Dude!
Jonathan Chait: Bring back Saddam Hussein
... our best option is to restore Saddam Hussein to power.
Yes, I know. Hussein is a psychotic mass murderer. Under his rule, Iraqis were shot, tortured and lived in constant fear. Bringing the dictator back would sound cruel if it weren't for the fact that all those things are also happening now, probably on a wider scale.
Meme to be appearing in a David Brooks OpEd near you.
Two excellent posts I recently read by Steve Clemons and Matt Stoller are well worth your time. However, I disagree with the fundamental premise that a McCain/Lieberman ticket is something to be deathly frightened of.
First, let me say that I'll defer to both of these guys in the realm of political strategy. I think that Marshall Whitman is a blight on society and if he has thrown his flabby white ass behind the last honest man, then there are things that do need taking care of. Matt is absolutely right in the call to arms in getting the "serious" adults in the democratic party on board and on board early in this fight.
But I can't help in thinking that we're fighting the last war here - so to speak. Whatever the reason why Lieberman won and whatever reason why McCain is the anointed saint of the center, events that are already in motion, which are way, way beyond anyone's control are going to be the backdrop for the battleground in 2008.
I'm talking, of course, about Iraq.
Pretty much the only thing that's been holding the pony brigade together is the fact that everything hasn't completely spun out of control. I'm pretty confident this is about to change. We're seeing the transformation of a rag-tag collection of insurgents into a seriously trained, well disciplined fighting force. Remember that war Israel and Lebanon had a while back? What was it that so surprised the Israelis? The population of Iraq is now solidly in favor of attacking the coalition forces (6 out of 10). Our attempts at training Iraqi security forces have been an absolute failure.
Oh, and did I mention that in just the past week, close to a thousand people have been killed in Iraq?
We're not "holding our own". The situation is already spinning out of control. Iraq's security forces are nothing more than the military forces in the sectarian civil war that's raging throughout the country.
And things are only going to get worse. Imagine what it says about your plans when the best thing you have going for you is a reliance on Syria and Iran to stop the violence. I mean, really. The best that the serious thinkers can come up with is a desperate plea that "we cannot lose" - that the consequences of failure are too terrible to imagine.
But we won't have to imagine them. The consequences are already becoming crystal clear as the bodies are stacked up like so much dead wood. The implications are crisply defined as the green zone feels more and more like Custer's Last Stand.
And so the battle in 2008 will not be one of "who is the more wizened sage of the center". The battle in 2008 will be to see who can get the troops out the quickest. There will be no more talk of staying the course. No more talk of long bombs. Only the desperate plans of desperate men as they beat an unorganized and deadly retreat out of Iraq.
McCain/Lieberman will be a target that even a blind folded marksman can hit every time. Firmly guided by Whitman, the party of one will march head long up to the edge of the yawning pit and jump right in. Iraq isn't going to hold itself together for anyone. And when it reaches the point where even the last honest man is screaming for our troops to come home, we're going to see chaos undreamed of in our century.
And the center of American politics is going to look like a big empty lake - everyone is going to be on one side of the shore or the other. And the way things are looking now - as America starts to open its collective eyes and survey the bubbling chaos - the right side of the shore is going to be pretty empty.
You might think this was a mistake. Unfortunately, the entire aquapet line is packaged the same way.
H/T Adam Dray
Surprising absolutely no one, the Pentagon's Iraq Review has come up with what at first appears to be three options.
The Pentagon's closely guarded review of how to improve the situation in Iraq has outlined three basic options: Send in more troops, shrink the force but stay longer, or pull out, according to senior defense officials.
Of course, option one, also known as "Go Big", requires several hundred thousand new troops in Iraq. The commission, naturally, has rejected this option because the army simply cannot pull that many troops out of their ass - and never could.
Option three, cleverly labeled "Go Home", is naturally a no-go from the get-go because we all know that winners never quit and quitters never win.
So, we're left with option number two, which surprisingly turns out to be the precise strategy that we're currently following in Iraq, the aptly named "Go Long", "Hail Mary" or simply the "Long Bomb" strategy. In this strategy, the number of troops will be temporarily "surged" by 20K to 30K and we're going to pray to all we hold holy that the Iraqis will be able to take up the slack asap.
Thus, we're left with yet another strategy that will require careful planning, execution and spectacularly good luck.
"The 'Go Long' approach is one that can work if there is sufficient strategic patience, resources appropriated and [if] leadership executes effectively," a military intelligence official said.
I guess past performance would indicate that we are, as the saying goes, fucked.
The only minor consolation is that the serious people are finally going to get their Hail Mary (at the expense of who knows how many soldier's lives, of course). And afterwards, they'll have to come up with yet another serious policy suggestion after this latest "surge" bombs out like each and every single plan these jokers have implemented in the past.
Go watch Robert Bussard's talk about Inertial Electrostatic Confinement Fusion at Google. I'm pretty darn confident that fusion really will start producing unlimited power in our lifetime. If you're really of the geeky type, you can go visit my fusion blog which documents my own experiments on with Bussard's design. Of course, these experiments are on hold until I get more time - having a one year old daughter in the house has proven to be quite the amazing time sink, surprisingly, leaving little time for such fun, esoteric pursuits.
Still, if you want more info, you can check out all the documents I've collected or the link collection I've put together. If you're looking for a quick, non-technical introduction to IEC Fusion, you can read the New Scientist article I have cached or, for a more technical overview, check out the U of Wisconsin's most excellent IEC introduction by John Santarius.
But what you really must do is gaze with awe at my own awesome cage and vacuum chamber up there above (click for the full size jpg). Bitchin', eh? Like something out of a Flash Gordon serial, ain't it?
Democrats warned not to block judges
The Senate's next Republican leader issued a veiled threat to block action on legislation if Democrats refuse to allow confirmation votes on
President Bush's troubled judicial nominations.Sen. Mitch McConnell (news, bio, voting record) of Kentucky, who will become minority leader Jan. 4, told the conservative Federalist Society Friday not to feel bad about the Senate election results because Republicans will hold 49 seats in a body that requires 60 votes to end a filibuster and bring legislation or presidential nominees to a final vote.
If the "Democrats want our cooperation, they'll give the president's judicial nominees an up-or-down vote," McConnell said.
My, how times have changed.
Well, I guess we can count on the Green Lantern Corp super army of beltway pundits and the gang of 14 moderates who held fast against the super evil known only as "the Filibuster".
Oh wait. This is a filibuster in support of the President.
Never mind.
Still, memo to McConnell: FU and the snake you rode in on.
In a column that took 12 years to see the light of day, Dick Meyer brings up a point which has always baffled and confused me as well.
The iconic figures of this era were Newt Gingrich, Richard Armey and Tom Delay. They were zealous advocates of free markets, low taxes and the pursuit of wealth; they were hawks and often bellicose; they were brutal critics of big government.
Yet none of these guys had success in capitalism. None made any real money before coming to Congress. None of them spent a day in uniform. And they all spent the bulk of their adult careers getting paychecks from the big government they claimed to despise. Two resigned in disgrace.
Having these guys in charge of a radical conservative agenda was like, well, putting Mark Foley in charge of the Missing and Exploited Children Caucus. Indeed, Foley was elected in the Class of '94 and is not an inappropriate symbol of their regime.
Myself, I've started my own business, ran it in the black for several years, paid employees, dealt with health care, taxes and all sorts of stuff and ended up selling the company. I've been a part of two other startups which didn't turn out as well. I'm still in the thick of the capitalist machine, working for House Harkonnen (He who controls the Spice controls the Universe, after all).
Now, what I find terribly odd is that here I am a big fucking liberal. If you listen to the likes of Gingrich and the jackals that compose their peanut gallery, I'm the living antithesis of capitalism. I'm the poster child for communism simply because I'm a democrat.
Which is kind of fucking hilarious. The jackanapes wagging their fingers with such sincere holiness over the religion of the free market and worshiping at the stinky feet of Milti seem to always be people who aren't exercising that muscle of capitalism. They seem to lounging back, soaking up the benefits of the taxes I pay and enjoying the fruits of the hard work that me and millions of other entrepreneurs produce. They just yelp the loudest and always seem to form the Greek chorus behind people like Gingrich, DeLay and Norquist.
Again, it's not like I believe that you have to be an Über capitalist to be of any worth or have anything constructive and down right useful to say about the economy - quite the contrary. I don't think that just because you build engines makes you a great race car driver. But I do think that if you're going to be a rabid, foaming at the mouth demagogue for the religion of free markets, bitch slapping people who disagree with you, labeling them communists and worse... well, perhaps you had better have some experience in that free market by actually participating in it rather than sucking off the government teat.
'Cause otherwise it makes me just want to bitch slap your sorry ass back and tell you to STFU because you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
Just sayin'.
The Cunning Realist points out the obvious flaw in the strategy so desperately being pushed by all the serious people
But we know now that before the war, our military, diplomatic, and intelligence communities determined together that it would take 400,000 troops to have any chance of success, and that even that force level would not preclude the possibility of Iraq devolving into chaos. (The wire report is here, and the recently-released documents in the National Security Archive are here.) That was the best estimate in 1999, when Iraq was "stable." Anyone advocating another 30,000-50,000 troops (after which we'd still have less than 200,000 troops in theater) needs to explain why Iraq is far "easier" now --after three years of a low-grade civil war -- than it would have been in 1999. I haven't seen that explanation yet.
Aside from the obvious losers who are pushing this strategy - of whom I could care less what their idiotic reasoning behind there support for this desperate strategy is - there's a couple of people who are theoretically smart who are desperately pushing this strategy as well. It'd be interesting to hear what their explanation for why this obvious, gaping hole in their strategy isn't really a stunningly large flaw at all. But as my brain isn't the size of a planet, I probably wouldn't be able to understand it. As it is, I'm still wondering where the hell they think they're going to get this 30k - 50k of troops that they believe will save Iraq from chaos.
As far as I can tell, the theory is that we can extend the current troops deployment, not sending them home. This will temporarily bump up the number anywhere from 20K to 40K, depending on whom you talk to - and whom you believe. As I see it, beside from the obvious flaw in this strategy that the CR points out, there's the fact that you simply can't sustain this - it's only a temporary "surge", as the saying goes. How long it can be kept up, what the damage to our troops it will wreck, and whether it can even be done long enough to actually accomplish the stated goal remains conveniently unanswered. So, the whole plan is yet another plan which requires "everything to go perfectly" - in a long, long line of plans where "everything had to go perfectly" to pull the rabbit out of the hat. Remember when we were going to "decapitate" the regime and install the head of Challabi? Good times. Good times.
Sorry, but all these ideas remind me of what I consider to be the harbinger of this whole fiasco, the aptly named Millennium Challenge war games. If you haven't heard of this, please do take the time to do a bit of research. What happened during this August 2002 rehearsal for Iraq should be required reading for everyone - double so for all the jackasses pushing for a war with Iran.
In the computer-controlled game, a flotilla of Navy warships and Marine amphibious warfare ships steamed into the Persian Gulf for what Van Riper assumed would be a pre-emptive strike against the country he was defending.
Van Riper resolved to strike first and unconventionally using fast patrol boats and converted pleasure boats fitted with ship-to-ship missiles as well as first generation shore-launched anti-ship cruise missiles. He packed small boats and small propeller aircraft with explosives for one mass wave of suicide attacks against the Blue fleet. Last, the general shut down all radio traffic and sent commands by motorcycle messengers, beyond the reach of the code-breakers.
At the appointed hour he sent hundreds of missiles screaming into the fleet, and dozens of kamikaze boats and planes plunging into the Navy ships in a simultaneous sneak attack that overwhelmed the Navy's much-vaunted defenses based on its Aegis cruisers and their radar controlled Gatling guns.
When the figurative smoke cleared it was found that the Red Forces had sunk 16 Navy ships, including an aircraft carrier. Thousands of Marines and sailors were dead.
The referees stopped the game, which is normal when a victory is won so early. Van Riper assumed that the Blue Force would draw new, better plans and the free play war games would resume.
Instead he learned that the war game was now following a script drafted to ensure a Blue Force victory: He was ordered to turn on all his anti-aircraft radar so it could be destroyed and he was told his forces would not be allowed to shoot down any of the aircraft bringing Blue Force troops ashore.
Now, the really sad thing about the whole Millennium Games fiasco is that, having happened in 2002 - a full 4 years ago - its lessons were manifestly apparent to everyone before the Iraq war. And, to anyone with brain one who took the time to look at the data, the lesson wasn't that we were going to get our asses kicked by Saddam going into Iraq. No, the lesson was clearly that this administration lives in a scripted reality. If things don't work out the way they want, the go back and make it look the way it was supposed to. After all, in an exchange which says everything you need to know about the people running things, let's remember what was said to Ron Suskind
Suskind: He says, you know, "You, Suskind, you're in what we call the 'reality-based community'" -- that's actually the term he used.
I said, "The WHAT?"
He says, "The 'reality-based community'.". He said, "you all believe" -- now let me see if I can get this right -- "You all believe that answers to solutions will emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality."
I said, "Yeah... YEAH, OF COURSE..."
He says, "Well, let me tell you how we really see it. You see, we're an empire now. And when we act, we kinda create a reality. Events flow from our actions. And because of that, what we do is... essentially... we act, and every time we act we create a whole new set of laws of physics, which you then judiciously study for your solutions, and while you're doing that we'll act again, promulgate a whole other set."
Janine Garofolo: "So you throw a rock in the pond, and the ripples go out..."
Suskind: And this guy said, "and that's where we'll stand ultimately; you'll study us, and we'll act. We'll be the actors, and you will study what we do. And if you're really good -- on good behavior -- maybe thirty years from now one of us will visit that graduate seminar you'll be teaching at Dartmouth in your tweed blazer." That's the thinking.
Thus the inability to send the required troops into Iraq in the first place (where 400K troops were going to come from is *still* unanswered, of course), their inability to correctly see the clearly developing insurgency, and now with a full blown civil war they are unable to see.
And yet, somehow, an additional 20K to 50K of troops for a short duration is another hail Mary that the serious people believe is going to work in Iraq. Why these people are still considered serious thinkers in this area still remains a mystery to me.
But then, as I pointed out previously, I don't have the brain the size of a planet, which is why I likely can't understand their clever and superior strategies.
So, you just have to love the right wing coverage of the whole Pelosi/Murtha/Hoyer entertainment. All over the blogosphere you can hear the cackling glee of the right wing as they anticipate a feeding frenzy as the Democrats implode merely one week after kicking their flabby white asses out of Washington. Probably my favorite is that famously wrong RedState curmudgeon, Pejman Yousefzadeh:
PWNED!
...
Again, it should be emphasized that the reverberations from this leadership fight will last long after the fight ended. Democrats knew coming into today that Nancy Pelosi made a poor tactical choice in throwing her weight behind John Murtha in the leadership fight. She demonstrated disloyalty to Steny Hoyer, who helped win a Democratic majority and she helped elevate the "culture of corruption" by backing one of the more ethically questionable members the House has.Now, in addition to all of that, Democrats know something else.
They know that Nancy Pelosi is weak.
Yea, so weak she won unamously in her bid to be the first woman speaker of the house of representatives - third in line to be the President (hey, how's Cheney's ticker anyway?).
Stunning. I guess Pelosi should have just let her friend Murtha by the side of the road. Shoot, I'm guessing that she should have kicked the bastard repeatedly until he stopped moving just to prove she was worthy to be the top dog of the house. Yea. And then she should have formed a naked human pyramid of anyone who dared to support him and... Well, I guess the picture of how these jackanapes understand how the game is played out is pretty clear. Thinking no more advanced than the average intelligence found in a pack of wild dogs.
If you're interested in another, more well informed analysis of what went on with Pelosi/Hoyer/Murtha, check out Steve Clemen's take.
Well, it's now been just a week since the last election and I gotta say that it just keeps getting weirder and weirder and weirder.
So, while we still have time, while there is still some scrap of sanity left before the coming weird times arrives....
Again, via "Which One's Pink?"
You gotta be crazy, you gotta have a real need.
You gotta sleep on your toes, and when you're on the street,
You gotta be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed.
And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight,
You gotta strike when the moment is right without thinking.And after a while, you can work on points for style.
Like the club tie, and the firm handshake,
A certain look in the eye and an easy smile.
You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to,
So that when they turn their backs on you,
You'll get the chance to put the knife in.You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder.
You know it's going to get harder, and harder, and harder as you
get older.
And in the end you'll pack up and fly down south,
Hide your head in the sand,
Just another sad old man,
All alone and dying of cancer.And when you loose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown.
And as the fear grows, the bad blood slows and turns to stone.
And it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw
around.
So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone,
Dragged down by the stone.I gotta admit that I'm a little bit confused.
Sometimes it seems to me as if I'm just being used.
Gotta stay awake, gotta try and shake off this creeping malaise.
If I don't stand my own ground, how can I find my way out of this
maze?Deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending
That everyone's expendable and no-one has a real friend.
And it seems to you the thing to do would be to isolate the winner
And everything's done under the sun,
And you believe at heart, everyone's a killer.Who was born in a house full of pain.
Who was trained not to spit in the fan.
Who was told what to do by the man.
Who was broken by trained personnel.
Who was fitted with collar and chain.
Who was given a pat on the back.
Who was breaking away from the pack.
Who was only a stranger at home.
Who was ground down in the end.
Who was found dead on the phone.
Who was dragged down by the stone.
It is with some amusement that I watch all of the so-called serious people gleefully throw Iraq under the bus as they figure that it's now the democrat's problem to deal with. After all, it's why they were elected into power, right? So chuck the hot potato and let them deal with the tar baby. What's amusing about this whole process isn't the fact that Iraq is being used as the equivalent of the flaming bag of shit left on old man McGreevy's doorstep. Rather, what's amusing about this rush to ensure that responsibility for Iraq is firmly in the hands of the Democratic congress is that the people chucking this hot potato in their direction are the very same people who have been pummeling us with the uber concept of the Unitary Executive - i.e. the idea that the President is El Presidente and that the congress is there to rubber stamp what El Presidente decides is best for his country.
Which is why it's hilarious to see this pack of jackals suddenly decide it's really the responsibility of the congress to make things right.
Leaving aside the fact that Iraq is a country populated by people who have been fighting for centuries and the fact that the only reason they weren't at each others' throats in 2001 is because a brutal dictator kept this fighting at bay by ruthlessly using his power to destroy anyone who dared raise their heads up and make waves. Leave aside the fact that there's a full blown civil war between these factions who have been fighting for centuries, ignited by the stunning incompetence of these ostriches that have been loudly proclaiming simply doesn't exit.
Leave all that aside.
Just focus on the fact that, like little boy blue, these jokers are simply washing their hands of the whole mess, taking their football and stomping off to home with their lower lip thrust out and trembling.
Like little babies.
Unlike little babies, though, what they're doing once they're 'round the corner and out of site is laying down their own political equivalent of IEDs in that any suggestion of doing anything different than what they are already doing is completely unacceptable. What they are saying, in effect, is that the strategy is correct, it's just that the strategy is being implemented by idiots.
And so they're going to fight tooth and nail, sabotaging everything they can get their grubby little petulant hands on along the way. Anything short of doing precisely what we're already doing is going to be shrilly characterized as "cutting and running" - or worse. Hell, the entire theme of the Republican election strategy was "If the Democrats win, the Terrorists will come and rape the white women and gleefully set about blowing up all your children". It was a campaign based on fear mongering and portraying the democratic strategy as one which will do nothing but lead to the complete and horrific destruction of our most basic way of life.
So when they punt Iraq over to this side of the field and proudly proclaim that Iraq is now the Democrat's problem, it's kind of like watching the Greeks roll up the Trojan horse up to the gates. It's a flaming bag of shit on a national scale. It's not a sincere belief that, in light of the election results, we should let the Democrats take the lead in solving this seething chaos that the people who used to be in charge were responsible for creating. No. It's just a not even clever political calculation designed to tar the Democrats with the failure that their brilliant policies have brought about.
Don't get me wrong. I do think the American people voted for a change in this election. I just don't think it's going to be that easy given that the only thing that has changed is that the checks on the executive is back in place. The person who's supposed to execute the plan is still the same person he was the day before. Cheney is still the same person he was before. Nothing has changed in the executive branch.
I'm reminded of a phrase that I heard quite a bit before 9/11: "Notification is not consultation". This administration is peopled exclusively by individuals who believe that their only responsibility to Congress is to file the appropriate notification forms - file classified ads in the D.C. papers or something similar. Worse, this is the dominant world view in the Right's political body. It's not just in their nature to compromise and consult in anything but the most trivial and superficial of ways. It is the proclaimed world view of this collective pack of jackanapes that they don't need no stinkin' badges. They don't have to do anything anyone says - they're the deciders.
Which is really just long drawn out post simply pointing out that one should not just be suspicious of Republicans bearing gifts, but absolutely and completely paranoid of them doing so. They have gone out of their way to proclaim that we're all a pack of terrorist loving, baby killing amoralists who want to ensure gay abortions for all.
I don't think they gave up that deeply held belief which underlies every political theory they have just because they lost a single election.
So Bush has thrown Rumsfeld under the bus in the first of undoubtedly many frenzied acts yet to come that are designed to appease the jackals starting to snap at his heels. That this happened less than 24 hours after the election - not to mention about a week after he just declared Rumsfeld "Secretary of Defense for Life" - marks the entire event with the unmistakable stench of a desperate man. That he does this in the middle of the Iraq war would indicate that the man is terrified.
Rumsfeld's resignation does have the desired effect of momentarily distracting some of his most vocal critics of his handling of the Iraq war. But it is just a distraction because the guy actually responsible for the whole mess is still in charge. Rumsfeld's political sepaku allows those who have strayed off the reservation to claim victory and merely delays the inevitable. While Rumsfeld was, in fact, a truly deplorable Secretary of Defense and the simple fact is that the world is a far, far better place without him serving in any capacity in this or any other administration, changing the driver of the bus careening down the hill at 100 miles per hour doesn't change the fact that we're all still careening down the hill at 100 miles per hour. Cheney has cut the brake lines long ago and Bush has permanently jammed the steering wheel so there's very little that anyone - short of Superman - can do to change the way this story is going to end. The only option available is to take our collective foot off the gas in the vain hope to limit the damage to merely historic rather than galactic in scope.
But if anything has been shown by the events of the past six years, it's that those who are "serious" about Iraq in particular, and American's foreign policy in general, are easily fooled by cheap cinematic tricks. Like Terry Malloy, we are forever destined to be a contender in l'affair d' Iraq - if it wasn't for that incompetent boob who was in charge of bringing their dream into fruition! His firing is simply another slender reed in a long line of slender reeds they can continue to cling to in the vain hope that something can still be salvaged from this fiasco.
The problem with scapegoats, though, is that they only work as long as they're actually drawing fire. Once burned at the stake, beating the dead corpse conveys little satisfaction. With Rumsfeld gone and Cheney permanently ensconced in his undisclosed location, I have a feeling that all the firewalls these jokers have created are burning up fast. The proverbial damn is getting ready to burst. Whatever kind of evil clown Rumsfeld was, there was one thing he was really, really good at, and that was holding back reality from impolitely raining on the parade and drawing fire.
Without Rumsfeld playing the role of the lightning rod, things are going fall apart fast.
It's all over the air today. Liberals - particularly those hairy, smelly, anti-war hippies - were the big losers in yesterday's election. The sensible center has been ratified and everyone just wants everyone to have a great big group hug and continue doing the same thing that's always worked. Yesterday was just an average election in a reelected President's second term. Moderates won the day and we can finally get to the business of cleaning out the radical left from our politics.
Move along. Nothing to see here.
Well, the race is tightening, everyone is now predicting the wave may just turn out to be a slight slosh.
Christopher, in a typically excellent post about the sentencing in Saddam's trial, asks
For Americans, there needs to be some soul-searching, starting with the question I asked above: Was this verdict, as satisfying as it may be to some, worth the disaster that is Iraq? Are Americans still willing to send their sons and daughters there to keep Iraqis from each others’ throats for a few months more?
As I alluded to in the title of this post, this is a trick question. It's not the American people's choice. As has been pointed out over and over and over, it's the decider's choice. As far as the right is concerned, this entire situation is like a ratchet - it only turns in one direction. Even the moderately intelligent on the right have bought into the whole "cut n' run" characterization of the alternatives to "staying the course". And thus, unwittingly or knowingly, form an essential piece of that ratchet. And given that Iraq is no longer a matter of right or wrong or even a fantasy regarding democratization of the middle east, it's not going to be decided by the American people.
The Iraq war is now a matter of "honor" and a matter of saving face on the right. Doing anything other than what the decider has said from the very beginning - whatever that really is, it all comes down to simply staying and getting blown up - is impossible for them to comprehend. It means "letting the democrats win" and if there is one thing that must be avoided at all cost, it's "letting the democrats win".
Even if it means another two years and two thousand more American sons and daughters dead.
I stumbled across Red State again. A while back they were messing with their RSS feeds and they mercifully dropped off my radar for the past couple of weeks. I wondered by and found a typical stern, finger wagging post by Moe Lane on the predictions for this Tuesday
Now - and just so that we're all clear - the consensus of the media, the polls and Tradesports is that the GOP is definitely going to lose the House of Representatives and probably the Senate, yes*? They're all saying that it's a done deal, yes? Everybody who's anybody on the Democratic side is endorsing that conclusion, yes? And it's all supposedly inevitable at this point, yes?
What? (shrug) No reason: I just want to make sure that I've clearly understood the Other Side's position on this, 72 hours out.
Read the comments for that extra pompous hubris that RedState's commenters are known for. But Moe's post really is a gem. Note that everyone is "on the other side". It's a classic. But hey, when they reach the acceptance phase, this attitude will serve them well as the party of permanent opposition. Another thing I love about these stern pronouncements by Moe (filled with ominous rumblings) is the fact that he's unwilling to make any predictions of his own. All he's doing is just setting up a "gotcha" so he can gloat if a miracle happens and Diebold comes through for the glorious party of permanent revolution. He doesn't have the stones to go on record - he wants plausible deniability while still keeping the possibility open for sticking that shiv in if everything somehow manages to work out.
Whatever these jokers are, courageous isn't a term that figures prominently in their bios.
Then there's Chris Lawrence over at OTB. Chris piles on James' previous post pushing Charles Krauthammer’s tributary feeding the great river De Nial. As Kevin Drum has already pointed out, the very premise of this rather weak attempt at setting the stage for face saving after Tuesday's election results are easily shown to be false. No doubt Steve "Dr. Science" Verndon, the resident statistic spinner at OTB, will be out in force to rebut Kevin's post. Still, the real gems in Chris' are his own tributaries he's contributing to the great river De Nial
Midterm loss, however, could be a good thing for the Republicans going forward. Having a Democratic leadership in Congress will be a useful rhetorical foil for the president, and divided government will force Democrats to shoulder some of the blame for the continuation of unpopular policies–particularly if prominent Democrats are unable to follow through on their commitments to force troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan.
Yea, I guess the whole Pavlovian conditioning of the "Unitary Executive" we've all been subjected to over the past 6 years will vanish like smoke in the wind now that Pelosi is in da house. And considering that Bush has been using the democrats as a rhetorical foil for the last 6 years and it seems to be a strategy that has lost it's effectiveness means that now that the democrats are in a position to use Bush as a rhetorical foil can only portend good things for the Republican party.
I guess Chris doesn't understand the meaning of the word "Subpoena Power". It'll be funny to see the man learn the meaning of the term over the next two years.
But really, Chris saves the best for last
Probably the best news for the Republicans is that after 12 years of Republican control of Congress, voters have forgotten how the Democrats acted during their 40-year dominance of both chambers–pretty much like Republicans have behaved over the past 12. The next two years will be a useful reminder to the public that the grass isn’t any greener on the other side of the aisle.
Yea. I guess after 8 years of prosperity, shrinking government, a stellar economy and the first budget surplus in recent memory, those voters have amnesia. After all, the last 6 years Bush has seen record deficits, an economy that most aren't participating in, rampant corruption, vast increases in the size of the government, ethics violations galore, spending like a drunken sailor... well, the list really is endless. And while the word liberal is probably still a pejorative, it could well be that having Pelosi block at least part of the spending like a drunken sailor, etc., will have precisely the opposite effect that Chris expects. I mean, it's not going to take much to look like a frickin' superhero compared to the way the House has been run for the last 6 years.
Still, the "Lake Victoria" of this great river of Republican De Nial has to be the three stooges of the current apocalypse: Richard Perle, David Frum and Kenneth Adelman. Read the entire article as it really is one for the history books. The shorter version of this article is probably theoretically impossible. I've seen a number of good attempts throughout the blogosphere, but they've all focused on just specific individuals or sections. The entire article is brimming over with quotes that future historians will be pulling up for hundreds of years to come. Really, it's that amazing.
One final note. That picture of Richard Perle. My god. He looks like Skeletor. He used to look like a blubbery roman empire, ready for the orgy. Now he looks like that evil reverend dude from Poltergeist III (check out the link and see for yourself). What did that evil dude keep saying? "God is in his holy temple".
Denial kept the Reverend from crossing over into the light. From the looks of things, it's going to keep the Republicans from doing much the same.
I was going to save this until after November 8th, but what the hell. If I'm wrong, I'll just be in stage one of the Democratic version so I won't worry any way...
We can already see this happening throughout the conservative blogosphere. Even with the ground work of spin being laid by those who see the wave starting to break, the party faithful are still spinning away as if it were 2002. John Kerry this, New York Times, that... Pretty much the standard fare we've been subjected to for the past 6 years. At some point, even the lizard brains are going to start noticing something is up.
You thought that these guys were scary before, just wait until the light dawns on Marble Head and they kick into full victim mode. Watch the threats escalate from the the absurd to the incredible within milliseconds. Watch their anger boil and marvel at the effects of their lashing out in that anger. Thought their suggestions of rounding up everyone who looks like an Arab was scary? Wait until they push off the donut crumbs, stumble up through the left over pizza boxes and rush out into their front yards in their pink bath robes, menacingly jabbing their 5 iron at you, hurtling incomprehensible insults to everyone who wanders by and threatening bodily harm against everyone who betrayed them by voting democratic.
This will be one of the most hilarious times (assuming that we aren't a war with Iran because of the other reaction by Bush and Rove) in recent political memory. The party that's been so fucking confident of their perfection will put on the nylon stockings and cover those pig lips with lipstick. They'll switch their porch lights to red and start giving it away in a pathetically desperate effort to win back votes. You name it, they'll give it to you. Moral clarity and economic purity will be yesterday's news. You thought they were whores before.... you haven't seen anything yet.
The number of conservative politicians desiring to spend more time with their family with suddenly fill the news. Conservative blogs will shut down completely as they find themselves unable to even work up the effort to punch up hate filled missives at their once popular blogs. Trolling by conservatives in lefty blog comments will drop to levels unseen since - well - since ever. Enjoy it while you can.
Suddenly, every conservative will remember that the conservative party was really just an opposition party all along. They will remember that Hillary Clinton is still running for president, and hey, that alone is a non stop fountain of inspiration for hate filled missives against the democrats... And there's always war with Iran... George Bush hasn't left office and Dick Cheney is still in charge. A few nuclear bombs and suddenly everyone is no longer talking about the democrats.
Via "I, Robot"
Gaze at the sky
And picture a memory
Of days in your life
You knew what it meant to be happy and free
With time on your sideRemember your daddy
When no one was wiser
Your ma used to say
That you would go further than he ever could
With time on your sideThink of a boy with the stars in his eye
Longing to reach them but frightened to try
Sadly, you’d say, someday, somedayBut day after day
The show must go on
And time slipped away
Before you could build any castles in spain
The chance had gone byWith nothing to say
And no one to say it toNothing has changed
You’ve still got it all to do
Surely you know
The chance has gone byThink of a boy with the stars in his eye
Longing to reach them but frightened to try
Sadly, you’d say, someday, somedayBut, day after day
The show must go on
And you gaze at the sky
And picture a memory of days in your life
With time on your sideWith time on your side
(day after day the show must go on)
With time on your side
(day after day the show must go on)
Just exactly when did Kerry stop beating his wife?
I think we'll all breath a heavy sigh of relief when the right wing finally gives up on fictionalized versions of events that happened over 30 years ago*.
All they have left is fear mongering and truly pathetic attempts to turn molehills into mount Everest through the application of fantasy political football punting.
________________________
* Who am I kidding? Most of these jokers are still fighting the civil war. They'll be pulling out Vietnam and the mythical spitting hippies for the next 150 years.
Lordy, lordy, lordy! Kerry had the audacity to make a joke about Bush! The horrors! Doesn't that man know his place after the 2006 smack down that was hand delivered by Rove? And the democrats! My word! Don't they have the decency to put Kerry front and center in all the congressional and state level races we're about to vote on?
I mean, it's not like the Army is having to lower their standards because they are drastically falling behind their recruitment goals. And it's not like this lowering of standards and desperation to fill positions has led to the infiltration of hate groups in the military. And regardless of what you hear from the treasonous democrats (we'll get you Kerry!), the alarming loss of junior officers from the ranks of our millitary is, in fact, not alarming at all.
Because the import thing - the really, really, REALLY important thing - is that we all ensure that this last minute desperate attempt at wrapping the Republican party in the flag works as Rove has planned. It's crucial that we go into next week's elections secure in the knowledge that the Republicans will do everything they can to make the millitary a political tool of this election.
They care because it works to pay lip service without any actual follow through.
John Henke... What can you say about this guy? He spent a lot of virtual column inches soul searching to rectify his libertarian ideals with the stark and crystal clear realities of the republican party. He weighed his options and then came down clearly on the side of bigotry, brutality and fraud.
Yes, John Henke's dark night of the soul, wrestling with such issues as which graves to fill up and which graves to empty has finally sunk to his natural level in the political echosphere: shrill apologist for a bunch of authoritarian brutes. In a time where literally anyone can see the actual video of the incident without even exerting the effort it takes to pick up a jelly donut (thanks to YouTube embedding), he is reduced to standing up in front of the crowds in the comical attempt to explain that what you see with your own two eyes isn't what happened at all.
I'd be lying if I said I was surprised to see such a prominent Libertarian turned into a complete shill, reduced to making shit up to protect his racist boss, spinning like a whirling dervish in his attempts to create enough misdirection such that enough of the truly stupid will believe the lines he's peddling. But what does surprise me is how public and how undeniable this final dropping of the veil of allegiance to "objective" reality and reason that Libertarians proudly proclaim has been.
I mean, it's just like some cheap movie script where the idiot gets his comeuppance through a series of highly unlikely coincidences, revealing his true colors such that the mousy guy with two left feet ends up with the blond bombshell.
It's almost enough to make one believe in a divine comedy.
