About Those "Seeds of Democracy"

Well, this isn't, exactly, a Captain Renault moment;

Defector admits to WMD lies that triggered Iraq war

The defector who convinced the White House that Iraq had a secret biological weapons programme has admitted for the first time that he lied about his story, then watched in shock as it was used to justify the war.

Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, codenamed Curveball by German and American intelligence officials who dealt with his claims, has told the Guardian that he fabricated tales of mobile bioweapons trucks and clandestine factories in an attempt to bring down the Saddam Hussein regime, from which he had fled in 1995.

"Maybe I was right, maybe I was not right," he said. "They gave me this chance. I had the chance to fabricate something to topple the regime. I and my sons are proud of that and we are proud that we were the reason to give Iraq the margin of democracy."

Since Obama has chosen not to look in the rearview mirror, we can only hope that history will not be so kind, and place the Bush Grindhouse and their Legacy in the appropriate light - The President of Shitdom.

And the Flying Monkeys over at the Right Wing Freakshow still wants to headline it was those "planting seeds of Democracry" bullshit.



Bonus Riffs

John Cole: You Told Me you Loved Me, But I Don’t Understand

Adam Serwer: Conservatives keep hogging credit for Mideast protests

For The Want Of A Lie

It Will Never Be A Happy "Mission Accomplished" Day

"Son of A Dog!"

Going Gaga

Well, we're still in our low posting/no posting mode, as tasks on the homefront, and appointments, have piled up, shifting our earlier projection back until tomorrow, or, more likely, Wednesday.

We hope ...

However, we do have a couple of "Gaga" moments to report on.

Frist, was the former Court-Appointed-President ((h/t Barry Crimmins)), The Commander Guy, punching the time clock, continuing to work at showing why he is going down in history as the Worst President Ever.



Bush on bin Laden: ‘I guess he is not dead.’

Eight years ago, President Bush asserted with great bravado that al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden would be taken “dead or alive.” “I don’t care, dead or alive — either way,” Bush said at the time. This weekend, while attending a conference of business leaders in New Delhi, India, Bush struck a different tone:

Asked whether al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden could be alive, Bush said “I guess he is not dead.”

He, however, noted that Laden is hiding and “not leading victory parades” or “espousing his cause” on TV.

He expressed confidence that Laden will be brought to justice which “he deserves to be” and it was a matter of time.

There must be a certain level of bliss, for someone that stupid, reveling in their own stupidity.

Maybe we should have this next guy read some of his speeches.

There was a minor buzz on the World Wide Web, over Christopher Walken, appearing on the BBC One program "Friday Night with Jonathan Ross" last week,

College Humor dubbed it "For Halloween Christopher Walken became an impression of himself."

Mahalo said;

The actor, known for his strange inflections and awkward, halting manner of speech, emphasized each individual syllable of the pop song's chorus, rendering it comical and ridiculous when spoken aloud.

What Christopher Walken did was read aloud Lady Gaga's song "Poker Face", as only Christopher Walken can do.

As they say on those sports show, "Let's go to the tape";

Christopher Walken performs Lady Gaga's Poker Face

Still Utterly Clueless

There must be a certain calmness in it.

Walking around, in the new bubble, out of office, almost universally heralded as the WORST PRESIDENT EVER.



Earlier this week, the former Court-Appointed President gave an interview with the Dallas Star-Telegram, and added to his roster of The Commander Guy, The Decider Guy, Ek-A-Lec-Tic Reading Guy, a new one;

Former President Bush says his new title is 'retired guy'

And this portion of the interview stuck out like a like a neocon at a peace rally;

Time in office: "Some days were good, some days weren’t so good," Bush said. "Every day was a glorious experience of serving our country. . . . When we lost a soldier, it was a dark moment." But even then, "I could always see light."

[snip]

Nervous moment: Standing on the mound in Yankee Stadium, getting ready to throw out the ceremonial first pitch of a game in October 2001. He said Yankees infielder Derek Jeter asked whether he’d be throwing from the mound or from in front of it. Bush said he told Jeter that he’d throw from the mound. "He said: 'Don’t bounce it. They’ll boo you,’ " Bush said, adding that he was nervous. "I got it across the plate and it was a fantastic moment, a moment of relief, then a moment of high energy."

He could "see the light?"

His most nervous moment was throwing a baseball?

It wasn't about lying, and orchestrating the lying, and fabricating the evidence, to invade and occupy Iraq?

It wasn't that his Vice President, and staff, purposefully, and blatantly, exposed the identity of an undercover CIA agent?

Or, that he illegally spied, and wiretapped, innocent American citizens?

That his policies of war, and giving tax cuts to the wealthy, and doing all he could to end oversight and regulation, his warped vision of an "Ownership Society" all but plunged this country (well, nearly the entire planet) into a second Great Depression?

No, his biggest worry, the thing that made him most nervous, was throwing a baseball.

Only the WORST PRESIDENT EVER could maintain that level of clueless consistency.

Ignorant Dolt of The Day: Ross Douthat

I was surprised, to some extent, that there wasn't a big roll out.

You know, trumpets blaring, long, ego-pumping press release.

But, no, nothing.

Only his column announced that NYT columnist Russ Douthat had jumped aboard the Bush Legacy Team, earning him a spot on the ever-growing roster of The Garlic's, Ignorant Dolts.



It was a doozy today, going well beyond the "when life gives you lemons, you make lemonade" kind-of-thing.

Douthat actually praises The Commander Guy for the disasters he created, in short, for the Invasion and Occupation of Iraq, Bush aces it because he escalated the war, and as to the Nightmare On Wall Street, The Ek-A-Lec-Tic Reading Guy decided to let Heistin' Hank Paulson turn over the U.S. Treasury to his old cronies, bailing them out from their own greed.

Here's some gems from Douthat's "The Self-Correcting Presidency";

But if Bush is destined to go down as a failed president, come what may, he looks increasingly like an unusual sort of failure.

America has had its share of disastrous chief executives. But few have gone as far as Bush did in trying to repair their worst mistakes. Those mistakes were the Iraq war — both the decision to invade and the conduct of the occupation — and the irrational exuberance that stoked the housing bubble. The repairs were the surge, undertaken at a time when the political class was ready to abandon Iraq to the furies, and last fall’s unprecedented economic bailout.

Both fixes remain controversial. But for the moment, both look like the sort of disaster-averting interventions for which presidents get canonized. It’s just that in Bush’s case, the disasters he averted were created on his watch.

[snip]

It’s true that Bush didn’t personally formulate the surge, or craft the bailout. But he was, well, the decider, and if he takes the blame — rightly — for what Donald Rumsfeld wrought, then he should get credit for Gen. David Petraeus’s successes in Iraq, and for blessing the sweeping decisions that Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke made in last September’s desperate weeks.

And if we give Bush credit on these fronts, it’s worth reassessing one of the major critiques of his presidency — that it was fatally insulated, by ideology and personality, from both the wisdom of the Washington elite and the desires of the broader public.

[snip]

And perhaps his best decisions, on the surge and the bailout, were made from the bunker of a seemingly-ruined presidency — when his approval ratings had bottomed out, his credibility was exhausted and his allies had abandoned him.

This is not a blueprint that future presidents will want to follow. But the next time an Oval Office occupant sees his popularity dissolve and his ambitions turn to dust, he can take comfort from Bush’s example. It suggests that it’s possible to become a good president even — or especially — when you can no longer hope to be a great one.

You would have thought some editor at the NYT would have walked the copy back to Douthat, reminding him, that "Hey, no way, Worst-President-Ever!", and give him the choice of rewriting it, or having some advertisement run in his column space.

And, if you think The Garlic is being tough on him, that Douthat isn't deserving of the IDOTD ...

From Blue Texan, over on Firedoglake;

I never thought I'd write this, but I'm starting to miss Bill Kristol.

Put another way, if I get totally wasted on smack, pass out on the couch with a lit cigarette and set the house on fire, but am shaken out of my drug-induced stupor by the billowing smoke in time for me to pull one of my children out of the conflagration -- that makes me a "good" parent not a "great" one.

Some sliding scale! And I thought conservatives opposed affirmative action.

Brad, at Sadly No;

Yeah, OK, so Bush fucked up everything he touched, but at least he had the good sense to scramble around at the very last minute while spending lots of lives and money to avert a complete zombies-roaming-the-streets type of disaster. In conclusion, Bush was a good president.

Even Glenn Greenwald, on his Twitter, weighed in;

Ross Douthat, every week: I'll explicitly renounce right-wing myths to prove I'm reasonable, then spend the whole column justifying them

Yeah, Douthat, we know that the NYT brought you in to replace Little Billy Kristol, that you are one of the young tigers of the Right Wing Freak Show (the non-screaming division), but Jesus, were you in a coma for the past 8+ years?

One thing if you playing around with this idea, over cocktails (you could always blow it off that you were drunk).

But, to run this Bush Legacy Package as your column?

Only an Ignorant Dolt would do such, and you, Ross Douthat, are today's Ignorant Dolt.

It Will Never Be A Happy "Mission Accomplished" Day

We wonder how The Commander Guy celebrated yesterday.

Did he strut around in his his new Dallas neighborhood in the flight suit? ... Stand on his back porch, reliving the moment on the deck of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln? ... Or, simply remain obtuse, as dense as he has ever been.

Yesterday, if you recall, was the 6th Anniversary of "Mission Accomplished".

You remember, when the invasion and occupation was all wrapped up, all that "stuff happens" happened, the cheering crowds of liberated people, fading in the deep crevices of The Bush Grindhouse, a few stray rose pedals, and flowers, drifting aimlessly..

As egregious (and, perhaps, criminal) as this was, it was more horrific, the complete submission, and full-throated cheerleading, of our dunce-capped media.

So many were so, so wrong.

Greg Mitchell has captured that, in his book, "So Wrong For So Long", and has a piece up on Huffington Post, "On 6th Anniversary of 'Mission Accomplished' -- How the Media Blew It";

Chris Matthews on MSNBC called Bush a "hero" and boomed, "He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, I believe, except a few critics." He added: "Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple."

PBS' Gwen Ifill said Bush was "part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan." On NBC, Brian Williams gushed, "The pictures were beautiful. It was quite something to see the first-ever American president on a -- on a carrier landing."

Bob Schieffer on CBS said: "As far as I'm concerned, that was one of the great pictures of all time." His guest, Joe Klein, responded: "Well, that was probably the coolest presidential image since Bill Pullman played the jet fighter pilot in the movie Independence Day. That was the first thing that came to mind for me."

Ahh .... Dwarf, finks, phonies, and frauds, the bunch of 'em ...

Go check out, for a head-shaking chuckle, our elite media, in Mitchell's "On 6th Anniversary of 'Mission Accomplished' -- How the Media Blew It"


Bonus Links

Bush Remarks on "Mission Accomplished" Banner Embarrass White House

Top Ten Cloves: Lengths White House Staff Will Go Today To Avoid Reminding President Of "Mission Accomplished"

"Nothing Lost, Mr. Christian!"

Spoiler Alert!

If you have never seen the absolute riveting movie, ''The Long Good Friday', then don't watch this video

The Long Good Friday...the fantastic end! Good Quality




"Shut up you long streak of paralyzed piss ..."

I only wish someone, anyone one of the assembled media at yesterday's final press conference with The Commander Guy, stood up and fired that back at him.

And, it would have been extra bonus points for Helen Thomas to do it.

Showing his bravery, he completely snubbed the veteran reporter, perhaps one of the very, very few who actually asked the opposite kind of questions lobbed at him by Jeff Gannon.

Perhaps, flashing back to his old drinking days, the "Compassionate Conservative" was all over the place, taking no blame, no signs of remorse, remarking only that the "Mission Accomplished" banner, and some of his rhetoric, were, perhaps, disappointments.

And, right down to the end, he showed off his intellectual prowess, referring to the Coast Guard pilots who rescued the citizens of New Orleans (no thanks to The Bush Grindhouse), as "drivers".

Drivers!

Now there's a real "Commander-In-Chief" moment ... Perhaps he should have stuck around, and fulfilled more of his National Guard service.

Maybe then he would know the difference between a "pilot" and a "driver"

While this piece of turd believes he has the record to take a victory lap, right in front of him was the evidence of just how insignificant he, and his Presidency, has become.

The Bush Grindhouse had to get interns to fill the last two rows (out of seven total) of the press room, to make it look full.

As Bob Hoskin's Harold Shand scornfully mocks the American gangsters, we borrow;

"Look at you ... The President of the United States ... of shitdom!"


Bonus Commander Guy Low Lights

Attaturk: Look, we’re not nostalgic

Andrew Sullivan: A Confession Of Sorts

Dana Milbank: Where Some See Mistakes, He Sees Disappointments

Kathy: Bush Says the World Still Respects U.S. Moral Authority

Matt Corley: Krauthammer: Bush ‘took a shoe for the country.’

David Neiwert: Bush has a peculiar way of admitting to his mistakes

Gregg Levine: Bush’s Final Presser: Redefining Success, One Rooftop Rescue at a Time

"Son of A Dog!"

Geesh ... I take a little time off, to chill out, catch a football game, or two, and all hell breaks loose ...

Shoes flying all over the place ...

And just what page, or section, of the Bush Legacy Project, does this come from?

Bush Dodges Shoes Thrown by Iraqi Journalist



From McClatchy;

George W. Bush made his last visit to Iraq as president on Sunday. But instead of highlighting progress from the "surge," it became a reminder that many Iraqis see him not as a liberator who freed them from Saddam Hussein but as an occupier who pushed their country into chaos.

As Bush finished remarks that hailed the security progress that led to a U.S.-Iraq agreement that sets a three-year timetable for an American withdrawal, an Iraqi television journalist leapt from his seat, pulled off his shoes and threw them at the president. Striking someone with a shoe is a grave insult in Islam.

"This is a goodbye kiss, you dog," the journalist, Muntathar al Zaidi, 29, shouted.

Bush ducked the first shoe. Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, standing to Bush's left, tried to swat down the second. Neither hit the president. Another Iraqi journalist yanked Zaidi to the ground before bodyguards collapsed on Zaidi and held him there while he yelled "Killer of Iraqis, killer of children." From the bottom of the pile, he moaned loudly and said "my hand, my hand."

Zaidi was hauled to a separate room, where his cries remained audible for a few moments.

Leave it to The Commander Guy, to go off on a "Mission Accomplished" victory lap and be greeted, as The Bush Grindhouse long propagandized, like a "liberator".

It would be fitting, especially with the Court-Appointed-President's party attempting to kill off unions, to stand by and watch Detroit sink (reprising their positions of Katrina-battered New Orleans), if the UAW workers, as well as all American, sent their old shoes to Dubya, in a symbolic gesture of supporting the sentiments of the Iraqi journalist, Muntathar al Zaidi

Just address them to "Son of a dog", or "Son of a thousand dogs".

I'll be waiting, watching, to see how soon The Worst President Ever makes another one of those mocking videos, ducking shoes, much like he pretended to look for WMDs under his desk.


Bonus Zapatos del Perro Riffs

Mustang Bobby: WMD - Wingtips of Mass Destruction

Jonathan Stein: Iraqi TV Journalist Throws Shoes at Bush at Press Conference

BagnewsNotes: Lame (Duck) Iraq Visit Guarantees Bush Shoe-In As Worst President Ever

Andrew McLemore: In final Iraq visit, Bush ducks a pair of shoes

The Commander Guy Sees His Future

Funny, looking back at those days, when The Commander Guy would give a speech, before a wildly hooting-and-hollering audience, only to discover that his preferred location to deliver said speeches were military bases and institutions.

Then we have today, where he finds himself with an international group of his peers, the G-20 Summit.

CNN Reports on President Bush - Where's the Love?



I guess those other World Leaders aren't ponying up anything for the Legacy run.

Or, perhaps, they're fearful, touching him could bring about some kind of jinx, that they would go home and drive their countries into the ground - well, at least the parts of it that The Bush Grindhouse hasn't already taken down with them.

From Steve Benen;

It is curious. It seemed as if every head of state was anxious to greet and shake hands with every other, except Bush. It wouldn't have been so jarring if Bush wasn't the only one to get the cold shoulder from everyone.

It's possible, I suppose, that there's an explanation for this that isn't humiliating for the president, but here's a question: what do you suppose the chances would be that none of the world leaders would shake hands with Barack Obama, had he represented the United States at the G20 meeting?

Cold shoulder?

Jesus, there was enough iciness there that would have had Mr. Freeze melting with envy.

I wonder if they made him shine their shoes before the photo, or go out and get coffee for everyone?


More Dubya Legacy Riffs

New Bush Export - Preemptive Horseshit!

Well, It's A Destiny of Sitting at The Presidential Kids Table

Where's That Apple Runner When You Need Her?

It's Time To Bring Down Rollo Tomasi

Retro Garlic: Bush Is Batman? ... Holy Batshit!

Hmmm ... Will The Bush Pioneers Be Raising Money For This, Too?

It seems, if the 110th Congress isn't going to do it, the citizens of San Francisco are.

That being, they are planning on flushing our Court-Appointed President (H/T Barry Crimmins) down the toilet.

George W. Bush Sewage Plant plan is on ballot

San Francisco voters will be asked to decide whether to name a city sewage plant in honor of President Bush, after a satiric measure qualified for the November ballot Thursday.

The measure, if passed, would rename the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. McConnell said the intent is to remember the Bush administration and what the group sees as the president's mistakes, including the war in Iraq.

This is cool!















Perhaps, it may take a generation, or two, but little children will learn, when the graduate from potty training, to "Bush" the toilet, when they are finished.

I wonder if The Commander Guy's buddy, Stephen Payne, will be trying to raise money for this?

After all, a significant percentage of people refer to the bathroom as "the library" ...


Bonus "Bushing" Links

The Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco

Skippy, the bush kangaroo: what? no public toilets were available?

Wonkette: George W. Bush Sewage Treatment Plant One Step Closer To American Reality

Emptywheel: Does Ray Hunt Do This Kind of Fund-Raising, Too?

Kagro X: Bush "Pioneer" and WH Advance man caught soliciting bribes on tape

I Could'a Had Class ... I Could'a Been A Contender ...

As we run out the clock, on the lamest - ever - court-appointed President (h/t Barry Crimmins), there's going to be a veritable roto-league of legacy wrap-ups.

Well ... Actually ... They'll all look more like a criminal rap sheet.

Yesterday, Brad Reed, over al AlterNet, kicked things off with his "The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency", which Brad subtitles "A shorter version of our long national nightmare?"

And, before you start pounding your head on the table (similar to one that Nancy Pelosi can't seem to find), or writing angry screeds of "Only 10!!!";

Narrowing down the Bush administration's various debacles to a mere 10 was no easy feat. In fact, I expect that many people will express dismay that their least favorite moment was left off the list. "How could commuting Scooter Libby's sentence not even make the top 10??!!" I can hear some of you shrieking already. Well, I'll tell you. Essentially, I tried to rate each Bush disaster by two main criteria: its body count and its damage to the country's reputation. So while Bush's awkward groping of German Chancellor Angela Merkel may be personally humiliating to everyone, it doesn't have the same heft as, say, the Iraq War.

I won't spoil the fun ...

Go over to "The 10 Most Awesomely Bad Moments of the Bush Presidency" for a good read.


Bonus Legacy Links

It's Time To Bring Down Rollo Tomasi

"He aggressively and successfully pursued public corruption ..."

"I'm aware of the fact that perhaps somebody in the administration did disclose the name of that person ..."

"Anyway, look, nobody has accused me of being Shakespeare, you know?"

The Condoleezza Rice Ballroom Dancing & Charm School

Top Ten Cloves: Things President Bush Didn't Give Up Over Iraq War

News Item: Bush: I quit golf over Iraq war

10. Ek-A-Lec-Tic Reading

9. Giving Dishonest Lobbyist (now convicted and jailed) access to the White House

8. Using The Google

7. Firing U.S. Attorneys over politics

6. Using retired military officers as propaganda tools

5. Letting phony reporter ask softball questions in White House Press Briefings

4. Torturing prisoners

3. Lying about torturing prisoners

2. Outing Covert CIA Agents

1. Commuting Prison Sentences of people that lied about outing CIA Agents for him

Sadly No Slaps Down Prom Dress Boy On Bush Legacy

I think, we can expect to see these things trickle out, through the end of the year, and into the next.

The dwarfs, finks, phonies and frauds of the Right Wing Freak Show, looking to lay down some gold, frankincense and muir at the alter of our first-and-only Court-Appointed President's legacy.

It seems Commissar Goldberg is about to talk or write about it.

You may remember the new Definer of Fascism from the pages of The Garlic, when we noted the reaction to his book in our "The morning after always looks grim if you happen to be wearing last night's dress".

There's a great interview (with Goldberg splaying all over the place) by Salon's Alex Koppelman ("We're all fascists now");

In the book, Goldberg attempts to convince readers that six decades of conventional wisdom that have placed Italy's Benito Mussolini, Germany's Adolf Hitler and fascism on the right side of the ideological spectrum are wrong, and that fascism is really a phenomenon of the left. Goldberg also attributes fascist rhetoric and tactics to Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and describes the New Deal's descendants, modern American liberals, as carriers of this liberal-fascist DNA. In a sense, "We're All Fascists Now," as Goldberg puts it in one of his chapter titles.

Larisa Alexandrova weighed in also, with her 'Springtime For Hitler' post;

Either Jonah Goldberg is putting on a new production of the Producers or his latest book is a cry for help from a fractured and disoriented mind.

Titled... wait for it... Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning, it is a retelling of history through the lens of propaganda.

Recently, Commissar Goldberg put out the call to his RWFS, and his National Review minions - "I thought it'd be interesting to know what NRO readers think Bush's legacy will be. Please send thoughts — hopefully constructive".

We noted the other day, Spencer Ackerman's brilliant definition of the Bush Legacy, recommending Obama adopt it on the stump;

Welcome to the next four years. These people have plunged the country into two failing/failed wars and killed hundreds of thousands of people. (Also, they pulled off a housing crisis and a healthcare crisis and an environmental crisis and when an entire city drowned the administration left the black people to die.) There’s no alibi: when conservatism had its chance to govern, this is what it yielded. If I was one of them, I’d bitch about Rajiv Chandrasekaran or Jeremiah Wright or whatever was necessary to distract people from what I did when I had the chance to do it. Get ready for years and years and years of this puerile and tiresome nonsense.

Probably not the legacy-building constructive narrative Commissar Goldberg is looking for ...

Heck, it's probably registering on Goldberg's Liberal Fascism Meter as we speak

Well, if he doesn't like that one, Brad, over on Sadly No, came up with another gem today.

I highly encourage you all to send Jonah your thoughts on this matter, be they constructive or otherwise.

For my part, I think pictures speak more than a trillion-kabillion words, so I’ll let them speak for me. Ladies and gentlemen, the Bush Legacy

You gotta go over to the post and check it the pictorial Brad lays out - Pretty much on-target!

And Brad adds;

To sum up: Bush has been a smarmy, destructive asshole for the past eight years and he has left the next president with an extremely large pile of shit to deal with. And you, Jonah, dutifully enabled the stupid SOB for years until you realized that he was starting to cost the GOP votes. Lest we forget...

A "smarmy, destructive asshole ..."

Yep, sure sounds like the Court-Appointed President (h/t Barry Crimmins) we have had over the past seven-and-a-half-years.

He'll own that legacy, that moniker, for perpetuity.


Bonus Links

Lawyers, Guns and Money: Dear Jonah: I Am Not Serious, Either

E&P Staff: Jon Stewart Goes After Jonah Goldberg and 'Fascism' -- He Responds

The Hon. Dr. St. Rev. Bradley S. Rocket, Esq, PhD, MD: A tantalizing peek at history’s greatest book

Where's That Apple Runner When You Need Her?

This picture is getting a lot of play today.











The back story is that Army Captain Joe Kobes was/is appearing on the television game show "Deal or No Deal" and "The show's producers contacted the White House after learning from Captain Kobes that the president is one of his heroes," White House spokesman Tony Fratto said."

We respect, and commend, Captain Kobes for his service, but have to jump off the bus as to his hero worship.

And, I suspect you know where this is head ...

Yeah, you got it ... The Commander Guy taped a greeting message, played on the show, to surprise the Army Captain

When I first saw the photo this morning, the first thing that came to mind was the classic Apple Computer "1984" Ad (which was redone and used last year to riff on Hillary) ...

Boy, it sure would have been nice to see that woman come jogging on the 'Deal or No Deal" set, winding up a sledgehammer and letting it fly into The Commander Guys' big screen face.

I'll let that dance about my head today, hopefully, drowning out the tsunami of "What If's" coming out of the television talking mannequins on the Pennsylvania Primary

Bonus Links

1984 Apple's Macintosh Commercial



''Deal or No Deal,' Mr. President?

President Bush makes an appearance on NBC's "Deal or No Deal," wishing an Iraq war veteran good luck as he tries to guess which suitcase contains $1 million. (April 21)

"He is Iraq's Katrina itself"

Just as New Orleans's Ninth War will still be a moonscape when Bush goes out of office, so will Iraq.

Sadly, it's looking less, and less, likely that we will see him exit the White House, handcuffed, in a perp walk - as he so richly deserves.

Mostly due to a brain-dead, Constitution-blinders-firmly-affixed-Congress (How big an outcry from our elected representatives have you heard about the bombshell news the other day, that the torture program was choreographed directly out of the Bush Grindhouse?), he gets to wear his real, and proverbial, flightsuit and play "The Commander Guy" for a number of dwindling months.

And inhabiting the Unreality Bubble he has ensconced himself in, Lord knows what further havoc he will reek.

Especially when he's running his policy speeches up the Neocon flagpole, before he gives them.

Wants to make sure, I suppose, there's enough warmongering in it.

Juan Cole writes/reports one of the best blogs on what's happening in Iraq (and the policies behind it; Another good one is Abu Aardvark).

Cole nails the Bush Legacy;

War turns Republics into dictatorships. The logic is actually quite simple. The Constitution says that the Congress is responsible for declaring war. But in 2002 Congress turned that responsibility over to Bush, gutting the constitution and allowing the American Right to start referring to him not as president but as 'commander in chief' (that is a function of the civilian presidency, not a title.)

So Congress abdicated to Bush. Bush has abdicated to the generals in the field.

That is not a Republic. That is a military dictatorship achieved not by coup but by moral laziness.

And, as Gene Robinson notes today, the Bush Grindhouse, cluelessly, is going through the motions, to pass this mess on to the next president.

Of course, Bush long ago lost any credibility with Congress and the American people on Iraq. It's understandable that he hides behind Petraeus's breastplate of medals and Crocker's thatch of gray hair, sending these loyal and able public servants to explicate the inexplicable: What realistic goal is the United States trying to achieve in Iraq? And in what parallel universe is this open-ended occupation making our nation safer?

Even the most basic question of any war is undefined: Who is the enemy? It was almost painful listening to Petraeus as he faced reporters yesterday and was asked whether Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army were friend or foe. His tortured answer, translated into English, was yes.

But thanks to Cole today, the Legacy Shopping is over.

Ironically, what officers like Petraeus need from Bush is not deference but vigorous leadership in the political realm. Bush needs to intervene to work for political reconciliation in Iraq if Petraeus's military achievements are to bear fruit. But Bush seems incapable of actually conducting policy, as opposed to starting wars. Bush happened to Iraq just as he happened to New Orleans. He cannot do the hard work of patiently addressing disasters and ameliorating them. He just wants to set people to fighting. Crush the Sadr Movement, perhaps the most popular political movement in Iraq? He's all for it. Risk provoking a wider conflagration in the Middle East by worsening relations with Iran? Sounds like a great idea to him. Bush campaigned on being a 'uniter not a divider' in 2000. In fact, he is the ultimate Divider, and leaves burning buildings, millions of refugees, and hundreds of thousands of cadavers in his wake. He is not Iraq's Brownie. He is Iraq's Katrina itself.

Just as New Orleans's Ninth War will still be a moonscape when Bush goes out of office, so will Iraq.

Phew!

That's a nutshell, alright ... A pretty, darned good nutshell I would say.

Last summer, The Garlic put forth a proposal - and it's still open and viable - that could end this madness.

Please, someone, step up and go for it!

Bonus Links

Amy Goodman: “Iraq Does Not Exist Anymore”: Journalist Nir Rosen on How the U.S. Invasion of Iraq Has Led to Ethnic Cleansing, a Worsening Refugee Crisis and the Destabilization of the Middle East

Bob Herbert: The $2 Trillion Nightmare

12 Former Army Captains: The Real Iraq We Knew

Wanted Dead Or ... Ahh, The Hell With It .. I'll Let The Next President Get'em ...

New Bush Export - Preemptive Horseshit!

Honeysuckle Rose ... White House claims to give up its ‘rose-colored glasses’

When you're passin' by,
Flowers droop and sigh
I know the reason why
You're much sweeter
Goodness knows
Honeysuckle rose

Well, if The Commander Guy, or Cheney, walks by and "flowers droop and sigh", I doubt it would be due to the thinking that they are "much sweeter".

More then likely, they'd be scared out of their wits, that they would be invaded and occupied, perhaps a mini-Shock-and-Awe would rain down on the flower bed.

I don't know if this was meant to lay down cover, for the testimony of the Dynamic Duo (Petraeus and Ryan) this week, but on Monday, Bush Grindhouse spokesperson Tony Fratto stepped out of the Unreality Bubble, to, essentially, assert there is no Unreality Bubble.

White House claims to give up its ‘rose-colored glasses’

Q: Also, how does this latest violence in Iraq and the latest uncertainty about what’s going on color the Petraeus-Crocker testimony this time around? It obviously has changed the equation. I mean, weeks ago it looked like the surge was — you know, had this pretty rosy cast, and now with all this renewed violence, I think it has changed the dynamics. So how has this changed the equation?

FRATTO: Well, I think we’ve thrown out all of the rose-colored glasses in how we look at Iraq, and try to look at it through clear lenses as to what is actually going on in the country.

And then again, a few minutes later, after a question about Iraqis protesting the American troop presence in Iraq:

Q: Do you think it takes any of the steam, though, out of what Petraeus and Crocker will be saying when you see those images juxtaposed?

FRATTO: No, I don’t think so. I mean, it’s — look, every — like I said, we threw out the rose-colored glasses. I think we have a very clear-eyed view of what’s happening in Baghdad.

Steve Benen also offers a long list of the Bush Grindhouse wearing those rose-colored glasses, and Think Progress has a video on it.

With The Commander Guy's legacy hanging on what happens with the Iraq Quagmire, I doubt very much they've thrown away the rose-colored glasses.

More likely, they've just upgraded to a pair with photochromic lenses.

Wanted Dead Or ... Ahh, The Hell With It .. I'll Let The Next President Get'em ...

Maybe, instead of having him classified as a terrorist, the FBI's #1 Wanted Man, The Commander Guy can call Osama bin Laden a tax cut, that way, he'll be motivated, like all-get-out, to see that the mission gets accomplished.

Not exactly a head-shaker, being his consistent detachment, his always-growing disinterest in capturing Osama bin Laden, going back to, well, first, the left turn he took out of Afghanistan to attack and occupy Iraq, his closing the CIA office that was after the #1 terrorist, his admission that Bid Laden's capture wasn't a "top priority", and now, to this;

Bush: Bin Laden Will Be ‘Gotten By A President’ (But Probably Not This One)

"It has been 2,326 days since 9/11, and the chief mastermind behind those attacks, Osama bin Laden, has not yet been captured. “If we could find the cave he is in, I promise you — he would be brought to justice or wherever he’s hiding,” President Bush tells Fox News in “George W. Bush: Fighting to the Finish,” a documentary scheduled to air Sunday night. Fox reports:

Bush says in the interview he’s confident bin Laden ultimately will be found.

“He’ll be gotten by a president,” Bush says.

And to critics who say he hasn’t done enough to find bin Laden, Bush is blunt:

“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” he says."

And neither does he!

Now, this isn't to be confused, with the profound and proficient Lying Operation that has been conducted.

When it came to fearmongering, or scoring political points for a political victory, The Commander Guy didn't shy away from putting on his ten-gallon hat and six-shooter and he, and his henchmen and woman, attempting to scare the bejeezes out of everyone, that Bin Laden and/or other terrorists were going to pop out of your closet.

In fact, the Bush Grindhouse continually inflated the size and importance of Al Qaeda in Iraq, whenever it deemed to serve their talking points.

Keith Olbermann pointed out the Wednesday evening, the Center for Public Integrity report on the lying of the Bush Grindhouse, noted the spikes in the number of lies, based on the calendar of political events, and/or Grindhouse scandals

Opening the segment, a wry observation;

OLBERMANN: If you have ever said this administration lied to us 1,000 times about the Iraq, the war and al Qaeda, it turns out you owe Mr. Bush an apology. In our third story tonight, a new study confirming the administration only lied about those vital matters 935 times.

Then, with Rachel Maddow, of Air America, and a newly-anointed MSNBC political pundit;

OLBERMANN: Only 935. In gambling terms the under won. Who knew?

MADDOW: Looking back, before today, before we had a bullion keyword searchable database of lies about to lead up to the Iraq War. You had the sense that we were lied to a lot about weapons of mass destruction, about Saddam having links to al Qaeda and to 9/11.

But having all of these instances in a list now, literally in a searchable database of lies kind of plugs up the memory hole in a way.

It means that we have the evidence at hand to rebut the assertion every time somebody asserts that oh the intelligence was a little fuzzy or I never made that sort of claims, 935 lies may feel low or they may feel high, but they are all provable, documents lies that can‘t disappear again that can‘t disappear in a public record or down the memory hole.

OLBERMANN: So that‘s 532 occasions so it‘s basically a two to one ratio to lies to opportunities for lies. It‘s kind of spectacular in its own way.

MADDOW: Compound sentences is what I think that means.

OLBERMANN: The center did not include false implications. Indirect follow-ups like Iraq has dangerous weapons. Or Iran has dangerous weapons, for that matter. The Republican echoing, actual other Republicans outside the administration saying the same things. We‘ve got all the senators and congressmen are not included in this list. Fox News chicken little moments are not included in this. But what base is there for claiming that this was planned deceit as opposed to innocent, albeit voluminous incompetence?

MADDOW: Well, I spoke with the director of the Center for Public Integrity about that fact today. I said how do you get from there were a lot of lies to the lies were plants. He said one of the things that they found was they organized this information was that there were these really noticeable quantitative spikes in the number of lies being told. At certain times they were lying a lot faster than other times. For example in the lead-up for the Congressional authorization, midterm elections. At specific politically moments, the lies got faster.

There is no way to explain that unless they were lying to accomplish the political objective

Much like the 160,000+ troops in Iraq that he will dump on the next President, The Commander Guy will exit the Grindhouse, an utter failure in HIS War on Terror, leaving the Osama bin Laden problem as well.

After all, The Commander Guy closed the CIA office in charge of hunting bin Laden (which he, a few days later, attempted to deny), then, a few months later, telling rightwing pundit Fred Barnes "Bin Laden Is Not A Top Priority Use of American Resources".

This, after his chicken-heart, phony bravado, following the attacks of September 11th, with his swaggering "I want justice," Bush said. "And there's an old poster out West… I recall, that said, 'Wanted, Dead or Alive.'"

Hmmm ... I wonder, have they raised enough funds, for the Bush Presidential Library, to have a wing of it house all the lies? Or, is that question, about where to house his lies and his Presidential Library, a redundant one?


The Commander Guy's Legacy

Bush uses bin Laden to defend Iraq war policy

Digby: Hyping the intelligence again?

Juan Cole: Bush's incompetence gives al-Qaida new life; The White House hints at military action as the terror organization regroups in northern Pakistan and the Musharraf government begins to wobble.

Sidney Blumenthal: Cooking the intelligence, again; The latest government estimate of the terrorist threat is just a rehash of the same old script, produced under pressure to support the president's efforts to sell the Iraq war.

Why the Bush Administration Didn't Care About Al Qaeda


An empty bullhorn