Only Trust Your Heart

Sorry, Garlic Fans, for the lack-of-posting, yesterday.

We were jammed up on the homefront (as we will be, again, today), and, as a bonus, it as a spectacularly beautiful day ... An Ernie-Banks-Let's Play-Two-Today kind of day ...

There's a good a good Frank Rick column today, on our Ran Kan Kan man, the implications of the his, and the Teabaggers, warped views.

So, until later (either tonight, or tomorrow), here's a tune that will go with your morning coffee, and have you humming its' melody the rest of the day.

Enjoy!

Only Trust Your Heart - Astrud Gilberto & Stan Getz

The Next PartyofNoican War

Good Frank Rich today, as he lays out the next front for Mitch McConnell and John Boehner to lie, distort, and, otherwise, continue their gameplan of obstructionism.



Obama, Lehman and ‘The Dragon Tattoo’

Anger over the last crash and the bailout of its high rollers spans the political spectrum, from neo-New Dealers on the left to Tea Party protesters on the right. As the battle over financial regulatory reform began in earnest with Chris Dodd’s introduction of a Senate bill last week, Lewis told an interviewer, “There is a war that is about to happen over not just who regulates Wall Street but what the rules are.”

The question for the politicians at the center of this battleground is simple enough: Which side of the war are they on? The Republican leadership revealed its hand unequivocally last week. Addressing the American Bankers Association, the party’s House leader, John Boehner, promised to delay and fight any finance-reform bill. “Don’t let those little punk staffers take advantage of you, and stand up for yourselves,” Boehner instructed the poor, defenseless bankers. In late January he met the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, Jamie Dimon, to make a pitch for donations. That may have been unnecessary. Chase and its employees, an A.T.M. for the Democrats in 2008, gave 73 percent of their contributions to the G.O.P. in the fourth quarter of 2009.

Republicans in the Senate will be no different. Mitch McConnell’s strategy of unmitigated obstructionism remains gospel there. Just as Charles Grassley and Olympia Snowe played the Democrats with months of fruitless negotiations on health care reform, so Richard Shelby and Bob Corker have been stalling a financial reform bill with similarly arid feints at “bipartisanship.” Corker insisted that any bill exclude regulation of extortionate “payday lenders,” who just happen to be among his biggest campaign contributors.

No doubt they will still be whining about healthcare, as they rev up the Right Wing Freak Show to go out and defend, honor and shower with platitudes, the slimeball Wall Street dwarfs, finks, phonies and frauds, who pulled the greatest heist in our history, thanks, in large part, to all that PartyofNoican deregulation.

Well, it will pump up the economy, to the extent Cable News covers it, and how many empty talking heads they rope in, and the shields we'll have to purchase, from all the flying bullshit that comes with it.

The Narrative Continues To Build!

"If you build it, they will come (to justice, hopefully)"

Yes, it's a bone we have latched on to, but one that continues to deny being buried.

More, and more, it is being obvious, to many, that the dots are being connected on how The Bush Grindhouse lied us into the invasion and occupation of Iraq, and, as an instrument of their odious, and evil tools, one of the items they used to sell it, was the implementation of their Torture Policy.



Frank Rich, today, with a monster column, weighs in, on-point, and on-the-money.

The Banality of Bush White House Evil

Yet we still shrink from the hardest truths and the bigger picture: that torture was a premeditated policy approved at our government’s highest levels; that it was carried out in scenarios that had no resemblance to “24”; that psychologists and physicians were enlisted as collaborators in inflicting pain; and that, in the assessment of reliable sources like the F.B.I. director Robert Mueller, it did not help disrupt any terrorist attacks.

[Snip]

In other words, the ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration’s ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections. Bybee’s memo was written the week after the then-secret (and subsequently leaked) “Downing Street memo,” in which the head of British intelligence informed Tony Blair that the Bush White House was so determined to go to war in Iraq that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” A month after Bybee’s memo, on Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney would make his infamous appearance on “Meet the Press,” hyping both Saddam’s W.M.D.s and the “number of contacts over the years” between Al Qaeda and Iraq. If only 9/11 could somehow be pinned on Iraq, the case for war would be a slamdunk.

But there were no links between 9/11 and Iraq, and the White House knew it. Torture may have been the last hope for coercing such bogus “intelligence” from detainees who would be tempted to say anything to stop the waterboarding.

It is becoming clearer, that Cheney, some other Bush Grindhouse cronies, the Flying Monkeys (and George Will, who on Little Georgie's show this morning, was outraged that a new administration would go after a previous administration), are being blatantly obtuse, that they are looking to frame this as a policy witch hunt, versus the illegal war crimes that it is.

More, from that growing chain of dots ...

John Cole, at Balloon Juice, along with seconding Rich's column, delves into another can-of-worms that will, at some point, come to light;

BTW, something I was wondering. Didn’t one of the detainees we tortured claim to have been injected with drugs. Was that Padilla? Has that ever been verified? Were there any memos mentioning using pharmaceuticals?

Kevin Hayden, on American Street;

The mainstream media finally has gotten it right: the real reason for the torture was not national security, but to sell an unnecessary, immoral and illegal war in Iraq.

[Snip]

So in addition to the torture, we’ve killed a couple hundred thousand Iraqis, put all future US POWs at greater risk of being tortured, and Halliburton, Exxon, Blackwater and other companies run by Bush/Cheney cronies have been reaping the blood money from it all.

Of course the perps are busily denying it all. That’s what perps do. They know they’ll lose in a courtroom. Their best chance is to appeal to the court of public opinion to avoid the courtroom process completely.

They deserve to fail and to be adequately punished for their war crimes, if justice means anything.

Ron Beasley, at Newshoggers;

This makes the crime of torture even more heinous. Torture to get a false confession to justify a war that killed thousands of American soldiers and tens if not hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis. Sorry Mr Broder, if these crimes are not investigated and and the guilty held accountable the American people will also be just as guilty. If President Obama truly wants to improve the US standing in the world it will take more than talk about how we won't do it again. As it stands now the US is in no position to be critical of even the worst of the world regimes. There is only one way that can change. And by the way Mr Broder that's not called vengeance it's called justice.

Let the narrative continue to build.

Yes, let's follow Cheney's call to release more of the documents.

If it wasn't so seriously evil, and atrocious, it is almost ironic that Cheney wants defend his war crimes by cherry-picking from the torture memos and reports, the very ones, initially, made-to-order, "Here the info you wanted", tell-us-what-you-want-to-hear "legal" advice.

Despite the hue-and-cry, including that from the Obama White House, the only way this should end is with a thorough, independent investigation, and let the chips fall where the may.

It that leads to prosecution, and charges against acquiescing Democrats, so be it.

As Frank Rich ended his column today;

"What we must have are fair trials that at long last uphold and reclaim our nation’s commitment to the rule of law."


Bonus Links

Krugman: Reclaiming America’s Soul

For The Want Of A Lie ...

Smokin' Frank Rich Today!

"...the Republicans should either lead, follow or get out of the grown-ups’ way."

They gloat over their big "Goose Egg", much with the same elan as The Commander Guy dishing out birthday cake to Stumblin' Bumblin' John McCain, as New Orleanians clung, precariously, to rooftops, their city filled like a fishbowl with flood waters.

Frank Rich's column today - "Herbert Hoover Lives" - lays it all out, that if they can be enough of obstructionists, if they can make it so President Obama fails, well, that is what will save their dying party, which Rich pegs as "At this rate the G.O.P. will be in Alf Landon territory by 2012."



More Rich;

The Republicans don’t acknowledge the need for this transformation, or debate it in good conscience, preferring instead to hyperventilate over the contraceptives in a small family-planning program since removed from the stimulus bill. All it takes is the specter of condoms for the party of Vitter, Foley and Craig to go gaga.

[Snip]

Obama no doubt finds Limbaugh’s grandiosity more amusing than frightening, but G.O.P. politicians are shaking like Jell-O. When asked by Andrea Mitchell of NBC News on Wednesday if he shared Limbaugh’s hope that Obama fails, Eric Cantor spun like a top before running off, as it happened, to appear on Limbaugh’s radio show. Mike Pence of Indiana, No. 3 in the Republican House leadership, similarly squirmed when asked if he agreed with Limbaugh. Though the Republicans’ official, poll-driven line is that they want Obama to succeed, they’d rather abandon that disingenuous nicety than cross Rush.

Most pathetic of all was Phil Gingrey, a right-wing Republican congressman from Georgia, who mildly criticized both Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to Politico because they “stand back and throw bricks” while lawmakers labor in the trenches. So many called Gingrey’s office to complain that the poor congressman begged Limbaugh to bring him on air to publicly recant on Wednesday. As Gingrey abjectly apologized to talk radio’s commandant for his “stupid comments” and “foot-in-mouth disease,” he sounded like the inmate in a B-prison-movie cowering before the warden after a failed jailbreak.

That they take their marching orders from a fat drug addict, I suppose, isn't so astounding, considering they selected The Wasilla Whiz Kid for their ticket in the last election.

A "Limbaugh with Lipstick", as it were.

The word "serious" doesn't seem to making its' way into their talking points.

As Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, said last week;

“It’s almost as if the election didn’t happen and that the message wasn’t received: that people in Washington need to cooperate a lot more than they have in the past.”

Maybe they need to tweak The Commander Guy's mantra, from "You're either with us, or against us", to "We're not with you, and we are against you"

They sure be playin' it that way


Bonus Gone-Out-To-Pasture Party Riffs

BooMan: Wanker of the Day: David Broder

Prairie Weather: Republicans go AWOL; Palin steps in, hair loose to shoulders

Steve Benen: HIGH BRODERISMS...

No More Mister Nice Blog: AN ASSERTION THAT SEEMS SELF-EVIDENT, EXCEPT THAT IT'S UTTERLY WRONG

Rich on Ruben: "The Citi may never sleep, but he snored ..."

Killer Frank Rich today!

He passes, for now, drinking the Kool-Aid on the Obama Transition, and hones in on, not the big billboard National Security team, but rather the Economic geniuses tapped by the President-Elect.

And, while he slathers some particularly aromatic relish on Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geithner, Rich goes with all the works for their mentor, Robert Rubin.

From 'The Brightest Are Not Always the Best';

Summers and Geithner are both protégés of another master of the universe, Robert Rubin. His appearance in the photo op for Obama-transition economic advisers three days after the election was, to put it mildly, disconcerting. Ever since his acclaimed service as Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, Rubin has labored as a senior adviser and director at Citigroup, now being bailed out by taxpayers to the potential tune of some $300 billion. Somehow the all-seeing Rubin didn’t notice the toxic mortgage-derivatives on Citi’s books until it was too late. The Citi may never sleep, but he snored.

Ouch!

Ruben may have to use some of his gigantic salary to visit a plastic surgeon, to get the palm-print of Rich's slap off his face.

A few more snips;

Well, nobody’s perfect. Given that John McCain’s economic team was headlined by Carly Fiorina and Joe the Plumber, the country would be dodging a fiscal bullet even if Obama had picked Suze Orman. But I keep wondering why the honeymoon hagiography about the best and the brightest has been so over the top. Washington’s cheerleading for our new New Frontier cabinet superstars has seldom been interrupted by tough questions about Summers’s Harvard career or Geithner’s record at the Fed.

And;

No doubt the Pavlovian ovations for the Obama team are in part a reaction to our immediate political past. After eight years of a presidency that valued cronyism over brains (or even competence) and embraced an anti-intellectualism apotheosized by Sarah Palin, it’s a godsend to have a president who puts a premium on merit. I also wonder if a press corps that underrated Obama’s political prowess for much of the campaign, demeaning him as a professorial wuss next to the brawny Clinton and McCain, is now overcompensating for that mistake. No one wants to miss out a second time on triumphal history in the making.

There's much more rips on Ruben, so, go read Frank Rich's 'The Brightest Are Not Always the Best'... It's a great read!


Bonus Riffs

Robert Reich: Citigroup Scores

Hilzoy: Who's In Charge Here?

Brilliant at Breakfast: So why DID we just throw a truckload of money at Citigroup then?

The Heretik: And the Smart Money Is On . . .

Top Ten Cloves: Things About Citigroup Keeping Stadium Sponsorship After Getting Government Bailout

Breaking ... Obama Team Vetting Food Tasters

So Flute

Well, after submitting myself to a proverbial "My Sister/My Daughter" today, mapping out a handful of posts, I decided to file them, and take the day off, catching up on some much-need rest.

Not to leave you totally dry, we will point to an excellent Frank Rich today, and leave you with a snapping musical interlude.

Rich, in his NYT column, gave a big "Fuck You" to the Right Wing Freak Show, all the Flying Monkeys, the dwarfs, finks, phonies and frauds, and the Bush Grindhouse, heralding the election of Barack Obama as the firing of the starters' pistol to closing the curtain on Turd Blossom-Faux News-echoed politics.

It Still Felt Good the Morning After

Dawn also brought the realization that we were at last emerging from an abusive relationship with our country’s 21st-century leaders. The festive scenes of liberation that Dick Cheney had once imagined for Iraq were finally taking place — in cities all over America.

So let’s be blunt. Almost every assumption about America that was taken as a given by our political culture on Tuesday morning was proved wrong by Tuesday night.

And he gave Stumblin' Bumblin' John McKKKain, and the Dead Campaign Express and pretty good slapdown;

The same commentators who dismissed every conceivable American demographic as racist, lazy or both got Sarah Palin wrong too. When she made her debut in St. Paul, the punditocracy was nearly uniform in declaring her selection a brilliant coup. There hadn’t been so much instant over-the-top praise by the press for a cynical political stunt since President Bush “landed” a jet on the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln in that short-lived triumph “Mission Accomplished.”

Go read "It Still Felt Good the Morning After", it's a good one.

Now, until tomorrow, the musical interlude ...

SO FLUTE - ST. GERMAIN

Cavett and Rich Take On Petraeus and Crocker

Martin and Lewis... Rogers and Hammerstein ... Sandler and Young ... Sonny and Cher ... Evans and Novak (or better known, Errors and No Facts) ... Tom and Jerry

I think you get the idea.

Alas, after this past week, we add the dynamic duo of Petraeus and Crocker to the list, which, as it were, played out more along the lines of Fric and Frac, or Tweedledee and Tweedledum

The pomp and circumstance, the glorious fanfare was, well, rather muted this time around.

It's getting harder and harder, no matter how many medals and scrambled eggs you have on your uniform, to spin the disaster that is Bush's Iraq War.

When the biggest buzz word to come out the hearings this year was “fragile and reversible,” as the Golden Boy General spoke of Iraq, you know its big-time sucksville happening over there.

Which leads us to two, rather entertaining, Op-Eds today in the NYT.

First up, was the regular Sunday Column of Frank Rich, calling our new hearings' stars on stage with "The Petraeus-Crocker Show Gets the Hook", and lamenting how much the country has tuned out of Iraq.

Speaking on a screening he attended of the new Errol Morris documentary, "Standard Operating Procedure”, on the horrors of Abu Ghraib, Rich cites how poorly any number of the Iraq War films have performed.

This is not merely a showbiz phenomenon but a leading indicator of where our entire culture is right now. It’s not just torture we want to avoid. Most Americans don’t want to hear, see or feel anything about Iraq, whether they support the war or oppose it. They want to look away, period, and have been doing so for some time.

Then Rich lays out how its all, but over in Iraq;

The original stakes (saving the world from mushroom clouds and an alleged ally of Osama bin Laden) evaporated so far back they seem to belong to another war entirely. What are the stakes we are asked to believe in now? In the largely unwatched House hearings on Wednesday, Representative Robert Wexler, a Florida Democrat, tried to get at this by asking what some 4,000 “sons and daughters” of America had died for.

The best General Petraeus could muster was a bit of bloodless Beltway-speak — “national interests” — followed by another halfhearted attempt to overstate Iraq’s centrality to the war on Al Qaeda and a future war on Iran. He couldn’t even argue that we’re on a humanitarian mission on behalf of the Iraqi people. That would require him to acknowledge that roughly five million of those people, 60 percent of them children, are now refugees receiving scant help from either our government or Nuri al-Maliki’s. That’s nearly a fifth of the Iraqi population — the equivalent of 60 million Americans — and another source of our shame.

Grim stuff but a good read just the same

"Try talking English, General. You mean more soldiers."

Going a different route with our newly-crowned pair, was the legandary Dick Cavett, the erudite writer, talkshow host and man of great wit.

Cavett weighs in - hysterically - with "Memo to Petraeus & Crocker: More Laughs, Please", where he with great mirth, and a fine ear, surgically cuts through the "sesquipedalianism" of P&C;

But back to our story. Never in this breathing world have I seen a person clog up and erode his speaking — as distinct from his reading — with more “uhs,” “ers” and “ums” than poor Crocker. Surely he has never seen himself talking: “Uh, that is uh, a, uh, matter that we, er, um, uh are carefully, uh, considering.” (Not a parody, an actual Crocker sentence. And not even the worst.)

These harsh-on-the-ear insertions, delivered in his less than melodious, hoarse-sounding tenor, are maddening. And their effect is to say that the speaker is painfully unsure of what he wants, er, um, to say.

Cavett was just warming up.

Petraeus commits a different assault on the listener. And on the language. In addition to his own pedantic delivery, there is his turgid vocabulary. It reminds you of Copspeak, a language spoken nowhere on earth except by cops and firemen when talking to “Eyewitness News.” Its rule: never use a short word where a longer one will do. It must be meant to convey some misguided sense of “learnedness” and “scholasticism” — possibly even that dread thing, “intellectualism” — to their talk. Sorry, I mean their “articulation.”

No crook ever gets out of the car. A “perpetrator exits the vehicle.” (Does any cop say to his wife at dinner, “Honey, I stubbed my toe today as I exited our vehicle”?) No “man” or “woman” is present in Copspeak. They are replaced by that five-syllable, leaden ingot, the “individual.” The other day, there issued from a fire chief’s mouth, “It contributed to the obfuscation of what eventually eventuated.” This from a guy who looked like he talked, in real life, like Rocky Balboa. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Who imposes this phony, academic-sounding verbal junk on brave and hard-working men and women who don’t need the added burden of trying to talk like effete characters from Victorian novels?

Cavett goes on, cutting the Generalspeak to ribbons (no pun intended, as you will read, at the beginning of the essay).

Now, if we can only get a few more of these mismatched pairs up in front of Congressional and Senate committees

Like Miers and Rove ... Addington and Yoo...

And, of course, the super mega, Top A-List, war-launchers and torture choreographers ... Cheney and Bush!


Bonus Links

Think Progress: ‘I don’t even know who Petraeus and Crocker are.’

Logan Murphy/C&L: Bob Schieffer Commentary: “No Longer Any Good Answers” On Iraq

Ambassador Crocker Meets Eddie Izzard

"...And Your Mother Wears Combat Boots!"

Boy, Frank Rich's timing couldn't have been better ... The Audacity of Hopelessness

Hillary's down to taunting Barack Obama, with, basically, a "Your mother wears Army boots" mentality.

So much for the "And, you know, no matter what happens in this contest -- and I am honored, I am honored to be here with Barack Obama. I am absolutely honored" thing, from the debate the other night.

Perhaps the operative phrase here is "no matter what happens", that it was not the emotional, conciliatory outreach most took it for, but a warning, throwing down a "I'm coming after you".

While it could register a movement on the satire meter, in looking at the video, the tone gives it away ... Hillary comes off cowardly, like a bully trying to rally support behind their oafishness.

And it's disingenuous.

While Obama, true, with uplifting, soul-stirring oratory, has moved the masses, I haven't heard him say it will be easy, that it's a cakewalk, or that on Day One, he'll wave a magic wand to disappear all the special interests, as Hillary mocked.

In this "My Sister-My Daughter" campaign of the Clinton camp, I half expect to see breaking news today of Hillary, cheeks puffy and red, breaking down in tears again, on how game she is, how hard it is ...

No, strike that ...

She'll wait until March 3rd to do the waterworks, to follow her New Hampshire strategy, maybe cite that she is "reclaiming her voice", since she had previously found it, and has been talking six-ways-from-Sunday with it.

There is an article this morning - "Clinton assures donors after losses."

Assures them of what?

That she'll be carrying around her "Campaign Joke Book for Dummies"? ... That she'll put thumb tacks on Obama's chair before the next debate? ... Or a Whoopee Cushion? ... Is she going to get some her staff, get their "Bitch" on and go all "Mean Girls" on Obama?

If Hillary's strategy, her "assurances to donors", is to merely taunt Obama, time for her to bow out now.

We don't need to hear this juvenile pap from now, to the convention.

It reeks of desperation.

Maybe a few of those celestial angels that she mocked, can come down, in the bright light that she mocked, and tap Hillary on the shoulder, whisper a few words in her ear and tell her the "weight-challenged" lady is singing.


Bonus Hillary Mockingbird Riffs

Skippy the Bush Kangaroo: rovian highschool mocking mentality

maxnyc/Daily Kos: UPDATE w/video Clinton Now Mocking Obama

Maureen Dowd: ¿Quién Es Less Macho?

Andrew Sullivan: The Clintons' Last Stand

Shaun Mullen/TMV - The Slow-Motion Implosion of Hillary Clinton’s Campaign: It Took a Village

Hillary's Smelling Burning Rubber! ...Or: The Garlic Was Right - Hillary Has Built Her "Field of Voices"

Good Thing Barry Crimmins Doesn't Work For MSNBC!

"Has your mother shown any remorse for the fact that her vote cost Iraqis a million of their lives?” a student asked Chelsea Clinton on Monday at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Ms. Clinton replied: “She cast a vote based on the best available evidence. Perhaps you had clairvoyance then, and that’s extraordinary."

Maybe, Chelsea can influence her mother, and, include in her healthcare plan, a provision in that, if people want it, they can have a sixth sense surgically implanted.

As with Frank Rich last week, Barry Crimmins is now persona non gratis at MSNBC, assuming they are still applying the David Shuster standard, for Crimmins, yesterday, has a tremendous, multiple-tongues-in-cheek look at the former First Daughter.

"You have to wonder why they're keeping such a warm and engaging person away from the media. She could have been sarcastic, flippant, condescending, impatient and dismissive in response to a challenge from an obnoxious peasant. Instead this warm, open and humble young lady chose to suggest that anyone capable of out-thinking her mother in 2002 was gifted with psychic powers and very special indeed. Some people are just givers.

Get over to Barry's website and read "Premonitions of ESP"

It may be the best, most humorous post you'll read today


Bonus Chelsea Links

Dennis Perrin: Pimping Outrage

Rachel Sklar: L'Affaire Shuster: Big Camel, Big Straw

Chez Pazienza: Pimp My Riot: In Defense of David Shuster

Good Thing Frank Rich Doesn't Work For MSNBC!

For, if he did, after the thrashing Rich delivered on Hillary today, and with they way they handled the David Shuster dust-up, the NBC/MSNBC empty suits would probably roll out their entire prime time line-up to apologize to her.

Rich was mercy-less in his column ("Next Up for the Democrats: Civil War"), tearing apart Hillary's live Hallmark Channel, Wolf Blizter-Situation Room-spoof, Town Meeting ("anachronistic studio set that looked like a deliberate throwback to the good old days of 1992").

"Like the scripted “Ask President Bush” sessions during the 2004 campaign, this town hall seemed to unfold in Stepford. The anodyne questions (“What else would you do to help take care of our veterans?”) merely cued up laundry lists of talking points. Some in attendance appeared to trance out ..."

"However boring, this show was a dramatic encapsulation of how a once-invincible candidate ended up in a dead heat, crippled by poll-tested corporate packaging that markets her as a synthetic product leeched of most human qualities. What’s more, it offered a naked preview of how nastily the Clintons will fight, whatever the collateral damage to the Democratic Party, in the endgame to come..."

"Less than two weeks ago she was airlifted into her own, less effective version of “Mission Accomplished.” Instead of declaring faux victory in Iraq, she starred in a made-for-television rally declaring faux victory in a Florida primary that was held in defiance of party rules, involved no campaigning and awarded no delegates. As Andrea Mitchell of NBC News said, it was “the Potemkin village of victory celebrations.”

It could be, since there's been no wailing out in the blogosphere, on how Rich, essentially, called Hillary and her husband lying scumbags, blinded only by their own, self-centered ambitions, the Hillary & Co. didn't notice, or have a chance to exploit/read Rich today.

They were kind of busy.

First, throwing their campaign manager under-the-bus, soon followed by her fourth consecutive defeat, in less than 24-hours, to Barack Obama, Obama taking the State of Maine's caucus today.

Rich points out, both with Hillary's Hallmark Moment, and out on the campaign trail, the Clinton's exploitation of "race" ("The campaign’s other most potent form of currency remains its thick deck of race cards."), the opportunity of some classic Clinton ruthlessness that lies ahead ("The question now is how much more racial friction the Clinton campaign will gin up if its Hispanic support starts to erode in Texas, whose March 4 vote it sees as its latest firewall.").

And then there's the delegates.

To borrow from Joe Pesci, it's the delegates, it's always the fucking delegates.

"That’s why you now hear Clinton operatives talk ever more brazenly about trying to reverse party rulings so that they can hijack 366 ghost delegates from Florida and the other rogue primary, Michigan, where Mr. Obama wasn’t even on the ballot. So much for Mrs. Clinton’s assurance on New Hampshire Public Radio last fall that it didn’t matter if she alone kept her name on the Michigan ballot because the vote “is not going to count for anything.”

Let us remind Barack Obama, the advice we gave him - and John Edwards - last month, on what he is up against;

"That someone needs to say again - and really accentuate - that he is running against THE CLINTONS!

Hunter S. Thompson, in his laser beam, spot-on "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail", about his view of the 1972 Presidential elections described the ego of a man running for president to that of "a moose in heat".

Well, there's two moose out there, ramming their antlers against anybody and anything that looks to be in their way on calling 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue home again."

Read Frank Rich and "Next Up for the Democrats: Civil War" ... It is such a exquisitely delicious thrashing!


Bonus Clinton Dirt

Barry Crimmins weighs in, less on David Shuster and much, much more on Chelsea Clinton with his "Hedging for a Hoedown" (and it's worth clicking over for the Rush Limbaugh photo only)

Arianna Huffington has some background on Hillary's, suddenly old-new, campaign manager with her blast-from-the-past "Who Is Maggie Williams?"


"Don't listen to that woman behind the curtain"

Best-of-Day! ... Crimmins and Rich

The Garlic, ever endeavoring to bring you the best of the World Wide Web, is introducing with this post a new feature - Best of Day!

Be it a line, a headline, a passage, photo, etc, we will strive to bring it to you (which, as disclosure, will be based on available "bests", as well as our time, energy and reading/research).

It will be, as with other offerings (such as Good Post Alerts, or The Laura Bush Bummer Bombing-of-the Day Posts), from time-to-time, not an everyday-thing.

So, to kick it off, we turn to someone very familiar, and many times featured on the pages of The Garlic, satirist Barry Crimmins, who takes away the Best Line of the Day;

"Either Giuliani is waiting for the heat to blow over concerning numerous scandals that his felonious police commissioner, Bernard Kerik somehow neglected or Rudy is protesting the unfairness of his party's decision to hold all its primaries and caucuses on days other than September 11."

This comes from Crimmins' post today, "Crazy Dicks", which also offered another gem;

I can't do that because I understand a basic truth: he or she who wants to be in control is a dick and probably crazy. The premise behind most presidential bids is shockingly simple: I've looked at the entire world and there is one glaring problem-- I'm not in charge!"

And it's a day of riches (pun intended), as NYT columnist Frank Rich rings in with the Headline of the Day;

Ronald Reagan Is Still Dead

We can only hope - fervently - that the Writer's Strike ends at the soonest, and SNL gets back on the air.

What could be a better nod to their illustrious early, great years, then to lead off Weekend Update with Seth Meyers, excitedly exclaiming "President Ronald Reagan is still dead!"

It Takes A Neocon To Raise A Legacy ... They're Drinking The Kool-Aid Again ...

It's turning into a mini Neoconpalooza today!

We offered earlier, what it would be like to be stuck on a boat full of Neocons (see our post "Where's Ernest Borgnine when you need him?")

And, lo-and-behold, before the second cup of coffee (fair-trade-bought-beans) can get cold, we have a couple of Legacy-Writing Drafts to chew over, that is before we smash them both with "The Hammer".

Legacy #1 - The Don't Call Him Dick For Nothing

First, there's the big, fat, wet kiss The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes plants on Darth Vader's cheek (and not either one above his neck), with his "Cheney Speaks", portraying a staunch and resolute, fearless Vice President, just doing his job (you're on your own as to supplying a barf bag);

"It had to be done. It was a--once you made the decision, once the plane became hijacked, even if it had a load of passengers on board who, obviously, weren't part of any hijacking attempt, once it was hijacked, and having seen what had happened in New York and the Pentagon, you really didn't have any choice. It wasn't a close call. I think a lot of people emotionally look at that and say, my gosh, you just shot down a planeload of Americans. On the other hand, you maybe saved thousands of lives. And so it was a matter that required a decision, that required action. It was the right call."

And, perhaps, an insight to the question, inadvertently supplied by Hayes, of who the real President was/is;

"Shortly after 10:00 P.M., Cheney, along with his wife and top two aides--Libby and Addington--walked back upstairs from the bunker and out the diplomatic entrance of the White House to the South Lawn, where Marine Two, the vice president's helicopter, was waiting. Joined by three Secret Service officials, a military aide, a communications expert, and Cheney's doctor, they took off under cover of darkness, an unusual precaution. The departure itself was a violation of longstanding protocol: No one takes off from the South Lawn other than the president. Their destination was kept from all but a handful of the most senior White House officials."

And;

"Less than thirty minutes later, another tradition was discarded when Cheney and his family settled into the Aspen Lodge at Camp David, the facility typically reserved for the president."

And what's so good about building up one legacy, is you get to throw someone under the bus.

"On February 15, 1991, George H.W. Bush had urged Iraqis to overthrow Saddam Hussein ...

Those comments and the subsequent failure of the United States to support the rebellion would have lasting consequences. "The Shia had been treated for centuries as second-class citizens, governed by the Sunnis, and in recent decades the Baathists, under Saddam Hussein. They had been encouraged, in '91, to rise up, and did, and were slaughtered for their troubles. Nobody came to their assistance," Cheney says.

Many Iraqis assumed that the United States refused to remove Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf war because the United States wanted him to remain in power ..."

And in case Cheney was impressed with the first big, wet, kiss, Hayes puckered up in closing out;

"And then Cheney paused, his words and his emotions tangled in his throat. He started to speak and then, choking back tears, stopped again. Reporters exchanged quick glances as if to confirm that they were seeing what they thought they were seeing.

For the man who had repeatedly evaded questions about how those attacks affected him personally, this was his answer."

Legacy #2 - When In Doubt, Pucker Up

But wait, not to be left behind, and under a sun-drenched, cheery title of "On The Brighter Side", TWS's main man, the warrior who put the destruction in the WMD's, the hawk who will measure the Bush Presidency by how well he carpet bombs Iran, Little Billy Kristol throws his hat in the ring for writing The Decider/The Commander/The Shakespeare Guy's legacy, the uplifting scolding that we've had it all wrong, with his "Why Bush Will Be A Winner" (okay, we'll wait a minute, while you grab the Hayes Barf Bag ... )

"Let's step back from the unnecessary mistakes and the self-inflicted wounds that have characterized the Bush administration. Let's look at the broad forest rather than the often unlovely trees. What do we see? First, no second terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- not something we could have taken for granted. Second, a strong economy -- also something that wasn't inevitable.

And third, and most important, a war in Iraq that has been very difficult, but where -- despite some confusion engendered by an almost meaningless "benchmark" report last week -- we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome."

First, throw some garlands down on the domestic front (after all, you'll want to secure those library donations from the Isolationist Conservatives as well as all the others);

"So on the two biggest pieces of domestic legislation the president has gotten passed, he has been vindicated. And with respect to the two second-term proposals that failed -- private Social Security accounts and immigration -- I suspect that something similar to what Bush proposed will end up as law over the next several years."

And;

"And if you're a conservative constitutionalist, putting Roberts and Alito on the court constitutes a huge accomplishment."

The War? Everything's coming up roses;

"What about terrorism? Apart from Iraq, there has been less of it, here and abroad, than many experts predicted on Sept. 12, 2001. So Bush and Vice President Cheney probably are doing some important things right. The war in Afghanistan has gone reasonably well.

These Waziristan havens may well have to be dealt with in the near future. I assume Bush will deal with them, using some combination of air strikes and special operations.

We are routing al-Qaeda in Iraq, we are beginning to curb the Iranian-backed sectarian Shiite militias and we are increasingly able to protect more of the Iraqi population.

Iran is a problem, and we will have to do more to curb Tehran's meddling -- but we can. So if we keep our nerve here at home, we have a good shot at achieving a real, though messy, victory in Iraq."

And Kristol isn't adverse to puckering up himself;

"Following through to secure the victory in Iraq and to extend its benefits to neighboring countries will be the task of the next president. And that brings us to Bush's final test.

The truly successful American presidents tend to find vindication in, and guarantee an extension of their policies through, the election of a successor from their own party. Can Bush hand the presidency off to a Republican who will (broadly) continue along the path of his post-9/11 foreign policy, nominate judges who solidify a Roberts-Alito court, make his tax cuts permanent and the like?"

Send In The Hammer

But, it's Sunday, so we can count on - and he delivers, as usual - Frank Rich to come hammering home (Stanley Tools, take note), to save the day by turning the reality channel back on, as he continues his relentless pounding of the Bush Grindhouse in "Don't Laugh at Michael Chertoff";

"But even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Last week, as the Bush administration frantically tried to counter Republican defections from the war in Iraq, Mr. Chertoff alone departed from the administration's script to talk about the enemy that actually did attack America on 9/11, Al Qaeda, rather than Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, the jihad-come-lately gang Mr. Bush is fond of talking about instead. In this White House, the occasional official who strays off script is in all likelihood inadvertently coughing up the truth.

The White House's game is to create a new fictional story line to keep the war going until President Bush can dump it on his successor. Bizarrely, some of the new scenario echoes the bogus narrative used to sell the war in 2002: an imaginary connection between Iraq and the attacks of 9/11. You'd think the Bush administration might think twice before recycling old lies, but things have gotten so bad in the bunker that even Karl Rove is repeating himself.

The capital's entire political debate over Iraq - stay-the-surge versus "precipitous withdrawal" - is itself pure hot air. Even though felons and the obese are now being signed up to meet Army recruitment shortfalls, we still can't extend the surge past next April, when troops for Iraq run out unless Mr. Bush extends their tours yet again. "Precipitous withdrawal" (which no withdrawal bill in Congress calls for) is a non sequitur, since any withdrawal would take at least 10 months. Rather than have the real debate about how to manage the exit, politically panicked Republicans hope to cast symbolic votes that will allow them to tell voters they were for ending the war before they prolonged it."

Regrettably, these won't be the only legacy drafts we see coming out of the TWS barn, they have an almost inexhaustible supply of Kool-Aid, as well as another farm-produced by-product.

And it will take all the Frank Rich's out there to keep them on the ranch, not letting them stray too far.

And just in case it isn't the Kool-Aid, Hayes and Kristol, you can follow the same advise we gave John Fund, as well as Dorothy Rabinowitz and Richard Cohen ...


Bonus Links

Webb Rips Graham As ‘Politician Trying To Put His Political Views Into The Mouths Of Soldiers’’

Kristol: ‘We’re Not In A Civil War’ In Iraq, ‘This Is Just Not True’

Glenn Greenwald: Still more White House secrecy -- this time in the Tillman investigation


Bonus Links II

Crooks and Liars: Bush Iraq policy controlled by Bill Kristol

The Guardian: Cheney pushes Bush to act on Iran; Military solution back in favour as Rice loses out; · President 'not prepared to leave conflict unresolved'













Get ready for some big, wet ones, boys, Kristol and Hayes are calling ...