Garlictorial - We’ll Need That Table

Power comes from lying ... Lying big and getting the whole damn world to play along with you ... Once you got everybody agreeing with what they know in their hearts ain't true, you get them by the balls

Senator Roark, from “Sin City - That Yellow Bastard”

We passed that ball-grabbing moment some time ago, and, funny thing, the lies keep coming, but the whole damn world is not playing along. Quite the opposite.

Another spotlight-singeing moment for our Court-Appointed President.

With the history of having the first woman Speaker of the House sitting behind him, and boy, did he milk that. I half expected Ralph Edwards to stroll out to the well of the floor and begin a "This Is Your Life". You have to think that, if not then, at some point during the speech, Nancy Pelosi must have had the twisted thought of reaching over and giving Bush a bop on the head with that giant gavel. Just to shake him up, reminding him to cut the bullshit, that he can't pull that off any longer.

Lame Duck?

That's much too generous. Bush appeared less a Lame Duck last night and more, to touch upon his baseball roots, the journeyman utility fielder, tossed into a lopsided losing game to pitch the last two innings so as to save, and not waste, the real pitchers.

He swatted away at the edges of what will be "his" domestic agenda and a call for bipartisanship. But when you've screwed up and lost a war, and you have poll numbers below 30%, you're not going to have an agenda beyond CYA. The Democratic Congress will, as James Webb said last evening in his Democratic Response, "show him the way".

Bush will have to down a shot, and steady his hand (or, take some classes as The Garlic noted previously), for his "agenda" these last two-years will be the power of the Veto, something that was lost (we didn't see our Chief Executive making jokes, like he did with the WMD's, of trying to find the Veto under his desk) during the six-year, Republican Jihad he enjoyed.

Beleaguered? You bet, in spades.

The audience of Congress, and other invited guests, must have operated under SAG rules, offering a set number of applause and engaging in standing ovations so wearily, as if someone was going to steal their seats if they stood up.

He Really Likes These People

Once again, Bush trudged out those poor, tired 12-million Iraqi voters. They must have leg cramps and dehydration for all the times he keeps running them out to attempt to sell his vision.

Never has so many done so little for their country, which, if you look at what is going on today, two-years later, I doubt it is what they had in mind in order to get their fingers dipped in purple dye.

I would speculate that those poor, tired 12-million Iraqis voted, not for some 5th-Grade Civics class film on Democracy, but for having things like electricity for the whole day, someone to pick up the garbage before it rots and spreads disease, to have schools to send their children to - safely, to be able to walk down to the market for fresh fruits and vegetables and walk home with both legs and arms.

But they have the "Decider" on their side and such tranquility must be longed for, with sacrifice, if you want to buy into the whole "democracy" thing.

Yeah, they elected a government and it's a horserace as to which one is more inept - there's or ours.

Bush keeps reading the 'Democracy" script, and Maliki is on-board with having a Unity Government, just as long as it is a Shiite Unity Government and he can use the death squads to wipe out, or drive out, the Sunnis.

Kinda like what the Republican Party, Tom DeLay and the K Street Project attempted to do, only without the guns, IED's and car bombs.

Historians, Start Your Pens! Let the Rewriting Begin!

"I respect you and the arguments you've made. We went into this largely united -- in our assumptions and in our convictions. And whatever you voted for, you did not vote for failure. Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq, and I ask you to give it a chance to work."

United ...In our assumptions?

We weren't "united" and there weren't any "assumptions" beyond how wrong going into Iraq would be.

We were beaten over the head with fear and threats, with WMD's and mushroom clouds and the only convictions in play were, if you questioned Bush and the administration, you were seized upon as giving comfort to our enemies, or worse, labeled an appeaser.

He's running out of rope on how he can spin this thing. Even members of his own party, in the Congress and Senate are fleeing from this man. Perhaps, to coordinate with the announcement of Hillary Clinton to run for President, the only road left will be, somehow, to start laying down more lies to blame the Clinton Administration, not just for terrorism, as ABC attempted to do, but for the Iraq Occupation as well.

But There's A Better Plan ... Brownshirts!

Last year, in his SOTU, Bush called on scientists and inventors to step forward, for last years' Energy Initiative.

This year, I had to do a double take when he spewed out this line;

"A second task we can take on together is to design and establish a volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps. Such a corps would function much like our military reserve. It would ease the burden on the Armed Forces by allowing us to hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them. And it would give people across America who do not wear the uniform a chance to serve in the defining struggle of our time."

There's a historical reference for Bush's call for a "volunteer Civilian Reserve Corps", and they're called Brownshirts.

Surprisingly, the heated heads of the post-speech talkfest didn't mention this.

Is Bush calling on the continued privatization of the military, or, is he looking to create his own, private storm troopers?.

"...Hire civilians with critical skills to serve on missions abroad when America needs them ..."

We're not talking about having civilians fill in for the National Guard, which will continue to be hijacked and thrown on the front lines.

This isn't a civilian brigade to fill sandbags, clear trash or direct traffic at disaster sites. Bush wants to give them uniforms and guns and send them out, we assume, to spread the seeds of democracy.

About That Table

Early in the 2006 Midterm campaign, Nancy Pelosi, and others in the Democrat leadership, stated that impeachment was off the table, should, or when, the Democrats regain the majority.

I, along with others, took that as a talking point, or, better stated, to remove a talking point from the Republicans that could be used against Democratic candidates.

Over thirty-years ago, we nearly impeached a president for his blatant breaking of the law and complete disregard for upholding the Constitution he swore to protect. He chose to resign, as opposed to facing that fate.

Be it Bush's Iraq Occupation, or his Domestic Spying, or his intentional misuse of Signing Statements, or his administrations' exposing covert agents (it's only Day 2 of the Libby Trial and the dirt is flying out of the courtroom like a busted Electrolux that's blown a gasket), we again have a president who has broken the law and flaunted the Constitution.

Time for Pelosi and the Democratic Leadership to start shopping for that table and pull the curtain down on this show.

Bush talked about the "nightmare scenario" that would befall us if we don't support his troop escalation and gain "victory" in Iraq.

It's time we also start looking at the "nightmare scenario" if we continue to allow this president to wage war, whether it's a build-up in Iraq, or he heeds the call from the shrinking chorus of neocons and starts carpet-bombing Iran. All the while, giving lip service to the true War On Terror.

Oh yeah, one last thing.

What were the two words that never passed the lips of our Chief Executive last evening?

New Orleans.


Links

President Bush's 2007 State of the Union Address

Democratic Response to the State of the Union Address

William Rivers Pitt's "The Tiniest President"

Edward Copeland's 'Translating The State of the Union

Of Daydreams, Lies, Libby and The State of the Union

Chopped Garlic ... Yes, Where Is The Intelligence - Both Literally and Figuratively?

I had the most delicious daydream earlier today.

Tonight, at the historic moment of when the U.S. House Sergeant at Arms booms out "Madam Speaker ... The President of the United States!", that Nancy Pelosi booms back "Don't let him in!, and Bush is hustled out of the Capital, much in the same manner as Cindy Sheehan was last year.

While it is a constitutional requirement that the "[The President] shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their Consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient." (Article II, Section 3)", it doesn't mandate that he deliver it in-person.

Tonight, our Court-Appointed President might as well mail (or e-mail) it in, for the canopy of the 24+-hours before says a whole lot more on the state of our union than anything (short of retracting his "New Way Forward" and admitting he lied to launch his occupation of Iraq) he can spew out to what will be a less-than enthusiastic audience then he's been used to at these things.

Here's the backdrop in which our "Decider" will strut into the House of Representatives this evening.

Yesterday afternoon, Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), a staunch supporter of the President's policy and deeply knowledgeable on the military, joined with a mushrooming (no, not one of Condi Rice's "mushrooms") group of senators in denouncing the President's plan to send more troops into Iraq, with yet another resolution.

This morning, during the opening arguments of the I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby trial, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald laid out a devastating charge that Libby was acting on the orders of Vice President Dick Cheney in bouncing around Washington, telling all who would listen on who administration-critic and former Ambassador Joe Wilson's wife was. And that Libby destroyed a memo given to him by Cheney on just what to say to a reporter to lay out the smear-and-destroy job they were launching on the Wilson's.

Maybe Cheney will send his daughter out, not to bash Hillary Clinton and other critics of the administration's foreign policy as she did today, but perhaps spin yet another version of the CIA Leak Case, or begin smearing Fitzgerald.

But it was last evening, when our intrepid anchor-hero, MSNBC Countdown's Keith Olbermann called out the President, and his administration, by pointing out that there are only seven work days left in January for them to release, as they said they would, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.

With Olbermann, to stand up, waving their arms as if to say "Look over here" was Richard Clarke, the former top counter-terrorism adviser to presidents of both parties, and author of the new techno thriller “Break Point.”

It was brutal.

When asked by Olbermann on where was the N.I.E. Report, Clarke offered "They haven‘t written it ... It‘s in draft. It‘s in pieces." Then, with the timing of Max Roach on the back beat, he added "The reason is this administration doesn‘t base its actions on intelligence."

OLBERMANN: The administration has been accused in many quarters, especially this one, of playing politics with intelligence. Would it go so far—you worked with these people; you know some of them. Would it so far to really sit on a NIE and not assemble it for purely political reasons?

CLARKE: Well, they can delay it. The fact that they have said there‘s one being prepared means ultimately they have to produce it. And given the fact that they did try to influence the last important one on Iraq, WMD one, and there have been investigations after that, trying to figure out how much they influenced it, and they influenced it a lot. They‘re limited in what they can do to influence this one. Especially now that they have increasingly real intelligence analysts, real intelligence professionals in some of these jobs.

The House, this evening, may resemble a Saturday afternoon swap meet, as Bush will have to have his best Willy Loman suit on, to spin selling whatever it is he's hawking this week - be it Iraq, the new, new FISA Domestic Spying program of last week, or laying down the lies, er, I mean foundation, to start hyping war against Iran.

Frankly, I'm hoping it wasn't a daydream I had, but a premonition

Links

Watch The Olbermann Video of 'Where's The Intelligence'

Transcript of Countdown for Monday 22 January 2007

Elizabeth de la Vega's "Lying and Spying: How the Administration Slip-Slides Away"

Frank Rich's "Lying Like It's 2003"