Can He Even Pronounce The Word "Souffle"?

One wonders, if during the 2004 Campaign, against John Kerry, if The Commander Guy was chowing down on souffles?


Then again, for that matter, can he pronounce the word "souffle"?


Anyways, the blogosphere is buzzing that Mr. Mission Accomplished was in a posh Dallas French restaurant, eating a souffle when he got the call that OBL was mowed down.


Go read Steve M., at 'No More Mr. Nice Guy' for a great post on it.


And, we have to give "Line-of-the-Day" to Blue Texan, over on Firedoglake;

Pretty easy to see why W. ditched his fake ranch out in the sticks for the poshy ‘burbs of Dallas. It’s so difficult to find decent French cuisine in Crawford these days.

Considering he gave up on capturing Bin Laden, did he even desire a phone call ....


 

Least We Not Forget ... Seven Years In Iraq

Today was the 7th Anniversary, when our Court-Appointed President, The Commander Guy, fully embraced the NeoNitWit's, marching us off to invade and occupy the country of Iraq.

Seven-years, and we are still there.

The editorial staff over at Truthout posted an Editorial to mark the dubious occasion

George Vanity of Vanities: The Iraq War Seven Years Later

We are still shocked. We were never awed. We have not adjusted. The senseless waste of our blood and treasure, our honor and our reputation continue. Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom - the latter unleashed seven years ago today - have morphed into a single Operation Enduring Occupation, set to bankrupt this country financially as well as morally, to destroy our own security as it has that of the over 31 million people who populate Iraq and 32 million people of Afghanistan.

[snip]

And as Benjamin Franklin might have agreed ("They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." {notes for a proposition at the Pennsylvania Assembly, 1775}), perhaps we deserve what has happened to us for allowing ourselves to be cowed into colluding in the ultimate crime against humanity, one which the Nuremberg tribunal powerfully condemned: "To initiate a war of aggression ... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

[snip]

Surely, the Iraq war's only obvious "successes" - the enrichment of the military industrial complex at the expense of ordinary citizens, the implementation of an ever more pervasive and intrusive "security" regime at home and the insurance of a second Bush term - could have been achieved without dragging the long-suffering people of Iraq into it. People - it may still need to be pointed out - who had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 and harbored no weapons of mass destruction.

Obama doesn't seem to be in a hurry to get us out of there, and, he's even less-so motivated to bring the war criminals who perpetrated this to justice.

That deserves a damning editorial, as well.

Top Ten Cloves: Things That Can Happen When Earth Gets Knocked Off Its' Axis

News Item: Chilean quake shifted Earth's axis: NASA scientist

10. Warren Buffett sneaks out his annual report, glossing over his boners

9. Disgraced, election-losing, Jack Abramoff-toadie Ralph Reed starts thinking about running for Congress

8. New York Times fawns over Teabagger

7. Harold Ford bails out of running for Senate (and someone thinks Larry "Kuddles" Kudlow should run)

6. PlayStation 3 goes screwy

5. Rightwing Freakshower Ann Althouse gives President Obama beer-drinking advice

4. Jim Bunning hides in "Senator's Only" elevators, and gives people the middle finger

3. People start putting up "Miss Me Yet" billboards, to honor The Commander Guy

2. A certain new Senator longs to wear his retro pink leather shorts

1. Canada breaks out the Inflatable Beavers

Thank God It's Friday

There an old Oscar Brown Jr. tune, 'Hymn To Friday' (from his 'Between Heaven and Hell' album), a calypso-beat number;

"It's the eagle fly day ... It's my day to get high day ... If you see what I say ... Thank God it's Friday ..."

It may (or may not) have become a bit clearer, why President Obama so eagerly wiped the floor with the PartyofNoicans last Friday, and, perhaps, left Baltimore singing "Hymn to Friday".

It was their GOP House Issues Conference, they extended the invitation to the President, but did not, initially, agree to have it televised.

This, from Steve M, on No More Mister Nice Blog, quoting an NYT article;

Although he and other presidents have addressed opposition caucuses before, they usually close the doors for questions, but this time the White House insisted on letting the news media record the give and take.

Hmmm .. Why would they insist? .. Let's see if we can come up with a reason ...

Ahh! ... It would dominate the news cycle for the rest of the day, perhaps two, or three?

Bingo!

It did, including MSNBC, who preempted Olbermann and Maddow on Friday night, to have them, with Tweety, rerun the event, adding their commentary.

And, what was thrown out on the Friday Night Trash Dump?



Obama's DOJ Clears Torture Memo Authors John Yoo, Jay Bybee of Professional Misconduct

The Truthout post culls from a report in Newsweek, "Holder Under Fire";

try the alleged 9/11 conspirators in New York City and his handling of the Christmas bombing plot suspect. Now the left is going to be upset: an upcoming Justice Department report from its ethics-watchdog unit, the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), clears the Bush administration lawyers who authored the “torture” memos of professional-misconduct allegations.

While the probe is sharply critical of the legal reasoning used to justify waterboarding and other “enhanced” interrogation techniques, NEWSWEEK has learned that a senior Justice official who did the final review of the report softened an earlier OPR finding. Previously, the report concluded that two key authors—Jay Bybee, now a federal appellate court judge, and John Yoo, now a law professor—violated their professional obligations as lawyers when they crafted a crucial 2002 memo approving the use of harsh tactics, say two Justice sources who asked for anonymity discussing an internal matter. But the reviewer, career veteran David Margolis, downgraded that assessment to say they showed “poor judgment,” say the sources. (Under department rules, poor judgment does not constitute professional misconduct.) The shift is significant: the original finding would have triggered a referral to state bar associations for potential disciplinary action—which, in Bybee’s case, could have led to an impeachment inquiry.

Jack Balkin cuts through the crap;

That is, the torture memos were written not to define "torture" with respect to new situations where the statute was unclear; rather they were written to allow the CIA to get around the legal ban on torture, even to the point of arguing that the torture statute would be unconstitutional if applied to persons acting under the direction of the President as commander-in-chief. The torture memos were not a hypothetical lawyer's exercise to guide future conduct. They were written in order to ensure that members of the CIA would never be prosecuted for torture.

Obama can end the recession, personally find every unemployed person a job, perform, himself, medical operations that save lives, but letting the Bush Grindhouse, and their cronies, get off scott free, from their illegal actions and war crimes, he will be wearing that failure, that "not looking in the rearview mirror" like a scarlet letter.

And it doesn't help his obtuseness, when other countries take action, that he doesn't;

International Arrest Warrants Requested

Professor Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois College of Law in Champaign, U.S.A. has filed a Complaint with the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court (I.C.C.) in The Hague against U.S. citizens George W. Bush, Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, and Alberto Gonzales (the “Accused”) for their criminal policy and practice of “extraordinary rendition” perpetrated upon about 100 human beings. This term is really their euphemism for the enforced disappearance of persons and their consequent torture. This criminal policy and practice by the Accused constitute Crimes against Humanity in violation of the Rome Statute establishing the I.C.C.

This might mean that these dwarfs, finks, phonies and fraud can't summer in Europe, or attend the Cannes Film Festival, but they are free to roam this country, weigh in on current events, continue their lying, smear the President and, otherwise, enjoy their lives, unfettered with any annoyances, any accountability, for their heinous crimes.

Now, during the State of the Union Address, again in his emasculation of the PartyofNoicans, Obama, as the suddenly naked GOP and Right Wing Freak Show, pointed out, Obama did quite a bit of "Bush Bashing".

He inherited the financial shit train from The Bush Grindhouse.

The Commander Guy, and his cronies, took us from surplus, to trillions-of-dollar in debt.

Obama hasn't been shy of falling back on that, and it surely, pisses off the PartyofNoicans, because it is true, it is fact.

Also, true, and also anchored in a boatload of facts, is the illegal activities, and war crimes, of the previous administration.

Mr. President, you are becoming hypocritical, to single-out the financial mess, but, when it comes to holding your predecessor, his Shadow President, Rumsfield, the two former Crony Generals, Condi Rice, Addington, Libby, Yoo, et all. accountable for the laws they violated, you, suddenly, can only look forward, you can't turn your neck, to look in the rearview mirror.



Glenn Greenwald tackled this, earlier this month, in his "The crime of not "Looking Backward";

Every Obama-justifying excuse for Looking Forward, Not Backwards has been exposed as a sham (recall, for instance, the claim that we couldn't prosecute Bush war crimes because it would ruin bipartisanship and Republicans wouldn't support health care reform). But even if those excuses had been factually accurate, it wouldn't have mattered. There are no legitimate excuses for averting one's eyes from crimes of this magnitude and permitting them to go unexamined and unpunished. The real reason why "Looking Forward, Not Backwards" is so attractive to our political and media elites is precisely because they don't want to face what they enabled and supported. They want to continue to believe that it just involved the quick and necessary waterboarding of three detainees and a few slaps to a handful of the Worst of the Worst. Only a refusal to "Look Backwards" will enable the lies they have been telling (to the world and to themselves) to be sustained. But as Horton's story illustrates, there are real victims and genuine American criminals -- many of them -- and anyone who wants to keep that concealed and protected is, by definition, complicit in those crimes, not only the ones that were committed in the past, but similar ones that almost certainly, as a result of Not Looking Backwards, will be committed in the future.

Yeah, we have a recession, astronomical unemployment, you're on the verge of blowing Healthcare Reform, so many things, all so much piled on the plate.

Ahhh, you probably think that we're going to tell you to get off your ass, and start rounding up these creeps, hauling their "no-bid-contract" asses into court and getting it on with them, right?

Wrong.

Since your so busy, since you have so much on your plate, we have an easier solution.

Let The Hague indict them, and all you have to do is not stand in the way of extraditing over there for trial, say the United States will cooperate, and stand behind whatever decision comes from The Hague.

All in the name of justice, and the rule of law.

Heck, you'll even authorize a gang of U.S. Marshals go out and get them, and, in a rather ironic twist, you can use one of those CIA "Extraordinary Rendition" airplanes, to get them over there.

If you want to put a little lead in the "Hope You Can Believe In' pencil, you'll be able to write your own ticket, as the person that didn't let them get away with it.

Whaddya say, there, Mr. President?

I Hope This Doesn't Give The Commander Guy Any Ideas

A word, first, on that "rear-view mirror" thing, then, the hijinks

Why, on earth, would you, President Obama, bring in The Commander Guy, to the Haitian Relief Effort?

Is there a Convention Center in Port-au-Prince, filled with desperate people, that you can put him in charge of ignoring?

Will you have him just do a few "fly-overs"?

When Hurricane Katrina hit, I believe, he was delivering a birthday cake to Stumblin' Bumblin' John McCain.

Did you dispatch him to Haiti to deliver cakes?



Did Harold Ford convince you, that it would be good to hear his voice
on this?

Maybe, Mr. President, you need to check out, and look into deeper, the interview of Amy Goodman, with Randall Robinson, to see how boneheaded it is to have him anywhere near this, and how insulting it is to the Haitians.

Heck of a job, there, Obama...

And, on another front, we'll put our bets on this kid, doing way more for Haiti, then Mr. Ek-A-Lec-Tic;

Boy, 7, raises $160,000 for Haiti appeal

He's no Wyclef Jean or George Clooney, but that hasn't stopped seven-year-old Charlie Simpson from raising more than £120,000 ($195,000) for the Haiti earthquake.

Simpson from Fulham, west London had hoped to raise just £500 for UNICEF's earthquake appeal by cycling eight kilometers (five miles)around a local park.

"My name is Charlie Simpson. I want to do a sponsored bike ride for Haiti because there was a big earthquake and loads of people have lost their lives," said Simpson on his JustGiving page, a fundraising site which launched his efforts.

"I want to make some money to buy food, water and tents for everyone in Haiti," he said.

Oh, no, bicycles ...

The Commander Guy might get in his head that "Hey, I can do something like that."

As history goes, no, no he can't

• Bush bruised after bicycle bang
• Bush collides with police officer during bike ride
• Bush bruised in bicycle crash

What's next Obama, have the former Shadow President Cheney take some Haitians out hunting?

It's A Family Affair

We go tabloid tonight, not to make light of another awful domestic violence incident, if only to highlight two monster lines by other writers, and, for the fact that the famed PartyofNoicans prestigious "family values" were on dubious display, once again.

All the more juicier that the animal neanderthal wife-beater is tied to the Bush Clan.

Former White House lawyer charged with attempting to kill wife in New Canaan

A prominent attorney and former White House lawyer was charged with attempting to kill his wife at his New Canaan home Wednesday night.

John Michael Farren, 57, of 388 Wahackme Road, was charged with attempted murder and first-degree strangulation after police received a panic alarm from his home shortly after 10 p.m.

This guy pitched the doubleheader, working for both, the 1000-Points-of-Light Bush, and, the considerably dimmer, The Bush Grindhouse.

You can click through the link, to read the grisly details of Farren beating his wife with a metal flashlight, over being served divorce papers, ironically, due to his "explosive temper", and then goes all Three Stooges/Niagara Falls when she hits a panic alarm, beating her more.

The folks we want to tip our cap to are;

Skippy, the bush kangaroo, in his post "the gop luvs them some fambly values" for;

Well, we wonder if britt hume has some religious counseling for this guy?

We also see why gay marriage is being voted out all over america. it would only cheapen the institution

And, TBogg, over on Firedoglake, with the great title - "Damn. I had “David Addington” using a “pool cue” in my office pool" - and for;

Former Bush counsel John Michael Farren, 57, of 388 Wahackme Road (oh, cruel irony) went a little apeshit when his wife served him with divorce papers:

[snip]

It is entirely likely that Farren will be defended by John Yoo who will explain that beating a woman unconscious with a flashlight is an entirely legitimate response during a time of war… on marriage.

Wonkette gets an honorable mention, for their "Former Bush Lawyer *ALLEGEDLY* Murders Everyone", and the wry salary reference.

Oh, you know their pious, pompous, bullshit facade about "family values" is going to haunt them, for all the live long days.

Meanwhile, we'll turn it over to Sly, to sing them a lullabye;

SLY & The Family Stone -- It's a Family Affair

Trouble Keeping The Lies Straight?

It's there, for anyone to look up, between testimony, media, documents, the prolific amount of lying conducted by The Bush Grindhouse.

It is such that, we could expect lightening to hit them, if they ever told the truth about anything.

So, maybe, The Commander Guy, was thinking about his his "Ek-A-Lec-Tic" Reading List, or a DVD he recently rented, when he let loose with another, in a long list of, faux pas;

Bush: I regret standing in front of the ‘Mission Impossible’ banner.

Bush also said that he regretted appearing in front of a “Mission Impossible” sign in 2003 during an address about the Iraq war. Of course, the sign actually said “Mission Accomplished.” Maybe “Mission Impossible” would have been more appropriate.

You can read more in "Shoes fly as George W. Bush speaks in Montreal".

Somehow, the Flying Monkeys of the Right Wing Freak Show will find a way to blame his "foot-in-mouth" on Obama, or the liberal media.

The Stupidest Man in the World could wear a "I'm With Stupid", t-shirt, pointing to The Decider Guy.



Bonus Commander Guy Riffs

It Will Never Be A Happy "Mission Accomplished" Day

Still Utterly Clueless

The Narrative Continues To Build!

For The Want Of A Lie ...

Where's That Apple Runner When You Need Her?

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

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.

Must Read: Why I threw the shoe

Remember when The Commander Guy was over in Iraq, giving some kind of press conference, and the Iraqi journalist who stood up, likely knowing his fate for the act he was going to commit, threw his shoes at the War Criminal Court-Appointed President?



Muntazer al-Zaidi is his name, and he has a post up on the Guardian UK, a tremendous read, from the heart, from the perspective we have had too little of, from our own, warmongering, cheerleading Corporate media.

Why I threw the shoe - I am no hero. I just acted as an Iraqi who witnessed the pain and bloodshed of too many innocents

I say to those who reproach me: do you know how many broken homes that shoe which I threw had entered? How many times it had trodden over the blood of innocent victims? Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were violated.

When I threw the shoe in the face of the criminal, George Bush, I wanted to express my rejection of his lies, his occupation of my country, my rejection of his killing my people. My rejection of his plundering the wealth of my country, and destroying its infrastructure. And casting out its sons into a diaspora.

If I have wronged journalism without intention, because of the professional embarrassment I caused the establishment, I apologise. All that I meant to do was express with a living conscience the feelings of a citizen who sees his homeland desecrated every day. The professionalism mourned by some under the auspices of the occupation should not have a voice louder than the voice of patriotism. And if patriotism needs to speak out, then professionalism should be allied with it.

I didn't do this so my name would enter history or for material gains. All I wanted was to defend my country.

Muntazer al-Zaidi is an Iraqi reporter who was freed this week after serving nine months in prison for throwing his shoe at former US president George Bush at a press conference. This edited statement was translated by McClatchy Newspapers correspondent Sahar Issa www.mcclatchydc.com

We covered it here, on The Garlic;

"Son of A Dog!"

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

[snip]

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.

For all the lies, the deception, the careless disregard for all things good, the White House should have turned into a veritable shoe warehouse.

Instead, our media all but got on their hands-and-knees, and fit them with velvet slippers.

With all the troops still stationed in Iraq, and the call for more troops to be rushed into Flintstonesville (aka Afghanistan), perhaps we should emulate Muntazer al-Zaidi, or, at least, in spirit, start practice whipping off the shoes and flinging them.

(H/T to Jeremy Scahill, for his Twitter post on this)

Lackawannabes ... The Bunch of 'Em!

This is a post we intended to get up earlier in the week

We've slowly entered into the zone, of thinking about what stopped The Shadow President, Dick Cheney, from using one of his assassination teams, to take out The Commander Guy.

Afterall, he nearly deep-sixed his hunting buddy there, a few years ago, and with that, he wasn't even really trying very hard.

Look at all the opportunities he had, if not in the White House, itself, then down on the ranch, with all the time Mr. Ek-A-Lec-Tic Reading Man spent there.

A mortal bicycle mishap, a freak drowning, and the clearing brush horrible accident, all things that the Cheney Death Squad could pull off, without raising an eyebrow as to it being anything but tragic.

I mean, Mr. Court-Appointed President (H/T Barry Crimmins) seems, much like a Texas Inspector Clouseau, tripping all over himself, but in the process, totally upsetting, and ruining, the dastardly plans of Cheney.

News broke on this last Friday (but got pushed off the radar by The Birthers, and The Blue Dogs), how it was given to debate of using the U.S. Military to shuffle off to Buffalo, and round-up a group of wannabe terrorists, the people that became known as the Lackawanna Six.



Well, it wasn't so much a debate, but rather, Shadow President Cheney looking to take a long piss on the Constitution.

From the NYT;

Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.

[snip]

A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests has few precedents in American history, as both the Constitution and subsequent laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.

The Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity.

Yeah, and guess who The Shadow President got to say it would be okay - None other than the Crony General, and Mr. Torture, John Yoo.

And here's Professor Jonathan Turley, on 'Countdown' Monday evening, with guest host Lawrence O'Donnell.

Constitution no obstacle for Cheney ... Prof. Jonathan Turley talks about allegations that Dick Cheney sought to deploy U.S. troops in Buffalo, N.Y. to arrest the Lackawanna 6.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

Now, it would sure be nice, to see President Obama, come alive, with fire and animation, the way he did responding to the Skip Gates - Officer Crowley Debacle, with holding The Bush Grindhouse accountable for their crimes.

If we don't see perp walks and indictments before the end of this first term, then he doesn't, no matter what else he succeeds at, deserves a second.


Bonus Links

Glenn Greenwald: The Cheney plan to deploy the U.S. military on U.S. soil

Steven D: Thank God Bush Was Lazy

Zandar vs. The Stupid: It's Just A Goddamn Piece Of Paper

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"

We Already Know What He Was Thinking - Us vs. Them

They can't be serious, can they?

The Commander Guy, Mr. Mission Accomplished, The "Ek-A-Lec-Tic" Reading List Man, is going to write a book?



He dropped word of it, during his all-but super-secret speech up in Canada, where some where looking for the Canadian Government to arrest him as a War Criminal;

Bush: Won't criticize Obama, says he 'deserves my silence'

Bush said that he doesn't know what he will do in the long term but that he will write a book that will ask people to consider what they would do if they had to protect the United States as president.

He said it will be fun to write and that ``it's going to be (about) the 12 toughest decisions I had to make.''

``I'm going to put people in my place, so when the history of this administration is written at least there's an authoritarian voice saying exactly what happened,'' Bush said.

``I want people to understand what it was like to sit in the Oval Office and have them come in and say we have captured Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, the alleged killer of a guy named Danny Pearl because he was simply Jewish, and we think we have information on further attacks on the United States,'' Bush said.

Bush didn't specify what the 12 hardest decisions were but said Iraq is better off without Saddam Hussein in power.

Yes, we quite sure it will be done in an "authoritarian voice".

Much like his dictatorship.

Funny, Boot-Lickin' Mike Allen doesn't mention that malapropism in his article today, gushing, almost breathlessly, "Former President George W. Bush has already written about 30,000 words of a memoir tentatively called “Decision Points” that will cover everything from how he found faith to how he quit drinking to how he chose Karl Rove and Dick Cheney for their jobs" and "The chapters include: the terrorist attacks of 9/11; the decisions to send American troops to Afghanistan and Iraq; the response to Hurricane Katrina; his commitment to fight AIDS around the world; the formation of his stem cell research policy; and his relationships with his father, mother, siblings, and wife."

We already know, with reams-and-reams of documentation, what he did in those circumstances.

He ginned up, manufactured evidence, and lied about having to invade and occupy Iraq, and, when they started catching some of the terrorists, they launched a chain of black hole prisons, Abu Ghraib and Gitmo, and ordered torture.

It was Us versus Them.

And, that included domestically, calling anyone who challenged his decrees, traitors and appeasers.

HIS Executive Office, HIS Vice President engineered the exposure of a covert CIA Agent, for political retribution, for calling out one of his lies.

Listen, from the Allen piece, how Chris Michel, Bush’s last director of speechwriting, is already spinning it;

The former president often e-mails and calls Michel and people from the White House, including Josh Bolten, his former chief of staff, and Steve Hadley, his former national security adviser.

“He’s having a lot of fun doing it,” the aide said. “He’s reliving some great moments, and thinking about how he can bring the reader into his shoes or put them in his seat for a fascinating period in history.”

He’s having a lot of fun doing it!

He lied us into war and melted down the country, but the important thing, he's having fun with revising his legacy!

With the book, scheduled for a Fall 2010 release, Steve M., of No More Mister Nice Blog, calls attention to the Mid-Terms at that time, and The Bush Grindhouse program of "The Permanent Campaign";

This isn't going to be a memoir -- it's going to be a campaign book. The timing is based on the assumption that the GOP base will be more motivated than the Democratic base in the next round of midterms, that they'll be furious at Obama (they already are), and that (after being softened up by Laura) they'll be ready to be moved again by the story of the brush-clearin' good ol' boy whom God personally steered away from Demon Rum and directly into a fight to the death with the evildoers, as opposed to the Kenyan-born Muslim America-hating effete basketball-playing interloper. There'll be a torrent of compare-and-contrast op-eds from right-wing hacks, and a book tour will ensue, managed as carefully as Bush's campaign appearances, with Dubya packed into pre-selected crowds of worshipful loyalists.

That ought to be very interesting, the PartyofNoicans having to carry that dead weight through, yet, another election.



Now, if they really want to put a book out that captures the Bush Grindhouse, that "puts us in his shoes" and flies off the shelves, he should write about the "12 toughest lies"

You know, takes from the facts, to how the cronies of the Bush Grindhouse, the White House Iraq Group (you can probably cull a good number of whoopers from these files), the VP's office, would dissect them, start inserting the lies, spins and smears, and then, the final product.

You know, kind of along the lines of a "Before" and "After" picture.

Be sure to have, at least, one chapter on the "mushroom clouds", 'cause that has to bring up fond memories

Oh yeah, two more things.

Remember your mouthpiece's advice, about "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August", so when you say "Fall of 2010", be sure it's after Labor Day.

And, embrace the Shoe Cannon, for, more than likely, it will be accompanying you on your book tour.


Bonus Our Pet President Riffs

Motoko Rich: ‘The Decider’ to Become ‘The Author’

Robert Stein: Bush's Chinese-Menu Memoir

White House "Embarrassed"; Bush Victory Strategy Speech Written By PR Agency ... Gave President Wrong Folder; Iraqi Newspaper Prints Slams Against Murtha, Kerry, Pelosi

New White House Iraq and Iran Group ...IG Report Casts Doubts On New Bush Security Plan; Says Nation “Out of Strategies” ...Shortage of Strategy Makers and Bush Administration Wiping Out Inventory Puts Office On Brink Of Crisis

Breaking News! Report Slams Seeds Of Democracy Currently Used “Worthless” ... Stunning IG Reports Cites Use Of Cheap, Mail-Order Seeds Of Democracy For Iraq, Middle East ...Spotlight On White House, Rumsfeld For Low-Cost Military Vision; Dirty Halliburton Water Also Cited

Breaking News! With DisneyBaghdad, Bush Says “Nobody Wins Hearts and Minds Better Than Disney ...Disney, With Secret Contract, Working With White House, Military On Building Baghdad Moats ...‘Pirates of the Caliphate’, Other Attractions To Mask Security Measures; State Dept. Touts “DisneyBaghdad Will Pay For Itself”

Breaking News! Analyst: President May Soon Need To Deny He Has Troops In Iraq ...White House Plunges Into New Iraq Strategy; Moving From ‘Keystone Cops’ To ‘Marx Brothers’ ...Denials Of “Stay The Course” Signal Major Shift; Possible Complete Erasing Of Iraq May Come In Time For MidTerms

That Thievin' Bush Family

Hmmm ... It's in the genes, perhaps ...

The grandfather steals the skull of a great Indian leader ...

The grandson steals an election (well, two elections) ...

Both, it can be said, robbed the country.

Geronimo’s Heirs Sue Secret Yale Society Over His Skull

Geronimo died a prisoner of war at Fort Sill, Okla., in 1909. A longstanding tradition among members of Skull and Bones holds that Prescott S. Bush — father of President George Bush and grandfather of President George W. Bush — broke into the grave with some classmates during World War I and made off with the skull, two bones, a bridle and some stirrups, all of which were put on display at the group’s clubhouse in New Haven, known as the Tomb.

The story gained some validity in 2005, when a historian discovered a letter written in 1918 from one Skull and Bones member to another saying the skull had been taken from a grave at Fort Sill along with several pieces of tack for a horse. 

Ramsey Clark, a former United States attorney general who is representing Geronimo’s family, acknowledged he had no hard proof that the story was true. Yet he said he hoped the court would clear up the matter.

Tom Conroy, a spokesman for Yale, declined to comment on the lawsuit but was quick to note that the Tomb was not on university property.

[Snip]

“Of all the items rumored to be in the Skull and Bones’s possession, Geronimo’s skull is one of the more plausible ones,” said Alexandra Robbins, the author of “Secrets of the Tomb” (Little Brown 2002), a book about the society. “There is a skull encased in a glass display when you walk in the door of the Tomb, and they call it Geronimo.”

Prairie Weather beat me to the punch, as to titles - "Bush family implicated in robbery"

And that Prescott Bush, he was quite the busy subversive, wasn't he;

How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany. 

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism. 

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy. 

The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The grandson helped Al Qaeda to power

Biden Says Bush Gave Al Qaeda Recruiting Tool

Visiting the Central Intelligence Agency to swear in Leon E. Panetta as the agency’s 19th director, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said Thursday that the Bush administration’s detention and interrogation policies “gave Al Qaeda a powerful recruiting tool.”

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, does it ... 

Like we said at the top, it's in the genes ... 

Qui couper le fromage?

It was the The Commander Guy who cut the cheese.

Not quite the same, good intentioned, vibe as, say, Charlie Wilson's War



Bush War on Roquefort Raises a Stink in France ...Departing Officials Set Duty at 300%

This seems an unlikely spot to fight a trade war.

A village of 600 souls in a remote part of southern France, Roquefort clings precariously to the side of Combalou Rock, a promontory overlooking a deep valley where sheep graze in the shadow of limestone cliffs that were sheared off by a seismic jolt in prehistoric times.

But the primal shake also carved out aerated underground crevasses that give a unique economic value to this jagged landscape about 65 miles northwest of Montpellier. They make possible a gastronomical wonder that has delighted gourmets for centuries: Roquefort cheese. And now, in an era of globalized competition for trade, the smelly delicacy and its little home town have become ground zero for the warriors of export-import in Washington.

It seems, on his way out the door, the man who had a Ek-A-Lec-Tic reading list, but not such sophisticated taste buds, gave a shout out to the Freedom Fries crowd and whacked the French with a 300-percent duty on Roquefort cheese.

Yikes!

The measure, announced Jan. 13 by U.S. Trade Representative Susan C. Schwab as she headed out the door, was designed as retaliation for a European Union ban on imports of U.S. beef containing hormones. Tit for tat, and all perfectly legal under World Trade Organization rules, U.S. officials explained.

All you stinky cheese lovers, better get your dander up, and start lobbying the new Obama Administration.

Hmmmm .... Perhaps, if they could get McDonald's to start making their cheeseburgers with Roquefort ... Man, it would in no-time at all, see those walls come tumbling down, and a less-taxed stinky cheese makes it into the country ...

Or, you know ... They could tie it into the Stimulus Package ...Part of the next TARP payment

For all those Wall Street fat cats, the ones who got the $18-Billion in bonuses (I wonder how big their bonuses would have been, had they actually plunged us into a full-fledged depression) ... They're gonna want some good, imported Roquefort, to go with their whining ...

And, at least for a few moments, take away the stink from them.

"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