Outside the Spectrum

Robert Parry of Consortium News has an excellent piece up on Alternet concerning the President’s State of the Union Speech. Some choice excerpts:

To heighten the fears of Americans, he again misrepresented the goals, capabilities and even the identities of the enemy. He blurred diverse and even antagonistic Muslim Sunni and Shiite groups, shoving them under the umbrella of "the Islamist radical movement."
"The Shia and Sunni extremists are different faces of the same totalitarian threat," Bush said. "Whatever slogans they chant, when they slaughter the innocent they have the same wicked purposes. They want to kill Americans, kill democracy in the Middle East, and gain the weapons to kill on an even more horrific scale."

That last paragraph is quite a masterpiece of either boneheaded political thinking or deliberate deception. Shia and Sunni extremists hate each other: its quite stretch to call them “different faces” on anything except some ridiculously broad category of people, like “violent people” or “violent Muslims.” Then he calls them a “totalitarian threat,” which is ridiculous. Terrorists are not members of some massive, fascist industrial state like WWII Germany. They are brigands and religious extremists. But we know “they have the same wicked purposes. They want to kill Americans” blah blah blah. Right. And Hexbollah is such a threat because they bombed a marine barracks in Lebanon 23 YEARS ago. Most of our soldiers weren’t even alive when that happened.

This administration is an ongoing, never-ending, slow motion disaster. But there are those who support it still, though they number 28%, last time I checked. Glenn Greenwald has a ruinously effective post here about the likes of Bill Kristol. Have watched Greenwald do this for a year or more, I must say, it’s starting to look too easy for him, like watching Lennox Lewis whip Tony Tucker over and over.

# posted by BitterHarvest @ 11:11 PM 0 comments

When I and a few others say that this president is neglecting the so-called “War on Terror” this is what we mean. And this. Afghanistan and Pakistan spiraling out of control, the president actually drawing troops out of Afghanistan as this happens, worldwide terror attacks rising every year, etc.

Darth Cheney explains to the curious N­ewsweek reporter: “We are a criminal syndicate. I don’t know why Chuck Hagel has gone off the reservation, but our code of silence, as articulated by Ronald Reagan, our omerta, stipulates that we may not point out when a member of the family is lying, wrong, or doing something illegal.”

That is what is known as a code of silence­­, ladies and gentlemen. According to wikipedia, when someone "witnesses or is privy to the knowledge of an illegal or embarrassing act, but puts comradery, or loyalty to the 'unit' above informing the public or the proper authorities."

The Republican Party usually operates like a criminal syndicate, as I have written before. This is what I'm talking about.­

He’s just playing with you now. It’s funny, now, to him. In the words of Mcjoan, “willfully obtuse” to the point of being impeachable. In my words, insultingly coy. What kind of theater is it to ask a ridiculous liar like him questions at all?

# posted by BitterHarvest @ 11:51 AM 0 comments

Dinesh D’Souza has a particularly repulsive book out now, blaming 9/11 on liberals, of course. The reviewer at the New York Times Book Review rightly pans it as a “national disgrace” and calls D’Souza a “childish thinker.” I couldn’t agree more, though I’m sure the members of his political movement like good friend Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh will be happy to support his every putrid argument. If you would like to purchase this slurry shit of a novel, you can also get a deal on Jonah Goldberg’s masterwork Liberal Fascism: the Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton here. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank the Chicago Tribune for syndicating such an eminent scholar as Jonah Goldberg.

This stuff speaks for itself. I love this quote: “The legislation also prohibited some of the worst abuses of detainees like mutilation and rape, but granted the president leeway to decide which other interrogation techniques are permissible.” Oh, well, thank God we outlawed mutilation and rape. Now we can be assured that the electrodes and waterboarding will all be used decently and fairly.

Hows about that surge plan? Retired generals no likey.

How about Carter’s new book? How about the wiped off the map phrase?

# posted by BitterHarvest @ 10:39 AM 0 comments

Our president has engaged in Soviet-style propaganda efforts for a long time, purging the military and intelligence services of dissenters (“what is he, some kind of defeatist?”) and then “listening” to his hand-picked associates.

He gets $200 million for what?

A little window into what lies ahead when Congress begins investigating and issuing subpoenas and the administration refuses to comply with the subpoenas.

…And in the comments section of the above article, a man (?) who echoes my own thoughts:

It baffles me as a non-citizen of the USA that there are still people like Alternet who believe their democracy actually still works and that the evil within their nation has to be fought from within it. How can you fight it from within a system that is so thoroughly compromised it no longer works?

Indeed, my friend, indeed. Check out this post from Arianna Huffington. The Preznit os just off the deep end. Or check out this one about Tony Snow: nobody believes anything Sec. Snow says anymore. He is the American equivalent of Baghdad Bob. Editor and Publisher basically just rolls its eyes whenever he talks now.

Gary Hart lays it down.

# posted by BitterHarvest @ 4:40 PM 0 comments

Progress? What Progress? LT General Odierno, the operational commander in Iraq, says that even with a troop surge it might take another few years. At least he’s honest. I’ll bet the president doesn’t mention any specific time period in his speech Wed. night.

Pajamas Media: you are an embarrassment. Where’s Rathergate now?

# posted by BitterHarvest @ 5:15 PM 0 comments

What the fuck is your problem?

Are you honestly waiting for a plan to win the war from the most incompetent, dishonest, criminal president of all time?

Are you seriously looking to George W. Bush for leadership?

Perhaps you enjoyed his prepared response to Hurricane Katrina? Or perhaps you thought his leadership in the war thus far has been so honest and effective you just wanted more, is that it?

The president is in the midst of preparing to ask for a troop surge. Instead of “listening” to his generals, who don’t want a troop surge, he’s jettisoning them and installing generals that will ask for a troop surge. Abizaid and Casey are out, Fallon and Patraeus are in. This part of his job was always dumbshit kabuki theater. The president always claimed to listen to “the CIA” or “his generals” when in reality he chose which ones to listen to. Then he or Sec. Von Rumsfeld promoted the generals that agreed with them. Then he listened to his top generals tell him what he wanted to hear.

The joke about the president listening to “his” generals was always Soviet-style beaurocratic theater. The president picks his generals. Of course he listens to them. It’s kind of like the president’s office assuring the public the president hadn’t asked John Roberts about abortion. Of course he hadn’t. His people had read everything Roberts had ever written since he was 6 years old. They had interviewed everyone the guy had ever known. When they were getting ready for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court they investigated Roberts so thoroughly they knew how many times he wipes his ass when he gets off the toilet. They knew his favorite sexual position and which side he sleeps on at night. They knew his Select Comfort sleep number, for fuck’s sake. They didn’t need to put him through some 1 hour interview to vet him.

SO shut up about Preznit Drinky “listening” to fucking anybody. Just shut up. Spare me the “Preznit Stumbly Wumbly is meeting with Congressional leaders to listen” bullshit, because this is ridiculous. We have seen this story before. President Coke Job McTrustfund is going to “listen” to everyone publicly telling him to please stop fucking up this country and then he’s going to mysteriously come to the conclusion that a troop surge, which just so happens to be his favorite plan, is the way to go.

I have an idea. Send Nancy Pelosi, John McCain, Barack Obama, and Trent Lott a simple little email:

President Bush’s job or yours. You choose.

# posted by BitterHarvest @ 10:27 AM 0 comments

So the new congress is underway, and while I’m happy Nancy Pelosi is the new speaker, I must say I’m not inspired by her leadership. She comes from pretty much the most democratic district in the nation, encompassing most of San Francisco, though her political positions are significantly rightward of her constituency. This is a disturbing dynamic that is echoed in most of the democratically-controlled districts in the nation. A majority of the country wants a pullout. A vast majority of the troops want to be out within a year. The vast majority of Iraqis want US troops out of their country in the same time period. These polls have not changed for a year. Of course, what does it matter what people want? Drinky wants a troop increase, and congressional democrats have displayed no stomach for doing what they can to stop the war: defund it.

If the war was defunded the president would have to withdraw the troops. Pelosi and other double-crossers in the Democratic Party have resorted to the sophistry of “We need to give our soldiers everything they need in the field.”

No, we need to give our soldiers everything they need to get out of Iraq, not everything they need to fight for the failed policy of a stubborn, misguided, and deceitful president against the will of America and the Iraqi people. But why champion that position when you can defy the will of your constituents, the majority of America, and the majority of Iraqis, eh, Pelosi?

False News strikes again. How do you “leak” information that was published a decade ago, Hannity? How do you characterize tacit admissions as “no evidence,” Novak?