Unintended honesty watch

From Dan Froomkin's column today talking about the meeting between Bush and al-Maliki he quotes that infamous SENIOR ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL: "...And I also wouldn't agree with your characterization of tinkering. These are the, as I said, sort of the nuts and bolts of getting the tools in place to deal with the security situation. There was, as I mentioned, quite a fulsome conversation about the situation in Baghdad..." [Emphasis mine-CK]

From Answers.com: ful·some adj.
1. Offensively flattering or insincere. See synonyms at unctuous.

I had a vision of Bush and al-Maliki tossing spin and platitudes at each other and thought, yeah, that sounds about right.

A long strange trip

Well, it's been a week now and past time to gather my thoughts on the election.

It's been a long time coming.

Wow.

To put things in proper perspective I should note that I've been interested in politics since I was a young lad following the exploits of McGovern v. Nixon.

And, as you might have guessed from that, shall we say, inauspicious beginning, seldom have my political desires been much more than disappointing.

I was pleased when tricky dicky go this comeuppance, but seeing a president go down in disgrace was hardly a booyah sort of moment.

I suppose I might have been more excited over Jimmy Carter if a) I wasn't so suspicious of his evangelical roots and b) I wasn't at the time a hormonal 17 year old male with much more important things on my, er, mind.

Then Ronald Reagan happened. The dangerous dolt who'd been my governor was now the dangerous dolt who ran the country.

A cold cheerless morning in America indeed. 8 years of cold cheerless mornings.

Then it was on to Bush 41 and the videogame war in Iraq. Fear sets in that America will never see a Democratic president. Which fear is confirmed by the election of...

Bill Clinton.

Bill, Bill, Bill.

12 years in the wilderness and "Don't ask, don't tell" is the best we can come up with? Triangulation? A healthcare plan destroyed by its own efforts to appease unappeasable insurance companies? Reforming welfare on the backs of the poor?

Sigh.

And then there was Bush 43. Our naked emperor.

I'll not even get started on BushCorp™'s bumbling CEO, I've written plenty elswhere.

But the last straw was the 2004 election when despite the fact that George II's faults were clearly on display for all with eyes to see, he was none the less re-elected.

And it was that election that convinced me to start this blog, so that I could a)keep my head from exploding and b)do my small part to educate, to cheerlead, and to encourage those who might be tempted to join the reality-based community to do so.

So to my vast readership, thank you for your patience.

And you're welcome.

And Congratulations

to Majority Leader Reid.

Speaker Pelosi

Has a nice ring to it doesn't it?

Cornered Dogs Part 3: Election Night Edition

Just thought I'd spend election night keeping track of all the GOP vote suppression activities. (I know, I know, keep track of ALL the GOP dirty tricks?!)

If you happen to hear of anything I've missed please let me know.

Here we go:

• George Allen's Campaign Attempts to Supress Democratic Votes


• Wingnut talkshow host encourages phonejamming scam


• RoboPhone Harrassment


• Voter disenfranchisement in Wisconsin


• Attempted Voter Suppresion in Yonkers


• Denver seeing massive problems - 2 Hour Extension DENIED by judge

And the ugliest so far:


• Men With Guns Harass Latino Voters

Like I said, cornered dogs.

Please don't vote

I know it's standard practice to encourage everyone to vote on election day.

So I know it's borderline unpatriotic, but I wanted to take a moment to encourage some of my fellow Americans not to vote tomorrow.

If it doesn't bother you that the world's fisheries will be gone in a few decades 'cos, well, you don't like tuna anyway please don't vote.

If you think that it's important to preserve the right of blastocysts the size of the period at the end of this sentence to be thrown in the garbage rather than used to cure disease please don't vote.

If you're proud that your government believes it's OK to torture please don't vote.

If you think the US should invade some country every few years just on general principles please don't vote.

If your main source of information is either Fox News or your local TV news please don't vote.

If you don't believe in global warming, but do believe in the rapture. If you don't believe in survival of the fittest in biology, but do believe it in business. If you believe in doing whatever it takes to protect our children except making sure they're properly fed, clothed, educated or have a clean environment and a debt free future. If you believe anything said by the lying sack of shit currently occupying the whitehouse or any of his enablers please, please, I beg you please stay away from that voting booth tomorrow.

Please don't vote.

Nuke Primer Published by GOP

Oh great.

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

So, in a vain effort to prop up their illusory claims that Saddam had WMDs, and over the objections of then DNI John Negroponte, congressional Republicans, with whitehouse backing, got these docs up on the internets.

Just great.

I suppose Bush discovered the error while using the google.

I did not have sex with that man

Just a paraphrase mind you, but the jist of monstrous hypocrite Rev. Ted Haggard's clarification of his relationship with an admitted male prostitute.

And for today I'm not going to rail on about the hypocrisy of it all or wonder about Haggard's close ties to the whitehouse.

No, today its just a little snark.

When I saw the WaPo headline: Minister Admits to Buying Drugs and Massage, the only thought that popped into my head was to wonder whether the story had a happy ending.

Army Times to call for Rumsfeld's resignation

Stunning.

One of the true greatnesses of the American experiment is the subsurvience of the military to its civilian leadership.

And make no mistake, this is a value more deeply ingrained in the US military than any other: that they serve at the discretion of the civilian leadership.

And it is a tribute to both the wisdom of our founding fathers, and the unparalleled discipline of our uniformed military that the US has never succumbed to easy choice of military dictatorship, even at the very worst of times.

We may believe our present difficulties in Iraq and with terrorists are a trial. But I cannot believe they come even close to the disasters of, say, the Civil War, or World War II. But even in those most potentially disasterous of times our military has kept faith and served the dictates of its civilian leadership.

But now, though we face a lesser threat than those two disasters, the greater disaster, the more real threat is the leadership of George W. Bush. The failure of leadership I should say.

And it is evidence of the magnitude of that failure that the US military feels the need to call for the replacement of its civilian leadership.

Let us hope that BushCorp's incompetence doesn't provoke a more devastating response.

Yawn, another day, another right wing scandal

Is it me, or does it seem that all the most vehemenent GOP gay-bashers are closeted homosexuals?

Poor GOP still can't catch a break.

On a day which they'd clearly planned the news cycle around Alberto Gonzales latest dragnet, the Haggard story breaks.

It's too bad that the stories on the end of the world's fisheries as well as the kidnapped GI in Iraq will also get overwhelmed as well.

On the bright side, I guess this is the end of the Kerry foot-in-mouth episode.

Attention pop-psychologists!

If, like myself, you've heard the latest of Bush's latest protestations of unwavering support for the likes of Don Rumsfeld and wondered, what's wrong with the man, Lance Mannion has a suggestion:

What I used to think of as monstrous vanity and arrogance I now suspect is actually delusion. Wolfe writes that for Bush believing a thing to be true is as good as its being true. Reality for him is what's inside his head. Wolfe attributes this to a combination of Bush's own character flaws and the tendency of the sycophants and machiavellians around him to keep him isolated. He's trapped inside a bubble of his own and his aides' making and he is too vain and too stubborn, and too weak, to see it or want to break out of it.

But I can't help thinking that he was born trapped inside that bubble. There is a clinical term for people who live inside their own heads, who can't interact completely and normally with other people, who seem to have no empathy with others and no sense that what they think is going on might not be what in fact is going on, who get angry and act out when the reality intrudes and they are forced to choose between the world inside their heads and the world outside.

That word begins with an A.

And I'm not thinking of alcoholic, although Bush's behavior is in many ways that of one still, even though he has supposedly sobered up. The dry drunk syndrome is an established fact.

You'll have to read the entire (two) oustanding posts for the answer, something I highly recommend.

Part 1 is here.
Part 2 is here.