Mike's Blog Round Up
Greetings from My Desk at the Mouth of Hell TM. Today's tasty tidbits hot off the grill? Irony is not dead, but it is gravely wounded: Most secretive president in history demands more open government.
Freddie's dead (and cold) but his wife is a live one. Has the alpha male turned into a mutt? So much depends upon a red truck and it looks like Fred Thompson turned right and crashed in a ditch.
Reading is fundamental. Or fun. Or just mental.
O Bomb. Or Obamarama?
Why can't we all just get along? With numbers like these, will Bush get along down the highway to hell?
(Nicole: We also want to send congratulations and blessings to our favorite crank caller, Mike from Calling All Wingnuts and his wife, who welcomed a new baby boy on 7/7/07.)
Send hot links to The Heretik at joe.ivory.mattingly AT gmail DOT com.
First!
Administration Shaving Yardstick for Iraq Gains
Goals Unmet; Smaller Strides to Be Promoted
By Karen DeYoung and Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, July 8, 2007; Page A01
The Iraqi government is unlikely to meet any of the political and security goals or timelines President Bush set for it in January when he announced a major shift in U.S. policy, according to senior administration officials closely involved in the matter. As they prepare an interim report due next week, officials are marshaling alternative evidence of progress to persuade Congress to continue supporting the war.
In a preview of the assessment it must deliver to Congress in September, the administration will report that Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province are turning against the group al-Qaeda in Iraq in growing numbers; that sectarian killings were down in June; and that Iraqi political leaders managed last month to agree on a unified response to the bombing of a major religious shrine, officials said.
Those achievements are markedly different from the benchmarks Bush set when he announced his decision to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Iraq. More troops, Bush said, would enable the Iraqis to proceed with provincial elections this year and pass a raft of power-sharing legislation. In addition, he said, the government of President Nouri al-Maliki planned to "take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November."
Congress expanded on Bush's benchmarks, writing 18 goals into law as part of the war-funding measure it passed in the spring.
In addition to the elections, legislation and security measures Bush outlined in January, Congress added demands that the Iraqi government complete a revision of its constitution and pass a law on de-Baathification and additional laws on militia disarmament, regional boundaries and other issues.
Freddie's dead! RAW has a story that Nixon once called Fred Thompson "dumb as hell". Say what you like about Nixon, he was pretty shrewd about people. It would be nice to call him back for just one day and get his opinion on the current crowd in the White House.
We all Green now after all the music yesterday?
From now on, I'm going to go ahead and trust my intuition.
Obama wants to increase the size of our military, its budget, its defense systems, the overall number of troops we have, etc., He's not interested in extracting America from the Middle East, just playing around with where we should keep all of our troops.
We are an imperial nation and that's fine with him.
Republicans have been in control for years and the debt is astronomical. If the media would get its head out of bush ass it could point out that fact. What exactly have we gotten for the billions (trillions) spent?
Janet @ 6:
It's not a matter of is it going to crash. It's when.
I didn't hear the presidents speech, again blaming democrats for tax and spend policies, but I have to wonder if the media provided any rebuttal to his claims. If he claims that the democrats will raise taxes perhaps he should explain just how we are going to pay off the debt he has created. This being the worst administration ever, always points the finger in the other direction. It is time that the media and the democrats point the finger where the responsibility belongs. This administration has been a complete failure for freedom and democracy and has been a success for the special interests. They should be the ones to pay off our debt and give our country back to the citizens of this United States Of America.
http://myfightfordemocracy.blogspot.com/2007/07/new-declaration-of-indep...
The whole illusion . . . "the markets are doing great" is going to bite us in the ass.
Ya know, I look at Bush's poll numbers and I have to wonder, how much lower would they be if people actually paid attention to the news and if Bush didn't have Fox News to spin every fuck up he ever pulls.
General William Odom writes that opponents of the war should focus public attention on the fact that Bush's obstinate refusal to admit defeat is causing the troops enormous psychological as well as physical harm.
Every step the Democrats in Congress have taken to force the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq has failed. Time and again, President Bush beats them into submission with charges of failing to "support the troops."
Why do the Democrats allow this to happen? Because they let the president define what "supporting the troops" means. His definition is brutally misleading. Consider what his policies are doing to the troops.
No U.S. forces have ever been compelled to stay in sustained combat conditions for as long as the Army units have in Iraq. In World War II, soldiers were considered combat-exhausted after about 180 days in the line. They were withdrawn for rest periods. Moreover, for weeks at a time, large sectors of the front were quiet, giving them time for both physical and psychological rehabilitation. During some periods of the Korean War, units had to fight steadily for fairly long periods but not for a year at a time. In Vietnam, tours were one year in length, and combat was intermittent with significant break periods.
In Iraq, combat units take over an area of operations and patrol it daily, making soldiers face the prospect of death from an IED or small arms fire or mortar fire several hours each day. Day in and day out for a full year, with only a single two-week break, they confront the prospect of death, losing limbs or eyes, or suffering other serious wounds. Although total losses in Iraq have been relatively small compared to most previous conflicts, the individual soldier is risking death or serious injury day after day for a year. The impact on the psyche accumulates, eventually producing what is now called "post-traumatic stress disorders." In other words, they are combat-exhausted to the point of losing effectiveness. The occasional willful killing of civilians in a few cases is probably indicative of such loss of effectiveness. These incidents don't seem to occur during the first half of a unit's deployment in Iraq.
Obama is a neo-liberal and has all the empty platitudes about 'vision' and 'renewed leadership' one would expect. Hillary and Edwards are identical. It will be Bill Clinton all over again.
The NeoCons only differ in that they believe the strategy of colonial rape of third world nations must be augmented by securing energy resouces by force (unless you actually believe the absurd lie that they want to spread democracy), not simply by using financial institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF. The Neo Conservatives are actually correct in this regard, if you accept the American Empire is a desireable thing.
Both want to maintain the same imperialist foreign policies conducted by the US since WW2.
Neither one will work. The US Empire must end; soon enough, we will have no choice anyway. We cannot maintain this manner of living anymore at all.
Just for your information, when I click on the links in the first line and get theheretik.us, I get a warning from my spyware software about the site. The link below has the description. I think the owner of the site should respond.
http://www.siteadvisor.com/sites/theheretik.us
those points need reinforcement through repetition.
if only there were Democrats with nads....
actually, I think Obie is identical to edwards, just a closet DLC/AIPAC plant with the faux MLK 'vision' and 'optimism'. All of his published platforms are basically corporate-based initiatives(domestic policy) or war-mongering(foreign policy).
If I can be permitted to comment "out of blog:" The author in Candide does not understand the true devilish nature of the Bush administration nor the people who have been turning the keys of American power since the decline of representative politics when the Kennedy brothers and Dr. King were gunned down.
Also, there is a true reality of terrorist extremism due to the American government funding of such groups, its growth fueled by Bush, that must be dealt with and not ignored. Obama is not going to. I thank him for that promise. The Bush-lite running Iran against his people's wishes is certainly a fascist.
Candidate Obama is not going to give opposition sufficient time to fashion events in such a way as to discredit him by ignoring the principles of his proposals. Broad strokes are very wise considering this is very early in the cycle. Character and principle ARE the messages.
With Obama you have the most demonstrative example of leadership that has the ability to take us through the most difficult transistion in our history. In a generational transition you must realize the growing pains will be severe and many will be influenced to become cynical. Hillary Clinton is the go-to compromise and those in power are more than willing to concede to the Clintons in order to prevent an Obama presidency.
Nitpickery: while I adore cats and loved the LOLcats ghosting Chubby Goldberg's book for him, Mr. Amato spotlighted that JonSwift piece on July 1.
And WhereTF is Holy Crap?
SiteMonitorAlert: I'm not done asking. And FYI, I've contacted Heretik directly, with a cc to Mr. Amato, BlueGal and Batocchio (both of whom did bother to include it during their stints as "The Sub".
Anyone else missing Holy Crap?
Janet @ 6:
Millions of dead people - some ours, some theirs.
Naomi at 17:
Holy Crap! is a great feature by Mike, it's true, but he didn't want anyone to feel pressured to do his thing. Blue Gal and I both felt comfortable doing it, but in my case I also collected stories over the course of a week before running with it. The Heretik's got a good round-up today, and I'm sure the rest will be splendid, as well.
As for posts on theocracy, there's the large number from the recent Blog Against Theocracy (I'm still working my way through them all), there's Talk 2 Action, and there's your own site, God Is 4 Suckers. The cup runneth over! ;-)
I'd love to know who Candide plans to vote for in lieu of Obama. It's a fine example of an essay that sounds reasonable, when viewed in the abstract, but when viewed in light of world that we live in right now, it's insane. Any candidate that doesn't rhetorically treat the issue of terrorism with the obligatory gravitas will get voted right into the dustbin of history, and they'll deserve it. You can argue theoretically that terrorism doesn't match the threat of fascism and communism, but you can't argue it with people who have experienced terror. You can't tell that to the surviving families, or the friends of surviving families.
Liberals are to eager to be disappointed in a candidate and cash in their chips.
So much heresy. So little time
You said it, Heretik!
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