CNN’s Michael Ware Takes a Look at Mexico

When the going was hairy in Iraq, CNN appointed foreign correspondent Michael Ware to cover the carnage and idiocy passing for foreign policy in the Bush administration. Michael Ware was not part of the officially okayed bunch of clowns the Bush administration “embedded” with the US troops and told what to say and how to say it. Ware never shied from letting it be known (which was often) when he thought the US generals were off base and doing our troops a disservice. Ware has an Australian accent, but he had lived in Baghdad since before the US invasion. He is now 40 years old and CNN has sent him to Mexico to have a look-see at the drug war. Last night, Michael Ware reported back to Wolf Blitzer in CNN’s Situation Room. Blitzer asked if the beefing up of the US border with Mexico would make a difference. Ware said, “Well, you certainly have to applaud any measure. But I have to say, from what I've seen so far in Mexico -- and I'm about to be spending a lot more time there -- this is a drop in the bucket, finger in the dike stuff. “I mean let's not forget what's driving this war. It's two things. One is the profit motive of the cartels. And beefing up the border even more hasn't stopped them so far. When they closed the routes through Florida and the Caribbean for the Colombian cartels, that's when the Mexican cartels took over and said we'll get it in. “I don't see that being stopped. We can disrupt it, make business more expensive, but it's not going to stop because they have the other coastline—the land border and they’ll never shut that tight. “Have you seen the drug subs? The guerrillas in Colombia actually built drug submarines that were able to skim just under the surface of the water, carrying as much as a ton of cocaine. And in the last couple of years, there's been increasing interceptions of those.” Ware estimates the drug cartels have 100,000 foot soldiers. These are well-armed troops with fully automatic weapons -- grenades and .50 caliber Barrett sniper rifles. “Now, these are a military weapon that I've only ever seen in the hands of the Marines and the U.S. Army,” Ware said. Blitzer asked for a comparison between the troops in Iraq and the drug cartel troops in Mexico. Ware said, “ Well, I'm very shy of making comparisons between a holy war or a political insurgency in Iraq and a profit-motivated drug war in Mexico. “However, I have to say, when I was in Juarez, the city that's right on the border with El Paso, the front line town, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was in the midst of an insurgency.” Blitzer asked about the Mexican military, if it doesn’t have the capability to deal with the drug cartels. Ware said, “Oh, Wolf -- Wolf, please. Please. Look, already the Mexican military has as many as 45,000 troops in the field, in their own country, fighting their own citizens. Now, this is a military trained like anyone else's military, to defend the sovereign territory of their country. And now they're being turned into super armed policemen, because you can't trust the local police. They're riddled with corruption. You can't...” Blitzer cut in saying, “But you're not really saying, are you, Michael, that you -- you think the United States should send in thousands of American troops onto sovereign Mexican soil to fight this war?” Ware answered, “Well, good -- heaven forbid that that should ever happen. But you either legalize these things and cut the demand or you're going to have to intervene. Now, what I'm looking to the White House and President Obama for is a third way. Now, that's what he's going to have to find -- some measure between those two things, because America is responsible for this war, Wolf. It's American demand for the illicit drugs that's fueling it. It's being fought on both sides with American weapons. And it's been neglected by the United States pretty much since 9/11.” Blitzer noted that secretary of State Hillary Clinton will be in Mexico later this week; the president is planning a trip next month; and Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano is going to confab with the Calderon government soon. Blitzer said he assumes they’ll all come up with some sort of new strategy. Ware said Admiral Stavridis (head of Southern Command) went to Mexico a couple weeks ago after which he briefed President Obama. As Blitzer noted, the big sign that something big is brewing in Mexico is that CNN sent Michael Ware to cover it. And yes, of course, Ware is right on the money: The drug problem is totally due to American demand for illicit drugs.

The Pope Gets it Wrong Again

On his monthly gaffe run, Pope Benedict XVI made new headlines yesterday. Last month, His Eminence recommunicated Bishop Richard Williamson--or whatever it’s called when the Pope reinstates an excommunicated member of the Roman Catholic Church. Along with three other bishops, Pope John Paul had excommunicated Bishop Williamson in 1988. Their ordination hadn’t had papal approval. The leader of an ultraconservative group, the Society of St. Pius X, ordained the four, which was against the reforms of the Second Vatican Council. This past January, in order to heal a schism in the church, Pope Benedict revoked the excommunication of the four Bishops. Not a month after being reinstated, Bishop Williamson said on Swedish television that the Nazi gas chambers had never existed and that no more than 300,000 people had died in the Holocaust. It didn’t sit well in the world that a German Pope had reinstated a Holocaust denier who was still in full vigor and proclaiming his anti-Semitic nonsense even into the 21st century. With the Vatican’s highly vaunted “moral authority” in question, the Vatican’s PR hype-machine revved up and scrambled to do damage control. The Pope repeatedly condemned Holocaust denial. To add to Pope Benedict’s humiliation, Williamson has never recanted his statement, he has simply said he’s sorry his remarks caused “harm and hurt”. He claims he’s a “nonhistorian” and that his perspective was formed “20 years ago on the basis of evidence then available.” Oh please! Twenty years ago was 1989. All available evidence supported the existence of the Holocaust in 1989. Time races forward. It is now a month after the Bishop Williamson debacle and the Pope has hit the news again. Yesterday Pope Benedict said from Yaounde, Cameroon, Africa: “You can’t resolve H.I.V./AIDS with the distribution of condoms, on the contrary, condoms increase the problem.” All known authorities on AIDS readily admit that condoms do not solve the AIDS issues. However, all known authorities on AIDS agree that the distribution of condoms is the one way that the spread of AIDS can be diminished to a large degree. The distribution of condoms does NOT increase the problem. The pope said, “a responsible and moral attitude toward sex would help fight the disease.” A responsible and moral Pope would help fight many of the problems in the world. Sadly, we do not have a responsible and moral Pope. And that is unfortunate for the world, the Vatican and the Roman Catholic Church.

True, I Couldn’t Watch ALL of Cheney on CNN

I could stand only about half of John King’s interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday. But I have read the entire transcript of Cheney’s exercise in revising history (even in the face of John King’s pointed questions). And Cheney has his post-Bush-regime delivery down pat. He acts like he’s thought about his answers and he has a considered and reasonable air. He doesn’t go off on tangents or fuss, fume or rant. He doesn’t need to. The GOP has Rush Limbaugh. Cheney said, “Rush is a good friend. I love him. I think Rush is a good man.” Dick Cheney simply continued to tell lies about the past eight years. He appeared to assume that he, his sect and his devotees had been the only ones who witnessed history as it played out. The rest of us don’t matter. 1) King asked if the Bush administration left a mess for President Obama to clean up. Cheney said: “I don't think you can blame the Bush administration for the creation of those circumstances. It's a global financial problem.” And by the way, all through the interview, Cheney deferred to George W. Bush, saying that Bush had made the decisions, some of which Cheney did not agree with. Okay, if that’s the way the GOP wants to play it, that’s the way it will be played. However, it would be interesting to know who actually was making the decisions that Cheney disagreed with because of this we may be sure, the decider was not the overmedicated, underachieving, out-of-the-loop, mumbling, babbling, incoherent George W. Bush 2) King asked: “Is the Obama administration going to be successful in restoring confidence in the markets?” Cheney said he “hoped the Obama administration would be successful". He added, “I noted when the markets were going down, they didn't want to talk about it.” I have no idea what Cheney meant by that. The Dems have always been willing and eager to talk about the markets beginning to plummet—it was during the Bush years. 3) King asked: “If you were in Rahm Emanuel’s place (Chief of Staff) would you tell Obama he’s trying to do too much too fast? Cheney said Obama’s situation is like the first Bush term. People are giving Obama a lot of advice to change his program and the Bush administration rejected the idea to change. “We did not allow the critics to diminish what we were trying to accomplish,” Cheney said. Um so...I guess we are to infer Cheney would not tell Obama he's moving too fast. It was kind of John King not to say that the Bush administration had been perfectly capable of diminishing their accomplishments themselves. 4) King asked why people should listen to Cheney now in view of the fact that unemployment numbers, poverty numbers and the budget deficit were at record levels during the Bush administration. Cheney said, “Eight months after we arrived, we had 9/11. We had 3,000 Americans killed one morning by al Qaeda terrorists here in the United States. We immediately had to go into the wartime mode. We ended up with two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Some of that is still very active. We had major problems with respect to things like Katrina, for example. All of these things required us to spend money that we had not originally planned to spend, or weren't originally part of the budget. Stuff happens. And the administration has to be able to respond to that, and we did.” In addition, Cheney again equated the Iraq war to World War II, which it never has been on a par with. Cheney said, “We always said -- I always said that wartime scenario is cause for an exception in terms of spending. It was appropriate in World War II, certainly, and I think it's appropriate now.” Cheney probably didn’t mean that “now” to mean now. But that’s what he said. King asked Cheney, given that Cheney was an MBA, a Washington insider and a CEO, how come he and the people in the administration couldn’t see the financial meltdown coming? Were they all so caught up in the boom times that they couldn’t see the warning signs? Cheney said, “I think so. I don't recall, you know, sort of a general warning of concern until things started to turn -- turn south on us.” Oh my! He doesn’t recall. About the Iraq war, Cheney said, “we've accomplished nearly everything we set out to do.” John King asked if Cheney would go so far as to say, “Mission Accomplished”? Cheney said he wouldn’t use that term, but only because it would trigger reactions the GOP doesn’t need. So. Yeah, Cheney is still defending invading Iraq, still saying it was the right thing to do and still saying the Bush administration kept Americans safe. He even said that Obama’s decision not to use torture would endanger America. Cheney was very clear that he believed Obama would not keep the USA safe. Here’s an interesting and telling note. Cheney claimed that the Bush administration had kept the US safe in myriad ways. He said there had been many, many, many planned attacks on the United States that Bush and Crew had intercepted, and most of these planned attacks had been kept secret. But he said one serious plan to attack the US was made public. This was, Cheney said, “the potential attack coming out of Heathrow, when they were going to have several American planes with terrorists on board, with liquid explosives, and they were going to blow those planes up over the United States. That attack was intercepted and stopped, partly because of the programs we had put in place.” To recap that incident in the here and now and to take it out of Cheney's fantasy realm: On August 10th, 2006, the British police arrested 25 suspects in a plot supposedly using liquid explosives to blow a plane up over the United States. Eventually, only 8 men (Ahmed Abdullah Ali, Assad Sarwar, Tanvir Hussain, Oliver Savant, Arafat Khan, Waheed Zaman, Umar Islam, Mohammed Gulzar) were charged in connection with the plot. The trial began in England in April 2008. On September 8th 2008, after more than 50 hours of deliberations, the jury did not find any of the defendants guilty of conspiring to target aircraft. Why should we listen to Dick Cheney? There is absolutely no rational reason under the sun.

Two Incontrovertible Facts

1) Fact No. 1 No matter how much the Repubs bloviate and rant about the current Stimulus Package, they cannot erase the fact that the last eight years of Repub Rule has landed us in the worst downward spiral since the Great Depression. No matter how much the Repubs fume and fuss about spending, they cannot erase the fact that the spending of the Bush administration on an unnecessary war in Iraq set the stage for the mess the Obama administration has to clean up. Any over-the-top rhetoric from the Repubs about our children and grandchildren having to pay for measures taken by the Dems is exceedingly hard to stomach, since it’s the Repubs who have bankrupted the United States and ruined its reputation abroad. 2) Fact No. 2 The hideously corrupt rightwing organization called Blackwater, USA is composed of a bunch of mercenary thugs that was used by the Bush administration’s Defense Department to expand the number of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Blackwater, USA is headed by zealous religious fanatics who have illegally killed and marauded to the extent that they have been outlawed in Iraq. As of yesterday, Blackwater renamed its conglomerate of two dozen businesses “Xe” (pronounced Ex-Zee) in an attempt to shed its odious image. But it does not matter what the Blackwater groups call themselves. They will always be a zealous religious rightwing bunch of murderous, looting, pillaging fanatics.

Mr. Ratfucker Has Two Peeves

Mr. Ratfucker cannot understand Ratbang Diary’s policy of not responding to readers’ comments. In fact, Mr. Ratfucker believes responding is a blogger’s duty. And in that regard, he feels he must respond to a reader’s recent self-absorbed, egocentric diatribe. The reader took exception to Ratbang’s claim that Dick Cheney was in a wheelchair at the inauguration not because he had wrenched his back but because he “is a sick, enfeebled, old man...a sick, mean, nasty, vitriolic, embittered old man." Ms Reader said, “I use wheels--is it because I am a sick, mean, nasty, vitriolic, embittered young woman? Is this really what you think of wheelchair users, that we're evil? If you take out prejudice, what's wrong with using a wheelchair? Cheney is these things anyway. Let's not harm people with disabilities by perpetuating highly negative stereotypes. What if someone did the same with race?” Mr. Ratfucker feels it would be a grave injustice to take Ms Reader’s silly, illogical, self-aggrandizing and narrow position and apply it to anything. He believes it would be particularly specious to say that if any person thinks Justice Clarence Thomas is an ignorant, bigoted and perverse black man, it would follow that the person believes all blacks are ignorant, bigoted and perverse. That is a perfect example of a false, unsound, and misleading argument, just as Ms Reader’s assumptions are false, unsound and misleading. Trust me, Ms Reader; if the Ratbang Diary had wanted to say all wheelchair users are evil, Ratbang Diary would have said exactly that. But that was not said and it was not implied. What was said is that one man, Dick Cheney, is in a wheelchair because he is old, sick, enfeebled and bitter, among other things. He was not characterized as “evil”. Ms Reader concluded that all wheelchair users are evil. Mr. Ratfucker believes the disabled should be given every consideration and assistance society can offer. But allowing the disabled to spew nonsense and twisted logic just because they are disabled cannot be supported. As to Mr. Ratfucker’s second peeve: He finds the use of kindergarteners and pre-adolescent children to hawk everything from pharmaceuticals to hospitals and life insurance, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera on television is nauseating and manipulative and he would like to see it outlawed. A recent stomach-turning ad had a little girl simpering, “When my daddy had his heart attack....” Mr. Ratfucker would like to know what these children offer to the viewer that a cogent adult giving real information could not do, and to better advantage? Before a benighted, nauseating and manipulative mother posts a comment Mr. Ratfucker would like to state he does not believe all children and mothers are benighted, nauseating and manipulative. Although he will admit there is a better case for this assumption than that all wheelchair users are evil.

The Day We Waited Eight Years For

As Maureen Dowd noted this morning in her New York Times Op/ed piece, it was a Greek chorus moment yesterday when four million eyes watched a machine of the gods lift George W. Bush out of our lives and carry him off to oblivion. “Everyone, it seemed,” Dowd said, “was waving goodbye, with one or two hands, a wave that moved westward down the Mall toward the Lincoln Memorial, and keeping their eyes fixed unwaveringly on that green bird...they wanted to make absolutely, positively certain that W. was gone.” Gone! Oh happy happy day!! In recapping Obama’s oath of office and inauguration speech, however, Dowd gave the former president too much credit when she said, “With W. looking on, and probably gradually realizing with irritation who Mr. Obama’s target was ...the newly minted president let him have it.” I doubt that GWB ever realized he was Obama’s target when Obama said, "As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals...those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake...false promises...and childish things." As a matter of fact, I doubt GWB understood Obama’s speech at all, since it was eloquent and composed of words of three or more syllables. And can we get one thing straight? Dick Cheney was not in a wheelchair because he had strained his back lifting heavy boxes the day before. Cheney hires people to do his heavy lifting--both the metaphorical kind and the real kind. Dick Cheney was in a wheelchair because that is the way he has to get around. Cheney was in a wheelchair because he is a sick, enfeebled, old man...a sick, mean, nasty, vitriolic, embittered old man. And his wheelchair was pushed to the sidelines with the greatest speed so that he didn’t have a chance to thumb his nose or flip the bird to his successor Joe Biden and the new Commander-in-Chief. That great day—1-20-09, Bush’s Last Day—has come and gone and the parties are over. And a new day of hope for the future has come. Now, as Mahatma Gandhi once said, it is up to us to be the change we want to see in the world.

GWB FINALLY SAYS GOODBYE!

Of all the endless farewell tours by performers that we have witnessed over the years, President George W. Bush took the longest time, or at least it seemed the longest time, to get gone. GWB’s final 15 minutes in the spotlight last night was eloquent and well written by his speechwriters and well rehearsed and delivered by the President. But it was almost entirely self-congratulatory delusional bullshit. “Above all,” the Prez said, “I thank the American people for the trust you have given me.” The cowed press may have given GWB leeway and latitude but the one thing the majority of Americans never gave the president was trust. “Tonight, I am filled with gratitude to Vice President Cheney and members of the administration,” he said. Certainly, that gratitude was well placed. Without Dick Cheney as the shadow president and the Bush administration to fill in for the monumentally mentally out-to-lunch and physically absent president, the United States would have had no commander-in-chief. “Afghanistan has gone from a nation where the Taliban harbored Al Qaeda and stoned women in the streets to a young democracy that is fighting terror and encouraging girls to go to school,” Bush said. He added, “Iraq has gone from a brutal dictatorship and a sworn enemy of America to an Arab democracy at the heart of the Middle East and a friend of the United States.” Total wishful thinking. The US failed in Afghanistan and after George W. Bush followed the lead of his war-mongering minders and invaded Iraq for no good reason, our military, six years later, has failed in Iraq. “For eight years, we have also strived to expand opportunity and hope here at home,” Bush said. “Across our country, students are rising to meet higher standards in public schools. A new Medicare prescription drug benefit is bringing peace of mind to seniors and the disabled.” After eight years of George W. Bush in the White House, hope was nearly extinguished here at home. Public schools are faltering. Many schools have no books for students to buy rent or read. And senior citizens and the disabled are having to choose between buying necessary drugs and buying food. Amazingly, last night the president had the balls to say, “Funding for our veterans has nearly doubled.” Bush actually vetoed a bill to give veterans aid. He also had the balls to say, “America's air, water and lands are measurably cleaner.” The exact opposite is true because GWB and his born-again, troglodyte caveman philosophy doesn’t believe in global warming. “And,” Bush said, “the federal bench includes wise new members, like Justice Sam Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.” It is true, they are new members, but they are far from wise as far as delivering true justice to all Americans is concerned. They are handpicked, conservative, elitist Republican jurists who value religious zealots and those who have money over the poor and minorities. “These are very tough times for hardworking families, but the toll would be far worse if we had not acted,” the president said. Acted how? Acted when? Dear George, you caused the current financial crisis this country is going through. You never once acted to avoid any of the problems we are currently undergoing. “I have always acted with the best interests of our country in mind. I have followed my conscience and done what I thought was right. You may not agree with some tough decisions I have made, but I hope you can agree that I was willing to make the tough decisions,” Bush said. No, George, whenever you acted, it was from your center of delusion and madness. Your actions were always to aid a narcissistic self-absorbed fantasy. But in the main, you did not make tough decisions. All decisions were made for you and you rubber-stamped them if it seemed they would in some way ennoble your self-aggrandizing image. Finally, last night the President said, “With the courage of our people and confidence in our ideals, this great nation will never tire, never falter, and never fail.” Actually, it is only because George W. Bush and the Bush administration are now leaving the political arena that this great nation has a prayer of not failing. Had they stayed in office longer, the United States of America would have crumpled under the weight of their dubious leadership and crimes and misdemeanors, and the USA would have become just a failed experiment called democracy.

QUOTE OF THE DAY!

I don’t see how I can get back home in Texas and look in the mirror and be proud of what I see, if I allowed the loud voices, the loud critics to prevent me from doing what I thought was necessary to protect this country—George W. Bush Even the New York Times opted for the above as its quote of the day. It’s true, George, you couldn’t go home to Texas, look in the mirror and be proud of what you see if you had listened to anyone ever during the last eight years. In fact, it would be impossible for any sane person to be proud of anything the entire Bush administration has done during the last eight years. Which begs the question, is Condoleezza Rice as crazy as George Bush? Yesterday, Rice—who is the worst and most sycophantic Secretary of State ever to have had that cabinet post in the history of the United States—said during an exit interview with the Washington Post that she defended every decision she made as George Bush’s SOS and that if Iraq eventually emerges as a democratic, multiethnic state that has friendly ties with the United States, ‘that will be more important than what anybody thought in 2002 or 2003.’” IF Iraq emerges as a multiethnic state? And if this big IF occurs, we’re looking at what year, and after what measures have been taken by whom to mend the catastrophe the Bush administration visited on the world by invading Iraq? WaPo further reported that Rice slapped the table for emphasis and claimed, “What is more important than current controversies is how the decisions will look 25 or 30 years from now, if you get very focused on whether someone thinks your policies are popular, you won't do the right thing.” Bush and Rice didn’t give a damn about whether they and their policies were popular or not and they still did absolutely the wrong thing at every juncture. Rice added: "That's not to say that it didn't come at great cost. I myself will be haunted by the lives that were lost. I will always think about the people I visited at Walter Reed or at Bethesda and wonder what their lives are like. I also know that nothing of value is won without sacrifice." So Rice feels that all of the Bush administration’s wrongheaded, stupid, self-serving, grandiose, despotic and arrogant decisions were valuable and worth the “great cost” and “sacrifice” made by the entire world. But she will be haunted. Well I would certainly hope so. Of one thing GWB and Condi may be sure, their monumentally egomanical exit interviews will be quoted in history books for the foreseeable future and the world will marvel that they did not go to jail for war crimes and misdemeanors, along with VP Dick Cheney, evil genius Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and the rest of the George W. Bush administration.

More Absurdities from The Plumber and Palin

The 21st century’s Everyman, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher is, like almost every century’s common man icon, a bigot. The man that John McCain singled out as representing “us” is a religious zealot brand of bigot and he has been hired by the right-leaning US website Pajamas TV to go to Israel as a war correspondent and to report back to its conservative base. Wurzelbacher said he was going to let "Average Joes" share their stories. He said he would get the real story of what is happening. "Being a Christian I'm pretty well protected by God I believe,” Mr. Everyman said. He then stepped back from his exalted position at the right of God and said, ”That's not saying he's going to stop a mortar for me, but you gotta take the chance.” The real story, Sam, is that people on both sides of the Gaza strip are getting killed and horribly killed. The real story is that people in Israel and Palestine are just like you who also believe they’ve got the inside track on what God wants. The real story is that your being a Christian isn’t going to protect you from stupidity, bigotry or death any more than a Jew being a Jew or a Muslim being a Muslim will give him special powers and consideration and protect him from being a total and complete asshole. The real story is we know the real story. However, it would be good if God delivered the world from zealous Christians getting in the way in Israel and gumming up the works even more than the Jews and Muslims have done. Particularly zealous Christians like Sam Wurzelbacher who simply want to live in fame one minute longer while calling it “doing good”. And then we have Sarah Palin still out seeking celebrity and notoriety in the political spotlight. Now she’s making the rounds blaming everyone from Katie Couric to Caroline Kennedy for the fact that she was an ignorant embarrassment to the Republican Party during her unfortunate moment as a Vice President candidate. Palin said Katie Couric only asked her about what newspapers she read in order to make it seem as though she was ignorant. Although she still couldn’t name any papers she read. And Palin said Tina Fey made it sound as though her unmarried teenaged pregnant daughter and boyfriend were unmarried pregnant teenagers. She said the media had unfairly scrutinized her and had not done so with Caroline Kennedy because of her “class”. Well, I have to admit, Caroline Kennedy is classy in a way Palin would give an eye to be. But apparently, that’s not what Palin meant. Perhaps she doesn’t know what “scrutinize” means...because Kennedy has been scrutinized all her life like Sarah Palin can only dream of being scrutinized. That’s scrutinized, Sarah, not sanitized. Is there a chance Sam the Plumber and Sarah Palin could get married so as not to make two families irreparably arrogant, ignorant, socially inept, narrow minded and fanatic?

Notable Frank Rich Lines from Yesterday’s NYT

New York Times Op/Ed columnist Frank Rich said it all yesterday when he described George W. Bush as “smaller than life”. Noting that Americans like their failed presidents to be close to Shakespearean in their tragedy, Rich said, “Here, too, George W. Bush has let us down. Even the banality of evil is too grandiose a concept for 43. He is not a memorable villain so much as a sometimes affable second banana whom Josh Brolin and Will Ferrell can nail without breaking a sweat. He’s the reckless Yalie Tom Buchanan, not Gatsby. He is smaller than life.” Rich cites the White House Website and its effort to inflate Bush’s woeful terms as president with something like adequacy: ”A booklet recounting ‘highlights’ of the administration’s ‘accomplishments and results’ (has) big type, much white space, children’s-book-like trivia boxes titled ‘Did You Know?’ and lots of color photos of the Bushes posing with blacks and troops...this document is the literary correlative to ‘Mission Accomplished.’” Rich goes on to say, “But the brazenness of Bush’s alternative-reality history is itself revelatory. The audacity of its hype helps clear up the mystery of how someone so slight could inflict so much damage. So do his many print and television exit interviews. The man who emerges is a narcissist with no self-awareness whatsoever. It’s that arrogance that allowed him to tune out even the most calamitous of realities, freeing him to compound them without missing a step. The president who famously couldn’t name a single mistake of his presidency at a press conference in 2004 still can’t. The crowning personality tic revealed by Bush’s final propaganda push is his bottomless capacity for self-pity. ‘I was a wartime president, and war is very exhausting,’ he told C-Span.” And to heal himself, Bush goes to military hospitals. Once again, it’s all about George W. Bush. As Rich points out, “incredibly enough, it’s his own healing he is concerned about, not that of the grievously wounded men and women he sent to war on false pretenses. It’s ‘the comforter in chief’ who ‘gets comforted,’ he explained (to Charles Gibson) by ‘the character of the American people.’ The American people are surely relieved to hear it. With this level of self-regard, it’s no wonder that Bush could remain undeterred as he drove the country off a cliff,” Rich said. During the GWB tenure in the White House, we heard many times about the president’s belief in God, about how God guided him, about his faith. But as Frank Rich says, “This presidency was not about Him. Bush failed because in the end it was all about him.”

Frank Rich is Upset at Obama’s Pick of Warren

It’s an honor to be chosen to deliver the invocation at a president’s inauguration. And this morning in his New York Times Op/Ed column, Frank Rich sees in Obama’s choice of The Reverend Rick Warren, a foreshadowing that Obama may have his own inclination to spend earned capital (as in, George W. Bush’s famous declaration that he had earned capital in his campaign and he intended to spend it). Rich is not sanguine about this omen and he is not sanguine about the Rev. Warren. Well, first, Frank, Barack Obama is going to hit some false notes since he is a mortal like the rest of us, so chill out, for God’s sake. It’s early in the game. And it’s true, The Rev. Warren is surely a lightning rod for everyone in the gay community who is looking to be offended. The man has been offensive to gays to a fare-thee-well. But second, I cannot think of a single person in the God-business that I personally would want to be God’s stand-in at Obama’s inauguration. All ordained persons are suspect. Maybe the Dalai Lama. The thing is, all God-biz guys have an agenda. And they are all going to be offensive if you just take the time to look under the hood. Any person who has decided to make a career out of explaining God to the rest of us is a bigot. Rich quotes gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson who said: “I’m all for Rick Warren being at the table but we’re talking about putting someone up front and center at what will be the most-watched inauguration in history, and asking his blessing on the nation. And the God that he’s praying to is not the God that I know.” Okay, now I’m offended. I would like to point out to all God-biz persons that the God we all pray to is One Unchanging Unknowable All-Knowing God. It’s the men and women of the cloth who have differing issues, agendas and talking points. And if Bishop Robinson thinks he knows God, he’s delusional as well as bigoted. But, that said, I also think that anyone standing before the world, and being watched by the world who asks that God bless this nation and the world is doing a good deed. And the moment that Reverend Warren invokes God’s blessing, we all should offer our own prayer and say AMEN!

Shawn Campbell’s Post on Twitter a Winner

Campbell said, “The White House has neither confirmed nor denied the President's plan for joining the Zappos Dodgeball team.” HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! And apparently, the popular online shoe store really has one. The news from Baghdad just gets better and funnier. The New York Times reported this morning: “Calling someone the ‘son of a shoe’ is one of the worst insults in Iraq. But the lowly shoe and the Iraqi who threw both of his at President Bush, with widely admired aim, were embraced around the Arab world on Monday as symbols of rage at a still unpopular war. In Saudi Arabia, a newspaper reported that a man had offered $10 million to buy just one of what has almost certainly become the world’s most famous pair of black dress shoes. A daughter of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, reportedly awarded the shoe thrower, Muntader al-Zaidi, a 29-year-old journalist, a medal of courage. In the Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, people calling for an immediate American withdrawal removed their footwear and placed the shoes and sandals at the end of long poles, waving them high in the air. And in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf, people threw their shoes at a passing American convoy.” Later in the article, the NYT said, “In Syria, Mr. Zaidi’s picture was shown all day on state television, with Syrians calling in to share their admiration for his gesture and his bravery. In central Damascus, a huge banner hung over a street, reading, ‘Oh, heroic journalist, thank you so much for what you have done.' ‘It’s the talk of the city,’ said Ibrahim Mousawi, a Beirut journalist and political analyst affiliated with Hezbollah. ‘Everyone is proud of this man, and they’re saying he did it in our name.’” Well done, George. Finally, in the last days of his term as President of the United States, George W. Bush has unified the Middle East.

Will the Prez Get the Message in Iraq?

President Bush has said he doesn’t read newspapers. So he probably didn’t read Frank Rich’s scathing account in the New York Times yesterday of his eight years in office. But can he fail to get the message sent yesterday by an Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at him? Bush’s trip to Baghdad was called “a valedictory visit” today in the NYT. As in, a fare-thee-well and god-bless excursion to the country he forced an unnecessary war on, a country which will equate his name with “failure” and “war monger” in future history books. But never mind those details, Bush went to Iraq to sanctify the recently-adopted security agreement between the United States and Iraq which includes a commitment to withdraw all American forces by the end of 2011. In his delusional state, Bush may have made his trip believing that finally he would be gifted with the flowers and candy that Dick Cheney predicted would greet the US invaders back in 2003. Instead, a shoe narrowly missed hitting him in the head. Of course the Iraqi journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, who threw his shoes at Bush was wrestled to the ground and beaten until he cried for mercy. But not before shouting in Arabic with the first shoe, “This is a gift from the Iraqis; this is the farewell kiss, you dog!” And, “This is from the widows, the orphans and those who were killed in Iraq!” with the second shoe. Will George W. Bush now get the message? No. Of course not. His insanity shields him from understanding the enormity of his culpability in the failed Iraq war or in America’s downward spiral. So, he made a joke about the shoes incident. He said, “All I can report is it is a size 10.” He then said, as the man’s screaming could be heard outside, “That’s what people do in a free society, draw attention to themselves.” And Bush went on to say that his war strategy known as “the surge” was “one of the greatest successes in the history of the United States military.” In closing, President Bush said about the war, “There is still more work to be done, but with this security agreement, the courage of the Iraqi people, and the Iraqi troops and the American troops and civilian personnel, it is decisively on its way to be won.” Perhaps after January 20th, George W. Bush and Sarah Palin will form a comedy duo to tour Iraq to bring glad tidings and laughter to all the grateful people in Iraq’s free society where they can draw attention to themselves.

Repubs Thumb Their Nose at Auto Makers

Let them eat cake Republican Senators said last night and voted down the auto bailout. And although the little guys in Detroit and the car company suppliers don’t deserve to suffer, it’s difficult to have sympathy for an industry that has shot itself in the foot the way the three big auto companies have done. The Big Three—General Motors, Ford and Chrysler—can’t pay their suppliers again...it happens every year. Which means the suppliers, in effect, are forced to lend the big guys money to get through the crisis. But this time the banks are not willing to lend the suppliers money; hence the day of reckoning has arrived. One sits back and looks at this dilemma and wonders why The Big Three has chosen to pay their execs billions of dollars in salary, freebies and bonuses instead of paying their suppliers. And the answer is, because they wanted the money themselves and saw no reason why they should pay their bills when they could get away with not paying their bills. And that should surprise no one. Since that’s the way people with money operate. The little guy has always had to offer discounts to the rich to get them to pay up. And even so, the little guy inevitably has to wait 90 days or more to get his money. Of course an auto industry collapse would bite everyone in the ass. But still, it’s been a long time coming and it was inevitable. But as an aside, I must say that every time Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stands up in the Senate and says anything, it irritates me. Yesterday, he said, “This is going to be a very, very bad Christmas for a lot of people as a result of what takes place here tonight.” Sentimental nonsense! The war in Iraq has made bad Christmases for the past five years. The Bush administration policies have made bad Christmases for the past eight years. Wall Street excesses and failures have made bad Christmases as long as one can remember. All US Presidents and every leader in the world have made bad Christmases. So don’t whine with that bad Christmas crap from the floor of the United States Senate, Harry, because you know what? Christmas has been officially recognized in America only since 1836 when Alabama made it a holiday. Oklahoma was the last state to recognize Christmas in 1907. And the first people to settle in these United States didn’t like the idea of celebrating Christ’s birth at all because it was “papist”. And another thing, Harry, you know as well as I do that a bailout for the auto industry in some form or another will be figured out by the US government within the next 30 days. That's just the way of things. And another ‘nother thing, it wouldn’t hurt a single Christian to cut back on Christmas buying and just go to church. That’s all I’m saying.

Feds Say JJ,Jr. is Blaggo’s Candidate 5

By me, it fits like a glove. The Feds say Jesse Jackson, Jr. is “ambitious”. There’s an understatement for you. I say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. There is not much that The Reverend JJ, Sr. has not been willing to do to throw himself into the limelight. In 1968, JJ, Sr. appeared on the Today Show wearing the blood-stained shirt he wore the day before when he claimed to have been with Martin Luther King when King was shot. There are those who dispute Jackson’s time line. Whether it’s true or not, his Today Show appearance is typical of JJ, Sr’s lifelong modus operandi. His son, Jesse Jackson, Jr. is a powerhouse in Chicago. But he’s not a strong contender politically in the state of Illinois. Evenso, JJ, Jr. is enough of a big noise in Chicago that when Barack Obama was thinking about running for the Illinois Senate, he went to JJ, Jr. and asked if he had eyes on the seat. Jackson said he did not, and he gave Obama his blessing. The New York Times reports this morning that Jackson changed his mind and now wants to claim Obama’s Senate seat. The NYT quoted Al Kindle, a South Side Chicago political consultant who said: “Jesse has wanted to be Obama’s heir apparent ever since Obama won the Senate seat.” Kindle helped Obama in the 2004 race. He added that since then, JJ, Jr. “has tried to reposition himself to appeal to a broader audience.” The NYT said, “Specifically, federal authorities said, Mr. Jackson is ‘Senate Candidate 5,’ associates of whom, the governor said in a wire-tapped conversation, were willing to raise money for Mr. Blagojevich in exchange for the seat.” Jesse Jackson, Jr. said “I did not initiate or authorize anyone at any time to promise anything to Governor Blagojevich on my behalf. I never sent a message or an emissary to the governor to make an offer, to plead my case or to propose a deal about a U.S. Senate seat, period.” That’s probably true. He wouldn’t have to be that overt. Everyone in Chicago knew JJ, Jr. wanted to replace Obama. It is also true that I am biased against The Reverend Jesse Jackson. I don’t like his methods or his manner and I am very ready to assume the worst about his son. The Blaggo tapes don’t look good for Jackson, Jr. The NYT said, “Of those alluded to, the affidavit’s implications seemed especially troubling for Mr. Jackson, or Senate Candidate Five. According to the document, Mr. Blagojevich told advisers last Thursday that he was giving Mr. Jackson “greater consideration” to replace Mr. Obama because Mr. Jackson would raise money for him, “upfront, maybe.” Yup, I believe it. By my observation, it’s the way the Jacksons do things.

Every Comic in the World Thanks You, Blaggo

Illinois governor Rod R. Blagojevich’s lawyer told reporters that the governor was "very surprised and certainly feels that he did not do anything wrong." Well, there you have it. That’s the main problem. Even after Blaggo was taped by federal agents saying, (re trying to sell Barack Obama’s Illinois senate seat to the highest bidder), “I’ve got this thing and it’s [expletive] golden. And I’m just not giving it up for [expletive] nothing. I’m not going to do it. And I can always use it. I can parachute me there”, no doubt the Gov truly thinks he did nothing wrong. Not unlike George W. Bush who believes his only wrongdoing over the past eight years may possibly be that he was unprepared for the war in Iraq, which he promoted, defended and started. Under state law, the Illinois governor has to name a replacement for Senator Obama who resigned his lllinois senate seat with two years remaining in his term. But as United States attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald said (yeah, the guy who prosecuted Scooter Libby), “the (Blagojevich) conduct would make Lincoln roll over in his grave.” Blaggo’s predecessor, Governor George Ryan was also indicted for corruption. Last month Blaggo said he believed President Bush should commute Ryan’s sentence of 6-1/2 years. “It would be a ‘fine decision’, Blaggo said. And lest we forget, Jack Ryan (no relation to George Ryan) had to quit his run against Obama four years ago because of a sex scandal. “I don’t believe there’s any cloud that hangs over me,” Blagojevich told reporters recently, “I think there’s nothing but sunshine hanging over me.” Right. And it surely is his kind of town, Chicago is. His kind of razzmatazz, and it has, all that jazz.

Shinseki Pick, A Thumb in Rumsfeld’s Eye

Obama’s choice of 38-year-career-Army man General (ret.) Eric K. Shinseki for Secretary of Veterans Affairs is perfect for a couple of reasons. First, the troops love him for telling the truth early on in the Iraq war. Shinseki said the invasion of Iraq would take several hundred thousand soldiers. Which estimate secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and deputy secretary of defense Paul D. Wolfowitz pooh-poohed. But as the Iraq war descended into a no-win debacle, Shinseki was proved absolutely right. And, second, just as importantly, Shinseki was wounded in Viet Nam and knows the problems faced by returning vets and particularly wounded returning vets. As if Shinseki rising from the ashes of the Bush/Rumsfeld/Cheney failure in Iraq were not enough of a lest-we-forget moment, we have this morning’s headline in the New York Times to remind us of the horrible decision by Bush and Co. to use mercenaries in Iraq: “Plea by Blackwater Guard Helps Indict Others”. The largest “security contractor” in Iraq (read, mercenary thugs), Blackwater, which was started by South Carolina far-right religious zealot, Erik Prince in 1997, and which contracted out as many soldiers-for-hire in Iraq as the volunteer army had in Iraq, has long been the subject of horror stories about its misuse of power. The worst of which was in 2007 and implicated six Blackwater guards. This morning, the NYT says: “In pleading guilty to manslaughter, the sixth security guard, Jeremy P. Ridgeway of California, described how he and the other guards used automatic rifles and grenade launchers to fire on cars, houses, a traffic officer and a girls’ school. In addition to those killed, there were at least 20 people wounded. The six guards were employed by Blackwater Worldwide, the largest security contractor in Iraq.” The Blackwater company has not been charged although it is no secret that Erik Prince and his protégé “Focus on the Family” religious zealot James Dobson believe that private Christian militias should rise up and take over the ungodly, unholy US government. However, this Blackwater black eye will no doubt slow down their planned religious war, particularly since Prince and Dobson no longer have a right-wing partisan zealot in the White House.

Op/Ed Writers Write—That’s Their Job

But even Frank Rich just turns the crank, at times. This morning’s New York Times Op/Ed column being one of those times. Back from a two-week vacation, Rich tells us that Obama’s economic team choices may fit David Halberstam’s original meaning of the title of his book, “The Best and Brightest”. Rich says Halberstam was being ironic with his description of the JFK team. They may have been bright but they surely weren’t the best. And they lead us into the Viet Nam war that “would destroy the presidency of Lyndon Johnson and inflict grave national wounds that only now are healing.” Then Rich points to Obama’s choice of Lawrence Summers as his top economic adviser and Timothy Geithner as Treasury Secretary and rips them apart for being bright, but hubristic, highhanded and worst of all, for being the protégés of President Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, who, according to Rich, is responsible for the “toxic mortgage-derivatives on Citigroup’s books” because he was asleep on the job. Rich says: “Washington’s cheerleading for our new New Frontier cabinet superstars has seldom been interrupted by tough questions about Summers’s Harvard career or Geithner’s record at the Fed.” Both of which, Rich claims, were less than wonderful and in Geithner’s case, possibly led to Lehman Brothers’ demise Okay. So? What’s it been, a week since Obama let the world know who his top job choices are? Washington has “seldom” asked tough questions? Is it possible there might still be time? Come on, Frank. I’m aware you had to churn something out for today’s column and I’m aware you probably had to write something negative about a couple of Obama’s choices lest you fall into the cheerleader camp. Still, your tag line gave you away when you wrote, “In the end Obama chose Paul Volcker as chairman of his Economic Recovery Advisory Board. This was a presidential decision not only bright but wise.” Right. Rich actually thinks Geithner and Summers are decent enough choices. And as Rich himself pointed out earlier in his column, “Well, nobody’s perfect. Given that John McCain’s economic team was headlined by Carly Fiorina and Joe the Plumber, the country would be dodging a fiscal bullet even if Obama had picked Suze Orman.” Bottom line: Frank Rich earned his fee for the week and the rest is blah-blah-blah.

Mr. Ratfucker Wants to Have a Quiet Word

It’s been a long time since Mr. Ratfucker has found a need to speak out. So long, in fact, that some Ratbang readers may not even recognize the name. Mr. Ratfucker is happy to elucidate. Way back when the Ratbang Diary was called the Ratfuck Diary, a particularly dim numnut had a particularly irritating wild hair up her nose and called the Ratfuck blogger Mr. Ratfucker. In the instant, Mr. Ratfucker came into being. This morning, Mr. Ratfucker would like to note that he finds it most annoying when some readers comment on ancient Ratbang posts and then take the blogger to task for being behind the times. Mr. Ratfucker wonders if it has never occurred to these benighted readers of old posts to look at the date of the post before making a comment? And while he’s at it, Mr. Ratfucker would like to comment on the doubts of some persons that Hillary Clinton will take the Secretary of State appointment or that in fact she wants it, what nonsense! The name of a considered appointee is never leaked by a President Elect if that person has not said he/she will accept the appointment if named. It would not surprise Mr. Ratfucker to find out Barack Obama had asked Mrs. Clinton to be his SOS the day after he won the candidacy, contingent on the outcome of the vetting of both Mr. and Mrs. Clinton. It would further not surprise Mr. Ratfucker to find out Mrs. Clinton had accepted immediately. Mr. Ratfucker thanks you for your time.

Blah, Blah, Blah

Now that the election is over and the pundits and op/ed writers are rummaging around for things to mull over and write about, their output has largely become tortured ruminations and boring blah-blah-blah. Tom Friedman is a classic example. From his halcyon days of being considered a dynamic force in the future of the middle east--his 2006 trip to Syria and subsequent columns on how to handle Syria, for example—through his spiraling down into ego-centered rants and nonsense, now today he is pontificating about Barack Obama possibly choosing Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State and telling us of his “worries” on that score. “Is Obama considering Mrs. Clinton for this job in order to get her off his back or as a prelude to protecting her back?” Friedman asks. (Among other deadly failings, Friedman glories in his turns-of-phrase and stand-up comic one-liners.) Then he tells us that he, Tom Friedman, knows more than anyone about what a relationship between a Prez and a Secretary of State should be because he covered James Baker when Baker was GHW Bush’s SOS. The world must be aware, Friedman says, that an SOS speaks for the Prez. An SOS and Prez must be totally in each other’s back pocket, their world-view must be identical with nary a disagreement between them...ever. And Friedman, from his high perch as know-all-see-all sage relates his concerns. Journalists and talking heads must not be allowed to see “daylight” between the Prez and SOS or they will jump on the flaw and tear them to shreds. “When it comes to appointing a secretary of state, you do not want a team of rivals.” Why not? one wonders. Who is Friedman to assume that the Baker-Bush model is the optimum form that must be followed? Who is Friedman to assume that two smart people cannot have different ideas and also arrive at a consensus that will indeed change things for the better? When will Tom Friedman realize he's become a has-been hack? Once again, Tom Friedman has fed 750 words into his laptop, emailed them to the NYT and gotten a check. And blah-blah-blah.