ExxonMobil ReHash Theatre presents: Oval Office Space — The Director's Cut
Ebert and Roeper gave it two thumbs up. Entertainment Weekly called it "the laugh-out-loud funniest film about Washington politics since 'All the President's Men.' " Now, with GWBWYPGN?! heading up to Bahhston this weekend for a four-day balls-out pub crawl an editors' conference and posting most likely sparse over the next few days, we present a feeble attempt to tide you over until our return: the special DVD collector's edition of "Oval Office Space," digitally remastered, somewhat recast, and with a few deleted scenes newly added. Sure, we're just rehashing old material, but we're rehashing it in Dolby 5.1 surround sound, bitch! And now, the limited-edition director's cut of "Oval Office Space."
SCENE 1:
INT. WEST WING OFFICE — DAY RICHARD CLARKE is working at an anonymous cubicle deep within the bowels of the West Wing, poring over papers, when his boss, GEORGE W. BUSH, stops by, cup of coffee in hand.
BUSH: Heeeey Clarke. Whaaaat’s happening.
CLARKE: Uh, hi, Mr. President.
BUSH: We need to talk about your WMD reports. Yeeeeah…we’re really trying to punch up our Iraq intelligence. Did you get a copy of that memo?
CLARKE: Uh, yeah, I got it, right here. I’m sorry. I was going over all the intelligence and I just couldn’t find anything indicating that Iraq had any weapons of mass destruction…but I promise I’ll do better next time.
BUSH: Yeeeeah. It’s just that we’re really trying to make it clear that the U.S. was in imminent danger from Saddam Hussein and everything, and he might have had a connection to al-Qaeda...so if you could just start putting that in your WMD reports, that’d be great.
CLARKE: But I don't think that —
BUSH: And I’ll make sure you get another copy of that memo, m’kay? Thanks a bunch.
BUSH walks off as CLARKE, shaking his head, returns to his paperwork. Within seconds, DICK CHENEY arrives.
CHENEY: Richard, we need to talk about your WMD reports.
CLARKE: Yeah. I know. I know. The President just came around and told me, and I promised him I’d…
CHENEY: It’s just that we’re trying to make it clear to everyone there was a "smoking gun" forcing us to invade Iraq and everything instead of focus on al-Qaeda, so if you could "punch it up" a little with those reports, that’d be super. OK?
CHENEY gives CLARKE an overly chummy punch on the shoulder, from which CLARKE recoils.
CHENEY: …And I’ll make sure you get another copy of that memo.
CHENEY walks off. CLARKE sighs heavily, gets up from his desk, and trudges into the situation room where GEORGE TENET and PAUL O'NEILL are looking at computer readings.
TENET: (angrily) Why does it say "Nigerian yellowcake" when there is no Nigerian yellowcake? One of these days I’m going to kick this piece of shit out the window, I mean it…
O'NEILL: You and me both, man. That thing's lucky I'm not armed. (notices CLARKE entering the room) ’Sup, G?
CLARKE: You guys want to go get some coffee at Starbucks or something? I gotta get out of here.
O'NEILL: Yeah, let's go.
CLARKE, TENET and O'NEILL grab their stuff and prepare to leave.
O'NEILL: By the way, what the hell’s up with your WMD reports?
SCENE 2:
INT. STARBUCKS, DUPONT CIRCLE — DAY CLARKE, O'NEILL and TENET sit morosely around a table, sipping disinterestedly at their cups of coffee.
CLARKE: Do you guys ever get the feeling that you’re not making a difference around here? Sometimes I wonder why I even stuck around in this business. I mean, think about it, what if we’re still doing this when we’re 80?
TENET: It would be nice to have that kind of job security.
CLARKE: Bush is gonna have me appear before the 9/11 committee on Saturday. I just know it. And I’m gonna end up doin’ it, because, well, because I’m a pussy. Which is pretty much why I signed on with this administration to begin with.
O'NEILL: Hey, I work for this administration and I don't consider myself a pussy, all right?
TENET: Yes, I am also not a pussy.
CLARKE: (something catches his attention) Look. There he is.
Angle on RAND BEERS, standing in line and laughing with a few of his friends.
TENET: Richard, if you’re so anxious to tell Rand Beers about everything that’s going on in the administration, why don’t you just go over there and talk to him?
CLARKE: You know what, I think I will.
CLARKE gets up and walks over next to BEERS.
CLARKE: Hi. I don’t know if you’ve seen me before, I’m Richard Clarke, one of Bush’s top terrorism advisers. I was wondering if you might want to have lunch sometime. I’ll be over at the Old Ebbitt Grill tomorrow, and if you want to stop by, that’s cool, and if not, that’s cool too.
CLARKE walks away with O'NEILL and TENET.
BEERS: Did he say the Old Ebbitt or Flinger's?
SCENE 3:
EXT. PENNSYLVANIA AVENUE — DAY CLARKE, O'NEILL and TENET are walking back toward the White House when PAUL WOLFOWITZ comes rushing toward them, clearly agitated.
WOLFOWITZ: Did you hear the news? Congress is mounting an investigation! To look into our prewar intelligence handling! You know what that means, right? We’re all screwed!
O'NEILL: Jesus, Wolfowitz, calm down, you're gonna give yourself a heart attack.
WOLFOWITZ: They’re gonna find out about how we trumped up all that information about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction! Somebody’s gonna lose their job!
The foursome re-enter the White House and find themselves back in the Situation Room.
WOLFOWITZ: Oh, man, I remember back in the first Gulf War we were talking about removing Saddam Hussein from power, but Bush 41 said we’d only end up having to occupy the entire country if we did that, so we held back instead. Now that was a great idea.
O'NEILL: You really think so?
WOLFOWITZ: Of course I do! At least it didn’t cost us two hundred billion dollars!
CONDOLEEZZA RICE: (walking by) Sounds like someone has a case of the Mondays! (walks off)
WOLFOWITZ: (wistfully) You know, I had a great idea once. It was called a "Jump to Conclusions" mat. You started out at 9/11, and then you could jump…to conclusions. Get it? You could end up at "Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons," or "Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11," or…
O'NEILL: Paul, that’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.
TENET: Yes. Yes, it is horrible, this idea.
CLARKE: You know, one of my old guidance counselors used to ask us, "If you had a billion dollars, what would you do?" Kind of like to help us figure out what our perfect job would be.
WOLFOWITZ: If I had a billion dollars? First of all, I would invest half of it in a new space-based missile shield. Then I would take the rest and put part of it into a new joint strike fighter that could be used by both the Navy and the Air Force…
O'NEILL: Paul, that's not even the point of the question. The point is they’re asking you what you would do if…(his attention is distracted by the fax machine) Discretionary spending up 12.5 percent over the last two years? The fuck does that mean?
SCENE 4:
INT. CLARKE’S APARTMENT — NIGHT CLARKE is sitting glumly on his couch, watching CNN. Suddenly a voice, that of former president BILL CLINTON, booms through the wall.
CLINTON (offscreen): Hey, check it out, Clarke, man, Juliet Huddy's on "Fox and Friends" and she's got her high-beams on, man!
CLARKE: (rolls his eyes) Bill, I already told you, if you want to talk, just come over!
CLINTON (offscreen): Oh! Sorry, man!
Within seconds, CLARKE’s front door opens and in walks CLINTON, who takes a seat on the couch next to CLARKE.
CLINTON: What’s wrong, Clarke, man?
CLARKE: Bill, when you were on Capitol Hill, trying to drum up support for a bill or something like that, and you weren't making a lot of progress, did anyone ever tell you it looked like you had a case of the Mondays?
CLINTON: A case of the Mondays? Hell no, man. Hell no. Matter of fact, I think I’d kick somebody’s ass for saying something like that, man.
CLARKE: Now let me ask you this — what would you do if you had a billion dollars?
CLINTON: A billion dollars? Tell you what I’d do, man — two interns at the same time.
CLARKE: That’s it? Two interns at the same time?
CLINTON: Yeah. Man, I’d hire Pamela Anderson for one of them and Carmen Electra for the other. Always wanted to do that, man. And I figure if I had a billion dollars I could hook that up, ’cause chicks dig a dude with money.
CLARKE: Well, not all chicks, Bill.
CLINTON: Well, the kinda chicks that’d double up on a dude like me do.
CLARKE: Good point.
CLINTON: What about you, man?
CLARKE: Besides two interns at the same time? I would do nothing.
CLINTON: Nothing?
CLARKE: Yeah. I’d just sit on my ass all day and do nothing.
CLINTON: Well, hell, man, you don’t need a billion dollars to do that. Look at Jeb Bush, his state’s broke, he don’t do shit.
SCENE 5:
INT. CONFERENCE ROOM — DAY Senators JOHN McCAIN and CHUCK HAGEL are sitting on one side of a long conference table. A visibly agitated PAUL WOLFOWITZ sits across from them.
HAGEL: So, uh...what is it you do here again?
WOLFOWITZ: Look, I already told you! I take intelligence briefings and turn them into plans for military operations!
HAGEL: So you're out there collecting data in the field?
WOLFOWITZ: Well, no, we have special agents that do that...
McCAIN: But when the military operations begin, you're out there directing the troops.
WOLFOWITZ: Well, no, I've actually never served in the military...look, I take the intelligence from the agents and present it to the president so that he can get a goddamn war started!...I'm a people person! Why is that so hard to understand!...
HAGEL: Uh, thank you, Mr. Wollo...uh, Wolfer...uh, that'll be all.
Quite shaken, WOLFOWITZ leaves, and PAUL O'NEILL enters to take his place.
HAGEL: Paul...Paul...Paul O'Neill?
O'NEILL: (dreading what's coming) Yes.
McCAIN: Like Paul O'Neill the right fielder for the Yankees?
O'NEILL: (sighs) Yup, that's me.
HAGEL: So what do you think of him, having the same name and all?
O'NEILL: Uh...he's pretty cool, I guess...
McCAIN: You're goddamn right he is! What do you think was his best season?
O'NEILL: Umm...I guess I'd have to say I liked them all...
HAGEL: Me too, that's a riot! I celebrate the man's entire career! For me it just doesn't get any better than the 2000 Series!
McCAIN: But it must be twice as hard for you, having the same name and all.
O'NEILL: Yeah, uh, you can just call me "P.O." if you want...
HAGEL and McCAIN just stare blankly at O'NEILL, bewildered.
SCENE 6:
INT. OLD EBBITT GRILL — DAY CLARKE waits, looking surprisingly serene, at a table where he sits stirring a cup of coffee. Eventually RAND BEERS walks in, looking a little unsure of himself. He takes a seat across from CLARKE.
CLARKE: Hi, Rand, glad you could make it. What’s that on your jacket?
BEERS: (pointing to his John Kerry button) This? Oh…this is one of my pieces of flair. (looks around surreptitiously, hastily removes button from jacket) I don’t really like to talk about my flair though. So, uh, what do you do, Richard?
CLARKE: I work in the Bush administration.
BEERS: Yeah, I know that. What do you do there?
CLARKE: I sit in a cubicle and "punch up" WMD intelligence from Iraq.
BEERS: Uh, OK, yeah…uh, so what's that like?
CLARKE: Well, see, we wanted to invade Iraq way back in 2001, right after 9/11, so basically people bring me this bogus information about Iraq’s weapons capabilities or their connection to al-Qaeda so I can hype it up and make people think Iraq was really dangerous…only I don’t really like my job, so, uh, I just don’t think I’m gonna go anymore.
BEERS: You’re just not going to go? Won’t you be forced to resign?
CLARKE: Maybe, but I don’t really want to work anymore, so I’m just not going to go.
BEERS: What will you do for money? How will you make any political contributions?
CLARKE: I never really liked donating to political campaigns, so I just think I’m not going to do that anymore, either.
BEERS: Wow.
CLARKE: Hey, I was thinking I’d just hang out at my apartment tonight and listen to some National Public Radio. Do you like National Public Radio?
BEERS: I love National Public Radio…
CLARKE: And I can tell you about all the stuff that’s going down behind closed doors in the administration. What do you think?
BEERS: Yeah. Definitely. Yeah.
SCENE 7:
INT. CONFERENCE ROOM — DAY Still in the same conference room with McCAIN and HAGEL at the table. CLARKE enters and sits across from them.
HAGEL: Richard Clarke, is it?
CLARKE: That’s right.
HAGEL: Well, Richard, maybe you could start off by telling us a little bit about what you do each day.
CLARKE: Well, usually I start off by coming in about 15 minutes late, and I come in through the East Wing — so President Bush can’t see me — and after that I just sorta space out for an hour.
McCAIN: Wha wha wha…space out?
CLARKE: Yeah, I just stare at all that Iraqi intel I’m supposed to be analyzing, but it looks like I’m working. I usually do it about an hour after lunch, too. All in all I’d say in a given day I only do about 15 minutes of real, actual intel work.
McCAIN: Really?
CLARKE: Yeah, you know why? Because I have four guys above me "vetting" my intelligence and making the threat sound as imminent as they possibly can.
McCAIN: Four guys?
CLARKE: Four guys, John! And that’s not gonna motivate me to write accurate reports. All that’s gonna do is make me use intel that’s just plausible enough for me to not get fired. I mean, it’s not that I’m lazy. It’s just that I don’t care.
HAGEL: Lemme ask you this, Richard — and this is just a hypothetical! — what if we put you in a more prominent position where we’d have four or five guys under you?
CLARKE: Yeah, I don’t know, I’ll think about it. (gets up to leave) Listen, I’ve gotta go, but it’s been a lot of fun talking to you guys. I hope your investigations go well.
HAGEL: Trust me, the pleasure was all on this side of the table.
CLARKE leaves the room. McCAIN and HAGEL look at each other.
SCENE 8:
INT. WEST WING — DAY Former ambassador JACK WILSON is seated nervously at his desk, listening to the radio. GEORGE W. BUSH strolls up in a Navy flight suit and stands by his desk, cup of coffee once again in hand.
BUSH: Heeeey Wilson. Whaaaat’s happening. Listen, we’re kind of behind the 8-ball with this weapons-of-mass-destruction thing, so I’m gonna need you to go ahead and make another trip to Nigeria, see if you can’t uncover some other information that would indicate they were selling uranium to Saddam Hussein, m’kay?
WILSON: But…but I…
BUSH: That’d be greaaaat. Yeah. And, ahhhh, I’m also gonna have someone in Cheney's office leak to Robert Novak that your wife is an undercover CIA officer. We’re kind of playing catch-up and everything, so I just gotta make sure the staff knows who’s in charge. M’kay?
WILSON: But I…I believe you have my stapler…
BUSH: Super. Thaaaanks a bunch, Wilson.
BUSH strolls off, leaving WILSON all alone.
WILSON: OK, but I’m going to set the building on fire…
SCENE 9:
INT. CLARKE’S APARTMENT — NIGHT CLARKE sits on his couch drinking a beer. O'NEILL and TENET are there also, looking very glum.
CLARKE: …So that’s the impression I got. Someone’s definitely going to take the fall for this.
TENET: This sucks! What are we gonna do?
CLARKE: I don’t know, George. But we’ve got to come up with a plan to get us out of Iraq. We weren’t meant to spend the rest of our lives sitting in tiny cubicles, getting reports that a tiny vial of botox was found in a truck trailer and trying to make it sound like we uncovered a massive chemical-weapons operation.
O'NEILL: I have an idea.
CLARKE: What is it?
O'NEILL: We need to find a way to make the Iraq operation too expensive to maintain without help from the international community, so we try to ram through another round of tax cuts. The Republicans on the Hill are almost sure to go for it, and while they’re busy slashing taxes for the richest one percent, revenue will decrease and we just won’t have enough money to keep things going...
CLARKE: …And the Republicans won’t have a clue.
O'NEILL: (smiling) Thumbs up their asses, my friend, thumbs up their asses.
TENET: That plan sounds awfully familiar.
O'NEILL: Yeah, they did it during the Reagan administration.
CLARKE: OK. You put in the call to the Congressional leadership, I’ve got another meeting with the senators tomorrow.
O'NEILL and TENET get up to leave. On his way out the door, TENET is singing a gangsta-rap song to himself.
TENET: Back up in your ass with the res-ur-rec-tion…
SCENE 10:
INT. CONFERENCE ROOM — DAY Back in the conference room, GEORGE W. BUSH and DICK CHENEY are sitting across from JOHN McCAIN and CHUCK HAGEL.
HAGEL: Well, first of all, you’re gonna have to get rid of that O'Neill guy. He's a liability at this point.
McCAIN: He’s history.
CHENEY: Sounds good to me!
McCAIN: And then there’s that guy, what’s his name, Wolla…Wolfo…Wolfor one thing he’s not gonna be working here much longer, I can tell you that…(McCAIN and HAGEL laugh)
BUSH: They’ll be gone by the end of the day.
HAGEL: Oh, no, we don’t do it like that. We generally wait until the sitting president’s term is up, and get them to submit their resignations when a lot of people are resigning anyway.
McCAIN: Problem solved from your end.
HAGEL: And that brings us to Richard Clarke. We had a chance to meet this guy, and boy, he’s just a straight shooter with "cabinet-level appointment" written all over him.
BUSH: Ooooh…yeah. I’m gonna have to go ahead and disagree with you on that one…yeah. He’s been real flaky lately, and…well, we’ve been having major problems with his WMD reports.
McCAIN looks like he’s about to get angry. HAGEL stops him.
HAGEL: I’ll handle this. Mr. President, we don’t think the problem is with Mr. Clarke. We think the problem (taps the table) is with you.
McCAIN: There it is. There it is.
BUSH: Ooooh, yeah, I don’t know about that…
McCAIN: Let me ask you this: How much time each day do you think you guys spend on these WMD reports?
Long, uncomfortable pause.
BUSH: Yeahhhh…
SCENE 11:
INT. CLARKE’S CUBICLE — DAY CLARKE and TENET are waiting anxiously for O'NEILL. O'NEILL finally arrives with a little grin on his face.
CLARKE: Did you put in the call to Frist and McConnell?
O'NEILL: Sure did. The plan is in motion.
TENET: Now we just sit back and wait…
SEAN HANNITY, the intern, stops by.
HANNITY: Did y’all hear what happened to Wolfowitz?
CLARKE: No, what happened?
HANNITY: Dude was going to Baghdad to survey the reconstruction efforts. He’s staying at the al-Rasheed Hotel downtown, right, when all the sudden some al-Qaeda insurgents mount a mortar attack on the building. Took the front of the place clean off.
CLARKE: Is Wolfowitz OK?
HANNITY: Oh, yeah. Broke both his legs…a few ribs...an arm…a wrist…lost a few teeth…but check this out. Dude’s writing a book about the whole thing. Getting an advance from Crown worth seven figures. He’s having a party at his place this weekend to celebrate. Think I might take that blond chick Ann Coulter from Human Events. If things go right I might be showing her my "O-face." You know — Ohh! Ohh! Ohh! Get it? Ohh! Check you guys later.
SCENE 12:
EXT. WOLFOWITZ’S BACKYARD — DAY It’s a beautiful fall afternoon and WOLFOWITZ is holding his celebratory barbecue. As CLARKE, BEERS, O'NEILL and TENET enter, they are met by WOLFOWITZ himself, in a full-body cast, rolling up in a motorized wheelchair.
WOLFOWITZ: Richard! Paul! George! Glad you could make it!
CLARKE: Uh, hi, Paul. Gee…you look…uh, great.
WOLFOWITZ: Thanks! Hey, you know, Richard, I know you’ve been kind of down lately, but I’ve been meaning to tell you, you’ve just got to keep your chin up. If you hang in there long enough, good things can happen in this world. I mean, just look at me!
CLARKE: Yeah…uh, that’s great, Paul.
BEERS, O'NEILL and TENET walk off to mingle with the other partygoers. SEAN HANNITY sidles up to CLARKE.
HANNITY: You've been hanging out with Rand Beers lately?
CLARKE: Yeah, I guess so.
HANNITY: Way to go, Clarke! Oooh! Oooh! Guy’s been around the block more than a few times in Washington, if you know what I mean.
CLARKE: No, Sean, what do you mean?
HANNITY: Well, he's worked for a few other administrations.
CLARKE: Like whose?
HANNITY: Well, hell, Reagan's...and Bush's...
CLARKE's face goes white.
SCENE 13:
INT. CLARKE'S CAR — DAY CLARKE drives with BEERS in the passenger's seat, looking distressed about something.
BEERS: I still don't know if this whole plan is a good idea. Trying to ram through a tax cut just so that Bush will be forced to cut back spending and bring in other countries for the Iraq occupation? It doesn't seem right to me.
CLARKE: Oh, yeah? Well, at least I didn't work for REAGAN!
BEERS: Who told you that?
CLARKE: Ohhhh!
BEERS: That is none of your business who I work for, mister! Let me out of the car!
CLARKE stops the car and BEERS opens the door.
BEERS: How dare you judge me. You're just some petty...intelligence...falsifying man. And I'm leaving.
CLARKE: Say hello to REAGAN for me!
BEERS slams the car door and CLARKE drives away. He stops at a convenience store on the way home and glances at the front page of the Washington Post; the main headline reads, "NATIONAL DEBT ABOVE $7 TRILLION; BUDGET DEFICIT FOR 2005 ESTIMATED AT $521 BILLION."
CLARKE: Oh, no.
SCENE 14:
INT. CLARKE’S APARTMENT — NIGHT Back at the apartment, CLARKE, O'NEILL and TENET look pretty depressed indeed.
TENET: Shit…mother…piss…ass…bitch…
CLARKE: What were we thinking? How did the deficit rise so fast?
O'NEILL: It was probably my fault. You know, the prescription-drug bill alone cost $130 billion more than they said it would. I probably just misplaced a decimal somewhere...dammit, I'm always screwing up mundane details like this!...
CLARKE: Well, this is not some mundane detail, Paul!
O'NEILL: You know what this means, don’t you? When this story breaks, we’re not gonna be talking about it on some Sunday-morning talk show. We’re going to be answering for it at a pound-me-in-the-ass Senate hearing, that’s what.
TENET: I don’t want to go to any hearing!
O'NEILL: Look, I’m gonna get out of here, try and figure out what I’m going to do next.
TENET and O'NEILL get up to leave.
TENET: Richard, this was a bad decision. And you are a very bad person.
TENET and O'NEILL head out the door.
CLARKE: (calling out) Hey, uh…Bill, you wanna come over?
CLINTON: Hell naw, man! I don’t need you fuckin’ up my life too!
CLARKE sighs heavily and begins writing his letter of resignation.
SCENE 15:
EXT. KERRY CAMPAIGN HEADQUARTERS — NIGHT CLARKE pulls up as RAND BEERS is walking out to his car. CLARKE gets out.
CLARKE: Look, I'm going to be going away for a while, and...I just wanted to say I'm sorry for the way I acted the other day. I shouldn't have acted that way when I found out you worked for all those Republicans.
BEERS: Dick, nobody likes the Republicans. That's why I left the Bush administration in disgust and started working for the Kerry campaign. But Republicans are just a fact of life that we have to deal with, whether we want to or not.
CLARKE: I understand that now. Thanks for forgiving me.
CLARKE and BEERS shake hands as ZELL MILLER walks up to his car.
ZELL MILLER: Get a room, you two! (flips them off) Nehhhh!
BEERS: I hate that guy.
SCENE 16:
EXT. WHITE HOUSE — DAY CLARKE pulls up to the White House, resignation letter in hand, to see all manner of objects being taken out of it — furniture, photographs, personal effects. Thousands of people are gathered on the sidewalk along Pennsylvania Avenue to watch as BUSH and CHENEY are marched out of the White House, weeping. CLARKE walks up next to SEAN HANNITY.
CLARKE: What happened here?
HANNITY: Bush and Cheney lost the election, man. People were already mad about how they were screwing up the war in Iraq and how they’d messed with all that intelligence, and then it turned out somebody in Cheney's office leaked the name of an undercover CIA agent to get back at her husband. When that story broke, it was the last straw…people tossed Bush out and now some dude named Kerry is the president.
CLARKE looks at HANNITY, stunned. Then he turns his attention back to the unfolding drama in front of the White House, and smiles.
SCENE 17:
EXT. CONSTRUCTION SITE — DAY CLARKE and BILL CLINTON are hard at work putting up a Habitat for Humanity house in northeast D.C. Presently PAUL O'NEILL and GEORGE TENET pull up in a Town Car. CLARKE greets them with a smile.
CLARKE: Paul! George! What are you guys doing here?
TENET: We heard you were putting up houses for the poor, wanted to come by and see how you were doing.
CLARKE: Hey, I heard the two of you wrote tell-all books and now you’re pulling in big money on the lecture circuit. Congratulations.
O'NEILL: You know, we could hook you up with a lecture deal of your own, if you want.
CLARKE: Thanks, guys, but I’ve already got a book lined up, and besides, I’m pretty happy here, building houses for the less fortunate with Jimmy Carter. But that’s great for you guys. We should have lunch sometime.
TENET: Take it easy, Richard.
CLARKE: Yeah, you too.
TENET and O'NEILL get back in the Town Car and drive off. CLARKE turns to CLINTON.
CLARKE: Nothin’ like a hard day’s work, huh, Willie?
CLINTON: Fuckin’ A, man.
CLARKE casts his gaze across the construction site and takes a big breath of fresh air.
CLARKE: Fucking A.
CLARKE and CLINTON get back to work.
SCENE 18:
EXT. BEACH — DAY Wearing sunglasses and some garish swim trunks, JACK WILSON is stretched out on a beach chair on a pristine stretch of sand in Mexico. A WAITER comes by with a drink for him on a tray.
WILSON: Excuse me, sir? Señor? May I speak to you please? I asked for a mai tai, and they brought me a piña colada, and I asked for no salt on the margarita, but it had grains of salt, big grains of salt on the glass.
WAITER: Lo siento mucho. (under his breath) Gringo estupido.
WILSON: (as WAITER walks off) And I could have this place condemned, I could write a letter…sir? I could call and have a group of special agents execute a covert operation to shut this place down, assassinate the manager…there were big grains of salt on my margarita, BIG grains of salt!…
THE END
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:20 AM
Hey, we'll all be laughing about this later! I will, anyway.
George W. Bush wants you to know he's terribly upset about those WMDs not showing up in Iraq. Oopsie! Tee-hee, where are they? Under my desk? Whoops, no they're not! I am so embarrassed!...
From the linked story:
Bush put on a slide show, calling it the "White House Election-Year Album" at the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association 60th annual dinner, showing himself and his staff in some decidedly unflattering poses.
There was Bush looking under furniture in a fruitless, frustrating search. "Those weapons of mass destruction have got to be somewhere," he said.
Yeah, ha-ha. George, you are such a card, and by "card" of course we mean "smug, arrogant son of a bitch with no regard for human suffering." Hey, what's a near-complete loss of global credibility if we can't laugh about it later? And hey, don't you think these guys are laughing their asses off about it? Or would, if they were still alive?
Try and imagine what the reaction would have been if, at the RTCA's annual dinner in '99, Bill Clinton had tried to warm up the crowd with some blowjob jokes, or if his "White House Photo Album" had included a shot of an intern "hard at work serving the president" — with her head in Clinton's lap. Think the Republicans would be sharing the chuckles at that one?
So often those of us in the anti-Bush camp get accused of an animus for Bush that goes beyond simple policy disagreement into an alleged visceral dislike for Bush personally. It's stuff like this that makes us want to say, Damn straight. Anybody got a problem with that?
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:17 AM
Thursday, March 25, 2004
O Sloganator! my Sloganator! your fearful trip is done...
Evidently, the Bush/Cheney '04 poster-maker we wrote about a couple weeks ago — which shall hereafter be referred to as "The Sloganator" — is achieving something approaching cult status on the Internet. TBOGG, who also commits the grievous sin of being funnier than me on a regular basis, links today to this touching elegy for the now-defunct sign-maker. (You need the sound on for the full tear-jerking effect.)
O, Sloganator. I did have the time of my life, I really, really did. (Props also to Wonkette for breaking the whole Sloganator story in the first place.)
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 3:23 PM
Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot: Part the 32nd — Rockin' Around the Clarke
You could practically set your watches by the moment Ann Coulter laid into the capitulating pansy Spaniards for daring to elect a president who wasn't best buds with George W. Bush, and Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot dutifully took her apart like we always do. Now here's another thing to set your watch by: the moment at which she rips the skin off of Richard Clarke for daring to suggest that George W. Bush is anything other than a god among men. Yes indeedy, she's given him her customary 1,000 words' worth of character assassination, and once again we're here to tell you she's categorically full of monkey poop. (Well, you already knew she was full of monkey poop, we're just here to tell you why.)
Read between the lines of Ann's column and you'll find that her "reasons" for slagging Clarke as a hack — just like her "reasons" for just about every other opinion she's ever held — are so obtuse, tangential and irrelevant that we wonder if she had any idea what she was writing as she was writing it. From the best we can deduce, Ann thinks Clarke is not to be trusted because (1) Nobody in the media paid any attention to Gary Aldrich's book; (2) He didn't like Condi Rice, even though Condi Rice is clearly one of the greatest human beings ever, everybody thinks so and if you don't you're a doo-doo-head; and (3) He was just a "paper-pusher" anyway so screw him. Yes, obviously these are all brilliant reasons for assuming he is not to be trusted! But we all know whom you make an ass out of when you assume, and Ann doesn't disappoint with "Chair-Warmer On The Hot Seat" — for though she attempts to pass herself off as an expert on everything Clarke, it doesn't take a genius to realize she doesn't know Dick:
Are you sitting down? Another ex-government official who was fired or demoted by Bush has written a book that ... is critical of Bush! Eureka!
But did they write the critical book about Bush because they got fired...or did they get fired because they were being critical of Bush? Which came first, the chickenhawk or the egg on his face?
The latest offering is Richard Clarke's new CBS-Viacom book, "Against All Enemies," which gets only a 35 on "rate a record" because the words don't make sense and you can't dance to it.
Boy, only a paragraph into her column and already Ann isn't making sense. She must be really pissed.
As long as we're investigating everything, how about investigating why some loser no one has ever heard of is getting so much press coverage for yet another "tell-all" book attacking the Bush administration?
And here we go: Ann Coulter, who has turned whining about liberal name-calling into a cottage industry, has already dubbed Richard Clarke "some loser." A loser who has forgotten more about international terrorism than Coulter will ever know, perhaps, but a loser just the same. (Coulter's possible response: "All Muslims are terrorists and they smell bad! What more about terrorism do you need to know?")
When an FBI agent with close, regular contact with President Clinton wrote his book, he was virtually blacklisted from the mainstream media. Upon the release of Gary Aldrich's book "Unlimited Access" in 1996, White House adviser George Stephanopoulos immediately called TV producers demanding that they give Aldrich no airtime. In terms of TV exposure, Aldrich's book might well have been titled "No Access Whatsoever."
"Larry King Live" and NBC's "Dateline" abruptly canceled their scheduled interviews with Aldrich. Aldrich was mentioned on fewer than a dozen TV shows during the entire year of his book's release -- many with headlines like this one on CNN: "Even Conservatives Back Away From Aldrich's Book." That's almost as much TV as Lewinsky mouthpiece William Ginsburg did before breakfast on an average day. (Let's take a moment here to imagine the indignity of being known as "Monica Lewinsky's mouthpiece.")
But a "tell-all" book that attacks the Bush administration gets the author interviewed on CBS' "60 Minutes" (two segments), CNN's "American Morning" and ABC's "Good Morning America" -– with an "analysis" by George Stephanopoulos, no less. In the first few days of its release, Clarke's book was hyped on more than 200 TV shows.
Puh-leeze. A book about presidential blowjobs rates every bit as high on Ann's importance meter as a book about how a presidential administration whistled Dixie while the worst terrorist attack in the nation's history was being planned? The truth finally comes out, doesn't it — to Ann Coulter, and no doubt millions of other right-wingers across this country, Bill Clinton's sexual peccadilloes were of equal, if not greater, consequence to the United States than 9/11.
In contrast to Aldrich's book, which was vindicated with a whoop just a few years later when the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, many of Clarke's allegations were disproved within days of the book's release.
How was Aldrich's book "vindicated"? He never even mentioned Monica Lewinsky in the book, all he had was bogus stories about Clinton allegedly slipping out to the Marriott late at night for romantic trysts with unnamed individuals — and his only source for that turned out to be "rumors" heard by then-right-wing attack dog David Brock. Which means Aldrich may be the only writer in American history to take a slam-dunk topic like Clintonian marital infidelities and still manage to get it wrong. (If you want more on Aldrich, this post at World O'Crap should tell you just about everything you need to know.)
Clarke claims, for example, that in early 2001, when he told President Bush's National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice about al-Qaida, her "facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before." (If only she used botox like Sen. Kerry!)
Speaking of unsubstantiated rumors. What the shit is Coulter doing name-checking Botox, other than to distract people from the fact that she's pulling stuff out of her ass here?
Sean Hannity has been playing a radio interview that Dr. Rice gave to David Newman on WJR in Detroit back in October 2000, in which she discusses al-Qaida in great detail. This was months before chair-warmer Clarke claims her "facial expression" indicated she had never heard of the terrorist organization.
Here's part of Rice's exhaustive expert analysis on the Newman program: "There needs to be better cooperation, because we don't want to wake up one day and find out that Osama bin Laden has been successful on our own territory." Yeah, how'd that work out for you, Condi?
But in deference to our liberal friends, let's leave aside the facts for now. A few months before Clarke was interpreting Dr. Rice's "facial expression," al-Qaida had bombed the USS Cole. Two years before that, al-Qaida bombed U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. In fact, al-Qaida or their allies had been responsible for a half dozen attacks on U.S. interests since Clinton had become president. (Paper-pusher Clarke was doing one heck of a job, wasn't he?) In the year 2000 alone, Lexis-Nexis lists 280 items mentioning al-Qaida.
By the end of 2000, anyone who read the paper had heard of al-Qaida. It is literally insane to imagine that Condoleezza Rice had not. For Pete's sake, even The New York Times knew about al-Qaida.
Rice had been a political science professor at Stanford University, a member of the Center for International Security and Arms Control, and a senior fellow of the Institute for International Studies. She had written three books and numerous articles on foreign policy. She worked for the first Bush administration in a variety of national security positions.
Her turn-ons are conservative men, long walks on the beach, and candlelit dinners. She doesn't like affirmative action or people who are mean to animals. So f$#!in' what?
All this was while Clarke was presiding over six unanswered al-Qaida attacks on American interests and fretting about the looming Y2K emergency. But chair-warmer Clarke claims that on the basis of Rice's "facial expression" he could tell she was not familiar with the term "al-Qaida."
If the attacks went "unanswered," it wasn't Clarke's fault. Here's an excerpt from a National Review interview with Richard Miniter, author of the book Losing Bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror and thus clearly not a wishy-washy liberal by any stretch:
"Counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke had ordered his staff to review existing intelligence in relation to the bombing of the USS Cole. After that review, he and Michael Sheehan, the State Department's counterterrorism coordinator, were convinced it was the work of Osama bin Laden. The Pentagon had on-the-shelf, regularly updated and detailed strike plans for bin Laden's training camps and strongholds in Afghanistan.
"At a meeting with Secretary of Defense William Cohen, Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Attorney General Janet Reno, and other staffers, Clarke was the only one in favor of retaliation against bin Laden. ... Cohen, according to Clarke, did not consider the Cole attack 'sufficient provocation' for a military retaliation. Michael Sheehan was particularly surprised that the Pentagon did not want to act. He told Clarke: 'What's it going to take to get them to hit al Qaeda in Afghanistan? Does al Qaeda have to attack the Pentagon?' "
So basically, Miniter is saying that Clarke warned the Clinton administration about the al-Qaeda threat and they did nothing. Contrast that to what happened the following year, when Clarke warned the Bush administration about the al-Qaeda threat and...they did nothing. Maybe someone else can explain the difference here, because we don't see it. The end result is that even if Miniter — and Coulter — are right about everything, the Bush administration at best didn't do any better a job of combatting al-Qaeda than the Clinton administration did, right up to 9/11. Something tells us, though, that Bush isn't exactly dying to make that a part of his re-election pitch.
Isn't that just like a liberal? The chair-warmer describes Bush as a cowboy and Rumsfeld as his gunslinger -- but the black chick is a dummy. Maybe even as dumb as Clarence Thomas! Perhaps someday liberals could map out the relative intelligence of various black government officials for us.
Oh, now we get it — Clarke's a racist! How could we not have noticed this before! Pay close attention, those of you who have attempted to defend Coulter in the comments threads. She writes off all Muslims as bloodthirsty terrorists who smell bad, yet Richard Clarke is the racist — for daring to suggest that a certain policymaker who just happened to be African-American didn't know what she was talking about! (Hey, Ann, we think you're a dummy, too — does that mean we hate white people?)
Did Clarke have the vaguest notion of Rice's background and education?
Who gives a shit what her background and education was? If Coulter can look at a guy with an undergrad degree from Georgetown, a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford and a law degree from Yale and call him a hillbilly pervert, maybe Clarke isn't necessarily obligated to bow down before Condi Rice just because she taught at Stanford.
Or did he think Dr. Rice was cleaning the Old Executive Office Building at night before the president chose her -- not him -- to be national security adviser? If a Republican ever claimed the "facial expression" on Maxine Waters -- a woman whose face is no stranger to confusion or befuddlement -- left the "impression" that she didn't understand quantum physics, he'd be in prison for committing a hate crime.
We say again: snore. After all the times Coulter has railed against media whores and race-card-players like Waters and Jesse Jackson, does she really expect us to buy it when she drops the race card on Richard Clarke, of all people?
As we know from Dr. Rice's radio interview describing the threat of al-Qaida back in October 2000, she certainly didn't need to be told about al-Qaida by a government time-server.
Richard Clarke: top counterterrorism advisor to Reagan, Clinton, and both Bushes...and, in Coulter's estimation, nothing more than a "government time-server." If you want to discredit the man, Ann, you're gonna have to do better than that.
No doubt Dr. Rice was staring at Clarke in astonishment as he imparted this great insight: Keep an eye on al-Qaida! We've done nothing, but you should do something about it. Tag -- you're it. That look of perplexity Clarke saw was Condi thinking to herself: "Hmmm, did I demote this guy far enough?"
Doubt that very much, Ann, because Rice herself asserted that Clarke "was in every meeting that was held on terrorism" after 9/11. It's the Bush administration that couldn't keep their stories straight on Clarke's level of involvement if you put guns to their heads. If Rice was such a font of knowledge on al-Qaeda, one who didn't need to waste her time with a puny lightweight like Clarke, maybe she can explain why her rebuttals to Clarke's claims have been so mealy-mouthed and dishonest. And if Clarke is such a do-nothing weakling, perhaps Ann can explain why Clarke has the balls to testify before the 9/11 Commission while dear sweet Condi can't be bothered to do the same.
Should Clarke's interpretations of Rice's facial expressions be taken at, well, face value? Sure. But while Ann is trying to distract you with that tennis ball — and inexplicably trying to slag Clarke as a racist in the process — she still doesn't manage to address the fact that, whether Rice thought al-Qaeda was a terrorist group or a lamb dish served with babaganouj, neither she nor anyone in the Bush administration did a whole hell of a lot about it. Doesn't matter, though, because 9/11 was Clinton's fault! The intelligence failures, the inaction on al-Qaeda, the whole shebangabang! This, of course, begs the question: If John Kerry gets elected in the fall, and there is a major terrorist attack on the U.S. in the first 235 days of his presidency, we get to blame that on Bush, right? Ponder that question, kids, while you await the next installment of Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot, same Coulter-time, same Coulter-channel!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 3:19 PM
Clarke vs. Rice: Testimony Cage Match
Who holds greater concern, and takes more responsibility, for the safety and protection of the American people — Richard Clarke or Condoleezza Rice? Who is more determined to get to the bottom of how 9/11 was allowed to happen and make sure it never happens again? To answer this question, let's examine what each of them has said before the 9/11 Commission.
Richard Clarke: Your government failed you, those entrusted with protecting you failed you, and I failed you. We tried hard, but that doesn't matter because we failed. And for that failure, I would ask — once all the facts are out — for your understanding and for your forgiveness.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 1:05 PM
Let's try this again
If you surf over to this page and the little counter to the right reads 25,000, congratulations, you're the twenty-five-thousandth person to have wasted valuable time reading this blog (and John Ashcroft just put your name on his Naughty list...in pen). E-mail us here and let us know who you are so we can send you some kind of prize, and perhaps contribute to your legal defense.
Update: The phone lines are closed and Lisa from Kamikaze Kumquat is our 25,000th visitor. Mazel, mazel. Good things. Good things.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:42 AM
I've already gone on at length about how betrayed I feel by Zell Miller, a man I once admired about as much as anyone I've ever met, so I won't bother rehashing that here. But I will say this: Zell, go join the Republican Party, for Christ's sake. You obviously don't like it here in the Democratic Party, so what the shit are you hanging around for? Just to bitch and moan about it? Look, I don't even care if you become a Republican, just become a Republican already and stop hanging onto the "D" next to your name. As it stands now, you sound like this so-called Georgia "fan" I knew who went to UGA but couldn't stop talking about how great everything was at Florida.
I remember a time years ago when we were living in Tennessee, and I went with a couple friends of mine out into the woods back behind our house. My little sister and a friend of hers, much to our dismay, insisted on tagging along, and my sister (who was like 7 or 8 at the time, she's changed a lot since then, she's a lovely individual and we get along swimmingly) proceeded to do nothing but whine the whole time: It was too cold outside, the snow was getting in her shoes, the thorns on the bushes were sharp, the boys weren't letting her play. So finally I asked her, "Well, why don't you just go back inside, then?!" And she responded — without irony, I thought, but maybe I'm mis-remembering this — "Because then I wouldn't get to complain."
Zell, it's cold out here, and you're obviously not having a good time. Go back inside. The big boys are trying to play.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 2:51 PM
Dude, where's my loop?
This is a pretty good defense of Richard Clarke in Slate today, but this might be an even better one. The Bush administration sure doesn't do a terribly effective job of keeping their top braintrusts and advisors "in the loop," do they?
So far, the Bush administration's rebuttals of Clarke's revelations on "60 Minutes" have made the Bush administration themselves look every bit as bad as Clarke. Your excuse is that he wasn't "in the loop"? Then what the hell were you doing keeping your top terrorism advisor out of the loop? If, as you claim, Clarke was basically incompetent, then what were you doing hiring him in the first place? (And then, of course, there's the Scott McClellan strategy, which is to simply lie your ass off.)
Look, you can go back and forth on this one all you want — Clarke is lying, Bush is lying, Clarke is only out for political gain, Bush is only trying to stifle dissent and cover up the truth, Clarke is an egomaniac, Bush is an incompetent, blah blah blah ad infinitum. Before long the whole thing has been reduced to he-said, she-said, and the only question you're left with is: In whom do you feel like you can place the greater trust, Clarke or the Bush administration?
You want to turn this into a game of Who Do You Trust? Fine, then I pick Clarke.
If you want to pick Bush, of course, this is America and you're welcome to do so...I just wish someone could explain to me why.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:06 AM
Tuesday, March 23, 2004
Planet of the Hot Democrats Part II: Revenge of the Donors
A few weeks ago, GWBWYPGN?! put its foot down and called upon the Democratic party to become the Party of Hot Chicks again. We pointed out that, some stereotypes to the contrary, the left side of the aisle is blessed with quite a number of lovely individuals, and the battle over hotness is one we must not concede to the GOP in 2004.
But little did we realize how right we were — and just how powerful the Democratic Party is in this department! Prodded by a certain bat-shit-crazy right-winger's expression of disgust that "Alias" star Jennifer Garner donated a big chunk of money to various Democrats, we went a-hunting on opensecrets.org to find out if any other hot chicks might be lurking on left-leaning donor lists. And boy, were there! Please excuse another brief descent into lookism and superficiality while we give you the rundown:
Jennifer Garner gave two gees to Dick Gephardt, plus a grand apiece to Wesley Clark (w00t!), John Edwards and John Kerry.
Uma Thurman wrote a big fat $2,000 check to John Kerry, which maybe explains why she couldn't afford a better dress to wear to the Oscars.
Reese Witherspoon threw five hundred bucks over to — gasp — Hillary Clinton!
Gwyneth Paltrow gave two grand to Emily's List, a PAC for female Democratic candidates, and another five hundred for John Kerry.
Debra Messing put two dimes on Joe Lieberman, which is sort of like donating to a Democrat.
Charlize Theron gave two grand to Barbara Boxer and another thousand to Kerry.
Not to mention all the other celebrities who have donated to Democrats. Meanwhile, what's Bush got? A lousy two hundred bucks from Pat Boone? That's not gonna cut it, George!
Normally we do our best not to dip into the Barry Goldwater well when posting here, but with all this in mind, we've got an idea for the DNC's 2004 slogan: Democrats 2004 — In your heart, you know they're hot.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 3:08 PM
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:16 AM
America's worst boss?
We were going to wait until someone whipped out the "Richard Clarke is just pissed off and looking for revenge" tennis ball before reciting the litany of former Bush advisers and policymakers who've left the administration in disgust, but...well, TBOGG couldn't wait that long. Hats off to him.
It would be one thing if it was just Clarke slagging the administration on his way out the door. But John DiIulio, Paul O'Neill, Rand Beers, Christine Todd Whitman (whom TBOGG left off his list), and Richard Clarke...that's a pretty long and illustrious list of disgruntled ex-employees. And there comes a point at which, if you're a supervisor, you've got to start to wonder, Is it them...or is it me?
You might also add to that list the ignored and marginalized Colin Powell, who's history even if Bush gets re-elected this fall. Then consider those who are not in the administration's direct employ but whose influence is just as important to their efforts: James Jeffords, who jumped off the GOP as a direct result of Bush's policies; Lincoln Chafee, who probably wishes he had; and centrists like John McCain and Chuck Hagel who wince every time Bush opens his mouth, like the mother of a child whom she knows is a shitty trumpet player but she has to grit her teeth and smile proudly every time he picks up the trumpet because she's his mom and she has to encourage him and, you know, be supportive.
Anyway, point is that's a lot of people jumping overboard. One would be fairly simple to explain — but five or six or seven, ehh, not so much.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:35 AM
Monday, March 22, 2004
Banned in the USA
Well, I finally crossed the line (evidently)...I've been banned from making any further comments to posts on Blogs for Bush. Oh, poo!
Today I left a comment on one of the posts about Clarke's appearance on "60 Minutes" to the effect of "You're right, Clinton didn't do as much as he could have against terrorism. I'm sure that once people find this out, Bush will easily win re-election over Clinton in 2004. Oh, wait, Clinton isn't running?..." Came back later that afternoon and the comment had disappeared (replaced only by the words "Troll"...boooo!), and when I tried to leave a comment asking why this was the case, I wasn't allowed to leave anything. Is this how Blogs for Bush typically reacts to anyone who disagrees with them? I don't know about you, but I think we have...yes! We do! Congratulations, Blogs for Bush, you're the latest winner of the Right-Wing PansyWatch™ Wuss o' the Week Award! Your names have been inscribed on the Wuss o' the Week plaque hanging in the GWBWYPGN?! lobby next to the desk of Tiffany the receptionist, and you're automatically eligible to win the 2004 Golden Pacifier Award at the end of the year!
The infantile Chicken-Little fear of opposing viewpoints over at BfB, though, did make me think a little, and I decided that those of us on the left side of the aisle have to be better than babies like that. So from now on, there's no such thing as "trolls" in the GWBWYPGN?! comments threads, for as BfB ably demonstrated, "troll" is too often a synonym for "someone who told me something I didn't want to hear." And try to be smart when you're making comments — the more you do that, the less likely things are to devolve into a "you're a poopy-head"/"no, you're a poopy-head" type of argument.
Other than that, gloves are off.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 2:52 PM
Why does the WSJ hate America?
In the wake of Richard Clarke's revelations last night on "60 Minutes," even the Wall Street Journal is beginning to ask some uncomfortable questions about 9/11. Glad you could join us, fellas. (Link courtesy of Atrios, who also brings us this.)
Well, at least the reporters are asking questions. The august opinion-writers at the Journal, however, still can't let go of their image of Bush as fearless terrorist-slayer, so they dutifully counter the news article with this bit of invective, whose message is basically thus: Investigating 9/11 is a complicated task that is bound to be politicized and spun by any number of people in Washington, so we should just not do it. Well, that's not quite accurate — they think we should do it, just not until Bush is safely ensconced in the White House for a second term. The editorial's last paragraph:
If the 9/11 Commission members really wanted to make a public contribution, they would shut down and resume their probe after the elections. Their final report is now due on July 26, two months after its original deadline and the same day that the Democratic Party convention begins in Boston. We doubt that's a coincidence either.
So releasing the report on the day the DNC begins, as was agreed to by the president: awfully convenient, according to the WSJ. Completely shutting down the investigation and not doing shit until after the election: Not convenient for anybody, and why, how dare you even suggest such a thing! (World O'Crap does the full takedown here.)
That ker-thunk sound you're hearing, by the way, is the sound of the neocon Kool-Aid drinkers following their marching orders and closing ranks around the prez at any cost. O.J. Simpson didn't even have this kind of blocking when he was running behind the O-line of the '75 Bills.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:34 AM
Sunday, March 21, 2004
Terra Wars Episode V: The Clenis™ Strikes Back
A short time ago in an administration far, far away from reality...
The Empire is in peril. Lord Bush has succeeded in vanquishing the Iraqi menace, but the ongoing battle against Terra has proven to be a long and difficult struggle. Stung by his inability to hunt down and destroy the evil bin-Laden, Lord Bush has been reduced to blaming the ancient and mysterious Clenis™ for his failures.
Richard Clarke's appearance on "60 Minutes" tonight could end up being a pretty significant part of a development we've been waiting for for quite a while — Clinton's anti-terrorism folks stepping forward to call the Bush administration's bluff and debunk the lie that Clinton somehow fell asleep on terrorism and allowed 9/11 to happen. It's about time they stood up for themselves, and maybe now we won't have to hear the Bush people blaming everything from the spread of terrorism to the mediocre economy on the Clenis™.
Do not mess with the Clenis™, my friends. Like the Force, it is a double-edged sword, one that can be used for good as well as evil. You can blame your problems on the Clenis™, but be careful, very, very careful, for when you least expect it, the Clenis™ may exact its revenge...
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 12:35 PM
Call me crazy, but if the war was really such a great idea, they wouldn't have to keep selling it — and I remain unsold.
Sorry to bum you guys out, it's been kind of a depressing week all round. So here, cheer yourselves up and check this shit out.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 10:06 AM
Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot: Chapter XXXI — The Shame in Spain is Mainly in Ann's Brain
If you're like those of us who assemble Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot, you've seen the Coultinator pansy-bait everyone from Howard Dean to the entire population of New York City for not falling right into lockstep with her hero King George, and you probably figured it was just a matter of time before she got around to ripping the Spanish people a new one for daring to do the same. Sure enough, here it is. Before the bodies of the 201 victims from last week's train bombing had even cooled off, Ann was no doubt penning the following screed, all the better to hock a jingoistic rhetorical loogie right in the faces of the stunned Spaniards still mourning their loss.
Naturally, Ann thinks the Spanish are wusses because they dared vote against a good buddy of Bush's. The subtext here is a bizarre one — evidently Ann's idea of democracy is "Vote for whomever you want as long as he likes Dubya" — but it's nothing new from Her Coulterness. Basically this column, "Al-Qaida Barks, the Spanish Fly," is a tired rehashing of all the same "Spain is an appeaser" rhetoric we've thoroughly debunked and refuted on this blog over the past week; perhaps for that reason, we couldn't do any better than this dry, straightforward intro, which certainly doesn't compare to the BibleVision™ tour de force from last week. But in honor of St. Patrick's Day (yeah, it was two days ago, eat me), howsabout we spruce it up by getting on the limerick tip:
The columnist Coulter did push
For kicking the Spaniards in the tush.
She said, "What are you afraid a',
You capitulators to al-Qaeda?
You should be capitulatin' to Bush!"
After a terrorist attack by al-Qaida that left hundreds of their fellow countrymen dead, Spanish voters immediately voted to give the terrorists what they want -- a Socialist government that opposes America's war on terrorism. Al-Qaida has changed a government.
For this column to be even remotely plausible, you're going to have to give in to Ann and assume that "war in Iraq" = "war on terrorism." To Ann, they're one and the same thing. To the rest of us thinking folks, however, the war was a distraction.
Until the bombings last week, the center-right Popular Party of outgoing Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar had been sailing to victory.
Didn't know it was possible to "sail to victory" by a percentage that falls within the margin of error, but whatever.
But then the al-Qaida bombs went off and Spaniards turned out in droves to vote against the government that had been a staunch Bush ally in the war on terrorism. (I guess it's OK for a Spanish Socialist to "politicize" a terrorist attack just to get elected.)
As has been pointed out numerous times on this site, the Socialists didn't "politicize" the attack, they merely pointed out the deception in which the Popular Party had engaged, trying to shift attention away from al-Qaeda and toward ETA in the post-bombing investigation. And that as much as anything else was what prompted people to turn Aznar out of office. By the way, Ann, you do recall that while Aznar had been a "staunch Bush ally" in the war on terrorism Iraq, that involvement was opposed by (wait for it) 90 percent of the country's voters, right? Are you really that surprised that they gave the PP the heave-ho?
In a videotaped message, the al-Qaida "military commander" for Europe claimed credit for the bombings, saying that the terrorist attack was meant to punish Spain for supporting the war in Iraq. The message came as a total shock to liberals who have been furiously insisting that Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with al-Qaida.
As one of those liberals, Ann...no, no it didn't. How does this prove Iraq had anything to do with al-Qaeda? Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein were longtime enemies, that much is still quite true, but be that as it may, al-Qaeda still wasn't itching to see a bunch of "infidels" defile a Muslim country with their presence. (Americans on Saudi soil in the first Gulf War was one of the reasons Osama bin Laden has given for building up such hatred for the U.S. in the first place.) Of course, in Ann's black-and-white world where all Muslims are cold-blooded killers, these nuances and differences don't get talked about much.
Apparently al-Qaida didn't think so. After the Madrid bombings, it looks like liberals and terrorists will have to powwow on whether there was an Iraq/al-Qaida link. Two hundred dead Spaniards say there was.
Ah, yes. With a few indignant statements backed up by a bare minimum of "reasoning," the Iraq/al-Qaeda link goes from something even Colin Powell couldn't back up to a taken-for-granted, set-in-stone fact. It's like magic!
The New York Times called the Spanish election "an exercise in healthy democracy." And an ATM withdrawal with a gun to your head is a "routine banking transaction." Instead of vowing to fight the people who killed their fellow citizens, the Spanish decided to vote with al-Qaida on the war. A murdering terrorist organization said, "Jump!" and an entire country answered, "How high?"
This should give you a pretty frightening picture into the minds of Bush's most strident supporters. The Spanish didn't say no to "vowing to fight the people who killed their fellow citizens"; prime-minister-elect Zapatero, in fact, has vowed that terrorists "will not have a moment of rest." So Spain didn't repudiate the fight against terror, they just repudiated Bush's way of fighting it. And that's what makes people like Coulter so mad, because after all, there's only one way of fighting terrorism, Bush's way. And if you don't agree with him, you're in bed with al-Qaeda. Once again, the right wing's anger over the Spanish election has nothing to do with safety or security or terrorism. It's all about Bush.
One Spaniard who decided to switch his vote in reaction to the bombings told the Times: "Maybe the Socialists will get our troops out of Iraq and al-Qaida will forget about Spain so we will be less frightened." That's the fighting spirit! If the violent Basque separatist group only killed more people, Spain would surely give them what they want, too.
Yet again, Ann conveniently fails to mention that if, in fact, a withdrawal of Spanish troops was "what [the terrorists] want," it was also what the Spanish people wanted, and they wanted it long before al-Qaeda did — they overwhelmingly opposed Spain's involvement in Iraq from the get-go. So now that that involvement has been pointed to as a reason for the terrorist attacks, what were the Spanish people supposed to do, say "Well gee, you went against the wishes of 90 percent of us and now it's resulted in 200 deaths, but hey, we'll just have blind faith that you know what you're doing and if we just re-elect you then this will all work out"?
After his stunning upset victory, Socialist Party leader Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero vowed to withdraw Spanish troops from Iraq if the United States does not turn over Iraq to the United Nations. He also vowed that all of Spain's remaining trains will run on time.
Ummm...Zapatero wants to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq and all of a sudden he's Mussolini? That's a pretty gargantuan logical leap, and a pretty pathetic one, even by Ann's standards.
Zapatero said the war with Iraq had "only caused violence" and "there were no reasons for it." One reason for the war, which would seem to be a sufficient reason for a more manly country, is that the people who just slaughtered 200 Spaniards didn't like it.
From this last statement, we can deduce that Ann evidently has two reasons for supporting the war in Iraq:
1) Al-Qaeda doesn't like it. Al-Qaeda also didn't like Saddam Hussein, so by that rationale we should have been funneling him chemical weapons until his bunkers couldn't hold any more. (Hey, it got the thumbs-up from Reagan!)
2) It's "manly." There are multitudes of jokes we could make here about Ann's affinity for "manly" things, but we're already hyperlinking to a Web page about Adam's apples every freaking time her name pops up, so we're going to beg off of this one. But feel free to leave your own snarks in the comments thread.
But, like the Democrats, the Spanish hate George Bush more than they hate the terrorists.
Ah, yes, you can practically set your watch by it — the point in each column where Ann will begin indulging in "Liberals love al-Qaeda"-type rhetoric so fatuous, slanderous, and stupid that you can actually feel your brain cells begin to trickle out your ears.
Zapatero said the war in Iraq was based on "lies" and called on President Bush and Tony Blair to "do some reflection and self-criticism." So don't think of the Spanish election as a setback for freedom -- think of it as a preview of life under President John Kerry!
So you're saying that "life under President John Kerry" would involve actually paying attention to current intelligence and carefully examining motives before we set off on a full-scale war to invade and occupy a foreign country halfway around the world? Gosh, it sounds just awful!
What kind of lunatic would blame Bush for 200 Spaniards killed by al-Qaida bombs? Oh wait -- Howard Dean just did. Summarizing the views of Socialists everywhere, Dean said: "The president was the one who dragged our troops to Iraq, which apparently has been a factor in the death of 200 Spaniards over the weekend."
Did anyone hear Howard Dean "blame" Bush for 200 dead Spaniards? We must confess that we did not.
Yes, with 1,700 dead or injured Spaniards, George Bush certainly has some explaining to do. What have the terrorists ever done besides kill and maim thousands of innocent civilians? Bush isn't fully funding "No Child Left Behind," for God's sake!
Whether you're Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, Green, Reform, Constitution, Whig, Bull Moose or Free Soil, we hope you're smart enough to realize just how inane that last paragraph was.
Before he was put into office because he supported policies favored by al-Qaida terrorists, appeasement candidate Zapatero said: "I want Kerry to win." Kerry is also supported by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, who broadcasts Kerry speeches over Radio Pyongyang with favorable commentary.
So now Kerry really does have two foreign leaders on record supporting him: a Socialist terrorist-appeaser and a Marxist mass murderer who dresses like Bea Arthur.
Ann must have written this column before George W. Bush received al-Qaeda's official endorsement. Oopsie! (And just what the hell is her problem with Bea Arthur? Isn't this sort of a case of the pot calling the kettle "mannish"?)
Zapatero predicted that his own victory would help the anti-war party "in the duel between Bush and Kerry." Would you mind repeating that, sir? I was distracted by that large white flag you're waving.
However Spain's election affects Americans, we can be sure that Spain's surrender to terrorism hasn't been lost on the terrorists. It's difficult to imagine the American people responding to a new terrorist attack by deciding to placate the terrorists, as the Spanish did. A mollusk wouldn't react that way to an attack. Only a liberal could be so perverse.
A liberal like that bedwetting bleeding-heart Ronald Reagan, who yanked U.S. troops out of Beirut following the Marine barracks truck-bombing in '83?
No matter how many of our European allies may surrender to the terrorists, America will never be alone. This is a country founded in a covenant with God by people who had to flee Europe to do it.
Sailing to the New World in 1630 on the ship Arabella, the Puritans' leader and governor, John Winthrop, said Americans were entering into a covenant with God to create a "city upon a hill." We would be judged by all the world if we ever broke that covenant. But if we walked with God, "We shall find that the God of Israel is among us, when 10 of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies." He has intervened in our affairs before, such as in 1776, 1861 and 1980.
So God got Reagan elected...[closes eyes, puts his head down on table, sighs heavily]
With the Spanish election, we are witnessing a capitulation to savagery that makes full-scale war inevitable. The Democratic candidate wants to represent godless Europeans. The Republican candidate wants to represent Americans. As Winthrop said: "The eyes of all people are upon us."
Yes, the eyes of all people are upon us, and some of them are asking for a better reason to vote for Bush than "the Democratic candidate wants to represent godless Europeans." That, incidentally, is Coulterspeak for "The Spanish people actually exercised their rights as a sovereign democratic nation to elect someone who wasn't buddy-buddy with George Bush, and Kerry is perfectly OK with this! How dare he?!?!" Because once again, ladies and germs, the War on Terra™ has ceased to be primarily about Terra™. Your strategy doesn't matter, your international alliances don't matter, hell, your relationships to the terrorists themselves don't matter — the only thing that matters anymore is whether you like George Bush. If you like him, Ann says Mazel to you; if you don't like him, it doesn't matter if you have bin Laden's small intestine wrapped around a stick right now, you're a lily-livered appeaser and a sad disgrace to all that is good in this world.
Oh, well, glad we straightened all that out! And thus ends yet another sordid chapter in the never-ending saga of Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot — tune in at some indefinite point between now and November when Ann explains how a vote for anyone other than George Bush for president is a vote for bin Laden himself, and as such the 2004 elections need to be suspended and martial law instituted post haste! We can't wait...holler at'cha then!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:33 AM
Thursday, March 18, 2004
Don't ever say we never gave you anything
If you've got Shockwave, you can play this game. Let us know if you win.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 3:09 PM
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 11:06 AM
Ha ha. Joshua Marshall said "poop"
Well, actually he didn't, he said "crap." And I can't help but think it would've been funnier had he actually said "poop," because I think "poop" is a funnier word. But fecal semantics aside, this post pretty much nails it:
Again and again I read — or hear directly from administration supporters — this excuse that any questioning of the administration's record in foreign affairs, or Iraq, or even on other matters is just a deplorable focusing on the past, a distraction, when the nation faces grave challenges which we need to focus on solving. ...
[T]his is like I come back to my office to find my new employee has taken a crap right on my desk.
Puzzledly and not happy, I say, "What, umm ... what happened here?"
To which he replies, "There you go again, always focusing on the past, how this or that could have been done differently, when what's really important is the future, how we deal with this and other challenges we're going to face."
To which I would reply, "No. The future is exactly what I'm thinking about. And that's why you're fired. Because in the future I can't afford to have anyone working here who craps on my desk, and then when I confront them about it all they can do is dodge responsibility with moronic excuses and try to put the blame on me for asking what the hell is going on."
These guys should be fired too.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 10:30 AM
The statement said it supported President Bush in his reelection campaign, and would prefer him to win in November rather than the Democratic candidate John Kerry, as it was not possible to find a leader "more foolish than you [Bush], who deals with matters by force rather than with wisdom."
In comments addressed to Bush, the group said:
"Kerry will kill our nation while it sleeps because he and the Democrats have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and present it to the Arab and Muslim nation as civilization."
"Because of this we desire you [Bush] to be elected."
Us? The Democrats? Have the cunning to embellish blasphemy and yada yada? You guys! I've been embellishing blasphemy on this blog for nearly eight months now and I didn't think anybody noticed! Awww, thanks! You just made my day, Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, and I'm sending you a basket of mini-muffins!
In all seriousness, this could be just a banzai bit of reverse-psychology on the part of the terrorists, but then again, it's just as likely to be a banzai bit of reverse-reverse-psychology, though we get too deeply into this and we'll end up in that episode of "Friends" where Rachel got Phoebe to seduce Chandler just to make him admit he and Monica were a couple ("So they know we know, but they don't know WE know they know we know...and Joey, you can't say anything").
The Daily Kos had the best bit of commentary on this development, though: "This is one foreign 'leader' we can scratch of Kerry's list." Heh.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:35 AM
TV news reports in America that showed President George Bush getting a standing ovation from potential voters have been exposed as fake, it has emerged.
The US government admitted it paid actors to pose as journalists in video news releases sent to TV stations intending to convey support for new laws about health benefits.
Investigators are examining the film segments, in which actors pretending to be journalists praise the benefits of the new law passed last year by President Bush, to see if they could be construed as propaganda.
Wait wait wait, rewind that and go back to this one sentence I want to read again...
The US government admitted it paid actors
Pay extra-close attention to that part, paleocons and I'm-a-Libertarian-everywhere-except-the-voting-booth Libertarians: Your government just spent a bunch of your tax dollars to pay a bunch of actors to act like Bush's drug-benefit package wasn't a complete crock of horseshit.
Then again, none of them flashed their tits, so everything's cool.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 4:42 PM
Oh. No. You. Dih-ent*
Promenade of the Misleading Campaign Ads, Vol. XXXVIII: Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo calls shenanigans on what has to be the most brazenly hypocritical, not to mention outrageous, claim yet in a Bush re-election spot.
This would be the one where the Bushies excoriate Kerry for voting against the $87 billion Iraq supplemental last year (not mentioning, of course, his support for an alternative measure that would've funded the Iraq operation through a decrease in the Bush tax cuts). In this ad, the Repubs claim Kerry voted for "No body armor for troops in combat. No higher combat pay. No to better health care for reservists and their families."
As Marshall observes, "What's most bracing about this narration is that this is actually a pretty factual statement if the target is the president, not Kerry." Bush was the one who opposed measures like these to the point where he had to be shamed into signing off on them. Marshall relates: "If you watched this debate at the time you'll remember that last summer the Bush administration went to great lengths to cut combat pay for troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan in order to save money for other priorities. They only relented when Democrats, Republicans and most of all military-oriented publications like Army Times expressed so much outrage that they had no choice but abandon the effort." Here's a Daily Kos post laying out in lurid detail just how willing Bush has been to screw the troops.
My early projection is that Bush's next campaign ad will attack Kerry for voting against the Bush plan to raise the chocolate ration from 30 grams a week to 20. Stay tuned.
* ETA: Just realized I made two critical errors here. One, I misspelled "di-ehhnt." Two, I forgot to cite the source of that information, and indeed the man who insists he invented that pronunciation in the first place: one Matt Lavine. Did I give credit where credit was due? No. No, I di-ehhnt. But I hope this correction is a sufficient mea culpa.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 1:37 PM
More on Spain
Some more stuff to ponder if you're one of the folks who's written off the Spanish as a bunch of terrorist-appeasin' sissies (links via Atrios):
James P. Pinkerton — says what a bunch of us lefty bloggers have been saying from the beginning: The Spanish people didn't reject the fight against terror just because they repudiated Bush's way of fighting it.
Pandagon — adds that just because Spain has a new government doesn't mean that they're not an ally anymore. If Spain does proceed to lose their stomach for the fight against terrorism, that is their fault — but if the U.S. proceeds to dismiss them out of hand as an ally before we've even seen the new government in action, then that's our fault.
Nathan Newman — points out that the people of Spain are being assailed for allegedly doing precisely what al-Qaeda hoped to goad them into doing by bombing the Madrid commuter trains (withdrawing from the Iraq occupation "coalition"), while Ariel Sharon does precisely what Hamas wanted to goad him into doing with their recent round of suicide bombings (pulling out of Israel-Palestine peace talks) and is roundly praised.
Washington Post — finally gets around to revealing that ousted President Aznar's Popular Party had been mounting a concerted effort to mislead the public into thinking the bombings had been masterminded by ETA (knowing that if the voters found out about the al-Qaeda connection before they went to the polls, Aznar's party would be in deep ka-ka), and that deception more than anything else may have been responsible for the PP's defeat. (The NYTconcurs.)
The Bush administration might want to be taking notes on that last one. A ruling administration deliberately obfuscates the events surrounding a horrific terrorist attack and then gets turned out of office as a result? Might be time to pencil in a little more than an hour for the 9/11 Commission, boys, just to be on the safe side.
But here's an irony alert, again from Pandagon: Dick Cheney thinks Americans have "a right to know" what John Kerry did or said to get all those foreign endorsements we've been hearing about. So we don't have a right to know what he and Bush say in front of the 9/11 Commission, or what he and his energy-industry pals talked about in their closed-door meetings...but what Kerry and his European friends talk about over cappuccinos at Café de la Paix, that's a red-hot issue of vital national importance?
My, what strange priorities you have, Grandma.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:31 AM
Heh
Jon Stewart on "The Daily Show" Monday night, on the results of the Spanish elections: "So a year after going to war, we've got a police state in Iraq and socialists in Spain. No democracy yet, but, uhhh...we're getting close..."
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 7:34 AM
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Yes, brave Sir Richard turned about/And gallantly, he chickened out/Brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Richard...
We're going to have to make this Right-Wing PansyWatch™ thing a regular feature, because yet another Bushie has crapped out in the manhood department — former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle has blinked first and said he won't be suing journalist Seymour Hersh after all, despite having once called Hersh "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist."
Perle, naturally, is still steamed that Hersh blew the cover on his connections to Trireme Partners, a security/defense venture-capital firm that makes a boatload of cash anytime someone proposes we start a war. (Which, of course, Perle has been doing about three times a day lately.) It goes without saying that Perle had no case...but he still wins this week's spot on the Right-Wing PansyWatch™ Wuss o' the Week plaque, which is hanging in the GWBWYPGN?! lobby right next to the desk of Marci the receptionist. Congrats, Richard, and thanks for playing!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 4:12 PM
Looks like Rush took the pill that makes him small
It's just too bad that when Rush Limbaugh was bellying up to the all-you-can-eat OxyContin buffet, he didn't bother to put some sodium pentathol on the side, because then he wouldn't get caught in retarded-ass lies like this one. Tom Flocco regales us with the tale of how Rush singled out a pair of pissed-off 9/11 widows as "part of the Democratic Party machine" because they criticized Bush's 9/11™-themed campaign ads. Only it turns out the specific two widows he railed against are actually Republicans! Oopsy-daisy, Rush! Psst, just say it was the drugs talking! (Link courtesy of the indefatigable Mary at Naked Furniture.)
Here's my question to any fans of known liars and misleaders like Rush, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity or Neal Boortz who come a-strollin' past this site. After they've chatted up the truth at a bar, slipped a roofie into its drink, taken it back to their place, had their way with its unconscious form and then slipped out the back door, did any of them ever so much as say "Whoops"? Did Hannity ever even mumble under his breath, "Looks like Abner Louima wasn't gay after all"? Did Boortz ever get around to mentioning John Kerry's Silver Star, or did that one just get bumped for time considerations? Even the Satanic liberal New York Times has been known to run a correction every now and then. What's these asscracks' excuse?
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 10:39 AM
Appease this
This morning, driving back up to Birmingham from the wilds of deepest, darkest Shelby County at around 6 a.m., one of NPR's "Morning Edition" reporters interviewed a guy from a policy think thank in Madrid who basically said the same thing I did about the Spanish elections, only a lot better and more succinctly. Not trying to play smarty-pants with y'all, just trying to indicate that I'm not the only one who thinks these "appeasement" slurs on the part of the American right wing are a lot of bull, and a typically Bush-esque drastic oversimplification of the issue at hand.
Here's Calpundit's most recent take on said elections, and here's a post he links to at Beautiful Horizons that includes some commentary from an actual Spanish person. Which, you know, is important, because it's Spain we're talking about. If you're still of the opinion that the Spanish electorate was basically bending over for al-Qaeda with their vote on Sunday, I think you'll find these posts illuminating.
In the end, the only people who are lobbing "appeaser" accusations at the Spanish are those who think Bush's way of fighting the War on Terror™ is the only way. What if the Spanish vote wasn't a repudiation of the fight against terrorism at all, but simply a repudiation of Bush's specific method of fighting it? I think that deep down, the right-wingers may have some idea that that's the case, and that's what ticks them off most of all. These pansy Spaniards think there's any way other than Bush's way? To hell with them, then! Eventually, though, they're going to have to stop seeing so much of the world in black and white. Could it be that the people of Spain already have?
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:56 AM
Monday, March 15, 2004
Here's a better way to fight budding terrorists — with Benjamins!
Shorter Arab fighters: I only wanted a job blowing up American troops, I wasn't expecting this!
Boy, there's just no honor among terrorists, is there? You answer a classified ad in the Qala'at Samaan Shopper looking for mercenaries to suicide-bomb the American infidels, and when you meet up with your contact he sells you for less than the price of a GameCube to the very American troops you were hoping to kill. That's called what goes around comes around, bitch, and I hope this story is getting heavy airplay around the Middle East. Maybe al-Jazzeera's John bin Stossel can use this for his "Give Me a Break!" segment this week.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 2:48 PM
So how's that working out for you?
This date in history: On March 15, 2003, Doug drove eleven and a half hours from Birmingham, Ala., to Washington, D.C., to participate in the last major anti-war protest in the nation's capital before the American invasion of Iraq officially began.
As I made that damn-near-interminable trip up to D.C., running on McDonald's steak biscuits and Red Bull, I was against the war for three reasons: First and foremost, I didn't believe the Iraqi "threat" was severe enough to merit an action as terrible as war; second, I had an idea that we might end up obligated to keep our troops there for years, if not decades; third, since nobody had been able to establish any substantive connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, it seemed like we were needlessly distracting ourselves from the true battle against worldwide terrorism.
So how have those three concerns matched reality? The first remains pretty sound, considering that we have yet to find anything in Iraq, WMD-wise, that would've constituted a serious threat to the United States. The jury's still out on the second, though even if we do succeed in building a sustainable democracy in Iraq — which I think is quite possible, and which I pray for every night — I don't think we'll be pulling our troops out anytime soon.
That leaves the third: How successful has the Iraq war been as a front in the War on Terror™? Well, let's take a look at the past few days. Two hundred people dead in a train bombing in Spain, 11 innocent Israelis dead in twin suicide bombings, and oh yeah, seven more American soldiers dead in Iraq. And, of course, the people who blew up the trains in Madrid are claiming that America is next. All in all, if one of the goals of the Iraq invasion was to strike a blow against Islamic terrorism, or even to intimidate the terrorists into inaction, it's done a pretty f$#!ing lousy job of that so far.
Over the weekend, the people of Spain booted President Jose María Aznar, who had sided with Bush in the Iraq invasion, and his ruling party in favor of a party that has vowed to withdraw its troops from the Iraq occupation. For turning their backs on Aznar's party, the people of Spain, for participating in a democratic election and deciding they weren't satisfied with their current president, are being called appeasers (or worse) by everybody and his brother.Whaaaa...?
With all due respect to the "appeaser" name-callers, I'd like to say: Go to hell. The people of Spain endured a horrible tragedy, they held the current ruling party responsible for creating conditions where said tragedy could happen, and they voted that party out. They didn't hold Aznar responsible for the tragedy itself — the responsibility for that, of course, lies with al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda only — but Osama bin Laden wasn't on the ballot in Spain yesterday. Aznar was. The people of Spain didn't feel like he had protected them — if anything, they felt like he had further endangered them — so he's outta there. Simple as that.
It infuriates me that people call that election "a victory for the terrorists" or claim that Spain is "capitulating" to al-Qaeda because they gave the heave-ho to the party that joined in on the Iraq invasion. That would only be the case if Aznar mounted an effort against al-Qaeda specifically — if he'd mounted a concerted effort against bin Laden, the country got bombed, and the voters punished him for being too zealous against terrorism, then yes, that would be a capitulation. But that's not what happened. Aznar signed on to an invasion of a Muslim country that had virtually nothing to do with al-Qaeda and subjected his country to a costly war. The Spanish public didn't feel like Aznar had endangered them by fighting terrorism, they felt like he had endangered them by leaping on board the Iraq distraction, and now all they feel like they have to show for it is 200 dead commuters. Wouldn't you vote out the party responsible for putting you in that situation — especially if you were part of the 90 percent of the public who had opposed that war in the first place?
My point is, let's not confuse Iraq and al-Qaeda here. The right-wing name-callers would have you believe the Spanish electorate is a bunch of pansies who don't have the stomach to fight terrorism, but I'd challenge them to find one single quote in which the new ruling party has said they're not interested in fighting terrorism anymore. Maybe the Spanish voters thought, as I did a year ago today, that the war in Iraq wouldn't really accomplish anything against al-Qaeda, yet their president dragged them, against their will, into a costly war that only distracted from the real task of fighting terror — and in doing so made his entire country a target. Now two hundred people are dead, and if that isn't grounds to vote someone out of office, then my God, what is?
I've got a sneaking suspicion that the real source of the right wing's vitriol toward Spain is not the fact that the Spaniards are "appeasing" terrorists, because deep down, they know the Spaniards aren't doing anything of the sort. The people of Spain haven't reduced their commitment to fighting terrorism, they've just reduced their commitment to going along with Bush's clumsy, untenable strategy for doing so, and I have a feeling that's what pisses off the American right more than anything. It's not really about "appeasement" for them, it's not about terrorism, and it's certainly not about the safety of the Spanish people or the memory of those who died aboard those trains — once again, it's all about Bush. And for that, the right-wing appeasement-accusers should be ashamed of themselves.
Maybe it's time for them — for all of us — to sit back and ponder what the Iraq war has really accomplished, particularly in terms of the ongoing fight against terrorism. My initial answer is not freaking much.
Put it this way: Let's say we end up in Spain's shoes and on the eve of the presidential election this November, a fully loaded 747 gets blown out of the sky right as it's taking off from LAX. The group that's responsible says they did it in retaliation for the American occupation of Iraq. Now, the current president OK'd that occupation, against the wishes of a substantial portion of the American people (myself included), and clearly, said occupation hasn't done much to lessen the chance we'll be hit by terrorism. Given that this attack happened on the current president's watch, it would seem he hasn't done quite as good a job of protecting us from terrorism as he would have us believe. Yet not voting for his re-election makes me an "appeaser"?
Pardon my vulgarity, but I don't fucking think so.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:52 AM
Friday, March 12, 2004
Uh...¿Ésta no es la línea para el restroom de los hombres?
Two fun links from Atrios today. The first concerns the cheering crowds that witnessed Bush's campaign stop at U.S.A. Industries on Long Island — all that enthusiasm must mean they truly believe in Bush's message of peace and prosperity for America, right? Well, let's see:
Security people kept reporters from interviewing the workers at U.S.A. until the president was on the way to his next stop.
But when workers were finally interviewed -- these people who made up the bulk of the president's cheering audience in New York -- Bush's performance turned out to be, if anything, even more impressive.
"No speak English," said the first worker, smiling apologetically.
"No speak English," said the second, third, fourth, fifth and sixth workers way-laid in the crowd.
But you think the tax cuts should be made permanent, as he says?
"Sorry, no English," said another.
So Bush travels to New York City, site of the World Trade Center tragedy, site of the 2004 Republican National Convention, the spot from whence he bravely vowed to avenge the deaths of the thousands of WTC victims, and he can't even find anybody to go to his campaign appearance who actually understands what he's saying? (This does explain a little better why you don't see the GOP pushing that official-language idea anymore.)
Of course, if Kerry tries to explain this to the cheering crowds who greeted Bush on Long Island, they won't have a frickin' clue what he's saying. Ahhh...now it's all starting to make sense.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 11:16 AM
Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot, Version 30.0: With introduction presented in BibleVision™
Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot, Chapter 30, verses 1-24:
1 And though her lies were many, the Coulter didst continue to speak them;
2 She didst transform William Safire into a liberal, and the people trembled with fear, for they knew the end-times were upon them.
3 The Coulter condemned the liberals, saying they knew not of GOD,
4 And the liberals did protesteth, but the right wing branded them as traitors and bid them to be silent.
5 And in her mendacity, the Coulter didst proceed to trick them with a false idol:
6 She held aloft the film that had been forg'd by Gibson of Babylon, and said, "Look you upon me, true patriots and Christians!
7 "Here is the film that hath been created by Gibson of Babylon, that he hath offer'd up to the LORD;
8 "It speaketh of the Passion of our Savior, JESUS CHRIST, and lo, though many shall say it cast much aspersion on the Semites, thou shalt not criticize it;
9 "For it is the work of the LORD, and any who speak against it, speak against the LORD.
10 "The liberals are sure to protest it, and by their GOD-hatred you shall know them;
11 "I decree that they shalt spend eternity in the fires of Gehenna, where there will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth."
12 It was after this condemnation by the Coulter that the skies did open, and a dazzling light shone through the clouds;
13 And the people didst tremble anew, for they knew the LORD was upon them. And thus He spake:
14 "Ann, thou hast displeased Me with thy falsehoods;
15 "With thy voice hast thou slander'd the brave Max Cleland, and tarnish'd the land with thy hypocrisy;
16 "Thou hast taken my commandment to love thy neighbor, and thou made'st an incidental tenet of it.
17 "Now thou stand'st before Me with a false idol, and thou hast encourag'd the masses to worship it;
18 "Thou hast said all those who love the film of Gibson of Babylon love GOD, and all those who do not enjoy the film are not of GOD.
19 "Thou hast equated the work of Gibson of Babylon with the work of the LORD thy GOD, and thou hast broken My first commandment.
20 "Begone, Coulter! For it is written, 'You shall worship the LORD your GOD, and Him alone shall you serve.' "
21 And the LORD didst transform the Coulter into an Afghan hound,
22 But not before the Coulter penned yet another scroll of lies and excrescence, and she didst again blaspheme the LORD by titling it "W.W.J.K.: Who Would Jesus Kill?";
23 But the scribes of Alabama didst tear the scroll to pieces, and bade the crowd to laugh,
24 And the crowd didst laugh, and it was good.
The William Safire, The New York Times' in-house "conservative" — who endorsed Bill Clinton in 1992, like so many conservatives — was sure Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of the Christ" would incite anti-Semitic violence. Thus far, the pogroms have failed to materialize.
Holy shit. Is Coulter basing her entire column on the idea that William Safire is a liberal? Ladies and gentlemen, the complete psychotic break we've long feared from Ann may finally have happened. Shut your doors and windows and don't come outside until you get the all-clear from the local authorities.
With all the subtlety of a Mack truck, Safire called Gibson's movie a version of "the medieval 'passion play,' preserved in pre-Hitler Germany at Oberammergau, a source of the hatred of all Jews as 'Christ killers.'" (Certainly every Aryan Nation skinhead murderer I've ever met was also a devoted theater buff and "passion play" aficionado.)
We're trying real hard, real freaking hard, not to make a joke about Coulter having met vast numbers of Aryan Nation skinhead murderers. It would be so easy to do — oh, God, so very, very easy. Why don't you use this pause to make your own joke, chuckle softly at it, and then move on.
The "passion play" has been put on in Germany since at least 1633. I guess 1633 would be "pre-Hitler." In addition, Moses walked the Earth "pre-Hitler." The wheel was invented "pre-Hitler." People ate soup "pre-Hitler." Referring to the passion play as "pre-Hitler" is a slightly fancier version of every adolescent's favorite argument: You're like Hitler!
Is it just us, or is Ann making entirely too much out of Safire's "pre-Hitler" modifier? She acts like she's earned some international medal for investigative journalism for running Safire's comment through her Demagog-O-Matic decoder ring and deducing that he's comparing the anti-Semitism of the early Passion plays with that of Hitler, as if it was some big secret, but...actually, Ann, that's precisely what Safire was doing, and it doesn't look like he was hedging in any way. What's your next news flash, the fact that Andrew Sullivan is gay?
Despite repeated suggestions from liberals -- including the in-house "conservative" and Clinton-supporter at the Times -- Hitler is not what happens when you gin up Christians.
Who said "Hitler is what happens when you gin up Christians"? Wasn't us. Wasn't that nasty liberal Safire. (Jeez, you can't imagine how stupid we felt just typing those words. Safire, a stealth liberal? Surely somewhere on the Town Hall editing food chain, there had to be an editor willing to say, "Ann, sweetie, we love you and everything, but...that's pretty f$#!ing retarded, even for you.")
Like Timothy McVeigh, the Columbine killers and the editorial board of The New York Times, Hitler detested Christians.
Ah, yes. Liberals hate Christians, we're back to that old line again. We've scoffed at it before, but at this point its utter stupidity doesn't even merit the scoffing. We will, however, point out that Timothy McVeigh was a Christian, and as a right-wing militia member detested all manner of non-Christian people. Jews, f'rinstance.
Indeed, Hitler denounced Christianity as an "invention of the Jew" and vowed that the "organized lie (of Christianity) must be smashed" so that the state would "remain the absolute master." Interestingly, this was the approach of all the great mass murderers of the last century -- all of whom were atheists: Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.
Boy, Ann spends the better part of a year calling down the wrath of God upon Saddam Hussein (Muslim), and now that he's getting lice-checked in Gitmo, he doesn't even make her list of great mass murderers. Some gratitude, Ann! What is he, chopped liver?
In the United States, more than 30 million babies have been killed by abortion since Roe v. Wade, vs. seven abortion providers killed. Yeah -- keep your eye on those Christians!
But according to liberals, it's Christianity that causes murder. (And don't get them started on Zionism.)
Nobody can throw together a straw man like our dear Ann. With all the words she crams into the mouths of us liberals week after week, it's a wonder we get a word in edgewise.
Like their Muslim friends still harping about the Crusades, liberals won't "move on" from the Spanish Inquisition. In the entire 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition, about 30,000 people were killed. That's an average of less than 100 a year. Stalin knocked off that many kulaks before breakfast.
Maybe, but Stalin didn't single out a specific religious group for killing — he pretty much purged anyone who got in his way. By the way, does anyone see the agonizing irony in the fact that Ann claims to have such respect for life, getting on her soap box about abortion, but when it comes to 30,000 dead in the Inquisition, she's all, "Ehhh, that ain't that many?" Especially when you consider that Ann has lowballed the Inquisition body count by, oh, a little over 90 percent. Is this another one of those things she just assumes nobody's going to check up on?
But Safire argues that viewers of "The Passion" will see the Jewish mob and think: "Who was responsible for this cruel humiliation? What villain deserves to be punished?"
Let's see: It was a Roman who ordered Christ's execution, and Romans who did all the flaying, taunting and crucifying.
Anyone who has seen this movie, or even read anything about it, knows that Ann is telling a flat-out lie here. Romans did all the flaying, taunting and crucifying? Ohhh nooo...the card says Moops.
Perhaps Safire is indulging in his own negative stereotyping about Jews by assuming they simply viewed Romans as "the help."
But again I ask: Does anyone at the Times have the vaguest notion what Christianity is?
Oh, for Christ's sake, Ann, quit being such a f$#!in' retard.
(Besides people who go around putting up nativity scenes that have to be taken down by court order?) The religion that toppled the Roman Empire -- anyone?
Actually, as a commenter to World O'Crap's take on this column pointed out, the Roman Empire was Christian when it fell — at the hands of pagan barbarian hordes.
Jesus' suffering and death is not a Hatfields-and-McCoys story demanding retaliation.
No news to us, Ann, but you might want to forward that memo to your pal Mel.
The gist of the religion that transformed the world is: God's only son came to Earth to take the punishment we deserved.
If the Jews had somehow managed to block Jesus' crucifixion and He had died in old age of natural causes, there would be no salvation through Christ and no Christianity. Whatever possible responses there may be to that story, this is not one of them: Damn those Jews for being a part of God's plan to save my eternal soul!
Congratulations, Ann, you've apparently mastered the vagaries of the Chewbacca Defense. "If the Jews hadn't killed Christ, there would be no Christianity, so there's no reason for anyone to get mad at the Jews! It just doesn't make any sense!" No, it doesn't, but you know what? People do it anyway. And your unilateral declaration that it's just plain ridiculous evidently hasn't stopped hate groups from whacking Jews in the name of God. No, it's not right, and no, it's not something Christianity encourages, but it happens. So put on a pot of coffee and wake the f$#! up.
Gibson didn't insert Jews into the story for some Machiavellian, racist reason. Christ was a Jew crucified by Romans at the request of other Jews in Jerusalem. I suppose if Gibson had moved the story to suburban Cleveland and portrayed Republican logging executives crucifying Christ, the left would calm down. But it simply didn't happen that way.
Stop treating Mel Gibson like such a freakin' Boy Scout, Ann. Yes, your historical account of the Jews' role in Christ's death is accurate, which means Mel didn't just throw them in there arbitrarily. But the way Gibson portrays their role in the event is enough to make people wonder what his motivation is. So are the numerous stories about Mel, his very bizarre father and their opinions on those who follow the Jewish faith.
Of course, the original text is no excuse in Hollywood. The villains of Tom Clancy's book "The Sum of All Fears" were recently transformed from Muslim terrorists to neo-Nazis for the movie version. You wouldn't want to upset the little darlings. They might do something rash like slaughter 3,000 innocent American civilians in a single day. The only religion that can be constantly defamed and insulted is the one liberals pretend to be terrified of.
Waah, waah, waah. One minute Ann raises holy hell about anyone who would use the Crusades or the Inquisition to tar the entire Christian religion as bloodthirsty, the next minute she writes off the whole of Islam as a bunch of murderous terrorists. Nope, no double standard there. Then, exhausted, she curls up into her little All Liberals Hate Christians bed and falls asleep like a little angel. Lovely.
You don't need a college — or even high-school — education to understand how deeply idiotic this is. Ann writes column after column about how liberals don't believe in God and they hate Christians, and what's her supporting evidence? Umm...the fact that liberals don't believe in God, and they hate Christians! I said it, it's true, so there! Only this time she supported her "thesis" with the fact that...William Safire is actually a liberal. Yup, that's what she said. William Safire is a liberal, William Safire didn't like Mel Gibson's movie, ergo liberals hate Christ. Now's the part where you picture Jon Stewart making the "squeak-a, squeak-a" noise as he furiously rubs his eyes, then pulls his hands away and asks plaintively, "Whaaaa...?"
All due respect, Coulter fans, y'all have to be some incredibly stupid motherf$#!ers not to see through this crap. But just in case the message still hasn't penetrated those thick Kevlar skulls of yours, Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot will be back next week to pound it in some more! Until then, go forth, be fruitful, and multiply!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:17 AM
Thursday, March 11, 2004
You have got to be f$#!ing kidding me...
When Bush makes his big trip to New York today for his fundraisers and his little side trip to the groundbreaking of the 9/11™ memorial, park workers from all over the city will be dispatched to make sure he doesn't get any dirt on his shoes.
Nope, didn't make that up. To make sure he doesn't get any dirt on his shoes. At a fricking groundbreaking. For real. Are they sure there'll be enough workers left over to clear the brush away so that Bush doesn't get a run in his tights? Will they also be charged with making sure nobody yanks on his pigtails, or is that still the Secret Service's job?
All you Republicans and Bush sycophants out there who see this man as the first and foremost symbol of America's might, the brave, fearless individual who doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks and who is the only one remotely capable of protecting our nation from the evils of terrorism, before you go to sleep tonight, remember: Your hero mobilized park workers from all over New York to make sure he wouldn't get dirt on his shoes. Just when you think the girlification of the Republican Party can't get any worse...it does.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 2:58 PM
On a more positive note, at least now we know which time of the month is that time of the month for Marc Racicot
Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry called Wednesday for deeper tax cuts for the middle class than proposed by President Bush and described his Republican critics as "the most crooked ... lying group I've ever seen." The chairman of Bush's re-election campaign called on Kerry to apologize "for this negative attack."
Snip...
"Senator Kerry's statement today in Illinois was unbecoming of a candidate for the presidency of the United States of America, and tonight we call on Senator Kerry to apologize to the American people for this negative attack," Racicot said in a statement.
Let me make sure I'm crystal-clear on this one, Marcia: You're running point for a campaign that, in 2000, administered push polls implying that John McCain fathered a Vietnamese child out of wedlock, and just days ago tried to claim a connection between John Kerry and North Korea. And you're getting your tampon string in a knot over "the most crooked lying group I've ever seen"? (Compounding the irony is the fact that Racicot himself recently lied through his teeth on NPR about Bush "volunteering" to go to Vietnam back in the '70s.)
If Kerry or anyone else on the Democratic side does apologize for this, I'm gonna lose some respect for them. He's got absolutely nothing to be sorry for, and I think a lot of Democrats are going to be (and should be) pumped that the party standard-bearer is exhibiting the ol' fire-in-the-belly that just wasn't there in 2000. Meanwhile, don't be surprised to see the Republicans' testicles popping up on the sides of milk cartons. For a party that regularly accuses liberals of trying to turn America into a nation of oversensitive, politically correct whiners, they've done a bang-up job of shrieking like an infant with a steaming load in his Huggies each and every time something in this campaign hasn't gone their way. Methinks a certain party has gotten fat and happy from not being questioned for the better part of three years, but now that someone's actually challenging them on a daily basis, they just don't know how to deal. For their sake, it's something they might want to figure out before November.
Though it was a pretty ridiculous movie for the most part, there was one good exchange from the movie "Days of Thunder" where Tom Cruise is participating in his first NASCAR race and is stunned to find that other cars are banging into him right and left. But when Cruise radios in to his pit crew to report that "the sonofabitch just slammed into me," his mentor, the world-wise stock-car lifer played by Robert Duvall, responds: "No, no, he didn't slam into you, he didn't bump you, he didn't nudge you — he rubbed you. And rubbin', son, is racin'."
Welcome to racin', bitches.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:22 AM
Wednesday, March 10, 2004
Do it! Do it! Do it!
Close your eyes and wrap your brain around this one: Kerry/McCain '04.
"John Kerry is a close friend of mine. We have been friends for years," McCain said Wednesday when pressed to squelch speculation about a Kerry-McCain ticket. "Obviously I would entertain it."
McCain cautioned that it was unlikely the Democrats would go for "a pro-life, free-trading, non-protectionist, deficit hawk" on the ticket. But is it completely outside the realm of comprehension? The abortion issue might seem like a sticking point, but McCain and Kerry do seem to agree on one thing — that simply banning all abortions out of hand isn't a good idea — so maybe it's not the 900-pound gorilla it sounds like (the issue doesn't even show up on the issues section of McCain's Web site). Certainly the fact that McCain is tough on the deficit would present no problem, especially if the Democrats want to try their hand at becoming the party of fiscal responsibility in the wake of Bush's $500 billion budget deficits. And while the knee-jerk response is to describe the free-trade/protectionism issue as Republicans think good, Democrats think bad, the smart money knows that's way too complicated an issue to be broken along strictly partisan lines.
Imagine Kerry standing up there with McCain at his side in Boston this summer, saying, "Four years ago, George W. Bush promised us he'd be a uniter, not a divider — a promise that was never kept. But John McCain and I are standing before you today asking you to give us the chance to succeed where he failed. We're asking Democrats, Republicans, and independents to join us in the quest to return fiscal responsibility to Washington; to make real progress in the international war on terror; to ensure that every American has a chance at economic success; and to stand together as one to face the road ahead. These are not Republican values, these are not Democratic values, these are American values, and we're standing before you today to prove that. We're putting aside partisan politics to see those values flourish across this great land, and we're putting our faith in you, the American people, to do the same."
Would this ever happen? Nah, probably not. But there are worse ideas in the world.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 2:37 PM
As Erma Bombeck would say, "In theory, it should've worked"
Via Wonkette, our attention was drawn to a nifty little feature of the official Bush/Cheney re-election Web site: a custom poster-maker! Yes, click on that link and you'll get a poster with the official Bush/Cheney '04 logo that you can customize with your own city and state, your specific organization, even your own slogan. What a great idea!...
...Or at least it probably seemed like one at the time. At Wonkette's prodding, hundreds if not thousands of naughty anti-Bushies have headed over there to make mischief and create slogans the Bush campaign probably would rather not have associated with their official logo and the legend "Paid for by BUSH-CHENEY 'O4, Inc." Yes, you, too, can create a poster reading "Gay Muslim Socialists fo BUSH/CHENEY '04" that appears to be officially endorsed (and paid for) by the campaign — and all through the magic of the Internet (and Adobe PDF, sold separately)!
Before you get too excited, there are certain words the poster-maker won't let you use — obscenities being one example, but "Nazi" being another. Which begs the question, if the gimcrack Webmasters who thought this thing up were prescient enough to realize that interlopers would be attempting to throw the word "Nazi" on a sign, why didn't they take similar steps to prevent the use of, oh, "Gay Muslim Socialists" or "Jesus Hates Gays Too"?
Oh, well, 'tis not for us to speculate — 'tis only for us to make mischief, and merriment! Do mosey on over there and take advantage before the campaign bigwigs get wise. It's fun, it's easy, and best of all it's paid for by BUSH-CHENEY '04, Inc.!!!!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 1:04 PM
Tuesday, March 09, 2004
Scratch that
Well, it looks like we (and the New York Times) may have jumped the gun when we announced just now that Bush wouldn't be limiting his time before the 9/11 Commission to an hour after all. Joshua Marshall has a transcript of today's White House Press Briefing, during which Scott "Sucka MC" McClellan was asked (by my count) 17 times whether Bush would be willing to talk to the commission for longer than an hour and not once gave a straight answer. A sampling of his typical responses follows:
And as far as the President, the President looks forward to meeting with the chairman and vice chairman and answering all the questions that they want to raise.
But, look, he’s going to answer all the questions they want to raise.
I just said that the President will answer all the questions that they want to raise.
The President looks forward to answering all the questions that they want to bring up.
Look, he looks forward to the meeting. Let’s let the meeting take place.
And now they’ll have an opportunity to come to the President, and ask any question that they want to. The President is glad to answer their questions.
The President is going to make sure, as we have, that they have all the information that they need to do their job.
I said he's going to answer all their questions.
But I'm just stating a fact -- the President will answer all the questions they want to raise.
But I'm saying the President, of course, is going to answer all the questions they want to raise. I think that you all should make that distinction.
Again, from this podium I'm telling you that the President, of course, will answer all the questions that they want to raise.
Congratulations, McClellan, you've achieved the rare distinction of actually being more annoying than Ari Fleischer. What do you think about all this, Comic Book Guy?
Worst. White House press secretary. Ever.
Yeah, that's what I thought too.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 1:36 PM
"Bring it on," indeed
Well, it looks like Bush is backing down on his insistence that he'll only meet with the 9/11 Commission for one hour. Scott McClellan's tendency to repeat the same answers over and over again regardless of the question means that we'll reserve final judgment on (and relief over) this development until we actually get to read the transcript of the press briefing, but at least it's a start.
Now that you've made that concession, George, howsabout you drop this nonsense about John Kerry's 1995 proposal to cut the intelligence budget by $1.5 billion. As Atrios points out, Kerry's proposal would have been stretched over five years, and centered on pork-barrel projects that were obsolete once the Cold War ended anyway.
Besides, Georgie, you keep harping on this spending-cut thing and someone's gonna find out what John Ashcroft did right before 9/11: Not only did he deny an FBI request for $58 million in new antiterrorism funding, he slashed — by nearly 60 percent — a program that issued grants to state and local law-enforcement agencies to fund their own counterterrorism efforts.
And then there was Donald Rumsfeld, who threatened to veto a plan that would've shifted $600 million from missile defense to counterterrorism.
Rumsfeld made the threat on September 9, 2001. Ashcroft announced his cuts the very next day.
We like Atrios' title for his post on this subject: "Bring it on." Yes, let's please have a discussion about "irresponsible" treatment of the intelligence budget. Why don't we have that discussion right now. Maybe then we can dismiss this silly notion that Bush is stronger on national security than Kerry would be (a notion which, by the way, nobody has stepped forward to defend, despite our challenge to do just that). And then maybe we can put somebody competent in the White House.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 11:29 AM
The natives are getting desperate
Ignore our last post in which we said that the GOP's next attack theme against John Kerry would be that he's soft on national security. No, they found a couple things that are even better! And by "even better," we mean completely fricking ridiculous!
(1) John Kerry has a potty mouth! Matt "No, I'm Not a Real Journalist, But I Did Stay at a Holiday Inn Last Night" Drudge reports that Kerry's Web site is "riddled with obscenities"! He even goes so far as to link to the search results for words like "f$#!" and "shit" so you can see the extent of Kerry's foulness! Oh, the profanity!
If you don't feel like clicking on those links, we'll sum them up for you: The f-word pops up all of four times; in two of the instances, it was spoken by Kerry, while the other two times it was used by various magazine writers in articles written about Kerry that the campaign site links to. The word "shit" pops up five times, twice attributable to a direct quote by Kerry (though, oddly enough, they're the same article, quoting from a journal entry Kerry wrote during the Vietnam War). The other three times, again, it was used by magazine writers the Kerry campaign has no control over.
This is "riddled with obscenities" in Drudge's book? OK, Matty, we're gonna lay out a situation for you, and you stop us whenever it starts to ring a bell: You're still steamed that you jumped on board that bogus-ass Kerry-infidelity story and got royally humiliated as a result, and now you're trying to save face. You've got to do something that makes Kerry look bad. Anything. And the issue by which you choose to do that is...Web profanity? Why don't you go play outside, Matty, it's a beautiful day...
(2) John Kerry is in league with the North Koreans! No, sadly, we're not making that up — it really says so on the Republican National Committee's official freaking Web site. So now Fox News isn't "fair and balanced" enough for the GOP? They're turning to the "official mouthpiece of Mr. Kim’s communist regime" for their daily news?
But, uh, look at all the dirty furriners who've come right out and endorsed Kerry! He has a French cousin! And he's also been endorsed by, uh, the lead singer of Coldplay! And, uh...
If this is the best the Republican campaign machine can come up with, we're starting to wonder if Karl Rove might have lost his Midas touch. Be on the lookout for upcoming accusations that Kerry is responsible for everything from Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the Super Bowl to the heartbreak of psoriasis.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:34 AM
Monday, March 08, 2004
Monday, Monday, MONDAY! It's a Bush-Kerry flip-flop SMACKDOWN! (And the GWBWYPGN?! Challenge o' the Week)
The GOP campaign machine has already tried two lines of attack on John Kerry — the first was that he was a loathsome Godless commie sympathizer after the Vietnam War, which kind of lost steam because the Repubs risked setting off the where-was-Dubya-in-'72 booby-trap every time they came near it; the second was that he gobbled up special-interest dollars like there was no tomorrow, which lost steam because Kerry hasn't even come close to racking up the kind of special-interest cash that Republicans treat like mother's milk. You can call someone an elitist for driving a Mercedes, but when you're hurling such epithets from the back seat of your chauffeur-driven Rolls-Royce, you kind of look like a douchebag.
Undaunted, the Bushies have a new theme against Kerry: He's a flip-flopper! A tried-and-true strategy, yes, since "flip-flopper" has only been used against every single political candidate since the beginning of time. Once again, however, the stones are being launched from one very fragile glass house. The Daily Kos (or, more accurately, one of their readers) has done us all the service of writing down Bush's substantial laundry list of flip-flops, and if the Kerry people are smart, they'll be taking notes.
Once this theme fails just like the previous two did, the Bushies are sure to whip out the "weak on national security" accusation against Kerry, the one that's so far been advanced primarily by conservative bloggers and GOP congressmen who literally think that a vote for anyone but George Bush is a vote in favor of Osama bin Laden. As far as I can discern, these accusations of national-security weakness are based entirely on the fact that Kerry wouldn't go off half-cocked by invading, and subsequently occupying, countries that had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11™, and goodness, wouldn't that just be terrible. But maybe I'm missing something. So in the spirit of Why Do You Like George W. Bush? and Why Do You Think George W. Bush is Strong on National Security?, we'd like to propose the following question to the Bush supporters and non-liberals who occasionally stumble onto this site: What makes you think Bush has been any stronger on the national-security issue than Kerry would be? Get your response on in the comments thread below. No points for whipping out the old "'Cuz he kicked Saddam's ass, beeyatch!" canard, since it should be obvious by now that the Iraq invasion was little more than a distracting sideshow to the larger war against terrorism. But if anyone can come up with a substantive bit of evidence that Bush is the only one who can keep this country safe, while a vote for Kerry would lead America down the road to ruin, I'm all ears.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:49 AM
Friday, March 05, 2004
Now's the part of the show where we like to ask, And how are you doing?
Busy day ahead, so there won't be too many more posts today — so it's time to bring you, the reader, into this debacle Web site. We had that mini-poll a few weeks ago about whom the Democratic vice-presidential nominee should be, but that's only interactive up to a point; I want you guys to use the comments below to give your answers to the following two questions:
1. Whom do you think John Kerry should pick to be his running mate?
2. Leaving aside considerations like who actually ran for president (and even who's actually in politics), what's your ideal presidential ticket in 2004? The only guideline is that you want someone who can actually pick up some votes — beyond that, go nuts.
My choice for Kerry's running mate: Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen (runner-up: Bob Graham). '04 dream ticket: Wesley Clark and...Vermont Sen. James Jeffords. (Although if Paul Wellstone were still alive, what a great choice that would be. Sigh.)
So basically it's part fantasy baseball, part "McLaughlin Group." Leave your answers in the comments below, fill that sucker up. Be funny and/or creative if you're so inclined.
...Morton Kondracke!!...
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:56 AM
Sorbet
Here's something to cleanse your pallet after you've swallowed the bitter pill of Ann Coulter, below: a slate column by Will Saletan making the case against George W. Bush about as well as anyone has so far. Some call it "Steady leadership in a time of change," we call it "Stubborn leadership completely oblivious to change." Here, let Will tell it.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:02 AM
Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot, Part XXIX: The Gospel According to Ann
Hey, anybody in the audience today ever read George Orwell's 1984? Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot has — and we seem to recall this part called the Two Minutes Hate, in which the government basically riles the subjugated populace into a hate-filled frenzy against whomever they're opposing at that moment. If America ever does, in fact, turn into that kind of 1984-ian dystopia — and in some ways we ain't that far off — somebody needs to sign Ann Coulter as the director of the Two Minutes Hate. In just one column this week, she calls the wrath of the Almighty upon everyone from Godless liberals and bloodthirsty Muslims to lying film critics and allegedly pansy Volvo drivers. Nope, we're not kidding.
But the worst part is, she cloaks all of this hatred and bile in the guise of righteous indignation that God and Christianity are being criticized. Actually, you'll note that neither God nor Christianity are being criticized — Mel Gibson and his movie "The Passion" are. But the thought processes of Ann and her right-wing sycophants are primitive enough that Gibson makes an easy surrogate for Christ, and that lets them start right in with their liberal-flaying. "Just a movie," you say? Then clearly you hate our Lord Jesus, you filthy Satanic scum! Now that we've got you in the mood and your bile duct is primed, let's begin with the Two Minutes Hate, as Ann gets us started with "The Passion of the Liberal":
In the dozens and dozens of panic-stricken articles the New York Times has run on Mel Gibson's movie, "The Passion of the Christ," the unavoidable conclusion is that liberals haven't the vaguest idea what Christianity is.
For Chri...um, I mean, for crying out loud, is this going to be another column about how not a single Democrat believes in God? Is there no argument so moronically fatuous that Coulter won't spend a thousand words trying to advance it?
The Times may have loopy ideas about a lot of things, but at least when they write about gay bathhouses and abortion clinics, you get the sense they know what they're talking about.
But Christianity just doesn't ring a bell. The religion that has transformed Western civilization for two millennia is a blank slate for liberals. Their closest reference point is "conservative Christians," meaning people you're not supposed to hire. And these are the people who carp about George Bush's alleged lack of "intellectual curiosity."
Snore. Somebody wake us up when Ann either presents some evidence in support of her Democrats-don't-believe-in-God "hypothesis," or when she appears to have some kind of a point with all this.
The most amazing complaint, championed by the Times and repeated by all the know-nothing secularists on television, is that Gibson insisted on "rubbing our faces in the grisly reality of Jesus' death." The Times was irked that Gibson "relentlessly focused on the savagery of Jesus' final hours" – at the expense of showing us the Happy Jesus. Yes, Gibson's movie is crying out for a car chase, a sex scene or maybe a wise-cracking orangutan.
As always, Coulter has applied as snide and selective an interpretation to a Times story as she possibly can, so here's the actual review from which she quotes if you want to make your own judgment. You'll notice that the review's points are largely cinematic in nature, as opposed to theologic — and far from "crying out for a car chase, sex scene or maybe a wise-cracking orangutan," the reviewer, A.O. Scott, seems to imply that Gibson has already treated Jesus' death with too much gore, sensationalism, and Hollywood shallowness as it is. But acknowledging that would force Ann to admit that the Times does have something valuable to say every once in a while, and we all know that ain't gonna happen.
The Times ought to send one of its crack investigative reporters to St. Patrick's Cathedral at 3 p.m. on Good Friday before leaping to the conclusion that "The Passion" is Gibson's idiosyncratic take on Christianity.
The Passion of Jesus Christ isn't "Gibson's idiosyncratic take." Gibson's movie, however, is. I've been to numerous Good Friday services (wonder if Ann can say the same?), and at none of them was I treated to a blood-soaked 45-minute beating of the priest who was playing Jesus, nor did a crow ever come down to peck the eyes out of the parishioner playing one of the thieves crucified next to him.
In a standard ritual, Christians routinely eat the flesh and drink the blood of Jesus Christ, aka "the Lamb of God." The really serious Catholics do that blood- and flesh-eating thing every day, the sickos. The Times has just discovered the tip of a 2,000-year-old iceberg.
Wow, so Ann knows about Communion. Whoop-dee-doo, I started doing that since I was 7, and I'm not crazy about Ann exploiting that ritual simply to politically bludgeon the New York Times. As a raised-then-lapsed-then-reformed-again Catholic, I'd be really, really interested to know how much time Ann Coulter has spent, total, in a Catholic church. Anybody have any guesses?
But the loony-left is testy with Gibson for spending so much time on Jesus' suffering and death while giving "short shrift to Jesus' ministry and ideas" – as another Times reviewer put it. According to liberals, the message of Jesus, which somehow Gibson missed, is something along the lines of "be nice to people" (which to them means "raise taxes on the productive").
Yeah, "blessed are the merciful," what a crock of shit! "Love thy neighbor," gross! What if my neighbor is a liberal or a Muslim? Do I still have to?
You don't need a religion like Christianity, which is a rather large and complex endeavor, in order to flag that message. All you need is a moron driving around in a Volvo with a bumper sticker that says "be nice to people." Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity...
Hear that, Christians and Coulterheads? "Being nice to people" has been reduced to the status of "incidental tenet" of Christianity as far as Coulter's concerned. If that's only an "incidental tenet," what does she think the really important stuff is? "Kill liberals"? "Smear the homos"? "Don't eat shellfish"?
...(as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of "kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed").
So Christianity isn't all that concerned with being nice to people, and Islam is only concerned with smelling bad and killing people! Boy, Ann, you're just batting a thousand with your interpretations of the world's belief systems! How on earth did you find the time to fit in all those comparative-religion courses between your Klan meetings?
But to call it the "message" of Jesus requires ... well, the brain of Maureen Dowd.
It may not have been the message, but it was a message, was it not? Have I been getting Christianity wrong all this time?
In fact, Jesus' distinctive message was: People are sinful and need to be redeemed, and this is your lucky day because I'm here to redeem you even though you don't deserve it, and I have to get the crap kicked out of me to do it. That is the reason He is called "Christ the Redeemer" rather than "Christ the Moron Driving Around in a Volvo With a 'Be Nice to People' Bumper Sticker on It."
But isn't "being nice to people" kinda the opposite of "sinful"...aaah, screw it.
The other complaint from the know-nothing crowd is that "The Passion" will inspire anti-Semitic violence. If nothing else comes out of this movie, at least we finally have liberals on record opposing anti-Semitic violence. Perhaps they should broach that topic with their Muslim friends.
We now have another slanderous lie to add to our Coulter On Liberals collection: Liberals love seeing violence done to Jews! We'll put that one right next to "Liberals don't believe in God," in between "Liberals are sad that Saddam got captured" and "Liberals want to help al-Qaeda."
One Times review of "The Passion" said: "To be a Christian is to face the responsibility for one's own most treasured sacred texts being used to justify the deaths of innocents." At best, this is like blaming Jodie Foster for the shooting of Ronald Reagan.
Here we go again...and here's the article in case anyone would like to actually read it instead of trust a hack like Coulter to accurately sum it up for you.
But the reviewer somberly warned that a Christian should "not take the risk that one's life or work might contribute to the continuation of a horror." So the only thing Christians can do is shut up about their religion. (And no more Jodie Foster movies!)
Who said Christians should "shut up about their religion"? The writer was merely cautioning Christian filmmakers like Gibson — quite calmly and eloquently, we thought — to be very careful in how they portray other religions, and consider how those portrayals might be interpreted by the public at large. Hell, that's sage advice for any filmmaker, no matter what their movies are about. But that didn't jibe with what Ann was trying to say, so once again, she twists the writer's words to her whims.
By contrast, in the weeks after 9-11, the Times was rushing to assure its readers that "prominent Islamic scholars and theologians in the West say unequivocally that nothing in Islam countenances the Sept. 11 actions."
Exactly what comparison is Ann trying to make here? After 9/11, the Times went out of its way to explain that Islam doesn't promote violence against non-believers, even though some people may use 9/11 as evidence of the opposite. In her article on "The Passion," Mary Gordon points out that Christianity doesn't promote violence against non-believers, even though some people may use "The Passion" as evidence of the opposite. Gosh, it sounds like everyone's actually being pretty loving and understanding here! — except for Ann, of course.
(That's if you set aside Muhammad's many specific instructions to kill non-believers whenever possible.)
Ann proceeds to make exactly one citation of such a "specific instruction" (below), and she even manages to cock that up. Sure, the Quran contains a lot of violent imagery, though it's juxtaposed with a number of exhortations for peace; it's kind of inconsistent that way, open to an awful lot of interpretation. Kind of like another holy book you might have heard of...oh, what is it called again? It's the one that says "Thou shalt not kill" but also "an eye for an eye"...it's right on the tip of my tongue...oh, what is it? Wait, wait, don't tell me...
Times columnists repeatedly extolled "the great majority of peaceful Muslims." Only a religion with millions of practitioners trying to kill Americans and Jews is axiomatically described as "peaceful" by liberals.
Are you freaking kidding me? The woman who said "bomb their cities, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity" suddenly has a bug up her bony ass about violence in the name of God?!
Even Coulter's diehard fans should be able to grasp the hypocrisy here. When Mel Gibson makes a movie that blames bloodthirsty Jews for the death of his Savior, Coulter rails away at those who would paint all Christians with the same broad, bigoted brush. (Longtime readers will also note she flies into a frothing rage anytime someone brings up the Crusades or the Inquisition.) But when 19 Muslims out of 1.48 billion crash Boeing 767s into the World Trade Center, it's perfectly acceptable to slag off the entire religion as a bunch of bloodthirsty killers, and to scoff at any idea that some of them, any of them, might be "peaceful." (Despite the fact that the standard Muslim greeting, Assalamu Alaikum, means "peace be upon you." Oh, those lying Muslims, they're probably just being snarky!)
As I understand it, the dangerous religion is the one whose messiah instructs: "[I]f one strikes thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also" and "Love your enemies ... do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that persecute and calumniate you." The peaceful religion instructs: "Slay the enemy where you find him." (Surah 9:92).
Please note that the cited Quran passage says nothing of the kind. Read this additional information from World O' Crap if you're interested in finding out just how Ann might've gotten confused; it turns out she's cribbing her notes on the Quran from noted Islam expert Jerry Falwell.
Imitating the ostrich-like posture of certain German Jews who ignored the growing danger during Hitler's rise to power, today's liberals are deliberately blind to the real threats of violence that surround us. Their narcissistic self-image requires absolute solicitude toward angry savages plotting acts of terrorism. The only people who scare them are the ones who worship a Jew.
Coulterites, I hope your souls feel just a little dirty just from having read this crap. In the span of just a few hundred words, Coulter basically dismisses the idea of "loving one's neighbor" as an important tenet of Christianity; slags off the entire Muslim religion as a bunch of bloodthirsty killers, and deliberately misquotes their holy book to support that view; and continues to reiterate her opinion that no liberal anywhere believes in God, as if that was some intelligent insight worthy of being repeated. We can only surmise that Ann's knowledge of Christian theology isn't nearly as deep as she'd like you to think it is, because this certainly doesn't sound very Christian to us. (Maybe she's going to try and defend herself with the Homer Simpson excuse — "Marrrge, I'm just trying to get into heaven! It's not like I'm running for Jesus or anything!") Throughout her claims that liberals don't know squat about the teachings of Christianity, the one who appears to have missed the Christian message most completely is, ironically enough, Coulter herself.
Nobody who's been following this feature for any length of time should have the idea that Ann is a kindhearted person, but lately she's been outdoing herself week after week. It's not even that she's intellectually dishonest (though she is), that she insults her readers' intelligence (though she does), or that she's got bizarre ideas on how this country should be run (though she has) — she's just a mean, nasty, vindictive bitch who gets off on the very sort of anger and hate of which this post-9/11 world needs absolutely no more. In other words, she's the polar opposite of the example Jesus was sent down to earth to be. Oh, well...as the one liberal in North America who still believes in God, Ann Coulter is a Lousy Writer and She Isn't Even That Hot will pray for her anyway! Ta-ta, heathens!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:43 AM
Thursday, March 04, 2004
We missed the big one-oh-oh-oh-oh, so...
...if you fire up this Web site and the number in the counter on the right says "20,000," howsabout you shoot us an e-mail.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 2:05 PM
Hi. It's Dubya. Mind if I exploit your national tragedy for a little while? It'll only take a second.
Demonstrating the sensitivity and eye for good taste for which his administration has become world-renowned, George W. Bush will be using images from the World Trade Center disaster in a round of TV ads unveiled yesterday on behalf of his re-election campaign.
Not surprisingly, some folks are upset:
"It's a slap in the face of the murders of 3,000 people," Monica Gabrielle, whose husband died in the twin towers, told the New York Daily News for its Thursday editions. "It is unconscionable." ...
"It's as sick as people who stole things out of the place," said Firefighter Tommy Fee of Queens Rescue Squad 270. "The image of firefighters at ground zero should not be used for this stuff, for politics." ...
"I would be less offended if he showed a picture of himself in front of the Statue of Liberty," said Tom Roger, whose daughter perished on American Airlines Flight 11. "But to show the horror of 9/11 in the background, that's just some advertising agency's attempt to grab people by the throat."
And these are friends and family members of people who died, for crying out loud. But if you're a Republican who's trying to find a way to ignore how repugnant and exploitative this all is, just do what Karen Hughes does and assume they're all Democrats anyway:
"I can understand why some Democrats might not want the American people to remember the great leadership and strength the president and first lady Laura Bush brought to our country in the aftermath of that," she said.
Mmmm, yeah, great leadership and strength. The kind of leadership and strength that allowed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the al-Qaeda operative who's been implicated in this week's bombing in Baghdad that killed 271 people (not to mention additional incidents that resulted in hundreds of other deaths), to get away clean. If the Republicans can fume about how Clinton supposedly "let Osama bin Laden get away," why aren't they more pissed off about this:
In June 2002, U.S. officials say intelligence had revealed that Zarqawi and members of al-Qaida had set up a weapons lab at Kirma, in northern Iraq, producing deadly ricin and cyanide.
The Pentagon quickly drafted plans to attack the camp with cruise missiles and airstrikes and sent it to the White House, where, according to U.S. government sources, the plan was debated to death in the National Security Council.
Snippety snip...
Four months later, intelligence showed Zarqawi was planning to use ricin in terrorist attacks in Europe.
The Pentagon drew up a second strike plan, and the White House again killed it. By then the administration had set its course for war with Iraq.
“People were more obsessed with developing the coalition to overthrow Saddam than to execute the president’s policy of preemption against terrorists,” according to terrorism expert and former National Security Council member Roger Cressey.
Yup, mm-hmm. But we're supposed to believe that the war in Iraq was integral to the fight against terrorism, and that it wouldn't distract from the ongoing battle against al-Qaeda. And we're supposed to believe that Bush is soooo strong on national security, the only guy who is qualified to protect America in this uncertain new world. Well, so far nobody's convinced me. In fact, he might just be the least-qualified one out there.
ETA: ...And it might be even worse than I thought. Josh Marshall explains.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 12:05 PM
Silence, bitches, and do not bore the great Scott McClellan!
Maybe you think that joke about one hundred women with black eyes is really funny but you're worried that you can't tell it in mixed company. Well, just replace "one hundred women with black eyes" with "one hundred members of the White House press corps" and you're golden, because evidently the press corps just doesn't f$#!ing listen!
Herewith are utterances made by White House Press Secretary Scott "Sucka MC" McClellan at Tuesday's press briefing. What a pain in the ass these reporters must be, because Sucka said all of this in a briefing that spanned a mere 28 minutes:
No, I think we've addressed this matter. I think we addressed it yesterday very clearly.
Well, again, I just mentioned where our focus is.
Terry, I think that the matter has been addressed. Secretary Powell yesterday fully addressed it, too, and outlined exactly how events occurred.
I think I've described the President's views from this podium, and I would leave it at that.
The President has talked about that.
He talked about it in his State of the Union address.
Les, I think that's a matter that you need to address to the state of California.
Les, I think that California issues you can address to California.
The President's views are very well-known.
Well, I think you know the way the legislative process works.
His views are very well-known on the other issues, as well.
His views are very well-known, David. I just said that.
Our views are very well-known on those issues.
I think, Goyal, that we've addressed this issue.
And I would refer you back to those remarks.
Russell, I think I've addressed this matter. I think I said, as recently as yesterday, that in terms of the issue, if you're asking about recusals or things like that, those are issues to address to Justice Scalia. And I think Justice Scalia has addressed that matter.
All right, thank you.
Why are we even paying Sucka a salary? Why can't we just replace him with a voice-activated mp3 device that simply repeats the phrase "I've already gone over that" whenever someone asks it a question? Or if "Go back and look it up yourself" is the only answer the press corps is ever going to get, why don't we just replace him with any librarian from any high school in the United States? Or InstaPundit?
Enough! Scott McClellan is tired of answering questions he has already answered, even if he hasn't already answered them! Scott McClellan tires of your foolishness! Begone, and if you come up with a decent question the great Scott McClellan hasn't already addressed, you may address it to the great Scott McClellan!
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 9:26 AM
OK, sure, but he was probably preoccupied with all the F-102s he was flying at the time
Well, somebody has finally come forward to say they remember seeing George W. Bush 30 years ago...but it wasn't anybody who served in the Alabama National Guard.
Rather, it's one of Bush's old economics professors from Harvard, and he's got a few insights about Bush that go a little deeper than "Best Friends 4-eva! C U next year!!!!" scrawled in the back of the Harvard Business School yearbook:
I still vividly remember him. In my class, he declared that "people are poor because they are lazy." He was opposed to labor unions, social security, environmental protection, Medicare, and public schools. To him, the antitrust watch dog, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Securities Exchange Commission were unnecessary hindrances to "free market competition." To him, Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal was "socialism."
Yeah, I definitely want this guy to be president for another four years. (Link via Atrios.)
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 8:25 AM
Wednesday, March 03, 2004
No honor among good ol' boys
This right here is the new Georgia flag. Like it? Not only is it purty, but peep that arch in the middle of the blue field. That's the University of Georgia arch, beeyatch, not some sissy yellow jacket. Say word, son!
Anyway, the good people of my home state voted yesterday to keep this flag instead of the previous flag that Roy Barnes proposed while he was governor to make the Confederate battle emblem smaller. So why are some people still pissed off?
Well, you see, the current governor, Sonny Perdue, defeated the incumbent Barnes in 2002 after promising to give Georgia voters the chance to reinstate the old stars-and-bars flag over the Barnes flag. The votes of the Confederate-flag-crazy fergit-hell crowd helped Perdue sail into the governor's mansion, but when it came time for Perdue to pony up with the promised referendum, he OK'd a referendum plan that offered only two choices — the Barnes flag, and the lovely emblem you see above. Not appearing on your ballot: the stars and bars. D'oh!
And now the hard-core "flaggers" are pissed. Awwww...poor y'all. On the one hand, as a distant relative of Robert E. Lee, I want to feel sorry for you. On the other hand, when you put your faith in a good ol' boy like Sonny and base your entire vote on something as picayune as a frickin' flag, you're kind of leaving yourselves open for some embarrassing shit like this.
So anyway...no soup for you. But love you guys. Hey, I hear they're still flyin' the stars and bars in South Carolina! Like, whenever you're ready...
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 12:37 PM
Good for the 9/11 Commission. If Clinton and Gore, the two guys who were responsible for 9/11 in the first place (everybody says so), can handle questions from the entire Commission panel, what do Bush and Cheney have to hide, and why do they only want to sit for an hour? Hmmmm?
If the Democratic policies had been pursued over the last two or three years, the kind of tax increases that both Kerry and Edwards have talked about, we would not have had the kind of job growth that we've had.
What, negative job growth? Whew, yeah, thank goodness we didn't let the Democrats mess with that. Really dodged a bullet there! I mean, who wants something like jobs? Ew! Yuck!
But we shouldn't be surprised to hear this kind of nonsense from a guy who characterizes the "Democratic policies" as "tax increases," even though, as Josh Marshall points out, the Democratic candidates never campaigned for a tax increase — they merely campaigned against the thoroughly ill-advised tax cuts Bush rammed through. So not quite the same thing.
Oh, and if you peep that Yahoo! story, you'll also note that Cheney is officially supporting the gay-marriage amendment that Bush threw his weight behind last week. Despite the fact that his daughter is, you know, an open lesbian. "Father of the Year" trophies may be sent to The White House, c/o Vice President Dick Cheney, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 7:44 AM
Monday, March 01, 2004
Congratulations on your brand-new testicles!
It took him long enough, but now that Bush has let his homophobe flag fly and vocalized his desire to keep gay people second-class citizens, Andrew Sullivan has all of a sudden grown a pair and learned that criticizing the president is OK. He's even written a whole column about how Bush's relative success in wartime could prove to be a disadvantage this election season.
Sully even goes so far as to offer some sage advice for you LINOs who claim to be Libertarian but then vote straight-ticket Republican every time you actually have to put your ballots where your mouths are. Well, he's actually just the conduit for said advice from a libertarian e-mailer, but hey, we'll take what we can get:
You claim in your blog that 'It looks increasingly as if anyone who cares about fiscal sanity is going to have to sit this election out.' However, isn't it obvious that the only way to impose some sort of fiscal sanity is to vote Kerry — resulting in a split government that can't reach any sort of agreement as to how to spend money?
Additionally, if we are going to spend money like drunken sailors wouldn't we rather have Kerry, who will at least tax the baby-boomer generation that is benefitting from all this spending, instead of Bush who wants to run up huge deficits and force these problems on future generations... people like ME?
As an uncatered to libertarian in my twenties, I think the answers to both of these questions are 'yes' and 'yes'. I intend to vote Republican except for President, where I intend to vote a big fat 'D'. Then I'll sit back and pray for government gridlock.
Sully agrees with this sentiment, even going so far as to admit that "Kerry seems to have a better grip on fiscal reality than Bush does." Democrats, the party of fiscal responsibility. Who woulda thunk it? Look, I'm not trying to say that the Democratic Party as a whole has all of a sudden had its fiscal come-to-Jesus moment and is now a bunch of budgetary tightwads. But at least we understand that if the government is going to spend an assload of money, it behooves said government to take in enough money to compensate, rather than just slash revenues like crazy and pray for the best — in other words, a tax-and-spend liberal is still better than a don't-tax-but-spend-anyway "conservative." It's time to end this fantasy that Republicans spend less and manage the country's money better, because three years of Bush have proven that to be emphatically false.
(Oh, and props to Sully for bringing our attention to this.)
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 4:03 PM
We're number one runners-up! We're number one runners-up!
GWBWYPGN?!'s influence continues to spread, like wildfire, cream cheese, or SARS — TBOGG named us a runner-up in his competition for best Bush/Cheney re-election slogan. Might we be patting ourselves a little too hard on the back for what basically amounts to an honorable mention? Possibly, but I don't see you winning any recognition for your Bush/Cheney re-election slogans, so until you do, suck it!
Man, now that I think about it, "Suck it" makes a perfect Bush/Cheney re-election slogan. Ah, well. Spilled milk, in any case. If you like GWBWYPGN?!'s sort-of-award-winning slogan idea, or any of the other ones we came up with, by all means feel free to put them on a bumper sticker. Don't steal any of the other slogans TBOGG published, because those were other people's ideas and they may not like you stealing them. But us, hey, we'd love for you to steal them. Anything to get our insolent and disrespectful crap work seen by a greater audience, we're whores! Just make sure when anyone asks you about your witty and hilarious bumper sticker, you say, "GWBWYPGN?!, baby — I steal from the best! Or if not the best, certainly the most desperate for public acclaim and recognition!" But really, we're doing it for the kids.
# Once again back is the incredible Doug at 11:52 AM
So long, Perle, and don't let the door hit ya where the good Lord split ya
Richard Perle, the controversial member of the Defense Policy Board who called Seymour Hersh "the closest thing American Journalism has to a terrorist" because Hersh exposed Perle's connection to security/defense venture-capital company Trireme Partners in this article, resigned from the DPB a couple weeks ago, but his resignation letter became public over the weekend. The whole letter can be found here, but this is my favorite paragraph:
We are now approaching a long presidential election campaign, in the course of which issues on which I have strong views will be widely discussed and debated. I would not wish those views to be attributed to you or the President at any time, and especially not during a presidential campaign. This is particularly true now since I have just published a book that calls for far reaching reform of government departments responsible for combating terrorism. Many of the ideas in that book are controversial and I wish to be free to argue them without those views or my arguments getting caught up in the campaign.
Shorter Richard Perle*: "I just wrote a book that says we should invade Syria, Iran, and Libya, and given that the unadulterated 100-percent bat-shit-craziness of these ideas may hurt the President's re-election campaign by association, it's probably best if I hang back for a while."
Richard Perle, stepping into the strike zone and taking one for the team. A prince among men.
