Needlenose

Tell me this ain’t so…another rig in the Gulf of Mexico just exploded.

I can’t believe the unmitigated gall of Paul Bremer to suggest that the U.S. should continue to occupy Iraq until it becomes democratic.  WTF?  Seriously, dude, weren’t you the one who fucking disbanded the Iraqi army, releasing 200K well-trained, angry Sunni soldiers into a jobless economy with ready access to Saddam’s old weapon caches?

This line from the linked article made me chuckle:

“The dismantling of the Iraqi Army in the aftermath of the American invasion is now widely regarded as a mistake that stoked rebellion among hundreds of thousands of former Iraqi soldiers…”

Yeah, well I regarded it as a spectacularly dumbass idea the moment Bremer made in in May 2003.  Also, in case you’ve forgotten, Bremer was the dumbass who kept telling us that things were turning a corner in Iraq, and stability was always “just 6 months away.”  Well asshole, it’s now 2010, and the Sunnis are going all “Hurt Locker” on Shi’ite ass, and the corner sure as hell isn’t in sight.

Frankly, I was surprised to hear from Bremer at all – it’s hard to believe he is really either that stupid or delusional.  My guess is this is just the first of a series of salvos from the reactionaries trying to blame the Democrats for the inevitable failure of Shrubya’s Iraqi Fiasco, just like the wrong-wing blow-hards already do about Vietnam (“we won every battle…if only we had nuked Hanoi…blah blah blah”).

This is the kind of nostalgia I can live without.  Via Politico today:

If President Barack Obama needed any more incentive to go all out for Democrats this fall, here it is: Republicans are planning a wave of committee investigations targeting the White House and Democratic allies if they win back the majority.

Everything from the microscopic — the New Black Panther party — to the massive –- think bailouts — is on the GOP to-do list, according to a half-dozen Republican aides interviewed by POLITICO. . . .

. . . And a handful of aggressive would-be committee chairmen — led by Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Lamar Smith (R-Texas) — are quietly gearing up for a possible season of subpoenas not seen since the Clinton wars of the late 1990s.

Issa would like Obama’s cooperation, says Kurt Bardella, spokesman for the ranking Republican on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. But it’s not essential.

“How acrimonious things get really depend on how willing the administration is in accepting our findings [and] responding to our questions,” adds Bardella, who refers to his boss as “questioner-in-chief.’

Yes, my friends, that’s right — if their obstruct-and-blame game plan borrowed from 1993-94 repeats its success in giving Republicans control of the House of Representatives, the GOP will do its damnedest to relive the whole eight years of Bill Clinton’s presidency.  (No word yet if Obama will cooperate in the re-enactment by having a tawdry Oval Office affair, although he’s been remarkably obliging toward the Republican strategy so far.)

Not that anyone should be surprised, of course.  The Republicans only have a few tricks in their bag, and endless, puffed-up accusations of Democratic scandals have always been one of them.  And with a nominally Democratic president still in place in the White House no matter what happens in the midterm elections, it’s not like the GOP could entertain thoughts of passing a serious policy agenda, even assuming they had one.

Still, think about the media’s belly-exposing submissiveness toward the right wing in dealing with manufactured controversies like ACORN and Park 51.  Now imagine how much more airtime will be devoted to these nonsensical claims once they’re backed by House subcommittees with subpoena power, and the TV bobbleheads can gravely intone that Serious Republican Congressmen wouldn’t make such accusations unless they had some merit.  Sobering, isn’t it?

And even if relentless scandal-mongering won’t boost the public’s opinion of Republicans very much, it will accomplish the party’s underlying strategic goal — distracting Americans from issues that really matter, and convincing them further that government can’t accomplish anything useful.  (The Democrats, truth be told, are only good at the second part of that.)

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.)

Too funny.

We’ve only got Soros (where is my monthly check btw, George?).  They’ve got the Koch Brothers, Satan’s little helper Rupert Murdoch, and another 184 billionaire-donors.  Not to mention all those corporations…

Reactionary thinking of the junk in Murdoch's trunk

Do you think this or this is more likely to be a consequence of this?

Wasn’t it just a couple of years ago when the Reactionaries were screaming about how Obama was being controlled by his anti-American pastor Reverend Jeremiah Wright?  How then can their tiny brains accept a contradictory theory, that Obama is a Muslim? This can’t be explained by stupidity alone, I theorize that the Reactionary Brain also suffers an extreme deficit in mid- and long-term memory.

Would be amusing if they weren't all heavily armed.

Can reactionaries get any loonier than sovereign citizens?  I say we declare war and attack!  Or we could march them out to a reservation somewhere in Montana.  See how well that works out for them!

*Update* Ayn Rand Paul should join these loonies out on the reservation.  Forget Montana, let’s relocate the ‘sovereigns’ to Kentucky.

No automatic citizenship for the uneducated

I actually think the Tea Baggers may be on to something with their calls to repeal the 14th Amendment.  Just because somebody is born here doesn’t mean they’d make a valuable addition to the US, right?  Here is what I’d do – when the person turns 18, I’d have them hand-letter a sign.  If the sign is misspelled or ungrammatical, the candidate is denied citizenship and deported to some random 3rd-world country.

By the same token, we should fast-track the citizenship process for immigrants with Masters and Doctorates to replace the vast swath of stupid conservatives we’d be deporting.  It’s a win-win proposition!

Just in case you forgot why nuclear energy is so bad, here is an unpleasant reminder from Chernobyl – the wildfires are near the contaminated area – a burn in the region could release radioactive ash.