Poor reactionary conspiracy nuts – now the UN-dispatched, feminazi-filled black helicopters sent to spy on their militias in anticipation of One-World Government will be equipped with nearly silent rotary blades – so they can’t hear ‘em coming!
I can just hear World Overlord Dr. Ali Abdussalam Treki cackling in glee!
Tip of the ‘Nose to Game Buddy!
Enjoying the Shrubya taxcuts the Democravens won't rescind
The Class War is over. We lost. These guys won.
I was naturally suspicious a few years back when Rupert Murdoch decided to build a McMansion in Beijing, but now I’m certain there is something evil afoot there – the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman just used the term ‘fair and balanced’ in a discussion regarding the U.S.’s concerns that China is deliberately undervaluing the yuan in order to maintain the flow of under priced goods to the U.S. It’s pretty clear from the context that he means it exactly in the ‘Fox’ sense – whatever we want or believe is “fair and balanced, so screw you!”
My previous post about alternative energy technology being manufactured in China attracted a fair bit of discussion. Beyond the snark, the U.S. does indeed have legitimate concerns about how China conducts its business.
The yuan needs to float freely against the dollar and the euro – like a real currency. Right now they have a built in mechanism to ‘not be undersold’ by U.S. goods.
Why is the U.N. still giving them development aid? If they can afford to loan us trillions of dollars, then can afford to lift themselves out of poverty.
We need to enforce environmental concerns with excise taxes. Chinese pollution doesn’t just stay in China – their crap comes wafting in the air and affects everyone. They don’t want to commit to emissions caps? Well estimate their emissions, put a price on them, and attach the price to their cheap goods. They won’t come to the table unless we force them to come to the table.
I could go on in the same vein about labor concerns, sustainable sourcing of resources, etc. Right now China is acting like the ‘bad boy’ of the planet, and will continue to do so if there are no consequences.
Imagine this WWII headline:
“Japanese attempt to fire a bullet at American forces. Republicans demand Roosevelt’s resignation”.
Now you’ve got a picture of the basic lack of seriousness and rationality associated with the right-wing claims, and the media’s stenography, about the Lap Bomber incident. The basic premise of the Cheneyites argument is that, while we are engaged in a worldwide war against an implacable and omnipresent foe, if one enemy footsoldier attempts one act of war anyplace in the world, it signifies that everyone in the administration has failed in their duty and must resign. Predictably, rather than pointing out that, when at war, enemies fight back and casualties can occur, the media swallows whole the moronic paradigm of risk-free, casualty-free global war as presented by Cheney and Republican Rep. Peter Hoekstra.
The Republican strategy for exploiting politically the failed bombing attempt is conveniently outlined in Murdoch’s house organ for the right, the Wall Street Journal. While Rep. Hoekstra, in a direct mail appeal, calls the Obama administration and Democrats “weak-kneed liberals”, and Cheney clangs his familiar gong of inexperience and mushiness, the best Axelrod can come up with is to call it “unbecoming” of Republicans to exploit national security politically. WSJ notes that the White House has leaked to bloggers the fact that the Yemeni Al Queda leaders are former Guantanamo inmates released by Bush, and has also publicized some high-profile arrests, like the David Headley case. The thing that no-one dares do is question the basic premise that the US can be engaged in multiple shooting wars in the Middle East, while also using unmanned drones to target suspects in multiple countries where we are not officially at war (unfortunately slaughtering a few wedding parties in the bargain), without any cost or interruption to the daily security of Americans at home.
As illustrated by my fictitous headline, if Republicans really believed their rhetoric of war, it would be obvious that wars presume enemies, and enemies fight back. Wouldn’t it be refreshing if some intrepid journalist pointed out the fact that, in war, especially guerilla wars with no borders and no defined state actors, civilians are at risk, and that that is the price of “superpower” status and world policeman actions?
So can Obama and Democrats use this line of argument to bolster their case? Unfortunately, the answer is clear. Unlike the British, who, while thoroughly despicable in their conduct of colonial empire, at least kept the stiff upper lip when the inevitable casualties ensued, the American public, body politic and media is so fundamentally immature that the idea of war without sacrifice (except some poor anonomous farmboys and homeboys whose official portraits scroll by on the evening news) is accepted as the norm, and any hostile act shakes our republic to the core. Any politician who notes that empire has cost, that enemies have resources, and that hypocrisy and abandonment of our core principles, as demonstrated by our support of Israeli exceptionalism and torture for convenience, has a price, would be committing political suicide for stating what any mature advisor would consider obvious.
Would it have been a tragedy if that plane had been blasted from the sky? Obviously, as it is a tragedy that the Taliban has murdered an entire CIA station in Afghanistan. The greater tragedy is the fact that the solidarity in face of war that lead to the defeat of a far more dangerous and implacable foe in WWII has been abandoned by the Babbitts of the Republican right in their desperation to reclaim the right to undo our republic from within, as they have successfully done during every Repug administration in recent history. And the foundational catastrophe of our age is that the press, in its laziness and frivolity, accepts every shoddy premise put forth by the know-nothing caucus as if it’s a serious critique, without once noting that a lie is a lie, or that a failed party with blood on its hands from 9/11 to Iraq to Abu Ghraib to Palestine to the dismantling of our moral legitimacy and economic stability has little right to give lessons in war policy.
Some tea bagger dumbass and his accomplice beg for a beat-down and get it. I don’t condone the violence, but I watched this a few times through and I believe the first ‘hit’ goes to the tea bagger.
I mused a few times during the darkest days of the Shrubya Reign of Error that the wrong-wingers really want us to devolve into a place like Brazil where people are armed, the rule of law is tenuous, the streets are dangerous and where political passions run high.
In fact, this kinda reminds me of growing up in Puerto Rico. Around elections, little vans and micro-busses would cruise around the streets with megaphones blaring the party and candidate messages. One day I remember two rival vans turn onto the same street – and young toughs piled out, started screaming and then quickly bashing each other.
The danger of doing that here in the U.S. is that the wrong-wingers are well armed and apparently consider the use of firearms ‘politics by other means.’
Still, it’s nice to see a reactionary punk get beat down.
Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton, D-Mo., had just finished addressing his Republican colleague Todd Akin Thursday.
Skelton then turned to the side and muttered “stick it up your ass.”
What he said.
Remember the Media-driven perception back in the dark days of ‘00 and ‘04 about how Bush was the candidate “you’d rather have a beer with?” Ironic because he was a recovering alcoholic. Doubly ironic because he never invited anybody over for a beer.
The sign of Obama’s genius is his latest press op drinking beer with Professor Gates and Sargeant Crowley. Genius because…that’s how ‘ordinary guys’ solve disputes – you sit down over a beer and talk through your dispute.
But beyond the ‘ordinary guy’ image going here (he’s already out-ordinaried Bush with his earlier burger joint runs), there is a subconcious appeal to a secret desire we all share here – that somehow we ordinary people could actually sit down and have a beer with Obama!
Of course it’s a preposterous notion, you’d have to engineer some awful confrontation, get Obama to misspeak and say something stupid, and hope he invites you to the Oval office to smooth things over. But the genius is the subconcious appeal of a celebrity President.
Tip from General Contractor Buddy, Tennesseens can pack heat in bars. Let that sink in for a moment – rednecks…alchohol…guns…all in one place…
Still, it seems wiser than the Georgian’s desire to carry guns in airports – I’m still not sure what that was about. And of course you need to pack a piece to defend yourself against Yogi and Boo-Boo in the National Parks. Of course for some reason we still haven’t opened up churches to weapons of individual destruction in spite of the fact that killing in church appears to be all the rage. I mean nothing says “Jeebus loves you” like a bullet to the head, right? Just ask this pastor in Kentucky!
It wasn’t long ago when the Dumbs were the minority in the Senate, and at the time they said theywouldn’t filibuster any vile Repug legislation or nominee because they were afraid the mean Repug bullies would eliminate cloture rules.
Now that they are in the majority with a Dem President, they seem downright gleeful about joining their former bully oppressors to filibuster – check out the Dumbocrat Jackass du jour, Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, threatening to filibuster any ‘activist’ (read: Pro Choice) Supreme Court nominee.
Could you imagine how things would have gone over the last 8 years if the Dumbocrats either had some balls, understood party unity or weren’t just fucking Repugs in disguise?
In all the commentary surrounding Cheney’s latest media blitz, most observers I’ve seen have missed the most pertinent thing about his argument. That argument can be boiled down to a few simple messages:
- we were right to use torture
- torture kept us safe, and gave us intelligence that saved lives, and
- Obama’s decision to forego torture (and all the other extralegal escapades of the Bush years) puts us at risk.
The fact that Cheney is taken seriously as a commentator on this topic, after he, his party, and their firmly-held beliefs plunged us into two losing wars and The Great Recession, demonstrates the impotence of the “liberal” media. The fact that he, and the Republican party, have succeeded (partly through the bumbling ineptness of Pelosi) to turn this conversation to what Democrats knew and when they knew it, illustrates the inability of the Democratic Party to stir the pot on these issues like the deeply experienced Republican machine can.
WIth all the petty tit-for-tat, however, it becomes easy to overlook the explosive strategy behind Cheney’s position. The fact that Republicans are influencing the debate in Washington, as evidenced by Obama’s acquiescence in military affairs this week…that’s the short game. The long game is far more insidious – Cheney and his party are betting that there will be another spectacular terrorist incident, and they’re setting the seeds for the only rescue position Republicans are capable of at this moment – the big-daddy, keep you safe party that’s not afraid to ‘break a few eggs’.
Think about the narrative that a terror catastrophe enables. There’s Cheney, reminding the world on “Meet the Press” that he told us so. There’s the elder wise man (believe it or not) George W., reminding regular folks how tough but effective the Bush adminstration was, with all the softening benefits of nostalgia that moves the Palin yokels so effectively. And there is the chorus of neo-conservatives, reviving their debunked mythologies alleging that American power can control the world.
So, Democrats can console themselves all day with the comforting notion that Cheney is the worst possible spokesman for the sinking Republicans, like we see them doing on every talking-heads show, but he may have the last laugh. If the worst comes to pass, and the forces arrayed against American power are again successful in perpetrating an atrocity, how long will it be before the Republicans, and, unbelievably, even Dick himself, seem like a comfort to a polarized and terrified America?
Betting that another terror extravaganza will hit us, and will benefit their party if it does, may be cynicism to the nth degree, but remember…this is Dick Cheney we’re talking about.
