...about all the ISIS yap last week. Those of us who remember the run-up to the Iraq War will know the drill.
The brethren's current fist-shaking reminds me that, had Al Gore been elected President -- excuse me, had he been inaugurated President -- we might not have had the clusterfuck we wound up with in Iraq; and if Romney had been elected in 2012, we might already be running back there full-strength. I know what George Wallace said, but to paraphrase Spencer Tracy in Adam's Rib, hurrah for that dime's worth of difference.
Fuck Bill Kristol.
ReplyDeleteOriginally, this comment was going to be about how Roy found not one, but two National Review writers who seemed to believe that MLK's "moral arc of the universe" quote was about predestination. Then Kristol's name came up, and you know what? There's no point in mentioning anyone else, because fuck that guy.
I just keep repeating that phrase he used a few days ago in my head - "What’s the harm of bombing them at least for a few weeks and seeing what happens?" I can't believe how flippant that is, how cavalier he's being about fucking war. He uses the same language one might use when trying to talk his friends into trying a new restaurant ("I've never had Polish food, but what's the harm in trying it?"). If I ever wondered if Kristol felt any guilt about the war he helped sell to the American people, I have my answer - Of course he doesn't.
It's amazing that after everything that we've seen that there are people who still think and talk like this. War is a video game to these assholes. It's a new basketball season, a hot new television show - something to discuss over drinks at the end of the day. And why not? It's not like war affects their lives...or most of our lives. Hearing Kristol speak like that really crystalized just how much the end of mobilization as a policy really changed our political culture. For all the talk about how "9/11 changed everything," it really changed nothing on the homefront. We started two wars and didn't even quit shopping. And we're bombing people now, so why not bomb a bunch more people? What the hell, right?
The sign that society has reached the final depths of its moral degeneration when it treats an evil as great as war as though it were merely a pastime. I look at Kristol and I realize how close we came to falling off that precipice. It only saddens me that the noble opposition and our wonderful newsmedia are so willing to give him another shot to pull us over the edge.
Heh. Cruz is being compared to Goldwater? Where? Everything I've read has compared him to, um, another senator of a decidedly different sort.
ReplyDeleteIn general, though, isn't this exactly what we expected literally months before Bush's little high explosive adventure in Iraq and his installation of a puppet government in Afghanistan?
And, of course Bloody Bill thinks a little popular support for more mayhem can be drummed up by the chickenhawks. After all, they've done so well convincing the public that Iraq was a big win. This would just be a little mopping up. (Any bets he was grinning like a hyena when he said this?)
I continue to marvel at the general idiocy, the studied forgetfulness of the news media, the neediness of the chickenhawks, but I'm least amazed at their predictability. They always have the very same answer to every conflict. There could be a fistfight outside a bar in Tangiers and their answer would be FA-18s packing JDAMs, or at the very least, a black ops assassination team.
Anyone doubting that belligerence and stupidity go hand in hand need only look to the right-wing press for proof.
We keep getting further evidence why Dan Quayle picked Kristol to be his VP chief of staff, don't we? Birds of a feather and all that....
ReplyDelete"(Any bets he was grinning like a hyena when he said this?)"
ReplyDeleteDoes he have any other facial expressions?
Bill Kristol: proudly subverting meritocracy since....well, since his old man secured him his first job right out of college.
ReplyDeleteCome to think of it, I've never seen anything but big, toothy grins from him, as if the prospect of death and destruction is a very pleasing thing. You'd think that every talking heads booker would think, at least momentarily, about that invariable grin and say, "nope, this guy's a sociopath. He's not getting on ever again."
ReplyDeleteBut, that never happens, does it?
Obama DOES have a strategy. A big strength for IS on the battlefield is their mobility. They find a weak spot in their enemies defenses and, using the speed that their fleets of vehicles gives, concentrate their forces for the attack so that they have greater numbers and firepower at a battle and overwhelm their enemies, even if their army is smaller overall. Airstrikes targeting IS vehicles are to keep them from moving freely. With out this advantage, they're starting to get overwhelmed themselves by the far larger numbers of their enemies.
ReplyDeleteWith the airstrikes, arms flooding in for the Kurds and the Iraqi army finally getting some fighting spirit, I think we're going to see IS slowly, but steadily pushed back in Iraq. This won't be the end of them, and something will have to worked out long term, but Obama's current strategy in Iraq is clearly working. That's probably what the usual suspects are so mad about.
Thomas had the whole apocalyptic scenario figured out, and he knew the cause, too: the "false belief that we can somehow 'convert' ideological and religious fundamentalists into pluralistis, tolerant people by exposing them to our way of life."
ReplyDeleteYeah, I'd also noticed that the Republican rebranding wasn't working out too well.
Cruz is being compared to Goldwater?
ReplyDeleteIn your heart, you know he's stupid.
Or, as the saying went at the time, "in your guts, you know he nuts."
ReplyDeleteBest meme is the idea that giving more heavy weapons to the Syrian opposition would have prevented ISIS from getting heavy weapons.
ReplyDeleteBecause once one delivers weapons to a warring faction in a chaotic failed state, you can control exactly who ends up with them.
Had Al Gore been elected president - well, there's a good chance 9/11 would have been avoided, but if not, Republicans would have tried to impeach for allowing it to happen on his watch.
ReplyDeleteAnd there's no doubt that Holy Joe would have had his sneakers on to be the first to the well of the Senate--as Senate president pro tem, of course--to denounce Gore and beg for impeachment.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, he's had more practice at that than anyone lately.
Senator Ted Cruz proposed to a Dallas crowd -- after telling them "I spent last week in Washington, D.C. It's great to be back in America" -- that the U.S. "bomb [ISIS] back to the Stone Age," compared "the Russian bear" to "the Obama kitty cat,"
ReplyDelete1.) "It's great to be back in America." If you despise the government of the United States so much, why are you a part of it, asshole?
2.) "the Obama Kitty cat." Yes, Obama is the powder-puff tyrant who has taken away all our freedoms.
3.) If only we'd listened to John McCain and Lindsey Graham, we would now have troops on the ground and fighting in:
Libya
Syria
Iran
Iraq
Chad
Nigeria
Sudan
Ukraine
Afghanistan
And probably China and Korea as well.
Lord knows what size tax cuts for the wealthy we'd have to enact to fight that many wars!
Yeah, since they consistently portray sane folks as ideological and dogmatic, I suppose he is advocating violence as the only way to convert liberals, women, gays, blacks, latinos, native americans, filmmakers, artists, trans-folk, cocktail drinkers, jews, golfers, …. (maybe it'd be easier to say "every non-white christist") to the Dark Side.
ReplyDeleteI do wonder, however, if he knows what "pluralistic" and "tolerant" mean.
It never happens because his sociopathy is his most desirable quality, as far as the bookers are concerned. And the producers love having him on because it gives them a single-episode shield from the non-stop cries of "liberal bias!!11!!!!one!"
ReplyDelete^THIS.^
ReplyDeleteWe'll just hand out all kinds of weapons to everyone we encounter who utters the secret phrase "I hate Assad!" None of those people would ever use those weapons for any other purpose.
I would wonder if the people advocating such a course would also hand a machine gun to a 9-year-old. But then . . .
It's all of a piece with their general inability to comprehend human emotions and reactions. People like Thomas look at 9-11 and they're outraged; they want revenge; they want to kill as many of those motherfuckers as possible. And yet, it never occurs to people like Thomas and Kristol that America dropping bombs on Middle-Eastern folks might make the survivors of those attacks want to kill as many American motherfuckers as possible. (Quoth Kristol, "what's the harm?")
ReplyDeleteFool me one time, shame on you.
ReplyDeleteFool me two three four five ..n+1 times, shame on me screw that, I'm pretty shameless by now..
ISIS would dearly love the US to reinvade because they could slip back into Syria (or the local population) and continue to reap the considerable financial benefits of warlordism and snipe away happily.
ReplyDeleteThe last thing they want is for peace to break out and for civil institutions to be re-formed - because then they'd have to function politically and satisfy people they couldn't just kill.
The US is going to have to be really really careful that they don't give in to the addiction to the military sledgehammer and the delusion that this time they'll get all the ants.
You've seen what he's offering. I think it's pretty clear just which party he's representing. And in a biblical context at that.
ReplyDeleteKristol's entire history is one long litany of failure -- from the Iraq invasion to Sarah Palin to his tenure at the NY Times, even his ventures among the easily duped right-wing (anyone remember the lunatic Keep America Safe?), the list is endless -- but the consequences of his blundering wrongness is always endured by others. Sometimes the plain bullshit of his Quayle-like idiocy is simply amusing, like when he predicted that the Iraq debacle would be a two-month war, not an eight-year war (he's partially right about it not being an eight-year war, we passed that mark a few years ago). Unfortunately, for millions of people elsewhere, death and suffering result. He's one more example that no amount of failure will cause demotion in wing-nut welfare land; the faucets of cash are always on and a compliant media will always appreciate Kristol as the Great Thinker and Political Philosopher he thinks he is. From Elliot Abrams to Jeanne Kirkpatrick to Bill's daddy Irving et al, the Reagan era elevated being an amoral slug to a principled station. William Kristol is just one turd of their abysmal legacy.
ReplyDeleteI really do not understand these people. I (probably naively) view ISIS as a kind of latter-day Khmer Rouge. Rag-tag band of savage fanatics takes power in a region reduced to chaos by a decade of war by virtue of their superior organization.
ReplyDeleteNow, the Khmer Rouge were bad people. They did terrible things. I wasn't paying attention in 1976, being more interested at that time in Lego and Hot Wheels, but it would not surprise me if some wingnut-types used the example of the Khmer Rouge to point out how the feckless Democrats and their college hippie allies had thrown the people of Southeast Asia under the bus. I would not necessarily agree with them. I believe the causality in the region is so tangled that the simplistic white-hat Yanks/black-hat commie gooks approach is laughably inaccurate, but I would understand the argument.
But this? This is the equivalent of some late 70s wingnut wetting his pants in fear that the Khmer Rouge were about to invade Peoria. It just doesn't make any damn sense. Don't they see how absolutely cowardly it makes them look?
Don't forget the Libya adventure.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/i-am-not-fighting-againstalqaida-itsnot-our-problem-says-wests-last-hope-in-syria-9233424.html
ISIS (originally Al Qaeda in Iraq) is what it is thanks to our regime changes efforts in Iraq, Libya, and Syria.
~
if Romney had been elected in 2012, we might already be running back [to Iraq] full-strength...
ReplyDeleteHell, given the latest scary bit of right-wing dick-waving about going to war with Russia over Ukraine, Romney might have already gotten half the world incinerated. (A reluctant warrior, Romney would have preferred to pocket Ukraine's public pensions and sell off all its assets to Russian oligarchs, but small consolation to posterity.)
ISIS is actually doing one thing right: They're retaining all the civil servants regardless of religion or political affiliation. Unlike the U.S., ISIS understands that conquering is not governing--and you need a functioning bureaucracy to govern.
ReplyDeleteCowardly? I have a friend who remains convinced that the Taliban and al Qaeda will actually conquer the United States and impose Sharia law. And that they'll be doing so soon (within the next five years).
ReplyDeleteWhen you ask the next logical question: "How can a relatively small bunch of people with rudimentary small arms defeat the strongest military on the planet?", you get a blank look or a shrug. To them, it's self-evident that America will fold like a lawn chair at the slightest push unless we ATTACK! ATTACK! ATTACK!!!!!!!!!!
A convincing argument could be made that there would be no ISIS at all without Bush's catastrophic invasion and occupation in Iraq. (Recommended reading if you haven't: Sideshow: Kissinger, Nixon & the Destruction of Cambodia by William Shawcross -- makes the case that the Khmer Rouge and their takeover of power were enabled by Nixon's secret bombing and incursions into Cambodia, among other things. Also, a lesson learned: never elect anyone President whose favorite movie for repeated viewing is Patton.)
ReplyDelete"...vigilantes are the last thing we need, but they could rise up, if
ReplyDeletegovernment fails to perform its constitutional duty to protect us from
enemies, foreign and domestic."
Oh, well said, Cal (wink wink, nod nod).
"British jihadists are fast transforming the United Kingdom into 'the Yemen of the West,"
ReplyDeleteAmanda Bowman is right! Why, when I was in London last year, rug merchants and begging children were everywhere, the streets were awash in sand from the incessant storms, and there was camel dung in the streets. OH, how the Empire has been laid low!
National Review's Jonah Goldberg suggested Obama thinks "the world is a TV show,"
ReplyDelete...
ReplyDeleteStill, I wish Obama hadn't put it the way he did. ISIS is a regional problem, but our pals the Saudis and Qataris have had little to say since the beginning. ISIS must be defeated by the regional powers, not us, and we can't let them sit back and wait for us to do something because they find it politically untenable to act. Much has been made of the equipment they got from the Iraqi army, but I can't see that advantage lasting long... after all, there's a reason that militaries have maintenance battalions; it's because combat equipment tends to break down a lot, and I doubt that ISIS captured enough spare parts to keep their equipment running for long.
ReplyDelete...
ReplyDeleteI absolutely agree. Gore would have been impeached, and before it went the distance he would have resigned for what he'd say was the good of the nation and its people. Then we'd've had Pres. Lieberman for 3 years, probably with VP McCain or something so as to have a "unity government." Icky.
ReplyDeleteThis is actually closer to the truth. Ted Cruz is not a stupid man... he is ambitious, ruthless, and totally amoral, and he doesn't care how many corpses pile up under his feet as long as they're, in his estimation, liberal.
ReplyDeleteOh, yeah... Christ, John McCain had his picture taken with guys who ended up fighting with ISIS:
ReplyDeleteISIS brags about links to US Senator John McCainAnd this is a conservative website doing the bitching. If McCain had had his way, ISIS would have gotten their arms a year earlier.
If McCain had his way, they probably would have gotten better arms a year earlier--including shoulder-launched anti-air missiles. He wanted to hand out Stingers so the Syrian rebels could knock down helicopters and fighter-bombers. Just think of the kind of show ISIS could put on YouTube if they knocked down an F-18 and captured the pilot.
ReplyDeleteUnrelated to ISIS, but I remember when Bush the Smarter sent troops to Somalia. There was footage of some Somali warlord's troops who had taken the 23mm Gatling gun from a derelict Mig-21 fighter and installed it in the back of a Toyota pickup. When they fired the gun, the recoil drove the brakes-locked pickup skidding down the street. In all, a terrifying weapon system that posed a lethal threat to everyone and everything except whatever it was originally aimed at.
ReplyDeleteAnd under Pres. Lieberman, we probably would have invaded Syria and Iran instead of Iraq and Afghanistan because Syria and Iran pose the bigger threat to Israel. We might have been spared "Now watch this drive!", but we would have been treated to Holy Joe's waterfall of crocodile tears over all the casualties.
ReplyDeleteComing next from Cal: "Just because I wrote a column calling for an armed uprising against the government of the United States doesn't mean I called for an armed uprising against the government of the United States. Geez, you people are so literal!"
ReplyDeleteFortunately, you can still get a decent dish of curry in London.
ReplyDeleteIt's all going to be done by creeping incursions from south of the border and the Middle East. They're going to infiltrate American society and take over the organs of mass indoctrination--the media and the courts--and have their way with us. It's truly diabolical, and it's already started: Telemundo!
ReplyDelete"Barry Goldwater, the late Arizona senator who upended the Republican establishment, and to whom Cruz has often been compared, couldn't have said it better," said Eliana Johnson at National Review.
ReplyDeleteYes, may he follow in the footsteps of President Goldwater.
Yeah ... and you can easily take it much further; Poppy B & the Gulf War; Zbig & Carter arming Afghans to fight the Rooshians; heck, installing the Shah ... we been messin' a while. Sustainable renewables, anyone?
ReplyDeleteYeah! We can send members of the Texas NG out there and they can eat the flowers and candy the people they liberate will throw!
ReplyDeleteYou have to hand it to the Right, they do know how to recycle their talking points. Bomb 'em to the Stone Age! They're Gonna Swarm Across the Rio! Aaaargh!
What they don't know about is context, and how the fuck it works.
So - Stampeding people into agreeing to invade a country that had noting to do with the Sept. 11 attacks? I can see how that happened even though the "evidence" of the threat Hussein posed was tissue thin.
But now what we're supposed to attack is the Islamist State (good luck finding that on a map), or at least a group of people operating (mainly) in two countries, and the only way we can fight them (apparently) is to send in the folks who are still trying to recover from the last time a bunch of right wing fucks used them to play GI Joe.
Or so they say. Because I don't think this about shaping policy or really even rattling sabers. It is enough to point at whatever Obama is doing and saying "Look, see what he's doing? It's wrong!" to excite the fans.
Now, what the fuck is up with that first cartoon?
May I quote the sometimes delightfully crude Tbogg? He should be fed a bag of salted dicks.
ReplyDeleteYou are so very right about this, and the CPA disaster continues to break my pathetic little heart. The reckless, senseless invasion had happened, but we could have made things less horrible. We could have cleaned up some after our own destruction - and we could have helped make things better with Saddam gone. There'd been a chance to help, we had Americans and Iraqis who were ready to work, and we blew it totally and completely and that's on the Bush administration. BTW, Kristol, McCain, Cheney are always still underfoot, but GWB is off paintin' and "refilling the ol' coffers" and nobody asks him anything.
ReplyDeleteWow. "Premature anti-fascism."
ReplyDeleteI just made this joke to an English Barrister friend of ours who is defending the wife of an English Syrian guy who went over to fight for Syria. Whoops. In between starting the case and it going to trial we had the beheading of James Foley and my friend's attempts to put her client's behavior in the best possible light has rather fallen under a cloud.
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one who winced when Cruz said "Bomb them back to the stone age"? It's kind of poor salesmanship on his part, since this exact wording is inextricably tied to the Shrub administration; didn't Rumsfield say exactly that?
ReplyDelete"Will no one rid me of this turbulent pres?"
ReplyDeleteThe Saudi's had a bit to say late last week, something along the lines of "the West had better deal with ISIS, or they will attack the US and Britain". As usual, the Saudi's expect someone else to clean up the mess they've made, a proposition that will work right up until their oil runs out. Maybe we can get our retired Shrub to go do some kissy-face with the king and ask him and his citizens to knock it off with funding ISIS*.
ReplyDelete*Haw, haw; who am I kidding?
Somebody or other has been saying that since Korea.
ReplyDeleteMore in sorrow than in anger...
ReplyDeleteAnd that makes him do stupid things.
ReplyDeleteI always wondered if Toyota offered gun mounts as a factory installed option in third world countries.
ReplyDeleteThat's actually a reference to Curtis LeMay, in 1965, talking about the Vietnamese.
ReplyDeleteSo - Stampeding people into agreeing to invade a country that had noting to do with the Sept. 11 attacks? I can see how that happened even though the "evidence" of the threat Hussein posed was tissue thin.
ReplyDeleteIt's the continued media complicity that has me pissed off.
So that explains why all of the women on Telemundo are covered up in burqas.
ReplyDeleteNo Bush II, no 9-11. I believe in the butterfly effect.
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't a total disaster for everyone- Dan Senor and his cronies got rich off of the chaos.
ReplyDeleteHow do you bomb a group of people back to the Stone Age when, for the most part, they are already living in Stone-Age conditions?
ReplyDeleteTo paraphrase something Khrushchev didn't say: They won’t have to fight us. They’ll so weaken our resolve that we will fall like overripe fruit into their hands.
ReplyDeleteFailure: he's a carrier, not a victim!
ReplyDeleteWhich George Wallace are we talking about?
ReplyDeleteWhat's the wife charged with?
ReplyDelete"Shape of Earth: Views Differ" is the most mild form of this complicity. It's more virulent form is best illustrated by the Sunday talk shows in which right-wing guests outnumber centrists or liberals by orders of magnitude. It's a rare Sunday that John McCain isn't on the TV.
ReplyDeleteTen years ago, some nameless booker for one of the Sunday showz was asked why the shows are all Republicans all the time. The answer was something like, "Well, when Republicans are out of power, we have to make sure their voices are heard in the national conversation. And when Republicans are in power, who cares what Democrats have to say?"
It should be mentioned that, as far as existential threats go, ISIS has killed fewer Americans than Ron Paul supporters have.
ReplyDeleteTed Cruz wants to bomb ISIS "back to the Stone Age" because they "reject modernity."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.newsmax.com/newswidget/cruz-dream-summit-americans-for-progress-isis/2014/08/30/id/591841/
(Sorry for the NewsMax link, but I did want to prove that he actually said that.)
So here is a conservative speaking against the rejection of modernity. Isn't that strange? Such rejection seems to be the very heart of conservative philosophy, it seems to me. Senator Cruz should be able to understand the urge to turn back the clock.
Shipping him stuff while he was in Turkey recovering from injuries suffered while he was fighting in Syria. Britain has rather extensive laws about "terrorism support" and shipping stuff, even if its medical or a warm coat, if it can be construed as "aiding and abetting terrorist acts" can be problematic. My friend has a rather amazing record of getting people off but the revelations about the British Syrian Isis fighters is pretty much going to do this woman in regardless of her intent in shipping the stuff to her husband.
ReplyDeleteHe was probably going to say Christianity but remembered at the last moment that the GOP is pretending to give a shit about Jewish people.
ReplyDeleteI think they call them "burquitas."
ReplyDeleteI have to think the choice was made for him - by who, I wonder?
ReplyDelete"The only difference between men and boys is the size of their turnips."
ReplyDelete"Quayle-like idiocy"
ReplyDeleteI forgot that Kristol was Quayle's chief of staff, Quayle's brain as it were. Needless to say, this does not help his reputation in my eyes.
(Any bets he was grinning like a hyena when he said this?)
ReplyDeleteGrinning like a hyena is his default setting.
And, as always, the cartoons are a joy to behold. Just wish the beholding could make 'em make sense. The second is an obvious segue from the Obama-Putts-While-Rome-Burns schedule to the ISIS-Is-Gonna-Kill-Us-All!!!11! schedule, but I flat give up on the first...
ReplyDeleteSounds like the Bizarro World response to Bizarro World 9/11.
ReplyDeleteWhich episode of Star Trek did he use to illustrate his point?
ReplyDeleteThe seventh century CE was not the Stone Age. But you're only off by 10,000 years or so, so don't feel too bad.
ReplyDeleteI don't, since it wasn't meant that these people are literally living as the neolithics did. Perhaps that's just too fine a point to grasp, though.
ReplyDeleteHe also said "we can't bomb ourselves." Hasn't he ever been to Philadelphia? Or Tulsa?
ReplyDeleteRe Kristol: you know in your ticker they just don't come sicker.
ReplyDeleteOr they could stand by the fainting couch and catch the wingnuts as they topple over from the vapors.
ReplyDeleteStanding athwart history yelling, "Over there!"
ReplyDeleteDid the Wingnuts ever get Sunni/Shia straight?
ReplyDeleteWhich (assuming they've thought it out that far) is another fine example of Heads the sky is green; Tails PROJECTION! thinking. Because if the American population is so heavily laden with weenies that most of us will hit the swooning couches when a hundred guys show up here waving guns, where are we getting the people to attack these guys where they live?
ReplyDeleteSo (again, assuming they've thought this out and aren't just trying to explain why they crapped their pants) I think the correct translation is:
Someone else needs to go fight the scary guys over there because at the least rumor that they've come here, my treasonous damp ass will run around screaming "I surrender! Allah Akbar!"
"'If ISIS attacks one or more U.S. cities, as it has threatened to do, what then?' hand-wrung Cal Thomas at Fox News. "We can't bomb ourselves.'"
ReplyDeleteAw gee, why not? Wouldn't that be the ultimate proactive approach? Why bomb the enemy as a precautionary measure when you can bomb yourself? Just think — Hitler only ended up destroying his own people, and everybody thinks he was a mega-badass. But just imagine how it would be if you could start out by destroying your own people — how much of a badass would you be then? You'd be at least a mega-badass times ten to the power of ten and nobody would want to mess with you. Word.
Plus, you would have gotten rid of all those victory mosques and Wahabism schools along the way. Point in favor, one.
Another plus — you'd give all your vigilantes something to do in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that would ensue. There's nothing worse than a bored vigilante with time on his hands. The Devil finds work, etcetera. Give 'em publicity and resources and eventually they start to gripe about you instead of the foreigners, the ungrateful sods. Here's the way to nip that whole cycle in the bud. Point in favor, two.
Amazing, ain't it, that nothing remotely like this has happened so far...
"An American president who was serious about marshaling and mobilizing
ReplyDeletethe elements of national power behind a strategy for victory"
Does that actually mean a damn thing? Of course not.
Gee, how many right-wingers threw fits when George W. Bush took almost a month to start the war in Afghanistan?
ReplyDeleteI like my burquitas with hot chili sauce on top.
ReplyDeleteThey're still fighting World War 2.
ReplyDelete"They're still [wanking off about their right-wing fantasy version of] World War 2."
ReplyDeleteFixed it for ya.
Did a bird shit on her shoulder?
ReplyDeleteOff ran Dingo--Yellow-Dog Dingo--always hungry, grinning like a coal-scuttle
ReplyDeleteWhich was the last time conservative Republicans opposed the US getting into a war.
ReplyDeleteHoped this reference would be made early, and not at all surprised that you brought that sauce. Irving's "...subverting meritocracy.." stands as one of the greatest own goals of conservative opinion. However, the meritocrasy of the sociopath has become very sucessful indeed.
ReplyDeleteWell, lots of them wanted to go right into Iraq, and ignore Afghanistan altogether.
ReplyDeleteWe knew the game was up when Cheney said, "We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." The only things missing from that scenario were the Sherman tanks, the pretty French girls, and the actual liberation.
ReplyDeleteActually, I think Obama could use this to create (and get Republicans to fully fund) a new "stimulus" package. He just fires up a "war" budget that calls for the production of tens of thousands of B-24 Liberators, B-17 Flying Fortresses, P-51 Mustangs and P-38 Lightnings. Hand out the contracts, get the factories built, get the airplanes built. Try the next generation of airline pilots by having them fly the newly built warbirds from the factories direct to the smelters who would recycle the aluminum to sell back to the factories.
ReplyDeleteHell, you could probably even turn a small profit by selling 10% of the production to wealthy private pilots and collectors who want an old WWII fighter to tear up the skies with.
Yes, they love workers but hate the union leadership. That's why conservatives want to simply abolish unions. And do away with OSHA. And scrap the minimum wage. And get rid of any worker protections or regulations to prevent workers from being exploited or ripped off.
ReplyDeleteRepublicans love workers with that tough kind of love that parents sometimes have to administer to their kids or children with punches, kicks, or simply tying the child to the radiator for a couple of hours.
I think that's her brain leaking out. Or maybe it's just a sprinkling of meth.
ReplyDeleteNo, see, in Calspeak, twisty-turny linguisticisms are disdained. He's speaking Linear American, and the words must be taken literally.
ReplyDeleteHere's an example:
"When sitting down to dinner, dessert is the last thing we need"
Clear now? Yes.
The Empires chickens have come home to roast...
ReplyDeleteHere's an alternative history novel I want to read: the very first Europeans arrive in the Western Hemisphere in their brief initial foray, only it turns out that the indigenous peoples' immune systems somehow quickly get mutationally super-charged, and instead of a death rate of some 80% or 90% of the original population, maybe only 2% died of imported disease, and then decades later (wasn't it nearly 100 years?) when the actual settlers and colonizers begin to arrive, they find a pretty settled and well-organized set of societies. So these Europeans make landfall, and the residents say, "Hmm, welcome, maybe, if you don't try to fuck things up, because listen: our house, our rules."
ReplyDeleteSo then the European immigrants who decide to stay are sensible and begin to learn the local languages and customs, and everybody begins to adapt to each other, so that if and when folks in Europe start thinking, gee, surely plundering opportunities still abound in that rich and fertile land, and they sail over to enlist the former emigrants in this lucrative endeavor, they get met by blank looks, because the immigrants and the indigenous people now have a homeland to defend: they are the "us" and Europeans are the "them".
Not that I believe in happily ever afters; I just want to read the book.
Someone in my Facebook feed made the observation that "the Saudi military's anthem is 'Onward, Christian Soldiers'."
ReplyDelete"... vigilantes are the last thing we need, but they could rise up, if government fails to perform its constitutional duty to protect us from enemies, foreign and domestic."I agree with Cal. These murderous right-wing thugs need to be arrested and jailed before it gets to the actual stage of armed treason. Those are the domestic enemies he's talking about, right? The sorts that have blown up federal buildings or threatened to shoot law enforcement officialls in the head over unpaid grazing fees?
ReplyDeleteYou know in your brain he's just insane.
ReplyDeleteBut just imagine how it would be if you could start out by destroying your own people — how much of a badass would you be then?God, how I hope Ted Cruz never reads this comment.
ReplyDeleteThe media in America are owned by the Upper Crustaceans, who are gonna be a loooooooong time separating the modern Left from the Communist threat of the early-mid 20th Century. I doubt it'll happen in my lifetime, or even any of yours. The biggest problem I have with it is the timidity of the Democrats in confronting it. Which, basically, they don't.
ReplyDeleteWouldn't bombing them back into the Stone Age just be giving them what they want? Why don't we drop stream of consciousness novels on them instead?
ReplyDeleteTruthfully, I never saw any on the parts microfiches when I was a Toyota mechanic in the `80s. But, then, Florida hadn't become the gun capital it is now.
ReplyDeleteThe mordantly hilarious bit in this is that it's looking increasingly as if the Bush crime family's old friend, Bandar Bush, was been behind the covert arming and supplying of the IS (with the help of some wealthy Qataris).
ReplyDelete(Still thinking about the pictures of Bandar Bush at the Bush "ranch," sucking on a cigar while Bush natters on, and Bandar's probably thinking, "how did we luck out with a bubblehead like this?")
President McCain's long naval history has taught him the intricate details of strategic thinking.
ReplyDeleteFor at least thirty minutes ahead.
This is the "Nicaraguan tanks could be on the Texas border in three days" routine. (Hey, the right-wing doesn't have to invent new tricks because the old ones still work so well.)
ReplyDeleteFunny thing about that neocon claim that Ronnie Raygun foisted on the country. Ft. Bliss is on that very same border, too....
Huh, and here I was thinking I was old....
ReplyDeleteif Romney had been elected in 2012, we might already be running back there full-strength.
ReplyDeleteMan, thank goodness Romney wasn't elected; I mean, if he was, we would've probably ended up with a President who wanted to extend the war in Iraq, escalated Afghanistan, started an illegal war in Libya, and radically expanded the security state, allowing the NSA to spy on Americans, and working to cover up CIA torture.
Man, that would've been just awful.
Thank goodness for that dime!
Now that was funny. She's a real peach!
ReplyDeleteCal Thomas: "We can't bomb ourselves."
ReplyDeleteNor chew gum and walk at the same time.
Nor locate his arse with both hands.
Nor tell shit from Shinola.
Given that Wingnuttia pays him to write-words-about-stuff, one wonders whether they consider his self-proclaimed ineptitude a bug, or a feature.
.
That goes well with the cartoon villain eyebrows.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Kristol should be given the Roman Army punishment for deserters: slowly beaten to death with sticks by two burly centurions before the entire staff of the Weekly Standard.
ReplyDeleteAnd this is the crowd for whom Red Dawn is almost a documentary.
ReplyDeleteTiny, whispering voice from under the bed: *wolverines!?*
President McCain's long naval history has taught him the intricate details of strategic thinking."If you can't hit 'em with bombs, hit 'em with planes."
ReplyDeleteYou should have seen the cover they wanted to do.
ReplyDeleteBlow up federal building = general statement of political disagreement.
ReplyDeleteShoot federal agent = patriotism of the highest order
Believe that minimum wage should be increased = ultra-extreme leftist bent on the complete destruction of capitalism, America, and supply-side Jesus.
Had Atta survived: "The inspiration for our plans was your John McCain's naval flying record."
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Judging by their rhetoric, they've been dying to nuke San Francisco, have they not?
ReplyDeleteIt wasn't too long ago that the press was touting Peter King as one of the sane, mature Republicans in a sea of Tea Party crazies. It was inevitable that something expose his true colors again, and the ISIS CRISIS has done just that. Now we can remember that he loves xenophobic outrage and hates tan suits, no doubt because the fabric reminds him of the skin of filthy Saracens. He's barely rational enough to put on his own socks.
ReplyDeleteSo does that mean Kristol is saying humanity is doomed? Best news humanity's had all day!
ReplyDeleteI do wonder, however, if he knows what "pluralistic" and "tolerant" mean.
ReplyDeleteDo you? Wonder, I mean?
Unions get in the way of giving workers the kind of love they deserve.
ReplyDeleteFree education? That would be progressive!
ReplyDeleteUnions get in the way of the Ministry of Love.
ReplyDeleteFixed
Probably not, but I suspect that good welders are in high demand these days.
ReplyDeleteHow is a person who was actually born in Canada even eligible to run for president? Also to some extent, elections are a popularity contest*, Cruz could win if the democrats shoot themselves in the foot, with scandals, or by nominating a loser.
ReplyDeleteGet rid of all the priests and pastors and you might just make it work.
ReplyDeleteHe was born to an American mom and so was a citizen at birth, actually duel citizen, he renounced his Canadian citizenship. Birthers will have no problem with this because reasons.
ReplyDeleteIn your ass you know he's crass.
ReplyDeleteIn your scrotum you know he has no decorum.
In your dick you know he's a prick (or visa versa)
You'd have to add pictures first.
ReplyDeleteYeah, no happily ever afters, and no lands of milk and honey. Still, with an indigenous population at nearly full strength, with a wealth of spiritual imagery, it seems like a Ghost-Walkin' Jesus might find a place eventually. There could be parables and such-like: How Jesus Found The Coyote, etc.
ReplyDeleteSo there would definitely have to be return trips to Europe available, but you wouldn't want to send a bunch of outraged priests and pastors home to lobby for a crusade. So you might want to exile them to a nice valley to grow crops and pray on stuff for a couple ten years till they acclimate. And definitely you'd want to make Manchester, New York a No-Dig Zone forever, on account of them golden plates. This is just supposed to be an alternate history novel. Although there could also be an alternate alternate history novel that includes apocalypse.
i see what you did there.
ReplyDeleteSo sorry to hear that.
ReplyDeleteUS pundit class: "Due to his obvious expertise, we need to keep inviting Dingo to orphanages."
ReplyDeleteThe GOP just loves workers - as long as they shut up and let the CEOs do whatever they please to make a profit.
ReplyDelete"Turn it into a parking lot/turn it into glass" seems to be the more popular version today.
ReplyDeleteHow do you figure?
ReplyDeleteWell...I'm not so sure that she should get off. She knew he was going back into Syria and its far from clear her husband isn't one of the guys with ISIS who are killing wantonly. My friend is a very good barrister and these kind of cases are her meat and potatoes but not all, or indeed any, of her clients are innocent of criminal intent or criminal acts.
ReplyDeleteIf Gore had been inaugurated, Republicans would have questioned his legitimacy, had stormy hearings about election fraud in Florida, and blocked everything he tried to do. Gore would have been derided as a terrible cross between Ford and Carter, and lost to some fresh-faced Republican governor in 2004. Then all the Iraq shit would have started just a few years later.
ReplyDeleteSince Gore would have listened to Richard Clark, 9/11 probably would have been a story on page A-19 of the New York Times. "Students at Florida Flight School Arrested in Absurd Hijacking Plot," and it would have done fuck-all for Gore's anemic approval ratings. Or, if 9/11 had somehow still happened, Gore would have been impeached for it. And we still would have had poorly-thought-out Republican military adventurism by whatever fuckhead--probably Jeb--got elected in 2004.
"We can't bomb ourselves."
ReplyDeleteTimothy McVeigh says we can, Cal.
You know what? I kind of like your typo: "duel citizen", 'cause I could be persuaded to challenge him to a duel in re dual citizenship. I mean, I'd lose unless it was a hair-pulling Harmony/Xander sort of duel, but it could be a laff riot and an obscure but entertaining historical footnote.
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