Presidential Lies

For those with a subsription to Atlantic there's an excellent long article (online it's integrated with sound clips) dealing with the subject of Presidential lies in a historical frame.
It's called:
Untruth and Consequences
From Washington to FDR to Nixon, presidents have always lied. Here’s what makes George W. Bush different by Carl M. Cannon

Absurdity Rules:

,

What a joke, the whole idea that there are any thinkers at all in the Bu$h administration. This is the same crew that watched the Soviet Union crumble and insisted it was a trick. The mental capacity of this crew is slightly behind that of reptiles, reptiles are obviously smarter as they have managed to survive a long time and if this crew is in charge much longer, mankind is doomed.

Well, this is my annual chance to experiment with eating poison. I know that if I eat something harmful later today, the State of the Union Address will make it easy to throw it up tomorrow.

How best to unite a country!

Bush found a way to unite the country. I don't have to believe anecdotes from nightbloom to see that the citizens of the US are greatly disturbed about the whole Iraq war. Every poll points to the people being quite against Bush and his direction in Iraq.

As to the surge, I would suggest that it may improve things in Baghdad, but do very little for the rest of the country, the borders surrounding it, or the general sectarian unrest. It is clearly not a longterm solution.

Hasn't the US done enough damage in Iraq? I've seen polls suggesting that the people there overwhelmingly wish the US to leave. Obviously, democracy hasn't found its way to Iraq yet, or their government would be asking Bush to pack up his army and go home.

Surge is an attention grabber

The troop surge will be sent into an already lost war without enough equipment. http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/special_packages/iraq/16516307.htm

Southern Iraq is rising up.
http://www.rense.com/general75/join.htm

And it is clear that Iran will be attacked after the Feb 23 UN deadline.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20070121&articleId=4536

If congress is kept busily arguing about the surge, then no one's attention will be where it should be.

I enjoyed the article

Mainly because I agree with the ideas expressed: the bastardization of the language is a major factor not only in this conflict but in most issues we consider in this forum.

It is difficult to make any sensible statement when the words themselves have been overused and their meanings distorted.

Also the issue at hand: "Bush's War" is important to all of us and needs to be prodded and thought and talked about from any perspective available.

The ongoing bastardization

The ongoing bastardization of language across the political spectrum is a truism, not an insight. Or is it only a virtue when the liberal-Left does it.

Byt really, can sarcasm and name-calling really stand-in for analysis and critique? He's preaching to the choir, here. This isn't last year's article...it's 2003's. Let's not pretend that Fellman is contributing anything we didn't already know, or that it advances the issues in any salient way. "Great Thinker" indeed.

Not to worry

So it's a puff piece. It is still a hook that allows us to discuss what is really going on.

Numerous reports that the president is determined to confront Iran, one way or another, before leaving the White House have to be taken seriously, and there are at least some indications that even the Democratic leadership in Congress is finally beginning to notice that we're headed for war with Tehran. Harry Reid has openly warned the administration that the president would need congressional authorization before unleashing American bombers, and others, including Joe Biden, have struck the same pose.

One wonders, then, why House Joint Resolution 14 – legislation recently introduced by Rep. Walter B. Jones (R-N.C.) which explicitly forbids a U.S. attack on Iran, except in response to a "demonstrably imminent" attack on U.S. forces or interests – has yet to attract more than a dozen or so co-sponsors. Unlike the weak palliatives offered up on the Iraq question by the Democrats, the Jones resolution is a binding one.

Although I started making inquiries last week, I have yet to get an answer from Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office as to her position on H.J. Res. 14. It's now quite popular to be antiwar when it comes to Iraq, but Iran is a different story altogether. Hillary Clinton, who seems on track to grasp the Democrats' presidential nomination, has criticized the Bush administration for being too soft on Tehran, and Howard Dean takes the kooky "Objectivist" position that the Iraq war is a case of attacking the wrong enemy, the right one being Iran.

Unless the Democrats and the fast-rising antiwar faction of the Republicans in Congress are willing to go on record as explicitly forbidding an attack on Iran, the presidential exercise of the military option will hang over our heads like a veritable sword of Damocles.

The quoted above has numerous embedded links.
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=10368

the magic

is working: even if some object to the article they are free to post whatever sentiments come to the keyboard. In fact those are often the most vigorous comments.

Then those of us who are overly sensible (like me) get to react to the comment and so on.

Further Glossary:

Neuveau Barbarians

Interior organizations, that used to have 3-letter names like FBI, CIA, NSA, MIB etc...now live under the banner called HOMELAND SECURITY. Doing great business all over the world.

http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/10/01/120.html

Deal
Done Right
Broke it...we own it
naïve
Nuke 'em till they glow
tragic Iraqi deaths in Iraq.

Six brutal truths about Iraq
http://niemanwatchdog.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=background.view&backgroundid=00146

Lack of professional ability

With the US army being gutted by the 'up or out' policy, meaning that the better officers are choosing to be 'out' and alive rather than promoted and dead.

What is left behind is starting to wake from its long slumber...

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2003487662_iraqed21.html

I also tried to find a comedy monologue that included 'pounding away in Iraq', I recalled it as truly funny, but I suppose there is no transcript online...at least not one I could find in 10 minutes searching. So the term

pounding

is to have different meanings in the future I think...

Welcome to Orwellian Newspeak everyone!

Bush

"And he and his boss would never admit this absolutely fundamental error as the war ground on, and therefore they did not escalate. To the contrary, for them the situation was always improving. Of course they never said that they saw the light at the end of the tunnel as had Lyndon Johnson, but their conception of the struggle was exactly that."

When Bush was asked if he would do anything differently, he always has the same answer: no. It is unbelievable that Bush is still intent on following a failed path, a failed strategy. The spin they put on the war has no real meaning behind it, and can be summed up as political.
Fellman is pointing out how insular Bush's decisions are. If your country sends people to war, you might need cooperation from the entire spectrum of the political landscape. It should be a strong message to the next president. Bush has proven over and over again that he won't listen to those with different opinions. That should concern liberals and conservatives alike.

"The ongoing bastardization of language across the political spectrum is a truism, not an insight. Or is it only a virtue when the liberal-Left does it."

Maybe if we could hear people's ideas and thoughts without the need for "descriptive" labelling ... oh wait ... your a champion of that!

Liberal left...

Which is nice of bloom, to let me off his high perch hook. :-) 'Cause I sure as hell ain't no " ...liberal-Left".

So I'll let you NDPers and Liberals defend for yourselves with this guy. :-)

And I certainly wouldn't "bastardize the language". B-D lol. Mangle it... maybe.

Sin of sins. :-)

Mangle away

Often it makes me wonder why English is the de facto international communication device. It is, according to people who try late in life, more difficult than most other languages (except Portugese).

What I figured out is that you can "bastadize" this language and get away with it. Most other languages need correct pronunciation and grammar but in english a few somewhat recognizable words patched together in almost any order will convey a simple meaning. Stephan Dion and John Cretian prove my theory.

Also somehow simple english restricted to specific topics (taking off, flying and landing a comercial airliner for instance)
has been chosen probably because it is effective there no matter the pilot or the Ground control mother tongue.

Punctuation and spelling also do not need to be perfect - my posts would likely be rejected by a competent Grade 4 English teacher

Divide,conquer,abuse.

http://www.nowpublic.com/iraq_vets_come_home_physically_mentally_butchered_by_aaron_glantz_0

After reading this, realizing how the neo-cons are getting rid of trained competant people, and abusing them even if they make it home again,I come firmly to the conclusion that one of the objectives of the war on Iraq is to rid the US of trained people who could aid in a rebelion.

The Iraq war is supposed to destroy the US.

The treasury has already been looted by the crazed printing of money, the people have been swindled by insiders and the opposition is corrupted. Destroying the army make perfect sense if you want to avoid nasty situations where people effectively fight back.

The aftermath of WW1, with it's marches on Washington, scared the hell of of the elite, and they made sure that one way or another, the vets were taken care of. The GI Bill after WW2 and drugs during and after Vietnam kept vets manigable.

The US itself is one of the targets of the monsters who run the NWO.

wrong link

http://www.newmediaexplorer.org/chris/2007/01/21/use_em_then_spew_em_the_abuse_of_soldiers_for_profit.htm
Use Em Then Spew Em - The Abuse of Soldiers For Profit

Surge refers to the surge in

Surge refers to the surge in profits to the warmongers whenever they escalate.

It's pretty obvious that Bush is unintelligent, but that doesn't matter because he's not in control and US atrocities around the world cannot be blamed on stupidity. The people who control the people who control Bush are extremely intelligent and know exactly what they are doing. It's a mistake to blame the madness of the Iraq situation on incompetence/ineptitude. It's premeditated and unfolding as planned.

Quote:It's premeditated and

.

My New Year's resolution was to be less cynical...but I surrender... my will is too weak. Have to say I much agree with you, Cynic.

The only thing I would add,

The only thing I would add, Cynic, is that the kind of intelligence they are displaying is of a sociopathic nature.

Then the question would be is that real intelligence or just madness?

Thanks for that

Cynic:
I not sure that I agree completely but your "rant" is a welcome diversion and could explain a number of anomalies we are now observing in the behaviour of western governments.

Grace Slick sang: "Show yourself" years ago.
These creeps hide and assume their spawn will survive.

I too have been trying to be

I too have been trying to be a bit less cynical.

But really, with a modicum of effort Fellman could have given us something a little more worthy of the liberal arts, rather than a stale polemic with scarcely concealed ideological animostities.

For example, Paul Fussell used irony and gallows humour to great effect in showcasing the doublespeak employed by government and military authorities during the First World War (and he did it without a trace of corrosive sarcasm). Paul Fussell's work would have been be a great starting point for a historically insightful overview of the peculiar dialect of wartime propaganda. You can actually trace its heritage right back to the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars. Such Orwellian 'newspeak' is a product of the nation-in-arms and the phenomenon of total war, which spring in turn from the same dynamic socio-political forces which gave birth to institutionalized democracy.

Then, lest that show too great a bias towards the unreconstructed Arts and the patriarchal 'dead white men' that created them, Fellman could have applied a post-modern overlay, and given us some insight into the cognitive origins of such collective linguistic falsehoods, and the institutionalized power structures which promulgate them (of the kind Harvard luminary Steven Pinker gives us on a semi-regular basis http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/173200 ).

Then we might have a little more insight into why wartime Newspeak wins such a surfeit of blind followers that it doesn't matter what the "Great Thinkers" running our liberal arts programs have to say about it.

If I had the time, I'd do it myself.

My descent into cynicism

My descent into cynicism began about eight years ago when I enthusiastically leapt into the world of financial services, determined to help my clients achieve financial independence. I resigned a year and a half later in utter disgust. I studied my metier too deeply. I learned that banking is actually a clever scam designed to transfer wealth from the people to the elite. I've now lost all naivety (I think) and I see the left-right debate as a diversion. We suffer from elite rule, and banking is the source of their power. So it's them against us, and we must find a way to stop them.

mikev

"Insurgent" bad, "guerrilla militia" better. How about "resistance"? At least I think that's how it started, a resistance. Most ferociously by the Sunni. The Shia mainly seemed willing to sit back and see how it turned out, because as the majority it could only get better for them. The Sunni felt betrayed by the Shia sympathizers, and sent some "messages", like bombing mosques. By this time, it was obvious to everyone except the USA that the USA was not going to "win" this war, so the Shia abandoned their focus on working with the USA and turned to protecting themselves and punishing the Sunni. Meanwhile moderates of any stripe were getting scarcer and scarcer as fewer and fewer people remained unaffected by the brutal occupation. I think by this time everyone knows someone who has been killed, most people have probably lost close relatives.

"Civil war" is a stupid term for what is going on there. It's a disintegration. "1 day of anarchy is worse than 1000 years of tyranny" is a saying that is proving its profound wisdom. Iraq used to be a prosperous country. It's so depressing to see what the USA has turned it into. Hundreds of thousands are dead, hundreds of thousands are fleeing. This is no civil war where one side will win and and one side will lose and the people will carry on and rebuild as best they can. It's down to people wanting to exterminate each other. There is no thought of what will happen after the fighting is over, nobody imagines the fighting ending. Nothing is sacred, scorched earth policies criss cross each other until the entire country is consumed.

The government of the USA are just a bunch of clowns performing for their people, cue the laugh track. It hardly matters what they come up with for a policy. They lit the match, fire sprung forth, and all Iraq is in flames. Maybe something new will rise from the ashes, but Iraq is destroyed. That something new has better than even chances of being much worse for the USA than what they destroyed in the first place. What a stupid hurting shame.

Cynic - Yes, I agree with

Cynic - Yes, I agree with that sentiment. None of the old justifications of popular sovereignty really stand up anymore. We live in a massive "trickle up" system. And just look how easily we are led by our noses. So really: who is worse, the fool himself or the fools who follow him? Everyone has bought into it just enough, that they're willing to go along with it a little (or a lot) further. The bottom line is that we’ve given our consent.

I would qualify the notion of a monolithic elite - I think there are several elites that are often in competition with each other, but whose interests meet over a collective virtual territory....a turf defined by international patent laws, international banking regulations, frameworks governing the movement of labour and trade…You get the idea. These areas are viturally untouchable by any single electorate, constuency or government. So it's actually a lot bigger than just Bush, Blair or Harper. We've been in a perceptual mind-game of diminishing expectations for a while now. That's how they can get electorates to go along with it. Just gradually instill lower expectations. One other qualification: elites switch places over time, and can be pauperized by political upheavals. This doesn’t remove the occurrence of elites in society, it only creates new ones. For example, look at how the Junker landholders of Brandenburg-Prussia, who formed the backbone of the German officer corps and the German industrial elite, were displaced by the party apparatchiks and state-sanctioned gangsters of Communist East Germany. Abusive hierarchy and unjust exploitation are universal human failings.

The problem is that our "Great Thinkers" haven't been very helpful lately. They have become pawns and mouthpieces, internal to the game, rather than external speakers of truth. This is why transparent journalist pieces like this irritate me. As I’ve said on other threads before: the one area where Chomsky’s politics make the most sense is when he returns to his discipline of linguistics and communications, and argues for a more concerted effort to cultivate a more media-savvy general public (i.e. a working public that does not as a rule attend "Liberal Studies" university programs). To my knowledge, the only multinational institution to take up Chomsky’s challenge…well, I won’t say it, because it’ll only earn me a hailstorm of invective from the secular liberal nihilist fundamentalists…. but here’s a hit: google “Jesuit Communication Project.”

It's a modern spin on Plato’s original 'philosopher versus rhetorician' theme. We’ve been reliving this dichotomy since the rise of the modern public intellectual during the heyday of the Dreyfus controversy, during which the traditional disinterest of the archetypal “Man of Letters” was co-opted and he became a decidedly interested agent of liberal activist politics. Julien Benda’s 1927 classic “La Trahison des Clercs” (‘Betrayal of the Intellectuals’) argued that learned men had abandoned their duty to abstract speculation about justice, good and evil, and the common good. Their role was to confront rulers and laymen with an ideal of justice that must never be betrayed. Benda believed that by century's end the intellectuals had betrayed their calling by becoming spokesmen for class and national passions, thereby helping to bring about the disasters that followed (world war, Communist dictatorship, fascist populism, etc.). As a consequence of this intellectual betrayal, Benda argued, the modern age is characterized (and degraded) by the intellectual organization of mass passions, to which the intelligentsia lends their imprimatur.

Quote:I would qualify the

Definitely - at least eight competing factions have been identified. What they share, however, is their absolute dedication to maintaining their position. For this they are capable of anything, including flying jets into skyscrapers, which is nothing compared to their many other vicious undertakings. Most important is to keep their fascist rule out of the awareness of the people and this is why the internet will be removed.

Yes. It's horrific to contemplate this in the face of the vast human suffering that persists on this wealthy planet at the hands of these psychopaths.

Hope springs eternal. Hugo Chavez seems to be genuine. He recently said that Venezuela will nationalise its central bank... perhaps he's aware of the banking scam. If so, watch for increasing anti-Venezuelan rhetoric in the corporate media.

More Glossary:

Injustice

Not only to their own people with the cancellation of Habeus Corpus pending...but across the planet in the very place that they are 'reportedly' bringing the light of truthiness and justice.

They recalled that former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said on Sept. 16, 2004, that the invasion and occupation of Iraq violated the UN Charter. This made the setting-up of the so-called Iraqi High Tribunal to try Saddam illegal.

http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/iraq/000527.php#more

Still more glossary:

Repression

http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/iraq/000526.php#more

Terrorist

but whom?

Terrified Soldiers Terrifying People

http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/iraq/000525.php#more

Phoenix rises again.

More important than the changes at the top of the pyramid of power in Iraq are the switches taking place in the next levels down in both the CIA and NSA.

None of which will mean well for the 'ordinary' Iraqi.

The sooner the Sunni, Shi'ite and Kurds wake up and throw of the yoke of their Imperialist oppressor, the better...for them.

Nothing make the Canadian contingent in Afghanistan seem any closer to home than the bottom of a pine box or just a wet spot in the sand...

http://www.dahrjamailiraq.com/hard_news/archives/newscommentary/000524.php#more

survive

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.

http://www.zeitcom.com/majgen/09kipling.html

What did you call it?

A botched invasion? Were you rooting for a successful invasion? Lets call it what it is, an unprovoked act of war, an aggressive illegal invasion that has resulted in 650,000+ murders, lives prematurely snuffed for what, loot the country of it's oil?

When the U.S.A. occupation forces announced the creation of "Permanent Military Bases in Iraq" do you think they were semantically speaking of something else? What part of Permanent don't you understand.

This whole article reads cock-eyed. Just focus for a moment on the bush family, Prescott was the Nazi's banker in the USA.
George H. W. is being linked to the murder of JFK, and has the blood of the first gulf war on his hands.
And here comes George W. do you think he measures up or should he go for Iran too?

Remember! this is a Criminal event, which will (if there is such a thing as justice in the world) be prosecuted.

Brit Car Bombers

Also what about the two Brit car-bombers. They were driving a car full of explosives, they were stopped at a check point, they murdered the guy at the check and were subsequently chased down and arrested by the dead guy's buddies. The two Brits were later busted out of the town jail by additional British forces using armored vehicles. The jail was demolished allowing many criminals to escape as well. This event occurred a couple of years back, before anything like a civil war was happening. Do you think antics like this and the brutal tactics of USA forces might have contributed to a "botched invasion"?

Bush has a approval rate so

Bush has a approval rate so low it's getting weird, as he staggers along. when a stage full of republican lawmakes are trying to tell him what so many others tell him it's geeting bizare. His idea of shoving a few more trooops into a civil war will prove nothing much except get a bunch of them killed. To read of people getting their tours extended or others going back for the third or fourth time just because George and Chaney won't admit thier stupid mistakes makes one grieve.

Approval and Grief

Just as LBJ did in the Vietnam era, the next occupant of the white house will have to continue this tragedy of criminal proportions against humanity in the middle east.

That future president will be so forced because the current Congress lacks the will and moral fiber to deny the Commander in Chimp the $$$ needed to launch the 'surge' troops.

Impeachment proceedings need to start now, and be accelerated -> against any member of the current white house that any shred of credible evidence can be found. Considering what 'intel' was used to try and bamboozle the UN, which worked to convince the US populace it should not be hard to 'find' such evidence.

At the very least the Patriot Act needs to be overturned and the continued strangle-hold of Homeland Security must be ended before 'all the kings men' hold the 'king' in the palm of their hands...

reality over language....

The "language" issue here, coming from right or left, so important to the, I would say, over-educated, such as nightbloom and those similarly absorbed more with the appearance or form than the content of a thing, is really irrelevant, at least to me. (Which is not to say that choice of language cannot be a tiny, tiny window into the soul of a person or ideas set.)

What is important is, as they say, the reality on the ground, and what it can reveal to us about the emerging "material" future likelihoods-, as opposed to our philosophical fantasies. And the reality on the ground here, both in the Middle East and the larger world, including our own closer to home "hemispheric reality" is, quoting from an article in the US blog, Huffinton Post:

AP report

This year's theme at the World Economic Forum annual meeting -- "the shifting power equation"-- confirms the view of the global elite gathering in Davos, Switzerland that power is draining away from the United States to multiple centers as countries from Brazil to China moved beyond "emerging" markets to establish themselves as major players on the world scene...

...Usually, Davos gets it right because its motto, which might be described as "follow the money, with the conscience trailing behind," pretty much approximates how the world works.

And this reflects the fundamental emerging reality, I think. Western capitalism, rooted primarily in the US, but only marginally less in Europe as well, has indeed been working to create a new "global system" over which it/they exercise dominance or hegemony, no doubt, but it is increasingly in fact a demonstrable failure. This new "colonial" imperial ambition of firstly the would-be US Empire is, for all its attempt to re-shape a new "colonial world" dominated by global corporatist capitalism, falling flat on its face.

The reality on the ground... Fuk the language. ...is that the world, while ambitious "new empire projects" are emerging from a number of capitalist centres, such as Amerika, Europe, China and Russia, and working mightily to establish dominance, including over each and the other, there is another phenomena working outside of that process to undercut it. And that is in fact an emerging "new democratic" , breaking free of the pull of Empire colonial control, and smaller state ambitions to secure their own independence, and control over their own natural resources and economic assets, and national political institutions.

The first project, right now at least, is in the process of coming down-, that of attempting to subjugate the peoples of the Middle East to the US Empire ambition. And it is threatening to fragment and set against each other, as in the case of the First and Second Great Wars, all the great powers of capitalism and to undermine its very economic dependency system on the United States economy. (Including China and Russia, who are both as well dependent upon US markets as drivers for their own new capitalist economies. And China especially is underwriting huge US debts, putting itself at great risk, just to maintain this system relationship.)

Of the two pulls on the modern world, one driven by corporate capitalism with all the counteracting forces resisting and increasingly attempting to pull it down, and the other pull of the smaller states of Latin Amerika and yes, even the Middle East peoples for modernity and to eject US imperialist/Zionist attempts to subjugate them, it is my view that the greater long term interest of this country, and its need to assert its own independence and control over its own economic resources and institutions, lies with aligning itself with this latter pull. We have a stake in its outcome. And unless our ambition really is seen to lie in the same bed with the US Empire, then it lies in us concluding that now, at this moment of their decline, and getting posthaste onto finally, our own independent national development and self-sufficiency path, along with this competing "smaller states" trend.

If the globalized "New World Order" capitalism project wins and proceeds, which I consider a near impossibility as it shapes up everywhere, then the North Amerikan Union is the reality into which we as a country will be drawn and consumed. And there is probably very little we can do then to prevent it. A triumphalist US Empire will simply just roll right over us.

If the project fails, my preference and as matters appear, then this country, as Amerika goes down in influence and economic clout, absorbed with its own growing internal "broken border" and post war restiveness and re-adjustments, then we are left no choice but to deal with our own situation, economic and political national development, and relationship with the then broken "empire aspirant" to our south. The latter being, hopefully, in a then more useful, less threatening, and "balanced" context-, as opposed to our currently more "submissive", knee bending relationship with them. Which needs to go, just as fast as we can send it into ancient history.

Thrashing Elephant

There is no doubt inmy mind that the US is going down.

http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m29960&hd=&size=1&l=e

Er...'Double Plus Up' anyone...?

Sounds almost like a Starbucks order. Fellman didn't pick up on the most absurd bit of Newspeak in the headlines this month...

http://time.blogs.com/daily_dish/2007/01/plus_up_1.html

...and then there's just

...and then there's just plain old uncalculated haplessness...No need to invoke Orwellian linguistic conspiracies...

http://www.slate.com/id/76886/

Breakdown Dead Ahead

In regard to Coyote's mighty fine piece of analysis above if you use Google News and google "PNAC", a very interesting array of news articles come up in relation to the alleged dissolving of PNAC....
or more accurately the attempt by its members to become "invisible" as the resulting world chaos from the implementation of PNAC policies becomes more and more evident....and as Bush continues to forge ahead implementing them once again in his latest "new strategy" towards the war in Iraq.

The road ahead has many forks in it...and almost all of them are pretty damn scary.

One of the news articles deals with the mental health of the president of the United States...that's when you realize the future could go anywhere.

I'll borrow a borrowed quote from the article:

“Danger, there's a breakdown dead ahead - Maybe you're in way above your head” –

From Boz Scaggs’ “Breakdown Dead Ahead,” 1980

dead skunk

watched the folks clapping away as President Bush gave his last (I hope) "State of the Union" address.

I'm not sure that this show was choreographed but it looked phony to me.

They're always very staged.

They're always very staged. It's a ritual. Cccasionally, spontaneous camera shots of audience reactions can provide for moments of levity, although these can be very calculated too. Hillary and Ted Kennedy always seem to know when the camera is on them.

It's not quite as ritualized as our Throne Speeches, and the Opposing party in the U.S. does get a chance to respond immediately aferward. In Canada, it's the Prime Minister who officially responds to the GG's speech (usually the next day that the House is sitting) even though the PM is the one who actually wrote and approved the speech.

They're always very staged.

They're always very staged. It's a ritual. Cccasionally, spontaneous camera shots of audience reactions can provide for moments of levity, although these can be very calculated too. Hillary and Ted Kennedy always seem to know when the camera is on them.

It's not quite as ritualized as our Throne Speeches, and the Opposing party in the U.S. does get a chance to respond immediately aferward. In Canada, it's the Prime Minister who officially responds to the GG's speech (usually the next day that the House is sitting) even though the PM is the one who actually wrote and approved the speech.

Maureen Dowd

Daffy Does Doom
By MAUREEN DOWD

WASHINGTON

Dick Durbin went to the floor of the Senate on Thursday night to denounce the vice president as “delusional.”

It was shocking, and Senator Durbin should be ashamed of himself.

Delusional is far too mild a word to describe Dick Cheney. Delusional doesn’t begin to capture the profound, transcendental one-flew-over daftness of the man.

Has anyone in the history of the United States ever been so singularly wrong and misguided about such phenomenally important events and continued to insist he’s right in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary?

It requires an exquisite kind of lunacy to spend hundreds of billions destroying America’s reputation in the world, exhausting the U.S. military, failing to catch Osama, enhancing Iran’s power in the Middle East and sending American kids to train and arm Iraqi forces so they can work against American interests.

Only someone with an inspired alienation from reality could, under the guise of exorcising the trauma of Vietnam, replicate the trauma of Vietnam.

You must have a real talent for derangement to stay wrong every step of the way, to remain in complete denial about Iraq’s civil war, to have a total misunderstanding of Arab culture, to be completely oblivious to the American mood and to be absolutely blind to how democracy works.

In a democracy, when you run a campaign that panders to homophobia by attacking gay marriage and then your lesbian daughter writes a book about politics and decides to have a baby with her partner, you cannot tell Wolf Blitzer he’s “out of line” when he gingerly raises the hypocrisy of your position.

Mr. Cheney acts more like a member of the James gang than the Jefferson gang. Asked by Wolf what would happen if the Senate passed a resolution critical of The Surge, Scary Cheney rumbled, “It won’t stop us.”

Such an exercise in democracy, he noted, would be “detrimental from the standpoint of the troops.”

Americans learned an important lesson from Vietnam about supporting the troops even when they did not support the war. From media organizations to Hollywood celebrities and lawmakers on both sides, everyone backs our troops.

It is W. and Vice who learned no lessons from Vietnam, probably because they worked so hard to avoid going. They rush into a war halfway around the world for no reason and with no foresight about the culture or the inevitable insurgency, and then assert that any criticism of their fumbling management of Iraq and Afghanistan is tantamount to criticizing the troops. Quel demagoguery.

“Bottom line,” Vice told Wolf, “is that we’ve had enormous successes, and we will continue to have enormous successes.” The biggest threat, he said, is that Americans may not “have the stomach for the fight.”

He should stop casting aspersions on the American stomach. We’ve had the stomach for more than 3,000 American deaths in a war sold as a cakewalk.

If W. were not so obsessed with being seen as tough, Mr. Cheney could not influence him with such tripe.

They are perpetually guided by the wrong part of the body. They are consumed by the fear of looking as if they don’t have guts, when they should be compelled by the desire to look as if they have brains.

After offering Congress an olive branch in the State of the Union, the president resumed mindless swaggering. Asked yesterday why he was ratcheting up despite the resolutions, W. replied, “In that I’m the decision maker, I had to come up with a way forward that precluded disaster.” (Or preordained it.)

The reality of Iraq, as The Times’s brilliant John Burns described it to Charlie Rose this week, is that a messy endgame could be far worse than Vietnam, leading to “a civil war on a scale with bloodshed that will absolutely dwarf what we’re seeing now,” and a “wider conflagration, with all kinds of implications for the world’s flow of oil, for the state of Israel. What happens to King Abdullah in Jordan if there’s complete chaos in the region?”

Mr. Cheney has turned his perversity into foreign policy.

He assumes that the more people think he’s crazy, the saner he must be. In Dr. No’s nutty world-view, anti-Americanism is a compliment. The proof that America is right is that everyone thinks it isn’t.

He sees himself as a prophet in the wilderness because he thinks anyone in the wilderness must be a prophet.

To borrow one of his many dismissive words, it’s hogwash.

Maureen's on the money.

Maureen's on the money.