Gobbledygook

Master Dick speaks

This neat clip from 1994 is a great comment about what might happen if the USA had invaded Iraq completely in 1991 and why that would be a really bad idea. The speaker is articulate and seems to have given the option some thought. Not much difference between 1994 and 2003. Except the aboutface that Mr. Cheney performs.

(Note, however, that he did not get it quite right. The Shia, the Sunni, the fact that Iran would become the big powerbroker, or one of the other Arab nations... all that went right by this man, who apparently knows little about the region ... My contention at the time was: take out Saddam Hussein and you'll open the way to some other nationalist leader to take the flag of the Mahdi, as it were... at least Hussein seemed pretty much hated by everyone else, he was therefore a divisive figure in the region... Divide et conquera, heavens, and Blair the Dunce did not get that message? The Brits invaded the planet using "divide and conquer" as a strategy. But no one asked me, in 1991 I was writing travel guides and occasional articles on doggie glasses, because editors were far too timorous to publish real stuff. Meanwhile well-paid pundits spewed hours and reams of nonsense for the masses.... but I digress).



This clip supports Helen Thomas's question as to why the USA went into Iraq (see yesterday's post). But Dick "Darth" Cheney ain't saying. After running the country for eight years -- you don't think the GWB could, do you? He never ran anything in his life -- we suddenly realize: The VP was just as incompetent, thick-skulled, evil and parochial as his understudy. Fifth-rate individuals, who brought in controllable tenth-raters like Chertoff.

The quality of conservatism in the USA can be measured by Pajamas Media's hiring of Joe the Plumber to go report on Israel. The man obviously has the intellect of a pipe wrench. The Huff Post lists a little interview he had with an Israeli reporter.... Does this man have work? Will anyone ever hire him as a plumber even, once the lunatic fringe has dropped him as the liability he is?
I can imagine sort of the following conversation:

Ring, ring,
- Joe the Plumber, may I help you?
- Hi Joe, Marty here, from the General Store. I have a leak in my basement, and don't know where it's coming from.
- Hi Marty, where is the leak?
- In the basement.
- Do you know where it's coming from?
- No, that's why I'm calling.
- So how do you know there's a leak...

and so on...


But under a Palin/McCain administration, he could have been Surgeon General, or head of Homeland Security or even Defense. No 7000-dollar toilet seats with Joe.

Speaking of Sarah Palin. The conservatives have made a delightful film of why Obama got elected, placing the blame on all sorts of things other than their own very silly candidates and McCain's two disastrous decisions: He chose Palin, and he chose to go with some very stupid dirt throwing at a time when even conservative Americans in the Televangelist Belt were beginning to wonder if maybe W. had been speaking to the wrong Jesus. The docu is pure trash, but it did provide Jon Stewart with a great target to practice pie-throwing:

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Blamey Whinehouse

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Quick reminder that before November 4, Palin said that the election was in God's hands. So why blame it on the media again, when this all powerful being who created everyone, but hates most of them, decided that Sarah Palin was not going to magically become Frau Präsidentin... Are these people for real? The whole thing was Disneyesque, let us face it, with Elmar Fudd joining Cruella and one of the Beagle Boys as Joe the Plumber. These people must grow up.

Professor Emeticus at work

The stuff one has to ingest....

(Remember Helen Thomas from yesterday's post? Coincidentally today: an excellent interview by Amy Goodman from Democracy Now! That woman -- redolence of J. McCain... -- Helen Thomas, who was born to Lebanese Christian parents in 1920, is simply phenomenal. I vote that a statue of her be placed opposite that pompous Mount Rushmore carving!)

My parents had a hilarious book in their vast library. It was called The Other Victorians by Steven Marcus and explored, presented and commented the bizarre pornography of that allegedly buttoned-up age. If my memory serves me correctly, that is where I first heard or read the expression "daisy chain." Yesterday, the public was regaled with a similar porno-political display, namely George Bush giving Tony Blair the Medal of Freedom. Time to cast a new medal for great public service, the MofF has just been disgraced forevermore. My source is the BBC, where the story had very short shelf-life, but the picture they posted along with the story does look like something out of, say, Brokeback Mountain.

Blair, who joyfully joined in the orgy that turned Iraq into a charnel house, is now a Catholic, so one must suppose that his soul is cleansed. Scruples is one thing that that man does not have. He seems to believe that lying about lying means the Truth. I wish some philosopher would crawl out of the dusty halls of academe and point out to him that that is not so.

Or are we faced with an Epimenides Paradox, "All politicians lie, said the politician." This may be one reason why nothing ever really gets done and the news all looks the same all the time, like those Hollywood titles called "films."

Israel, Israel, Israel

At any rate, these two men have focused immense attention and energy and resources on a neo-conservative adventure in Iraq, while leaving the real problem untouched: Israel and Palestine and some 12,000 square miles of territory that is causing about 75% of the political trouble around the world. America's consistent and blind support of Israel, which is aimed at maintaining divisions, war and instability in the Middle East, has made the region far more dangerous. Just imagine peace in the region: suddenly, no more bugaboos, no more scapegoats, nowhere to point a finger to make sure attention is not focused on real problems.... And the right wing in Israel and elsewhere has figured out long ago that war turns entire populations into complete imbeciles frothing at the mouth for revenge. Pavlov's dog with a rabies. Permanent war. The solution to all problems.

But in the Middle East, there can be no peace, because people like George W. Bush have been approaching the problem with some simplistic ideas like "Israel has a right to defend itself." Not enough on a negotiating table, but what more can you expect from such a low-watt bulb. Enlightenment? Clarity?

Speaking of the BBC.... Still an organization with a little backbone left (I have long been convinced that evolution is actually going the other way than Darwin suggested, we are ascending towards the amoebal state, at least that's what the evidence shows... Their comment section is full of wild speculations and rants, but oddly, three that I left were "not published". Here they are: Try and find anything irritating (small changes, because there is more space here). I drop them here for some consideration...

#1: BBC Question: Are the raids on Gaza justified?
Answer: Killing innocent people through indiscriminate bombing is never justifiable. Period. And Americans should remember that "Made in USA" is actually printed on the (Israeli) ammo somewhere, so do not be astonished when you are made responsible, too. Not published.

#2: BBC Question: How can a truce be achieved in Gaza?

Answer 1: I am 51. I started reading papers at the age of around 10. One bit of continuity: The world itself has been held hostage by these two miniature nations not being able to get along for that long at least. I for one am sick and tired of it, I am tired of reading about it, I am tired of the fingerpointing and all this biblical nonsense. Had these two peoples decided to set aside their differences and ask the Swiss, for example, how do they manage, they would be living in a sort of Garden of Eden. But someone, somewhere must be profiting immensely from this conflict.

Answer 2: As of today, nearly 800 Palestinians (this was a few days ago, the number tops 1000 today) have been killed, mostly innocents, versus a few Israeli soldiers. This is exactly what the extremists want. Because it is a rhetorical victory in terms of facts. To the "man on the street", Israel is the bogeyman. But Israel has responded to the extremists by doing their bidding, i.e., "heating up the street." (Nevertheless, it is the people who are clamoring that Israel stop the bombing who are being called friends of the terrorists, etc.)

So, who is giving in to the terrorists, I ask? Yes, Israel.

The second answer was stretched a little... Just to underscore the complete lack of logic in the Israeli attack on Gaza.
That is how bizarre everything has become.

Best regards,

Professor Emeticus

With news to puke by

Clearing the Bush

Because some things need to be said...

Outgoing Double-U, were one to just scan the news these days, is becoming introspective. By the soundbytes of it, he is a deep-thinking man, self-critical, self-effacing, a misrepresented genius of .... you get the message: the usual claptrap by a press corps too afraid of reality to report it.


(Let us make a very clear exception here with Ms Helen Thomas, who at the age of 88 has more critical faculty in her left index finger than J. Tapper in his whole body. While the White House Press Corps was shaking in its shoes and keeping its collective (ca)rears covered, Ms Thomas, the last beacon of fearless journalism, asked GWB the following, sobering question in 2006:

"I'd like to ask you, Mr. President, your decision to invade Iraq has caused the deaths of thousands of Americans and Iraqis, wounds of Americans and Iraqis for a lifetime. Every reason given, publicly at least, has turned out not to be true. My question is: Why did you really want to go to war? From the moment you stepped into the White House, from your Cabinet—your Cabinet officers, intelligence people, and so forth—what was your real reason? You have said it wasn't oil—quest for oil, it hasn't been Israel, or anything else. What was it? "

Hundreds of thousands of deaths later, we are still waiting for a logical explanation, an answer, an admission at least… But now newspapers are already whitewashing a little, they seem almost wistful about the Dear Departing President Bush?
Yesterday, on January 12, the Boston Globe brewed one of those typical “four editors get together and refuse to commit themselves” pieces. Their effort to avoid the point-blank truth is appalling. The equivalent of using cheap perfume to cover the smell coming from a seldom changed litter box. Iraq, within a few lines, is checked off as a "precipitous decision"? They must be kidding? Precipitous means "too fast". The Boston Globe must refer to some other planet in a distant solar system. Iraq, to remind my shallow-dish colleagues, was an unnecessary war created from a fiction and waged, illegally, in order to keep America's news media busy with nice pictures while the GOP cronies dismantled any regulation at home that might prevent their masters from becoming richer. It had nothing to do with terrorism and everything to do with oil and creation of an Orwellian “permanent war.”

He spake
Thus, the Washington Post duly notes Bush The Outgoer saying ... "(T)he greatest challenge President-elect Barack Obama and his successors will likely face is "an attack on our homeland" akin to the events of Sept. 11, 2001. Such a scenario, (Bush) predicted, would make people less likely to question interrogation tactics and other extreme security measures adopted by the government during his tenure."
What is missing, of course, is the little reminder that Mr. Bush and his incoming team were given just such information in early 2001, but that Mr. Bush the Decider decided that long vacations at taxpayer expense and some rounds of golf were more important than protecting the nation. In other words, he was slacking off on the job and then went about acting like some high-noonish muppet in a cowboy film and falling into the Bin Laden's carefully laid trap (more about this soon). Thank you, Washington Post, for failing to remind us of that pithy fact. This is the paper that went after Nixon?

Ways of making them squawk
As for the extreme measures used for interrogation, they destroyed our image abroad far more than Bush is willing to admit. Furthermore, these measures are a waste…. Let us reel back to the war in Algeria (France, 1950s). When the methods employed by the French paras in Algerian prisons became known, public opinion shifted against the French in Algeria and against the government’s approach. If the Bushistas had been somewhat more cultivated, they might have spotted the dangers of Iraq and even Afghanistan simply by peaking at history. But men like Paul Wolfowitz are not interested in history, they are as incurious as W himself, the flavor of his own dandruff appears enough to satisfy him. Besides the vast literature on the Algerian War, there are little tidbits like Heinri Alleg's La Question and a grandiose docudrama called The Battle of Algiers by Gillo Pontecorvo, which depicts something uncannily similar to what went on in Iraq -- and even Palestine. This is just a little flavor. (Note the reference to “drowning”… that is waterboarding. And for those who have not yet figured it out yet, the clear winner in the region is Iran, that, at least, is the view of Joschka Fischer, former foreign minister and Vice Chancellor from Germany. But someone I know, who interviewed him, cannot even give the interview away (18 queries, 2 answers), the press “is not interested.”

Chatty aside: Information from torture is often false. A properly built up network requires 24 hours to disband, I believe, no sooner has one person been captured. And the networks are built up of people who generally do not know each other. So why do it?

Sadism. Plain and simple. And just because the other side acts like butchers, cutting people’s heads off and behaving essentially like some demented Catholic priests from the Middle Ages Catholicism (those fellows from the Vatican knew how to be revolting at home and abroad), doesn’t mean we have to do it… You know: looking into the abyss and all.

Straight Bush

As for the Associated Press, it, too, offered a few choice comments by this strange fellow:

"I think it's a good, strong record. You know, presidents can try to avoid hard decisions and therefore avoid controversy. That's just not my nature."

Of course, the point is, as the slacker he is, he tried to avoid the tough decisions. A prezdint has to make tough decisions, he is not elected in a huge campaign to become the White House butler. It’s not about tough decisions, it’s the wrong ones. But shortly after wandering into this minefield of logic, George offers two slaps in the face of every American, though about 30% will not notice, because they believe Bush has been anointed by God and they also believe that dinosaurs shared space with people like the Sumerians who were already using yeast to make real ale in 6000 b.c.

But let's not forget the afore-mentioned slaps: Finding no WMD and Abu Ghraib were both “disappointments” for Bush, he says. Like going to the movies to see The Piano and finding it has been replaced by Brigadoon. So much for compassionate conservatism. Like the Collected Flubs of Kristol and Co., those of George W. Bush have the odd self-contained dialectical quality of actually signifying the opposite of what they are saying. It’s very confusing for most people, especially since everyone has gotten used to 3-second TV clips and to expressing emotions in the form of three or four capitalized letters or silly yellow circles.

The clean-up
What is frustrating, of course, is that the establishment must still spend time dealing with this fifth-rate political carbuncle named George W. Bush, but rather than comment in an honest and forthright fashion, they are still being mealy-mouthed, and sweating profusely to make sure that everyone sort of gets equal time, except for the dwindling reality-based community. Ooooo, musn’t hurt anyone’s feelings, now. There they are, with pens and pads and microphones and cameras, creating a semblance of a legacy and by the same token pumping the Bush ego. As if he had something to say. Anything.

He has nothing to say. And no one is about to say it. He is a shortsighted, thick man, manipulative and narcissistic like so many addicts or former addicts who quit the booze and cocaine without a second thought to pick up a primitive and simplistic religion, which paints the world in easy blacks and whites (the book Bush On The Couch was absolutely right in its profiling of this silly creature). This provided him with the illusion of grandeur under which he labors. He could now kill and sleep well at night. He said as much in 200, I believe when discussing the record number of men he signed off to the gallows in Texas…. he also put firecrackers in frogs as a kid. The pundits should have noted his complete absence of compassionate thinking, but few did. Instead, they brown-nosed their comfy little ways to get close to the seat of power, climbed into the little personal Bush bubble and are now scrambling to keep it from popping along with the financial bubble. By the time they wake up, democracy will have become as obsolete as Leninism.