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Thursday, June 24, 2004
You Don't Know Dick
Atrios is reporting that Wonkette is reporting that CNN is reporting that Dick Cheney advised Pat Leahy to attempt an anatomical impossibility upon himself yesterday on the floor of the Senate. A search for "go fuck yourself" on CNN's site produces no results so maybe the Wonkerita is wanking us again.
UPDATE: 7:47 pm The Washington Post has details.
posted by Jerry Bowles
5:35 PM
Co-Executive Privilege
The Surpremes have voted 7-2 to keep Co-President Dick Cheney's "energy task force" papers private. The decision allows the GOP stall tactics to continue and effectively kicks the issue back to the lower courts. Scalia didn't have to vote via carrier pigeon from the Co-President's Bayou duckblind. In spite of all the media fuss, he showed up, unscathed. In Halliburton we Trust.
posted by Groom
4:29 PM
Why Bush Wins
1. Iraq. Starting next week, Bush can just blame the new government in Iraq if things go wrong, claiming, “We did our job. We need to be patient with new democracies. We, and our coalition partners, are doing everything we can to support THEM.” His numbers on handling war on terrorism will start going up again. Kerry can only neutralize this issue by appointing General Clark as VP, something he is not likely to do.
2. Economy. It doesn’t matter how bad the economy got, what matters now is that it is improving now. Joe Six Pact and Mary Chardonnay don’t know nothing about no deficits. Kerry will try to play the Clinton card.
3. Debates. All Bush needs to do again is show up. Kerry will “look” presidential, but Bush is the president. Kerry, who was on the Yale Debating Team, will be too conscious of Gore’s problem in the 2000 debates, and in his overcompensation, he will be too stiff and his attempts to be loose and light will not work. Bush will lose on content, but win on personality with his casual, self-deprecating style and “fuzzy math” labels.
4. Likeability. With 90 or more percent of voters having made up their mind who they will vote for, splitting about evenly between the two, the balance of voters are likely to wait until the last minute, and as this voting cohort has in the past, vote for the candidate they “like” the best. In terms of personality, Kerry is cold, Bush is cool. Kerry is stiff and not good at one liners. Bush can only deliver one liners, with that weird, but “engaging” body language and those strange facial expressions of his.
5. October Surprise in September. Only Bush is able to pull a surprise in this election. And he is likely to do so by replacing Cheney on the ticket, at the Convention, and in one deft move, remove the Cheney/Halliburton baggage. For those who wanted McCain as VP, they may get their wish, but on the wrong side. McCain's job will be to clean up the Pentagon and sort out the CIA.
Then we move to Canada.
posted by Josh
12:50 PM
The Spy Who Came in from the Heat
It looks like the Bush administration is having trouble putting down the insurgency over at Langley. George Tenet’s body isn’t even cold yet and already comes a deadly fuselage of criticism from a “senior intelligence official” called Anonymous in an imminent (first week of July) but already widely discussed new book called Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror. The title says it all; the book is a scathing condemnation of the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism policy. The author argues that the West is losing the war against al-Qaeda and that an "avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked" war in Iraq has played into Osama bin Laden's hands.
What makes the book most remarkable is that “Anonymous” is anything but. He’s a 22-year CIA veteran who once headed the al-Qaeda “desk” at Langley and was shunted aside for taking his job too seriously. He has a beard and wears glasses and clearly doesn’t plan to keep working much longer. He was on CNN last night, in silhouette, talking about the book. Every journalist and security analyst in Washington knows his name. Did I mention that he still works at the CIA and that the book was vetted by the agency?
CNN trotted out some “old boys” to offer the lame explanation that the Agency doesn’t want to interfere with anybody’s First Amendment rights and a working spook has the same rights to diss the government as anyone else which, of course, is horse pucky. The Agency’s legal beagles could easily have kept the manuscript “under review” until after November’s elections but someone deliberately chose not to do so.
Anonymous is no closet liberal. He believes they hate us not for our “freedoms,” as Shrub keeps insisting, but because of our specific U.S. Middle Eastern policies, i.e. troops on the Arabian Peninsula and our support of Israel, right or wrong. He is much closer to the “kill them all and let God sort them out” school than to the bring the troops home position.
He believes (or, at least, writes) al-Qaeda is rooting for Shrub and may attack the U.S. to insure his re-election.
It seems fairly clear that the Administration is scapegoating the CIA for the twin failures of 9/11 and Iraq and that there is going to be blow back. Consider this the first suicide bombing of what will be a nasty little war.
posted by Jerry Bowles
11:12 AM
Kerry takes care of his own
While John Kerry was pulling the trigger in Vietnam, Bushovic was pulling his pudd at some undisclosed location on the Redneck Riviera. When 9/11 commision member Bob Kerrey got whipsawed in 2001 over disclosures about his role in a rather nasty Navy SEAL operation in Vietnam, it was Kerry who went to the Senate floor and defended him. No wonder Nurse Frist tried to play "whites only y'all keep out" on the Veterans Bill vote.
posted by Groom
10:15 AM
Grooming Tips for Neocons
Before television appearance, take filthy black comb from pocket, stick in mouth, slobber lavishly, rake through the dingy hair, return comb to pocket. (Paul Wolfowitz, observed in Farenheit 9/11)
posted by Jerry Bowles
9:10 AM
Dems flick Nader’s BIC in Arizona
A couple of generic Arizona Democrats have filed a lawsuit claiming that two thirds of the 21,512 signatures Ralph Nader submitted to get on the November presidential ballot are invalid. We'll find out whether those petition signers pulled a convoy from the Corvair cryogenics center in neighboring New Mexico, where it's still legal for dead people to vote. Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.
posted by Groom
6:13 AM
More Fuel for the Brainwash
You know, these [U.S. soldiers in Iraq] are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You ever heard of the need to blow some steam off?
-- Rush Limbaugh, on his radio show, May 4
In the interest of blowing off steam, I say hog-tie him. Naked, that is. And snug his boil-scarred, pill-popping, chickenhawk ass right up to a very naked, very sweaty, and ultimately very jiggly Newt Gingrich.
-- Deek, a poster at Atrios's Eschaton, June 24
posted by Michael
1:25 AM
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