That dog don't hunt

Sure, a lot of Republicans are looking for the last boat off of the Titanic, but why on earth would Vice President Dick Cheney endorse John McCain at the last minute? Does anyone think there's an undecided voter who's going to think 'well, if Dick says it's okay...'?

This seems like another Cheney hunting accident with McCain as the victim. Sure, he's still got his fans. So does George Bush: two people stood up for him in USSP last night. Those people have already made up their minds.

McCain is desperately trying to stay away from these associations. Oh, and according to Taegan Goddard, Barack Obama helpfully responded with "I'd like to congratulate Senator McCain on this endorsement because he really earned it."



Surprise, surprise, surprise -- Gomer Pyle

Oh, maybe just whistle

Barack Obama and John McCain may be whistling in the dark when it comes to Iraq, and it's likely both candidates know it.

"Key aides" of each have been vetted (The veterinarian has checked their wind and teeth) and kept in the loop since summer. (President George Bush officially created a Transition Coordinating Council October 9.) They've probably heard much of what's in a draft National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. According to McClatchy Newspapers:

A nearly completed high-level U.S. intelligence analysis warns that unresolved ethnic and sectarian tensions in Iraq could unleash a new wave of violence, potentially reversing the major security and political gains achieved over the last year.

I'd bet on both candidates ignoring it, unless McCain decides on yet another 'hail Mary' pass to revive his campaign. He has (or had) an edge on foreign affairs, but he's invested a lot in being right about the surge. For Obama, it would seriously threaten his 16 month deadline.

The article also provides less-than-optimistic statements from Gen. David Petraeus, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Defense Department.

The next President's to-do list isn't getting any shorter.

Media withdrawing

It's no surprise that government officials will filter the information they release, but at the same time most news organizations are doing their own pullout.

According to the Washington Post:

U.S. military officials say they "embedded" journalists 219 times in September 2007. Last month, the number shrank to 39. Of the dozen U.S. newspapers and newspaper chains that maintained full-time bureaus in Baghdad in the early years of the war, only four are still permanently staffed by foreign correspondents. CBS and NBC no longer keep a correspondent in Baghdad year-round.

Cynically, we could say that's because bombings sell advertising, while reconstruction and infighting over power won't make the front page. There's an election going on. It's also true that newspapers in particular are hurting, with several going out of business.

Whatever the reason, we're getting less information out of Iraq at a critical time.

The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That's bigger than any tax cut in the any country. -- Rupert Murdoch, 2003

He will either go down in history as a very great president or he'll crash and burn. I'm optimistic it will be the former by a ratio of two to one. -- Rupert Murdoch, 2003

Malfunction, dysfunction, bailout

Some days it's just no fun to write. For more than a week, I've read story after story about the dysfunctional national and local governments. Outrage is like adrenaline: it takes more and more to have any effect.

Nationally, we have the credit "crisis". That's a malfunction. But, depending on who you listen to, it's been coming for six months, a year or years. Failure to deal with it is dysfunctional and our political system is to blame. Despite their protestations, both parties have been happily hand-fed by the bad actors in this drama.

So, when Henry Paulson and Ben Bernanke wanted their stinking sack filled at the last minute with $700 billion ($700,000,000,000) or so, the politicians were trapped. They knew they were to blame, and they wanted to blame someone else.

The bipartisan ball

They call it being bipartisan. An example: Ben, Henry and George (Bush, it's not really helpful to have him front-and-center these days) give you a three-page proposal and say take it or leave it. If you don't, you're being partisan, perhaps even unpatriotic.

Doesn't work? Let's have the House and Senate committees that sat on the problem for years put some flesh on the skeleton from their closets. If you don't buy that... well, see above.

Except... too many Republicans and Democrats won't go along. Now we've got a dance. The Presidential candidates can't actually come out against it (They might succeed and be blamed for bad things), only sniff that it would never have happened on their watch. The trick, on both sides of the aisle, is to have just enough support to let it pass while giving protection to vulnerable colleagues who are up for election. Nevermind toxic debt; being the only party with majority support for a Bush proposal is toxic.

The Republicans didn't have enough party discipline to play that game, so the Senate had to step in by spreading some tax breaks around. Now we can go back to business as usual.

Bush whacked

President George Bush seems to be trying a Texas two-step to get John McCain elected. Nationalizing Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, massive borrowing to prop up other failing banks; that should get us through to the November election. More stop-gaps until January and it's someone else's problem.

Look at today's financial meltdown. Lots of attacks, but where's the beef?

McCain and Barack Obama to the rescue? Why am I cynical?:

Merrill-Lynch: McCain $394,300; Obama $229,100
Bank of America: McCain $177,500, Obama $263,500
Lehman Brothers: $117,500, Obama $370,500
AIG: McCain $103,000, Obama $82,600

Sure, they're two Senators out of 100, but they've been burnishing their Presidential credentials instead of dealing with the problem.

Blame Bush for lax regulation, with the help of both parties. Both candidates say they're going to fix that. Meanwhile, I'd suggest looking at their economic policies as a whole. This issue looks like a wash.

They say in the stock market…buy stock in a business that’s so good that an idiot can run it because sooner or later one will. -- Warren Buffet

Where eagles sour

Now we know why Tom Ridge was dropped from George McCain's list of potential Vice-Presidents.



This video works fine on You Tube, but gives a 'Not available' message here. Dunno why, tho they say they're doing site maintenance. Here's another version:



Hmm. Same thing. Try this or this

Georgia on my mind

Welcome to cyberwar. The Republic of Georgia (not the state) is using Google's Blogger to get its message out:

Cyber Attacks Disable Georgian Websites
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Monday, August 11 • 12:00 Tbilisi, Georgia

Cyber Warfare Attacks by Russia Disable Georgian Websites; Government of Georgia Established Alternative Websites

A cyber warfare campaign by Russia is seriously disrupting many Georgian websites, including that of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. If you cannnot access official Georgian government websites, please go to the following sites for the latest official Government of Georgia news.

* http://georgiamfa.blogspot.com/ (this site)

* The website of the President of the Republic of Poland Lech Kaczyński: www.president.pl (go to the link: "information about the latest developments in Georgia.")

This one doesn't work: http://www.government.gov.ge/


(Oil) Power Politics

President George Bush is dithering, John McCain favors a more bellicose stance and Barack Obama seems to be falling into Bush's hand-wringing posture. Meanwhile, Russia's troops have cut the country in half. Realistically, there is nothing we can do to oppose the power play.

Bush has been pushing NATO to accept Georgia as a member, but was rebuffed because its democratic institutions have a long way to go. Not-so-incidentally, our European allies are dependent on Russian oil and gas. McCain and Obama also favor NATO membership.

Russia, newly rich, nationalistic and confident, is playing power politics. They have helplessly watched as the former Soviet Republics turned to the West. To former KGB Cold Warriors like Vladimir Putin, our actions must look like a remix of the old George Kennan containment policy. The pipelines through Georgia were intended to reduce Russian influence.

This pot has been simmering for 15 years. Residents of the breakaway South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions have been given Russian passports, giving Putin the pretext of protecting his citizens. Constant border tensions were the bait and Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili bit, leading to the Russian invasion.

He may have counted on more Western support, particularly from his old friend Bush. There's a George Bush street in the capital and Georgia may be the only country where he was popular with the majority.

I wouldn't suggest taking a poll now, even if the Russians would let you do it. NATO membership is a lot further away.

What’s in a word?

I really shouldn’t read the newspaper when I’m eating breakfast. It seems George Bush and Nouri al-Maliki are talking about a “horizon” for withdrawing more troops from Iraq. As an "aspirational goal", of course.

Cough, sputter, choke. What an optimistic, happy meal, word. “Deadline” is just so negative. I could almost believe Karl Rove hadn’t left for Fox News’ witless protection program. But objects transfer spin, and I’m sure his trained minions are carrying on despite the computer hard drives he shredded on his way out of town. (Whew. Maybe that Red Bull wasn’t such a good idea, but my power went out at 6:30.)

Back to the Bush.

What’s going on here? Facts on the ground? Sure, it’s reasonable to reduce our occupying troops as the “surge” (Oh, Karl.) appears to be working, or is it the Sunnis who switched sides? In either case, there are a lot of Iraqi politicians who don’t want to defend our presence. And downsizing makes as much sense as, um, talking to Iran and “surging” into Afghanistan.

Those are all reasonable actions based on the current situation. Barack Obama was castigated for being naïve when he suggested them. Except the Iraq surge, of course, that’s John McCain’s baby.

I’m always pleasantly surprised when George Bush flip-flops based on reality.

Zori wars

Unfair words, you say? Times change, people change, somewhat. Well, McCain and Obama have marshaled armies of pundits to police their opponent’s positions and play gotcha!

I’m less concerned, within limits. Speaking of reality, these are politicians running for President. You’re looking at the trees instead of the forest when you concentrate on the minutiae.

Obama needs to ‘center himself’; show he’s no Jesse Jackson, if you will. That’s much easier than McCain’s unenviable task of holding the center while showing his base he’s really one of them.

Maybe they should both give Rove a call and get some buzzwords.

email antidote

I don't get many phony opinion pieces attributed to celebrities and scurrilous 'somebody told my aunt' rumors in my email these days. That may have something to do with my tendency to shoot back at the sender with snarky remarks about their gullibility.

When they come, snopes.com is a grand place to check them out. Obviously, most aren't worth the time. (BTW, why are there so many about Barack Obama while John McCain gets a free ride?)

I subscribe to their newsletter to see what I've missed, but handle it with care. Once I get started it takes me an hour to sort through the interesting and funny rumors. Every page leads to another.

"Don't blame me"

George Carlin got me going this time. I never could resist the man's humor, and the fake views on aging even have his voice. That led to how he felt about this garbage: i.e. "sappy load of shit". It's a short jump from there to his home page, naturally.

Then there's that Larry Miller guy. Being mistaken for George Carlin and Dennis Miller is a neat trick, something like mixing oil and water. Worth checking out, I thought. Waste of time, that: there's no there, there.

Still, you get the point. For me, it's another time-trap. Happily, I got another favorite out of the exercise:

Make the Pie Higher!
(Attributed to George Bush)

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen and uncertainty
and potential memory losses

Rarely is the question asked
is our children learning?
Will the highways of the internet become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?

The misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish can coexist.
Families is where our nation finds hope, and where our wings take dream.

Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher! Make the pie higher!

Bush is being lame. Duck!

Is George Bush losing it? The goofy dance steps at some of his appearances lately have been pretty strange, but I cut him some slack because he's been attending these 'socials' for seven years. I can think of worse ways for a lame duck President to get attention.

Saying " Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter" as he left the G-8 summit, for instance. And...punching... the air... while grinning widely? (His rah-rah national pride is admirable, but he may have gotten that wrong, too. It appears China may have passed us in Carbon emissions. Tsk, George, you let it happen on your watch.)

Pawing German Chancellor Angela Merkel was odd enough, though maybe in some kinky way it's connected with her keeping Barack Obama away from the Brandenburg Gate.

The final countdown

Seymour Hersh has an article in The New Yorker that scares the hell out of me.

According to Hersh, President George Bush has persuaded key congressmen to go along with covert operations inside Iran--$400 million worth. They're getting nervous about the operations being more extensive than they bargained for: mainly gathering nuclear information. Something like authorizing military action in Iraq a few years ago.

Evidently the operation includes funding dissidents. An excerpt:

The use of Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, told me. “The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda,” Baer told me. “These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers—in this case, it’s Shiite Iranians. The irony is that we’re once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties.” Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists.

Hersh suggests that the White House, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, is more than interested in direct military action, but the military has been resisting.

Here's the thing: it's Hersh, who has a long record of digging up some pretty well-buried secrets. His stories hold up.

On the other hand, it's Hersh, with a track record of hyperbole when speaking about the stories he covers. He has more Deep Throats than the Mitchell Brothers, and that always makes me nervous. I have to go back over his stories and winnow the sources he names into column A and the unnamed sources into column B. It's almost impossible to check a lot of his facts until other reporters catch up.

He's got enough for me this time. I'm just desperately counting the days until we have a new President.

Plucking a lame duck

I never really understood Hunter S. Thompson's visceral loathing of Richard M. Nixon, but I'm getting closer.

Seven years of watching George Bush neuter government agencies, loot the treasury and edit the Constitution will do that. It wasn't so at first: he seemed like an affable front man for Business, as usual. Someone who could become best buddies with a former opponent, like his father and Bill Clinton. Maybe it was the affected Texas drawl, or that I really did want to think he was just another Good Ol' Boy.

Now I watch his eyes. In unguarded moments the 'aw shucks' wide-eyed innocence disappears and you see the mean Machiavellian squint of Dick Cheney. I've come to believe he regains his composure by imagining his tormenter in Gitmo.

'You don't support the troops if you're against the war', he wheedles, 'embedding' brave men and women in our consciousness so we ignore the privatized bounty he's bestowed on favored corporations. Where's Dwight Eisenhower when we need him?

Or Teddy Roosevelt, for that matter. Environmental agencies have been filled with eunuchs who roll over and present their empty sacks when his underlings start editing scientific publications. Their staffs have been gutted, their rules watered down.

There is so much incompetence in so many agencies it must be intentional. That's one way to fight big government: starve it and sell off what's left.

We had a chance to show how a great nation deals with its enemies in 2001. The world was behind us. They, and the U.S., got George Bush instead, shrilling sound bites and campaign slogans from the back of his hobby horse.

Now we've got our Homeland Security superagency. It can't deal with hurricanes, but by golly it can require that every state look out for Improvised Explosive Devices. Why shouldn't the government monitor calls and confiscate laptops? It's a small price to pay: there hasn't been another 911. Absolutely right. The U.S. Postal Service should be opening all of our mail to prevent another anthrax attack.

How do you disprove a negative? More specifically, exactly which of our preventive measures would have saved the World Trade Center and 3,000 lives? The buildings had already been attacked, and by Islamic radicals. I wouldn't call it a failure of intelligence, but a failure to be intelligent.

Pit stop

It's nice to learn something new every day, but a new fetish? Armpit sniffer gets jail and cane. (Reuters)

The headline would normally be more than I really want to know, except the Law of Unintended Consequences popped into my head. Would this veddy British form of punishment attract a certain er, class of lawbreaker to Singapore?

Let's get political

While I'm mentioning this Law, how about President George Bush and his co-pilot (Maverick) opposing a new GI Bill because it might encourage veterans to leave the services? Does the same concern apply to throwing often unaudited money at private security firms so they can hire mercenaries?

That's no heifer, that's....

A Henny Youngman moment about fetishes. Have you been following the Appeals Court judge who dropped down to the District Court for a bestiality case? He declared a mistrial after he was caught posting the pictures on his website.

No pictures, sorry (I think). Why do these things always happen in the 9th Circuit?

Here it comes

Just a short follow-up to George Bush attacks Washington insiders.

The Democratic National Committee claims Gov. Bob Riley's endorsement of John McCain payback for withholding link to discredited lobbyist, according to The Birmingham News in Alabama. Here it comes. The market for glass houses is tanking too.

Jack Abramoff: the gift that keeps on giving, a saying supposedly first used in re phonograph records(those are antique machines that were once used to play music recorded on vinyl). It's been said that Abramoff loved to squirrel his emails away, so it's a nice twenty-first century update. (Have I said this? Gift means poison in German)

If you were thinking diamonds, here's one for you. There's a proposed settlement in the class action suit filed against some companies in the DeBeers Group. Here's your page if you bought diamonds between January 1, 1994 and March 31, 2006.

George Bush attacks Washington insiders

Bonus points if you can guess which presidential candidate he's going to accuse of using Washington double-talk.



Post post (the next day)

There's an interesting dengre* Diary alleging that McCain is “managing” a mountain of Jack Abramoff documents, partly as payback against George Bush and company and partly as a sword over their heads.

True or not, that's one explanation for the disconnect between the first statements on the video and the last. It could also be politics as usual for Bush Jr. He's not running against John McCain this time around.

* dengre disclaimer: Before you flame me, the link does not mean I buy into all of his conclusions and pet theories. I particularly don't like misplaced personal attacks on people I know who he's never met. He does his homework and links to good facts, so I visit fairly often. That's why his link is handy on my main page. I can draw my own conclusions.