BottleOfBlog

Do The Right Thing

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 29 - Concerned that the stain of former Representative Randy Cunningham's admission that he took bribes and evaded taxes could damage the party's prospects, President Bush and other Republican leaders issued strong denunciations of Mr. Cunningham's actions on Tuesday...

Oh, why, oh why do President Bush and other Republican leaders insist on engaging in the politics of personal destruction?  Why are they criminalizing conservative politics?

Though some Republican officials said Democrats in Congress were equally guilty of questionable behavior...

...both they and the New York Times failed to specifically say who...but that's good journalism to just leave that hanging out there...

Mr. Cunningham, an eight-term representative from San Diego, pleaded guilty on Monday to charges that he took at least $2.4 million in bribes to steer Pentagon contracts to two friends. He announced his resignation from Congress hours after entering his plea.

Representative David Dreier, the California Republican who heads the House Rules Committee, said Mr. Cunningham had violated the ethical standards of the House and was right to resign immediately.

Yes, it was right of Cunningham to resign immediately.  On November 29th.  After his corruption was discovered on or about July 12th.

Yes, resigning immediately, four months after being caught, was the right thing to do.  Even in disgrace, the Duke was honorable.  Even if he first, before immediately resigning, collected another four months of taxpayer provided salary and benefits (that's $162, 000 a year, or about fifty grand before he immediately pled guilty and resigned) while blatantly and publicly lying and insisting that he hadn't done anything wrong:

While insisting he did nothing illegal or dishonorable, the former top gun Navy pilot admitted he showed "poor judgment" in 2003 when he sold his home in Del Mar, California, to a friend, Mitchell Wade, the founder of MZM Inc., a large defense contractor…

Cunningham said while he continues to believe he received a "reasonable price" for the Del Mar home, he and his wife will sell their current home, where they had planned to retire, and donate part of the proceeds to charity to demonstrate to their friends and supporters "that I did nothing wrong.

And, of course, it was right of the House Republicans, particularly David Dreier, who heads the House Rules Committee, to not do a single goddam thing about an eight term Republican, sitting on a committee responsible for about four billion dollars of defense and intelligence spending, in a "time of war", who was clearly guilty of taking millions of dollars in bribes in the conduct of his official duties.

For four months.

Sure, sure, the guy's innocent until proven guilty--even if he is living on a yacht named the "Duke Stir", which is owned by a defense contractor Cunningham has directed millions of taxpayer dollars to.  But, even so, it takes a pretty shrivelled up, blackened, corrupt heart to congratulate the guy on immediately resigning four months after getting caught.

That's some vigilant public service, waiting for the dude to enter a guilty plea before saying or doing shit about it.  Then running like hell from him.

Sleep well, America. 

Porter Goss Explains It All

WASHINGTON (AP) -- CIA Director Porter Goss, saying his agency struggles to penetrate terrorist sanctuaries overseas, insists that "we know more than we're able to say publicly" about Osama bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi…

Al Qaeda leaders bin Laden and al-Zarqawi haven't been found "primarily because they don't want us to find them and they're going to great lengths to make sure we don't find them," Goss said in the interview broadcast Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America."

No shit!  Christ, I thought we couldn't find them because we weren't torturing enough people.  Or that we weren't trying hard enough.

But now we know!  Now that we've got Goss, Porter Goss--IQ?  007--the guy in charge of Congressional oversight of the CIA during the alleged worst intelligence failures in the history of the country running the very agency he totally failed to oversee, now we know why we haven't found Osama bin Laden or al-Zarqawi:

They don't want us to find them.  And they are going to great lengths to not be found by us.

Jesus!  How many weapons do the terrorists have at their disposal??? They both don't want to be found and are actually trying to not be found???  What chance do we have???  We should surrender now!  Our cause is hopeless!

Oh, if only the terrorists wanted to be found by us!  Or if they didn't want to be found, but didn't really try to not be found by us!  Victory would be ours!

Give this guy a fucking raise.  He's worth every penny Bush pays him.

Why Not All Three?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff says President Bush was "too aloof, too distant from the details" of post-war planning, allowing underlings to exploit Bush's detachment and make bad decisions…

Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. Wilkerson said that Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because "otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard."

And we're still going to pretend it was an intelligence failure...

Total Failure

Senator John Warner(R-Va), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, illustrating just how much progress has been made in Iraq.  And the size of Joe Biden's testicles.

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Tuesday that "it would be a terrible mistake" to pull U.S. forces out of Iraq and that politics should not play any part in a decision about withdrawal…

The war in Iraq and the mounting number of American casualties have contributed to a steep drop in Bush's popularity. His approval rating is at the lowest level of his presidency.

"People don't want me making decisions based on politics," the president said...

The U.S. strategy has been built on an expectation that training a competent Iraqi security force and facilitating the election of a democratic government would stabilize the country and allow a gradual U.S. military exit, possibly starting in 2006.

Which just happens to be an election year!  Good thing politics aren't playing a part in any decision about withdrawal!  Christ, how does anyone take these jokers seriously?

Rumsfeld ticked off several indicators of progress on the military front, including…

• The Iraqi army has seven division and 31 brigade headquarters in operation, compared with none in July 2004.

• The number of Iraq army battalions "in the fight" has grown to 95, compared to five in August 2004.

On Monday, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad said the number was 100, plus 30 battalions of Iraqi Special Police. Pentagon spokesman Maj. Todd Vician said the 100 total includes five Iraqi special forces battalions.

And this is remarkable, as well, when you consider that just two months ago, American General George Casey told Congress that there was a single Iraqi battalion capable of combat without American support:

WASHINGTON - The number of Iraqi battalions capable of combat without U.S. support has dropped from three to one, the top American commander in Iraq told Congress Thursday, prompting Republicans to question whether U.S. troops will be able to withdraw next year.

And now there are ninety five in the fight!  Plus five whole batallions of special Iraqi police!

Course, someone might want to keep a tight rein on those special Iraqi police.  But back to the Victory Chimp:

"Secondly, we want to win," Bush said. "The whole objective is to achieve victory against the terrorists."

"I'm interested in winning. I want to defeat the terrorists. And I want our troops to come home," the president said. "But I don't want them to come how without having achieved victory. We've got a strategy for victory."

It's about time!  We're only three years into this thing.  About time somebody came up with some kind of strategy for victory.  Want to know what that victory looks like?

Moderate, secular Iraqis bowing to Freedom.

Even as that battle raged on Oct. 27, Mr. Sadr's aides in Baghdad were quietly closing a deal that would signal his official debut as a kingmaker in Iraqi politics, placing his handpicked candidates on the same slate - and on equal footing - with the Shiite governing parties in the December parliamentary elections. The country's rulers had come courting him, and he had forced them to meet his terms.

Wielding violence and political popularity as tools of his authority, Mr. Sadr, the Shiite cleric who has defied the American authorities here since the fall of Saddam Hussein, is cementing his role as one of Iraq's most powerful figures…

Mr. Sadr has made no move to disband his militia, the thousands-strong Mahdi Army. In recent weeks, factions of the militia have brazenly assaulted and abducted Sunni Arabs, rival Shiite groups, journalists and British-led forces in the south, where Mr. Sadr has a zealous following. At least 19 foreign soldiers and security contractors have been killed there since late summer, mostly by roadside bombs planted by Shiite militiamen who use Iranian technology, British officers say. The latest killing took place Nov. 20 in Basra…

Members of the Mahdi Army have also joined the police in large numbers, while retaining their loyalty to Mr. Sadr. Squad cars in Baghdad and southern cities cruise openly with pictures of Mr. Sadr taped to the windows. On Nov. 17, the American Embassy demanded that the Iraqi government prohibit private armies from controlling the Iraqi security forces, after American soldiers had found 169 malnourished prisoners, some of them tortured, in a Baghdad police prison reportedly under the command of a Shiite militia.

Mr. Sadr's oratory is as anti-American and incendiary as it has ever been. A recent article in Al Hawza, a weekly Sadr publication that the Americans tried unsuccessfully to close last year, carried the headline: "Bush Family: Your Nights Will Be Finished." Another article explained that Mr. Sadr was supporting the December elections to rid Iraq of American-backed politicians who "rip off the heads of the underprivileged and scatter the pieces of their children and elderly."

Yes, it's that Sadr.  The one American troops battled for weeks in Najaf in August of 2004.  I'm sure the dozens of Marines who were killed or wounded in Sadr City or Najaf would be or are just pleased as punch that anti-American Sadr is cementing his role as one of Iraq's most powerful figures.

There is, after all, no more noble sacrifice for an American soldier than to give his or her life for the benefit of someone who hates them and everything they stand for.  Or, for that matter, to give his or her life for the man who killed them.

And who were the fighters of Sadr's militia?  According to the biggest bullshitters in the history of the United States?

In Baghdad, U.S. forces before dawn struck and damaged al-Sadr's office in his main stronghold, the sprawling Shiite neighborhood of Sadr City, residents said.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld discounted the strength of al-Sadr's militia. "There's nothing like an army," he said. "You have a small number of terrorists and militias coupled with some protests." U.S. officials estimate al-Sadr's force at about 3,000 fighters.

Terrorists.  That's who the Bush administration told us Americans were battling in Sadr City and Najaf.  Terrorists.  And Bush is now telling us he doesn't want to bring American troops home without defeating the terrorists, even while the terrorists are cementing their roles as the most important political figures in the new Iraqi "democracy".

Jesus Christ.  What a total clusterfuck.  No one knows why we went.  No one knows why we're there.  No one knows who we're fighting.  No one knows who or what we're fighting for. 

And now the jackasses who brought us this...fiasco are telling us they have a plan for victory and it won't be influenced by politics.  Though, that plan most likely will kick in during a midterm election year.  When the Chimp In Chief's disapproval ratings have hit a record high.

This "plan for victory" is sure to be so dumb that even this White House is going to have to start recruiting extra idiots just to put it into words.  Even this administration probably doesn't have the kind of in house stupid power a plan so bold in its dumbness and cynicism like this requires.

The Poor Man expresses the horror and waste we're about to embrace as "victory" brilliantly:

Politics is a cynical business. Clinton was always criticized (by the media) for doing whatever the polls dictated, and while people didn’t exactly love him for it, they sure liked him. Worst President Ever, of course, makes a great point of not caring about what the polls say - a posture that polls very well - but Texas isn’t big enough to hold the focus group-approved prop ranch it would take to overcome the reality of the situation in Iraq - a reality that has unimpeachable Hero of Democracy and Our Man In Baghdad (Who Isn’t Named Ahmed), Iyad Allawi, proclaiming the US to be a worse human rights abuser than Saddam, and the semi-democratically elected leaders of Iraq telling us to leave and declaring attacks on US soldiers “legitimate”. So the war is unpopular, the war is destroying our military, the people we came to liberate hate us, and so, and not a moment too soon, we are about to declare victory and leave. Yes, it is a cynical flip-flop. (Pity the jingos!) It’s also the right move, if overdue. Worst President Ever would do well to do a bit more following, because this whole “leading” thing isn’t really his strong suit.

But, I've got to say, I still don't think we're going anywhere.  There's going to be an aimless and pointless shuffling of American troops.  A lot of talk about "restructuring" forces.  We'll continue to fight this terrorist today, who tomorrow will be instrumental in achieving a terrorist free, secular Iraqi democracy even if it requires the adoption of Sharia and possibly torture, and martial law.  And terrorists.

Who hate America.

And that horseshit will go on throughout 2006, until the midterm elections are over.  And then--golly gee--we'll need to increase security forces in Iraq.  Just like, a week or two after Bush's "re-election" in November of 2004, we had to level Fallujah.

And then we'll endlessly discuss the neverending progress in Iraq until The Worst President Ever finally leaves office in 2008 and someone with a set of balls and a sense of decency and responsibility finally returns to the White House.  And that person will actually have to deal with the collosal waste of money and lives and blood and prestige that the Iraq War clearly is.

Bush will not end this disaster now.  He will not do it next year.  He will never do it all.  He doesn't have the guts or the character or the morality.  He will leave it to someone else.  And then, when someone smarter and braver and more responsible than him finally makes the hard decisions that this stupid and dishonest war requires, Bush will annoyingly criticize those decisions from his boozy hideaway in Crawford, all the while claiming he is above criticism of people smarter and braver and more responsible than him.

And we'll have to endure idiots like Karen Hughes and Condi Rice and Donald Rumsfeld endlessly writing editorials in the Wall Street Journal about how Bush was just about to achieve global victory over terrorism when his time in the White House ran out and cowards turned the March of Democracy into a flight from danger!

But, in the end, we'll all know, even the most shameless liars on Pennsylvania Avenue, all we ever did was loan out the United States military, at taxpayer expense, to Exxon Mobile and Halliburton, only they couldn't get the natives on board with the business plan.

In the end, we just paid for the newest, most chaotic Islamic Republic the world has ever seen.

Acronyms: Bottle Of Blog

My good friend, Mary, was wondering if I was feeling okay.  And I am.  I feel great.  I'm a little bitter about that Texas A&M fumble late in the fourth quarter--I mean, it was third and two inside the Longhorns twenty.  Christ, give it to the full back, right up the middle and send Penn State to the National Championship!

So that sucked. 

But it didn't make me ill.

Actually, I've been great.  I was just enjoying Thanksgiving with my family.  In particular, with my little nephew Willie, who's only sixteen months old, but who I've taught to call me "Uncle Bob".  There are any number of reasons I could give you for why I decided to teach Willie to call me Uncle Bob, but they'd all be lies.  And the true reason would leave your minds crippled with shock and horror.

So, anyway, now I'm Uncle Bob.  And Willie loves his Uncle Bob.  Apparently, when I'm not even around, which is about 99.99% of the time, Willie shouts "Uncle Bob!  Uncle Bob!  Uncle Bob!"  He shouts it enough that my dear sister, who has that empty, far away stare in her eyes that only front line combat veterans and mothers of one year olds have, says to me, "We're so happy you taught him to say 'Uncle Bob'".

And she says it in that way that lets me know that she wished I had choked myself as a child on that poorly constructed crib in our bedroom, rather than having grown up into the kind of man who would, for no good reason at all, teach her son to shout "Uncle Bob" seven hundred times a day.

So this pleases me.

She is, after all, my only sister.  And I'm her only brother.  And if I can bring her bizarre, inexplicable misery, I feel that my job is done.  And done well. 

And don't start with the moralizing.  I'm her brother, for Christ's sake.  When we were kids, she used to bite me.  Hard.

Also, I love my sister.  Nobody is sillier than my sister.  She's given me more hiccups than the Latrobe Brewing Company.  She's so ridiculously silly that I think every time she and I get together, even in our late thirties, and start giggling like four year olds, my father regrets once again that he didn't stop at one child.

And nobody in the world would ever possibly appreciate the absolute ridiculousness of her brother teaching her son to call him "Uncle Bob" more than my sister.

And I'm pretty sure, at a year and a half, my little nephew Willie is about as silly as his mom.  And his Uncle Bob.  And that pleases me, as well.

It's Thanksgiving.  We give thanks for things.  Mostly for stuff we're not thankful enough for the rest of the year.  Why should I be any different?

This year, I give thanks for my wonderful and funny, and silly sister.  And her excellent husband.  And their funny and silly son, Willie.

Isn't she beautiful?

She's been my best friend for as long as I can remember. And I've never been thankful enough for that.  So,this year, Brandi, I'm thankful.  I'm thankful for a wonderful sister and a great friend, and I'm thankful that, even though you're grown up, moved away, and married, and have a home and a son of your own, I can still torture you.

More Sober Judgment

You know, for years I tended bar.  Nearly a decade.  And when I wasn't tending a bar, I was on the other side, holding one up.  And if that's not a drunk, if that's not a guy who's still drinking, then I never served one.

And I'm here to tell you, I served plenty.

You Magnificent Bastards!

EAST LANSING, Mich. - Penn State played its way into a BCS bid and a Big Ten title with a 31-22 win over Michigan State on Saturday.

The win gave Nittany Lions coach Joe Paterno his first 10-win season since 1994, also the last time Penn State (10-1) won a Big Ten title.

Hey, I ain't George W. Bush.  When I'm wrong, I'm wrong. 

Michael Robinson?  Early in the year, he fumbled, he threw interceptions--passing? He couldn't hit water if he fell out of a boat.  Today?  Now? 

A magnificent bastard.

Heart of a lion.  When the Lions roar? Michael Robinson names the tune.

Tony Hunt?  You even have to ask?  Lions hunt to live.  And they live to hunt.

The receivers?  Even without the fantastic DWill, college football is going to have to come up with a new word to explain "open", because the old one doesn't do these fuckers justice.

And the defense...I don't have to eat any words about them.

Young lion hunting prey.

They've played like wild animals for two years.  They've been inspiring--4-7?  They don't care.  Meaningless game?  That's meaningless to them.  Their D-line plays every play, without subs.  And they seem to play harder and faster in the fourth quarter.

Their linebackers?  Jesus, fast, smart, and everywhere.

Their secondary?  AZ tormented Stanton tonight.  And their safeties hit harder than any safeties in the country.  Lowry?  He ain't the hero back for nothing.

For two years, they've played every down like it was it fourth and goal, with one second left, in the National Championship.  Hell, last year, I watched every game just to watch their defense make me ashamed to be a man.

I'll eat my words with a fork, a spoon, a big ass ladel, a snow shovel, whatever.  You got something bigger?  Bring it.  I'll eat them all and ask for seconds.

Thirty years of watching and living and dying with Penn State teams, and I don't think I ever loved one more.  One second from perfection.  But on a calm, sunny afternoon in Beaver Stadium, these fuckers could beat USC.

Thanks for everything.  Thanks to all those guys for one more fantastic fall of thrilling Saturdays.

Roar like a lion, you bastards!  Rooooooar, goddammit!  Or be gobbled up like prey.

(also, Joe, this would be a terrific time to retire.)

Preznit Sobers Up, Makes Judgment

Sober Judgment:  "That last pretzel was a mistake."

SAN AIR BASE, South Korea - His war policies under siege at home, President Bush said Saturday there would be no early troop withdrawal because “sober judgment” must prevail over emotional calls to end the military mission before Iraq is stabilized.

"Sober judgment"?  What is this?  A codeword to his base that he's back on the wagon?  Yeah, that's what I look for--sober judgment from a guy who can't remember his forties. 

What does he know about "sober judgment"?  This is a guy who disappears for weeks at a time.  This is a guy who can't be seen by the public after ten o'clock at night.  This is a guy, in the mid 90's, who woke up naked and bruised and confused in the Governor's Mansion in Austin.  He was surrounded by total strangers, had a couple of bloody knuckles, and the last thing he could remember was walking into a bar in Alabama sometime around 1972.

Now he's lecturing the nation on "sober judgment"!  Gee, what next?  A major policy speech on balancing the budget?

No, of course, Bush is not going to voluntarily withdraw troops from Iraq.  Bush knows that no matter what the cost in dollars or lives, he can maintain the status quo in Iraq until he leaves the White House.  Iraq won't get any better.  But it won't get much worse.  And he can leave that mess to the next president and no matter what happens, he and his insane clown posse can claim it's not their fault!  The next guy fucked it up!

Just like Nixon was going to "win" Vietnam, the Bushies will claim they were just about to "win" Iraq.

Either that, or Congress will finally have enough and force Bush to withdraw troops.  And, in that case, Bush will claim whatever happens is not his fault--Congress fucked it up!

But don't expect anything from Bush.  He's not about to take responsibility for the fiasco he's created.  He's going to make someone else do that.

Little Late Night Failure Chaser

Afghanistan used to be the place to go for terrorist training, funding and real-world experience in battle. Not anymore. Iraq has become, in President George W. Bush's words, "the central front" in the war on terror. And compared with distant Afghanistan, Iraq has more fighting, more people, more money and a far better strategic position in the heart of the Middle East. If Afghanistan under the Taliban was a backwoods school for terrorism, Iraq is an urban university. "Bin Laden and Zawahiri remain in the leadership's safe haven in Afghanistan," says a senior Taliban official who uses the nom de guerre Abu Zabihullah. "But Iraq is where the fierce encounters take place, where we recruit and dispatch fighters and where jihad's spirit thrives…"

U.S. officials are also increasingly worried that a global underground of financiers that once served Al Qaeda in Afghanistan is now aiding the Iraqi insurgency…

Sitting there in the middle of that hole is Zarqawi, a Jordanian who until the Iraq war was a relative nobody as terrorists go. "He was a small man, with a small group, in a small jail," says Jordanian journalist Abdallah Aburomman, who spent three months in the same prison with Zarqawi in 1996. Zarqawi's jihadist views were even more extreme than bin Laden's at the time, says Aburomman, who was jailed on political charges. "The Taliban were trying to win Afghanistan's seat in the United Nations, and he said, 'Why do they want to belong to an infidel organization?' "

As Zarqawi became increasingly successful in Iraq, through a combination of brazen suicide attacks and gruesome propaganda videos, he publicly appealed to bin Laden for support and pledged to follow his lead. Bin Laden responded by anointing him "emir" of Al Qaeda in Iraq, and lavishly praising his newfound protege. Zarqawi gained recruits, and made common cause with Saddam's Baathist followers, whom he had long bitterly denounced. Even in Jordan, where he was widely despised before the Iraq war, a semiofficial poll in August (quickly suppressed) suggested that 70 percent of Jordanians approved of Zarqawi's actions in Iraq…

Brian Jenkins, a terrorism expert at RAND Corp., says Iraq has been a "net importer" of terrorists but may be on its way to becoming a "net exporter," one that spawns "knowledge, veterans and operations."

Last May, CIA analysts produced an assessment of how the Iraq war would affect global terrorism; the report was so secret, its very title is classified. A counterterrorism official, who did not want to be named because he was discussing classified matters, says the report's conclusion is that defeat of the insurgency in Iraq would unleash experienced, capable and vengeful terrorists on the rest of the world, and particularly the United States. It's a kind of terrorist Darwinism. Those terrorists who survive, as Jenkins puts it, will be the fittest and the smartest—and they'll be looking for new battlegrounds.

So, Iraq, a country formerly without terrorists, is now a training ground and net exporter of terrorists into the world.  Because of Bush's stupid war.  That's great.  Well worth the cost.

But, hey, at least Afghanistan is now safe.  At least Bush took care of that haven of terrorists.  You know, the haven where al Qaeda was.  The al Qaeda that blew up the Trade Towers.  That's what started all this War On Terror thing in the first place, right?

I mean, maybe Iraq was a total fuck-up, a totally unnecessary, unjustified, ill-planned, full blown disaster.  But, at least, Bush, who's tuff on terra, took care of Afghanistan.  Well, after he let bin Laden go.  After that, he took care of Afghanistan, right?

FORT BRAGG, N.C. — U.S. Special Forces soldiers hunting Taliban and foreign fighters in southern Afghanistan say they are encountering a fiercer and more organized adversary than last year, and one that is far from being near collapse as predicted by an American general in April...

Wednesday, Afghan Defense Minister Rahim Wardak told the Associated Press that terrorist attacks now resemble the violence in Iraq. This week, three suicide bombings in Kabul, the capital, killed 10 people, including a U.S. soldier and a German peacekeeper.

No such luck.  But I'm sure the new democracy in Afghanistan, the one right wingers can't shut the fuck up about, will sort all this out.  I'm sure the new Afghan democracy will be very helpful in fighting Islamofascism or whatever right wing nuts are calling extremist Muslim governments.

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sunday, Nov. 13 - Afghanistan moved closer to forming its new National Assembly on Saturday, electing provincial representatives to the upper house, or the Meshrano Jirga, and releasing final results for elections held in September for the lower house and for provincial posts.

Based on early analyses of the full results of the Sept. 18 elections, the National Assembly will be dominated by religious conservatives and jihadist figures.

Well, that certainly is an improvement from the Taliban, who were mostly religious conservatives and jihadist figures.  And you know what happened when they were in power!

Kind of makes you wish the Bush administration had taken the reconstruction of Afghanistan seriously when they had the opportunity, doesn't it?  But, of course, the Bush administration forgot about Afghanistan before the job had even begun.

Kind of makes you wish the Bush administration had taken notice of what was starting to happen from their failure to properly reconstruct Afghanistan before they completely failed to take the reconstruction of Iraq seriously, doesn't it?

So we go from one failed state, exporting terrorism to the United States, to two failed states exporting terrorism to the United States.  All for the bargain price of about $200 billion and 2000 dead Americans.  But the best part is the new terrorist state is sitting on the fourth largest oil reserves in the world!  Whereas the old terrorist state had to sell heroin on the streets of America to raise money.

Though, apparently, the heroin trade is booming in Afghanistan these days.  Another big Bush bonus for the cities of America.  Another "Bush Boom".  You know, like that deficit.

You could not make up this kind of catastrophic failure if you tried.  You could not write a comical, political farce about this kind of incompetence.  You couldn't do it.  And, if you did, no one would read it.

It would be too stupid.

Ginny Brown-Waite No Longer America's Stupidest Congresswoman

Jesus, can you believe the good people of Ohio sent this wet bag of stupid to the United States Congress instead of Paul Hackett?

You remember Paul Hackett, right?  He's the next great Senator from Ohio.  He's also a Major in the United States Marine reserves and an attorney who left his private practice to go to Iraq, where he served his beloved Corps in Fallujah.

When he returned from Iraq, Paul Hackett ran against this idiot Jean Schmidt in a special election for a seat in the Peoples' House.  She ran a delightful campaign where she routinely accused Hackett of lying about his service, where she stupidly asserted that Hackett, as a Marine serving in Fallujah was actually getting his opinions about Iraq from Teddy Kennedy, and where her horrid Republican surgogates did things like call Hackett a "staff puke" on her behalf.

In a district that went about 70% for Bush in 2004, she then "won" by a razor thin margin.

I just find it hilarious that this idiot woman is once again--this time on the floor of the House of Representatives--insulting another Marine, Rep. John Murtha (D-PA), who has served his country in combat.

She lectured the dude, a Bronze Star winner, on courage.

On behalf of Bush, the World's Worst Air National Guardsman.  A guy who only ever showed up in uniform for the free dental work.  Though, he skipped the free physical.  Cut and ran from that one.

But that's par for the course for the "Supportin' the troops" Republican party, isn't it?  McCain collaborated with the enemy, John Kerry shot himself, Max Cleland blew himself up on a beer run.

And John Murtha is a coward who cuts and runs.

I have never in my life seen people disparage the service of combat veterans like the modern Republican party.  Republicans never shut up about a couple of stoned teenage nobodies who, thirty years ago, spit on Vietnam vets at airports.  And, yet, today, their party leaders, their Congressmen and women, their president, and their voice of modern conservatism don't hesitate to spit on those same vets on TV, on the radio, and on the floor of the House and Senate.

And they spit on Iraqi War vets and on their mothers, and on their friends and on their family members.

It's like the only soldiers Republicans really get a hard-on for are dead ones.  Since they seem to make so many of them.  And dead soldiers, of course, can't criticize the Gee Oh Pee.

(after I posted this, I read this, which was obviously stolen from me--don't be confused about the time.  He's on the West Coast.  Three hours behind normal person time.  I have no hard feelings about his shameless theft.  After all, a little known and rarely read blogger like him has to do what he can to boost his readership.  And, hell, I admire him for stealing from the best since, as you know, there's only one thing worse than a thief, and it's a petty thief.

Course, on the other hand, maybe some truths really are self evident...)