Saturday, January 27, 2007

BUSH, CHENEY TRADE FRANTIC SIGNALS, RAVE ON



DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Those mad, conflicting statements may be a calculated game designed to get us behind "good" cop Bush so we can escape "bad" cop Cheney. On the other hand, maybe they're no con. Each may be running around in his own little circle of unreality, no longer coordinating actions or statements with his partner because one or both has snapped his leash. Maybe their statements are aimed not at us, but at each other -- frantic signals of despair and menace as they scramble for an exit that’s just not there for either of them.


As the messes they make get deeper and fouler and ever more dangerous, it's more likely that their statements jump around in an uncoordinated babble because that’s how they really think, and it's increasingly difficult for them to mask or contain their pained, bewildered loathing for everyone who dares observe their agony.

For years now Cheney has emerged from his spider hole mainly to sputter and glower like a babbling wretch on a subway platform, the kind everyone gives plenty of space. But lately his ravings, though still sounding like elaborations on a theme just pronounced by Bush, are more like personal rebukes, as though he's publicly admonishing his slow-witted pupil.

Bush, though standing firm behind his “surge” in his State of the Union address, conceded mistakes were made, subtracting just a smidge of the usual arrogance. He preferred to speak about his fantasy image as a bestower of health plans and booster of conservation, a decider who's running on all eight cylinders.

But less than 48 hours later, Cheney, interviewed by CNN’s accommodating Wolf Blitzer, seemed to be lecturing Bush as much as everyone else when he explained Iraq thusly: “Bottom line 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.” It's uncomfortable to consider these words, because they are so clearly the words of a madman and echo the pronouncements of the feuhrer when he raged in his bunker that the German people were undeserving of his perfection.

HECK OF A JOB, WOLFIE

But in Iraq, hundreds of thousands are dead. We don't know how many more are maimed, crippled, homeless, helpless, hungry, afraid to leave, afraid to stay. And the gelded Blitzer, incapable of dealing with what he just heard, dares not or knows not how to steer the discourse somewhere sane. If we're there to create a democratic beacon, just when did this goal take shape? Because they sure as hell didn't mention it when they were screeching about phantom weapons of mass destruction and pursuing their very deliberate, Goebbels-like campaign to portray Saddam as Bin Laden. But Blitzer finds it safter to pretend Cheney's words are rational, that the world is right on course. You're doing a heck of a job, Wolfie.

It’s easy to envision Shotgun Cheney, the man of a thousand deferments, wandering in his private, visionless hell, one fist wrapped around his shotgun, another around a Jack Daniels, losing himself in a groundless interpretation that absolves him of everything because he was held back by the dead weight of simple George, the weak sister, the meandering mistress. How will George answer this duplicitous arrogance? That chapter hasn't been written yet.

But George has answered back, messaging his master through an interview with NPR's Juan Williams that Cheney has a "glass is half-full" mentality, meaning all is forgiven. Sure, Blunder-amus, the whole world knows the glowering Cheney is a veritable whirlwind of optimistic delight. And in the meantime, to keep Shotgun Dick cheerful, Prince George threatened again to rain a shitstorm on Iran. Maybe he doesn't read the papers, but the Iranians do. Already on his ass with two wars, whom does he think he's scaring when he threatens a third? Me, that's who. Cornered critters do ugly, crazy things.

A vast majority of us understand there is no point to this war in Iraq. It helps only our enemies, attracting recruits, sympathy, and funds to totalitarian Islamists. As the consequences of the pointless invasion and occupation grow worse by the hour, fewer and fewer Americans can find a reason to continue this campaign whose only purpose is to bestow a sick meaning to the empty lives of the vicious liars and fools who demanded it – and who rave at each other while our people die for them.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

THE CONDOLEEZA QUESTION


DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

What’s with all these broadcast reporters who keep asking Condoleeza Rice whether she’s going to run for President in ’08? Every time she’s on the tube – which is way too often – she gets the same question and then rolls her eyes fetchingly while she implies, hey, she’d make one dandy commander-in-chief, but it’s just not in her plans.


Haven’t any of them noticed she’s a co-conspirator in the worst foreign policy scam-disaster inflicted on this country since its inception? In what way does this qualify her for a bump up?


A question more pertinent to the record she's compiled might go something like, "Know any good criminal lawyers?" Or perhaps, "What are the chances of an insanity defense?"
These broadcast bumpkins might at least scan a newspaper once in a while. Maybe while they’re in makeup. In the meantime, all the cute questions and coy answers plant the canard in viewers’ minds that hey, she must be a deserving, viable candidate. But then who was the moronic scumbag who ratcheted up the menace in her perennially scowling face (Condi's expressions are so clearly psychotic she makes even Dick Cheney look lovable by comparison) and warned us about Saddam sending over a mushroom cloud? That was just before she helped launch the pointless war that she and her pals still perpetuate from the Bush-bunker. But they’ve been so exposed you could say they’re all running around down there without clothes. Ugly thought, isn't it?

Once congressional investigators start looking into Condoleeza’s lying eyes, the smart thing for her to do would be to get herself a Greta Garbo hat and sunglasses and hop a plane to Argentina. Or perhaps find a berth on a boat steaming upriver to Colonel Kurtz’s headquarters. That would be true if half the Democrats in Congress weren’t running for President and trying to look moderate and presidential. But the way things work she’s going to finish the game on her feet and pick up a $10 million advance so she and her ghost writer of choice can put together a lying book that absolves her of everything.

Oh the horror, the horror.

Monday, January 15, 2007

'WHEN CAN I TEND THE RABBITS?' (OVAL OFFICE CONVERSATION WITH APOLOGIES TO MARIO PUZZO & JOHN STEINBECK)


DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

--Mama, this whole Iraq thing, it's getting me down. Nobody picked on me like this in Texas. What'd ya bring me to Washington for anyway?

--Lately I ask myself the same thing every day.

--At least I can talk to you. Daddy, he just jumps all over me like everybody else. Like when that Iraqi guy's head fell off yesterday. They even blame me for that.

--Poor baby, of course that wasn't your fault. What'd they expect you to do? Issue 'em duct tape? Don't worry about it. It's like Rummy said. Democracy can get messy.

--Yeah, Rummy. What'd you make me fire him for? He used to make me laugh. What a kidder. This new guy, he's so serious all the time.

--Rummy was amusing, dear. But he was starting to talk to portraits. Like you-know-who used to back in the seventies. We were afraid he might lose it in front of the reporters. Besides, he was always picking on Condi.

--Who used to talk to portraits?

--Sometimes I have a hard time believing you majored in history. What'd you do all that time at Yale, anyway?

--I was a cheerleader and stuff. But who's the you-know-who that was talking to portraits? Anybody I know?

--Forget it. You don't even want to know his name.

--Okay, but now they get on me for not going to some o' these funerals. You know, of those, well, dead people. The ones who like went to war.

--Don't be silly. Dead people are depressing and that's the vice president's job anyway.

--Going to war? That's not what Cheney says. He says he has other priorities.

--No, no, no. Going to funerals.

--Right. But Cheney won't go. He won’t listen to me at all. It's not fair. Keeps calling me 'Fredo.' What's he mean, mama?

--What he means is, you're no Al Pacino.You know, I hate to say this, but he's got a point. Sometimes I think we should have passed you over for Jeb. I know you were the oldest, but look at the Godfather. You didn’t see him handing the family over to Fredo.

--Who’s Fredo?

--God, you're a Ding-a-Ling.

--You promised not to call me that anymore, remember?

--Sorry, kid. But I mean, you’re not even a Ronald Reagan. I knew Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a friend of mind. And honey, you’re no Ronald Reagan.

--Ronald Reagan. I remember him. He gave me that Star Wars set for Christmas. I used to play with it all the time. But it's getting boring. I'm running out of things to do around here.
--Why don't you read Alec Baldwin's mail? You always enjoy that.
--Yeah, but I can't wait to go back to Texas, mama. Tell me again how it’s gonna be in two years, when the twins take over here and we go back to the ranch.

--Again? You heard this a thousand times.

--Please mama.

--Oh, all right. We're gonna have a cow, and some pigs, and we're gonna have maybe a chicken. Down in the flat, we'lI have a field of alfalfa for the rabbits.

-- For the rabbits... And I get to tend the rabbits.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

BIN LADEN'S BEST XMAS GIFTS EVER? GEORGE BUSH, 'SURGE'


DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Had you asked Iran and al-Qaeda what they wanted for Christmas in 2000, they might have asked for a seriously screwy fool to seize the U.S. government, recruit a crew of arrogant imbeciles to run it for him, invade Iraq with no exit plan, and then keep fighting a pointless war there to the last drop of someone else's blood. And when even his own party deserts them, he, with the assistance of a partially new set of imbeciles, could invent something called a "surge" to extend the nightmare into the abyss. Wow, that would be one heck of a present for America's enemies, and one serious nightmare for America.
Now, so many long years later, this Napoleon wannabe described above -- a terrorist's dream come true -- has actually owned up at last to the mistakes of failing to fight the Iraq war intelligently. But the biggest mistake -- one he won't admit -- was invading in the first place. He and his flunkies still claim they did the right thing and expect us to keep swallowing their fantasy. You almost can't blame them. Voters kept them in office in '04 even after the WMD and al-Qaeda ties proved nonexistent.
But America was not a perfect place before the war, and all the festering problems -- exported jobs, rampaging oil and pharmaceutical companies, broken education and housing, heating the Earth with our petroleum fixation -- grow more severe while we're forced to deal with this absurd misadventure. It didn't have to happen. New Orleans didn't have to drown, and we don't really have to blunder on with this goofball in charge. The Constitution makes it tough, but he can be lawfully removed.
In the meantime, our addled Prince demands that we pretend -- just as he pretends -- that this corrupt regime in Baghdad could save our bacon. Like him, we're also supposed to ignore Muktada al-Sadr, who runs the most powerful gang within the Green Zone government -- the same Muktada al-Sadr whose militias have attacked and killed our G.I.s. The photo above is of Casey Sheehan's tombstone. He was killed by Sadr's militias. You may recall that at one time our leaders told us they wanted Sadr dead or alive. Now our troops fight and die in his behalf in a mad circumstance that keeps Iran and al-Qaeda giggling.


All the terrible turmoil in and around Iraq that Bush predicted in his escalation speech in the event of failure may come to pass. What he failed to mention is that the longer our troops remain, the more severe the turmoil.

Here's a thought. Why not stop pretending? Why not demand that our congressional representatives find the backbone to withhold funds from this illegal, pointless war? Most liberal Democrats cling to this funding because they fear they'll be accused of withholding bullets from our boys and girls. But they don't fear for the G.I.s who will die. They fear for their careers. And they rationalize this fear by telling themselves they’re irreplaceable. It's not clear who is more guilty -- the fools who still believe Bush or the fools who don't but who keep funding his folly anyway.


Bush's principal mission now is to pass the mess on to someone else in two years and place the blame on whomver finally faces reality and gets us out of there. Meanwhile, our troops not only must die for his personal agenda -- they have to fill the role of smiling props when he visits them with a gang of carefully arranged camera crews, as he did again this week at Fort Benning.
But if we stop pretending, if we stop playing his game, we can pay serious attention to Bush's warrantless bugging and his reading of our mail and email. These acts -- and he's admitted giving the orders -- have already been confirmed as crimes in court. There's also a load of evidence that transparently evil Cheney is guilty of amazingly blatant war profiteering, also a felony. While we sit around and let them steer the ship of state, it sinks. It’s time to put a new captain on the bridge and send crews down to repair damage. Withhold the funds. Impeach.

Monday, January 08, 2007

'SURGING' THROUGH OUR ORWELLIAN NIGHTMARE







DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman


The “surge” is not a surge. It’s an escalation. Just as an estate tax is not a death tax and a faith-based foundation is really a church. Did you ever hear anyone talk about the sermon they heard Sunday at their "faith-based institution?"



Our journalists are mostly parrots, allowing this Orwellian administration to put its own impossibly paradoxical labels on the injustices it inflicts around the world every day. And speaking of Orwell, if you read his brilliant essay “Politics and the English Language,” you see the importance he places on such false labels. Remember? War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and etc. from 1984? He was proving a point, and so is the Bush-Cheney administration.


Orwell also had much to say about the links between expression and thought. Those individuals who are unable to express themselves with any sort of clarity, Orwell concluded, have minds to match. Which of course brings us to the Blunderer-in-Chief, who couldn’t ask the whereabouts of the men’s room without trashing the language. When you consider this is a guy with degrees from Yale and Harvard, it could lead you to question the general assumption that an Ivy League degree is superior to a sheet of paper purchased from an Internet diploma mill.


But back to the impending escalation in Iraq. Senator Biden is correct when he says it's merely a way to extend the war long enough so some other President will have to pull our people off the Green Zone roofs in helicopters. Notice that the White House is leaking the conclusion that it will take at least eighteen months to know whether the "surge" had any effect? That gets it within six months of the goalpost -- the next administration. But Biden might also be correct if he were to guess that Prince George really thinks this time everything will work out and we will “win” this war. The surge-oplastic motives of our less than sweet prince are probably a combination of these factors, mixed with some kind of Oedipal confusion and the belief that John Wayne movies reflect reality. In the meantime we're all supposed to pretend along with Charlie Brown that this time Lucy will let Charlie kick the football.


I’m compelled to point out again -- as I have never heard a White House correspondent point out to Prince George -- that this Iraqi regime our troops are dying for is run by Shiite militia elements that have been killing our troops for years. So our Iraq mission is a complete fantasy, always has been. Whatever the original motives, they had little to do with advancing the inerests of either America or Iraq and don't now.


Yet we're supposed to pretend this administration that's led us into one disaster after another knows what it’s doing, just as the news media pretend a “surge” is a serious strategy and not another blind footstep on the road to hell.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

HANGING SADDAM - JUST LIKE OLD TIMES



DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman


You have to marvel at those Iraqis investigating who took the video of Saddam’s last dangle. I mean, with bodies turning up every day in Iraqi streets, many of them with drill holes in the skulls, this huge concern over a case of reality-cell-phoning sure looks like a misguided priority.

The hanging was a nostalgic one for Prince George, who hadn’t executed anyone since he governed Texas, where he did a fine job of killing the retarded, the mentally ill, and people sentenced to death while their senile, court-appointed attorneys snored in the corner. (Along with the photo of Saddam on the gallows is one of Oliver David Cruz, whose IQ of 63 put him right in Governor Bush’s range. But the gentle prince, feeling no kinship or love, had him lethally injected anyway.)

The hanging was in keeping with what barbarian conquerors do – they smash their way into a country, steal what they can, split the proceeds with their puppets, and execute the former ruler. It’s precisely this kind of ghastly Genghis Khan behavior that whittled our coalition of the willing down to Bush & Blair – or maybe Micronesia and a few others such micro-powers that continue blessing the project from afar.

Prince George and Shotgun Cheney have no conception of excess. They charge through the brush shooting anything that moves as long as their own personal safety is a lock. When Vietnam came up, the Prince’s Daddy made a phone call, and Do-Do-Boy with the much sought-after history major received a direct commission and was trained for antiquated planes that would never get near a war theater. Shotgun Cheney married, went to grad school, and produced offspring, filing for new deferments at every step, always keeping abreast of whatever stratagems would allow him to continue slipping through the changing regulations.

Now they strut among our troops like they’ve got The Right Stuff, and damn if they don’t carry it off. That’s because they’re so screwed up they actually believe their own malarkey. Method acting comes naturally to pronounced pathological liars.

The dynamic duo are shoving aside more generals tired of saying yes to their bullshit and will soon pour more troops into the grinder, ordering even bigger batches of them to drive up and down Iraqi roads they can’t possibly secure. The Blunderer-in-Chief’s speech writers are preparing the rationalizations right now for whatever regurgitated crap he will spew out in his much-anticipated speech to the nation. He and his Veep are liars, killers, and thieves who seized power in a 2000 coup, and they’ll keep on doing what they’re doing until America gets the backbone to remove them. In the meantime, any member of Congress who funds their pointless war is an accessory.

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

BUSH WON’T ABANDON PUTIN, PELOSI CLINGS TO HANNIBAL LECTOR



DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi says ending the war is her first priority, but she won’t cut its funding. This is like saying you oppose Hannibal Lector’s cannibalism but will continue to pay for his cookware.

We’ve grown used to these kinds of contradictions. Remember, for instance, when the Blunderer-in-Chief, while claiming to support democracy in Russia, looked into the eyes of Putin and saw a sweet, like-minded fellow he could deal with? Our sweet prince never took back that sentiment no matter how many reporters Putin shot, political opponents he jailed, or whistle-blowers he poisoned.

Part of the attraction is unbridled envy. Remember when our gentle Prince George actually admitted that his job would be much easier if he were a dictator? No, I’m not making this up. I think we all understand how he and Shotgun Cheney would really like to deal with pesky reporters and such.

Which is why I get worried, from time to time, about Senator Tim Johnson, critically incapacitated with a stroke-related illness. It probably wouldn’t take much radioactive poison to push the 51st Democratic senator into the fire and brimstone that surely awaits all members of his party and presto! – Senate control goes back to the Republicans and all those Senatorial investigations of blatant war profiteering and related Administration foibles would be nipped in the bud.

Let me tell you, I'm a superstitious man -- and if some unlucky accident should befall Senator Johnson -- if he should get shot in the head by a police officer or if he should hang himself in his jail cell or if he's struck by a bolt of lightning -- then I'm going to blame some of the people across the aisle. And that, I do not forgive. But -- that aside -- let me say that I swear -- on the souls of my grandchildren -- that I will not be the one to break the peace that we have made here today. Right, you nailed me. I borrowed this paragraph from Don Corleone.

Meanwhile, in other believe-it-or-not news, our glorious leader told his generals last month, “What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win, not how we’re going to leave.” Precisely what this “win” looks like in his teeny, tangled little mind is tough to say with certainty, but apparently a chief component of such a victory would be a circumstance in which his pals who hold sway in Baghdad’s Green Zone could rule all Iraq. Apparently no one has the heart or the cojones to explain to Prince George that the most powerful member of this Iraq regime he admires with such abandon is the party controlled by Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, whose troops have been attacking and killing U.S. occupation forces for years. Never mind, Bush is still willing to defend this murderous bunch to the last drop of somebody else’s blood.