Reason To Be Upset

Republican operatives and pundits just can’t understand why the rest of us are so upset. Hands to their cheeks and mouths agog they recoil, wide-eyed, whenever they confront the rage that has built up over the last five years, calling it “unseemly,” “immature” and “over the top.”

After all, what could Moderates, Independents and Democrats be so worked up about??

When Bill Clinton raised his pitch and got in Fox reporter Chris Wallace’s face after being asked a loaded question, Republicans responded as if Clinton has gone berserk and leapt out of his chair, arms flailing, mouth frothing.

Their playbook response is to trivialize and dismiss such anger, explaining that the perpetrator “just hates George Bush.” For no reason--they just hate him.

Well I don’t know George Bush and I don’t hate him. He’s probably a nice guy to spend an afternoon flying around the Gulf Coast with.

But I hate the things he and his incompetent team have done. And I have good reason to be outraged and appalled by what has gone on in this country of late.

President Bush and the GOP built their success on phrases like “Family Values” and “Party of Values.” The moralizing was so thick and constant you might have mistaken them for Puritans. But the goody-two-shoes Republicans have shown us their true values. As the saying goes, "You are what you do". Thus, by their actions, they clearly value:

• Torture
• Diminished civil rights
• Restricted liberties
• Government intrusion
• Profligate spending
• Favors for the rich
• Massive deficits
• Rampant cronyism
• Secrecy and backroom deals
• Unchecked pollution
• Environmental destruction
• Influence peddling
• Diplomatic bullying
• Character assassination

Furthermore, they’ve succeeded at virtually nothing (unless you’re a wealthy taxpayer). And they’ve turned most everything they’ve touched into a disaster, or worse, a tragedy.

So the next time rational, reality-based citizens get angry in a public forum, it’s not because they “hate Bush.” It’s because his administration and congressional enablers have made a big, fat, stinking mess of the things the rest of us cherish.

Not a small mess, not a trivial mess, but a significant, disastrous, harmful alteration in the direction and fabric of our nation. If that’s not worth getting upset about, I don’t know what is.

- JT Compton

Duh

Leaked sections of a recent National Intelligence Estimate told reality-based Americans what they already knew--our invasion and occupation of Iraq has clearly and substantially increased the scope and threat of terrorism.

That damning assessment coincided with a hearing conducted by Congressional Democrats frustrated by the refusal of Republicans to properly oversee the executive branch. The hearing featured retired military leaders, many of whom served on the ground in Iraq, discussing the incompetence of our civilian leadership.

Retired General Batiste, former commander of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division in Iraq, put the blame for our failings squarely on Donald Rumsfeld. As the occupation commenced, according to Batiste, Rummy threatened to fire the next person who mentioned the need for a postwar plan in Iraq.

Apparently, Rummy and his neo-con posse were so taken by their own “greeted-as-liberators” B.S. that they not only failed to plan, but shamed and bullied anyone who had the audacity to second guess their so-called strategy by suggesting any post-war plan.

That Donald Rumsfeld remains in office is a testament to the monumental incompetence of the entire Bush Administration and demonstrates that they are incapable of grasping and acknowledging their failures, much less taking responsibility for them.

White House Homeland Security Advisor Fran Townsend, interviewed today by Chris Matthews on MSNBC’s Hardball, was a showcase of the current Bush team’s twisted, immoral logic.

When asked about President Clinton’s assertion that he did everything he could to get Bin Laden, Townsend said that Clinton’s was a “legalistic, evidentiary type of approach, where as we know President Bush has not taken that approach…”. Yes, we know that neither Bush nor his Attorney General Gonzalez seem to care about evidence or legalistic principles. Those they suspect of wrongdoing are simply prejudged to be guilty and denied due process.

When asked whether Iraq has created more terrorists, Townsend revealed that “we know that if the Jihadists don’t win in the war in Iraq, they face ultimate defeat. And that’s why it’s good for us to stay.” In other words, if we kill every last terrorist in Iraq, Al Qaeda will simply dry up and blow away. Really?

Except that for every terrorist we kill, three more spring up to replace them, and Al Qaeda has already metastasized into countless cancerous cells operating autonomously around the world. But if recent history is a guide, Townsend will likely be among the last to grasp or admit these inconvenient facts--facts that annihilate her Homeland Security fantasy.

Townsend ultimately described the Jihad mentality as one that “uses violence as a means to achieve its end.” But so does the Bush Administration. Frightened by the thought of actual diplomacy, Bush and his wimp-turned-bully cabinet have no choice but to bomb and invade countries that hold strategic importance. So by Townsend’s definition, our President’s mentality is not much different from a Jihadi.

And until we change that mentality from the top down, we will continue to project our power in ways that damage our credibility, create resentment and terror, produce untold suffering, and garner short-term political gain at the expense of long-term American prosperity and security. Duh.

- JT Compton

All Talk, No Walk

Today’s speech at the UN by President Bush was both wonderful and tragic. Wonderful in the lofty ideals, bold visions and provocative suggestions it offered, and tragic in terms of how poorly and incompetently his administration has acted to make such rhetoric a reality.

Bush claimed that a lasting peace between the sovereign nations of Israel and Palestine was one of his greatest priorities. Yet his administration has done virtually nothing, and certainly less than any recent presidency, to broker that peace.

He noted that genocide was occurring in Darfur, urging the UN to intercede, yet his administration has done little more than provide a few humanitarian-aid dollars.

Most bizarrely, he stated that “Freedom cannot be imposed, it must be chosen.” But his occupation of Iraq was a blatant and unambiguous attempt to impose freedom. How does he square this hypocrisy?

He doesn’t, of course. He just keeps reading speeches written by talented, ideological speechwriters while his blind, inept, dishonest, unethical, misguided advisors and officials continue to screw up every mission, botch every policy initiative and smear every opponent they come across.

Bush talks the talk, but he can’t even crawl the crawl.

Hopefully, voters this November will ignore the rainbow speeches and focus on the dark results. By voting against Bush's Republican enablers, the nation may just be able to change its dismal and worsening course.

- JT Compton

The Path To Tucker’s Masculinization

(The following Docu-drama uses facts from Wikipedia to dramatize the events that led Tucker Carlson to stop wearing bow-ties.)

On April 1, 2006, a producer of MSNBC’s conservative talk show "The Situation with Tucker Carlson" confronted the show’s WASPy namesake:

MSNBC Producer: Let’s face it, Tucker, your ratings suck. Turns out Paul Begala was the guy we should have hired, but we didn’t realize the Conservative movement would crater so badly.

Tucker Carlson: Bush, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Rove...who knew such capable, peace-loving, honest guys would let the effete, liberal intellectuals on the coasts get the best of them?

MSNBC: Yes, well, we need to talk about that.

Tucker: About what??

MSNBC: Tucker, you don’t seem to grasp that you embody the traits of the people you always demean and stereotype.

Tucker: What are you talking about? What traits?

MSNBC: Well, let’s take effete. I just looked it up in Websters. It means “soft or decadent as a result of over-refinement of living conditions or laxity of mental or moral discipline.”

Tucker: Really?

MSNBC: Yes, and your presentation screams over-refinement and softness and mental laxity.

Tucker: Is it that obvious?

MSNBC: I’m afraid it is. Hell, your middle name is Swanson, as in Swanson frozen foods. And even worse, nobody on television today looks more like a stereotypical intellectual.

Tucker: But I...I...I never even graduated from college!

MSNBC: You went to an elite private prep school in New England for God’s sake! And sure, you bailed from college in your fourth year, but it was Trinity College in Connecticut. It doesn’t get any preppier than that.

Tucker: Nobody knows. I've never mentioned it on the air, and please don’t tell any of the staff--

MSNBC: Viewers know you work in liberal, blue-state New York. If word gets out that you were born in San Francisco, it could be devastating.

Tucker: But I’m not gay. I swear. I have a wife and kids! I just bought a $4million second home in the District of Columbia!

MSNBC: Jesus, don’t mention that either! No matter what, never draw attention to the fact that the elite conservative ruling class has a ton of money and nothing in common with average Americans.

Tucker: Right. By the way, I’ve always planned on living in the Midwest someday, I swear.

MSNBC: I hate to say it, but you’re getting a reputation as a priss, a brie eater, a quiche lover, a cappuccino drinker, a prig, a weasel, a limp-wristed Yuppie--

Tucker: But I try so hard to talk tough. I always call people wimps and whiners and ghouls. Crime victims should suck it up, no mercy for perpetrators, psychology is a crock, every lawsuit is frivolous, global warming is baloney. I’m so manly, don’t you think?

MSNBC: More like...so deluded. Were you teased as a child?

Tucker: Yes. Those bastards. So?

MSNBC: We have to make big changes. For starters, we have to make you meaner.

Tucker: Like, Coulter-mean?

MSNBC: A few notches down. You don’t want to piss off the 9/11 widows. But insult your guests, stereotype them, interrupt them, ignore their logic.

Tucker: I already do that.

MSNBC: Well...do it more. Do it louder.

Tucker: What else?

MSNBC: This is going to hurt, but you have to get rid of those bow ties.

Tucker: Screw you! That’s outrageous. It’s my signature.

MSNBC: Only ivory-tower academics and gay decorators wear bow ties. Name a single regular-guy type who wears one?

Tucker: G. Gordon Libby.

MSNBC: Who is regularly mistaken for a member of the Village People. You’ve proven my point.

Tucker: But without the bow ties, I’ll just be another pale, sarcastic pseudo-conservative whose positions are wildly conflicted and unsupportable by reason. I’ll be another O’Reilly. God, I feel like crying.

MSNBC: Either get rid of the bow ties or get ready for cancellation. Nobody wants to watch a conservative talk-show hosted by a fussy New England elitist.

Tucker: Okay, okay. I’ll get rid of them. I never want to go back to pitching shows--it was hell on my arches, and my pedicures never took. But I still think my audience sees me as a tough, swarthy military type. A playground bully who kicks butt and never gets shouted down. A virtuous crusader--

MSNBC: Just shut up and do it.

Tucker: Yes ma’am.

Slow, Grinding Defeat

George Bush is angry.

As his voice and demeanor evidenced during his third speech in as many days (his latest Defending My Indefensible Policies Tour), Bush can neither accept nor grasp why the American people still don’t “get it”.

Why don’t they understand that any Muslim we capture and detain must be presumed guilty? Why don’t they understand that those men must be “questioned” (tortured) in order to keep us safe? Why don’t they understand that those men must be detained indefinitely and deprived of any access to justice? The justification--that a few of those we have captured have actually given us important information.

Why don’t the American people get it? Why don’t they believe that we can eventually kill every terrorist currently alive? Why don’t they believe that we can achieve total victory? Why don’t they view this struggle in the same light as World War II? Why do they care so much about their own civil liberties? Why don’t they trust us to spy on them? Why don’t they trust us to keep them safe? Why don’t they trust us to respond to disaster? Why don’t they trust us to steward the environment? Why have they turned on me and the Republican party?

Yes--as his speeches and tone demonstrate, our President is that stupid.

But the American public is not. Fearful, perhaps. Cautious, certainly. But not deluded enough to see through his latest round of propaganda.

For example, the President claimed today that he signed into law the Detainee Treatment Act, proving that he does not support torture. Yet he failed to mention that his own signing statement reserved for him the option of ignoring the law as he saw fit! Americans are not too simple to catch that hypocritical deception.

The public understands that spin and speeches and fearmongering don’t compare to the facts, whether on the ground in Iraq or in the rubble of the Ninth Ward or in Presidential signing statements.

We have been losing the “War” in Iraq for several years now. The proof is simply the fact that we cannot provide security to the citizens of that country or our troops. Winning would include an increasing degree of security, and losing would include a decreasing degree of security. Thus we are losing and losing badly.

So when Bush and his party talk about “Staying the Course,” they are talking about staying the course of failure. They are talking about sticking with a loser. They want to keep the nation on the slow, grinding path of defeat.

When Bush, Rumsfeld and Rice compare our occupation to WWII or the Civil War or any other conflict, they insult our intelligence and our motives. It has become crystal clear to the rest of us that war is neither an effective nor moral response to terrorism.

It has also become clear that we have failed our own Gulf Coast citizens, most of whose shattered lives remain in limbo thanks to the inaction, ineptitude and incompetence of the Federal response.

The increasingly desperate rhetoric of the blind, deaf and dumb Bush Administration will do nothing to quell the legitimate anger of the public. This November, the voters are poised to take America in a new direction.