I wake each day with trepidation knowing that earlier this month Karl Rove promised an "October Surprise" in a speech to his acolytes, and this is the last day of October. I think the preferred surprise would have been lower gas prices or a new record for the Dow, because these are things within the capacity to manipulate. The lower gas prices are due to the huge sell-off in oil futures by hedge funds thinking the Israeli-Hezbollah conflict would have lasted a few days more. The record Dow is just that; a record for the handful of blue chip stocks that make up the Dow-Jones Average. These are good days to own stock in Pfizer and Bristol-Meyers; not so good if you need the medicines they make and lack either the insurance or the means to buy them.
So if not cheap gas and high stock prices, what could Rove come up with that would be the Republican equivalent of the Rebel Yell? Only this; matters of war and peace. Since Chucklehead threw the phrase "stay the course" overboard, could an announced change in tactics be far behind in Iraq? Any timetable for troop withdrawal would please me, regardless of the cynical timing of the announcement. I've long ago given up the delusion that this government would not trifle with the safety of our soldiers for political gain. Especially when the expected death penalty for Saddam Hussein will be announced on Nov.5, in the face of projected riots. But a troop withdrawal alone will not stem the tidal wave of angry voters heading for the GOP, and something more electrifying than the thought of gays marrying must motivate a disillusioned base.
It is of some note that James Baker,III has returned to the White House as co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, a group of Poppy's Wizened Old Fixers who always kick in the door and take over whenever Junior has lost his way and needs rescuing by the grown-ups. So it wouldn't surprise me if Baker announced a plan for drastic changes in not merely Iraq, but the "War President's" cabinet as well. This may placate some conservatives, but it won't happen until after the election. The spookiest specter of them all is Henry Kissinger wandering around the West Wing, hands forever stained by the blood of Laotians and Cambodians, giving advice to President Cheney. Is there anyone remaining who does not see the parallels to Vietnam, including the very real possibility of a wider war in the Middle East? If not, here is a ghoulish scenario that only the Frankenstinian minds of Cheney/Rummy/Kissinger might have dreamed up.
All month I have been reading reports, the most alarming by former New York Times Middle East bureau chief Chris Hedges,
that speak of a large build-up of US warships in the Persian Gulf and the Straits of Hormuz near Iran. This flotilla includes aircraft carriers, guided-missile cruisers and destroyers, and fast attack submarines. This was done quietly since only tonight did CNN, of all the news networks, announce the presence of US warships in the Gulf for an "exercise to potentially intercept WMD." Would that be coming into, or going out of, Iran?
Bob Woodward has described Dr. Strangelove Kissinger in interviews as "getting to re-fight the Vietnam War" these days. In 1972, he said, "Peace is at hand," and then began secret saturation bombings involving three countries. But while our ships are on an "exercise" off the coast of Iran, I am reminded of how the whole terrible Vietnam War began; with the Tonkin Gulf Resolution of 1964, after an attack on US warships was fabricated by a hawkish Defense Department for political purposes. If the Bush's follow the LBJ mold, which worked once, any provocation, real or imagined, by Iran against our soldiers while they are rattling the administration's saber, will be considered the gravest of threats to mankind. Then when a "Cuban Missle Crisis" scenario is developed and a blockade against Iran is formed, Bush gets to attempt to re-enact a genuine JFK moment while a breathless nation watches on TV and decides to go to the polls and dance with those that brung 'em. With power at stake, anything is possible.
The brink of nuclear war is a sure enough scary Halloween trick, but with the possibility of Congressional investigations on the line, WWKD?(Karl). I hope President Shemp is forced to take the James Baker avenue. Baker, even though he lawyered Bush into the White House, is much less scary than the present occupants of the cabinet. Especially Dr. Evil; Dick "The Merciless". This evening when my doorbell rings, we have chocolate goodies for the trick-or-treaters. But if I open the door and see a group of children dressed as Bush, Cheney, Condi, Rove, and Rummy, I trust my wife will have the portable defibrillator nearby. In fact, with the ghost of Richard Nixon still haunting the White House, it might be a good idea to keep it close all week long. Happy Halloween, everyone. Trick or treat?
5 comments:
Do you even sleep at night? It must take all of your paranoid strength to emit these words onto the page. I imiagine you looking over your shoulder while you think and write.
Shemp, as you call him, is 10 times the thinker than anyone on the Liberal Front. Surely you admit that to yourself in private, or are you really this blind.
I imagine lots of American kids will have Kennedy, Clinton, and Kerry masks on tonight so we'll all get a REAL scare.
BOOOOOOO!
Hey everybody! Wanna help the country? Wanna help healthcare reform? Wanna help Katrina victims who over a year later are waiting for help? Go to the polls and vote all the Republicans out. Next presidential election, do the same thing. The only way I would vote for any Republican, in any race, anywhere, would be, say, if the Democratic candidate was O. J. Simpson, David Duke, or Bill O'Reilly. None of which is likely.
I'd have to take the side of RJ Haspel when he derides Mr. Bush as a man who is challenged mightily by anything that might require more than, say, an IQ of more than 105. I'd have to agree that, in my opinion (and I have had the good fortune to have experienced some pretty good "thinkers), Mr. Bush is actually just about the opposite of a "thinker". I've heard Kennedy, Clinton, Kerry mentioned. These fellows could stand up and have a well considered conversation about why they think what they do, what the evidence is that leads them to their conclusions, and could by their comments be felt to be "worldly" enough so that insulation from larger truths wouldn't seem to cause them to be so provincial as to make them miss largely the larger point. I don't think any of those fellows would stand up and say that God whispered in his ear that war was the right thing to do. Just don't think so. Those kinds of words from the leader of the free world is worse than any BOOOO. Yo, that is the scariest thing that we could ever cook up.
Who would you let cut your skull or your chest or your belly open, if you had the chance to talk to him first? Would you want somebody who just repeats some lines that he was fed by the nurse, or would you want to sit down with a person who can answer all your questions with thought, with consideration of all the facts, who obviously has a grip on all of the various contingencies, and has a plan in which to deal with them, and is fluent in his presentation to you (you know, you, the one who is going to get his head or chest or belly cut wide open). .....................of course, you might just pick the guy who they always sent out to get the beer when he was at college, and was never successful in anything he ever tried as a businessman, and is reported to sit without asking a single question when one of his more intelligent aides comes to present some difficult information to him. 53 million people picked him in 2004. I hope his daddy has some "real" surgeon who can jump into the room to save your life when the guy you picked turns out to be an idiot. Hey, but you'd never pick an idiot to cut your skull open. You'd walk out of his office and say, "no way I'd let that idiot cut my head open." Even the near idiots wouldn't let an idiot cut their head open. Ya know.
........ So, yeah, I THINK that Mr. Bush is an idiot. That means he is not much of a "thinker".
I guess it was lucky for the millions of near idiots that they weren't born somewhere else. Could have been, you know. Near idiots have to be lucky enough to be born somewhere where they can be near idiots and live a fairly liveable life. Not so if a near idiot is born in Vietnam, or Cambodia, or Chile, or El Salvador, not white. NOPE, than the near idiots are in harm's way from the full idiots who are intent on blowing them and their lives to smithereens. BOOOOOO.
As I reread this, something else occurs to me. I don't think many people ever said that Kennedy, or Clinton, or Kerry, made them sick to their stomachs. Oh, yeah, a blow job in the oval office is pretty far out, but killing thousands of people, lying about science to get a political agenda done, and being "thoughtless" in a position of leadership with so much at stake, that makes me sick to my stomach. Check it out. I'm way from being alone on that. Check out the tidal wave on Nov 7th from the near intelligent. Watch the near idiots run.
And I don't "think" we'll see the great "thinker" doing much off of his ranch other than hobnobbing it with the good ole boys from K Street after he's run out of office. Most of the "thinkers" I have been lucky enough to know also show (by their actions) that they also care about other human beings. I mean, what good is being a good "thinker" if you just sit and "think" while somebody just down the street is sick and has no medical insurance. No, I "think" that the great "thinker" will just sit around roping some Heiffers wishing that he had been cool enough to have gotten a couple of good blow jobs while he was in the Oval Office.
It'll take us a long time to have the respect return that we'd like to have in the world and for ourselves. After all, we have allowed all this damage to be done. 53 million idiots and near idiots. I'm sorry, it's pitiful.
Max Boot: L A Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/sunday/la-oe-boot25oct25,0,1237357.column?coll=la-util-opinion-sunday
Maybe the surprise will be that al-Maliki will not only get the U.S. to take down check points, but tell us to leave his country (all orchestrated by the Bush administration.) Then he can say we had no choice; it's probably the only way to end this thing!
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