Drink Up: Harry Reid

Of all the times for Harry Reid to try and sack up it's for stupid shit like this?

At a town hall in New Hampshire this afternoon, President Obama tried to give a little friendly recession spending advice, telling people they shouldn't "blow a bunch of cash in Vegas" when comparing the federal budget to a family budget.

"This isn't how responsible families do their budgets. When times are tough, you tighten your belts. You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage. You don't blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices. And it's time your government did the same," he said.

He may not have expected just how quickly Nevada politicians, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, would react.

Reid (D-NV) shot off a statement telling Obama to "lay off" Las Vegas.

"I just spoke to the White House and told them that while the President is correct that people saving for college need to be fiscally responsible, the President needs to lay off Las Vegas and stop making it the poster child for where people shouldn't be spending their money," Reid said.

Good. Fucking. Grief.

If you're going to get your ass handed to you in November anyway, can we move onto the next Majority Leader already?

Dick of the Week: Mark Halperin

Already a dick, for Halperin to close the deal and win the week just took this:


I dunno, Mark, maybe the fact that ONLY white men "need apply" for the last 200-plus years would lead you to shut the fuck up with wise-ass shit like that?

UPDATE: A comment from the Balloon Juice thread on Halperin's douchiness:

Souter’s out, Ginzy’s in debatable health (FSM bless her, but come on), Stevens is catching up to Methuselah—could it be that Barry X has THREE appointments in his first term? Hell, he could appoint Glenn Beck for the first replacement just for the pure comedy value and still leave the Court in better shape than when he found it.

Tho’ for my money I’d like to see Glennzilla, Digby and David Corn get the nods. Plus some ninja clerks to kick Scalia in the balls when he’s not looking. And a pubic hair on a doily delivered daily to Thomas. And a copy of My Pet Goat for Alito. Ninjas on the SCOTUS would be awesome!

Coach K (the K is for Shut the Fuck Up)

Duke University head coach and WATB Mike Kczeschehzjejcje0ajfl has his panties in a bunch 'cause Obama filled out a bracket.

"Somebody said that we're not in President Obama's Final Four, and as much as I respect what he's doing, really, the economy is something that he should focus on, probably more than the brackets," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said from the Blue Devils' first-round site in Greensboro, N.C.

Maybe you should worry less about politics and more about coaching your team in the tournament, douche. Since clearly it's not possible for someone to do two things at once...like go to college, take classes AND play basketball...Or, maybe walk and chew gum...Or, do my job AND tell you to drink the fuck up...



[h/t Toast]

UPDATE: That post was based on a FOX News story, so naturally it should have been wiped off my shoe rather than believed. Video shows Coach K is clearly joking as he makes the remarks and goes on to declare he thinks Obama is great. He's absolved for this, but not everything else, so he can keep sipping.

Cabinet Refacing

President-Elect Obama has filled out his Cabinet, and there are surely a couple of posts there worth second-guessing, if not outright complaint-worthy. But only as a matter of policy, idealogy, or the fact that I don't like them—but, at this point I'm trusting they'll be following Obama's lead.

What I DON'T want to hear anyone bitching about is who didn't get picked for some stupid-ass demographic reason...

NOT BLACK ENOUGH
The Congressional Black Caucus is bent out of shape because apparently Obama's Cabinet doesn't closely resemble the S1Ws enough...

Black lawmakers irked by Obama’s diverse Cabinet

Some members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) are disappointed President-elect Obama did not appoint more African-Americans to his Cabinet.

Obama tapped four blacks for Cabinet posts, including Eric Holder. If confirmed, Holder will be the first African-American attorney general.

But Obama passed over black candidates in selecting Cabinet nominees for positions central to setting policy for urban America, such as the departments of Education, Labor, and Housing and Urban Development.

[...]“On balance, I’d say a great deal of thought went into the shaping of this Cabinet,” Davis told The Hill. “And he ended up with a real rainbow. But some people, sure, thought there should be a bit more color in it.”

Another senior member of the CBC who requested anonymity said more pointedly that Obama “isn’t doing enough for the black folks.”

As dumb as that is, THIS one is even worse...

NOT SOUTHERN ENOUGH
Yeah. Twenty straight years of Southern Presidents surrounded by other Southerners and these fucking rednecks are bitching about what?

Southerners are the missing group in Obama's Cabinet
By Jim Morrill | Charlotte Observer

There are Democrats and Republicans, liberals and moderates, Hispanics and Asians, whites and blacks, Northerners and Westerners.

But one group arguably was missing when President-elect Barack Obama rounded out his 15-member Cabinet Friday — Southerners.

[...] "Obama scored a tremendous advance for Democrats in winning the three large Southern states and ignored them," says Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. "I'm just stunned. It was the one grouping completely ignored."

[...] "There really ought to be one (cabinet post) from each state," says Sabato. "These are three really big prizes, and they're tenuous. None of these states is guaranteed for a Democrat in the future."

There's more:

The disparity isn't an accident -- critics already are calling it a snub -- and that perception could slow the pace of recent electoral gains Democrats have made below the Mason-Dixon line.

"Southerners need not apply," said Rep. Jack Kingston, R-Ga. "It's hard to believe that there wasn't anybody qualified for something from the South." [...]

Dan Carter, a political historian at the University of South Carolina, said the shortage of Southerners among top White House aides is highly unusual and could invite criticism.

Um...Fuck You? Seriously. Perhaps the fact that Obama is picking qualified, knowledgable people to man the posts eliminated all the yokels at the door? But that's not really even true. Obama's got people from Texas, North Carolina, D.C., Florida plus Arizona and New Mexico. I guess not all of them are the "right kind" of Southerner...

Go read the whole AP piece, it's filled to the rim with stupid.

The best thing I saw on this? From the comments at Benen's:

Fine, fine, three new cabinet posts for the south then. Here are my suggestions;

Secretary of Tobacco
Secretary of NASCAR
Secretary of Obnoxious Whiners

Will that make them happy?

For the record, Obama’s Cabinet has 11 whites, four blacks, three Hispanics and two Asian Americans. Several are women, and one is the first openly gay cabinet-level appointee. It's a diverse—yet extremely qualified—group by almost any measure, so haters can sit back and drink up...

Nobody cAyers

William Ayers has an Op-Ed in the New York Times in which he addresses his connection (or lack thereof) to Obama. Thankfully he waited until after the election to come out of the woodwork, and he makes a good point about the attempts to smear Obama using their loose association, but nobody's really asking for his opinion. The Times should not have given him a platform regardless of his point about the campaign, and once they read the rest of his piece it should have been shredded, not printed.

The piece may be bookended with legitimate points regarding Obama and the campaign, but in between Ayers spends most of the column narcissistically trying to salvage his own reputation—unavoidably at the expense of Obama's.

The "real Bill Ayers" rationalizes and excuses his past behavior, and lamely attempts to refute the "unrepentant terrorist" label fixed on him by—being totally unrepentant, and dishonestly minimizing his actions.

Hilzoy pretty much nails it:

"Ayers may think that there's still a debate about the Weather Underground's effectiveness. And he might also think that he "acted appropriately in the context of those times." To me, though, he's just a shallow rich kid who took himself and his revolutionary rhetoric much too seriously, helped inspire people to do things that got them killed, and helped to discredit the anti-war movement and the left as a whole."

In case any defense of Obama for knowing Bill Ayers ever came across as a defense of Ayers himself, let me be clear—I think the guy was fucking scum back in the day. Even if he has rehabilitated himself (debatable) and become a productive member of society (he has) then the most it earns him in my book is "shut the fuck up, lay low, and go about your business" status. I'm not interested in anything the guy has to say if it's not contrition.

It's Monday, and we all know what that means...

...Paul Krugman is pissing me off.

Today's column is titled "Divided They Stand" and in it you'd expect Krugman to lay out a plan for the Democrats to unify the party to take on McCain. Well, he'll get to that in a minute...First, he has to spend four paragraphs bemoaning the latest "fake scandal" that is being trumped up against Clinton—never mind that this RFK thing was entirely of her own making. Yes, the outrage amps were cranked up "to eleven," but it was Hillary herself that kicked it off, and then compounded it with her weak-ass "apology."

Krugman in his rush to absolve Hillary and shift blame to Obama (or the universally vague "Obama supporters") never mentions that Obama and his campaign were pretty goddamn gracious about the whole thing and resisted piling on like Clinton did every time she had a chance to show some class or grace.

Krugman gets down to the business of "uniting the party" by announcing Obama has a problem:

Mr. Obama will be the Democratic nominee. But he has a problem: many grass-roots Clinton supporters feel that she has received unfair, even grotesque treatment. And the lingering bitterness from the primary campaign could cost Mr. Obama the White House.

To bolster his case, PK points to some stupid poll showing that Obama trails McCain in Florida while Hillary leads. In fucking May—with the Dems still splitting votes versus McCain. From that poll, Krugman extrapolates that this is all the result of disgruntled Clinton supporters, and that Obama needs to win over and bring them back to the party.

First, I think the number of "I'm so disgruntled that Hillary lost that I'll vote for McCain or stay home because Hillary had a tough time and I blame it all on Obama" is way overblown. It certainly pales in comparison to the number of African American voters who would be (far more justifiably) disaffected if Clinton were to somehow abscond with the nomination. Plus, let's not forget the excited youth vote (aka the future of the party) that Obama actually seems to be delivering for once.

Second, these disgruntled die-hard Hillary supporters (I tangle with them regularly at Shakesville) are beyond Obama's appeal, if not all reason. They are the equivalent of Bush's 23-percenters, and that brand of identity politics is not worth bending Obama's platform to embrace.

Krugman blames Obama (?!?!) for dismissing Clinton's support as "a purely Appalachian phenomenon." More bullshit. That's only come up as a result of three recent primaries, all of which took place with Clinton desperately trying to close the gap, and SHE is the one that attempted to use those numbers as an indication that Obama can't win with "hardworking white Americans." Obama and his campaign would just assume not acknowledge those losses, but when forced to explain them, the only thing differentiating these "blue collar whites" from the ones that Obama carrieds everywhere else—from Oregon to Wisconsin—IS the Appalachia/racism factor.

The big problem really is that Krugman, as always, is laying all of Clinton's mistreatment (and there has been plenty) at the feet of Obama and "Obama supporters." That's bullshit. And frankly, this sounds disturbingly like February's "Nixonland" column when Krugman used his email inbox as illustrative of the wide world of Obama supporters.

Disgruntled Clinton supporters can and should be pissed at the treatment of their candidate by the media and punditry—it's been at times awful and disgusting—but Obama and his "official" campaign have been pretty fucking easy on her. There have been tussles, but by and large, he has run a pretty high-road campaign, even as Clinton threw the kitchen sink at him, and even questioned his qualifications for the job—while endorsing their GOP foe's.

Krugman spends exactly one brief paragraph on what role Clinton has had and will have in all of this:

Mrs. Clinton needs to do her part: she needs to be careful not to act as a spoiler during what’s left of the primary, she needs to bow out gracefully if, as seems almost certain, Mr. Obama receives the nod, and she needs to campaign strongly for the nominee once the convention is over. She has said she’ll do that, and there’s no reason to believe that she doesn’t mean it.

What fucking planet has Krugman been on the last week? I was actually ready to write almost the same thing—two weeks ago! Before Hillary decided to head down to Florida and undermine the legitimacy of the presumptive nominee. That's not playing the spoiler? Comparing the electoral process to Zimbabwe is being graceful?

So when Krugman concludes that it's Obama that has to clean up the race, it's almost laughable. Hillary has been setting fire to everything she can as she goes down, but "mainly it’s up to Mr. Obama to deliver the unity he has always promised..."

One thing to do would be to make a gesture of respect for Democrats who voted in good faith by recognizing Florida’s primary votes — which at this point wouldn’t change the outcome of the nomination fight.

Really, then why was the gracious, non-spoiling Hillary continue to beat the Florida thing into the ground?

The only reason I can see for Obama supporters to oppose seating Florida is that it might let Mrs. Clinton claim that she received a majority of the popular vote. But which is more important — denying Mrs. Clinton bragging rights, or possibly forfeiting the general election?

Yeak, Professor, Hillary just wants "bragging rights" and a "Perfect Primary Attendance Trophy"...she would use that exact popular vote scenario (dubious though it would be) to try and hijack the race. In fact, she's already trying...

What about offering Mrs. Clinton the vice presidency? If I were Mr. Obama, I’d do it. Adding Mrs. Clinton to the ticket — or at least making the offer — might help heal the wounds of an ugly primary fight.

Here’s the point: the nightmare Mr. Obama and his supporters should fear is that in an election year in which everything favors the Democrats, he will nonetheless manage to lose. He needs to do everything he can to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Of course to Krugman, adding Clinton to the ticket has no down side. None at all. As if the droves of disaffected Republicans currently sitting this one out wouldn't be awakened by a Clinton anywhere on the ticket. Pretty sure there're more of them than there are pissed-off Hillarybots. And nowhere in there is there anything that Clinton could do—like perhaps to knock some sense into her supporters?...it's all on Obama to try an win them over, while Hillary goes about stoking the embers.

Andrew Sullivan wraps up his critique of Krugman..."I've been open to an Obama-Clinton ticket; but the more you see of the Clintons, the more you realize that getting rid of them - and the assumptions they represent - is part of what this entire campaign has come to be about."

Yeah. Pretty much.

UPDATE: More from: Carpetbagger, Too Sense, John Cole, Aravosis

A Cup for Paul Krugman

Professor, I really didn't want it to come to this, but you leave me no choice... I understand that you support Hillary Clinton. That's fine. But you are still pretending you are neutral, and that you offer sober analysis, yet you have been little more than a campaign mouthpiece and now seem to be completely through the looking glass and even exceeding the rhetoric of the campaign itself.

The day after Hillary Clinton shoves her foot all the way down her throat regarding the work habits of white people*—with no clear extrication procedure available—you decide to take pen in hand and write a column about a candidate, and a campaign, that has a "problem" with race, and you write it about Barack Obama?!? Are you fucking serious?

Fellow academician Mark Kleiman said it perfectly:

If you actually wanted to help Barack Obama (who is, as you note the presumptive Democratic nominee) you would give him advice in private and praise him in public. Telling him that he shouldn't disrespect white people is neither necessary nor helpful. You might at least pretend to believe that some of the people who voted for your preferred candidate were voting for her, rather than against him.

Take a fucking sabbatical until this race is over, Professor, and join us on the other side. You are embarrassing yourself.

* In defense of HRC, I think she made a horrible mistake when she spoke, and NOT a dogwhistle remark. I could be wrong of course, but I'm hoping not.

An Open Letter...

To the media and all professional pundits and columnists.

Barack Obama's NOT "elitest," he just looks that way because you are all fucking retarded

Since Barack Obama made the "mistake" last week of telling the truth about the plight of the forgotten people and towns in this country, his opponents and you morons with microphones have been having at him—spinning wildly to portray him as some "out of touch elitest."

Let's review some of the heavy, issues-oriented analysis of the last week, shall we?:

• We know Chris Matthews thinks orange juice is for pussies, and that real Presidents drink coffee.

• Everyone seems clear that "real Presidents" can bowl at least 150.

• Hillary "Salt of the Earth" Clinton can chase her shot of whiskey with a beer. But don't mention that even though she has more than enough scratch to buy a round for the entire Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, that if she did, her campaign would stiff the bartender on the tab.

• You were all so helpful in 2000 and 2004 to remind us that we need a President we can "have a beer with." Never mind the fact that that reg'ler fella Dubya is a recovering alcoholic and cannot "have a beer" lest he careen off the wagon and start doing lines of coke off his painting of a horse thief.

But, as vapid and irrelevant as all of those thigs are, do you know which utterly stupid fucking thing is pissing me off the most?

Arugula.

Yes, arugula. Last summer (as in nine months ago) Barack Obama was in Iowa talking to some "regular small town Midwesterners" and he started said this:

"Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula? I mean, they're charging a lot of money for this stuff."

WTF? What a fucking snob. Is he kidding? This is DesMoines, not the Upper East Side...

Back then, bow-tied, yet blue-collared, George F. Will was the only one sharp enough to catch this slip from the ivory tower by Obama, but during this week's pile-on, Obama's "arugula" moment has new life...

What "FUN" for you bunch of goddamn Heathers. A perfect storm of effete and elite. It's like Michael Dukakis grabbed his belgian endives, hopped in Howard Dean's Volvo to meet John Kerry for wind-surfing and lattes and green tea on the beach.

Here's the fucking problem with that bullshit.

Barack Obama isn't George H.W. Bush enthralled by a checkout scanner, he wasn't making a gaffe by trying to order arugula in an Ames, Iowa greasy spoon. Or lamenting his grocery bill to try and seem down to earth.

And these aren't coal miners in Western PA, (who might very well know what arugala is, btw), he was in Iowa. Talking to farmers. You know, farmers? The people who grow crops. Like arugula.

Obama was talking specifically to farmers about diversifying crops, about profit margins, about ways for them to increase their share of the high prices paid for certain foods.

The nerve of that fucking guy.

So, in conclusion, could you all just do everyone a favor and shut the fuck up and stop trying to judge who's a regular guy? That means you, Chris "Three Mercedes" Matthews, and you too, Maureen "Dateline: Abroad" Dowd.

Thanks,
Mr Furious

MORE: Watch this video, but be forewarned that you will want to start throwing things around the room.

A Round for the House

It's been a very busy week for loudmouths and idiots. So many in fact, that I think I should just order pitchers of STFU to keep my tab down. Bottoms up:

N.O.W.
The N.Y. state chapter of NOW threw an absolute fit over Ted Kennedy's endorsement of Obama, calling it "the ultimate betrayal to women." And that's just for starters. Go here for the complete and completely unhinged rant.

NEW HAMPSHIRE
The editors of The The New Hampshire Union-Leader are all bent out of shape about Hillary's play for the Florida delegates—first campaigning for them, and then trying to seat them. Everything they say is true and correct, but guess what? I don't want to hear you bitching about the primaries, New Hampshire, you're the fucking problem. Hopefully your days of importance are over, and this bullshit primary setup is trashed. Then you can go back to doing what you do the other 1,460 days between elections—being the poor man's Vermont.

HILLARY
Just because those Green White Mountain yokels are shutting the fuck up, doesn't mean I'm letting you off. All of this "Changing the rules once the game's underway and you have a lead" crap has got to stop. You are rapidly becoming that which you seek to replace

ARLEN SPECTER
I actually thought this was a joke when I saw it. Snarlin' Arlen wants NFL Commissioner Goodell to come before Congress and explain why the League destroyed the Patriots "spygate" tapes. Specter went as far as declaring this action "analogous to the CIA destruction of tapes." Yeah. It's just like that. The Patriots violated the countless laws and international treaties when they sent a guy out to walk around with a camcorder at the Meadowlands. Luckily for Goodell and Belichick, ole Arlen never follows through on his threats...

PAUL KRUGMAN
Look. I love the Professor as much as the next guy, but for some reason he's got a stick up his ass about Obama. Monday's "Lessons of 1992" installment was the most convoluted anti-Obama rationale yet: See, Bill Clinton already tried this message of hope, post-partisan approach, and it didn't work. So Obama's got nothing to offer. Better go with...the Clintons? Take a vacation until the general election, okay Paul?

UPDATE: NANCY PELOSI
[c/o Toast] Madame Speaker is sounding off about President Bush's latest signing statement:

"I reject the notion in his signing statement that he can pick and choose which provisions of this law to execute," said Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California. "His job, under the Constitution, is to faithfully execute the law - every part of it - and I expect him to do just that."

No, granted, this specific statement is among the most blatently unconstitutional assertions of CIC power yet, but I still don't want to hear it Nancy. Bush has been doing this all along, and you have been letting him. In seven years he has chosen to exempt himself from more laws than all previous Presidents combined. All of them. As in two hundred years worth. So don't get all feisty about it now, you have no intention of doing anything about it, so do as the mug says.

I'll Pour It, Hillary Can Serve It…

Jesse Jackson, Jr. national Obama Campaign co-chair earns himself a Big Gulp with this shit:

In an appearance today on MSNBC, Jackson said that Clinton's "tears" -- none actually fell from her eyes -- are something that "we're still analyzing within the Barack Obama campaign." "Those tears also have to be analyzed," Jackson said. "They have to be looked at very, very carefully in light of Katrina, in light of other things that Mrs. Clinton did not cry for, particularly as we head to South Carolina where 45 percent of African-Americans will participate in the Democratic contest, and they see real hope in Barack Obama."

[...] Asked whether he was suggesting that Clinton's "tears" were "staged," Jackson said he wouldn't go that far -- but then suggested that there are things in the world worth crying over, and that whatever got Clinton going wasn't one of them.

Hey, Jesse, I don't recall crying about Katrina, but I cried like a goddamn baby at the end of "Children of Men." Got a problem? Funny thing about emotions, you can't always control them. Kinda like now—I can't help but to call you an asshole.

Put a fucking leash on this guy, Obama, or cut his ass loose.

UPDATE: Video...

Perfect Season. So Far...

"We were the first ones to climb Mount Everest," Yepremian said late Saturday. "If New England comes and does it, then they can be the second ones. But you usually don't remember No. 2. I remember Sir Edmund Hillary was the first one to climb Mount Everest. I don't remember who did it the second time. Do you?"

Drink up Garo, Nick, Don and the rest of you bitter old fucks.

Ya know, even as a Patriots fan, I was all prepared to pen a "the Patriots haven't done anything until they win the Super Bowl" post, until I read that self-serving, sore loser crap "response". Since you bitter assclowns broke out champagne every time an undefeated team lost in Week 10 or 13 (or whenever) for the last thirty years, Garo, you don't get to play it like this now—you care and you watched. All of you. Your perfect regular season is history, and in a month 19-0 will make 17-0 look like you climbed Mount Wycheproof, douche.

While Exploring the Amazon...

Saw this while shopping online:

3 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

More junk made in China December 6, 2007
By "Melissa L" (MI United States) - See all my reviews
I bought this at Sam's Club and brought it home. It's a piece of junk - and yes, it's made in China. It is supposed to have 3 settings but the high setting doesn't work. On medium, it's hot in some spots and cold in others. It's obviously going right back in the box and back to Sam's Club.

Don't waste your money! WHEN will we have a decent choice of products NOT made in China???

Um, when you stop shopping at fucking Sam's Club, you cheap moron.

Huckabee "Heartbroken"

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- [link] Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee said it was "heartbreaking" that the deaths of women killed by a convicted rapist who was released from prison after Huckabee supported his parole had become politicized.

..."There are families who are truly, understandably and reasonably, grief stricken," Huckabee told CNN. "And for people to now politicize these deaths and to try to make a political case out of it rather than to simply understand that a system failed and that we ought to extend our grief and heartfelt sorrow to these families, I just regret politics is reduced to that."

Yeah, you sound "heartbroken"...that this is an issue. Here's your cup, Mike. Drink it down.



Let's make things clear. This is politicized now because you responded to the mouth-breathing, Clenis-fearing, rightwing asshats when you were Governor and pushed for the release of a convicted rapist for purely political reasons!

In the same breath you claim "not to have pressured" the parole board, you mention that you were considering "granting DuMond clemency in 1996, but he dropped the idea in response to public outcry."

To cover your ass against that "public outcry" and in defiance of the letters you recieved pleading that DuMond remain in prison, you held a controversial closed-door, no-transcript session with the Parole Board, and within weeks he was on the street. What and who are we supposed to believe here? The board members who say you pressured them, and threatened to outright commute DuMond if he wasn't paroled or you and your political handlers. That his parole stipulated he leave Arkansas (convenient for you) but both Florida and Georgia refused to accept him, and he ended up in Missouri? That's how "concerned" you were with his supervsion?

You fucked up, Mike. Big time. And people lost their lives because of it. And it was for a disgraceful reason—political payback. So don't you dare moan about politics now. Right after you're done shutting the fuck up you can rot in Hell right next to your buddy DuMond.

My Last Post on the War

Go read this story and guess what I'm most annoyed by / sick to death of. Go ahead, it's not long. I'll wait...

What? Too fucking lazy to click? Okay. Here are the choices:

Bush wants another $42 billion for wars
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The Bush administration on Monday asked for an additional $42.3 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bringing the 2008 request for total war funding to $189.3 billion. [blah, blah, blah]

"Congress should not go home for the holidays while our troops are still waiting for the funds they need," he said.

This tired shit again? Jesus. Sure, that's a bunch of crap, but this pisses me off more:

Minutes after Bush spoke, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, warned the president not to expect Congress to "rubber-stamp" the latest request.

"In the coming weeks, we will hold it up to the light of day and fight for the change of strategy and redeployment of troops that is long overdue," Reid said.

Oh, just shut the fuck up already, Harry. Please. I've had i t with this bullshit. Do everybody a favor and just rubber-stamp it. Stop pretending. We all know you're gonna cave. Just be honest about from the start—I'd rather the new Democratic strategy just be "Here. Finish your fucking war, Bush. This is all on you. How much do you need? A twenty? Just take it and stay out all night if you want. Because next year you're out and shit's gonna change.*"

* In theory. I'm not even confident a Democratic President will change anything anymore.

"I grow fatigued..."

The fact that I can hardly get worked up about the War, among other topics, anymore due to Outrage Fatigue won't stop me from letting somebody else point out what crap Bush's "address to the nation" was. Take it away, Hilzoy:

In a move that caught all of Washington by surprise, President Bush announced tonight that he will begin drawing down troops at almost exactly the rate that he must draw them down unless he is prepared to extend troop rotations or institute the draft. In another startling move, he described this drawdown not as forced on him by deployment schedules, but as a "return on success": the tremendous success of the surge. In so doing, once again, our President shows himself to be a true visionary: seeing things invisible to ordinary men and women. Where we see only a country in the process of falling apart, our more discerning President sees success. Where we see millions of people fleeing their homes, he sees 'civil society taking root'. And, somehow, he sees "a young democracy" where we see dead people.

And to top it all off, where we see a President determined to keep our troops in harm's way for as long as possible, hoping that the civil war unleashed by his folly will unfold on someone else's watch, he sees a chance, "for the first time in years, for people who have been on opposite sides of this difficult debate to come together." Although why he thinks this is so novel escapes me: it has always been possible for both sides to come together if all those who disagree with George W. Bush simply abandon their positions, and this is not the first time he has suggested that we embrace this sort of bipartisanship.

The President also said this:

"In the life of all free nations, there come moments that decide the direction of a country and reveal the character of its people. We are now at such a moment."

Here, for once, I agree completely. We have had clear evidence that our policy in Iraq is unworkable for some time. We need to decide what to do about it. And we have, essentially, two choices. On the one hand, we can face up to this fact, as unpleasant as it might be, and figure out the most honorable way of extricating ourselves. On the other, we can continue to defer the moment when we have to realize that we have failed, and go on sacrificing good and decent men and women to our unwillingness to face the truth.

This will, as President Bush says, reveal our character as a people. I would much rather it reveal some capacity for maturity and decency than a willingness to ask people to die so that we can pretend we haven't lost.

Following up on the President's quote above...This is actually the only part I saw (after the fact, online) and I had to stop it right there before I hurt my pretty new monitor. What the fuck to you mean "we", white man? Whatever has been happening in Iraq, and what comes next has no reflection on this country or the character of its people. The rest of us left you and your retard-base and your fucking abomination of a war in the dust quite a while ago.

Your "moment of truth" is nothing but a bullshit soundbite in your vast narrative of lies. you are pretending to bring troops home, when all you are really doing (and not even committing any numbers, btw) is going back to the same unacceptable number of troops we had before this stupid surge. 2008 will end with the same amount of troops that 2006 did.

Last night's speech was the same as any of the other ones—you continue to fool all 28% of the people all of the time, cow Congress into supporting you, and punt the ball down the field and expect the next President to deal with your fucking mess.

Nicely done. You are full of shit, but it's working. That is your only success—your brain-dead supporters clap, the morons in the media trumpet your "compromise," the Republicans point to this fake success, and the Democrats roll over for whatever you want.

Fuck you, Mr President. And fuck the rest of you too. In fact, you can all suck down one of these...



Extra points for whoever identifies the title quote. Full quote, "I grow fatigued, Captain."

UPDATE: Sullivan, good NYT Op-Ed, Carpetbagger, Slate.com's Kaplan

Drink up, Chuck

Last time I busted out the mug it was for Harry Reid's turn at Dick of the Week. I'll be brewing the STFU for whoever needs it, and that person need not be DOW. The first pour from the fresh pot goes to Chuck Schumer...

[link] Senators were too quick to accept the nominees’ word that they would respect legal precedents, and “too easily impressed with the charm of Roberts and the erudition of Alito,” Schumer said.

“There is no doubt that we were hoodwinked,” said Schumer, who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee and heads the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.

[...] In Friday’s speech, he said his “greatest regret” in the last Congress was not doing more to scuttle Alito.

[...]Schumer said there were four lessons to be learned from Alito and Roberts: Confirmation hearings are meaningless, a nominee’s record should be weighed more heavily than rhetoric, “ideology matters” and “take the president at his word.”

Hoodwinked? Please. You, me, Bush, Alito and everyone else knew exactly what was on the table here, what the President's "word" was worth, and what these confirmations meant—and you fucking pussies capitulated.

You got this part right:

“Alito shouldn’t have been confirmed,” Schumer said. “I should have done a better job. My colleagues said we didn’t have the votes, but I think we should have twisted more arms and done more.”

Yep. You did a shit job, and let the country down. but don't try and tell me you were "hoodwinked." That's crap.

Dick of the Week: Harry Reid. "Drink up!"

[via Kos] Democrat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid responds to the White House bait and switch on the September Iraq Progress Report:

"The White House’s effort to prevent General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker from testifying openly and candidly before Congress about the situation in Iraq is unacceptable. Not only does it contradict the law President Bush himself signed in May, but it appears to be yet another politically driven attempt to avoid giving Congress and the American people an honest and open assessment of a war we can all see is headed in the wrong direction.

"From the very beginning of this war, the Bush Administration has refused to level with the American people about its flawed policy. It has instead done everything in its power to escape accountability and mislead us about the reality on the ground. The result: an open-ended civil war that has taken nearly 4,000 American soldiers’ lives and an Iraqi government that refuses to take responsibility for its own country.

"If the President is going to continue to ask American soldiers to fight in this civil war, ask taxpayers to spend $10 billion each month to fund this war and ask the American people for patience as he conducts this war, then those closest to the situation on the ground must give Congress and the American people a frank and honest account of this war free of White House political spin."

The Administration has done "everything in its power to escape accountability?" Really, Harry? And who holds them accountible? Oh, that's right, fucking Congress. You guys have done nothing but roll for those lying pricks and I don't want to hear any more "talk" from you, Leahy, or anyone else unless you are going to do something about it.

If approving "The Surge" was contingent upon a report directly to Congress from the General on the ground in six months, and the White House refuses to follow through, than cut off the goddamn money. Period. If Bush wants to continue the War, or the Surge or whatever, Congress gets the report it demanded and Bush is bound by law to fucking provide.

Anything else constitutes you "accepting" the "unacceptable."

The American people did their job, they put you in charge of Congress. Now it's time for you to do your job. Bush is only escaping accountibility because you allow it. As Mr Blonde says, "Are you gonna bark all day little doggie, or are you gonna bite?"