Letters to the Editor
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When this administration ends...
We'll probably get even more stores like this. Basically, Bush is managed in the same way as a laggard salesman at a Buick dealership. Lots of pep talks, not much education. It's why car salesmen usually can't remember the horsepower of cars they sell everyday and it's why we're stuck with the unworkable policies of this administration.
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'Will' is not Bush's problem
Although Bush may have the Will to Power, he lacks the required Skill to Power.
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If it weren't so serious...
...it'd be a joke. Not a funny joke, more pathetic. These oh so serious grown up deep thinkers don't realize that my eight year old neice has more common sense than the whole roomfull of the. Course she's pretty smart.
What terrifies me is how many people they plan to bring along with them to meet the Almighty.
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Not Much Of A Surprise / To Those With Open Eyes
AKA "Confessions of an Info Addict."
Aside from the fact that they tell the world about it, nothing in this report came close to raising an eyebrow with me. It's all confirmation, in drawing room play form, of what's been obvious for years.
What I find notable is two things:
First, that no one even bothers to try to reconcile this axiomatic and thoroughgoing contempt for others with either (a) the cover story about "spreading democracy" or (b) the lip to "winning hearts and minds."
Second, that up to now the media has managed to studiously ignore the defining influence of neoconservatism--which is treated rather like a recurring character in a tv show, rather than its premise.
How often, for example, do they note that terrorism goes virtually unmentioned in Rebuilding America's Defenses and that Rebuilding America's Defenses is the guidepost for Bush's policies? How often do they discuss Strauss and the noble lie? Answer: they do not discuss the concept of the noble lie, they simply help spread the lie. Which is why they stay silent about Rebuilding America's Defenses, too.
So what does it mean that they've come out so dramatically like this?
I see this as the end of a strategic post-election set piece. First, there was the firing of Rumsfeld, feinting some sort of break with the past. Then there was the rejection of Baker/Hamilton, and introduction of "the surge," aka "Good Morning, Vietnam," daring the Democrats to act on the will of the people. Now we have the "Nyah! Nyah! Nyah! Nyah!" phase, aka "I'll bomb whoever the hell I want."
I do hope the Blue Dogs feel proud of themselves. Dante will be showing them to their places in hell, shortly. Beatrice sends her regrets.
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Real history lesson
Someone should read to Bush the following:
I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert... Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal these words appear:
My name is Ozymandius, King of Kings,
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
When he asks, "Ozymandius who?", the reply should be, "Exactly."
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Bush and Grownups
It's frightening to think about the feeble minded Bush sitting at the adults table, especially when the adults are as misguided and dangerous as this crews world view. The only outcome here is tantamount to filling up a twelve year old with cheap whiskey, handing him the car keys and sending him off into the night.
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Sounds familiar, sounds very familiar....
One of the aspects of neoconservatism that makes it so uniquely pernicious is that it is consciously and deliberately deceitful. They see themselves as vanguards of an intellectually superior elite who have an entitlement -- even an obligation -- to use concepts for the lower masses (such as religion and morality) to manipulate them into passivity. -- GlennGreenwald
Could these neoconservatives actually be (gasp) Communists? (Just kidding.... You -- and we -- have discussed ad nauseum the attraction which Leninism has for these poor unfortunates.)
Frankly, I wouldn't mind visiting their embalmed bodies in an elegant mausoleum on the National Mall, but only if I could stick a pin in them -- just to be sure that they were well and truly gone.
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It is now perfectly clear
We are governed by a crazy person, advised by delusional, homocidal maniacs.
That's nice.
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Fraud Guy
I mentioned Rebuilding America's Defenses, you mentioned "Ozymandius."
In a recent comment, I combined the two, saying something like, "they should have spent less time reading Buck Rodgers in their teens, and a little more time reading "Ozymandius."
If only they actually meant any of that crap they spout about the great dead white males, and defending Western Civilization. If only one of them actually read "Ozymandius," or Richard III, or The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Or--God help us!--The Constitution.
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Confused...
"Fifth lesson: We are fighting an enemy that cannot be appeased; were that possible, the French would already have done it--a Roberts quip that elicited a loud chuckle from the president."
Neville Chamberlain was French? Who knew?
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Madmen
We are truly in the care of a madman who is being fed by madmen who are being fed by greed and religious insanity. When will enough be enough? IF this country survives the reign of George W Bush, it will not be because of the press or the Congress, it will be because the masses have awakened from their 'stupor'. Ring the alarm. Ring the alarm!
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Uebermenschen with bifocals
...jewhad Jewspiracy castigates us for our silly conspiracy theories. I couldn't help laughing out loud when reading his description of us as the paranoid 20-25% of Salon's readership who think that:
...Jews are Running the World from the Deck of their Orbital Nuclear Battlestation...
Then, of course, I came here, and read about GWB's book club. All I can say is that if you substitute neoconservative for Jew in Mr. Jewspiracy's formulation, it pretty much sums up not what we fear or believe, but what these folks actually aspire to for themselves. It's not a joke at all, not to them. Their own statements convict them of a world view that's very nearly impossible either to believe or to parody.
-- William Timberman *
That's the most twisted thing about the neocon think tank clique -- they are so obviously, obliviously convinced that they are smarter/better/more able than the ordinary men around them. Novak's slip in regards to his status with respect to the President was most telling.
They are middlebrow at best. I don't doubt they are men and women who have great capacity for the technical aspects of scholarship: they are facile writers and speakers, prodigious readers, skilled test-takers, publishing machines. But wisdom evades them.
They seem quite convinced that if they keep up their effort to manipulate America's leaders they will get what they want -- safety & unhindered expansion for Israel, unchallenged hyperpower supremacy for America, and maybe a pony too. The other 6 billion individuals that make up humanity won't inevitably beat them because..... why? Because our CVs are not as beautiful? Because our publication record is shorter? Because they will maintain access to the powerful for ever and ever? These seems to be the unexamined emotional underpinnings of their hubris.