Rip Van Bush

Has Rip Van Bush woken from his long nap? Does he know there's still a conflict going on in Iraq? I'm sure he knows nothing about wiretapping or anything else also. It's not like he's the President or anything...one wonders what he knows if he claims as he did (and it's videotaped), that the government was ready to address the disaster fall-out from Katrina. I'm scared to think what a state of unreadiness would be like. Perhaps this?

Not that it matters.....

you know you don't use math(s) in the real world? Right? Right? Hmm, so if I drive home in four hours, how many beers can I drink in 20 minutes so I can still be safe...?

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 9/10 correct!

Could You Pass 8th Grade Math?

Qu'est-ce que c'est le sens vrai?

Just some mind-boggling revelations these last few days. This is essentially a link dump so that I can square some of these ideas in my head a little bit:

• Intelligent neo-con-I just wonder how much he must be paid to spout ideas he seems much to intelligent to spout says that "we have not had a serious three-year effort to fight a war in Iraq." I'm just wondering again why Democrats are considered so unsympathetic to the troops.
• There are still 2,000 people unaccounted for from Katrina. And yet Mardi Gras went on yesterday. Whoever was celebrating there really should be ashamed of themselves.
• 72% of troops believe we should leave within the next year, and 29% believe that we should leave immediately. Another interesting finding is that 90% (90%!!) don't blame the insurgency for attacking. Obviously the attacks are tragic and deadly, but the soldiers have much more sense than the pundits here in the States and realize that people there are unhappy with the continued occupation; not that it excuses suicide attacks, but at least the troops have more sense than the pundits.
• Also, a story in the Washington Post indicates that over one-third of troops returning from Iraq are seeking professional psychiatric care relating to their service in Iraq. And yet...and yet...Republicans continue (with some success) to link Democrats to a cavalier attitude on national security. Incredible that Dems are not more assertive. Unless they have some really nasty skeletons in their closets, totally inexplicable their political acquiescence.
• 34% approval rating for Bush. Yeesh. If Nixon was alive, he'd be saying, well, at least I'm not that guy.

Just how much more incompetence might it take before there is a broader call for impeachment? One of the ideological forefathers of neo-conservatism has admitted that the venture into Iraq has been a failure. What do they know now that they weren't being yelled at by libs in 2002? There's nothing new. These guys are just a bunch of snake-oil salesmen.

Oh well. As Digby points out, obviously intelligent, but also obviously intellectually dishonest people like Kristol and Buckley are positioning themselves so that they can criticize Dems, (as the FUX NEWS shills analysts do here) for essentially causing the failure of the mission in Iraq because of their complaining. Uh huh. So it has nothing to do with bad policy right? Sort of like how some dirty hippies in Berkeley and Cambridge, Mass. in 1968 had so much influence that they led to the US' ignoble departure from Vietnam. Yup, nothing to do with The Gulf of Tonkin ("We don't want the smoking to be a mushroom cloud?" anyone?) or JFK secretly ratcheting up the number of US forces in Vietnam in 1961, not fooling himself even that they wouldn't be engaged in combat although they were ostensibly there to train the south Vietnamese. Nothing to do with LBJ being caught between fear of domestic criticism of appeasement of Communists and a well-founded concern that the US was making no progress in Vietnam-in fact such an internal conflict facing LBJ that he didn't run for a second term.

Meanwhile, the rest of the world looks on in shocked horror as the mask comes off the United States. All the things that kids living outside the States, at least in Britain I guess when I was a kid, but probably similar things in many parts at least of western Europe, learn about the US from the earliest years of elementary school (freedom, opportunity, wealth) etc. are being exposed as barely plausible masks.

I remember always being so amazed hearing about America when I was a kid. The film In America by Jim Sheridan certainly rang true for me, especially the wonderment of the two little girls (not that I was a little girl) and the fact that the story was set around the same time we moved here; but certainly the wonder and fearlessness that some little kids have to drink in everything around them, regardless of how fearful their parents are about such fearlessness. I don't somehow think that America is such an attractive place for kids growing up these days.

Anyway. Can't leave on that note. Perhaps you've seen the video of the autistic boy in Rochester, New York who wasn't a full member of the varsity squad at his high school but who had served loyally as team manager and general odd-job man throughout his high school years. However, the coach put him in the last game of the season with the game safely out of reach and he was, to quote Dan Patrick, en fuego (on fire for fellow non-Spanish speakers). Here it is and here's some good common sense from someone who's been writing thoughtfully about Bush post-9/11 from the start.

So what does it mean? It means that France was right and George Bush's presidency has been an utter failure.

Isn't it ironic?

That while Democrats actually know what they believe, at least in George Bush's AmeriKKKa, that don't aggressively promote those ideas or really stand up for themselves when criticized, while Republikkkans, who really (at least if George Bush is a conservative) don't know what they stand for but have each others' backs if criticized by an evil, evil Democrat? (Well, though it seems less now the long knives are coming out as King George the Incompetent becomes progressively more unhinged and unpopular) I swear, if the Democrats were a basketball team, they would lost most games by scores like 80-20, 90-40, etc; and whenever there was a pressure situation, they would have turned the ball over. Absolutely no nerve.