Still Not in the Loop

Have his advisors still not told him this is not the case?

In rebuffing calls to bring troops home from Iraq, President Bush on Thursday employed a stark and ominous defense. “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq,” he said, “were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that’s why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home.”

Or, does he just like lying THAT MUCH he cannot stop doing it?

Regardless, his constituents probably do believe this, since to them, all "towelheads are the same..."

The Fights

This past weekend Vladimir Klitschko defeated Lamont Brewster to win the IBF Heavyweight Championship in Germany. Contender Matt Skelton sat ringside to watch the 6 round beatdown, and afterwards declared that he "has what it takes" to beat Klitschko. Which begs the question: Who the fuck is Matt Skelton? Better yet, do you even know who Lamont Brewster is? Klitschko, you know him, right? Make sure you do because there are two of them, brothers, and are both completely boring.

At the same time this weekend the UFC had an event in Sacramento featuring two title fights, and while I'm sure you don't know the names of most of these fighters there was clearly more buzz on ESPN and from people who I know than there was for this boxing Clash of the Titans.

I watched the UFC in a sports bar at the Jersey Shore, and had other friends watching it at other sports bar down the shore. No one seemed to even know there was a boxing match on, including the bar owners.

In other words, the UFC may not yet have reached household status as a sport, but it's only days away from overcoming boxing from the perspective of known personalities.

UFC will never be what boxing once was, but then again, neither will boxing. But UFC, and other MMA fights will overtake boxing, that's for damn sure.

A Smaller Story

Sorta like "Off-track Betting in the Himalayas", but I'm sure you've been following it:

BAGHDAD – In an astonishing heist, guards at a bank here made off with more than a quarter-billion dollars on Wednesday, according to an official at the Interior Ministry.

Army Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner called al-Qaeda in Iraq the principal threat to U.S. and Iraqi security forces in Iraq. The robbery of $282 million from the Dar Es Salaam bank, a private financial institution, raised more questions than it answered, and officials were tight-lipped about the crime. Local police said two guards engineered the robbery, but an official at the Interior Ministry said three guards were involved.

Both confirmed that the stolen money was in American dollars, not Iraqi dinars. It was unclear why the bank had that much money on hand in dollars or how the robbers managed to move such a large amount without being detected.

Chump change.

Moving Forward

I take my cues from real people, with real backgrounds, who have real accomplishments. Not guys like the President, who has nothing to speak of in his entire life, which is so ironic. I believe General Michael Hayden, a person with a clue:

Early on the morning of Nov. 13, 2006, members of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group gathered around a dark wooden conference table in the windowless Roosevelt Room of the White House.

For more than an hour, they listened to President Bush give what one panel member called a "Churchillian" vision of "victory" in Iraq and defend the country's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. "A constitutional order is emerging," he said.

Later that morning, around the same conference table, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden painted a starkly different picture for members of the study group. Hayden said "the inability of the government to govern seems irreversible," adding that he could not "point to any milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around," according to written records of his briefing and the recollections of six participants.

"The government is unable to govern," Hayden concluded. "We have spent a lot of energy and treasure creating a government that is balanced, and it cannot function."

So now that there's that, and putting aside how ridiculously wrong Republicans and conservatives have been on the war (I know, there's always hope, which is why they're so religious...), where is the real discussion about getting out of there, and minimizing damage? Is the military actively engaged in this? The government leaders who are having dialogue about it seem to still be debating a) How wrong the Bush Cartel has been and/or b) How I will make a better President than someone else will. These exercises only leave us with applause by different groups who favor one person over another. Then the people say, "He sounds great...I'm starting to really like him. This doesn't push people to really care when/how/if this war is going to end. In peoples' minds, listening to a debate, and picking a candidate is the civic duty of the day. Meanwhile, these leaders are clearly not forceful enough in ending this fucking travesty.

Who is going to be the voice willing to truly end this thing? Where is the person taking the reigns who is not running for office? What the fuck already?

Every day we are there, pretending to be doing something other than attempting to secure long term oil, is a joke. Where is the leader who will step up, push the plan of Iraq as 3 parts, separate nations, whatever, with a democracy in the form of Kurdistan leading the way, and an oil ministry that serves the 3 states equally? Where is that plan already, and a voice behind it?

:-)

I'd say reality is slipping away, but we know we're long past that point.

Bush to Declare Gains in Iraq on Some Fronts

The Bush administration will assert in the next few days that progress in carrying out the new American strategy in Iraq has been satisfactory on nearly half of the 18 benchmarks set by Congress, according to several administration officials.

Iraqi Progress on Benchmarks But it will qualify some verdicts by saying that even when the political performance of the Iraqi government has been unsatisfactory, it is too early to make final judgments, the officials said.

The administration’s decision to qualify many of the political benchmarks will enable it to present a more optimistic assessment than if it had provided the pass-fail judgment sought by Congress when it approved funding for the war this spring.

Because he declared it therefore it's, uhhh, totally false. Sorta like when he put on a flight suit in an attempt to become a pilot...

Now That The Most Recent Elections Are Over...

I'm curious to know how many Republicans would like to "cut and run."

The thing Conservatives are cutting and running from in droves is Bush.

The Spider

It's been asked more than once, "Dude, who's that black guy in the photo on your blog?"

Anderson "The Spider" Silva, aka, the best fighter in the world.

Shocker

Basically, like everything else.

Former Surgeon General, Dr. Richard Carmona speaks:

In his testimony, Dr. Carmona said that at first he was so politically naïve that he had little idea how inappropriate the administration’s actions were. He eventually consulted six previous surgeons general, Republican and Democratic, and all agreed, he said, that he faced more political interference than they had.

On issue after issue, Dr. Carmona said, the administration made decisions about important public health issues based solely on political considerations, not scientific ones.

“I was told to stay away from those because we’ve already decided which way we want to go,” Dr. Carmona said.

He described attending a meeting of top officials in which the subject of global warming was discussed. The officials concluded that global warming was a liberal cause and dismissed it, he said.

“And I said to myself, ‘I realize why I’ve been invited. They want me to discuss the science because they obviously don’t understand the science,’ ” he said. “I was never invited back.”

Conservatives, please, do not be pussies, as is your nature, and respond.

Not Dead

Just totally bored with the news. It really NEVER changes. They lie, press conference takes place, Tony Snow lies more, talk radio claims it's the media's fault, and nothing happens. So awesome.

Nothing better than Sean Hannity saying yesterday that "liberals are using politics to further their own agenda..." What does that even mean? Then he said something like, "there are a lot of people using the President to advance their own careers...I think President Bush will be judged as a hero one day..."

Uh huh. Keep telling yourself that. This is what conservatives HAVE TO DO in order to justify their own skewed outlook, for they see the world as it is, and know it's bad, so if you can just say, "one day we'll be right..." you can keep being wrong...until you're dead... Trickle down economics, you can keep talking about it, keep claiming you want more of your "own money" right now to suit your own selfish desires because it's never going to happen, let alone ever going to work. So when you're dead you can say, "Oops, I guess that I was..." Dead.

So there's that...

There's also this little thing that happened this weekend.

My girlfriend's mom is a Republican, and honestly, the worst kind. Like the clueless Bill O'Reilly reading kind who really doesn't even want to know the other side. Her daughter, again, my girlfriend, told her last weekend, "Mom, David is fair about things..." with regards to the AG scandal, and the effect the whole thing has had on democracy in general. So she listened to me on why it was a big deal, regardless of guilt, or not, and was amazed that Rush Limbaugh could actually have it all wrong! Go figure, the voice of the right, not even drugged up, could have it all wrong!

So we're watching 60 Minutes, which she does watch (the media has yet to convince her of all the media's biases), and it's a repeat story about Comptroller David M. Walker of the Government Accountability Office, aka, the nation's chief accountant. Walker went on and on about our liabilities, the prescription drug benefit, the war, our spending, our costs, etc. They even references Bill Clinton's closing of the deficit, which fiscally responsible conservatives no longer care about, of course...oh the irony. Anyway, the piece commented on how no one in Congress can really deny what Walker is saying, and no one days. Walker is taking his show on the raod to explain how this wonderful government is pushing the problems onto the children and grandchildren of America, who I'm sure will be equally as irresponsible, of that's possible, as this current administation, etc. Girlfriend's mom was horrified! The horror!

After the piece, she looks up at her daughter and says, "Maybe he should run for President!" as if he just said something so groundbreaking. I held my tongue. I mean, afterall, this was the policy of the former administration! Walker even said, "we're going to have to raise taxes..." This didn't even phase her! Rasie taxes, the horror! You mean we're not going to "grow our way out" of the problem? Nigga, please.

So it just goes to show that even a wingnut can be convinced, but that the right wing media has done such a wonderful job of denigrating the messenger that so many don't even hear the message. It takes a random face, someone with supposed authority, and no bias, to make the claim, and then maybe 1 or 2 folks will come along. But of course, that's assuming they don't turn into Rush Limbaugh and hear something like, "Walker was appointed by Clinton!!!"

Right, he was, because had he been appointed by Bush I'm sure he would have been an internal auditor from Enron.