SwampLog 3.0

Still Waiting For The Answer

Mike Luckovich, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, published this in October. I wish I had seen it when it was published, but it's just as powerful now:

No Winner In The Blame Game

So, George W. Bush has decided to fall on his sword and admit that he's responsible for sending America to war based on faulty intelligence. Huh.

It's not as if he cares where public opinion of his presidency falls these days. Why would he? What matters now is the damage it does to the GOP, and by taking the blame on his shoulders, he can now deflect some of it from whomever the party tosses up for the 2008 candidacy.

Remember, this is the same president who called the Constitution "just a goddamned piece of paper" and had this exchange with author Bob Woodward, while working on the book Plan of Attack:

"After the second interview with him on Dec. 11, we got up and walked over to one of the doors. There are all of these doors in the Oval Office that lead outside. And he had his hands in his pocket, and I just asked, 'Well, how is history likely to judge your Iraq war,'" says Woodward.

"And he said, 'History,' and then he took his hands out of his pocket and kind of shrugged and extended his hands as if this is a way off. And then he said, 'History, we don't know. We’ll all be dead.'"

Marty envisioned Rove in the rafters at the speech, strings attached to his fingers. I wish it were that simple.

Support Our Troops In A Way They Need

I've been digging "Guns, God and Good Government," the blog from J.R. Labbe, a writer for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, and he points to a fantastic effort by Ken Meyer called Operation: A Bit Of Home. The project collects toiletries for Freedom Rest, a non-profit organization working for soldiers stationed in Iraq.

One of my service calls yesterday was for a banker in Waxahachie, who was stationed in Tikrit for a year. I told him in passing that I had become friends with a sniper working in Baghdad's "red zone," and had sent her a bottle of Paul Mitchell conditioner that she coveted more than anything. He replied that I was doing more for the "war effort" than people who put goofy-ass yellow ribbon magnets on their car.

I wonder what Dick Cheney would have thought of that comment.

Yee-Haw.

I've never been embarrassed to be a Texan.

Until now.

Just Not Lucky

If you weren't watching this week's 'Real Time With Bill Maher' on HBO you missed one of the most concise, scathing indictments of George W. Bush's presidency I've seen or heard. Maher begins by calling for a recall election, a la California's ouster of Gray Davis, and finishes up with this masterful bon mot:

On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two Trade Centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans...Maybe you're just not lucky!

I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. So, yes, God does speak to you, and what he's saying is, "Take a hint."

I've said repeatedly that it's difficult to lay the blame on one person, regardless of how fun it is to try. There's equal parts to look at -- Mike Brown at FEMA, Mike Chertoff at Homeland Security, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco, and New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, as well as the vacationin' Dubya. My question is this: after September 11, 2001, when the Bush Administration rolled out the PATRIOT Act and made the Department of Homeland Security one of the top-level agencies in the chain, wasn't this sort of inaction supposed to be addressed?

CampaignSTRONG

In the current issue of Outside Magazine, Lance Armstrong hints at a run at the Texas governor's seat, but not in 2006.

On behalf of everyone in Texas, allow me to make the following plea to Lance: please reconsider.

As soon as the Tour de France is done, start your campaign. Hell, get started now. Have Sheryl file your paperwork tomorrow. Christ, get going. As long as you keep MoFo Perry and the GOP out of your back pocket, you have my vote.

(Admittedly, I have no idea what Lance's politics are, or whether he's a conservative or liberal. But, I'm thinking since Crow's a screaming liberal, the chances he's like-minded are better than zero.)

The Ugly, Ill-Informed American

My next ex-wife, Eden (1), has written a pair of great observations on the way Americans are perceived -- not only abroad, but by other Americans.  Take a little time to read both posts (here and here).  I'll wait.  (Oh, by the way, a lot of her site is not work-safe, content-wise.  Just be prepared, and be responsible.)

Okay.

While I think she's spot on with most of the commentary, a little clarification is necessary.  While the average factory worker in China may not have the wherewithall to know what's going on in Azerbaijan, I think they may have a better opportunity to find out through Chinese televised news than in the U.S.  If you want to go solely off that model, from my experience as well as Marty's, the newscasts abroad feature much more global content than their American counterparts (2).  (Yes, print media and the Web offer a better range of information than the boob tube, but I'm looking at apples against apples here.)

There were two passages at the end that I simply love, because they speak volumes about where we have to focus as a society in the coming years:

3. Most Americans don't fully understand the ramifications of a global marketplace. They don't understand that prices are low in the Wal-Mart because the products are all made in Asia. They don't know that some products are expensive because of fees and taxes that are the result of lobbying by those industries in the US. I had one person tell me recently that, "the world outside of North America could disappear and it wouldn't change my life one bit." He truly believed it, until I started going through his office and pointing out where all of the products he relies on were made. There are occasional pushes to buy American products, but if middle America truly did, all of those Dollar General discount stores would have to close.

4. A lot of Americans -- just like people the world over -- live crappy little lives. They don't own the nice homes you see in sitcoms. They don't dress in the latest fashions. They live in modest houses or apartments decorated with cheap, tacky items that they prize; they smoke, drink, and eat too much; they work at jobs they don't enjoy that barely pay the bills; they have a lot of debt and very little savings; they come home in the evening and they're tired, hungry, and stressed. They don't recognize the power that they have the change their lives, so they drift along, getting caught up in petty dramas like neighborhood squabbles and family disagreements. They take their entertainment where they can get it. Some of them (like the weirdo standing on the corner across from the coffeeshop where I'm typing) have nothing better to do in the middle of the day than stand on a corner and stare at some woman in a shop window. These are not folks who are going to take the time or effort to absorb the nuances of diplomacy on the Korean peninsula; they will understand "North Korea = crazy bad, South Korea = ally" if it's shown and explained a couple of times, though.

I guess I'm in a contemplative mood today for a couple of reasons.  First, the news blurb stating Bush's approval rating was at its lowest since he took office in 2001 (and the people who are bitching now should have voted that way in November, since so much has changed in eight months).

Second, one of Marty's friends made the chilling comment that she would "live to see the death of our country" due to the short-sightedness of its leaders and populace alike.

I'd like to think that the direction America is more like a pendulum swing than a one-way path to desolation.  WIll it take years (decades?) to repair the damage being done my the Bush Administration?  Likely.  It's also impossible to go back in time and fix what's been done, unless you have a DeLorean with a flux capacitor sitting in your garage and a good week to be able to visit George at night in the guise of the Ghost of Christmas Past / Present / Future.  But "the death of America" has been predicted repeatedly for over 225 years.  The stakes are pretty high right now, but the damage to the fabric of our Union is not irreparable.

(1) Granted, I've never met Eden, but we have volleyed e-mails back and forth over the last three years, and I guarantee that if we ever shared the same space, we would be bundled off to Vegas in no time flat (3).

(2) This is going off of having watched televised news in England, Scotland, Spain, and Austrailia.  Your mileage may, of course, vary.

(3) Okay, so it would only be another 48-hour marriage.  But, between the stories both of us have to tell, it wouldn't surprise or shock anyone in either of our circles.

A Shade Of Teal Would Be Nice

On the right, you'll see the Aqua Teen Hunger Force Terror Alert rating. We've been at Yellow (or, in this case, Master Shake) Alert for the better part of two years, with a weekend bump to Orange (or Frylock) in August 2004 for the financial sectors of New York and New Jersey.

According to Tom Ridge's nifty little chart, Yellow Alert means that there is a "significant risk of terrorist attacks." I'm wondering, aimlessly, if the folks at Homeland Security remember that the level actually still exists -- and if they do, would they mind dropping a little note to the American public to tell us why we should, in fact, be Alerted?

Takes The Edge Off

The Chicago Tribune and three other papers refused to run yesterday's strip of 'The Boondocks,' and it's just shameful.

(Click for Full Size)

The truth hurts, and now that Dubya is maxed out on terms, he doesn't care who knows about his past.  Yet people are still trying to protect his "integrity."  Funny, no one was that thin-skinned with Clinton's blow job penchant.

We're getting to the point in America where free speech isn't just a lofty ideal, but a bona fide endangered concept.  The FCC is getting Congressional approval to raise single-offense indecency fines to $500,000.  Think about that for a moment -- if a broadcaster has a "questionable" show in the FCC's view, they could issue two million dollars in fines for four incidents over a period of time.  Rather than try to defend the air talent, the person gets fired and gets blacklisted in the industry.  The broadcaster appeals the decision, and risks bankruptcy if the appeal fails.

The trick is... there's no solution in sight.  The FCC are all appointed by the sitting President and confirmed by Congress, so the public has no say in who becomes the "gatekeepers of decency." 

Synchronicity

I'm at Humperdink's, because I know they have free Wi-Fi and I won't be pulled aside to answer a question or change a TV.  They have the Bush Inauguration parade on the big screen, on FOX News, with sound.  So, I pop on the headphones and let my iPod drive.

So, I had to stifle a guffaw when they showed Bush at a podium speaking, and my iPod chose to play Neil Young's "Rockin' In The Free World."  Brilliant.

Wonkette is documenting the huge pain in the ass security around Washington is causing.  Is there a president who has been more insulated from the people he's supposed to be representing?