bustardblog

Number 3

By my count, we have now announced the death of the seventh "number three" man in Al Qaeda.  Osama bin Laden, number one, is apparently alive and well. Even though we have twice announced the death of Al-Zawahiri, the number two guy, he is still planning acts of terrorism.

But somehow, we are meant to believe that we have now killed seven number threes:

• Abu Faraj al-Libbi  (Syrian)
• Saif al-Adel
• Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
• Mohammed Sheikh Mohammed
• [a] senior operational leader, who gave Faris his orders… identified in court documents as ‘C-2′
• Rabia
• And now, without further delay,  let me announce this year's model:
  • Abu Laith al-Libi, born in Libya

Not as pretty as Miss Michigan perhaps, but on average, we get a new one every year, just like Miss America.

(memeorandum)

R.I.P RudI

Rudi finally conceded that to know him is to dislike him.

He lost. Clearly his loss was not as great as I wrote yesterday, but he still defines ignominious defeat.

At the end of the third quarter, he had spent  bit over 30 million. Huckabee had spent a bit over one.

He fails to admit to any strategic errors, thereby inadvertently acknowledging that the fault lie not in the planning, but in the being, of Rudi Giuliani:

"It was the only realistic strategy available to us given my strengths, my weaknesses, given the amount of money we were able to raise, and given the places we thought we could make a big impact. Obviously, it didn’t work. But, as we were going through the strategy we really did believe it would.”

In the same interview, Rudi wants us to believe that he did not participate in the New Hampshire primary.  He claims to know that he was losing in Florida, despite his statements yesterday to the contrary.

Rudi's month long vacation in Florida has cost his donors about a million a day - they should be pretty pissed about now.

(memeorandum)

Time Warner and Cancer

Yesterday's failure to blog was not due to cancer - rather the poor performance of Time Warner.

Thanks for your concern.

In Which I Mourn Rudy's Demise

May the Republicans of Florida, a group for whom I have little respect, display a modicum of wisdom today and show their preference for Mike Huckabee over Rudi Giuliani.

Huckabee, an opponent of Darwin, a supporter of amending the Constitution in ways antithetical to the views of the founding fathers, a believer that the wife should be a servant to her husband, who has zero foreign policy experience - might be the final nail in the coffin of "America's Mayor's" political career. Complete, total, humiliation.  R.I.P.

Joy.

(memeorandum)

Crucifying the Clintons

In case you didn't notice, Jimmy Carter's presidency was a total failure. His advocacy for human rights and his concerns about the environment and our dependence on foreign oil were evidence of his being a wimp. We now need to bomb Iran, all because of his catastrophic leadership. Did I mention that forging peace between Egypt and Israel only proved his anti-semitism?

These "facts" are well enough established that we can now destroy the Clinton Presidency. It was all about his failed marriage and that blow job he forced us to focus on - God knows we do not want to go back to that. A complete turn-around in the country's economy was just random.There were no accomplishments in Bosnia. Our stature in the world was far lower than it is now. The President, and his wife, were not only anti-Semites; they were also racists.

He knows his Presidency was marred terribly by the impeachment, and that his record of accomplishment was much less than he hoped it would be (TPM)

Obama struck precisely the right note in his victory speech, skewering the Clintons without naming them. (Joke Line)

It's great that Obama skewered the Clintons - all the easier for us to devour our own.

I don't know who I'll vote for in my state's primary, but I am a Democrat, and I despise our self-destructive urges. Senator Clinton's mention of the role of a President in passing civil rights legislation was factually correct. It seems to me that Bill Clinton's reference to Jesse Jackson's victories in South Carolina was an attempted reminder that African Americans tend to vote for African Americans. ( NewsFlash: Jewish people like to vote for Jews; Italian Americans proportionately gave much more money to Giuliani than to other candidates. By the way, Protestant White Males really, really like Protestant White Males)

It's grossly unfair to characterize such behavior as

"the completely unprincipled use of race-baiting language by the former President" (link)

"A mass, unspoken decision had been made that Bill and Hillary Clinton had behaved unjustly toward Barack Obama" (link)

or Kevin Drum, who  "doesn't like dog whistle racial appeals"

Many of these writers make reference to the "Clinton Machine." As of the end of the third quarter Obama had spent 44 million, Clinton 40.  If she got a machine for her money, and he got a tricycle, we have to put her in charge of the economy.

Painting Obama as being a victim of bullies belittles him. Agreeing to a republican narrative of Bill Clinton's presidency can only make a democratic victory in November less likely.

(memeorandum)

 

Peggy Noonan: Sack Up

Reagan's greatest admirer is incoherent. Peggy Noonan simply makes no sense. It's probably a side effect of a life time of writing speeches that defied reality, but Ms Noonan has lost all connection. 

Truth's orphan, Noonan, wrote today of Clintons, Republicans and W. The Clintons of course are the worst - since they destroyed the Democratic party. The destroyer of the Republican party is none other than W himself, but he is far less guilty because the party he destroyed will lose the White House, while the other is preparing to move in, and destroy the furniture all over again. At which time we should:

"Watch for the GOP to attempt swoop in after the November elections and make profit of the wreckage."

Noonan refers to, as if it were fact, "a Web site believed to be" part of the Clinton campaign.  (emphasis mine) She then attacks Bill Clinton's appearance:

Bill Clinton, with his trembly, red-faced rage, makes John McCain look young. His divisive and destructive daily comportment—this is a former president of the United States—is a civic embarrassment

Republicans are moving from the Capital to K Street in droves - when greed is in conflict with service is there any doubt?  But Bill's comportment is unattractive. Noonan is always big on issues of comportment, while asking the guys in the GOP to "sack up."

Could someone please adopt Ms Noonan, and try to potty train her again? Shitting on the truth is most unattractive.

(memeorandum)

Sparse Blogging

Mme's illness means very little blogging these few days.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Pls Double Click to Enlarge.

August 28, 1963, The Lincoln Memorial

I was on the Mall that Day (I was 12.)

Next Pres: Not McCain

I can get pissed off at the performance by some of the Democratic front runners. To cool off, I shift my razor like focus to the Republicans, and guffaw.

To win the GOP nomination, a candidate must focus on the 26% of the population still loyal to W. That of course is the batshit portion of the population, and to connect with them one has to disconnect from reality, a task for which the current group of candidates is remarkably well suited. In the GOP, today's front runner is always tomorrow's loser - as soon as the press focuses on a candidate, rational Republicans cringe at what they see.

McCain seems to be next in line for the guillotine. He has not won among Republican voters anywhere yet. His only victories have been in states where independents are allowed to vote in the primary, and there are not many such states still to come.

But even if he were to get the nod, he'd still lose in November.  His recovery from his near death experience in the race can only be attributed to the fact that he is running against losers. He did get a temporary surge from the supposed success of the other surge.  Since the success in Iraq is illusory, so too will be his surge.  To date in January 23 of our soldiers have been killed. Our worsening economy will make the billions wasted seem ever more inexcusable. The disastrous cost/benefit ration will only be increasingly obvious to all.

Whether or not we are in a recession, we have hit a very rough patch, and McCain, cheerfully and charmingly, admits he hasn't a clue what to do about it. A few recent statements by McCain will be as nails in the coffin of his candidacy:

"People talk about a stimulus package. Fine, if that's what we want to come up with. But stop the spending first."

"Every time we have cut taxes we have increased revenues.

“The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should,” he says. “I’ve got Greenspan’s book.”

They'll be no reincarnation as President for Senator McCain. At its best, politics is a high wire act between a devotion to principle and a need for compromise -McCain fell off the wire and there is no net.

(memeorandum)

Rudith's Ashes

Read James Wolcott's obit of Rudy Giuliani here.  Of course it's brilliantly written, and it  clarifies the cause of death - Rudy's failure to register with the voters precipitated by an almost genetic mental rigidity.

The piece ends on a perfect note:

It's hard to gain traction from inside an urn.