In the twilight of his presidency, George W. Bush and his inner circle have been feeding the press with historical parallels: he is Harry Truman—unpopular, besieged, yet ultimately to be vindicated—while Iraq under Saddam was Europe held by Hitler. To a serious student of the past, that's preposterous. Writing just before his untimely death, David Halberstam asserts that Bush's "history," like his war, is based on wishful thinking, arrogance, and a total disdain for the facts.
A: From yesterday's Morning Edition, NPR's Guy Raz illustrates that statistics are BS, especially in Iraq and especially especially when the Pentagon's involved. Case in point:
Sometime around February 2004, a top military official in Iraq estimated that there were about 15,000 total insurgents. About a year later, U.S. military leaders in Iraq announced that 15,000 insurgents had been killed or captured in the previous year.
In private, a skeptical military adviser pointed out to commanders that the numbers didn't make sense. "If all the insurgents were killed," he asked, "why are they fighting harder than ever?"
The Pentagon lying isn't exactly news, no matter what year it is, but under the Bush administration, these lies are intended as more than just a means of boosting American morale — they're the casus belli. More on this later.
CAIRO — A Saudi passenger tried to smuggle a large number of reptiles, including cobra snakes and infant Nile crocodiles, out of Egypt in his luggage, Egypt's official Middle East News Agency reported Sunday.
The crime was committed by a Saudi, but a few months, George W. Bush will blame it all on Iraqis.
When the War on Terror is won next week, the streets of New York will explode into joyous sexual assault.
A: Yes! As revealed by President George W. Bush yesterday, we are just one step away from capturing and exploding Osama bin Laden: we just need to figure out where he is. Stand by!
This so-crazy-it-just-might-work new strategy in the War on Terror — codenamed Operation: Find Out Stuff and Then Do Stuff — was outlined yesterday by Bush during a press conference with his Afghani counterpart and BFF Hamid Karzai. Read 'em and weep, terrorists!:
"I'm confident, with real, actionable intelligence, we will get the job done," said Bush.
Let me unpack that a little, for those of you who aren't brilliant political minds like myself: The phrase "real actionable intelligence" is military slang, derived from the English words "real", "actionable" and "intelligence" which essentially translates to "information that is so totally not fake that we don't ignore it."
Indeed, this administration will surely be celebrated as one of the best ever, as foretold by the prophet William Kristol, as soon as Bush begins taking actions guided by real intelligence.
Meanwhile, bin Laden must be rolling in his grave! Oh, wait, did I say grave? I meant "secret underground lair." Seriously, bin Laden is totally powerful and virile and alive and terrifying and not even slightly dead. I mean, think about it: If he were dead, we would never ever find him and then we'd be terrified forever. Good thing he's so alive! We'll find him Thursday I bet.
Meanwhile, Harry Reid's all-night-sleepaway camp resulted in a massive, unprecedented surge of support for congressional Democrats. Oh, no, wait, it didn't at all.
Just 35 percent said they approve of the way congressional Democrats are handling the situation in Iraq, with 63 percent disapproving...
The latest poll was conducted July 18 to 21 among a random sample of 1,125 adults, just after Senate Democrats failed to pass legislation that would set a timetable for the start of troop withdrawals from the war zone...
Congress's approval rating has declined over the past three months because self-identified Democrats have soured in their assessment.
Wow, I can't believe Reid's plan didn't work. Oh, no, wait, I can, and have, and did:
T.A.M.S.Y., Jul 18: One reason — perhaps the biggest reason — Congress' approval ratings are so low is because Americans have the impression no one is getting anything done. Spending all night very dramatically not getting anything done, in the midst of a media frenzy, isn't going to help that.
Yes, it's thanks to brilliant predictions like that that my blog is now read by upwards of several people.
MORE FROM MY CRYSTAL BALL: Sometime in the near future, John Edwards is going to smile so wide, it will expose several of his teeth. I also expect him to reveal his father's profession to have involved some sort of work in a mine. MARK IT DOWN. Meanwhile, Barack Obama will continue to be black.
I guess what it comes down to is whether you take the administration's bullshit at face value or not. So A+ to the NYT for reading comprehension. Maybe Tom Tomorrow is rubbing off on them.
Point being, don't trust headlines. Or the liberal media. Or conservatives. Or anyone but me.
In other news, Satan is getting Bush and Cheney's room ready.
A:Weekly Standard editor and cutting-edge satirist William Kristol wrote a knee-slappingly hilarious editorial for yesterday's Washington Post, "Why Bush Will Be a Winner." I laughed so hard, I shot like a gallon of milk through my nose — and I wasn't even drinking milk!
Kristol packs in such zingers as,
Let's step back from the unnecessary mistakes and the self-inflicted wounds that have characterized the Bush administration. Let's look at the broad forest rather than the often unlovely trees. What do we see?
Hahahahaha! See, it's funny, because you'd have to step back so far, you'd be on like Jupiter.
I hate to give away all the punchlines, but this is his conclusion:
What it comes down to is this: If Petraeus succeeds in Iraq, and a Republican wins in 2008, Bush will be viewed as a successful president.
I like the odds.
OH GOD STOP CAN'T BREATHE!
I haven't read much Weekly Standard, but Alfred E. Newman better watch his back! There's a new funnyman in town!!!!
POSTSCRIPT:Arianna Huffington is under the impression Kristol's whimsical essay was meant literally (she probably thought "A Modest Proposal" was really about eating babies, too). Huffington claims to have ridden in the same Amtrak car with Kristol last week; presumably this occurred in the seventh circle of hell.
(Earlier today, I was going to make a joke about the motto for Folgers coffee being "The best part of wakin' up..." but I decided it wasn't timely enough. And yet gellin' jokes still = comedy gold? Yes, yes they are. Also, dude, get a Dell.)
Anyway, where was I? Oh right, George W. Bush is so going to prison, circa 2011. Patience.
A: I know, it seems like a million years ago, especially with Bush's approval ratings dropping further into the mid-20s1. But it was less than two years ago (Sept. 20, 2005) that the following Tom Tomorrow comic made infuriating sense.
[click to enlarge]
Mission accomplished, you dirty hippies.
You know, if we'd known back then the Bush administration would implode under its own tons of crap as it has and is, we totally would've expected it to be way more fun than it actually is. Instead, it's just kind of boring and sad; just ask political cartoonists. Patton Oswalt said much the same thing in his recent interview with Terry Gross. Political satire loses its edge when nearly every human being on Earth agrees with you.
1 As Sully notes, these polls were largely conducted prior to the Scooter Libby commutation. I know C.W. says the conservative base supported the get-outta-jail-free card, but T.A.M.S.Y. calls bullshit. How much more straw can these dumbass camels take? Expect to see another two or three points of approval erosion, minimum, when this week's polls hit.
A: If so, expect him to do so in the next two hours. Having worked with the Bush administration, Paul Wolfowitz is surely aware that anything announced late on Friday afternoon doesn't count as ever having happened. Meanwhile, European protesters are standing by.
In other news of W.-related jackassery, check out Wired's interview with Mark Klein, the retired technician who blew the whistle on AT&T for helping the government spy on your emails. Klein calls for Congress to take action, but he isn't optimistic:
"They could hold hearings and subpoena people and give them immunity. Right now there are people who could come forward and say what they know, but they need immunity. That's the bottleneck. I don't see a resolution coming from this Congress. It's a conspiracy against the American people."
A: If you're looking for hot reading material, the popular social media site Reddit's always got plenty to offer — but one story in particular today has all the makings of a must-read. Sex! Crime! Death! Mystery! The world's most powerful man! And that's just the headline: The Strange Death of the Woman Who Filed a Rape Lawsuit Against Bush, by Jackson Thoreau.
Granted, the premise here is a bit, ahem, far-fetched: that George W. Bush and FBI agents may have drugged and raped a Houston woman, Margie Schoedinger, in 2002; and that the woman's purported suicide in 2003 may have been state-sanctioned murder. Nonetheless, the story was an immediate hit with Redditors, who voted it up near the top of the front page within a few hours of its being posted late last night.
I suspect that a major part of the story's popularity has less to do with President Bush drugging and raping women, per se, than it does the entirely plausible accusation that the media has failed us. As Jackson Thoreau (a pseudonym, btw) writes in his conclusion:
For all I know, maybe Schoedinger did kill herself. Maybe she dreamed up a lot of this stuff. But I don't know, am I "deranged" to think it's weird that in this mass-media, detailed-information age, so few people are even asking any questions about how a woman who filed a rape lawsuit against the president could be dead less than a year later?
It seems like a reasonable question. Unfortunately, it turns out there are a few teeny little details Thoreau neglected to mention...
The author makes a big deal out of the fact that only one other reporter, LeaAnne Klentzman of the Fort Bend Star, covered Schoedinger's original lawsuit. So why doesn't he include Klentzman's story among his links?
Is it maybe because — in his effort to convince you that his theories are totally plausible — he was hoping you won't notice that Schoedinger apparently suffered from a mental disorder not unlike paranoid schizophrenia?
Here are some of the other claims made by Schoedinger, revealed in Klentzman's piece, which Thoreau conveniently glosses over:
George W. Bush raped her several times in her home in a suburb of Houston, beginning in Oct., 2000 — a few weeks before the election. Just to make sure this point is clear: In the heat of campaigning against Al Gore — a period during which he was being followed by reporters and camera men at all times — Bush was making secret trips to the Houston, for the purpose of raping this woman. He would continue to make secret rape trips, apparently even after he became President.
The alleged victim did not actually remember any interactions with Bush during the period that he was raping her. In fact, she did not even know that she was being raped; she didn't find that out until later, when an unnamed FBI agent revealed to her that it was part of a large conspiracy organized by a racist organization (Schoedinger was black).
The FBI agent also revealed to her that Bush was spying on her, and also continually raping her. And that the people who traveled with Bush, who were apparently also FBI agents, were also raping her. Thoreau does mention that, although he leaves out the detail that Bush and the FBI agents also may have raped her husband (but apparently he was drugged too, so he couldn't know for sure whether or not he had been repeatedly raped). The alleged victim was not sure how many times she had been raped, obviously, given than she didn't even know she was being raped until the FBI agent revealed it to her.
"Section VII of the lawsuit states; 'Whether or not Plaintiff's husband was raped remains in question, as Plaintiff was drugged after she was raped and her husband was drugged before her rape. Plaintiff can only state that these men purported to be FBI agents raping her for the purpose of covering for how many times they had drugged her and allowed the Defendant to rape her in the same manner.'" Sorry, I was unable to figure out what any of that meant.
The FBI and local police department refused to take any actions to protect the alleged victim. The police department, however, "conducted a background investigation into Plaintiff's past activities. In the end, this investigation yielded the following information: Plaintiff had seven dates, (which became seven lovers), had told no lies, committed no crimes, gotten 2 traffic tickets and dated George W. Bush as a minor." Why the police would have revealed such information to Schoedinger — or why their internal investigations are recorded in the form of brief nursery rhymes — remains unclear.
Gosh, all of that stuff seems kinda pertinent, doesn't it? Maybe Thoreau was going to mention it, but he forgot. Or maybe Thoreau is just part of the cover-up himself!!!
Still, before you get up on your high horse about how journalists are afraid to reveal the truth, Mr. Thoreau, maybe you should try to avoid being such a shitty journalist.
Back to Thoreau's original essay (riding high with 141 points, as of this writing, and still among Reddit's top stories):
But I remember being puzzled by Schoedinger's attitude after hanging up the phone. I wondered that if she had made up such a wild story, why she didn't come up with something a little less outlandish, in which people couldn't necessarily dismiss her as a kook...
Besides Pravda and Internet ezines - one of whom referred to Schoedinger as "deranged" - I haven't seen stories on this strange death of a woman who filed a rape lawsuit against the U.S. president and wound up dead nine months later. I can't say I'm surprised. Or even angry. I don't know what the hell to think. All I know is I was one of the last - if not the last - reporters to speak to Schoedinger, and she didn't sound "deranged" to me in July 2003. She sounded like someone who had gone through something weird and was trying to sort it out. She sounded like someone who wanted the truth to come out.
The truth? I'm beginning to suspect Jackson Thoreau can't handle the truth.
(And look, I don't mean to make light of this poor woman's mental illness. The fact that she was suffering from delusions clearly wasn't her fault, and isn't something to laugh about, especially considering she ended up taking her own life. But trying to suggest that those delusions deserve to be top news — and attempting to politicize her death as an assassination — is entirely laughable. Or, no, cryable maybe. I can't decide.)
(Anyway, maybe you should shut up about George Bush being a rapist and instead focus on how he's a shitty president who has done nothing positive for health care — or, say, for the treatment of the mentally ill.)
Redditors, I should note, are generally a discerning lot (and less susceptible to propaganda and yellow journalism than their peers at Digg). So I'll forgive them for this lil' misstep.
And hey, perhaps it's not so surprising if the story is striking a chord, at this particular moment in American history. Strip away the specific accusations, and consider the underlying themes fueling the article itself:
Disgust for the mainstream media, and its distorted sense of perspective.
A nightmarish characterization of a president whose dangerous actions seem completely disconnected from a sense of rationality or consequence — and who will go to any lengths, no matter how destructive or criminal, to hide his own misdeeds.
A world defined by lies, selfishness, cowardice and disregard for human life.
If those concepts sound familiar, it's probably because they're your inner monologue.
A: Something unexpected happened between President George W. Bush and Queen Elizabeth II on the South Lawn of the White House yesterday. Whether it was LOL hilarious or a horrible disgrace depends on whom you ask, the American press or the British press. Oh, wait, President Bush was involved, so it was probably both.
The video record of the moment in question is indeed ambiguous, particularly vis a vis the Queen's bemusement and/or blood-curdling rage:
So how can we find out what really happened? Only one way: He Said, She Said — Yanks vs. Brits Edition — to determine once and for all which nation's reporters are slightly less incompetent!
We say tomato; they say tomahhto; let's fight it out to the death!!!
THE CHALLENGERS
Representing the red, white and blue, it's Bush's hometown Houston Chronicle, running a syndicated piece from the right-leaning Chicago Tribune. Representing the other configuration of red, white and blue, it's the London-based Daily Mail, taking a brief break from reporting on what Robbie Williams was wearing yesterday or whatever. And we're off!
WHAT HAPPENED?
HOUSTON: "The queen, a sprightly 81, gave an embarrassed Bush a gracious nod after he suggested she had celebrated the United States' founding in 1776. He meant to say she had attended 1976 bicentennial festivities. 'You helped our nation celebrate its Bicentennial in 17 ... ' Bush said, quickly correcting himself, ' ... in 1976.'"
LONDON: "When you've just made it sound like the Queen is more than 200 years old, there may be a few ways of recovering from the gaffe. But turning to her and giving her a sly wink is probably not included in any book of royal etiquette... The Queen received the wink with a frosty glare."
HEADLINE?
HOUSTON: "Bush's verbal slip adds humor to queen's visit; Bush faux pas also manages to show how well the 2 nations get along."
LONDON: "Blundering Bush makes ANOTHER gaffe as he winks at the Queen"
CONTEXT?
HOUSTON: "The U.S. and United Kingdom share more than centuries of history. Queen Elizabeth II commemorated the 400th anniversary of the Jamestown Settlement in Virginia with this, her fifth visit to the U.S. and her first in 16 years. The erstwhile adversaries, their colonial ties severed by revolution, stand as the staunchest allies at war in Iraq and Afghanistan."
LONDON: "Mr Bush is the leader who once greeted Prime Minister Tony Blair with: 'Yo, Blair. How are you doing?'"
WINNER?
In the category of being delightfully entertaining, the Daily Mail is the clear winner — although it did have an unfair advantage, given that it is, like all British tabloids, extremely drunk.
In the category of being journalistically sound, the Chronicle wins simply by virtue of not blatantly lying. Regular T.A.M.S.Y. readers (by which I mean "all of the Western world") will know that it pains me to even sorta defend El Presidente, but just look at the Daily Mail's photographic retelling of Bush's verbal blunder.
Bush: Pissed in the U.K. sense. Queen: Pissed in the U.S. sense.
The Mail implies these two things happened in sequence. That only makes sense if the Queen was running laps around Bush — either in an effort to show how not 250 years old she is, or just as a tribute to Street Sense. Actually, I like that version of the story best. I encourage the Telegraph to cover it in the evening edition.
NOTE TO LAW ENFORCEMENT: The image at the top of this post is merely an artistic rendering of hypothetical events. It does not constitute a call for the president to be assassinated by the Queen, or anyone else. Please do not send me to Guantanamo. [image via Getty, via Sullivan]
A: You get three guesses. And they should all be "Germany."
It's "Bush's Best Friends,' by Rainer Hachfeld! Via the always surprisinger, often perplexinger international cartoonists @ Cagle Cartoons.
I find it sort of odd how only the non-U.S. media is properly emphasizing that Paul Wolfowitz is yet another boneheaded Bush appointee, and that perhaps his flagrant abuses of power aren't so unexpected.
But I always found it very odd that hardly anyone in this country complained when Donald Rumsfeld's bloodlusty number two was inexplicably appointed head of an organization that wields billions of dollars in funds for the benefit of developing nations.
It must have been announced on a Friday afternoon or something. At the time, the U.S. media barely seemed to notice the appointment, let alone question its logic (at least, that's how I remember it. I would confirm that, but I'm still too sick to be expected to do anything challenging or responsible).
A: They haven't happened yet. My top ten favorite George W. Bush moments will likely occur in succession on a single day in January, 2009. In the meantime, these ten — presented by David Letterman (via recorded segment) at this year's White House Correspondents Association Dinner — will have to do.
A:Jon Stewartposed the very question on Wednesday's show, while lambasting the president's hypocritical (or nonsensical, or intentionally deceitful, take your pick) criticism of the Democrats over the war-funding bill. Crooks and Liars was on top of the same story last week.
Of course, it's nothing new for this White House. As America's finest blogger once wrote, "the quickest way to identify the administration's most critical flaws is simply to note whatever they're currently projecting onto opponents and enemies."
A: These young people today, I tell you! They don't know the value of a dollar. Or anyway, they don't know the plummeting value of the American dollar. Or how things are going in Iraq. Or, like, how to read.
Forty-eight percent of Americans 18 to 29 years old said the United States did the right thing in taking military action against Iraq, while 45 percent said the United States should have stayed out. That is in sharp contrast to the opinions of those 65 and older, who have lived through many other wars...
Overall, 34 percent of Americans said they approved of the way the president was handling his job, and 58 percent disapproved. But younger Americans were more approving than older Americans. Forty percent of 18-29 year olds said Mr. Bush was doing a good job, while 56 percent said he was not.
Hipster irony has finally gone too far! LAY OFF THE WEED, PEOPLE. Don't make me side with the crotchety old folks here!
More than one person who lived through the Vietnam war mentioned the draft and the absence of one for this war. "It's because of life experience," said Jimmie Powell, 73, a bartender and factory worker from El Reno, Oklahoma. "I don't think younger people really know a whole lot about anything. They don't care because there is no draft. If there were a draft, we'd finally have the revolution we need."
It was bad enough when it was just the nappy-headed hos getting all laughed at by the racist core of corporate media. But if there's anything worse than a moderately popular morning disc jockey making an offhanded derogatory comment about you, it's death.
So as rough of a week it's been for continental hos, it's been even rougher for the Pacific Islander Hos. By which I mean the Don Hos. By which I mean Don Ho has died.
Ho down: Bad week for guys named Don, hos and Don Ho
Via the Washington Post:
Don Ho, the entertainer whose vivid shirts, baritone voice and easygoing manner came to symbolize his native Hawaii to millions of visitors, died last night. He was 76.
Ho, who had performed steadily since the 1960s and could be found several nights a week performing at a Waikiki hotel, suffered a heart attack, Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann told the Honolulu Advertiser.
It's like I've said a thousand times before, down-low hos always come in twos. And by "a thousand times before," I of course mean "whenever I'm calling for prostitutes." By which I of course mean several hundred times before. And if you're wondering why I always ask for two, it's because I order prostitutes from Little Caesar's.
Anyway, what were we talking about? Oh, right, a man has died. Have some respect, for God's sake. Interesting side note to Mr. Ho's obit:
In recent years, he had heart problems and underwent experimental stem cell treatments in Thailand in December 2005.
He told reporters that he had scarcely been able to walk and would have been finished without the procedure, which reportedly involved injecting cells from his blood into his weakened heart. He was said to have learned about it on the Internet and said it was his "last hope."
Tune in to Rush Limbaugh on Monday, when Rush will claim than Don Ho is exaggerating the effects of death. In other news, President Bush is an idiot.
A: The History Boys, by David Halberstam [via Bill Simmons, for some reason]
]
, hits stores today.
]
.
