Can’t sleep.
Archives for 2008
Are They Really That Dumb?
John Keegan Ace writes:
Bob Krumm writes Obama’s claims are wrong in detail but right in overall thrust — but he’s still wrong.
The link to Bob Krumm has the following gem:
The truth behind the story is far less damning–if even damning at all. The captain (he is a captain now, but was a lieutenant when all this occurred back in 2003!) didn’t have half his platoon in one theatre while the rest was deployed somewhere else. Instead his unit, as a result of normal personnel rotations, had lost soldiers who had been transferred elsewhere and hadn’t yet been replaced.
I can only state the following in response- no fucking shit. Let’s review what Obama stated:
I heard from a Army captain, who was the head of a rifle platoon, supposed to have 39 men in a rifle platoon. Ended up being sent to Afghanistan with 24, because 15 of those soldiers had been sent to Iraq.
Did these military geniuses really think Obama was suggesting this guys platoon was cut in half, with first and second squad sent to Afghanistan, and third and fourth sent to Iraq? Because if that is the case, these folks have clearly OD’d on Cheeto dust and are dumber than I even thought they were.
Of course that is what happened- soldiers were moved to fill out units deploying to Iraq and elsewhere, as THAT WAS THE PRIORITY AT THE TIME. His unit, not deploying to Iraq, was given a lower priority on replacements. Which is, as you may be aware, precisely the point Obama was trying to make:
Now that’s a consequence of bad judgment, and you know, the question is on the critical issues that we face right now who’s going to show the judgment to lead. And I think that on every critical issue that we’ve seen in foreign policy over the last several years — going into Iraq originally, I didn’t just oppose it for the sake of opposing it. I said this is going to distract us from Afghanistan; this is going to fan the flames of anti- American sentiment; this is going to cost us billions of dollars and thousands of lives and overstretch our military, and I was right.
Jesus. We need some better wingnuts. I don’t want to get all syrupy about the soft bigotry of low expectations, but if they simply drool on themselves it is a step in the right direction from this kind of deep thinking.
*** Update ***
And the mind-meld continues.
The GOP Nightmare
Isn’t terrorism, despite all the hand-wringing from the serious people and their bedwetting allies in the blogosphere. This is the real GOP nightmare:
Hillary Clinton apparently thought that she had a killer sound bite during Thursday’s debate when she ripped Barack Obama as a promoter of “change your can Xerox.”
Instead, the audience booed, critics winced and once again the New York senator’s attempt to demonize her rival fell flat, another illustration of how 2008, at least so far, is the year that negative campaigning just doesn’t work as it once did.
“It looks like people are just burned out on that stuff,” said Peter W. Schramm, the executive director of the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs in Ohio.
In state after state, voters said they moved from Clinton to Obama — or, on the Republican side, from Mitt Romney to John McCain or Mike Huckabee — partly because they were tired of what seemed like politics as usual.
Without negative campaigning, the GOP has- well, nothing, really. They have no new ideas. They have unattractive candidates. Their standard-bearer is someone who can easily be tied to many (if not most) of the disastrous policies of the Bush administration, someone who has gone out of his way to seek part ownership of the extremely unpopular war in Iraq, and someone who gets less attractive by day as reporters suddenly begin to examine his record. No amount of straight talk can insulate McCain from the party of Bush, Cheney, and DeLay, and now negative campaigning, dragging down the Democratic candidate, may not work.
And that has got to scare the shit out of them.
So Much For the Bully Pulpit
The Bush administration said yesterday that the government “lost intelligence information” because House Democrats allowed a surveillance law to expire last week, causing some telecommunications companies to refuse to cooperate with terrorism-related wiretapping orders.
Instead of trying to scare congress into passing a bill providing immunity for law-breaking telecoms, how about you use the bully pulpit to start naming the companies who are not patriotic enough to adhere to lawful requests for information, you fucking jackass. They are required by law to pass on legal information, you know. Let the American people know that AT&T or Verizon hate America, or, more realistically, can’t be bothered to spend a few bucks on lawyers to figure out what is and is not a legal request from you dipshits.
God I hate these people.
*** Update ***
I should probably point out that I am not naive, the reason they want immunity is not because companies are turning down lawful requests. They want immunity so they can have willing co-conspirators in the telecoms who will turn over anything and everything they want and don’t have to worry about it when they do (and they still get fat government contracts, to boot). January 2009 can not come soon enough.
A Personal Post and PSA. Hopefully You Can Learn From My Stupidity
This is a stupid little post that I have been contemplating writing for some time. I debated whether or not to write this because it was the most embarrassing event in my life. But I thought I would share this with you because it’s something that happened to me that I never ever expected would and I hope it will make you think. It will also explain why I’ve all but quit drinking. I hope you learn something from it. Anyway, the rest is below the fold.
A Personal Post and PSA. Hopefully You Can Learn From My StupidityPost + Comments (127)
Who Would Al Qaeda Want To Win The White House?
Let’s think about that for a minute. The last time I checked those guys who attacked us are sitting snug in their Pakistan safe haven while America spends its blood, treasure and credibility stirring chaos in a country that bin Laden meant to chaosify himself if we hadn’t done it for him. Bin Laden attacked America dreaming that it would tie us down in a bloody war of occupation. He had an outside hope, kind of a three-wall bank shot, that we’d manhandle civilians badly enough to inflame the muslim world.
We could stay in Iraq or we could leave. Either way we have a wrecked army, no credibility and just the kind of chaos in Iraq that bin Laden couldn’t dream of accomplishing without our help.
It’s hard to deny that Republicans and radical Islamists have a symbiotic relationship that bin Laden would sorely miss. When al Qaeda wants to sell the idea that the west is at war with Islam, what could help more than prominent administration figures reflecting and reinforcing the terrorists’ medieval rhetoric almost word for word? Synchronicity! It’s sadly comical that the rightwing screamosphere and their political allies still have not figured out that you don’t effectively oppose someone by joining the fight on their terms.
More than rhetoric, the GOP-al Qaeda marriage of convenience really hinges on fear. Terror, after all, is the point of terrorism. It’s simple psychological fact that fear is a terrible state of mind for decision making. If you want an enemy to make a rash decision that catastrophically hurts their position the best thing you can do is scare the hell out of them. Bin Laden planned to draw America into an Afghan war that could wrap up America’s activities abroad as effectively as he’d done to the Soviets, or just drive out of the mideast altogether, by provoking us into lashing out in fear.
He pretty clearly screwed that pooch on that bet, but after the Afghan setback hits just kept on coming for Osama bin Laden. How could he know that the Bush GOP also thrives on fear in America? Iraq was like manna from heaven. Abu Ghraib a gift. Terrorists don’t really hate America for our freedoms (they usually cite Israel and our support of dictators like Murbarak and the Sauds) but our open, easy-assimilating society is still a problem. Unlike European muslims who live under a constant cloud of suspicion and daily reminders of their own alien-ness, those in America often mix into the melting pot before the ink dries on their green card. Our accomodating attitude makes it much harder to take the radical clash-of-civilizations message seriously. Losing that edge over Europe (thanks, Michelle Malkin!) is great for fundies and very bad news for Muslim, how do you say, liberals.
What is the ultimate policy agenda of fear? Surveillance, unrestricted police power, torture, rigged trials and unlimited detentions. As the famous National Review cruiser put it,
“The liberals don’t believe in the constitution. They don’t believe in what the founders wanted – a strong executive,”
In reality hyperpowered executives usually make stupid or self-serving decisions that don’t serve the national interest in any way. That’s why the founders didn’t trade one king for another. We can even test the point – having had its way without the faintest hint of oversight the Bush admin has acted as the ultimate Strong Executive for six plus years. How is that rightwing utopia working out for us? Every Bush initiative I can think of has turned out no better than if we’d assigned the same job to six or seven functionally retarded chimpanzees. Fear breeds unrestrained executive power, unrestrained power leads to boneheaded ego–driven decisions, graft and endless embarrassing screwups.
So FOX wants to know who al Qaeda supports in the election. The answer should be obvious. They’re terrorists. Al Qaeda wants fear to win.
Four more years.
***Update***
Heh. Indeed.
Who Would Al Qaeda Want To Win The White House?Post + Comments (41)
Open Thread
Document the stupidity.