Give Me a Break category archive

Give me a break.

Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard reports that President Bush favors former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney as Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) running mate, as does Jeb Bush, who “preferred Romney over McCain in the primaries.” Bill Kristol also recently stated that “Mitt Romney would be good,” adding that he “vetted the idea with former White House aide Karl Rove.”

Via HuffPost.

For John McCain to equate himself with Winston Churchill–pah! words fail me.

How can one reclaim a state of nonbeing?

Via Karen.

An interesting exchange between Congressman Wexler (D-Fl) and Condoleeza Rice.

I certainly give Ms. Rice points for coolness under pressure.

Looking at her story, though, I find some interesting twists:

She says that “Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States. We went to war with him in 1991. . . .”

The United States did not go to war against Iraq in 1990 and 1991 because Iraq was a threat to the United States. It went to war against Iraq, under the sanction of the United Nations, because Iraq had invaded Kuwait.

She sort of leaves that out, giving the impression that Saddam Hussein was seen as a threat to the United States a decade and a half ago.

He wasn’t. Indeed, Iraq was for a long time supported by the U. S. as a counterweight to Iran. Indeed, it was St. Ronald Reagan who took Iraq off the list of terrorist states.

In talking about the Iraqis shooting at U. S. planes, she also leaves out that the U. S. planes were flying over Iraq is to enforce sanctions imposed by the United Nations.

Now, I’m certainly not arguing that the planes deserved to be shot at; they were on a lawful mission under international law at the time. Once again, though, in her telling of the story, Ms. Rice implies that the Iraqis just got up one morning and said, “Oh, gee, let’s go shoot at some planes,” implying that it was pure aggression, rather than what might better be characterized as stubborn (and lunatic) resistance.

Furthermore, as we look back to the months preceding the 2003 invasion of Iraq, recall that, the closer that arms inspectors came to proving that there were no weapons of mass destruction and no capability of creating them in Iraq, the more the Current Federal Administrator moved the deadline. Moved it up, that is, not back.

It doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to wonder whether the wonderful advancing deadlines had something to do with the weakness of the Bushies’ cherry-picked “evidence” against Saddam Hussein.

It is entirely fitting that cherry-picked “intelligence” be followed by cherry-picked testimony.

Steve pretty much nails it:

For Bush to claim his party as the party of peace and prosperity is more than a crock. Bush is a traitor to the truth, and has been for a long, long time. We Americans need the truth in order to understand who to vote for. It is conceivable to my mind that a voter could understand the policies of Obama, Clinton, Huckabee or McCain to be better for our nation, both in trying to bring a peaceful end to Dubya’s endless and foolish war, and to keeping our economic house in order after Hurrican Dubyan and the Republicans swept trough wreaking havoc for seven long years. Yes, it is possible to be rational and think any of these candidates could accomplish these tasks. It is not possible to be rational and say that only Republicans can bring peace and prosperity, not after the eight years of peace and prosperity in the Democratic Clinton Administration, followed by the seven years of war, economic breakdown and governmental incompetence led by George Bush. If George Bush really thinks he and Republicans represent the only route to peace and prosperity, he is a traitor to the truth, but maybe to sanity as well.

And Richard Blair sums it up.

By their hypocrisy shall ye know them:

A Utah retailer of family-friendly tapes and DVDs – Hollywood films with the “dirty parts” cut out of them – has been arrested for trading sex with two 14-year-old girls.

Orem police say Flix Club owner Daniel Dean Thompson, 31, and Issac Lifferth, 24, were booked into the Utah County jail on charges of sexual abuse and unlawful sexual activity with a 14-year-old.

Sounds like he–and the unnamed 14-year-old girl–would have been better a lot better off if he had just watched the movies off to which to get his rocks.

(Aside: Of all the things that set me off, false holier-than-thou hypocrisy is just about at the top of the list. Since it has a lot of practitioners, I guess I should just get used to being set off.)

Via Susie.

Give those poor folks in Iowa and New Hampshire a break:

. . . sez the Republican Party. Dick Polman (emphasis added):

One durable Republican staple is the alleged commitment to “small government.” I’ve heard this repeatedly during the GOP presidential debates. The candidates declare that the feds should butt out, that “one size fits all” policies enacted by Washington would burden the states. On everything from guns to abortion, the GOP politicians say that states should be allowed to come up with solutions that reflect the will of their own people. This is supposed to be a cornerstone of the conservative ethos.

But it’s really just pap for the stump. In reality, and for a fresh insight into contemporary Republican hypocrisy, let us behold (yet again) the Bush administration in action.

A couple days ago, the Bush team – acting through the Environmental Protection Agency, in violation of the law that created the EPA, and in defiance of federal court rulings – decreed that California, and 16 other states would not be permitted to act on their own to reduce global-warming emissions from automobiles. The EPA explained that it favors a “national solution” (i.e., one size fits all) over what it calls “a confusing patchwork of state rules.”

Un-be-freaking-believable.

Oh my goodness.

How stupid is this?

Jeez-oh-man.

Words fail me.

Phillybits via Brendan.

Geez oh man. Some people will buy anything.

Phillybits.

Erik Prince makes a point:

On the mercenary front, Erik Prince uttered a revealing remark the other day. The founder/owner of Blackwater, who says his longstanding family Republican ties have played absolutely no role in his reaping of more than $1.02 billion in private security contracts from the Bush administration, was being quizzed on CNN on the issue of accountability…or, more specifically, about why the Bush team and the Iraqi government have long failed to hold Blackwater accountable for anything (as two new audits have also concluded).

Prince was asked, “Whose laws are you subject to?” And in response, almost in passing, he told CNN: “Well, in the ideal sense, we would be subject to the Iraqi law, but that would mean — that would indicate that there was a functioning Iraqi court system where Westerners could actually get a fair trial. That’s not the case right now.”

Well, that’s not very helpful to the Bush team, is it? The administration has been struggling for many months to put the best spin on the failure of the Iraqi government to meet the benchmarks laid out in Washington…and here is Prince, casually mentioning a failure that is not even addressed in the benchmarks.

So much for the Bushie-installed “government” of Iraq.

Of course, the next inference from the statement is that Swampwater is subject to no laws, but that’s already been discussed here.

Doesn’t matter. It was dispensed by the Current Federal Administration, so accountability, natch, wasn’t an issue.

But we can be sure of one thing. It made the rich, richer and the poor, poorer.

Between April 2003 and June 2004, $12 billion in U.S. currency—much of it belonging to the Iraqi people—was shipped from the Federal Reserve to Baghdad, where it was dispensed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Some of the cash went to pay for projects and keep ministries afloat, but, incredibly, at least $9 billion has gone missing, unaccounted for, in a frenzy of mismanagement and greed. Following a trail that leads from a safe in one of Saddam’s palaces to a house near San Diego, to a P.O. box in the Bahamas, the authors discover just how little anyone cared about how the money was handled.

You can hear the authors of the article interviewed here. The interview is well-worth your while.

Working at home today, I had a chance to hear the developing wingnut story of the Gonzo resignation.

“Gonzo,” it goes, “did nothing wrong. He was hounded out of office by the Democratic witchhunts.” I heard it over and over again from those who make a career of apologizing for those who violate the Constitution.

Such as here. And here. And here.

Give me a bleedin’ break.

The Democratics didn’t fire any U. S. Attorneys and then lie stumble around about it.

The Democrats didn’t suffer amnesia on a massive scale when asked where they were and what they were doing.

Heck, not even the Republican congresspersons did anything of the sort.

Oh, poor Gonzo. Did ‘ose nasty ole Democwats expect Ooo to tell the twuth. Ahhhhhhh!

Gonzo was the author of his own disgrace. It started years ago when he hitched his wagon to a star(ling).

And now we say good bye, but only as we look back and see a prediction of the future from two weeks ago:

Via Susie.

I just heard George W. Bush say in a radio news report, “I believe that people will make rational decisions based on facts.”

As does George W. Bush, for example, who never met a fact?

Words fail me.

(Full disclosure: I did not serve in Viet Nam because of a high lottery number. I had decided that, if drafted, I would go and not flee to Canada, though I considered then and consider now that the Viet Namese War was a fraud and a lost cause–as it proved to be. Kinda like this War in Iraq.)

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney on Wednesday defended his five sons’ decision not to enlist in the military, saying they’re showing their support for the country by “helping me get elected.”

Romney, who did not serve in Vietnam due to his Mormon missionary work and a high draft lottery number, was asked the question by an anti-war activist after a speech in which he called for “a surge of support” for U.S. forces in Iraq.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, also saluted a uniformed soldier in the crowd and called for donations to military support organizations. Last week, he donated $25,000 to seven such organizations.

“The good news is that we have a volunteer Army and that’s the way we’re going to keep it,” Romney told some 200 people gathered in an abbey near the Mississippi River that had been converted into a hotel. “My sons are all adults and they’ve made decisions about their careers and they’ve chosen not to serve in the military and active duty and I respect their decision in that regard.”

It is so easy to fight a war with other persons’ children and wives and husbands and brothers and sisters and parents, is it not?

Wolfie:

Fighting to keep his job, World Bank president Paul Wolfowitz issued a rebuttal yesterday that blamed unclear bank rules for creating questions about his handling of hefty pay raises for his girlfriend.

Acting ethically is not just following some rules or procedures or obeying the law. Acting ethically is something someone does because he or she carries inside him- or herself guidance as to what is right or wrong. The rules or procedures or laws merely set the ground floor. But the ethical person remains in the penthouse.

Wolfie played favorites because he does not have that thing inside himself. Wolfie helped start a war because he does not have that thing inside himself.

I think I shall gag.

Addendum, 5/7/2007:

It takes a committee to help Wolfie understand ethical behavior:

A committee of World Bank directors has formally notified Paul D. Wolfowitz that they found him to be guilty of a conflict of interest in arranging for a pay raise and promotion for Shaha Ali Riza, his companion, in 2005. The findings stepped up the pressure on Mr. Wolfowitz to resign.

But he still won’t figure it out.

Via Huffington Post.

I was going to write about this:

The White House said yesterday that it had mishandled Republican Party-sponsored e-mail accounts used by nearly two dozen presidential aides, resulting in the loss of an undetermined number of e-mail messages concerning official White House business.

Congressional investigators looking into the administration’s firing of eight federal prosecutors already had the nongovernmental e-mail accounts in their sights because some White House aides used them to help plan the U.S. attorneys’ ouster. Democrats were questioning whether the use of the GOP-provided e-mail accounts was proof that the firings were political.

but SpinDentist beat me to it.

(And, remember, this is the same bunch who want unfettered access to everyone else’s emails everything.)

Not that stuff like this hasn’t happened before.

Now, I know a little bit about computers and networks. I spend most of the last eight years at my previous job inside computers. (And, take it from me, it’s pretty cramped in there, especially in those new slim-line laptops.)

It is indeed possible for someone accidently to delete emails off an email client–that is, your computer. It’s also possible to go to your webmail account and delete the email from your mailbox on the server.

But delete them off the mail server so that they are all gone–Poof!–no traces remaining?

Highly unlikely, at least not by accident. Properly maintained, those things are backed up three ways to Sunday.

(Then again, the Current Federal Admistration has “mishandled” everything else.)

All seriousness aside, I smell cover up.

Of course, that would lead one to the conclusion that the minions of the Current Federal Administration might not be entirely truthful.

Gosh. You think?

Addendum, 4/12/2007:

Dan Froomkin.

Good grief!

A man who was fired by IBM for visiting an adult chat room at work is suing the company for $5 million, claiming he is an Internet addict who deserves treatment and sympathy rather than dismissal.

James Pacenza, 58, of Montgomery, says he visits chat rooms to treat traumatic stress incurred in 1969 when he saw his best friend killed during an Army patrol in Vietnam.

It’s not that I don’t believe that addiction is a real thing. Heck, I smoke. I know addiction is real. But a significant element of addiction is the existance of physical withdrawal symptoms.

I fail to see how someone could suffer significant physical withdrawal symptoms from simply confining the surfing of adult websites to non-work hours.

And I’m pretty sick and tired, as my mother would have said, of every habitual bad behavior being labelled as an “addiction.”

During the time my marriage was crashing on the rocks, I spent some time in online support groups for persons having the sort of marital difficulties I was having (and, surprisingly enough, I got good support and made some good friends). There was a regular parade of spouses, usually wives, saying that their others suffered from “sexual addiction.”

Horse-hockey. There may be some kind of disorder there (probably narcissitic personality disorder), but let’s not blame it on sex or on addiction.

There’s a big difference between “I can’t stop” and “I don’t want to stop.”

But it’s a growth market for therapists, so no doubt we shall see more “addictions” on the list.