JABbering Stooge

TBogg points out a ridiculous online petition being circulated by the likes of Hugh Hewitt, Perfesser Corncob and others to cut off funds for the National Republican Senatorial Committee unless they pledge, in writing, not to fund the campaigns of any Republican Senator who votes for the non-binding resolution (meaning the little dictator can still do as he pleases) against The Most Holy George W. Christ’s compensation campaign. Gee, that sounds so familiar…

In 2001, DeLay contributed $70,000 and his endorsement to an opponent of Fort Bend County Sheriff incumbent Milton Wright because Wright refused to fire his campaign manager—the wife of a man who had sued DeLay and won a settlement years before.

On September 30, 2004, the House ethics committee found that DeLay had violated House rules in his efforts to pass the controversial Medicare prescription drug bill. The committee admonished DeLay for making an offer to Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.), who was retiring, that he would endorse Smith’s son for the seat if Smith would vote for the bill.

Incidentally, you should check out the petition. Some interesting names have cropped up recently…*snicker* Dick Pinch *snicker*

Shorter Michael Gerson: Bush r00lz, Webb dr00lz!!!!!!111!1!1!!11!!1!1!!11!

From an MSRNC article on the deployment of the USS John C. Stennis carrier group to the Persian Gulf:

Some among the audience of Dubai-based diplomats and analysts complained that American wars in the Middle East were already threatening the region’s stability and asked Burns to sort out Iraq and the Israel-Palestinian conflict before turning attention to Iran.

“What we are not interested in is another war in the region,” Mohammed al-Naqbi, who heads the Gulf Negotiations Center, told [U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs Nicholas] Burns. “Iraq is your problem, not the problem of the Arabs. You destroyed a country that had institutions. You handed that country to Iran. Now you are crying to Europe and the Arabs to help you out of this mess.”

You see, the people and countries with the most direct stake in what happens in Iraq clearly see what the Bush administration either cannot, or will not see - that the Iraq debacle is the Pretzeldunce’s fault, no one else’s, and that it is Bush’s responsibility to clean up his own mess. Yet all the Bushies care about is nuking Iran. God help us all.

What would I like the Pretzeldunce to say in the State of the Union speech tonight? Short of admitting all the crimes he’s committed - from illegal warrantless wiretaps in violation of FISA to torture at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and suspending habeas corpus - and announcing his resignation - something that will only happen when hell freezes over, and maybe not even then - I would like to see the following:

• An announcement that he will actually follow the recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton commission, and actually talk to the countries we have a beef with, rather than arrogantly threatening to nuke them.

• Offering a plan to reduce our dependence on foreign oil - a real plan involving promotion of renewable resources, rather than just kickbacks to the Slixxon-Mobils of the world.

• A commitment to making prescription drugs affordable to anyone who needs them, not just the upper 0.00000001%. This means revoking his threat to veto the House’s drug price negotiation legislation.

• A true plan for real peace in the Middle East - not this damn-fool idealistic crusade to convert Muslims by the sword to Christianity, as Pope Benedict Arnold I clearly wants.

Those are just a few of the things I can think of offhand. Unfortunately, they have as much chance of coming to pass as this authoritarian dunce stepping down as president (not that a President Perma-Sneer would be much better).

As for me, I’ll be watching the SOTU with the Austin chapter of Drinking Liberally. I’ll try to have pics later.

From Chris over at AMERICAblog:

I understand the fired part, but $14 million to walk away? Great for Pressler for negotiating package like that but why do corporate boards continue to pay failures so handsomely? Recently the Home Depot CEO was given the boot and received over $200 million. Again, great negotiations and everyone agreed to this though I find this disturbing in the context of their failures as CEOs. That a CEO has a lot more responsibility and stress and can make a big difference in the performance of a company, sure, but I am not very convinced that for all of the CEO pay excess, companies and shareholders are really seeing a positive difference. The pool of true difference makers is very small.

I also take issue with corporates who find it necessary to bathe their CEOs in riches while stripping or reducing employees - even well paid, well educated employees- of what used to be standard benefits. With so many failures like Pressler or Nardelli cashing in, what will it take for the public and more importantly corporate boards, to say enough?

Yep. CEOs get rewarded for running their companies into the ground, while the grunts get the shaft yet again. Ain’t completely unregulated capitalism great?

To paraphrase an e-mail sent to Bartcop (scroll down to “Subject: poor cancer”) after he revealed that he had cancer:

I heard that Breast Cancer has contracted Jane Hamsher. I am very sorry to hear this.

Please give my condolences to Breast Cancer. I will be sending Breast Cancer some balm for its impending red-ass.

In all seriousness, though, be sure to go over to Firedoglake (all two of my readers) and give Jane some love, will ya?

Remember this quote?

If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.

Well, Glenn Greenwald points out just why The Most Holy George W. Christ’s political troubles just might bring out the dictator in him.

But more significantly, if the President wanted FISA changed, even radically, to vest him with still greater powers, the unprecedentedly compliant post-9/11 Congress was as eager as could be to grant all of his wishes and to give him whatever new powers he wanted. It did so repeatedly, at exactly the time (October, 2001) when he ordered eavesdropping in violation of the law.

In fact, Congress did amend FISA to grant expanded eavesdropping powers — in complete accordance with the President’s request — at the very same time Bush ordered illegal eavesdropping.

The reason Bush violated the law when eavesdropping is the same reason Lithwick cites to explain his other lawless and extremist measures — because he wanted purposely not to comply with the law in order to establish the general “principle” that he was not bound by the law, to show that he has the power to break the law, that he is more powerful than the law.

This attitude permeates everything the Bush administration does, and it shows. This arrogance, this hubris, this disdain for all rational counsel and advice, when evidenced in the leadership of the “free” world, is more than just an unpleasant personal quirk - it does severe damage to our democracy and our standing as the world’s last superpower, as the last six years should’ve shown to anyone not blinded by ideology.

Greenwald continues:

As John Dean demonstrated, a perception of one’s weakness and the resulting fears it inspires are almost always what drive people to seek out empowering authoritarian movements and the group-based comforts of moral certitude.

This attitude also permeates the minds of Bush’s most ardent followers, from pundits on right-wing hate radio to conservative bloggers, and has lately taken on an eliminationist bent. For a more salient example, just look at what happened with Spocko.

Greenwald concludes:

The most dangerous George Bush is one who feels weak, powerless and under attack. Those perceptions are intolerable for him and I doubt there are many limits, if there are any, on what he would be willing to do in order to restore a feeling of power and to rid himself of the sensations of his own weakness and defeat.

This is why Bush needs to be impeached NOW, before he does anything el-……oh, shit…

“I fully understand they could try to stop me,” Bush said of the Democrat-run Congress. “But I’ve made my decision, and we’re going forward.”

Shorter George W. Bush: “I’m the dictator, and what I say goes, you damn Dhimmicrats!!!!!111!11!!111!!1111!!” (Also note the lovingly-parroted conservative style of referring to Democrats - thanks, “librul” media!)

“You cannot run a war by committee,” the vice president said of congressional input (while shooting septagenarian lawyers in the face).

As opposed to how you’ve been running this war, Vice President Perma-Sneer? I believe Peter Jurasik’s character in Babylon 5 put it best. “Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts,” as you have already done with Iraq and Afghanistan. “Only the heir to the throne of the kingdom of idiots fights a war on TWELVE fronts!” Which is precisely what you are doing by escalating your Iraq debacle into a wider regional war.

I’ve descended to the realm of catblogging. Nevertheless, it seems only natural for me, a cat lover, to eventually get around to doing this. So without further ado, here’s my first catblogging post.

First up, a cat with a toilet-flushing obsession:

I think he’s trying to figure out where the water is going…

This next cat is “chirping” according to Wikipedia, but all the YouTubers who have posted it label this “Barking Cat.” You decide.

And finally, we end with a video montage of cats being silly set to funky Japanese music:

I guess you now know why I agree with Delenn’s assessment of cats and their Minbari equivalents:

Such creatures are the universe’s way of making sure we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

Seriously. And I’ll tell you why I think so. In Thursday’s entry on Boortz’ blog, the “Nealz Nuze” section of the site, he slips in a rant about the House passage of a minimum wage increase. What is particularly galling in this rant is the following comment:

Every single member of the House who voted for this legislation has now, through their vote, told us that they…[b]elieve that it is appropriate for the Imperial Federal Government to use its police power to force an employer to pay an employee more that that employee’s labor is worth to the employer.

That’s right. Boortz thinks that the minimum wage is screwing over poor employers who, without labor laws, would be treating their employees like shit (and with the GOP rollbacks of said labor laws, we’re already starting to see a return to such practices). In other words, in Boortz’s demented mind, every single solitary grunt-level employee is worth precisely $0.00/hour, while every single solitary executive-level manager is worth $6.02 x 10²³/second, recent cautionary tales of Enron, WorldCom, Tycho, ImClone, etc. etc. etc., be damned.

Boortz must believe that Dilbert is “librul agitprop,” which would be news to Scott Adams. But then again, this is the guy who thinks that 4-10% (the actual percentage of the insurgency that consists of foreign fighters and Al-Qaeda types) is “a large amount.” Go figure.

Category title inspired by similar category titles at The Republic of Dogs.

When it rains, it pours. In his “Stay the Course Without Appearing to Stay the Course” speech on Wednesday, the Decider with a Messiah complex and a chip on his shoulder the size of Meteor Crater tilted at some Syrian and Iranian windmills: