... and they can impeach the Bush v Gore majority for election theft.

Posted at January 12, 2008 6:24 PM in response to What to do about the Supreme Court

Why now?

Couldn't let him go earlier. That would be to acknowledge his wrongdoing. It would give impetus and leverage to the various congressional investigations into the multiple scandals where he was instrumental (a word I use with precision). It would be a waste of his stonewall value.

Couldn't let him go later. Stonewalling gambits all used up. His impeachment, being 10 on the gimme scale, a genuine possibility. Even loyal GOP cronies and stooges unable to come up with a way to defend him (even GOP fantasyland not infinite). Stink penetrating the obliviousness even of average Americans.

Split the difference.

Posted at August 31, 2007 1:02 AM in response to Fredo Open Thread

Continued use of the Fahrenheit temperature scale is just another instance of US exceptionalism. In Australia and the UK we maqnaged to painlessly quit that nonsense decades ago. That billion dollar initial mistake with the Hubble telescope wouldn't have happened if the US had gone metric like the remainder of the former imperial-measurement English-speaking world.

Posted at February 10, 2007 3:03 PM in response to How cold was it?

Just like McNamara and Westmoreland, just like Rumsfeld and Casey, Gates and Petraeus are on record as saying that entertaining the notion of US fallibility emboldens the enemy.

So the pentagon and the military know the score. You can't support the troops if you don't support their reputation. The truth of anything suggestive of errancy or fallibility is irrelevant. Lies to sustain the myth of might and right are duty. Anyway, there's the security angle. This might become classified information and where's the need to know? Also, among a military with a broad christianist streak there'll inevitably some lying for Jesus, especially where muslims are concerned.

If anything at all about this syndrome is new, it's that its Bush era expression makes it appear more starkly pathological, as the US citizenry once again belatedly begins to doubt whether US wars are invariably justifed and whether US willpower will invariably guarantee success.

Posted at January 27, 2007 8:06 PM in response to A Growing Military Credibility Gap?

We are in the middle of a hydra headed civil war. We have helped create a lethal version of an Animal House food fight.

Sure, but we gotta stay to look after the keg.

Posted at January 13, 2007 3:27 PM in response to Why We Can't Win Militarily in Iraq

So what if he was indelibly painted a phony in 2000? He still won the vote. Anyway, as we now know, GOP paint is not indelible. In 2000, Bush was painted as a compassionate conservative skeptical of foreign involvement, no matter how well-meaning. I don't think that paint survived the mid-terms

RE-ELECT GORE - What better campaign slogan? What better mandate for a clean-up job? What better national acknowledgment?

Posted at January 5, 2007 8:06 PM in response to Why Not Gore?

By now you know Olaf's from one member of the Coalition Of The Willing - Denmark. I'm from another - Australia.

Bush was an obvious phoney right off to just about anyone who wasn't American (as well as to most of the 20-odd% of Americans who twice voted against him). But look at the fertile ground distinctive to the US national makeup from which Bush's GOP sprouted - the flag idolatry, the free pass for wacko pseudo-Christianity, the exceptionalism, the gun-happiness, the hypercapitalism, the savvy and gall to successfully market anything however useless or toxic, the easy can-do assumptions, the plutocratic extremes, the abnormally high incidence of stupid-but-nevertheless-articulate, the poverty of the minimum wage earner, the navel-gazing of schools and media, the red states that still haven't gotten over Abraham Lincoln, never mind Martin Luther King.

In short, the US was a big worry before Bush and will remain so after him. Which is not to say that millions of Americans don't share our concern. Best of luck guys - you'll need it.

Anyhow, we've also got to somehow explain our own national flaws for supporting our own miniBushes before and during their joint war crime that was and remains Iraq. For us, that's harder. It's easier to spot other countries' demons than one's own, but a few things are clear even to us. We're full of toadies who'd follow the US anywhere out of a fearful narrow short-term view of our their own self interest. Xenophobia and religio-cultural bigotry are rife here as well. Oh yeah, and we spawned Rupert Murdoch. Special apologies for that.

Posted at October 16, 2006 7:24 AM in response to Of Civil Wars

Australia's Prime Minister for the past 10 years lost a federal election in the 1980s as opposition leader, then lost the opposition leadership, then regained it, then won in 1996 over Paul Keating who had opined that the souffle doesn't rise twice.

RE-ELECT GORE

Posted at May 22, 2006 1:35 AM in response to Count the votes, dude

That might be 6:30pm Washington time.

The Washington Post timeline is all east coast time. 

Posted at February 16, 2006 1:49 AM in response to Go F**k Yourself America?

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Hunting Accident and Incident Report Form contains this item ...

Under the apparent influence of intoxicants or drugs?

                     [_]Yes     [x]No     [_]Unknown

If the Sheriff was successfully put off until the following morning, so as to be incapable of forming an opinion on drug-taking, how was Jason Duke from Kingsville Parks & Wildlife office able to get access that evening to enable him to report [x]No rather than [x]Unknown? Or was he as unable as the Sheriff to assert, but inclined or persuaded to assert, what he could not know?  Has he been interviewed?  Is it relevant that Ms Armstrong used to be on the Texas Parks & Wildlife Board?

Posted at February 14, 2006 11:23 PM in response to Go F**k Yourself America?