A moment of silence please for the dearly departed Scott McClellan, President Bush's former press secretary.
Hey, stop laughing! Presidential press secretary is a job that requires the low Morality Quotient (or MQ) of a Hollywood talent agent or a Nazi commandant. Lying must come as naturally as breathing, if not more so. You answer the first question of the day (from your spouse, who says "How are you?") with a "no comment" and it just gets stickier from there. It's easy to see why even in the best of administrations, the typical lifespan of the press secretary has been about three years tops. In two-term administrations like this one, it's not uncommon to have four or five press secretaries.
So good luck to whichever lying scalliwag gets the job next. It's probably yours for the remaining 1005 days or so of the Bush Administration--if you don't get indicted.
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Iran War 2007?
A long, long time ago, in the pre-blogosphere, so it must have been like 1997, I sent out a series of email chain letters/editorials that I called "Get Serious". In one of them, I talked about an article I ran across in Mother Jones--back when Mother Jones was a much better read--which laid how the neoconservatives both within and outside the government have been planning since the early 1970s to take over the Middle East so that the United States could either directly, or through proxy, control most of the world's oil supply and it's passage through the Persian Gulf. The grand design, as laid out through the article which must still be available in the MJ archives, was to topple Iraq, replace it with a friendly government, then find a way to topple Iran and replace it with a friendly government--you know, like the one we had when we toppled the original Iranian government in the early 1950s and replaced it with the Shah.
Also in the plan was the neutralization of Afghanistan, making it safe to then use American petrodollars to contract with the then Communist Soviet dictatorship to build a pipeline from Kazakahstan through Afghanistan and Iran to the Persian Gulf. Sound farfetched? What a lucky break for the neocons when the Soviet Union collapsed and Kazakhstan became an independent (albeit unstable) country! No more tricky finessing with the Politburo, ExxonMobil and Shell could deal directly with new cash-strapped country to try and finance that pipeline. Look at the map now--the United States ostensibly controls Iraq, even though the country is obviously in the early stages of a bloody and eventually devastating Civil War' a friendly, non-Taliban government is in place in Afghanistan; Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are allies, even though they're the kind of bedfellows that would lead you to do the "walk of shame" back to your car in the morning, if you permit me a mixed metaphor. Everything is in place for the great neocon petroleum triumph except for Iran. And now our President would love to nuke Iran with bunker busters to encourage it's citizens to overthrow the hardliners while simultaneously derailing Iran's nuclear weapons program. This would leave ally Israel as the only country in the Middle East with working nuclear weapons (except for the WMD's we would undoubtedly try to smuggle into a stable Iraq, if that day ever came, in an ironic and tragic funhouse mirror end result of phony WMD-war we used as pretext to invade Iraq in the first place. See, God has a CRAZY sense of humor!)
If I can ever find that link, I will post it and you can read it for yourself, but for now the logic of the neocon plan--which of course does not take into account such issues as civillian deaths, global oil prices, the decline of the American image and the destabilization of the region as a whole--stands as clear as day, as bright as the burning sun. At this point, even when Bush leaves office, the machine has been put into motion in such a way that you have to wonder if we'll be able to shut it off in time to avoid starting World War III in the Persian Gulf.
All so that we have enough gas for those SUV's.
Modern Sports: The Denver Nuggets Break It Down For Ya
Finally, on a lighter note, my friend Dave in Denver emailed this to me. We are both diehard Denver Nuggets fans (well, me more than him I'm afraid) and their recent play inspired him to compose this mock open letter to the city of Denver and to Nuggets fans everywhere. I thought I'd share with it you because, frankly, it's the funniest piece of writing to appear in this space so far:
OPEN LETTER TO THE DENVER COMMUNITY
We have tried to show these ideas with our play on the court, but it seems that some people don't get it without us using words. So we will say it usin words, even if we is not very educated and find words hard to use. But we will try to tell you what you should already be seein'. We have priorities. We don't care much about things people always be doggin' us about, like playin hard and playin as a team. We know what matters most. We like money. And celebrity. And sex. Mostly money and sex, when we think about it. We thinking that some people are getting the wrong idea cause we winned our division. They think we must be a good team and all. But we want to people to see we only winned our division cause it sucks. We are just the best of the other teams that suck. So don't get all riled when we don't win in the playoffs cause that ain't what we're about. We like money and sex. And sometimes a good steak. And weed.
And besides, we tired. You all don't understand how tirin it be shooting and standing and running for up to 30 minutes twice a week. That hard work wears you out after a while. One hour a week, man. And we not just standing still the whole time either. It be lots harder than workin yo jobs each week cause those thirty minutes are really killin. It you be us, you be tired too. How many times do we need to give up during a game before you all understand it? We don't care that much about basketball playin. So just give us yo money and leave us be.
Sincerly,The Nuggets Playas
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The Nuggets face the Los Angeles Clippers (?!?) in the first round series starting Saturday in Los Angeles. I pick the Clippers to win the series, 4 games to 1. If I'm wrong, please send your angry letters and bomb threats to:
President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
Washington, D.C. 20090
Peace...
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