WASHINGTON (C.U.News)  Proving that he was a maverick all along, President McCain, on the anniversary of his first week in office, has ordered the re-invasion of Iraq.

“The agreement reached by the previous US president and the current Iraqi prime minister to pull US troops out of Iraq on a timetable is not in the best interests of the country,” stated McCain’s press secretary William Kristol. “Therefore, the president has issued an executive order repealing Bush’s SOFA agreement with the Iraqi government. Additionally, he has ordered the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff to prepare an immediate regime change plan aimed at deposing Prime Minister Maliki and his Iranian quisling enablers.”

Asked about this radical departure from his predecessor’s actions, Kristol smirked: “I guess we can finally lay to rest all that pre-election blather about a third Bush term. Having suffered through decades of the post-Vietnam syndrome that so weakened America’s resolve to execute its manifest destiny, President McCain has today launched a pre-emptive attack on post-Iraq syndrome. By insuring we stay there forever, he is guaranteeing victory with honor for the American people.”

Attempts to reach former president George W. Bush for comment has been unsuccessful. Reports that he was arrested by Interpol agents and flown to the Hague to stand trial for war crimes remain unconfirmed.

What’s wrong with this picture?

[Hint: It's a totally correct display of the US flag in the Bizzaro Universe]

Impact of two terms of Bush’s management of the US Economy

The Bush Administration today issued a mind boggling record deficit projection of $482 billion for 2009. And that’s not even counting the off-budget estimated $80 billion being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor the cost of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac and homeowner bailout bill.

That’s a yearly deficit of over one-half trillion dollars, most of it borrowed from strategic competitors like China and Kuwait.

Skyrocketing energy costs are only beginning to ripple through the economy, showing up as higher prices in everything from food to tires to pharmaceuticals.

Home foreclosures are up a staggering 250% (in LA), unemployment is rising rapidly, and even successful businesses with great credit history can’t get a loan.

The entire financial system, ranging from Wall Street, investment houses, to regional banks is in a deep freeze driven by the fact that no one knows what anyone’s paper assets are worth. The economy is so bad that Bush has been forced to betray his conservative base by doing an about-face (legacy pun intended) on the aforementioned bailout. Ayn Rand must be rolling over in her capitalist grave.

Obviously, this is bad news for all Republicans running for office this year. Despite the tragedy of Iraq and the increasing threat of a reconstituted Al Qaeda and resurgent Taliban in Afganistan and Pakistan, we’re back to “It’s the economy, stupid” as the overriding political issue of the 2008 election. And it’s hitting the McSame Campaign like a Democratic mule kick to the gut.

McSame has admitted that the economy is not his strong suit, and that he’s trying to make up it for it by reading the book by the man who did as much as anyone to create the current crisis, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. Kinda like asking a surgeon with a history of amputating the wrong limbs to take a little off the top.

McSame’s answer to the ruinous cost of energy— his flip-flop on off-shore drilling, is a classic case of bad timing, considering that oil billionaire (and Swift Boat funder) T-Boone Pickens is currently spending $58 million on an advertising campaign that states that we can’t drill our way out of the crisis.

Oh well, McSame can still run as Commander-in-Chief of the “surge.”

As for his snuggling buddy, George Junior, the latter can sleep easy knowing that once again he has bested his father, the previous deficit champ. By racking up the three largest deficits in US history, W. wins the gold, silver and bronze medals. Now it’s on to the Beijing Olympics, where he has volunteered to judge the synchronized waterboarding competition.

UPDATES

July 29 (Bloomberg) Merrill Lynch, the third-biggest U.S. securities firm, will sell $8.5 billion of stock and liquidate $30.6 billion of bonds at a fifth of their face value to shore up credit ratings imperiled by mortgage losses.

July 29 (Reuters ) Home Prices Fall in May, Erasing Four Years of Gains. ...S&P said the composite index of 10 metropolitan areas fell 1 percent in May, for a 16.9 percent year-over-year drop. Regions that saw some of the largest gains during the housing boom, such as Miami and Las Vegas, were the worst performing markets in May. Miami home prices fell 3.6 percent in May from April for a 28.3 percent annual drop. In Las Vegas, prices in May slumped 2.9 percent, for a 28.4 percent decline from a year earlier.

Stupid Fingers!

Rob Stafford writes over at HufPo:

“. . .here are four questions I’d like someone to ask Senator McCain, and that I’d like him to answer — without parsing, without equivocating, just answer. And if he doesn’t answer — we keep asking. And if these questions no longer seem topical—we ask something else. I don’t want to act like the Republicans, but I do want to make sure our narrative gets equal play—that’s what gets “teh Googles” to wake up and pay attention.

Well, I think McSame is so gosh-darn predictable, I’d like to answer those questions for him, Rob; so fire away, the Senator is awake, alert, and will not now answer your questions:

1. Senator McCain, it’s my understanding that Karl Rove, known to some as “Bush’s Brain” is acting as an informal advisor to your campaign. Are you aware that Rove is currently evading a congressional subpoena, that he has left the country & shows no inclination to appear?

Ah, Mr. Rove does not speak for me, or my campaign. And as far as I am aware, I’m totally aware, that he feels he has a right to declare executive privilege, regarding his activities in the government, and now it is an issue for the activist bench at our courts to decide. I wish him luck.

2. Are you aware that several members of the Bush White House have now failed to respond to congressional subpoenas? What is your opinion of people who show contempt for you & your fellow congresspersons in this way?

Well, I’d take issue with your use of the word “contempt,” even summers can be hectic in Washington, and the Bush team is pretty busy these days. My friends, it would probably be closer to the truth to believe that they’ll be getting round to the subpoenas just as soon as they can.

3. You have supported President Bush on many issues, including his handling of the war and his stance on tax cuts (which, before you were running for president you opposed), you have been photographed publicly embracing him, and yet now you have a little old lady arrested for holding up a sign that reads “McCain = Bush.” Please tell us why you would not like to be associated with President Bush? Why is he a political liability to you now?

Presdent [sic] Bush and I agree on the transcendent issues of today, and always have. He is not a political liability to me, or my campaign. The woman that, the protester that was arrested, was in violation of the rules governing the use of the facility, and it was only fair to the other attendees that she follow the rules as they did. Instead, she chose to be arrested. (shrugs)

4. I understand that you have distanced yourself from Phil Gramm’s comment to the effect that “We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” and yet, I find it hard to believe that you chose this man to work on your campaign on economic issues, you have worked with him closely for a year, and yet you were unfamiliar and/or in disagreement with this sentiment. Clearly, if Mr. Gramm had known this statement would embarrass you, he wouldn’t have said it. Do you think it would be unfair, given this context, to argue that you have distanced yourself from the public declaration of this comment, but not of the sentiment itself?

Yes, it would be unfair, I said before that Phil Gramm doesn’t speak for me, and that is still the case. But I think the press was making too much of his comments, in that he was pointing out the steady drumbeat of the blame America first crowd, who always take the negative over the positive, and overlook the power of the psychological over the minds of many Americans, who think the country is in worse shape than it really is, because that’s all they hear about from the cable monsters.

Well, Rob, there you have it. Milquetoast answers, all neatly packaged in mind-fog you can believe in.

Hateful to me, as are the gates of hell,
Is he who, hiding one thing in his heart,
Utters another.
—Homer, Iliad

A Charge To Keep, by W.H.D. Koerner

The above painting was proudly displayed in Governor George Bush’s office in Austin, Texas. As Crooks and Liars describes it:

In 1995, he issued a memo to his Texas staff, describing the painting, by W.H.D. Koerner in 1916, which he kept on his office wall. Bush told his aides:

The…painting is based upon the Charles Wesley hymn “A Charge to Keep I Have.” I am particularly impressed by the second verse of this hymn. The second verse goes like this: “To serve the present age, my calling to fulfill; O may it all my powers engage to do my Master’s will.”

This is our mission. This verse captures our spirit. […]

When you come into my office, please take a look at the beautiful painting of a horseman determinedly charging up what appears to be a steep and rough trail. This is us. What adds complete life to the painting for me is the message of Charles Wesley that we serve One greater than ourselves.

When one looks at the painting, you see a man on horseback — who actually looks a little like Bush — apparently leading a group of missionaries. It worked for Bush on a couple of levels: the title comes from one of the president’s favorite Methodist hymns, the man in the picture looks like him, and he related to the missionary work depicted in the painting.

He liked all of this so much, Bush used the title for his autobiography (which he admittedly did not write). He even brought the picture with him to Washington upon taking office.

The funny part is the truth about the painting: “Bush’s inspiring, proselytizing Methodist is in fact a silver-tongued horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob.”

Hard to think of a better metaphor for Thursday’s announcement that Bush has set forth an “aspirational goal,” part of “a general time horizon” for withdrawing US forces from Iraq. An event that John McSame likes to call “surrender.”

Not only did Bush pull the rug from beneath McSame’s feet, but Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki proceeded to roll him up inside it by telling the German magazine Der Spiegel that Obama’s plan for withdrawal of US troops for Iraq is just hunky dory with him:

“US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”

Oh dear, how cold it must be for Saint John to be dangling there alone, twisting slowly, slowly in the wind…

A Mind’s Eye View of Star Trek’s The Game

In Star Trek: The Next Generation’s The Game (Episode 106, first aired 10/28/91), the crew of the Enterprise becomes totally addicted to a virtual reality game brought aboard the ship from an alien world.

A slick pair of VR specs sends visual imagery to brain, energizing the brain’s serotonin and dopamine receptor sites. The more one plays, the more one is chemically rewarded, rendering the higher cortical (reasoning) areas of the brain moot. This puts the ship and, by extension, the entire Federation at grave risk.

I was reminded of The Game as I read today’s New York Times editorial titled There He Goes Again. It’s a rather mild take-down of John McSame’s ridiculous economic proposals, the core of which is keeping in place Bush’s tax cuts for the billionaires amongst us. Money quote:

Mr. McCain and his advisers must know that his numbers do not add up. But adding up is not their point. Their point is to perpetuate the fantasy that Americans can have ever bigger tax cuts and a balanced federal budget. They cannot. The unbalanced budgets of the Reagan years and two Bush presidencies are proof.

Perpetuating fantasies is the very function of the Rethuglican propaganda machine. Believing that Iraq is a success, that we aren’t already in a recession, that we can drill our way out of rapidly increasing gas and energy prices in time to ward off an even more severe economic downturn, that attacking Iran will enhance our national security, that tax cuts for the hyper-rich will trickle down their legs to benefit the rest of us are just a few of their most prominent delusions.

Neurocognitive evidence for addictive delusional behavior is provided in Dr. Drew Westen’s book The Political Brain: The Role of Emotions in Deciding the Fate of the Nation. Westen reports an experiment in which political partisans are presented cognitively dissonant information about their favorite politician. Functional MRIs reveal which parts of the brain are involved in processing that information, and the extent to which it will go to restore mental harmony. Even the most clearly bogus rationalizations are no match for the brain’s electrochemical reward circuitry, the same used by drug addicts when getting their fix. Not only does the subject again feel good about their candidate, but they end up feeling better. (Westen wryly notes that the term political junkie is thus more than just a metaphor.)

Message to McSame and their MSM enabled Rethuglican propaganda machine:

Take those rose colored VR glasses and shove ‘em where the sun don’t shine.

UPDATE: A McSame VP candidate, South Carolina’s Governor Mark Sanford, experienced a moment of cognitive flatulence Sunday morning when asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer to identify any economic policy differences between McSame and Bush.

Kinda hard to watch, but Huffpo has the vid.

Photo credit to newsgroups.derkeiler.com

How dare the highest court in the land hold our resident White House psychopath accountable for anything, let alone violating the US Constitution, which Bush is said to have called “just a goddamn piece of paper.”

Same goes for Dem senators like Carl Levin who supported The Military Commissions Act– Bush’s complicit enablers.

Glenzilla does the post-mortem here.

And the NY Times editorial board weighs in here.

While the Obama campaign depicts the ontogeny of Organism McCain as the phylogenetic recapitulation of Species Bush, aka “running for Bush’s third term,” one has to wonder how McSame will respond.

Perhaps he will take a page out of the old (and not so old) Kremlin playbook, as mentioned in Monday’s NY Times editorial titled Airbrushed by the Kremlin, Again, which begins thusly:

Years ago, Soviet news agencies grew to be experts in removing unwanted comrades from official photographs. People disappeared in the developing rooms just as they disappeared in real life, and early group photos with Stalin often contracted into a picture of the Soviet dictator standing alone. That grim history makes what happening today on Russia’s national television networks all the more chilling.

As Clifford Levy wrote in The Times last week, Russia’s national networks, the most powerful media in the country, are routinely deleting news or opinions critical of the Kremlin. In one notable case, Mikhail Delyagin, a well-known political analyst, criticized Vladimir Putin during the taping of a talk show. When the program aired, Mr. Delyagin was missing. Or, most of him was missing. His disembodied legs remained in the picture.

How long, then, before we start seeing images like this:

Citing the public’s “. . .deep seeded antipathy toward the president, the war, gas prices, the economy, foreclosures and, in some areas, the underlying cultural differences that continue to brand our party,” former Republican Party leader Rep. Tom Davis this week observed that “the Republican brand is in the trash can. . . if we were dog food, they would take us off the shelf.”

So distressed at Barack Obama’s successful “Change” theme, the Repugs have tried to claim some of that turf as their own with their new campaign slogan—”Change You Deserve.” Unfortunately for them, that is the trademarked advertising slogan for the anti-depressant Effexor, used to treat generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and panic disorder in adults. (Who said that the Most Highs don’t have a sense of humor?)

Speaking of the president, who has done his best to insure that his once mighty party will spend the next generation or two polishing the back benches of Congress with their pudgy, white keisters, Mr 28% used the Israeli Knesset as a platform to paint presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barak Obama as a Nazi appeaser.

So much for Harry Truman’s dictum that domestic politics should end at the nation’s borders. As Bill Clinton’s former assistant secretary of state and the State Department’s chief spokesman and ardent Hillary supporter Jamie Rubin observed in the WAPO:

“It is bad enough that Republicans use the politics of personal destruction here at home, but to deploy that kind of political weapon at an occasion as solemn as an American president addressing the parliament of a friendly government marks a new low.”

John Kerry called Bush’s remarks a “disgusting and dangerous political game.” Senator Joe Biden called them “bullshit” on the Senate floor. After Obama pointed out that Bush’s bull in the china shop Middle East policy had, among other things, strengthened Iran and weakened US security as a result, Saint John McCain piled on.

“It was remarkable to see Barack Obama’s hysterical diatribe in response to a speech in which his name wasn’t even mentioned. . .”

A bit hyperbolic (not to mention hypocritical), even for McCain. But the sainted maverick was just warming up. He continued his critique with this ridiculous, juvenile strawman:

“It would be a wonderful thing if we lived in a world where we don’t have enemies. But that is not the world we live in, and until Senator Obama understands that, the American people have every reason to doubt whether he has the strength, judgment and determination to keep us safe.”

Poor, naive Barack. His insistence that there is a categorical difference between talking, negotiation, and appeasement was just too ‘elitist’ for us lesser citizens to understand. He even went so far as to challenge McBush to debate these issues— any time, any place— obviously relishing the prospect of confronting them with a foreign policy record that has to be the worst in American history. As John F. Kennedy said in his inaugural address:

“So let us begin anew— remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.”

Bring it on.

EAT SHIT, AMERICA!

Mc. . . McSame. . . How many times did you eat a McDonald’s cheesebooger before you realized you are what you eat? How many times did you eat a McDonald’s cheesebooger before you realized it was never going to taste different, or better, or be good for you at all?

How many times can the Republicans make you eat the McSame McShitburger candidate before you realize they are all the same? How many times will you vote for a Republican candidate for president before you realize it will never be different, or better, or good for you at all?

Five times? Seven times? Ten times?

Ten times. . .

Nixon; Nixon; resigned to avoid impeachment; Ford; Reagan; Reagan Redux; Bush Senior; Bush Junior; Bush Junior redux.

Three more to go? Better bring your lunch.

Yep, Chimpy stopped by our office today. The hardcore software geeks have their own communal cell near the center of the campus circles. I was almost finished painting a mural on the last wall of their cube farm, one of four twenty foot tall stucco constraints with no windows; at least the poor bastards would now have something beautiful to stare at while they longed to be anywhere else but work.

What was really strange about his visit, besides being totally unannounced, was the fact it was sans Secret Service goons; maybe they were in the cafeteria fucking off with the coffee cake. And he was wearing some goddamned silly-assed NASA flight suit getup, so he looked even more like an imbecile than he usually does.

Bush insisted on a group photo— “fur when history vindicates me.” Naturally, we obliged him.

I had a little forced one-to-one time with him. Since no one in the office even looked up when he walked in, he wandered over to the coffee station where I was gettin’ my joe on. It was awkward— one, because he had a fuggin’ toothpick in his mouth, which he kept tonguing from one side of his mouth to the other, and two, everyone in the office stopped and turned to watch what would happen when he got in my personal space.

Then, it was like someone flipped a forgotten switch in a long dark hallway, and his little weasel windows bore into me like I imagined the Great Satan’s might be able to.

“How’s teh java?” he said, avoiding eye contact. I took a long sip and said, “You’re not gonna like it.” He gave one of those classic Jon Stewart “Heh heh hehs,” and reached for a cup. Since he’d caught me with my flask out, I tilted it his way; both his eyebrows did a little simultaneous hop and he thrust his cup forward with an emphatic, “Helll yes.”

I poured a good jigger in, but he gestured for another. “Be my guest,” I muttered, and handed it over; he held it inverted over his cup until a drop formed that refused to fall. “How ’bout a little coffee with that,” I suggested, barely concealing my annoyance with his boorish flash of lushitude.

Another “Heh heh heh” followed another “Helll yes.”

He looked me up and down as he returned the empty flask, and said, “So whutur you, teh resident hippie?” Another chuckle got past his toothpick. Collecting myself with another draught of morning mud, I ventured, “You know, I’ve always wanted to ask you— “What do you think you’ll say with your last breath?”

He swallowed a good third more of his beverage, and turned to acknowledge the software geeks by raising his cup in a mock toast to them. They just stared, motionless. He turned back to me and remarked, “They don’t say too much, do they. I like that.”

Then, it was like someone flipped a forgotten switch in a long dark hallway, and his little weasel windows bore into me like I imagined the Great Satan’s might be able to.

“You probably b’lieve in good and evil, don’tcha hippie guy. Well I do too. But then, then ya got yur evil in yur good, and ya got yur good in yur evil; know wudda mean? There was no pause for me to answer. “But then ya got yur no bad good, and ya got yur no good bad; and there ain’t no good good, and no bad bad— see? He took another long suck on his boozalotte, and, his head cocked to one side, he continued.

“Now— teh good man thinks of teh Devil, and teh evil man thinks a lot about teh God. But if ya think yur thoughts right between teh two ya know— then ya know there’s a day teh be evil, and a day teh be good; so, when ya wake up in the mornin’, ya ask yurself, ‘Who’s day’s it gonna be tehday? Is it teh God’s day, or is it teh Devil’s day?”

His brow suddenly unfurled and he looked really pleased with himself, as if he had just successfully arm-wrestled some enormous cosmic truth down from a lofty heavenly rampart, and was revealing it on the white house lawn for the whole world to revel in. It was then I realized that was all he had to say.

I looked at him as it settled over me like a giant cloud of methane flatulence, that he was totally rat-shit fucking insane. And probably a little drunk, too.

Lots of things raced through my mind, like he never answered my question, like he never even heard it. Like, this man has the blood of many hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children on his hands, and he talks about “teh God” and “teh Devil” as if he were talking about two ordinary shits like Hannity and Colmes. Like, he’s already soul destroyed and spiritually dead, only his body doesn’t know it yet. Like, I’on’t even know.

“Teh God and teh Devil”

I took another drink of coffee as a wave of compassion washed over me in the exact same way a wave of nausea would; Bush had whirled around and was headed over to the locked utility closet, no doubt thinking it was the exit.

I went back to work.