Just wondering...

With all the neocons coming into the White House, which country do you think will be bombed when one of Trump's hotels is attacked?

We were close to war with Iran during President Cheney's reign

But I didn't realize how close.  If this is true, it was going to happen.

Susie Madrak introduces us: This is Gwyneth Todd, former member of President Clinton’s National Security Council and top Middle East advisor. (articles date from 2012.)

Military command of this invasion, to be done without consultation of congress or the United Nations was left to Vice Admiral Kevin J. Cosgriff and Admiral Will J. Fallon, both career opportunists with extremist political views, willing to do anything for promotion and the curry favor from the powerful criminal figures in US government. 

Their “cover story” was to sale a frigate up the Shatt al Arab, a disputed waterway between Iraq and Iran, hoping to stimulate a “response” from Iran. 

Their real plan was to create the response themselves, as was done by the Navy during the Tonkin Gulf Incident in 1964 when America “invented” an attack by North Vietnam as a prelude to a 10 year war America eventually lost. 

Their plans were to create phony radio traffic simulating an Iranian attack in order to push America into authorizing hostilities that they, themselves, had perpetrated in as part of a conspiracy.

Apparently there were attempts to follow Gwyneth Todd to Australia.  Juan Cole discusses events.

Thanks, we'll pass.

Bush Sr. Wants Jeb To Run For President

Memories...

An old post:

Res ipsa loquitur at Rising Hegemon lays it out for us: 

September 11th. Iraq. Katrina. FEMA. The DOJ. The deficit. Walter Reed. Surging rates of teenage pregnancy, soldier suicides, and income disparity. Lurita Ding Dong Doan and the GSA. Bernie Bada Bing Kerik and the DHS. Heckuva Job Brownie and FEMA. Wolfowitz. Rumsfeld. Condi Ferragamo. Megan O'Sullivan. We scream, "Incompetence!" Still think incompetence across virtually every spectrum of government is an accident? 

You're missing the overall. This is incompetence by design. Disdain as a philosophy. Contempt as a core value. You want the bridge to fail? Let me design it. You want the government to fail? Send a twenty-one-year old whose most meaningful job experience has been driving an ice cream truck to Iraq to rebuild Iraq's interior ministry. Let "The Fucking Stupidest Guy on the Face of the Earth" formulate defense policy. Put a schmuck with no disaster management experience in charge of FEMA. 

I've said before that we're going to have to fire virtually every person hired into federal government after January 20, 2001. But we need to go farther. Every time a Republican runs, voters need to be reminded that Republicans should never be permitted to run government again. Ever. They don't believe in it.

And today looking back.

Har har har....

Go ahead and try it, buster.

Jeb Bush on 2016 run: ‘I don’t think there is any Bush baggage at all’

update:



Update 3/11 from Talking Points Memo, a very insightful piece on the difficulties of the Republican party:

I mean, George Bush as “strong leader?” Really? I was there. I watched it happen. The guy was a potted plant who they imagined into faux greatness by sheer force of Noonanian gibberish and the D.C. establishment’s will to believe it. 

To my mind, that moral and intellectual bankruptcy has been obvious since at least 2005. The failure of the Social Security privatization push, the Schiavo debacle, the disintegration of Iraq into murderous chaos, and the hailing of a financial industry edging ever closer to outright criminality as the Miracle of Markets Creating Wealth and Prosperity for All. 

All of these disasters—political, social and economic—were the consequence of Bush Administration’sapplication of the Reagan realignment policy paradigm to social and economic circumstances that no longer remotely resemble those existing in 1980. Privatization, tax cutting, the embrace of politicized Christian fundamentalist as policy, militaristic interventionism, and deregulation—of course the Bush Administration’s zealous application of those policy principles led to serial disasters for the GOP and the nation. All of the problems—real or perceived—that these policies were implemented to fix had long since been as “fixed” as it was possible for those principles to fix them. And yet they were compelled to keep acting like top marginal rates were at 90%, the Evil Empire had to be rolled back and business was groaning under the weight of oppressive regulation and mired in strangling red tape because the constituencies that were the pillars of the party’s electoral constituencies.

Update: Rotating 360 on immigration.

Update:  What writing his 'book' about immigration actually means.

Romney is Bush

Nobody has learned anything.  And the neocons need jobs.  Because somebody needs to attack Iran.  It's on the to-do list that didn't get completed during Georgie's time.

I'll say it now. If Romney becomes president, we will be at war with Iran within two years.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Life, wind and fuck ups.

Why it's worth it to live.

A US wind map.

The Koch brothers very bad no good week.

Georgia.  Yet another state I will not visit nor support if I am able.

The Supreme Court fucks up again.

Women need to recognize verbal sabotage and manipulation.

Curveball.  The excuse created by the neocons to attack Iraq.

Birds and bees

Mandatory bird.

Phila of Bouphonia's Friday Hope.

I guess the Koch brothers didn't buy the right scientist...

Koch-Funded Berkeley Temperature Study Does “Confirm the Reality of Global Warming”

Honeybees and bumblebees. And lighting their hives on fire.

How Japan cleans up after a disaster.

Now they've pissed off the nurses...

Outraged by the arrest of two nurses and a union organizer volunteering at the Occupy Chicago protest over the weekend, National Nurses United is planning a protest at Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office today.

The group, the nation's largest union of registered nurses, is calling on its membership in Chicago to picket City Hall this morning to demand that misdemeanor trespassing charges against the nurses and all of the protesters be dropped.

Do you think they've learned anything? The Iraq war is finally over. And it marks a complete neocon defeat

About time:

Regulator throws lifeline to underwater borrowers

and

'We can't wait': Obama to use executive authority to boost economy as Republicans dither on jobs

And magic! There is no more poverty!

Bullshit

Bush: 'I Was A Dissenting Voice' On Iraq War

We knew this from the very beginning.

From the moment Bush was selected to be president, some of us bet we'd be at war with Iraq in two years. The neocons had been begging Clinton for years to take out Saddam, and now they had the power and ability to do so themselves.

The Bush administration was obviously prepping for war while theatrically pretending to be weighing the decision until the last minute. It was so very clear to us what they intended to do but the media just bizarrely ate up each declaration from Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush as the truth and asked no questions. It's what made me give up on the mainstream media in disgust and go hunting for those who actually reported the truth.

I really think the neocons felt they had all bases covered. The churches had been bought off with the 'faith-based initiatives', the allies were ready to get the oil, the military brass got a new shiny war with really big bombs, the media had been seduced with quail eggs and special interviews.... The Bush administration just didn't plan on those pesky bloggers with their damned facts and discomforting questions.

The truth refuses to die even though you thought you put out a hit, Mr. Cheney. And now the facts are slowly working back to the surface. Even though we knew what the truth was, it's nice to prove it.

Newly Declassified Documents Show Bush Administration Looked For Excuse To Start War In Iraq In Nov. 2001

And in the distance, we can still hear the shrill voices of the neocons....

Bomb Iran!

Bolton seems to believe that everything in the world can be fixed by nuking Iran .... economy, environment, jobs, acne, .....

Really, why on earth did we develop the A bomb if we weren't going to use it and show the world we're total badasses?

Because that was their intent all along... Iraq was supposed to be easy. They were going to pop out Hussein and pop in Chalabi and then be sitting pretty to start a real war with Iran.

And they're making sure the next crop of neocons gets the message:

And even some non-neocons seem to think nuking Iran would fix everything.

They're already planning to blame Obama for everything that goes wrong because he DIDN'T nuke Iran when he had the chance.

Let them talk

And then do just the opposite:

A group of conservative foreign policy advocates—including a bevy of neoconservatives—this week sent President Barack Obama a letter urging him to stand firm in Afghanistan and vowing their support for him (on Afghanistan) if he did so. The letter was organized by the Foreign Policy Initiative, a think tank put together by leading neoconservatives Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan, and signers included the pair and such neocon stalwarts as David Frum, Max Boot, Robert Kagan, John Podhoretz, Clifford May, Danielle Pletka, Randy Scheunemann, Dan Senor, and Gary Schmitt. But two high-profile right-wingers also added their names: Sarah Palin and Karl Rove.

The letter is reminiscent of the neocons' efforts before the Iraq War to whip up support for US military action against Saddam Hussein, an effort promoted by Kristol's think tank of the time—the Project for a New American Century.

We've had eight years of the neocon agenda and look what a mess they've left our country and the world in! So WHY ON EARTH are we giving Bill Kristol and these doofuses air time? Why? They are absolutely the LAST PEOPLE in the world to be taking advice from!

Starting the week....

By reading the top ten!

Giving hate free rein

It's intentional.

You have got to be kidding me.

There's no way. No way at all Jeb! Bush can run for President. One of the original signers of the PNAC? A Neocon through and through? A BUSH?

Are they fucking serious? The rubble hasn't even finished smoking from the last idiot son of Poppy and Bar, and they're talking about JEB!???

Just remember. Jeb! has the same DNA as this guy:



Update: John Aravosis of AMERICAblog doesn't know if Jeb Bush was a child molester and asks for a definition.

crossposted at American Street

Eliminate! Eliminate!

I didn't John Bolton of the Walrus Mustache of Hate was a Dalek...



But he sure sounds like one...




The Los Angeles Times prints Bolton's cry for Regime Change! Not diplomacy! Regime Change!

To date at least, the Obama administration's answer remains a resounding no. Obama wants negotiations with Tehran, not regime change. Given that the Revolutionary Guard and the hard-line mullahs -- and not the people -- are increasingly likely to be the short-term winners of the current Battle for Iran, supporters of regime change must now make longer-term plans.

We have missed a huge opportunity because of Obama's error (and that of his predecessors), but the continuing threat of Iranian nuclear weapons and support for international terrorism make the imperative of regime change no less compelling. The Iranian people will continue their opposition no matter how inconvenient it is for Obama's hoped-for negotiations. We should support them, and not just by rhetoric.

um... Mr. Bolton? With what? Support them with what? You and your Neocon buddies in the Bush administration broke the military. You now want to bomb and invade Iran too? Haven't you Neocons done enough damage, caused enough wreckage, destroyed enough lives and property to content you? Is that all you guys can think of? The world will worship in shock and awe the US because we're the biggest baddest bullies nuked up and willing to use them?

Well, invading Afghanistan AND Iraq kinda blew a hole in your plans for world domination, didn't it? Things looked really good on paper: kick Saddam out, pop Chalabi in, and then you're wedged in tight right in the middle of the biggest oil fields of them all. Then you could threaten and harass Iran and maybe even bomb them into submission, right?

But Afghanistan did what it always does when invaded, changed hats to the invaders colors and waited to see what promises were kept. Which turned out to be very little, because you guys were in such a hurry to invade Iraq. Strangely, Iraq didn't like being invaded and getting rid of Saddam started a veritable bloodbath of epic proportions.

The wreckage you have caused in these two countries will never be fixed. You have stained the ground with blood, depleted uranium, destroyed infrastructure, lies, and broken promises. No one will trust the US ever again. And we owe this all to you.

Just why are you being given print space anyway?

Grover Norquist's work on Ronald Reagan's legacy

From Crooks and Liars:

One of the more down-to-earth tributes was written by Norquist, who said: “Every conservative knows that we will win radical tax reform and reduction as soon as we elect a president who will sign the bill. The flow of history is with us. Our victories can be delayed, but not denied. This is the change wrought by Ronald Reagan.” Norquist all but revealed one of his missions in the coming two years — finding a presidential candidate who would assume the Reagan mantle in a way that neither Bush 41 nor Dole ever could — but not the other. His second big push was practically a guerrilla marketing campaign to make sure that the less-engaged Middle America would get the message that Reagan belonged in the pantheon of all-time greats right next to Lincoln, Washington and FDR. Norquist had learned the lessons of Normandy and of the Brandenburg Gate, which was that powerful symbols can mean a lot more than words (especially in a little-read policy journal), that a motorist under the big Sunbelt sky of Ronald Reagan Boulevard will absorb the message of the Gipper’s greatness without ever pondering if ketchup should be a vegetable in federally funded school lunches or if “the moral equivalent of our Founding Fathers” in Central America were drug-dealing thugs, the kind of stubborn things that popped up in those newspaper articles ranking the presidents.

I've never understood the 'worship' of Saint Ronnie, but now I can see who was force feeding the public the load of tripe about him.

The top ten

Assholic conservatives are at it again. Here's a quote about Newt:

So just to clarify... when Nancy Pelosi says the CIA lied to her during a briefing in 2002, it's "the most despicable, dishonest and vicious political effort" of all time. But when Newt Gingrich accuses the entire intelligence community of deliberately undermining the policies of the United States, he gets a standing ovation.

The No-Policy Pity Party

What to name the Republicans as they desperately try to rename Democrats.