The Band-Aid Analogy

In a speech yesterday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City, President Bushmill had the gaul to compare Iraq to Vietnam in an effort to attack critics of his war. It would be laughable if so many people weren't dying because of this idiot.

Basically the entire Bush Crime Family and Cheney neocon-men argument for staying in Iraq boils down to this: if we leave, things are going to get worse.

And you know what? For once, they are right about something. Of course things are going to get worse -- at first. If and when the United States leaves, there will be a vacumn of military power and control, and chaotic violence will follow as various competing groups grapple to fill the vacumn.

Relatively quickly, however, a pecking order of power will be established, and once that happens, the violence will start to subside. Al Queda will be rooted out by sectarian forces and then those sectarian forces will claim and clean out their own cities and territories, and probably within two years, Iraq will have reached a point of functioning equilibrium. Just like Vietnam did.

Here's the simplest analogy Page A-26 can provide:

Getting out of Iraq is going to be like pulling a band-aid off of an open wound: you can pull it off slow, or you can rip it off fast. Either way it's going to hurt, but if you rip it off fast, the pain is over in an instant and the process of feeling better can begin immediately. If you pull it off slow, it draws out the pain and often makes a huge, bloody mess. If you leave it on indefinitely, the wound festers and gets worse.

The bottom line is that Bushmill and his lying enablers are simply trying to confuse and bully the American public into believing that the surge and Bush's larger Iraq strategy are working. In 2004, when Ted Kennedy likened the Iraq conflict to Vietnam -- and not in a good way like Bushmill sees it -- the Bush Crime Family and Cheney neocon-men were appauled that Kennedy would dare invoke the haunting specter of Vietnam.

It really is hard to keep up with these immoral, lying bastards, but we have to keep trying. Otherwise, they will completely rewrite history with their disgusting, distorted views.

A Pox on All Their Houses

Well, well-well, well, well. Seems that Tony Snowjob, the official public mouthpiece for lies and deception coming out of the White House and long-time member of the Bush Crime Family, has announced that he must leave his $168,000 a year job because of financial difficulties. "I will not be able to make it to the end of this administration, just financially," Snow said on Friday.

Less sympathetic Page A-26 could not be. First of all, most of America would be living the high-high life if they made $168K a year. For a Republican celebrity to be whining about money issues is extremely insulting to the rest of America that has to scrape and scrimp by on considerably less. (In 2004, the median household income in the United States was $43,389.)

So much for sacrificing one's own fortunes for a couple of years to serve country and the common good as a public official.

Do not shed a single tear for Tony Snow. He's been in the job for little more than a year. Before that he was a TV personality and Republican stooge (well, he's still a Republican stooge and TV personality, just not officially for Fox News any more) making millions of dollars.

So where did all that money go in just two years? Main Stream Media (MSM) reporting of Snow's announcement didn't even have the balls to proffer a guess.

Page A-26 knows exactly where the money went, and Americans should be furious. The money went to pay for medical bills related to Snow's recent recurrence of colon cancer.

Americans should be furious at the price of health care in this country, but that's only an underlying outrage in this particular case. The outrage here is that Snow, a card-carrying member of the vast conservative Republican right-wing conspiracy, a man who made his reputation and fortune villainizing progressive ideas like socialized health care, can just quit his government job and go make millions on the lecture circuit to pay for his continuing cancer treatment.

No wonder he and his fellow Republican millionaires don't give a crap about the ridiculous price and state of health care in this country -- it doesn't affect them! If you're rich, it's a non-issue.

Americans should be further outraged that Snow and the MSM are clearly avoiding any discussion of why Snow needs money. The news reports mention that he needs money, but not why. Why? Why wouldn't they mention why he is so broke?

Because it would reveal that not even somebody making $168 grand a year can afford health care, and that in turn would strike a serious blow against the conservative/Republican position on the topic. It may even cause people to start questioning whether the cozy relationship between the Bush Crime Family corporatists and the insurance companies may actually have something to do with the sad state of health care in this country. The next thing you know, Americans are electing Hillary Clinton for president and clamoring for health care reform. And that will eat into the corporate and personal profits of the Bush Crime Family and their corporatist allies, and that cannot be allowed to happen.

This is even more infuriating given President Bushmill's recent, disgustingly flip and either uncaring or uninformed comment about Americans' access to health care. In his typically ham handed way, Bush recently had this explanation for why he is going to veto a measure passed by both houses of congress to increase funding for the federal Children's Health Insurance Program:

"People have access to health care in America," he told an audience in Cleveland. "After all, you just go to an emergency room."

Pretty much says it all. If you ever had a doubt that the Bush Crime Family and its cohorts don't get it, don't want to get it, and don't' want you to have it, it's an idiotic comment like this (reminds Page A-26 of Poppy Bush's illuminating moment with the barcode scanner at the grocery store in 1992).

So good riddance to Tony Snow. He doesn't care about us, so why should we care about him. Next fall, just remember how quickly he abandoned the noble role of public servant when the devil came knocking on his door. Will he and his good friend Bushmill have compassion for uninsured kids with cancer when it comes time to vote on that children's heath care legislation? Or when Democrats try to get socialized medicine in the country so that everybody and not just the millionaires can have access to reasonable, affordable health care? Yeah, right.

One last word on Snow's announcement Friday: thanks for nothing MSM. Once again, they just let the real reasons behind the public actions go unquestioned and unreported, showing less curiosity than Bushmill in a bookstore. A pox on their houses, too.

George W. Bush: Huge Douchebag or the Hugest Douchebag?

Beware the historical legacy of George W. Bush, which right now, even as you read this, is being "prepared" by operatives of the Bush Crime Family.

Mark these words today and be chilled to your very marrow: in twenty years or less, there will be serious discussion in the right-wing media about putting Bush on the dime (the Bush Crime Family has always hated FDR) or Mount Rushmore. Sadly, in twenty years Stephen Colbert's tongue-in-cheekiness will be lost in the sands of time, and people could very well be asking with a straight face, "George W. Bush: great president or the greatest president?"

Conservative philosophe Glenn Beck on August 1, 2007:

He feels the pain of every wounded hero, every lonely, grieving parent this war has caused. He is a man who understands the heavy cost that we are paying. But who believes with every ounce of his being that we are in the fight for our very survival, a fight that's importance can only be judged fairly decades from now, and I believe a fight he is willing to be judged harshly for until that time comes, even if he's long dead.

Republican mouthpiece Scott Hennen after meeting with his Holiness himself on August 2, 2007:

I wish I could quote him exactly or play a recording of the conversation. Because the George W. Bush I met with in the Oval Office today is a very different person than the man you see in our media. He is a great President. We are very blessed that he is our Commander in Chief. History will judge him well.

And of course, one of the ringmasters of the inner sanctum of the vast right-wing conspiracy, ladies and gentleman, Bill "I haven't been right about anything yet, but it's bound to happen some time" Kristol gives a coup d'grace on July 15, 2007: "Bush will be viewed as a successful president." Sounds pretty confident for a guy who hasn't been right yet. Hmm, maybe he knows something that we don't.

But that's just the frontal assault by the usual suspects. It goes deeper than that. Think Armstrong Williams. Think Judith Miller. Think Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack. Take for example, a new book by Purdue University professor Bert A. Rockman (go ahead, give that "Rrrrrock-man" a little Burgess Meredith in Rocky III there when you say it, it's OK). In The George W. Bush Legacy, Rrrrock-man et al note some of Bush's "bold steps," including:

. . . influencing the direction of the judiciary, expanding executive power, institutionalizing the 2001 tax cuts and going beyond them, delivering policies and appointments for favored base constituencies, and increasing the size and reach of the national security state . . . .

Oh it can happen, and the same stubborn, determined, deluded gang of wacky misfits that rammed Iraq into our yawning pieholes is already hard at work making sure it does happen. Under rocks and in the shadows, the "preferred" legacy of George W. Bush grows. While time heals all wounds and the nation forgives and forgets, the Bush malignancy gathers strength and consolidates message. Soon, it will be indistinguishable from the truth. Ultimately, it will become the truth. What are you doing to stop them?

The best single thing you can do to understand why Bush perpetually thinks he has a mandate from God to do whatever he decides needs doin' and why crafting a legacy of mythological proportions is so paramount to the Bush Crime Family, read Kitty Kelley's biography, The Family. Stop right there with the snickering about Kitty Kelley. The vast right-wing conspiracy Swift-boated poor Kitty real good, but disregard the titter of a compromised media, Page A-26 is here to tell you that The Family is a piercing, definitive examination of the Bush pathology. Kelley astutely describes how Dumbya came into the presidency with his legacy foremost on his mind. That is the hallmark of the Bush Crime Family -- they are myth makers.

Now that it's been brought to your attention, start noticing every time Bush or one of his sicophants mentions the words history or legacy. It's a lot. Long after this generation has forgotten what its lyin' eyes saw, the lies that the Bush crime family are planting today will have sprung up and completely choked off all connection to the truth.

And in a completely unrelated story, Karl Rove announced his resignation today (calm down, not effective until August 30). While this seems good, it's actually not. With a slimeball like Rove, it's better to keep him out in the open so you can keep an eye on him. He'll now be free to play his dirty tricks unfettered by any rules of engagement (but completely covered by executive privilege).

Some pundits, like Howard Fineman of Newsweek, think that Rove is going to head up some underground strike force to target Hillary Clinton and keep the Terra' meter pegged to eleven. No doubt. You can be sure that Mr. Dirty Tricks, who learned at the knee of the master, Lee Atwater, will continue to divide this country against itself in order to serve the Republican agenda. Ol' Karl still has a few McCain-South Carolina tricks up his sleeves, but for now, he'll just be doing stuff like that for fun. That is, when he's not "spending time with his family" of course.

Others like Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post think that Rove may take a leading role in establishing the Bush Presidential Library (will they have a copy of My Pet Goat?) as a base of operations for prosletizing the Bush mythology.

Bingo Froomkin. Here's Rove at a joint appearance with Bush yesterday morning to make the weepy announcement: "I look forward to . . . being your fierce and committed advocate on the outside . . . ." You can bet your sweet ass on that one. Karl Rove will spend the rest of his life aggrandizing Bush into Jesus II.

"Karl Rove is movin' on down the road" Bush said at the press conference. Yeah, well, let's hope he gets hit by a bus. Maybe then our grandchildren might have at least one chance in hell of knowing what actually happened at the dawn of the 21st century.

Dem Guns, Dem Guns

It's almost as if Page A-26 had been a fly on the wall when Dick "the Dick" Cheney, Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove, Tony Snowjob, Ken "Ferret Face" Mehlman, and the right honorable and in no way subjective General David Petraeus were deciding which cover story to use and how to spin the press about the missing guns in Iraq. Page A-26 guessed it would be pinned on a hapless supply sergeant in Kuwait -- and Petraeus' fall guy for today: clerical errors. Thank you very much, we'll be here all week.

Let's look a bit more closely at the details of this missing weapons story. It's not just weapons that are missing, it's body armor and helmets. Body armor? Wasn't there some big hullaballoo about how the troops didn't have body armor and how we went to war with the Army we had and not the Army we wanted? After first trying to deny it, didn't Bush and Rummy promise that the troops would get their body armor? Maybe it wouldn't have taken years and the lives of hundreds of US troops if not for those pesky clerical errors. Damn you logistics!

You know who hasn't had any shortages of weapons and proper protective gear? Private military contractors, otherwise known as mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, hired killers. We're talking the usual suspects like Blackwater, Aegis, and even some boys that we helped train for General Pinochet in Chile.

If the press or the GAO or the Pentagon or any other interested party really gave a damn about this story, they would listen to Page A-26 and look at two possibilities: the guns never existed (which would be nicely covered by Petraeus' little clerical snafu story) or they went directly and free of charge to our shadowy, unregulated, murderous, private contractor proxies (which would give the shadowy, unregulated, murderous profiteers a nice little bump to their profit margin by giving them free weapons). It's almost as good as the free cash that up and vanished while the private military contractors were supposedly guarding it. Anybody seeing a pattern here?

And because no serial numbers were ever recorded, the guns can never, ever, ever, never be located, accounted for, or traced to anybody. How convenient. Maybe the missing guns are with Saddam's missing weapons of mass destruction?

As pressure and embarrassment mount about this story, look for the Cheney neocon-men and the Bush Crime Family to pin the blame on the Iraqis. Also look for lots of stories about how those guns that the Iraqis lost are now being used by "insurgents" against US troops. (Wait, we thought it was Syria and Iran who were supplying the insurgents with weapons and materials? Now we're supposed to believe it's actually the Iraqis who are supplying themselves?)

Anything to steer you away from the thought that a) those guns never existed, or b) they are safely in the hands of whoever it is the Supreme Dick wanted to them to go to, whether that be private contractors, Sunni insurgent groups, or whoever else it is that the US is too embarrassed to admit in public that they're supplying with deadly weapons.

Chances are we'll never know the real truth about this missing guns incident, but there are some things we definitely do know.For example, we know the weapons are unaccounted for, we know money was appropriated for these weapons by the Pentagon and paid to suppliers, but we also know they never made it to the troops. And we know that the lying, corrupt Bush Administration has been in charge of prosecuting every iota of this war from day one.

This incident should mark the tipping point toward impeachment for this Administration. Either they're horribly incompetent and don't deserve to be in charge, or they're horribly corrupt and deserve to be in prison. Come on America, it's one or the other (possibly both).

As Page A-26 said when this story originally broke: missing guns? There's no missing guns.

The Guns of Avarice

Well look-ee there, a whole bunch of guns went missing in Iraq.

Where did those guns get to? To our new friends, the Sunni insurgent groups? Or our old friends, the Shia-dominated central government? Or our forgotten friends, the Kurds? Or their mortal enemies the Turks? Oceania or Eurasia? All of the above?

Stand by for lots of finger pointing and "cannot recall" moments as Cheney's neocon-men play musical chairs with the truth before finally pinning the entire blame on some supply sergeant in Kuwait who got a case of Budweiser for rubber stamping some phony forms.

Who is in charge of the show over there? Who's been running the show the entire time? Who has lied about every facet of the war from its premise to its ultimate objective, from Abu Ghraib to Jessica Lynch? What shred of credibility or qualifications do they have? When will the real culprits -- the ones setting the policies and doin' the decidin' -- ever be held accountable for their crimes?

Did the guns ever exist at all?

Or was it all just on paper? A financial transfer made "official" with some bogus documentation and sealed away from public knowledge with executive privilege? After all, what's more lucrative to a profiteering multinational than a no-bid contract for goods and services that don't exist. It's just pure cash flow. In the world of Bush, oversight doesn't exist, so who would ever know or care?

It's just part of the ongoing draining of the US Treasury by the corporatist military/industrial complexians that run this country and the world. Why did the damn bridge collapse in Minneapolis? Ask Haliburton, Raytheon, Blackwater, Bechtel, Honeywell, Boeing, Northrup-Gruman. Better yet, ask their executives, their shareholders, and the financial services companies that raked in billions -- they're the ones that got your damn money, take it up with them!

As for the guns, this much is certain: there was no bungling by an inefficient government bureaucracy with layers of fatty pork that doesn't know how to do anything right and buys $800 toilet seats. Those guns, if they ever existed, went right to who Cheney and his boys wanted them to go to (ahem, private contractors [Blackwater]).

Missing guns? There's no missing guns.

The Cowardly Donkeys

Why are the Democrats so afraid of being labeled soft on terrorism? Don't they know that it doesn't matter what they do to appease Cheney, Bush, Bill Kristol, and the rest of the neocon fascists, any future terrorist attack -- even the inside jobs -- will be blamed on the Democrats.

Under "pressure" from the White House, the valiant, upstart Democratic congress went ahead and did the Republicans bidding for them again by passing an update to FISA. This after just finding out on Wednesday that they still don't know the parameters of the original illegal NSA domestic spying program. They just don't get it. When the Democrats in Congress vote for legislation like the gas they passed on Friday, then Ann Coulter and her ilk are, in fact, accurate when they call the Democrats cowards.

By Tom Sawyer-ing the Jackasses into passing the FISA free-for-all, the Republicans have effectively taken warrantless domestic spying in particular and civil rights in general off the table for Democrats in 2008. The Dems are now totally complicit on domestic spying, the war on terror, and the ever-accelerating demise of this country.

They're going to get blamed anyway, so the Democrats might as well start doing the right thing instead of the right-wing thing.

Terror Alert Level: Exposed!

Does it not strike anybody else as peculiar that this bridge collapses out of nowhere in Minneapolis and the word "terrorism" merits barely a whisper from either the lips of politicians or Main Stream Media (MSM)?

Somehow the entire nation is nearly thrown into martial law over a block of cheese and some dry ice in some lady's luggage at the airport, yet a completely unexplained bridge collapse is immediately diagnosed as ABT -- anything but terrorism. It's almost as if the word has been immediately put out to all MSM that this story is going to play as infrastructure decay and bureaucratic inefficiency through and through. Right? That's all Page A-26 has heard this described as, yet as far as we know, not a single investigation has been completed or preliminary report released. The FBI was dispatched -- to "look for possible evidence of problems such as shoddy construction or faulty materials." But it definitely was not terrorism. Or conservative/Republican economic policy designed specifically to weaken and ineffectualize the government.

Pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the terror alert system and this Administration's manipulation of terror and the MSM for its own ends. Apparently, the MSM is not capable or willing to independently raise the issue of terrorism; instead, it must wait for its marching orders from the likes of Karl Rove and Tony Snow.

And in this case, no effort has been made on behalf of the Administration to raise the bloody terror flag. Why not?

As happened after 9/11, all stories in the immediate aftermath are the same -- in this case focusing on local blame-fixing and acts of heroism. Cue the shiny objects.

So how can an event like the Minneapolis bridge collapse occur without tripping sending the Terror Alert Level to 11? Why would the Bush Administration, which is usually so quick to cry "Terra'," not be using these events as excuses to further eviscerate the Constitution? Are they incompetent? Or is it for a reason?

The obvious answer is that the whole terrorism thing is one big dog and pony show, with the neocons and the Bush Crime Family using the fear it generates to ride herd on the American public. Alternatively, it may be a deliberate act of misdirection that the Minneapolis bridge collapse is being presented to the public as ABT. This event may very well have been a dry run for future acts of terrorism by somebody -- a theory oddly unexplored.

The Common Thread

The "people" that killed Pat Tillman are the same ones that killed Kennedy.

Not literally the same people, but the same ideological cabal, which seems to pass down its constitutional disdain, from HUAC and the Red Scare to Watergate to Iran/Contra to 9/11 to the War in Iraq. Through the decades, a mind set has been passed down from generation to generation, their Machiavellian malice growing with each successive political mitosis.

Like Kennedy, Tillman was a grave and gathering threat to the War Machine and its handlers. As with Kennedy, a hit was arranged with outside contractors -- no fuss, no muss, no connection to us.