What's News Tonight: May 2009 Archives

Gibbs Doubles to Right

By John Batchelor on May 30, 2009 12:32 AM | 12 Comments

Reviewing the Robert Gibbs remarks today at the White House -- and above is an edited series of bites -- you can see what a surprising gift he received from a routinely mocking monologue by Rush Limbaugh earlier in the afternoon. The critical moment for use by Gibbs was when Limbaugh made reference to the political pariah, "David Duke." Gibbs saw the name like a hanging curve ball and slammed a double to right center. Then Gibbs took full advantage of his standing on second in front of the cameras and the friendly White House press crowd and offered concessions about controversial remarks made by Sonia Sotomayor in 2001 (right, Princeton photo, 1976). Well-stroked, good bat-speed, Mr. Gibbs. The Limbaugh transcript that contains the reference to David Duke is dense, unstructured, now and then discursive, and yet the product of a nimble narrator who knows how to begin and end his paragraphs inside a rip-roaring fairy tale. (The fun of a Limbaugh performance is that he rescues himself from the wicked witch every time with just the right counter spells.) The "David Duke" reference is not exciting. Gibbs made it exciting when he put it into play.

"...Not only does she lack," continued Limbaugh, "the often-discussed appropriate "judicial temperament," it's worse than that. She brings a form of bigotry or racism to the court! I don't care that we're not supposed to say it. We're supposed to pretend it didn't happen. We're supposed to look at other things. But it's the elephant in the room. The real question here that needs to be asked -- and nobody on our side, from a a columnist to a TV commentator to anybody in our party, has the guts to ask -- is how can a president nominate such a candidate and how can a party get behind such a candidate? That's what would be asked if somebody were foolish enough to nominate David Duke, or pick somebody even less offensive...."

World Arrogance Reset

By John Batchelor on May 29, 2009 7:57 PM | 7 Comments

Blood on the Tiles.

The small desert town of Zahedan in the southeast of Iran has wide avenues with little vehicle traffic, small residential houses and solitary municipal buildings built of a light sandstone, universities, football clubs, a prominent central mosque and the ordinary, cargo-cult life of Iranians in an energy rich but trade strangled state. The suicide bomber attack within the last news cycle struck against a large crowd in a small mosque for Friday morning prayers looks to be part of a local rebellion, perhaps related to the Baluchistan rebellion across the border in Pakistan, and perhaps related to narco-lords who devil Iran much like they do in Mexico. The new attack looks like the 2007 attack, which was claimed by a Sunni-based Baluchi cult called Jundalla, or soldiers of Allah. Iran is not a well-run tyranny. It is a beggarly, marginal, superstitious, fatalist state, the product of at least two centuries of European-aided feudal lords in Tehran and local warlords. This new suicide bombing struck at an ordinary, poor, clean, unremarkable population at prayer. The official toll as of now is at least 25 dead and 80 wounded. The blood on the tile of the mosque reminds me of the blood I have seen on the floor of a hotel in Israel, a week after an attack, even after it was scrubbed aggressively.

World Arrogance.

Tehran blamed the US, aka the Great Satan or, more recently, the World Arrogance, meaning the Obama administration. This mechanical, predictable blame-shifting provided a lesson to the zestful White House that when you aim to try jaw-jaw diplomacy with an apocalyptic and suicidal tyranny, it is like playing solitaire. You can claim you are winning at any moment if you change the rules, that is, cheat. But cheating at solitaire is not winning, is it? And yet, there is no one else in the game, is there? In response to the bombing, the Obama administration sputtered a bit and then condemned the bombing with language so unfelt that it sounds like the way Arafat used to condemn bombings. "The American people send their deepest condolences to the victims and their families. No cause justifies terrorism, and the United States condemns it in any form, in any country, against any people." "Deepest condolences" to the rueful, impoverished, disregarded people of Zahedan? Tehran must smile at this hollow, reflexive diplomatic ploy. Is the Obama team copying from a book? The Tehran Twelvers are serenely in charge of this narrative -- just as they were with the narrative during the Bush administration. The more aggressive the Twelvers are with nukes, missiles and rhetoric, the less the humble people of Zahedan signify. What is the nuke confrontation for? To sow chaos and to dominate the Gulf and the US. All working logically. However a parallel advantage for the Twelvers is that the nuke confrontation dominates all the people of Iran who are as mute and impotent as Zahedan.

Miracles and Hamas

By John Batchelor on May 28, 2009 11:04 PM | 6 Comments

Fairy Tale.

POTUS played meet and greet with the decrepit and facile M. Abbas this news cycle, and then POTUS made the predictably empty opening remarks of any powerless and puzzled chief of state when looking at the Palestinians. The recognizable reciting of "two state solution" and "side by side" and "peace and security" is delivered with a sleepy drone. POTUS does raise his voice with vigor when he voices the quarrelsome notion of "stopping the settlements." This is meant to be a fresh controversy -- a POTUS who confronts the fabled Jewish lobby in favor of the troubled, orphaned Palestinians. Bluntly, this is an inert fairy tale. Bill Clinton and Ehud Barak aimed to reorganize whole neighborhoods of Jerusalem into Al Aqsa gangster fiefdoms; and Ariel Sharon and George Bush handed the Gaza settlements to the vile Hamas gangsters; and Ehud Olmert devoted every week since the Hizballah war of 2006 to proposing transfers of land and people to the PA. Jerusalem has been giving away pieces and making concessions for a decade and more. What is original about the Obama administration is that they might actually believe they are new thinkers.

Stale Clinton II

The Obama team approach to the Palestinian enterprise borrows the last years of the Clinton administration and adds the surprise that the POTUS believes in miracles and Hamas. Miracles are more likely than a trustworthy Hamas helping to rebuild the wrecked Gaza parliament or the leveled housing. Since the campaign, the Obama team has toyed with the Hamas gangsters both in Gaza and in Cairo and Damascus. But that is for meetings on the back stairs, or through cut-outs. For the Oval Office slideshow, there is Abbas, an impotent thief who represents no one but his entourage of hangers-on. The formula for the Obama team: Whisper to Hamas and deny it. Embrace and bolster Abbas and acknowledge that it is futile. This is the Obama policy for Israel and Palestine -- an exact update of the Clinton years, replacing Al-Aqsa with Hamas, and Arafat with Abbas. Is Abbas as loathsome as Arafat, the dead Egyptian national deteriorating to dust in the parking lot at Ramallah? No.

The Devil and Kim

By John Batchelor on May 27, 2009 8:47 PM | 13 Comments

Worthwhile Sulfur, Mate.

The European outlets have picked up the theme that the Kim regime is acting oddly and aggressively, and of course this worries the Euros in a crocodile tear fashion. Since the US is not directly involved, with several divisions and a fleet hanging around in Northeast Asia, they seem profoundly less tremulous than when the subject of Tehran comes up. Why is this? Compare and contrast. The Kim regime is a feral, apocalyptic, defeatist cult built upon mass sadism. The Twelver regime is an apocalyptic and grandiose cult built upon paranoia and suicide. Both have the same missiles, since the Kim regime sold the Twelvers its missiles, and even tested the same for the Twelvers. The Kim regime has nukes, provided by the Russian breeder reactor and the PLA bomb-making plans from Shanghai. The Tehran regime aims to have a complete nuclear fuel cycle soon, based upon centrifuge technology stolen by Pakistan and guided by the Kim regime. The Kim regime sells missile and nuke technology to Tehran. Tehran directs nuke and missile technology to its client Syria. In all, the Kim regime and the Twelvers are compadres, brothers of the gun, a lunatic duo of rogues. So why are the Europeans less unsettled by the Kim regime provocations that they are routinely of the Twelver regime provocations? Because the Europeans have no trade advantages with North Korea. It is that simple. Tehran is an EU trading partner. If the Tehran regime were to lower its mask for a moment and reveal Satan himself, the Euros would find something ameliorative to say about the sulphur smell. Kim is Satan, and the Euros fret without breaking a sweat. Cowardly New World.

"...no sense of decency?"

By John Batchelor on May 26, 2009 11:39 PM | 37 Comments

The Rush Limbaugh melodrama is traveling a well-known course and much faster than can be followed easily. Limbaugh, remarking predictably today on the long-anticipated nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to SCOTUS, is not speaking for the Republican Party. Nor does he represent anything more than the cunning of his daily burlesque act. When Limbaugh taunts veteran big team players Colin Powell and Tom Ridge, when he mocks the not few Republicans who find him shallow, unacceptable, or aimless, when he (below) speaks with sly character assassination of famous Federal judges he does not know, then Rush Limbaugh becomes a figure of isolated self-derision: "...Here you have a racist -- you might want to soften that, and you might want to say a reverse racist..." There is no call to elaborate the more on this delusional behavior. It makes me think of Joseph Welch's famous remark to the self-doomed Joseph McCarthy at the Army Hearings in late June, 1954:

"Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator.... You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

Earthquake in Northeast Asia

By John Batchelor on May 25, 2009 8:51 PM | 16 Comments

Mechanical, predictable, cut-and-paste, paint-by-numbers, all the banal modifiers apply to POTUS's statement condemning the Kim regime's nuke test.

The Test at 4.5.

My best signals source reports that the satellite and other assets had been watching the nuclear test site for some weeks, tracking the increasing activity into the site. It is an underground facility, so there were limits. At the same time, there was feverish activity around the missile test site. POTUS had all this the moment he received confirmation of the nuke test at 09:52 hours Korea local time, illustrated by the seismic record of the 4.5 "artificial quake." (We were on air, and went to our analysts immediately, Gordon Chang, Mary Kissel at Hong Kong, B. Raman at Chennai, Larry Johnson, Bill Roggio, Evan Ramstad at Seoul.) The surveillance over the last weeks explains why there was no surprise at the White House. It may explain why POTUS walks through his remarks as if entering a pro bono plea at the courthouse.

"...pose a great threat.... I strongly condemn their reckless actions... endanger the people of Northeast Asia blatant violation of international law, and they contradict North Korea's prior committments.... the United States and the international community must take action in response... inviting stronger international pressure... will redouble our efforts for a more robust international anti-proliferation regime.. the United States will never waver..."

Succession Struggle.

At the UN, the statements by Susan Rice were stingy and delivered with the same matter of fact insincerity as those by POTUS. Why? Note how POTUS does not name the problem, which is one man, Kim Jong-Il, and one fact, Kim is dying. There is a succession struggle in North Korea. POTUS knows this, or at least, his briefers tell him, and then he knows it. The Kim succession struggle is the big, big story in what POTUS calls "Northeast Asia." The Kim struggle is dangerous, already out of control, and will continue for the indefinite future. POTUS remarks about "international law" and "robust international anti-proliferation regime" are to the point that POTUS knows there is danger ahead. The Kim regime will continue to stage provocations with ballistic missiles and nukes. The Kim goal is go make the regime a nuke protected power with the capability to launch on warning. Kim believes this will make it unnecessary and perhaps impossible for the Kim successor regime to reverse course and give in to bribery, intimidation or trickery. No. 3 son is the chosen successor, Kim Jong-Un. More soon. For now, consider what major turmoil in "Northeast Asia" does to the Obama administration plan to corral Jerusalem, bug out of the Gulf, and secure rapprochment with the Twelvers of Tehran.

Bolden to Enterprise

By John Batchelor on May 24, 2009 12:43 AM | 7 Comments

Eye on the Robots.

Finally the Obama administration makes a choice for NASA administrator, Charles F. Bolden, both a military veteran and an astronaut veteran, as previewed by Bob Zimmerman Sunday 10. The work for Bolden is prodigious. The shuttle program will be extended, the moon base will be postponed at least a few years beyond the 2020 target date, and the ISS must be completed. The cut-backs at NASA are widespread, not only in the delay of the Aries rocket booster but also the Orion capsule that was to be the next generation of manned spacecraft for Earth and lunar orbit. My eye is on the robots for the solar system exploration. Kepler is up and ready for genius discoveries (right); Hubble is repaired and awaiting operations; the James Webb telescope in line; the lunar, Mercury, Venus Mars and Saturn bots continue.

What Is To Be Done?

A long-range, war-fighting concern is that the deposed NASA boss Mike Griffin was a savvy administrator, and he was removed by an aimless, clumsy, cynical decision by the Obama team committed to cutting costs and putting NASA's missions on a low priority. These decisions were made during the fear of of the cliff-diving markets. These decisions look now to have been hasty. Will Bohlen review cost-cutting? Will Aries and Orion be restored to aggressive production schedules? What about the moon base? The moon base is not idle flag-planting. Stratfor's George Friedman's sweeping, convincing scenario for global conflict in the year 2050 (above, re his "The Next One Hundred Years") began with a sneak attack of missiles against US battle stars launched from a Japanese moon base. The high ground. If you toss this scenario aside, I remind you that in February 1898, the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, TR, ordered the Admiral of the US Pacific fleet, Dewey (right), to acquire plenty of Welsh coal for a pending attack on the Spanish fleet at Manila. Four and five inch naval guns against unarmored, protected cruisers battled for supremacy of the Pacific. Half a century later, the American commander in the Pacific, MacArthur, supremely lord of the Pacific with the American fleet and Air Force, asked the POTUS, Truman, to use atomic bombs against a massed million Chinese and Korean soldiers. Half a century after that, the American commander in the Middle East, Petraeus, supremely lord of the Atlantic, India and Pacific oceans, uses satellite-directed robots to hunt genocidal guerillas in the Hindu Kush. Half a century from now, it is credible that the US supports orbiting battle stars, like an orbiting Starship Enterprise, that dominate organized opponents on the planet, such as, in George Friedman's projection, the Axis coalition of Japan and Turkey versus the Allied coalition of North America and Western Europe. The moon bases to be built by China, India, Japan, Russia, Germany, the EU and the United States become critical gun platforms -- like Dewey's Olympia, like MacArthur's B-29s, like Petraeus's Predators. NASA is national defense for the 22nd century.

Daisy Mash-Up

By John Batchelor on May 23, 2009 12:53 AM | 3 Comments

Pantomime Puzzle.

Have found a curious coordinated agitprop pantomime by the MSNBC op trio of E. Schultz, K. Olberman and R. Maddow responding to the cheapskate mashing-up of the grandfather classic Daisy ad from LBJ in '64. The cable trio are working dutifully to mock the RNC for taking what was a Democratic smear of Barry Goldwater and turning it into dross. The puzzle is, why does this irk, interest, engage, light a fire under the trio? Their hambone glee is sweaty and leaden. The original (above) was homely, rude, camp, apocalyptic, facile, and altogether hyperbolic. Played just once on network TV (no cable, internet or Battlestar Galactica existed), the Daisy ad was a woozy LBJ strike on an under-financed, underdog Republican campaign that Goldwater launched with the searing lines in his nomination acceptance speech, "I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice." LBJ was running on the momentum of the JFK tragedy, the civil rights machinations, the Gulf of Tonkin falsehoods. It is unclear if the researchers at MSNBC have all this irony under control. Assume that

there is an organizing intelligence. My quick measure is that the Dem ops who maintain mischievous email chats with the shows producers are confounded, even stumped. How could the great GOP machine come to mashing Daisy as a ploy? They are overthinking. Old rule: You must hit the bottom before you begin recovery. Listening to the screeching Gingrich mocking Pelosi, the preening Steele baiting POTUS, the cliched Cheney calling out Wolf, Wolf, long way below.

Steele on Obama: "We don't know him..."

By John Batchelor on May 22, 2009 6:01 PM | 15 Comments

Not Vetted.

Very unusual remark by Michael Steele as he guest hosted on the Bill Bennet radio show. It is not an inaccurate statement of the facts. The Obama record in Illinois remains shrouded, guarded, delayed, lost, and the stories that Tony Rezko has to tell are unavailable. It is a strange limbo. The man who spent the most time with POTUS from 2002 to 2005 is in Federal prisoner facing more prosecution for corruption in Illinois. And the governor they both served and worked with, Rod Blagojevich, in in disgrace, stripped of power and waiting Federal trial for corruption. Strange days. We will know much more about Barack Obama, the early years, in the year 2029, then we do now. Transcript from Politco's Ben Smith via Talk Left.

"The problem that we have with this president is that we don't know [Obama]. He was not vetted, folks. ... He was not vetted, because the press fell in love with the black man running for the office. "Oh gee, wouldn't it be neat to do that? Gee, wouldn't it make all of our liberal guilt just go away? We can continue to ride around in our limousines and feel so lucky to live in an America with a black president." Okay that's wonderful, great scenario, nice backdrop. But what does he stand for? What does he believe? ... So we don't know. We just don't know."

Devil's Island, Mon Amour

By John Batchelor on May 21, 2009 11:02 PM | 11 Comments

No Plan.

At first I figured the 90-6 Senate rejection of an $80 million funding request from the Obama administration to close GITMO was just a matter of obedience. When the Obama team submits a plan to the Senate, the Senate will fund it. That is the party line. Now, after the president's GITMO/torture speech at the National Archives, it occurs to me that the center of the problem is not EIT, or Cheney, or the jihad. It's Guantanomo. The Obama administration does not know where to put the prisoners. There are 240 of them at GITMO. One hundred of them are Yemenis (as was Bin Laden). Seventeen of them are Uighurs from East Turkistan, in rebellion from Beijing. Three of them are very bad guys, KSM, Ramzi Binalshibh and Abu Zubaydah -- the only three were are told who have been subject to EIT back in 2002. Nevertheless, nobody much wants any of them. Europe won't take them unless the US takes some. And none of the states of the Union have stepped forward to take a single of the 240. Not yet. POTUS seems to believe he can work a deal with one of more governors to take the prisoners. But not even Supermax in Florence, Colorado is

volunteering for the job. It comes to this inert fact. The Senate voted "No," because there is no plan. The Obama team talks and talks, because there is no plan. There is no plan because the governors of the fifty states say nimby, not in my back yard. Until and if someone comes forward with a way to distribute and dispose of all 240, GITMO stays GITMO, home of the pariahs, a timeless, meaningless, endless Devil's Island, mon amour -- in defiance of all the King's horses and all the King's men.

Hang 'Em High!

By John Batchelor on May 20, 2009 8:19 PM | 9 Comments

On The Road to Zanzibar.

Peculiar and turbulent news arrives the evening before the pressured POTUS speech about the war on terror and the Guantanomo characters. The Obama administration whispers to the AP that it will move a major suspect of the 1998 embassy bombings in East Africa from GITMO to New York City to be tried in a Federal court for war crimes including murder. The suspect Al Qaeda's ops name is Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani. Born in Zanzibar, Tanzania, in 1974, he was captured in 2004 in Pakistan and taken through a variety of secret prisons to GITMO. Ghailani is one of 21 people named as participants in the terror attacks, four of whom are dead, five of whom are now serving life without parole sentences and seven or eight of whom are still at large.

Break with the Bush Administration.

At GITMO, Ghailani was ruled an enemy combatant by the Bush administration was was slated to be tried in a military tribunal. The decision to move him to a Federal court for a trial by American rules of jurisprudence is a pyrotechnical break with the previous administration. The above video clip, from the famous NPR iconoclast Amy Goodman Show in New York, indicates that the Obama administration may be following the recommendation of at least one family member of a Tanzania bombing victim. What is most striking at this time about the decision is that it moves an Al Qaeda suspect to the center stage at just the moment the whole debate of detention, rendition, torture, GITMO, the Senate rejecting the request for money to close GITMO, the refusal of many states to accept transfer of the GITMO twenty score, the dispute between the FBI chief Mueller and the State Department over the national security risks of any GITM detainee in any state of the union, the battle of the Washington speeches on Thursday 21 with POTUS one one side arguing torture and closing GITMO and Dick Cheney on the other arguing that the nation is less safe in the Obama administration's charge -- all this, and now the story looks to where it all began on 9/11, Manhattan. (With the sensational twist that four knuckleheads, said to be from Newburgh, New York, are reported arrested this evening, suspect of plots both to bomb a Riverdale synagogue and to shoot down military aircraft with Stinger missiles. Nabbed in an FBI sting operation, the four suspects will now serve as useful idiots in the debate between POTUS and Dick Cheney about the necessity of vigilance.)

Ahmed Ghailani Thug.

What is thrillingly wretched about Ghailani is that he is not just an Al Qaeda devil. Ghailani is said to have worked for the vile Charles Taylor trafficking in blood diamonds in Liberia, which would mean that Ghailani was part of the sadism of the diamond fields before Taylor fled to Nigeria and was then, fleeing again, grabbed by the International Criminal Court to be tried for war crimes in Sierra Leone (right). More, Ghailani is said to have been part of a plan to launch an attack in the summer or fall of 2004. In all, Ghailani is a completely unlovable human being who is also accused as a war criminal. Six of the counts against him carry the death penalty. I will speak to Ed Hayes and others on Sunday 24 re the decision to bring Ghailani to NYC Federal court. The media circus, the TV stake-outs, the nightly summaries of the jury selection, the extremely high security warnings, the risk of shahid in the subways by copy-cats, all of it to contemplate, plan for, dispute, analyze with microscopes.

NYPD and NYFD

The prospect is so overwhelmingly operatic, that I can doubt that it can ever come to pass. Governor Paterson running next year, Mayor Bloomberg running this year, senators Schumer and Gillibrand always running, so many domestic partisan melodramas because of the financial failures, and the rookie POTUS seeking accommodation with his own party over what is to be done with the rascals held in GITMO, all will have a stake in when and if the trial begins in New York City. Who will be first to call for Ghailani to be tried in public, on TV, and to be sentenced to death immediately and to be excuted as quickly as the Feds can move? Who will first cry, "Hang em' high!" The NYPD Benevolent Association? The NYFD Benevolent Association? The Transit Authority Benevolent Asociation? Rudy? Yes, Ghailani is not a 9/11 plotter like KSM, Abu Zubaydah, Ramzi Binalshibh, but he will do for an opening spectacle; and he is suspect of plotting a follow-on in 2004. All is vigorous, useful, dynamic preparation for the day New York City will host Osama Bin Laden and his kindred of Cain on their journey to oblivion.

Google Goes to War

By John Batchelor on May 19, 2009 10:14 PM | 8 Comments

Text Messaging Swat.

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StateSec HRC spoke this news cycle with unpersuasive Uncle Sam boilerplate re the collapsing Pakistan and the brutish catastrophe in the Swat Valley. The Obama administration now enters the drama with Act I, The Buildup Years. Comparing this to Southeast Asia, 1961-1975, we are witnessing the early JFK decision to send LBJ to visit the Diem brothers in Saigon, and then to heave in State, AID and the newly birthed Green Berets. HRC emphasized the gimmick-laden AID memos on her desk. I point your special attention to the text messaging novelty -- how to donate $5 to the United Nations to help the refugees of the Northwest Provinces. Cellphones, text-messaging, digital miracles, all such "Google Goes to War" notions are the freshest evidence that the Obama administration is already lost in Asia. The StateSec language is that of a volunteer corps rescuing the victims of a faraway Katrina. The idea of a failed, rogue, nuke state of jihadists and tyrants is not visible. Nor does HRC entertain that she and State have been handed a tragedy already accomplished but for the special effects of war, famine, pestilence and mass death.

"...one of our guiding principles... more than just delivery of supplies... also should be an investment... work to create quick impact job programs... our approach to the aid, reflects our conviction that all Pakistan... coordinating closely with the United Nations... also deploying new tools..., working to support the Pakistan government.... text messaging service... reach directly the Pakistan families that have cell phones... using your cell phone, Americans can text the word "Swat" to 20222 and make a $5 donation... Some have already gone back to their communities... as long as this crisis persists, our assistance will continue... we face a common threat, a common challenge, and now a common task... and we know that the work ahead is difficult, but we have seen an enormous... to tackle the extremist challenge..."

Act II

It is not that HRC does not see what is happening on the other side of her anonymous, theoretical, philanthropic, non-violent assertions. Does POTUS realize yet that his plans in Tehran, his ambitions in Baghdad, his appetite for peace making in the fiction of the Palestine, are dashed by the immediate darkness visible in the Northwest Provinces? There is nothing holding up Islamabad but the cash equivalents from the United States and the minor credit line of the IMF. Pakistan as a country is as stable as Citibank, that is, bankrupt, doomed, aimless, too big to fail quietly. The civilian leadership is bootless, larcenous, devious, wholly false and cowardly. The military leadership is a cult of sadists, lunatics, paranoids and cynics. And this is to leave out what to make of the ISI with its hands on the nukes. There is no alternative to the Taliban except the devils in Islamabad. The Obama administration, following Colin Powell's rule, "You break it, you own it," -- now owns Pakistan. Act II will begin immediately after we either remove, disappear or watch the assassination of A.A. Zardari and his Sind clans. The Punjab generals are next up on the throne, a chorus line of starched-shirted colonels led by a waxed moustache of a major, major general with red pips and a riding crop. Gilbert & Sullivan cannot make this stuff up. The Taliban, entirely Pashtun, are guaranteed a long, bloody, mythological riot. Is the American defeat foreordained? No. No more foreordained than Dunkirk.

Tehran Clock Running

By John Batchelor on May 18, 2009 11:22 PM | 12 Comments

Nixon and Mao.

The public performance by the POTUS and the PM the past news cycle was not about agreement about Tehran and its nukes. It was about dispute. PM Benjamin Netanyahu asserts that the Tehran Twelvers are unacceptable once they have nuke warheads and long range ballistic missiles. POTUS Obama asserts that engagement can solve the dilemma of nukes in the hands of men who expect the Twelfth Imam to emerge from a well after chaos sweeps the Earth. The question is time. How long does the PM wait? How long does the POTUS demand that the United States military waits? The POTUS was especially non committal on the timeline. Few in his own adminsitration believe that diplomacy is useful with regard Terhan. The POTUS wants to be Nixon goes to China. What POTUS appears to be now is Neville Chamberlain warming up the plane for flight to Germany. How long? The POTUS says he will make a decision about timelines at the end of the year. Christmas time. Tehran is us certain to be a hot topic around the tree.

Panetta Waterboy

When confronted, Tehran acts meek and peaceful. When petted, Tehran acts thuggish. Does POTUS know? No reason to believe that he does. DCI and Obama administration waterboy Leon Panetta travelled to Jerusalem two weeks ago to deliver the POTUS message to the PM, the message was to prepare Israel for a nuclear Iran. Panetta did not evidence knowing or understanding that nukes in the hands of the Twelvers is nukes in the hands of terror gangs like Hizballah and Hamas and Al Qaeda. Neville Chamberlain returned from Germany with a paper that said the peace of Europe was guaranteed. Diplomacy is clock management. Ticking now.

The Wall Street Pakistan

By John Batchelor on May 17, 2009 12:09 AM | 10 Comments

Anti-War Peculiar.

The Wall Street Journal Paul Gigot, Dan Henninger, Bret Stephens, Kim Strassel discuss the peculiar change of fortune for the anti-war posse with regard Afghanistan and the Obama administration. It is matter of fact that Barack Obama and HR Clinton battled in the primaries for the attention of the anti-war votes in the Democratic primary turn-out. The way this was done was Francophile clever. Blast the Iraq war as illicit and stupid; promote the Afghanistan war and the search for Bin Laden as noble, and thereby find favor from those who want strong national security in the White House and those who was peace and diplomacy and contrition in the White House. Now, the Obama policy on Afghanistan, which resembles the Bush policy so closely that it requires a magnifying glass to tell apart. There is Richard Holbrooke, old Jowlly, who does his Gordon Brown act before the Senate better than Gordon Brown. There is Hillary Clinton, who has not emerged with a Pakistan policy other than being nice to the playboy and pet A.A. Zardari. And Hamid Karzai, the mayor of Kabul, the friend to all narco-lords and their facilitators, is left to the side, like a plant in the video library. The four Wall Street Journal worthies point to all this with dispatch (they leave aside Karzai only out of time pressure). What is not clear at the close of the segment is why the team believes the Obama administration is going to be any less a disappointment in Afghanistan than the Bush administration.

Pakistan.

The facts right now support speculation that Pakistan is tumbling into panic and that Zardari is in disgrace and on his way out, to be replaced by either Chief of Staff Kayani or another zesty general officer. Afghanistan is lost if Pakistan falls. And Pakistan in the hands of the the general staff is not stable given the mysteries of the ISI secret police. There are messy reports that the Pakistan army is now laying waste to the Swat Valley and is about to launch typically stupid, gross, cowardly attacks against villagers in Waziristan. Zardari demands $1 billion for the refugees the army is deliberately driving onto the roads. The Neo-Taliban rises and rises wherever the Pakistan army moves like a brute mob with RPGs and tank cannon against empty buildings. The Pakistan army does not battle; it bludgeons and scampers. Now the US Army claims it is instructing the Pakistanis in counter-insurgency warfare. Folly. Too late, too little, and with mercenaries and wretches. The report that US Special Ops are training Pakistan soldiers in Baluchistan is too much like Vietnam even for the slow-witted in the Democratic party. The depredations, massacres, war crimes, rebellion, cruelty, famine, scorched earth in the Swat Valley make what was a failure into national catastrophe. Pakistan cannot stand without military rule. How long? Guess.

Obama's War.

Pakistan is a clean break with the Bush and Clinton administrations. No other nation on the UN Security Council wants to touch it but the US, and even the Congress doesn't want to. Obama is now stuck with a failed state that is simultaneously a rogue and all the while has nukes and capability of producing plutonium and enriched uranium. No one will help, not even the all powerful Congress Party at Delhi, not even the Russians. Pakistan is our Boer War. Can't win it, can't lose it, can't escape it, can't, just can't. Need a new administration to make it fade away.

Get Cheney!

By John Batchelor on May 16, 2009 12:57 AM | 8 Comments

What is surprising about this 11-minute plus segment, featuring the dogged host Rachel Maddow with the famous journalist Jane Mayer, is that it is difficult to watch through because it is so leaden, detailed, argumentative, earnest, defensive, logical, repetitive, sleepy and, if you look away a moment, perplexing and mind-numbing. The theme is that Dick Cheney is a genuine ongoing out-sized danger to the Constitution. Maddow reviews the record of the Bush administration's decision to use EIT (enhanced interrogation techniques) on detainees. There are dates, places, news clips, file film; there are quotes from documents; there is a parade of what appears to be evidence in a criminal prosecution. And then there is the disconnected and unconvincing Jane Mayer of the elite partisan magazine, the New Yorker (long ago the New Yorker was a cultural taste-maker; now it seems satisfied with being the flavor of righteous liberalism). But what does it come to? Not a conspiracy, not a plot to undermine the Constitution, not an imminent nuke war over Iran, not an outrage with missing trillions or a disgrace in the public eye. It comes to "Get Cheney!" Maddow and Mayer do not like Cheney. Fair guess they didn't vote for him. Do they know that complaining about a former vice-president is deeply comical and peculiar? At one point late in the sluggish exposition (how many ad breaks were there in these 11 minutes?), there is a passionate, slow-motion, dispirited exchange between Maddow and Mayer in which they explicate how Cheney spent his mornings going over raw intelligence data in his own office and then going over it again with POTUS. Mayer is disdainful of this clerical attention to what she characterizes as mostly "garbage." Maddow sniffs handsomely. The accusation against Cheney at this point is that he was obsessed with the random sweepings of national security. Guilty. Cheney now states flatly that his administration protected the country from a second Al Qaeda attack for seven years.

Back to Torture.

The chief pursuit of Darth Cheney by Maddow, Mayer and their allies is on the narrow legal case that EIT was illicit, or should have been, and that the use of EIT on detainees who were not an imminent threat, who were not standing on the Mall with a nuke in their backpacks, was stupid, cruel, disgusting, un-American and maybe even slightly illegal. That is the whole of it. Torture is nasty. Cheney believes that torture is nasty and necessary. War is horrible. Cheney conducted the war as nasty, horrible and necessary. Guilty.

Obsession.

It may be that this determined lecture series by Maddow and Mayer is an unobvious explanation for Mrs. Pelosi's creative egotistical conduct on Thursday. If you live at the video edge of MSNBC's trinity of Ed Schultz, Keith Olberman, Rachel Maddow evening presentations of the case for "Get Cheney!" then you could, inside this cloud of righteousness, sophisticated patriotism and limpid partisanship, have made a mistake on the scale of Mrs. Pelosi's to answer questions about what she knew and when she knew it re EIT. In sum, if you only watch the bloviators you agree with, you are going to be surprised by the mob who don't live in your zip code. It may be be that Darth Cheney makes a corresponding error by watching the wee Fox only. It may be easy for those of us who watch neither cable channel, nor any cable, nor listen to the talk radio, nor much concern ourselves with fashionable disdain, to see that "Get Cheney!" is hilarious and incomprehensible. Too much Churchill distorts my worldview. Bluntly, I suggest that Maddow and Mayer are not as monomaniacal as they present. And Darth Cheney is not as gifted a wizard as he presents.

"...torture is criminal, if it's not justified by the OLC opinion..."

By John Batchelor on May 15, 2009 12:50 AM | 13 Comments

Sheldon Whitehouse, Democratic junior senator from Rhode Island, wades thigh deep into the mighty partisan swamp of torture with back to back performances on cable, CNN followed by MSNBC, commenting on a peculiar and melodramatic revelation from Charles Duelfer, the Iraq WMD searcher. The story is told in the Daily Beast by Robert Windrem, following Duelfer's new book, that the Office of Vice-President, that is, Darth Cheney, directed an enhanced interrogation, or waterboarding, of an Iraqi intelligence officer who may have known of links between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

Criminal

Robert Windrem's observation on Charles Duelfer (who can certainly speak for himself when he gets to Charlie Rose for his book promotion) was yesterday's news, and is backed up this news cycle by Scott Horton's observations in the Beast about 9/11 investigator Robert Zelikow, and Zelikow's questions about how the White House may have ordered the suppression of his protesting memoranda about waterboarding. TV is just getting to it the Duelfer story and is not close to the Zelikow. What TV has contributed is putting Sheldon Whitehouse on camera to use the word "criminal" with regard the allegations that Cheney got involved in a partisan pursuit of information on WMD that, if successful, would have strengthened the White House. I note the meaty word "criminal," with regard conduct of Vice-President Cheney's office and the CIA. It matches Nancy Pelosi's use of the meaty word "misleading," with regard the CIA and the briefings on waterboarding. Whitehouse was not reluctant to wander into areas that throw the Obama administration, the current Congress and the media deeper into the swamp in search of criminal conduct by the previous administration.

Swamp Fever

Criminalizing the Bush team is what this comes to, and it is a perilous course because of precedence. More, this means both the House apparatus and the the Senate Democratic apparatus are fighting an insurgency against the Obama administration's recent aim to bury all this in old business. Declaring a witch hunt on both the CIA and the GOP appears ambitious. The TPL/War Crimes Tribunal Posse are more passionate and pell-mell about this so far than the right-wing, but it is early. My first glance tells me that Darth Cheney is the clear winner, because he will never get off TV and will sell books forever -- a combination of Churchill, Nixon, Darth Vader and Beelzebub in "The Devil and Daniel Webster." Here we go, deep into the swamp mud with a fever.

"...there is some further evidence of that... " said Sheldon Whitehouse re an enhanced interrogation of non-Al Qaeda prisoners.

".... there is not a great deal of evidence that came out on our hearing about that... if that is true then it takes the application of these techniques out of the scope of the Office of Legal Counsel opinion...

"...and that raises the prospect of there being a criminal prosecution that could justifiably emerge...

".. torture is criminal, if it's not justified by the OLC opinion, if there aren't the defenses because you have gone outside of it..."

"...not only does it disturb me, it takes the waterboarding outside of whatever protection the Office of Legal counsel provide... if the motivation for doing this was to get political information connecting Osama Bin Laden to Saddam Hussein that wasn't related to a direct attack on the US, then it falls directly under the cases that show that waterboarding is a crime in America and is stripped of all protection from the OLC memoranda..."

"...this thing is just getting deep and deeper..."

KSM: Man In the Armed Mask

By John Batchelor on May 14, 2009 12:42 AM | 22 Comments

Fogbound.

Two blows to the War Crimes Tribunal posse in one day, Wall Street Journal Evan Perez reporting, as the Obama administration both reversed its decision to release more abused prisoner photos, originally scheduled for May 28, and then late in the day let float the notion that Guatanomo incorrigibles such as KSM will be moved to the United States mainland and held indefinitely without trial, tribunal, hearing or resolution. In sum, the much bally-hooed Obama change of direction with regard GITMO and terror suspects has now been shelved. This is not exactly no change. It is more a fogbound journey, reset.

Cheney On Twin Targets, Justice and White House

In the opinion of the War Crimes Tribunal posse, the photos are more certain evidence that the Bush administration abused and tortured. In the opinion of the Obama administration, the photos could "endanger" US troops. This is an immediate paradox, since the Obama administration did not hesitate to release the Torture Memos in March that led to the drumbeat for a tribunal or full-scale investigation of the Bush team lawyers who wrote the memos and then of the chiefs of the administration, beginning with Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld. Eric Holder argued the use of waterboarding to be torture. POTUS agreed with him. The new photos are part of the accusation. Now the Obama administration recoils. The same timid and contradictory decision-making now applies to Guantanomo. Too notorious to keep open, it is to be shut, but its worst cases are to be dropped into another tragic, federal, sanitized, Marine-guarded abyss, a living grave. There is no explaining this scramble of piety, jurisprudence, history, politics and venom except that Dick Cheney's warning not to go farther has intimidated the Obama team. Perhaps not, but the timing is provocative. Last evening, I called Darth Cheney's remarks an X-fight strike in two waves. It now appears that Cheney was on target. The Justice Department is a crater of doubt. The White House pontificators are smoking with frustration. The War Crimes Tribunal posse is stunned; they will be heard.

Man in the Iron Mask

Lindsey Graham and Greg Craig of the White House said to be chewing over what is to be done. They may reinvent the national security courts that the Obama administration stopped with regard KSM and his four co-conspirators last December. Worse, they are looking for a state to stash KSM. Who will take him? KSM is worse than nuke waste forever bound for Yucca Flats. And since we know, thanks to the Obama team release, that he was repeatedly waterboarded, he is the number one exhibit of Bush administration abuse. In an open court, with a Federal trial, how could the government convict a man who has been tortured into revealing facts about his own crimes? Even in a military tribunal, can rules of evidence include information that was tortured from the accused? KSM is the Obama administration's Man in the Iron Mask - the prisoner who can never be released but cannot be tried and executed, must be held forever in an iron cage. And meantime, KSM could well become the reigning prisoner of conscience to the Ummah, the one prisoner for who men will connive and abduct and hijack and campaign to free. KSM is a young man; he can live another forty or fifty years. Where?

Cheney On Fire

The Daily Beast publishes a sensational Robert Windrem investigation piece on torture that includes an analysis of a new book from Iraq WMD searcher Charles Duelfer that alleges in glowing letters that Dick Cheney ordered the waterboarding (torture) of an Iraqi officer in order to learn secrets about the connection of Saddam Hussein to Al Qaeda. Sensational. The prisoner's name is Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi. He was chief of the notorious M-14 Section of the Mukhabarat, the secret police. His work was chemical weapons and liason with terror gangs. Duelfer says, in his new book, "Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq," that he was told he had been "too gentle." Duelfer says he was disgusted that he was being told to torture. "The debriefings were just debriefings, even for this creature." Rough, vivid, savage, amazing, darkly romantic scenario emerging. Duelfer versus Cheney, with the caveat that Duelfer did not win clearance to name the person in Washington who asked for waterboarding. "The language I can use is what has been cleared," Duelfer says. There is more. Robert Windrem says that "More than one-quarter of all footnotes in the 9/11 Report refer to CIA interrogations of Al Qaeda operatives subjected to the now-controversial techniques. In fact, information derived from the interrogations was central to the 9/11 Report's most critical chapters, those on planning and execution fo the attack." Bluntly, according to Windrem, the 9/11 Commission Report is a torture product. Wow.

The Last Days of the Republicans: Part 13

By John Batchelor on May 13, 2009 7:11 PM | 23 Comments

Can Wanda Sykes Save the GOP?

The stand-up comedian Wanda Sykes took only seconds in her disciplined 15 minutes at the White House Correspondents' Dinner--a naughty performance that mocked both Barack Obama and Rush Limbaugh--to lay out a vision for the Republican Party. Of course, Sykes didn't mean to help the GOP, yet in the manner of a prophet she climbed up on the mountaintop of C-SPAN at the precise moment that the glamorous tribes of Washington, New York, and Hollywood had gathered to worship, and she spoke the words that came to her as if from a special effects Yahweh. Wanda Sykes articulated a simple vision. She pictured a day in the distant future when the Republican Party will be free of its childlike dependence upon burlesque acts like Rush Limbaugh and his acolytes; free of their droning, repetitive excuses that the attack on New York and Washington gives them writ to bait and bully everyone who isn't on the burlesque stage with them....

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like-mind

Say it, John.
I'm so glad to hear you say this because I've been wanting to get it across, as well - that they have found their own False Gods and they have been lead astray.

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12:20 am, May 13, 2009

jburrey2

Wanda Sykes was disgusting! Her remarks were neither funny or humerous...real comedians don't have to malign others or use 9-11 for their own political purposes....a registered democrat

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12:47 pm, May 13, 2009

GMCaesar

nor comical neither!

She hopes his kidneys fail, and I hope all his condoms fail.

1:18 pm, May 13, 2009

ldcreo

stop whining!

1:45 pm, May 13, 2009

xlntcat

You've got to be kidding me! After the pure venom that pours out of this obese drug addicted felon on a daily basis, you might want to find another cause to defend. Rush and Cheney have made a career of using 9-11 for their own political purposes. Cheney, the draft dodger, the coward who got 5 deferments during Viet Nam, Cheney who ignored the intelligence that would have prevented 9-11 in order to lie his way into a meaningless war and cost nearly 5,000 Americans their lives so far. Now, you want to get self-righteous about using 9-11 for political purposes?

5:30 pm, May 13, 2009

Cforchange

Perfect, simply perfect.

8:09 am, May 13, 2009

susquehannastudio

All the GOP has left are the fundamentalists and the NRA.

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8:37 am, May 13, 2009

tankertodd

They have me and I care for neither. I don't shoot guns and I don't go to church.

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10:38 am, May 13, 2009

Coloradem

Perhaps what susquehannastudio should have said is that all the leadership of the GOP (Limbaugh, Gingrich, Cheney and Palin) wants are the fundamentalists and the NRA.

12:50 pm, May 13, 2009

LordVader

I am a fundamentalist - at least in terms of my own life - and I left the GOP sometime ago. Or rather, the GOP changed - I changed - and I stopped believing that the GOP had any sort of exclusivity on issues important to me or in the best interest of the people of the United States.

I am anti-abortion (GOP), but anti-Death Penalty (mostly Democrat), yet in favor of capitalism (GOP), yet in favor of applying firm regulation to the Free Market (neither, really), anti-Iraq War (Democrat), pro-Living Wage (Democrat), pro-Universal Health Coverage (not sure), anti-Single Payer (GOP), anti-anti-gun ownership (GOP), pro-gun registration (mostly Democrat), in favor of mandatory gun training for all owners (not sure), pro-made in USA and keeping jobs in the USA (not the GOP, but not so sure about the Democrats), pro-Union (Democrat), pro-Right to Work (GOP), pro-Greening America (kind of Democrat, Green Party), pro-Energy Independence (not so sure), uncomfortable with the homosexual lifestyle (GOP), neither for or against Gay Marriage, but seeing it as equal treatment under the law, so it's the right thing to do (Democrat, maybe Libertarian), anti-affirmative action (GOP), anti-racist (mostly Democrat), anti-sexist (mostly Democrat), legalizing recreational drugs (kind of Democrat, mostly Libertarian), heavily regulating recreational drug use (not sure), pro-contraception (Democrat), disbeliever in the success of abstinence (Realist), mandatory rehabilitation for out of control recreational drug users - alcoholics - gamblers (kind of Democratic, mostly Fascist), in favor of flogging repeat drunk drivers (Fascist), pro-Free Education K - The Last Breath (not sure).

So there really is no one party that meets my needs or wants per se. So I vote for whoever seems to be the best fit. I don't think I am alone in having a broad range of notions about what is in general best for the people of the United States. I think this is why there are more independents as time goes by.

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1:22 pm, May 13, 2009

Utaneus

This is why partisan politics are so sophomoric. It's just plain stupid to pigeonhole people based on one or two issues and expect that they agree with every other issue they're being lumped in with.

Though I agree with some of your viewpoints, disagree with others, and think you've oversimplified the GOP-Dem dichotomy in some cases, I really agree with the spirit of your comment.

This is why I rejoice in the growth of the independent demographic; people will vote on issues, not party lines.

6:11 pm, May 13, 2009

sagaderisa

I agree with you that Rush Limbaugh is part of the problem, but I fail to see how fringe-zealots like Sarah Palin are any better. Sarah Palin is too quirky for a part of the electorate that dismisses candidates based on little things or even made up things. (i.e. my very conservative friend, whose family hosts fundraisers for the Republican party, didn't want to vote for her because of the wolf-hunting thing. She was torn though, because while she liked what Obama was saying, Michelle's "first time I've been proud to be an American" comment rubbed her the wrong way.) Sarah Palin preaches abstinence-only education (even though it clearly didn't work out too well for Bristol), lauds abortion-clinic bombers, and spewed a LOT of nonsense into the media (and her nonsense often didn't come in complete or comprehensible sentences).

Rush Limbaugh is an extremist who is leading the party in the wrong direction, and even though Sarah Palin is a politician, so is she. (I think that leaders like Eric Cantor and Meghan McCain, who offer a tempered, more modern version of Republicanism have a more viable vision for the GOP).

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8:48 am, May 13, 2009

GeorgeAlbert

Right, that is why McCain lost and even Colin Powell endorsed the other guy...Do facts mean anything to you Obama Kool-aid drinkers??

9:49 am, May 13, 2009

isabella

Is Meghan McCain a leader? If so, she needs to find something Republican to lead with. On present indications, she probably should join the Democratic Party along with Colin Powell. John McCain could have won the presidency if he had promoted Republican ideals including respect for the Rule of Law, instead of pussy-footing around every sensitive issue and playing Me Too to Obama's broad brush socialism and promise not to enforce immigration law.

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10:41 am, May 13, 2009

empressaw

There was no way John McCain could have won the presidency. This has already been acknowledged by many conservative commentators. He had too many obvious issues he was up against; he is too old, he made the wrong choice for a running mate, the demographics of the electorate have drastically changed, and the list goes on. Why don't Republicans stop droning on about how Obama is supposedly socialist and figure out that their party is becoming increasingly non-relevant. Just please fade off nicely and don't come back...

1:23 pm, May 13, 2009

Tango121

Very good. The republicans need to look for someone new to lead. But following Colin Powell's advice that the republicans need to change into Moderate Democrats is not the answer either.

8:58 am, May 13, 2009

Carole65

I really doubt that a comedienne like Sykes will nor should have an affect on how a political party finds its voice. The present administration will give the Republican plenty of grist for future campaigns. When the middle class finds that their wallets are shrinking by higher taxes and inflation caused by the enormous debt incurred by these collectivist programs, we will see new leadership emerge, whether it's Republican or Democrat.

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9:17 am, May 13, 2009

pkali77

Pay attention. Bush inherited a surplus of 286 billion, he left office with a deficit of 1.3 trillion. If you know anything about budgeting you know its 2 fold. Revenue and expenses. The revenue projections are weak because of the low tax rate and the projected growth. 2/3rds of your exoenses are entitlements and military spending. Scream all you want but however much you play with 1/3 of your expenses the 2/3rds will kill you if you dont grow. So to fix this you have to attack entitlements for the expense side, and you have to find avenues for growth. The strategy here is new energy, and the most highly educated workforce in the world. Its a heavy lift, but if you dont invest there is no future.
I would argue that not investing in the American people but investing in tanks and planes is what has left us vulnerable.

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10:13 am, May 13, 2009

Carole65

Right you are. Bush never found his veto pen until it was a day late and a dollar short, but Obama upped the federal debt to 11.2 trillion. This recession was not caused by the Bush tax cut, but by the mismanagement of Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac. I know enough about budgeting that when you outspend your income, you create a deficit, which turns into a debt. And you pay back that debt with interest. With 11.2 trillion, and growing, the government could sieze 90% of the wealthy's money, and it still wouldn't be enough. So guess who's next - the middle class.

11:27 am, May 13, 2009

StellaRay

When the middle class finds that their wallets are shrinking..." When?! The middled class has suffered stagnant wages for almost a decade topped off with a severe recession that's almost halved most retirement funds, not to mention all the unemployed who now have 0 to put in their wallets.

Most of us know exactly who we have to thank for that. And it ain't Obama.
Watching the GOP lick their lips in anticipation of the epic Obama "fail" is the most delusional thing they do. And that's saying something.

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10:22 am, May 13, 2009

rpopstar

stella, i'm with you...there are lots of voters who remember the relative fatness of their wallets during the clinton years..and the relative thinness now...and who's to blame...

not only is obama widely popular, his economic policies are too...all the gop can hope is that 3rd quarter gdp in '010 will have a negative effect on voters...it's a pretty big gamble....if it has a positive effect, the party is toast....

as for carole...if she really thinks freddie and fanny caused the recession, she's off in la-la land...

ps...bush created $5 trillion in new debt...but inflation didn't follow, 'cept for the unrelated oil-price spike....thank china for thank....

12:22 pm, May 13, 2009

JPMOTU

I disagree with your article. Rush Limbaugh is NOT the problem. It's political pundits that think they speak for the Republican party who are wolves in sheep clothing, aka RINOs.

Individuals like Meghan McCain do not speak for the majority of the Republican party. She is nothing but another RINO like her dad.

Those that have so far posted comments on this site seem to me speak like MSNBC or CNN. Do us all a favor and leave the party. WE do not need you voice in this fight.

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9:27 am, May 13, 2009

egbptc

I agree with you. Rush Limbaugh is NOT the problem. Rush is not even a Republican. He is a Conservative. All you people who claim to be "Republicans" but say you won't come back because of Palin and Limbaugh - good riddance to you!! We don't need people like you who are diluting conservative principles. Go become Socialist Democrats like Colin Powell!! You claim to be smarter and better than Palin and Limbaugh when all you are is conceited. You fit right in with the Democrats. GO GET LOST!!!

1:04 pm, May 13, 2009

PhilMcRoin

spoken like a true dittohead.. way to think for yourself.

1:13 pm, May 13, 2009

ldcreo

Right. And then after everyone who doesn't agree with us leaves, we'll have about 120 angry, self-righteous cave men left. And we'll call it the Republican Party! Great idea...

1:50 pm, May 13, 2009

Bunx05

Actually, if you get rid of all the Meghan McCains and keep all the Limbaughs, you won't have to bitch and moan about the Republican party not being what it used to because there won't be a Republican party.

As someone who wants to see a strong, sensible, levelheaded two party system in America, I have to say you and all the people who think like you and don't listen to what anyone else says (this includes Limbaugh) are an idiot.

2:16 pm, May 13, 2009

doko84

way to be constructive you turd, it must suck to be so narrow- minded.

4:53 pm, May 13, 2009

Pablo4200

"She pictured a day in the distant future when the Democrat Party will be free of its childlike dependence upon burlesque acts like Obama and his acolytes; free of their droning, repetitive excuses that the attack on New York and Washington gives them writ to bait and bully everyone who isn't on the burlesque stage with them."

Roll the clock back 12 months and it's amazing how well that edit works. So, just what is it you'd like to dump Limbaugh from, John? It's not like he's a party leader, Obama, Emanuel, Carville and Begala's protestations notwithstanding.

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9:31 am, May 13, 2009

Abelard

Given that the current GOP seems to take Mr. Limbaugh's word as gospel (or at least doesn't mind when he's foaming at the mouth), he *is* a leader of the party. The question now is whether or not he should remain so...

9:56 am, May 13, 2009

Bunx05

Agreed Abelard-

When the head of the RNC has to apologize for comments he made to/about Rush, Limbaugh is a de facto leader. Sorry, that's just the way it is.

2:19 pm, May 13, 2009

GeorgeAlbert

Wow, who ever this guy is, (I never heard of him), he certainly is a very emotional man.The idea that political parties are there to merely win elections is a very good description of the Beltway Think.No Mr. B, political parties are established to grow and sustain core values of a nation or other political entity. Mr. B thinks winning is everything a.k.a. power is everything. Some of us actually believe that core values and a way of being human and supporting human freedom and liberty is everything, from a secular perspective anyways. Mr. B is obviously very jealous of Rush and with good reason of course. Rush has an audience and that audience thinks about more than venal and superficial gaining of power. They think about advancing freedom and liberty for humanity. I'm with Rush. Mr. B...go away and crawl back under the rock from which you came. We have enough people lusting for power already

9:38 am, May 13, 2009

carouzer

Mr. Batchelor, it seems that you get it. Too bad the leadership of your party does not.

The answer to the Republicans' current dilema is not a drug-abuser radio talk show host or a semi-literate, nonsensical Alaskan Governor or a "waz-up" buffoon who currently chairs the party. When national political figures cow-tow to an "entertainer" as divisive, intemperate and extreme as Rush Limbaugh something is very, very wrong--and none of the party leadership seems to be the least interested in fixing it.

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9:48 am, May 13, 2009

HuskyNan

Mr. Batchelor does indeed seem to get it. How long until he's given the RINO tag for making such bold statments?

10:59 am, May 13, 2009

rexbatt

You guys are totally missing the point and so is the author of this so-called "analysis". She didn't say that the GOP should dump Rush. SHE WISHED DEATH ON HIM!!!! TWICE!!! Do you not see the difference or even care? Plus, if you're a liberal and you think Rush is so bad, why don't you just let him and the Republicans hang themselves. You guys are actin like Obama got more than 52.5% of the vote. You're acting like 60 million people DIDN'T vote against Obama...

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9:50 am, May 13, 2009

Bunx05

Chill out mi amigo. What you're missing is that Wanda Sykes is a comedian. the "I hope his kidneys fail" comment was a punchline to a joke. Wanda doesn't speak for any group of people other than herself. And here's the rub, Limbaugh doesn't "officially" represent anyone's views but his own either. The difference is that Limbaugh, the chubby bastard, has made himself a figurehead. And for what? To promote some peaceful agenda? To leave the world a better place than he found it? No. For ratings.

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2:26 pm, May 13, 2009

Utaneus

I agree with Bunx05, you need to first off chill out, you sound like a kindergartener throwing a fit over something you obviously don't understand.

Second off, do you have amnesia? 50.7% of the popular vote was enough for GW Bush to claim he had a MANDATE!?!

52.5% is a pretty substantial lead, bordering on landslide.

Now, let me ask you what's worse, joking about some fat jerk's kidney's failing, or, in all seriousness, wishing failure on the United States?

6:19 pm, May 13, 2009

xlntcat

60 Million people didn't vote against Obama and since the election the GOP has lost 11% of those who were willing to identify themselves as republicans. Republicans ignore the fact that they can no longer spew out lies and not be fact checked. Betrayal of trust is hard to come back from.

5:49 pm, May 13, 2009

Cara-C

Limbaugh speaks up for freedom, and it's wonderful that he is doing this. Few in Washington seems to remember that America's greatness is due to our respect for individual LIBERTY. They're too busy working out whether they should have total control over our lives (Democrats) or semi-total control over our lives (Republicans).

The Republican party is floundering because of the battle between social conservatives (anti-abortion and gay rights types) and fiscal conservatives (pro-choice, pro-gray rights, libertarian-leaning types).

This is not a good time for this battle because the threat to our freedom is so great right now. All conservatives have to come together to protect freedom and work out their differences later. Rush is an important voice, but shouldn't be the only voice speaking up for liberty.

9:50 am, May 13, 2009

Abelard

I'd have a lot more respect for the political broadcasters of either stripe if they actually ran for office. It takes nothing to yell and complain; it takes real guts to get elected and actually try to make your views into policy.

9:54 am, May 13, 2009

muddog

The problem with the G.O.P., you can dish it but you cant take it.

Wanada Sykes just said what many think, Limbaugh is a fat, drug addicted lying thug, like it or not he is the most vocal voice of the G.O.P, ( next to Cheney with his 18% approval rating ) and now to say your sick of him??!!. You all rode his coat tails, along with Fox Noise, Coulter, Beck, Savage and the other conservative ilk. Now it's time to pay the piper....

911 is not the proper subject for humor?. WTF over?. When you have creeps like Anne Coulter making fun of the 911 families and the G.O.P. using 911 like a cheap prop, where do you come off lecturing others?. Save your finger pointing for the mirror.

When you have someone like Colin Powell being called a Democrat because he does not follow group think the G.O.P. has some serious issues...

9:58 am, May 13, 2009

estcruzer

Look, the party was hijacked, by neocons. Unfortunately for them their message - American empire through force (both military and economic) wouldn't sell to American voters - it's not what we believe we are about. So they overtook the Republican party and started to lie about what Republican's were about. The result - after the sunshine exposed the parties leaders for what they were is an unfortunate collapse of the Republican party. What the Republicans need to get back to is their real roots not the neocon philosophy but the one that rings true with American's. Until the leaders figure that out the party will continue to wander around drunkenly looking for a direction.

I believe that a healthy America needs at least 2 healthy political parties to keep each other HONEST. Not throw sh-t at each other like they have been in the past few decades. I think that a healthy Republican party will create a healthy Democratic party and both will make America healthier again.

IMHO, actually not so humble, It's time the Republican leadership figured out what would be best for Americans and made that their goals, popularity will follow then elections and the Democrats will have to improve to be able to compete.

10:01 am, May 13, 2009

da47ve

...nothing like taking advice from the enemy on how to improve your defense and who to go with on your offense...

Thanks liberals for your "analysis" of the Republican Party and your wonderful advice...and given from a comedienne no less...

...Go Sarah, Dick, and Rush!!!

(1)

10:03 am, May 13, 2009

tankertodd

No lie. Why are Republicans even listening to liberals and leftists debate the future of the Republican Party and conservative movement? Is this just insane or what??!?! Why don't they let us drive off the cliff? The answer is that they know we're on to something. If we can recraft the party around individual liberty and limited government with fiscal responsibility we'd strip them of their power in 2 years.

(3)

10:42 am, May 13, 2009

jmrdandy

just which republican president actually shrunk government and shrunk the deficit. the only answer to anything in the republican party is tax cuts will cure anything while they go on and spend like crazy. this has gone on since and including saint reagon.
it's all talk and no show

12:21 pm, May 13, 2009

What's Breaking News Tonight?