Fiasco

Todays Laugh,

1. The Wall Street Journal is read by the people who run the country.
2. The New York Times is read by people who think they run the country.
3. The Washington Post is read by people who think they should run the country.
4. USA Today is read by people who think they ought to run the country but don't really understand the Washington Post. They do, however like the smog statistics shown in pie charts.
5. The Los Angeles Times is read by people who wouldn't mind running the country, if they could spare the time, and if they didn't have to leave L.A. to do it.
6. The Boston Globe is read by people whose parents used to run the country.
7. The New York Daily News is read by people who aren't too sure who's running the country, and don't really care as long as they can get a seat on the train.
8. The New York Post is read by people who don't care who's running the country either, as long as they do something really scandalous, preferably while intoxicated.
9. The San Francisco Chronicle is read by people who aren't sure there is a country, or that anyone is running it; but whoever it is, they oppose all that they stand for. There are occasional exceptions if the leaders are handicapped minority, feministic atheist dwarfs, who also happen to be illegal aliens from ANY country or galaxy as long as they are democrats.
10. The Miami Herald is read by people who are running another country, but need the baseball score.
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Todays Quote,
People that are really very weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history."...Governor George W. Bush
You said it George!
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From CBS Interview
Volunteers
by mcjoan
Tue Jan 16, 2007
I was on a plane Sunday night, so mercifully was spared the dilemma of whether I should watch Bush on 60 Minutes. Instead, I get to read what others are saying about it, and in doing so, came across this part of the interview posted at the MoJo Blog:
A telling moment in the interview (this one's not in the transcript, perhaps because it was not in the formal sitdown session) came when Pelley asked Bush whether multiple deployments, two, three, four of them for some, were fair to the troops and their families. Bush answered saying, "this military is motivated," (meaning, and I'm guessing here, that soldiers are more than happy to leave their families and return again and again to Iraq?).
But the toll it's taking on soldiers, pushed Pelley, who then referenced Bush's brief service in the National Guard:
Pelley: In Vietnam as you know, you served 365 and you were done.
Bush: This is a different situation. This is a volunteer army. In Vietnam, it was, ‘We’re going to draft you and you’re going to go for a year.'
Well, for George Bush it most definitely was not "We're going to draft you and you're going for a year." It was, "Your Daddy's a Congressman? Well, sure you can 'volunteer' and 'serve' with the Texas Air National Guard. When you feel like showing up, that is."
So let's do a little compare and contrast exercise with volunteering for service in George Bush's world. Here's his own experience:
It was May 27, 1968, at the height of the Vietnam War. Bush was 12 days away from losing his student deferment from the draft at a time when Americans were dying in combat at the rate of 350 a week. The unit Bush wanted to join offered him the chance to fulfill his military commitment at a base in Texas. It was seen as an escape route from Vietnam by many men his age, and usually had a long waiting list.
Bush had scored only 25 percent on a "pilot aptitude" test, the lowest acceptable grade. But his father was then a congressman from Houston, and the commanders of the Texas Guard clearly had an appreciation of politics.
Bush was sworn in as an airman the same day he applied. His commander, Col. Walter B. "Buck" Staudt, was apparently so pleased to have a VIP's son in his unit that he later staged a special ceremony so he could have his picture taken administering the oath, instead of the captain who actually had sworn Bush in. Later, when Bush was commissioned a second lieutenant by another subordinate, Staudt again staged a special ceremony for the cameras, this time with Bush's father the congressman – a supporter of the Vietnam War – standing proudly in the background....
Among the questions Bush had to answer on his application forms was whether he wanted to go overseas. Bush checked the box that said: "do not volunteer."
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U.S. Unit Patrolling Baghdad Sees Flaws in Bush Strateg
From The Washington PostBy Sudarsan Raghavan

A few hours before another mission into the cauldron of Baghdad, Spec. Daniel Caldwell’s wife instant-messaged him Thursday morning. President Bush, Kelly wrote, wanted to send more than 20,000 U.S. troops and extend deployments in Iraq. Eight weeks pregnant, she was worried.
Caldwell, a tall, lean 20-year-old from Montesano, Wash., wondered whether he would miss the birth of his child. He walked outside and joined his comrades of Apache Company, 1st Battalion, 23rd Infantry Regiment, Stryker Brigade. They, too, had heard the news.
Moments before he stepped into his squad’s Stryker — a large, bathtub-shaped vehicle encased in a cage — Caldwell echoed a sentiment shared by many in his squad: "They’re kicking a dead horse here. The Iraqi army can’t stand up on their own."
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The Texas Strategy By Paul Krugman The New York Times
Monday 15 January 2007
Hundreds of news articles and opinion pieces have described President Bush's decision to escalate the Iraq war as a "Hail Mary pass."
But that's the wrong metaphor.
Mr. Bush isn't Roger Staubach, trying to pull out a win for the Dallas Cowboys. He's Charles Keating, using other people's money to keep Lincoln Savings going long after it should have been shut down - and squandering the life savings of thousands of investors, not to mention billions in taxpayer dollars, along the way.
The parallel is actually quite exact. During the savings and loan scandal of the 1980s, people like Mr. Keating kept failed banks going by faking financial success. Mr. Bush has kept a failed war going by faking military success.
The "surge" is just another stalling tactic, designed to buy more time.
Oh, and one of the favorite techniques used by the owners of savings and loan associations to generate phony profits - it involved making high-interest loans to crooked or flaky real estate developers - came to be known as the "Texas strategy."
What was the point of the Texas strategy? Bank owners were certainly gambling - with other people's money, of course - in the hope of a miraculous recovery that would bail out their negative balance sheets.
But the real point of the racket was a form of looting: as long as they could keep reporting high paper profits, S.&L. owners could keep rewarding themselves with salaries, dividends and sweetheart business deals.
Mr. Keating paid himself a million dollars just weeks before his holding company collapsed.
Which brings us to Iraq. The administration has spent the last three years pretending that its splendid little war isn't a big disaster. There have been the bromides (we're making "good progress"); the promises (we have a "strategy for victory"); and, as always, attacks on the media for not reporting the good news from Iraq.
Who you gonna believe, the president or your lying eyes?
Now Mr. Bush has grudgingly sort- of admitted that things aren't going well - but he says his "new way forward" will fix everything.
So it's still the Texas strategy: the war's architects are trying to keep their failed venture going as long as possible.
The Hail Mary aspect - the off chance that somehow, things really will turn out all right - is the least of their motivations. The real intent is a form of looting. I'm not talking mainly about old-fashioned war profiteering, although there is no question that profiteering is taking place on an epic scale. No, I'm saying that the hawks want to keep this war going because it's to their personal and political benefit.
True, Mr. Bush can't win another election with phony claims of success in Iraq, the way he did in 2004. But escalation buys him another year or two to claim that we're making progress - and it gives him another chance to prove that he's the Decider, beyond accountability.
And as for pundits who promoted the war and are now trying to sell the surge: for a little while longer they can be Very Important People who have the president's ear.
Meanwhile, the nation pays the price. The heaviest burden - in death, shattered bodies, broken families and ruined careers - falls on those who serve. To find the personnel for the Bush escalation, the Pentagon must lengthen deployments in Iraq and shorten training time at home.
And the back-door draft has become a life sentence: there is no limit on the cumulative amount of time citizen-soldiers can be required to serve on active duty. Mama, don't let your children grow up to be reservists.
The rest of us will pay a financial price for the hundreds of billions squandered in Iraq and, more important, a price in reduced security.
Escalation won't bring victory in Iraq, but it might bring defeat in Afghanistan, which the administration will continue to neglect. And it has pushed the military to the breaking point.
Mr. Bush calls his critics "irresponsible," saying that they don't have an alternative to his strategy. But they do: setting a timetable for withdrawal, so that we can cut our losses, and trying to save what can be saved. It isn't a strategy for victory because that's no longer an option. It's a strategy for acknowledging reality.
The lesson of the savings and loan scandal was that when a bank has failed, you shouldn't let the owner string you along with promises - you should shut the thing down. We should do the same with Mr. Bush's failed war.