Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

The sun rose, Seattle was cloudy, and another Bush official was revealed as an incompetent fuckwit:

The former commander of U.S. forces in Iraq took aim at Bernard Kerik in an exclusive interview with the Daily News Sunday, calling his efforts to train Iraqi police in 2003 "a waste of time and effort."

Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the top military leader in Iraq from June 2003 to June 2004, blasted the former police commissioner for failing to produce results while Kerik was the interim minister of interior in 2003. "I would be hard-pressed to identify a major national-level success that his organization accomplished in that time," Sanchez told The News a day before his new memoir, "Wiser in Battle" hits bookstores nationwide.

"He is a very energetic guy. He is very confident - overconfident to an extent - and he is very superficial in his understanding of the requirements of his job," Sanchez said. "His whole contribution was a waste of time and effort."

[snip]

"They'd get tips and they'd go and actually raid a whorehouse," Sanchez told The News. "Their focus becomes trying to do tactical police operations in the city of Baghdad, when in fact there is a much greater mission that they should be doing, which is training the police."

No surprises on all three counts. If you could find a really dim bookie, you could probably make millions on betting that anyone Bush touts as competent and qualified will be neither.

Speaking of no surprises, I was wondering when we'd get around to reliving Watergate:

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA – In two states where US attorneys are already under fire for serious allegations of political prosecutions, seven people associated with three federal cases have experienced 10 suspicious incidents including break-ins and arson.

These crimes raise serious questions about possible use of deliberate intimidation tactics not only because of who the victims are and the already wide criticism of the prosecutions to begin with, but also because of the suspicious nature of each incident individually as well as the pattern collectively. Typically burglars do not break-into an office or private residence only to rummage through documents, for example, as is the case with most of the burglaries in these two federal cases.

In Alabama, for instance, the home of former Democratic Governor Don Siegelman was burglarized twice during the period of his first indictment. Nothing of value was taken, however, and according to the Siegelman family, the only items of interest to the burglars were the files in Siegelman's home office.

Siegelman's attorney experienced the same type of break-in at her office.

I'm not usually much of a conspiracy theorist, but considering the circumstances, considering the pattern The Raw Story put together, and considering the cavalier disregard of the law the Bush Administration has displayed, I think this one's worth pursuing.

Fucking depressing, innit? We need a change o' pace. Up for some fun? You can go sign a petition telling McCain and Clinton exactly what you think of their pandering:

Dear Senator Clinton and Senator McCain,

Please stop insulting the intelligence of the American people with pointless gas tax scams.

Soaring gas prices are not something we can solve with a cheap gimmick. Gas prices are high because people around the world are using lots of gas including rising demand in developing nations like China and India. Prices are high because oil is a limited resource and production is
limited, because of speculation on Wall Street, and instability in the Middle East. Gimmicks won't change any of that.

Oh, and I'd just like to add an addendum: "Dear Clinton and McCain, you can kiss my elite ass."