Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

My darlings, we're not just having happy hour, we're having a fiesta. There's just too much delicious controversy today. Pour your poison and gather 'round.

For those of you who worry about celebrating while Iraq continues to slip-slide into chaos and death, fear not! For our glorious Vice President Dick "Darth" Cheney has declared all is going "swimmingly":

Today, Vice President Cheney appeared on The Paul Gallow Show in Mississippi. During the interview, he and the host lamented the media’s alleged bias in its Iraq coverage, suggesting that they should cover more good news — such as the Disneyland-style amusement park being developed for Baghdad:

GALLOW: You know, I look at this, and every once in a
while, we’ll see a story, Mr. Vice President, things like an amusement park opens in Iraq or in Baghdad, which is totally counter to what we’re hearing over here, as far as the marketplaces being open, the schools, and things such as
that. But I saw a story several weeks ago about an amusement center maybe over there, and I’m thinking this is not what you get in today’s media.

CHENEY: No, that’s true. It’s — what gets covered obviously is bad news. That’s — you know, if everything is going swimmingly, then that’s not news, so it doesn’t get the kind of attention.

Darn those reporters and their penchant for reporting things like bombings, battles, and casualties! Really, everything's going swimmingly! Those are just isolated incidents! Would we really be building an amusement park in Iraq if it was all that dangerous? Of course not! So things are obviously great! Look - there's McCain's pony!!!

They may think they've found McCain's elusive pony, but they have bugger-all to show in their quest to tie Iranian weapons to Iraq:

A plan to show some alleged Iranian-supplied explosives to journalists last week in Karbala and then destroy them was canceled after the United States realized none of them was from Iran. A U.S. military spokesman attributed the confusion to a misunderstanding that emerged after an Iraqi Army general in Karbala erroneously reported the items were of Iranian origin.

When U.S. explosives experts went to investigate, they discovered they were not Iranian after all.

Heh heh heh whoops.

You'll note that U.S. officials are frantically trying to pawn the blame off on those damned ignorant Iraqis. They don't want you to pay attention to the man behind the curtain:

There was something interesting missing from Maj. Gen. Kevin Bergner's introductory remarks to journalists at his regular news briefing in Baghdad on Wednesday: the word "Iran," or any form of it. It was especially striking as Bergner, the U.S. military spokesman here, announced the extraordinary list of weapons and munitions that have been uncovered in recent weeks since fighting erupted between Iraqi and U.S. security forces and Shiite militiamen.

[snip]

Not once did Bergner point the finger at Iran for any of these weapons and munitions, which is a striking change from just a couple of weeks ago when U.S. military officials here and at the Pentagon were saying that caches found in Basra in particular had revealed Iranian-made arms manufactured as recently as this year. They say the majority of rockets being fired at U.S. bases, including Baghdad's Green Zone, are launched by militiamen receiving training, arms and other aid from Iran.

Yes, a couple of weeks ago, it was the Pentegon and U.S. military officials in Iraq who were bleating about Iran's bad behavior. Now they want you to believe they were misled by Iraqis. I call bullshit. This stinks of pathetic attempts at scapegoating and a strong desire to rewrite reality. Good fucking luck, boys. Even if the Iraqi Army had been the only group pushing that fantasy, you're the ones who trained 'em, armed 'em, and indoctrinated 'em. This spectacular fuck-up is yours start to finish.

Speaking of spectacular fuck-ups, RFE/RL analyst Daniel Kimmage just got the boot from the good ol' Bush government. You may ask why this matters? Who the fuck is Daniel Kimmage, anyway? Well, he analyzes al-Queda's internet operations, using the original Arabic sources:

The relevance of his work has grown along with the general appreciation of the importance of information operations to al-Qaeda's strategy, and a sense (rightly or wrongly) that the internet is a central front in this battle. Just a few days ago, State Department Coordinator of the Office for Counter-terrorism Dell L. Dailey stated that "terrorists consider information operations a principle part of their effort, use the Internet for propaganda, recruiting, fundraising, and increasingly for training. It has made the Internet a virtual safe haven." So understanding how that works has got to be a top priority, right? Especially given the widely noted shortage of analysts with Arabic language skills?

Right. His job's obviously vital, there's not enough of him, he's doing a competent job, even a raving dumbshit with only one and a half neurons would agree he's an asset, and that of course means...

That's right: the US government is cutting loose one of its best analysts of al-Qaeda's use of the internet in order to save money which doesn't even amount to a rounding error in the Pentagons budget. Whether it's because of the fall of the dollar or because of the costs of Iraq, or more narrowly because of the Broadcasting Board of Governors need to pay the bills of the al-Hurra TV white elephant, this speaks volumes about both our real resource constraints and our real priorities.

Riiiiight.

But what else can we expect from a government run by the kind of people who hate Mother's Day?

It was already shaping up to be a difficult year for congressional Republicans. Now, on the cusp of Mother's Day, comes this: A majority of the House GOP has voted against motherhood.

On Wednesday afternoon, the House had just voted, 412 to 0, to pass H. Res. 1113, "Celebrating the role of mothers in the United States and supporting the goals and ideals of Mother's Day," when Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), rose in protest.

"Mr. Speaker, I move to reconsider the vote," he announced.

Rep. Kathy Castor (D-Fla.), who has two young daughters, moved to table Tiahrt's request, setting up a revote. This time, 178 Republicans cast their votes against mothers.

I know. I can't hardly believe it either. Of all the batshit insane things the Republicons have done in the last eight years, none of them really prepared me for voting down mothers in an election year.

When asked to explain why 178 Republicons switched their votes to hate on moms, House Minority Leader John Boehner said breezily, "Oh, we just wanted to make sure that everyone was on record in support of Mother's Day."

What.

The.

Fuck.

You go "on record in support of Mother's Day" by voting against it?

That's how you show your support for moms? Really? Wow. That explains a lot about why the Republicons claim to luuurrrrvvveee America sooooo much more than that meanie evil Dems, and yet continue to sodomize her with glee. They're living in Opposite-Land.

Reality really is too much to ask of these people.