Happy Hour Discurso

Today's opining on the public discourse.

If the transitions herein make no sense, please keep in mind that this nocturnal person has been hijacked into a day schedule and is operating on about 3 hours of sleep. I go back to nights next week.

Next week seems a really loooong way away.

But not quite as long as the Bush regime, which at this point feels like it's going to last for another million years. Let's see what kind of fuckery they've been up to today.

Oh, I see they're trying to walk Prime Minister Maliki like a dog:

First, a rather odd statement released by U.S. Central Command on the Maliki government’s behalf suggesting Maliki was “misunderstood and mistranslated” — but the statement only came after the Bush administration leaned on Maliki’s office to help put a lid on this public-relations disaster for Bush and McCain.

But Maliki and his staff keep slipping the leash:

Ali al-Dabbagh, the spokesperson for the Maliki government in Iraq, has had an interesting couple of days. After Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki endorsed Barack Obama’s withdrawal policy, it was Dabbagh who was forced to argue that the quotes attributed to Maliki were “not accurate,” even though they were entirely accurate.

The back-and-forth nature of the discussion led some to an awkward dynamic: the Iraqi government supports a U.S. withdrawal, but the Bush administration has explained to Iraqi officials that they’re not supposed
to support a U.S. withdrawal.

This morning, to help resolve any ambiguities, Dabbagh endorsed Obama’s timetable, too.

And so John McCain, to help out his buddy Bush, decided to explain to Maliki via the American media what Iraq really wants:

Given reality, the fact that the Maliki government wants a U.S. withdrawal timetable and has endorsed Barack Obama’s Iraq policy by name would seem to be bad news for John McCain and his presidential campaign. But the presumptive Republican nominee has a trump card to get himself out of inconvenient jams like these: “I’m John McCain.”

Take this morning’s appearance on NBC’s “Today” show, for example.

[snip]

Meredith Vieira asked McCain, “[I]f the Iraqi government were to say — if you were President — we want a timetable for troops being to removed, would you agree with that?” McCain responded, “I have been there too many times. I’ve met too many times with him, and I know what they want.”

Got that? The prime minister of Iraq and the Iraqi people may seem to want U.S. troops out of their country, but John McCain has been to Iraq and he “knows what they want.”

I knew McCain was going to have a rough time wriggling out of this one - I mean, it's quite a lot of egg he took in the face, what with the Iraqis endorsing Obama's Iraq strategy over his - but I thought he'd come up with something a little more clever. This strategy's bold, yes. Bold and incredibly stupid.

It's almost as stupid as what the wingnuts are saying to try to get around the fact that the Iraqis would really like their country back soon:

As I've mentioned before, Maliki, of the Shiite Dawa Party which opposed the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq in the first place, has long-standing ties to Iran and Syria — and has expressed support for Hezbollah. The only thing that surprises me about this story is that anyone is surprised.

[snip]

Notice: No credit to or thanks for the efforts and sacrifices of the United States and our armed forces, much less the surge. In fact, Maliki's major observation about American troops, other than that he wants them out of Iraq "as soon as possible," is that he wants the power to prosecute them for "offences or crimes committed by US soldiers against our population" — a major sticking point in negotiations over a status of forces agreement.

Well, that's an interesting argument. They're trying to say Maliki's got no right to say what he says cuz his party opposed a foreign invasion of their country, they have a relationship with their neighbors, and they're not grateful enough for the rampant destruction and exploitation of their country and citizens freedom we gave them. And imagine the nerve of demanding the right to prosecute invaders for crimes against the citizens!11!!!1!

If this is all they've got to counter with, they're in pretty bad shape. The sad thing is, at least 28% of the country listens to this drivel.

I'd ask Bill O'Reilly what he thinks about this, because it's sure to be entertaining in a teeth-grinding, makes-you-want-to-slap-him-upside-the-head kind of way. But he's a little too distracted by Gore's unexpected visit to the Netroots Nation convention:

On his radio show today, O’Reilly claimed that Gore was now associating himself with the most “hateful group in the country.” “And I’m including the Nazis and the Klan in here,” said O’Reilly.” He then claimed that attending Netroots Nation was “the same as if he stepped into the Klan gathering”:

O’REILLY: Al Gore now is done. He’s done. Ok. He is not a man of respect, he doesn’t have any judgment. The fact that he went to this thing is the same as if he stepped into the Klan gathering. It’s the same. No difference. None. K, he loses all credibility with me. All credibility.

[snip]

But O’Reilly exposes the hyperbolic shallowness of his name calling when he claims that “these Daily Kos people” are worse than “the Nazis and the Klan,” but then assures his audience that they won’t “come to your house and hurt you.”

Note to O’Reilly: The Nazis and the Klan actually hurt people.

America's neocons, ladies and gentlemen. An endless font of raging stupidity, bloodlust, and whining. I'm sure Al Gore is just devastated he's lost all credibility with them.