A tip of the hat to Arthur Gilroy, whose recent words of inspiration so eloquently expressed a hope that our collective thoughts in the blogosphere may have significant meaning.
I read the whole Iraq Study Group Report. I preface my remarks with this qualifier because Tony Snow made such a fuss about it yesterday, as David Gregory from MSNBC was drilling him.
GREGORY: [The report says] stay the course is no longer viable. The current approach is not working. The situation is grave and deteriorating. . . . Can this report be seen as anything other than a rejection of this President’s handling of the war?
FOX NEWS SPOKESPERSON FOR THE FREE WORLD (hereafter SNOWJOB): Absolutely. And I think you need to read the report.
GREGORY: I have.
SNOWJOB: You’ve read the whole report?
GREGORY: No. I’ve gone through a lot of the recommendations.
SNOWJOB: Well, I’ve read the whole report.
Well la-dee-fucking-da. Snowjob has read the whole report. And Bush has been on this game plan for months. Next fucking question.
Watch the clip if you’d like. It’s fucking instructive on how the neo-con reality is in no way related to anything in the real world. Our government is a Fox News re-run, looped in a cycle that is approximately seventy-two hours in duration, as far as I can tell, interrupted by NFL games and 30-minute epidsodes of talentless singing, dancing and/or suitcase selection (whatever the fuck that show is about — and when did fucking Howie Mandel go all Telly Savalas).
The reality is, a kid I fucking knew pretty well, is getting shipped off to fucking Ramadi in January where he will face random threats to his life from bullets and high-explosives, and he may die at a young age, thus ending his personal evolutionary viability for. . . .
For what exactly? Not a goddamned thing. There is nothing left. But platitudes and hollow reports about prospects for victory and defeat, with really lame or non-existent definitions for success or failure. A sound and fucking fury signifying absolutely nothing. Except dead kids. Theirs and ours.
And make no mistake. The forecast calls for dead kids. It doesn’t rain men anymore. That was so ’80s. It is going to be a continuing drizzle of our dead children, and a blizzard of dead Iraqi men, women and children. But you can’t do much about the weather.
And like predicting weather, you might as well buy a magic fucking 8-ball. It would give you a better idea about how many more plots to open up in Arlington. My god those white crosses are going to look good to some kids on a field trip a hundred years from now. All symmetrical and pure. Probably inspire a few of them into the folly of their own day, where they can end their own lives prematurely for no fucking reason.
Which is why I am personally nominating the Magic Fucking 8-Ball (“Fucking” is its full middle name, for those of you who may think I’m dropping the f-bomb for effect, and I’ve been told that you must use full middle names in making such nominations) for the post of Special Military Advisor to the Batshit Loopy President of the United States of America.
8-Ball will not lead us astray. And at some point, his little octogonal heart, floating in a bluish fluid (a liquid that will undoubdetly remind the former-booze-hound commander-in-chimp of a curacao-flavored cocktail from days gone by), will randomly tell the boy king to immediately end this war.
I mean, I could provide some simple common sense wisdom to the Smirking Emperor. Something that would tell any non-medicated human to end this disaster of his own making. A short bit of advice I learned from my father.
Son, when you find that you’ve dug yourself into a hole, the first thing you’ve got to do is stop digging.
Fuck. Such homespun bullshit might actually resonate with those few nuerons (the hearty brain cells that allow Bush to perform tasks which require only limited mental functioning, like clearing brush, choking on pretzels, and running down foriegn security officers with his mountain bike) that miraculously survived his self-medicating days as a fratboy and cheerleader at Yale.
And I’d be a hell of an advisor, too. Because way back in 2002, with no security clearance and only Internet access available at any public library, I was able to understand that 1) Sadaam had no WMD, and that 2) Iraq was not responsible for the al Qaeda attacks on 9/11. Better, using the same tools, and within just a month of the invasion, I was able to understand that absent a brutal dictator like Sadaam, the three major factions in Iraq were either going to fight one helluva war amongst themselves until some factions were wiped out, or until the country was partitioned. I was also able to say with some confidence that 2-3 U.S. soldiers would die every day, until we just left, and let Iraq settle back to whatever end is going to come. I’m sorry to say I was right about that one. But the number is at the low end of the range I predicted, and if you asked me today, I’d tell you I think the rate is going to rise some over the next four years of war.
Despite my uncanny ability to forsee this fucking calamity (an ability that, when I’ve had the audacity to demonstrate it in public by holding up really radical signs, reading things like “Peace Now,” has gotten me heckled, threatened, flipped-off, and flimed by my government), I will not seek the nomination for Special Military Advisor to the Batshit Loopy President of the United States of America. And though my predictive abilities have been far in excess those displayed by any member of the Iraq Study Group panel, I will not accept the position of Special Military Advisor to the Batshit Loopy President of the United States of America, even if I am drafted to fill it.
But with the Flying Spaghetti Monster as my witness, I hope that someone will second the nomination of Magic F. 8-Ball for this post. Because he’ll get us out of this fucking war eventually. And that is more than I can say for the proposal of the Iraq Study Group.
In the nine-months during which the ISG has pondered the problem, 2-3 soldiers, on average, keep on dying every day. And 50-100 Iraqis a day, on average. And it will stop only when we leave, and Iraq finds its bloody equilibrium. The equilibrium that we destroyed. For no fucking reason. The ISG plan will end us up in 2008. And we’ll be just like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. The alarm will go off. We’ll wake up and read more reports about bombs and deaths. We’ll get the same phone calls, about shipping out for a war. There will still be empty platitudes about victory and success. And handwringing about how we can’t just leave those poor Iraqis to fend for themselves. Oh the instability we will have created in the world if we pull out now. Just try a little harder. A little longer. And wake up tomorrow, and do it all over again.
FUCKING NEWSFLASH! BREAKING, MR. DRUDGE. This is over. We’ve wrought destruction. No amount of super glue is going to put fucking Humpty-Dumpty back together again. This is Bush’s failure. Own it. And end it. Or re-live it again and again and again.
I’ve read the full report, Snowjob. And I’m not impressed.
Also available in orange.
Thanks AG. You pulled the cork on a rant. That’s always fun.
Beautifully done, BostonJoe. A truly fine rant. Thank you.
Personally, I’d second your nomination, as the Magic Fucking 8-Ball would be uniquely suited to the position.
Not only does it offer answers in helpful monosyllables, but it shares the administration’s humanist perspective.
Ah-ha-ha-ha!
I suppose I could give in and just start saying things like ROFLOA. But, I can’t debase the written word so. So:
Ah-ha-ha-ha! M.F. 8-Ball would fit perfectly on his staff really. Probably get the medal of freedom and everything. And be very compatible with the chimp.
The only setback to their relationship being that Bush doesn’t read — ergo the 8 Ball’s observations would have to be read for him & interpreted in a sufficiently friendly manner.
Speaking of friendly interpretation, note the following current opinion from David Corn at The Nation, re Gates confirmation:
‘Course, ‘you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows’.
Oh god. Now I’m going to have to pay Corn royalties or soemthing.
Or maybe, he would accept my apologies if I call him and say, “Great minds think alike,” wink, wink, nod, nod.
Ah-ha-ha-ha!
Not to worry — the Magic Fucking 8 Ball belongs to us all & we all stand behind it.
I nominate MacGyver, who I hear can do almost anything with a Magic F’ing 8 ball.
I’m sufficiently pop-culture attenuated to distinguish whether this is a reference to MacGyver’s ability to use everyday objects for great effect, or a reference to an actor’s coke problem. I’m so old that it took me a minute to ensure that MacGyver was not the guy with the car named K.I.T.T., and I’m still not positive.
But I’ve got the sneaking suspicion what you said was funny, until I overanalyzed it to death with this post.
man you write a great rant. With humor non the less. I wish I could do this and get away with it. Back to therapy. and anger management classes I go….teehee.
Seriously though, I just wanted to smack that fucking smirk right off SnowJob’s face yesterday when he tried to humiliate Gregory. What an ass. I am also going to keep bringing this up. The news conference yesterday with the ISG was stacked with Fox reporters. You can even hear one of the panel breing it up towards the end.Anyone have a transcript?
I don’t know about a transcript. But I swear, if I were in the room with some of these guys. Bush with his, “That’s not what I asked, I asked how’s your boy.” And Snow with the smarmy, “Well I read it.” They just didn’t get their arses beat enough when they were young. I’m convinced of it. Because after you smart off a few times and get clubbed real good, you figure out how to be relatively polite (even if your as dumb as dubya).
When did you get that signature line. That actually made me laugh out loud. Just a little hiss of a laugh, because I’m not bucking for anyone to commit me, and I’m trying to avoid letting out large bursts of laughter as I watch the world go slowly insane on my 14″ flat screen monitor.
has been there for probably over a year now. I bought a tshirt with that on it and loved it so much that I changed my sig line.
My wildest fanatasy included Bush and me spitting in his face.I know, I know, I need to get a life.
I guess I don’t really read them, but I just saw that, and it made me laugh. Now that I’m thinking on it, maybe I’ve read it before, and even laughed or commented before.
I swear. I am having some early memory loss. But it makes life interesting.
I dunno about the dreaming of getting Bush thing. Seems to me like more people should be in that kind of mood. Impeach him. Screw the whining people talking about the political consequences. They impeached Clinton over lying about sex. Come on. Fair is fair.
BJ…I really agree with you. There is absolutely no reason the Congress cannot do more than one thing at a time. These cowards cannot pass bills and hold this misadministration fully responsible for the high crimes they have committed against humanity? Maybe if they worked five days a week like everyone else they could get more done.
Have you no sense of viable plan for Iraq, sir. At long last, have you left no viable plans?
I nominate the quarter in my pocket. Heads/tails, it’s just about as responsive as your 8-ball, but without the fancy blue fluid.
Okay. We can go coin. But you’re going to have to be the one to train the dumb son of a gun how to make the flipping motion with his thumb.
I nominate my Ouija board… it told me I was a princess in a past life.
I think your board has a slow second hand. I always thought you were a princess in this life.
Yeah, but nobody pays any attention. I try and try to tell people to refer to me as Her Royal Highness the Princess Spider of Leaf, but nada.
So all I’ve got to hang onto at this point is my past lives unfortunately.
Nobody pays attention to me either. But I figure if I keep offereing sound advice, and continue to wander around with my right hand across my abdomen, tucked into my lapel, some day, someone will crown me as the next short ruler of the Holy Roman Empire.
BJ, you and I both woke to the same drummer today. I hate to use bad words, but you nailed it truly.
I am just so furious that they have tried to do it again to us, that I can hardly tolerate much of anything else. To have listened to this unintelligent man speak is getting on my last nerve, and I mean it is bush I speak of..well, snow too, for that matter. I can not get beyond the unintelligent ppl in our government that try to make themselves look so important. They are absolute fools if ever there was any. Thanks for your rant….hugs
I just couldn’t not right about this stupidity. And I think I cussed enough for both of us. š
I nominate YOU, BostonJoe! Your “Advice to a batshit loopy prez” series had the best advice possible at the time, most of which still rings as true and funny as it was at the time.
With you AND the MF8ball, how could Batshit Loopy go wrong?
As I said, I would refuse such a nomination. I would send a more qualified blueneck in my stead, so long as you promised not to get shot as you campaigned for such duty.
Oh, well, I’m left with a “Draft BostonJoe” option at least…
I can’t do it, I would definitely get shot because I’m way too liberal for the Al-CIA-da and the BFEE and the Bilderbergers and the CFR and the Trilateral Commission and the MIC and the Freemasons and the Federal Reserve Owners and Operators and the Pope, too. And I’m not really ‘qualified’ in the eyes of the MSM cartel, anyway.
Excellent post, BJ. Groundhog Day it truly is – not just because of the daily violence and casualties, but also because the Preznit keeps on waking up each day and repeating the same lines he used the day before…
In your earlier, linked, post you said something about ‘the warm buzz of a boilermaker’. Is this a colloquial Americanism that us furriners don’t follow?
I’m quite sure you’ve got a “boilermaker” at a local pub near you (you probably call it a “flaming roo” or something). In the industrial Midwest, it is a blue-collar drink, not infrequently smacked down after a long shift. A shot glass of whiskey dropped into a cold mug of beer, and customarily slugged down in one gulp, to get the after work party started.
Are you sure you want to let bush get his hands on the Magic Fucking 8-Ball?
You know that he will break it too…