Well, You Saw This Coming

The Nameless One weighs in on South Ossetia.

Vice President Dick Cheney says Russia's military actions in Georgia "must not go unanswered."

Cheney spoke Sunday afternoon with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili. "The vice president expressed the United States' solidarity with the Georgian people and their democratically elected government in the face of this threat to Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Cheney's press secretary, Lee Ann McBride, said.

Cheney told Saakashvili "Russian aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as the broader international community," McBride said.

What pray tell, with our ground troops a tad busy at the moment, should our answer be Mister Vice President? A shooting war with Russia? He's on the McSame page as McSame, while Obama is pointing out Bush's lack of diplomacy with Russia led to the fact we can't do a damn thing about this.

And what the hell is Condi Rice doing through all this? Isn't she supposed to be our Russia expert? How incompetent can you get, when the SecState is a RUSSIA EXPERT and missed this little powder keg?

The Guardian newspaper goes over what's next for the region, which is A) status quo antebellum, B) war spreads to other parts of Georgia and another breakaway province or two or C) the Ukraine gets involved, and we have a shooting war between multiple former Soviet republics. So far, it's looking like Option B is happening now.

There's not much we can do. We have no diplomatic or military stick to wield right now without Russia going "Hey assholes, IRAQ" to our faces and continuing to bitchslap the Georgian Army around. Again, this is what the Bushies have brought us. McSame wants to up the stakes here, Nameless One style.

At this point, everything's up to how far Russia feels like going with this.

And our President Bush? He's letting Nameless and Condi run the shop while he's busy playing beach volleyball.

Yeah, we're screwed.

PS: The Iraqis Are Encouraging The Terrorists

...because they want a timeline for withdrawal. Now.

Clearly Obama and the Iraqis are working together because both the Iraqis and the Democrats are trying to legislate defeat and...umm wait...Ya know it would be a shame if anything happened to the Iraqi Foreign Minister. Clearly the terrorists would want to attack him for working with the Americans and trying to get them out of Ira...errm no, um...because he was giving in to demands of the enemy of the Iraqis, the Iraqi govern....no dammit! Umm...he's a Sunni and the Sunnis want the Americans to stay forever unlike the Sh...oh screw it, OBAMA IS A SCARY BLACK MAN BOOGA BOOGA SLEEP WITH YOUR DAUGHTER AND MAKE LITTLE MOCHA BABIES THAT HATE AMERICA AND DO TERRORIST FIST BUMPS AND HE'S ELITIST FOR GOING TO HAWAII WHEN YOU CAN'T BECAUSE IT'S NOT LIKE HAWAII IS AMERICA RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

What's the Why in South Ossetia?

The question people are asking now about the conflict in Georgia is "Why?" Why did the Russians come down like an Iowa tornado on Georgian troops?

There are two theories. One, the other, or both may be correct.

Theory one is that Russia is going after the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which is the main moneymaker for the Central Asian former Soviet Republics to make money by delivering oil to the Med...oil that does NOT go through Russia. The West has been funding this project for 15 years now, and BP owns the pipeline.

Much like Russia continues to fund Communist Cuba on America's doorstep, we're trying to give Georgia an economic boost into capitalism. About 1/3 of the pipeline runs through Georgia. It's all about the oil.

Theory two is that it's not all about the oil, but the fact the Russians aren't going to put up with any more Kosovo situations. Sick of the West funneling arms and equipment into places like Georgia and setting up pro-Western dictators like Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, the Georgians thought the US would back them up if they made a play for South Ossetia. NATO made Kosovo off limits to the Russians and REALLY pissed them off. They have decided that it will not happen again. NATO will not claim Georgia.

The Georgians were wrong. The proxy war led to the proxy being smashed by the Russians. We left them out in the storm just like we did with the Iraqi Kurds, who got smashed by Turkey.

One, the other, or both may be correct. For theory one to be correct, Russia would have to occupy Georgia. This may be the beginning of a series of "annexations", the stuff of nightmares in the region, and the US being involved in yet another war.

But Russia may opt to do the same thing to send a message to the US on theory two...get your pro-Western governments off our back yard. This is our turf. We're daring you to do something about it. Theory two also looks strong. I think it's both economic and political, as they are often tied together with oil being involved.

Considering NATO is tied up in Afghanistan and the US is tied up in Iraq, Russia clearly feels it can operate with impunity in the region, and is feeling pretty burly right now.

The United States on Sunday accused Russia of trying to overthrow the government of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, where Russian troops have been battling Georgian forces over the breakaway territory of South Ossetia.

At an emergency session of the United Nations' Security Council, the U.S. alleged Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili "must go."

"This is completely unacceptable and crosses a line," said the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Zalmay Khalilzad, who made the allegation.

In a crackling exchange of a type rarely seen since the end of the Cold War, Khalilzad asked Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin whether the Russians were seeking "regime change" in Georgia with the military operation they launched Friday.

In response, Churkin objected to the disclosure of a confidential phone call between top diplomats and said "regime change" was "an American expression."

The Russians are now playing hardball with Georgia and with the West. They've seen the US get away with Iraq and Afghanistan now for years. Now it's their turn. This is what the Bush Doctrine has wrought upon realpolitik. Again, they are daring the world to do something about it. There's little it can do, frankly. The rapid expansion of NATO into Russia's turf has clearly been viewed as a hostile act. Russia has moved swiftly against Georgia given the excuse of bringing liberty to the Russian people of South Ossetia.

Given that we've got a lame duck President, an election year, and we're militarily tied up, Russia saw the brass ring and went for it. Whether it's for oil or territory or both, they moved.

Will they stop or keep going? Can the world even respond militarily? John McSame wants to clearly antagonize Russia further. But it's not the Georgians who were sent a clear message over the last four days. It was the United States. That message is "Get Out."

This is the inevitable next step in the Bush Doctrine: other powers will see what we did and copy it to their own benefit. McSame promises more of this. I'm not sure if Obama doesn't yet, but I believe McSame would actually be far worse.

McSame McWar McTime

Politics makes for strange bedfellows, and Russian politics seems to make the strangest beds of them all. On the topic of the Russian invasion of Georgia, both President Bush and Barry O are on the same page, asking for calm and diplomacy.

McSame on the other hand seems to think that Georgia was justified to attack Ossetia, but that Russia is *not* justified in attacking Georgia in turn.

When the North Caucasus slid into war Thursday night, it presented John McCain and Barack Obama with a true “3 a.m. moment,” and their responses to the crisis suggested dramatic differences in how each candidate, as president, would lead America in moments of international crisis.

While Obama offered a response largely in line with statements issued by democratically elected world leaders, including President Bush, first calling on both sides to negotiate, John McCain took a remarkably — and uniquely — more aggressive stance, siding clearly with Georgia’s pro-Western leaders and placing the blame for the conflict entirely on Russia.

What pray tell does McSame want us to do to Russia exactly? Is McSame trying to look foolish by saying Georgia is free to bomb the crap out of Ossetia? Or is he trying to look foolish by saying that Russia has no right to have military troops in another sovereign country it has no right to attack, while we're in Iraq and Afghanistan? Or is he trying to look extremely foolish and dangerous by trying to say we should get involved militarily while deep in two wars already?

This is a call not even George W Bush is willing to make. Let's think long and hard about what McSame as Bully-in-Chief would mean for the world with his temper and his disdain of international diplomacy. He actually manages to embody the worst characteristics of both Bush and the Nameless One: a nasty temper and mean personality, a sense of total entitlement, an extreme disconnect from reality bordering of willful ignorance, and the tendency to spout off without thinking.

After 8 years of vicious, vengeful belligerence tempered by bouts of guilt in the White House, we're in danger of trading it in for vicious, vengeful belligerence exacerbated by volcanic bursts of anger.

No matter what you think about Obama, he wins this particular point hands down. There are times for diplomacy and we need a President who understands this, not one who thinks he's the star of a Vince Flynn novel.

Above all this little war needs to be ended by the adults. A couple thousand people have already died and more will follow unless reason breaks out. McSame shouldn't be anywhere near this one.

A free world with that man at the helm is one of unending war, not just in the Middle East, but EVERYWHERE.

VP Joe (A Real American Zero)

I mentioned in passing that Joe F'ckin Lieberman was being kicked around as McSame's Veep, and I'm sad to say the odds of his selection have gone way, way up now.

Joe Lieberman, the former Democratic vice-presidential nominee who has endorsed John McCain, is being vetted as a potential running mate for the Republican presidential hopeful, according to an adviser to Mr McCain’s ­campaign.

Mr Lieberman, who has campaigned for the Arizona senator, has long been ­considered an unconventional but plausible choice for Mr McCain.

Although Democrats have rejected Mr McCain’s image as a maverick politician, Mr Lieberman’s support for the presumptive Republican nominee has, much to the chagrin of his former ­colleagues, helped to boost Mr McCain’s reputation as a bi-partisan legislator with friends on both sides of the aisle. Mr Lieberman, a staunch supporter of Israel, could also help Mr McCain win over Jewish voters.

“[McCain] loves Lieberman. And he is on the [short-]list because Lieberman has never embarrassed anyone, never misspoken. The first rule is, don’t take someone who costs you votes,” said one McCain adviser.

Since Joe F'ckin Lieberman's official job these days is to correct McSame's more idiotic/senile statements in public anyway, just give him the job. You know you want to, Sidney. Team Village Bipartisan Maverick Awesomeness would get so much press love it's not funny.

Then maybe the Dems can happily strip the asshole of his Senate chairmanships and we can get on with it.

And Behind the Curtain...

Raw Story is reporting that new evidence from Ron Suskind backing up his book that reveals how the Nameless One was behind the effort to link Saddam to nukes is compelling stuff.

A forged letter linking Saddam Hussein to the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks was ordered on White House stationery and probably came from the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a new transcript of a conversation with the Central Intelligence Agency's former Deputy Chief of Clandestine Operations Robert Richer.

The transcript was posted Friday by author Ron Suskind of an interview conducted in June. It comes on the heels of denials by both the White House and Richer of a claim Suskind made in his new book, The Way of The World. The book was leaked to Politico's Mike Allen on Monday, and released Tuesday.

There SHOULD be investigations into this, but we live in America. The White House earlier this week tried to ignore the book.

On Tuesday, the White House released a statement on Richer's behalf. In it, Richer declared, "I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document ... as outlined in Mr. Suskind's book."

The denial, however, directly contradicts Richer's own remarks in the transcript.

"Now this is from the Vice President's Office is how you remembered it--not from the president?" Suskind asked.

"No, no, no," Richer replied, according to the transcript. "What I remember is George [Tenet] saying, 'we got this from'--basically, from what George said was 'downtown.'"

"Which is the White House?" Suskind asked.

"Yes," Richer said. "But he did not--in my memory--never said president, vice president, or NSC. Okay? But now--he may have hinted--just by the way he said it, it would have--cause almost all that stuff came from one place only: Scooter Libby and the shop around the vice president."

"But he didn't say that specifically," Richer added. "I would naturally--I would probably stand on my, basically, my reputation and say it came from the vice president."

"But there wasn't anything in the writing that you remember saying the vice president," Suskind continued.

"Nope," Richer said.

"It just had the White House stationery."

"Exactly right."

What will it take, I wonder, for the Democrats to decide to put the Nameless One in the dock for crimes against America and the world? I mean, how bad does it have to be to get back on Nancy's table?

Or would that start to reveal how many Dems were complicit on this? What does the old bastard have up his sleeve? This is brutal stuff here...and not a peep out of Obama, Nancy, or anybody in Congress about yet another effort to lie us into war? Will we ever know? Will President Obama ever decide to look into this whole mess six months from now (should he actually win?)

Does anybody left in America care anymore?

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition

Morning folks. Lot happens overnight.

• Elizabeth Edwards comes clean that she knew about her husband John's affair back in 2006, posting over at Daily Kos.
• Bush wants both sides to stand down in Georgia. Georgia's president meanwhile wants to make the war against Russia official.
• The Police played their final concert ever in NYC last night, with real police backing them up: the NYPD.
• The California Supreme Court calls noncompete contracts unconstitutional.
• The Pakistani Army is not backing up Pervez Musharraf.

If you've got any news items from the last 24, post 'em.

BOING!

That dead cat bounce, it's a funny thing. Dow up 302. Oil drops, the dollar getting stronger. Good, right?

Not if the dollar is strong because other world currencies are taking a beating. Asia is now starting to feel the global slowdown. The greenback looks good now, but as other countries buy less dollars due to their own economic troubles, the dollar will sink, oil will rise, and markets will fall.

The problems behind the slowdown are still there, weak housing, credit crunches, debt explosions and a soft labor market. It'll get worse soon.

Much worse. PS, that $30 drop in oil in 3 weeks? Speculators bailing. What changed in supply and demand from six weeks ago? Nothing that would justify a 20% drop in oil. Unless it was being used as a hedge against the dollar. Lemmings bailed, oil drops as dollar gets stronger.

That'll reverse soon as the world catches up. And oil will go right back up another $30.

Remember, the lowest gas prices in the last two years were during the first week of November 2006...mid-term elections. GOP still lost.

The Poetry Of Politics

Mark Ambinder posits in prose:

If there were a group of questionable donations all with the name Abdullah
that were funneled through a guy in Jordan
who is a Jordanian national
who is under investigation for war profiteering
and it were Barack Obama
instead of John McCain
would this be a bigger deal?

Yes. In fact the scandal in question would be the largest Presidential campaign finance scandal of all time, instead of the most widely ignored Presidential campaign finance scandal of all time.

Heeeeeeeeeeeere's Johnny!

EPIC FAIL.

Former U.S. senator and Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards admitted to an extramarital affair in an interview with ABC News, the network reported Friday. He denied being the father of the woman's child, as had been alleged in tabloid reports.

Speaking to the network for a story to be aired Friday night, Edwards acknowledged the affair with 42-year-old Rielle Hunter, which began after she was hired to make documentary videos for his campaign, ABC said.

He said he has not taken a paternity test, but that the timing of the affair rules out the possibility that he could be her baby girl's father. A former campaign aide has publicly said he fathered the child.

...Well, at least now the wingnuts will leave Obama alone while he's on vacation next week, right?

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan points out MOAR EPIC FAIL.

"I think this President has shown a remarkable disrespect for his office, for the moral dimensions of leadership, for his friends, for his wife, for his precious daughter. It is breathtaking to me the level to which that disrespect has risen," - John Edwards, on Bill Clinton, 1999.

In hindsight, this would have cost him the election. It also would have cost Obama the election if he was Veep if Barry had taken him early. Both options would be leaving us with McCain right now as a shoo-in for President.

Important lesson here, folks. In the end, all politicians will do something stupid, that's why I'm here. Yes, this means Obama too. I'm hoping his support for FISA was the limits of his stupidity.

I doubt it will be.

Krugman Versus The Stupid

Paul Krugman at the NY Times: "Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid."

What I mean, instead, is that know-nothingism — the insistence that there are simple, brute-force, instant-gratification answers to every problem, and that there’s something effeminate and weak about anyone who suggests otherwise — has become the core of Republican policy and political strategy. The party’s de facto slogan has become: “Real men don’t think things through.”

In the case of oil, this takes the form of pretending that more drilling would produce fast relief at the gas pump. In fact, earlier this week Republicans in Congress actually claimed credit for the recent fall in oil prices: “The market is responding to the fact that we are here talking,” said Representative John Shadegg.

What about the experts at the Department of Energy who say that it would take years before offshore drilling would yield any oil at all, and that even then the effect on prices at the pump would be “insignificant”? Presumably they’re just a bunch of wimps, probably Democrats. And the Democrats, as Representative Michele Bachmann assures us, “want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, take light rail to their government jobs.”

Is this political pitch too dumb to succeed? Don’t count on it.

This is what it's all about, and every now and again the Village gets it right. The GOP strategery has been willful ignorance of the facts on the ground as they were busy running about creating their own little reality and expecting everyone else to buy into it out of sheer laziness and cynicism. It is stupidity raised to an art form, the art being the Art of Governance. Keep the people fat, dumb, and happy!

Eight years of this and we're facing a nasty recession, a country that is no longer recognizable as America the free, two wars without end and a third on the way, and a President despised by the world.

Now don't get me wrong, plenty of Democrats contributed to this mess. Some are gone, many are still in the halls of power. And there are plenty of realities that the Democrats choose to willfully ignore.

But with the choice being McSame and Obama, I take Obama. I know exactly what I'm getting with John Sidney McSame. Obama I still have hope for. That hope wavers on days, but it's still there. I have to believe that he can start the healing, and that he has to be better than who we have now.

Krugman ends with this:

In any case, remember this the next time someone calls for an end to partisanship, for working together to solve the country’s problems. It’s not going to happen — not as long as one of America’s two great parties believes that when it comes to politics, stupidity is the best policy.

Next time you hear somebody dump on the Dems for being elitist and condescending and appearing to consider Americans to be dumb, remember the GOP game plan of lying and obfuscation for the last eight years, and actually treating Americans like mindless idiots.

Red, White, And Blackwater

As I pointed out yesterday, the Bushies just executed McSame on Iraq policy with the deal to get out by the end of 2010. Obama's plan? Mid-2010. McSame's plan? Stay forever. But what's the deal with the hold up on the plan?

Turns out it's our old buddies at Blackwater.

Two senior U.S. officials said negotiators have made progress and are close to a deal. But they also said that some issues are unresolved and that troop withdrawals would be tied to conditions on the ground.

The U.S. military presence is spelled out by a U.N. mandate, which is to expire by the end of this year. Iraq and the United States want to replace that mandate with a status-of-forces agreement governing how U.S. troops will operate in Iraq.

The U.S. officials said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke with al-Maliki on Wednesday to try to resolve the issue of legal immunity for U.S. contractors working in Iraq.

The officials described the phone call as tense.

Under a provision put into place in the early days of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq, security contractors have had immunity from Iraqi law.

The Iraqi government has criticized the blanket immunity because of incidents such as the fatal shootings of 17 people in Baghdad's Nusoor Square on September 16. Iraqi officials say Blackwater Worldwide contractors killed the 17.

It's insanity. We have an opportunity to leave Iraq and end this war, finally, after years of pointless deaths and trillion wasted, and it's being held up because of those assholes at Blackwater want a get out of jail free card for the murders they committed.

As Blue Texan over at FDL points out:

Selling out the Constitution to give telecoms immunity is bad enough. Selling out the troops to give Blackwater immunity is a whole new level of sickening.

Hey Obama campaign? Here's your clean-up hitter.

Sequoia National Pot Farm

The Feds have completed Operation LOCCUST and eradicated a billion (with a b, yes) bucks worth of weed grown in the Sequoia National Forest. Mexican cartels have been using the forest as their own pot ranch.

Illegal immigrants connected to Mexico's drug cartels are growing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of marijuana in the heart of one of America's national treasures, authorities say. It's a booming business that, federal officials say, feeds Mexico's most violent drug traffickers.

"These aren't Cheech and Chong plants," said John Walters, director of the National Drug Control Policy. "People who farm now are not doing this for laughs, despite the fact Hollywood still thinks that. They're doing it to make a lot of money."

Walters spoke from a "marijuana garden" tucked deep into the Sequoia National Forest, about a two- to four-hour hike from the nearest road, far removed from the giant sequoias the region is best known for.

Three observations:

1) Maybe if the Bushies were more concerned about preserving, protecting, and funding our national parks instead of trying to sell the land to the highest bidder, we wouldn't be in this problem. Of course, this will be shown as proof that national parks need to be disbanded and the land sold off to where it can be monitored by private interests, preventing this from happening again. Who was asleep at the wheel to let a billion bucks of weed grow out in the open like that?

2) The War on Drugs is still stupid and has been for decades. Legalize the stuff already to reduce the street value of it, so that criminal organizations don't build billion dollar empires based on raising weed and kill people. Then, we go around and incarcerate people for using instead of going after the guys getting rich off of it. Hell, make a publicly traded company that manufactures the stuff. Capitalism. Whee.

3) Illegal Immigration + Drugs + Violence + violating a "US National Treasure" = right wing meltdown. I can already see Malkinvania and her buds going into high apoplexy over this, and will be telling anyone they can that THIS is the major issue of Election 2008, and not the fact that you're flat-ass broke, and that the GOP should start rounding up brown people. Doing so will help them at the polls, because brown people don't vote!

Mother Lode

Taylor Marsh points out that the Wall Street Journal thinks Obama is on to something.

The underreported economic news of the week is that Barack Obama favors a stronger dollar. Even better, he thinks a stronger greenback would help to reduce oil prices.

That at least is what the Democratic Presidential candidate told a town hall forum in Parma, Ohio, on Tuesday. "If we had a strengthening of the dollar, that would help" reduce fuel costs, he said, according to a Reuters dispatch ignored by most of the media.

This ought to be a bigger story. In linking the dollar to oil prices, Mr. Obama is pointedly at odds with the Bush Administration and Federal Reserve, both of which blame high commodity prices on supply and demand, despite falling demand due to slower global growth. Fed officials -- in particular, Vice Chairman Donald Kohn -- have expressly rejected any strong link between the dollar's collapse and the oil price surge since last August.

Even the WSJ isn't buying the Bush line on this. It's absolutely the case that a weak dollar is the major contributor to the massive inflation we're having, and especially the inflation in oil prices. In the last three weeks as the dollar has strengthened, oil has dropped 20%. The greenback shored up a bit because with their own inflation problems, the Eurozone has left their interest rates alone and the Fed has stopped cutting rates here. People flocked to oil as a hedge on the dollar, overinflating the price of oil. Now that pressure is draining somewhat...for now. When the dollar starts floundering again, oil will shoot back up. The Bushies and McSame are simply denying the dollar has anything to do with oil prices when it's the major factor. Weak dollar = inflation. Period.

Not really shocking that the media didn't pick up on it. Economics isn't always explainable in a way that can translate. This is real trouble for McCain any way you slice it. Because it all points to Bush's economic policies or better yet, lack thereof. Now Obama has to keep pounding it home. Economics tied to energy could win the race.

This goes again back to that 48% that think the economy is the issue. These are the people Obama has to reach. Eight years of Bush policies have done this to our economy.

"What's in your wallet?" is this year's "Are you better off than 4 years ago?"

Dammit Nancy

The Village and Nancy may be ignoring the hell out of the will of the American people, but the people press on anyway, recently Dennis Kucinich delivered 100,000 petition signatures to start proceedings to Nancy Pelosi. (h/t Crooks & Liars)

The Village is trying to do everything in their power to spike the growing movement for impeachment, and with the Ivins anthrax case adding yet another crime to the Bush administation docket (and with the Village becoming increasingly complicit in catapulting the propaganda) it becomes more important than ever to get this rolling.

This man is a criminal. The people who work for him are criminals. It's time we start acting like they are. But Pelosi does nothing, and the Village does nothing, and Bush remains free.