Ardilla is Dead!

George W. Bush with an important announcement about breaking news from the Canyon Creek Sizzler…

On a more serious note, it’s just been absolutely disgusting to see how right-wingnuts have reacted to the fact that Osama Bin Laden was killed under the current president’s watch.

Initially, they tried to disproportionately credit Bush (even though he’d effectively abandoned the search in 2002), then they attempted to leverage this outcome to justify the use of torture (absent demonstrable evidence), then complained about… well, everything. Not releasing the photos of the corpse, the way the body was disposed of, excessive use of the personal pronoun in Obama’s announcement, appearing at “Ground Zero” and so on. Unbelievable.

Curveball

It’s curious that Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi aka “Curveball” – the loopy informant relied upon so heavily by the Bush administration to bolster their case for war against Iraq – has now suddenly reappeared in the news. For those of us who weren’t entirely comatose during the previous decade, the revelation that this unstable character was completely full of shit isn’t exactly news.

It is however highly amusing that he’s apparently been fired quite recently from several fast food joints in Germany because of his pathological lying. The man was deemed unfit to work at Mickey D’s, but his creative imagination helped to kill several hundred thousand innocent Iraqis. What a deeply strange and perverted world we inhabit.

Revolution 2.0

Wael Ghonim, Google’s Head of Marketing for the Middle East and North Africa, speaking to CNN just shortly after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak…

“They convinced us for 30 years that Egypt had died, that there was no more Egypt. We were all looking for Egypt and thank God we found her today.”

Ghonim, an activist who helped launch the first online efforts calling for protests said that he had confidence that Egypt will not fall into dictatorship again: “Egypt will be a fully democratic state. You will be impressed.”

Certainly the revolution itself was impressive in every respect, so one hopes that the same qualities that enabled it achieve victory against all odds will carry through to the eventual realization of its democratic aspirations.

Absolute Insanity

There’s not much that I feel needs to be added to this tail-end of this interview.

Last night’s address by President Obama was a huge disappointment, but one that should have been entirely expected. At the end of the day, while there may be a distinct improvement in style, there’s very little difference in terms of substance between this “commander in chief” and the former one. How depressing.

I’m with John Cole on this one: “I just don’t know what to think.”

Is it any wonder that most people are so cynical and disaffected when it comes to expecting any real change from politicians that are more often than not entirely fungible, held hostage to the corporate interests that get them installed in office and then generously provide for their welfare in perpetuity through respectable forms of bribery… It’s all such a fraudulent sham.

And with that, I need to take a shower, a long walk in the sunshine and another sanity-regenerating sabbatical away from all this nonsense for a while.

Cheney: “A Man Who Frightens Easily”

Granted that Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, the Chief of Staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, has been an outspoken critic of the Bush administration since leaving the State Department in 2005, but his assessment of Dick Cheney and the general fear mongering of the Bush administration in the post 9/11 environment is pretty insightful.

“Vice-President Cheney is a man who frightens easily. All you have to do is go back to his five deferments during the Vietnam conflict, his behaviour post 9/11, undisclosed locations and so forth.”

On a related note, here’s a great discussion with Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda discussing the obligations of President Obama under the Constitution with regards to the torture issue.

Torture: A Modest Proposal

How about we take Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly and all of these other manly men who scoff so dismissively with great contempt at the various kinds of illegal “torture” — oops, sorry, “enhanced interrogation techniques” authorized by the Bush administration — and subject them to each and every one of the methods that have been painfully outlined in the OSC memos released earlier this week…

And how about we broadcast that live on TV? Don’t you think we could learn an awful lot of enlightening stuff about what’s really going on with the U.S. government? Because… you know, these “enhanced interrogation techniques” actually do “work” at getting to the truth, right? And don’t we all deserve to know the truth at absolutely any cost?

Update: Never let facts get in the way of things…

Still Bushed!

The cavalcade of fucktacular incompetence rolls on… and on.

Hey, speaking of the ongoing efforts of the Bush Legacy Project to re-fashion history, “The Decider” is writing a book. I know… you’re probably every bit as surprised as I am at this amazing bit of news:

“I want people to understand the environment in which I was making decisions. I want people to get a sense of how decisions were made and I want people to understand the options that were placed before me,” Bush said in an interview Wednesday from his office in Dallas.

Tentatively called “Decision Points” the stellar new Bush tome will (appropriately) be published by the Crown Publishing Group, a somewhat disreputable division of Random House — the same outfit that unleashed A Bold Fresh Piece of Humanity on an unsuspecting nation…

h/t: Carl and his inner imp.

The Eagle Has Landed

Under cover of darkness and all super-secret like…

It must be a little disillusioning for George Bush to realize that even in “the most conservative city in the nicest nearby country” he’s still met with crowds of angry, shoe-hurling protesters. Well, he’d better get used to “not getting out of his car, to not press the flesh, and not shake some hands… with all those people who are not his fans and who did not line the road …” and so on.

Author James Moore says that when the former president was leaving his speaking engagement in Calgary (risibly billed as “a Conversation with George W. Bush”), somebody asked him why he hadn’t criticized President Obama. He’s reputed to have said “I think he deserves my silence.” To which Moore quipped, “I would suggest that we all deserve his silence.”

Update: “The consensus among those who talked to reporters after the two-hour speech and question-and-answer period was that Bush was worth every penny.” Obviously people with no concept of value for money.

X-President Bush in Canada

Could he be arrested on Tuesday as a war criminal?

No, of course not. Harper would never allow that to happen. I mean, just imagine… actually enforcing our own laws. Feh. Ridiculous!

So, how’s that “shoe cannon” coming along then, folks?

Fleischer: Still Lying err, Spinning

It’s beyond astounding that former press secretary Ari Fleischer could not only be indignantly offended at the suggestion that 9-11 happened on the watch of the Bush administration, but that he could then go on to deliver this steaming whopper: “After September 11th, having been hit once, how could we take a chance that Saddam might not strike again?” Absolutely un-fucking-believable.