Iowahawk Says It Better

…than I ever could:

BILL [Maher]: That’s right Ann, you emaciated Eva Braun sideshow freak. By supporting this good citizenship effort, you will ensure that America’s outspoken pundit community has the book and TV and speaking contracts we need to pay the critically important mortgages on our Laurel Canyon ranch homes.

ANN [Coulter]: And Manhattan apartments! So take it from me and my venereal diseased, dwarf-penis pinko fag colleague Bill – don’t be a player hater. Stop the indignation, because there are enough zippy assassination one-liners for everyone. The next time you are repulsed by something we say, remember:

ANN AND BILL: A spleen is a terrible thing to waste.

Check out his cool new ride, too. It’s depressing. He’s got this bitchin 60’s Buick and an astounding show rod. I’ve got a Honda Civic Hybrid with the licence place identifying me as an ‘Eco Fraud’…I’d want his lifestyle, but then again, he’s stuck in Chicago…

34 thoughts on “Iowahawk Says It Better”

  1. Pelosi, just shown on CNN:

    “On this very important matter I would extend a hand of friendship to the president, just to say to him: ‘Calm down with the threats, there’s a new Congress in town. We respect your constitutional role, we want you to respect ours. This war must end, the American people have lost faith in the president’s conduct of the war, let’s see how we can work together.'”

    Finally, some sensible people in Congress.

  2. That’s funny, I’d say that they’re senseless…but we’ll just have to disagree on that. And as to the American people’s view – they’ve been given filtered and bad information for three years – by both sides – and so it’ll be interesting to see how stable their views really are.

    A.L.

  3. That’s funny, I’d say that they’re senseless…

    Putting you in the minority.

    And as to the American people’s view – they’ve been given filtered and bad information for three years – by both sides

    And you’ve managed to provide such information from both angles. Unless of course you managed to dig up that 2003 post where you complain about the Administration lying to the public about what the grand Iraq strategy will require.

    Frankly, to see you complaining about misinformation concerning Iraq is rather hilarious.

  4. This could happen. In fact, is highly likely to happen. Timothy Leary and G. Gordon Liddy teamed up to turn hysterical Nixon-era politics into a traveling circus. Much to the annoyance of an old teacher of mine, who took those hysterical Nixon-era politics very seriously.

    In a more enlightened future, all politics will be played for laughs.

    But then, in an even more enlightened future, politics will be recognized as a mental illness and everybody will feel guilty for making fun of it.

  5. Davebo asks: “Unless of course you managed to dig up that 2003 post where you complain about the Administration lying to the public about what the grand Iraq strategy will require.” and I reply, will “this July 2003 post do?”:http://www.windsofchange.net/archives/003781.php

    I think we need a plan, because our original plan…that 25 American troops led by Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz would win the war and somehow manage Iraq by themselves…hasn’t quite proved out. I don’t see anything resembling a quagmire, but I do see a coming test of endurance. And we haven’t been quite so good at endurance in the past. For a variety of reasons (largely led by the increasingly wacky but preferable to anything else political system which we are enjoying), ‘sticking it out’ seems to be hard for us. A plan makes sticking it out easier to handle, and, more importantly, it makes sure that we match our resources to our obligations.

    Back to you, Davebo…

    A.L.

  6. Are you being facetious, or serious? Really. Are you saying that the views of the American people cannot be trusted because they’ve been receiving “filtered information” for the last three years, but……you haven’t, so the “stability” of your views (some would use the term “stubbornness”) is more reliable, or worse, something to be proud of?

    And that “both sides” are guilty of this? Both sides of what? Your split brain? Excuse my surprise but this is a whopper of a commentary and it does deserve perhaps the scrutiny of a clinician….someone who’s specialty is in the many ways the human brain can trick itself into believing what it wants despite contradictory (sensory) information.

    And what of my views? Are they because I’ve only received “filtered” information for the last 6 years?

    All I was trying to do was illustrate what I think is a highly admirable effort by Pelosi to reach across the very wide partisan divide that Bush has created for himself to try to solve some major security and constitutional crises that he is largley if not entirely responsible for creating. That shows a lot of integrity and reflects highly on her in her role as a public representative in our government and her genuine interest in putting results over politics.

    Instead you mock her by calling her comments “senseless”. THIS is the problem with our discourse, not whatever the heck it is you’re going on about….

    Wow. Just wow.

  7. Gee Al, “hasn’t quite proved out”? Ya think?

    I was referring of course to the pre invasion rhetoric. All that you complain about above was out there prior to our decision to invade. Complaining after the fact isn’t exactly productive.

  8. How about a dialogue btw/ President Bush and Speaker Pelosi, each pointing out how unpopular each other is? Bush was winning (i.e. more popular), but he aims to try harder.

  9. Wei, she’s reaching across a partisan divide and telling Bush that as long as he does just what she wants, everything will be just fine…that’s a great tool when you have the power. The D’s may, just may have it. And they may use it. But I’ve gone on record and will go on record as saying that what’s being proposed is a far worse idea than the invasion.

    But hey, you’re the guy who think that only progressives have a monopoly on virtue…

    A.L.

  10. Wow… when I read wei’s first comment (#1), I thought it was sarcasm! There really is a huge gulf in worldviews here.

  11. I didn’t say that “only progressives have a monopoly on virtue”, did I?

    Nor did I say I was a “guy”…lot of assumptions here.

    My problem with your apparent aversion to the Speaker’s comment is this: “…as long as he does just what she wants, everything will be just fine.”

    You cannot fathom, apparently, that she is, in FACT, attempting to carry out the will of a large majority of Americans. I guess that should not be her or Bush’s concern in your view? No one has the right “unfiltered” info but you and Bush and Cheney, is that it?

    And of course she is NOT saying that “…everything will be fine”. Is that what you’re hearing? You really might want to consider why it is the Speaker is saying one thing and you’re hearing another.

    Plus, the topic of your last two threads seems to be that, its ok if people disagree, but that if they do so it should be civil….EXACTLY what the speaker is doing that you do not want to give her credit for.

    Perhaps all your trying to say in the end is that if people disagree with YOUR VIEWS they need to be civil; otherwise, anything goes, y’know, because its all about national security and the War on Terror and why should we need to be civil with Traitors who are trying to allow bin Laden to kill us….etc.

    Because this is where you seem to be going with your argument. It’s a major, major loser, by the way.

  12. Actually, wei, you did suggest that progressives have a monopoly on virtue. In the post on bullying, you said:

    “Glen—I’m not gonna defend hate-filled comments, but don’t you think it’s just a teensy weensy bit possible that neocon nutjobs might post crap like that on Left blogs just so the media might think that all comments on lefty (or righty, or any damn) blogs reflects the work of people of similar political leanings?

    This is such a simple and obvious point that it is amazing that it needs to be made at all, given the anonymity that the net provides and the below the belt “anything goes” approach to politics.

    It’s political spam.”

    So basically, the – bad – comments on lefty sites are there because they are planted by “neocon nutjobs”, right?

    And I apologize – I use “guy” in a non-gender specific way; the people who work for me are “guys” – because there’s no good informal female equivalent. It’s not a common usage, and I understand how it could be confusing.

    And the politics around this are both unclear and rapidly changing; but I’ll suggest that the fact that the most antiwar D’s are trailing badly in the polls might be a message of some kind, no?

    Pelosi and the Democratic leadership are desperate to get the war ended by November 08 so it won’t be an election issue. The fact that they believe that suggests that they are both unspeakably cynical and delusional.

    A.L.

  13. Wei:

    You cannot fathom, apparently, that she is, in FACT, attempting to carry out the will of a large majority of Americans.

    Since you like public opinion, have you seen Pelosi’s approval ratings? Are you sure she’s the Messiah?

    If the person with the highest poll numbers rules, then that means Bush, because he’s five percentage points ahead of the entire Congress right now.

    60% of Americans oppose cutting off funding needed to send any additional U.S. troops to Iraq. Who is attempting to carry out the will of a large majority of Americans on that issue, do you think?

    Of course your crowd did not go around preaching the wisdom of polls when a majority of Americans supported the war, nor will you do so if the balance tips back the other way – which it very well might. Poll histories show that public opinion on the war has been pretty stable for the past two years, in spite of the left’s pretense that a huge shift has occurred, and opposition to the war has never been as great as support for it was in 2003.

    At which time, of course, one heard very little about the will of the people.

  14. she is, in FACT, attempting to carry out the will of a large majority of Americans.

    So this must be some new meaning of the word “fact”? Help me out here–approximately what percentage of the public is referred to by “large majority”? Even more importantly, how did you determine this number?

    A.L., I’d actually disagree with you regarding your usage of “guy” being unusual, but maybe all that means is that you and I hang out with the same kind of people. I hear this usage all the time.

  15. I thought this was supposed to be a humor thread? Anyhow:

    bq. _In March, Rep. Stephanie Herseth (D-S.D.) attacked Democratic proposals to end the war: “I don’t think we should be overreacting to public opinion polls.”_

    “Democracy Haters”:
    http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/3080/democracy_haters/

    bq. _Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth plans to support a House bill that would require combat troops to leave Iraq by next year. The legislation also contains about four (b) billion dollars in agricultural disaster assistance for farmers. … Herseth also praised the inclusion of drought disaster aid for farmers._

    “Local News”:http://www.ktiv.com/News/index.php?ID=11287

    Drum roll and cymbal crash please.

  16. Last time I looked the American people make a choice as to who they want to represent them. Whether or not

    “they’ve been given filtered and bad information for three years”

    is completely irrelevant and a matter of opinion, not of fact. The Fact is there was an election. The results of the election reflected a radical change in the thinking of the American Public. I accept that. This is the essence of what we believe as a people.

    “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.”

    This may classify me as a hopeless romantic, but I would prefer if politicians dealt with present reality and practiced the art of compromise instead of this mindless one-upmanship and polarity that is rampant across the society.

    As it stands now, the political parties would forge a presidential race between Lady Macbeth and Saravanola. One more angry and twisted than the other. Such is the state of the Republic.

  17. Pew poll.

    Solid Majority Favors Congressional Troop Deadline
    36% Think Surge Will Work

    Released: March 26, 2007

    A solid majority of Americans say they want their congressional representative to support a bill calling for a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq by August 2008. Nearly six-in-ten (59%) say they would like to see their representative vote for such legislation, compared with just 33% who want their representative to oppose it.

    Democrats are united in their support of legislation calling for a U.S. troop withdrawal by August 2008, and most independents (61%) also favor this step. Most Republicans oppose this step, but there are substantial divisions within the GOP. More than four-in-ten moderate and liberal Republicans (44%) want their representative to vote for legislation calling for an August 2008 deadline for a troop withdrawal, compared with only about a quarter of conservative Republicans (26%).

  18. AL said: Pelosi and the Democratic leadership are desperate to get the war ended by November 08 so it won’t be an election issue.

    So is that what they’re doing? Despicable. I agree with you…they should be kept there until at least 2009 so the Democratic president has to deal with this mess as well.

    I wonder how the troops feel about being used to disprove a “political” calculation? But then again, this whole sorry war has been run by politicians, not military strategists, so they must be used to it by now. (Just don’t let their loved ones in on the dirty little secret!)

  19. Clearly, the battle lines are drawn. To salvage the situation, Bush needs for the surge to work. Pelosi needs it to fail.

  20. Awe crud. I sometimes disagree with Armed, but not this time. Bush needs to veto the bills coming down the pike for just this reason, they are so filled with pork, Democratic pork they remind me of BBQ. Is this how the supposed culture of Republican corruption is to be cured by the Dems?

    The disinformation coming from both sides these days is bad, but I do firmly believe it is worst from the Dem side of the Congressional aisle. The cure for the culture of corruption in DC is term limits. Limit how long the Senate and House critters can be there – make it two. That gives some stability but precludes feeding at the trough as they do.

    Arthur C Clarke wrote a book “Songs Of Distant Earth”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Songs_of_Distant_Earth

    One of the side themes was that the leader and head executive of Thalassa was appointed from the person who least wanted the job. That ensured that government remained small and efficient. The tasks of governing got done quickly so the head exec could get on with the rest of life. Instead we have those like some I could name who think that they were born to govern (and he is a Dem Senator from my home state). Ick…….

    We need smaller more efficient government not bigger more bloated.

    The current run-for-it bills coming from the Dems are dishonest at the best and traiterous at the worst. Setting a date for Iraq is stupid beyond belief. But that is what we are going to do. All the thugs in the ME have to do is mark their calenders, ‘V’ for victory day – Aug 1st, 2008. And they have presicted that we would do just this!

    We are at the tipping point of the US Gov’t and economy – more are drawing from the gov’t trough than contribute to it. We stay in this state and we are done, it is only a matter of time.

    The Hobo

  21. Everyone here seems to take it as a given that a withdrawal plan for US forces in Iraq is necessarily a bad thing, but no one seems to bother backing that idea up by saying why they think that is. Why not? I sure hate to think that anyone really believes that the status quo is working out well.

  22. Everyone thinks jumping out of a plane without a parachute will have a pretty predictable result, hence we don’t spend much time expounding on it. Anyone wishing to claim something positive would come from such an act should rightly have the burden of proof thrust upon them.

    American troops are demonstrably keeping Shiia deathsquads from wandering the streets of Baghdad and Sunni militants from turning places like Ramadi and Falluja into armed camps- it defies credulity to insist that removing the fingers from the dyke wont result in a moisture event. If you can present an argument and evidence that in fact what i have just stated is somehow not the case, then we have something to talk about.

    Everyone gets their own opinion, but not their own facts.

  23. My opinion, sooner or later the US will leave Iraq. My guess Jan. 21 2009. Iraq will fragment. YMMV.
    Jonathan

  24. #25 from Jonathan

    I agree. and so will Iran, Turkey, Syria, etc. the post WWI lines in the area will be redrawn by regional war over a long period of time. This is what happens when you have a shorsighted, adolescent view of foreign policy like the Neo-Cons.

    The have unwittingly created a power vacuum that the U.S. can not an should not fill, breaking the first commandment of strategic thinking, Thou shalt not create a power vacuum, it only leads to more trouble.

    Now that it has been done, we can only hope that the region involves itself in internecine warfare and the focus of the Al Queda type groups is on their “homeland”. What a mess.

    Oh for the heady days of Containment and Mutually Assured Destruction when we had foreign Policy people who actually thought things through rather than these Neo-Cons and their Boys Own fantasies.

  25. #25 from Jonathan

    I agree. and so will Iran, Turkey, Syria, etc. the post WWI lines in the area will be redrawn by regional war over a long period of time. This is what happens when you have a shorsighted, adolescent view of foreign policy like the Neo-Cons.

    The have unwittingly created a power vacuum that the U.S. can not an should not fill, breaking the first commandment of strategic thinking, Thou shalt not create a power vacuum, it only leads to more trouble.

    Now that it has been done, we can only hope that the region involves itself in internecine warfare and the focus of the Al Queda type groups is on their “homeland”. What a mess.

    Oh for the heady days of Containment and Mutually Assured Destruction when we had foreign Policy people who actually thought things through rather than these Neo-Cons and their Boys Own fantasies.

  26. these Neo-Cons and their Boys Own fantasies ..

    TOC once again demonstrates the truth of my assertion – there is NOT ONE PERSON in the Democratic Party who knows what a “Neo-Con” is.

    Except of course Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who is dead.

  27. Oh for the heady days of Containment and Mutually Assured Destruction

    Oh yeah, MAD’s going to work real well on people who think suicide bombing is a ticket to heaven. When they have Unilaterally Assured Destruction, I’m not sure we can do much by threatening to kill them.

    Maybe we can threaten their leaders, you say? I fine idea, but a deterrent is only useful if it’s credible–in 2003, what reason did anyone in the ME have to take the US at all seriously? They’d been bombing/shooting/kidnapping our people for 30 or so years and we did nothing about it.

  28. #28 from Glen Wishard

    TOC once again demonstrates the truth of my assertion – there is NOT ONE PERSON in the Democratic Party who knows what a “Neo-Con” is.

    Another incidence of Neo Con over simplification and blindness. I am a Republican. A conservative Republican at that. The Neo Cons have to get their head out of the mirror and take a look at what is going on around them.

  29. #29 from Rob Lyman

    Containment and MAD were highly sophisticated strategies that avoided Nuclear War, Stopped the spread of Communism, won the Cold War and a number of other nice things. What has the brainless half baked invasion of Iraq accomplished? Is it impossible to come up with equally ingenious strategies to combat the threats we now face

    I would prefer that our foreign policy strategists would come up with more sophisticated strategies than tying a large part of our military manpower down in a area with no end in sight, having no realistic plan for what to do after the invasion, having no idea of what constitutes the Iraqi society, emboldening our enemies, weakening our allies in the area and strengthening our enemies.

    But I guess this is too much to ask. What would be better is to come up with well thought out ideas like this:

    Maybe we can threaten their leaders, you say?
    I didn’t say that.

    I fine idea, but a deterrent is only useful if it’s credible–in 2003, what reason did anyone in the ME have to take the US at all seriously?

    Why would anyone take us seriously now. The threat of force was a lot more powerful than its completely incompetent use over the past 4 years.

    They’d been bombing/shooting/kidnapping our people for 30 or so years and we did nothing about it.

    They re still doing it, if you haven’t noticed. Only difference now is that we don’t have the threat of force to contain it. Or, do you want to continue to invade countries? There are limits to our power. It has to be used wisely. this administration has used in very unwisely. If you can face up to that than maybe we can come up with a better strategy than creating a Civil War and putting our troops in the middle of it..

  30. Mark #24

    “American troops are demonstrably keeping Shiia deathsquads from wandering the streets of Baghdad and Sunni militants from turning places like Ramadi and Falluja into armed camps- it defies credulity to insist that removing the fingers from the dyke wont result in a moisture event. If you can present an argument and evidence that in fact what i have just stated is somehow not the case, then we have something to talk about.”

    More Than 100 Killed in Baghdad, Nearby Town
    Blast in Capital Hits Area Central To Security Plan
    By Joshua Partlow
    Washington Post Foreign Service
    Friday, March 30, 2007; Page A12

    BAGHDAD, March 29 — Bombs tore through crowds of after-work shoppers in Baghdad and a town north of the capital on Thursday in an onslaught of violence that killed more than 100 people, according to Iraqi government and hospital officials.

    Both areas — a bazaar in the eastern Baghdad neighborhood of Shaab and the farming town of Khalis in Diyala province — are populated predominantly by Shiites, and Iraqi government officials quickly blamed the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/29/AR2007032900385.html?hpid=topnews

    But don’t worry, Mark, I’m not really interested in having a discussion with someone who thinks of the situation there as abtractly as you do.

  31. Take it away, Kevin Drum:

    TAL AFAR….Last year, it seemed as if half the reporters in Baghdad made a pilgrimage to Ninewah province and filed glowing reports about how the relative calm in the city of Tal Afar demonstrated that counterinsurgency could work in Iraq if only it were planned and executed competently. This was always something of a mirage, but even with that in mind yesterday’s news about the resurgence of violence there left me too discouraged to write anything about it. However, others are made of sterner stuff. Joe Klein gets the gist here:

    The violence in Tal Afar is all the more depressing because that city was the site of the most recent, pre-Baghdad experiment in counter-insurgency tactics. The estimable scholar-warrior Col H.R. McMaster led the effort, and Bush praised it at the time…and it fell apart as soon as the Americans left.

    Spencer Ackerman, who spent last week in Mosul (about 40 miles east of Tal Afar), says that without exception, every officer he talked to credited the relative peace of Ninewah province to “the competence and strength of the 2nd and 3rd Iraqi Army Divisions operating in Ninewah, as well as the Iraqi police.” But that was last week. So what happened?

    The depth of sectarian division in Ninewah is impressive to behold, even for a cynic or a pessimist….Yet for the most part, the political process in the province has held.

    ….What the Tal Afar massacre shows is how thin a tissue the process is. By Baghdad standards, the twin suicide bombings weren’t that much pressure for the jihadists to apply, and they managed to spur a bloodbath that sucked at least some members of the security forces in….Yet Petraeus, Wiercinski, Twitty, etc, have a point. Ninewah does evince more normalcy than most Iraqi provinces. The trouble is that things like the Tal Afar massacre are part of normalcy in the new Iraq.

    It’s simply not possible for a political process to take even minimal hold in the middle of a tinderbox — and this week’s violence strongly suggests that even after two years of successful (!) counterinsurgency Tal Afar remains a tinderbox. So ask yourself: If the Army’s showpiece of counterinsurgency — in a city of modest size far away from the fury of the Sunni triangle — breaks down at the first hint of violence, what does that say about Baghdad? That we would need 200,000 troops there for ten years to have even a modest hope of success? Probably. But we don’t have either 200,000 troops or ten years.

    Every day that we stay in Iraq does further damage to our long-range best interests in the Middle East. At best, that would be worth it only if our continued presence there were likely to bring a measure of peace to Iraq itself. The failure of Tal Afar suggests that we don’t have either the manpower or the ability to do that, and that in turn means we’re literally accomplishing nothing in Iraq except making things worse along almost every dimension.

    The sooner we get out of Iraq, the sooner we can rethink our recklessly militaristic approach to the war on terror and instead start applying some common sense to the problem. Unfortunately, it looks like we still have a couple more years of digging ourselves deeper into a hole before that will happen. 2009 can’t come soon enough.

  32. #33 from tcg at 3:59 am on Mar 30, 2007

    I really find it hard to believe. After 4 years of absolute incompetence, people still try to defend this NeoCon fiasco. These people knew nothing about the middle east, propagated fantasies that amounted to our troops tossing nylons and chocolates tanks and Iraq becoming a beacon of democracy in the Middle East. When things went wrong they turned on the President and Rumsfeld, the people that gave them credibility saying that it was not their ideas (delusions) that were at fault, but the way the war was run.

    Just the type of guys you would want to have in a foxhole with you. Blame Shifters. What irks me most about these frauds is how, when interviewed, they all strike the same pose. They pause as if they are ruminating, and, with a pained expression, they do their utmost to explain their position, which they know will be too subtle for their listeners.

    Talk about Emperors in dire need of new clothes…

    We have now gotten to the that most fatal of situations in foreign policy and business. The excuse that we are bing given for this lunacy is that we can’t walk away.

    I am a businessman. You do not make a deal you cannot walk away from. If you do, you get killed. How did we get in this position. Listening to phony tough guys about something as important as going to war. Something that the vast majority of them have never come close to experiencing.

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