Others, like Atrios, believe that Thompson stepping into Cheney’s seat would be good for the Republican party. I don’t think this will happen for a minute — Cheney is way too powerful — but I actually think letting Thompson in would be like opening the doors to a Trojan Horse.

Just to be sure: This is the Barefoot Boy of K Street we’re talking about?

i do agree that there are many people trying to communicate their objection to an attack on iran. that they are doing so by leaks to the news media, says to me that they don’t think the formal communication routes are working.

beforer invading iraq there were plenty of people saying it was a bad idea (even snowcroft) and bush/cheney did what they wanted.and still do, even at great harm to the country.

i just don’t think bush listens to many people. and the people he listens to are cheney and the aei crowd.

i’m not trying to say that i think there will be an attack – i’m not smart enough or knowledgable enough… but i do think there is a very real risk. and i see congress acting as enablers while most of the country and the left/d blogosphere does nothing to hold them accountable. i think there is a value in educating congress when they are mislead by a mistranslation or when they don’t bother to find out what the iaea is saying about iraq’s nuclear program. and we’re not doing that. it worries me…. ‘cuz i don’t think my congressman is going to be convinced if i’m the only one calling him.

I think there are nuances at work here (I know, I know, hard to believe with W) that aren’t apparent if, like most people, you’re not from Texas. For all his many faults, I think that Bush is sincere about wanting to appeal to Hispanics. It’s one of the differences between New England-born-and-educated Bush and his many white racist supporters. If anything, this whole immigration mess is best seen as what a tone-deaf politician he actually is, since the opposition from within his own party really seems to have surprised him.

The jury-rigged heart will be the face-saving “out”. It could be true or not. After all, the man has had 4 heart attacks…

but it’s coming.

I said I had $40 on Cheyney’s resignation. Actually, it’s $60. :o)

I gave a friend a decent chance to win it, with the time frame in mid-november of 2007, instead of by the election in 2008.

We’ll see.

We are not going to bomb Iran.

If you’re in a debate with someone who thinks we are, here are your “talking questions”:

Do they think that CentCom (which had a “full plate”, the last time I checked…this morning…) wants to find out how the Iraqi Shia will react if bush starts bombing the Iranian Shia?

Do they think that the Brits (and their new P.M. Gordon Brown) sitting down there outside of Basra, want to find out how THOSE Shia will react? They too, are currently losing more troops than at any time of the war.

According to the CIA, during the war in Afghanistan involving the Russians, the Iranians got about 100 of those Stinger missiles which proved so effective against the Russian helos and aircraft there. And they certainly “shared” with the Russians who had a…mild interest in the system. It’s safe to say that Teheran has some really good upgrades now, and if bush goes after the Iranian reactors, those things will start showing up in the hands of some very angry Iraqis, including but possibly not limited to, the various Shia militias, and the price of air-support poker in Iraq will go through the roof.

And Centcom knows this. Which is one of the reasons why so many of our military are doing all they can to scotch the idea of attacking Iran.

See: Admiral Fallon’s comments:

“Some of us are trying to put the crazies back in their box.”

Do your “we’re gonna bomb the reactors” debate partners:

Think Wall St. wants to see how oil at $100 a barrel will affect our economy?

think that the repubs running in 2008, want to be explaining $5 a gallon pump prices to their SUV-Panzer constituents, and the rest of america? If bush attacks Iran, there will be so many anti-ship mines laid in the Straits of Hormuz that Condoleeza Rice will be able to walk across without getting her Guccis wet.

Our military doesn’t want it.

Wall St. doesn’t want it.

The congressional republicans don’t want it.

The Saudis don’t want it.

No sane middle-easterners want it.

Pretty good roster, huh?

Only Al Queada wants it. And haven’t we done enough to help Bin Laden?

The warpimps in the whitehouse got away with funnel-feeding us their jingo bullshit when they invaded Iraq. But that’s on their “futurist” resume’ now, and most american voters fucking well recognize it.

Where’s the cred for doing it again?

And if they go for a sneak attack, there are too many people in the pentagon who will leak it, the instant they get wind of it.

Likewise, with the Brits. I will guarantee you that Gordon Brown has told bush:

“You need to give us a 48 hour heads-up before you do Iran, so we can start boogying for the Kuwait border. Otherwise, post-attack, we’ll just tell the SHITTES to give us that 48 hours, and you can start looking for the troops to replace us as you try to keep a lid on the various militias down here, and as you try to keep at least some of the revenues from those southern fields, flowing toward the “Iraqi Government” in Baghdad.”

No attack on Iran. That train left the station a long time ago. In fact, the locomotive is now lying upside down in some Mesopotamian wadi.

We DO need to be paranoid enough about it, to keep raising hell every time goatboy pulls his toy sword out and starts waving it around, but there are just too many people who have no interest in watching george bush try to gin up a regional mideast war in which to enfold the fuckup he’s already created.

A VESTED interest, as the phrase goes.

Same old story, Selise:

Money talks and bullshit walks.

The bullshit promenade is now going on in Iraq. A lot of powerful, influential, people, including some participants in the shitmire itself, don’t want to see it take one step toward Iran.

Freddie The Caretaker makes about as much sense as… well…

Freddie the DODO!

Given the nickname “Fred” after the 65-year-old who found them, the remains should provide the first decent specimens of dodo DNA, he said.

Let the Repubs keep on being themselves and lets keep handing them boulders as they trudge up the hillside.

Be well Jane, and thank you so much for your work.

Jesus wept.

And short of impeachment and conviction, Dick Cheney is out of the office of the Vice President if and only if his black, jerry rigged heart explodes in his misbegotten, bastard fuck’s chest.

I can’t ignore the possibility that Bush is seeing things from the endtimes point of view. If he is, then he thinks that this war is necessary to usher in the millenium.

I don’t want it to be true, but if these ministers are visiting him at the White House, we need to be up to speed about these beliefs.

Here’s the link
to today’s article about this fundamentalist head trip and those who believe it.

No one person here is running things, perhaps least of all Bush. It’s best to discard any analysis of these things that reduces them to matter of Bush’s psychology, such as that attacking Iraq was an Oedipal thing, or that he’s an evangelical Christian (he is not). As often as not such overwrought pseudo-psychoanalysis comes from a desire to obscure real factors, such as, for example, the role of the Israel lobby in this stuff, or from ignorance of how, precisely, oil really comes into play (I don’t know). That “end times” stuff is fit for a Maureen Dowd column: amusingly grotesque, but irrelevant.

I don’t want it to be true, but if these ministers are visiting him at the White House, we need to be up to speed about these beliefs.

Here’s the link
to today’s article about this fundamentalist head trip and those who believe it.