Zed is dead…long live Zed and the last brain cell in Bush’s head!

Bush has threatened to slap some Russian volley ball players’ ass.

-G

Scarecrow: how much credence do you give to the rumors that the US “encouraged” Georgia to piss off Russia now as a distraction for a potential buildup of US warships in the Persian Gulf?

Bush needs a war…he committed treason and he would like you all to be too busy to notice.

oh hi Scarecrow
this isn’t June 28, 1914 – Serbia redux?

I haven’t seen that; doesn’t sound likely, even for this Administration. It doesn’t make sense to provoke the Russians into taking over or bullying a democratic state on Russia’s borders.

Had NATO followed Darth’s recommendation and admitted Georgia to its ranks, we would be at war with Russia now. An attack against one is an attack against all.

McCain wants NATO to admit Georgia in a hurry, presumably so we can have another war.

With these guys, everything is a nail, and their hammer is war.

Has he threatened to have Condi scowl at them yet? She’s really good at that. Everything else…not so much.

1,726 DAYZ AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen Scarecrow and the Firepup Freedom Fighters:

This is it…we are now gunna reap the whirlwind as a result of giving a fascist administration 7 years to hollow out the US military, transfer enough of the treasury to corporations to establish well regulated corporate militia and poison off what was left of an independent federal court system. What the fuck are we gunna do if Putin tells the Chimpenfeuherer to take a flyin’ fuck at the moon??!!

All this while the US military is makin’ the rounds of political talk shows in civilian cloths, arguin’ for a continued US military presense in Iraq and expanded combat troops in Afgahnistan…good Christ, we gotta impeach theses bastards before November!!

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION, THERE IS NO COMPROMISIN’ WITH FASCISTS!!

between the Georgia-Russia conflict and the ongoing naval redeployments, we are entering the perfect storm during which the paramilitary powers congress has given the president may be used for whatever Bush Cheney wants to use them for.

OK, so ‘Little Boots’ will put on his commander codpiece play outfit and shake his fist at the mean Putti.

Then what?

Thanks scarecrow.

All that appeasement bullshit is really biting Clusterf*ck in the ass now.

I had not seen that but since Condi visited in July, it’s easy to infer she did not discourage the attack. The reason I think that is because the US was more than willing to bring the Georgian troops home. Normally removing a few thousand troops takes some planning.

Col. Sam Gardner on democracy now this morning said that the Russians will use tactical nukes if the U.S. intervenes against their military. It’s been stated Russian policy for awhile, they practice it, and have moved a missle, resumably nuke tipped, into the neighborhood, all according to Gardiner. Worth listening to the last 20 minutes of the program. Gardiner has been following the situation closely. And BTW didn’t like either candidate’s response.
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/8/11/stream

George Bush is a hypocritical asshole, especially since it was reported today that the US supplied the airpower to bring Georgian soldiers in Iraq back to Georgie to fight the Russians. Does Georgie expect Pootie to listen to him, especially after Georgie had his CIA and other thugs forging documents to fake out our Congress to get their own illegal invasion which went straight to the capital of Iraq? Spit.

And…Wasn’t it the Reagan Crazies who helped Osama bin Laden fight the Russians years ago?

His Dad and Cheney will decide if there’s money to be made. If so, then he keeps shaking his fist. If not, then he stops. Either way, he rides his bike alot.

Froomkin, quoting the WSJ today on the pullout of Georgian forces from Iraq:

“[R]eplacing the Georgians will be difficult. The 2,000-strong Georgian contingent was the third-largest foreign force in Iraq, and Georgia, unlike most of the other coalition countries, allowed its forces to carry out dangerous missions near the Iraqi-Iranian border.”

Protest sign seen last summer in Kennebunkport, Maine (protest against Bush & Putin who was in Maine for a visit with da Fuhrer of America):

“THANKS TO GEORGE BUSH THE NEXT 9/11 ATTACK WON’T BE A SURPRISE”

FWIW, I just don’t see it happening.

The GOP finally convinced Bush that his sabre rattling with Iran was pushing UP the price of crude. Armed conflict with Russia imho would really send it north.

IIRC, Swopa and Steve Gilliard were mentioning years ago that our unilateral invasion of the Middle East paved the way for Russia to pull the former Soviet Republics into a tighter orbit. That in turn makes our European allies less safe.

Was watching on CNN, and immediately after Bush’s rose Garden statement, CNN showed a “just in” statement from Obama, but I have not seen any link for it. Anyone seen that?

georgian president on cnn right now

It may make them less safe, but it makes lots of money fo the Bush family and their cronies.

Brzezinski finds Russia’s actions unacceptable as well. Even one-ups Bush by comparing Putin to Stalin and Hitler.

Citizen Scarecrow:

“It doesn’t make any sense to provoke the Russians into taking over or bullying a democratic state on Russia’s borders.”

Why doesn’t it, from the fascist point of view at least? Creating a crisis with a nuclear power on the edge of the Mideast oil patch and diverting attention from the realities on the ground in Iraq and Afgahnistan and from the on going election campaign can only further expose our country’s military weakness and give the corporations freedom of the field in Iraq.

We’re gunna see one crisis after another from here on in to November unless Congress comes back in September and impeaches the whole lot of the bastards!

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE AMMUNITION… THEY WON’T QUIT, WE HAFTA BEAT ‘EM COMPLETELY!!

Well, the irony is that being bogged down in Afghanistan and Iraq may be the only thing preventing Cheney from doing something ever more crazy here.

I always thought the Democrats were nuts to support expanding the size of US forces, because we didn’t have enough to invade somewhere else with all our troops in Iraq. What were they thinking?

Bet CNN doesn’t get a Russian spokesperson to give their side of the story.

Oh the irony & hypocrisy of Dick Cheney…

http://www.theaustralian.news……01,00.html

US Vice-President Dick Cheney took a tougher line, saying “Russian aggression must not go unanswered and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as (with) the broader international community”.

Armies get used eventually. Bigger armies get used more places.

“…must not go unanswered” is extremely undiplomatic talk, especially when speaking with another head of state, as Cheney was. It means war. We are morally obliged to try to stop the fighting, I understand that — but are we also obliged to enter this war on one side?

So here we are in something of a “crisis,” everyone is struggling to fashion a diplomatic solution in a situation in which we have very little leverage, the US President is patting our Olympic team on the “backside,” so the least credible Administration official, Dick Cheney, makes a public statement threating to do . . . what?

In addition to funding, taking on Russia would require a draft. Bush and Cheney are dead set against a draft.

Never thought I’d say it but I miss the ass-slap-happy Beijing goofy george. Seems like just yesterday.

wasn’t it Madeline who said, “What’s the point of having this superb military you’re always talking about, if we can’t use it?”

U.S. won’t enter militarily (hopefully) but consequences of so doing are enormous. See my 14.

So, Georgie is a fine one to be lecturing Pootie on the diplomatic niceties of invading a country that hasn’t attacked you. I’m just waiting for Pootie to say, “I’m just following your example, George!”

Bob in HI

oh right, we’ve used it up.

The other day someone said the situation is like when a bear is on your border and moves in to attack you ferociously. Everyone is shocked BUT when a bear is on your border and you poke it in the stomach, everyone suggests that you deserve it.

The Russians are humiliating Condi Rice and Bush in public. This is payback, and it is also a message that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander when it comes to invading countries on the excuse of ‘preventive war.’ The United States do not have many levers they can work in this situation. The Brits will stand with us, because we’re all they’ve got after they burned their bridges with Europe in the Iraq invasion. As to the others, nice words, but not real actions.

This invasion marks the public announcement of something that has been known in private for some time: that the United States is no longer the world’s sole superpower, or to put the point with more nuance: that it cannot alone impose its will when and where it wants.

This is bad news for the Georgians, but I think, good news for the rest of the world.

Col. Sam Gardner on democracy now this morning said that the Russians will use tactical nukes if the U.S. intervenes against their military.

There is no such thing as a tactical nuke. All are strategic, all could trigger a general nuclear exchange.

Citizen Knut:

Absolutely right fuckin’ on!!

Everyone says it’s “unacceptable,” then they accept it because doing anything else is what’s really “unacceptable.” “That word doesn’t mean what you think it means.”

BTW, no one will be surprised to learn that Israel supplies arms to Georgia. All the usual suspects.

Anatol Levin sez Russia warned Georgia that Russia would intervene militarily if Georgia attacked Ossetia. So Saakasvili knew exactly what forces he was unleashing.

Brzezinski finds Russia’s actions unacceptable as well. Even one-ups Bush by comparing Putin to Stalin and Hitler.

Zbig’s inner Cold Warrior is showing.

Just repeating what I heard Gardiner say. But yes, once one nuke is used, all bets are off.

The exercise of military force is a sign of the lack of real power/authority. If you have true power/authority, you don’t need to use the friggin’ force. Cheez-us, the sorry excuses we get for leaders.

Bob in HI

I don’t think the Russian invasions makes our European allies less safe; it makes us less safe. There is really no strong reason why the Europeans cannot cut a deal with the Russians, who are on their continent and no longer threatening them as they were under the Soviet regime. They can cut the US out, and there is nothing the US can do about it. We are alone in the world, thanks to the magnificent diplomacy of Condi Rice, Dick Cheney and Bush.

they showed it a few minutes ago on cnn, and mccain’s ‘reaction’…and the female commenter commented on obama’s ’sweat pants or whatever it was he had on’; went to website, can’t find obama statement anywhere–on video choices at top right, have un, mcain reactions on video, but no obama. anywhere.

other mccain stuff on the page, not one obama article or video.

Here’s the Levin link I forgot to put in my 42. H/T TPM.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t…..498709.ece

Don’t you think Iran beat Russia to that?

The Caspian Sea lies above one of the world’s largest groups of oil and gas fields. As the Caspian Sea is landlocked, the transportation of oil to Western markets is complicated.

Georgia’s section of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline was constructed by a joint venture of France’s Spie Capag and US Petrofac Petrofac International. The Turkish section was constructed by BOTAŞ. Bechtel was the main contractor for engineering, procurement and construction.

http://www.tiraspoltimes.com/n…..setia.html

11/Nov/2007

Georgia is preparing for a US-financed war against Abkhazia and South Ossetia. That is what the country’s military build-up reveals, according to a leading journalist and political analyst from Geneva. Since the current regime took power, Georgian military spending has effectively increased by over forty times and now has the highest growth-rate of any country in the world.

A journalist, who is a regular contributor to Le Monde Diplomatique, points out that since the “rose revolution” of 2003-04, Georgian military spending has effectively been increased by over forty times. The majority of Georgia’s arms purchases are financed directly or indirectly from Washington. Salaries for Georgian soldiers have also repeatedly been paid for by American taxpayers.

” – The recent announcement in Tbilisi to increase Georgian military participation in Iraq from 850 to 2,000 comes at a time when most European nations have already started withdrawing their troops, and the Bush administration is under political pressure in Washington to come up with its own schedule to decrease troops,” explains Cheterian. He also points out that another 150 Georgian military serve in Kosovo. This is an area where NATO-led troops keep Serbia out, and where the United States State Department is actively pushing for the right of self-determination to override the territorial integrity of a metropolitan state, Serbia.

The pipeline cost US$3.9 billion. Approximately 70% of BTC costs are being funded by third parties, including the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, export credit agencies of seven countries and a syndicate of 15 commercial banks.

It has been proposed that oil from the BTC pipeline may be transported to eastern Asia via the Israeli oil terminals at Ashkelon and Eilat

Follow the money, pay attention to the players.

no, ecahn, of course not, now, the commentator was doing that for them, you know that!!! fair and impartial!!!

Why does it make us less safe? They gunna steal our off-shore drilling?

andlet’s not forget that the registered lobbyists for georgia are neocons.
scarecrow had a thread last night with a bunch of links from wesg and others.

The majority of Georgia’s arms purchases are financed directly or indirectly from Washington. Salaries for Georgian soldiers have also repeatedly been paid for by American taxpayers.

The arms build-up is financed by the United States, according to an article which was published by OpenDemocracy. The money started flowing in 2002 when an eighteen-month “train and equip” program with a total budget of $64 million was started to modernize four infantry battalions and one mechanized company.

Cnn had said earlier that O was in a remote location and that it would take a while to get the tape in?

Thanks for your detailed comment above. US pays but Israel supplies. Just more US welfare for Israel.

And US paying for Georgian military is just one more example of W going out of his way to created powerful enemies.

how remote is a satellite? is he in a cave? hawaii is only sooooo big.

and they showed it on the air, but it’s not up on the website. tha’ts what i was sayin’.
: )

Yeah, that was CNN’s Candy Crowley telling us how much more Presidential McCain was because he’s in a suit somewhere in the 48, while Obama was wearing a jacket somewhere “on vacation” in Hawaii, which Cokie Roberts told
us on ABC yesterday, is an “exotic place.” She said McCain won on “image.”

These people are hopeless. If Obama had dressed up and held a formal press conference, they’d criticize him for being presumptuous.

57 was to foothills 55

He’s in Maui. His campaign sent over a video of Obama making a statement with all the usual platitudes one says about this sort of thing, and CNN ran it.

she said worse than jacket, she said sweats. “or waaahtever it is/that was he was wearing”

just got calbe a few weeks ago, the players have changed since i had it, still learning names…..their real names.i already have nicknames for most of them.
: )

The majority of Georgia’s arms purchases are financed directly or indirectly from Washington. Salaries for Georgian soldiers have also repeatedly been paid for by American taxpayers.

Actually, the American taxpayers are broke and don’t really pay for anything. Rather, they borrow from the Chinese, who indirectly finance Georgia with the U.S. taxpayers guaranteeing it all.

Borrow-and-spend conservatives!

Ummmmmmm, he’s threatening to make things worse? Sounds about right. Dick Cheney has never been one for peace as you know. ;-)

@60
hey crow==did you get those riga meeting links i left for you last night?

(and my best friends just got back from maui)

thought that was the statement you were looking for. the one he just made.

Agree.

Did not mean to imply otherwise.

Okay, here are the instructions:

1. Be sure to check out Marcy’s post, in which she exposes that McCain grabbed his Georgia statement from wikipedia.

2. Then hit Firedoglake at the top, which brings you back here, where Ian will have a new post up, already.

This is a test.

The neocons have told us for years that the Iraqis enjoy being occupied because it was better than Saddam Hussein. Uh ha. Alrighty then, I’ll remember this when Russia decides to invade America and occupies us. Spit.

Wow. I’m pleased to know that I was born in an exotic place.

Seemed like home to me…

But I wanted to be near my mom, y’know?

BC

got it,
righto.

Appearing at the White House, President Bush just condemned Russia

Well, at least he won’t be disrupting the Olympics anymore.

Can we keep him from finally starting the hot war the cold war avoided for fifty years? Is anyone paying attention?

I see words such as

gunna

used increasingly often in comments at FDL.

What language is this word? I can’t find it in my Norwegian dictionaries, neither Bokmål, nor Nynorsk. Norwegian was, in light of the context in which gunna and other orthographic novelties frequently are appearing at FDL, my first guess. But no. So what language is it?

And hafta: is this a cognate of NAFTA?

US pays but Israel supplies.

Arms paid for with American money! And American money allows the Israelis to manufacture their nukes and massive weapons stockpiles. Without this massive financial propping, the state called Israel could not exist.

Thanks for that; nothing like alittle reminder what some folks think is critical, important. great.

Cleanth: I think your point is well-taken. I raised it myself a few days ago to inquire what purpose is served, intended, desired by the lingo. I certainly understand your inquiry. My modest proposal, however, is you may be pushing at something that is roughly in the league of “accepting what you cannot change.” Just a thought, my 2 cents.

slang words–
gunna/gonna/’going to’
i am going to empty the dishwasher as soon as i quit commenting on firedoglake.

hafta/’have to’
i have to unload the dishwasher or my sink will be filled with dirty dishes.

i had a swedish/english dictionary to translate ‘traditional’ weaving instructions from a swedish book.

Do you think he actually notices the hypocrisy?

bev and cleathe–i use ‘gonna’ because i write like i talk, and amongst friends i use ‘gonna’..a lot of people use slang and don’t realize they are using it. even purists.

teens use it as a short-cut, and some words just stuck with me. gunna, gonna, is one.
cleathe–it is also regional here.

on-purpose triangulation of it by some to act like a ‘hick’ or to be ‘funny’, irritates me.

: )

RevBev, I adduced this point yesterday and received a farrago of abusive non-sequiturs from the offending party, including vicious anti-intellectual attacks on academics and intellectuals; and arguments along the lines that we are not democrats (as in democracy).

I agree your point: time wasted inveighing against such abuse of English, which language I revere.

Muck about in the barnyard and get covered in shit.

Thanks for your response, BevBev. BTW, I mentioned yesterday that another FDL member had also complained along the lines I had complained.

i wasn’t allowed to use slang growing up..in any form whatsoever..the use of the word ain’t, even in fun, meant getting grounded…..maybe that’s why i use gonna…

Don’t travel to Maine, because here we say…

‘Florider’ instead of Florida
‘Cornah’ instead of corner.

We add an “ah” when a word ends with “er” and we add “er” when a word ends with “a” (soda = sodah).

It’s funny to watch the out-of-staters (we call them ‘flatlandahs’ LOL) trying to figure out what we’re talking about. ;-)

*soder = soda ;-)

…on-purpose triangulation of it by some to act like a ‘hick’ or to be ‘funny’, irritates me

dmac, I hasten to assure that you are not the target. Yes, I saw that you had used “gunna” today, and I chalked it up to infection by misexample.

What you so well characterise in the blockquote above is, alas, the situation obtaining.

When ones ideas and arguments are expressed verbally or in writing, they perforce depend upon good usage of the language employed to express them. And when such use of language is, as in the offending cases here, sloppy, the ideas and their presentations are vitiated. Indeed, it has got to the point where I no longer read comments expressed in this foul abuse of English, which language I revere.

RevBev wisely suggests that this game may not be worth the candle. I would like to call attention to this wonderful true story. Charles Doughty wrote what remains, nearly a century on, the standard work on Arabia. It is entitled _Travels In Arabia Deserta_. It is one of the monuments of English prose style. Doughty was asked why he undertook this massive work, and he replied that

…[I]t was to rescue the English language from the slough of despond into which it had fallen after Chaucer.

i wasn’t allowed to use slang growing up..in any form whatsoever..the use of the word ain’t, even in fun, meant getting grounded…..maybe that’s why i use gonna…

Aw, Shucks, dmac! I ain’t gonna take yer arse out to the woodshed ;-)

It’s funny to watch the out-of-staters (we call them ‘flatlandahs’ LOL) trying to figure out what we’re talking about. ;-)

I spent a lot of time in Prague. Praguers speak a dialect of Czech which is often somewhat unintelligible to those not in on it. Rather like the Maine usages you describe. Additionally, literary, written Czech is much more formal than spoken Czech. Czech is a wonderful language, albeit structurally difficult for those not to the manner acclimated.

IMO, there is a world of difference between regional usages and wilfull despoiliation of a language merely as an attention-getting ploy.

I especially appreciate poets Hayden Carruth and David Budbill for their wonderful use of New Hampshire and Maine dialect.

Way back, decades ago, I was greatly amused and confused during a journey by train the length of England. Seemingly, at each station where the train stopped, the platform announcements were in a different dialect from that obtaining at journey’s origin in Sussex. And I appreciate these variations very much, lamenting their increasing passing.

What we are confronting at FDL is not some regionalisms, but a wilful despoiliation of our common discourse. The offender shows his hand in his mean-spirited diatribes yesterday, to which I refer interested parties.

What ya gonna do chimpy?? Huh…Call Condi?? Ooops..I forgot she’s on permanent vacation and won’t come back… Scream at Cheeney?? Too busy mixing tomorrow’s KoolAide…. talk to the dog in the back yard?? He’s given you great foreign policy advice so far… have a ham sandwich and contemplate your naval??? Too nasty to think about…

I guess you’ll just have to read the last version of MAD magazine your staff left on your bed stand….Ooops..the dog ate that too!

WHAT A MORON..NOBODY care what this loser says….

i don’t know the earlier conversations about all of this. thanks, i know i am not the target, i am a dictionary freak. my slang is on purpose, i actually speak as i write here….however, this is relaxed and loose.so, is appropriate, i am at home. but when speaking publically or writing, i clean it up a little. well, a lot.

one of the first questions my uncle asked me when i moved here to se ohio was about the slang and dialects here. i go back there and realize how much of it i have included in my speech.sloppy.then i come back here after a week, and i am back to proper english again.i like a mix.

the quote is funny. i have heard it before.my uncle is/was a historian.

i don’t like the flippant constant usage of slang because it’s demeaning, to the person using it-and sometimes the intention is to demean others. condescension.

if we want to get picky-even using contractions is bad form–don’t, won’t, didn’t, etc. but it’s much easier to read. i still have a hard time ending a sentence in a preposition. and i use the word ‘whom’. in the same sentence as gunna….ha…

my grandmother said ‘wardsh’ for ‘wash’. but she also said ’sofa’ not ‘couch’. and lavatory.

i was taught that using slang or cuss words meant i was choosing to not fully express my ideas and thoughts. but i think a good cuss word works just fine sometimes.
i think it depends on how someone wants to express themselves, and the reason for the expression. that would enter into which words i choose.
on a blog, a shortcut is sometimes a good thing for wordy people like me.

take care,

: )

it woulda been if i’d have said that!!!

and kay at 81—’sohda’soda, ‘wahdda’water cape cod
i still say it that way sometimes.

people here say ‘wadder’water.

take care

and cleathe–the use of language is why i love british mysteries and other art forms from there.

IMO, there is a world of difference between regional usages and wilfull despoiliation of a language merely as an attention-getting ploy.

Despoliation is in the eye of the beholder. Languages change. There is resistance to such change. Both are aspects of the same process.

It’s funny to watch the out-of-staters (we call them ‘flatlandahs’ LOL) trying to figure out what we’re talking about. ;-)

You are so right. When I moved to Boston from Indiana and got a job which included answering the phone — for the first 10 days I had to hand the phone to someone else every time — couldn’t make out head nor tail.

After ten days I’d ‘learned the language.”
a note, tho–much as I enjoy a good tussle over language (devotee of all things language from earliest memory) — right now I’m scared —less of all this fierce talk from the crazies who we know are capable of just about anything. I have not been so nervous since the Cuban missile crisis. Anybody else?