We Haven't Learned a Goddamn Thing (BR)

I'm in the midst of enjoying my morning coffee at 1:00 PM, as is my custom, and browsing Crooks and Liars to catch up on whatever ass-hattery perpetrated by Team Bush I managed to miss thanks to our species' confounded need for sleep.

A post titled Dems' big advantage on Iraq by Steve Benen reports the results of a new Washington Post/ABC News poll, which does indicate a shrinking level of public tolerance for the President's assertion of exclusive dominion over the handling of the war:

Most Americans see President Bush as intransigent on Iraq and prefer that the Democratic-controlled Congress make decisions about a possible withdrawal of U.S. forces, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

As the president and Congress spar over war policy, both receive negative marks from the public for their handling of the situation in Iraq. But by a large margin, Americans trust Democrats rather than the president to find a solution to a conflict that remains enormously unpopular. And more than six in 10 in the new poll said Congress should have the final say on when to bring the troops home.

While this is encouraging data for anyone who, like me, favors a withdrawal from Iraq, I can't share in Benen's enthusiasm when he sums it all up this way:

Any Dems who are still worried about how the public might react to Congress forcing Bush’s hand just aren’t paying attention.

This is a popular line of thinking among my fellow Democrats, but it does not ring true to me. Even though Americans of all stripes are growing sick of the war, we are not as gung-ho to end it as we were to invade in the first place.

As if to confirm my skepticism, The New York Times published a separate poll today, showing that popular support for the initial invasion of Iraq has increased seven points since May; a frightening and baffling 42% of our countrymen and -women would go to war all over again today, even knowing everything we know now, even having seen the chaos and death that has ensued.

Another interesting finding in the Times poll is that notwithstanding John Edwards' and Governor Richardson's frequent admonitions regarding how easy it would be to simply cut off the money and force the President to bring the troops home, only eight percent of those polled favor blocking funds as an option. Fully 63 percent say they support fully funding the war with a timetable for withdrawal, but this only illustrates the cluelessness of the electorate about the process and the ground rules of the debate.

It's a bit like someone stating his support for being fed cheesecake by five nude models. It's a nice idea, but it speaks to a fundamental misunderstanding of how things work in the real world.

I'm not as heartened by the vox populi today as some of my friends, and I see the Democrats' hedging as fairly standard political maneuvering. If a withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq precipitates an escalation of the current civil war into full-fledged genocide, or turns the country into a safe haven for Islamist groups with aspirations to global terror -- two very real possibilities -- it will be determined to have been the Democrats' fault.

More to the point, nowhere in these poll results do I see a people that has learned anything from this horrendous botch-job of a war. There may be sympathy toward the de facto "peace" party, but there's nothing that would identify a solid majority in favor of military restraint, robust diplomacy, or non-interventionism. If anything, I see a nation increasingly protective of its prerogative to screw up just as badly in the future.

50 Arguments Against a Hillary Presidency (BR)

I'm really sick of Hillary Clinton. Not just her, but also the prevailing thought that her winning in the Democratic nomination for President is a fait accompli. The woman is underqualified, not as brilliant as she's generally credited as being, and has said and done some incredibly stupid things.

In the name of putting Sen. Clinton under the microscope and cutting through the phony hype and sensation stirred up on the left and right, here are 50 reasons to say "Hell no" to Hillary when the Democratic primaries roll around:

• 1. "Aye" vote for the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force that started the war in Iraq.
  
• 2. Incredible ability to turn $1,000 into $100,000 overnight.
  
• 3. She's no Slick Willie, that's for damn sure.
  
• 4. Coining of the phrase "vast right-wing conspiracy."
  
• 5. HillaryCare.
  
• 6. "Let's chat. Let's have a dialogue."
  
• 7. Carpetbagging from Illinois to Arkansas, then to New York.
  
• 8. "We are the president."
  
• 9. "We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about what is best for society."
  
• 10. "We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good."
  
• 11. Dozens of men and women more competent and qualified for the job, for example:
  
• 12. Al Gore.
  
• 13. Barack Obama.
  
• 14. Oprah Winfrey.
  
• 15. Russ Feingold.
  
• 16. Rudy Giuliani
  
• 17. Barbara Boxer.
  
• 18. Ron Paul.
  
• 19. Joseph Biden.
  
• 20. Oscar the Grouch.
  
• 21. A Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton presidential succession would look SO lame, not to mention monarchical, in history books.
  
• 22. "I have gone from a Barry Goldwater Republican to a New Democrat, but I think my underlying values have remained pretty constant."
  
• 23. Her annoying and pointless crusade against video games.
  
• 24. Introduction of a "compromise" bill as an alternative to the Flag Desecration Amendment that would nevertheless have criminalized flag burning.
  
• 25. If we ever have another Clinton running the country it had sure as hell better be George.
  
• 26. Wearing Yankees hats at Yankee games and Mets hats at Met games.
  
• 27. Ideally all presidents, but particularly the first female president, would be someone whom reasonable people can respect, if not agree with.
  
• 28. Kissing Suha Arafat following a speech in which the late PLO leader's wife falsely accused Israel of using "poison gas" on Palestinians.
  
• 29. Both the liberal and conservative press had coronated her the 2008 nominee even before John Kerry threw in the towel.
  
• 30. Quick: Name an important piece of legislation Hillary has introduced, sponsored or otherwise ushered toward passage.
  
• 31. When not reading from a prepared script, she says "Uh" at least every third word.
  
• 32. Even the use of her maiden name has been the subject of elaborate political calculation on her and Bill's part.
  
• 33. Fawning support from the Democratic Leadership Committee and her nitwit coterie of neoliberal gasbags like Lanny Davis and Tom Friedman.
  
• 34. The melange "Billary" paved the way for later couples' media monikers like "Bennifer" and "Vaughniston" (also, to be fair, "Filliam H. Muffman," but more credit is due to Stephen Colbert for that).
  
• 35. Chris Matthews: "[Bush] made it pretty clear from day one we were going to war. How come she still pretends that she didn't know he was going to war? It's like she didn't know anything about Bill and his behavior. How many times is she going to be confused by men?" It bears repeating.
  
• 36. Who actually bought It Takes a Village and gave it a serious, thoughtful read?
  
• 37. Inability to answer a question with "Yes" or "No" even when the questioner takes pains to make absolutely clear that "Yes" or "No" are the only two acceptable answers.
  
• 38. Complaining about the double standards imposed upon females but being too timid to defy them.
  
• 39. Teaming up with Newt Gingrich to promote expansion of health care? Are you serious?
  
• 40. "I do not think it is a smart policy ... to set a date certain [for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq]." - June 15, 2006
  
• 41. "If we in Congress don't end this war before January 2009, as president, I will." - February 5, 2007
  
• 42. "I wonder if it's possible to be a Republican and a Christian at the same time."
  
• 43. Her campaign logo reads simply, "Hillary." Like she was friggin' Elvis or something.
  
• 44. She has served as a lawyer, First Lady and U.S. Senator, but where is the evidence that she would be a competent executive? Has she ever been endowed with authority and not subsequently bungled it?
  
• 45. On her watch, New York, her adopted state and my home, arguably the foremost terrorist target on the planet, has had its Homeland Security funds slashed by the Bush administration and handed to high-risk locales like Des Moines and Bismarck;
  
• 46. its ports under federal control offered up to private corporations in Dubai; and
  
• 47. its heroic citizens suffering debilitating respiratory cancers from substances inhaled at Ground Zero on Sept. 11 denied sufficient medical care.
  
• 48. "Look what the Iraq Study Group came up with. You know, that was a totally nonpartisan group of, you know, 10 wise Americans, you know, some of them Republican, some of them Democrats from different, you know, experiences." You know?
  
• 49. The success of her run for U.S. Senate was based not on experience or competence but name recognition and a cynical move to a big state with politics similar to her own, a common liberal criticism of George W. Bush's rise to power.
  
• 50. "Ségolène Royal is hotter. And smarter. And more qualified." - a female friend of the site
  

All quotes taken from Wikiquote

Savage (Michael, not Fred) Mulls '08 BidWhippersnapp endorses paranoid madman for GOP nomination

Some days you wake up and everything just falls into place. Today is one of those days. The train pulled into the station just as I walked through the turnstile, the guy at the deli toasted my bagel just the way I like it, then I pulled up the ol' internets and what do I see?

No less than my favorite psychopath, Michael Savage, floating the idea of a run for the Republican nomination for President in 2008. O Happy Day!

Savage, or Michael Weiner as his parents named him, is an avowedly anti-gay, anti-immigration conservative radio host with the third-largest audience on talk radio, after Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. His style, which could be fairly described as outright cruelty, has won him legions of fans in the coveted "stupid goon" demographic, as well as, one assumes, a strong base of rubberneckers and gawkers among the more civilized segment of the American audience.

To casual spectators of the political circus, Savage is perhaps best known for a virulent rant on his short-lived MSNBC TV show, for which he was immediately fired:

"Oh, so you're one of those sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig, how's that? Why don't you see if you can sue me, you pig. You got nothing better to do than to put me down, you piece of garbage, you got nothing better to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it. Get trichinosis. ..."

This all is highly interesting not just for the patina of martyrdom this bluster and subsequent shit-canning would impart to a Savage candidacy, but also for its incongruity to earlier chapters in the host's bio.

As a twenty-something writer in San Francisco -- Heavens! -- in the 1970's, Savage was well in with beat luminaries like Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. A friend who knew Savage at the time, Stephen Schwartz, tells of a photo of Savage and Ginsberg swimming together naked, a photo which Savage would delight in showing off.

Some hard-line devotees of Savage may also be surprised to know that the drum-beating warrior of conflicts cultural and military alike is actually an academic with fancypants Masters' and Ph.D. degrees in fruity-sounding subjects like ethnobotany and nutritional ethnomedicine. This red-white-and-blue-blood also spent nearly a decade in the South Pacific studying plants and making out with trees like some common gutter hippie.

But as a media personality with a loyal following and unmistakably right-wing principles, Savage is an intriguing wild card for the Republican nomination for president. He is outspoken in his disdain for most of the party's high-profile announced or presumptive candidates like Sen. John McCain and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and frequently derides figures like Bill Bennett and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich for espousing moral values while nursing a gambling addiction or going on three marriages, respectively (Savage himself has divorced and remarried once).

In a GOP horserace where the only conservative firebrands (Sen. Sam Brownback and Reps. Tom Tancredo and Duncan Hunter) range from listless to uninspiring and don't figure to arouse any enthusiasm from the conservative base, a colorful candidate like Savage, with nothing to lose politically and everything to gain as a star of his particular medium, could inject some life into the stodgy safety dance that's sure to go down between front-runners McCain, Romney and Rudolph Giuliani.

So we at Whippersnapp, in the name of entertainment and assuring the fair-and-square defeat of fringe right-wing politics in the marketplace of ideas heartily endorse Michael Weiner Savage for the Republican nomination for President of the United States. Good luck, Michael, and for God's sake keep talking.

Updated: Oh yeah, and he named his kid Russell Goldencloud Weiner. What the hell?