licentious radio

Thursday, September 18, 2003
[11:31:00 PM]

People are beginning to notice that a lot of us are very angry about the 2000 presidential election.

We aren't going to "get over it" until we've thrown Bush out of the White House. 2004 is payback time. Bush is going to lose again, and this time we won't let them steal the election.

So let's say it plain: The Supreme Court's decision was illegitimate, and tantamount to treason. By aborting the Florida vote count, right-wing extremists denied more than 50% of Florida voters the right to have their votes counted. Can there be a higher crime in a democracy? The justification given by the conspirators was transparently false -- there was no time urgency, and the right to have votes counted trumps every ridiculous argument they made.

All of this will change the dynamics of the 2004 elections. Republicans will fight dirtier than ever, but we won't let them get away with it.

The moron-American vote will be less crucial, because a much higher percentage will turn out to vote.

[10:59:31 PM]
Wow. "Enough is enough," we said, and then Bush, Rice, and Rumsfeld all confessed that Iraq wasn't behind the infamous September 11 attacks. That's how important we are....

But seriously, you can tell there's pretty good coordination of the message between those three. And you can tell that Cheney is not a part of the same message.

Is Cheney a rogue freelancer, or does is there some diabolical "stupid cop, stupider cop" game being played? We bet Cheney's rogue.

That makes me wonder if he plays his own game in more areas. For instance, outing Joe Wilson's wife as a CIA agent -- mandatory 10-year prison sentence -- do we have any evidence that wasn't Cheney's doing? Maybe Rove is careful not to do things that would land him in prison. Maybe Cheney's more vengeful....

[10:51:38 PM]
"There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud." --Ted Kennedy

[4:29:49 PM]
What the f* is with CNN about this hurricane?

It's a hurricane! Keep the reporters safe. But it is *not* a Category 5 hurricane.

It's not like the world has stopped. News is being made everywhere. Only CNN isn't covering the news. CNN is covering the hurricane nonstop -- all without saying the obvious, that it isn't really worth talking about that much. The winds are not so bad. The rain won't be that bad, because it's moving very fast... so there will be much less flooding than you would expect.

[4:23:46 PM]
Imagine bank robbers settling with prosecutors on the promise that they won't do it again.

This happened today. A bank that crookedly helped Enron with its stock fraud faces the stiff penalty that they must promise not to do it again.

What about "three strikes, you're out"? Doesn't apply if your crimes are in the millions or billions of dollars, at least not if you've kept up with your payments to the Republican party.

In fairness to Merrill, there's some evidence that the Bush administration asked them to help Enron, and so it would be unfair to jail all of Merrill's corporate officers and terminate the corporation unless you also threw Bush in the slammer. And don't get us started on OKenny-boya Bin Forgotten....

[11:56:45 AM]
Thomas "Looneybird" Friedman?

"France is becoming our enemy."

Friedman, presumably, has never heard the "Friends don't let friends drive drunk" campaign. France's actions are completely explainable by saying that France is unwilling to go along with the miserable failure in Iraq of the Miserable Failure.

"The whole tone and direction of the Arab-Muslim world, which is right on Europe's doorstep, will be affected by the outcome in Iraq. It would be as if America said it did not care what happened in Mexico because it was mad at Spain."

Huh? Wouldn't it be more like if the US didn't care what happened in *Paraguay* because it was mad at Spain? OK. That's a minor quip, and you really can tell what his point is.

If you need further confirmation that Friedman is completely off-base, note that the Saudis are also refusing to commit to giving cash to Bush for Iraq.

The first, simplest explanation is that the Bushists have been caught cooking the books to hide a huge amount of corruption -- shoveling money to Halliburton on no-bid contracts, for example. Meanwhile, it's not at all obvious that rigorous accounting has been used to track the cash the occupation forces took from Iraq. And it's pretty clear that the call for money is not based on clear plans with excellent cost estimates, but rather on rough guesses -- "back of the envelope" projections. You wouldn't invest in a company based on that kind of plan, and no country with sane leaders is going to donate to Bremer's budget based on what we all know about Bremer, the plan, and the way things have gone so far.

"Let me spell it out in simple English: if America is defeated in Iraq by a coalition of Saddamists and Islamists, radical Muslim groups -- from Baghdad to the Muslim slums of Paris -- will all be energized, and the forces of modernism and tolerance within these Muslim communities will be on the run."

Um. Let me spell it out in simple English: the US has screwed up bigtime already, and if it doesn't change direction immediately, we might not be able to recover from the disaster. I would say everyone but Thomas Friedman knows that, and that everyone in the world should pressure Bush and Rumsfeld with whatever resources they have.

"If France were serious, it would be using its influence within the European Union to assemble an army of 25,000 Eurotroops, and a $5 billion reconstruction package, and then saying to the Bush team: Here, we're sincere about helping to rebuild Iraq, but now we want a real seat at the management table."

If the United States were serious about Iraq, we would have done *everything* differently up until now, and if we are finally serious about it, we should start doing the right thing immediately.

It's preposterous for even Friedman to want France to sign on to Alice-in-Wonderland occupation before the Bush administration starts doing the right thing.

All along, Friedman has had his own personal freakishly tinted glasses on. In Friedman's world, the Bushists are always going to stop acting like Bushists and start doing the right thing. Everyone else could tell at the beginning that there was no chance the Bushists would do the right thing. And it's still pretty obvious that they will never do the right thing.

Example: Friedman accuses France of "making it impossible for the Security Council to put a real ultimatum to Saddam Hussein that might have avoided a war". Friedman is clearly in an alternate universe. Saddam let the inspectors in, and was about to give up the evidence that the so-called WMDs had been destroyed. There was no preventing Bush from conquering Iraq. To suggest that another UN resolution would have changed things is preposterous.

You know, there comes a point when the New York times should give those column-inches to somebody who has a clue.

[10:58:12 AM]
"It's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words." --Joseph Wilson

If Democrats want to win the election, they *must* insist on accountability for this.

[9:27:21 AM]
U.S. officials say they have Al Qaeda on the run. And we know right where they're running to: Iraq.

Actually, the scary thing is that Rumsfeld & Co. can claim there are a fixed number of terrorists, and therefore it's better to fight them in Iraq. How come don't they get slapped down for saying such preposterous things? You don't think they could believe it, do you? Then we'd *really* be in trouble. But they did (apparently) believe the occupation would be short and sweet....

[9:23:33 AM]
We need to campaign hard on the key issues, and we need to whup Bush's sorry ass -- to establish a mandate to undo every vile, undemocratic, nation-wrecking, environment-wrecking, peace wrecking (etc.) bit of their agenda.