what joe learned today

former bad plumber sam wurzelbacher, a.k.a "joe the plumber", plumbing the depths of just how bad a former bad political mascot can be as a very bad war correspondent.

eagerly waiting on your next bad career move, mr. sarahcuda-in-drag.

not.

so, i mean, ah ... now, d'ya have ... aw shoot. [sighs deeply] i've a lot of questions. just tryin' to find the right one ... um ... [snip] oh, what did i learn today? um, y'know, the israel people are actually incredible. even with world opinion beatin' down upon 'em, they're not broken ... ah, y'know, they, ah, for most part don't care, y'know, they need to be protected. and, ah, i'm ah ... amazed with the courage that i see in the people — i'll be honest with ya, i don't think that journalists should be anywhere allowed war. i mean, you guys report where our troops are at, you report what's happening day to day, you make a big deal out of it. i-i think it's asinine. y'know, i like back in world war i and world war ii, when you'd go to the theater, and you'd see your troops on, uh y'know, the screen, and everyone would be real excited and happy for 'em. now everyone's got an opinion and wants to down on, down soldiers, our american soldiers — or israeli soldiers. i think media should be abolished from, ah y'know, reporting, y'know, war is hell. and if you're gonna say "look at this atrocity", you dunno the whole story behind it half the time, so i think the media should have no business in it.

it can be safely said that you can identify any conservative ideologue by their congenital lack of irony.

bloodsuckers

steven d at booman tribune on the neocons, their bottomless thirst for conquest, and its role in the coming midterm elections:

... a while ago i predicted we were in for a wild ride this summer in terms of a coordinated campaign by conservative supporters of president bush to generate support for war with iran, in part to bolster the republican party's prospects for the mid term elections this fall. yet even i didn't anticipate the bush administration letting israel slip off it's [sic] leash to attack both the palestinians in gaza and hizbollah in lebanon. mea culpa. i should have anticipated such murderous manipulation from the most immoral and deceitful administration in our history. if killing a few more arabs (and israelis) is what it takes to assure continued majorities in the house and senate for republicans, the bush team is more than happy to oblige. the fact that this approach has already failed miserably in iraq is of little consequence. retaining their power, and implementing the folly of an expanded war in the middle east is all that matters to them.

monstrous as this picture of the administration is, the reality may be even uglier. while steven portrays the israeli offensive merely as a means to an end — continued domestic political domination — the offensive may be an end in itself, as an irresistible incitement to war with the archnemesis iran.

the war trolls know that they're running out of time. they know that their clutch on the body politic may be significantly weakened come november. they know that they may never again in their lifetimes get another chance to dismember and resurrect a servile middle east — a chimera which never seemed more achingly close to birth.

this administration has only one modus: raising bogeymen. it has only one note: a shrill screech. it has only one concern: its own blasphemous survival. forget about acts of governance or evidence of accomplishment from these bloodthirsty maurauders. true leadership cannot hope to thrive as long as they remain battened onto a host as torpid and succulent as america. will the world will have strength enough left in 2008 to exorcise the vampires of vietnam for once and all?

i once called this administration a potemkin government, for its perverse devotion to pretense, but i was mistaken, because a potemkin government accomplishes nothing. as the bones, sucked dry, pile higher and higher in the desert, their leavings, their real achievement, can be seen for miles and miles: it is a charnel house.

painting by alex ross © 2004.