Friday, January 12, 2007
ANOTHER MILLION-DOLLAR IDEA. St. Rudy Giuliani (with added bombast by Newt Gingrich) explains that what Iraq needs is for Rudy to go chase away the squeegee men.
Okay, not quite. But he does want to turn the Green Zone into a Business Improvement District:The week before Christmas, the Pentagon asked Congress to approve a supplemental $100 billion for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, on top of the estimated $500 billion spent to date. The administration should direct a small percent of that amount to create an Iraqi Citizen Job Corps, along the lines of FDR's Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression... Of course, during the Great Depression, America had not literally been attacked by the Martians from War of the Worlds, who then, under political pressure back on Mars, rushed to institute the CCC. But other than that the analogy holds!
I can't wait till they send St. Roo over there to run the Iraqi Citizen Job Corps:
ST. RUDY: Alright, men, I know you've been poisoned by a culture of dependency. For too long you depended on running water, electricity, and civic order. But now those of you who have boots will pull yourselves up by the bootstraps, and those that don't have boots will wake up and smell the coffee. In fact you'll all wake up and smell the coffee!
In the absence of water to make actual coffee, ST. RUDY has BERNIE KERIK spray the room with Demeter's "Fresh Coffee" scent.
ST. RUDY: Today we're going to sweep the streets! Where's that kid I sent for brooms?
IRAQI 1: Pardon, oh lisping one, that was my nephew, Achmed. I saw him just now outside the window, dying in a hail of gunfire.
ST. RUDY: Your nephew died a hero, sir. We'll carve his name into a memorial sometime in 2016. Alright, who wants to go get the brooms?
Nobody moves.
ST. RUDY: Listen, people, those orange jumpsuits aren't going to pay for themselves! Would you rather sit here all morning and read articles from City Journal out loud?
One man raises his hand.
IRAQI 2: I would be happy to go, sir, if I could have American soldiers to protect me.
ST. RUDY: Soldiers to protect you! I suppose you'd like food stamps, too!
IRAQI 1: (his mouth watering) You have stamps made out of food? Allah be praised!
The Iraqis rush ST. RUDY, who is protected by KERIK and others with tasers.
ST. RUDY: I was wrong about you people! You're not capable of self-reliance! To hell with you, I'm going to Somalia -- I understand a lot of the problems there are caused by black people!
(Regrettably, I am too lazy to find a .wav file of The Little Rascals closing theme, which should be played here; use your imagination, like I did when I was your age.)
UPDATE. Thanks Tild~ for the illo!
10:51 AM by roy edroso
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Thursday, January 11, 2007
WILLING SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF. Lord knows there is plenty of comic potential in the President's speech, and some of his fans have been making the most of it. Like noted Sadly, No commenter Ann Althouse:I doubt that President Bush has any capacity to inspire Americans about the war in Iraq. I vaguely wish that he could. Well, that'll get them up and out of their seats! Brave troops, muzzily march to your vague doom!He's made his decision, and I think people need to support what he's doing and not undercut him by revealing to our enemies that we can be worn down and demoralized. Yet it doesn't bother me that much that Americans are not fired up by presidential speeches. We don't like war, and we especially don't like to live with a long war that doesn't reward us with distinct successes from time to time. We express our dissatisfaction, but I think most of us realize it's the President's responsibility to get us through this. Electing Democrats to Congress can be read as an expression of dissatisfaction, but does it also mean that we expect or even want Congress to interfere with the President's plan? It's like this stain in my blouse. From my perspective it sort of looks like the continent of Africa, but from your perspective, it would look like something entirely different. You might see an arrowhead, or a flame. Or you might say, "That's some big stain, Ann." Wait, what were we talking about again?
But strangely, some of the more reliable laugh-getters leave me depressed. From Infinity-to-the-tenth-power-Star General Ralph "Blood 'n' Guts" Peters, I expected a yuk-fest, especially after Bush told Peters' beloved grunts and swabbies and whatnot they were now free from "restrictions" -- kill and kill again, General! But there is something rote in Peters' performance. The last thing one expects from our favorite kill-crazy madman is equivocation, but Peters' opening is painted in pastels as pale as Althouse's:...Will the plan work? Maybe. It's a last-hope effort based on steps that should've been taken in 2003, from providing basic security for the population to getting young Iraqi males off the streets and into jobs.
The added 20,000-plus U.S. troops to be phased in over the coming months will make a tactical difference in Baghdad and Anbar province - but that may not translate into strategic success... Of course, there's one topic on which Peters never disappoints, and that's the media, which he predictably and pre-emptively blames for the failure of Bush's shitty plan:Our troops can stand up to any enemy. But I'm not as certain President Bush can withstand the onslaught of an enraged media - and any prospect that we might be turning the situation around will certainly enrage them. But even this doesn't have the old Peters kick -- it's almost as if he's phoning it in.
Maybe it's just me. Because, when you think about it, the loss of lives this crackpot scheme will bring isn't all that funny.
UPDATE. Oh thank you Michelle Malkin for bringing teh funny! Such a cute widdle Iraqi boy-with-US-flag! Next time put a Hershey bar in his other hand -- if he has one -- and we'll run that baby on page one!
UPDATE II. Thanks also to John Podhoretz! You tell 'im, hoss -- that guy can't use that word, that's your word! Like "politically correct," "feminazi," and "America"!
UPDATE III. Paul J Cella -- now that guy cracks me up:What prevents me from supporting President Bush amounts to this: I do not trust his judgment. Put another way, a man whose judgment has been demonstrated to be so suspect cannot claim my trust. Alternately, my trust I do not in him entrust, because I judge his judgment untrustworthy. Conversely, were he judged trustworthy I would trust his judgment. Or judge his trustment. Also funny: Democrats are "cynical" to oppose the Iraqi quagmire because "everywhere else we look, Democrats are urging that we 'do' something for somebody" like poor people and chicks, so why not people in other countries we've recently blown to shit? Also funny: "Alas."
10:13 AM by roy edroso
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Wednesday, January 10, 2007
SHORTER THE ANCHORESS: You're Dems if you do and Dems if you don't!
(For the record, I have always thought this war was bullshit -- see my archives, or even the original alicublog, for confirmation -- and I think we should get the fuck out, no matter what the wets and water-treaders think.)
4:59 PM by roy edroso
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SHORTER AUSTIN BAY: Slow news day -- think I'll invent a meaningless catchphrase.
(Fave sentence: "As a noxious odor spread through Manhattan, reasonable people feared either an extensive natural gas leak or a poison gas attack." Many of us, however, just assumed Jonah Goldberg had a second breakfast burrito.)
11:10 AM by roy edroso
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Tuesday, January 09, 2007
MORE ADVICE FROM YOUR MORTAL ENEMIES. Some weeks ago, ferociously anti-"raghead" Gates of Vienna waged white jihad on Keith Ellison, a Muslim and a Democratic candidate for Congress. "Minnesota, weep for your children," said Dymphna. "This candidate is a piece of work." "Mr. Ellison’s fealty does not lie with the U.S. Constitution," said Baron Bodissey. (Yes, these are their names -- they're into Nordic roleplay.) "...his past, plus his present associations, most definitely point in the direction of 'Koran First, Constitution Second.'"
Well, now Piece-of-Work Ellison is Congressman Ellison -- sworn in on a Ko-ran, by Odin's codpiece! -- and Dymphna is offering him advice: take a stand on "the plight of women under sharia law — especially in Iran and Pakistan..."
The cause is commendable, though the utility of a freshman Congressman's denunciations would be in this case probably nil, at best. Still, Dymphna calls for Ellison to speak out, because -- get this -- "your public stance on the predicament of Muslim women is vital to the progress of reforming the view many Americans have of Islam at the moment."
Gates of Vienna (an "Islamophobic and Proud of It" button featured on its sidebar) offering to help Keith Ellison improve the image of Islam in America! By Loki's ampallang, that's a good one.
5:35 PM by roy edroso
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Monday, January 08, 2007
WHY WE FIGHT:Iraq's massive oil reserves, the third-largest in the world, are about to be thrown open for large-scale exploitation by Western oil companies under a controversial law which is expected to come before the Iraqi parliament within days.
The US government has been involved in drawing up the law, a draft of which has been seen by The Independent on Sunday. It would give big oil companies such as BP, Shell and Exxon 30-year contracts to extract Iraqi crude and allow the first large-scale operation of foreign oil interests in the country since the industry was nationalised in 1972. Keep an eye on this one. Both the outcome and the coverage should be interesting.
UPDATE. Commenter LA Confidential Pantload points to this RedState post, in which "Socrates" (I imagine RedState staff meetings as sad Symposia with giant bottles of Mr. Pibbs instead of wine) argues that we've been too nice to our "defeated" "enemy" in Iraq (you know, the erstwhile flower-strewing freedom-lovers). "Victory is incomplete until the loser internalizes the outcome," he says. But DeBa'athification, hanging Saddam, and turning the nation into a hellhole haven't led to the right sort of internalization, so what will? Maybe something like the Pol Pot Year Zero formula, after we get the future corpses to help us erect the derricks. For added laffs, check out ol' Soc's interpretations of the American Civil War and WWI.
3:43 PM by roy edroso
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TEACHING THE MSM A LESSON. Kerry photo funnies enjoyed by rightwing assholes (ha ha! Soljers stuk in irak hate Jon Cary!) shown to be bullshit. Ole Perfesser (via correspondent) says the real story is how that Cary -- I mean Kerry, ha ha -- has "special talents" for looking foolish.
Jamil Hussein, long derided by rightwing assholes as non-existent, is produced. The Ole Perfesser says the real story is that Media Matters listed Patterico among about a dozen other rightwing assholes.
Rightwing assholes flout Bush/Pelosi poll comparison which turns out, you guessed, to be misleading. (They tried something similar a few months back.) The Ole Perfesser turns it into a thought experiment: "I'm guessing, though, that these numbers would be getting a lot more press attention anyway if the party affiliations were reversed."
The knock I hear these guys constantly making on Main Stream Media is that the MSM's malfeasances, however small in the scheme of things, make all their stories hard to trust. They have a point. The MSM should work tirelessly and shamelessly, as the Perfesser does, to spin even obvious reversals into victories for their political affinity groups. Trying to actually report is difficult, and you can easily screw it up; but doing such work as the Perfesser does takes very little skill and there are no standards, apparently, against which to judge it. And there will always be a select group of people who will believe what you tell them, no matter what. And you never have to leave your basement!
Really, I don't know why our media isn't worse than it is, considering the current incentives.
12:54 PM by roy edroso
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HISTORY'S GREATEST MONSTER. This whole post, by Malkin storeminder Dafydd ab Hugh, is a gem, but here's the best bit:The Iraq war -- indeed, the larger GWOJ (global war against jihadism) -- is as much a propaganda war, a war of ideas and "memes," as it is a shooting war. Paul Josef Goebbels understood the power of propaganda; so too did Tojo, Walter Cronkite, and so does al-Qaeda, of course. I eagerly await future installments of this fever dream, in which the author uncovers Walter Cronkite's rape rooms and concentration camps. Not to mention the "Black Rock Death March."
Walter Cronkite as a peer of Tojo and Goebbels! Defeat has made them even more hilarious.
11:14 AM by roy edroso
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ALL I CAN SAY IS, if some of the big, big money I make every day with alicublog has run off in Dr. Mrs. Ole Perfesser's direction, well, blogging's like manure -- it's no good unless ya spread it around!
Previously, in her comments section, Dr. Mrs. OP has also claimed that Glenn Greenwald and I bought her a boat. If the IRS is reading this (and it is!), I just want to say that, judging from my actual traffic numbers (and what I know blogads and adsense actually pay), her claims are rather fanciful. (Though she may have a separate arrangement with Mr. Greenwald that I don't know about.)
UPDATE. Dr. Mrs. is onto me: not only am I a blog-millionaire, but the real power behind the Ann Althouse Army known as Sadly, No! It's only a matter of time before she figures out that I'm the brains behind this whole damn operation. Atrios -- Edroso in Latin! Kos -- Edroso in Greek! Pandagon -- Edroso in drag! My name is legion!
If you want me I'll be hiding out on Skull Island till things blow over.
UPDATE II. DMOP points out that I only gave her enough money to rent a boat. It's still going to look bad in the tabloids, though.
9:53 AM by roy edroso
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