UPDATE. Commenters note that some of the factoids repeated as gospel by the brethren are being challenged, let us say, by events and expert witnesses: For example, the insistence that the five trained Talibani were super-villains whom Obama only let go because he wants them to grow stronger and destroy America has been contradicted by a Gitmo prosecutor ("When I saw the names of the five individuals, when they were reported last weekend, my first reaction was, ‘Who are they?’... I think [the Administration] struck a pretty good deal"), as well as by a former CENTCOM chief, among others. I wouldn't say this proves that there was nothing wrong with the deal -- I don't want to get into the game of refuting one set of unbuttressed assertions with another -- but it does remind those of us still in possession of common sense that a house built on bullshit may not survive a brisk summer rain.
UPDATE 2. I would say this Marc A. Thiessen headline marks the all-time low --
Is Obama considering surrendering to the Taliban?-- but experience has taught us that as far as these guys are concerned, the barrel has no bottom.
I can't believe the bloodlust that is being expressed about this. The facts haven't come out, and they want the guy's head on a stick.
ReplyDeleteI thought we were supposed to be the civilized ones in the "GWoT".
Immediately rightbloggers professed mortal offense that the swap had been made...
ReplyDeleteActually it took them a few hours. Don't judge a wingnut until you've cognitived a mile in his dissonance.
Yes, they are all but calling for his head to be cut off as punishment for not having his head cut off by the head cutter-offers.
ReplyDeletegasp! ...you're comparing a basket of puppies to a ham sandwich! - you fiend!!
ReplyDeleteI liked how Maddow showed up the McCain Twostep. Got to be first to rev up the wingnuts. Jonah's column sounds like he has been sniffing his farts out of a plastic bag again. The newest interns haven't worked out that the voice recognition software doesn't sort the sentences into order yet.
ReplyDeleteWithout conditions, the Taliban could ask for anything -- all of the prisoners in Gitmo, a billion dollars, the L.A. Clippers -- and our hands would be tied.
ReplyDeleteJonah's still endeavoring to master the Rule of Threes, I see. If only he'd figure out that he has to end the sequence with a gag - a gaseous emission won't cut it.
These dunnings won't kruger themselves, after all!
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised you didn't go on for a few more pages with this one. The whole week was a veritable landslide on Bullshit Mountain.
ReplyDeleteWithout conditions, the Taliban could ask for anything--
ReplyDelete--MANPADS, the deed to the Naval Observatory, out-of-season Shamrock Shakes
--air support, a seat at the UN, the complete series of Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy
--unconditional surrender, a new Loya Jirga, an evening with Burt Reynolds
Just trying to make life easier for Jonah's intern.
The whole Bergdahl affair has a real Going After Cacciato vibe to it.
ReplyDeleteI can't even be outraged, really;
ReplyDeleteSgt. Bergdahl's parents have now received death threats thanks to these pigfucking point-scoring psychopaths. I thought I had finally exhausted my outrage ducts, too, but it seems I was mistaken.
Bergdahl went AWOL so he could defect? Huh say what? Did he go over to Taliban side and say "Hey, I wanna work with you guys?" and they put him on ice for five years so they could think about it?
ReplyDeleteAnd don't worry, Roy, I can get outraged enough for both of us. Not because of the hypocrisy of certain people cuddling up to everything military,and in quite a few cases demanding that Obama bring Bergdahl home and then attacking him as soon as he does. It's because innocent people are being hurt. The man's parents have already gotten death threats from some easily-led yahoos out there.
Violence is the go-to "solution" in the 'States now, it would seem. Can't get a date? Shoot up some place. Want to make a political statement? Shoot up a Georgia courthouse. Mad at your brother for "stealing" your shirt? Shoot him. Mad that the President secured the release of a POW? Make death threats.
ReplyDeleteAh, we were typing in unison.
ReplyDeleteCan't those people do anything right?
ReplyDeleteI, for one, was surprised and gratified that Juan Williams (of all people) called out the hypocrisy of Republicans about this on Fox News. This may be one case where the right's outrage actually does it far more harm than they reckoned. I think most of the Average Joes and Janes are both puzzled and disgusted by the right's opportunistic flip-flop just to score imaginary points.
ReplyDeleteI prefer "harmony."
ReplyDeleteToo bad it's Jonah's intern who has to change Jonah's MANPADS. Eww!
ReplyDeleteFor the halibut, I posted this item at Tiger Beat on the Potomac:
ReplyDelete----
Retired Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who was the former top
prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay, told MSNBC on Saturday that the prisoners released in exchanged for Bergdahl were so inconsequential that he did not even know who they were.
“My role as chief prosecutor was to review the information we had on the
detainees to determine which ones we could potentially bring war crimes
charges against,” Davis recalled. “When I saw the names of the five
individuals, when they were reported last weekend, my first reaction
was, ‘Who are they?’”
“I never saw the names before, which means there was not enough
information to even make it on our list of potential prosecution,” he
explained. “To trade five of them for a U.S. service member, in my
estimation, and I’m often critical of President [Barack] Obama, I think
they struck a pretty good deal.”
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2014/06/rand-paul-libertarian-hawk.html
-----------
The immediate response? YOU ARE A LIAR, TWO ARE WANTED BY THE U.N.!!
As if any of these little spambots ever gave a shit about what the U.N. wanted before.
~
Credit where credit is due to Williams, yes.
ReplyDeleteAs to the Average Joes and Janes, the conservative noise machine basically seems to have forgotten that they exist. This is all being aimed at the basiest of the base, in the hopes that they'll be enough to swing the Senate.
Obama "has replenished the enemy in wartime by giving the Taliban and Haqqanis back five senior, capable, rabidly anti-American commanders..
ReplyDeleteI think he means 5 broken men, hollowed by years of brutalisation and psychological and physical torture.
GWoT = George W. of Thrones?
ReplyDeleteTHAT JUST MAKES THEM EVEN MORE SENIOR, LIEBERAL!
ReplyDeleteJust imagine how scared the Viet Cong would be if we sent them back 5 John McCains.
IMAGINE IT!
~
Given the McCain/crashed fighter ratio, I'm sure the Vietcong would have been happy to leave them with the US forces.
ReplyDeleteWould we have exchanged 100 prisoners? Would we have handed over a trillion dollars? How about giving our foes one of our aircraft carriers?
ReplyDeleteHmmmmmmmmm..........Facile, yet stupid. How, uh, unexpected.
These guys must be hysterical at poker. "I've got an ace and a six. I'll bet my entire pile because it's just as likely that I'll draw a royal flush on the next three cards as it is that I'll get bupkis."
There's some irony at play. After years and years of denouncing nuance as liberal deception, the brethren are now trying to get some nuance of their own. Even if it's bullshit.
ReplyDelete"I can't believe the bloodlust that is being expressed about this."
ReplyDeleteWhy not? It's their two minutes hate. The facts surrounding its object is only tangentially related the rage expressed therein. He's just a proxy.
Is stupidity the opposite of insight? Because Goldberg puts his on display even for the most innocuous observation:
ReplyDeleteGoldberg: This is in keeping with his withdrawal-at-all-cost Afghanistan policy, in which the only timetable that matters is the one driven by his personal political priorities. Obama wants out of Afghanistan before he leaves office and he needed Bergdahl home — no matter the price — to do that.
Or, as this week's ABC News/Washington Post Poll put it, "Obama has said he will reduce U.S. troop levels in Afghanistan to 9,800 by the end of this year, half of that next year and near zero by 2016. Do you support or oppose this troop-reduction plan?"
Support:77% Oppose:19% Unsure:4%
Clearly, without Bergdahl home Obama would not be able to convince the 4% who are still unsure if his timetable is a good idea.
Y'know, I'm beginning to think that the whole fart metaphor for Jonah's output is terribly unfair to farts.
Remember when it was deemed bad form to dump major foreign policy problems on your successor?
ReplyDeleteTWO ARE WANTED BY THE U.N.!!
ReplyDelete"Wanted" by the U.N.? I have no illusions as to my shortcoming as a foreign-policy thinker, so could someone break this one down for me? And wouldn't releasing them from a black hole of international law make it easier for the U.N. to "arrest" them, or whatever? And, as ittdgy™³²®© alludes to, wouldn't the U.N.'s enmity mean that these are good guys? Maybe they're wanted for valiant resistance to Agenda 21.
When Obama said, "we don't condition whether or not we make the effort
ReplyDeleteto try to get [captured soldiers] back," Goldberg a-ha'd: "the Obama
administration had been negotiating for years for Bergdahl's release,"
he said. "Why negotiate at all if we don't have conditions? Without
conditions, the Taliban could ask for anything -- all of the prisoners
in Gitmo, a billion dollars, the L.A. Clippers -- and our hands would be
tied."
Which, you will be shocked to learn, is a complete misreading of what the president said. He was quite clearly taking about whether we attempt to get a person back not being conditioned on whether wen like that person.
Wheels within wheels, man, wheels within wheels.
ReplyDeleteSay what you will about farts, at least they are the byproduct of a useful, productive process.
ReplyDeleteYa know, all of those fuckers held at Guantanamo should have been either released or charged, convicted, and put in a real prison years ago. So if we can off-load at least a few and get something, anything in return, then what exactly is the problem?
ReplyDeleteTo semi-quote Swingin' Dick Cheney, "We negotiated with terrorists, and we didn't get a very good deal." I wonder what Dick would consider a good deal. What exactly does he think all those people he and W imprisoned illegally are worth?
Too bad they didn't play this "there are always costs on the other side of the ledger" game over a decade ago:
ReplyDeleteInvade Afghanistan? Would we invade Iraq, too? Would we kill thousands of Americans and maybe a million Iraqis? How about spending $3 trillion dollars?
Yeah. I only wish there weren't "substantial prices that the United States would not have paid."
And curiously, everyone's except mine smell bad.
ReplyDeleteIt took a little while for the news that it was Eastasia we had always been at war with to make its way through the usual channels.
ReplyDeleteI forget where I read it (probably Raw Story or Crooks and Liars), but one commentor was suggesting that the best thing to do is to "give them all away" like "Crazy Eddie": Take two Gitmo detainees for building a school! Take Bieber off our hands, we'll give you four!
ReplyDeleteCosts only come home to roost when the guy in the White House has a (D) after his name.
ReplyDeleteOne can only hope that prospective recruits are paying close attention. "So...I volunteer to serve my country, and if I'm captured by an enemy and a Democratic president negotiates my release, my family will be slandered all over Fox News and receive death threats? Uh...no thanks, I'd rather be saddled by huge college debts the rest of my life."
ReplyDeleteBergdahl went AWOL so he could defect?
ReplyDeleteThis is actually based on a typographical error. Bergdahl went AWOL so he could defecate. His failure to get permission to use the boys' room is clearly the act of a traitor.
You're depriving the deaf of their enjoyment of them.
ReplyDeleteTechnically, if someone wanders away from their post, wouldn't they be AWOL and perhaps guilty of dereliction of duty rather than "desertion"? You can't really call someone a "deserter" if they were being held by armed guards against their will; if that were the case, all POWs would be "deserters." "Deserter" refers to someone who leaves and doesn't return even though they have the ability to do so.
ReplyDeleteRemember John Walker Lindh? He's about 12 years into a 20-year sentence, of which up to 3 might be shaved for good behavior, but he's been an active Muslim-rights advocate in jail, and successfully sued for the right to common prayer. I always thought he got a raw deal, myself; it was a pretty crazy time. These assholes must not be allowed to railroad Bowe Bergdahl, who may (or may not) deserve some kind of sentence; time served, for instance.
ReplyDeleteA US soldier who deserted his post in 1965, crossed the Korean DMZ, and lived in North Korea until 2004. In 2004 he went to Japan, and turned himself in at a US military base.
ReplyDelete"On November 3, Jenkins pled guilty to charges of desertion and aiding the enemy, but denied making disloyal or seditious statements – the latter charges were dropped. He was sentenced to 30 days' confinement, received a dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and benefits and was reduced in rank to E-1 private (the lowest rank in the US Army). He was released six days early, on November 27, 2004, for good behavior.[1]"
"--air support, a seat at the UN, the complete series of Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy<\i>"
ReplyDeleteOr even, God forbid, Air Supply.
Inasmuch as they define civilisation as a willingness to torture, yes.
ReplyDeleteA real Republican warrior just shits his pants, like the Nuge.
ReplyDeleteYes, desertion involves intent, and sometimes length of absence, among other things.
ReplyDeleteBergdahl's history of prior incidents of going walkabout and returning suggests he probably would have returned if he hadn't been grabbed by the Taliban.
That's probably why his platoon mates, coached by Republican operatives, are making sketchy claims that Bergdahl left a note which indicated that he wasn't returning. Evidence of said note existing? None.
Pretty sure we have aircraft carriers just sitting around rusting.
ReplyDeleteNice mixing of fact and rumor there, do you do it for free or should we expect a bill?
ReplyDeleteIt's bad enough they direct this shit at the president and the first family, at least they have guards.
ReplyDeleteBut now they've taken all of the psychotic rage they've been hurling at the White House fence and are directing it at a defenseless family. There was no reason to make the Bergdahl's into proxies for Obama. They could have gotten lots of mileage out of "OMG Obama released Five Bin Laden Clone/Cyborgs with Lasers Mounted on their Heads" or whatever they're calling these guys today. And you don't even have to go nutpicking to find this stuff.
I think this is a new phase in their slide into non-stop Raaar! and they won't be happy (or at least silent) until someone is killed.
The only thing remotely sort of amusing about this are the massive skidmarks they left when they did the Bring Bowe Home to Send Bowe Back 180. And maybe we're finally at the point where if Obama says "Don't drink bleach," they'll all rush out and buy a bottle of Clorox.
What rumor? The stuff about Jenkins? I got that from Wikipedia, which ought to be pretty accurate, since Jenkins wrote a book about it, and it isn't a terribly controversial subject that would attract ideological edit wars.
ReplyDeleteWhat I wrote about Bergdahl isn't exactly going out on a limb. Afghanistan is a much more active conflict than US vs. North Korea in 1965. And I'm just going with the assumption that he was in fact a captive, with living conditions much worse than Jenkins'.
It's not like I'm pushing Fox's nonsense that Bergdahl was a jihadi convert.
Don't like minorities? Shoot a couple of cops, some random strangers and then yourself.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.reviewjournal.com/news/las-vegas/shooters-metro-ambush-left-five-dead-spoke-white-supremacy-and-desire-kill-police
W/o looking I think it's 30 days before it's desertion rather than AWOL, may be different in a combat zone.
ReplyDeleteThey're desperate to find anything to feed impeach-mania.
ReplyDeleteOn the bright side, I've seen one recent Connecticut op-ed calling for the POW-MIA flags to come down and be replaced by a flag honoring living veterans. It didn't reference the Bergdahl case, but I suspect the op-ed was inspired by the VA hospital scandal, and by the Bergdahl situation exposing the emptiness of the alleged "concern" for POWs.
ReplyDeleteSure, but that doesn't explain why they're attacking the Bergdahls.
ReplyDeleteIf I wanted to give you shit, I wouldn't stalk some guy you once helped out, slander him and threaten to kill him and his parents. And even if my grievance with you is the product of me losing brain function because I've had my head jammed up my ass for dozens of years, going after someone you happen to know is purely d-ranged. It is the sort of behavior that makes paranoid schizophrenia look like a benign personality quirk. But these guys aren't even sick, they're just mean.
Oh, yeah, true.
ReplyDeleteThe usual channels being the right wing's small and large bowels.
ReplyDeleteGreat minds, etc.
ReplyDeleteCheney's lucky he wasn't part of the deal.
ReplyDeleteI think racist wingnuts are also upset about the math: five ragheads for one white American. It shouldn't have been more than three-fifths of a raghead.
ReplyDelete"Satisfy your Blutdurst with delicious Aristocrat Puppy Sandwiches."
ReplyDeleteIt's been nearly a generation since they've had Jon Walker Lindh to kick around, even when he had nothing to do with 9/11 or fighting against U.S. troops, so, I guess Bergdahl will have to stand in for the role of "traitor," and, of course, this will be Obama's ostensible sin to bear.
ReplyDeleteStill, I feel badly for the kid. Went into the military and to Afghanistan because he believed a lot of nonsense about us doing the right thing, when nothing of the sort was ever evident. The army's going to get their licks in, as are the wingnutz, and it's going to be a long while before he's able to drift off into anonymity.
And, as usual, it's the keyboard commandos who would never put themselves, ever, in the position of having a crisis of conscience, let alone in harm's way, who are out for blood. No matter how this turns out, it's not going to be gory enough for the eejits.
I gotta go with Dennis Green on this one. (Or, "Bergdahl's Granite Countertops.") They live for making non-ironic death threats.
ReplyDeleteBand name.
ReplyDeleteThat's why we have these things called "investigations" and "courts martial," which are supposed to clear up ambiguities such as why Bergdahl left, whether he intended to come back, whether he provided "aid and comfort," etc.
ReplyDeleteThis is the tell, really. If this whole thing really were about Bergdahl, the Support the Troops contingent would at least be willing to wait for the facts to be established, a process that will take months--far too long for the present election cycle, plus: Obama could be out of office by then.
North Vietnamese officer: Hm-m, his father and grandfather were great naval officers. Why is this runt such a shitty pilot?
ReplyDeleteOther North Vietnamese officer: Must come from his mother's side.
Both: Ha ha ha!
Honestly, it's just become so pavlovian. If Obama cured cancer, the Republicans would become cancer's ally.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, this proves that they don't give a shit about actual POWs, since they are shitting on this guy who did nothing wrong, other than have his release negotiated by someone that they have an enduring hatred for.
ReplyDeleteAnd you know that's the first thing they'd have demanded.
ReplyDeleteWhat do they think the Gitmo prisoners are worth? Nothing.
ReplyDeleteBUT, every person being held there is not really a person. They're Marvel Comics super villains. They have powers far beyond the comprehension of normal people, and their legions of henchmen are capable of both the unimaginable and the unspeakable. Only our SuperFortress of Doom with its kryptonite containment field can hold them.
Or, at least, that's pretty much the message of the last meltdown the rightwing had when the subject of trying the Gitmo detainees in American courts came up. Ol' Lindsey Graham had to be brought meals and bedpans on the fainting couch, he was so scandalized by the idea. And it took the jaws of life to pry the microphone from John McCain's hands.
Oh, that was a long time ago.
ReplyDeleteAllow me to introduce the "School Children Must Play With Benzene Act of 2015." Sponsored by Louie Gohmert, Ted Yoho, and Ted Cruze.
ReplyDeleteA wingnut can't suffer a crisis of conscience because they don't have consciences--at least not as we understand the term.
ReplyDeleteWow. In a way, that's pretty fucked up.
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't. I remember GHW Bush deploying troops to Bosnia and Somalia after having just lost the '92 election to Clinton with the promise that the troops would be home before Christmas.
ReplyDeleteNo Child Left Alive
ReplyDeleteAir Supply. - At long last, have you left no sense of decency?
ReplyDeleteIt was certainly a better deal for Cheney than it was for the people imprisoned at Gitmo for 12 + years without being charged.
ReplyDeleteThere are, after all, no bike paths in Afghanistan.
ReplyDeleteThey tried to trade him, but no one wants Cheney.
ReplyDeleteTwo more, and McCain would have been a North Vietnamese ace...
ReplyDeleteTrue story: when I was in high school, Air Supply came to play at the local podunk college. Not only did some of my classmates go to see the show, a few of the girls joined them after the show back at the local Ramada Inn to "party" with them. Worse, they didn't know better than to tell everyone about it, thinking that it was really cool that they had "partied" with Air Supply.
ReplyDeleteOf course, we never let them live it down.
Well, according to Free Republic, of all people, there are five decomissioned carriers on static display, with well-stocked gift shops and everything.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3042098/posts
And the Taliban is always looking for new funding...
Frankly, I think Average Jane and Joe were forgotten as soon as Benghazi!!!!11, so it's all troglodytes from here on out.
ReplyDeleteWell, who wouldn't believe his platoon mates? After all, Bergdahl didn't drink beer with them!
ReplyDeleteAn advance copy of "Downton Abbey!"
ReplyDeleteThe whole POW/MIA flag thing always puzzled me--I could never figure out how much of it was driven by movies like Rambo and Missing in Action, or whether the movies were inspired by a pre-existing sentiment that somehow the Vietnam War needed to be refought on a smaller scale, or maybe just that the people who fought in it felt screwed over by the lingering notion that they were personally responsible for losing the war, and the alleged POWs were stand-ins for the vets who actually made it out but still felt alienated from their country. (Charlie Daniels, of all people, did a song titled "Still in Saigon" that suggested that a lot of vets hadn't left the war mentally, and other hits like "Born in the USA" and "Goodnight Saigon" suggested the same.)
ReplyDeleteThe flag itself dates from 1971, but by the time it was officially recognized by Congress, in 1990, the chances that any soldier that might have been in captivity (as opposed to simply deserting) was slim to nil.
Umm, excuse me, Jonah, but didn't you just step on your own dick when you let this little gem slip:
ReplyDelete"..the Obama administration had been negotiating for years for Bergdahl's release," he said."
Kinda blows the "Ooh... we didn't know you were planning to release THESE five supervillians back into the battle to prey on 'Murrica." right out of the water, dontcha think? And yes, Jonah these five guys have been on the table for years.
But now they've taken all of the psychotic rage they've been hurling at the White House fence and are directing it at a defenseless family.
ReplyDelete"Now"?
Getting one through the Khyber Pass will be an engineering challenge.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I forgot to add: this is in strong contrast to the issue of MIAs from previous wars. Of course, it's understood that many of the MIAs from the World Wars and Korea have that status simply because forensic science of the time was unable to identify remains of unknown casualties, but still, the number of MIAs from Vietnam is dwarfed by those of the previous wars.
ReplyDeleteI think I disagree with you here, Shakezula. It < is/> a mix of fact and rumor, but it's within normal limits of what we do here, and the pertinent point, if it's accurate, is that neither the U.S. government nor the U.S. populace has typically assumed that returning POWs or suspected deserters deserve castigation, death penalty recommendations, or death threats to their families. It's not that our past behavior has always been so exemplary - hardly - but that Berdahl is Special on account of oh gah I'm all out of words.
ReplyDeleteBut a 5:1 Mooslim/American exchange rate shows the strength of the American.
ReplyDeleteOf course, delivering 3/5ths of a prisoner would have satisfied their blood-lust, especially since it would almost certainly have resulted in Bowe's death, which they could then blame on Obama (including the treatment of the prisoner). Maybe 20 prisoners run through a wood chipper in exchange for Bowe's head would have been good?
I can't tell, I am not a d-ranged asshat sheet-stainer who ends each day by praying that I'll wake to find the last two presidential elections were a crazy dream.
One of the things that is getting surprisingly little play in the media (or maybe just being drowned out by the right-wing noise machine) is that apparently Bergdahl's platoon was notoriously dysfunctional; I wouldn't be surprised if he "wandered off" just to get away from some assholes for a little bit.
ReplyDeleteHave you ever read the novel by Kevin Powers, The Yellow Birds? (Little Brown, 2012) It's set in Iraq and narrated by a US soldier. Powers served in Iraq. I don't know if he has a blog, or what he thinks about Bergdahl, but I think it must be exponentially more insightful that anything any keyboard commando could ever come up with.
ReplyDeletePardon, I took it you meant he left while the base was under attack, which is one of the early "He's a Tr8or!" rumors.
ReplyDeleteDon't worry, if they get bored with this we'll hear the screech of desk chairs doing another 180: "WHY, AFTER TAKING TOO LONG TO SECURE THIS BRAVE HERO'S RELEASE, IS OBAMA PERSECUTING THIS BRAVE HERO WE HAVE ALWAYS CALLED A BRAVE HERO?!??! p.s. Everyone delete our tweets and facebook posts that show us howling for Bergdahl's blood.
ReplyDeleteHey, I'll defend "Making Love Out of Nothing at All" to the death. Or at least the moderate maiming. You can't go TOO wrong with Jim Steinman.
ReplyDeleteAnd I'll counter with this:
ReplyDeleteFitzcarraldo II.
ReplyDeleteNot really. Rather, they'd be outraged that he ignored MS. They'd have an MS sufferer, and her parents, on Fox and Friends, bravely enduring the cruelty of it all. Steve Doocey would look very sad. In the evening, Hannity would feature "an actual doctor" explaining the disease's symptoms. O'Reilly would, with his usual combination of condescension and narcissism, run down a list of celebs "on the far left" who have, or have had, cancer, to show how politicized Obama has made things.
ReplyDeleteThe next day a Fox News poll would show 56% of respondents "concerned that the President has given attention to one disease at the expense of many others."
To me, it seems pretty simple, really. If Bergdahl is a horrible, treasonous, Taliban-abetting piece of shit, then Obama is just THAT MUCH WORSE for releasing him. And how is everyone gonna KNOW how horrible Bergdahl is if we don't vomit bile all over him? HUH?! Answer me THAT! I mean, sure, of course, it's psychopathic behavior to try to destroy the guy because you don't like the president, and sure, it's a new low even for wingnuts, but it's really all just the usual sort of bullshit magnified.
ReplyDeleteSomeone call Werner Herzog!
ReplyDeleteBUT HIS DAD HAS A BEARD
ReplyDeleteI have to wonder, who, at this point, are they talking to other than themselves? There surely cant be that many fabled "undecided voters" left who were just waiting for a POW to get dogpiled on before they committed to pushing the straight-R ticket button come November.
ReplyDeleteWingnuts are like Nazis... I know, Godwinning, shut up... Not in the literal sense, but in the way that just when you think you've seen the worst they can do, they surprise you with something more repellant than you could have imagined.
And many MIA cases stem from instances where a man (or even group of men) is literally blown into a fine mist by artillery. In WWI, this was a major problem in certain sectors. Artillery bombardments (by really big field guns) would last hours or even days. Casualties would be torn apart, buried, blown back to the surface, reburied, and so on. Entire platoons simply vanished this way.
ReplyDeleteAnd Viet Nam, with dense jungle covering so much of the battle areas, made it very easy to "lose" casualties--especially during battles that traversed a mile or two of such terrain.
Europeans get a 7:1 exchange rate, but that just adds to their trade deficit.
ReplyDeleteHow long was Lt. George W. Bush absent from his post in Alabama?
ReplyDeleteHe may think "negotiate" meant negotiate with the execs at DeathRUs for a slice of the pie when he ramps up the ground war again in order to Save Sgt. Bergdahl, yeeeehaaaaw [fart].
ReplyDeleteIt's kind of weird to fixate on it. I mean, it's pretty much accepted that if a Navy ship or submarine sank, some or all of the bodies would never be recovered. How many sailors escaped a sinking ship, but were taken by sharks? How many planes went down in WW2 over the ocean, and were never found?
ReplyDeleteThe sad fact of war is that many bodies are not recoverable. It's no favor to families to promote unrealistic hopes that their loved one may still be out there alive so long as the remains haven't been located.
And jungle isn't an environment that preserves remains very well.
ReplyDeleteOh, man, don't get me started. Or Dan Rather.
ReplyDeleteAnd then what?
ReplyDeleteI find the right to be thoroughly disgusting men and women. They always seem to make themselves even more disgusting. It is the only thing they are good at. Being disgusting human beings.
ReplyDeleteThis is what I was looking for: http://www.dtic.mil/dpmo/
ReplyDeleteAs we all know, you have hit on the only perpetual truth of the right: No matter what Obama does, it's ALWAYS a disaster for the country.
ReplyDeleteEven if he found a cure for cancer AND revved the economy up to full employment, record profits and vastly reduced taxes, he'd still be accused of simply making us all feel good before he imposes Sharia law, confiscates all our money, guns and property, and ships every child off to madrassa when he establishes the new Caliphate.
And it took about 15 seconds for rational people to respond, "But what about Duck Dynasty?" Doesn't matter: It didn't stop these people from throwing it out there as if they'd never thought about it. Amazing.
ReplyDeleteAnd Dr. Keith Ablow would explain the psychological underpinnings of Obama's hate for MS sufferers...
ReplyDeleteExit through the Taliban gift shop.
ReplyDeleteBut i get thst crazy dream since i would still like to imagine that the two bush terms were just a nightmare from which we could wake up.
ReplyDeleteThe harumphing when Bin Laden was killed sure proved that, didn't it?
ReplyDeleteIm still waiting for the handful of beans we were promised when we traded the cow for iraq.
ReplyDeleteIm on my phone snd cant link but ZiIRC the entire MIA/POW flag thing was a serious con artist grft that mccain of all people fought because he recognized the basic scam of it. He was personally attacked for years by the guy behind it because he refused to pretend there were secret POW camps in vietnam that the us government was hiding. The guy behind the scam was an early pre newsmax/ fox news con artist selling fear, nostalgia, and resentment to the families of lost soldiers.
ReplyDelete". . . and a war criminal to be named later."
ReplyDeleteWell, obviously it's our own damn fault.
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought about Air Supply in a long time, and during that time Even The Nights Were Better.
ReplyDeleteAw, c'mon... if Texas and Alabama had been mortal enemies locked into an existential struggle to the death... or something... you KNOW Bush would'a TOTALLY been there...
ReplyDeleteAm I doing something wrong here? "Well, obviously, dumbass." http://www.salon.com/2014/03/18/iraq_war_architect_bill_kristol_complains_about_american_war_weariness/
ReplyDelete"Went into the military and to Afghanistan because he believed a lot of
ReplyDeletenonsense about us doing the right thing, when nothing of the sort was
ever evident."
Look, as far as I know, it is considered psychologically disastrous for children to grow up in the US in any other era, politically, than the 50s.
I think we would need Terry Pratchett to fix that one.
ReplyDeleteI think you mean the keening and skreeeing.
ReplyDeleteWhy, it's as plain as the beard on his face!
ReplyDeleteThis one really gets me, an "At long last, Senator, have you no decency?"
ReplyDeleteOf course you bring the solider home. And when I say that I almost always include the same words the President used, "Period. Full stop." It just blows my mind.
Sorry if this all has been said, but this one just guts me.
I can believe it; there are a bunch of people who have worked the grift, including Bo Gritz, who has seemingly never met a fringe group he didn't like, and at one point tried to mount a "rescue operation" that was severely hampered by his marketing commemorative T-shirts before the operation. (William Shatner paid for the movie rights to his life story, an option that Shatner wisely never exercised.) I can't find anyone in particular who was going after McCain, except for Sidney Schanberg (probably best known for covering the genocide in Cambodia), who has kept the POW/MIA myth alive for decades, and who went after John Kerry (who chaired the early nineties Senate committee looking into the matter--McCain was also on it, as was semi-loose cannon Bob Smith--which found no basis for believing that anyone was still alive) and McCain during their respective presidential campaigns for the alleged "coverup".
ReplyDeleteI like the theory that Obama just did this to distract us from...er...what? They've been negotiating for Bergdahls release for years, but according to the wingnuts, it was decided last week in order to get some other breaking news off the front page.
ReplyDeleteIt didn't. It would never occur to them.
ReplyDeleteYou are thinking of using an association chain based on 'beard'. This is the optimal thing to do, since, after all, it is the subject being discussed.
Alas, Republican association chains begin with 'near'. 'Was that bearded dude with the near?'. "Yep". "Then he's a terrerist".
Since the Duck Dynasty Douchebags hate the near, they would never be considered.
You remember that you are talking about people who stalked at 10-year-old boy AND his family simply because the kid spoke in support of the SCHIP program that saved his (and his sister's) life?
ReplyDeleteThe same people who stalked and threatened two college girls for speaking out against Bush.
The same people who threatened Rachel Ray for wearing a print scarf.
These people are beyond sick, beyond mean, beyond any of our understandings of what constitutes civilized behavior. To them, failure to agree with and actively support their view is exactly equal to threatening them with physical violence. Hence, their instant reaction is physical violence.
How many sailors escaped a sinking ship, but were taken by sharks? How many planes went down in WW2 over the ocean, and were never found?
ReplyDeleteLots. Heck, never mind the ocean--Glenn Miller, the most popular bandleader of the big-band era, disappeared in a flight over the English Channel, a body of water so modest that people regularly swim across it. (The two main theories for the disappearance is that his small plane was hit by jettisoned bombs from British bombers, and that it was a cover-up for Miller having a heart attack while consorting with a Parisian prostitute.)
"They'll never know it's not bacon"
ReplyDeletehe has to end the sequence with a gag - a gaseous emission won't cut it.
ReplyDeleteOh, he gags all right, it is just hard to write the words you say when suffering from suffocation by sulfurous putrefaction.
Sorry, he's All Out of Love.
ReplyDeleteViolence is the go-to solution this week.
ReplyDeleteThat's just Cleek's Law.
going walkabout
ReplyDeleteMagnificent.
Bravo!
ReplyDeleteThat's McCain's whole psychology to me - he never measured up to Pap and Grandpap, and he's hell-bent on doing something notable, if even that happens to lead to the incineration of the planet.
The raw address will default like it did for you in the first link, prepending "alicublog.com\" (or at least mine did using Firefox with a raw address). I just add the tags, but I expect quoting the whole string will work, anything to keep it from prepending the local server.
ReplyDeleteIf Bergdahl had only slipped away to rape and murder a young girl and her family, and then returned to his post; those people would yapping about the presumption of innocence and assuring us that we just don't understand what happens in the 'fog of war'.
ReplyDeleteYes Marc, he is. Better run screaming from America before it is too late. Don't wait, we'll send your stuff once you reach safety.
ReplyDeleteEverything Obama does is franticly ginned-up into the worst, most scandalistic, anti-American, impeachable behavior EVER, in the hopes that someday one of the scandals will be authentic or something.
ReplyDeleteTheir whole world perception is based on FAITH. If Fox says something is so, IT IS SO. Eat your heart out, Pope.
ReplyDeleteAnd you KNOW the stuff that's going on in secret is a million times worse. I dread the far-off day when the Bush II admin records are unsealed, not that I expect to live that long.
ReplyDeleteit seems I was mistaken
ReplyDeleteDry heaves are the worst.
But our head cutter offers are morally superior to THEIR head cutter offers. Our side "Cuts For Christ".
ReplyDeleteFilm at 11. who wants to start the betting pool?
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand they would also bemoan the loss of jobs in the medical field due to the curing of cancer (oncologists, radiologists, etc.) Why, cancer is a job creator! Impeach!
ReplyDeleteWe can only hope....
ReplyDelete"'Death to America' watch cap" made me fucking laugh.
ReplyDelete"And you can get it free with our top 40 ululations, available now from K-Tel!"
Hündchenblutdurst is still a better Durst than Fred.
ReplyDeleteHave you no decency sir?
ReplyDeleteIf it feels good, it's true. For instance, Hayden Panettiere craves me bad.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I have been preeped, but never by a server. Do you have any photographs?
ReplyDelete"a house built on bullshit may not survive a brisk summer rain."
ReplyDeleteOne of Harry Belafonte's less successful singles.
Is Obama considering surrendering to the Taliban?
ReplyDelete... because if so, he has a goddamned unusual way of going about it.
So, theoretically, if we wanted to end violence in this country we should insist that liberals are all pro violence and then, in a mass reaction like a school of anchovies precision turning, the NRA and the Republicans would drop their gun fetish? I am a believer in Cleek and Cleek's law but that stretches my religious convictions to the breaking point.
ReplyDeleteIs Obama considering surrendering to the Taliban?
ReplyDeleteYou know it's ironic that the people who helped bring America into the torture community are the ones I most want to torture.
The only people dim enough to take the bet are the people I'd be betting on. Is that allowed?
ReplyDeleteThey seem to think the investigation and court martial should have been done before the deal was made to get Bergdahl back. Always easier to get a conviction when you don't have the defendant in person to deal with.
ReplyDeleteWell, I don't think anyone was going to argue that they were terribly photogenic gentlemen.
ReplyDeleteAnd definitely overheating...
ReplyDeleteYeah, Congress hasn't authorized deadly force for debt collectors. Yet...
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, I find many of my own...interesting.
ReplyDeleteGood on ya, Jenn.
ReplyDeleteI love those kind of stories.
Well, fuck, the CIA probably still has the receipts for a lot of 'em...
ReplyDeleteSay what you will about the tenets of Suck-On-This, at least it has politically correct facial hair.
ReplyDeleteAnd you know that had to be an Air Force joke at the time...
ReplyDeleteSO DOES THE RAINBOW!
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWLABR
Well my sister is happy that the French are criticizing Obama because gum so cleek.
ReplyDeleteWhen Obama said, "we don't condition whether or not we make the effort to try to get [captured soldiers] back," Goldberg a-ha'd: "the Obama administration had been negotiating for years for Bergdahl's release," he said. "Why negotiate at all if we don't have conditions?"
ReplyDeleteIf there had been any remaining doubt on the stupid-evil-or-both trilemma regarding Goldberg, I think this concludes the issue. A remotely intelligent man would have at least found a way to avoid quoting "whether or not we make the effort" before making a series of reductio ad absurdam claims based on ignoring those words.
Agenda 22, man...think about it.
ReplyDeletesg
ReplyDeleteIf only Jonah, as Lucianne's output, were merely a metaphor.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of that great closing scene from The Simpsons:
ReplyDeleteBurns: This anonymous clan of slack-jawed troglodytes has cost me the election, and yet if I were to have them killed, I would be the one to go to jail. That's democracy for you.
Have we reached the point where a disfavored figure says, "I eat a lot of beans," and the cry comes up, "kill him!?"
ReplyDelete"Hamburgers are very satisfying."
"Get the fuckin' rope, boys!"
"My favorite color is orange."
"Where's mah goddamn gun?"
"Most bicycles have two wheels."
"Jesus H. Christ, he's a Satanist! Kill him!"
It's seems we're getting closer to the point where none of those responses would seem impossible.
In a way, the POW-MIA campaign has the scent of Dolchstosslegende to it, a way of blaming others for the outcome of the war, and was probably propelled along by the same type of character that perpetuated the "hippie chicks spitting on veterans" myth. Perhaps the biggest fly in the POW-MIA ointment was that the Vietnamese won, so they had no practical or political ax to grind, no reason to secretly hold some prisoners as bargaining chips after the war was over. It was also a way to keep up the charade that we were the decent, honorable combatants, while the North Vietnamese were the evil, diabolical participants who were incapable of playing by our notions of the rules of war.
ReplyDeleteThen as now, American exceptionalism required a lot of myth-making.
But of course! The Invisible Hand of the Free Market and all, dontchaknow.
ReplyDeleteWhich set the stage for the whole Black Hawk Down incident--which the right gleefully pinned on Clinton because his being a Democrat emboldened the residents of Mogadishu or something.
ReplyDeleteNo, but we have figured out a way to allow them to send debtors to jail. We've always thought conservatives wanted to take us back to the 1890s. They're really pining for the 1690s.
ReplyDeleteIs Obama considering surrendering to the Taliban?
ReplyDeleteUpon further thought, I thought Obama is the Grand High Talibanger. Can a man surrender to himself? Or consider surrendering to himself?
Perhaps Bergdahl senior is now the Taliban because he wears the Beard of Terror. Or H.R. Clinton because BengalTigergazi! Maybe it's one of you all. Maybe it's me. It is so hard to tell what goes on in the heaving, glorping pool of fermenting shit that is the wingnut central nervous system.
And for those of you who don't know, or have forgotten, Thiessen was an assistant speechification writer for Bush II. It sure shows, doesn't it?
Isn't it bad enough we had to suffer through Bush's working out his daddy problems by becoming president and wrecking the country? We have to put up with McCain's daddy complex, too?
ReplyDeleteAnd I note that Romney was carrying quite a bit of daddy baggage as well. What's with Republicans and their father figures? For the party of family values, their sons (at least) seem to be awfully screwed up when it comes to dealing with familial relations.
And they'd manage to do all of this and avoid ever mentioning that stem-cell research might provide a cure for MS, but we don't do that because of snowflake babies.
ReplyDeleteSort of like, "Is that good bacteria or am I rotting away inside?"
ReplyDeleteThen as now, American exceptionalism required a lot of myth-making.
ReplyDeleteThen, as now, it also seemed to require a lot of conservatives spitting on veterans.
Upon further thought, I thought Obama is the Grand High Talibanger.
ReplyDeleteNo, no, merely a craven Muslim flunky. Remember all the bowing to other Muslims? That was him preemptively surrendering.
Same here, but I'm hard pressed to say why it wouldn't work. They're not long on clever.
ReplyDeleteCan a man surrender to himself?
ReplyDeleteSure, but he'll go blind.
Maybe not, but if you show them a bunch of liberals toting guns, they might drop the contents of their ... Well, that wouldn't be any different from the usual. Never mind.
ReplyDelete"Sure, but he'll go blind."
ReplyDeleteNonsense! Perhaps a bit of astigmatism, but nothing more. Say, I knew an Opus Dei guy once who had a Stigmatism.
The way the gay agenda is taking over this country, I have to wonder how much longer we will be making American myths.
ReplyDelete