Wearing US Flag Pins On Your Lapel

So much is made of who and who does not where a US flag pin on their lapel. Does just wearing a pin make you more patriotic? I find these are the phony people trying to look like they care, it's all for show.

What's funny, I bet most of these pins are made in China.

CNN's Ware Dismisses McSame

So McSame says Barack should go with him to Iraq to get a firsthand view of "success"? I'm sure the escorted Blackhawk, kevlar and tank visit really gives you insights into what having no water and electricity is like. CNN's Michael Ware, who has the best nose on TV, said that U.S. officials’ trips to Iraq are usually “divorced from reality” adding that its “impossible” to “get much of a real picture.” Ware then noted that McCain’s own trips to Iraq have not helped him get a sense of the realities in Iraq:

WARE: I’ll issue a word of caution, too. I mean Senator McCain has been here, what, more than half a dozen times. And we’ve seen him get assessments of Iraq terribly wrong. So I wouldn’t be hanging my hat on the fact that your opponent has only been here once.

Video and more here.

That's what is great about being old like McCain, you see your own reality, senility is bliss for him. Hey Cheerleader Johnny, have any of your trips to Iraq resulted in saving American lives or shortening the occupation in Iraq? Your six visits have amounted to Jack Squat. Dog and pony show paid by US tax dollars.

Printing The Truth

There is a great moment in the Bob Dylan documentary Don't Look Back by D.A. Pennebaker where Dylan is engaged with an established Time magazine writer. The writer is trying to uncover the Dylan mystique that is intangible, a sort of generation gap personified.

After a series of annoying questions, Bob fires back [paraphrasing], "you don't want the truth, magazines like Time would never dare print the truth, if you printed the truth you'd go out of business the next day".

While that particular exchange was based around a broader "what is truth", Dylan's words always stuck with me. Printing the truth is not in the interest of our culture, we always need the spin to make it palatable. I understand that. I wish it were different. The truth is a powerful thing. It has to be taken in doses.

I'm not saying I know what truth is, I'm biased. So take a current story. Maybe someone like Scott McClellan is telling the truth when he airs all the dirt on his years working for Bush. The truth about how Bush is inept or how he mislead the country is too hard to handle, but "disgruntled", "traitor" and "not the Scotty we knew" are easy tags we can throw at McClellan. These will make the news cycles. A good gauge is always how hard they attack the messenger and not the message. How many segments will be about why McClellan said what he said versus what he actually said? Who will show the lessons Scott learned from the Bush mindset that made a lot of really bad choices. The truth of his statements are not the issue. I hope the MSM can prove me wrong this time. Seeing how a passive media got us into this mess, I'm not counting on them to get us out of it.

Thinking back on that exchange in 1965 with Dylan and Time, truth was too hard to print. I hope the times they are-a changin'.

Bush: Is It Possible To Get More Inexperienced?

Reflect on this:

President Bush said Wednesday that rebuilding Iraq and Afghanistan is proving difficult as the wars rage on, and "we're learning as we go."

A few things popped into my head.
1. Learning as we go implies they did not know what they were doing at first.
2. To really learn, you have to admit mistakes, which Bush will never do, so you'll never really learn.
3. Can a Presidential candidate use "I may not know, but I'll learn as we go"?
4. Does inexperience count?
5. What are some real examples of what Bush and Co have learned?
6. Can rebuilding a country and engaging a country in a war happen at the same time?
7. How can someone who does not know anything be so confident about what and what will not work? [i.e. leaving vs staying]
8. What does he learn from getting rid of all the CENTCOM commanders in the Middle East?
9. Is this a disingenuous use of the word "learn"?

More broadly, what has Bush learned about issuing debts to China, the Palestinian situation, rising energy costs, shrinking dollars, housing foreclosures, failed foreign policies, climate changes, hiring cronies without skills, gay marriages, not asking tough questions, looking into Putin's eyes/soul, domestic natural disasters like Katrina, and on and on.

Bush is a lifelong C student, learning is not his strong suit. He is like the old guy that asks "can I get emails on the internet?" He really has no clue.

What Really Happens In Iraq

In the spring of 2007, a conference was held on the outskirts of Washington, DC. Entitled Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan, it hearkened back to the Winter Soldier testimonies held three decades ago during the Vietnam War. Of the testimonies filmed, this one, by Iraq War vet Jon Michael Turner, was the most compelling and intense.

Watch as he talks about his "kills".

McCain = Bush = McSame

According to CQ, Senator John McCain has voted with President Bush 100% of the time in 2008 and 95% of the time in 2007.



So even though McSame has broken from the Republicans on a few occasions, he is in lock step with Bush 100% of the time. Read More. Can you handle 4 more years of this?

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Bush: The Denier-In-Thief Did Coke

As per my last post about denial, Bush reigns supreme when it comes to denying reality. The truth is far too hard to bear, so create the lies to help you get through the day. Being a former cokehead troubles George so he makes up some bullshit story about "honestly" not remembering.

Here's a clip from Scott McClellan's new book:

"'The media won't let go of these ridiculous cocaine rumors,' I heard Bush say. 'You know, the truth is I honestly don't remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don't remember.'"

I remember thinking to myself, How can that be?" McClellan wrote. "How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn't make a lot of sense."

In the years that followed, McClellan "would come to believe that sometimes he convinces himself to believe what suits his needs at the moment." McClellan likened it to a witness who resorts to "I do not recall."

Anyone who says "I can't remember if I did cocaine", yet was a drunk and partied until he was 40, is an addict in denial. People who never did it would recall never doing it. It's like asking someone "did you ever kill a man?" Either you did or you didn't.

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Scott McClellan's New Book

Some nuggets from the former Bush press secretary's new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception. Get ready to be shocked:

"McClellan charges that Bush relied on “propaganda” to sell the war."

He says the White House press corps was too easy on the administration during the run-up to the war.

He admits that some of his own assertions from the briefing room podium turned out to be “badly misguided.”

So with all this candor comes the denial, captured here: “I still like and admire President Bush,” McClellan writes. “But he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war. … In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security.”

He still likes and admires the guy?

Read More.

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The War Prayer By Mark Twain

A film of Mark Twain’s scathing indictment of war, and particularly of blind patriotic and religious fervor as motivations for war.



The War Prayer website

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