So This Happened

I'm doing my thing today, scanning headlines, keeping up with news and opinion. Mostly international and national stuff.

Local politics bores the fuck out of me. Local politics is like watching little kids fight over who gets to eat the cat shit in the sand box.

I'm seeing these articles from Right Wing Fucktards like John Bolton, Karl Rove and William Kristol about how President Obama has been "dithering" over Libya.

That's the Krazy Klown Kollege talking point Buzzword Of The Day. Dithering.

Obama is a "Ditherer".


John "Got Milk?" Bolton said it.


Krazy Karl Rove said it. Dithering!


William "Wild Bill" Kristol, in an article he apparently wrote next Monday and was kind enough to send back in time to us, also accuses Obama of "Dithering"!

To paraphrase Inigo Montoya,

"That word you keep using. Dithering. I do not think it means what you think it means."

I think the word they are searching for is deliberating.

It was in this context that I saw that the topic on NPR's "Talk of the Nation" today was "Sussing Out An Emerging Obama Doctrine".

Neal Conan would be discussing the subject with Bob Woodward, associate editor for The Washington Post and half of the Woodward/Bernstein Team that broke the Watergate Scandal and brought down the Nixon Presidency.

So, naturally, I had to fire off an email expressing my opinion on the subject.

Apparently someone on the NPR staff felt it was broadcast-worthy. Here is an excerpt from the transcription of today's broadcast:

"CONAN: Here's an email from Xavier, who writes: President Obama understands something a lot of people don't: Anything America touches is perceived by the rest of the world as being tainted and corrupt.

The only thing people in the Middle East despise more than their totalitarian dictators is us. After all, we bear primary responsibility for keeping those dictators in power by doing business with them.

When there's a popular uprising of people yearning for freedom, the best thing we can do for them is stay out of it and let them fight. As soon as we intervene, it becomes about us, and the freedom fighters are undermined by association with us.

Mr. WOODWARD: That may turn out to be the case, and it may not. If you -there's so much we don't know. If you asked who are the rebels in Libya? What are their names? I mean, there's vague data on it.

You know, apparently six of them are known; 24 or something like that are not known. You know, maybe these are wonderful people and great leaders. Maybe they're not."

You can find the full transcribe here.

You can listen to the full podcast here. Conan reads my email between the 19:09 and 20:09 marks.

Just to wrap this up, I'll point out that the oppressed people of the world aren't looking for us to liberate them.

They want to liberate themselves! Yes, they want what we have. They want freedom. But not at the price that we charge. They want to get it themselves, on their own terms, without owing America a Goddamn thing.

The absolutely worse thing we can do is to "help" them. They don't need or want the help of the people who facilitated their oppression by doing business with their oppressors and keeping them in power.

When we "help" people fighting for their freedom, the rest of the world interprets that as us co-opting the fight for our own political purposes and that delegitimatizes the freedom fighters.

GOP in Total Implosion

I laugh myself to sleep every night.

The Rove/Limbaugh/Dobson/Gingrich/Bush/Cheney/Addison crowd are all on the downhill side of history and they are too stupid to realize it. They will never, ever be in power again.

Their policies have failed. The demographics of this country are changing. Their time is over and it ain't coming back.

The old GOP white guys are shoving Bobby Jindal and Michael Steele out front to be cosmetic siding and cannon fodder, but they throw them both under the bus at the first hint of dissent.

"WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Over the weekend, Republican Party Chairman Michael Steele called Rush Limbaugh's rhetoric "incendiary" and "ugly" and insisted that he, not Limbaugh, is in charge of the GOP.

But that was two days ago. Monday, after a blistering response from the conservative talk-radio kingpin, Steele told the online journal Politico that he "was maybe a little bit inarticulate."

"There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership," Steele said. He added, "There are those out there who want to look at what he's saying as incendiary and divisive and ugly. That's what I was trying to say. It didn't come out that way."

Steele's original remarks came from an interview on CNN's "D.L. Hughley Breaks the News," which aired Saturday. They came as Democrats, including White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, have tried to paint Limbaugh -- who has said he wants to see the Obama administration "fail" -- as the effective head of the opposition party.

Steele rejected the idea, saying, "I'm the de facto leader of the Republican Party."

"Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer. Rush Limbaugh's whole thing is entertainment," Steele told CNN. "Yes, it is incendiary. Yes, it is ugly." iReport.com: Limbaugh and Steele show divisions in GOP

Limbaugh fired back on his radio show Monday, saying the Republican chairman appears to be supporting President Barack Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. He said Steele appears "obsessed with seeing to it President Obama succeeds."

"I frankly am stunned that the chairman of the Republican National Committee endorses such an agenda," Limbaugh said. "I have to conclude that he does, because he attacks me for wanting it to fail."

But Monday night Steele told Politico he didn't intend to go after Limbaugh.

"My intent was not to go after Rush -- I have enormous respect for Rush Limbaugh," Steele told Politico in a telephone interview. "I was maybe a little bit inarticulate ... There was no attempt on my part to diminish his voice or his leadership."

Steele told Politico he tried to call Limbaugh after the show on Monday and said he hoped he would be able to talk to the radio host soon.

"I went back at that tape and I realized words that I said weren't what I was thinking," Steele told Politico.

"I'm not going to engage these guys and sit back and provide them the popcorn for a fight between me and Rush Limbaugh."

And in a written statement issued to CNN, Steele said, "To the extent that my remarks helped the Democrats in Washington to take the focus, even for one minute, off of their irresponsible expansion of government, I truly apologize."

"I respect Rush Limbaugh, he is a national conservative leader, and in no way do I want to diminish his voice," Steele said. "I'm sure that he and I will agree most of the time, but will probably disagree some as well, which is fine."

Steele's Democratic counterpart, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, said he was "briefly encouraged" by Steele's "courageous" remarks.

"However, Chairman Steele's reversal this evening and his apology to Limbaugh proves the unfortunate point that Limbaugh is the leading force behind the Republican Party, its politics and its obstruction of President Obama's agenda in Washington," Kaine said in a written statement."

It's a different world and they have no idea how to adapt. And that means extinction.