On Stomaching the Gross Old Party Convention

Gastronomic references seem to be the rule for non Kool-Aid drinkers this week. I've seen several uses of "stomach" as a verb in describing the gathering of "pathetic old geezers and those who love them" at MSG.

Some chose other descriptors though, like in this post by Timshel, who effectively hammered away at the faux points made in last night's look back to 9/11 and lie-fest about the wars. Mr. Prado notes that a quick search on the internet cuts right through the bullshit being marketed as lilacs by the Rethuglicans and their media lackeys. I for one found myself last night considering the through-the-looking-glass quality of the event (minus the times I had to turn away). Ron Silver's crack about a "war we did not seek" had to qualify as the surreal, if not out and out dada line of the night.

I was, not surprisingly, unimpressed with Rudy Guiliani's speech. I thought he sounded tired and disjointed. Augustus Gloop, aka Dennis Hastert, managed to slime John Kerry some six times in a five paragraph speech, while I half expected Silver, no irony intended, to suddenly shout out "ein volk, ein reich, ein W" in the course of what was simply a bizarre rant.

The talking point in Iraq from the GOOP seems to be that it's fair game in the war on terror--which manages, to paraphrase a Bushism, to hit the trifecta: it's dangerous, stupid, AND racist. Funny how bin Laden got such short shrift from the so-called terror warriors, even as Bush qualifies his otherwise blind ignorance when he declared that the "war on terror" won't end at the final buzzer. Hmmm.

Will there be any mention of the fact that Bush has, thus far, failed in EVERY element of the war? I doubt it. David Brooks managed to lie last night when he declared that there hasn't been a terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11--conveniently omitting the anthrax attacks--as he spun like a Battling Top. No one called him on that--and no one mentioned that, if this IS a global war on terror, then perhaps we should think of terrorist actions AROUND THE GLOBE as significant, rather than consigning them to "less than 9/11" status (which confirms to the rest of the world that the US is utterly xenocentric).

Here are the facts: bin Laden is still on the loose. The Taliban are active in Afghanistan. Iraq is a complete mess, we're spending money hand over fist and the only accomplishment seems to be that Halliburton's share price is holding steady in spite of their engaging in wartime profiteering--and what the hell have we accomplished? We have a single despot in custody (and a lot of "enemy combatants" of dubious culpability over at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib, with who knows how many becoming victim to US prison practices). We've managed to kill at least 11,000 Iraqi civilians in a year and a half--numbers which qualify as a massacre by ANY definition of the term. Upwards of a thousand US soldiers have come home in body bags, with more sure to follow (of course, remember that the right considers military deaths "acceptable"), at least five times that number have been injured, many severely, AND the odds are that IF a genuinely stable government ever takes root in Iraq, it will be basically a smaller version of Iran. What's not to celebrate?

Which is why, if you ask me, Bush, via proxy, launched the Swift Boat Veterans Who Lie campaign. By using the post Democratic convention period to, in his chimplike fashion, throw feces, he managed to turn the mentally retarded media's attention away from real issues and lead them on an armchair snipe hunt. The inane justification that "Kerry asked for it" holds NO water whatsoever. Yes, there was emphasis on Vietnam during the Democratic convention--why shouldn't there be? The Senator most certainly was affected profoundly by his military service in combat (unlike a certain TANG enlistee who went AWOL). But the pundits must have boxes of rocks in their collective heads if they can't recall a real vision and agenda for the future of the country that Democratic leaders laid out for the country last month. Barack Obama made the best keynote speech of my lifetime, Al Sharpton rocked the house, Bill Clinton spoke eloquently of the past and the future--but all the morons who clog the airwaves can only remember Vietnam...

My nerf brick will be getting a lot of work this week.