Ankle Biting at High Levels of Government


Things finally have calmed down a bit over here, and I'm catching up with the internets at last. Hmmm...

To begin, Heckuva Job Brownie did his best John Dean impersonation on Capitol Hill today, lending credence to the old saying about tragedy being repeated as farce, with Norm Coleman apparently playing the part of the fools' chorus. Not that we didn't know, but Brownie's newfound penchant for candor--sorta--makes it pretty clear: the Bush administration is to governing what pornography is to sex, i.e., decidedly not the real thing, or even reasonable facsimile...though most of us ARE getting screwed. Today's revelations are part of a--no pun intended--flood of news articles that pretty much demonstrate beyond any shadow of doubt the incompetence, the mendacity, the stupidity, the arrogance, and so on, of Team Bush--Firedoglake has a nice summary (they don't archive individual posts, so you might have to scroll down). Let's see: Brownie's spilling the beans re: Katrina, the "L.A. shoe bomb terror threat" trial balloon they floated turns out to have more holes in it than an erector set, former CIA middle east analyst Paul Pillar is yet the latest expert to point out that intelligence for Team Bush was "cart first, then the horse," Plamegate's back on the front burner...the president who vowed to "defeat the terrorists" is reduced to whimpering about cartoon riots...as for that, by the way, WIIIAI really got it right with this observation:

Condi Rice has found the real culprit in the Cartoon Wars: Iran and Syria, who have “gone out of their way to inflame sentiments and to use this to their own purposes. And the world ought to call them on it.” Yeah, I’d hate for the smoking cartoon gun to come in the form of a cartoon mushroom cloud.

Oh, and while I doubt the media will take much note of this, The WaPo reports on Jack Abramoff's rather extensive contact with Shrub (and, they give credit where it's due, to Think Progress)...that is to say, the boy-king is telling big, fat lies when he claims he doesn't know the disgraced lobbyist/criminal.

But, of course, the national press is only concerned about lying when it involves Bill Clinton and a young female intern...

Still, though, you've gotta think--again, no pun intended--the figurative levee that keeps Team Shrub from drowning in scandal is at the breaking point. I mean, for chrissakes, not only does everything they touch turn to shit, they're not even particularly good at being a bunch of crooked, lying, sonsofbitches. At least the McMahon family upped the production values when they transformed pro-wrestling from the various regional circuits into a national gig. King Dubya the Dense and his Lying Circus don't even cut it by Austin standards. We're talking Crawford Little Theater here...Mike Brown as John Dean? [shaking my head].

And Bush as Peckerwood Il Duce...damn--you know, the other day, I actually thought of that too, but I didn't act on it like Watertiger did...well, what the hell:


Shrubolini

Damn...it doesn't really look all that different from the original. Figures...