The Antisocial Socialist

I wonder if they'll discover that he's full of shit.

Insert your own grade-school jokes here.

It might be because I enjoy (and write) fiction where villains have complex and even sympathetic motivations, but I prefer not to imagine the Bush twirling his Snidely Whiplash mustache and committing evil acts for the sake of evil. Cardboard bad guys make for uninteresting stories and even worse politics.



Except that when I read about this, I just pictured him rubbing his hands together and cackling, maniacally: "All your political processes are now belong to me."

Shorter Bush: Silly Latin Americans, thinking that you have self-determination and that you can elect any old leader you want. As soon as we're done freeing the shit out of the Middle East, we're coming for you.

All day, I kept seeing news headlines proclaiming that Bush was going to "admit that mistakes were made." Of course, I couldn't wait to see what those mistakes were and what the Chimpresident planned to do about them. I was not disappointed!

Check out this bit of Orwellian satire, I mean, Globe and Mail article. Here, we have a classic example of pure, unmitigated stupidity, and the media swallowing it wholesale. Bush "admits" (I am really getting sick of having to use scare quotes all the time) that mistakes were made. Note the use of the passive voice throughout the article and throughout the Bush Administration. "Cookies were stolen from the cookie jar." "Coffee was spilled on the top-secret report." You get the idea.

No one, of course, will confess to making said mistakes, but do we get Bush's explanation about what those mistakes were? You bet! Are you ready for this?

"Military operations sometimes were handcuffed by political interference by the Iraqi leadership.”

Whisky tango foxtrot? The puppet government that Bush installed, you know, the one that's a shining beacon of democracy and freedom in the Middle East*, is the cause of all the problems there. Who knew? Maybe we ought to invade and depose—no, even I'm getting sick of making that joke.

Another beautiful line is this attempt at consensus and solidarity:

“A vast majority of the American people are not satisfied with the progress in Iraq,” Mr. Bartlett said. “President Bush is in their camp. He's not satisfied, he's going to say the strategy was not working, he's going to tell them specifically how we're going to fix the strategy.”

THAT'S RIGHT WE'RE ALL ON THE SAME SIDE HERE. Bush and the dirty hippie protesters in the streets, together at last. We all agree.

Now we can bring on the solution to the Iraqi non-quagmire, non-civil war, cycle of violence thingamabob. Can you guess what it is?

*DRUMROLL*

...more troops.

Which is what he was going to do anyway.

Isn't democracy grand?

EDIT: De-Baathification? Author of Liberty? Was this speech translated through Babelfish?

* It used to be Israel, of course, but Israel no longer has to suffer the burden of being The Only Democracy in the Middle East. It now needs only to be "secure."

Hey guys, check it out: Bush not only Godwinned, but he compared Bin Laden to Lenin. Awesome.

* Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that the U.S. hadn't made an official declaration of war since 1942.

SUVs suck, octopuses rule, and Bush likes killing Arabs.

It's nice to know that the world never changes.

(Hat tips: rackletang for the octopuses, uberbitsch for the Camus.)

And it's an open thread, even though I know most of you guys don't like those. (Why not, by the way?)

Topics for discussion:

1. Actual Yahoo! News headline: "President Bush acknowledges racism still exists." Funny or sad?

2. Let's talk about writers who write about ethnicities other than their own. Some good starting points.

New Gaybortion!: No, really; we have to go.

This is human_loser's fault:

( He made me do it. )

EDIT: It doesn't end there. I blame nom_de_grr for posting it in a comment and unleashing this horror in the first place.

fengi weighs in.

IM IN UR LJ...

Everyone's sick of talking about the stupid cartoons (although I have a new-found confidence in gaybortion, which is way better than any of them and also has never caused a riot. So hah!), so let's talk about more interesting subjects.

Baby Godwin is a sad panda.

Rumsfeld compared Hugo Chavez to Hitler.
Then Chavez said that Bush was worse than Hitler.

[Poll #667317]

(Hat tip to roter_terror and springheel_jack.)

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Also, OCAP and Uprising are doing joint movie nights and are looking for recommendations for movies to show. They must be fun (that means no didactic documentaries, kthnx) and political in some way. Until the spring, exceedingly long movies like The Battle of Algiers cannot be shown because Uprising has no heat.

La Haine, They Live!, Life and Debt and The Harder They Come have all been recommended, and I'm being told to quash any suggestions of Bread and Roses. (Heh.)

Personally, I recommend this political movie.

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Marinetti thanks everyone for the birthday wishes and fealty. He is now passed out in the living room.

Hat-tip: jenlight

Teen investigated for homework threat to Bush

When I was in grade 7, we had a project to make a poster celebrating Canada's 125th anniversary. I saw little to celebrate, really. I didn't see the point of nationalism. I was nine years old when we signed the Free Trade Agreement with the US, and the year I turned 11, I was walking around wearing buttons protesting the application of the newly passed GST to the sale of books. So, annoyed at the assignment, I drew a picture of then-PM Brian Mulroney setting fire to a Canadian flag.

I got in a boatload of trouble for that. I suppose today CSIS would have investigated it, given that 11-year-olds are a great threat to freedom and democracy.