July 24, 2010
July 23, 2010
July 22, 2010
July 20, 2010
July 16, 2010
July 15, 2010
July 12, 2010
July 3, 2010
June 27, 2010
June 22, 2010
The Tattlesnake – It’s McChrystal Clear: The General is Running for President Edition
By publicly making derogatory comments about his superiors in the chain of command – President Obama, VP Biden, Defense Secretary Gates, White House National Security Adviser Gen. Jim Jones — US Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal has committed an act of rank insubordination, and I think he did it intentionally.
Subsequent apologies for his loose-lipped Rolling Stone interview notwithstanding, McChrystal knows Obama must, in order to maintain what little credibility he has with the military as commander-in-chief, relieve McChrystal of his command and he should break him in rank down to a Colonel or, at least, Brigadier General, but, considering Obama’s reticence in such matters, he likely won’t do the latter.
McChrystal well knows that if he wants to criticize his superiors there is a legitimate and honorable way to do so – resign his commission and fire away as a civilian. Instead, the wily general has manufactured a situation wherein Obama must relieve him or lose all respect with the military establishment and a good portion of the public, as well.
Why would McChrystal set up such a situation? The easiest answer is that he’s planning on running for president as a Republican in 2012 and he can use it to a) play the aggrieved victim of a president and administration that doesn’t know what it’s doing in the Middle East; and b) insulate himself from charges of incompetence when we are forced out of Afghanistan. “I told the president the strategy he was pursuing to defeat the Taliban was naïve and wrong and that I had a better plan. This so angered him he found a flimsy reason to dismiss me.”
This is the line I believe McChrystal will employ following his resignation after Obama has relieved him of his command. Such criticism dovetails nicely with the GOP’s probable angle of attack on Obama in 2012 – arrogant, incompetent, headstrong, vengeful, naïve – and McChrystal will go to the head of the class of potential presidential candidates in a so far thin field for the Republicans — Romney’s no barn-burner; Palin’s a sour joke; Gingrich is stuck in the mud of 1994; Pawlenty’s a calamitous bore, and no one else is really on the radar.
Of course, the GOP establishment would welcome McChrystal with open arms as the second coming of Dwight Eisenhower, but even the various Teabaggers, quasi-Libertarians and Christian zealots who are now the party’s foundation would most likely not much contest nominating a ‘military hero’ such as the general. His campaign would also provide some lengthy (and stable) coattails for other Republicans to ride, a surcease from the almost daily factional friction of a minority party in turmoil.
The question: Will former Pentagon black-ops chief McChrystal’s new strategy to gain the White House work any better than did his plans to tame Afghanistan?
The answer: For a man as arrogant, incompetent, headstrong, vengeful, and naïve on public matters as Stanley McChrystal — who also, according to Rolling Stone, thinks Bud Light Lime is a great beer – is a resounding no.
Read more:
“The Runaway General” – Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone, June 8-22, 2010.
Stanley A. McChrystal’s Wikipedia bio.
“New Afghanistan Commander Ran Secret ‘Executive Assassination Ring’ Under Cheney”
– Tom Englehardt, TomDispatch.com, May 21, 2009, by way of The Huffington Post.
© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.
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June 18, 2010
June 17, 2010
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April 15, 2010
The Tattlesnake – Word on the Street Edition
In the spirit of the late Mike Royko’s Slats Grobnik, here are comments from the unFoxed Vox Populi:
– L.A. Mike, who was born and lived in Los Angeles for most of his life, on the Republicans paying $2K for simulated lesbian bondage at the Voyeur Club:
“What wrong with those dudes? It’s really stupid. For half that price in L.A. you could rent a motel room, hire a couple of hookers, see the same show up close and join in if you felt like it. You’d even have enough left for a bottle of some primo liquor. That’s really a stupid waste of money.”
– V.J., a small business owner for over 20 years, on Obama’s tax plan:
“I’m a middle-class small business owner and everybody was telling me, ‘watch out, Obama’s gonna raise your taxes!’ I just got my tax forms back from my accountant and I’m paying $800 less this year than last, and he specifically said it was thanks to two deductions Obama put through. If this is Obama’s big tax increase for the middle-class, keep it coming!”
– Anna, who worked in state government for 20 years, on Sarah Palin:
“I don’t get it – how do you quit as governor and then pass yourself off as a winner? How do you tell other families to practice abstinence when your own kid gets pregnant when she’s underage? Why does anybody take her seriously?”
– Al, who worked at a mail order firm, on the ruthless corporate culture:
“Worked at the same job for 12 years. We heard the rumor that company was being sold, but my boss, the owner of the company, looked me straight in the eye and told me he’d never sell and I’d always have a job there. Six months later we’re all fired and the owner makes off with a fortune from selling the company. I asked one of the ladies in accounting what happened – the S.O.B. was in the process of selling the company the very day he told me that B.S. that he’d never sell! The lady said he lied because he didn’t want people quitting to take other jobs before the new owner took over – wanted to squeeze every dime out of the place, even if it left us flat. He lied to my face and I thought this man was my friend!”
– Vernon, who managed an office for 10 years, talks about Michael Steele’s RNC spending:
“I’ll tell you this: If I had been charging anything from Tiffany’s or the liquor store to ‘office supplies,’ and I had approved an expenditure of a couple grand to a strip club, there would have been about two minutes before I was fired and out on the street. I don’t know how he gets away with it.”
– Lily, a waitress at an upscale restaurant, on GOP tax cuts:
“Why doesn’t the media ever call these guys out? They get up there, these Republicans, always talking about tax cuts and they’re rich as fuck! Sure, they want tax cuts – for themselves! Yeah, I got my little piddley-ass tax cut from Bush, and the price of everything went up, including my state taxes, so I went way further in the hole. They really treat us like we’re too dumb to know what they’re doing. Fuckers!”
– Rory, who once worked at a mental health facility, on the Teabaggers:
“These people must all have Alzheimer’s like Reagan. They don’t remember we had big deficits and big government under Republicans since Reagan? They don’t remember Reagan bailed out the savings and loans in the 1980s? I didn’t see them out there screaming and yelling then. They think the shitty economy started under Obama? Give me a break. They just hate him cause he’s black. These tea party people should go to their doctors and be tested for Alzheimer’s – they’ve definitely lost it. I mean if they can afford a head doctor on their fixed incomes — oh, wait a sec, Medicare will pay for that, so they’re covered!”
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April 1, 2010
April Fool’s Year for the GOP
“I want to thank the Teabaggers for helping us pass health care, for resurrecting the Obama presidency. I know they’re saying, ‘Why are you thanking me? I was so against it, I marched on Washington with tea bags hanging off my Founding Fathers costume, with a gun on my hip and a picture of Obama dressed as Hitler, screaming about his birth certificate.’
And America saw that and said, ‘I think I’ll go with the calm black man.’”
– Bill Maher, h/t to Bartcop.com.
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The Tattlesnake – Dick Cheney Doesn’t Have a Pulse Edition
Rachel Maddow reported July 14th that five-heart-attacks-since-he-was-37 Dick Cheney is hanging on by a thread following complete heart failure, kept alive only by a machine called a LVAD resting externally on his belly that keeps his blood moving. Ironically, because an external machine is circulating his blood rather than his damaged heart, Cheney apparently has no pulse, not that I would have sworn he had one before. Although I wouldn’t wish death on any human being (leave that to the kill-crazy wingnuts; I’d rather see him in jail), and Deadeye Dick marginally qualifies in that category, this would seem to be close to the end of the line for the Torture Boy – the doctors can do no more except a full heart transplant and he’s physically in such bad shape he likely couldn’t survive the operation. (Although the sci-fi plot possibilities of Cheney receiving the heart of, say, a peaceful Buddhist monk and publicly renouncing his past self is nearly irresistible. “I’ve done wrong and now I must pay the price! President Obama, put me in prison for war crimes – waterboard me, I insist! And I’m donating all of my millions in wealth to Green Peace! Liz, stop crying like that!”)
If he goes, are we going to be subjected to the full-pomp, days-long state funeral, or will every news outlet but Fox let him pass with just a brief mention and obit? I also wonder if, in his final moments in this realm, a fearful-of-judgment Cheney will pull a Lee Atwater and ask forgiveness for his past crimes and deceptions?
© 2010 RS Janes. LTSaloon.org.