They Couldn’t Possibly Be That Stupid, Could They?

The Busheviks couldn’t possibly be so stupid that they’d build a Level 4 biohazard lab on the Gulf Coast, a.k.a. Hurricane Country, could they?

I mean, they make decisions based strictly on greed and short-term political advantage, and “concern for the consequences” never enters into it, but even they have enough of a sense of self-preservation to avoid the risk of floodwaters carrying off deadly biological agents, yes?

Sadly, they are that stupid.

Level 4 means the “exotic and dangerous” agents that pose a high risk of infection, agents that cause severe to fatal diseases for which there are no vaccines or treatments. The bad stuff, like Ebola and SARS. And the Busheviks decided it was okay to store that stuff in a city that is regularly in the path of history-making hurricanes.

Galveston, Texas, as expected, is flooded by Hurricane Ike. We can only hope the biohazard lab and its contents are intact.

Heckuva job, Bushie.

Dubya Does It Again

The Wartime President publicly promised the Republic of Georgia that he’d send U.S. naval vessels to provide “humanitarian aid”.

To reach Georgia, those naval vessels would have to sail through waters controlled by our ally Turkey.

And Bush didn’t bother asking Turkey for clearance before making his pronouncement. So far, Turkey hasn’t given permission. It’s probably unlikely they will, given the insult of not asking them.

Even if the U.S. had permission to send the ships through Turkish waters, it would take weeks for them to arrive.

In other words, Bush made an empty promise, just to shoot off his mouth. And apparently I’m not the only person who thinks so:

“The president was writing checks to the Georgians without knowing what he had in the bank,” said a senior administration official.

Sounds like Bush annoyed more the Turks with his impulsive behavior.

Surprise! Bush Lies About Oil Crisis

George W. Bush used his weekly radio address to blame the Democrats for high gasoline prices. The reason the prices are so high, he claims, is that the Democrats won’t let him have the energy policy he wants.

The energy policy Bush wants, I don’t need to tell you, is “Give everything to the oil companies.” Specifically, Bush is trying to convince us that ending the ban on offshore drilling will lower gas prices.

Democrats and other critics of Bush’s Big Oil agenda point out that oil companies already have leases for 68 million acres on federal lands and waters that are not being developed. If they’re not drilling in the territory they already have leased, why give them control of more territory?

But, say Big Oil’s allies, those 68 million acres don’t count because sometimes it takes years for actual development to take place.

Stop right there.

Ceding more territory to the oil companies will lower our gasoline prices now when the oil supply won’t be increased until years from now?

If the oil companies are spending more money without getting anything in return, they’ll charge lower prices?

No. Reality doesn’t work that way.

George W. Bush may believe that things must happen the way he wants just because he says so, but the rest of us know better than that.

Tuesday Morning News Roundup

– So Apple’s come out with the better, cheaper iPhone. It’s all very nice, but it needs to have cut/copy-and-paste functionality; then it really will be the killer PDA and the laptop replacement for on-the-go air travelers in this era of $50 extra for each checked bag.

– “GOP Insiders Worry About McCain“. Yeah, I’d worry too if my guy had spent four months virtually untouched by any primary flames while the folks on the other side had a knockdown-dragout fight and the winner of that bruising fight was pulling ahead of my guy.

– Ooops! Somehow I don’t think Iraq’s signing a Memorandum of Understanding with Iran is one of the outcomes the PNAC Platoon had in mind when they sent our troops forth to topple Saddam. The louder the PNAC and Likud/Kadima crowd rattle their sabers against Iran, the closer Iraq draws to Iran.

– MEC noted earlier that the post-mortems of the Democratic primary campaign just passed are all “Why Hillary Lost”, falsely implying that she should have won and that Obama somehow lucked into the nomination. Drew Westen at Huffington Post agrees with her:

So what when wrong? Hillary Clinton had the misfortune of running against a candidate too much like her husband in his extraordinary capacity to inspire.

As Bob Kerrey, tongue-in-cheek, summarized her biggest mistake in his op-ed in the New York Times, “She and President Clinton should have moved back to her home state after they left the White House. By doing so, she would have been elected the junior senator from Illinois in 2004, thereby reducing the chances that Mr. Obama would have been in a position to run against her.”

Bush pulls Peas With Awner stunt

Just before the 1972 election, Richard Nixon declared that we were doing so well in Vietnam that we were going to withdraw. He announced we would have “Peace with honor.” Three years later, North Vietnamese regular troops driving into Saigon showed just how sound the peace and how deep the honor were.

[image drawn from Wikipedia synopsis of Vietnam War]

Bush is now pulling the same game. Will the American people be dumb enough to buy it? Patrick Cockburn, The Independent [thanks, Stormcrow]:

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

US troops would have “permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law…President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated.”

Worst President Ever

In an admittedly unscientific poll, historians rated George W. Bush’s presidency the worst ever.

Only two percent of respondents said his presidency was a success.

The comments that many of the respondents included with their evaluations provide a clear sense of the reasons behind the overwhelming consensus that George W. Bush’s presidency is among the worst in American history.
 

“No individual president can compare to the second Bush,” wrote one. “Glib, contemptuous, ignorant, incurious, a dupe of anyone who humors his deluded belief in his heroic self, he has bankrupted the country with his disastrous war and his tax breaks for the rich, trampled on the Bill of Rights, appointed foxes in every henhouse, compounded the terrorist threat, turned a blind eye to torture and corruption and a looming ecological disaster, and squandered the rest of the world’s goodwill. In short, no other president’s faults have had so deleterious an effect on not only the country but the world at large.”

According to Bush

Iraqi security spokesman kidnapped in Baghdad

Green zone hit for fourth day this week

Heavy Fighting Rocks Iraq’s Basra City

Iraq implodes as Shia fights Shia

Diplomats told to take cover in Baghdad

Military Tells Bush of Troop Strains

But according to George W. Bush, Progress in Iraq is real

Progress. “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

The Madness of King George

Bush lies.

President Bush said Thursday that Iran has declared that it wants to be a nuclear power with a weapon to “destroy people,” including others in the Middle East, contradicting the judgments of a recent U.S. intelligence estimate.

Amateur diagnoses are dangerous things, but I am of the decided opinion that George W. Bush is insane. As evidence, I present the fact that he made this false accusation of aggressive intentions and dishonesty…

…in an interview intended to reach out to the Iranian public on the Persian new year and to express “moral support” for struggling freedom movements, particularly among youth and women. It was designed to stress U.S. support for Iran’s quest for nuclear energy and the prospects that Washington and Tehran can “reconcile their differences”…

Oh, yeah. Accusing somebody of lies and hostile intentions is the BEST WAY EVER of expressing your own friendly intentions and getting their cooperation.

I knew the first time I heard George W. Bush speak, back in 1999, that the boy just ain’t right. How did everybody else miss the obvious clues that he is the poster boy for Narcissistic Personality Disorder?

Dueling Headlines

Economy slows to near crawl

Bush: US is not headed into recession

What’s Wrong With This Picture?

The Republicans say that we should vote for them instead of for Democrats because only they, the Republicans, can keep us safe from bad guys all over the world.If that’s the case, why couldn’t the Republican Bush Administration keep the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade safe from being invaded and vandalized by protesters?

Masked attackers broke into the building, which has been closed this week, and tried to throw furniture from an office. A blaze broke out but firefighters swiftly put out the flames.
 

[…]
 

In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the U.S. ambassador to Serbia was at his home and in contact with U.S. officials.
 

Serbia has “a responsibility now to devote the adequate resources to ensure that that facility is protected,” McCormack said.

Excuse me? Serbia has a responsibility to keep the U.S. Embassy safe? A U.S. embassy is officially U.S. territory. Why didn’t the U.S. government devote adequate resources to ensure that its territory is protected?

My guess is, because Bush paid as much attention to the warning signs of Serbian outrage over his recognition of Kosovo as an independent country as he paid to the August 6, 2001 security briefing. He expected that everybody would just accept that Kosovo is independent because he said so.