DISPATCH FROM THE BAR-SET-SO-LOW RANCH

       

       Much is being made over President Bush’s seeming
inability to correctly pronounce the party name of his opposition: the
Democratic Party, as he keeps referring to them as the “Democrat Party”.  That situation was addressed yesterday in the
Doonesbury strip basically asking – is our president disrespectful or just
plain well, “stupid”.  Now that’s a tough
one because the president has shown such great respect for so much stupid advice
so many times, how can we tell?  Our
guess at FNN.C, to take the high road from the bar-set-so-low is to go with
disrespect, although it means we’ll have to now
call Mr. Bush “the derider”.  We’ll allow
his inaccuracy here could be
unintentional but let’s not go “nucular” over it.

SOME UNORTHODOX ORTHODOXY

            John Edwards is now officially “broken” in as a candidate and member of the foot in mouth
club.  His hypothetical “perhaps the
greatest short-term threat to world peace is the possibility that Israel would bomb Iran’s nuclear reactor” is at worst
duplicitous and divisive, and at best, totally mindless.  Rabbis and other Jewish leaders are being
asked to sign a letter of protest against Mr. Edwards, in the name of among
other reasons downright fairness to Israel.  But speaking of being fair, these righteous
voices of outrage in the present would be a bit more credible had they been
more centrist in the past.  Consider
this, that in May of 2004 when the Saudi Arabian government, you know our and
President Bush’s good friends, reacted to terrorist attacks on their soil by
blaming the “Zionists”, what letters were circulated then?

            According
to the Anti-Defamation League, of all major political figures, only John Kerry
spoke, calling the Saudi’s out on their anti-Israel bias.  Our president (then and now) said decidedly
nothing and that seems to be what many of these same Jewish leaders circulating
the current petitions also said at that
time, nothing.  What then is more lethal to Israel’s interest
and image; a would be  nominee’s bumbling
hypothesis or a sitting president’s deliberate silence, a candidate speaking
wrongly about a possible event or a president deciding to be silent on an actual one?  Few people in history have had more poignant
experiences of the dangers posed by the double standard and a prejudiced mindset
than the Jewish people, an intellectual dishonesty they dare not emulate
themselves.

EARTH TO BUSH: OUR HUMVEE’S NEED PROTECTION FOR SAFE TREKS

 As was noted in Frank Rich’s Sunday column in the New York
Times, the Bush administration claims knowledge that EFP’s (Explosively Armed
Penetrators) supplied by Iran have been in use against our troops in Iraq since 2003.  In a very related point, to our soldier’s
survival that is, the Washington Post headlined that it will take until at
least this summer to fully implement the needed armor upgrades to defend our
Humvees.  Let’s see, EFP’s have been
viciously used against us since ’03, and it will take until at least the summer
of ’07 to get the right protective armor in place, during which time our troops
have been and will be out there
without the best protection possible.

            We think the problem with Prez W,
among many things, is that he and his group just don’t grasp there’s a certain
order to make things safe, be they matters of defense, finance, or health.  That said, permit us at FFN to allow
ourselves a digression and illustrate it to these folks this way; which
hopefully even they can not misinterpret; you (always) put
the condom on before the sex.

QUERY TO PRESIDENT BUSH: CAN YOU DISTINGUISH BETWEEN POTENTIAL FRIEND AND FAUX?

           

            So, just who are our potential long term allies, or not in
the Middle East; we’re only trying to get this straight:  Let’s see, the Saudi people in great numbers actually
hate us, and in fact, 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens, part of
their mullah militia if you will.  In
addition, the Sunni faction, supported by the Sunni Saudi Arabian government,
is the group which has inflicted the greatest number of casualties on our
soldiers in Iraq.

            Conversely
many, many of the Iranian people have mostly positive feelings towards the US
and in their recent election repudiated their President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a
rather narrow brained anti-U.S., Holocaust denying and potentially killer
clown. And, it has come out (from our
State Department) that the Iranian government was most helpful to us after the
9/11 attacks before we and they
embarked on a course of mutual miscommunication and mistrust.

           Let’s be
clear here.  This Iranian government is
not composed of angels, and some Iranians no doubt send arms to insurgents in Iraq.  But we’re sure there are more then a few of
the 9/11 families who’d be hard pressed to say the Saudi government has no
devils as well.  It’s almost as if come
Haliburton or high water, the Bush family has major financial interests intertwined
with that of the Saudi’s, with their interests taking precedence over ours; no,
not the Bushes.  Oh well, oil’s well, that
ends well, eh.   

            So, as we have
sadly faced many more Sunni then sunny days involving the Mid-East since 9/11,
we ask again Dub, can you tell potential friend from faux?

TO JOE BIDEN: DON’T JUST DO SOMETHING, STAND THERE

Joe Biden is a good guy, an articulate guy, a decent guy but verbally, at least, he’s an over extended guy.  We’ve all heard of people who can’t take yes for an answer, well Joe is the guy who can’t say yes (or no for that matter) for an answer.  Rather he tends to use 50 or more words when 5 or less would do.

            We all know what he meant about Obama, that here we have a truly electable African American but he used the word “articulate” instead, giving previous black candidates for elective office, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, to name two, the opportunity to take umbrage.  Were they justified, that’s a judgment we at FFN.C won’t make but for the record, Mr. Biden does have an excellent record on civil rights.  Oh and we would hope those offended by the lynch pin word “articulate” will have at least as intense a reaction to the lynch pin word “lynch”, and we hope they work up to it by June 2007.  You see, that marks the second anniversary of the failure of Resolution 239 to pass unanimously in the U.S. Senate, it did pass but with 8 nays.  239 FYI was a symbolic resolution stating that the Senate should have (years ago) condemned (no friggin’ foolin’) the lynching of black Americans by other Americans, in America.  Incidentally, all 8 in opposition are right wing republicans, hope they at least went easy on Mr. Biden. 

            Aside, our early poll results of blacks we’ve asked is an overwhelming majority preferred being called inarticulate than being lynched.

THE ARGUMENT FOR TERM LIMITS

What’s in a term?  We
thought we knew until this administration, in addition to taking over the three
branches of government, took over portions of our language as well.  And believe us, they evolved way beyond Bill
Clinton’s definition of what “is” is. 
Whether it was the “Healthy Forest Initiative”, hey, if you cut down all
the trees, you don’t have any unhealthy ones, or their sense of  “accomplishment” regarding the mission in Iraq, they
engaged in snow jobs, long before Tony.

            So when
they call the addition of some 20,000+ troops to the war in Iraq, an “augmentation” instead of
a “surge”, we might just want to examine and as it turns out this time
(unfortunately) they just may be correct. 
Because it seems, according to Webster’s, a “surge” is a rise followed
by a fall; as more troops in, and then more troops out, where an “augmentation”
is defined only in terms of enlargement. 
So guess what, when the numbers over there go only upwards, we can’t say
they didn’t, in a stealth sort of way, warn us. 
But we kind of wish they would have used the word “fluctuation” instead;
a word that would have worked so much better then augmentation when properly
prefaced by “cluster”, that is.