CHANGE YOU CAN DECEIVE IN

One of the great lines (there weren't that many) in the Republican primary debates was by John McCain in derisively addressing Mitt Romney. Referencing to the truth, that Romney had changed his position on taxes, energy, pro-choice and many other hot (push?) button issues, McCain quipped (to Romney) "You are indeed the agent of change." So why then would the McCain folks have Mr. Romney representing them on the national talk show circuit, most recently the center stage on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos?" Why indeed. Well, possibly because Senator John McCain in an election year where the mantra is on "change" has in fact done the most changing of all, not from the current administration with which he is a in knee jerk reflex but from himself. That's right, John McCain's "Straight Talk Express" with regular access available to reporters across the spectrum has become the "Straight Talk Digress." Consider the "Straight Talk" 2000 and after version of John McCain trying to insulate (as opposed to emulate) the nation from George W. Bush. He opposed Bush's tax plan as unfairly tilted to the rich (maybe he hadn't seen Cindy McCain's actual financials) and was against, strongly (then) the "agents of intolerance" of the religious right. Today, all that's changed. He stood against the lobbyists who ran Republican policy, but his he's hired many of them to run his campaign now. In 2003 he was all approving of the Iraq war and only after the insurgency showed the mess we had "accomplished," as in "mission" (not), did he take a stand against the Bush Bunch's approaches.

Thanks to Frank Rich for pointing out that 4 in 10 Americans feel they don't know John McCain well enough. Also the story that the McCain campaign has received "strong" support financially from a "group tied closely to Al Qaeda" was broken by Mr. Rich this past Sunday. The source of this information interestingly is Jerome Corsi who has produced works to smear John Kerry, "Draft to Command" and Barack Obama "The Obama Nation." The web site (again, a right wing bastion) which has broken the news on Mr. McCain's financial Al Qaeda ties is www.worldnetdaily.com.

And hey there Mitt Romney, when you were campaigning and your five healthy sons were headed around our nation, but nowhere near Iraq, you explained they were defending this country by getting you elected president. Now that you're no longer running, how many have enlisted so far?

UNTIL THE ELECTION: 100 DAYS BUT QUITE A WAYS

John McCain recently claimed ( then disclaimed) that 16 months sounded like a pretty good time table to leave Iraq and then said he didn’t use the word ‘time table’. Interestingly, Mr. McCain still maintains we were greeted as liberators, and that Saddam Hussein “posed a threat to the security of the United Stated of America”. Senator McCain also says that when he said that Barrack Obama would rather “lose a war to win an election”, that didn’t mean McCain was questioning his patriotism. Because that’s not the low road Republicans usually take, right…..
It’s also fascinating that John McCain couldn’t make the senate vote on the housing bill (which passed 72 – 13), but says he would have voted for it. Fine, but on the Medicare bill where Ted Kennedy came straight from Chemo treatment to vote for it and break the 60 vote plateau, 99 senators were present: all except John McCain. The Libby Ledbetter bill is coming up arguing a women’s right to sue when the victim of blatant salary discrimination and Mr. McCain has indicated he wouldn’t vote for that. So why isn’t the Democratic line against McCain; to those Medicare recipients, women and those struggling with the mortgage crisis, “he doesn’t vote for you, why vote for him?”

Oh, on ABC’s “This Week” on his latest promise to reduce taxes he bungled as follows “I’ll keep tax cuts low, okay. Is it too much to expect a president who speaks coherently, more often than not? And we ask again why vote for a man who won’t vote for you?

And finally (for now) just how does Mr. McCain distance himself from the Bush Economy while aligning himself with all the Bush economic policies? More to follow.

ON STAYING THE COURSE A LESSON FROM MR. ED…SMITH AND OTHERS

Just what conditions exactly would allow us to cut back on our troop deployment in Iraq. If “the surge” works, and things get more stable or if things suddenly get more chaotic would seem to suggest two different strategies. And they are two different scenarios. Presuming that things don’t stabilize, the Republican argument regarding violence and a breakdown of civil order seems to be as follows: we have to stay in great numbers because we cannot in good conscience (which we wish they’d had before starting that war) allow massive loss of life and the ensuing destruction to social order. But then what if “The Surge” works, well…there are many right wingers who also argue that if the surge is calming things down we have to then “stay the course”, (a strategy long ago used by Edmund John Smith) and keep great numbers of our forces there because well…you explain it and we’ll explain where Edmund J. Smith and a gentleman named Preston Marshall, neither of whom are currently household names come in.
First to Mr. Smith, who was, and always will be the original “stay the course” guy. He was a white haired patrician of around age 60 when he received the most important command of his life. He had gone to the best schools and was if not the brightest of students certainly among the best connected. He was a friendly sort, fond of giving people folksy nick names (sound familiar) and was supremely confident almost to the point of being supremely stubborn. In fact in his diary he essentially describes his personal philosophy this way; “I have never met a situation I could not overcome”…again does that ring a bell? Smith was man who deeply valued his personal leisure time as well, and on one night to remember he delegated what proved to be a crucial judgment to a very inexperienced subordinate, the results of which left him on the collision course in history.
Preston Marshall was a successful business entrepreneur with strong some might say harsh political opinions, and with ideological views to match. He was the owner of the Washington Redskins and held among his many strong social theories the conviction that “the Negro” could not be an effective player in professional football and so he refused to draft a young Black man named Jim Brown out of Syracuse. For the uninformed (we don’t mean as uninformed in Mr. Marshall, that’s just not possible) Mr. Brown really could play that game. Owner Marshall had in his employee a coach named George Allen (whose Muccacca son, the former Senator of Virginia we all know, and can now fondly forget) was also the Redskins General Manager. Mr. Allen coached and managed (the finances) by never telling any player or the owner for that matter anything they didn’t want to hear, emphasizing flattery and loyalty. Again if some of these characters may sound like they would be welcome in the Bush administration, we agree.
Let us then surge along to our lesson and as is our (hopeful) custom a punch line or two. First, regarding Mr. or should we say Captain Smith who “stayed the course” but left an inexperienced underling (on watch in the crows nest) alone when there were warnings of the ocean liner version of a quagmire, specifically an ice field. And with no Karl Rove to spin his tale, Captain Smith’s last command bottomed out and received poor job reviews as it was the good ship Titanic. Preston Marshall when he saw what George Allen had done to his team’s budget, remember Allen never told a player anything they didn’t want to hear, uttered the memorable line that he had given Mr. Allen an “unlimited budget and he’d exceeded it”. Captain Smith, Owner Marshall and Coach Allen are long since gone, and we’re certainly not claiming that Senator McCain is old enough to have been on the Titanic but we can’t help thinking he’d feel a kinship with these three gentlemen. Unfortunately, Mr. McCain as well as the Bush administration has lost out on two valuable lessons. First, that a commander-in-chief has to have limits and set limits and second, as Captain of our ship of state it might be best to concentrate less on “staying the course” and more on missing the friggin’ iceberg.

SHOULDN’T OUR TROOPS BE ALLOWED TO PRACTICE SAFE TREKS?

    Since by all accounts from the Pentagon, to the
media, well over 50% of our soldiers’ casualties in Iraq are caused by
EAP’s, Explosive Armed Penetrators, we need to ask, what then, has our
troop supporting (in word) administration done indeed.  Well, with
apologies to Shakespeare, in deed, they have done little. 
Consider dear readers, that 5 billion (with a “B”) dollars has been
funded to study this lethal problem 18 months ago; and currently only
25% has even been expended by the Pentagon, with no tangible
improvements for troop protection yet in place.

    But . . . there is an answer, called the MRAP (Mine
Resistant Ambush Protection) vehicle, and one man, Senator Joe Biden,
has proposed their acquisition be made part of the Supplemental
Emergency Budget scheduled to go before President Bush.  The
upside is that they do, in fact, provide 4 to 5 times the protection
than the current armored Humvees do, when they’re actually armored that
is.  The downside is that the military estimates state that about
8,000 of said vehicles will be necessary to our troops, but only 200
are currently available.

Oh, we’re told Haliburton has a version in the works and has assured
the administration (we’re not kidding here) they’ll be ready as early
as 2011.  Think it might just come in over bid.

    We realize this edition of Faux News has a bit more
data than the other F.Xin’ news, but then it would be tough to have
less.

CUT AND RUM DEPT; WAR TIMELINE NEWS – EVERYTHING’S COMING UP ROSES

                  
In February of 2003, Donald Rumsfeld lent us his expertise on the
timeline in Iraq, “will it take six days, six weeks, oh, I doubt as
much as six months”, in describing how long the fighting would
last.  Do we hear an “under or over” for six years?  Well,
our president’s war of choice in Iraq has now lasted longer than the
Korean Conflict, and longer than WWII marking it as certainly one of
our longest if least intelligently handled wars or should we say civil
wars, ever.  But  . . . as civil wars go, this one is pretty
short term compared to say the War of the Roses (1455-1485) over the
throne of England.  Wait, didn’t VP Cheney say we’d be greeted as
liberators with flowers?  That old crafty President of Vice, he
knew it all along and was trying to tell us, you see, a War of the
Roses by any other name would be . . . And bye the buy, here’s what
else that VP Rich-head knew:  Haliburton stock in March of 2003
was $20.50 a share and in March of 2007 adjusted for a split on ’06,
it’s now valued at $64.12 a share.  So for Mr. Cheney, everything
in this war is coming up roses. 



* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *  



          Recently, after
we’d written about the sloppy planning for this war, re: intelligence,
no WMD’s, inadequate armor, poor handling of the Iraq army, etc.,
someone asked why we at FNN.C don’t spend at least sometime discussing
what our Gerrymander-in-Chief has done right.  Easy, because we
hope to be paid by the word. 

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?

CUT AND RUM DEPT. UP-DATE

Some things are true even if Donald Rumsfeld
says they are.  For example his claim that a surge in troops would provide
no substantial change or dividend we regretfully conclude is correct.  Of
course what will result, sadly, is more American casualties.  We wonder
did any of this administration ever heft, lift or even touch a full body
bag.  And by the way, as of 1/11/07 a number of folks in the Iraqi
government have announced that they don’t want more troops.

CUT AND RUM DEPARTMENT, UPDATE

This past week, Dick Cheney noted that the departing Don of
Rumsfeld may have been the best Secretary of Defense ever. Now we’re not sure we agree but what should
be recognized are the unique defensive “credentials” of our own VP Dick, who
will no doubt go down in history as the VP most committed to the non-defense of his country given his
epic total of five, count ‘em, five Vietnam era deferments. Puts Bill Clinton’s
pedestrian “one” to shame doesn’t it?

But don’t
go getting too impressed with Dick’s high, or should we say low 5; the American
League record to our knowledge is seven (7).
That’s right, seven (7) deferments from the Vietnam era draft. This unpatriotic coward must be located,
singled out, and duly mocked and who better to help than former Homeland
Security Honcho John Ashcroft. Why,
because he’s got the cunning, the look, the voice, can soar like an eagle and,
well, sees the guy each time he shaves. Yep,
turns out Mr. Ashcroft so loved America,
his homeland, he made sure (as a soldier anyway) never to leave it. You couldn’t make these guys up.

CUT AND RUM DEPARTMENT

We are saddened by the departure of Donald Rumsfeld as Defense
Secretary. Mr. Rumsfeld saved reporters a great deal of time in press
conferences by rapidly asking and answering his own questions.
We hope that's appreciated. The upside of Robert Gates is that while
the press conferences should be much slower, if there is a major
scandal down the road, its name is tailor made for media headline
heaven; Gates Gate.