Cheney - Running Over The Same Old Ground

By Cernig

Dick Cheney is in Iraq and has announced that he has a gut feeling that the Iraqi invasion and occupation has been a "successful endevour" which was "well worth the effort".

"I was last in Baghdad 10 months ago and I sense that, as a result of the progress that has been made since then, phenomenal changes in terms of the overall situation," Cheney said after meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Cheney said there had been a "remarkable turnaround" in security after 30,000 extra troops were sent to Iraq last year to help reduce sectarian violence that threatened civil war.

Despite the improved security, however, some 4 million Iraqis are still displaced, and the International Committee of the Red Cross said in a report on Monday that millions were still deprived of clean water and medical care.

(In fact, that Red Cross report said that some families spend a third of their average monthly wage of $150 just buying clean water and that healthcare in Iraq was "now in worse shape than ever.")

So there you have it - more faith-based victory metrics from the Bush administration.

And while we're on the subject, does anyone seriously believe that the sitting Republican VP arriving in Iraq at the same time as the Republican heir-presumptive, John McCain is just a coincidence, even if the two have no plans to meet up there? me neither. The Republican party is calculating that most American voters are small-c conservatives in that they will prefer the Devil they know to some amorphous "change" and so intend painting McCain's candidacy as a continuation of the last eight years in policy terms even while saying loudly they're doing no such thing. It's all about the framing.

So to help them along in that endevour I've a campaign song for John McSame, seeing as I'm such a kind and helpful soul.

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell,
Blue skys from pain.
Can you tell a green field
From a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?

And did they get you to trade
Your heros for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange
A walk on part in the war
For a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We're just two lost souls
Swimming in a fish bowl,
Year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have we found?
The same old fears.
Wish you were here

Bush's Karaoke Moment Hits You-Tube

By Cernig

Libby, I'm happy to tell you that you were wrong - someone did leak footage of Dubya's karaoke moment at the Gridiron Club. Thanks very much to "The Lede":

Did they really think it wouldn’t make You Tube? President Bush has turned up on the popular Internet site singing an off-key spoof of “The Green Green Grass of Home,” which he performed Saturday night at the supposedly off-the-record Gridiron Club dinner in Washington.

And so without further ado:

YouTube of the Day

by shamanic

Will.i.am & friends' brilliant retelling of Obama's New Hampshire speech. If only we always celebrated great political speeches this way.



Thanks to Goose3Five and Carol for sending it along.

Huck's new ad

by shamanic

No, not the attack ad he won't be running, but his new abortion ad.



"Family. Life. Freedom." What an uninspiring plate of hollow words. I especially love the text stating that as governor, he passed a marriage amendment. The lesson here is that family sure does matter, by golly, unless you're a friggin queer.

And life? In his attack ad that he won't air, he apparently goes after Mitt Romney for hosting no executions as governor of Massachusetts. I guess down in Arkansas they build a little campfire and roast marshmallows while they watch fully restrained prisoners be killed. Ah, life. What a beautiful thing.

But dude, we all love freedom. I love the freedom to say that Mike Huckabee is a twit, and in any other year, he'd be an asterisk in the polls. Mike Huckabee is what happens when a political party implodes. There are days when I really miss the GOP.

Perry Bites the Hand That Fed Him

By Cernig

Rick Perry, the very model of a modern Republican politico, is at it again.

Fresh from his Freudian slip over his social conservative leanings towards Huckabee even while he endorses Guiliani, Perry has now back-stabbed Dubya, his old boss and running mate back when Perry was freeloading Bush's campaign machine to become Lieutenant Governor of Texas.

Here's the video of Perry : "George was never a fiscal conservative".



The Austin Statesman reports:

Perry, who spoke in Nelson's living room after a drive through several inches of fresh snow, cast Giuliani as someone who could work with Democrats to make progress in Washington where "it ain't working today. They are spending too much money, it takes too long and they're doing more harm than good."

Perry called Giuliani a fiscal conservative, unlike Bush, who preceded Perry as governor.

Perry, responding to a party guest's suggestion that federal spending could kill candidates with voters, said that as governor, Bush consistently signed into law budget increases.

"Let me tell you something," Perry said: "George Bush was never a fiscal conservative. Never was. ... Wasn't when he was in Texas. ... I mean, '95, '97, '99, George Bush was spending money."

Perry turned to his press secretary, Robert Black, who had joined him at the Iowa stop.

"Do you agree?" the governor asked.

Black nodded.

Perry also dammed Bush with faint praise, saying he was "better than Al Gore"... the man he endorsed over Clinton back when Perry was a Democrat.

This venal flip-flopping in a frantic effort to hitch himself to someone's - anyone's - coat-tails and take a ride to power has earned Perry the contempt of even some Texan Republicans. Over at Red State, "haystack" writes:

in the name of my beloved Lone Star State the Governor is using salary dollars I pay him to run on up to Iowa to be Rudy's toothless pit bull as well. Check that last...I should have said coiffed little toy poodle.

Well, Bush had Blair - will Rudy come to wish he didn't have Rick?

The Gods Have Returned

By Cernig

There were a lot of fans who were nervous that Led Zeppelin's much-hyped reunion gig would fall as flat as their awful Live Aid set, which was so bad the band refused to allow it on the concert's compilation DVD.

But not to worry says Martin Dunk, the music critic for the UK's Daily Express, The Gods of Rock Are Back.

Led Zeppelin once dubbed the loudest band on the planet, demonstrated to the five generations of fans that filled the 20,000 capacity 02 Stadium tonight just how exciting, raw and jaw-droppingly heavy rock music can be.

From opener Good Times, Bad Times and through early sluggers like Ramble On and Black Dog, Jimmy Page’s Gibson guitar roared and wailed driven by John Paul Jones’ thunderous bass lines and Jason Bonham’s near-perfect facsimile of his father John’s drumming.

For a man in his early sixties, singer Robert Plant couldn’t quite hit the ear-shredding notes of yore, and his timing was a little out during the terrifying sonic rampage of Thirties blues update of In My Time of Dying, but with the Messerschmitt-like noise coming from rock’s finest rhythm section that just didn’t matter.

It was a deep ominous noise that filled the hangar-like O2, a noise that nobody else has never quite managed to reproduce.

I think he liked it.

So too did Hamish MacBain of the NME, Britain's most respected music mag.

You might think it couldn't possibly live up to expectations, but, it transpires, the opposite is in fact true of Led Zeppelin's first public appearance in 17 years.

They seem buoyed by the deafening roars that greet their every twitch tonight - everyone present in the O2 Arena is willing their performance to the realms of greatness. It's almost impossible to be subjective, to not be sucked in.

It takes Robert Plant three songs before he offers a cursory "good evening". By that time they've alreay blasted through an incendiary 'Good Times Bad Times', a dramatic 'Ramble On' and the stop/start rhythms of 'Black Dog'. He needn't say anything.

Next they launch into 'Nobody's Fault But Mine' and Zep are smiling at each other, only occupying about six square feet of the enormous stage. You wouldn't believe this is a band who haven't played together for so long.

They do 'No Quarter and they're locked in as tight as if it were the 1970s. Only the close ups on the screen at the back give away their advanced years.

Next they launch into a version of 'Dazed And Confused' that seems to last forever - but every last second is enthralling.

Here's one sample, via YouTube - Stairway To Heaven.



There's plenty more. The greatest rock band in history have proven they still have it. Now, what about a tour, guys?

Update Rolling Stone's David Fricke loved it too.

Put A Brain In The White House

By Cernig

Rudy's new campaign ad:

Friday Car Blogging

By Cernig

The Bugatti Veyron vs an R.A.F. "Typhoon" Eurofighter in the ultimate drag-race. Awesome.

Reading The UK Papers

By Cernig

When bloggers in the U.S. read articles in the British press, they often implicitly accord them a degree of trustability that they wouldn't accord their own U.S. newspapers. They forget that every UK newspaper has its own agenda. Here's a guide for the perplexed:

ThatcherBush-enomics

By Cernig

In honor of Peggy Noonan and just to repeat what I've been saying for three years, here's a video from the illustrious Spitting Image team and the band Madness which has more than a little relevance to current affairs in the U.S.

YouTube of the day

by shamanic

Genevieve Van Cleve is one of my very favorite spoken word artists, and a damn nice lady to boot. This piece, "Don't Y'all Miss Clinton" is a perfect example of why she's one of the finest, and funniest, around.

YouTube for the day

by shamanic

This reminds me that I haven't heard from my gamer friend in a number of weeks. We've all got one of those in our lives, right?