Author: Thomas More

Great comment on Balloon Juice from the always-interesting ppGaz, on the UAE port deal:

It’s really the same issue as the Cheney lawyer-shoot story. It’s about the arrogance and fuck-you attitude of these people. The NSA story strikes me as being in the same category. For that matter, the whoe Iraq war is in this category.

These are people who don’t like process, because it gets in their way. They don’t like courts. They don’t like the legislative branch. They don’t like the press. They really don’t like the people. They want to do whatever they want to do, and fuck anyone who doesn’t like it.

When the apologists and the spinmonkeys are playing with their feet and wondering why we “hate Bush”—this is why. This is exactly. America is all about the rejection of the King model of government. These people want to be kings.

Well the latest defense/attack strategy of the Bush Cultists who are defending the UAE port deal is that people who don’t like it are “racist.” Hmmm.

Which means that people like Bill O’Reilly are in effect calling people like Michelle Malkin, who wrote “In Defense of Internment,” racist.

Delicious, delicious irony. It’s like the chocolate mousse of irony. Sweet and creamy and chocolatey.

It’s funny because the Bush Cultists are trying to ignore the fact that people on the right also oppose this deal. They are trying to squeeze their eyes shut really tight and convince themselves that this is just traitorous Commies and their George-Clooney-loving friends in the traitorous mainstream media. But it’s not. It’s Bill Frist and it’s Peter King. It’s Lindsay Graham and Sean Hannity. And it’s Michelle Malkin. Open your eyes, cult members. You can handle it.

There’s nothing better than the rare sight of people on the right tearing each other apart, hammer and tongs. Because when they turn their guns on each other, only little gobbets of flesh are left. You always hurt the ones you love.

Good stuff. On the mark.

Well, that’s Josh Marshall’s take, anyway. I thought it would make a good headline, and intro to his piece about Mary Matalin’s dissembling over the “Cheney’s Got a Gun” incident. He’s got Mary cold.

The thing is, I sort of admire Cheney in a bizarre way. With him, what you see is what you get. Not like Bush, who hides behind a rather absurd hail-fellow-well-met, all-hat-no-cattle sensibility. Cheney doesn’t do pretense. Which is why it was so hard for him to do even the soft Brit Hume mea culpa, which he only did when the Prez leaned on him. I’m sure he honestly believed that he had nothing to explain, nothing to apologize for. He knows he comes off like the Emperor in Star Wars, and he’s OK with that. Good for him.

Well now we find out that the Bush administration is outsourcing our major port operations to the United Arab Emirates, a country with ties to the 9/11 hijackers. Michael Chertoff, who oversaw the many failures of Katrina, and Condoleeza Rice, who was national security advisor during the largest attack ever on U.S. soil, have been making the rounds defending this decision.

But of course they can’t really specifically defend it, because that stuff is classified, you see.

Why does half of the country trust these people? And don’t tell me it’s because we haven’t been hit since 9/11. That’s a false conclusion. Al Qaeda takes *years* between attacks. They wait. They plan. And considering the criminally-negligent security at our ports and chemical and nuclear plants, their job probably isn’t all that hard.

And Bill O’Reilly and Michelle Malkin want you to think that the greatest threat to your security in Ottumwa, Iowa is an undocumented Mexican.

UPDATE: President Bush, who hasn’t vetoed a bill in his five years in office, promises that if Congress tries to block the port deal, he’ll stop that cold. Good job, Mr. President! Protect the hell out of us.

UPDATE II: Shepard Smith on (gasp of surprise) Fox News had the following tack: Hey, since we don’t really search the containers anyway, why does it matter who runs the ports?

Oh and BTW, Bush didn’t know about the sale to the UAE until it was already done. Yep – eye on the ball, that’s these guys.

Actual CNN headline:

Shooting victim apologizes to vice president

Anyone who doubts that we live in an absolutely batshit crazy time should print out that headline and look at it several times a day. Because that, my friends, is the world we live in.

Anyone got any vodka? Or grain alcohol?

RELATED POST BELOW: Congress, why do you have to make me hit you like that?

RELATED: Iraq apologizes for being invaded

UPDATE: VP Accident Tale Filled with Discrepancies

AND THIS…

The shooting could hardly be a better metaphor for Cheney. It neatly packages his faulty judgment, insularity and arrogance in a story that is not cataclysmic on its own terms but will prove hard to forget. That’s too bad for Cheney, and certainly for Harry Whittington. But it is a blessing for anyone hoping to restore some accountability to a government that increasingly believes it is a law unto itself.

-Jonathan Alter, Newsweek

Oh and one more thing…

While ranch owner Katherine Armstrong told the media initially that absolutely no alcohol had been consumed by the hunting party, Cheney did tell Brit Hume that he had “had a beer at lunch.” This line was conveniently removed from the broadcasted interview and the posted transcript.

As one commenter elsewhere noted, “I’ll stop calling this administration ‘Orwellian’ when they stop using ‘1984’ as their political playbook.”

Why all the hysteria? The vice president accidentally shot a hunting companion with buck-shot over the weekend. He is in “very stable condition.” The media were not notified for some time. And we’re all supposed to be worked up about that?…Who cares? I don’t.

-Mark Levin, National Review Online

Forgot to mention this gem from Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ testimony about the domestic spying:

“Well, Senator, I’ll repeat what the president has said, and that is to the extent that Congress wants to suggest legislation, obviously, we’ll listen to your ideas.”

Hmmm. So now Congress just “suggests” stuff, and maybe, just maybe, King George will consider it. How magnanimous of him.

If a Republican wins the White House in 2008 (I give it an 85 percent chance), that person is going to make George W. Bush look like a piker. We will look back fondly at the restraint and common sense of the GWB administration.

The future’s so bright, I gotta retreat into my concrete-reinforced fallout shelter.

Glenn Greenwald absolutely nails it in his deconstruction of what I have come to call the Bush Cult. All that matters to these people is fealty to one man, George W. Bush. Bush tomorrow announces that we are in a War on Peanut Butter, and these people organize a peanut butter bonfire within hours. Past statements in support of peanut butter never happened. John Kerry loves peanut butter. Anyone who questions this new PBW are traitorous bastards who should be hanged until they are dead, dead, dead. (Or suffocated in peanut butter. Whichever is handier.)

I’ve been saying this stuff for years. Sadly, at this point, the small number of people who are even willing to broach the subject won’t make much of a difference. The cultists have to leave on their own power. We can’t kidnap half of the nation and throw them in a van.

UPDATE: As Glenn’s commenters, and Glenn himself, point out, this isn’t really a Bush Cult. It’s an authoritarian cult. It can (and most likely will) be transferred to whoever succeeds Bush in the White House. It’s comforting to think we have an all-knowing, all-seeing leader who can protect us and love us. Too bad it’s all a fiction.