Looks like the prez kindly blessed us with an advance of his State of the Union address tonight:


Of course the blogosphere will offer an unfettered amount of liveblogging and navel-gazing, but the fine folks at Think Progress have promised real time fact checking on Bush's address. For those of us who can't stand to watch our simian leader molest the English language for more than two minutes before pulling a Presley on the TV set, this could come in real handy like.

"Day after day, the egalitarian creed of our Declaration of Independence is trampled underfoot by hired experts and sloganeers, who speak of the "death tax," "the ownership society," "the culture of life," "the liberal assault on God and family," "compassionate conservatism," "weak on terrorism," "the end of history," "the clash of civilizations," "no child left behind." They have even managed to turn the escalation of a failed war into a "surge," as if it were a current of electricity through a wire, instead of blood spurting from the ruptured vein of a soldier." – Bill Moyers addressing the National Conference on Media Reform, Friday, January 12 in Memphis, Tennessee.

Read the transcript of Moyers' speech at Democray Now!'s Web site, or watch a YouTube upload of it here.

Your (still somewhat) Austin Representative, on the president's plan unveiled earlier this week:

"President Bush has been wrong at every step along the descent into chaos in Iraq, and he is wrong once again. The terrible price for his repeated miscalculations is paid for by the blood of the brave, by hundreds of billions of dollars squandered, and by greater insecurity for our families. He has no new plan; just an old delusion."

So tonight our president is poised to announce his plans after painful weeks of "decider" mode: deploying 21,500 extra troops to Iraq, mostly into the cauldron of Baghdad. I suppose tonight he'll lay out some ostensible reason or goal for putting that many more Americans in the middle of an Iraqi civil war, but I hold little hope we'll get much beyond the same shopworn bullshit about standing up and sitting down.

Of course, it's thought one reason for the escalation is to dismantle the Mahdi Army, lead by Muqtada al-Sadr. You know, the same guy Saddam Hussein's executioners were cheering at the hanging supposedly administered by Iraq government. The strongman undoubtedly helps the meager Shiite government there hang on to power. That's gotta put president Nouri al-Maliki in an odd spot – not to mention the troops sent over there. So are they risking their lives to take out one of the president of Iraq's supporters? What exactly are we supposed to accomplish over there?

It's not surprising that Bush, who claims to administer war plans based solely on Army needs and demands (but promptly canned his top general after he said escalation was a bad idea), has basically been reduced to bribing them into going along with his face-saving plans to escalate, dump the whole mess in his predecessors' lap, and claim that he didn't lose Iraq. It's obvious what Bush is trying to do, but I repeat: what the hell else are we doing in Iraq?

UPDATE: So this is how billion dollar, life and death decisions are made: the "surge" was trumpeted by Bush in part to spite the Baker/Hamilton Iraq Study Group. For shame.

Everyone, mark your calendars:

"Evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson said Tuesday that God has told him that a terrorist attack on the United States would cause a "mass killing" late in 2007.

"I'm not necessarily saying it's going to be nuclear," he said during his news-and-talk television show "The 700 Club" on the Christian Broadcasting Network.

"The Lord didn't say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that."

Robertson said God told him about the impending tragedy during a recent prayer retreat.

God also said, he claims, that major cities and possibly millions of people will be affected by the attack, which should take place sometime after September."

This just in: Robertson is an incontinent, doddering fool in the final throes of syphilis dementia. God told us.

You would've thought they'd save it for Super Bowl halftime, with Jessica Simpson dressed as Martha Washington giving him a final lapdance before they throw the switch. Or you'd think the administration would kick off the State of the Union with it, Bush addressing the nation whilst standing on his smoldering, electrocuted corpse. But no, it looks like Saddam Hussein is scheduled to die tonight. Before FOX could get the pay-per-view rights, no less. Well, like Rumsfeld said, democracies are free to make those sort of mistakes.

Where's Bush? I'll be flabbergasted if he's not in Iraq. This is his white whale, the man that tried to Kill his Daddy, his ultimate limp-dick Oedipal boogeyman and reason our military is stretched to its breaking point halfway around the world.

Bizarre, to say the very least. Uh, Happy New Year?

UPDATE: And he's dead.

UPDATE 2: "This thing is a sham, of a piece with the whole corrupt, disastrous sham that the war and occupation have been... This whole endeavor, from the very start, has been about taking tawdry, cheap acts and dressing them up in a papier-mache grandeur -- phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters. And this is no different. Hanging Saddam is easy. It's a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us."

Only the Statesman editorial board could fuck up something as simple as a tribute to president Gerald Ford. On Ford's defining moment, his quick turn-around in pardoning Nixon, they say "as the nation got to know this modest man better, most accepted that Ford really did act in what he believed was the best interest of the country." "Most" is further defined as Kay Bailey Hutchison, and a quote from Ted Kennedy calling it "an extraordinary act of courage." (So is storming hell with a glass of ice water – that doesn't make it a good idea, though.)

Aside from setting a questionable precedent, one which lead to Clinton's long vilified Marc Rich pardon, there's a greater danger in Ford's actions, one we're reaping the wretched spoils of today. In sweeping Nixon's crimes under the rug for the sake of "the country" ("the landed Beltway gentry" is more like it), Ford began the pushback against the transparency Watergate promised, entrenching what we know today as the theory of the "unitary executive" allowing Bush's ambitions to roam unchecked. It's no accident that Donald Rumsfeld and the architect of the Imperial Presidency, Dick Cheney, served under Ford, the latter's views no doubt forged in reactionary response to hardened congressional oversight.

Granted, it's poor etiquette to speak ill of the dead. But with Bush committing crimes that would make Tricky Dick blush, there's a more appropriate cliché: those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

Seems like I'm not the only one to take Time's accolades seriously, John Edwards has announced he's running for president in 2008 – via YouTube. To wit:

I thought Edwards made a great potential VP in 2004, his debate with Cheney being a timeless example of youth and idealism versus age and... pure evil? I'm definitely digging what he emphasizes here also (expanding health care, raising the minimum wage, combating genocide and rejecting the 'surge' in Iraq). 2007 will definitely be an interesting year.

As the year sputters to an end, we see more round-ups, countdowns and accolades. More often then not, they're pithy, inconsequential and arbitrarily awarded, but every now and then, they make the right choice. Like Time awarding me – a blogger, MySpacer, YouTuber and Flickrer (I think I got that one right) – their Person of the Year award. Finally, they got one right.



I, Wells Dunbar, thank you for my award.