American Realistan

George W. Bush likes to think of himself as a powerful and influential world leader, yet the evidence screams loudly in confirmation of the alternative.

On April 17, 2007, Bush was to host a formal state dinner in honor of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah. For reasons that were not evident at the time, Abdullah cancelled his appearance.

In addition, Jordan’s King Abdullah, a half-Brit who has an American-born step-mother, and who has spent more time in George W. Bush’s Washington than any other foreign leader, cancelled his own state visit planned for September.

The reason for Saudi King Abdullah’s cancellation is now revealed: Abdullah denounced the “illegitimate foreign occupation” of Iraq by the United States and declared independence from future American interference in Arab affairs, saying in an opening speech to the annual Arab summit in Riyadh that Arab nations would not allow any foreign force to decide the future of the region.

Isn’t that what Condoleeza Rice is now attempting to do? And failing miserably as an incompetent always does?

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I’ve been a little off my game lately due to a very active schedule and little rest. Today, it is all catching up with me, but I feel a need to say something.

Current events are seeming very familiar to me in a way I haven’t felt since 1974. I actually have a sense that a corner has been turned, that a cliff has been averted, and that positive progress is again possible. It may be that it is only the impression of an exhausted mind, but it appears that everything once clearly defined - especially in the political realm - is all jumbled and in disarray.

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Fred Fiedler & Martin Chemers, in Improving Leadership Effectiveness, declared that “The quality of leadership, more than any other single factor, determines the success or failure of an organization.”

As an example of the validity of this statement, we will avoid the most recent achievement of our proposed paragon in order to focus on the more important point introduced by this quote which his past success raises:

When [U.S. attorney Patrick] Fitzgerald went to Kenya in 1998 to investigate the bombing of the U.S. Embassy there, he and his team decided to follow both American and Kenyan law until they decided which country they would file charges in. “If there were two ways of doing it, we would do it the harder way so it would stand up in court in either place,” he said.

That meant that instead of letting a witness sit behind a one-way mirror and point out a suspect from a lineup of six people, as U.S. law requires, witnesses had to come face-to-face with a lineup of nine people, then walk up and place their hand on the shoulder of the suspect they identified, as required under Kenyan law.

Kenya does not guarantee suspects the right to an attorney, and the New York judge who tried the case was not satisfied Fitzgerald’s team had satisfied their obligation under American law to educate the suspect of his right to an attorney and so dismissed some parts of the man’s confession.

But both suspects were convicted anyway.

Considering that the field of international criminal prosecution was still very new when this case was tried, this result was far more than anyone should have expected. In addition, it’s magnitudes of scale larger than all of the leadership “accomplishments” of George W. Bush in his entire life.

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One of the reasons the people of Earth hold religious beliefs is to help them deal with monstrous evil, providing hope that something much bigger and more powerful than ourselves will assess judgement on those who have wronged us. There has been a fair amount of religious petitioning this week, and not all of it Christian.

Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist, wonders if Mayan priests can purify their sacred land after a visit by George W. Bush, can we do so to our own nation?

George W. Bush — famed warmonger, despoiler of lands, despiser of gays and women and science and earthly resource, hapless fascist-wannabe — it seems George just visited Guatemala, where he happily trod upon a holy Mayan site or two… [T]he first thing Guatemala’s holy guardians of the sacred did as soon as Air Force One’s wheels lifted off the ground was, of course, to purify the hallowed ground our president’s shockingly low, nefarious energy had infected.

[I]t is becoming increasingly evident that a great national purifying ritual is just about exactly what we need. Yes, we need a grand American ritual. We are, after all, far more deeply infected than that Mayan site. Does it not seem entirely appropriate? Does it not make perfect sense? Of course it does.

We shall purify and rinse and cleanse the nation of this horrific and banal poison, once and for all, and it shall be Good. And those Mayan priests? Why, they’ll simply look over and nod, smile knowingly. They understand completely.

Unlike the Mayan priests, however, we will be using much different methods of cleansing our land.

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With danger looming to derail the Bush regime plan for world domination, the chickenhawks in the media are flocking to the rescue.

Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former New York Times foreign correspondent, claims that Valerie Plame Wilson persuaded her CIA superiors to send her husband to investigate the Niger Yellowcake claims, a mission for which May declares “[Wilson] was unqualified and … he brought back misinformation that he marketed to the public through credulous journalists.”

Or is it instead that “credulous” journalists - like National Ledger’s Jack Kramer and May - are marketing misinformation? Kramer is asserting “Plame and her husband Joe Wilson are like rock stars to many of the members of congress [sic]. Don’t expect any tough questions from the left…”

Sending the unqualified on missions of great importance and peddling lies are trademarks of today’s Republican power elite. So should we be taking these chickenhawk town criers at their word, or should we allow the hearings to progress and maybe discover that these paid shills are merely attempting to derail the investigation of alleged treasonable actions taken at the highest levels of our government before it can cause - in the words of Associate Supreme Court Justice Antonin “Tony The Fixer” Scalia - irreparable harm to George W. Bush?

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This post was supposed to appear at Blogcritics,
but they passed on it
for technical and style policy reasons.

A recent commenter at Blogcritics didn’t like my recent post concerning the economy, saying, “These kinds of articles make me think of children that want to change the rules of a game in midstream.”

Funny he should have brought this concept up. Columnist Andrew Cassel of the Philadelphia Inquirer was in the same playlot when he stated, “When my siblings and I were small, playtimes could get rowdy. … my mother would always say … ‘This will end in tears.’ ”

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Before I continue, I want to point out
that some of my comments following
will appear to be extreme at first.
Please go with the flow until you see where it goes.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reports a decline in overall military readiness which might take years to “reduce” the risk to the nation’s security, such as it now is. One reason for this decline is, despite lots of claims to the contrary, Pentagon is having poor results in their attempts to recruit new troops despite reducing standards to the point that convicted felons are allowed to enlist. The Arizona Star wants to see some kind of oversight over these convict enlistees in order to prevent “harming America’s war effort.”

But in order to perform this logical duty, the Pentagon would need more officers, but it seems that they already are falling short of the necessary numbers without meeting the oversight duty needs requested by The Arizona Star even if they are promoting officers beyond their experience, threatening the quality of the military officer corps at a time when quality has never been more necessary.

That’s why one has to wonder why General Pace is insisting on shooting himself in the foot with his loaded mouth.

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Progressives sometimes are their own worst enemies. They express frustration when their heroes prove to be mere mortals and not faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, or able to leap the tallest Republican political obstacle with a single bound.

One such example happened just the other day, when a Military Mom tried to apply pressure [use this link if that one doesn’t work] to Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin to get him to accomplish more than just the backstage manouvers toward an eventual goal that constitute modern American politics.

Not to polish my own apple, but I did include my condemnation of this act of street sabotage in a recent post.

But a much better critique of the foolishness of badgering a political ally came from David Sirota, who had this to say:

Antiwar activists are high-fiving each other, almost as if catching Obey’s outburst about “idiot liberals” is as big a YouTube feat as catching George Allen saying “macaca.” This is deeply troubling on a number of levels…

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This post was supposed to be on Blogcritics, but since it doesn’t meet with their standards, I’m posting it here.

You can tell when you score points with a recent post when the responses to it get personal, ignoring the attributes of that topic in favor of personal slander of the author, during which the commenters make unsubstantiated claims with no links to support their “everyone knows” idiocy.

For instance, Al Barger jumps in with, “Fool calls himself the ‘Realist’ seemingly exactly because he’s not. Brother Nalle makes the obvious point about the basic complete lack of any actual real facts.” That isn’t even properly grammatical English, Al! My own editor, “Brother” Dave Nalle would never let me get away with such sloppy writing!

Since you brought him up, let’s let him get his shots in: “Realist is clearly out of his league. The only value to these omnibus articles of Realist’s is to follow the links to his even more insane sources of inspiration so you can guage [sic] just how crazy the most dangerous elements on the left are.”

That’s “gauge”, Dave. G_A_U_G_E. Look it up.

OK, Dr. Nalle! Having diagnosed my mental condition along political lines, maybe you and “Brother” Barger would like to see some real facts from those who are all-stars in their leagues? You can hit the ‘back’ button to resume your slanderous tirades of me once you’ve determined that I still fit your narrow psychological profile. (more…)

Financial blog columnist Michael Panzner wrote on Feb 20th, 2007: “Coincidentally or not, growing political discord between Democrats and Republicans, emblematic of a darkening social mood, seems to be shadowing the ongoing deterioration in the economy.”

That deterioration is only affecting a certain portion of the population, however - the statistical middle class, the workers of The United States of America.

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