Dangerous Dictator Dick
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We here at Compatible Creatures have always much-enjoyed the literary technique of alliteration. Maybe too often. However, the device does carry a salient ring; words slip off the tongue, sometimes without passing lips and produce a fluid, distinct sound even in the mind: Alliteration is also known as “head rhyme.”
As in title to this blog. A poetic, though, sharp and ominous message is quickly created: The first two words flow hard right, headlong onto the word, Dick. A sing/song kind of Gestapo-like head rhyme: A Dick-head.
DANGEROUS DICTATOR DICK! Bold with italics: DANGEROUS DICTATOR DICK! Has a certain timbre to it, huh? A title carrying a bit of humor, but in reality, mostly a whole lot of intense anxiety and depression.
Of course, this particular Dangerous Dictator Dick is the US vice president, Dufus Dick Cheney. And he is no Charlie Chaplin. And in actuality, he is no dufus, at least in any way that can be pined on him. In the space of six or so years, the man has run his own separate fiefdom, answering to no law. He’s a despot in his own right, and probably the most dangerous threat to the more-than 200-year-old republic then any person, place or thing since the late 1700s.
Dufus Dick’s main characteristic bad-news, however, is his timeless ability to completely fuck shit up, going back decades to his one-year failure at Yale, followed by his five deferments from the draft during the Vietnam era and his riding the coat-tails of the famous into positions of power. Dufus Dick has always been secretive, keeping his cards close to the chest, allowing no one to fully comprehend his complete incompetence.
And make no mistake about it: After fucking up Gerald Ford’s presidential campaign in 1976, screwing the voters of Montana in the 1980s, destroying Halliburton’s stock in the late 1990s, Dufus Dick has finally shit-out the mother of all fuck-ups. On his shoulders rest the horror of the Middle East in the form of Iraq and soon to be Iran.
Decider George can’t create an original thought. In 2000, he asked Dufus Dick to select a vice president, but instead Dufus Dick settled on himself. Decider George’s first and maybe most-foremost horrendous decision was to Okay that solution.
Dufus Dick’s real threat is against the only true situation from US history: The Constitution. US past is horror. Manifest Destiny was really murder and greed: Take all and kill everyone who opposes, destroying cultures and any kind of animal or human life. Unless you were white and Protestant, you were not worthy of life. Just ask Native Americans.
And the only product to last through the carnage was the Constitution. Now, Dufus Dick has decided to ignore it.
Rising like a tidal wave last week were reports Dufus Dick has been ignoring an order to show how the vice president’s office handles classified information. In fact, Dufus Dick contends his office is not part of the executive branch and shouldn’t have to answer to any inquiries on how he handles anything. Decider George believes that, too. Both go against a law Decider George himself signed.
In today’s Wasington Post is an in-depth piece on Dufus Dick’s work. “Stealth is among Cheney’s most effective tools… Man-size Mosler safes, used elsewhere in government for classified secrets, store the workaday business of the office of the vice president. Even talking points for reporters are sometimes stamped “Treated As: Top Secret/SCI,” the Post story says.
It’s just in keeping in line with Dufus Dick’s entire life: Lie and lie again, and after you fuck up something, move on. And never have to answer for it, never learn.
The horror of Dangerous Dictator Dick is his ability to escape any kind of oversight or punishment. And although we wouldn’t bet the farm, there’s probably a 99.9 percent guarantee Dufus Dick will walk.
And the most grating aspect, one that leaves bile caught in the throat, is the massive damage the sonofabitch has left in his wake.
He really doesn’t give a fat-rat’s ass.
Dangerous Dictator Dick destroys da Constitution. We tried.
Old Soldiers Should Sometimes Shut The Hell Up
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When anyone attempts to compare Iraq with any other horror show, except maybe Vietnam, and then draws parallels between them should undergo a brain scan: Intelligence has leaked into the biosphere.
Even from veterans who ought to know better.
One of these warfare, motor-mouthed individuals is retired General Barry McCaffrey, one of those hard-fisted, clenched-jawed guys who believes might is right, despite all the contrary evidence. He’s currently on NBC a lot and fires out tough-eyed, seemingly-insider opinions about some military event. He’s been right on occasion: He was one of only a few who reckoned early on the heavy impact of continuous, 24/7/365, combat would have on US military personnel and equipment in a prolonged insurgent war. And we’re fairly sure McCaffrey understands the one-sided history of such wars.
In an overwhelming majority, the aggressor/occupier was always defeated by any kind of insurrection. Examples: The US, Vietnam, Somalia, India, Israel, etc.
McCaffrey, though, can annoyingly display that same smug look Decider George produces when relating some small data-nugget from an authentic, highly-secret intelligence report, and only he as commander-in-chief fully comprehends the whole picture. The general shows off the old ‘I know way-more than I’m really saying’ routine. In McCaffrey’s favor: He just can’t exhibit Decider George’s dumb-ass, shit-eating grin.
We think now, however, McCaffrey has crossed into cold-hard, asshole land responding to the story US troops would not be getting any time off from combat duty: A recommendation had been made to allow one month off for every three months in the field. But the plan has already been judged unacceptable by McCaffrey’s former war buddies still in active service and now calling the shots in Baghdad.
The story about a possible short, but vital time-off from killing for US boots on the ground surfaced Tuesday on MSNBC’s Scarborough Country.
Instead of being any kind of somewhat-sympathetic for the troops (12 month-tours recently extended to 15, soaring killed-in-combat numbers), McCaffrey played a hard-ass:
“It’s a tough life. If you can’t embrace the brutality of combat, you shouldn’t be in the infantry. These are the toughest, most courageous combat troops we’ve ever fielded.They are mostly not damaged by their combat exposure. In fact, they come home grateful for hot water, for living in this country, and for their families, not the victims of PTSD.”
McCaffrey’s ass should be busted back to at least bird colonel, no, maybe back to captain, no, back to being a civilian and not another word on TV. Recent reports from several medical agencies�reveal more than 30 percent of troops returning from Iraq experience some kind of mental problem. The Army can’t find enough mental-health workers: A continuous involvement in hideous, violent cruelty will indeed do wacky stuff to the mind. The good general should know that, but instead coughed up a comparison to Battle of the Bulge.
“In World War II, there was no tour length. You went for the duration.”
What a shit-kicking spasmo! McCaffrey cites a battle 60 years ago in a conflict with set lines and somewhat staged combat pieces, to an insurgency coupled with a civil/religious war that has no bounds in its horror. And has endured more than four years, longer than WWII itself.
If the US soldier kids in Iraq aren’t given some relief soon, things could become even worse. In the heart of any rational person is the words: ‘Get them the hell out of there!’
And warrior/pundits should keep their freaking’ mouth closed if they can’t say anything nice. Or has any heart.
Hypocrite Oath 2: Pass It On
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Hard-work at quick greed. Schemes without any authentic reason for existence, other than to apparently put the pinch on unsuspecting people, have been around since times immemorial. We here at Compatible Creatures have always felt the term, “times immemorial,” as kind of boorish, but actually in this sense it works: The phrase comes from old English law concerning time allowed in lawsuits, and in 1600, or thereabouts, its meaning broadened to its current usage invoking a very long time ago.
Of course, the biggest nonsensical scheme (or schemes) with the most repercussions is Decider George’s big-stick, no-brain Iraq policy, or maybe his CEO-infected fiscal policy, or maybe the frustrating, irritating policy of selecting liars and crooks to work for him, or maybe… Well, you get the realistic drift. Due to Decider George’s two terms as president, the US and the world will never be the same again, a large and dangerous negative.
However, just as the world as a whole experiences the horror of those schemes, which way-too-often carry enormous life and death consequences, the lying, hypocritical attempts flourish in our own every-day universe, even here on California’s north coast.
A writer here at Compatible Creatures was stung this week with an Internet hoax which may or may not be illegal. The core of the operation still, however, carries a whiff, or maybe a hint of a chain letter-type device: Send off this post to someone else and make money. Send it off many times and make more money. A circle without meaning other than to make money — no goods or services provided, no real, honest labor with any creative thought and to make the entire machine function, one has to perpetuate the lie.
A lie by any other word (or set of words) is still a lie. The base concept of a lie is hypocrisy, a line of thought altering truth.
This particular writer is of boomer age. Born in the late 1940s as the world, especially the US, was swept toward a cloudy/bright future: Prospect of instant annihilation via a nuclear exchange in the back of brains while enjoying the exhilarating onrush of technical hardware like TVs, outer-space vehicles and all-electric homes. In near-retirement, the writer sought a small-but-enough income to cover expenses while Compatible Creatures and other literary ventures could become fiscally well-grounded. In other words, money to cover the ass while being a creative writer, sadly, his only real, tangible skill (a dexterity which could lead to alcohol abuse or early old-age mental collapse — the former is way behind him, but seemingly the latter could be just ahead).
The writer selected a posted Internet job offer that promoted a “Data Entry” position. Data entry means just what it says: Process of entering data into a computerized database or spreadsheet. The work is a wide-reaching, fairly decent-paying employment field, coming mostly from medical, financial and legal sectors, though, there are many types.
A reply e-mail contained the following: “The data entry processing position that you inquired about requires you have a PC with mail access, an email account, an Internet connection, basic Internet knowledge and minimal typing skills…”
The catch is a training manual. And the only way to get that manual is the payment of $20. After dispatching off the money through an Internet payment site, the training manual arrived in the email inbox. The title of the manual is HOME BASED TYPIST/DATA ENTRY SPECIALIST, which in reality covered only the typist and nothing of the specialist.
Again in reality, the entire manual explained that not only have you been had, but details in five easy steps how you can do onto the others, the same that was done unto you. Even the manual covers the trick:”To be honest with you, I was disappointed when I received the training guide and realized that I will just be placing my own ads like the one I responded to. I almost didn’t do it, but then I thought about it and said to myself ‘Well, I did pay for it, so I should just try!’ I sure am glad I did…”
Yeah right! The job was to place the same ads all over the Internet in hopes of catching someone else and regroup the old $20, and with enough snares, maybe even make a profit — from $200 to $800 a week, depending how hard thou labor. Nothing at all about a position as “Data Entry Specialist.” The manual even lists several sites to place ads from Google and Yahoo to places like CareerSite.com and BigJobs.net.
In order to stem the legal wrath of the snookered, the manual points out the whole “concept is 100% legal,” citing laws, one being the US Postal and Lottery Laws, Title 18, Sections 1302 & 1341. However, Section 1343 should be of even more interest: “Fraud by wire, radio or television. Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses, representations, or promises, transmits or causes to be transmitted by means of wire, radio, or television communication in interstate or foreign commerce, any writings, signs, signals, pictures or sounds for the purpose of executing such scheme or artifice, shall be fined not more than $1,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.”
Of course, lawyers will argue, but it would be interesting to see if the scheme is truly legal. One of the first and foremost thoughts by the Compatible Creatures writer after viewing the above-noted training manual was the requirement to continue the lie in order, at the minimum, to regain the $20. Most of the time legal and moral are at opposite ends.
In the broad sweep of things, $20 is pretty much a no-big-deal kind of affair. However, what is really far-more important is the lie and the obligatory need to continue it.
As Decider George continues on with his lies that will eventually circle around to gnarl and maul us badly on the ass, so will those who perpetuate a tiny, nearly-insignificant untruth.
Losing $20 is absolutely nothing compared to the truth.
Hypocrite Oath
Filed Under Musings, Orwellian, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
Mankind has a combination fault present in the genes of everyone since the beginning: Either desire to quickly blame someone, or present a false cloak — a tendency toward the wide-mouthed defect of hypocrisy.
Bibical Adam blamed Eve, she in turn blamed the snake. They knew, however, the lure of the devil/snake gripped them both: Power! And they took of the forbidden tree. Not only did Adam and Eve lie, but they presented a sense of innocence. And back to our favorite hypocrite: Decider George.
A real-good reading on Decider George’s terms as president is the well-researched piece by David Michael Green posted last Friday at commondreams.org and aptly titled “What Every American Should Know About Iraq.” Not only does the article background the war itself, but delves into a complete examination of far-fetched and most-likely-criminal acts of the current administration. Although most of the information we here at Compatible Creatures already knew, the knowledge was kind of piecemeal, so Green’s presentation put the ugly picture together in one cohesive wad. A very-must read for everybody.
One aspect in the Green post discussed Decider George’s relationship with his daddy, former President George H.W. Bush, especially where it came to Iraq. Decider George decided daddy wasn’t the kind of daddy who could advise when it came to slaughtering people to gain some degree of power.
“You know, he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to. I’m driven with a mission from God…God would tell me, ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq…’ And I did,” Decider George is quoted as saying.
Not only has Decider George lied about the entire Iraq operation, from the run-up to invasion to the current senseless, bloody “surge, he can also blame it on God: ‘George, go and end the tyranny…”
What a block of shit! He’s been eating acid and reading way-too-much Old Testament.
Only a well-versed hypocrite could mutter such tripe. As Americans are awaiting signs the War On Terror is being pounded into the deserts sands of Iraq, the reality is Decider George has indeed made the world a much-more dangerous place, giving Osama and his boys (and every other terrorist bunch no matter the religious stripe) the training and the desire.
While at home he’s building a tumbling block for law.
The Government Accountability Office in a report released today found that 30 percent of laws were not carried out when Decider George made use of an entitlement very-little-known to the general public, but very popular: “a presidential signing statement.” This a perk that has allowed presidents to not follow some laws handed down by Congress to the letter. This also a thing just about all presidents have used, some long before Decider George humped onto the scene. It’s used to nullify parts of the law deemed so by the president.
Many in Congress and elsewhere believe Decider George and his cronies have broken the law in continuously using the signing statements and he’s utilized more than any other administration.
A good look at the whole phenomenon is by John W. Dean, known of course, as a lawyer in Dick Nixon’s White House and who uttered the famous phrase, “There’s a cancer growing on the presidency.” Dean’s article appeared Jan. 13, 2006, at writ.news.finlaw.com.
According to Dean, Decider George used his right to signing statements more than 107 times in his first four years of office. In that grouping, according to Dean’s figures, were 505 constitutional challenges to various provision of congressional legislation.
Those numbers are from more than 18 months ago.
In the GAO report today, in looking at only 19 of those in 2006, a third of laws were not carried out by federal agencies.
Dean writes: “I find these signing statements are to Bush and Cheney’s presidency what steroids were to Arnold Schwarzenegger’s body building.” It could make you look good, but could be harmful or fatal just a little further down the line.
In using signing statements, Decider George is a pretending to be something he’s not. He won’t make a public use of a veto for certain laws, but he’ll sure slip behind your back and whip out a few signing statements.
A hypocite by any other name is still a hypocrite. Decider George fully practices the wily art of tartuffery (Yes, Hannah, you’ll have to look up that one).
Endgame
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One of the pop-up phrases floating up through the ether nowadays is “exit strategy,” which means just how are we supposed to get out of this complete and total mess. Custer didn’t have one at the Little Big Horn. The Vietnam conflict didn’t have one. And now Decider George doesn’t have one either, not for Iraq, not for his criminal-blighted Justice Department, not for anything. Lifeboats are non-existent.
Not only has Decider George screwed up the American government, but the entire freakin’ world. Writing in Salon.com, Sidney Blumenthal reported after a trip to Europe talking to leaders there the main concern for them is attempting to avoid crap-fallout from any more of Decider George’s decisions.
Blumenthal wrote Europeans are most worried with “somehow making it through the last 18 months of the Bush administration without further major disasters.”
Not with any kind of hope, but instead with great dread. Is that any way to run a country? Do a 360 and what do you see? Nothing but failure on all fronts, and it’s just not ineffectiveness, but catastrophic disasters.
- Just about anyone who has any walking-around sense can see the so-called “surge” in Iraq has failed. Not only has it not worked, but it’s caused more destruction, more death, more horror. And it’s caused the top soldier to speak out of his ass. Gen. David Petraeus said in an interview this week that he’s seen “astonishing signs of normalcy” around Baghdad. The asshole needs to get out more! And even if that wasn’t enough, a Pentagon task force revealed this week that 40 percent of Army soldiers and one third of Marines suffer from some kind of heavy mental problem upon returning home from the war zone. That’s a huge bunch of guys. Looks like Petraeus suffers from some mental disorder too! Even Decider George is suffering: In a press conference Thursday he waxed eloquent about the war. “You know, it’s an interesting debate we’re having in America about how to handle Iraq. There’s a lot of people — good, decent people — saying ‘Withdraw now.’ They’re absolutely wrong. It would be a huge mistake for this country.” Decider George, there is no debate here because you’re a hardheaded, cold-hearted sonofabitch!
- In Gaza, Hamas has driven out the the US-backed Fatah and caused a major realignment in the area and rippled down the unity government of Mahmoud Abbas. Decider George’s big push for Democracy caused voters to cast okay ballots for Hamas last year and turn the region into an unstable boat in a stormy sea.
- Another splash in the ongoing attorney mess at the US Justice Department occurred Friday on the resignation of Mike Elston, chief of staff to Deputy AG Paul McNulty. That makes five who have quit since the whole scandal started earlier this year. Head huncho AG Alberto “Don’t Recall” Gonzales is himself now under investigation by Justice Department lawyers for trying to influence the Congessional testimony of Monica Goodling, Don’t Recall’s former aide. Goodling told the Senate Judiciary Committee last month she felt “a little uncomfortable” about Don’t Recall’s prodding before she appeared before the committee. Talk about a sordid mess! And the endgame in that caper is far from over.
And there you have it, and in only three little peeps at what Decider George has done in just the last six months. No wonder the Europeans are holding their collective breaths.
Endgame is from chess, usually in the final moves when there are but a few pieces left on the board. Strategic moves are calculated by several points, a couple being the use of an aggressive king and the employment of zugzwang, which where a player is forced into a position where he must make an undesirable, or even a disastrous move. What is Decider George going to do with his arrogant, failed endgame situation? Bomb Iran? North Korea?
There is no exit strategy in a box canyon except to turn around. Is Decider George going to do that? Shit no.