Blind Oversight
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Long ago, when in high school, I lost almost $100 somewhere after a shopping trip.
My mother — always aware of how a bit means a lot, and even with the money being my own hard-earned cash — went nearly ballistic.
Nowadays, nothing of the sort happens, no fits pitched, no hand-wringing, no talking about the value of resources — even as more and way-more of my own money (along with a shitload of other US peoples money) has once again been found to have gone missing in that vast, horrifying, and ugly orifice of Iraq — and no one appears to give a fat-rat’s-ass.
US treasure down the Middle East, war-torn, rabbit hole:
A U.S. audit has found that the Pentagon cannot account for over 95 percent of $9.1 billion in Iraq reconstruction money, spotlighting Iraqi complaints that there is little to show for the massive funds pumped into their cash-strapped, war-ravaged nation.
The words, ‘massive funds‘ is some kind of a WTF understatement — does anyone have any kind of grip on $9.1 billion?
The report released just last week by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction is seemingly the second such audits from that august group on big-bucks disappearing — in 2005 $9 billion in reconstruction funds just vanished “in the midst of a war” between October 2003 and June 2004.
Gobs and gobs of cash — Heady days them with literally tons of greenbacks pouring the country, one flight alone in December 2003 contained $1.5 billion in cash, the largest single Federal Reserve payout in US history.
Read a good wrap of that particular tale of horror here.
A couple years after that fiasco, a congressional report found the Pentagon lost nearly 200,000 weapons in 2006 — including 185,000 AK-47 rifles, the vaulted, weapon-of-choice for Mid East insurgents — amidst budgets then of $19.2 billion for Iraqi security forces along with another $2 billion for training and equipping Iraqi troops.
And how about the now-nine-year-old original war in that war on terror, Afghanistan — more of the fricking same.
Last week, a federal auditor called out an “outrageous waste of taxpayer money” in reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, building all kinds of structures without a grain foresight or sense.
Just as US House approved another $59 billion for the Afghan war, take a look at this as the cash flows like water into the modern horrors of US conflicts since 2001 –and all that waste in blood and treasure.
My mother would have pitched a shit fit.
‘Watching Gidget address the Reichstag’
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Near, so near to conclusion of the extreme-worse of all US presidential administrations, we find ourselves also with a view of the extreme-worse of all presidential candidates — Jackboot John McCain is the most retarded (not PC, we know), shameless incompetent ever to attempt the White House.
(The above pix from bewarethemarketplaceidols).
One gut-clenching, hands-over-face experience is Jackboot John’s heir apparent Sarah Palin’s interview with Katie Couric — whimsical, Gracie Burns-funny while shitting-the-pants scary — all at once.
If Sarah wasn’t on a possible path to the Oval Office, if she was just maybe a freakin’ governor of a state being interviewed on CBS, if a lot of shit…
This entire scenario would then be black-humored, Dr. Strangelove-like-hilarious.
Watch the incredible Tina Fey as Sarah on Saturday night’s SNL via HuffPost here.
And for the real thing: Sarah interviewed by Couric last week (Amy Poehler plays Couric in the above skit) also via HuffPost here.
This evening Couric interviewed Jackboot John and Sarah, together again for the first time — “gotcha journalism” the scapegoat for Sarah’s foreign policy quip about tracking militants into Pakistan.
Jackboot John has got to be the most-dumb-ass man to ever hold himself up for president.
Marc Ambinder’s blog at The Atlantic has a section of convoluted dialogue between the three — Couric finally being a journalist, Sarah following Jackboot John’s interruptions — the whole scene written-out is reminiscent of a parlor-room scene in a freaked-out ‘Father Knows Best‘ episode.
However, it’s hobbed-about that CBS might have more of Katie’s interview with Sarah from the other night, according to the Washington Post, And the worst may be yet to come for Palin; sources say CBS has two more responses on tape that will likely prove embarrassing. (Hat tip to dailykos.)
As was said above with a sitting-on-the-shitter-grimace, Jackboot John’s run for the White House is probably the worse in US history — way-badder than Thomas E. Dewey in 1948, even Michael Dukakis in ’88 — and Sarah is just a horror extension of the McCain presidential campaign.
Sarah is just the obvious lie.
Matt Taibbi, the always-interesting political writer for Rolling Stone, offers up a view of the RNC and Sarah Palin as a reflection of the floating-toward-the-abyss USA — fat, sassy, and from-the-looks-of-it, dumb-ass blind.
- Sarah Palin is a symbol of everything that is wrong with the modern United States.
As a representative of our political system, she’s a new low in reptilian villainy, the ultimate cynical masterwork of puppeteers like Karl Rove.
But more than that, she is a horrifying symbol of how little we ask for in return for the total surrender of our political power.
Not only is Sarah Palin a fraud, she’s the tawdriest, most half-assed fraud imaginable, 20 floors below the lowest common denominator, a character too dumb even for daytime TV — and this country is going to eat her up, cheering her every step of the way.
All because most Americans no longer have the energy to do anything but lie back and allow ourselves to be jacked off by the calculating thieves who run this grasping consumer paradise we call a nation.
And Sarah’s RNC speech:
- It was a virtuoso performance.
She appeared to be completely without shame and utterly full of shit, awing a room full of hardened reporters with her sickly sweet line about the high-school-flame-turned-hubby who, “five children later” is “still my guy.”
It was like watching Gidget address the Reichstag.
…
Here’s what Sarah Palin represents: being a fat fucking pig who pins “Country First” buttons on his man titties and chants “U-S-A! U-S-A!” at the top of his lungs while his kids live off credit cards and Saudis buy up all the mortgages in Kansas.
Read Taibbi’s entire shit-knuckled, right-on piece at AlterNet.
When Jackboot John and Sarah’s flippant gotcha on the worsening Afghan/Pakistan crisis is coupled with now-global-domino collapse of the world’s financial markets, the couple appear like a dream — they just can’t be real.
And the shit goes on…
Big Al and Dufus Dick
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As the days and months flow by, the news from the US Justice Department is still the same old shit. However, for the first time in US history, the general public can get a look into how corruption, arrogance and incompentence fills the so-called oval office. Decider George and his buddy AG Alberto “Don’t Recall” Gonzales: A creation of suck-buddy, Mafia-style silence in the wake of some obvious lying.
Don’t Recall has apparently slipped the noose again.
As of noon today, Decider George has been quiet about Don’t Recall’s lying barrage last week up on the Hill. Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, requested from the Bush administration some evidence of Don’t Recall’s truthfulness. But, of course, nothing from the White House. Just about every politican in D.C. has slammed the AG. Don’t Recall is indeed a piece of work.
According to stories in the Wasington Post, Gonzales’s tie to Decider George stretches back to at least 1996, when he intervened to prevent then-Gov. Bush from serving jury duty in Texas, which allowed the decider to keep his own drunken driving conviction a secret years longer. Don’t Recall has been Decider George’s gofer for a long time and will stand with his man until the end.
There’s nothing that good-ole buddies won’t do even with Don’t Recall.
Even Vice President Dufus Dick Cheney has open his yap. When asked in an interview with CBS radio whether Don’t Recall should keep his job, Dufus Dick replied: “I do. I’m a big fan of Al’s. I think Al has done a good job under difficult circumstances. The debate between he and the Senate is something they’re going to have to resolve. But I think he has testified truthfully.”
Al? ‘Testified truthfully?’ Dufus Dick still has a the gall despite every freakin’ bit of evidence to the contrary and even Don’t Recall’s own words.
Dont’ Recall ain’t that smart, neither. James Moore, co-author of Bush’s Brain, a book on Karl Rove, told Countdown MSNBC host Keith Olbermann on Monday, education does not necessarily make one a brain. “I think — it is amazing to me that people actually think that this man is smart,” Moore said. “If the administration of George W. Bush has proved anything, it is that you can go to a top flight East Coast school and get an advanced degree and not be a very bright person.”
Duh!