Dana Perino and Junkyard Wars

By Capt. Fogg

So Dana Perino still isn't bowing out of her mission to defame the president who employs her. It's too breathlessly important to talk down the America that pays her salary; pays her excellent medical and dental plan that she would deny us, to bother to be consistent with what she just finished saying or with objective reality. Why should she, after all? She's preaching to her own demented and dishonest choir, none of whom is any smarter or more honest than she is.

A few days ago, it was wrong for President Obama to play golf because "there's a war on." Yesterday it was just fine to call him to task for not calling a shooting "terrorism" even though "there's a war on." Criticizing the President in time of "war" is only treason when the President is of their tribe, you know and it's never treason when Fox does it. Anything goes, you see, when you're blond and perky. Anything -- even forgetting that the 9/11 attacks were not only on George W. Bush's watch, but that George W. Bush wasn't actually watching and had effectively shot down those who were. But hey, that was history and history is a junkyard from which you take parts and assemble your own truth.

We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during president Bush's term,

Perino said to Sean "Insanity" Hannity on Fox last night. The old Fox with the botox face didn't even flinch. She went on to politicize the shootings at Fort Hood by accusing Barack Obama of "politicizing" the shootings at Fort Hood by not calling the act of an American officer "terrorism" in advance of any evidence to back that up other than the man's religion.

So why is it so important, other than for reasons of creating a religious war, to label the Fort Hood murders terrorism? So that she can pretend Bush was a protector and Obama is not. She needs a "terrorist" attack to create a false equivalence no matter how outrageously unequal it may be. In her little mind, your little mind will accept that the billions of dollars of destruction and the 3000 or so lives is equivalent to an American officer going wacko and shooting up his fellow soldiers and therefore Barack Obama is a failure.

What's in a name? Everything, it seems. The difference between death by friendly fire and terrorism is all in the politics of the beholder, whether or not the fire is friendly. If someone "fragged" his commanding officer, it's not terrorism and if Pat Tillman was shot by his own men, that's not terrorism either. Charles Manson isn't a terrorist, even though his mission was to strike terror into the hearts of white people and start a war. David Berkowitz wasn't a terrorist although he terrorized New York -- and why? A political football is not a football until someone kicks it and the Grand Old Fox has no interest in doing so unless it serves their need of supporting Republicans and toppling Democrats.

I've seen famous comedians booed off the stage for making mild jokes about George Bush, I've had death threats for saying Reagan had serious flaws. Where is the outrage now? Where is the response to such amateurish, clumsy and wildly dishonest propaganda coming, like foul breath, out of the mouths of Fox?

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

Fox in the henhouse

By Capt. Fogg  

What the hell Barack Obama was thinking when he appointed Dana Perino to anything at all, I don't know. The Raw Story says, with a bit of mockery, that she's staying true to her convictions but although that sort of thing is so often described as virtue, I have to remember that never changing one's mind and never changing the subject is the mark of the fanatic -- to put it politely. What was he thinking when he appointed a hostile and professional anti-regulatory, anti-government propagandist to the Broadcasting Board of Governors? She may cackle like a biddy, but she's a Fox in the henhouse for sure.

I haven't heard the hortatory "there's a war on" trope for a while now, but here she is again on Fox News trying to use it to generate that same community spirit we had 65 years ago when there really was a war on that had something to do with national security and not another illegitimate, unnecessary and degenerating quagmire having little to do with anything but the ego of a president who never won anything fairly in his life. I have to wonder if the obscenely perky Ms. Perino actually knows enough about WWII to make a valid comparison. You'll remember, of course, that last year as White House deputy press secretary, it came out that she'd never heard of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but with the arrogance only someone with the strength of conviction of the ignorant can have, she's chastising her boss by saying he shouldn't play golf "when there's a war on" and when unemployment is up -- like it was under St. Reagan the Infallible.

He shouldn't keep the generals waiting she says, not remembering that if Kennedy hadn't keep his generals waiting, Florida might still be radioactive. Funny stuff anyway, coming from a mouth that used so recently to tell us not to criticize the president when there's a war on. Disgusting stuff when that particular president set and still holds the U.S. record for number of vacation days taken, morning runs, weeks accumulating into months of brush cutting, and evenings passing out on the couch -- war or no war. Was Obama hoping to plant an ally of some sort in the Fox den? Sorry, you can feed it like a dog, but a Fox is a Fox.

In fact, I think President Obama has already played golf more than President Bush did in eight years. I don't begrudge him for playing golf but you have to understand when you have the B roll of the video that shows the president playing golf while there is a 10.2% unemployment rate, while his senators are basically having to twist arms in order to get this party line vote, while KSM is headed to New York City for trials, while we have the Gitmo detainees possibly coming to Illinois — they have to understand that people could look at that and say, "Oh, and by the way General McChrystal has been waiting 86 days for a decision about Afghanistan."

She twittered to Steve Doocy of Fox and Friends infamy. This, from someone who told us that global warming would be good because fewer people would get colds. No, it was OK for Bush to bicycle, jog, cut brush and pass out in front of the TV while hundreds of thousands died and millions were made homeless, It wasn't golf, that elitist game. It was OK for Ronald to sleep all afternoon when unemployment was 10.5% and there was "a war on" in Granada but Obama should not have a break, or get a break either -- because he's Obama.

For someone who clearly remembers the way the warhawks went after Dwight Eisenhower for dithering and playing golf instead of addressing the missile gap that never really was, it's amusing and infuriating at the same time, since his greatest strength, in my opinion, was his resistance to being rushed or bullied by the generals. It's also amusing to remember that Lyndon Johnson played golf when a far bigger and deadlier war was "on" and you didn't hear much about it from the support-any war-Republicans. All and all, she's just another yipping Fox Friend, with the annoying self confidence of those born yesterday. She belongs with Fox and along with Malkin and Coulter and giggling Glenn, not working for a government she hates.

What the hell was he thinking?

(Cross-posted from Human Voices.)

The Garlic's 2007 Sounds of Christmas

By J. Thomas Duffy

In what will likely become an annual tradition, The Garlic has had its ear to-the-ground, wide and far, to bring to you the Sounds of Christmas. Who's listening to what to get into the holiday spirit (and I do realize, using the phrase "holiday spirit" versus "Christmas spirit" may bring upon me Bill O'Reilly's war machine)

While you're reading, click on to listen to Louis Prima, and his What Will Santa Claus Say (When He Finds Everybody Swingin')


President Bush (and his Telcom Buddies) - Angels We Have Heard On High

President Vice President Dick Cheney - Silent Night

Condoleezza Rice - I Wonder As I Wander

Dana Perino - What Is Santa Claus? (Stan Kenton version)

Paul Wolfowitz - I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm

Donald Rumsfeld - Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow

I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby - I'll Be Home For Christmas

Blackwater USA - Sleigh Ride

Mitt Romney - O Come All Ye Faithfull

William Kristol - Little Drummer Boy

Michelle Malkin - What Child Is This

CIA agent John Kiriakou - Hark The Herald Angels Sing

Lou Dobbs - White Christmas

Howard Krongard - Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas

French President Nicolas Sarkozy - I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg - Our Little Town


Bonus Xmas Links

Garlic Christmas Special - David Sedaris Christmas Letter

Twas The Night Before The New Congress

Twelve Days of Dubya ...The Twelfth Day

















(Cross Posted at The Garlic)

Top Ten Cloves: How Bush Administration reacted to news of the Death Star Galaxy

News Item: Jet From Supermassive Black Hole Seen Blasting Neighboring Galaxy

By J. Thomas Duffy

10. Checked with NASA, to make sure it wasn't some drunk astronauts pulling a prank

9. Debated for a few hours about using it as an opportunity to raise the Terror Alert Chart, and call for Duct Tape and Plastic

8. For a short period of time, not knowing what was going on, Bush changed into his flightsuit, just in case

7. Rush Limbaugh called... Wanted to know which was older - the Death Star Galaxy or Hillary Clinton

6. Worked late into the night to see how that could fit this into FISA Debate and giving Telcoms Immunity

5. Condoleezza Rice raced over, in case they needed her to go out and talk about "mushroom clouds" again

4. Immediately started writing press releases, blaming Al Qaeda in Iraq

3. Bill O'Reilly and William Donahue called on Bush to renounce this Death Star Galaxy as a liberal, secular ploy to diss Christmas

2. Had someone call Erik Prince and get assurances Blackwater USA wasn't involved

1. Assigned someone to tutor Dana Perino, to make sure she knows something about the Hubble Telescope

Bonus Video

MSNBC Countdown - Alison Stewart Interview with Derrick Pitts, chief astronomer of the Franklin Institute, discussing the emergence of the “Death Star Galaxy"














(Cross Posted at The Garlic)

How about No Press Secretary Left Behind?

By Edward Copeland

You'll have to scroll down a bit through the story to get to the details, but as further evidence of the pisspoor historical education received by people in this country (and unfortunately way too many members of Dubyaland), Bush spokeswoman can't remember what that Cuban Missile Crisis deal was all about:

Appearing on National Public Radio's light-hearted quiz show "Wait, Wait . . . Don't Tell Me," which aired over the weekend, Perino got into the spirit of things and told a story about herself that she had previously shared only in private: During a White House briefing, a reporter referred to the Cuban Missile Crisis -- and she didn't know what it was.

"I was panicked a bit because I really don't know about . . . the Cuban Missile Crisis," said Perino, who at 35 was born about a decade after the 1962 U.S.-Soviet nuclear showdown. "It had to do with Cuba and missiles, I'm pretty sure."

So she consulted her best source. "I came home and I asked my husband," she recalled. "I said, 'Wasn't that like the Bay of Pigs thing?' And he said, 'Oh, Dana.'"