Busy busy bees…

From a few days ago in the Situation Room, not that it matters. Could just sprinkle lye over them and leave them in place. I read that the Brits are sending 500 more troops into Afghanistan, heavily weighted with Rules of Engagement.  As well, a few days ago, they announced a (small number) return to Iraq… after a showy departure a few months ago.

It will never end.

Helen Thomas graced us yesterday…. and BTW so will Ob, tomorrow he cuts out of depressing, old, black, poor fucked New Orleans.. and comes to the arms of San Francisco progressives or liberals or whatever we are. Who knows by now.  ATM of the West…

It’s one thing when the Financial Times says Barack Obama “seems to float like a butterfly — and sting like one…”

Even if the gently biting British criticism does come from one of the few publications that successfully charges for some of its content — journalism is all about commerce platforms these days — we’re still talking the Brits here. Hey! Who won the war? as White House press lioness and legend Helen Thomas once said to then-German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in her bawdy and distinctly American style of directness.

But it’s another thing entirely when Ms. Thomas herself says that Mr. Obama “lacks courage.”

There was a gasp in the crowd when the veteran reporter, who’s covered and stuck her thumb in the eye of 10 presidents from her front row White House briefing room seat, made that comment yesterday at a San Francisco Commonwealth Club Q&A.  snip

Gasped!  They gasped!  The remedy for that is prawns knocked backed by champagne.  (It’s a little early for crab season.)  Or a very very dry Martini.. with no food – the olive is lunch.  Both staples of the city.

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UPDATE, 2:56 pm, on the Pacific Ocean

I went over to Talk Left to see if Tentola had picked up on the slithery blither of a “rant” yesterday over at Booman Tribune (catnip linked to it).  He linked to this from Greenwald.

Poor Eugene.  Honey, they’d pull that Civil Rights rug out from under you so fast.  The whole thing is conditional … and Ob is window dressing.  (Good luck!).  How is Eugene different from Sully who had the fucking temerity to say that those who opposed Iraq War were FIFTH COLUMNISTS?

What sick hacks are seeded in our systems.

(bolding and other emphasis is Greenwald’s)

Yesterday in The Washington Post, Eugene Robinson returned to the DNC’s pernicious theme of last week by arguing that those who were “mocking our nation’s leader . . . as unworthy of” the Nobel Peace Prize have “joined with the Taliban”; are “exhibiting what [conservatives], in a different context, surely would describe as ‘Hanoi Jane’ behavior”; have violated core precepts of “good manners”; and deviated from the “only reasonable response“:  to congratulate the President.  But also yesterday, Matt Taibbi wrote one of the most scathing (and typically insightful) criticisms yet of Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize, based on the twisted understanding of “peace” which Western Europe and the U.S. uniquely share and the “change” that Obama actually seems to represent.

Has Taibbi really committed a breach against public decency by expressing doubt that Obama’s actions reflect genuine aspirations for peace?   That’s not a legitimate view?  That can’t reasonably be questioned and debated?  How about the numerous liberals (Ezra Klein, Robert Reich, The Nation‘s Richard Kim, Naomi Klein) and — according to one poll — a majority of American and British citizens who also believe the Prize was not deserved?  Are we actually at the point for some people — as we seem to be — where a person is not only obligated to assume the core goodness of Obama but also agree and affirm that, a mere nine months into his presidency, he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize?   That’s now a mandated belief?  In order to be a good, patriotic citizen and a decent human being, that‘s the requirement one has to fulfill?  If that became the prevailing view, wouldn’t the distinction Ambinder highlighted between the Bush and Obama years cease to exist?  snip

We are rife with racism in this country, rife with organised diversion and division – going back hundreds of years.  But charges of racism at ordinary, if vehement, criticism as well as open dislike of Ob (oh count me in – I have never argued against anyone who dislikes a pretzel, FREE COUNTRY – they say!) is simply thuggishness.  As is slandering ordinary people as subversives for disagreeing, however strongly, with acts of the State…

Dipshit lectures.

However… Glenn misses a few oars in the slave ship:

At least as I always perceived it, the “liberal blogosphere” — to the extent that’s a cognizable entity — has devoted itself to criticisms of two failed institutions:  (1) the establishment media and (2) the Democratic Party leadership.

Naa-naa.  The job of the organised Liberal Blahgosphere has been, over all, to corral the hapless, intimidate open debate and, in timely fashion, reinforce sublimation.  To “rebel” just enough to keep the faithful tuned in… and again, at the right time, to change the tone and temper of the argument.

It is an organ of the party it serves.

Last, here is a good laugh also via Glenn, if you needed one:

UPDATE:  Arianna Huffington argues today that Joe Biden — who has led the internal administration debate against escalation in Afghanistan — should resign in protest if Obama orders more troops to that war.  She makes a good case against escalation and a better case than one might think for why Biden should resign.

What a scream.  She misses the entire slave ship.  Biden resign. Over principle.  Yeah right.  The last resignations of any value, post Saturday night massacre (Cox and Richardson) were Cyrus Vance under Jimmy… Edelstein under Clinton over welfare ”reform” and the three diplomats at the opening of Iraq War.

Dipshit lectures… ’til they haul the hapless faithful back in and set in motion the ship.  You know, that slow turning ship Ob loves to mention.