New and Improved! Swill™

I'm all for trying new things. I was leery of this new thing when I first saw it. For good reason. I won't even mention it by name for fear of driving hits to the parent company or providing them any additional revenue for this liquid atrocity. But if you see this in a bottle that you're about to drink, cut your tongue out instead. Avoid it at all costs.

Rarrrgghh!

I should really learn to write when I'm less irritated. That said, here's my laundry list of all the little things that have converged to piss me off in the past four hours.

After a perfectly enjoyable (if a tad boring) day at work, I go up to Chinatown to wait for the 80 to take me home. Bus timetable sez that on Sundays the northbound 80 arrives there at 6:23. My watch sez 6:08. Cool. Even allowing for the 5 minute margin of error that this town thrives on, I'm still golden.

Tick... tick... tick...

6:23. No bus.

6:28. No bus. They've now passed the margin of error.

Tick... Tick... Tick...

Damn it's cold out here.

If one more smelly, hairy person gets up in my stuff and badgers me for money, I'm going to go ape shit.

Tick... Tick... Tick...

6:43.

Call the girl. Maybe she knows where this X2 bus goes. You know, the route that has a bus every freakin' minute. Girl sez I should just take a cab, but that seems silly to me. Cabs in DC cost too much.

Alas, she doesn't know the X2's route.

Tick... Tick... Tick...

6:48.

A mental list of the buses I've seen go through or near this intersection, in no specific order: 70 (4 of 'em), P6 (2), Circulator (3), X2 (4), 42 (3).

Maybe I should go back down to Olsson's to warm up. Or over to the sbux across the street. No, wait, they just closed. Damn.

Tick... Tick... Tick...

6:53.

Call the girl again. Maybe she can see me on the traffic camera. Hi girl. I like talking to the girl. I'm just annoyed. And now, the one fun thing I've devised to keep myself entertained over the past 45 minutes I have to stop because, oh look, there's my fucking bus.

So, as it turns out, either the 6:23 bus never showed up and this was the regular next bus, or this dude was really late. I'm learning, however, not to take my frustrations out on other people. But the other people waiting for the 80 have not even attempted learning this.

6:54-7:01: Wow. These people just will not shut up about waiting for an hour. That seems to be an awful lot of time to waste on a dude whose fault it may or may not be and who doesn't really care anyway.

I get home exactly one hour after getting to the stop in Chinatown. Note to all: bus service on Sundays in DC blows.

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There's been other stuff today this weekend that has annoyed the hell out of me, but I'm not gonna bother with it. All I have to say is that if there isn't at least 4" of snow on the ground Tuesday morning, there's gonna be hell to pay.

Three reasons I'm getting profoundly disenchanted by politics.

Reason 1) Which is more un-American: to criticize the war effort where it is not succeeding, or call for a terrorist attack in an American city? To wit, check out the Media Matters and Think Progress coverage of Bill O'Reilly of late. Of interest are his call to allow al-Qaeda to blow up the Coit Tower in San Francisco, his statement the next day defending the comments, and his statement yesterday saying that it was all "satire". (He also tried rewriting history on his TV show by omitting the most offensive remarks addressing the controversy then acting indignant because he hadn't said anything offensive or potentially treacherous.)

I'm just really fed up with conservative pundits continuing to assert that efforts to criticize the war effort are, in and of themselves, un-American, when some of them are actually advocating the murder of American citizens.

Reason 2) The lunacy is no longer relegated to the Lunatic Fringe. Capitol Hill Blue had a report a few days about a strategy memo circulated among "senior Republican leaders" that discussed how to rally public support for the war effort. Most of the ideas appear to be mostly harmless, legitimate efforts to try and make their case, but in one particularly egregious instance their strategizing moves into a very nefarious area. One way, the memo states, that American support would return to the President would be via another terrorist attack on the US.

Just so we're clear about this: the leadership of the ruling party of the country says that another terrorist attack and the time of "national shock and sorrow" would validate the war effort. I really hope, and generally suspect, that these leaders don't want another terrorist attack in the States. But for them to even think this way - of turning a 9/11-style tragedy toward some perverse political gain - is the height of repugnant behavior. It also confirms - as if it needed any more confirmation - that the ruling members of the ruling party have been completely taken over by a conservative (or, perhaps, neo-conservative) movement that used to sit on the sidelines of the national debate screaming about not letting black children attend school with white kids and blowing up doctors and patients.

Reason 3) Our President's steadfast refusal to acknowledge reality. There was a news story over the weekend, the style of which generally makes my eyes glaze over. But this one was important to our understanding of this administration. The Vice President met with Ahmed Chalabi. Aside from the fact that the two are probably the most detestable figures in the Iraq war, and between them they likely have enough potential criminal convictions to give them jail sentences that could match that of a serial marijuana user, the tone of meeting is what is particularly galling.

Chalabi, you may recall, was the guy on whose "intelligence" a lot of White House policy was based with regard to WMD. When we started finding scads and scads of not-weapons (i.e., sand) in Iraq, Chalabi got tossed aside as the fraud and opportunist he was. That was the smart, correct thing to do: disassociate yourself from fraudulent people who tell you lies.

So, of course, he's back, and having meetings with Cheney at the White House. (I don't know if that is more wrong, or more dumb. It's a shitload of both.) And why, pray tell, was Chalabi at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW? According to Byron York, it was to discuss Iraq's WMDs. You know, all those WMDs that were used as evidence to get us into the Iraq War in the first place. All those WMDs that weren't used on American troops. All those WMDs we have not found. All those WMDs that the addendum to the Duelfer report say never existed. All those WMDs that, according to York (writer for the conservative mag National Review, a friendly voice in the wilderness for the Bush White House), folks in the White House still believe we will find.

But only some folks. Not Stephen Hadley, who is the President's National Security Adviser. He was on Late Edition this past Sunday. And you know what he said?:

HADLEY: ... Turns out we were wrong.

About WMDs! That's what he's talking about! That's what the veep, at the very least, was talking to Chalabi that very day about finding in Iraq. (The entire text of Hadley's remarks are at the link. This shocking admission comes in the second paragraph of Hadley's first answer. You know, get the bad shit out of the way first. Like a band-aid... one-rip, RIGHT OFF!)

Either Hadley didn't get the talking points for the day about the meeting, hasn't been told that the WMDs actually are there actively hiding from us, or - most likely - this administration cannot get its act together enough to stop contradicting themselves on a daily basis.

Not only does the Bush team steadfastly refuse to acknowledge reality, they cannot agree on which un-reality they believe in.

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Now, all of that said, I'm very tired about it all. It's taken me over two weeks to synthesize any of this, and I keep coming back to the same shit all over again every time. I have other shit going on in my life. Most of it's good, but I haven't been writing about it because I sit here with 14 tabs open in Mozilla with pages of stuff from all over the place (an exercise I conduct with unbearable frequency) that continually tell me the same thing. So I'm done with writing about politics for a while. If you're reading this for politics, go elsewhere. There are a billion and a half other places more insightful than I am. I'm just done.

Just more evidence...

That Bush and his Presidency is the biggest disgrace to the spirit of this wonderful country since James Buchanan:

This item, from Brian Williams. This is not spin, this is not analysis. This is Brian Williams reporting the raw fact that the power came back on in the area around the location of Bush's motorcade before he passed through, and gave hope to the folks there that things might be nearing a return to normal. Then, after the President's departure, the lights again went out. Power had still not been restored to the residents more than 12 hours after it went out last night.

I really want to hear an ardent Bush apologist make a case for this one. I mean, really. How in the name of God is this defensible? How does this say anything except that Bush used New Orleans last night as a backdrop for a speech they'll play on continuous loop at the Bush library? What does this say about the Presidential power structure in charge in NOLA that allows so much of their resources to go toward providing America with the veneer of normality when the actual truth is still far, far away from that? Is this President so sheltered from reality that he doesn't know they turned the power back on just for him? Does our President now not know that the normality he saw last night in New Orleans was a fraud?

And at what point do Americans say enough is enough? At what point do we take Bush at his word, and force him to actually take responsibility. You know what... it's Open Letter Time:

Dear Mr. President:

Taking responsibility for something isn't just the words you say, Mr. President. It's being held accountable for that which you are claiming responsibility. So, by your own admission, Mr. President, you are responsible for this fraud. You, Mr. President, have committed just another in a long and historic string of frauds on the American people. You have demonstrated your incompetence. You have demonstrated your inability to deal with a problem far less severe than massive WMD attack on our country (something you told us years ago the country was ready for because of all the money thrown to your old business partners in the name of National Security and fighting the terrorist threat). You have demonstrated the failure of your plan to provide for the people of New Orleans, and any other poor sap of an American who happens to find themselves in dire straits because of a disaster, natural or otherwise.

Mr. President, your behavior is inexcusable, your failures are inexcusable, your "solutions" are inadequate, your ignorance is appalling, and you no longer seem to care about America and her inhabitants. Since you have indicated you are responsible for this debacle, this disgrace, I would be honored to accept your resignation. You serve at the pleasure of the people, and the people are no longer pleased. So for the good of your country, Mr. President, please, resign.