Donk Scratch Fever

***Didn't we deep-six the "Fairness" Doctrine last week? Why is it still being debated in the Senate?

And why is Ali Dickbar Al-Durbini still using the same embarrassingly obtuse material?

I'm sorry to interrupt you but I really wish that through the commerce committee or the appropriate committee of jurisdiction, we can really get into this question. But the senator is arguing that the marketplace can provide. What is the senator's response if the marketplace fails to provide? What is the marketplace does not provide opportunities to hear both points of view? Since the people who are seeking the licenses are using America's airwaves, does the government, speaking for the people of this country, have any interest at that point to step in and make sure there is a despair balanced approach to the - fair and balanced approach to the information given to the American people?

Norm Coleman of Minnesota gave al-Durbini the answer once again. Suffice it to say, with the entire fricking AM band, the entire freaking FM band, hundreds of television channels, satellite radio, Internet radio, the blogosphere, etc., etc., etc., claiming that every conceivable angle on every conceivable side of every conceivable issue on every conceivable topic in every conceivable genre isn't talked, typed, hissed, hollored, brailed, handed, fisted, folded, spindled, mutiliated, mumbled, chanted, and smoke-signaled to absolute genocidal death is like fretting that Americans can't drive through Ted Kennedy's liquor cabinet and get eye-crossingly hammered.

"Fair and balanced" in Al-Durbini's demented cranium means "arrest Limbaugh and his broadcasting brownshirts and make their ignorant mouth-breathers listen to NPR while bound, gagged, and pumped full of Ecstasy."

Gotta differ with the Admiral on one point, though; I don't think Al-Durbini and his reactionaries feel they've "lost the debate". If that were true, why would they now again be in the majority, and why would they be openly trying to ban talk radio? They think they've already won the debate, as well as the 2008 election, and are just having difficulty pacing themselves.

And they just may be right.

***The purported "third way" in Iraq is codified in the Senate's Salazar-Alexander amendment, which would force President Bush to adapt the lunatic fantasism of the Iraq Study Group report as official Iraq policy and withdraw the bulk of American forces by the end of next March. Yet it claims to seek all the same ends as the current "Surge" strategy while denying all the means:

Under the amendment, the only U.S. troops remaining in Iraq after the redeployment that “could” occur in early 2008 would be “those that are essential for,” among other things, “conducting targeted counterterrorism operations” and “training, equipping and advising Iraqi forces.” But these missions would be rendered all but meaningless by the lack of U.S. combat operations.

All but impossible, actually. No, I take that back: flatly impossible. As NRO's editors go on to explain in scathing detail, "counterterrorism operations" are what we're conducting right now. They require large combat forces to sweep through areas, eliminate the "foreign fighters" (aka al Qaeda and their Iranian allies) and win the trust and support of the indigenous population. Now that the additional troops are deployed and "surging," they're enjoying more and more success, such that the interim report that came out this week indicates the security "benchmarks" already being met.

Moreover, as we all know by now, successful counterterrorism operations require reliable and well-nigh instant intelligence. That can only come from boots on the ground in contact with and enjoying the trust of the local populace - "humint," as it is called in that particular trade. Surely everybody recalls what an utter lack of "humint" vis-a-vie pre-liberation Iraq did to the accuracy of the intel the Bush Administration had available on which to base its military decision-making. Ditto the embarrassing failures of the Clintonoids, when they bothered to go after bin Laden at all in pre-liberation Afghanistan. Yet it is precisely what President Bush once described as "lobbing a cruise missile into an abandoned terrorist camp and hitting a camel in the butt" that the Salazar-Alexander amendment would have us return to.

As to training Iraqi forces, how can that be done if our forces bug out? What better training could they receive than to continue to operate alongside us while we fumigate their country of Islamist scum?

What parts of Salazar-Alexander that aren't foolishness are sheer delusion. "Encourage other countries in the region to stop the destabilizing interventions” in Iraq? WTF? How do you "encourage" the neighboring mullahgarchy to butt out without the credible capability of turning their country into parking lot? "Mother, may I" and "pretty please with sugar on it"? How about encouraging, “if possible, military assistance from non-neighboring Muslim nations.” Whafor? Why the bleep would Algeria or Indonesia send troops to Iraq if we're taking ours out? How could they possibly be as effective or motivated? And then there's, "assisting the Government of Iraq in achieving certain security, political, and economic milestones.” Sorry to have to break it to ya, gents, but that's what we're already doing, you gibbering nincompoops.

Best, or worst, of all, this amendment would actually require the President to report to Congress quarterly on the progress of this idiocy. Which would hang him out to dry as the one public figure who would look and sound like the biggest idiot when this piece of mental masturbation collided with reality like a sneeze smashing into a volcanic eruption.

Suffice it reassuringly to say, while the President may be his own moron here and there (immigration is painfully recent example), he's nobody else's. But what's Lamar Alexander's excuse? Especially since he's gonna have to answer for it to Tennessee voters not much more than a year from now.

***Here's the best summation I've seen yet if this surreal Iraq "debate":

Meanwhile the forces battling the central government can’t solve their problems. With every month that passes, the so-called insurgents seem weaker and more fractured. The most vital manpower reserve of the insurgency — the Sunni tribes — are coming over to our side wholesale. And according to one of the most senior counter-insurgency advisors to General Petraeus, “This is not a result of planning. It‘s a fashion trend.” If anyone is begging for an exit-strategy from its current predicament, it is the insurgency.

Put yourself in their shoes. They have studied history. They know what an insurgency needs in order to win. They know that they will never achieve national geographic scope. No foreign army is going to come to their rescue. They will never have diplomatic recognition, from any country. No Iraqi general will ever defect to their side.

As things now stand, they cannot win. Their only hope is Congress. And now — at the very moment that our troops finally have the chance to prove they can win — a majority of the Congress wants to legislate defeat, by interfering in the strategic and tactical judgments of the constitutional commander-in-chief and his generals, and force them to do things that they are convinced will throw to the winds all that we have gained at such a terrible price.

It is unspeakable treachery what is going on in Congress now under Donk auspices and with RINO collaboration. And the hell of it is, it all happened before a scant thirty-two years ago, and everybody knows it, as well as the horrific results that will follow.

No, I take that back; the hell of it is, when those horrific results follow, the Democrats and the Enemy Media and the nutroots will blame them all on George W. Bush and the GOP.

This is what the American people voted for last November. This is what tight-sphinctered right-wing purists incurred in their arrogant, stupidly myopic presumption to "teach the Republicans a lesson." Whatever sins the former majority were guilty of, cowardice, treason, and flagrant perfidy weren't among them.

Until now.

Congrats, guys; you've managed to resurrect Rockefeller Republicanism. Which is the political equivalent of misplacing the cure for cancer.