Has the True Blue Liberal blog's raison d'être been resurrected?

Yesterday I posted here for the first time in a while. With war drums beating again and one of America's most prominent war drummers, John Bolton, again in a position of power, it seemed necessary.

Today I went back and looked at one of the earliest posts on this blog from December 2004, while we were still dealing with the trauma of George W. Bush's re-election and I felt the need to jump into the leading social media of the time. I titled the post "Peace Bloggers." It had occurred to me when I decided to start a blog of my own to look up "Weblog" on Wikipedia. That article placed a lot of emphasis on the role of organized "War Bloggers" in the run-up to the Bush/Cheney war on Iraq as a key factor in the history of blogging (the current Wikipedia entry no longer even mentions "War Blogging"). So I proudly proclaimed that this little corner of the web would be a place for peace blogging, and that's why it's time for me to become more active again. If Trump thinks that war on Iran (or Venezuela or wherever) could help his popularity in the run-up to next year's election, does anyone believe that he would restrain the most hawkish of his advisors? Can some of us help to make war unpopular? Isn't it worth trying?

The Kristol Oracle Works Again!

Because Bill Kristol has been proved wrong every single time he has opened his mouth -- or let his stubby little fingers plod across a keyboard or touchscreen -- anyone who checked Kristol's Twitter feed yesterday morning got advance notice of Vice President Biden's decision not to run for President this year.

Following the rules of The Kristol Oracle, his confirmation that Joe Biden was going to announce his presidential candidacy today was exactly the opposite; it was advance warning that Joe would be leaving the establishment-Democrat field free for Hillary Clinton to play in by herself.

Since @BillKristol is demonstrably wrong about everything, Hillary can breathe a sigh of relief about any Biden bid. https://t.co/lxrhicMlDo

— True Blue Liberal (@TrueBlueLiberal) October 20, 2015

I need to start following The Kristol Oracle regularly to find out which movies to avoid and which stocks to buy.

And to make this even stranger, he just tweeted a few minutes ago why he wanted Biden to run:

This is what a nation looks like before American bombs fall.

Meet some of the people whom John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Dick "Dick" Cheney, Bibi Netanyahu, et al. would like to bomb in our name as soon as possible:

I want to travel to Tehran just to have the psychic parakeet at the 3'50" mark of this video tell me my future.

If Bush and Cheney are ever brought to justice ...

OK. Please stop laughing, BUT IF George Bush and Dick Cheney are ever brought to justice for war crimes generally, and specifically for the illegal and unjustified destruction of Iraq, then this article in The New York Times today, "Claims Against Saudis Cast New Light on Secret Pages of 9/11 Report," should play at least some role in their prosecution. If they really were classifying parts of the 9/11 commission report in December 2002 that showed actual links to Saudi officials while still ginning up fictional ties between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein to begin their war, then this piece of evidence shouldn't be forgotten at their trial (again, please stop laughing).

This issue isn't even new, as shown by this exchange between Dick Cheney and Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet the Press" on September 14, 2003, when we were only six months into our never-ending war along the Tigris and Euphrates. Cheney was still trotting out discredited Iraqi links and there were already rumors about the Saudi government connections contained in the suppressed sections of the 9/11 Report:

Dick Cheney: ... With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.

Tim Russert: We could establish a direct link between the hijackers of September 11 and Saudi Arabia.

Cheney: We know that many of the attackers were Saudi. There was also an Egyptian in the bunch. It doesn’t mean those governments had anything to do with that attack. That’s a different proposition than saying the Iraqi government and the Iraqi intelligent service has a relationship with al-Qaeda that developed throughout the decade of the ’90s. That was clearly official policy.

Russert: There are reports that the investigation Congress did does show a link between the Saudi government and the hijackers but that it will not be released to the public.

Cheney: I don’t know want to speculate on that, Tim, partly because I was involved in reviewing those pages. It was the judgment of our senior intelligence officials, both CIA and FBI that that material needed to remain classified. ..."

The shorter version? It's perfectly fine if the fictional Czech story of the Iraqi link is somehow "public out there" (with no help from Bush and Cheney, obviously), but the true Saudi link needs to be kept from the public.

Now for the happy musical outro courtesy of Michael Moore and REM who put all of this into a 2004 movie:

Jon Stewart nails confessed torturer Dick "The Dick" Cheney

This is must-see TV from last night's The Daily Show. However, Dick Cheney and others responsible for "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" need to be asked these questions before an international court of law where "9/11-9/11-9/11-9/11!-9/11!!!-9/11!!!!!!" is not an acceptable defense for torture.

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook,Daily Show Video Archive

"George W. Bush, thank you for not dying while you were in office."
--Jon Stewart, The Daily Show, 14 December 2014

Legal Strategy 101 for War Criminals

With the Senate report on CIA torture during the Bush/Cheney years being released today, it's important once again to remember that Administration's intense opposition to United States participation in the International Criminal Court as soon as they came into power in 2001 (long before September 11th of that year). It's almost as if they knew that there might be Americans committing war crimes in the near future.

I couldn't find any lengthy statements from George Bush or Dick Cheney about their principled opposition to a permanent Nuremberg-inspired war crimes court, but I did find an interesting video explanation from the Captain Kangaroo they placed as their recess-appointment ambassador to the United Nations. John Bolton puts the reason the Iraq Warriors objected to the ICC clearly in the following lines delivered about three minutes into this video:

"And yet, the threat of prosecution -- the threat of being accused of being a war criminal -- can have an inhibiting effect. And since there's no accountability for these institutions, it could pose a threat to the United States -- or to the will of American friends and allies -- to take actions that they should undertake for their own self defense." --John Bolton [Emphasis Added]

Isn't that the point of all police and prosecutors and courts? To have an inhibiting effect on potential criminals?



And without American participation in an International Criminal Court, shouldn't even Bolton agree that it's therefore incumbent on American judicial institutions to look into and possibly prosecute the people behind the numerous war crimes listed in the report released today?

The Running-Mate Anagram of the Day

In a move to deflect today's news about Mitt Romney's Bain tenure, the questions raised by his missing tax returns, and his disastrous appearance before the NAACP yesterday, his campaign is floating stories about a  "surprising" Vice-Presidential choice.  The name that's popping up in right-wing blogs is Condoleezza Rice, but when push comes to shove it's hard to imagine Romney -- with his own iffy social conservative bonafides -- choosing someone who is even more liberal than he is on issues like abortion, gay rights, and immigration.

I'd like to suggest an even more surprising name in the 2012 GOP Veepstakes, a man with impeccably right-wing credentials, experience in foreign policy, and service under multiple Republican Presidents.  Mitt Romney is having dinner with this man in Wyoming tonight (no photographers allowed please).  Richard "Dick" Cheney has a new heart, he's ready to serve, and Vice Presidents are not limited to a mere two terms in office.  Plus, Dick probably knows what secrets lurk in Mitt's missing tax returns and where other bodies are buried (not that we're suggesting that blackmail will play any role in Mitt's final decision about his running mate). Surprise! This will turn the 24-hour news cycle away from Bain Capital questions.

Therefore: "Romney and Cheney" = "Deny No Archenemy"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Previous running-mate anagrams can be found by clicking on the names: Santorum, Ayotte, Pawlenty, Christie, and Portman. 

This is what evil looks like.

Welcome to day one of year six of a war that never should have been fought.

And if you have dial-up, or you can't stand the smirking face of Dick Cheney, even in a 20-second video clip, here's the transcript:

MARTHA RADDATZ (ABC): Two-thirds of Americans say it's not worth fighting.
RICHARD CHENEY (Dick): So?
RADDATZ: So? You don't care what the American people think?
CHENEY: No. I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls. There has in fact been fundamental change and transformation and improvement for the better. That's a huge accomplishment.

(thanks to Mustang Bobby at Shakesville for posting this)

Hey Wyoming! It's Your Turn to Start a New Obama Winning Streak!

I wish I could vote for Barack again tomorrow in the home state of soon-to-be-
EX-vice-president Richard "Dick" Cheney.
If I were a resident of Wyoming, I'd be thrilled to show the world that my state could live up to its official nickname, The Equality State, after eight years of being associated with its least-favorite son, the torturer and friend of the oil rich.