Pass the Dutch, Baby...

Why shouldn't China invoke the Carter Doctrine?

Shmuel Rosner has a piece in Slate on the global oil supply that builds a House of Nerves out of mere data. 40% of the world's supply runs through the Straits of Hormuz: true! China gets oil from the Sudan: true! China would like to cooperate with Iran on energy: all true! And then he leaves us with an abrupt incoherent ending about the necessity of kicking foreign oil, like this was 2005...China is going to drink our milkshake!

Okay, fine. China is the number two consumer of oil in the world (impressively conservative, considering it is 5 times the size of the number one consumer). It is no longer an arriviste superpower; preeminence demands concomitant international commitments, what was once called "The White Man's Burden." You want a steady flow of oil, then DIY, bitches! Plus, you get to handle all these Dutch-diseased petrostates, with their feudal economies...The Carter Doctrine should belong the the US no more than territorial disputes in the Gambia should be settled by Great Britain.

Not to sound Lewis Lapham-esque, but empires have a way of passing the torch. Seems about time the US took what it has left of UK-like Regal Splendor, even if it's the geopolitical equivalent of a 40 of Olde English and some Hot Pockets, and found a stoop to sit on. If the cost of being out of Iraq is Chinese PT boats in Basra, sign me up. The US Treasury could stand to have that 3 billion a week back. Kids from the sticks could stand to have all their limbs attached.

Besides which, the twin goals of kinder-gentler foreign policy and hydrocarbon conservation satisfy one another. Not only is Defense a colossal consumer of oil, it provides a free platform for extraction and pipeline companies to work on the side. Shutting down our bizarre, high-school protection racket in the Mideast is a win-win: no more defending oil means less oil needed for Defense.

And all those rogue states China's dealing with? Well, rogues have a way of being brought into the fold when necessary. Is Rosner trying to say that oil from Saudi Arabia is morally cleaner than oil from Venezuela? Or is he saying that we should clean up our own house? In which case Exxon-Mobil and Conoco-Philips and Total-Fina-Elf need to move out of Sudan. And everyone needs to make friends with Brazil.

And so, President Hu, we bequeath to you the Carter Doctrine, a destructive little bit of "statecraft" so insane that only a peanut farmer could enact it with a straight face.

What's the Chinese for Military Keynesianism?
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Ambassador of Poontang

"President Clinton is obviously committed to doing whatever he can and is asked to do to ensure Senator Obama is the next President of the United States."

This, of course, was the response from Big Dawg headquarters to murmurings that he's miffed about the Obama candidacy. The always insightful Marc Ambinder takes up the topic, as well:

A Democrat who has spoken directly to Clinton about his feelings said that the former president remains “miffed” for two reasons. One is that he feels that Obama’s candidacy was essentially an anti-Clinton candidacy; that Obama ran against Clinton’s presidential record at times, implying that it was timeworn, divisive, and damaging to the party while adopting policy positions that seemed to flow directly from the Clinton oeuvre. Why should Clinton embrace a guy who spent the past twelve months bashing him and his accomplishments?

Two: Clinton is convinced that the Obama campaign went out of its way to portray the former president as a racist. Clinton wants a private meeting with Obama to sort these things out; he has reconciled himself to the reality of Obama’s nomination and does not want to sit on the sidelines.

The first reason seems like a bit of sour grapes to me. Were it true, it smacks of BillyClint being unable to realize he was totally outmaneuvered. Again, we've been over how the Obama camp pulled some amazing Rovian jiu jitsu on the Clintons, turning their perceived biggest asset--the Clinton years and Clinton, himself--into a liability. We saw the Big Dawg calm and confident, then red-faced and finger-wagging, then muzzled and muted on the campaign trail. I think Bill's still trying to get his head around it.

The second reason? I don't recall anyone calling Bill Clinton a racist. That was the reaction from the Clinton camp and supporters: Don't call me a racist! I marched! But nobody was calling them racists. People were saying that they were saying some pretty racially insensitive things. Were they? Well...

But this is really all beside the point. What's important is that Bill will come out on the campaign trail eventually. It will be a surprise and the media will fall all over themselves covering it. "Passing the torch," they'll call it.

Were I in the Obama team, I'd get Bill to deliver a high profile speech at the Convention. Something about the completion of the Bridge to the 21st Century, maybe? A bit of flourish about crumbling infrastructure, blah blah blah. Then shots of Bill and Hill and Barry all arms raised and smiling.

Then Obama upholds his end of the bargain and makes Bill American Ambassador to the Playboy Mansion.

Dabbling in pacifism...

K: Secretary Rice is finally dabbling in pacifism...and her guru is Bashar al-Assad!

Here's a Syrian spokesman two weeks ago, calling for Israeli-Lebanese talks:

The president hinted that it would not be in Lebanon's interest if it did not have its own talks if Syrian-Israeli talks advanced[...]

And here's Condi one week ago, calling for Israeli-Lebanese talks:

I also told him that the United States believes the time has come to deal with the Chebaa Farms issue[...]

And here's Israel calling for Lebanese talks. Oh, and Olmert's going to meet Assad in Paris in July, for crepes, presumably.

So the same Sec. Rice three weeks ago was on the Dick Cheney, Bloodthirsty Persians tip. Partly this is a matter of tailoring the message to the audience; Rice bellowed bellicose for AIPAC, and -ahem- detumesced for the Lebanese. In theory, rhetorical fireworks can accompany Israel's land-for-peace negotiations with Syria and Lebanon, and the prisoner-exchange negotiations with Hezbollah. The unique aim is to pick allies off of Iran's branch.

But the timing of Bill Kristol and John Bolton's rabies attack doesn't serve that strategic purpose. War fervor is already plenty high: Israel just finished a dry-run for an attack on Natanz, dudes. Nor is this an escalation of rhetoric by people who currently have real jobs. These are dudes with the same security clearance as you and me...

More to the point, Kristol and Bolton aren't responding to similar Iranian bloviations; they're calling out Americans. State just proposed sending an American mission/outpost/charge d'affaires to Iran. Whammo! Like squirrel blood to hammerheads! All the unemployed sharks have to remind us of the "nature of the threat..." They're calling Rice out.

Clearly spooked by the power of language to change "facts on the ground," having just watched the administration's war of words provide Israel cover to bomb Syria, to war-game a Natanz raid, etc., Condoleezza decides it's time to throttle back the warmongering, at last joining Ali Larijani on some calmer-than-you-are shit...

Hope for a cooler summer...and I like to think my prediction was not totally wrong...
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This aggression will stand.

Tony Jaa is on some entirely other shit man. Lotta ins, lotta outs, lotta bone-cracking, flying knee and elbow drops.

The sequel to Ong Bak, Thai Warrior is soon to come, and video has leaked. Look upon his works, ye mighty, and despair.





via Angry Asian Man

Exercises in the paranoid style, or, zim-zimma, who got the keys to Boumediene?

K: Indeed, what happens to detainees upon release? Will they sue in civil courts for wrongful imprisonment? Will the people who brought them to Guantanamo be prosecuted for kidnapping, like the Italians are prosecuting the CIA? Will they, as the Pentagon keeps saying, return to the battlefield?

Your point and mine, clearly, is that five detainees returning to jihad is less worrisome than the five thousand middle-class Egyptians radicalized the way Qutb was back in the day. (I did actually remember that NYT Mag piece from 2003...) The Supremes have just agreed to hear three cases involving executive branch responsibility for deprivations of civil rights carried out abroad, probably in order to shut 'em down. So the fear that former secretaries will have to pay for private school in Canada, or new rims on a bunch of Afghan Hummers is unmerited. And the 9-0 Munaf-Omar ruling makes clear that whatever the consequences of deporting a detainee, it ain't challengable.

Summary castration be damned: What Happens in Yemen Stays in Yemen. Ultimately, no one cares what these dudes do after their day in court.

The real question is, What will these dudes do in court? The administration hasn't been arguing to block the release of detainees; certainly not while they've been steadily draining Gitmo. They've been arguing to keep detainees from having access to their own lawyers, from seeing the evidence against them, or from having their testimony preserved in toto.

Torture is the weenie. This is why David Hicks, the Australian Talib, is subject to a gag order. This is why Andy Card, Karl Rove, Harriet Miers et alia refuse to obey subpoenas, risking jail rather than dent the armor of executive privilege. The administration is scared shitless of Carl Levin! They fear no mujahideen; they fear memoirs! Depositions!

This is not Syriana, it's Michael Clayton. (Check me later on Tilda Swinton intentionally modelling her character on Condoleezza Rice.) Detainees will demonstrate in court that a program of coercive interrogation originated at Guantanamo shortly after Rumsfeld signed off on it in 2002. Pre-Abu Ghraib, pre-"bad apples."

A program of torture spanning three continents and half a decade was conceived, promulgated and concealed by the executive branch. And the people subject to it now get their day in court? The goddam plane has crashed into the side of the mountain...

My concern is that this will bump us into a higher-echelon paranoia. Just as Al-Qaeda will feed on the shadow-government narrative, the Hammerhead Right will cite the Boumediene decision as evidence of the Enemy Within. At least, until these dudes testify...
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Just a thought...

What exactly are we going to do with all our detainees? That is: you can't just fake-drown a man for months and years on end and then send him back with a free plane ticket and a thanks for the memories post card and expect that that aggression will stand.

Why is this question important? The editorial board of the Dark Steer Report recommend viewing a BBC documentary by the name of The Power of Nightmares. It's a rather interesting glimpse into the structures and history underlying the NeoCon and Al Qaeda movements. Incomplete, perhaps, but enough to introduce one to Sayyid Qutb, who is the reason behind this post.

Our concern, dude, is that whatever horrors we may have inflicted on innocent men and women may be visited tenfold upon our heads. Check the story of Qutb and see that he was loud and obnoxious before imprisonment, but it was the torture that radicalized him.

Now we've got pens and planes and prisons full of swarthy individuals of varying degrees of innocense and we've mock-drowned and beaten and stress-positioned and sleep-deprived them for quite some time now. And now they may get access to the courts? What happens to these men when they go free?

Roberts insane, Part 2: Court feeds fresh meat to these vulgar brutes...

Part 1

Remember when the Protect America Act was allowed to lapse and President Bush predicted imminent terrorist attacks if Verizon couldn't build illegal wiretap aqueducts? Once again, there's huffing about the inevitable violence that will ensue when Gitmo detainees get habeas rights. Nino, for instance predicts, "devastating" and "disastrous consequences," and gave us an instant classic:

"It will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed."

So what's up with the gift given along with the whipping? The 9-0 ruling in another combined detainee case holds that Omar and Munaf -- American-Jordanian and American-Iraqi dual citizens -- can challenge their detention by the American military, but cannot challenge their transfer to another country, in this case Iraq.

Shouldn't we have expected Roberts to argue against granting the men habeas at all, since the terrorist threat posed by them is so grave? No, they're citizens. So they have to be denied the right to petition their government for wholly other reasons, viz.:

"Iraq has a sovereign right to prosecute them for crimes committed on its soil, even if its criminal process does not come with all the rights guaranteed by the Constitution."

Again, there's a nested issue. The Court has essentially legitimized extraordinary rendition, opened up a defense of the CIA's secret prisons, and taken the first step in denying challenges to repatriation to countries that practice torture.

Allowing a detainee to challenge his capture is moot once he's been transferred. The message the court has sent, by saying that a habeas hearing for a transferree cannot result in review of his transfer, is "export these guys quicker!"

No-challenge transfers can work in reverse as well. Imagine Muhammad Rahim challenges his detention at Guantanamo on two grounds: one, he wants a habeas hearing in federal court; two, the CIA tortured him in Afghanistan in order to get the confession that sent him to the tribunals at Gitmo.

According to yesterday's decisions, Rahim would win the former point, but lose the latter, as surely the CIA's transfer is essentially a military transfer to a third country. If the transfer is legal, whatever happens at the other end is irrelevant. Disappeared.

If military transfers are unimpeachable, current detainees cannot ask not to be repatriated, even if they face torture at home. So quick folks, get Abdul Rahman back to Tunisia before the D. C. Circuit holds a habeas hearing!

Finally, the no-challenge military transfers closely parallel INS procedures for deporting illegal immigrants. Like something out of Bagram or Bucharest. Dark Steer awaits the day when this decision is cited to permit INS to drug deportees before shipment...what happens in Bagram stays in Bagram...

"Pre-flight cocktails" for everyone!
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ClarkVeep Speaks

Your editorial staff here at The Dark Steer Report have undertaken to explore the ClarkVeep from both sides of the issue. But we do not labor under any illusions that these are anything other than just, like, our opinions, man. What says the man himself?

"I know he's trying to get traction by seeking to play to what he thinks is his strong suit of national security... The truth is that, in national security terms, he's largely untested and untried. He's never been responsible for policy formulation. He's never had leadership in a crisis, or in anything larger than his own element on an aircraft carrier or [in managing] his own congressional staff. It's not clear that this is going to be the strong suit that he thinks it is."

"What he thinks is his strong suit"? Ouch. Two things revealed here.

1. They're still planning on running a solid guerrilla politics campaign. Turn McCain's strengths against him. Just like they did with the Clintons (BigDawg Bill all of a sudden equals albatross? Who knew?) Ask the Dark Steer Moonless Prairie Night Magic 8-Ball if we're going to see McCain's service record (respectfully) attacked and undercut and it snarls back "All Signs Point to Yup."
2. Clark's trying to show off his attack dog chops here. He still doesn't have a fully formed defense for Obama when he attacks Walnuts. He tries to parry the "neither does Obama" with a rather weak "but that's not what he's running on". Hell, even if you agree with the man, that's not terribly convincing. Were he to get the Veep-nod, expect Obama's team to flesh out this defense a bit. Perhaps something like "Senator Obama isn't putting forth his non-executive service record as a primary plank for his candidacy as is Senator Bush--I'm sorry--Senator McCain. Senator Obama is running on a record of sound judgment in national security matters and, with the benefit of my years in executive capacity throughout the heirarchy of our Armed Forces, in peacetime and in war, I am certain he's got the chops to steer this country through blah blah yadda yadda what have you."

So ClarkVeepWatch continues... more later.

Chief Justice Roberts is a hammerhead shark, insane with bloodlust...

Yesterday's 5-4 ruling restoring habeas to detainees is half a loaf. Here's the full text.

Kennedy writes the majority like he's being chased by rabid wolverines, tossing raw deer meat off to the side of the trail, knowing all he has to do is slow the toothy bastards down...

For instance, the predatory John Roberts in dissent:

"The political branches crafted these procedures [CSRTs and military commissions] amidst an ongoing military conflict, after much careful investigation and thorough debate. The Court rejects them today out of hand, without bothering to say what due process rights the detainees possess, without explaining how the statute fails to vindicate those rights, and before a single petitioner has even attempted to avail himself of the law's operation."

Here, as elsewhere, my lizard-brain recoils in dread and confusion. Roberts is arguing that the procedures Congress established, which this Court strikes down for the third time, should have been pursued unimpeded. Detainees should have gotten out of their stress positions, walked to the Gitmo FedEx and filed their own petitions for review by the D.C. Circuit Court?

It is as if Roberts were dissenting with the Court in upholding the Fair Housing Act, by saying poor black folks redlined out of white neighborhoods should have worked harder in pursuing the remedies already available to them. "Why not go to another realtor, or pursue higher education. The fact that no petitioners live in my neighborhood is proof that they aren't trying hard enough."

The Court was forced to consider Boumediene and Al-Odah precisely because the petitioners cannot sanction the legitimacy of the proceedings. If the petitioners reverse their position in order to "avail themselves of the law's operation," conservatives on the Court would be able argue that following the avenues provided in the law demonstrated the sufficiency of the DTA in preserving habeas corpus. Petitioners' argument is that the US has de facto sovereignty over Gitmo, thus Constitutional protections apply. If petitioners avail themselves of the Roberts path, they provide de facto legitimation. Then it would be: "If the D.C. Circuit and the military commissions were good enough back then, why sue for extra rights?" Roberts is essentially whining that no lawyer fell into the legal trap built into the government's motion to dismiss.

And let's just ignore Scalia's convenient shift from strict constructionism to living word. Or his prophesies of doom. Kennedy had the first angle of complaint wrapped up when he quoted The Federalist:

"Alexander Hamilton likewise explained that by providing the detainee a judicial forum to challenge detention, the writ preserves limited government. As he explained in The Federalist No. 84:

'[T]he practice of arbitrary imprisonments, have been, in all ages, the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny. The observations of the judicious Blackstone ... are well worthy of recital: "To bereave a man of life ... or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to jail, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government." And as a remedy for this fatal evil he is everywhere peculiarly emphatical in his encomiums on the habeas corpus act, which in one place he calls "the bulwark of the British Constitution." ' " [citations omitted; emphasis mine]

In Part 2: what liberals on the court are willing to do to citizens; deranged freaks; medieval information-gathering...
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Obama to Lieberman: Get your ugly fucking goldbricking ass out of my beachfront community...

BHO can put the LBJ on Poor Joe Lieberman because Leebs doesn't have any friends in the Senate. And he doesn't have any friends in the Senate because everyone realizes that by January 2009, Virginia is going to have two Democratic Senators for the first time since the era of Harry Byrd. That's a clear majority, my friends, even if all six of the seats in play go red. I drink your milkshake.

Viz., Joe on a McCain conference call:

"If Israel is in danger today, it’s not because of American foreign policy which has been strongly supportive of Israel in every way, it is not because what we have done in Iraq, it is because Iran is a fanatical terrorist, expansionist state and has a leader and a leadership that constantly threatens to extinguish the state of Israel." (emphasis mine)

See how energetic he gets by the end? Weird, right? Nervous about something...

Assuming he's off the squad, how will Republicans swallow his pro-labor, pro-choice, pro-amnesty platform? What will it be like to be the most junior Republican Senator?

What's it going to be like for Joe to sit between Jim Bunning and Tom Coburn? Won't Jim De Mint kick his ass every day for his lunch money?

Joe is wrong about The Consequences of Leaving Iraq, The Persian Menace, and The Rise of Islamofascism; won't the Republican Party be seeking people who can read the international tea-leaves a trifle better? Don't they need fewer, rather than more such braying jackasses? Lieberman has virtually the same foreign policy weltanschaaung as Rick Santorum, who now writes unfunny op-eds in the vein of his wrestling commercial...

I'm saying Lieberman's future is bleak.

So what was in that conversation on the Senate floor?

"Joe. Come here. Let me explain something to you. Personally, I don't give a shit if you work for the old man. Your conscience is free. Kill babies, run over old ladies in the Piggly Wiggly. Whatever. My position is this. If you persist in sniping at me from my side of the aisle, you will live out the rest of your term in agonizing fucking pain."

"B-but --"

"Agonizing pain. No reason why you should rank. No reason why you should have a nice office, or your own sub-committees --"

"B-but, Rules --"

"Rules? Fuck Rules. This is what I'm saying to you. You go make peace with those Ku Klux across the aisle. Because you know what? Fuck your seniority. Lyndon Johnson said fuck your seniority --"

"But I'm the decider --"

"You're not deciding shit Lieberman. You haven't been all Congress. I don't like your jerkoff name; I don't like your jerkoff face; and I don't like you, jerkoff."

Exeunt
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Reruns of wars...

John the Evangel was an oil industry tout.

Imagine if "wars and rumours of wars," had hit the headlines last week, when light sweet crude hit 135 on speculation that it would reach 150 later. This, to my illiterate eye, looks like self-fulfilling prophecy, or a corrupt enterprise, but that's how markets work. Add to the rumor some dick-waving by the man in charge of Israel's school buses:

Traders also zeroed in on remarks by an Israeli Cabinet minister who was quoted as saying his country will attack Iran if it doesn't abandon its nuclear program. Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz added that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad "will disappear before Israel does,"[...]

and we got ourselves a party!

This is why I never get tired of deflating expectations of all-out war in west Asia. There's always some illiterate villager transported into the spotlight, ready to spike oil prices with a phrase.

Mr. Mofaz, of course our friend Mahmoud will be gone before Israel is: Ali Larijani got elected Majlis speaker last week, and has promptly set about persuading the world of Iran's pragmatism. (Also, he's persuading Iranians to develop issues-based politics, rather than the politics of personality. Since it took the French 200 years -- from the Marquis de Lafayette to Charles de Gaulle -- to figure that out, Dark Steer wishes luck to the Iranian Majlis.) Rather than call the IAEA a bunch of little devils, he points to the time and money they're wasting, sounding for all the world like Bob Novak talking about the prosecution of Scooter Libby, viz.:

[...] Fitzgerald's long, expensive investigation found no violation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act, if only because Plame was not covered by it.

In fact, Larijani and the American Right should come to terms at what I'm now calling the Plame Nexus: external investigations, national sovereignty, and presidential prerogative. Both see obfuscation and stonewalling as legitimate secrecy in the interest of national security; both resent special investigators, call their enemies evil, and rig elections. Both quash challenges to their rule by the backdoor; one by removing from election rolls all progressive politicians, the other by firing insufficiently Bushite Assistant Attorneys General.

The Iranian regime, in effect, is a wet-dream version of the Bush adminstration. Imagine the power to shut down newspapers, imprison journalists, exile agitators! The Patriot Act is for fags...

The main difference between Bushites and the incipient Larijani administration is that only one group sees its influence over Middle Eastern geopolitics as stabilizing. Bushites are content to let havoc reign, begging Israel to pop off at Lebanon again, or Syria, or Iran; ignoring the fatal conflict between our arming Sunnis in Iraq and officially backing a Shiite central government; making sure the shadow-conflict with Iran is still audible amid the continuous din of news in the acutal world. Larijani, on the other hand, remains on some Walter-Sobchak-calmer-than-you-are shit.

So wait for the Speaker to make some comments on oil prices soon. Maybe the administration will finally get the idea, and the next time someone's Minister of Motorboats talks shit, someone else will be there to flip his wig...
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Walls come tumbling...

...i also want barryhussein to end a few more speeches with "god bless america." i think this subtle addition, which he can pull off well, does two things. one- it sounds damned presidential. two- it helps dispel the nagging muslim rumor and endears him subtly to the christian center-right, whom i'm convinced he shoudl [sic] make a run at this election. the man can give a sermon. we set him loose on the evangelicals and we watch them flood in. of this, i am certain.
-Ya Boy Koan, February of 2008

We here at the Dark Steer Report bring this demented missive from a disturbed mind to your attention, Dear Reader, because news has leaked of the coming Evangelical Incursion:

...Barack Obama's campaign will unveil a major new program to attract younger Evangelicals and Catholics to their campaign.

It's called the "Joshua Generation Project." The name is based on the biblical story of how Joshua's generation led the Israelites into the Promised Land.

A source close to the Obama campaign tells The Brody File the following:

"The Joshua Generation project will be the Obama campaign's outreach to young people of faith. There's unprecedented energy and excitement for Obama among young evangelicals and Catholics. The Joshua Generation project will tap into that excitement and provide young people of faith opportunities to stand up for their values and move the campaign forward."

The official rollout won't be for another two weeks or so, but The Brody File has been told the activities will include house parties, blogging, concerts and more.

The Joshua Generation, eh? Well, potential legal issues aside, it is our (not so) humble opinion that the Evangelical Incursion stands a strong chance of being a smashing success. Strong potential here that Obama could pull off the scummiest ninja moment of the summer and slip a mickey to Christ at his own supper. There is a great potential for seismic shift in the Evangelical poiltical landscape, as the good, God-fearing folks at numerous other blogs have noted:

But from where I sit, Obama shouldn’t have too much trouble getting 40% of the evangelical vote. He might even get more.

Consider how the landscape has changed over the last four years. Howard Dean is breaking bread with Richard Land. Barack Obama is hanging out with Rick Warren. The entire religious-right establishment decides early on that John McCain is completely unacceptable as the Republican presidential nominee, and yet, McCain wins the party’s nod fairly easily.

Can Obama get 40% of the evangelical vote? Of course he can.

Walnuts the Baptist (kudos, again, to the Carpetbaggers) has proved to be unable to capitalize on the massive head start he had in consolidating his base. The Christians don't trust him. His position on abortion is shaky at best and his protestations to the contrary ring false and forced. If Obama can engage in a sustained outreach to this voting group, there's a serious chance of upheaval in this group. I mean, moreso than the overall potential for seismic political shift.

He's throwing rocks this year. Those guys're dead in the water.

Obama and the Politics of (You'd Better) Hope (I Don't Kick Your Ass...)

An event in the hallowed chambers of the Senate made the rounds of the internets last week. Seems good old BarryHussein cornered noted human paraquat Joe(mentum) Lieberman in the Senate and proceeded to drink his milkshake. Right in front of him.

Furthermore, during a Senate vote Wednesday, Obama dragged Lieberman by the hand to a far corner of the Senate chamber and engaged in what appeared to reporters in the gallery as an intense, three-minute conversation.

While it was unclear what the two were discussing, the body language suggested that Obama was trying to convince Lieberman of something and his stance appeared slightly intimidating.

Using forceful, but not angry, hand gestures, Obama literally backed up Lieberman against the wall, leaned in very close at times, and appeared to be trying to dominate the conversation, as the two talked over each other in a few instances.

Smilin' BarryHussein... intimidating? Noted internet madman and fabulist Warren Ellis, between posting horrifying snippets of the true nature of the universe, took time to comment:

Kelly Sue and I just said “LBJ-style!’ at exactly the same time. Kelly Sue, however, has breeding, and didn’t follow it up with “Obama should have shanked the prick and left him to bleed out.” No, that was me.

"LBJ-style"? Saints preserve us. Surely this arugala-munching, non-bowling, big-eared naif can't be... oh my stars and garters... a tough guy?

This is in keeping with Dark Steer Theorem #4432... "The politics of hope is a sham."

The "Politics of Hope" (Patent Pending) is the shiny, smiling face Obama and company have put over what is really a hardscrapple political operation. You look back on his political career and you'll see some arm twisting and pretty cynical political operations. He elbowed his way into his first Democratic nomination in Chicago, clearing the field via technicalities. And check this choice quote:

"To my mind, we were just abiding by the rules that had been set up..."

Sound familiar? Yep, that's pretty much smilin' BarryHussein's canned response to the Florida/Michigan fiasco: This is not 'Nam... there are rules.

So BHO [Dark Steer Aside, here: Wouldn't it be fun if the Obama campaign did some iPod style marketing time'a'time? Standard platform positions ending with "It's not a politician. It's BHO"] goes on to the next round robin and he's smiling all the way. Arm-twisted his way onto the national stage, got the Clintons into a submission hold. The Clintons were complaining the whole way that the Obama campaign was underhanded, race-baiting, Rovian even. But Smilin' BarryHussein comes out of it with but the slightest bits of dirt on the shoulder.

So what if he is this mudflinging, underhanded, shiv-happy politicoschemer? That means the Dems have got a vicious streetfighter in sheep's clothing. A brawler with a happy face. Isn't that exactly what the Dems need?

Congratulations, Sahib!!

To recap, sahibs:

Sunni radicals are having a government-sponsored bitchout in advance of a government-sponsored interfaith summit in Mecca.

Mohammed el-Baradei is going to Syria. Syria says that's fine.

Sunnis in Lebanon are being truculent about the compromise government.

The President has said some wack shit about Iran. So has John McCain.

Hezbollah released the remains of (at least) two Israeli soldiers in exchange for one live hezbollahi.

Everywhere around the Middle East are the wriggling vestigial tails of Bush's Iranienkampf. As the second term winds down, the strategy of mollycoddling Sunni governments to check Iran has devolved into watching each state in the region pursue its interests catch-as-catch-can.

Thus is the administration reduced to feebly attempting to sabotage peace when it comes by another's terms; to nudging action through language; to wheedling for more oil; to averting its eyes from repression.

Ehud Olmert, unlike the President, is capable of admitting defeat and moving on. Having seen that Hezbollah can simultaneously frighten his people, snarl his military, win the hearts of hitherto-moderate Lebanese, and win a PR victory, he's decided to sue for peace. Bush's response (or someone's response, because I'm sure he doesn't give a real shit) is to lash out at Iran. Yawn.

Negotiators and technocrats the world over roll their eyes. Syria suggests to Israel, "Hey, while we're at it, let's settle with Lebanon over the Chebaa Farms." Israel: "Aight." Iranian conservatives, for their part, back Ali Larijani for speaker of Parliament, snubbing our old friend Mahmoud. And the Lebanese back off the brink of civil war, form a government, and no one even bats an eye when Bush's boy Fuad Saniora remains prime minister.

What we're learning, slowly, is the absolute limit of American influence in the Middle East. Israel humored our request for an airstrike in Syria, found nothing, and has had it with our slam-dunk intelligence services; they're negotiating for peace. Egypt is working with Hamas to stabilize Gaza. Hezbollah is going to have a plurality of power in Lebanon; Moqtada al-Sadr is going to have a share in Iraq. The things everyone from the Weekly Standard to the Atlantic thought were portents of the end of time will all happen.

A hush will fall on west Asia, and we will pay 5 dollars a gallon for gas. Certain men will make noise about the catastrophe to befall the US in the region if we let X or Y happen. Other men will bruit about the benefits of sticking it out, as if the House of Saud were populated by leprechauns with a cache of black gold. In short, we will be irritated.

But everyone else will be cool.

So in the next few years, when some retro-Bushite lets out a war whoop, or some imam talks about the Devilish Occupier, and you want to scream for the region to calm down, think instead of the Dude and Walter, and imagine the placid faces of Khalid Meshaal, Ali Larijani and Bashar al-Assad all saying in unison:

"Calmer than you are."
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where purple and gold rule happens...

Just a quick note. We here at the Dark Steer Report are well aware of the import of the continued rivalry twixt the green and the purple and gold. Truly, the rejuvenation of the storied rivalry 'twixt these teams is a good NBA.

That said, Lakers in Seven. Outside chance of Lamar Odom hoisting the NBA Finals MVP trophy in the Garden.

Just like God intended.

Revenge!

Many are searching for meaning in the release of former press secretary Scott McClellan's tell-all memoir. Everyone's coming up empty. The emerging consensus is that Scott exists in a credibility-free zone, having cirque-de-soleil'd the news once too far.

As near as Dark Steer can tell, Scott McClellan lied once in three-plus years of briefing the press. It's true that literally every other minute, something far afoul of the truth was gushing forth from that chinless wonder-worker. But only one definite lie. And that, to David Gregory about Scooter Libby not being involved in the CIA leak, wasn't even his.

Then it's possible that Scott McClellan is no more a congenital liar than any other press secretary. It was his job to massage fiction into fact. And the people attacking him are proving -- as Dickerson says -- the point of the Plame Leak, that the administration wastes its enemies.

Why publish now, when all Scott's revelations are old hat? When no one is interested in Libby-Plame-Niger-WMD? When it does no harm to the administration? When all Frank Rich's columns from the period can finally be read for free?

Scott indicts the press for being Bush's lackeys? The snivelling, perenially offended, namby-pamby Scott McClellan of old berates the Fourth Estate for failing its audience? Watching Scott anew, I wondered.

And that's when I remembered my Notorious B.I.G., his own poetry of nihilism: "I'm sick of niggas lyin', I'm sick of bitches squawkin'. Matter fact, I'm sick of talkin'." Clearly, this is a transformed man. Call him Scott Furens: altered by rage at the succession of blows to his self-image, sick of shovelling shit, lashing out at all. This is, after a fashion, the part where he paint hisself blue like Titus and start to head bussin'.


As with any revenge tragedy, the point of this Act V suicide attack is already moot. No harm could be done to Bush's credibility that hasn't been done already. Scooter Libby has been pardoned. Karl Rove is busy not testifying about other shit. And the beneficiary of all this violence done to his men's careers, to the rule of law and to our institutions himself gets to stand and introduce the war hero as our new Emperor. In Phoenix fundraising for McCain, the President might as well have called for Rome's scattered grains to become one sheaf, or called for the election of Lucius Andronicus, a uniter, not a divider.

Epilogue: snippets:

"David, it's not a question of whether or not I'd like to talk more about this."
2:43 P.M. EST October 31, 2005

"The President directed the White House to cooperate fully, and that's what we've been doing."
1:04 PM EDT July 18 2005

"MR. McCLELLAN: I'm saying that that is not the way that this President or this White House operates, and I've seen no evidence to suggest there's any truth to it.

Q Are you saying Novak was wrong in saying that it was two administration sources who were the source for --

MR. McCLELLAN: I have no idea who "anonymous" is. I often wish --

Q It's not anonymous. He says senior administration officials.

MR. McCLELLAN: That would be anonymous.

Q Well, that would be senior administration --

Q Like the guy who briefed us last week?"
12:58 PM EDT July 22 2003

"Q Scott, you have said that you, personally, went to Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Elliot Abrams to ask them if they were the leakers. Is that what happened? Why did you do that, and can you describe the conversations you had with them? What was the question you asked?

MR. McCLELLAN: Unfortunately, in Washington, D.C., at a time like this, there are a lot of rumors and innuendo. There are unsubstantiated accusations that are made. And that's exactly what happened in the case of these three individuals. They're good individuals, they're important members of our White House team, and that's why I spoke with them, so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved. I had no doubt of that in the beginning, but I like to check my information to make sure it's accurate before I report back to you, and that's exactly what I did.

Q So you're saying -- you're saying categorically those three individuals were not the leakers or did not authorize the leaks; is that what you're saying?

MR. McCLELLAN: That's correct. I've spoken with them."
12:58 P.M. EDT October 7 2003

"Q Does the President still consider it vital to find these crucial weapons to uphold his credibility? Or does he believe, like Wolfowitz, that it no longer matters, the question of finding weapons and --

MR. McCLELLAN: I think we made it very clear that we are confident that we will uncover the full extent of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program.

Q Where are they?"
1:17 P.M. EDT July 23 2003

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