Modestly...

You need each other, gentlemen.

David Carr's best line in his NYT piece is the last line: cable anchors trying to harness teabagger rage sound like candidates, but all they're running for is "first place in the demo."

With that in mind, a modest proposal to teabaggers: do you really want to throw off the yoke of government bailouts and corporate welfare, only to remain slave to the bottom line at NewsCorp? Trade a banking devil for a media devil?

Aren't you concerned that maybe other Americans actually like the "Kenyan Who's Destroying America"? That you might be alone?

You need an ally, Dear Teabagger. You need to broaden the demo. Allow me to introduce to you the Iranian Street! Back in October, when Mahmoud tried to enforce a sales tax on bazaar dealers, they called a general strike. When he delayed the sales tax, they expanded the strike! These are people you want on your side, Teabagger!

And the Iranian Street has a long history of restiveness. Every time the government reduces the gas subsidy, like in 1991 and 1999, blood is shed. Happened summer 2007, too.

What's more, every time there are price or tax riots in Teheran, we 'Merkins get all breathless about a coup. And it never happens. More often, the reaction is stronger than the protest. But with an army of kindred souls in relaxed fit jeans, egging them on across the ocean, perhaps real revolution can come to Persia Iran. Did I say that out loud?
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I didn't say "Bomb, Bomb, Iran," I said "Rock the Casbah"...

Obama had two replies. First, he wasn't calling for an invasion of Pakistan—just for "taking out" Osama Bin Laden if we had him in our sights and the Pakistanis couldn't or wouldn't do it. Then he won the round decisively by remarking, "This is the guy who said 'Bomb, bomb Iran,' " who called for "the annihilation of North Korea," and who, after we ousted the Taliban from Kabul, said, "Next up, Baghdad." That's not talking softly. (McCain's response, that he was just joking with an old veteran friend, was, first, not true—he said it in a public forum—and, second, quite lame.)

Yeah I was wondering about that lame excuse. I mean, for my money, it wasn't the most outlandish, nor the most important/heavyweight misdirection Walnuts used in the town hall, e.g., he will fine you, he will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, (at 02:03)

he was wrong on Russia (btw, we're all wrong on Georgia; are Georgians sniping at Russians as they (the Russians) leave?).
Right, sod all that. Where is this "Bomb Bomb Iran" thing? Murrell's Inlet, SC? Listen to the wackjob fascist asking the question: When do we airmail Tehran? Poor Walnuts had to do something...I actually think the Barbara Ann thing is hilarious, and it's going to be in my head for the rest of the afternoon. We out here at the 'Steer already understand that the Famous Air Pirate is off his gourd, so the joking about nuclear annihilation thing is, we feel, to be taken in stride. Like the man says, get a life; Politics has no real-world application, right?
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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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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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...the Kaiser'd stolen our word for twenty...

Walnuts' spiral into a very public, very ugly dementia continues. Again, if the media quits treating him with the kid gloves, this man's dead in the water. His whole campaign could be one long and painful Stockdale impersonation. We could have five, six months of "Who am I? What am I doing here?" The latest screw-up?

“Yes, there have been appeasers in the past, and the president is exactly right, and one of them is Neville Chamberlain,'’ Mr. McCain told reporters on his campaign bus after a speech in Columbus, Ohio. “I believe that it’s not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.'’

Now, leaving aside the idiocy of comparing a desire to talk to our enemies to appeasing them, if only for just a second, Walnuts seems to be forgetting a little thing we here at Dark Steer like to call... um... what do we call that again? Tip of my tongue. Something to do with... Contras? Maybe something about "I Ran"? Oh well, must not have been too important.

Dead in the water, dude. The Republicans have to know this, too. Once the Democratic Clusterfuck slouches toward Denver to finally die, the spotlight falls squarely on the two nominees. That's when Walnuts starts to look plain old 'Nuts. I'm seeing two main problems:

1. A shaky grasp on reality, as evidenced by Sunni-Shia confusion, Reagan "negotiations", and the innumerable other slips of mind waiting in the wings.
2. An inability to civilly deal with anyone challenging the aforementioned shakily grasped reality.

He's going to look like an old man. A very old man. I've got the feeling the party put its weight behind him and gave him the nod because they know what's coming in the fall. They've lost three special elections in a row in solid Bush counties. The camel's falling to its knees and more knives are drawn. So you give it to the old curmudgeon, see what he can do. If he wins it, he owes you big for not giving his campaign the Schiavo plugpull. If he loses, ah hell, you were gonna buckle down anyway.

Which makes his veep choice very interesting. Romney's biding his time and waiting for '12, when he can emerge as true conservative come forth to battle after Walnuts' valiant but failed showing. (nb, this would've been Hillary's strategy if she really thought BarryHussein would lose. Instead, she's on the Huckabee "hope for a miracle" plan. natch.)

Continuance later, now for some playoff highlights...

-K

"Now my story begins in Nineteen-dickety-two. We had to say "dickety" because the Kaiser had stolen the wold "twenty". I chased that rascal to get it back, but gave up after dickety-six miles."
-Grandpa Simpson

Bad futures

Well. Clearly I was wrong to hate on the Inqy for running an inflated-threat headline. What are editors to do when the only copy out there is inflated-threat copy? F'rinstance: NSC's Stephen Hadley on Fox Sunday:

"Iran is very active in the southern part of Iraq. They are training Iraqis in Iran who come into Iraq and attack our forces, Iraqi forces, Iraqi civilians. There are movements of equipment. There's movements of funds,"

Note the specificity! Why, it's as if the Weekly Standard predicted this very thing! Prediction, agitation, rearguard defense when it all goes south, recrimination: the cycle of future-baiting! (Or "-bating," -- Eds.)

We here at Dark Steer solemnly promise never to predict futures that would have undesirable side-effects if enacted. We further promise never to be wrong about anything consequential. Nor will we pursue a foreign policy detrimental to Dark Steer's image/standing in the world.

But back to Steve's kool-aid! It gets really weird! Viz.:

"So we have illegal militia in the southern part of the country that really are acting as criminal elements that are pressing the people down there."

Did he say "pressin'"? Or "o-pressin'"? Is the problem that Basra is overrun with criminal gangs? Like the 28 mere hooligans summarily executed yesterday? Because that's good for SCIRI and Maliki; it means their political legitimacy is not questioned. But wait, he also called dem bways "illegal militia," trained by Iran -- though by whom in Iran, where in Iran, with what materiel in Iran, like the SecDef sez, "we just don't know." Militia, tho' constitute a political problem, not one of law and order, thus:

Iraq's cabinet ratcheted up the pressure on anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr by approving draft legislation barring political parties with militias from participating in coming provincial elections.

...and after all the fuss we made about this not being about upcoming elections, it turns out that Badr vs. Sadr II follows the same pattern as the first time around: shut down the press office, assassinate the leadership, move in on the neighborhoods. Then, sit back and scratch your heads when the radicals you tried to isolate sweep parliamentary elections. Did the routine work in Palestine in 2006? It ain't work in Paris in 1788 either...
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Inqy bashing

K:

Headline in this morning's Inquirer: U.S.: Iran hikes militia support. Shit we're used to hearing, albeit with modifications. Used to be "Iran supports Muqtada al-Sadr," and now al-Sayyid himself is beyond reproach, but Iran is still -- doing what exactly, funding? training? arming? feeding? -- supporting special groups. Conventional wisdom: Iran is the problem. I mean, despite the fact that SIIC -- formerly the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iran -- is Maliki's party, their militia the Badr is without any dispute trained in Iran; Iran brokered the Basra ceasefire; the last thing they want is for the Maliki government to fall, etc.

Nevermind. The new conventional wisdom is heightened support. Right under the AP's scaremongering set-up, "Iran's role has been one of the complicating factors," the secdef says:

"I think that there is some sense of an increased level of supply of weapons and
support to [special groups]. But whether it's a dramatic increase over recent
weeks, I just don't know."

Some sense, but I just don't know...like the drunk everybody believes, because listening to him is harmless; just let the man prattle on. Here's another. Take it easy. Anyway, it's a lot easier than listening to Rick Santorum. Gates is the guy who wakes up on your porch the next day talking to himself in a puddle of piss.

New Inquirer headline: SecDef: "Wait, Whose House Is This?"

Some historical matter. Clearly war with Iran will solve all our problems. Clean up human rights abuses, fix the border, protect unborn Christian babies, etc.:

• "Bob Casey is aiding and abetting terrorism and genocide."
• Holy shit he lost the election and he's still at it.
• "Terrorists, trying to enter our country, yet Casey comes out for amnesty for illegal aliens."

And I remember the "Democrats Will Not Protect You From Osama Bin Laden" flyers from 2004 getting trotted out for 2006...but I don't have an image yet...

Anyway, I thought this shit was old hat. I mean, Sy Hersh hasn't written a piece on impending war with Iran since, what last April?

Off to play in the sun...

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