BlatherWatch

siegel's missing again, but don't get your hopes up...

BlatherWatch email has readers wondering outloud: where's Mike Siegel? His producer, Dave Boze, the Skagitonian pride of Hillsdale College and Michael Medved's humor-challenged call screener Dan "the Tool" Sytman have been filling in this week on Siegel's morning show (KTTH m-f, 6-9).

Every time Siegel's missing these days, the rumors fly. His ratings are always so low, (last book he went from 16th to 21st place in the market) that rumors of his demise have been around as long as he's been in this spot.

Boze answered our inquirely politely, saying that Siegel had gone on a cruise he'd advertised for months.

(It was only last month Siegel returned from a grand tour of France. He and Bill O'Reilly for the last couple of years have pushed for the boycott of goods and services of that fair country for opposing the Bush Doctrine of Ungrammatical Adventurism. And now there was Siegel, prancing Provence, and phoning in wine & cheese recommendations like the liberal elitist dilettante he really is. BlatherWatch tirelessly jabbed him for his hypocrisy, but he didn't even seem to notice--we were disappointed and kind of hurt. O'Reilly still claims he singlehandedly devastated the French economy with his 'embargo.' It wasn't an embargo at all but rather, an attempt at a boycott of French imports by folks who 1) never bought them in the first place and 2)wouldn't know a chateauneuf du pape from la plume de ma tante.

KTTH isn't exactly booming. This speck in the eye of media mega-dwarf Entercom has been functioning as a support system for the Rush Limbaugh show for going on 3 books now. Rumors abound--including one that would have them putting Big Pants over on KIRO, their larger failing station, closing KTTH mikes, and sending Siegel and others packing their vocal chords and heading for the unemployment offices they claim they don't believe in.

(Right-wing talkers like to call unemployment benefits 'welfare,' but it's a laugh to see them out there bellying-up to the hand-out window on Rainier Avenue the very next day after they're fired).

When Siegel was gone last time, Boze and Sytman were a hit with listeners who found their hardass, caffeinated tag-team style refreshingly different from Siegel's hardass, caffeinated loner style. Listeners expressed to us (and we hear they wrote the station as well) that they'd love it if the two young-uns would take over the spot.

We'd like that too, though it probably wouldn't pry us away from NPR's Morning Edition (KUOW,m-f, 5-9a) or Air America's Morning Sedition (KPTK, m-f, 5-9a). Or get us to not check out Kirby Wilbur (KVI 5-9a) when he scores a good interview or broadcasts in the nude.

The lack of decent local programming (Siegel is the only local, besides 2nd stringers like Boze and Sytman) on KTTH is a major reason this station hasn't been able to make anything out of the huge advantage it had when it stole Big Pants from KVI.

(That's also the reason that Air America's KPTK is sucking. We've tirelessly jabbed them for their stupidity, timidity, parsimony or whatever it is on this detail and they didn't even seem to notice--we were disppointed and kind of hurt).

playing the seattle card

Playing the Seattle card still dominates Republican and conservative politics around Washington.

It's an old but irresponsible strategy that'd be treason if that crime could be applied against a state instead of a country.

John Carlson (KVI, m-f, 3-6p) and Kirby Wilbur, both raised in Seattle and both transplanted to the east side burbs--lead daily divisive anti-Seattle rants in their on-air campaigns for the anti-roads repair initiative, I-912.

The hypermanic and overblown right-wing patriotism seems to stop at the state line. If they were consistent with their states' rights, and small 'r' republicanism, they'd be as gung-ho for local and regional loyalty as they are for the national Big Brother and its egregious godless ways.

But instead they split the state by enflaming rural, exurban, and suburban resentments against Seattle. It suits their immediate political needs; it's craven, and they're hurting America, as Jon Stewart would say if he were speaking to us.

Every day they stoke the indignant backlash about the intolerant, selfish, elitist, Ivy-overeducated, sushi-eating, bus riding, extra-virgin olive-oiled, French speaking, irreverent, vegan, religion hating, wine-bibbing, peace-marching, brie-guzzling, hippy Seattleites who build their monorails, lesbian art museums and stadiums using taxes they shake down from the middle class of the rest of the state. They do this sitting in schmancy restaurants that serve expensive imported food that isn't cooked, while sneering at the little people's churchgoing ways.

This contradictory conglom of stereotypes describes no one we know in Seattle and that Seattle/Tacoma is an economic engine upon which the rest of the state depends for its revenues means nothing in this short-term, piss-in-your-pants-to-stay-warm partisanship.

The Alaska Way Viaduct which would finally begin to be fixed in the transportation package Carlson and Wilbur are so anxious to veto--is scoffed at as another Seattle extravagance.

Every day, you hear callers saying the old bridge is still perfectly good and Seattle is just trying to scare the taxes out of the taxpayers. Talk hosts never contradict any of this.

Instead they excoriate Seattle's discussion of any options other than retrofitting, and merrily drive east to their homes in the wealthy suburbs of Bellevue and Kirkland.

If, god forbid, a quake were to bring down that downtown waterfront viaduct, the harsh economic tremors would follow them east, passing through those elite, well-trimmed burbs and continue on to Yakima, Walla Walla, and Spokane.

Bringing the monorail debacle into the I-912 argument as proof (as they do every day) that the Seattle-centric Department of Transportation squanders our money and isn't deserving of our tax dollars is about as an outrageous political lie as we've ever seen perpetrated.

The monorail idea and funding was passed by Seattle voters for and upon themselves. DOT had no part in any of it. People from Arlington, Goldendale, Kirkland, Tacoma, Ferndale, Mabton, and Yelm were unaffected and untaxed.

This has been going on forever here and in other states. New York City is despised in the same way by upstaters, Illinois downstaters feel the same way about Chicago.

Ex-Senator Slade Gorton won a view times by running against Seattle even though he actually lived there. The attempt to undo Governor Christine Gregoire's election was spun as a Seattle/King County plot to steal the election.

Plenty of Eastern Washington legislators have been defeated because they've been painted as laying down (sometimes literally) with Seattle legislators.

Tim Eyman, the self-serving anti-tax initiative flack who's done more to hurt this state than red tide, uses Seattle bashing like most of us use tooth paste and deodorant.

It's send-a-message-politics where voters ignore the facts and their own self interests to express the rage trumped up by talk radio feeding the fires they kindled with misinformation.

It'll never stop, but it's one of the most dishonest and divisive of political tactics and serves only serve to stop political dialog and hamper the measured informing of the electorate.

kill a commie for christ, 2005

We love Rev. Pat Robertson's precious First Amendment rights. May he always be free to speak whatever's on what's left of his mind in this our great land of the free.

He's a great conservative, a great evangelical and a great Republican. And he's covered himself in Christian glory once again.

His remarks recommending the assassination of Venezuelan strongman President Hugo Chavez to save us the expense of another war, had special meaning to those of us who look to Robertson for Christian witness and The Peace That Passeth Understanding. Of course, his blathering managed to make the tinhorn Chavez look good and scapegoated--especially when held up to the forked tongued Robertson...

What pisses us off is how right wing talk radio chooses to ignore the pusillanimous neochristionic gruntings of Rev. Robertson, who bravely chooses a TV pulpit in Virginia Beach to fire his missiles of deluded apocalyptic foreign policy.

He is the tip of the spear of the "life-affirming" community, doncha know. They'll advocate keeping a reanimated corpse of Terri Schiavo bobbing and blinking for the TV cameras in an obscene puppet show in the name of "life," but would advocate the illegal, immoral, clandestine, and cold-blooded murder of a duly elected head of state just to save us a few bucks on the deficit.

Bryan Suits (KVI m-f, 6-9p) wasn't afraid to bring up the topic. But he changed the subject by making it about Robertson's right as a private citizen to say what he pleases. That's like saying about Jeffrey Dahmer: "Well, a guy's gotta eat."

Our questions for discussion are :

Why is this does this man have access to our President and his administration?

If Robertson has earned political capital with the President and the Republicans, can't we just pay him back with frequent flyer miles?

Is this some kind of horrid trial balloon floated by a desperate administration failing on every other front?

Why doesn't the FCC consider his remarks more obscene than Janet Jackson's nipple?

Who would Jesus assassinate?

Sure enough, there were plenty of listeners  on the Bryan Suits show who thought it would be just fine if we bumped off ol' Hugo. It's the kind of hypocrisy that neoconservatism, (or Wilsonian Democracy when the liberals do it) is based upon.

I'm sure Bryan in his heart of military hearts would be fine with that as well...but we expect such from grunt soldiers and talk hosts. But men of alleged higher callings like those of Christian pastor or Republican President, we, for one, expect more.

We always say this about the religious right, but Rev. Robertson's just proved our point again. They always eventually overreach and offend the American people. They have a tin ear for politics and once they have a little clout they get impatient and push it too far--they're dealing with heaven and hell, after all. Or as the great Knute Berger once wrote:

The problem with the monotheists is that only one of them can be right. But that isn't true in a genuine democracy under which there can be more than one right answer. And a key element to an open society is the ability of those in power to be held accountable for mistakes. Infallibility is not a virtue in democratic leadership.

Monotheist is too nice a word for the likes of Pat Robertson. He's a charlatan; a perverted, power-hungry little man, who, thank god, never realized his dreams of world domination and has to reinflate his national profile every once in a while with this sort of toxic flatus.

kiro dog days: in front of the fire hydrant

It just gets weirder around Eastlake. Long, long days of what's next? Everyone knows that something's gotta give, must change, and change majorly at KIRO and KTTH.

The ratings suck, the programming needs major boots in the ass; management needs to go and come. Most employees have been through similar--even less dire circumstances--at other stations. They know it's upcoming, the staff's uneasy they know the tectonics are as inevitable as Labor Day.

But nothing happens. We thoroughly reject the notion we hear frequently that it's to spite BlatherWatch that Bala Cynwyd's so slow moving.

The author of the disaster, program director Tom Clendening takes a vacation, which the help thinks is like the captain of the Titanic taking a nap.

Meanwhile, there seems to be indecision and confusion. There's been no replacement for night time news editor Ed Schmacher, so Lan Archer keeps pulling doubles which gives him something new and seemingly endless to talk about.

Reporter Jim Valley had a major meltdown in the newsroom that was just short of throwing things, which stirred everybody out of their ennui for a few days.

The big guys: Dave Ross and Dori Monson take their annual vacations and Frank Shiers, the former voice track guy from KBSG fills in--he's becoming the voice of KIRO. This hasn't made this unexperienced guy who won't talk to anybody around the station very popular. People resent that he gets all the fill-in time. Folks around the office were almost beginning to wish ol' Dori were back. It's just a sign, we guess, of the distractedness of the management.

Then there's the guy who replaced the vacationing overnight jock, Lou Pate, whose name is Styble, (rhymes with "bible"  he keeps telling us over and over). He makes Pate seem reasonable and liberal even. We found ourselves laying awake at 4:30am wishing Pate would burst into the studio brandishing a blunt instrument to drive out the interloper.

Even the dulcet tones of Frank Shiers would have been welcome at that point. We're afraid that if something competent doesn't happen down there soon, this Bible Styble may get a drive-time slot.

Readers keep wondering why all these people seem to be vacationing at the same time--they read the direst of scenarios into the absences and the 2nd rate replacements. But this is par for the course in August--in and of itself doesn't mark the beginning of the changes that are sure to come.

Don't touch that dial...

under the dog star: truth and picnics, bread and puppets

O the dog days.

Will autumn never come and the news get back from vacation?

Talk radie-yo is clogged with 2nd rate fill-ins avoiding 1st rate issues with what's-your-favorite-color topics, and tap-dancing the fandango while listeners head for the beach.

No leaks, no dish, no volcanoes or tremors. What's a talk radio blogwatch to do? Maybe we'll toodle on down to the shore ourselves.

We're counting our blessings, though...the annual summer news talk vacuum has given us the gift of Cindy Sheehan. Her exit today to her sick mother's side may end the impressive media run she's been given to highlight the disintegrating conditions of a bad war gone worse. Sheehan and the stalemated Iraqi constitutional convention are galvanizing fears many Americans have had since it's beginning but repressed.

It's the notion that this war sucks, and always did.

Galvanizing is how that salty old right-wing lobster Pat Buchanan described Sheehan Wednesday on MSNBC's Hardball. He said she's an "authentic" voice, and that it's the tipping point for the antiwar movement. When real conservatives speak out against this Administration's disastrous policies as they're morally bound to do, we listen up.

A Republican senior citizen caller today told Frank Shiers filling in for Dave Ross (KIRO m-f, 3-6p): "We're fighting a war we don't need, with money we don't have." Frank, a snaggle-toothed neocon himself, didn't disagree.

The people are coming our way. 56% of Americans now say Bush was wrong sending troops to Iraq.

And now it's time for a Democrat to step up and take Cindy's place.

Always changing the subject, the Republican noise machine pounds away on the Able Danger story that reaches back into the last century attempting to pin 9-11 on who? Bill Clinton, of course.

Sean Hannity says it's bigger than Watergate; but it's hard for this piece of history to get much attention when the death toll rises daily in a bloody here-and-now-war that Americans increasingly realize they were deceived into supporting.

Our Michelle Malkin and her friend, Brian Maloney, keep rearranging the nasturtiums in the nothing-going-on "scandal" at Air America. We read these pieces faithfully every day, hoping to find something new, but all we ever get is elaborate and voluminous blocks of text with scary "scandal" rhetoric like "web of lies," and unflattering pictures of AAR investors and talent. It's consolation for the  bloggy right-wing choir, something to chew on--like Nicorettes for denial.

Right-wing rada usually yanks us out of our ennui; but in this, the guns of August, it's not working; though we're vaguely energized knowing it also fails to distract the washed masses of Americans who are changing their minds about the war as intently as they're working on their tans.

Pray for the onset of October and an autumn of discontent.

old men, young men, girly men--uncle sam wants you

These bloviating talk radio males ripping on Cindy Sheehan, are making us plotz. She's the Gold Star Mother who lost her son in Iraq who's caught the heart and the media of the nation as she sits giving interviews by the road to Bush's Texas estado waiting for the big guy to explain to her what "noble cause" her son died for.

(Most noble causes don't need lies to sell them...do they???).

Rush Limbaugh the big fat liar says she just made it all up. "Her story is nothing more than forged documents. There's nothing about it that's real, including the mainstream media's glomming onto it. It's not real. It's nothing more than an attempt. It's the latest effort made by the coordinated left."

Her "story" is that her son was killed in an ambush in Iraq in 2004--there's a pretty convincing paper and blood trail on that, Big Pants.

Frank Shiers, filling in for Dave Ross (KIRO m-f, 3-6p) kicked her around for being divorced. She told Chris Matthews (may he fall down and rip his pants for even asking her about it) her divorce was "another personal tragedy due to this war."

Shiers says he shouted at the TV when she said that--but with that honey-throated, made-for-radio voice he's got, it's hard to picture him emoting in such an unscripted way...he's got one of those mellifluous voices usually heard in voice-overs for erectile dysfunction commercials. 

He turned it into one of those "personal accountability,"  "anti-victimhood" discussions so popular with conservatives until they get busted for something. Shiers said she was blaming Bush for murdering her son.

Is that so wrong?

It sure as hell wouldn't be wrong if we could get some of these middle-aged males--who are the most gung-ho for this war--off their Barca-loungers and their riding lawn mowers to fight this war of theirs. The administration is beginning to come around--in their desperation to stretch the manpower in the armed services, they've pushed the upper age limit for serving to 42. Bryan Suits (KVI m-f, 6-9p) one of the few talkers who has actually donned a uniform other than a Wendy's smock is mad about that--42's too old, he says, but that's because he's 41.

And Jaime O'Neill in the Sunday SF Chronicle says it could happen:

Because most of the fighting now being done requires far less marching than was once needed, it is only reasonable to propose that perhaps we have arrived at a time in the history of human struggle when the old people can do the fighting.

After all, how much youthful vigor does it require to fire lightweight weapons from the back of an armored-personnel carrier? How much strength does it take to press the trigger on a grenade launcher, or to redirect the turret on a tank? When soldiers are being driven to the various scenes of conflict, why is it necessary for soldiers to be young?

And, because youth is no longer the requisite quality for struggling, and because the U.S. military is having difficulty finding enough young people willing to fight and die in this struggle, it would, therefore, be wise to consider that vast pool of potential warriors at the other end of the age spectrum.

From Rush Limbaugh and Karl Rove right on down to the guys who write letters to the editors of the nation's newspapers, the fiercest warriors are men over 50, men with expanding waistlines and receding hairlines who would tear the enemy a new one if only they could get up off the sofa in less than three tries.

He's right--these men who are so full of duty and honor and patriotism should pitch in and help out the nation they love.

But let's not let off the new generation of chicken hawks...the right-wing 20-30 somethings who stand so bravely for god and country and duty in their snug, bullet-free, air conditioned cubicles and digitized work stations.

Lou Pate (KIRO m-f, 1-5a) claims to be a lover not a fighter, but he sounds like he could hold up his end of a firefight---he's from the Bronx, after all.

Stuffin' Smurkansky the Republican transvestite blogger and anti-sex columnist for The Stranger has no visible means of support--3 hots and a cot might help give him some focus and new sense of self-worth.

(We learned recently from ABC News' Jake Tapper that recruiters desperate for recruits, are forgetting Don't ask, Don't tell and overlooking young men's sexual proclivities just to sign 'em up. Transvestites have always been treated "special" in the Army, Stuffin'...)

KTTH producers Dan Sitman and Dave Boze--god love 'em--are awfully generous with the idea of other people getting their asses shot off. Boze is already trained in firearms, Sitman may need upper body work, and a sense of humor transplant, but these guys with their tough, rule-are-rules patriotism would make great soldiers...but geez, they gotta join up. 

Boys! they're recruiting gays and old men! Step up and do your duty! If we have to re-install the draft, you won't be seeing another Republican administration until your children have children.

air america scandal: whole lot of nothin' goin' on

It's like one of those big high-geared contraptions that clowns drive around the circus: no matter how furiously they peddle, it goes nowhere.

We speak of Air America's alleged ripping off of little ghetto kidz and Alzeimer's patients in order to finance spreading their liberal agenda over the radio waves in their quest to dominate America.

Our conservative friend, Brian Maloney of RadioEqualizer has had quite a scoop with this straw dog...he's been not only widely quoted, but has appeared on talk radio all over the country. And we don't blame him for flogging it--we'd do the same thing.

Al Franken

His latest accusation is pretty funny, though. Citing a recent piece in the Washington Post where a San Diego AAR listener was inspired to go where Cindy Sheehan waits by the side of a Texas road for George Bush, the RadioEqualizer extrapolates this heady conspiracy:

Air America's own strategy is now about diversionary tactics, with Cindy Sheehan's rabid supporters in Crawford and one of the network's hosts providing needed cover. If enough people can be convinced AAR's programming is responsible for the activity around the Bush family ranch, it might be a sign the network is in fact viable.

The idea that Air America, one of the smallest broadcast entities in the country could have manipulated the rolling media thunder that Cindy Sheehan has enjoyed is ludicrous.

Righties can't seem to make up their minds whether to spin AAR as laughably puny, non-viable and irrelevant--or, as an evil, conspiratorial perp of the powerful liberal establishment.

(Of course, "powerful" and "liberal" have been mutually exclusive since  approximately the time when LBJ decided not to run in 1968).

BlatherWatch had been following this so-called scandal since Day 1 and we've been ransacking the blogoshere and every news outlet we could think of. For the life of us, we can't find a soupcon of there anywhere in the proximity of there. No matter we've followed all the links and done exactly what the Equalizer and his saucy moppet, Michelle Malkin have told us to do, and read, and  think.

If you read BlatherWatch, you know that even though we're cheerfully, brazenly of the liberal persuasion, we hold liberals to a higher standard than conservatives--because we expect more from them.

Here's what we still know for sure--for all the bloggy sound & fury, the story hasn't changed since Day 1:

-- Evan Cohen, the shady former AAR CEO, while screwing over other investors in a web of lies and finaglings, "borrowed" 875k from the Gloria Wise Boy's & Girls Club in New York and put it into his infant Air America. He'd told everybody he had enough money to keep the start-up going for 3 years when actually he had only enough for 3 months.

--Al Franken, top AAR talent and himself a screwed-over investor said, "I don't know why they did it and I don't know where the money went. I don't know if it was used for operations, which I imagine it was. I think he was robbing Peter to pay Paul."

--After Cohen's house of cards collapsed, a new company, Piquant was formed with new investors--real investors--led by Seattle's RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser. When the B& G Club scandal broke out, Piquant agreed to pay back the money they're doing that on principle, they're not legally bound to do it. It's just another flaming bag of dogshit left at the doorstep of the struggling start-up by Cohen.

--New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer's office is determining whether they have an investigating role in the matter, but right-wing blogs are already attempting to inoculate the projected findings (which will probably amount to zilch) by casting him as a Democratic partisan running for Governor who'd help in the cover-up so as not to "risk annoying his base."

All this has been is mudhoney spread thick on the right side of the blogosphere. The bloggers' strategy has been to create a volumes of text that look like volumes of scandal.

But when you blow away the fluff of stern adjectives and self-righteous partisan glee--there's nothing left but a sad story of a corporate asshole sticking it to his investors and employees.

(Nothing new there--sounds like a clarion call for more government regulations of corporations to us!)

The MSM picked up the scandal story bigtime, deflating claims that it was being ignored and covered up.  AP ran it nationwide. The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and a host of smaller papers have picked it up. Fox News talkers Bill O' Reilly, Sean Hannity and John Gibson have run with it, of course. Radio talkers like Big Pants, Rusty Trumpet, Hugh Hewitt, John Carlson, Mike Gallagher have been touting it with the help of Malkin. but it doesn't seem to fly.

Could it be that's because there are real scandals brewing? There was an indictment last week in Miami against Jack Abramoff in the Tom Delay influence peddling case. The Karl Rove national security scandal should have some thermonuclear indictments soon. The Ohio Republican Party is decomposing rapidly from its rotten core along with their Governor.

President Bush is facing real opposition to his war from within his own party. The military is in disarray; there's real desperation over replacements for the overextended, undermanned troops fighting in the Iraqi quagmire which  daily gets bloodier and more complicated.

Americans have finally begun to question Bush's methods and motives for getting us into this mess. His poll numbers are at historic lows.

Air America's troubles? It's blanc mange--but baby, it's all they got.

the lives of the talk hosts no.66: stayin' alive, stayin' alive with bill o'reilly...

My thing was the music: I was a dancing machine. Sock it to me, Donna Summer! Let’s shake this place, Gloria Gaynor! Get down!
Now, this was the lad of a quarter century ago, okay? But I make no apologies. I loved the all-out dancing, and quite a few girls loved to dance with me. The dancing got me dates. The dancing said (since you couldn’t hear any words in those places under the rotating mirror balls), 'Hey, let’s have some fun and see what happens next.' 
Even Catholic girls had their inhibitions lowered by the howls of the Bee Gees or Sylvester. A few hours at clubs like Septembers or Shenanigans and most of my dates wanted to extend the evening at their place or mine. 
         - From "The O’Reilly Factor: The Good, the Bad and the Completely Ridiculous in American Life"  by Bill O’Reilly. 2000. Broadway Books. New York.

Thanks to Sweet Jesus I hate Bill O'Reilly.com for reading this book so we didn't have to.

mcdermott, waPo, blatherWatch, and jerry springer predict more scandal, chaos, underachieving and death

"'They expect to hear it from me--but when it's from you, it takes on a whole new meaning.'"

The speaker was Congressman Jim McDermott, (who was against the war before it was cool) telling BlatherWatch about a conversation he had with fellow House member, conservative Republican Wayne Gilchrest who broke with the Bush Administration last week, saying "American troops cannot abandon the Iraqi people, but the United States should have a timeline on when to pull troops out of Iraq."

The wheels are coming off public and GOP support for the war effort and the Administration is playing Wack-a-Mole with gathering scandals, McDermott said Saturday at a small private gathering in Seattle.

The Delay/Abramoff influence peddling got an indictment last week; the Karl Rove CIA agent outing, and the "coingate" scandal which could unseat the Republican Ohio governor, are simmering away in the hands of ambitious prosecutors.

Of course, to obfuscate things, the right is focusing on the shocking ads NARAL ran against Supreme Court nominee John Roberts. The confirmation, which even Democrats have said for weeks ago is in the bag, is the subject of many straw man erections (you know what we mean...) by Republican surrogates trying to change the subject.

(The dude is faceless, has a faint paper trail and even has given pro bono help to gays & lesbians. This last fact makes him more palatable to Democrats but hasn't seemed to faze the religious right who have apparently drunk the holy water on this guy spooned to them by Bush. Hell, maybe he is Jabba the Hut--nobody'll know for sure until it's too late).

Gilchrest told McDermott there were more Congressional Republicans "laying in the weeds" waiting for the right time to distance themselves from the war and trying to find a graceful way to avoid the oncoming tsunami of scandals.

"These guys are all going to [military] funerals and facing the families," McDermott said. "And they all know what bullshit they were fed leading up to this war."

Oblivious George, on the other hand, said Saturday in his radio address: "Iraqis are taking control of their country, building a free nation that can govern itself, sustain itself and defend itself. And we're helping Iraqis succeed."

Iraqi officials are struggling to agree on a draft constitution by a Monday deadline for an October vote. Chances of meeting that deadline look pretty remote at this point.

McDermott says, "They've got all the issues settled except for the Kurds and Shiites [who want special status], the role of Islamic Law and women's rights."

Those are some pretty big exceptions and that doesn't bode well for the sunny Administration predictions of Iraqi autonomy and stability to come like up like thunder across the bay after the magic bullet of a new constitution.

The insurgency has escalated--attacks on American troops in Iraq have doubled in the last month, going from about 40 attacks a day to about 80.

Last week was the fourth-worst week of the war for U.S. combat deaths and August already is the worst month for deaths of members of the National Guard and Reserves.

The Washington Post reports today that the Administration is "significantly lowering expectations" of what can be achieved in Iraq.

...the realities of daily life are a constant reminder of how the initial U.S. ambitions have not been fulfilled in ways that Americans and Iraqis once anticipated. Many of Baghdad's 6 million people go without electricity for days in 120-degree heat. Parents fearful of kidnapping are keeping children indoors.

Barbers post signs saying they do not shave men, after months of barbers being killed by religious extremists. Ethnic or religious-based militias police the northern and southern portions of Iraq. Analysts estimate that in the whole of Iraq, unemployment is 50 percent to 65 percent.

Frank Rich thankfully back from his vacation, writes in the New Times, today that the war is over:

A president can't stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won't stay with him. The approval rate for Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend's Newsweek poll - a match for the 32 percent that approved L.B.J.'s handling of Vietnam in early March 1968. (The two presidents' overall approval ratings have also converged: 41 percent for Johnson then, 42 percent for Bush now.) On March 31, 1968, as L.B.J.'s ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn't seek re-election, commencing our long extrication from that quagmire.

But our current Texas president has even outdone his predecessor; Mr. Bush has lost not only the country but also his army. Neither bonuses nor fudged standards nor the faking of high school diplomas has solved the recruitment shortfall. Now Jake Tapper of ABC News reports that the armed forces are so eager for bodies they will flout "don't ask, don't tell" and hang on to gay soldiers who tell, even if they tell the press.

Meanwhile, Camp Casey, outside Bush's Crawford, Texas ranch continues to grow. The encampment, named after fallen Marine Casey Sheehan, whose mother Cindy invoked this outpouring by plunking herself down alongside the dusty Texas country road is inhabited  not only by the usual lefty activists but also with growing numbers of parents and spouses who have lost sons and daughters, wives and husbands in George Bush's ill-conceived war.

Sheehan, despite being slathered in shit by the right wing press and bloggy moonbats, waits for a chance to speak directly to the President. And 60% of Americans polled believe he should give her that chance.

The longer he ignores her, the longer the impassioned opposition to this bloody failure by military families stays above the fold and in the face of the American people who need the large print sometimes to stay in the room.

Washington now does not expect to fully defeat the insurgency before departing, but instead to diminish it, officials and analysts said. There is also growing talk of turning over security responsibilities to the Iraqi forces even if they are not fully up to original U.S. expectations, in part because they have local legitimacy that U.S. troops often do not.

"We've said we won't leave a day before it's necessary. But necessary is the key word--necessary for them or for us? When we finally depart, it will probably be for us," a U.S. official said.

Bush has always been able to skate through the scandals and the fuck-ups. Always the optimists, we don't think he can do that forever.

And forever may be even nearer than 2006.

thursday oddems: licking the envelope--dave ross, the 1st amendment, the bad breath bible, semper pie, darth bader

MORE DAVE
We've been listening to Dave Ross lately and we're bummed. He's the best. A solid advocate for the causes we love--he's more obviously liberal after his Congressional run last year-- and as always a fair but hard hitting interviewer. It's one of the reasons we hate what they've done to KIRO--we get less or a diminished Dave Ross. Would that more liberal talkhosts were like him. Not pissed off and meandering like Mike Webb. Not unevenly prepared and perky like Erin Hart. Not silly and doomed like Allan Prell. Liberal talk will never siphon off all that much from NPR, (who reportedly beats everyone in this market) but the best chance to get any of them at present is Dave Ross. He gets his audiences from the same pool of listeners as the right-wingers--the regular talk radio demographic. That's the audience lib-talk must win...and they're there for the taking.
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“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”-- Nietzsche
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WRONG, WRONG, WRONG.
1.OK, OK, we were wrong: Mike Siegel (KTTH m-f, 6-9a) is back from France, reeking of crepes and having added some vocabulaire to his always stylish Brooklynese. We were sure that the rumors were true that he'd sought political asylum in France, after angry listeners stormed his website demanding answers for his blatant violation of his and Bill O'Reilly's boycott of French goods and services. We're hearing there was quite a flood of mail in support of Dave Boze and Dick Sytman who yukked it up engagingly while Mike was gone.
2.Yeah, yeah, BlatherWatch was proved wrong again yesterday when a libertarian law firm filed a counterclaim on the I-912 campaign's behalf to undo Judge Chris Wickham's brave ruling that KVI blabberjocks, Kirby Wilbur and John Carlson were campaign functionaries and their on-air participation had to be reported as in-kind contributions. The two were part of the campaign in that they used their talk shows to promote the campaign effort and ask listeners to donate to it. We predicted this would never be filed, and we were wrong, wrong, wrong. We still think the talkers' blatant logistical planning, and fundraising on the public airwaves was direct campaigning. Brett Bader, the Lemony Snicket of Eastside Republicans and conservative hired gun for the I-912 cult told the PI: "It is very difficult to determine where the line is drawn" between political commentary and political campaigning. Not that he gives a shit, now the signatures are gathered and the irresponsible roads repair veto is safely on the ballot. 
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Where am I going and what am I doing in this hand-basket?
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THE SHOCKING TRUTH THAT THE 'BIG BOYS OF ORAL CARE HOPE YOU NEVER FIND OUT!
Listening to KIRO, today we were reminded at how far down the once might blowtorch has dwindled, the ad for The Bad Breath Bible left us breathless and longing for a GutterHelmet testimonial from Dori Monson. It was like one of those low-watt stations that have nutritional supplement infomercials interspersed with Bible thumpers. Incidentally, the absolutely free Bad Breath Bible is a $9.95 value you shouldn't pass up, especially if you ride the bus.
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And in the end the age was handed
The sort of shit that it demanded.
--Ernest Hemingway, The Age Demanded
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HUFFIN' PUFFIN' STUFFIN'
We don't usually write about Stuffin' Schmuckansky, the transvestite Republican sex advice columnist at The Stranger, but our liberal colleagues have been having a field day with his latest attempts to make himself relevant again. Read Carla's piece Rebel without a Clue, at Preemptive Karma or Also Also's Stefan Quixote: SoundPolitics, Not Letting Go. Schmergansky, who's 15 minutes seemed to have been used up during the frivolous gubernatorial unvote campaign is struggling to get back in the headlines. He mysteriously took a rear seat during the I-912 signature-gathering campaign which probably reflects the ambivalence of his Republican master, State Chair Chris Vance for the initiative since the business community is so avidly opposing it.