Fantasy Land

Joe Klein wants people to be nice to David Broder and discuss Broders editorial on it's merit, so says bigger bloggers than I.

The problem being that his eds have no merit, except as a window on the delusions of the DC Beltway crowd, people like Klein and Broder and what not other rag tag riff raff Dowds and Sally whats her name that make up our Conventional Wisdom.

So I sent him a note, I tried, as always in respect of his old age, to keep the vitriol at a minimum.

"Iraq War at an end?"

The widely trusted Gen. Petraeus? That's the tip off that you're talking out of your imagination again David. We don't know the good General from David, do we? Of course you Beltway folks know him oh so well, right, but David, you know that DC is just a speck of the population of this country, so widely is a relative term, don't you think?

But on to the meat of my missive. Dude, you just live in a total fantasy land don't you. Haven't you heard Bush repeat ad very nauseum that we aren't leaving Iraq while he's President? Don't you understand the Korea metaphor? What part of "leaving it for the next President" don't you get?

Centrists exert leverage? All 8-12 of them? And John Warner, has he yet done any more than sputter some protest than fall directly into the Bush line on vote after vote after vote after vote? Ken Salazar, the rookie turncoat from Colorado, you think he has any heft with the Democratic Party?

Bush wasn't cool to the Baker-Hamilton recommendations, he said they were a good start, then proceeded to ignore and reject every aspect of them out of hand. That isn't being cool to something, that's spitting all over the plan and its progenitor's.

But I guess in the Purple Fantasy Land you live in, that calculated disrespect means something else. I suppose that's how you can sleep at night, by living in a world so far removed from the reality that everybody else, mostly, lives in.

Give it up Broder, you're not unlike the pathetic and delusional people like your brilliant friend Paul Wolfowitz, except that you have no power and no impact whatsoever on the events of this day and on this miserable and misbegotten administration you find so comforting and competent.

Centrists and leverage, there's a breakfast combination you don't see every day!

I'm sorry, but Bush isn't leaving Iraq unless we somehow force him to, maybe a revolt of the military, maybe a sign from the Great Flying Spaghetti Monster, and the United States Senate, for the greatest part, is fully infected with the disease that Al Gore is talking about, what Jimmy Carter called a malaise, what explains the desperate grasping at things that give so called meaning to our lives, like god, or money or i-pods or more and more material crap, this endless and frantic soccer mom mentality of running your kids from one event to another and having no time to spend together as a comminity, be it a family or a neighborhood or social gathering to exchange ideas of import and substance with our fellow human beings.

What did Bob Simon say to Bill Moyers, he was too afraid to speak out on the shoddy intelligence, the gaping logic holes, the false premises of Iraq as terror master that led us to this pass today, too afraid to lose his precious job of news reader because, I don't know, he would've died or suddenly had no value as a human being if he didn't have that wonderful particular job?

And I wonder how it is that these raging idiots and fools and woefully uneducated people like Bush and Goodling and Doan and Cheney and DeLay and Wolfowitz can beat the tar out of the Democrats for the past 7 or 27 years?

Note to the Dean

Mr. Broder,

You wrote this column entitled "Suggester in Chief" and I wonder if you might want to review what you said? I ask because, well, I find it hard to understand why you would think that Bush and the Republicans would do any of these things. (My underlines for effect.)

"But his main plea was for the president to take the temperature of Congress, by meeting personally with the Foreign Relations Committee and consulting seriously with its members, before settling on a policy for Iraq.

"The president needs some well-informed friends," Lugar said pointedly, and he warned Bush that people such as himself will not be ready to defend his decision if he simply waits and declares it after private discussions of the kind he has been holding within his war Cabinet.

After an election in which war-weariness was a motivating force for the defeat of Republican candidates, the president has to face the reality that the only decision on Iraq that can possibly command sustained public support is a collective decision shared with Congress -- not a personal order.

Any action he takes may still be thwarted by Iraq's own divisions. But if he does not bring Congress and both parties into the process, the policy will inevitably fail. He has to face that reality."

President Bush does not consult seriously with Congress, and he doesn't seem to face reality either. And Sen. Lugar certainly has, as the rest of the GOP have indeed done just that, defended his decision, else they would have supported the non-binding resolution of someone's, even their OWN resolution.

You write and speak with great assurance of your knowledge and standing in the great hub of the DC Beltway, yet there seems to be a bit of a disconnect between that picture and the ugly realities on the ground. Perhaps in your privileged spaces those truths don't stand up, but in the hot desert of Iraq, on the streets of over producing and underpaid America the truth is that George W Bush is not playing the same game as you.

You're playing this game of pretty JFK, the mighty heroes of the Greatest Generation, the vast "silent majority" confused by the lies and misapplication of history and intelligence in Vietnam; and our wonderful Decider is selling us all out through the delusional ravings of Dick Cheney and Doug Feith and Eliot Abrahms and Bill Kristol for the gains of Big Oil, you know, Exxon-Mobile's $39 BILLION last year, for the Media Monopolies (oh, so is Rupert Murdoch one of you now?) and the Military Industrial Complex that are the driving forces in our Chinese dominated economy (are the Chinese one of you now too?)

So when you write things like the above, I have to wonder. Are you feeling okay? Watching what you eat, drinking enough water? I mean, really, did you seriously think Bush was going to work with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid and Howard Dean and Pat "Eff You" Leahy? Face reality? George W Bush, who has never his entire life faced reality, is going to start now, when the destruction of our government is fast approaching the drowning stage, when the corporate coffers are bursting out at the seams, when the ranks of the millionaires and billionaires are growing faster than anything?

I look forward to some introspection in future columns on your part, Mr. Broder, some reflections not so much on the accuracy of your columns, but the mindset that produced them, the sense of well being and entitlement that allows you to be so wrong about this subject you've spent your adult life writing about. That's what I'd like to see for your next column, not some claptrap about vitriolic bloggers saying nasty argumentative things on their blogs, (and later I'll send you some stuff that will curl your eyebrows) but some serious discussion about the lies and mendacity and greed and arrogance of the Bush/Cheney administration, and the failure of the news media to report on that substance.