All posts by lrepublican

Huckabee, heck, he ain’t no ord’nary huckleberry

Apocalypse Watch, Islamophobia, Luke R. E. Publican, Terrorism Issue

What better place for the Republican wolf-no-longer-in-sheepish-clothing pack to have a demolition derby debate than Orlando, home of Disney’s fantasy view of America and chosen site for a dodgeball game with reporters (not deciders, of course) from Fox News? Not since the missing chads of 2000 has so much heat been generated in Florida over such an important outcome. Whatever round this is in the GOP run-up to the election, this time they all came out itchin’ for a good-old-boy fight, apparently ready to shed their “family values” political correctness if only for a night. All of the candidates took pot shots at Hillary, playing pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey until the audience fell on their conservatively smart asses laughing. Fred laid a few low blows on Rudy, who kicked back with his own street smarts. Mitt and McCain were able to raise a little cain. Then there were the also-theres, including the recent third-place values man, Governor and former Baptist minister Mike Huckabee. Taking a page out of Rudy’s play book, he played the fear card. In one of his responses he noted that the greatest threat that has ever faced America (get ready for a history lesson) is Islamofascism. In a recent online interview he laid out his apocalyptic scenario:

“There’s almost an inevitability, not just a possibility. It will happen again. Continue reading Huckabee, heck, he ain’t no ord’nary huckleberry →

Another Debate (Debate?)

Iraq War, Islam in America, Luke R. E. Publican, Terrorism Issue

Watching the Fox News comedy-not-so-central Republican debate last night, it seemed to me that the gentlemen (and they were, of course, only men) behind the podiums were more intent on smiling through their election-year platitudes than engaging with the messy realities of the government each seeks to head. Apart from Ron Paul, the interloping libertarian, each candidate apparently (a word that John McCain stubbornly refuses to use in his vocabulary) hoped that supporting the troop surge would lead to a surge (even a blip for those hanging on only by their televised sound bites) in their respective pre-season ratings. There was a lot of puffing and fluffing about family values, with Hizzoner begging (the question) to have his private life left private (‘fat chance’, as they say in the Big Apple) and another don’t-remember-the-name tossed out the Pottery-Barnyard we-broke-it-so-we-gotta-fix-it mantra that treats premature evacuation (Iraqis Interruptus) as one of the seven deadly sins. Mercifully, there was no gay bashing and one candidate (does it really matter who said what at this stage?) insisted that Republicans or better than Democrats because they ‘come clean’ and resign after a scandal. I wonder if Larry Craig was taking notes. Fox News should have stationed an embedded reporter in a stall in the Minneapolis airport just to be on the safe side. Continue reading Another Debate (Debate?) →

Revenue Sharing, but not Drug-free

Afghanistan, Luke R. E. Publican, Osama Bin Laden, Taliban, Terrorism Issue


[The American plan to convince Afghan farmers not to grow poppies: some good old cow dung smothered in politically expedient B.S. Photo from the New York Times.]

In the old days (before 9/11, the posters for Osama dead or alive, the seeming fall of the Taliban, Operation Shock and Awe, etc.) before terrorism merited an all-out war, there were more socially-minded wars on the American political scene. An earlier Texan (so early he was Democratic) named Lyndon Johnson started a War on Poverty. The wealth of Bill Gates shows how well that succeeded. Then Betty Ford helped launch a War on Drugs. Casualty figures for this have been withheld by the government for insecurity reasons. Indeed, today’s New York Times has an article that suggests the War on Drugs has fused with the War on Terrorism and we are losing on both fronts. “Afghanistan produced record levels of opium in 2007 for the second straight year, led by a staggering 45 percent increase in the Taliban stronghold of Helmand Province, according to a new United Nations survey to be released Monday.” writes David Rohde in his article “Taliban Raise Poppy Production to a Record Again.” He adds, “Here in Helmand, the breadth of the poppy trade is staggering. A sparsely populated desert province twice the size of Maryland, Helmand produces more narcotics than any country on earth, including Myanmar, Morocco and Colombia. Rampant poverty, corruption among local officials, a Taliban resurgence and spreading lawlessness have turned the province into a narcotics juggernaut.” Continue reading Revenue Sharing, but not Drug-free →

Famous General Supports Iraq War

Film and Video, Iraq War, Luke R. E. Publican

America has a number of famous generals who now serve as icons of our legendary military prowess. General Washington beat the red pants off of Lord Cornwallis. General William Tecumseh Sherman put the heat on those good old southern white boys down in Georgia. General Custer died with his boots on, as did all the men he led into battle. Then there were the heroes of World War II, the most cinematic being General George C. Scott, I mean General George S. Patton. It turns out that General Patton, like all superheroes, has risen from the grave and returned to tell it like it should be (since “like it is” is not going so well) in the War on Terror and Iraq. If you would like his revamped take, then all you need to do is go to YouTube and see him read the Patriot Riot Act, courtesy of a 21st century impersonator and vintage 20th Century Fox (no relation to Fox News this time) footage.

If you are disappointed that the footage here is from the movie, then rest assured that General Patton has indeed been seen, though not as many times as Elvis. Just ask Don Imus.

Luke R. Publican

What Went Wrong: A Top-Ten Review

Iraq War, Luke R. E. Publican

What went wrong in Iraq? It seems as though it might make more sense to ask why didn’t anything go right. When Operation Iraqi Freedom began, the good news was that a brutal tyrant named Saddam Hussein had been ousted from power. For the billions of dollars thrown at modern Mesopotamia, the result is now in painful hindsight a bloody (and I do not simply mean the British expletive) mess with no good in realistic sight. The litany of bad news has morphed into a politically untenable tsunami, destroying all good intentions in its wake. One of the top stories in today’s news is the alarming rate of deaths among contractors working alongside the American military in Iraq. In the first three months of 2007 almost 150 were killed, often because they tend to be “soft targets,” but increasingly because U.S. troops are stretched thin outside the surge-happy capital. Even Chatham House, hardly a left-leaning lean-to in British politics, has neon-lighted the handwriting on the Babylonian wall with a recent report by Gareth Stansfield, who argues in a paper released Thursday that “Iraq is on the verge of being a failed state which faces the distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation.” You know things are really bad when the U.S. military creates its own shared channel on You-Tube.

The reasons are so obvious four years after the patriotic fever orchestrated by the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz gang of neocons that it almost seems trivial to keep repeating them, so perhaps the best thing is a Letterman-like line-up of the top ten real stupid mistakes made so far (it ain’t over until the fatuous voter sings) by recent U.S. foreign policy in Iraq: Continue reading What Went Wrong: A Top-Ten Review →

Apocalypse Watch: The Man Who Knows Squat

Arab-Israeli Conflict, Bible and Holy Land, Israel, Luke R. E. Publican, Palestine

Most people find it hard to take cartoons seriously, apart from political satire and that can become a deadly issue, depending on the target. Given the recent Danish cartoon controversy it would seem that comics and religion do not mix well or at least settle well for the believers who see themselves as the target. But what about comic relief for the political struggle between Israel and the Palestinians? Fundamentalist tract artist Jack Chick, whose comic empire is dedicated to winning souls for Christ by drawing on God’s hate, has been using his pen to spread a rather sinister version of the fundamentally reduced Gospel for over 40 years. One of his more recent offerings is called “The Squatters” and it provides a virtual roadmap to apocalypse. Continue reading Apocalypse Watch: The Man Who Knows Squat →

The Fort Dix Deep Six

Iraq War, Islamophobia, Journalism and Media, Luke R. E. Publican, Terrorism Issue

Things can’t get worse; they can only get worse. No, this is not poor grammar or end-of-semester illogic but my first impression after listening to the hard-to-digest dollop of the morning news. Another suicide bomb killed and maimed scores in Iraq, this time in the Kurdish town of Irbil. The Bush administration suggests that things are getting better in Baghdad since the wall-less security crackdown, but that is debatable. What is not open to debate is that other parts of the country continue to spiral in insecurity, perhaps due in part to the targeted crackdown in one place. None of this seems to matter to Vice-President Cheney who has made a surprise visit to the Green Zone, mainly it seems to convince the Iraqi parliament not to take a summer vacation this year and be nice about dividing up the spoils of America’s, I mean Iraq’s, oil profits.

In this case it is not only the shit hitting the fan, but the gold as well. Gold as in Fort Dix (Fort Knox or whatever…) but I hope not a golden journalistic award to a local newspaper. Continue reading The Fort Dix Deep Six →

Up Against a Wall

Humor and Satire, Iraq War

The Iraq War on its way to the record books as one of the longest wars in American history is at last, without any lingering doubt, up against a wall. One of the top stories today in the New York Times says it all: “U.S. Erects Baghdad Wall to Keep Sects Apart.” “American military commanders in Baghdad are trying a radical new strategy to quell the widening sectarian violence by building a 12-foot-high, three-mile-long wall separating a historic Sunni enclave from Shiite neighborhoods,” write reporters Edward Wong and David S. Cloud. In other words, when push comes to surge and surge comes up against a brick wall, then just go ahead and do something concrete, like building a wall. The new military strategy becomes ‘ where there is a wall, there is a way.’ Continue reading Up Against a Wall →