Desperados

Resolve

Realpolitik

Texas Mis-step

Stay What Course?

Tonight the president delivered a prime time speech from the Oval Office, his first in three years. Anticipating a certain gravitas (don't they always?), the networks offered free time, with the pundits waiting, ready to dissect the every word of the dunce behind the desk, as if the fate of the world were hanging in the balance.

What did we get? More talk of “freedom”, with large doses of “terrorism”, “terrorists” and fear thrown in for extra measure. The same crap we’ve heard for the last four years. Bush XLIII has shown, time and time again, that his rhetoric is as empty as his head, with the persuasive power of a telephone sales pitch.

The post-mortems, from the “fair and balanced” crew of usual Fox News cheerleaders, (Brit Hume, Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke, and Bill Kristol, administration apologists, all), to the laughingly swelling symphonic underscore of of Bush’s beedy-eyed rhetoric during the commercial breaks in Tucker Carlson’s segment on MSNBC, were predictable in their self-indulgent massage of political sophistry.

One point did emerge from the blather: almost all of the talking heads agreed that the misadventure in Iraq has been a screwed up disaster; but that we’re there, and now we have to get behind the resolute leader, or not.

Never mind that the resolute leader and his L'Eminence Rouge, (Dick Cheney), have been wrong at every turn of this disaster. From weapons of mass destruction, to Nigerian yellow cake, to smoking guns in the form of mushroom clouds, Bush and the powers behind his throne have fashioned a Potemkin village of impressive dimensions, with disastrous consequences.

Yet, as far as media are concerned, it’s still nothing more than a difficult public relations project for the White House, with the commander-in-chief, still lauded for his “resolve” and “strength”, needing to find only the right tone that will reassure the fearful masses. Hope continues to spring eternal in the cowardly pens of the unctuous fourth estate.

The discussions seem focused not so much upon grave issues of impending national doom, but more upon Bush’s standing in the polls, the upcoming mid-term elections, and the immediate dynamic of the political power structure.

Now we will be asked to support Bush's myopic vision of a democratic Iraqi future and forget about the anti-democratic betrayal that dragged us into the mess. As it has been since the start of this debacle, those who oppose the policy, who feel they were mislead, will be marginalized and ridiculed as "angry", "quitters", and worse.

"Chicken Hawk" Hannity, "Big Head" O'Reilly, "The Fat Drug Addict" Limbaugh, "Twiggy with Tourette's" Coulter, and an entire battalion of shouting heads are poised and ready to come to the aid of the befuddled Bush. Expect to see "Stay the Course" replace "Support the Troops" as the slogan of the day.

A majority may be mad as hell, but, as as "conservative" talking head Tucker Carlson says, “The same people who are always mad will always be mad, but they don’t vote Republican, so who cares?”