Well. Not exactly her president. She’s Canadian, although also Floridian. Hot Sun Bakes Canadian Brain. In the end we agreed that when Rick Perry invades Iran in five years after taking office by winning 45% of the popular vote, I will deserve to be drafted and sent off to fight and presumably die in that war because I think Democrats should pursue big projects like universal health care, the cramming of which down American throats led George W. Bush to invade Iraq. Damn you, Harry Truman!

(Too, this means America will lose because if the time comes when I’m 1) drafted and 2) expected to actually fight, that will be the time when our Great Country is dead on its feet.)

This synopsis is much, much closer to how the actual discussion went than it is to a caricature of the actual discussion, although it is several days shorter than the real thing. Along the way I learned how people like me—loud-mouthed unreasoning lefties—cost Democrats the 2010 midterm elections even though though they didn’t. Because they must have! Even though independents who went for Democrats by nearly 20 points in the 2006 midterms went for Republicans by nearly 20 points in the 2010 midterms because, well, Obama. And Democrats. But a 40-point swing in a third of the electorate was not the issue; it was me. Me! Fuck! What was I thinking!

Okay. Well. Canadians, whattayagonnado.

Just kidding. Very nice people. Don’t do well in hot climates, though.

One good thing about Obama, he’s not making up crazy bullshit about Iran the way the Bushies did about Iraq. So the war really will be Rick Perry’s fault. My fault.

Where are George W. Bush and Dick Cheney living these days, anyway? Shouldn’t we be slapping sanctions on those joints for harboring war criminals? Freezing assets? Travel sanctions for top officials? Preventing their sporting franchises from competing with those in other, less benighted locales?

Light up the gated entrance at Preston Hollow with Hellfire missiles for a few nights and pretty soon a group of masked billionaires will be dropping a trussed-up W out in the street under a white flag. There is precedent!

Cheney, though: I think we all know how that will end if his neighbors try to bring him in alive. First one through the door takes a shotgun to the face.

Do the Canadians deserve Obama? Sure: they elected Stephen Harper, so their standards obviously aren’t what they used to be. And evidently most of them went home afterward and never came out to vote again. It’s possible they won’t even notice we sent Obama up there, especially if we time it for Hockey Night in Canada. At least until they start getting notices from Canada Revenue that they have to buy Aetna health insurance or else.

If they don’t notice we sent him we can’t every well demand anyone in return, but Tommy Douglas is deader’n Nixon so who cares anyway? Maybe we can work out a three-way deal to get Lula from Brazil, since he’s a free agent now. Meanwhile, Biden can hold down the fort here with one foot tied behind his mouth.

No, wait: Dennis isn’t that crazy. It was some guy called Peter Rodman, who maybe or maybe not should be dead, but definitely is so.

The other Rodman’s untimely death explains his absence from the PNAC-powered foreign policy posse that Mitt Romney, the increasingly Gumby-like leader of the GOP presidential pre-primaries, is assembling in apparent anticipation of the 2000 general election.

Eliot Cohen, another PNAC signatory and Bush administration factotum, is all in for Mitt. So is former Bush administration undersecretary of state for democracy, Paula Dobriansky. Robert Kagan, whose family is to neoconservatism as Alec Baldwin’s is to acting—or would be if all the Baldwins were the awesomely delusional but very modestly-talented Stephen Baldwin—is on board. (Kagan’s dad, Donald, is the actual PNAC signatory but they keep the crazy in the family.)

Former Minnesota congressman Vin Weber, who embodies the “not quite rising to the level of overt criminality” school of legislative conduct, is a PNAC alumnus. (Involuntarily retired Minnesota senator Norm Coleman is not, but does bear the distinction of being the only member of Congress ever to lose to a Saturday Night Live cast member.)  Weber is also a bigfoot lobbyist whose firm has been supporting Pakistan’s efforts to keep Congress from cutting US military and financial assistance to that country.

The Romney list is simply a rogues gallery. Whoever wasn’t intimately involved in plotting and marketing the most stupid and destructive foreign policy adventure in US history was cheering it or profiting from it or both. The only significant names one doesn’t find on it are those who, like John Bolton, probably see Romney as irreparably weak-kneed on diplomacy and defense.

Among the more peculiar choices to fill out the team is Dan Senor, the one-time spokesman for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which for those of you who weren’t paying attention at the time is what the US occupation government in Iraq was called. Senor managed a seamless transition from the coruscating narratives created by Baghdad Bob, Saddam’s spokesman during the invasion, to his own less dazzling but equally fictional descriptions of post-invasion success.

Norm Coleman may qualify as the most bewildering member. Not only isn’t he a PNAC graduate; a quick glance at his CV seems to indicate that his only significant foreign policy experience derives from his successful mayoral quest to establish a new National Hockey League franchise in St. Paul, an endeavor necessarily involving diplomatic relations with stick-wielding and sometimes ill-tempered Russians and Canadians. If there is such a thing as an ill-tempered Canadian. Rex?

There are the Michaels Chertoff and Hayden, the former a proud father of the PATRIOT Act and the Bureau of Internal Security and now, the proprietor of the Chertoff Group; the latter, the longest serving head of the National Security Agency, with a minor in CIA and now, a partner in the Chertoff Group. Ever feel like you’re being watched? It’s probably the two of them.

Dov Zackheim was embedded in the Pentagon in one manner or another for nigh on 30 years. As a Rumsfeld deputy for Pentagon planning he helped develop the strategies for occupying Iraq and Afghanistan. Promoted to Pentagon comptroller, he oversaw the disappearance of billions in shrink-wrapped pallets loaded with hundred dollar bills during the Iraq occupation and then abruptly resigned a year after the invasion; he is of course another PNAC veteran. He has written a book called “It Wasn’t My Fault: How Other People in the Bush Administration Fucked Everything Up.”

It’s an impressive group. The people in it who fucked up did so in the biggest possible ways, and the ones who executed their responsibilities well are probably worse.

And here we are apparently on the cusp of another Iraq crisis. A heroically corrupt state just this side of failed, Iraq’s government is joining with Iran’s in helping Syria’s to weather that country’s belated Spring, and the two have negotiated a number of mutual trade and assistance pacts during the past several years.

There is as yet no official word on whether or not the current Iraqi government is a party to the recently discovered “plot” by “Iran” to assassinate a Saudi diplomat in the US through the good offices of a Mexican drug cartel, which was inexplicably willing to bring its operations forcefully front and center to every US law enforcement and intelligence agency for the sake of about 12 hours worth of profit.

Given the pedigrees of the Romney foreign policy team members, though, job the second on their to do list, after nuking Iran, will be the invasion of Iraq and the installation of a pro-US government.

Because one simply can’t be too careful.

Paging Ahmed Chalabi. Dr. Ahmed Chalabi to the white courtesy phone please …

Thanks to the ever vigilant Malignant Bouffant for tipping me to the caper.

What never occurred to me is that Obama might run on his record; I just assumed he would run a two-pronged effort to paint Republicans as the slavering sociopaths they are while he proposes popular legislation that he can’t and probably doesn’t want to get passed. I forget that some people still take him seriously, and that presumably he and his staff do as well.

I posted yesterday’s effort at the Smirking Chimp as well as here, because people actually see the stuff I post there. Quite a few people have commented on it, and among them was a proud Obama supporter who came up with something that, the more consideration I give it, seems quite insane. I reprint it here; the original is here.

I love that President Obama is more like James Bond than wannabe cowboy Bush.

Let’s see….Pre­sident Obama -
- took out Somali pirates
- ACA
- Saved GM (and made a profit)
- troops out of Iraq
- troops out of Afghanista­n
- killed Bin Laden
- Egypt – dictator gone
- Tunisia – dictator gone
- Libya – dictator gone
tons more here – http://the­obamadiary­.com/2011/­08/22/a-wo­rd-from-ta­lly-4/

And no need for a farcical parade in a flight suit on an aircraft carrier in front of a MISSION ACCOMPLISH­ED banner that all turned out to be a lie.

I don’t need President Superfly.

Ghandi, MLK, and Mandela didn’t need to get all mad either.

And no, I don’t want Obama running around yelling, “Look at what I did!” or “My way or the highway!” I hated when Bush The Smirk did that, and I certainly don’t want President Obama doing it.

I prefer a POTUS with some class and grace, especially in the face of such monstrous, well-funded, and downright hatefully ugly opposition.

Yeah – I’m totally IN for Obama 2012.

Er … James Bond?

The subject line of the comment reads “WTF”. This is probably in celebration of the Obama campaign refrain, “Winning The Future.” But of course the more widely recognized use of the acronym is to mean “What The Fuck?”

So: James Bond? What. The. Fuck.

Presumably that’s a reference to the assassination of Osama bin Laden, which the president carried out accompanied by the lovely but ultimately doomed daughter of a treasonous Pakistani intelligence official. And, I guess, to his daring late night rescue of a container ship captain who was kidnapped by Somali pirates. We all know the story: The president, armed only with a speargun and what proved to be a defective limpet mine, glided lithely through the shark-infested waters …

And so on. The thing to remember about Bond is that in the end, he’s the Queen’s man who takes the Queen’s shilling and does the Queen’s work no matter how dirty it gets.

It bears endless repeating that Obama absolutely has not removed the US troops, contractors and mercenaries from Afghanistan and Iraq; he is instead negotiating extended stays in those hospitable climes on their behalves, and expanding his theater of operations to … well, to everywhere.

President Superfly? Well, why the hell not? As we see in the campaign literature, he’s got a plan to stick it to the man. Barack Obama? Not so much: He is the man, or at least the man’s man. I’m actually sort of torn on the question of whether or not a world weary coke dealer/president looking to get out of the game and into something less destructive would be a bad thing for the country; I’m inclined to think that on balance, we could do worse. Especially with respect to the War on Some Drugs. And there’s no denying that Youngblood Priest had keen negotiating skills.

I’m not clear on which Obama was behind the overthrow of Mubarak and Ben Ali in Egypt and Tunisia, respectively. Was that Obama/Bond or Obama/Martin Luther King? And which of them has the Al Khalifa family’s back in Bahrain, where protesters against the despotic ruling family have met with unequivocal equivocation from the US? Can you say “US Navy Fifth Fleet,” boys and girls?

King and Gandhi, Gandhi and King … It was Gandhi who coined the famous saying that “Change must come from the barrel of a gun,” and both he and King were life-long advocates of extended aerial bombardments causing frequent but deeply, sincerely regretted collateral fucking damage. Neither they nor Nelson Mandela, the former head of the African National Congress military wing, are known to have had an angry moment in their lives.

President James Martin Luther Mohandas Bond Obama: Always cool, able to step up and drain the three under pressure or calmly oust suddenly inconvenient despots in countries with coveted natural resources. No muss, no fuss, no need to bother Congress, asking no other question but “What Would Gandhi Do?”

I was watching the movie “Crossfire” tonight. The director was Edward Dmytryk, one of the Hollywood Ten screenwriters and directors blacklisted in 1947 by the movie industry for refusing to cooperate with the House Committee on Un-American Activities. One of Dmytryk’s friends and fellow blacklistees was Dalton Trumbo, the screenwriter and novelist who wrote “Johnny Got His Gun,” and later wrote and directed the film version.

“Johnny Got His Gun” is, I think, the most horrifying novel I’ve read. The story’s protagonist is a World War I soldier who survives an artillery round explosion on the last day of the war with his mind intact but with the loss of his limbs, sight, hearing and speech. The novel describes his gradual recognition of his circumstances and follows his evolving understanding of the nature of the mechanics of war. Here’s an excerpt from a section in which Johnny is thinking about the men who make war and the ones who actually do the fighting in the wars those other men make.

Already they were looking ahead they were figuring the future and somewhere in the future they saw war. To fight that war they would need men and if men saw the future they wouldn’t fight. So they were masking the future they were keeping the future a soft quiet deadly secret. They knew if all the people all the little guys saw the future they would begin to ask questions. They would ask questions and they would find answers and they would say to the guys who wanted them to fight they would say you lying thieving sons-of-bitches we won’t fight we won’t be dead we will live we are the world we are the future and we will not let you butcher us no matter what you say no matter what slogans you write.

We are the immortal we are the sources of life we are the lowly despicable ugly people we are the great wonderful beautiful people of the world and we are sick of it we are utterly weary we are done with it forever and ever because we are the living and we will not be destroyed.

If you make a war if there are guns to be aimed if there are bullets to be fired if there are men to be killed they will not be us who die. It will be you… Remember this. Remember this well you people who plan for war. Remember this you patriots you fierce ones you spawners of hate you inventors of slogans. Remember this as you have never remembered anything else in your lives.

And part of the horror of the book is that these are the thoughts of a man with, literally, no voice and no face and nothing to fight with.

You can’t read those things and understand them and internalize them, and send someone off to die and someone off to kill. You can’t set poor man against poor man. You can’t even write stupid shit boasting about the James Bond president assassinating Osama and knocking off Gadaffi and blowing up some schmoes in Somalia who likely as not took to piracy when they lost their fishing grounds to foreign fleets.

But we’ve moved way beyond “Johnny Got His Gun”. The men who make wars aren’t any longer masking the future or keeping it secret. It’s so far out in the open now that a good liberal, a good Democrat, can write a mash note praising the style of her warrior, her man, her murderer, over that of the last one without even questioning the underlying premise. It’s so far out in the open that it has become the open, just as have the astonishing acts of thievery and greed that characterize this country’s rulers.

And oh, yeah: That profit the president made on GM? On the backs of the workers.

Winning the future. What the fuck.

Make that three advantages: Few of his potential supporters seem to care much about his militarism—imagine the infuriated cries of liberals had George Bush been the president who decided to exclude the (no doubt furiously protested) bombing of Libya, and hence future air campaigns against whichever states are pissing him off, from Congressional oversight the way Obama did—or his national security excesses, or his refusal to prosecute even publicly confessed war criminals, or that he claims the right to execute Americans without due process. Turns out Democrats aren’t much different than Republicans when it comes to forgiving the hypocrisies and sins of their own. So all is well on that front.

Democratic fundraisers will clear between $300 million and $400 million by the end of the year in combined donations to Obama’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee. First quarter contributions to the campaign were good, although not great—the campaign started fundraising in April, so their first quarter is the calendar’s second quarter—but much of that money came in before Republicans started talking up the virtues of defaulting on the national debt. You can bet administration backers have been burning up the hot line to Wall Street since then, asking, “Do you really want those yahoos running your economy?” Some big money men will say, “Sure, they’re just kidding anyway,” but many others will say, “Better the yahoo we know …”

As they did in 2007-2008, Obama campaign officials are bragging about their principled refusal to take money from lobbyists or political action committees. And as in 2007-2008, they’re happy to take money from people who use lobbyists, or who are married to them, or who run the firms that provide them, or who work at those firms in capacities other than lobbying.

Despite the incessant whinging from banksters and Wall Street types about Obama’s harsh words toward their ilk, financial industry bundlers—fund raisers who collect at least $50,000 in individual contributions and write a single check to the campaign—raised $11 million for Obama, just shy of a third of his $35 million in bundled contributions. Nearly two thirds of the $11 million came from securities and investment firms. They may not all especially like Obama, but they see that big old butter-laden knife in his hands; witness the administration’s current attempt to geld New York attorney general Eric Scheiderman, whose determination to thoroughly investigate the behavior of criminal banking institutions got him kicked out of the White House-led group charged with negotiating a relative wrist slap for the big banks.

Heavyweights like Jon Corzine—former Goldman Sachs CEO, former US Senator and current CEO of derivatives monger WF Global—and Robert Rubin—former Goldman Sachs and Citigroup CEO, former US treasury secretary, and always and forever one of the most dramatically incendiary assholes behind the deregulatory frenzy that helped wreck the economy—both raised more than $500,000 each, as did 25 more bundlers from the financial and other vaporware sectors euphemistically described as industries. (Corzine recently hit the news through a gob-smacking arrangement his company made with investors: If he gets a job from Obama, the investors earn more interest on WF Global bonds.)

There is, then, plenty of money to be had from the usual suspects.

The Republican primaries are shaping up to offer more than the usual hilarity, along with myriad other Obama fundraising opportunities. Texas governor Rick Perry has more or less accused Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke of treason and has threatened him with physical harm should Bernanke show his face in Texas. (Perry has previously declared his state’s right to secede from the United States, but that apparently isn’t treason.) Both he and Michelle Bachmann are more or less openly copulating with wealthy Christian theocrats. Those are the sorts of things that inspire potential Obama contributors, even wholly disillusioned ones, to pony up, and they’re the sorts of things that bored politics reporters will eventually get around to reporting. Possibly.

The specter of Rick Perry running in the general election has struck down Bush family factotum Karl Rove with the vapors. Rove describes Perry as an idiot and is publicly longing for someone who is neither obviously crazed nor a Mormon nor Ron Paul nor a theocrat to enter the race. Although time is running out, Rove may yet end up buying such a candidate’s participation with promises of indirect money from his “American Crossroads” corporate slush fund.

That would mean diverting some of the group’s money to fund issue ads and organizing efforts aimed at undermining other Republicans during the primaries in addition to attacking Obama particularly and Democrats generally, but Rove and other squeamish Republican kneecappers may think it necessary to get a real shot at toppling the president.

Calling George Pataki? Now there’s a scintillating candidate.

Obama campaign officials deny reports that their fundraising target for the campaign is a billion dollars. Reaching that amount seems feasible, though; what Obama has lost by way of frustration among Democrats, he has gained back by way of Republican performance art. An incumbent president with a billion dollar bankroll will be tough to beat even in next year’s prospectively dreadful environment, and even up against the hundreds of millions that the mouthy corporate citizens on the right will be throwing at him. The decisive factor will probably be whether he decides to campaign as a Democrat or the ruthlessly post-partisan independent he apparently believes himself to be.

Democrats won’t have all that much to celebrate should Obama prevail. Their party will be effectively leaderless; the president will escalate his push toward International Monetary Fund-style austerity, including cuts to social insurance programs. Encouraged by his success in defenestrating the War Powers Act, and by the relatively small tab for installing the Gadaffi government, minus Gadaffi, in Libya, the president will probably find other opportunities for war by presidential fiat. And absent a victory in the House of Brobdingnagian proportions, most congressional Democrats will continue to view themselves as constrained from openly opposing him. Comme ci comme ça.

Nevertheless, we leave you with the Tammany Hall war cry: Vote early, and vote often.