Here’s funnyman Joe Biden talking about how he’s going to impeach the president for starting some random war against a Muslim nation that isn’t doing anything to us … oh wait, he’s talking about a previous president. This must be an old appearance on Hardball. We’ve got ‘em all on VHS, every episode going back to 1956 ….
The important thing is that this Libya clusterphuck seems to be as poorly thought out as any Bush Junior imperial misadventure, minus the grand designs and years of wingnut think-tank scheming. But the result is the same: blood on the sand and enrichment of the U.S. defense industry.
We were listening to Bloomberg in the car tonight when ace reporter Lizzie O’Leary broke down the incredible amount of money American Taxpayers are spending right now on this Libya thing: $160 million worth of missile strikes, millions for each bomber flight, etc. It still was a drop in the bucket compared to the TWO BILLION DOLLARS PER WEEK the U.S. is pissing through in Afghanistan, but it’s also more than NPR’s entire annual revenue, of which about 2% of that comes from government funding of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
IN OTHER WORDS, if we could only de-fund NPR for all of next year, one more missile could be shot at some Arabs somewhere.
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At least Obama is smart enough not to have a "Mission Accomplished" sign.
He has one…just not in long form.
It just says
"DONE!"
Yes We Did?
Oh, moar bettah. Upfist.
It would need to be accompanied by a Barack finger-wag for true slightly racist but ultimately comedic value.
Oh No You Dih'int!
Yet.
I strenuously object. This post ignores the fact that spending a trillion dollars over 10 years to kill a bunch of browns in Afghanistan is morally imperative, whereas spending far less than that over 10 years to make sure everyone in the United States, including some browns, has access to healthcare, is morally reprehensible. Nevar forgett!!!
The GOP Platform in a nutshell.
Money to kill browns=Good
Money to help Americans=Bad
Let's give it to ol' funny Joe. If the "bracket picker in chief" gets impeached out, guess who's the new prez? He's smarter than you think.
or stupid like a fox.
Meh. After Iranghanistanq, bitching about the cost of our Libya adventure is like deciding on a whim to go to dinner at the most expensive restaurant in Manhattan and then arguing for a half hour over dessert whether you should tip 15% or 20%.
What's that olde English saying? "In for a penny, in for £970 Billion?"
"thousand million." Them's funny like that.
/pedant
Blood on the sand? I prefer blood on the dance floor.
Haha, here's Joe singing about blood on the ground.
Perhaps we could carpet bomb Qadaffi with considerate conversation and well reasoned analysis.
If that didn't work, we'd still have Click & Clack in our arsenal to go all "atomic drop" on his sorry, sandy-cracked ass.
Coming up, on "This American Death" . . .
On Wait Wait Don't Tell Me we've invited Colonel Qadaffi on to play "Not My Job" and we're delighted to play a game we're calling "Legitimate Rulers in Africa".
How about we use some of those Camel-Tow Missiles?
That's Gross!
She's Radio pretty.
Let's think this through carefully. Libya is in Africa. Barack is from Africa. Let's not interfere in this private dispute between Obama and his motherland.
This country is bombing all right, in every sense.
Too bad the McCarthyites who gave us "in god we trust" in 1956 because it was the antithesis of atheistic communism weren't so quick to embrace education and reason when fighting a bunch of religious fanatic know-nothings. It would've meant the end of Texas as we know it but hey — when there's a principle at stake, certain sacrifices are worth it.
for many years i've been a proponent of giving Texas back to Mexico. as the song goes, "there's no time like the right time, and baby, the right time is now."
The difference between Dems and Repubs is that when Dems invade a country it's with a pure heart to help avert a humanitarian disaster…then it blows up in their face and becomes a colossal fuck up. When Repubs invade a country, they do it just to do it because they are bored and they can….then it blows up in their face and becomes a colossal fuck up.
this is the best american foreign policy analysis i have read in years.
There is an "articulate" and "clean cut" exemption to Joe's impeachment standard.
Not to worry. In a day or two the US hands things over to the former colonial powers who know a thing or two about random slaughter of wogs.
This one is a direct UN mandate pushed for by France, the UK and the US. Sure, the US lead the initial AA-defence destruction, but that's what the US is very, very good at.
This wasn't pissing around for months on end, eventually dragging the UK and a grab-bag of allies (remember Poland!) into some bullshit after a UN presentation which could have been critiqued by a kindergartener.
Khaddafi was using tanks and planes against civilians. As much as (and I know this is a Jon Stewart meme right now) other countries like Bahrain have killed civilians, this was a brutal, non-specific, military attack on cities killing many, many civilians.
It's more like a Kosovo intervention than ignoring the Iran uprising.
For me, I'll give Hopey a pass on this one, as long as Britain, France and (fingers crossed) some Arab countries pick up the baton and the US can make a graceful exit.
Let the p-score fall!
"This one is a direct UN mandate pushed for by France, the UK and the US."
Couldn't the same be said for Afghanistan?
An intervention I also agreed with. I remember, and few people do, conservatives pre-9/11 giving the Taliban a pass for blowing up the Buddhas since it was "the most stable society Afghanistan has seen for years". I can only assume that was a reaction to the "win" by Reagan after the Soviets left and the (US-funded) Islamic nuts could take power.
The current clusterfuck, not so much.
It's defining the endgame which is important these days, not the reasons for instigation. S'what worries me about the Libya thing.
Honestly, you're saying a lot of what I have been trying to say, but in a manner much more articulate and clean-cut than I did.
My biggest fear is of this turning into another Somalia, not of us taking a sharp left turn into a nearby different country for no legitimate reason, completely sabotaging our original purpose here. Iraqistain this ain't, and it's not unilaterally bombing Iran (the topic of the above clip), either.
I think there's reasons to be concerned about what our goals are and the risk of mission creep, but honestly, I don't even like the whole framing of this as another invasion- it draws equivalencies between Bush's Iraq Misadventure and Clinton-era containment of the same (complete with no-fly zones and sporadic missle lobbing!) that I'm not comfortable making.
but…..abortion?
hopey does get a pass on this, but i still want to be able to point out that there is always – ALWAYS – money for war making even when we're "broke"
One important fact that everybody is overlooking: Obummer is trying to LIBerate LIBya. Wake up, sheeeples!
To follow on from your upfisted post, I shall now channel G-Beck
Scene: A sweaty man stands in front of a chalkboard
Have you seen this? Have you seen it? I'll explain it to you.
You have Barack Hussein Obama with a mandate from the UN draws lines using weapons developed by God-fearing Americans being used in this invasion
Pause. Look at camera 2
Now, we can connect the dots. You have Hussein Obama, who was schooled in a Madrassa, and Gadaffi, who was also schooled in a Madrassa. Now you have the Progressives gunning for an intervention in Libya, with the blessing of the UN.
furious scribbling and line-drawing on chalkboard
It all makes sense.
If we take these words, add some letters, take some away, then re-arrange them we can see the true meaning of this.
points to chalkboard
"I LOVE MUSLIMS"
Now, I'm not saying this is definitely the case. I'm just putting information in front of you. George Soros would pay a lot of money not to have me point this out to you.
This is a LIE-beration of LIB-ya. It's the progressives at work, folks.
Also, buy seeds.
You are so bitter. And The Comic Book Guy strikes, again.
Today, we are all morally weak.
well if Biden is the President now, we won't have racist teabaggers demonstrating to "take our country back"
Now they'll have to rally their rascals to take the country back from vampires.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/archive/236/tag/Joe...
Oh no! They got to him too??! And here I thought they were mostly into ladies
This isn't a war it's a farce, obammy will never get impeached dream on folks.
Well, you know, Hopie doesn't want to seem soft on crime and/or terrorismz.
Duh. Winning!
Yeah, because escalating in Afghanistan made him look soft.
Obama didn't offer military support for a no-fly zone above Libya because he wanted or needed any more warhawk street-cred. That's for damned sure.
He could bomb every Muslim and/or African and/or other brown-skinned peopled country on the planet and it wouldn't enough for the idiotic conservatives. Except that it would also be too much and too expensive and socialistic fascism, etc.
So basically those douchebags will never be happy with anything he does.
As far as the expense goes, we all know that all things military are paid for by magic leprechaun money and have no effect on the budget at all.
Just like tax cuts.
Don't you miss the Bush days, when funding for the war(s) simply didn't exist? Bush just decreed that its funding didn't add to the deficit. So, it just didn't.
They created their own reality, and in time have created ours.
It's so win-win, every billion $ spent on bombs is a thousand less million $ to spend on everything else, or in the case of NPR and PP a million less thousand $.
Its only a matter of time before some Tea Bagger or Republiklan comes out and claims that the strikes on Libya are just another Obama Stimulus Plan aimed at the Defense Industry.
Too late, and it's not the conservatives drawing that conspiracy, either…
I am so disappointed in Obama. So much for Change in Washington. I guess the bureaucracy, especially that of the military, is so entrenched there that no matter who gets elected president the only advice he gets is to wage war.
So we have wars on three fronts and maintain troops overseas in something like 150 countries. This is just not going to end well for us: politically, economically, or morally.
We are freakin' doomed.
And Jap radiation storming its way to Cali!!! Quick, load up the SUV – everyone to Oregon!
Morally it has promise. When we are bankrupt we can't fuck the world anymore. See France, Belgium, England, Germany, Japan, Rome, etc.
The only question is where are we going to drop all these bombs before we run out of money for fuel?
Who is this man, this "Joe Biden"?
You don't know? He's the BFD, "big fucking deal."
Now this really is a big fucking deal – right, Joe?
I can somewhat see why we're doing this. Italy is a NATO country, and IIRC, it was threatened early on. As such, containing Kaddafi makes some sense. Containing meaning either forcing his surrender/compliance or taking him out. There is even a popular agreement with this.
The question remains: Why didn't the O go to Congress for the approval? I think he would have gotten it.
I think the answer is that he's using this to show he can make war even more unilaterally than his predecessor did. I also think he should be brought down over it, even if I personally think hitting Libya is ultimately a prudent idea.
Why didn't O go to congress? because those short dicked fuckers would have stalled objected and investigated till everyone in Libya was dead and then condemned the Pres. for not acting boldly, haven't you been paying attention to the script?
To save money, maybe we can send over Biden's motorcade, which has a history of cold killing people, to rain down death and destruction on Libya.
What if we bomb the fuck out of Hanoi in the middle of the night, just for the hell of it and old times sake? All these tin-hat dictators would realize our meth problem is now really out of control and we're capable of anything when agitated, they'd straighten up and fly right then…
It's time to get rid of the U.S. joint checking account. Taxpayers could check Liberal Fund or Conservative Fund on their tax forms. Half of each fund goes into a joint account for the basics, and then the Dems and Rebubs get to spend what's left on what they want. Marriages are saved this way — spouses can continue to hate each other, but a lot of the bitchin' is eliminated.
Bomb Massachussetts or Connecticutt so we can
A: get rid of unspellable states, and
B: Spend the Marshall Plan Halliburtibux at home.
Just Joe being Joe!
OT – Sigh…being followed by another Briebart tool. Its name is spanky and its profile mentions "gangs". It cleverly uses a beloved cultural symbol and turned it into a gang that prefers spanking.
There is no p-rating.
spanky is my new best friend, too. loves following in my wake…which is weird because last night was spicy italian sausage night at the monkeh house.
I wonder who they got to be the new president of the “He man woman haters club’. For the younger readers out there, look it up at Wiki.
HA!
i'm old.
Me too…my god, I got that reference.
But Democrats kill people much more kindly than Republicans.
If we had just sent in Ironman to clean up this mess then we wouldn't have had to spend so much money on missles and planes. Tony Stark would have absorbed all the expense himself and works on his own personal mandate.
Joe's right: war is one big fucking deal!
Speaking of NPR, This Bush-era national security toady Richard Hass was on it decrying Obammer's invasion of a sovereign nation.
It's already a clusterfuck? Don't those planes cost 2 million dollars to the taxpayer every time you light up the engine?
Look it's simple. If Libya's crackdown had gone ahead unimpeded, you would have seen the same thing in Bahrain and eventually Saudi Arabia. Massive shows of US military-financed might carried out by oil sheiks on poor Arabs. And guess what? The revolutions still get carried out, only now with extra Blood Libel revenge directed at the US, which is "us."
Wait I have more to add but I just pissed my pants.
You can rub his nose in it, beat him with the newspaper, but Joe will NEVER learn to STFU.
Good thing the Cons haven't been able to outlaw invasions, even in the case of rape or incest.
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