On a more serious note – has any other news agency noticed that our President began speaking in tongues at a press conference today? You’d think that might be, y’know, news or something.

IOKIYAR, Jillian.

If our President himself is about to collapse into gibbering, incoherent insanity…

About to???

I saw the clip on the Daily Show last night before Bill Clinton’s interview. What will it take for the press to break down en masse and laugh at this clown while he’s still yammering?

Frank Caliendo doing Bush on Letterman (gobble! gobble!).

This is different, Thunder.

When Bush complained that “gynecologists…aren’t able to share their love with women all across this country”, we knew what he was trying to say.

When Bush sympathized with people working hard to put food on their families, we knew what he was trying to say.

For the first time ever, I have absolutely no fucking idea what he was trying to say. Was it supposed to be in English? Is it the klonopin talking? Has his cocaine-addled brain finally dissolved and leaked out his ear in his sleep?

I’m just baffled.

I believe Reagan was far gone long before the end of his term. The same might well be true of the first AWOL cokehead.

Oh c’mon, as he McArdled himself moments later, he meant that Saddam Hussein had killed all the Iraqi Mandelas. Except for, you know, Chalabi & all the other brave 30 years-plus exiles who were busy defrauding banks while fighting for seed money from the State Dep’t.freedom.

Feigned ignorance & Bush’s inability to express himslf (’cause he’s got nothing to express) aside, “Kaye…Grogan!” is spot on.

It STILL doesn’t make any sense. What “Iraqi Mandelas”? What the holy hell is he on about?

My god, he’s a cretinous fool.

There probably would be a whole lot more “Nelson Mandela” types in the Arab & Muslim world if it hadn’t been U.S. policy to crush any sort of independent nationalism (which might have led to countries using their oil & money for things other than what the US leadership wanted) by hiring monarchs, generals, thugs, and religious nuts to repress and kill most of them.

Guess Nelson Mandela was lucky to only be imprisoned by South African fascists, as opposed to the thugs usually preferred by the U.S. establishment.

This same Iraqi Mandela figure of speech came up in Bush’s meeting with right-wing bloggers last week.

Has “McArdled” become an adjective now? That was fast.

Oh, shit.

He means “nationalist movement leaders”? I know that’s a whole eight syllables, but sheesh.

And if Bush wants to know why there aren’t any, he can, as El Cid suggests, ask either King Faisl.

Mr. Bush finds a phrase and then runs with it. He’s like the drunk freshman at parties, he’s learned a new multisyllabic word and wants to try it out on all the co-eds. The wing-nut bloggers loved that the Mandela thing, so the traditional media will too.

The really sad thing about watching him is that when he hears the press gaggle laughing he thinks “look, they think I’m hilarious” when really what they’re thinking is “they’re keeping this guy away from sharp objects, right?”

I got stuck on Jillian’s aside: ” I’ve had a handful of Guinnesses “.

Do you completely exhale THEN drink? (a’la Jack Daniel) Or what?

I’m serious.

A world filled with only Guiness and Mister Pretzels? I’m a dead man!

Of course, it’s “best in Ireland!” *wink, wink*

From “Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam” by Robert Dreyfuss

In the 1950s, the United States had an opportunity to side with the nationalists, and indeed many U.S. policymakers did suggest exactly that, as my book explains. But in the end, nationalists in the Third World were seen as wild cards who couldn’t be counted on to join the global alliance against the USSR. Instead, by the end of the 1950s, rather than allying itself with the secular forces of progress in the Middle East and the Arab world, the United States found itself in league with Saudi Arabia’s Islamist legions. Choosing Saudi Arabia over Nasser’s Egypt was probably the single biggest mistake the United States has ever made in the Middle East.

A second big mistake that emerges in Devil’s Game occurred in the 1970s, when, at the height of the Cold War and the struggle for control of the Middle East, the United States either supported or acquiesced in the rapid growth of Islamic right in countries from Egypt to Afghanistan. In Egypt, Anwar Sadat brought the Muslim Brotherhood back to Egypt. In Syria, the United States, Israel, and Jordan supported the Muslim Brotherhood in a civil war against Syria. And, as described in a groundbreaking chapter in Devil’s Game, Israel quietly backed Ahmed Yassin and the Muslim Brotherhood in the West Bank and Gaza, leading to the establishment of Hamas.

Still another major mistake was the fantasy that Islam would penetrate the USSR and unravel the Soviet Union in Asia. It led to America’s support for the jihadists in Afghanistan. But as Devil’s Game shows, America’s alliance with the Afghan Islamists long predated the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 and had its roots in CIA activity in Afghanistan in the 1960s and in the early and mid-1970s. The Afghan jihad spawned civil war in Afghanistan in the late 1980s, gave rise to the Taliban, and got Osama bin Laden started on building Al Qaeda.

There plenty of academic histories of these various events but Dreyfuss pulls them together easily enough.

Let’s see.

Funded and trained Mukhabarat. Check

Funded and trained SAVAK. Check

Funded and trained Shin Bet. Check

Funded and trained DINA. Check.

Geez, where do all the Mandelas go? Can’t even imagine….

mikey

In exchange for permission to cite Mandela in a favorable way, Bush had to promise Cheney a low-yield nuclear strike on Iran before Easter.

Jillian, I’ve got it!!!111one!!

He meant teh Vandellas.

There’ll be swingin’ swaying’ and records playin’…

(I thing I like this video better, even though it doesn’t have the resolution of the Ed Sullivan show version.)

When Bush complained that “gynecologists…aren’t able to share their love with women all across this country”, we knew what he was trying to say.

Sez you. I think that Laura told him some porky pies.

ya got that right hysterical woman.

While Bush makes himself out to be the village idiot, his administration continues its diabolical maneuvering.

Welcome to the final act bitches. It has been swell, but tribalism has fucked us all. Amazing how our strongest evolutionary advantage is that which lead us to our end. Auf wiedersehen Democracy, ich glaube denken dir aufwissen.

Not all the Mandelas. I still have one under my bed. He hasn’t eaten in a few days though… maybe I’d better… oh, fuck, yeah he’s dead.

His speechwriters ought to know better than to try to make him speak metaphorically. He’s so dim, everyone assumes he’s utterly literal all the time, and this time it’s bitten him in the ass.

“[Any potential Iraqi] Mandela’s dead because [our former friend and business partner and buyer of our chemical weapons ]Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.”

I guess taking him metaphorically isn’t exactly a walk in the park either.

Has “McArdled” become an adjective now?

No way. Jonah Goldberg’s already beaten her to the “I take it back” move. Jane Galt’s a retread.

If our President himself is about to collapse into gibbering, incoherent insanity, how the hell is anyone supposed to be able to keep up with the requisite amount of snark for that?

Do you think anyone will notice?

Where have all the Mandelas gone?
Long time passing
Where have all the Mandelas gone?
Long time ago
Where have all the Mandelas gone?
Saddams have picked them every one
When will they ever learn?
When will they ever learn?

What “Iraqi Mandelas”? What the holy hell is he on about?

Bush *does* know that Nelson Mandela helped his countrymen overthrow an oppressive regime that went against the will of the majority, right? On second thought. . .

Shorter Jillian:

“Fuck, Reavers“

I look forward to the day, 20 years or so from now, were it is revealed the Bush actually started suffering from dementia and senility around late 2004, with just a pinch of Alzheimer’s. Mebbe he’s already being treated for it, and today was just a bad day.

Mebbe he’s already being treated for it, and today was just a bad day.

That’s pretty much the premise of Donald Freed’s Patient #1.

Some Guy nails it, and he didn’t have to do that extra difficult triple axle to make it work either. Nice landing as well.

I like to think the double lutzes’ make up for it.

And i like anything that has a character named “The Doctor” XD

Righteous Bubba:

No way. Jonah Goldberg’s already beaten her to the “I take it back” move. Jane Galt’s a retread.

You spelled retard wrong, Bubba.

How embarrassing for you. The President’s quote was a compliment to Mandela. A leader during tyranny who comes out the other side to lead his nation out of darkness. A moral man. None exist in Iraq. Saddam had them killed. That’s Bush’s point. He did not say Mandela has passed. It’s respectful to wish there was a Mandela in Iraq. Should we just not bring his name up until the 89 year old passes away? The original question that the President was referring to was someone asking: “Where is this region’s (middle east) Mandela?” Is that person to be derided as someone who mistakenly thought that a frail 89 year-old Mandela was making the rounds, dodging jihadists in Iraq? I really can’t believe that someone would have misunderstood the President’s evoking of Mandela’s name in his statement. I can believe this though:

As one of the legions of faceless, nameless, wise-ass, know-it-all bloggers to get yet another shot in at George Bush… you should be embarrassed. You should be embarrassed that you’re among a generation of kids who are getting their “news” snippets from YouTube, the daily show, and fellow bloggers.

Rico, you should be embarrassed by your lame attempt to defend a predident who, literally, cannot speak two sentences in a row w/o screwing something up. Bush can’t express himself because he has nothing to express, except how stubborn he is. If Bush, instead of Lincoln, had debated Douglas we’d probably still be a slave-holding nation.

Where do you get your “news snippets,” media run exclusively for profit & slanted to forever perpetuate the power of its owners?

Easy there, Rico.

It’s not as if Bush actually cares about Iraq having no Mandelas.

Rico’s comment is so ripe for fisking.

I yield the floor.

Hanx for the floor, objectivelypro!

Dick Cheney (aka shrub’s master), re: Nelson Mandela.

Cheney has done his part to put colored people in their place worldwide as well. Cheney consistently voted against sanctions on South Africa for its policy of apartheid (which, translated in English, means “God’s chosen few”). Cheney even had the courage to vote against every House resolution calling for the release from prison of Nelson Mandela. Cheney’s Christian conviction that apartheid was right for South Africa (and Mandela belongs behind bars) has proven correct. While liberal Democrats were falling all over themselves to pander to the votes of penniless coloreds, whom our Godly forefathers brought to this blessed country just so those lazy creatures would have work, Cheney had the moral backbone to stand up and say, “Nelson Mandela is no different than most black men – he is a criminal.”

Rico, me thinks you’re a little bit too stupid to play in this sandbox.

And trust me, it takes one to know one.

Thankfully, I’m not defending Bush, which at least makes me marginally smarter than you.

I got Bush’s point about Mandela. But I disagree with it fundamentally. Common sense, decency, sanity, fairness, and peaceful coexistence cannot be defeated by the “death” of “one” man. Even if said death is merely a metaphor.

Bush is so fucking stupid he’s down to 29%. Keyes got 27% in the IL Senate race against Obama. Keyes is the Maginot Line of American politics.

Get a grip. Go back to the Malkin website and get some friends.

ifthethunderdontgetya:

Way to dig out a classic.

Reminds me of when Cheney (Dick) thought invading Iraq would leave us quagmired. But then Mr. 5-deferments wet his pants over and over and over again after 9-11. I claim him to be the most physically cowardly person ever to hold national office.

But, the man is a genius. After all, he picked himself for VP, knowing how easily manipulated our Esteemed (at least among his dick-sucking staff) Leader is.

Jesus, this stuff isn’t rocket science for anyone who has ventured outside their basements and mommies.

M. Bouffant, let me just compliment you. I was all set to reply to Rico, but then I read your response and I realized I could not have said it better.

Bravo.

I’m sure Bush was referring to Mandalas. Saddam Hussein destroyed all those circular Jungian symbols of completion and integration, because he didn’t like hippies.

Anyone remember Ilyka Damen? You may remember her from such threads as this one, Chris Clarke says:.

She’s baaacckkkkkk.

“How embarrassing for you. The President’s quote was a compliment to Mandela. A leader during tyranny who comes out the other side to lead his nation out of darkness. A moral man. None exist in Iraq. Saddam had them killed. That’s Bush’s point.”

That’s funny, I thought his point was that Iraq was crammed full of Mandelas and Appleseeds, and a wonderful western style democracy would burst forth once we’d otherthrown and then executed Saddam Hussein. Are you telling us now though that Saddam had ALREADY killed any hope, and people with hope, in Iraq before we went in…? So we’re now stuck in the middle of a violent ethnically cleansing civil war, and are too incompetent to lead Mandela style ourselves, and have to wait the however-many decades for a brand new Mandela to be born, mature, and begin to lead his nation out of the current American-run darkness? Well, that’s a bit of a bummer; you could have warned us about that earlier!

Also, as has already been mentioned, Cheney still to this day doesn’t regret voting against condemning the treatment of Mandela… guess Mandela was never all that anyway, eh?

Thanks, g, but I think we must give The Final Smackdown Award to Mr. Bacon & His Short Roll.

I got to defend Bush here. He’s clearly speaking metaphorically. Of course, he can’t even do that without chutzpah. His own vice president was one of the ones trying to make sure there were no Mandelas in South Africa.

Wouldn’t the actual answer to the question “Where is this region’s (middle east) Mandela?”, meant metaphorically or not, have been “In prison”?

And that sounds like a totally set-up question anyway. And even then Chimpy can’t do it right.

Ginger Yellow: Sadly, no. President Codpiece has never spoken clearly in his entire life.

“A moral man. None exist in Iraq.”

Ya got us there. Not one single moral man. (Women?) Hussein’s moral detector was that freakin’ accurate, swept the country daily, and it could kill in one shot! Not quite mass destruction, but it adds up.

Not one single moral man. (Women?) Hussein’s moral detector was that freakin’ accurate, swept the country daily, and it could kill in one shot!

This is why they were so enthused about an Iraqi democracy: if it works here with amoral thugs it’ll go swimmingly there.

Saddam killed all the Mandelas? How do we know that? How do we know the guy with the hood at Abu Ghraib wasn’t the Iraqi Nelson Mandela?

Besides, when did the GOP become pro-Mandela? Didn’t Cheney once condemn Mandela as a dirty communist?

Are you telling us now though that Saddam had ALREADY killed any hope, and people with hope, in Iraq before we went in…?

Well, in some sense, Saddam did kill all the Mandelas that arose in the Shiite south of Iraq after GWHBush’s Gulf War, and the US – thank you, Dick Cheney – failed to support them and let Saddam pick them off.

It’s hard to even react to this kind of crap anymore. It doesn’t mean anything at all. It means nothing when they say it because it means nothing at all to them. Just a convenient bone to mouth and growl around the edges of.

Mandela? Bush may not have known one way or the other whether Mandela is still alive — hell, he may not have known (pace, defender of the Royal IQ) who Mandela is at all — it’s something to use, a bone to mouth, a rhetorical growl. That’s all.

With kind regards,
Dog, etc.
i remember home

The President’s quote was a compliment to Mandela. A leader during tyranny who comes out the other side to lead his nation out of darkness. A moral man. None exist in Iraq. Saddam had them killed.

I think it’s an insult to the Iraqis, personally. At the beginning, there were some leaders who might have been the Iraqi Mandela: remember clerics like al Sistani or Muqtada al Sadr? We didn’t like them, and we made damn sure to ruin any chance they might have had of uniting the country.

Any potential Mandelas in Iraq would have been crushed by the people in charge: namely us. We didn’t want a Mandela; we wanted a puppet who would do what we told him. If Iraq were actually an independent regime, they would actually be able to kick Blackwater out of the country, like they tried.

Either Bush thinks Mandela was a puppet of the apartheid regime, or he expects us to believe that he actually would allow anyone remotely like Mandela to have any power in Iraq.

Both options prove Bush an idiot, don’t they?

did this really happen? He really did say that? Can we ever get some real reporting on who the president actually is? I know everyone says that Cheney is actually running the country — but how literally true is that? I mean, how feeble-minded is the president?

I mean, how feeble-minded is the president?

VERRRRY Feeble minded.

It’s also possible that one or two Iraqi Mandelas were killed by American smart bombs or white phosphorus rounds. Of course, pointing that out might be considered un-American, so I’ll just pretend I’m from Venezuela for the purpose of this post.

I was going to say something about al Sistani and Muqtada al Sadr, but Dorothy said it already.

What the good Herr Doktor said.

Nobody, so far, has mentioned what else the President said, “There aren’t any Martin Luther Kings in Eye-rack, either. I mean the Junior King, not the Senior King. But there aren’t any Senior Kings or Junior Kings or Coretta Kings in Eye-rack, either. Saddam had all them killed too, by Eye-rackey James Earl Rays. My daddy had nothing to do with that. We were all sitting at the dinner table in 1968, and the news said King was dead, and daddy said right out loud ‘I had nothing to do with that’ without anybody asking a question or anything. Did I already mention that there are no Eye-rackey Dale Earnharts neither?”

Nobody, so far, has mentioned what else the President said, “There aren’t any Martin Luther Kings in Eye-rack, either. I mean the Junior King, not the Senior King. But there aren’t any Senior Kings or Junior Kings or Coretta Kings in Eye-rack, either. Saddam had all them killed too, by Eye-rackey James Earl Rays. My daddy had nothing to do with that. We were all sitting at the dinner table in 1968, and the news said King was dead, and daddy said right out loud ‘I had nothing to do with that’ without anybody asking a question or anything. Did I already mention that there are no Eye-rackey Dale Earnharts neither?”

You, sir, win the thread. If the great Heineken brewers could mix colloquialism and parody, they might produce a post such as this.

There aren’t any Martin Luther Kings in Eye-rack, either. I mean the Junior King, not the Senior King. But there aren’t any Senior Kings or Junior Kings or Coretta Kings in Eye-rack, either. Saddam had all them killed too, by Eye-rackey James Earl Rays. My daddy had nothing to do with that. We were all sitting at the dinner table in 1968, and the news said King was dead, and daddy said right out loud ‘I had nothing to do with that’ without anybody asking a question or anything. Did I already mention that there are no Eye-rackey Dale Earnharts neither?

Did he really say that?

This is a joke.

Please?

I’d just like to share what I’ve discovered South Africans think of the issue, or at least the highly biased sample I’ve talked to.

In South Africa, Nelson Mandela is, deservedly or no (considering how quickly he liberalized and the fact his tenure has produced a monarchist party to the *left* of the ANC, I lean farther towards ‘no’), heavily lionized. And in no regard is he more lionized than as Freedom Fighter Mandela, something he does richly deserve. He languished in a shadowy prison for twenty-seven years, a two-generation procession of torture, abuse, and denial which the American right, Cheney and Bush Sr included, worked hard to prevent him from escaping.

Nelson Mandela is 87 and in horrible health. He is mortal. He is the only human being alive in South African history who everyone feels comfortable with – and happy with – and he is on the verge of death. Jokes, references, or metaphors involving his death are as well-appreciated as those regarding JP2’s death were among even liberal Catholics in the beginning of this decade.

There have been consistent rumors about his death spread by the sort of people who take on Nazi symbols and consider the end of Apartheid a war crime.

So basically, on the surface, Bush is helping spread the memes of people in South Africa who believe the ANC are a Judaeobolshevik front organization and Mandela is a secret Israeli agent (or whatever, I don’t know or care how exactly neo-Nazis think the world works). That’s offensive enough.

But when you deconstruct the metaphor, well, think about Saddam Hussein. (And considering that Apartheid SA was an Israeli ally during the time in which Saddam was Israel’s Public Enemy #1, South Africans know more about Saddam than most foreign countries.) Saddam went from the fairly respectable Israel as a nemesis to, after they humiliated him by pantsing him and his nuclear program, Iran – which is, well, something of a step down, but hey, at least they had human wave tactics, right?

But Iran beat him down to a stalemate. So he set his sights lower.

Then he fucked up Kuwait.

The Afrikaners wouldn’t have taken Saddam Hussein as an apprentice testicle-electrocutor, and Bush has just told a country that loves him that if he had been in Iraq his bitch ass would have gone down.

Mix that with his vice-president being a prominent pro-Apartheid campaigner while Mandela was being tortured in prison and his unprecedented decision to specifically snub Nelson Mandela for the high crime of criticizing his policy on the UN (Mandela took Clinton to the damned cleaners and Clinton wouldn’t have turned him down to save his life – it’s an international embarassment, albeit a minor one) – and the unfortunate confluence between the ‘Mandela is dead’ thing and the Mandela’s-death rumors spread by neo-Nazis there…

Well, I don’t think Bush wants to visit South Africa any time soon.

Told a country that loves MANDELA etc.

Frigging preview.

Then, pounding his lectern,
It’s like you kids have a private language, the way you’re always coming up with these new expressions.

Mandelas=Ponies

Horsies=Wishes

Bush=Ass

Another great post Jillian!

Thank Christ this was Oktoberfest in Cincinnati. Because instead of my head exploding RIGHT NOW it will just explode tomorrow when it gets word of what my liver was up to.

“Rico, me thinks you’re a little bit too stupid to play in this sandbox.”
-John O.

Ahh yes… “I’m smarter than you are”. Always the refuge of a TRUE genius. Superior intellect. Bravo!

I can’t believe I’m about to do this.

I’m going to defend Bush.

It’s pretty obvious that what he was trying to say was that Iraq has no charismatic leaders like Mandela who can lead Iraqis to their promised land, because Saddam killed them all.

Now, you can agree with that or not, but he wasn’t saying that Mandela himself is dead, and I can’t believe that so many people seem to think he was.

It makes you look dumber than he is.

Mario: As I said, what he’s actaully getting at is more offensive, not less. It is disappointing to see people misconstruing it, but even if it weren’t really poorly articulated it’d be a ridiculous and offensive argument anyway: ‘The Afrikaners were pussies. Now Saddam, he was brutal.’

I mean, the Republicans spent decades trying to make as if Apartheid-era South Africa was a bastion of freedom and democracy against the communocivilrightsofascists, so it’s at least consistent with the narrative. Just like the Yalta Betrayal bone he’s been throwing to the bigoted right wing in Eastern Europe. But it’s still fucking unacceptable for him as a representative of the United States to shit on Mandela like that.

I’ll be really glad when he’s out of office. I think you’re right about the people mistaking the statement looking dumber than him – I think having him as President has made us all half-retarded.