Tom Gasaway sent me a link to this cartoon, but I don’t get it.
Is it trying to say that Condi is an amazing asset to the US who brings us all kinds of wonderful surprises? Could we get her to give up her current job and come work at the Common Cup in lovely downtown Morris? I’d order lunch there every day, I promise.
The whole administration is on over it’s head.
Just wish a giant squid would keep them under and drown them out of our misery.
If Condi went to work at Common Cup is wrong for two reasons:
1) The coffeehouse looks like a nice place and Condi’s incompetence would put the quaint small town java house out of business.
2) Who would replace her in her old job? Knowing how well the President picks people, such as FEMA’s “heck of a job” Brownie, we could end up with someone even more incompetent than Condi. However impossible that may seem I am confident the President will actually meet my expectations in this respect.
It would be a wonderful suprise for you, but it would annoy the squid.
Nah. I think the squid would find it very entertaining.
Hey, the same thing happened to me at a diner in Florida!
It’s dry humor… very very dry. I like that sort of dryness myself, but your mileage… etc.
Why doesn’t she wear her stormtrooper boots in the Middle East?
No, PZ, Condi would not provide you with good service at the Common Cup. You’re jumping to the unsupported conclusion that you could get yourself a nice squid just by ordering grilled cheese. Since Rice is a master of the non sequitur, she’d bring you something chosen at random each time. Maybe even those stormtrooper boots of hers, perhaps garnished with a nice sprig of parsley. Yum!
Hmm. I just watched something on the history channel last night that “almost” explains the delusions. Turns out that one nut in the ME, around the time of Hitler, was going around every place promoting anti-semitism and copies of Hitler’s autobiography. This person helped found the Baath party, after spreading his money and followers all over the ME. The rifts we now see between Shia and Sunni came about towards the end of the war, when one side fought against the British, while the other fought beside them. This was most obvious in Iraq, where Saddam’s favorite uncle, who was in the battle, described Kurds, Shia and Jews as the greatest enemies if the Arab people. Saddam eventually joined up with the Nazi copy cats in the Baath party, embraced their state of facism and secret police, then implimented the same when he got power in Iraq.
In other words, much of the $@#$#@ ME is still fighting WWII, on top of the fact that they are also still fighting other wars from centuries before that. Nazism didn’t die with Germany’s defeat, it just turned into an Islamic version, and the west either forgot about the connections between it and Hitler’s forces, or ingored it, because it wasn’t politically expedient to wipe out the rising facist groups in the ME, especially Syria, where the most pro-Nazi Baath group is located, and who have a party flag that is based on a version of the swatztica.
It throws a much clearer light on the kind of nuts we are dealing with and why the disease has spread so wide. Yet… Somehow I doubt Bush was thinking about these facts when making his plans. I doubt he is smart enough to understand the connection, or how badly all of us screwed up by letting the bastard that started the whole thing survive through the end of WWII, then both promoted the rise of people like Saddam, and also becoming a leader of one of the ME nations himself. The only thing we could have screwed up worse would have been if Hitler had lived, but somehow escaped into the ME to promote the rise of a new movement from there. Internal fracturing, betrayals where not every side agreed on either the anti-semitism or just who would be in charge and the loss of German support for a single unified Arab state, probably under Baath party rule, are all that has kept the ME from turning into a new Arab version of the third reich. Thankfully, in spite of screwing up by letting this clown escape, then letting him rise to actual power as a leader in the ME, our other screw ups got enough factions pissed off at each other to leave them fighting with each other, not us. This is what, ironically, may have created terrorist organizations. They realize we fouled things up so bad that no single unified anti-semitic Arab state is possible, and worse, we continue ot meddle in things and mess up all their plans.
Now imagine, given the connections to Hitler, and the influence of his ideals of nearly every country in the ME, what would have happened if we hadn’t had our fingers in all the pies and left them alone, like some people advocate we now do… Scares the hell out of me to contemplate. There is no way in hell is would be “better” than things are now, assuming you believe the historical accounts about the meetings, connections and events surrounding the creation of the Baath in Syria, and other connected events.
Liberals are short on explaining what could have been done in the month after the August 6, 2001 President’s Daily Brief was discussed to change the course of history. If you notice; the dates in the document were already several years old. (It’s at thesmokinggun.com – I can’t include the link)
If only Gore were president he would have instantly recognized a pattern deducing where, when and how.
If only Gore were president he would have instantly recognized a pattern deducing where, when and how.
He would have continued the anti-Al Qaeda strategies that Bush ignired, and he wouldn’t have sat like a stunned deer for 7 minutes.
He also wouldn’t have shredded the Constitution, started immoral wars that distracted us from getting bin Laden, or set up concentration camps in Cuba.
Here’s a liberal explaining what a president like Gore would’ve likely done: pretty much what Clinton did when his guys heard chatter from terrorists. First, you get all your security guys together — not underlings, but the heads of agencies and departments; then you tell them to beat the bushes and put on a (quiet) alert. You tell these heads to meet each day with the latest details their people in the hinterlands have dug up, and you run with that. Then you catch the guy(s) — just as Clinton’s people did at Port Angeles, Washington in going after the chatter they’d heard, stop the Millenium plot (blowing up LAX) and try and convict the guy. All without alarming the populace and without destroying the Constitution.
Sounds good to me.
Using that method would’ve turned up the FBI informant living with hijackers, found the Minnesota guy learning to fly 747s, had plenty of time to (quite legally) get into his laptop and uncover the contacts therein, uncovered the other visa and legal problems that various of the hijackers had, and almost certainly captured, tried, and convicted the plotters. And of course Gore almost certainly wouldn’t have called off the dogs they had going after terrorist plots like Bush?Cheney/Rove did.
Besides the fact that if the attack had gone through, President Gore would not have called off the pursuit when we had bin Laden cornered — like Bush did — it’s highly likely the WTC attacks would’ve been foiled under president Gore.
Turns out that one nut in the ME, around the time of Hitler, was going around every place promoting anti-semitism and copies of Hitler’s autobiography. This person helped found the Baath party, after spreading his money and followers all over the ME.
On Syrian transcripts you still see “National Socialism” in the first couple of years of university.
That said, your imagined counter-scenario is ridiculous. Arabs and Jews have a longer history than Hitler’s life, the Baath party was never what Islamists wanted (nor is socialism, state or otherwise), “messing up plans” is an unfortunate euphemism for “completely fucking up the region”, “better” another euphemism for I-don’t-know-what etc.
“I don’t get it.”
Maybe a reference to her performance as National Security Adviser? Some people think she didn’t do much actual advising, just sort of moderated between the various strong egos.
President Gore would not have called off the pursuit when we had bin Laden cornered — like Bush did — it’s highly likely the WTC attacks would’ve been foiled under president Gore.
Well thought out, QrazyQat. I don’t beleive it. I think Gore would have ignored this PDB too because he would have been waist deep trying to get Kyote ratified.
Poor Condi! You damned liberals just don’t want to give her ANY credit, do you?! Between her piano recital and appearing on the O’Reilly Factor, she’s been working HARD at dragging her feet while the violence in the Middle East spirals more out of control by the minute. God bless Dr. Rice. I hope her diligence allows El Presidente to take another 5 week vacation on his dirt farm.
Well thought out, QrazyQat. I don’t beleive it. I think Gore would have ignored this PDB too because he would have been waist deep trying to get Kyote ratified.
I see no sign that Gore was so easily sidetracked. Any more than Clinton was, with a concerted rightwing effort to worry about from many angles he still managed to stop not just the Millenium bombing plot but capture and try and convict the principles in the first WTC bombing plot. OTOH, we see that the combined efforts of the entire Bush administration can’t even manage to accomplish what they concentrate on en mass.
And BTW, in case anyone really can’t see the point to this cartoon, the main one, IMO, is that Condi’s failed efforts and her excuses for the repeated failures would put her in firing position even at an average eatery, whereas in the bush administration she’s not just untouchable, but someone you find touted as a possible presidential candidate.
Presidential. As in “would get fired as a server at a diner” but is nonetheless a fine candidate for President of the United States. Bizarre.
“Is it trying to say that Condi is an amazing asset to the US who brings us all kinds of wonderful surprises?”
You’re overthinking this. The cartoon explains what it means – Condi is too incompetent to be a decent waitress
I think it’s just saying that now, she’s not having any actual input whatsoever – just nodding and saying Yes like everybody else. Anybody prepared to agree with the president could do her job. Being a waitress – that’s hard.
To me the clear implication is that Rice lacked the smarts as National Security Adviser to understand the threats posed by Al Queda and Osama Bin Laden. The NSC, which she chaired as NSA, is responsible not for just passing on reports–any idiot can do that–but to read them and synthesize the results for the President. Condi didn’t do that in 2001 and should have resigned or been fired. (Basically the creation of the national intelligence czar, John Negroponte, was done because Condi failed to fill her role as NSA.) The last panel just implies, as others have observed, that Condi, if working as a waitress in a diner, couldn’t even get an order of a grilled cheese sandwich straight, but at least as a waitress she wouldn’t throw the whole world into a tizzy, only an order or two from some poor sucker who had the misfortune to drop in on her diner. At least that’s how I see it.
The joke is that Condi was so clueless about how to handle a straighforward and incredibly detailed analysis on terrorist Osama Bin Laden’s evident intentions that she thought doing nothing was the right way to handle it. In the cartoon she was so clueless about how to simply fill and order for a cup of joe that she brought out an octopus thinking that it was the same as what was expected of her.
Clueless.
MYOB’
.
Dude, the rift between Shia and Sunni came about something like 1500 years ago, shortly after the death / accession of Muhammed.
It was an order for a grilled cheese sandwich. It would seem you’re not much more competent than Condi.
Liberals are short on explaining what could have been done in the month after the August 6, 2001 President’s Daily Brief was discussed to change the course of history.
Bush Cultists are short on explaining why they give Bush — whom they revere as Commander in Chief and are willing to sacrifice any amount of liberty and honor in their frenzy to look to him as a protector — a free pass for doing, so far as we know, absolutely nothing in the month after the August 6, 2001 President’s Daily Brief.
Remember Condi’s pathetic babbling that there was no warning — hastily amended to “no specific warning”?
Remember their struggle to keep even the title of the PDB classified?
Bush’s primary duty is to defend the US, and he didn’t lift a finger.
Um, guys? PZ was being facetious.
I’m surprised this many people would miss PZ’s in-joke of pretending not to understand. Of course he knows the intended message of the comic, but to *him*, serving up a *cephalopod* is always a “wonderful surprise”, no matter what you were expecting or asked for. (Especially a cephalopod with eyebrows – that really is a surprise!)
We can never really know what would have happened with a different president in office. We do know what *did* happen with a different president in office: Al Qaeda failed to carry out any major terrorist attack while Clinton was in office. It was only once Bush took over that they were able to succeed. It’s possible that might be a coincidence, I guess, but it sure doesn’t look good for Bush.
Oh, and no major wars broke out in the Middle East while Clinton was in office, either (although there was one in the Balkans). Bush started one and catalyzed (and is now encouraging) another. It’s hard not to reach the conclusion that he *wants* there to be more wars around the world.
Dude, the rift between Shia and Sunni came about something like 1500 years ago, shortly after the death / accession of Muhammed.
Should have said, “it got wider”. There was a concerted effort by the nut I mentioned to try to create a single Arab state and yes, anti-semitism did exist before then, it provided fertile ground for the addition of Nazi ideology. Sorry about messing up the facts. I over emphasized the issue. But the fact still stands that the Baath, even if most of the ME doesn’t want that, was still founded by the same man that incited pro-Nazi ideals throughout the rest of the region, before he become an even bigger problem, by taking actual control over one of the countries. And we “still” ignored the connection, ignored the reality of what was going on, and ironically may have weakened the ability for a more consistent movement to form, even as we screwed everything else up.
Caledonian | August 3, 2006 09:13 AM
Brain drain. I thought he said coffee.
But there was no need for insults.
MYOB’
.
Al Qaeda failed to carry out any major terrorist attack while Clinton was in office. It was only once Bush took over that they were able to succeed
What an interesting way to look at the world. It’s called Post hoc, ergo propter hoc.