Little Black Dog

When I meet my fiance M. at a happy hour a few years ago the thing we talked about was our dogs. She had a little black cocker spaniel that she had gotten as a puppy. I had a big ridge-back/husky cross that I had gotten as a puppy. We went on for hours about our dogs, and it was on the strength of that conversation that I got her number and arranged a first date.

We owe the dogs a lot. She's had Onyx for 15 years and C'Bears been with me for 13. Beyond their companionship and their unwavering devotion, they have provided protection, solace, and more than a few laughs.

When some jerk's freakishly large pit-bull slipped it's leash and charged M., Onyx, and C'Bear, C'Bear calmly stepped between the rushing beast and M. and Onyx. She took the hit and stayed in the fight until the jerk got control of his dog. When the pit-bull was gone C'Bear calmly whet back to watching over M. and Onyx unit I got there.

M. calls C'Bear 'The Protector' because of the way she watches over us. I call Onyx "The Little Black Dog" but M. calls her "Genius Dog" and that's the better description. M. taught Onyx to do everthing she could think of. Onyx will pick up objects on command, carry her blanket from room to room, open cabinets for us, and fetch her leash for us. Since she's been loosing her hearing for the last couple of years, M. taught her sign language for all her tricks. When we gave the dogs puzzle cubes for X-Mass one year (you put treats in the cube, put the cube on the floor, watch the dog learn to roll the cube around until they get a treat) Onyx immediately began flipping the cube over with her nose snarfing down treats as she went. C'Bear, on the other hand, lay down with the cube, clutched it tightly between her front paws, and began to slowly and methodical destroy the " indestructible" cube to get to the treats. Intellectual finesse juxtaposed against Alexandrian directness is how I describe that X-mass morning.

I guess I should mention here that as a younger dog Onyx suffered some abuse at the hands a stranger and a couple of bad dogs. It's a long story with a short summery: Onyx won't interact socially any dog other than C'Bear. Even though they have lived together for a year, Onyx still won't play with C'Bear and faced with any dog other than C'Bear Onyx simply pretends the other dog isn't there.

A month ago Onyx started to limp a little. Luckily we took her in instead of just thinking "She's an old dog and she's probably just a little sore." The vet did some x-rays and we got the bad news: the limp was caused by a form on cancer, an osteosarcoma growing on Onyx's right femur.

And just like that we found ourselves in a place where we couldn't be Onyx's protector any more. The thing she needs protection from is out of our hands.

Onyx is on an operating table right now and when we see her again she'll be missing a leg. The fact that amputation was our only option didn't make the choice much easier.

M. is at home cleaning like a madwoman and trying not to worry. I wish I was in the gym doing bag-work or on the mat wrestling so I could be thinking about moves instead of worrying about our 'little black dog', but my job today is to be the one who sits by the phone and waits and worries and hears the good or the bad news and carries it back to M.

Waiting and worrying about the woman I love and the little black dog we both love, I'm struck by the irony of how we pretend to be strong for the ones we love at times like this, times when strength means nothing at all....

And before I can even post we have good news: our little black dog came though her surgery just fine. We'll see her in a couple of hours and take her home sometime tomorrow. Our little black three-legged genius dog.

Damn You Maureen Dowd! Damn You!

Normally I have no use for Maureen Dowd. I find her semi-coherent screeds tiresome and, lets face it, my own semi-coherent screeds are far more entertaining ('butt-monkey' hee hee).

But this is the last straw. In her NYT column today, not only is she coasting on the coattails of my own brilliant work (the aforementioned Butt-Monkey piece - scroll down), she also lays claim to a phrase I really wanted for my own :

... crusted-nut-bar Dick Cheney ...

It's Brilliant. Damn Her! Damn Her to HELL!!!!

National Security Advisor / Butt-Monkey

So I am sitting at my Starbucks this morning looking over the dead tree version
of the New York Times when I come across this article explaining that Stephen J. Hadley is getting a promotion because he's 'loyal'.

"Loyal how ?" you ask. "Loyal like a dog maybe ?"

Uhm... No. It's more like 'Stockholm Syndrome loyal'.

You see when the USA channel cranks out "Triumph of the Bat-Shit Crazies : Round II, The Man-Date" they are going to have to get Lee Majors to play Hadley because:

Perhaps the lowest moment for Stephen J. Hadley in the first administration of George W. Bush came in July last year when he publicly took the blame for including in the president's State of the Union address a discredited intelligence report that said Iraq had sought uranium from Africa.

"The high standards the president set were not met," Mr. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, told reporters in a rare on-the-record session in the Roosevelt Room across from the Oval Office.

It was an extraordinary and embarrassing moment in public view for the ultimate
behind-the-scenes foreign policy adviser. But it illustrated what friends and colleagues say is an important trait of Mr. Hadley: loyalty.

That's right, Hadley was the 'Fall Guy'. In July of 2003 he stood up before the whole world and said :

"I'm an incompetent boob! Sorry."

Now it goes with out saying that the Fall Guy is usually taking responsibility so that someone higher up doesn't have too; that's why they call them the 'Fall Guys'. In
this I am sure that Hadley is no exception. But there are certain important rituals that are traditionally observed when a public servant like Hadley takes 'The Fall':

1. The 'Fall Guy' publicly takes responsibility for his actions.


2. The 'Fall Guy' ask for forgiveness from his superiors and the public.


3. The 'Fall Guy' turns in his resignation and walks away from public service.

Steps 1 and 2 are nice, but step 3 is where the the piper gets paid. Also, after step 3 is compleated the little people get to say:

"Well it's good to see that our goverment is still acountable too us. Is CSI on yet?"

Step 3 is also where the 'Fall Guy' gets to keep some of his dignity. If you skip step three then the piper does not get paid and you do not exit as a noble but flawed public servant taking responsibility for failing the people you serve. No, if you skip step 3 you just get to be someones butt-monkey. Only a butt-monkey would publicly sacrifice their reputation and their dignity to protect a higher up and then hang around waiting for a reward to fall from the same alter whence they were offered up.

Steven J Hadley skipped step 3 ergo Steven J Hadley is a butt-monkey. [Ed. Readers may substitute 'exhibits classic symptoms of Stockholm Syndrome' for 'is a butt-monkey' in this analysis.] Also, the piper is threatening to turn the bill over for collection.

Anyway, the Butt-Monkey is getting promoted. According to the article :

President Bush said that Stephen Hadley was a "man of wisdom and good judgment" who "has earned my trust."

In a sane world, the Times would just stop right here and say "What a load of crap!" because it is a load of crap. In a sane world a incompetent boob does not get to hang around after letting the president make a significant mistake in the state of the union address, much less get a glowing complement and a promotion from the president a couple of years later.

What has Hadley done to earn the presidents trust?

Mr. Hadley wrote an opinion piece for USA Today in June 2004 arguing that the administration had been right before the war to link Al Qaeda to Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq, a claim largely rejected by the commission studying the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

The piece is here and it is pretty hactacular, but it's nothing that the administration doesn't get for free from Safire every week. What else has Hadley done in the trust earning dept?

...he (Hadley) led the National Security Council's planning for postwar Iraq, which has turned out to be deadlier and far more difficult than anticipated.

Ok, that's it, I give up. Hadley's a incompetent boob. He's becoming our new National Security Adviser because he's been a loyal butt-monkey. National Security Adviser is an important position and I, personaly, would like to see a higher primate who still has some of their dignity left filling the role.

How You Gonna Come ...

Via every-where : I see that the Bush admin has finally begun a purge of one of the last great hotbeds of liberalism. No, not the State Department. State is where we are keeping the Panda Huggers. According to this very serious piece of reporting, the librals are all hanging out at the CIA:

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."

Since you know that every one of those long-haired, chronic loving, mac daddy, hipsters in the Clandestine Services department has it memorized, I'm recommending that all of them dial up Clash's classic The Guns of Brixton on their IPOD and crank it up!

A CNN broadcast that featured video of a bunch of hardened spooks wearing their ties like headbands and dancing like fools as they sing

"When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun"

at the top of their lungs would do nothing to sway the administration. But a few people in middle-America watching CNN with the sound turned down might see it and think:

"Wow! Those white guys in suits sure are bad dancers! What the hell is this? One of those bad German music videos? Why is it on CNN? Turn up the volume Ethyl. What The Fuck! Those guys are all CIA agents and their rocking out to the Clash in protest to the Bush administration calling the CIA 'a hotbed of librals'!?! Damned! That is whack! What fool would believe that the CIA is full of pansy ass librals? My uncle Fred was in the CIA and he's no pansy assed liberal. He once killed 3 heavely armed KGB Agents with nothing but a pair of nail clippers! You know Ethyl, I'm no East Coast libral elite but it seems clear to me that this debate can not be framed as a traditional libral vs. conservitive divide. I think we need to reframe thie debate in the more acurate terms of 'Bat-Shit Crazy vs sane' and I really wish the media would start phraseing it that way.

OK, it probably wouldn't happen exactly like that but you get the picture.

This represents an golden opportunity to reframe the debate in terms that would let the sane compete. So if anyone at the CIA is reading this and you don't want to just go quietly with your hands on your head, then put down your IPOD for a minuet, fix your tie, and let me give you some advice by way of Arlo Guthrie:

If one CIA agent, just one CIA Agent appears on CNN wearing his tie like a headband, dancing like a fool and singing "The Guns of Brixton" the viewers will think he's really sick and they won't pay any attention to him. And
if two CIA agents, two CIA agents appear on CNN wearing their ties like a headbands, dancing like a fools, and singing "The Guns of Brixton" in harmony, the viewers will think they're both faggots and they'll change the channel to Fox News.
But if three CIA agents appear on CNN wearing their ties like a headbands, dancing like a fools and singing "The Guns of Brixton" in harmony, three, can you imagine, three CIA agents appearing on CNN wearing their ties like a headbands,
dancing like a fools and singing "The Guns of Brixton" in harmony. The viewers
will think it's an organization and they'll tell all their friends they saw it.But can you, can you imagine fifty CIA agents appearing on CNN wearing their ties like a headbands, dancing like a fools and singing "The Guns of Brixton" in
harmony? The media and the viewers would thinks it's a movement. And thats what we need: 'The CIA Guns of Brixton Anti-Bat-shit-Crazies' Movement!

All I'm asking for is 50 CIA agents who can kind of keep a beat, an IPOD, and someone who knows how to call a press conference.

Go!

Bat-shit Crazy In Name Only

Via War and Piece
I see that someone has finally figured out what has been holding the Bush administration back all these years.

That "some one" is, of course, the clear-eyed realist and purported part time Iranian intelligence asset Michael Ledeen.

While many of us in the reality-based community just assume that most problems within the Bush administration are caused by the bat-shit crazy things they do and say. Michael points out that there are some members of the administration that are not technically bat-shit crazy and therein lies the problem. The Bush administration is bogged down in a self imposed morass created by its continued tolerance of memberes who are "Bat-shit Crazy In Name Only" (Bat-shit CINOs for short).

"Never mind those annoying RINOs like John McCain and Arlen Spector!", says Michael. "What the Bush administration must do immediately is to purge itself of those last few bastions of sanity that still pollute it's hallow halls."

And by "bastions of sanity" Michael means "People like Donald Rumsfeld."

I'm sure a lot of you made it this far thinking that Michael was just pitching a retread of that tired old "Colin Powell is a traitorous rat bastard" meme. But that is what separates us from Michael. We still labor under old memes and concern ourselves with things like 'idealogical purity' and 'thought crime'. But Michael has transcended the old memes and now he sees the new meme with a clarity that can only be gained when you are standing on the shoulders of giants. From his new post beside some giant's earlobe, Michael is calling the Bush Administration to him. Calling them to transcend idealogical purity, to recognize the limits of Orwellian control, and finally to move past both of these self limiting philosophies and join him in Bat-shit Crazy Nirvana-Land! [Ed. cue inspirational music here.]

Thats right folks: Michael Ledeen is now the Bodisapha for the Bat-shit Crazy.

"But what about Powell?" you ask. "Since the old RINO meme is gone does Powell get a pass?"

Hell no! Just like there's no crying in baseball, there's no room for people like Powell in Bat-shit Crazy Nirvana-Land.

According to Michael:

   The proper care of allies is right up near the top of a 

   secretary of State's mission, and the allies don't give 

   Colin Powell a passing grade. For that alone, he needs 

   to go.

Michael goes on to say that Powell "Forgot about Poland!" and that "Countries like France really doesn't feel comfortable talking to a sane guy."

So Powell's got to go. The perfect bat-shit crazy person to bring our allies back into the fold? Zell Miller obviously.

Rice has to go too. "Crazy, but not Bat-shit Crazy!" Says Michael. "Now Wolfowitz, he's f-ing Bat-shit Crazy and would make a perfect NSC adviser."

And what is Rumsfeld's sin? In what way is he still clinging to sanity? Michael is coy on that but, since Michael suggests James Woolsey as a replacement, my guess is that Rumsfeld simply doesn't blame Saddam for enough things that Iraq had nothing to do with.

Side Note: Maybe now that a pundit has finally called for a
Sister Souljah moment from the Bush administration Matt will be happy.

Maybe not.