6-4-2004 Scapegoat?


If you go back and read what Bush said in the campaign, he's just doing what he said he'd do. You've got to give him credit for that...no one has the whole truth.--Bill Clinton, from a speech he gave yesterday

Here's the latest from the forum page:

Mark,

While flipping through channels, I stumbled upon the PCN channel. Who do I see? Sue Henry interviewing the mayor from Kingston. Holy crap, I thought to myself! We should get our mayor on one of these radio shows. Naturally I would suggest your saturday show, but I'm sure you don't want to give your phone number out. So what's wrong with going on the radio? Or better yet, how about a town meeting?

DAMMIT! That's twice that PCN sat in on Sue's show, and twice that I later forgot to turn on the video advertising box and watch her struggle with the multitude of buttons and 'puter arrays staring her in the puss. Whatever. I'm a freakin' bonehead. Sorry Suzie Q. Maybe next time.

Actually, I imagine that our mayor could probably appear on Sue's show any time he wants. She's only a phone call away. But, be warned, Fred Williams tried this in the past and it was, for the most part, a bust. Fred used to have Jimmy Connors and Tommy McG on on the last Friday of every month and most of the calls were moronic in nature.

Connors would generate calls from Scranton folks appreciative of his singing exploits at the latest church bazaar and McG would field calls from Wilkes-Barre folks obsessed with paving and curbside pick ups. Good ole McG would berate the callers that were even remotely negative and Connors mostly sucked up the non-stop praise from the Scrantonians that seemed to think having a manic falsetto in City Hall was all they needed.

But one day, true to form, Fred ripped McG a new one and McG went AWOL on Fred from there on out. After that, Connors showed a few more times and took more calls from folks that were more concerned with proving that they were on a first name basis with the mayor than they were with the sad state of their city. And Connors revelled in it.

If you want to have Tom Leighton sporting a pair of WILK headphones once or twice a month, why don't you suggest the idea to him. It's certainly not a bad idea. But I think it'll quickly degenerate into people calling and whining about facing life without a trash calendar, or some such mentally-challenged skimble-skamble. And I can't do it. As things have worked out, I just can't muster up the time for an internet radio adventure anymore.

I am a bit puzzled by your hankering for a "town meeting," though. Twelve of those adventures are conducted each and every year in this city. In common parlance, they are most usually referred to as City Council meetings. I'm not trying to piss ya' off or anything, but any one of us can vent at any one of those meetings. Tell the chickie you want to speak to council before the gavel bangs, your name goes on the tale end of the agenda, and before you know it-you are standing tall and raising some serious hell. And all the while, our council members will feign a smile and go out of their way to be respectful. Although, all bets and gloves are probably off after the exit the arena. I think they might snicker at the wackier folks in that back room.

Dude, lets cut to the chase. If you want to rant and rave at someone in an elected office, then f**king do it already. There is no safety in numbers at a "town meeting." And calling WILK, giving the call screener some fake name and then reaming the mayor out is counter-productive, if not downright pussy-whipped. If anyone has anything to say to the mayor, say it to him already. Do it! He might agree and he might not, but I seriously doubt that he'd dedicate his remaining days in this hole-scarred city to seeing to it that anyone suffers. The much-hated VLP is dead, or is there some new acronym that I am totally unaware of? Believe it or not, the new guy at City Hall is very approachable. I would dare to suggest that more people should approach him rather than sniping at him from afar.

Some of you people have got to rise above the trauma inflicted upon ya'll during the previous eight years. They're not all vindictive ogres, you know.


I had better do this before I forget. I'm a bit tired. From the e-mail inbox:

*******Hi Mark, How are you, Hope you are all doing great. I just wanted to drop you a quick note, my XXXXXX works as a XXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXX for the W-B/Scranton Pioneers and I'm not sure if you are aware but the staff has been camping out all week long outside their office near the arena hub in order to sell out the Sat. June 5th game, if the game sells out they will be able to donate $20,000 to Sgt. Sherwood Baker's son, so far they have reached almost 4,000 tickets sold but I think 7,500 is the sellout number, I was just wondering if you could post this to remind everyone this is for a great cause and some tickets are as low as five dollars to go see a great game and support a good cause, Thanks a bunch, SXXXXX*******

You would hope that game sells out, heyna? The guy died defending what we hold so dear. The least this community could do is send his kid to college for free. I can't be there. I'll be cruisin' the Susquehanna river tomorrow aboard Kayak Dude's Essex Class boat. It displaces 65,000 tons and cruises at a scary 30 knots, or something thereabouts. Anyway, I really hope they accomplish their noble goal.


If D-Day Had Been Reported On Today

by William A. Mayer

Tragic French Offensive Stalled on Beaches (Normandy, France - June 6, 1944) - Pandemonium, shock and sheer terror predominate today's events in Europe.

In an as yet unfolding apparent fiasco, Supreme Allied Commander, Gen. Dwight David Eisenhower's troops got a rude awakening this morning at Omaha Beach here in Normandy.

Due to insufficient planning and lack of a workable entrance strategy, soldiers of the 1st and 29th Infantry as well as Army Rangers are now bogged down and sustaining heavy casualties inflicted on them by dug-in insurgent positions located 170 feet above them on cliffs overlooking the beaches which now resemble blood soaked killing fields at the time of this mid-morning filing.

Bodies, parts of bodies, and blood are the order of the day here, the screams of the dying and the stillness of the dead mingle in testament to this terrible event.

Morale can only be described as extremely poor--in some companies all the officers have been either killed or incapacitated, leaving only poorly trained privates to fend for themselves.

Things appear to be going so poorly that Lt. General Omar Bradley has been rumored to be considering breaking off the attack entirely. As we go to press embattled U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt's spokesman has not made himself available for comment at all, fueling fires that something has gone disastrously awry.

The government at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is in a distinct lock-down mode and the Vice President's location is presently and officially undisclosed.

Whether the second in command should have gone into hiding during such a crisis will have to be answered at some future time, but many agree it does not send a good signal.

Miles behind the beaches and adding to the chaos, U.S. Naval gunships have inflicted many friendly fire casualties, as huge high explosive projectiles rain death and destruction on unsuspecting Allied positions. The lack of training of Naval gunners has been called into question numerous times before and today's demonstration seems to underlie those concerns.

At Utah Beach the situation is also grim, elements of the 82nd and 101st Airborne seemed to be in disarray as they missed their primary drop zones behind the area believed to comprise the militant's front lines. Errant paratroopers have been hung up in trees, breaking arms and legs, rendering themselves easy targets for those defending this territory.

On the beach front itself the landing area was missed, catapulting U.S. forces nearly 2,000 yards South of the intended coordinates, thus placing them that much farther away from the German insurgents and unable to direct covering fire or materially add to the operation.

Casualties at day's end are nothing short of horrific; at least 8,000 and possibly as many as 9,000 were wounded in the haphazardly coordinated attack, which seems to have no unifying purpose or intent. Of this number at least 3,000 have been estimated as having been killed, making June 6th by far, the worst single day of the war which has dragged on now--with no exit strategy in sight--as the American economy still struggles to recover from Herbert Hoover's depression and its 25% unemployment.

Military spending has skyrocketed the national debt into uncharted regions, lending another cause for concern. When and if the current hostilities finally end it may take generations for the huge debt to be repaid.

On the planning end of things, experts wonder privately if enough troops were committed to the initial offensive and whether at least another 100,000 troops should have been added to the force structure before such an audacious undertaking. Communication problems also have made their presence felt making that an area for further investigation by the appropriate governmental committees.

On the home front, questions and concern have been voiced. A telephone poll has shown dwindling support for the wheel-chair bound Commander In Chief, which might indicate a further erosion of support for his now three year-old global war.

Of course, the President's precarious health has always been a question. He has just recently recovered from pneumonia and speculation persists whether or not he has sufficient stamina to properly sustain the war effort. This remains a topic of furious discussion among those questioning his competency.

Today's costly and chaotic landing compounds the President's already large credibility problem.

More darkly, this phase of the war, commencing less than six months before the next general election, gives some the impression that Roosevelt may be using this offensive simply as a means to secure re-election in the fall.

Underlining the less than effective Allied attack, German casualties--most of them innocent and hapless conscripts--seem not to be as severe as would be imagined. A German minister who requested anonymity stated categorically that "the aggressors were being driven back into the sea amidst heavy casualties, the German people seek no wider war."

"The news couldn't be better," Adolph Hitler said when he was first informed of the D-Day assault earlier this afternoon.

"As long as they were in Britain we couldn't get at them. Now we have them where we can destroy them."

German minister Goebbels had been told of the Allied airborne landings at 0400 hours.

"Thank God, at last," he said. "This is the final round."

********


Let's do this. George Tenet resigned his position at the CIA. We have been treated to month after month after month of Democrats howling that intelligence failures directly led to the 9/11 catastrophe. They smelled blood. They demanded blood. And they saw no corresponding blood-letting. That infuriated them even further and they rode the 'intelligence falures' snake oil wagon until they became slightly more than f**king annoying.

So Tenet resigns. The man in charge of our intelligence agencies has walked away from the most criticized job in this country. So how should this latest development be interpreted?

Bush is scapegoating Tenet! Bush is screwing over Tenet to save his own ass! Every f**king thing that ever happens these days is another conspiracy thunk up at the Crawford, Texas ranch. Yesterday, it was Bush is too loyal to his underlings. Today, he's using one as a scapegoat. We wanted blood and we got it, but are we now satisfied? Nope. Bush is still breathing.

We've got Mike McGlynn in today's Voice referring to Bush's top guns as "lunatics," so I'm wondering why the news that the guy that presided over our supposed biggest intelligence failures ever having resigned isn't enough to satisfy the assholes that have been frothing at the mouth over our seemingly glaring intelligence failures.

If I could, I would ask that past his journalistic prime windbag McGlynn why Bush waited so f**king long to use one of his own as a scapegoat?

He didn't. The folks on the liars side of the aisle wanted blood, but the guy that slit his political wrists was not near the top of the target list. They want Ashcroft. They want Rumsfeld. They want Rice. They want Bush. They want blood. They want power. And if the country, or the war, or wars goes badly-so be it. They'll fix it once they reattain power. Or so they think.

The folks at the top of the perch are being forced to make life and death decisions nearly every day, while their detractors are putting lives at risk while working for a few political deaths.

I'm not sure who to fear more, the screwball Jihadists, or the screwball Democratic whores.

I gotta roll, but I do have to deliver yet another spinning back-fist to one Kevin Lynn. He started today's show by pointing out that Tenet is a good friend of the Bush family and he proceeded to repeat that claim throughout his mostly disjointed three-hour shift. What he failed to mention to the mental incontinents that follow his hogwash is that Tenet was appointed as the CIA head honcho by one President Bill Clinton. Nice try and all, Kev.

Drooler.

Nite