Circle the wagons

[nacho]

Okay,

yotoc: Indictments in the CIA leak investigation case are expected to be handed down by a grand jury on Wednesday, bringing to a head a criminal inquiry that threatens to disrupt seriously President George W. Bush's second term.
Do you see the irony in this sentence?

Poor guy!  The revolution's coming and yotoc is hurriedly packing bags while the streets fill with chanting Democratic workers and the entire country grinds to a halt.  Bush voters are being machine gunned against the wall -- the end is near!

Right?  Or does it just not matter and everybody reading this has to rush off to their 12 hour workday?

Anyway, since I only have 20 minutes before I have to rush off to my 12 hour workday, let's start the wheels moving on a government freakout thread.  The indictments are coming down from the hills today.  Articles, discussions and on-camera suicides.  I want them all!

The sky is falling in DC!  I want to see political blood in the water, screams of agony, floating corpses.  The rise and the fall of emperors!  Give me a story, would you?  Rattle dem bones.

[nacho]

My grandfather's wrapped in a blanket in front of the TV with a case of Coca-Cola, a bag of bear claw's and four bags of chips.  24 hour deathwatch on CNN.  Volume at top level, settled back in the chair --

"WHO TAKES THE FALL FOR BUSH?" He screams over the TV as soon as he sees me.

"Stop shouting!"

He rubs his hands, folds them together, then looks at me with a giant smile.  I can't hear him over the TV, but he's mouthing the words, "Death to the king."

Even my aunt, usually under a drug haze of doom and despair, is spinning in circles.

I stop her, laughing, "Sue, it's all shit.  Even if something does happen, so what?  It'll be a sacrificial lamb, nothing bad, Cheney and Bush will stay there, the course will maintain.  Revolution, you see, is dead."

She shakes me violently, her smile fading, her face clouding.  "One is enough!  Anyone is good enough"  

Give us blood, give us blood.  Just feed it to us.  Throw one of your slaves through the palace doors and onto the street.  Close those doors and barricade them.  Let us creep, slowly, from the shadows and hovels and gutters, and devour them.  Feed us Rove!  Feed us Libby!  We'll take any portrait that has a name, we'll crawl through the dust in our tattered leper's robes and feed on the spleen of Karl Rove.  

Such simplicity in the mind of the revolutionary.  Sacrifice to us, tyrant king, and you buy yourself your last two years.

Hatred seethed at work yesterday.  The American liberals chattering, the news on every computer, hushed conversations in front of the wall-sized window that looks out at the Capitol Building.  The dome against the rainy sky, heads bent in the foreground.  Work will be at a standstill today.  Every breath caught, thin, hopeful smiles, hands shaking over the keyboard as webpages are refreshed, everyone waiting for the one who finds it first.  A shout of victory, the cue to refresh, refresh, refresh.

[RottingCorpse]

I think most of the reg'lar folks know it's all theatre. Rove or some other schmuck will get indicted and "step down," I'll owe Tyson ten bucks, There will be a two year trial that ends in somebody's reputation ruined and then it'll be the 2008 Prez election and everyone will be like, "Wilson? Plame? Rove? Libby? Who are they?"

Bush is lame duck, which is frightening because there's three years left in his presidency. The GOP are distancing themselves from him because he has turned out to be the incompetant obsessive compulsive his detractors said he was.

And of course the lib-lappers want blood! The karma flipping around on the Bushies isn't even close to what it should be. I'm going to tuned into CNN all day and jerk off everytime Rove says "I can't recall." Then I'll laugh maniacally screaming, "Caeser is crumbling!"

[Nubbins]

This country has 2nd term disease.  Clinton had Lewinsky, Reagan had the whole Iran Contra thing, Watergate... it's just too fucking typical.  Why does this always happen to us?  The only thing that seems to change are which groups of people want heads to roll.

I will give it to Clinton though... sperm stains on a business dress and a cigar to the crotch was hysterical.  What a card.

[Tyson]

See, I'd much rather have my president a pimp than a shifty-eyed freak.

But yeah, I'm loving this. CRUMBLE, ADMINISTRATION! CRUMBLE!

[nacho]

This country has 2nd term disease.  

Oh, look.  Those fuckers had it coming!  LBJ got us embroiled in horror.  Nixon fucked us in the ass.  Iran Contra wasn't some made up voodoo, we're living the results now.  Clinton was a power-mad hillbilly (you and I probably would have been fucking openly in the rose garden and throwing bottles at the Marine guards).

The second term disease clearly shows us that these fuckers are just like us and, yes, absolute power corrupts.  It also shows us that we're all a bunch of idiots.  LBJ had to murder to get into the White House.  That's where it began.  An illegal president who campaigned with a ghost in 1964 and won through a veil of tears and panic.  What he brought us blew our minds and shattered our hearts.  Nixon got picked up because the blind and the ignorant were running scared, Reagan's the same.  Clinton, too.

It's backlash disease.  Nixon was a backlash president who promised to remove us from a war that makes Iraq look like a jog around the YMCA track.  Reagan got elected in a backlash, the great second wind of modern Republicanism, with dark threats from Russia weighing on the same societal psyche that produced movies like Rock Hudson's World War III and the Day After.  Carter belonged in the 1930's, not in the world of Terrorvision.  Clinton is backlash through and through.  The most obvious example of it and, in turn, his actions created the Bush backlash.  No election since JFK/Nixon has had any sort of thought to it.  Since LBJ stepped down in disgrace, we've been throwing anybody who shows verve at the problem and hoping to god that it gets fixed.  We're not listening to people who say they have the solution, because the solution is costly and painful.  We want people to tell us it's morning again in America.  Cowboys!  So, instead of politicians, we hire out of work actors, local governors, populists, madmen and next door neighbors for the job.  The candidates who are pros don't even get a chance to breathe before they get plowed under a speedboat heavily laden with party animals.

Lunacy can reign for four years.  It takes that long to get your footing.  Then, roll on the second term.  These weak, weak men have the power.  They have nothing more to worry about.  They've been validated by an America that's been shivering and frightened and utterly confused since Chicago 68.  And when these madmen are off the leash, it shows.  They fuck interns and lie, they haul us, screaming, into war, they play global mind games that explode in our faces.

[yotoc]

Nobody answered my question!

[Tyson]

Irony being defined as "a meaning (often contradictory) concealed behind the apparent meaning of a word or phrase," I'm afraid I don't see any irony in the passage.

Am I missing something?

[RottingCorpse]

Nobody answered my question!

What's your question?

[monkey!]

Nobody answered my question!

What's your question?

Do you know the road to Why Kee Key?

[nacho]

Irony being defined as "a meaning (often contradictory) concealed behind the apparent meaning of a word or phrase," I'm afraid I don't see any irony in the passage.

Am I missing something?

Ooh, Mr. Dictionary!

Irony has evolved somewhat from what Mr. Webster says.  It could also be something that contradicts expectations or assumptions.  

Then there's the whole Romeo & Juliet thing.  I am shocked to realize that I forget which one faked death, because I've read the play 18 million times and I should know.  But, dramatic irony!  

Let's use a more liberal form of irony to carefully analyze yotoc's sentence, since we have plenty of time now that the indictments are not going to be announced for 72 years.

Edit:  Aha!  It's right in front of us.  The indictments did not come down, though we expected them to.  Right?  Or would it be the indictments are assumed to hurt the administration, but they won't realy...?  No?  Yes?

[nacho]

This thead's going to the editorial department! (Considering that I just talked to the head of the department and she told me that they're playing paper football down there.)

[Nubbins]

I think I see it....  "seriously President George W. Bush"... like, seriously... HE'S the President!

[nacho]

This thead's going to the editorial department! (Considering that I just talked to the head of the department and she told me that they're playing paper football down there.)

Haha:

Is the irony question is being asked by a conservative? Because there's liberal irony -- as in, isn't it ironic that an administration that sold itself to the American people as squeaky clean and above reproach is, in fact, as tainted as any of the most corrupt that have ever occupied the White House? Or perhaps that conservative "loyalty" turns out, IRONICALLY, to be as jaundiced and temporary as any so-called political loyalty.

[Tyson]

From Daily Kos:

With Fitzmas Day apparently upon us, I think it is important to remind folks of the big picture again - that the President of the United States Lied to the American People. Phil Singer of the DSCC reminds as well:

   BUSH THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF SAID HE'D FIRE ANYONE FOR LEAKING, THAT NOBODY WAS INVOLVED...

    Asked in June 2004 if he'd stand by his pledge to fire anyone found to have leaked, Bush replied "yes." [Bush Press Conference: Savannah, GA, 6/10/04]

    When the White House was asked specifically whether Karl Rove, Elliot Abrams or Lewis Libby told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said: "Those individuals -- I talked -- I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this. And that's where it stands." [White House Briefing, 10/10/03]

    "I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action." [Bush Remarks: Chicago, Illinois, 9/30/03]

    "The President has set high standards, the highest of standards for people in his administration. He's made it very clear to people in his administration that he expects them to adhere to the highest standards of conduct. If anyone in this administration was involved in it, they would no longer be in this administration." [White House Briefing, 9/29/03]

    BUSH THE CANDIDATE PROMISED TO UPHOLD THE HONOR AND INTEGRITY AT THE WHITE HOUSE...

     "I will swear to uphold the laws of the land. But I will also swear to uphold the honor and the integrity of the office to which I have been elected, so help me God," said then-Governor George Bush [CNN, "Inside Politics," 8/11/00]

    "Americans are tired of investigations and scandal, and the best way to get rid of them is to elect a new president who will bring a new administration, who will restore honor and dignity to the White House." [Then-Governor George Bush on CNN's "Burden of Proof," 9/15/00]

    "Americans want to be assured that the next administration will bring honor and dignity to the White House." [Then-Governor George Bush on CNN's "Capital Gang," 8/13/00]