"Lame Duck Still Quacks" by Jon Spitz

Jon’s back. After taking a few weeks off to work on local issues involving water rights, Jon is again writing columns for the Mendocino County Observer. The Observer is the weekly newspaper in Laytonville, California, a town of 1,301 residents that straddles U.S. 101 one hundred and sixty miles north of San Francisco. Since last October, I’ve featured several of his columns with links below.*

His most recent, "Lame Duck Still Quacks," is well worth reading. In the first paragraph he sets the tone by stating “…[T]here is still a bloody war going on in Iraq and …we still have a sitting president who is literally getting away with murder.”

Jon focuses on the underreported war in Iraq, the negative impact of the “surge,” and the likelihood the war will rage on regardless of who is nominated for president next November.

Not just one war. We may be on the verge of a second war. Excerpt: “With virtually no Congressional resistance to his war in Iraq, Bush felt empowered to spend much of his recent trip to the Middle East trying to drum up support from Islamic countries for his plan to bomb Iran. Unlike the cowering US Congress, however, the leaders of these countries did not bow down to the naked emperor, and Bush came away with no local Middle Eastern support for his lunatic plan. But such rejection means nothing to Bush and the bombing of Iran is still very much on his agenda.”

There are many more insightful comments in the article. In Jon’s concluding paragraph he warns, “…Bush is not gone, and in these perilous months before the November election he is still in a position to do a lot of damage. Public beware – this lame duck is still quacking.”

Related reading: Today’s post by Dan Froomkin, "Bush's Peace of Mind" (scroll down to the second section). It describes Bush’s sangfroid in the face of the disastrous Iraq war: “Yesterday, as the American military death toll in Iraq passed 4,000, Bush's first public appearance was at the annual Easter Egg Roll, where he appeared in high spirits. Today he participated in a photo op with two bass-fishing champions. ‘There's nothing better than fishing,’ he said.”

* Jon’s previous columns:
”ClintObamaInc.”
"Full-spectrum impotence"
"Don't look now, but here come the thought police"
"The Suddenly Impeachable Mr. Cheney"
"Frank Rich....and Jon Spitz...comment on the Mukasey confirmation"
"The collapse has begun"

(photo of Jon provided by him)