At (Wolfo)Witz End: Who's The Next Corrupt Bushie at the World Bank?

The World Bank needs another corrupt, incompetent, crony-loving, misleader to make it even tougher for poor, third world countries to survive.

So who's next, once Paul Wolfowitz resigns while insisting he did NO wrong?

Sadly, the Bush Administration seems to have an endless supply of corrupt incompetents from whom to choose. Keith Olbermann on "Countdown" last night suggested the brain dead Alberto Gonzales. Others have said perhaps Tony Blair for those times when he's not, in retirement, humping his master, George Bush's, leg.

Ideas?

Maureen Dowd: "Labors Love Lost"

MoDo takes on Tony Blair's successor in Great Britain:

Gordon Brown’s smile does not look at home on his face. It sits there uneasily, like an uninvited guest at a party, until his features can resume their comfortably dour grooves.

The brooding Scot ended his decade-long run as a hefty Heathcliff to Tony Blair’s chatty Cathy, stepping out of the shadows Friday with visible relief to begin a campaign for prime minister that he has already won.

Grumpy Gordon is an enigma compared with Captain Showbiz, as the glib Mr. Blair is called by a morning TV host here. The 56-year-old son of a Presbyterian minister, with hooded eyes and frugal charm, will be hard pressed to compete on the European stage with Iron Frau Angela Merkel and Nicolas Sarkozy, dubbed “Thatcher without petticoats.”

Mr. Brown’s school friends came on TV to say he was more fun than he looked. “He enjoys a good glass of wine,” said his pal Bill Campbell.

The chancellor has been striving to move beyond his reputation as a man so obsessed with the budget that he wouldn’t even share the details in advance with Tony Blair. He traded the green eyeshade for pastel ties. He told a women’s magazine that he liked the rock band Arctic Monkeys, but later couldn’t name any of their songs.

Mr. Brown was considered the uncool half of the Cool Britannia team that swept into power on a wave of Champagne, celebrities and Cherie Blair’s New Age guru. But thanks to his role as W.’s interlocutor and translator, Tony Blair is uncool, too.

The first boomer prime minister got a blazing start in trying to make Britain more modern and tolerant. But he fell in with an American crowd of bullies who were turning back the clock on modernity and tolerance, and Tony abused Britons’ trust.

Blair Gets Booted, But We're Still Bushwhacked!

Let me paraphrase one of the few decent things I heard on Friday's "Real Time with Bill Maher" on HBO:

"Tony Blair cited his reason for stepping down from leading Great Britain

as a desire to spend more time (not with his family BUT)

humping Bush's leg, just like a good little lapdog should."

Goodbye, Cool Brittania

No more lapdog for Bush? No more bridge between the U.S. and Europe?

Read what The Newshoggers (Cernig, especially) have to say on the matter of Blair's anticipated resignation tomorrow.

Wew.

British Troops Seized By Iran

The seizure of at least 15 British marines by Iran on charges that they trespassed into Iranian waters is a situation to watch closely. The videotape of the marines sitting in a room, blindfolded, certainly whips up some emotion.

However, we know that both the U.S. and Great Britain have violated Iranian territory (both sea and air) many times in the last few years and some report this has increased significantly over the last several months. Iran has the right to seize ships and sailors who trespass just as the U.S. does on a pretty regular basis.

Before anyone screams and yells about the "horrible treatment" Iran is giving these marines, stop and think what the United States is doing. Our "secret" detainees are tortured, shipped all over the globe, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

I am not exactly into conspiracy theories, but I've watched the Bush Administration socially engineer and lie about so much that I find myself wondering if the Bushies and Tony Blair did not set up a scenario by which Bush can have the war with Iran he seems to want so desperately. When people lie and destroy so much, so often, there is literally nothing you can put past them.

Maureen Dowd: "A Cat Without Whiskers"

[Note: Did you catch Dick Cheney pretty much endorsing McCain on one of his whistlestops late this past week? Urgh.]

MoDo takes on John McCain and his almost outlandishly named campaign vehicle, "The Straight Talk Express" (straight, perhaps, as in straight into hell):

SEATTLE -- So some guy stands up after John McCain’s luncheon speech here yesterday to a group of business types and asks him a question.

“I’ve seen in the press where in your run for the presidency, you’ve been sucking up to the religious right,” the man said, adding: “I was just wondering how soon do you predict a Republican candidate for president will start sucking up to the old Rockefeller wing of the Republican Party?”

Mr. McCain listened with his eyes downcast, then looked the man in the eye, smiled and replied: “I’m probably going to get in trouble, but what’s wrong with sucking up to everybody?” It was a flash of the old McCain, and the audience laughed.

Certainly, the senator has tried to worm his way into the affections of W. and the religious right: the Discovery Institute, a group that tries to derail Darwinism and promote the teaching of Intelligent Design, helped present the lunch, dismaying liberal bloggers who have tracked Mr. McCain’s devolution on evolution.

A reporter asked the senator if his pandering on Roe v. Wade had made him “the darling and candidate of the ultra right wing?” ( In South Carolina earlier this week, he tried to get more evangelical street cred by advocating upending Roe v. Wade.) “I dispute that assertion,” he replied. “I believe that it was Dr. Dobson recently who said that he prayed that I would not receive the Republican nomination. I was just over at Starbucks this morning. and I talk everywhere, and I try to reach out to everyone.”

But there’s one huge group that he’s not pandering to: Americans.

Most Americans are sick and tired of watching things go hideously backward in Iraq and Afghanistan, and want someone to show them the way out. Mr. McCain is stuck on the bridge of a sinking policy with W. and Dick Cheney, who showed again this week that there is no bottom to his lunacy. The senator supported a war that didn’t need to be fought and is a cheerleader for a surge that won’t work.

It has left Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, once the most spontaneous of campaigners, off balance. He’s like a cat without its whiskers. When the moderator broached the subject of Iraq after lunch, Mr. McCain grimaced, stuck out his tongue a little and said sarcastically, “Thanks.”

Defending his stance, he sounds like a Bill Gates robot prototype, repeating in a monotone: “I believe we’ve got a new strategy and it can succeed. I can’t guarantee success. But I do believe firmly that if we get out now we risk chaos and genocide in the region.”

He was asked about Britain’s decision to withdraw 1,600 troops from Iraq. “Tony Blair, the prime minister, has shown great political courage,” Mr. McCain said. “He has literally sacrificed his political career because of Iraq, my friends,” because he thought “it was the right thing to do.”

Read the rest here and MoDo's right: McCain really is into far right GOP pandering.

More Political Cartoons Part 1

On the subject of Bush, Cheney, the Iraq Escalation/Surge, and Tony Blair's announcement of Great Britain's exit strategy for its troops from Iraq; from New Jersey, India, and Canada... all available at Political Cartoons.

The British Speak While U.S. Republican Senators Go Mute: England To Withdraw Troops From Iraq

CNN has just reported that Prime Minister Tony Blair, often called George Bush's lap dog, has announced a sped-up timetable for withdrawing English troops from the abyss that Bush has made Iraq. British citizens have been screaming for an end to their participation in Iraq far longer than it has been popular here.

And with this announcement, can Blair's final days be long off? I doubt it.

Would that Bush's last days were less than the nearly 700 which remain.