The Written Peace: Open Forum of November 19, 2006

It is way past time for an open thread here at The Dark Wraith Forum.

I had a minor, special announcement to make, but I'll have to hold off on that until at least tomorrow. My effort to get everything in place for a weekend announcement of my latest endeavor turned into a fiasco of almost incomprehensible proportions. It was about the weirdest little experience I've had in quite some time. I'm not going to even try to figure out what all happened and why it all happened because every one of the possible, logical explanations for how I got out of the mess boils down to intervention by either gods or demons. I just don't need the aggravation right now of sorting out which it was.

Anyway, I should start off with a call for proposals.

Shakespeare's Sister has noted that Morton Kondrake has attempted to slap on soon-to-be-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi the nickname "Wicked Witch of the West."

As Mr. Kondrake notes, former House Speaker Tom Delay—every last bit the manly-man—was called "The Hammer," a term that veritably exudes power, force, and irrestible pressure. One might also note that a hammer is a tool, perhaps a faint acknowledgment of the old, derogatory description of a jerk as being "a real tool." Even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, himself no paragon of gentility in his political life, agreed in saying, "A hammer is a relatively dumb symbol."

Question for this open forum: If House Speaker Pelosi is to have a nickname, what should it be? Better yet, we have so many, many nicknames for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, would it be better if we settled on some standards, some small set of names that we could use, say, for the next fifty years, and every time we did so, we'd get a rousing round of laughs?

Or do such standards stifle innovation? Is it possible that there's a nickname for Bush or Cheney out there of which no one has thought, yet, and we need to leave the field open in the hope that this gloriously perfect handle will finally emerge, and we'll all say, "Wait a minute... Yeah... YEAH! That's it: that's the perfect nickname!"

It's a tough call, but we need to make it before the Republicans beat us to the punch line in their zeal to distance themselves from their former masters.


Moving on, Minstrel Boy, he of fame at Harp & Sword and Big Brass Blog, posted a wonderful comment over at Pam's House Blend. Pam published an article about a cretin who serves as vice president of the school board in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. It seems that, in reference to the new Gay-Straight Alliance group at the local high school, he used the term "sex club." When admonished to use the appropriate, proper name for the group, he came back with the zinger, "Okay, the faggots." Sweeeet.

Anyway, in the comment thread to that post of Pam's, Minstrel Boy explained that he is encouraging his son to stop using the popular, deragotary declaration, "That's so gay," and instead use the truly damning put-down, "That's so evangelical."

Goodness, gracious, what a springboard Minstrel Boy has put up over the cesspool of intolerance! This is the start of something big, I tell you. Let's take a few departures for consideration:

"That's SO Republican!"

"That's SO Dickie Cheney!"

"That's SO neoconnie!" (With the optional addendum, "You're so CUTE in your little Junior Jackboots!")

"That's SO Ted Haggart!"

Working outward a bit, we have these possible nuggets.

"Oh, go IM Mark Foley, why don't ya?"

"Don't you have a poster of Ann Coulter you could be romancing right now?"

Enough of this inappropriate stuff. We should be striving to build bridges to our intolerant, hateful, uninformed, twisted, vicious, freedom-hating brethren on the Right. What the heck were you thinking, suggesting mean-spirited verbal attacks on those people? My goodness.


Moving on, investigative reporter Seymour Hersch says that, even before the Democrats took both Houses of Congress in the November elections, the Bush Administration was laying the groundwork to "circumvent" any restrictions the new, uppity Congress might put on White House plans to attack Iran, this despite a recent CIA report that found no hard evidence Iran is even trying to develop nuclear weapons.

Suffer me a minor prediction. Readers are cautioned to use good judgment in ascribing to it any credibility, knowing as many do my track record, considering what I said on matters like what would come of Patrick Fitzgerald's Valerie Plame scandal investigation and which political party would win big in the November elections. I'm not always on the mark; but in my own defense, I'm doing pretty good on the batting average these days.

(And so help me God, if anyone brings up my prediction that a recession was going to start in the third quarter of this year, I'll hack your computer and turn it into a terrarium. Yes, we do have an economic pause underway, but it's not a recession, at least not according to official data. I really underestimated an effect that will be the subject of my next Pulp Economics article, which will be entitled, "Gains to Leverage.")

So here's my prediction for the day. We shall soon be in a military conflict with Iran. It will not be of our own making, although the Administration chickenhawks will have encouraged it, and the White House will think—as it did before the invasion of Iraq in 2002—that the armed forces and the American people are fully prepared and supportive.

Is this a certainty? Of course not. Put the odds at 3-to-1 in favor of the attack before Spring. Put the odds at better than even in favor before the Democrats take over in January.

Although the sources of my prediction don't have the political angle, the logic of the assault happening before mid-January flows from Hersch's article: the Democrats wouldn't be able to order Bush to stand down during an on-going, presumable "short-lived," in-and-out military confrontation.

So, there's my predication. Again, take it for what it's worth.


And on that happy note, let us then have this time of free-wheeling, non-stop tom-foolery, full as I'm sure it will be of jest and diatribes, rants and hyperlinks, grousings and glad-handing. Pull up a chair, grab something from the fridge, and enjoy the evening in the company of warm cyberbodies. Oh, yes, please feel free to send greetings and comments on cuteness to my new kitten, a manx named Gabriel.


The Dark Wraith and his cat call, "ALL ABOARD!" the night train.