Wow. That's Big.

Time to clear the boards in prep for Clemsy's Corner's Anniversary Edition, coming up as soon as it's done. In the meantime, the question below is worth a thousand words, at least half a billion dollars, your outrage and consternation and serves as proof positive for exactly how long the U.S. plans to hang around Iraq.

Cheers,
Clemsy

QUESTION OF THE WEEK

What covers 104 acres, cost about $600,000,000 and, when completed, will be bigger than Vatican City and, according to architects, visible from orbit? ANSWER (Sit down with a drink. A strong drink. Tequila will do.)

QUOTES OF THE WEEK:

You've performed so poorly I'm surprised that you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes. On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon, and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side. ~Bill Maher

Three years later we know, courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers, that our corrupt, Enron-like Iraq reconstruction effort has yielded at most 20 of those 142 promised hospitals. But we did build a palace for ourselves. The only building project on time and on budget, USA Today reported, is a $592 million embassy complex in the Green Zone on acreage the size of 80 football fields. Symbolically enough, it will have its own water-treatment plant and power generator to provide the basic services that we still have not restored to pre-invasion levels for the poor unwashed Iraqis beyond the American bunker. ~Frank Rich

Here's a few precious quotes from Stephen Colbert's routine at White House Correspondent's Dinner, coutesy of Editor and Publisher:

I believe that the government that governs best is a government that governs least, and by these standards we have set up a fabulous government in Iraq.

...reality has a well-known liberal bias.

When the president decides something on Monday, he still believes it on Wednesday - no matter what happened Tuesday.

You should spend more time with your families, write that novel you've always wanted to write. You know, the one about the fearless reporter who stands up to the administration. You know-- fiction. (Directed at the press.)

[Here I am] surrounded by the liberal media who are destroying this country, except for Fox News. Fox believes in presenting both sides of the story — the president’s side and the vice president’s side.

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Once the reality of the president's claimed lawbreaking powers starts to be truly discussed in our national political dialogue, I believe there will finally be accountability for what this administration has done. ~Glenn Greenwald (Yes, but should I hold my breath or not?)


QUOTES FROM THE HIVE MIND

The Security Council is the primary and most important institution for the maintenance of peace and stability and security, and it cannot have its word and its will simply ignored by a member state. ~Condi Rice (When did we give the U.N. that job? I thought that was our job.)

PICK OF THE WEEK

Our monarch, above the law by Scot Lehigh

HAS GEORGE W. Bush come to believe he's king?

That's the question that springs to mind upon reading Charlie Savage's front-page report in Sunday's Globe detailing the president's sotto voce assertion that he can disregard laws if he thinks they impinge on his constitutional powers.