Lindsey Graham Loses Mind, Demands MORE BOMBING! WAR BONER! YARRRRRGH!
Seriously, the dude has gone over the edge.
Remember when John McCain tossed off that flip “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” line like he was some morning show shock jock, and then defended his asshole warmongering by telling the rest of us to “lighten up”? We cannot believe we are typing these words, but: it is a damn shame that John McCain is no longer alive to act as a moderating influence on his old mini-me Lindsey Graham.
We’re not even exaggerating for comedic effect. Graham showed up on Maria Bartiromo’s show on Fox News on Sunday and proceeded to give a performance that would convince his loved ones, if he had any, to strap him to a gurney and sedate him. The man has always been a panicky warmonger, but he’s gone beyond that now. Something in his brain has broken.
Behold, for example, his first rant on Sunday. Bartiromo started off by reciting some of the budgetary info about the war (A billion dollars a day! Oil prices rising! The president wants a $1.5 trillion defense budget!) before asking Graham for his take. And Graham responded with, we kid you not because we timed it, an almost three-and-a-half-minute uninterrupted tirade that made us seriously wonder if he was hopped up on cocaine or had snorted someone’s ADHD meds. It was that unhinged:
Bartiromo couldn’t get a word in edgewise. The best she could do was mumble the occasional “Yup” and hope Graham shut up before the heat death of the universe.
It’s tough to fact-check that slop, but here’s a couple. Graham’s claim that Iran has enough uranium enriched to 60 percent to make 11 nuclear bombs is apparently true. Or at least that’s what the Iranians allegedly told Trump envoy Steve Witkoff, who is a moron.
What Graham failed to mention is that Iran also told Witkoff they enriched that uranium AFTER Trump tore up Barack Obama’s deal with the country, otherwise we wouldn’t be in this position. He also failed to mention that the Iranians offered to give up that 60 percent enriched material as part of a new agreement to replace the old one. Which, again, Trump tore up in his first term.
Then there was Graham’s hollering at Arab Gulf nations that they need to join in the fighting, yelling at Bartiromo, “I want them to get in the fight!” Frankly, we doubt there is a faster way to destabilize the populations of some of these countries than their governments jumping into an alliance with the US and Israel and helping cause mass destruction in the region. This went over poorly with at least one Gulf billionaire. If this is a widespread attitude, then maybe Graham should shut the hell up:
Graham has been, next to Whiskey Pete Hegseth, the biggest public supporter/ball-gargler of Trump as he began his bombing campaign against Iran. And why not? Blowing up Iranians has been one of his longest-standing goals, something he has encouraged Donald Trump to do ever since the Orange One’s first term. The way Graham enthuses about bombing 90 million people, you’d think they all have pictures of him with a loincloth and a jar of peanut butter or something. It is grotesque in a way that almost can’t be parodied. He’s like Rod Steiger in Mars Attacks!, except Steiger was about 50 percent more toned down.
“We’re gonna blow the hell out of these people. This regime is in a death throe now. It is gonna be on its knees, it’s gonna fall, and when it falls we’re gonna have peace like no other time. We’re gonna have prosperity unlike anyone could ever imagine.”
Easy, Senator. You’re going to shoot off prematurely, and that way lies some awkward pillow talk.
This Wall Street Journal piece from last week took a deeper look at Graham’s lobbying. The paper makes it pretty clear Graham might have gotten played by Israel, although Lord knows he wanted to be played so badly, he was all but begging for, at a minimum, some hand stuff:
Graham traveled several times to Israel in recent weeks, meeting with members of the country’s intelligence agency. “They’ll tell me things our own government won’t tell me,” he said. He spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, coaching him on how to lobby the president for action.
Netanyahu has been pushing for the United States’s help taking down Iran for over 20 years. We doubt Graham was really driving the car in these meetings. Either way, being Jewish, we’re really not onboard with a story all but stating that Lindsey Graham conspired with a wily Jew to drag the United States into a Mideast war. Seems suboptimal for our co-religionists.
The Journal also notes how Graham worked with a couple of neocons, including former Bush speechwriter and current worst opinion writer at The Washington Post Marc Thiessen to push for war in the paper and on TV. It was basically a full-court press of Trump while annoying the piss out of his advisers:
For months, Graham worked the issue, at times irritating senior White House aides. One called him an “annoying crazy uncle.” He kept showing up at Trump’s Florida clubs.
Shoot, even John McCain’s daughter, Meghan “My dad is John McCain!” McCain, is publicly begging Donald Trump to rein in his Lindsey Graham-shaped lapdog on the grounds that the dude is scaring the crap out of people with his “WE’LL BLOW UP IRAN AND THEN CUBA AND THEN ANTIFA AND ANYONE ELSE WHO GETS IN THE WAY OF OUR GREATEST PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP AMERICA FUCK YEAH” war boner that is now tumescent enough to show up on radar.
By Sunday night, even Graham seemed to realize he had gone too far with the murderous chest-thumping. After weekend bombing took out oil facilities around Tehran and turned the city’s atmosphere into poison, he was suddenly begging everyone to chill out:
Well well well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own actions!
Iran wasn’t the only war boner Graham was popping on Bartiromo’s show. He told the host she should just wait and see what would happen in the next two weeks. Asked what he meant, Graham said:
“You see this hat? Free Cuba. The liberation of Cuba is upon us. It’s just a matter of time now.”
Man, how about we deal with the catastrophe we’re unleashing in the Persian Gulf before we start a possible refugee crisis 90 miles from our own shores?
Graham closed by telling Bartiromo that America is “marching through the world. We’re cleaning out the bad guys." Then he chugged four Bud Light tallboys and crushed the cans against his own forehead while hollering for 50 virgins to be brought to his tent so that he may enjoy the fruits of a battle he is perfectly happy to send other people to fight.
The end.
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I read the news today, oh boy.
Then I got on Xena: Warrior Scooter and hit the bike paths, on my way to the Forest Hills Fishing Pond. It was a sunny 70* in Cleveland and people were feeling it.
Of course I always use the big flat parking lot to enter the park and get Xena up to her top speed of 18 mph, whee!
On the shared pedestrian/bike/scooter path I passed so many smiling faces. People walking happy puppers, tails wagging as strangers stopped to give pets; a young family with a toddler on dad’s shoulders; an older couple walking a big dog; everyone smiling and saying hello.
I got to the pond and an older gentlemen I had chatted with before when I was fishing in the summer passed by.
“Any fishing today? A good day for it.”
I said not today, but soon.
Then I lit up a joint and chatted with the cobra chickens. It was sweet, it was life.
Then I got back on Xena and home.
It was sanity.
It was a reminder.
There are still sweet moments, do not avoid them.
They are as good a reason as any to keep fighting.
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