The January issue of Vanity Fair has, on the face of it, a very satisfying article by David Rose entitled . It's all about the evil scumbag neo-cons that were the architects of Bush's war for oil in Iraq, for several years the cheerleaders for the war, in fact this collection of douchebags are the heart and soul of the neo-con world. And suddenly they've turned on Bush like so much waste in a roadside Porta-Potty.
When I read it I smiled and enjoyed reading the pus bag's excuses for why this mess doesn't blow back on them. Their explanation to a man, invading Iraq and spreading democracy was a beautiful idea, Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld just fucked it up! There message is, we were right, but the Bush administration was too incompetent to carry out the beautiful plan.
I personally think they and their plan are insane, but I agree that the Bush administration has never been able to find their asses with both hands. As my kind father would have said, Bush would screw up a wet dream.
After I enjoyed this good read I went upstairs to paint a bedroom and kept hearing the news on NPR on the hour and every time it led off with Bush whining about people losing faith in the war in Iraq.
This afternoon he announced that the US was neither losing nor winning the war. Is that supposed to be music to our ears? What kind of depressing Jimmy Carter talk is that?
And pardon me, but if you aren't winning, you must be losing...
..will we have a tie in Iraq?
So as I rolled on the paint between the news hours my sense of dread began to build. If Bush, who everyone agrees is stupid, decide that YES HE WILL win the war for oil in Iraq, what's he gonna do? The noose is tightening around his neck, he may not even be President by next Christmas.
His only chance...
.the only rabbit he can pull out of his hat is a big fast win in Iraq. Now I'm really worried.
Should he send over 30 to 60 thousand more troops, bringing our total of troops in Iraq to around 200,000 soldiers, I believe it will just create more targets that will find their way back home in a black body bag. At best I don't believe that will tip the scales in our favor and surely not fast enough to save the Decider's ass.
That could only mean nuclear weapons, or some new secret weapon we don't know about yet.
Imagine waking up tomorrow morning and hearing on the news that our troops have suddenly vanshed from Iraq. Following on the heels of that news, reports come in of gigantic explosions going off all over the Iraqi countryside. The astronauts high above the earth in the space station report that all of Iraq is glowing.
Would Americans do such a thing? Can we live with ourselves if Bush Hitlerizes the world in our name?
Or this came out today and makes me kinda wonder:
In violation of the US Code and international law, the Bush administration is spending more money (in inflation-adjusted dollars) to develop illegal, offensive germ warfare than the $2 billion spent in World War II on the Manhattan Project to make the atomic bomb.
So says Francis Boyle, the professor of international law who drafted the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 enacted by Congress. He states the Pentagon is now gearing up to fight and 'win' biological warfare pursuant to two Bush national strategy directives adopted without public knowledge and review in 2002.
Could Bush and our new Secretary of Defense (the 23rd ex-CIA director to be involved in the deep workings of our government) be planning on germ-ing 27 million Iraqis to death in the near future.
It is my opinion the only way to win the war for oil in Iraq is to kill every living human within Iraq's borders. It's pull out and come home or nuke them till they glow..
...
no middle ground. Who among us doubts at this point that Bush isn't crazy enough to be thinking about killing them all? Our President, and I use the word our very loosely, appears to be infected with the same lunitic mentality that told Hitler and Tojo that they could beat the Allied Forces and win WWII.
The same mentality told them to use any means within their grasp to win. In their hearts they believed they were justified in order to glorify, to protect, to save their countries.
I believe George W.
Bush and his puppeteer Dick Cheney could very well be entertaining ideas of killing every person in Iraq. Look how many ways they justified and lied attacking innocent little ole Iraq in the first place. Bush thinks he's Harry Truman, Cheney thinks he's God.
Anythings better than losing in their minds.
I started writing this piece a couple of weeks ago and the holidays and depression fell on my head like twin rocks. In the mean time I've thought of another possibility that could be waiting for us around the next bend.
The possibility that Bush-Cheney will do nothing but continue down the exact same road they have been on for going on 4 years. I'm saying they will stay the course, looking neither right nor left and this time next year our troops will still be sitting ducks, the US body count will be 1500 higher and we'll still be losing the war for oil in Iraq.
Plainly, Bush-Cheney are out of ideas.
This isn't a card game, they can't just fold and go home. They are 100% unwilling to give up and bring our troops home. They can't or won't ask for help.
Who or what could help them anyway...
they picked the wrong war to start and are reaping the misery of it. Actually the families of 3012 dead US soldiers are doing all the reaping, plus 22,022 injured US troops and the 30% of returning troops who are reported suffering from mental and/or emotional damage..
.that's a lot of reaping too. Imagine what skid row will look like 10 years from now.
Nam vets, move over...
we have incoming.
How can we sit on our hands and allow Bush-Cheney to run out the clock? I left out the 2000 a month average total of dead Iraqis.
Are we wealthy enough and yet dead in spirit and soul enough to do nothing while 2 more years worth of people die horrible deaths? It is estimated that the Iraq War has Arkansas going on 3.4 billion and counting so far.
There is a real possibility that we're stuck with an insane bus driver who refuses to turn the wheel right or left yet keeps his right foot press to the floor...
...
..for a whole other 2 years!
This coming week may be the first attempt to land a powerful punch to Bush's chin. He's talking more troops and Pelosi is saying no way. So far nothing has slowed the Bush train wreck down even a tiny bit.
He is forging on as if the November elections never happened. I keep cheering our new found power, but then I stop and realize so far self-satisfaction is all I've gotten. If we're lucky.
...
..if that's the word for it, we'll know soon if Bush plans to nuke or germ Iraq or if he just plans to change nothing and grind up bodies until January, 2009.
And we'll also find out if the Democrats have any power and if so what new low it will force the Bush administration to resort to, to stay in power. I'm counting on Congress..
..but in the end it may take our own military to remove Bush from office.
I say loud and clear...
...
2007 will be a year we'll never forget.
Thursday, January 04, 2007 - 22:04:11
It's been a golden lovely day even in the rain. Ding Dong the witch is dead.
..the old ugly Republican witch is under the house with her toes curling up!
.ARE going to walk all over them!
There are numerous reasons that many in the Bush administration should be in jail or swinging like old Saddam and Katrina is right at the top of the list.One of the horrors that came out of WWII were tales of human experimentation carried out by Dr. Josef Mengele..
..eerie, creepy, inhuman, unchristian.
..unbelievable.
...
Bush has stained all hands with the blood of the innocent, all crimes done under our beautiful waving flag, all done with the approving nods of our popular Christian leaders.
All the while the Pryors and the Lincolns, when not conspiring with the Bushes, lending quiet support with their votes while pretending to be Democrats. And we shop and we party and we cut prayer meeting short to get home and watch Lost. How ironic.
..the lost watching Lost!
Sure enough people like Pelosi, Frank, Hoyer, Reid, Emanuel, Rangel are going to have to grab America by the short hairs, wake us up, get our attention, slap us around and make us fighting mad...
.a level of mad we should have achieved on our own these last 6 miserable, embarrassing, deadly years.
We must put down childish things and get to work to save the world from our own rogue government.
Heads must roll. Trials must commence. Justice must land on the guilty like a ton of bricks.
After we pull out from this war of Bush Exxon's making, we must find a way to make it up to the rest of the world. This world needs the old America back as much as we we do. Take time to look back at our history, we've always been better than this.
..even in our darkest hours.
Pray-ers...
.this would be a real good time to start praying. There is no indication that the Bushdinistas will go peacefully.
We must all do our best and hope that the year 007 is our lucky number...
...
we're going to need all the luck in the universe.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006 - 15:22:46
It's hard not to apologize profusely for these pictures. I personally shy away from horror movies, bloody pictures.
..even lions attacking straggling gazelle on Animal Planet.
But it is high time for everyone in America to see death in Iraq. To know what our tax money is financing each and every day of the week, and has for over 3 years now. I got no joy finding these pictures and I get no joy showing them to you.
Whitewashing a war is a sin. Life is good in America because we are not allowed to see the daily carnage on our TVs, in newspapers or magazines. It's not fair that we are let off the hook so easily while being a part of such death and destruction.
It is not my intention to dishonor our troops. Turning a blind eye honors no one. What should we expect from 19 year old kids, who if still at home would make us very nervous every time they took the family car?
Kids who can't legally drink are trained to kill and then turned loose with the most deadly weapons known to mankind. If age doesn't matter, why set the drinking age to 21 or the eligibility to be President to 35? No, I'm not demonizing American troops, I'm demonizing the insanity of war.
What follows are excerpts from a November, 2006 Vanity Fair article titled by journalist William Langewiesche. An investigation into what happened at Haditha after a land mine tore one of our HumVees in half, also tearing one of our Marines in half, what happened to the soldiers of Kilo Company as they sought revenge in their terror, anger and grief, what happened to 24 innocent Iraqi men, women and children whose only sin appears to be having been living in the wrong place at the wrong time. I want to share several paragraphs that should make it clear why war should always be the very last tool in our bag and why we should bring our troops home now.
They got to the house, kicked through the door, and in the entranceway came upon the owner, a middle-aged man, whom one of them shot at close range, probably with a three-round burst to the chest. The Marine's M16 would barely have kicked in his hands. Beyond the sound of the shots, he might have heard the double pops of the rounds entering and exiting the man, the heavier snap of bullets against bone, perhaps the metallic clatter of spent cartridges hitting the ground.
The Iraqi was not thrown by the rounds as people are thrown in the movies. If no bones were broken, he may not have felt much pain, except for some stinging where his skin was torn. Unless he was struck in the heart, he did not die immediately, but soon succumbed to the massive hemorrhaging.
Chances are his blood first splattered against the wall, then flowed into a dark-scarlet puddle beneath him until his heart stopped pumping.
The power was out in the house, and the light inside was dim, all the more so for the Marines, who were piling in from the sunshine of the street. Inside a hostile house, survival requires fast reactions.
The Marines fired on a figure down the hall, who turned out too late to be an old woman. There could have been a message there, but guerrilla wars are tricky, and the Marines were not about to slow down. She screamed when she was hit, apparently in the back, and then she died.
The Marines were shouting excitedly to one another. They worked down the hallway until, busting open a door, they came upon a room full of people. Later some of the squad said they had heard AK-47s being racked, though whatever they heard turned out not to be that.
The room was dim, and the people where glimpsed rather than clearly seen. The Marines rolled in a grenade, hugged the hallway for the blast, and then charged into the dust and smoke to mop up with their rifles as they had been trained to do.
Nine people had sheltered in that room, three generations of the same family, from an ancient man paralyzed by a stroke to an infant girl just three months old.
When the grenade exploded, it blew some of them apart, wounded others with penetrating shrapnel, and littered the room with evil smelling body parts. In the urgency of the moment the old man forgot that he was paralyzed and tried to stand up. He took rounds to his chest, vomited blood as he fell, and then lay on the floor twitching as he died.
In that room four residents survived. A young woman left her husband behind, grabbed the infant girl, and managed to run away; a 10-year-old girl and her younger brother lay wounded beside their dead mother and remained conscious enough to be terrified.
In the next house another innocent family was slaughtered.
Here is what the sole survivor, a 13 year old girl recounts. Daddy was shot through the heart. He was 43.
Mommy was shot in the head and chest. She was 41. Aunt Huda was shot in the chest.
She was 27. My sister Nour was shot in the right side of her head. She was 15.
My sister Saba was shot through the ear. She was 11. My brother Muhammad was shot in the hand and I don't know where else.
He was 10. My sister Zainab was shot in the hand and the head. She was five.
My sister Aysha was shot in the leg and I don't know where else. She was three. The brains of at least one of the little girls were shoved through fractures in her skull by the impact of a bullet.
This is a standard effect of high-velocity rounds fired into the closed cavity of a head. Later that day, when a replacement Marine came in to carry out the bodies, the girl's brains would fall onto one of his boots.
(He didn't stop his car correctly)
By now, nearly one year later, hatred of the American forces in the city (Haditha) has turned so fierce that military investigators for the trials at Pendleton have given up on going there.
That hatred is blood hatred. It is the kind of hatred people are willing to die for, with no expectation but revenge. This was immediately apparent on a video that was taken the day after the killings by an Iraqi from the neighborhood--the same video that was later passed along to TIME.
The Marine Corps was wrong to dismiss the video as propaganda and fiction. It is an authentic Iraqi artifact. It should be shown to the grunts in training.
It should be shown to the generals in command. The scenes it depicts are raw. People move among the hideous corpses, wailing their grief and vowing vengeance before God.
This is my brother! My brother! My brother!
In one of the killing rooms, a hard-looking boy insists that the camera show the body of his father. Sobbing angrily, he shouts, I want to say this is my father! God will punish you Americans!
Show me on the camera! this is my father! He just bought a car showroom!
He did not pay all the money to the owner yet, and he got killed!
A man cries, This is an act denied by god. What did he do?
To be executed in the closet? Those bastards! Even the Jews would not do such an act!
Why? Why did they kill him this way? Look, this is his brain on the ground!
The boy continues to sob over the corpse on the floor. He shouts, Father! I want my father!
Another man cries, This is democracy? Well yeah, well no, well actually this is Haditha. For the United states, it is what defeat looks like in this war.
It's crazy, I keep waking up thinking our country has been taken over by aliens bent on world domination!
It all started when I had this dream about putting my ballot in the box and seeing it float up in the air like tissue caught in an updraft. I dreamed the guy with the most votes didn't win.And the guy that cheated kept winning and winning as people died in droves and rich people used 1000 dollar bills to light their cigars.
I keep having this reoccurring dream of thousands of people lost in dark murky waters screaming out for help that never comes. I didn't count em, but the other night I dreamed my tax dollars had killed 655, 000 people in some far off country.I dreamed I had a son and some bastard kept sending him nasty IM's about his young boy penis.
..oh god.
..the snarling vicious dogs.
..they rip at my flesh while I'm forced to lay in a pile naked men simulating homosexual acts.
I must be sick! And why do I think Mark Pryor will not help me? He's from a good family I'm told.
He looks sweet, but I saw a black aura around him the other day when I saw him standing behind some Republicans on TV.
These terrible nightmares are making my long luxurious hair fall out and my teeth seem unhappy in their jar at night. I expect to feel better by the 8th of November and maybe I'll throw a big party to celebrate my return from the dark world. We'll just have to wait and see.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed and my dosage up!
The 00's are the new 1950s!
While trying to do my taxes way late and feeling the effects of my 4th day on Zoloft, which I highly recommend to our recovering friend, Belinda, I continue to try to understand the world around me though the fog is fairly thick in my brain at the moment.
For those of you not acquainted with it, in my opinion Vanity Fair is the best magazine in the US that doesn't have a centerfold. Sure there is some Paris Hilton fluff, but in between is some of the smartest reporting of current events you'll find in print.
Fortunately, a lot of it is online for free.
So as a long time print subscriber I will try to pass on really important articles as I run across them. In November's edition of VF mixed in between 1st pictures of baby Suri is a great article (that I also found somewhat difficult to read) that among other things, explains one idea I haven't had before. Michael Wolff points out in so many words another reason we've slid backwards from the glory days of the Clinton administration.
He says that Bush Co., are genuine people of the 1950s, and it fits better than OJ's glove.
I've been harping about the old Nixon men running this country, but duh.
...
.what other mindset would they have than the buttoned down big businessman of the 50s? They have a US vs.
THEM mentality that worked more or less in the Cold War days but is totally opposite of the Bill Clinton, Can't we all get along 8 years of peace and progress and prosperity. Bill smoked a little, inhaling or not but the Bush crowd grew up running the projectors in health class or excelling in accounting. Nerds who are getting their revenge on us and the rest of the world these days.
They want Jesus to wash over us, teenagers to not have sex, they see enemies everywhere they look and this bunch has decided to shoot first, kidnap first, torture first and ask questions later...
...
.or not ask questions at all.
Rather than take up precious pixels here, I will provide a link to by Michael Wolff and you all be the judge.
Saturday, September 30, 2006 - 16:46:09
With the publication of Bob Woodward's new book, State of Denial, we see yet another rat, another Bush supporter jumping off the sinking ship. After publishing 2 books on the glories of the Bush administration, Woodward suddenly does an about face and writes President Bush emerges as a passive, impatient, sophomoric and intellectually incurious leader, presiding over a grossly dysfunctional war cabinet and given to an almost religious certainty that makes him disinclined to rethink or re-evaluate decisions he has made about the war.
Anyone who ever had a crappy job can probably identify with this little nugget from Woodward's book.
ldquo;It was only one example of a visitor to the Oval Office not telling the president the whole story or the truth. Likewise, in these moments where Bush had someone from the field there in the chair beside him, he did not press, did not try to open the door himself and ask what the visitor had seen and thought. The whole atmosphere too often resembled a royal court, with Cheney and Rice in attendance, some upbeat stories, exaggerated good news and a good time had by all.
rdquo; Were the war in Iraq not a real war that has resulted in more than 2,700 American military casualties and more than 56,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, the picture of the Bush administration that emerges from this book might resemble a farce. It rsquo;s like something out of ldquo;The Daily Show rdquo; or a ldquo;Saturday Night Live rdquo; sketch, with Freudian Bush family dramas and high-school-like rivalries between cabinet members who refuse to look at one another at meetings being played out on the world stage.
There rsquo;s the president, who once said, ldquo;I don rsquo;t have the foggiest idea about what I think about international, foreign policy, rdquo; deciding that he rsquo;s going to remake the Middle East and alter the course of American foreign policy.
There rsquo;s his father, former President (who went to war against the same country a decade ago), worrying about the wisdom of another war but reluctant to offer his opinions to his son because he believes in the principle of ldquo;let him be himself. rdquo; There rsquo;s the president rsquo;s national security adviser whining to him that the defense secretary won rsquo;t return her phone calls. And there rsquo;s the president and , his chief political adviser, trading fart jokes.
And he suggests that President Bush chose Mr. Rumsfeld as his defense secretary, in part, because he knew his father mistrusted Mr. Rumsfeld, and the younger Bush wanted to prove his father wrong.
Woodward goes on to repeat this passage, which is bone chilling if you stop and think about it. he quotes Mr. Armitage as telling former Secretary of State that he rsquo;s baffled by President Bush rsquo;s reluctance to make adjustments in his conduct of the war.
ldquo;Has he thought this through? rdquo; Mr. Armitage asks.
ldquo;What the president says in effect is, We rsquo;ve got to press on in honor of the memory of those who have fallen. Another way to say that is we rsquo;ve got to have more men fall to honor the memories of those who have already fallen. rdquo;
I propose since Bob Woodward, one of my personal heroes since Watergate, gave us 2 books full of false information, lies and untruths about the worst administration in US history, that this time he and his publisher GIVE his new book away to the public.
Random House and James Frey, author of A Million Little Pieces have agreed to refund the purchase price for all those who bought Frey's book believing his fiction was fact. Why shouldn't Bob Woodward either refund the money for his 2 previous books or simply give this new book away, since only now is he giving us the real facts of the Bush administration.
I'm glad Bob Woodward has come to his senses.
...
.but really Bob, it's a little to late to let you off the hook and if I was you, I'd feel like some of the blood of those 2710 dead US troops was on my hands. Let's give the world a great Christmas present and march every torture loving , teenage boy loving member of the Bush administration to prison by December 25th of 2006.
Maybe we should issue a recall for everyone currently in office and start over.
Friday, September 29, 2006 - 01:49:28
It isn't my intention to turn my blog into a cut and paste world of other people's ideas. But the Torture bill that just passed has opened a floodgate of ideas that should be considered.
And rather than steal or plagiarize, passing on something written far better than I could ever manage seems like the right thing to do.
September 28, 2006: Another Karl Rove campaign kicks off.
I mean, I may be jaded and cynical but I rsquo;m not stupid. Unlike the majority of your ilk, I rsquo;m smart enough not to bet on WWE matches neither do I swallow what Frank Sinatra said about his mob connections. Some things are self-evident and you have to grant me the right to start hurling breakables at the nearest wall whenever I come across someone who can rsquo;t see the obvious.
The obvious is that the Republican Party is in it for itself. They are all for staying in power, enriching their base, enriching Republican-friendly conglomerates and never, ever accepting blame for even one fuck-up. At least the Democrats have been coming out and saying, ldquo;OK, OK, we fucked up and voted for the war.
True, we were voting based on cherry-picked and fabricated intelligence but now we realize the USA PATRIOT Act and the war in Iraq has quickly turned into a fucking boondoggle. So how can we fix it? rdquo;
The Republicans, meanwhile, are saying, in essence, ldquo;Not only are all our initiatives working according to plan, comrades, but we have over fulfilled our quota for the Five Year Plan and will begin a Ten Year Plan!
rdquo;
To paraphrase Sponge in ldquo; rdquo;, their only chance is to connect with a dream because their best laid plans sure ain rsquo;t doing shit.
Your ldquo;President rdquo; is in over his head like a toddler stranded in the middle of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, the guy with his hand up his ass, Dick Cheney, is still clinging to the old ldquo;The insurgency is in its last throes rdquo; assertions even as virtually every day brings news of dozens more tortured bodies being unearthed in Baghdad.
The GOP-run Congress has decided for the umpteenth time that it rsquo;s more important to let the Idiot Boy-King have his way than to do what rsquo;s right (read SadButTrue rsquo;s take on the nightmare fuel of a detainee bill just above this).
They had blamed the victims of Hurricane Katrina for not being solvent or smart enough to leave the city before the storm made landfall then finally slouched toward New Orleans after waiting a week, thereby proving what would happen to Blanche DuBois if she had to rely on the kindness of Republican strangers.
They rsquo;ve waged war on science and learning, have essentially turned our two party system into a paranoid monopolitical police state, have, in proud Republican fashion, rolled up one enormous deficit after another and have widened an already enormous trade imbalance with China.
The Republicans have denied you the right to file for bankruptcy, denied the Democrats votes on their amendments to said bill, have made having a national ID card with a microchip embedded in it mandatory, used No Child Left Behind as a vast data-gathering apparatus for the Pentagon, have sent your children, husbands, wives, your loved ones into a meat grinder more infamously known as Iraq while denying them armor and cutting their VA benefits.
Every intelligence agency under the American sky insists that we rsquo;re in more danger from terrorist attacks now than we ever have been, which only makes the PATRIOT Act and this detainee bill, weapons in the GWOT, look even more like the colossal, wasteful, shameless fascistic shams that they are.
Oh, yeah, your party of personal responsibility, when they rsquo;re forced to admit that fuckuppery has been committed, continually blame Bill Clinton, the Family Circus ldquo;Not Me rdquo; spirit of the GOP.
I could possibly enumerate their every evil since January 2001 but I rsquo;d like to think that I rsquo;ve made my case. If I haven rsquo;t, then I might as well be talking to Terri Schiavo. So, my question to you all is: What rsquo;s the attraction?
What could possibly be in it for you to keep these ass weasels in power?
Is it the increasingly foolish and pathetic delusion that you rsquo;re getting in on the ground floor of something that history will once proudly call The Party of Bush? Or maybe by continuing to wage war on learning, on homosexuals, on immigration, on universal health care and on every progressive agenda under the sun that you rsquo;ll be given a ringside side to the Rapture so the Devil can hand out ponchos like at a Gallagher gig just before he splatters you with the brains of said liberals for daring to impose humanitarianism on humanity?
As Election Day draws near, I keep thinking more and more to the final words of a d r i f t g l a s s post entitled ldquo; rdquo; that ended with the words, ldquo; ldquo;Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Republican Party? rdquo;
When the current GOP, with its stubborn and insane insistence on ramming into the iceberg time and time and time and time again even as the ship is sinking, lands on the shit pile of history and we rsquo;re able to look at these times with the 20/20 vision of hindsight, I think that when people mention the Party of Bush, they will say so in hushed tones not in the spirit of reverence but of fear, as if saying ldquo;Bush rdquo; three times will somehow bring the Evil Old Idiot back to life. Schoolchildren will whisper ldquo;Party of Bush rdquo; in the same way that the children of Elm Street whisper Freddy Krueger rsquo;s name.
It will be a cautionary tale, the Party of Bush, warning us of what happens when unmitigated evil and stupidity are allowed to run its course unchecked, much like the Nazi Party, much like the Communist party, much like the ancient Roman oligarchy taught us these lessons.
What was it that George Santayana said about that?
--- .
Friday, September 29, 2006 - 01:38:44
This was posted on Kos and deserves a good thinking about. If the following is 100% true and comes to pass, it still does not excuse Mark Pryor and the other 11 torture loving pretend Democrats who voted to help cover Bush's war criminal arse. Read and think.
All this bill is, is an utterly MEANINGLESS piece of kabuki theater.
It serves only two purposes: a) a desperate attempt by Bush to try to legally cover his own ass; and b) a desperate attempt designed to distract from the unrelentingly horrible news on Iraq. On Afghanistan.
On Pakistan. On healthcare. On the economy the rest of us live in.
And again, this bill doesn't accomplish SHIT. Let's look at a few points, one by one, shall we?
1) Congress has NO authority to decide if these things are legal or not.
That's up to the COURTS to decide.
It's up to the COURTS to decide how the Geneva Conventions--which are American Law--are construed. It's up to the COURTS to decide whether habeas corpus does or does apply to all persons (as it so clearly states in the Constitution).
Every piece of this Unconstitutional bill is beyond the scope of the Congress to legislate. It's dead on the courthouse door--and doesn't change anything in the meantime.
2) The torture is happening the same, regardless of whether this bill passes or not.
We've already BEEN waterboarding detainees. We've already BEEN subjecting them to cold rooms. We've already BEEN doing all these horrible things.
Habeas corpus is ALREADY being suspended.
All this stupid bill does is attempt to make it OK to do these things. Which it CANNOT DO, because it's not up to Brownback, Reid, Schumer, or Santorum to decide whether it's ok or not.
The only reason it even exists is to try to provide legislative cover for Bush against possible trials for war crimes--which it also cannot do. Which brings me to point #3.
3) Bush cannot claim retroactive immunity based on Unconstitutional law.
Suspending habeas corpus is Unconstitutional. Torture is UnConstitutional. And any future trial of Bush will be based on how his actions play out with regard to the CONSTITUTION--not with regard to some stupid laws passed by his lap-dog rubber-stamp Congress.
Which brings us to point #4:
4) A Democratic congress will easily reverse this bill. When the subpoenas start coming and Bush is on the hotseat for his crimes, there will be a MAJOR tailwind and drive to remove even the pretense of this horrible legislation. Bush is the Emperor without Clothes--and this butt-cover will blow right off when the winds kick up.
Of course, without a Democratic congress we won't have that. And if you hand-wringers refuse to support Democrats, or some other drivel, on the basis of their reaction to this legislation in the face of political pressure, we won't get a Democratic congress.
In other words: this bill doesn't give them ANY powers they aren't ALREADY using (and have been using for years); and when the time comes to call them to account for it, it WON'T save their asses--if it hasn't already been repealed.
Meanwhile, every day that we obsess over this meaningless kabuki bullshit farce, we lose another day that we can spend talking about shit that doesn't go right over the heads of the American people at best, or make us look like terrorist enablers at worst.
Shit like Iraq. Afghanistan.
What Bush did to stop 9/11. Cronyism. Corruption.
Healthcare. The economy the rest of us live in.
So please, PLEASE CALM DOWN!
!! America isn't dead.
The Constitution isn't dead. Nothing has changed.
There's a REASON they're doing this so close to the election.
There's no big torture emergency out there: they just want a good distraction, and Bush wants to try some lame attempt at covering his ass in case there's a stiff-spined Democratic congress at his heels in 2007.
So get over it. Let the Republicans have their meaningless political theater.
It changes absolutely nothing, and it will be struck down by the first, second and third courts that get their hands on it.
And then send some REAL Americans--the ones with (D)s after their names--to Congress. Because that's what REALLY matters here.
Chill.
The executive branch takes on another job that should belong to our weak Congress.
Those countries in the world who align with us do so out of fear, not love.
Be especially nice to your children today, their future just got dimmer and more dangerous.
PHOTO: AP
Enron, once the nation's seventh-largest company, crumbled into bankruptcy in December 2001. The collapse wiped out thousands of jobs, more than $60 billion in market value and more than $2 billion in pension plans.
Let me get this straight.
Andrew Fastow who directly caused the 7th largest company in the US to fall apart, killing thousands of jobs and causing thousands of people to lose their pensions and life savings, gets 6 years in prison!
Yet a Greenwood school teacher who gave a 14 year old boy a blowjob that he'll remember the rest of his life, gets 12 years in prison?
I was reading the other day where in certain parts of Malaysia you can buy a human for about 19,000 US dollars.
I assume most purchases involve buying young girls, but who knows, maybe gay men shop there too? So, if one takes the 2 billion lost in Enron pensions alone, and travels to Malaysia for the same amount of money you could buy 105, 263.158 Malaysian people, keep them in your basement and do whatever the hell you want with them.
Now I can't prove it right this moment, but I'm sure there is some fine logic in all this math and I'm sure...
..if anyone could understand the logic they would see why it is criminal that Mr.
Fastow gets 6 years for all that taking while Ms Bobo gets 12 years for all that giving.
Seriously, we've got our priorities all mess up in this country.
Filed at 8:17 p.
m. ET
NEW YORK (AP) -- Fox News chief Roger Ailes says former President Clinton's response to Chris Wallace's question about going after represents ''an assault on all journalists.''
Ailes said Clinton had a ''wild overreaction'' in the interview, broadcast on ''Fox News Sunday.
'' Hundreds of thousands of people subsequently watched clips over the Internet, with Fox foes rallying behind Clinton.
Saint Roger Ailes, the same man who cooked up the whole Willie Horton campaign against Dukakis in 1988, the man who put the FU in Fox News is now playing Mr. Nice Guy and pretending that mean old Clinton scared him.
I think he might be partly right, I can see where you could call Clinton's words to be an assault on all BAD journalists.
Right-wingers hate it when you use facts to beat them over the head. And who can blame Bill Clinton after the whole ABC thing, making out that the blood of 3000 people are on his hands.
Then snippy little Chris slides him that Don't cha think you could have done more to catch Osama stuff. This from the mouth-piece of the neo-cons who have had 5 years to kill Osama and can't.
Stephen Colbert coined the word truthiness in recent months.
The Republicans learned from the master Rove to be experts of truthiness , the ability to sound like your telling the truth when you aren't. It's truthiness when Condi and Satan Cheney ignore the Senate subcommittee report that stated in no uncertain terms that there was no connection between Sadam and Iraq and Osama and 9-11. Both Condi and Satan spoke truthiness the next weekend and said indeed there was a connection.
It was truthiness when Condi said Clinton was lying, yes sir, the Bush-Cheney team was all over Osama between the inauguration and the day of 9-11. While Clinton offers up facts to back up his statement, Condi Douche-Rice offers none. Bush is putting out truthiness when he says we do not torture.
Anyone who has paid any attention to the news the last 3 years has seen with their own eyes that we do indeed torture.
Saint Roger Ailes is being truthy when he uses Clinton justifiable anger as a sign that Democrats have launched a jihad against journalists. What crap!
I guess saying Hitler was bad is an assault against all German journalists? It is the job of every good Democrat to put truthiness to bed until after the elections. After Democrats sweep across America maybe they can go to work next year to remove truthiness from our government entirely.
We should all hate both Democrat and Republican lies equally. Truthiness has put chicken hawks in charge of our military. Truthiness put Bush's cronies in charge of national security and killed a ton of people in the Gulf after Katrina moved through.
Truthiness says we're winning in Iraq. Truthiness gave us stories of WMDs in Iraq, gave us fake newsmen-gay-hooker-party-boys in the White House, gave us Kerek, Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney, Conrad Burns, Lyndie England, Ken Lay, Heck of a Job Brownie, the silly Gang of 14, secret black site prisons, journalists that are paid by the White House, fake news stories, NSA wiretaps on Americans..
...
...
...
..the list is endless even when pixels are free.
Every good American should take Bill Clinton's lead and refuse to let truthiness slip by unpunished. Not in Washington DC, not in Little Rock, Arkansas, not in your home or place of business or your church. When someone puts out truthiness , take a big breath and let them know they're wrong and should be ashamed.
It's the only thing we can do on a local level that might help save our country. Times up! The Serious Season has started, take no prisoners!
Death to Truthy!
And finally tonight, a Special Comment about President Clinton rsquo;s interview. The headlines about them are, of course, entirely wrong.
It is not essential that a past President, bullied and sandbagged by a monkey posing as a newscaster, finally lashed back.
It is not important that the current President rsquo;s portable public chorus has described his predecessor rsquo;s tone as crazed.
Our tone should be crazed.
The nation rsquo;s freedoms are under assault by an administration whose policies can do us as much damage as Al-Qaeda; the nation rsquo;s marketplace of ideas is being poisoned, by a propaganda company so blatant that Tokyo Rose would rsquo;ve quit. Nonetheless.
The headline is this: Bill Clinton did what almost none of us have done, in five years.
He has spoken the truth about 9/11, and the current presidential administration.
At least I tried, he said of his own efforts to capture or kill Osama Bin Laden. That rsquo;s the difference in me and some, including all of the right-wingers who are attacking me now.
They had eight months to try; they did not try. I tried.
Thus in his supposed emeritus years, has Mr.
Clinton taken forceful and triumphant action for honesty, and for us; action as vital and as courageous as any of his presidency; action as startling and as liberating, as any, by anyone, in these last five long years.
The Bush Administration did not try to get Osama Bin Laden before 9/11.
The Bush Administration ignored all the evidence gathered by its predecessors.
The Bush Administration did not understand the Daily Briefing entitled Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S.
Moreover, for the last five years one month and two weeks, the current administration, and in particular the President, has been given the greatest pass for incompetence and malfeasance, in American history!
President Roosevelt was rightly blamed for ignoring the warning signs mdash; some of them, 17 years old mdash; before Pearl Harbor.
President Hoover was correctly blamed for mdash; if not the Great Depression itself mdash; then the disastrous economic steps he took in the immediate aftermath of the Stock Market Crash.
Even President Lincoln assumed some measure of responsibility for the Civil War mdash; though talk of Southern secession had begun as early as 1832.
But not this President.
To hear him bleat and whine and bully at nearly every opportunity, one would think someone else had been President on September 11th, 2001 mdash; or the nearly eight months that preceded it.
That hardly reflects the honesty nor manliness we expect of the Executive.
But if his own fitness to serve is of no true concern to him, perhaps we should simply sigh and keep our fingers crossed, until a grown-up takes the job three Januarys from now.
After five years of skirting even the most inarguable of facts mdash; that he was President on 9/11 and he must bear some responsibility for his, and our, unreadiness, Mr. Bush has now moved, unmistakably and without conscience or shame, towards re-writing history, and attempting to make the responsibility, entirely Mr.
Clinton rsquo;s.
Of course he is not honest enough to do that directly.
As with all the other nefariousness and slime of this, our worst presidency since James Buchanan, he is having it done for him, by proxy.
Thus, the sandbag effort by Fox News, Friday afternoon.
Consider the timing: The very same weekend the National Intelligence Estimate would be released and show the Iraq war to be the fraudulent failure it is mdash; not a check on terror, but fertilizer for it!
The kind of proof of incompetence, for which the administration and its hyenas at Fox need to find a diversion, in a scapegoat.
It was the kind of cheap trick which would get a journalist fired mdash; but a propagandist, promoted:
Promise to talk of charity and generosity; but instead launch into the lies and distortions with which the Authoritarians among us attack the virtuous and reward the useless.
And don rsquo;t even be professional enough to assume the responsibility for the slanders yourself; blame your audience for e-mailing you the question.
Mr.
Clinton responded as you have seen.
He told the great truth un-told hellip; about this administration rsquo;s negligence, perhaps criminal negligence, about Bin Laden.
He was brave.
Then again, Chris Wallace might be braver still. Had I mdash; in one moment surrendered all my credibility as a journalist mdash; and been irredeemably humiliated, as was he, I would have gone home and started a new career selling seeds by mail.
The smearing by proxy, of course, did not begin Friday afternoon.
Disney was first to sell-out its corporate reputation, with The Path to 9/11.
Of that company rsquo;s crimes against truth one needs to say little. Simply put: someone there enabled an Authoritarian zealot to belch out Mr.
Bush rsquo;s new and improved history.
The basic plot-line was this: because he was distracted by the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Bill Clinton failed to prevent 9/11.
The most curious and in some ways the most infuriating aspect of this slapdash theory, is that the Right Wingers who have advocated it mdash; who try to sneak it into our collective consciousness through entertainment, or who sandbag Mr.
Clinton with it at news interviews mdash; have simply skipped past its most glaring flaw.
Had it been true that Clinton had been distracted from the hunt for Bin Laden in 1998 because of the Lewinsky nonsense mdash; why did these same people not applaud him for having bombed Bin Laden rsquo;s camps in Afghanistan and Sudan on August 20th of that year? For mentioning Bin Laden by name as he did so?
That day, Republican Senator Grams of Minnesota invoked the movie Wag The Dog.
Republican Senator Coats of Indiana questioned Mr. Clinton rsquo;s judgment.
Republican Senator Ashcroft of Missouri mdash; the future Attorney General mdash; echoed Coats.
Even Republican Senator Arlen Specter questioned the timing.
And of course, were it true Clinton had been distracted by the Lewinsky witch-hunt mdash; who on earth conducted the Lewinsky witch-hunt?
Who turned the political discourse of this nation on its head for two years?
Who corrupted the political media?
Who made it impossible for us to even bring back on the air, the counter-terrorism analysts like Dr.
Richard Haass, and James Dunegan, who had warned, at this very hour, on this very network, in early 1998, of cells from the Middle East who sought to attack us, here?
Who preempted them hellip; in order to strangle us with the trivia that was hellip; All Monica All The Time ?
Who hellip; distracted whom?
This is, of course, where mdash; as is inevitable mdash; Mr. Bush and his henchmen prove not quite as smart as they think they are.
The full responsibility for 9/11 is obviously shared by three administrations, possibly four.
But, Mr. Bush, if you are now trying to convince us by proxy that it rsquo;s all about the distractions of 1998 and 1999, then you will have to face a startling fact that your minions may have hidden from you.
The distractions of 1998 and 1999, Mr.
Bush, were carefully manufactured, and lovingly executed, not by Bill Clinton hellip; but by the same people who got you hellip; elected President.
Thus instead of some commendable acknowledgment that you were even in office on 9/11 and the lost months before it hellip; we have your sleazy and sloppy rewriting of history, designed by somebody who evidently redd the Orwell playbook too quickly.
Thus instead of some explanation for the inertia of your first eight months in office, we are told that you have kept us safe ever since mdash; a statement that might range anywhere from Zero, to One Hundred Percent, true.
We have nothing but your word, and your word has long since ceased to mean anything.
And, of course, the one time you have ever given us specifics about what you have kept us safe from, Mr. Bush mdash; you got the name of the supposedly targeted Tower in Los Angeles hellip; wrong.
You did not try.
You ignored the evidence gathered by your predecessor.
You ignored the evidence gathered by your own people.
Then, you blamed your predecessor.
That would be the textbook definition hellip; Sir, of cowardice.
To enforce the lies of the present, it is necessary to erase the truths of the past.
That was one of the great mechanical realities Eric Blair mdash; writing as George Orwell mdash; gave us in the novel 1984.
The great philosophical reality he gave us, Mr. Bush, may sound as familiar to you, as it has lately begun to sound familiar to me.
The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power hellip;
One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
The object of persecution, is persecution.
The object of torture, is torture. The object of power hellip; is power.
Earlier last Friday afternoon, before the Fox ambush, speaking in the far different context of the closing session of his remarkable Global Initiative, Mr.
Clinton quoted Abraham Lincoln rsquo;s State of the Union address from 1862.
Mr. Clinton did not quote the rest of Mr.
Lincoln rsquo;s sentence. He might well have.
We must disenthrall ourselves mdash; and then hellip; we shall save our country.
And so has Mr. Clinton helped us to disenthrall ourselves, and perhaps enabled us, even at this late and bleak date hellip; to save hellip; our hellip; country.
The free pass has been withdrawn, Mr.
Bush hellip;
You did not act to prevent 9/11.
We do not know what you have done, to prevent another 9/11.
You have failed us mdash; then leveraged that failure, to justify a purposeless war in Iraq which will have, all too soon, claimed more American lives than did 9/11.
You have failed us anew in Afghanistan.
And you have now tried to hide your failures, by blaming your predecessor.
And now you exploit your failure, to rationalize brazen torture mdash; which doesn rsquo;t work anyway; which only condemns our soldiers to water-boarding; which only humiliates our country further in the world; and which no true American would ever condone, let alone advocate.
And there it is, sir:
Are yours the actions of a true American?
I rsquo;m K.O.
, good night, and good luck.
Monday, September 25, 2006 - 17:50:26
Could This Happen in Arkansas?
Found this little news story floating around the Internet today. Could the same thing happen in Arkansas? Asa is that you?
Liberal bloggers in New Hampshire busted an aide to Rep.
Charles Bass (R-N.H.) who was posing as a liberal blogger on such blogs as Blue Granite, NH-02 Progressive and others.
Bass rsquo; office admitted culpability to HOH and said the staffer would be ldquo;appropriately disciplined. rdquo;
The unnamed aide to Bass mdash; who, like many others in his party, faces a tough re-election fight mdash; was routinely trolling liberal New Hampshire political blogs calling himself ldquo;IndyNH rdquo; and more commonly IndieNH, pretending to be a progressive.
Finally, after noticing that lots of things he said just didn rsquo;t add up, a couple of the bloggers traced IndieNH rsquo;s IP address to the House of Representatives.
And they thought, ldquo;How many offices in the U.S. House would be interested in one race in New Hampshire?
rdquo; The answer: Very few. Probably only one.
Laura Clawson, who runs the Blue Granite blog and writes as ldquo;Miss Laura, rdquo; told HOH that she and another blogger easily traced IndieNH rsquo;s IP address to the House server.
They could even see the searches Mr. or Ms. IndieNH was doing to gather opposition research on Bass rsquo; challenger, Paul Hodes (D), such as ldquo;Hodes and gay marriage rdquo; and ldquo;Hodes and taxes.
rdquo;
The incident follows a string of cases in which Capitol Hill aides have been caught modifying entries on Members in Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia.
mag posted this on an older thread and I think it is too important to be hid on a thread everyone is probably finished with. The loss of American jobs to 3rd world countries is just another broken leg America is trying run the race on.
The following song is as true as it is heart breaking.
Here's a new anthem by James McMurtry (Texas musician, son of the great Larry McMurtry)
Vietnam Vet with a cardboard sign
Sitting there by the left turn line
Flag on the wheelchair flapping in the breeze
One leg missing, both hands free
No one's paying much mind to him
The V.A.
budget's stretched so thin
And there's more comin' home from the Mideast war
We can't make it here anymore
See all those pallets piled up on the loading dock
They're just gonna set there till they rot
'Cause there's nothing to ship, nothing to pack
Just busted concrete and rusted tracks
Empty storefronts around the square
There's a needle in the gutter and glass everywhere
You don't come down here 'less you're looking to score
We can't make it here anymore
Some have maxed out all their credit cards
Some are working two jobs and living in cars
Minimum wage won't pay for a roof, won't pay for a drink
If you gotta have proof just try it yourself Mr. CEO
See how far 5.15 an hour will go
Take a part time job at one of your stores
Bet you can't make it here anymore
High school girl with a bourgeois dream
Just like the pictures in the magazine
She found on the floor of the laundromat
A woman with kids can forget all that
If she comes up pregnant what'll she do
Forget the career, forget about school
Can she live on faith?
live on hope?
High on Jesus or hooked on dope
When it's way too late to just say no
You can't make it here anymore
Should I hate a people for the shade of their skin
Or the shape of their eyes or the shape I'm in
Should I hate 'em for having our jobs today
No I hate the men sent the jobs away
I can see them all now, they haunt my dreams
All lily white and squeaky clean
They've never known want, they'll never know need
Their sh@# don't stink and their kids won't bleed
Their kids won't bleed in the da$% little war
And we can't make it here anymore
Will work for food
Will die for oil
Will kill for power and to us the spoils
The billionaires get to pay less tax
The working poor get to fall through the cracks
Let 'em eat jellybeans let 'em eat cake
Let 'em eat sh$%, whatever it takes
They can join the Air Force, or join the Corps
If they can't make it here anymore
In Dayton, Ohio
Or Portland, Maine
Or a cotton gin out on the great high plains
That's done closed down along with the school
And the hospital and the swimming pool
Dust devils dance in the noonday heat
There's rats in the alley
And trash in the street
Gang graffiti on a boxcar door
We can't make it here anymore
LT. EMILY J.
T. PEREZ, 23, a graduate who outran many men, directed a gospel choir and read the Bible every day, was at the head of a weekly convoy as it rolled down roads pocked with bombs and bullets near Najaf. As platoon leader, she insisted on leading her troops from the front.
Two weeks ago, one of those bombs tripped her up, detonating near her Humvee in Kifl, south of Baghdad. She died Sept. 12, the 64th woman from the United States military to be killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Eight died in Vietnam.
Despite longstanding predictions that America would shudder to see its women coming home in coffins, Lieutenant Perez rsquo;s death, and those of the other women, the majority of whom died from hostile fire (the 65th died in a Baghdad car bombing a day later), have stirred no less mdash; and no more mdash; reaction at home than the nearly 2,900 male dead. The same can be said of the hundreds of wounded women.
There is no shortage of guesses as to why: Americans are no longer especially shocked by the idea of a woman rsquo;s violent death. Most don rsquo;t know how many women have fallen, or under what circumstances. Photographs of body bags and coffins are rarely seen.
And nobody wants to kick up a fuss and risk insulting grieving families.
ldquo;The public doesn rsquo;t seem concerned they are dying, rdquo; said Charles Moskos, a military sociologist at who has closely studied national service. ldquo;They would rather have someone else's daughter die than their son.
- Vintage Vinyl News: Grammy Retrospective - The Grammys Turn the Corner
Penny DitchUp until 1967 , the academy generally nominated "safe" artists for the major awards such as Record of the Year...
- recordonline.com - COMEDY: Indie comedians leave the club behind
Franky MicklestoneNovember 20, 2006 Two-drink minimums. A tacky guy in a blazer. Potato skins and drunken bachelorette parties. These used to be the hallmarks of live comedy, an art relegated to the controlled environs of comedy clubs...
- Father and daughter jazz duo extraordinaire - Kingston Reporter
Dwayne JenkingsSteve Martin said, ldquo;Talking about music is like dancing about architecture. rdquo; I am reminded of this as I sit with Johnny and Leah Souza and chat about music, and in particular, jazz. This isn rsquo;t going to be easy to write about , I realize...
- Online services offer your kind of music
Fanny MoreJanuary 15, 2007 BY EDWARD C. BAIG Passionate about music? Most likely, then, you are open to discovering new artists and songs. You may want to create masterful playlists or listen to instant radio that caters to your mood...
- A busy Foxx does his boast - The Boston Globe
Hotty MissJamie Foxx is the closest thing to a real Renaissance man we've got in modern hyphenate culture: an actor-musician-comedian who does more than dabble...
News RSS