It's called collateral damage and that phrase is a big favorite at Camp Clusterfuck (the Bush White House). In this case, you have two pieces of such victimization, an innocent civilian and taxpayers on the hook to pay off the judgement he won in the ensuing lawsuit.
Also innocent is the Associated Press, which objected to rightwing naysayers who assert that the incident in which some Baghdad Muslim worshippers were burned alive by insurgents. Now here is why I can't figure this out: the GOP may be disturbed about all the reports of in your face attacks by the terrorists in Iraq, but this incident only displays the utter depravity of the religious fanatics who are perpetrating these acts and should be useful propaganda for the American side. But noooo! Not in Republican-ville.
The Bush administration, similar to Joe Stalin during the Soviet era, just cannot tolerate ANY insinuation that things are going other than peachy keen. This is how divorced from reality they are. Bush would like to be staging Kim Jong-il style precision dancing in the Green Zone, but they can't deal with all the party crashers.
Ratcheting up the criticism of Bush is none other than the Republican asswipes at Time Magazine, who accuse him of creating a catastrophe in Iraq. Even asswipes are right occasionally.
And while we're on the subject of asshats, Brent Bozell says that generals in Iraq don't think it's civil war. Uh, Media Matters indicated that Bozell may want to take another look at the facts.
Following up on my rant about Ford the other day, they just laid off 38,000 workers, albeit with severance packages (which no doubt take together wouldn't match the total compensation of the members of the company's board and other executives).
And while we're on the subject of crappy car companies, rapper and self-styled pimp Calvin Broadus (aka Snoop Dog) has been busted again. If you remember, Broadus starred in a commercial for Chrysler with former chairman Lee Iacocca. Again, it was an exhibition of corporate America's inattention to morality, as Broadus was (is?) a gang member and had once been tried for taking part in a drive by murder. When I saw that commercial, I half-expected O.J. Simpson to show up at some point. So you will never see me in a Chrysler. They are shitty cars anyway.
This is becoming a week of no-shows. First, Fidel Castro takes a rain check on his own birthday party. Let's hope he never sees another one.
Senate leader Bill Frist, he of the Psychic Friends Diagnosis Network, has shelved his presidential ambitions. Like he had a chance.
Then Iraqi leader Nuri Al-Miliki stood Prez Turbo up Wednesday in their scheduled meeting.
NY Governor George Pataki, the space between whose ears is some of the most untouched real estate in the country, was in Iraq and didn't like the looks of what is going on there. Can we please knock it off with these vanity sightseeing junkets to Iraq at taxpayer expense? What the fuck is Pataki doing there anyway? Pols like him just get in the way over there. I'm sure the security detail he had guarding him had better things to do.
But apparently bored, his imperial Turboness banned sales of IPods and other "luxury items" to North Korea as a juvenile way to get Kim's goat. The only trouble with that is Kim can get them from Japan and China rather easily.
Also, is Bush going to do anything about those Fiats his buddy, the Rev. Sun-myung Moon, has made in North Korea at a plant Moon owns there (with the help of slave labor, I'm guessing)? Apparently not so much. But that is the Bush administration, one empty gesture after another.
A division of Halliburton will pay the U.S. more than $8 million for engaging in fraudulent charges under a government contract. Nobody is going to jail for this, however. How did THAT happen? (Dick Cheney). If I set up a three card monte table in front of my house and bilk my neighbors out of a couple of hundred bucks I likely end up in the slammer. But not the officials of KBR. Lesson: if you gotta pull a bunko scheme, make the government your victim.
The rightwing straitjacket that Republicans currently wrap themselves in is hurting them, says E.J. Dionne.
But what is hurting democracy is stuff like you see in Texas.
The Seattle Times has this series on immigration.
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Maliki Reaches Security Agreement----With Iran; Heckuva Job There George!
Holy Moly! Read it and flinch. Thanks to Musedebussy at Americablog for highlighting this disturbing piece.
Conservative Correctness Rears Its Ugly Head in Calling Iraq a Civil War
Has anyone been scratching their heads over why the media has been so tentative about labeling the Iraq conflict a civil war? They shouldn't and there is a lesson in it.
The media is so full of cowards now that even stating what should be obvious to an eight year old is fraught with fears that the mighty rightwing Wurlitzer will bury them in an avalanche of criticism. So many of these media companies are seeded with Republicans in their executive ranks that reporters and headline writers are running scared that their necks are on the chopping block if the conservative echo chamber reverberates with the sound of grumbling.
Shit, look at Joe Thugborough accusing Danny DeVito of engaging in, and I quote, "political hate speech." First, it was on The View, who nobody above a room temperature I.Q. gives a tinker's cuss about. Thugborough also had some paint fall off of his macho facade by admitting that he cares about anything emanating from that yenta-fest.
Keep that in mind then you read today's headline about how a rightwinger is making a serious bid to buy the NY Times.
Republicans believe, much how the black community does, that it should be entitled to immunity from scrutiny from non-members of the populace by virtue of who they are because they each fraudulently claim that they have been victims of unfair portrayals in the media.
The actual truth is that in inner city America as well as in corporate boardrooms, criminality tends to be coddled and even, in certain circles, thought of as cool and they scream like stuck pigs when the police and prosecutors show up to interdict that and the media appears to capture it for its viewers, listeners and subscribers.
The media has, in fact, been way too timid in forthrightly dealing with both groups because they don't want to be accused of being racists on the one hand and being liberal stooges on the other.
Consequently, the time is more ripe than ever for the emergence of an American Hitler or Mussolini because the watchdog that is supposed to help prevent that from happening is either bought off by the problem party (NBC by GE, Sinclair, Disney, Fox, Clear Channel, etc) or have been scared into toeing the line (CBS, which is owned by Viacom). CNN is such a bore that it is hard to take seriously and it, too, has begun listing rightward.
So idiots like David Gregory, Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, John Gibson and Brit Hume aren't just cowards, they, in a very real way, end up being collaborators and should be reviled as such.
By the way, Thugborough, Barbara Walters is a horse's ass. She's about as venerable as a can of sardines.
The media is so full of cowards now that even stating what should be obvious to an eight year old is fraught with fears that the mighty rightwing Wurlitzer will bury them in an avalanche of criticism. So many of these media companies are seeded with Republicans in their executive ranks that reporters and headline writers are running scared that their necks are on the chopping block if the conservative echo chamber reverberates with the sound of grumbling.
Shit, look at Joe Thugborough accusing Danny DeVito of engaging in, and I quote, "political hate speech." First, it was on The View, who nobody above a room temperature I.Q. gives a tinker's cuss about. Thugborough also had some paint fall off of his macho facade by admitting that he cares about anything emanating from that yenta-fest.
Keep that in mind then you read today's headline about how a rightwinger is making a serious bid to buy the NY Times.
Republicans believe, much how the black community does, that it should be entitled to immunity from scrutiny from non-members of the populace by virtue of who they are because they each fraudulently claim that they have been victims of unfair portrayals in the media.
The actual truth is that in inner city America as well as in corporate boardrooms, criminality tends to be coddled and even, in certain circles, thought of as cool and they scream like stuck pigs when the police and prosecutors show up to interdict that and the media appears to capture it for its viewers, listeners and subscribers.
The media has, in fact, been way too timid in forthrightly dealing with both groups because they don't want to be accused of being racists on the one hand and being liberal stooges on the other.
Consequently, the time is more ripe than ever for the emergence of an American Hitler or Mussolini because the watchdog that is supposed to help prevent that from happening is either bought off by the problem party (NBC by GE, Sinclair, Disney, Fox, Clear Channel, etc) or have been scared into toeing the line (CBS, which is owned by Viacom). CNN is such a bore that it is hard to take seriously and it, too, has begun listing rightward.
So idiots like David Gregory, Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, John Gibson and Brit Hume aren't just cowards, they, in a very real way, end up being collaborators and should be reviled as such.
By the way, Thugborough, Barbara Walters is a horse's ass. She's about as venerable as a can of sardines.
Bush's Cut and Run Iraq Die-in for 2008
It is apparent that President Floyd R., Turbo Bush has absolutely no idea of how to successfully conclude the Iraq War or to get our troops home without igniting what will assuredly be an obscene level of retaliatory bloodshed.
But the GOP doesn't feel there is any reason for them to worry about any of that. Why? That is a no brainer.
The Greedy Old Party already got off fairly cheaply in the past midterm elections with their mishandling of the war. Considering the longterm impact of this thing, which ranges from exacerbating already enormous budget deficits that potentially provide a crucial strategic asset to our enemies in China and Saudi Arabia, to pulverizing American prestige abroad while also strengthening that of terrorist groups and their supporters in Iran and Syria, they have proven incapable of managing any sort of crisis, be it domestic or military.
But what they do realize is that people tend to put more stock in their most recent memory of something. Since Iraq has become military quicksand for the neocons, it really doesn't behoove them to try to solve this thing. Instead, the gambit is to put the Democrats in a position to where they will either have to come up with a concrete plan for the administration, who will then take credit for it if it succeeds, or will say, "see, we told you they can't lead" if it fails.
What the GOP is actually hoping for isn't an actual concrete scheme from the Democrats, but for them to repeat what they did with Vietnam, cut off funding for it. Turbo can then say that Congress tied his hands since they wouldn't provide the money for the war on terrorism and, as the pictures come in of continued bloodshed and maybe even the Iranians marching on Baghdad, the public will recall those images when they go to the polls in the upcoming general election.
In other words, the Republicans are basically staging a die-in for American soldiers for electoral advantage. That Bush doesn't want to be overshadowed by James Baker and anything he might come up with is a dead giveaway because Bush is still attempting to look presidential (hah!) and in control even as Iraq gets further and further out of his grasp as time passes. So even if Baker devises the most brilliant strategy since the landing at Inchon, Bush won't hear it because it didn't come from him or his inner circle.
What the Democrats need to do is to call Bush on this. Tell him that they aren't going to hold his hand and that if all he can do is keep soldiers stationed overseas to use their sacrifice as an electoral tool he and Cheney should resign so that new President Nancy Pelosi will have all the tools available to help resolve this thing as coherently as possible.
Insist that Bush read the Constitution and know that he is the commander in chief. If he can't do his job then, like what happens in any battlefield situation when the general in charge isn't up to the task, he has to be relieved of duty. Furthermore, challenge Bush to finally do what is right for the country and not right for just him or his cronies with Halliburton and the party. Tell the country that Bush had the House of Saud bail him out of one of his bankrupt oil companies and now it is time for "Bhandar Bush (i.e., Saudi prince and Bush intimate Prince Bhandar) to step up to the plate for the U.S. or fuck off back home and take his BFF Bush with him.
That will cause the GOP to run McCain out there, but you just start calling him "John McNamara" and accuse him of wanting to escalate the war. Done, goodbye, get lost.
Yes, the GOP, which has stonewalled on revealing who was in those energy meetings with Cheney is now stonewalling peace as a hail mary for 2008. Let's hope that Pelosi, et al, don't fall for it.
But the GOP doesn't feel there is any reason for them to worry about any of that. Why? That is a no brainer.
The Greedy Old Party already got off fairly cheaply in the past midterm elections with their mishandling of the war. Considering the longterm impact of this thing, which ranges from exacerbating already enormous budget deficits that potentially provide a crucial strategic asset to our enemies in China and Saudi Arabia, to pulverizing American prestige abroad while also strengthening that of terrorist groups and their supporters in Iran and Syria, they have proven incapable of managing any sort of crisis, be it domestic or military.
But what they do realize is that people tend to put more stock in their most recent memory of something. Since Iraq has become military quicksand for the neocons, it really doesn't behoove them to try to solve this thing. Instead, the gambit is to put the Democrats in a position to where they will either have to come up with a concrete plan for the administration, who will then take credit for it if it succeeds, or will say, "see, we told you they can't lead" if it fails.
What the GOP is actually hoping for isn't an actual concrete scheme from the Democrats, but for them to repeat what they did with Vietnam, cut off funding for it. Turbo can then say that Congress tied his hands since they wouldn't provide the money for the war on terrorism and, as the pictures come in of continued bloodshed and maybe even the Iranians marching on Baghdad, the public will recall those images when they go to the polls in the upcoming general election.
In other words, the Republicans are basically staging a die-in for American soldiers for electoral advantage. That Bush doesn't want to be overshadowed by James Baker and anything he might come up with is a dead giveaway because Bush is still attempting to look presidential (hah!) and in control even as Iraq gets further and further out of his grasp as time passes. So even if Baker devises the most brilliant strategy since the landing at Inchon, Bush won't hear it because it didn't come from him or his inner circle.
What the Democrats need to do is to call Bush on this. Tell him that they aren't going to hold his hand and that if all he can do is keep soldiers stationed overseas to use their sacrifice as an electoral tool he and Cheney should resign so that new President Nancy Pelosi will have all the tools available to help resolve this thing as coherently as possible.
Insist that Bush read the Constitution and know that he is the commander in chief. If he can't do his job then, like what happens in any battlefield situation when the general in charge isn't up to the task, he has to be relieved of duty. Furthermore, challenge Bush to finally do what is right for the country and not right for just him or his cronies with Halliburton and the party. Tell the country that Bush had the House of Saud bail him out of one of his bankrupt oil companies and now it is time for "Bhandar Bush (i.e., Saudi prince and Bush intimate Prince Bhandar) to step up to the plate for the U.S. or fuck off back home and take his BFF Bush with him.
That will cause the GOP to run McCain out there, but you just start calling him "John McNamara" and accuse him of wanting to escalate the war. Done, goodbye, get lost.
Yes, the GOP, which has stonewalled on revealing who was in those energy meetings with Cheney is now stonewalling peace as a hail mary for 2008. Let's hope that Pelosi, et al, don't fall for it.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Dispatches From Camp Clusterfuck
Mr. 250 Pounds of Wrong, Newt Gingrich, wants to help terrorists win by abrogating free speech.
Gingrich also equates Bush with George Washington in calling for continuing involvement in the Iraq fiasco. How many lobotomies does one have to have to buy THAT one? Washington's relatives ought to be incensed!
Republican Representative Tom Tancretin has called Cuban-American dominated Miami "a third world country" in an interview with World Wackmaster Daily. No word on what flavor shoe polish he was tasting when he uttered that one.
No matter what U.S. does, bloody civil war in Iraq inevitable.
Washington Post seems to admit it is a mouthpiece for Bush's phony baloney Iraqi government....
Even as Michael Froomkin calls Bush's upcoming meeting with Jordan "a charade", Bush, who once condemned "old Europe" as out of touch, now begs for military support from them.
CNN's Michael Ware gets up close and personal with Bush's Baghdad clusterfuck.
Iraq Study Group a study in a whole lotta nothing.
Republicans do soft shoe to stay out of a War Crimes Tribunal docket.
A geographic look at U.S. military options in Iraq. It's got lots of pictures, so maybe even prez Turbo can understand it.
Al Qaeda power expanded under Bush bumbling.
But does he understand his poll numbers tanked again?"
Two words you never thought you would hear associated with our dumbass in chief: "library" and "think tank."
Brother Neil, though, got himself some money earmarked for schools.
Is Bigtime about to bail after a career trying to restore the imperial presidency?
Will there be blowback for the punditocracy for cheerleading the Iraq mess?
American Muslims show the stupidity of religion.
For women yak yak yak is their heroin while for men it is all about pussy and science says so.
Aussie wheat outfit bribed Saddam with $224 milion and duped Norm Coleman (R-MN) out of investigation.
Republican congressman Curt Weldon threatened a foreign aid cutoff to Moldova after friend's distillery venture in Russia went south. Can you say, "extortion?"
Diplomatic wizardry from Rush Limbaugh.
Minimum wage increase helps job creation.
U.S. economy supposedly growing, but some facts undercut that.
Creationism idiocy invades Britain from America.
Democratic wipeout of GOP in Washington state could mean smoother sailing for agenda.
A new day, another Republican lie.
New Jersey Republicans try to have it both ways on gay marriage issue; wait until you get a load of THIS!
Maxine Waters, shut the fuck up!
Slight recline better for back than sitting up straight.
Feds Bust Country Singer for Illegal Bear Killing. Somebody send him hunting with Cheney!
Gingrich also equates Bush with George Washington in calling for continuing involvement in the Iraq fiasco. How many lobotomies does one have to have to buy THAT one? Washington's relatives ought to be incensed!
Republican Representative Tom Tancretin has called Cuban-American dominated Miami "a third world country" in an interview with World Wackmaster Daily. No word on what flavor shoe polish he was tasting when he uttered that one.
No matter what U.S. does, bloody civil war in Iraq inevitable.
Washington Post seems to admit it is a mouthpiece for Bush's phony baloney Iraqi government....
Even as Michael Froomkin calls Bush's upcoming meeting with Jordan "a charade", Bush, who once condemned "old Europe" as out of touch, now begs for military support from them.
CNN's Michael Ware gets up close and personal with Bush's Baghdad clusterfuck.
Iraq Study Group a study in a whole lotta nothing.
Republicans do soft shoe to stay out of a War Crimes Tribunal docket.
A geographic look at U.S. military options in Iraq. It's got lots of pictures, so maybe even prez Turbo can understand it.
Al Qaeda power expanded under Bush bumbling.
But does he understand his poll numbers tanked again?"
Two words you never thought you would hear associated with our dumbass in chief: "library" and "think tank."
Brother Neil, though, got himself some money earmarked for schools.
Is Bigtime about to bail after a career trying to restore the imperial presidency?
Will there be blowback for the punditocracy for cheerleading the Iraq mess?
American Muslims show the stupidity of religion.
For women yak yak yak is their heroin while for men it is all about pussy and science says so.
Aussie wheat outfit bribed Saddam with $224 milion and duped Norm Coleman (R-MN) out of investigation.
Republican congressman Curt Weldon threatened a foreign aid cutoff to Moldova after friend's distillery venture in Russia went south. Can you say, "extortion?"
Diplomatic wizardry from Rush Limbaugh.
Minimum wage increase helps job creation.
U.S. economy supposedly growing, but some facts undercut that.
Creationism idiocy invades Britain from America.
Democratic wipeout of GOP in Washington state could mean smoother sailing for agenda.
A new day, another Republican lie.
New Jersey Republicans try to have it both ways on gay marriage issue; wait until you get a load of THIS!
Maxine Waters, shut the fuck up!
Slight recline better for back than sitting up straight.
Feds Bust Country Singer for Illegal Bear Killing. Somebody send him hunting with Cheney!
Sunday, November 26, 2006
Random Thoughts
Anyone ever wonder what Scanner Bush would look like in an orange jumpsuit? We should have been able to get an eyeful of that during the Iran-Contra affair, when Bush clearly perjured himself in denying that he had anything to do with the scheme.
Now he and his buddies at the Carlyle Group may be investigated for insider trading after acquiring Taiwanese chip packaging firm ASE. Moreover, the purchase appears to be part of a quid pro quo to evade Taiwan's laws having to do with investing in the mainland Chinese market. China is an enemy of the United States. Yes, a Bush helping American enemies, a tradition for over 70 years.
According to media reports, the hellspawn of Turbo Bush, Barbara and Jenna (kind of like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, except without the "class"), have been asked to leave Argentina due to security issues. One Latin American tabloid had the twins cavorting starkers in the hallway of their hotel, but the hotel staff denied it.
What enquiring minds REALLY want to know is: do they swallow and do they prefer doggy style over missionary? Kind of hard to imagine their mom sticking Turbo's cock in her mouth (that is Condi's job, according to some of the more salacious Washington D.C. rumors), but the daughters sound like they could have a taste for tube steak.
But pulling out early to prevent having more boys aborted in Iraq are the Brits, Poles and Italians. The U.S. is being increasingly isolated and with Iraqi officials looking to bring Iran into the diplomatic mix in order to try to shut this insurgency down, the extent of Bush's debacle and America's tragedy seems to get bigger with every passing day.
Unfortunately, if Jordan's King Abdullah is correct, it will be civil wars for everybody during the coming year. It's too bad that Turbo has had to learn on the job that diplomacy does count. And it is even more distressing the size of his unilateralist mess is becoming.
Mitt's dick side exposed in gay flip flop.
Knives come out for GOP leaders as party takes a digger in Hawaii.
Pat Buchanan, America's most noted crank, actually thinks Vlad Putin had nothing to do with the poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko. Somebody prescribe him some Lithium, okay? Sheesh! Look Pat, what Putin has to gain from this is silencing critics in Russian emigre communities abroad. He has already completely cowed the domestic media. Moreover, there is increasing speculation that Putin has engaged in false flag operations that resulted in the deaths of dozens of innocent civilians so that he could setup Chechen rebels to be crushed (not that I have any sympathy for the Chechen side, who are a bunch of morons, for the most part).
It appears that men may finally have a pill on the way that will allow them to engage in pregnancy risk-free poking. Of course, this has the hosanna hut denizens up in arms, who argue that it will cause more STD's since there will be less condom use. What they forget is all the unmarried and even married couples who will use it so as not to cause an unwanted knocking up. So in the end, all these voyeuristic rollers of the holy smoke are attempting to do is stick their noses into people's private business. Again, religion is never having to mind your own business.
But paying for the screwing they have been giving consumers for decades is Ford, whose debt notes were downgraded by Standard and Poor. Ford has always sucked, the lowlights being the Edsel and those exploding Pintos. It is too bad that their ill fortune has resulted in the layoffs of tens of thousands of workers over the years, but the fact is that anyone with a brain should have seen this coming. Like GM, this company has been run into the ground by incompetent management. But will those execs pay the price for that? No. Mr. and Mrs. Lineworker will. So if this company disappears, and it probably will in my lifetime, nobody will miss it from a qualitative standpoint.
Also being ankled for poor product is television. Young people are abandoning the idiot box more and more in favor of internet video content. Your sulfuric soothsayer has had his tube in the upright and off position almost the entire Thanksgiving holiday period, the only things interrupting that silence being the USC-Notre Dame tilt (being a California native it is ingrained into my genetic code to watch it) as well as an episode of a cartoon called Metalocalypse, which is a hilarious series about a dimwitted but mindblowingly popular fictional death metal band. Instead, I often hang out at You Tube and watch music and people's personal videos.
Back in the land of white trash, Canadian bimbo Pam Anderson and her yingyang husband, Detroit's Kid Rock, are splitting. Never saw THAT coming, did you? While I have no respect for any rapper except for Wycliffe Jean (and that is only because he is a megatalented musician and not just the usual gangbanging dumbass), Kid Rock has had an engaging dorkiness and obviously loves music even if you wouldn't want him as a neighbor.
Don't crumple up that piece of notepaper just yet. It could be the hot new data storage medium and I ain't talking books here. You gotta check this out.
Finally, to the Iraq Study Group, thanks for a whole lot of nothing.
Now he and his buddies at the Carlyle Group may be investigated for insider trading after acquiring Taiwanese chip packaging firm ASE. Moreover, the purchase appears to be part of a quid pro quo to evade Taiwan's laws having to do with investing in the mainland Chinese market. China is an enemy of the United States. Yes, a Bush helping American enemies, a tradition for over 70 years.
According to media reports, the hellspawn of Turbo Bush, Barbara and Jenna (kind of like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie, except without the "class"), have been asked to leave Argentina due to security issues. One Latin American tabloid had the twins cavorting starkers in the hallway of their hotel, but the hotel staff denied it.
What enquiring minds REALLY want to know is: do they swallow and do they prefer doggy style over missionary? Kind of hard to imagine their mom sticking Turbo's cock in her mouth (that is Condi's job, according to some of the more salacious Washington D.C. rumors), but the daughters sound like they could have a taste for tube steak.
But pulling out early to prevent having more boys aborted in Iraq are the Brits, Poles and Italians. The U.S. is being increasingly isolated and with Iraqi officials looking to bring Iran into the diplomatic mix in order to try to shut this insurgency down, the extent of Bush's debacle and America's tragedy seems to get bigger with every passing day.
Unfortunately, if Jordan's King Abdullah is correct, it will be civil wars for everybody during the coming year. It's too bad that Turbo has had to learn on the job that diplomacy does count. And it is even more distressing the size of his unilateralist mess is becoming.
Mitt's dick side exposed in gay flip flop.
Knives come out for GOP leaders as party takes a digger in Hawaii.
Pat Buchanan, America's most noted crank, actually thinks Vlad Putin had nothing to do with the poisoning death of Alexander Litvinenko. Somebody prescribe him some Lithium, okay? Sheesh! Look Pat, what Putin has to gain from this is silencing critics in Russian emigre communities abroad. He has already completely cowed the domestic media. Moreover, there is increasing speculation that Putin has engaged in false flag operations that resulted in the deaths of dozens of innocent civilians so that he could setup Chechen rebels to be crushed (not that I have any sympathy for the Chechen side, who are a bunch of morons, for the most part).
It appears that men may finally have a pill on the way that will allow them to engage in pregnancy risk-free poking. Of course, this has the hosanna hut denizens up in arms, who argue that it will cause more STD's since there will be less condom use. What they forget is all the unmarried and even married couples who will use it so as not to cause an unwanted knocking up. So in the end, all these voyeuristic rollers of the holy smoke are attempting to do is stick their noses into people's private business. Again, religion is never having to mind your own business.
But paying for the screwing they have been giving consumers for decades is Ford, whose debt notes were downgraded by Standard and Poor. Ford has always sucked, the lowlights being the Edsel and those exploding Pintos. It is too bad that their ill fortune has resulted in the layoffs of tens of thousands of workers over the years, but the fact is that anyone with a brain should have seen this coming. Like GM, this company has been run into the ground by incompetent management. But will those execs pay the price for that? No. Mr. and Mrs. Lineworker will. So if this company disappears, and it probably will in my lifetime, nobody will miss it from a qualitative standpoint.
Also being ankled for poor product is television. Young people are abandoning the idiot box more and more in favor of internet video content. Your sulfuric soothsayer has had his tube in the upright and off position almost the entire Thanksgiving holiday period, the only things interrupting that silence being the USC-Notre Dame tilt (being a California native it is ingrained into my genetic code to watch it) as well as an episode of a cartoon called Metalocalypse, which is a hilarious series about a dimwitted but mindblowingly popular fictional death metal band. Instead, I often hang out at You Tube and watch music and people's personal videos.
Back in the land of white trash, Canadian bimbo Pam Anderson and her yingyang husband, Detroit's Kid Rock, are splitting. Never saw THAT coming, did you? While I have no respect for any rapper except for Wycliffe Jean (and that is only because he is a megatalented musician and not just the usual gangbanging dumbass), Kid Rock has had an engaging dorkiness and obviously loves music even if you wouldn't want him as a neighbor.
Don't crumple up that piece of notepaper just yet. It could be the hot new data storage medium and I ain't talking books here. You gotta check this out.
Finally, to the Iraq Study Group, thanks for a whole lot of nothing.
Sunday Reading
Perverting history to create war hysteria.
Where's the exit strategy GOP? Nations are waiting.
Dead Kennedy's sang a better tune than G.W. Bush is now.
Nutty conspiracy theories dog U.S. war effort in Iraq.
Oil companies hindering Indian economic growth.
In today's comedy segment, we have Iran's wackjob leader offering to "help" U.S., but only after it withdraws from Iraq.
GOP playmate Augusto Pinochet claims victimhood. No word on what families of those he killed think.
Electorate found Democrats better on pocketbook issues than Republicans.
Civil rights demagogues readying rhetoric after drunks ram two cars and get shot.
Senator Feinstein to scrutinize voting machines.
The Republicans' family planning farce.
Is Bush Administration using Ethiopia to wage war in Somalia?
Associated Press finds evidence of oil companies manipulating supply to drive up prices.
Republicans avert your eyes, it's the week's science news summary.
God exterminated sinful marine life to remake oceans anew. Just kidding.
Where's the exit strategy GOP? Nations are waiting.
Dead Kennedy's sang a better tune than G.W. Bush is now.
Nutty conspiracy theories dog U.S. war effort in Iraq.
Oil companies hindering Indian economic growth.
In today's comedy segment, we have Iran's wackjob leader offering to "help" U.S., but only after it withdraws from Iraq.
GOP playmate Augusto Pinochet claims victimhood. No word on what families of those he killed think.
Electorate found Democrats better on pocketbook issues than Republicans.
Civil rights demagogues readying rhetoric after drunks ram two cars and get shot.
Senator Feinstein to scrutinize voting machines.
The Republicans' family planning farce.
Is Bush Administration using Ethiopia to wage war in Somalia?
Associated Press finds evidence of oil companies manipulating supply to drive up prices.
Republicans avert your eyes, it's the week's science news summary.
God exterminated sinful marine life to remake oceans anew. Just kidding.
Saturday, November 25, 2006
Why the U.S. Needs to Stay the Hell Out of the Lebanon Issue
Remember how I said that because of their congenital incompetence that nobody should ever try to pick up after the French? Well, here is another patch of the world the bastards have screwed up all to hell coming back to haunt us.
Holy Shit! Russians Go to Church to Recruit British and American Spies
Once again, these citadels of the superstitious bite civilization in the ass.
And it isn't like MI6, Britain's version of the CIA, probably isn't compromised now like it has repeatedly been over the last 100 years.
And it isn't like MI6, Britain's version of the CIA, probably isn't compromised now like it has repeatedly been over the last 100 years.
Random Thoughts
Meet the new defense chief, same as the old boss.
L.A. Times calls it a civil war in Iraq.
A couple who fled to Canada in the wake of Bush winning a second term decides to stay put even with conservative tool (in both senses of the word) Stephen Harper becoming prime minister there and the Democrats taking Congress.
Here we go: the two idiots who were heckling Michael Richards now want a payday for the former Seinfeld star's tirade that was directed at them. And who is representing these two loudmouths? None other than judicial heldentwat Gloria Allred.
These hecklers are a couple of pussies. Look, Richards' career is over. Just because somebody calls you names doesn't mean they actually hurt you to the point that you suffered some kind of loss. If you can now claim monetary awards just for name calling, lawyers would be crawling all over elementary and junior high schools looking for students who want to sue their classmates after playground spats. So shut the fuck up and disappear, okay you fucking whiners?
Lawyers have also found a new way to manipulate jurors, so expect to see more histrionics from them in a courtroom near you.
Meanwhile, states will tell the Supreme Court that they want Turbo Bush and Congress to take action on global warming.
Republicans in Indiana are resisting a Democratic call to eliminate that state's six percent sales tax on gasoline. Why? So they can cut property taxes instead, which mostly benefits, as you would expect, apartment owners (who won't slash rents) and the wealthy with big ass land holdings. Moreover, just what the impact of the GOP plan will be on police services and schools hasn't been disclosed, but it won't be positive. That's the Republicans for you, always willing to sacrifice public safety and education for the sake of greed.
I have two uncles who are truckers. They are both owner-operators, one a long haul and the other a shorter haul (pretty much the south only) and they are getting killed on these high gas prices, the ones that the Indiana state government benefits from thanks to the continuing gouging by Big Oil. Of course, ultimately when transportation costs go up so do consumer prices. But again, the GOP doesn't care.
The Carlyle Group, an investment firm that is headed up by Scanner Bush and some of his cronies, has plans to buy one of the world's biggest microchip packaging firms. Hmmm..... Read about it here.
Rwanda has broken off relations with France amid allegations that the froggies are attempting to destabilize the African nation's government. Nice job Rwanda! French leaders should be brought up on war crimes charges for helping to stoke the genocide there, but there is no plan to do that, unfortunately.
French soccer fans also have some self-reflection to do following a match with an Israeli squad, as they showed that anti-semitism is still alive and well there.
It appears that cranky Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez is going to cruise to an easy victory in the upcoming elections in that country, but it could have an interesting side effect since Chavez may forbid Venezuelan players to go to the major leagues. Several MLB clubs have academies there. MLB thus brings millions of dollars to what is still a poor nation. Venezuelan baseball fans are reportedly not amused.
Comedians, though, are having a good time shredding the Bush Administration for the appointment of religious wacko Dr. Eric Keroack to oversee family planning policy, but average women are not because the GOP cannot mind its own business.
Also not right in the head is L.A.'s birdbrained Democrat mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who says it's okay to inconvenience people attempting to go to and from work and to help generate more pollution in one of America's smoggiest cities for Hollywood's sake. Sorry, but I think it is the job of industry to stay out of the way of average people as much as possible. This country doesn't exist for the benefit of corporate America, but for the country's inhabitants. It's too bad that Villaraigosa hasn't learned that simple fact. Call him a Hollywood whore.
Is the campaign to recognize gay marriages setting gay rights back? Read this and make up your own mind.
In what might be the oddest headline of the day, though, a teachers pension fund in Ontario, Canada has bought interest in, get this, four shipping container terminals. You read that right.
L.A. Times calls it a civil war in Iraq.
A couple who fled to Canada in the wake of Bush winning a second term decides to stay put even with conservative tool (in both senses of the word) Stephen Harper becoming prime minister there and the Democrats taking Congress.
Here we go: the two idiots who were heckling Michael Richards now want a payday for the former Seinfeld star's tirade that was directed at them. And who is representing these two loudmouths? None other than judicial heldentwat Gloria Allred.
These hecklers are a couple of pussies. Look, Richards' career is over. Just because somebody calls you names doesn't mean they actually hurt you to the point that you suffered some kind of loss. If you can now claim monetary awards just for name calling, lawyers would be crawling all over elementary and junior high schools looking for students who want to sue their classmates after playground spats. So shut the fuck up and disappear, okay you fucking whiners?
Lawyers have also found a new way to manipulate jurors, so expect to see more histrionics from them in a courtroom near you.
Meanwhile, states will tell the Supreme Court that they want Turbo Bush and Congress to take action on global warming.
Republicans in Indiana are resisting a Democratic call to eliminate that state's six percent sales tax on gasoline. Why? So they can cut property taxes instead, which mostly benefits, as you would expect, apartment owners (who won't slash rents) and the wealthy with big ass land holdings. Moreover, just what the impact of the GOP plan will be on police services and schools hasn't been disclosed, but it won't be positive. That's the Republicans for you, always willing to sacrifice public safety and education for the sake of greed.
I have two uncles who are truckers. They are both owner-operators, one a long haul and the other a shorter haul (pretty much the south only) and they are getting killed on these high gas prices, the ones that the Indiana state government benefits from thanks to the continuing gouging by Big Oil. Of course, ultimately when transportation costs go up so do consumer prices. But again, the GOP doesn't care.
The Carlyle Group, an investment firm that is headed up by Scanner Bush and some of his cronies, has plans to buy one of the world's biggest microchip packaging firms. Hmmm..... Read about it here.
Rwanda has broken off relations with France amid allegations that the froggies are attempting to destabilize the African nation's government. Nice job Rwanda! French leaders should be brought up on war crimes charges for helping to stoke the genocide there, but there is no plan to do that, unfortunately.
French soccer fans also have some self-reflection to do following a match with an Israeli squad, as they showed that anti-semitism is still alive and well there.
It appears that cranky Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez is going to cruise to an easy victory in the upcoming elections in that country, but it could have an interesting side effect since Chavez may forbid Venezuelan players to go to the major leagues. Several MLB clubs have academies there. MLB thus brings millions of dollars to what is still a poor nation. Venezuelan baseball fans are reportedly not amused.
Comedians, though, are having a good time shredding the Bush Administration for the appointment of religious wacko Dr. Eric Keroack to oversee family planning policy, but average women are not because the GOP cannot mind its own business.
Also not right in the head is L.A.'s birdbrained Democrat mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who says it's okay to inconvenience people attempting to go to and from work and to help generate more pollution in one of America's smoggiest cities for Hollywood's sake. Sorry, but I think it is the job of industry to stay out of the way of average people as much as possible. This country doesn't exist for the benefit of corporate America, but for the country's inhabitants. It's too bad that Villaraigosa hasn't learned that simple fact. Call him a Hollywood whore.
Is the campaign to recognize gay marriages setting gay rights back? Read this and make up your own mind.
In what might be the oddest headline of the day, though, a teachers pension fund in Ontario, Canada has bought interest in, get this, four shipping container terminals. You read that right.
Voters to Romney on Gay Marriage Ban: Suck it!
Mitt Romney says this is about voters' wishes being respected, which is the same argument made by southern segregationists back in the 1950's. But the folks in heavily Catholic Massachusetts are having none of this nonsense, according to this report.
Friday, November 24, 2006
Democrats Messy But Effective, Republican Base is Bigots Says George Mason University Study
It's not to say that Democrats are perfect, but we get the job done anyway, according to this study by the conservative leaning George Mason University.
More Republican Idiocy
The perpetual surveillance state.
Republican cartoon characters declare war on actual cartoons.
Gunplay in National Parks to be Senator George Allen's uh, parting shot.
Massive corruption, U.S. tactical missteps leading to Taliban resurgence.
Bush sided with foreign wheat growers over those in America's heartland.
Bush, GOP Congress tells working folk to go to hell.
Incompetent Bush BFF Vicente Fox helping gangsters take over Mexican border towns.
Bush Team 100 member Robert Bass' protege's company indicted by South Korea for Stock Manipulation, embezzlement, other charges.
Money leads to rightwing cave on Vietnam trade.
Teacher turns public school classroom into hosanna hut and then lies about it:
Republican cartoon characters declare war on actual cartoons.
Gunplay in National Parks to be Senator George Allen's uh, parting shot.
Massive corruption, U.S. tactical missteps leading to Taliban resurgence.
Bush sided with foreign wheat growers over those in America's heartland.
Bush, GOP Congress tells working folk to go to hell.
Incompetent Bush BFF Vicente Fox helping gangsters take over Mexican border towns.
Bush Team 100 member Robert Bass' protege's company indicted by South Korea for Stock Manipulation, embezzlement, other charges.
Money leads to rightwing cave on Vietnam trade.
Teacher turns public school classroom into hosanna hut and then lies about it:
Heritage Foundation: WWII and Korea Vets Stupid
Chickenhawks are running scared over NY Representative Charlie Rangel's proposal that a draft be reinstated. The media today is running editorials and articles from yellow elephant outlets such as National Review decrying the idea.
I also reject that notion propounded by the Heritage Foundation that drafted recruits in WWII and Korea were dumber than those currently being subjected to the Iraq experience. Just outside my bedroom door, because there is greater wall space, are pictures and citations concernings my late grandfather, who was killed at the Battle of the Bulge. I have his medals on a shelf right in front of my bed along with more pictures. So you can imagine how offensive I find that insinuation by the rightwing propaganda house, especially since my mom was so young when he died that she barely remembers him. It is due to folks like him that I can sit here and spout off to you this morning. I will always be grateful.
My grandmother then married another WWII vet, who stayed in the reserves after it was over and got called up to serve in Korea, where he was wounded.
I will take them over the array of gangbangers and drug users who are allowed to join today due to eroded criteria so that the Bush administration can make it look like they aren't hurting military preparedness.
Down the line we are going a pay a price for this. We already have a gang problem in the military, even in the Navy, and we are bascially training hoodlums how to outfight the police in America's urban cores. Great for the vicious 18th Street gang and the Crips, bad for America.
That isn't to mention that dissing our WWII troops is incredibly elitist, but when it comes to the Bushies, that isn't a suprise.
I also reject that notion propounded by the Heritage Foundation that drafted recruits in WWII and Korea were dumber than those currently being subjected to the Iraq experience. Just outside my bedroom door, because there is greater wall space, are pictures and citations concernings my late grandfather, who was killed at the Battle of the Bulge. I have his medals on a shelf right in front of my bed along with more pictures. So you can imagine how offensive I find that insinuation by the rightwing propaganda house, especially since my mom was so young when he died that she barely remembers him. It is due to folks like him that I can sit here and spout off to you this morning. I will always be grateful.
My grandmother then married another WWII vet, who stayed in the reserves after it was over and got called up to serve in Korea, where he was wounded.
I will take them over the array of gangbangers and drug users who are allowed to join today due to eroded criteria so that the Bush administration can make it look like they aren't hurting military preparedness.
Down the line we are going a pay a price for this. We already have a gang problem in the military, even in the Navy, and we are bascially training hoodlums how to outfight the police in America's urban cores. Great for the vicious 18th Street gang and the Crips, bad for America.
That isn't to mention that dissing our WWII troops is incredibly elitist, but when it comes to the Bushies, that isn't a suprise.
Random Thoughts
First, a tribute to a journalistic hero in Mexico. This guy had 15 pound balls.
Yes, it's more problems for the bumblers in the White House in the Middle East as the Turbo Bush crowd massages America's hunger problem. I guess any problem can be cured with a new euphemism. Let them eat cottonseed, I guess.
Vampire Bob Novak dropped a big brown steamer on Bush's Thanksgiving dinner table. Now you know that the White House has become a lame duck pond when a true believer such as Novak, who should be in jail for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, jumps ship.
The American Legion supported Texas Representative Chet Edwards, a Democrat and non-veteran, over an Iraq War vet running for the GOP because, unlike the Republicans in general, Edwards has been an outstanding advocate for those who who go put a big ass whippin' on our enemies.
A Democrat priority should be fixing our broken Veterans Administration. It is obscene the crap that vets who emerge with medical problems due to serving us overseas have to endure from the VA, which basically treats them as nuisances rather than good folks with real needs. Get it done Democrats. Now!
You gotta love the marketing weasels at Microsoft and how they handled the launch of their new X Box. But since when do Republicans care about consumers?
But you actually really do have to admire scientist who continue to advance stem cell research, including one where it turns out they can extract stem cells without hurting human embryos. This further undermines the hosanna hut contingent that wants to impede the use of embryonic stem cells.
And there is even more intriguing stem cell related news here.
Can somebody rationally explain to me why there is resistance to a new regulation that requires every American traveling outside our borders and anyone entering the U.S. to have a passport? As someone who has lived in foreign countries myself it is unbelievable that this hasn't always been a rule. Wah wah wah, I got to spend $90 to get a passport. Poor baby. Give me a fucking break!
Canadian ISPs have joined the fight against child porn. What the fuck took them so long? Shouldn't they have done that in the late 1990's?
What are the British going to do about Vladimir Putin? Kinda tough to try to extradite the frontman of a nuclear power for murder, especially a particularly xenophobic one. The Russians did something like this before in Britain during the Soviet era when a KGB agent poked a target with an umbrella tipped with ricin at a bus stop, iirc.
France should be added to the axis of evil (which sounds like something Marvel Comics would have dreamed up, such is the manner in which the Bush Administration has dumbed down how we discuss foreign policy). Everything they have touched, be it Haiti, Vietnam or Algeria, turns to shit and creates tremendous international diplomatic and security issues. Now with revelations increasing of French culpability in the Rwandan Genocide, the froggies are moving to create legal diversions to obfuscate that fact.
My condolences to the family of former Baltimore pitcher Pat Dobson at age 64 of leukemia. The interesting note about Pat was that he didn't pitch a no hitter in the big leagues, but he did toss one against a Japanese all star team when the O's did a tour of Japan back in their glory days, when he was part of a rotation that included Mike Cuellar, Jim Palmer, and Dave McNally, all four men winning 20 games in 1971.
Yes, it's more problems for the bumblers in the White House in the Middle East as the Turbo Bush crowd massages America's hunger problem. I guess any problem can be cured with a new euphemism. Let them eat cottonseed, I guess.
Vampire Bob Novak dropped a big brown steamer on Bush's Thanksgiving dinner table. Now you know that the White House has become a lame duck pond when a true believer such as Novak, who should be in jail for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, jumps ship.
The American Legion supported Texas Representative Chet Edwards, a Democrat and non-veteran, over an Iraq War vet running for the GOP because, unlike the Republicans in general, Edwards has been an outstanding advocate for those who who go put a big ass whippin' on our enemies.
A Democrat priority should be fixing our broken Veterans Administration. It is obscene the crap that vets who emerge with medical problems due to serving us overseas have to endure from the VA, which basically treats them as nuisances rather than good folks with real needs. Get it done Democrats. Now!
You gotta love the marketing weasels at Microsoft and how they handled the launch of their new X Box. But since when do Republicans care about consumers?
But you actually really do have to admire scientist who continue to advance stem cell research, including one where it turns out they can extract stem cells without hurting human embryos. This further undermines the hosanna hut contingent that wants to impede the use of embryonic stem cells.
And there is even more intriguing stem cell related news here.
Can somebody rationally explain to me why there is resistance to a new regulation that requires every American traveling outside our borders and anyone entering the U.S. to have a passport? As someone who has lived in foreign countries myself it is unbelievable that this hasn't always been a rule. Wah wah wah, I got to spend $90 to get a passport. Poor baby. Give me a fucking break!
Canadian ISPs have joined the fight against child porn. What the fuck took them so long? Shouldn't they have done that in the late 1990's?
What are the British going to do about Vladimir Putin? Kinda tough to try to extradite the frontman of a nuclear power for murder, especially a particularly xenophobic one. The Russians did something like this before in Britain during the Soviet era when a KGB agent poked a target with an umbrella tipped with ricin at a bus stop, iirc.
France should be added to the axis of evil (which sounds like something Marvel Comics would have dreamed up, such is the manner in which the Bush Administration has dumbed down how we discuss foreign policy). Everything they have touched, be it Haiti, Vietnam or Algeria, turns to shit and creates tremendous international diplomatic and security issues. Now with revelations increasing of French culpability in the Rwandan Genocide, the froggies are moving to create legal diversions to obfuscate that fact.
My condolences to the family of former Baltimore pitcher Pat Dobson at age 64 of leukemia. The interesting note about Pat was that he didn't pitch a no hitter in the big leagues, but he did toss one against a Japanese all star team when the O's did a tour of Japan back in their glory days, when he was part of a rotation that included Mike Cuellar, Jim Palmer, and Dave McNally, all four men winning 20 games in 1971.
Thursday, November 23, 2006
Random Thoughts
There was a time leading up to the election that the rightwing punditocracy was predicting that the great DailyKos blog was about to implode due to dissension within the ranks of its readers and unease within the Democratic Party about where netroots outfits like that august organ was leading the.
Well, the crayon warriors were almost right. DailyKos did implode....the Republican Party during the election. Gloat here.
Those of you who live in my beloved Southern California have undoubtedly heard about the racism lawsuit against the L.A. Fire Department for a prank some of its brave men in yellow pulled on an African-American colleague where they put some dogfood in his spaghetti. The L.A. City Council, which has been a bad joke since the turn of the 20th century, decided to pay out $2.7 million to make the ensuing civil suit go away, even after photos emerged of the plaintiff, Tennie Pierce, pulling even more asinine practical jokes than the one he was afflicted by. Pierce apparently became distraught when his colleagues kidded him about wolfing the dog chow-laden pasta and decided to get himself some legal muscle.
After the photos of the pranks that Pierce himself was a part of came out through the auspices of the unlistenable John and Ken show on sieg heil on your dial KFI, the fecal matter went Jackson Pollack and L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, generally a shitbrain for all seasons, did the right thing and yanked the settlement. Even the leftwing L.A. Weekly cheered the mayor's action.
Of course, as you can imagine, the usual winger suspects such as World Wackmaster Daily are expressing ecstacy in their Idaho bunkers because it points out how much of a scourge leftwing political correctness is. The unfortunate thing is that view is correct (but then again, there is such a thing as conservative correctness, too. Just ask the Southern Poverty Law Center).
Too many blacks are all too willing to use phony charges of racism as a chance for a payday and they have to be called on it.
Speaking of which, fuckhead Michael Richards tried to reach Tawana Brawley playmate Al Sharpton as a way of expressing a mea culpa for his n-word laced invective against a couple of black hecklers at an L.A. nightclub. Richards has thus done something that makes me think of him less than I already did (I never cared for him on the old Fridays program and I thought Seinfeld was a snooze).
The problem with Richards doing that, aside from the fact that even most liberals think Sharpton is human dogshit, is that by paying obeisance to the shitwad he has sabotaged his chances of replacing Dennis Miller as the rightwing's favorite unfunny comedian. The use of the "n-word" would have nicely burnished Richards conservative bonafides, but that is now cast asunder. D'oh!
On my position concerning the tasing of a UCLA student a while back, there is a rather unsavory tinge to the officer who did the deed and he shouldn't have been around to even be there, in my opinion.
The Long Beach Police Department is rather infamous for its cavalier observance of excessive force regulations. A few years back, a former police officer named Don Jackson was stopped by the LBPD for supposedly weaving in traffic (he wasn't). The problem was that Jackson was being trailed by an unmarked NBC news van. Can you see where this is headed? The officer made Jackson assume the position against a shop window and then just shoved Jackson's head through it while the NBC crew filmed all this in disbelief.
The Caucasian officer was eventually brought up on charges and, get this, acquitted, in a trial in Hawthorne, California. The officer had his job with the LBPD restored as a result and, AFAIK, is still on that city's force today.
So you obviously have to go a loooooooooooooong way to get pink slipped by the Long Beach PD, but the guy who was involved in the UCLA incident was. He claims it was for doing paperwork too slowly or some such bullshit. I just wonder if there were any dead bodies that actually engendered his firing.
Jackson himself went off the deep end and is more or less on a vendetta against all cops now, even backing O.J. Simpson during his murder trial.
Incidentally, for those of you behind the wall in George Bush's personal gloryhole, your man and noted pot smoking surf nazi Dana Rohrabacher regularly refers to his home district Huntington Beach policemen and women as, and this is a direct quote, "stormtroopers." So fuck off you winger assholes who think it is righties who favor the constabulary. Hell, his wife is a convict. That should tell you something. as would Rohrabacher's and Scott Baugh's relationship with a child molester.
Finally, a note to Florida Representative: Alcee Hastings: resign. Do your party and the country a favor you scumbag.
Well, the crayon warriors were almost right. DailyKos did implode....the Republican Party during the election. Gloat here.
Those of you who live in my beloved Southern California have undoubtedly heard about the racism lawsuit against the L.A. Fire Department for a prank some of its brave men in yellow pulled on an African-American colleague where they put some dogfood in his spaghetti. The L.A. City Council, which has been a bad joke since the turn of the 20th century, decided to pay out $2.7 million to make the ensuing civil suit go away, even after photos emerged of the plaintiff, Tennie Pierce, pulling even more asinine practical jokes than the one he was afflicted by. Pierce apparently became distraught when his colleagues kidded him about wolfing the dog chow-laden pasta and decided to get himself some legal muscle.
After the photos of the pranks that Pierce himself was a part of came out through the auspices of the unlistenable John and Ken show on sieg heil on your dial KFI, the fecal matter went Jackson Pollack and L.A. mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, generally a shitbrain for all seasons, did the right thing and yanked the settlement. Even the leftwing L.A. Weekly cheered the mayor's action.
Of course, as you can imagine, the usual winger suspects such as World Wackmaster Daily are expressing ecstacy in their Idaho bunkers because it points out how much of a scourge leftwing political correctness is. The unfortunate thing is that view is correct (but then again, there is such a thing as conservative correctness, too. Just ask the Southern Poverty Law Center).
Too many blacks are all too willing to use phony charges of racism as a chance for a payday and they have to be called on it.
Speaking of which, fuckhead Michael Richards tried to reach Tawana Brawley playmate Al Sharpton as a way of expressing a mea culpa for his n-word laced invective against a couple of black hecklers at an L.A. nightclub. Richards has thus done something that makes me think of him less than I already did (I never cared for him on the old Fridays program and I thought Seinfeld was a snooze).
The problem with Richards doing that, aside from the fact that even most liberals think Sharpton is human dogshit, is that by paying obeisance to the shitwad he has sabotaged his chances of replacing Dennis Miller as the rightwing's favorite unfunny comedian. The use of the "n-word" would have nicely burnished Richards conservative bonafides, but that is now cast asunder. D'oh!
On my position concerning the tasing of a UCLA student a while back, there is a rather unsavory tinge to the officer who did the deed and he shouldn't have been around to even be there, in my opinion.
The Long Beach Police Department is rather infamous for its cavalier observance of excessive force regulations. A few years back, a former police officer named Don Jackson was stopped by the LBPD for supposedly weaving in traffic (he wasn't). The problem was that Jackson was being trailed by an unmarked NBC news van. Can you see where this is headed? The officer made Jackson assume the position against a shop window and then just shoved Jackson's head through it while the NBC crew filmed all this in disbelief.
The Caucasian officer was eventually brought up on charges and, get this, acquitted, in a trial in Hawthorne, California. The officer had his job with the LBPD restored as a result and, AFAIK, is still on that city's force today.
So you obviously have to go a loooooooooooooong way to get pink slipped by the Long Beach PD, but the guy who was involved in the UCLA incident was. He claims it was for doing paperwork too slowly or some such bullshit. I just wonder if there were any dead bodies that actually engendered his firing.
Jackson himself went off the deep end and is more or less on a vendetta against all cops now, even backing O.J. Simpson during his murder trial.
Incidentally, for those of you behind the wall in George Bush's personal gloryhole, your man and noted pot smoking surf nazi Dana Rohrabacher regularly refers to his home district Huntington Beach policemen and women as, and this is a direct quote, "stormtroopers." So fuck off you winger assholes who think it is righties who favor the constabulary. Hell, his wife is a convict. That should tell you something. as would Rohrabacher's and Scott Baugh's relationship with a child molester.
Finally, a note to Florida Representative: Alcee Hastings: resign. Do your party and the country a favor you scumbag.
Happy Thanksgiving!
And what better thing to give thanks for than the continuing progress in the understanding of how human beings work. So here is today's assigned reading.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Random Thoughts
So I see where Wal-Mart capitulated to the religious bigots concerning marketing to the gay segment of America by issuing a statement basically saying that they would be more mealy mouthed about it in the future so as not to offend those who prefer to bongo their bibles.
That provokes a question: why can Budweiser, which told these assholes where they could ram their nonsense a few years back, stand up for themselves while Wal-Mart, a much bigger company, caved like a 98 pound weakling to these bullies?
Wal-Mart has always carried plentiful supplies of Jesus' blood in their stores (you call it wine) and the Waltons were supposedly Big Daddy in the Sky-fearing men, so what made them turn, uh, hmmm.... to inviting homosexuals to spend their wads in their big boxes? Because the Waltons wanted even more cash up the ass. When it comes to money, the Waltons are Richard Gere, you get my drift?
So now Wal-Mart will have to accept the filthy lucre that we all can't get enough of on the Q.T. from that sexually non-heterodox clientele. No Prohibition-style secret handshakes or code words necessary (yet). Some Wal-Mart clerks may even accept a suggestive little wink. Of course, they might try to look a little ashamed to placate the punters fresh from the pews, but that will only make the, uh, transaction more, well, delicious.
Check this article out. It will have even my fellow atheists exclaiming, "amen."
Another Republican runs to the front to be with the winning side. Now if we can just turn Olympia Snowe and/or Susan Collins....
Bad news in New Mexico, where the GOP's version of Howard Stern's Underdog Lady, Heather Wilson, has taken her House race by a whisker. This bitch is disturbed. Who the hell could vote for that and keep a straight face?
This just in: John McCain thinks lying to our troops overseas will boost morale. Uh John, you fought inVietnam, remember? Or at 71 is your memory becoming a bit late-Ronald Reaganish? I guess he can no longer recall the cynicism that disgruntled U.S. troops during that war after hearing all kinds of prevarications and empty promises out of D.C. and seeing little of it mean anything to help them win the thing.
That provokes a question: why can Budweiser, which told these assholes where they could ram their nonsense a few years back, stand up for themselves while Wal-Mart, a much bigger company, caved like a 98 pound weakling to these bullies?
Wal-Mart has always carried plentiful supplies of Jesus' blood in their stores (you call it wine) and the Waltons were supposedly Big Daddy in the Sky-fearing men, so what made them turn, uh, hmmm.... to inviting homosexuals to spend their wads in their big boxes? Because the Waltons wanted even more cash up the ass. When it comes to money, the Waltons are Richard Gere, you get my drift?
So now Wal-Mart will have to accept the filthy lucre that we all can't get enough of on the Q.T. from that sexually non-heterodox clientele. No Prohibition-style secret handshakes or code words necessary (yet). Some Wal-Mart clerks may even accept a suggestive little wink. Of course, they might try to look a little ashamed to placate the punters fresh from the pews, but that will only make the, uh, transaction more, well, delicious.
Check this article out. It will have even my fellow atheists exclaiming, "amen."
Another Republican runs to the front to be with the winning side. Now if we can just turn Olympia Snowe and/or Susan Collins....
Bad news in New Mexico, where the GOP's version of Howard Stern's Underdog Lady, Heather Wilson, has taken her House race by a whisker. This bitch is disturbed. Who the hell could vote for that and keep a straight face?
This just in: John McCain thinks lying to our troops overseas will boost morale. Uh John, you fought inVietnam, remember? Or at 71 is your memory becoming a bit late-Ronald Reaganish? I guess he can no longer recall the cynicism that disgruntled U.S. troops during that war after hearing all kinds of prevarications and empty promises out of D.C. and seeing little of it mean anything to help them win the thing.
Conason: Bush Missed the Point, as Usual
How come Bush's remark about the lesson learned in Vietnam was to keep the war going until victory that was uttered in that country didn't catch much attention from the press? Imagine the posturing by the wingnuts if Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe visited the states and propounded that Japan should have held out longer even after the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, before ending WWII! The outrage by the usual media suspects would be so hot you could make yourself a grilled cheese sandwich on the top of your tv set.
I don't know if the great Joe Conason was disgusted or amused, but he used the hammer of truth to once again chronicle the mischief of our popular with 31% of the population (you guys gotta quit chasing that moonshine with OxyContin) clown in chief.
I don't know if the great Joe Conason was disgusted or amused, but he used the hammer of truth to once again chronicle the mischief of our popular with 31% of the population (you guys gotta quit chasing that moonshine with OxyContin) clown in chief.
Hagel Goes Walkabout on Republicans Yet Again
Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel, as well as Joe Scarborough, would both probably like to run for President and have been taking quite a few potshots at their party over the last few months, which is a bit like shooting a barrel of your own fish. This is all likely a pose to appear independent while both men are actually members of the GOP's Newt cadre.
In any event, Hagel threw John McCain under the bus with this little assessment of the Iraq situation.
Odds of Hagel becoming McCain's Secretary of Defense should he be elected to the White House? I think you'll see Cindy Sheehan get that nominati0n before he looks Chucky's way.
In any event, Hagel threw John McCain under the bus with this little assessment of the Iraq situation.
Odds of Hagel becoming McCain's Secretary of Defense should he be elected to the White House? I think you'll see Cindy Sheehan get that nominati0n before he looks Chucky's way.
Simpson Confessional Desperation Ploy to Boost Failing Fox TV
Call it a "hail O.J. pass." According to the L.A. Times, the Fox Network's ratings are dead last among the major four networks and the Simpson kinda sorta, nudge nudge wink wink tell something but probably not all special was engineered to draw the eyeballs of Mr. and Mrs. Gapejaws across the firmament to Rupe-a-dupe's flagging concern.
But the kicker? Expect to see it on the net at some point.
You Republicans out there remember that it was the Gingrich Congress that gave Murdoch citizenship through special legislation so that he would not only not have to undergo the usual naturalization routine that the great majority of much more humble immigrants have to, but so that he could own U.S. television outlets knowing that he would turn those stations into conservative loudspeakers. So the L. Brent Bozells, James Dobsons and the other usual hosanna hut mountebanks have no complaint here. You voted for the clowns who made Fox possible. Helluva job there GOP base (and base it is)!
Of course, what makes Murdoch so frightening is that he has been taking over stations in Britain, most recently snatching off ITV, and has accumulated enormous power there as a result. It is to the point that he is treated like a head of state rather than the vile Philistine that he is.
The irony in all this, however, is that Bill Clinton's recent verbal disembowelment of the insipid Chris Wallace (the media's answer to George W. Bush, spoiled and much dumber than dad) has, harrumphed the rightwing Accuracy in Media, seen Rupee attempt to kiss up to the Big Dog.
When light loafered Fox News morning host Shepherd Smith ripped into Bush for his delaying the dispatch of more troops to Iraq after the election so as to not piss the electorate off more than they already were, it created a sensation among liberal bloggers and their readers, though they expressed fears that the news game's version of Clay Aiken would soon be shown the door or end up in a rendition to an unnamed European gulag. But he is still with Fox and hasn't been demoted to their minor league club, MSNBC, at least as of yet. It could be that Fox will merely lobotomize him like they did with Alan Colmes.
But the kicker? Expect to see it on the net at some point.
You Republicans out there remember that it was the Gingrich Congress that gave Murdoch citizenship through special legislation so that he would not only not have to undergo the usual naturalization routine that the great majority of much more humble immigrants have to, but so that he could own U.S. television outlets knowing that he would turn those stations into conservative loudspeakers. So the L. Brent Bozells, James Dobsons and the other usual hosanna hut mountebanks have no complaint here. You voted for the clowns who made Fox possible. Helluva job there GOP base (and base it is)!
Of course, what makes Murdoch so frightening is that he has been taking over stations in Britain, most recently snatching off ITV, and has accumulated enormous power there as a result. It is to the point that he is treated like a head of state rather than the vile Philistine that he is.
The irony in all this, however, is that Bill Clinton's recent verbal disembowelment of the insipid Chris Wallace (the media's answer to George W. Bush, spoiled and much dumber than dad) has, harrumphed the rightwing Accuracy in Media, seen Rupee attempt to kiss up to the Big Dog.
When light loafered Fox News morning host Shepherd Smith ripped into Bush for his delaying the dispatch of more troops to Iraq after the election so as to not piss the electorate off more than they already were, it created a sensation among liberal bloggers and their readers, though they expressed fears that the news game's version of Clay Aiken would soon be shown the door or end up in a rendition to an unnamed European gulag. But he is still with Fox and hasn't been demoted to their minor league club, MSNBC, at least as of yet. It could be that Fox will merely lobotomize him like they did with Alan Colmes.
Germany to Bush: Get Bent
Conservative German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was literally rubbed the wrong way by our boy Floyd R. Turbo Bush, said no way are her nation's troops going to get involved in attempting to help U.S. forces stave off an epic comeback attempt by the Taliban in southern Afghanistan.
That the U.S. had to ask the Germans to do this is yet more evidence of the incompetent distribution of resources by the Bush Administration in the area and things are indeed becoming more tenuous for the American ability to stifle Afghanistan's murderous Islamic religious nuts. Helluva job there Georgie and Donny!
Both the war and Bush are extremely unpopular in Germany and it is evident that Merkel is attempting to soft shoe her country's participation in helping to turn Afghanistan around from a barbaric theocracy to a workable ally of the west.
That the U.S. had to ask the Germans to do this is yet more evidence of the incompetent distribution of resources by the Bush Administration in the area and things are indeed becoming more tenuous for the American ability to stifle Afghanistan's murderous Islamic religious nuts. Helluva job there Georgie and Donny!
Both the war and Bush are extremely unpopular in Germany and it is evident that Merkel is attempting to soft shoe her country's participation in helping to turn Afghanistan around from a barbaric theocracy to a workable ally of the west.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Know Your Bushes
This one is about the daddy of G.H.W. "Scanner" Bush, Prescott.
As an addendum to that, you have this.
In addition, my fellow Democrats will get a kick out of this goody.
Thank you to the good offices of the folks who post at Americablog for the first and third items while the second was revealed to me by the Antifluff Superstar Blog.
As an addendum to that, you have this.
In addition, my fellow Democrats will get a kick out of this goody.
Thank you to the good offices of the folks who post at Americablog for the first and third items while the second was revealed to me by the Antifluff Superstar Blog.
Rush Limbaugh, We Have a Solution for You
According to the Associated Press, a Tampa man was able to receive a vastly more lenient sentence on a $1.8 million federal embezzlement charge by blaming it on his Paxil prescription.
Sad to say, the judge in this case was an appointee of Bill Clinton's.
Drug addicted criminals all across the land have to be celebrating this, as if you are a heroin user and stole a car or did a break in to finance your habit you can blame the illegal action on the drugs and get only a slap on the wrist.
Hell, Rush Limbaugh could have claimed that the OxyContin urged him to violate prescription laws by being so narcotic and probably walked off with a reduced charge since he wasn't about to admit responsibility of any sort for his actions.
Moreover, the embezzler will probably end up suing his doctor since he now has a judgment entered into the public record that somebody like him who was bipolar should never have been given Paxil, meaning that a white collar criminal is about to get his ass a big payday thanks to our squirrely legal system.
By the way, let's end this whole Club Fed bullshit for white collar criminals. Put them in maximum stir. That should deter at least some who are contemplating ripping off their companies or private individuals if they have to room with Tyrone the street thug from the Bronx who is doing a dime for armed robbery. This class system we have that differentiates scum who rip you off at gunpoint from those who use a computer or a line of bullshit is nonsensical and unfair. Put the screws to both of them.
Sad to say, the judge in this case was an appointee of Bill Clinton's.
Drug addicted criminals all across the land have to be celebrating this, as if you are a heroin user and stole a car or did a break in to finance your habit you can blame the illegal action on the drugs and get only a slap on the wrist.
Hell, Rush Limbaugh could have claimed that the OxyContin urged him to violate prescription laws by being so narcotic and probably walked off with a reduced charge since he wasn't about to admit responsibility of any sort for his actions.
Moreover, the embezzler will probably end up suing his doctor since he now has a judgment entered into the public record that somebody like him who was bipolar should never have been given Paxil, meaning that a white collar criminal is about to get his ass a big payday thanks to our squirrely legal system.
By the way, let's end this whole Club Fed bullshit for white collar criminals. Put them in maximum stir. That should deter at least some who are contemplating ripping off their companies or private individuals if they have to room with Tyrone the street thug from the Bronx who is doing a dime for armed robbery. This class system we have that differentiates scum who rip you off at gunpoint from those who use a computer or a line of bullshit is nonsensical and unfair. Put the screws to both of them.
Monday, November 20, 2006
Random Thoughts
I was reading the great Jesus General blog this evening when someone posted in the comments section about a wacko Christian sect called Quiverfull, which is averse to any form of birth control and advocates that people have as many offspring as they can splorch out. No, this is apparently NOT related to the Mormons.
In reply to this, one of the respondents riposted that "a vagina isn't a clown car" while another told an anecdote that supposedly occurred on Groucho Marx' old game show, You Bet Your Life: when a female contestant revealed that she had a large brood, Marx asked her why. "I love my husband," she is said to have rejoindered. Which engendered this observation from the mustachioed comedian: "Well, I like my cigars, too, but I take them out of my mouth every once in a while." I haven't stopped laughing since.
I just saw on the news of how Iran and Syria might end up being allowed to weigh in on any settlement of the Iraq situation. To me, that would be the greatest diplomatic and military humiliation ever endured by America. Let's call Bush what he is: Nero. Or a scatalogical King Midas, who turns to shit everything he touches.
There were some recent cheers in some sectors of the liberal blogosphere regarding a reported improvement in the ratings of MSNBC and CNN as compared with Fox News. But why? MSNBC was perhaps an even bigger cheerleader for the Iraq invasion than the Rupe-a dupes and CNN features one blowhard wingnut shithead Glenn Beck as well as former Rush Limbaugh fuck toy Darin Kagin. Furthermore, the one watchable asset that MSNBC, which should be folded up like a cheap carnival tent and sent into that eternal good night, has, Keith Olberman, is forced to have his show scarred by a bunch of tabloid horseshit by his Republican bosses attempting to blunt the impact of his show. None of the winger hosts, Joe Thugborough, Tim "the Buffalo Buttface" Russert and"Quisling Chris" Matthews are so hamstrung.
Thus, all three cable news outlets suck and it wouldn't be much of a loss if all three of them went off the air tomorrow. Most smart people are getting their news off the internet anyway.
Speaking of which, are there big enough numbers available to quantify just how galactic an embarrassment the Katie Couric version of the once proud CBS Evening News is? It is like having a sexless soccer mom from down the block working the anchor chair. Even Rita Cosby would be an improvement only because she makes you imagine what she did to get that husky voice of hers and it kind of makes you horny even if, like Couric, Cosby isn't a journalist but rather just a bimbo who can read a teleprompter.
Scraping the bottom of the brainpan the last couple of days was Democrat New York Congress critter Chucky Rangell, who would like to revive the draft. Rangell, unlike most of the war eagle crowd on the other side of the isle, has seen combat somewhere (Korea, in fact) and is pissed about how it is generally minorities and the poor who end up with the cannons pointed at them, to plagiarize John Fogerty. So he wants to make (cue melody from White Christmas) everyone from 18-42 available to Uncle Sam's beck and call.
One can see Rangell's point. He also posits that this would have kept us from pulling the trigger on Iraq since everybody in the country would have had some kind of personal stake in how we exercise military power. Of course, that's about as sound as Ted Haggard's ability to deny himself buttsex and street pharmaceuticals because Bush and Cheney are such sociopaths that they don't give a shit and the empty eyed denizens of the country's hosanna huts back them because their leaders (Jerry Falwell, ad nauseum) are part of the GOP in crowd. If Bush really gave a shit about what Americans think we would have gun control, abortion wouldn't be threatened and we would have national health care.
The conscription proposal was immediately shot down (no pun intended) by speaker to be Nancy Pelosi. All Rangell ultimately did was create a distraction from the incremental agenda that Pelosi has in mind for the first few months of the Democrat Congress and it may have even alienated independents who don't want to hear anything associated with war at the moment due to the monumental clusterfuck Bush has subjected our brave troops to.
What is a bit ominous about all this is that Bush has so crippled the reach and readiness of our armed forces that one wonders if maybe Rangell isn't right. The GOP won't back a draft either out of political expediency even as you have idiots like John McCain calling for 20,000 more men to be dropped into the quagmire. McCain is talking like he has the intention of going McNamara on us if he were elected president and then it will be even more like Vietnam than it already is. Yet another reason to refrain from voting for this stealth rightwing hack.
Fox has no decided to pull the OJ Simpson tv special and I had initially thought that they would leave the book available (which was already climbing up the Amazon charts; The queen bitch of South Central, Maxine Waters, was probably looking forward to the former running back personally autographing her copy) while using the fuss over it as a form of negative marketing. But no, the book has been pulled, too, thank the deity of your choice. C'mon, even the most blindered Republican has to now realize that Fox and its honchos Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes lack any conscience whatsoever. Or is that what the wingnuts like about them?
This all provoked a poster to Americablog to do a send up in the comments section concerning a deal Fox probably would have made with Osama Bin-Laden. It's under the headline, "Fox News' Rupert Murdoch Cancels OJ Book and TV Special."
I guess we've seen the last of Michael Richards, no? What a pinhead!
In reply to this, one of the respondents riposted that "a vagina isn't a clown car" while another told an anecdote that supposedly occurred on Groucho Marx' old game show, You Bet Your Life: when a female contestant revealed that she had a large brood, Marx asked her why. "I love my husband," she is said to have rejoindered. Which engendered this observation from the mustachioed comedian: "Well, I like my cigars, too, but I take them out of my mouth every once in a while." I haven't stopped laughing since.
I just saw on the news of how Iran and Syria might end up being allowed to weigh in on any settlement of the Iraq situation. To me, that would be the greatest diplomatic and military humiliation ever endured by America. Let's call Bush what he is: Nero. Or a scatalogical King Midas, who turns to shit everything he touches.
There were some recent cheers in some sectors of the liberal blogosphere regarding a reported improvement in the ratings of MSNBC and CNN as compared with Fox News. But why? MSNBC was perhaps an even bigger cheerleader for the Iraq invasion than the Rupe-a dupes and CNN features one blowhard wingnut shithead Glenn Beck as well as former Rush Limbaugh fuck toy Darin Kagin. Furthermore, the one watchable asset that MSNBC, which should be folded up like a cheap carnival tent and sent into that eternal good night, has, Keith Olberman, is forced to have his show scarred by a bunch of tabloid horseshit by his Republican bosses attempting to blunt the impact of his show. None of the winger hosts, Joe Thugborough, Tim "the Buffalo Buttface" Russert and"Quisling Chris" Matthews are so hamstrung.
Thus, all three cable news outlets suck and it wouldn't be much of a loss if all three of them went off the air tomorrow. Most smart people are getting their news off the internet anyway.
Speaking of which, are there big enough numbers available to quantify just how galactic an embarrassment the Katie Couric version of the once proud CBS Evening News is? It is like having a sexless soccer mom from down the block working the anchor chair. Even Rita Cosby would be an improvement only because she makes you imagine what she did to get that husky voice of hers and it kind of makes you horny even if, like Couric, Cosby isn't a journalist but rather just a bimbo who can read a teleprompter.
Scraping the bottom of the brainpan the last couple of days was Democrat New York Congress critter Chucky Rangell, who would like to revive the draft. Rangell, unlike most of the war eagle crowd on the other side of the isle, has seen combat somewhere (Korea, in fact) and is pissed about how it is generally minorities and the poor who end up with the cannons pointed at them, to plagiarize John Fogerty. So he wants to make (cue melody from White Christmas) everyone from 18-42 available to Uncle Sam's beck and call.
One can see Rangell's point. He also posits that this would have kept us from pulling the trigger on Iraq since everybody in the country would have had some kind of personal stake in how we exercise military power. Of course, that's about as sound as Ted Haggard's ability to deny himself buttsex and street pharmaceuticals because Bush and Cheney are such sociopaths that they don't give a shit and the empty eyed denizens of the country's hosanna huts back them because their leaders (Jerry Falwell, ad nauseum) are part of the GOP in crowd. If Bush really gave a shit about what Americans think we would have gun control, abortion wouldn't be threatened and we would have national health care.
The conscription proposal was immediately shot down (no pun intended) by speaker to be Nancy Pelosi. All Rangell ultimately did was create a distraction from the incremental agenda that Pelosi has in mind for the first few months of the Democrat Congress and it may have even alienated independents who don't want to hear anything associated with war at the moment due to the monumental clusterfuck Bush has subjected our brave troops to.
What is a bit ominous about all this is that Bush has so crippled the reach and readiness of our armed forces that one wonders if maybe Rangell isn't right. The GOP won't back a draft either out of political expediency even as you have idiots like John McCain calling for 20,000 more men to be dropped into the quagmire. McCain is talking like he has the intention of going McNamara on us if he were elected president and then it will be even more like Vietnam than it already is. Yet another reason to refrain from voting for this stealth rightwing hack.
Fox has no decided to pull the OJ Simpson tv special and I had initially thought that they would leave the book available (which was already climbing up the Amazon charts; The queen bitch of South Central, Maxine Waters, was probably looking forward to the former running back personally autographing her copy) while using the fuss over it as a form of negative marketing. But no, the book has been pulled, too, thank the deity of your choice. C'mon, even the most blindered Republican has to now realize that Fox and its honchos Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes lack any conscience whatsoever. Or is that what the wingnuts like about them?
This all provoked a poster to Americablog to do a send up in the comments section concerning a deal Fox probably would have made with Osama Bin-Laden. It's under the headline, "Fox News' Rupert Murdoch Cancels OJ Book and TV Special."
I guess we've seen the last of Michael Richards, no? What a pinhead!
It's Time to Dismantle the Department of Homeland Security
In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack, Washington D.C. bureaucrats decided to go forth and multiply, giving birth to a new entity, the Department of Homeland Security in perhaps the second most expensive overreaction to a problem since the Spanish-American War. Those of you who payed attention in history class will recall that we used an explosion on a ship called The Maine as a predicate for seizing some of Spain's possessions. Spain was such a dessicated power by that time that taking them on was a bit like me punching out Jessica Tandy. Not a fair fight. We then went and killed over 100,000 Filipinos in a follow up aborted revolution.
As it turned out, though, what caused the detonation of The Maine was spontaneous combustion down below in the coal magazine. Whoops!
While Americans are likewise thinking that the Iraq War was the wrong conflict at an ill fitting chronological juncture, making it the most costly snafu in response to a conundrum in American annals, just below it was the creepily named DHS. I will be buying a couple of bags of chips and some dip in preparation for the visit I will probably get from national security cops after posting this piece so as not to be a bad host. I must admit that since I don't drink I'm not sure what wine you are supposed to serve during an interrogation.
Homeland Security was a tacit admission that Boy George didn't have the leadership to do what he needed to as President of the United States. It was ostensibly (a word meaning somebody is making up a lame excuse) originally devised as a way to more efficiently enact security measures and enable closer collaboration between foreign (CIA) and domestic (FBI) intelligence agencies. What is wrong with this is that we already have a defense department. It used to be called The Department of War, but that was no doubt changed to make it more warm and fuzzy to Mr. and Mrs. Gapejaw American. So have they become incapable of defending American shores now? God only knows they haven't been able to keep a lid on Iraq since the mission was pronounced accomplished by Bush nor are they exactly up to holding off a resurgent Taliban.
In any event, when we are sold a Department of Defense we want an actual Department of Defense. Donald Rumsfeld, who will go down in history as a joke, has some explaining to do on that front.
Then there is the FBI, which is supposed to handle domestic spying. Now we didn't seem to have any problems in that area during WWII or during Vietnam, when the number of constitutional rights they violated was equal to the digits you see on a McDonald's sign.
When someone becomes president, he is supposed to fulfill the role that the DHS does. If you can't crack heads to get the CIA and the FBI to share information with you that might affect the safety of citizens on the American mainland and Hawaii then you should resign. It is called dereliction of your duty in that office. You shouldn't need a multibillion dollar agency to pass the buck to. Bush is the commander in chief even if he has tried to run the country like it was a college fraternity Monday Through Saturday and a pentacostal church on Sunday.
Bush then politicized the new bureaucracy by using it as a go to conduit with which to stir up fear among the electorate to fortify his party's electoral position. Bush didn't just cry wolf, but also pretty much every other animal that you can see in a decent sized zoo and now people just roll their eyes when the words, "according to the Department of Homeland Security...." are uttered. The Katrina debacle didn't exactly help people take it any more seriously.
Let's face it: terrorism wasn't on Bush's radar and he didn't want to hear about it. Instead, he was obsessed with getting ruinous tax breaks passed so that we not only had 9/11, but we also now have an accumulated budget deficit that gives the Saudis, the Chinese and other holders of the bonds that are used to finance that red ink a measure of leverage over us and our currency. Boy, I feel so much safer knowing that.
Cheney? Hard on for Iraq to the exclusion of just about everything else except aiding his energy buddies in reaming the American consumer. Cheney was so busy cooking up the phony rationale for toppling Saddam Hussein that he wasn't available to be Bush's intelligence factotum.
So with a chance to give more cronies and people he owes favors to a chance to take up space in the bureaucracy, the DHS was created with the aim of: 1) looking like they were doing something; 2) had something to pawn responsibility off on if there was another large scale terrorism incident on U.S. soil. As usual, however, Bush was doing nothing and making taxpayers pay through the nose for it.
And get this, the U.S. military was firing interpreters with Arabic skills because they were gay despite a shortage in that vital capability. Jerry Falwell might feel better that latrines weren't being used as what homesexuals call "tea rooms (bathrooms where trysts take place)," but it further eroded out intelligence gathering ability. In a funny way, that means that Falwell, James Dobson, Ted Haggard and Pat Robertson are threats to national security due to their urge for a gay purge and holding Bush's feet to the fire to get it done. Call them "Focus on the Faggots."
If we had a REAL president (Bill Clinton, say), the DHS wouldn't have happened and that would have been a good thing. That is because a real president knows what questions to ask and who to read the riot act to. America found out, though, that when you ride with stupid you're on the hot rails to hell.
As it turned out, though, what caused the detonation of The Maine was spontaneous combustion down below in the coal magazine. Whoops!
While Americans are likewise thinking that the Iraq War was the wrong conflict at an ill fitting chronological juncture, making it the most costly snafu in response to a conundrum in American annals, just below it was the creepily named DHS. I will be buying a couple of bags of chips and some dip in preparation for the visit I will probably get from national security cops after posting this piece so as not to be a bad host. I must admit that since I don't drink I'm not sure what wine you are supposed to serve during an interrogation.
Homeland Security was a tacit admission that Boy George didn't have the leadership to do what he needed to as President of the United States. It was ostensibly (a word meaning somebody is making up a lame excuse) originally devised as a way to more efficiently enact security measures and enable closer collaboration between foreign (CIA) and domestic (FBI) intelligence agencies. What is wrong with this is that we already have a defense department. It used to be called The Department of War, but that was no doubt changed to make it more warm and fuzzy to Mr. and Mrs. Gapejaw American. So have they become incapable of defending American shores now? God only knows they haven't been able to keep a lid on Iraq since the mission was pronounced accomplished by Bush nor are they exactly up to holding off a resurgent Taliban.
In any event, when we are sold a Department of Defense we want an actual Department of Defense. Donald Rumsfeld, who will go down in history as a joke, has some explaining to do on that front.
Then there is the FBI, which is supposed to handle domestic spying. Now we didn't seem to have any problems in that area during WWII or during Vietnam, when the number of constitutional rights they violated was equal to the digits you see on a McDonald's sign.
When someone becomes president, he is supposed to fulfill the role that the DHS does. If you can't crack heads to get the CIA and the FBI to share information with you that might affect the safety of citizens on the American mainland and Hawaii then you should resign. It is called dereliction of your duty in that office. You shouldn't need a multibillion dollar agency to pass the buck to. Bush is the commander in chief even if he has tried to run the country like it was a college fraternity Monday Through Saturday and a pentacostal church on Sunday.
Bush then politicized the new bureaucracy by using it as a go to conduit with which to stir up fear among the electorate to fortify his party's electoral position. Bush didn't just cry wolf, but also pretty much every other animal that you can see in a decent sized zoo and now people just roll their eyes when the words, "according to the Department of Homeland Security...." are uttered. The Katrina debacle didn't exactly help people take it any more seriously.
Let's face it: terrorism wasn't on Bush's radar and he didn't want to hear about it. Instead, he was obsessed with getting ruinous tax breaks passed so that we not only had 9/11, but we also now have an accumulated budget deficit that gives the Saudis, the Chinese and other holders of the bonds that are used to finance that red ink a measure of leverage over us and our currency. Boy, I feel so much safer knowing that.
Cheney? Hard on for Iraq to the exclusion of just about everything else except aiding his energy buddies in reaming the American consumer. Cheney was so busy cooking up the phony rationale for toppling Saddam Hussein that he wasn't available to be Bush's intelligence factotum.
So with a chance to give more cronies and people he owes favors to a chance to take up space in the bureaucracy, the DHS was created with the aim of: 1) looking like they were doing something; 2) had something to pawn responsibility off on if there was another large scale terrorism incident on U.S. soil. As usual, however, Bush was doing nothing and making taxpayers pay through the nose for it.
And get this, the U.S. military was firing interpreters with Arabic skills because they were gay despite a shortage in that vital capability. Jerry Falwell might feel better that latrines weren't being used as what homesexuals call "tea rooms (bathrooms where trysts take place)," but it further eroded out intelligence gathering ability. In a funny way, that means that Falwell, James Dobson, Ted Haggard and Pat Robertson are threats to national security due to their urge for a gay purge and holding Bush's feet to the fire to get it done. Call them "Focus on the Faggots."
If we had a REAL president (Bill Clinton, say), the DHS wouldn't have happened and that would have been a good thing. That is because a real president knows what questions to ask and who to read the riot act to. America found out, though, that when you ride with stupid you're on the hot rails to hell.
Time to Think About Internal Exile for Recidivist Criminals
At any one time in America there are approximately 1.5 million people incarcerated in prisons and jails throughout the land, according to the Justice Department. Of those, more than half had been under some form of governmental supervision, either state or federal, after being released from a sentence arising out of a previous offense.
The reason that I bring this up was that I read a story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer concerning a chronically violent miscreant who stole a car one night and, while speeding through the streets of a city I not very fondly like to refer to as San Francisco for Dummies, went through a stoplight and collided with a car driven by an off duty female police officer. She died at the scene.
The killer, which is what he was, was a wanted man at the time, but he was considered a low priority while the Seattle PD was busy busting respondents to a Craig's List ad for engaging in prostitution. No, I am not making this up. Read about it yourself. And just so that you know, the State Attorney is Rob McKenna, a Republican. Maybe prostitution busts play better to Washington's GOP base, who are mostly located east of the Cascades, than nabbing assholes like the one that killed the officer in Seattle. In any event, the misallocation of police resources for cracking down on compensated nookie helped the thief slip through the cracks. He was thankfully killed as well, sparing us hundreds of thousands in jail and court costs.
But the prostitution vs. rounding up street thugs question isn't why I am writing this. However, it is an example of why I am about to say what follows:
In just about every locality you can name, the authorities become like competitive bass fishermen, playing a perpetual game of catch and release. In this case, the fish are the criminals who require us to keep our doors locked at night and compel us to not frequent certain neighborhoods after dark. We spend billions a year to keep these sociopaths away from civilized society only to then reintroduce what are really a bunch of one man crime waves back into their communities. You will hopefully forgive me if I insist that is stupid. The officers who have to put up with these cocksuckers in the lockup would be better employed patrolling our streets instead.
That is because if I had my way, I would go to whatever authority that controls the Marianas or a similar godforsaken outpost and buy off an island for use as a prison colony. What I propose is that we take anyone who belongs to a street gang or other organized crime group, even if they aren't currently in prison, as well as habitual offenders of every stripe and dispatch them to what could perhaps be dubbed Papillon Island (if you haven't seen Papillon I recommend you do so; it's a great movie).
Unlike today's American prisons, though, where the guards live in fear of of the rapists and robbers contained therein, in my scheme, the criminals would be dropped off on the island with the supplies necessary to begin planting their own food and become self supporting (hand tools only to help facilitate that) and they would have to figure it out for themselves. The U.S. Navy would surround the island to practice blockading around the clock. Anyone that tries to come off the island would be shot to death on site, as would anyone that attempted to approach it unless there was approval from Washington D.C.
It would be one and done. If the prisoners can't do what aboriginals from Australia to Canada did and form some kind of cooperative society then they would be allowed to perish. Furthermore, this would be done with no regard for population control (save that no women would be allowed on it). Prisoners would be dropped off as needed and let the colony's inmates deal with it even if the inmate population swells to five million on a patch of land the size of Disneyland. If major gang war breaks out, hey, who is against criminals killing each other? There would be no visitation allowed since it would be called a national security zone. No media, either. It would also be a no fly zone to prevent the media from flying over it. Any helicopters or planes flying over it would be shot down or forced to land. The participants would be subject to a one million dollar fine apiece and a ten year mandatory jail sentence at Joliet. The pilot's license would be pulled for life.
No first time offenders would be allowed to be placed on the island to ensure that those mistakenly convicted would have a chance at some kind of redemption. Yeah, I know this disappoints you Republicans who think that you should just convict anybody to clear a case (see Rackauckas, Tony). I have rather more respect for the innocent than that.
As hazily alluded to earlier, I make no distinction between incorrigible shoplifters and murderers. If you insist on hurting local business by repeatedly stealing even after previous trips to the gray bar hotel then you got to go. America depends on small business and we can't afford the economic termites that are petty thieves.
Drug users? Americans have waaaaay too much sympathy for them. We need a three strikes on users (with an arrest where a drug habit lead to the commission of a crime to support it being counted as two strikes) and a two strike regulation on dealers. If you are going to debilitate yourself on whatever, be it OxyContin or meth, society is held back by your continued participation in it. The first time you are busted, you go to mandatory rehab. The second time, a habit plus an offense sends on a permanent island getaway. Good riddance you waste of DNA!
The exception would be marijuana, which I would legalize and then tax the shit out of like alcohol and cigarettes, to pad the various state budgets.
Anybody who has two violent felonies plus a criminal misdemeanor (petty theft, assault, harrassment, drug possession) would be permanently bid farewell. Corporate criminals, especially embezzlers, wouldn't be allowed the first offense privilege. They go immediately. Otherwise, you will have more Ivan Boeskys, who was allowed to keep a substantial chunk of his ill gotten money by the judge in his case, or Michael Milken, who has endeavored to redeem his image as one of the U.S.' most prominent ratfuckers by setting up a phony baloney charitable foundation that is geared mostly to making him loveable.
Look, what you are dealing with in the habitual criminal is someone who doesn't think longterm and who hates the thought of having to work for a living. They are impulse driven and solipsistic in the extreme. Murders are still committed everyday despite the existence of the death penalty, which does not deter crime (I am not a death penalty opponent, just so that you know). So make them work to survive, which they don't have to now (and they get free cable and meals besides) and put those rookie cops who are the ones most often assigned county or city jail duty out in the neighborhoods instead of in fortified control centers in prisons or on their walkways.
Initially, this would be expensive due to land acquisition and transportation costs associated to moving hundreds of thousands of people out to the middle of whatever ocean we decide to do so. But when dickheads disappear the regular good people of the best country in the world can enjoy an environment much more free of lurking threats and investment in what used to be high crime areas would explode, leading to a renaissance in our cities.
Police officers on the street would feel like they are actually doing something rather than just being part of a neverending bit of street kabuki. They would be a lot less frustrated and cynical and thus less likely to go nuts in frustration on a suspect because they know the guy is about to go bye bye forever. This would result in less civil rights litigation and fewer criminals seeing an arrest as a chance to turn it into a payday by hiring the likes of the thankfully dead Johnny, "they hack 'em, I back 'em" Cochrane.
There is no way this is a loser. Or at least as big a loser as the criminal element. So make it happen by hitting up your state and federal representatives with an email or a phone call.
The reason that I bring this up was that I read a story in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer concerning a chronically violent miscreant who stole a car one night and, while speeding through the streets of a city I not very fondly like to refer to as San Francisco for Dummies, went through a stoplight and collided with a car driven by an off duty female police officer. She died at the scene.
The killer, which is what he was, was a wanted man at the time, but he was considered a low priority while the Seattle PD was busy busting respondents to a Craig's List ad for engaging in prostitution. No, I am not making this up. Read about it yourself. And just so that you know, the State Attorney is Rob McKenna, a Republican. Maybe prostitution busts play better to Washington's GOP base, who are mostly located east of the Cascades, than nabbing assholes like the one that killed the officer in Seattle. In any event, the misallocation of police resources for cracking down on compensated nookie helped the thief slip through the cracks. He was thankfully killed as well, sparing us hundreds of thousands in jail and court costs.
But the prostitution vs. rounding up street thugs question isn't why I am writing this. However, it is an example of why I am about to say what follows:
In just about every locality you can name, the authorities become like competitive bass fishermen, playing a perpetual game of catch and release. In this case, the fish are the criminals who require us to keep our doors locked at night and compel us to not frequent certain neighborhoods after dark. We spend billions a year to keep these sociopaths away from civilized society only to then reintroduce what are really a bunch of one man crime waves back into their communities. You will hopefully forgive me if I insist that is stupid. The officers who have to put up with these cocksuckers in the lockup would be better employed patrolling our streets instead.
That is because if I had my way, I would go to whatever authority that controls the Marianas or a similar godforsaken outpost and buy off an island for use as a prison colony. What I propose is that we take anyone who belongs to a street gang or other organized crime group, even if they aren't currently in prison, as well as habitual offenders of every stripe and dispatch them to what could perhaps be dubbed Papillon Island (if you haven't seen Papillon I recommend you do so; it's a great movie).
Unlike today's American prisons, though, where the guards live in fear of of the rapists and robbers contained therein, in my scheme, the criminals would be dropped off on the island with the supplies necessary to begin planting their own food and become self supporting (hand tools only to help facilitate that) and they would have to figure it out for themselves. The U.S. Navy would surround the island to practice blockading around the clock. Anyone that tries to come off the island would be shot to death on site, as would anyone that attempted to approach it unless there was approval from Washington D.C.
It would be one and done. If the prisoners can't do what aboriginals from Australia to Canada did and form some kind of cooperative society then they would be allowed to perish. Furthermore, this would be done with no regard for population control (save that no women would be allowed on it). Prisoners would be dropped off as needed and let the colony's inmates deal with it even if the inmate population swells to five million on a patch of land the size of Disneyland. If major gang war breaks out, hey, who is against criminals killing each other? There would be no visitation allowed since it would be called a national security zone. No media, either. It would also be a no fly zone to prevent the media from flying over it. Any helicopters or planes flying over it would be shot down or forced to land. The participants would be subject to a one million dollar fine apiece and a ten year mandatory jail sentence at Joliet. The pilot's license would be pulled for life.
No first time offenders would be allowed to be placed on the island to ensure that those mistakenly convicted would have a chance at some kind of redemption. Yeah, I know this disappoints you Republicans who think that you should just convict anybody to clear a case (see Rackauckas, Tony). I have rather more respect for the innocent than that.
As hazily alluded to earlier, I make no distinction between incorrigible shoplifters and murderers. If you insist on hurting local business by repeatedly stealing even after previous trips to the gray bar hotel then you got to go. America depends on small business and we can't afford the economic termites that are petty thieves.
Drug users? Americans have waaaaay too much sympathy for them. We need a three strikes on users (with an arrest where a drug habit lead to the commission of a crime to support it being counted as two strikes) and a two strike regulation on dealers. If you are going to debilitate yourself on whatever, be it OxyContin or meth, society is held back by your continued participation in it. The first time you are busted, you go to mandatory rehab. The second time, a habit plus an offense sends on a permanent island getaway. Good riddance you waste of DNA!
The exception would be marijuana, which I would legalize and then tax the shit out of like alcohol and cigarettes, to pad the various state budgets.
Anybody who has two violent felonies plus a criminal misdemeanor (petty theft, assault, harrassment, drug possession) would be permanently bid farewell. Corporate criminals, especially embezzlers, wouldn't be allowed the first offense privilege. They go immediately. Otherwise, you will have more Ivan Boeskys, who was allowed to keep a substantial chunk of his ill gotten money by the judge in his case, or Michael Milken, who has endeavored to redeem his image as one of the U.S.' most prominent ratfuckers by setting up a phony baloney charitable foundation that is geared mostly to making him loveable.
Look, what you are dealing with in the habitual criminal is someone who doesn't think longterm and who hates the thought of having to work for a living. They are impulse driven and solipsistic in the extreme. Murders are still committed everyday despite the existence of the death penalty, which does not deter crime (I am not a death penalty opponent, just so that you know). So make them work to survive, which they don't have to now (and they get free cable and meals besides) and put those rookie cops who are the ones most often assigned county or city jail duty out in the neighborhoods instead of in fortified control centers in prisons or on their walkways.
Initially, this would be expensive due to land acquisition and transportation costs associated to moving hundreds of thousands of people out to the middle of whatever ocean we decide to do so. But when dickheads disappear the regular good people of the best country in the world can enjoy an environment much more free of lurking threats and investment in what used to be high crime areas would explode, leading to a renaissance in our cities.
Police officers on the street would feel like they are actually doing something rather than just being part of a neverending bit of street kabuki. They would be a lot less frustrated and cynical and thus less likely to go nuts in frustration on a suspect because they know the guy is about to go bye bye forever. This would result in less civil rights litigation and fewer criminals seeing an arrest as a chance to turn it into a payday by hiring the likes of the thankfully dead Johnny, "they hack 'em, I back 'em" Cochrane.
There is no way this is a loser. Or at least as big a loser as the criminal element. So make it happen by hitting up your state and federal representatives with an email or a phone call.
Sunday, November 19, 2006
A Tazy Shade of Winter
Call me odd, but if the cops story about the Arab-American kid at UCLA is true, that he wouldn't show his identification after being politely asked for it at 11 p.m. in a campus library like everybody else was, then I have little sympathy for him. That policy has been in effect for sometime and he wasn't singled out.
Yeah, the police may have gone a little overboard. But the fact of the matter is that in this world, as much of a liberal as I am, the only thing some people will understand is a good old fashioned ass kicking. Or in this case, tasing.
Listen pal, you may not have intended to do it, but the practical effect is that you attempted to use your ethnicity as a shield from a rule everybody had to follow in order to protect the folks who have a legitimate reason to be there. For that, I extend you a hardy medial unidigital salute.
As far as his civil attorney, Steven Yagman, who is, in my opinion, a vexatious litigator, goes, his showing up in a courtroom ought to illicit the same reaction that major league general managers have when a player they were interested in has hired Scott Boras to represent him: a roll of the eyes and a "no dice."
Of course, I could change my mind when more about all this is disclosed. If one of the cops threatened a bystander with being tased, though, he has to be fired. That would tend to incite a crowd and could have resulted in something truly horrendous.
Yeah, the police may have gone a little overboard. But the fact of the matter is that in this world, as much of a liberal as I am, the only thing some people will understand is a good old fashioned ass kicking. Or in this case, tasing.
Listen pal, you may not have intended to do it, but the practical effect is that you attempted to use your ethnicity as a shield from a rule everybody had to follow in order to protect the folks who have a legitimate reason to be there. For that, I extend you a hardy medial unidigital salute.
As far as his civil attorney, Steven Yagman, who is, in my opinion, a vexatious litigator, goes, his showing up in a courtroom ought to illicit the same reaction that major league general managers have when a player they were interested in has hired Scott Boras to represent him: a roll of the eyes and a "no dice."
Of course, I could change my mind when more about all this is disclosed. If one of the cops threatened a bystander with being tased, though, he has to be fired. That would tend to incite a crowd and could have resulted in something truly horrendous.
Democrats Get Out the Word: We Do War Better
I saw how Henry Kissinger said that the Iraq War is unwinnable and yet he doesn't want us to pullout. Does this strike anyone as familiar? Like back around, say, 1973?
But then again, by that time, Nixon had slugged a three bagger, though for the other team. Vietnam was untenable, he had spread the conflict into Cambodia and thus helped set the stage for Pol Pot's emergence, and also lost Laos. The best Bush can do is a double (Afghanistan and Iraq) unless Iraq splits into three pieces (when he first heard about Sunni Muslims, he probably thought it had something to do with Woody Allen's wife).
Moreover, for all the nonsense about Democrats being weak on national security, when one looks at the facts the GOP doesn't come out so hot. Democrats won world wars one and two. We ended a genocidal war in the Balkans (over the strenuous objections of assholes like Bob Dole) and the liberals who won the Civil War are all now Democrats while those who lost it are all presently ensconced with the Republicans even if the parties were reversed at the time it ended. George H.W. "Scanner" Bush got us mired in Somalia and we basically went to war with Panama as a way to extradite Manuel Noriega (more irony: Boy George said that he "wasn't concerned with Osama Bin-Laden," who killed thousands of Americans on our own soil, but his daddy sure went after Noriega for a whole lot less, no?).
In addition, the Republicans only get an incomplete on the first Gulf War by leaving Saddam Hussein in power despite Scanner calling him another Hitler (which leads to the question of what would have happened if Scanner had been president during WWII and we got to Hitler's bunker first and not the Russians: "can't take out Hitler; would lead to a long costly occupation. Wouldn't be prudent"). My personal suspicion is that it allowed Hussein to lay infrastructure for a resistance in the aftermath of a new future attack (the labyrinth of underground tunnels, which the North Vietnamese would have thought luxurious by the standards of what they had to endure in their underground nests) and part of what we are seeing now is due to Scanner's inaction.
Eisenhower basically gave the North Koreans a mulligan because the American public was tiring of the war and then spent more than a billion dollars attempting to prop the French up in Vietnam despite the fact that the froggies have a recommended wine for a surrender in their military handbook. Eisenhower's mishandling of the diplomacy surrounding Vietnam then set in motion what became an American tragedy.
Nixon cut and run because he wanted to take the heat out of the American antiwar movement by getting out and therefore invalidating the need for a draft in an attempt to keep the GOP from eliciting an electoral bloodbath in the 1974 midterms (still didn't work).
Like Nixon and Kissinger did, Boy George and his cronies are trying to concoct some public relations bullshit, the 21st century answer to "peace with honor," which was actually peace at home and a Communist takeover in 1975.
Sorry, but Republicans just don't do war well. It's not that president Johnson was adept in handling Vietnam, but there was a hell of lot more at work diplomatically and geopolitically there than what Boy George had to deal with.
Oh, and MacArthur and Eisenhower being Republican generals? I'll acknowledge that. But the fact is that Roosevelt and Truman allowed them to run their wars (except for MacArthur's plan to nuke China) while Bush did not in a much less nettlesome geopolitcal environment. So Democrats, with the exception of Johnson, do war better. It can't be denied.
But then again, by that time, Nixon had slugged a three bagger, though for the other team. Vietnam was untenable, he had spread the conflict into Cambodia and thus helped set the stage for Pol Pot's emergence, and also lost Laos. The best Bush can do is a double (Afghanistan and Iraq) unless Iraq splits into three pieces (when he first heard about Sunni Muslims, he probably thought it had something to do with Woody Allen's wife).
Moreover, for all the nonsense about Democrats being weak on national security, when one looks at the facts the GOP doesn't come out so hot. Democrats won world wars one and two. We ended a genocidal war in the Balkans (over the strenuous objections of assholes like Bob Dole) and the liberals who won the Civil War are all now Democrats while those who lost it are all presently ensconced with the Republicans even if the parties were reversed at the time it ended. George H.W. "Scanner" Bush got us mired in Somalia and we basically went to war with Panama as a way to extradite Manuel Noriega (more irony: Boy George said that he "wasn't concerned with Osama Bin-Laden," who killed thousands of Americans on our own soil, but his daddy sure went after Noriega for a whole lot less, no?).
In addition, the Republicans only get an incomplete on the first Gulf War by leaving Saddam Hussein in power despite Scanner calling him another Hitler (which leads to the question of what would have happened if Scanner had been president during WWII and we got to Hitler's bunker first and not the Russians: "can't take out Hitler; would lead to a long costly occupation. Wouldn't be prudent"). My personal suspicion is that it allowed Hussein to lay infrastructure for a resistance in the aftermath of a new future attack (the labyrinth of underground tunnels, which the North Vietnamese would have thought luxurious by the standards of what they had to endure in their underground nests) and part of what we are seeing now is due to Scanner's inaction.
Eisenhower basically gave the North Koreans a mulligan because the American public was tiring of the war and then spent more than a billion dollars attempting to prop the French up in Vietnam despite the fact that the froggies have a recommended wine for a surrender in their military handbook. Eisenhower's mishandling of the diplomacy surrounding Vietnam then set in motion what became an American tragedy.
Nixon cut and run because he wanted to take the heat out of the American antiwar movement by getting out and therefore invalidating the need for a draft in an attempt to keep the GOP from eliciting an electoral bloodbath in the 1974 midterms (still didn't work).
Like Nixon and Kissinger did, Boy George and his cronies are trying to concoct some public relations bullshit, the 21st century answer to "peace with honor," which was actually peace at home and a Communist takeover in 1975.
Sorry, but Republicans just don't do war well. It's not that president Johnson was adept in handling Vietnam, but there was a hell of lot more at work diplomatically and geopolitically there than what Boy George had to deal with.
Oh, and MacArthur and Eisenhower being Republican generals? I'll acknowledge that. But the fact is that Roosevelt and Truman allowed them to run their wars (except for MacArthur's plan to nuke China) while Bush did not in a much less nettlesome geopolitcal environment. So Democrats, with the exception of Johnson, do war better. It can't be denied.
John McCain the Phony
Professional former prisoner of war and Arizona Senator John McCain will now apparently make another run at nabbing the Republican presidential nomination. In his so doing, you will no doubt get the same old bullshit about what a maverick he is. The truth, though, is that McCain is just another rightwing hack.
Let's look at who the former pilot has in tow: Bruce Herschensohn, the failed GOP California Senate aspirant who decried the fact that the UN is filled with representatives of dictatorial regimes on the one hand then lamented that then President Jimmy Carter didn't crush the Islamic rebellion that toppled dictator Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, aka the Shah of Iran.
Yep, that is how you buy credibility in a Muslim region, by killing what may have been thousands of that religion's faithful and perhaps becoming bogged down in a perpetual guerrilla conflict after the U.S. had pulled out of Vietnam just a little over half a decade previous. That is not to also mention that the Soviet Union, which was barely hanging on at that point, felt that Iran was within its sphere of influence. A U.S. military action there could possibly have stoked tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets and given more spine to military and KGB hardliners, especially after what we had been doing in Afghanistan with the Mujahadeen.
So he obviously doesn't really believe in diplomacy, which has been Bush's big problem and he has no grasp of geopolitical realities. It doesn't say much for McCain that he would have this idiot as one of his advisers.
That is beside the fact that he doesn't agree that the federal government ought to aid victims of natural disasters. That falls right in line with Bush, who left everybody behind during Hurricane Katrina while he was on another vacation and only belatedly moved, albeit merely with a series of lame ass photo ops, when the criticism and outrage got to be crushing.
Moreover, Herschensohn is another echo from the Nixon White House days and if McCain is trying to set himself up as some kind of moral paragon, as his recent courting of wackjob religious fringies like Jerry Falwell showed, then his buddy Bruce, a Tricky Dick apologist, betrays that.
One also has to question how conservatives could vote for McCain anyway. Aside from the fact that he has the adultery thing going and his wife is part of the GOPP (Grand Old Pill Poppers), Bush and his campaign made insinuations during the 2000 primary campaign that McCain was a kind of Manchurian Candidate in the wake of the torture he endured whilst a prisoner in Vietnam. That leaves those conservatives now open to being charged with selling out the country by being willing to vote for somebody who may have been programmed by the Commies even if we all know that what was said about McCain in this connection is garbage.
Then there is John Weaver, his political strategist. Weaver also advised another wingnut, Phil Gramm, during his 1996 presidential bid.
McCain is also closely tied to advisers to Bush, as this list demonstrates, including the insufferable former Indiana Senator Dan Coates, who tried to help Bush get Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and who is hardly a stalwart defender of the First Amendment.
It's the same old shit. Don't fall for it. McCain is about as independent of the GOP establishment as Ed Gillespie.
Let's look at who the former pilot has in tow: Bruce Herschensohn, the failed GOP California Senate aspirant who decried the fact that the UN is filled with representatives of dictatorial regimes on the one hand then lamented that then President Jimmy Carter didn't crush the Islamic rebellion that toppled dictator Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, aka the Shah of Iran.
Yep, that is how you buy credibility in a Muslim region, by killing what may have been thousands of that religion's faithful and perhaps becoming bogged down in a perpetual guerrilla conflict after the U.S. had pulled out of Vietnam just a little over half a decade previous. That is not to also mention that the Soviet Union, which was barely hanging on at that point, felt that Iran was within its sphere of influence. A U.S. military action there could possibly have stoked tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets and given more spine to military and KGB hardliners, especially after what we had been doing in Afghanistan with the Mujahadeen.
So he obviously doesn't really believe in diplomacy, which has been Bush's big problem and he has no grasp of geopolitical realities. It doesn't say much for McCain that he would have this idiot as one of his advisers.
That is beside the fact that he doesn't agree that the federal government ought to aid victims of natural disasters. That falls right in line with Bush, who left everybody behind during Hurricane Katrina while he was on another vacation and only belatedly moved, albeit merely with a series of lame ass photo ops, when the criticism and outrage got to be crushing.
Moreover, Herschensohn is another echo from the Nixon White House days and if McCain is trying to set himself up as some kind of moral paragon, as his recent courting of wackjob religious fringies like Jerry Falwell showed, then his buddy Bruce, a Tricky Dick apologist, betrays that.
One also has to question how conservatives could vote for McCain anyway. Aside from the fact that he has the adultery thing going and his wife is part of the GOPP (Grand Old Pill Poppers), Bush and his campaign made insinuations during the 2000 primary campaign that McCain was a kind of Manchurian Candidate in the wake of the torture he endured whilst a prisoner in Vietnam. That leaves those conservatives now open to being charged with selling out the country by being willing to vote for somebody who may have been programmed by the Commies even if we all know that what was said about McCain in this connection is garbage.
Then there is John Weaver, his political strategist. Weaver also advised another wingnut, Phil Gramm, during his 1996 presidential bid.
McCain is also closely tied to advisers to Bush, as this list demonstrates, including the insufferable former Indiana Senator Dan Coates, who tried to help Bush get Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and who is hardly a stalwart defender of the First Amendment.
It's the same old shit. Don't fall for it. McCain is about as independent of the GOP establishment as Ed Gillespie.
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