Saturday, December 22, 2007

Going Dark for the Holidays

Too much to do, too little time. I'll be back after the New Year. In the meantime, thanks for reading and happy holidays to everyone.
--The F Man

Friday, December 21, 2007

Perry Kucinich -- RIP

News just in today, Perry Kucinich, the brother of Dennis Kucinich, was found dead in his home in Cleveland.

Our hearts go out to Dennis and the extended Kucinich family and our thoughts are with them at this time of grief.

Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 2865 2888 2906 2959 3006 3018 3025 3067 3087 3118 3132 3151 3166 3189 3210 3233 3245 3266 3299 3316 3337 3358 3387 3409 3444 3504 3519 3546 3577 3592 3611 3631 3683 3705 3725 3738 3760 3780 3795 3823 3830 3838 3845 3866 3875 3881 3886 3891 3896

Total coalition forces dead: 307
Total Iraqi Dead: 700,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2291
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1752
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1695
Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347

Number of days that the the Vice President has NOT shot a man in the face: 676
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 519.

It is still 390 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

More on "Johnny Taliban"

It's kind of surprising that it took this long for some "patriot" to comment on my Johnny Taliban post from back in October. My new good buddy "Bill" tries to make some cogent rebuttals to my post but of course he falls flat. In the meantime I have a little fun with him by throwing some of his "arguments" back in his face.

Check it out, and you might also benefit from reading my first post on John Walker Lindh, It's Not Good to be First.

Jeez, all you have to do is ask a couple of pointed questions and you're suddenly a supporter of the Taliban.

More on the Party of Satan

I've had a chance to do a little more research on this topic. Turns out that a well-known Satanic hand signal is the "Corna", which is made holding the two middle fingers down with the thumb so only the index and little finger are upright:



Our old friend Anton Sander LaVey can be seen prominently displaying it here:



The Religious Right didn't have a problem attacking The Beatles when a cartoon of John Lennon showed up with the Corna on the cover of The Yellow Submarine:



So where are they today when this kind of thing is common?



There's even more. Do a Google Image search for bush satanic hand signal and you'll get a million of them.

So, to answer my own question, here's an Xian website called Jesus is Savior that has dozens of photos of prominent people, all of them flashing the sign. Look for such prominent darlings of the Right as Pat Robertson, Dan Quayle, Jenna Bush, Dick(less) Cheney, Tom Ridge, and Amy Grant!!!

So what does it all mean?

Well, in the words of my favorite guru, Mister Natural

when asked that question: "It don't mean shit."

Buzzflash Photo Caption Challenge

Every week over at Buzzflash they have a "Caption This" challenge.

Here's this week's photo:



Drop by and make your suggestion. Each week they pick a random entry for a nice prize.

My favorite so far: "Is that a cruise missle in your pants or are you just glad to see me?"

Church-State News from North Carolina

There's a guy named M. Reza Salami who teaches at a local college in Greensboro, and he was recently stopped at a sobriety checkpoint and ticketed for having "open alcohol containers" in his vehicle.

Never mind the fact that Salami was on his way to the local recycler with a lot of those "open" containers -- after all, who's gonna take them to recycle when they're still unopened?

Salami made the news when he complained about a sticker in the car of the deputy who stopped him. The sticker was on the divider between the front and back seats.

It said "Jesus is Your Savior".

Salami -- who just happens to be Christian himself -- felt that the deputy's car is public property and is no place for such a blatant piece of religious propaganda.

He is right, and to his credit he filed a complaint with Americans United for Separation of Church and State.

And that's where his troubles started. The local yokels took to the wingnut airwaves, demanding that Salami be deported to Saudi Arabia (he is a naturalized American citizen) as a "terrorist" and worse.

There's a lot more. Read the story on the local newspaper's website, and remember that we must all remain vigilant if we want to preserve that Wall of Separation that is under attack from many directions.

And all props to Salami for doing the right thing. If more people had his courage and conviction and core belief in the US Constitution, we'd all be a lot better off.

Would You Hire This Man?

You're the personnel manager of a very large company, and you've got a guy whose résumé contains some of the following items:

· Ran for congress and lost.
· Produced a Hollywood slasher B movie.
· Bought an oil company, but couldn't find any oil; company went bankrupt shortly after I sold all my stock.
· At least one conviction for drunk driving.
· AWOL from National Guard and deserted the military during a time of war.
· Refused to take drug test or even answer any questions about drug use.

Yeah, you've already guessed that this is part -- and a small part -- of the résumé of Baby Doc Bush.

There's a lot more. Check it out and see if you would hire a job applicant whose total work history consists of one fuckup after another, only to be bailed out by his daddy's pals.

Monday, December 17, 2007

The Party of Satan?

I'm usually not given to buying into tinfoil hat conspiracy theories, but this struck me as interesting.

I caught this on the Thom Hartmann show this morning. It seems that the Rethug official party logo has undergone some cosmetic changes since the BFEE took over this country.

Here's what it used to look like:



And here's what it's looked like for about the last seven years:



Notice the difference? Yeah, me neither before this morning. But take a closer look at those stars. On the old logo they are right-side-up -- see the single point at the top? Then look at the new logo and you'll see that the stars are upside down.

Yes, upside down. And that upside-down star, or pentacle, has been a symbol of Satan for a long time.

Don't believe me? Take a look at this:



That's the album art for a recording by one Anton Sander LaVey, founder of The Church of Satan.

Being a card-carrying Secular Humanist, I'm not sure what to make of all of this, but it seems to me that the Fundo Xians who make up a substantial Moron-American bloc within the Rethug Party ought to be more than a little concerned over this.

Sign On to Impeach Cheney

Florida Congressman Robert Wexler (D -- Naturally) has just about had it with the corporatist mainstream media protecting the chief assholes in the BFEE, and I don't blame him.

The MSM/SCLM has so far refused coverage of the calls for Cheney's Impeachment, so Wexler is now taking it to the streets -- in this case the blogosphere.

He's issued a call for those of us out here in Left Blogistan -- and everyone else -- to make our voices heard on this important issue.

Please join me in signing on to Wexler's call for hearings on impeaching Darth Cheney.

As of right now there have been 77,743 signatories, one of which is (of course) mine. Please drop by and make your voice heard as well. Let's show those fuckers in the MSM that the people (i.e. us) have a voice regardless of how much they want to ignore us.

And if you feel like taking an even stronger stand, see The People's Email Network for a longer form that you can complete and send to your own members of congress as well as your local media.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1294 days since Jenna and Not-Jenna Bush, the slacker offspring of Preznit Numnutz, graduated from college and they are still not in the uniform of the US armed services.

Why? Because they have other priorities. They are too busy partying down in Georgetown, Argentina and god-knows-where-else to show their support for the war by enlisting their chickenhawk-child selves into the military service, that's why.



And it's not just The Twins: ONLY ONE member of the extended Bush family has seen fit to volunteer for military service. Check out the Buzzflash analysis of the chickenshit Bush/Cheney extended family and see for yourself. There's even a photo taken in 2000 of the extended Bush family, complete with a whole lot of young fresh faces who seem to be of an age now to be eligible to enlist.

Little Georgie Bush, the son of Jebbie, has just enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He's going into the Officer Training Program, preparing to be ... an intelligence officer. Okay, the obvious jokes aside, what are the chances he's ever going to see Iraq?

And I see in the news that little Jenna is engaged to a joker named Henry Hager. Wanna bet that he won't be wearing a uniform anytime soon? Like ever? Unlike both husbands of the daughters of Lyndon Johnson, both of whom went into the service and were sent to Vietnam.

Bush and Cheney were cowards during Vietnam who sent other men off to die in their place. Now the next generation is doing its part, sending their own peers off to die instead of them.

Why can't the Twins be more like their royal counterparts in the UK? The British Royal Family, unlike the Bush Crime Family, has a centuries-long tradition of honorable military service. Prince Andrew was a combat helicopter pilot in La Guerra de las Malvinas (aka the Falklands War) and Prince Harry, until the decision was made not to send him, was on his way to Iraq as a cavalry lieutenant. But even though he's not on his way to The Sandbox, he's still in uniform.

Will the Bush Twins follow his example?

No, they will not. They are fucking cowards like their father and their Uncle Dick(less) Cheney.

Be sure to check out The Yellow Elephant blog, which asks the question "It's their war; why aren't they fighting it?"

BTW, the twins are also still not pregnant with their own Snowflake Babies. If they can't join the service, the least they could do would be to get themselves impregnated with a couple of blastocytes that would otherwise go into the garbage.

Remember what Farnsworth always says: Baste 'em, don't waste 'em.

Saturday, December 15, 2007

And Speaking of Xmas...

This is a heart-warming news story from my home town. This is a terrific way to celebrate Xmas. I've already emailed my own adult children with the suggestion that we do something similar next year.

After all, how many more t-shirts or bottles of exotic aftershave do I really need?

On the other hand, if we're talking about gift bottles of single-malt Scotch whisky, that's another story...

Celebrating Xmas? It Wasn't Always That Way

This is interesting, in light of the bogus "War on Xmas" drummed up out of nothing and manufactured out of whole cloth by such people as Bill Orally. Here's some historical perspective on the celebration of the "religious" holiday in America's past:

As Christmas draws near, Pastor John Foster won't be decorating a tree, shopping for last-minute gifts or working on a holiday sermon for his flock. After all, it's been 50 years since Christmas was anything more than a day of the week to him.
He's one of very few American Christians who follow what used to be the norm in many Protestant denominations -- rejecting the celebration of Christmas on religious grounds.
"People don't think of it this way, but it's really a secular holiday," said Foster, a Princeton-based pastor in the United Church of God. He last celebrated Christmas when he was 8.
Take that, Captain Felafel.

Halloween is Over

Somebody wanna tell Kindasleazy Rice to take off her mask?



What's that you say? That isn't a mask?

Woops, my bad.

Gotta Love that Liberal Media

In a not-surprising but still outrageous decision, the Des Moines Register Guard, sponsor of the presidential "debates" in Iowa, chose not to include Dennis Kucinich in its dog-and-pony-show Democratic "debate" this week.

The reason? Well, apparently it's because the Kucinich camp neglected to rent office space in Iowa. Therefore Dennis was not considered a "viable" candidate.

Bullshit! Give me a fucking break already. When you think about it, this isn't that far removed from a poll tax, the chief difference being that instead of a tax payable to the governmental authorities, it's a direct cost to the candidate -- if he wants to be considered "viable" he has to rent an office!

My best guess is that because Kucinich would win hands-down in an election that truly focused on the issues, that old "liberal media" can't stand it. They'd rather have the kind of stupid horse race that they are fostering among the so-called front runners rather than be seen promoting a candidate who really, truly has the best interest of this nation at heart.

Read this and see what you think.

Friday, December 14, 2007

Cards for Wounded Warriors

You know the drill: An elementary school class, or just a concerned citizen, will spend some time around Xmas writing letters and cards and sending them to a generic "wounded warrior" at a military hospital, like Walter Reed.

I can recall doing something similar when I was in grade school, sending a note to an anonymous recipient in a VA hospital. We all felt good about doing it, and when we even got a note back from the disabled veteran thanking us for our thoughts it made our day.

So it is with some concern that I have learned that those cards and letters are no longer being delivered to their intended recipients.

Apparently the brass/the suits are worried that those third-graders have somehow gotten ahold of a barrel of anthrax and are intent on finishing the job that "the terrorists" started. Or that somehow the recovering soldier will get a letter attacking him or her for just being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Bullshit. I'd prefer to be charitable about it and think that this is just some overzealous underling at the Pentagon who has made this decision, but with everything we know about the Baby Doc Maladministration and its contempt for the rank and file military -- especially disabled veterans -- maybe not.

In the meantime, wasn't it nice of the Pentagon to let everyone know that those cards and letters addressed to those generic wounded warriors are just thrown away, without ever getting into the hands of those they were intended for? But I guess even that's asking too much from the most secretive administration in American history.

Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 2865 2888 2906 2959 3006 3018 3025 3067 3087 3118 3132 3151 3166 3189 3210 3233 3245 3266 3299 3316 3337 3358 3387 3409 3444 3504 3519 3546 3577 3592 3611 3631 3683 3705 3725 3738 3760 3780 3795 3823 3830 3838 3845 3866 3875 3881 3886 3891

Total coalition forces dead: 307
Total Iraqi Dead: 700,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2284
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1745
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1688
Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347

Number of days that the the Vice President has NOT shot a man in the face: 669
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 512.

It is still 393 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Thursday, December 13, 2007

Teacher Suspended over "Letter from Hell"

Here's some news from the Northern Tier: An 8th grade health class teacher in North Dakota was suspended for three weeks after he made a video entitled "Letter from Hell" a mandatory part of his class. And after a smart parent complained about it.

You probably won't be seeing this one in the MSM/SCLM anytime soon. All I could find were a bunch of local news stories about it.

This so-called Letter from Hell, in case you are wondering, is a fundo Xian propaganda piece which is supposedly narrated by a dead teenager who is now in hell and bewailing the fact that he did not come to know Jesus when he was alive, and blaming his Xian best friend for not introducing the two of them.

I haven't seen the whole thing, but I did give it a try. As you can imagine, it's stupid beyond belief, and even the little bit that I managed to keep down was enough to convince me that the teacher had stepped way over the line. I'm glad that he was suspended for three weeks because of showing it, but that's not enough. At least a couple of months without pay would have been more like it. That would send a strong message to those infiltrating fifth-column public school "educators" who are trying to push their Fundo Faith down the throats of America's children that we as a society will not stand for it.

As I do periodically, I urge everyone to join Americans United for Separation of Church and State and let's do all we can to keep that Wall in place. And it would be a good idea for all parents -- all taxpayers -- to regularly monitor what is going down in our children's classrooms. These people are insidious and they won't stop trying to push their agenda. It's up to all of us to prevent them from spreading it inside the public schools.

Up Next: Michael Vick as ASPCA Dog Owner of the Year

What the fuck is up with the ABA? They just named Alberto "Torquemada" Gonzales as their Lawyer of the Year. And there's his goofy-looking picture on the cover of The ABA Journal.

Well, isn't that special. The ABA cited, of all things, Time Magazine choosing to put Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin on their covers as their "Man of the Year" as a precedent for putting Gonzo on their own cover.

And when you think about it, it kind of makes sense. Find the worst example of lawyering and put him up as some kind of negative warning. You know, "Don't do like he did, kids. You might end up with your picture on a magazine cover."

Jesus, what is wrong with those people? After Michael Vick on the cover of Animal Watch, how about Britney Spears for Parenting, or Mary Kay LeTourneau for Educator of the Year on the cover of Teacher Magazine?

Baby Doc the Speechalist

My wife stumbled on this video and immediately alerted me to it. Watch Baby Doc stumble over the basics of English, and then find out what is behind it. And you thought it was just because he was stupid...


Wednesday, December 12, 2007

The Tang Shop -- Do Not Patronize

I don't ordinarily use this blog for personal crap like this, but I'm so pissed off right now at an online merchant (part of Yahoo! Shopping, no less) that I want to warn everyone not to patronize them.

In early September 07 I purchased an external battery for my PDA from The Tang Shop (order #61432, TID:4729-GXXM-1009). The picture on the website showed the battery I thought I was going to get, but when I got it, it was not as advertised and it would not work with my PDA. They were initially happy to take it back and told me that when they received it, they would send the item that was actually pictured on the website, the one that I thought I had ordered.

So I returned the battery -- with postal insurance -- and first they told me that they didn't receive it. After two separate trips to the post office, I found that the PO actually did deliver it (thank god I insured it!).

Then on Oct 17 they said that a replacement would be shipped "within the next few days". On Nov 19 they informed me that "a replacement request has been processed".

It has yet to arrive. In the meantime I took two long plane flights for which I needed the item, but of course I didn't have it.

Finally on 12-3 I emailed them again to complain and I have yet to receive a response.

And Yahoo! Shopping? Basically their response was "tough shit". They did tell me, however, that they would "contact the merchant" with my complaint. Big fucking deal that is.

Needless to say, I am not a happy consumer, and at this point I have to say that I will NEVER buy anything from Tang Shop again. Nor will I buy anything from an online merchant in the Yahoo! Shopping network. If they can't step up and reign in one of their rogue merchants, then they do not deserve my business, either.

Oh, and this is not an isolated incident. See for example this complaint, and especially this one, wherein the Tang Shop pulled the same we-didn't-get-it-in-the-mail shit as they tried to pull with me.

Ultimately, I guess, it's my own damn fault for not checking them out more thoroughly.

Bottom line: Caveat emptor.

We Found Who's Responsible: It's You. It's Me.

At first I thought this had to be some kind of a joke, but it turns out it's true. NBC's David Gregory actually said that -- get this -- bloggers are to blame for the polarization in politics!

Bloggers?! Jesus, give me a fucking break.

I could go on a rampage here and start screaming out all of the ways that this is just wrong, but I see that fellow blogger Words of Power has already done it for me:

Yes, of course, it was the bloggers who polarized the US body politic.
The bloggers spent $50 million plus on Ken Starr's rogue investigation, which was coordinated with the work of the privately funded, reich-wing "Arkansas Project."
The bloggers shackled Susan McDougal and sent her to jail.
The bloggers impeached a popular President at a time of peace and economic prosperity over testimony in a civil suit involving sexual intercourse.
The bloggers issued that voluminous report on Bill Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, and posted it on the WWW.
And that's just for starters. Power goes on in that vein for a long ways and never repeats himself once.

Way to go, my brother blogger. And now, as you know, I gotta be gettin' back to my 24/7 mission of polarization.

So much politics, so little time...

[Thanx to my good friend BAC over at Yikes! for the lead]

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

We've Found the Pimple on Limbaugh's Ass -- It's Tom Tancredo

Some interesting news from Buzzflash today: Bottom-feeding-tier presidential candidate Tom Tancredo (R-Chickenhawk), congressman out of Colorado, was eligible to serve in Vietnam but didn't go.

Tancredo, a war-hawk on Iraq and a drum-beater on Iran, apparently was no different when it came to Vietnam: He supported the war way back then, but he didn't have to go fight it, either.

The reason: Tancredo had been treated for "depression" when he was a teenager and was classified 1-Y by his draft board.

Getting a 1-Y classification was not the same as 4-F, but it was almost a golden parachute. For a long time I was classified 1-Y myself, but I had to keep reporting, on a regular and frequent basis, for draft physicals until they finally got tired of seeing me, reclassified me 1-A and drafted my ass.

The point being that a 1-Y pretty much kept you from getting drafted until the condition was corrected -- or corrected itself.

So Tancredo -- like Limbaugh -- was a chickenhawk who was happy to cheer us on from the sidelines, but wasn't so gung ho that he was willing to enlist and go to Vietnam.

Incidentally, back in the day, a 1-Y classification kept you from actually being drafted, but the vast majority of those 1-Ys were for conditions that, like Limbaugh's ass pimple, would not have prevented you from enlisting in the service. Especially the army, who would take you as long as you were room temperature, regardless of your draft status.

And, as one of the commenters on the Buzzflash story says, if Tom Eagleton was "unfit" for the vice-presidency way back in '72 because he had been treated for depression, why is Tancredo now suitable to be president, having been treated for the same thing?

The answer: Because Rethugs have absolutely no problem with their own hypocrisy.

Okay, I Just Can't Help It

I'm blowing my cover as one of America's premiere bad-attitude pissed-off veterans, but this is a gotta-see video. It features two of my favorite animals: A kitten and a crow. And warning, the Awwwwwww!!! factor is way off the scale.

It's an incredible story. And enjoy it because you won't be getting very many of these out of me. I do have a reputation to uphold after all....



Joe Wilson on Scooter's Dropped Appeal

Here's what Ambassador Joseph Wilson had to say to the news that our boy Scooter has chosen not to appeal his recent conviction:

By dropping his appeal, Mr. Libby has finally abandoned the pretense that his conviction was a miscarriage of justice. Mr. Libby's decision suggests, however, that he may have received word that President Bush plans to pardon him shortly. Of course, a pardon is completely at odds with the president's earlier claim that he would not tolerate anyone on his team leaking a covert CIA officer's identity, but this is the kind of inconsistency representative of this administration. Given the White House's extensive and continuing efforts to cover up how and why Valerie Wilson's identity was leaked to the press, the only way that remains to get at the truth in this sordid matter is through our civil suit against Libby, Vice President Cheney, Karl Rove, and Richard Armitage.
Go get 'em, Joe! Even though everyone knows that it's pretty much a done deal that Baby Doc is going to pardon the slimy little fucker, all props to you and Valerie for continuing to hold this maladministration's feet to the fire for their treasonous actions. We'll be watching this snake its way through the courts and cheering for you every step of the way.

[Thanx to Buzzflash for posting this alert on their website.]

Monday, December 10, 2007

Today is Write Your Newspaper for Kucinich Day

The folks over at the Kucinich campaign have designated today as the National Write Your Newspaper for Kucinich Day, and I was more than happy to do my part.

Here is my letter to the editor of my local newspaper:

I've been following the election news closely, and I've discovered some interesting facts. Americans in general hold a majority opinion on the following issues, and for Democrats that majority opinion is huge:
1. Ending the illegal occupation of Iraq
2. Creating a universal coverage national health policy
3. Withdrawing from NAFTA and protecting American jobs
4. Impeaching Dick Cheney
It is troubling that only one candidate is in step with the American people on all of these issues, yet he has repeatedly been given short shrift, not only by the mainstream corporate-controlled so-called "Liberal Media" but also, sadly, by many members of his own party.
That candidate is Dennis Kucinich.
Do a Google search for "choose your candidate" and you will find a number of links to several "blind taste tests" of all the candidates. Answer a dozen easy questions and you will be presented with a ranked array of the candidates who most closely represent your beliefs and values. You might be surprised at what you learn.
I am a Vietnam veteran who is opposed to the Iraq war, and I say that the best way to end the Quagmire in the Desert is to elect Dennis Kucinich president.
So I encourage all of you to send your own letters -- those of you who, along with me, support Kucinich, of course. And feel free to pirate as much of my letter as you like. It's one of the many free services offered here at One Pissed Off Veteran.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1287 days since Jenna and Not-Jenna Bush, the slacker offspring of Preznit Numnutz, graduated from college and they are still not in the uniform of the US armed services.

Why? Because they have other priorities. They are too busy partying down in Georgetown, Argentina and god-knows-where-else to show their support for the war by enlisting their chickenhawk-child selves into the military service, that's why.



And it's not just The Twins: ONLY ONE member of the extended Bush family has seen fit to volunteer for military service. Check out the Buzzflash analysis of the chickenshit Bush/Cheney extended family and see for yourself. There's even a photo taken in 2000 of the extended Bush family, complete with a whole lot of young fresh faces who seem to be of an age now to be eligible to enlist.

Little Georgie Bush, the son of Jebbie, has just enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He's going into the Officer Training Program, preparing to be ... an intelligence officer. Okay, the obvious jokes aside, what are the chances he's ever going to see Iraq?

And I see in the news that little Jenna is engaged to a joker named Henry Hager. Wanna bet that he won't be wearing a uniform anytime soon? Like ever? Unlike both husbands of the daughters of Lyndon Johnson, both of whom went into the service and were sent to Vietnam.

Bush and Cheney were cowards during Vietnam who sent other men off to die in their place. Now the next generation is doing its part, sending their own peers off to die instead of them.

Why can't the Twins be more like their royal counterparts in the UK? The British Royal Family, unlike the Bush Crime Family, has a centuries-long tradition of honorable military service. Prince Andrew was a combat helicopter pilot in La Guerra de las Malvinas (aka the Falklands War) and Prince Harry, until the decision was made not to send him, was on his way to Iraq as a cavalry lieutenant. But even though he's not on his way to The Sandbox, he's still in uniform

Will the Bush Twins follow his example?

No, they will not. They are fucking cowards like their father and their Uncle Dick(less) Cheney.

Be sure to check out The Yellow Elephant blog, which asks the question "It's their war; why aren't they fighting it?"

BTW, the twins are also still not pregnant with their own Snowflake Babies. If they can't join the service, the least they could do would be to get themselves impregnated with a couple of blastocytes that would otherwise go into the garbage.

Remember what Farnsworth always says: Baste 'em, don't waste 'em.

Sunday, December 09, 2007

Going After a Gnat With a Chainsaw

Interesting news out of congress this week: HR 4137, the so-called College Opportunity and Affordability Act (COAA). Sounds pretty innocuous, doesn't it?

But the devil, as the saying goes, is in the details. Once again we have an Orwellian-named bill that does just the opposite of what you might think it would.

Buried deep in the 747-page(!) bill is the following: Section 494(A): Campus-Based Digital Theft Prevention, which provides that colleges and universities will have to come up with a plan to prevent illegal downloads of music from peer-to-peer filesharing groups, AND come up with a technology-based deterrent to "digital theft".

What that all means is that if a school does not comply, it will lose ALL federal funding for ALL student loans, grants, etc. Even Pell Grants. The bill also dictates that colleges come up with "alternatives" to the illegal downloading, and apparently what that means is that they will end up joining one of the non-illegal download providers. Which costs money. Which will undoubtedly come out of increased student fees.

And all of this certainly doesn't sound to me like it's going to enhance college opportunity and affordability. Quite the opposite.

Since only about 20% of a given school's student body actually lives on-campus, and by the MPAA's own estimate, only about 18% of "illegal downloaders" are students, this means that only about 4% of all illegal downloads are going into college computer networks.

And that seems to me to be more than a little Draconian.

But I guess that doesn't matter, since we've now, as a society, gone from "It's better to allow a thousand guilty men go free than to convict one innocent man" to a "kill 'em all and let god sort 'em out" mentality.

All that aside, in the big picture view, is it really necessary, is it really in the public good, to come up with a congressional bill that is over 700 pages long? Who has time to read that? Who has the intellectual fortitude to digest it?

No one, and that's why we get such bad laws. Our "representatives" are voting for -- or against -- bills that they haven't read, haven't digested, and are clueless about the projected effects or outcomes.

Let's take a stand on this one. I urge everyone to contact your representative and tell him/her to vote "NO" on HR 4137.

Friday, December 07, 2007

Boycott Overstock.com

I'll admit up front that I have never shopped online at Overstock.com. So it won't be a huge imposition on me to boycott them, but now that the Xmas shopping season is upon us, I want to urge anyone and everyone who has even thought of purchasing something at Overstock.com to reconsider.

And here's why: In Utah this year there was a ballot measure concerning funnelling state school money into private schools. Every time this has been on a ballot anywhere in the US it has been roundly defeated, usually by landslide margins, and Utah was no exception:
The measure lost in every single county in the state.

Americans have always seen this as the proverbial nose in the tent by the Religious Right, whose main goal is to siphon off financial support from the public schools, put their special little children into those private, mostly-Fundo-Xian schools, and ultimately destroy the very fabric of our public school system.

Oh, and incidentally, those precious little white babies won't have to rub shoulders with all those dirty and smelly minority-type kids, who seem to just litter the public schools.

So what's Overstock got to do with all this, you say?

Well, I'm glad you asked. The HMFIC* of Overstock, one Patrick Byrne (who has more legal problems than Carter has pills -- and see the Crooks and Liars piece on him as well), has been pouring tons of his own money into these ridiculous campaigns for years now, including the one in Utah. And when I say "his own money", what I really mean is the money he gets as a profit from operating Overstock.com. Which, if you happen to spend money there, is cash going
out of your pocket and into the already-overstuffed wallet of capitalist-pig fat-cat Patrick Byrne.

Update: Be sure to check out Whitecollar Fraud and O-Smear for more info on Byrne and his problems, legal and otherwise.


[* Head Mother Fucker In Charge -- it's an old Army term that I still use, nearly 40 years later.]


Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 2865 2888 2906 2959 3006 3018 3025 3067 3087 3118 3132 3151 3166 3189 3210 3233 3245 3266 3299 3316 3337 3358 3387 3409 3444 3504 3519 3546 3577 3592 3611 3631 3683 3705 3725 3738 3760 3780 3795 3823 3830 3838 3845 3866 3875 3881 3886

Total coalition forces dead: 306
Total Iraqi Dead: 700,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2277
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1738
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1681
Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347

Number of days that the the Vice President has NOT shot a man in the face: 662
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 505.

It is still 400 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Liberal Ronald Reagan Criticizes -- Republicans!

This is priceless. Take a listen to this radio address from Saint Ronald himself, back when he was still a human being:



Listen to him talking about, among other things, the evils of the union-busting Taft-Hartley Act, the horrors of tax breaks to the wealthy and the nightmare of reducing milk subsidies to public school children.

Even back then he had the basics down to be the Great Communicator. Too bad he later sold his soul to the devil for a mess of pottage.

It's sad, really, to see how completely Saint Ronald went to the Dark Side, after being a liberal way back in 1948.

Ten Million Emails "Lost"

It's shocking, but there it is. Worse than we thought. Instead of a paltry five million White House emails gone missing, now the total is over ten million.

Conveniently, the dates of the vanished emails include the period of March 2003 through October 2005 -- which encompasses the period of time from start of the Iraq War Illegal Occupation to the Hurricane Katrina aftermath.

Coincidence? I don't think so.

Tricky Dick was brought down over an 18.5 minute gap in a tape recording. This goes so far beyond that meager gap that "exponential" can't come close to describing it.

What we have here is a series of patent violations of the Presidential Records Act of 1978. And once again, the lawless and cynical BFEE will probably get away with it.

US Rep Henry Waxman (D--Naturally), along with the staff of CREW, are still doggedly pursuing the White House to produce these missing emails. I used to work in IT, so I know that nothing erased from a computer -- especially emails -- is gone forever. What with multiple backup systems and forensic hard disk tools, the emails are still there somewhere.

In the meantime, read the Crew report Without a Trace: The Story of the Missing White House Emails and the Violation of the Presidential Records Act.

How many more crimes can these fuckers get away with before America is finally fed up?

Abstinence? Yeah, That Works...Not!

In a not-surprising story out of Chicago, a group of doctors have found what the rest of us who can actually remember being teenagers knew already:

Abstinence-only sex education DOES. NOT. WORK.

But once again, those of us over here in the Reality-Based Community don't really matter. Not when you have a front-running presidential candidate denying that he descended from an ape (Note to Huckabee: We all deny that, because Darwin never said we did!!!), the BFEE throwing tax dollars at religious organizations faster than they can pick them up, and a teenage birth rate that has gone up for the first time in 14 years:

Average age at first intercourse: Down
Average number of teenagers having sex: Up
Average use of condoms: Down

The only surprising statistic is that the number of abortions has remained steady. Which means that more teenagers are choosing to remain -- or have been forced into remaining -- pregnant, and as any 15-year-old single mother can tell you, from that point on your potential futures have been reduced exponentially, down to a handful at best, and most of them are not good.

And all of it is due to the Rethug radical-fringe religio-fascists who have been pushing abstinence-only sex education, to the exclusion of realistic, We Actually Live On This Planet sex education.

Oh, and do you recall just last year, when Baby Doc said, talking about the fact that as of 2006 the teenage pregnancy rate was still falling slightly: "Wise policies such as welfare reform, drug education and support for abstinence and adoption have made a difference in the character of our country."

Oh really? What now? I guess he can always blame the Democrats. After all, they took over Congress in January of last year. They must have caused the teenage pregnancy rate to rise. Yeah, that's it.

After all, it couldn't be the Rethugs--they pretty much restrict their sexual contact with teenagers to the boys.

Wednesday, December 05, 2007

American Enterprise Institute is "Non-Partisan"?

The American Enterprise Institute! Non-partisan!

This was news to me, as I'm sure it was to pretty much everyone reading this hit piece on Obama in the formerly august New York Times.

But there it is, in the seventh graf down: "...said Joseph Antos, a health policy expert at the American Enterprise Institute, a nonpartisan group." [emphasis added]

No leading qualifiers, no sidebars, nothing in fact to show the casual reader that this nest of rightwing corporatist neocon neofascist snakes is anything but a neutral observer.

Goddam that Librul Media anyway.

Perino Gives the Stink Eye to Helen Thomas

This is worth watching. At a press conference with Stepford-Sec Dana Perino, Helen Thomas asks some pointed questions that appear to leave Perino flat-footed.


Watch it til the end, after Perino has been suitably chastised. She gives Helen Thomas one of those daggers-from-the-eyes if-looks-could-kill stares.

Priceless.

Baby Doc Signing Statements

We've heard about them for years, but how many of us know exactly what they were and which bills signed by Der Monkey Fuehrer they were attached to?

Certainly not me, and that's why it was especially gratifying to find that the American Constitution Society has collected them and has published a lengthy list and description of them at Index of Presidential Signing Statements 2001-2007.

Like I say, it's long (174 pages in .pdf format), but well worth skimming through. He even put these signing statements on laws passed by his own fellow Rethugs in congress.

As I look through them, most of them seem to be of a nature to ensure the primacy and superiority of the Executive Branch. Watch for the tell-tale phrasing "unitary executive branch" in many of them.

Exactly the kind of thing you'd suspect from an Imperial pResident like Baby Doc Bush.

Blog Poster Arrested

In the news today was a story on suburban Milwaukee high school chemistry teacher James Buss, who left the following anonymous post on a rightwing Wisconsin blog:

Looking at those teacher salary numbers in West Bend made me sick. $60,000 for a part time job were you ‘work’ maybe 5 hours per day and sit in the teachers lounge and smoke the rest of the time. Thanks God we won on the referendum. But whining here doesn’t stop the problem. We’ve got to get in back of the kids who have had enough of lazy, no good teachers and are fighting back. Kids like Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold members of the Young Republicans club at Columbine. They knew how to deal with the overpaid teacher union thugs. One shot at a time! Too bad the liberals rip them; they were heroes and should be remembered that way
It is patently obvious from reading this that it was sarcasm, a tongue-in-cheek poke at the wingnuts who run the Boots and Sabers political blog (I won't provide the link because I don't want to promote their blog but you can do a Google search and find them readily enough).

But that didn't stop the cops from investigating it. They went to the blog owners and got Buss's IP address -- without a warrant, apparently -- and swooped down on him like Storm Troopers. The potential charges against him: disorderly conduct and unlawful use of computerized communication systems.

WTF???

This is, at its core, a free speech issue. Unless Buss was intending to inspire more wannabe Harris-and-Kelbold types to strike down greedy teacher thugs, one shot at a time, then he did nothing wrong.

Last I looked, we still had free speech in this country. Buss, a public school teacher, probably didn't exercise the best judgment in this. After all, over in Wingnutistan, they are not known for having much of a sense of humor, and their grasp of satire, of irony, of parody, of sarcasm, is tenuous at best.

But I think a whole lot of overreaction has taken place here.

Nevertheless, this has the potential of placing a "chilling effect" on free speech in the blogosphere. It won't affect me any since I refuse to live in fear, but I feel that many people might think twice before posting something that is critical, say, of the BFEE, especially on wingnut websites whose owners apparently have no qualms about calling the cops.

I don't know if the assholes over at Boots and Sabers are the ones who dropped the dime on Buss, but they were more than happy to give him up. And that's something that I would never do, so keep on posting here and we'll all meet up at Gitmo...

This Chimp is Smirking for a Reason

In a fascinating bit of news out of Japan, it turns out that chimps are better than humans at certain memory tasks.

Anyone who has ever been around a chimpanzee knows that they are very smart (as are most primates, I would guess -- remember Koko the Sign Language gorilla?)

Jeez, I'm probably gonna have to stop calling Baby Doc Bush a Smirking Chimp.

It's an insult to the chimpanzees.

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Help Stop Peake at VA

Der Monkey Fuehrer has nominated a guy named Dr. James Peake to head the VA. On paper the guy looks pretty good: Former Army Surgeon General. First physician to be nominated to head the VA, and first general to be nominated. What's not to like?

Turns out, quite a bit.

There are a lot of questions surrounding Peake's tenure as chief Army medical man, including possible knowledge about the torture of enemy prisoners of war unlawful enemy combatants and his presiding over the criminally negligent treatment of our wounded, injured, and sick Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Until these questions are resolved, I don't want to see Peake as head of the VA. Please consider contacting the Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs and asking them not to vote for confirmation of Peake until these serious questions have been answered.

Check out Veterans for Common Sense for a ton of material on Peake and his prior actions.

Liar and History Revisionist Karl Rove

Here are links to the two-part video of Karl "Turdblossom" Rove v. Chris Van Hollen on Faux News Sunday.

It's absolutely mind-boggling to watch Turdblossom sit there and lie through his teeth.

Part One:



Part Two:



And, for those of you who don't have the time -- or the stomach -- to watch Turd Blossom or the Rethug-enabling Chris Wallace for the whole sordid thing, here's a DCCC digested version which pretty much cuts to the chase and shows the most important parts about Rove's lies and historical revisionism, with cross cuts to Baby Doc and Turdblossom himself which show him up to be a fucking LIAR.

Oh, and watch Chris "Goebbels" Wallace try, about halfway through Part 2, to quote John Murtha as saying the surge is working. Nothing like the Faux Noise Network to pluck shit out of context and use it to spin the BFEE talking points.

Texas: Still in the Dark Ages

Some alarming news out of the Lone Star State this week. Christine Comer, the Texas Science Curriculum director, was fired for daring to forward an email about a lecture by Barbara Forrest that was critical of so-called Intelligent Design.

Fired. For upholding "sound science".

I'd like to say that Texas was on the verge of reverting to the Dark Ages, but any state that would elect Baby Doc Bush governor, not once but twice, really never left them.

And so what does that say about a country that would elect him pResident twice? We don't really know, since we wasn't elected the first time, and probably not the second time, either.

Monday, December 03, 2007

Action Item: Tell Fed-Ex You're Fed Up

At an appropriate time of the year, here's an action item. Fed-Ex has been taking some extraordinary steps to prevent its drivers from unionizing. The drivers work long hours, frequently without benefits, and are routinely harassed -- even fired -- for just thinking about supporting a union.

I will personally refuse to ship anything with Fed-Ex, and will refuse to buy anything from any online merchant who ships exclusive through Fed-Ex.

I have also sent an email to the Fed-Ex CEO telling him that I'm fed up.

Please consider doing the same. We have to fight for fair employment and family-wage jobs whenever and wherever we can.

CNN: The Corrupt News Network

Tim Rutten, media critic at the LA Times, has an insightful -- and incisive -- commentary about the recent CNN-YouTube Rethug debate:

THE United States is at war in the Middle East and Central Asia, the economy is writhing like a snake with a broken back, oil prices are relentlessly climbing toward $100 a barrel and an increasing number of Americans just can't afford to be sick with anything that won't be treated with aspirin and bed rest.
So, when CNN brought the Republican presidential candidates together this week for what is loosely termed a "debate," what did the country get but a discussion of immigration, Biblical inerrancy and the propriety of flying the Confederate flag?
Read the whole thing and see if you agree with him. They spent the whole first part of the debate discussing immigration, an issue that maybe 10% of the populace considers the top issue facing the US.

And why would they do this? One simple reason: Ratings. Lou Dobbs, the neopopulist/neonativist has made it his signature issue, and CNN is losing ratings to MSNBC. The more they can fire up the great unwashed television audience on this essentially made-up issue, the more people will stay tuned into CNN.

Rutten thinks that's corrupt.

And he's right.

Phone Cards for Hospitalized Veterans: A Worthy Charity

What with all of the cutbacks and general stinginess of the Baby Doc Maladministration towards the VA and America's veterans, it's refreshing to see a worthy cooperation between the Credo Mobile division of Working Assets and Veterans for Peace to put pre-paid phone cards in the hands of disabled and hospitalized veterans.

Last year the same cooperative put phone cards into 148 VA hospitals which allowed the veterans to make phone calls home for the holidays.

Your tax-deductible contribution of $10.50 will get two-hour phone cards into the hands of three deserving veterans this December. A contribution of $52.50 will get phone cards into the hands of fifteen veterans.

I urge everyone to join me in dropping by and committing some bucks to this worthy cause.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1280 days since Jenna and Not-Jenna Bush, the slacker offspring of Preznit Numnutz, graduated from college and they are still not in the uniform of the US armed services.

Why? Because they have other priorities. They are too busy partying down in Georgetown, Argentina and god-knows-where-else to show their support for the war by enlisting their chickenhawk-child selves into the military service, that's why.



And it's not just The Twins: ONLY ONE member of the extended Bush family has seen fit to volunteer for military service. Check out the Buzzflash analysis of the chickenshit Bush/Cheney extended family and see for yourself. There's even a photo taken in 2000 of the extended Bush family, complete with a whole lot of young fresh faces who seem to be of an age now to be eligible to enlist.

Little Georgie Bush, the son of Jebbie, has just enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He's going into the Officer Training Program, preparing to be ... an intelligence officer. Okay, the obvious jokes aside, what are the chances he's ever going to see Iraq?

And I see in the news that little Jenna is engaged to a joker named Henry Hager. Wanna bet that he won't be wearing a uniform anytime soon? Like ever? Unlike both husbands of the daughters of Lyndon Johnson, both of whom went into the service and were sent to Vietnam.

Bush and Cheney were cowards during Vietnam who sent other men off to die in their place. Now the next generation is doing its part, sending their own peers off to die instead of them.

Why can't the Twins be more like their royal counterparts in the UK? The British Royal Family, unlike the Bush Crime Family, has a centuries-long tradition of honorable military service. Prince Andrew was a combat helicopter pilot in La Guerra de las Malvinas (aka the Falklands War) and Prince Harry, until the decision was made not to send him, was on his way to Iraq as a cavalry lieutenant. But even though he's not on his way to The Sandbox, he's still in uniform

Will the Bush Twins follow his example?

No, they will not. They are fucking cowards like their father and their Uncle Dick(less) Cheney.

Be sure to check out The Yellow Elephant blog, which asks the question "It's their war; why aren't they fighting it?"

BTW, the twins are also still not pregnant with their own Snowflake Babies. If they can't join the service, the least they could do would be to get themselves impregnated with a couple of blastocytes that would otherwise go into the garbage.

Remember what Farnsworth always says: Baste 'em, don't waste 'em.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Putting an Egg-Sucking Dog in Charge of the Henhouse

You can imagine my surprise to learn that noted war monger, neocon architect extraordinaire and champion comb-licker Paul Wolfowitz is returning to the Baby Doc Maladministration.

Yep. According to Newsweek Online, Secretary of State Kindasleazy Rice has offerred Wolfie a job as chairman of the International Security Advisory Board.

That's the august body within State that advises on international security stuff, such as, I don't know, maybe whether we should bomb Iran and stuff like that...

No word yet as to whether Wolfie's girlfriend Shaha Ali Riza will also be getting a job with State.

Oh, and that position does not require Senate approval, so Wolfie won't be bothered by pointed questions from those com-symp terrorist-enablers, the Democrats.

Saturday, December 01, 2007

Patriotism

Nobody these days has ever heard of Carl Schurz, but he had an interesting life as a German revolutionary, Civil War Union general, and the first German-American to be a US Senator.

Here's what he had to say about patriotism:

The man who in times of popular excitement boldly and unflinchingly resists hot-tempered clamor for an unnecessary war, and thus exposes himself to the opprobrious imputation of a lack of patriotism or of courage, to the end of saving his country from a great calamity, is, as to "loving and faithfully serving his country," at least as good a patriot as the hero of the most daring feat of arms, and a far better one than those who, with an ostentatious pretense of superior patriotism, cry for war before it is needed, especially if then they let others do the fighting.
That was way back in 1898.

And Schurz was a Republican!

A Gay General??? The Horror!

I have posted on the whole "don't ask don't tell" debacle several times on this blog, including this one when this blog was brand new:

To those who say they don't want a gay person sleeping next to them or taking a shower with them, I say one word: bullshit. If you served in the military, then chances are you already did those things. You just didn't know it because the gay person sleeping next to you or showering with you was forced to keep his/her sexual orientation secret.
And somehow you survived it, didn't you?
So I was glad to see that Keith Kerr, retired Brigadier General and (now) an openly gay man, asked that question during the Rethug debate, since it's an issue that is long overdue to be settled.

But when it came out that he was a volunteer on the Clinton campaign, suddenly THAT became the story, about how he had somehow "ambushed" those poor pitiful deer-in-the-headlights candidates, and the real story got submerged.

The real story is that here is a Brigadier General who is retired after 43 years of service, a graduate of the Special Forces Officer Course, the Commanding General Staff Course and the Army War College, who had been forced to live in the closet for all of those years.

So it's back to what I said before: If you are a veteran who doesn't think you've already served with gay soldiers, sailors, etc., then you are an idiot.

Friday, November 30, 2007

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 2865 2888 2906 2959 3006 3018 3025 3067 3087 3118 3132 3151 3166 3189 3210 3233 3245 3266 3299 3316 3337 3358 3387 3409 3444 3504 3519 3546 3577 3592 3611 3631 3683 3705 3725 3738 3760 3780 3795 3823 3830 3838 3845 3866 3875 3881

Total coalition forces dead: 306
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2270
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1731
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1674
Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347

Number of days that the the Vice President has NOT shot a man in the face: 655
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 498.

It is still 417 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Thursday, November 29, 2007

Veterans for Kucinich -- Update

A couple of days ago I was bewailing the fact that there doesn't seem to be a "Veterans for Kucinich" entity out there in the ether of the Internets.

Guess I spoke too soon, since I did a little more research and found that there is, indeed, a group calling itself Veterans for Dennis.

It's part of the Kucinich Action website, and I wish they'd made it a little more prominent.

Nevertheless, it IS there, and I encourage all of my fellow veterans to drop by and add yourself to the Veterans for Dennis group. The more veterans that come out of the closet and support Dennis Kucinich, the better off his campaign will be.

The Thoughtcrime Act of 2007

This is another one of those things that has flown under my radar until early yesterday morning.

Senate Bill 1959, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007, sounds, on first seeing it, like something that doesn't sound so bad: Establish a National Commission on the Prevention of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism, and for other purposes.

And for "other purposes"? Already a red flag ought to be going up.

Well, the devil, as the old saying goes, is in the details. This legislation is worded so vaguely that even my ranting blog could fall under its purview:

(2) VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- The term 'violent radicalization' means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.
(3) HOMEGROWN TERRORISM- The term 'homegrown terrorism' means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.
(4) IDEOLOGICALLY BASED VIOLENCE- The term 'ideologically based violence' means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual's political, religious, or social beliefs.
No where is "force" defined in the bill, nor is it apparent that you and I out here in Left Blogistan would be free from the accusation of using our words to promote an "extremist belief system".

Okay, I know that this particular bill is only for the purpose of setting up the commission, so it's not time to hit the barricades just yet, but the very fact that this is floating around the deliberative body of our government gives one pause.

This is definitely worth keeping an eye on.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Smartest Guys in the Room

I'm a little embarrassed to admit it, but somehow I missed seeing the terrific documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. But last night I finally watched it and man-oh-man was I ever blown away.

Over the intervening years, what with all the shit that has been blowing our way, I also managed to forget a lot of the details on the Enron scandal, so this film was a great reminder of what happened during those dark days.

And I mean dark days literally, since Enron was solely responsible -- after the moronic California assembly went for deregulation of energy companies -- for those nightmarish "rolling blackouts" in California that ultimately ended with Gray Davis being ousted and The Governator being installed.

It was priceless (in a horrifying way) to watch the Enron Gurus blame the California blackouts on -- get this -- regulation!

There is so much to tell about this film that I can't even begin. Buy it, rent it, watch it, even give it away for Xmas presents.

And the next time that obnoxious wingnut brother-in-law of yours starts harping on the benefits of the so-called Free Market, you won't have to say a word. Just hand him your copy of Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, for a textbook example of how free markets can -- and will, if left unregulated -- run amok and bring down the carefully erected infrastructure in a major state.

California yesterday, tomorrow the world? Only if the neocon assholes get their way.

Our job? Stop them.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

"If Conservatism is the Ideology of Freedom, Then I'm the Queen of England"

I just ran into this must-read over at The Regressive Antidote. It's a fairly long piece by David Michael Green with the title that you see above, the headline to this blog post.

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who are always trying to take that freedom away from us, especially women and minorities? Why did they fight against the effort to end slavery, or to give women and minorities the vote, or to protect them from discrimination? Why are they still supporting efforts to disenfranchise minorities?

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who bitterly opposed the New Deal at a time when Americans were ravaged by the Great Depression and the only freedom they were desperately seeking was from unemployment, starvation, humiliation and death? We should give thanks for their efforts ever since then, though, as they’ve been kind enough to keep trying to liberate seniors from the hell of receiving their Social Security benefits, bravely volunteering Wall Street to carry that burden instead.

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who are always propping up foreign dictators, like Saddam, Musharraf, Mubarak, Marcos, Pinochet, the Shah, Batista, the House of Saud and apartheid South Africa? Why did they, in some of these cases, secretly topple democratically elected governments to install repressive regimes, which they then assisted in the torturing of their own citizens? Exactly which definition of ‘freedom’ does that fall under?

If conservatism is the ideology of freedom, how come they’re the ones who are always trying to control other people’s sexuality? Why are conservatives always telling us whom we can sleep with and what we can do in bed, even including whether we can use birth control?
And there's a lot more. Check it out and you will probably, like me, bookmark it in your favorites for further study. And now I can't wait to use it on some poor unsuspecting Rethug who starts harping on the "freedoms" that the CONservatives support. Then I can, as Green suggests, tell them, "Yeah, no kidding, freedom is a really good thing. You’d like it even better if you actually tried it out some time."

Baby Doc Quote of the Week

"And there is distrust in Washington. I am surprised, frankly, at the amount of distrust that exists in this town. And I'm sorry it's the case, and I'll work hard to try to elevate it."

--George W. Bush, interview on National Public Radio, Jan. 29, 2007

Jeez, that's right up there with "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."
--George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., Aug. 5, 2004

You can keep up with the latest bon mots from Bushspeak on About.com

Monday, November 26, 2007

"Veterans for Kucinich" -- WTF?

So I do a Google search for Veterans for Kucinich, hoping that there's an organization in place with its own website. No such luck. So then I tried entering "veteransforkucinich.org" in the address bar, and this is what I get. Same thing for "vetsforkucinich.org".

Maybe it's just me, but that really doesn't look like a Veterans for Kucinich website to me.

So the next step was to do a WhoIs search to find out who's got these domains locked up, and I learned that someone named Michael Hartsell in Missoula, Montana, is the registered owner of these two domains.

I don't know what Hartsell's angle is, but it certainly looks to me like cybersquatting. If that's the case, then when Kucinich gets the nomination these two domains will be for sale to the highest bidder.

It's an ugly practice, but it's also pretty widespread, despite numerous lawsuits that have been adjudicated against the cybersquatters.

Here's hoping that Hartsell's heart is in the right place, and that he's nailed down these domains against the chance that Kucinich will be the nominee, at which time he will donate them to the campaign.

Sidebar: Interestingly enough though, these domains are registered (and hosted) by the controversial GoDaddy.com, whose CEO Bob Parsons (a fellow Vietnam vet who ought to know better) is on record as stating that he did not believe that the "interrogation techniques" used in Gitmo were torture.

Okay, to Parsons' credit, he later withdrew this statement, but still...

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1273 days since Jenna and Not-Jenna Bush, the slacker offspring of Preznit Numnutz, graduated from college and they are still not in the uniform of the US armed services.

Why? Because they have other priorities. They are too busy partying down in Georgetown, Argentina and god-knows-where-else to show their support for the war by enlisting their chickenhawk-child selves into the military service, that's why.



And it's not just The Twins: ONLY ONE member of the extended Bush family has seen fit to volunteer for military service. Check out the Buzzflash analysis of the chickenshit Bush/Cheney extended family and see for yourself. There's even a photo taken in 2000 of the extended Bush family, complete with a whole lot of young fresh faces who seem to be of an age now to be eligible to enlist.

Little Georgie Bush, the son of Jebbie, has just enlisted in the Naval Reserve. He's going into the Officer Training Program, preparing to be ... an intelligence officer. Okay, the obvious jokes aside, what are the chances he's ever going to see Iraq?

And I see in the news that little Jenna is engaged to a joker named Henry Hager. Wanna bet that he won't be wearing a uniform anytime soon? Like ever? Unlike both husbands of the daughters of Lyndon Johnson, both of whom went into the service and were sent to Vietnam.

Bush and Cheney were cowards during Vietnam who sent other men off to die in their place. Now the next generation is doing its part, sending their own peers off to die instead of them.

Why can't the Twins be more like their royal counterparts in the UK? The British Royal Family, unlike the Bush Crime Family, has a centuries-long tradition of honorable military service. Prince Andrew was a combat helicopter pilot in La Guerra de las Malvinas (aka the Falklands War) and Prince Harry, until the decision was made not to send him, was on his way to Iraq as a cavalry lieutenant. But even though he's not on his way to The Sandbox, he's still in uniform

Will the Bush Twins follow his example?

No, they will not. They are fucking cowards like their father and their Uncle Dick(less) Cheney.

Be sure to check out The Yellow Elephant blog, which asks the question "It's their war; why aren't they fighting it?"

BTW, the twins are also still not pregnant with their own Snowflake Babies. If they can't join the service, the least they could do would be to get themselves impregnated with a couple of blastocytes that would otherwise go into the garbage.

Remember what Farnsworth always says: Baste 'em, don't waste 'em.

Saturday, November 24, 2007

Hey Kids, You Wanna See Something REALLY Scary?

It's a little late for Halloween, but not too late to have the crap scared out of you.

Matt Taibbi over at Rolling Stone magazine just wrote a long story on resurgent Rethug Fundo Xian ex-governor Mike Huckabee, which you can read on the AlterNet website.

Mike Huckabee, the latest it girl of the Republican presidential race, tells a hell of a story. Let your guard down anywhere near the former Arkansas governor and he'll pod you, Body Snatchers-style -- you'll wake up drooling, your brain gone, riding a back seat on the bandwagon that suddenly has him charging toward the lead in the GOP race.
Huckabee, who denies evolution and says that we are not descended from primates (Note to Mike: We are primates...), who insists that the earth is around 6000 years old, and who believes that we have all these problems with illegal aliens because -- get this -- the abortion "Holocaust" has cost us millions of people who otherwise would be doing the work that those nasty over-the-border types are doing.

All of this begs the question, Taibbi asks, "If this religious zealot's rise represents the end of corporate dominance of the Republican Party, is that a good thing? Or is the real thing even worse than the fraud?"
What the press doesn't understand is that Huckabee has changed the equation of party-specific orthodoxies. A generation of GOP candidates have used the poor as a whipping-post stage prop, complaining about lazy, frantically copulating homeless fiends living in cars, fucking up the property values of Decent Folk. Huck turns that rhetoric around by saying, "We shouldn't allow a child to live under a bridge or in the back seat of a car." It's a brilliant innovation for a candidate like Huckabee, who recognizes that the only thing he has to lose by talking about poverty and high CEO salaries is the support of the big-money wing of his party -- something he doesn't have anyway.
Go on over and read the article. It's pretty sobering stuff, and if by some "miracle" Huckabee manages to pull it off, we need to prepare ourselves for the coming crusade by the Fundo Xians, backed by their boy in the White House, to round up and Gitmo-ise all of us out here in Freethinkerland.

Friday, November 23, 2007

It's Not Fascism When We Do It!



[Thanks to the Project for the Old American Century for the image -- drop by and check them out; they have a number of personal items such as t-shirts, etc. with this image on them plus a lot more.]

US Constitution Arrested for Aiding and Abetting Terrorists!

That was the headline screaming across the Bad Reporter Times today.

Okay, if you know Don Asmussen's work, you already know that this is a joke.

Or is it? Can something like this really be so far off?

Remember, NSPD 51 is still out there, still "valid" (at least in the Alice-Through-the-Looking-glass world of the wingnuttery and their puppet masters in the BFEE) and we should all still be very nervous about Der Monkey Fuehrer and this unprecedented grab for power.

The US Constitution will join those other "quaint" artifacts of history, such as the Declaration of Independence, the Magna Carta and the Geneva Convention treaties in the dustbin of history.

Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 2865 2888 2906 2959 3006 3018 3025 3067 3087 3118 3132 3151 3166 3189 3210 3233 3245 3266 3299 3316 3337 3358 3387 3409 3444 3504 3519 3546 3577 3592 3611 3631 3683 3705 3725 3738 3760 3780 3795 3823 3830 3838 3845 3866 3875

Total coalition forces dead: 306
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2263
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1724
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1667
Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347

Number of days that the the Vice President has NOT shot a man in the face: 648
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 491.

It is still 424 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Church and State

Over the couple of years since I started this blog, I've made a large number of posts on religion and separation of church and state issues, so it isn't surprising that I've finally managed to get on someone's "hit list".

But what fucking rock did this moron crawl out from under?

Way back in August I did a blog post on The Faith Based Pentagon, excoriating the Christian Embassy crowd for sticking their stinking noses into the military tent.

So now it's November, and someone calling himself "Curtis Patton" is just now trying to take me to task over it:

Where in the Constitution do you find seperation of church and state. No it is not in the 1st amendment. The phrase was in a letter from Thomas Jefferson to a Clergy letting him know that the state would not get involved in Religion. You atheist have gotten it wrong for so long you think that your wrong ideas are the truth.
He goes on to gamely try to disprove evolution for a couple more sentences, but to no avail, of course.

So, in spite of myself, I answered the lame-ass motherfucker thusly:
Curtis:
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.
So why don't you tell me where in the Constitution it DOESN'T say there is a wall of separation?
It will probably come as a surprise to you, since I'm pretty sure you haven't actually READ it, that the US Constitution mentions religion exactly TWO TIMES and ONLY two times:
One is in the often-misrepresented-by-your-side First Amendment, and the other in Article VI - Debts, Supremacy, Oaths
...
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. [Emphasis added]
And if that's not a clear indication of that Wall of Separation, then I don't know what would be.
You Fundos in the Wingnuttery are so fond of pointing out the "intent of the Founders" when it comes to constitutional questions, except when it doesn't support your own thesis.
And as far as your comments about evolution...well, if you cannot see the truth in the theory, then you are beyond help anyway.
(BTW, don't you have a spell-check on your computer? "seperation", "disproveing", "absense", etc. Please, come back when you've managed to get yourself an education and we'll talk some more -- Remember, I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man...)
He hasn't come back, of course. The vast majority of them never do. In the immortal words of Harry S Truman, "If you don't like the heat, get out of the kitchen."

Kucinich's Uphill Battle

Even after being totally marginalized by the horse-race media, you gotta hand it to Dennis Kucinch, who is still in there swinging.

Over at The Progressive, the ever-insightful John Nichols has a long think piece on Kucinich called Kucinich’s Challenge, wherein he offers a roadmap to the White House for the Kucinich campaign:

The challenge for Kucinich is a real one. He can run according to the rules and be a Democratic Harold Stassen, or he can break the rules and make his campaign a redemptive force. To do the former, he need merely continue campaigning as he now is. To do the latter, he must level with himself and with the voters and offer himself up as a representative of the idealistic insurgency that both the party and the country so sorely need.
An idealistic insurgency is what Gene McCarthy was the godfather of in 1968, which pulled the Democratic party to the left -- unfortunately in ways that it turned out weren't really anticipated in the heat of the battle in 1968.

So, at the risk of it turning into one of those "be careful what you wish for" situations, I think Kucinich ought to take to heart some of Nichols' suggestions, and I also urge each of you to toss a few bucks Dennis's way to help in the campaign.

Let's take back our democracy!

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

A Blast from the Past

It might behoove us on this Thanksgiving Eve 2007 to take a little trip down memory lane and watch a short video featuring none other than 1940's Republican candidate for President of the United States, Wendell Wilkie -- who was, in his own words, a liberal:



If Wilkie were still alive today, there's no doubt in my mind that he would be a Democrat. Just listen to some of the "controversial" ideas that he's on record as supporting.

Hell, he'd probably be held up as a traitorous supporter of terrorism by the strident assholes in the rightwing blogosphere.

An interesting experiment would be to write down all of the concepts and ideas that Wilkie says he supports in this video and then present it to that right-wing creepizoid of a brother-in-law of yours who's coming over for dinner tomorrow. Ask him what he thinks about someone who espouses such dangerous socialistic ideas, and finally spring the ambush: Tell him that they are direct quotes from the 1940 Republican Party nominee for president.

And then watch him start to squirm. Heh heh heh...

[Hat tip to Mick Lasalle over at the SFGate website.]