Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

I work in a research unit, and long-time readers know how I feel about innumeracy, so I am more attuned than most to the subtle ways people who want to lie to you can manipulate the numbers to make their arguments sound valid.

But there's nothing subtle about this one. This came up and smacked me between the eyes.

At the VA website there is a page that shows the number of wounded in Iraq. For several months this figure was up in the 50,000 range, and then on January 10 it plummeted, without explanation, to 21,649.

So what's up with that?

Well, it turns out that the lower figure is the number of strictly combat-related injuries. The rest of them are due to illness, vehicle crashes and other accidents, etc., a number that the VA insists isn't relevant. See the full story over at VA Watchdog

Never mind that it helps to hide the true cost of war (for example, those injuries or illnesses likely would not have happened if the individual hadn't been in Iraq to begin with). And the cost, to be borne for several generations, of caring for the veterans who have been disabled in those incidents. Remember, if it occurred while you were in the service, it is by definition a service-connected disability.

It wouldn't surprise me a bit if the VA came up with a new definition of service-connected disability. Look at the money it would save if disabled veterans were helped only for combat wounds and nothing else.

Jesus, I'd better shut up. I might be giving the evil fuckers in the BFEE some ideas and lose my own VA disability payments...

Through the Looking Glass

It's a crazy world, isn't it? A Republican senator with a 96% positive rating from the American Conservative Union is challenging his own president on the war in Iraq while the leading Democrats are still talking fuzzy about the war, despite the sound thrashing the Dems gave their opponents last November, with the war itself as the main issue in those victories.

Chuck Hagel, Vietnam veteran and current senator from Nebraska, has been a long-time vocal opponent of the Iraq debacle, stemming from his realization that he had, along with a lot of his fellow vets, been duped by then-president Johnson over the reasons for and the conduct of the Vietnam War. He's been asking the tough questions and demanding the answers from the BFEE Maladminstration for a long time now, and he can't be ignored.

It's even gotten to the point that longtime leftist journalist Robert Scheer has come out and said that given a choice between Hagel and one of the wishy-washy namby-pamby mealy-mouth squishy-on-the-war Democrats, he'll support Hagel.

And that, IMHO, would be a huge mistake. Hagel, for all his aw-shucks charm and flatland charisma, is still more conservative than even McCain, and there's no reason to think he wouldn't, to take just one example, appoint more Scalia-Thomas-Alito clones to the Supreme Court.

Op Ed News has a lengthy but compelling analysis of Hagel and his maybe White House run. It's worth a read.

Monday, January 29, 2007

From Our WTF Department

Minneapolis cab drivers who are Muslim are refusing to pick up fares from the airport if the potential riders are carrying alocholic beverages or are accompanied by dogs.

The Muslim belief system is, of course, anti-alcohol but I did not know that dog saliva is considered "unclean".

Actually, this post should be really be titled "From Our Give Me a Fucking Break Department". As with the notorious Xian fundo pharmacists who refuse to fill valid prescriptions for the Morning After pill, these jokers have no goddam business imposing their belief system on their customers.

If you are engaged in a public service job -- cab driver, pharmacist, fireman, cop, what-the-fuck-ever -- then you do not get to impose your religious values on others. If you don't think you can do your job without imposing those values on others, then you need to get in another line of work.

If I'm standing at the Minneapolis airport in a twenty-below blizzard, toting two quarts of single-malt scotch under one arm and my cousin's ankle-snapping lapdog under the other, the last thing I'm gonna give a shit about is your religious proclivities. I want a cab and I want one now.

Do your fucking job or get a different one. It's that simple.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 978 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.



Come on, you two. Do your patriotic duty. Your daddy is standing there with egg on his face. Think what your enlistment into the military could do for his poll numbers with the American people. Think what it could do help him get that "surge" he's wanting so badly.

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

Friday, January 26, 2007

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

Total coalition forces dead: 253
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1963
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1414
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1363
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: 345
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 192.

It is still 747 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

So Many Hypocrites, So Little Time

Okay, so I stole the headline from Buzzflash, but it's a great lead-in for the latest Dick Cheney story.

Faux News is frothing over the fact that Wolf Blitzer had the audacity, the gall, to ask The Big Dick about that whole Lesbian-daughter-pregnancy thing. "Personal life is off limits," they're screaming. "Family is sacrosanct."

Never mind that these are the same hypocritical motherfuckers who believe that "family" does not include the Heather-has-two-mommies crowd, and were in the forefront, waving pitchforks and brandishing flaming torches, when Bill Clinton's most personal and private details were paraded before the nation for months on end.

Clueless. As Usual.

One of the more idiotic proposals to come out of the State of the Union was Baby Doc's suggestion to give people a $15,000 tax break for health insurance.

In addition to all of the other problems with this stupidity, the major one is that more than half of the uninsured in this country, even those who are working, are so poor that they already owe no taxes. Some big benefit that's going to be for them.

This is another example of building the pie higher. Not only is he totally clueless, he thinks we are as well.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Libby's Lawyer: It Was Rove

"Scooter" Libby's lawyer in his opening statements at Libby's trial shifted the blame to Karl Rove and said that his client was being scapegoated for the Plame leak.

This is the story that just won't quit, and I don't think there's a rational sentient being on the planet that doesn't, in his heart of hearts, believe that Rove was NOT behind the Plame leak.

So it was a smart move on the part of Theodore V. Wells Jr., Libby's lawyer. Shift the focus away from your client and put it on the one person who is most likely to have really committed the act.

It's a tactic as old as dirt, but it works.

Now let's watch the fun as the truth finally comes out. Maybe Karl Rove won't slither out of this one. Maybe he's going to end up in the graybar hotel after all.

Vets MIA in State of Union Speech

Once again, in a perfect record, Baby Doc ignored this nation's veterans in his State of the Union speech last night.

That in itself is not surprising. The Rethug party for years has thought of the military as interchangeable parts in the assembly line of Empire.

But what is surprising is that James Webb, both a Vietnam veteran and former head of the VA, also did not mention veterans in the Democratic response.

I expected better from him.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

Chutzpah!

I've worked in Unemployment Insurance for most of the last 30 years, so there isn't a whole lot that comes up that can amuse me or surprise me. But this one did.

A Des Moines woman, one Emmalee Bauer, a 25-year-old total slacker, had what appeared to be a pretty cushy job at the Sheraton Hotel. And during the time she was employed there she maintained what turned out to be a pretty hefty daily journal of her activities at work. Most of which consisted of descriptions of how she was slacking off and not working.

She started writing it out in longhand, but when her manager finally told her to stop keeping the journal on work time, she started keeping it on the computer instead. "That way, there isn't any way to tell for sure if I am working really hard or I am just goofing off," she wrote one day.

And when they finally discover her, they fire her. Yeah, big surprise there, all right.

So what does she do? Files for Unemployment Insurance! And during the course of the hearing over whether she should be allowed benefits, the journal, which ran to some 300 single-spaced pages when printed out, is entered into evidence.

Check out the Des Moines Register article on the case and read some of the entries introduced during the hearing.

The whole thing reminds me of that archetypal chutzpah story of the axe murderer who chopped up both of his parents and then pleaded with the judge for leniency because he was an orphan.

I kind of feel sorry for Little Emmalee, since with all this negative publicity it's going to be kind of hard for her to find another job. Especially one with all the perks of the one she lost.

Monday, January 22, 2007

Gentlemen, Start Your Smear Engines

Jesus, the guy wasn't even an announced candidate when it started:

A typical example from a currently-circulating email that started last year sometime:

Barack Hussein Obama was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, to Barack Hussein Obama Sr. (black muslim) of Nyangoma-Kogelo, Siaya District, Kenya, and Ann Dunham of Wichita, Kansas. (white atheist).

When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced and his father returned to Kenya. His mother married Lolo Soetoro -- a Muslim -- moving to Jakarta with Obama when he was six years old. Within six months he had learned to speak the Indonesian language. Obama spent "two years in a Muslim school, then two more in a Catholic school" in Jakarta. Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim while admitting that he was once a Muslim, mitigating that damning information by saying that, for two years, he also attended a Catholic school.
And it's only going to get worse. Now that he's officially in the running, wait for the wingnuttery to pull all the stops. I'll bet you will never hear once on rightwing radio his name mentioned without that unfortunate middle name being included.

Oh, and about those smear emails? As always, you can learn the truth at the About.com Urban Legends website or you can check it out at Snopes.com.

Not that reality will make a difference to the Moron-Americans who buy into this bullshit, but at least you will know the truth.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 971 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.

Come on, you two. Do your patriotic duty. Your daddy is standing there with egg on his face. Think what your enlistment into the military could do for his poll numbers with the American people. Think what it could do help him get that "surge" he's wanting so badly.

And everybody else, 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.

Friday, January 19, 2007

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

Total coalition forces dead: 252
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1956
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1407
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1356
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: 338
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 185.

It is still 754 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Flip Flop Flip Flop

Nothing like a little political reality to create a series of flip-flops. Or in this case, a lot of political reality.

The BFEE is running for cover and scrambling to make up for lost ground after Baby Doc's handlers finally had it sink in that they are in big trouble and "staying the course" isn't going to cut it on a whole plethora of issues.

Latest to hit the skids is the whole warrantless wiretap concept, wherein the stubborn W. has steadfastly maintained that he is the ultimate authority and final arbiter (aka "decider") as to the constitutionality of warrantless surveillance. Now they've agreed to allow FISA oversight of the wiretaps. Something they should have done all along.

But leave it to Der Monkey Feuhrer and his spokesboy Tony Snow to put a Rethug/Fascist spin on it: "it's an example of a case where we take hits for doing what's right rather than getting credit for what seems to be expedient."

Expedient? Trashing the constitution, abrogating the rights of US citizens, trampling roughshod over basic democratic rights, and all that crap is just "expedient" to these people.

BTW, Baby Doc has also backed down as well on most of the wingnut Atilla-the-Hun judicial appointments he's been flogging for over a year I guess he's finally seen the handwriting on the wall and someone has told him that if he does too much to piss off the 110th, impeachment might become more than an abstract concept.

Now these are exactly the kinds of things that Baby Doc and the Rethugs were talking about when they called Kerry a "flip-flopper". Jeez, nothing like a slap in the face from the cold hand of fact to change your outlook, is there?

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Iraq for Dummies

Kudos to a fellow vet over at the fairly new ironically-named One Veteran of Iraqi Freedom blog for breaking it down to a Sesame Street version of the Iraq War that even Baby Doc himself could understand. As long as Pickles can read it aloud to him.

BTW, for those in the know, this blog used to be One Veteran's Voice.

The Fascist Mindset

I guess this shit shouldn't surprise me any more, but it still does.

Last week a Pentagon spokesman/fulltime asshole named Charles Stimson, who is the DOD Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs (a fairly high-falutin' title if you ask me) went on a DC radio station and made an astonishing statement.

First he listed the dozen or so law firms who are representing Gitmo detainees, and then he went on to say "I think, quite honestly, when corporate CEOs see that those firms are representing the very terrorists who hit their bottom line back in 2001, these CEOs are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms."

Well allrighty then. First we pick up these people without a warrant, then keep them locked up for years without habeas corpus, and when they finally manage to get in touch with an attorney (all of whom are working pro bono, BTW), threaten an economic boycott on the law firms where those attorneys are employed.

Makes a nice, neat package for the government, doesn't it? Get the lawyers to run in fear and then claim that the detainees must be guilty, since they couldn't even get a free lawyer to defend them.

What a fucking outrage. Yeah, yeah, I know the fucker ended up apologizing for saying it. For saying it. Not for thinking it.

But it serves to illustrate perfectly, in this little capsulized event, the utter disdain and contempt this maladministration feels toward the constitution and the rule of law.

Monday, January 15, 2007

MLK Day -- A Day of Service

I have always held a special reverence and enormous amount of respect for Dr Martin Luther King and the superhuman efforts that he exerted for Civil Rights in this country.

I was raised in rural Oklahoma and went to a segregated grade school in the early 1950s. Then we moved to a town in the Pacific Northwest, whose black population was literally so small you could count them on two hands. Consequently, like so many of my peers, the opportunities that we had to interact with African-Americans on any kind of equal footing were basically nonexistent. It really wasn't until I went into the military that I had the opportunity to work along side of and form friendships with black people. And the respect that I had for Dr King forced me to put aside the racial stereotypes and thoughtless prejudices that I had been raised with and allowed me to form those friendships.

The MLK Day of Service is a terrific way to honor the spirit and the work of Dr King. It's probably a little late for this year, but next year mark your calendars to have A Day On, Not a Day Off on Martin Luther King Day. Opportunities to make a difference in your community are there, and all it takes is a few dedicated individuals to change the world.

Timing is Everything

The fact that the Dems were hogging all the press with their 100 Hours must have really grated on Der Monkey Fuehrer's handlers. Their lapdog lackeys in the SCLM were giving the Dems way too much space, both in print and on television. Bringing too much attention to the fact that the Dems were going to get more done in 100 hours than the do-nothing Rethugs managed to in six years.

So what's the time-honored way of dealing with that situation? Wag the dog and go to war.

Except we're already in one, so the next best thing is to heat up the one we have. Send more troops. And sure enough, the ADD media's focus got dragged away from the Dems and back to the BFEE.

But maybe that's a good thing. While the media is waiting for its short attention span to wander somewhere else, the Dems can fly under the radar and get more things done in a shorter period of time.

Like issue subpoenas and start impeachment proceedings.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 964 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.



Come on, you two. Do your patriotic duty. Your daddy is standing there with egg on his face. Think what your enlistment into the military could do for his poll numbers with the American people. Think what it could do help him get The People behind that "surge" he's demanding so petulantly.

And everybody, 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.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Crocodile Tears

I see by these news stories that Baby Doc is "shedding tears" for Corporal Jason Dunham, the Marine who was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor. The coverage is complete with a photo of Der Monkey Fuehrer with something wet trickling down his cheek.

I can just imagine a hand, just out of frame, holding a bottle of Visine and dribbling out that oh-so-touching tear.

How convenient -- how fucking convenient --that we have this phony-baloney photo op to exploit the grief of the family of Corporal Dunham immediately after the announcement of a troop escalation cynical political ploy insane strategery military surge in Iraq.

Give me a fucking break, already.

So Many Hypocrites, So Little Time

I learned on Olbermann's Countdown that one Jack Kingston, a Rethug (naturally) congressman from Georgia, fired a broadside at the Dems for wanting to increase the minimum wage, saying "the real way to end poverty was for people to marry and start to work 40 hours a week."

So what else did he say? He also said recently that Nancy Pelosi's intent to force congressmen to work five days a week "eats away at families and marriages suffer."

Jesus, what is it with these fuckers? Just what the fuck IS it?

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

Total coalition forces dead: 251
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1949
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1400
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1349
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: 332
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 178.

It is still 761 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

What's Next, the Church of Satan?

A federal judge's ruling says that the VA's use of religion in "healing" veterans does not violate the constitutional separation of church and state.

Bullshit.

But naturally the fundo Xians are falling all over themselves in a congratulatory orgasm of religious transport, having once again fought back the atheistic forces of darkness, as embodied this time by the Freedom from Religion Foundation. Which is sure to appeal this bogus decision, and it'll be interesting to watch this one play out.

In the meantime, though, all those bible-thumping snake-handling cousin-kissers won't be so fucking happy when someone representing something like, I don't know, the Church of Satan shows up for a ritual-abuse "healing" session with some fucked-up veterans, will they?

Why an Admiral?

Did you stop to wonder why Admiral William Fallon was picked to take over command in Iraq when all of the military action is on the ground and Iraq has only a 36-mile coastline?

Short answer: Take a look a this map and see which of Iraq's next-door neighbors has a 1500-mile coastline.

That's why an admiral.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Forty Years Ago Today

It was exactly 40 years ago today that LBJ gave a State of the Union address outlining the reasons why we should stay in -- why we should escalate in -- Vietnam.

And now, thanks to Will Bunch over at Attytood, we can see a line by line comparison between that speech and the eerily similar speech given tonight by Baby Doc.

Check out the whole story and see if the parallels are as chilling to you as they are to me.

And to all of my fellow Vietnam vets who say that there are no similarities between Iraq and Vietnam: Fuck off. You are wrong.

War on Two Continents

Baby Doc has finally gotten parity with his Daddy's War -- the attacks in Somalia have managed to spread the War on TerraTM to another continent, and the little fucker seems hell bent on creating another World War for himself, the "War Prezdint".

And every attack this country makes creates another recruiting event for Al Qaeda. And not only Al Qaeda but any of dozens of other Anti-American "terrorist" organizations, groups, scout troops, or ad hoc committees.

So now that he's spread it to Africa, what's next? Somewhere in Europe? How about Germany -- they have a lot of Islamic immigrants. Naw, not Germany, been there, done that, and besides, it'd be too hard.

I know, how about France? They have all those North Africans rioting in those suburban rings around Paris, ought to be easy to take out with a few well-placed nukes. And we don't like the French anyway.

What's Going on Here?

I thought that the Attorneys for Veterans legislation was a done deal, passed in the waning days of the last congress.

For those not in the know, the legislation was needed to update a 140-year old Civil War relic that said that while a veteran could have an attorney's representation in a dispute with the VA, that attorney could charge no more than ten dollars!

It was a law that was in serious need of repealing or updating, but guess who was against that -- the service organizations. Yep, the DVA was at the head of the pack, followed closely by the VFW and American Legion. Not surprising, since this was nothing more than a turf issue to those fuckers.

Here's how it worked: Their sevice officer would help the veteran with his or her VA paperwork, and at the same time exercise some of that good ole boy networking with their drinking buddies inside the VA. The veteran gets his benefits and then out of a sense of gratitude or obligation would feel compelled to join the service organization that did such a wonderful job of getting his bennies. So it really in't any wonder they were against it. It means money out of their pockets for every vet they don't sign up.

But despite their objections, the bill passed, as part of an omnibus bill in the last days of the 109th. But it seems that one Senator Kent Conrad, a goddam Democrat for crissake, but apparently beholden to the special interests of the DVA etc, tried to hold up passage of the bill, and then inserted "repealer" language in the act, which now puts its repeal on the fast track with the 110th Congress.

What a fucking disappointment, over a goddam turf issue. The VA itself has an army of lawyers at its disposal, who do nothing but try to prevent the award of benefits to deserving veterans. It's way past time that the veteran himself has access to a lawyer to represent his interests.

And fuck those goddam turf warriors in the VSOs. I never had much use for them, and I still don't.

I am the New Number Two

People like me who are fans of the 60s cult classic BBC series The Prisoner will recognize that headline. And that's what I am reminded of every single time we manage to take out the Number Two Man in Al Qaeda.

Now we've taken out another Number Two, this time in Somalia. BFD. There's always a new Number Two. Now they've taken to calling them just another "top man" in Al Qaeda -- makes it easier, I guess. Even the pathological liars in the BFEE are getting tired of it.

Monday, January 08, 2007

A New Twist on the 419 Scam

For years my inbox, along with yours and everyone else's on the planet, has been inundated with get-rich-quick schemes usually involving a dead African and millions in dollars or Krugerrands or diamonds, etc.

This is called generically an Advance Fee Fraud, but because so many of its modern perpetrators are Nigerians, it became universally known as the Nigerian Letter or the 419 Scam (after the appropriate article of Nigerian law).

So it was with a mixture of relief and amusement that yesterday I got an email from someone representing himself to be one Captain James Adams, currently on duty in Iraq.

Here's what my new good buddy had to say:

I am CPT Adams, James of the US Marine Force on Monitoring and Peace keeping mission in Baghdad-Iraq. I know this may not be the proper way of contacting you based on the nature of my proposal but this is the only means avaliable to me here.
On the 27th day of August 2006, we were alerted on the sudden presence of some Terrorists camping in a suburb not too far from Karbala here in Iraq. After Immediate intervention, we captured three (3) of the Terrorists, twenty-six (26) were killed leaving seven (7) injured.
In the process of torture they confessed being rebels for late Ayman al-Zawahiri and took us to a cave in Karbala which served as their camp. Here we recovered several guns, bombs and other Ammunitions including some boxes among which one filled with hard drugs(cocaine) and the other two to my amazement contain some US Dollars amounting to $17.2M. I however instructed my junior intelligent officers to keep this in high secrecy.
I am in keen need of a reliable and trustworthy person like you who would receive, secure and protect these boxes containing the US Dollars for me till my assignment elapses in here in Iraq as the boxes have already been moved out of Iraq. I assure and promise to give you 25% of this fund, however feel free to negotiate what you wish to have as your percentage in this business.
Please assure me of your keeping this topmost secret to protect my job with the US Monitoring and Peace-Keeping mission. If you will assist me, please send me your response including your name, telephone and address to my personal email: jamesadams_76@yahoo.com.hk
Sincere regards,
CPT Adams, James
You gotta hand it to these guys, they just don't give up.

And now, for an interesting response to these jokers, see the scam-baiting Scam-o-rama: The Lads from Lagos page, wherein, among other things, an erstwhile victim turns the tables on his new best buddies and gets them to send HIM money! Priceless.

Olbermann Once Again Hits it Out of the Park

Here's a link to the latest Keith Olbermann diatribe against the Smirking Chimp -- watch it!

Olbermann always tells it like it is: "Mr President, you do not own this country. We have sacrificed 3000 persons for your lies; with your surge, we will now be sacrificing them for your ego."

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 957 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.

Come on, you two. Do your patriotic duty. Your daddy is standing there with egg on his face. Think what your enlistment into the military could do for his poll numbers with the American people. Think what it could do help him get that "surge" he's wanting so badly.

And everybody else, 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, January 06, 2007

He Just Doesn't Get It

Sociopath. That was yesterday's comment, and it's still true. He just can't seem to get it.

In what has been an unmitigated string of Orwellian-named Acts of Congress, the latest to fall victim to the Baby Doc Pen of Fascism is the so-called Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act.

Oh, he signed it all right, but with yet another in a long line of infamous "signing statements" for which he is now notorious, saying the he is, once more, above the law.

What's worse, he's actually proud of the fact that he and he alone is the final abiter (the "decider") of what part of the law he -- and by extension the entire Executive Branch, including the Justice Department -- can blithely ignore.

Now the ball is in the court of the Dems to draw a line in the sand (mixed metaphor, but you know what I mean). Let's hope that their recent victory will allow them to finally grow some spine and stand up to the little tyrant.

Enough is enough. Call or write your Senator and your representative in Congress and ask them to demand answers from the White House that will explain and defend this action.

As members of a democratic society, we can expect no less.

Webb Introduces New GI Bill

In his first act as a freshman senator, James Webb (whose campaign I enthusiastically supported, as long-time readers of this blog know) has introduced a sweeping revision to the now-creaky GI Bill.

The bill is the first truly generous one since the WWII and Korean vets mustered out and went to college, in what has been hailed as one of the laws most instrumental in changing the Old Guard in this country and allowing us to become more of a representative democracy.

The GI Bill that Vietnam Vets were stuck with was a pale reflection of that which allowed our fathers and uncles and older brothers to get an education. We were paid only a monthly stipend, out of which we had to pay our tuition, fees, books and living expenses. This was a great deal for the community colleges and the small state schools, where all these expenses were less, but what it really meant was that while I, thoroughly working class, was able to apply to -- and be accepted by -- Stanford, I couldn't actually attend because the GI Bill wasn't enough to pay even the tuition.

The new Webb proposal would include all of the tuition, fees, etc., in addition to the stipend for living. It would allow more veterans to attend more colleges, even those whose tuition is so high that now only the scions of the wealthy can afford to go there.

An influx of smart, tough battle-hardened veterans will be a healthy addition to those elete bastions of weak-kneed snobs, and maybe straighten out a few of those Yellow Elephants.

Friday, January 05, 2007

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

Total coalition forces dead: 250
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1942
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1393
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1342
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: 325
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 171.

It is still 768 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Holy Warriors

In a flying-beneath-the-radar move, the Fundo Xians have stealthily taken over the chaplain corps in the military services and at the academies. Now over 50% of military chaplains are radical fundamentalists who preach holy war -- jihad -- against Islam.

There's a long article on the phenomenon over on Alternet. It's called America's Holy Warriors by Chris Hedges that is well worth the read.

Excerpt:

The drive by the Christian right to take control of military chaplaincies, which now sees radical Christians holding roughly 50 percent of chaplaincy appointments in the armed services and service academies, is part of a much larger effort to politicize the military and law enforcement. This effort signals the final and perhaps most deadly stage in the long campaign by the radical Christian right to dismantle America’s open society and build a theocratic state.
Read it and see if you don't lose a little sleep over the impending possibility of a fundo theocracy in this country. The American Taliban are still out there, still as glassy-eyed as ever in their monomaniacal pursuit of those in league with Satan (that includes me and all of liberal types over here in the Reality Based Community, I presume). Once they take over the military, then we will be in some serious shit.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Baby Doc the Sociopath

"Sociopath" is kind of an outdated term, but basically it consists of behaviors characterized by impulsiveness, disregard for social norms, and indifference to the rights and feelings of others (see Antisocial Personality Disorder).

Keeping that in mind, please see the Buzzflash interview with Dr Justin Frank, the author of Bush on the Couch. It's pretty scary stuff, and I'm not the one to say that he's wrong. I read his book and I couldn't sleep for several nights because of it.

And I shudder to think that this is the so-called leader of the free world.

Ellison Swears in on Koran

Or Qu'ran or however you want to spell it. Keith Ellison, the new Minnesota Democratic member of the House of Representatives, the first Muslim elected to Congress, who weathered a storm of outrage from Faux News, the right wing in general, and one Representative Virgil Goode in particular, swore in today using a Koran once owned by ... [drumroll] ... Thomas Jefferson!

Virgil Goode, by the way, just happens to represent the Virginia district that ecompasses Jefferson's home, Monticello.

Oh, the irony!

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

The Human Behavior Experiments

Last night I watched a chilling documentary film from the Sundance Channel called The Human Behavior Experiments.

If you get the chance, be sure to see it. It centers on the now-infamous Milgram Experiment at Yale in the early 60s, in which an authority figure can get an otherwise "normal" human being to inflict torture -- including what he has no reason to doubt is a fatal electric shock on another person -- and the equally-notorious 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, in which a group of male subjects was randomly divided into two groups, one of which acted as jailers and the other as prisoners.

Both experiments were designed to test the hypothesis that nearly everyone, given the right circumstances, can be subtly persuaded to do things that would ordinarily go against his or her conscience and values.

The most shocking part to me was the vast number of parallels between the prison experiment and the photos coming out of Abu Graib prison, even down to the bags over the heads, the stripping off of clothing, and the forced positions of simulated homosexuality.

I highly recommend this film, and it especially should be required viewing for the topknot generals, admirals and their civilian hangers-on at the Pentagon. As this film so graphically shows, the events at Abu Graib were not due to a few bad apples; the whole fucking barrel is rotten.

VA Collecting DNA?

The VA is embarking on an ambitious program which will attempt to get DNA information from veterans which they will then tie in to the veterans' medical records for "research" purposes.

Sounds okay, but only if -- and that's a BIG IF -- the purpose is to do research into such things as the genetic causes of disease and the development of treatments.

But let's face it, the VA does not have the best reputation when it comes to safeguarding personal privacy, and I am not at all willing to give up my DNA when I don't know -- and can't be guaranteed -- that it won't fall into the wrong hands. The wrong hands being my health insurance company, the cops or drug companies, just for starters.

So the next time you go to the VA medical center, if they ask you for a DNA sample, do what I'm going to do -- tell 'em you'll leave one on your way out with that cute blonde receptionist at the front desk...

As if We Didn't Already Have Enough to Worry About

A new research study has established a link between PTSD and heart disease.

No big surprise there; it was something that most of us knew more or less intuitively -- you can't go through that much stress and adrenaline without it having a serious effect on your health. But this study apparently puts the final nail in the coffin, so to speak.

At least now there is a causal nexus established, and research should be able to focus on PTSD as a factor.

And it is eminently treatable, at least by prophylaxis -- Rx: Stop sending people to fight in needless and stupid wars that are actually nothing but invasive military occupations.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Taunting Saddam on the Gallows

it didn't take long for a bootleg copy of the execution of Saddam Hussein to make it onto the open market. Someone smuggled it out to Al Jazeera almost immediately, and the Arab Street is up in arms about what it apparently shows: Witnesses jeering and taunting Saddam Hussein while he is on the gallows, while the rope is being pulled taut, while the trap door is being sprung.

Sadly, it doesn't surprise me. I am, as everyone knows who reads the blog regularly, categorically opposed to the death penalty, so what I have to say on the subject isn't really in the realm of reasoned and logical response, but...

If you are reduced to having to put someone to death, shouldn't it be done with a little dignity? A little solemnity? A little respect for the fact that you are killing someone?

After all, it was no less an august personage than Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Polygamy) who said, "the death penalty is the way we demonstrate our respect for human life"...

Monday, January 01, 2007

3000 Dead American Troops -- 3000 Too Many

Once again, I know it's just a number, but I can't get over how fucked it is to have reached it on New Year's Eve.

I will be going to a local vigil tonight at 4:30 with my Veterans for Peace chapter. I urge everyone to find a local happening and join it.

Let's speak with one voice: 3000 is 3000 too many!