Owsley Lives!

Those of us of a certain age and, shall we say, "receptivity to new ideas" remember well a guy named Augustus Owsley Stanley III.

Or just "Owsley" to those in the know.

Owsley was the legendary creator of FDA-purity high-octane street-level LSD, for those of you who don't know, and Owsley Acid was legendary back in the day. Much imitated, never duplicated, and never improved upon, Owsley Acid was the sine qua non of psychedelic drugs.

Over the years I've periodically wondered whatever happened to The Bear, and just today I was sent newspaper article from the San Francisco Chronicle telling the rest of the story.

Turns out Owsley is still alive and kicking at 72(!), living in a remote area of the Queensland Australia Outback, still on his infamous "meat only diet" and still proud of the fact that he opened the minds of literally millions of American youth.

So here's to you, buddy. Way to go. If I weren't so freaking old now myself, I'd drop a tab or two in celebration. But there's no way now to get Owsley quality from street acid, so it's probably better that I just put on the Dark Side of the Moon platter and kick back in the dark.

Groovy, man.

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

Total coalition forces dead: 287
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2132
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1634
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1534
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: 463
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 358.

It is still 578 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

The Preznit Finally Admits Someone in His Maladminstration Leaked Plame's Name

Yeah, it's true. But so what?

This is an administration that's been long on cult-like loyalty and short on personal accountability or responsibility.

So in a press conference today he stated in answer to the WaPo's Michael Abramowitz question, "I am aware of the fact that perhaps somebody in the administration did disclose the name of that person, and, you know, I've often thought about what would have happened had that person come forth and said, 'I did it.' Would we have had this -- endless hours of investigation and a lot of money being spent on this matter? But it's been a tough issue for a lot of people in the White House and it's run its course and now we're going to move on. Wendell..."

Wendell being the next press lackey in line, which allowed no followup questions by Abramowitz.

One of which might have been, "Mister pResident, you stated through you mouthpiece Scotty McWeewee on September 29, 2003, in answer to the subsequently marginalized Helen Thomas, that you pledged to fire anyone in the administration found to be involved in the leaking of Valerie Plame's name."

How about that, Dubya? I guess you didn't really mean it back then, did you? I remember watching you smirk when a reported asked you pointedly about someone in the administration leaking the name. Watching that smirk and that body language when you said, "Hey, it's a big administration, lotsa people" -- shrug.

That was all I needed to know that you had just given, on national television, a free pass to the person or persons responsible.

But all of that doesn't matter to you. You are so blinded by the right, savoring the power that you have arrogated to yourself, the "political capital" that you intended to spend and instead have pissed away, that you are incapable of seeing the damage that you and your administration have done and continue to do to this country, to its prestige in the world, to the souls of its people.

Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

It is time for you to go.

Baby Doc Quote of the Week

"Do you have blacks, too?"

-- to Brazilian president Fernando Cardoso, Nov 8, 2001

But wait -- that's not enough. Here's another one:

"See, free nations are peaceful nations. Free nations don't attack each other. Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction."

--Oct 3, 2003

So I guess that means, since we apparently do not meet any of the stated criteria, we are not a free nation...

But I think we already knew that.

Bush Tortures Teenager

I guess it's not enough to have the brain of an emotionally-stunted eight-year-old. You have to act like one, too.

In a town hall type forum in Ohio, Baby Doc let loose a sarcastic 1100-word tirade against a 13-year-old girl who had the temerity to ask a question about immigration reform.

For her trouble, the teenager was reduced to tears by the Asshole-in-Chief's ranting.

Raw Story has some sketchy details, such as they are. Of course the preznits handlers leaped on it, put out some fires, and had the Smirking Chimp meet with the girl and her family backstage afterwards.

Big fucking deal. He humiliates her in front of 400 people and then meets with her in secret. Good thing her parents went backstage with her, that's all I've got to say. Otherwise she'd be on her way to Gitmo even as we speak.

And I guess I don't need to add that it's a goddam good thing that it wasn't one of my teenage granddaughters who was up there being tortured.

On the other hand, they are smart kids (naturally) and wouldn't have shown up a Potemkin-village town hall with Der Monkey Fuehrer in the first place.

Surgeon Generals Muzzled

Yesterday it became public that the Baby Doc Maladministration has been actively engaged in muzzling its chief medial officer, the Surgeon General of the United States.

Dr. Richard H. Carmona, who was Surgeon General from 2001 to 2006, told the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, that he was being directed by non-medical political appointees, and "Anything that doesn't fit into the political appointees' ideological, theological or political agenda is ignored, marginalized or simply buried..."

He testified that he was required to use the name of Der Monkey Fuehrer at least three times per page when he gave speeches. "The problem with this approach is that in public health, as in a democracy, there is nothing worse than ignoring science or marginalizing the voice of science for reasons driven by changing political winds. The job of surgeon general is to be the doctor of the nation -- not the doctor of a political party."

Carmona testified along with C. Everett Koop, Reagan's appointee to the post, and David Satcher, who served under Clinton. Both of them stated that they had felt political pressure, but it appears that the interference rose to new heights under Bush 43.

So what does the news media do with this? Cover it slightly, but coincidentally on the same day SS Oberstfuehrer Michael "I'm-not-a-corpse-but-I-play-one-on-television" Chertoff gets a "gut feeling" that Al Qaeda is preparing a summer offensive and raises the terror threat level to yellow, and that gets all the headlines.

Jesus, what is with the media in this country? Can't they see how they are being played like cheap ukuleles by their overlords in the BFEE? Don't they even care?

When Hypocrisy Reigns

Let's rewind back to those late and unlamented days of the Clinton impeachment. One of the big voices in condemning The Big Dog for his sexual misadventures was a bright and upcoming star of the Religious Right, a guy named David Vitter, newly elected to congress from Louisiana.

Family-values Vitter was also a strong backer of the so-called Marriage Protection Ammendment, which would define marriage as a sanctified-by-god union between and a man and a woman. He also called for abstinence-only sex education and made various claims that it was a sin to have sex, either before or after marriage, with anyone except your legally and spiritually bound spouse.

Too bad he wasn't listening to his own counsel.

On Monday Vitter was outed as a client of the DC Madam. After all that, it turns out that Vitter was using the services of DC Madam Debra Jean Palfrey. While he was mouthing all those sanctimonious homilies about "sex is bad". He issued a prepared statement (strangely reminiscent of fellow-Louisianan Jimmy Swaggart's crocodile-tear-drenched "I have offended thee o lord" mea culpa) in which he admitted his "serious sin" and said that both god and his wife have forgiven him. (I guess god talks to him, too -- but remember the old saying, if you talk to god, it's praying; if god talks to you it's insanity)

But this is the wife, by the way, that said something to the effect that if her husband ever ran around on her, her reaction would be less Hillary Clinton and more Lorena Bobbitt. I wonder if Vitter has taken to wearing chainmail underwear and sleeping on his stomach these days.

Oh, and do I really need to add that Vitter is ... wait for it ... a Republican? And do I really need to add that back in 2004, when the rumors first surfaced that Vitter was potentially a client of a New Orleans "escort service", he denied it publicly, calling the allegation "absolutely and completely untrue"?

So what does the right wing do with all of this? They circle the wagons and deny that it's hypocrisy. I heard Tucker "I-am-an-idiot-and-I-play-one-on-tv" Carlson actually defend the guy on one of the talking head shows last night, trying to make what had to be the weakest possible case for Vitter not being a hypocrite.

Sorry, if you are preaching a stern morality for others while choosing not to follow it yourself, then that is the very definition of hypocrisy. But once again, the truth doesn't seem to matter to these fuckers.

Carlson even said, essentially, that it's inherent in situations where the husband is separated from the wife by being in Washington DC while she stays home to raise the kids and keep the house. "Men are just like that," Carlson said. "That's what men do." Essentially we're the victims here, enslaved by our testosterone or something like that.

I don't know if Carlson is married (and the constant sporting of bow-ties, at least up until sometime last year, would militate against it -- what woman would want to marry a guy who wears bow ties all the time?), but if he is, I'll bet the Little Woman is not going to be letting the fucker go out of town for any length of time. Like an hour.

Oh, and one more thing on Vitter: He's the head of the Southern Strategy for none other than Rudy "No-lips" Giuliani, who doesn't really seem to be a very good judge of character, what with the whole Bernie Kerik thing and Thomas Ravenel, his South Carolina coordinator, calling black people "retarded" and then getting busted for running a cocaine ring.

Poor Rudy. It hasn't been a good time for him. I almost feel sorry for him.

Not!

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1131 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?

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.

Court of Appeals Rules on Wiretapping Suit

Naturally this came out on a Friday, where it misses the major news cycles when people are getting ready for the weekend and are not really paying attention, and by the time Monday rolls around chances are there'll be a new missing white chick or new celebutant scandal.

But in a chilling ruling out of the Sixth Cicuit court in, of all places, Cincinnatti (WTF?), a majority of the three-judge panel said that the plaintiffs in this particular case had no standing to sue. They did not rule on the merits of the case, just on the standing issue.

No standing. Because those bringing the suit (i.e. the ACLU) weren't the ones who were illegally bugged, wiretapped, eavesdropped on by the NSA without approval from the FISA court.

But here's the catch: The program was and remains so secret that proving you were victimized by it is virtually impossible.

It's a big catch, but maybe not insurmountable. Read the story yourself for all the gruesome details.

And let's do everything we can to get the evil BFEE out of power.

Constitutional Grounds for Impeachment

They're not as limited as you might think. Here's a link to Constitutional Grounds for Presidential Impeachment, Provisions in the Constitution that are Relevant to Impeachment and Past Impeachment Inquiries -- It's a bit long, but well worth reading.

It's also important to note that George Mason, one of our revered "founding fathers", felt strongly about impeachment: "No point is of more importance than that the right of impeachment should be continued. Shall any man be above Justice? Above all shall that man be above it, who can commit the most extensive injustice?"

It is worth noting also that Mason himself refused to sign the constitution because he felt that the provisions for impeachment were not sufficient to remove a president who was guilty of suborning treason by issuing a pardon for individuals who committed it.

Mason also felt that individual rights were not adequately protected under the constitution, a fact which was corrected with the adoption of the Bill of Rights in 1791, a full two years after the adoption of the Constitution.

And Gouvernor Morris, another of the founding fathers, also felt that the president ought not to be able to pardon someone convicted of treason (hear that, Scooter? Hear that, Darth Cheney? Baby Doc? Anybody?).

Of course, Morris also had some definitely anti-democratic views -- the poor should not be allowed to vote since they would be tempted to sell their votes to the rich, the "common man" was basically incapable of self-government, and voting should be restricted only to property owners, but regardless of that, he still had at least one good idea.

So, given all that, the short answer to all this remains: Hell yes! Impeach the motherfuckers!

Lawn Order Presidency?

It's so goddam typical of these coy politicians: "I might run for president, I might not, first show me how much you love me".

So how is it that Fred I'm-not-really-an-avuncular-wise- man-I-just-play-one-on-television Thompson can be a Rethug frontrunner when he hasn't even announced that he is running?

How is it that the Moron-American voting bloc can think that the wise men that Thompson plays on TV and in the movies are somehow actually what we'll get if we elect him president?

Jesus, the guy was a high-powered lobbyist from K Street for most of his career. How that translates into presidential material is beyond me. You might as well have a completely incompetent moron sweeping into office on his daddy's coattails ...

What?

Uh... never mind.

But ... while we're on the subject, just who IS Fred Thompson and why is he suddenly the darling of the Rethug party? My guess is that he's the anti-Giuliani candidate, the any-body-but-Giuliani candidate. The "mainstream" right wing thinks Mr. No-Lip doesn't have what it really takes to be prezdint. Too much of a political hack, too much of an insider.

So it's not surprising that Good Ole Boy Freddy is hard at work, spinning himself as a Washington outsider, but how much of it is true?

Answer: None of of.

Freddy first came to Washington as a Minority Counsel (i.e., Rethug) for the Watergate Hearings, and he's the one who springboarded to fame for his televised grilling of Alexander Butterworth in which Butterworth first revealed that Nixon had secretively taped all Offal Office conversations. (And rumors abound that Freddy already knew about the tapes, and, in fact, had leaked that knowledge to the White House before Butterworth was called to testify -- in other words, Freddy was grandstanding.)

He then spent some 20 years as a high-octane lobbyist, spurring on such vital public policy issues as deregulation of the Savings and Loan Industry, the direct result of which cost American taxpayers 150 billion dollars when the industry collapsed and we had to bail it out. And don't forget the "forgotten" Bush brother, Neil, who ran his own S&L into the ground while he was screwing hookers in Bangkok.

Freddy was also tight with fellow Tennesseans Howard Baker and William Frist when they were leaders in the senate, and he helped establish the Clinch River nuclear project, which, by the time it was shut down before ever going on line had cost taxpayers another $1.7 billion.

And even after he became the face of law and order on television, he successfully lobbied for a British company who wanted to weasel out of its asbestos lawsuits accountability.

He was Baby Doc's point man on the nomination and eventual approval of Chief Justice John I-was-a-liar-when-I-testified-about-my-judicial-philosophy Roberts. Plus he was instrumental in the formation and operation of the Scooter Libby Defense Fund, which ultimately raised more than $5 million, and he was quick to state that he would pardon Libby if he were president.

And this is the "outsider" who now wants to be president? Hardly. And people need to wake up and take a cold hard look at the facts before blindly supporting him for president.

But chances are they won't. Once again emotion will triumph over reason, and fantasy will trump reality.

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

Total coalition forces dead: 284
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2125
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1627
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1527
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: 456
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 351.

It is still 585 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Oh, the Irony (Part Six Million and Something...)

Way back when, your prezdint, Der Monkey Fuehrer, said, "Anyone who breaks the law in this administration will be taken care of."

I'll bet that you, like me, immediately thought of Tony Soprano or Michael Corleone.

We thought we knew what he meant. Turns out we were wrong and he was right.

Scooter was "taken care of" in a way that we could only hope for if we were convicted of the major federal felonies, obstruction of justice and perjury.

How much more will it take before we rise up en masse and demand the impeachment of the entire BFEE?

Baby Doc Quote of the Week

"Those who enter the country violate the law."

--Nov 28, 2005

Like I always say, you can't make this shit up.

MUST WATCH!!! Olbermann's J'accuse!

On the eve of Independence Day, Keith Olbermann gave it to the Baby Doc Maladministration with both barrels and then some. I've been a fan of Olbermann's for a long time, and even I have never seen him in this full rant mode before.

Be sure to give it a watch. You can find it over at Crooks and Liars, but I'm sure that it's all over the web by this time. Everybody has it.

Olbermann: "Mister Bush, you ceased to be president of the United States... Even Richard Nixon knew when it was time to resign."

Let's hope that Der Monkey Fuehrer and Darth Cheney will listen.

Yeah, like that's gonna happen. Which is why I still demand IMPEACHMENT NOW!

Sentenced to Death -- For Driving a Car?

The outrages just keep coming. Down yonder in Texas (naturally) they're on track to snuff their 400th death row inmate this summer.

Number 400 could very well be one Kenneth Foster, who was sentenced to death despite the fact -- and the great state of Texas aknowledges it -- that he didn't kill anybody.

Let me say that again. Kenneth Foster did not murder anyone.

What he did do was have the poor judgment to drive a car in which Mauriceo Brown was a passenger when Brown arrived at the location where he shot and killed Michael LaHood Jr.

Brown has already been executed for the crime. He stated that Foster remained in the car, some 80 feet away from the scene, with the windows rolled up and the radio on. And that Foster did not know that Brown even had a weapon in his possession or what he was planning to do with it.

But all that doesn't matter, since Texas has one of those laws that allows all parties present at a crime to be held equally accountable.

So unless some miracle happens and the governor of Texas commutes his sentence, Foster will be executed on August 30th. If you feel that this would be an unconsionable miscarriage of justice, then please consider signing the online petition to the governor, or emailing the governor from his website. See Stop the Execution for more information and action items.

Maybe we could also hope for Der Monkey Fuehrer, since he's all concerned now about "excessive" punishments, to commute Foster's sentence.

But probably not. Kenneth Foster wasn't a member of the Inner Party and isn't a darling of the Neocon thugs.

And he has something else going against him: Kenneth Foster is a black man.

July Fourth

Okay, today we have a history lesson. First read this and tell me who the "He" is:

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
...
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
...
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
...
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
...
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
...
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
...
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us...

Give up? Well, this particular passage makes up a large part of our own 1776 Declaration of Independence. The "He" refers to King George the Third, but as you can see, it has some remarkable reverberations to our present day and our own King George the W.

It's time for a renewal of the primary document in our history. We need to symbolically sign a new Declaration of Independence and declare ourselves free from the tyrannical rule of our own King George.

The best way we can do this? Contact your congressional representative and demand that he or she sign on to Dennis Kucinich's bill for the impeachment of the whole sick crew at the top of this evil maladministration.

A Fucking OUTRAGE

In an unanticipated move, Der Monkey Fuehrer today commuted the prison sentence of Scooter Libby. I thought it would be an out-and-out pardon -- and that's still not out of the question -- but he threw us a curve ball with this one.

Little Scooter still has the felony conviction and has to pay the fines -- yeah, like that's gonna be a big problem for him and his wingnut Rethug fatcat big-wallet supporters -- but no jail time.

So let's recapitulate: The former governor of Texas who oversaw something like 154 executions, earning him the nickname "The Texecutioner", commutes the sentence of someone who did arguably worse crimes than the poor and mostly minority saps who happened to kill someone within the borders of the Execution State, and he laughed and mocked the execution of Karla Faye Tucker while refusing clemency for 62-year-old grandmother and domestic-violence-victim Bettie Lou Beets.

This is a fucking outrage against justice, against humanity!

Scooter's crimes were so much worse than simple murder. He outed a CIA agent and caused the murder of an unknown number of sources of Valerie Plame who worked with her undercover in many dangerous countries. He mocked the rule of law. He flouted the Constitution of the United States. He helped the precipitous decline of American prestige in the world, and dried up many sources of secret CIA intelligence.

Now just watch: Baby Doc will pardon Scooter Libby on his last day in office, as sure as shit. Wait for it, and remember, you heard it here first.

It almost makes me want to believe in a god, just so The Texecutioner would have to stand before the throne and shit his pants when the big guy sends him on the down elevator to hell.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1124 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?

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 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.

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

For those of you playing along at home, that's 31 in one week!

Total coalition forces dead: 280
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2118
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1620
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1520
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: 449
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 344.

It is still 592 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

The Pat and Rudy Show

Now let's see if we've all been paying attention. Rudy Giuliani is on his third -- or is it fourth? -- marriage, he's pro-choice and pro-gay-rights.

If you're a rightwing Fundo, what's not to like?

And that's why it comes as no surprise that Pat Robertson is heaping praise on Rudy, to the point of embracing him (but not in a gay way) in public.

And not just any public. It was during a lecture series at Robertson's Regence University, where Robertson praised the Rethug ne'er-do-well to the point of embarrassment.

Embarrassment for everyone for Giuliani, who lapped it up like a cat at a saucer of milk.

I guess it's true that politics makes strange bedfellows (but not in a gay way).

Cheney's Office Backpedals Bigtime

I guess the whole I'm-not-part-of-the-executive-branch argument wasn't working out for Darth Cheney, so the latest spin on Cheney's office keeping secrets from the National Archives is that the VP's office is part of "The Presidency" and as such is exempted because it's not an executive branch "agency".

Never mind the fact that the directive includes all executive branch "entities" and not just agencies. Never mind the fact that the office of the Vice President is specifically excluded in only one mention in the directive -- which leads a reasonable member of the Reality-Based Community to conclude that it is included in the rest of it.

This is the kind of legal parsing that these same fuckers hooted at when Clinton tried it ("It depends on what the definition of 'is' is...").

I'd love to see the subpoenas start flying over this one. VP Crashcart has managed to thumb his nose at our constitutional system for six years. Now it's time for some payback.

Impeachment. That's the answer.

Vindication!

Those of us who have been around for a while used to talk in hushed tones about it as if it were the Holy Grail -- it was all the fault of the CIA, we said. The CIA was working with Mafia. The CIA had plans to assassinate Castro. The CIA used mind-control techniques and hallucinogenic drugs on unsuspecting citizens. The CIA tapped citizens' phones illegally. The CIA was spying on journalists.

Nonsense, the government told us. We would never do that. That's just your neurotic obsessive-compulsive conspiracy-theory mental illness that you're suffering under. The CIA is your friend, and your government would never lie to you.

Lies. Now, finally, the truth is out. The CIA has released a document compiled in the early 70s that details the very actions that we consipiracy theorists were dismissively derided for voicing all along.

And the media? They've taken the lead of the CIA and are calling the document "The Family Jewels", as if this were some quaint and mildly amusing social-gaffe-filled Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight Saturday morning cartoon show.

So what else were we lied to about? CIA involvement in the assassination of John F. Kennedy, maybe? Hmmmmm...

High Court Overturns Hein

In a disgusting display of pandering to the Religious Right, the Supremes today issued its long-awaited decision in Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, and -- no surprise here -- voted 5-4 that federal taxpayers do not have the right to challenge the constituionality of Der Monkey Fuehrer's so-called Faith Based Initiatives.

In brief, the plaintiffs argued that the doling out of federal tax money to these "faith-based" groups -- nearly all of them of the Fundo stripe -- violated the wall of separation between church and state.

Which it does. And that's not what the court ruled on. Instead, in a masterpiece of legal parsing, it held that the plaintiffs had no standing to sue.

No standing. Taxpayer money being used to fund religious organization, and the taxpayers themselves have "no standing".

The best quote to come out of this came from Sammy The Fixer Alito: "Tt is a complete fiction to argue that an unconstitutional (sic!) federal expenditure causes an individual federal taxpayer any measurable economic harm".

Jesus, what is with that bunch of woolly-brained morons?

This decision holds that taxpayers have standing only in expenditures specifically authorized by the legislative branch. What a bunch of crap that is -- if congress didn't give the money to the executive branch, they wouldn't have in the first place.

Okay, then, if I have no say in how my tax money is being spent unconstitionally, then maybe I'll just stop paying it. This is taxation without representation, and we already fought one revolution over it.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1117 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?

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 Guerre de las Malvinas (aka the Falklands War) and Prince 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.

More on Cheney

As I said last week, Darth Cheney has stepped in it now. If he's claiming that he's not part of the executive branch and therefore not accountable for failing to follow a presidential directive, then he is not entitled to the money that congress appropriates for the running of his executive branch office.

And that's exactly what House Democratic Caucus chairman Rahm Emanuel plans to do.

This week he plans to introduce a bill that will strip away the millions of dollars earmarked for the Vice President's office as part of the executive branch.

"This amendment will ensure that the vice president's funding is consistent with his legal arguments," Emmanuel said.

Way to go, Rahm! That ought to get the fucker's attention.

More on Reframing the Vietnam War

This one has kind of flown under the radar -- my radar, at least -- but it's apparently been a hot item in the wingnut blogosphere at least since the 2004 election.

According to this latest reframe, North Vietnam's famous general, Vo Nguyen Giap, made the statement in his 1985 published memoirs that North Vietnam was ready to throw in the towel and ask for surrender terms following the crushing defeats of the 1968 Tet Offensive. But the news reports out of the liberal American media caused him to change his mind when he saw that the media was reporting Tet as a "victory" for the North Vietnamese. This was allegedly "verified" by later interviews with Giap and with a dissident NVA named Tin.

Bullshit.

Do a Google search for "giap surrender tet media" and you'll see for yourself -- the vast majority of the web pages for this particular phrase belong to such reliable sources as Free Republic and Front Page Magazine. But surprisingly, a number of middle of the road and even left-wing sources seem to have picked it up.

Okay, let's deconstruct it. First of all, Giap did not publish a memoir in 1985, but he did write one later. I have not read it myself, but my friend the historian has and he says that there's nothing in the memoir that could conceivably be stretched to account for this story. Various "interviews" with Giap are cited in this wingnut frenzy to blame the media in which Giap supposedly made this statement, but where are they? Somebody provide an authentic link to just one of these interviews, or a reference to a page number in Giap's book, and I will publicly eat my words.

And Mr. Tin...? Well, he's just a guy who became disenchanted with the People's Republic of Vietnam and his former homies, and came to the west with a wheelbarrow full of bullshit to feed to his erstwhile rescuers who were desperate to find a reason why we lost Vietnam.

And there it is: Walter Cronkite and liberal media! Those commie motherfuckers who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, sold out the American fighting man, and enabled those America-hating traitors, Hanoi Jane Fonda and John Kerry.

That's become the latest revisionist frame for the rightwing to point fingers at the "real winners" of the Vietnam War, the subversive anti-American fifth-columnist reporters, editors and antiwar activists who toiled tirelessly at home to undermine the war effort.

Jeez, that sounds vaguely familiar. It kind of sounds like the incoherent rantings of one Adolph Hitler, who was quick to blame the treacherous defeatist Jews in the government and the banking industry for Germany's defeat in WWI.

No doubt Tet was a tactical blunder of epic proportions, wiping out something like 75% of the Viet Cong in the south. And it's true that after Tet, the NVA, of necessity, had to take a much larger role in the prosecution of the war, but to claim that Giap was ready to surrender flies in the face of both history and reason.

Otherwise, how could the NVA have continued fighting the Americans for five more years, with a body count ratio of NVA to US of something like ten-to-one? How to explain that following Tet, the American military and its ARVN sidekicks withdrew from major parts of the countryside, in essence turning them over to the NVA? Was that the work of the liberal media and the antiwar activists as well? What about the public opinion polls in the US that STILL showed a majority of people in support of the war weeks after Tet? How about the reevaluation of the Vietnam war strategy by Lyndon Johnson, The Wise Men and what was left of the Best and the Brightest, which began on the day after the Battle of Tet started?

Jesus, those liberal media guys and maggot-infested war-protesting longhair hippie bums sure had a lot of control over the nation back then, didn't they?

Give me a fucking break. It's just another ludicrous example of The Big Lie, a revisionist talking point expounded by propagandists on the right to point out the treachery of the media and the antiwar movement.

Above the Law

We all knew that Cheney was a secretive sneaky motherfucker, but this goes beyond that. This is incredible, unbelievable. It's right up there with "I don't got to show you no stinking badges!"

Under the terms of a presidential directive issued by Clinton and expanded by Der Monkey Fuehrer, all executive branch offices -- no, entities -- are supposed to, once a year, report how much classified information they are keeping.

Every executive branch office, every executive branch entity, it would appear, except that of the Vice President. Darth Cheney's minions filed the required reports in 2001 and again in 2002, but since then nothing but silence.

Crashcart's excuse? He's not really part of the executive branch, and therefore not required to comply with the directive.

Because his sole constitutional duty is to preside over the Senate, The Dickless Wonder is saying that he's part of both the executive and the legislative branches, and therefore he doesn't have to worry about those pesky rules. Those inconvenient laws. Those traitorous demands for -- gasp -- accountability.

Jesus, just when you think you've heard it all...

So the answer to all this shit? Well, I just heard John Dean on the Rachel Maddow Show voice a modest proposal: Congress should cut off ALL funding for the Vice President's office, including staff salaries and facilities. Let him pay his own staff out of his own pocket, pay rent on his office space in the Old Executive Office Building, and on that palatial estate on the grounds of the National Observatory that serves as the official residence of the Vice President.

Sounds like a good idea to me. If he's not part of the Executive Branch, then we as taxpayers have no fucking business paying for his cyberpatched ass to occupy our space.

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

For those of you playing along at home, that's 27 in one week!

Total coalition forces dead: 280
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2111
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1613
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1513
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: 442
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 337.

It is still 599 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

And Speaking of Lawsuits

There's a knuckledragging Rethug congressman named John Hostettler (R-Moron) who is quietly attempting to push through legislation that would prevent organizations such as the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State from collecting attorney's fees when they successfully sue churches for violations of the First Amendment.

I didn't even know about this until last night, when Barry Lynn touched on it in his talk in Seattle, but it's dangerously close to becoming law.

It's called The Public Expression of Religion Act and it came perilously close to passage in the last congress.

It's a blatant attempt to subvert the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to our Constitution, and it would, if passed, help to cement into public policy the establishment of Christianity -- fundamentalist backwoods Bible-thumping snake-handling Christianity -- as the official state religion, to the everlasting detriment of the approximately 20% of the American population who are emphatically not Christian, including people like me who are proud to have NO religion.

It's worth keeping an eye on this. I doubt that Hostettler will be able to come as close in the current congress, so it's premature to call for riots in the streets, but it does come as a serious reminder that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State

Last night I had the singular privilege and rare honor of meeting Rev. Barry Lynn, the executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State when he was in Seattle to give a talk and sign his latest book, Piety & Politics: The Right-Wing Assault on Religious Freedom.

I have long been an opponent of the drift towards theocracy that has been evident in this country, and it was a pleasure to hear Barry speak about the recent victories that AU has achieved in the battles to keep that wall of separation (in Jefferson's words) between government and the religious establishment.

But he reminded us that while we have won many battles, and that blatantly religious candidates were almost entirely losers in the 2006 election, the struggle continues, and it is up to us to remain vigilant against the sneaky inroads that the Fundos are trying constantly to make into our secular government.

To that end, I encourage everyone to join AU. It's only $35 a year and it is well worth the money. It isn't cheap bringing lawsuits against churches or governments who have blurred the line of separation, and the organization needs your help. Join today!

Gays in Uniform? The Horror!

A new exhibit at San Francisco's GLBT Historical Society contains, among other things, the dress uniform, medals and rusty footlocker of Leonard Matlovich.

Matlovich, who died in 1989 after serving three tours in Vietnam, chose for his epitaph, "When I was in the military they gave me a medal for killing two men and a discharge for loving one."

Matlovich and other gay individuals who served with honor and distinction in America's military are being honored the GLBT Historical Society.

And it's long overdue. I hope to see the exhibit this fall when I go to San Francisco on vacation and pay my respects to those men and women who chose to hide their true selves so they could serve proudly in the armed forces.

Now all we need to do is convince the assholes at the top of the heap that we have always had gay men and women in the military, and it didn't hurt any of us -- or "unit cohesion", the latest buzzword in the Jim Crow-like approach to keeping our gay brothers and sisters in the closet.

And to discharge that dozen or more speakers of Arabic -- when we are bogged down in an Arab country -- simply because they happen to be gay is unconscionable. It is, in fact, mind boggling.

This new exhibit is a step in the right direction, bringing focus to the hidden and closeted gays who chose to serve their country and were trashed for their efforts.

Baby Doc Quote of the Week

"It's in our country's interests to find those who would do harm to us and get them out of harm's way."

--Apr 28, 2005

Clinton Slams "Free Trade" Deal With Korea

Jeez, it's easy to see that we're in the full throes of the political campaign season, even with 16 months left to go before the general election.

Now Hillary Clinton says she opposes the impending free trade agreement with Korea.

Yeah, great, but where was she when her hubby was jamming through NAFTA and CAFTA? Both of those extremely fine programs combined to force many thousands of American workers into poverty, into "service economy" dead end jobs, into lifestyle changes that none of them expected nor should have been expected to accept?

Remember Ross Perot? As much as I looked askance at the crazy little billionaire, he was dead on about that giant sucking sound.

So I guess it's kudos to Hillary, albeit reservedly. She's a little late to the party, but it's better than her never showing up at all.

Magic 1000

This is my 1000th post since I started this blog nearly two years ago. I can't believe that I was initially concerned that I would soon run out of things to say.

Unfortunately -- or fortunately, depending on your point of view -- it turns out that I was worried needlessly. You just can't underestimate the ability of Der Monkey Feuhrer and his minions to provide fodder for the leftwing blogosphere.

Thanks to all of you for reading.

--The F Man

Another Game of Guess Who Said It

Okay, students, put on your thinking caps and tell me the source of this quote:

The rule of law, the very foundation for a free society, has been under assault, not only by criminals from the ground up, but also from the top down. An administration that lives by evasion, coverup, stonewalling, and duplicity has given us a totally discredited Department of Justice. The credibility of those who now manage the nation’s top law enforcement agency is tragically eroded. We are fortunate to have its dedicated career workforce, especially its criminal prosecutors, who have faced the unprecedented politicization of decisions regarding both personnel and investigations.

Give up?

Was it some arm-waving Democrat? Some wacky believer in the quaint notion of the rule of law? Some anti-Bush sign-waving protest-marching latté-drinking Beemer-driving Nordstrom-shopping limousine liberal?

Nope, nope, and nope.

Believe it or not, that was in the 2000 platform of the Republican Party.

The hypocrisy never stops. That document is just a treasure trove of irony and unintended dark humor. Here's another example:

...a shrunken American military has been run ragged by a deployment tempo that has eroded its military readiness. Many units have seen their operational requirements increased four-fold, wearing out both people and equipment. Only last fall the Army certified two of its premier combat divisions as unready for war because of underfunding, mismanagement, and over-commitment to peacekeeping missions around the globe. More Army units and the other armed services report similar problems. It is a national scandal that almost one quarter of our Army's active combat strength is unfit for wartime duty.

Jesus, if I didn't know better, I'd think this was an up-to-date description of our current armed forces.

And don't forget that it was the "Clinton military" -- much reviled by the neocon thugs who have taken over this country -- that went to Afghanistan and Iraq and did their initial assignment, followed their initial orders, with such success.

Not the Bush military. Not the Rumsfeld military (remember "you go to war with the army you've got, not the army you'd like to have"?

This quaint and naively idealistic document ends with:

Republicans have a strategy. It is a strategy that recalls traditional truths about power and ideals and applies them to networked marketplaces, modern diplomacy and the high-tech battlefield. A Republican administration will use power wisely, set priorities, craft needed institutions of openness and freedom, and invest in the future. A Republican president and a Republican Congress can achieve the unity of national governance that has so long been absent. We see a confident America united in the fellowship of freedom with friends and allies throughout the world. We envision the restoration of a respected American leadership firmly grounded in a distinctly American internationalism.

A wise man (my grandfather) once told me that the way to vote for a president is to read the party platform. If you find one you agree with, vote for the other party because they always go the opposite way from what they say they are going to do.

Wise counsel indeed, when it came to the 2000 Rethug platform.

VA Hospitals and Clinics to Extend Hours -- Not!

Last Friday VA Commissar Nicholson made a surprise announcement that he has directed the 153 VA hospitals and clinics around the country to keep their doors open longer, to better serve the veteran population.

Sounds good, right?

Except for one tiny detail: No one bothered to tell the hospitals and clinics.

It apparently came as a total surprise to them.

Jesus, these people just can't stop lying! I guess they just can't help it -- it has to be a BFOQ for all the positions in the Baby Doc Maladministration.

A Surprise Unanimity from the Supremes

In a surprising -- some might say shocking -- unanimous decision today, the US Supreme Court came solidly down on the side of freedom and individual rights.

The case was Brendlin v. California, and the crux of it is that a passenger in a car that is stopped by the cops without probable cause can't be detained on evidence that results from that stop.

It's been a long-standing precedent that the driver of the car has had that protection. But the passengers have been in a kind of legal limbo until now.

So it's hats off to the five neofascist members of the court, who were, I was sure, going to vote the other way.

Maybe there's some hope after all.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1110 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?

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 Guerre de las Malvinas (aka the Falklands War) and Prince 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.

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

Total coalition forces dead: 277
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2104
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1606
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1506
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: 435
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 330.

It is still 606 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Oh, the Irony! Getting Borked

Jeez, I swear you can't make this shit up. Former US Solicitor-General, Supreme Court nominee, Nixon triggerman and all-around rightwing asshole Robert Bork, a longtime champion of so-called "tort reform" has sued the Yale Club for inujuries he alleged suffered while climbing a set of steps to a dais where he was scheduled to speak.

Yep, the same Robert Bork who has campaigned so loudly for reform of our litigious society, who has called for an end to punitive damages, is suing for ... wait for it ... punitive damages.

Check out the analysis over at Tort Deform. Those guys have done a great job of putting Bork's lawsuit into perspective:

A 79 year old man tripped while trying to step onto a foot-high platform. He fell and hit his head and leg, but was able to give a speech and leave on his own. He has minor surgery and some physical therapy. A year after his injury, he sues the restaurant where he fell for over $1 million dollars plus punitive damages.

What reaction do you think most "reformers" would have to such a case? There's no need to speculate. Instead, let's look at the fact pattern from another famous case:

A 79 year old woman spilled hot coffee on herself while trying to put cream in it. She suffered third degree burns and needed surgery and months of physical therapy. Over a year after her injury, she sued the restaurant who served her the coffee and asks for punitive damages.

And thus did poor Mrs. Stella Liebeck and her now-infamous McDonald's Hot Coffee case become the unwilling poster child for tort reform.

So, bottom line, I guess it all depends on who's doin' the suin'...

Like I say, you can't make this shit up.

More on the True Cost of War

Veterans for America estimates that over 10,000 veterans of the current misadventure in Iraq are living on the streets. Halfway houses, drug rehab centers and homeless shelters are bursting at the seams, and the top officials at the VA are whistling their way past the graveyard.

Over 175,000 recent veterans have applied for disability compensation from the VA. The VA backlog is such that some of these veterans will die before their claims are approved (and yeah, I read the claims by the VA that they schedule upwards of 95% of veterans appointments within 30 days but the truth is something different).

There's a harrowing story out of LA "Surviving War, Slowly Dying at Home" about the plight of several of those vets.

This is unconscionable in a country such as ours, but it is happening right in front of our eyes, and it can be deposited directly on the doorstep of the Baby Doc Maladministration. And what still galls me is that many of my fellow veterans still continue to support this sick excuse for national leadership, to the detriment of their own self interests.

Supreme Court to Home Health Workers: Fuck You

In one of several business-friendly decisions handed down today, The Supremes (by a shocking 9-0 vote) ruled that home health care workers are NOT entitled to minimum wage or overtime protections.

The court held that current law doesn't provide for it. The US Fair Labor Standards Act is the controlling law here, and I guess that the Supremes are right, since techincally "domestic service workers" are not covered (remember, the Act was passed in 1938, back in the day when most of the upper crust had servants and didn't want them getting uppity).

BUT...it's just a law. It's not part of the Constitution, and therefore it is easily amended.

The next step is for the Dems to bring it up in Congress. It's something that needs to be done. The companies that hire these people for home health care charge the recipients of the care $20 an hour or more, and they pay their workers shit.

Since many of the home health care workers are women and minorities, it's also an equity issue. Let's bring them up to the same minimum wage and hour standards that we provide for nearly everyone else in this country.

And special kudos to the Service Employees Internation Union, who had the balls to bring this suit in the beginning.

Bomb-bomb-bomb, Bomb-bomb Iran

Jeez, what is it with ex-Democrat Joe Lie-berman? Now he's calling for tactical bombing of sites inside Iran.

So far he's the first mainstream politician to rattle that saber publicly, but he won't be the last.

"If Iran won't play by the rules(!)", he says, "we've got to use our force...including taking military action to stop them from what they are doing."

So let me get this straight. We've had such a GREAT time with our military misadventure in Iraq that Old Joe wants to expand that to yet another country that did not attack us.

We've spiraled so far out of control that now we have to bomb Iran to show the "terrorists" that we aren't afraid...of ... of what I don't know, and I don't know what rational end could come of bombing targets inside Iran.

What, we will make them love us only if we pulverize them? Have we turned into that big of a block bully for the whole world?

It's sad and scary to see someone who by rights was Number Two in this nation turn to these kinds of threats. Now you know why the Rethugs poured so many millions into his campaign funds last election, so he could run as an "independent" and fuck his lifelong Dem pals.

According the Joe "The Liar" Lieberman, Iran has trained and equipped Iraqi fighters who have, in turn, killed over 200 Americans in Iraq.

Okay, I'll admit my knowledge of the facts is a little hazy, but even I know that the vast majority of the problems we're facing in Iraq come from the Sunnis. The Iranians are Shi'a. The two groups HATE each other, so why would Iranian Shi'ites help their arch-enemies, the Sunnis?

And even if it were true, that figure, as doubtful as it is, represents only about 8% of the Americans killed in the BFEE illegal occupation. So we're going to widen the war, bomb yet another Muslim nation, drag them into the war, for a paltry 8% of the casualties?

It makes no sense.

We'll Always Have Paris

Jesus, it's a sad day when even I am held in thrall by the wacky shenanigans of America's favorite love-her-hate-her celebutante. I blame Keith Olbermann and his "Keeping Tabs" segment where even the ironic tone of Olbermann's tongue-in-cheek commentary doesn't remove the stain of having to cover Paris Hilton's latest antics.

There was a lot of confusion and uproar last week over her premature release to house-arrest by the LA County Sheriff, one Lee Baca, and the question on most lips was Why?

Ask and ye shall receive, my friends.

Money talks and Paris walks.

It turns out that Paris's billionaire grandfather, hotel king William Barron Hilton, had donated a substantial amount of campaign cash to Baca's election. Could this be payback?

And one final question: Why did I have to learn this from the foreign press? I had to go all the way to Australia to find the story?

BTW, word on the street has it that Paris is getting dehydrated because she won't eat or drink anything. Because she doesn't want to use the jail toilet. And not for the usual reasons (if you've been in jail, you'll know what I mean: Multiply the absolute worst facility you've ever seen by a factor of ten and then take away the toilet seat...).

It's because she doesn't want some county-jailer-slash-aspiring-paparazzi to snap a cell-phone-camera shot of her on the pot and put it on the Internets.

Got that? This from someone whose major claim to sexual fame was that notorious green-light blow job video from a few years back, which is still available all over the place.

Jesus, after that, what's a couple of candid shots of her squeezing one off on a jailhouse toilet?

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1103 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?

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 Guerre de las Malvinas (aka the Falklands War) and Prince 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.

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

Total coalition forces dead: 277
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2097
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1599
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1499
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: 428
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 323.

It is still 613 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Julie Amero Update

You might remember the case of Julie Amero, the middle school teacher in Connecticut who was convicted on a "morals" charge for "allowing" her students to view pornographic images on a school computer.

This became a pet project of mine when I first heard about it, and now I am pleased to report that a judge has set aside Julie's conviction.

While the ruling means, under the strict interpretation of the law, that Julie is entitled to a new trial, my best guess is that the prosecutor will drop it faster than a flaming blunt.

Way to go, Julie. I knew that you would prevail.

But...just in case, I'm going to keep my eye on this. If that asshole prosecutor refuses to face reality, he might just refile the charges, and in that case, Julie will need more money in her defense fund.

And once again I'll be glad to donate as much as I can.

"Curing" Homosexuality

It's amusing -- and scary -- to watch the "last throes" of the Baby Doc Maladministration. Der Monkey Fuehrer's nominee to be the new Surgeon General of the US, James Holsinger of Kentucky, is a doctor who helped to found a Methodist congregation that believes that the "gay lifestyle" is a matter of choice and can be cured and who helped strip a Lesbian minister of her minsterial credentials.

"He has a pretty clear bias against gays and lesbians," according to Christina Gilgor, director of the Kentucky Fairness Alliance, a gay rights group. "This ideology flies in the face of current scientific medical studies. That makes me uneasy that he rejects science and promotes ideology."

It just goes to show you how deeply the Religious Right has inserted itself into our government.

Give me a fucking break already. As if anyone would "choose" a lifestyle that would subject them to constant discrimination, abuse, harassment and threats of death (anyone besides me remember Matthew Shephard?).

I think the old Biblical phrase "physician heal thyself" is appropriate here.

BTW, Holsinger, in addition to being a doctor, is a graduate of something called the Asbury Theological Seminary, an innocuous-sounding institution that is dedicated to "send forth a well-trained, sanctified, Spirit-filled, evangelistic ministry to spread scriptural holiness throughout the world".

More of that good ole faith-based medicine, I guess. If you weren't evil, god wouldn't punish you with sickness. Repent and pray, sinners, and god will heal you. That way you won't need to clog up the health-care system with the fruits of your sinful lifestyle.

A Pardon for Libby? The Rethug Big Guns Say So

Jeez, our boy Scooter has yet to spend one hour in jail and already they are calling for a presidential pardon. Even presidential hopeful and former high-power K-Street lobbyist Fred Thompson is on the bandwagon, saying he would "absolutely" pardon Libby to correct a "gross injustice".

Big shot Rethugs are right there as well: Donald Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger, Billy Kristol, Paul Wolfowitz, Gen. Peter Pace -- the list goes on.

What is wrong with these people? They were the same ones who were calling for a public pillory of Bill Clinton when he committed perjury (for those who are still confused, "perjury" is a legal term for lying under oath, and it carries serious punishments with it for those who commit it), and yet here they are, weeping and wailing and gnashing their teeth over the "gross injustice" that will be done to little Scooter if he has to go to prison.

At the bottom, this case is a simple one. Lie under oath and you will be punished. Obstruct justice and you will be punished. It doesn't matter one fucking iota that the real perpetrators of the crime (Karl Rove, Richard Armitage) of outing Valerie Plame will go unpunished. That's not the point.

Libby lied. If Bush pardons him, that will put the final nail in the indictment that history will hand down about the evil and corrupt Baby Doc Maladministration.

But I guess that really doesn't matter to these fuckers. In the words of Fearless Leader: "History? Who cares? We'll all be dead."

So I guess that little Scooter will not spend a day in the slammer. Watch for his lawyers (funded by Halliburton and the Carlyle Group) to stretch out the appeals until after next year's election, and Baby Doc will pardon him on the traditional last day in office, when he's beyond the reach of any who would want to retaliate.

But remember the outrage at some of Clinton's pardons? Remember how they were made an issue for Al Gore four years later? Maybe Baby Doc ought to pardon Scooter. It could spell the end of the Republican party...

A Pardon for Libby? James Carville Says So, Too.

In the cascade of letters written by the big names on the Right (Donnie Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger, et al), the best one came from Mary Matalin, who pleaded that we "think of the children". Not just the Libby children, but alse her children and everyone else's children.

Think of the children? What the fuck is up with that? Yeah, I believe we ought to think of the children, and let this be an object lesson to them: If you lie under oath, you will be punished.

And sadly, James Carville(!) also signed Mad Mary's letter. Now that's just fucked. What happened to our favorite Ragin' Cajun? Does Mary have him whipped to the point where he'll do anything she says? Did she threaten to cut him off?

That relationship has always bothered me (I can't imagine sitting down across the breakfast table with someone who disagrees with me on each and every belief that I have -- let alone someone who is a willing mouthpiece for Darth Cheney) and maybe now we're seeing reality.

Maybe James Carville was never a progressive -- just an opportunistic hack who played one on tv.

Think about it.

A Pardon for Libby? James Carville Says So, Too.

In the cascade of letters written by the big names on the Right (Donnie Rumsfeld, Henry Kissinger, et al), the best one came from Mary Matalin, who pleaded that we "think of the children". Not just the Libby children, but alse her children and everyone else's children.

Think of the children? What the fuck is up with that? Yeah, I believe we ought to think of the children, and let this be an object lesson to them: If you lie under oath, you will be punished.

And sadly, James Carville(!) also signed Mad Mary's letter. Now that's just fucked. What happened to our favorite Ragin' Cajun? Does Mary have him whipped to the point where he'll do anything she says? Did she threaten to cut him off?

That relationship has always bothered me (I can't imagine sitting down across the breakfast table with someone who disagrees with me on each and every belief that I have -- let alone someone who is a willing mouthpiece for Darth Cheney) and maybe now we're seeing reality.

Maybe James Carville was never a progressive -- just an opportunistic hack who played one on tv.

Think about it.

Fuck! Shit! Fuck! Shit!

There, I feel better. And now I can say it on TV, just as long as I do not mean the actual act of sexual intercourse or that stinky cornlog floater in my toilet bowl.

In a stunning upset to the Bushevik FCC, a federal appeals court has ruled that broadcasters are not liable for the occasional and "fleeting" expletive uttered on television.

So Cher can relax after saying about her critics, "fuck 'em", and Nicole Richie can unwind after complaining about how fucking hard it is to get cow shit off of a Prado bag.

And the delicious irony is that the three-judge panel based its decision on (1) the widely available off-the-cuff remark by one Baby Doc Bush himself, who said through a mouthful of bread to Tony "The Poodle" Blair that Hezbollah needs to "stop doin' that shit" and get their act together, and (2) VP Crashcart telling Senator Patrick Leahy to go fuck himself on the floor of congress.

Yeah, you remember those two: They're at the very top rung of the party that promised to bring "decency" back to the White House.

In the Reserves and Opposed to the Iraq War? Shut the Fuck Up.

In one of the most bizarre stories floating around this week, the USMC is instituting a "general" discharge against a 25-year-old reservist corporal who had the Al-Qaeda-emboldening balls to actually show up at a peace demonstration and voice his concern about the war.

Corporal Adam Kokesh showed up at the demonstration wearing his Marine combat uniform, but he had taken the precaution of stripping all of the insignia off of it so there would be no question that he was there on his own, and not representing the military.

Not good enough for the ass-hats at the Pentagon, who seem to feel that those good ole American values of free speech and petitioning the government for redress are, like the Geneva Convention, "quaint".

As a punishment for the nervy corporal, they are going to give him a "general" discharge -- which is below an "honorable" discharge -- and that means that he will lose a substantial portion of the veterans benefits that he deserves.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that Kokesh already did a tour in Iraq, that he was released from active duty but assigned to the "ready reserve", and as such is, for most intents and purposes, a civilian.

When I got out of the service, I kept much of my uniform, including a perfectly good field jacket that I wore for a number of years, and a set of jungle fatigues and a boonie hat (which I still have and which I still wear occasionally to anti-war demonstrations). I suppose I'd better start looking over my shoulder whenever I show up at a peace rally.

But I actually received an honorable discharge, and I've long since used up all of my GI Bill benefits, so they really don't have any kind of grip on me. I can't say the same for Kokesh, but it is gratifying to learn that the VFW is actually supporting him in his free speech battle with the Corps.

Wow. I wonder what the American Legion thinks about the whole thing? Not a word from them in the media.

Yeah, there's a surprise.

Oh, You Wild and Crazy Guys at Faux News

Jeez, you'd think that it would be impossible in this day and age, but when William Jefferson was indicted for bribery (BTW, the only guy who managed to get scam money OUT of Nigeria), Faux News ran the story with typical Democrat-baiting breathlessness.

The only small problem with their coverage was that they ran a picture of ... John Conyers.

Yeah, okay, Conyers is also a black congressman. Close enough: They all look alike, right?

If you had any doubts about the racist-fascist Rethugs over at the "unfair and imbalanced" network, that ought to set them to rest.

I'm Back

Okay, it's been a week and I've had a chance to recharge the old batteries. The rain has returned to the Wet Corner now that the top is off the Jeep (naturally), and I'm ready to go.

It's been an interesting week off, but that's another story. Suffice it to say that there have been highs (I'm retiring in 51 days!) and lows (two funerals in two days), but I'm still here and still kicking.

A hearty thank-you to all of my regular readers, and especially thanks for your continuing support. I wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for you.

Spring Fever

Yeah, I'm okay. We've had our first spate of nice weather here in the wet corner of the country (i.e. the Pacific Northwest) and all I can do is go outside and enjoy it.

I'll be back in a week or so, after the spell of nice weather goes away and we go back to our usual drippy climate.

In the meantime, enjoy your life.

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

Total coalition forces dead: 274
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2083
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1583
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1483
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: 404
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 309.

It is still 627 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

All Monica All the Time

I had a chance to actually see some of Monica Goodling's testimony last night, and what's with the breathless little-girl voice, the blow-dried mane, the understated presentation? What is she, auditioning for Legally Blonde 3: The Disbarring?

All in all it was a pretty disappointing outing for the Regent University graduate, and it goes a long ways in illustrating that fine education in law that she received there when she couldn't admit -- even under the immunity agreement -- that she had broken the law.

She made "mistakes". She couldn't even identify under direct cross examination that what she did was BREAK THE LAW. I thought that if you graduated from law school, you ought to have more than a passing familiarity with THE LAW.

Guess not, but what can you expect from the graduate of a fine school whose motto is "Christian Leadership to Change the World"? To these people, "god's law" supersedes all mortal laws, and anything they do can be justified as helping to push the cause of the lord.

And can you really blame her? A cursory reading of their holy book shows upteen million incidents where a wrathful god thinks nothing of smiting his enemies -- including women and children -- to further his holy cause.

How can we expect one of his minor lackeys, one of his special representatives here on earth, to do any different? What's a minor lawbreaking when we are engaged in a holy battle for the soul of America?

In the meantime, it looks like she basically blew the whistle on Gonzo -- what she described is beyond the line, and for all appearances Torquemada Gonzales is guilty -- at the very least -- of attempted obstruction of justice.

He might as well have walked into her tastefully-furnished-in-Xian-ecstasy apartment saying shit like "Nice place ya got here -- be a shame if something happened to it, now wouldn't it?"

Why do we keep putting up with this shit? What is wrong with us?