Myth, Fact and Comedy

Over at the Carpetbagger Report, Steve Benen has a deliciously insightful deconstruction of that White House "Official Myth vs. Fact" sheet on exactly why it's such a freakin' national disaster that Congress refused to pass that FISA bill.

Excerpts:

MYTH: If any new surveillance needs to begin, the FISA court can approve a request within minutes. In the case of an emergency, surveillance can begin immediately and FISA approval can be obtained later.
FACT: Reverting to the outdated FISA statute risks our national security. FISA's outdated provisions created dangerous intelligence gaps, which is why Congress passed the Protect America Act in the first place.
STEVE: Um, guys? In this case, the "fact" does not disprove the "myth." In fact, it's a non sequitur. The White House presented a "myth," apparently in the hopes of disproving it, and then didn't point to any evidence that actually undermined the veracity of the original claim, which, inconveniently, happens to be accurate.

Or how about this one:

MYTH: The future security of our country does not depend on whether Congress provides liability protection for companies being sued for billions of dollars only because they are believed to have assisted the Government in defending America after the 9/11 attacks.
FACT: Without the retroactive liability protection provided in the bipartisan Senate bill, we may not be able to secure the private sector's cooperation with current and future intelligence efforts critical to our national security.
STEVE: That may sound nice, but this "fact" is plainly false. This administration, or any future administration, can secure the private sector's cooperation with a court order.

I guess this is just another example of how fucking stupid the BFEE really thinks we are. And I guess by and large we are -- we just keep letting them get away with it since to do otherwise would "embolden" the terrorists. Remember the BFEE motto: You're either with us or you're with the terrorists.

Obama, Plagiarism and Musical Quotation: Another Perspective

The latest media storm surrounding the election concern charges from someone in the Clinton camp that Barack Obama stole from speeches of Mass. Gov Deval Patrick. Accusations are flying faster than donuts at a police convention, but what is the truth? Is it plagiarism or not?

Those who are quick to level the charges seem to be trying to equate a political stump speech with a research paper. But they are not equivalent forms of communication. A research paper, by its very nature, has to be original, and any "borrowings" that are not footnoted with the source acknowledged are considered, with good cause, in all of Academia to be plagiarism, and god help anyone, from freshman to doctoral candidate, who gets nailed for doing it. I've spent enough time, both as a student and as a college instructor, in the Groves of Academe to know what I'm talking about.

A political stump speech, to my way of thinking, is less like a research paper and more like a symphony. If you listen to both of them, you'll see they contain the same kind of movements and pacing: adagio, allegro, allegro non tropo, etc. Neither a political stump speech nor a symphony is intended to inform; they are both intended to work at the emotional level.

The inclusion of bits and pieces from other orchestral works has a long and varied history in classical music, to the point where it even has its own name: "Musical quotation". (See also From ancient Greece to John Williams: music has always been the same.)

And that, I submit, is why Obama's use of something said in another political stump speech by his friend Deval Patrick is the political equivalent of musical quotation; it is not "plagiarism".

Blogroll Search Engine Fakeout

My good friend BAC over at Yikes! got this from our mutual friend D-Cup at Politits. According to D-Cup, "It appears that the rules by which Technorati, Google and other important social websites and search engines rank blogs do not take blogrolls into consideration but do count links within posts". I don't know if this is true, but just in case, here's a repeat of my blogroll to fake out those search engines:

• Abstract Thoughts
  
• Alternate Brain
  
• American Constitution Society
  
• Bad Astronomy
  
• Beggars Can Be Choosers
  
• Big Brass Alliance
  
• Blue Collar Politics
  
• Blue Gal
  
• Deuddersun
  
• Elected Swineherd
  
• Eschaton
  
• Existentialist Cowboy
  
• Irritated Vet
  
• Is America Burning?
  
• It's My Right to be Left of Center
  
• Jae's Sea
  
• Just an Earth-Bound Misfit
  
• Last Left Turn Before Hooterville
  
• Left in the Heartland
  
• LTR -- Liberal Talk Radio Blog
  
• Main and Central
  
• Media Girl
  
• Military & Veterans: Politics for the Deserving
  
• Monkey Muck
  
• NetAgra
  
• Operation Yellow Elephant
  
• Pharyngula
  
• Politicky Bitch
  
• PoliTits
  
• Radio Left
  
• Ranger Against War
  
• Rose Colored Glasses
  
• Skippy the Bush Kangaroo
  
• The Democratic Party Blog
  
• The Democratic Veteran
  
• The Liberal Oasis
  
• The Moderate Man
  
• The Ostroy Report
  
• The Otherwhirled
  
• The Rude Pundit
  
• The Truffle
  
• Three Pissed Off Vets
  
• White Noise Insanity
  
• Yikes!
  
  

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1360 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 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? Especially since he apparently hasn't actually even put on the uniform yet, even though he "enlisted" way last year.

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

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

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

Will the Bush Twins follow his example?

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

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

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

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

Is This a "Christian Nation"?

Grandpa McCain said so a while back -- "the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation", but immediately had to backpedal a bit to say we are "a nation founded on Judeo-Christian principles".

And that's a corner that you can back a lot of Fundo Xians into when they start spouting that "Christian Nation" bullshit, but they tend to stop there, dig in their heels and insist that the United States was founded on "Christian principles" (ironically, as we shall see, they tend not to give the Jews a lot of credit in these things).

Usually when the subject comes up, it's within the Fundo-Xian snake-handling bible-thumping tradition that, for example, excoriates those liberal-atheistic-commie-pinko activist judges in the Federal courts for telling Judge Roy Moore that he couldn't display on public property that giant carved rock containing the Ten Commandments, or some such similar nonsense. And note that it's almost always some kind of rabid frothing at the mouth over the "suppression" of the Ten Commandments -- other bibilical topics get pretty short shrift with these people.

Okay, so maybe they have a point: Maybe the United States was founded on the Ten Commandments. I think an examination of the appropriate part of the so-called Holy Bible is in order. So here, complete and unexpurgated, is the section of Exodus wherein can be found the Big Ten:

Exodus 20
1 And God spake all these words, saying,
2 I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
3 Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
4 Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.
5 Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
6 And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
7 Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.
9 Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work:
10 But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
11 For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
12 Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
13 Thou shalt not kill.
14 Thou shalt not commit adultery.
15 Thou shalt not steal.
16 Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
17 Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.

And there you go. Now let's take a look at the US Constitution and see how many of these holy-writ directions from god ended up there.

Go ahead, read it. I'll still be here when you get back.

Okay, done? Now, what is your answer?

What??? None of them, you say??? But how can that be, if the Founding Fathers, the authors of the Constitution, founded this nation on Christian principles?

Okay, maybe the Fundos don't really mean the Constitution when they say that. Maybe they mean just those general laws passed to govern behavior in society. You know, state criminal codes and stuff like that.

I will concede that it appears that a handful of the commandments managed to make it into the laws: Murder, perjury, theft (and, in some jurisdictions, adultery). But those laws about murder and theft, etc., are not particularly biblical -- pretty much every civilized society in the history of the world has had similar laws, for obvious reasons: Without them a civilized society would deteriorate rapidly into anarchy or dictatorship. You don't need a supernatural revelation from The Flying Spaghetti Monster to figure that one out...

But back to the Big Ten. You really have to wonder why ALL of them didn't get into our laws. After all, if we were founded on these principles, why would only some of them make the cut? And why were the two "biggies" -- no other gods, no graven images -- kept out?

Oh, but that's the OLD Testament, you say, and the "true" Christian Principles are really found in the New Testament. (Even though we all know that's it's really the Old Testament that the vast majority of these Fundos are referring to when they talk about this -- they don't want to be bothered with the New Testament and all that "love thy neighbor as thyself" and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" crap. I think maybe it sounds too much like namby-pamby wimpy-assed nancy-boy socialism to them.).

Okay, so go grab yourself one of those nifty "red letter" editions of the New Testament and look up the words of Jesus. They're printed in red so they are easy to find. Then pop on back and tell me which of THOSE principles are incorporated into the Constitution.

Never mind, don't go to the extra trouble. You won't find 'em there, either.

So, regardless of the particular religion or the spiritual/supernatural beliefs (or lack thereof) of those Founding Fathers, not a single one of them insisted that those "Christian Principles" be enshrined in the most important secular document the world has ever seen.

Jeez, this isn't rocket surgery, but you'd more easily convince Rush Limbaugh to suck Hillary Clinton's toes than you would trying to make one of those Fundo-Xian knuckledraggers understand this stuff.

What Do You Really Know About the Separation of Church and State?

As with most things that have to do with this issue, most people think that they know everything, but since a lot of them have diametrically opposed ideas, they can't all be right.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation has created a fun little online quiz, so you can see how your knowledge of this important issue stacks up against reality. Go ahead and take it, see where you fall on this critical area of knowledge.

More on Right Wing Radio and John McCain

Naturally I'm not the only one to question the motives behind wingnut radio slinging mud at the man who has the lock on the Rethug nomination.

In Reading the Tea Leaves of Today's Biggest Broadcast Idiot, P M Carpenter rings in on what he calls "the biggest, fattest, most conservative broadcast idiot of them all" (Rush Dope-Addict Limp-Dick Limbaugh, in case you didn't already guess it):

I write, of course, of Rush Limbaugh, he of 13.5-million weekly listeners who, it would seem, wouldn't know serious political philosophy from botany. If you've ever been gripped by sufficient masochism to tune in, you know what I mean. There they are, the fawning, sycophantic dupes of dittodom, queued up on the switchboard, hankering to get at Rush so they can regurgitate his wretched unenlightenment from the Dark Ages.

. . .

Rush may in fact represent less of an actual, loosely organized mass movement than merely a massive intellectual bowel movement.

. . .

When it's all over, I'm venturing, this most reactionary of broadcast idiots will be found to have held only a negligible sway over his presumed legions of lapdogs -- and he may even soon go the way of his equally offensive and finally beyond-the-pale broadcasting forebear, Father Coughlin...

I am a devotee of so-called "Old Time Radio", so I have some recordings of the infamous Father Coughlin, and yes, I can see that there are some striking similarities between the fascist-apologizing freedom-hating Coughlin and the bloviating Missouri gasbag. In their respective times, they each were the biggest non-elected (and unelectable) demagogues in the nation.

Here's Carpenter again:

McCain, however, may wish that Limbaugh's voice grows even louder. Because returning again to the era of Father Coughlin, Rush represents what Franklin Roosevelt denounced as "government by organized money" -- "the old enemies of peace, business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism [and] war profiteering" who were aligned in rabid opposition to the New Deal. But rather than accommodating them, rather than seeking peace with them, rather than staging powwows of compromise, Roosevelt announced: "I welcome their hatred." He then cleaned their clocks in the '36 election.
If McCain is shrewd -- and I think he is -- he will return the same fire against the on-air reactionaries and extremists of today, and thereby gain the allegiance of moderates and independents who otherwise would quake at the thought of a presidential candidate in bed with the malignant likes of a Rush Limbaugh.
In short, as Rush himself has suggested, his alienation from McCain may be the best thing that could have happened to McCain. The extreme right is shrinking, and Rush's intimation would seem to verify that he even he knows that. It's out of whack with the times, an aging and dying ideological dinosaur whose cranky intrusion into this race could cause any candidate more injury than benefit.

Like I said before, this whole thing seems just a little too calculated, a little too neatly wrapped, for it to be what some of us out here in Left Blogistan would like to see, which is nothing short of an implosion in the Rethug Party. Keep watching.

Snuggly the Security Bear

Snuggly is one of my favorite cartoon characters, created by the exceptionally talented and hilariously funny Mark Fiore.

In the current episode, Spies Who Love You, Snuggly says that the terrorists want to undermine our constitution and our way of life, so we have to do it before they do.

Remember: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." -- Der Monkey Fuehrer, Aug 5, 2004.

Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 2865 2888 2906 2959 3006 3018 3025 3067 3087 3118 3132 3151 3166 3189 3210 3233 3245 3266 3299 3316 3337 3358 3387 3409 3444 3504 3519 3546 3577 3592 3611 3631 3683 3705 3725 3738 3760 3780 3795 3823 3830 3838 3845 3866 3875 3881 3886 3891 3896 3908 3921 3932 3943 3952 3960

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

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2347
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1808
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1750
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: 736
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 575.

It is still 337 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Obama Sweeps February Voting -- Wonder Why?

Wanna know why Barack Obama had that unforeseen and unprecedented series of lopsided victories this month?

Easy. February is Black History Month!

Welcome back to The Daily Show, Larry Wilmore!

McCain and Torture: Another Look

Way back when (before I really got a good look at him), I had a lot of respect for John McCain. Yeah, I know, it was naive of me, and I'd actually been flirting with that whole "Rethug with a human face" thing. In August of 2005 I even posted an entry about Bill Orally lecturing McCain (of all people) about torture:

O'Reilly: "Cheney doesn't want any restrictions on the detainee interrogations. OK? And he's adamant about it."
. . .
McCain: "Don't think that you get anything out of torture, Bill, because you don't. And I know that for a fact." [Emphasis added]

And later that year, McCain led a drive to put anti-torture language into a military spending bill. In 2006 McCain sponsored the Detainee Treatment Act which included a ban on waterboarding, which Der Monkey Fuehrer essentially invalidated by one of those nifty little "signing statements" arrogating to himself the authority to just ignore any law that he doesn't agree with.

So let's fast-forward to yesterday: A former POW who was tortured by the North Vietnamese (and even a couple of Cubans, if you can believe Grandpa McCain's claims) for five-and-a-half years, who, in spite of what he told Orally three years ago, in spite of leading the anti-torture addition to the "defense" spending bill, in spite of sponsoring a bill to outlaw waterboarding just two years ago, has now fallen into lockstep with the rest of neofascists in the Senate and voted against this year's bill to prevent waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques.

I guess he was "against torture before he was for it". And the wingnuttery had the balls to accuse the last Democratic candidate of flip-flopping.

So much for the Straight Talk Express man. I really miss him, but without him giving up his soul and sucking up to the Rethug power structure, his campaign would be dead in the water. He's already (if you can actually believe that) in trouble with the fundo-Xian über-conservative wing of the party, but isn't afraid to give up all of his core beliefs, deny his own history and his senatorial record in order to win the presidency.

Props to McCain's fellow Republicans, Susan Collins, Chuck Hagel, Richard Lugar, Gordon Smith and Olympia Snowe for breaking step with their own party and recognizing that the United States still ought to stand for something.

And here's a hint to Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton (despite the troubling fact that YOU were both AWOL for that vote): When you get in that first debate with McCain, point out to him and to rest of the world: "On February 13, you voted for torture".

Grandpa McCain has given you a precious gift. Accept it with humble grace and use it with reckless abandon.

Quote of the Week: Religious Issues

Okay, students. Put on your thinking caps and tell me which prominent US politician said this:

However, on religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God, or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon, the use of God's name on one's behalf should be used sparingly.
The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particular moral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both. I'm frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in "A," "B," "C," and "D" Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?
And I am even more angry as a legislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it has some God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I am warning them today: I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictate their moral convictions to all Americans in the name of "conservatism."

So who do you think? Ted Kennedy? Hillary Clinton? Barack Obama? Barney Frank? Former Chief Justice Earl Warren? Former Justice William Douglas?

Nope. If you identified any of the usual suspects of the right wing, you would be wrong. This is from Senator Barry Goldwater, who used to be the conscience of the Republican Party, but who sadly would not be welcomed by today's Rethugs.

It's too bad the Goldwater Republicans are an extinct species now. I personally know, just in the small city where I live, a substantial number of former Goldwater Republicans who now belong to the Democratic Party.

This is the kind of individual liberty that the Republicans used to stand for. It's sad that they have degenerated into the theo-con neo-fascist Moron-American-voting-bloc-pandering Rethugs that we are surrounded with today. Were it not so tragic for our nation, it would be laughable.

[Source: Congressional Record, September 16, 1981, quoted here]

Will the Romney Boys Enlist Now?

Way back in August of last year, at one of those "Ask Mittens Anything" forums in Iowa, back when he still had delusions that he could actually get the nomination, Mitt Romney was asked why his sons have not served in the military. His answer was as stupid as it was arrogant:

My sons are adults. They've chosen not to serve in the military in active duty and I respect their decision in that regard. … And one of the ways my sons are showing support for our nation is helping me get elected because they think I'd be a great president.

He also said that "the way his sons are showing support for the military of our nation is to buy a Winnebago and tour across Iowa and help him get elected."

Okay, fair enough, I suppose. We all have hard choices to make when it comes to defending our nation in the War on Terra^tm. But now that Romney is out of the running, don't you think that the next best way for those strapping young men -- all of whom are still young enough to enlist and serve not only their country but also the wars that their father was so vocal about supporting -- is to finally man up and enlist in the service?

Anyone want to get in on the wagering whether they will actually do it? Even if I give you one-thousand-to-one odds, I still won't get any takers.

[Note to PH: It's still called HYPOCRISY.]

More Scared = More Safe?

It is an odd formula, but I guess that it's worked so well in the past that they keep going back to the same well.

This morning Der Monkey Fuehrer was issuing one of his most dire warnings ever (cue scary music): The goal of terrorists using telephones is to "bring destruction to our shores that will make September 11 pale by comparison". Jesus, he all but invoked that "smoking gun-mushroom cloud" meme again.

Coincidentally, almost at the same time he was trying to scare the shit out of us, a story came out of New York about the NYPD setting up a fake company that bought 300 pounds of liquid chlorine and had it delivered to an address in Brooklyn, without hassle, and even without much human intervention.

Now maybe it's just me, but you'd think that an administration that was hell-bent on protecting us from terrorists would have, by now, over six years after 9-11, have thought this through and put some kind of limits on who, how and where anyone could buy that much chlorine.

Chlorine gas, just in case you didn't know, is a deadly poison that was used by insurgents in Iraq as far back as February 2007 to kill not only other Iraqis but also American troops.

More scared does not equal more safe. That's just the way THEY want you to see it.

[HT to Rachel Maddow for this piece of news -- if it hadn't been for her mentioning it on her show today, I wouldn't have seen it, since a Google News search for "NYPD chlorine" returns exactly two -- and only two -- Associated Press stories...]

McCain and the Rethug Smoke and Mirrors Show

I don't mean to go all tinfoil hat here, but I have a sneaking suspicion that all this storm in the wingnuttery, how they hate McCain, mAnn Coulter would rather vote for Hillary, etc etc, is all thunder and no lightning. I think it's an elaborate scam to convince more liberal or centrist voters to take a chance on McCain.

After all, if Limpdick Limbaugh, Slanthead Hannity and the Wicked Witch of the Airwaves all hate him, then there must be something about him to like. You know, it's the whole "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" thing.

Bullshit.

It's all a bunch of smoke and mirrors, designed by the Rovian puppetmasters in the Rethug party, to make McCain seem more "human" to the centrists, the sunshine liberals, and those who say they will never vote for Hillary.

Again, bullshit.

That's what Farnsworth says…

A Strange Resonance

Apparently I'm not the only one who is hearing some distant echoes from 1968. Stephen Pizzo over at OpEdNews.com has his own analysis of the oddly echoing parallels between 1968 and this year.

Check out Chicago 1968 - Denver 2008:

· In 1968 support for the Vietnam war had hit new lows.
· In 2008 support for the war in Iraq has reached new lows.
· In 1968 the Democratic Party insider candidate, Humphrey, had supported the war and, while public option was increasingly for withdrawal, he preached against a mandated withdrawal from Vietnam, deeming such a withdrawal as reckless and potentially dangerous to US security.
· In 2008 the Democratic Party insider candidate, Hillary Clinton, who was for the war until she was against it, now argues against a rapid withdrawal or setting a hard timeline for withdrawal.
· In 1968 an unconventional, anti-war candidate -- Senator Gene McCarthy, captured the imagination and rekindled the hopes of a new generation of voters, even bridging racial divides garnering support from civil rights groups including the Black Panthers.
· In 2008 an unconventional, anti-war candidate -- Senator Barack Obama, has captured the imagination and rekindled the hopes of a new generation of voters, again bridging historical racial divides.

Adding to this strange brew is the odd coincidence that both conventions will start almost exactly on the same date (Aug 26 in 1968, Aug 25 in 2008) forty years apart.

Go read the analysis. It's some compelling stuff, and let's all hope that it doesn't work out the way it happened forty years ago.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1353 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 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? Especially since he apparently hasn't actually even put on the uniform yet, even though he "enlisted" way last year.

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

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

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

Will the Bush Twins follow his example?

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

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

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

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

Note to John McCain: Read the Constitution

Article II, Section 1, of the United States Constitution prescribes the following oath or affirmation, required to be uttered by each and every president upon taking office:

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.

So wouldn't it be a good idea for a presidential candidate to actually know what's in it?

I'm pretty sure that the Dems know, but at the Conservative Political Action Conference conference last week, frontrunner Grampa McCain made some lame attempts to try to shore up his support among the wingnut base of the party. Hidden among many other gems in his speech was this shiny one:

I intend to nominate judges who have proven themselves worthy of our trust that they take as their sole responsibility the enforcement of laws made by the people's elected representatives. Judges -- judges of the character and quality of Justices Roberts and Alito, justices who can be relied upon to respect the values of the people whose rights, laws and property they are sworn to defend.

Jeez, there is just so much wrong with that statement, but I'll just latch onto the inconvenient fact that the Judicial Branch does not have the duty or responsbility to enforce laws. That's the job of the Department of Justice, which is part of the Executive Branch.

No, the job of the Judicial Branch is to interpret the laws. Not enforce them. Interpret them.

Ever since the Marshall Court's famous Marbury v. Madison ruling, the Supreme Court has been the final arbiter on all constitutional issues. They interpret the laws that are passed by those "people's elected representatives" and decide whether or not they pass constitutional muster.

They are not, nor should they ever be, the kind of rubber-stamp body that McCain seems to envision.

John, I know you weren't the best student in school, but jesus, dude, this is basic Civics 101 crap here.

Oh, and as a footnote, the more observant readers will notice that the officially prescribed oath of office does not contain at the end of it the phrase "so help me god", even though I guess it's become customary over the years to just kind of tag it on. But it is not required.

Washington State Democratic Caucus

In Washington State, where I live (out here on the Left Coast), the Democratic Party chooses its delegates using the caucus method, where Democrats in the various voting precincts statewide meet and decide the direction that the party should take.

Delegates to the county conventions are chosen at these caucuses, and from those county conventions delegates are chosen to the various congressional districts, and from there to the national convention.

So the precinct is the most basic element of Democratic Party politics, and I am proud to say that I was an active participant in democracy at its most grassroots level.
I was at my local precinct caucus from about 11:30 (I showed up early to volunteer to help) until just about an hour ago. Talk about pandemonium!

Our facility was a retired Junior High that is now being used as the school district HQ. By 12:45 we had a full auditorium and a line snaking out the door, down the hall and around the parking lot. At one point one of the other volunteers came in and said the crowd was getting unruly, so I went out and talked to them. Although I felt like I needed a whip and a chair, I did manage to calm them down -- among other things, I used my favorite Will Rogers quote on them: "I don't belong to an organized political party; I'm a Democrat". Once you get people to laugh, it's pretty hard for them to go back to being angry.

I would guess that there were well over 1,000 people there, spread (rather unevenly) over six precincts (which was a far cry from the off-year caucus two years ago, when the same six precincts had a total of about 13 people).

Finally we split up into our respective precincts and mine (Olympia 48) in the first round was something like 32 Obama, 4 Clinton, 3 Undecided, 1 Kucinich, and 1 Richardson.

After a lobbying effort, two of the Undecideds switched over to Clinton and the Richardson came over to Obama, with the end result that out of our seven delagates to the county convention, Obama got six (of which I am one) and Clinton got one.

I was on my feet all that time, since I was simultaneously lobbying for Obama, helping people find their precinct sign-in sheet, running around putting out fires, etc., so right now I am experiencing a very weird combination of exhaustion and elation.

But it is democracy at its most basic -- and its finest -- level and it was worth every single minute of 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 3025 3067 3087 3118 3132 3151 3166 3189 3210 3233 3245 3266 3299 3316 3337 3358 3387 3409 3444 3504 3519 3546 3577 3592 3611 3631 3683 3705 3725 3738 3760 3780 3795 3823 3830 3838 3845 3866 3875 3881 3886 3891 3896 3908 3921 3932 3943 3952

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

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2340
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1801
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1743
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: 729
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 568.

It is still 344 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

UPDATE: I heard today that Shooter Cheney is spending the weekend back at the scene of the crime, that tame-dove "sport shooting" game ranch down in Texas. I guess the poor old man who got shot in the face isn't going this time. "Unavoidable conflict" in his scheduling. Oh, well, we can always hope that he's going to take someone like Scalia with him, Scalia who didn't have any problems going fishing with Cheney at the same time a court case involving Cheney was coming in front of the Supremes.

John McCain the Best Choice for Veterans -- NOT!

No, really. I know there exists a peculiar mindset among veterans that predisposes them to vote for McCain because "he's one of us", he knows the trials and tribulations that veterans have gone through, etc etc ad inifinitum ad nauseum.

Bullshit.

Just take a look at former Army sergeant Michael Bailey's compilation of the voting records of the top three existing candidates, McCain, Clinton and Obama, at What Veterans Should Know in Order to Vote.

Check out these statistics, all of them based on their respective 2006 voting records in the Senate:

· McCain supported the interests of the Disabled American Veterans 20 percent.
· Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave McCain a grade of D.
· McCain sponsored or co-sponsored 18 percent of the legislation favored by the The Retired Enlisted Association.
· Clinton supported the interests of the Disabled American Veterans 80 percent.
· Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave Clinton a grade of A-.
· Clinton sponsored or co-sponsored 41 percent of the legislation favored by the The Retired Enlisted Association in 2006.
· Obama supported the interests of the Disabled American Veterans 80 percent.
· Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave Obama a grade of B+.
· Obama sponsored or co-sponsored 12 percent of the legislation favored by the The Retired Enlisted Association.

These are not minor issues. These are issues of utmost importance to veterans. And you can see that both Democratic candidates outpaced McCain by a long shot in nearly every category.

And yet I'd hazard a guess that the vast majority of those veterans are going to vote for McCain. Because he's "one of us"...

At this point, I'd have to say that a veteran voting for John McCain is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders.

Please pass the word to your friends who are veterans and see if you can change their minds with facts.

Coming to the Trough

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Observations on Yesterday's Super-Duper Monster Tuesday

It's kind of a neat little set of bookends. Rotten Rudy G (sounds like a rap artist, doesn't it?) thought he was the front runner, but as the campaign went on and people got to know him, his numbers trailed off to the point where they vanished. He ended up dropping out before Super Tuesday.

Jeez, who could've seen that coming...

Obama is just the opposite. The more people get to know him, the more support he gets. It's not a coincidence that he won big yesterday in the states where he actually showed up in person. As the campaign progresses and more people get to know who he is, the more those numbers will climb.

The media has gone out of its way to call various states as supporting either Obama or Clinton, but given the way that delegates are proportionally allocated based on the relative percentages of the votes -- as opposed to the Rethug "winner take all" rules -- it's pretty much a meaningless distinction. It doesn't matter who won a given state, but who won the most delegates. That's what Nevada proved: Clinton won "the state", but Obama won more delegates.

Right now Obama and Hillary C (another rap artist?) are in a virtual dead heat in committed delegates, with a number of votes left to count, but those so-called "Super Delegates" are still problematical. Mostly they are party insiders whom the Clintons have been cultivating for years. They are under no obligation to support anyone, but one could profitably wager that they will come down solidly in the Clinton camp.

If Hillary gets the nomination at the convention based solely on the Super Delegate count, or solely on the seating of the controversial Michigan and Florida delegations, then I foresee the Democratic party entering another self-destruct mode (which BTW we are really good at) that will make the 1968 convention look like a Sunday school picnic.

Rightwing Sexual Hypocrite #19,877

Or whatever big number you want to utter. The fact is that apparently NONE of these pricks can keep it in their pants.

The latest is Daniel Thompson, a Salt Lake City pervert who was the founder or manager or something like that (it's not clear exactly what position of authority he held) of an outfit called Clean Flix, has been arrested for having sex with underage girls.

Clean Flix, you may recall, was responsible for Bowdlerizing movies to remove all the "smutty" parts. It did this, of course, without the authorization of the studios or the copyright holders, and in fact lost a lawsuit because of it.

So it appears that Thompson cut out all the dirty parts, but kept them for himself:

...the "booking documents state Thompson told the 14-year-olds that his film sanitizing business was a cover for a pornography studio." Police found a "large quantity" of porno movies inside the business, "along with a keg of beer, painkillers and two cameras hooked up to a television." Thompson has been released after posting $30,000 bail.

If you ask me, there ought to have been an additional bail for being a goddam rightwing hypocrite. But I guess that isn't against the law. If it were, the jails would be bursting at the seams.

Why Not Amy Carter or Chelsea Clinton?

Today someone left a comment on my very first Bush Twins in Uniform post from way back in June 2005 -- which also was my very first post on this blog.

Someone hiding under the name "bunbun8464" says:

you didn't mention Amy Carter or Chelsea Clinton in your jabs at the GOP---let's be fair kids. And did any of the Kennedy's kids serve? Any of Gore's?
Be fair!
kb

Okay, it's a fair question. Sort of. But as usual, those from the wingnut wing of semi-reality just don't get it. They miss the point so much that it has to be intentional. But that's a common tactic among those people: Pick out some minor point and elevate it to the point where it exceeds and surpasses the original thesis. A case in point: The so-called Rathergate controversy, wherein the authenticity of the memos themselves was called into question, instead of the actual content of the memos. And that campaign, as you know, was completely successful. The question as to whether the memos could have been typed with proportional spacing in 1972 (short answer: Yes, the IBM Selectric was widely available -- and in use in the military -- by the mid-1960s) completely overtook and submerged the actual story, that of Baby Doc's questionable National Guard service.

But I digress. Back to kb's question.

The reason I do not include Amy Carter, Chelsea Clinton or any of the Kennedy offspring, etc etc, should be obvious -- and in fact, it is obvious to the readers of this blog who are part of the Reality Based Community -- is summed up by the motto of Operation Yellow Elephant: It's their war; why aren't they fighting it?

In short, it's really easy for Rethugs to start a war for business reasons and send our children to fight it, but they aren't willing to "invest" their own children in it.

And why not?

Because they are a greedy bunch of fucking hypocritical lying elitist assholes.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1346 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 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? Especially since he apparently hasn't actually even put on the uniform yet, even though he "enlisted" way last year.

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

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

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

Will the Bush Twins follow his example?

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

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

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

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

The Myth of the Missing Weapons

It has become something of an article of faith among the apologists for the BFEE illegal Iraq invasion that Saddam Hussein refused to say whether he still had those weapons of mass destruction, and that he kicked the UN weapons inspectors out of his country.

The myth goes something like this: Saddam kept mum about the weapons in order to instigate a war with the United States. For what reason I can't possibly imagine, but there it is. And in order to hide the fact that he didn't have the weapons, he kicked out the inspectors. I know, that was a Scooby-Doo "hyunh?!" moment for me, too.

I don't how these things get started -- well, in this case, yes I do: They were lies told by the Baby Doc Maladminstration mouthpieces to the Moron-Americans watching such drivel as the State of the Union address, etc., in order to gin up support for a war that we had no business fighting.

So what was the truth? Well, let's turn it over to a couple of experts. Here's an excerpt from a Dan Rather CBS 60-Minutes interview with Saddam in February 2003:

It's pretty clear from that that Saddam is saying he doesn't have the weapons. But today CBS, that bastion of the liberal media, is still dancing to the BFEE tune. In January of this year, CBS reporter Scott Pelley asked the question: What happened to the weapons of mass destruction?

He also pressed the myth some more: "So why keep the secret? Why put your nation at risk? Why put your own life at risk to maintain this charade? ... As the U.S. marched toward war and we began massing troops on his border, why didn't he stop it then? How could he have wanted his country to be invaded?"

Jesus, this is some Through-the-Lookinglass stuff here, for sure. It's almost impossible for me to believe that some people are still clutching desperately to the myth of the weapons.

Oh, and those weapons inspectors that Saddam "kicked out" of Iraq? If they were, in fact, kicked out, why in the hell did Der Monkey Fuehrer order them to leave the country in early March of 2003?

WTF??? mAnn Coulter Will Vote for...Hillary???

Just when you don't think it can get any weirder, here's Moron-American crossdresser mAnn Coulter saying she'll vote for Shrillary before she'll vote for McCain!

Excerpt:

We know the far right is upset with McCain as nominee but this is really going too far: Ann Coulter asserting on Fox News that if he gets the nomination she would not only "vote for" Hillary, she would "campaign for her if it's McCain." She told Sean Hannity last night that Clinton "is more conservative than he is" and added that in that scenario "she will be our girl." As president, Hillary would be "stronger in the war on terrorism" and would not pull the troops out of Iraq -- she jumped to her feet at the State of Union speech when Bush said the surge was working. Hannity countered: "McCain did support the war." She pointedout: "So did Hillary."

Jesus, I know politics can make strange bedfellows, but ... no, wait. I don't need that image in my mind's eye.

Eeeewwwwwww!!!

Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 2865 2888 2906 2959 3006 3018 3025 3067 3087 3118 3132 3151 3166 3189 3210 3233 3245 3266 3299 3316 3337 3358 3387 3409 3444 3504 3519 3546 3577 3592 3611 3631 3683 3705 3725 3738 3760 3780 3795 3823 3830 3838 3845 3866 3875 3881 3886 3891 3896 3908 3921 3932 3943

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

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2333
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1794
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1736
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: 721
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 561.

It is still 351 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

You Want Changes?

Well, I got yer Changes right here:

The Farnsworth Endorsement: The Kiss of Death?

Jeez, you gotta wonder. First I came out for Kucinich, and he drops out. This morning I was all ready to endorse Edwards, and he drops out just seconds before I posted my endorsement of him.

Now I am kinda scared about my new endorsement. Whichever candidate gets it will be killed in the Super Tuesday primaries.

Naaaaw, fuck that. I'm still coming out for Obama. I'm in the ABC school of Democratic politics: Anybody But Clinton.

So there you have it: Your old pal Farnsworth is now an active supporter of Barack Obama and is in the process of joining Veterans for Obama.

I encourage everyone who truly believes that it is time for change in the direction of this nation to join me in supporting Barack Obama in his quest to be the President of the United States in 2008.

Rush Limbaugh and the Evil Voting Machine

I swear you can't make this shit up. News out of Palm Beach today carries the story that notorious gasbag and brain-addled drug addict Rush Limbaugh couldn't figure out the voting machine when he went to vote in the Florida primary yesterday:

"I hit 'Next' and it didn't go there," said Limbaugh, who lives in Palm Beach and often recounts the county's electoral foibles on his show.
Then he hit the "Back" button and "got my candidate page again with the vote already recorded there. So I said 'hmmmmm, I wonder if this is going to count twice."
So he unclicked his favored candidate, clicked that candidate again and hit "Next" a second time - and it worked.
"I don't know if I voted twice," he said. "Probably not.

Yeah, uh-huh. This is the guy, you'll recall, that made a ton of malicious fun back in 2000 and 2004 about the stupidity of people who complain about voting machines.

What a fucking moron. Maybe you should pop a couple of Vitamin V tablets next time. Kind of perk up your head, so to speak.

The Way Democracy is Supposed to Work

I'll admit it right up front that I didn't watch Baby Doc's delusional view of the State of the Union last night. I can't stand even looking at the guy, let alone listen to him speak for an hour. Besides, She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed would feel she'd have to lock up the guns lest I starting shooting holes in our big-screen HDTV.

However, I wish that congress would take a page from the British House of Commons, which holds a Q&A session with the Prime Minister weekly.

Take a look at this one posted on YouTube:

How great it would be if our own congress was able to -- had the balls to -- talk back to The Chimperor the way these guys do to their HMFIC. I'd actually tune in if that happened.

C-Span shows these sessions on a regular basis. They are always fun to watch.

"You're a Liberal!" -- "Am Not, YOU Are!"

Jesus, does it get any better than this? Both of the frontrunning Rethugs are hurling "The L Word" at each other like a couple of schoolyard third-graders on recess.

The L Word. As in "Liberal".

Liberals!!! Oh my god!!! It's the end of civilization as we know it! Dogs and cats, living together! (Bill Murray, in Ghostbusters)

Who'da thunk it, forty years ago, when being a Liberal was a good thing?

You remember the Liberals, don't you? The people who brought you the minimum wage, the 40-hour work week, Social Security, the end of Jim Crow laws, etc etc etc.

For some perspective on those goddam atheistic commie pinko America-hating terrorist-enabling liberals, take a look at the brilliant satire A Day in the Life of Joe Republican by John Gray, who wrote it way back in 2004.

This is some great stuff. It's too bad more Rethugs can't read it. Won't read it. Wouldn't "get it" if they did read it. Morons.

A Sleepless Night

I really shouldn't let my imagination run loose when I'm trying to go to sleep. Here are the nightmare scenarios that kept me up until the wee hours.

Setup:

The next president dies in office, and his vice president, under the US constitution (which is still more or less in effect, even though it's currently on life supports), becomes president.

Scenarios:

John McCain, the apparent front-runner in the Rethug race, would be 71, making him the oldest president ever, at the the time he is sworn in next January. (By comparison, Saint Ronald was a youthful 69 at the time he took office.) Despite the fact that McCain regularly keeps trotting out his doddering 95-year-old mother to prove that he has longevity genes, he's already had skin cancer and his body has to be a lot less than 100% after his wild youth (I "generally misused my good health and youth" -- source) and those five-and-a-half long years of torture and lack of medical care as a guest of the North Vietnamese.

In order to shore up his support among the mouthbreathing knuckledragging Fundo Xian branch of the party, McCain chooses Huckleberry Hucklebee as his VP. McCain dies and Huckleberry starts in on his campaign to restore Christian principles to the US constitution and, with the compliance of the spineless Blue Dog Democrats and the Dominionist-packed Supreme Court, slides us into theocracy.

And the Dems? Barack Obama is a prime target for assassination (a Google search for "assassinate obama" turns up some 14,000 terrifying hits). Let's face facts: Anyone who does not believe that there is a deep-seated and virulent strain of violent racism lurking just beneath the surface in many parts of this country is living in a fool's paradise. The current wide-eyed comparisons between him and JFK are downright scary when you remember what happened to Kennedy.

If Obama is the nominee, he will just about have to choose Billary as his VP running mate (and vice-versa). By the time of the Democratic Convention the party will be badly wounded by the current infighting that's going to only get worse. The best way to try to heal up those wounds would be to choose your enemy as your running mate and pretend that you have always been best buddies (as Reagan did with "Poppy" Bush, and JFK seems to have done with Lyndon Johnson). Then Obama dies in office. She is president, and she will continue the slide into fascistic corporatism that was started by Ronald Reagan and sadly continued, in large part, by Bill Clinton.

Jeez, I think I need a Xanax/Ambien cocktail...

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1339 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 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? Especially since he apparently hasn't actually even put on the uniform yet, even though he "enlisted" way last year.

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

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

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

Will the Bush Twins follow his example?

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

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

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

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

Think a Conjoined Church and State is a Good Idea?

Really? Well, this is one of those "be careful what you ask for because you just might get it" questions. Let's take a look at the last time this happened in the traditions of "Western Civilization".

Although a bunch of wingnut Koolaid drinkers have gone to some length to try to deny it, you don't have to look any farther than Nazi Germany for proof that the melding of church and state is never a good idea.

Take a look at the photographs on this page for a stark visual reminder of what can happen when the church and the state get into bed together.

Not convinced by a bunch of photographs? How about taking a look at the scholarly study, Theologians Under Hitler by Robert P. Ericksen PhD, or, for those with a short attention span, check out the DVD of the same title. The premise of the book and the film is that even the most reputable and "normal" theologians can readily accommodate themselves to the banality of evil and see the attractiveness of a church-state combination.

The right wing can try to weasel out of this all they want, but facts are facts and their denials are Just. Fucking. Wrong!

Okay, I hear you saying, but that was Germany, and they are among the "others". So you want an example in an English-speaking context? How about Oliver Cromwell and his attempts to establish a Protestant theocracy in England after his Roundheads overthrew -- and chopped the head off of -- the English king, Charles I. His genocidal activities against the Irish Catholics are still highly resented in the Irish Republic and among Irish descendants world wide.

Our best and last hope to prevent this in the US lies in organizations such as Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. I am proud to be a member of AU. Please consider joining us, so you can help us make our collective voices heard.

Remember: The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.

Not Too Late to Help Dennis Kucinich

Even though he's dropped out of the presidential race, Dennis Kucinich still has a lot to offer this country, but it'll be difficult for him to do anything if he's not reelected to Congress.

And that's why I am urging everyone to go to his website and shake loose a little cash so he can stay in the House of Representatives.

The Rethugs, smelling blood in the water after his poor showing in the presidential campaign, are pouring literally millions into a campaign to give him the boot and install a Koolaid-drinking lockstep-marching robotic moron in his congressional seat.

Let's not let that happen. We were with him in the presidential race; let's be with him now.

Thank you.

Kucinich Quits Quest for Presidency

It wasn't surprising that it happened, but it kind of took me off guard that it happened fairly early in the campaign. I thought that he would at least wait a couple of weeks, until after Super Tuesday, to do it.

But in the long run, it was probably smart to do it now. This way those of us who were going to vote for him in the primaries -- or in my case my party caucus -- can jump over to another candidate.

Now the only problem is which one. As I've said before, I will actively support ANY Democratic presidential candidate over any Rethug, since the Dem will be several orders of magnitude better than the Rethug when it comes to appointments to the Supreme Court.

Stay tuned.

Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 2865 2888 2906 2959 3006 3018 3025 3067 3087 3118 3132 3151 3166 3189 3210 3233 3245 3266 3299 3316 3337 3358 3387 3409 3444 3504 3519 3546 3577 3592 3611 3631 3683 3705 3725 3738 3760 3780 3795 3823 3830 3838 3845 3866 3875 3881 3886 3891 3896 3908 3921 3932

Total coalition forces dead: 307
Total Iraqi Dead: 700,000+ [yeah, I'm still keeping that number -- sorry PH]

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2326
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1787
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1729
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: 714
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 554.

It is still 358 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

The Biggest Threat

Ask the average member of the Moron-American voting bloc what the biggest threat facing the United States is and he'll probably mouth some Faux News/BFEE-induced nonsense about "Islamofascism" and the like.

He would be wrong. Very wrong.

The biggest threat facing our nation is not external. It is found in the bedrock christofascism found in so many Fundo Xian niches across the country. These people are serious -- and openly honest -- about their desire to turn this free country over to an Americanized version of Taliban rule in Afghanistan.

A case in point -- and a very scary one it is -- is the almost-unknown infiltration by these Radical Christianists into the US military.

It all started fairly innocuously. The US Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs had a showing of the Mel Gibson Christianist propaganda film, The Jesus Chainsaw Massacre (a/k/a The Passion of the Christ). But, not content just to show this execrable movie as part of their regular movie night experience, the Fundo Xians in charge of this shit browbeat each and every cadet into going to see it.

Naturally afterward, those already Fundo cadets were found to be calling their fellow cadets who were Jewish "Christ Killers", "fucking Jews", and worse. The brass at the academy did nothing to put a stop to this. In fact, the Xian cadets were aided and abetted in this Nazi-like behavior by their higher ups.

Unfortunately, this was not an isolated incident. It has spread throughout the military, with such formal organizations as the Officers' Christian Fellowship and the Christian Military Fellowship. Promotions and perks are often based on an individual's participation in these organizations.

Thank the gods for the timely appearance of Michael "Mikey" Weinstein. He's the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and there's a lengthy and enlightening interview with him on the Philadelphia Jewish Voice website that is well worth the time it takes to read it (that's where I stole the "Jesus Chainsaw Massacre" title above).

Excerpts:

. . . we are at war with a small subset of evangelical Christianity – about 12.6% of the American public, about 38 million Americans – the Premillenial, Dispensational, Reconstructionist Dominionist, Fundamentalist Evangelical Christians who believe they have an unlimited right to push their particular biblical worldview (the gospel of Jesus Christ) irrespective of time, place and manner, regulation by our Constitution of any other type of law. That is to say, if we were not talking about the freedom of religion, but we were talking about the freedom of speech, they would believe they had the right to scream “fire” in a crowded theater.
. . .
Now, I remind you, Hitler never had more than eight percent of the German citizenry in the Nazi party; I don’t think Stalin ever had more than 2.9 percent of his closest association. So, this is plenty, particularly when you are talking about a command and control structure like the U.S. military. The frightening prospect that our conventional and nuclear forces--technologically the most lethal organization ever created by humankind—was falling into the hands of a Christian Taliban.
. . .
My eldest son, Casey, graduated from the Air Force Academy in the class of 2004, as did his wife, Amanda, a Christian. They both experienced this, both of them did. My daughter-in-law was “asked” by the commanding general, the commandant of cadets at the Air Force Academy, to go out an essentially harvest non-Christian cadets and bring them to the New Life Church, where they had those shootings a couple weeks ago. Ted Haggard, the president of the National Association of Evangelicals, headed that organization until it came out that he had a homosexual liaison in Denver.
. . .
Whenever a virulent form of any religious faith --- in this case Christianity --- has engaged the machinery of the state --- and those are not my words, they are the words of our U.S. Supreme Court . . . where all the sticks and stones are that break our bones, the armed forces -- whenever that has happened, we have seen that train leave the station before over the last 2,000 years. It goes to a one-town Slaughterville, because we do not end up with little creeks, rivers creeks, ponds and lakes. We end up with oceans and oceans of blood, usually beginning with Jewish blood.
Now I can look on the calendar, I can see that it’s January 2008 and I can make a strong case that it is January 1937. It is happening over again. We are about a Tiger Woods’ two-inch putt away from a fundamentalist Christian theocracy in this country. It is starting with the completely controlling U.S. military.

Now that is some scary shit. Especially when these fuckers are working hand-in-hand with their identical-twin Fundo Xians in Blackwater.

So if you have a few bucks to donate to the most worthy of causes, go to Mikey's website and drop some cash on him. He has a big battle in front of him and he needs all the help we can provide.

O'Reilly? No, O'Wrongly

Last week Bill Orally made, on his nationally-shown Faux News infotainment show, an absolutely flabbergasting statement concerning homeless veterans sleeping under bridges:

They may be out there, but there’s not many of them out there. Okay? … If you know where there's a veteran sleeping under a bridge, you call me immediately, and we will make sure that man does not do it.

This is over the top, even for a dickwad bully who has made a history out of making outrageous -- and flat out wrong -- statements about pretty much everything.

If you get a chance, please drop by the website set up by the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America (IAVA), watch the video, and then send the open letter to Billo urging to set the record straight on homeless veterans.

It's going to be a lot of hard work for Billo to get all 200,000 (according to that bastion of America-hating terrorist-enabling Bush-hating Islamo-fascio-communism, the US Department of Veterans Affairs) homeless veterans out from under those bridges.

But if you look closely at his statement, he doesn't really say he's going to do anything to help those homeless veterans. He's just going to get them out from under those bridges. What they do next is up to them, but I'm sure Billo thinks that they can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, just the way he did.

After all, we all know about the desperate poverty that he was forced to grow up in, in that heated house in Levittown, with a full dinner table each night and the support of his extended family.

Maybe if Billo had to spend a few winter nights under one of those bridges, he'd have a little more compassion for the people who have to.

Yeah, like that's gonna happen.

Study: 935 False Statements Over Iraq

Right on the heels of that scintillating interchange with my new BBF who apparently has his head so far up his ass that he thinks clean air smells like shit, a new study came out that found that Baby Doc and his top minions made a total of 935 false statments about Iraq leading up to the illegal occupation.

In other words, as those of us out here in Left Blogistan have been saying for years, we were lied into the Iraq War.

The study was an extensive one, investigating public statements by the likes of "Colon" Powell, Kindasleazy Rice, Ari Fleischer (official "mouthpiece" of the BFEE in those days), Baby Doc himself, and especially Dickless Cheney. Including this classic from Crashcart's speech to the VFW convention in 2002:

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.

The plaintive whining of weak-minded Koolaid drinkers to the contrary, there simply were no longer enough WMDs to be a threat even to Gilligan's Island, let alone a huge nation halfway around the world.

It's especially interesting to see the study's criticism of the news media for their compliance with the BFEE in propagating The Big Lie. Yeah, that good old "liberal media" at work again.

Circular Firing Squad

No, it's not what you think. I know it's a phrase that's long been associated with Democratic internecine warfare during primary/caucus season. And true, there's been a lot of that with the latest Clinton-Obama quarreling spats, but that's not where we are going today.

No, instead we're going to take a dark safari over to Rightwing Hate Radio Land, and its apparent inability to get its shit together on a viable candidate.

Now even übermensch Michael Fucking Medved, a one-time liberal leopard who "got religion" and changed his spots, is taking potshots at Rightwing Hate Radio (which is ironic, to say the least, since he's one of the beloved poster boys for wingnut radio media). He evidently has had enough:

The big loser in South Carolina was, in fact, talk radio: a medium that has unmistakably collapsed in terms of impact, influence and credibility because of its hysterical and one-dimensional involvement in the GOP nomination fight.
For more than a month, the leading conservative talkers in the country have broadcast identical messages in an effort to demonize Mike Huckabee and John McCain. If you’ve tuned in at all to Rush, Sean, Savage, Glenn Beck, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager, and two dozen others you’ve heard a consistent drum beat of hostility toward Mac and Huck.
[…]
In other words, the talk radio jihad against Mac and Huck hasn’t destroyed or even visibly damaged those candidates. But it has damaged, and may help destroy, talk radio.

Jesus, I just fucking love it when they start eating their own. And I'm so glad to see yet another sign that the GOP is on the verge of imploding.

Nyuck nyuck nyuck.

Hookers for ... Ron Paul?!

Despite the "hook" (jeez, I loved doing that...) of the story of a political visit to one of Nevada's legal brothels, showing that the "girls" working there are supporting Ron Paul(!), the story itself is actually a very incisive analysis of what's gone so dreadfully wrong for the Rethug party in the Intermountain West. That's a geographical region that for a long time has been solidly Republican, and suddenly the Rethug party won't be able to count on that solid support this year.

Oh, and since these working girls are considered self-employed independent contractors, their support of Paul doesn't really come as a surprise. His stands on health care and bringing the troops home have a special resonance with these ladies.

Wow! A Hot Button Post

All of a sudden -- and out of the blue -- I got a big bunch of responses on last Friday's Friday by the Numbers post. (Probably it literally was "out of the blue" -- my friend bluegal's contribution citing OPOVet on the always worthy Crooks and Liars site--thanks BG!)

Including an apparently endless continuing series from my new BBF, one "pepsiholic" who is so new to Blogger that he doesn't have his own blog or a real profile.

But PH, as I call him, has been so entertaining that I've temporarily suspended my regular rules about not responding to anonymous posters and refusing to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed man.

Go ahead and check it out. It really is entertaining.

Update on the Cruise--Michelle Malkin Is Worried About Us

Just in case you were all feeling a little smug satisfaction that a bunch of liberals are going to be on the Air America cruise, take a look at what Malignant Malkin had to say about it on her blog. Little Michelle is concerned about us. She's afraid the boat will lean so far to the left it will capsize. Awwwww, isn't that just too cute? Too precious?

And be sure to read the enormously entertaining comments by her ... well, I was gonna say "dittoheads", but that belongs to The Bloviating Missouri Windbag. What would hers be? Mittenheads? Muttonheads?

Martin Luther King Day 2008

In April 1967 The Rev Dr Martin Luther King gave a speech at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City:

The truth of these words is beyond doubt, but the mission to which they call us is a most difficult one. Even when pressed by the demands of inner truth, men do not easily assume the task of opposing their government's policy, especially in time of war. Nor does the human spirit move without great difficulty against all the apathy of conformist thought within one's own bosom and in the surrounding world. Moreover, when the issues at hand seem as perplexed as they often do in the case of this dreadful conflict, we are always on the verge of being mesmerized by uncertainty; but we must move on.

You can read the full text of the speech -- and listen to an audio of it -- on the American Rhetoric website.

Dr King was speaking of Vietnam and the necessity for us to resist our government's excursion into that nation, but his words still ring true when you think of Iraq.

We could do a lot worse on this national holiday dedicated to Dr King than to read his words, listen to his speech, and take them to heart.