Weekly Bush Twins in Uniform Watch

It has now been 1416 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.

Little Jenna has now 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. Not to be denied, Harry turned around and went to Afghanistan on a "stealth" assignment for three months, until Matt "The Traitor" Drudge outed him for no good reason except his own self-aggrandizement.

So will the Bush Twins follow Harry's 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 -- or won't -- join the service, the least they could do would be to get themselves impregnated with a couple of blastocytes that would otherwise go down the sewer pipe.

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

Saturday Song Parody

Meme for Maverick
(Theme from Maverick television series*, © 2008)

Who is that bumblin' old man there?
"Maverick" is his claim.
It's all made up from thin air,
Lies are his companions,
Media is to blame.
They always give him a free pass,
"Maverick" is their frame.
They all line up to kiss his ass,
Givin' up their ethics,
Addin' to his fame.

McCain thinks war is swell,
He'll march us straight to hell.
Cash from the lobbys what he likes to find.
Baghdad to old Tehran,
He wants to drop The Bomb.
John McCain is a legend in his mind.

[For my younger readers: Maverick was a television show from the late 1950s; you can read the normal lyrics and listen to the music here]

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 3974 3987 3992 4004 4032

Total coalition forces dead: 309
Total Iraqi Dead: 700,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2396
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1857
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1804
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: 788
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 624

It is still 288 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Baby Doc Quote of the Week

"They said, 'You know, this issue doesn't seem to resignate with the people.' And I said, 'You know something? Whether it resignates or not doesn't matter to me, because I stand for doing what's the right thing, and what the right thing is hearing the voices of people who work.'"

--Portland OR, October 31, 2000

Baby Doc's Numbers at New Low

An AP-Ipsos poll released to day show new lows in the approval rating for Der Monkey Fuehrer.

Especially within his own party. Only 60% of Rethugs approve of his overall job, and only 54% approve of the way he's handling the economy.

Of course the question remains as to what the fuck is wrong with those koolaid-drinking knuckle-dragging Moron-American-voting-bloc Rethugs who still, by a slim majority, approve of what he is doing.

Nevertheless, looking at the big picture: Neener neener!

VA Drags its Heels Over Voter Registration

The nation's VA hospitals are full of disabled veterans, naturally, and many of those vets are disabled to the point where getting out to register to vote is an almost unbearable burden. So the natural solution would be for the VA -- like many other government agencies operating under the 1993 Voter Registration Act-- to take on the responsibility to get those vets registered and on the permanent vote-by-mail lists that most states offer.

Makes sense, doesn't it?

Well, not so fast. The VA itself, in the person of its new director, James Peake, is claiming that this would "divert substantial resources from our primary mission".

Substantial resources??? That may sound like reality to someone from, say, Mars, but registering to vote is actually one of the easiest interactions that take place between citizens and their government.

Here are those resource-hogging steps to get registered to vote:

1. Fill out a postcard-sized card.
2. Send it in.

And that's it. So why is the VA dragging its feet over this very simple process that would "divert substantial resources" away from veterans health care? Could it be that the BFEE is trying to suppress voting by hospitalized veterans because it's afraid that they will not vote for Grampaw McCain?

I'm just asking.

McCain's Medical Records

Much is being made over the fact that Grampaw McCain keeps putting off the release of his medical records (now the date has been moved to sometime in May), so much in fact that it's starting to raise questions.

For example, it's no secret that McCain has had two serious bouts with malignant melanoma, and it appears that he is having more than his share of "senior moments" lately.

As a melanoma survivor -- so far -- myself, I can't imagine it not being an issue if I were running for the presidency, but McCain brushes off any questions about it with a generic "my health is great" answer. And while I'm a bit younger than McCain, I still experience a few senior moments myself; however, if I were having as many as he seems to, I'd personally be more than a little concerned by their frequency. As should the American people, if I were running for president.

These are normal questions that need to be asked before we vote for the next president of the United States, but so far we aren't getting any answers.

I have a couple of separate but equal theories about Grampaw's unwillingness to disclose his medical records:

1. He really does have a clean bill of health, but he's waiting until the Democratic nominee (i.e., Barack Obama) starts making a case about the apparent secrecy of his medical records, at which point he will make a big show of providing them. This will result in any further attempts on the part of the Democrats to bring up any health issues being dismissed as mere ageism, or mean-spirited low-class below-the-belt attacks on a poor old man.
   Or...


2. He really does not have a clean bill of health, but since he's now only the presumptive nominee, he's waiting until after the convention blesses him and his carefully-hand-picked and overwhelmingly-qualified VP (no, I don't know who that could be, but I do notice that the Mittens Boy seems to be do a lot of hanging around...), at which time the Rethugs will breathe a collective sigh of relief, the way they did when St Ronald picked Bush 41 way back in 1980 -- in retrospect, I think that a number of Gooper insiders knew even back then that Ronnie Raygun was in the beginning stages of alzheimers. Then McCain will dramatically reveal the awful truth, whatever it happens to be, and according to plan he will win the election with a sympathy vote and subsequently resign for "health reasons" some time in the new year. After all, he has already mentioned that he probably won't run for a second term -- is that a subtle hint?

Okay there are my theories. Could be either, a mixture of both, or neither. Or something else entirely.

BTW, remember when the wingnuttery tried to make a big fucking deal -- aided and abetted by the MSM/SCLM -- about John Kerry "refusing" to release his medical records in 2004? Where are they now, when their own boy is apparently trying to pull the same bullshit?

Yeah, that's what I thought: This is "different"...

Democratic Wimps

I've been out of touch with a lot of the news for the last week, what with all that's happened, but I see in today's NY Times that Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) has apologized to John McCain for some off-the-cuff remarks that Rockefeller made about his fellow senator:

In an interview in his home state, West Virginia, on Monday, Mr. Rockefeller, a Democrat, told The Charleston Gazette that Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, could not relate to the everyday concerns of people on issues like health care.
According to the article, Mr. Rockefeller said: “McCain was a fighter pilot, who dropped laser-guided missiles from 35,000 feet. He was long gone when they hit. What happened when they get to the ground? He doesn’t know. You have to care about the lives of people. McCain never gets into those issues.”
On Tuesday, the McCain campaign demanded an apology, not just from Senator Rockefeller, but also from Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, because he has received the West Virginian’s endorsement.
[ . . . ]
The Obama campaign also issued a statement: “Senator Obama has a deep respect for Senator McCain’s service to this country and he does not agree with what Senator Rockefeller said.”

Well, isn't that just special. So what in Rockefeller's original statement was incorrect? What did he get wrong? What wasn't true?

Answer: Nothing. So why did Rockefeller feel the need to apologize for it?

That's one of the problems with the Democrats. They refuse to develop that killer instinct, that go-for-the-jugular technique of infighting that the Rethugs have perfected over the years. The Rethugs don't bring a knife to a gunfight, as the Swiftboating of John Kerry four years ago so amply demonstrated.

McCain is running a sub rosa campaign based on his Vietnam service, such as it was ("I don't like to talk about it, but did I mention that I was a POW?"), and it ought to be fair game to ask some questions about it, to criticize it, to wonder exactly what it is about it that made Grampaw Mac so ready to be president, but the wimpy Dems won't do it. The Rethugs obviously wouldn't have been so mealy-mouthed about it -- if the shoe were on the other foot, they would have told the "offended" to go piss up a rope.

Note to the Dems: This is not the way to win an election.

Good News and Bad News

Okay, here I am. The good news is that the cost of repair for the Seattle breakdown was "only" $200. It turned out that it wasn't the clutch itself, but the so-called "slave cylinder". I was expecting a bill in the range of a thousand bucks, so that was a huge relief.

Bad news: The hard drive is still fried. My friend the computer geek suggested that I freeze it for several hours.

Yeah, right. And tomorrow I'm going to go after Bigfoot, go for a ride on a flying saucer, and join Scientology.

Well, it turns out that freezing a recalcitrant hard drive is one of those time-honored "quick fixes" that actually works a lot of the time. And I thought he was sending me on a high-tech snipe hunt. So I tried it, wrapped the drive inside a sealed bag to keep out condensation, and stuck it in the freezer for about six hours.

Nothing.

But that's about what I expected, so I didn't lose anything except time. The next step, I guess, is to send it off to one of the repair shops to see if they can do anything with it. I did some research on the Internets and found a place that has a good reputation and doesn't charge the traditional arm and a leg.

The price they quoted me?

$200(!)

Something very odd about those bookends, but I guess we can chalk that up to Synchronicity...

Anyway, I'll be back tomorrow with my usual observations, declarations, subversive humor, left-wing rants and accusatory finger-pointing.

The Week from Hell

I haven't been around lately, after my "bad hair day". That's because it turned into something much worse.

My main hard drive somehow got fried. Bad enough in itself, but after the days-long hassle of buying and installing a new hard drive, reinstalling Windows XP Pro, reinstalling all of my software and hassling for hours with finding, downloading and installing new drivers for my peripherals, I discovered that my backup software had some kind of a glitch and hadn't made backups for more than two months.

Two months! And then I found that not all of the items that I'd identified as wanting to be backed up actually got backed up. Like my login and password text document, a ton of downloaded install files, the only draft of my new book, the electronic copy of my old book, etc etc etc.

I've finally cobbled things together enough that I am functional (barely). I've contacted many of the vendors to see about replacements for the software, but you can imagine how that is going.

In the meantime, I've decided to bite the bullet and see if I can get the local geek shop to try to recover the data from the fried hard drive. It's going to cost -- and cost a lot -- but I think it will be worth it.

Oh, and the icing on the cake? Today She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed went up to Seattle to visit with our friend Linda (I'm thinking she actually made up an excuse to get out of the house and out of town and not have to put up with all of my ranting and raving and pissing and moaning), and no sooner does she get there but ... the clutch goes out in her car.

I can't imagine what's going to happen next.

My posts may be a little sparse this week. I still have a lot to do to get my PC back into shape, plus I may have to drive to Seattle tomorrow to deal with the repair shop and bring her home. And then take her back up there later in the week, when the car is repaired.

Stay tuned.

Bad Voodoo's War

I've read a lot of good press about this documentary, and I've set the DVR to record it tonight. It's on PBS's Frontline at 10:00 (on the left coast). Here's a little preview:

I hope it's as good as it's made out to be. More tomorrow -- I've had a "bad hair day" today.

McCain's Own Congressman a Closet Dominionist?

Another interesting story that I stumbled upon is this one that asks that very question about McCain's representative in congress and his apparent adherence to the dangerous religio-political philosophy of Dominionism.

Trent Franks, the congressman in question, recently gave a "speech" wherein he conflated the Statue of Liberty with the Xian cross, called the current War on Terra^tm a crusade, and said that all of us out here in the Reality-Based Community are worse -- worse! -- than those "Islamofascists" who are trying to destroy the country from outside, because, as he puts it, it's the water on the inside that sinks the boat.

Okay, you're saying, that's par for the course. He can pretty much say anything he wants, tossing out red meat to his Christianist base in a political stump speech.

Uh-huh. The only problem with that reasoning is this: It wasn't a political stump speech. It was a sermon delivered from the pulpit of McCain's own church!

Politicians need to stay away from religion, and vice versa. When church and state become entwined, you end up with bad government and bad theology.

BTW, McCain ought to be called to answer for this ("Do you agree with him? Or do you denounce, reject, condemn, abhor, disdain, etc etc him?") as well as for his devotion to those frothing-at-the-mouth clinically-insane wingnut preachers he's actively courted the support of, people of the ilk of Rod Parsley and John Hagee (who, for example, stated on numerous occasions that the Catholic Church was a "whore", and worse). But he won't be, and that's because the MSM/SCLM are so fucking in love with the bastard that they can't get off their knees long enough to identify a news story if it came up and kicked them in ass. They didn't have any problem smearing Obama with his "guilt by association" with his own pastor, but god forbid they should show any hint of balanced reporting when it comes to their boy McCain.

After all, he might not invite them to any more barbecues...

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1402 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.

Little Jenna has now 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. Not to be denied, Harry turned around and went to Afghanistan on a "stealth" assignment for three months, until Matt "The Traitor" Drudge outed him for no good reason except his own self-aggrandizement.

So will the Bush Twins follow Harry's 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 -- or won't -- join the service, the least they could do would be to get themselves impregnated with a couple of blastocytes that would otherwise go down the sewer pipe.

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

Saturday Song Parody

Iraq Isn't All That You Want

(to the tune of You Can't Always Get
What You Want by The Rolling Stones)
©2005

I saw him at the Yoo-nited Nations,
Fake evidence in his hand,
We all knew it was just a big deception,
Powell sent to lie by The Man.

No, Iraq isn't all that you want.
Iraq isn't all that you want.
Iraq isn't all that you want.
But if you invade anyway
You just might say,
I want Iran.

Oh yeah, hey hey hey, oh...

Can't find no weapons of mass destruction,
It turned out to be just a ruse.
For Halliburton oil production,
With Crashcart Dick Cheney turning the greedy screws.
Sing it to me now...

Iraq isn't all that you want.
Iraq isn't all that you want.
Iraq isn't all that you want.
But when you invade anyway
Then you might say,
We want Iran.

I went down to to the Baghdad drugstore,
Thought there was anthrax in vials.
I was standing in line with Mr. Saddam,
And man he looked pretty wild.
We decided we would both get loaded,
Some yellowcake I thought he said.
I sang my song to Mister Saddam,
Yeah, and he said one word to me, and that was "dead".

Iraq isn't all that you want.
Iraq isn't all that you want.
Iraq isn't all that you want.
After you invade anyway
Then you just might say,
We want Iran.

I saw Bush today at the reception,
Behind him I saw a bleeding man.
He was practiced in the art of deception,
You could tell by his bloodstained hands.

Iraq isn't all that he wants.
Iraq isn't all that he wants.
Iraq isn't all that he wants.
Iraq isn't all that he wants.
But he invaded anyway,
And now he'll say
We'll take Iran.

Vietnam Veterans Against McCain

The name sounded good, so I checked out the website. Turns out that it's not such a great idea after all -- it was created and organized by a rightwing dickwad and professional MIA "activist" named Ted Sampley.

And Ted Sampley, for those who don't recall, was also an organizer of a similar group called Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry back in 2004, which melded in with the Swift Boat Liars for Bush, and his tactics haven't changed much over the years. He's still issuing his scurrilous broadsides of lies, innuendo and outright slander against those he sees as his enemies. And that list would include, it would appear, pretty much everyone who does not agree with him (I fully expect that I'll show up on it eventually). He also runs a putative veterans website called The US Veteran Dispatch, which is a Pravda-like propaganda display for his toxic lies and inflamed hatred.

One of his most egregious claims about John McCain: That he is a "Manchurian Candidate" who was brainwashed by Soviet operatives in Hanoi and has been a mole climbing the rungs of the American government ever since his return. (I guess all we're waiting for is Angela Lansbury to turn over that queen of diamonds...)

Sampley says that he's a retired Green Beret (even his own bio states that he spent only ten years in the service, with just a few of them as an actual Special Forces member), whose main claim to fame up until 2004 was to pass himself off as a POW-MIA "activist" -- in reality it appears that he was nothing more than a manipulative greedy gadfly engaged in a perniciously dishonest campaign to extract money out of the pockets of both MIA families and the general public, in order to "learn the truth" about the missing Americans from the Vietnam War.

For an incisive look at Sampley's activities, as well as a ton of other information on the whole American POW-MIA issue, check out the worthy MIA Facts site, set up and run by Vietnam veteran Col. Joe Schlatter, who for nine years was assigned to various positions in the DOD POW-MIA office, including a two-year stint as Deputy Director.

Especially see his analysis and refutation of Sampley's outlandishly moronic claim of McCain as a Manchurian Candidate.

America's veterans have enough problems with Rethugs in general, and John McCain in particular, without having to rely on viciously slavering slander-pigs like Ted Sampley and his ilk. Don't fall for it, don't join him, don't send him money -- instead put all your efforts into the election of the Democratic candidate (i.e., Barack Obama) this November.

BTW, Sampley hates Obama as much as he hates McCain, so watch for him to go for his jugular as well, once Obama seals up the nomination.

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 3974 3987 3992 4004

Total coalition forces dead: 309
Total Iraqi Dead: 700,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2382
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1843
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1788
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: 774
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 610.

It is still 302 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

How's that Surge Workin' Out for Ya, Grampaw?

Just in time for Grampaw McCain's triumphant return from the Middle East, where he managed to mangle to unrecognizability anyone's understanding of what is going on in Iraq, we get the news that the seven-month-long cease fire called by Moqtada Al Sadr is apparently now over.

Just for those of you who haven't been following along with the rest of us, it was that cease fire and not the so-called surge that was responsible for an apparent reduction in casualties on all sides over the last half a year.

Now that cease fire has been broken by US-directed raids against Al Sadr's Mahdi Army in Baghdad and Basra. The much-lauded and highly exaggerated "safe" Green Zone has come under sustained rocket and mortar attacks, to the point now where US personnel have been warned to stay indoors and refrain from eating together in mess halls.

Yeah, that surge sure worked well, didn't it? And now that the raids against the Shi'a are in full swing, a backlash is occurring among the youngest -- and the poorest -- Iraqis, who will flood into the ranks of the anti-US forces in Iraq.

Der Monkey Fuehrer is creating new enemies daily, and there's absolutely no indication -- or hope -- that a President McCain will do anything to alleviate that movement. If anything, The Man of the 100 Years will exacerbate it.

Remember, there wasn't an Al Qaeda presence in Iraq in 2003. But there is now.

Baby Doc Quote of the Week

"There's only one person who hugs the mothers and widows, the wives and the kids upon the death of their loved one. Others hug but having committed the troops, I've got an additional responsibility to hug and that's me and I know what that's like"

-- Dec 11, 2002

[This from the same prezdint who refused to meet with Cindy Sheehan, despite the fact that she camped out for months in a ditch near Der Monkey Fuehrer's "ranch" in Texas]

Fight McCain, Not Each Other

Right on the heels of my Carville post this morning, I received an email from Democracy for America asking me to sign an open letter to both candidates demanding that they keep focused on the November election:

We have an historic nomination battle, driving record Democratic turn-out and commanding the nation's attention. But, the Democratic race for President has lost its focus. We have John McCain to beat in November, instead we fight each other.
America needs to know our nominee will fight global warming with new jobs, technologies, and investment. Our nominee will expand health coverage to 10 million kids immediately, allow lifesaving research on stem cells, and work toward health care for all by the end of a first term. We will ban torture, restore habeas corpus, and build renewed respect for America around the world. A Democratic President will end the war in Iraq and bring our brave men and women home.
Let voters choose our nominee based on the best we have to offer, not the worst we can imagine. Join me in demanding Senators Clinton and Obama fight McCain, not each other.

As the email says, join me in demanding the candidates fight Grampaw McCain, and not each other!

The Judas Factor?

It was with an oddly oxymoronic combination of simultaneous snicker and cringe when I saw that James Carville (you know, Mr Mary Matalin, Mr James "I'm-Not-a-Liberal-But-I-Play-One-on-TV" Carville, Mr "Leniency-for-Scooter-Libby" Carville) lambasted New Mexico governor Bill Richardson as a "Judas" for having the temerity, the gall, to come out in support of Barack Obama.

I can understand an unconsidered and unfortunate outburst in a fit of pique (not surprisingly, I am not above that myself...), but when Carville refused to "take it back", and said he was glad he said it, it started me thinking about the Clinton Camp.

The true-believers obviously think that she is entitled to be president, to the point where they are willing to say anything, do anything, to ensure her victory over Obama, and god help those in the inner circle who are willing to step outside and do something that is against the creed.

It reminds me of the Scientologists and other closed-cult religions when someone strays from the True Path -- the True Believers they left behind are under a non-negotiable obligation to shun them.

So ... is the Church of Hillary a cult? Is that why Carville used "The J Word" (on Easter Sunday, no less)? To start the shunning of Richardson, and send a message to the other True Believers in the Clinton Camp that they'd better not be seen to be wavering in their blind obedience and unquestioning loyalty?

I'm just asking.

What is Hillary Clinton Really Up To?

Hillary Clinton's actions over the last couple of weeks bode ill for the success of the Democratic Party in this fall's presidential election. She seems to be more concerned with elevating John Grampaw McCain over Barack Obama than she is with electing her own party's candidate, handing the Rethugs enough ammunition to cut Obama off at the knees in the general election.

So what's up with that? Well, here's my take on it. She can see the handwriting on the wall that she's not going to be the Democratic standard bearer this year, so she is positioning herself for a run in 2012. The only way she can successfully mount a campaign that year is if the Rethugs own the White House again; if Obama beats McCain -- which he would under ordinary circumstances -- he would be the repeat candidate in 2012 and Hillary would have to wait all the way until 2016 to run. Better to have him lose and clear the decks for her victory four years later.

In 2016 she would be 69 years old, which is really too old to be running for president, as evidenced by the doddering confusion exhibited by Grampaw McCain ("Al Qaeda is being trained in Iran", blithely dismissed as a "senior moment" by McCain's press spokesman, Britt Hume of Faux News -- as if that was going to make us feel any better about it...).

If we have yet another four years of the BFEE, which we would have in spades with a McCain presidency, she figures that at long last the American people would have enough of Rethug rule and she will be able to ride in on a white horse and deliver us from evil.

It's hard to believe that someone would be this amorally cynical, this politically calculating, but it's one theory that makes sense out of her actions.

4000

It happened yesterday -- ironically, on Easter Sunday -- that the illegal Iraq Occupation claimed its 4000th American victim.

It's now been five long years and 4000 American deaths too many. And 97% of the dead Americans were murdered after Prezdint Codpiece strutted around that carrier deck to celebrate "Mission Accomplished".

It's way beyond time for it to end.

And the only way I can see out of it is to vote Democratic this fall. Neither Obama nor Clinton seems willing to bring the troops home as quickly as I would like, but both of them would bring them home faster than McCain.

Who won't bring them home at all, not as long as he wants to stay for a hundred years.

Or a thousand years.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1395 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.

Little Jenna has now 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. Not to be denied, Harry turned around and went to Afghanistan on a "stealth" assignment for three months, until Matt "The Traitor" Drudge outed him for no good reason except his own self-aggrandizement.

So will the Bush Twins follow Harry's 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 -- or won't -- join the service, the least they could do would be to get themselves impregnated with a couple of blastocytes that would otherwise go down the sewer pipe.

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

Easter Sunday

Given that I'm not what you could call a religious person, the Holy Holidays tend to pass me by without interruption to my real life. But, now that it is Easter Sunday, and after all the tempest-in-a-teapot flap over what Barack Obama's homeboy preacher had to say about America, I think it would be instructive to read a few quotations:

· When we are in our battle against the whole nation of the U.S. -- if you are truly in love with this nation, and if you love this nation more than anyone else, this nation will come into God's possession, and Satan will have nothing to do with it. ... With that as the bullet, we can smash the whole world.
· Individualism is what God hates most, and Satan likes best.
· God likes the idea of a monarchy, because it removes the cycles of election after election which can obscure the focus and direction of the nation.
· The whole world is in my hand, and I will conquer and subjugate the whole world.
· The time will come when, without my seeking it, that my words must serve as law.
· We will be able to amend laws, articles of constitution, if we wish to do so.
· Telling a lie becomes a sin if you tell it to take advantage of a person, but if you tell a lie to do a good thing ... that is not a sin ... Even God tells lies very often.
· I have met many famous, so-called famous, Senators and Congressmen; but to my eyes they are nothing. They are weak and helpless. We will win the battle. This is our dream, our project. But shut your mouth tight.
· America may boast of its virtues to the world, but look, democracy is now reaching the end of its rope. People thought democracy is the final anchor of the free world, but it is reaching its end. So what is left? America has been telling the weaker nations that they have to accept democracy, forcing them to receive so-called democracy. But look at America. It is rotten, top to bottom. There is nothing to be proud of, not their way of walking or talking or thinking.
· When you hear me putting America down, your ears are not pleased. But if we continue living in this hub of the satanic world, this New York-DC area, we are in the darkness.

Okay, what notable religious figure said all these hateful things about America? No, it was not Reverend Wright. How about Jesse Jackson? The Pope?

Nope. Try again.

Never mind, I'll tell you. It was none other than religious cult leader and Rethug money man Sun Myung Moon.

And why, pray tell, does the MSM/SCLM fail to flail against these traitorous pronouncements, when they had no problem elevating Rev Wright's story right up there with disappearing white girls and the Britney-KFed squabble?

See the full story, The Republican Right's Moonie Problem, over at Fire Dog Lake. Like most people, I've been aware for years of this cult, but in the past I assumed that it was some kind of narrow-niche small-potatoes operation, like the Hare Krishnas and the like. This is some pretty eerie and frightening shit, and it ought to make all of us redouble our efforts to elect a full slate of Democrats this fall, and get this scary motherfucker out of OUR politics.

Saturday Song Parody

Death to the World
(to the tune of "Joy to the World"
by Three Dog Night)
© 2008

John McCain is full of bullshit
Not a good friend of mine
You can’t believe a single word he says
He a-drank the kool-aid like wine
And the Rethugs have some mighty fine wine

Singin'...
Death to the world
All the boys and girls
Death to the fishes in the deep blue sea
Death to you and me

He wants to be the king of the world
Tell you what he'd do
He'd bomb Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan
And he'd torture you.

Sing it now...
Death to the world
All the boys and girls
Death to the fishes in the deep blue sea
Death to you and me

You know he loves the lobbys
Loves to have his funds
He's a death-dealin' flyer and a sewer rider
On the Straight Talkin' Express bus
I said on the Straight Talkin' Express bus

Death to the world
All the boys and girls
Death to the fishes in the deep blue sea
Death to you and me

Privacy? What Privacy?

When I first learned about the unauthorized access to Barack Obama's passport files, I was tempted to dismiss it as a minor infraction by curious and bored government clerks. You know, part of the "shit happens" excuse.

But then I learned not only that it happened on three different occasions, but it was all done by contract employees of a unidentified company which was hired to do data entry.

I spent 31 years in the employ of state government, and at first I felt that I could understand -- and dismiss -- the invasion of privacy inherent in this action. But the more I learned, the more concerned I became. Who exactly were these "private contractors" and what was the name of the company they worked for? It wouldn't surprise me to learn that this company is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Halliburton or Blackwater or some other wingnut "contracting" company.

But the bigger question, and one that no one seems to be asking, let alone answering, is this: Were these contractors able not only to view Obama's passport records, but were they able to make changes?

Given that the Rethugs are not above such dirty tricks campaigning, it's a question that needs to be answered.

BTW, this is yet another example of the many detrimental things that can happen when government contracts out to private enterprise jobs that should be done -- ought to be done, must be done -- by government employees who, in my experience, are dedicated professionals who take pride in their work. Regardless of what the neocon fascist anti-government flacks in the wingnuttery try to tell you.

So the next time you fill out a government form, for anything from applying for unemployment insurance, a passport or Social Security, are you going to feel safe? Are you going to feel that your privacy is as sacrosanct as you'd like it to be?

I didn't think so.

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 3974 3987 3992

Total coalition forces dead: 308
Total Iraqi Dead: 700,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2375
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1836
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1781
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: 764
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 603.

It is still 309 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Baby Doc Quote of the Week

"For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three nonfatal shootings. And folks, this is unacceptable in America. It's just unacceptable. And we're going to do something about it."

--May 14, 2001

The Fifth Anniversary

Today marks the fifth anniversary of the illegal war -- followed by the illegal occupation -- of Iraq.

In that time we've lost 3992 American lives to a war that should never have been fought. It was the wrong war against the wrong enemy, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

All for a fucking business deal over oil.

I don't much feel like being funny today. I feel like being pissed off.

Which I am.

McCain Is an Idiot

I know, I can hear the "duh!" all the way through the Internets. But something happened today that goes beyond his normal idiocy. Speaking in Jordan, next to ex-Dem turncoat Joementum Lieberman, McCain made the astonishing statement that Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq had been slipping across the border into Iran for training and then slipping back to prey on Americans.

Good theory. Just one problem. Al Qaeda is Sunni and Iran is Shia. There probably doesn't seem like there's much of a difference to Grampaw "I Hate Gooks" McCain, but when even someone like Lieberman has to step in and correct you, then there's something missing in the old gray matter.

And McCain, let me remind you, is daring to run on his "experience" in international affairs and his abilities in the international arena.

As Olbermann said tonight, he thinks we'll be in Iraq for 100 years because that's how long it will take him to get it straight.

McCain: "I Hated the Gooks"

This is one you won't find anywhere in the MSM/SCLM -- see for example, this Google News search for "McCain 'I hated the gooks'", in which you will see, as of this morning, exactly zero news stories.

But it's pretty clear that Grampaw McCain actually said it on board the old Straight Talk Express to a bunch of, of all things, news reporters:

I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.

Think about that for a while. Think about what that term "gook" really is. (In case you're not up on your slang, gook is a derogatory term applied to all Asians that is as offensive to them as the N-word is to African Americans -- see John McCain's racist remark very troubling by Katie Hong for a typical reaction.)

At the very least, this demonstrates a profound cultural insensitivity on the part of the man who would be leader of the free world that is more than troubling. Oh yeah, he tried to gloss over the whole thing by saying he was talking only about his captors/jailers, but that doesn't really make it any better. In fact, it makes it worse because it shows that he is woefully lacking in the kind of common sense that we ought to expect from our president.

But even more troubling is the fact that it was completely ignored by the media, including all of the "news" reporters on the bus. Imagine if you will that Hillary Clinton had said, "I hated the [N-word]."

That would be front page, top of the hour headline news around the planet, for days and days and days, and the Clinton camp would be on 24-hour lockdown trying to fend off the attacks that would be hurled her way from every corner.

So why is Grampaw McCain getting a free pass?

Stop the Fox Attacks

Over at Fox Attacks, there's another "Fox Attacks Obama" video that is worth watching:

And after you watch it, please sign the petition to the MSM/SCLM honchos that we've had enough of their crap.

In the meantime, I am going to boycott all Faux News sponsors -- here's a page that lists a number of them (it dates from late 2007 and concerns Fox's exclusion of Ron Paul from their "debate", so I'm not at all certain that it's up to date).

Rupert Murdoch's bottom line is money, so let's hit him where it will hurt the most.

Bush "Envious" of the Troops in this "Romantic" War

Just when you thought you've heard it all... Last week Der Monkey Fuehrer made one of the most startling statements -- amid a veritible plethora of startling statements we've gotten out of him over the years -- about the nature of the war in Afghanistan:

I must say, I’m a little envious ... If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed ... It must be exciting for you … in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger...

Yeah, that's some pretty big talk for someone who, when he had the opportunity himself during the Vietnam years when he was, you know, "younger" and "not employed", did the classic duck and cover and ran into the safety of the National Guard.

Which he ended up deserting when that got to be hard work, i.e., when they asked him to take a drug test.

So, as a Vietnam veteran myself, I look more than a little askance at his whiny-assed "envy" at the "romantic" notion of multiple deployments to the front lines of the endless War on Terra^tm, the very real possibility of death or severe and permanent disability, and a leaden reaction from a "grateful" nation that doesn't even have a clue as to how many American deaths there have been.

Maybe if our shitweasel-in-chief had actually gone to Vietnam instead of getting his ideas about war from Hollywood movies, he might have a few different notions about how fucking "romantic" war is.

And maybe one of these guys from Midland TX might still be alive instead of him.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1388 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.

Little Jenna has now 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. Not to be denied, Harry turned around and went to Afghanistan on a "stealth" assignment for three months, until Matt "The Traitor" Drudge outed him for no good reason except his own self-aggrandizement.

So will the Bush Twins follow Harry's 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 -- or won't -- join the service, the least they could do would be to get themselves impregnated with a couple of blastocytes that would otherwise go down the sewer pipe.

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

Saturday Song Parody

Dubya B. Goode
(to the tune of Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry)
© 2005

Way down in Midland Texas with the stinky smells,
That came from all the pumps on daddy's oil wells,
There stood a big mansion made of french-milled wood,
Where lived a little retard name of Dubya B. Goode.
He never ever learned to read or think so well,
But he could take the country on a trip to hell.

Go, Dubya, go.
Go, Dubya, go.
Go go,
Dubya B. Goode.

He used to drink his whiskey from a paper sack,
And he used to snort his coke from a mirror back.
He didn't have enough sense to go and sit in the shade,
He was spendin' all the money that his daddy made.
He deserted the National Guard,
I guess he found that the guardin's too hard.

Go, Dubya, go.
Go, Dubya, go.
Go go,
Dubya B. Goode.

His mama hoped like daddy he would be a man,
That he would be president of the whole damn land.
She got her wish and I guess we found,
Even a president can be a big assclown.
Now he says presidentin's hard work,
We know Dubya B. Goode's a jerk.

Go, Dubya, go.
Go, Dubya, go.
Go go,
Dubya B. Goode.

Swift Kids Attack Hillary

Watch this. It's terrific.

Don't Think About a Black Man

Sometimes ya just gotta let the YouTube speak for itself:

A Modest Proposal

Given that Grampaw McCain has the appearance of not being sufficiently neocon-fascist enough for the quasi-pseudo-intelligentsia of the Rethug camp, and given that Hillary Clinton seems more intent on praising McCain at the expense of tearing down her own opponent on the Democratic side, allow me to make a modest proposal:

McCain and Clinton will each secede from their respective party affiliations and form the new Republicrat Party, wherein all American greedy corporatists, militant warmongers, military-industrial-complex acolytes and fence-straddling neo-Mugwumps can find a home.

This will free up the political landscape for the rest of us, who can get down to the serious business of electing Barack Obama as the next president of the United States.

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 3974 3987

Total coalition forces dead: 308
Total Iraqi Dead: 700,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2368
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1829
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1774
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: 757
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 596.

It is still 316 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Obama Gets Support of Military Brass

Yesterday in a slap to the face of Rethug nominee John I-Sold-My-Soul-to-the-BFEE McCain, Barack Obama picked up the endorsement and support of no fewer than ten retired generals and admirals:

"Senator Obama has a profound, even scholarly knowledge of our Constitution and he has the deepest respect for the rule of law. As a career naval officer, I trust his judgment, his temperament, and his ability to analyze complex international situations and relationships and to make military decisions that are in the best long term interests of the United States," said Admiral (Ret.) Don Guter (USN). "It will take the powerful leadership of Senator Obama to forge the consensus we need to right our ship of state, restore our honorable place in the world, and secure the safety of our nation."

So how's that whole "I've got the military behind me" idea of yours working out for you, Grampaw Mac? Could it be that these guys, more than anyone else in the military-industrial complex, know where you are coming from and they just don't want another 100 years of war in Iraq? And you, Hillary, how're you coming with those "it's three AM" phone calls of yours? These are the guys who would be listening in on that DOD party line when you picked up the phone. Do they know something that you don't know?

McCain's Voting Record on Troops and Veterans

Over at The Daily Kos, there's an extensive list of John McCain's voting record when it comes to congressional bills that affect America's troops and veterans.

Included in that list you'll find these gems:

1. August 2001 -- McCain votes against increasing the amount of cash available for veterans' medical care
2. March 2004 -- McCain votes against creating a reserve fund for veterans' medical care
3. March 2006 -- McCain votes against increasing veterans' medical services funding
4. May 2006 -- McCain votes against additional funding to the VA for health care facilities
5. September 2007 -- McCain votes against the Webb Amendment, which would have provided for adequate periods of rest between deployments to Iraq

There are many other examples -- I just picked out some of the juiciest.

Note that these are his actual votes. Talk's cheap, and Grampaw can say anything he wants to try to seduce America's veterans into voting for him in November, but it's going to be pretty hard for him to run away from his record.

And this is why Farnsworth always says, "a veteran voting for John McCain is like a chicken voting for Colonel Sanders."

The Way It's Supposed to Work

Eliot Spitzer, the "untouchable" governor of New York, has resigned over the fallout from questionably-motivated Hookergate investigation.

Okay, regardless of the fact that Spitzer was obviously singled out for investigation because of the many enemies he'd managed to make, both during his term as New York's attorney general and as a sworn enemy of Wall Street corporatist corruption, regardless of the fact that those "questionable" withdrawals from his bank accounts wouldn't have gotten a second look if he were, say, Merrill-Lynch honcho and huge Rethug cash donor John Thain, and regardless of the fact that the "Federal Case" against him rests on an archaic -- some would say sophistic -- interpretation of the racially-based 1910 Mann Act, the fact remains, bottom line, that Spitzer, the erstwhile paragon of virtue, was guilty of consorting with prostitutes, to the tune of, by some estimates, $80,000 or more.

But, and here's the big difference between Spitzer and Rethugs like Larry Craig and David Vitter, Spitzer (like notorious Rethug child molester Mark Foley) did the right thing and resigned.

That's not something you'll see very often from the Rethug camp -- someone willing to man up, admit his mistakes and take responsibility for them. Take a hint, Larry and Dave -- this is the way things are supposed to work when a public official violates the trust that the people have empowered him with.

Baby Doc Quote of the Week

"The only thing I can tell you is that every case I have reviewed I have been comfortable with the innocence or guilt of the person that I've looked at. I do not believe we've put a guilty ... I mean innocent person to death in the state of Texas."

--The Giggling Murder Monkey, June 16, 2000
(It's not like we weren't warned...)

Bullshit Protector Earflaps

I recently received an email with this photo attached to it:

The text of the email ran as follows:

You've gotta love this man!
He's a 73 year old war hero, who wears a protective flap over his ear while Senator Ted Kennedy, Barrack O'Bama and Hillary Clinton address the Veterans of Foreign Wars! I wish I could shake this man's hand!
I just want to know where he got it....?

Well, I have an answer to that. As big a fan of political jibes as I am, I'm an even bigger fan of accuracy and truth.

This guy is Bill Moyer, a 73-year-old WWII, Korea and Vietnam vet, and it's a legitimate picture, all right. The only problem is that it was taken at the 2005 VFW convention in Salt Lake City, and the speaker whose bullshit he was deflecting was none other than ... Baby Doc Bush himself!

Leave it to the wingnuttery to try to change history. You can read more about this on Snopes, as well as Wikipedia and the Museum of Hoaxes, and if -- or should I say when -- you receive this email from one of your rightwing friends, fire back at them and request that they forward the truth to everyone they sent the lie to (I sent the truth back to the guy who sent this to me, and asked him if he still wanted to shake his hand; I haven't received a reply yet...).

They won't, of course, since pesky things like facts have a way of being extremely inconvenient to those people. But you will have struck a small blow for truth and justice anyway.

I'm Back (Again)

We had out of state visitors (from Hawaii, no less) and consequently we all went on a brief unscheduled vacation trip up to Victoria BC for a few days.

In case you were wondering...

Saturday Song Parody

John McCain
(to the tune of "Purple Rain" by the
Artist Formerly Known as Prince)
© 2008

I only want the CIA to torture
I only want to cause a lot of pain
I know I used to say I was against it
But I just can't help myself, I'm the liar John McCain

John McCain, causing pain
John McCain, 'gainst the grain
But he just can't help himself, he's the liar John McCain

I helped out my buddy Charles Keating
For all that cash I should have felt ashamed
I knew that it was wrong but I still took it
I really couldn't help it, I'm the corrupt John McCain.

John McCain, really lame
John McCain, not to blame
He really couldn't help it, he's the corrupt John McCain

That lobbyist they say I was in bed with
It wasn't for the sex it must be plain
You know that I was just there for the money
I really couldn't help it, I am greedy John McCain

John McCain, has no shame
John McCain, just the same
He really couldn't help it, he is greedy John McCain

If This Doesn't Scare the Shit Out of You...

...then you really haven't been paying attention.

"Whattaya wanna do after the prom, Johnny?"
"Oh, baby, you know what I like..."

Why in the fuck does Hillary Clinton keep campaigning for Grampaw McCain? It seems as if every sound bite that comes out of her mouth not only gives Grampaw ammunition to use against Obama, but also against her.

What the fuck is going on here???

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 3974

Total coalition forces dead: 308
Total Iraqi Dead: 700,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2361
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1822
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1764
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: 750
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 589.

It is still 323 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Negotiating out of Fear, or Fearing to Negotiate?

While I was away on the high seas, it seems that our very own Baby Doc rang in on the presidential race, criticizing Barack Obama for being willing to sit down and negotiate with "enemies of freedom".

Once again, life not only imitates art, it surpasses it.

Take a look at these photos, courtesy of Think Progress and Blogger Radio:

There are more photos on Blogger Radio, along with their acerbic commentary on exactly which "enemies of freedom" these are, and why Der Monkey Fuehrer is so willing to be seen holding hands -- and sucking face -- with them.

Ah, so many rightwing hypocrites, so little time...

Baby Doc Quote of the Week

"We're still being challenged in Iraq and the reason why is free Iraq will be a major defeat in the cause of freedom."

--Charlotte NC, April 5, 2004

Outta the mouths of babes, the saying goes...

Had Enough Religious Bullshit?

Yeah, me too. And that's the question asked by a newly stumbled-upon website, H.E.R.B.

Among many other notable and worthy entries you'll find the following:

I've heard the call. I believe God wants me to run for president.

-- George W. Bush, quoted in George Magazine, September, 2000

I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany.

-- Adolf Hitler

A person who is guided by God will never be misguided by anyone.

-- Osama Bin Laden

We're being guided by God.

-- Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson

George Bush was not elected by a majority of the voters in the United States. He was appointed by God.

-- Lt. Gen. William Boykin, the defense undersecretary in charge
of hunting down top terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan

Nothing [Bush] does can be challenged on moral grounds, however unethical or evil it might appear, because all of his actions are directed by God. He can twist the truth, oppress the poor, exalt the rich, despoil the earth, ignore the law--and murder children--without the slightest compunction, the briefest moment of doubt or self-reflection, because he believes, he truly believes, that God squats in his brainpan and tells him what to do.

-- Chris Floyd, CounterPunch, 7/30/03

No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God.

-- George Bush Sr., to a reporter in 1988

A tyrant must put on the appearance of uncommon devotion to religion. Subjects are less apprehensive of illegal treatment from a ruler whom they consider to be God-fearing and pious.

-- Aristotle, 343 B.C.

He [God] is using me, all the time, everywhere, to stand up for a biblical worldview in everything that I do and everywhere I am.

-- Disgraced former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay

Why is this man in the White House? The majority of Americans did not vote for him. Why is he there? And I tell you this morning that he's in the White House because God put him there for a time such as this.

--Lt Gen William Boykin, speaking of G. W. Bush,
New York Times, 17 October 2003

He [Rumsfeld] leads in a way that the Good Lord tells him is best for our country.

-- Marine General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

God gave the savior to the German people. We have faith, deep and unshakeable faith, that he was sent to us by God to save Germany.

--Hermann Goering, speaking of Hitler

It's good stuff. Check it out.

Who Would Bill Clinton Vote For?

Here's Bill Clinton just four short years ago:

Watch it and tell me who Bill Clinton ought to be supporting.

Home from the Sea

We're finally back from the Air America Cruise, and what a terrific week we had! It was an honor and a privilege and a pleasure to meet so many of the brightest stars in the talk radio firmament, including my own personal favorties, Thom Hartmann, Rachel Maddow and especially Randi Rhodes, with whom we were seated for dinner one night. She is as sardonically super-funny in person as she is on the radio, and she's pretty much the same in person as she is on her show. Because the conversation was so intense and interesting and entertaining, our table was the very last one to leave the dining area that night.

It was also great to meet all of my blog readers who contacted me prior to the cruise: Becky, Gary and Linda from Colorado, Bonnie and Mark from New Jersey, Sharon and her family from Virginia, Alex from California, and especially Marilyn and Steve from New York -- thank you all for making it a memorable and exciting week. In addition, several other fellow cruisers saw my Farnsworth badge and told me in passing how much they like reading this blog. Thanks to all of you.

And a big thank you as well to all of the other people whom we met on the cruise, too numerous to list, but who also made the week a memorable and exciting one.

I especially want to thank our good friends from home, Bob and Debby, who made the trip with us. At dinner, Randi Rhodes asked Debby to give an impromptu speech on political organizing at one of the final sessions. Her presentation went over so well that I was able to bask in her reflected glory ("You're friends with Debby? Wow!") for the rest of the voyage.

There were some 400 Air America listeners from all over the country who were on the cruise and I wasn't able to connect with everyone, however much I wanted to, and for that I apologize. But the good news is that this is only the first of what we hope will be many Air America cruises, so maybe we'll meet up on a subsequent one.

In the meantime, I think everyone came away overflowing with a lot of renewed political energy (personal energy is another story -- that we are still trying to recover, and after a week of gentle pitching and rolling on the high seas, I find myself still experiencing some "phantom motion" even as I sit here in front of my computer) and we are all fired up for this year's election campaign.

As Thom Hartmann's signature signoff phrase has it, "Democracy begins with you -- tag, you're it!"

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1374 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.

Little Jenna has now 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. Not to be denied, Harry turned around and went to Afghanistan on a "stealth" assignment for three months, until Matt "The Traitor" Drudge outed him for no good reason except his own self-aggrandizement.

So will the Bush Twins follow Harry's 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 -- or won't -- join the service, the least they could do would be to get themselves impregnated with a couple of blastocytes that would otherwise go down the sewer pipe.

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

Going Dark for the Cruise

Regular readers of this blog know that I am leaving tomorrow on the Air America Cruise to the so-called "Mexican Riviera". As a result, I am going dark for a while.

Thank you for reading, and I look forward to coming back to you in ten days or so.

And, for all of you who are going to be on the cruise with us, here are graphic representations of the ID badges that I and She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed will be wearing. If you see us, please come up and introduce yourselves.

The Founding Fathers Were Christian, So...

One of the popular Religious Right arguments against the separation of church and state goes something like this: The Founding Fathers were all Christians, so therefore the United States was founded on Christian principles.

This is a classic error, a logical fallacy known as post hoc ergo propter hoc ("after this, therefore because of this"). But those morons are good at that. They can point to the 1960s-era Supreme Court decisions about prayer in school, claiming (erroneously) that the court kicked god out of the classroom, and that following those decisions, American society went to hell in a handbasket. You can pick out any supreme court ruling and say that the country immediately went to hell because of it. Try Brown vs. Board of Education, for example, which, as everyone knows, was a 9-0 decision on school desegregation. Unless you're a Strom Thurmond cheerleader like Trent Lott, no one rational person tries to make the case that school integration caused, say, the US intervention in SE Asia and its consequent rending of the fabric of society.

The genius of the framers of the Constitution is that they were able to construct a completely secular document in spite of their religious beliefs, not because of them.

But good luck on convincing any of those mouthbreathing knuckledraggers over on the Fundo-Xian end of the scale. By definition they are not rational people.

More on Vietnam Revisionism and Iraq

I've posted before on the various attempts by historical revisionists to reframe the Vietnam War into something we could have "won" if it weren't for those goddam [insert favorite scapegoat here: the media, the war protesters, the "civilians" in charge of the military, the "doves" in Congress, etc etc etc] back in the good ole USA who "lost" the war for us.

Now I see there's yet another new book out playing that same tired old song. I won't identify it here because I don't want to give the fucker any additional web traffic or book sales out of my website, but I will refer you to an excellent piece by H.D.S. Greenway entitled Revisionist Approach to Vietnam, wherein he takes on the author of the book and, more importantly, the conclusions the author came to:

Today there is a school of thought that says Tet was a terrible defeat for the Communist Vietnamese, that it should never have caused us to flinch, that the war was basically won by 1972, and that if we had only stayed the course we would have won it. Henry Kissinger has said as much, whole generations of soldiers were told that, and, it seems, that many around President Bush believe it as well.
When Iraq became the quagmire it is, I used to wonder how we could make the same mistake again so soon. But then I realized that Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were in the Oval office with President Ford when Saigon fell. Perhaps they, and the worshipers of American power, felt that, this time, we would get it right.

Go read the whole thing. Greenway says the same thing as me, as thousands of other Vietnam veterans, all of whom were there and saw it for our own eyes, that the Vietnam War was never "winnable" in any real military sense.

Just like Iraq.

Anyway, the Iraq War actually ended with the unfurling of that huge we-don't-know-who-did-it "Mission Accomplished" banner behind Prezdint Codpiece strutting around that carrier deck like a demonic smirking-chimp boy scout with a gym sock rolled up in his crotch. What's happened since then is nothing more than an illegal occupation of a sovereign nation. And the Iraqis want us out as badly as the Vietnamese did. Let's hope it doesn't cost us 57,000+ dead Americans before we finally get a clue and get the fuck out.

Public School Bible Class and the Ten Commandments Fable

Over at Talk to Action (a site with which I am so impressed that it now appears in my links list), Bruce Wilson has reprinted a fable about a young man in Germany who starts out attending a school with the Ten Commandments hanging on the wall.

Johan Lehrer, the "hero" of the story, lives a life wherein he always strives to do the right thing. However, in the course of that life, he also ends up violating each and every one of the Big Ten. Read his sad tale, and then tell me if you want this fable being taught in your public school "Bible class".

This is brilliant satire; as one of the commenters on that page noted, it is right up there with Voltaire's Candide, with its incisive bite into the soft underbelly of "religious" society.

It's well worth the read, even if Bruce Wilson still seems to be a little taken aback by it.

Active Duty Soldiers Speak Out

Just in case anyone thinks that the only people crabbing about the Iraq War Illegal Occupation are us old and bitter veterans of Vietnam, plus a bunch of crabby old ladies and other assorted left-wing types, here's a story out of Texas, Fort Hood soldiers breaking the silence in war in Iraq.

Excerpts:

...some vets feel it's their duty to let the American public know the truth.
"The honest truth is that if the American people knew what was going on over there everyday, they would be raising their voices too. They would be saying, 'Hey, bring those guys home," Sgt. Selena Coppa said.
Coppa blames lawmakers in Washington for filtering the facts on the war in Iraq. She said there's no real end in sight.
"There is a cost to this war. This war is being paid in American blood, in my soldier's blood. And that is not okay"...

. . .

"We lost really good friends, really good leaders who died in Iraq. From my perspective, it didn't make any sense, we didn't accomplish anything, and I talked to a lot of other soldiers who feel the same way," Fort Hood soldier Casey Porter said.

And that's from the mouths of people who really know what's being done in Iraq in the name of the American people. In fact, if you change just the time period, they are saying the same things as a lot of soldiers home from Vietnam said way back when.

But that won't stop the wingnuttery from calling them "cowards" and "leftwing tools" and "traitors" -- pretty much what everyone called Vietnam veterans who came home from the war with a different perspective on what was being spoon-fed the Moron-American voting bloc, who stood up and spoke out against the war.

And, as in the circa 1970 era, we ignore these voices at our peril.

Damn Those Gay Penguins Anyway!

I swear you can't make this shit up. A library in Loudon, Virginia, has removed from the children's library section a children's book called And Tango Makes Three.

Because the book is about -- gasp! -- two male penguins who hatch an egg and parent a chick.

Never mind that this is something that actually happens in the wild, that those precious little innocent eyes can see on, say, the Nature Channel, Animal Planet or National Geographic.

Never mind that this is based on the story of two real-life penguins at New York's Central Park Zoo.

Never mind that this is a heart-warming story about love and family and making it together in the cold world.

No, exactly one snippy parent complained, and suddenly the book was taken off the shelves. All because it promotes that terrible "homosexual agenda" -- whatever the fuck that is. The gay people that I know have pretty much the same agenda as me: Food, clothing, shelter, friends, family, happiness. You know, all that stuff that "real men" or "real women" apparently eschew in their rush to be oh-so-NOT-gay.

Give me a break. Give me a fucking break.