How Much More Can We Take?

Yet another general has come out publicly to call for Rummy to step down.

Major General John Batiste, commander of the 1st Infantry Division (the Big Red One) in Iraq in 2004-2005, says Rumsfeld's "authoritarian style" is making the job of the military much more difficult. "We need leadership up there that respects the military as they expect the military to respect them," he said. "And that leadership needs to understand teamwork."

You ought to be thinking, assuming that you are a normal, logical, intelligent human being, that if high-ranking general officers, commanders, who were formerly under your leadership are all coming up with the same criticisms, then maybe you ought to be listening to them.

Not our Rummy, though, and not his moron-in-cowboy-boots boss, Baby Doc: Rummy's doin' a heckuva job, and screw those pantywaist generals who say he isn't. They're just professional military men -- what the fuck do they know about running a war?

Jesus, how much more can we take of this maladministration's boot on the neck of the American people? Vote Democratic this fall. Take back the congress and turn it around -- it'll be our turn to put the boots to them.

Special Midweek Bush Twins in Uniform Update

Prince Harry, Royal "bad boy", third in line to the British throne, and an across-the-water equivalent to the Bush Twins, has graduated from England's elite Sandhurst Military Academy (the British equivalent of West Point) with a commission as a 2nd lieutenant.

He will join the Blues and Royals Regiment, which has a very good chance of being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan within the next 12 months, according to one of the regiment's senior officers.

Meanwhile his older brother, Prince Willian, has just started his own training at Sandhurst. It is conceivable that both second-generation direct-line heirs to the throne could see action in the Middle East. There's been no talk among the Brits about how disruptive the princes' presence would be to their units or how many personal guards will have to be deployed to protect them, none of the crap we hear from the wingnuts here in reaction to the possibility of Jenna and Not-Jenna being in uniform.

So what about Jenna and Not-Jenna? Where are they while the princes are doing their patriotic duty for their country? Partying down in Georgetown nightspots as usual. They just can't be bothered with fighting in a war that their father started and is unable to finish. Military service? That's for the little people, the Walmart-shopping trailer trash writhing in benighted agony beneath the contempt -- beneath the notice, even -- of the ruling class, their sole function being to serve as cannon fodder for the furtherance of the Empire.

You'd think that the Bush family would be shamed by the actions of their counterparts in Great Britain, but apparently they are incapable of feeling embarrassment. Surprise.

What Did the President Know and When Did He Know it?

It was the question that became a Watergate cliché, and it was asked by Senator Howard Baker, a member of Nixon's own party. (By the end of the Reagan years, of course, it had gone beyond parody and into farce: What did the president know and when did he stop knowing it?)

Now it has a whole new currency. What did your president tell Patrick Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor of this whole sordid mess, while he was under oath?

That's what it all boils down to, and few in the SCLM/MSM seem to be getting it. If Bush lied under oath to Fitzgerald, then all of this fancy-dance pussyfoot two-step parsing out of the quasi-legalities of declassifying official state secrets, or for that matter, debating the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin, means nothing.

If Bush lied under oath, then he is guilty of perjury and obstructing a federal investigation. This is exactly what landed Martha Stewart in prison. It doesn't matter whether what you actually did was legal or illegal. Lying under oath is a crime. Obstructing an investigation is a crime.

It doesn't matter a rat's ass what your motives are or what you were lying about, you committed a crime.

So, Baby Doc, as long as you are trying to take the high ground and justify what you did in the name of national security, how about releasing the full transcript of your testimony to Patrick Fitzgerald.

If you have nothing to hide, why are you trying so hard to hide it?

The American Dictatorship: Here Already?

Geov Parrish over at Working for Change presents the argument, in a disturbing piece entitled "L'etat c'est moi", that the American experiment in representative democracy may be over already.

With Baby Doc running rampant, unchecked by congress and the courts, unaccountable to anyone -- including the American people -- shored up by his hand puppet Alberto "Torquemada" Gonzales who is of the opinion that the president is not only above the law, he is the law, we may have already slid into a dictatorship that it will be well-nigh impossible to dig our way out of.

Future presidents will have in their pocket of weaponry the precedent of the Bush Crime Family presidency in which the president can do -- and has done -- anything he damn well pleases and nobody can do anything about it.

Because he IS the state.

My history may be a little rusty, but wasn't there a French Revolution a couple hundred years ago because they had an absolutist king who actually said that (L'etat c'est moi is French for "I am the state")? Didn't we thow off the yoke of British monarchy because we wanted -- demanded -- our freedom?

The very freedom that Baby Doc gives lip service to -- and nothing else -- almost daily. When it comes to the Middle East.

I hope Parrish is wrong, but all of the danger signs and warning signals are there. If that's the case, let's just forego the futile exercise of pretending that we still have free elections and a free country, and start thinking like sans culottes.

Baby Doc Admits "Declassifying" Documents

When the president does it, it's not against the law. Apparently that mindset, a holdover from the late and not lamented Nixon Administration, is still with us.

The Empty Sleevejob says that he -- arbitrarily and unilaterally -- decided to declassify secret government documents in order to answer his critics about the leadup to the Iraq War.

In a word, bullshit.

There are established processes for declassifying information, and he didn't follow them. Those on the right, marching in lockstep with the current maladministration, quickly jumped to Der Monkey Fuhrer's defense, but even the most brain-dead among them must realize where that line of reasoning will take them.

Taken to its logical extreme, it means that Baby Doc, were he so inclined, could give our nuclear weapons blueprints to his equally-crazy counterpart in North Korea by simply stating -- by executive fiat -- that he was "declassifying" them.

When the president does it, it's not against the law? And these are the same fucking sanctimonious hypocritical assholes who piously preached that Clinton's actions brought shame on the office of the president.

Bullshitbullshitbullshitbullshit.

Marching to Armageddon

How do you know they are lying? Their lips move, noise comes out of their mouths, they form words, etc.

In yet another pearl on the string of unbelievable denials, the White House says that any plans to nuke Tehran is just crazy talk.

Like we would fucking believe any denials coming out of that nest of vipers. All they have done for the last five years is lie, lie, lie.

If Baby Doc wants to attack Iran -- and it is patently obvious that he does -- then the only "reasonable" way to do it is with nuclear weapons. Our military is already stretched too thin, and there just aren't enough of them to go around. Iran is over 3.5 times the size of Iraq, both in land area and population, and we would still have to maintain a strong military presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iran has always been a future stop on the Clusterfuck Express, right from the beginning, but there's no reasonable way to do it without using nukes. Which means there is no reasonable way to do it.

But, in the immortal words of Yogi Berra, it's déjà vu all over again: What is reasonable, what is logical, what is based somewhere in reality, has nothing to do with it. With Der Monkey Fuhrer's ass in a sling over illegal wiretapping coupled with classified information leaking from the First Penis, watch for another diversion. Maybe not now, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of our lives.

Certainly before the election. Can't let those terrorist-loving Amerikkka-hating Darwin-pushing god-dismissing Christmas-destroying bible-burning Demon-crats take control of the congress. Watch for an "October Surprise" that will be a richochet echo of that lying bitch Kindasleezy Rice: The smoking gun will be a mushroom cloud, but it's going to be ours.

Tramp tramp tramp the boots are marching...

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 686 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 to show their support for the war by enlisting their chickenhawk-child selves into the military service, that's why.

Why can't they be like their royal counterparts in the UK? The Royal Family, unlike the Bush Crime Family, has a centuries-long tradition of honorable military service. Prince Andrew was a combat helicopter pilot in La Guerre de las Malvinas (aka the Falklands War), Prince William, direct heir to the throne, has entered Sandhurst (Britain's West Point), and little brother Prince Harry graduates Sandhurst this month and could be sent to Iraq as a cavalry lieutenant.

How's that shit, Jenna and Not-Jenna? That make you a proud father, Baby Doc?

The rest you, those who think the proud military tradition of this nation needs to be upheld by those most likely to profit from it, be sure to sign the Buzzflash petition and demand that the Bush offspring enlist, or else bring the troops home. If it's not a cause noble enough for any of the children of the Bush Dynasty to join, then it's not noble enough for our sons and daughters to die for.

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

Drip drip drip...

It's the official count from icasualties.org:

2350 dead American troops

How many more will it take before we remove the corrupt and evil Bush Crime Family from office and put them in the dock at The Hague?

Democracy in Action

I spent the day at my Democratic county convention, where I served as both a delegate and as a sergeant-at-arms. No rough stuff, it turned out -- amazingly, a well-behaved bunch of Democrats -- so mainly my duties consisted of counting the "ayes" and "nays" in close votes.

It really is democracy at the grassroots level, and we spent a good deal of the time debating the planks on the county platform. I managed to shuck off my sergeant-at-arms duties long enough to impose my will on the body and add three sections to the Veterans plank of the platform.

Sight unseen, I am willing to bet that the corresponding Repugnican platform is completely silent on veterans and veterans' issues. (They are the party that "supports the troops", you know.)

I encourage all of you to get active in politics at the local level, the most basic grassroots level. Most of the progressive ideas on the national scene are happening at the state level, and those ideas are ones that percolate up from "the masses" at events such as this one. But they start at the precinct level, so in 2008 please consider attending your local precinct caucus. You could ultimately end up as a delegate to the national convention and have a strong say not only in who becomes president in 2009 but also what course this country will take for the succeeding four years.

Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq War Illegal Occupation: 2345
Total coalition force soldiers dead: 208
Total Iraqi Dead: 100,000+

It has been 1669 days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive".
It has been 1086 days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began.
It was only 1347 days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII.

Friday Cat Blogging

Look in the Mirror, Baby Doc

Way back in 2003 after the Valerie Plame story went public Baby Doc said, "There are too many leaks of classified information in Washington. There's leaks at the executive branch, there's leaks in the legislative branch. There's just too many leaks. And if there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is."

Newsflash: It's you, moron.

Libby says so. In a sworn statement. Under oath. To a federal prosecutor and a grand jury. If he's lying about it, then he's committing perjury.

Give it up, Monkey Boy. You're toast.

Releasing classified information without going through the formal process of declassifying it is a crime. But this maladministration has never bothered itself with formal process, which usually means keeping within the law.

Now let's see the US Marshals frog march Der Monkey Fuhrer out of the White House and into the van of the Stasi for a little "foreign rendition". And while you're at it, get Cheney and the whole corrupt and incompetent lot of them.

Not that I'm going to hold my breath for that to actually happen. Not until the weak-kneed lilly-livered Dems grow some balls, show some fight, and take back Congress this year.

Then -- and only then -- will we see justice.

He Who Fights and Runs Away...

Over at Main and Central, I see a report, issued publicly by an Army Information Office, that American convoys in Iraq will no longer cut and run when engaged by the enemy, but instead will stand and fight. Because trying to speed up and get away from the ambush sends the "wrong message" to the attackers.

Well, isn't that just fucking great. Fucking stupid is what it is.

I was in the Transportation Corps in Vietnam, so my knowledge of convoy tactics is a little out of date, but I can tell you that the convoys that sustained the most damage were the ones that got bogged down and had to stop. I had friends get shot on the infamous Tay Ninh convoy ambush in August 1968; it was one of those, the trucks stopped dead when one got blown up, the drivers and people like me who were riding "shotgun" on the trucks shot it out with the VC/NVA until the infantry came in and kicked some ass. As a result of his heroic action in this battle, Sergeant William Seay was awarded, posthumously, the Medal of Honor.

So based on my experience in convoys in a war zone, I seriously question the wisdom of this new tactic; I might have been willing to give it a try if I were a convoy commander, but not now. Now that we've blurted out to the world what our new tactic will be.

All changes in battle tactics should be conceived in secret and applied in stealth, varied at every turn, so the enemy won't know what you are doing.

Telling them right out in so many words -- before you even do it -- is just fucking stupid. It's right up there with selling atomic secrets to North Korea. Stupid.

Now that they know what we're up to, all the insurgents will have to do is prepare their ambush with enough weaponry, a couple hundred claymores, and a mass of fighters, enough to overwhelm the lightly-guarded convoy.

What are the odds that some lame-ass chickenhawk civilian BFEE crony/campaign-contributor -who-was-promised-a-job in Rummy's office came up with this one? I'd say they're pretty good.

What Is This, a Fucking Epidemic???

Close on the heels of yesterday's revelation about the Homeland Security pervert, we learn that in October of last year, no less a personage than Frank Figueroa, the fucking HEAD of the Homeland Security child-sex-predator sting operation Project Predator, was arrested for exposing his dick and jacking off in front of a 16-year-old girl in a shopping mall in Tampa.

Appalling as it is, here's the story from the Tampa Tribune.

So how about that, you mothers and fathers who voted for this corrupt maladministration? You feel more secure? Your families? Your daughters?

Doesn't anybody even pretend to try to vet these fucking perverts, incompetents, morons and assholes before they are given top government jobs?

Never mind. I already know the answer to that one. Cronyism, campaign contributions and blind loyalty to Der Monkey Fuhrer trump all.

Homeland Security Official Busted for Child Sex. How Stupid Are These People???

Really, you just can't make shit like this up.

According to an MSNBC story, the deputy press secretary of Homeland Security was busted Tuesday for attempting to use the Internets to lure what he thought was a 14-year-old girl whose profile he saw on one of those teenage-chat-meet-new-friends websites like MySite.

Bryan J. Doyle, 55, was arrested as his home in Maryland after a sting operation in which Doyle exchanged frank sexual talk with the girl and sent explicitly sexual photos to her -- but unknown to him she was actually an undercover Florida detective.

Yeah, I feel a lot safer in The Homeland when shit like this happens. A lot safer letting my granddaughters go to the mall, or god forbid to fly on an airplane -- with Homeland Security in charge of the airports? Jesus, I'd feel safer putting them on a Greyhound bus and sending them through the South Bronx.

Doyle, being fourth ranking official in the office, has to be a Republican appointee. That's the party of "family values" you know.

Jesus, how many sex scandals can these people get away with? Clinton gets one lousy blow job and you'd think he'd sold atomic secrets to the North Koreans, for chrissake. These child-molesting Republican perverts are given government sinecures so they can ply their lubricious trade with America's youth.

Give the fucker a fair trial, convict him as a sexual deviant, and then weld him in a 4x8 cell for the rest of his life. (I do have four teenage granddaughters, so my normal perspective on justice may be a little bent...)

Rep. McKinney and the Constitutional Question

With all the furor over the racial profiling scuffle of Rep. Cynthia McKinney, who is now apparently about to be arrested over the incident, it's suprising that no one has brought up the constitutional question.

The constitution clearly states that members of Congress "shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place." (Article 1, Section 6)

From my understanding as to what happened, it was all a mistake, but like a lot of innocent mistakes, it has a reverberation and a resonance far beyond the simple facts of the case.

Especially when you have the loudmouth fascists on the radio right taking up the cudgel to describe her hair as "ghetto slut", like "Tina Turner peeing on an electric fence", and saying that she looks like a "welfare drag queen". And don't let's forget The Vulgar Pigboy, Rusty Make-That-Ten-More-Oxycontins Limbaugh, who said "Breaking news - the US Capitol has been evacuated because of a power failure. It could be that Cynthia McKinney's hair got stuck in a light switch and shorted everything out." Ole Rusty, I'll bet he never met a racial slur that he didn't like, that boy.

So it's the Republicans who are doing this to Cynthia McKinney. They'd like to remind you that they are the party that freed the slaves (not true) -- but their history since then has been to keep those former slaves in a condition of servitude and second-class citizenship. It's not a coincidence that the Democrats lost the South with the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And lost it to the Republicans, who to this day know something about keeping the uppity Negroes in their place.

Gotcha!

In case you've been living under a rock the last day or so, the biggest news is Tom Delay quitting congress.

I thought sure he'd say it was to spend more time with his family. Wrong. He says he can do more for the Republican Party outside of the People's Chamber of Deputies House of Representatives.

For once I can agree with the slimy bastard. If he were to hang around, the stench of corruption clinging to his body like dogshit to your shoe would drag down the party in the fall elections. And since the evil motherfuckers in the GOP have only one goal, to win elections, Tom's leaving is good for the party.

And, sorry to say, not good for the Democrats. Nothing like a convenient post to hang the corruption hat on, and Tommy D. was one of the best.

Still, with the evil slimy sonofabitch out of congress, his influence will inevitably wane to the point where, like Newt Gingrich, it'll be "Tom who?"

Bottom Line: Good fucking riddance.

Addendum:

"Tom (DeLay's) invaluable presence on the campaign trail will certainly be missed as we celebrate him for time and again delivering on our party’s bold agenda of reform."

-- NRCC Chairman Tom Reynolds (R-NY)

Bold agenda of reform? Calling George Orwell.

Scalia to the Rest of Us: Fuck You

No matter how the fucker tried to slice it, it was still baloney.

"Tony Pro" Scalia, coming out of church, of all places, told a reporter "vaffanculo" -- Italian for "fuck you", and the reporter snapped a photo of him. Now he's trying to deny it, of course, but the whole thing is a microcosm of the Repugnican-appointed Supreme Court members. They're telling the rest of the country "fuck you".

The Boston Globe has the full story, along with a photo of the asshole with his fingers closed in the classic Italiano gesture. Anyone who has been around those of the Italian pursuasion for any length of time will immediately recognize it.

It's really what the whole BFEE/Bush Crime Family is about. Roll up the profits and fuck you to the rest of us.

People, we have to work hard this election. We can't let these bastards keep stealing our country from us.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 679 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 to show their support for the war by enlisting their chickenhawk-child selves into the military service, that's why.

Why can't they be like their royal counterparts in the UK? The Royal Family, unlike the Bush Crime Family, has a centuries-long tradition of honorable military service. Prince Andrew was a combat helicopter pilot in La Guerre de las Malvinas (aka the Falklands War), Prince William, direct heir to the throne, has entered Sandhurst (Britain's West Point), and little brother Prince Harry graduates Sandhurst this month and could be sent to Iraq as a cavalry lieutenant.

How's that shit, Jenna and Not-Jenna? That make you a proud father, Baby Doc?

The rest you, those who think the proud military tradition of this nation needs to be upheld by those most likely to profit from it, be sure to sign the Buzzflash petition and demand that the Bush offspring enlist, or else bring the troops home. If it's not a cause noble enough for any of the children of the Bush Dynasty to join, then it's not noble enough for our sons and daughters to die for.

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

Kudos to the LA Times

I've had any number of philosophical differences with the LA Times over the years, but this week it's all kudos to them for running a three-part series on the Iraqi War wounded Americans.

See The Lifeline for a harrowing, depressing, chilling -- but ironically uplifting -- story on what our boys (and girls) are going through when they are blown half to bits for The Chimperor in his War for Empire.