From Our WTF Department

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

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

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

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

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

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

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 978 days since Jenna and Not-Jenna Bush, the slacker offspring of Preznit Numnutz, graduated from college and they are still not in the uniform of the US armed services.

Why? Because they have other priorities. They are too busy partying down in Georgetown, Argentina and god-knows-where-else to show their support for the war by enlisting their chickenhawk-child selves into the military service, that's why.

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

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

Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 2865 2888 2906 2959 3006 3018 3025 3067

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

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1963
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1414
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1363
Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347

Number of days that the the Vice President has NOT shot a man in the face: 345
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 192.

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

So Many Hypocrites, So Little Time

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

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

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

Clueless. As Usual.

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

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

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

Libby's Lawyer: It Was Rove

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

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

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

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

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

Vets MIA in State of Union Speech

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

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

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

I expected better from him.

Chutzpah!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gentlemen, Start Your Smear Engines

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

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

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

When Obama was two years old, his parents divorced and his father returned to Kenya. His mother married Lolo Soetoro -- a Muslim -- moving to Jakarta with Obama when he was six years old. Within six months he had learned to speak the Indonesian language. Obama spent "two years in a Muslim school, then two more in a Catholic school" in Jakarta. Obama takes great care to conceal the fact that he is a Muslim while admitting that he was once a Muslim, mitigating that damning information by saying that, for two years, he also attended a Catholic school.

And it's only going to get worse. Now that he's officially in the running, wait for the wingnuttery to pull all the stops. I'll bet you will never hear once on rightwing radio his name mentioned without that unfortunate middle name being included.

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

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

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 971 days since Jenna and Not-Jenna Bush, the slacker offspring of Preznit Numnutz, graduated from college and they are still not in the uniform of the US armed services.

Why? Because they have other priorities. They are too busy partying down in Georgetown, Argentina and god-knows-where-else to show their support for the war by enlisting their chickenhawk-child selves into the military service, that's why.

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

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

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

Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 2865 2888 2906 2959 3006 3018 3025

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

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1956
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1407
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1356
Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347

Number of days that the the Vice President has NOT shot a man in the face: 338
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 185.

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

Flip Flop Flip Flop

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iraq for Dummies

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

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

The Fascist Mindset

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MLK Day -- A Day of Service

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

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

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

Timing is Everything

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

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

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

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

Like issue subpoenas and start impeachment proceedings.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 964 days since Jenna and Not-Jenna Bush, the slacker offspring of Preznit Numnutz, graduated from college and they are still not in the uniform of the US armed services.

Why? Because they have other priorities. They are too busy partying down in Georgetown, Argentina and god-knows-where-else to show their support for the war by enlisting their chickenhawk-child selves into the military service, that's why.

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

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

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

Crocodile Tears

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

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

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

Give me a fucking break, already.

So Many Hypocrites, So Little Time

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

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

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

Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619 2641 2710 2737 2758 2788 2809 2826 2865 2888 2906 2959 3006 3018

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

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1949
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1400
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1349
Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347

Number of days that the the Vice President has NOT shot a man in the face: 332
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 178.

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