Friday Cat Blogging

Friday by the Numbers

• Total American dead in the Iraq War Illegal Occupation: 2327
• Total coalition force soldiers dead: 208
• Total Iraqi Dead: 100,000+

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• It has been 1662 days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive".
• It has been 1079 days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began.
• It was only 1347 days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII.

How's That Again?

According to the Washington Whore Post, he really said it:

"We support democracy, but that doesn't mean we have to support governments that get elected as a result of democracy."

And we also support children but not the schools they go to, we support veterans but not the hospitals they are confined to, we support old people but not the wasteful social security payments that they are consuming, etc etc etc.

Jesus.

Baby Doc and His Vietnam Mistakes

As much as Baby Doc, the Bush Crime Family and their wingnut supporters try to deny it, we all know that there are some disturbing parallels between Iraq and Vietnam.

So it's an interesting read over at the always-worthy Consortium News, where Ivan Eland lists the top ten.

1. Underestimating the enemy.
2. Deceiving the American public.
3. Blame the media.
4. Use of artificial statistics to measure progress.
5. Excessive use of force without a plan to win "hearts and minds".
6. Failed "search and destroy" tactics.
7. Iraqization (like Vietnamization).
8. No date for withdrawal.
9. Retention of incompentent policy makers.
10. Starting a war for concocted reasons.

Read the full story for a complete explanation of these ten points.

Consortium News is one of the most important political sites on the Internets.

Cheap Bastards -- The Baby Doc Maladministration Screws Veterans. Again.

Out of Fontana, CA comes the story of wounded Iraqi War veteran Kevin Stonestreet. Kevin joined the Army as an infantryman following graduation from HS in 2001 and received a signing bonus of $20,000, to be paid out over the six-year term on his enlistment.

So far so good, but when Stonestreet was wounded in Iraq and came home with a Purple Heart and an early honorable discharge due to PTSD, the Army demanded that he give up $2200 out of his final pay... because he hadn't finished his six-year "contract".

What a bunch of fucking bullshit this is. But it just goes to show you -- again -- exactly how little regard the ruling class has for its warriors. They are just cannon fodder, pieces of meat thrown into the sausage grinder to further the ends of the Empire.

They treat our soldiers like raw material in a factory, to be used up and flushed down the toilet, and the sorry motherfuckers just can't figure it out why enlistments are down and reenlistments have fallen off.

Why are we letting these fuckers run our country?

States Offshore Human Services Information Technology

In a story on the Washington Technology website that hits close to home, it's reported that the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has found that 43 out of 50 states (51 including the District of Columbia) outsource to foreign countries -- mostly India (naturally) -- the IT work that could be done by state employees. In fact, only two states, New Jersey and Arizona(!) have laws that prohibit offshoring state contracts.

The four programs affected are the federally-mandated but state-run programs dealing with human services: child support enforcement, food stamps, temporary assistance for needy families and unemployment insurance. In what has to be hands down the understatement of the year, the story says that this outsourcing has been "politically controversial in Congress, due to the perception of contributing to American economic and job losses and to privacy concerns".

Since I'm a state employee myself who has worked in unemployment insurance IT in one form or another since the late 1980s ( for you fellow techies, back then it was all about Unix, using a Sun RISC microprocessor), this story has particular resonance with me.

And even though I am "in the business", I'll admit that I wasn't aware of this particularly parsimonious practice. I'll also admit that it doesn't surprise me, though, since we as a society seem to be engaged in a systematic race to the bottom that will ultimately leave two classes of people in this country, the very wealthy and the rest of us, who I imagine are supposed to consider ourselves fortunate that we even have a job, let alone start whining about wages, hours and working conditions.

After all, those three items are classic union issues, and with the rampant union-busting going on behind the scenes in this country, they are considered at best quaint relics of the early twentieth century that act as a brake on the economy of the New World Order.

In Washington State we recently enacted legislation that made union membership mandatory for state employees. AFSCME (of which I am pround to say I am a 30-year member) along with several other smaller unions became the bargaining agents between state employees and our employer, the state government, with the result that several whiny-assed crybabies who refused to join the union got fired from their jobs.

Enter the Orwellian-named National Right to Work Foundation, whose sole function in society seems to be to act in support of business against the best interests of workers. They are taking on the case of this handful of malcontent slackers and suing the union and the state and god knows who else on behalf of these poor downtrodden fuckers who want all of the benefits of union membership without having to pay for any of it.

This is worth watching, since it has the earmarks of a test case that will be used -- if they are successful -- in other states to disestablish closed-shop labor agreements.

What I say is this: Fine, let the malcontents leave the union but keep their jobs, with the provision that they must work at minimum wage with no health care coverage and no benefits. Then, when even their jobs are outsourced to India, they can brush up on their Hindi and move to Bhopal.

I hear the air is great there -- just the thing for these self-absorbed assholes.

Daddy's Drunk Again -- Hide the Keys

From Terminal Boy over at Livejournal we get the following (excerpt):

He's always broke. He has to borrow money to finance his nights out on the town. He tells the people he borrows from that he'll get them back sometime in the future.
He's been known to get drunk and attack people who haven't done anything to him. Invariably, this gets him in fights that he can't win.
When any of his friends question his choices he loudly declares that either they are "with him or against him" and calls them cowards. When someone in the family questions him, he tells them that they are ungrateful and obviously don't care as much about the family as he does.

Check out the full story and tell me if you don't think that the President of the US is an alcoholic father on a bender.

You redstate morons, even you wouldn't tolerate this kind of behavior from your brother-in-law, your cousin, your sister. Why in the hell do you tolerate it in the President of the United States? Why did you vote for the motherfucker when you could see all along what he was?

Because you are a bunch of goddam enablers, that's why. You are in such denial about your Daddy that you would make excuses for the sonofabitch if you caught him stomping your puppy to death.

Veterans Shield Funeral from Bigots

In a story out of Michigan, hundreds of military veterans from around the state showed up to form a human shield around the church where the funeral of Army Corporal Nyle Yates III was being held.

The funeral of Yates, himself a victim of the War on Terra^tm in Iraq, was targeted by three koolaid-drinking homophobic bigots from Topeka's Westboro Baptist Church who carried signs claiming god killed Yates because he "defended" a country that supports homosexuality. (Of course we can make the obvious argument that our soldiers are not "defending" the US when they have been forced to engage in an illegal occupation of a sovereign nation that did not attack us, but that's another argument...)

In addition to carrying signs, the three men trailed an American flag on the ground and stepped on it. I'm surprised they didn't burn it. But that will come later -- that's my prediction -- and it will give aid and comfort to those among us who want a flag-burning amendment.

But back to the Westboro Boys: This is an ongoing problem with these neo-Nazi Christ-hating Bible-denying Xian fascists from bleeding Kansas -- they are making a career of spewing their venom at the funerals of soldiers who have died in action. And it's nothing new; the same dickwad disciples of the Rev. Fred Phelps, Acolyte of the Antichrist, also made an avocation of protesting at the funerals of AIDS victims in the 90s, holding up the same kinds of signs ("God Hates Fags", etc.).

I am glad to see that my fellow veterans are showing up at these military funerals in sufficiently intimidating numbers to keep the innocent family members shielded from these subhuman trolls. Keep it up, guys!

Finally, a confession: As much as I am a supporter of free speech -- and I believe it is very nearly absolute -- I also would have no problem taking, shall we say, a personal interest in stomping the shit out of these bigoted assholes. Call me hypocritical if you want, but freedom of speech does not mean freedom from accountability for the contents of that speech. While I believe that government has very little business regulating freedom of speech, I also believe that an individual (i.e., me) does not have to tolerate this bigoted hatred spewing forth from the facial gashes of these mouth-breathing morons at a funeral for a soldier killed in action.

In short, let's see them show up to try this shit in MY town.

Scalia-Gitmo Followup #1

The Washington Whore Post is reporting that five retired flag officers -- two generals and three admirals -- are calling for Scalia to recuse himself from the Guatanamo case.

Citing Scalia's statement over the weekend in a speech given in Switzerland(!) that indicates he has already come to a decision about the legality of detaining "foreign combatants" (and apparently also foreign non-combatants), the officers issued a letter yesterday taking him to task over whether his statements "give rise to the unfortunate appearance that ... the justice had made up his mind" about the merits of the case.

Okay, but is he still going to sit on the bench in judgment of the merits of the case?

I'm still saying that he is. He is incapable of seeing any problems in it, just like all the other monkeys in the lock-step Republican party. God ordained it and it's not up to them to question god.

I never thought I would live to see the installation of a fundamentalist theocracy in this country, but here we are, just a couple of steps away from the naked force of the American Taliban. And since I belong to both the ACLU and Americans United for Separation of Church and State, I'm sure that I'm on their Enemies List.

Scalia Calls it "Crazy" -- We Call it "The Constitution"...

In a tape that surfaced over the weekend, SCOTUS Blowfly Antonin, aka "Tony-Pro" aka "Quack-Quack" Scalia calls Guatanamo detainees' claims to have rights "crazy".

No word yet on whether the loose-jowled scowler is going to recuse himself from the case, having already been shown to have pre-judged it, but my guess is that old Quack-quack, if he wasn't willing to recuse himself from the Dick Quickdraw McGraw Cheney case, having just gone on an intimate duck hunting trip with old Wildshot Crashcart himself, chances are he won't see any difficulties here, either.

It's like Judge Roy Bean, the legendary Law West of the Pecos: "We're gonna give the ornery galoot a fair trial and then we're gonna string 'im up." Let's not let all that inconvenient crap contained in that used wad of toilet paper otherwise known as the United States Constitution get in our way.

After all, to Baby Doc and the rest of the crypto-fascist fundo-Xian corporatist motherfuckers in the BFEE, t's just a goddam piece of paper, anyway. And with Scalia wiping his ass with it, I don't think it can hold up much longer.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 672 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 in April 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?"

Caligula Without the Sex

I finally saw the film Good Night and Good Luck last night, and it made me nostaligic for the days of responsible Fourth Estate journalism, the days when a journalist could make a principled stand against demagogery and fascism, and by fearlessly making that stand, actually make a difference.

Edward R. Murrow has always been a hero of mine, and he was my inspiration to study journalism in college. Even though I was a small child in the early 50s, I was raised in a politically liberal family (rural Oklahoma was way different then, let me tell you), and my parents encouraged me to be aware of the world and what was going on in it. They had been fans of Murrow since his WWII broadcasts from London and we always watched him on television, even the excrable Person to Person.

In the famous McCarthy broadcast of See it Now, Murrow said the following:

"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of the Republic to abdicate his responsibility."

The film resonates with a 21st Century audience because the times in which we live are scarily reminiscent of the "you're either with us or you are with the Communists" days of the early 1950s.

But this time, Helen Thomas aside, we just don't have journalists who feel a responsibility to a higher calling other than being willing whores for the White House puppetmasters. And that bodes ill for the future of the republic.

History has a way of repeating itself, and we are eyewitnesses to what is in many ways a repeat of the collapse of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire. All of us, from the Senate to the House to the Fourth Estate to the average citizen, have abandoned our duties -- our solemn responsibilities -- to keep the Boy King in check and accountable. As Murrow said (quoting from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar) in closing that famous McCarthy broadcast: "The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars; it's in ourselves."

We have allowed The Chimperor to become as destructively insane as Caligula, but without all that messy sex.

If this is "Democracy", No Thanks.

I swear, you can't make this shit up.

Afghanistan started out being the Main Event in the War on Terra^tm, but then the Real Target (Iraq) was engaged, and it became nothing more than an inconvenient sideshow.

Nevertheless we were fed the pablum that great strides were being made, the people are so much better off now than they were under the oppressive fundamentalism of the Taliban, democracy is on the rise, blah blah blah.

So what are we to make, then, of the news out of Kabul that an Afghan citizen, one Abdul Rahman, is about to be executed for -- get this -- converting to Christianity!!!???

Yeah, we're bringing some of that good old fashioned American democracy to the Middle East all right -- the democracy of the late 19th Century when women didn't have the right to vote, it was legal to lynch black people, and monopolistic corporations trampled the rights of workers under their heavy boots.

If this is democracy, we'd better stop. The world can't afford it. We can't afford it.

Meanwhile, Abdul is on the Afghani equivalent of death row, ready to walk The Green Mile rather than give up his faith, and the Religious Right in this country is now up in arms. Over this? Where the fuck were they when the US-installed governments of Afghanistan (including the Taliban) were torturing their own people and suppressing their women, and now, with this new bunch of warlords, reinvigorating the agrarian economy with the major Afghan cash crop, the opium poppy?

And the US response? We are "requesting" that he not be put to death. Whatever the fuck that is supposed to mean. Like we couldn't just tell Karzai, Our Boy in Kabul, to back down. Like we would have to go hat in hand to our puppet regime to ask nicely for them to please not do that. Bullshit.

Bottom line, I think the Religious Right -- the American Taliban -- is secretly jealous of their fundo brethren in the Middle East, and they would gladly reinstitute the death penalty here for a wide variety of "crimes", including anti-fundo-Xian apostasy, if they thought they could get away with it.

Give them a few more years, two more stolen elections, and then we'll see what they can do. It isn't a pretty sight to contemplate.

Where is the Pentagon Plane?

I don't normally go in for "tin-foil hat" stuff (reality is strange enough as it is), but a friend sent me a very interesting video about the mysterious disappearing Boeing 757 that hit the Pentagon on 9-11.

Watch it and see what you think.

Then of course, drop by Snopes and see their debunking of this very theory. It's not a new one, having been around since early 2002, originally put forth by French author Thierry Meyssan in his book, The Frightening Fraud.

But of course the Snopes debunking could be more government disinformation...

Friday Cat Blogging

A continuation of last week's story. About ten seconds from the time of this snap, Dotty met the spider. Close up and personal. I didn't think she could move that fast.

Censure Bush -- Sign the Petition

Sign the petition over at Act for Change to call on congress to censure The Empty Sleevejob.

Censure. It's really a weak word and a weak concept. It's a slap on the wrist with a wooden ruler. I got enough of those in grade school back in the day -- but they didn't help me one goddamn bit.

Just like it won't help Baby Doc. It's a good start, and it should be done -- just like Barbara and Papa Doc should have slapped the little fucker to sleep when he fucked up as a kid.

I used to think impeachment was the way to go; now I think that's not good enough: I want to see him standing in the dock at The Hague in a piss-stained prison orange jumpsuit, answering to charges of war crimes.

That's what I'm talkin' about.

Don't Bring a Knife to a Gunfight

How's this for a quote from Baby Doc:

"I did notice that nobody from the Democrat Party has actually stood up and called for getting rid of the terrorist surveillance program. You know, if that's what they believe, if people in the party believe that, then they ought to stand up and say it."

They really do think we are morons. And we are acting like it. Where is the Democratic outrage at this pile of stinking dog shit? Who in the fuck ever said we should get rid of the surveillance program? This is how these slimy motherfuckers operate, and the sad excuse for a White House press pool, bunch of attention-whore slackers that they are, didn't even bother to call him on it.

Bartcop did though. Here's his suggestion as to something the Dems could say in response:

"Nobody from the GOP has actually stood up and called for the lynching of every black man in America. You know, if that's what they believe, if people in the GOP believe that, then they ought to stand up and say it. They ought to stand up and say, 'We're gonna hang every black man we can find. They ought to take their message to the people and say, vote for me.'
If that's what all Republicans believe, who don't they have the courage to say the words out loud?

But no, the weak-kneed sob sisters in my own party are too fucking scared to play by the same rules as the BFEE.

Don't bring a knife to a gunfight. That's what I say.

SCOTUS Shocker

In an unanticipated -- and welcome -- blow for liberty and individual rights, the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 (Alito sitting out) against the Stasi agents police and the Fourth Reich Bush Maladministration in a search and seizure case.

See the full story on the case and then take a guess who besides our new Grand Inquisitor Chief Justice were among the only three dissenters.

Okay, no-brainer. Of course it was Floppy-jowl Scalia and Houseboy Thomas. Jesus, somebody ought to clue those two plus Roberts in to that whole "intent of the founders" concept about unreasonable search and seizure (hint: it's in the Constitution, boys, that just-a-goddam-piece-of-paper document that you and your plantation masters in the BFEE are working so fucking hard to wipe, shred and flush).

Made a Mess? Let the Negroes Clean it Up

Baby Doc, like the spoiled brat fratboy he is, suffering from a lack of parental discipline in his childhood, apparently doesn't believe in cleaning up his own messes.

Yesterday he said, in yet another press conference (a sure sign that he's running scared--when he was brimming with misplaced self-confidence he didn't feel the need to lower himself to speak with the subhuman types in the White House Whore Press Pool) that it will be up to a future president to deal with the Mess O'Potamia. The mess that he made, in spite of the Colin Powell Pottery Barn admonition (If you break it, you bought it).

Baby Doc's whole life has been spent -- or misspent -- making one big mess after another, and he's always had Papa Doc and his friends to clean up after him. He has never once exhibited the slightest bit of accountability or personal responsiblity.

Now he's up and taken a big shit in the middle of the dining room table, suppertime is coming on, and like always, he's going to leave it for someone else to clean up.

If some of those smart-money-dumb-shit pundits of the right are correct and the next president is Kindasleazy Rice...well, that would just about be a perfect end product of the entire elitist-snob ruling-class ante-bellum plantation-mentality Repugnican attitude: Make a mess and leave it for the House Negroes to clean up.

When the Repugs talk about "traditional American values", let's don't forget that slavery was one of them. That's part and parcel of that whole "intent of the founders" Constitutional argument (slaves were 3/5 of a human) that makes me want to vomit when I hear it spewing from those flappy five-o'clock-shadowy jowls of Tony-Pro Scalia -- and it's all the worse when his houseboy, Clarence Thomas, is singing backup for him.

Finally, take a look at these maps showing the 19th Century Slave States and territories open to slavery compared with the so-called Red States in the last election. Very interesting how they seem to almost exactly coincide, isn't it?

VA Health Care Crisis: It's Clinton's Fault. Naturally.

In a story out of Pittsburgh, Eugene Nestler, an 82-year-old WWII AAF veteran who flew 30 bombing missions, was unceremoniously dumped out of VA health care and into a private facility. It's just another in a long series of slaps in the face to America's veterans, many of them elderly and frail, unable to stand up for themselves and their rights.

At the beginning of the decade of the 1990s, the VA was notoriously the worst health care system in the country. Bill Clinton (you remember him: dope-smoking draft-dodger who hated veterans and hated the military) decided to change all that. He appointed a guy named Dr. Kenneth Kizer to revamp the whole system, with the result that overall quality of health care at the VA skyrocketed astronomically.

So fast forward to the hostile takeover by the Repugs and the BFEE and the unconscionable cutbacks in VA health care and veterans benefits, inevitably resulting in numerous cases like Eugene Nestler, our WWII veteran.

Of course it's Clinton's fault: If he hadn't taken the initiative to radically improve things at the VA, today's disabled, sick and psychotic veterans would have nothing positive to compare today's fucked-up system to. They would be -- as they should be, as they soon will be once the budget cuts are all fully in place -- happy to be wallowing in their own waste, lying in unchanged sheets, their flyblown untreated stumps left to fester by an overworked and understaffed system that is now being set up to fail them, not care for them.

And what I can't understand, not at all, is the support this lying cheating stealing murdering soldier-killing veteran-hating Maladminstration still enjoys from so many veterans and active duty military.

I honestly can't understand it.