Happy Holidays, Everyone

I'm going dark until after the new year. I need the R&R very badly. Thanks to everyone who continues to read this blog, and I'll be back after the holiday.

See you then, and stay progressive!

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

Total coalition forces dead: 247
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1928
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1379
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1328
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: 311
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 157.

It is still 782 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

MORE Troops???

Let's see now. The war in Iraq has been a total debacle, an unmitigated disaster, a supreme clusterfuck, claiming nearly 3000 American lives, and all Baby Doc can do is ... call for more troops?

Let's throw some gasoline on the fire and try to put it out. Let's pour a thousand gallons of water over the top of that drowning man to try to save him. I remember an old bumper sticker from the Vietnam era: Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.

It's like the November elections -- as clear a referendum on the Iraq war as we could have seen -- didn't happen.

William Arkin, writing in the normally lickspittle WaHoPo, calls it out in his column today. And be sure to check out the blog posts at the bottom of the page. Unbelievably, there are still people who are so out of touch with reality that they are still supporting The Smirking Chimp.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 943 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.

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.

Better Living Through Electricity

We finally have our electricity on, after days of cold and darkness following the big windstorm of 2006.

On Thursday evening, at the height of the windstorm, our power went off, but I still managed to make it to work on Friday. Only a skeleton crew actually showed up, though, so we sat around and yakked like college students in a dorm bull session, and then midmorning I went out on a food run to the only fast food place in town that was open, Jack in the Box, where I sat in the drive-up window line for nearly 45 minutes to get a sackful of delicious breakfasts of sausage-on-a-croissant.

So I spent a nice warm day at the office while She Who Must Be Obeyed was sitting at home, freezing her ass off and getting more and more disgruntled.

When I finally rolled in around 4:00 in the afternoon, she was more than a little surly, not to mention negative and bitter.

"What's up?" I said, casually tossing my hat and scarf onto the footstool. I really should have known from the look on her face that she had not had a good day.

"You want to know 'what's up'?" she hissed. "I've been here freezing to death while you've been sitting around your nice warm office drinking coffee and eating croissants."

"And surfing the Internets," I said. "But this isn't so bad. Think of it as an adventure, like winter camping. What's for supper?"

"I don't DO winter camping!" she screamed, smashing a lit Coleman lantern over my head.

So, after I smothered the flames under my woolen stocking cap and drew some eyebrows back on my face, I took her out for a nice dinner at one of the downtown restaurants that had its power on and then we came home and layered ourselves with winter clothing. A couple glasses of wine later we were all right and amused ourselves listening to mp3 versions of Xmas shows from the golden days of radio (Jack Benny, Life of Riley, etc).

On Saturday we got away, and today the power is back on, the house is warm, and all's right with the world. At least this little corner of it. Two streets away they still are in the dark. It's all in the luck of the draw. And where the Suits from Puget Sound Energy live, apparently. Those neighborhoods seemed to get their lights back on almost immediately.

But I'm sure that was just a coincidence.

A Step Back from the Brink of Fascism

One of the first orders of the day for Democrats ought to be a rollback of the fascist laws and regulations enacted by the glassy-eyed goosestepping followers of Der Monkey Fuehrer, and that appears to be exactly where they are headed.

According to Patrick Leahy, the new head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the wiretap law will be first up. Let's hope that it doesn't stop there, that this is only the beginning, and don't forget that it was the very same committee that in 1974 was ready to vote articles of impeachment against another corrupt and crooked Rethug, Richard Nixon.

I Thought the Election Was Over

But it wasn't: There was still a runoff election to be decided in Texas 23. And I'm happy to relate that the Democratic challenger, Ciro Rodriguez, stomped long-term Rethug Rep Henry Bonilla, to give the Dems yet another seat.

Now all they have to do is govern. Something that we haven't seen a lot of in the last six years of rubber-stamp Lackeys for Baby Doc.

BTW, that runoff election was held on, of all days, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, one of the most important dates in Mexico. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to figure out that the date was chosen in a deliberate attempt to suppress the Hispanic vote, a demographic that was seen to prefer Rodriguez over Bonilla.

Take That, Swifties!

News from the Federal Elections Commission today: The Swift Boat Liars for Bush have been hit with a $230,000 fine for their over-the-top campaign of deceit against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry.

Raw Story has the details, along with the other guilty parties, including (regrettably) MoveOn.org.

But it was the Swifties who got the biggest hit, and deservedly so. Maybe this will be a lesson to the backers and hangers-on of the Swifties that they need to dial it back a little.

But chances are they won't. And why should they? When it comes right down to it, in their warped world view, a small fine is worth it to keep Baby Doc in power. Besides, the BFEE will I am sure open its vault and pay the Swifties back for the amount of the fine.

It's just chump change to those fuckers.

Violation of Patent Rights

I like to play with my cats using a laser pointer. They chase it around the room and generally have almost as much fun as I do -- but inevitably they give up before I do, once they figure out that I'm having a good time...

So how was I supposed to know that every time I do this, I am infringing on someone's actual patented idea.

No wonder patent law reform is such a hot button issue in this country. But for every ridiculously granted patent for a frivolously obvious idea, there are hundreds of legitimate inventors who will suffer if the laws aren't revised in the right way. From the looks of the proposals, the "reform" will benefit the rich and the powerful (e.g. Microsoft), to the detriment of the rest of us.

Yeah, now there's a big surprise.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 936 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.

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.

USA Today Calls for President to Resign

Here's what USA Today had to say:

Has the President so failed in his duties to the nation that he should leave office? The answer to that question is yes, and the time for the President to leave is not after months of continued national embarrassment but now. [The President] should resign.

How about that for a hard-hitting opinion piece? They pretty much call it as we see it, don't they?

Well, it's just too fucking bad that this was published on Sept. 15, 1998, and "The President" was Bill Clinton.

So where are these papers who called for Clinton's resignation over one little lie about getting a blow job -- a lie in answer to a question that should never have been asked -- now that Baby Doc has been shown to be a criminally insane megalomaniac operating outside all normal bounds of reality? Major dailies such as the Seattle Times, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, the Des Moines Sunday Register, the San Jose Mercury-News, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution all called for Clinton to resign. Not one has called for Bush to resign.

Of course that would mean a President Cheney, and who wants that?

(Thanks to Beggars Can Be Choosers for the heads up on this.)

And BTW, does anyone still believe in coincidences when it comes to this crowd in the White House? I don't want to go all tin-foil-hat here, but does anyone remember that the Starr Report was issued on ... September 11? I'm just asking.

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

Total coalition forces dead: 247
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1914
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1365
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1314
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: 297
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 143.

It is still 796 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration -- unless we impeach the whole sorry lot of the corrupt and criminal bastards.

Lying Legion Chief Claims to be Vietnam Vet

It used to be that the membership of the American Legion consisted of veterans who were actually in a war on foreign soil. I don't know exactly when that changed, but you'd at least think that the Supreme Kommandant of that fine organization would be an actual war veteran.

But not one Paul Morin, who ran for the office using the statement in his official bio as "Morin is Vietnam veteran of the U.S. Army".

The closest Morin got to Vietnam was ... Fort Dix, NJ.

I've been a stickler over the years about who is and who is not a Vietnam veteran. To my way of thinking, if you weren't boots-on-the-ground, butt-in-the-air or feet-in-the-water, then you really can't call yourself a Vietnam veteran. Period. You are a Vietnam-era veteran. Not that there's anything wrong with that, let me make that perfectly clear. Those of us who were drafted had a chance to be sent anywhere. Several friends of mine who were drafted around the same time as me spent their time stateside, and a lucky few got to go to Germany. We were all in the service and we all served honorably. But they don't describe themselves as "Vietnam veterans".

Wannabes like Morin make a mockery of the service of real Vietnam vets and he ought to be ashamed of himself. This is yet another in a long line of reasons why I have never joined -- and will never join -- the American Legion, the VFW, etc.

Mary Cheney Pregnant!

I don't know how it can get any better. Mary Cheney, who pretended to be pissed off at both Kerry and Edwards during the last presidential campaign for "outing" her as a Lesbian (which, as we all know, was completely bogus -- she was openly gay for years before that), is now the proud bearer of her very own fetus.

Cheney, who has lived with Heather Poe, her same-sex partner, for the last 15 years, has been an embarrassment and a thorn in the side of the Xian fundos backing the BFEE for years. And has been living proof that being gay is not a "lifestyle choice", that with all the advantages accruing to her growing up in a religiously active politically conservative family she is still gay.

The details are sketchy, of course, but we can only hope that she saved one of the "baste-'em-don't-waste'em" snowflake babies that would otherwise be flushed down the toilet.

But I'm guessing that she didn't. All that Focus on the Fetus talk is just that: Big talk. When the chips are down, the little embryos have served their propaganda purpose and Gay Mary will have gone to a sperm bank to get the "perfect" child.

She and her partner, BTW, now live in Virginia, which just passed an anti-gay rights law. What that means is that while Baby Snowflake might have two mommies, one of them will have absolutely NO parental rights.

And I am assuming that Mary and her father The Dick are perfectly happy with that arrangement. After all, it's an article of faith for the Repugnican Party. But I do feel sorry for Heather Poe. She will have no rights at all when it comes to that baby. On the bright side, though, she also won't be stuck for child support when she and Mary get a divorce have a legal separation break up.

And I'm sure that's one more thing that the anti-gay-marriage crowd is happy about -- abandoned children who are not supported by the absent parent.

Iraq: One By One They Finally Cough Up the Truth

The Independent from the UK is always an interesting read, to get news from a non-US, non-SCLM perspective. They are have an intriguing list of individuals, from Colin Powell to Jack Straw to Donald Rumsfeld, who are finally telling the truth about Iraq.

See the story and then wonder why John Kerry was called a "flip-flopper" by many of these same fuckers.

And why Baby Doc and The Poodle still remain strangely silent...

Save Your Hearing

I came home from Vietnam with some significant hearing loss, mainly in my right ear, the result of an M-16 on full rock-n-roll right next to my head one night when the Jeep I was riding in got ambushed.

I also love music, and I love it turned up loud. Which can create additional problems with your hearing if you've joined the iPod revolution.

While my mp3 player is not an actual iPod, it is essentially the same thing: a 1 gig mp3 player with headphones, and I have to be careful when I turn up the volume.

All of his isn't new, but it's being newly stressed in a new report from the Mayo Clinic. For all of us old geezers who already had hearing loss, the news is pretty grim. It appears to be worse if you use those tiny little "earbud" headphones jammed into your ear canal.

Take some time to read the article, and then consider what I did to deal with it.

I bought some over-the-ear noise-cancelling headphones from Sony (only $125 and worth every penny; Bose, the Rolls Royce of headphones, can possibly be better, but not $150 better) which have a noise-cancelling circuit built in. Consequently I can drown out the external noise -- I work in a particularly loud office with some annoyingly irritating coworkers -- without having to crank up the volume.

Of course just not wearing them is an option, but I'm afraid that if I did that, you'd be seeing the breaking news alerts: "Vietnam vet goes beserk, film at eleven".

VA Spending Too Slowly on Mental Health

In another news-that-isn't-news story out of the mismanaged Dept of Veterans Affairs, a new report faults the VA for not spending money already allocated for the mental health care of veterans.

Jesus, what the fuck IS it with the Rethugs? First they won't fund the VA at the levels needed, and then when they slapped around by a feisty Mom-in-Tennis-Shoes (Washington Senator Patty Murray) and finally, grudgingly, open the purse a little bit, their flunkies over at the VA won't spend the money.

Like I've said before, the Repugnican Party doesn't give a shit about America's veterans or its active duty military. The sad part is that they now are shameless about it. They used to give us at least some lip service, but now they've even given up on that pretense.

Mandatory funding for VA health care? I'll support that, but it had better include mandatory spending, too.

Taking the Oath

Some wingnut talkshow host by the name of Dennis Prager, whoever the fuck that is, has tried to stir up a little religio-racist tempest by saying that newly-elected Muslim congressman Keith Ellison (D-MN) has refused to take the oath of office on a Bible and will use a Quran instead.

Oh my god! It's the end of civilization as we know it!

Naturally this is red meat to the Moron-American/Racist-Knuckledragger audience that these guys naturally play to, and it's had its desired effect. Now the MSM has picked up on it, repeating the statement that Ellison has said he'll use the Quran, and the left is now weighing in with a defense of religious liberty, blah blah blah.

Too bad that no one even bothers to do the slightest amount of research, or they would have learned that NO ONE SWEARS ON A BIBLE when they take the oath of office.

Back in the day, when I was still an aspiring hack, we were a drunken cynical lot but even we could be counted on to do at least a minimum of research on a story.

But that's too much to expect now. The wingnuts lie. They lie all the time. They will be lying even more now that their party is no longer in power in the marbled halls of Congress, and the goddamn MSM/SCLM will continue to be enablers and allow them to get away with it.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 929 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.

But now it's even worse -- they've been asked to leave Argentina, of all places, because they've been partying too much. Argentina, previously known for harboring Adolph Eichmann and other Nazi war criminals! It must be bad if even Argentina is kicking you to leave...

Used to be the best thing for a couple of troublemaking slacker offspring was a hitch in the service. There used to be a saying in my family: There are two kinds of Farnsworth boys, those who have been in the Navy and those the judge hasn't sent there yet. (Of course, iconoclast that I am, I had to go into the Army.)

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

BTW, they 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

Total coalition forces dead: 247
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1907
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1358
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1307
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: 290
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 136.

It is still 803 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration -- unless we impeach the whole sorry lot of the corrupt and criminal bastards.