And Speaking of Hagel

It also makes you wonder why (NOT!) Chuck Hagel's letter is appearing pretty much in the blogosphere and in the left-wing internet media.

I just did a Google News search and found only 16 references to it, hardly any of them in the MSM/SCLM.

There's that goddam liberal media at work again. Shameless.

Remember When...

I can remember when the Rethug party was the party of a much bigger tent, as the saying goes, when you had two distinct wings of the party, represented by people like conservative Barry Goldwater on one hand and liberal Charles Percy on the other.

Unfortunately today's Rethug party doesn't resemble in any way the GOP of old. Instead it now more resembles the nascent Nazi Party of early Thirties Berlin.

Which is why it's a little surprising for Chuck Hagel to write a scathing letter to Der Monkey Fuehrer calling for "direct, unconditional, and comprehensive talks with the Government of Iran".

But Hagel has already said he's not going to run again, so I guess he figures he's got nothing to lose by alienating the wingnut fringe that's taken over the party and is running it like a Stalinist cadre of reactionary hardliners. Did I say "running it like..."? No, they are actually running it that way.

But it makes you wonder why so many of these guys wait until they are out of the maladminstration or no longer susceptible to the long arm of the Bushevik NKVD before they speak out.

Anyway, Hagel calls it straight, and watch him be made to suffer for his party-loyalty insouciance by the rightwing smear machine. Watch Big-Hair Hannity and the Bloviating Gas Bag try to rip him a new one, watch the Faux Noise machine go into high dudgeon over Hagel's "treason".

I think Hagel ought to seriously consider coming over to the party that truly has the Big Tent. And he would be welcomed with open arms, just as we welcomed former Rethug Jim Webb. Now all we need to do is convince more of the sane-minded nominal Republicans to come over as well and we will have a new majority that will last for a generation. Or more.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1245 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 just 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?

And I see in the news that little Jenna is engaged to a joker named Henry Hager. Wanna bet that he won't be wearing a uniform anytime soon? Like ever? Unlike both 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. But even though he's not on his way to The Sandbox, he's still in uniform

Will the Bush Twins follow his 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 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 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

• Total coalition forces dead: 303
• Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+


• Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2235
• Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1682
• Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1639
• 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: 620 (but watch out, Shooter's going hunting this weekend...)
• Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 463.


• It is still 452 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Fascism in 10 Easy Steps

Those of you who still persist in believing that the BFEE is, at best, a bumbling bunch of morons would profit from a perusal of Naomi Wolf's new book The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot.

In it she describes the path to American fascism in 10 easy steps. You can read her summary over at the Huffington Post, with a brief explanation of each of the ten steps:

1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law

This is the blueprint universally used by fascist states to solidify their power, and when you look at each of these steps, you will see that the Mayberry Machiavellians who are working behind the scenes in the BFEE are systematically working to bring about each and every one of them.

This maladminstration must be stopped. But, since the Dems seem to have lost that slender spine that they tried growing six months ago, I don't have a whole lot of hope that they will do anything of the sort. Not when Nancy Pelosi's spine seems to be limited to criticizing one of her own, Pete Stark, whose only crime was speaking truth to power.

I Pledge Allegiance to the ... Penis?

It wasn't enough that Prezdint Codpiece strutted across that carrier deck with a rolled-up gym sock in his flight suit.

Now he's been caught on film during a flag pledge with his hand over what can charitably -- and ambitiously -- described as a different bodily organ.

Jesus, what is that fucker's monthly laundry bill for those sweat socks, anyway?

[Thanks to Newshounds for the picture]

HR 3685: Another Straw Man

Sometimes late at night, when my Seattle Air America station, KPTK, fades out, I tend to scan up and down the dial for alternative sources of talking head entertainment. Invariably that means I'm pretty limited to rightwing radio. But I'm willing to put up with it, if only to check in periodically on what the enemy is up to.

So that's how it happened that last night that I tuned in to a shrill harangue by wingnut harpy Diane Medved (who claims to be a "clinical psychologist" and who happens to be married to Jewish-Orthodox Crypto-Fascist Slavery-Wasn't-So-Bad Michael Medved) on HR 3685, the so-called ENDA bill, which would add sexual orientation to the list of things protected by federal anti-discrimination laws.

Well, that was pretty much the end of the world for Diane Medved. She went into a lengthy rant about the spectre of Christian bookstores having to hire cross-dressing child-perverting want-to-marry-your-brother homos, blah blah blah, and predicted that this would end up having to cater to a wide population of psychosexual personality disorders.

Nothing in the bill itself refers to any manual or text used by the American Psychology Association to define "deviant" sexuality, but that didn't stop Medved from claiming that it did, even going so far as to look up and read over the air such choice "sexual orientation" items as people who derive sexual stimulation from physical contact with an amputee's stump... (Never mind also that the APA has come out in support of gay marriage and gay adoption -- but that inconvenient fact is something Medved apparently wants to hide.)

You can read the text of the bill yourself and see that religious organizations are specifically exempted from compliance, as are the military services and businesses who employ fewer than 15 employees (like the vast majority, if not all, Christian bookstores, I would guess).

Medved did acknowledge that exemption for religious organizations, but maintained that it was "meaningless". Well, since she's a rightwing koolaid-drinking Rethug nutcase who hangs on every word of Der Monkey Fuehrer, since any part of any law can be rendered meaningless by a stroke of the signing statement pen, I guess a given portion of any law can be "meaningless".

And, what seems to be a little-known feature of the ENDA bill is that, of all places, the White House helped craft the religious exemption language in the bill. So maybe she's right about that "meaningless" crap.

All of which leads me to believe that the Giggling Murder Monkey wanted the bill to pass congress, just so he could make a swaggering show of vetoing it. And he's the one who decried "political theatre" not so very long ago.

I guess it makes a difference who the actor is.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1238 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 just 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?

And I see in the news that little Jenna is engaged to a joker named Henry Hager. Wanna bet that he won't be wearing a uniform anytime soon? Like ever? Unlike both 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. But even though he's not on his way to The Sandbox, he's still in uniform

Will the Bush Twins follow his 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 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.

Remembering "Johnny Taliban"

You all remember the sad and lamented fate of one John Walker Lindh, who made the fatal mistake of investigating and adhering to the "wrong" religion.

When he was just a callow youth, Lindh managed to take off to foreign climes where he began to study Islam, became a true believer, and ended up in Afghanistan on the side of the Taliban, who were at the time fighting the so-called Northern Alliance.

Remember, all this happened in early 2001, when Baby Doc was still actively sniffing the butts of the Taliban. After all, they were still in charge in Afghanistan, and the oil baron puppeteers who pull Bush's strings were hungering after a treaty which would allow them to build a pipeline across the country from the oil-rich fields in the "Stans" in the north to a Pakistani port on the Arabian Sea.

But then, unfortunately for Johnny Taliban, 9-11 happened, the US suddenly was an enemy of the Taliban ("Oceana was at war with Eastasia; Oceana had always been at war with Eastasia." -- 1984) and Lindh was captured after US forces invaded Afghanistan.

Even more misfortune was to befall Lindh, when he was first photographed with CIA agent Johnny Mike Spann, and immediately thereafter Spann was killed in a prisoner uprising.

After several days of hiding in a basement, which was hit with such non-violent tactics as bombing, burning fuel and freezing water, the prisoners gave up, and Lindh was among them.

The world remembers the image of the naked and immobilized-by-duct-tape Lindh being carried on a stretcher. But, since the image was cropped, the world does not remember that Lindh had a potentially life-threatening wound in his leg.

But we also remember that Lindh, despite any evidence that he ever even considered taking up arms against the US, accepted a plea bargain that netted him 20 years at the Colorado "Super Max" prison.

Where he has been held incommunicado ever since.

Jeez, you'd think that this was, just maybe, "cruel and unusual" punishment, but not according to the wingnuttery. According to them, Lindh was everything from a traitor to a terrorist, all because of that liberal upbringing of his in "liberal Marin County", California.

And it wasn't just the right wing spin machine. If you'll also recall, there was not one single contemporary news story that did not feature prominently that upbringing in "liberal Marin County".

Contrast that, if you will, with the concurrent news coverage of school-teacher-turned-child-rapist Mary Kay Letourneau, all of which happened pretty much at the same time as the coverage of Lindh. Hardly a single news story revealed the fact that she was a product of conservative Orange County, California.

And, to make matters even worse, hardly any news stories about Letourneau revealed the fact that she was the daughter of Über Conservative (and Republican, naturally) former US Congressman and former presidential candidate John G. Schmitz. I'll repeat that: Hardly any news stories.

And there's your goddam liberal media at work again.

So back to Lindh. There he is, being held at the Super Max and not allowed to talk to the media or pretty much anyone else. He's probably glad that he wasn't disappeared, like some hapless Argentinian, into the American gulag, as an "enemy combatant".

But is he being held incommunicado because he might be able to blow the whistle on war crimes committed against the Taliban in that basement? When you add bombing, burning fuel and icy water to the mix, it sound a little like overkill to me.

I'm just asking...

Go Get 'Em, Pete!

Congressman Pete Stark (California, Dem--natch) kicked some Rethug ass on the floor of congress yesterday before the failed attempt of the House to override the unconscionable veto of the S-CHIP program by the Giggling Murder Monkey.

If you don't want to watch the video, you can read the transcript here.

Predicably the wingnuttery are up in arms over his remarks, demanding an apology.

An apology, for telling the truth? I don't think so.

Keep it up, Pete. Kick 'em in the nuts, knock out a few teeth, and send the fucking bullies packing.

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

Total coalition forces dead: 303
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2228
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1675
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1632
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: 613
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 456.

It is still 459 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Religion and Politics

You wouldn't know it from listening to the Fundo Xian talking heads, mouth breathers and other assorted moronic fairy-tale believers on the right wing, but the United States Constitution mentions religion exactly twice:

Article. VI. - Debts, Supremacy, Oaths

...

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States. [Emphasis added]

and

Amendment 1 - Freedom of Religion, Press, Expression. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

And that's it. Christian nation, my ass.

So why is it that the major Dems are falling all over themselves to prove who's the better Xian?
"I'm more religious than you are!"
"No, you're not. I'm more religious!"
"Are not!"
"Am too!"
What is this, the fifth grade playground?

Well, the answer is that this article and amendment, like most of the Constitution under the present regime, have been rendered "quaint". That and that 28% or so of people who identify themselves as Evangelical have an untoward influence on the political scene that is completely out of proportion to their actual numbers.

Just once I'd like to hear a candidate for president say, in answer to some dickhead media asshole asking about his/her religion, "I believe that one's religion is a deeply personal matter, and the constitution states that there shall be no religious test for holding office, so I respectfully decline to answer, but thank you for your question."

Yeah, like that's ever gonna happen.

Oh and that part about "oath or affirmation"? It means this: If you do not believe in god, you do not have to swear an oath. Instead you make an affirmation that what you are saying is true.

When I was an investigator for the state, I had to testify on numerous occasions. In the early days I was asked to hold up my right hand and swear that what I was about to say was the truth, blah blah blah, so help me god. Inevitably, since I thought that it would be hypocritical to swear to a god I didn't believe in, I'd have to interrupt the proceedings and inform the court or the administrative law judge that I would not swear an oath, but rather would affirm to the truthfulness of my testimony, under penalty of perjury.

So after several years of this nonsense, they finally "got it" and in the later years they streamlined it to "I do solemnly swear or affirm" etc., and left off the god part at the end.

A welcome change, if you ask me. And I often wondered how many people in my position just went along with it, swearing an oath to a god they didn't believe in, just because they didn't want to "make waves". Probably a lot.

The "Right to Life" Movement

The local Planned Parenthood office is just around the corner from my favorite watering hole, and several times a week I have to drive past a group of mostly elderly men (i.e. my age...) who are picketing the office because Planned Parenthood provides abortion counseling and referral.

To make it worse, they are holding large full-color posters of aborted fetuses, all red and nasty-looking, with the intended purpose of scaring off potential "customers" of Planned Parenthood.

So, aside from prompting smartasses like me to make comments like "Mmmmm, looks good. I think I'll have spaghetti and meatballs today!", what are they really accomplishing?

Well, they are raking in the dough. Anti-abortion crusades are a huge money-maker.

The Rethugs had total control of Congress, the Executive Branch and the Judicial Branch for six years. Did you see any bills come up, let alone get passed, that would have done anything to stop abortions in this country?

No, you did not. The very last thing these fuckers really want is a federal ban on abortion. That happens and their cash cow goes dry, their donations disappear and they'll have to go out and find a new cause to champion.

Funky Winkerbean Creator Takes Death Head On

I've been along-time fan of Tom Batiuk's Funky Winkerbean, and I'll confess that even I wept a tear at Lisa's death from breast cancer week before last.

So I'm a little taken aback at the controversy surrounding the fictional events leading up to her death.

I guess people still don't want to face death, and would prefer that their "funny pages" remain funny -- never mind the fact that so many of them stopped being "funny" years ago, and never mind the fact that in the early days of the comic strip they contained long story lines in which people suffered -- and died -- with depressing regularity.

But what surprised me the most were the people who issued non-negotiable demands that their local newspaper drop the strip.

Jesus, people, if you don't like it, then don't read it. It's the same with censorship of books, movies, television, the Internets, etc. etc. Just because you don't want to read it, don't even think of telling me that I can't read it, either.

Fundo Xian Religion Takes Hit from Youth

Finally, some hopeful news about the "younger generation". Today the results of a large poll were released, and the news ain't good for the Fundo Xians.

According to the story (published in San Antonio, of all places -- and not so much elsewhere), today's young people see Christianity as judgmental, hypocritical and -- most importantly -- anti-gay.

I say good for them. I grew up in Oklahome in the 50s, when Civil Rights were pretty much a pipe dream, where the "negroes" knew their place and pretty much stayed in it. No one could have predicted that the gathering storm on the historical horizon would result in the major sea change in American society that was wrought by Martin Luther King and the other major players in the Civil Rights pantheon.

And I believe that it took the changing attitudes towards race of young people to help bring this about. Now we are engaged in another monumental Civil Rights struggle, this time for the equal rights of gay, lesbian and transgendered people, and it will be won, just as the struggle of my generation was won. And it is the young people who will make it happen.

In a way it's kind of scary, though, since every time The Church has come under scrutiny and objective criticism, the backlash has been horrific (e.g., the Inquisition, the slaughter of the Huguenots, the list goes on...), and there's no reason to suspect it won't happen again as a result of the conclusions of this study. Watch for modern equivalents of the rack, the bastinado, and the fiery stake, used as instruments of missionary zeal.

So you freedom-loving intellectually-honest young people -- and I am proud to put my free-thinking, authority-questioning agnostic 14-year-old grandson in that mix -- stand your ground, stay true to your Secular Humanism and your sense of social justice, and give the well-deserved boot to those homophobic authoritarian judgmental assholes in your life.

Life is too short to worry about what other people are doing in the bedroom. Stand up for what's right.

There is hope after all for this country.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1231 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 just 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?

And I see in the news that little Jenna is engaged to a joker named Henry Hager. Wanna bet that he won't be wearing a uniform anytime soon? Like ever? Unlike both 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. But even though he's not on his way to The Sandbox, he's still in uniform

Will the Bush Twins follow his 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 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.

More on RIAA

A few days ago I posted a criticism of RIAA entitled "Music Nazis". Today from C|Net News (my favorite technology news site, BTW) I got a chance to read the more complete story on Jammie Thomas, the woman ordered to pay $220,000 in damages to RIAA for music downloads.

I'm not sure that Thomas is actually guilty of the charges against her, but that's beside the point. What is bothersome is that one of the jurors on her case is a self-admitted Internet moron illiterate who has never even bothered to try to get on the Internets.

Like the notorious case of Jule Amero from last summer, it's dangerous to have on your jury people who are complete idiots when it comes to technology. Even under the best of circumstances the opposing counsel can run rings around the poor jury members and convince the less-savvy among them that up is down, black is white and left is right. I've been on a jury and I could see it happening.

It becomes a problem if the jurors have no technical grounding in the subject matter. They are left to try to make a decision based on which attorney "sounds" better, or worse, which one had the better suit, or which one was "cuter" (I swear to god, that was one of the reasons put forth in the jury deliberation room).

I don't know how you would get around this, but I certainly wouldn't want my fate dependent on someone who was a complete moron.

Wait a minute, that's what we have now with Baby Doc in the White House...

Incompetence -- Another "Phony Soldier" Speaks Out

No less a personage than former Supreme Commander of the Iraq War Illegal Occupation has spoken out againt the BFEE.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who commanded U.S. forces in Iraq for the first year of the occupation, has called the Baby Doc maladministration -- and by extension Der Monkey Fuehrer himself -- incompetent.

In a speech before a conference of Military Reporters and Editors in Arlington, Virginia, Sanchez blasted the administration for mishandling the Iraq quagmire in the desert:

There has been a glaring, unfortunate display of incompetence in strategic leadership among our national leaders. They have unquestionably been derelict in the performance of their duty. In my profession, these types of leaders would be immediately relieved or court-martialed.

Sadly, Sanchez drew up short of demanding a full and immediate withdrawal. "America has no choice but to continue our efforts in Iraq. A precipitous withdrawal will unquestionably lead to chaos, in my opinion, that would endanger the stability of the greater Middle East."

Okay, so Sanchez doesn't go far enough, and his statement that something would "lead to chaos" is not congnizant of the fact that it can't lead to chaos, since chaos already exists and will only get worse.

Sanchez seems locked into that gambler's mindset -- I saw it myself in Las Vegas -- that insists on throwing good money after bad because we've already gambled away a small fortune, and it would be bad to quit now before we've won back what we lost.

That's what keeps Vegas running, and it doesn't work any better there than it does in the real world.

So, Mister Pimple-ass Rush Limbaugh, I supposed that General Sanchez is another "phony soldier" in your estimable opinion. You and all of the other armchair generals on the right wing who never saw a day in uniform but haven't let that stop you from pontificating on military matters.

Bunch of fucking chickenhawks.

Slurs from the Right

The National Enquirer, of all things, is flogging a "news story" that Democrat presidential hopeful John Edwards has had an ongoing extramarital affair with one of his staffers.

Apparently our good buddy Drudge also had something on this, since mAnn Coulter was spewing some invective a couple of days ago on the same topic. And I was listening to Big Eddy this afternoon when a caller speculated that it wasn't the wingnuts who were behind it, but instead the Hillary Clinton camp.

Yeah, nice try, caller. While it's clear that the Clintonistas would be the primary beneficiaries of a slander like this, I still hold that it comes from the Rethugs, who fear an Edwards presidential campaign more than a chicken fears Colonel Sanders.

They want to run against Hillary Clinton. And no one else, since she's the only candidate who can polarize the election to the point that they can drag out their Fundo Xian supporters and force them, however reluctantly, to vote for whatever midget-brained morally-bankrupt Stepford-Wife Rethug candidate happens to survive the primaries.

They see, and rightly so, that Hillary Clinton is the Dem candidate who will be the easiest to come within striking range of, and after the last two elections, that's all they need. A little tweaking here, a little vote fraud there, and voilá, Rethugs win again! Sorry, Dems, go home and cry yourself to sleep again. Nothing more to see 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

Total coalition forces dead: 302
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 2221
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1668
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1625
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: 606
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 449.

It is still 466 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration.

Slavery? It Wasn't So Bad...

Jesus, as if we needed any more ammunition against the wingnuttery. Now full-time crypto-fascist neocon Michael Medved has come out with a "think-piece" defending, of all things, slavery!!!

Medved lives (regrettably) in Seattle, and conseqently is more or less a neighbor of mine. Jesus help me, I'd rather have Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Francisco Franco, Ghengis Khan, Attilla the Hun, Adolph Eichmann, Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgeway, Albert DeSalvo or Martin Bormann living next door than this piece of unregenerated rightwing suckass neo-Nazi pigshit.

Over at the sadly misnamed Town Hall website (I refuse to give them a link; do a Google search for "medved six inconvenient truths slavery" and you'll find it, right there at the top.

Basically Medved's thesis is that slavery was GOOD for African Americans, it wasn't "genocidal" since the slave owners needed the living capital and it did not create profits to slay them, etc etc etc.

I've hated the fucker ever since, ten or twelve years ago, he came on as a talking-head pundit on a station that used to be fairly liberal (KING AM 1090), proud of the fact that he was a neocon. No one knew what that meant back then, but it didn't take long of listening to this little fucker to know what HE meant.

Since those days he's managed to shift over to the Faux News Talk station out of Seattle, PLUS wangle his way into a nationally syndicated talk show.

I don't get it, but there you are. Now he -- an Orthodox Jew, by the way, who ought to know better -- is a major apologist for, of all things, slavery in the United States.

It boggles the mind. It really does. And it just goes to show you that the rightwing is capable of anything -- ANYTHING -- in this country, and apparently without having to take the slightest amount of personal responsibility for it.

It's no wonder that the Rethugs have basically written off the black vote in this country. But you'd think that at least they'd feel a modicum of embarrassment by it. But no.

A Refreshing Political Interview

Here's what happened when NYC Councilman James Oddo was ambushed by a Norwegian comedy crew pretending to be legitimate news people:

More on Rush

Or should that be "Moron Rush"?

Just when I thought I was done with the bloviating gasbag pimpleass, he pops up again, this time ridiculing a 12-year-old boy whose life was saved by the CHIP program and who then had the unmitigated gall to go on national radio to talk about it.

What's the matter, Rusty? Chelsea Clinton (aka "the White House dog") get too old for you? You are afraid to debate Jon Soltz about the so-called "phony soldiers", and you are afraid to debate me on the same topic, but I guess, like the rest of your hypocritical sex-crazed closeted gay cohorts in the GOP, 12-year-old boys are not off limits.

Remember folks, this unwarranted and disgusting attack on an innocent boy comes from a guy who spent his Viagra-fueled vacation in the Dominican Republic, the Western Hemisphere's mecca for child sex prostitution.

Could it be that the Windbag from Wall Street is doing a little projecting when he spouts vile shit like this:

So the bottom line for me is: They can’t rely on truth to make their case for their cause. They have to lie. Be it about me, be it about their own voters (such as the Frosts) be it about President Bush, they must lie — and anybody who stands in the way of their succeeding with that lie becomes an enemy, becomes a target
* * * *
They send the kid out to lie. They filled this kid’s head with lies just as they have some of these soldiers about me. Put lies in the kid’s head or put it on the script that he’s reading. He goes out and reads it. He’s 12-years-old! They will use anybody! They’ll corrupt anybody, to get where they’re headed. That’s who they are, folks.

I don't have a degree in psychology, but this is so easy I don't need one. The fatass motherfucker is so clearly talking about himself and the rest of the Talking Point Rethugs that it isn't even funny any more.

Here's what Graeme Frost, the 12-year-old under attack, had to say in his radio broadcast. Read it over and then tell me what in it is such a huge lie:

Hi, my name is Graeme Frost. I’m 12 years old and I live in Baltimore, Maryland. Most kids my age probably havent heard of CHIP, the Childrens Health Insurance Program. But I know all about it, because if it weren’t for CHIP, I might not be here today.
CHIP is a law the government made to help families like mine afford healthcare for their kids. Three years ago, my family was in a really bad car accident. My younger sister Gemma and I were both hurt. I was in a coma for a week and couldn’t eat or stand up or even talk at first. My sister was even worse.
I was in the hospital for five-and-a-half months and I needed a big surgery. For a long time after that, I had to go to physical therapy after school to get stronger. But even though I was hurt badly, I was really lucky. My sister and I both were.
My parents work really hard and always make sure my sister and I have everything we need, but the hospital bills were huge. We got the help we needed because we had health insurance for us through the CHIP program. But there are millions of kids out there who don’t have CHIP, and they wouldn’t get the care that my sister and I did if they got hurt. Their parents might have to sell their cars or their houses, or they might not be able to pay for hospital bills at all.
Now I’m back to school. One of my vocal chords is paralyzed so I don’t talk the same way I used to. And I can’t walk or run as fast as I did. The doctors say I can’t play football any more, but I might still be able to be a coach. I’m just happy to be back with my friends.
I don’t know why President Bush wants to stop kids who really need help from getting CHIP. All I know is I have some really good doctors. They took great care of me when I was sick, and I’m glad I could see them because of the Childrens Health Program.
I just hope the President will listen to my story and help other kids to be as lucky as me. This Graeme Frost, and this has been the Weekly Democratic Radio address.
Thanks for listening.

Just what the fuck are the wingnuts so fucking afraid of, that they have to send their overweight, oversexed and overbearing fat-fuck pimple-assed attack dog after a 12-year-old boy??

Another Straw Man

While I was driving through the remote desert between LA and Vegas, I was twirling the dial on the Red Shark's radio and caught a fundo Xian station out of Fort Stinking Desert. On it the radiovangelist was railing about the return of the "Fairness Doctrine" if those atheistic commie-pinko liburuls get their way.

He ranted and raved about his station having to give equal time to atheists and satanists if the doctrine is reinstated, and followed it up (naturally) with a plea for money to fight the commie bastards every step of the way.

It would be funny were it not so sad. I could just picture his listeners, huddled around their cheap transistor radios in the shade of their 1950s-era trailers, wondering where their next meal was coming from but not worrying about it since they'll send the money they'd use to buy it to this suit-wearing charlatan.

Even in the hey-day of the Doctrine, religious broadcasters were pretty much exempt, and there are no plans to change that now. Even the modest proposals for a return to the Doctrine -- which have gone nowhere -- have not included religious broadcasters.

Not that they shouldn't be included. I'm sick and tired of the fundo Xians in this country skirting the constitutional separation of church and state, and I'd like to see them start paying taxes if they are going to be politically active on the part of the Rethug party (as I would if they were active on the part of the Dems).

But this is just another classic "straw man" argument, something that the wingnuttery has elevated to an art form.

Music Nazis

This one almost slipped past me. It seems that the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America, which represents the rich corporations that own the music, and not the musicians performing it) is taking another step in their crackdown on "illegal" music.

Long story short, the RIAA has filed suit in the UK against making personal copies of CDs "owned" by individuals, and wants to extend its tentacles into private businesses, automobiles, etc., by banning the use of radio music broadcasts that can be heard by others.

Read the whole story here and see for yourself if RIAA is trying to cross the line into fascist Big Brother tactics.

I can't imagine a more short-sighted way to cut profits by trying to "protect" them. Imagine the last time you bought a music CD. Was it because you had first heard the music in, for example, The Gap? Heard it a friend's house? Heard someone whistling it on the street?

All that will be a thing of the past if RIAA has its way. And ten years from now they'll be wondering why no one buys their CDs. Could it be because no one has even heard of the musicians because of RIAA's oppressive policies? And what will their answer be? Given their current mindset, it'll probably be to institute even harsher policies.

I don't believe RIAA has a legitimate claim that I cannot BUY a bunch of mp3 songs from Napster and use my CD burning software to turn those music tracks into a music CD. But that is the direction things are going.

At this point I'm joining the boycott against the RIAA music producers. Fuck 'em. I'm going to check it out with RIAA Radar first, and if the music I want to buy is affiliated with RIAA, they won't get my money.

The ultimate power in a capitalist society lies with the individual's pocketbook. If we don't buy their music, they won't make a profit. Pure and simple.

More on "Phony Soldiers"

I have been a long-time fan of General Wesley Clark (and I still am, despite the fact that he has endorsed Hillary), so it was with a feeling of serendipity that I got an email from him this afternoon concerning the whole Rush Limbaugh Phony Soldiers thing.

In it, General Clark provided a link to his website, WesPAC where he has a pre-filled email that you can sign and send to Mister Pimple Ass drug abuser himself demanding that he have on his radio show Jon Soltz, Iraq war veteran and chairman of VoteVets.org.

If the blowhard has nothing to hide, he ought to be more than happy to have an Iraq Illegal Occupation veteran on to counter his lies and slanders.

Join me in sending the Bloviating Chief Chickenhawk a message.

Rush Limbaugh and the Phony Soldiers

I was pretty much out of contact with the real world for over a week, but one of the things that I heard was that Rush Limbaugh had called anti-war military members and veterans "phony soldiers". Which I guess pretty much encompasses me and my fellow members of Veterans for Peace.

I've actually heard a recording of the remarks, unlike most of the Limbaugh apologists, and it's pretty clear from the context that he was not talking about just the one or two frauds who claimed to have been in Iraq and weren't, but pretty much all soldiers and veterans who do not support the Bushco Maladministration's misadventure in the illegal occupation of Iraq.

The fact that Rush himself edited the transcript of the show available on his weak excuse for a website indicates that the bloviating blowhard knew he'd over-extended even his own shifting boundaries of taste and common sense.

None of that matters, though, since the wingnuttery has pounced on the predictable reaction by the progressive left, denouncing all and sundry as traitorous assholes who don't "support the troops".

All this over some juvenile salivary spew from a fat-pig drug-addled draft-dodging chickenhawk who got to sit out the Vietnam war because of a pimple on his lard-laden hairy ass.

I know how the draft boards worked in those days. Limbaugh came from a wealthy and influential family in good ole Cape Girardeau, Missouri, and, like similar small towns all over the country, their draft board was made up of fellow pillar-of-the-community types who had the power to protect the sons of their peers by figuring out ways to keep them from being drafted. Pimple on his ass? Bullshit. I was drafted with people who had torn ligaments in their backs, birth defects in their knees and flat feet (I was one of them). The only difference was that all of us were from the other side of the tracks and didn't have any family friends on the local draft board who could protect us. And we didn't have anyone in the National Guard or Reserve with enough pull to get us to the front of the enlistment line and away from the draft board.

So I'm not about to take advice on veterans' matters from that stupid lying pimple-assed moron, and Rusty can just shut the fuck up about the military and about veterans and pretty much everything else that he knows nothing about.

But then that would be pretty boring for his dittoheads, who would be forced to listen to three hours of dead air.

Not that they would notice.

The Pace Race

I note that our old good buddy, General Peter Pace, still isn't backing off his bigoted stand against gays in the military. However, he did seem to toss gay and lesbian military members a bone by stating, "Are there wonderful Americans who happen to be homosexual serving in the military? Yes. We need to be very precise then, about what I said wearing my stars and being very conscious of it," Pace added. "And that is, very simply, that we should respect those who want to serve the nation but not through the law of the land, condone activity that, in my upbringing, is counter to God's law."

Okay, put aside the Rumsfeldian ask-and-answer-your-own-question rhetoric, and you'll see that he's reluctantly acknowledging the fact that closeted gays are serving already.

But when he descends into intrepreting the laws of god and dictating morality, he's exceeding his authority as a professional military man and a general officer.

He went on to say, essentially, that sex is limited to a man and a woman in a marital relationship. Okay, so what does he have to say about the rampant fornication, prostitution, adultery and out-and-out rape that takes place in every port town, every military post town, across the world, wherever there is a military presence?

Old Pete remains strangely silent on that side of the equation. Could it be that it's not that awful nasty homo-sessual sex that's involved?

And this is a guy that apparently wants to be president. Well, it's not like he could ever be worse than Der Monkey Fuehrer, but haven't we finally had enough of right-wing rule in this country? Isn't it finally time to elect a progressive who will be saddled with the enormous job of undoing the damage wreaked by the neocons over the last seven years?

And that's why we all have to actively campaign for whoever the Democratic nominee turns out to be. I'm no big fan of Hillary, but I'd rather see any Democrat in the office of president than any Rethug. Especially now that the top three on the right have all come out in support of the bankrupt supply-side economic theories of Saint Ronald.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 1224 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 just 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?

And I see in the news that little Jenna is engaged to a joker named Henry Hager. Wanna bet that he won't be wearing a uniform anytime soon? Like ever? Unlike both 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. But even though he's not on his way to The Sandbox, he's still in uniform

Will the Bush Twins follow his 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 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.

I'm Back -- Vacation Notes

I'm back from a hectic vacation to Las Vegas, the most surrealistic city on the face of the earth, where I attended a friend's wedding, followed by a trip to the LA area where I met my youngest daughters and their four children at Disneyland and California Adventure, followed by a trip to Hollywood and the Universal Studios.

Some random thoughts:

1. Disneyland has expanded since the last time I was there, with new attractions and Disney's California Adventure park right next door. Both parks, along with Universal Studios, presented some totally incredible 3-D movies.
2. Splash Mountain is a simulated log flume ride, with a 50+ foot drop into water at the end. It was not for the faint-hearted, that's for sure, but I noticed that inside the "mountain", as you ascended to the final splashdown, you could see animatronic characters such as Brer Rabbit, Brer Bear, Brer Fox, etc., presented totally without context. Since the Disney Company took Song of the South out of circulation many years ago because of some negative racial stereotypes, particularly with the portrayal of Uncle Remus, the movie has never been released for home video (at least in this country), and no one reads Joel Chandler Harris any more -- and certainly not the Uncle Remus stories, I'd bet that probably 80% of the guests floating by were clueless as to what they were seeing.
3. The top ride in each park: Space Mountain in Disneyland (try to get a front car--I've been on the ride probably 13-14 times and this was the first time I got the front) and the California Screamin' roller coaster at California Adventure, complete with a rocket takeoff and a tight loop around Mickey Mouse's head.
4. Water World is the best show by far at Universal Studios.
5. The Terminator 3-D is way overhyped. It had some good 3-D effects, and the blending of live stage action with action on the screen was interesting and visually pleasing, but the overall effect was kind of blah, especially when compared with the 3-D effects in Shrek or A Bug's World.
6. In Hollywood you can now buy the traditional "maps to stars homes" with an added twist: The maps now include notorious crime scenes, such as the locations of the Tate and LaBianca murders.
6. Don't buy an expensive bottle of Scotch at a cheap California price and expect to bring it back with you on the plane. Fortunately I figured this out before I needed to know it, and sent my bottle home with my kids, who drove down and back. Unlike the guy I met at the Seattle airport, who managed to unload his own whiskey at 50 cents on the dollar -- to me, ha ha -- when he learned that he couldn't take it on the plane.

So all in all, it was a great trip and a lot of fun. I walked more in four days than I'd probably walked in the last four months, managed to drive 650 miles in a rental car, a little red Chevy that I dubbed "The Red Shark" in honor of Hunter S. Thompson, and didn't get arrested once.