"Spitting on Veterans" -- It Just Won't Go Away

I've blogged before in this space on the whole bogus spitting-on-Vietnam-veterans meme and what a pussy it makes of those Vietnam vets who have, over the years, convinced themselves of the truth of these incidents, when in fact there are absolutely zero contemporary accounts of it actually happening.

But it's one of those things, like so many other Urban Legends, that just won't die. The lead paragraph of this recent story out of Tyler, Texas, is another example of it.

I don't know if these three vets actually said that to the reporter or if she took it on herself to toss it in because it would jazz up a story about a vandalized Vietnam veterans memorial, but either way it's an insult. I'd like it to die, but I guess that's too much to hope for.

Sadly, two hundred years from now (assuming we last that long as a species -- a doubtful proposition) that will still be one of the factoids about the Vietnam War that people "know".

The Last Throes are the Worst Throes

Hard to believe that we've been in the "last throes" of the insurgency in Iraq since 2004. Time flies when you're having fun.

Eleven US servicemen were killed yesterday! That makes 70 deaths just this month. We're now on track to have the worst month for deaths since January 2005.

And that's against a backgound of sectarian violence that in September alone has killed 2600 Iraqis.

And yet Darth Cheney said just yesterday on the Rush "Oxycontin Cowboy" Limbaugh show that things are going well in Iraq! I wonder what it would take for him to say things weren't going well? A nuclear explosion in the Green Zone? A total meltdown of the oil-rich desert into a huge asphalt parking lot? A Roman candle up his ass?

How can these fuckers keep this up? How can they just keep lying to us with a straight face? And how can so many people continue to believe those lies?

It boggles the mind. It really does.

Obituary -- US Constitution 1789-2006

Today the US Constitution was officially declared dead, with the signing of the death certificate by attending physician George W. "Baby Doc" Bush.

The Constitution's health had been in jeopardy since late 2000 when it suffered a debilitating stroke; it had remained on life supports for the several ensuing years.

In 2004 and again in early 2006 it staged what appeared to be a rally, only to slip back into a coma. Finally, in September 2006, radical surgery removed a number of moribund parts of the Bill of Rights, deemed malignant growths by the surgeons in the US Senate and Doctor Bush.

The operation was a success but unfortunately the patient died.

The Constitution is survived by a distant relative, the Magna Carta, still living in Great Britain, and its bastard offspring, American Fascism.

Another Rethug Congressman in the Crosshairs

From our "never rains but it pours" department, US Rep Curt Weldon (R-Corrupt) is the subject of an FBI probe of possible influence peddling, using his own daughter.

So what does Faux News lead with? Weldon's concern about the "timing" of the FBI raid, this close to the election.

As if the Democrats could control it. As if the Justice Department isn't headed by one Alberto "Torquemada" Gonzales, consigliere to the BFEE, who is perfectly capable of stalling any FBI investigation -- and especially an FBI raid -- until after the election.

So who did order the raid, and why was it this close to the election? Is Weldon being thrown overboard by the Rethugs? Or is it that the tide has finally shifted to the point that they can do nothing to stem it?

Jesus, if the Democrats aren't careful, even they won't be able to fuck this one up and lose again.

Longest Undefended Border? No more.

It used to be a matter of pride for the US and Canada, bragging rights on having the longest undefended border in the world.

Now that's history. US Army Blackhawk helicopters are doing armed patrols of the border between Montana and Alberta. Unmanned drones are scheduled to be added to the choppers. All of this to protect our northern border. Why not just build another fence, like we are doing on the southern border?

BTW, you'll note from the Google news search that nearly all of the sources for this information are Canadian. You don't see a whole lot in the American media about this kind of stuff.

Besides, I've always maintained that the fence isn't there to keep THEM out; it's to keep US in.

The Big Database

I'm sure I'm in it. You're probably in it. Everyone who reads this blog is probably in it.

It's the huge Dept of Defense database on anti-war demonstrators, pacifists, quakers and other traitors. They've managed to list us all as potential terrorists.

Read the NYTimes article (login required -- try Bugmenot.com for one it it asks) for a chilling glimpse in the fascism that is slowly surrounding us on all sides.

Yeah, won't be long until those of over here in Left Blogistan will be rounded up in the middle of the night for "extraordinary rendition" and taken to a sports stadium a la Argentina and Chile in the bad old days.

A woman I met a number of years ago was reading Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number one day, and I told her then that it could happen very easily here. She argued with me, of course, telling me that our Constitution wouldn't allow it.

Really? I wonder where she is now and if she still agrees.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 874 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 graduated from Sandhurst in April and could be on his way to Iraq as a cavalry lieutenant.

The son of Senator John McCain has enlisted in the US Marine Corps. That means that as soon as he's done with his training, he's going to be on his way to The Sandbox. Now there's a role model right in their own political party for Jenna and Not-Jenna. Will they follow him?

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
Total coalition forces dead: 237
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1858
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1306
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1268
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: 241
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 87.

It is still 850 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration -- unless we impeach the whole sorry lot of the corrupt and criminal bastards.

Vote Democratic in November!

Friday Cat Blogging

Turkish Author Wins Nobel Prize for Literature

The Nobel Prize committee has a history of choosing relatively obscure writers for the award of the Lit prize (one reason why my own hopes are still alive), and this year's choice was no different.

Orhan Pamuk is this year's recipient; he's been called the "voice of a divided country" for his lay-it-on-the-line statements about Turkish genocide against the Armenians.

I used to live in California, and I can tell you that there is no better illustration of William Faulkner's dictum that "the past isn't history; it isn't even past" than the absolute hatred that the Armenians feel for the Turks.

So it's really interesting to me that a writer who was recently on trial for "insulting Turkishness" has been elevated to the select ranks of Nobel Prize winners.

Turkey, of course, is caught in the middle. They want to join the European Union so bad they can taste it, but along with that membership is the requirement that they have to give at least lip service to the basic concepts of freedom of speech.

I'll admit that I haven't read any of Pamuk's work, but that's going to change as soon as possible. I was an English major in college, and it's always been a point of pride to me that I read at least one book by each Nobel Prize Lit winner.

And, in a somewhat related story, the French parliament voted to make it a crime to deny the Turkish genocide against Armenia. Of course France has nearly a half a million Armenians, one of the most populous populations in Europe, so maybe that had something to do with it.

Nevertheless, I do find it both amusing and ironic that the French would make free speech a crime at the same time that the Nobel committee is rewarding free speech, and both on the same issue.

New Casualty Count

Researchers from the prestigious Johns Hopkins have now come up with a new estimate of the number of Iraqi civilians killed since the Iraq War Illegal Occupation began.

It's over 655,000!!!

Which is about twenty times the estimate that Baby Doc gave us sometime earlier this year.

When he was called on this by a CNN reporter, his response was typical: "Nun-unh! Are not! Take it back!"

You Gotta Be Kidding Me...

So. North Korea allegedly exploded a "newkuler" weapon. Never mind that scientists are at odds over whether it really was nuclear. Never mind that Baby Doc himself approved -- and paid for -- the export of the raw materials for the newkuler weapon back in 2002. Never mind the fact tha there's an election coming up and we've pretty much run into the ground any "threats" from our unindicted co-conspirators in Al Qaeda.

But none of that is stopping Baby Doc from calling it "provocative"...

Provocative??? WTF??!!

Provocative is Denise Richards in Playboy.

Far be it from me to say anything negative about our Fearless Leader, but...

Does anyone else think that this stinks? That this seems like a huge fraud, to put us back into the "scare zone" since we've pretty much run out the well on the Middle East threats?

Here's what I think: I think that Kim Il Jong and the so-called "communist" North Korea is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Bushco/Unification Church, and the whole thing is a phony-baloney scare tactic to frighten the Moron-American Voting Bloc into voting for Rethug candidates, on the completely bogus "national security" platform.

Wait and see if I'm right. Remember, you saw it here first.

VA Cutbacks Turn Deadly

Right in my own backyard, an aging WWII veteran named Clinton Fuller went to the VA hospital in Spokane, Washington, where he died in front of the building because they did not have the staff and equipment to man a 24-hour emergency medicine department.

Budget cutbacks at the VA, we are told. So sorry. "Stuff" happens. You go with the medical you've got, not the medical care you want or would like to have.

Tell that to Clinton Fuller and his family, who believed right up to the biter end that they could get the health care they were promised from the VA.

Read the whole sorry story here, by VA Watchdog's Larry Scott, and prepare to get pissed off.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 867 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 graduated from Sandhurst in April and could be on his way to Iraq as a cavalry lieutenant.

The son of Senator John McCain has enlisted in the US Marine Corps. That means that as soon as he's done with his training, he's going to be on his way to The Sandbox. Now there's a role model right in their own political party for Jenna and Not-Jenna. Will they follow him?

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
That's 27 in ONE WEEK! And we've been in the "last throes" of the insurgency since 2004.
Total coalition forces dead: 237
Total Iraqi Dead: 100,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1851
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1299
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1261
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: 234
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 80.

It is still 857 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration -- unless we impeach the whole sorry lot of the corrupt and criminal bastards.

Vote Democratic in November!

Friday Cat Blogging

Oh, the Irony, the Irony

I swear you can't make this shit up. A "concerned parent" in Texas (surprise) has started a movement to have a book banned from the local school 10th grade reading assignment list.

So what's the book? Huckleberry Finn? Lady Chatterley's Lover? Tropic of Cancer?

Nope, it's -- get this -- Fahrenheit 451!!!

A book about censorship and book burning! And the reading assignment was given out during National Banned Book Week!!

It's just too much. Like I say, you can't make this shit up.

Hastert Gets the Blunt Boehner

After being caught lying on the bloviating gasbag's show the other day, you'd think he'd show a little bit of remorse and shame. Instead he's not going to step aside for the good of the party.

His loyal henchmen, Boehner and Blunt, are falling over their own feet trying to distance themselves from the hapless speaker: "Hastert? Hey, I barely know the guy."

Even Joe Scarborough says that the Rethugs have gone too far, that Hastert has to go, and that the Dems are going to take back Congress next month.

So either way, Hastert is toast. If he steps aside now, it's too late to save face or anything else. And if he hangs in there, he's a handy hook for the Dems to hang the scandal hat on.

"I love the smell of napalm in the morning." -- Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now

"Gay Bashing" and the Foley Scandal

One of the most bizarrely comical things that has surfaced in all this is the statement made several times by different spokesmouths on the right that the Rethugs didn't want to do anything about Foley because it would be seen as "gay bashing".

Yeah, the party that discharges from the military Arabic speakers who just happen to be gay, the party that opposes each and every gay civil rights law that comes along, from partner benefits to gay marriage, now that's my idea of a party that's afraid of seeming like they are "gay bashers".

Sorry, guys, that spin cycle is broken. Try a different washing machine.

It's Called "Perjury", Condi

It's lying under oath. Remember the mock outrage when Clinton "lied" about something inconsequential? Where's the similar outrage over the Rice lies?

Take a look at this list of statements that Kindasleazy made -- under oath -- to the 9/11 Commission, along with the actual reality-based facts associated with those statements.

She is a born-again liar and she's at it again. When confronted with the story of the now-infamous meeting on July 11, she first denied it, then said it happened but she didn't remember it. And now she's throwing a tantrum, acting like a petulant teenager busted coming in after curfew.

She says it's "incomprehensible" that she would ignore warnings of an Al Qaeda attack. Yeah, that's what we're all thinking, Condi. So why did you do it?

It would be a lot funnier if it weren't so tragic. This is another member of the BFEE cabal that needs to be frogmarched in orange coveralls before the court of justice at The Hague.