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.

Freedom is Slavery

In an actual speech before, of all things, something called the Loeb First Amendment Award Dinner in New Hampshire, our boy Newt Gingrich called for restrictions on ... free speech!

Not only that, but he also said that the concepts of the separation of church and state and campaign finance reform be "rethought"... Whatever that means.

He also wants to shut down various websites that he thinks enable the terrorists. Read the Keith Olbermann commentary on MSNBC and see for yourself what a slimy motherfucker Gingrich really is.

This is from a guy who was two heartbeats away from the presidency when he was Speaker of the House. A guy who still harbors presidential aspirations. And sadly he embodies a concept that is rampant in Rethug circles: If freedom is to be abused it must be taken away. Oh sure, they'll go to great pains to couch in it terms that the Moron-American voting bloc will swallow (fighting terrorism, thwarting child pornographers, etc etc), but bottom line the ruling class in this country has never been comfortable with the whole concept of democracy.

Keep an eye on them, because they are not going to just fold their tents and steal away in the dark. They are still with us and are girding their loins for another big fight. Let's be prepared to give it to them.

Pulling the Twins Out a Bad Move

According to Don Asmussen, whose comic strip Bad Reporter I read regularly on the SF Gate website, pulling the Bush Twins out of Argentina will make the situation even worse.

James Baker has been called in to help with their checkout time, and the neocons fear that it will be seen as a sign of weakness.

Asmussen is a smart-ass know-it-all whose sense of humor lies somewhere along the lines of dropping firecrackers into Halloween bags and waxing the steps at a nursing home.

In short, someone just like me. No wonder I like his stuff so much.

It's a Civil War, Stupid

Finally NBC and its cable cohort, MSNBC, are calling a spade a spade. That nebulous violence that has gripped Iraq since shortly after the US invasion is now, in the NBC lexicon, a civil war.

The White House and its thinning ranks of apologist can go on calling it whatever they want in that Bizarro-world alternate universe they live in. The rest of the world knows -- and has known for a long time -- that it is, by any rational definition of the term, a civil war.

But that's the same knuckledragging mentality that continues to insist that the American Civil War was not a civil war, either: they insist on calling it "The War Between the States" (when the diehards in the south aren't calling it privately the War of Yankee Aggression).

I guess they just can't help it. Stupidity is genetic.

"Hey, don't blame me," Baby Doc says. "I'ts Al Qaeda's fault. Yeah, that's it. Al Qaeda. Heh heh heh..."

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 921 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.

The Secret Service can't even protect them from purse snatchers, so it isn't like they are any more secure outside the military.

Come on, you two. Do your patriotic duty.

Everyone, 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.

It's Now Official -- Longer than WWII

As of today, the BFEE has been at war in Iraq for 1348 days.

It was only 1347 days from Pearl Harbor to the end of World War II.

Baby Doc's next goal: Longer than Vietnam.

It was 3918 days between the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964, and the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975.

Proof that We Can't Relax

Just because the Dems won in the recent election, it doesn't mean that the autocratic neofascist dictatorship of the BFEE is somehow over -- hobbled, crippled, reigned in.

No it is not, and you don't have to go any farther than this recent story about two New York men charged with terrorism.

So what did they do? Blow up a bridge? Bring down a jet? Stomp red white and blue kittens to death?

Good guesses all, but no. What these two did was the heinous crime-against-humanity of providing satellite television customers in the US with a Hezbollah TV channel!

I'm so old that I can remember when the US sharply and roundly criticized the Soviet Union for arresting its citizens for the crime of listening to the Voice of America on the radio. Now we're on the other side of the street, enforcing mind control on our own citizens, and arresting people for Orwellian thoughtcrime.

The rightwing in the country has always been against the free marketplace of ideas (for example, the Communist Party was outlawed, the works of Karl Marx were banned from the US mail along with birth control information, naked pictures and steamy fiction) so it's not a new story. It's more of the same, and we need to be always vigilant. How far are we, really, from a 21st Century reenactment of the Palmer Raids?

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 914 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.

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.

The More Things Change...

Like I always say, you can't make this shit up.

Trent Lott (R-Mizzippi) has finally made a comeback, back from the dead, back from the good ole days when he praised Strom Thurmond's 1948 Dixiecrat rebellion whose the only campaign platform plank being Segregation Now, Segregation Tomorrow, Segregration Forever.

"I'm proud to say my state voted for him, and if the rest of the country had, we wouldn'ta had all these problems we've had neither" Trent said during a tribute to the old racist a few years back.

For that little mispeak, Trentie lost his job as Senate Majority Leader. But, to show that you just can't keep a good racist down in the Rethug Party, he's been rehabilitated and now has a new job in the new senate.

Trent will be ... [wait for it; drumroll] ... the Minority Whip!

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

Total coalition forces dead: 246
Total Iraqi Dead: 600,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1893
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1344
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1293
Number of days between Pearl Harbor and the end of WWII: Only 1347

NOTE: This means that just four days from now, on Tuesday, The Chimperor will have been at war in Iraq longer than this nation took to win World War II.
Think about that...

Number of days that the the Vice President has NOT shot a man in the face: 276
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 122.

It is still 817 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration -- unless we impeach the whole sorry lot of the corrupt and criminal bastards.

Kick 'em When They're Down

That, in modern parlance, is one of the tenets of Machiavelli's seminal work, The Prince, and so I note the great irony of Donald Rumsfeld, poster boy for the Mayberry Machiavellis who took over the Republican Party, being brought up on war crimes charges.

In Germany.

I guess it is still too early to expect us to clean our own house, but I'm willing to take justice wherever I can get it. And Germany does seem an appropriate place to have the crimes of Von Rumsfeld exposed.

And, in an unrelated story, I'm sure that it's just a coincidence that Rummy has canceled plans to attend the NATO Summit in Latvia...

Heh heh heh.

What's Going on Here?

Now that I've had a few days away from the fray and I've had some time to relax and reflect, it suddenly dawns on me that something isn't quite right with this whole election.

Two years ago I had the sneaking feeling that Kerry and the top Dems had thrown the 2004 election.

Now I'm getting the same feeling about the Rethugs. This whole thing with Rummy leaving the very next day seems very odd to me, and even odder is that lame Baby Doc excuse that he didn't want to inject the Iraq War into the political process.

Say what?

Okay, so you couple that with the amount of money that the Rethug party poured into Lieberman's coffers -- at the expense of their own candidate, and you end up with what could be seen as an intentional attempt to give it up to the Dems.

So what do these fuckers know that we don't know?

Going Dark

I'm leaving on a much-needed R&R to San Diego for the long weekend. I'll be back on Tuesday.

Jeez, Does it Get Any Better Than This?

I was already on Cloud Nine since last night when they called the House for the Dems. Today I learn that Rummy is gone.

Despite the fact that Baby Doc, as recently as Monday, was giving him one of his patented "heckuva-job" praises. Which, looking back (in retrospect), I should have picked up on: Whenever Baby Doc praises someone, it means that they are about to fall on their sword.

Now the icing on the cake will be when Montana and Virginia are finalized for the Dems, we have a clear majority in the Senate to go with the substantial majority in the House, and the subpoenas start flying.

Thanks to everyone who worked so hard to get a Democatic majority in the House, and especially to all the hard workers in Virginia who did so much to elect Jim Webb.

And this thanks goes extra-specially to my good friend Tom Keefe, who worked tirelessly night and day to elect Jim Webb. Way to go, buddy!

Postsvcript: Now, watch for the de-stalinization of Rummy; now that he's out, the BFEE will be blaming him for everything, from the failed Iraq policy to the disappearance of Judge Crater.

And to make matters worse, the word on the street has it that Cheney has asked Rummy to go hunting with him this weekend...

First Muslim Elected to Congress

In a race that has been more or less flying under the radar, Minnesota elected the first Muslim member of congress yesterday with the election day victory of Keith Ellison in the Minneapolis-metro 5th Congressional District.

This can only be a good thing, to have a practicing Muslim taking a seat in the House of Representatives. Even though I am as non-religious (many would go further, saying I am anti-religious) as they come, I see the increased diversity in our congressional representatives as positive. Whatever we as a nation can do to dispel the stereotypes, both abroad and at home, that people carry, the better off we will be.

Our House of Representatives should be exactly that: A body that is truly representative of the American people. Sorry folks, but we are not -- and have never been -- all white, all male, all heterosexual and all christian. It's about time our representatives were truly representative.

By the way, I guess we don't really have to add that Ellison is a Democrat, do we?

Democrats Victorious!

Way to go, Dems! Now we need to concentrate on getting things done: A raise in the minimum wage, a speedy extraction from Iraq, universal single-payer health care, shoring up Social Security, all of these are high-list agenda items for the Democrats. Nancy Pelosi has a "hundred hour" agenda that includes most of the so-called "liberal" agenda.

Here's hoping that she can use the heady atmosphere surrounding the election to push through most of that agenda.

Let's all support her in her goals. Send her an email today telling her that you support what she is doing.

The Dems now can claim, in the immortal (and erroneous) words of Baby Doc Bush, "we have political capital and we intend to spend it".

Go for it!

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