Too Fucking Stupid to be President #23455

Jesus Fucking Christ, who dresses the little fucker in the morning?

[Thanks (once again) to Bartcop for the image.]

American Fascism

Way back in 1944, before I was even born (and that's a long time ago), then US Vice President Henry Wallace had this to say:

The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.

The new rightwing talking point about radical Islamists is that they are "Islamo-Fascists". Nothing could be farther from the truth. They are Theocrats who are in no fundamental way different from their counterparts in the Taliban Wing of the Republican Party.

American Christianists want the same things as their Islamist brethren (and I use that word advisedly, since the "sisteren" on both sides have no real role): The merging of government and religion.

As Sinclair Lewis so famously said (a quote which adorns the right-hand column of this blog), "When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross."

The amoral Mayberry Machiavellians in the BFEE don't really give a fuck about religion except as a tool to sweep up the "useful idiots" among the great unwashed Moron-American voting bloc.

Their true goal is classic fascism: "A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism." (1983 edition of the American Heritage Dictionary)

Even the John Birch Society can recognize it: "...from the administration's perspective, the president is, in effect, our living constitution. This is, in a specific and unmistakable sense, fascist."

Now in my wildest imaginings I never thought I would be in agreement with the John Birch Society. About anything. But there it is.

Here's Henry Wallace again:

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy.

We have an unhealthy -- an unholy -- alliance between business interests -- big business -- and the reins of power concentrated in the iron fist of the BFEE that will be very difficult to destroy. These fuckers mean business, and they will not willingly surrender the tremendous power that they have accumulated.

All the more reason to work -- and work hard -- for Democratic candidates this fall.

[Thanks to Thom Hartmann for the details on this.]

You Gotta Love This

The rightwing Dallas millionaires (now there's a redundancy) who bankrolled the Swift Boat Liars for Bush and the 2000 John McCain smear campaign are in hot water with the IRS.

Seems the Wyly brothers have managed to avoid paying a lot of taxes, thanks to a complicated scheme of offshore banking accounts.

This does not come as a surprise. It's so typical of those at the very top to develop the haughty feeling that they are somehow above the riffraff when it comes to supporting this country, and their little circle of Texas millionaires naturally includes the BFEE. What is surprising is that Baby Doc would allow the IRS to go after them. Their tax trangressions must have been so blatant, so over the top, that they couldn't be hidden any longer.

Or else there's a quiet revolt going on in the bowels of the maladministration, where even the lowliest bureaucrat is scrambling to be able to say "Bush? Hey, I barely knew the guy!"

Too bad the Wyly boys won't do any jail time. There's nothing like waking up with your new best friend Bubba to change your attitude about obeying the law.

Heckuva Job, Brownie

So why haven't we seen this particular piece of news bannered across every major daily newspaper in this country?

Michael "Heckuva-Job-Brownie" Brown, the former head of FEMA, came right out and said the White House asked him to lie about the agency's preparedness and take the heat for the bungled job.

"The lie was that we were ready and that everything was working as a team. Behind the scenes, it wasn't working at all," Brown said.

Wouldn't you think that this would be news, even to the craven cowards in the MSM/SCLM who serve as Baby Doc's bootlicking lickspittles? Would that be too much to ask?

I guess so.

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 826 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.

The "One Book" Bandwagon

I've never been above jumping on a blogosphere bandwagon (such as Friday Cat Blogging) when it coincides with my interests, and the current one going around is an interesting one. I don't know who started it, but I picked it up over at Is America Burning?

And, like everyone else, I complain because there are so many books to choose from, books that I've loved, books that I've hated, books that have changed my life. Nevertheless, here are the ones who made the final cut. Today. Ask me the same questions tomorrow and I might have completely different answers.

One book that changed your life
On the Road by Jack Kerouac
It was the early 60s when I first picked up On the Road, and it led to several stretches of time spent bumming around the country, abusing a variety of substances and living in communes. It changed my life, all right, but probably not for the better. If I hadn't read it, maybe I'd have stayed in college, majored in pre-law, become a Naval officer, married a liquor heiress, joined the astronaut corps and earned a Nobel Prize for Literature...
Naaah...

One book you have read more than once
1984 by George Orwell
Regular readers of this blog know how much I like this book, dystopian fiction at its very best, and an amazingly prescient prediction of the kind of society we're slipping into. I reread it every couple of years and never fail to find something new in it. Maybe because we are becoming more and more like Oceana every day.

One book you would want on a desert island
Devlin's Boatbuilding: How to Build Any Boat the Stitch-and-Glue Way by Samuel Devlin
I figure the only way off that fucking island is to build your own boat. Otherwise I'd go totally insane.

One book that made you laugh
Miles Walker You're Dead by Linda Jaivan
A wacked-out post-modern look at Australia on the eve of the millennium. On New Years Eve, artist Miles Walker is preparing to have himself blown up for his art because his friends have convinced him that dying young would be a good career move for him. Absolutely hilarious.

One book that made you cry
Tortilla Curtain by TC Boyle.
A relentless examination of the same themes found in John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, updated for a new generation of migrant workers in California.

One book you wish had never been written
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion by Anonymous.
From their first appearance at the start of the 20th Century, the completely fraudulent protocols have whipped up fanatic hatred for Jews. But thanks to Henry Ford (yes, that Henry Ford), who pushed this ugly propaganda onto an easily-duped American public, a virulent strain of Anti-Semitism effectively blocked most efforts to do something -- anything -- to save the European Jews who were being systematically exterminated by the Nazis.

One book you are currently reading
Around the World on a Bicycle by Thomas Stevens
In 1884 Englishman Thomas Stevens set out from San Francisco on a high-wheel "penny farthing" bicycle on a ride around the world. Fascinating descriptions of places and people that he encountered along the way, and an amazing glimpse into how much has changed in the world in a little over 100 years.

One book you have been meaning to read
Mason and Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
Aside from the Bible, this has to be the least-read bestseller in history. It's been sitting on my bookshelf since I bought it new. I've taken it down and hefted it a couple of times, even read the first couple of pages. My literary friends are all in the same boat with me: I don't know one person who has actually read it. One of these days I'll manage to do it. Or maybe I'll just wait for the comic book version...

One book you wish you had written
Suspects by David Thomson
What starts out as a somewhat whimsical examination of the supposedly real lives of movie characters eventually takes on a more sinister tone and you slowly come to the realization that many of these characters interact in some way with the unnamed narrator, who ultimately turns out to be a famous film character himself. A master accomplishment and a must-read for film buffs, especially those who love the 1940s film-noir genre.

Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605 2619
Total coalition forces dead: 230
Total Iraqi Dead: 100,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1809
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1256
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1218
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: 193
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 38.

It is still 899 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration -- unless we impeach the whole sorry lot of the corrupt and criminal bastards.

Vote Democratic this fall!

Friday Cat Blogging

Penis Pumps in the News

Jeez, it never stops. Just a few days ago I remarked on the judge in my hometown getting four year for playing with a penis pump in his courtroom.

The latest development is an Iraqi man who was arrested by TSA officials when a female security guard at Chicago's O'Hare Field found a small squeezy rubber object in his backpack.

Mardin Amin was standing next to his mother when the offending object was plucked from his personal possessions and didn't want to yell out what it was. Instead he murmured out of the corner of his mouth the word "pump".

Leave it to the minimum-wage flunky to misunderstand him.

"Bomb" is what she heard and placed the man under arrest. And things spiraled out of control from there, with the result that this poor sap is now placed in the position of defending himself in court. The guard testified that he said the word "bomb", and the judge believed her.

In the meantime, Al Qaeda sleeper cells are making a run on the market and buying up penis pumps all over the world so they can turn them into bombs.

No, I don't know how they could do that, but while the TSA and the Dept of Homeland Insecurity are hassling this guy for the Muslim equivalent of Driving While Black, they are not on the lookout for the real terrorists.

What a fucking joke. Except Amin isn't laughing about it.

More "Backdoor Draft"

Despite the rosy predictions coming out of Field Marshal von Rumsfeld and the DOD, it looks like a bunch of discharged veterans from the so-called Ready Reserve are getting called back into uniform.

According to the news stories, up to 2500 Marines are getting the call to report back. In many cases, these are guys who have been out of the service for several years. Around 10,000 Army reservists have already been called back in the last three years.

The Christian Science Monitor has one of the most complete stories on this new and tragic development.

"Shortfalls in recruitment" in a number of military specialities are being blamed for this debacle. Yeah, there's a surprise. Who in the fuck would want to join up for a stint in the service knowing they'd be sent almost immediately to the Quaqmire in the Desert and get their asses shot off?

This marks the second time in three years that Baby Doc has authorized the Marines to call up these inactive reservists. Remember, we've been in the "last throes" of the insurgency since 2004. Two simultaneous wars have stretched troop levels to the breaking point, and yet the fuckers are still making big noises about invading Iran.

What this amounts to is a backdoor draft. Why can't they at least be honest about it and tell us the truth: We cannot fight a war on two fronts with an all-volunteer military, and we have to start a real draft.

But they don't want to do that, since the American people -- as stupid as many of them are about this whole fiasco -- this time just won't stand for the children of wealth and privilege dodging the draft by getting a bunch of student deferments (Cheney) or disappearing into a "champagne unit" of the Air National Guard (Bush) and then not even bothering to show up for duty. God forbid Jenna and Not-Jenna would have to don uniforms and show their support for their father's war.

So our reservists will be trucked off to the sandbox as cannon fodder and the rest of the country can go about its merry way without the sacrifices that, in a just world, ought to be borne by each and every American. But, in the words of Tom Delay, "nothing is more important in time of war than tax cuts".

New PTSD Study and the Media

There's a new study out on Vietnam vets verifying that about 19% of all Vietnam vets suffer from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. And the study also proves that it can be devastating to those suffering from it.

So what does the media do with this new information?

"Fewer Vietnam Vets Suffer PTSD"
"Study Downsizes Number of Vietnam Vets Suffering from PTSD"
"Few Vets Suffer from Stress Disorders"

These are typical headlines from a Google News search. Granted, this percentage is down from the vastly inflated one-in-three figure that has been bandied about for the last several years -- a number that I doubted myself when I first heard it -- but mostly overlooked in all of these media stories is the fact that this new study has verified and validated PTSD for the veterans actually suffering from it.

Combat can leave lasting psychological scars. The new study establishes beyond doubt that the stresses of combat result in debilitating and devastating mental consequences later in life. Very few of the media stories focus on that aspect. (One of the notable exceptions is the Boston Globe story on the study.)

Instead most of the headlines tend to come off as dismissive of Vietnam vets and our whiny-assed crybaby attitudes.

The media ought to be focused on what this study means for the new crop of veterans coming home from Iraq and Afghanistan, but, like their masters in the BFEE, they don't really give a shit about veterans once they've wrung out of them the last drop of what they can give for the furtherance of the Empire.

Sign the "No Cure" Pledge

Jonathan Alter over at MSNBC came up with a good one, patterned after the "No Tax" pledge from a few years back.

All of the self-aggrandizing posturing politicians who stood up behind Baby Doc at his veto of the Stem Cell Research Bill ought to be consistent in their beliefs. To that end, Alter came up with this pledge:

Because of my strong opposition to embryonic-stem-cell research, I hereby pledge that should I, at any point in the future, develop diabetes, cancer, spinal-cord injuries or Parkinsons, among other diseases, I will refuse any and all treatments derived from such research, at home or abroad, even if it costs me my life.
Signed, ______

There were 37 senators and 193 house members who stood up in support of Prezdint Numnutz. Now they can take that one extra step to show their true commitment to The Cause, to show that it was not election-year posturing.

If you are represented by these troglodytes, please ask them to sign the pledge and demonstrate their true dedication.

And if they refuse to sign, let your local media know about it.

Torture and Coverup in Vietnam

Way back in the early 1970s a much-decorated Army light colonel named Anthony Herbert leveled charges, against officers and enlisted men of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, of torture of captured Viet Cong and NVA troops.

Those charges were widely publicized, which resulted in an internal Army investigation. In early 1973, then Chief of Staff General Creighton Abrams (formerly head of the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, where he had replaced the discredited General William Westmoreland) received the news from the Army's chief of criminal investigations: The practice of torture and abuse went far beyond what Herbert had described.

However, there was also enough dirt on Herbert uncovered in the investigation to question his credibility, and so the Army went on the offensive against Herbert, instead of correcting the abuses. For his troubles, Herbert was savaged by, of all people, Mike Wallace on CBS's 60 Minutes -- an early example of the SCLM at work, doing the bidding of its corporate overlords who were in bed with the Nixon Administration -- and, also in typical fashion, that is what is remembered about Tony Herbert, and not the fact that he won a lawsuit against CBS.

So back to the torture: The investigators found that beatings, electric shocks and waterboarding (although it probably wasn't called that) were routine among the military interrogators in the 173rd, approved by their officers. At least one prisoner died at the hands of his interrogators.

Those abuses were never made public, and very few of the 29 suspected abusers were punished. In typical fashion, the only one who was really punished was Tony Herbert.

These facts were buried in a 9,000 page collection of documents that were once classified. However, in 1994 they were declassified and moved to the National Archives where they lay dormant until an enterprising group of reporters from the Los Angeles Times finally dug them out.

While I never witnessed prisoner abuse or torture while I was in Vietnam, there was no doubt that it took place with distressing regularity. Stories of throwing two bound prisoners out of helicopters in order to encourage the third one to talk were common, and the electric shock torture technique, usually conducted using a crank-phone electrical magneto, was widely and sardonically known as the "Bell Telephone Hour".

Anybody who tells you otherwise is either mistaken or just plain lying. We'd all like to think that we are an honorable nation who would never torture prisoners, blah blah blah, but the sad fact is that we are a warlike people whose blood lust can never truly be slaked. And it's not just the US, it's the whole human race. Among the oldest skeletons ever uncovered you can find the remains of primitive spear points that have struck bone.

It's a Secret Because We Say it's a Secret.

Can it get any more mundanely bizarre? Now the BFEE is refusing to tell anyone what they already told our former "enemy", the Soviet Union, years ago.

So what is it? The location of every US nuclear submarine? The identity of every US spy on the Eurasian land mass? How to make a zillion megaton bomb out of borscht and tsotchkes?

Nope, none of those. It's a simple number: How many nuclear weapons were in the US arsenal during the Cold War. Like I say, they already TOLD the Russkies, and now it's ancient history, on the order of the Third Punic War.

But it's now classified material. This is the most secretive administration in the history of this country, and this is just one small example of it.

So now I suppose that I will be bound for Gitmo when I release the number: It's 42.

That also, coincidentally, in case you recognize it, happens to be the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything...

Weekly "Bush Twins in Uniform" Watch

It has now been 819 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.

Disorder in the Court: Hometown Judge Gets Four Years.

I grew up in the little northeastern Oklahoma town of Bristow, so I'm always interested in news from there. But this isn't the kind of news that the city fathers like to see.

Donald Thompson, a Creek County judge with a courtroom in Bristow, has been sentenced to four years in the slammer for using a penis pump. On the bench. In court. During a jury trial.

Police built a case against the judge after a police officer testifying in a 2003 murder trial saw a piece of plastic tubing disappear under Thompson's robe. During a lunch break, officers took photographs of the pump under the desk.
Investigators later checked the carpet, Thompson's robes and the chair behind the bench and found semen, according to court records.

Wow. And eeeeyyyewwwwww.

Now see what happens? In the 1950s Oklahoma was a "blue" state. Now it's a "red" state, and sexual deviancy is running rampant, even in the hallowed halls of justice. Just goes to show you.

I hope the judge got some, shall we say, "positive results" from that penis pump. His new roommate, Bubba, is gonna appreciate it...

How Convenient...

Is it just me, or does the whole "I Killed Jon-Benet" story just fucking reek? And was it a coincidence that it comes out on the same day as -- and shoves off the front page the news about -- the judge in Detroit ruling that the BFEE wiretaps are illegal and unconstitutional?

The latest news on John Mark Karr and his "confession" to the police in Thailand is starting to show some unraveling around the edges:

• Karr said he gave Jon-Benet drugs; no drugs were found in her system.
• Karr says he raped Jon-Benet, but test conducted at the time showed no semen on her body.
• Karr's ex-wife says he was in Alabama with her every Christmas.
• Karr says he picked Jon-Benet up from school, but school was closed for the Christmas holiday
• There is no evidence that Karr even knew the Ramseys, or that he was ever in Colorado.

Watch for more unraveling in the next few days or weeks, and when the entire skein is spread out on the floor and they find it attaches nowhere to the case, the charges -- if any are ever even filed -- will quietly be dropped, the true murderer will still be at large, and Karr's life will be ruined. He obviously needs psychiatric help, but he will most likely not get it.

But hey, at least it moved the focus of the ADHD-suffering Moron-Americans off of what really counts and onto the Crime of the Century, conveniently brought there by the BFEE-controlled media.

Friday by the Numbers

Total American dead in the Iraq Illegal Occupation: 2500 2513 2532 2540 2546 2558 2571 2585 2597 2605
Total coalition forces dead: 230
Total Iraqi Dead: 100,000+

Number of days since Baby Doc said he'd get Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive": 1802
Number of days since the illegal occupation of Iraq began: 1249
Number of days since "Mission Accomplished": 1211
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: 186
Number of days that the Bush Twins are still not pregnant with baste-'em-or-waste-'em Snowflake babies: 31.

It is still 906 days until the end of the BFEE Maladministration -- unless we impeach the whole sorry lot of the corrupt and criminal bastards.

Vote Democratic this fall!

Friday Cat Blogging

Judge Rules Wiretapping Illegal

A Federal judge in Detroit ruled in favor of the ACLU in its lawsuit over the warrantless wiretapping program. Unconstitutional, she said. Cease immediately, she said.

Now watch for the wingnut overreaction to another "activist" judge, calling for the Fundo-Xian equivalent of a fatwa against her.

Predictably the DOJ filed an appeal against the ruling. Never mind what Der Monkey Fuehrer/Liar-in-Chief said back in April 2004: "Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about 'wiretap', it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so.".

Of course he also told a member of his staff once upon a time to quit thowing the constitution up in his face all the time: "It's just a goddamn piece of paper!"

It's obvious that we're being led by an unruly two year old. Someone needs to give him his bottle and send him to bed; I think I liked it better when he was (openly) drinking.