Roadkill Journal

LOOKING LEFT ON THANKSGIVING

2006-11-23T15:16:00.000-08:00

I’m reading the Huffington Post –its blogs, specifically – so you don’t have to…

You’re welcome…

Arianna Huffington leads off, cackling briefly about the election, and then going after the Orwellians in the Bush administration “(who) have decided to no longer use the word "hunger" to describe the 35 million Americans -- that's 12 percent of the population -- who aren't always sure where their next meal is coming from. Instead, the poor people formerly known as the hungry will now be referred to as people experiencing "very low food security."”

The old lady has a point… The kind of doublespeak she quotes herein is pretty hard to take:

“Hunger, you see, is actually the byproduct of being "food insecure" and thus harder to precisely measure. In the words of a USDA advisory panel, hunger "should refer to a potential consequence of food insecurity that, because of prolonged, involuntary lack of food, results in discomfort, illness, weakness, or pain that goes beyond the usual uneasy sensation."”

Arianna admits “Just writing that gives me an "uneasy sensation."” It triggers my slap reflex – I want to slap the clinical fool who originally penned it… But at least she goes on to admit that this isn’t just a Republican problem…

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Arianna ends - more or less - saying “chang(ing) the reality of hunger in America … will take a national commitment to overcoming poverty from our leaders -- and from all of us. Something to think about as we sit down to our Thanksgiving feasts.”

Guilt… Jews invented it; Catholics perfected it… Manipulators use it as a weapon. The strict, true conservative that still hides deep within me peers out and asks, when and where has “a national commitment to overcoming poverty from our leaders” ever worked? Don’t tell me it hasn’t been tried. Churches, philanthropic organizations, Great – and lesser – societies, governments of all kinds in many lands and times have tried. The closest anyone has came to “success” that I can recall are the relatively socialized societies of Western Europe – Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, the Low Countries, and Scandinavia. And that success has been fraught with – hopefully – unintended consequences, creating “entitled” groups notoriously smug and more than willing to aggressively protest and even riot in order to maintain their status.

Ungrateful, if you are into the guilt shtick…

It is a poison of the spirit to give a man everything he needs to survive except hope. Hope cannot be found in a stipend. Poor men have poor ways. Enrich their path.

Arianna, worry less about the poverty of hunger and more about the poverty of hope. Then you may have a chance of success.

Moving right along, John Ridley gives thanks “for the political center.”

“I'm thankful for The Political Center. The hard-core, radical middle that's finally taking control of discourse in this country. I am thankful that Republican, Democrat, Red and Blue are fading obelisks on the cultural landscape. Irrelevant, and replaced by the only ideology that is of any substance: pragmatism.”

My knees jerk, each in its own direction… I started blogging just over a year ago, billing myself as a moderate – a designation I have since changed to, by chance, pragmatist. So I should give John bravos… Except I really don’t know what he means. The more I do this the less I know what “liberal,” “conservative,” “left,” right,” or “center” mean.
Mostly, it means someone is calling someone else a name, and likely with derogatory intent…

But I agree with John on some specifics. While I think he overstates the case “the left has found a path” I agree the midterms were won “by backing the likes of small d Democrats (such as) Bob Casey, Jr. and Jim Webb”… I also agree “That Joe Lieberman’s win as an independent indicates how badly the far left … underestimated the Middle's ability to look beyond a single issue and pull votes from all sides.”

The war, of course, being that “single issue”…

I’ll take a line here to again plug an excellent WSJ Op-Ed by Senator-elect Webb: “Class Struggle.” I think he makes good points…

The American political conversation, from “a more perfect union” to “a chicken in every pot” to “it’s the economy stupid” has always been partly about prosperity… And Joe Rustbelt is nervous. His dad retired from the old factory with a good pension. He’s doing OK, which is more than can be said for his neighbor, who lost his pension in a corporate collapse. And they’re both better off than Joe, who has never even been offered anything like the sweet deals his parents’ generation got. At that, he’s lucky – he has a “family wage job.” Joe III is stuck shoveling shit for a hopelessly inadequate minimum wage. He’s considered college, but his college-educated friends don’t find their degrees help them much in the restaurant or mattress superstore, and those student loan payments suck… He’d like to break into construction, but Mexicans have taken that over, and no habla Espanol, se?... Besides, the contractors have all the applicants they need, waiting in Tijuana… Well, there is always the army…

Meanwhile, the corporate hacks who sold out Joe Sr., his neighbor, and their kids are doing fine, floating down on their golden parachutes…

The conversation has been about prosperity, but it has been about equity as well. Now, I posit Americans generally have an instinctive apprehension to equality of outcome, but very much support equity in opportunity. It’s bred into us; a product of wide-open capitalism and a frontier mentality. Well, the frontier is – temporarily, at least – closed to the average man, and capitalism has become its own worst enemy.

Joe is voting with his feet. He’s walking away from a system that seems to have turned on him. Let’s hope he doesn’t walk into something worse…

Moving on down the evolutionary tree to the domain of the lizard brain, John Seery thanks nobody in particular for the infinite superiority the dysfunctional California Yuppie lifestyle he lives today enjoys over the dysfunction of his traditional Iowa upbringing… If you like the kind of piece that sends Rush Limbaugh into spittle emitting, paper crunching tirades, you’ll love this one…

And finally, arriving at the very bottom of the evolutionary slime, we find Tony Hendra, ranting back at us… Tony offers a heartfelt prayer to whatever god he worships, first entreating the almighty? to bless Dick Cheney with another heart attack and then giving thanks that, among other things, “Thy glorious sun is finally breaking through the viscous, vomit-colored cloud-cover of Republican bigotry, repression, fear-mongering, greed and graft. A blighted carapace of despair and depression that has blotted out the clear blue sky from horizon to horizon for six long years, O Lord, like a billion pairs of enormous morbidly obese buttocks sitting on our heads.” It goes sub-slime thereafter…

Really, this is just the thing, if you’re a Republican who enjoys a good bout of holiday indigestion.

You might even want to save it… You never know when you may need a good example of far-left liberal “compassion”…

VIOLATING THE LAW OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

2006-11-22T20:31:00.000-08:00

There are a couple of stories kicking around of late that demonstrate the folly of too much law and the unintended consequences it generates…

Last week our own lead neoconservative trooper was outright sky-falling astonished to hear the ACLU was defending a lawsuit involving guns!

Well, sort of… It was really a free speech case involving internet filters. Owing to a Federal “strings attached” arrangement, libraries which received certain Federal grants were required to install filters to prevent minors from “seeing visual depictions of sexual activity,” whatever exactly that means… Is this what we used to call porn?

Well, some Eastern Washington libraries, contrary to Supreme Court edict, didn’t remove the filters to allow unfettered adult access. “The plaintiffs include a Ferry County woman who wanted to do research on drugs and alcohol while studying at Eastern Washington University; a professional photographer blocked from researching art galleries and health issues; and an Okanogan man unable to access a Web log he maintains, as well information relating to gun use by hunters.”

Nobody is explaining how a porn filter blocked access to those subjects, but I think it’s time to slap the software writer…

And a few hundred members of Congress, too. Why do we need this law? Protect kids from porn? C’mon… They don’t need porn. They have Britney Spears, appearing here half a sneeze away from pulling a Janet. Fox calls her single and sizzling… I got another “s” word for her… And a note to Fox – she isn’t single, yet. Some icon… Keeping kids away from explicit sexuality is hopeless.

And BTW, isn’t this one of those parental functions? I know… Ma’s at work. Somebody has to pay for those porn filters.

This one is a lot grimmer… FoxNews, among many others, is reporting the case of a 92 woman who was killed in a “shootout” with narcotics officers who broke down the wrong door on a botched warrant. It’s claimed they announced themselves properly, followed all the right procedures, etc… Except it was the wrong damned house. It’s a good guess Kathryn Johnston didn’t hear their declamation before she wounded three of them…

Something in me wants to curse her aim and curse twice the apologists who insist this was justified – or at least that the cops were justified in their response. I would wish at the very least they never wear a badge again, and that the fool who got the location wrong go to jail for involuntary manslaughter, civil rights violations, and wounding – its his/her fault the cops got shot.

I would, but it’s so futile. It’s just one more case of collateral damage from the most misbegotten war this country has ever fought, the war on drugs.

Over at National Review there is a link to a ten year old article by WF Buckley and the NRO editors. If you haven’t read “The War On Drugs Is Lost” do so now. It’s long and wordy – what else? – but it makes the case very well. And it is especially significant that the observations Buckley et al made in 1996 are still so applicable.

So how goes the war today? Oh, you can search and search – you’ll find thousands of opinions, estimates, and hyperbolic rhetorical excesses – but you’ll find almost no “facts” because nobody knows. All we know for sure is that since 1996, as estimates of total users have gone up and down, methamphetamine and prescription drugs like oxycontin – Limbaugh’s balm – have become hugely popular while the old standbys maintained their popularity and availability - as cheap or cheaper than ever. We know that cops keep busting and users keep buying, while those true capitalists of the black markets wax ever more ingenious in their techniques, digging tunnels and building submarines to facilitate their enterprises…

Lost? Worse than lost: Stalemated. The war on drugs is a quagmire that makes Iraq look like a shining success. And just like Iraq, the collateral damage goes on, as Kathryn Johnston found out…

I don’t expect it to change. Religious zealots and similar dogmatists, fighting side by side with dealers, crooked cops and judges, and the huge numbers of drug customers make this almost certain. I have to wonder, though: Do the anti-drug legions realize they are perpetuating the problem? Do they realize their futile efforts are lining the pockets of those they purport to oppose?

Do they know they have blood on their hands – the blood of people like Kathryn Johnston – just as surely as do the druglords?

Do they care? Or is any means justifiable in their war?

I guess so… That’s what war means.

BIG 'OL BAG OF DIRTY LAUNDRY

2006-11-21T14:32:00.000-08:00

I’ve a lot of different things chasing each other through the fetid crags of my dirty little mind today… I thought I’d scoop ‘em all into one bag…

First, an opinion:

Establishment liberals waxed derisive while conservatives hooted catcalls as Nancy Pelosi worked to elect John Murtha Majority Leader. After the effort failed, pundits provided a plethora of analyses as to the damage “her failure” did to her upcoming Speakership.

Keeping in mind one can be scrupulously principled and dead wrong at the same time…

You have to admit that so far the Speaker-elect is being uncommonly principled – uncommon, that is, for the House of Representatives… She clearly believes the election just over is a mandate to “get us out” of Iraq, whatever that means. She also believes Representative Murtha played a significant role in popularizing the message.

So ignoring his many other shortcomings and the potential damage of failure she pushed his candidacy.

Add to this the fact she has come out in opposition to a new draft, it becomes all the plainer she is serious about pushing to “get us out.” We won’t need a draft if we’re not stuck in Iraq…

Meanwhile, The Washington Post reports this morning that the Democrats are planning a REALLY BIG SHEW on ethics. From the article:

“Despite divisions among Democrats over how far to go in revising ethics rules, House leaders plan a major rollout of an ethics reform bill early next year to demonstrate concern about an issue that helped defeat the Republicans in the midterm elections.

But they will do it with a twist: Instead of forwarding one big bill, Democrats will put together an ethics package on the House floor piece by piece, allowing incoming freshmen to take charge of high-profile issues and lengthening the time spent on the debate. The approach will ensure that each proposal -- including banning gifts, meals and travel from lobbyists as well as imposing new controls on the budget deficit -- is debated on its own and receives its own vote. That should garner far more media attention for the bill's components before a final vote on the entire package.

"This will be the most significant ethics and lobbying reform that Congress has ever voted on," promised Rep. Martin T. Meehan (D-Mass.), one of the point men on the effort.”

I wondered if Jim McDermott would be involved in the circus, so I perused his page… Web, that is, not Congressional… Jim doesn’t even have a link to ethics…

Moving down the pecking order, Arianna Huffington bitch-slaps James Carville for his criticism of Howard Dean, opining Democrats need to send the “Agin' Cajun to the Political Consultants' Retirement Home.”

I have to say I enjoyed that, and I bet a lot of other people did too. I bet if you charged $5 a pop for the chance to slap Carville, you could pay off the National debt…

Meanwhile, with the jury still out, the vigilantes are advocating a hanging. Joshua Muravchik of the American Enterprise Institute opines in the LA Times that we must bomb Iran.

Blood pressure time… I think it is cowardly and foolish, not to mention ultimately counterproductive, to insist there is no legitimacy to Iran’s desire for nuclear power generation capacity. As I read this article, I see one theme repeated over and over… Hezbollah. Hezbollah this, Hezbollah that… Hezbollah isn’t my problem, and neither is the security of those whose problem they are…

But the nightmare Medusa of fossil fuel reliance is my problem, and as I have opined in the past and will in the future, I think the way out – the only way out – is nuclear power. I think the US should go all out to build energy self-sufficiency via nuclear power. That said, I think it hypocritical for us to attempt to block others…

Yes, I know the arguments. I don’t care. This is inevitable. And I’m tired of watching the American people be dragged around by their fears. We spent 40 years steeling ourselves for an Armageddon that never happened and in fact came closer to happening by accident than design. Now the Fear Party wants to drag us around by a fear of a nation that cannot possible give us more than a bloody nose and almost certainly won’t, if it comes to it, even try. Oh, I know. There are millions of people in the Middle East – and millions in the US – who want to create Armageddon in the unholy land, today. But I think I’m going to cast my lot with common sense. In the end, most people will realize in time all this religious stuff is pure crap and they won’t follow the freaks off the cliff…

Over at Slate Christopher Hitchens has a few choice words for James Baker & co, asking “Who’s Cutting and Running Now?” I found this piece interesting not so much for his criticisms as for it’s value as a reminder of what a radical departure GWB’s Iraq policy was from previous policies. Now, it seems some of the same people who created the long standoff between the Gulf Wars are being tapped to talk us out of the quagmire.

It’s also a flag for anyone in Iraq who is really supporting us: As Hitchens notes, Baker was a chief author of the policy that encouraged Shiite and Kurdish dissent against Saddam Hussein and then failed to support that dissent. “For millions of Iraqis, the betrayal of their uprising against Saddam in 1991 is something that they can never forget. They tend to bring it up, too, and to fear a repetition of it.”

They should.

Well, I guess all you can say is WAAAAA!!! “Young people in developed countries unhappy, survey says” Of course, a lot of theories are offered as to why kids in India are happier than kids in Japan or the US. Here’s mine: Western kids have an impossible to attain definition of success. In Japan, its work related success, in the good ‘ol USA, it’s an insidious combination of materialistic goals and obsession with beauty.

What did the Mr. wizard of my childhood cartoons say? “Be just what you is, not what you is not. Those who do this are the happiest lot.”

Maybe these kids need better cartoons.

I knew there was more to this story and I hoped it would come out. A few weeks ago, a much-reported study claimed Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000. Fred Kaplin at Slate took issue with the study, and his criticisms have elicited a response from the study authors, which Fred responds to.

The heart of the issue: Using an accepted statistical technique not heretofore applied in Iraq, the study authors concluded the total death rate from all causes was 13.3 per 1000. The pre-war rate had to be estimated, and was pegged at 5.5 / 1000, which is lower than in the graying West but higher than other Middle Eastern Nations which have the young populations a high birth rate provides. Other estimates, however, place the pre-war rate as high as 10 / 1000.

So even if the 13.3 figure is correct – I expect it probably it is – we still don’t know where we are because we don’t know where we came from…

This is ugly… H Candice Gorman, attorney for a Mr. Al-Ghizzawi, currently being held in Guantanamo, without, she maintains, any cause – let alone a just or legal one. Speaking of Rumsfeld, Gonzolez, and their cronies she writes: “Even if the only thing they were guilty of doing was what they did to Mr. Al-Ghizzawi, they deserve to be tried and convicted as war criminals. They need to sit in tiny cells for the rest of their lives and ponder their cruelty.”

More blood pressure… If her assertions are correct, I agree. Anyone involved in this should be stripped of all immunity and turned over to The World Court for trial as war criminals. If GWB was in on it, this alone should be a slam dunk for impeachment.

And this should be a wake-up for all Americans: Under current law, anyone can disappear into these hellholes. Being an American is a meaningless protection if you are held incommunicado. In fact, it would make it worse. If they grabbed Joe Citizen by accident and then figured it out six months of torture later, they almost certainly wouldn’t let him go for fear of legal reprisals.

IMO, the recently passed exceptions in Habeas Corpus robs the US government of all legitimacy. “We” are now ruled by criminal thugs no better than a Saddam Hussein. If they want my allegiance, they can repeal that ghastly law. Until then, it ain’t my government…

Here’s some bile from the sore-losers of the right wing: Jenean Mcbrearty laments in The Lexington-Herald Leader “Hippies still trying to ruin the country”

Note to Ms. McDipshit: I’ll take hippies over you hillbillies any day… She writes: “America won't win another war until the 1960s flower children are pushing up petunias.” Idiot. America won’t have peace until all her kind are pushing up Skunk Cabbage…

Then on a values note: William Saletan at Slate suggests a novel idea for the Democrats: "Go back to being the party of responsibility." He weaves several themes together, but the one I find the most interesting is the latest morphing of the prohibitionist vs. liberalist position on abortion. Prohibitionists have managed of late to back themselves into a corner over birth control. To Saletan, the remedy for the public perception of Democrats as the “if it feels good, do it” party is simple: Advocate that “Democrats are for reducing abortion without banning it. The most effective way, short of abstinence, is through birth control. Birth control isn't about doing what feels good. It's about taking responsibility.”

I think ultimately this will be the winning position…

And last an economic twofer: Drudge led this morning with one of those “grabber” headlines he is so fond of: GOOGLE HITS $500 A SHARE; MARKET VALUE $154,570,000,000.00

This reminded me of a piece by Daniel Gross at Slate: “The Mystery of the Disappearing Stocks” Gross offers “A bizarre explanation for the stock market rally,” suggesting “The continuing stock rally in the face of a slowing economy and a cratering housing sector is something of a mystery, baffling economists and investors alike. But there could be a simple explanation: supply and demand.

Simply put, the supply of U.S. stocks available for individual investors, mutual funds, and index funds. Call it de-equitization. In the last few days, deals have been announced or concluded to take large publicly held companies private.”

He goes on to elucidate this ongoing trend: “According to Thomson Financial, buyouts worth $334.5 billion have been announced or completed so far this year, up from $115 billion for all of last year. According to Standard & Poor's, members of the S&P 500 Index spent $325.15 billion on their own shares in the first three quarters of 2006 and have spent more than $674 billion since Jan. 1, 2005. Between buybacks and buyouts, that's more than $1.1 trillion of stock taken out of public hands in less than two years.”

I have long thought this economy is badly overrated – and I think he’s on to something here. It is the same as the just busted speculative boom in oil. There is a lot of money out there looking for a home, and fewer and fewer places for it to go.

I don’t think it will last – I think once the buyback frenzy described subsides, the P/E ratio will reassert itself and the prices will “re-align”… Translation: 8,000 DOW within a year.

Good Day…

Cross-Posted to NW Bloggers

THE REAL DEMON

2006-11-19T12:40:00.000-08:00

This morning we have another spewing of evil from the sickest bastard in America. Bob Cesca over at Huffington Post links Crooks & Liars for some fine Sunday fare:

“Pat Robertson: All Others Worship “Demonic Powers””

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/11/18/pat-robertson-all-others-worship-demonic-powers/

In its entirety:

“A viewer wrote in to ask Pat Robertson a question

Why [do] evangelical Christians tell non-Christians that Jesus (God) is the only way to Heaven? Those who are Hindu, Buddhist, Islamic, etc. already know and have a relationship with God. Why is this? It seems disrespectful.

Robertson replied that it is not all disrespectful because all other religions really just worship "demonic powers."

No. They don't have a relationship. There is the god of the Bible, who is Jehovah. When you see L-O-R-D in caps, that is the name. It's not Allah, it's not Brahma, it's not Shiva, it's not Vishnu, it's not Buddha. It is Jehovah God. They don't have a relationship with him. He is the God of all Gods. These others are mostly demonic powers. Sure they're demons. There are many demons in the world.”

Sick bastard.

This isn’t free speech, its hate speech and incitement. There are unfortunately billions of people who are religious, and he just hurled the worst possible insult at two-thirds of them. He should at the least be prosecuted and his broadcast licenses should be revoked.

And stuff your first amendment arguments, please. Freedom of speech was intended to protect political speech and was primarily intended to apply to speaking out for or against government. Likewise arguments of freedom of religion are misplaced. This isn’t a church; it’s a for-profit enterprise whose product is pseudo-religious hatred such as the above example. And like any product, it deserves to be regulated. Robertson has made millions with this. Allowing him to hide in the first amendment is despicable.

Discussing the fact he said it should be protected – he made it political by using the public airwaves. What he said should not be and neither should the speaker. If someone were incited to violence against him over comments like these, well, that’s fine by me. He asked for it.

Bring back dueling!

A SLIP OF THE TRUTH

2006-11-19T10:45:00.000-08:00

Well, the Brit Minister of “He didn’t say that” issued a statement yesterday, commenting on Tony Blair’s recent agreement with David Frost that Iraq was a disaster. From AFP VIA Breitbart:

“Blair 'disaster' admission over Iraq a 'slip of the tongue': official”

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/11/18/061118191126.gfcbmuyt.html

The piece sums the matter well:

“Downing Street moved swiftly to play down an apparent admission by British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the invasion of Iraq had been a "disaster," labelling his comments a "slip of the tongue."

In an interview Friday on Al-Jazeera's new English-language channel, broadcaster Sir David Frost suggested that the 2003 US-led and British-backed invasion had "so far been pretty much of a disaster."

"It has," Blair replied, before adding quickly: "But you see, what I say to people is why is it difficult in Iraq? It's not difficult because of some accident in planning.

"It's difficult because there's a deliberate strategy... to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war."

But during Blair's trip to Pakistan for talks with President Pervez Musharraf, the prime minister's official spokesman told reporters: "It was a straightforward slip of the tongue... sometimes he does this when he's half-listening to the question and wants to get on and respond."”

A slip of the tongue? A slip of the truth… These war party hawkers never tell the truth unless it’s a slip of the tongue…

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Really this is of little if any note. It’s absolutely old news that there is an irreparable disconnect between what our governments are claiming about Iraq and the actual situation. It even goes to his credit that he “slipped;” to constantly and completely deny the truth requires a psychopathic mind – one like Cheney or Rove possesses. At least Blair isn’t stark raving mad… Like our VP…

I wouldn’t have thought to comment on the matter at all, except for another bit of honesty here that I think we Americans need to consider:

“"It's difficult because there's a deliberate strategy... to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war."”

As this country continues down the path to a class-ridden, have vs. have not society, we need to remember the survival of our free, open, representative Republic – and the rights it guarantees – depends on overwhelming popular support. If even a few percent of America gave up on the process and decided the only way to survive was to take the fight to the streets, our Nation and its ideals would be doomed.

We have had a small taste of what terrorists can do. We have seen what tiny numbers of domestic terrorists can accomplish.

What havoc could a few million wreak? And why if they are dispossessed in the land of their birth shouldn’t they do so?

Jim Webb, the junior Senator-elect from Virginia, said much the same thing – in far more circumlocutious terms - in a must read op-ed in The Wall Street Journal back on November 15th:

“Class Struggle”
“American workers have a chance to be heard”

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110009246

Read it, please. Mr. Webb obviously still believes the system can cure itself – or at least he hopes to project that belief. But I have to wonder how many of the people who elected him share that view. Seeing, as he notes:

“The most important--and unfortunately the least debated--issue in politics today is our society's steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America's top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.”

Seeing the trends, and:

1) Seeing manufacturers forsake our shores in favor of profits while still expecting to market their wares here,

2) Seeing any outsourceable job outsourced,

3) Seeing corporate America use illegal immigrants to bust unions and turn family wage jobs into slave labor,

4) Seeing, as Mr. Webb notes:

“Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve compensation packages for chief executives and others that are out of logic's range. As this newspaper has reported, the average CEO of a sizeable corporation makes more than $10 million a year, while the minimum wage for workers amounts to about $10,000 a year, and has not been raised in nearly a decade. When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20 times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much.”

In the face of all this, is it reasonable to expect people to remain peaceful citizens, respecting a system that respects neither they nor their needs?

I don’t think so. It certainly isn’t my expectation.

I do think that this issue was a big part of the turnaround in Congress this last election. Americans are very patient as a group – look at how long “we” tolerated failure in Iraq – but the big lie of the Bush / Republican economy has simply become too big to accept anymore. Wall Street be damned – it’s main street that matters to Joe Citizen. And main street has been raped by Wal-Martization and the globalist treachery of corporate America.

Joe Average knows the Republican establishment wants to enslave him. Joe is hoping Democrats will rise to the challenge and restore equity. If the government doesn’t do something now, a lot of average Joes may give up and start studying Jefferson… A little revolution, you know, being good every once in a while…

COSSACKS!

2006-11-18T15:38:00.000-08:00

Judge this one for yourself…

From Huffington Post:

“Houston Police Trample Protesting Janitors With Horses...”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/11/18/houston-police-trample-pr_n_34427.html

If it’s true, it’s a damn shame the protesters weren’t armed and inclined to fight back. At the very least, none of these Cossacks should ever wear a badge again – and whoever ordered this should go to prison for life.

Damn… Is it absolutely certain we can’t just give Texas back to the Mexicans?

RESOLVING A PARADOX

2006-11-18T12:33:00.000-08:00

A couple of pieces this last week on environmental matters make a fine addition to the environmental loony bin – the first reminding science what it is up against, the second providing a springboard to explain a paradox that’s long needed it…

First, this from Think Progress VIA Huffington Post:

“Inhofe: Don’t Worry About Global Warming Because ‘God’s Still Up There’”

http://thinkprogress.org/2006/11/17/inhofe-hoax/

The title says it all…

Senator Inhofe, the anti-Gore… The cure is worse than the disease…

Idiot. We got these fools out of the driver’s seat just in time. But at least he provides a sterling example of just why the State needs insulation and even protection from the church…

And then from the mad scientist file of the loony bin:

“Scientists: Pollution could combat global warming”

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/science/11/16/smog.warming.ap/index.html

From the article:

“Air pollution may be just the thing to fight global warming, some scientists say.

Prominent scientists, among them a Nobel laureate, said a layer of pollution deliberately spewed into the atmosphere could act as a "shade" from the sun's rays and help cool the planet.

Reaction to the proposal here at the annual U.N. conference on climate change is a mix of caution, curiosity and some resignation to such "massive and drastic" operations, as the chief U.N. climatologist describes them.

The Nobel Prize-winning scientist who first made the proposal is himself "not enthusiastic about it."

"It was meant to startle the policymakers," said Paul J. Crutzen, of Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. "If they don't take action much more strongly than they have in the past, then in the end we have to do experiments like this."

Serious people are taking Crutzen's idea seriously.”…

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Senator Inhofe of Oklahoma has recently became a defacto spokesman of sorts for a wide spectrum of opinion on global warming that ranges from those who believe the debate isn’t over to those that believe the whole thing is nonsense, and on over to those who believe it’s a socialist plot to destroy their inalienable right to drive a Hummer to work, through the forest, or down a clam beach at low tide… Realistically, the only shred of sanity these people hold onto is their assertion the debate isn’t over – we have a lot more to learn about climate dynamics before we can make the kind of projections we need to be able to make if we’re going to start spending real money on solutions, be they economic incentives or the kind of mad scientist shtick Dr. Crutzen suggested.

But a lot of the popular arguments against global warming stem from a failure to properly evaluate what we in fact already know. For example…

One of Senator Inhofe’s oft-quoted assertions is that the measured rise in temperatures posited to be due to man-generated greenhouse gasses has lagged the actual creation of those gasses by quite a long time. It is pointed out that while man has been pumping greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere throughout recorded history and in vastly increasing volumes since the industrial revolution got going 300 years ago the rise in temperatures has only been noted very recently.

Why?

Pollution. Particulates seed clouds while forming reflective layers by themselves. Unburned hydrocarbons, acid-forming oxides and ozone form smogs that reflect still more sunlight.

Put together, the effect is significant. Consider natural examples:

When Krakatau catastrophically erupted in 1883, everything from anecdotal accounts to actual measurements over the next two years pointed to reduced crop yields and unseasonably cold temperatures worldwide. While there wasn’t really good global temperature tracking back then, there was 108 years later when nearby Mount Pinatubo did the same thing – and there were significant, albeit short-lived drops noted in global temperatures.

“Air pollution may be just the thing to fight global warming”…

Throughout the first 200 years of the industrial revolution, the fuel of industry was coal – the dirtiest fuel on the planet. During the 19th century, London and southern England were famous for their impenetrable fogs – fogs created by the smog from coal burning. As technology evolved, more and more of the fuel consumed came from oil – cleaner but still very dirty. And we all know the rest. By the latter half of the 20th century, particulates, unburned hydrocarbons, ad acid-forming oxides in the air had built up past being a nuisance, past being a problem, up to the point of being in many places a crisis, killing forests, animals, and people with poisonous smogs while the acid rains literally dissolved stone buildings and destroyed metal bridges.

Back then, a little carbon dioxide was the least of our worries…

But we the people had had enough, and beginning in the early ‘70’s, we forced ourselves to change. Now we have nice clean air, sunlight reflecting smogs are far les common – and most all the fuel we consume is converted into carbon dioxide and water vapor, the two greatest contributors to global warming.

I won’t belabor the obvious any further, except to point out that the one place on earth that is bucking the trend – and measurably suffering for it – is mainland China, where downwind industrial pollution in some areas is creating cold spots and ruining crops…

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It all comes down to the simplest of ideas: There is no such thing as a free lunch. The great fuel reserves of earth are like a huge bank account built up over millions of years. Now, if somebody suddenly dumped bales of cash into the economy that wasn’t based on current economic activity – cashed in a huge bank account, so to speak – what would happen? Would there be a significant change in the economy? Would there be inflation?

Think of global warming as natural inflation…

And just like economic inflation, there are and will be winners and losers. I think that’s why so many people don’t want to believe it’s real – they know that after acceptance comes check writing time. Tony Blair’s likely successor has already endorsed a carbon tax, and so have some Republicans… It’s raising the interest rate on global warming inflation. But if I’m the payor, who is the payee? I can’t write a check to Mother Nature…

So does my contribution go to a fund to build seawalls for threatened coasts? Maybe relocate people whose ancestral lands have been destroyed by desertification? Or retrain workers whose jobs are destroyed by the downturns created by Kyoto-style arrangements?

Are “they” going to take my money and give it to the mad scientists for building city-sized smog pots designed to cloud the sun? Hmmm… I like the sun…

Who administers this? Gas taxes should in theory go to building roads. In practice even this simple guideline is hard to follow, because governments treat revenue sources the way little boys treat five bucks from grandma. They always figure out a way to spend it quick…

And what about Kyoto? If we say yes, we commit economic suicide. If we insist the whole world participates, then two-thirds of mankind is left hobbled in their quest to achieve what we take for granted. If we say no, the problem???

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I’d be willing to settle for a little practical compromise. GWB needs a legacy – something really important to work on for the next two years. Not something impossible like nation building, but rather something that can easily be done today, but only by a great leader. I have a suggestion for the President: Become the Nuclear President.

I’ll happily pay a carbon tax if the money goes to building a nuclear solution to the two biggest challenges the industrialized world faces today: Fossil fuel dependence and climate change. Will anyone else?

It beats smog pots…

OUTFOXED!

2006-11-15T09:57:00.000-08:00

This is telling…

Huffington Post has obtained a nasty little memo from FoxNews Vice President of “news”…

“Fox News Internal Memo: "Be On The Lookout For Any Statements From The Iraqi Insurgents...Thrilled At The Prospect Of A Dem Controlled Congress"...”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/11/14/fox-news-internal-memo-_n_34128.html

Fair and balanced, my ass…

It’s even worse without the edits:

“And let’s be on the lookout for any statements by the Iraqi insurgents, who must be thrilled at the prospect of a Dem-controlled congress.”

He… She… It? Goes on to refer to the Democrat’s Iraq plan as being a very short angle, insists twice that the war on terror isn’t over “just because the Dems won,” and stresses the need to pursue stories on a Hamas threat to American interests…

Hamas… They’re Israel’s problem – one Israel created – not ours. They’ll leave us alone if we leave them alone… Instead of pumping billions into the Israeli coffers to be used to kill Palestinian doctors…

FoxNews clearly wishes to promote Hamas as our problem – and make the problem as bad as possible.

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It’s so telling. This is a perfect example of the neoconservative attitudes that have been used to poison the attitudes of the non-thinkers among the Republicans. Everything about it is delusional.

First off, the last thing “Iraqi insurgents” want to see is a Democratic congress or administration. As Abu Ayyub al-Masri, head of Al-Qaeda in Iraq stated on the 9th:

“"I tell the lame duck (U.S. administration) do not rush to escape as did your defense minister...stay on the battle ground"… "Remain steadfast in the battlefield you coward!"”

They – all of the warring factions - are desperate to keep US over there.

It’s important to remember the “insurgents” – an idiotic term in the first place – include native-born Iraqis of at least two religions and several parties, tribes, etc as well as foreign adventurers. We provide the cause celebre that brings in millions of dollars and thousands of recruits which fuel some factions. At the same time, we are providing millions more to the phony government in cash and arms, much of which is just ripped off or turned over to the militias that hide inside the Shiite-dominated administration –fuelling the other factions. Dollars and weapons they are using to kill US troops with…

Then as we bomb and destroy, we leave behind survivors who become recruits for all factions…

The Democrats just might figure out a way to get us out of the fray without giving up the fight – to isolate the battlefield from the outside through a combination of smart battle strategies and smarter diplomacy. If that happens, one side or another will come out on top fast as all sides run out of the wherewithal to continue the battle. Their mutual eradication agendas will be starved out…

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Wars are never fought for discrete, simple reasons, let alone the reasons stated, even though the misleaders of war try to reduce their agendas of carnage to simple reasons and single provocations in the public’s eye.

The war on terror / the war in Iraq… Never before has a rationale been so twisted; never before has the truth been so thoroughly occluded…

Anyone with a lick of common sense sees that nobody in the west would be interested in the Middle East but for two reasons: Oil and Israel. The greatest driver – one the neocons won’t face – is the oil. The hard core of the neocons try to pretend they are moral, even though they are moral toilets. Admitting they are out for plunder shatters the illusions they mollify the public with.

And admitting the money that fuels “terrorism” comes out of our own pockets at the gas pump is an admission of pure stupidity they can’t make.

But still a significant minority promotes the “war on terror” for the second reason. The New York Times reminds us that the destructive religious fantasies of the evangelicals do affect American foreign policy:

“For Evangelicals, Supporting Israel Is ‘God’s Foreign Policy’”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/14/washington/14israel.html?_r=2&ei=5094&en=2ddf96aacd3748dd&hp=&ex=1163480400&oref=slogin&partner=homepage&pagewanted=all

From the article:

“As Israeli bombs fell on Lebanon for a second week last July, the Rev. John Hagee of San Antonio arrived in Washington with 3,500 evangelicals for the first annual conference of his newly founded organization, Christians United For Israel. At a dinner addressed by the Israeli ambassador, a handful of Republican senators and the chairman of the Republican Party, Mr. Hagee read greetings from President Bush and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert of Israel and dispatched the crowd with a message for their representatives in Congress. Tell them “to let Israel do their job” of destroying the Lebanese militia, Hezbollah, Mr. Hagee said.

He called the conflict “a battle between good and evil” and said support for Israel was “God’s foreign policy.”

The next day he took the same message to the White House.”

And of course when the pro-Israel lobby needs to advertise, they know where to spend their money:

“Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, the founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews and the Israeli government’s official goodwill ambassador to evangelicals, said the statements turned out to be superfluous because there was a groundswell of grass roots evangelical support.

Mr. Eckstein said he had discovered the depth of that support when he ran television commercials on the Fox News Channel seeking donations. The response, mainly from evangelicals, “burned out the call centers,” Mr. Eckstein said. During the five-week war, his group added 30,000 new donors. Thanks to the influx of money, he said his organization has exceeded its income from the first 10 months of last year by 60 percent, putting it on track to pull in $80 million this year. “The war really generated a momentum,” Mr. Eckstein said.”

FoxNews… Where else? They know how to reach their target audience. And no wonder Fox is interested in ginning up a Hamas threat to the US. They are after all doubly motivated by the ideologies of their senior management and their customers…

The neoconservative / religious right cabal.

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To be sure, the arguments for the war on terror and the Iraqi occupation are often couched in much more convoluted terms – but the arguments can almost always be distilled to the same two issues: Oil and Israel.

Before the election, the lead rabid monkey at Orbusmax was trying to scare people, linking an Orson Scott Card piece via Rainmaker, who claimed it was a "must read before voting." Card's writing is still a must-read, I think.

“The Only Issue This Election Day”

http://www.ornery.org/essays/warwatch/2006-10-29-1.html

Card opines:

“There is only one issue in this election that will matter five or ten years from now, and that's the War on Terror.

And the success of the War on Terror now teeters on the fulcrum of this election.

If control of the House passes into Democratic hands, there are enough withdraw-on-a-timetable Democrats in positions of prominence that it will not only seem to be a victory for our enemies, it will be one.

Unfortunately, the opposite is not the case -- if the Republican Party remains in control of both houses of Congress there is no guarantee that the outcome of the present war will be favorable for us or anyone else.

But at least there will be a chance.”

Card goes on to make some unpopular assertions about our progress in Iraq and the usual arguments for the war, and he makes them very well. He very carefully refutes my position that the Iraqi insurgents want us to “stay the course.” But there is one interesting error and a paradigm assertion, made in the role of Devil’s Advocate:

“Every Congressman who says "We must set a timetable for departure" is providing ammunition to the tyrants in their campaign of terror… That is certainly not what most who call for withdrawal intend. They see Americans dying and they have no hope of victory. The Iraq War (as they call it) is costing lives and shows no sign of ending. Meanwhile, Iran is getting nuclear weapons, North Korea already has them, Syria and Iran are sponsoring continuing and escalating attacks on Israel -- how can we possibly "win" a war that threatens constantly to widen? Let's cut our losses, retire to our shores, and ...

And will you please stop and think for a moment?

There is no withdrawal to our shores. American prosperity requires free trade throughout most of the world. Free trade has depended for decades on American might. If we withdraw now, we announce to the world that if you just kill enough Americans, the big boys will go home and let you do whatever you want.

Every American in the world then becomes a target. And, because we have announced that we will do nothing to protect them, we will soon be trading only with nations that have enough strength to protect their own shores and borders.

Only ... what nations are those?”

“There is no withdrawal to our shores. American prosperity requires free trade throughout most of the world.” That is literally paradigmatic. Have we wholeheartedly accepted this? And have we accepted the burden of defending the entire trading community – for free? Consider the case as you consider Card’s mistake. Speaking in the context of the Islamist position, Card goes on:

“President Bush has offered something quite different. We don't want to turn you into mini-Americas, he says. We offer you, instead, democracy, in which you can choose for yourselves what parts of western culture to adopt. You will govern yourselves. It isn't a choice between wickedness and righteousness, it's a choice between freedom and oppression.”

“Choose for yourselves.”

I’m not sure Card speaks for all when he says we don’t want to make them into “mini-Americans.” Clearly, the globalists want as many glutinous consumers as possible. But we’ll leave that aside.

Because “choose for yourselves” isn’t how our government works, of course. We don't have a democracy - if we did, we'd have a "living, breathing" - growing, changing - constitution that meant nothing intrinsically. As a concept - one we have somewhat abandoned - we have a limited government of enumerated powers that recognizes individual rights, even ones that are destructive to society as a whole.

Oh, it's not a choice between freedom and oppression, democracy and totalitarianism? Of course not. Democracy and totalitarianism are not mutually exclusive. In a democracy, "the people" are free to elect a dictator, or anyone else.

And that is plainly what has happened in the Middle East. In Iraq, in Palestine, in Lebanon – “they the people” have democratically chosen government by tyrant – tyrants in the flesh wielding tyrannical religious attitudes.

So put it together. What if a democratically elected government declined our trade in a vital commodity or initiated an outright embargo? Will we take it – accept the decision and do without – or will we TAKE it?

In the early ‘70’s, we took it, as OPEC cut us off over our support of Israel. Back then, they supplied a significant but not crucial amount of “our” oil.

Would we take it again? That was answered when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. As Rush Limbaugh remarked at the time, Gulf I was about oil at market prices.

We TOOK it – we handed it back to the emir, whose claim to the land, resources, and rule of the people was as tenuous as they come. But he was – is – our lackey…

Is it ours because we need it?

At the kernel of the core lies this attitude from which all the other issues spring. It’s the attitude Fox slants everything to promote. It’s we’re right, they’re wrong, and history is on our side because we are the victors. Might gives us the right to allocate the wealth of a planet. And consistency isn’t required of us, any more than following international law is.

But it was the victors of a war on another continent who created Iraq – something Card reminds us of. The victors re-established the long defunct State of Israel. In both cases, the will of millions was ignored. We are still dealing with the backlash of those bad decisions – they are part of the roots of the “war on terror.”

We support pliant tyrants like the House of Saud and denounce nationalistic movements that bear unfavorably on our hegemony, giving tacit support to such as the Russians as they brutalize the Chechnyan separatists. More roots…

We ignored 12 years of genocide by Saddam Hussein, only taking action when it became apparent he intended to threaten the oil we apparently believe is ours by right because we need it.

We ignore the brutalities of China, whose slave factories destroy the environment as they supply our “needs.”

We ignore the genocide of Darfur. Darfur doesn’t exist to the neocons. Why? They have nothing we want. Our morals do not reach beyond our appetites.

It’s no wonder we are making enemies faster than we are making friends, Card’s assertions notwithstanding.

We’re never “fair and balanced”… Any more than Fox is. No wonder they are so popular.

ONE MORE REASON BOLTON MUST GO

2006-11-11T16:00:00.000-08:00

AP reports VIA MyWay News:

“U.S. Vetoes Condemnation of Gaza Strikes”

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061111/D8LB3ICO0.html

Disgusting…

I’ve always been an opponent of the arrogant, prima donna-ish way the Israelis have handled their “international affairs” – and I think as long as we support them, any retaliation that comes our way is earned.

But at least in the past you could count on the Zionists to be efficient and effective. But since their defeat in southern Lebanon earlier this year – damn right they lost – they aren’t even efficient and effective anymore.

This bunch of yahoos weren’t shooting at the enemy. They were just shooting – it’s freely admitted the nearest enemy position reports were for targets hundreds of yards away from where they shot.

And they called it a “technical error.”

They were just shooting – they killed 19 people, most of them well-placed, peaceful professionals.

Sorry… You’re doctors appointment has been cancelled. The doctor was blown to pieces by a random barrage of artillery fire from our “peaceful” neighbors.

So here’s another good reason to be glad the Democrats won control of Congress:

“US Democrats baulk at extending Bolton term”

http://www.abc.net.au/am/content/2006/s1786218.htm

“President Bush has re-submitted Mr Bolton's nomination to the Senate but Senior Democrats and even a key Republican have declared there's no way the envoy's term will be extended.”

Get that creep out of there. He is a disgrace to the human race and a danger to the Republic.

We’ll just have to hope the Senate makes sure the shrub doesn’t just replace him with another neocon sycophant bent on supporting foreign over American interests. Until he appoints someone with a neutral view, I'd say we can do without an ambassador…

NEWS FROM THE PLANET DRUDGE

2006-11-11T12:10:00.000-08:00

VIA Drudge from Reuters:

“Students at Calif. College ban Pledge of Allegiance”

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2006-11-10T021338Z_01_N09494500_RTRUKOC_0_US-LIFE-PLEDGE.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

Only in a world where communication is dominated by Drudges and the internet could a purely local story such as this receive so much exposure… I’ll be surprised if it doesn’t get considerable attention, although the usual foot soldiers for the cause may still be a little too shellshocked to peek out of their holes…

They didn’t ban the pledge, BTW… They banned it at their meetings – or, more accurately, they eliminated it from their proceedings by parliamentary process.

They can’t ban it, of course, as Christine Zoldos proved by “loudly reciting the pledge in front of the board on Wednesday night in defiance of the rule.”

And she insists she will do it again! Damned anarchist…

Oh well, legislative bodies set their own rules, as our contrarian political science major protester should know… After what the Republican House did over the last several years, this is small potatoes – if these kids are looking for examples to follow, that is…

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Regular readers probably know what I think of the Pledge – I think it is pure anti-American poison; 100% evil. I’m proud to say I have been a major pain in the ass on this subject at every opportunity presented since junior high school – except when I was a student government representative at my junior college.

Representatives represent… They don’t “lead”… Oh sure there is a mix; leaders get elected by people who want to go somewhere. But while 51% may be a victory, it isn’t a mandate to run roughshod over the other 49%.

This was, I think, a big part of the reason the Republican revolution has finally been put down. Real Americans, longsuffering though they habitually are, got tired of being bulldozed like a Gaza village.

Unless you are going to kill all the opposition, bulldozing doesn’t work. The survivors will get you.

So my advice to the kiddies: Climb off the bulldozer, sit down, and shut up. Your mouth won’t catch fire if you say the damned pledge. Ultimately, you will accomplish nothing if you begin by starting a riot – nothing except your own future defeat.

MORE POSITIVE ELECTION FALLOUT

2006-11-11T11:51:00.001-08:00

Huffington Post links VIA Yahoo an AP story by Laurie Kellman:

“Warrantless wiretaps unlikely to be OK'd”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061111/ap_on_go_co/warrantless_wiretaps

Very good news; precisely the sort of thing I hoped would follow a change of the guard.

It’s not the power; it’s not the wielder… It’s the lack of oversight, aggravated by the autocratic assertion oversight is unnecessary or even unconstitutional during times of war.

This is too much power for any man to wield outside of checks and balances – and its offensive that the president should ask for it.

Well, he asked for it… Now he’s really gonna get it – on this and a lot of other issues.

Get it?

MORE POSITIVE ELECTION FALLOUT

2006-11-11T11:51:00.000-08:00

STAY THE COURSE!

2006-11-10T14:10:00.000-08:00

The usual neoconservative water-bearers are giving top billing today to the latest foaming at the mouth from Al-Qaeda in Iraq. While Drudge luridly fills column space with Fire Engine Red clip quotes, Fox leads off with the by-line “Al Qaeda: We'll Never Rest Until White House Destroyed”…

You can get pretty much the same information from AP VIA Fox or from Reuters:

“Al Qaeda Claims to Have 12,000 Fighters in Iraq”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,228636,00.html

“Al Qaeda gloats over Rumsfeld”

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-11-10T172059Z_01_IBO132069_RTRUKOC_0_US-IRAQ.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage3

Oh hell… If burning the White House is all it will take to shut you up, we’ll lend you some matches… It’s been burned before… Probably has termites, anyway…

We are more than a house.

Aside from always reminding me of Foghorn Leghorn and the “chickenhawk,” these Al-Qaeda releases seem to be tracking a never ending descent into the ridiculous…

Which is a good one-word description of this one…

“"I tell the lame duck (U.S. administration) do not rush to escape as did your defense minister...stay on the battle ground"… "Remain steadfast in the battlefield you coward!"”

Thus spake Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, also known as Abu Ayyub al-Masri, head foamer of Al-Qaeda in Iraq inc…

I’m a chickenhawk, and I’m not done chewing on your ankle!

Still, it’s revealing. Both sides – all sides, I should say – who have an interest in prolonging the conflict in Iraq want this same thing: They all want the US army to remain in Iraq indefinitely. Nobody knows who would come out on top in the meltdown that will follow our withdrawal when it inevitably comes, but everybody knows it’ll shake out fast.

It’s our presence that maintains the stabilized chaos we see today which allows death squads to roam the Baghdad night and provides Al-Qaeda in Iraq – Al-Qaeda anywhere – its best recruiting tool.

Meanwhile, the state of war itself provides powerful tools which bolster the militarists in the US. It would have given them a permanent hammerlock on the electorate and the government itself I fear, if they hadn’t botched the execution so badly.

BRAVO neoconservative incompetence!

And our continued presence allows the oil lobby to hope they will yet be able to implement the hugely one-sided production contracts they are forcing on the supine Iraqi puppet government.

An odd bunch of bedfellows, this, but then, what would one expect in so crooked of an enterprise?

But at least it can be said the American voter has finally done something that has scared Al-Qaeda in Iraq… We’ve elected people they think will walk away from their war, leaving them fresh out of bogeymen.

“Remain steadfast in the battlefield you coward!” Stay the course!

Abu Hamza al-Muhajir, if he could have voted, would have voted Republican, I think.

IT'S ABOUT TIME

2006-11-10T11:00:00.000-08:00

Hat tip this morning goes to Matt Drudge for linking a Time.com exclusive:

“Exclusive: Charges Sought Against Rumsfeld Over Prison Abuse”

“A lawsuit in Germany will seek a criminal prosecution of the former Defense Secretary and other U.S. officials for their alleged role in abuses at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo”

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1557842,00.html

Hand them over, I say.

The American exceptionalist crowd needs to see this happen – for the good of the Republic. Their attitude is just as dead as Nationalism, I posit.

And I ask: If their attitude should be supported, then why not the rest of Nationalism?

Where are my protective tariffs?

It’s clearly an “a” or “not a” argument. We’re either part of the community or we are the exception that seeks to prove the rule. If we are that exception, we shouldn’t expect any of the normal protections of the larger community to apply to any of our property or people – especially those overseas.

Protecting accused lawbreakers like Rumsfeld endangers every other American.

That said, let’s keep in mind he wouldn’t necessarily be prosecuted – the charges might be found to be without merit. And if prosecuted, he wouldn’t necessarily be convicted.

If he and the others were acquitted, it would certainly raise the value of our “moral stock” worldwide - as would submitting to the process itself.

Hand them over.

THE BEST ARGUMENT YET FOR EUTHANASIA

2006-11-10T10:44:00.000-08:00

VIA FoxNews, AP relates how a real Brit patriot celebrates British history:

“British Man Injured After Lighting Firecracker in Buttocks”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,228517,00.html

A Tommy just back from the war at that… AP explains:

“The incident took place Sunday, when Britain celebrated Bonfire Night, traditionally marked with fireworks to celebrate the Guy Fawkes' gunpowder plot to blow up Parliament in the 17th century.”

Meanwhile, “Several of the man's friends recorded the incident on a mobile phone.”

May there always be an England?

What I want to know is how he lit it. My guess is somebody lit it for him, as in “You hold it and I’ll light it, Butthead”…

And I’d like to suggest to the attending physicians… Please, put this fool out of our misery… He’s using up valuable air…

ONE DOWN

2006-11-09T16:10:00.000-08:00

By now everyone has read about the first – let’s hope not the last – “casualty” of the 2006 election. Don Rumsfeld is out at Defense.

Well, that’s one… One neocon down. We got two more that need the axe…

So if we could get rid of Rice next, we’d start making real progress. We need someone new at State, a real charmer with a proven track record of deviousness equal to the job…

I’d like to suggest Slick Willie. He’s not doing anything right now…

And then if we can just get rid of Cheney… The shrub would have to get used to having nobody pulling his strings, but rid of the evil influences he just might be salvageable.

Maybe Cheney could be tricked into eating breakfast every day with Hillary, Nancy, and Barbara… Boxer, that is...

You know, uniting, not dividing… For a change…

A week of that and the fat bastard will spontaneously combust!

YANKING OPEN THE CLOSET DOOR

2006-11-09T15:54:00.000-08:00

We’ve got a mini tempest in a teapot brewing over at Huffington Post this morning… It seems CNN has censored Bill Maher, who suggested to Larry King that Ken Mehlman is gay…

Censor Bill Maher? Why, that’s totally unheard of!

“Censored By Cnn: Bill Maher Suggests Rnc Chair Mehlman Is Gay....”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/11/08/censored-by-cnn-bill-mah_n_33701.html

There are videos I didn’t watch and a pair of transcripts, edited and unedited. Unedited, Maher remarks:

“BM: A lot of the chiefs of staff, the people who really run the underpinnings of the Republican Party, are gay. I don't want to mention names, but I will Friday night...

LK:You will Friday night?

BM: Well, there's a couple of big people who I think everyone in Washington knows who run the Republican...

LK: You will name them?

BM: Well, I wouldn't be the first. I'd get sued if I was the first. Ken Mehlman. Ok, there's one I think people have talked about. I don't think he's denied it when he's been, people have suggested, he doesn't say...

LK: I never heard that. I'm walking around in a fog. I never...Ken Mehlman? I never heard that. But the question is...

BM: Maybe you don't go to the same bathhouse I do, Larry.”

It seems CNN didn’t want to get sued, so they dropped the name dropping…

Note to self: If ever in Washington DC, do not go to the same bath house as Bill Maher… He hangs out with butt pirates…

But wouldn’t that just ice the cake? To find out that the Republican Party elite is as queer as a three-dollar bill?

We might need to print a new currency in their honor…

PROTECTED AS LADIES OR EMPOWERED AS WHORES - PICK ONE ONLY

2006-11-03T17:18:00.000-08:00

I accumulated one of those accidental collections of unrelated but irresistible articles over the last few weeks, providing a view of woman the animal…

First, there was this little hornet’s nest:

“Outrage as Muslim cleric likens women to 'uncovered meat'”

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=412697&in_page_id=1770

“A Muslim cleric's claim that women who do not wear the veil are like 'uncovered meat' who attract sexual predators sparked outrage around Australia yesterday.

Sheik Taj Din al-Hilali, the nation's most senior Muslim cleric, compared immodestly-dressed women who do not wear the Islamic headdress with meat that is left uncovered in the street and is then eaten by cats…

"If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside on the street, or in the garden or in the park, or in the backyard without a cover, and the cats come and eat it… Whose fault is it - the cats or the uncovered meat?

"The uncovered meat is the problem."

He went on: "If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab (veil), no problem would have occurred."”

Poor sandbunny… Stood up on his hind paws and got mauled…

It does give us a good social timeline to compare his world and ours… I am just old enough to remember “good girls don’t get raped; bad ones shouldn’t complain if they do.”

50 years… You’ve come a long way, baby???

Not according to Joan Shore over at Huffington Post:

“Liberated Women? Think Again”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joan-z-shore/liberated-women-think-ag_b_32289.html

“Call it liberation, emancipation, sexual equality -- we are living under a grand delusion…

We look in revulsion at Muslim women wrapped in scarves and veils. We pity them, and we despise the male chauvinism that imposes that on them. But here's the catch: they are not caught up in our Western cult of exhibitionism and vanity. They are not openly competing with each other for men and men's favors. They are even, to a large degree, protected from assault and rape because they are virtually invisible. Home is their domain, husbands are their guardians…

We must understand that an internet hooker, a porn star, a naked fashion model, is not a liberated woman but a subjugated one. She is being exploited, or knowingly exploiting herself, for the sleaziest motives, and whatever she earns for that is shameful money. Prostitutes have more integrity.”

Then, icing the cake today, William Saletan over at Slate writes:

“Why Girls Sleep Around”
“The evolutionary case for female promiscuity.”

Just a short, almost tongue in cheek blurb on a study of marsupial “mice” and breeding success… Female promiscuity, the study concludes, enhances female lifetime fitness by enhancing the survival of offspring. Saletan goes on to note it also promotes small brains and big balls in males…

I must say: As an evolutionist, I find all this to be powerfully validating – especially the feminist take…

Evolutionary science teaches there is something called the battle of the sexes. It isn’t so much a battle as a competition, but it teaches a powerful lesson: The sexes can never be equal. Now, the monkey man, thoroughly out of touch with his/her inner monkey, resists accepting this truth. But the truth nevertheless prevails:

“"The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab (veil), no problem would have occurred."”…

“We look in revulsion at Muslim women wrapped in scarves and veils. We pity them, and we despise the male chauvinism that imposes that on them. But here's the catch: they are not caught up in our Western cult of exhibitionism and vanity. They are not openly competing with each other for men and men's favors.”…

In the competition of the sexes, either men or women rule – never both. The competition is over the limited female breeding capacity – a human female can be bred by at most two males at once, and one at a time is the overwhelmingly likely situation.

So males seek to accumulate the exclusive “rights” to as many females as possible. Females seek to accumulate the resources of as many males as possible, while saving the breeding for her “best” opportunity…

We see the general trend in the two cultures we are told are at war today. In the Moslem world, men rule and women are a protected commodity men fight over, buy, and sell. Hence, the woman not protected is “uncovered meat” provoking strays…

Whereas in the West women rule… Rule in everything that matters to the inner monkey. Men are free to do their best to accumulate resources, but all they can do is hand them over and hope… Women make all the real choices.

Which means women compete to accumulate men instead of the reverse. And ultimately, there is only one thing they can compete with, because it’s always the same “commodity” being marketed.

Lady or whore – it’s built into us. Pick one. You can’t have both.

SINKING BENEATH CONTEMPT

2006-11-03T14:41:00.000-08:00

This one is just too much…

“Offer of free flu shots halted at polling places”
“Mayor cancels program after critics slam it as a politically motivated ploy”

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/chronicle/4304540.html

It speaks for itself…

“Mayor Bill White ordered a halt Wednesday to the city health department's privately funded drive to offer flu vaccinations at early voting sites in predominantly Hispanic and black neighborhoods, amid conservative criticism that the effort would boost Democratic turnout… White's decision followed two days of criticism from some conservative bloggers and talk radio shows hosts after officials announced the program Monday. At least 20 other municipalities have launched the same initiative in several states, city officials said.

Local Republicans, who had scheduled an afternoon news conference on the vaccination issue before the mayor's announcement, accused White of deliberately selecting early voting sites in Democratic strongholds in an attempt to gin up votes favorable to city propositions on Tuesday's ballot.

"I think the program was completely motivated by a plan to turn out Democratic voters," said Harris County Republican Chairman Jared Woodfill.”

The people who set the program up dispute the claims – and so do those the program targeted:

“City health director Stephen Williams said the program was motivated by public-health concerns and said anyone 50 or older was eligible for a shot — not just those who voted.

"The sole purpose of doing the 'vote and vaccinate' initiative is to actually go where the people were," Williams said.

Other voters at Sunnyside said they weren't even aware that vaccinations would be available when they voted.

Ida Gibson, 59, said "it's just ridiculous" for anyone to tie her vote to a shot. "It's not an incentive for me to come," she said.”

Filthy scumballs. This is beneath contempt. If there is a god, every one of these bastards will die of flu this winter – starting with Jared Woodfill.

But there isn’t of course… Which is why his kind survive and flourish…

A FATAL DISTRACTION?

2006-11-03T14:13:00.000-08:00

Richard Black over at the BBC pens a reminder note to civilization:

“'Only 50 years left' for sea fish”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6108414.stm

Black writes:

“There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific study.

Stocks have collapsed in nearly one-third of sea fisheries, and the rate of decline is accelerating.

Writing in the journal Science, the international team of researchers says fishery decline is closely tied to a broader loss of marine biodiversity”…

“In 2003, 29% of open sea fisheries were in a state of collapse, defined as a decline to less than 10% of their original yield.”

Note this isn’t another study based on SWAG. This is fish in the net.

“Bigger vessels, better nets, and new technology for spotting fish are not bringing the world's fleets bigger returns - in fact, the global catch fell by 13% between 1994 and 2003.”

We’re getting better at fishing all the time, and catching fewer fish…

We’ve heard this before… We didn’t listen, and we won’t this time, I think. We’re too busy gorging on fish & chips…

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

I’ve never been comfortable with the way “global warming” issue is debated. On the basic level, there is no debate: The issue is as simple as a blackboard full of equations. Increasing the atmospheric concentration of substances with molecular absorption bands in the near infrared enhances planetary energy retention. Period… But the erasers start to fly when “we” begin to discuss what it means to the continued prosperity of man and the rest of life… Let alone what should be done about it…

And I have never been disposed to lend much support to the Kyoto treaty – in its present form, it is probably worse than nothing for two reasons. First, from an economic standpoint, it is unilateral surrender by “the west” in the war of competition, since the restrictions “we” would take upon ourselves would not apply to the world’s two most populous Nations – Nations possessing two of the world’s fastest growing economies.

But there is a far more important reason. The real goal – the only one that can ever really solve the problem – is for “we the consumer” to decide, each as individuals, to make do with less junk… In other words, we have to overcome human nature, which isn’t likely. As long as we continue to provide the endless market for the junk the slave factories of the Orient pump out, cutting our greenhouse emissions will merely result in more and more of the greenhouse gas generating production capacity deserting our shores for theirs – and taking our balance of payments with it.

It has already happened, and we all know it, but we don’t want to think about it. We want to think we are doing something about “the environment,” whatever that means, or alternately, that there is no need to do anything, or at least anything more.

The smokestacks are disappearing from the skylines, and we need those new giant TV’s…

Kyoto is really just another kind of denial.

And “global warming” may well be a fatal distraction.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

We know what more of those energy absorbing “greenhouse gasses” will do, at least on a blackboard. We don’t know what a net energy increase will mean to us, or the living and inanimate systems that support us. The best predictions available are based on models which are in turn based on theories. All we know for sure is we’re stoking the fires of change, which stokes the fiery arguments of politicians.

Scientists seek to understand. Politicians seek to control. Control requires creating phantoms to be chased with the people’s money and at the cost of their freedoms.

It also requires a kind of fanatical, beady-eyed obsession; a religiously single focus.

Al Gore, High Priest of Global Warming.

It’s gotten so damned glamorous lately. What is being ignored?

30% of the world’s commercial fisheries depleted beyond practical recovery; At the current rate, 50 more years and… The half of the world for whom these fish are a dietary staple starve. It’ll come on in stages, of course, and there will be fearful competition and confrontation, but it won’t matter. Gone is gone, at least for a very long time.

In 50 years, models based on theories suggest the warming climate will be causing expensive problems. Counting the fish says in 50 years they will be gone.

And so it goes. Deforestation, destruction and depletion of arable land, the rape of the oceans, biodiversity issues, irreplaceable ores... Global warming is just one more symptom of the human footprint and not the most important. This is something one will find wide, quiet agreement on in the environmental community: Steven Milloy, well-known crusader against “junk science” - which includes, in his opinion, global warming – objects to the single-minded focus on global warming for exactly the reasons I outline here.

Ultimately, the skeptic cannot avoid seeing the crusade against global warming as the perfect platform for the high priest / witch doctor / presidential candidate. It incorporates all the elements: A scary future a long way off, an opportunity to gain huge political, economic, and social power now to combat that future, and murky, realistically immeasurable results. Once the paradigm is accepted, any bad news becomes the fault of the bogeyman and any good news is credited to the crusader. And pretty soon it is entirely forgotten we are measuring the immeasurable, that before Saint Albert Carbonslayer came along there was good and bad news…

Meanwhile, as our modern Quixotes joust, harder, deadlier issues sit and fester. Most of the real peril the world’s environment faces today comes from the burgeoning populations and consumption of the very people agreements like Kyoto simply don’t address. A lot of these issues – like fisheries depletion – are despite their immediacy so much more difficult to solve than global warming it isn’t surprising our politicians don’t have the balls to take them on but would rather chase shadows they can affect with taxes and efficiency mandates. But that’s what real leaders are for: They take on the things from which ordinary men shrink.

It has been recently reported Gordon Brown, expected to head the next government in Britain succeeding Tony Blair, will push for a carbon consumption tax to combat the “global warming crisis.” It isn’t clear where the money will go or how it will combat global warming other than the minor effect it may – or may not – have in promoting conservation.

Leading by taxing… Mr. Brown, you are no Winston Churchill, any more that Al Gore is a Lincoln.

Enjoy your fish and chips, Mr. Brown… While you still can.

CHARTING ABSURDITY

2006-11-02T14:33:00.000-08:00

FoxNews brought us the story yesterday that the Pentagon is “looking into” who leaked the latest OMIGOD ABSOLUTELY TOP SECRET THE TROOPS ARE ALL GOING TO DIE NOW document to the dastardly COMMIE TERRORIST BIN LADEN SUPPORTERS at the New York Times:

Sorry… Channeling the RNC there…

“Pentagon Looking Into Leak of Classified Intel to New York Times”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,226832,00.html

The report claims the Pentagon is now trying to determine whether or not leaking the classified information was illegal…

To view the earth-shattering POTENTIALLY ILLEGALLY ACQUIRED PowerPoint, descend into the ENEMIES LAIR:

More RNC…

“Military Charts Movement of Conflict in Iraq Toward Chaos”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/world/middleeast/01military.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

The chart is, of course, very simple… It was, after all, intended for the highest ranks of the American military…

OOPS! Channeling Kerry…

It shows a horizontal bar, green on the left and red on the right… Right side, bleeding to death blood red… Got that straight…

The left is peace – the right chaos… This PowerPointer had a pretty good grasp of the obvious…

There are a series of dated position markers, moving forward toward right-wing chaos…

Damn! More Kerry…

There are a few bullet points… Short & simple… Tailored to the audience…

Did it again…

But I think it could have been improved. The chart should be vertical – red end up – and it needs to be interactive. Make it ten feet tall, put a carnival kicker at the bottom and a bell at the top… Give the high-heeled boys a mallet made out of Don Rumsfeld’s head and make whoever rings the chaos bell Secretary of Defense…

OOPS! I mean “a mallet made out of a rock shaped like Don Rumsfeld’s head”… Hey… If Kerry can drop a few words, so can I…

Not that you could tell the difference between a rock and…

Ta Dum, Bum!

Anybody disgusted yet? With such a smorgasbord, I don’t know where to start… At the beginning, I guess…

Why is this secret? Does anyone really not know this? Let’s see… There are those in a coma… The addled in their nursing homes… The residents of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue… The whole rest of the fucking country knows Iraq sliding into chaos – and we didn’t even need a sliding bar graph to figure it out…

But then, we aren’t generals leading the army… OUT OF MY HEAD, KERRY!

As for the so-called enemy in Iraq… They knew it before anyone…

Our government has become paranoid – and that’s a psychotic condition.

But why did the Times leak this?

Now, I’m all for patriots who leak things our government is hiding from us we need to know. Secret, illegal prisons, illegal surveillance programs? Bravo leakers!

But why this?

As noted, everyone already knows Iraq is going to hell in a bucket. Most of us suspect even the high-heeled boys know it. What purpose did this leak serve?

It served the purpose of proving they could do it. It’s just their way of flipping the bird at Don & his buddies.

A purpose every bit as rational as the urge to classify everything right down to the toilet paper the Pentagon suffers from…

Ta dum bum…

Oh where is that asteroid now when we really need it?

HOW THE DEFICIT STOLE CHRISTMAS

2006-10-29T13:51:00.000-08:00

I sat down to write a piece on society’s misplaced priorities on elections and election spending… I intended to start with the well-worn comparison of election spending vs. Halloween spending – the latter, by any estimate, far larger than the former.

I’m still going to write that piece, but another matter caught my attention…

While looking for some gee-whiz numbers on holiday spending, I ran into this from KRT Fort Wayne:

“Adults hijack Halloween goodies”

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/15864168.htm

According to Brianna Bond of Capital News Service, “we” will spend around $4.96 billion on Halloween and $438.6 billion on the winter holidays this year.

That $4.96 billion almost doubles what “we” will spend on the election, but that’s another post…

And then this crossed my bow: A piece by Matt Crenson of AP, writing on the Federal deficit and detailing the efforts of a few sturdy patriots who are trying, Paul Revere style, to wake Middlesex, village, and farm to the danger it poses. The Seattle Times links story here:

“Economists warn of nation's coming fiscal meltdown, call for hard choices”

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003328801_deficit29.html

You can get the same story straight from AP via MyWay:

“GAO Chief Warns Economic Disaster Looms”

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20061028/D8L1OC5G0.html

Alas, I fear Middlesex, village and farm will sleep through it once more…

After all, it’s so abstract; so … Tomorrow… So maybe. Today’s economists - like our worthy GAO Chief David Walker - squinting down the trendline connecting yesterday, today, and tomorrow, can only say that IF we continue along the same trend, we are in big doo-doo. The words barely leave their lips when they are answered by a host of theorists taking alternate squints and advocating fixes…

If we just raise the GDP by a percent or two and assume thus and such theory is the magic bullet that kills inflation while promoting growth and filling the Treasury to overflowing…

We’ll throw in cold Fusion on top of that, since we’re theorizing…

It’s a lot like Global Warming… What little we can see doesn’t look good… But “we” can’t see much, and greed is stronger than those dim, dark warnings…

But the holidays and the deficit. What an interesting coincidence.

The current annual budget deficit, recently widely reported in the media as $250 billion and falling slowly, was actually $437 billion in August: The $260 billion reported, and another $177 billion borrowed from the Social Security surplus…

Oh, yea… We’re still borrowing that, aren’t we? The entire surplus in Social Security payments is automatically “invested” in T-Bills… We’ve been doing that since the ‘80’s, when Reagan, that great fiscal conservative – NOT! – conceived a new way to juice the books…

$437 billion… Or just about the same amount “we” will spend this year on the Holidays…

How could “we” balance the budget today, for this year? Just spend nothing on Christmas, and forward the money saved to the Treasury.

I know, that’s an apples and oranges argument, even if apples and oranges would be on the list of things forgone. And no, this Grinchy Atheist isn’t suggesting it. But I think it is an apt comparison in one sense:

Christmas is all about joy, celebration, giving, and giving thanks. As we rack up the bill, we should consider that joy is just what “we” are stealing from ourselves and those who follow. Joy tomorrow.

Someday, there won’t be a choice anymore, if Dave Walker is right. If he’s right, the ghost of Christmas future will reveal a day when we won’t be able to afford Christmas cheer – or any cheer. Everything we will be able to produce in that someday will go to repay the past we’re making today.

Merry Christmas, kids…

POWERFUL COMMON SENSE FROM A PROGRESSIVE

2006-10-27T11:33:00.000-07:00

My hat is tipped once again to Matt Drudge who links a window into a brilliant mind. From Salon:

“Salon Interview: Camille Paglia”

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/10/27/paglia/index.html

The best five pages I have read in years. Conservatives, you must read this, especially if you think the left is intellectually spent… Liberals, you must read this, especially if you think it isn’t…

She absolutely excoriates Democrats… A few gems:

On the topic of Democrats, defense, and our dearth of choices:

“What candidate do we have to offer when national security is the No. 1 item on the front burner? Democrats became so distracted by their focus on domestic issues over the past 25 years that they're weak on national defense… My generation of baby-boom Democrats hasn't done much deep thinking about international issues except in terms of postmodernist fragmentation or fuzzy, smiley-face multiculturalism. We desperately need better candidates… John Edwards… Good Lord, that guy is such a lightweight! Are we really going to put America's national security in Edwards' hands? He has no relevant experience whatsoever… Except for Charles Rangel, who served in Korea, few Democratic leaders have military experience, so their rhetoric isn't likely to convince this skeptical and apprehensive electorate.”

Really nailed that one… But what are the choices?

“The country is being asked to take a gamble with the disordered Democrats or to choose nascent fascism on the Republican side -- the intrusion into personal files and phone records, the shadowy sweeps that may have imprisoned innocent people along with genuine terrorists. The electorate could be ready to accept abrogation of basic constitutional rights in a time of war.”

If we do, we will never get them back. But as Paglia notes:

“In this anxious atmosphere, the Democrats look addled and self-absorbed, with their handmaiden major media and showbiz sermonizers and celebutantes. All that vulgar posturing”…

On the Democrats’ characterization of Republicans as “fat cats:”

“The Democrats' portrayal of Republicans as fat cats out of touch with ordinary Americans just doesn't fly anymore, and they should drop it. I think the center of the Republican Party really is small-businessmen and very practical people who correctly see that it's job creation and wealth creation that sustain an economy -- not government intervention and government control, that suffocating nanny-state mentality.”

Nanny Pelosi…

“The Democrats are in some sort of time warp in always proposing a government solution to every problem. It's like Hillary's philosophy that it takes a village to raise a child. Well, does it? Or does it take a strong family and not the village?”

And that from a woman who supported Ralph Nader over her own Democratic party…

On Democrats’ fascination with right-wing media success:

“This overblown fear of Fox News is such a sentimentality on the part of too many Democrats. Talk radio is infinitely more powerful than Fox. Radio hosts are blanketing the country with round-the-clock conservative ideology -- not because they're dastardly conspirators manipulating the media but because they've achieved their success, market by market, in creating programs that millions of people want to listen to…

I think there is a connection between talk radio and the ordinary Republican Paglia so accurately characterizes: those “small-businessmen and very practical people” are a natural audience for talk radio. They run their own shops, and don’t have to be overly concerned with PC issues. They are mostly contrarian by nature – you need an independent streak to survive on your own these days – and the “stir the guts” nature of talk radio is a natural fit.

Perhaps most importantly, a lot of small business owners spend half of their lives in their cars…

And Air America?

“The recent filing for bankruptcy by Air America dramatizes my party's abject failure to produce shows that are informative and entertaining and that systematically build an audience -- the way all the top radio hosts did who climbed the ladder from obscurity to their present prominence. Aren't we the party of Hollywood? The fact that we've failed so miserably at this central medium of communication shows how something has gone very wrong in Democratic sensibility… Don't even mention Al Franken -- I can't listen to him for 30 seconds without falling asleep. A voice like molasses and never a fresh idea.”

On religion:

“To claim, as Democrats often do, that there has always been a separation of church and state in America is misleading: The U.S. simply has no official state religion. The formative influence in our intellectual heritage came from Puritan dissidents in New England. Major universities like Harvard and Yale were founded on religious principles.”

No revisionism there…

“As long as the Democrats are perceived as the anti-religion party, we're going to lose the culture wars… Religion is absolutely central to this country in ways that Europe's secularized intellectuals fail to understand. I'm speaking here as an atheist who studies religion and respects it enormously. In the history of mankind, the benefits that religion has brought to society in shaping behavior and moral choice are overwhelming in comparison to the negatives, which anyone can list -- like religious wars and bigotry. Without religion, we'd have anarchy… I think that the constant sniping at religion coming from liberal Democrats is really a dead end.”

I have to agree, with the qualification I think religion has outlived its usefulness – we’ve outgrown it. Our ancestors were barbarians and their religions reflected it… But seeing good aspects in our religious history in no way tempers my disdain for the evangelical jihadists of the religious right… Paglia offers a similar caution, continuing:

“But there's reason for alarm at the right-wing intertwining of religion and politics, where the Bible is seen as the prophetic master plan of the universe and where Israel as the Holy Land must be protected at all costs from Muslim infiltration -- duplicating the agenda of the medieval crusades.”

Damn straight. Yet Paglia notes a powerful disconnect:

“The more liberal parents are, the less contact their children have with religious ideas. That will surely disable our future American leaders from being able to understand the religious commitment of Islamic fundamentalists. Liberal journalists often seem incredulous about how anyone would seek death for religious principles. But that was the entire history of early Christianity, when the saints willingly sought martyrdom. We're heading into that world again.”

I hope she is wrong. I think she is right.

And what does this liberal intellectual think of liberal intellectuals?

“What do contemporary intellectuals have to offer anyhow? What passionate engagement do they have to appeal to young people? Liberal secularism has become bourgeois and materialistic. It's snide, elitist, and politically marginalized… The intellectuals, with their cultivated internationalism, always counsel procrastination and leave it to the men of action to deal forcefully with fascist regimes”...

And finally the war:

“Of course Democrats are genuinely divided about how we should proceed. There are people like me who want immediate withdrawal of all American forces from Iraq... Withdrawal would probably plunge Iraq into civil war, and the Democrats don't want to be blamed for the blood bath. But it's going to be nasty whether we stay or go.”

That’s just it. Democrats – and liberal intellectuals in general - don’t want to be blamed for anything. So they do nothing, and get blamed for that…

And predictions about “staying the course:”

“I doubt withdrawal has ever been a possibility for this administration. Bush sees Iraq as a staging station to safeguard the oil fields by democratizing the Middle East. Our military bases may be permanently planted in Iraq. It will require a very strong and visionary future president of either party to get us out of this mess.”

Plus a lot more – Foley, Woodward, the first woman President…

A must, must, must read.

A NEW STRATEGY

2006-10-26T14:19:00.000-07:00

Matt Drudge gets the hat tip for a link to a must read from the BBC:

“Travelling with the Taleban”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6081594.stm

The by-line sums it well:

“The BBC's David Loyn has had exclusive access to Taleban forces mobilised against the British army in Helmand Province in southern Afghanistan.”

Remarkable… Does he wave to Tommy as he drives by?

The article provides a few interesting insights into how the Taliban survive, move, and about the political forces and corruption that are helping to re-popularize them in the region.

But the sheer fact of his being there is the most singular of all.

You know, I hope the shrub is reading this story. There is a new strategy here he needs to consider. Fire all the CIA spooks and retire the special forces macho mutts… Bring their sorry, failing asses home…

Send in the reporters. In six months they’ll have the details every Taliban rat hole in Asia…

Assuming they don’t already…

RULING FOR EQUALITY - AND AGAINST BIGOTS

2006-10-26T13:09:00.000-07:00

The long anticipated New Jersey Supreme Court decision on “Gay Marriage” was handed down yesterday, and the winner is… Equality. One of many accounts:

“Gay Couples Can Get Marital Rights, N.J. Court Says”

http://www.kirotv.com/family/10151332/detail.html

For the full decision – 90 pages worth – go here:

http://ad.doubleclick.net/clk;7006713;8704162;d?http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/glrts/lewisharris102506opn.pdf

The first three pages are a syllabus prepared by the Clerk as a public service. I am including it at the end of this post. It’s a worthy read. I’m taking the liberty of abbreviating their work.

As for the decision: Bravo!

First off, contrary to the slant applied to this decision by the right-leaning MSM, the Court did not find gays have a “right to marry.” Rather, the Court expanded on Appellate Division Judge Anthony Parrillo’s concurrent filing in the appellate action. Judge Parrillo elucidated “the twofold nature of the relief sought by plaintiffs -- the right to marry and the rights of marriage. He submitted that it was the Legislature's role to weigh the benefits and costs flowing from a profound change in the meaning of marriage.”

Thusly the Court held the “plaintiffs' equal protection claim to have two components: whether committed same-sex couples have a constitutional right to the benefits and privileges afforded to married heterosexual couples, and, if so, whether they have a constitutional right to have their relationship recognized by the name of marriage.”

The decision goes on to cite legal precedents for equal protections and against similar discrimination, and noted the existence of inadequate remedies.

Following this logic, the Court did not consider whether committed same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, but only whether those couples are entitled to the same rights and benefits afforded to married heterosexual couples. Cast in that light, the issue is not about the transformation of the traditional definition of marriage, but about the unequal dispensation of benefits and privileges to one of two similarly situated classes of people.”

The Court noted the State raised significant issues pertaining to preserving the institution of heterosexual marriage but concluded that in recognizing the separateness of the two issues the institutional arguments became collateral.

Thusly, “To bring the State into compliance with Article I, Paragraph 1 so that plaintiffs can exercise their full constitutional rights, the Legislature must either amend the marriage statutes or enact an appropriate statutory structure within 180 days of the date of this decision.”

Bravo!

Hopefully, this ruling will take the wind out of Republican hopes that a Court ruling for “gay marriage” would help to bring the bigots slithering out from under their rocks in record numbers on November 7th. Hopefully, by dropping this matter back on the legislature, the ruling will de-energize arguments that an activist court is pursuing an agenda.

Hopefully, it will pull a few more bigot’s fangs… The bottom line here is… The bottom line. There are still all too many people in this Nation who adhere to yesterday’s barbarisms, and seek to wield power over others to enforce their sick attitudes. The best weapon they have is the power to pauperize. Denying someone equal compensation due to a non-work related issue is vile. It’s even worse when the government becomes a defacto partner in the shagging. The more similar laws and rulings we have, the fewer opportunities the bigots will have to wreak their assaults.

If government has legitimate roles in the workplace, this is one of them.

The syllabus:

(This syllabus is not part of the opinion of the Court. It has been prepared by the Office of the Clerk for the convenience of the reader. It has been neither reviewed nor approved by the Supreme Court. Please note that, in the interests of brevity, portions of any opinion may not have been summarized).
Mark Lewis and Dennis Winslow, et al. v. Gwendolyn L. Harris, etc., et al. (A-68-05) Argued February 15, 2006 -- Decided October 25, 2006
ALBIN, J., writing for a majority of the Court.
Plaintiffs are seven same-sex couples who have been in permanent committed relationships for more than ten years. Each seeks to marry his or her partner and to enjoy the legal, financial, and social benefits that marriage affords. After being denied marriage licenses in their respective municipalities, plaintiffs sued challenging the constitutionality of the State's marriage statutes.
In a complaint filed in the Superior Court, Law Division, plaintiffs sought a declaration that laws denying same-sex marriage violated the liberty and equal protection guarantees of Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution. They also sought injunctive relief compelling the defendant State officials to grant them marriage licenses. (The named defendants are Gwendolyn L. Harris, former Commissioner of the Department of Human Services, Clifton R. Lacy, former Commissioner of the Department of Health and Senior Services, and Joseph Komosinski, former Acting State Registrar of Vital Statistics. For the purpose of this decision, they are being referred to collectively as the "State.")
Both parties moved for summary judgment. The trial court, Superior Court Judge Linda Feinberg, entered summary judgment in the State's favor and dismissed the complaint. Plaintiffs appealed. In a split decision, the Appellate Division affirmed. Judge Stephen Skillman wrote the majority opinion in which he concluded that New Jersey's marriage statutes do not contravene the substantive due process and equal protection guarantees of Article I, Paragraph 1 of the State Constitution. He determined that only the Legislature could authorize same-sex marriages.
Appellate Division Judge Anthony Parrillo filed a concurring opinion. Although joining Judge Skillman's opinion, Judge Parrillo added his view of the twofold nature of the relief sought by plaintiffs -- the right to marry and the rights of marriage. He submitted that it was the Legislature's role to weigh the benefits and costs flowing from a profound change in the meaning of marriage.
Appellate Division Judge Donald Collester, Jr., dissented. He concluded that the substantive due process and equal protection guarantees of Article I, Paragraph 1 obligate the State to afford same-sex couples the right to marry on terms equal to those afforded opposite-sex couples.
The matter came before the Court as an appeal as of right by virtue of the dissent in the Appellate Division.
HELD: Denying committed same-sex couples the financial and social benefits and privileges given to their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose. The Court holds that under the equal protection guarantee of Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution, committed same-sex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes. The name to be given to the statutory scheme that provides full rights and benefits to same-sex couples, whether marriage or some other term, is a matter left to the democratic process.

As this case presents no factual dispute, the Court addresses solely questions of law. The Court perceives plaintiffs' equal protection claim to have two components: whether committed same-sex couples have a constitutional right to the benefits and privileges afforded to married heterosexual couples, and, if so, whether they have a constitutional right to have their relationship recognized by the name of marriage. (pp. 19-21)

In attempting to discern the substantive rights that are "fundamental" under Article I, Paragraph 1, of the State Constitution, the Court has followed the general standard adopted by the United States Supreme Court in construing

the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. First, the asserted fundamental liberty interest must be clearly identified. In this case, the identified right is the right of same-sex couples to marry. Second, the liberty interest in same-sex marriage must be objectively and deeply rooted in the traditions, history, and conscience of the people of this State. (pp. 21-25)

New Jersey's marriage laws, which were first enacted in 1912, limit marriage to heterosexual couples. The recently enacted Domestic Partnership Act explicitly acknowledges that same-sex couples cannot marry. Although today there is a national debate over whether same-sex marriages should be authorized by the states, the framers of the 1947 New Jersey Constitution could not have imagined that the liberty right protected by Article I, Paragraph 1 embraced same-sex marriage. (pp. 25-28)

Times and attitudes have changed. There has been a developing understanding that discrimination against gays and lesbians is no longer acceptable in this State. On the federal level, the United States Supreme Court has struck down laws that have unconstitutionally targeted gays and lesbians for disparate treatment. Although plaintiffs rely on the federal cases to support the argument that they have a fundamental right to marry under our State Constitution, those cases fall far short of establishing a fundamental right to same-sex marriage "deeply rooted in the traditions, history, and conscience of the people of this State." Despite the rich diversity of this State, the tolerance and goodness of its people, and the many recent advances made by gays and lesbians toward achieving social acceptance and equality under the law, the Court cannot find that the right to same-sex marriage is a fundamental right under our constitution. (pp. 28-33)

The Court has construed the expansive language of Article I, Paragraph 1 to embrace the fundamental guarantee of equal protection, thereby requiring the Court to determine whether the State's marriage laws permissibly distinguish between same-sex and heterosexual couples. The test the Court has applied to equal protection claims is a flexible one that includes three factors: the nature of the right at stake, the extent to which the challenged statutory scheme restricts that right, and the public need for the statutory restriction. (pp. 34-3 6)

In conducting its equal protection analysis, the Court discerns two distinct issues. The first is whether same-sex couples have the right to the statutory benefits and privileges conferred on heterosexual married couples. Assuming that right, the next issue is whether committed same-sex partners have a constitutional right to define their relationship by the name of marriage. (p. 37)

New Jersey's courts and its Legislature have been at the forefront of combating sexual orientation discrimination and advancing equality of treatment toward gays and lesbians. In 1992, through an amendment to the Law Against Discrimination (LAD), New Jersey became the fifth state to prohibit discrimination on the basis of "affectional or sexual orientation." In making sexual orientation a protected category, the Legislature committed New Jersey to the goal of eradicating discrimination against gays and lesbians. In 2004, the Legislature added "domestic partnership status" to the categories protected by the LAD. (pp. 37-40)

Discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is also outlawed in our criminal law and public contracts law. The Legislature, moreover, created the New Jersey Human Relations Council to promote educational programs aimed at reducing bias and bias-related acts, identifying sexual orientation as a protected category. In 2004, the Legislature passed the Domestic Partnership Act, which confers certain benefits and rights on same-sex partners who enter into a partnership under the Act. (pp. 40-42)

The Domestic Partnership Act has failed to bridge the inequality gap between committed same-sex couples and married opposite-sex couples. Significantly, the economic and financial inequities that are borne by same-sex domestic partners are also borne by their children. Further, even though same-sex couples are provided fewer benefits and rights by the Act, they are subject to more stringent requirements to enter into a domestic partnership than opposite-sex couples entering a marriage. (pp. 43-48)

At this point, the Court does not consider whether committed same-sex couples should be allowed to marry, but only whether those couples are entitled to the same rights and benefits afforded to married heterosexual couples. Cast in that light, the issue is not about the transformation of the traditional definition of marriage, but about the unequal dispensation of benefits and privileges to one of two similarly situated classes of people. (p. 48)

The State does not argue that limiting marriage to the union of a man and a woman is needed to encourage procreation or to create the optimal living environment for children. Other than sustaining the traditional definition of marriage, which is not implicated in this discussion, the State has not articulated any legitimate public need for depriving committed same-sex couples of the host of benefits and privileges that are afforded to married heterosexual couples. There is, on the one hand, no rational basis for giving gays and lesbians full civil rights as individuals while, on the other hand, giving them an incomplete set of rights when they enter into committed same-sex relationships. To the extent that families are strengthened by encouraging monogamous relationships, whether heterosexual or homosexual, the Court cannot discern a public need that would justify the legal disabilities that now afflict same-sex domestic partnerships. (pp. 48-51)

In arguing to uphold the system of disparate treatment that disfavors same-sex couples, the State offers as a justification the interest in uniformity with other states' laws. Our current laws concerning same-sex couples are more in line with those of Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut than the majority of other states. Equality of treatment is a dominant theme of our laws and a central guarantee of our State Constitution. This is fitting for a state with so diverse a population. Article I, Paragraph 1 protects not only the rights of the majority but also the rights of the disfavored and the disadvantaged; they too are promised a fair opportunity for "pursuing and obtaining safety and happiness." (pp. 5 1-56)

The equal protection requirement of Article I, Paragraph 1 leaves the Legislature with two apparent options. The Legislature could simply amend the marriage statutes to include same-sex couples, or it could create a separate statutory structure, such as a civil union. Because this State has no experience with a civil union construct, the Court will not speculate that identical schemes offering equal rights and benefits would create a distinction that would offend Article I, Paragraph 1, and will not presume that a difference in name is of constitutional magnitude. New language is developing to describe new social and familial relationships, and in time will find a place in our common vocabulary. However the Legislature may act, same-sex couples will be free to call their relationships by the name they choose and to sanctify their relationships in religious ceremonies in houses of worship. (pp. 57-63)

In the last two centuries, the institution of marriage has reflected society's changing social mores and values. Legislatures, along with courts, have played a major role in ushering marriage into the modern era of equality of partners. The great engine for social change in this country has always been the democratic process. Although courts can ensure equal treatment, they cannot guarantee social acceptance, which must come through the evolving ethos of a maturing society. Plaintiffs' quest does not end here. They must now appeal to their fellow citizens whose voices are heard through their popularly elected representatives. (pp. 63-64)

To bring the State into compliance with Article I, Paragraph 1 so that plaintiffs can exercise their full constitutional rights, the Legislature must either amend the marriage statutes or enact an appropriate statutory structure within 180 days of the date of this decision. (p. 65)

The judgment of the Appellate Division is MODIFIED and, as MODIFIED, is AFFIRMED.
CHIEF JUSTICE PORITZ has filed a separate CONCURRING and DISSENTING opinion, in which JUSTICES LONG and ZAZZALI join. She concurs in the finding of the majority that denying the rights and benefits to committed same-sex couples that are statutorily given to their heterosexual counterparts violates the equal protection guarantee of Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution. She dissents from the majority's distinguishing those rights and benefits from the right to the title of marriage. She also dissents from the majority's conclusion that there is no fundamental due process right to same-sex marriage encompassed within the concept of "liberty" guaranteed by Article I, Paragraph 1. She is of the view that persons who exercise their autonomous liberty interest to choose same-sex partners have a fundamental right to participate in a state-sanctioned civil marriage.
JUSTICES LaVECCHIA, WALLACE, and RIVERA-SOTO join in JUSTICE ALBIN's opinion. CHIEF JUSTICE PORITZ filed a separate concurring and dissenting opinion in which JUSTICES LONG and ZAZZALI join.

PEANUT BUTTER & JELLY ON THE GAVEL

2006-10-25T10:22:00.000-07:00

The LA Times brings us a relatively evenhanded reminder of what we may be in for after this next election:

“Madam Speaker? Pelosi likes the sound”

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-pelosi21oct21,0,3020800,full.story

Your basic bio stuff, a few short anecdotes… Including this story on “plotting to foil Bush's plan to privatize Social Security”:

“Acting on advice from marketing gurus after the 2004 presidential election, Pelosi ordered her ranks to assail the Bush privatization plan while offering nothing of their own that the Republicans could counterassault. Week after week impatient Democrats asked, "When can we propose a plan?" and week after week she intoned, "Never."”

“kick him in the shins and give him nothing to attack”…

Sounds like down and dirty politics to me… She clearly has the biggest pair of balls in the Democratic caucus…

But it was the last line that really caught my eye – and reminded me of what I dislike most about Democratic control:

“"I think the fact that I am a woman will raise expectations in terms of more hope in government, and I will not disappoint," she says.

"The gavel of the speaker of the House is in the hands of special interests, and now it will be in the hands of America's children. I don't mean to imply my male colleagues will have any less integrity…. But I don't know that a man can say that as easily as a woman can."”

In the peanut butter and jelly coated hands of the children… Who may soon be reassured that they are protected, coddled, and ruled to the nth degree by the nanny state, with the Speaker, Nanny Pelosi, leading the way…

Vox Populi becomes pox populi… What a pass. On one hand we have a criminal, someone who helped gut the rules the House of Representatives for his parties benefit, ignored graft, corruption, and perversion in the ranks of his followers… Someone who has and likely will do anything, ethical or not, to preserve the power of his degenerate and degenerating cabal…

Or we can hide under Momma’s skirt…

Why is there never a good-sized asteroid handy when you need one?

NOVEMBER 2006: REVENGE OF THE INDEPENDENT?

2006-10-24T10:42:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post provides a pair of must reads on the upcoming election this morning; one an analysis, the other an editorial from E. J. Dionne jr.:

“Rising Radical Center”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/23/AR2006102301034.html

Mr. Dionne opines:

“President Bush's six-year effort to create an enduring Republican majority based on a right-leaning coalition is on the verge of collapse. The way he tried to create it could have the unintended consequence of opening the way for an alternative majority.

This incipient Democratic alliance, while tilting slightly leftward, would plant its foundations firmly in the middle of the road, because its success depends on overwhelming support from moderate voters…

The strategy pursued by Bush and Karl Rove has frightened most of the political center into the arms of Democrats. Bush and Rove sought victory by building large turnouts among conservatives and cajoling just enough moderates the Republicans' way. But this approach created what may prove to be a fatal political disconnect: Adventurous policies designed to create enthusiasm on the right turned off a large number of less ideological voters.”

Bravo.

I have often noted the abandonment of the center by the Republican Party, held hostage as it is by the neoconservatives and beholden as it is to the radical evangelicals. I have frankly despaired there is an independent middle left - Dionne suggests we’re still out there, and we’re done with the neocons…

Meanwhile, Dan Balz and Jon Cohen give us a little data to consider:

“Independent Voters Favor Democrats by 2 to 1 in Poll”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/23/AR2006102300766.html

“The independent voters surveyed said they plan to support Democratic candidates over Republicans by roughly 2 to 1 -- 59 percent to 31 percent”…

It’s the war coupled with a general lack of trust. Voters [in general] “trust Democrats more than Republicans to deal with the war, the economy, North Korea and ethics in government. On terrorism, the two parties are at parity. But independents, the key swing voter group, strongly trust the Democrats on all of those issues by margins ranging from 14 percentage points on terrorism to 23 points on Iraq and North Korea and 26 points on ethics in government.”

And the economy? The zillion point Dow matters to people getting ahead, but that’s a mighty slim slice of the American pie:

“Republicans appear to be getting little tangible benefit from the growing economic optimism, which has come amid declining gasoline prices and a record high in the Dow Jones industrial average. Those who cite the economy as the most important issue favor Democrats by 18 percentage points, 57 percent to 39 percent.

One reason is that only a quarter of those surveyed said they are getting ahead financially. About the same number said they are falling behind. Most, however, said they are just able to maintain their standard of living. Republicans have an advantage only among those who say their financial condition is improving.”

An economy in which 75% of the participants are either treading water or drowning can only be called “good” by… By the kind of people who think “we” are winning in Iraq and those WMD’s are still out there waiting to be found… Those of us paying attention are looking at Ford, GM, and the plethora of multinational corporations who are making a “profit” by laying off their American workforce and outsourcing every job they can – preferably to overseas slave labor.

It’s only a poll, and they have been wrong before. But I’ll be cautiously optimistic – for now – that there are still enough of “we the independents” left to save this country. I’m hoping for the return of divided government and the safety of gridlock…

I can only speak for myself on this, but I do not consider myself safe in a Nation dominated by either the loony left of the rabid right. With either group really dominant, my wallet and my livelihood are threatened, albeit in different ways. If the left is in control, my property isn’t safe – with the right in the driver’s seat my privacy isn’t safe and neither is my freedom from religion… And without those things, the other “rights” really don’t matter.

So I’ll leave off with another plug for my new personal issue, the gridlock amendment:

Proposed as an amendment to the US Constitution:

“In any situation where majority control of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate vests in a single party and the President likewise is elected from that party, special veto authority equivalent to Presidential veto authority will be conferred on the House and Senate minority leaders in acting in concert. The veto will only apply to bills already signed into law by the President.”

Think about it and the idea will grow on you…

If the House and Senate go “blue” two weeks from today, it may start to sound real good to the remains of the Republican Party…

NOVEMBER 2006: THE REVENGE OF THE INDEPENDENT?

2006-10-24T10:37:00.000-07:00

BIGGER CATS MAKE BETTER FENCES

2006-10-21T12:28:00.000-07:00

Micky Klaus over at Slate has devoted quite a bit of space in his Klausfiles blog lately to the ongoing saga of the Secure Fence Act, which GWB has yet to sign, apparently because nobody actually knows where the Bill is…

“Read My Lips: No New Jaguars!”

http://www.slate.com/id/2151609/?nav=fix

On the 18th, Mickey leads off the discussion, acerbically suggesting “Bush Picks Secret Signing Over Winning Midterm Election,” citing a bit of analysis from The Washington Times, which is looking high and low for the bill…

“Border-fence bill awaits signing”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20061018-123040-8481r.htm

According to the Times:

“The White House is pleading with Congress to send over the bill authorizing 700 miles of fence on the U.S.-Mexico border so the president can sign it immediately, but Republican leaders on Capitol Hill want to wait until closer to the election and to have a public signing ceremony…”

Apparently the Congressional Leadership is holding onto the bill, hoping for a really big show really close to the election – but the administration would rather this be a low-key affair, because… Mickey Klaus picks up the refrain there, providing all kinds of speculation built around the Times assertion a White House “official” “rejected a signing ceremony, and said the White House doesn't want voters to expect too much out of the wall.”

A good read if you are a political junkie needing a fence fix…

A day earlier, Klausfiles takes on a naysayer’s piece from the Washington Post by staff writer John Pomfret detailing why the fence won’t work, will cost too much, will offend Mexico, and will stifle “Efforts to protect pronghorn sheep and encourage the jaguar to return to the United States”…

“Fence Meets Wall of Skepticism”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/09/AR2006100901006.html

Klaus notes, “Pomfret makes no attempt at balance--it's a straight "let's let fence critics piss all over the idea" piece.”… Klaus does a good job of pissing on the critics…

I don’t know… As an animal lover, I may have to change my mind on this issue… If it is, as Klaus suggests, a question of “Which will it be: No new jaguars or no new illegal immigrants?” well, we need to get our priorities straight here…

But the germ – rapidly fermenting – of an idea formed as I read that line “No new jaguars or no new illegal immigrants”… If we could just change one little couplet and moderate “no”… “No” is soo negative…

After all, if GWB can proclaim operation Enduring Bullshit to be a mere comma in history, I can change an “or” to an “and”…

So let’s consider a better, more ecologically sound initiative:

“New jaguars and fewer illegal immigrants!”

Consider it. We import a lot of nice, fat Jaguars. Just think of them as very big black kitty cats. We populate the border with them, and teach them to eat border crashers! Let’s scrap that fence and build a wildlife preserve instead. Make it maybe five miles deep along the whole border… We’ll collar the Jags and set up “invisible fence” on our side to keep them where they belong and let nature do the rest…

There are wins all around this scenario.

First off, Americans don’t really want to stop Pedro from sneaking in. There’s work to be done north of the border, and business will suffer if it has to pay a fair wage to an American. Pedro will pick those apples or clean the “biohazardous materials” off those hotel walls for half of what one of those lazy white dudes will, and he won’t ask for any safety gear, either!

No, Americans want to stop Pedro’s wife from sneaking in and dropping an anchor baby on our side of the Rio. And this is where the Jaguar system will be a real win-win: The cats will go after the easy marks – kids, 8 months’ pregnant women, fatties who can’t run… Those are the ones who will just overload our social services. We don’t need their kind…

And if Pedro wants a wife, well, there are millions of available American women, since the millions of American men they would be sleeping with are part of the largest prison population on the planet…

We could even get a new reality show out of this: Those fancy cameras some want for watching the border can watch the cats hunt…

And don’t forget the new government program possibilities: As part of a physical fitness initiative, we can create a program whereby anyone who manages to outrun kitty is automatically granted citizenship – we can call it the paper chase.

Oh, and deportees? When we do decide to deport somebody, we’ll just lead them to the five-mile line, jab them in the ass with a cattleprod and let some white militiaman chase him on in with near-misses from an M-16…

I'LL LEND HIM A GUN

2006-10-18T19:14:00.000-07:00

We have humor??? John McCain style today, courtesy of Reuters:

“McCain jokes about suicide if Democrats win Senate”

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyid=2006-10-18T193648Z_01_N18365054_RTRUKOC_0_US-MCCAIN.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

“Arizona Sen. John McCain, a likely Republican presidential contender in 2008, joked on Wednesday he would "commit suicide" if Democrats win the Senate in November…

"I think I'd just commit suicide," McCain told reporters, to accompanying laughter from Republicans standing with him. "I don't want to face that eventuality because I don't think it's going to happen."”

I’d be happy to lend the bastard a gun…

But this is an illuminating example of the real difference between diehard Republicans and Democrats… When threatened with defeat, Democrats threaten to move to Europe… Republicans just threaten to die hard…

Which is a good argument for lots of electoral turnover… All the commie Democrats will move to France… All the Nazi Republicans will fall on their warmongering swords…

And perhaps, for a while, the Republic will be safe…

KOREA QUESTIONS THAT NEED ANSWERS

2006-10-18T13:58:00.000-07:00

Anne Applebaum over at Slate makes a simple and concise case for where international responsibility for North Korea’s continued intransigence lies:

“Blame China”

http://www.slate.com/id/2151635/?nav=tap3

From the article:

“There is one significant country, after all, that has the military, economic, and political power not only to pressure North Korea to discard its bomb but to topple its regime altogether.

That very large superpower is, of course, China… Beijing could bring North Korea into line tomorrow—if it really wanted to”…

First question: Why don’t they want to?

And a darker question I haven’t heard anyone ask…

Since the DPRK’s first test, there has been a lot of interconnected speculation as to whether or not the test was a success and how big the bomb yield “should” have been. Much of the groundwork for this speculation was based on intelligence estimates of the limits of the DPRK’s bomb-making technology. Dogma stated Korea’s expertise was very limited; hence, evaluation was based on the assumption Korean bomb makers could only make a fairly simple bomb, which meant it had to be of a certain minimum size and yield.

Hence, when the expected multi-kiloton blast turned out to be much smaller, we were treated to a week of speculation that either the bomb wasn’t a nuke – a fake, perhaps - or it was a dud, or perhaps a partial dud… Finally on the 16th the US government confirmed the DPRK did in fact set off a bomb:

“U.S. Confirms North Korea Set Off Nuclear Explosion”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,221182,00.html

Still, the assumptions held, and the dogma remained unchallenged:

“The official said that the North Korean device was believed to be roughly the equivalent of 200 tons (181 metric tons) of TNT, suggesting to analysts that it was probably a partial failure. Experts in and out of government had expected a detonation of at least several thousand tons.”

Fatal errors often arise from obsolete assumptions…

Once there was a Pakistani scientist, Abdul Qadeer Khan, who founded a little enterprise… “Bombs R Us,” so to speak… Khan’s stock in trade was technology – some of it was physical but most of it was the equally dangerous informational variety.

If our government knows for certain who bought what at Bombs R Us, they aren’t telling “we the people”…

But the customer list included Iran, Libya, and the DPRK. – while the products list likely included some very good plans for very small nukes.

Is it possible? I haven’t read anyone else addressing this possibility. What if their “dud” wasn’t? The yield would have been right on the low edge of a small bomb.

And would our government conceal this – if they could???

Did Howdy-Doody have wooden balls???

Assumptions…

It is assumed that although Korea has missiles, including the recently crash tested long range Taepo-dong-2, a nuke wouldn’t be any good to the DPRK because any design they could come up with would be far too large for even the Taepo-dong-2. So short of smuggling, the only way they could deliver their bomb would be in the back of an old truck, which pretty much limits the targets to Seoul and the troops on the DMZ.

It is also assumed the bomb used plutonium scavenged from the spent fuel of their recently reactivated reactor complex. Within that larger assumption are collateral ones: How much was available, and how well they could separate out the useful isotopes from the rest. “How well” bears not only on how much but also how small – a smaller bomb needs purer separations. Purer separations require better centrifuges and chemical process controls –especially centrifuges.

It is assumed the DPRK DID NOT obtain really first-class centrifuges or centrifuge designs from Bombs R Us…

Perhaps I’m chasing ghosts here but if so I would like to hear it from Ghostbusters. Conventional wisdom holds the DPRK has enough material and the appropriate technology to build 8 or 9 large, crude bombs that might or might not work and couldn’t be delivered against a strategic target in any case.

The bombs are therefore something between a gesture and a suicidal urge – kind of a National suicide by cop…

Even Korea’s opting to spread their technology wouldn’t mean much, since so much better is easily available.

But if this is otherwise… 8 or 9 bombs might suddenly be 10 or even 20 times that number of smaller, deliverable weapons useful not only as a fatalist’s deterrent but also as tactical weapons one might actually use on a battlefield.

Perhaps that explains China’s failure to act. Perhaps swatting this hornet’s nest isn’t worth chancing the sting to the rulers in Beijing… Or perhaps not all scenarios including a really nuclear-armed Korea displease the Communist leviathan…

In any case, let’s hope we know more in 20 days. It would be nice to take this bit of ire to the polls November 7th…

A LESSON IN SUPPLY AND DEMAND

2006-10-18T11:45:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post carries this from AP:

“7 Plead Guilty in Stolen Body Parts Case”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/18/AR2006101800624.html

From the article:

“Seven funeral home directors linked to a scheme to plunder corpses and sell the body parts for transplants have secretly pleaded guilty to undisclosed charges, prosecutors announced Wednesday.

Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes also announced that a grand jury had voted to bring a new indictment in the case that adds allegations involving funeral homes in New York City and Rochester.

"It is clear that many more funeral home directors were involved in this enterprise," Hynes said.

The seven unidentified directors all agreed to cooperate in an ongoing investigation into what investigators describe as an enterprise to steal bone and tissue from cadavers and sell the material to biomedical supply companies for profit, Hynes said.”

Well, the dead hand of Adam Smith works on other dead body parts… We shouldn’t be surprised. You have a huge demand and a potentially huge supply being held apart by an artificial barrier, which, needless to say, makes the commodity very profitable…

I’m surprised it took this long for the death industry to grow an offshoot…

And one final observation: Stem cell technologies will probably make this kind of “harvesting” obsolete… So the sooner the wackjobs in the religious right abandon their silly prejudice against stem cell research, the sooner the dead will be safe…

YEAH, SO?

2006-10-16T15:04:00.000-07:00

The New York Daily News thinks it has a big scoop:

“McCain team mocks Hil torture loophole”

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/462237p-388764c.html

According to the News:

“Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) said she supports legalizing the torture of a captured terror suspect who knows about "an imminent threat to millions of Americans"”

This isn’t news… Bill was an “imminent threat” for eight years, and we saw how she tortured him…

THEY'LL RECONCILE IN HELL

2006-10-15T15:21:00.000-07:00

Just in case you’re not completely numb to this yet, FoxNews links AP, who adds a little more salt to the wound:

“Iraqi Gov't Postpones Reconciliation Conference; Violence Kills 63”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,220941,00.html

“BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's government indefinitely postponed a much-anticipated national reconciliation conference on Sunday as at least 83 people were reported dead in a two-day spree of sectarian revenge killings and insurgent bombings.”

Reading Owl scat reliably reveals that the Iraqis will reconcile just as soon as one side or the other is extinct…

Oh, and by the way:

“The U.S. military reported the deaths of a Marine and four soldiers… 54 U.S. military personnel have been killed in the first two weeks alone.”

Question: What is the difference between “cut and run” and “stay the course?”

Answer: Three dead US soldiers per additional day.

Either way, we lose.

THE GRIDLOCK AMENDMENT

2006-10-12T10:11:00.000-07:00

Joel Connelly over at the Seattle P-I wrote an excellent piece yesterday chronicling this year’s Senate campaign in Montana, where the race between the Republican incumbent and his Democrat challenger is close enough to make for down and dirty politics:

“Montana tires of senator's shtick”

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/connelly/288268_joel11.html

The two candidates have engaged in several debates in different areas of the state. Connelly sees and describes the race not only in its own context but also as a referendum on the Republican Party and one-party control. Quoting the Democratic candidate, Jon Tester, on Republican Conrad Burns’ positions, Connelly ends with an interesting bit of Montana History:

“"I'll tell you where his (Burns') priorities were, with Jack Abramoff and his lobbyist buddies, and with giving the Bush administration everything it wanted," he argued. "Congress is there to be a check on the executive. It's not just a rubber stamp."

Echoes of Montana history came in Tester's closing remarks.

In the late 1930s, a progressive Montana Democrat, Sen. Burton Wheeler, took on a president of his own party -- Franklin D. Roosevelt -- and led the effort to block FDR's plan to pack the U.S. Supreme Court.

There was fire in Wheeler, as recounted in a very good new book, "Welcome to the Homeland" by National Public Radio's Brian Mann. The senator said of his president:

"It is an easy step from the control of a subservient Congress and the control of a Supreme Court, to a Hitler or a Mussolini."

Words worth remembering.”

Bravo…

And it should be remembered that in the late 1930’s Hitler and Mussolini were still operating – barely - within the framework of international law… And Nazism was a model of “get the job done” efficiency… Nazis didn’t cut & run…

My “moderate credential” has been criticized quite a bit recently by people who insist I can’t be middle of the road if I consistently criticize Republicans. But of course that is a fool’s argument: I criticize those who I think need it. At this time, there is almost nothing to recommend the Republican Party, and as for “the middle,” the Republicans have, I assert, totally abandoned the middle, cynically deciding the very few left there have become politically insignificant.

There is no longer any moderation in my former party.

I haven’t been this disgusted with our Federal government… since 1993, when the Democrats had full control.

Not the party… It’s the power. It’s the one-party power. Neither of our parties is fit to the task of one-party rule. I have become convinced one-party rule will ruin America, disaffecting millions and Balkanizing the Nation. A Nation of laws that respects minority rights and cherishes individual and political freedom cannot operate under the control of any single, exclusionary political philosophy.

No party could ever have a big enough tent for everyone.

If only we could ban one-party rule.

You can’t. It’s practically impossible to eliminate a one-party possibility and still adhere to free elections.

After all, “We the People” have the sovereign right to screw ourselves…

But maybe we can blunt one-party rule – like this. Proposed as an amendment to the US Constitution:

“In any situation where majority control of the US House of Representatives and the US Senate vests in a single party and the President likewise is elected from that party, special veto authority equivalent to Presidential veto authority will be conferred on the House and Senate minority leaders in acting in concert. The veto will only apply to bills already signed into law by the President.”

A new kind of check on the runaway train. Neither minority leader would be able to exercise veto power alone – they would have to act in concert, and could only intervene after the President signed a bill into law.

Thoughts?

A BETTER BODYCOUNT?

2006-10-11T12:35:00.000-07:00

I’m intrigued by this:

“Study: 655,000 Iraqis Died Due to War”

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/10/10/D8KM6GL80.html

From the article:

“In the new study, researchers attempt to calculate how many more Iraqis have died since March 2003 than one would expect without the war. Their conclusion, based on interviews of households and not a body count, is that about 600,000 died from violence, mostly gunfire. They also found a small increase in deaths from other causes like heart disease and cancer…”

The rise in “other causes” is probably due to hardship and lack of preventative care…

What if it is correct?

The results are sure to add a little more shit to the fan. According to the article, return fire is already coming in. Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Washington criticized the way the estimate was derived and noted that the results were released shortly before the Nov. 7 election.

“"This is not analysis, this is politics," Cordesman said.”

But wait a minute, it is analysis. It is just a different method. How do you count chaos?

All bodycounts in Iraq right now are somebody’s SWAG. There are multiple data sources tracking different segments of the population in different ways. Each of Iraq’s three significantly involved Ministries – Health, Interior, and Defense – keeps their own tallies derived from different sources.

Then there are watchdog groups and the UN…

As I said, I’m intrigued. I’m not considering the magnitude – any is too many – but rather the idea. It is an interesting sort of thinking outside the box… Ask the actual people who are burying actual relatives? Whoda thunk it…

And it will be interesting to see if anyone has any spare energy left to argue about this, considering how much else there is to argue about. The number can only be discussed in relativistic terms. It may be “big” compared to other estimates, but more civilians have died in many other wars in other times – Vietnam, for example…

Still, any is too many, and for a Nation that seems to pride itself on its great skill in waging “bloodless war” – enemy combatant blood excepted – this may be a sobering realization.

Three years of war… The siege of Leningrad lasted just about 3 years, and according to Soviet figures, about 670,000 civilians died.

But those pesky unofficial estimates are much higher…

So the more it changes the more it stays the same… The same for dead people, whether intentionally targeted by an implacable enemy or dead as part of “collateral damage.”

And the same for body counters.

WINNING THE INSURGENT LOTTO

2006-10-11T08:10:00.000-07:00

I can’t help it… This one brings on a chuckle…

VIA FoxNews, word of what may be the luckiest shot of the whole war:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,219422,00.html

“Insurgents hit an ammunition dump on a U.S. base in Baghdad with a mortar round, setting off fiery explosions through the night that shook buildings miles away…

The Islamic Army in Iraq, a nationalist anti-occupation insurgent group, claimed responsibility for the Tuesday night attack on the U.S. Forward Operating Base Falcon in southern Baghdad near the Dora neighborhood that caused stockpiles of tank and artillery shells to explode through the night in spectacular bursts of flame and sparks…

The authenticity of the statement could not be immediately verified, but the U.S. military did confirm that the base's ammunition depot had been hit at 10:40 p.m. Tuesday by an 82mm mortar round fired by insurgents from a nearby residential area.

"Intelligence indicates that civilians aligned with a militia organization were responsible for last night's mortar attack," base spokesman Lt. Col. Jonathan Withington said.

There were no injuries reported, and Withington said the attack had no strategic effect.”

No strategic effect… I’ll bet it affected that mortar crew…

THANKS MUCH, SHORTY!

2006-10-09T12:53:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like as America slept last night, the Doomsday clock ticked ahead another second: North Korea – excuse me, The Democratic People's Republic of Korea – set off an atomic bomb.

Unofficial sources claim George W Bush immediately called Kim Jong-il, President of the DPRK, and thanked him for diverting public attention from Foleygate…

Ta Da Bum!

For a look at what people were saying yesterday, Fred Kaplan over at Slate is as good as any:

“Kim Jong-il and His Quest for the Magical Atom Bomb”

http://www.slate.com/id/2151039/?nav=tap3

Doesn’t look as if Mr. Kaplan will have too much crow to eat… Like most of yesterday’s analysts, he didn’t expect the test so soon, assuming “the bomb” would be used as a bargaining chit – as it has been used before.

For an early appraisal of where “we” are today, The Washington Post is a good start:

“Reported Test 'Fundamentally Changes the Landscape' for U.S. Officials”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/09/AR2006100900047.html

I’d like to be in the first wave to offer my thanks to Kim Jong-il…Thanks, shorty. You have done us all a stack of favors…

You have done much to relieve the anxiety that uncertainty always adds to any plan and you have replaced that with happy certainty!

First off, we are now happily certain you had a bomb… Had… You now have a radioactive coal mine. We can furthermore be comfortable in the likely certainty you either have a few more or at least can make more.

We’ve been arguing about this for years. Now we can argue about something else…

But most importantly, we can now be certain that the Bush foreign policy is a complete disaster without even the slightest glimmer of success to show for it…

This is, after all, the direct result of one more of the shrubs geopolitical miscalculations. As the Post notes:

“When Bush became president in 2000, Pyongyang's reactor was frozen under a 1994 agreement with the United States. Clinton administration officials thought they were so close to a deal limiting North Korean missiles that in the days before he left office, Bill Clinton seriously considered making the first visit to Pyongyang by a U.S. president.

But conservatives had long been deeply skeptical of the deal freezing North Korea's program -- known as the Agreed Framework -- in part because it called for building two light-water nuclear reactors (largely funded by the Japanese and South Koreans). When then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell publicly said in early 2001 that he favored continuing Clinton's approach, Bush rebuked him.

Bush then labeled North Korea part of an "axis of evil" …”

You know the rest. The shrub turned Slick Willie’s patient, almost successful negotiations into a pissing contest. The DPRK fired their reactor back up, started reprocessing spent fuel rods for plutonium… And now they have pissed on the toe of our cowboy boot…

It’s probably callous to say it, but this really doesn’t threaten us directly. North Korea has no suitable long-range delivery capability. North Korea is pretty much cut of from the rest of the world – except their communist Chinese brethren – and today we’re threatening to blockade their sealanes, which we can easily do. That action, normally an act of war, is considered “legal” in this sense because the blockaders would be looking for contraband nuclear materials. So the chances of them getting near America proper with a bomb are pretty small.

Our allies, on the other hand… This must be a blow to the South Koreans. And Japan – the world’s most nuked nation – is clearly worried about nuclear weapons in the hands of people they brutally oppressed for most of the first half of the last century…

They’re not going to use it. A nuclear arsenal is only really valuable as a deterrent. A single bomb, or even a dozen, has no deterrent value against the thousands of bombs the US possesses. Once the bombs – or in their case, probably bomb – flies, retaliation sufficient to guarantee “regime change” is inevitable. Their bomb is only valuable as a tactical weapon in a conventional war, and only if they are losing. They won’t use a bomb unless they are directly attacked.

And if they are, I wouldn’t want to be a US soldier on the DMZ… Or anywhere else in Korea, for that matter.

Besides, they don’t have to use it. They have made their point: America doesn’t rule the world, and an American administration that tries to do so will exhaust itself in conflict on one level or the other. In “winning” the cold war we lost many things – one of which was respect for the ability of others to fight back. Even small fry can be more fight than the fight is worth. We’re learning it in Afghanistan, Iraq, and now here.

So thanks again, shorty! And congratulations on the timing: America needed another reminder of just how far into that state of denial the current administration is, and how chimeric is the Republican claim to being “better” on national security issues. The Iraquagmire, the NIE… And now this. They’re batting zero in this game of chess…

Maybe they would do better if they stopped batting and started playing the game as it is, instead of as they wished it was.

And hopefully the people will begin to understand the failures, and send the failing parties packing next month.

If the Republicans do lose the majority, maybe we should give Kim a medal…

THE VIEW FROM IRBIL

2006-10-06T13:23:00.000-07:00

Condi Rice put on her best “pretty please” smile for a visit with Massoud Barzani, the President of the Nation of Kurdistan – OOPS! I mean the northern Kurdish Province of Iraq…

“Rice Urges Kurdish Cooperation With Iraqi Government”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,218178,00.html

The President and the Secretary of Begging met last Friday in Irbil. Rice made a point of thanking Barzani for the cooperation America has received from the Kurdish people, stating “I appreciate also your important participation in the process of national reconciliation. Thank you.”

Barzani reaffirmed Kurdistan’s commitment, saying “Kurdistan, "like any other nation, has the right to self-determination." However, he said he is committed to a "federal democratic and pluralistic Iraq."”

I am reliably informed a more literal translation from the original Kurdish Barzani spoke was “fuck you very much, Iraq can be democratic and pluralist without us”…

Chalk this part of the ongoing disaster up to wishful thinking 50% and unintended consequences one-half…

The article reminds us that the Kurds have been pretty much on their own, protected by the US air Force since 1991. I’ll remind you that before that, they were attacked and brutalized by everyone around them… I’ll remind you there has been a movement to establish a Kurdish state for a very long time.

I’ll point out they have had 15 years to build that Nation, it’s infrastructure, police forces… And military arms, I’m sure.

And I’ll ask you: Now that they have achieved their dream, why should they give any of it back?

But as the article notes, that was just what Rice sought:

“Convinced oil revenue is the long-term key to economic independence for a unified Iraq, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appealed Friday for cooperation from the autonomous and oil rich Kurdish north.”

I’ll also ask: If they tell us – and the rest of Iraq – to piss off, what are we going to do about it?

So many “ifs”… If some means can be found to convince the insurgents to surge somewhere else… If an uncommon fit of common sense seizes the kill for god crowd… Still it is for naught if the country fragments along more or less ethnic / religious lines: The issue can be simply defined:

“Sunni Arabs, who had enjoyed control over Iraq under Saddam, now fear the Kurdish push for secession under the nation's new federal system. Should the Shiite majority in the oil-rich south follow suit, the Sunnis would find themselves with little more than date groves and sand.”

Well, some might say that’s Karma for supporting the old bastard… But then the practical question becomes, how can such an arrangement ever produce a peaceful, stable Nation or Nations where Iraq once was?

And the answer, most likely, is by balancing it on the back of GI Joe and funding it from the US treasury…

Thanks, George… Oh well. You wanted bases over there… Looks like we’ll have them whether we want them or not. Forever…

TREATING A NATIONAL EMERGENCY

2006-10-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

MSNBC brings us the news this morning of some incredibly valuable new research:

“Marijuana may help stave off Alzheimer’s”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15145917/

Now, if only they can remember where they put the study…

From the article…

“New research shows that the active ingredient in marijuana may prevent the progression of the disease by preserving levels of an important neurotransmitter that allows the brain to function.

Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute in California found that marijuana’s active ingredient, delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, can prevent the neurotransmitter acetylcholine from breaking down more effectively than commercially marketed drugs.

THC is also more effective at blocking clumps of protein that can inhibit memory and cognition in Alzheimer’s patients, the researchers reported in the journal Molecular Pharmaceutics.”

The article notes “Those afflicted with Alzheimer’s suffer from memory loss, impaired decision-making, and diminished language and movement skills.”

I think you see where I’m going with this. There is a National Alzheimer’s emergency, an epidemic that threatens America itself… And now we can combat it!

We need to get a whole bunch of this stuff – all the hempsters could contribute a week’s worth of stash, maybe – and we need to get it to Washington DC ASAP. We need to fill the ventilation systems of all of the Congressional, Administrative, and Judicial offices, and then set it off all at once.

We can let them out after about a week to see if they are better. Meanwhile we’ll just send in Doritos, burritos, pizza and beer…

It’ll be for their own good… They will thank us later…

CALL OUT THE GUARD!

2006-10-03T14:41:00.000-07:00

Robert Jamieson over at the P-I has some somber reflections on a country gone bad:

“It's time to revisit the power of war protest”

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/287327_robert03.html?source=rss

He turns us on to an organization that wants to do just that:

“The World Can’t Wait!”

http://worldcantwait.org/

They are planning a “drive out the Bush regime” protest October 5th…

Watch it Bob… And remember your birth certificate… If you’re going to protest the Bush regime, you better be ready to prove you’re American: Otherwise you might end up in Guantanamo, held incommunicado as an “alien enemy illegal combatant”…

And you might end up there anyway…

Really, there is only one reasonable response for the Bush administration in this situation: Call out the guard!

Tin soldiers and Bush is coming… We’re finally on our own… This fall I hear the drumming…

After all, he’s fucked everything else up.

The Dow is at an all-time high, corresponding to the rape of the real US economy by fat cat globalists and their exportation of the family wage jobs of the middle class … Meanwhile, illegal aliens, flooding the labor markets, willing to work for nothing under any conditions, undo 100 years of American labor progress.

The war in Iraq is a quagmire with, we have recently discovered, Henry Kissinger calling the shots in the background – Now that’s a real Vietnam parallel… It’s making the phony war on terror less winnable by the day, creating enemies faster than they can be killed or placated – in the best judgment of the US intelligence community, that is.

We still don’t have an energy policy even as foreign competitors tie up more and more of the available world oil supplies, guaranteeing we will see the return of ultra-high prices soon. But we do have a shredded constitution, courtesy of the boy who would be King and the neoconservative cabal who pulls his puppet strings…

But the Republicans are too busy not noticing the homosexual predator in their midst to worry about any of that…

Yep, it’s heaped to overflowing – there is only one thing left. We need a few dead college students shot by guard members breaking up antiwar protests. Now that would ice the cake.

So come on, Liar-in-Chief Bush! Send in the troops! There still must be a few National Guard remaining Stateside. Maybe you can conscript some of the ‘Nam era vets – some of your Swift-boat character assassins, perhaps… They will know what to do with leftist college rabble.

Send ‘em in. You and the rest of the Republican misleaders are running out of stuff to fuck up, and you have an election to lose…

HALF AN ECOSYSTEM EQUALS A WHOLE LOT OF TROUBLE

2006-10-01T14:14:00.000-07:00

It’s perverse, but I find this amusing…

Via MSNBC, David A. Fahrenthold of the Washington Post chronicles a new environmental dilemma:

“Wildlife waste is major polluter”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15053738/

From the article:

“Scientists have run high-tech tests on harmful bacteria in local rivers and streams and found that many of the germs -- and in the Potomac and Anacostia rivers, a majority of them-- come from wildlife dung. The strange proposition that nature is apparently polluting itself has created a serious conundrum for government officials charged with cleaning up the rivers… Part of the problem lies with the unnaturally high populations of deer, geese and raccoons living in modern suburbs and depositing their waste there. But officials say it would be nearly impossible, and wildly unpopular, to kill or relocate enough animals to make a dent in even that segment of the pollution…That leaves scientists and environmentalists struggling with a more fundamental question: How clean should we expect nature to be? In certain cases, they say, the water standards themselves might be flawed, if they appear to forbid something as natural as wild animals leaving their dung in the woods.”

“A majority of the germs come from wildlife dung”… Part of the problem lies with the unnaturally high populations of deer, geese and raccoons living in modern suburbs”…

No shit? It’s worthy of a little consideration how this came about…

Once upon a time there was an ecosystem in balance here… Not a paradise, not an Eden, just a system in balance. There would have been representatives of all the major animal, plant, and insect groups filling their respective niches. Ground dwelling mammals, insectivores & root eaters – moles, groundhogs, etc. Then there were fur-bearing plant eaters – rabbits, squirrels and the like, up to beaver. They lived with – and sometimes were food for – mostly larger furred predators – meat eaters from weasels to badgers, omnivores like raccoon. There were sea and river otters. Maybe an occasional alligator… All manner of birds with various diets. Teeming insect populations – including dung beetles. Hunting cats and canids – cougar, bobcat coyote, wolf, fox… And then deer and bear.

The waters were well-populated with a variety of fish.

It surely wasn’t as neat, clean, or tidy as we modern Americans would like, but it was self-sustaining.

Fish was the most important dietary staple of most of the relatively small numbers of Amerinds who lived in the area. They did a little farming and gathering and competed with the bigger predators, trapping and hunting rabbits, wild turkey, squirrels, and the occasional deer. They were probably mostly immune to the local diseases due to acclimation.

When Europeans moved into the area, they re-created the ecosystem. It is important to see the difference between changing and ruining – the spread out populations lived off the land, living much the same way the first people did but with more emphasis on farming. Remember, in 1800, most staple food was local, even for cities. As the populations grew, people asserted themselves more and more, hunting out the larger, dangerous predators that competed for game, killed livestock and even occasionally somebody’s great Aunt…

But it was still a working ecosystem. Man was the dominant predator. Species that fit “our ecosystem,” including plants and animals we added to it thrived, and the species we considered undesirable dwindled. The more man dominated, the more complete the transformation became.

Then “we” moved off the land.

How many people hunt today? In the Washington DC area, I’ll bet there isn’t too many. Somehow, toting a rifle – or even a bow - around Maryland’s remaining woods strikes me as being a good way to end up guilty until proven innocent…

So what hunts the deer?

Nature got along fine without us as general manager – even when we were a major player, we were still part of the game. Now, as we try to write the rules, we find out just how inadequate we are. A suburb is a lot of things but it isn’t a balanced ecosystem. It’s a mostly sterile place where native plants are “weeds,” insects are discouraged, moles are targets, and deer are “pets”… And when it rains, all the unrecycled poop from all the deer – and raccoons, rats, squirrels, coyotes, dogs, and cats – heads straight into the water, facilitated by the drainage systems we made for our convenience. Then the bacterial counts skyrocket and the nitrogen promoted algae blooms kill fish which rot and make matters worse…

Beach closed… No fishing, for your safety. Man once lived on fish here…

Manage it or let it alone, if you can. In this case, leaving it alone would mean reconstituting an ecosystem – bringing back all the species we eradicated when we made the place into what we thought we wanted… Managing it means taking a very unpopular action: becoming the predator once more.

Lesson: The highest form of intellectual exercise is the attempt to foresee the unexpected consequence…

It’ll be interesting to see how this issue develops. Maybe the best idea is habitat reconstruction. If we reintroduced, for example, cougar into the Capitol…

Dateline Washington DC… The Office of Congressman Smith announced today he will not be running for re-election, as he was eaten today by Sarah the cougar as he was jogging near the House office buildings… Sarah, who has eaten several lawmakers recently, had no comment… But analysts note she is eating Republicans, two to one…

This idea might just grow on you…

DO US ALL A FAVOR

2006-09-29T18:58:00.000-07:00

Well, another pervert bites the dust:

“Foley Resigns From Congress Over E-Mails”

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060929/D8KEQ83O0.html

“Rep. Mark Foley, R-Fla., abruptly resigned from Congress on Friday in the wake of questions about e-mails he wrote a former teenage male page.”

Do us all a favor… Blow out your brains.

FALLING STRAIGHT OVER - GIVE LSU A NOOGIE

2006-09-28T12:30:00.000-07:00

Karl Swenson over at LSU has decided to take a cue from Chris Wallace and write a hit piece… Really I’m flattered… I didn’t think I was big enough to hit… But as a matter of the record, I thought I’d re-post my responses to Karl’s “you messages”…

For this to make any sense, one first needs to read my posts:

“Republican Suicide: The New Reality Show”

http://dontlikeanyofthem.blogspot.com/2006/09/republican-party-suicide-new-reality.html

“Republican Suicide: The Lies that Backfired”

http://dontlikeanyofthem.blogspot.com/2006/09/republican-suicide-lies-that-backfired_27.html

Karl specifically comments on the former, his piece being titled:

“Roadkill weaves accross the center line and rides the left shoulder for a few miles”

http://leaningstraightup.com/2006/09/27/roadkill-weaves-accross-the-center-line-and-rides-the-left-shoulder-for-a-few-miles/

The entire piece, with these comments, can be found at the above LSU link… Or I think they can…

Enjoy… Beginning with a Karl quote:

"Politically, I am a fiscal conservative social moderate, which usually labels me a centrist."

Me, too, but we're talking about principles, not positioning. A moderate can appear to be on a fringe in an immoderate climate. If you define yourself by those around you, you have no real positions.

Digression: I endorsed Slate's analysis based on it's quality, not it's conclusions. I never took a position of who set who up... I assume both sides sought to set the other up...

"I had no trouble finding the unedited video, so I don’t understand his laziness."

TV is a drug, and these video snippets are as well. I don't want the damned video. I notice you have nothing to say about Crooks and Liars assertion the Youtube stuff was juiced... I'll assume that it in fact was...

I want a true written copy. If your arguments cannot be cogently presented in written format they aren't worth my time. I am not interested in subjective voodoo crap like body language - if you were more studied in the matter, you would understand 1) Body language is not universal and 2) Body language is manageable. In other words, people can learn to use it as a tool - it's called acting, Karl. Republicans used to deride Clinton for being able to "cry on cue" - I recall several memorable incidents where he was literally caught at it... But he didn't invent it. The first President to grasp the value of TV staging was Kennedy, and the first one to get really good at it was Reagan, which is reasonable, considering his vocational history. His successor, Bush 41, was a bad actor - which probably contributed to his demise. He ran against a clown and a genuine talent. What do you expect?

That, BTW, was about the time I unplugged. I'm right about this, and I don't care how many people gainsay it. You're all stoned.

You're stoned, Karl. And I don't care if everyone else is stoned, too. What everybody does doesn't alter my views. It may constrain my actions, but never my views.

You're stoned, Karl... And a bit infantile - which is one of the side effects of watching too much TV for too long. This form of media gets at you on an emotional level you can't control, at the same time degrading reason. Why do you think those idiotic commercials work?

Hate? Don't be silly, that's a five year old's reaction... Or the reaction of a mass murderer... Or someone stoned on the glass tit. The closest to an emotional reaction any of these antics inspires from me is a moderate disgust... Pardon the pun.

But on that score, I will add another digression: I think - not feel, but think - that the real emoters are to be found among the Bush supporters, not detractors. It is a parallel of what I refer to as hyper anti-anti Semitism – some people love Bush so much they automatically interpret any criticism as "Bush hate." I think the real issue is "Bush love:" People who are so fanatically devoted to Bush they cannot see him for what he really is - a failure. At the risk of over-using a bad, worn out analogy, I think - not feel - some of the hardcore are as devoted to Bush as the SS were to Hitler. That kind of devotion is unhealthy.

A failure? Reading, again - not watching - I am evaluating all sorts of accounts from all over the world. Even when I'm not posting, I'm reading - "listening" takes precedence over "speaking." If it's in English, I'll consider it. I cross check, fact check, and reality check. The conclusions are becoming clearer all the time: Everything this administration has done has backfired. Which leads to Rice... I stand on my position, which stands on her record. I notice you do not refute my conclusion on peoples' unwillingness to honestly assess her, and you offer no defense of her record, other than to say people on "both sides" admire her. I'm not on a side, and I'm not looking for endorsements that may well be as tainted as a confession obtained by torture.

So I'll ask again: What has she accomplished?

So was it "suicide?" I think I failed in making the point. I should have shortened the piece, I suppose, but...

Bill Clinton has kept his mouth shut to a remarkable degree since January 2001. He has conformed well to the "speak no evil" principle of former Presidents, unlike Jimmy Carter, an ex-President whose views I do appreciate. Clinton has gone so far as to say he would have done the same thing in Iraq as Bush - which means he would have been just as wrong.

But now, people who I assume get no direction from the White House, the Party, or even Rove - I don't believe in "talking points" - go after Slick Willie in a very personal way. I ask, as I asked yesterday: Are these boobs a fifth column?

Or are they just desperate? This matter would have never come up but for that "B" rate TV movie. Why provoke a rattlesnake?

Because the makers of that flick are stoned... And everything to them is a game. Because living in TV La La land has reduced them to all-feeling, no-thinking fools. Life isn't a game. People like that are a good argument for bringing back duelling.

One last. I'm sorry, but I have to call you on some "facts:"

"Well, not really.  And again, you are comparing 8 years of active indecisiveness and bureaucratic dysfunction in the face of yearly attacks to 8 months of inaction before any attacks, which has been followed by 5 years of highly decisive action.

1) There was no "8 years." Al-Qaeda grew slowly from talk to fact. If we want to throw in the whole Kahuna, you need to go clear back to... Just keep going. Some might argue the writing was on the wall clear back when the Marines were bombed during the Reagan years - the people who pulled that off are the predecessors of today's Al-Qaeda allies. If the neocons are going to conflate, as some have, the Somalia disaster with Al-Qaeda - who had nothing to do with it at all but to cheer after the fact - then you have to add in a lot more conflations. Bin Laden  - who I remind all was supported by the US when his Mujadaheen were kicking Russian butt - got his wind up when the Saudis allowed our troops to base in the Moslem Holy land - but it was just rock throwing until the embassy bombings, and the strength of the threat didn't really become apparent until the Cole bombing... In 2000...

Further, the August 6 2001 leaks - KUDOS TO THE PATRIOTIC LEAKERS - Make a real lie out of the idea the Bush administration pursued Al-Qaeda before 9-11.

And since then? A botched operation that we're still botching. It's getting serious. Newsweek has a good piece today: "The Rise of Jihadistan"

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14975282/site/newsweek/

So let's not pretend the administration has done anything that is both effective and efficient. Really what has been done has been neither...

And a final matter:

"He also is hoping for more intelligence leaks, and in my comments has shown he clearly has no regard for what the consequences will be.  Nothing leftist about that, right?"

Call it whatever you like. It is an issue of principle. Our government - especially this administration - has driven the "national secrets" concept into the ground. WE DON'T NEED ALL THESE SECRETS. THEY ARE ANTI-AMERICAN. We have an administration that attempts to cover its butt by classifying the evidence of failure. The consequences? Misplaced support of bad policies.

And I'll remind you most of the leakers are government employees...

Show me one example where any of these leaks have caused a genuine harm. We have reporters riding shotgun with troops on the ground. We have reporters connected with peoples the government tells us are the enemy. We're swimming in reporters. If there was a desire to cause harm with leaks, there is ample opportunity. Where has it happened?

It hasn't. The only thing that has been harmed is the shrub's reputation. Show me proof. Show me soldiers dead because somebody tipped the enemy. Show me a decisive operation pulled because of a leak. You can't. You can assert, but you have no examples because they don't exist.

The worst you can assert is that some reporters might choose to be better conduits for information to our side. 1) You don't know they aren't doing just that, and 2) Doing so would destroy their ability to contact the other side. There is ultimately no value in that.

George W Bush is not my leader. He isn't my Commander in Chief - I never served. He is my servant. He is in my employ, and I want to know what he is doing, or I want a straight explanation as to why I can't know. And in an environment where leak after leak demonstrates bungling at best and perfidy at worst, the burden of proof is on the servant...

REPUBLICAN SUICIDE - THE LIES THAT BACKFIRED

2006-09-27T14:12:00.000-07:00

It’s old news – it’s no news – that the neoconservative hatemongers are in full rabid-monkey attack mode, attempting assault on anything Democrat – and the truth – with such garbage as ABC’s right-wing 9-11 mockudrama and FoxNews weekend hit piece aimed at former President Clinton.

The right-wing trail on “The Path to 9-11,” which leads to a conservative evangelical group and is lousy with the footprints of radical neoconservative David Horowitz, is chronicled by Eat the Press:

“Discover the Secret Right-Wing Network Behind ABC's 9/11 Deception”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/max-blumenthal/discover-the-secret-right_b_29015.html

The bias of FoxNews needs no tracking… At Fox, all roads turn right…

But there is some new evidence out this morning demonstrating that the public isn’t buying it. From the well-respected pollsters at Gallup:

“Bush Blamed More Than Clinton for Failure to Capture Bin Laden”

http://www.galluppoll.com/content/?ci=24733

Noting “Views are predictably partisan; independents mostly blame Bush” the article goes on to state:

“The recent firestorm over former President Bill Clinton's culpability for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was fueled on Tuesday when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice contrasted President Bush's efforts to pursue al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden with Clinton's efforts. Clinton has strongly denied various suggestions that his administration missed key opportunities to kill bin Laden and left the Bush administration without a comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy. However, Bush -- whom Clinton says did nothing about al-Qaeda for the first eight months of his presidency -- has the bigger image problem with Americans on the issue.

According to a recent Gallup Panel survey, the American public puts the primary blame on Bush rather than Clinton for the fact that bin Laden has not been captured. A majority of Americans say Bush is more to blame (53%), compared with 36% blaming Clinton.”

There’s a lot more detail, of course, but the synopsis covers it well.

Damn stupid neocons… Everything they have done in the last 5 years has backfired into a shambles. Now their hit squads pick a fight with the most popular politician on Earth…

What are these fools, a 5th column?

You know, WJC was a less than active campaigner for the Democrats in 2004. He could have done a lot more. Could he have turned the election?

He can certainly turn this issue, which these neocon Neanderthals have tried to shove down his throat in a very personal way. And on this issue the entire Republican chimera of being better on security issues rests…

And it is chimeric – the evidence mounts. Everything GWB has done in the war on terror has proven to be a failure.

He went into Afghanistan – pretty much following Clinton’s plan, the one our incompetent Secretary of State denies existed – missed Bin Laden and replaced a bad government with a worse anarchy… The only winners there are the world’s heroin users – and traffickers…

He went into Iraq naively believing he would be met by rose-strewing citizens singing ‘God Bless America”… He got a quagmire from which we cannot extricate ourselves and a civil war.

We can’t get out. The Iraqis – whose opinions hardly matter on this issue – are divided. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani has been lobbying recently for a permanent US presence in Iraq, suggesting it is necessary to protect Iraq’s sovereignty:

“US troop presence keeps neighbors from invading Iraq: Talabani”

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/09/26/060926231203.q6d2gwnv.html

Yet poll after poll of ordinary Iraqis suggests they the people want us the hell out, and yesterday…

We can’t get out… Can we stay? Very possibly not. As Fred Kaplan over at Slate notes, GWB’s policies have almost destroyed our army:

“How Bush Wrecked the Army”

http://www.slate.com/id/2150337/

Civilian interference by the White House’s chickenhawks has wrecked the battle... Meanwhile, failure to cope with the consequences of the failed battle plan has wrecked the army itself:

“Nearly 1,500 Humvees, M2 Bradley fighting vehicles, and other vehicles were awaiting repair at the Red River Army Depot in Texas. The same was true of 500 M1 tanks at the Anniston depot in Alabama. None of the Army's five largest depots was operating at more than 50 percent capacity—all because of a shortage of money.”

A shortage of money… When the Republicans control both Houses of Congress and the White House… Is incompetence an impeachable offense? It should be…

Which brings us to the real rock-hard spot quandary: The situation clearly calls for more troops, but there are none to send… Again from Slate:

“Won't Deploy? Can't Deploy.
There are no more troops to send to Iraq.”

http://www.slate.com/id/2149684/

Noting neocon mad-dog William Kristol’s call for more troops

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/11/AR2006091100879.html

Slate’s Daniel Benjamin and Michèle A. Flournoy explain why it can’t be done… And less the source be suspect, Rowan Scarborough at the Washington Times agrees:

“Army considers more combat units for Iraq”

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060925-123036-8636r.htm

From the article:

“The Army is facing more demand for troops at a time when military analysts say it is nearly stressed to the breaking point.
Non-deployed combat brigades are experiencing low readiness ratings due mostly to a lack of usable weapons and equipment. The wear and tear in Iraq is ruining M1A1 tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles, Humvee vehicles and other equipment at such a fast pace that the Army has neither the money nor the industrial base to replace them… Gen. Peter Schoomaker, Army chief of staff, this summer asked Congress for nearly $50 billion over three years to replace broken equipment in a process known as "resetting" the force.
"We have inadequate Army and Marine Corps combat power to sustain this level of deployment," said retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey, a highly decorated Vietnam combatant who led the 24th Infantry Division in Desert Storm.
Gen. McCaffrey said the Army needs an immediate infusion of 80,000 new soldiers added to the active force of about 500,000.”

But the Republicans who got us into this mess are too cowardly to vote the resources to get us out. Why? Because it implies failure. And the neocons would rather see the army wrecked and the troops’ safety compromised than admit a failing.

We can’t go… We can’t stay… And either way, we’re breeding more terrorists. That’s the conclusion of the latest NIE, currently under scrutiny due to the timely work of an unknown patriot who provided the New York Times with at least a part copy. So desperate has GWB been to fend off the scathing conclusions of this document that he today ordered the release of about 10% of the document, which can be read here:

http://www.slate.com/id/2150435/entry/2150436/

Acerbically querying, “Can Bush Read?” author Timothy Noah points out that the National Intelligence Estimate abstract released says… Exactly what the Times claimed it did…

A shambles… A total shambles… Yet the neocons press the attack…

We are being led by madmen… And mad women; let’s not leave Condi out. Incompetence is equal opportunity in the Bush Administration…

All in all, Bush better hope Osama Bin Laden isn’t dead, and that they can pull him – or a reasonable facsimile – out of Karl Rove’s ass, and soon…

I’ll continue to hope he is dead – and the Republican majority in Congress is dead with him. This much is certain: If “we the people” continue to put up with this level of dishonesty and incompetence, then, well, we’ve earned whatever trouble that comes our way.

REPUBLICAN PARTY SUICIDE - THE NEW REALITY SHOW

2006-09-26T12:50:00.000-07:00

By now most of us interested in politics has had a chance to view – or review – the “debate” between Bill Clinton and Chris Wallace aired by FoxNews over the weekend, and bootlegged by the Beavis channel over at YouTube…

I didn’t watch it – I don’t watch TV – and I won’t stoop to the level of the Drudge class hatemongers and patronize the Youtube crap, which, according to Crooks and Liars, has been deliberately altered to WJC’s detriment…

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/09/22/president-clinton-blasts-chris-wallace/#more-10457

I guess those who watch it will have to judge Crooks and Liars claim for themselves. For myself, I’d settle for a full transcript, which I haven’t been able to find at Fox – I suppose this means so few Fox viewers read that there’s no demand…

So I was forced to rely on what Crooks and Liars provide at the aforementioned link, claiming it to be “a rough transcript”…

Reading, not watching… Bill Clinton wiped the floor with that little smartass… I’m surprised he didn’t end the interview by giving Chrissy a noogie…

My conclusion seems to be reinforced by one of the few objective accounts I can find on the interview, that of Slate’s John Dickerson:

“Fox in the Henhouse
Clinton's strategic TV blowup.”

http://www.slate.com/id/2150335/?nav=tap3

Read it yourself. Good analysis.

I want the Republicans to get the biggest shellacking they have suffered since 1856 in this next election – so I shouldn’t be giving them what I believe to be good advice… But here it is…

Leave Bill Clinton alone. Muzzle and chain your rabid attack monkeys, if you have to, but leave him alone. He is hands down the most popular and charismatic politician alive today – there is more charisma in Slick’s “willie” than GWB’s administration. If you take him on, you will lose.

And that’s from someone who utterly detested Clinton when he was President.

I must admit, my opinion of WJC has improved since January 2001. He’s made a far better ex-President than he made President – his style better suites the elder statesman / I told you so niche. And things have gone so badly the last 6 years that his administration can’t help but look better than it actually was…

Don’t take him on…Especially on a subject where he is undeniably right. Any review of the facts will show Clinton did far more than Bush to find Bin Laden, and for less provocation. From the interview:

“after the Cole I had battle plans drawn to go into Afhanistan, overthrow the Taliban, and launch a full scale attack search for Bin Laden. But we needed baseing rights in Uzbekistan which we got after 9/11. The CIA and the FBI refused to certify that bin laden was responsible while I was there. They refused to certify. So that meant I would have had to send a few hundred special forces in helicopters and refuel at night.”

“special forces in helicopters and refuel at night.”… Shades of a debacle suffered by another Democratic President in that part of the world back in ’79…

That IS a rough transcript… Well at least you know it isn’t mine… I wouldn’t allow that many spelling errors… But I digress.

The GWB administration then sat on it’s hands for 8 months - even after the President was told, on in a private meeting August 6, 2001, that Al-Qaeda was planning on doing just exactly what they did five weeks later…

BRAVO to the patriotic leakers who bring us word of meetings like this…

And ultimately, Bush did follow Clinton’s plan, but with a lot more force at his disposal, more bases, and more allies… And he still didn’t get Bin Laden.

History vindicates Clinton… So predictably this morning the administration, in the person of Condi Rice, is shooting back. One of many accounts…

“Rice Challenges Clinton's Statements on Anti-Terror Record”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,215779,00.html

“"The notion somehow for eight months the Bush administration sat there and didn't do that is just flatly false… We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight Al Qaeda…"”

It’s an understandable reaction, considering the source. I’ll offer an opinion you won’t find expressed anywhere else – not because it’s wrong, but because it’s taboo:

I think Rice is utterly incompetent.

The left – Ted Rall’s demented humor aside - won’t say it, because…

She’s black.

She’s a she…

The left just doesn’t criticize black women. The neocons won’t criticize their black women; they need every one they have…

But I will. Everything she has done since becoming Secretary of State – really, everything she has done since joining the administration – has been an utter failure. The Mideast peace process is ruined; Iraq is a disaster… Half the world, including Iran, Syria, and North Korea has told us to piss off… Even our allies treat us like a … I could say black sheep… but that’s too loaded… Whatever metaphor you pick, this much is certain: Since she’s been at State, our foreign policy has been a disaster.

So I’ll discount her butt-covering… She has plenty to cover… Policy failures, I mean.

And I’ll look forward to the next installment of this new reality show – a show I don’t need a TV to watch is right up my alley. Scurrilous leaks suggest it will be entitled:

“Bush orders Iraq/terrorism report revealed.”

The plot will involve trying to explain away all the new terrorists created since we went on the warpath to eradicate terrorism…

Somehow, I doubt the Republican mobsters will try to “hit” Slick Willie for an opinion on this one… But he may offer one anyway.

WITH A WHIMPER, NOT A BANG

2006-09-23T12:42:00.000-07:00

VIA My Way News this morning, AP is circulating a story from the French newspaper l'Est Republicain, which is reporting on the contents of a confidential document pilfered from somewhere in the upper circles of the French government.

The document claims Saudi secret services are convinced Osama Bin Laden is dead.

Bin Laden died in Pakistan of typhoid August 23, 2006:

“France Looks Into bin Laden Death Report”

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060923/D8KAHRNG0.html

Predictably, our people aren’t able to confirm anything about this report…

“U.S. can't confirm bin Laden death report: official”

http://reuters.myway.com/article/20060923/2006-09-23T122247Z_01_N23227995_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-SECURITY-BINLADEN-USA-DC.html

Well, we’ve heard it all before… But I am intrigued by this juxtaposed against a bit of gossip from NewsMax published 9-21-06:

“Karl Rove Promises October Surprise”

http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2006/9/20/141615.shtml?s=rss

Maybe the Shrub’s #1 rabid sonofabitch just lost his little surprise…

Dead of typhoid. What an all-around cruelly perfect Karma. Not with a bang but a whimper… Not dead in any great action – not in the Eagle’s belly, as he once prophesied – but dead to a disease virtually eradicated in the West he contended against…

I hope he is dead – and dead of disease. It’ll take a little of the wind out of the warmongers… On both sides…

I hope because I think it is time to move on. We have been living in Hannity’s “post 9-11 world” too long. Not forget, not forgive. But stop the National obsession. Stop picking the scab - and heal.

I think that in a collective sense America has been behaving like a mugging victim since 9-11-01. Defensive, even a little paranoid… Packing heat and a little too inclined to use it… Looking for someone – anyone – to use it on.

Violated…

Oh, we were so smug. Muggings just didn’t happen to us – it didn’t happen in our neighborhoods. We were condescendingly sympathetic to the other mugging victims… Those poor dears… But the Ivory tower was safe – just one more attribute of American exceptionalism.

But just as we were never really safe, I don’t believe we are now in anywhere near as much danger as our leaders want us to think we are in. I think some among our leaders are way too willing to use fear to maintain their own positions and promote their agendas.

I think the one thing many of our leaders fear is that we will stop being afraid.

It’s time to do just that.

I’ve followed the grim speculations, the chatter spikes, the warnings… The successful and thwarted muggings of others in other places… The what if’s.

What if not? What does all this cost on so many levels?

I think Bin Laden and his people were the one non-governmental group that was sufficiently motivated, sufficiently skilled, and sufficiently funded to really pose a threat to this Nation – and I think they are a spent force. There isn’t going to be another 9-11.

But as long as we flinch every time some “Al-Qaeda spokesman” farts, there doesn’t have to be another 9-11, because the first one continues to pay them - and a lot of others - dividends.

So here’s hoping he’s dead, and dead so ignominiously – by his standards – that his own people are embarrassed to announce the passing of “the Mahdi.” Here’s hoping they find his crippled corpse buried anonymously in Pakistan.

And here’s hoping that becomes the last footnote to 9-11. The mugger is dead. The streets are as safe as they ever were.

TOTALLY NEOCONSERVATIVE!!!

2006-09-05T19:47:00.000-07:00

FoxNews brings us a short blurb today on Iran’s Banty Rooster In-Chief, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad…

It seems he has a bone to pick with “liberal university lecturers:”

“Iran's Ahmadinejad Calls for Purge of Liberal Teachers”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,212122,00.html

To quote His Truculence…

“"Today, students should shout at the president and ask why liberal and secular university lecturers are present in the universities,"”

Damn… How totally neoconservative… Has he been channeling Sean Hannity, who, according to WorldNetDaily, said on September 4th:

“"All you college kids out there, check your state laws, check your campus laws," Hannity said on his national radio program.

"Get your little tape recorders if legal, and I want you to start recording these left-wingers. Bring it to this program and we'll start airing it every single time on this program. I'm sick of this indoctrination. I'm sick of this left-wing propaganda."”

“Hannity igniting revolt against left-wing profs”

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47601

Google “Sean Hannity liberal college professors”… 228,000 hits… It’s one of his favorite rants…

Here’s one from two years ago:

“Half An Education…The Left Half”

He’s teamed up here with David Horowitz, one of the [unofficial] representatives of our [unofficial] 51st State – Israel….

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,97583,00.html

Now Google “Anne Coulter liberal college professors”… 816,000 hits, including this hawking of Horowitz’s latest rant, “"The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America."”

“Tuition soars due to knowledge shortfall”

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/AnnCoulter/2006/05/03/tuition_soars_due_to_knowledge_shortfall

Bill O’Reilly gets 379,000 hits…

The facts are clear: O’Reilly, Coulter, Hannity, and Ahmadinejad are on the same team…

Bastards of the same corrupt birth, I’d say…

But is it any surprise it is the “liberals” here in this Nation who are most willing – and able – to converse with conservative Moslem extremists without using a gun? After all, they have the practice, dealing with neoconservative Christian extremists here in the good ol’ USA…

MARIA CANTWELL: FAILING THE ETHICS TEST

2006-08-29T19:31:00.000-07:00

The Seattle Times brings us the latest news on the mudwrestle the contest for Washington’s junior Senate seat has degenerated into:

“No "millionaires" boost for Cantwell, FEC says”

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2003233883_webfeccantwell29.html

From the article:

“A $2 million loan by U.S. Senate challenger Mike McGavick to his own campaign does not trigger a "millionaires' amendment" that would allow Democratic incumbent Maria Cantwell to raise more money, the Federal Election Commission ruled today.

The FEC's decision means that Cantwell will have to abide by normal campaign finance laws, at least until the Sept. 19 primary.

In a unanimous decision, the FEC said the so-called millionaires' amendment — which lifts campaign donation limits for anyone facing a candidate who self-finances a campaign — applies only to McGavick's Republican primary opponents, not Cantwell.”

The article then notes:

“Ironically, that figure [$10 million of personal money McGavick might spend] is the amount that Cantwell, a high-tech millionaire, contributed to her campaign in 2000, when she upset then-Sen. Slade Gorton, R-Wash. Much of the money was in loans that were later repaid to Cantwell, whose personal wealth has declined significantly in recent years as the stock of her former company, RealNetworks, has plunged.

The millionaires' amendment, adopted in 2002, did not apply to the 2000 election.”

I’ve often noted “fair” is where you go to look at bunnies and roosters… Nothing is ever “fair” in the mostly bloodless bloodsport of American politics. But Senators – like the President – have too damn much power to lack self-restraint.

Just like McGavick’s golden parachute… Just like Maria’s stock option manipulation of her Real Networks holdings… This challenge may be legal but it isn’t ethical. It’s a good thing the FEC shot her down.

That’s two for Senator Bubblehead. She financed much of her first campaign with smelly money; now she’s complaining about the other millionaire’s smelly money and how he is spending it.

As a person who – at least in theory – became wealthy by entrepreneurial success, she should be pleased the other guy got rich in business and can afford to finance his own campaign. After all, the alternative is to raise tons of money from those damned lobbyists who represent “special interests”…

At least she should be pleased if this was about “fairness” and the people’s interest in the best person winning… But isn’t; it’s just about winning.

Forecast for the fall: lying and shit throwing from both monkeys punctuated by repeated legal challenges of everything that can be challenged…

Damn shame we can’t do better than this.

UNDERTONES: THE NEW TERRORIST THREAT

2006-08-27T16:11:00.000-07:00

Here’s another one for those afflicted with the delusion that pursuit of the phony “war on terror” won’t lead to everything from outright idiotic hare chasing to tangible abuse of innocent citizens…

From AP via The Seattle Times:

“Idea to remove dam triggers probe by FBI”

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003228878_dam27.html

From the article:

“ST. LOUIS — Jim Bensman thought his suggestion during a public hearing was harmless enough: Instead of building a channel so migratory fish could go around a dam on the Mississippi River, just get rid of the dam.

Instead, the environmental activist found himself in hot water, drawing FBI scrutiny to see whether he had any terrorist intentions…”

Bensman claims he never mentioned blowing up the dam – which is after all how one removes a no longer needed dam – but that the sponsor of the meeting, the Army Corps of Engineers, did so in their presentation…

But a reporter from the local rag of record got it wrong, and a few days later the man was leaning on Bensman. His comments were “construed to have terrorist undertones”…

You know, I bet the section charged with counterterrorism in the FBI office covering Missouri is real busy… Why every sandmonkey alive must dream of blowing up… What? Is there anything in Missouri worth blowing up?

Maybe Rush Limbaugh on a trip back to Cape Geraldo…

So these boys are pulling down 50 grand a year or better each to???

Harass citizens who advocate removing obsolete dams, it looks like... Harass citizens at the request of bureaucrats from the Corps who weren’t at the meeting to hear the advocacy but objected to a second-hand account…

This is how it starts. Think of it as an adjunct to Giuliani’s “broken window’s” idea or the slow boiling frog theory. You don’t just wake up one morning with two cops and a posting of 50 new rules on every street corner. You get used to it a little at a time, like broken windows or warming water. Pretty soon these common, petty insults to citizens – these foolish wastes of our money - become accepted… And then one day if a Jim Bensman complains and thereafter disappears for a few days only to reappear beaten and drugged, well, he shouldn’t have stuck his head up…

People stop sticking their heads up… And stop being free men but instead become slaves to petty bureaucrats and the fear and paranoia abuse creates.

It is real and it isn’t inconsequential. There is no room in a free America for cops who chase shadow “threats” parsed out of comments made under the most American of protections, the right to address the government directly in a public assembly.

Zero tolerance to terror power abuses is the only way.

WHORING CHRISTIANITY

2006-08-26T10:18:00.000-07:00

A wail of desperation could clearly be heard under the comments of the neocons darling – and unindicted election thief – Katherine Harris, as she stooped to exhorting – or is it extorting - the “faithful”…

Via The Seattle Times from The Orlando Sentinel:

“Congresswoman: Elect Christians or "legislate sin"”

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003226852_harris26.html

“"If you are not electing Christians, tried and true, under public scrutiny and pressure, if you're not electing Christians, then in essence you are going to legislate sin,"”

I’d be disgusted except people who drag religion into politics are beneath contempt…

And I’d recommend some reading for her and the ignorant that follow her… Particularly Timothy and Paul, both of whom were a lot closer to Christianity as designed by Christ than she and both of whom had some choice comments for bigmouthed uppity women…

Something along the lines of seldom heard and never in charge…

If she wants a theocracy she should emigrate… There are still several in the world… And they know what to do with bigmouthed uppity women…

Oh well. The rest of the religious community will stomp this Neanderthal and I should shut up…

But there is a context I don’t think the faithful will see. Harris is desperate. She’s sunk everything she has into this race and she’s losing. She will probably get the Republican nod for the November race but the only people who think she can win are the ones buying Florida swampland…

She’s losing and she’s desperate. Desperation is like anger: It releases the real person. The “person” a good politician knows needs to be kept shut up – the keeper of hidden agendas.

And she, like a lot of other neocon Christians, really does believe America would be better off as an old-fashioned theocracy, where people could be discriminated against over any of a number of ugly, barbaric prejudices – denied housing, denied employment, or even jailed for not following their sick creed.

So it’s good she’s desperate… She is showing her true colors – and they aren’t red, white and blue…

FACT CHECKING "HALF-TRUTH" MCGAVICK

2006-08-22T20:06:00.000-07:00

“That’s not right, is it?” said Mrs. Possum to no one in particular – me – as we sat in our office going through e-mails on our respective computers and listening to 103.7 FM in the background. I knew what she was referring to – she took the words right out of my head… We had just been treated to Mike!™ McGavick’s new commercial…

““You know, by deducting their sales taxes from the federal income tax, the average Washington family saves $550 a year. That really helps families get by,” Mike says in the ad.”

That’s not from memory. I wouldn’t do that. That’s a quote from Mike’s!™ website:

“Campaign Launches New Radio Ad — Mike Expresses Disappointment with Sen. Cantwell for Following Party Over State’s Interests”

http://www.mikemcgavick.com/pressrelease.asp?prid=77

The subject was Cantwell’s vote on the so-called “trifecta” tax legislation. And as far as I’m concerned, the ad is the end of any claim Mike!™ McGavick had to being the honest campaigning good guy…

He’s just one more fact manipulating, lying politician…

I wasn’t going to get into this race…

I don’t like Cantwell and I don’t understand people who do. I voted for Slade, I’m still suspicious of the last minute returns that cost him the election, and I’m still disgusted that the people of Washington would be stupid enough to retire someone with Slade’s seniority and connections in favor of a bubblehead dotcommie who epitomized everything that was wrong with the dot.com opium dream – someone whose biggest private sector accomplishment was bailing out before the shit truly hit the fan.

And nothing she has done since her election has impressed me either….

I liked Slade. He was my kind of Republican – a Republican from the time before the party deserted me with its disastrous right turn.

As for McGavick, I know very little about him, but I won’t support anyone who accepts a 20 million dollar goodbye kiss from an insurance company. Oh, I’m sure it was legal, opposition rock throwing notwithstanding, and I don’t care. It isn’t ethical. The insurance industry has a captive market: Unless you are rich enough to tell the whole world to kiss your ass, you have to patronize them. That being the case, I think it’s immoral for them to make even a dime of profit.

I think it should be a matter of law that insurance companies make zero profit. And I think the salaries of their upper level execs should be set by law… Set low.

That 20 million was stolen from the policy holders, IMO, in the form of inflated premiums… And I’ll be proud to be a bigot on this one…

So I was going to keep my mouth shut. I really don’t have a horse in this race. I won’t vote unless the race is really close, in which case I will vote for the bubblehead, her mediocre record notwithstanding, because I think the Nation desperately needs a Democrat majority in Congress right now.

But I sure wasn’t going to promote her… And I’m still not. But this ad pisses me off, because it, and the bill it refers to, says so much about what is really wrong with American governance today.

First the bill. The nick-name says it all: “Trifecta.” Let’s lump a bunch of vaguely related stuff together in such a way as to try to make political hay… Screw the people – they’re not important… And screw the merits of the individual ideas. This isn’t about bettering the Nation; it’s about bettering the Party’s position…

It’s dirty, and the fact both parties have done it when they were in the driver’s seat doesn’t make it clean.

Even if it takes a Constitutional Amendment, this sort of thing should be stopped. But it never will be, because the one thing neither party will ever do is surrender a way to twist arms.

The damned ad… That excellent example of lying by telling half the truth… That excellent insight into the Republican mindset…

True: Cantwell voted against the bill. I’m not interested in her reasoning right now.

False:

“You know, by deducting their sales taxes from the federal income tax, the average Washington family saves $550 a year.”

You only get this deduction if you itemize. Again, from Mike’s!™ website:

“[the deduction] will benefit an estimated 940,000 people who itemize deductions — about 22 percent of the state's federal tax filers.” — “Tax break for nearly 1 million in Washington,” Seattle Times, 10/12/2004

22%... The average person will get zero benefit from this… Who will benefit? The itemizers. Who are they? Here’s an older analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:

http://www.cbpp.org/6-8-04tax.htm

In this 2001 analysis, 34% of Washington’s taxpayers are expected to benefit. Of those, 17.8% earn less than $50,000, and 29.9% earn less than $100,000.

Two-thirds of the itemizers make more than $100,000… 93% of those making over $200,000 itemize.

That’s Mike!™ McGavick’s “average” Washingtonian…

You know, it’s funny… Just about everyone wants to be rich, but nobody wants to be known as the “party of the rich.” I guess we now know who makes up Mike’s!™ party…

And who he is willing to lie for, to distort the facts for. He’s happy to try to bullshit people onto his team with his “average Washington family” shtick.

The hell of it is, this proposal will just screw the real “average” Washington family. It’ll cut into Federal general fund revenues, forcing the government to borrow more to meet its obligations, driving inflation, pushing interest rates up and dragging the overall economy down… Depressing buying power still further for those “average” taxpayers as it raises their borrowing costs…

As it pushes the burden to pay off the debt onto everyone’s kids…

As far as I’m concerned, the Republicans are going in the wrong direction. The deduction should be yanked out from under everyone. Sales tax shouldn’t be deductible. Neither should State income taxes. The whole system is designed to benefit those who need it least while bleeding those who haven’t got the blood to give.

It’s a big part of why the middle class is vanishing, with a tiny few rising and the vast majority – the real average – sinking into serfdom…

But then I doubt Mike!™ gets that… After all, when you’re one of Mike’s!™ party, where a 20 million dollar golden parachute seems “normal,” it must be hell to try to make it on only $200,000 a year…

Legal Stress

2006-08-15T22:31:00.000-07:00

Driving home from work today, it suddenly struck me that I needed a little more stress. My radio was pleasantly filling my car with music from the local classic rock station. That obviously wouldn’t add the stress I was craving. So I tuned in to one of those wonderful talk radio stations where I new I could be assaulted with the asinine ranting of a right wing lunatic punctuated with moronic comments from people calling in.

I was not disappointed. Today’s topic was about the brand new Seattle cop that was killed by a drug crazed woman running a red light at 80 MPH. Read the story yourself. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003199343_crash15m.html

The bone of contention for this true blue (oops, I mean red) lockem up law and order fanatic was that this woman had been released after only serving a couple of months in prison because she was sentenced under a DOSA plea bargain. Under a Drug Offender Sentencing Alternative a suspected drug offender can plead guilty and promise to get treatment in return for serving a much shorter sentence. The thinking went something like this. If this woman had been tried and given a real sentence she would have been cooling her heals in prison when Mr. Policeman was driving through the intersection in question and would therefore be a public servant for many happy years.

Sounds wonderful don’t it? So why was my blood pressure spiking while I chugged along in rush hour traffic? Was it that I hated cops and want all of them killed? NO! It had more to do with the fact that tragedy happened because our legal system has become totally twisted by the “ if I don’t like it make it a crime crowd” and then made insane by the “ criminals are the real victims crowd”.

Let me explain. In the first place we have labeled many behaviors as crimes that in and of themselves have no direct negative impact on our ability to enjoy our own pursuit of happiness. Drug use itself should not be a crime. Stealing to support your habit is a crime. Endangering the public by driving under the influence is a crime. Letting your children go hungry so you can spend all your money on crack is a crime and should be dealt with as a crime.

OK, now what? If someone commits a “real” crime we should remove him or her from society for a time that is proportionate to the severity of the crime. For relatively minor crimes, a couple of years. For major crimes, a decade or two. For heinous crimes, life. Lets not stop there. If an offender is also a drug addict give them treatment while still in the properly controlled environment of prison. If they need job skills to give them a hope of a life without crime teach them. Give them what they need to be able to choose a life without crime. If they choose to go back to crime when they are released then warehouse them for life.

Tired Turtles Rant

2006-08-13T20:08:00.000-07:00

Tired Turtle’s Rant Of The Day

The world anxiously waits to see if the Israeli-Hesbola cease-fire will actually happen. I for one am not holding my breath. Each and every faction involved is plotting it’s failure while smiling for the camera. Israel is betting that Hesbola’s hatred of all things Jewish will make it impossible for them to restrain themselves from kicking Israel in the shins which will justify more carnage to civilian populations. Hesbola has embarrassed Israel by showing they are not an invincible superstate. A reputation earned by continually beating on the impotent Palestinians. Hesbola knows they will continue to receive ample resources from Syria and Iran as a reward for showing that the IDF has feet of clay. Even now you can bet that the Lebanese government officials are figuring out how they can skim enough from the imminent humanitarian aid to keep themselves comfortable while their nation burns. This show is far from over.

BETTER KILLING THROUGH CHEMISTRY

2006-08-11T17:28:00.000-07:00

Dominating the news today, and very likely for many days to come, is the story of the thwarting of an alleged plot to blow up as many as ten airliners in mid-flight between the UK and the US using explosives made from ingredients smuggled onto the planes. It is speculated the bombers intended to play chemist in the bathrooms…

FoxNews doing a good job of following the story and Matt Drudge is at his best today providing links on the unfolding plot. Links I thought worthwhile include:

Washington Post.com “Tip Followed '05 Attacks on London Transit”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/10/AR2006081001654_pf.html

The article begins “It all began with a tip: In the aftermath of the July 7, 2005, suicide bombings on London's transit system, British authorities received a call from a worried member of the Muslim community, reporting general suspicions about an acquaintance.”

Remember that, Muslim bashers… But for a Muslim those planes might be falling out of the sky as you read this…

The New York Times provides some insight into the scope of the problem this tactic creates for security agencies:

“Liquid Threat Is Hard to Detect”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/world/europe/11threat.html?ei=5065&en=77fb08a134ace3bf&ex=1155960000&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

And from Time.com:

“Thwarting the Airline Plot: Inside the Investigation”

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1225453,00.html

Or if you enjoy being unnecessarily alarmed, there’s this from the UK TimesOnline:

“Science briefing: chemical mix could create deadly flight blast”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-2306994,00.html

Quite the event…

We’re being told the plot is at least a year old, has operatives in at least Britain and Pakistan, was thoroughly infiltrated in both nations, may – or may not – have Al-Qaeda connections, and involved making an explosive organic peroxide, probably TATP, from hard to detect liquid components.

We’re not being told why the British moved against the plotters now, which leads to speculation of a political motive…

And I think we may be being told a few things that are just plain inaccurate. So before somebody calls for banning Miss Clairol, I’d like to offer three deep breaths and some thoughts on the practical side of this crazy endeavor…

Along with a couple of suggestions as to how this could be a hell of a lot worse.

TATP has been in the news quite a bit in the last few years. We’re told it is easy to make from “ordinary” chemicals bought in hardware stores or supermarkets, and we’re reminded it’s been used as a component – sometimes a main explosive, but usually a detonator – in suicide vests, IED’s, and Richard Reid’s shoes.

There are a lot of pages available on TATP, some of which I have found to be dangerously inaccurate. For a good basic read on just what TATP is, I’ll vouch for this Wikipedia entry:

“Acetone peroxide”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acetone_peroxide

I’d like to offer a little practical chemistry you probably won’t get elsewhere. Bear with me…

In chemical kinetics, a reaction goes forward anytime entropy is favored and the reactants are present. But in a reaction system, concentration is what we call a “rate step.” In other words, if even a tiny amount of reactants are present, a reaction happens, but it happens very slowly.

There is a pertinent example anyone with lab experience knows about. Diethyl Ether, usually just called ether, forms an explosive peroxide much less stable than TATP when it combines spontaneously with oxygen. If you open a bottle of pure ether, pour half of it out, and then put the rest on a shelf for several months, the tiny bit of oxygen available in the air in the bottle will decompose the ether, forming peroxide crystal around the bottlecap. Just opening the bottle will set it off. To prevent this, stabilizer is added to ether when it is packaged.

A little oxygen… A slow reaction and a scant amount of product.

There are a lot of dangerous chemicals available “off the shelf,” so to speak. And a lot of very ordinary products have dangerous ingredients. The main difference between that nasty industrial chemical and the Mr. Clean under your sink is the industrial version is highly concentrated and the cleaning fluid isn’t…

TATP… Triacetone triperoxide is made from acetone, hydrogen peroxide, and a strong acid. Acetone is a common chemical with a zillion uses which can be purchased in pure form in a hardware store, where it is sold as a paint solvent.

The other two are a bit trickier…

Hydrogen peroxide is one of those “dose makes the poison” cases. Medicinal peroxide, the stuff you pour over cuts, is sold at 3% strength. The stuff used to bleach hair is 6%. From there you go on up through concentrations into the 70% range, which is used in industrial processes like bleaching paper. The strongest stuff easily attainable is 30%, and is used to clean pools or hydroponic equipment.

And 30% is the weakest that is really practical for making TATP. You can use weaker mixes, but you get a poor yield, it’ll take forever, and you have to remove the water – the rest of the peroxide solution is water – at the end of the process. You can also concentrate the peroxide by careful boiling.

Then there is the acid. You can use either hydrochloric or sulfuric, the latter being the best choice. Moderately strong hydrochloric acid is sold as muriatic acid in hardware stores; you use it to clean brick. Battery electrolyte is 50% sulfuric acid. Neither of these is really strong enough to do a good job. Weak acid gives a slow reaction and creates a lot of DADP - diacetone diperoxide – which is less explosive but way less stable, having the unhappy habit of exploding spontaneously. Practically, you need the purest sulfuric acid you can steal – you can’t buy the “good stuff” in Wal-Mart…

So the assertion you could just pick the stuff up on the way to the airport is incorrect. Ordinarily available chemicals either won’t make the right stuff or make so little of it so slowly you could never accomplish the synthesis in an airliner bathroom…

The TimesOnline article claims the components were to be smuggled in two containers. That’s possible – you could mix the acetone and the peroxide, and then drizzle in the acid. So imagine trying to do this…

You got your bottles by the security teams. You had to seal the acetone-peroxide mix well, because it has a powerful odor any person can detect. Likewise, if your acid had leaked, it’d have eaten most anything organic or metallic it touched and might have started a fire. Now you’re in the can… You need to keep the mix cool somehow as you mix it, if your goal is to make TATP, wash it, dry it, and then set it off with some kind of electronic device, as has been suggested… And you need to accomplish all this before someone wonders why Abdul is barricaded in the John…

Or maybe that’s been considered… It will explode prematurely if the temperature rises too fast as you add the acid or the acid is too weak and you make DADP. You might not need a detonator if you tried to “do it wrong”… Just dump the acid straight in, glug glug… And shake the hell out of the mix… It wouldn’t be foolproof, but it might be proof enough for the fools involved. Perhaps that’s why there was to be so many attempts at once – to assure at least one success out of many efforts.

And a final issue: It has been claimed these liquids are not easily detectable. Bullcrap. Either bottle would have a suspiciously low pH; the acid alarmingly low. A simple dipstick test would reveal that. Likewise, the peroxide can be detected by a similar dipstick test. Sure, it means opening a zillion bottles… But it can be done.

But just so you don’t get any sleep for a while – at least not on a plane – consider a few other possibilities:

First, a “true confession:” I thought of this before it happened, and I’ve thought of a lot of other ways to do the same thing. I’m trained in the subject, but so are a lot of other people. If I thought of it, millions have… And they have thought of ideas like:

Turning metal hydrides into explosives. A hydride is an ionic combination of a metal and hydrogen. In most common chemical systems, hydrogen forms a positive ion – that’s what acid is. In a hydride, hydrogen takes on a negative charge. If you mix an acid – even water, which is a weak acid – with a hydride, you make hydrogen; a lot of it, very fast. So for example…

Start with sodium borohydride. It’s a common industrial chemical, hard to buy but easy to steal. You could use it as a dry powder – that would be best – but if it were hard to smuggle the powder, you could mix it with a very high pH solution of sodium hydroxide to form a very heavy, thick liquid – it would be a lot like Liquid Plumber. Put it in a stout bottle – there will be some gas pressure – and smuggle that onto a plane. In the bathroom, mix it with water. You’ll make enough hydrogen very fast to blow the plane to bits, Hindenburg style… One match and it’s history. You could also make an auto mixer that would do the same thing from the cargo hold…

Or a real nightmare scenario. We hear of suicide bombers wearing vests. What if the bomb were in the bomber?

You have a lot of “extra” organs… You could do without a kidney, a lobe of your liver, or even a couple of lobes of lung. If you’re a suicide bomber, you won’t miss them at all… Remove some of those “extra” organs… Then replace the tissue with a bag of explosive.

You could even do it with breast implants…

Fashion a detonator that looks like a pacemaker…

There are a lot more, but I’ll shut up. The point is made. We really can’t win this. The first hijackings cost the traveling public dear; 9-11 was astronomically more expensive. Even this foiled attempt will be costly, and had it succeeded… If this sort of thing keeps happening, it will destroy air travel as an available option for the general public. Eventually, only people thoroughly vetted beforehand will be able to fly, and they will pay a big price for the privilege. That will probably eliminate hundreds of flights and flight destinations – and tens of thousands of jobs.

There has to be a better way… Fighting the invisible enemy only works until it doesn’t, and then all the successes mean nothing.

New ideas, anyone?

DREAM TEAM

2006-07-29T16:37:00.000-07:00

The paramount neoconservative bottomfeeder “Drudges” a headline from the New York Times:

“Hillary Clinton, Mccain Held Vodka-Drinking Contest...”

Hmmm… By midnight he was witty and she beautiful…

Only on the DrudgeReport would a headline like that lead to a story like this:

“2008 May Test Clinton’s Bond With McCain”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/29/washington/29rivals.html?ei=5065&en=c05eac31f4771d4a&ex=1154836800&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print

A page full of political filler on a slow day…

But it invites a muse… Want to see the two Parties’ National Committees piss themselves to death? Put these two together on the same Independent ticket.

The dream – I mean nightmare – team…

They could arm wrestle for top billing first time out – then McCain could be President in 2016…

TANGIBLE HARMS OF THE PATRIOT ACT

2006-07-24T19:54:00.000-07:00

Conservative and neoconservative proponents of the Patriot Act and similar security measures adopted since 9/11 often insist “potential abuses” cited by civil libertarians are a smokescreen. My blogging colleague Karl over at LSU

http://leaningstraightup.com/

has often challenged me and others to demonstrate a situation where these laws have harmed innocent Americans. Well, Karl:

From TheDenverChannel.com - hat tip: Huffington Post – we have this:

“Marshals: Innocent People Placed On 'Watch List' To Meet Quota
Marshals Say They Must File One Surveillance Detection Report, Or SDR, Per Month”

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/9559707/detail.html

“You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they're reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it.

The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they're required to submit at least one report a month. If they don't, there's no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.

"Innocent passengers are being entered into an international intelligence database as suspicious persons, acting in a suspicious manner on an aircraft ... and they did nothing wrong," said one federal air marshal….

Although the agency strongly denies any presence of a quota system, Las Vegas-based air marshals have produced documents that show their performance review is directly linked to producing SDRs.”

Not surprising at all. Police departments have often been accused of giving cops quotas for things as simple as traffic tickets… In fairness, “quotas” - numerically based performance standards, if you prefer – are one of the few metrics that can be applied to independent field personnel. But still:

“What kind of impact would it have for a flying individual to be named in an SDR?

"That could have serious impact ... They could be placed on a watch list. They could wind up on databases that identify them as potential terrorists or a threat to an aircraft. It could be very serious," said Don Strange, a former agent in charge of air marshals in Atlanta. He lost his job attempting to change policies inside the agency.”

Sounds tangible to me… Well, Karl… anyone??? Or will this abuse just be one more on a rapidly multiplying list the right refuses to recognize?

You know, I think Republicans need a new mascot. The Elephant doesn’t describe them properly… The Ostrich would be much more accurate…

NEWSBUSTERS: ATTACKING AMERICAN PATRIOTS

2006-07-23T16:52:00.000-07:00

Well, the America haters over at NewsBastards are at it again, bashing the patriots at The New York Times while ignoring illegal government actions:

“New York Times Strikes Again, Reveals Information on Arms Shipment to Israel”

http://newsbusters.org/node/6534

This rant concerns a Times story reporting that the US was shipping bombs to Israel on a “rush” basis… These munitions, long since paid for - I mean, long since ripped off from the US taxpayer, since Israel pays for very little of the arms it receives - were to be requisitioned on an “as needed” basis.

No real news here…

What is news, news that is being ignored by the right-leaning MSM, including the Times, is that these weapons deliveries may be in violation of US law. Newsbastards typifies the party line, insisting “One of America’s allies purchased a variety of weapons last year, and now that it is being attacked by a shared enemy, has asked that the shipment of these arms be sped up to allow it to better defend itself.”

Damn. I didn’t know Lebanese kids were enemies of the US! And just how far have their armies penetrated into Israel?

Common Dreams puts the situation in perspective, noting that the weapons, which have been the proximate cause of the deaths of at least 200 innocent Lebanese citizens, are sold only for use in strictly defensive operations:

“Israel Violates Law on U.S. Weapons in Mideast”

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0718-07.htm

“"Section 4 of the (U.S.) Arms Export Control Act requires that military items transferred to foreign governments by the United States be used solely for internal security and legitimate self-defense," says Stephen Zunes, professor of politics at the University of San Francisco.

"Since Israeli attacks against Lebanon's civilian infrastructure and population centers clearly go beyond legitimate self-defense, the United States is legally obliged to suspend arms transfers to Israel," Zunes told IPS.”

Sneer at the source if you like – it doesn’t change the facts. Neither do the facts change because nobody in the government will recognize them. The rest of the world recognizes them. What other Nation would receive such blindly preferential treatment?

Certainly the Arab world recognizes the facts. As the Times points out, “The decision to quickly ship the weapons to Israel was made with relatively little debate within the Bush administration, the officials said. Its disclosure threatens to anger Arab governments and others because of the appearance that the United States is actively aiding the Israeli bombing campaign in a way that could be compared to Iran’s efforts to arm and resupply Hezbollah.”

They ought to be angry.

Here’s hoping that when the full consequences of this blind support becomes manifest, Americans get angry too.

POLITICS BEFORE HEALTH AT THE FDA

2006-07-23T13:58:00.000-07:00

A survey recently published by the Union of Concerned Scientists should disturb every American:

“FDA Scientists Pressured to Exclude, Alter Findings; Scientists Fear Retaliation for Voicing Safety Concerns”

http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/fda-scientists-pressured.html

The survey, which intended “to examine inappropriate interference with science at federal agencies” was sent to 5,918 FDA scientists, and received 997 responses:

“18.4% of the respondents said that they "have been asked, for non-scientific reasons, to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information or their conclusions in a FDA scientific document."”

“61% of the respondents knew of cases where "Department of Health and Human Services or FDA political appointees have inappropriately injected themselves into FDA determinations or actions."”

“Only 47% think the "FDA routinely provides complete and accurate information to the public."”

“81% agreed that the "public would be better served if the independence and authority of FDA post-market safety systems were strengthened."”

I am aware many conservatives have issues with the Union of Concerned Scientists. Nevertheless, I think it unwise to shoot at the messenger this time – the message is too important. If you study the many cases in which the welfare of the public has been compromised in environmental, public health, or public safety issues, you will find a common thread:

Government action necessary to protect the people’s interests was corrupted by political pressure from special interest groups whose agendas were allowed to trump science.

The pressure can come from anywhere - environmental groups, industry lobbyists, religious groups, or competing government bureaucracies. The resulting action - or inaction - typically rolls over patiently garnered evidence to side with profits, prejudices, or unprovable beliefs.

The direct results can include monies unnecessarily spent, activities unnecessarily curtailed, or prejudices unreasonably reinforced. The practical result is usually a lot of unnecessary human suffering.

In the case of the FDA, the effects are especially poignant: The FDA has approved drugs like Vioxx, later found to be dangerous - just as the suppressed evidence indicated. The FDA has refused to accept overwhelming evidence of the efficacy of drugs like marijuana as an adjunct in the treatment of cancer and AIDS, siding instead with fools who are still confusing “Reefer Madness” with science.

Perhaps the worst example is the political back & forth we have seen over the approval of RU 486. Stalled for years by political pressure from pro-life groups who want to stop all abortions, it was then promoted by the Clinton Administration, which was equally partisan in ignoring safety issues. The ink was barely dry on the relatively liberal September 2000 approval when the GWB administration took over and pressure began to reverse it. The pro-life lobby applied this pressure using the language of the protectionist: Anti RU-486 partisans proposed, in cleverly ambiguous terms, that to be “safe enough” this drug had to have a 100% record of success - something no drug or procedure has ever had - and argued that since it lacked that 100% complication free record it should therefore only be administered by practitioners prepared to cope with the rarest and most extreme of complications, an insistence which would effectively prevent many clinics and physicians from prescribing it at all.

So the argument seesawed between ignoring the complications and obsessing on them - two positions that were equally invalid. Meanwhile uncertainty about the final resolution has retarded the development of a properly expert medical community equipped to use this tool, which is at least as safe as and cheaper than surgical alternatives commonly used…

It shouldn’t matter which side you take on the “rightness” of such a drug. What should matter is the private right of the informed individual who seeks the treatment, and the ability of physicians to manage the treatment and its potential downsides within the context of the alternatives.

Like most bureaucracies, the FDA has a mission statement:

“The FDA is responsible for protecting the public health by assuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation. The FDA is also responsible for advancing the public health by helping to speed innovations that make medicines and foods more effective, safer, and more affordable; and helping the public get the accurate, science-based information they need to use medicines and foods to improve their health.”

When the FDA lets political bickering and social agendas interfere with those goals, it fails in its mission, and fails the public.

That should concern all of us – not just the scientists.

DEMON JUSTICE

2006-07-23T11:10:00.000-07:00

Yahoo News relates the strange case of John Curtis Ridgeway, accused of assault:

“Jury acquits man of 'handshake' assaults”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060722/ap_on_fe_st/handshake_acquittal

“Ridgeway was seen pulling out a vial of liquid and rubbing his hands with the contents after a December jury trial in which he was found guilty of driving without insurance, authorities said… Ridgeway insisted on shaking hands with the prosecutor, the police officer who pulled him over and a bailiff, authorities said”

“The three got sick within an hour or so, according to testimony. Symptoms, which lasted about 24 hours, included nausea, headaches, numbness and tingling. Two of the three went to the hospital.

Ridgeway told The Associated Press after he was charged that the substance was olive oil. He testified that he used oil to anoint "corrupt buildings" and that it was meant to rid the buildings of demons.”

HMMM… Oil is purported to cast out demons… Oil touches a lawyer and two cops… All three get sick…

If I were religious, I might be drawing a conclusion from this…

But what I really want to know is where I can get some of this stuff… It sounds mighty handy. I bet if you sprayed it inside The Beltway, everybody would melt.

THEY NEVER LEARN

2006-07-21T12:21:00.000-07:00

World Tribune is reporting this morning on another iteration in an old miscalculation:

“Israel's military stunned by the failure of its air war”

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/06/front2453938.0986111113.html

“Israel's new chief of staff, an air force general, believed that most of Israel's future operations would be conducted from the air.

Military leaders were convinced that with superior communications and air power they did not even need new U.S. "bunker buster" munitions to root out terror leaders in underground hideaways.

Today, this vision of air power as a panacea has been shattered.

"Air power is not the answer here," a senior officer said. 'You have to go from one Hizbullah [weapons] bunker to another. Some of these bunkers are seven meters deep and can't be destroyed by aircraft, even if you could find them."
The air force learned that lesson in Beirut as fighter-jets sought to destroy Hizbullah headquarters, Middle East Newsline reported. Officials acknowledged that 23 tons of munitions failed to penetrate the thick walls of the underground command headquarters constructed by Iran.”

Hermann Goering was surprised when the Luftwaffe was unable to destroy the Dunkirk evacuation… LBJ was surprised when thousands of B-52 airstrikes failed to break the back of North Vietnam… And does anyone remember our air campaign in the Balkans a few years back?

The high-heeled boys never learn… It’s boots on the ground. Now, we’ll see which side can muster more boots.

AN IMPEACHABLE OFFENSE

2006-07-21T11:09:00.000-07:00

VIA MyWay News, Mark Sherman of AP reports on testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales:

“Gonzales: Bush Blocked Eavesdropping Probe”

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060718/D8IUGOTO0.html

“Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday that President Bush personally blocked Justice Department lawyers from pursuing an internal probe of the warrantless eavesdropping program that monitors Americans' international calls and e-mails when terrorism is suspected.

The department's Office of Professional Responsibility announced earlier this year it could not pursue an investigation into the role of Justice lawyers in crafting the program, under which the National Security Agency intercepts some telephone calls and e-mail without court approval.”

That’s known as obstruction of justice, an impeachable offense. If the Republican majority weren’t traitors to the Constitution, articles of impeachment would be on the table today.

We have to hand Congress back to the Democrats. It’s the only hope the Constitution has.

THE REAL PATRIOTS

2006-07-17T19:12:00.000-07:00

The New York Times re-stirred the hornet’s nest with an excellent editorial about GWB’s continuing assault on the Constitution via abuse of power:

“The Real Agenda”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/16/opinion/16sun1.html?ex=1310702400&en=d38dc3c60f31985e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

BRAVO! BRAVO! BRAVO!

I won’t reiterate the arguments; they don’t need it. But if you cannot stand to agree with the Times even when they are 100% right, try this from FoxNews contributor Susan Estrich:

“The Arlen Specter-Dick Cheney Deal...”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,203898,00.html

Same arguments, different advocate…

“The Arlen Specter-Dick Cheney Deal” SUCKS! It is an ass-kissing, servile, unconstitutional rollover to an out of control administration – and a damn good reason why we need Democratic majorities in both Houses, majorities with enough balls to lay down an ultimatum to this renegade President: Follow the law or face immediate impeachment proceedings.

I never thought I’d be calling for a return to the incompetence of Democratic control, but that’s the only choice we have, short of taking up arms. The President has decided the administration is bound by no law, and Congress won’t bind them. The Constitution, which charges Congress with creating the strictures of law and the President with “faithfully executing” them, is now therefore destroyed. All that’s left is the Court, which rightly slapped the administration down hard.

But…

I have to ask, how long before this administration - or a future one – begins ignoring the Court? It will happen unless something is done to remove the Shrub from power, or at least neuter his agenda. Power feeds on itself. We cannot let the beast grow.

A lot of people - a lot of neocon agitators, that is - have spent a lot of ink & bandwidth bashing the Times, calling them traitors, accusing them of aiding the phantom enemy in the terror un-war of unlimited duration.

I think there are a lot more patriots at the New York Times than there are in the Bush administration - where I doubt there are any left at all.

YESTERDAY'S REFORMER - TODAY'S APOLOGIST

2006-07-16T15:52:00.000-07:00

David Postman over at The Seattle Times blogs an interview with Republican luminary Newt Gingrich, who recently visited Seattle - well, Bellevue – in support of Dave Reichert, Doug Roulstone, and the state party:

“Gingrich says it's World War III”

http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/davidpostman/archives/2006/07/gingrich_says_its_world_war_iii.html

Gingrich discussed several topics within the strategy of winning in 2006… You can tell right off what caught Dave Postman’s eye… Here’s what caught mine:

“Gingrich said he is "very worried" about Republican's facing fall elections and says the party must have the "nerve" to nationalize the elections and make the 2006 campaigns about a liberal Democratic agenda rather than about President Bush's record.

Gingrich says that as of now Republicans "are sailing into the wind" in congressional campaigns. He said that's in part because of the Iraq war, adding, "Iraq is hard and painful and we do not explain it very well."…

He said that as Democrats make the elections about George Bush, Republicans should make it about House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco. He said voters need to be told "how weirdly San Francisco these guys are voting" and Democrats will "collapse in defeat."”

There you go, boys! Mr. Republican says if Republicans run on the Republican record, especially the record of GWB, they’re toast. Instead he suggests ferreting out the most liberal faces in the Democratic Party and trying to build a scare campaign around them!

Vote for us! We’re incompetent bunglers, but the other guys are scary loons!

Anyone for a second amendment party? There’s a few things we need to toss into the bay…

WWIII… My dear honorable [ex] Senator dipshit, we’re still fighting WWI, still cleaning up the mess of a century past. The whole tragic mess in the Middle East represents the result of our arrogant continuation of yesterday’s mistakes. Some historian you are…

We have to find a better way, because if we do it your way, we’re sure to lose.

Meanwhile, I’m reading The Huffington Post so you don’t have to…

Over at Huffpo, and coming from the other end of the ideological spectrum, Gary Hart is blogging along a very different track:

“Welcome to the Hornets' Nest”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-hart/welcome-to-the-hornets-n_b_25061.html

You’d think Hart & Gingrich would have more in common… After all, they’re both card carrying members of the “my affair ruined me” club…

Hart could have just said “I told you so.”… His remarks aren’t remarkable, except he’s one more person pointing out the obvious:

“By our justified overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan, though unsuccessful decapitation of al Qaeda, we removed a thorn in Iran's side. By removing Saddam Hussein, we removed a thorn in Iran's other side.
But, inadvertantly and ignorantly, we empowered Iran to undertake a major intervention on behalf of the Shiite majority in Iraq. In response to our insistence that Iran not develop any nuclear capability, Iran and Syria have emboldened Hezbullah in Lebanon to energize Israel's formidable military and Hamas to do the same.”

That seems to be common wisdom, but another HuffPo link offers a different view:

“The Rules of the Game”

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11724

Laura Rozen of The American Prospect interviews Mark Perry, who has the advantage of actually being in the middle of the hornets nest: He’s “co-director of the Conflicts Forum, a Beirut-based nongovernmental organization that has, over the past three years, put former senior American and British policy-makers and intelligence officials in talks with Hezbollah and other militant political Islamic groups in Lebanon.”

Read this.

Perry thinks this most recent flare-up in what he sees as a 25 year war between Israel and Hezbollah probably began the way so many other wars started: Local bungling that wasn’t rectified in time by higher-ups. No grand scheme… Just the near certainty that if you have two armies looking for opportunities to shoot at each other across a frontier, occasionally incidents occur…

Which brings us to another HuffPo must-read:

“Shrewd Israeli Objectives May Be to Curb US Deal-Making Options In Middle East”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-clemons/shrewd-israeli-objectives_b_25110.html

Steve Clemons asks the question, “Why is Israel pounding most of Lebanon rather than just the South and rather than pinpointing its attack against Hezbollah assets? Why the dramatic bombing of explosive fuel centers? The attacks both in Gaza and in Beirut seem made for Fox News, CNN, and the next Schwarzenegger movie.”

He ascribes this to many factors, some as petty as Ehud Olmert’s and Amir Peretz’s desire to avoid looking “timid,” and others very significant:

Clemons suggests that recent moves by the US in the Middle East are viewed by many Israelis as running counter to Israel’s interests. Israel may have seized upon this latest provocation to deliberately boil the pot, destroying the American peace initiatives in the unholy land and recent American attempts to reach an accommodation with Iran - destroy them once and for all…

Which makes sense, I think: Israel doesn’t want peace with Iran. Israel wants safety from Iran. They’re not interested in an uneasy “MAD” style coexistence, believing that the “MAD” system confers the advantage on the madman.

The Israelis are equally uninterested in attempts to accommodate - or appease, if you prefer - Hezbollah or Hamas; here, they are only interested in decimating hornets…

But if we don’t deal with Iran, probably Israel will be forced to accept what they clearly view as an unacceptable status-quo; bluster aside, they can’t go this one alone.

They need a big fat war now…

At the same time, it’s hard to doubt Hezbollah and Hamas aren’t equally interested in war now… Why??? Why do they think they have a winning hand?

Do they have some of Saddam’s “missing” WMD’s?

Or is it that they are equally afraid of accommodation and mainstreaming? After all, if Iran and Syria’s leaders come to their senses, H & H inc. is finished… Even their own success could doom their more radical elements… Hamas won an election awhile back… Nothing brings on accommodation quite as fast as peace, quiet, and democratic moderation…

All in all, I wish we could just walk away… Away from the curse of our “allies” and “enemies” alike in the region, on both sides of this ancient conflict. But we can’t. This is the price we pay for taking out Iraq while leaving Iran and its little buddy Syria intact, functioning powers. Until a new, balancing, militarily competent regional power emerges - something that may never happen - there are 80 million Iranians and 20 million Syrians standing between our army and home.

Well, at least Newtie is right about one thing: The Republicans shouldn’t try to run on their “accomplishments”…

Postman’s Postscript:

David Postman has published some quotable quotes from Gingrich’s performance today on Meet The Press:

“A different tone from Gingrich on World War III”

http://blog.seattletimes.nwsource.com/davidpostman/archives/2006/07/a_different_tone_from_gingrich_on_world_war_iii.html

On the whole, quite interesting, especially this. Quoting Postman:

“In both interviews he praised John F. Kennedy, though in Bellevue it came with a clear shot at the current leadership of the Democratic Party:

"The old Democratic Party was led by John F. Kennedy who threatened nuclear war over missiles in Cuba; because the old Democratic Party was a very patriotic, hawkish party. It had fought the Second World War, the First World War and the Korean War. It was a tough party.

"The current Democratic Party would say, 'Well, if only if we had abandoned Miami than Cuba wouldn't have any grievances' -- the Howard Dean vision."

On TV Gingrich said only:

"And John F. Kennedy, a Democrat who understood the importance of power in the world, was prepared to go to nuclear war to stop missiles from being in Cuba."”

So in private, we get the old “pick a fight” Newtie… In front of the larger audience, we get the new, kindler, gentler Newtie…

Caveat emptor…

NO WAY

2006-07-12T18:29:00.000-07:00

Today, Drudge links ABC for a report on a new CDC proposal:

“Should Every American Adult Be Tested for HIV?”

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/story?id=2179090&page=1

Not only no but hell no… I will never comply with a law like this.

That’s what privacy means…

SHUTTING DOWN THE CENSORS

2006-07-09T11:52:00.000-07:00

Huffington Post brought us some fine news for a Sunday morning, via the Salt Lake Tribune:

“Utah film sanitizers ordered to cut it”

“Court ruling: Deleting objectionable language, sex and violence injures artistic expression”

http://www.sltrib.com/ci_4026743

I’m tickled pink by the ruling… Screw moralists and especially moralist censors… But I’m a bit disturbed by the reasoning…

If you haven’t been following this dog, there are a few companies, most of them in Utah, which have been capitalizing on an idea started by a mom & pop video shop, Sunrise Family Video. They offered to edit nude scenes from "Titanic" for $5 for people who purchased the movie.

Well, the “I can’t look at a titty without turning to stone” crowd lined up at the door, and the enterprise took off, spawning copycat copythieves...

Needless to say, movie producers got a little hot about this…

I’d like to see the whole ruling – the Court posts its rulings but the last post is a day before this decision. If you’re interested, go to:

http://www.co.uscourts.gov/opinions_frame2.htm

All we have is this snippet from the report:

“"Their [studios and directors] objective . . . is to stop the infringement because of its irreparable injury to the creative artistic expression in the copyrighted movies," the judge wrote in a 16-page decision. "There is a public interest in providing such protection. Their business is illegitimate."”

Artistic expression… How about “it’s mine and I don’t want you to chop it up?” How about “It’s mine and I didn’t authorize you to reproduce it?”

The decision takes the form of an order to CleanFlicks, Play It Clean Video, and CleanFilms, to stop "producing, manufacturing, creating" as well as renting edited movies – and it will be appealed. Ray Lines, chief executive of CleanFlicks, said he plans to meet with his attorneys Monday to discuss the ruling, but vowed to keep fighting Hollywood. "We're disappointed," he said. "This is a typical case of David vs. Goliath, but in this case, Hollywood rewrote the ending. We're going to continue to fight."

So it’s on to the Tenth Circuit, I suppose. Too bad it’s not the Ninth… This would be a good one for them.

WHY WE NEED THE ACLU

2006-07-08T18:26:00.000-07:00

There’s a good case in point for the ACLU haters being discussed today – a good case in point for why we need the ACLU. Via Oregon Live, a report from AP:

“ACLU sues Secret Service and police over 2004 anti-Bush protest”

http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/regional/index.ssf?/base/news-15/1152221061289450.xml&storylist=orlocal

From the article:

“The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Thursday alleging the U.S. Secret Service and state and local police protecting President Bush during a 2004 campaign appearance discriminated against anti-Bush protesters when they moved to clear the streets outside an inn where the president was eating dinner.

The class-action lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court contends that police acting on orders from the Secret Service used unreasonable force to move some 200 people peacefully protesting against the war in Iraq… while allowing pro-Bush demonstrators to remain standing on sidewalks.”

According to the ACLU, “16 similar instances in 12 other states and at least three other lawsuits have been filed.”

“"We have no quarrel with protecting the president." [ACLU representative] Temple said. "Consistently, the Secret Service has used protection of the president as an excuse for keeping anti-Bush protesters out of the hearing of the president."”

The protesters, who took pains to maintain a peaceful, orderly protest, were assured they would be “OK” if they stayed on the sidewalks – the same sidewalks the pro-shrub crowd used. However, “40 police officers in riot gear brandished clubs and fired paintballs loaded with pepper spray to move an estimated 200 to 300 demonstrators away from the Jacksonville Inn” where the first family dined after a campaign rally…

Not to protect the president’s safety – just to move the demonstrators off the sidewalks and out of earshot of the President…

That says it all, and exposes the core of what is wrong with the Imperial Presidency the Office of the First Servant has devolved into… He is not a king – he does not have the Kingly prerogative of being removed from the complaints of the people he serves.

GO, ACLU!

TREASON FOR REAL

2006-07-08T17:18:00.000-07:00

Today, as a service to the neoconservative pinheads who salivate as they listen to Hannity or Coulter spew their poisonous idiocy about “treason” at the New York Times or similar institutions they just don’t like…

Here’s treason for real, or as close as you will get without a sovereign state on the other side of the war. From The Blotter:

“California Man Revealed as al Qaeda Leader”

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/07/california_man_.html

Now pay attention, boys and girls… This man, without renouncing his citizenship, has removed himself to the enemy camp and is providing significant aid in levying war…

Assuming you classify Al-Qaeda as an enemy waging war instead of an international crime syndicate, this is in fact treason…

The first two points are often overlooked. You have to be a citizen, and you have to “adhere” to the enemy or levy war. The fact it’s wartime isn’t enough, To quote statute:

“United States Code at 18 U.S.C. § 2381: "whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason”…

The Constitution defines treason but does not create the offence in law…

All of the “well known” convictions for treason in recent times weren’t: The Rosenbergs, Johnathan Pollard, etc. were convicted of espionage, not treason… John Walker Lindh pled guilty to conspiracy to murder… Treason didn’t apply, since he “removed” himself in peacetime.

Bitch Coulter has used the case of Iva Toguri D'Aquino, aka Tokyo Rose, in published remarks on the subject as an example of someone convicted of treason… Of course, she neglects to add the conviction was based of perjured testimony which was later exposed… Iva Toguri D'Aquino was finally exonerated and eventually pardoned… Something Coulter fails to mention…

So here you go, a real live traitor, if you can take him alive… Got to it, dogs of war!

NOVAK TWOFER

2006-07-08T13:14:00.000-07:00

Everybody’s favorite sonofabitch, Robert Novak, brings us four items in today’s dirtbag, two of which I find to be of particular interest:

“Rudy for president?”

http://townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?UrlTitle=rudy_for_president&ns=RobertDNovak&dt=07/08/2006&page=full&comments=true

I would find the lead item of little note - speculation about Giuliani’s presidential aspirations is cheap - except for this:

“Republican insiders respond to [Giuliani’s high standing in the polls] by saying rank-and-file GOP voters will abandon Giuliani once they realize his position on abortion, gay rights and gun control. Party strategists calculate that if he actually runs, he must change on at least one of these issues”…

So if he’s pro-gun he can be pro-abortion and pro-gay marriage?

Or anti-gun, anti-abortion, and pro-gay marriage?

Or anti-gay marriage, anti-gun, and pro-abortion?

I know… We read stuff like this all the time… But it just makes me want to go find neoconservative Republicans and slap the shit out of them…

If the neoconservative agenda rests on cornerstones like this, they ought to be slapping the shit out of themselves… If it doesn’t, they ought to be slapping the shit out of Republican triangulators who reduce them to such nonsense…

The second amendment is important in the abstract but is in no way threatened; the other two are strictly personal issues no government on any level should ever interfere with.

When will the right realize there are real issues out there?

Speaking of a real issue, the third item in the dirtbag is especially interesting.

“Wooing Hispanics”

In it’s entirety:

“Presidential adviser Karl Rove and Sen. Sam Brownback, two conservative Republicans who favor a guest-worker program for immigrants, will address the left-wing Hispanic advocacy group La Raza in Los Angeles this week.

La Raza was active in increasing participation in nationwide work stoppages and demonstrations April 10 after the House passed a tough border enforcement bill. La Raza in Spanish means "The Race."

Former President Bill Clinton heads the list of speakers for the annual meeting of La Raza's national council. The Rev. Jesse Jackson will appear on a panel.”

What do Karl Rove, Bill Clinton, Sam Brownback, and Jesse Jackson all have in common? They’re all sucking up to the Mexican Black Panthers…

For better or worse, the “old America” - the America of the melting pot, the America founded on a good idea - has been sold out to the globalist pirates for whom borders – and the standards that come with them – are an inconvenient impediment to profits…

If the anti-immigration crowd isn’t ready to use their second amendment rights yet, you have to wonder why…

4TH OF JULY VISIONS: A TALE OF TWO COUNTRIES

2006-07-04T13:17:00.000-07:00

Two good local reads on the holiday have come my way today, and have somehow connected themselves in my twisty mind…

They are from people of, I think it’s fair to say, very different ideological biases – yet I find myself agreeing with both of them for the most part.

And it reminds me of what the choice between supporting the left or the right, the Republicans or Democrats, means to me personally - and of their small differences and great similarities…

First, a good short essay from Toby Nixon, a Republican who represents Washington’s 45th legislative district. It’s in the form of an untitled letter to supporters. You can read this at the Representative’s website or at Leaning Straight Up, where the hat tip goes to Karl:

http://www.tobynixon.com/news.htm#a179

http://leaningstraightup.com/2006/07/04/the-declaration-of-independence/

The second piece is by Seattle Post-Intelligencer columnist Robert Jamieson:

“Blowing up democracy on Fourth of July”

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/276374_robert04x.html

Lacking specific knowledge, I will nevertheless advance the presumption this man votes Democrat…

Republican or Democrat… Hanging or lethal injection…

Or so it often seems to me.

Either way, I can count on the government taking more of my money than I’m willing to give and spending a lot of that in ways I don’t approve of, including some that are downright foolish.

The “R’s” will spend a disproportionate amount of that money on foreign misadventures which perpetuate the cycle of war – job security for the military industrial complex. Of course, the “D’s” get their licks in on this one, too: It was a “D” who escalated Vietnam from a relatively minor police action into a major war…

Beware Texans on the warpath…

The “D’s” will spend a disproportionate amount of my money on social programs, some of which do nothing but perpetuate problems.

The “R’s,” by perpetuating American hegemony, will better secure my prosperity. But if I end up in the poor farm, the “D’s” will take better care of me.

I’m more likely to be either rich or ruined by Republican policies… I’m more likely to be poor and protected by the Democrats.

Neither group advocates protecting my rights the way I think they should be protected. The “R’s” will do a better job protecting my real property and will promote a better operating environment for any business activity I might start. Representative Nixon goes into detail on the hot-button issue of takings in his piece:

“… Today, our government too often assumes for itself the power to take from us our lives, our liberty, and our property. It may be in the form of a “critical areas ordinance” that takes from each rural landowner the use of 65% of their land, or a U.S. Supreme Court decision that says any local government can take our home from us if they think some other private landowner would pay them more in taxes for it, or a state legislature that says the government should take ownership of a significant part of our assets when we die instead of them being inherited by our children…”

Bravo. It should be noted the GWB administration recently issued an Executive Order which repudiates economic “takings” by the Federal government of the kind allowed by Kelo…

Bravo…

The “D’s” are 90% AWOL on this matter. The majority “D’s” in Washington’s Legislature have given us land use and environmental standards so rigorous that the property right of many is practically void.

The collectivist left does not respect property rights per se - and neither does the Democratic Party.

On the other hand, siding with the “R’s” means accepting a “wink-wink nudge-nudge” theocracy which will seek to marginalize - and support the marginalization of - anyone who chooses to follow a non-traditional lifestyle. This will include sexual and religious minorities, people who eschew traditional marriage, etc…

The “D’s” are more willing to keep their morals out of my home and my life and their religions in their churches where they belong.

So I can protect either my property or my privacy, but not both…

And it’s privacy of a different kind - government secrecy - which occupies most of Mr. Jamieson’s attention in his piece, railing, as he does, against the Bush Administration’s secret programs and what he views as administration efforts to stifle the constitutionally protected free press:

“President Bush recently lashed out against reporters for divulging a secret government program that monitors international banking transactions. He called such newspaper revelations "disgraceful" acts that help terrorists… In Bush's world, the media should be lapdogs for the administration, not watchdogs. Asking questions is rude. Lies aren't lies -- they're examples of "truthiness." And when all else fails just pull out the fear card -- with color-coded terror warnings -- and distract the public.”

Mr. Jamieson quotes Thomas Jefferson “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

Old Tom… He really was a fine anarchist… And I would agree with him.

Yet Jamieson should consider a little less personalization here… There has been a lot of “D’s” riding this bandwagon… The President has a lot of bi-partisan support for his “security initiatives”…

Which brings me to the place where the minor distinctions without major differences between “R’s” and “D’s” merge: Both groups crave more power, even if they would wield it differently. And this is why I contend the power grab must stop now. I think GWB has vastly abused his office with unnecessary expansions of power cloaked in the necessity of fighting a “war on terror” - a war with only the most nebulous of goals, a will o’ the wisp enemy, and no definable end…

The powers are contingent on the war and last as long as it does… The war may never end…

Supporters of GWB, do you want a “D” wielding that enhanced power? Would you have been comfortable with Slick Willie having these powers? How about Mrs. Willie? The woman who, despite her only connection to the government being her marriage, nevertheless just happened to get a hold of at least a thousand FBI files… Have you forgotten? Not me.

She could be your next President… And I don’t believe for a minute any “D” - Kerry, Gore, any of them - would have failed to pull the same shenanigans the shrub has…

And a final question: If war powers can be applied to fighting against this will o’ the wisp, can they be used against others???

Every wartime President we have had since Lincoln has abused wartime powers. Our only defense is disclosure.

Which is why I support the New York Times in its recent disclosures of classified government programs. I don’t want the government wielding the power of the secret. I don’t believe programs like the SWIFT requests need to be secret – in fact, I’ll suggest that if they are out in plain view they might go a long way in discouraging wannabees like those fools recently nabbed in Florida…

The real terrorists will expect US to pull out all the stops… The others should be warned.

So, for a last call here’s two more pieces I recommend on Independence Day. The first is The New York Times rebuttal to critics:

“When Do We Publish a Secret?”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/01/opinion/01keller.html?ei=5090&en=d54ac45e4e52e739&ex=1309406400&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

And finally, from America’s last honest President, James Earl Carter:

“We Need Fewer Secrets”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/02/AR2006070200674_pf.html

And may the Star Spangled Banner continue to wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

SELLOUT?

2006-07-03T14:15:00.000-07:00

The assassination of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq is old news by now, but the threads of the story continue.

Analysis of the surprisingly large amount of information gained in the aftermath – surprising in the sense it survived an airstrike – certainly continues in intelligence circles, while pundits and reporters scramble to “get the story.” Emerging is a picture of a man whose actions increasingly alienated supporters and potential allies… With perhaps a few very odd twists.

For a good, if very long read on the subject, we have a report from MEMRI:

“Al-Zarqawi Post Mortem: How He Lost His Sunni Allies Prior to His Killing”

http://memri.org/bin/latestnews.cgi?ID=IA28406

To summarize: Zarqawi had many enemies among Iraqis and a shrinking circle of conditional allies due to his playing everyone against everyone, his brutal tactics, and his dogmatic refusal to compromise…

Sort of like Karl Rove but with a gun…

Today, however, there is a fascinating blurb that might provide insight into who some of those allies may have been – and into some surprising enemies:

VIA Huffington Post –the first major American blog to carry the story – Yahoo brings us an account of a story from the Italian newspaper La Repubblica:

“Al-Zarqawi's wife: Al-Qaida sold him out”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060703/ap_on_re_eu/iraq_al_zarqawi

From the story:

“Al-Qaida leaders sold out Abu Musab al-Zarqawi to the United States in exchange for a promise to let up in the search for Osama bin Laden, the slain militant's wife claimed in an interview with an Italian newspaper. The woman, identified by La Repubblica as al-Zarqawi's first wife, said al-Qaida's top leadership reached a deal with U.S. intelligence because al-Zarqawi had become too powerful. She claimed Sunni tribes and Jordanian secret services mediated the deal.”

On an unrelated but potentially explosive note, the article goes on to claim the memory of Zarqawi’s cellphone contained “telephone numbers of senior officials” which “included ministry employees and members of parliament.”

FoxNews has published a similar account of the cellphone numbers find.

Fascinating… What a tangled web this may become…

There are a lot of problems with this story, not the least of which are the questions of how and how much does this Jordanian woman know about the Al-Qaeda leadership. But still…

There were already reports of a sellout. The day after the airstrike, IHT ran a story claiming the US found Zarqawi by following his “"spiritual adviser," a man named Sheikh Abd al-Rahman.” IHT went on to claim the tip that allowed the US to zero Rahman came from “an Iraqi informant inside Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.”

“Zarqawi betrayed by Qaeda insider”

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/06/09/africa/web.0609raid.php

At the same time, ABC news “The Blotter” reported the breakthrough came from the Jordanian intelligence service:

“Captured Zarqawi Aide Spilled the Beans”

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/06/captured_zarqaw.html#comments

According to ABC:

“An Iraqi customs agent secretly working with Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's terror cell spilled the beans on the group after he was arrested, Jordanian officials tell ABC News.
Ziad Khalaf Raja al-Karbouly was arrested by Jordanian intelligence forces last spring.
Officials say Karbouly confessed to his role in the terror cell and provided crucial information on the names of Zarqawi commanders and locations of their safe houses.”

Neither of these versions were confirmed in their entirety by US officials…

Which brings us back to the original… What if??? The accounts of MEMRI, among others, supply the insight that Zarqawi had few friends and many enemies, although the most recent account suggests some surprising friends. Earlier reports - some going back months - had suggested Zarqawi was often at odds with the Al-Qaeda leadership.

What if? What if Osama Bin Laden concluded Zarqawi was too much of a loose cannon to be trusted? What if the dogs were getting too close?

Would he sell one of his own? I find this a reasonable suggestion.

Would we buy?

I wish I could find this an unreasonable suggestion… But I can’t. I wish I could accept that our government has done everything it could to find OBL… But I can’t.

A 49 year-old with a kidney condition who was in a Pakistani military hospital on 9/11/01 has eluded an honest effort mounted by the best army in the world, backed by the best intelligence money can buy?

I don’t believe I’m the only person who finds this hard to believe…

Would we buy? We needed Zarqawi’s head – we needed a victory. The Administration and the party it leads needs political points badly; control of the government likely hangs by a thread in the next election. Would we buy a certain kill with a promise to forebear, at least temporarily?

Would the United States government deal with terrorists, or a “terrorist state” behind the people’s backs, perhaps even in violation of US law?

Do you remember Iran-Contra???

How bad does the Administration want OBL, anyway? After all, if we catch him, if we “decapitate” Al Qaeda, will that not lead immediately to calls to declare the war on terror “won?”

Millions of Americans - dare I suggest most all Americans - want peace; want to go back to “a pre-911 world.” How many are there who don’t want that? And who are they?

Call this a fool’s muse if you dare. But if you do, tell my why. Is it merely that you trust the administration of GWB? I don’t trust them: They have lied too many times already. They have dealt dirty before - as has every administration of the last 40 years except perhaps Carter’s. I can’t accept they wouldn’t deal dirty again.

After all, there is a war to promote… Maybe Zarqawi’s sorry carcass wasn’t the only thing “sold out” this time…

IN THE BLOOD

2006-06-24T14:42:00.000-07:00

Reuters reports on a little fun at the games:

“England, Germany fans clash in Stuttgart”

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsarticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyid=2006-06-24T180615Z_01_L24598892_RTRUKOC_0_US-SOCCER-WORLD-ENGLAND-FANS.xml&src=rss&rpc=22

“Tens of thousands of English and German fans had gathered in the city's Schlossplatz, with many drinking all day, to watch Germany's 2-0 second-round victory and trouble broke out shortly afterwards. Both sets of fans traded punches before dozens of nervous-looking riot police moved into the area, pushing the German fans away and keeping the English supporters in one corner. A few hundred fans were involved.”

England and Germany… There’s a lesson here, and maybe a good model… I think England and Germany should, for the good of all mankind, to agree to have a little mini-war every decade or so, just to get it out of their systems. I don’t suppose they need to kill anyone, at least not intentionally, but they should all get roaring drunk, break a lot of stuff and beat each other senseless with big clubs…

Afterwards they need to all get roaring drunk again, kiss, and make nice…

Then maybe they will be able to behave for a while…

CRUEL AND UNUSUAL

2006-06-24T11:32:00.000-07:00

The paramount bottom-feeder of the right wing, Matt Drudge, scoops that cornucopia of bottom-ooze, The New York Times:

“Crazy Saddam: Americans Might Reinstall Me As President!”

http://www.drudgereport.com/flash1.htm

“Saddam Hussein believes the Americans may reinstall him as president of Iraq, the NEW YORK TIMES is planning to report on Sunday, newsroom sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.”…

The place is a fucking disaster… You know we won’t put him back in power… That would be cruel and unusual punishment…

FELONY CONDUCT

2006-06-23T15:09:00.000-07:00

I just got an e-mail –spam, I suppose I should call it:

“From: Casandra [Casandraappropriable@doglover.com]

The newest Online CCasino. Go aand Play It

Good evening

Online CCasino with 85+ games. Play It Now! http://tdvid.com/d1/check

Yuh gat fuh blow yuh nose where yuh stump yuh toe. A happy heart is better than a full purse.”

So…

Is this a felony under Washington’s new internet gambling law? Is the Gaming Commission going to “protect” me by hunting “Casandra” down and jailing “her?”

And am I committing a felony by passing this on? If it’s a felony to pass this on, am I committing a felony if I pass it on to the Gaming Commission?

One last question… Is there a doubt in the world that Margarita Prentice is the stupidest thing to serve in a Senate anywhere since Caligula’s horse???

NO WONDER THEY WERE CAUGHT

2006-06-23T14:49:00.000-07:00

FoxNews carries the headline:

“Homegrown Terrorists”

For the pack of amateurs picked up yesterday in Miami…

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200683,00.html

Homegrown… That explains a lot… The homegrown is never as good as the Afghani stuff…

Still, it’d be hard to be charged with more for doing less. It’ll be interesting if the government can get a conviction on so little…

Now, if stupidity were illegal – that would be a slam-dunk…

OH CRAP

2006-06-22T05:43:00.000-07:00

Plastered all over the favorite websites of the neoconservative war party are headlines trumpeting the news – WMD’s found in Iraq! From FoxNews:

“Report: Hundreds of WMDs Found in Iraq”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,200499,00.html

The Senator from warmongering, Rick Santorum, pulled his head out of his ass long enough to read the news of a newly declassified pentagon report detailing the find:

“"Since 2003, coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent. Despite many efforts to locate and destroy Iraq's pre-Gulf War chemical munitions, filled and unfilled pre-Gulf War chemical munitions are assessed to still exist."”

You can put your head back, turkey… This is old news – we’ve been hearing about these finds every few months for two years now. As the recycled report states:

“The weapons are thought to be manufactured before 1991 so they would not be proof of an ongoing WMD program in the 1990s.”

Old weapons, old news… And no ongoing program; no thousands of liters of anthrax, no thousands of rounds of nerve gas. A few hundred rotted rounds found here and there, leftovers from the Iran war and the mostly destroyed pre-Desert Storm stocks.

What has really been found here? What has been found is the neocons are desperate for good news to bolster their popularity, and they think the American people are stupid enough to confuse 2003 with 1990 and hundreds with thousands…

What remains to be seen is whether or not they’re right. My bet is they’re wrong again…

NOW I'VE HEARD EVERYTHING

2006-06-19T18:23:00.000-07:00

David Reinhard over at he Oregonian gives us a critique on Ann coulter’s new book, “Godless,” as well as a few insights into his taste in “women”…

“Graceless: The high priestess of conservatism”

I won’t read the book, of course, or address anything the witch postulates. As far as I’m concerned, she is living breathing proof there is no God, for no supreme being would allow such an abomination to live, but would rather blast it to flinders…

But this… Now I’ve heard everything…

Reinhard writes:

“"The only sort of authority Cindy Sheehan has is the uncanny ability to demonstrate, by example, what body types should avoid wearing shorts in public."

I'm with Coulter on Sheehan and today's grief-based political posturing, but this was too much. It would be tasteless and mean if Coulter were one of "those body types that should avoid wearing shorts in public." Suffice it to say she's not, as anyone with a pulse will notice after seeing the blue-eyed blonde on a panel discussion, the hem of her signature black dress hiked up to midthigh. Coulter's stunning looks make her all the more cruel. She worries that sending out grieving women to make political points is degrading our public discourse. And then she uses the puerile technique of the lunchroom bully.

Actually, I wouldn't be calling attention to anyone's looks if I were Coulter, for here's another fact. She would never get away with some of this stuff were it not for her looks. She's would never get away with this sort of stuff if she were a man, hunk or not.”

Dave, Dave… Two pieces of advice…

First for you… Get an eye exam. That woman is so ugly it’s scary. It’s hard to believe a blonde can be that ugly…

Second, for the witch herself. Someone she listens to – if such a person exists - needs to tell her to change her clothier… It’s cruel and unusual to subject mankind to visions of the ghost of bosoms that far past…

Hide or hoist, woman!

ODD THINGS THAT RILE NEOCONSERVATIVES

2006-06-17T14:50:00.000-07:00

VIA Orbusmax, we have a couple of links I find to be oddly connected… By their mutual membership in the “things that rile Neoconservatives” club…

First a blurb from the Orb himself:

“COMMENCEMENT AT THE EVERGREEN STATE COLLEGE: "Dancing, yelling, jars of peanut butter and jelly, and the newly minted graduate's own rendition of the song 'Happy Together'..."”…

My oh my… singing… peanut butter and jelly… We need an airstrike immediately!

I’ll never live long enough to figure out what bugs neocons about my Alma Mater. Get past the funny costumes, the place is very ordinary. Maybe it’s just the institutionalized disrespect of institutions; maybe a perception of disrespect is responsible for the venom.

Or maybe it’s the “question authority, flout tradition” attitude...

If so, that’s an oddity…Questioning authority and flouting tradition are very American – I recall reading many examples of how Jefferson, Madison, and their peers questioned and flouted…

Generally when I ask “why the animus?” one-on-one I get a noncommittal answer or none at all. Most of the detractors have little firsthand experience there. Oh well. Maybe someone can enlighten me today…

Then there’s this little piece from the UK Telegraph:

“How the Chicks survived their scrap with Bush”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/06/15/bmdixie15.xml

Natalie Maines, the “chick” who caused a furor in 2003 by expressing regret GWB was from her home state, has once again made utterance sure to leave neocons vein-popping, eye-bugging pissed:

“"The entire country may disagree with me, but I don't understand the necessity for patriotism. Why do you have to be a patriot? About what? This land is our land? Why? You can like where you live and like your life, but as for loving the whole country… I don't see why people care about patriotism."”

Well…

Merrian Webster defines “patriotism” simply: “Love or devotion to one’s country.”

Any love can be twisted… Patriotism isn’t necessarily a good thing.

If patriotism is devotion, fanatical devotion of one’s country, then Adolf Hitler was among the greatest patriots that ever lived. Whatever else said about him, there can be no doubt he was fanatically devoted to the Germany he helped to re-create…

And if patriotism is love, then it is a private, internal thing, something no person may judge in another. What if you love your country but think it has been corrupted to the point violence is required to save it? One man’s patriot is another man’s terrorist.

Can a Timothy McVeigh be a patriot? Only if his side wins, I guess…

Oh, I realize that when the average person uses that term, especially in war time, what they really mean to express is solidarity with our Nation’s policies and respect for its institutions and traditions – it’s more a question of a qualified devotion to an amorphous thing we’re all in together. More or less…

More or less. Most people in America will reject the more fanatical expressions of disrespect or disunity irrespective of the expresser’s motives – hence the original Dixie Chicks flap; hence opposition to flag burning. But many if not most people also object to extreme measures taken by their government under a cover of patriotism; many are riled by the mere name of the Patriot Act and are deeply suspicious of the expansions of powers it confers and the concomitant limitations of freedom it implies.

And many are disgusted by the arrogance of the power takers.

Does that make them unpatriotic? In the eyes of many neocons, I think it does. Many are proud to call the questioner unpatriotic, to accuse them of aiding the enemy. Some approve of the power takers… Some want to be power takers themselves.

My country right or wrong… But never right or left… Right only…

Uber-patriots… Like Hitler or McVeigh? Perhaps like them before they were utterly consumed by their patriotism…

The entire country doesn’t disagree with you Natalie. I agree with you. Patriotism is only as good as the individual; often, it’s a brightly lit path to the dark side. It’s a sometimes necessary evil – which means if it isn’t necessary, it’s just evil. It’s a good way to justify evil deeds – extreme uses of power by Nations or individual men. Extremes that always have the same result: The diminishment of that most American of attributes, liberty.

Think about that, the next time the patriot calls…

DARTH EYMAN???

2006-06-05T17:12:00.000-07:00

KOMO news brings us the word on the hijinks of Washington’s foremost horse’s ass, Tim Eyman, pushing his latest referendum:

“'Darth Eyman' Fails To Turn In Ref. 65 Signatures”

http://www.komotv.com/stories/43756.htm

“Tim Eyman, in a stunt that was not wholly unexpected, arrived at the state elections division building Monday dressed as Darth Vader and wielding a plastic light saber. Missing were the petitions full of signatures in support of an effort to overturn the state's new gay civil-rights law… Eyman, the referendum's sponsor, says he's been called many evil things, so he may as well look the part. So he dressed as Darth Vader”…

I have a couple of questions… If Eyman is Vader, who is the evil Emperor? And when will “Vader” toss the Emperor into the fiery pit, afterwards succumbing to his own accumulated wounds?

And when he does, can I run the camera???

WATCHING THE BORDER

2006-06-04T19:06:00.000-07:00

BBC News reports on the plans of Texas governor Rick Perry to set up webcams at border hotspots and solicit the online community to watch and report:

“Web users to 'patrol' US border”

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/5040372.stm

I am suddenly seized by a combination of cynicism and chaos… Think of the blowback… A lot of people are still for an open border…

There might be advantages… You could pick out your new nanny and then pick her up before the cops did…

Then there is the pro-immigration counterattack… What if somebody sets up a smuggler’s hotline? Pedro, you’re spotted at … Border patrol approaching from the northeast…

Or false reports to plug up the system…

Oh well. We’ll see…

2006-06-03T11:53:00.000-07:00

I'm coming out...

READS ON HADITHA AND THE WAR

2006-06-03T11:40:00.000-07:00

RealClearPolitics.com links to two good reads and one must read on the war and purported war crimes issues.

On the subject of those purported crimes: Having the luxury of not having to judge, I won’t. I think it’s wise to wait until the people who have to judge get done and see what they find…

First, a must read by Frank Schaeffer from The Washington Post:

“What's Lost in the Hue and Cry Over Haditha”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/02/AR2006060201327.html

Submitted with the strongest possible recommendation but no comments…

Then, from an almost Olympian height of arrogance, William Kristol of The Weekly Standard brings us this piece:

“Haditha Handwringing”

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/287wfyfv.asp

You get a real opportunity to see an issue upon which almost everyone will agree – that proven war crimes must be prosecuted – viewed through the eyes of an absolute dogmatist. First Kristol sets up his strawman, in the person of Peter Beinart from The New Republic. Beinart opines:

“Americans can be as barbaric as anyone. What makes us an exceptional nation with the capacity to lead and inspire the world is our very recognition of that fact. We are capable of Hadithas and My Lais, so is everyone. But few societies are capable of acknowledging what happened, bringing the killers to justice, and instituting changes that make it less likely to happen again. That's how we show we are different from the jihadists. We don't just assert it. We prove it. That's the liberal version of American exceptionalism, and it's what we need right now in response to this horror.”

Kristol opines “No, it isn't. The last thing we need in response to Haditha is hand-wringing liberalism.”…

He then offers us a profoundly different view of “what makes us an exceptional Nation:”

“What makes us exceptional is that we stand for liberty, and that we are willing to fight for liberty. We don't need to "prove" we are different from the jihadists by bringing our own soldiers, if they have done something wrong, to justice. Of course we must and will do this. But our doing this "proves" nothing. Even if there were ten Hadithas, we would still not have to "prove" that we are "different from the jihadists." The idea would be offensive if it were not ludicrous.”

I think that just speaks volumes about the fundamental difference between the dogmatic left and the dogmatic right:

The dogmatic left believes we are better because we realize that to “be better” we have to prove it and are constantly trying to do so. Our self-defined need to lead by example, always wanting to be the “good guy,” makes us better…

The dogmatic right believes we are better… We have a better idea and its superiority is so self-evident that there is something wrong with anyone who questions that core premise – and we will fight those people. We not only have nothing to prove but “the idea would be offensive if it were not ludicrous.”

We must constantly prove ourselves vs. it’s an offense to suggest we have anything to prove at all. That’s quite a gulf…

Later in the article Kristol goes into what’s gone wrong in Iraq and what we must do to win. Read it yourself; I think the old war horse believes we can certainly win in Iraq but very likely won’t, and certainly won’t if we keep on the way we are going now…

Last, there’s this by Victor Davis Hanson:

“The American Way of War
And the constraints on American power.”

http://victorhanson.com/articles/hanson060206.html

It’s all been said before but he re-says it well. Please note, the author considers the war in Iraq and any proposed war in Iran to be inherently very different propositions...

I think he’s right. And I think that’s a small piece of a big problem we have in Iraq: Until we reach an accommodation with Iran – or clean their clock – we won’t be able to leave Iraq. If we do, the Iranians will be in Iraq so fast their forward echelons will be strewing the road ahead with flowers for our departure…

It’s going to be a long war – or a humiliating one.

BORDER MUSINGS

2006-05-29T14:04:00.000-07:00

Notes on the pickle we’ve made for ourselves…

On the 19th of May, The Arizona Daily Star online broke the news of a border bust:

“Tip leads Border Patrol to 91 illegal entrants in truck”

http://www.azstarnet.com/sn/hourlyupdate/129880.php

“Border Patrol agents discovered 91 illegal entrants who were smuggled into the country in the back of a box truck Thursday night southwest of Sonoita, an official said Friday.”

There’s a photo of the truck – it’s a big single-axle with a maybe a thirty foot box on it…

And the tale reads like a bad joke… How do you get 91 Mexicans into a van?

You offer them a ride to work…

Meanwhile, the Minutemen are stringing barbed wire on the border – HuffPo has a positively ridiculous photo from AFP:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2006/05/28/minutemen-working-on-ariz_n_21765.html

You can tell whose side this photographer is on… I’m afraid that fence won’t do much other than stimulate barbed wire sales. It won’t catch many immigrants… But that’s not what it’s for, of course. It’s designed to catch a government with its pants down… And maybe a controversy…

FoxNews gives a more balanced take:

“Minuteman Group Begins Building Border Fence in Arizona”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,197291,00.html

Fanning the Minutemen’s ire are reports the Border Patrol is tipping of the Mexican Government as to their whereabouts and activities. From the Minutemen’s website:

“U.S. tipping Mexico to Minuteman patrols”

http://www.minutemanhq.com/hq/article.php?sid=86

Some days, a good vigilante just can’t win…

Then there is the fifth column. KVOA.com reports:

“Surge of volunteers expected to help illegal immigrants cross desert”

http://www.kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=4930696

“Leaders of two faith-based groups, No More Deaths and Samaritan Patrol, say they've signed up hundreds of volunteers to deliver food, water and medical aid to migrants illegally walking into the country from Mexico. No More Deaths alone has 500 registered volunteers, up from 300 last summer.”

Illegal entry notwithstanding, some believe it’s just plain inhuman to let people die trying to cross the desert…

I wonder… What’s going to happen when one of these Minutemen patrols get into a confrontation with someone from, say, the Samaritan Patrol… and someone gets shot? What if there is a full-fledged donnybrook down there? The National Guard may find itself trying to keep Americans from killing each other…

In Washington - the “bad” Washington - Our Senate has decided to build a fence… Somewhere… But Michelle Malkin points out Senator Chris Dodd has inserted a rider into the passed bill requiring consultation with all involved parties, including the Mexican government, before any actual fence is built:

“Mexico Gets Veto Power? "Consultation" Req'd”

http://michellemalkin.com/archives/005264.htm

One might argue consultation doesn’t necessarily entail deference, but in the real world…

On the subject of “getting real,” Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, published an excellent articulation of the middle of the road position last week in the Wall Street Journal:

“Enforceable, Sustainable, Compassionate
On immigration, it's time to get real.”

http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110008420

One five-star alarm this raises with me is his proposal to create a National DNA database for everyone – not just foreign workers. He wants to make it a requirement even for native-born citizens…

Like hell you will. You can have my DNA when I’m done with it and not before, you prick…

Back in the “bad” Washington, and across the campus, members of the House of Representatives are sweating bullets, trying to decide whether or not to actually listen to their constituents on this question, most of which want a leak-proof border, even if it requires a moat of alligators.

From The Washington Post:

“Immigration Deal at Risk as House GOP Looks to Voters”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/27/AR2006052700802_pf.html

The House is collectively viewing the next election as if it were a runaway locomotive and they a damsel on the tracks… If they side with the majority, it’s likely there will be no action at all. If they don’t, a lot of them may get unelected…

And then there’s that pesky minority – all the people on both sides of the border that are cleaning up – or at least surviving - on all this lawbreaking… Smugglers, drug runners, the entire US Farm sector, the Hospitality industry… The Nation of Mexico…

The biggest benefactor of all this law breaking may well be that Nation south of the border. SFGate.com does a pretty good summation of this angle:

“Give and take across the border
1 in 7 Mexican workers migrates -- most send money home”

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/21/MNGFQIVNAF1.DTL

One in seven… and, according to SFGate, “Last year, Mexico received a record $20 billion in remittances from migrant workers. That is equal to Mexico's 2004 income from oil exports and dwarfing tourism revenue.”

Not to mention the benefit of not having to cope with all those desperately poor people Mexico cannot provide for…

Adding insult to the injury, Mexico itself has received certainly unwelcome publicity of its own profoundly xenophobic immigration policies:

“Mexico Works to Bar Non-Natives From Jobs”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060521/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/mexico_limiting_immigrants

Immigrants are second-class citizens in Mexico, irrespective of how long they have been there, and are just plain discouraged from trying to settle. Partly as a consequence, Mexico’s foreign-born population is only a half percent of their total.

I wonder if there is another consequence… Is their reluctance to accept immigrants one of the things that is holding them back?

A little closer to home, we have an alarm being sounded on a very practical matter. From The New York Times:

“With Illegal Immigrants Fighting Wildfires, West Faces a Dilemma”

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/28/us/28fire.html?ei=5090&en=4c0cc51185768f14&ex=1306468800&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

I think there is something to this. For a long time Hispanics have been dominating certain aspects of the forest products industry. It was already a factor back when I did this sort of work in the ‘80’s. It isn’t just fire fighting. There is tree planting, pre-commercial thinning, fertilizing – all more or less related. You plant & fertilize in winter, thin in spring and fall… And try to keep it all from burning in the summer…

And a last item for the holiday. Jim Derych over at HuffPo reminds us of Lance Corporal Jose Guitierrez, one of the first Marines killed in the Iraq war.

“Lance Cpl. Jose Gutierrez--Illegal Immigrant, American Hero”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-derych/lance-cpl-jose-gutierrez_b_21806.html

As a kid from Guatemala, he train-hopped his way across Mexico and then entered the US illegally. When he was 18 he acquired resident alien credentials and thereafter joined the Marines. He died in a firefight near Umm Qasr.

RIP. You’re a better American than many, Corporal.

WHY WE NEED NATIONAL HEALTHCARE - AN EXAMPLE

2006-05-26T13:21:00.000-07:00

The Seattle Times fleshes out the no-win dilemma that hit Boeing employees earlier this week:

“Regence faces union fallout”

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2003019914_regence26m.html

The Select Network Plan, billed as a means to provide Boeing employees with a “high-quality, cost-efficient” medical insurance plan option, has decided to exclude approximately 500 previously included physicians… Regence will not release their selection criteria, but, according to the Times, “it appears that Regence is more concerned with how much doctors cost than with whether they give good health care. Many patients said highly competent doctors were excluded.

It is admitted by Regence “the ratings are based only on billing data, because "that's the current best available method to do this analysis."”

High-quality, cost-efficient… An oxymoronic lie like that could only come from a salesman or a politician…

More Chinese fire drills with health insurance… The whole idea of an insurance poll is to average the total cost across enough individuals to prevent accidental and incidental costs from ruining any one individual… Enter the chiselers, who give some of the pool a break if they will patronize Dr. Low Budget.

It’s another aspect of the race to the bottom, and it can have only one effect: The erosion of the overall quality of available medical services…

As long as there is a dime of profit in the medical insurance industry, there will be chiselers trying to manipulate it.

National Health Care NOW.

THEN AND NOW

2006-05-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

FoxNews brings us an update in the case of Lashuan Harris, who, last October 19th, dropped her three kids into San Francisco Bay, drowning them:

“Mom Due in Court in San Francisco Bay Kids' Deaths Case”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,196809,00.html

Diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic with delusional thought disorder, Harris told the Court via her attorney "The voice of God called upon me to sacrifice my three children"…

What would they have said about Abraham???

Just wonderin’…

AMERICA'S RELIGIOUS WAR

2006-05-23T15:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, well-known Seattle commentator Ken Schram excoriated initiative champion Tim Eyman over his recent church-based drive to collect signatures for an anti gay-rights initiative he intends to field this year:

“Timmy Is Turning To God”

http://www.komotv.com/stories/43554.htm

Opines Mr. Schram:

“Timmy is turning to God.

I guess Mr. Eyman figures that since Jesus turned water into wine, the Lord would be willing and able to transform church-going Christians into bigots.

Timmy describes this as an "opportunity" for 500,000 voters in 5,400 churches to sign a petition to cancel out gay rights legislation passed in Olympia earlier this year.

Timmy says it's all about ending "preferential treatment."

I say it's all about legalizing discrimination against gays and lesbians.

And I think that Timmy's just trying to turn conservative Christians into another tool in his money-making initiative arsenal.

To those folks, I have a now familiar question: What would Jesus do?”

A damn good question for Christians… A damn good question asked by a man who, if one can judge by his writings, is himself a Christian – A liberal one.

A liberal Christian? In the eyes of many that’s an oxymoron. For quite some time –since at least the Reagan years – conservatives have worked to claim sole ownership of the American church. By and large, unbelievers such as myself have given “them” a bye on this claim – it is, after all, not our fight - and media professionals have abetted it by discussing social issues in the language created by religious conservatives, speaking of “family values,” “morals,” and the like as being “conservative” issues.

Meanwhile, religious liberals, prompted, perhaps, by Christ’s promise that the meek would inherit the earth, have meekly stood by and allowed the conservatives to claim the American church as theirs alone…

Success often sows the seeds of failure…

And so it may be with the conservative movement and their allies, the religious right. For them, the Presidency of George W Bush has been the greatest success in a very long time.

For liberal Christians, it has been a wake-up call… And more than a few are fighting back.

Speaking of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright recently remarked “"I worked for two presidents who were men of faith, and they did not make their religious views part of American policy,” a policy that clearly leaves the Secretary uneasy:

“Bush's faith worries Albright”

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/05/22/albright.bush.reut/index.html

Madame Albright describes herself as “"an Episcopalian (U.S. Anglican) with a Catholic background" and states "I know I believe in God but I have doubts, and doubt is part of faith,"”

I hear the snickers and groans… Bill Clinton, a Christian? Such is the nature of the conservative’s success…

But if a “Christian” is any person who believes in the redemptive sacrifice of Christ – and if belief is a private thing – how can any short of the Almighty dispute their claim?

Over at Time.com, Andrew Sullivan makes the arguments very well:

“My Problem with Christianism
A believer spells out the difference between faith and a political agenda”

It’s a subscriber link only, but the piece is a worthy read if you can get it:

http://www.time.com/time/archive/preview/0,10987,1191826,00.html

Mr. Sullivan begins:

“Are you a Christian who doesn't feel represented by the religious right? I know the feeling. When the discourse about faith is dominated by political fundamentalists and social conservatives, many others begin to feel as if their religion has been taken away from them.
The number of Christians misrepresented by the Christian right is many”…

He elaborates, describing a tolerant church of many denominations: “very orthodox believers who nonetheless respect the freedom and conscience of others as part of their core understanding of what being a Christian is… evangelical Protestants who believe strongly that Christianity should not get too close to the corrupting allure of government power… lay Catholics who, while personally devout, are socially liberal on issues like contraception, gay rights, women's equality and a multi-faith society.”…

He bridles at comments such as those made recently by the disgraced former House Majority Leader Tom Delay: “"Sides are being chosen, and the future of man hangs in the balance! The enemies of virtue may be on the march, but they have not won, and if we put our trust in Christ, they never will."”

Mr. Sullivan then asks: “So Christ is a conservative Republican?”

It’s the awakening of a sleeping giant… Perhaps…

Yet Mr. Sullivan argues against the creation of a “religious left,” suggesting instead that what the religious right practices isn’t a religious faith at all, but rather an “ism:” Christianism. He elaborates:

“"My kingdom is not of this world," Jesus insisted. What part of that do we not understand? So let me suggest that we take back the word Christian while giving the religious right a new adjective: Christianist. Christianity, in this view, is simply a faith. Christianism is an ideology, politics, an ism. The distinction between Christian and Christianist echoes the distinction we make between Muslim and Islamist. Muslims are those who follow Islam. Islamists are those who want to wield Islam as a political force and conflate state and mosque. Not all Islamists are violent. Only a tiny few are terrorists. And I should underline that the term Christianist is in no way designed to label people on the religious right as favoring any violence at all. I mean merely by the term Christianist the view that religious faith is so important that it must also have a precise political agenda. It is the belief that religion dictates politics and that politics should dictate the laws for everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike.
That's what I dissent from, and I dissent from it as a Christian. I dissent from the political pollution of sincere, personal faith. I dissent most strongly from the attempt to argue that one party represents God and that the other doesn't. I dissent from having my faith co-opted and wielded by people whose politics I do not share and whose intolerance I abhor. The word Christian belongs to no political party. It's time the quiet majority of believers took it back.”

It’s a powerful idea, if powerfully wielded by people brave enough to speak their minds, even if their voice shakes. And it’s about time, IMO… As a nonbeliever, I have watched in disgust as the religious right sought to drag this Nation back into the dark ages of governmental enforcement of religious intolerance and governmental approbation of nonsense like creationism. But I have been even more disgusted by the disorganized, misfeasant fashion in which tolerant Christians have defended their faith…

Watching the two groups, I have become utterly convinced there is no value in either…

So I welcome the new counterattack. People, by and large, need faith to survive – it’s built into man, as if it were a philosophical instinct. Yet the “faith” of the religious right - and the policies it inspires - is clearly a destructive influence in a modern, creative, diverse society that will only become more diverse as time goes on.

Maybe the “religious left” can give the American church a better way.

A DOG'S LIFE

2006-05-23T10:08:00.000-07:00

VIA Orbusmax, we have two items concerning developments in an unforgivable incident of animal cruelty. First, KATU Portland brings us the basics:

“Court To Rule On Landmark Pet Death Case”

http://www.katu.com/stories/86078.html

The case concerns one Raymond Weaver, who was convicted of animal abuse after he deliberately ran over his neighbor’s dog, Grizz. In what could be a precedent-setting case, the family is suing for loss of companionship, asking for 1.5 million in damages. As KATU notes:

“States typically limit damages in such cases to an animal's fair market value. An award for loss of companionship … could lead to an expansion of pet owners' rights in Oregon, and possibly the nation.”

Meanwhile over at 750 KXL, Lars Larson offers an opinion on the matter:

“What is a dog's life worth?”

http://www.larslarson.com/Commentary/NWReports/168948.aspx

Succinctly put, Mr. Larson opines that while running over the dog was “an evil thing to do” the suit is “inappropriate:”

“Now loss of companionship is something you get for a child or losing your wife; for a human being, not for a dog. Not for any kind of animal… Do I think the family deserves a million bucks in compensation or more for the loss of their dog? Absolutely, positively not.”

What’s a dog’s life worth? I think that’s the wrong question to ask.

What’s the life of a dirty sonofabitch who would deliberately run over a dog worth?

A lot less than a dog, I think.

Mark Greenup and his family deserve every penny of that 1.5 million and more. And Weaver deserves to be locked away for the rest of his life… In a dogpound. Build him a special cell next to his betters and lock him away every night. Let him out to tend the animals – and divert the wage he would have earned to reparations.

And if he gets sick or injured, just “put him to sleep”…

INTERESTING SEMANTICS

2006-05-22T12:26:00.000-07:00

FoxNews reports on the Grand Jury indictments of four persons accused of setting the fires that destroyed several buildings at the world-class Vail Colorado ski area:

“Grand Jury Indicts 4 Accused Ecoterrorists for 1998 Vail Firebombing”

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,196219,00.html

From the article:

“Four alleged environmental extremists have been indicted in a 1998 firebombing at the Vail ski resort that caused $12 million in damage — one of the most devastating ecoterrorism attacks in U.S. history.”

I find the semantics here fascinating… “alleged environmental extremists”…

These are “alleged arsonists”… There is nothing “alleged” about their extreme attitudes or politics, of which they are very proud…

A slip of the pen? Maybe… But this same wording, more or less, can be found in several news accounts of this event.

I wonder… Is someone implying being an environmental extremist who burns buildings is somehow different than a common arsonist?

Is it a more – or less – heinous crime? Is why they lit the match more important than lighting it?

And how is the implied reasoning any different than the reasoning behind hate crimes?

Just wonderin’…

A FIVE-STAR GEORGE WILL

2006-05-18T12:56:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post today is carrying an absolute MUST READ from George Will:

“Who Isn't A 'Values Voter'?”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/17/AR2006051701874.html

Dr. Will’s thesis is aptly summed in the first two paragraphs:

“An aggressively annoying new phrase in America's political lexicon is "values voters." It is used proudly by social conservatives, and carelessly by the media to denote such conservatives.
This phrase diminishes our understanding of politics. It also is arrogant on the part of social conservatives and insulting to everyone else because it implies that only social conservatives vote to advance their values and everyone else votes to . . . well, it is unclear what they supposedly think they are doing with their ballots.

Bravo!

I’d like to make a couple of observations:

“"values voters." It is used… carelessly by the media to denote such conservatives.”

It’s interesting to note “values voters,” being mostly “social conservatives,” tend to hold the MSM in very low esteem… Social conservatives are usually first to hurl the “bias” charge.

So why does the MSM play along with this? Why give people they are thought to disagree with the right to define the social debate?

A cynic might suggest it’s just pandering to a large, powerful market. Market share is hard to come by today, with choices constantly proliferating.

I’d suggest something simpler. This is another good evidence the MSM isn’t biased toward the left.

Dr.Will goes on to argue everyone votes values; it’s just different values:

“Today's liberal agenda includes preservation, even expansion, of the welfare state in its current configuration in order to strengthen an egalitarian ethic of common provision. Liberals favor taxes and other measures to produce a more equal distribution of income. They may value equality indiscriminately, but they vote their values.

Among the various flavors of conservatism, there is libertarianism that is wary of government attempts to nurture morality and there is social conservatism that says unless government nurtures morality, liberty will perish. Both kinds of conservatives use their votes to advance what they value.”

It’s the basic work of politics: Creating a system where people of different values can co-exist… As opposed to a “system” where people believe violence alone can protect their “values.”

And that’s a caution to majorities… Present and future.

GOD ACCORDING TO PAT UPDATE

2006-05-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

VIA Drudge, we have a link to wftv.com in Florida, reporting Pat’s latest prophecy:

“Robertson: God Says Storms Will Lash U.S.”

http://www.wftv.com/news/9235304/detail.html

The link won’t load on this atheist’s computer… Maybe it’s God’s will…

From the teaser:

“The Rev. Pat Robertson says God told him the U.S. will suffer bad storms this year and maybe a tsunami.”

I’ll have to assert: If there is a God, and if there’s a Tsunami, it’ll kill Robertson… And if there’s a benevolent God, it’ll get Anne Coulter, too…

BUSTING BLASPHEMERS

2006-05-17T12:27:00.000-07:00

Mark Finkelstein over at Newsbusters reports comments by Da Vinci Code actor Ian McKellen, speaking to Matt Lauer:

“Da Vinci Code Actor: Bible Should Have 'Fiction' Disclaimer”

http://newsbusters.org/stories/dv.html?q=node/5402

Spake Gandalf “"Well, I've often thought the Bible should have a disclaimer in the front saying this is fiction. I mean, walking on water, it takes an act of faith."”

According to Finkelstein, McKellen’s comment is a “stunning bit of blasphemy” that is “likely to test the adage that all publicity is good publicity.”

LOL! This little side-circus gets better every day!

McKellen has a point… Even if you are devout, you must realize many serious Bible scholars don’t take many parts of the Bible seriously…

OK, maybe asking for a fiction disclaimer is a little provocative… But at least the Bible ought to carry a disclaimer it hasn’t been peer reviewed…

DAMN GOOD IDEA

2006-05-17T11:17:00.000-07:00

VIA Orbusmax, kbcitv.com reports on a change of policy in Idaho:

“Wages must double for employers to receive state funds”

http://www2.kbcitv.com/x51828.xml?URL=http://localhost/APWIREFEED/d8hlki480.xml&NewsSection=StateHeadlines

The Idaho Workforce Development Council, which pays up to $3,000 per worker to businesses which locate or expand in Idaho, formerly offered assistance to any business paying at least $6 an hour. That will now be raised to $12 an hour and / or benefits.

“Officials say that paying six an hour is a hidden tax because those workers are eligible for food stamps, housing assistance and Medicaid.”

Damn good idea - $6 an hour is a sweatshop wage. Or at least it’s a damn good start…

We have a problem in this nation. On one hand, government has “sold” the electorate on policies that amount to a defacto guarantee of a minimum standard – not just a minimum wage employers will pay but a minimum standard of care.

Minimum compensation should meet the minimum expectation…

I know… What I just said is in some senses absurd. Who defines “minimum?” Should a minimum standard of care imply therefore that compensation should be linked to family size?

Now there’s an idea… If you want to promote a baby boom…

But that absurdity is exactly what we have, via that minimum standard. A young single person with no dependents isn’t eligible for anywhere near as much state aid as that same person would be as a single parent of two or a traditional family of five…

Yes, I know we “do it for the kids.” I also know subsidies have often counterintuitive economic effects, one of which is exploitation of the system by capitalist pirates.

You don’t have to pay your people enough to survive if their survival is otherwise assured…

The enemy of capitalism is capitalists… The inspired thinkers who, many years ago, outlined the principles of capitalism wrote at length of the necessity for capitalism to be self-regulated by the ethics of the participants. It’s just plain unethical to offer poverty wages – and it’s doubly unethical take state training money and use it to set up a shop that pays a poverty wage…

And when a state agency allows that to happen it stops being a promoter, becoming instead an enabler… The government shouldn’t enable the unethical.

AN IMMODERATE SUGGESTION

2006-05-16T12:05:00.000-07:00

Just about everybody today is discussing – or at least cussing – the President’s speech last night on the topic of immigration reform. VIA Breitbart, AP provides the text:

http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/05/15/D8HKHJG80.html

A good effort, I think – a good effort at compromise. Very middle of the road. And to his credit our First Texan did not suggest branding illegal aliens on the ass, steer-style, before tossing them back over the Rio…

GWB covered all the bases, throwing a bone to all constituent groups. More border security, more workplace enforcement, including a so-called tamper proof guest worker ID to be used by the participants in a huge new guest worker program. And all wrapped up in a warm and fuzzy blanket of protection for those GWB refers to as “the vast majority of illegal immigrants are decent people who work hard, support their families, practice their faith, and lead responsible lives. They are a part of American life but they are beyond the reach and protection of American law.”

Kumbaya… Kumbaya…

But it’s not amnesty… Not for the illegal immigrants, at least.

It’s amnesty for the illegal employers…

I was surprised this morning. Over at the popular anti-immigration blog Daniel’s Political Musings http://danielisright.blogspot.com/ I read thirty comments to “The president's sellout” and not one of them mentioned the problem of illegal employment… There was mention, as there was in GWB’s speech, of “jobs Americans won’t do.”

I’ve billed myself as a moderate. By “moderate” I mean I’m more interested in evidence than ideology, but “moderate” is a poor descriptor. It would be more accurate to say I am an unaligned skeptical pragmatist, willing to change my mind as the facts dictate.

And I have a few immoderate comments… Followed by an immoderate suggestion…

The evidence becomes increasingly clear: The root of the problem isn't security at the border. Its thousands of repeat felons among us. Not the illegal aliens in their millions, but the thousands of US employers who routinely, deliberately break the law or at least violate its spirit.

"Jobs Americans won't do." Bullshit!

Jobs Americans won't do for half a wage, perhaps. Jobs Americans won't do without being properly compensated for overtime. Jobs Americans won't do under substandard conditions or with substandard, unsafe equipment. Jobs Americans won't do because the foreman is the clone of an 1840 Alabama slavemaster.

Increasingly it becomes clear that whole industries have used immigrant labor, legal or otherwise, to gut the labor market, debase the wage and benefit expectations, and generally put unscrupulous entrepreneurs in the driver's seat - and they're driving the rest of us off a cliff.

The rest of the arguments are studies in the chimeric:

Border security is a pipe dream, as is forced deportation – neither are practically attainable, if only for reasons of expense. To his credit, the Compromiser-in-Chief recognizes the scaling issue and doesn’t advocate forced deportation. But he does mollify the “build a wall” crowd with a promise of 6,000 National Guard troops to aid the 12,000 immigration officers already present.

Still, a force of 18,000 on a 2,000 mile border between two nations that do 100 billion dollars worth of legal trade a year on top of all the illegal activity is a joke…

And the guest worker program is a sellout to the capitalist bastards who created the problem, one illegal hire at a time.

Let's get to the root of the issue. We need real enforcement of the hiring laws we have. And while a biometric ID sounds good in theory, it’s how many years away? And what good will it do in an atmosphere of wink & nod enforcement?

GWB proposes more agents on the border to follow the “temporary” guard deployment. Here’s a better suggestion: Let's put those agents - we can't use the troops - in the workplace. And throw the book at every employer, no excuses accepted, no slack cut. Bankrupt them. Shut them down. And no plausible deniability, either. We don't care if you didn't know; you're still done.

If you accept a counterfeit $100 bill, you lose the $100 dollars – and you might just get arrested for a crime you didn’t commit. Why should accepting counterfeit ID be an acceptable excuse for committing a felony?

Employers don’t know? My ass they don’t know. They don’t want to know. You see no evil with eyes wide shut.

There is no other way. Staying in the middle of the road will make us all roadkill. We either have to give up and move as fast as possible toward total integration of the two Nations – one unified economy with one set of labor, wage, and environmental standards – or we have to enforce our standards at home and leave them in the third world they choose to inhabit. In order to enforce our standards, we have to shut down the “Mexican” sub-economy operating here in the US. The way to do that is jail the bastards who profit from that economic activity. Jail them and confiscate all of their assets. When the opportunity dries up the illegal aliens will deport themselves.

Allowing two economies to operate side by side has vastly degraded the lot of the American blue-collar worker and the unskilled, entry-level worker, and it has helped to pull everyone else down as well. Wage-wise, we’re all treading water – while the collateral strains on infrastructure sap public treasuries.

One way or the other. Moderation got us into this fix in the first place.

Any takers? Not among GWB's business supporters, I'll wager...