Explorations ...

I've directed you to The Disgruntled Chemist's Beer Blogging Archive in the past. An excellent resource for those who like good beer. Me included. Well, I have another for you whom I found via the Chemist. Two Glasses Beer Archive by Toast. I plan to check out some of his recommendations shortly.

Pay up, suckas

The great Avedon Carol:

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Someday I hope we can collect the taxes the "Christian" right owes the United States government for being nothing but a bunch of partisan hacks.

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Clean me off ...

I think some tribe in the Pacific also did a purification ceremony after Bush left a couple years back:

GUATEMALA CITY - Mayan priests will purify a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday. [my em]

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Tip o' the Brain to Nicole @ C&L.

Update:

It was India and Gord posted on it about a year ago.

The man, the blog, and the whoring ...

It's Saturday and that means the second-to-last chapter of my novel The Captains is up at The Practical Press.

And just a programming note: Since next week will see the conclusion of The Captains, the week after will see the beginning of The Fourth Estate, particularly relevant since the '08 Presidential Race started a year early. Set your VCR ... heh ...

Feds Seek To Gag D.C. Madam

I couldn't resist that headline at The Smoking Gun. As those of us with experience in these matters know, it's damn hard to make a madam gag! Especially with Federal, er, equipment, yeah, that's the word.

As BuzzFlash says:

Feds Want to Gag D.C. Madam; We Want to See Who Her Famous Clients Were, C'mon, Just a Peek

More from The Gun:

[...] In their motion, a copy of which you'll find below, government lawyers claim that some discovery documents contain "personal information" about Palfrey's former johns and prostitutes that is "sensitive." [...]

I think that means who does what to whom, who wears what outfits, who likes what, what props are used, what scenarios are played out, and so forth. Hey, inquiring minds want to know!

[...] In connection with an asset forfeiture action, Palfrey has sought to depose political consultant Dick Morris, who she has identified as a former escort service client. [...]

Don't worry, Dick. IOKIYAR. I just wanta see some dish! We need some good laughs at the expense of the ruling elite. Seeing them turn red and duck for cover would be a good start.

Veterans Face Vast Inequities Over Disability

NYTimes

Veterans face serious inequities in compensation for disabilities depending on where they live and whether they were on active duty or were members of the National Guard or the Reserve, an analysis by The New York Times has found.

Those factors determine whether some soldiers wait nearly twice as long to get benefits from the Department of Veterans Affairs as others, and collect less money, according to agency figures.

"The V.A. is supposed to provide uniform and fair treatment to all," said Steve Robinson, the director of veteran affairs for Veterans for America. "Instead, the places and services giving the most are getting the least."

"It's Actuary Science 101," said Paul Sullivan, who until last March monitored data on returning veterans for the V.A. "When 5,000 new troops get deployed from California, you can logically expect a percent of them will show up at the V.A. in California in a year with predictable types of problems."

"It makes no sense to wait until the troop is already back home to start preparing for them," Mr. Sullivan said. "But that's what the V.A. does."

Many new veterans say they are often left waiting for months or years, wondering if they will be taken care of.

In 2004, a system was designed to track soldiers better, prepare for surges in demand and avoid backlogs. But the system was shelved by program officials under Secretary Jim Nicholson for financial and logistical reasons (my em), V.A. officials said Thursday at a hearing before the House Veterans Affairs Committee.

The V.A., which has said it has an alternate tracking system nearly operational, depends on paper files and lacks the ability to download Department of Defense records into its computers.

President Bush has appointed a commission to investigate problems at military and veterans hospitals.

Swell. Bush is too incompetent to throw a beer party in a brewery, and so are all the people he appoints.

For Mr. Curry, the reservist from Chicago who has fallen behind on his mortgage payments, his previous life as a $60,000-a-year postal worker is a fading memory. "It's just disheartening," he said. "You feel like giving up sometimes."

Please don't give up, Mr. Curry. It's exactly what this maladministration wants you to do. Don't let them off the hook that easily. They owe you and hundreds of thousands of Vets just like you. Pay they must, and pay they will, unless we let them get away with their malfeasance.

Why Bush Will Pardon Libby If He Has To

Here's the last half of a BuzzFlash editorial

Last week, Bush himself was asked about the possibility of a Libby pardon were Libby to be convicted, and Bush indicated that he wouldn't answer such a question.

What the White House is going to do is wait and hope that the D.C. Court of Appeals, on which the infamous partisan Federal Judge David Sentelle sits, will save them from the issue of a pardon by overturning Libby's conviction on some technicality.

Sentelle has an interesting history in this area. He was one of the judges who overturned the Iran-Contra felony convictions of Oliver North and John Poindexter on a technicality.

We have written about Sentelle several times. Not only is he a right winger who believes that there is a liberal conspiracy to destroy America, he is the one that appointed Ken Starr as the Clinton Special Prosecutor after Jesse Helms and another Neo-Confederacy senator told him to. Sentelle is a partisan GOP judicial operative, who is there to save Republicans from legal jams that they get into.

He also does the ideological bidding of the White House. In the last two weeks, he has been part of a 2-1 majority on the D.C. Court of Appeals ruling on the side of the White House to suspend Habeas Corpus.

It is important to also remember that Poppy Bush pardoned Caspar Weinberger so that he wouldn't "flip" and spill the beans on Daddy Bush in terms of his neck-deep involvement with Iran-Contra.

Pardons by Bushes to save their own necks are in the bloodline.

Bush will pardon Libby if he needs to, because Bush is already implicated in the Valerie Wilson outing - as we know from the Libby trial.

If Libby were to "flip" and spill the beans to Fitzgerald, Bush and Cheney would be forced to resign or face impeachment.

But Bush is going to wait it out and hope that the back bench of activist partisan right wing judges appointed during the Reagan, Bush and Bush administrations will save him the politically costly act of pardoning Libby.

If for some unexpected reason, Judge Sentelle doesn't get the job done – or Nino "the Fixer" Scalia fails if the Libby appeal reaches the Supreme Court – then Scooter knows Bush will do the deed and grant him the ultimate Bush get-out-of-jail card: a pardon.

Because if Libby talks, Bush and Cheney will likely face some hardcore jail time themselves.

Sing like a bird, Scooter!

And just as an aside, I think the real Fixer should sue the shit out of Scalia for impersonating him.

Department of Injustice

Paul Krugman on the U.S. Attorney purge:

The bigger scandal, however, almost surely involves prosecutors still in office. The Gonzales Eight were fired because they wouldn't go along with the Bush administration's politicization of justice. But statistical evidence suggests that many other prosecutors decided to protect their jobs or further their careers by doing what the administration wanted them to do: harass Democrats while turning a blind eye to Republican malfeasance.

And let's not forget that Karl Rove's candidates have a history of benefiting from conveniently timed federal investigations. Last year Molly Ivins reminded her readers of a curious pattern during Mr. Rove's time in Texas: "In election years, there always seemed to be an F.B.I. investigation of some sitting Democrat either announced or leaked to the press. After the election was over, the allegations often vanished."

Fortunately, Mr. Rove's smear-and-fear tactics fell short last November. I say fortunately, because without Democrats in control of Congress, able to hold hearings and issue subpoenas, the prosecutor purge would probably have become yet another suppressed Bush-era scandal - a huge abuse of power that somehow never became front-page news.

Before the midterm election, I wrote that what the election was really about could be summed up in two words: subpoena power. Well, the Democrats now have that power, and the hearings on the prosecutor purge look like the shape of things to come.

In the months ahead, we'll hear a lot about what's really been going on these past six years. And I predict that we'll learn about abuses of power that would have made Richard Nixon green with envy.

Gee, ya think?

When I read stuff like this, and I do nearly every day, I'm damn glad the Democrats are finally in control, thank you again electorate. They've got the subpœna power that may yet turn these administration abuses into jail sentences.

I wish the process would move faster, but reality dictates it will take the time it takes. As long as it proceeds in the right direction I guess I'm happy.

Pardon, Hell!

Seems to be a drumbeat growing, and from more than just the right, to justify a pardon for Libby. This has to be one of the more absurd things that I've heard recently and, as we all know, there is plenty of absurdity going around. Libby's actions facilitated Congress giving Bush the go ahead for his illegal war. 10s of thousands of lives have been lost unnecessarily as a result of that and as a direct result of Libby helping to facilitate it. Yeah, there is no doubt that Libby is taking the hook for bigger fish, but he should be grateful that perjury and obstruction is all he's been charged with. He stands as a fully willing accomplice to murder and should be in the Hague with the rest of them, not waiting for a pardon.

R.

Harry Belafonte, The Lion At 80

"In 1965, Belafonte was on the original Selma march with Dr. King. Just before they reached Montgomery, St. Jude's Catholic Church offered its grounds to the thousands of marchers. Belafonte called in artists from around the country. Tony Bennett came, as did Pete Seeger (both were at Harry's birthday party), Sammy Davis Jr., Mike Nichols, the conductor Leonard Bernstein, Odetta and Joan Baez. In the rain, they built their stage in the mud with donated caskets from local mortuaries.

The stakes were incredibly high. People were shot and killed; people were beaten. Viola Liuzzo, a white Detroit homemaker, was fatally shot by Klansmen while driving marchers back to Selma. Weeks before, police shot a man named Jimmie Lee Jackson, who later died. Despite all that, Belafonte says that the stakes are higher today."

More here from Amy Goodman at AlterNet.

Happy Birthday, Harry. We need thousands more like you.

R.

More hypocrisy

And Newtie wants to be President?

Expose the hypocrisy

Brother Lurch is home from his East Coast Tour '06 and takes a look at what a politician's faith says about the way he will govern:

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Requiring a politician to state specifically what religious tenets (s)he adheres to could provide oodles of fun. Can you imagine those creatures who have built a career pandering to the bible-thumping literalists trying to explain just why they believe in Jesus the carpenter as their personal savior yet refuse to live and legislate by that man’s teachings? I’m pretty sure the carpenter would disapprove of Mr Giuliani’s multiple marriages and serial adulteries. Ditto for Newt Gingrich, who also has a strange method of divorce negotiation that would probably find disapproval with Jesus. It’s quite likely he’d have something to say about Mr Bu$h’s faith-based government policies, since I think I remember something about rendering unto Caesar as separate from rendering unto G_d. And I’ll bet the Iraq thing would be frowned upon. There’s something about glass houses, stones, and first without sin, to mix citations. [em in orig]

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Happy Birthday, Osama

How is it you've been able to celebrate the last 6?

... And now you're about to turn 50 - and you're still foot loose and fancy free. 2006 days since you attacked the United States and still no consequences ...

Keepin' us safer

Good thing the Rethugs are the party of national security, huh?

Supporting the troops

Really. Lurch reminds us of a good cause.

International Women's Day

Women are God's greatest creation in my book. They should get a month at least. Stand up and take a bow, sisters, one day you'll run the world and we'll be better off for it.

Quote of the Day

"There is something profoundly evil about a country encouraging young men
and women to go off and fight its wars and then shortchanging them on medical
care and other forms of assistance when they come back with wounds that will
haunt them forever." --Bob Herbert in today's N. Y. Times (behind the Times Select wall)

R.

What Story Will the Public Take Away About the Walter Reed Mess?

Excellent article at Pacific Views:

Americans are truly outraged about the Walter Reed story, but what message have they taken away this week? As this segment on NPR says this story is capable of completely derailing the Bush administration.

It is very important that the public understand what the Bush administration's role was in this failure of policy. As I wrote earlier, the rightwing machine is already out talking about how this is a big government (Democratic) problem. If they successfully paint this idea in the minds of the American public, they will once more skate responsiblity for their actions and be free to carry on as usual.

Today, one of the biggest stories on Google is how Bush is stepping in to fix the problem with no mention that he owns responsibility for this mess. Here is what the Christian Broadcasting News is reporting.

This story line has the effect of once more smearing "government" instead of emphasizing the difference between a Bush bureaucracy and what is possible when someone who cares about making things work for people rather than only their rich backers is in charge.

Just as Clinton's FEMA worked beautifully, so did the VA medical system. It is under Bush that things got so bad.

Besides starting an unnecessary war which greatly stressed the system, Bush and his ideologically corrupt minons refused to hear about the problems and focused their attention on diverting tax dollars to the rich. Former TPMMuckraker Justin Rood has uncovered the fact that the "complicated system" that exists today could have been made significantly better for a mere $1 Million (via TPMMuckraker).

As Krugman says, the problem we see with the treatment for the wounded soldiers is the same as what we saw with New Orleans. The Bush administration is ideologicially concerned first and foremost for funneling profits to their cronies. Everything else is secondary.

If you don't read any of the other links, read Krugman.

Indeed, according to Rood, Bush continues to place confidence in the very people who refused to change the systems that had been identified as problematic:

Yesterday, President Bush put VA Secretary Nicholson in charge of an interagency task force to determine what can be done to deliver benefits and health care now to thousands of wounded vets who have struggled to receive care.

The announcement came almost exactly two years after Nicholson had received the newly designed system, itself the result of an internal VA task force studying how to make sure wounded soldiers were "seamlessly" transitioned from military service to veteran status with the care and benefits they'd earned.

...Sullivan ... reacted with dismay at yesterday's announcement that Nicholson would be leading the new effort to make sure wounded veterans get the care and benefits they deserve.

"I don't think it's a good idea for the people responsible for the problem to be in charge of fixing it," he told ABC News.

This is the story we need to make sure the public takes away from this scandal. Otherwise, nothing can or will get fixed, despite the announcement of a new bipartisan commission to "fix" things. There must finally be some accountability for the Bush administration and their ideology that places greed over human needs.

The day must come.

"Mr. Bush is losing a P.R. war to people who blow up emergency wards."

Matt Taibbi climbs Tom Friedman's frame. I like Friedman for his expertise in some areas, and his style, but dislike him for his idiotic viewpoint on others. He's had this one coming for a while. A 'recommended read'.

Thomas Friedman has been subdued lately. I get the feeling that he's taken some of the criticism of his nutty metaphors (I'm only one of a great many people who've been on him about this) to heart and decided to chill out, which in a way is kind of a shame. He's still an arrogant, wrong-headed prick, but he's no longer a walking literary time bomb like he used to be. I often feel now, like I did on the day Red Auerbach died, that the world has lost one of its leading lights.

What we have to remember about America's half-baked propaganda machine is that, dumb as it is, it always keeps its eye on the ball. The war in Iraq is lost, everyone knows that, but there are future wars to think about. When a war goes wrong, the reason can never that the invasion was simply a bad, immoral decision, a hopelessly fucked-up idea that even a child could have seen through. No, we always have to make sure that the excuse for the next war is woven into the autopsy of the current military failure. That's why to this day we're still hearing about how Vietnam was lost because a) the media abandoned the war effort b) the peace movement undermined the national will and c) the public, and the Pentagon, misread the results of the Tet offensive, seeing defeat where there actually was a victory.

The notion that our problem in Iraq is a resource deficit is pure, unadulterated madness. Our enemies don't have airplanes or armor. They are fighting us with garage-door openers and fifty year-old artillery shells, sneaking around barefoot in the middle of the night around to plant roadside bombs. Anytime anyone dares oppose us in the daylight, we vaporize them practically from space using weapons that cost more than the annual budgets of most Arab countries to design. We outnumber the active combatants on the other side by at least five to one. This year, we will spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined -- more than six hundred billion dollars. And yet Tom Friedman thinks the problem in Iraq is that we ordinary Americans didn't tighten our belts enough to support the war effort.

Friedman should be hung upside down and have holes drilled in his skull for even suggesting this, of course. We're talking about one of the richest men in media, a guy who in recent years got still richer beating the drum for this war from his $9.3 million, 11,400 square-foot mansion in suburban Maryland. He is married to a shopping mall heiress worth nearly $3 billion; the Washingtonian says he is part of one of the 100 richest families in America. And yet he has the balls to turn around and tell us that the pointless, asinine war he cheerleaded for failed because we didn't sacrifice enough for it. Are you reaching for the railroad spike yet?

But trust me, the myth is going to be that you didn't cough up enough for the war. It's your fault we failed, not Tom Friedman's. So put all three of your hands in your pockets and dig out that change you're holding back. We'll need it for his next great idea.

Enjoy.