Quote of the Day

A 'comment' on a post at The Carpetbagger Report about the Flip wingnut & Co. throwing shit at George Soros and hitting themselves right in the face with it:

You know, Michelle Malkin isn’t even the kind of Olongapo boom-boom-short-time girl you’d pick up if you walked into the bar totally shitfaced.

Maybe she's a Benny Boy? Somebody with a strong stomach please check this out.

We've had too many of these ...

Dix Hills – Suffolk County Executive Steven Levy has presented the Suffolk Medal of Distinguished Service to the families of five Suffolk soldiers who died in service to the country while fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan.

At a Veterans Appreciation Ceremony, held at the Brentwood campus of Suffolk County Community College, Levy presented the Suffolk Medal of Distinguished Service to:

Richard and Laurie Baylis, parents of Army PFC Matthew Baylis of Oakdale;

Richard and Nicole Lundin, parents of Army Cpl. James Lundin of Bellport;

Jose and Elsie Pacificador, parents of Army PFC Paulo Marko Pacificador of Shirley;

Patti and Kevin O’Neill, sister and brother-in-law of Army CW4 John Engeman of Northport;

Tim and Janet Scherer, parents of USMC Cpl. Christopher Scherer of East Northport.

...

I'm sick and tired of my neighbors losing sons and daughters in this misbegotten war.

Yeoman's work ...

The San Diego Humane Society is coordinating the animal rescue from the fires and they're busting their butts. Give 'em a hand if you can.

This hurts ...

This hits home for me. Heh ...

Jack Daniels water supply is running low and putting the century-plus whiskey business in jeopardy.

...

The water here has become a precious commodity. The water source for the whiskey is a spring flowing through the Jack Daniels property. For more than 140 years this spring, known as Cave Spring, has been the water supply for Jack Daniels. It is one of the most essential parts of the whiskey’s recipie.

...

But this year there is a problem - that water supply is starting to flow less and less. Hamilton said the drought Tennessee is in is taking a toll on Cave Spring.

...

Jack wouldn't be Jack without the water. Oy! To me, it is the Elixir of the Gods.

Thanks to Cookie Jill for the depressing link.

Saturday whorage

As with mostly every Saturday, another chapter of my novel Thirty Days at Zeta is up at The Practical Press.

Leave your own links in comments. Let us know what you're talking about.

'Toons

Every day I look for a good cartoon to put up. Usually I don't find any. Not today. Too many to choose from. Go here and look.

Laura Bush Slams Newspapers on 'Freedom' and Iraq

Editor & Publisher

ALI AL SALEM AIR BASE, Kuwait First lady Laura Bush told hundreds of U.S. troops Thursday that the American people stand by them in the Iraq war and the security situation in the country was improving due to their efforts.

"I'm here to tell you that the American people stand with our troops," she said. "No matter what you might read in the newspapers, people do appreciate the gift of freedom."

Oh, the poor dear! She was supposed to be a rich, still marketably attractive widow by now. That window has closed. So sad.

Note to Laura: Ya done yer job, Pickles. Award yerself a bonus Prozac, pour a tumbler of yer favorite colorless booze, and take a break and relax. You've earned it, shillin' fer that worthless bastard yer married to, Heaven knows. Ya might wanta put some fresh batteries in that other thing, too...

Osama's pretty safe from our flip-floppin' big shots

I guess I got a little theme goin' this morning. I'm a pro-2d Amendment guy and a firearms and shooting sports enthusiast, not to mention being possessed of a strong survival instinct, i.e. I will personally prevent my own demise, or that of those around me, at the hands of another rather than wait like a good Librul for the cops to come and draw a chalk line around my corpse. Guns work darn good for that.

So normally I wouldn't link to the anti-gun Gun Guys, but sometimes they have some good shit. This is one of those times.

We don’t get into presidential politics much on GunGuys.com.

But a boast on Tuesday in New Hampshire caught our attention.

While speaking at a company called Thompson, which bills itself as “America’s Master Gunmaker,” John McCain declared:"I will follow Osama Bin Laden to the gates of hell and I will shoot him with your products.”

We’re all for hunting down Osama, but the current administration has failed to do that over the past several years.

Now, I'm familiar with the Thompson/Center Contender. The outfit makes other firearms as well, but that one's a premium piece. Comes in lotsa calibers, very accurate, which is good 'cuz it's a single-shot, and a mite pricey.

Knowing that Sen. McPCain's a little bucks-down at the moment, I thought perhaps he'd have trouble swingin' the ducats for one of those, so I thought to offer him the loan of my Dad's old shootin' arn, a 1914 Smith & Wesson Military & Police Hand Ejector Second Change revolver in .38 Special. It's in excellent shape, with a lock-up as tight as, if not better than, a brand new equivalent. The old wheelgun's got a real tall 'great plains' front sight blade and delivers an accurate shot at 100 yards, an incredibly long range for a handgun, so Johnnie wouldn't even have to get real up-close, albeit shootin' the fella'd be a mite personal, to bin Laden to do him.

It'd be Win-Win! OBL'd be pushin' daisies (poppies?) like everyone says they want, I'd have a historically significant firearm, and McCain'd get a big boost in his ratings. That's OK. He ain't gonna win nuthin' nohow.

That last sentence came home after I read this next paragraph. I think the theme today is poof!.

(We should note that when challenged later about his statement, McCain backtracked a bit. "I certainly didn't mean I would actually shoot him. I am certainly angry at him, but I was only speaking in a way that was trying to emphasize my point," McCain said. "I would not shoot him myself.")

Thanks for clearing that up for us John.

Go on home to beautiful Arizona, John, take up knittin' and rock on the porch. That kinda flip-floppin' out of a strong statement ain't gonna help you be president of anything. I take that back. Maybe the other ladies in the sewin' circle won't mind. Maybe you can be president of that if the opposition's not too tough.

Maybe I'm wrong about this. Maybe it's gettin' too close to the Gates of Hell that spooks him. Being close to that many politicians and lawyers'd spook anybody.

Goddammit, Bush, kill the sonofabitch, you incompetent twit!

At the not inconsiderable risk of having Fixer beat me black and blue, thump me a pink belly with sap gloves, and rub noogies in my noggin with dirty gravel, I will now link you to a Colonel Hunt. I got no idea what he was a Colonel in. I'm doing this at great personal peril to show you that even though a stopped clock is right twice a day, which is a pretty generous comparison considering the record of this outfit, it's wrong again one second later.

We know, with a 70 percent level of certainty — which is huge in the world of intelligence — that in August of 2007, bin Laden was in a convoy headed south from Tora Bora. We had his butt, on camera, on satellite. We were listening to his conversations. We had the world’s best hunters/killers — Seal Team 6 — nearby. We had the world class Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) coordinating with the CIA and other agencies. We had unmanned drones overhead with missiles on their wings; we had the best Air Force on the planet, begging to drop one on the terrorist. We had him in our sights; we had done it. Nice job again guys — now, pull the damn trigger.

Unbelievably, and in my opinion, criminally, we did not kill Usama bin Laden.

That was the 'got it right' part. How 'right' perhaps even the Colonel doesn't know. Operative word is 'criminally'.

Something bothers me that the Colonel didn't really address: since when does 'the best Air Force on the planet' have to 'beg' to shoot up the bad guys in a war zone? Orders to the contrary when it comes to this particular bad guy? We'll get to that in a moment.

Then the Bird gets back to normal:

You cannot make this crap up; truth is always stranger and more telling than fiction. Our government, the current administration and yes, our military leaders included, failed to kill bin Laden for no other reason than incompetence.

There is certainly a wealth of incompetence in the Bush administration, but that's not the reason they didn't 'pull the trigger' on OBL. Perhaps the Colonel knows and can't bring himself to say it, but the real reason is that it would be a 'friendly fire' incident. If Osama had a cell phone filled with C-4 up to his ear, Bush wouldn't hit 'send'.

Bush needs bin Laden and al Qaeda as boogiemen to scare hash marks into our skivvies, not that I need any help with that at my age. He needs them to justify the damage he has already done to the United States and the rest of the world and plans to do for at least the next fourteen months. Bin Laden dead, poof! goes the pouf.

Besides, the bin Ladens are old family friends and business partners in crime of the Bush famiglia.

Then, remarkably, I wholeheartedly agree with the Colonel again:

Our men and women are being blown up and killed every day in Iraq and Afghanistan. Every family who is separated from a loved one during this war is being insulted by our government when they fail to kill those who have already killed us and will not hesitate to do so again and again. Damn it guys, PULL THE DAMN TRIGGER.

Setting aside for a minute the fact that Bush's Oil War is a criminal enterprise that surpasses even the family traditions he was raised with, even people on his side are starting to complain about the way he is going about it. The right (heh) reaction for the wrong reasons.

Why Those Who Love America Are Feeling Brokenhearted

I hadn't thought of the word 'brokenhearted' to describe the way I feel until I read this piece by Andrew Greeley, but it fits perfectly.

I am ashamed for America. Note carefully that I do not say I am ashamed of America. Despite all its inherent flaws and all its tragic mistakes, the United States stands, however incompletely and with whatever imperfections, for the highest standards of freedom and democracy that the world has yet known.

I am ashamed for America because all the evil done in the nation's name in recent years is turning off the light on the mountaintop.

Mr. Greeley manages to sum it up in four paragraphs, which is a pretty good trick considering there are hundreds of thousands of pages yet to be written about it.

4. At a remarkably frank meeting of middle-range officers (majors and colonels) at Fort Leavenworth, the soldiers debated not whether there should have been a war in Iraq, but who was to blame for losing it. Was it the senior officers or the joint chiefs or the civilian leaders? The war is not even over yet, and already the officers who fought it and will have to fight its continuation have already given up hope. Too bad for them, because the president has made up his mind that we are still going to win the war and the Democratic presidential candidates speak about a 10-year presence in Iraq. Whatever the political leadership is or will be in 2009, no candidate seems capable of saying, "We're getting out now!" And the rest of the world laughs at us because both parties are led by fools.

Anyone who cares about the United States and its legacies has to be brokenhearted at what has been done to our beloved country by the crazy people who are running it - people who have become so skilled at deception they don't even realize anymore that they are deceiving. Just like the Democrats don't realize they are again stealing defeat out of the jaws of victory.

All I have to add to this is that 'hope springs eternal' in my foolish broken heart.

Dodd!

Shakes has a great post up at Comment is free:

Can you feel the Doddmentum yet? Last week, after leaders of the senate intelligence committee reportedly reached an agreement with the White House that would, via new legislation, grant immunity to the telecom companies who complied with the national security agency's warrantless spying program, Democratic presidential candidate and senator Christopher Dodd emerged as a potential leader on the issue of privacy and constitutional protections. First he swore to put a hold on the bill. Then he vowed to filibuster if Democratic leaders tried to proceed with it despite his hold.

...

I'm not jumping on the Dodd wagon yet, but by golly, the man is doing the right things. Good Friday morning reading ... if you're not going to work.

I, on the other hand, woke up late (the Mrs. is away on business) and I'm scrambling. Thank God it's fucking Friday.

More from Shakes on the subject here.

Quote of the Day

"You can roll horse manure in sugar, doesn't make it a doughnut."

I like that!

That was the response to the revised SCHIP bill going through the House as we speak, by a Repug congressmanette from Florida. Repugs know all about rolling our doughnuts in manure to give their enablers some sugar.

San Diego Fire Evacuees vs. Katrina Evacuees: Who Ya Got?

I've been thinking about this comparison between these two disparate groups of people, but I've held off posting about it because I didn't think I could do it justice. The Rude Pundit has given me the swift kick in the slats I needed.

One of the mightier acts of bullshit sophistry that's already started (and will continue) is the comparison of how "well-behaved" are the people who have evacuated to San Diego's Qualcomm Stadium from the fires engulfing the nearby areas and how utterly degraded and savage were the people who made their way to the Superdome and Convention Center in New Orleans before, during, and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

[...] And certainly what Glenn "If You Hire a Cretinous Retard, Expect Him To Say Cretinous, Retarded Things" Beck spewed about America haters getting their houses burned down will be less offensive than what's coming. Yeah, it's all race and class-based, and it's also pathetically narrow and simple-minded.

Yes, what's happening to people in California is hideous, awful, and other adjectives, and it's great that the evacuees there are being treated like human beings. But other than the desperate president trying desperately to not look like a desperate boob and trying to make sure everyone sees he's in charge and that he's "learned lessons" since Katrina, there is no reason to compare. Indeed, comparing the two masses of people at the evacuation sites is not unlike comparing apples and drowned people.

Well...they both float. For a while.

The two disasters have nothing - I say again, nothing - in common other than bad things of wildly different severity happened to people in wildly different circumstances. The demographics, logistics, emergency response, the aftermaths - all as different as night from day.

The SD evacuees' houses weren't on fire for the most part, just in danger. They were warned by methods ranging from a loud hailer on a cop car to personal calls by a 'reverse 911' system. Most of them had plenty of time to load essential shit in their SUVs and boogie to Qualcomm or wherever. I guarantee you that every last swingin' dick and dickette drove themselves out of harm's way. Public transportation in SoCal is for 'the help', and usually involves a lot of walking anyway. Those folks have bank accounts (Boy, do they!), credit cards, resources. Even if their houses go up in smoke, they're in no physical danger. The evacuation facilities are plush, to say the least. Good eats, plenty to drink, rock bands, crafts for the kids, shitters that work, pet care, grazing for horses, the works. The roads are open and resupply is not a problem. Emergency responders, firefighters, cops - they all showed up. If their houses burn down, we have LtGov Garamendi (who would make a good Governor, but that's another story), former state Insurance Commissioner, to make sure the "pay as little as late as possible" insurance companies cough it up.

Contrast that with Katrina. Those who could evacuate, did. Those who didn't own a car were stuck. Emergency responders, public transportation, medical personnel, everybody who could, got the fuck out. And couldn't get back in, partly because of road conditions, partly because of government bungling (all levels), and in many cases were not allowed to. The floodees were without food, water, operating toilets, etc., etc. , for days. Many died due to government ineptitude. We all know how much help the Chimp and FEMA weren't. And still aren't, really. The insurance companies played their despicable games all along the Gulf Coast, except amongst the rich and powerful who wouldn't stand for it.

Two years on and we see how well things are going on the Gulf, particularly in NOLA. Not very.

Of one thing I am certain: the SoCal evacuees will not be dispersed to try and turn their area into a Repuglican region. It already is. That's the reddest heavily populated area (I know where my 'reddest area' is, even though I can't see it without hurting myself. Heh.) in my state.

In short, it's a lot better to be an upscale, if not rich, white suburbanite in a predominantly Repuglican area than it it is to be a poor black city dweller in a Democrat(ic) one.

The thing that's most irritating about these bullshit comparisons between the 'good' evacuees and the 'bad' evacuees is that it comes up at all. It's only happening because of the poisonous atmosphere in this country brought about by the newly resurgent tolerance, even promotion, of racism, and the class and culture wars started against the have-nots by the haves and the right-wing administration they side with, to further their fascist corporate war-mongering agenda of domination.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, all by design, with the aid of a carefully oiled conspiracy to divide the American people and thus conquer all of us, including their unwitting toadies. Luckily, even some of those morons are starting to catch on.

They must not - I say again must not - prevail. They won't. There are many like me who consider themselves in the fortunate half of our society who demand fairness and justice for the other half.

I was right. I didn't do this subject justice. There's so much more to say. I guess I've got time to get back to it if the sap rises again. Later, and please pardon the rant.

Plamegate Finale: We Were Right; They Were Wrong

David Corn, in his last "Capital Games" article in The Nation, on Plamegate:

It's like the war: false statements, false cover stories, and failure to concede the errors in judgment and action that have caused harm to national security. But the meta-narrative of Bush and his neoconservative allies is one of no apology, no surrender. They say and do what they must to shield themselves from the consequences of their actions. Reality be damned. What matters is what they can get away with. In the case of Valerie Plame Wilson, they did escape retribution. In the larger case of the Iraq war, they are still hoping to.

I hope all the neocons and war profiteers end up in a nice camp somewhere. Manzanar springs to mind. Or The Hague. Or Lubyanka. Or the Tijuana jail. Or under it. Somewhere fitting for their crimes.

Endgame for Iraqi Oil?

Jack Miles on how how Bush's Oil Grab is BOGging down. This may be the light at the end of the tunnel unless Cheney makes Bush go to war with Iran. This article is a little technical, but the Devil is in details. It's a Tomgram, so take a lunch.

The oil game in Iraq may be almost up. On September 29th, like a landlord serving notice, the government of Iraq announced that the next annual renewal of the United Nations Security Council mandate for a multinational force in Iraq - the only legal basis for a continuation of the American occupation - will be the last. That was, it seems, the first shoe to fall. The second may be an announcement terminating the little-noticed, but crucial companion Security Council mandate governing the disposition of Iraq's oil revenues.

The game will be up because, as Antonia Juhasz pointed out last March in a New York Times op-ed, "Whose Oil Is It, Anyway?":

"Iraq's neighbors Iran, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia?. have outlawed foreign control over oil development. They all hire international oil companies as contractors to provide specific services as needed, for a limited duration, and without giving the foreign company any direct interest in the oil produced."

By contrast, the oil legislation now pending in the Iraqi parliament awards foreign oil companies coveted, long-term, 20-35 year contracts of just the sort that neighboring oil-producers have rejected for decades. It also places the Iraqi oil industry under the control of an appointed body that would include representatives of international oil companies as full voting members.

The news that the duly elected government of Iraq is exercising its limited sovereignty to set a date for termination of the American occupation radically undercuts all discussion in Congress or by American presidential candidates of how soon the U.S. occupation of Iraq may "safely" end. Yet if, by the same route, Iraq were to resume full and independent control over the world's third-largest proven oil reserves - 200 to 300 million barrels of light crude worth as much as $30 trillion at today's prices - a politically incorrect question might break rudely out of the Internet universe and into the mainstream media world, into, that is, the open: Has the Iraq war been an oil war from the outset?

Gee, ya think? There's lots more, and it's well worth reading, but I'll cut to the chase:

Time will tell, but not too much time. The eerie silence of the Bush administration about oil grows all the more deafening as the price of crude climbs toward $100 a barrel. Blood for oil may never have been a good deal, but so much blood for no oil at all may seem a far worse one.

It's all been a swindle on the grandest of scales, and the incompetent evil little pricks in this administration couldn't even do it right. They sure managed to kill a lot of people and spend a lot of our money, though, and that will continue for a long time even though folks are wising up.

The clock will not start to run down on BOG until 20 January '09 at the very earliest, of that we can be sure, and then only if Bush decides to step down like he's supposed to.

Memories ...

I meant to blog about this earlier. When I was in the Air Force, I passed through Clark AB in the Philippines several times. My esteemed colleague over at The Practical Press, The Fat Lady Sings, was a Navy wife stationed at Subic Bay. She posted an essay the other day that brought back many memories, fond and not so fond. I urge you to read it.

...

This was P. I. – Subic Bay. It made Bangkok look like Vegas on family night. Have any of you seen the HBO series Deadwood? OK – now you have some idea of what I’m talking about (sans the carnivorous pigs). Why in hell have wives there at all, you may ask? Oh please! Didn’t you know the Navy was a family institution? Reagan was president, God Damn It! There had to at least be a veneer of respectability. I mean, what would mom and pop back at the old homestead think if they knew junior was getting his roto routered in some dingy bar by a skinny 13 year old girl with hopeless eyes? Not to mention being strung out on crystal meth or amyl nitrate, as well. So the powers that be made a point of shipping families in – by the plane load. Most MAC flights would cost $10; but P. I. – P. I. was free. A garden paradise, they said. Lovely blue ocean. Marvelous shopping. Not one word about poverty, hookers and filth. Then there were the snakes and bugs. Big fuckers – eat you alive in a heartbeat. And the humidity! Jesus H. Sebastian Christ! You know – P. I. is the only place I’ve ever been where it rained out of a clear blue sky. No lie – hot rain too; it got so humid, the air would have to shed water. Imagine 100 degrees with 110% humidity. Like living inside a pressure cooker.

...

My neighbors ...

Don't fuck with this lady:

OCTOBER 24--Swinging an ax she retrieved from behind the counter of a Long Island convenience store, a diminutive clerk fought off an armed man who tried to rob her Saturday night, a confrontation caught by a store surveillance camera ...

Heh ... Video here.

Questions ...

Do you take anything a 'government spokesperson' says at face value anymore? Or, in lieu of that, do you, once you hear of a story or issue on TV, do your own research to determine the truth for yourself because you don't trust [name of your regularly watched network news program] not to spin it somehow?

I'm trying to determine if it's just my own paranoia.

If Only...

Click to make the smoke billow out his head even bigger!

From Slate

Flash! Al Qaeda! Fire! Fear!

Subhead: Only Repuglicans Can Save You From Nonexistent Dangers That They Invented To Scare You Into Voting For Them

Under a big, bold headline at the very top of Raw Story:

Did al Qaeda start the California wildfires?

As more than a million people escaped the flames, Fox News anchors couldn't help speculating about a terrorism link to the blazes ravaging southern California.

Correspondent Adam Housley said he's received "hundreds of comments" from readers of his Fox News blog speculating about a link to terrorism.

Thus solidifying the opinion of folks like me who think you have to be an ignorant, misguided moron to watch FAKENews'

And then, under a teeny tiny blurb at the very bottom of Raw Story:

Wildfires ravaging California are the result of the region's unique climate and geography combining with a burgeoning population that is increasingly encroaching on rural areas, experts say.

Now that's more like it. Of course, the F** viewers who can read might notice that that story is from AFP, and you know how those Frogs lie!

I was born in Southern California and lived there for 35 years. These fires have been occurring annually as far back as I can remember, and historically as far back as the Spaniards could remember and the Indians before that. The fires weren't really much of a problem until the coastal flatlands got all built out and people started spreading up the surrounding hills, to the 'wildland interface' of dry, brush-covered hills that are all over the place surrounding the urban areas down there.

I guaran-goddam-tee you that SoCal doesn't need any terrorist help to catch fire. The F** Noise bullshit is just more fear-mongering from paranoid Repuglican operatives who want their daddy to save them. It's too much to hope that they would ever develop a sense of shame and disgust at their own verbal diarrhea from passing on such utter crap from WH/neocon talking points.

By the way, when I'm Emperor of California, there will be a $100,000 cash bonus, or more if needed, for each person who leaves the state for good. Anybody who wants to move here will be required to bring a year's supply of water with them as the price to gain entry. After I wrote that last sentence, I got a vision of little brown people with many, many water jugs on really long poles trudging northwards...