Quote of the Day

Montag:

I just read that Karzai of the Afghans doesn't believe that our military can beat the Taliban. I believe that in the best traditions of American good will, we should agree with him, pack up our troops and equipment, put our money back in our pocket and leave the Kabul Quagmire.

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Yeah, how come?

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So, it's ok to say that American born Hispanics should be forced to "go back where they came from" but saying it about Israeli Jews is worthy of a witch burning. Why is that?

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Not that I want American Jews to go anywhere, but I don't think the things politicians say about American citizens of the Hispanic persuasion would be tolerated about any other group, except the gays if there was a Gayistan or something.

More Arkansas Post Mortem and a little stream-of-unconsciousness

There's so much of this the last coupla days, it oughta be on CBS, which Mrs. G calls "The Autopsy Channel" because of NCIS and the CSI: Wherevers. Heh.

Lady Jane

4. That said: suck on it, “anonymous Senior White House officials” and other assorted DC Democrats (extra hard for you, Bill Clinton). Labor is not your bitch, and their money isn’t yours to direct. They’re supposed to take what, another six years of black eyes from Blanche Lincoln just because you say so? If their $8 million buys derivatives legislation and limits the damage that the Masters of the Universe can do to the world economy in the future, it’s not only a bargain, it also means that a bunch of nurses and janitors have done more to rein in the banks than you and your entire pack of servile, visionless Wall Street lackeys has done since you took office.

Glenn Greenwald

What's going on here couldn't be clearer if the DNC produced neon signs explaining it. Blanche Lincoln and her corporatist/centrist Senate-friends aren't some unfortunate outliers in the Democratic Party. They are the Democratic Party. The outliers are the progressives. The reason the Obama White House did nothing when Lincoln sabotaged the public option isn't because they had no leverage to punish her if she was doing things they disliked. It was because she was doing exactly what the White House and the Party wanted. The same is true when she voted for Bush/Cheney Terrorism policies, serves every corporate interest around, and impedes progressive legislation. Lincoln doesn't prevent the Democratic Party from doing and being what it wishes it could do and be. She enables the Party to do and be exactly what it is, what it wants to be, what serves its interests most. That's why they support her so vigorously and ensured her victory: the Blanche Lincolns of the world are the heart, soul and face of the national Democratic Party.
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[...] In other words, the White House wants unions and other progressive groups to be nothing more than Democratic Party apparatchiks, whereby they help Democrats get elected purely for the sake of preserving Democratic power, regardless of the policy outcomes that are achieved, and regardless of how hostile those outcomes are to progressives. The sooner that realization is pervasive, the better.

Both of those pieces have links to others.

So what do we as progressives do about this? On the one side we have a regressive right-wing warmongering corporatist Repuglican't Party. Support for them is out of the question. Duh.

On the other side, we have a slightly less right-wing but just as corporatist Democratic Party. Support for them is getting to be more and more distasteful even though Obama is light years better than Bush or any other Repug in every way. Yes, I said every way.

I'm beginning to understand how the fundies and 'God, guns, & gays' and other retard wingnuts must feel, if there are any of them with functioning brains, that is. The Dems are using unions, liberals, and minorities just like the Repugs use the right-wing tiny-brained: promise them anything for votes and then kick 'em to the curb once they're in power.

One answer that has been kicked around for a while and is gaining support is a (gasp!) Third Party. This has its own set of problems. For one thing, our third party will split the Dems into smaller factions just like the teabaggers are doing to the Repugs. That's a good thing when it's happening to the Repugs, a bad thing if it happens to Dems. Worse, Dems aren't as conditioned to lock-step ideology as Repugs and don't agree as easily to things they are told to like but don't.

Which brings us to 'time'. It will take a comparatively long period of time for a Progressive Third Party to congeal* (carefully chosen word) into something that can get a national following and get people elected who are outside the two-party corporatist/careerist mold.

*I chose 'congeal' because there are lots of 'third parties': Peace & Freedom, Green, Save The Alligators, Free Bagels, etc., etc., that can hold their conventions in a phone booth and come up with candidates like Eldridge Cleaver and Ralph Nader who mercifully don't stand a chance. That kind of splintering just makes the problem worse and the bleeding needs to clot.

The longer it takes to do something, the earlier you must start. Let me use the analogy of a spark plug: we tend to think of a spark plug firing all at once. It doesn't. A spark plug starts to fire an incredibly long period of time, relatively speaking, ahead of actually lighting off the fuel charge in order for it to build up enough of a kernel of electrical flame to do so. I could go on and on about the compromise of ignition timing, stoichiometry, fuel compression, cam timing & overlap, rod angle, and a bazillion other things that have to happen to get you to the convenience store for a pack of Depends, but that's for Fixer & Gordon. Point is:

Start now, results later. A viable Third Party is simply not going to spring full-blown into existence ready to take over and make things right. We're not talkin' an election cycle or two here. We're talkin', best case, a decade if we hit the deck a-runnin' NOW. Which we're not doing. Worst case, a generation. If we start NOW. Which we're not doing.

The seeds of a third party are being planted as we speak, and mighty oaks from little acorns grow. Go plant one and get a lawn chair and a cold drink and watch it. Before you can hang a tire on a rope from a branch on that mighty oak and watch your grandchildren swing, there's a lot going to happen.

Do it. Start a Third Party. Nurture it. Watch it grow to national prominence against the entrenched two-sides-of-the-same-coin corporatist moneyed powerful political system we have now. Trust me on this one, it won't happen as fast amongst Progressives and Liberals as it seems to be happening with the teabaggers because we tend to think for ourselves. That's a big difference and something to consider.

A split Democratic Party will inevitably lead to the Right Wing gaining power again, just like the currently split Repug Party mercifully has them running in circles and screaming and shouting.

Until such a time as there is a viable Third Party, I ask you to remember that the biggest enemy our nation faces is not the Democratic Party but rather the Far Right. You can call the Dems a Hobson's choice or the lesser of two evils, but whether you opt for another more progressive party or try to change the Dems from within with better candidates, Fight The Right With All Your Might. They must never gain control again. Period.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

I've probably put up different versions of this song a half dozen times. Here it is again.

Emmylou Harris,Steve Earle & Townes van Zandt ~ If I Needed You

Thanks to 9granieri, Italy.

Successes and Failures in Arkansas

None of us are very happy about the Dem power structure biting the hand that feeds them by supporting the DINO Lincoln in Arkansa. Jane Hamsher has an excellent post on it.

The best way to impact an incumbent’s responsiveness to their constituents is in the form of primary challenges, whether they are successful or unsuccessful. Nothing else we have ever done has had as much impact. Coming from within their own party, they don’t let incumbents resort to tribalism in order to draw attention away from their record, which they are thus forced to defend. Primary challenges have never been wasted effort, so that is what we decided to pursue. We launched the 2010 Primary Project in October of 2008.

But because the parties are essentially incumbency protection rackets, when you’re supporting a primary challengers you’re running against the party and its ability to wield power. You’re also running against the corporate cash that probably triggered the accountability issue in the first place. Those factors present a very powerful set of obstacles.

More.

Sex death apocalypse iPhone 4

Friday Morford.

Any minute now, solar power and French fry grease, nanotechnology and organic microlending neurobiological hemp-powered oil-eating magic bacteria will take over and make it all better. Right?

And you slap yourself awake. You stab yourself in the soul with an ice pick of Now. And you remember.

We are nowhere near close. It takes no effort at all to flip the lens, to walk the street in fear, to observe, say, all the blood pouring through the streets of Mexico, the violent corruption in Africa, the drug-related shootings just down the street, the raging poverty and sickness, the wall of black death we have just unleashed into the ocean.

Which side is piling up faster, the beauties or the horrors? [...]

Just go...

Nevada’s Wingnut Angle

By Madeleine Begun Kane

Harry’s hopes for November looked bleak,
With Republican odds at their peak.
But he’ll easily wrangle
The wacky Ms. Angle.
Thank you, wingnuts for picking a freak.

I think Angle is a Dem plant. Heh. Good job, Harry! The napalm was a nice touch.

Headline of the Day

World Cup: Should U.S. team wear “BP sucks” shirts vs. England?

Note to the U.S. team: Better accessorize them jerseys with sap gloves and brass knuckles. Heh.

Milo Minderbinder in Afghanistan

Good piece at This Can't Be Happening, which of course it is.

1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder
"We're gonna come out of this war rich!"

Yossarian
"You're gonna come out rich. We're gonna come out dead."

-From the Buck Henry screenplay of Catch 22

No one has captured the absurd spirit of US war-making better than Joseph Heller in Catch 22. Here’s one of the greatest literary symbols for capitalism, Milo Minderbinder, on the future of US warfare:

"In a democracy, the government is the people," Milo explained. "We’re people, aren’t we? So we might just as well keep the money and eliminate the middleman. Frankly, I’d like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry."

In a dynamic Milo Minderbinder would understand, the Afghan security companies protecting US troops from Taliban attacks are now cutting deals with the Taliban on a regular basis. According to an official in the Interior Ministry, if the Taliban are too strong to intimidate, a deal is made. This includes payment not to attack convoys and certain things like radio and cell phone towers.

In one instance, two Afghan security companies -- Watan Risk Management and Compass Security -- were cut out of NATO convoy protection contracts for shooting civilians. The morning the ban went into effect, a NATO convoy was attacked and two men were killed.

According to Filkins, evidence suggests these companies either attacked the convoy themselves or contracted with the Taliban to make the attack. Supply-laden trucks began to stack up on the highway, and soon the contracts were resumed and the two companies were back to work.

Milo Minderbinder should have the last word. Here he speaks with the story’s main character Yossarian, in the 1970 film version of Heller's story. The character Nately has just been killed in the raid Milo contracted on the US base.

Minderbinder
"Nately died a wealthy man, Yossarian. He had over sixty shares in the syndicate."

Yossarian
"What difference does that make? He's dead."

Minderbinder
"Then his family will get it."

Yossarian
"He didn't have time to have a family."

Minderbinder
"Then his parents will get it."

Yossarian
"They don't need it. They're rich."

Minderbinder
"Then they'll understand."

That's about it. Please read the rest.

In Defence Of Helen Thomas and The Myth Of Free Speech

Jonathan Cook in Palestine Chronicle:

Ms Thomas earnt a reputation as a combative journalist, at least by American standards, with a succession of administrations over their Middle East policies, culminating in Bush officials boycotting her for her relentless criticisms of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan. But the reaction to her latest remarks suggest that, if there is one topic in American public life on which the boundaries of what can and cannot be said are still tightly policed, it is Israel.

Undoubtedly, Ms Thomas’ opinions, as she expressed them in an unguarded moment, were inappropriate and required an apology. It is true, as she says, that Palestine was occupied and the land taken from the Palestinians by Jewish immigrants with no right to it barring a Biblical title deed. But 62 years on from Israel’s creation, most Jewish citizens have no home to go to in Poland and Germany -- or in Iraq and Yemen, for that matter. There is also an uncomfortable echo in her words of the chauvinism underpinning demands from some Jews -- and many Israelis -- that Palestinians should “go home to the 22 Arab states”.

The flip side is that the other Arabs don't want them.

Ms Thomas is an Arab-American, of Lebanese descent, whose remarks were publicised in the immediate wake of Israel’s lethal commando attack on a flotilla of aid ships trying to break the siege of Gaza. Unlike most Americans, who were half-wakened from their six-decade Middle East slumber by the killing of at least nine Turkish activists, Ms Thomas has been troubled by the Palestinians’ plight for much of her long lifetime.

She was in her late twenties when Israel ethnically cleansed three-quarters of a million Palestinians from most of Palestine, a move endorsed by the fledgling United Nations. She was in her mid-forties when Israel took over the rest of Palestine and parts of Egypt and Syria in a war that dealt a crushing blow to Arab identity and pride and made Israel a favoured ally of the US. In her later years she has witnessed Israel’s repeated destruction of Lebanon, her parents’ homeland, and the slow confinement and erasure of the neighbouring Palestinian people. Both have occurred under a duplicitious American “peace process” while Washington has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into Israel’s coffers.

It is therefore entirely understandable if, despite her own personal success, she feels a simmering anger not only at what has taken place throughout her lifetime in the Middle East but also at the silencing of all debate about it in the US by the Washington elites she counted as friends and colleagues.

I've called her "the old Ay-rab" for years, but I didn't know 'til now that she actually is one. She's dead right about the United States mishandling the entire Middle East virtually forever, kinda like smoking a cigarette whilst seated on a powder keg in the middle of a lake of gasoline.

What she said after "Israel should leave Palestine", which is true of its attitude toward Gaza and the West Bank though not of the larger former Palestine, was out of line but it was her right to say it.

Repugs, neocons, warmongers, and other never-righties say a lot worse things and do not get pilloried for it. I think at her age it's plenty OK for her to bow out and retire and I hope she can enjoy her remaining years, but if she had been forty years old, those few sentences would have unfairly ruined her career, not that fairness should be expected by anyone anywhere.

This whole deal is the poster child for misdirected political correctness run amuck when it comes to Israel, which in a sane world would be called a bully. The U.S. as well for being its enabler and abettor.

Insanity ...

I don't get crazy about sporting events, mostly. If the Mets make the playoffs, I'm watching. Same goes for the Giants (The New York Football variety). And I'll try to catch Daytona and the Bristol NASCAR races. That's about it.

And then there's the World Cup. You know, real football.

Mrs. F is happy it only takes place every four years. It starts today and I'll be an idiot for the next month until it's over, trying to catch as many matches as I can. Fortunately, ESPN Satellite Radio is carrying all the games so I can listen at work and in the car.

USA/England is tomorrow and my boys, "Der Mannschaft", play their first match on Sunday v. the Aussies.

I'm out of my mind (more than usual). Heh ...

Happy Friday!

Whiners and Sheep ...

Click pic to make big. Stolen from the American Progressive Party's Facebook Page.

The Whiners complain about paying a few more percent in taxes (they can certainly afford it) and have the Sheep brainwashed to believe we're heading down the road to Marxist Russia.

Quote of the Day

Lewis Black:

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"They, as far as I can tell, are attacking us with oil. And so I propose we declare war and invade them," Black suggested.

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I'm down wid dat, brother.

Packing it in ...

I'll be leaving the car business in October and I give it a parting shot.

Shades of Ilse Koch

Pardon the pun. I'm a sick pup...

Mengele's Children: American Medical Experiments and Torture

AMY GOODMAN: A new report from Physicians for Human Rights accuses the Bush administration of conducting illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on prisoners in CIA custody. The report details how doctors, psychologists and other professionals monitored the effects of sleep deprivation, waterboarding and other so-called "enhanced interrogation" techniques on more than a dozen prisoners. It charges that CIA doctors and other medical personnel turned the prisoners into research subjects and collected data in order to study and refine those techniques, but did so under the guise of trying to protect the health of the detainees. The report argues that in determining how far a harsh interrogation could go, doctors, psychologists and physician’s assistants participated in justifying acts that had long been classified illegal, provided legal cover against prosecution, and helped designed future interrogation procedures.

It got me to thinking that Godwin's Law comes in handy across the board. It ain't just Hitler we compare righties and neocons to.

From The Trial of Ilse Koch:

"She was a very beautiful woman with long red hair, but any prisoner who was caught looking at her could be shot," recalled Kurt Glass, a former inmate who worked as a gardener at the Koch family villa. "She got the idea she would like lamp shades made of human skin, and one day on the Appellplatz we were all ordered to strip to the waist. The ones who had interesting tattoos were brought to her, and she picked out the ones she liked. Those people were killed and their skin was made into lampshades for her. She also used mummified human thumbs as light switches in her house."

Congratulations, Georgie and The Dick. You're the new 'Bitchez of Buchenwald'.

Outage on 16

We were a little worried about this one, but it came out OK.

CoCoTimes

California voters' rejection of Proposition 16, despite at least $46 million in backing from Pacific Gas and Electric Co., clears the way for municipalities throughout the state to follow Marin's lead and compete with the investor-owned utility as retailers of electricity.

The proposition, which would have required two-thirds approval from local voters before cities or counties could choose an alternate energy provider, lost with 52.5 percent of voters opposed and 47.5 percent in favor. In Marin the margin was much larger: 61.3 percent of voters voted no, while 38.7 percent voted yes.
...

"The voters saw through the attempt to buy the election. They could smell a rat," said Marin Supervisor Charles McGlashan, who heads the Marin Energy Authority board. The authority, which consists of the county of Marin and seven Marin cities, is sponsoring the Marin Clean Energy initiative, the first community choice aggregation effort in the state, which is competing for customers with PG&E.

"I'm relieved that other communities may be able to join us in creating competition," McGlashan said.

In a press release, Greg Pruett, senior vice president of corporate affairs for PG&E, said PG&E respected the voters' decision. [...]

That's white of ya, Greg. This attempt by PG&E to highjack the initiative process and con the voters into thinking their 'voting rights' were under attack to prevent competition failed because enough voters paid attention.

I have no idea what effect the overcharging of thousands of customers by PG&E's SmartMeters had on the election. Heh.

Here's an interesting bit: voters in areas where private utility companies like PG&E are predominant voted against Prop 16 in overwhelming numbers. Voters in areas with giant publicly owned utilities, like Los Angeles' Department Of Water & Power (LADWP), voted for it in large numbers. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, I guess.

Nobody seems to like their large utility companies very much. I get my power from the Truckee Donner Public Utility District (TDPUD) (from whom I get free light bulbs) via Sierra Pacific Power Company (NV Energy), a publicly traded company. The power appears to be ON and I like TDPUD just fine. My polling place is in their meeting room, which I think is a very fitting place to vote against the attempted power grab (pun intended) by Big Volt.

She's got the scientologist teabagger vote sewed up!

I live next door to Nevada, 12 miles from the state line and 12-miles-and-one-foot from the closest casino. Besides 24-hour saloons and legal bordellos that are the tax base of the cow counties, they have one of the wackiest politicians going in the form of Sharron Angle who won the Repug senatorial primary and will go up against Harry Reid in November.

From Dana Milbank via the EssEffZam:

According to Dana Milbank's column in the Washington Post and other news sources this morning, here are some of the wacky ideas Angle, a former substitute teacher for 25 years, is proposing:

* Bring more nuclear waste to Nevada.
* Deregulate Big Oil; BP spill was only "an accident."
* Abolish the Education Department, Energy Department, EPA, United Nations and most of the IRS.
* Eliminate Social Security -- possibly Medicare and unemployment insurance too.
* Outlaw alcohol. (See 'state with 24-hour saloons' - G)

Other odd and misinformed views:

* Abortion causes breast cancer.
* Prisoners should have massages and saunas (program created by Scientology).
* Drug sales supported the attack on 9/11.

During Angle's time in Nevada's state assembly, she voted "no" so frequently on matters of wide consensus that votes were often called as "41-to-Angle."
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Angle was named "Nevada's worst legislator" several times by the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Another Republican contender, Sue Lowden, blasted Angle in this ad:

http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2010/05/lowden-ad-rips-angle-named-one-of-nevadas-worst-legislators.php

Even though about half of Nevadans view Reid unfavorably, it's hard to fathom a general electorate sending anyone as loopy as Angle to the U.S. Senate. She makes Reid look good indeed.

Whatever we think of Reid, he's better than this idiot. He's not only going to dodge the bullet, it has no primer or powder. I hope he knows how lucky he is to have Ms. Angle as his opponent. Nevadans are politically crazy and you never know, but the smart money is on Reid.

Ms. Angle may be 'loopy', but in her defense I will say she doesn't appear to be mean-spirited and downright evil in her views like Bachmann and some others.

BTW, I got the Repug "my opponent is a flaming Librul godless commie fuck!" primary TV ads from two states. Lucky me.

Lemons ...

To lemonade.

A truism ...

If Republicans are bitching about Dems doing it, they've probably already done it and more:

In the latest twist in the ever-growing Mark Kirk military service fiasco, the Illinois Senate candidate appears to have violated military regulations by campaigning while on active duty.

If Kirk did indeed campaign while serving, as a newly released Department of Defense memo suggests, the offense would be punishable by up to two years of confinement and dishonorable discharge from the military.

...

But it's okay because ...

[Say it with me.]

... he's a Republican.

Link thanks to Mr. Aravosis.

I'm tired ...

Of being pissed on and being told it's raining.

For reasons that could make sense only to the "effing retarded," the Obama White House has chosen not only to ignore virtually every Democratic voter group but to taunt them, rub their noses in it, and insult any Democrats who dare to demand better choices than the corporate shills that now control much of the Party and the White House.

...

They sure kissed our collective ass when they were running for office.

...

So let’s see. In just the last year, the White House has managed not merely to ignore and disappoint but often gone out of its way to mislead, lie to and betray liberals/progressives, labor unions, teachers, Hispanics, gays/lesbians, anti-war groups, dedicated environmentalists, respected pro-employment/pro-growth Nobel economists, climate scientists, financial reformers, defenders of Medicare and Social Security, mainstreet populists, civil liberties and women’s rights advocates, defenders of public interest regulation, alternative energy/efficiency supporters and even scarecrows.

In case you don’t recognize the list, that’s the core, the heart, the brains and the foot soldiers of the Democratic Party.

...

And in November, and the next few Novembers to come, we're supposed to forget all of this and vote like party members in good standing. Listen, I've got better things to do on a Tuesday night in November than stand in line at the voting booth. If they're gonna take my vote for granted they've got another thing coming.

I realize there's a big mess to clean up, all the leftovers from the Bush administration, but they can't be alienating the people that brung 'em. I certainly wouldn't vote Republican but it isn't mandatory I vote either. I'm tired of having to choose between the proverbial 'lesser of two evils'.

Great thanks to Watertiger for the link.

Update:

Digby is offended as well:

...

And, by the way, going to this length over Blanche Lincoln who is about to sign on to Murkowski's move to limit presidential power to regulate on behalf of the environment is just too ironic. What exactly are these guys fighting for?