Support our troops II

Cincinnati Enquirer via The American Street:

[. . .]

Hundreds of thousands of veterans of earlier U.S. military conflicts might also no longer qualify for VA health care or might be forced out by rules proposed by the Bush administration to relieve an overburdened system. The changes would increase veterans' out-of-pocket costs by increasing co-payments for out-patient care and prescription drugs, as well as require many to pay a $250-a-year enrollment fee just to stay in the VA health-care system.

That, critics say, will force many veterans to say goodbye to a health-care system they had assumed would be available all of their lives.

[. . .]

"Young men and women go off and fight for their country and are told that their needs will be taken care of," said Ronald Conley, national commander of the 2.8-million member, Indianapolis-based American Legion. "To change the rules on them when they get back is wrong."

[. . .]

And while I'm all pissed off, I come across this. Fucking bunch of users. Like my partner says, Bush looks at our troops as cannon fodder and deck apes, nothing more, and if they can't fight anymore, we don't want to know about 'em. I'm sorry, but I was more than willing to put my ass on the line for this country, still am, but if I'm fucked up in the process, you'd better give me the care I need.

1963

Xpat.org via Sadly, No!:

"If we do not suppress the Detroit vote, we're going to have a tough time in this election." --Michigan State Representative John Pappageorge (R), July 16, 2004 (Detroit is 88 percent black in a predominantly white state)

[. . .]

It's more visible in Philadelphia than anywhere else as of tonight, where the Bush campaign staff attempted a last-minute drive to shuffle around polling places in Philadelphia--again, a predominantly black city in a predominantly white state. The Bush team argued that they wanted to relocate 63 polling places because they allegedly lack sufficient handicapped access, and because of "intimidation." Said Matt Robb, the Republican leader of the 48th ward in South Philadelphia, "It's predominantly, 100 percent black. I'm just not going in there to get a knife in my back." Another gem of a Republican said they were trying to change polling places in black neighborhoods because "The black neighborhoods are the ones that do the funny stuff. What are you supposed to do?"

[. . .]

Yeah, you know dem niggas, they's all troublemakers.

What the fuck is going on around here? Have we entered a time warp and been transported back 40 years? I am SO pissed off right now, I feel like going out and kicking my annoying neighbor's ass. This is criminal and you know the responsibility goes right to the top. Bush and his cronies need to do some jail time after they're out of the White House.

The American President

Mrs. F and I love that movie. So when Bob Harris made the reference, it got my attention:

Bob Rumson: Vote For Me Or Die! Die! Die!

Suppression

It is shocking: The Bush administration is suppressing a CIA report on 9/11 until after the election, and this one names names. Although the report by the inspector general's office of the CIA was completed in June, it has not been made available to the congressional intelligence committees that mandated the study almost two years ago.

"It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."

[. . .]

From the L.A. Times via The Talent Show.

If I were an 'undecided voter' (ha!), I would certainly want to know who screwed the pooch in the months leading up to 9/11 and who still has a job three years later. I wish, since the Agency has had it with the White House (if the rumors can be believed), they would leak this report before Election Day. Probably the best way cut Bush's legs out from under him at this point.

Update: 15:05

From L.A. Times via Kos:

WASHINGTON -- The ranking members of the House Intelligence Committee have asked the CIA to turn over an internal report on whether agency employees should be held accountable for intelligence failures leading up to the Sept. 11 attacks, congressional officials said Tuesday.

[. . .]

Ya think these bastids will show some balls and demand the fucking report before Election Day?

U.S. Gets Silver In Iraq

From The Onion:

BAGHDAD—After 19 months of struggle in Iraq, U.S. military officials conceded a loss to Iraqi insurgents Monday, but said America can be proud of finishing "a very strong second."

"After that strong start, I really thought that we were going to take it home," Bremer said. "I'd say we can chalk this loss up to a combination of Iraq's home-field advantage and a poor second-half U.S. game plan."

Loyal fans of the U.S. are still coming to terms with the loss, a rarity for an organization that won undisputed world championships in the '10s and '40s, but has not always played its best on hostile ground in recent years.

Added Carruthers: "You'd think they hadn't even scouted their opponent beforehand, let alone beaten them soundly the last time they squared off. Someone should lose his job over this."

"But remember that this was just one war," Rumsfeld added. "We'll get 'em next time."

I think we need new owners and a new coach.

Brrrr

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 - The Selective Service has been updating its contingency plans for a draft of doctors, nurses and other health care workers in case of a national emergency that overwhelms the military's medical corps.

In a confidential report this summer, a contractor hired by the agency described how such a draft might work, how to secure compliance and how to mold public opinion and communicate with health care professionals, whose lives could be disrupted. (NYT)

[. . .]

Docs and nurses now, old forward air controllers next year. I'm a-waitin' for my draft card. You laugh? Read:

[. . .]

Under the plan, Mr. Flahavan said, about 3.4 million male and female health care workers ages 18 to 44 would be expected to register with the Selective Service. From this pool, he said, the agency could select tens of thousands of health care professionals practicing in 62 health care specialties. [my emphasis]

[. . .]

The bright side is that they'll have to fix my hip to get me combat-ready.

Gore Dumps On Bush

Again, it's about time. If he could have spoken this plainly in 2000, we wouldn't be in the mess we're in today. Go read this speech by Al Gore on MoveOnPAC:

Most of the problems he has caused for this country stem not from his belief in God, but from his belief in the infallibility of the right-wing Republican ideology that exalts the interests of the wealthy and of large corporations over the interests of the American people. Love of power for its own sake is the original sin of this presidency

The essential cruelty of Bush’s game is that he takes an astonishingly selfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals then cloaks it with a phony moral authority, thus misleading many Americans who have a deep and genuine desire to do good in the world. And in the process he convinces them to lend unquestioning support for proposals that actually hurt their families and their communities. Bush has stolen the symbolism and body language of religion and used it to disguise the most radical effort in American history to take what rightfully belongs to the citizenry of America and give as much as possible to the already wealthy and privileged, who look at his agenda and say, as Dick Cheney said to Paul O’Neill, “this is our due.”

The central elements of Bush’s political – as opposed to religious -- belief system are plain to see: The “public interest” is a dangerous myth according to Bush’s ideology – a fiction created by the hated “liberals” who use the notion of “public interest” as an excuse to take away from the wealthy and powerful what they believe is their due.

It is clear that President Bush has absolute faith in a rigid, right-wing ideology. He ignores the warnings of his experts. He forbids any dissent and never tests his assumptions against the best available evidence. He is arrogantly out of touch with reality. He refuses to ever admit mistakes. Which means that as long as he is our President, we are doomed to repeat them. It is beyond incompetence. It is recklessness that risks the safety and security of the American people

We also have learned in today’s Washington Post that at the same time Bush was falsely asserting to the American people that he was providing all the equipment and supplies their commanders needed, the top military commander in Iraq was pleading desperately for a response to his repeated request for more equipment, such as body armor, to protect his troops. And that the Army units under his command were “struggling just to maintain…relatively low readiness rates.”

But for the Bush team, it is all part of the same pattern. Lie, intimidate, bully, suppress the truth, present lobbyists memos as the gospel truth and collect money for the next campaign.

The same dangerous dynamic has led Bush to reject the recommendations of anti-terrorism experts to increase domestic security, which are opposed by large contributors in the chemical industry, the hazardous materials industry and the nuclear industry. Even though his own Coast Guard recommends increased port security, he has chosen instead to rely on information provided to him by the commercial interests managing the ports who do not want the expense and inconvenience of implementing new security measures.

The same insularity and zeal that makes them effective at smashmouth politics makes them terrible at governing. The Bush-Cheney administration is a rarity in American history. It is simultaneously dishonest and incompetent.

Massive incompetence? Endemic corruption? Official justification for torture? Wholesale abuse of civil liberties? Arrogance masquerading as principle? These are new, unfamiliar and unpleasant realities for America. We hardly recognize our country when we look in the mirror of what Jefferson called, “the opinion of mankind.” How could we have come to this point?

He has ducked accountability by the press with his obsessive secrecy and refusal to conduct the public’s business openly. There is now only one center of power left in our constitution capable of at long last holding George W. Bush accountable, and it is the voters.

Whoo-eee! Yes, I said "speech". Long, it was, and I read every word. Gore touched on every evil act that Bush has done. Well, not everything. He didn't have all day, but he got to a lot of them. There are a lot of summations out these days about Bush's criminal career in office and this is a good one. If you have a few minutes, go read it.

Finding excerpts to post was a lot like riding a desert race on a fast motorcycle: I just hit the high spots, and tried not to crash. Did a couple tank-slappers, tho'.

I think the last quote says it all.

More College Daze

There is so much good, serious, anti-Bush shit starting to fly around the ether today (about time, I'd say) that I'm having a hard time deciding what to post, so I did the only logical thing: I chickened out. Here is more nonsense from Steve Harvey of the LATimes:

I mentioned that when a college opened in Camarillo, it was named Cal State University Channel Islands, though, of course, Camarillo is on the mainland. Rumor has it that school officials were afraid that the initials of a Cal State University Camarillo — CSUC — would draw unintended laughs. So now the school is CSUCI.The result? Marvin Petal notes that it's known to locals as Cal Sushi.

School daze (cont.): Continuing the discussion of school nicknames, Margo Kline writes that at that good-times school, UC Santa Barbara, "the initials UCSB are said by some of the rowdier students to stand for 'U Can Study Buzzed.' " (Kline points out that the school does have six Nobel Prize winners, so not everyone is partying.)

At happy-go-lucky UC Santa Cruz, meanwhile, student Dori Daniels says the joke is that the initials stand for Uncle Charlie's Summer Camp.

Hopefully, I'll be back later with some real stuff. If the coffee holds out.

Inconsistencies and incongruities

Jeff points up a relevant one:

[. . .]

In many states, the moment a 16 or 17 years old commits a crime, it suddenly changes thier status from "helpless, innocent, little baby" to an "villianous adult." In other words, if you have sex with a 17 year old girl on the eve of her eighteenth birthday, you are a major felon taking advantage of an innocent young person. If she robs a convenience store on the way home, she's an hardened adult.


[. . .]

Go read.

Economics even I can understand

MaxSpeak, you listen:

The latest Bush entry in the Stupid Olympics, after the "terrorism is a nuisance" canard (nicely ripped here by Michael Kinsley), is their umbrage over the suggestion that they have a secret plan to privatize Social Security.

If memory serves, the President was emphatic in the third debate on the need to divert a portion of payroll taxes into individual accounts. That's privatization. The fun part -- the need to replace trillions of dollars of lost revenue to pay current Social Security benefits -- was missing from his spiel. [my emphasis]

There are only a few possibilities here.

[. . .]

How dare you?

From The Farmer at Corrente:

In an extraordinary response to these recent stories, Bush campaign spokesman Steve Schmidt spoke thusly:

"The Bush campaign should be able to make an argument without having it reflexively dismissed as distorted or inaccurate by the biggest newspapers in the country."

Got that?

Remind you of something? Maybe this?

"I subordinate myself without further ado to Herr Adolph Hitler. Why? He has proved that he can lead; on the basis of his view and his will,.... He and the party are one, and offer the unity that is the unconditional premiss of success." ~ Ernst Graf zu Reventlow, 1927.

The 'L' Word

Bob Herbert in the NYTimes:

There should no longer be any doubt that the war in Iraq is an exercise in lunacy. It was launched with a spurious rationale, the weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be a fantasy relentlessly stoked by obsessively hawkish middle-aged men who ran and hid when they were of fighting age and the nation was at war.

This is a war that never made sense and now we are seeing - from the troops on the ground, from our allies overseas and increasingly from the population here at home - the inevitable reluctance to forge ahead with the madness.
The president likes to say he made exactly the right decision on Iraq. Each new death of a soldier or a civilian, each child who loses a parent to the carnage, each healthy body that is broken or burned in this war that didn't have to happen, is a reminder of how horribly wrong he was.

My, some variation of the word "Lunatic" seems to be the order of the day. I must've started it. Even the highly paid and supposedly fearless journalists are starting to hint around that maybe Dubya is a taco short of a combination plate. They need to reach into their shorts and, if they feel anything there at all, they need to ratchet it up just a notch: Bush&Co. are out of their fucking minds!

But What Do I Do With All These Dollar Bills?

This one's just great! From AlterNet. We're all over it, like a lap dancer on a Republican businessman with a wad of cash.

When a few officials of the local Republican party in Cleveland, Ohio decided to treat themselves to a good old-fashioned boy's night out at a strip club, they were greeted with an alarming sight: a Fox News television crew.

"They asked me why Fox was outside," says Angelina Spencer, The Circus club owner, "and I told them they were doing a story about our voter registration campaign."

"They all scrambled and fought over the back door. One guy even got his tie caught in the door," she laughs.

Once again, the good shit's in between the quotes.

With Americans spending around $10 billion a year on adult entertainment, the industry clearly has an opportunity to influence the outcome of the election. "A few Republicans have politely asked me to stop," Spencer says. "Anytime you get strip club owners involved in the political process, you know it’s going to be quite an election."

I like the more amplitudinous gals, myself. More room to stuff dollar bills.

Maybe they need a ride to the polls on election day. A chance to do my civic duty!

Hate? Of Couse Not. Loathe & Despise? Hell, Yes!

Byron Williams has this to say from Working For Change:

This may not come as a surprise, but I have received a plethora of e-mails accusing me of hating President Bush.

First, I hate no one. Second, I don't know President Bush, but he appears to be an affable individual. After all, any person whose favorite baseball player is Willie Mays cannot be all bad.

However, if hate is a loose euphemism for my profound disagreements with the president's policies the argument may have merit.

The good part is in between the quotes. Go read it.

It is the opinion of this writer that in order to support the president, one must place being a Republican above being an American.

I don't hate anybody. 'Hate' is a bad thing. I do, however loathe and despise George W. Bush. Personally. Anyone who could do to my (our) country the things he has done and think he is doing good work is a person worthy of my utter contempt on every level.

Delicate? Hell, No, And I'm In Good Company

Besides just Fixer, I mean. This article in Common Dreams about Michael Moore and the Founders:

This country was not founded by polite people. The American revolution did not follow Robert's Rules of Order. The America experiment was launched in revolt against the existing order, against corrupt kings and their equally corrupt business partners. Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin and their kind rejected the divine right of kings; they did not believe that power should pass from one King George to another. And the best of their number, Tom Paine, preached the healing power of revolution - not just for America but for the world.

Nothing would horrify Moore's critics more than the suggestion that he might well be the best upholder of the revolutionary spirit in the current day - and thus the greatest patriot. But, then, Moore's critics tend to confuse patriotism with blind obedience. And if Jefferson and Madison teach us anything, it is that the true patriot must always stand against King George.

The time for delicacy is long past. It's time for knees to the groin and baseball bats.

A condom

From Mrs. F, apparently goofing off at work:

The government today announced that it is changing its emblem from an Eagle to a condom because it more accurately reflects the government's political stance.

A condom stands up to inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you a sense of security while you're actually being screwed.  It just doesn't get more accurate than that.

Palpably Unstable

Not any better, however a little more delicately said than my partner did, but the same sentiment.

[. . .]

The prophets of doom, whom Cheney exemplifies, are precisely right about the importance of this election. But the momentous decision awaiting Americans is not whether they return to power a President who is uniquely qualified to protect the US against terrorism, as Cheney et al would have us believe. It is whether they re-elect a man who, it is now clear, has become palpably unstable.

The evidence has been before our eyes for some time, but only during the course of this election campaign has it crystallised - just in time, possibly, for the 2 November election. The 43rd US President has always had a much-publicised knack for mangled syntax, but now George Bush often searches an agonisingly long time, sometimes in vain, for the right words. His mind simply blanks out at crucial times. He is prone, I am told, to foul-mouthed temper tantrums in the White House. His handlers now rarely allow him to speak an unscripted word in public.

[. . .]

Go read the whole article at The Guardian. I don't need to say anything.

New Florida Ballot

To see the new Florida Ballot, click here.

Big John

You don't have health care?
Can't afford your prescriptions?
Can't get a flu shot?

" . . . And what does George Bush say to you? 'Stop whining'."

"If Halliburton made flu vaccines, there would be more vaccines in Florida than oranges."

Inmates In Charge Of The Asylum

Here's some follow-up on Fixer's post on the faith-based presidency. In our ongoing effort to spare no expense and bear any hardship to bring you news of things we consider relevant, I actually read the entire article by Ron Susskind in Sunday's NYTimes. You should too.

''This is why he dispenses with people who confront him with inconvenient facts,'' Bartlett went on to say. ''He truly believes he's on a mission from God. Absolute faith like that overwhelms a need for analysis. The whole thing about faith is to believe things for which there is no empirical evidence.'' Bartlett paused, then said, ''But you can't run the world on faith.''

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

And for those who don't get it? That was explained to me in late 2002 by Mark McKinnon, a longtime senior media adviser to Bush, who now runs his own consulting firm and helps the president. He started by challenging me. ''You think he's an idiot, don't you?'' I said, no, I didn't. ''No, you do, all of you do, up and down the West Coast, the East Coast, a few blocks in southern Manhattan called Wall Street. Let me clue you in. We don't care. You see, you're outnumbered 2 to 1 by folks in the big, wide middle of America, busy working people who don't read The New York Times or Washington Post or The L.A. Times. And you know what they like? They like the way he walks and the way he points, the way he exudes confidence. They have faith in him. And when you attack him for his malaprops, his jumbled syntax, it's good for us. Because you know what those folks don't like? They don't like you!'' In this instance, the final ''you,'' of course, meant the entire reality-based community.

Reality-based community? So everybody between Fixer and me is in the un-reality-based community? The arrogance of these bastards!

Bush shouldn't be in charge of the United States. He should be in charge of some wacko neo-Christian-Nazi compound in Idaho where they can wear cammies and carry big no-balls-compensating weapons and just carry on to their little hearts' content about how the rest of us "just don't get it." Somewhere, not too close to a town, where they can anoint themselves with Crisco and worship their little chimp-like idol. Somewhere where they can't hurt the rest of us and we can keep an eye on them. Behind gray stone walls would be better.

Besides being the devil's spawn, they're all fucking crazy, clinically insane, and we are the worse for it.

I hope God doesn't tell them to unleash our weapons of mass destruction just before they are escorted out of the White House in January. In irons, I hope.

Print the article. Keep it next to the shitter and read a little every day. There's a lot more in it besides these excerpts.