Fuckups

Four letters. NASA.

(CNN) -- NASA will delay the launch of the space shuttle Discovery, the first shuttle to fly since the 2003 Columbia disaster, from May until July because of safety concerns, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said Friday.

Griffin said the decision was made after managers looked at technical reviews over the past 10 days.

"As a result of all that and in looking at the open analysis items and the small fixes that we need to make and some issues that arose during the tanking of Discovery ... the sum of all those things necessitates that we move out six or seven weeks," Griffin said.

[. . .]

Maybe they should have somebody who knows how the fucking thing works running the show over there? Now, I have the utmost respect for engineers. I've worked closely with some of the finest minds at Ford when I was with Motorsport back in my engine building days, but engineers don't know how things really work. Yeah, they can design shit, but they have no clue about how shit is done in the real world. I could tell you stories. Shit working on paper is far different from the fucking thing actually working when you flip the switch.

NASA has done some good shit over the years, don't get me wrong, but the folks running the show over the last two decades have lost their focus. This is something that should be privatized. It'll save the taxpayers a buncha money and progress will be more forthcoming. Let NASA do the happy little research shit, send their little rovers to Mars (though the place is starting to look like a used car lot), and explore space. Let the corporate world develop the cargo and resource-exploitation end of it. They'll do a better job and we won't have to go through the national trauma every time we lose a crew because the engineers can't figure out how to keep the fucking things together.

Con game

This via the Farmer, via Loaded Mouth:

Authorities at Guantanamo Bay staged interrogations of detainees for visiting politicians and generals to give the impression that valuable intelligence was regularly being gathered, according to a former Army translator at the camp.

Former Army Sgt. Erik Saar told CBS television show 60 Minutes that he believes "only a few dozen" of the 600 detainees at the camp were terrorists and that little information was obtained from them.

"Interrogations were set up so the VIPs could come and witness an interrogation ... a mock interrogation, basically," Saar told the program, to air on Sunday. [my emphases]

[. . .]

So, Jesuslanders, how does it feel to be lied to again . . . and again . . .

Oy gevult!

I was lucky enough to be at dinner with the Mrs. and her AA when (p)resident Nutless Wonder was on TV last night. Unfortunately, I got to see the high(low)lights on the news this morning. Yeesh.

Is it me, or should the President of the United States look and act a bit more confidently? I mean, he looked like a 6th grader in front of the class for the first time, shuffling, squirming, losing his train of thought. I've never seen a man in the office of the Presidency look so out of place, so out of his element (which would be clearing brush on his ranch).

Even Jimmy Carter seemed more at ease, even when it was going to shit around him. Nixon looked more confident when he told us 'I am not a crook'. Clinton was even able to look us all in the eye when he said 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman'. And who can forget G.H.W. Bush when he confidently and sternly told us 'read my lips, no new taxes'. I guess the Chimp's discomfort comes from living in a insulated world of sycophants and yes-men and then being thrust before a group of skeptics.

Agree or disagree with any of his predecessors over the past half-century, most of them were aware of the responsibilities and demands of the office and lived up to them, regardless of idealogy. It is quite obvious that our current President is neither aware, nor does he care. In short, he represented the mindset of this nation last night.

This is a nation of scared, uninformed, and undereducated people who, as long as they're being told everything is fine, are happy to go through their days with blinders on until finally, reality comes bursting through in all its clarity. It's becoming clear lately, that's for sure, and more and more folks are opeining their eyes. It's why the 64% of this nation now feels the man is a total fuckup.

I think it's about time to chase the petulant teenagers out of the Congress and 1600 and let the adults straighten this shit out before we're all sunk. The U.S. cannot be run like a Third World dictatorship or a high school where the teachers have suddenly taken leave. If we keep this shit up, we're gonna break America badly enough that she can't be fixed.

Update: 06:00:

Heraldblog, guest blogging at Blogenlust while John moves from S.F. to NYC (our gain, S.F.'s loss), has a good take on the shit-shoveling session last night.

Profits

How were your first quarter earnings?

Whack-a-DeLay

Go have some fun!

update on that hypocritical bastard.

Fuckshitgoddamnit

From DoD Advisories:

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld will host an armed forces full honor review and award ceremony for Deputy Secretary Defense Paul Wolfowitz at the Pentagon at 11 a.m. EDT, Friday, April 29, 2005.

Why doesn't (p)resident Drizzling Bunghole give him the Medal of fucking Freedom too? Motherfuckers.

Between Iraq and a Hard Place

Excellent article in TomDispatch about the upcoming draft. Long, but well worth it.

But if the draft advocates eventually persuade the administration that a conscripted army is viable, I believe they would still have to overcome a second layer of reluctance among decision-makers in charge of military policy: a fear that the draft will specifically alienate those who currently endorse the war in Iraq (my emphasis). Pro-war partisans rest much of their support of administration foreign policy on the expectation that the January 30 election was a turning point, that the battle of Falluja disabled the resistance, that Iraqi troops will be ready to handle the guerrillas in the not-too-distant future -- and that American troops will soon be brought home at least reasonably victorious. The reinstitution of a draft would constitute an admission that these beliefs are so many illusions. In all likelihood, therefore, any relaxation of the unequivocal opposition to the draft in the administration would indeed precipitate a sharp erosion of the war's already eroding base. Opposition might then reach the critical mass needed to make withdrawal "thinkable."

Bush's imperialistic criminal war is just fine so long as other people's kids have to fight and die for it, huh, you bastards? When your kid has to go, it's time to drop the charade.

Let's let the draft commence and bring the troops home. But not too soon. You want your kid to have a chance to participate in God's Bush's glory, don't you? I do. Even if it kills him. I'm not a nice person on this subject.

Good and Evil on this day in history

Good: On April 28, 1947, a six-man expedition sailed from Peru aboard a balsa wood raft named the Kon-Tiki on a 101-day journey across the Pacific Ocean to Polynesia.

Evil: 4/28/1942: Twelve hundred Berkeley, Calif. residents of Japanese descent report for transport to internment camp.

Dem Dumb Dems

The White-haired Rose of Texas, my darlin' Molly Ivins, goes on about how the GOP continues to screw reg'lar folks and how the Dems continue to let them get away with it.

Being of the populist persuasion, I am a terminal fan of Thomas Frank, who has gone from "What's the Matter With Kansas?" to "What's the Matter With Liberals?" in the current issue of the New York Review of Books, which is a good spot for it.

Those of us in the beer-drinking, pick-up-truck-driving, country-music-listening school of liberals in the hinterlands (That's me - ed.) particularly appreciate his keen dissection of how the Republicans use class resentment against "elitist liberals," while waging class warfare on people who work for a living.

The unholy combination of theocracy and plutocracy that now rules this country is, in fact, enabled by dumb liberals. Many a weary liberal on the Internet and elsewhere has been involved in the tedious study of the entrails from the last election, trying to figure out where Democrats went wrong. I don't have a dog in that fight, but I can guarantee you where they're going wrong for the next election: 73 Democratic House members and 18 Democratic senators voted for that hideous bankruptcy "reform" bill that absolutely screws regular people.

Long list of things that screw regular people. Read.

"The data show that the share of real income growth that has gone to wages and salaries has been smaller than during any other comparable post-World War II recovery period, while the share of real income growth that has gone to corporate profits has been larger than during all other comparable post-World War II recoveries."

In previous recoveries, workers got an average of 49 percent of the national income gains, while corporate profits got 18 percent. This time, the workers are getting 23 percent and the corporations are getting 44 percent -- about one half as much as the share that has gone to corporate profits.

None of that apply to you? Good. Go listen to Tom DeLay give another lecture on moral values.

I'd sooner smack myself repeatedly on the forehead with a ball peen hammer. It would be easier to take and more productive.

Deja Vu All Over Again...

This item caught my interest because I actually got to go to this clusterfuck. From The Baltimore Sun.

FORTY YEARS AGO, on the morning of April 26, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson spoke with a top State Department official about fast-moving events in the Dominican Republic. A popular rebellion was on the verge of toppling a military junta and restoring the country's democratically elected president, Juan Bosch, to power.

"This Bosch is no good," Mr. Johnson said. "He's no good at all," replied Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Mann, who added: "If we don't get a decent government in there, Mr. President, we get another Bosch. It's just going to be another sinkhole."


Two days after that phone conversation, thousands of U.S. Marines landed on the beaches of Santo Domingo. By then, the White House spin machinery was in high gear. When the president went on television to declare that the military action was necessary to rescue U.S. citizens, he didn't mention that nearly all of them had already been evacuated before the Marines arrived.

The invasion of the Dominican Republic turned out to be the first in a modern series of U.S. military interventions that produced quick victories overseas and evident satisfaction at home. The sudden and overwhelming arrival of U.S. troops in Santo Domingo was a prototype for the lightning-strike invasions of Grenada and Panama in the 1980s.

In their phone conversation two days before the Marines landed, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Mann were already planning the post-invasion government of the Dominican Republic.

A tape recording of the discussion conveys large doses of imperial arrogance. "We're going to have to really set up that government down there," the president said, "and run it and stabilize it some way or other."

Forty years later, it's easy to imagine similar conversations in the present-day Oval Office.

As young Marines, we didn't know or give a shit about the politics. We were eager to go somewhere and kick some ass. We assumed it was legit and our government was telling the truth. Please remember that it was the dawn of time as far as public awareness and speedy communication went. I got a real pretty Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal campaign ribbon out of the deal.

Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, we were used as unwitting tools by the administration, as servicemen have always been and will continue to be.

Iraq aside, when I read this article, for some reason Venezuela came to mind.

Hostile Information

From William Rivers Pitt via Truthout:

In this mean and meager time of pre-packaged, pre-processed, corporate-controlled infotainment that passes itself off as 'news, it is a rare and refreshing experience to see and hear a true journalist reporting the facts. I was privileged on Monday night to share a stage in Boston with Dahr Jamail, the intrepid reporter who could not stomach the biased non-news coming out of Iraq after the invasion, and went over there to see and report on what was happening himself.

And report he does. Read for yourself. What's being done in your name will make you angry.

The Pentagon has a phrase for the photos and reports Dahr Jamail was able to bring back to us from his time in Iraq. They call it 'Hostile Information,' otherwise known as unassailable facts that cut violently against the pretty portrait and non-news the American people have been spoon-fed about our occupation of that country.

'Horror' is not a strong enough word to describe what Dahr Jamail showed us on Monday night, what he saw with his own eyes, what almost no American has been allowed to see because 'Hostile Information' is not permitted in George Bush's America.

Bush and his holy cabal look at us like we're mushrooms: keep us in the dark and feed us shit. About everything they do.

Truer words . . .

From Eccentricity:

[. . .]

When you stand on principle and refuse to budge, those who flout principle look like the lowlives they are.

[. . .]

Can I get a Hallelujah? Can I get an Amen?

Catholics going wingnut

Caution! Catholics are not immune from Evangelical wingnuttery. Pam:

WTF?! Do these guys have a death wish for the Catholic church? These allegedly learned Men of God^TM keep uttering insane sh*t like this that makes them look like....ummm...our American Taliban! (Advocate):

[. . .]

Winning . . . not

Pauly:

[. . .]

The U.S. count of major world terrorist attacks more than tripled in 2004, rise that may revive debate on whether the Bush administration is winning the war on terrorism, congressional aides said Tuesday.

[. . .]

Rudeness

Satanic Judges Eat Jesus:

I had to

Courtesy of Pam's House Blend

Unbelievable failures

Ed Naha, a must read:

[. . .]

Oh, sure, the media has helped Bush and his band of merry madmen twist and trample the truth, but you don’t need to be an Einstein to survey the wreckage of this country and conclude that this bunch has been WRONG about EVERYTHING. Not just Iraq. Not just the economy. EVERYTHING. Still, they saunter unscathed through the wreckage, never allowing an unwanted fact trip them up.

[. . .]

Hat tip: Cmdr. Sue

Priorities

With all the problems in this country, Congress sure has their priorities straight. The Sister.

Don't take your guns to town, boys...

Well, just as Florida makes it legal to pre-emptively blow folks to Kingdom Come if they scare you (aka the Bush Doctrine), a real Cowboy State has decided that guns and alcohol don't really mix all that well. From AZ Central:

Gov. Janet Napolitano said no on Monday to mixing guns and alcohol in Arizona nightspots.

The end of an era. No more "Go fer yer hog-leg, Slade! I'm a-callin' ya (hic) out, ya varmint!"

"We're happy she recognized that it's dangerous for our employees and for the industry as a whole," said Miglino, who owns Nixon's at the Esplanade. "It is also exciting for the recognition of the hospitality industry and how important it is to the state. You can't mess with the golden goose, which is tourism in Arizona."

Yeah doggies, blow the sonofabitch to hell and feathers, no more Golden Eggs! I think people vacation in Arizona half hoping to see an Old West shootout. People don't vacation in South Central L.A. for the same reason.

Eric Edwards, executive director of the Arizona Association of Chiefs of Police, said, "Guns don't mix with booze any better than driving has."

Duh.

Please keep in mind that it's legal to carry a handgun in Arizona without a permit as long as it's in plain sight. A lot of folks do and nobody freaks out over it. Guns are openly and legally bought and sold at swap meets. Try either one of those in California, go to jail.

While this law seems a little trivial, it shows that Arizona, a notoriously Red State, is slowly changing due to an influx of less-conservative people fleeing California's taxes and up-tight, restrictive laws.

Are you effin' kidding me?*

WASHINGTON - Confronting growing concerns over high energy prices, President Bush on Wednesday will unveil controversial plans to spur construction of new nuclear power plants, provide incentives to buy diesel vehicles and most novel of all: use some old military bases for oil refineries.

[. . .]

Nuclear power.Bush will call on Congress to provide a “risk insurance” plan to insulate the nuclear industry against regulatory delays if they build new nuclear power plants.

[. . .]

Dicknose has gone over the edge. Let me tell you about a little place called Shoreham, Long Island.

Late last month, the people of New York State got quite a bargain: the Shoreham nuclear-power plant on Long Island, complete and almost ready to run, a certified $5.3-billion value for only one dollar.

If you wonder why the plant's owner, the Long Island Lighting Company (Lilco), was willing to sell at such a discount, the answer can be found in that phrase ''almost ready to run.'' All Shoreham lacks is an operating license, for which it has been waiting since its completion in 1984. It doesn't have an operating license because the State of New York and its creature, Suffolk County, have refused to take part in developing the emergency-evacuation plans that are a requisite to securing the license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC). . .

This was written in 1988. Know what Shoreham is doing, 17 years later? Nothing. It's falling into the ground. I'm still paying for that white elephant and I will be for about 20 more years. I'm gonna be paying more when the containment begins to fail and they have to sink more money into the place to keep it safe. When people see places like Shoreham, and the money we have to sink into working plants like Indian Point and Yankee in order to protect them from terrorists, they're not gonna want to pay for it. Especially if it does nothing for them in the short-term. Personally, I'm in favor of nuke plants, but in the current post-9/11 climate, it ain't gonna happen. Not in my backyard anyway.

Update: 18:30:

I was listening to (p)resident Drooling Sphincter on the ABC World News talk about 'fixing' the problem of energy dependence. As a mechanic, when I hear the word 'fix' I expect the fucking thing to work when the 'fixing' is over with. So far, everything Chimpy's 'fixed' is broken.

*No relation to RUFNKM.