A price must be paid

Dr. Cole:

From Wednesday to Friday, guerrillas in Iraq killed 18 US troops. The most tragic single incident came on Friday, when guerrillas used old Baath rocket parts to make an enormous bomb that killed 10 Marines near Fallujah and wounded 11. CNN points out that Marine convoys tend to spread out to limit such casualties, so the death of 10 GIs in one incident suggests just a horrific explosion. There were said to be 600,000 tons of munitions stored in Iraq, one of the more militarized societies in the world, and over 200,000 tons are probably still unaccounted for.

...

After the lies, the poor planning, and the outright corruption that are part of every facet of this fiasco, only one thing comes to mind.

We impeached a President who lied about getting a fucking blowjob!

As the bodies of American troops pile up, as more corruption and scandal are revealed, it is becoming very clear the only way Bush will pay a price is if there is a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress at this time next year. And a price must be paid.

The Bush administration cannot be allowed to perpetrate these crimes against this nation and her people, and the world's people, and be allowed to walk away scot-free. This fact has to be made astonishingly clear to the leadership of the Democratic Party as we move into election season.

This is not a matter of patriotism and it has to be made clear to the public that crimes have been committed. Heinous ones. At the very least, someone must be held accountable for the murder of over 2100 U.S. troops whose lives were squandered for profit.

Iraq, the reasons for it and the process used to initiate it, is an illegal action brought about purely for the enrichment of large corporations. It is obvious at this point and only the people making a profit from it (directly or indirectly) are denying it. Our credibility in the eyes of world counts on an unequivocal act of contrition. If we are ever to be recognized as the moral leader of the free world again (and we were at one time) we have to take the high road, and continue to do so until we are once again seen as the beacon of freedom and democracy.

Without our credibility, any diplomatic initiative will be suspect. We are alone on this tiny ball of rock known as Earth that is getting smaller every year. We have to get along with those around us because we are the anchor. We have to be the ones who 'do the right thing', for no one else has the power we do, military, economic, and moral. By letting Bush and the Republicans get away with murder (literally) we will have abdicated our position, earned by the sacrifice of previous generations.

Yes, a price must be paid and apologies must be given. It is up to the Democratic Party to grow the backbone to do it. It's up to us to remind them of their responsibility and help them get their heads around that fact. Bush must pay, Cheney must pay, and their accomplices must pay. They should at least face trial. We have to show the world we know the difference between Right and Wrong. We are all responsible for our actions and this administration, and their hangers-on, must be held accountable for theirs.

A price must be paid.

Hostages

My prayers go out to those kidnapped in Iraq...but (there's always a 'but', ain't there?)...

I have one question. What the fuck are you people doing in a fucking war zone?

...

Iraq war opponent Mr Kember, 74, of London, was seized in Baghdad.

A British anti-war campaigner is due to arrive in the Iraqi capital later to appeal directly for his release.

...

Mr Kember has been held since Saturday along with three other peace activists - American Tom Fox, 54, and Canadians James Loney, 41, and Harmeet Singh Sooden, 32.

...

Now, I'm as much against the war as these peace activists, but being in Iraq ain't gonna bring about the end of the war. 150,000 U.S. troops can't seem to do it, what makes you think you can? As many of we veterans have said over the past 2 1/2 years, this war will be ended politically and the best way to do that is agitate our governments at home.

Checking out the group these unfortunate folks belong to, it seems they are actually committed to doing good in many places, not just proseletyzing.

What would happen if Christians devoted the same discipline and self-sacrifice to nonviolent peacemaking that armies devote to war?

I admire their efforts (and many of our so-called 'christians' could learn from them), but Jesus H. Christ, the situation on the ground there is too unstable. A white (especially those from the U.S. and U.K.) person on the street in Iraq is too tempting a target to those whose mission is to destabilize the situation even more.

Take a little advice from a guy who's dodged his share of bullets. A war zone is not the place (especially one where your countrymen are part of an occupying force) to do your thing. You're only providing fodder to those whose intentions run counter to yours. You're also condemning your people to a horrible death if they are captured. If you want to stop this war in Iraq, get your fellow Christians in this country to see the light. I mean, they are the ones who got us into this thing in the first place. May God protect your people.

Update:

And then there's Rush Lintball.

Career Day at the General's

Help make a boy's dream come true...

They're all goin' down

Related (somewhat) to Gord's post below:

Don't forget that Jack Abramoff's own secretary, Susan Ralston, became Karl Rove's Personal Assistant, and that Abramoff said he contacted Rove personally on relieving his client Tyco from having to pay some taxes and still be able to get federal contracts. Abramoff said "he had contact with Mr. Karl Rove" on Tyco.

But that's not the half of it! It was only revealed this August that in 2002 Bush himself fired a prosecutor investigating Abramoff over a scandal in Guam. Rove recommended the replacement! [my em]

...

Do I detect an Archibald Cox moment?

Hat tip: Maru

DeLay's redistricting ruled illegal, finding suppressed

WaPo

Justice Department lawyers concluded that the landmark Texas congressional redistricting plan spearheaded by Rep. Tom DeLay (R) violated the Voting Rights Act, according to a previously undisclosed memo obtained by The Washington Post. But senior officials overruled them and approved the plan.

The memo also found that Republican lawmakers and state officials who helped craft the proposal were aware it posed a high risk of being ruled discriminatory compared with other options.

The 73-page memo, dated Dec. 12, 2003, has been kept under tight wraps for two years (mine). Lawyers who worked on the case were subjected to an unusual gag rule. The memo was provided to The Post by a person connected to the case who is critical of the adopted redistricting map. Such recommendation memos, while not binding, historically carry great weight within the Justice Department.

In their analysis, the Justice Department lawyers emphasized that the last-minute changes -- made in a legislative conference committee, out of public view -- fundamentally altered legally acceptable redistricting proposals approved separately by the Texas House and Senate.

More info at Lone Star Project with a link to the full memo.

Hopefully, we'll be runnin' my twelve-rope gallows 24/7 until it crumbles to dust. There may not be any Republican politician or appointee anywhere who is not totally immersed in undermining and subverting Democracy, let alone breaking the law.

Oh, tough guy, huh?

Go check out Cleek's "Top Thirty Facts About Chuck Norris". Mr. T and Vin Diesel too.

Chuck Norris is 1/8th Cherokee. This has nothing to do with ancestry, the man ate a fucking Indian.

I'll have a rum 'n politics with a big shot of history, please...

AlterNet

The author of a history of our favorite Caribbean libation discusses how rum affected slavery, Indians, and culture as a whole.

I don't really regret to say that a lot of the research I did was absolutely irrelevant to the book, but it taught me a lot about rum. It was fascinating because it took me into a lot of history -- particularly about the American Revolution. I developed an appreciation for how the modern world developed the way it did around the Atlantic seaboard.

Rum was such an integral part of it. This has been written out because of Prohibitionism and temperance. The founding fathers' connection to booze was omitted from American history books, along with the whole role of rum in the American Revolution, the development of the northeast colonies, and its tie-in with slavery. We all in the north look down on the south as the old slave-holding stronghold, but the north actually transported most of those slaves and paid for it with rum.

It's an interesting article. Here's my favorite part:

What about rum's connection to the navy?

The British instituted rum by giving rum rations to the sailors. At the height of the British Empire, British sailors were given over half a pint of rum every day. It's always been a great mystery to me how they got the ships out of port, let alone won battles.

It was a big bonding ritual on the ships as well. It was an entitlement. The British admiralty resisted interfering with the sailors' sense of entitlement. The American Navy swapped rum for whisky in the early 19th century, during the Civil War, and then abolished the ration entirely.

But the British didn't abolish it until the 1970s. One of the convincing things they did for a PR stunt was to breathalyze the people who were driving the nuclear submarines for Britain. After they'd had their rum ration, they weren't fit to drive their cars home from the naval base, but they were being considered fit to drive around with submarines filled with nuclear missiles.

What was most surprising thing you discovered in your research?

With the Puritanical, self-righteous image of America, the idea that the founding fathers were a bunch of lushes doesn't sit well. Even when I've done readings, I've said that people think that the standard of American politics has declined, and present-day politicians don't match up to the founding fathers. Well, they do.

Pour yourself a stiff one and go read. Arrggh, mateys!

Al in the Family

This is a very strange news day. Maybe it's just me. From AlterNet:

CBS is looking at a new project from Paramount Network Television that would feature the Reverend Al Sharpton in his own sitcom. That's right, a sitcom. According to Variety, it's called Al in the Family and will be written by Peter Ackerman with Jamie Widdoes set to direct and exec produce.

He's a funny guy. He'd probably be good at it.

You may shoot me now.

Holy shit, is she still alive?

If there's any old (I hate that word!) folkies left out there besides me, go read about Joan Baez' new album and what she's thinkin' about these days.

Peace, joy and happy shopping -- right, Jesus?

I think we better put Mark Morford of the EssEffChron on suicide watch:

I shall not argue for the purity of the holidays, for some sort of utopian Christian notion that it used to be all simple and lovely and beatific and that it has now been horribly corrupted by ruthless commercial interests, because the whole damned holiday has been commercially controlled for the past hundred years, and to suggest otherwise is to suck down one too many $5 Starbucks Eggnog Lattes and don the happy blinders.

And I shall certainly not argue for the sanctity of the idea that Christmas is meant to celebrate the holy and glorious birth of Christ (an iPod-free renegade mystic who was actually born somewhere around July) or the idea that we should all be taking some sort of solace in our national generosity of spirit (a generosity that exists only if you're not, you know, gay or minority or Iraqi or Islamic or mentally ill), nor shall I even defend Christmas as a time of family togetherness, given how, for most people, getting together with family around the holidays is akin to having your fingernails yanked out by a chain saw in an ice storm, naked.

Go read for a little fun and perspective before you get out amongst 'em.

This day in history

Working For Change

12/2/1823: United States announces Monroe Doctrine: essentially, that the U.S. is entitled to do whatever it wants in the Western Hemisphere.

So, what else is new?

Pilot circles globe in grandfather's seaplane

I forgot all about this. I even went back and read October posts to make sure I really had forgotten to post it. Luckily, it's nothing particularly timely, just enjoyable. From the Sierra Sun.

Iren Dornier piloted his vintage 1938 seaplane over Lake Tahoe Monday evening, dipping to skim the lake in the dimming light before coming to land in Truckee.

The week-long stay in Truckee for Dornier and his refurbished aluminum aircraft is part of a two-year global mission to raise money for children in the Philippines. After a year-long mission through Asia, Europe and the Middle East, Dornier is taking the plane throughout North and South America, raising funds for the United Nations Children's Fund chapter in the Philippines.

Dornier is the grandson of aviation pioneer Claude Dornier, who founded the Dornier line of airplanes. And he is following in his grandfather's footsteps in two respects.

His global mission has set him on a path that retraces his grandfather's flights in a Dornier Do-X seaplane, which at the time was the largest, heaviest and most powerful aircraft in the world.

I missed getting over to the airport to see it up close, so it came to me. On its way out of town it flew right over my house. Believe me, I heard it coming and ran out to see what all the racket was! A big, beautiful old-fashioned flying boat. It's magnificent! Photo at the link.

Friday Cattle Dog Blogging

Princess Shayna, a.k.a. Little Miss Attitude

More failures

For President Utterly Incompetent and his band of thieves. Patricia has the goods.

...

"The report card rates the U.S. government's response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in four key areas: prevention, treatment and care, research and global AIDS. Sadly, the administration and Congressional leadership failed to improve since last year's grades, and even dropped to an F in treatment and care. [my em]

...

Update:

I was meaning to blog about this since Paris. While there, the only English-speaking channel we got at the hotel was the Beeb, and they ran a great series on living with HIV. Fortunately, their website has great links all on one page.

Why we should leave Iraq

That Colored Fella puts his finger on it. One paragraph says it all:

...

Those on the Right also want us to believe that the inked Iraqi people are unified in their thirst for Western style democracy, and we cannot 'cut and run' until we deliver what we promised. Yet, Murtha enunciated those sober, and no doubt, surprising statistics to many Americans - 80% percent of Iraqis want an immediate withdrawal of Coalition troops, while 45% percent believe it's perfectly fine to kill any of them, in the meantime. [my em]

...

80% of them want us out; almost half of 'em think it's fine to kill us. Fuck what American public opinion says, it's their country. That's good enough for me.

Update:

And Neil explains why we won't:

...

There's not much blood in a human body; a little over a gallon. There are 112.5 billion barrels of "proven reserves" under Iraq. So that's only about 2,000 gallons of blood we're trading for 4 trillion 725 billion gallons of oil. That's a mere 1 gallon of American blood for every 2.375 billion gallons of oil. To these oilmen that's the Deal of the Century. That's better than the Louisiana Purchase. That's better than beads for Manhattan.

...

The American Bush Plan #2

Krugman:

...

The National Security Council document released this week under the grandiose title "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" is neither an analytical report nor a policy statement. It's simply the same old talking points - "victory in Iraq is a vital U.S. interest"; "failure is not an option" - repackaged in the style of a slide presentation for a business meeting.

It's an embarrassing piece of work. Yet it's also an important test for the news media. The Bush administration has lost none of its confidence that it can get away with fuzzy math and fuzzy facts - that it won't be called to account for obvious efforts to mislead the public. It's up to journalists to prove that confidence wrong. [my em]

...

With idiots like Lardass and Mrs. Greenspan running around, I don't have much faith that they will.

Read the whole thing at Uniongrrl's place.

Where are those WMDs?

Capt. Jeff Pirozzi
Camp Taqaddum, Iraq:

Weapons of mass destruction? I'm still looking for them, and if you find any give me a call so we can justify our presence in Iraq. We started the war based on a lie, and we'll finish it based on a lie. I say this because I am currently serving with a logistics headquarters in the Anbar province, between the cities of Fallujah and Ramadi. I am not fooled by the constant fabrication of "democracy" and "freedom" touted by our leadership at home and overseas.

...

Read the rest in Stars and Stripes.

Hat tip: Jillian

Yeesh

Mama said there'd be days like these...

Like it or not, you're funding Right-wing Rock

This makes me sick to my stomach, but I can take it. From Think Progress under "Radical Right-wing Agenda".

Another "educational" conservative band, Junkyard Prophet, has been busy touring high schools across the country. But these rockers aren't stickin' it to the man - they're being funded by him. The band apparently receives about $1500 per appearance - an amount that several schools have paid out of their drug-free schools funding from the Department of Education. (Junkyard Prophet says it helps students resist peer pressure and "understand the value and beauty of the moral absolutes on which their country was founded.")

Our sister site, CampusProgress, has details:

The Des Moines Register reported that after one 2004 performance, Junkyard Prophet handed out CDs to a few random students that bore this message: "the death sentence [is] on you due to your sins! The very evidence of your sin will be your death! It is appointed to you to die and after that you will be judged according to your ways! His judgment is so thorough every thought will be brought to the light. When all your sin against God is exposed, how will you escape the damnation of hell?" [...]

[Prophets frontman Bradlee] Dean has also told students that "there is nothing in our Constitution or founding documents about separation of church and state" and criticized the theory of evolution.

According to the band's website, it has appeared at over 220 schools over the last few years. (Experience Junkyard Prophets for yourself - their music videos are here.) In some instances turned up by CampusProgress, students were told that attendance at the assembly was mandatory and that they would be suspended if they skipped out.

One of the comments says a mouthful:

Must suck to be a Young Republican. No wonder they drink so much.

I'd rather my tax money went to buy 'em enough booze to drink themselves to death.

This whole deal is an unconscionable and illegal use of public funds being filtered through school boards for religious purposes.

Will someone please punch this asshole's lights out...

Under the heading "Braindead Media", from Think Progress, with a video link.

On Today Show, O'Reilly Compares Murtha With Hitler Sympathizers

Bill O'Reilly on the Today Show this morning:

These pin-heads running around going, "Get out of Iraq now" don't know what they are talking about. These are the same people before Hitler invaded in WWII that were saying, "He's not such a bad guy." They don't get it.

Jesus fucking Christ, mention Hitler in the same sentence with the Republican of your choice and watch what happens! I guess IOKIYAR.

And from Media Matters on the "Liberal War on Christians", with an audio link if you can stand listening to his bullshit:

According to O'Reilly, the "secular progressive" movement has three elements:

* First, progressive financiers George Soros and Peter Lewis "pour money into the ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union], they pour money into the smear websites, you know, they buy up a lot of media time."
* Second, "the ACLU is their legal arm. ... [T]he ACLU runs around the country suing everybody and intimidating people."
* Third, "the smear websites are their media arm."

O'Reilly said these three elements operate "in tandem":

O'REILLY: [Y]ou use your left-wing smear websites to go after anybody who stands up for Christmas. If you stand up for Christmas, they come after you. So the tandem intimidates. The tandem intimidates. Suing on one hand; smearing on the other hand.

The result? According to O'Reilly:

O'REILLY: In every secular progressive country, they've wiped out religion ... Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, all of them. That's the first step. Get the religion out of there, so that we can impose our big-government, progressive agenda.

He got the last sentence kinda backwards. It should have been "Get the religion IN there, so that we can impose our big-government fascist agenda". And since when are the Soviet Union, Red China, the Third Reich and Castro's Cuba "progressive"? What a fucking dipshit!

But wait! There's more! From Free Democracy:

FOX News and Bill O'Reilly Selling "Holiday Items" While Crying about "The War on Christmas"

Bill O'Reilly and FOX News have been CRYING about a "War on Christmas" and how the LEFT is using the word "Holiday" instead of "Christmas".

Well if you go to FOX News here is what you'll find:

FOX News Channel Ornament Set - 3 pack - Product #:FOX21000700
Make your holiday tree really festive with a set of 3 ornaments from your favorite Fair and Balanced news channel

What a buncha hypocritical lyin' money-grubbing bastards! GRRRR!