We done been meme-tagged..

Cleek done tagged us with the Meme of Fours. Thank God it's a short one.

Four jobs you've had in your life: Service station (remember those?) attendant, motorcycle mechanic, oil refinery operator, sheet metal spot-welder, many more.

Four movies you could watch over and over: Shrek, Heartbreak Ridge, Grapes of Wrath, The Wild One

Four places you've lived: Sherman Oaks, Beverly Hills, Burbank, Truckee, all in California, and that's it except for the service.

Four TV shows you love to watch: NCIS, Ghost in the Shell, Commander-in-Chief, The Daily Show

Shouldn't there only have been four?

Four places you've been on vacation: Central Coast of California, the Southwest, London, Edinburgh

Four websites you visit daily: Cleek, Yelladog, Shakespeare's Sister, It's Morning Somewhere, Main and Central, many more

Four of your favorite foods: carnitas, pizza, cheeseburgers, chicken-fried steak & eggs. I don't eat these too often because they'd kill me in a heartbeat, you should pardon the play on words, but that wasn't the question!

Four places you'd rather be: to quote an old country song:

There's no place that I'd rather be than right here
With my red neck 'n white socks 'n Blue Ribbon beer

The only taggin' I'll do involves the White House and some spray paint, so - any volunteers? Yeah, uh-huh, that's what I thought!

Brokebush Mountain

Just go see. Haw!

Heirs

Heh...Neil:

Former President, now "King", George II has divorced his wife, Laura, in order to marry a young, fecund woman who can give him a male heir.

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Nut 'em all...

Go read this one about "The tumultuous and tawdry travels of Neil Bush" at Media Transparency.

Over the past six months, Neil Bush, the son of former President George Herbert Walker Bush and Barbara Bush and the younger brother of the president, has been shepherded around several former Soviet republics by a man wanted for fraud by Russian authorities, and has showed up in the Philippines and Taiwan at the side of a self-styled messiah.

As an adjunct to hanging the Chimp from a yardarm, we need to castrate all Bush males so they can't spawn any more. This is an evil family.

He doesn't care if he hides it anymore...

The Nation

Bush's choice marks a watershed in the evolution of his Administration. Previously when it was caught engaging in disgraceful, illegal or merely mistaken or incompetent behavior, he would simply deny it. "We have found the weapons of mass destruction!" "We do not torture!" However, further developments in the torture matter revealed a shift. Even as he denied the existence of torture, he and his officials began to defend his right to order it. His Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, refused at his confirmation hearings to state that the torture called waterboarding, in which someone is brought to the edge of drowning, was prohibited. Then when Senator John McCain sponsored a bill prohibiting cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of prisoners, Bush threatened to veto the legislation to which it was attached. It was only in the face of majority votes in both houses against such treatment that he retreated from his claim.

But in the wiretapping matter, he has so far exhibited no such vacillation. Secret law-breaking has been supplanted by brazen law-breaking. The difference is critical. If abuses of power are kept secret, there is still the possibility that, when exposed, they will be stopped. But if they are exposed and still permitted to continue, then every remedy has failed, and the abuse is permanently ratified. In this case, what will be ratified is a presidency that has risen above the law.

There is a name for a system of government that wages aggressive war, deceives its citizens, violates their rights, abuses power and breaks the law, rejects judicial and legislative checks on itself, claims power without limit, tortures prisoners and acts in secret. It is dictatorship.

With Bush's defense of his wiretapping, the hidden state has stepped into the open. The deeper challenge Bush has thrown down, therefore, is whether the country wants to embrace the new form of government he is creating by executive fiat or to continue with the old constitutional form. He is now in effect saying, "Yes, I am above the law--I am the law, which is nothing more than what I and my hired lawyers say it is--and if you don't like it, I dare you to do something about it."

Members of Congress have no choice but to accept the challenge. They did so once before, when Richard Nixon, who said, "When the President does it, that means it's not illegal," posed a similar threat to the Constitution. The only possible answer is to inform Bush forthwith that if he continues in his defiance, he will be impeached.

If Congress accepts his usurpation of its legislative power, they will be no Congress and might as well stop meeting. Either the President must uphold the laws of the United States, which are Congress's laws, or he must leave office.

Read this one in self-defense. Print it and keep it next to the shitter. Read it until you have it memorized.

These criminals have to be stopped, and soon, whatever it takes.

Yeah, how come?

John at AMERICAblog asks:

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Wow, very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings and churches, yet Bush never sought a court order to conduct the snooping because he thought a court wouldn't let him?! Huh? Let me repeat, the people they spied on "have a history of blowing up trains, weddings and churches." If that's true, then any court in the land would haven given Bush a search warrant.

But there's a larger question. If Bush is now telling the truth about who these people are, then pray tell, what the hell was Bush doing letting hundreds if not thousands of people "who have a history of blowing up trains, wedding and churches" run around free inside the US for the past 4 years?

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Yeah, whatever happend to 'Homeland Security' and 'fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them here'? Have your efforts been so fruitless, are you that worried to force the decision to spy on literally every American? Let's get real, data mining and illegal wiretaps are only being used for one thing; spying on the American people for the political gain of the Republican Party. Any Repub who fails to condemn this policy should be considered an accomplice to it. Like I've been saying, the Republican Party is no longer a political organization, it is a criminal enterprise.

Hat tip: Atrios

Update:

To wit:

President Bush and other top officials in his administration used the National Security Agency to secretly wiretap the home and office telephones and monitor private email accounts of members of the United Nations Security Council in early 2003 to determine how foreign delegates would vote on a U.N. resolution that paved the way for the U.S.-led war in Iraq, NSA documents show.

Two former NSA officials familiar with the agency's campaign to spy on U.N. members say then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice authorized the plan at the request of President Bush, who wanted to know how delegates were going to vote. Rice did not immediately return a call for comment.

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Thanks: Attaturk

Shoot all the...hold on a second

Much as I have a problem with lawyers (too goddamn many of 'em; were I the King, I'd close every law school save Yale and Harvard), there's sort of a love/hate thing going on in my house (the vagaries of insurance law pay a lot of bills in the Fixer household). However, thanks to the Republican Congress, I think one of the only remedies to King George is the courts:

Last week I predicted that defense lawyers would soon start filing motions related to Bush's warrantless NSA surveillance. The New York Times reports lawyers from coast to coast are getting ready to hit the courts, and some will seek to reopen cases in which the defendants have been convicted and are serving their sentences.

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Some federal prosecutors tell the Times the NSA warrantless surveillance could be a problem for the Government in both past and future cases.

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While Jeralyn goes on to say some of the probable defendants have lost their access to an appeal thanks to guilty pleas, the demand for discovery might lead to the government dropping charges considered shaky in the first place. She then directs us to one of my favorite legal beagles, ReddHedd:

In a NYTimes article that should come as no surprise to the legal minds in the audience, defense counsel for a number of charged and convicted terrorism suspects are planning to challenge cases based on the latest revelations on the NSA spying domestically. To do less would be malpractice, because many of these defendants were American citizens, so this ought to be no shock to anyone who has spent time as defense counsel in criminal matters.

But as someone who has also been a prosecutor, I can tell you that this scenario is your worst nightmare in those shoes. No matter how solid your case, no matter how dirty the defendent might be, no matter how clean you thought your case was, the US Attorney is going to have to combat the perception by defense counsel that the defendant found his way into the government crosshairs through a dirty wiretap -- which hamstrings the government's case at the start.

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So all I have to say to defense lawyers is litigate your asses off. It's time to open another front in the Second American Revolution. It's time to send King George back where he came from.

Things to be thankful for

Ed Naha at Smirking Chimp:

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I'm thankful that Bush doesn't have a twin.

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I'm thankful that no Dennis Hastert sex tape has surfaced on the web.

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I'm glad that Scooter Libby's name is "Scooter Libby." It will make him so much more popular in prison.

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What's in yer Socks?

The Pensito Review via Pam:

GOP Investigated Pres. Clinton's Cat But Only Plans 'Oversight' on Pres. Bush's Admitted Illegal Spying

Only in Bush's America.

The mission

I was reading this post at Main and Central and it got me thinking. Lurch nabbed part of a post from an active duty vet serving in Iraq:

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Some law student emailed me while back with some questions, and after it was all said and done she told me she supported the troops. And I know a lot of people share that sentiment and it's all really warm and fuzzy and whatnot, but honestly, I just rather you run out, sign up and catch the early-bird charter to Kuwait and get your ass over here ASAP so one of us can go home. Maybe we can arrange something, you know, by ones and twos and so on, pretty sure we could get all us over-extended types outta here in no time.

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It got me thinking about my motivations when I was in. Yes, I've seen combat, not the prolonged mess that was Vietnam and is Iraq but the short, intense skirmishes when the military is called upon to act in peacetime. Firefights with drug dealers and processors, coming under fire when inserting and extracting 'covert operatives' from hostile nations (still classified...probably; gotta check on that so I can tell you some stories), and of course the conflict in Grenada. In my case, we got to go home after the job was done. Not all of us, mind you. I lost a 6 mates during my 4 years with AFSOCOM (the old 23rd Air Force), but in general, after the mission, we got to go home to our loved ones until the next mission. And it's the mission that got me thinking. Actually, thinking about what I was thinking at the time.

The reason I volunteered (for SOCOM, not my initial enlistment; I enlisted in the Air Force to keep my ass out of jail) was for adventure and travel to strange exotic lands, and to sleep with strange exotic women. I was 17 and my brain was located somewhere south of my waist, but I digress. It's where I realized I was an adrenaline junkie; nothing beats jumping out of a C-130 from an altitude higher than Mt. Everest in the middle of the night and going more than half the distance before opening your chute. Nothing beats jumping out of a Blackhawk less than 50 ft. over the Gulf of Mexico, swimming miles to some dinky island, and then calling in an airstrike on some drug lord's secret shipping facility, and then blowing up and killing what the Navy pukes didn't get. Nothing beats extracting a 'covert operative' (who gave the signal he was in the clear) in a Communist country and then being opened up on by Soviet infantry just as the chopper flared for a landing. Yes, seriously, that's what I lived for when I was young. That and knowing there would be a woman and a bar waiting for me when I got back.

Did I ever think about the 'Big Picture'? No. Did I ever think, when we went to Grenada, that Reagan was doing it for political reasons, or any other reason than what we were told? No. It was the mission, period. I never paid any notice to the rightness or the wrongness of it. Orders came down, we trained up for the mission, accomplished it, and came home. On to the next. The thought of whether we were 'right' to do what we did never crossed my mind when I was in. The operative word, again, was home. Had I taken part in a protracted conflict, maybe I would have thought more about the morality of what I'd been told to do. I had to deal with the morality later on, and continue to do so.

I think about what these guys have had to do, under the stress of prolonged, repeated deployments [Note: My longest deployment or TDY was 90 days.], and wonder what I would do. Would I open my mouth? Would I complain about the injustice done, once the reason for the mission began to change? Would I have the chance to question right from wrong while dodging bullets?

When I was in, I knew what I was doing was right. There was the Soviet menace and my job to protect democracy from it. Black vs. White. Night vs. Day. Then. It's gotten a bit wide and gray over the years, with hindsight, hence the reason the young boy whose throat I cut when he discovered my hidey hole returns to me so often in my dreams. It wasn't black and white then and it certainly isn't now. There are guys coming back who've had to do far worse in a war, like Vietnam, with little justification from their leaders. You can kill to defend your way of life, as long as you can square it with yourself. When you begin to debate the 'rightness' of what you're doing, as you're doing it, your psyche can't help but suffer. Killing someone who would kill you is one thing. Killing someone who did nothing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time is something else to reconcile. I have doubts about those who can. It makes me wonder about bomber pilots.

This war is ruining a whole generation of young men and women to enrich people who give not a damn about them. It is illegal and immoral and anyone who supports it is devoid of any 'moral values' they claim to have. I wish I could let them share my dreams...just once.

Debunkitude

Media Matters debunks the Repub talking points about the spy scandal. A good read.

Thanks to John at STF.

Down the road

Don't think we're well on our way toward a Fascist state? Think again.

Great thanks to the lovely Pam.

Your tax dollars at work

ReddHedd:

Shorter WaPo: The US Government is willing to pay just about anyone -- Iraqi news stations, right-thinking bloggers, whatever -- to get out the message that they want you to hear. Your tax dollars at work, in a mass-e-mail campaign or newscast or blogwhore near you.

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Nothing like a well-funded propaganda campaign. Any time the DNC wants to send us money to do what we do, lemmie know. We'll arrange a direct deposit thing. Yeesh.

Boycotting into oblivion

Mercury has a list of companies who do business with gays and lesbians whom James Dobson wants his Focus on the Fetus wingnuts to boycott. From the looks of the list, they won't be doing business with anyone.

Up is Down

Call me naive but we're not living in the America I know either.

One wonders if Osama bin Laden didn't win after all. He ruined the America that existed on 9/11. But he had help.

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That's no America I know, I would have argued. We're too strong, and we've been through too much, to be led down such a twisted path.

What is there to say now?

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I evidently have a lot poorer insight regarding America's character than I once believed, because I would have expected such actions to provoke -- speaking metaphorically now -- mobs with pitchforks and torches at the White House gate. I would have expected proud defiance of anyone who would suggest that a mere terrorist threat could send this country into spasms of despair and fright so profound that we'd follow a leader who considers the law a nuisance and perfidy a privilege.

Never would I have expected this nation -- which emerged stronger from a civil war and a civil rights movement, won two world wars, endured the Depression, recovered from a disastrous campaign in Southeast Asia and still managed to lead the world in the principles of liberty -- would cower behind anyone just for promising to "protect us."

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Excellent article via Mustang Bobby.

A GOP Christmas

Yes, the War on Christmas goes on...or at least the War on Christmas Spirit. I can only ask, what would Jesus think?

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The government's home heating supplement now stands at a half or less of what the poor will need if predictions of a harsh winter pan out and fuel bills increase 25 percent. Various studies have established that, in a pinch, the poor scrimp on food purchases in order to meet heating bills. Yet Congress's stinginess is being compounded by the administration's recent decision to reject a request from New York and several other states to increase food stamp outlays to the poor as fuel bills mount.

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Instead of incessantly yelling 'Christmas, Christmas, Christmas', maybe we should remember the spirit of Christ's teachings instead of bandying his name about in false piousness. I'm about sick and tired of folks who demand others say 'Merry Christmas', yet are the same ones who support the war in Iraq and all the crimes associated with it. I don't remember Jesus teaching 'Peace on Earth and goodwill toward white Protestants'. It's about time you people began to live your faith.

Like my grandmother always said, 'actions speak far louder than words'. My Jewish wife is far more 'christian' than most of you who claim to be.

Christmas in Iraq

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Noor, whose name means light in Arabic, was born with a severe form of spina bifida. Iraqi doctors lack the resources to treat her. They sent her family home, telling them the baby had 45 days at most to live. Barring a miracle, the light in their lives would go out.

Noor beat the odds and will be 3 months old Friday. Her time, though, is running out. No one is sure how long she will live in her condition.

But Noor's family might get the miracle they have dreamed of, thanks to soldiers from the 48th Brigade Combat Team's 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry Regiment.

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But in the trash-strewn, sewage-infested slums of impoverished Abu Ghraib, few children receive basic medical attention such as vaccinations, much less the kind of intensive care Noor needs.

Morgan took a military doctor to visit Noor, called Baby Nora by the soldiers. The doctor determined that she was born with spina bifida, an open spine. In the early stages of her mother's pregnancy, Noor's spinal cord did not fully close, leaving a gap where a cyst-like growth the size of a baseball now sits on Noor's back.

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Morgan said the Marriott hotel group was willing to donate living space for the girl and an accompanying relative. Delta Air Lines has agreed to fly the child and one relative from Kuwait to Atlanta through its charitable Sky Wish program.

And Childspring International, an Atlanta nonprofit that matches sick children from other countries with doctors in the United States, is working with Children's Healthcare to arrange Noor's medical care.

"We will work as hard as we can to make it happen," said Rose Emily, executive director of Childspring. "I look forward to going to the airport and picking up this little girl."

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A lot of good does happen in Iraq, but we have been a cause of much of the bad. This girl probably would have gotten the medical care she needed in Iraq before we destroyed much of the infrastructure and brought chaos down upon them. Let's hope we hear more good news (not contrived propaganda but real stories of progress). We owe them as much normalcy as possible before we bug out - you know we will, Rummy's already making noises and election season starts in a couple weeks.

On this day...

Whether you celebrate the birth of the progenitor of the God of your choice, rejoice at the return of the life-giving Sun, dance around an evergreen tree deep in the forest, drink brandy while watching children eschew the fruits of capitalism in favor of playing with the boxes they came in, shine the whole thing on, or do whatever it is the Hebrews do, please express a desire for Peace on Earth and Goodwill amongst Men.

A short prayer, plea, or forlorn longing for a sense of Truth and Justice on the part of the world's powermongers wouldn't be out of line either. Maniacal laughter is optional, but what you do at Grandma's dinner table is none of my business.

Merry Christmas, folks.

Ted Koppel is an idiot

"The only difference between Clinton and Bush is 9/11. If it would have happened on Clinton's watch, we'd be in Iraq now too." ~ Ted 'Helmet Head' Koppel on Timmy's.

You've got to be fucking kidding me.

[Correction: PSoTD has the exact quote and the transcript. I was working from memory and there is no change in context.]

Merry Christmas/Happy Hanukkah

Got home in the wee hours last night. Fat. Dumb. Happy.

All the best to you and yours.