Monday, January 2, 2006
My best decision
16 years ago today, Mrs. F and I went on our first date. Asking her out was the best decision I ever made.
American Manifesto
From our pal Badtux:
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2. Real Americans know that real men don't hit first. Hitting first is the mark of a coward or a bully. A real man doesn't go in and beat the shit out of other folks just because those other folks might, at some time in the future, somehow be a threat. Those of you who still support going in and beating the shit out of Iraq and the Iraqi people for the audacity of not sucking George W. Bush's dick aren't real Americans, you're just a bunch of cowards and bullies not fit to lick Benjamin Franklin's petrified dick...
Sunday, January 1, 2006
Shit looking for a fan
Norbizness has a compendium of things just waiting to come apart. At the front end, it looks like 2006 is gonna be worse for the Republicans than 2005.
Thought Police
[WaPo]Information captured by the National Security Agency's secret eavesdropping on communications between the United States and overseas has been passed on to other government agencies, which cross-check the information with tips and information collected in other databases, current and former administration officials said.
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At least one of those organizations, the DIA, has used NSA information as the basis for carrying out surveillance of people in the country suspected of posing a threat, according to two sources. A DIA spokesman said the agency does not conduct such domestic surveillance but would not comment further. Spokesmen for the FBI, the CIA and the director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, declined to comment on the use of NSA data. [my em]
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To me, the word 'threat' has a very subjective meaning nowadays. Jane has a lot more to say on this.
More than corruption #2
Dave's got more on this. Looks like the old enemy is at it again:
Links aplenty.
Not one to toot my own horn, but I called this years ago. Anybody who's read my books, specifically Plain Sight, The Fourth Estate Lightning Crashes, and Technocracy knows my feelings about foreign corporate influence on the U.S. political system.
When I put up this post asking if maybe the "conservative movement" Republicans were really dupes of the Russians or the Chinese, I sure didn't expect to get my answer a few hours later.
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It seems that everyone in the world understood that the Republican leadership was on the take. Do ya think maybe foreign intelligence services might have also known? Do ya think that maybe some of the really, really strange things these right-wing clucks have been doing to the country might maybe have been the result of a few (or more) million dollars changing hands? I suspect this is only the very first on foreign influence of the so-called "conservative movement."
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Links aplenty.
Not one to toot my own horn, but I called this years ago. Anybody who's read my books, specifically Plain Sight, The Fourth Estate Lightning Crashes, and Technocracy knows my feelings about foreign corporate influence on the U.S. political system.
Happy New Year
Hope our fellow bloggers and readers have a happy and healthy New Year. We go into this new year more hopeful and optimistic for our cause than we did last year. Looking back at last year's post, I knew we had the potential for success:
Yes, we will. All the best.
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Not many reflections on the Old Year. I like looking toward the possibilities of the future. We took a hit in November, but hopefully we'll learn and hit back in the mid-terms and beyond. We'll do better.
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Yes, we will. All the best.
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Gratuitous Sex
Git'cher MoDo workin'...
A tip o' the Brain to Tennessee Guerilla Women even if they don't know how to spell it.
The Weather Gods Are Laughing At Me. Again.
I am typing as fast as my poor bruised little index finger can handle, hoping it doesn't happen again.
I just wrote a real long post about our local weather: road closures, power outages, way too many weekenders/New Year's celebrants, etc., with links to all kinds of shit for your amusement and edification. Maybe an hour's worth. As I was moving the cursor from the final 'period' towards 'publish', the power went off for the second time today. Lasted less than thirty seconds, but -poof!- the post was gone.
I think the weather gods were trying to tell me it was too long and nobody would care anyway. I can take a hint. I won't try to duplicate it. You're saved.
Howsomever, in the course of my research I discovered the absolute best webcam site I've yet seen. Go click around my state and my mountains. I'm going to. There's even a 'Shamu, The Killer Whale' one! Whee!
Happy New Year, folks. '06 is going to be lots better.
I just wrote a real long post about our local weather: road closures, power outages, way too many weekenders/New Year's celebrants, etc., with links to all kinds of shit for your amusement and edification. Maybe an hour's worth. As I was moving the cursor from the final 'period' towards 'publish', the power went off for the second time today. Lasted less than thirty seconds, but -poof!- the post was gone.
I think the weather gods were trying to tell me it was too long and nobody would care anyway. I can take a hint. I won't try to duplicate it. You're saved.
Howsomever, in the course of my research I discovered the absolute best webcam site I've yet seen. Go click around my state and my mountains. I'm going to. There's even a 'Shamu, The Killer Whale' one! Whee!
Happy New Year, folks. '06 is going to be lots better.
The Magical Victory Tour
One of my new favorites, Matt Taibbi, who calls 'em like he sees 'em, on Bush's recent PR speeches on Iraq.
And on his encounter with Scott "That's my story an' I'm stickin' to it" McClellan in the WH press room:
Go read.
Bush in person always strikes me as the kind of guy who would ask a woman for a hand job at the end of a first date. He has days where he looks like she said yes, and days where the answer was no.
Today was one of his no days. He frowned, looking wronged, and grabbed the microphone. I pulled out my notebook . . .
A few minutes later, I felt like a hooker who's just blinked under a blanket with a prep-school virgin. Was that it? Is it over? It seemed to be; Bush was off the podium and slipping down the first line of the crowd, pumping hands for a minute and then promptly Snagglepussing toward the left exit. By the time I made it five rows into the crowd, he had vanished into a sea of Secret Servicemen, who whisked him away, presumably to return him posthaste to his formaldehyde tank.
In other words, this was really a National Strategy for Victory at Home. It was classic Bush-think: Instead of bombing the insurgency off the map, he bombs the map -- in lieu of actually fighting the war (my em), a bold strategy, to be sure. But would it work?
And on his encounter with Scott "That's my story an' I'm stickin' to it" McClellan in the WH press room:
"Just to be clear," I said, exasperated, "that's a different argument than was made to the American people before the war."
"Our arguments are very public," he said. "You can go look at what the arguments are. That's not what I was talking about."
He smiled at me. There's your strategy for victory in Iraq: Fuck all of you -- we're sticking to our story.
Go read.
Economics 101
Stolen from Attaturk:
We all know that outside of blowing up some foreign swarthies the thing you loved most is money. If anything you obsess over your stock market earnings more than most. So I'd like you to pay attention to this particular statistic.
When "the Clenis" took office in January 1993, the stock market stood at about 3,500. When "the Clenis" left office in January 2001, the stock market was at 10,588.
In nearly five years, what has "Mr. Deficit" the Chimperor Disgustus accomplished for your market portfolio?
Yesterday, the market closed at 10,717.50. Five years into the Clinton presidency it stood at about 8,000 (more than double).
In short, why the fuck are you voting Republican?
More than corruption?
My man Dave Johnson:
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To what extent is it possible that today's Republican Party scandals are not just about traditional corruption, but instead are the result of manipulation by foreign interests, masquerading as corruption and ideological cultism? China, Iran, ??? The neo-cons are persuaded by ideology and cooked-up intelligence to go to war in Iraq. Iran ends up with Shia Iraq as a client state, with its oil resources at its disposal, for sale to China. America weakened, its industries no longer competitive, it's infrastructure crumbling. Who benefits?
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Heh . . .
Federal prosecutors and lawyers for Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff consulted briefly Friday with a federal judge in Miami as they put the finishing touches on a plea deal that could be announced as early as Tuesday, according to sources familiar with the negotiations.
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Abramoff's cooperation would be a boon to an ongoing Justice Department investigation of congressional corruption, possibly helping prosecutors build criminal cases against up to 20 lawmakers and their staff members. [my ems]
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Happy New Year to us!
Link via Maru.
Fixer's Person(s) of the Year
The United States Coast Guard.
Lord help us if we didn't have 'em. I give them all a salute and will hoist a pint of Newcastle (maybe more than one) in their honor tonight. Think about what they do in a single day:
My pick for Person(s) of the Year.
The United States Coast Guard is a military, multimission, maritime service and one of the nation's five Armed Services. Its mission is to protect the public, the environment, and U.S. economic interest - in the nation's ports and waterways, along the coast, on international waters, or in any maritime region as required to support national security.
Lord help us if we didn't have 'em. I give them all a salute and will hoist a pint of Newcastle (maybe more than one) in their honor tonight. Think about what they do in a single day:
Save 15 lives
Assist 117 people in distress
Protect $2.8 million in property
Interdict 30 illegal migrants at sea
Conduct 90 search and rescue cases
Seize $21 million worth of illegal drugs
Respond to 11 oil and hazardous chemical spills
Board and inspect 122 vessels
My pick for Person(s) of the Year.
Chutzpah
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department is investigating who disclosed a secret domestic eavesdropping operation approved by President George W. Bush after the September 11 attacks, officials said on Friday.
"We are opening an investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified materials related to the NSA," a Justice Department official said on condition of anonymity.
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It takes a set to demand an investigation after the WH knew the Times had this story for a year, especially since they had no intention of investigating who leaked Valerie Plame's identity to the press. Why didn't they take the Times to task last year? Because it was, say it with me, election season. Let's hope Abramoff takes the lot of them down before the next one.
Update:
Pudentilla writes letters.
Update:
Granny, fully and completely:
Now they are having a witch hunt to find out who wasn't covering up the President's crime!
Imagine that type of response to Valerie Plame
to 9/11
to Tom DeLay's appropriating fe[d]eral property.
Imagine if they hadn't permitted so many of their friends to destroy evidence of ongoing investigations. Anthrax, 9/11, Ohio...
Clowntime is over:
The Last Stand of the American Republic:
A must-read.
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How will the Establishment deal with this direct challenge? The past few years give little grounds for hope: the Democrats spineless, conflicted, co-opted and corrupt; the Republicans slavish, bellicose, cruel and criminal; the media timorous, witless, corporate-controlled; big business absolutely rolling in gravy from the autocrat's larder; academia cowed, silenced, ignored, demonized; the military acquiescent in criminal aggression, top-heavy with time-servers currying autocratic favor. Only the courts provide some stray sparks of hope, although they too are now loaded with political sycophants, corporate bagmen and knuckle-dragging throwbacks produced by the Right's decades-long devolution of American jurisprudence. Prosecutors like Patrick Fitzgerald and Elliot Spitzer "keep hope alive," but their efforts will mean little in a system where lawlessness at the top has been countenanced by the rest of the Establishment. And in any case, the outcome of their work lies ultimately with the Supreme Court -- the same court that shredded the Constitution in awarding power to Bush in the first place, and which is now led by a Bushist apparatchik.
Still, you don't go through a constitutional crisis with the Establishment you want; you go through a constitutional crisis with the Establishment you have. And this sad, sick crew, ladies and gentlemen, is all we have. If they swallow the spy scandal, if they don't push back now -- and I mean really push back, not just make a lot of harrumphing noise or hold a few toothless hearings or get a couple of underlings offered up as ritual sacrifices to save the Leader -- then we will have well and truly and finally lost the Republic that Franklin, Jefferson and Madison gave us so long ago.
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A must-read.
Thanks to Susie.
Friday, December 30, 2005
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