...
I say this because you know it's only a matter of hours before the Republican Swift Boating of Rev. Lowery and Coretta's funeral begins. How dare a black man not know his place at a funeral, they'll say. As if the Republican party and its surrogates have any right whatsoever to speak on behalf of Mrs. King, to tell black America what they can and cannot do to honor one of their most revered leaders.
A party that doesn't have a single African-American member of Congress has no right lecturing black people about knowing their place.
...
Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps the old white men of the GOP (read: Ken Mehlman) and their media enablers will sit well enough alone. Perhaps. But I doubt it. Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King, and the legacy they leave behind, is far too dangerous to the right-wing extremists that run our country. They'll have to do something to mar Coretta's legacy. I have a hunch this will be it. [my em]
...
Wednesday, February 8, 2006
Wait for it
The SwiftBoating should begin shortly:
Tuesday, February 7, 2006
What's wrong
The NRA and the American gun industry are getting way out of hand. I believe in the right to keep and bear, but if hunting is supposed to be a sport, why not let the prey get a bit closer?
Personally, I don't get hunting but I see the need so have at it. But I don't see a need for some yahoo to be better equipped than a Marine Expeditionary Force. Last I heard, bear and deer don't shoot back.
I'm tired of the NRA horseshit and what the gun industry, from top to bottom, has been able to get away with. It's time some serious controls are enacted before this lassez faire attitude will bite us in the ass. The days of Jesse James and Wyatt Earp are over. At least those guys were close enough to look into the eyes of the men they killed.
Tip: You wanna protect your home? Buy a pump action shotgun with a pistol grip if possible and the shortest barrel for ease of movement in close quarters. You don't need to be accurate, just able to fill the space in front of you with BBs. Load your first round with small bird shot, the next with 00-buckshot. If whoever is trying to break in doesn't get the hint with the first shot, the second will blow his chest open.
Who needs a gun that is accurate to more than a mile, can down an airliner on take-off or landing, and can penetrate steel plating? If you're the gun lobby and its friends in the firearms industry, the answer is simple: sportsmen! If you're law enforcement, the answer is equally simple: terrorists.
...
Personally, I don't get hunting but I see the need so have at it. But I don't see a need for some yahoo to be better equipped than a Marine Expeditionary Force. Last I heard, bear and deer don't shoot back.
I'm tired of the NRA horseshit and what the gun industry, from top to bottom, has been able to get away with. It's time some serious controls are enacted before this lassez faire attitude will bite us in the ass. The days of Jesse James and Wyatt Earp are over. At least those guys were close enough to look into the eyes of the men they killed.
Tip: You wanna protect your home? Buy a pump action shotgun with a pistol grip if possible and the shortest barrel for ease of movement in close quarters. You don't need to be accurate, just able to fill the space in front of you with BBs. Load your first round with small bird shot, the next with 00-buckshot. If whoever is trying to break in doesn't get the hint with the first shot, the second will blow his chest open.
The French
Yes, the French:
Fuck you wingnuts. The Saudis aren't our friends. The Europeans are and have proven it more times than is necessary.
...
They made commitments to donate several million dollars to the reconstruction, brining [sic] total contributions by French companies and their US subsidiaries to more than 22 million dollars.
The French government has also contributed a million dollars to help rebuild the city's French schools. [my em]
...
Fuck you wingnuts. The Saudis aren't our friends. The Europeans are and have proven it more times than is necessary.
Vets' ills mounting fast
New York Daily News
Swell. If he can't afford to care for the service people he sent to his criminal adventure, at least he can bury his mistake.
The World Socialist Web Site chimes in on the same topic:
Those programs are being cut to the bone to help Bush "reduce spending". Most likely, the Veterans will just have to fend for themselves at some point or die. Then there's no problem.
When these Vets' children are living in poverty from having to pay for this war with taxes on their minimum wage income, brought about by a lack of education and foreign economic competition, and not able to adequately care for their sick or injured Vet parent, it's likely to be considered "patriotic" for them to pull the plug.
About that time, their children will be sent to fight India or China, perhaps for "economic" reasons.
Go read both those articles and you will be as pissed off as I am right now.
We need to get rid of Bush and his cabal NOW so we have at least a chance of aiming this country at fiscal and foreign policy sanity. May God damn that sonofabitch.
Nearly 120,000 veterans - more than one of every four who served in Iraq and Afghanistan - have already sought treatment at Veterans Health Administration hospitals for a wide range of illnesses, according to an internal study the VHA completed late last year.
More than 30% of those sick veterans are afflicted with some type of mental disorder, mostly posttraumatic stress and depression.
An additional 35,000 - more than 29% of the total - were diagnosed with "ill-defined conditions," according to the study, which was prepared in October by VHA epidemiologist Dr. Han Kang but has yet to be publicly released.
"Those numbers are way higher than during the Persian Gulf War for 'ill-defined' symptoms," said one Department of Veterans Affairs official who asked not to be identified.
Mental disorders, however, rank as the biggest problem among ailing veterans.
Two previous military studies of combat troops in Iraq found that 17% to 25% of U.S. soldiers suffer from major depression or combat stress.
The Department of Veterans Affairs "does not have sufficient capacity to meet the needs of new combat veterans while still providing for veterans of past wars," the GAO concluded.
But in a chilling sign of the terrible toll our nation has yet to pay for this dreadful war in Iraq, Bush earmarked an additional $78 million to build six new national cemeteries and expand three existing ones.
Swell. If he can't afford to care for the service people he sent to his criminal adventure, at least he can bury his mistake.
The World Socialist Web Site chimes in on the same topic:
One of the terrible legacies of the criminal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is the number of maimed, sick or traumatised former US soldiers - many of them barely in their twenties - who will require medical assistance for the rest of their lives. For political reasons, the scope of the tragedy is barely being reported despite the impact it is having on a significant layer of young men and women, their families and communities.
Concern over the long-term fate of the wounded is compounded when the true dimensions of the casualties that have been suffered by the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq are considered. On top of the official figure of close to 20,000 killed or wounded-in-action since November 2001, there are now tens of thousands of soldiers who have been evacuated from Central Asia or the Middle East for "non-battle injuries" or disease, and tens of thousands more who have developed psychological problems since their return to the United States.
The extent of war casualties soars once soldiers return. The number of Afghanistan and Iraq veterans who have sought health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has already passed 100,000 - or close to one out of every four of the troops who has served in the occupied countries and subsequently left the US military.
An internal army survey, cited in Stars and Stripes in December 2005, showed alcohol abuse among returned veterans was 21 percent one year after returning from the war zone; 22 percent suffered from anger and aggression issues; and 15 percent intended to break up with their partner.
The wave of new victims of American militarism arriving home and needing treatment at VA hospitals and clinics comes at a time of growing need of the VA system by veterans of earlier wars. An increased numbers of veterans of the Vietnam War and the 1991 Gulf War are registering for VA health care, possibly because falling living standards are making more eligible for the means-tested assistance. As well, the surviving veterans of WWII are at an advanced age.
The Bush administration's proposed budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs in fiscal year 2007 is $US80.6 billion, with some $US34.3 billion being requested for health care - an 11 percent increase. The soaring cost of benefits and medical treatment for the war wounded will more than likely be met by cutbacks to other programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Those programs are being cut to the bone to help Bush "reduce spending". Most likely, the Veterans will just have to fend for themselves at some point or die. Then there's no problem.
When these Vets' children are living in poverty from having to pay for this war with taxes on their minimum wage income, brought about by a lack of education and foreign economic competition, and not able to adequately care for their sick or injured Vet parent, it's likely to be considered "patriotic" for them to pull the plug.
About that time, their children will be sent to fight India or China, perhaps for "economic" reasons.
Go read both those articles and you will be as pissed off as I am right now.
We need to get rid of Bush and his cabal NOW so we have at least a chance of aiming this country at fiscal and foreign policy sanity. May God damn that sonofabitch.
Cheaper peanut butter
From The Carpetbagger Report:
Rationed to one spoonful per day. Bread is an excessive luxury when you have to keep gas in those Humjobs, after all.
Go read some Republican responses to Bush's budget.
Mr. Bush proposed an array of savings in domestic programs, including big reductions or cuts in 141 programs. Critics asserted those reductions would do little to ease the deficit even as they imposed real hardship on some people, constituting pain for little gain. Gene B. Sperling, a former economic adviser to President Bill Clinton, compared it to a man who leases three fully loaded Hummers, finds it stretches his family's budget to the breaking point, and decides his family has to start buying cheaper peanut butter.
Rationed to one spoonful per day. Bread is an excessive luxury when you have to keep gas in those Humjobs, after all.
Go read some Republican responses to Bush's budget.
Rove counting heads on the Senate Judiciary Committee
Rove is sweating. Good. From Insight:
And a comment from About:
If warrantless spying on Americans is legal, as Bush claims, what is Rove so worried about? After all, if you're not doing anything illegal, you have nothing to worry about...
The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee's investigation of the administration's unauthorized wiretapping.
Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.
And a comment from About:
Karl Rove wouldn't feel the need to threaten senators unless he and/or others in the White House thought that there was a good chance that even a Republican senator might conclude, based upon the evidence, that President Bush broke the law and violated his oath to uphold the Constitution. Such senators probably start out any evaluation with at least some bias in favor of the president, so it's reasonable to conclude that if these senators are likely to end up voting against the president unless they are threatened, then the evidence against the president must be pretty strong.
If warrantless spying on Americans is legal, as Bush claims, what is Rove so worried about? After all, if you're not doing anything illegal, you have nothing to worry about...
Send O'Reilly to Darfur
This is the best idea I've heard in a long time! From Editor & Publisher
Stop collecting money when you have enough to buy him a one-way ticket.
In the same article is this jewel:
And they give it to such worthy causes.
New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof resumed his exchange with TV/radio talkster Bill O'Reilly on Tuesday, asking readers to contribute to a fund to send O'Reilly to Darfur.
Kristof said he would ante up the first $1000.
"Mr. O'Reilly has a big audience and a knack for stirring outrage. Lately, he (quite properly) galvanized an outcry over a ridiculously light sentence for a sexual predator in Vermont. The upshot was that the sentence was increased. Good for him.
"So imagine the furor Mr. O'Reilly could stir up if he publicized the hundreds of thousands of rapes, murders and mutilations in Darfur. He could save lives on a grand scale.
"Join the pledge drive!"
Stop collecting money when you have enough to buy him a one-way ticket.
In the same article is this jewel:
Another New York Times column on Tuesday sure to draw attention comes from John Tierney, who mocks concerns about energy independence and conservation. "For now, the best strategy is to buy gasoline and stop worrying that it's sinful or dangerous," Tierney writes.
The column, entitled "Burn Baby Burn," concludes: "After you fill up your tank, twist the rear-view mirror so you can gaze at yourself. Repeat these words: 'I'm good enough, I'm rich enough, and doggone it, people in the Middle East like my money.'"
And they give it to such worthy causes.
The sad future
...
So remember, when you are old and gray and still paying for Mess O'Potamia, reflect that once upon a time we had a chance to rid ourselves of these noxious fuckers, but some people chose party over public policy.
Try explaining that to the pharmacist as you beg for meds, or some goverment bureaucrat who will take your home just to toss you into a sub-standard, government-funded "assisted living facility". It will be ugly, but there will be no going back, because with government, once the invisible hand has writ, it's a stone bitch to erase it.
...
Rights, once lost, generally aren't returned without armed resistance. Unfortunately, most of you are too cowardly to stand up now, let alone when the rest of us will be dying to get back what you gave away.
Monday, February 6, 2006
An open letter to Bubba
Via Bob Geiger, an Iraq vet talks to the chickenhawks:
That's the way it is.
...
You have the audacity to claim that by not supporting the president, I don't support the troops. Yet, the president chose to send over 160,000 of us to unprepared and without a defined mission. We had no body armor, no vehicle armor, and poor supplies of ammunition. Our families spent thousands of dollars that they did not have to supply us, while President Bush did nothing. In fact he didn't even scold his Offensive Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, when he told our forward deployed troops, "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had." Moreover, the mission was originally about weapons of mass destruction, but there were none. Then it was making a democracy, but yet the "insurgency" worsens. Now the president has decided that in order to honor those who died for nothing, more must die for nothing.
...
That's the way it is.
Questions
Is it me, or do other people want to give CNN's Ed Henry a wedgie too? I'm watching him on the news and I just want to hang him in a closet by his shorts.
'Good news' from Iraq
Oh yeah, we got generators, top of the line. Ain't got fuel to run 'em though. Oh the ineptitude.
And you wonder where our money goes?
...
"The basic problem with Qud[a]s is, we have four LM6000s out there that essentially don't have a fuel supply," says a U.S. power-generation engineer who did a yearlong tour in Iraq. "We installed a third of a billion dollars' worth of combustion turbines that can't be fueled."
The LM6000 combustion turbines are a type known as aeroderivative. They are basically Boeing 747 turbines mounted on heavy stands. They work well on natural gas, but to run on diesel, they need high-quality fuel and a fair amount of operational sophistication, two things in short supply today in Iraq. "The first time I went to Quds and saw those LM6000s, the first words out of my mouth were, 'What the hell are those things doing here?'" says the generation specialist in Iraq.
...
And you wonder where our money goes?
Braintip: Atrios
Brutalized & Arrested in Cleveland
From World Can't Wait
Go read it.
My name is Carol Fisher, and I am on the staff of Revolution Books in Cleveland OH. At the bookstore we have been immersed in building and supporting the initiatives of World Cant Wait. Yesterday, 1.28.06, while putting "Bush Step Down" posters on telephone poles along a major thoroughfare on a sunny Saturday afternoon, I was brutalized by Cleveland Heights police, charged with 2 counts of felony assault and held incommunicado under police custody in the hospital! This outrage and others like it must be exposed and opposed by all who hate the direction that the Bush regime is taking this country and the world.
Here is what happened:
Go read it.
" I participated in a hoax..."
Lawrence Wilkerson, former aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, on his participation in the cooked intelligence that led up to Bush's Criminal War, on NOW:
No, it isn't. Perhaps you could shorten your prison sentence by coming clean the rest of the way.
That's the fight for the soul of our nation that we're in now. If we lose, we lose everything.
I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council. How do you think that makes me feel? Thirty-one years in the United States Army and I more or less end my career with that kind of a blot on my record? That's not a very comforting thing.
No, it isn't. Perhaps you could shorten your prison sentence by coming clean the rest of the way.
Suppose we get people who can't make good decisions as FDR was pretty good at. I'm worried and I would rather have the discussion and debate in the process we've designed than I would a dictate from a dumb strongman. And that dumb strongman is his felicitous phrase.
Oh I think it's come to that. I think we've had some decisions at this administration that were more or less dictates. We've had a decision that the Constitution as read by Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo and a few other very selected administration lawyers doesn't pertain the way it has pertained for 200-plus years. A very ahistorical reading of the Constitution.
And these people marshal such stellar lights as-- Alexander Hamilton. They haven't even read Federalist Six. I'm sure they haven't. Where Alexander Hamilton lays down his markers about the dangers of a dictate-issuing chief executive. This is not the way America was intended to be run by its founders and it is not the interpretation of the Constitution that any of the founders as far as I read the Federalist Papers and other discussions about their views would have subscribed to. This is an interpretation of the constitution that is outlandish and as I said, clearly ahistorical.
Dictatorships work on occasion. You're right. Dictatorships do work but I-- I'm like Ferdinand Eberstadt. I'd prefer to see the squabble of democracy to the efficiency of dictators.
That's the fight for the soul of our nation that we're in now. If we lose, we lose everything.
They're getting our rooms ready...
Long Beach (CA) Press-Telegram
Does this mean we won't even get to go Gitmo?
On a related note from Working for Change:
Japanese-Americans, Reality-based Americans, what's the diff?
The story showed up in Tuesday's Press-Telegram, as I was reading "Night," Elie Wiesel's horrifying autobiography of a teenager in Buchenwald and Auschwitz.
Appearing on page A5, the story said the federal government had awarded a $385 million contract for the construction of "temporary detention facilities." These would be used, the story said, in the event of an "immigration emergency."
The new detention camps will be built by Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton. The latter, as you likely know, is the defense-related corporate giant with fists full of contracts involving the war in Iraq.
Considering what took place in Nazi Germany, as well as the shameful incarceration of Japanese-Americans in 1942, no detention camp should be built without the widest possible public scrutiny.
Bottom line: The contract cries out for greater attention. So far, the government's expressed reason for building them is insufficient and ill-defined. And even if the camps do relate to illegal immigration, their purpose could be changed overnight.
Let's not have it said, years from now, that no one ever questioned this.
Does this mean we won't even get to go Gitmo?
On a related note from Working for Change:
2/6/1943: U.S. government requires the 110,000 Japanese-Americans imprisoned in internment camps to answer loyalty surveys.
Japanese-Americans, Reality-based Americans, what's the diff?
Mushroom clouds...again
The guy in the fancy suit takes a look at the escalation of the rhetoric toward Iran:
Call me anti-Semitic if you will, but Badtux quotes my friend Lurch, with whom I wholeheartedly agree:
And as the article (which you should read beginning to end) Gord's post last night points up, uber-Right Jews and Evangelical Christians have formed an alliance to push the 'neocon dream'. This scares me because I know there is probably more than one hawk in Israel who would love to nuke the shit out of Iran. Perle, Feith, Wolfowitz, and Frum are the ones who make policy here (regardless some of their little legal problems). You figure it out.
Update:
Wolcott sees it too:
A mushroom cloud over Iran, that is. From U.S. low-yield "bunker buster" nuclear explosives.
Because, of course, we must nuke the planet to protect the planet from nukes.
...
Call me anti-Semitic if you will, but Badtux quotes my friend Lurch, with whom I wholeheartedly agree:
...
Iran MUST be defeated militarily. The Neocon plan calls for it. Israel must be defended to the last American.
And as the article (which you should read beginning to end) Gord's post last night points up, uber-Right Jews and Evangelical Christians have formed an alliance to push the 'neocon dream'. This scares me because I know there is probably more than one hawk in Israel who would love to nuke the shit out of Iran. Perle, Feith, Wolfowitz, and Frum are the ones who make policy here (regardless some of their little legal problems). You figure it out.
Update:
Wolcott sees it too:
...
Cockburn believes sanity will prevail. Lind sees the inmates still in control of the asylum. "In Washington, the same brilliant crowd who said invading Iraq would be a cakewalk is still in power. While a few prominent neocons have left the limelight, others remain highly influential behind the scenes. For them, the question is not whether to attack Iran (and Syria), but when. Their answer will be the same as Israel's."
...
Chickenhawk Heroes
Jesus' General, of course:
Rep. Bob Beauprez
Beauprez for Governor
Dear Rep. Beauprez,
It takes a lot of guts to parade around in military garb after requesting and receiving three separate draft deferments and then, finally, a medical release. Unlike you and Our Leader, Eurocrats like John Kerry and Max Cleland took the easier path, earning their right to wear a uniform by serving in combat. Suckers. Didn't they know that a bumpersticker is enough.
...
Cross-posted at Main and Central.
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