Salvaging the cave in ...

The Dems' cave on the funding supplemental for Iraq sucks ass. Thing is though, they just moved this argument another Friedman Unit into the future. Maybe they'll grow a set by then. It would be nice to get it through their thick heads our troops are dying at an ever-increasing rate, but it's a foregone conclusion that won't happen. Steve Soto gives us a glimpse of reality about what we need to do when the fight starts again.

A day after the funding deal was reached, it is now time to figure out what to do next. There is a short term and mid-term course of action. For the short term, as others have noted, Democrats in each house should vote against the supplemental to demonstrate that they are against the GOP’s auto-pilot rubber stamping of this war. Let Mitch McConnell and John Boehner worry about assembling the majorities for their blank checks.

Some would say that this is wrong because the bill contains other spending the Democrats like, but the Democrats were wrong to muddy the issues in the first place. Bush and the GOP should have been forced to veto or use parliamentary tricks to kill each of these popular domestic issues one at a time, so that a record could have been built of McConnell and Boehner killing off the SCHIP expansion, the minimum wage increase, the 9/11 Commission recommendations, the Katrina relief. I would also say that the GOP and White House need to be forced to kill or veto the ethics reform package, the Medicare Part D fixes, the student loan reforms as well, but it seems the Democrats are quite willing to screw those over themselves.

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Note to Dems: We put you there to straighten this mess out and get in the Chimp's face. Let's get on it or we'll find someone else to do it. The idea is to get Bush and Cheney out and then you can enact progressive legislation and bring our troops home. By 21 Jan 2009, the death toll for our troops could be well over 5000. The longer you dick around, the more blood will be on your hands. Most of you still have a lot of explaining to do regarding why you gave the Chimp authorization in the first place, you idiots.

Quote of the Day

Olbermann via C & L:

The Democratic leadership has, in sum, claimed a compromise with the Administration, in which the only things truly compromised are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats, and the lives of our brave, and doomed, friends, and family, in Iraq.

Wow!!!!!

It snuck up on me. Our auto/motorcycle blog Fixer & Gordon turned 3 years old yesterday.

He needs help, dammit!

Much as I'm no fan of Dr. Laura, her son doesn't need snark, he needs help.

The soldier son of talk radio relationship counselor Laura Schlessinger is under investigation for a graphic personal Web page that one Army official has called "repulsive."

The MySpace page, publicly available until Friday when it disappeared from the Internet, included cartoon depictions of rape, murder, torture and child molestation; photographs of soldiers with guns in their mouths; a photograph of a bound and blindfolded detainee captioned "My Sweet Little Habib"; accounts of illicit drug use; and a blog entry headlined by a series of obscenities and racial epithets.

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This kid shouldn't have been in a war zone to begin with and now he's well on his way to coming apart. It's obvious. Been there.

It's sucking...

Some surge*:

The "troop surge" by American soldiers in Iraq is not working, one of Britain's senior military officials in Baghdad has said.

In a pessimistic assessment of the strategy designed to pull Iraq back from all-out civil war, Alastair Campbell, the outgoing defence attaché at the British Embassy in Baghdad, claimed that extra US forces were not achieving the desired drop in violence.

Mr Campbell, whose remarks may cause embarrassment to Downing Street and anger in Washington, said that the casualty figures for April - in which 1,500 civilians are believed to have been killed - provided no "encouraging" evidence.

Speaking on the record last week to a public audience at Chatham House, the London-based foreign-policy research institute, he said: "The evidence does not suggest that the surge is actually working, if reduction in casualties is a criterion. The figures in April were not encouraging."

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So tell me again how more troops are the answer. The only thing we should be talking about now is getting our people home in a quick, orderly way. Anything else is just horseshit. Much as I'm annoyed with John Edwards, he does make the most sense on this issue.

“Conceding to the president on full funding for the Iraq war is a serious mistake. It is time to force an end to this war, and the only way for Congress to do that is to use its funding power. Any compromise that funds the war through the end of the fiscal year isn't a compromise at all, it's a capitulation. As I have said repeatedly, Congress should send the president the same bill he vetoed again and again until he realizes he has no choice but to start bringing our troops home.”

*Great thanks to Maru for the link.

Lone Pine deux

Last week, I threatened to post a picture of the view from our motel in Lone Pine. Hyar 'tis.

The road is US 395. Then there's cows, which my dogs were fascinated by. Beyond that, the Alabama Hills, and beyond that, Mt. Whitney.

We drove down the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada to L.A., then back up Highway 1 (see also 'Other Names') and US 101 along the coast, then east past Casa de Fruta through Pacheco Pass* to I-5, up to I-80 and home. Sort of a 'Great Circle Route'. The trip was 1250 miles and we only had to do a couple hunnert of 'em on the superslab.

I think you can see why we like to do it that way instead of 'hammerin' with the herd' the whole way through the (bor-ring!) Central Valley..

*Wikipedia needs editing: SR 152 has been four lanes over its entire length for several years. The lore of Pacheco Pass has suffered because of it. Used to be, there was a ghostly lovelorn Indian Princess who would magically appear on the road and cause cars to wreck. I think there was usually a breathalyser involved afterwards. Since the road was widened, she apparently (apparitionally?) confines her activities to the old two-lane section which isn't even there anymore.

Bio Billy

That's my old pal Bill. His folks moved to Beverly hills from Long Island in about 1959 or so. I met his brother Rick first, who was known as "Richie" in NY. Heh. We don't do "Richie" out West here. Too Eas' Coas', even though there's lots of transplants. Through him I met Bill and we've been friends ever since. Rick hung with the surfer crowd and Bill hung with the greasers, but I hung with 'em all.

Bill's a cab driver in Santa Monica. He got the nickname 'Bio Billy' from the bio-diesel-capable cab you see in the picture. There aren't enough filling stations that offer bio-diesel yet for him to use it all the time, but he does when he can. The cab is an '87 M-B with 250K miles on it. Bill says it sounds like gravel in a garbage can, but I thought it ran like a watch. Well, maybe a pocket watch. It's the biggest Mercedes sedan I've ever seen and was very comfortable to ride in. Huge back seat. Most of the times I've ridden in the back seat of anything, I was sitting on my hands!

Him 'n me and Mrs. G all went out for breakfast last Saturday. Bill rode us in the cab, for which I was mighty grateful. For free, too! The traffic in SoCal is about ten times worse than I remember it and I welcomed any chance I could get to let the blood flow back into my fingers and the grip marks on the steering wheel dissipate.

We had a good visit, albeit too short, but that's the way it goes. Even though Bill and I went to different schools, it was definitely a good part of my 'reunion' trip.

Jesus weeps ...

Greenwald looks at a poll the right wing pundits are screaming about. An excellent post. The thing that got me though, was a relatively simple observation Glenn makes:

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And majorities of white Christians -- Catholics, evangelicals and protestants -- believe in torture not merely in the improbable-in-the-extreme "ticking time bomb" scenario; rather, they believe in torture as a matter of course (i.e., more than "rarely" -- either "often or "sometimes"). (By stark and revealing contrast, "secularists" oppose torture in far greater numbers). Think about how depraved that is: what kind of religious individual affirmatively believes that people should be routinely tortured, including people who have never been proven to have done anything wrong?

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It goes back to my post the other day about the hard core right. The overt bigotry on the right is both astounding and frustrating. Our friends Mimus Pauly and Lurch both have posts up commenting on mine, with far greater insight than I do. Read them too.

The only way we'll get out of Iraq ...

... is when this country goes broke. Creature in toto (link at his place):

A blank check by any other name is still a blank check. Damn you, Democrats. It'll be interesting to see which of the presidential nominees choose to support it.

Heh ...

It's Fleet Week in NYC and Mrs. F is in San Francisco. Heh ... No Dress Whites for you this year, darling!

Update:

The next best thing. She can see a dashing officer and I'll never tire of seeing Catherine Bell in a ball gown.



Next year, schedule your business trips accordingly, baby.

And just a personal observation. I think the Navy has the best dress unforms. There's something about a white suit (unless there are guys wearing them chasing you, swinging a butterfly net) that's just classy, and they actually look comfortable. The Air Force Mess Dress we had was all black and homely, the Army one ain't much better with them blue pants. I'd say the Corps comes in second to the Squids.

Quote of the Day

“Let's get George Bush out of Iraq, out of the White House, out of our Treasury and into jail ASAP. THAT'S the strategy for winning in Iraq that I would recommend if I was in charge.”
—Jane Stillwater

Read it in context at Jane Stillwater's Web Log

R.

Told ya

All Iraq has ever been about is oil. Walk in, knock Saddam off, and take the oil for Halliburton and Exxon/Mobil. Shit's hitting the fan and there's only one thing the Chimp is worried about:

But two senior Iraqi officials told The Associated Press that Bush warned al-Maliki that Washington expected to see "tangible results quickly" on the oil bill and other legislation as the price for continued support.

Freedom? Feh. Democracy? Puh. Like Jed Clampett learned a long time ago, it's all about the Black Gold.

You know, the Chimp shoulda been straight with his generals right up front. "Get me the oil and hold it," was all he would have had to say and they would have done it. There'd be Jarheads standing on every drilling rig and the shit would be flowing like the Mississippi River. But he had to gin it up in a U.N. resolution so the American people would swallow it. If he would have been straight with us; ("I'll git y'all 50 cent a gallon gas if you let me kick over Iraq and take it.") the majority of us would have probably gone along as well.

Incompetent, murderous fools.

Intimidation ...

This pisses me off. Fucking Jesus freaks and Big Oil, with Congress and the Chimp in their pockets, have cowed the scientific community in this country:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Smithsonian Institution toned down an exhibit on climate change in the Arctic for fear of angering Congress and the Bush administration, says a former administrator at the museum.

Among other things, the script, or official text, of last year's exhibit was rewritten to minimize and inject more uncertainty into the relationship between global warming and humans, said Robert Sullivan, who was associate director in charge of exhibitions at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.

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Rather, he said, Smithsonian leaders acted on their own. "The obsession with getting the next allocation and appropriation was so intense that anything that might upset the Congress or the White House was being looked at very carefully," he said. [my em]

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Great thanks to Holden for the link.

Hard core

So, I see a customer I hadn't seen in a couple months. He's ex-Navy, Republican, NRA member, mid-fifties. I've known him 15 years and he's always been a decent enough guy. Yeah, he watches Fox 'News' but he'd always listen to reason. He's really pissed off about the way Iraq was botched and about how it's all gone to Hell over there. So I ask him today, "I bet you're gonna vote Democrat next year."

"Nope," he says. "Republican across the board."

So I gotta ask. "Even after all this horseshit in Iraq?"

"Yup," he nods.

"How come?" I ask.

"Niggers and spics," he replies.

My jaw drops open. "What?"

"Niggers and spics," he says again. "The Republicans don't like 'em and neither do I."

"You're kidding," I say.

"Nope," he shakes his head. "Fuck them people, taking jobs from real Americans."

"But the blacks have been here from before the Revolution, they are Americans," I say.

"Fuck them," he says again. "All we do is support 'em. Lincoln shoulda never set them free."

"But what about me," I say. "I'm a first-generation child of immigrants."

"You're white," he says. "And you work for a living."

"So," I say. "It doesn't matter the Republicans have fucked up everything they've touched, wasted all those American lives, our brothers and sisters, wasted all that money, and you'd vote for 'em just because they don't like blacks and Hispanics? Regardless if they run the nation into the ground?"

"Yup," he says.

And that's what it's all about. The hard core will only be happy in a lily white, apartheid state, regardless of how bad living in it might be and the way to get there is to vote Republican. I guess there's some people you just can't reach. I hope his daughter comes home for summer vacation with the biggest, blackest, linebacker on her university's football team and tells him they're getting married.

Addendum:

For all to know, this conversation didn't happen in Texas, Kansas, or Alabama, it took place within sight of Manhattan.

Update:

And you really should read the Rude One's post on the new immigration bill that's causing all the hubbub.

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The guest workers program is, more or less, the creation of an official servant class, one that'll serve to undercut the unionization of working class Americans and legal immigrants. By the way, the whole "guest workers" thing sound like we're gonna provide them with fresh towels and scones every morning. Why not just call them "shit detail workers"? The bill's filled with bizarre rules like if Jorge from Guatemala is a guest worker for two years, he's gotta go back to Guatemala for a year before he can come back here for another two years, for a total of six years. 'Cause no one's gonna break that law and stay, you know, illegally.

Oh, and then there's the fines, the total of $5000 that illegals would more or less have to pay if they want a green card, thus making the United States government into the largest coyote operation. The most festive provision is forcing the head of a household, no matter how many American kids that person has, to return to whatever country he or she got the fuck out of to come here and then turn around and come back legally, hoping that he or she gets back in to the kids, the job, the life that's been established. Immigrant rights groups are cautiously pessimistic about the bill - it's something, but, hell, that something ain't much.

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I thought he was their 'spiritual leader'?

They'll suck his cock for votes, but when it's time to see him off to 'God's Kingdom', well ... not so much:

U.S. Sen. John McCain isn't planning to attend the Rev. Jerry Falwell's funeral Tuesday. Rival Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani can't make it, either.

Nor can former Virginia former governor and long-shot 2008 Republican presidential candidate Jim Gilmore.

While some Republican figures will attend next week's funeral in Lynchburg for the founder of the Moral Majority, many will not. Experts say that even with a presidential election looming, it's not a must-attend event and there likely won't be political consequences for skipping it.

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Ya think there will be no political consequences? Maybe, unless the morons who make up the 'christianist base' actually realize they've been pandered to all these years. Doubtful, but stranger shit's happened. Funny, but the Chimp doesn't feel much of an obligation either, though if it weren't for Falwell and his ilk, Chimpy would have been clearing brush full time for the last couple years.

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President Bush does not plan to attend, but the White House is sending Tim Goeglein, a mid-level aide.

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Who?

Thanks, Skippy.

Jimmy

"I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history," [Former President Jimmy] Carter told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a story that appeared in the newspaper's Saturday editions. "The overt reversal of America's basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me."

Do you think he's saying this for some sort of political gain? I don't. Be nice if Bill said something like this too, he knows it well enough, but then his old lady would have to deal with the blowback and I think he wants to be back in the White House again.

Gulags 2

Thinking about the pics I posted yesterday from Natzweiler-Struthof, I remembered I made a video of the experience when we got home. I finally found it and it's my first YouTube.



And this is appropriate on several levels because the music is provided by MGV Hauenstein, the chorale group in my ancestal home of Hauenstein, Germany. One of the angelic voices you hear belongs to my cousin Birgit.

Who knew?

Via Aravosis, seems a buncha folks (us included) knew Iraq would turn into a mess. WaPo:

Two intelligence assessments from January 2003 predicted that the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and subsequent U.S. occupation of Iraq could lead to internal violence and provide a boost to Islamic extremists and terrorists in the region, according to congressional sources and former intelligence officials familiar with the prewar studies.

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The assessment on post-Hussein Iraq included judgments that while Iraq was unlikely to split apart, there was a significant chance that domestic groups would fight each other and that ex-regime military elements could merge with terrorist groups to battle any new government. It even talks of guerrilla warfare, according to congressional sources and former intelligence officials.

The second NIC assessment discussed "political Islam being boosted and the war being exploited by terrorists and extremists elsewhere in the region," one former senior analyst said. It also suggested that fear of U.S. military dominance and occupation of a Middle East country -- one sacred to Islam -- would attract foreign Islamic fighters to the area.

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I believe back then (this was before I began blogging), I was called a terrorist, a traitor, and a whole buncha other names when I'd tell people nothing good could come of Iraq. The other day, a friend of mine who thought I was crazy 4 years ago called me a visionary. Go figure but if I knew this then, so did the Chimp and his henchmen. They just didn't care.

WTF?

I know I paint Republicans with a very broad brush around here, but Jesus H. Christ, why does it seem that every last one of them have some seriously fucked up sexual habits, a lot of them downright criminal?

A former South Dakota lawmaker is accused of molesting his own foster children and legislative pages.

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In the most disturbing accusation, the girls say Klaudt had them convinced they could earn up to $20,000 by donating their eggs to a fertility clinic. And even though he has no medical training, the girls say Klaudt did all the supposed "exams" and "procedures" himself.

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If this is what being 'Christian' and 'Pro-Life' is all about, I'll stick to being a godless, Jesus-hating, fag-loving, Commie-pinko, feminist-supporting, baby-killer, thank you very much.

We're not leaving Iraq ...

... until we're dragged, kicking and screaming.

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The embassy is one of the few major projects the administration has undertaken in Iraq that is on schedule and within budget. Still, not all has gone according to plan.

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The complex quickly could become a white elephant if the U.S. scales back its presence and ambitions in Iraq. Although the U.S. probably will have forces in Iraq for years to come, it is not clear how much of the traditional work of diplomacy can proceed amid the violence and what the future holds for Iraq's government.

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Too many people have too much invested in Iraq to let us run so quickly. Scarecrow at FDL sees it too, talking to an Air Force weenie coming back from Baghdad:

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If my friend is right — and this is just one anecdote from one Airman, but he’s been there three times, all over the country doing the same thing, building what he builds — we are building a huge, permanent infrastructure in Iraq. We are putting in the latest equipment, and it is not there to support some temporary military presence. What’s going up is not something to be taken down and removed when our troops withdraw or respond to some uncertain Congressional appropriation. And the facilities that are being constructed, and the way they are being linked, indicate a more or less permanent military presence.

We’re spending billions upon billions on this, and it’s not slowing down. My friend has been there three times, and each time he goes back, he marvels at the tremendous change — in how much more there is now than there was last time. Much more sophisticated; more permanent.

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Too many people are making big money off this war. Let's hope the Dems don't get 'coerced' into continuing the carnage.