Where's Shakes?

Here for now. It'd be nice to find out who fucked with her page. Just sayin' ... heh ...

Silly me [slaps forehead]

Watertiger explains it all. Dick is the King:

The Office of the Vice President represents the independent, capitalistic and entrepreneurial spirit of America and has done so publicly since 2001. Wherever oil companies and military industrial complexes are repressed, wherever the morality of disproportionate corporate profits is called into question, the Office of the Vice President is there to remind us of that skyrocketing capital gains for the few at the sake of the huddled masses, yearning for decent jobs and nationalized health care, is the American way.

Two hundred and eighteen years ago, the United States Constitution established the Office of the Vice President. It was implicit in the Constitution that future generations of Americans foresee the need for a fourth branch of government to protect the people from the dangers posed by a tripartite system run amok and to protect the upper class from the great unwashed.

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We should just shut up and go along with it and maybe they might "let us eat cake". How long have I been calling for a 'Bastille Moment'? Oh, that long.

Update:

Walt at Blondie's says it precisely:

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This disgusting creature who dares sully our government deserves to be impeached and removed from all political office, then brought to criminal trial for treason and fraud.

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Hearbreaking ...

Via Atrios, Johnny got his gun.

TAMPA, Florida: He lies flat, unseeing eyes fixed on the ceiling, tubes and machines feeding him, breathing for him, keeping him alive. He cannot walk or talk, but he can grimace and cry. And he is fully aware of what has happened to him.

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Cool resource ...

For Firefox users. I found this weather utility at the Firefox site, and have been using it for a couple months, and it's really helpful. It will install to your navbar or status bar (your choice) and shows you 3-day weather for your area plus provides quick links to radar and satellite data (plus a lot more minutiae). Did I mention 1-Click Weather is run by The Weather Channel? It's easy to download and installs itself (uninstalls just as easily if you don't like it).

Download Page

Shared Experience

AP

Democratic presidential hopeful Chris Dodd is issuing a call for community service that aims to create the first generation in which everyone serves their country.

He proposes making community service mandatory for all high school students, doubling the size of the Peace Corps by 2011 and expanding the AmeriCorps national service program to 1 million participants by the end of his presidency.

I doubt if there's going to be a 'his presidency', but it's still a damn good idea.

Dodd said his goal is to see 40 million people volunteering in some for or another by 2020.

"I think we want to have a shared experience again," he said earlier Saturday at a house party in Amherst. "Our shared experience today is we all pay $4 for the same cup of cafe latte no matter where you live in America. That's not a shared experience. A shared experience is going out and sacrificing."

I think it should be mandatory, not voluntary, with full citizenship and voting rights awarded only upon its successful completion. Fat chance that's gonna happen. Americans are too spoiled and arrogant to think they can be made to do anything simply because it's the right thing for them to do.

Call it something other than 'community service' too. Community service is a sentence imposed by a judge after you fuck up, like cleaning up trash off the White House lawn after the Negroes play music.

Military sees drop in black recruits

AP

The number of blacks joining the military has plunged by more than one-third since the Afghanistan and Iraq wars began, as other job prospects soar and relatives of potential recruits increasingly discourage them from signing up.

Walking past the Army recruiting station in downtown Washington, D.C., this past week, Sean Glover said he has done all he can to talk black relatives out of joining the military.

"I don't think it's a good time. I don't support the government's efforts here and abroad," said Glover, 36.

The brothers are wisin' up.

Pretty soon we may get an answer to the Vietnam-era question: "What if they gave a war and nobody came?"

17 Syllables

Deadly Haiku Of We Are Now Officially 'The United States Of Dick And Bush'

Latest From Bushtard
Same As Cheney, Says Exempt
Rejects Oversight

Will Congress Stand Up
And Do their Job On This One
Bush Is Not A King

Immune From All Laws
Endless War And Suffering
Except for The Base

The Rich One Percent
The Defense Contractors And
Religious Zealots

You can say a lot in 17 syllables if you string 'em together right.

Can The 'Surge' Beat The Clock?

Rozius Unbound

Frank Rich looks at how the Bush Administration will try to play the American public yet again as the September deadline for the Iraq fiasco approaches.

Last weekend the latest custodians of the fiasco, our new commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, and our new ambassador to Baghdad, Ryan Crocker, took to the Sunday shows with two messages we'd be wise to heed.

The first was a confirmation of recent White House hints that the long-promised September pivot point for judging the success of the "surge" was inoperative. That deadline had been asserted as recently as April 24 by President Bush, who told Charlie Rose that September was when we'd have "a pretty good feel" whether his policy "made sense." On Sunday General Petraeus and Mr. Crocker each downgraded September to merely a "snapshot" of progress in Iraq. "Snapshot," of course, means "Never mind!"

The second message was more encoded and more ominous. Again using similar language, the two men said that in September they would explain what Mr. Crocker called "the consequences" and General Petraeus "the implications" of any alternative "courses of action" to their own course in Iraq. What this means in English is that when the September "snapshot" of the surge shows little change in the overall picture, the White House will say that "the consequences" of winding down the war would be even more disastrous: surrender, defeat, apocalypse now. So we must stay the surge. Like the war's rollout in 2002, the new propaganda offensive to extend and escalate the war will be exquisitely timed to both the anniversary of 9/11 and a high-stakes Congressional vote (the Pentagon appropriations bill).

For the Bush White House, the real definition of victory has become "anything they can get away with without taking blame for defeat," said the retired Army Gen. William Odom, a national security official in the Reagan and Carter administrations, when I spoke with him recently. The plan is to run out the Washington clock between now and Jan. 20, 2009, no matter the cost.

As General Odom says, the endgame will start "when a senior senator from the president's party says no," much as William Fulbright did to L.B.J. during Vietnam. [...]

[...] The best way to honor the sixth anniversary of 9/11 will be to at last disarm a president who continues to squander countless lives in the names of those voiceless American dead.

I think Daddy Frank's experience as a theater critic makes him uniquely qualified to critique this maladministration's Theater of the Absurd.

A Vice President Without Borders, Bordering on Lunacy

MoDo on The Dick:

It's hard to imagine how Dick Cheney could get more dastardly, unless J. K. Rowling has him knock off Harry Potter next month.

Dr. No used to just blow off the public and Congress as he cooked up his shady schemes. Now, in a breathtaking act of arrant arrogance, he's blowing off his own administration.

Henry Waxman, the California congressman who looks like an accountant and bites like a pit bull, is making the most of Congress's ability, at long last, to scrutinize Cheney's chicanery.

On Thursday, Mr. Waxman revealed that after four years of refusing to cooperate with the government unit that oversees classified documents, the vice president tried to shut down the unit rather than comply with the law ensuring that sensitive data is protected. The National Archives appealed to the Justice Department, but who knows how much justice there is at Justice, now that the White House has so blatantly politicized it?

"It's absurd, reflecting his view from the first day he got into office that laws don't apply to him," Representative Waxman told me. "The irony is, he's taking the position that he's not part of the executive branch."

Ah, if only that were true. Then maybe W. would be able to close Gitmo, which Vice has insisted he not do. And Condi wouldn't have to worry every night that she'll wake up to find crazy Dick bombing Iran, whispering to W. that they have to do it before that weak sister Hillary takes over.

I love that Cheney was able to bully Colin Powell, Pentagon generals and George Tenet when drumming up his fake case for war, but when he tried to push around the little guys, the National Archive data collectors - I'm visualizing dedicated "We the People" wonky types with glasses and pocket protectors - they pushed back.

Archivists are the new macho heroes of Washington.

I get a visual of bespectacled crew-cut nerdy types in 3-fer-$10 wash-n-wear white short-sleeve shirts beating Cheney to death with rolled-up archives. Ah, to dream...

Please read the rest.

Balls ...

It's about time. Not that I'm a big fan of Rahm Emanuel, but it's good to see a Dem calling bullshit on the White House:

Following Vice President Dick Cheney's assertion that his office is not a part of the executive branch of the US government, Democratic Caucus Chairman Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) plans to introduce an amendment to the the Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill to cut funding for Cheney's office.

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"The Vice President has a choice to make. If he believes his legal case, his office has no business being funded as part of the executive branch," said Emanuel in a statement released to RAW STORY. "However, if he demands executive branch funding he cannot ignore executive branch rules. At the very least, the Vice President should be consistent. This amendment will ensure that the Vice President's funding is consistent with his legal arguments." [my ems]

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Finally. Thank you. I hope it's contagious.

They forgot to tell us . . .

. . . that the "surge" would be in casualties. 25 more familes ripped apart this week, and that is just on the U.S. side:

From Yahoo! News:

“BAGHDAD - Roadside bombers killed seven U.S. troops Saturday, four of them in a single blast near Baghdad, and an eighth soldier died of a non-combat cause — raising to 25 the number of American soldiers killed this week.”

Impeach the bastards. Now!

R.

Fair fights ...

Let me tell you something right now. I never had a fight in which I fought fairly. Fuck that, I want to win. Anybody who wants 'to fight like a gentleman' is gonna get his ass kicked. This is not to say I'm a fighter, in fact I don't like violence in any form, but sometimes you have to defend yourself.

That said, it seems as if the generals running the Iraq mess believe the al Qaeda clowns over there should fight us 'like men'.

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Let me see if I have this straight? We go after a supposed concentration of Al Qaeda. We encircle a city filled with civilians. We blow the living shit out of the place. And guess what? The terrorists aka insurgents beat feet and melt away. The so-called cowards won't "stand and fight". Well, looks to me like those cowards are much faster learners then we are.

General Odierno ought to go back and read some good old fashioned American History. There was this guy, General Francis Marion, who got the nickname "Swamp Fox" from a fussy British Colonel (Tarleton) who complained that Marion did not fight fair:

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The current U.S. offensive will fail. We will punch ourselves out on an enemy that is smart enough to retreat in the face of overwhelming force. We will go house to house rousting able bodied men from their sleep and humiliating them in front of their wives. We will detain some of these folks but eventually let them return home. When they return home they will be fully prepared to support whatever insurgent group will help them reclaim the honor we took from them.

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Iraq was doomed to failure before the first pair of U.S. boots hit the ground. The longer we stay, the worse it will get.

There are ways to fight an insurgency, none of which the American people have the stomach for. It's why we lost in Vietnam and why Iraq won't turn out any better.

Lock up the Children!

This rating was determined based on the presence of the following words:

death (5x)

fuck (4x)

dick (3x)

gay (2x)

dead (1x)

I never said this was a family show. Heh ...

Back to normal blogging tomorrow. Spent most of the day cleaning my office. God I accumulate a lot of crap.

Great thanks to Watertiger for the silly link.

George W. Bush Would Like the Negroes To Clean Up

Wonkette

Congress joined the Bush Administration for a nice little barbecue on the South Lawn last night. The theme was Mardi Gras, so everybody could enjoy memories of New Orleans being destroyed by the Bush Administration and then pretty much left in that same condition years later.

Famous NOLA chef Paul Prudhomme catered the picnic and New Orleans jazz band Kermit Ruffins and the Barbeque Swingers played Dixieland.

And then Bush told the black musicians to clean up after the politicians.

THE PRESIDENT: Kermit Ruffins and the Barbeque Swingers, right out of New Orleans, Louisiana. (Applause.)

MR. RUFFINS: Thank you. Thanks for having us. We're glad to be here.

THE PRESIDENT: Proud you're here. Thanks for coming. You all enjoy yourself. Make sure you pick up all the trash after it's over.

What. A. Dildo.

The early whore gets the worm ...

Saturday means another chapter of my novel The Fourth Estate is up at The Practical Press.

Farewell to the Queen

Regulars around here know what a nut I am for ocean liners. Well, I'm drinking heavily tonight. Cunard's Queen Elizabeth 2 has been sold.

Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Cheney

Asia Times

In a development that underlines the tensions between the anti-Iran agenda of the US administration and the preoccupation of its military command in Afghanistan with militant Sunni activism, a State Department official last week publicly accused Iran for the first time of arming Taliban forces, but the US commander of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) forces in Afghanistan rejected that charge for the second time in less than two weeks.

The use of the phrase "irrefutable evidence" suggested that the Burns statement was scripted by the office of Vice President Dick Cheney. The same phrase had been used by Cheney himself on September 20, 2002, in referring to the administration's accusation that then-Iraqi president Saddam Hussein had a program to enrich uranium as the basis for a nuclear weapon.

But the NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Dan McNeill, pointed to other possible explanations, particularly the link between drug and weapons smuggling between Iran and Afghanistan.

Given the very small scale of the arms in question, Cheney's interest in the issue appears to have much less to do with Afghanistan than with his aim of ensuring that President George W Bush goes along with the neo-conservative desire to attack Iran before the end of his term (my em).

Evil is as evil does. So is stupid. Somebody please dab a loop on The Dick and tie him to a fence post before he does us any more harm.

The US military command in Afghanistan, on the other hand, sees the external threat in Afghanistan coming from Pakistan rather than from Iran. US commanders there are very concerned about the increase in Taliban attacks launched from Pakistan's North Waziristan and South Waziristan after Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf's truce with Islamic separatists in those border provinces last year.

See Fareed Zakaria on "The Real Problem With Pakistan".

The only institution that works in Pakistan is the military. The Army is mostly professional and competent. It is also vast, swallowing up approximately 39 percent of the government's budget. In a book published last month, author Ayesha Siddiqa details the vast holdings of Pakistan's "military economy"—including banks, foundations, universities and companies worth as much as $10 billion. And with or without Musharraf, as Daniel Markey ably explains in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, the military will continue to run Pakistan's strategic policy.

Deeply ingrained in the Army's psyche is the notion that it was abandoned by the United States in the 1990s, after the Soviets were driven out of Afghanistan. The generals are worried about Washington's warm overtures to India and fear that soon they will be abandoned again. One explanation for why the military has retained some ties to the Taliban is because they want to keep a "post-American" option to constrain what they see as a pro-Indian government in Kabul. If Washington were to dump Musharraf, the Pakistani military could easily sabotage American policy against Al Qaeda and throughout the region.

I wish I had the answers to all this, but I only have one: Get rid of Cheney. Quick.

Here, Tony! Come on, boy!

Ian Williams

In response to a news story, Tony Snow, Bush's spokesman, denied that Tony Blair was being considered for a position of special representative for the Middle East quartet. So, based on Snow's record for obscuring issues, it must be true.

It would be the final epitaph for a quartet that has already proven to be a quadruple diplomatic paraplegic.

Blair has consistently done whatever Bush wanted him to do. When he took British forces into Iraq, it was with clear knowledge of the ineptitude of the White House but he nursed the fond illusion that his support would give him a hand on the steering wheel - and then he found that runaway trains do not have steering capacity, and no working brakes either.

Not only that, but a train jammed at full throttle with the safeties tied shut. It's a toss-up whether the train will run off the cliff it's headed for or blow up first. Either way, its run will end violently.

Blair has shown consistently that he has no influence with the White House on any important issue and will not even try to influence the Israelis. In the unlikely event that he has a blank cheque from the White House, he could do something useful. But it looks much more like the White House tossing him a diplomatic dime because there are vestigial memories of him doing them an occasional good service.

I think the White House figures 'once a poodle, always a poodle', and/or that they need a scapegoat for yet one more botched policy.

We ain't gonna get our troops out of Iraq by supporting Bush

Today's 'must read' at Frameshop in response to Sen. Levin's letter to WaPo.

Senator, the wrong message cannot be sent by those who oppose Bush's Iraq policy. The wrong message can only be sent by those who support it.

In particular, Senator, over the past 7 years President Bush has been sending a message so wrong that it has led to the criminal destruction of our valued military: the message that the Democratic Party is a danger to the safety and security of the American people.

The cruel irony of that wrong message from President Bush is obvious to every American--including those Americans fighting in Iraq: the more President Bush says that Democrats are a danger to our troops, the more President Bush's Iraq policy destroys the lives, families and reputation of the U.S. military.

More. Kudos to Mr. Feldman.

Digby Speaks

Go see Digby accepting the Wellstone Award on behalf of the independent progressive blogosphere. There's also a transcript.

We are passionate about politics, and in this era of Republican corruption, excess and failure, that passion sometimes manifests itself as anger. But how can you not be angry? So many institutions have failed us in the last decade that being vitriolic seems the only sane response.

Angry? Vitriolic? Sane? Who, US?