This Administration Is Like a Bad Movie...

Tony Peyser

The Bush Administration was under court order not to discard evidence of detainee torture and abuse months before the CIA destroyed videotapes that revealed some of its harshest tactics. A White House spokesman yesterday said, "I can't live with myself anymore! I have to tell the truth! The official who insisted on destroying the all tapes was ---." The spokesman suddenly grabbed his neck, removed a poisoned dart from an African blowgun, and collapsed to the ground.

Later Ike ...

You made great music, but a scumbag like you deserves just what he got.

Ike and Tina - Proud Mary



Glad Tina finally got away.

Tina Turner - Son of a Preacher Man



See ya in Hell, Ike. You'd better have the jams cranking when I get there.

PTL - Praise The Lord? No - Pass The Loot

Click for a larger collection plate

And the Bronze goes to...

My theme so far today seems to be about religion. Our pal Shakey's Sis is going on about it as well. And, oh yeah, she's as pissed off as I am about the way it's stinkin' up our otherwise flawless (pukes on keyboard) political tomfoolery.

I mean, this is to what our national political dialogue has been reduced by these idiots. Rather than teasing out the flaws in Romney's policy platform, Huckabee instead impugns his character merely by accusing him of believing Jesus and Satan are brothers, because everyone knows that's way wackier than believing that Jesus is God's son but Satan is just a fallen angel!

Are you fucking kidding me?

So it doesn't really matter a fig to me whether Romney believes Jesus and Satan are brothers; I still know he's a disingenuous, opportunistic, integrity-challenged dodo. That Huckabee is trying to make it an issue only confirms that he is a brainless, ethically-impaired gobshite, hiding behind his religion because he's got nothing else to offer.

She goes on at length and you should go read.

In her 'comments':

Why aren't you writing in a major magazine?

I use the f word. Also: I have a vagina.

I use the f word too. I wonder if I could write as well as she does if I had a...but I digress, and just in time too!

You just keep doin' whatcher doin', sweetheart, and they'll bleep one out and bronze the other for the Hall of Fame.

Re Jesus and Satan being brothers, just fer grins go see the video Romney doesn't want you to see.

GOP Religious Bigotry

Troutfishing at Kos

They just can't help themselves, can they ? The Christmas spirit and religious bigotry, both eternal, are forever at odds but today's religious right dominated Republican Party seems to have gotten one confused for the other. That's not surprising, however, because the religious right of their day, the Puritans, started the Christian war on Christmas to advance the Puritan values of stinginess and religious bigotry, and the contemporary American GOP is sliding right back into that traditional groove. Somebody better call Bill O'Reilly - the war on Christmas has spread to the GOP. Or, maybe it started there.

At this point, Mr. Troutfishing goes into some detail on the Puritans, who, by the way, are with us yet.

After years of screwing up managing the US Federal Government and starting a disastrous and costly war, the GOP has, for once, gotten something right, sort of ;

The original American Christmas spirit was hatred of what we now know as Christmas, and by exemplifying the original, stingy and mean Puritan hatred of Christmas and the Christmas spirit the GOP's new House Resolution may represent a bold new front in the war, against Christmas, which has been languishing since the Puritans took off their hats and drab clothes, got off their hard wooden pews, and learned to enjoy life a little.

Maybe, for his next stunning act, Steve King can introduce a House Resolution calling for non-Christians to be pressed to death with rocks, children stoned to death for talking back to their parents, or dogs tried for witchcraft.

What's Christmas without a little gratuitous meanness ?

The whole "war on Christmas" deal is silly, but religious intolerance is not. I'm very tolerant of other people's beliefs, except of course Repuglicans, unless they're in my face about it or trying to pass laws to make me see things their way.

Note to religionists: practice any rituals you like short of molesting children. Just do it in private. Say anything you like in the public square about injustice and helping your fellow man, but STFU about politics or start paying taxes.

Dear World,

Please ignore President Bush. He doesn't represent us.

Sign the petition.

Great thanks to our pal Creature.

And so it begins ...

Skippy:

the sound you hear was skippy's ira going down the toilet. today the dow jones dropped almost 300 points after the federal reserve lowered interest rates by a mere 25 points (a quarter of one percent).

...

Hold on to your hats. It'll get worse in the new year.

The Fall Of The House Of Bush

It can't come too soon for me. Excellent BuzzFlash interview with Craig Unger. They're trying to sell his book but it's good anyway.

Radar Magazine on the book:

Run, don't walk to buy Craig Unger's brilliant new book The Fall of the House of Bush. Forget about the clash of civilizations between Islam and the West. Unger's subject is the war that really matters: the one between Islamic, Jewish, and Christian fundamentalists on one side, and the scientific (reality-based!) post-Enlightenment world that some of us still prefer to inhabit.

Yes, some of us still do.

From the interview:

BuzzFlash: In essence, what I'm saying is, why the Middle East? Is there another issue other than oil?

Craig Unger: There are two powerful reasons there. It has to do with oil and Israel.

So they saw Iraq as a beachhead from which the US could go after the crown jewel of the Middle East -- Iran. That way, Israel would be secure, and the US would have cozy oil deals with Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Iran all in the Western camp. This was never about democratizing the Middle East -- if that were the case the neocons would have been screaming to overthrow the Saudis. It was about winning strategic dominance for the US throughout the entire region, with Israeli security and oil being the two great prizes.

Much more. All the usual suspects come under scrutiny. They're all guilty as well.

Dust and Smoke

Interesting little article in The Nation about a chance encounter in a Boston hotel between the writer, 'Slam Dunk', and Gore Vidal as a result of a false fire alarm. A good quick read. He leaves us with a point to ponder:

[...] He told me it was a faulty smoke detector on the third floor. It had mistaken simple dust for smoke.

It's often that way with intelligence, confusing dust with smoke, and for the rest of us, not knowing when to heed the alarm and when to ignore it, a question that resonates well beyond the Charles Hotel. After so many false alarms, the system itself becomes suspect, and even after the "all clear," there really is no going back.

Obviously a metaphor for this administration, but to 'dust and smoke' he should have added 'mirrors'.

To this I add my own metaphor: there's always those sickos who pull the fire alarm just to see the pretty red fire engines come, and who get off on all the confusion and excitement, never caring that the firefighters might be called upon for a real emergency elsewhere. Just like Bush.

TV might be about to get better

From Think Progress:

Rachel Maddow gets MSNBC tryout.

Progressive talk radio host Rachel Maddow “taped a pilot” recently for MSNBC, in which she teamed up with MSNBC prime time VP Bill Wolff. Maddow currently makes “irregular appearances on MSNBC.” According to TVNewser, there is “no word on if the pilot is being considered ready for take-off.”

From her Air America bio:

Rachel has a doctorate in political science (she was a Rhodes Scholar) and a background in HIV/AIDS activism, prison reform, and other lefty rabblerousing.

She shakes a mean cocktail, drives a bright red pickup, hates Coldplay, loves arguing with conservatives, spends a lot of money on AMTRAK tickets, and dresses like a first-grader.

Let's hear it for lefty rabblerousing!

I didn't know she has a doctorate, but it doesn't surprise me. This gal is smart as a whip and extremely coherent and understandable when she speaks. I'm a huge fan.

MSNBC ain't stupid. They struck ratings gold with Keith Olbermann, and they moved Scarborough to the early morning hours where he can only do a minimum of damage, and replaced him with Dan Abrams who isn't doing too badly. Dr. Ms. Maddow will add another truth-teller to their lineup. I hope it works out.

Let's hope they can that Repug twit Carlson to make room for her.

Now the big question remains: What make of pickup does she drive? Enquiring minds want to know...

Pirates ...

Not only are the 'contractors' robbing our treasury, they're raping their employees. This is what we've become:

So, apparently Halliburton isn't just pillaging the treasuries of Iraq and the US. Their mercenaries are allegedly raping their own female employees, with no repercussions ...

The closer I get to leaving, the more self-conscious I become about being an American and what that means to the rest of the world. I know I'm gonna get an earful when I get to Germany, deservedly so.

Romney and Huckabee's religious intolerance

Joe Conason

Distasteful as all the Bible thumping and ostentatious piety of the Republican presidential aspirants certainly are, the time may have come to address their religious pretensions directly, instead of turning away in mild disgust. For the truth is that no matter how often candidates like Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee promise to uphold the Constitution and protect religious freedom, they are clearly seeking to impose the restrictive tests of faith that the nation's founders abhorred.

So if these two worthy gentlemen seek to exploit or extol their own faith, why should we bar ourselves from exploring the subject more deeply? They have invited a discussion of the sublime and the absurd in their religious doctrines, and of how those doctrines would influence them in office. We have already seen the destruction inflicted on America and the world by a dogmatic chief executive who believes that God urged him to wage war. (And let's not forget that Rudolph Giuliani, among others, has echoed the notion that President Bush was divinely chosen and inspired.)

At this point Mr. Conason explores the subject more deeply. Go see.

Phonies like Huckabee and Romney (my em) complain constantly about the supposed religious intolerance of secular liberals. But the truth is that liberals -- including agnostics and atheists -- have long been far more tolerant of religious believers in office than the other way around. They helped elect a Southern Baptist named Jimmy Carter to the presidency in 1976, and today they support a Mormon named Harry Reid who is the Senate majority leader -- which makes him the highest-ranking Mormon officeholder in American history. Nobody in the Democratic Party has displayed the slightest prejudice about Reid's religion.

I'm not prejudiced against anybody's religion, but I am prejudiced against the way people speak and act. Out amongst us 'gentiles' they keep a lid on it pretty much, but on their home turf, AKA 'Utah', Mormons are arrogant insufferable pricks, at least the few I've come in contact with.

I will illustrate with a personal experience. Quite a few years ago, I went over to Delta UT to compete in the Cherry Creek Hare 'n Hound desert motorcycle race. It was held at the Little Sahara Recreation Area, and had the deepest sand I've ever seen. I got buried in it to the point I couldn't see my rear wheel, which actually came in handy as it put the carburetor at a more convenient height to strip it and clean the sand out of it which had stuck it at full throttle. Believe me, when you slam the throttle shut and the bike continues at full speed, that's pucker power! The sand got in my chain so bad that it effectively turned it into one piece and snapped one of the chain adjusters, cocking the rear wheel so it was pointed in a slightly different direction than the front one. At this point, my race was over and I limped back about twenty miles to the pit area.

I was whupped. I sat on the tailgate of my pickup and drank an ice cold beer which was really nice. At this point a person with a cowboy hat on, whom I can only assume was a Mormon, wandered by and commented disdainfully,

"Are ya drunk yet?"

I needed that like another itchy asshole and it has colored my view of Mormons ever since, for right or for wrong.

Liberals and progressives have no apologies to make, or at least no more than libertarians and conservatives do. Cherishing the freedoms protected by a secular society need not imply any disrespect for religion. But when candidates like Romney and Huckabee press the boundaries of the Constitution to promote themselves as candidates of faith, it is time to push back.

I don't care much about Romney. He's all flip-floppin' vinyl and hairspray. If it comes out that he made most of his money by asset-stripping and putting people out of work, it'll just be the frosting on the cake. He doesn't stand much of a chance of being nominated, let alone being president, and that's good.

Huckabee is a different story. His aw-shucks bullshit is appealing to fundies and a lot of gullible christians who aren't. I don't think he's got much of a chance of becoming president either, but I have to say that, with his Jesus-buried-the-dinosaurs-6000-years-ago beliefs, he's the most dangerous of all the Repug candidates. He's a true evangelical fundie. I was gonna ask for the Lord to call him home and save us all, but He doesn't need phonies like that either. Let's hope we don't get stuck with him, in the White House and up our butts both.

Oh, the irony...

NEW GOP POLL:
Which is Most Important to You In a Candidate?
Asked of registered Republicans who plan to vote in primaries.

"Thank you, Boosh!"

Click to emBooshen

War, Depression, and Turning-Point Elections

Excellent 'must read' Tomgram by Steve Fraser. Disquieting and heartening at the same time.

Will the presidential election of 2008 mark a turning point in American political history? Will it terminate with extreme prejudice the conservative ascendancy that has dominated the country for the last generation? No matter the haplessness of the Democratic opposition, the answer is yes.

Mr. Fraser describes a few teeny-tiny problems we are going to be living with for a while, thank you George and the Repugs. Iraq, the abtogation of the Constitution, the coming Depression, stuff like that.

All signs are ominous. The credibility and legitimacy of the old order operate now at a steep discount. Most telling and fatal perhaps is the paralysis spreading into the inner councils at the top. Faced with dire predicaments both at home and abroad, they essentially do nothing except rattle those sabers, captives of their own now-bankrupt ideology. Anything, many will decide, is better than this.

Or will they? What if the opposition is vacillating, incoherent, and weak-willed -- labels critics have reasonably pinned on the Democrats? Bad as that undoubtedly is, I don't think it will matter, not in the short run at least.

There's an old blues song about "been down so long, it looks like up to me". Up is the Dems. Scary, but anything is better than what's been going on under the Repugs. File that last sentence under "Famous Last Words" or "Watch This!".

Yet the New Deal followed. And not only the New Deal, but an era of social protest, including labor, racial, and farmer insurgencies, without which there would have been no New Deal or Great Society. May something analogous happen in the years ahead? No one can know. But a door is about to open.

If I could predict what is going to happen tomorrow I would be down at the Race & Sports book with my life savings. I can't, but I welcome whatever comes as long as the door slams shut on the criminal regime currently in power and its enablers.

Wasn't me ...

Although as soon as we saw this, my wife looked at me the way a mother would when she knows her little kid is up to something. My response: "You know I wasn't in Philly this weekend." My parents woulda killed me. Heh ...

...

Everything was relatively normal about the event until shortly before 11 a.m.. That's when authorities say an employee's child hit a button that said "don't hit button unless in an emergency". The button triggered the fire suppression system, filling the hanger [sic] with foam.

...

Video at the link. Heh ... I'm still laughing.

Forgiveness ...

Not from me and not from Athenae either:

...

You know, it's past time we stopped giving people a pass for not criticizing this stuff from day one. We are rapidly approaching the day when this all will be counted out, and we will have to rebuild the world after the Bush years, and in that accounting, I don't really want to start handing out cookies for people who spoke up once it became clear there would be no real repercussions.

Because the minute we say it's okay to refrain, in the immediate aftermath of some terrible event, from speaking up, that's the minute we make another Bush era possible. It can't be okay, not even temporarily, not even when there will be those who call it treasonous, it can't be okay to ever look the other way while America tortures people in secret prisons. I don't care how "politically painful" it is for them. I don't care, because it's not like it wasn't blindingly obvious to everybody by like week two that every asshole with an R after his name was gonna use this to brand all Democrats as spineless pussies, it's not like we didn't know about the supposed political pain, that it was gonna come no matter what. [my em]

...

Indeed. The deal with 'doing the right thing' is to do it from jump street, not just when it's politically 'safe' or expedient.

M-i-C*

Stolen from bluegal.

*Moron-in-Chief.

So tell me ...

Why we shouldn't march on the White House and the Capitol, drag 'em all out, string 'em up from the light poles, and start from scratch?

In September 2002, four members of Congress met in secret for a first look at a unique CIA program designed to wring vital information from reticent terrorism suspects in U.S. custody. For more than an hour, the bipartisan group, which included current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), was given a virtual tour of the CIA's overseas detention sites and the harsh techniques interrogators had devised to try to make their prisoners talk.

...

With one known exception, no formal objections were raised by the lawmakers briefed about the harsh methods during the two years in which waterboarding was employed, from 2002 to 2003, said Democrats and Republicans with direct knowledge of the matter. The lawmakers who held oversight roles during the period included Pelosi and Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) and Sens. Bob Graham (D-Fla.) and John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), as well as Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.) and Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan).

...

Avedon, from whom I stole the link, quotes our pal Lambert:

Lambert says: Well, I guess now I know why impeachment was "off the table."

They're all in it together. I've had it with the lot of 'em. Seriously.

I Hear Them All

We've been havin' fun with music videos today, but music serves a higher purpose sometimes. Old Crow Medicine Show.