Thursday, May 1, 2008
Joke of the Day
Got this one today out of a magazine in the waiting room at the offthal awfulmolly eye doctor's office. The magazine will remain nameless, but let's just say it's the rag Americans read to stay misinformed. Funny jokes, though, and Big Print too!
An 11 year-old girl is telling her dad that she wants to join the Army. The dad says there are better opportunities and suggests she consider the Air Force.
"But I don't wanta be a pilot", she says.
Dad replies, "There are lots of other jobs in the Air Force, Honey."
"I don't wanta be a flight attendant either."
(rimshot)
An 11 year-old girl is telling her dad that she wants to join the Army. The dad says there are better opportunities and suggests she consider the Air Force.
"But I don't wanta be a pilot", she says.
Dad replies, "There are lots of other jobs in the Air Force, Honey."
"I don't wanta be a flight attendant either."
(rimshot)
About the Masthead ...
I've received some questions lately from folks who are bored with the masthead art here. I'm gonna reprint Gord's thoughts on it:
Every morning, even before the caffeine has kicked my awakeness anywhere close to following my half-open eyelids, I see that lovely Toktong Pass exhibit from the Marine Corps Museum.
It just dawned on me, in true "lights on in yer head, dipshit" fashion: That's US here at the Brain!
Sittin' all alone out in the cold, thanklessly freezin' our beboops off, lookin' for a chance to lob a few at the enemy and praying for a secondary explosion, wonderin' if it's all worth it or if it will make any difference in the scheme of things.
A wonderful and maybe subtle metaphor.
Fixer's a lot smarter than he looks.
And I'll add that it was sent to me by Lurch.
Don't hold your collective breath waiting for it to change.
Every morning, even before the caffeine has kicked my awakeness anywhere close to following my half-open eyelids, I see that lovely Toktong Pass exhibit from the Marine Corps Museum.
It just dawned on me, in true "lights on in yer head, dipshit" fashion: That's US here at the Brain!
Sittin' all alone out in the cold, thanklessly freezin' our beboops off, lookin' for a chance to lob a few at the enemy and praying for a secondary explosion, wonderin' if it's all worth it or if it will make any difference in the scheme of things.
A wonderful and maybe subtle metaphor.
Fixer's a lot smarter than he looks.
And I'll add that it was sent to me by Lurch.
Don't hold your collective breath waiting for it to change.
The stupid continues ...
SilentPatriot:
Pardon me while I smash my forehead into my desk repeatedly.
Turns out the Rhodes Scholars over at “Fox and Friends” think Abraham Lincoln debated Frederick Douglass in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858. Of course it was Stephen Douglas. Something tells me Frederick would have had a tough time winning a Senate seat back then. Just a thought.
...
Pardon me while I smash my forehead into my desk repeatedly.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Dumb as We Wanna Be
Believe it or not, Thomas Friedman:
It amounts to about half a tank each. Big whoop.
Go read the rest of this one. Two out of the three candidates must think the people they are pandering to are morons.
It is great to see that we finally have some national unity on energy policy. Unfortunately, the unifying idea is so ridiculous, so unworthy of the people aspiring to lead our nation, it takes your breath away. Hillary Clinton has decided to line up with John McCain in pushing to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for this summer’s travel season. This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.
It amounts to about half a tank each. Big whoop.
The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: “Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most.”
The McCain-Clinton proposal is a reminder to me that the biggest energy crisis we have in our country today is the energy to be serious — the energy to do big things in a sustained, focused and intelligent way. We are in the midst of a national political brownout.
Go read the rest of this one. Two out of the three candidates must think the people they are pandering to are morons.
Get the steel cage ready
Politico
Lady and Gent, don yer speedos...
Capitol Hill insiders say the battle for congressional superdelegates is over, and one Senate supporter of Barack Obama is hinting strongly that he has prevailed over Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Not so fast, said Clinton spokesman Phil Singer.
Lady and Gent, don yer speedos...
Bush/McCain: The Arlington Plan
Politics Plus
Live Veterans cost money that might better go to the war profiteers. Dead ones cost nothing. Nor do any the government can screw out of their benefits. See Chief's post just below this one at API.
Crossposted at The American Patriot Institute.
All of the soldiers interviewed passed the rigorous health screening given recruits before being accepted into the Army. All were deemed physically and psychologically fit in a second screening as well, before being deployed to Iraq, and served honorably there in combat. None of the soldiers interviewed during this eleven-month investigation had a documented history of psychological problems.
Yet after they returned from Iraq wounded and sought treatment, each was diagnosed with a pre-existing personality disorder, then denied benefits. As in Town's case, Army doctors determined that the soldiers' ailments were pre-existing without interviewing friends, family or fellow soldiers who knew them before they were wounded in combat.
In this article you will hear from Army doctors who say wounded soldiers are routinely misdiagnosed. One says he was pressured by superiors to diagnose personality disorder in cases where soldiers were physically wounded or suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Inserted from The Nation
This is just the introduction to a major five page article, and I urge you strongly to click through and read the rest. I have watched with growing frustration as Democrats in Congress have put forward measure after measure to improve the lot of our troops and veterans only to see them either vetoed by the ChickenHawk-in-Chief or fall to GOP filibusters, in which the GOP could always count on John McHypocrite to vote against our nation's troops and vets.
GW Bush, McConJob, and the GOP have a formula for supporting our troops and vets. I call it The Arlington Plan. If that isn't clear, see the graphic.
Live Veterans cost money that might better go to the war profiteers. Dead ones cost nothing. Nor do any the government can screw out of their benefits. See Chief's post just below this one at API.
Crossposted at The American Patriot Institute.
When caught, Army acts
Following up on last week's post about the awful living conditions for Iraq returnees at Fort Bragg, from Yahoo!News:
Yeah, like the soldiers didn't tell the Corporals who didn't tell the Sergeants who didn't tell the First Shirt and so on and so on that shit was backing up into the barracks. Gimme a break.
I wonder how many of those GIs wrote to their Congressmen about the conditions? In my day, that was the way to get things done. When the Congresscritter inquired of the Commanding General just WTF was going on, things happened. It may have been out of trying to avoid an investigation and resultant damage to their careers rather than a sense of duty to the enlisted swine, but things got done.
Oh, silly me, I forgot - the military works for Bush now, not us. Congress doesn't count any more.
I got a sneakin' hunch that these kinds of things are known by the local brass, but get put on a to-do list because the Bush administration would rather borrow trillions to profit their cronies than expend thousands on the welfare of the troops. I've heard that some bases have even had trouble paying their electric bills.
The operative word here is 'revealed'. One rightly pissed-off dad with a video camera and YouTube made more difference than a barracksful of soldiers in knee boots. That got this deal moved to the top of the list. The Army'll put a little PR lipstick on the pig and hope it goes away.
Support the troops. Yeah, right, until they gotta do something expensive like hire a plumber.
Crossposted at The American Patriot Institute.
Army officials said Tuesday they are inspecting every barracks building worldwide to see whether plumbing and other problems revealed at Fort Bragg, N.C., last week are widespread.
Yeah, like the soldiers didn't tell the Corporals who didn't tell the Sergeants who didn't tell the First Shirt and so on and so on that shit was backing up into the barracks. Gimme a break.
I wonder how many of those GIs wrote to their Congressmen about the conditions? In my day, that was the way to get things done. When the Congresscritter inquired of the Commanding General just WTF was going on, things happened. It may have been out of trying to avoid an investigation and resultant damage to their careers rather than a sense of duty to the enlisted swine, but things got done.
Oh, silly me, I forgot - the military works for Bush now, not us. Congress doesn't count any more.
I got a sneakin' hunch that these kinds of things are known by the local brass, but get put on a to-do list because the Bush administration would rather borrow trillions to profit their cronies than expend thousands on the welfare of the troops. I've heard that some bases have even had trouble paying their electric bills.
The operative word here is 'revealed'. One rightly pissed-off dad with a video camera and YouTube made more difference than a barracksful of soldiers in knee boots. That got this deal moved to the top of the list. The Army'll put a little PR lipstick on the pig and hope it goes away.
Support the troops. Yeah, right, until they gotta do something expensive like hire a plumber.
Crossposted at The American Patriot Institute.
Dear Wolfgang and Jacqueline
"What's With Your 'Crazy' U.S Politics?" -- A Letter to European Friends
In short, the McCain that Stewart and many others admired for his "maverick" willingness to confront the Bush Administration on campaign-finance reform, torture as state policy, racial intolerance inside the GOP, etc., is no more. Now it's the old guy who knows he has one arrow left in his quiver and is going to stand with the fundies and extreme conservatives on all the major issues because he believes that's his only chance to wind up in the White House. To quote Stewart again: "Has John McCain's Straight Talk Express been re-routed through Bullshittown?" The answer is, sad to say, yes.
A key House Democratic committee chairman the other day wondered aloud what I've heard voiced quietly elsewhere: If Hillary can't get the nomination in 2008, she'll so wound Obama that McCain might slip in. Or, even if Obama were to win the election, he'd be so damaged as to be unable to govern easily. In either case in 2012, Clinton, the only one left standing, figures she would be perfectly positioned to take the nomination.
Talk about "crazy"! Those reasons seems much too convoluted to be taken seriously, not the least because Clinton, in this scenario, would be universally recognized as the Dem spoiler who ruined the party's best shot for taking back the White House. She would be the Ralph Nader of 2008 who would never be forgiven by the very activist Democratic base she would need in a future run for the presidency.
Please read the rest.
Good. God.
I've written many times before that the neocons who've run this show into the ground for the past 8 years, longer if you count from Newt's 'Contract with America' days, think they're qualified to run a country after watching Star Trek and 24 reruns incessantly. Sadly, no:
Please, please let me wake up one morning to realize that this has been one long bizarre dream induced by my use of LSD in the late '70s. In the past 15 years we have drifted so far from reality that somebody has to be under the influence of hallucinogens, be it I or the people in charge.
I'm going to work now. Tomorrow, I get to see if I have to pay more than $4 for a gallon of regular gas. Now that's reality.
...Now a fixture at Department of Homeland Security science and technology conferences, SIGMA is a loosely affiliated group of science fiction writers who are offering pro bono advice to anyone in government who want their thoughts on how to protect the nation.
The fact that my tax dollars are going to buy juice and cookies for these schmendricks makes me feel all warm inside.
...
Please, please let me wake up one morning to realize that this has been one long bizarre dream induced by my use of LSD in the late '70s. In the past 15 years we have drifted so far from reality that somebody has to be under the influence of hallucinogens, be it I or the people in charge.
I'm going to work now. Tomorrow, I get to see if I have to pay more than $4 for a gallon of regular gas. Now that's reality.
Conscience ...
There are some for whom sleep, after seeing the America they took an oath to defend go down the tubes since September 11, has become a very tenuous thing. To wit:
The Bush administration wasn't looking for convictions, much as the prosecution was trying to avoid acquittals. They wanted propaganda fodder, to Hell with the outcome of the trial. They don't care about "keepin' us safer", never did, they just care about how it all would play during election season.
GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, April 28 -- The Defense Department's former chief prosecutor for terrorism cases appeared Monday at the controversial U.S. detention facility here to argue on behalf of a terrorism suspect that the military justice system has been corrupted by politics and inappropriate influence from senior Pentagon officials.
...
[USAF Col. Morris] Davis also decried as unethical a decision by top military officials to allow the use of evidence obtained by coercive interrogation techniques. He said Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, the legal adviser to the top military official overseeing the commissions process, was improperly willing to use evidence derived from waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning. "To allow or direct a prosecutor to come into the courtroom and offer evidence they felt was torture, it puts a prosecutor in an ethical bind," Davis testified. But he said Hartmann replied that "everything was fair game -- let the judge sort it out." [my em]
...
The Bush administration wasn't looking for convictions, much as the prosecution was trying to avoid acquittals. They wanted propaganda fodder, to Hell with the outcome of the trial. They don't care about "keepin' us safer", never did, they just care about how it all would play during election season.
Great thanks to our pal Montag for the link.
Double standards
Obama/Wright = Oh, the outrage! What do we tell the children??!!! Do we want a President who hates America??!!!!
McCain/Hagee/Parsley = [crickets]
Let someone tell me the press is not in the tank for McCain.
McCain/Hagee/Parsley = [crickets]
Let someone tell me the press is not in the tank for McCain.
Man-child ...
I know pre-teens who take more responsibility for their actions than our President:
When I was little (5 or 6), being an only child, I used to blame the cat or the dog when I got into trouble. That didn't work either.
...
Even I'm embarrassed for Bush trying to pull this switcheroo. But he didn't stop with gas prices, he blamed Congress for the farm bill, stopping nuclear power plants, foreclosures, the economy, and I think Miley Cyrus' photo spread. If Truman said "The buck stops here," then Bush's mantra must be "Who wants this buck?"
...
When I was little (5 or 6), being an only child, I used to blame the cat or the dog when I got into trouble. That didn't work either.
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
100 Years ...
In 2003, allegedly to disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, the US and Coalition forces launched a war to bomb Saddam Hussein into oblivion, topple the Ba’athist regime and instate a new era of “liberty and peace.” By late April, down plonked Saddam’s statues (the man himself remained underground) and tanks rolled into Baghdad flying the US victory flag. Five years, 3 980 US military deaths and in the calculation of Nobel laureate and former World Bank economist, Joseph Stilgitz, $3 trillion later, no WMD have been found, while Iraq overflows with blood and despair.
Even by Iraq Body Count’s conservative estimate, between 81,000 and 89,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed since the 2003 invasion. The World Health Organisation estimates that from 2003-2006, the US-led Multi-National Forces (MNF) and sectarian fighters have been responsible for the deaths of 151,000 Iraqi civilians. According to the UN Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI), approximately 34,452 people were killed in 2006 alone, while the group Just Foreign Policy places the figure of civilian casualties in the last 5 years at a colossal 1 million.
The massive post-invasion death toll in Iraq has left tens of thousands of children orphaned and women widowed. In 2006, studies by the Ministry of Women’s Affairs concluded there were approximately 300,000 widows in Iraq’s capital city alone. In 2007, Iraq’s anti-corruption board estimated there were 5 million orphans in Iraq.
...
John McCain will continue this in our name. I can't abide that.
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