A French Revelation, or The Burning Bush

This isn't backed up by anything else I've seen, but I have absolutely no problem believing it. I'm callin' this one a 'must read'.

Secular Humanism.org

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible’s satanic agents of the Apocalypse.

Honest. This isn’t a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God.

It’s awkward to say openly, but now-departed President Bush is a religious crackpot, an ex-drunk of small intellect who “got saved.” He never should have been entrusted with the power to start wars.

Gee, ya think?

For six years, Americans really haven’t known why he launched the unnecessary Iraq attack. Official pretexts turned out to be baseless. Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction after all, and wasn’t in league with terrorists, as the White House alleged. Collapse of his asserted reasons led to speculation about hidden motives: Was the invasion loosed to gain control of Iraq’s oil—or to protect Israel—or to complete Bush’s father’s vendetta against the late dictator Saddam Hussein? Nobody ever found an answer.

The answer is: All of the above plus.

Now, added to the other suspicions, comes the goofy possibility that abstruse, supernatural, idiotic, laughable Bible prophecies were a factor. This casts an ominous pall over the needless war that has killed more than four thousand young Americans and cost U.S. taxpayers perhaps $1 trillion.

I think the 'ominous pall' was cast a long time ago. This just adds religious insanity to it.

As more and more comes out against the fundie corporate nutjob criminal Bush maladministration, it becomes ever clearer that we are lucky as a nation to have survived it, if just barely.

Note to God: Everybody who says "God don't make no junk" is deluded. You made plenty of it and it fucked the joint right up for eight awful years and counting. Knock off the cheap shit, Asshole.

Almost

Boston Globe

Governor Deval Patrick, even as he decried partisanship in Washington, said today that Republican opposition to President Obama’s agenda has become so obstinate that it “is almost at the level of sedition.”

For a politician to say something is 'almost' traitorous, even as a 'rhetorical flourish', means it's way, waaaay past 'almost'.

Headline of the Day

White Supremacist Watch: Stormfront funding Rand Paul

Paul's base. Teabaggers and Paleolibertarians are bad enough, but this is sickening.

"Civil discourse" ...

Wasn't that the term the conservatives used when we'd become so outraged over the myriad of things Bush did to bring the country to the point it is now?

Well, it seems "civil discourse" has devolved into death threats and violence now that they're out of power.

...

FBI agents tracked the calls to a 54-year-old Texas man who lived alone — and who at one time had owned a 20-gun arsenal of handguns, shotguns and rifles. According to the documents, he told officers that he was “really, really drunk” when he made the calls. He said he was just “venting” — taking out his frustrations after hearing a discussion of the Fairness Doctrine and becoming concerned that the government would attempt to abolish the radio shows of Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh.

In testimony submitted to Congress, Capitol Police officials have said that the threats against lawmakers have caused them to dramatically increase their security efforts. Police who work on protective details say demands on their time have skyrocketed, and the department has requested a 54 percent increase — of $2.7 million — to fund travel for its dignitary protection officers in fiscal year 2011.

In fiscal year 2009, dignitary protection was provided at 139 congressional events, a nearly 100 percent increase over 2008. Capitol Police also moved to provide “a more robust role” to town hall meetings, including working with hundreds of law enforcement agencies.

...

Had we made threatening calls to elected officials during the Bush administration (much as many of us would have liked to see the lot of 'em up against a wall), the Secret Service would have carted us all off to Gitmo.

As Mr. Aravosis says:

...

The Republicans have bet the bank on turning the country against government, in the hopes that it will get the Democrats unelected. Except that the kooks are hearing the GOP's message, about Obama being a socialist, about there being Maoists in the Cabinet, about Obama wanting to kill your grandma, and they're responding accordingly

As long as you have the conservative leadership (Rush, Hannity, and Beck) calling for Jihad, more and more of these assholes are gonna come out of the woodwork. Maybe Obama can declare them terrorists and have the CIA arrange a few 'accidents'? Hey, they say it's legal now ...

My hero!

Now get out.

Montag chronicles the latest case of WalMart screwing over an employee:

...

Wal-Mart, where they rollback everything decent and admirable in life just to make a little more profit.

Nobody Puts BP in the Corner

The Rude One

BP is BP, motherfuckers, and who the fuck are you? Some puny government? Man, BP has fucked up entire nations so it could drink their fucking milkshakes. British Motherfucking Petroleum. C'mon, who the fuck do you think you are? BP eats Amocos and Arcos, and it'll lay pipeline wherever the fuck it wants and make governments work for the privilege. BP says jump and the fuckin' earth will shake from all the people hopping in unison.

So, really, when BP CEO Tony Heyward says, as he did yesterday, that he was "devastated" by walking amidst the environmental wreckage caused by his company, or when managing director Robert Dudley says that "there's nobody -- nobody -- who is more devastated by what has happened" than BP, well, what can one say to such touching human emotion other than, "We hope you get raped by alligators while the pelicans cheer."

Wouldn't hurt if the 'gators ate their fuckin' neither. Save some for the pelicans.

How do you think this plays out? That some fucking miracle happens? That BP pays every dollar to every fisherman, every shrimper, every marsh tour boat operator, every business that has to cut back or shutter because of lost tourist dollars? That Congress will pass any regulations that have gums, let alone teeth? That President Obama will put on his Aquaman Underoos and dive down a mile to personally shove a cork into it? Hey, if we're gonna fantasize, we may as well have fun with it.

Look, we know what happens: For BP, it's a holding pattern until the goddamn thing is plugged and a relief well is drilled a couple of months from now. BP's gonna stand there and take everything that everyone is gonna throw at it. It'll go to the meetings and listen to the fishermen talk about the destruction of their heritage. Its executives will sit at congressional hearings and soberly answer questions. Heyward will scrub a seagull. Then, once the oil stops, BP will unleash the lawyers to scorch the earth it hasn't befouled. It will seek to pay as absolutely little as possible. It will make settlement offers that are a fraction of the real damage and people will take that because time is passing and everyone needs to move on. It'll contribute thousands of dollars to members of Congress. Hell, now it can just run campaign ads itself: Lisa Murkowski, brought to you by BP. Environmentalists will attempt to continue to call attention to the unending effects of the damage, but no one will pay attention once the greasy birds die off. And Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal will sit back down and demand nothing more. He will, in fact, talk about the future and making sure that offshore drilling continues for the good of the state's recovery.

Because they are fucking BP. And who the fuck are you?

Just someone who at times has entertained thoughts that offshore drilling is almost a necessary evil who now thinks it's just plain evil.

How Facebook Is Redefining Privacy

Time magazine's cover article this week is about Facebook. It's an eye-opener. Many links to related articles.

Shorter: You're more likely to buy something if your friend buys one. Oh, and Facebook's money comes from ad sales.

The willingness of Facebook's users to share and overshare — from descriptions of our bouts of food poisoning (gross) to our uncensored feelings about our bosses (not advisable) — is critical to its success. Thus far, the company's m.o. has been to press users to share more, then let up if too many of them complain. Because of this, Facebook keeps finding itself in the crosshairs of intense debates about privacy. It happened in 2007, when the default settings in an initiative called Facebook Beacon sent all your Facebook friends updates about purchases you made on certain third-party sites. Beacon caused an uproar among users — who were automatically enrolled — and occasioned a public apology from Zuckerberg.

And it is happening again. [...]
...

Facebook is readjusting its privacy policy at a time when its stake in mining our personal preferences has never been greater. [...]

"I'm CEO ... Bitch"

Oh yeah? Find somebody else to work for you ... Bitch.

Facebook has developed a formula for the precise number of aha! moments a user must have before he or she is hooked. Company officials won't say exactly what that magic number is, but everything about the site is geared to reach it as quickly as possible. And if you ever try to leave Facebook, you get what I like to call the aha! moment's nasty sibling, the oh-no! moment, when Facebook tries to guilt-trip you with pictures of your friends who, the site warns, will "miss you" if you deactivate your account.

Facebook wants you to get into the habit of clicking the Like button anytime you see it next to a piece of content you enjoy. Less than a month after launching Open Graph — which made its debut with some 30 content partners, including TIME.com — Facebook is quickly approaching the point where it will process 100 million unique clicks of a Like button each day.

The more updates Facebook gets you to share and the more preferences it entreats you to make public, the more data it's able to pool for advertisers. Google spearheaded targeted advertisements, but it knows what you're interested in only on the basis of what you query in its search engine and, if you have a Gmail account, what topics you're e-mailing about. Facebook is amassing a much more well-rounded picture. And having those Like buttons clicked 100 million times a day gives the company 100 million more data points to package and sell.

The result is that advertisers are able to target you on an even more granular level. For example, right now the ads popping up on my Facebook page are for Iron Man 2 games and no-fee apartments in New York City (I'm in a demographic that moves frequently); my mom is getting ads for in-store furniture sales (she's in a demographic that buys sofas).

This advertising platform is even more powerful now that the site can factor in your friends' preferences. If three of your friends click a Like button for, say, Domino's Pizza, you might soon find an ad on your Facebook page that has their names and a suggestion that maybe you should try Domino's too. Peer-pressure advertising! Sandberg and other Facebook execs understand the value of context in selling a product, and few contexts are more powerful than friendship. "Marketers have known this for a really long time. I'm much more likely to do something that's recommended by a friend," Sandberg says.

As powerful as each piece of Facebook's strategy is, the company isn't forcing its users to drink the Kool-Aid. It's just serving up nice cold glasses, and we're gulping it down. [...]

But corralling 500 million people is a lot harder than corralling 10 million. And some users are ready to pull the plug entirely. Searches for "how to delete Facebook" on Google have nearly doubled in volume since the start of this year.

I came very close to 'pulling the plug' on Facebook. I'm bored to tears with it. I couldn't care less about how many goats you fucked in FarmVille, or how badly you burnt dinner in some imaginary kitchen, and on and on. I'm tired of being asked to join things I couldn't care less about and wondering if I'm going to hurt somebody's feelings if I don't.

I'm leaving my Facebook account alone because there are things on there that I like. It's nice to be able to see how your friends are doing, even if what they're doing isn't much. I leave the game progress reports in because that's the only thing some of my friends and relatives are up to. Sad. There are occasionally updates and articles on things I'm interested in.

That said, I don't like Facebook. I put up a mildly off-color joke on my page and Facebook took it down. Hey, all my Facebook friends are adults and if they're censoring me because they're letting just anybody see my page, or if it offends their dainty sensibilities, well fuck 'em.

I used to go there several times a day so I wouldn't miss anything but I haven't visited the site in days, with the exception of yesterday when I got an email saying a friend had written on my wall. Some of the stuff people share is interesting and fun but too much of the content is drivel and mental diarrhea. Worse than here, even!

If you don't go every day, whatever's there is pretty much gone forever as far as accessing it unless you go to each individual friend page. I could do it, I suppose, I don't have that many friends, but I've got better things to do. I'm doing one of them now.

I guess I'm not properly 'hooked'. I've been hooked on shit before and it's no goddam good. Perhaps that's why I'm a little bit more resistant to it.

After reading the Time article, I did go in and change my privacy settings to 'friends only'. I'm not trying to meet people, I've gotten friend requests from total strangers, which is creepy, and there's plenty of other places that sell my info that I get enough solicitations and advertising via email, snail mail, TV, billboards, etc. etc. already.

Note to Facebook: Get your shovel outta my ass and go mine somewhere else ... Bitch.

No great loss ...

GM built the last Hummer and now the brand is no more. Maybe the price of gas might drop a penny or two:

SHREVEPORT, LA (WKOW)--The last Hummer rolled off the assembly line Monday at Shreveport's General Motors assembly plant.

...

They were junk to begin with and a bitch to drive on crowded streets (since, it seems, none of my customers who have them ever took them in the dirt). It is not a sad day in the car world.

A potential bailout ...

Waiting to happen.

Seems Michael "Livin' Large On Master Charge" Steele has put the GOP in a bad way financially:

Washington (CNN) - An internal Republican National Committee document obtained by CNN paints a damning picture of the committee's financial standing compared to the past five election cycles.

The document, pulled together during a recent review sparked by concerns over RNC spending practices, said the committee had $12.5 million in cash on hand at the end of April.

...

Now, to you and me, $12mln is a big deal. Not so, it seems, to a political party.

...

Looking only at even-numbered years, this year's $12.5 million end of April COH is less than one-third the amount the RNC had on hand on April 30 for the 2002 ($47 million) and the 2006 ($44.6 million) midterms.

...

Yes, Republicans, keep doing what you're doing and the Dems won't have to worry about winning the midterms. You'll be bankrupt by then.

Thanks to Oliver Willis for the link.

Question of the Day

Karoli:

...

It begs the question: Did they let people in chicken suits vote in Nevada BEFORE that?

Seward's Icebox Fulla Legal Dope

EssEffChron

If Californians want a glimpse of how the landscape might look should a November ballot initiative to legalize marijuana pass, they could turn north.

They would see complication. And a cautionary lesson. And maybe hope for those who want pot smoking legitimized.

It's the most liberal pot policy in the nation, made that way under a 1975 Alaska Supreme Court ruling that said that what a person does in his home is protected under an unusually strong privacy provision in the state's Constitution.

There ya go! Such enlightenment got conned into electing Moosebreath governor? Go figure.

There are ambiguities and pitfalls, however, but hope floats. Go read.

Taco Deco

[A big welcome to Crooks and Liars readers! - F]

Excellent piece on Arizona Anglos' cultural insecurity by Gregory Rodriguez in the LATimes.

It's easy to assume that Arizona has become the epicenter in the battle against illegal immigration primarily because it has one of the highest percentages of undocumented migrants of any state in the union. But that's just half the story behind the fear many white Arizonans evidently feel.

By the late 20th century, white Arizonans had perfected a style critics dubbed "Taco Deco," "Mariachi Moderne" or simply "Refried Architecture" — that faux Spanish colonial architecture with arches, tiles and the bougainvillea climbing everywhere (Southern California has its share too*). According to Phoenix architecture critic Lawrence Cheek, in the Valley of the Sun, "The farther you move away from the Hispanic neighborhoods of central and south Phoenix, the more refried architecture you see. The style has been coopted not by the people who could legitimately claim it as their heritage — they tend toward Middle American tract homes — but by itinerant gringos in search of a heritage…."

*Nothing new. Me 'n Mrs. G both grew up in Spanish-style houses hundreds of miles apart. We didn't move there from anywhere.

Faux Native American culture is another part of the Arizona aesthetic. I know a fancy spa in Scottsdale that has a tepee in the back where a shaman leads meditation sessions. (Never mind that tepees were used by Plains Indians far from the Southwest.) In some parts of town, you can't shake a stick without hitting mass-produced Kachina dolls, wrought-iron Kokopellis welded by hippie sculptors, and Indian jewelry that isn't made by Indians.

Boy, that's no shit! It gets to hilarious extremes up around Sedona, and other places I am sure. The roadsides all over the state have jewelry stands run by Indians. Unless you see them make the stuff, you don't know where it's from, and them blanketasses are the silent type. They ain't tellin'.

That said, the jewelry business in all of Arizona ain't a pimple on the ass of the jewelry business in downtown Santa Fe NM. I wore out a pair of shoes following Mrs. G around there one morning. Heh.

And you flip one particular light switch in my house by makin' Kokopelli smile...

None of this should be mistaken for genuine cross-pollination or healthy race relations. On the one hand, it demonstrates the Anglo newcomers' desire to acquire the trappings of ethnicity. On the other, it suggests how comfortable they are commodifying and consuming less influential cultures.

And make no mistake, the coming of Anglos meant the delegitimizing of other cultures in the Arizona Territory. In the early 1900s, during Arizona's struggle for statehood, its representatives had to prove to Washington that it was, in essence, white enough to enter the union.

Because of the large presence of non-Anglos, Indiana Sen. Albert Beveridge, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, argued that the federal government should view Arizona as it would an overseas possession. To avoid its becoming like "the Negro section of the South," he wanted Arizona to be managed the same way as the Philippines.

When it was time to write a constitution, this logic was made explicit, and non-Anglos were relegated to second-class status. The struggle for statehood had honed a clear notion of what constituted the preferred Arizonan. As historian Eric V. Meeks has written, "Racial inequality was not simply an unfortunate corollary to full statehood; it was built into the very identity of Arizona from its inception."

I thought for a while that I could retire in Northern Arizona (that's anyplace north of the Phoenix city limits or the Maricopa County line). Wide open spaces, wonderful scenery, lots of things to see and do, peace and quiet, a great VA system.

Not any more.

Headline of the Day

Texas cops mistake actual weed for marijuana, spend hours doing yard work

Cool way to avoid the high cost of hiring Meskins!

My sides, they hurt...

Sorry, Guys, But We Won't Do Right-wing Crazy Forever

P.M. Carpenter

I know exactly how Frank Rich feels.

"Yes, the Tea Party is radical, its membership is not enormous, and its race problem is real and troubling," concluded the Times columnist yesterday, but "if the Democrats can’t muster their own compelling response to the populist rage out there," then this tiny, radical, troubling bunch of crackpots could win it all in November.

Does that make sense? Of course it doesn't. Yet it reflects the left's enduring sense of pessimism as well as self-knowledge of its historically disadvantaged status against the loud, activist right. No matter the growing Mt. Everests of evidence that the opposition is imploding, we should be very, very afraid. Because afraid is what we do, because the right is so damned wily and the left is so incredibly inept.

Still, the right can go too far in its conceit and self-assurance. And that would seem to be precisely what it's doing now, to the enormous benefit of the left, even if the latter trusts the trend not.

Our center-rightness is indisputably dominated by the center. That's what allows the left its occasional triumphs and dooms the right's outright lunacy, which is swiftly becoming personified not only by Mr. Paul, but the unfailingly reliable Newt Gingrich.

Go read what he says about Neutie and his "secular-socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did" meme. Heh. The nearly sane amongst the Repugs are backpedalling so fast from that one that they're wearing out their chains and sprockets in the other direction.

Yes, it's good that the Dems aren't goose-stepping-toward-1954 ideologues like the Repugs. Yes, it's bad that they're disorganized and light on ballsack. Our best chance is for the Repugs to tear themselves to shreds, and to them I say "continue the march" with my blessing.

The Gift That Keeps On Giving

Good quick read by Will Durst:

[...] Democrats have a secret weapon this November and his name is Michael Steele.

Steele is not just the center post in the GOP big tent movement, he’s the post, the flaps, the stakes, the ties and the canvas; and party leaders would rather stick a fist full of paper cuts in a vat of Tabasco Sauce than write off their first African- American chairman during an election year. These days, the GOP Black Caucus could hold its convention in a phone booth, and they don’t make phone booths anymore, and the analogy still holds.

Most of the places he visits, he’s not simply the only black guy in the room, he’s the only black guy admitted to the grounds without a police escort. [...]

[...] On CNN last February, he dismissed Rush Limbaugh as “an entertainer" and "incendiary." The outrage from Rush’s fans, the vocal, visible, thick and dense end of the Republican base, forced Steele to backtrack faster than freshly waxed skis on newly fallen powder.

First he was directed to beg the poster boy for OxyContin Today’s forgiveness. To say Rush was less than gracious is like implying frozen goose fat makes for substandard bicycle spokes. Steele genuflected on Rush’s show and kissed his ring while Rush didn’t bother taking it out of his back pocket.

Between Steele and his "Just Say No To Obama" Repug establishment faction and the batcrap crazy racist and hater "Just Say No To Establishment Repugs" and "Turn Back The Clock To When The Colored Knew Their Place" factions, they're splitting things up 'til they're putting themselves right where we want 'em. Loud and out of power beats the shit outta robbing us blind like they've done for thirty years. Not that it's stopped, but under Dems at least we can hope it will slow down a little. There's NO hope with Repugs.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Texas School Board Adopts New Curriculum
Students can finally learn about our Founding Fathers, Newt Gingrich and Phil Gramm.

6 Men in 520-Day Simulated Mission to Mars
Results will be compared with six women spending 520 days in simulated mission to Venus.

Study: Those Over Fifty Happier, Less Stressed
Knowing those under fifty will have to work until they're ninety.

Pelosi: Congress Members, Staff Will Have to Fly Coach
More Legroom for Americans Act suddenly has 535 co-sponsors.

Vatican Warns Cell Scientists Not to Play God
Says only the Church decides who should play God.

Irony huh?

As long as it's still America ...

They can build wherever they want:

The Imam planning an Islamic community center and mosque near Ground Zero says his critics are bigots and the project will stamp out terrorism - not fan the flames.

...

The meeting came one day after Tea Party Express chairman Mark Williams called the project a monument to 9/11 attackers "for the worship of the terrorists' monkey-god."

...

Until they ban Islam in the United States (won't surprise me to see that coming down the pike someday), people have the freedom to worship whatever god they want and they're allowed to worship on their own property. Ain't nobody gonna bitch if they build a church or a synagogue there, are they? Most of the people who will worship there are American citizens (though that might be a tentative status in the future as well) and good, decent people. It's time to STFU and stop treating Muslims like second-class citizens at best, enemies of the state at worst.

Quote of the Day

Mr. Philadelphia:

...

More than that, someone needs to get on the teevee and point out that no, it is not ok for any actor - state, big corporation, or terrorist - to destroy the coastlines and economies of several states. You don't just get to say 'woopsy' and move on. Gigantic fuckups need to have consequences for the perpetrators, even though these days that seems like an amusing notion.

But like the Wall St. types who destroyed our economy, these assholes will walk away with a slap-on-the-wrist fine at most. As long as big business of any stripe has most of one political party and a part of another in their pockets, nothing meaningful will ever be done.

Light Blogging Today

I'm in the middle of Mrs. G's annual marathon birthday celebration which started Friday at the Full Belly Deli, continues today at the Sunday Celtic Jam (which I will attempt to film, if 'film' is still the word to use) at the The Auld Dubliner at Squaw Valley, and which hopefully will culminate in a Grand Finale on Tuesday at Village Pizzeria which is a much better restaurant than the name implies.

At our age, birthdays are one less rather than one more so ya gotta cram as much into 'em as ya can. That's Mrs. G's philosophy. I just let mine slide by as best as I can.

This b'day is a huge one for her - the Medicare Birthday. I'm just along for the wild ride, kinda like Slim Pickens in Dr. Strangelove. I drive and open my wallet and nod my head a lot. What makes mama happy makes me happy and anything else would be like shovellin' shit against the tide anyway so why bother?

To illustrate how fluid this whole deal is, yesterday we were at the supermarket. The announcement came over the civilian equivalent of the 1MC that anybody who showed up at the end of aisle 2 in the next two minutes would get a free paring knife. We burned the wheels off our shopping cart gettin' there 'cuz If It's For Free, It's For ME. We weren't alone. Well, Mrs. G listened to a knife salesman's spiel and got her paring knife and a little gadget ya put in an orange like a really brutal enema hose and squeeze out orange juice. I'm too much of a smartass to stay quiet during a sales pitch and didn't wanta mess the guy up so I walked a few feet away and just watched. Pretty good knives. The guy carved up a steel hammer with one of 'em.

Not my line of country. If I can't cut something up with my Buck Bantam ($16) or my Ka-bar (3 years of my life), it don't need cuttin'.

Mrs. G wanted the knife set the guy was selling. We have lotsa knives and I tried to talk her out of it. After a coupla minutes I realized she really wanted 'em, so rather than be a total jerk (which I'm good at) I asked her if she'd like to have them for a birthday present.

Her reply: "Instead of jewelry? You bet!"

That's my girl! Forty bucks later (low end of the earring spectrum), she got outta there with something like fifteen knives and three orange juice enema gadgets and is happy as a clam.

And that's the whole idea...

Gotta go drain the dogs and get ready for our Celtic music/Irish-style food adventure. See yas.

Update:

I had Mrs. G read this. She said she wished she hadn't blurted out the "instead of jewelry" line, so tomorrow I'll head for the Husbands' All-Purpose One-Stop Shop. Heh.

Update II:

I think I got some pretty good music. Go see the vids here and here. Be sure to read my extensive descriptions. Heh. The one below is kinda special and came as a complete surprise. That's my fat ass blocking the view.

When I got done recording music, I turned the camera off. Imagine my surprise when I got home and found this in the camera. I must have turned it on again by mistake. Or was it the little people wishing my bride of 36 years a Happy Birthday...?

Tech News

One day your pants may power up your iPod

But where d'ya plug it in...?