Air Heads

Via Memeorandum, the Air Force caves to the Jesus freaks, turning into a bunch of sky pilots. I wonder when they're gonna rename it Christian Aviators.

The Air Force, under pressure from evangelical Christian groups and members of Congress, softened its guidelines on religious expression yesterday to emphasize that superior officers may discuss their faith with subordinates and that chaplains will not be required to offer nonsectarian prayers.

"This does affirm every airman's right, even the commanders' right, to free exercise of religion, and that means sharing your faith," said Maj. Gen. Charles C. Baldwin, the Air Force's chief of chaplains. [my em]

...

And that means proseletyzing and pressure from above for cadets to accept the 'Christian way'. It's a crock of horseshit and is detrimental to the good order and discipline. I wonder if being 'Christian' is a requirement for the missilemen (you know, the guys who launch the ICBMs) nowadays? Gotta have 'people you can trust' with their fingers on the button, don't ya?

The stench of hypocrisy 14

Seems the Chimp is going after the people who leaked evidence of his eavesdropping program. How much you wanna bet the White House is more forthcoming with this prosecutor than they were/are with Fitz?

Penthouse to the pavement

Mr. H has the story of a recently unemployed executive who gets hit squarely between the eyes by reality.

Bounce this

Wolfie can gin the facts any way he wants, but nobody believed that crock of shit Bush called the State of the Union speech last week. Maru, fully and completely:

Bush's job approval, much like a dingleberry, stuck near bottom.

Lyie McStupington's marks on overall job approval and for handling the economy are mired near their lowest levels ever despite a spike in consumer confidence over the past month and an "upbeat" SOTU, an AP-Ipsos poll found.

Update:

Taylor Marsh has detail on the polling.

Brass monkey

Gag me.

Dogs rule

As you know, I love all animals, but especially dogs. I've had a dog all my life, starting from my Beagle, Fritz, when I was a little kid, to my German Shepherd, George, who was my best friend through two marriages and 6 years on active duty, to our current Princess Shayna*, the Australian Cattle Dog. They all have one thing in common. They're all shelter dogs.

Pedigree, the pet food people, and the American Humane Association are running a drive to get shelter dogs adopted into good homes. Did you know 7000 dogs are euthanized every day because there is no place to keep them? The website makes it very plain:

Life on the streets is no fun. Especially when you're there because you lost your best friend. Untold numbers of dogs are "orphaned" each year - lost, abandoned, or worse, abused and left to fend for themselves.

While political contributions are important, see if you can earmark some funds for the AHA. Also the North Shore Animal League [Where we got Shayna. - F-man] does incredible work in animal rescue and adoption. Our best friends can't do it themselves. Why not make room in your home for a shelter dog? If the logistics don't allow it, toss these dedicated folks some coin.

*Pic added for cuteness and the fact I missed Friday Cattle Dog Blogging yesterday.

Yeah...that's it

Ya see, we were wrong the first time, so we can't take any chances now.

Winter Camo

Since we're waiting for a blizzard here in NY, the Uniform of the Day is Arctic-1.

Rumors

When I was in the military, they drummed into us not to listen to rumors, which were usually wrong anyhow. With that in mind, I present this from Xan:

...

"Rumors have it that Vice President Cheney is to step down amidst health and/or Libby related issues. On that same note, our sources show that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist has reserved the Nashville-area Marriott hotel to hold a press conference this Saturday.

...

Clay pigeons

Elaborating on Gord's entry last night, you know what happens to clay pigeons on the skeet range:

...

Two of the elected officials referred to in Friday's filings have been identified in published reports as Reps. Steven LaTourette, R-Ohio, and Don Young, R-Alaska. According to Roll Call, a Capitol Hill newspaper, the two representatives wrote to the GSA in September 2002, urging the agency to give preferential treatment to groups such as Indian tribes when evaluating development proposals for the Old Post Office.

...

Friday's filings by prosecutors refer to a third member of Congress, Rep. Shelly Moore Capito, R-W.Va. Her name appears in e-mails that suggest she was trying to help Abramoff secure a GSA lease for land in Silver Spring for a religious school.

...

Too bad, so sad. Three more Republicans under investigation thanks to Abramoff. Heh...the hits just keep on comin'. Tell me again how the Republican Party is not an organized criminal enterprise?

Tip o' the Brain to the Left Coaster.

Rats

The great Neil Shakespeare.

The Sopranos

Man, there's a lotta shit flyin' in courtrooms, investigations, and newsrooms inside the ol' Beltway today. I can't remember the last time I saw fingers pointin' in so many directions at once and so many heads a-shakin', "Not me. Iss not my yob! Ees hees fault!". I guess instead of takin' the bullet like they were supposed to, they'd rather spread the slugs around.

Brownie's tellin' who knew what and when they knew it, and who kept him from doing what he should have. Note to Brownie: I know you had experience with tragedies and disasters in the Arabian horse world such as when they break a leg, but you can't solve the problems of thousands of people in a major city in the same manner by shooting them in the head! That doesn't solve the horse's problem, just yours.

Abramoff's tellin' how many times he met with Bush at parties and such. He's got the photos. They'll be showin' up soon I betcha.

A new CIA voice is telling reporters Bush had decided to go to war no matter what. Hey, the more the merrier.

On top of Libby droppin' many dimes on Cheney.

I wish I knew how to put little musical symbols on this thing: "The Hill is alive, with the sound of music..."

Couple all that with the Chimp gettin' dumped on by ministers, ex-Presidents, and others at Mrs. King's funeral, and his job approval numbers, it's been a pretty good week.

McCarthy's ghost

Or, Ohio again. Zoe on a new bill going through the Ohio State House:

...

So it is now up to the state of Ohio to investigate and determine who is or isn't homosexual, bisexual or transgendered? (I'd love to know how many children each of these people have adopted and/or fostered. I would also love to know if any of them have any glbt kids.)

...

Yeah, love those 'family values'.

30%

Escaping the attention of the mainstream media at the end of January was a panel held by mental-health professionals at the National Press Club in Washington, in which it was revealed that up to one-third of Iraq war Veterans will suffer from some degree of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

...

[Deputy Chief Consultant for Mental Health Services at the Department of Veterans Affairs] Zeiss said 120,000 soldiers have sought health care, and that 31 percent of them are being reviewed for possible mental health disorders, with the prevailing diagnosis being PTSD. A big difference from previous wars, she said, is that 13 percent of those soldiers are women. [my em]

...

By the time this war is over, we'll have seriously screwed up a generation of young men and women. Bob Geiger has some statistics that might surprise you. Over the next ten years, the VA is going to be strained even farther than it is now.

Let's send old people off to war

After reading this article in the EssEffChron, I'm calling the recruiter - as soon as I remember where I put the phone...

Many Americans are becoming impatient with this sacrifice of the young people who comprise our combat forces, soldiers with their whole lives ahead of them. I think the public attitude toward casualties could be changed by the simple expedient of extending the age of eligibility for military service to, say, 85. Think about it. How much strength or physical fitness is required to drive a vehicle down the road?

What if, rather than pester high school students (and their parents) about enlisting, military recruiters focused their efforts on nursing home residents? Sure, many with advanced Alzheimer's or hooked up to Foley catheters might be unenthusiastic about military service, but I guarantee you that some World War II vets who haven't really felt significant since 1945 would be happy to make use of their still-valid driver's licenses in the service of their country.

Imagine these guys -- or women -- at the wheel of a humvee in Fallujah or Kirkuk. The insurgents would have no idea what to make of it. ("Hang on Achmed, I think he's turning left. No, wait, he just put on his right directional.") You don't have to throw their timing off by much to make them miss.

In our daily lives we're accustomed to seeing people die full of years, having finished most of life's assigned tasks. We couldn't possibly feel the same sense of loss as we do when a young person is taken in the flower of life. This would achieve an important Bush administration objective and result in increased public tolerance for casualties.

It also might serve as an opportunity for some elderly members of the current national leadership to shed their "chicken hawk" label. People like Dick Cheney or Dennis Hastert could at last have a crack at the combat that eluded them during the 1960s. Since there is no apparent end in sight to the war on terror, President Bush himself might eventually "age in" to the geezer brigade. With his driving record, he might even be eligible for a waiver to join immediately on leaving office.

The only drawback I can see is that I hear GI-issue 'Depends' are scratchy.

I'm gonna remember

To those of you who support the rape of our nation by the Republicans. Not the under- or mis-informed who voted for Bush twice, you've come to your senses by now, or will by Election Day. No, I'm talking about the Kool-Aid drinking hate mongers, willfully aiding the Republican cause. I'm gonna remember.

Someday, the Dems or maybe a 3rd Party, will be in control of the government once again. One day, the crooks and sycophants will be out of the government and reality (or as close to it that can be acheived in Washington) will prevail. And I'm gonna remember.

I'm gonna remember how you spread the lies, how you enabled these criminals to turn a nation to be proud of into a paraiah. I'm gonna remember how you called for war in Iraq, supported it in some childish, Rambo-esque sexual fantasy that somehow makes you a man. I'm gonna remember how you advocated genocide - "nuke all them ragheads", "nuke Mecca" - how you give a shit for the lives of anyone who isn't white and 'christian', or who wears the uniform of this country. I'm gonna remember how you tried to curtail my free speech by calling me a traitor because I stand up for what is right and I'm gonna remember how you advocated giving an incompetent President the power of a monarch.

In the past 5 years you've hurt this nation more than any outside enemy, more than the terrorists did on 9/11, and I'm not gonna let you get away with it. When this ship of state is righted, I will not let anyone forget it was you who contributed to swamping it. You may peel the 'Bush/Cheney 04' bumpersticker off your car, but I'll be there to remind folks you displayed it proudly once upon a time.

I will do my best to jam you up at every opportunity, make sure any successes in your future are small and your failures extraordinary. I will go out of my way to see you are marginalized by the Reality-based Community and that your opinions and proclimations are ridiculed and dismissed. You and your ilk will never have control of this country again and I'll fight until my last breath to make it so. You've proven you are not up to the task.

We'll talk again in November.

And just something to keep in the back of your tiny minds as you continue your inept, murderous rampage on the Constitution. The French had their own way of dealing with collaborators after the Nazis were vanquished. Be glad this is America and some of us do believe in the principles this great nation was founded upon.

Update:

This is one I'm never gonna let off the hook.

Just fucking crazy

At C&L.

Mary Matalin - "...they're keeping their neighborhoods and their African-American brothers enslaved..."

And Phyllis Schafly - "...by malicious feminists who have lobbied for laws that punish spousal rape just like stranger rape..."

Mary Matalin should be run out of Washington (and her moron husband along with her) and Phyllis Schafly should be run down by a bus. Two extreme, batshit-crazy wastes of my good air.

'Bureaucratic SNAFU' or CYA?

Following up on yesterday's post about Lt. Rebrook who was charged for "losing" body armor when he was wounded, CNN has this:

A former Army soldier will be reimbursed after he was required to pay for his equipment when he was wounded in Iraq, a military spokesman said Wednesday.

The statement also said, "There is no question that [Rebrook] should not have to pay for the body armor of his that was destroyed in Iraq."

But that development came after the matter garnered national attention Tuesday when a West Virginia newspaper reported Rebrook's story.

On Wednesday, the Army said Rebrook would not have been asked to pay the money if he had filled out two required forms.

Those comments drew an angry rebuke from Rebrook's father, Edward Rebrook of Charleston, West Virginia.

"That is a lie," the soldier's father told CNN. "It's a case of CYA by the Army."

Bureaucratic SNAFU? CYA? My military experience tells me it's both, but without the publicity the EllTee woulda been SOL for his money.

Heh . . .

The Yella Bros. collaborate.

Curses, foiled again!

Okay...so they were gonna blow the cabin door open...with a shoe bomb...in a pressurized aircraft...and they're actually gonna be able to fly it...into a building...the tallest building in L.A....yeah...that's it...

Illegal? Inept? More like 'Criminally Moronic'

Bob Herbert. A tip o' the Brain once again to Tennessee Guerilla Women.

While testifying about the Bush administration's warrantless eavesdropping program, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was asked to explain how the program had been damaged by the disclosure of its existence in the press.

Senator Joseph Biden suggested that Al Qaeda operatives have most likely been aware for some time that the government is trying to intercept their phone calls.

Mr. Gonzales agreed. "You would assume that the enemy is presuming that we are engaged in some kind of surveillance," he said. "But if they're not reminded about it all the time in newspapers and in stories, they sometimes forget."

Senator Biden managed to laugh. Probably to keep from crying. This was the attorney general of the United States speaking, yet another straight man for an administration that has raised governing to new heights of witlessness. Watching the Bush administration in action would be hilarious, if its ineptitude and brutally misguided policies didn't end so often in needless suffering and sorrow.

The public should be aware of two important points about the president's domestic spying program: it's illegal, and it's not catching terrorists.

To laugh or to cry - that is the question as we contemplate three more years of this theater of the absurd known as the Bush administration.

Not much point in crying. Seething is good. The laughter will come when the ropes jerk taut.

Libby Authorized to Leak by Cheney, Others

Editor & Publisher

Lewis "Scooter" Libby testified to a federal grand jury that he had been "authorized" by his boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, and other White House "superiors" in the summer of 2003 to disclose classified information to journalists to defend the Bush administration's use of prewar intelligence, according to an article posted today by the National Journal.

“Beyond what was stated in the court paper, say people with firsthand knowledge of the matter, Libby also indicated what he will offer as a broad defense during his upcoming criminal trial: that Vice President Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials had earlier encouraged and authorized him to share classified information with journalists to build public support for going to war. Later, after the war began in 2003, Cheney authorized Libby to release additional classified information, including details of the NIE, to defend the administration's use of prewar intelligence in making the case for war.

"Libby testified to the grand jury that he had been authorized to share parts of the NIE with journalists in the summer of 2003 as part of an effort to rebut charges then being made by former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson that the Bush administration had misrepresented intelligence information to make a public case for war."

One of those journalists was former New York Times reporter Judith Miller. She has written that at a July 8, 2003, meeting with Libby he offered some details from the then-classified NIE. Libby apparently is now saying he was authorized to give her that information.

In a January 23 letter, Fitzgerald wrote to Libby's attorneys: "Mr. Libby testified in the grand jury that he had contact with reporters in which he disclosed the content of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in the course of his interaction with reporters in June and July 2003.… We also note that it is our understanding that Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors."

The public correspondence does not mention the identities of the "superiors" who authorized the leaking of the classified information, "but people with firsthand knowledge of the matter identified one of them as Cheney," Waas states. Libby also testified that he worked closely with then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove in deciding what information to leak to the press to build public support for the war.

In the correspondence, which emerged last week, Fitzgerald also asserted that Libby testified that he had met with Judith Miller on July 8, 2003, with the "purpose" of intending "to transmit information" to her "concerning the NIE."

Yo, The Dick 'n Turdblossom: Gotcha, motherfuckers!

Trapped like a rat...

William Rivers Pitt on Mrs. King's funeral and the political rebukes to Bush thereat:

And then, of course, the foolishness began. The nattering nabobs of network nonsense blithered into their cable news studios to deplore all the political statements that were served up before the appreciative crowd in that church. It was the Wellstone funeral all over again.

The central tenet of the civil rights movement has, is and will always be one simple truth: one must speak truth to power in order to affect change. This was the maxim by which Coretta Scott King lived her life, and the maxim by which her husband lived and ultimately died by. Had her funeral not involved speaking truth to power, the ceremony would have been incomplete. George W. Bush heard on Tuesday some hard truths that his fanatical insulation has to date spared him from. It may have been the healthiest moment this republic has absorbed in years.

This was a day for speaking truth to power, but it was more than that. Mr. Bush and his people have worked incredibly hard to keep this president from hearing anything that rubs against what he believes to be true. He speaks before hand-picked crowds of adoring supporters, never once seeing the face of someone who thinks he is running the nation into the ground. Millions upon millions of protesters have followed his every move, and yet it is almost certain he has never laid eyes upon a single one of them.

On Tuesday, by his own design. George W. Bush was trapped like a rat on that stage. He was forced to listen to eloquent denunciations of his politics and his policies, perhaps for the first time since he took office. The effect upon him was clear; during the speeches delivered by Rev. Lowery and president Carter, Bush looked as if he was sucking on a particularly bitter lemon.

When one speaks truth to power, especially arrogant power, that is usually the effect. Coretta Scott King would have approved.

I have nothing to add to that.

Letters

To the Dem leadership. It would be safe to assume the rank and file is fed up.

More guns

You remember my little rant the other day. My lovely neighbor Blondie has the statistics to back it up.

Eeyore

A great line (and bald truth) from Mustang Bobby:

...

I truly wish they [Dems] would just get to work and let their actions speak for themselves. It's not as if the Bush administration and the GOP leadership in Washington hasn't handed them several truckloads of material to run on, and all we get is whining about they can't get any traction. So get out there and campaign, and stop turning the Democratic donkey into Eeyore.

It comes around

You've heard me bitch about my local town supervisor:

As regular readers of the Brain know, I speak my mind. Everybody knows where they stand with me. There's no guessing if I like you or not. If I don't you'll know it.

Anyway, it's with this attitude I pay my property taxes twice a year . . . in person. It's the one time I can get in my local politicians' faces . . . well, two times a year. They have to deal with me too because I give 'em $4000 at a clip. I also went to school with the Town Supervisor's (mayor's) useless piece-of-shit son.

...

Well, things come around. I was wondering when they'd get him:

The Suffolk district attorney has seized Islip Supervisor Pete McGowan's $1-million campaign account and served scores of subpoenas to businesses that have dealt with his campaign fund, town and county officials said yesterday.

The subpoenas appear to be focusing on possible misuse of campaign funds, and are part of a long-running investigation by District Attorney Thomas Spota into political corruption in Suffolk County.

...

Ha-ha! See you in Hell, motherfucker.

Mah new brother

Seems the Chimp wants to be connected to Clinton now. Hmmmm. Do we have some unresolved issues with daddy or are you that desperate politically?

...

But the constant references to Clinton from the current President Bush have taken on a forced, almost contrived feel. Why would Bush try so hard to remind everyone, as often as possible, about his close connections to Clinton?

I suspect it's because Clinton has something that Bush doesn't: high poll numbers. Last summer, an ABC News/Washington Post poll asked respondents, "Thinking back to when Bill Clinton was in office, would you say you approve or disapprove of the way Clinton handled his job as president?" A whopping 62% of Americans said they approved. At the time, the ABC/Post poll showed Bush's support at 47%, a number which has dropped even lower since.

...

If this is a strategy for Bush to get a bump in popularity, the Bush gang might want to look for a Plan B. The frequent Clinton references only serve to remind people of a time when we had a president who had the country on track - economically, militarily, fiscally, and diplomatically.

...

Driven to Distraction

Ever mindful that old age is gonna kick my ass one of these days (put a sock in it!), I read with interest this article in the LATimes:

Exploring the anatomy of attention, researchers have discovered that middle-aged people are more readily driven to distraction by interruptions because of age-related changes in how their brains work.

Grady, however, suggested that people in their 20s today - their brains molded by instant messaging and all of the other high-technology of the short attention span - may be better able to manage unwarranted interruptions when they reach old age.

Screw them young whippersn - Ooh, look! A shiny nickel!

Watch the Mighty Wurlitzer Start

Following up on Fixer's post, The Left Coaster chimes in on the RS3M* follow-up to Mrs. King's funeral.

President Bush was humiliated at Coretta Scott King's funeral yesterday by Reverend Lowery and the thunderous applause for the Clintons. What the blogosphere has termed The Mighty Wurlitzer just got cranked up in response, for public, televised put-downs of The Almighty George cannot be countenanced under any circumstances.

The Wurlitzer - talk right radio, backed up by cable TV news and eventually harmonized with network news - will endlessly blather on for the next 48 hours how uncouth, crude, and disrespectful-of-all-that-is-decent those liberals and democrats were yesterday at the funeral; semi-freaks like that surely can't accurately reflect the All America Love that the US basks in for Bush.

This ol' semi-freak just fuckin' loves to watch all the brouhaha!

Go read. Coupla links.

*RS3M: Republican Spin, Slime, & Smear Machine. "The Mighty Wurlitzer" works good too.

Smokey the Bear is a Republican

Go see this Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility news release from October:

The October 11, 2005 order issued by NPS Director Fran Mainella requires that the selection criteria for all civil service management slots (Government Service grades or GS-13, 14 and 15) include the "ability to lead employees in achieving the ...Secretary's 4Cs and the President's Management Agenda." In addition, candidates must be screened by Park Service headquarters and "the Assistant Secretary [of Interior] for Fish, and Wildlife, and Parks," the number three political appointee in the agency.

The President's Management Agenda includes controversial policies and proposals such as aggressive use of outsourcing to replace civil servants, reliance on "faith-based initiatives" and rollbacks of civil service rights. Interior Secretary Gale Norton's "4Cs" is a slogan she uses to express her management approach: "4 Cs: communication, consultation, cooperation, all in the service of conservation."

"It is outrageous that park superintendents must swear political loyalty to the Bush agenda and parrot hokey mottos in order to earn a promotion," stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch. "The merit system is supposed to be about ability, not apple polishing."

"Presidents come and go but the civil service is designed to serve whoever occupies the swivel chair in the Oval Office," Ruch added. "It is downright creepy that now every museum curator, supervising scientist and chief ranger must be okayed by a high-level political appointee."

Creepy, shit. It's downright North Korean. So is the part about "presidents come and presidents go". Not if Kim Il Bush has anything to say about it!

I wonder if we'll have to sign a Loyalty Oath to go visit our National Parks? Good ploy on their part if we do. I'll never sign one. I'll never see it when they sneak all the trees out and the oil wells and strip mines in, either.

Since Bush wants to privatize the parks, don't be surprised if a pimply-faced underpaid non-professional-looking "Park Ranger" asks "want fries with that?"

Bake sales for body armor

Upon reading (probably at Grannyinsanity) that wounded Vet Lt. Rebrook was being charged for the body armor he "lost" in Iraq, John Aravosis of Americablog put out a call for donations to cover it. The effort succeeded.

Wow, you guys were amazing. In just two hours, we raised over $5,000, with over 180 donations ranging from $1 to $400 (average donation was around $20, so this really was a community effort).

Here's to hoping that some day we won't need virtual body armor bake sales to help provide for our service members in Iraq.

Editor & Publisher has more:

"We liberal folk may disagree with the Bush administration over the reasons for going to war and over how they're fighting this war," he declared, "but one thing you'd expect no disagreement over would be the treatment of our soldiers. They fight for their country and they deserve some respect in return. And that means not charging them for their body armor because someone blew them up on the battlefield."

Why do you think the Captain always goes down with his ship?

I think the only disagreement on how we treat our soldiers comes from the Pentagon and DoD. It looks like the "Liberal traitors" are doing a better job.

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots

Democratic Underground has the 231st in a series. It's worth going to just to scroll down to the photo at the bottom, or, better yet, read it.

Thrust & Parry...

If you're interested, Senator Obama has posted his and McCain's letters that are causing the media to go into such paroxysms of ecstasy. Yawn.

Bush doll

The Old White Lady's got the best one yet.

The cartoons...again

This has been given far more attention than it deserves. Here's the deal. There is such a thing as measured response. You don't burn, kill, and riot over cartoons. Boycott - yes, peacefully demonstrate - yes, Jihad - no. The spectacles in the Middle East over some shitty cartoons makes it so much easier for some in the West to justify killing your people wholesale. Perceptions count and this violence makes you look like a bunch of savages. Save the Jihad for defending your homeland from serious threats.

Alien and Sedition Acts

As many of you know, John Adams is a hero of mine, for many reasons, but he made some mistakes (looking at them in hindsight) too. The Alien and Sedition Acts, the largest of them. While they expired in 1800, Farnsworth looks at the modern day equivalent:

...

Okay, fast-forward to today's case in point: Laura Berg, an employee of the US Veterans Administration -- a nurse, in fact -- in New Mexico, who had the fucking nerve, the pure unmitigated gall, to write a letter to the editor of a small weekly newspaper, a letter that was critical of the Bush Maladminstration...

Yeah, I know, what a subversive. But it gets worse.

Storm troopers from the VA Gestapo (whatever they call their Internal Affairs Division over there) showed up at her desk, impounded her computer and accused her of "sedition". Jesus, sedition? Who even talks like that any more? And maybe somebody ought to set up a fund to buy a goddamn dictionary for these assholes, so they can see the fucking difference between "forcefully" and "forcibly".

...

Real good, but the thing that makes me sit up and think is this graf:

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So let's go back to the Alien and Sedition Acts. That last one, Number 4, it's the Big Kahuna, and that's exactly the one that we have to worry about the most. Every one of us out here in Left Blogistan is potentially at risk of violating that one. We're fortunate that the act expired with the end of Adams' term -- otherwise the BFEE would not be above dusting it off, dressing it up and trotting it out, to apply it wholesale to those of us who are acting forcefully to remove an administration filled with vicious deceit.

...

To the free speech Gestapo: Bring it on, bitches. You know where to find me.

Wait for it

The SwiftBoating should begin shortly:

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I say this because you know it's only a matter of hours before the Republican Swift Boating of Rev. Lowery and Coretta's funeral begins. How dare a black man not know his place at a funeral, they'll say. As if the Republican party and its surrogates have any right whatsoever to speak on behalf of Mrs. King, to tell black America what they can and cannot do to honor one of their most revered leaders.

A party that doesn't have a single African-American member of Congress has no right lecturing black people about knowing their place.

...

Perhaps I'm wrong. Perhaps the old white men of the GOP (read: Ken Mehlman) and their media enablers will sit well enough alone. Perhaps. But I doubt it. Coretta Scott King and Martin Luther King, and the legacy they leave behind, is far too dangerous to the right-wing extremists that run our country. They'll have to do something to mar Coretta's legacy. I have a hunch this will be it. [my em]

...

Hey

George Washington did it too. Idiots.

Dear John McCain

Shut the fuck up.

Thanks,

F-man

What's wrong

The NRA and the American gun industry are getting way out of hand. I believe in the right to keep and bear, but if hunting is supposed to be a sport, why not let the prey get a bit closer?

Who needs a gun that is accurate to more than a mile, can down an airliner on take-off or landing, and can penetrate steel plating? If you're the gun lobby and its friends in the firearms industry, the answer is simple: sportsmen! If you're law enforcement, the answer is equally simple: terrorists.

...

Personally, I don't get hunting but I see the need so have at it. But I don't see a need for some yahoo to be better equipped than a Marine Expeditionary Force. Last I heard, bear and deer don't shoot back.

I'm tired of the NRA horseshit and what the gun industry, from top to bottom, has been able to get away with. It's time some serious controls are enacted before this lassez faire attitude will bite us in the ass. The days of Jesse James and Wyatt Earp are over. At least those guys were close enough to look into the eyes of the men they killed.

Tip: You wanna protect your home? Buy a pump action shotgun with a pistol grip if possible and the shortest barrel for ease of movement in close quarters. You don't need to be accurate, just able to fill the space in front of you with BBs. Load your first round with small bird shot, the next with 00-buckshot. If whoever is trying to break in doesn't get the hint with the first shot, the second will blow his chest open.

The French

Yes, the French:

...

They made commitments to donate several million dollars to the reconstruction, brining [sic] total contributions by French companies and their US subsidiaries to more than 22 million dollars.

The French government has also contributed a million dollars to help rebuild the city's French schools. [my em]

...

Fuck you wingnuts. The Saudis aren't our friends. The Europeans are and have proven it more times than is necessary.

Vets' ills mounting fast

New York Daily News

Nearly 120,000 veterans - more than one of every four who served in Iraq and Afghanistan - have already sought treatment at Veterans Health Administration hospitals for a wide range of illnesses, according to an internal study the VHA completed late last year.

More than 30% of those sick veterans are afflicted with some type of mental disorder, mostly posttraumatic stress and depression.

An additional 35,000 - more than 29% of the total - were diagnosed with "ill-defined conditions," according to the study, which was prepared in October by VHA epidemiologist Dr. Han Kang but has yet to be publicly released.

"Those numbers are way higher than during the Persian Gulf War for 'ill-defined' symptoms," said one Department of Veterans Affairs official who asked not to be identified.

Mental disorders, however, rank as the biggest problem among ailing veterans.

Two previous military studies of combat troops in Iraq found that 17% to 25% of U.S. soldiers suffer from major depression or combat stress.

The Department of Veterans Affairs "does not have sufficient capacity to meet the needs of new combat veterans while still providing for veterans of past wars," the GAO concluded.

But in a chilling sign of the terrible toll our nation has yet to pay for this dreadful war in Iraq, Bush earmarked an additional $78 million to build six new national cemeteries and expand three existing ones.

Swell. If he can't afford to care for the service people he sent to his criminal adventure, at least he can bury his mistake.

The World Socialist Web Site chimes in on the same topic:

One of the terrible legacies of the criminal wars in Afghanistan and Iraq is the number of maimed, sick or traumatised former US soldiers - many of them barely in their twenties - who will require medical assistance for the rest of their lives. For political reasons, the scope of the tragedy is barely being reported despite the impact it is having on a significant layer of young men and women, their families and communities.

Concern over the long-term fate of the wounded is compounded when the true dimensions of the casualties that have been suffered by the US military in Afghanistan and Iraq are considered. On top of the official figure of close to 20,000 killed or wounded-in-action since November 2001, there are now tens of thousands of soldiers who have been evacuated from Central Asia or the Middle East for "non-battle injuries" or disease, and tens of thousands more who have developed psychological problems since their return to the United States.

The extent of war casualties soars once soldiers return. The number of Afghanistan and Iraq veterans who have sought health care from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) has already passed 100,000 - or close to one out of every four of the troops who has served in the occupied countries and subsequently left the US military.

An internal army survey, cited in Stars and Stripes in December 2005, showed alcohol abuse among returned veterans was 21 percent one year after returning from the war zone; 22 percent suffered from anger and aggression issues; and 15 percent intended to break up with their partner.

The wave of new victims of American militarism arriving home and needing treatment at VA hospitals and clinics comes at a time of growing need of the VA system by veterans of earlier wars. An increased numbers of veterans of the Vietnam War and the 1991 Gulf War are registering for VA health care, possibly because falling living standards are making more eligible for the means-tested assistance. As well, the surviving veterans of WWII are at an advanced age.

The Bush administration's proposed budget for the Department of Veterans Affairs in fiscal year 2007 is $US80.6 billion, with some $US34.3 billion being requested for health care - an 11 percent increase. The soaring cost of benefits and medical treatment for the war wounded will more than likely be met by cutbacks to other programs, such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

Those programs are being cut to the bone to help Bush "reduce spending". Most likely, the Veterans will just have to fend for themselves at some point or die. Then there's no problem.

When these Vets' children are living in poverty from having to pay for this war with taxes on their minimum wage income, brought about by a lack of education and foreign economic competition, and not able to adequately care for their sick or injured Vet parent, it's likely to be considered "patriotic" for them to pull the plug.

About that time, their children will be sent to fight India or China, perhaps for "economic" reasons.

Go read both those articles and you will be as pissed off as I am right now.

We need to get rid of Bush and his cabal NOW so we have at least a chance of aiming this country at fiscal and foreign policy sanity. May God damn that sonofabitch.

Cheaper peanut butter

From The Carpetbagger Report:

Mr. Bush proposed an array of savings in domestic programs, including big reductions or cuts in 141 programs. Critics asserted those reductions would do little to ease the deficit even as they imposed real hardship on some people, constituting pain for little gain. Gene B. Sperling, a former economic adviser to President Bill Clinton, compared it to a man who leases three fully loaded Hummers, finds it stretches his family's budget to the breaking point, and decides his family has to start buying cheaper peanut butter.

Rationed to one spoonful per day. Bread is an excessive luxury when you have to keep gas in those Humjobs, after all.

Go read some Republican responses to Bush's budget.

Rove counting heads on the Senate Judiciary Committee

Rove is sweating. Good. From Insight:

The White House has been twisting arms to ensure that no Republican member votes against President Bush in the Senate Judiciary Committee's investigation of the administration's unauthorized wiretapping.

Congressional sources said Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove has threatened to blacklist any Republican who votes against the president. The sources said the blacklist would mean a halt in any White House political or financial support of senators running for re-election in November.

And a comment from About:

Karl Rove wouldn't feel the need to threaten senators unless he and/or others in the White House thought that there was a good chance that even a Republican senator might conclude, based upon the evidence, that President Bush broke the law and violated his oath to uphold the Constitution. Such senators probably start out any evaluation with at least some bias in favor of the president, so it's reasonable to conclude that if these senators are likely to end up voting against the president unless they are threatened, then the evidence against the president must be pretty strong.

If warrantless spying on Americans is legal, as Bush claims, what is Rove so worried about? After all, if you're not doing anything illegal, you have nothing to worry about...

Send O'Reilly to Darfur

This is the best idea I've heard in a long time! From Editor & Publisher

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof resumed his exchange with TV/radio talkster Bill O'Reilly on Tuesday, asking readers to contribute to a fund to send O'Reilly to Darfur.

Kristof said he would ante up the first $1000.

"Mr. O'Reilly has a big audience and a knack for stirring outrage. Lately, he (quite properly) galvanized an outcry over a ridiculously light sentence for a sexual predator in Vermont. The upshot was that the sentence was increased. Good for him.

"So imagine the furor Mr. O'Reilly could stir up if he publicized the hundreds of thousands of rapes, murders and mutilations in Darfur. He could save lives on a grand scale.

"Join the pledge drive!"

Stop collecting money when you have enough to buy him a one-way ticket.

In the same article is this jewel:

Another New York Times column on Tuesday sure to draw attention comes from John Tierney, who mocks concerns about energy independence and conservation. "For now, the best strategy is to buy gasoline and stop worrying that it's sinful or dangerous," Tierney writes.

The column, entitled "Burn Baby Burn," concludes: "After you fill up your tank, twist the rear-view mirror so you can gaze at yourself. Repeat these words: 'I'm good enough, I'm rich enough, and doggone it, people in the Middle East like my money.'"

And they give it to such worthy causes.

Metrics

Lurch:

...

In contrast, in the last year of the Clinton presidency (2000), there were 1138 attacks and 776 deaths. Since then, after five years of Bush's macho 84 billion-dollar-a-year War on Terror(tm), attacks have increased by 250% and deaths by a whopping 550%.

...

The sad future

...

So remember, when you are old and gray and still paying for Mess O'Potamia, reflect that once upon a time we had a chance to rid ourselves of these noxious fuckers, but some people chose party over public policy.

Try explaining that to the pharmacist as you beg for meds, or some goverment bureaucrat who will take your home just to toss you into a sub-standard, government-funded "assisted living facility". It will be ugly, but there will be no going back, because with government, once the invisible hand has writ, it's a stone bitch to erase it.

...

Rights, once lost, generally aren't returned without armed resistance. Unfortunately, most of you are too cowardly to stand up now, let alone when the rest of us will be dying to get back what you gave away.

An open letter to Bubba

Via Bob Geiger, an Iraq vet talks to the chickenhawks:

...

You have the audacity to claim that by not supporting the president, I don't support the troops. Yet, the president chose to send over 160,000 of us to unprepared and without a defined mission. We had no body armor, no vehicle armor, and poor supplies of ammunition. Our families spent thousands of dollars that they did not have to supply us, while President Bush did nothing. In fact he didn't even scold his Offensive Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, when he told our forward deployed troops, "you go to war with the army you have, not the army you wish you had." Moreover, the mission was originally about weapons of mass destruction, but there were none. Then it was making a democracy, but yet the "insurgency" worsens. Now the president has decided that in order to honor those who died for nothing, more must die for nothing.

...

That's the way it is.

Questions

Is it me, or do other people want to give CNN's Ed Henry a wedgie too? I'm watching him on the news and I just want to hang him in a closet by his shorts.

'Good news' from Iraq

Oh yeah, we got generators, top of the line. Ain't got fuel to run 'em though. Oh the ineptitude.

...

"The basic problem with Qud[a]s is, we have four LM6000s out there that essentially don't have a fuel supply," says a U.S. power-generation engineer who did a yearlong tour in Iraq. "We installed a third of a billion dollars' worth of combustion turbines that can't be fueled."

The LM6000 combustion turbines are a type known as aeroderivative. They are basically Boeing 747 turbines mounted on heavy stands. They work well on natural gas, but to run on diesel, they need high-quality fuel and a fair amount of operational sophistication, two things in short supply today in Iraq. "The first time I went to Quds and saw those LM6000s, the first words out of my mouth were, 'What the hell are those things doing here?'" says the generation specialist in Iraq.

...

And you wonder where our money goes?

Braintip: Atrios

Brutalized & Arrested in Cleveland

From World Can't Wait

My name is Carol Fisher, and I am on the staff of Revolution Books in Cleveland OH. At the bookstore we have been immersed in building and supporting the initiatives of World Cant Wait. Yesterday, 1.28.06, while putting "Bush Step Down" posters on telephone poles along a major thoroughfare on a sunny Saturday afternoon, I was brutalized by Cleveland Heights police, charged with 2 counts of felony assault and held incommunicado under police custody in the hospital! This outrage and others like it must be exposed and opposed by all who hate the direction that the Bush regime is taking this country and the world.

Here is what happened:

Go read it.

" I participated in a hoax..."

Lawrence Wilkerson, former aide to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, on his participation in the cooked intelligence that led up to Bush's Criminal War, on NOW:

I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council. How do you think that makes me feel? Thirty-one years in the United States Army and I more or less end my career with that kind of a blot on my record? That's not a very comforting thing.

No, it isn't. Perhaps you could shorten your prison sentence by coming clean the rest of the way.

Suppose we get people who can't make good decisions as FDR was pretty good at. I'm worried and I would rather have the discussion and debate in the process we've designed than I would a dictate from a dumb strongman. And that dumb strongman is his felicitous phrase.

Oh I think it's come to that. I think we've had some decisions at this administration that were more or less dictates. We've had a decision that the Constitution as read by Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo and a few other very selected administration lawyers doesn't pertain the way it has pertained for 200-plus years. A very ahistorical reading of the Constitution.

And these people marshal such stellar lights as-- Alexander Hamilton. They haven't even read Federalist Six. I'm sure they haven't. Where Alexander Hamilton lays down his markers about the dangers of a dictate-issuing chief executive. This is not the way America was intended to be run by its founders and it is not the interpretation of the Constitution that any of the founders as far as I read the Federalist Papers and other discussions about their views would have subscribed to. This is an interpretation of the constitution that is outlandish and as I said, clearly ahistorical.

Dictatorships work on occasion. You're right. Dictatorships do work but I-- I'm like Ferdinand Eberstadt. I'd prefer to see the squabble of democracy to the efficiency of dictators.

That's the fight for the soul of our nation that we're in now. If we lose, we lose everything.

They're getting our rooms ready...

Long Beach (CA) Press-Telegram

The story showed up in Tuesday's Press-Telegram, as I was reading "Night," Elie Wiesel's horrifying autobiography of a teenager in Buchenwald and Auschwitz.

Appearing on page A5, the story said the federal government had awarded a $385 million contract for the construction of "temporary detention facilities." These would be used, the story said, in the event of an "immigration emergency."

The new detention camps will be built by Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR), a subsidiary of Halliburton. The latter, as you likely know, is the defense-related corporate giant with fists full of contracts involving the war in Iraq.

Considering what took place in Nazi Germany, as well as the shameful incarceration of Japanese-Americans in 1942, no detention camp should be built without the widest possible public scrutiny.

Bottom line: The contract cries out for greater attention. So far, the government's expressed reason for building them is insufficient and ill-defined. And even if the camps do relate to illegal immigration, their purpose could be changed overnight.

Let's not have it said, years from now, that no one ever questioned this.

Does this mean we won't even get to go Gitmo?

On a related note from Working for Change:

2/6/1943: U.S. government requires the 110,000 Japanese-Americans imprisoned in internment camps to answer loyalty surveys.

Japanese-Americans, Reality-based Americans, what's the diff?

The Dodgy Dossier

Watch this BBC video and ask yourself why Bush isn't in jail.

Mushroom clouds...again

The guy in the fancy suit takes a look at the escalation of the rhetoric toward Iran:

A mushroom cloud over Iran, that is. From U.S. low-yield "bunker buster" nuclear explosives.

Because, of course, we must nuke the planet to protect the planet from nukes.

...

Call me anti-Semitic if you will, but Badtux quotes my friend Lurch, with whom I wholeheartedly agree:

...

Iran MUST be defeated militarily. The Neocon plan calls for it. Israel must be defended to the last American.

And as the article (which you should read beginning to end) Gord's post last night points up, uber-Right Jews and Evangelical Christians have formed an alliance to push the 'neocon dream'. This scares me because I know there is probably more than one hawk in Israel who would love to nuke the shit out of Iran. Perle, Feith, Wolfowitz, and Frum are the ones who make policy here (regardless some of their little legal problems). You figure it out.

Update:

Wolcott sees it too:

...

Cockburn believes sanity will prevail. Lind sees the inmates still in control of the asylum. "In Washington, the same brilliant crowd who said invading Iraq would be a cakewalk is still in power. While a few prominent neocons have left the limelight, others remain highly influential behind the scenes. For them, the question is not whether to attack Iran (and Syria), but when. Their answer will be the same as Israel's."

...

Chickenhawk Heroes

Jesus' General, of course:

Rep. Bob Beauprez
Beauprez for Governor

Dear Rep. Beauprez,

It takes a lot of guts to parade around in military garb after requesting and receiving three separate draft deferments and then, finally, a medical release. Unlike you and Our Leader, Eurocrats like John Kerry and Max Cleland took the easier path, earning their right to wear a uniform by serving in combat. Suckers. Didn't they know that a bumpersticker is enough.

...

Cross-posted at Main and Central.

Killer Fact! Reading the Following Post May Save Your Life!

As Buffy would say, Your logic does not resemble our Earth logic.

Death squads in the United States? Yet again the 1600 Crew are using the ticking bomb approach to amend or create executive orders. Newsweek reports that during a closed-door Senate intelligence committee meeting last week Steven Bradbury, acting head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, suggested that in certain circumstances the President could "order a killing on U.S. soil".

"Dianne Feinstein asked Bradbury questions about the extent of presidential powers to fight Al Qaeda; could Bush, for instance, order the killing of a Qaeda suspect known to be on U.S. soil? Bradbury replied that he believed Bush could indeed do this, at least in certain circumstances... Current and former government officials said they could think of several scenarios in which a president might consider ordering the killing of a terror suspect inside the United States. One former official noted that before Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, top administration officials weighed shooting down the aircraft if it got too close to Washington, D.C. What if the president had strong evidence that a Qaeda suspect was holed up with a dirty bomb and was about to attack?"

Apparently this was an "academic discussion of theoretical contingencies", but are there not multiple levels of policing and law enforcement services from the local to the federal that can respond to any situation where there is reasonable suspicion of immediate danger? Certainly the Patriot Act has given all federal and local enforcement agencies broad powers. When the police encounter situations where they have evidence a crime is about to be committed or they catch someone in the act of committing a crime they are authorized to respond. There are procedures in place; they are permitted to use force if they believe a suspect to be a danger and they can use deadly force if the situation warrants. Why would the police not be able to cope with the theoretical terrorist bomber about to unleash a dirty bomb on the unsuspecting populace? Why should our government require death squads instead?
As for Flight 93, from what I understand, our Air Force could have been ordered to shoot those hijacked planes down on 9/11. The President would indeed have issued that tragic order but he does not need any special extra-constitutional privileges to give such an order. Well, I'm relieved that someone had the cojones to tell us what the 1600 Crew are likely already up to anyway--would we have known about the FISA go-round if someone hadn't blown the whistle?

(No lights-out this evening--Fixer and Gordon will be live-blogging during the Super Bowl--;P I think they intend to discuss the underlying structures of our society and the need to spend millions of dollars glorifying violence etc. They will also tell us which team has God on its side.)

Crying 'wolf'

So we all see the escalating tension between Iran and the West. It's been documented here and many other places. My question to you, inspired by this post from John Emerson.

...

I do not believe that the Iran crisis is what Bush says it is. There's something there that we have to deal with, but we cannot take anything Bush says at face value.

...

Are you of this same opinion, like I am, that this is just more Chimp rhetoric or do you believe Iran is a real, credible, and most of all, an immediate threat?

Update:

Atrios sees the same thing.

...

But note how a central part of the propaganda campaign works: several months ago, the usual estimate for the time Iran would need to develop nuclear weapons was about ten years. Then it got reduced to five years. Now, people speak as if Iran will have nuclear weapons in the next few months.

...

The Valley's Not So Civil War

This is a long article in today's LATimes Magazine. It's well worth a read.

In Central California, Mark Arax sees what fear--over terrorism, over our commitment in Iraq--can do to a community. Hatred between Right and Left. Hawk and Dove. Too bad they aren't listening to one grieving parent, who found some peace.

That subhead doesn't begin to cover it. A lot about christian-zionists, neocons, self-hating lefty and right-wing Jews, communists, Okies, Mexicans, raisin farmer Victor Davis Hanson and his pal the frog farmer, dead Marines, in short, all the crap Bush has got us into and how it's being exploited. Oh, yeah, there's a little about how Israel figures into the picture.

A strange symbiosis

Chicago Tribune, and about time too...

A dozen days before the 2006 State of the Union Message, Osama bin Laden reached out from some cave halfway around the world to give the president a much-needed public-relations boost for the second time in about 15 months.

This new appearance by the leader of Al Qaeda came as the president's polling numbers are at a low ebb and he is under serious pressure to pull at least some troops out of Iraq. Bin Laden's earlier appearance helped re-elect Bush.

Bush and bin Laden each will get exactly what they want from the latest message, reinforcing the view that both halves of this odd couple really need each other--and neither wants to quit the other.

The fact is, each plays the role of organizing symbol for the other, strengthening respective political bases. Nothing helps a political leader rally his troops more than having a clearly defined enemy.

Bin Laden understands that by attacking Bush he enhances him and by seeming to support American war critics he discredits them in many quarters. In short, he wants Bush around as long as possible, he wants Bush to have public support and he wants the occupation to continue for all the reasons stated above.

Why do you think he made a video public on Oct. 29, 2004, fully aware that it was only four days before the presidential election, reminding us that he was alive and kicking and still mighty dangerous?

Because he, and most of the world, knew that the so-called war on terror and U.S. security were Bush's strongest suits, and his appearance would outrage Americans and enhance Bush on Election Day.

On the Friday the video aired, Democrats' Democracy Corps poll showed John Kerry ahead by 3 points and possibly growing. On Saturday the tracking poll showed an immediate drop of 1.5 points and the next day an even race. We know what happened on that Tuesday.

Bin Laden denounces him, and Bush once again can rally his troops, shout "stay the course" and denounce the Democratic peaceniks. Most of all he can again echo bin Laden's threat to attack us on our homeland and reassure us all that only he can keep us safe and secure.

Bin Laden's re-emergence was so perfect it might as well have been staged by Bush strategist Karl Rove.

I don't doubt for a second that all these bastards are in cahoots.

Silencing science

I wrote about this last week. Today, PZ Myers shows us how deep the rot really goes.

More Iran

So you heard the rhetoric from the Chimp and now the Iranians have raised the stakes. The U.N Security Council has the issue. Fine, it can go a lot of ways from here, most of it not good unless the Iranians are given the opportunity to back down gracefully and save face. I think the Chimp is too myopic to give them that opportunity, to even recognize the option is open to him, if the Iranians even want one by now. Remember, this situation is one of our own making.

When the Chimp, with his grandiose vision of 'remaking the region', branded Iran, Iraq, and North Korea the 'Axis of Evil', he put them all on notice they were in the U.S.' gunsights. He backed that up by attacking Iraq. The Iranians countered by electing a radical, reactionary government. They see what's going on in Iraq, are probably funding some of the insurgency along with an intelligence gathering network, and they know there is not much we can do against them. There is little we can do diplomatically either. Quoting Taylor Marsh (take the time to read the whole post):

...

Because of our situation in Iraq and the lack of credibility of President Bush, which has spilled over to brand America, this is going to be a very long month, with what lies at the end presenting a very ugly scenario. For some of us, the country of true malevolence has always been Iran, and because of Bush's preoccupation with preemption and his naivety on Iran, not to mention the lack of real intel inside that country, today, our options are between Israel and a U.S. airstrike.

...

With all due respect to the lovely Taylor, I doubt airstrikes will seriously disable the Iranian nuclear initiative [short of a Linebacker I & II campaign; i.e. carpet bombing and all the collateral damage and bad press that comes with it]. Personally, I don't think the Iranians would have raised the rhetoric to this level if they weren't pretty certain they were immune from conventional attacks against the infrastrutcure. I mean Good lord, we have air bases all around them.

Remember this: A guy doesn't go waving his prick around with the expectation of getting it cut off. Iran wouldn't put all that money at risk of being bombed into dust so easily. So that means we'll have to put boots on the ground to ferret out the labs and processing facilities. Where will we get the troops from? Are we gonna use nukes? Are we gonna let Israel use them? Are we prepared for the Armageddon that will surely follow such actions. And what about the Iranian oil? We are addicted after all.

How did we paint ourselves into this corner? We put the Republicans in charge.

Update:

The Russians might be the key to diffusing the situation. This would be a good time for the Chimp to back off the rhetoric and allow the Iranians the wiggle room to accept this offer.