Press For Truth:9/11

I hesitate to write alot about 9/11 simply because I was not in any of the locations where planes became weapons that day,no one I know died or lost someone,and while I was sickened,stunned and saddened on that day,I never had to see,smell,hear or live with the aftermath of that madness.I feel like this part of our history should be told by those impacted most,my offerings for that day are really not that relevant.I was at home,nearly a thousand miles from NYC,my husband was in Houston on bidness,and our little guy had got on the school bus early that morning,around 7am.It was probably only once out of a handful of days I went back to bed after Atilla left for school.The phone rang,waking me up.It was my husband asking me if I had the TV on(the TV is never on in the daytime at my house unless something big happens).I rolled out of bed,and turned on the TV in the living room just moments before the second plane smashed into the WTC.All the air left my lungs and my husband's voice faltered.He told me he and his boss were on their way to rent a vehicle before the mad rush began and they'd be driving home,and that he'd call me back when they got on the road.I think we hung on the phone,mostly quiet,both of us sobbing softly,for about half an hour before we decided I should go pick up our son from school.At the school,the front office knew what was happening,but no one in the classrooms did.Lots of parents were freaking out jamming the phones,a few of us took our kids home.I wasn't afraid our school would be hit,I just wanted my baby home with me,it's a Mom Thang I guess.See? I told you my reflections weren't all that exciting.I started getting pissed off maybe a month or so after 9/11,as my shock wore off and I wanted to know why this happened,HOW it could happen.

Nate over at Get In Their Face! is hosting the almost 90 minute documentary(run time is 1:24,scroll down the page just a bit,it's there,and linked on his sidebar.He's got quite the collection of films there) Press For Truth: 9/11, I just finished watching it. Let me give you a feel for the film in my immediate after viewing opinion:

You must see it. You must try to get as many people as you can to see it.You might even be able to convince any"moderates"you know to watch it,hard core righties won't like this film one bit and will attack it.Let'em try,once you watch it,you'll see how difficult it will be to pick apart.

There are no tinfoily conspiracy theories here.In fact,most of the information presented is open source,with each point made often having several sited resources.This makes it quite easy to fact check,the information has been open source from day one.Paul Thompson constructed a time line using all(or mostly,I have not looked at the whole timeline yet)open source information,his work is a large part of this film.Timelines are extremely useful in constructing a look at any part of the historical record,it makes events much easier to connect and understand.As laid out,this particular timeline(actually,it's a series of timelines) is simply STUNNING in how it connects the dots.

Here's the thing though,this information has been let out in teeny,tiny little pieces.Little pieces scattered all over the media in it's various forms.Sometimes it's front page or prominent information,sometimes it's tucked away in smaller city papers,internet sites,magazines,or audio and/or video clips,etc.But none of it has ever been pieced together to tell the story with no other motive than to tell the Truth.Until Thompson and his volunteers began digging.And digging.I cannot imagine the thousands of hours spent on this project.

Nate's also got some other really good documentary films on his site,all free for the viewing if your computer will co-operate.Go visit him,and thank him too.

The right wing has made it impossible to discuss the darkness at the heart of our nation today openly,without fear of retribution,intimidation,or even physical harm.If we can't even talk about what's wrong without fighting,lying and ad hominem attacks,we will never,ever be able to identify and fix what is broken.We must not let them do this anymore,not if we expect to survive as a country.IMO,that is one of THE most insideous things today's conservative"movement"has done.We must look into the activities and backrounds of those in power,so we can decide if the people in charge of the world are people of character and strength or criminals,murderers and cowards.We simply must be allowed to have that choice and decide if the costs of what our country does(or doesn't do) is too great to us,and to others.Democracy cannot survive without this,and right now,that's going away faster and faster with every hour we stand silent.

Lessons

Olbermann at Ground Zero last night:

...

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation.
There is, its symbolism - of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.
The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it ... was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.
Those who did not belong to his party - tabled that.
Those who doubted the mechanics of his election - ignored that.
Those who wondered of his qualifications - forgot that.
History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government, by its critics.
It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation's wounds, but to take political advantage.
Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.
The President - and those around him - did that.

...

When those who dissent are told time and time again - as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus - that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American ...
When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have "forgotten the lessons of 9/11" ... look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:
Who has left this hole in the ground?
We have not forgotten, Mr. President.
You have.
May this country forgive you.

The entire transcript, of course, at Crooks & Liars.

Personally, I'm not in a forgiving mood. When dealing with this President and his minions, I'm looking toward vengeance.

Primary Day in NY

Polls open in 45 minutes. Get out there and pick your candidates, dammit.

And an aside: We'll be getting our 100,000th visitor sometime in the next week. Yes, I realize Atrios and Kos get more hits than that in half a day, but for a buncha folks who all have lives and jobs far removed from the profession of journalism, I think it's pretty good. My great thanks to my blog partners past and present, without whom the Brain wouldn't be half the blog it is.

Free parting gift: If I can figure out who our 100,000th visitor is, I'll send you a signed copy of my latest novel Technocracy, which can be used as a doorstop, paperweight, or as a form of home protection (hit somebody with it, you'll see what I mean).

Gordon

Heh ... They named one after the old man.



That's how you know you've made it.

Alterman canned by MSNBC

9/11: America attacked twice

It would be impossible to do justice here to the legacy of 9/11 at year five and I'm not going to try. This nation was doubly cursed on this day five years ago; first by the attack itself, and second by the reaction of our dishonest, incompetent and corrupt leadership's exploitation of it for their own naked political and ideological purposes. As every single global poll during the past four years indicates, we are a less admirable nation than we were five years ago. We are more warlike, more arrogant, more ignorant, less compassionate, less generous, less free, and thanks to the Bush administration's catastrophic invasion of Iraq, far less safe.

P.S., I'm Fired...

He'll soon be at Media Matters. Good.

Some things never change...

Go see Mickey Mouse presents the Reichstag fire. Watch it for a minute or so. The captions change.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Blair Leaving, Won't Say When
Hasn't received instructions from Bush.

House Panel: Intel on Iran Weak
But good enough to warrant preemptive nuclear strike, says Cheney.

Senate Report: Saddam Had No Ties to Al Qaeda
But he was close to Rumsfeld.

Republicans Concerned Spy Agencies Playing Down Iran Threat
Fear voters not sufficiently scared.

CORRECTION

We reported that President Bush had referred to busting the Miami terrorist plot as a great success. In fact, FBI informants provided the money, video cameras, plans, warehouse, cellphones, targets, a van and the Al Queda "swearing in" ceremonies, while the captured terrorists provided only the marijuana, so Bush must have been referring to the great success of busting some other terrorist plot. We apologize for any confusion caused by our mistake.

In the old days, you brought the weed, the cops brought the money, and you were busted. Later, the cops brought the weed, you brought the money, and you were busted. Nowadays, the cops bring the weed and the money, and you're busted. Sometimes the cops bust other cops this way. They all have guns, so sometimes it's funny.

Five Years After 9/11, Drop the War Metaphor

A guest editorial at BuzzFlash. Two 'must reads' in one day. Amazing. Must be an election year.

The war metaphor was chosen for political reasons. First and foremost, it was chosen for the domestic political reasons. The war metaphor defined war as the only way to defend the nation. From within the war metaphor, being against war as a response was to be unpatriotic, to be against defending the nation. The war metaphor put progressives on the defensive. Once the war metaphor took hold, any refusal to grant the president full authority to conduct the war would open progressives in Congress to the charge of being unpatriotic, unwilling to defend America, defeatist. And once the military went into battle, the war metaphor created a new reality that reinforced the metaphor.

Once adopted, the war metaphor allowed the president to assume war powers, which made him politically immune from serious criticism and gave him extraordinary domestic power to carry the agenda of the radical right: Power to shift money and resources away from social needs and to the military and related industries. Power to override environmental safeguards on the grounds of military need. Power to set up a domestic surveillance system to spy on our citizens and to intimidate political enemies. Power over political discussion, since war trumps all other topics. In short, power to reshape America to the vision of the radical right - with no end date.

9/11 was a crime - a crime against humanity - and terrorism is best dealt with as crime on an international level.

It is time to toss the war metaphor into the garbage can.

Bush is an occupation president, not a war president, and his war powers should be immediately rescinded. Rep. Lynn Woolsey's resolution to do just that (H.R. 5875) should be taken seriously and made the subject of national debate.

Finally, openly discussing the war metaphor as a metaphor would raise the question of the domestic effect of giving the president war powers, and the fact that the Bush administration has shamelessly exploited 9/11 to achieve the political goals of the radical right - with all the disasters that has brought to our country. It would allow us to name right-wing ideology, to spell it out, look at its effects, and to see what awful things it has done, is doing, and threatens to keep on doing. The blame for what has gone wrong in Iraq, in New Orleans, in our economy, and throughout the country at large should be placed squarely where it belongs - on right-wing ideology that calls itself "conservative" but mocks real American values (my em).

Metaphors cannot be seen or touched, but they create massive effects, and political intimidation is one such effect. It is time for political courage and political realism. It is time to end the political intimidation of the war metaphor and the terror it has loosed on America.

I couldn't have put it better myself. Go read the rest.

Cheney's influence waning

Good. The last paragraph of a three-page article in WaPo:

Mr. Cheney maintains that what matters now is convincing the country that it is really at war and that defeat is not an option. And at 65, he seems willing to wait for his vindication. As Mr. Cheney recently told NBC, "History will decide how I did."

It already has, motherfucker. Hopefully it won't be too long before the Devil collects on your deal with him.

Promises not kept. Duh.

Paul Krugman via Welcome to Pottersville, with an intro by Jurassicpork:

Still, when you consider the Bush family's cozy corporate relationship with the bin Ladens, you'd think the appearance of impropriety and conflcit of interest alone, if not because of the 3000 innocent lives taken five years ago today, would've given the Bush administration incentive to capture Osama bin Laden long before now.

But I'll let Paul Krugman have his say...

And so he does.

Five years ago, the nation rallied around a president who promised vengeance against those responsible for the atrocity of 9/11. Yet Osama bin Laden is still alive and at large. His trail, The Washington Post reports, has gone "stone cold." Osama and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, are evidently secure enough in their hideaway that they can taunt us with professional-quality videos.

Meanwhile, much of Afghanistan has fallen back under the control of drug-dealing warlords and of the Taliban, which sheltered Al Qaeda before it was driven from Kabul. [...]

The path to this strategic defeat began with the failure to capture or kill bin Laden. Never mind the anti-Clinton hit piece, produced for ABC by a friend of Rush Limbaugh; there never was a clear shot at Osama before 9/11, let alone one rejected by Clinton officials. But there was a clear shot in December 2001, when Al Qaeda's leader was trapped in the caves of Tora Bora. He made his escape because the Pentagon refused to use American ground troops to cut him off.

At the same time, the administration balked at giving the new regime in Kabul the support it needed. As he often does, Mr. Bush said the right things: the history of conflict in Afghanistan, he declared in April 2002, has been "one of initial success, followed by long years of floundering and ultimate failure. We're not going to repeat that mistake."

But he proceeded to do just that, neglecting Afghanistan in ways that foreshadowed the future calamity in Iraq. During the first 18 months after the Taliban were driven from power, the U.S.-led coalition provided no peacekeeping troops outside the capital city. Economic aid, in a destitute nation shattered by war, was minimal in the crucial first year, when the new government was trying to build legitimacy. And the result was the floundering and failure we see today.

But Iraq doesn't explain it all. Even though the Bush administration was secretly planning another war in early 2002, it could still have spared some troops to provide security and allocated more money to help the Karzai government. As in the case of planning for postwar Iraq, however, Bush officials apparently refused even to consider the possibility that things wouldn't go exactly the way they hoped.

These days most agonizing about the state of America's foreign policy is focused, understandably, on the new enemies we've made in Iraq. But let's not forget that the perpetrators of 9/11 are still at large, five years later, and that they have re-established a large safe haven.

The first 'comment' is killer:

Yeah: a large safe haven bunkered in Maryland, run by the Vice President.

If this administration ever kept one of its promises other than the ones it's made to rich people, it might give me a heart attack out of sheer surprise. I'm in no danger.

The Day That Changed Everything Wasn't 9/11

Today's 'must read', from TomDispatch. As always when reading Tom, take a lunch.

When, back in the 1960s, Senator J. William Fulbright wrote of "the arrogance of power" as a defining trait of America's leaders, few in power took him seriously. So many years later, the question is: Do our present arrogant leaders have the faintest idea how limited their powers really are? As Ira Chernus, author of Monsters To Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin, suggests below, on this fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks, the leadership of an increasingly cornered empire continues to put its emphasis not just on striking back, but on striking first... and wherever. This is the most dangerous, the most blinding and fearful legacy of the 9/11 attacks. In the long run, it threatens a world in rubble. Tom

Yes, it changed everything -- not September 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers collapsed, but November 9, 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell and left the U.S. at sea, drifting without an enemy in a strange new world.

The neoconservatives understand all this perfectly well -- and well before September 11, 2001. For years, they had dreamed of preserving American virtue (and American global dominance) by flaunting American military might. They just needed an ongoing series of excuses to do the flaunting. The attacks of 9/11 gave them their chance.

Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and Condoleezza Rice (all products of the Cold War era) said it clearly in the weeks following the attack. Their new war would not be a straightforward World War II-style march to victory. It would be more like… well, the war they knew, the Cold War, with its endless string of conflicts, crises, containments, and battles in the frontier lands of what used to be called the Third World. And it would be forever.

Here's the irony. Unlike the nuclear-armed Soviet Union in the Cold War years, terrorists cannot actually threaten to obliterate our country or destroy the planet. But each apocalyptic warning of war to the death by the Bush administration only hastens another kind of loss -- the loss of the American imperial power they so prize.

This is the vicious circle from Hell. The Bush administration's aggressive policies weaken U.S. power. Then its officials try to frighten the public into supporting the very same aggressive policies. We were stuck in a similar cycle, only half-recognized, throughout the Cold War years, and there's no end in sight. So far, it looks like not much has changed at all since 9/11.

Already, there is a growing awareness that the Bush Global War on Terror is doing more harm than good. Even from the foreign policy elite we can hear (though still often faintly) voices saying it's time to call it off. For now, the talk is narrowly focused on our imperial well-being -- the weakening of U.S. power and interests around the world.

Perhaps, as losses mount, Americans will eventually see the more important truth: Simplistic moralism and a pervasive fear of apocalyptic disaster weaken our society here at home. They make every step toward positive change look like a looming danger and that plays right into the hands of conservatives who are dedicated to preventing the change we need so badly. If the failed war on terror eventually teaches us this lesson, 9/11 will turn out to be the day that did indeed change everything.

To paraphrase Monsieur de Tocqueville, "America is great because she is good. When she stops being good, she will cease to be great."

We're well on our way to being neither unless we get rid of this administration and their neocon enablers. We need to re-invent ourselves in the realization that we live on this planet with neighbors, good and bad both. We don't own it. That is the true 'generational' battle.

Quote of the Day

From the ground in Baghdad:

As things stand, many 4-23 members say the sweeps are no more than a temporary fix. Some argue that the aim is only to make Iraq look good before the Nov. 7 U.S. elections - "fighting for the House of Representatives," as Sgt. Brian Patton describes it. [my em]

Tip o' the Brain to Xan.

9/11

[I think I might have posted this before. It's a letter my wife wrote to my family in Germany a few days after 9/11, recounting her experience and to get it down as some sort of record:]

14 September 2001


I wanted to tell you what has happened here, from my vantage point. This is not to scare you, but to let you know what I have been through and that I have made it out ok.

My office is directly across the street from the World Trade Center. As Birgit [my cousin who'd visited NYC 6 weeks before] may have told you, my office faces the Trade Center, and the Towers are the only thing I truly see from there. If you have seen any of the local maps, they refer to the World Financial Center and the American Express and Merrill Lynch Buildings. My office was on the 44th floor of the Merrill Lynch Building.

I arrived at work at 06:40 hours and was preparing to leave the office at 09:15 with two co-workers to visit a client in New Jersey. We were to have left the building at 09:15 to get the car to drive there. At 08:45, the office was quiet as not everyone had arrived for the day. We heard, what I thought was the sonic boom of a military plane. [Fixer] and I had heard the same sound on one of our cruises when a Coast Guard plane "buzzed" the ship. The next thing after the boom, the building shook. Since all of our windows faced the towers, someone began to cry out, "My God, the plane is going to hit the Tower". Everyone raced to the windows to open the remaining blinds and I was no exception. I watched, in horror as the tail end of the first plane disappeared into the North Tower. At the same time it was disappearing, pieces of the fuselage were falling out of the plane while a huge fireball was coming out of the opposite side. We all stood there for about 45 seconds in total disbelief, thinking this was not real and rather a stunt for a movie script. At this time, I still was unaware the plane was a commercial jet and not a military plane. We believed this was a "freak accident".

My Vice President (the big boss of the department) was of sound mind enough to call out for everyone to evacuate the office. I grabbed my things and ran out, following my co workers through the suite of our office space. We considered this an emergency and walked down the entire 44 floors of the building, only to reach street level, almost directly under the burning North Tower. It appeared to me that my company were the only ones on the stairs. We have over 225 people working for the company, and with everyone coming out at the same time, the exit area was getting crowded. We had some people who had heart conditions. We tried to help them as much as possible down the stairs and out of the building.

We kept moving outside, to allow everyone an area to exit the building. While walking outside, I started to see pieces of the burning building floating down, seeming like a feather, until it impacted the street, and exploded like fireballs on the pavement.

I passed two people, who had apparently been pedestrians on the street, who were struck by burning debris. They were burned so badly, their bones were exposed. They were burned almost beyond recognition.

After being on street level, not more than 2-3 minutes, I kept saying , "We shouldn't be here. We are too close to the area." Just after I said this, I heard the second sonic boom, and the second plane impacted the South Tower, and debris again began to rain down on us. At this time, I was certain we were under attack by terrorists. All of this transpired in just 18 minutes.

We ran through my office building towards the Hudson River, on the West side of "downtown" Manhattan. I kept my wits together enough to know we had to continue to get away, moving North of the area. People were in a panic and many of us knew people who worked in the towers. One of the girls who worked in my accounting department had a boyfriend who worked in the Tower, apparently on the floor that was struck first. She was paralyzed with horror.

In the midst of all the confusion, I was able to locate my two immediate bosses. We stayed together and continued to walk North and away from the area. We continued about 15-20 blocks on foot as there were no vehicles to be seen with the exception of emergency vehicles.

We soon saw a taxi cab, that was locked with the driver standing by and watching with horror of his own. We were able to convince him to drive us to Penn Station. We were trying to get on a train to get out of the City as soon as possible.

It took us a long time driving, but we made it to Penn Station by 9:40. I made my way inside and called [Fixer] to tell him I was alive. It was now 0945. People were in a daze trying to figure out what was going on. No one that was in the Midtown area knew exactly what was happening, but they knew it was not good.

There was a train scheduled to leave Penn Station for my home at 10:15. My Manager and I were able to get on the train. We were packed into the train with no room, all hoping against hope to get out of the City.

At 10:30, an announcement was made that the train was cancelled; Penn Station was closed; and we would have to exit the train and get out of Penn Station, only to have to go out on the streets of New York City.

I was trapped in a City under attack, with no hopes of getting home in the immediate future.

My boss and I started walking away from Penn Station in case it was the next to be hit. We were also only two blocks away from the Empire State Building. We feared this may be the next target.

[Rumors were running rampant in the hours following the attack and if you listened to the news, bombs were going off everywhere ~ F]

There was no traffic in the streets because the City had effectively been closed. It was surreal to walk in the streets of New York City with no sounds of cars, trucks, busses or overhead planes. People were wandering aimlessly, walking in the middle of the major streets of NYC, without knowing what to do or where to go.

We made our way to 42nd street, and watched, on the large exterior televisions as the Towers collapsed.

All businesses and stores had closed by this time; however; there had been people working on construction sites who had radios on. They allowed us to listen to the news. We walked a little further and stopped by a truck who was stopped with his door open allowing us to listen to a bit more of the news as we continued to walk on.

We attempted to find a hotel to stay in, however, there were none to be found, nor did I really want to think about spending the night in the City.

After wandering for hours, we were told that one of the bridges leading out of the City and towards home would be opened to pedestrians. This was on the East side of town, and "uptown" from where we were. We continued to walk towards the bridge among the masses of people just wandering. We were on a "mission" to get home and out of the City, no matter how far we had to walk.

After a while, we were now at 53rd Street and 3rd Avenue, almost on the East River, and at the midpoint of the island. The subways began working again and we were among the first to get on and get safely out of Manhattan. It took another few hours before I finally made it home at 16:30.

We have remained in the house for the past few days, glued to the television, trying to get as much news about what is happening as possible. The death toll is expected to rise to almost 10,000, if not more. Entire companies of 1500 people or more have been lost. We have no information whether my building, which is considered to be in "ground zero", will ever be able accessible again or not. Telephones are sporadic coming into and out of NY. We are awake now, Friday, since 05:30.

There have been several arrests overnight, where they believe there were three different groups, attempting to get on planes out of Kennedy airport and LaGuardia airport in NY, who were going to try to do more damage.

The World Trade Center was truly a world in itself. There were businesses from at least 15 different countries who had companies and people in the Towers. Japan had 31 companies, most of which were clients of my company. Deutsche Bank had offices there and 4 German nationals are confirmed dead with numerous others listed as currently missing.

What you see on television, if you have been watching, is nothing compared to having been there. It still seems like a bad dream, however, it is not. I have had a lot of pain in my legs from all of the stairs I walked down, and all of the additional walking, however, I sit here and say, "thank goodness I am here to feel the pain".

The people of New York and the surrounding states have pulled together for the rescue efforts. We will get past this and we will come back bigger and better than we were, once we have had the opportunity to grieve and heal.

I wanted you to know that I am ok. That is all for now.

We send our love to you all.

[As you can see, not long after New York's blackest day, we, and I speak for most NYers, were already looking to the future. We are an irrepressable bunch and as history has proven, 5 years later we are back in stride, back to our old form. I am proud, honored, and privileged to call myself a born and bred New Yorker and will be until I die, regardless of where I choose to live. ~ Fixer]

So ...

The question arises. How close are the Disney execs and the Bush family?

And just an aside, the WiFi project I put on hold when the Mrs. went into Sloan 6 months ago became a reality yesterday. As I sit at the kitchen counter, keeping the Mrs. company while she cooks an excellent dinner, I wonder how I lived without it.

Lies

And why I try not to. Once you compulsively lie, you blur the distinction between them and truth; they become interchangable. Since I won't link to the Powertools, I'll steal the quote from TBogg:

First the Senate Democrats browbeat a television network into changing a program so it won't reflect badly on a Democratic administration. Then a Senate committee puts out a report that airbrushes history, leaving out the most important evidence of links between Iraq and al Qaeda, for the sole purpose of making a Republican administration look bad. I think it's really important to work hard to get a Republican majority in the Senate, so the Dems won't be able to pull stunts like these! [my em]

...

You can't make this shit up.

Update:

And speaking of lies*:

...

The release of the Phase II report, incomplete as it may be, at least serves to remind the American people of one thing: that this is an administration addicted to lies, one that is unwilling (perhaps unable?) to wean itself off the propaganda it has pushing for the last three years...

*Tip o' the Brain to Atrios.

Sunday Fun

I've been kinda discouraged as of late,personally,and just as a citizen overall.I don't feel inspired to do much,my energy is reallllly low.

Which means it's time for a little fun.A diversion or two,just to recharge.Sooo,let's see what I can pull out of my bag o'tricks on a lazy Sunday afternoon.

Kat Von D is a tattoo artist,currently featured on the TLC series Miami Ink on the TeeVee. Kat is cool,I LOVE her work.Tattoo artists don't get enough credit for being artists in their own right,and what's remarkable about Kat is that she's only in her early 20's,she's not even reached a peak in her development as an artist yet.And she's better than alot of the men in this male dominated field. Her specialty is portraits and pin up girls.I am SO getting one of her t-shirts.Click through her site to the gallery pages,it's worth a few minutes of your time.

As I've mentioned before,we've been in the process of remodelling our house for the better part of the last 7 yrs,and my job has mostly been clean up,but I also have done most of the interior re-designing and decorating.Which for me means paint and painting techniques.Jan Dressler Stencils are expensive,but the large stencil kits for murals are FANTASTIC.Her dead tree catalog is also full of ideas if you're looking to paint a room.Her techniques are almost idiot proof,anyone who can hold a paintbrush or a rag can do them.

Then there's looking to the heavens for inspiration.

Aric McBay's site,In the Wake, looks at life if the grid were to crash,ala a post industrial/technological /post peak oil crash. The site is all about living off the grid,basic survival,practical stuff.Yeah it's a tad"radical"(or alot,depending on how you define "radical"),but practical info is practical info.Ya never know when such things will come in handy.Whether you agree with the politics/philosophy or not,this site is impeccably researched.A couple years ago I had some correspondance with Aric,he's one of the good guys.

One Spirit is a sponsorship program I have been part of for several years now(it used to be called Spirit Rising).The focus of this organization is Lakota families,especially children, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in southern South Dakota,our poorest citizens who have been isolated and forgotten.My personal experience has been wonderful,I've become quite close to my sponsored child's mom over the years,though we've never met in person.She's a love-and one of the bravest people I know.You send no money(though there are organizations within One Spirit that do take cash for things like heating oil in winter and other projects),you're matched to a child,and you send them stuff a few times a year.I made a commitment to sponsor a child thru high school,it's a long term thing to me.If the program seems like it's your cuppa tea and you have questions,please feel free to email me(we also need to discuss reality on the rez and certain key points of cultural respect in the items you choose to send a sponsored child or family) at gardenspirit1 at hotmail dot com. Please consider helping,you'll be doing a lot of good,even if you can only do a little.This is really great bunch of volunteers doing really good work in an area with very trying circumstances.

Seeds of Change is an organic gardening supply site I like alot.They have tons of varieties of heirloom seeds,some varieties having a history going back to the beginnings of America and earlier.It's amazing how much diversity there is just in vegetables,stuff we never see in supermarkets.Seed Savers Exchange is another way cool resource too.I've spent many an afternoon lost in the dead tree version of their catalog.I've found varieties my great grandparents used to grow on their farm when I was but a wee child.

Happy Sunday All.

The Happiest Place on Earth?

Go see 10,000 Monkeys and a Camera. Be sure to see it all.

Whatever Happened to the America of 9/12?

Frank Rich looks at where we were 5 years ago and, more importantly, where we are headed today. Via Rozius.

At the National Cathedral prayer service on Sept. 14, 2001, President Bush found just the apt phrase to describe this phenomenon: "Today we feel what Franklin Roosevelt called 'the warm courage of national unity.' This is the unity of every faith and every background. It has joined together political parties in both houses of Congress." What's more, he added, 'this unity against terror is now extending across the world."

The destruction of that unity, both in this nation and in the world, is as much a cause for mourning on the fifth anniversary as the attack itself. As we can't forget the dead of 9/11, we can't forget how the only good thing that came out of that horror, that unity, was smothered in its cradle.

This selfish agenda was there from the very start. As we now know from many firsthand accounts, a cadre from Mr. Bush's war cabinet was already busily hyping nonexistent links between Iraq and the Qaeda attacks. The presidential press secretary, Ari Fleischer, condemned Bill Maher's irreverent comic response to 9/11 by reminding 'all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. "Fear itself - the fear that paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance," as F.D.R. had it - was already being wielded as a weapon against Americans by their own government.

Less than a month after 9/11, the president was making good on his promise of "no sacrifice whatsoever." Speaking in Washington about how it was 'the time to be wise' and 'the time to act,' he declared, 'We need for there to be more tax cuts.' Before long the G.O.P. would be selling 9/11 photos of the president on Air Force One to campaign donors and the White House would be featuring flag-draped remains of the 9/11 dead in political ads.

And so here we are five years later. Fearmongering remains unceasing. So do tax cuts. So does the war against a country that did not attack us on 9/11. We have moved on, but no one can argue that we have moved ahead.

I think it could be argued that we have moved backwards under this pretender to the presidency. Recovery from 9/11 was a day at the beach compared to what it will take to recover from him.

Quote of the Day

Visual today, via the wonderful, and real smart, PZ Myers:



Update:

Had to add this one from Jeff Huber:

... Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his kiss-up generals have screwed up the war on terror so badly that Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz combined couldn't fix their foibles...

Shades of yesteryear

Dr. Cole:

The McClatchy News Service has cast doubt on the numbers of killed in Baghdad for August as announced by the US military. The report finds that the "count" of declining "murders" in Baghdad for August had been intended to exclude victims of suicide bombings and mortar attacks!

Some may conclude that since the US miltiary is not making any real progress in stopping the civil war, they have now begun attempting to manipulate the numbers.

...

Yeah, Iraq is going swimmingly and there's no reason to leave. Hell, we lost 58,000 troops in Vietnam, right? We're nowhere near that yet. The U.S. government did the same thing with enemy body counts, except in reverse, 40 years ago and that war dragged on until '75. I was born after Vietnam began (my boss Harry enlisted in the Air Force 3 weeks before I was born) and I was 13 when we finally left Saigon. I do not remember a day in my youth when the nightly news did not have reports from the war zone; U.S casualties for the day and the enemy's dead.

There will be another generation of American children who will have the background of war as a constant in their lives for a long time and many will have an empty seat at the dinner table as a result.

So much for the Good Old Days.

November.

Typical

When all else fails, hide behind your kids. Rethugs have no shame, no principles, and no grasp of the term 'responsibility'.

Selective stupid

The eloquent Driftglass:

...

43%.

Bush isn't the problem. Cheney isn't the problem. Rummy isn't the problem.

The 43% of our fellow citizens who are this stupid? This fucking stupid? This fucking, Quikrete headed, Limbaugh-gobbling, Christalopithecan stupid?

They're the problem.

And mind you, piglump stupid as they are, they are also very selectively stupid.

These are, after all, many of the same human stinkweeds on the lawn of Liberty that followed every nuance, haircut and semicolon of William Jefferson Clinton for eight years with the fastidious obsession of an astronomer mapping a newly discovered solar system.

...

The reason they follow the Chimp blindly down the road to Hell is because they can't admit to themselves they were stupid enough to vote for the asshole ... twice.

Sorry, Mickey ...

But the long weekend Mrs. F and I were gonna spend at Disney World next spring is getting switched to Paris, or a B&B somewhere on the Hudson, or Las Vegas, or maybe even Sedona, but it'll be a long time (like when Lucifer starts shopping at the Burlington Coat Factory) before I patronize one of your properties again.

Yes, Disney/ABC will go ahead and run their right wing propaganda tomorrow night and Monday, no matter that the FBI backed away from it a year ago, and no matter that its director admits it is his version of events, a version that is targeted at Clinton. Folks, Disney has too much invested politically and corporately to back away from this now. The only response is to hold Disney, your local ABC affiliate, and those who support right wing propaganda on public airwaves accountable for fascism, because that is exactly what this is.

...

I presume others are of the same mind.

Update (Sunday):

Tristero @ Digby's:

I assume someone will collect and publish the list of commercials for show 2 - show 1 being broadcast without ads. I for one will take that list very seriously. Any sponsor whose products I can avoid, I will, and those that [I] can't will hear from me. [my em]

And from Blondie:

Daily Dave*

Mejias Press Secretary Gabby Adler sent me this dispatch via email on Labor Day:

FARMINGDALE - Dave Mejias, Democratic candidate for Congress in New York's 3rd Congressional District, observes Labor Day by calling for a national commitment to working families. As a Nassau County Legislator, Dave Mejias has championed labor issues; his record is in sharp contrast to his opponent Peter King's record. Mejias believes a national commitment to labor in this country is necessary for a national minimum wage increase, continued workplace safety and the protection of Social Security.

"I have stood up for hard working families, and it's time Washington does the same," said Mejias. "Peter King and George Bush have turned their backs on hard working people. Instead of increasing the minimum wage, making health care affordable, maintaining workplace safety codes and securing social security they have given tax cuts to the wealthiest and special breaks to corporations making it harder for working families to make ends meet."

Peter King's voting record proves he has turned his back on working families:

• King voted YES on HR 653, which resulted in nearly $40 billion in spending cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, student aid, child support enforcement and other working family programs.

• King votes YES on HR 3010, which would have cut critical funds for job training and employment services, college aid, elementary and secondary education programs and rural health funding.

• King voted YES on HR 525, which would exempt health plans from state consumer protection rules and offer minimal health plans to younger workers.

• King and the Republican controlled Congress have prevented an increase in the minimum wage for over 9 years. Under current law, a full time worker earning minimum wage in the United States makes $10,700 a year, almost $6,000 below the poverty line for a family of three.

• King supports of the Bush plan to privatize Social Security (The New York Sun, 3/14/05)

Dave Mejias has the voting record to match his rhetoric. Mejias authored legislation to protect the rights of domestic workers, voted for the living wage bill that increased the minimum wage to $9.50 an hour for workers doing business with Nassau County, and fought to eliminate gender based pay inequity for 911 operators in Nassau County. Mejias earned the State AFL-CIO endorsement last month in the 3^rd Congressional race; it was the first the AFL-CIO had ever endorsed King's opponent.

And the Wall Street Journal, can you believe it, thinks Eliot Spitzer's presumed gubernatorial win and Hillary's efforts can soften up traditionally Rethug seats like Peter King's in NY-03.

Vote for Dave Mejias in November. Do you live in NY-03?

Dave for America

Dave's ActBlue page.

And remember, we're also highlighting House races throughout the country. Drop me an email if you know of one you'd like us to post on. See who we've highlighted so far.

*Not so daily lately because my offline life has been nuts.

Quote of the Day

Watertiger:

FUCK YOU, CHRISTIE TODD WHITMAN and your bosses in Washington, D.C.

The American Dream

Today's 'must read' is to go listen to George Carlin.

"It's a big club. And you ain't in it."

DHS Investigates Palast

I always hear rumors last, but when I do hear one, I put it out as if I heard it first...

Yes, the rumor's true. Greg Palast is facing a criminal complaint from the Department of Homeland Security stemming from his filming the Hurricane Katrina investigation for Link TV and Democracy Now. The film's producer, Matt Pascarella, is also facing the legal wrath of Big Brother.

It appears the complaint is about filming a sensitive national security site owned by Exxon petroleum. It seems that photographing major Bush donors is now a federal offense.

Reached at an undisclosed location, Palast says, "Let's not get over-excited. They haven't measured us for our orange suits yet."

Take it from one who knows, Greg: they're pretty much "one size fits all". The latest trend is for old-fashioned lookin' black-and-white striped outfits, which is plenty enough reason fer this ol' squatty-body to stay on the straight 'n narrow. I don't mind being locked up, but they doesn't hafta make me look fat!

During questioning by Homeland Security, Palast asked, "Hey, aren't you supposed to be looking for Osama? Or for guys with exploding shoes? ... We're journalists." At Palast's request, Homeland Security confirmed that Louisiana is, indeed, still part of the USA but did not respond when asked if the First Amendment applies there.

They probably don't even know what the First Amendment is. They just know it's a felony to tell the truth about this administration.

Priorities

This is probably an old joke, but Sumo tells it well:

Four U.S. Presidents get caught up in a tornado...and off they whirled to the Land of Oz.

Better yet, click here and scroll down to it. She has good 'toons and commentary.

Sharpen them canines, boys...

National Journal

This is how it goes lately between the White House and the press corps -- constant sniping and gibes, a battle fought largely between the lines. "You guys are a bunch of negative, nattering, pro-terrorist pinkos." "Oh yeah? Well you're gonna lose big-time in November."

Nobody says it exactly this way, but if you had a magic decoder ring and pointed it at the daily news cycle, that would be the translation.

So let's assume the latest oracular visions are correct and the GOP suffers a major defeat, something approaching if not matching the stunning Democratic losses of 1994. That would be the political equivalent of an earthquake. But would it have any implications for the media? Would it change the dynamic between the Bush team and the journalists who cover them?

A November defeat for the Republicans will change everything. If Bush suffers a major political setback, the media will feel freed up to tear into this war as they have never done before. Again, it will not be a conscious, orchestrated decision -- there will be no covert meeting at which senior editors and producers conspire to declare Iraq an epic failure. But the pack will change direction, as it always does when it smells blood.

Journalists are dumb beasts in the main, but they have sharp teeth and there are a lot of them.

If ever an administration needed to be "catastrophically deconstructed" by a pack of snarling, previously whimpering curs who were beaten into submission, it's this one.

November.

Malice + Incompetence = Bush & Rummy's Criminal War

Kos

One of the questions that constantly comes up in looking at the myriad snafus the Bush Administration has unleashed is this: incompetence or malice? (And yes, I know, "both" is a distinct possibility.) This story furnishes some powerful ammunition for the malice alternative.

[...]

"Then, just as we were barely into Afghanistan Rumsfeld came and told us to get ready for Iraq."

Scheid said he remembers everyone thinking, "My gosh, we're in the middle of Afghanistan, how can we possibly be doing two at one time? How can we pull this off? It's just going to be too much."
...
"The secretary of defense continued to push on us that everything we write in our plan has to be the idea that we are going to go in, we're going to take out the regime, and then we're going to leave," Scheid said. "We won't stay."

Scheid said the planners continued to try "to write what was called Phase 4," or the piece of the plan that included post-invasion operations like security, stability and reconstruction.

Even if the troops didn't stay, "at least we have to plan for it," Scheid said.

"I remember the secretary of defense saying that he would fire the next person that said that," Scheid said. "We would not do planning for Phase 4 operations, which would require all those additional troops that people talk about today.

"He said we will not do that because the American public will not back us if they think we are going over there for a long war."

The Iraq clusterfuck is by design. Making a plan and not telling us would have been one thing. They're good at not telling us stuff anyway.

Knowing they needed a plan, but not making one so we wouldn't find out as part of a P.R. plan to lie us into an unnecessary war is positively criminal. Past criminal. I don't even have a word for it.

I'm beyond "get a rope". We need four ropes for each one of these criminal bastards. Four ropes attached to four Humvees going in four directions.

Good work ...

For greedy Wall Street weenies who usually don't want to part with a dime:

On September 7, 2006, New York Downtown Hospital will open The Lehman Brothers Emergency Center, a new state-of-the-art emergency facility serving all of Downtown New York. This project is critically important because Downtown Hospital is the only hospital in Lower Manhattan. It is the first responder to virtually every medical emergency in the area, providing life-saving medical care for 33,000 emergency patients each year and responds to approximately 5,000 ambulance dispatches annually.

...

The project, which will cost approximately $25 million, was made possible by a $5 million gift from The Lehman Brothers Foundation. Additional funds were raised through the support of many generous donors, including The New York Stock Exchange, The Starr Foundation, The Bank of New York, AIG, and JP Morgan Chase, each of which donated $1 million or more to the project. The Hospital is working diligently to raise the last $4 million needed for this critical project.

...

I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt on their reasons for doing it. A lot of those folks wouldn't be alive were it not for NY Downtown, their incredible staff, and the miracles they performed on 9/11. The hospital is a fixture in NYC, serving the Lower Manhattan for over a century and a half.

...

The Hospital's first incarnation, The New York Infirmary, was founded in 1853 by a medical and social pioneer determined to provide care for the impoverished women and children of Lower Manhattan. The pioneer was Elizabeth Blackwell, M.D., the first female physician in the United States.

...

They let him live.

This idiot swore he wouldn't be taken alive. Were I the New York State Troopers chasing him down, I would have granted his wish. Would have saved me and my neighbors a nice chunk of tax money.

(Carroll, New York - WABC, September 8, 2006) - After a very tense stand off, the newest man on the FBI's Most Wanted List surrendered peacefully on Friday night.

Ralph "Bucky" Phillips is accused of a violent crime spree -- shooting three New York state troopers and killing one of them -- after escaping from prison.

...

His confidence tonight was his downfall. When unarmed and surrounded on all sides, he put his hands up and gave in.

...

This guy should have a 10mm entrance wound between the eyes. What a waste of my good air. One of the reasons I'm not a cop.

Bucky ... heh ... grown man ... called Bucky ... heh ...

Know what?

There's something that pisses me off much more than anything the Chimp can do. Well, it's part of the same problem. Little men asserting what little power they do have by beating on their women. Motherfuckers.

A word of advice to you lowlife assholes. If you have the urge to pop your girl and I'm walking by at the time, you'll be eating the rest of your meals through your ass with a straw. If you want to beat on somebody, try taking a poke at me. I'll give you an education in 'anger management'.

PSM

Pauly's put all his book reviews in one place. Great if you're like me and don't have time to read shit but the newspapers and blogs.

Is it getting warm?

My boss Harry is a diver. He'd better watch his ass:

GARDEN CITY, N.Y., Sept. 8 (UPI) -- Scientists are investigating how a flamboyant tropical fish native to the Pacific Ocean is surviving in the chilly waters off New York's Long Island.

...

Todd R. Gardner, a biologist at Atlantis Marine World aquarium in Riverhead, N.Y., discovered lionfish were spawning in the Atlantic five years ago when he found one clinging to a dock piling by Fire Island. The Times said Gardner has been studying them since then along with biologist Paula Whitfield of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

...

But there's no such thing as global warming. Just ask the Long Island lobstermen how their catch has been the last few years.

9/11

You have to read the whole thing. I think most New Yorkers feel this way.

...

I don't watch any documentaries or movies about 9/11. I don't watch the ceremonies. I cringe every cloudless, perfect day, a day New Yorkers call a 9/11 day.

...

Let me explain something: they buried the last firefighter from 9/11 last year. They found a bone or two with his DNA.

...

Then the year of newspaper articles on a funeral. Seven days a week, for a year. And some girl wonders why she can't "share" in this? Share? There is nothing to share. There is grief, a sense of loss, and an understanding which you can never share. Any more than I can share what happened on Omaha Beach. I can understand, but it wasn't my friends dying there.

You want to understand 9/11, buy a fucking book and leave people to their memories. [my em]

That's why, as a New Yorker and a veteran, it makes me so angry when they use us to justify thousands of deaths in this misbegotten and illegal war, both American and Iraqi. If we are to somehow get retribution, how about the guys who planned and executed 9/11 and are still running around, now with their own production company it seems?

Quote of the Day

Daytona Beach News Journal via Maru, little Tyler Radkey:

...

"His face just started to turn red," said Tyler, now 13 and in seventh grade. "I thought, personally, he had to go to the bathroom."

For a puzzling seven minutes, the youngsters read aloud from the story "The Pet Goat" while the shaken president followed along in front of the class, trying to come to grips with what he had been told -- that a second plane had just hit the World Trade Center and the nation was under terrorist attack. [my em]

...

Your Chickenshit-in-Chief. So obvious a little kid can see it. So what the fuck is wrong with the idiots who still support the Chimp?

My Internet connection sucked monkey ass this morning before work for some reason. No I haven't fallen off the Earth completely.

Ah-nold steps on his schnitzel

LATimes

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger today apologized for saying the lone Latina Republican lawmaker in California had a "very hot," fiery personality because of her ethnicity, a comment captured on audio tape last spring in his private office.

The governor made his apology in Santa Monica standing next to Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia (R-Cathedral City), the lawmaker Schwarzenegger and his chief of staff discussed. Garcia's parents were from Puerto Rico.

On the recording, Schwarzenegger describes Republican legislators as the "wild bunch" and, referring to Garcia, casually says that "black blood" mixed with "Latino blood" equals "hot."

"I mean, they are all very hot," the governor says on the audio recording. "They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it."

Garcia said there was no need for Schwarzenegger to apologize.

Ms. Garcia is a nice lookin' gal for a Republican, and, hey, mo' hottah, mo' bettah, but ya doesn't wanna get caught sayin' shit like that even if it is true!

Gotta go now. Time for my daily Spanish lesson.

Si así es el infierno, ¡¡que me lleve el diablo!!
This is when you see a sizzling hot babe walking by. "If hell's like that, let the devil take me there"

Adios.

'Bin Laden to the rescue'

The Carpetbagger Report has a good summation of thoughts on the latest 'Vote for us or die' Rove-spin:

As you've probably heard by now, Al-Jazeera TV obtained and began broadcasting a new video yesterday afternoon with previously unseen footage of Osama bin Laden meeting with the top planners of the Sept. 11 attacks. It prompted similar responses from some of my favorite writers.

For example, The New Republic's Michael Crowley wrote, "Given the White House's current strategy to divert attention away from Iraq and back to Osama bin Laden and 9/11, this new al Qaeda video is bizarrely in sync with Karl Rove's election-season game plan. It's especially weird when you recall that bin Laden's 11th-hour video in October 2004 may have cost John Kerry the election (something I know certain of his staffers believe). I'm not suggesting any actual coordination here, something that seems almost too obvious to say. But in a weird way, you can argue that bin Laden has become a kind of political ally for George W. Bush."

Similarly, Josh Marshall added, "So al Qaida - or what's left of it - releases a five-plus year old tape of bin Laden with two of the 9/11 hijackers as well as Ramzi Binalshibh, one of the baddies just transfered to Gitmo. Right in time for the president's big kangaroo court role out. If you didn't know that bin Laden and Bush were the two polar opposites in the global battle between good and evil, you'd think the two were coordinating their media blitzes."

And Ezra Klein noted, "bin Laden seems perfectly content to release a new tape moments before each election. It's understood truth that the tighter terrorism's grip on the national agenda, the brighter the fortunes of the Republican Party. And yet bin Laden, whom the RNC would like you to believe blanches at the mere mention of their name, routinely plays deus ex machina each time their electoral outlook dims. To believe that bin Laden, whose network is largely online and reportedly sophisticated, cannot call up the New York Times and comprehend this electoral dynamic is the height of foolishness. So, for whatever reason, he appears intent on doing his enthusiastic best to improve the Republicans' prospects. Strange, given their belief that he fears them so."

I have to say, it warms the heart to know that my cynicism is shared by reasonable, levelheaded writers at widely respected outlets...

I have to say, it warms the heart to know that my cynicism is shared by reasonable, levelheaded writers at widely respected outlets...

As always, it's just a little too pat.

Army shuns system to combat RPGs

MSNBC

Rocket-propelled grenades, or RPGs, are a favorite weapon of insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are cheap, easy to use and deadly.

Sixteen months ago, commanders in Iraq began asking the Pentagon for a new system to counter RPGs and other anti-tank weapons.

Last year, a special Pentagon unit thought it found a solution in Israel - a high-tech system that shoots RPGs out of the sky. But in a five-month exclusive investigation, NBC News has learned from Pentagon sources that that help for U.S. troops is now in serious jeopardy.

The system is called "Trophy," and it is designed to fit on top of tanks and other armored vehicles like the Stryker now in use in Iraq.

Trophy works by scanning all directions and automatically detecting when an RPG is launched. The system then fires an interceptor - traveling hundreds of miles a minute - that destroys the RPG safely away from the vehicle.

The Israeli military, which recently lost a number of tanks and troops to RPGs, is rushing to deploy the system.

And officials with the Pentagon"s Office of Force Transformation (OFT) agree. Created in 2001 by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, OFT acts as an internal "think tank" for the Pentagon and is supposed to take a more entrepreneurial - and thereby less bureaucratic - approach to weapons procurement and other defense issues, and to get help to troops in the field more quickly. OFT officials subjected Trophy to 30 tests and found that it is "more than 98 percent" effective at killing RPGs.

An official involved with those tests told NBC that Trophy "worked in every case. The only anomaly was that in one test, the Trophy round hit the RPG's tail instead of its head. But according to our test criteria, the system was 30 for 30."

As a result, OFT decided to buy several Trophies - which cost $300,000-$400,000 each - for battlefield trials on Strykers in Iraq next year.

That plan immediately ran into a roadblock: Strong opposition from the U.S. Army. Why? Pentagon sources tell NBC News that the Army brass considers the Israeli system a threat to an Army program to develop an RPG defense system from scratch.

The $70 million contract for that program had been awarded to an Army favorite, Raytheon. Raytheon's contract constitutes a small but important part of the Army's massive modernization program called the Future Combat System (FCS), which has been under fire in Congress on account of ballooning costs and what critics say are unorthodox procurement practices.

Col. Donald Kotchman, who heads the Army's program to develop an RPG defense, acknowledges that Raytheon's system won't be ready for fielding until 2011 at the earliest.

So why would the Army block a solution that might help troops?

"There are some in the Army who would be extremely concerned that if the Trophy system worked, then the Army would have no need to go forward with the Raytheon system and the program might be terminated," says Steven Schooner, who teaches procurement law at both George Washington University and the Army's Judge Advocate General's School.

Trophy's supporters inside the Pentagon are more blunt. As one senior official told NBC News, "This debate has nothing, zero, to do with capability or timeliness. It's about money and politics. You've got a gigantic program [FCS] and contractors with intertwined interests. Trophy was one of the most successful systems we've tested, and yet the Army has ensured that it won't be part of FCS and is now trying to prevent it from being included on the Strykers" that OFT planned to send to Iraq.

Once again, the troops are getting screwed and will die for corporate profit and future fat jobs for lifer pricks.

Maybe the kids who are in the 8th grade now will get the weapon when it's their turn in the meat grinder of Iraq.

This makes me so mad I can't see straight.

Remember

9/11: Press for Truth

A Nation Remembers...

Fiore

Remember.

November.

No. 1 or not, "out of the box" is a good thing at his age...

Straight from Cursor:

The successful debut of "Modern Times" makes Bob Dylan "the oldest living person to go straight into the chart at number one" -- aided by an edgy TV ad and a dead poet -- but 'That's Not Bob Dylan!'

Speaking as a certified genuine Olde Farte (Lctp!)and one who has purchased Modern Times, I'm glad to see Dylan doing good. It's a good album.

The main difference between old folks' concerts and young folks' concerts is that at our concerts we throw Depends up on stage. Throwing our underwear is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention.

November '06, WWIII, and the end of the United States

Robert Parry at Consortiumnews.

As Americans go to the polls in two months, they should have one thought fixed in their minds: they will be voting on whether to commit the nation to fighting World War III against large segments of the world's one billion Muslims. Beyond the cost in blood and treasure, this war will mean the end of the United States as a democratic Republic.

The failure to trap or kill bin Laden at Tora Bora might rank as one of modern history's worst military blunders. But in his Sept. 5 speech, Bush instead cited other historical failures - what he called missed opportunities to eliminate Lenin and Hitler when they were living in obscurity and writing about their improbable dreams of power.

What Bush appears to be advocating is the end of free speech and free thought, or at least the regulation and punishment of speech and thought that he disdains. Bush is extending his concept of "preemptive war" - launching attacks against countries that might present a future threat to the United States - to "preemptive thought control," eliminating political opponents who might pose some future threat.

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibits the U.S. government from criminalizing speech. But Bush is indicating that he and his political followers believe that, amid the "war on terror," it is justifiable to do just that.

As Bush defines domestic criticism of his war's costs "in finances and casualties" as part of a terrorist scheme, it's not hard to imagine how Bush's devoted followers will react. Any expression of concern that Bush is charting a course toward mad destruction will be attacked as somehow acting in concert with terrorists.

Though Bush has said that his goal in waging his vague and seemingly endless "war on terror" is to defend freedom, the reality behind Bush's grim vision is the emergence of an American totalitarianism where objectionable thought will be repressed and dissent will be equated with treason.

The President has now made clear that he wants the Nov. 7 congressional elections to be a referendum on whether Americans will follow him into this dark future.

He must be stopped.

November.

The American Legion

Like Commander Huber, they've been bugging me to join. Not any time soon:

Every six months or so the American Legion sends me a letter asking why I haven't joined yet. Last week, at its annual convention in Salt Lake City, Utah, the Legion answered its own question.

It's bad enough that the Bush administration abuses its authority at every opportunity to use active duty troops as a Leni Riefenstahl style backdrop for its political rallies. The military, constitutionally under young Mister Bush's command, has no other choice but to play along. But for a so-called "veterans' service organization" to volunteer itself as a wall in the neoconservative GOP echo chamber is a particularly offensive piece of Rovewellianism.

...

I'm not one for clubs in general. I got a deal with the exclusivity thing (to me, the reason for most 'clubs' existence is to exclude a certain type of person), but that's just me. As for the American Legion, I won't be a member of something that's just another arm of the White House Propaganda Machine, I don't give a fuck what they do for veterans.

...

One of the best examples of the Legion's adherence to the Karl Rove propaganda playbook is its Resolution 169 titled "The War on Terrorism: A Guide to Building Public Awareness" that the Legion adopted during its 2005 convention in Hawaii.

...

Proposition 169 acknowledges the right of war protestors to speak out, but admonishes them to limit their activities to things like writing letters to their local newspapers, e-mailing their representatives in Congress, and voting against political candidates whose stances on the war they find objectionable. In other words, anyone who disagrees with the administration's policies and war strategies should feel free to voice their opinions as long as they do so in a way that no one can hear them.

And that fed directly into Donald Rumsfeld's speech at the 2006 Legion convention in Salt Lake City, Utah, where he accused Iraq War critics of "moral" and "intellectual" confusion.

...

Want to help vets? Help vets and don't take sides. Don't play politics. Use your influence in a bipartisan attempt to get more funding for the VA and vets' services. I won't support an organization that supports war criminals.

Wild horses* ...

Couldn't drag me away ...

Give your elected reps a call or drop 'em an email**. Granny, in toto:

Congress votes on the horse slaughter ban tomorrow [That would be today. - F]. What will they do? On one hand we have a couple of businesses raking in the dough, on the other, 65% [o]f the population opposes horse slaughter.

Oh what will they do?

Backstory here.

*Apologies to Mick and the boys.
**Use the handy form in the left sidebar in the 'Complaint Department' section.

Quote of the Day

Our pal Creature*:

How is it possible that 2 in 5 Americans still support Bush's handling of international affairs? FOX News Channel.

Over the past 6 years, I've pretty much lost faith in the intelligence and common sense of my fellow Americans. We're a nation of morons and chickenshits. To wit**:

MIAMI, Sept. 5 -- Shunned by party leaders and battered by repeated campaign controversies, Rep. Katherine Harris nonetheless held on to enough support from the state's Republican voters Tuesday to win Florida's Senate primary convincingly over three little-known candidates.

...

*Go see the cartoon.
**Link thanks to Lambert.

Sorry

Sorry about my sporadic posting and commenting lately. There's been a lot going on in my non-online world. Namely business (we've gotten really busy at the shop and I've been working late) and personal things (a very dear friend is dealing with some serious medical problems) and getting ready to be at sea for 2 1/2 weeks at the end of the month. Hopefully things are going to mellow out soon. God I can't wait for this vacation.

This Want Ad Says It All

Z's Ominous Psyops Blog

MORTUARY AFFAIRS/ LOGISTICS ASST.
Two PT temp contractor positions at Dover AFB Port Mortuary (13+/hr. thru 8/18/05). Provide logistics-related support services as members of a Serco, Inc. team of employees working for the US Army Casualty and Memorial Affairs Operations Center. Principal duties include the cleaning, sanitizing, repairing, and preparing for storage and/or reutilization the aluminum "transfer cases" that are used to transport to the Dover Port Mortuary the remains of deceased members of the US Armed Forces. HS diploma. Reliable self-starter with respect/compassion for deceased military members and families. Military and/or funeral home experience a plus.

No doubt a burgeoning field.

Serco is also a contract military recruiter.

Comin' in or goin' out, they get a check.

Bush is the Bitch

MoDo via Tennessee Guerilla Women:

W. and Katie were both on TV at 6:30 last night, trying to prove they were a man.

Katie won, by a whisker.

Heh. Go read.

Charlie Brown Update

Go read Charlie's post at Kos:

Hawkish Members of Congress who never served one day in uniform (like my opponent John Doolittle) like to equate speaking out against the mistakes and missteps of this Administration on matters of national security with "not supporting the troops." Exhibit A is Doolittle's most recent column on the subject.

Like his "stay the course" colleagues, Doolittle's hopeless strategy here is to try and distract voters from his hypocritical record on the subject by smearing his opponents. Unfortunately, no amount of taxpayer funded campaign mailers will change the fact that he voted to send our troops to war in Iraq without a plan, proper equipment, or sound intelligence. It won't change the growing tensions in Iran, North Korea, Afghanistan, Lebanon, and elsewhere that have occurred under John Doolittle's watch. And it certainly won't change the fact that he had the second worst record in the entire House of Representatives on Veterans issues in the 109th Congress (per Disabled American Veterans).

Near the close of my 26 year Air Force career, I served two rotations coordinating surveillance flights over Iraq's "No Fly Zones" (mid 1990's). I attended the General's briefings every morning, spoke with intelligence officers, and we regularly discussed what we would target if we went to war with Iraq the next day. As I've reported on many occasions, no one was worried about WMD during those times, because we knew those programs had been shut down.

Accordingly, I spoke out early and often against the false assertions used to justify the U.S. led invasion of Iraq. Now that we are there, I've consistently called for a timetable for re-deploying our troops elsewhere, turning over authority to Iraqis, and reducing the suspicion of occupation that is fueling insurgent violence and civil war. And, I support an immediate end to the "make it up as we go along" security strategy that has so dangerously isolated our country from the allies around the world that are needed to win a Global War on Terror. Most importantly, I recognize that when it comes to keeping our promise to veterans, the true measure of leadership is performance--not empty rhetoric. And the only acceptable result is "no one left behind."

"No one left behind" except Doolittle in CA-04, that is.

Charlie Brown for Congress

Veterans For Peace

Go watch this video, then check out Veterans For Peace.

God ... heh

This is why I am so anti-religion; all religion. Since the beginning of recorded history, more people have been killed, more lives destroyed, and more atrocities committed in the name of God than for any other reason. It is also obvious the people who are supposedly charged with spreading God's message are the ones usually responsible for committing the sins they so loudly rail against.

...

A woman in the group soon told a sheriff's deputy horrific stories of how the compound's leaders had molested girls as part of religious ceremonies during which they were told their bodies were being prepared for "service to God."

...

Fuck the lot of 'em. You don't have to believe in God to be a good person and wrapping yourself in the cloak of religiosity doesn't make you one. As they say in my neighborhood, 'bullshit walks'. Prove you're a good person by your deeds. Words mean nothing. Throw whatever holy book you read from away and do what's right. You shouldn't need a book or a preacher to explain it to you.

Our 'friends'

The Paks, who have received billions in U.S. anti-terror aid, who have done more to increase illegal nuclear proliferation than any 'rogue state', and who are the ones who built Iran's new hard water nuclear reactor, don't feel the need to police the worlds largest terror breeding gorund:

...

Q. ABC News: So, he wouldn't be taken into custody? He would stay there?

A. Gen. Sultan: No, as long as one is staying like a peaceful citizen, one would not be taken into custody. One has to stay like a peaceful citizen and not allowed to participate in any kind of terrorist activity.

...

Former White House counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, an ABC News consultant, said "What this means is that the Taliban and al Queida leadership have effectively carved out a sanctuary inside Pakistan."

...

The Paks are also pulling out of Waziristan so the Taliban and al-Qaeda will have a place to plot, plan, and connive in relative sanctuary. So tell me again how we're going to bring the people who killed 3000 of my friends and neighbors (and nearly my wife) to justice?

And who says the terrorists didn't win? The leadership of this nation are nothing but greedy war criminals and the Paks are their accomplices.

Cheney bio

I got turned onto a little light entertainment by our pal Lurch.

An excerpt from Rising Hegemon

Dick takes time off from school, working for an electrical company as a lineman. However, in reality, Dick is listening in on phone conversations involving the Kennedy Administration. Later that Year, Dick visits Hollywood and gets a job as Marilyn Monroe's housekeeper going by the name "Eunice".

Dick and his High School Sweetheart Lynne begin sending each other letters and gifts. Lynne sends Dick the heart of a local farmhand, Dick sends Lynne the pelvic bone of a vagrant who's flesh he had boiled away. Their co-dependency grows stronger. On Valentine's Day 1963 Dick sends Lynne a letter that reveals the poet in Dick Cheney's soul:

'Eunice' indeed! Please enjoy.

Dems to Bush: Wise up, Fuzznuts

Via HuffPo:

Today top House and Senate Democrats wrote President Bush to urge him to change his Iraq policy. The letter proposed four changes, which included a phased redeployment of US troops, disarming militias and positioning the US Military as a counter-terror force. The democratic leaders also told Bush that "to demonstrate you recognize the problems your policies have created in Iraq and elsewhere -consider changing the civilian leadership at the Defense Department."

The text of the entire letter is included below:

And so it is! Go read.

Rice ups the bar on stupidity

The Carpetbagger Report

Last week, top administration officials, including Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld, equated the war in Iraq with fighting Nazis in World War II. As part of this analogy, the Bush gang made its critics out to be Neville Chamberlain - as if troop redeployment in Iraq is the moral equivalent of appeasing Hitler.

As if that weren't quite offensive enough, Condoleezza Rice has upped the ante a bit, suggesting that opponents of the war are the moral equivalent of those who would tolerate slavery in 19th century America.

[...]

"I'm sure there are people who thought it was a mistake to fight the Civil War to its end and to insist that the emancipation of slaves would hold," Rice said in the new issue of Essence magazine.

"I know there were people who said, 'Why don't we get out of this now, take a peace with the South, but leave the South with slaves?'" Rice said.

Now, I know that Rice, like much of today's Republican Party, is desperate. I realize that this appears to be a challenging campaign cycle for the GOP, and they're willing to engage in whatever demagoguery necessary to survive the next 10 weeks.

But to suggest, out loud, on the record, that critics of the war in Iraq are similar to those who would approve of slavery is perhaps the most breathtakingly stupid remark ever uttered by a Bush administration official. And given the competition, that's no easy feat.

And she's supposed to be the smart one in that outfit!

What's next? Are we to analogized to the people who nailed Jesus up?

I'd rather think of us as analagous to the folks who tried to tell the Skipper of the Titanic to maybe steer a little to the left of the iceberg, and bitched at him while we sank after he didn't.

Propaganda

It was Clinton's fault! It was Clinton's fault!

There's a 9/11 movie to be aired on the Mickey Mouse channel on 9/10 and 9/11 which blames the Clinton administration for 9/11. His Republican congress had a lot to do with his failure as a president. As you will recall, for the past 6 years, everything wrong with the world has been blamed on Clinton. And if I recall, practically nothing could get past Clinton's Republican house at the time unless it was clearly in the best interest of fascists (but not the "Islamo-fascists". You know and I know that EVERYTHING in DC is political. You would have to be blind to not see it.

Let's take a trip down memory lane shall we? When Clinton wanted the executive powers and legislation to fight terrorism 10 years ago, Trent Lott and Orin Hatch didn't want to know about it. They were more interested in going on recess. Why not read the CNN report from July, 30 1996?

...

Who knew the Mouse was a card-carrying Repuke and part of the right wing propaganda machine? This 'docudrama' is nothing more than another way to frame the issue in the Repukes' favor just before Election Day. How many idiots will believe this is unadulterated fact? ABC wouldn't air it if it weren't true, right?

Hel-lo! 6 August is not just the anniversary of the Hiroshima nuking.

Labor Day

Or, what American Dream*?

...

Were that all that Wal-Mart did, of course, the answer would be "nothing." But as business writer Barry Lynn demonstrated in a brilliant essay in the July issue of Harper's, Wal-Mart also exploits its position as the biggest retailer in human history -- 20 percent of all retail transactions in the United States take place at Wal-Marts, Lynn wrote -- to drive down wages and benefits all across the economy. The living standards of supermarket workers have been diminished in the process, but Wal-Mart's reach extends into manufacturing and shipping as well. Thousands of workers have been let go at Kraft, Lynn shows, due to the economies that Wal-Mart forced on the company. Of Wal-Mart's 10 top suppliers in 1994, four have filed bankruptcies.

For the bottom 90 percent of the American workforce, work just doesn't pay, or provide security, as it used to.

...

This nation has turned into Gordon Gekko's Paradise. Benefits? Raise? Vacation? Shut up and get back to work** or find another job. American Dream, my ass.

*Thanks to C&L for the link.
**Thanks to Atrios.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Bush Warns Iran
Threatens it with undermanned invasion, inept occupation, incompetent reconstruction.

Support Grows for Dividing Afghanistan Into 3 Regions
One each for Taliban, warlords, opium farmers.

U.S. Military Puts Out $20 Million Contract for Positive News From Iraq
Having already shelled out $200 billion for negative news.

Be sure to go to page 3 for the Time Chart of WWII v. Bush's War and Occupation of Iraq.

Keepin' us safer ...

Yeah, right. Link via C&L:

Terrorism prosecutions have fallen back to pre-9/11 levels. A new report notes, "In the eight months ending last May, Justice attorneys declined to prosecute more than nine out of every 10 terrorism cases sent to them by the FBI, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies."

... Nearly 4 in 10 of the rejected cases were scrapped because prosecutors found weak or insufficient evidence, no evidence of criminal intent or no evident federal crime ... [my em]

Just sayin'.

New Site Alert

Go see Evil GOP Bastards. Have fun.

Live by the sword ...

Die by the sword.

They Think We're Stupid

So this morning,as I do every weekend(ok it's Monday,and I'm a little behind on chores),I'm changing the feline's litter box.I'm not one to buy fancy cat litter,unless some unbelievably great deal comes along.The grocery store was discontinuing Arm and Hammer clumping cat litter at 60% off,so I picked up a box to blend with the el cheapo clay stuff I usually buy.

On the top of the box,I shit you not,it says:

Safe for use around pets.

Well,I would fucking hope so,seeing as how I buy it FOR the family pets.I personally don't use the litter box,neither do the rest of the humans around here.(and if they were to start,someone would be on the recieving end of my foot in their ass.I'd also assume,that if it's safe for pets,humans should be covered too)

Of course this isn't the first time I've found a ridiculous message sprawled on a common household item.For instance,my curling iron has warnings not to use it while sleeping or bathing/showering.I can't tell you the number of times I personally have done my hair while asleep.And taking a shower while operating an electrical appliance is a sure fire waker upper in the morning,better than coffee or even a double expresso.Damned if I knew you weren't supposed to do either of those things.

Plastic bags are NOT a toy for infants,read it,learn it,live it.

And please,for the love of GOD,don't drink bleach or eat laundry detergent,no matter how hungry or thirsty you find yourself.

This public service announcement has been approved by An Angry Old Broad specifically for you morons out there that can't find your ass in the dark with both hands and a laser beam.

39

It sucks being #2 I guess.

Tip o' the Brain to Pauly.

Election Day

You know Election Day is almost upon us when the price of a gallon of gas drops 15 cents and we get a weekly tape from al-Qaeda.

Honky-tonkin' fer truth

From azcentral.com:

NASHVILLE - The songwriters hunched over hamburgers and sweet iced tea at Brown's Diner allowed that a cut titled I'm Takin' My Country Back by the Honky Tonkers for Truth sounded like a hit to them.

But they don't expect it to get any airplay on country music radio stations, mainly because of lyrics like these:

"And I'm takin' my country back/Boys you ain't been doin' her right/Oh, I've been watching you and I don't like/How you been treating my Stars and Stripes.

"You took our jobs and sent 'em overseas/Now we owe billions to the Red Chinese/You blew the budget and you botched Iraq/So I'm taking my country back."

The song is one of 20 on a CD released online by the Music Row Democrats, an organization of country music songwriters, singers, executives and promoters dedicated to helping oust the Republican majority in Congress in the November elections.

Conservative Christian Right-Wing Republican Straight White American Male is another cut on the CD by Todd Snider, an artist who arrived in Nashville after stops in Austin, Texas, and Atlanta. Or, as Snider describes himself "a tree-huggin,' peace-lovin', pot-smokin', porn-watchin' . . . hippie."

Not your typical county music song or singer.

While conceding that country music is widely perceived as a bastion of conservative politics, the Democratic group claims a membership of about 1,200 in "the industry," including a slew of down-home liberals.

In their mission statement, the Country Music Democrats say their founders "were fed up with feeling as if they had to apologize for being Democrats."

About fuckin' time! It was time to come out of the closet years ago, but I understand about radio airplay and making a living in country music. I'm glad they're doing it at last.

I guess when Hag comes out, the rest of 'em feel it's safe.

When the country DJs, and more importantly, the radio station owners, wise up that their listeners ain't buyin' Bush's bullshit any more, it'll all be over.

On men ... again

Texas Jaye with some words of advice:

...

Remember that the next time, women, you go to bed with someone whose middle name you don't know. And how much fun is it to go to bed and perform sexually for a man who thinks your sole purpose in life is to clean up after him and stroke his ego by being his doormat, trapped in his house, with no credit, no real job, and no way out and no way in your own life.

...

As the Mrs. and I get older, we've noticed more of our friends whom we thought had great marriages are dealing with this problem now that the kids are out of the house. It's the women who are realizing they are the ones who've been doing everything for the last 20-odd years and they've had enough of being a maid, cook, and servant for guys who just want to sit on the couch and watch TV or go play golf.

Note to journalists ...

Or, life imitating art. If you want to learn something, buy this or watch the reruns. Regardless of the schtick, you might pick up something about ethics and principle.