God's Only Party

Go get a Dose of Durst:

Earlier this week, a clandestine cadre of controlling conservative Christian captains (bunch of right-wing religious nut jobs is what I'm getting at) threatened to run from the GOP like ducks from an alligator the size of a Buick if any infidel they don't anoint is nominated for president. And yes, specific former New York City Mayors were mentioned. Funny you should ask.

At a meeting in Salt Lake City, (where else -- you thought Vegas?) Heaven's Soldiers collectively decided they would rather support a burned beyond recognition, duck-billed platypus with wire coat hanger hands than a certain Mr. Rudolph Giuliani. Apparently the Mayor of 9/11 is not the answer to their prayers.

I would keep a close eye on anyone for whom JulieAnnie is the answer to their prayers...

Not only are some dogmatic noses severely out of joint from having the door of implemented policy change slammed in their apostolistic faces, but they also have a few canonistic bones to pick with some of their recent higher profile disciples such as Mark Foley, David Vitter, Larry Craig, and the Creator's own personal mouthpiece, Ted Haggard. Guys whose newsreels feature more extra curricular sexual footage than you'd run into at the Moonlight Bunny Ranch during an after hours party for the Adult Video Awards.

Of course, if they do form a third party, the big question is what to call it? "The Holier Than Thou Party," is a bit put offish. "God's Only Party" would be confusing, especially if the media tried to acronym it. "The Everyone Has to Live Like We Think They Should Live Party" is probably too long. I did come up with the perfect name, but unfortunately, "The Taliban," is already taken.

Enjoy the rest.

The stench of hypocrisy 19

Wonder what the man upstairs will say about this? These are the same people who tell you not to touch yourself 'that way'.

OCTOBER 8--An Alabama minister who died in June of "accidental mechanical asphyxia" was found hogtied and wearing two complete wet suits, including a face mask, diving gloves and slippers, rubberized underwear, and a head mask, according to an autopsy report. Investigators determined that Rev. Gary Aldridge's death was not caused by foul play and that the 51-year-old pastor of Montgomery's Thorington Road Baptist Church was alone in his home at the time he died (while apparently in the midst of some autoerotic undertaking). While the Montgomery Advertiser, which first obtained the autopsy records, reported on Aldridge's two wet suits, the family newspaper chose not to mention what police discovered inside the minister's rubber briefs...

Look, I don't care if you like to get trussed up like a Christmas turkey and violate your orifices with strange objects. If that's what gets ya off, god bless ya, I've seen stranger shit, but the hypocrisy of these people's ravings is unbelievable.

It's easy. Live and let live and nobody will care what you do in private. But don't preach against sexual experimentation and question others' "morality" when you're kinky enough to make a B&D* queen blush.

Looks like God has a sense of humor (or justice) or He wouldn't have let one of His mouthpieces die in a rubber suit with a dildo up his ass.

Off to the shop ...

*Bondage and Discipline, for those uninitiated.

Shit floats ...

To the top ... eventually. When the last Osama video came out, I expressed some reservations about its authenticity.

I'm no forensic engineer, but something strikes me funny about 'then' and 'now'.

Seems a few folks had the same doubts.

...

Osama Bin Laden's widely publicized video address to the American people has a peculiarity that casts serious doubt on its authenticity: the video freezes at about 1 minute and 36 58 seconds, and motion only resumes again at 12:30. The video then freezes again at 14:02 remains frozen until the end. All references to current events, such as the 62nd anniversary of the U.S. atomic bombing of Japan, and Sarkozy and Brown being the leaders of France and the UK, respectively, occur when the video is frozen! The words spoken when the video is in motion contain no references to contemporary events and could have been (and likely were) made before the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

...

A few folks who know what they're looking at:

...

More important though are the edits. At roughly a minute and a half into the video there is a splice; bin Laden shifts from looking at the camera to looking down in less than 1/25th of a second. At 13:13 there is a second, less obvious splice. In all, Krawetz says there are at least six splices in the video. Of these, there are only two live bin Laden segments, the rest of the video composed of still images. The first live section opens the video and ends at 1:56. The second section begins at 12:29 and continues until 14:01. The two live sections appear to be from different recordings "because the desk is closer to the camera in the second section."

...

Are any of us surprised? Anybody not think the tape was 'edited' in the White House basement?

Thanks to Digby for the links.

Witch hunts ...

Yesterday I spoke, and linked to Digby's post, about the smear campaign against the family whose son spoke up about S-CHIP. Today, Ezra looks at the dysfunction of Michelle Fucking Malkin (thanks AOB) and the rest of her rabid followers:

...

It is a blessing and relief that these mobs, as of yet, do nothing more than smear, that the blood they exult in is figurative and the inflicted harm is emotional or occupational. But they are howling, braying, thirsty mobs nonetheless, and their frequent, communal savagings of chosen representatives of their enemies is ugly and unsettling. It's impossible not to wonder when the first one will drive by a house, and then decide to ring the doorbell, and then. Indeed, it's already come damn close.

...

I find 'em looking through my garbage, hiding in my bushes, and harassing my neighbors, they're gonna get a blast of 00-buck to their 'center of mass'. The cops are gonna be wrestling my dog for their rib bones. I don't fuck around when it comes to protecting my family. Been proven more than once. If you send your army of twits to my house, Michelle, make sure they're armed and ready for a fight. They might actually learn what it's like to go to Iraq instead of surfing the Net with their pants around their ankles, trying to smear 12 year olds.

Great thanks to Atrios for pointing this out.

Let's play Cornhole!

I'm NOT making this up. You may shoot me now, I've seen everything.

[...] The four-year-old American Cornhole Association now boasts more than 25,000 "cornholers," ambassadors of the game who have helped take it national, spawning a mockumentary film, an arcade version and tournaments.

Oh yeah, let's follow that circuit. Now there's a dream vacation. Or maybe we'll just go to the arcade...

Oy gevult.

A shitcan fulla 'legacy'

Click. Then watch where you step.

Hopefully, he won't need a ladder to get off that thing. Should be able to step right off a dead elephant. Maybe it'll roll over on him when it croaks. Win-win!

Coup?

He'd be better than the Chimp:

Mikhail Gorbachev drew loud cheers in New Orleans Friday when he promised to lead a local revolution if the Army Corps of Engineers doesn't keep its promise to improve levees by 2011.

"We will be coming back," the Soviet Union's last leader said, through an interpreter, during a ceremony in the Lower Garden District. "If this pledge is not fulfilled, we will start a new revolution in New Orleans."

...

Great thanks to our pal Scout Prime.

State Dem group played hardball to kill GOP election system plan

EssEffChron

Even as Democrats feared having to spend as much as $40 million for a bruising, bloody fight expected to drag on for months, this makeshift group of California Democratic operatives needed just weeks to pummel a Republican-funded push for a ballot measure that threatened to change the outcome of the 2008 presidential election.

The ruthlessly effective battle plan of the California Democrats' group raises the specter that, as the 2008 election looms, Republicans may have to confront a far more aggressive Democratic ground game that has revived the old "Clinton war room" philosophy.

"We need to fight back and not be reluctant - that if they come after you with a knife, to pull out a gun," said California Democratic strategist Chris Lehane, former spokesman for President Bill Clinton's White House and Vice President Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign.

I heartily approve of shootin' 'em in the kneecaps and then jammin' their own knife up their ass! That's just me showing my bleeding-heart compassionate side.

The rest of the article is good, but I'm using it to lead into a personal opinion.

While we decry the Dems' constant caving in to Bush instead of givin' him what for, and rightly so, perhaps they're really onto something.

We elected a very bare majority of Dems, expecting them to fight like the blazes and undo the damage Bush and his Repugs have done. I'm beginning to see that they can't. Not yet. There's not enough of them. Yet.

For the disorganized Dems to take on the highly organized Repugs is somewhat akin to twenty nuns taking on ten Hell's Angels: they outnumber them, but not by enough. The best they can do is to get their asses kicked a little slower until they can get many, many more nuns.

The numbers as they stand aren't enough. Even with the majority, the Dems are up against a formidable enemy. They are backing up a little slower than they were before, but they have to put their resources where they'll do the most good until they can get overwhelming numerical superiority.

That opportunity will come next November. As much as we would like to see the Dems put an end to the Iraq flusterpluck and administration lawlessness in general right fuckin' now, it ain't got a snowball's chance in Hell until then.

The Repugs know they're going to lose big time in election '08. The California case shows the lengths to which they will go to try to get any advantage, along with their tried-and-true election-stealing, caging, voter disenfranchisement, etc., etc. They're damn good at it, and with their backs against the wall, even in a weakened state, they're still damn dangerous.

What is shown by the defeat of the proposed measure in California is that the Dems can get together and fight these bastards when they have to. And win.

It's all about the next election. Even if you're not happy with the Dems, and I'm not and you're not, they are our ONLY CHOICE. Yes, we want change NOW, but it ain't gonna happen. We don't like it, but that's the way it is. Period. If Bush decides not to leave, then it's a whole different ball game, but the way it stands now, we can only affect the change we want with a Democratic President and an OVERWHELMING Democratic majority in the House and Senate. Think of it as 'air superiority' - deny the sky to the enemy and you can bomb and strafe his ground forces at will. it's simply a matter of numbers and raw power, not of ideas.

The way we're going to get it is by putting aside differences on the finer points of philosophy and progressive ideology, and holding our noses and voting Democratic. We can get back to hammering on the Dems once the Repugs are knocked back to insignificance. This will be the Armaggedon of elections, a fight between good and evil, perhaps our last chance. Very simple. The only thing necessary to assure the continued dominance of evil will be to stay away from the polls in disgust or to vote for a third, or fourth, or fifth party candidate that will subtract from the Dems.

We need to come out for the Dems in such numbers that the Repugs can't cheat enough to beat us.

We are not in a position to pick our fights. This fight against the Bush cabal was thrust upon us by bad people, and it is the fight of our lives. And the lives of generations yet to come. We will not win by saying we're too weak to fight back. We win by ganging up on the bad guys. There are enough of us if we pull together.

To complete my metaphor, we need a veritable ocean of habits and wimples and a din of clacking rosary beads to beat the shit out of the bad guys.

GSOP

If ya think I'm on a Paul Krugman tear today, I think yer right. From yesterday's Op-Ed:

Well, I don’t know what true conservatism is, but while doing research for my forthcoming book I spent a lot of time studying the history of the American political movement that calls itself conservatism — and Mr. Bush hasn’t strayed from the path at all. On the contrary, he’s the very model of a modern movement conservative.

How very reassuring...

Above all, people claim to be shocked by the Bush administration’s authoritarianism, its disdain for the rule of law. But a full half-century has passed since The National Review proclaimed that “the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail,” and dismissed as irrelevant objections that might be raised after “consulting a catalogue of the rights of American citizens, born Equal” — presumably a reference to the document known as the Constitution of the United States.

Now, as they survey the wreckage of their cause, conservatives may ask themselves: “Well, how did we get here?” They may tell themselves: “This is not my beautiful Right.” They may ask themselves: “My God, what have we done?”

But their movement is the same as it ever was. And Mr. Bush is movement conservatism’s true, loyal heir.

I just wish I could thank Bush for ruining the Repugs once and for all. That's a good thing. If he coulda just run their end of the ship that is our country up onto the rocks, without making the rest of us swim for it and get beaten bloody, I would.

Early leak of bin Laden video slams doors on intel gathering

I think this is interesting. WaPo

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.

A small number of private intelligence companies compete with SITE in scouring terrorists' networks for information and messages, and some have questioned the company's motives and methods, including the claim that its access to al-Qaeda's network was unique. One competitor, Ben Venzke, founder of IntelCenter, said he questions SITE's decision -- as described by Katz -- to offer the video to White House policymakers rather than quietly share it with intelligence analysts.

I'll go along with that - intelligence analysts don't make things political. It takes our so-called 'policy makers' to do that, and it's instantaneous in this administration.

It seems to me that whoever leaked this prematurely had some kind of ax to grind, whether it was a competing private intel-gathering firm (the notion of which raises questions as to is this the best method of getting the goods on al Qaeda and warning us) who wanted to knock the oppo out of the box, or some ____________ (fill in your choice of government intel-gathering agencies) agent for much the same reasons.

This time, I'm not going to blame the White House. They like privatization. They like collusion better than competition, but that's in the quest for profit and power, which may not apply directly in this instance.

At any rate, this leak sabotaged one intel source when we actually need all we can get. I wonder if we'll hear any more about it.

Krugman Interview

Today's 'MUST READ' and yes, I'm shouting. BuzzFlash interview with Paul Krugman, a mild min with brains and the balls of a lion.

Paul Krugman Has a Conscience, Which Makes Him Contemptible to Republicans Who View Caring About the Needy as a Sign of Weakness

[...] But very, very largely, if you ask how did liberal get to be a bad word, it's the theme that runs through a lot of the book, which is race. Liberal became somebody who was in favor of being permissive towards bad behavior by you-know-who. And that's been a problem. But I think the answer is not to run away from liberal and say, oh, I'm not one of those people. This is being used to distract and exploit working families all across the country of whatever color. So it's both politically impractical and just wrong to run away and say, oh, I'm not one of those liberals, because that's not the problem.

[...] In some sense, the meanness is the message. On the right, there's an almost lethal refusal to consider the problems of suffering of others. [...]

But to just say this isn't true conservatism -- well, this is what conservatism has been in America for over forty years. It may not be what people would like. There are some people who may consider themselves conservative who don't recognize themselves in these people, but this is what the movement is. One of the things that I think is important to say is that we tend to sanitize and romanticize the early members of this movement. So people say, well, Ronald Reagan wasn't like Bush. Actually, he was, a lot. Ronald Reagan was, in fact, a race-baiting, slander-using, perfectly modern movement conservative, way back in the 1960s It's not that there was this idealistic, noble movement that turned mysteriously into what's in the White House right now. It's been the same thing all along. In the book, I talk about the National Review and William Buckley in the 1950s. If you think that there were once these high-minded conservatives who had these good ideas about how we can have freedom, and maybe they're impractical, but they're not bad guys, then go back and read the National Review. You have these pæons of praise for Generalissimo Franco, and others exulting in the continuing ability of white Southerners to disenfranchise their black fellow citizens, with this kind of dismissive reference to a catalog of the rights of American citizens created equal as being about silly stuff. Of course, they're talking about the Constitution. This is what being a conservative in America was, for at least forty years, and maybe half a century.

t's very simple. Southern whites started voting Republican. You can look for other things. There were some other factors going on. There was some other shift in the voting behavior of other groups. But overwhelmingly, it's just that thing. And if you ask, what changed, the answer, of course, is the civil rights movement. The deal with the devil that the New Deal made, where it basically accepted segregation as the price of Southern support, came apart in the Sixties. Instead of something that was put to the side, race became a key way in which the right was able to attract voters who were, in many cases, voting against their economic interests.

Paul Krugman: Well, what Roosevelt wrought was actually bad for you if you were in the top 1% or top 10% of income distribution. It is actually true that the rich got poorer as a result of the New Deal.

BuzzFlash: Or less rich.

Paul Krugman: That's right -- less rich, if you prefer that. At the time, many of them did not appreciate that Roosevelt was maybe hurting their fortunes but saving their heads. As the memory of the crisis fades into the past, people just start to say why should I be paying taxes to support social insurance that I'm never going to need? And, not everybody who's rich takes that attitude, but enough of them do to basically fund their movement.

I could quote the crap out of this interview, as if I haven't already. Go read it.

Are you surprised?

I'm not. The Dems left their spines home once again:

WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 — Two months after insisting that they would roll back broad eavesdropping powers won by the Bush administration, Democrats in Congress appear ready to make concessions that could extend some crucial powers given to the National Security Agency.

Administration officials say they are confident they will win approval of the broadened authority that they secured temporarily in August as Congress rushed toward recess. Some Democratic officials concede that they may not come up with enough votes to stop approval.

...

At this point, I can't find a political party in America that represents me or my values*. Listen to me:

We want Hillary Clinton to have an 'imperial Presidency' as much as we want George W. Bush to have one.

A Dem with that much power is just as bad as a Rethug with that much power.

I want the balance of power between the White House, Congress, and SCOTUS restored. I don't want anyone to have the power the Chimp and Cheney have grabbed for themselves. I want a Congress to be able to put the brakes on a Presidency run amok. I want SCOTUS justices who are not ideologues.

I will not vote for a Democrat who hedges on the subject of Iraq. I want one who says "the troops will come home on January 21st 2009". I will not vote for a Dem who envisions a U.S. presence there in 2013. I will not cast a vote for the Presidency if the Dem candidate is equivocal on this illegal war.

I'm just about fed up with the lot of 'em. The running of this country has degenerated to the point it is no better than a high school student council (and some of them are run better) or a playground pecking order.

Good God! Did we send all of you to Congress just to piss me off or put me over the edge? Wake the fuck up before we don't have an America left. At least not one we recognize.

Update:

*I am a progressive. I am not a 'centrist' and I am certainly not a conservative. I do not believe in compromise with people who think the answer is to return to a Leave it to Beaver or Father Knows Best world that never really existed in the first place and never will exist in the future. I will not compromise with people who want a return to the 'Gilded Age' that brought about the Great Depression. I will not compromise with people who are scared of everything not familiar.

I believe there are some universal constants: The U.S. Constitution and real moral values, practiced without hypocrisy. I do not believe in looking backward aside from learning from our mistakes (we aren't too successful in that department, are we?).

The Future is coming, whether we bury our heads in the sand or not, and I want this nation to be prepared for it, I want this nation to be successful in it and have a leadership role shaping it. This world is overcrowded, poverty runs rampant over a good part of it, our climate is out of whack, and our future will be bleak if we don't address these problems now. Not ignore them, not put them off for a future generation to deal with. Restoring the integrity and credibility of this nation is my first concern and the only way to do that is to extend a hand of friendship across our borders and help those less fortunate enjoy what we have here. I want Americans to have so much more than they do now.

I believe in Humanity.

Compassionate Conservatism ...

2 kids and a house on $45,000/yr, and the Rethugs say they're too rich.

...

This is so loathesome I am literally sick to my stomach. These kids were hurt in a car accident. Their parents could not afford health insurance --- and sure as hell couldn't get it now with a severely handicapped daughter. And these shrieking wingnut jackasses are harassing their family for publicly supporting the program that allowed the kids to get health care. A program, by the way, which a large number of these Republicans support as well.

...

You know why? Because the conservatives' mantra is "all for me and fuck everybody else".

They find money to support 'war for fun' yet heaven forbid we try to help out fellow Americans who can't get insurance for their kids. And if, by chance, they do crack their wallets, they go out of their way to deny the benefits to as many people as possible.

More money has been wasted, stolen, swindled, and embezzled during this administration than in any other. The rich get tax cuts while the rest of us have to support this war and our crumbling infrastructure. We can spend $600 million for an Imperial Palace embassy in Baghdad, yet we can't manage to save a city that was once an American treasure. And if we do spend money to help out our citizens, most of it is stolen and wasted before it gets to those who desperately need it.

"It's over, George"

p m carpenter's commentary

George, listen up. Concentrate. Even your idol, Abe, would now call it quits. He would conclude that though he once had virtually no hope of winning this war, he now has absolutely no hope of winning this war.

That, at least, is what he'd conclude after ripping this morning's headline from the wire: "Top Iraqis Pull Back from Key U.S. Goal" -- followed by a lead that confirms the worst: "For much of this year, the U.S. military strategy in Iraq has sought to reduce violence so that politicians could bring about national reconciliation, but several top Iraqi leaders say they have lost faith in that broad goal."

That's it, George. That's the ballgame. That's all she wrote. There now officially remains not one solitary justification for staying the course, for there is no acceptable course on which to stay. Either Iraq is partitioned, which you oppose, or it settles into a permanent sectarian power structure of brutal ethnic cleansing and minority oppression, which you also claim to oppose. There is no other future, George, no Third Way.

Please note the use of the word 'officially'. The 'official', albeit unspoken but well known justification for this criminal war is and always has been OIL.

And George, Shiite pols, Sunni pols and Kurdish pols are now open about it. To say, as this news piece did, that "some potential progress toward reconciliation has run into recent trouble" is like saying Hitler's '43 Russian campaign hit a bit of a bump in the road. It's over, George, and all the pertinent players are conceding just that.

Since Iraqi pols are leaving no question about the direction of Iraq's future, that leaves us, George, with only one remaining question: How are you going to spin this one? We await your speechwriters' inventiveness, but frankly, even your idol, Abe, would no longer bother.

Go ahead, George, and tell us that we can't leave yet because we didn't steal contractualize all Iraq's oil yet and we wouldn't want all our troops to have died in vain by failing to get it. Go ahead, George, I dare you.

'Massachusetts Values'

Digby:

...

First of all, it's disgusting to hear any of these people, including the "journalists" get away with derisively using the term "Masachusetts values" on television without somebody calling them out for its divisiveness. It is a derogatory right wing talking point. The Larry Craig Republicans should be ashamed of themselves --- the people of Massachusetts were the first in the union whose values translated to full equality for gay people.

...

Personally, when I think of 'Massachusetts values', I think of John Adams, John Hancock, Sam Adams, Paul Revere, etc.

Interrogations

A lot of people have pointed to the WaPo article that came out this weekend highlighting the interrogation techniques of the officers at Ft. Hunt during WW 2:

For six decades, they held their silence.

The group of World War II veterans kept a military code and the decorum of their generation, telling virtually no one of their top-secret work interrogating Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt.

When about two dozen veterans got together yesterday for the first time since the 1940s, many of the proud men lamented the chasm between the way they conducted interrogations during the war and the harsh measures used today in questioning terrorism suspects.

...

Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. Across the river, President Bush defended his administration's methods of detaining and questioning terrorism suspects during an Oval Office appearance.

...

It reminded me of a book I read about 20 years ago called Spy Catcher, written by a retired MI-5 officer who'd done the interrogations of Soviet spy Kim Philby.

When I read it at the time, I was struck by how civilized the interrogations were. No pain, no 'enhanced techniques', mainly talks over dinner. It was amazing the little verbal techniques used to uncover clues Philby did not give willingly, even during the time he protested his innocence quite vociferously, that alerted MI-5 to other spies within the Kingdom.

In those days, interrogation was an art form and the product derived was mostly sound and usable, unlike what people give up under painful questioning only to make the torture stop.

Thanks to the Chimp and the neocons, and their bloodlust, we have given up our humanity for questionable motives and questionable results.

Short and sweet ...

The Grand Dame:

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has no better friends than the spineless Democratic congressional leadership and the party's leading presidential candidates when it comes to his failing Iraq policy.

Those Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people want U.S. troops out of Iraq, especially since Bush still cannot give a credible reason for attacking Iraq after nearly five years of war.

...

Link thanks to Maru @ UL

One day is a fantasy, 80 days are a nightmare

LATimes

SAN DIEGO -- For 85 years young men have been coming here to see if they're tough enough to be Marines.

For the last six years, the Marines have opened up their gates one Saturday morning a year to let the public get a tiny taste of the strenuous process of turning recruits into Marines.


Call it fantasy boot camp, a chance to tackle a miniature version of what recruits do every day for 13 grueling weeks at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot

Sounds like fun, but dollars to donuts they don't treat the one-day-trippers anything like the kids whose names they got on a 4-year contract. And whose asses they fucking own.

Here's a real "fantasy boot camp":



Just like I remember it, ghost of John Wayne and all...

Quote of the Day

Brother Lurch:

...

When fighting insurgents or guerrillas, the moment you kill an innocent civilian you have lost moral superiority, and that is all you have unless you want to fight to the last. You may think (or pretend) that civilian was somehow involved in resistance, but the locals know best, and you’ve just created more resisters.

...

Yo, Chimp - ¡Mas Campesinos AHORA!

LATimes

The administration is quietly relaxing visa regulations because farmworkers are in critically short supply.

"It is important for the farm sector to have access to labor to stay competitive," said White House spokesman Scott Stanzel. "As the southern border has tightened, some producers have a more difficult time finding a workforce, and that is a factor of what is going on today."

The administration has pursued the project discreetly. The issue of immigration has generated friction between President Bush and the conservative wing of the Republican Party, which has strongly opposed many of the initiatives that Bush has pursued.

Go read the rest.

Shorter: The agricultural and other industries have told the Chimp to get more little brown people up here pronto lest the bottom line rots in the fields.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: the closest Bush has come to getting something right was his immigration proposals. The ones for Meskins, that is. Most of his immigration policies, like the one for displaced Iraqis, suck. The irony is that his xenophobic, pants-wetting, racist, drooling retard base wouldn't hear of it. Someone should tell them that the real terrorists come into the country on airliners, and the best dope comes from California or Afghanistan.

Money talks and bullshit walks. Now that the money has spoken, things are happening.

Best Title For A Country Song Ever

"It's Hard To Kiss The Lips At Night That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long" by Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill, and The Notorious Cherry Bombs. Lyrics.

Worth watching for many reasons, not the least of which is getting to see big-time country stars Crowell and Gill in drag. Liquid alert.



Better quality video with embedding disabled here.

We now return to our regular programming...

What I know about Europe ...

Via Atrios, what I know after spending half my life in Europe:

...

Beware of stereotypes based on ideological assumptions. As Europe's economy has surged, it has maintained fairness and equality. Unlike in the United States, with its rampant inequality and lack of universal access to affordable health care and higher education, Europeans have harnessed their economic engine to create wealth that is broadly distributed.

...

Either believe what I tell ya or what the conservatives say, but I'm the one who's retiring to Paris. Be nice if the conservatives who malign 'Old Europe' actually left the U.S. and experienced it. You see ladies in burqas shopping right next to ladies wearing the latest Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, and Donna Karan. It works, unlike this dysfunctional mess we have here.

Update:

Demosthenes (thanks to the lovely Avedon) looks at this too, riffing off the Krugman article Gord linked to the other day:

...

The French's shorter hours would be conducive to greater productivity while they actually are working, and a greater quality of life while they're not. Honestly, aside from a slight hit to GDP--that, in America, principally consists of increased compensation to the already fantastically wealthy and slightly greater pay for those with no time to enjoy it--I honestly fail to see the problem.

Update Zwei:

There's a reason why the dollar is doing so poorly against a currency (the Euro) that, by rights, ought to have been worthless 5 years after its inception.

And, by the way, I thought the U.S. hegemony* would have been accomplished (if you read my books) by a strong dollar as opposed to military might as Bush and the neocons believe. My vision for the future would be Europe and Asia rallying around and accepting the dollar (after the fiscal discipline and growth of the Clinton years, and our 'sole superpower' status) as the 'universal currency'; an economic sphere, as it were, from which a global government (hegemony) would arise sometime (a century or two) in the future. I believed, before Bush gained control, an idealistic sea change in the Mid East and East Asia would come about due to economic pressures, and their entrance into the 'First World', and would signal the beginning of a more progressive direction for the world to take.

Lord, was I wrong. The Chimp managed to fuck it all up.

*I always said I'm more of the king type; progressive but despotic. Heh ...

Beep! Beep! Schwarzewasser comin' through!

Janessa Gans

When the Iraqi government last month demanded the expulsion of Blackwater USA, the private security firm, I had one reaction: It's about time.

As a U.S. official in Baghdad for nearly two years, I was frequently the "beneficiary" of Blackwater's over-the-top zeal. "Just pretend it's a roller coaster," I used to tell myself during trips through downtown Baghdad.

We would careen around corners, jump road dividers, reach speeds in excess of 100 mph and often cross over to the wrong side of the street, oncoming traffic be damned.

One particularly infuriating time, I was in the town of Irbil in northern Iraq, being driven to a meeting with a Kurdish political leader. We were on a narrow stretch of highway with no shoulders and foot-high barriers on both sides. The lead Suburban in our convoy loomed up behind an old, puttering sedan driven by an older man with a young woman and three children.

As we approached at typical breakneck speed, the Blackwater driver honked furiously and motioned to the side, as if they should pull over. The kids in the back seat looked back in horror, mouths agape at the sight of the heavily armored Suburbans driven by large, armed men in dark sunglasses. The poor Iraqi driver frantically searched for a means of escape, but there was none. So the lead Blackwater vehicle smashed heedlessly into the car, pushing it into the barrier. We zoomed by too quickly to notice if anyone was hurt.

Until that point I had never mentioned anything to my drivers about their tactics, but this time I could not contain myself.

"Where do you all expect them to go?" I shrieked. "It was an old guy and a family, for goodness' sake. Was it necessary for them to destroy their poor old car?"

My driver responded impassively: "Ma'am, we've been trained to view anyone as a potential threat. You don't know who they might use as decoys or what the risks are. Terrorists could be disguised as anyone."

"Well, if they weren't terrorists before, they certainly are now!" I retorted. Sulking in my seat, I was stunned by the driver's indifference.

One of these days, and I'm not givin' anybody any ideas since I'm sure they've already thought of this, Iraqi locals, not necessarily organized insurgents but just pissed-off homies, are going to shove a bunch of old cars filled with cement in front of a Blackwater convoy, knowing the lead driver will try to bust through a roadblock at high speed, and let those macho (Spanish for 'mule') thugs run smack dab into the barrier and come to a crumpled halt, like an accordion daisy chain. Then they're gonna out with their household AKs and RPGs and waste 'em all. I can't say I'll blame them. It'll be like a Neighborhood Watch taking their street back from dope dealers and hoods.

If the Iraqi homeboys are smart, and I think they are, they'll then hide their guns, put on big shit-eatin' grins, and sell lemonade to the actual GIs who come to pull what's left of the mercs and their clients' fat out of the fire.

A wide stance, a bag of go-fast, and thou...

KESQ, Palm Springs

The male escort responsible for the downfall of Christian evangelist leader Ted Haggard is now alleging that embattled Senator Larry Craig also came to see him.

True? ¿Quien sabe? Who cares? It's fun!

Where's the profit in compassion for children?

Blow in his ear Click to inflate

Eugene Robinson

To say that George W. Bush spends money like a drunken sailor is to insult every gin-soaked patron of every dockside dive in every dubious port of call. [...]

Having done a modicum of, er, research in that field in a previous life, I like that line!

So for Bush to get religion on fiscal responsibility at this late date is, well, a joke. And for him to make his stand on a measure that would have provided health insurance to needy children is a punch line that hasn't left many Republicans laughing.

That's cuz it ain't funny, Gene. Mean, petulant, and petty, yes. Bush is a sore-headed loser. He really doesn't want to see anybody actually getting anything useful for all the money he throws at Big Biz, Heaven should only forfend! Maybe the little voices he thinks are God told him to do it...

The program Congress voted to expand provides health insurance for children who fall into a perilous gap: Their families make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but don't make enough to afford health insurance. The cost of covering an additional 4 million children was estimated at around $35 billion over five years. That's a lot of money. But in the context of a $13 trillion economy -- and set against Bush's history of devil-may-care, "buy the house another round" spending -- it's chump change.

It's hard for me to get my head around $35B as 'chump change', but in context it is. The Chimp's doing it 'for the children'. They're too young to drink, and he doesn't want them to end up a wet-brained dry drunk like him. Unless, of course, their parents pay the enablers of Big Med. Then they can have all they want until they get too much 'health care' and get cut off. Then they can just fucking die if it affects the bottom line.

Bush's stated reasons for vetoing the SCHIP bill left even reliable congressional allies -- such as Republican Sens. Orrin Hatch of Utah and Charles Grassley of Iowa, both of whom supported the legislation -- sputtering in incomprehension. As for me, I don't know what to call the president's rationale but a pack of flat-out lies (my em).

The president said Congress was trying to "federalize health care," even though the program in question is run by the states. The president said that "I don't want the federal government making decisions for doctors and customers," even though the vetoed bill authorizes no such decisions -- the program enrolls children in private, I repeat, private, health insurance plans.

Bush seems to be upset that Congress didn't adopt his pet idea to tackle the health insurance issue through -- guess what? -- tax breaks. None of the major players on Capitol Hill thought this would work. When the White House persisted, Congress moved ahead on its own.

Hatch said he believed Bush had been given bad advice by his staff. He didn't take the next step and draw what seems to me the obvious conclusion: Either Bush didn't understand the bill he vetoed or he's just being petulant -- with the health of 4 million children at stake.

"I hope the folks at home raise Cain," Hatch said. Oh, I think they will.

I sure hope they do. I think that until this country sees the light, private health insurance should come out of our tax money instead of on top of it.

Bush is scared pissless of 'socialized' health care. As a corporate whore, he should be. When we finally get universal single-payer health coverage for all, the private insurance companies are by and large going in the shitcan and good riddance.

It's coming, trust me. Health care for profit is getting to be an obscene notion and is on its way out. It's way past time we caught up with the world.

I don't think so ...

I don't often disagree with Jane Hamsher, and never enough to do a blog post about it, but I have to say something here because I don't want him let off the hook. Lardass Matthews came out this week and talked about the pressure put on him by the White House (and others) not to criticize Republicans on his Noballs show. Jane gives him credit for being 'courageous'.

...

I understand the knee-jerk reaction is to say “what took you so long” but the fact of the matter is that it’s going to be awfully difficult to unravel this situation unless journalists start speaking up about the strong-arm tactics that have been used on them, fostering Paul Krugman’s climate of “asymmetrical intimidation” (where no penalty is paid for ridiculing Democrats but you get your ass handed to you for saying anything untoward about the GOP). I also think it took more guts, not less to say it in front of the Pale & Male Club who have been the ones engaging in this charming little game that has landed us in the middle of such a toxic journalistic climate.

Of course there will be times when it looks like people are just trying to catch the next wave, but Matthews actually did speak out at the time and told Joe Wilson that Karl Rove had said his wife was “fair game.” I really do think he should be applauded for speaking out here. Hopefully others will follow suit.

...

If Matthews wants applause from me, he could say this shit on his show, something (for now) people pay attention to. Do you think his comments at this shindig will make it anywhere past the lefty blogs? He could come on and say, "I want to report [whatever] but the White House has put pressure on my boss to silence me." He could have resigned and gone public with the reasons why. He certainly doesn't have to fellate every Rethug who appears. If someone told me to compromise my principles to do my job, I wouldn't have that job.

No, Jane, he gets no credit, no applause from me because he was one of the many who looked the other way when his voice could have made a difference when it counted.

Lessons ...

Barry Bonds and other 'role models' could learn something from Marion Jones. So can children who look up to 'people of celebrity'. What this young woman did yesterday was probably the most difficult thing she ever had to do in her life. She stood up and accepted responsibility for her actions. God bless her and I wish her well. This is a good start on the journey to reclaim her credibility and integrity.

Too bad it took until now ...

I had this same epiphany almost 20 years ago, at the time when being Republican was beginning to mean being 'Christian':

...

Screw them. I got out. They can have their party. I will vote for Democrats and little L libertarians and isolationists until the crazy people aren’t running the GOP. The threat of higher taxes in the short term isn’t enough to keep me from voting out crazy people and voting for sane people with whom I merely disagree regarding policy. Hillarycare doesn’t scare me as much as Frank Gaffney having a line to the person with the nuclear football or Dobson and company crafting domestic policy.

...

Link via Greenwald.

Saturday whorage

Saturday means there's another chapter of Thirty Days at Zeta up at The Practical Press.

As always, whore yourself in comments.

Stupid's hard ...

Cliff Schecter:

...

It seems to be a race to the bottom with these cerebrally ill-clad, Abramoffian imbeciles. After Dan Quayle, for obvious reasons (potato-E) they had to search far and wide for a bigger mumbo-brain. They found one in the persecuted personnage of George W. Bush. A guy who has trouble finding an unlocked door after press conferences or chewing pretzels without the White House taster present.

But finding someone even more mentally handicapped this time around was going to be quite a challenge. They had good 'ole country boy George Allen, if by "country boy" you mean a spoiled-brat, rich-kid from Los Angeles who liked to torture his sister. But he too openly hated black people, instead of hiding it among metaphors and code words like the rest of his klan...er, party.

...

Democratic Presidential Candidate Does The Right Thing! Shocking!

BradBlog

A Democrat does the right thing for a change! What are the odds these days? And will it hold?

Senator and Presidential Candidate Barack Obama (D-IL), had recently (and correctly) called on Bush to send up an "acceptable" nominee to the Federal Election Commission (FEC), instead of the anti-Democracy, anti-voter villain Hans von Spakovsky.

"His record of poor management, divisiveness, and inappropriate partisanship makes him an unacceptable nominee to the FEC," Obama had previously said. "I am particularly concerned with his efforts to undermine voting rights at the Civil Rights Division during his tenure at the Department of Justice."

And for a change, we have a Democrat who has decided to put his money where his mouth is! For now.

It only makes sense for Bush to try and install an FEC head that will try to disenfranchise as many Democratic voters as possible to lessen the margin of the upcoming Repug trounce in '08.

It also makes sense that the Dems try to stop it. It's refreshing that an actual candidate, the one for change, did it.

Good on yer, Senator Obama.

"Look at the poor little sick kid! Hahahahaha!"

Paul Krugman on the 'compassion' of conservatives. Shorter: Not. If you're poor or sick, they think it's funny.

Of course, minimizing and mocking the suffering of others is a natural strategy for political figures who advocate lower taxes on the rich and less help for the poor and unlucky. But I believe that the lack of empathy shown by Mr. Limbaugh, Mr. Kristol, and, yes, Mr. Bush is genuine, not feigned.

What’s happening, presumably, is that modern movement conservatism attracts a certain personality type. If you identify with the downtrodden, even a little, you don’t belong. If you think ridicule is an appropriate response to other peoples’ woes, you fit right in.

And Republican disillusionment with Mr. Bush does not appear to signal any change in that regard. On the contrary, the leading candidates for the Republican nomination have gone out of their way to condemn “socialism,” which is G.O.P.-speak for any attempt to help the less fortunate.

So once again, if you’re poor or you’re sick or you don’t have health insurance, remember this: these people think your problems are funny.

I like Mr. Krugman. He speaks great truths in the most polite way I can imagine. If it was left to the boorish likes of me to describe the Repugs' attitude toward everyone but themselves, it would be more on the order of: they're mean, cruel, heartless, greedy, selfish, elitist, clueless, hooray-for-me-and-fuck-you warmongering dickless motherfuckers and suckers of corporate cock who have deluded themselves into thinking they are morally superior because of their own propaganda. The Repug Masters know it's not true of course, but if they ever admitted their own lies and mistakes their house of rotten cards would collapse even more quickly than it's going to very soon anyway.

The party of 'moral values' ...

Is a moral failure. Swopa:

...

When you fail on this scale, it’s not just incompetence — it’s an ongoing betrayal of trust, the abandonment of one moral responsibility after another.

...

That’s why MoveOn.org’s recent campaign on this theme is such a threat to the Republicans; it plants an idea in people’s minds that maybe the GOP doesn’t deserve that aura of morality that they’re always claiming for themselves. And once people are cued to start looking for proof of the Republicans’ moral failure, they’re likely to find more evidence every day.

I don't know how it wasn't obvious to the majority of the population until recently, but I'll be satisfied that most Americans have their eyes open now. The imperative now is getting congressional Dems to do the same thing.

Update:

Speaking of 'moral values', how surprised are you to find out another Rethug has an affinity for public restrooms? Our pal Scout Prime:

...

Early Thursday Republican Joey DiFatta dropped out of the Louisiana State Senate 1st District race claiming he had been having chest pains and "might have had a minor heart attack in the past few days." Tonight the Times Picayune reports DiFatta, (a former member of the Republican State Central Committee--1996-2004), was twice detained for suspicion of lewd conduct in mall restrooms.

...

Times-Picayune link on her post.

Foot, meet bullet...

Radio Iowa quoting Fred Thompson on Iran:

I'm afraid that the Soviet Union & China are not ever going to do anything that's going to hurt them that badly but we need to ratchet those up if at all possible.

While that statement is literally true, yer gonna have to do a helluva lot more than ratchet up the Soviet Union, Einstein!

I guess we should be thankful that a presidential candidate didn't mention that the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Empires ain't likely to be much help either.

I am praying that this moron becomes the Repuglicant nominee.

FNG*

Click to make it even worse

*Fuckin' New Guy

Dippin' the Bishop

I read this at Yahoo!News:

Bishop would deny Communion to Giuliani

ST. LOUIS - Roman Catholic Archbishop Raymond Burke, who made headlines last presidential season by saying he'd refuse Holy Communion to John Kerry, has his eye on Rudy Giuliani this year. Giuliani's response: "Archbishops have a right to their opinion."

Burke, the archbishop of St. Louis, was asked if he would deny Communion to Giuliani or any other presidential candidate who supports abortion rights.

It got me to thinkin' (!!!).

First of all, this clown priest is just looking for publicity. If he'da thought this through, he would realize, if he really believes his own Catholic misinformative oppressive crap, that Giuliani is going to go to Hell anyway just for taking communion. If Giuliani is as good a mackerel snapper as he claims he is, he won't even try. If he takes communion just as a photo-op to show how religious he is, he compounds his 'sin'.

I ain't exactly worried about what happens to JulieAnnie's soul. He ain't got one, near as I can figure.

Now, according to Cat'lick occultism ritual dogma, handed down to keep the faithful in line for centuries, in order to properly cannibalize the transubstantiated Lord by means of the most tasteless little cookie ever devised, your soul has to be in a state of grace, i.e. free of sin. You do this by confessing your sins to a priest, out loud, in person, upon completion of which he makes you pay a small fine in the form of a penance, usually some rote prayers. I can't imagine what sins old Italian and Mexican ladies could commit, but I've seen them flat fuckin' melt their rosaries doing this.

There's a lot of funny jokes about penances, like gargling with holy water to pay off for giving a blow job, but I digress...

Think for a moment of the priest who has to sit, usually on Thursday or Saturday nights, in a small confessional booth, in the dark, and wait for people to come tell him the weirdest shit so he can absolve them. I wonder what politicians confess to? They never tell the truth anyway. Can you imagine listening, to Repugs in particular, tell you about their sins? No wonder these guys are horny for young boys!

The priests know what's going to happen. In preparation, to help avoid the occasion of sin, they should put about forty pounds of ice in the holy water font ahead of time. After they get all worked up listening to the sleazy details of their parishioners' foibles and need a 'cooling-off period', they should take their Standing Bishops and dip them in it.

Come to think of it, the 'weenie shrinker' penance is something the priest and his political parishioner could do together. It would help keep sleazy hypocritical behavior off the streets and in churches and the Capitol where it belongs.

Update:

It's funny how things work sometimes, but I swear I didn't see this article in Time until after I took my my tongue out of my cheek from dashing off the above.

Increasingly, it seems the only thing U.S. Catholics confess these days is that they rarely if ever confess.
...

The fading away of one of Catholicism's best-known traditions has finally gotten alarming enough that bishops have begun turning to modern marketing tools to reverse it.

Any revival effort has a long way to go. Confession has been in steady decline for decades. Reasons range from long-standing doubts about church teachings to the current obsession with public mea culpas that have largely supplanted the confessional booth. [...]

The church's sexual-abuse scandal has also taken its toll. Catholics felt that the bishops--many of them accused of enabling pedophile priests--were arrogantly evading the same kind of penance they demand from their flocks.

I'm glad a big outfit like Time got my point...

...and some priests are even hearing confessions in venues likes shopping malls.

Near Victoria's Secret I hope...

Who says irony is dead? Ha!

National Guard Troops Denied Benefits After Longest Deployment Of Iraq War

WCSH6, Portland, Maine

MINNEAPOLIS, MN (NBC) -- When they came home from Iraq, 2,600 members of the Minnesota National Guard had been deployed longer than any other ground combat unit. The tour lasted 22 months and had been extended as part of President Bush's surge.

1st Lt. Jon Anderson said he never expected to come home to this: A government refusing to pay education benefits he says he should have earned under the GI bill.

"It's pretty much a slap in the face," Anderson said. "I think it was a scheme to save money, personally. I think it was a leadership failure by the senior Washington leadership... once again failing the soldiers."

Anderson's orders, and the orders of 1,161 other Minnesota guard members, were written for 729 days.

Had they been written for 730 days, just one day more, the soldiers would receive those benefits to pay for school.

This is about as chickenshit as it gets. So far. Just when you think the Pentagon has topped out on egregious fucking over of the troops, they never fail to top themselves with a new low.

22 months is a looong overseas deployment for a Regular, let alone for supposedly part time Citizen Soldiers who have left home and career to get participated in the Iraq clusterfuck.

I guess the (Br)asshats feel they need to stiff a couple thousand guys who did their duty out of a few hundred bucks a month so they can pay 'defense' contractors whatever they want. If they bothered to audit Cheneyburton's or Darksmellyliquid's billings, they could come up with the bucks in a New York minute, but nooooo...then there wouldn't be the high-dollar do-nothing jobs for retired Flags.

Minnesota's senators are looking into this. I hope they can do something. All the GIs are being horribly misused by this administration, and we owe them.

"Like fascism, I fear fascism,"

In case you missed it, watch Matthews get his lard ass handed to him:



More commrmtary at Editor & Publisher.

This was worth waiting a decade for.

Heh.

Update:

Kos

Apparently Tweety has a new book about how life is like a political campaign. Stewart committed the ultimate lapse of judgment and read the fucking thing before having Matthews on.

Well the gist of the book, according to Jon (who I tend to trust on such things) is that life is that the way to be successful in life is to be duplicitous and cut-throat, or at least calculating. Instead of playing along with this shit, Jon called him on it.

Tweety was stunned, of course. Visibly shocked that Jon wasn't just glad-handing him. Tweety made a huge tactical mistake and asked him point-blank what he thought of the book. "I thought it was a recipe for sadness."

By the end I think Jon felt badly about it, but he shouldn't. It was great television and great for Tweety to hear.

It didn't hurt me to hear it either. Well, my sides hurt a little bit afterwards.

It wouldn't hurt even a little bit for more of the inside-the-Beltway gasbags to hear more of this stuff, either.

Now I get it ...

Americans are just celebrity whores. TRex made me see the light:

...

Ryan, I am sure you are a very sweet person, but you and your friends need to be a little more discerning about who makes you guys squeal like a bunch of star-struck little girls at a Justin Timberlake concert. Ann Coulter is serving an agenda that’s about as healthy for the gay community as crystal meth.

I’m appalled that a bunch of grown men in a marginalized population would just drop their principles to fawn over that cracked-out basilisk. I don’t care if her private beliefs are vastly different than the toxic spew she emits on television and in her books.

...

The fact she takes diametrically opposed positions privately and publicly is reason enough to dislike her. I don't know about anyone else, but taking money to preach what you don't believe is disgusting as well as hypocritical.

Off to the shop ...

Yeah, what happened?

From the "How I know the Dems aren't serious" Department:

...

Oh, they can hold a vote condemning Moveon's exercise of it's free speech rights (and get it to the floor in record time). That's easy. But actually schedule a vote on contempt of Congress by Bush administration officials whose actions have deliberately obstructed a congressional investigation into the improper and potentially unlawful firing of US Attorneys by the Bush administration, the suborning of the Department of Justice into just another arm of the Republican Party's voter suppression efforts by forcing US Attorneys' to bring phony charges of voter fraud against Democrats, and allegations of potential White House meddling in prosecutions of corruption by Republican lobbyists and lawmakers in an election year? That's an "uphill struggle." Then again, getting the Democrats to use their political capital to actually oppose Congressional Republicans and/or the White House on anything seems like an uphill struggle most days.

...

And the question Steven D asks is one of mine as well:

... Explain to me why I voted for these clowns in 2006. Better yet, tell me again why I should vote for these clowns in 2008? ...

Because they give the Chimp whatever he wants, just like the Rethugs did in the last Congress. The time for talk is over. Shut up and do what we sent you there to do.

Loved by my people ...

Today, my birthday, is a national holiday in Germany. I would like to thank Herr Kohl, Frau Merkel, and the members of the Bundesrat and Bundestag for bestowing such an honor ...

Quote of the Day - Zwei

August:

So just for the record, the "compassionate conservative" has vetoed only four bills in his entire reign as President. Two of them would have helped advance research into life-saving medical procedures. Another would have started bringing troops home from Iraq. This morning, he vetoed a bill that would have given millions of children health coverage.

There is something very disturbing about Bush having such a high standard for vetoing a bill, and that standard being that it might let people live longer and happier lives.

...

Double-secret probation for you, guvnah ...

Seems the Brits are no longer our best friends (2nd Digby link of the day, BTW. I think C&L is the only other with that honor.):

...

The Daily Telegraph reports today that a senior White House official has revoked Britain’s status of being “the closest Bush ally“:

...

The administration isn't getting the kind of doglike devotion they are accustomed to from the British PM so have turned to ... France and Germany.

...

I thought the French sucked?

"...nursing the boils on his ass."

From Digby (a 'recommended read') on the whole Rush deal on 'phony soldiers', a response from Brian McGough on being called a 'suicide bomber':

So, Rush Limbaugh called me a "suicide bomber." More slander from the high and mighty sitting in his chair nursing the boils on his ass. I can assure you that I am no suicide bomber and that I can think for myself.

Rush, your phony soldier comments pissed me off. The audacity of someone like you who never had the courage to stand and fight for what you believe in makes my head spin. That is what made me stand up and state my convictions in front of a camera. I wanted to point out that you are wrong. I am not a phony soldier. I believe that we are not doing the right thing for national security by staying in Iraq. We are putting too much strain on our military by extending tours and not giving people enough time at home to rest. We have taken our eye off of the real Al-Qaeda and let them regroup to their pre-9/11 strength. We have not developed a political system in Iraq that would enable the country to stand on its own.

I stood in the sand, snow, dirt, mud and dust of both Afghanistan and Iraq. I spent over a week on a side of a mountain in Afghanistan during Operation Anaconda. I received The Bronze Star medal for my actions during that battle. I crossed the border into Iraq with the first wave of the 101st Airborne. I sustained an open head injury on the streets of Mosul after a vehicle borne IED exploded next to the vehicle I was riding in. I have seen the aftermath of a real suicide bomber. I had loved ones who died in the 9/11 attacks. I have friends and colleagues who returned from the war in body bags.

How dare you call someone like me a phony soldier and a suicide bomber? In the commercial I just taped, I told you unless you had the guts to say something to my face, stop telling lies about my service. Well you haven’t had the guts to say it to my face, but I am waiting and the offer is still on the table.

Don't hold yer breath, Brian. Limpbaugh ain't got the balls to say it to your face. If he was to get doped up enough to do it, he'd never even feel it when you beat him bloody. I'd love to see it, though.

Quote of the Day

From a review of the song Gypsy Biker on Bruce Springsteen's new album Magic, with a little lead in:

[...] 'Gypsy Biker' is a lament for a friend killed in war, and there's no reason to say it isn't in Iraq--the friend has been sent "over the hill" with the cry "victory for the righteous", and the benefit going to "profiteers" and speculators"--but the wailing rock guitars, and the emotion in Springsteen's wailing voice, reach back 35 years or more. The biker culture that is invoked as the dead man's friends "pulled your cycle up out of the garage and polished up the chrome" (itself a line echoing from an Eighties Springsteen song about a Vietnam vet, 'Shut Out the Light') then burn it in the desert is emblematic of the Vietnam era, though that culture persists to this day. The evocation of domestic turmoil about the war ("This whole town's been rousted / Which side are you on?") is, unfortunately, more redolent of 1970 than 2007.

'Redolent' means 'it smells'. Got that one right. '70 or '07, it fuckin' stinks.

In short, the beloved Gypsy Biker may have been killed in Vietnam, or in Iraq. Being a fictional character, indeed, he may have died in both wars.

Here's the quote:

Either way, "To them that threw you away, you ain't nothing but gone."

Amen.

The Mercenary-Evangelical Complex

MoDo

“He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster,” Nietzsche said. “And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

We’re gazing into the abyss all right, and Blackwater is gazing back.

President Bush continues to preach that we must defeat the “dark ideology” of extremists with “a more hopeful vision.”

But the compromises W. makes to slog on in Iraq, be it with warlords, dictators or out-of-control contractors, are spreading a dark stain on America’s image.

One more stain on the blue dress of Bush's reign.

Americans have been antimercenary since the British sent 30,000 German Hessians after George Washington in the Revolutionary War.

But W. outsourced his presidency to Cheney and Rummy, and Cheney and Rummy went to war on the cheap and outsourced large chunks of the Iraq occupation to Halliburton and Blackwater. The American taxpayer got gouged, and so did the American reputation.

The mercenaries inflame Iraqis even as Gen. David Petraeus tries to win their trust.

How's that goin', General? Better than here, I hope. You fer damn sure have lost our trust.

Once there was the military-industrial complex. Now we have the mercenary-evangelical complex.

Oh fucking swell. Just what we need.

FOX Honkies Rehearse for Harlem Minstrel Show

Tim Hollis, "News from a lunatic-infested dirt clod":

I'll probably get strangled for this, but I just had to crash the final rehearsals this week and they were nothing short of jaw dropping. Commanding the Apollo stage was GOP hack and author of Who's Loofing Out For You? Bill Bleachedwheat O'Reilly belting out all of America's Jim Crow favorites; My White Heaven, Alabamy Bound and I'm Going South, just to name a few. Don Imus was plucked from the audience to be serenaded with Baby Face. Later teaming up with Anne Coulter for a skit entitled ‘Imus ‘N' Annie' (my em) Don was one nappy headed ho.

And folks, you aint heard nothin' yet. Harkening back to a bygone error when racism was all the vogue, FOX pundits pulled out the stops on You Made Me Love You from Honeymoon Express, and in a tribute to Ronald Reagan, Massah's in de Col' Col' Groun' (There IS a God! - G). ‘Aunt Jemima' Rice was swooned by Colin Powell with Condonia (What Make Yo Big Head So Hard).

Just go read the rest...

Interesting Blackwater/Bush Facts

Just Another Blog (From L.A.)

Turns out Joseph Schmitz, COO & general counsel of the Prince Group, Blackwater's parent company, is married to one Lucila Garnica Gallo, Colomba Bush's sister (Jeb Bush's wife). Next on the list: What sort of family are the Garnica Gallos? Well, not the (literally) criminal lawyers George W. likes to help. Señor Garnica appears to have been a migrant worker.

Hit the links. Interesting stuff.

All these Blackwater execs are old line John Birchers, the forerunners of the neocons. The Schmitz guy in particular is apparently a Bush brother-in-law. The whole deal reads like a Bush family neocon daisy chain.

A few sex scandals (family values, you know) and an infamous sister-in-law as well. Have fun.

Big men ...

Chickenshits more like it. While we're on the subject of mastubatory war fantasies today, Glenn Greenwald looks at some of the reasons why, if the whole world were on fire, these clowns still wouldn't be satisfied:

...

Bombing and killing Muslims is the only path for avoiding the humiliating scenarios which our nation's war cheerleaders carry around obsessively in their heads, and which are currently filling my inbox. They're not going to be the ones on their knees, begging. They're not going to be the "faggots." Instead, they are going to send others off to fight and bomb and occupy and kill and thereby show who is strong and tough and feel protected.

...

That is a major reason why -- despite the endless debates and overwhelming public sentiment -- we stay in Iraq (because to leave would be to "lose," to suffer a "humiliating defeat" at the hands of a laughing Al Qaeda), and it is why war with Iran is so appetizing for so many -- we need to show the world who is boss. It is warped psychology masquerading as political belief. And that is why nothing triggers hysteria of the sort in the above-excerpted post more than challenging the notion that it may not actually be necessary to wage Permanent and Endless War on Muslims. Arguing that is virtually tantamount to advocating that our nation's vicarious war cheerleaders be deprived of food, water and oxygen.

...

And I hope all of you realize that once they get done killing all the Muslims, they're gonna look for someone else to eradicate. You see, it's impossible to blame themselves for their own failings and shortcomings, actual or perceived. They will always have the need for someone to blame.

Good thing I didn't compare them to Nazis, eh? (Muslim, Jew, either would work in a pinch, right?) Wouldn't want anyone to think I was trivializing anything.

What's a dead Iraqi worth?

The Rude One, offered without comment except for "read the whole thing":

...

Just imagine: you tell some alcoholic pistol-fellating badass wannabes that they'll get paid a thou a day to drive around Baghdad in Hummers with submachine guns and not only do they not have to follow military code, they can't even be prosecuted for "misfires." Why, they might go batshit crazy with power.

Without getting too much into the shit you can discover by reading Jeremy Scahill's book on Blackwater, its website is filled with tough guy t-shirt bullshit: "When failure is not an option and hope is not enough." It's enough to make your crazy uncle living outside Reno jack off in anticipation of killing some brown people. You may have never gotten to be that Navy SEAL, but Blackwater can make your paramilitary fantasies come true.

...

Figures ...

[A big Brain welcome to Shakes' and Blue Girl's readers.]

Maru found this at that nitwit Drudge:

Mon Oct 01 2007 -- Mr. Kingston submitted the following resolution honoring all Americans serving in the Armed Forces of the United States and commending broadcaster Rush Limbaugh for his relentless efforts to build and maintain troop morale through worldwide radio broadcasts and personal visits to conflict regions. [my em]

...

Please, please, please, let me wake up tomorrow and it will be 2000 and Al Gore won in a landslide ...

Fuck that apartment in Paris ...

I want this!

Thanks to Nicole for the link.

Fun At Auschwitz

Go see this narrated slide show of recently unearthed photos from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and then read Dr. J's Commentary.

That is the basis of the horrors that we observe in the behavior of the German guards at Auschwitz, of Southern townspeople, of American guards at Abu Ghraib, at Japanese soldiers during the Nanking Massacre of 1937: a particular group of humans aren't; they are sub-human and thus can be treated like animals (that is if one is into brutalizing animals). When one government engages in systematic dehumanization of one or more groups of either its own citizens or the citizens of a country with which it has gone to war, "fun at Auschwitz" and "fun at the lynching in the center of town" can happen, all too easily.

But it couldn't happen here again, could it? Nah. Couldn't possibly. We're just too advanced. No one could get away with labeling all of their political opponents as "traitors," as "godless," as "just not like us," as "not Christian and thus not qualified to govern" (and yes, none other than John McCain said that in so many words just the other day [The Progress Report, "Blackout and Brownout," Oct. 1, 2007]), and thus quite possibly somehow less than human. Couldn't happen here, could it. Could it?

It has, and could again. Much too easily.

Support Our Troop

I'm sorta screwin' around so far today. Go see "The Loneliest Icelander".

About This Video

Iceland just had one "troop" on the ground in Iraq, (actually a press aide, not a soldier--Iceland has no standing army), but that didn't stop Bush from counting them as an equal member of his disappearing "coalition."

We aren't hating on you, Icelanders. We're jealous of what you enjoy--a lack of military entanglements, a terrific standard of living, and a genetic predisposition for high cheekbones.

Welcome home.

Hey Rush, STFU

Cold War, anyone?

Haven't heard about one of these in a while. Back when I was in, the Russians (Soviets) used to test our security all the time:

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — Russian warplanes staged at least seven exercises outside U.S. airspace near Alaska this summer, and each time U.S. or Canadian fighter jets were dispatched to escort them, U.S. military officials said Monday.

...

At least five exercises by the Russian Tu-95 Bear heavy bombers have taken place off Alaska's Aleutian Islands and other historic Cold War outposts, such as Cape Lisburne and St. Lawrence Island, according to NORAD records.

All occurred beyond the 12-mile boundary that constitutes U.S. airspace and have involved two to six aircraft. Each time, Russia alerted the U.S. through reports in Russian news agencies, Herritage said.

...

When I was in, we used to make 'pickups and deliveries' of Agency folks working behind the Iron Curtain. We bumped uglies with the Soviets a few times, one particular stand-off between the pilot of the Pave Low II I was in and the guy in a Russian Mi-24 still puckers my ass when I think about it 25 years after the fact and not a shot was fired.

We'd hear the fighter guys talk about 'shadowing the Bears' all the time, serious tension. It was a prick-waving contest at 30,000 feet, and our guys would get close enough to read hand-written notes from the Soviet crews they'd put up against the windows. A lot of "Fuck your Mother" and "American Dog" was countered with American middle fingers. Heh ...

The point of this little trip down memory lane was the fact once again, tensions are escalating between us and the Russians. Cookie Jill, from whom I stole the link, thinks it's because of the anti-missile shield tests we're doing. In addition, I get the feeling Putin feels threatened by our operations in the Middle East (other countries need oil besides us) and the more than doubling in size of the EU, many former Eastern Bloc nations joining the economic partnership or attempting to.

We're worrying a lot of people (not that I'm a big fan of Putin), and the Cold War spawned Korea (we still have troops there 50 years later), Vietnam (and everything that brought with it), and a hundred other little skirmishes no one's ever heard about (South America and the Caribbean). It was the reason for our relationship with al-Qaeda and the reason for our fucked up policy toward Cuba. We don't need another Cold War and all the attendant bullshit attached to it. The only people it will benefit will be the defense contractors.

Thanks to the Chimp and his neo-con pals, nations who used to be friendly with us are now holding us at arm's length and our former enemies are beginning to refortify. The United States has taken under this administration has served to increase tensions all over the world. We have become an international pariah.

Repug Rag on Gen. Betraeus

Pensito Review

American Conservative Mag Mocks Petraeus As ‘Sycophant Savoir’ - Will Congress Condemn It Like They Did the Moveon.org Ad?

Beyond the headline, the American Conservative article is harshly critical of the general and the partisan political role he has chosen to play. The writer, Andrew J. Bacevich, describes Petraeus as a “politcal general of the worst kind — one who indulges in the politics of accommodation that is Washington’s bread and butter but has thereby deferred a far more urgent political imperative, namely, bringing our military policies into harmony with our political purposes.”

Bacevich accuses Petraeus of deploying a strategy in Iraq that is designed to succeed politically in Washington, not militarily in Iraq:

Petraeus has chosen a middle course, carefully crafted to cause the least amount of consternation among various Washington constituencies he is eager to accommodate. This is the politics of give and take, of horse trading, of putting lipstick on a pig. Ultimately, it is the politics of avoidance.

Bacevich concludes:

Politically, it qualifies as a brilliant maneuver. The general’s relationships with official Washington remain intact. Yet he has broken faith with the soldiers he commands and the Army to which he has devoted his life. He has failed his country. History will not judge him kindly.

We’ll be waiting (but not holding our breath) to see if anyone drafts a similar measure condemning the American Conservative magazine.

The Repugs will condemn that rag when we're dodging aviating porcine excreta. it would not be politically expedient to fire on one of their own.

Reaching out to minorities

Click to Stuff Shirt even more...

Black Republicans ...

It still seems like two mutually exclusive terms but there are some. I think I saw all 5 of them on CNN this weekend, laying down cover for the Republican frontrunners in the upcoming Presidential election.

Now, far be it for me to speak about the black experience. Totally unqualified. But to see them uncomfortably covering for racists and a racist political party is something to behold. Trust me, I know bigots when I see 'em.

J.C. Watts, who must qualify as one of the dumbest mofos who ever walked the face of the earth, was tongue-tied when asked if the Rethugs were racist by not attending the debates the other night and bowing out of the Univision event.

There's a pretty woman as well, who they put on as a counterpoint to Donna Brazile if Ol' J.C. ain't available. It was something too see her put out the 'these are Presidential candidates and have very busy schedules' talking point. You could see she didn't believe it either. There was also the 'well, blacks usually vote Dem anyway so why bother' meme that was pushed around as well. To me, that says the black (or any other ethnic group's) vote doesn't matter. There's something wrong when politicians turn away votes. Digby has some thoughts on that magic.

I guess you can find self-haters everywhere, look at all the closeted (and not-so-closeted) gay Republicans, but I still have to wonder what can make people defend those who would deprive them of their rights and ignore things important to such a large constituency.

While I would love to see a color blind society emerge in this country, the sad fact is we're a long way from it. Whether it pertains to black or Hispanic issues (or issues important to any other ethnic group) the Republicans have ignored the situation or been outright hostile to it. Until we have a truly color blind society, race issues matter and when a political party openly disregards them, it says they do not care about a large percentage of Americans.

Now, I give a damn what anybody believes or who they vote for, but were my concerns ignored by my affiliated party (hello, Dems? Iraq? Corruption?), and a majority of the members are openly hostile to me, I'm going to go somewhere else to have my needs addressed. I left the Republican Party 20 years ago, when the Jesus freaks began their takeover because that's another one of their things. There is little tolerance for anyone not 'Christian' and it's quite plain the Republicans don't want to know about folks who have no 'faith' or ascribe to the 'wrong' one.

So, I'm back to my original question. What can make people defend those who would oppress them (in the worst case) and ignore them (in the best)? What can make people defend the usurpation of civil rights when they will be the first to lose theirs? What can make people defend the corruption when their people have been ripped off more than the rest of us? What can make someone defend a war where their people make up the highest percentage of casualties? What can make people defend a political party whose base is made up of people who think theirs should 'know their place'?

I just don't get it.

Quote of the Day

MoDo

Without nepotism, Hillary would be running for the president of Vassar. But then, without nepotism, W. would be pumping gas in Midland — and not out of the ground.

Phony Soldiers

Army Of Dude responds to Limpbaugh and posts photos of some of the phonies he served with in Iraq.

[...] As the war kept on, so did I. I waited for a little over a year to get my results back: I would finally be able to join despite the surgery I had two years prior. As Rush found after dropping out of his first year of college at Southeast Missouri State University in 1969-1970, he found himself on draft status. Nothing that a claim of an old football injury or a boil on the ass can take care of, though! The medical deferment he was referring to was a pilonidal cyst, which apparently is a clump of severely ingrown hairs. That barred him from enlistment, and I'm sure he was ecstatic. After all, there was a war on. Here's a first hand account of the surgery that was done to correct it. She claims that in eight weeks, it was perfectly healed. Rush is willing to sacrifice the lives of Americans in Iraq but not his own ass (literally) in a simple surgery. I waited a year to get in, and he didn't try. Boy, do I really give an effort at being a phony soldier!

Speaking of phony soldiers, I wanted to show Rush a few that I know:

Go see. I particularly liked the one of the guy tugging on the wire to lead him to an IED! Grunts ain't no smarter today than they used to be...

Note to Rush (good name for a doper, huh?): You got out of service during Vietnam because of an easily repairable pimple on your ass. Fitting, indeed, because you ain't a pimple on the ass of a 17-year-old recruit stepping off the bus at boot camp today, let alone the Vets you call phony soldiers, you yellow son of a bitch.

I don't blame anybody who didn't want to go to Vietnam or doesn't want to go to Iraq, but it's the height of hypocrisy and arrogance to find a cheap-ass phony way out of the one and then forty years later call serving soldiers 'phonies' for not agreeing with you when you're wrong.

Oh no!

Dad's got the camera ...



Shayna's annoyed because I'll be starting (as if I don't have enough shit on my plate) the remodel of the Living Room/Dining Room soon. She's used to construction but always manages to get something dropped on her or get paint (or some other substance) on her anyway.

Update:

Where we hide the bodies ...