Obama: Lightworker?

Now that Senator Obama is our presumptive nominee, and just when the dishes and rolling pins and stuff have quit flyin' around the house at least to the point where I feel it's almost safe to take down the chicken wire that was protecting the pundits on our TV screen, Mark Morford kicks it up a notch.

Is Obama an enlightened being?
Spiritual wise ones say: This sure ain't no ordinary politician. You buying it?

Warning: If you are a rigid pragmatist/literalist, itchingly evangelical, a scowler, a doubter, a burned-out former '60s radical with no hope left, or are otherwise unable or unwilling to parse alternative New Age speak, click away right now, because you ain't gonna like this one little bit.

Ready? It goes likes this:

Barack Obama isn't really one of us. Not in the normal way, anyway.

Here's where it gets gooey. Many spiritually advanced people I know (not coweringly religious, mind you, but deeply spiritual) identify Obama as a Lightworker, that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment. These kinds of people actually help us evolve. They are philosophers and peacemakers of a very high order, and they speak not just to reason or emotion, but to the soul.

Yep. Pretty gooey.

Please. I'm also certainly not saying he's perfect, that his presidency will be free of compromise, or slimy insiders, or great heaps of politics-as-usual. While Obama's certainly an entire universe away from George W. Bush in terms of quality, integrity, intelligence and overall inspirational energy, well, so is your dog. Hell, it isn't hard to stand far above and beyond the worst president in American history.

But there simply is no denying that extra kick. As one reader put it to me, in a way, it's not even about Obama, per se. There's a vast amount of positive energy swirling about that's been held back by the armies of BushCo darkness, and this energy has now found a conduit, a lightning rod, is now effortlessly self-organizing around Obama's candidacy. People and emotions and ideas of high and positive vibration are automatically draw to him. It's exactly like how Bush was a magnet for the low vibrational energies of fear and war and oppression and aggression, but, you know, completely reversed. And different. And far, far better.

Don't buy any of it? Think that's all a bunch of tofu-sucking New Agey bulls-- and Obama is really a dangerously elitist political salesman whose inexperience will lead us further into darkness because, when you're talking national politics, nothing, really, ever changes? I understand. I get it. I often believe it myself.

Not this time.

I think it is not tofu-sucking New Agey bulls-- to say that Obama is a better man than Bush. Hell, so is Pickles for puttin' up with his chimp ass.

As for the rest of the tofu-sucking New Agey bulls--, we will (hopefully) see. I'll be happy if Obama runs a non-criminal White House.

The beginning of the end ...

...

"Little by little the gray dawn comes up., but this time around, from the intensity of the aircraft and the cannon an idea springs to mind: landing! I get dressed hurriedly. I cross the garden, the men recognize me. In one of the foxholes in front of the house, I recognize one of the young men from the office; he has headphones on his ears, the telephone being removed there. Airplanes, cannon right on the coast, almost on us. I cross the road, run to the farm, come across Meltemps. 'Well!' I say, 'Is this it, this time?' 'Yes,' he says, 'I think so, and I'm really afraid we're in a sector that's being attacked; that's going to be something!' We're deafened by the airplanes, which make a never-ending round, very low; obviously what I thought were German airplanes are quite simply English ones, protecting the landing. Coming from the sea, a dense artificial cloud; its ominous and begins to be alarming; the first hiss over our heads. I feel cold; I'm agitated. I go home, dress more warmly, close the doors; I go get Bernice [a neighbor] to get into the trench, a quick bowl of milk, and we run - just in time! The shells hiss and explode continually.

...

6 June 1944; the beginning of the end for the Nazis.

Quote of the Day - Drei

Our pal UL:

Poised, as always for a political comeback, Broder's masturbatory fantasy, and lame duck Pretzelnitwit Tipsy O'Drinky surges all the way to 25% popularity proving once and for all that basically 25% of Americans are actually brain dead ...

Quote of the Day Zwei

From SPR:

It’s Official! Obama’s the Presumptive Nominee; McCain the Hump-tive Abominee

Heh.

Think about it, you pissed-off old white women...

Click to McBiggen

Quote of the Day

The Last Chance Democracy Cafe on what will happen to the Supremes if McCain is elected:

It ain’t just crying wolf when half the sheep have already been eaten. By then, it should be pretty clear to everyone how much is at stake.

Rights, meet shitter.

"...in fishnets and heels, dancing around a greased pole..."

Will Durst on John McBush:

I'm a little worried about John McCain. Not simply because of that nasty looking marsupial pouch stapled to his upper neck, but because he seems determined to wrong-headedly barrel down a path more dangerous than slaloming downhill blindfolded on a black diamond course with barbed wire gates at night. Let me explain. A while back, the erstwhile Senator from Arizona scheduled a fundraiser featuring President Bush at the Convention Center in Phoenix. But a few Democrats who weren't distracted by the ugly alley fight going on behind their own garage raised a stink. So they threw the most exquisitely horrible epithet at the Senator they could think of--John McBush.

This insult and some like it proved to be the motivation to move McCain's intimate soiree to a private home in Phoenix. Lots of deep-pocketed big time potential donors were invited but strangely, not the media. I'm guessing he's a mite reluctant to have that part of the electorate known as The Undecided see him all tarted up in fishnets and heels, dancing around a greased pole in front of his big Crawford Sugar Daddy (Brain bleach! Quick! - G). And if that image excites you, seek therapy.

The problem is even though the two get along like a cobra and a mongoose, Mr. McCain is really broke and must suck at George Bush's silicone-enhanced money tit, but isn't all that anxious to have a record of it. Typical case of needing the cash, but not the photo-op. Just another politician who wants to have his cake with the rich green icing flowing down and eat it too. Stuck between a despised lunkhead and a barren bank account. Damned if he does and doomed if he don't. Can't live with the president and can't take a ball peen hammer to his head and crack him open like a piggy bank then get down on his knees and scoop up every single coin that falls to the floor even those that roll under the dresser.

The ball peen hammer to Bush's head is a grand idea. Sorta like an empty piñata though - fun to do but nothing inside.

Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control

Patrick Cockburn in The Independent (UK)

Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors.

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

But the accord also threatens to provoke a political crisis in the US. President Bush wants to push it through by the end of next month so he can declare a military victory and claim his 2003 invasion has been vindicated. But by perpetuating the US presence in Iraq, the long-term settlement would undercut pledges by the Democratic presidential nominee, Barack Obama, to withdraw US troops if he is elected president in November.

Please read the rest of this.

Teach your children and grandchildren well. Teach 'em Arabic, marksmanship, and how to keep their heads down so they can have children and grandchildren whom they can teach these things to and so on and so on.

Damn Bush.

Update:

Think Progress

An Iraqi government official today said that a “July target for negotiating an agreement on future relations between Iraq and the United States is likely to be missed.” The AP reports:

U.S. and Iraqi officials began talks in March on twin agreements on the status of U.S. military forces in Iraq after 2008 and a strategic framework agreement that defines long-term bilateral ties. […]

“I don’t think that we can meet this date. There is a difference in viewpoints between Iraq and the U.S. I don’t think that time is enough to end this gap and to reach a joint understanding … Therefore, we are not committed to July as a deadline,” he told al-Arabiya television. […]

The talks have angered many Iraqis who suspect the United States, which led the 2003 invasion of Iraq and has around 155,000 troops in the country, of wanting to keep a permanent presence there.

Update - Spencer Ackerman also notes, "Now this is really starting to get interesting. Tomorrow at 2 p.m., for the first time, Congress is going to receive testimony from two Iraqi parliamentarians opposed to the impending Bush-Maliki long-term-occupation deal."

What's wrong with these Iraqis? Don't they know it's traditional, perhaps written in stone or the Bible, that imperialistic white people are entitled to dominate and enslave little brown people over natural resource wealth? Yeesh.

Maybe the Iraqis are starting to think for themselves. Good.

Dr. Fixer of Weedology ...

A private San Francisco area university dedicated to the study of the cannabis industry is giving a whole new meaning to higher education.

At Oaksterdam University -- so called after the nickname locals have given to Oakland -- students learn how to grow, harvest and cook marijuana, as well as dispense it to others.

The goal, say administrators, is to educate consumers about the benefits of the mind-altering plant and encourage graduates to start their own dispensaries in California, even though possession remains prohibited under federal law.

...

Dear Oakland University,

Please advise me concerning the date of the ceremony bestowing upon me an honorary doctorate. Thank you.

Regards,

Fixer

PS: Late for work. See yas ...

Thanks to Maru for the link.

Change McSame ...

Nuff said:

If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.

McCain's new tack towards the Bush administration's theory of executive power comes some 10 days after a McCain surrogate stated, incorrectly it seems, that the senator wanted hearings into telecom companies' cooperation with President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, before he'd support giving those companies retroactive legal immunity. [my em]

...

What DD should have said ...

Our pal Skippy wrote a letter to Dunkin' Donuts about the Rachel Ray/scarf horseshit and got a reply, a lame one, so PhysioProf rewrote it a bit. Heh ...:

... what they would have responded with if they were honest.

Now get to work ...

Dday has a job for Senator Obama now that he's got the nom:

I congratulate Barack Obama on his primary win and think he has the opportunity to bring forward meaningful change in America. In fact, he can start today. He can go to the well of the Senate and demand that the party he now leads not authorize new powers to spy on Americans and immunize corporations who broke the law with their illegal spying in the first place.

...

Because the Dems are about to cave ... again:

...

The House Intelligence Committee’s top Democrat disclosed late Tuesday that he is ready to accept a Republican-brokered deal to rewrite the nation’s electronic surveillance laws, signaling that a long-running congressional impasse could soon be coming to an end.

...

No, that is completely unacceptable.

Election '08

Interestingly enough, this month's Leatherneck magazine depicted how it's going to go...



I needn't tell you which side's which.

Art is "Marines At Belleau Wood" by Frank E. Schoonover.

CA-04 Update

[A big welcome to Sideshow readers. - F]

Yesterday was election day around here. I'll cut to the chase: Charlie Brown won by a landslide and will run against Tom McClintock in November.

When we got to the polling place, Mrs. G took her paper ballot and disappeared into one of the high-tech cardboard-and-trash-bag booths.

i didn't get off so easy. One of the poll workers spotted me as an obvious sucker cutting-edge type guy and asked if I would care to, er, volunteer to try out their new electronic digital high-zoot voting machine. Here's the dialogue:

Me: "Did Diebold have anything to do with that thing?"

Him: "No. You'll be wanting a Democratic ballot, right?"

Heh. Right.

The machine was way cool, but I was so dazzled I didn't get the brand name. It was like sitting under an instrument flying hood in a biplane. It had a little wheel you turned to make your choices on a screen, which changed after each 'enter'. At the end, a paper backup scrolled into a window. I then got to approve my choices or not, and then it thanked me warmly.

It only took me about twice as long to vote that way as it took Mrs. G with her #2 pencil. Ah, the progress of man.

Update:

More at AmericanRiverCanyon. Click 'there's more...' at the bottom of his posts.

Gotta go now and prepare my new 49-state motorcycle for an attempt at getting a California title in place of an Oregon one. There's a little innocent trickery involved on my part due to a stupid California law. If it works, I'll post about it at F & G in a coupla days. If it doesn't work, I don't know when I'll be able to post...

DMV twice in one week. Yeesh. Later.

Update 2:

My motorbike now has its very own California title and license plate, and I didn't have to outrun anybody. Let's just say for now that my faith turned out to be well-founded in the supposition that the DMV lady, a very nice person by the way, is not an expert on much earlier English motorcycle odometers than came on the sled. I actually was concerned that she might wonder what a 150MPH speedo was doing on an 80MPH motorcycle. More later.

The Ten Things Republicans Should Never Say to Democrats

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

History ...

Pic thanks to Watertiger. Click to embiggen.

150 years ago, these two people would have been property. 60 years ago, these two people were not allowed to serve their country. 45 years ago, they probably wouldn't have been allowed to vote.

Today, they have the ability to become the First Couple of the United States of America.

It's about fucking time.

Gotta take the Mrs. to the airport and then I'm off to work. See yas later.

Quote of the Day

Creature:

A black man is about to be the Democratic nominee for the president of the United States. That's pretty cool.

Yes indeed, my friend.

Nothin' a .30-'06 can't fix...

Hey, Conyers!

Click to empiggen

Oh, the irony...

I missed doing this yesterday because I was infatuated by riding my new motorbike around without the element of fear of getting it towed because I didn't have a license. I'm over that for a few minutes. Heh.

Ironic Times

U.S. Secretly Planning Attack on Iran
According to Pentagon press release.

CIA: Al Qaeda Nearly Defeated
Warns: if we defeat terrorism, the terrorists win.

Audit: Of $8.2 Billion in Iraq Defense Contracts, $7.7 Billion Unaccounted For
Contractors cite “don't ask, don't tell.”

Shuttle Delivers New Toilet To Space Station
And some magazines.

Gov’t Home Price Index Posts Largest Drop in 17-Year History
Cardboard box price index hits 17-year high.

Saudi Arabia Rejected Bush's Request to Boost Oil Output
Granted Cheney's request to do nothing.

Reports: Inflation Up, Home Prices Down, Health Care Costs Rising, Consumer Confidence Falling, Housing Foreclosures Soar, Prices Plunge
Stocks finish higher for week.

And isn't that really what it's all about?

And as a pæan to my creaky generation:

Woodstock Museum Opens
Features wide doorways, wheelchair ramps, strategically placed oxygen stations.

What, no geriatrics-trained EMTs? Harrumph!

So al-Qa'ida's defeated, eh? Go tell it to the marines

The Independent (UK):

Last week the head of the CIA claimed it was winning the battle. Nonsense, argues Robert Fisk. The extremists in the Middle East are growing stronger

Six thousand dead in Afghanistan, tens of thousands dead in Iraq, a suicide bombing a day in Mesopotamia, the highest level of suicides ever in the US military – the Arab press wisely ran this story head to head with Hayden's boasts – and permanent US bases in Iraq after 31 December. And we've won?

Am I alone in finding this stuff infantile to the point of madness? As long as there is injustice in the Middle East, al-Qa'ida will win. As long as we have 22 times as many Western forces in the Muslim world as we did at the time of the Crusades – my calculations are pretty accurate – we are going to be at war with Muslims. The hell-disaster of the Middle East is now spread across Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, even Lebanon. And we are winning?

Because al-Qa'ida is a way of thinking, not an army. It feeds on pain and fear and cruelty – our cruelty and oppression – and as long as we continue to dominate the Muslim world with our Apache helicopters and our tanks and our Humvees and our artillery and bombs and our "friendly" dictators, so will al-Qa'ida continue.

Does Mike Hayden read this stuff? Or is he, like most of Washington, so frightened of Israel that he wouldn't say boo to a goose? Doesn't the CIA realise – or imagine – that as long as we allow the Middle East to fester under a cloak of injustice, al-Qa'ida will continue? Why are our forces – and this is a question I was asked in Baghdad – in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Turkey, Egypt, Algeria (yes, US special forces have a base near Tamanraset), Bahrain, Kuwait, Yemen, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Tajikistan? (Yes again, French bomber pilots are based at Dushanbe to fly "close air support" for our lads in Afghanistan.)

And as long as we have stretched this iron curtain across the Middle East, we will be at war and al-Qa'ida will be at war with us. This new iron curtain, by the way, starts up in Greenland and stretches down through Britain and Germany, through Bosnia and Greece to Turkey. What is it for? What's on the other side? Russia. China. India.

These are questions we do not ask; certainly they're not the kind of questions that The Washington Post would dare to put to Mike and his chums at the CIA. Yes, we huff and we puff about democracy and freedom and human rights, though we give little enough of them to the Muslim world. For the kind of freedom they want – the kind of freedom that allows outfits like al-Qa'ida to flourish – is freedom from "us". And this, I fear, we do not intend to give them.

Mike Hayman may think the Muslim world is "pushing back" al-Qa'ida's "form of Islam", but I doubt it. Indeed, I rather suspect al-Qa'ida is growing stronger. Mike says they're defeated in Iraq and Saudi Arabia. But are they defeated in London? And Bali? And in New York and Washington?

Not exactly similar, but similar enough to the Vietcong, skinny little guys with AK47s, and the Afghans who defeated the British with handmade copies of bolt-action Lee-Enfields, and many others throughout the years, al Qaeda's got a few things goin' for 'em, rightly or wrongly, that no modern firepower-based army can ever defeat - they've got a fire in the belly born of religious fanaticism and social oppression to rid themslves of exploitation by outsiders and their own regimes that are fueled by it.

They can peck away at the biggest army and cause it to lose its will to continue. It doesn't matter if it takes a hundred years. They are where they are and will be there long after we leave. Which we eventually will.

We might as well GTFO. As long as oppressive regimes are in place, many of whom even sponsor aQ as long as they terrorize elsewhere, the conditions that cause things like aQ will let 'em percolate along in perpetuity just fine without us.

And just as an afterthought, thank the stars for foreign news media that's not afraid of their corporate masters or a failing oppressive regime here at home.

John McCain: A legacy of being wrong

VirginiaDem at Kos has tamped McCain's shit into a nice brick:

It's seems like we've got a narrative building folks. John McCain is trumpeting his experience, but it seems like all he's done in this campaign is highlight how many times he's shown a lapse in judgment and a failure to understand the facts. And about serious subjects like Iraq, the economy, ethics, and his own damn words.

Wrong judgment, wrong facts.

The following is a list compiled just with a few minutes of web searching. If you know of others, add them in the comments.

Loooong list, many links, handily compiled in one place for reference should you require such.

Bush: Mad Mullah of the Movies

Tom Englehardt has a few words on Bush's immaturity, perhaps turning into real insanity in the face of failure, that got us into the mess we're in. He has a few for Nixon and Reagan too. A 'recommended read'.

So, in a historic moment almost four decades ago, a desperate president suddenly found it strategically advisable to present himself to his enemies as a potential nation slaughterer, a world incinerator (and his aides were privately ready to think of him as such); the leader of what was then commonly termed "the Free World," that is, was considering revealing himself as a mad emperor, a veritable Ming the Merciless.

Skip ahead these several decades and, presidentially, things have only gotten stranger. After all, we now have a president who has openly, even eagerly, faced the world as the Commander-in-Chief of Enhanced Interrogation Techniques, Extraordinary Rendition, and Offshore Imprisonment; a Vice President who appeared openly on Capitol Hill to lobby against a bill banning torture; and key cabinet members who, from a White House conference room, micromanaged torture, down to specific techniques in specific cases. Talk about Ming the Merciless.

In all this, you can sense a man in his own bubble world, engrossed in, and satisfied with, his own performance - both as actor and, as in childhood, audience. What Gen. Ricardo Sanchez has added to this is the picture of a man who, even in 2004, was already dreaming Vietnam disaster ("This Vietnam stuff... We can't send that message."); who, perhaps sensing that his blockbuster was busting, like Richard Nixon before him, proved willing to mix the white-hat and black-hat codes of his movie childhood in remarkable ways. Under the strain of a failing war, in private and among his top officials, he didn't hesitate to take on that "guru" role and rally his closest followers with a call to kill, kill, kill!

A confused pep talk indeed. Even if Bush is still exhorting his top officials not to "blink," Americans should. After all, there are almost eight months left to his presidency, and a man of such stunning immaturity, who confuses fantasy with real life, and is given to outbursts of challenge, bluster, and bloodlust should be taken seriously. Nixon's "mad mullah" stayed private until transcripts of the Watergate tapes and memoirs started coming out. For us, the question remains, will this President be able to take a final turn on-screen before his term ends, playing the "mad mullah" in relation to Iran?

Bush is like a spiteful little kid who never learned what "no" means who'll break a toy so no one else can play with it. The only reality that matters is his twisted image of himself and fuck everybody else.

Help me to understand this ...

Our good pal Pissed Off Patricia talks about this today:

Americans, are you so angry at Senator Clinton’s possible loss of the Democratic nomination that you are willing to vote for Senator McCain? Are you so angry that you are willing to punish your daughters’ and granddaughters’ by being responsible for the loss of their freedom to choice? That freedom of choice could and most likely will be taken away if Senator McCain becomes our next president.

...

And so does our friend Avedon from across the pond:

...

I gotta admit, I didn't get the "I'll vote for McCain!" thing when it was Obama supporters saying it, and I get it even less now that it's Clinton supporters saying it. I can easily understand the reasons progressives have for particularly disliking Obama or Clinton, but I don't get why they would dislike one of them so much that they'd rather completely forget how much better they still both are than McCain. Yes, they've both done things that are destructive, but jeez. I mean, McCain has no actual progressive policies, and several policies that are even worse than BushCheney's. And we need people to want to go to the polls and vote a straight Democratic ticket in November - not merely because we want a Democratic president, but because we want to win all those down-ticket races - and that just doesn't happen unless people have some enthusiasm for voting for the top of the ticket. Coattails, we need coattails a whole lot. (But if you can't bring yourself to vote for Obama, at least don't vote for McCain or stay home - vote for the other Dems on the ballot, and vote for Cynthia and Matt for pres.)

...

You all better get over yourselves real quick or nothing will get better and you'll be stuck with another asshole for 4 years. I was ready to leave in '04. If McCain wins in November, this blog will be run from somewhere in Paris or the Alsace before 2012. This isn't the America I put my ass on the line for and I've about had it with the whole situation. If you want to spend your lives supporting corporate interests as your rights get pissed away, go right ahead. Quit being babies and do what's best for the nation and future generations. It ain't about you.

Although, it would be nice to meet Avedon for tea in Cardiff or lunch at Gordon's near Charing Cross Station on a regular basis. Off to work ...

Appeasement ...

Via Maru, most believe the American President should appease our enemies just like that traitor to the realm Neville Chamberlain engage in diplomacy with hostile governments:

PRINCETON, NJ -- Large majorities of Democrats and independents, and even about half of Republicans, believe the president of the United States should meet with the leaders of countries that are considered enemies of the United States. Overall, 67% of Americans say this kind of diplomacy is a good idea.

...

What? No more "bring it on"?

The score ...

Dr. Fez-head tallies up the costs in Iraq so far:

CASUALTIES:

_Confirmed U.S. military deaths as of May 2008: at least 4,085.

_Confirmed U.S. military wounded (hostile) as of May 30, 2008: 30,143.

_Confirmed U.S. military wounded (non-hostile, using medical air transport) as of May 3, 2008: 32,248...

Assassinated Iraqi academics: 371.

_Journalists killed on assignment as of June 2, 2008: 127.

...

Afghanistan's fucked too ...

The NATO commander in Afghanistan says he needs more troops ... lots more:

No, that's not a typo. The outgoing US commander of NATO troops in Afghanistan says it would require 400,000 troops to secure that country.

...

Gen Dan McNeill is one of the straight-shooters of the US military, he says what he means and says it when it needs said. Four hundred thousand troops. As opposed to the less than 200,000 sent to Iraq for the Surge.

...

See yas ...

The Diggers are outta there:

...

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was swept into office in November largely on the promise that he would bring home the country’s 550 combat troops by the middle of 2008, saying the Iraq deployment has made Australia more of a target for terrorism.

U.S. President George W. Bush said in March that he understood the decision and it would not harm bilateral relations.

The Australians had "successfully accomplished their mission" and their contributions "assisted in the stabilization and development of Iraq," U.S. military spokesman Col. Bill Buckner said in a statement.

...

Look out, California, here he comes!

I'm going to DMV this morning and see if satisfying the legal requirements and standing in line are enough to get me a driver's license.

If that works, I'm going to take my new motorbike for a spin and drive legally for the first time in six years.

Later.

Update:

Success! Two hours in line and 25 minutes of written tests, thumb print, vision test and plenty of paying, and I'm legit!

And, yes, I'm an eye and organ donor. Anyone who gets my eyes has hit the jackpot, and as far as my other original equipment, if ya ain't got a muffler or a water pump, an old worn out rusty one is better than nothing.

I'm goin' ridin'. Legally. See ya.

Good memories ...

The Chief remembers Guantanamo Bay fondly, but that was before 9/11:

Gitmo, to me, is, perhaps, similar to a relationship one has with a (former) significant other, in that your memories of that time are sweet and positive, but today the relationship, if there really is one, is negative.

...

For about an 18 month period, Early Spring 1961 to late Summer 1962, I was in and out of Gitmo many, many times on two different Navy ships. The first ship was a WW2 Sumner class destroyer. I was a third class Electronics Technician, ET3 in Navy speak who maintained radars and equipment associated with Combat Information Center or CIC. I also stood underway watches in CIC. The height of my proficiency was the ability to radar navigate out of Gitmo harbor.

...

Bad memories ...

The great billmon of the now-defunct Whiskey Bar once (well ... more than once) characterized the Iraq War as "Vietnam on crack," because the same shit was happening, just a lot faster and crazier. It seems we've arrived at 1967 and things are going swimmingly.

I don't get it ...

All day Saturday, I had to sit through the excruciating minutiae and whining of the DNC committee meeting while CNN showed every painful detail. By the time I switched over to the Beeb, I was under the assumption Barack was the presumptive winner. So why is Hil acting like she didn't get the memo?

Now, I voted for Hil in the NY primary but jeez, the writing's on the wall. Let's wrap this up already and focus the party's (and the media's) attention on McSame. Hil's acting like a spoiled child, still wanting to play the game, even though it's over, is very off-putting. It's time to go back to representing the people of New York (and I will be more than happy to help get her reelected).

Right Now

Emmylou and some Limey gui-tar picker

Quote of the Day

The Rude One:

...

Are you goddamn kidding that two of the news networks are gonna spend a good chunk of the day on a hearing of the fuckin' Rules Committee of the DNC? Christ, give us a smoke-filled back room, please.

...

It's good to know a little about the process but really ...

McCain’s McClellan McNightmare

Daddy Frank lays it on 'em:

THEY thought they were being so slick. When the McCain campaign abruptly moved last Tuesday’s fund-raiser with President Bush from the Phoenix Convention Center to a private home, it was the next best thing to sending the loathed lame duck into the witness protection program.
...

The two men’s furtive encounter on the Phoenix airport tarmac, as captured by a shaky, inaudible long shot on FoxNews.com, could have been culled from a surveillance video.

Americans don’t like being lied to by their leaders, especially if there are casualties involved and especially if there’s no accountability. We view it as a crime story (my em), and we won’t be satisfied until there’s a resolution.

Amen to that, Pop!

That’s why the original sin of the war’s conception remains a political flash point, however much we tune out Iraq as it grinds on today. Even a figure as puny as Mr. McClellan can ignite it. The Democrats portray Mr. McCain as offering a third Bush term, but it’s a third term of the war that’s his bigger problem. Even if he locks the president away in a private home, the war will keep seeping under the door, like the blood in “Sweeney Todd.”

[...] Mr. McCain is hoping that the “liberal media” will once again be complicit enablers. We’ll see. He’s also counting on the press to let him blur his record by accentuating his subsequent criticism of the war’s execution — as if the war’s execution (also criticized by countless Democrats), not its conception, was the fatal error.

The 'press' will never let us know they made an error of moral judgment in their complicity about this criminal war, but they damn sure know they did. If they suddenly start doing their job it's tacit, if not implicit, admission of same. I'll not hold my breath.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald would have it, we will be borne back ceaselessly into the past. Or so we will be as long as Americans continue to die in Iraq and as long as politicians like Mr. Bush, Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton refuse to accept responsibility for their roles, major and minor, in abetting this national tragedy.

As usual, I agree with our Pop. Please read the rest.

If you don't get the judge you want ...

Get another one. Montag:

So to keep the Gitmo trials on their proper and preplanned schedule, the Defense Dept has removed the presiding judge who threatened to suspend the trials for that most frivolous of reasons, fairness for the defendants.

...

Far be it for them to let fairness get in the way of a trial.

Bush Refuses to Read McClellan’s Book, Calling It ‘A Book’

Borowitz

“I have no intention of reading Scott McClellan’s book,” Mr. Bush told reporters, “because it’s a book.”

Mr. Bush said he was “surprised” that Mr. McClellan had written a book to criticize him because “if you’re trying to communicate some criticism to me, a book is pretty much the last place you’d put it.”

The president said that he thought the chances of his someday reading Mr. McClellan’s book were “zero,” adding, “If I didn’t read the Iraq Study Group’s report, I really don’t think I’m about to read Scott McClellan’s little book.”

“Scott McClellan would have had a much better shot if he had put his memoir in Xbox 360 format and then slipped it into a package labeled ‘Grand Theft Auto 5,’” he said.

For his part, Mr. Bush said that there was in fact a book published this week that had caught his eye: the new James Bond thrilled entitled “Devil May Care.”

“Now, that book looks like it could be good,” he said. “Maybe I’ll have Laura read it to me.”

Bush can read just fine. He's 'aliterate', which means he he chooses not to read. That is unconscionable in that office, and much much worse than 'illiterate'.

I want a President who reads everything he can get his hands on, including, say, The Constitution, history, and the opinions of experts instead of listening to neocon ideologues with an agenda and falling for their evil ideas.

Top McCain Fundraiser, War Profiteer Sued Over Iraq Fuel Deal

Crooks and Liars

A little-noticed civil lawsuit in Florida is shining a light on an unusual but hugely profitable Pentagon contract to ship millions of gallons of aviation fuel to U.S. bases in Iraq through the kingdom of Jordan.

The deal involves a cast of influential characters, including the king of Jordan’s brother-in-law, who is suing Harry Sargeant III, a top Florida-based fundraiser for Sen. John McCain’s presidential bid.

No wonder Senator McCain wants to stay in Iraq for 100 years, one of his top fundraisers is making hundreds of millions of dollars in profits from it — and you can rest assured, Sargent isn’t the only war profiteer who keeps McCain neatly tucked in his back pocket.

McSame old, McSame old. Yeesh.

County clerk to invoke executive privilege

Yahoo! News

MARTINEZ, Calif. - For 18 years, Stephen Weir has been in charge of the office that hands out marriage licenses in California's ninth-largest county. And for just as long, Weir has been unable to get a license himself because the love of his life is a man.

The irony did not escape him.

"Always the bridesmaid, never the bride," he quips with a rueful smile.

So Weir hopes the citizens of Contra Costa County understand if their clerk-recorder invokes executive privilege and opens up for business a little early on June 17, when same-sex couples may be able to legally wed in California.

He and his partner, John Hemm, want to be first at the counter that day. They plan to be the first to exchange vows and kisses in the conference room Weir converted into a wedding chapel that hosts 1,200 couples a year, but that he could never use.

Now there's a use of 'executive privilege' i got no problem with! Best of luck, you guys.

BTW, Contra Costa County is called 'CoCo' by the locals. As in 'Chanel' perhaps? ;)

They all suck ...

Even Tom Brokaw.

The cherry don't fall far ...

From the tree. The sexy, beautiful, Shemekia (daughter of Johnny) Copeland:

Shemekia Copeland - It's 2 A.M.

Saturday whorage

The last chapter of Thirty Days at Zeta is up at The Practical Press.

Let us know what's on your page in comments.

Brand W ...

No, Golda, it ain't kosher by a long shot ...

Memo to Scott McClellan: Here's what happened

From McClatchy's Nukes & Spooks, many links and comments:

Until now, we've resisted the temptation to post on former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book, which accuses the Bush White House of launching a propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq.

Why? It's not news. At least not to some of us who've covered the story from the start.

But the responses to McClellan from the Bush administration and media bigwigs, history-bending as they are, compel us to jump in. As we like to say around here, it's truth to power time, not just for the politicians but also for some folks in our own business.

Bush loyalists have responded in three ways:

1) Scott, how could you? This conveniently ignores the issue of what Bush did or didn't know and do about intelligence on Iraq, converting the story line into that of wounded leader and treasonous former aide. (That canard was the sole focus of a CBS news radio report Wednesday night).

2) Invading Iraq was the right thing to do. Okay. When do Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, et al *not* say that? Dog bites man.

3) It was an intelligence failure. The CIA gave us bad dope on WMD and, well, they're the experts. More on this in a second.

So far, I haven't heard the administration actually deny any of the charges, just try to shoot the messenger and blame others for their failures. Typical Repug spin, slime, and smear.

The news media have been, if anything, even more craven than the administration has been in defending its failure to investigate Bush's case for war in Iraq before the war.

So the Pentagon tells the media what kind of reporting is in- and out-of-bounds?

Hogwash. Hogwash! HOGWASH.

Enough self-aggrandizing trumpet-blowing. OK, Scott, What Happened?

Here's what happened, based entirely on our own reporting and publicly available documents:

Looong list follows.

We could go on, but the rest, as they say, is history.

That's what happened.

The only new thing I've heard outta McLiellan is that the Chimp couldn't remember if he snorted cocaine. That doesn't pass the, you should please pardon me for this, sniff test. His supporters say he used to drink a lot and that may be why he doesn't remember.

Bull-fucking-shit.

I've snorted cocaine when I was so drunk I could barely stand so I could drink more, but I also snorted it when I was sober. If you do one, you do the other. Period. I don't remember each occurrence of cocaine use, of course. There were hundreds, if not thousands.

Bush is lying about that like he lies about everything else.

Heroes and Bums

Brent Budowsky

Scott McClellan, and millionaire and Medal of Freedom recipient George Tenet, embody everything that has gone wrong in Washington in the dark age of the Bush years. They stand for the courtier, the sycophant, the seeker of power at all costs. Instead of risking their careers while others gave their lives for policies that were catastrophic, the likes of McClellan and Tenet did the wrong thing first, then the get-rich-scheme later, to make a bundle from their bungles, and a fortune from their bad faith.

Contrast this with the courage and integrity of genuine military heroes such as Adm. Fallon, retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni and retired Army Gen. Eric Shinseki.

Fallon, Zinni and Shinseki spoke with clarity and conscience, with integrity and courage. They spoke real truth to power, when the power hated their words and retaliated against them. They put their military judgment, the integrity of their military advice, their honor in what they felt was best for their troops and the nation ahead of personal advantage and career opportunism.

While Fallon, Zinni and Shinseki acted with principle and honor, standing against the unwise polices of a disastrous presidency, McClellan and Tenet courted favor with power first, then peddled their wares for profit later while the number of Gold Star mothers continues to rise.

Make no mistake: Fallon, Zinni and Shinseki are heroes. McClellan and Tenet are bums.

Amen.

Modern "Journalism"

Click to embiggen

The dogs and ponies are doing fine

Think Progress, with video, links, and comments:

Yesterday, CNN’s Michael Ware dismissed Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) recent assertion that Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) travel to Iraq in order to get a better sense of the war. Ware said that U.S. officials’ trips to Iraq are usually “divorced from reality” adding that its “impossible” to “get much of a real picture.” Ware then noted that McCain’s own trips to Iraq have not helped him get a sense of the realities in Iraq:

WARE: I’ll issue a word of caution, too. I mean Senator McCain has been here, what, more than half a dozen times. And we’ve seen him get assessments of Iraq terribly wrong. So I wouldn’t be hanging my hat on the fact that your opponent has only been here once.

McCain did make a correct assessment of the dog and pony shows the administration had the Brass trot out for him. I've stood, and passed, inspections with inoperable gussied-up-to-look-good gear too. Shoot it may, but shine it must.

It's like assessing a used car by its paint job. You'll be sor-ree! It's no basis for foreign policy.

Related:

McCain falsely claims Mosul is ‘quiet.’

Today at a townhall meeting in Wisconsin, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) tried to claim that President Bush’s policies in Iraq are “succeeding,” by pointing to the “quiet” in Mosul and other cities:

So I can tell you that it is succeeding. I can look you in the eye and tell you it’s succeeding. We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr city are quiet and it’s long and it’s hard and it’s tough and there will be setbacks.

Mosul, however, is not quiet. In fact, today AP reported, “Another suicide bomber driving a police vehicle struck Iraqi commandos earlier Thursday in Mosul, killing three of them and wounding nine other people, according to battalion commander Capt. Aziz Latif.”

Thank you, McSenile, for proving my earlier point.

Racing to the checkered keffiyeh

Forget Rachael Ray, Michelle Malkin Claims Indy 500 Sold Out to Terrorists

"It's just one more example of the Indy-fada."

Thanks, Don.

And at a discount too ...

Heh ... Ted.

Now I'm late. Outta here ...

That deaf, dumb, and blind kid ...

Sure plays a mean pinball*.

NY Governor Patterson [sic] has directed that NY will recognize out of state same-sex marriages. It's not totally clear from the NY Times article whether this includes civil unions that are not called "marriage" from other states. I would expect so.

...

I'm so glad we elected Spitzer or we never would have gotten to know Mr. Paterson. He makes me proud to be a New Yorker.

Off to work, TGIF ...

*Apologies to The Who and Mr. Paterson for the editorial reach.

The mountain comes to Mohammed ...

It's a minuscule change, but even the Arab men can be progressive if they want:

Bahrain's king has appointed a Jewish woman as the country's envoy to the United States.

Houda Nonoo said she was proud to serve her country "first of all as a Bahraini" and that she was not chosen for the post because of her religion.

She is believed to be the Arab world's first Jewish ambassador.

Ms Nonoo, 43, has served as a legislator in Bahrain's 40-member Shura Council for three years and is head of the Bahrain Human Rights Watch.

...

Let's hope it's contagious.

Link thanks to Chris.

Correct ...

Though I think any moral authority we might have had has evaporated over the last 8 years. Turkana:

...

It's been a habit of the Democrats to let Republicans get away with their crimes. New administration, new Congress, move on, let bygones be bygones. It is imperative that the next Democratic president and the next Democratic Congress establish the principle that no one is above the law. Here's part of the reason why:

Earlier, Bolton had defended the US's right to launch pre-emptive nuclear attacks and to promote regime change or, if necessary, a military attack on Iran to prevent it acquiring nuclear weapons.

If people like Bolton aren't held accountable, not only will the U.S. continue to cede any moral authority on any human rights issues anywhere, but these same people will continue to turn up in other Republican administrations, ready and enabled to cause more crimes, more destruction, and more death.

...

If (big if) the next President is a Dem (unlike many others, I'm not convinced it will happen), priority #1 should be holding the members of the Bush administration accountable for their crimes. Probably won't happen, but it would do a lot to restore our credibility in the world (and do a lot to put the fear of god into the Rethugs).

Holy Puke!

Matt Taibbi of The Smirking Chimp and Rolling Stone, one of the best journalists going, went undercover and joined Hagee's sheep.

If you've ever been curious about the subtleties of vomiting demons, watch this interview.

Watch it even if you've never been curious about such a weird subject. Apparently, they damn near ran out of demons to the point they were pukin' up the 'demons of handwriting analysis'. Funnier'n shit, but...Yeesh.



A tip o' the Brain to AlterNet.

McCliellan's Tell-All: Better Late Than Never. For Some.

Click to embiggen

Can He Take a Frisk?

MoDo is in full snark mode about Hil as Veep:

After “Rahmbo” Emanuel, the Illinois congressman dubbed “the hostage negotiator” by the Obama forces, fails to talk Hillary down, Barack Obama knows that he is left with one final roll of the dice. He sets up a secret meeting with Bill Clinton in neutral territory at Rahm’s hideaway office in the Capitol.

“Mr. President, I’m going to run a very transparent administration, everything on C-Span. So I’ll need a full accounting of your foundation donors.”

“Oh, sure thing, buddy, from this day forward.”

“No, Bill, we’ll need full disclosure of your business dealings for the last eight years. And you can no longer accept Arab millions — not if I’m going to talk tough to them about oil. I can’t send Hillary on diplomatic missions to the Middle East if you’re taking money from Dubai and Kuwait. And no more trips to Kazakhstan. I wouldn’t want to have to put a Geiger-counter bracelet on you to check that you’re not involved in another shady uranium deal.”

“Ha, ha.”

“We need to know where that $11 million came from that you guys loaned your campaign. And the $15 million from Ron Burkle at Yucaipa and the $3 million from Vinod Gupta. And you must spill about any offshore accounts in the Caymans. And no more big-money speeches, Bill. You guys have already cashed in for more than $100 million.”

“I’m not debating the meaning of the word ‘speech,’ Bill. We’re going to have an administration so squeaky clean that it makes Jimmy Carter look like Marc Rich. All your trips abroad will have to be authorized by a higher authority.”

“The State Department? Fine, I’ll check with them.”

“Higher.”

“Oh, no. Not that.”

“Yes, Michelle. She’ll have you on a much shorter leash, Bill, and it’s not so fun. There’ll be no more Ron Air, no Burkling and Binging. Eight long years of Michelle watching your every move. No eruptions of any kind. And that big telescope in the Naval Observatory is off limits. We’re going to be a family-values administration. And in the campaign, we’ll use you the way Al Gore did: Not at all. No more Bill YouTube meltdowns.”

More. Enjoy.

I think ol' Bill can take a frisk. The question for the lovely Ms Dowd is: Can you? And what time should I be there to administer it?

Quote of the Day

About McFlipFlop's change of tune in a speech to Nevadans about the nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, which is a HUGE issue there:

If a man told you for years that he didn't love you, essentially had no regard for you at all, and then suddenly, when he needed you, told you he adored you, would you fall for it?

Oh babybabybaby, Papa needs...

Beat it, Pops.

How about a big, steaming cup of ...

Dunkin Donuts coffee Shut the fuck up? I'm not a big fan of Rachel Ray, she just annoys the crap out of me and there are far better chefs out there, but this latest Michelle Malkin faux outrage has made it to the national news and I figured I'd add my two cents. Background from Sadly No!:

She just won’t be deterred. Despite being roundly ridiculed by, like, everyone for her latest jihad against Rachel Ray’s scarf, Michelle Malkin has dedicated her entire weekly column to the affair. Read. Weep:

...

So now Skippy tells us Dunkin Donuts has pulled the ad:

...

so by acquiescing to malkin's bigoted demands, dunkin' donuts itself has acted in a bigoted manner, eg, implying that all people who wear a kaffiyeh are to be suspected of terrorism.

...

Pic stolen from the Roo.

So, Ms. Malkin and your willing idiots, RR is a Jihadi sympathizer, or at least Dunkin Donuts is, right? Well, what do you say to the US troops who wear them in the desert? What, you didn't know a shemagh is GI issue?

Pic courtesy of Armed Forces Merchandise Outlet, where you can buy 'em.

Now, please, SHUT. THE. FUCK. UP.

Update:

And just another example of hardly-ever-right wing stupid (there is no way to fix stupid, by the way) at Sadly No!, There's more 'outrage' about Obama naming the wrong concentration camp his uncle helped liberate. Why this is an issue, who would know (aren't we all glad the camps were liberated, period?), but the twits had to bother the folks who run the 89th Infantry Division of World War II website. The reply:

Please crawl back under the rock you came out from.

Good day

Raymond Kitchell, veteran 89th Inf Div

Another buncha vets after my own heart.

Really late for work now, hadda kick the Mrs. out at the airport. Don't worry, I slowed down to 20 mph before I made her jump. Heh ... Later.

Utah Phillips, 1935-2008

U. Utah Phillips, The Golden Voice of the Great Southwest, folksinger, storyteller, labor & social activist, and anarchist, passed away May 23 in Nevada City, California, which passes for 'the big city' at the other end of my county.

I did a post on this fine old gent just before the 2004 presidential election when he realized that corporate fascism had taken us over to the point where he felt it was necessary to compromise his vow to never participate in systemic politics and vote for the first time. He urged progressives to set aside their differences, vote against the Bush regime, and get back to fighting amongst themselves after the danger had passed. Which it hasn't yet, of course, but he was right.

From my local paper, the Sierra Sun:

“Phillips died at home, in bed, in his sleep, next to his wife,” according to his family, which was in seclusion Sunday at his home about a mile from downtown Nevada City.

Pretty good way to go, although I don't know if I'd want to surprise Mrs. G like that.

The folk musician’s remarkable career included international acclaim for the stories and songs he wrote about social and labor issues, as well as his career as a hobo who ran the rails as a young man. He also once ran for the U.S. Senate.

Phillips’ musical career stretched over 38 years and his songs were performed by Emmylou Harris, Waylon Jennings and Joan Baez. He earned a Grammy nomination for an album he recorded with Ani DiFranco.

He once told The Union that “folk music is the glue that holds the community together,” as people gather to share food, music and to dance.

From the EssEffChron:

Mr. Phillips rose to prominence on the folk scene with the single "Moose Turd Pie," a song from his 1973 debut album "Good Though!" That song was about serving moose feces to fellow laborers during the time Mr. Phillips worked as a cook in a railroad gang.

I think I've had that. I live in a big railroad town. It's all in the spicing...

While an irrepressible comedian onstage, Mr. Phillips took his social commitments seriously. A brief stint in the Army that included a tour of Korea in 1956 inspired his work with the peace movement. For a while, Mr. Phillips was a railroad tramp, drinking heavily and ending up in a homeless shelter in Salt Lake City operated by an anarchist.

The son of labor organizers, he ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate from Utah on the Peace and Freedom Party ticket in 1968. He also made a run for the presidency in 1976. Later, he founded the Peace and Justice Center in Nevada City and helped start the Hospitality House, a local homeless shelter.

Last night, Democracy Now ran a previously un-aired 2004 interview with Mr. Phillips. This is the first interview with him I've ever seen. Entertaining as all get out, and some words of wisdom we'll not again hear the likes of. I highly recommend watching it. A transcript as well.

A selection of videos of his work here.

This old gent put the 'left' in 'progressive'. He was the epitome of the 'left wing commie pinko liberal', a title coined by the rabid right to describe anyone who doesn't agree with them and one I am proud to claim even though I'm not.

Utah Phillips walked the walk. His passing is a huge loss. One of his signature songs is 'Railroading on the Great Divide'. See ya on the other side of the great divide, Utah.

Salvage ...

I betcha there's a couple Martians in an old pickup truck making money off all the crap we leave up there.

Seriously, if there is other intelligent life out there, why would they stop in to visit us? From their perspective, the Solar System must look like a junkyard.

Off to work ...

Thanks to Oliver Willis for the link.

Quote of the Day

The Rude One on McCain's 'experience', and other things:

Just because someone's been fucked a lot doesn't mean they know how to do the fucking.

Of course we were ...

As Mr. Philadelphia Dr. Fez-head says:

Scott McClellan tells us Dirty Effing Hippies we were right about most everything.

Indeed:

Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan writes in a surprisingly scathing memoir to be published next week that President Bush “veered terribly off course,” was not “open and forthright on Iraq,” and took a “permanent campaign approach” to governing at the expense of candor and competence.

...

McClellan repeatedly embraces the rhetoric of Bush's liberal critics and even charges: “If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.

...

Nothing we didn't know, but it's nice to hear one of them admit it. Ya think anything will come of this 'revelation'? Me neither.

Wanted: Agent Provocateurs

The Misfit:

If you look like a hippy and you have the morals of a snake, then the FBI wants to hire you!

Turns out it is straight piecework, you have to give them somebody to arrest. Presumably, if you agitate for bad things to happen and then turn people in for following your lead, the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force will give you oodles of cash.

You'd think that after the cops and the FBI got caught doing this stupid shit in the 1960s that they would have learned their lessons. Apparently not. The police have a long track record of using agent provocateurs to start trouble as an excuse for arresting lots of people.

...

Turn in your friends, your neighbors, even family and get paid to do it. Do you know an Enemy of the State? Turn 'em in now and make big bucks.

What has happened to this country?

Peeved at Prices? Don't Blame the Dealer

I worked at gas stations off and on for forty years. I live in a tourist trap town way up in the mountains, and gas prices have been 40-50¢ higher than the metro areas the tourons come from for the 28 years I've lived here. I used to get customer complaints all the time. It's a waste of time to unload on the hose jockey or cashier, but I guess they have to vent at somebody.

WaPo

Every time Sohaila Rezazadeh rings up a sale at her Exxon station on Chain Bridge Road in Oakton, her cash register sends the information to Exxon Mobil's central computers. If she raises the price of gasoline a couple of pennies, chances are that Exxon will raise the wholesale price she pays by the same amount.

Through a password-protected Web portal, Exxon notifies Rezazadeh of wholesale price changes daily. That way the oil giant, which is earning about $3.3 billion a month, fine-tunes the pump prices at the franchise Rezazadeh has owned for 12 years.

Now, however, Rezazadeh says she cannot stay in business. Credit-card fees are eating her profit margins. Exxon, which owns the station land, last week handed Rezazadeh a new lease raising her rent about 30 percent over the next three years. She stuck a copy on the window of her station to show customers who are angry about soaring pump prices. Rezazadeh has told Exxon that she cannot make money with the rent that high. Her territory manager's reply, she said, was simple: When you go, leave us the keys.

Although Exxon owns and operates few stations anymore -- less than 10 percent of the 12,000 Exxon outlets in the United States -- it uses franchise agreements to maintain tight control over stations that bear its brand. The company dictates everything from the number of pumps to hygiene practices to the placement of food on convenience store shelves. "They monitor everything," Rezazadeh said.

Even some of Exxon's successful and loyal dealers complain. Jerry Daggle owns five Exxon stations in Northern Virginia, and even though they have different competitive conditions and prices, "Exxon magically lets me make about 8 cents a gallon" at each one, he said.

Well, at least their profit has gone up. Forty years ago when gas was 30¢ a gallon, the dealers only made a nickel. Those were the days when two, count 'em two, impeccably turned out attendants, who made maybe $1.75 an hour and could just about live on it, would trot out and wash your windshield and rear window and check under your hood, the point of which was really to sell stuff, oil, wiper blases, whatever. Everything was done right at the car window and the customer never had to get out of the car, which was very handy for the occasional driver who forgot his pants (I worked at a station in Hollywood once. Trust me, it happened!).

Daggle, who has been an Exxon dealer for two decades after working his way up from pumping gas, said he has done well. But he still cannot fathom how the oil company can charge him different wholesale gasoline prices for each of the five Northern Virginia stations he owns. The stations all sell the same Exxon-branded gasoline, delivered from the same terminal in Newington, where it arrives via the same pipeline. Sometimes, Daggle said, it's even dropped off by the same truck and driver hours apart on the same day.

The only thing that's different is the price, which can vary by 35 cents per gallon, Daggle said. [...]

Historically, gasoline marketing has been a low-margin business. For decades, when oil was plentiful, margins were kept low to move as much crude oil through the system as possible. Now, major companies don't have to fight to move product, but they are still battling for nickels and dimes at the pumps.

Like other parts of the retailing business, gasoline marketing has become more concentrated and high volume than it was in the days when mom-and-pop gas stations lured customers with free drinking glasses.

Trading stamps. I remember S&H Green Stamps and Blue Chip Stamps. You'd paste 'em into booklets and redeem them for mail-order merchandise. If you forgot the stamps when you gave the customer his change or credit card slip to sign (I'm dating myself again. Heh.), boy would they howl!

Oddly enough, when prices are rising rapidly and consumers are most upset is usually when profit margins are slimmest for station owners. When prices are falling, as they were in September 2006, is usually when jobbers and station owners make the most money.

How much depends largely on Exxon. "If I had raised my gas, within a couple of days, almost inevitably, they would have raised my wholesale price. It's an unspoken rule," Daggle said. He said his Gainesville station makes most of its money from repairs, not gas sales.

Selling gas remains a cutthroat business in an industry awash in profits. Three years ago, when Daggle bought the Gainesville station, a share of Exxon stock was about $50. Buying and fixing up the station has cost him $800,000, and he hasn't yet drawn a profit from it. "If I had bought the stock," he said, he would have nearly doubled his money and would have "never lifted a finger."

Any money a station makes these days is from the service bays or the convenience store. Selling gas is almost a public service, and here's the rub: gas always has been and still is, even at $4+ a gallon, the cheapest thing you can buy for your car.

It's going to get worse before it gets better, on the off chance it ever will get better.

David Sirota Sees A Populist Revolt Brewing

A BuzzFlash interview with David Sirota:

We have a trade and a globalization policy that is designed to create a race to the bottom among ordinary people. When you force American workers into direct unfettered competition with workers who are enslaved, with workers who are allowed to be paid a dollar a day, with workers who are allowed to be employed in sweatshops, you are creating a wage-cutting environment that's destroying competition towards the bottom.

-- David Sirota

BuzzFlash: David, first we want to encourage all the BuzzFlash readers to buy and read The Uprising: An Unauthorized Tour of the Populist Revolt Scaring Wall Street and Washington. The mainstream corporate media is probably not your biggest fan, so we want to do our best to promote the book.

David Sirota: That's exactly right.

BuzzFlash: Why don't they like you?

David Sirota: I think the frame of the book tells it all. The book is about a backlash to the status quo. It's about a backlash to the media and political establishment. It's a sequel in many ways, to my first book, Hostile Takeover, which is about big money taking over the government. This book is about the uprising against that "Hostile Takeover." Obviously, the people and forces and institutions that have perpetrated that hostile takeover are going to be hostile to a book that describes the uprising against that establishment. When you tell the truth, sometimes people don't like it.

Like, DUH! Only about 99% of the time.

David Sirota: That's right, and that's a huge thing that people sometimes people forget -- that corporate control of the media is more than just a certain network won't cover the parent company. It's actually a whole ideology. And the ideology is deeply ingrained. The media does not question corporate issues -- the concentration of corporate power, the general deregulatory agenda that corporations push. Most issues relating to money and the accumulation of profits are either off limits, or soft-pedaled in the corporate media, because the corporate media is not objective when it comes to those things. It has an ideology.

I do think that the uprising is a backlash to that. I think we are at a precipice. If you look at public opinion data, if you look at the stories in my book, The Uprising, you will see that all of this is boiling now, and that this election and what comes out of the election could end up changing the direction of the country in a really serious way, in an exponential way.

We desperately need this to happen, but it won't until times are so bad for reg'lar folks that they pick up their scythes and pitchforks and march on their state house, city hall, the Capitol, whatever. That day is coming, and I think we should should try and short circuit the Second Great Depression and the widening Middle-East War and get on with it.

Fat chance Americans will get off their fat behinds until all they got are skinny behinds, so we'll just have to wait.

Please God, oh pleasepleaseplease let it be so...

Click to embiggen

Memorial Day at ‘South Pacific’

This is a coupla days late, but every day is, or should be, Memorial Day.

Daddy Frank looks at war and racism through the lens of the Broadway revival of 'South Pacific'. A 'recommended read'.

The Lincoln Center revival of this old chestnut is surely the most unexpected cultural sensation the city has experienced in a while. In 2008, when 80-plus percent of Americans believe their country is in a ditch, there wouldn’t seem to be a big market for a show whose heroine, the Navy nurse Nellie Forbush, is a self-described “cockeyed optimist” who sings of being “as corny as Kansas in August.”

Watching “South Pacific” now, we’re forced to contemplate Iraq, which we’re otherwise pretty skilled at avoiding. Most of us don’t have family over there. Most of us long ago decided the war was a mistake and tuned out. Most of us have stopped listening to the president who ginned it up. This month, in case you missed it, he told an interviewer that he had made the ultimate sacrifice of giving up golf for the war’s duration because “I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf.”

“South Pacific” reminds us that those whose memory we honor tomorrow — including those who served in Vietnam — are always at the mercy of the leaders who send them into battle. It increases our admiration for the selflessness of Americans fighting in Iraq. They, unlike their counterparts in World War II, do their duty despite answering to a commander in chief who has been both reckless and narcissistic. You can’t watch “South Pacific” without meditating on their sacrifices for this blunderer, whose wife last year claimed that “no one suffers more” over Iraq than she and her husband do.

The show’s racial conflicts are also startlingly alive. Nellie Forbush, far from her hometown of Little Rock, recoils from de Becque when she learns that he fathered two children by a Polynesian woman. In the original script, Nellie denigrates de Becque’s late wife as “colored.” (Michener gave Nellie a more incendiary word in his book.) “Colored” was cut in rehearsals then but has been restored now, and it lands like a brick in the theater. It’s not only upsetting in itself. It’s upsetting because Nellie isn’t some cracker stereotype — she’s lovable (especially as embodied by the actress Kelli O’Hara). But how can we love a racist? And how can she not love Emile’s young mixed-race children?

Then and now, the show concludes with the most classic of American tableaus: Emile, Nellie and the two kids sitting down to a family meal. It’s hard for us to imagine how this coda must have struck audiences in 1949, when interracial marriage was still illegal in many states (as it would be in 16 until 1967). But nearly 60 years later, this multiracial family portrait has another context. The audiences watching “South Pacific” in this intense election year are being asked daily to take stock of just how far along we are on Nellie’s path and how much further we still have to go.

And so as we watch that family gather at the end of “South Pacific,” both their future and their country’s destiny yet to be written, we weep for the same reason we often do when we experience a catharsis at the theater. We grieve deeply for our losses and our failings, even as we feel an undertow of cockeyed optimism about the possibilities of healing and redemption that may yet lie ahead.

The only 'optimism', and it's not at all 'cockeyed', I feel is that maybe, just maybe, Bush and the neocons will actually leave office in January, and the damage they have done will start slowly grinding to a halt so the daunting task of repair work can begin.

Other than his slight attempt to be uplifting at the end, ol' Pops did a good job as usual. Well worth a read.

Getting by ...

I asked this question a while back and my neighbor Blondie brings it up again. Living on Long Island (as she and I both do) car travel is a way of life (mass transit isn't good until you get into the 5 Boroughs of NYC. The eastern counties - Nassau, Suffolk - don't even compare). To get anywhere you have to drive, so the price of gas hits us especially hard:

So what do you do when you're a part time employee who makes about $10/hour and it takes you a gallon or so of gas to get to work and another gallon or so to get home and they ask you to come in on Saturday morning for a couple of hours and the gas price is up to $4.15 for regular at the cheap gas station?

...

The real 'mission' ...

Every Sunday, our pal (and fellow New Yorker) Creature does his 'Truth in Comics' post. He always finds excellent toons, but I stole this week's offer.

Click to inflate.

Could be from The Onion ...

But it's not. The New York Times:

President Bush opposes a new G.I. Bill of Rights. He worries that if the traditional path to college for service members since World War II is improved and expanded for the post-9/11 generation, too many people will take it.

He is wrong, but at least he is consistent. Having saddled the military with a botched, unwinnable war, having squandered soldiers’ lives and failed them in so many ways, the commander in chief now resists giving the troops a chance at better futures out of uniform. He does this on the ground that the bill is too generous and may discourage re-enlistment, further weakening the military he has done so much to break.

So lavish with other people’s sacrifices, so reckless in pouring the national treasure into the sandy pit of Iraq, Mr. Bush remains as cheap as ever when it comes to helping people at home.

...

Hey, if they don't want to, or can't, carry a rifle anymore, what the fuck good are they?

Great thanks to Mr. Aravosis for the link.

Things that make me sick ...

One of the worst is watching this idiot placing the wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

Pic stolen from C & L.

And Bob Geiger says it just about right:

Dead Troops Remembered By President Who Had Them Killed

Yes, that's a harsh headline for this piece.

But I'll ask you to forgive me because, as a Veteran, there isn't a day on the calendar that causes my hatred -- and I do indeed mean hatred -- of George W. Bush to bubble over the top more than Memorial Day.

...

The Chickenhawk-in Chief says a lot of things that make this Vet's blood boil but stuff like saying that he prays "...that our country may always prove worthy of the sacrifices they have made" is almost vomit inducing.

...

Makes me wanna puke too, pal.

Cross-posted at API.

I'm Ba-ack...

Click to make it HUGE!

I'm back, but I'm beat, even after a night's sleep. The above photo shows conditions on the traditional first weekend of summer. We got rained, sleeted, snowed, and hailed on for the first 200 miles of our 1000-mile trip and the last 200 miles. I could hear God laughing, "New motorbike, huh? Let's break 'er in right!"

Maybe posting today, maybe not. See ya soon.

Not to put too fine a point on it ...

The Normandy American Cemetery - Normandy, France

But Memorial Day is not a 'happy' holiday.

Memorial Day is a time to reflect on the people who sacrificed their lives so you can live the life you do in this country.

Especially this year, the 6th since the War in Iraq began, when over 4000 of our service people have died, not to protect this nation or our way of life but in an illegal, unjustified provocation. 4000 dead for nothing. 4000 lives wasted.

I'll have a 'happy' Memorial Day when Bush, Cheney, and their minions are in a dock in The Hague.

Cross-posted at API.

Obama, Osama ...

Kill 'em all.



I wonder what would happen if someone like Donna Brazile or Rachel Maddow said this about McSame?

Trotta: …and now we have what some are reading—as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama , umm, ah… Obama, well both if we could ... haha ...

Probably would be shipped off to Gitmo so quick her head would spin.

Quote of the Day

From Blue Girl over at "Watching Those We Chose":

"So take the long weekend to lick your wounds, and when Tuesday rolls around, start with mending fences. It is time to get over yourself. It isn't about you, or me, or even the candidates. It is about electing a Democrat and saving the Supreme Court."

It cannot be stressed enough how important this election is for the Democrats to win because of the Supreme Court. It and the process will be out of reach, possibly forever, if the Republicans retain control. The country is, in effect, in the grip of a criminal syndicate, it is time to take it back and to see that it stays taken back.

JG.

Hillary's "Assassination" Comments

I've been alternately outraged and stunned by the utter senselessness of and utter lack of sensitivity shown by Hillary's comments last Friday. I wanted to write something about it, but (as is not at all unusual) could not find the means to express myself. Then I read this post, "Palpitations...And No Pride To Speak Of" by Lower Manhattanite over at Group News Blog and knew that he had encapsulated my feelings pretty precisely. This is a must read.

Hillary was waiting for the big mistake that would end the game. She got it.

JG.