"Like, say, stab wounds"

To the pantheon of numerological phrases in common usage, like 'the four-one-one', 'Five-O', 'What's yer 20?', and my favorites, 'three-way' and '10-4, back door', we can now add the most insidious of them all - 'the nine-three-five'.

Mark Morford with today's 'recommended read'.

Oh sweet Jesus, someone actually counted.

Is it helpful to know the exact number? Does it make a difference? After all, presidential lying isn't exactly a revelation. [...]

It has to do with matters of scale. It has to do with audacity, with sheer recklessness, with BushCo's stunning contempt for all national and international law and historic precedent and human decency. It is the sense that, at bare minimum, the most significant lies told by previous administrations were, by and large, not massive, calculated stabs to the very heart and infrastructure of the entire nation. They were not designed, as Bush's clearly were, specifically to pervert the entire American experiment, to violently shift us from peace-promoting and defense-oriented protector to an arrogant, insular, pre-emptive attacker, widely loathed and mistrusted worldwide.

Fine. If it's a fact that all presidents lie anyway, if there's little we can do to stop them, then let us put forth a new hope. Let us now wish for the next president to lie just as passionately, as powerfully, as strategically as BushCo, and get away with it just as extraordinarily.

Yes. Give us now a president who lies, calculatedly and strategically, straight in the face of the hard right neocons and the evangelicals and the corporate cretins. Let his or her army of lies lull these groups into a false sense of complacency and/or utter soul-deadening fear so they will keep their mouths shut while the rest of us get some real work done.

"And finally, I shall never abolish the death penalty, legalize marijuana, approve gay marriage, promote honest sex education for teens, honor habeas corpus and the Geneva Convention, or eliminate the insidious farm subsidy program. We shall never stop lying about ethanol or offer solar subsidies for every household in America. Our direct ties to horribly misogynistic, terrorist-supporting Saudi Arabian power regimes shall remain deeply corruptive and powerful forevermore."

Heh. Lull the fuckers to sleep. Then slit their throats.

Army Blocks Disability Paperwork Aid at Fort Drum

NPR

Army officials in upstate New York instructed representatives from the Department of Veterans Affairs not to help disabled soldiers at Fort Drum Army base with their military disability paperwork last year. That paperwork can be crucial because it helps determine whether soldiers will get annual disability payments and health care after they're discharged.

Now soldiers at Fort Drum say they feel betrayed by the institutions that are supposed to support them. The soldiers want to know why the Army would want to stop them from getting help with their disability paperwork and why the VA — whose mission is to help veterans — would agree to the Army's request.

[...] The official said the VA used to help soldiers with the paperwork, but Army officials saw soldiers from Fort Drum getting higher disability ratings with the VA's help than soldiers from other bases. The Army told the VA to stop helping Fort Drum soldiers describe their army injuries, and the VA did as it was told.

It's unclear why the Army wanted to stop the soldiers from getting help with the disability paperwork. [...]

No it's not:

"The more soldiers you have who get disability retirements, the more retirement pay is coming out of your budget," Hurwitt says.

The question remains as to why the VA acceded to the Army's demand to butt the fuck out. The VA claims their reps aren't trained or qualified to help the soldiers.

Bullshit.

"VA counselors understand the disabilities, what the different kinds of conditions are, how they should be properly described in the paperwork," Hurwitt says.

She points out that VA officials have to look at a soldier's medical history anyway to counsel him or her on VA benefits, which are separate from Army benefits.

"Really what it comes down to is you're just helping the soldier get what he's entitled to under law," Hurwitt says.

The real reason is that the VA Is run by Bush appointees. The money that should by rights go to Vets can better be distributed to cronies and big biz. No profit in giving folks what they've earned and what's due them if they have become useless and can no longer generate revenue. The system is rigged to easily cheat them out of their benefits if they don't have help, so don't help them.

No pull trigger, no get food. It's the Repug way.

Vietnam is still bitin' us on the ass

A very good account of the attack on the U.S. Embassy in Saigon from a newsgathering perspective by a reporter who was there, along with some commentary on how Tet has shaped war reporting to this day. From the lead-in:

Because U.S. politicians and commanders had oversold progress in the war as a way to quiet domestic dissent, the savage Tet fighting shocked millions of Americans and widened Washington’s “credibility gap” on Vietnam.

But Tet had another long-term consequence. In the years that followed, U.S. conservatives would insist bitterly that critical news reporting about the war in general but particularly the Tet Offensive caused the American defeat, that the U.S. news media had betrayed the nation, that reporters had gone from being the Fourth Estate to acting like an enemy fifth column.

Official Army historians would conclude eventually that the war was lost by poor strategy and excessive casualties, not by disloyal reporters.

But by then, the “press-lost-Vietnam” charge had become an article of faith to many conservatives. That certainty fueled the vitriol of rightist anti-press groups and led deep-pocket conservatives to pour billions of dollars into the construction of an ideologically right-wing media, now one of the most potent political forces in the nation.

In those days, there were no 24/7 news channels or cable TV and communications satellites, yet the war was in everybody's living room every night on the network news. All three of 'em. As time went on, war protests were on the news every night. Still, U.S. combat involvement in that war went on for five more years after Nixon won office with his "secret plan" to end the war.

God only knows how much longer the Iraq occupation will continue what with the wingnuts not wanting to lose another already-lost war and the Democrats afraid of losing elections.

Better than the Big Catbox?

More and more of our young people in uniform are attempting suicide:

...

Whiteside's personal tragedy is part of an alarming phenomenon in the Army's ranks: Suicides among active-duty soldiers in 2007 reached their highest level since the Army began keeping such records in 1980, according to a draft internal study obtained by The Washington Post. Last year, 121 soldiers took their own lives, nearly 20 percent more than in 2006.

At the same time, the number of attempted suicides or self-inflicted injuries in the Army has jumped sixfold since the Iraq war began. Last year, about 2,100 soldiers injured themselves or attempted suicide, compared with about 350 in 2002, according to the U.S. Army Medical Command Suicide Prevention Action Plan.

...

Yup, keep recycling them back through the Hell, horror, and carnage and eventually people will only see one way out, thinking it better than the Hell on Earth they are forced to experience repeatedly. What most of the draft dodgers and deserters making the decisions don't get, never did because they had "other priorities" when the time came for them to serve, is that the human mind can only take so much horror. When that point is reached, bad things start to happen. You'd think the Army would have known this. You know, "our experience in Vietnam" and all. Oh, wait ...

...

The Army was unprepared for the high number of suicides and cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among its troops, as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have continued far longer than anticipated. Many Army posts still do not offer enough individual counseling and some soldiers suffering psychological problems complain that they are stigmatized by commanders. Over the past year, four high-level commissions have recommended reforms and Congress has given the military hundreds of millions of dollars to improve its mental health care, but critics charge that significant progress has not been made. [my ems]

...

Oh yeah, that's right, the Roman Legions U.S. Army would march in there and a couple months later Caesar the Chimp could declare victory. Why plan for something that'll never happen? "Bring 'em on."

The only way progress in this area will be made is when this occupation is over and our troops come home.

Thanks to FDL for the link.

For $400 billion ...

It'd be cheaper than stealing someone else's oil. Greenboy sends us to a Scientific American article laying out a good plan to switch to solar energy, though it would require a $400+ billion investment of public funds. How much has Iraq cost us again? Can we consider those results successful?

...

The federal government would have to invest more than $400 billion over the next 40 years to complete the 2050 plan. That investment is substantial, but the payoff is greater. Solar plants consume little or no fuel, saving billions of dollars year after year. The infrastructure would displace 300 large coal-fired power plants and 300 more large natural gas plants and all the fuels they consume. The plan would effectively eliminate all imported oil, fundamentally cutting U.S. trade deficits and easing political tension in the Middle East and elsewhere. Because solar technologies are almost pollution-free, the plan would also reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants by 1.7 billion tons a year, and another 1.9 billion tons from gasoline vehicles would be displaced by plug-in hybrids refueled by the solar power grid. In 2050 U.S. carbon dioxide emissions would be 62 percent below 2005 levels, putting a major brake on global warming.

...

Not that I'm any sort of expert on solar energy, but it's one of the better pans I've heard in the last few years. As Greenboy says:

...

In any event, my issue is largely a quibble, as even Big Solar would be preferable to Big Oil by enabling Uncle Sam to give the finger to the Sheiks, reduce pollution and carbon dioxide emissions...and lower our overall cost of energy. Not to mention the creation of a large number of jobs in the growing solar industry that would be hard to outsource.

Something has do be done soon and I hope Hillary and Obama realize that. U.S. energy policy has been a bad joke since this bunch of criminals took office. The answer is not drilling for domestic oil in ANWR, as my idiot brother-in-law thinks (but he also thinks Rush Lintball is a great guy), or stealing the resources of a sovereign nation, but getting this nation free from the petroleum noose permanently, sooner rather than later.

Now I get it ...

You see, the people who lost their homes thanks to predatory lenders are the real villains here. Those poor, poor, motgage bankers? Well, they are just the unwitting victims. To which I have to say, Sadly, No!

Eulogies ...

To Rudy's campaign. Leave it to the Rude One:

...

Rudy has lost in a hand of Florida Hold 'Em, the all-in bet where he was dealt a pair of aces and the flop, the turn, and the river were all fives, sevens, and jacks. Watching Rudy's stunning swan dive turn into one of the worst belly flops in recent political history has been marvelous. Dancing on his grave? Ask the firefighters, the cops, and the 9/11 families. That shit's fuckin' priceless.

Definitions ...

Bipartisanship:

...

But more importantly, "bipartisanship" is already rampant in Washington, not rare. And, in almost every significant case, what "bipartisanship" means in Washington is that enough Democrats join with all of the Republicans to endorse and enact into law Republican policies, with which most Democratic voters disagree. That's how so-called "bipartisanship" manifests in almost every case.

...

Click on the link for some stark examples.

Bush Issues Signing Statement On Defense Act, Waiving Ban On Permanent Bases In Iraq

Think Progress, links and comments at site:

Even though he forced Congress to change its original bill, Bush’s signature yesterday came with a little-noticed signing statement, claiming that provisions in the law “could inhibit the President’s ability to carry out his constitutional obligations.” CQ reports on the provisions Bush plans to disregard:

One such provision sets up a commission to probe contracting fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another expands protections for whistleblowers who work for government contractors. A third requires that U.S. intelligence agencies promptly respond to congressional requests for documents. And a fourth bars funding for permanent bases in Iraq and for any action that exercises U.S. control over Iraq’s oil money.

The bastard simply wants us to stay there until we get the oil and all our money is in the hands of his cronies with no recourse under law. He should be impeached and imprisoned today, but I think the best we can hope for is 1.20.09

Turn On, Tune In, Enter Your Pin Number

AP via Raw Story

The city that popularized the fast food drive-thru has a new innovation: 24-hour medical marijuana vending machines.

There's somewhat more to it than that, but I know one thing: I want to own the one in front of Fixer's house. It'll be a lot of work refilling it twice a day, but I'll clean up!

By the Numbers

John Cory

While the high school heathers of the press corps rush to generate in-depth analysis of the hairstyle and cleavage of candidates or who looks presidential as opposed to who acts presidential, the real issues get shuttled aside in polls and punditry and primary politico-image management.

At some point there will be one of those staged affairs where they take questions from the audience, the everyday folk - the voters. So let me step up to the microphone and ask a question:

When does 9/11 + 935 = 3,391?

When lies kill.

Nine hundred thirty-five false statements (lies) moved this nation into a war that has resulted in 3,391 deaths so far.

There have been 30,000 troops wounded in action; 39,000 have been diagnosed with PTSD; 84,000 vets suffer a mental health disorder; 229,000 veterans have sought VA care, and 1.4 million troops (active duty and reserves) have been deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan so far. Estimates run between $350 billion to $700 billion needed for lifetime care and benefits for veterans.

A CBS study of 45 states over the past 12 years reveals disturbing and tragic patterns of suffering veterans, whether Korean Conflict, Vietnam War or the newer versions, Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2005 alone, there were 6,256 veteran suicides. That's 120 every week, or an average of 17 suicides every day.

The Bush administration has no waiting period to go to war, only waiting lines that take months to treat veterans and provide the health care they need. It is an amazing irony that Bush has presided over the longest delays and waiting periods for veterans in VA history, and yet he has generated more veterans faster than most any other administration. As the Democratic Policy Committee pointed out in 2004: "During Bush's four years in office, the average millionaire has received a tax break of $123,000. In contrast, President Bush has broken all previous records for fees paid by veterans - proposing to collect $1.3 billion from veterans themselves in 2005, a 478 percent increase during his time in office."

I know this issue about veterans care won't poll well for the presidential primaries or even for television debates. After all, how many debates and candidate talks even acknowledge the war, let alone its aftermath?

I care so much because I've known the madness of war and the insanity of returning only to be told to wait or ignored or having to fight tooth and nail for a friend who needed the VA and couldn't get in and took his life. I know what it is to feel like a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle but all the pieces are olive drab or sky blue and no matter how hard I tried to make them fit, I kept ending up with a thousand little tiles that had no rhyme or reason or shape. I know the smell of lonely rain and empty streets that hang between there and yesterday on the border of here and now.

So let the politicians blather and blab. Give me a vet on a midnight afternoon who needs my ear for a while and we'll wait until they gather us up and then we'll step up to the microphone and ask:

If one tear is too many and a thousand not enough, what will it take?

It will take more than lip service from politicians. Don't hold your breath.

Abortion and the Earth

Excellent 'must read' article about the history of abortion, population growth, male domination, what is going to happen in the not-too-distant future, and what can possibly be done about it, by Kelpie Wilson.

The moral arguments about abortion rarely consider the physical limits of the planet, but if they did, and if abortion were put into the context of the long history of human attempts to avoid starvation by regulating population growth, we might come to a different conclusion about what "pro-life" really means.

For the first 100,000 years of our existence, the human population consisted of a couple of million hunter-gatherers scattered across the planet. Studies of modern hunter-gatherers, like the Kalahari San, show that women had long intervals of four to five years between births and produced an average of four children each. Only two children typically survived to reproduce themselves, leading to a stable population.

The curious thing is that this was not a pro-life law code. It was about male control over females. Men claimed for themselves the prerogative to kill any young infants that they wanted to or to sell their children or their wives into slavery. In particular, the new law allowed them to choose to raise more males who could fight as soldiers in armies. This initiation of male reproductive choice in the ancient agricultural civilizations of the Bronze Age is what set patriarchy on its current trajectory of empire, war and the ultimate conquest of the Earth itself that is killing our planet.

At the end of the day, the most fundamental issue is growth. We live in a culture and an economic system that promotes growth as the ultimate and greatest good. On a finite planet, this amounts to suicide. Growth was good for a certain time. At the beginning of the Industrial Age, it was good to grow our capacity, but with oil - the prime mover of that Industrial Age - running out and also causing grave life-threatening, species-threatening, world-threatening problems of global warming and toxic pollution, growth is no longer good, especially growth in the quantity of goods and the quantity of people.

Of course, none of Ms. Wilson's solutions can be implemented until God fixes stupid. Barring that unlikely scenario, the planet itself can and will reduce the human population, and it will not be a voluntary program.

I have a friend here in town who has six kids. I used to get laughs by saying he'd damn near literally fucked himself out of a place to sit at the dinner table. It's not so funny any more.

Early Morning Jokes(?)

Tony Peyser

John McCain defeated Mitt Romney in Florida's primary. Conservative seniors in the Sunshine State haven't been this excited since the introduction of fruit-flavored Metamucil.

Old folks will always vote for a good big shit.

The House is moving quickly on a $150 billion plan to jump-start the economy. Instead of calling this a rebate, wouldn't a better title be ... gift card?

Yeah, like a mugger givin' you part of of your money back so you can go his bail. If you're dumb enough to go for it, have no doubt that once he's out of trouble he'll mug you again.

So long, Rudy ...

Don't let it hit ya in the ass:

...

Perhaps a simpler dynamic was at work: The more that Republican voters saw of him, the less they wanted to vote for him.

...

I want a job ...

On The View. I think I could hold my own better than this one and get paid for looking down Joy Behar's shirt and schmoozing with Whoopi. Beats fixing cars for a living.

Did you think Enron ...

Was the only one? Now we get to the crux of the biscuit in the 'subprime' mess. Heh ... They'll soon find the same crap that happened behind the scenes Enron is going on at the big banks and brokerages. Pass the popcorn. I wonder if anybody I know will end up doing 2 1/2 to 5 at Danbury?

Bush's Delusions Die in Gaza

Good article at Spiegel Online International:

The mass jailbreak of Gazans into Egypt revealed the bankruptcy of both Israel's policy of collective punishment and Bush's attempt to make Mideast peace.

If it were just a matter of morality, we could ignore the agony of Gaza. After all, we countenance immoral actions all over the world. But this isn't a matter only of morality, but of national security. For we are seen by the Arab-Muslim world as Israel's co-jailers -- and ultimately, we are. We support and pay for Israel's occupation. If we were to demand that that occupation stop, sooner or later Israel would be forced to comply (my em). The people in the region know this, and they are deeply angry and frustrated, and as a result some of them are driven to fight us. There is no troop surge big enough to defeat the jihadis and anti-American militants our Middle East policies are breeding.

We need to get rid of the end-times loonies that place Israel above all before any good can happen over there.

Om...

Bush v Fact

What his nibs said in his BSOTU, v Fact at Think Progress.

A Republican Congressman — who appeared to be Rep. Chris Shays (R-CT) — greeted Bush on his way up to the podium and planted a gentle kiss on the President’s cheek.

Is Shays in the Mafia? I hope so! Video if you must.

Bush said: “Over the past 7 years, we have increased funding for veterans by more than 95 percent. As we increase funding, we must also reform our veterans system to meet the needs of a new war and a new generation.”

FACT — 1.8 MILLION VETERANS LACK HEALTH INSURANCE: “The new study, published in the American Journal of Public Health, estimated that in 2004 nearly 1.8 million veterans were uninsured and unable to get care in veterans’ facilities.”

Bush said: “American troops are shifting from leading operations, to partnering with Iraqi forces, and, eventually, to a protective overwatch mission.”

FACT — IRAQIS ANTICIPATE TAKING CONTROL OF SECURITY BY 2018:
Iraqi defense minister Abdul Qadir “that his nation would not be able to take full responsibility for its internal security until 2012, nor be able on its own to defend Iraq’s borders from external threat until at least 2018.”

Oh fucking swell.

Much more.

One Bush Left Behind

This is so good! Greg Palast.

Here’s your question, class:

In his State of the Union, the President asked Congress for $300 million for poor kids in the inner city. As there are, officially, 15 million children in America living in poverty, how much is that per child? Correct! $20.

Here’s your second question. The President also demanded that Congress extend his tax cuts. The cost: $4.3 trillion over ten years. The big recipients are millionaires. And the number of millionaires happens, not coincidentally, to equal the number of poor kids, roughly 15 million of them. OK class: what is the cost of the tax cut per millionaire? That’s right, Richie, $287,000 apiece.

Mr. Bush said, “In neighborhoods across our country, there are boys and girls with dreams. And a decent education is their only hope of achieving them.”

So how much educational dreaming will $20 buy?

Not much, what with all the richies tryin' to snatch the Jackson out of the kids' hands.

If you can’t buy a book nor pay tuition with a sawbuck, what exactly can a poor kid buy with $20 in urban America? The Palast Investigative Team donned baseball caps and big pants and discovered we could obtain what local citizens call a “rock” of crack cocaine. For $20, we were guaranteed we could fulfill any kid’s dream for at least 15 minutes.

Now we could see the incontrovertible logic in what appeared to be quixotic ravings by the President about free trade with Colombia, Pell Grant for Kids and the surge in Iraq. In Iraq, General Petraeus tells us we must continue to feed in troops for another ten years. There is no way the military can recruit these freedom fighters unless our lower income youth are high, hooked and desperate. Don’t say, ‘crack vials,’ they’re, ‘Democracy Rocks’!

Of course, there’s an effective alternative to Mr. Bush’s plan – which won’t cost a penny more. Simply turn it upside down. Let’s give each millionaire in America a $20 bill, and every poor child $287,000.

And, there’s an added benefit to this alternative. Had we turned Mr. Bush and his plan upside down, he could have spoken to Congress from his heart.

The whistling of his ass-music is drowning everything else out anyway, whichever end he speaks from.

McCain's 100 Years War

Buchanan: McCain win would mean war with Iran

"More wars" could prove to be the oddest of all presidential campaign slogans. Especially if it works.

"That's one of the things that makes me very nervous about him," Buchanan went on. "There's no doubt John McCain is going to be a war president. ... His whole career is wrapped up in the military, national security. He's in Putin's face, he's threatening the Iranians, we're going to be in Iraq a hundred years."

There I go again, nodding my head at Buchanan's words. Either he's getting smarter or I'm getting old...

Best case scenario: McCain gets nomination, drops dead 5 November, just before election day. That way, even if he gets elected he can't start any more senseless wars. Added benefits: His inauguration speech will be short and the White House won't smell any worse than it does now.