The first casualties ...

Of the wrong headed SCOTUS decision upholding Voter ID. Fucking old nuns, for crying out loud. Just the folks who would engage in voter fraud.

...

About 12 Indiana nuns were turned away Tuesday from a polling place by a fellow bride of Christ because they didn’t have state or federal identification bearing a photograph.

Sister Julie McGuire said she was forced to turn away her fellow sisters at Saint Mary’s Convent in South Bend, across the street from the University of Notre Dame, because they had been told earlier that they would need such an ID to vote.

The nuns, all in their 80s or 90s, didn’t get one but came to the precinct anyway.

"One came down this morning, and she was 98, and she said, ‘I don’t want to go do that,’" Sister McGuire said. Some showed up with outdated passports. None of them drives.

...

I wonder if the poll captain had them stripped and did a cavity search too. Once again, another piece of Rethug legislation whose sole purpose is to fuck the average citizen. Thanks to the Chimp's SCOTUS appointments, a large number of Americans' rights have been flushed.

And on a related note, while you're at C & L, McCain wants to appoint more judges justices like the 'Big 4'*. Real good.

Sen. John McCain delivered a speech at Wake Forest University today on judicial nominations. His basic message: I love George Bush’s judicial nominees – keep ‘em coming. He picked up where Bush is about to leave off, and read from the same script written by Sen. Sam Brownback, Family Research Council president Tony Perkins, and Pat Robertson’s lawyer Jay Sekulow.

...

Taking the Mrs. to the airport. See yas after work ...

*Roberts, Scalia, Alito, and Thomas.

Dream Vacation Destination Resort

Click for better target acquisition

US-backed plan sees shiny future for Green Zone in Iraq

Forget the rocket attacks, concrete blast walls and lack of a sewer system. Now try to imagine luxury hotels, a shopping center and even condos in the heart of Baghdad.

Man, those recruiters'll try anything!

How Far McCain Has Fallen

Do not miss this one by MFBTGR*! She's tamped the old geezer's lies, spins, flippity-floppities and misstatements into a tight brick of a turd that I'd sure hate to try to pass!

McCain's fall has been Shakespearean -- and really hard to watch for those, like myself, who so admired and even loved him. His nobility and his true reformer years have given way to pandering in the service of ambition.

And the main reason for The 28/48 Disconnect is the mainstream media's ongoing membership in the John McCain Protection Society. They too continue to party -- and report on McCain -- like it's 1999.

Every time McCain screws up, the media jump all over themselves to make it better, as if grandpa had said something embarrassing at the dinner table and it needed to be smoothed over as quickly as possible.

I'm waitin' to see how they gloss over 'grandpa' droppin' his pants and drooling on camera!

Interestingly, McCain's mental meltdown over the reason we invaded Iraq was prompted by a comment from a McCain supporter who said he hoped a group called "Swift Boats for McCain" would be formed to help McCain in the campaign.

The gentleman needn't worry. The group already exists. It's called "the media." And they are very well-funded, and highly motivated. The Swift Boat Media for McCain are, for instance, going to make sure that we hear a lot more about the nuances of Obama's decision to not wear a flag pin on his lapel than about McCain's ideas on a little thing like the Iraq war.

McCain tries to wriggle away from his "100 year" comment by saying that he wasn't talking about a hundred year war, but a very long term commitment of U.S. troops, like we have in Germany or South Korea. Maybe so, but the last time I looked no one was blowing up American soldiers in Wiesbaden.

Well...I think maybe good German beer can 'blow them up', but in the good way.

What will it take for the Swift Boat Media to realize that John McCain jumped the shark a long, long time ago?

McCain's all they got this time around and they're welcome to him. Fuck 'em. McCain proves you can make chicken salad out of chicken shit, identical in all respects save texture and taste. And they lap it up.

*My Favorite Big Titted Greek Redhead

Who Will Tell the People?

By He Whose Name Shall Not Be Spoken. Heh.

[...] My own totally unscientific polling has left me feeling that if there is one overwhelming hunger in our country today it’s this: People want to do nation-building. They really do. But they want to do nation-building in America.

They are not only tired of nation-building in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with so little to show for it. They sense something deeper — that we’re just not that strong anymore. We’re borrowing money to shore up our banks from city-states called Dubai and Singapore. Our generals regularly tell us that Iran is subverting our efforts in Iraq, but they do nothing about it because we have no leverage — as long as our forces are pinned down in Baghdad and our economy is pinned to Middle East oil.

Our president’s (Small 'p'. I like that! - G) latest energy initiative was to go to Saudi Arabia and beg King Abdullah to give us a little relief on gasoline prices. I guess there was some justice in that. When you, the president, after 9/11, tell the country to go shopping instead of buckling down to break our addiction to oil, it ends with you, the president, shopping the world for discount gasoline.

[...] Sorry, we don’t need a president who is tough enough to withstand the lies of his opponents. We need a president who is tough enough to tell the truth to the American people. Any one of the candidates can answer the Red Phone at 3 a.m. in the White House bedroom. I’m voting for the one who can talk straight to the American people on national TV — at 8 p.m. — from the White House East Room.

Who will tell the people? We are not who we think we are. We are living on borrowed time and borrowed dimes. We still have all the potential for greatness, but only if we get back to work on our country.

Looks like ol' HWNSNBS learned a few things when he took a few months away from his fellow billionaires. Good for him.

Probe of USS Cole Bombing Unravels

An extensive article in WaPo:

ADEN, Yemen -- Almost eight years after al-Qaeda nearly sank the USS Cole with an explosives-stuffed motorboat, killing 17 sailors, all the defendants convicted in the attack have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials.

Some officials acknowledged that pursuing the Cole investigation became less of a political priority with the passage of time. A new administration took power three months after the bombing. Then came Sept. 11.

"During the first part of the Bush administration, no one was willing to take ownership of this," said Roger W. Cressey, a former counterterrorism official in the Clinton and Bush administrations who helped oversee the White House's response to the Cole attack. "It didn't happen on their watch. It was the forgotten attack."

Yeah, fuck it. It was all Clinton's fault.

On Feb. 3, 2006, prison officials announced that 23 al-Qaeda members, including most of the Cole defendants, had vanished. They escaped by digging a tunnel that snaked 300 feet to a nearby mosque.

Prison officials broadcast an urgent appeal. "We loaned them the shovels in good faith and we need them back!" said a representative.

I mighta made part of that up. The fuckers probably walked out the front door anyway.

John P. Clodtfelter Jr. of Mechanicsville, Va., whose son Kenneth died on the Cole, said the families have tried to meet with Bush to press for more action.

"I was just flat told that he wouldn't meet with us," Clodtfelter said. "Before him, President Clinton promised we'd go out and get these people, and of course we never did. I'm sorry, but it's just like the lives of American servicemen aren't that important."

You're learning, Mr. Clodtfelter.

The Pentagon vs. America

Scott Ritter on the disconnect between the military and rule of law and hence the citizenry. Another fine job, Georgie. A 'recommended read'.

An executive that operates in accordance with a unitary theory of governance is one that views the capacity to defend the state as being in fact the capacity to defend the realm. As such, one sees a gravitation of emphasis: Rather than focusing on external threats to the collective, the realm becomes obsessed with internal threats to its ability to retain power. The Patriot Act is a clear-cut example of how a unitary executive has undermined and corrupted the legitimate law enforcement mechanisms of the land by vesting the executive with powers normally associated solely with the legislative branch. In this regard, we see the armed forces similarly abused, with the creation of military command structures (namely U.S. Northern Command) which exist not to protect the people, but rather protect the realm from the people. This is not a stated objective, but rather one inferred from the fact that, for the first time since the imposition of posse comitatus in 1876, the United States has positioned its armed forces so that they can participate in normal state law enforcement. In short, instead of serving as a force of protection for the American people from external threats, the military views the American people as the threat, "targets" which need to be investigated as potential threats to the military.

In similarly deplorable fashion, the Pentagon has allowed itself to be hijacked by the radical right wing of the Republican Party. The fact that Fox News has become the channel of choice for the U.S. military speaks volumes about the mind-set which has gripped those who lead it. The military has always been a conservative institution. Yet when wearing the uniform of the United States serves more as a front for defending a political ideology (a rabid one at that) rather than upholding and defending the Constitution, the military does itself a disservice. The disconnect between those who serve in the military and those whom they are sworn to protect can be fatal when one realizes the recruiting pool no longer identifies with the military as a legitimate expression of patriotism and citizenship.

The scope of this ideological hijacking is broad, yet barely recognized. One can glimpse just how deep and nefarious this ideological shift is when one considers the extent to which evangelical Christians have infiltrated the U.S. Air Force Academy, proselytizing their heavily politicized religion to the future officers and leaders of that service. The past comments of Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a decorated Army Special Operations veteran who described America's post-9/11 "war on terror" as a conflict between "Christian" America and "radical Islam," are widely embraced within the U.S. military. President Bush has echoed Boykin in his speeches and statements, and the military's favorite presidential candidate, Republican Sen. John McCain, has become the embodiment of Boykin's philosophy. The Constitution prohibits the notion that America be defined as a Christian nation. To allow the military, sworn as it is to uphold and defend that document, to posture itself as Christian, becoming in effect the "sword of God," is unthinkable and unforgivable.

[...] Genuine patriotism was once a viable recruitment pitch. Now, economic incentives, false promises and pseudo-patriotism are used as the bait to lure the youths of today into America's legions. Like the legions of the past, these new warriors march not on behalf of the citizens they are sworn to protect, but rather the emperor who commands them (my em). This may be viewed as an overly harsh statement, but there is no other way to describe the abuses of a unitary executive who positions himself above the Constitution and Congress in a time of war.

Quote of the Day

From a helluvan article at TomDispatch:

Every time you hear the phrase "the next war" - and journalists already love it - you should wince. It means endless war, eternal war, and it's the path to madness.

We're well on the way.

Sex and the Provincials ...

And, after all, that's what the 'Beltway insiders' are. Digby takes a look:

...

Wolff obviously sees the world the same way Dowd does --- the way they all do. Even the Village elder of Village elders, David Broder, is obsessed with the sexual lives of politicians in a way that is more than a little bit odd. (But then, that's the way provincial villages operate, isn't it?)

...

A personal anecdote: When I was 15, I had my first experience with real love while in Germany for the summer. As you know, my family lives in a little town in the foothills between Alsace-Lorraine and the Black Forest. The niece of one of my mother's oldest friends had me enthralled, smitten. Needless to say, word of our attraction spread like wildfire though the small town of 1500. To this day (30 years later), people still talk about it and people will still bring the relationship up to me whenever I visit. Suffice it to say it was passionate and we were always looking for places to be ... intimate, away from the watchful eyes of adults. The small town obsession comes from the amount of times, and places, we were caught.

At this point in our lives, hers and mine, our relationship is just a fond memory (I have a wonderful life and love no one more than my wife; she married a great, successful guy and they have 3 beautiful kids - thankfully they take after their mother), but I'm sure, just as I do, she gets reminded every time I'm in town and people always tell her "we always thought you and he would get married". It will probably be that way until our parents' generation is all gone.

...

But Wolff doesn't stop with just speculating about the politicans' sex lives. He makes the assumption that voters are as obsessed with politicians' sex lives and speculates that their own sexual "deficiencies" are dictating their presidential preferences:

The Hillary story is—and how could it not be?—largely a sexual one. This is not so much a sexist view as a sexualist view: What’s up here? What’s the unsaid saying? What’s the vibe? Although it’s not discussed in reputable commentary, it’s discussed by everyone else: so what exactly is the thing with Hillary and sex, with the consensus being that she simply must not have it (at least not with her husband; there are, on the other hand, the various conspiracy scenarios of whom else she might have had it with). It’s partly around this consensus view of her not having sex that people support her or resist her. She’s the special-interest candidate of older women—the post-sexual set. She’s resisted by others (including older women who don’t see themselves as part of the post-sexual set) who see her as either frigid or sexually shunned—they turn from her inhibitions and her pain.

...

Personally, I hope Hillary and Bill worked out whatever problems they had and they're humping like rabbits. Though I think the only ones who care are the 'provincials' like Wolff. Do you care if or who Hil is fucking? I don't, as long as it doesn't embarrass the nation and, after Bush, that bar is set pretty high.

I don't know, but the priorities to me are her statement that she'll start bringing our troops home within 60 days of her election. The fact she promised to rein in the oil companies and end their gouging of the American people. The fact she does have some economic cred (you can't spend 8 years in the White House and not have some of it rub off) and might be able to stop this tailspin the Chimp nosed us into. Her sexuality, or lack thereof, is way down on the list.

...

Why Wolff thinks his immature, locker room talk represents anything meaningful is beyond me, but the fact that he writes it in a national magazine, apparently never realizing the multiple levels of insult at a large swathe of American voters is baffling. Perhaps an even greater mystery is why he didn't realize that these allegedly "post sexual" and "older women who don’t see themselves as part of the post-sexual set" probably make up substantial number of Vanity Fair readers. (However you parse it, it's a pretty mean way to categorize middle aged and older women.)

...

And just a personal (male) observation: The 'post-sexual' set Wolff refers to doesn't really exist in my opinion. I believe (I'm no sociologist, just a man who enjoys women in a whole lot more than a sexual way) that female 'post-sexuality' is a creation of the 'establishment'; the male-dominated establishment. When I was 24, I dated a woman who was 20 years older than I and I thought it was an epiphany. I realized that what I was taught (just as women were taught that fulfillment was reached with the white picket fence, two and a half kids, and the executive husband) about what I should want in a woman was mostly wrong. Older Mature women are sexual (even post-menopause); they've just been told otherwise for so long they believe it.

What people like Wolff don't get is that women, as opposed to their college-age cohorts, want more than the sophomoric pick-up lines and the dinner - movie - fuck cycle of youthful passion. They've been there and done that. They've matured and they want conversation; they want to be appreciated for more than a set of tits or a hot body. They want to be appreciated for who they are as an individual, not as a 'generic woman'; to be discarded when her face isn't as youthful as it was in her 20s or gravity does its work on the parts that were once firm. The turn-on, I've noticed, is when a woman realizes the man she is with wants her for more than just the good parts. Great sex follows (you can keep the 72 virgins, I'll take one woman with experience any day).

When people worry more about others' sex lives than the big issues of the day, I tell them they have to get out of the house more. People like Wolff need to get out among regular folks, and not just the ones they run into in airports. It is his ilk who allowed one President to be impeached over an affair that affected the nation not a whit and another to avoid it after committing war crimes abroad and shredding the Constitution at home. It might behoove them to look more closely at their own houses, and in their own pants, before making an issue of Hillary's (and Michelle Obama's) sexuality; a subject it is painfully obvious they are supremely unqualified to speak about.

Off to work ...

In Honor of Cinco de Mayo

Party on, Vatos!

Stick yer finger down yer throat Click to empuken

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Experts: Gas Could Reach $10 a Gallon
Which was target price established by Cheney Energy Task Force.

Cheney's Lawyer to Congress: He's Beyond Your Jurisdiction
Can only be questioned by cosmic council made up of Solons from other galaxies.

An in-depth 'probe', perhaps?

Report: Army Corps of Engineers Patching Levees With Newspaper
Finding called “encouraging” by newspaper business.

They're not going to buy the papers, you idiots. They'll used the unsold ones from yesterday. When the CofE rocket scientists figure out they can buy rolls of newsprint, at inflated government prices of course, that you don't need any more, they'll do that. It ain't the ink that plugs the holes.

Report: Nelson Mandela on Terrorist Watch List
Authorities don't want him bringing his anti-apartheid message here.

Theory: Mirrors on Moon Could Send Signal to Distant Civilizations
To let them know we're six billion ignorant schmucks about to destroy ourselves.

On that note, have a nice day.

Dana Perino, 35AA68

Dan Froomkin writes all-purpose, all-encompassing op-eds. The title of this one is "What Karl Rove Fears Most", which I think can be summed up as "His cellie, the grinning, pantsless Bubba, unseen, approaches the kneeling, also pantsless Karl", to which I would add, "Film at 11". Heh. But I digress...

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer editorial board writes: "White House spokeswoman Dana Perino, apparently operating on a dying pair of AA batteries, said, 'President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said 'mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission,' said Perino. Yet, Bush used the same phrase a month later in a speech that had nothing to do with that specific ship and its officers. As terrifyingly adept as the Karl Rove-installed deus ex machina is at creating threats and victories out of a thin vapor of lies, it falters in dealing with the fact that much of what the architects of this war said and did in getting us there is recorded and reported. The American public doesn't suffer from the White House's brand of amnesia. Nonetheless, Perino continued, 'And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner.'

She probably lies about her age, bra size, and room temperature IQ as well. Or maybe she just doesn't know.

The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder

Vincent Bugliosi, who prosecuted Charles Manson for the Tate-LaBianca murders, has a new book:

"In 'The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder,' Bugliosi presents a tight, meticulously researched legal case that puts George W. Bush on trial in an American courtroom for the murder of nearly 4,000 American soldiers [it is now more than 4000 GIs killed in Iraq] fighting the war in Iraq. Bugliosi sets forth the legal architecture and incontrovertible evidence that President Bush took this nation to war in Iraq under false pretenses -- a war that has not only caused the deaths of American soliders but also over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women and children [the Lancet survey projected out now would make that more than a million dead]: cost the United States over one trillion dollars thus far with no end in sight: and alienated many American allies in the Western world.

I think the book will be found in the 'SciFi-Fantasy' section of your local bookstore. Sadly.

Remembering Kent State

Ohio - Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

JG.

Sorry ...

I wasn't around much yesterday. As you know, we're starting a remodel at the house and yesterday I was moving the heavy shit out of the 'work zone'. Demo starts the end of the week.

That and dad-in-law gave us a scare on Friday, blacking out at his kitchen table. Mrs. F got him to the hospital, thinking he might have had a stroke but, fortunately, they think his pacemaker fucked up. We're springing him this afternoon and he's gonna spend a couple days with us before he goes back home. Gotta get a guest room ready before I go to work. Oy!

Is it time for vacation yet? Heh ...

"Another vacation? You must be kidding me, dad!"

And an aside, the piece of furniture behind Shayna is the companion to the big one I moved yesterday. Later ...

They been doing it for 20 years ...

It's why I worry that McCain will end up winning in November. Greenwald:

...

With the help of a media enthralled to such shallow, easy-to-chatter-about attacks, they succeeded in electing a highly unpopular figure from a scandal-plagued, discredited party. And Republicans, with their media partners, have been using that depraved playbook ever since, and will continue to do so this year. For the 1988 election, Reagan's severe economic mismanagement, his disastrous foreign policy filled with savage covert wars, and widespread perceptions that top Reagan officials had blatantly lied about breaking the law were all just disappeared. Actual issues played virtually no role in George Bush the First's 40-state triumph.

...

As Glenn does so well, he highlights the similarities today with the election of 1988. The issues are not a concern for the Rethugs; it's all about the propaganda and the press is thoroughly in the tank for McCain. Wait until the Dems finally pick a candidate. The Rethug Noise Machine will kick into high gear and it will be 24/7 bash the Dem. I'm not looking forward to this at all.

Associates ...

While everybody's interested about the political views of everyone Barack met throughout his life and how it will affect his presidency, seems nobody much cares who McCain hangs out with:

Can a presidential candidate justify a long and friendly relationship with someone who, back in the 1970s, extolled violence and committed crimes in the name of a radical ideology—and who has never shown remorse or admitted error? When the candidate in question is Barack Obama, John McCain says no. But when the candidate in question is John McCain, he's not so sure.

...

What McCain didn't mention is that he has his own Bill Ayers—in the form of G. Gordon Liddy. Now a conservative radio talk-show host, Liddy spent more than 4 years in prison for his role in the 1972 Watergate burglary. That was just one element of what Liddy did, and proposed to do, in a secret White House effort to subvert the Constitution. Far from repudiating him, McCain has embraced him.

...

Ever get the feeling the 'news' media wants a Rethug back in the White House next year?

Great thanks to Athenae for the link.

Why can't there be a better metaphor for 'long memory' than the goddam Repug symbol?

This is dedicated to that phony motherfucker McCain in honor of his recent panderama in NOLA. Some of us will never forget. Bet on it.

Gulfcoast Highway

Sunday Crazy Redneck Music Blogging

Brad Paisley is one of the better 'hat singers'. This song's about an old acquaintance I haven't seen in years. Thank God.

The All-White Elephant in the Room

A quiz! Oh boy, I love quizzes! The first and last paragraphs from E.J. Dionne's op-ed:

Do white right-wing preachers have it easier than black left-wing preachers? Is there a double standard?

Yes and Yes.

Exactly right. Now the question is whether we will be just as tough on false prophets who happen to be white and right-wing.

That would be No, E.J.

How'd I do?

Daddy Frank weighs in on this particular segment of white right-wing hypocrisy as well.

BORED by those endless replays of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright? If so, go directly to YouTube, search for “John Hagee Roman Church Hitler,” and be recharged by a fresh jolt of clerical jive.

Are we really to believe that neither Mr. McCain nor his camp knew anything then about Mr. Hagee’s views?
...

Any 12-year-old with a laptop could have vetted this preacher in 30 seconds, tops.

12-year-olds can't vote. Good thing, too. They mostly haven't learned how to let others make them lie to themselves yet. They'd be damn poor Repuglican voters.

[...] Here, too, there’s a double standard. Mr. McCain is graded on a curve because the G.O.P. bar is set so low (my em). But at a time when the latest Wall Street Journal-NBC News poll shows that President Bush is an even greater drag on his popularity than Mr. Wright is on Mr. Obama’s, Mr. McCain’s New Orleans visit is more about the self-interested politics of distancing himself from Mr. Bush than the recalibration of policy.

The point of my emphasis is that even though McCain is a weak candidate of a deservedly failed party and ideology, and even though the forces of relative light and truth have two pretty good candidates, either one of whom will be orders of magnitude better than a third Bush term, Big Comm has decided whom they want in the White House and thus overlook a lot of McCain's weenie-self-stompin' and play up the Dems'.

Please read the rest of these.

It's all about the white guys ...

When it comes to being influential:

...

Here’s to the almost forgotten concept of women having a voice in this alleged democracy.

...