The glamorous life of a rock star...

Our pal Patrick of I speak dog is traveling abroad as the guest drummer in a really loud rock band. England, France, Spain. Go read his journal. Start at the top and read it backwards, or any way you choose. Educational and entertaining.

GOP Bloodbath - Whee!

Americablog

Tucked in to the bottom of an article in the New York Daily News about the Hoyer/Murtha election was this little tidbit:

For all the focus on the Democrats, a former Bush official who predicts a coming bloodbath between the White House and disgruntled conservative Republicans brushed off the Pelosi-Hoyer tussle as much ado about process.

"The Democrats are the sideshow," he said. "Bush self-destructing is the big story in town."

The reporters, Tom DeFrank and Ken Bazinet, always have very, very good inside GOP sources.

The GOP bloodbath will be great fun to watch. Let the games begin.

No comment. Big grin.

Weekend reading ...

And shameless blogwhoring. This week's installment (Chapter Five) of my novel The Captains is up at Fixer and Old White Lady's Writing Blog* The Practical Press.

*Explanation.

"A disaster ..."

The Mail via BuzzFlash:

Tony Blair admitted that British intervention in Iraq has been a disaster last night - sending shockwaves through Westminster.

...

Challenged by veteran interviewer Sir David Frost that the Western invasion of Iraq has "so far been pretty much of a disaster", Mr Blair said: "It has."

...

Almost four years on and one of them finally gathers the stones, but only out of political expediency, to admit what the rest of us reality-based folks knew going in. Had a little effort been put in to post-war planning, as opposed to the effort people put into ripping off the Coalition Authority, the Chimp and Tony could have come up smelling like roses, and the 'permanent Republican majority' might have become a reality here.

But the Chimp's West Highland Whitey refused to concede he was part of the problem. Of course not. Why would you have to plan for what comes after the war if you win?

...

The Prime Minister went on: "You see what I say to people is why is it difficult in Iraq? It's not difficult because of some accident in planning, it's difficult because there's a deliberate strategy - al Qaeda with Sunni insurgents on one hand, Iranian-backed elements with Shia militias on the other - to create a situation in which the will of the majority for peace is displaced by the will of the minority for war." [my ems]

...

The blame for the insurgents goes directly to Blair and Bush because had we not invaded, Iraq would be terrorist-free. Say what you will about Saddam, and I'm not defending him, but under his regime, as long as you kept your mouth shut and stayed out of his way, you could live a pretty good, safe life. Bush, Blair, the Spaniard, and the Eye-Tie bear full responsibility for the mess in Iraq.

Just wondering ...

How you Vietnam guys feel about this?



I wonder how the Chimp feels with Uncle Ho looking over his shoulder saying "Missed you the first time"?

Pic thanks to Holden.

Gentlemen, start your subpœnas

Raw Story

In a letter addressed to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, soon to be chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has requested the release of documents that outline the Bush Administration's interrogation policies.

The documents, which have long been thought to exist by observers and critics of America's national security policies, were confirmed to exist as the result of a still-pending Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the ACLU.

Let the games begin!

Full text of letter at the link.

[Welcome to all the visitors from The Daou Report. ~ Fixer]

Depraved Indifference

Don Davis

While George Bush the Elder is currently being hailed for pulling in the reins on his ne'er-do-well son, local authorities in Kennebunkport, Maine have arrested "41" on counts of "negligent supervision of a minor," and "endangering the planet."

As the Kennebunkport D.A. rhetorically asked at his press conference, "what good is it to take the car keys away from a wasted teenager, after he's already destroyed the neighborhood?"

Paraphrasing from the Maine Criminal Code, the D.A. asserted that Poppy Bush "knew or should have known, of a need to prevent Dubya from operating a country, especially under the influence of Dick Cheney."

The D.A., a Republican, added that the State would be seeking the maximum punishment under the law due to the aggravated nature of the offense, since it was "41" himself who supplied Cheney to "43": "Simply put, this was like handing a loaded gun to a child."

The D.A. concluded his press conference by asserting that Senior never should have let Junior out of his sight: "When you take 41 away from 43, you just end up with No. 2."

Yes, a great steaming, wormy loaf of it.

Let bygones be bygones, my ass...

L.A. City Beat

The midterm election was a long night, and I didn't rise until the next afternoon, but when I did finally drag my hangover to a TV set, I discovered aimless panic as though Godzilla were coming down the Ginza. Donald Rumsfeld has already been hurled from the train. Rush Limbaugh was pounding his fists and bellowing that he'd been "carrying water" for all the wrong people. Talking heads who, when I'd passed out, had been wired to the RNC and Karl Rove were no longer even Republicans, embracing some weird, amorphous "libertarianism." Tucker Carlson had ditched his fatuous bow tie. Others were pointing out that it really wasn't much of a Democrat victory, because the winning Dems were kinda conservative, and that all would basically be business as usual. George himself made an appearance, and every third word was "bipartisan." A few Bushite pundits even had the enduring gall to issue threats while still scuttling like roaches at the light. Henry Waxman was advised to keep his subpoenas under the bed, and John Conyers to forget his articles of impeachment, because vindictive investigations of the White House would not be in the national interest.

Though the post-victory haze, I perceived a final pathetic spin, based in the fiction that the people still respond to Bush's supposed charisma: that to lay a Democrat glove-of-impeachment on the president would alienate the electorate big-time. We were being urged to forgive, forget, and all get along. As in forget the lies and the spies, the Constitution and Geneva Conventions, the war profiteering and the body count. Forget that New Orleans's 9th Ward is still in ruins, forget the inflated homophobia, the decimated middle class, for-profit health care, reproductive rights and embryonic stem cells, and all the small-time insanity, like the Terri Schiavo debacle. Forget My Pet Goat and the War on Christmas? And the accusations of everything from treason to dementia leveled at most of my friends?

Believe me, I have no inclination to forget any single damned thing, or to make any attempt to get along. I want to see every dirty secret dragged out and exposed, until George W. Bush is doing the Nixon perp-walk to the helicopter.

Couldn't have put it better myself.

Quote of the Day

From one who always seems to come up with great quotes, our pal 42 on Mitt Romney's Presidential aspirations:

... I guess the next thing you do after leaving the Governor's Mansion in Springfield is buy up a media conglomerate in preparation for your presidential fantasy-run; fantasy because Americans are more likely to elect a Jewish lesbian for president than a Mormon ...

Whaddaya mean ...

I can't beat her? She's my wife, ain't she? Another of the 'values crowd' shows his true colors*:

State Rep. Mark Olson, just elected to his eighth term in the House, was being held in the Sherburne County jail Monday after being arrested in connection with an alleged domestic assault on his wife Sunday afternoon at their home in Big Lake, Minn.

...

I just can't understand why most Americans won't cast a cynical eye at those who would presume to judge our morals. Just because someone swears they follow the teachings of Jesus (and I'm still trying to figure our which of Jesus' teachings they actually do follow) doesn't mean they do. How many examples do you need?

Like the Catholic preisthood it seems the Republican party has become a haven for wife beaters and pedophiles. How can anyone, in good conscience vote for a party where assault and sexual abuse are so widespread? When authority figures abuse the authority they have been given, using it to steal the innocence of youngsters or assault their spouses, on such a scale, something should click in the public's collective heads making them wonder if it might be a systemic problem. It does in mine.

It's a sad commentary on America when the Republican Party can be held harmless for the sins they've committed against this nation and her people.

*Link via Maru.

Got some doom for ya, F-man

Almost 7 min long, this video packs a lot of doom...


There is a detailed diary on this on DKos, so here's a bare outline of how 2 police officers couldn't detain a student with (allegedly) 6 taser shots: During a late night security check of students at a computer lab at UCLA a student who is not carrying his ID is asked to leave. When the student doesn't immediately shut down his computer the security guard calls in the campus police, who encounter the student as he is leaving the lab. The above video starts where the student is intercepted by the campus police and prevented from leaving the computer lab, and when he protests he is tasered by the UCLA police. According to the police the student "didn't cooperate" although students say he did. The police cuff the student who then drops. The police keep telling the student to get up and when he can't or won't they tazer him again and again. Why didn't they just pick him up and carry him out, you ask, since that's what happened at the end anyway. I'm asking that too. Why do they keep screaming at the terrorized student, which only serves to escalate an already tense situation, instead of calmly talking with him, trying to see his position? Wouldn't public safety be better served by just 'talking the kid down'? Yes, the police need to respond forcefully to violent criminals resisting arrest but this student perhaps broke a college rule (I don't know UCLA regs). If you want to be tough I guess you can argue that they could have given the kid a written warning and let him walk off. Well, it can also be said that terrorism is intended for those who witnesses it as well. Oh yes, a student who asked for badge numbers was threatened with a tasering, too.
"Here's your Patriot Act! Here's your f**king abuse of power!" Mostafa Tabatabainejad, the aforementioned student.
Update 1: Please see Dan's comment, which provides contact info for the UC Chancellor.
Update 2: Thank you, Keith Olbermann, for bringing this disgusting incident to national attention.
Last Update:
I think what happened at UCLA is tragic, repugnant and despicable not because it's unique but because it isn't unique. That or worse happens in this country regularly. Here is a quote from They Thought They Were Free, The Germans 1933-1945, by Milton Mayer:

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it--please try to believe me--unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, 'regretted', that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these 'little measures' that no 'patriotic German' could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head."

The real me...

I've had one of these decals - yes, decal - on my toolbox for thirty years and I decided I needed another one and found one on the internets in ten minutes. Ain't life grand?

Tsunami hits California

San Francisco Chronicle. Story and pictures.

Steven said Del Norte County officials received a notification from the National Weather Service on Wednesday morning that a 3- to 5-foot surge resulting from an 8.1 magnitude quake near Japan would hit the Crescent City region about 11:40 a.m.

"We did have a very small surge at that time, and then everybody went back to business as usual," Steven said.

Then around 2:30, Steven said, residents noticed an ominous sign -- water started running out of the town's harbor, a classic indication of an approaching tsunami.

"You don't like to see that," Steven said. "It looked like a very fast river."

Musta been kinda hard to see out of the back of your head whilst running full speed for higher ground.

"...couldn't put this clusterfuck back together again."

Sidney Blumenthal via True Blue Liberal. Read the whole thing.

Bush family guardians James Baker and others are trying to rescue "Sonny" from his failed Middle East policies. Will he listen this time?

In the event that Baker actually advocates what he thinks, Bush's options will be to admit the errors of his ways and the wisdom of his father and father's men or to cast them and caution aside once again. His choice is either Shakespearean or Wagnerian.

Mr. Blumenthal left out Dante:

"Abandon hope all ye who enter here..."

From the Guardian:

President George Bush has told senior advisers that the US and its allies must make "a last big push" to win the war in Iraq and that instead of beginning a troop withdrawal next year, he may increase US forces by up to 20,000 soldiers, according to sources familiar with the administration's internal deliberations.

I think "machinations" might have been a better choice of words than "deliberations" but them Limeys are quite reserved.

The "last push" strategy is also intended to give Mr Bush and the Republicans "political time and space" to recover from their election drubbing and prepare for the 2008 presidential campaign, the official said. "The Iraq Study Group buys time for the president to have one last go. If the Democrats are smart, they'll play along, and I think they will. But forget about bipartisanship. It's all about who's going to be in best shape to win the White House.

The official added: "Bush has said 'no' to withdrawal, so what else do you have? The Baker report will be a set of ideas, more realistic than in the past, that can be used as political tools. What they're going to say is: lower the goals, forget about the democracy crap, put more resources in, do it."

I don't think we have the military resources to "do it" like it needs, not that it should have ever been "done" in the first place.

This will use up our military, folks. In the fuckin' Bush is giving us and Iraq, these are the short strokes. An act of desperation in pursuit of inevitable failure.

That old black magic...

Yahoo News

BOGOR, Indonesia - A renowned black magic practitioner performed a voodoo ritual Thursday to jinx President George W. Bush and his entourage while he was on a brief visit to Indonesia.

Ki Gendeng Pamungkas slit the throat of a goat, a small snake and stabbed a black crow in the chest, stirred their blood with spice and broccoli before drank the "potion" and smeared some on his face.

I have to disguise broccoli too, but I usually do it with cheese sauce.

"I am doing voodoo, because other ritual would not work," he told reporters after he conducted the gory ritual about 1 kilometers from the palace.

Good luck, Mr. Pamungkas. I've worn out six Ken dolls* and used up eighteen boxes of hat pins.

*Closest thing I could find to Bush. No balls. I damn sure wasn't gonna use a G.I. Joe.

Dems are screwing up already

David Sirota

I thought when the campaign ended, we would all get a break from people lying about the Iraq War - and especially from faux "centrist" Democrats lying to us. I thought the strong anti-Iraq-War mandate of the election would shock the system into at least a brief few weeks of clarity and honesty.

I was wrong.

It seems that the "Yay Iraq War! Oops, Let's Now Pretend We Were Always Against the War" wing of the Democratic Party is trying to nationalize Lieberman's Nixonian model and apply it elsewhere. To understand what I mean, just take a quick look at what's going on in the race for House Majority Leader between anti-Iraq-War leader Rep. Jack Murtha (D-PA) and recently-reconstructed pro-war mouthpiece Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD).

Apparently, the DLC, Tauscher and Hoyer himself believe that the Members of Congress who will be voting in the Majority Leader race are very, very stupid people who have no access to the Internet and have never heard of Google or Yahoo. They must believe this, because it takes about, oh, 10 seconds online to figure out that, in fact, Hoyer led the charge against Democrats taking a strong position on Iraq, publicly attacking the House Democratic leadership for having the guts to follow Murtha's lead and get up the guts to challenge Bush on the war.

All of this is happening at the same time Hoyer is trying to position himself as the ethics candidate in the race. Granted, Murtha is no saint - but Steny "I Have My Own K Street Project" Hoyer now billing himself as Congress's new Bill Proxmire is as credible as Mark Foley chairing Congress's Exploited Children Caucus. Oops, I forgot - that actually happened, so maybe we shouldn't be surprised after all that this kind of up-in-your-face chutzpah is very much alive and well in a congressional leadership race.

The race is over. Hoyer beat out Murtha in the "leadership" race.

Not a very good start, Dems.

Update:

Here's what Sirota said a month ago, and I agree:

I'm working as hard as I can to help get Democrats into the majority, but the Washington Monthly echoes what I've been saying for a long time about Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD): he's part of the problem. If Democrats take the majority, Hoyer will become a very serious obstacle to those Democratic lawmakers fighting back against the hostile takeover of our government. If Democrats lose, Hoyer will make a run for leader of the entire party - again, not a good thing.

We shall see.

International relations

Think Progress

Yesterday, the White House website featured a graphic with the flags of the three countries he's visiting on his trip - Singapore, Vietnam, and Indonesia. One problem: instead of displaying the Vietnamese flag, the White House graphic featured the old flag of South Vietnam. That flag hasn't been the official flag of Vietnam since South Vietnam surrendered to North Vietnam in 1975.

What's next? The Confederate flag at Arlington?

Impending doom

You know, I get this feeling that something's gonna happen. I can't help thinking that the White House cabal has something up their sleeves they hope will neuter the Dem majority in Congress. I hear Harry Reid's name being mentioned in connection with Jack Abramoff's recent squealings. Will they jump on this to deflect investigation of their nefarious activites over the past 6 years? I don't know.

Will another front on the "War on Terra" be opened 'inadvertantly' or 'accidentally', an Iranian Tonkin if you will? Another attack on the U.S. perhaps? Don't know either.

It just seems to me that people who crave power for power's sake will not go quietly, just throw up their hands and say "it was fun while it lasted" and begin to bow to the will of Congress. We're dealing with cheaters here, folks, and cheaters don't change.

They are still at the controls, still have incredible power (and don't forget, the support of a third of Americans), and I don't think we can allow ourselves to believe all is fixed with a Dem majority on the Hill. I believe the shenanigans will increase as the WH tries to keep its 'mandate'.

A question

Would you go to a tobacco company for help to quit smoking, a beer company to keep your kids from drinking, or an oil company to help you conserve fuel? Just askin' because it sounds awful stupid in their commercials.

What a difference ...

Four years makes:

WASHINGTON - Mississippi Sen. Trent Lott, ousted from the top Senate Republican leadership job four years ago because of remarks considered racially insensitive, won election to the No. 2 post Wednesday for the minority GOP in the next Congress.

...

Republicans, same old song and dance.