Al Franken Rules!

Go buy his book, and find out what the hell is really going on.

Do it.

Now!

Fox's Bill O'Reilly is, in the words of a friend's wife, a big pussy.

Hear why.

Fox News is bad for your brain!

Ah-Nold's Real Agenda

Get a close look at the sort of thing the Gropinator intends to do to the state of California.

Now Showing

If you are a movie fanatic and own a DVD player, run, don't walk to Netflix.

'Nuff said.

Call A Plumber!

Years ago a family friend whose father worked for the CIA was asked what he told people who wanted to know what his father did for a living. He replied:

"He's a plumber."

Seems his services are needed today in the Bush Respectability Retirement Home on Pennsylvania Avenue. So much for integrity and all of that - when crossed, these bastards will stoop as low as they need to for their petty revenge. In the case of Joseph Wilson, they've outdone themselves, committing a felony in order to get their "enemy." The White House deliberately outed his wife, a CIA undercover operative. Since Republican abuse of the independent counsel statute prompted Congress to pass on renewing it, the only avenue of redress lies in the Justice department, headed by America's favorite lawman, John Ashcroft.

You can see why the Shrubites expect to get away with this one. I expect they will, but the message is sent - go along or we'll stop at nothing to hurt you, even if it involves committing felonies and possibly endangering national security. Hey, sounds like a great Republican administration of yore, where a lot of the current crew served.

And in the event you are having trouble getting your mind around how easy the press has been on Shrub, just imagine this had all taken place during the Clinton administration...

Yikes!

You Get What You Pay For...

...And ESPN has just discovered this for themselves. Having hired the motor-mouth conservative blowhard Rush Limbaugh to inject some "controversy" into ESPN's Sunday night football pregame show, the execs who made that dubious decision got exactly what they paid for.

Seems they didn't like it much. Rush is a football illiterate, which begs the obvious question: What the fuck did ESPN expect him to contribute? Apparently, crappy analysis and cutting edge racist commentary was what they expected, 'cause it only took 4 weeks to get it.

The only shocking thing here is that Rush was hired in the first place. Afterall, his stock in trade on the radio and back in the day of DittoHead TV was exactly the kind of barely disguised code he employed in his comments about Donovan McNabb, who, regardless of what Rush may think, is so good he scares the shit out of opposing teams. Rush has built a multi-million dollar empire on fact-challenged so called "political" commentary rife with white middle class scare tactics: Black folks are taking your jobs, fucking your daughters, and the "liberalmediaestablishment" colludes to promote this agenda. It's all misdirection while Rush's masters loot the public treasury for themselves while telling the rest of us to work longer hours for less pay, and never mind the over time!

As for ESPN, well, they are in it now. Whoever hired Rush knew full well what they were getting, and it will be to their everlasting discredit that they pulled this stunt in a cynical ratings grab. Sports, despite the associated problems, has time and again been out in front on race issues, sometimes dragging a reluctant society with it. ESPN has taken a regressive step with this foolishness. One good thing to come out of this is that ESPN's football drama Playmakers is coming under some much needed scrutiny. Billed as a hard hitting, reality based show about a professional football team, it feels a lot more like a bad 1980's gangsta rap movie, all drugs and gold chains and no plot. I won't say it is racist, but it is absurd...

Shameless, shameless, shameless.

Absolutely shameless.

Listening closely to the utterances coming from the Shrubministration one can only surmise that they really did make it all up. Every sentence is now a retro-rationalization for invading Iraq.

-----

A case can be made for the impeachment of Shrub.

In America, lying about a blowjob from someone other than your wife is a mortal sin....lying to start a war and getting US citizens killed is not.

Our priorities are seriously fucked up.

-----

Vote Dean. I don't necessarily agree with all of his politics, but I get the distinct impression lying is not his forte. Might be a refreshing change from the mealy mouthed political managers running the scene right now.

I'm outta here.

Addendum

Read the post below, then this:

The real story behind this Iraq/Niger nuclear thing is the fact that the documentation was forged, and poorly so, yet either never caught by anyone reviewing it or the Resident's State Of The Onion address, or inserted into it with the knowledge that it was wholly untrue, but highly useful to the propaganda effort.

And lastly, but not leastly, the White House finally admitterd it in July, even though there were published reports many months ago in progressive media pointing out that the docs were forged, CIA knew it, and others in the administration knew it. Only when investigations were started into the body of evidence concerning mass destruction weapons did the White House "get out in fornt" of this very old story.

Liars and cheats, top to bottom.

==================

Richard Cohen, with whom I often disagree, has taken the CEO/President analogy one small step further, and it is kind of funny:

Audit.

Follow me into fantasy land:

Don Rumsfeld has floated a new justification for invading Iraq: seeing old "evidence" in "new" light. That particular light is said to be the experiences of September 11th, though he proffered that idea without any further explanation.

Talking in code again, I see.

This from a man who has spent hours at his press podium parsing words and splitting the finest of hairs in order to avoid simple truths, like the fact that US forces, no longer involved in "major hostilities," are now fighting a guerilla war. Rumsfeld hotly denied that it was guerilla warfare, preferring instead any one of a number of other terms, most of them involving the word terrorism, a catch all term intended to shut down the conversation.

A CNN reporter finally looked up the term "guerilla warfare" in the Defense Department's own book of definitions and terms, and read it to Rumsfeld, then asked the obvious question: What is the difference, if any, between this definition and what is happening in Iraq? Rumsfeld made some weak joke about the book, and failed to address the question.

It is telling that the point man in the administration on the war against Iraq spends much of his time and energy splitting fine hairs to make them finer and continues to search desperately for justification after the fact for a war the US had no business conducting. The White House is so cowardly that folllowing the "news" that the reports quoted in the State Of The Onion address asserting Iraq was buying nuclear materials from Africa (Niger, to be precise) proved to be totally false and the documentation supporting it pathetic forgeries, no more than a statement from an unidentified administration official was released. The Resident Shrub also tried to brush the discovery of vaporous evidence away, proclaiming with a puzzled furrow in his brow that he believes he made the right decision, and that ought to be good enough for everyone.

Frankly, these fuckers care nought that they have been caught in a tremendous lie, one made as part of the speech given to justify the war and get the public to go along with it. The deed is done, justification in and of itself. The real looting is now underway, and those fingers fiddling in your pocket don't belong to Mary Ann's shaky hands.

Randominity

I don't post much anymore, 'cause no one's reading. I ought to anyway, lest my half-broken brain turn to complete mush.

So here are some mostly random observations and scattered thoughts. Enjoy!

My country is being operated as an ongoing criminal enterprise. Were it a prtivate company, it would be liable for a laundry list of conspiracy charges under the RICO statutes most commonly applied to Organized Crime as we used to know it. The plunder of Iraq is thievery on a staggering scale. The looting of the public treasury here in the United States by Shrub and his many many corporate friends is nothing less than astonishing, and it's not over yet. Repeated tax cut packages further swell the pockets of those who need it the least while crucial services are being cut off due to a lack of funds.

Ya think?

Prosecutors in the Laci Peterson case need to shut the fuck up. Trying this case in the media is the pervue of the defense, and something not looked upon very highly by most folks. Having the agents of the state, whose job is to follow and apply the law, leaking shit all over the media stage is revolting. Then again, take a look at the DC sniper case for an example of how to take a mighty steaming piss into the jury pool...

To say the Shrubministration overstated the case concerning weapons of mass destruction would be to understate the truth, if you'll permit me to butcher the language in ways that amuse me. Colin Powell, allegedly the man in government with integrity coming out of his fucking ears, lied his way through that crucial presentation to the UN, knowing he was doing so every last second of it. The French, a contrary people still harboring aspirations to empire themselves, had it right from the start. The only thing to go after was Hussein himself, and Shrubministration bleatings aside, that was never the aim or justification for invading Iraq, killing thousands of civilians, loosing chaos upon the land, and stealing all of the oil for our greedy selves.

Oops. That sounds suspiciously like the truth of it!

Next up, Iran! Woohoo!

I am not afraid of SARS. Neither should you be. It has killed fewer people in its run than malaria kills in a single day. or AIDS. And so on. It does happen to translate well to a television "news" envorionment, what with all of those Chinese wearing face masks. Too bad it didn't come up so hard on the media radar a little later - it could have been the summer non-story to flog until the fall brings us something else approximating real news. Achoo!

Reality TV isn't. 'Nuff said.

Molly Ivins On The FCC.

(from Alternet)

In Plain Sight

I trust you all are paying attention, 'cause the wholesale thievery by the Shrub administration continues unabated.

Iraq has become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Friends Of Shrub Inc., and the FCC, run by Colin Powell's corporate clone son Michael, has relaxed the remaining restrictions on concentrated media ownership even further. The "public" airwaves, which have not been public in decades, have truly been given away, and your tax dollars paid the salaries of those who did it. This is the second time in under a decade that a wholesale giveaway has been granted to the giant media companies, who benefitted wildly from the Telecommunications Act passed by Congress and signed by that alleged liberal Bill Clinton into law. The following morning, waves of enormous media mergers were announced in a multi-billion dollar feeding frenzy on a scale unlike anything in the history of USA, inc.

And so in the coming months, while less spectacular, expect a number of similar mergers to take place, as media companies move to consolidate right to the limits of ownership, flimsy as they are now, while pushing for the destruction of the last, tissue thin regulations preventing a single company from literally owning all of the media in a given market, or all of the TV stations in the United States.

The argment is made that in the new century, new rules must come into play, that new media allows a wide variety of voices to be heard. The untruth in this argument is both obivous and simple to understand - media companies are larger than ever, and more diverse than ever in their holdings. ISP's and TV/movie compannies are now one, and own cable systems, newspapers, television and radio stations within their corporate umbrellas. The Internet, while wondrous in so many ways, is also more of a top-dog environment, as the entire concept of search engines and the way they function serve to promote the popular over the accurate or comprehensive. In raw terms, fewer companies already own more media than ever before in our history, and yesterday's FCC ruling, so clearly not in the public interest (which that organization allegedly exists to serve), paves the way toward an even narrower pyramid of ownership.

Oil is proving to be the driving factor in the Shrub annexation of Iraq. Yeah yeah yeah, it's great that Saddam Hussein is gone, but that was never the aim, rationale, or true consideration in the manufacture of a motive to make a bold oil grab in the Middle East - not at all. As the Pentagon looks foolish trying to deny that the Saving Of Private Lynch was as staged as the opening scene of the Tom Hanks film, the US has strong-armed the UN into dropping the sanctions against Iraq, unlocking the oil deposits. It is said the wealth generated by that oil is destined for the pockets of "the people of Iraq," but in the same news reports that carry such administration statements can be found a brief explanation of the true destiny for all of that black gold - American corporate pockets. See, the oil is tro be sold at market price, and the proceeds used to pay all of those American companies, er, make that the few American companies able to penetrate the private bidding process, that are "rebuilding" Iraq. So, the taxpayers of the US (and following another mammoth tax break giveaway to the rich, this means the middle to lower class) and the people of Iraq are joined together as benefactors of wealthy American corporations.

It is raw thievery, and were it committed by individuals and not countries, Interpol would be making mass arrests of the perpetrators.

Worth Repeating

Thanks to Alternet.


Senate Floor Remarks - May 21, 2003

Senator Robert Byrd, WVA.

"Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again,
The eternal years of God are hers;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among his worshippers."

Truth has a way of asserting itself despite all attempts to
obscure it. Distortion only serves to derail it for a time.
No matter to what lengths we humans may go to
obfuscate facts or delude our fellows, truth has a way of
squeezing out through the cracks, eventually.

But the danger is that at some point it may no longer
matter. The danger is that damage is done before the truth
is widely realized. The reality is that, sometimes, it is
easier to ignore uncomfortable facts and go along with
whatever distortion is currently in vogue. We see a lot of
this today in politics. I see a lot of it – more than I would
ever have believed – right on this Senate Floor.

Regarding the situation in Iraq, it appears to this Senator
that the American people may have been lured into
accepting the unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation,
in violation of long-standing International law, under false
premises. There is ample evidence that the horrific events
of September 11 have been carefully manipulated to
switch public focus from Osama Bin Laden and Al Queda
who masterminded the September 11th attacks, to
Saddam Hussein who did not. The run up to our invasion
of Iraq featured the President and members of his cabinet
invoking every frightening image they could conjure, from
mushroom clouds, to buried caches of germ warfare, to
drones poised to deliver germ laden death in our major
cities. We were treated to a heavy dose of overstatement
concerning Saddam Hussein's direct threat to our
freedoms. The tactic was guaranteed to provoke a sure
reaction from a nation still suffering from a combination
of post traumatic stress and justifiable anger after the
attacks of 9/11. It was the exploitation of fear. It was a
placebo for the anger.

Since the war's end, every subsequent revelation which
has seemed to refute the previous dire claims of the Bush
Administration has been brushed aside. Instead of
addressing the contradictory evidence, the White House
deftly changes the subject. No weapons of mass
destruction have yet turned up, but we are told that they
will in time. Perhaps they yet will. But, our costly and
destructive bunker busting attack on Iraq seems to have
proven, in the main, precisely the opposite of what we
were told was the urgent reason to go in. It seems also to
have, for the present, verified the assertions of Hans Blix
and the inspection team he led, which President Bush and
company so derided. As Blix always said, a lot of time
will be needed to find such weapons, if they do, indeed,
exist. Meanwhile Bin Laden is still on the loose and
Saddam Hussein has come up missing.

The Administration assured the U.S. public and the world,
over and over again, that an attack was necessary to
protect our people and the world from terrorism. It
assiduously worked to alarm the public and blur the faces
of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden until they
virtually became one.

What has become painfully clear in the aftermath of war is
that Iraq was no immediate threat to the U.S. Ravaged by
years of sanctions, Iraq did not even lift an airplane
against us. Iraq's threatening death-dealing fleet of
unmanned drones about which we heard so much
morphed into one prototype made of plywood and string.
Their missiles proved to be outdated and of limited range.
Their army was quickly overwhelmed by our technology
and our well trained troops.

Presently our loyal military personnel continue their
mission of diligently searching for WMD. They have so
far turned up only fertilizer, vacuum cleaners, conventional
weapons, and the occasional buried swimming pool. They
are misused on such a mission and they continue to be at
grave risk. But the Bush team's extensive hype of WMD
in Iraq as justification for a preemptive invasion has
become more than embarrassing. It has raised serious
questions about prevarication and the reckless use of
power. Were our troops needlessly put at risk? Were
countless Iraqi civilians killed and maimed when war was
not really necessary? Was the American public
deliberately misled? Was the world?

What makes me cringe even more is the continued claim
that we are "liberators." The facts don't seem to support
the label we have so euphemistically attached to ourselves.
True, we have unseated a brutal, despicable despot, but
"liberation" implies the follow up of freedom,
self-determination and a better life for the common
people. In fact, if the situation in Iraq is the result of
"liberation," we may have set the cause of freedom back
200 years.

Despite our high-blown claims of a better life for the Iraqi
people, water is scarce, and often foul, electricity is a
sometime thing, food is in short supply, hospitals are
stacked with the wounded and maimed, historic treasures
of the region and of the Iraqi people have been looted,
and nuclear material may have been disseminated to
heaven knows where, while U.S. troops, on orders,
looked on and guarded the oil supply.

Meanwhile, lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq's
infrastructure and refurbish its oil industry are awarded to
Administration cronies, without benefit of competitive
bidding, and the U.S. steadfastly resists offers of U.N.
assistance to participate. Is there any wonder that the real
motives of the U.S. government are the subject of
worldwide speculation and mistrust?

And in what may be the most damaging development, the
U.S. appears to be pushing off Iraq's clamor for
self-government. Jay Garner has been summarily replaced,
and it is becoming all too clear that the smiling face of the
U.S. as liberator is quickly assuming the scowl of an
occupier. The image of the boot on the throat has
replaced the beckoning hand of freedom. Chaos and
rioting only exacerbate that image, as U.S. soldiers try to
sustain order in a land ravaged by poverty and disease.
"Regime change" in Iraq has so far meant anarchy, curbed
only by an occupying military force and a U.S.
administrative presence that is evasive about if and when it
intends to depart.

Democracy and Freedom cannot be force fed at the point
of an occupier's gun. To think otherwise is folly. One has
to stop and ponder. How could we have been so
impossibly naive? How could we expect to easily plant a
clone of U.S. culture, values, and government in a country
so riven with religious, territorial, and tribal rivalries, so
suspicious of U.S. motives, and so at odds with the
galloping materialism which drives the western-style
economies?

As so many warned this Administration before it launched
its misguided war on Iraq, there is evidence that our crack
down in Iraq is likely to convince 1,000 new Bin Ladens
to plan other horrors of the type we have seen in the past
several days. Instead of damaging the terrorists, we have
given them new fuel for their fury. We did not complete
our mission in Afghanistan because we were so eager to
attack Iraq. Now it appears that Al Queda is back with a
vengeance. We have returned to orange alert in the U.S.,
and we may well have destabilized the Mideast region, a
region we have never fully understood. We have alienated
friends around the globe with our dissembling and our
haughty insistence on punishing former friends who may
not see things quite our way.

The path of diplomacy and reason have gone out the
window to be replaced by force, unilateralism, and
punishment for transgressions. I read most recently with
amazement our harsh castigation of Turkey, our longtime
friend and strategic ally. It is astonishing that our
government is berating the new Turkish government for
conducting its affairs in accordance with its own
Constitution and its democratic institutions.

Indeed, we may have sparked a new international arms
race as countries move ahead to develop WMD as a last
ditch attempt to ward off a possible preemptive strike
from a newly belligerent U.S. which claims the right to hit
where it wants. In fact, there is little to constrain this
President. Congress, in what will go down in history as its
most unfortunate act, handed away its power to declare
war for the foreseeable future and empowered this
President to wage war at will.

As if that were not bad enough, members of Congress are
reluctant to ask questions which are begging to be asked.
How long will we occupy Iraq? We have already heard
disputes on the numbers of troops which will be needed
to retain order. What is the truth? How costly will the
occupation and rebuilding be? No one has given a straight
answer. How will we afford this long-term massive
commitment, fight terrorism at home, address a serious
crisis in domestic healthcare, afford behemoth military
spending and give away billions in tax cuts amidst a deficit
which has climbed to over $340 billion for this year alone?
If the President's tax cut passes it will be $400 billion. We
cower in the shadows while false statements proliferate.
We accept soft answers and shaky explanations because
to demand the truth is hard, or unpopular, or may be
politically costly.

But, I contend that, through it all, the people know. The
American people unfortunately are used to political
shading, spin, and the usual chicanery they hear from
public officials. They patiently tolerate it up to a point. But
there is a line. It may seem to be drawn in invisible ink for
a time, but eventually it will appear in dark colors, tinged
with anger. When it comes to shedding American blood –
when it comes to wreaking havoc on civilians, on innocent
men, women, and children, callous dissembling is not
acceptable. Nothing is worth that kind of lie – not oil, not
revenge, not reelection, not somebody's grand pipedream
of a democratic domino theory.

And mark my words, the calculated intimidation which we
see so often of late by the "powers that be" will only keep
the loyal opposition quiet for just so long. Because
eventually, like it always does, the truth will emerge. And
when it does, this house of cards, built of deceit, will fall.

"News"

Three headlines as seen on the Google News page:

"Ridge Says US Safer From Terror Threat"

"Bush Cites Ongoing Terror Threat"

"FBI Issues New Warning On Al-Qaeda"

What color day is it today?

Sheesh.

Eating Their Own

I'm not necessarily a huge fan of Howard Dean, but I do admit that he is exactly what the Democrats need: a candidate who says pretty much what he is thinking, admits to not knowing absolutely everything, and is a common sense kinda guy with a very humanist aura surrounding his political ideals. Personally, I need someone more Left than he to light my voting fire, but at least he isn't part of the same worn out stable of losers, liars and soft compromisers that have annihilated the Democratic Party and forcibly morphed it into Corporate Party #2.

It is no surprise, then, that the organ responsible for selling off the party apparatus to the corporate moneymen are so miffed with Mr. Dean that they have begun a public attack campaign, using words that were once honest descriptors of the ideals of the party to "smear" Dean in advance of the hard campaigning to come. The Democratic Leadership Council, self-described as "centrist" and "moderate", and the primary mover behind Bill Clinton's ascension to office in 1992, has called Dean "an elitist liberal" and member of "the McGovern-Mondale" wing of the party, responsible for losing "49 states in two elections and transform[ing] Democrats from a strong national party into a much weaker regional one."

There are too manyy flaws within this one brief statement to examine them all, but foremost among them is the idea that sch a wing in the party exists ( it does not), or that it has anything to do with losing elections. The Democrats lost recent elections, uncluding 2000 (the Supremes stole the election in legal terms, but Al Gore and Co. put them into that position in the first place, and they slavishly served their masters) election, by dint of their owen hubris, arrogance, stupidity, and foolishness. The guy the DLC put into office for eight years, and a brilliant campaigner, Bill Clinton, was not invited to do what he had already proven he could do at the convention, which is energize the base and assault the opposition.

The Democratic party is a mess at the national level because it has been bought and paid for by corporate interests, the same ones that own Resident Shrub and his merry band of war criminals. They keep the Dems to one side for obvious reasons - should the unruly rabble (also known as voters) put them back into national power, corporate boardroms will be protected. Given the choice between Republicans and Republicans - Lite, they'll take the real thing every single time, but at least the faux version can't hurt them too much should they get back into the drivers seat. The DLC is exactly that - faux Republicans and corporte lap dogs.

So Howard Dean, despite his very "conservative" stance on gun control and financial issues, is too "liberal" (be sure to put the requisite sneer into your mind-voice when reading that word) for the "centrist" junta that has taken over the Democratic Party, once quiter proud of its liberal values and policies...and it should be again.

The only person to come to Dean's defence is, of all people, Sen. Jim Jeffords, who equated what the DLC is doing to Dean to the tactics employed by the Republican party that Jeffords disavowed by becoming an independent. Pathetic that a former Republican and still political conservative senator is the only one to come to the aid of such a "liberal" candidate. Frankly, anyone from the Democratic party that wnats to catch my attention should brand him or herself a Liberal and run with it. Better to live as a lion than to die sheared sheep.

Neuro-withdrawal

About three weeks or so have passed since I was forcibly detoxed of my anti-convulsive meds, and while I don't miss powerful drugs that failed to stop or control my seizures, there is a withdrawal effect that is subtle, but noticable. Prior to going into the hospital I felt slow, groggy, and mentally confused too much of the time. This is partialy, at least, attributable to the secondary, simple (partial) seizures that I experience, which, in and of themselves, are a fairly new phenomena for me. Beyond the failings of my brain, both Dilantin and Zonegran have a damping effect on the firing of synapses, the workings of neurotransmitters, and thus, even after acclimation, tend to slow the thought processes of the person taking them.

Within 48 hours of having the meds removed I began to feel strangely. Numbness in my extremities was the first thing I noticed, and it returns once in a while still. My vision seemed to undergo changes as well, with things becoming indistinct, focus hard to find or enforce on what I was looking at. That has largely passed. My sleep, never a dependable thing, is off the rails. I get tired suddenly and wih\thout warning, but once in bed, barely sleep, and wind up crawling from beneath the blankets before I am anywhere close to rested.

Then there is the elevator. Or rollercoaster. Whatever. I've been climbing and falling emotionally in a most irregular way, swinging across the spectrum in seconds at the slightest provocation, or none at all. While it is true that I have become generally more irritable in recent years, this is a little much, and while I am not bipolar, I equate the intensity and fluidity of these feelings with that disorder. Basically I feel weird all of the time, not "myself," whatever the fuck that is. As I took these drugs for years, it may take many months to find a steady state independent of the effects of medication that can be identified and reckoned with on its own.

We return now to your regularly scheduled programming.

Home again, home again, jiggetty-jig.

I have returned from the hospital, largely intact.

Six days of being watched 24 hours a day, 32 electrodes cemented to my head; an electronic leash that prevented me from ever leaving my little crackerbox of a room.

Reading and watching TV was all I could do, really, and take on the phone for as long as people would listen to me ramble.

Some useful information was gathered, but I didn't have enough seizures to get an exact read on their origin and nature. So, as has always been the case with me, there is still no discernible pattern to any of it, even with the trauma of enforced cold-turkey withdrawal from my meds.

Alas.

Ari Does Goebbels

We all know Ari Fleischer, even if we don't know his name. He's that chrome dome guy who's always on the news speaking for the Resident, cause the Rez can't speak his own fucking language. Ari looks like an academic, which is camouflage, meant to throw us off, allay our fears, believe he's really a nice, harmless guy.

Bzzt.

Thanks for playing.

Ari is the author of those famous words in the wake of September 11th, advising we Americans to cast off our first amendment rights and "watch what we say" lest we criticize the Shrub administration and cause upset to our Resident, ruining his football watching of a Sunday afternoon with his dog and bag of pretzels.

Ari was the one who left the White House press room in a huff before the war, when Turkey had voted against letting the US Army us it for a base of operations against Iraq. A question was asked about what Mexico might be able to get if it went along with the war on Iraq. Trying his best blustering tone, Ari asked the reported if he was not seriously suggesting that any quid pro quo was available from America for cooperation in the war. The entire room burst into laughter, and he stormed out, petulantly.

Now, in the Santorum affair, Ari has let this gem out:

"the president typically never does comment on anything involving a Supreme Court case."

Here is the punch line. Just a week or so ago, Shrub weighed in on a pending Supreme Court case involving affirmative action, the famous Michigan college admissions case, which Shrub opposes, cause black folk have gotten all the help they need by now, and why can't we all get into Yale on a legacy admission?

Commenting on the glaring discrepancy Ari explained that's why he used the word:

"typically."

Move over, Goebbels! There's a new sheriff in town, and his name's Ari!

Just Do It

Senator Rick Santorum from Pennsylvania is in big trouble, and his conservative brethren are going to be mighty pissed at him. Not for his beliefs, no, for they share them, and not for his attempts over his career to further those beliefs, for they share that cause also. Santorum is getting into trouble for *speaking* so plainly about the mission and core held beliefs of the conservative movement in America. In recent comments about a case before the Supreme Court involving two men in Texas who were arrested and convicted under sodomy laws for having consensual sex in the privacy of their home, Santorum equated homosexual sex with incest, polygamy, bigamy and more. I quote:

"We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery."

Read that over several times, and carefully. The paranoia leaps out at you the first time, the legalese is rampant both the first and second readings, but blows away by the third. It's thin cover for an ideology rooted not in true political conservatism in the old American tradition but rather the hijacked version informed first and last by a desperately backwards interpretation of Christianity that is uniquely American. In Santorum's world, the Supreme Court may strike down a law which prohibits a freedom (consensual sex in a persons home by two legal adult humans) and suddenly people will be seeking protection under the law in droves for sheep fucking. This is, literally, nonsense. Santorum's remarks have as much to do with another separate issue, marriage of two men or two women, as it does with how they please each other in their homes, married or not. In Santorum's apocalyptic world, striking down an unjust law that prohibits a behavior he finds personally distasteful is but a stepping stone to the legalization of marriage between two men or between two women, which he would rather die than see come to pass.

Santorum is one of many religious conservatives in this country who have perverted the concept of political conservatism to further their own narrow, messianically inspired ends. True political conservatives would see the absolute wisdom in removing antiquated sodomy laws from the books and restoring freedoms to individuals that do no harm to other individuals or the society as a whole. Less government is the goal, the new cons tell us, unless it involves your bedroom, your bookshelves, music collection, movie watching, and these days, your political ideals.

Here's one more gem for you from the Santorum interview, nice and short to take with you everywhere you go. You might even have heard this one before:

"I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts."

He he he...

...HA HA HA....

Full remarks for clarity follow

----------------------------------------------------------

An unedited section of the Associated Press interview, taped April 7, with Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa. Words that couldn't be heard clearly on the tape are marked (unintelligible).


AP: If you're saying that liberalism is taking power away from the families, how is conservatism giving more power to the families?

SANTORUM: Putting more money in their pocketbook is one. The more money you take away from families is the less power that family has. And that's a basic power. The average American family in the 1950s paid (unintelligible) percent in federal taxes. An average American family now pays about 25 percent.

The argument is, yes, we need to help other people. But one of the things we tried to do with welfare, and we're trying to do with other programs is, we're setting levels of expectation and responsibility, which the left never wanted to do. They don't want to judge. They say, Oh, you can't judge people. They should be able to do what they want to do. Well, not if you're taking my money and giving it to them. But it's this whole idea of moral equivalency. (unintelligible) My feeling is, well, if it's my money, I have a right to judge.

AP: Speaking of liberalism, there was a story in The Washington Post about six months ago, they'd pulled something off the Web, some article that you wrote blaming, according to The Washington Post, blaming in part the Catholic Church scandal on liberalism. Can you explain that?

SANTORUM: You have the problem within the church. Again, it goes back to this moral relativism, which is very accepting of a variety of different lifestyles. And if you make the case that if you can do whatever you want to do, as long as it's in the privacy of your own home, this "right to privacy," then why be surprised that people are doing things that are deviant within their own home? If you say, there is no deviant as long as it's private, as long as it's consensual, then don't be surprised what you get. You're going to get a lot of things that you're sending signals that as long as you do it privately and consensually, we don't really care what you do. And that leads to a culture that is not one that is nurturing and necessarily healthy. I would make the argument in areas where you have that as an accepted lifestyle, don't be surprised that you get more of it.

AP: The right to privacy lifestyle?

SANTORUM: The right to privacy lifestyle.

AP: What's the alternative?

SANTORUM: In this case, what we're talking about, basically, is priests who were having sexual relations with post-pubescent men. We're not talking about priests with 3-year-olds, or 5-year-olds. We're talking about a basic homosexual relationship. Which, again, according to the world view sense is a a perfectly fine relationship as long as it's consensual between people. If you view the world that way, and you say that's fine, you would assume that you would see more of it.

AP: Well, what would you do?

SANTORUM: What would I do with what?

AP: I mean, how would you remedy? What's the alternative?

SANTORUM: First off, I don't believe _

AP: I mean, should we outlaw homosexuality?

SANTORUM: I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who's homosexual. If that's their orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations? So it's not the person, it's the person's actions. And you have to separate the person from their actions.

AP: OK, without being too gory or graphic, so if somebody is homosexual, you would argue that they should not have sex?

SANTORUM: We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does. It all comes from, I would argue, this right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold -- Griswold was the contraceptive case -- and abortion. And now we're just extending it out. And the further you extend it out, the more you -- this freedom actually intervenes and affects the family. You say, well, it's my individual freedom. Yes, but it destroys the basic unit of our society because it condones behavior that's antithetical to strong, healthy families. Whether it's polygamy, whether it's adultery, where it's sodomy, all of those things, are antithetical to a healthy, stable, traditional family.

Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that's what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That's not to pick on homosexuality. It's not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality _

AP: I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going to talk about "man on dog" with a United States senator, it's sort of freaking me out.

SANTORUM: And that's sort of where we are in today's world, unfortunately. The idea is that the state doesn't have rights to limit individuals' wants and passions. I disagree with that. I think we absolutely have rights because there are consequences to letting people live out whatever wants or passions they desire. And we're seeing it in our society.

AP: Sorry, I just never expected to talk about that when I came over here to interview you. Would a President Santorum eliminate a right to privacy -- you don't agree with it?

SANTORUM: I've been very clear about that. The right to privacy is a right that was created in a law that set forth a (ban on) rights to limit individual passions. And I don't agree with that. So I would make the argument that with President, or Senator or Congressman or whoever Santorum, I would put it back to where it is, the democratic process. If New York doesn't want sodomy laws, if the people of New York want abortion, fine. I mean, I wouldn't agree with it, but that's their right. But I don't agree with the Supreme Court coming in.

No Shame, No Gain

When in doubt, take the money and run.

I am no friend of the airline industry in this country - I think it is ill-run, unsafe and a general pain in my ass. I also think that since the days of deregulation the airline industry has been constantly sucking at the government tit (yes, America, that's why you're nipples are so sore in the morning) just to stay afloat in the manner to which they accustomed themselves. The airline industry also received a fat arrangement whereby the passenger railroad would be held to very different standards as a nationally run quasi-business, and that has resulted in its slow demise. I could go into the enormous giveaways here, but suffice to say that it has cost the taxpayer far more to "deregulate" the airlines than Amtrak has cost outright since its inception in 1977. In other words, those cheap fares you get from CA to DC aren't really *that* cheap.

In the end, those who are meant to make the money (are) always due, and that was never more clear than yesterday. American Airlines has been threatening to seek bankruptcy protection for months now as their ridership is down along with their profits. In a move all too common these days, the three major industry unions voted to cut their members pay and benefits, and eliminate thousands of jobs voluntarily so American can keep flying.

So much for the greedy union stereotype. The overall loss in pay is close to 2 billion dollars spread over the next five years, and the unions only agreed to this in exchange for a guarantee that the airline would avoid bankruptcy and make the good faith effort to keep the airline viable.

Hehehe....

...HAHAHAHAHA....

What the airline failed to tell the unions prior to the cost cutting and job destroying vote was that certain executives would still be receiving undisclosed bonuses between now and 2005, on the order of twice their normal salaries, which, by the way, were unaffected by the cost cutting measures. These are called "retention" bonuses, and basically they are bribes to keep fat execs fat and lazy enough not to look for another corporation to exploit. American even went so far as to delay their quarterly earnings filing by two weeks so all three union votes would have taken place before the existence of these bonuses would become evident. Once the votes were in, American filed, and buried in the fine print were these bonuses, proof that well paid execs, who are also the only few people in the entire company who would still have a retirement plan protected in the event of bankruptcy filings, are willing to lie, cheat and steal when the jobs of the "little people" are on the line. This is what the corporate culture has come to in America. This is what we export under the guise of "freedom and democracy."

The reason for the bonuses given is to retain these executives, less they move on to other companies, where their earnings potential is said to be so miuch higher than at troubled American. Frankly, given how poorly American is performing and how well Southwestern is doing at the same time, I don't believe a fucking word of it. Let them go. Offer the job to someone who has something to prove other than how much they can take shareholders and taxpayers for, and see if they can make the airline fly again.

Those fucking guys.....

Face Painting

...Or Why North Korea Is Not Going To Nuke L.A.

Kim Jong-il looks kind of crazy. Those teeth, that suit, and of course, the Elvis coiffe now dried up and flipping out. The guy looks like a bad-acid refugee from Haight-Ashbury.

He's not crazy, as in, insane, as easy as it may be to label him so. No, the leader of North Korea is playing a face-saving game with the United States, with all of his pieces spread out on a Cold War map with the new Axis Of Evil overlays courtesy of the Shrub administration. It isn't a game he much cares to play at this late stage of his dying country but he is compelled to do so, in order to get *out* of the game completely.

Many folks have forgotten that both Koreas sent a unified athletic delegation to the last Olympics, an enormous leap of faith, especially for the north. South Korea exists solely for the purpose of reunification, much the way West Germany did for forty years, and Ireland does still today. But North Korea was to be a new Communist paradise with an open option to reconquer the south, an option cut off by standing US policy for half a century now, an option no one in the north even considers any longer.

Because the north's leadership is looking for a viable endgame strategy here, a way to bring North Korea out of the Cold War stone ages and into the light of the 21st century, however murky that light be. As a regime, it is not willing to go down to defeat, to come unglued and have celebrations in the street, to have its ideology repudiated in blunt and unyielding terms. Looking across the border North Korea can see what is happening in China, where a new breed of hyper-capitalism is on the loose, transforming the economy of that nation without fundamentally altering the underlying political structure, despite all of the confident predictions of those who say that where capitalist theory leads, democracy shall always follow. That model is still too unruly for North Korea, but something similar to it may allow them to remian as they are politically while changing their economy and providing the country with the income it so desperately needs to buy the things it must have - like food, better farming equipment, medical supplies, etc.

Thus, the weapons programs. Oh, they weren't hatched with all of this in mind - the strategy has certainly changed since the programs inception - a new goal has been assigned to the outcome. Otherwise, why would the North Koreans conduct the construction of their nuclear weapons program in so public a manner? Each step is announced to the world, and all of this began shortly after Shrub misused the word "axis" and included their country in it. North Korea has no intention of going to war with anyone if it can help it, though it must surely doubt the peaceful intentions of the US. Unlike other countries that scoff at the pre-emption doctrine, the North takes Shrub at his word, and choose the holocaust deterrent to keep US forces at bay.

The question then becomes: what do they want?

First, not to be attacked by the US. Stealth fighters and more bombers have been moved into the pacific theater since the back and forth began. N. Korea wants a guarantee.

They also want guidance without anyone calling it that. Loan guarantees, international aid and investment, and modernization. All of this must be gained through power negotiations, where North Korea is seen and treated as an equal partner, hence the missile tests, public pronouncements about the future of their weapons program, yesterday's announcement about fuel rod reprocessing, and so on. Only a few people within the US government seem to fully comprehend this idea of face saving - most want to raise the stakes, turn up the heat, perhaps even fight that war on the battlefield. They are fucking nuts, cause North Korea ain't fucking Iraq.

An example is the North Koreans calling the proposed talks between their own officials and those of the US and China "bilateral," again to show that they are equals in the world, and in this matter. All the chickenhawks in Washington got their dainty little feathers all ruffled up by that statement, enough that they wanted to cancel the talks. How typical...image over reality. The reality is quite simple. North Korea will eventually have viable nuclear weapons, and absent help and respect from the US, will have little choice but to find a way to make that program profitable for them, geometrically increasing the likelihood that you or I will one day be vaporized by one of those weapons.

These talks need to happen. For once, the Shrubs need to use their brains, not their guns.

Boy, invading Syria may not be politically viable at this time, but they sure do want it.

Blown Cover

Two completely separate incidents converge rather nicely today and blow some government cover.

Let's go to the videotape!

In incident one, a panel investigating murders in Northern Ireland has come to the conclusion that collusion existed between security forces, the RUC (Protestant dominated police force), British government, and Protestant paramilitaries like the UDA, UVF, etc. In simplest of terms, intelligence about suspected IRA members, their families and associates was given to these paras so they could go and kill them, which they did, gleefully so. Collusion has been very hard to show in terms of a causal link, but it seems it may finally have reached the evidentiary level - we shall see. A wider reading of the situation leaves no other possible conclusion.

British intelligence services and special operations groups from the army sent operatives into Northern Ireland with the express mission to disrupt the IRA and Irish Nationalist politics of any stripe by whatever means they saw fit. To that extent, those groups commissioned to this work were left to their own devices, allowing their masters in London a high degree of "plausible deniability" in the event things went awry. Intelligence gained by the army and the RUC was given to paramilitaries who then proceeded to use this information to carry on their street war, killing Catholics who were often civilians, not members of the IRA or other armed organizations. See, the British intelligence was abysmal, based on the practice of rounding up young catholic men and keeping files on them, assuming anyone of a certain age to be a member, however minor, of the IRA. Thus, many unwarranted killings.

The current scrap is about two murders specifically, and in my view, far too narrow. Much is known about how the IRA managed to arm itself and remain so for thirty years, but little investigating has been done to determine how the UDA and its splinters gained access to modern weapons that happened to mirror those in use by the British army. The UDA and other paras of that stripe were also the primary source of illegal drugs and prostitution in Northern Ireland, a fact known to the local police, who looked the other way so long as the "lads" kept on shooting catholics.

If peace is the goal, these inquiries cannot be blocked any longer. Former members of the IRA have been amazingly forthcoming about their activities in those days, in an effort to clear the air and inject a measure of truth into the agonizingly slow peace process. The same most certainly cannot be said for protestant paramilitaries, and especially not the British government or army, which have steadfastly refused to open their files and aid in putting the horror to bed.

Incident two features the current Secretary of State, Colin Powell, issuing an apology of sorts for US involvement in Chile in the 1970's, when the democratically elected leader of the country was overthrown in a violent coup aided by the US, and a disgusting, murderous right wing dictator put in his place. Gee, didn't we just fight a war...never mind. Suffice to say, Henry Kissinger was deeply involved in events prior to the coup, which involved the assassination of a key Chilean general who refused to use the military to block the elected president frombeing sworn in. Money and arms were sent via the diplomatic pouch, funnelled through the American Embassy, and eventually, the general was killed.

Bang!

Families have filed suit against Kissinger and other defendants, which automatically makes the US government the defendant in the case, as the assumption is the individuals acted on behalf of the state. Now, Powell has shot his mouth off, saying it was a regretful period in US history, etc. The implication is that Powell has specific knowledge, and his public statements can be considered testimony. Good luck to Mr. Kissinger when they finally manage to haul his ass into court.

Ted Rall knows what's up.

See this piece at Alternet.

Yellow!

Phew!

I am sooooooooo relieved!

The scare-the-shit-out-of-the-public alert system has been altered to yellow.

I am not sure why exactly I should feel comfitted by this - yellow seems neither inherently safer nor more dangerous than orange, which is higher on the "be fucking scared" scale, nor can I ascertain the reasoning behind the lowering of the "threat level." Sure, the war is "over," woohoo and all of that, but last I saw on the news we were gearing up to bomb Syria, or Sri Lanka, I'm not too clear on the location, and from what the SpewsMedia has been telling me for six months or so, that could maybe result in a backlash in the form of more terrorist attacks, so maybe we ought to go to bright red. Bright red is alarming, in my view. We could even randomly fire off the storm sirens here in Norman for good effect. Keep us on our toes. That's what we overly complacent Americans must need, I guess, or God would not have made Shrub president in time to pacify and Christianize Iraq and all of the middle east except Israel, and what's a poor boy to do, I'd move to Canada but I hear rumors of annexation and Mexico is just one big labor camp and Germany and France are gutless Commie cowards and....

...I need some coffee.

Looting and Disorder

They need to stop lying.

Really.

Enough is fucking enough.

To hear Donald Rumsfeld, one time buddy of the Hussein regime tell it, the same vase was stolen twenty times and the media irresponsibly broadcast the same tape over and over again, giving a false impression of reality.

I fart in his general direction. During the aftermath of the taking of Baghdad, I perused the media coverage from all of the major networks and CableSpews outlets, plus the BBC, CBC, and Arab TV, and I didn't see the same piece of looting footage twice. It was all different, and portrayed looting on a vast scale in multiple cities in Iraq, and all across Baghdad.

For a bit of irresponsible media manipulation, consider that statue-toppling incident in a city square facing the hotel where all of the media in Baghdad happen to be housed. Looked like thousands of Iraqi's spontaneously gathered to vent their hatred of Saddam and pull down a symbol of the murderous regime, right?

Think again.

During the early airing of the statue footage, one CableSpews outlet did not edit properly, and if you look past the people in direct view, you can see how empty the place is.....

But back to looting and lawlessness.

It is bad enough their was no plan to have MP's follow up more rapidly or be flown in earlier than today, or tomorrow, or whenever they are due to arrive, it is inconceivable that important government archives where the evidence of torture, murder and disappearances might be found were left to be ransacked and destroyed. Given the solemn droning from the Shrubites about War Crimes and their Prosecution, they seem rather blase about protecting or gathering evidence for trial.

Oh yeah, I forgot, they just drop 2,000lb. bombs where the bad guys might be, and hope for the best.

And don't give me that shit about how the city wasn't under control, blah blah blah.

Bullshit.

Where the looting was taking place was under control enough for camera crews to move about without fear, taking lengthy video of the trashing of buildings and shops, people's homes, and government offices. Marines are seen standing around in fairly relaxed poses, often with their weapons down. The crime that occurred at the National Museum should be pinned squarely to the lapels of the planners of this war, for appeals were made immediately to US forces and officials to stop the looting of irreplaceable historical artifacts, and they did nothing. Day after day, they did nothing, even though that part of the city has been firmly in US control. As of late last night, not a single Marine or Army soldier had been detailed to guard the few trashed remnants of ancient history left in the wrecked museum, a history that had survived both Saddam Huseein and two US bombing campaigns.

There's a war crime for you.

C-SPAN ROOLS

Yes, the nerds are taking over.

CSPAN rocks. It rules.

As a follow up to the mention below of Tim Robbins and the pettiness of the baseball hall of shame, I should mention that Robbins appeared at the National Press Club yesterday to speak about his stance on the war, Cooperstown, and the media in particular. His speech was both impassioned and intelligently written, and the free form question and answer period reveal what I have already known - he really knows his stuff. Activism isn't a "latest fashion" to be tried on this week and cast aside the next; Robbins obviously takes it seriously and devotes considerable time and energy to it. Most importantly, he devotes a considerable portion of his being to it.

Hats off.

"The Masters"

The title begs the question: "Of what?"

Yes, the prestigiously dull, awesomely boring golf tournament known as The Masters gets underway in Georgia today amidst some flurry of protest and controversy. Seems the club that annually hosts the tournament does not allow women as members, proclaiming itself a "private" club, so barring women from the gate doesn't qualify as discrimination.

This would be true but for one thing: They host the biggest tournament in all of golfdom, and get paid handsomely to do so. While that may not technically alter the distinction, it does so in spirit. Fact is, they get way rich off the players who come there, the corporations who sponsor the tourny, and the fans who come and spend money all weekend long. This very public exposure makes them vulnerable, and to that end, someone has chosen to take them on.

Bravo!

Hold on a minute. Augusta National is a way ritzy club, its members way rich, so the argument really boils down not to women generally, but rich women specifically being barred from membership.

Oh. Well.

Fuck that.

Honestly speaking, it is ridiculous that a so-called private club can reap the rewards of a very public sporting event and still get away with rank discrimination, but a little perspective reveals that we are talking about rich white women being denied acces to the clubhouse. I can't get too upset about that.

There has also been much criticism of Tiger Woods for not coming to the aid of the monied damsels in distress, based on his color and the fact that not too many years ago he would not have been able to play on many of the courses he now visits, much less ever be a member. He even made those provocative Nike ads when he first turned pro, talking about that very issue. Now, he is the richest golfer in the history of the game, but has refused to get directly involved in the controversy, just as Michael Jordan refused to get into the issue of where and how those Nike shoes so closely tied to his name were being made, and by whom.

Some say Tiger can't make a bit of a difference.

Wrong.

He is so good, so far ahead of the rest of the sport, that were he to boycott the tournament and perhaps the sport, this men-only thing would be history. He chooses not to, and I think it unfortunate.

Maybe he just wants to play golf.

When Petty Minds Attack

"Baseball been berry berry good to me."

A baseball movie was once very good to Tim Robbins, not to mention baseball itself, and later this month the Baseball Hall Of Fame in Cooperstown, NY. was scheduled to hold a 15 year anniversary of the film's release. For those who haven't had the pleasure, it's a great movie, even if you're not much of a baseball fan. I took my mother to see it, and initially thought it might be too racy for her, but the hoots and snickers from the seat beside me allayed my fears. Unfortunately for the film, both Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon happen to be in it, and a former Reagan administration official happens to be the president of the Baseball Hall Of Fame.

Thus, the celebration of a great movie and a great game is tarnished by a tiny mind and self-righteous grandstanding.

Dale Petroskey, now president of the hall of shame, was once assistant press secretary in the Reagan administration, infamous for its ability and willingness to tell the Big Lie, and thousands of little ones. These lies often concealed the fact that Reaganite policies were getting people killed. Petroskey apprently holds a deep dislike for Robbins and Sarandon, both famous in recent times for their statements against the war in Iraq, and both long term committed activists for peace and social justice, concepts that stick in the craw of every former Regan official, including the many currently running the war.

So Petroskey issued these words:

"In a free country such as ours, every American has the right to his or her own opinions, and to express them.
Public figures have platforms much larger than the average American's, which provides you an extraordinary
opportunity to have your views heard - and an equally large obligation to speak and act responsibly. We believe
your very public criticism of President Bush at this important - and sensitive - time in our nation's history helps
undermine the U.S. position, which could put our troops in even more danger."

To politicize a celebration of a baseball movie at a baseball shrine is beyond pathetic, but I'm not surprised at all. The Republicans seem to have carried over the famous enemies lists of the Nixon era. Al-Jazeera gets tossed off the floors of stock exchanges, FoxSpews gets special treatment in exchange for savaging any mildly famous person who expresses and opinion considerd deviant from the party line, and now this stupidity. The hall of fame is home to thugs and wife beaters past, and future to Pete Rose, who bet on his own sport, a true violation of the ethics of the game, but he will be enshrined. Robbins and Sarandon were merely part of a film about baseball unlike any other ever made, one to be celebrated, and within the context of the game they have comitted no harm, no foul. Beyond the white lines they spoke their minds as responsible citizens are *required* to do as part of their civic duty, a concept so distorted as to be lost.

Tim Robbins, after receiving Dale Petroskey's admonishing letter, said this:

"I had been unaware baseball was a Republican sport.
Long live democracy, free speech and the `69 Mets - all improbably glorious miracles that I've always believed in."

Throwing The Book

"Well I'm proud to be an American
cause I might know how to read..."

Awright, it wasn't funny.

Neither is this, but it sure is cool.

Librarians are pissed about the secret powers the government granted itself when it passed the Patriot Act, you know, the one that came after September 11, you know, the one nobody in Congress really bothered to fucking read? One of its many many unexamined provisions allows federal law enforcement officials to obtain a search warrant in secret court and get your library records. Computers being ubiquitous, records are accurate and easily collected. The subject of the search will have no knowledge of it happening and no manner of appeal.

Secret, rapid, no redress.

Some librarians can see past the thin fog of this War On Terrorism and recognize how easily federal law enforcement can obtain warrants for anyone's reading records (which includes Internet use at the library) and have taken countermeasures, destroying checkout records for all patrons, clearing computer usage records, and in some cases, resisting the move to update systems any further to ensure they still have control over them.

Sure, it doesn't seem like much, the feds examining what books you read, but the assumption must run in the opposite direction - what fucking business have they in the first place abrogating American's guaranteed civil liberties so they can go fishing for bad guys? The FBI has a long and sordid history of gathering and maintaining files on citizens who hold opinions that run counter to the dominant thought of the day, and that practice, despite their insipid denials, remains in practice today. Going through your reading records is another way for them to unconstitutionally snoop where they do not belong.

Librarians rock.

Blow Shit Up

Cool, let's blow some shit up!

Maybe we can hit some civilians, blast their houses to Kingdom Come, 'cause coming it surely is now that we're here. No worries, someone told us big bad Saddam was there, so it was worth it the extra body parts.

What's that? Huh?

Why don't we take him alive if we know where he is?

Are you referring to our Brainless Leader's empty talk about war crimes?

*chuckle*

Maybe a few low level guys go on trial so we can reinforce our unlimited righteousness, but no, Saddami the Salami ain't going on trial, he's goin' straight to Hell where he belongs, to hang out with other war criminals, like Hitler and Richard Nixon, and maybe Rupert Murdoch when he arrives.

Besides, if we took him alive and put him on trial in a venue other than a kangaroo of our own design, Adolf Saddam Hitler Hussein might start talking about classified US intelligence information...

Oops!

Never mind all of that crap - we're winning the war!

We're kicking ass and not even bothering with the fucking names!

God Bless America - Not Just A Prayer, It's A Demand.

Hospital Redux 2

OKOKOK.

One of these days, I'll actually go to the hospital for this monitoring.

Really.

I swear.

I'm put off until the 28th of April.

Peeing In The Pool

I lived in and around Fairfax County, Virginia for many years before moving out here to Oklahoma. It's a comfortable county, one of the five richest in America with rock solid ties to Washington's power structure, used to getting its' way in all things. In recent years the county and the state surrounding it have savaged themselves by electing a series of pie-in-the-sky tax-cutting hard right Republicans who have annihilated the state budget structure, made a mockery of one of the best public school systems in American history, and brought down Jefferson's lofty dreams of superb higher education. The architects of the slaughter have moved on to become senators and white house favorites - George Allen, now a Senator, and Jim Gilmore, general ass licking lackey for the Shrubites.

So it came as no surprise in the wake of the sniper case that Fairfax would flex its considerable political muscle and convince the feds involved to drop the federal charges against Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Muhammed, backhand Maryland officials out of the way (the majority of the killings took place in Maryland, the state where the suspects were also apprehended), and have the case assigned to Fairfax County for trial. The move was extraordinary in every dimension, but in a post September 11 United States, no one thought much of it.

Of course, the primary, perhaps sole reason for the change in approach to the case was the application of the death penalty. Maryland does have a death penalty statute but it does not allow for the execution of persons who were under 18 at the time of the comission of the crime in question, thus Malvo could not be executed. Maryland has also been toying with eliminating or radically altering its death penalty statutes, making it an unreliable venue for a case in which all parties have publicly stated a desire for the defendants to be executed.

Thus, Virginia. That state is not shy about applying its liberal death penalty law, and were its population larger it might challenge Texas for the annual execution crown. The appeals process is also one of the most restrictive in the nation, making it an ideal environment in which to try these two cases. While the outcome is not preordained, it is close.

And, with intentional leaks from law enforcement and the prosecution, the result in both cases is more likely to resemble the fervent wishes of the prosecution. It is obscene that prosecutors in this, or any case can get away with prejudicial activities of such an extreme nature. Releasing all or major parts of statements taken from an accused defendant on trial for his lfe in a civilized system of justice is criminal behavior. In an era when the death penalty has come under much need scrutiny that has revealed mind boggling flaws and outright criminal behavior on the part of those who arrest and try suspects, it is incomprehensible that public officials would continue to use the very same tactics to influence outcomes in order to win cases.

I repeat: It is wrong, and criminal. A reminder for those who are in need of it: to date, no official in the United States has ever been held criminally liable for manufacturing or suppressing evidence or testimony in a death penalty case. A few have been found out and quietly lost their jobs, but have never gone on trial for what is provable criminal behavior. Whatever else one may think of the barbarity of killing people in the name of the state, that very fact goes a long way in explaining why the system is so flawed and prone to error.

It also explains why Fairfax County prosecutors and law enforcement officials are going to get away with their power grab in these cases, and with openly peeing in the jury pool.

Round Two

I try again for the hospital tomorrow morning. Thus far today I haven't received a call complicating the appointment or cancelling it altogether, but the day is young.

Big thunderstorms here last night and this morning, part of the same wave that dropped enormous hail on northern Texas. We had soaking rains, big booming thunder and spectacular lightning, and yes, got hammered by hail also. It sounded like a thousand people on our roof beating it with sledgehammers, so we got up to see if the car was being totalled. To our relief, it was not. We don't have a garage, but our driveway is sheltered somewhat by a large spreading tree that had only dropped its blossoms last week and unfurled its leaves, most of which were carpeting the car. They are now all over the driveway, the lawn, the roof, and the street.

Friendly competition

Once again Oklahoma is chasing the state of Texas for the execution crown, going the extra mile this time by killing a man convicted of murdering two people when he was a juvenile. The Supremes split along election-stealing lines, despite some earlier indications that they may be slightly troubled by this barbaric practice. Apparently not.

Stay denied.

DrugWar Comes Home

Tulia, TX.

This is 2003, right?

"Degraded?"

There has been much ado in the papers and electronic media these past days about te Republican Guard surrounding Baghdad, its size, strength, and capabilities. Most of it has been rank speculation, fed by tidbits from CENTCOM, and who knows how much, if any, of what they have been tossing out is true.

More disturbing is the deeper push into the bizarro land of euphemism. As US troops approach Baghdad, air power and ground based artillery has been striking at the various divisions of the Republican Guard, "softening them up" for the inevitable full frontal assault. The terms used to describe the results of these attacks is interesting. On the one hand there is "heavy damage." I've seen heavy damage, to cars in accidents, towns following tornadoes, cities after full scale bombings. "Heavy damage" is not ordinarily a term that I imagine would be used to describe what must in fact be happening - human death on a wide scale. CENTCOM won't even say that they are "inflicting heavy casualties" on the Iraqi divisions around Baghdad. They prefer "heavy damage," then go on to characterize those same divisions as being at "50% effectiveness or less," which I must presume to mean that half of the men in those divisions have been killed or wounded severely enough to keep them from fighting. So why not say so?

The further descent into weirdness comes with the term "degradation," as in "the Republican Guard divisions have degraded by 50%." I'm not sure that qualifies as English, much less anything that a normal person can realistically understand. Are the people in those divisions rotting away? Have they some horrible new disease? Ebola, perhaps? Shall we call the World Health Organization? The CDC?

All of this euphemistic weirdness, delivered through stony faces beneath the glitzy lights at CENTCOM is beyond creepy, but when it is coupled with the refusal to issue body counts for Iraqi military personnel and especially civilians ("We don't do body counts," as Herr General Tommy Franks said) it becomes clear that the White House and Pentagon don't trust the American people with the simple facts. Why they fear their own citizenry over these issues is a question none of them would deign to answer in public, but the conclusion is fairly obvious, even through all of the linguistic smoke.

Who shall lead them?

The Bush/Blair unholy alliance may be faltering, and the troops are only in the Baghdadian suburbs.

How tragic, especially for Mr. Blair, who will likely lose his job over this when the fighting stops.

Blair favors heavy involvement of the UN in administering a postwar reconstruction of Iraq, while Resident Bush insists upon direct US administration. That means "occupation." So much for "liberation." Adding insult to bombardment, the Shrubites, busily bankrupting the federal government with this war and their ridiculous tax cuts, are going to force the Iraqis to use their only viable resource, oil, to pay for the reconstruction. Yes, that same oil that so desperately needed to be "preserved for the Iraqi people" will be hauled out of the ground as fast as US corporations can get it to market, and the Iraqi portion of the profits will go into rebuilding the country our forces have just blown to bits.

Follow the money:

US invades Iraq, all on the public dime. US corporations are given contracts to clean up oil spills, put out fires, and rebuild the physical infrastructure of the entire country. US corporations will also be granted enormous contracts to aid Iraq in retrieving more oil from the ground on a per daily basis than they ever have before. That oil will be sold on the open market, the consulting firms get paid, and the Iraqi share goes immediately into the rebuilding fund, which pays out to US corporations....

...and so on.

Kudos to Private Jessica Lynch for managing to survive in deadly circumstances. My hat is off to you.

Perhaps her debriefing will put to rest the lie about the "captured then executed" POWs.

The media is wall to wall with Private Lynch's rescue, and it is clear that the extraordinary circumstances involved are not the only reason. That she is young, white, and importantly, female, plays heavily into the coverage, and that is too bad. Private Lynch is a trained member of our armed forces, someone who signed up cognizant of the risks involved, and yet the saturation coverage refuses to acknowledge her equal rank and status by the repeated use of her first name only in reference to her. In the context of a war and her experiences as a wounded prisoner and survivor, it is only right that the media refer to her as Private Jessica Lynch. Had she been a male prisoner, proper rank and title would be affixed to her name in most media references. Why not in her case?

I'm drinking in the air...literally.

It's like thick soup out there today, more like swampy Virginia than Oklahoma.

CableSpews And Their Discontinentia...

Peter Arnett and Geraldo Rivera have been cast out.

Woe is us.

Arnett, veteran of many a network and a few suspicious stories sank himself by foolishly appearing in an interview conducted by Iraqi state television, such as it is. Though US forces have been trying like hell to knock it off the air since it became clear it would not be the medium by which Saddam Hussein would declare surrender on Day Two, Iraqi TV has managaed to broadcast on a semi-regular basis during even the most furious bombing campaigns. Perhaps Arnett wasn't acclimatized to the constant subsonic booming and blinding flashes given off by the bombs, and so had not slept since the start of the war when Iraqi officials asked to speak with him on camera. Who knows? He went ahead and did so, and it was a stupid step for a man whose career was declared dead five years ago when he was fired by CNN, and so NBC/MSNBC CableSpews officials fired him yet again.

Fine.

But enough already. The continuing allegations remain that Arnett in his statements gave aid and comfort to the enemy. Arnett merely repeated statements that have been reported and spoken in newspapers and TV all across the US and the globe, by US officials current and former, by our friends and our enemies. He basically said that the initial war plan failed - it did - and that it was being modified - it was. This information was available all over mainstream media, including FoxSpews, which has made major hay of this story in a cynical bid for extending their ratings lead over MSNBC. Fox, excresence of Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch, has alleged that Arnett's comments will lead to further US casualties, a statement that even I find objectionable - the Iraqi's get satellite TV, read major papers, and the top brass still have access to the web.

Meanwhile, FoxSpews leading star "reporter," Geraldo Rivera, late of stupid afternoon "talk" shows and chair throwing incidents, issued a report from inside Iraq that included diagrams being drawn in the sand showing the forecast movement of the troops with wholm he was travelling, as well as the major and alternate supply lines. US CENTCOM told Fox Spews they considered this a breach of both the enbedding agreement (Rivera was not expressly part of that program, but had been travelling with a specific unit) and operational security. The latter, if officials chose, could lead to federal charges. Roger Ailes appealed the decision with all of his administration buddies, and things got quiet. Rivera stupidly took to the air and claimed he'd done nothing wrong, and that NBC was out to get him. How *that* is possible in this situation is beyond me, and indicative of his loose mental state.

After more than 24 hours, FoxSpews finally stated that Rivera was leaving Iraq, but the channel itself has done almost no reporting on its own reporter's incredible irresonsibility. No, they've been flacking the Arnett story and the implication that Arnett is getting people killed. Right wing media commentators have also been haranguing about Arnett and all the US servicemen and women who will die because of his retatement of widely reported issues in the press, while they give Geraldo a complete pass.

Hurry up and wait.

My week in the hospital has been delayed until April 7. The neuro folks have only three rooms set up for 24 hour EEG/video monitoring, and several patients had to be kept on extra days. The third room was given to a patient coming from out of state. I understand, though they were vague about whther this meant the whole week was shot or just monday. I finally got them to tell me they prefer to start new patients at the beginning of the week, so I could assure them next week was fine.

Thanks to all of you who called, and those who promised to call and entertain me during my captivity...I hope you meant it, as I'll still need the floor show next week. :)

Language is everything.

In the hyper-fast world of electronic media, terms and definitions have their meanings altered and distorted as the need arises.

To whit:

200 people are blown up in a building in Basra during an air strike. That's a hell of a lot of people, too many to just deny as accidental, "collateral" deaths. The US makes up a really amazing story about 200 members of a "terrorist death squad" meeting in a building in Basra to "plan attacks upon coalition forces." Acting upon timely "intelligence," fighters and bombers leap to the air and drop tons of ordnance on the building, demolishing it and killing everyone inside.

Hurrah!

Terrorist Death Squad Members Are Dismembered!

That was a few days ago.

Today, the British government, whose forces are largely in control of the areas surrounding Basra, has re-characterized those inside the building as "Baath Party Members," now dismembered, of course. A blow for the old empire, to be certain.

Language is everything.

If those men killed were officers in the military, or even civil servants, then the Brits will be telling the truth in the strict reductionist sense, as all of them would have been members, now dismembered, of the Baath Party. When they mutated from being dismembered members of a Terrorist Death Squad to bog standard members (dismembered) of the ruling Baath Party, we shall never know.

In fact, language continues to take a very odd turn in Iraq and the airwaves carrying the war to the rest of us.

It seems there are very few civilians in Iraq at all, judging by the pictures and the commentary. Tanks, planes, and many many explosions, but very few civilians, and then only when they are dead, and them only if they are proven to be dead by hands other than our own. That Baghdad marketplace remains a shining example of how odd things can become. In the minutes following the breaking of that story, officials at CENTCOM had already floated a story that Iraq had done it to themselves, even though a near continuous bombing and missile campaign had been going on at the time. Later, when they'd had a bit of time to think, they floated a new rendition of the same story, claiming that some sort of mysterious Iraqi missile had misfired and fallen back to earth. Except there were multiple craters in the street there, so several missiles simultaneously misfired, fell back to earth, and killed civilians.

A few points can be awarded for sheer chutzpah, as those same officials at CENTCOM took a cursory look at a grainy videotape of the blasted market and strewn (and yes, dismembered) bodies and declared with shiny confidence that the bomb craters were "inconsistent with US munitions." Are you fucking kidding me?

Language is everything.

There is no Iraqi military left, except for those who surrender when we tell them to.

The rest have all been relegated to a whole host of new categories, churned out again by those boys at CENTCOM. I suppose they have little else to do - they don't fight themselves, they don't release any real, factual information to the press, and their self-importance can be contained for only so long. Any man with a gun and not in full Iraqi uniformed regalia is called, at the very least, an "irregular." In some cases, this might be true. Men might have been run off their land by the bombs or advancing troops, or terrified of the coming invasion of their homeland, brutal dictator or not. They may well be Iraqi soldiers whose uniforms have worn out or no longer fit, and for which there are no replacements. Sounds hilarious, but it is likely true. Think Confederate soldiers in America - no two dressed anything alike, because what little resources they had went to guns and food.

Then there are the "paramilitaries". These were mostly "irregulars" in the first week of the war, but "paramilitaries" is a more loaded term, denoting a kind of lawlessness or shifting loyalty. This is applied in order to cut them off from any association with the nation of Iraq. If they are not true soldiers of the country, then they are one step closer to terrorists, and much easier to kill, or torture, etc.

Last, we have my favorite, "Terrorist Death Squad."

This is also a loose term, highly loaded, with a shifting and ever-broadening definition. If the war does not end in a few more days or so, everyone in Iraq who is obviously not a combatant will be a member (potentially dismembered) of a "Terrorist Death Squad." Under the current definition, these people were called the Fedayeen until two or three days ago, when CENTCOM, they of the spiffy clean uniforms, came up with their new moniker. The new name came right when legitimate doubts about the war were springing up, and there is nothing like the word "terrorist" to cloud the issue and reset the American jaw.

Fedayeen, as I understand it, means "devoted to a cause" or "to die for a cause." These soldiers are sworn to Saddam Hussein himself, a grave error in judgment in my view. I understand them to be a fanatical personal military guard. They are not bound by military commanders in the field but by Hussein himself. This is neither shocking nor all that unusual, nor does it rise to "terrorist" as the word has come to be popularly defined in the West after the events of September 11, 2001. Thus far, they have been accused of all manner of crimes by the US military, but there is no evidence whatsoever for any of it, and a military command that will stretch reality to avoid taking responsibility for civilian deaths while bombing a city full of them is the least likely source of truthful information. The media that reports the war here relies entirely upon that military command structure and its political masters for information, so they also disqualify themselves. Point being, all of the horrors attributed to the Fedayeen (who are pretty small in number - they must run really fast to get all over the country to perform that much mayhem) or some or none of them may turn out to be true - but our government has gone right ahead and behaved in its usual irresponsible way and applied the appellation "Terrorist Death Squad" to them, dehumanizing them, making it easier to kill them. Thus, "liberation."

Thirty years ago it was "pacification."

Language is everything.

And on the subject of war crimes.

Enough already. The Red Cross has determined that both the US and the Iraqis violated the terms of the Geneva Convention in filming and airing films of captured prisoners. As for the repeated fairy tales of US soldiers who were first captured and them executed - it has not been shown to be true, and likely it is not. The Brits had made the same accusation about two of their own, which has since been withdrawn by British military command, though not Tony Blair. Disgusting, really, that he would use two families' pain for propaganda purposes. Not bad enough they were killed in war, no, they had to be led to believe there loved ones had been captured, tortured, and executed. Tony really has become a little follow-along lapdog for the Shrub, hasn't he?

The final hilarity, in the most morbid of senses, to all of this war crimes talk, is His Shrubness threatening to try anyone else filming American POWs as war criminals. My question would have to be: In what venue? The US pulled out of the International Criminal Court at The Hague, set up specifically to deal with war crimes and other major issues between nations. No doubt he'll label everyone who pisses him off an "unlawful combatant dismembered member of a terrorist pretzel squad" and relegate them to a purgatory of listening to him read aloud every evening.