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. :)