Oh That Bushie! So Presidentiumable

God forbid El Presidente's exercise regimen be disturbed. Check out this excerpt from the White House daily briefing, courtesy of Editor and Publisher:

Q: Scott, yesterday the White House was on red alert, was evacuated. The first lady and Nancy Reagan were taken to a secure location. The Vice President was evacuated from the grounds. The Capitol building was evacuated. The continuity of government plan was initiated. And yet the president wasn't told of yesterday's events until after he finished his bike ride, about 36 minutes after the all-clear had been sent. Is he satisfied with the fact that he wasn't notified about this?

McCLELLAN: Yes. I think you just brought up a very good point -- the protocols that were in place after Sept. 11 were followed. The president was never considered to be in danger because he was at an off-site location. The president has a tremendous amount of trust in his Secret Service detail. ...

Does My Pet Goat suddenly come to mind? Doesn't Bush's behavior in the minutes following his notification that the United States was under attack on September 11, 2001, pretty much explain why he wasn't told this time until the coast was clear? You may be able to conceal your shit-stained drawers in a dark suit, but in biking shorts, the crap is going to bulge the spandex and leak down your legs.

But the real message here is that nobody, not even his own cronies, trusts his judgment in a crisis. And McClellan (poor bastard--he looks like a baby seal being clubbed) has no hesitation with saying yes, Bush was satisfied that he wasn't notified. "Bein' prezdent is hard work. Ah don't want no distractions like air-o-planes trying to crash into buildings or nothin'."

What a fuckwad. And 59 million sorry-ass suckers voted for this.

On Blair and Powell and Becoming Bush's Bitches

From Sidney Blumenthal's column in the UK Guardian:

But, like Powell, Blair convinced himself that going along in public was essential to his efforts to influence Bush behind closed doors. Like Powell, every time Blair made a slight gain, he reinforced his delusion of influence. Both overvalued their leverage.

Doesn't this just smack of the naive women you've known who'll say, "Oh, sure he's an insensitive brute who uses me and then beats me, but I just know I can change him."

Time to run to the domestic violence shelter, you two. Your bruises and cuts can't be covered up with cosmetics anymore.

Iraq Is Doing Great! Uh, Well, Maybe Not

Actually, this is heartbreaking for me, knowing that our servicemen and women are putting their lives on the line in a war that they had no choice in fighting. Please remember that the military is only an instrument of policy and that the ultimate power is in the civilians who direct that policy.

Given this war was entirely one of choice and not necessity (if you still doubt this, go read some other blog that sychronizes with your fascist viewpoint), please read what it is heading toward in this Newsday piece:

"I think we are really on the edge" of all-out civil war, said Noah Feldman, a New York University law professor who worked for the U.S. coalition in Iraq.

Mr. Feldman's words become even more chilling further on.

The Sunni insurgents could win the battle if they persevere long enough to sour U.S. voters, Feldman said.

He said, "There is no evidence whatsoever that they cannot win."

"No evidence whatsoever." My heart aches for our soldiers who are in this Iraqi crossfire. According to this report,

Now the 140,000-plus U.S. troops in the country are mainly "a nuisance" factor in the insurgents' overall goal of preventing the new government from consolidating.

How destructive to our image and our power have the Bushits been? Think of George's crotch-enhancing flightsuit, his helmet under his arm, mincing across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln two years ago and standing under that "Mission Accomplished" banner. Think of him excusing his entire presidential record because "I'm a war president." Think of him standing before the White House press corps, unable to articulate a single mistake.

And now 140,000 of our best citizens are reduced to "nuisance" status in a region that we destabilized because of the ambitions and lies of a handful of extremist chickenhawks who consider the sacrifices of daughters and mothers and husbands and sons and brothers and sisters as not even worthy of mention or depiction.

This is a criminal administration, violating US and international law and decency. Bob Dole asked during his race for the White House against Clinton, "Where's the outrage?" Patriots should now be finding all the outrage they need. These motherfuckers must be stopped.

One Step Closer to Disgrace and Impeachment

At long last, what has been at play in the British press for the past few weeks has finally crawled into a couple of major US news outlets, showing up in the Los Angeles Times and on CNN's website. From the Times:

Labeled "secret and strictly personal — U.K. eyes only," the minutes begin with the head of the British intelligence service, MI6, who is identified as "C," saying he had returned from Washington, where there had been a "perceptible shift in attitude. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy."

Now for the moment hold that statement, "intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy" with this next tidbit, also from the Times:

[Foreign Minister Jack] Straw then proposed to "work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam" to permit United Nations weapons inspectors back into Iraq. "This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force," he said, according to the minutes.

Hold that as well, and then read this:

Excerpts from the paper, which Smith provided to the Los Angeles Times, said Blair had listed conditions for war, including that "efforts had been made to construct a coalition/shape public opinion, the Israel-Palestine crisis was quiescent," and options to "eliminate Iraq's WMD through the U.N. weapons inspectors" had been exhausted.

Lining up all these neatly we have:
1. Bush and company were fixing the facts to fit the desired policy.
2. The British would cook up an unacceptable ultimatum. Remember that Chief UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix said there were no WMD in Iraq, so Straw knew Hussein would refuse inspections beyond a certain point.
3. Public opinion would be shaped accordingly, which was probably easier than they expected with our kneepad news media.
4. This occurred on 23 July 2002, eight months before the invasion.
5. Subsequent to this report, Bush repeatedly denied the plan or desire to invade Iraq and declared that he wished to explore all avenues, exhaust every option, leaving war as a last resort.

The Bushits have denied all this, of course, despite having continually shifted the reasons for war as each lie was exposed (WMD, nukes, mobile chemical weapons labs, links to Al Qaeda). They are now faced with documentation of the planning of what they deny doing. it seems, to quote Bush butt-boy George Tenet, a "slam-dunk" for indicting a sitting president, vice president, and anyone who can be stuffed back into the slime pit with them.

The one fear I have is that these minutes are a plant, to be used to lure and then discredit any news organization that falls for it, a la Dan Rather. I hope not. I hope these minutes are authentic and can be used to begin to pressure and turn key players to work up the chain to clear the vermin and their stench from the executive branch of our government. I imagine that there are a lot of CIA professionals who have a lot of payback they'd like to deliver to Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith and Libby, and this could be the trigger. Having to feel the bootheels of first Porter Goss and now John Negroponte, the spooks must be seething in Langley while sharpening their knives. If there's anything I learned in my stint in the military, it was don't fuck with intelligence people. Cheney is probably public enemy number one in their books these days.

Let's hope that the tipping point is reached quickly and decisively so that even the sincerest bootlickers in the mainstream media will have to pick up the thread, not because they are courageous journalists but because they are gutless cowards who will run when their masters begin to fall. Count on your pretty boys and girls on cable TV to suddenly discover the story as if it's news to them.

Thanks to the LA Times and CNN for at least having the guts to put the story where some Americans might see it.

Congratulations, Graduates! Welcome to the Bush Economy

At the little university where I teach part-time, there is the springtime hubbub of graduation, with parties, teas, yard sales by departing students, beaming parents filling up the local hotels, a feeling of liberation and accomplishment and adventure. It's always a mixed emotional bag for me because I love teaching, and yet by the end of the semester I'm ready for a break too, although it means saying goodbye to a lot of students I've come to know, respect, and like. And, like many Americans, I have this second job of teaching to supplement my income a little as a hedge against what has been a down-spiraling economy for most people since the Bushits seized power.

Of course, there are indicators that things were looking up, despite the stagnation in the stock market, a lower savings rate than ever, an eroded dollar that may be the new model for Monopoly money, and the fact that there are actually fewer jobs in the U.S. now than when Bush was sworn in. But things were looking up, right? Our president said so, his economic spokespeople said so, and all the screaming financial heads on cable news said so. And yet in today's Financial Times, we learn this:

Real wages in the US are falling at their fastest rate in 14 years, according to data surveyed by the Financial Times. . .
Even after last month's bumper gain in employment, there are 22,000 fewer private sector jobs than when the recession began in March 2001, a 0.02 per cent fall. At the same point in the recovery from the recession of the early 1990s, private sector employment was up 4.7 per cent.

Since 2001 we have a net loss in jobs, and those jobs that are being created are 90 percent low-wage, entry-level types. So not only is this economy not improving, if one compares it to the Clinton-era recovery, any declaration of strength in the economy for the average workingAmerican is an outright lie. Surprise, surprise, as Gomer Pyle used to say.

So how are people compensating? That good old American institution--overtime.

Even with a slight rise in the hours employees are working, from 33.7 to 33.9, this suggests wages are struggling to keep pace with inflation. The gauge covers non-supervisory workers, about 80 per cent of the workforce.

Now, I don't want to sound all 1960s or anything, but what got me in this story was that non-supervisory workers constitute 80 percent of the work force. Can you imagine the untapped power that lies within that figure? Suddenly I feel like screaming, "STRIKE!!!" from the rooftops.

The working people of America, and of the world, really do hold their destiny in their hands. All that is required is organization. One well-timed national strike could send a level 10 Richter-scale shock through the executive suites in this country. Consider this: If all the executive vice presidents, CEOs, CFOs, CTOs and upper management types went on strike for a week, do you think you'd notice? Now imagine if every fry cook, hotel housekeeper, dry cleaner worker, construction worker, plumber's helper, copy editor, pressman, auto mechanic, factory hand, software engineer, trash collector, and so on stopped their labors for a week.

Who has the real power?

I think it's time to turn the tables. Save your pennies, clip some coupons to save on the grocery bill, search for bargains to build up a little extra dough. Let's get started. Labor movements can be fun!

Strike!

The Continuing Slide Toward Impeachment

The Washington Post reports that those moderate women who were suckered by Bush's aw shucks phony humility and simultaneously frightened by the suffocating smarminess of Kerry into committing the cosmically unpardonable sin of voting for Bush in 2004 are now regretting their decision.

There has long been a gender gap between the parties, with women tending to vote Democratic in disproportionate numbers. Bush all but closed that gap last year, losing the female vote to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) by three percentage points. But the memo pointed to a March survey that found women favoring Democrats when asked which party's candidates they would support if congressional elections were held today.

Let's hope it's the old "Fool me once" aphorism at work and they're shaming Bush.

Please recall, by the way, that the sociopathic Bush couldn't even remember that simple old saw the one time he tried to use it, which according to Mark Crispin Miller is no trivial slip of the tongue but rather an indication of Bush's absolute inability to see himself as responsible for anything that does not glorify him.

As dim as the state of the nations seems, this is a small sliver of light for the left, but only if several things occur. For one, the Democratic Party leadership has got to get some spine and then use it to clearly distinguish their progressive roots and history while simultaneously attacking the Republicans on every single thing that is worse now than when they took office, which is quite a smorgasbord. The one thing that's actually better under this administration? The introduction of the national "Do Not Call" list. Everything else has gone to shit.

The left must be combative and relentless in assaulting the record of these thugs, in particular the war profiteering of Cheney cronies, the environmental destruction for profit, and most of all that we are still frighteningly vulnerable to terrorist attacks due to malfeasance, corruption and greed by the Bushits. This battle must slowly escalate, without letup, to peak in November 2006, resulting in (yes, I'm really fantasizing now) the Dems retaking both houses of Congress, and immediately initiating impeachment proceedings that will make Nixon and Clinton into impeachment footnotes while turning Bush into the most despised figure in modern American history, both by the left and the right--the former because, well he is the most despicable figure, and the latter because belatedly, while standing in the smoking rubble of their movement, the conservative extremists will realize that they really fucked up in thinking they could stage a coup with Bush.

In the process of trying to salvage the next election, the Bushits will stab their core constituency of theofascists and mouthbreathers in the back in an attempt to con the moderate conservatives into giving them another chance to repeal the Bill of Rights and wage more illegal wars. But things are going to be too grim for all but the most deluded and/or ignorant of the Bushit core group, which will at last be rendered in the popular media for the foaming curs that they are (and no disrespect meant to the canine world. I have two big black dogs that I dearly love).

In the immortal words of Popeye, a lot of moderates are going to be saying, "That's all I can takes and I can't takes no more." And the way Bush and his gang are going to go down will make the executions at Tyburn during the Tudor reign in Britain seem like a Disneyland parade down Main Street. It's going to be wonderfully, if metaphorically, bloody and messy, and the crowds will be calling for gore, gore, gore (no pun intended).

Get your tickets now.

Capitalists vs. the Christians

Well, well, well. Isn't this going to be fascinating to watch? As U.S. business is getting bitch slapped because of the nutwad image our nation getting courtesy of the religio-fascists, I wonder what sort of wedge this might drive between the more libertarian/pragmatist greed faction of the Republican Party and the snake-handling, Bush-as-Messiah, burn-the-nonbeliever Dobson wing, which has become so frothy around the piehole about gay marriage and Terri Schiavo that they ought to be put out of their misery for the mad curs that they are. Rabid seems too tame a label for the true believers. I don't know why they just don't spontaneously combust into holy smoke, so evil has our world become. What a relief to them, and particularly to us, that would be.

Anyway, the Financial Times had the following:

The US is losing billions of dollars as international tourists are deterred from visiting the US because of a tarnished image overseas and more bureaucratic visa policies, travel industry leaders have warned.

Granted, the tourism industry, while big, is not a tail by which to swing the dog, but it is symptomatic of our larger problem with having the sort of image the Bushits have created for us. Of course, the business community has largely remained blissfully and purposefully ignorant of any of the details so long as there are profits to be made from war or a tax-cut-injected spurt in the economy (remember, it's all red ink ultimately, so it will have to be paid sometime).

But the best way to get a profiteer's attention is to spank him in the wallet, so it will be amusing to watch the nutwads and the greedheads square off against one another. The nutwads have conveniently overlooked the porno, tobacco, and alcohol money that helps their political pals, but they have to draw the line somewhere when our business boys try to create an Amsterdam-like center of sex and reefer somewhere in the US to attract more tourists.

“The idea has gotten out that we've pulled in the welcome mat,” said Rick Webster, the association's director of government affairs.

Yeah, seeing Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, who would ever get such an idea?