"Criminal" Is Not Just Rhetoric

My wife sometimes patiently listens to my rants and then calmly replies with a comment that one day is going to cause me to have a stroke: "Really, Olaf, I think you're overstating things."

Now that's not to say she isn't right--after all, I enjoy putting the "hype" in hyperbole. But one bone of contention between us (no smutty jokes, please) is my frequent use of the word "criminal" in discussions of the Chimpie administration and Republican (and a lot of Democratic, let's face it) politicians.

Well, I'm standing by the term. At the top of the list, of course, is the whole Rove/Plame affair, in which a bulldog of a prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, is sure to hand down indictments for what? Criminal activity. And isn't Judith "Kneepads" Miller sitting in the slammer for contempt of court in that investigation and facing criminal contempt charges?

And then there's Ohio, as reported in the Toledo Blade:

As Gov. Bob Taft yesterday became Ohio’s first governor to be convicted on criminal charges, he apologized for embarrassing the state he’s sworn to lead, but dismissed the ethical misdeeds as an inadvertent “mistake.

Jesus Christ. Talk about rhetoric. What the state calls "criminal" charges, gets the label "ethical misdeeds." And some of the continuing investigation into these "ethical misdeeds" shows it's not some "Oh, I got drunk and fucked-up" moment.

Even before yesterday’s court proceedings, the Taft administration was already immersed in a scandal stemming from the state’s failed $50 million rare-coin venture with Republican fund-raiser Tom Noe, who is facing multiple investigations and allegations that he stole millions of dollars.

Misdeeds indeed.

Next we go to Illinois where someone did a very un-Republican thing and trashed his party pals. Why? Well, there seem to have been a few more of those "ethical misdeeds":

The Illinois Republican Party is trying to come back from the political wilderness after losing nearly all of the clout and power in the wake of the massive corruption scandal. The scandal resulted in dozens of indictments, including the former Republican Governor George Ryan.

To be fair, I'd like to point out that George Ryan was the man who placed a moratorium on death penalty executions when it became clear how badly the law was working in that area, which is something that simply enraged sociopathic elements in the party (Chimpie, anyone think?) who think that frying a few innocent people now and then is a bearable cost of serving their sadistic pleasures.

Oh, and that reminds me of another Republican stalwart, our old friend the Hillbilly Heroin Homeboy who is struggling down in Florida to avoid his own criminal charges for massive drug acquisition.

The search warrants were obtained after investigators showed a judge Limbaugh's extensive prescription records from pharmacies near his $24 million Palm Beach mansion.

The warrants included a prescription list from one pharmacy, which showed Limbaugh obtained 2,130 pain and anti-anxiety pills under the brand names Norco, OxyContin, Lorcet and others in a five-month period. On June 3, a prescription was filled for 240 tablets of Norco, a mixture of the painkiller hydrocodone and acetaminophen. On June 18, he filled a prescription for another 100 pills of Norco.

This story is now over two years old, because the Vulgar Pigboy is claiming that the investigation is an invasion of privacy, which is especially ironic given his support of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts who doesn't believe, along with Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas in any Constitutional guarantee of a right to privacy. Crime makes strange justapositions, no?

Meanwhile, in Texas, Tom "Giant Flying Cockroach" DeLay may be feeling the heat:

Jim Ellis, who runs DeLay's Americans for a Republican Majority, and John Colyandro, the executive director of Texans for a Republican Majority, were indicted last year by a Travis County grand jury on charges of violating state election law and money laundering.

And then we have the big fish, related to DeLay also, in the person of Jack Abramoff, arrested for fraud, who is now cooperating as a witness in a mob hit investigation, wherein a fellow he did business with turned up dead with a bullet to the head.

Abramoff has close ties to several influential GOP leaders, among them House Majority Leader Tom DeLay of Texas, Americans for Tax Reform director Grover Norquist, and former Christian Coalition chief Ralph Reed.

DeLay, Norquist, Reed, and on up the chain.

So, my dear, do I overstate when I speak of "criminal enterprise"?

How Do You Spell Hypocrisy?

Tip o' the hat to Republic of Dogs for digging these up and Daily Kos for broadly disseminating this collection of quotes from the scumbags of the right.

Number of Americans killed in Bosnia and Kosovo? Zero.

Who's partisan now?

Here's a Good Thursday Morning Amusement

Send this link from the Onion to the radical theofascist (christofascist faction) of your choice and watch him or her defend the anti-gravity stance. My favorite part:

"Let's take a look at the evidence," said ECFR senior fellow Gregory Lunsden."In Matthew 15:14, Jesus says, 'And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.' He says nothing about some gravity making them fall—just that they will fall. Then, in Job 5:7, we read, 'But mankind is born to trouble, as surely as sparks fly upwards.' If gravity is pulling everything down, why do the sparks fly upwards with great surety? This clearly indicates that a conscious intelligence governs all falling."

Too bad it's satire, but I figure if argued passionately enough, maybe the fuckers will all float off into outer space. And even if that doesn't happen, imagine the chagrin when you explain what the Onion is--trust me, they won't get it, not having the slightest sense of humor or irony. Enjoy yourselves.

Some Levity and, Perhaps, Bizarre Nostalgia

I lived in Alabama for 13 years, working on the Space Shuttle program, before escaping to the mountains in the southwest. And every once in a while, I sort of miss it, you know? Here's why, and it's pretty damned funny.

Thanks to Americablog commenter jurassicpork for the link.

How Low Will the Bar Go?

In an earlier post, I enumerated all the things that had been claimed as reasons for going to war in Iraq which are now proven false. But will the Chimpie criminal empire admit their mistakes, or even try to correct them in a public manner to restore confidence in their (cough, cough) "leadership"? No, of course not. What they are going to do, as in changing the WMD threat to bringing democracy to the Middle East, is to change the rules by which they are measured.

"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

Note that this official says that their expectations were "never realistic." NEVER!

So, all you Bush-lovers out there, all you "Support the Troops and Be Loyal to the President" fantasists out there, would you have sent your own children to Iraq under Chimpie's command knowing from the beginning that these assholes were never, NEVER, basing their decisions on any reality on the ground, but rather on the a personal agenda of greed and power? 59 million suckers out there. Suckers. Dumb-ass, stupid-as-Crawford-tree-stump stupid suckers. The cited Washington Post article concludes:

Ironically, White said, the initial ambitions may have complicated the U.S. mission: "In order to get out earlier, expectations are going to have to be lower, even much lower. The higher your expectation, the longer you have to stay. Getting out is going to be a more important consideration than the original goals were. They were unrealistic."

I hope that as this happens, the kneepad American media will take Chimpie's cock out of its collective mouth long enough to call boo on the changing foundation for judging success and not let these bastards play their pathetic base for fools yet again.

But then maybe I should lower my expectations. Having faith in the American media or the American people to face reality was, perhaps, "never realistic."

Is This War Won?

When Richard Nixon declared the War on Drugs, we should have known that the real war would be on truth and our wallets. More than thirty years later, the war, which in the early 1970s was focused on marijuana, seems to have had four fundamental effects:

1. The creation of a huge drug criminal empire with enormous financial resources
2. A growing problem with drugs far, far worse than reefer, in particular crack and methamphetamine
3. The birth, growth, and care of an enormous drug enforcement industry
4. More varieties of more powerful and dangerous drugs available at cheaper prices nationwide

Okay, okay, that's all common knowledge. But here's what is a really strange manifestation. "Back in the day," when a "lid" was $10 and weighed an ounce, most pot came from Mexico or, on rare occasion, some friend's backyard. Now, after over three decades of enforcement, we have this from the Arizona Daily Sun:

Law enforcement officers have busted one of the biggest marijuana-growing operations in the state -- and perhaps the nation -- in the Fossil Springs Wilderness on national forest lands southeast of Camp Verde.

No big deal, right? Domestic pot cultivation is big business in Humboldt County, California and in Kentucky as well. Here's the kicker, however.

The Department of Justice predicted in a report that marijuana farming in forests nationwide would only increase and become more commercial, led primarily by drug cartels with ties to Mexico.

Indeed, the arrest of a Mexican citizen in connection with the Arizona marijuana operation supports DOJ's prediction.

And that's what has yours truly chuckling. Drug enforcement policy has been so effective that not only do we have meth labs in every neighborhood and access road motel, but now Mexicans are coming up here to grow their pot.

Help me out here--is this true irony, or am I just too easily amused?

Something Else to Thank Chimpie For Making Possible

Ah, it just keeps getting better all the time, doesn't it?

Russia and China will hold their first ever joint military exercises this week as the once wary neighbors demonstrate their willingness to cooperate in the face of the U.S. military presence in Central Asia.

The two countries will also do a little business on the side as Russia shops its hardware, including nuclear-capable strategic bombers, to its military-industrial complex's best customer, Russian and Chinese defense analysts said.

I wonder if somehow this isn't the secret agenda of Condi "I'm Competing with Donald Rumsfeld for the Incompetence Championship Belt" Rice. As you know, her expertise (sic) was in Cold War-era Soviet studies. Perhaps the desire is to return us to the time when an entire nation had its thousands of nukes pointed at us and tensions were sky high. Perhaps, given the utter failure of this administration to reduce the threat of terrorism, they hope to swing things back to what they hope they understand. Not that Condi, Donald, Dickie and the gang would do any better. Their desire is power, and everything else is secondary, including the security and sovereignty of this nation.

Plus, the neo-con criminal cabal has another problem.

Terrorism just isn't so scary when you remember the Cuban missile crisis, and maybe the neo-con fuckwads want to get something truly scary before the nation wakes up to the overhyped threat of terrorism.

That's right--overhyped. Go read some history of the era of standing toe-to-toe with the Russkies, to quote Major "King" Kong. The scale of one versus the other is staggeringly different. Terrorism is real, to be sure, and it's scary, but it is containable and with the right policies of policing and international cooperation, it is entirely possible to eradicate all but the most fringe elements that would subscribe to such tactics.

But then if you're not so scared, it makes it tougher to control you with lies and conduct assaults on human rights, privacy, and real security.

That's why I hate what these motherfuckers have done so very, very much. It's the biggest con game in history, folks. So, who's a sucker? Are you?

Mistaking the Medium for the Message

Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, can't stop shilling for the Chimpie-driven disaster that the war on terror has become. In defying a court order to release photographs of abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, he thinks that the pictures are more important than what they portray.

Gen. Richard B. Myers wrote in recently unsealed court papers filed in US District Court in Manhattan that it was "probable that al-Qaida and other groups will seize upon these images and videos as grist for their propaganda mill."

Of course, Myers is grinding his own propaganda mill here in saying the pictures will help recruitment. No, General Myers, it's what is shown in the pictures that will help in recruitment.

In other words, the photographs themselves are worthless without the context of an illegal invasion of a country and the subsequent brutalization of prisoners in clear violation of the Geneva Convention. If it hadn't been perpetrated, the pictures would be worthless, you dig?

So far, the highest ranking official to be punished for what are clearly systematic programs of torture in violation of international law is an Army staff sergeant. What Myers probably recognizes is the these photos may reveal to a heretofore unbelieving American public just what we're capable of sinking to, and that is going to blow a lot of minds, excepting, of course, those who are in such deep denial that they still think Chimpie is the Dear Leader.

And once average Americans begin to realize the horrors being done in their name, they'll want justice, and they'll want it to go all the way to the top in order to excise this cancer from our national leadership. Since General Myers currently sits at the apex of that pyramied in the military chain of command, I think he understands the power of those photographs, and his fear has less to do with helping recruitment for Al Qaeda and everything to do with being hauled up for war crimes, which is not a good end for a long military career.

In Case You Wondered Why "Chimpie" Is His Name . . .

Gotta love Steve Benson at the Arizona Republic. If you need a break from all the Iraq war focus, go check out this cartoon and many of his others. Mr. Benson is an interesting character, someone I don't see eye-to-eye with on some things (abortion, for example) but he's pure in spirit and someone whose pro-life means all life, not just blastocysts in a petri dish. Plus, he's damned funny.

Meet One of that 38%

I can't add anything to this. Just go meet Mr. Larry Mattlage.

Oy.

Actually, I can't help it. After hearing the following oratory from the lips of Mr. Mattlage . . .

Ma’am, who wants to wade through all these people walking around there. What this is a war of porta-potties and the one with the most porta-potties is gonna’ win and you know who that is don’t you. You all got started out going to the bathroom in a five gallon bucket. Now, I see three porta-potties. How many more porta-potties are we going to have to put up with? Now, George Bush has more porta-potties than you all, so if I was a bettin’ man, I’d say he’s gonna win. So let’s don’t make this a little more ridiculous than it is now. Everybody go back a winner. You’ve made your point. I’m proud of you. God bless all of you.

. . . I only want to ask this: Is Chimpie writing his speeches?

How to Admit Failure Without Actually Admitting Failure

When it comes from the administration bootlickers at the Washington Post, you can take it to the bank. This is incontroverible proof of the unflagging incompetence of the Chimpie administration in the conduct of the so-called war on terror and on the war in Iraq:

The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

So let's add up the "reasons" for going into Iraq:
1. Connection to 9/11--Nope.
2. Connection to Al Qaeda--Nope.
3. Threat of nuclear weapons, "smoking gun in the shape of a mushroom cloud."--Nope
4. Threat of biological weapons.--Nope.
5. Threat of chemical weapons.--Nope.
6. Establish model democracy in Iraq.--Nope.
7. Liberate the people of Iraq from oppression and violence.--Nope.
8. Reestablish Iraq as a primary global oil producer.--Nope.
9. Greeted as liberators.--Nope.
10. Oil from Iraq will pay for cost of war.--Nope.
11. Iraq can be pacified with fewer troops than recommended by General Shinseki.--Nope.
12. "Mission Accomplished" as announced in crotch-enhanced premature ejaculation from Viking jet on carrier USS Abraham Lincoln.--Nope.

Batting .000, Chimpie-boy. You and everyone in your criminal administration had better resign now and turn yourselves over to the Hague for prosecution. Then, and only then, might you be shown a breath of mercy. You god damned motherfuckers.

Such Compassion! (part 2) and What You GIs Can Expect From Your Republican Friends

It just keeps on coming. Check out this passage about a Bush supporter down in Crawford. His "support" for our troops is damned impressive, don't you think?

Many Bush supporters say the president has little to gain politically by meeting with Sheehan. "I have no problem with what these people are doing here. This is America, and that's their right," said Elliott Mattlage, who owns the 300-acre cattle ranch next to the intersection where Camp Casey has taken shape.

Wearing a "Bush-Cheney 2004" shirt, the retired 67-year-old said he worked for defense contractors for nearly 40 years. "I sympathize with anyone who's lost a child. But nobody asked this guy (Sheehan) to join the service," Mattlage said.

Then he pointed over a rise in his 50-head ranch. "If we don't stop these terrorists over there, then they're going to be right there in that creek."

Don't you love that? "[N]obody asked this guy (Sheehan) to join the service." Does he go to the Veterans' Administration hospitals and remind the amputees that it was their own fucking decision and no one else's that got them blown up?

And then the sheer idiocy of the terrorists being "right there in that creek," if we hadn't invaded Iraq. Yep, they were gathering on the Lousiana-Texas border as I recall, sending in sapper units to blow up his stock tanks and kidnap his cattle for use in unspeakable sexual acts.

The fact that there is still about 40% of the population that believes this fantasy gives me a very bad feeling about this country. Are this many people really this damned stupid? Are this many Americans really so blase' about the useless waste of our military, which is now so weakened we may not be able to answer more serious threats?

Good God. I need a drink. Is the sun over the yardarm yet?

Such Compassion!

Well, I thought Chimpie had really bottomed out for me as perhaps the most public example of sociopathy in office in the history of our nation, but this piece from the Birmingham News just blew my mind. I'd say that the verdict is in that Bush is completely absent of empathy.

Bush said he is aware of the anti-war sentiments of Cindy Sheehan and others who have joined her protest near the Bush ranch.

"But whether it be here or in Washington or anywhere else, there's somebody who has got something to say to the president, that's part of the job," Bush said on the ranch. "And I think it's important for me to be thoughtful and sensitive to those who have got something to say."

...Bush's Saturday schedule included an evening Little League Baseball playoff game, a lunch meeting with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a nap, some fishing and some reading. "I think the people want the president to be in a position to make good, crisp decisions and to stay healthy," he said when asked about bike riding while a grieving mom wanted to speak with him. "And part of my being is to be outside exercising."

Chimpie's right, of course. We do indeed "want the president to be in a position to make good, crisp decisions." That is, if he had ever actually made a good decision. Well, there was one. Again, the only thing I can think of that has actually gotten better for the country is the crackdown on unsolicited telephone calls during the dinner hour. Stacking the rest of his "legacy" against that, I'd say that if exercise is what informs Chimpie's decisions, he ought to spend all his waking hours on the couch with a bag of Cheetohs and a few six-packs, watching porn. Then we might see just a glimmer of competence.

As for compassion, understanding, or empathy, forget it. If his poll numbers on the war sink any lower, Barbara and Jenna had better head to Sweden. Chimpie will be signing them up for the Marine Corps if it'll save his ass. And while he's at it, hasn't he got some nephews and nieces who are available for Iraq?

I guarantee you, if anything happened to them, he wouldn't feel a thing, or at least as much as he feels for Casey Sheehan, 1850 other dead Americans, or the wounded GIs, or the dead and maimed Iraqis. After all, he has to go on with his life. He's got bikes to ride and naps to take.