This Ought to Make It "Mission Accomplished," eh?

According to Reuters:

As part of a newly honed White House focus on Iraq, Bush will travel to an army base at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, on Tuesday to deliver what his aides are billing as a major speech on the conflict.

Gee, I thought that El Presidente Chimpie thought about Iraq "every day; every single day." You'd think that he'd be "honing" his "focus" on a continuing basis. I hate to be impatient, and patience is a virtue, but since his triumphant landing and prance aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln over two years ago, the crotch-enhanced dress-up queen's message just hasn't seemed to have reached the insurgents . . . or some of his own party.

Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is angry. He's upset about the more than 1,700 U.S. soldiers killed and nearly 13,000 wounded in Iraq. He's also aggravated by the continued string of sunny assessments from the Bush administration, such as Vice President Dick Cheney's recent remark that the insurgency is in its "last throes." "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality," Hagel tells U.S. News. "It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."

Now, according to Daily Kos, Cheney, as another lying mouthpiece for the whole Bushit echo chamber and propaganda machine, is going after Hagel, which just delights me, given that Cheney is a fucking chickenshit chickenhawk and Hagel is a decorated Vietnam veteran. And even though he doesn't carry the weight of a Chuck Hagel, Walter "Freedom Fries" Jones, a Republican Congressman from North Carolina, has now also turned against Bush's little lying war.

"If we were given misinformation intentionally by people in this administration, to commit the authority to send boys, and in some instances girls, to go into Iraq, that is wrong," he is quoted as saying. "Congress must be told the truth."

I wish he'd gone a little farther, adding, "And after Congress gets the truth, we're going to impeach the bastards, remove them from office, indict them on war crimes, and then convict them. It should not be long before they meet their maker at the gallows in the Hague." But still, for the guy who wanted the word "French" excised from American menus, this is quite a turnaround.

Of course, Karl Rove can send his thugs around to "correct" those errant Republicans to keep them in check, but it's going to take more than a Bush charm offensive, with or without the Village People attire, to reverse this:

Barely one in five Americans -- 22 percent -- say they believe that the insurgency is getting weaker while 24 percent believe it is strengthening. More than half -- 53 percent -- say resistance to U.S. and Iraqi government forces has not changed.

On the other side of the world, the sparkling victory given to the Iraqi people fails to impress them.

It is not just the political violence, the bombs and assassinations, and all the security measures taken to suppress them, that bother many people in Baghdad and other badly-hit areas.

It is also straightforward criminality and the feeling that there is no authority controlling the streets.

Perhaps this is what Bush meant while mugging beneath his "Mission Accomplished" banner. In chaos, one finds opportunity. Just ask Halliburton, ask Bechtel, ask the weapons manufacturers. Add to the unnecessary slaughter of Iraqi civilians and the deaths of Americans for a lie the crime of war profiteering and I'd say there's more than enough for these scummy liars to swing from the city gates.

Who Really Hates Our Troops?

Will Durst puts it exactly right:

Okay, get this and get this straight. Criticizing our Government is not the same as criticizing our armed forces. Okay? The same way that criticizing our Government is not the same as criticizing our postal workers. Or criticizing our zoo keepers or our ceramic mosaic tile grout installers. And let me make this clear, I am not in any way suggesting that any of these groups be criticized. Especially the postal workers.

Furthermore, telling the press that you are disgusted by reports of torture does not endanger our troops. You're all so fired up desperate to know what does endangers our troops; I'll tell you what endangers our troops: Greedy, cretinous toad leaders who send them 12,000 miles away to a desert to fight a war based on lies. Lies about the threat, and lies about a phantom desire to negotiate. That's who is responsible for putting our troops in harm's way. The idiots who sent them into this -- and yes, its time to say it out loud -- this quagmire.

Now go read the rest of it, then have a beer (Pilsner Urquell for me) and have a great weekend. Try to have some fun because liberals enjoying themselves in America really pisses off the theo-fascists and neocon shitheads. In fact, see if you can get the phone numbers of some Republican activists in your town, and when you're really feeling good, call some up and tell them how happy it makes you that they are destroying themselves by tying their fortunes to Team Bushit. Those motherfuckers are going down, and going down hard. The right wing is, to paraphrase Dick "Evil but Stupid" Cheney, in its death throes.

See you Monday.

Chickenshit Republicans

The label is fitting if you are a Republican, support the war, but refuse to donate your body or the body of a loved one to be an instrument of the military in fighting the Global War on Terror in Iraq. Not that you don't have a rich tradition of cowardice, allowing others to fight your battles whenever you can. Let's review:

1. George W. Bush - escaped duty in Vietnam by mincing into Texas Air National Guard thanks to daddy's connections; failed to finish service. Wasted a substantial investment in his training when he stopped flying for unspecified reasons. Unexplained absence from duty.

2. Karl Rove - Avoided service to his country through numerous student deferments, but never completed a degree.

3. Dick Cheney - married to avoid draft, then fathered a daughter to avoid draft, used grad school deferment, claiming he "had other priorities." Still using wife and daughter to protect his sorry ass.

4. Donald Rumsfeld - hid from service in Korea by staying in school playing in ROTC. However, unlike most chickenhawks, he actually served on active duty for a while. In spite of this, they let him join the neocon cabal. Has more than earned his stripes by destroying the US Army and Marine Corps.

5. Former Attorney Gen. John Ashcroft - received deferment to teach at SW Missouri State in business education.

6. Paul Wolfowitz, did not serve
7. Richard Perle, did not serve
8. Bill Kristol, did not serve
9. House Majority Leader Tom "Giant Flying Cockroach "Delay - avoided the draft, claiming that minorities "had all the good jobs" in the army.
10. Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert - avoided the draft, did not serve.
11. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist - did not serve.
12. Rick "Man on Dog Sex" Santorum, R-PA, third ranking Republican in the Senate - did not serve
13. Jeb Bush, Florida Governor - did not serve.
14. Former Speaker Newt Gingrich - avoided the draft, did not serve but still defends Vietnam action.
15. Rush "Hillbilly Heroin Homeboy" Limbaugh - used his anal cyst to escape service during Vietnam and still relies on it as the source of his lying, vitriolic radio presence which has proven popular with similarly afflicted, i.e. shit-for-brains, Americans

You get the idea. For a more complete list visit Chickenhawk Central.

Jonah Goldberg of The National Review is the poster boy for today's chickenhawks. He wrote,

I think that war with Iraq is necessary to save lives in the long run. I think that those who are opposed to toppling Saddam are risking American (and Arab and Israeli) lives too.

Soldiers will die in any war, that's why they call it war.

Then he wrote, without the slightest shame,

As for why my sorry ass isn't in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give -- I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my ass is, er, sorry, are a few -- ever seem to suffice.

Yes, that's so sad, Jonah. God knows that no men or women in their thirties who can't afford lost income or have kids are in the military.

So you've got plenty of support and solidarity with your leadership, and from the accounts I've heard, Operation Yellow Elephant has yielded no volunteers for Iraq from all you College Republicans, so I applaud your consistency in cowardice and hypocrisy.

Chimpie, Karl and Rush are so proud of you for not showing them up as the big yellow 'fraidy cats that they are. Cowardice--a proud and continuing neocon tradition.

Alternative Service for Republican Warriors

All right, I know that despite your tough talk, some of you are frightened little squirrels, so I want to give all of you Young Republicans and College Republicans who just can't bring yourselves to tangibly contribute to the Global War on Terror by actually signing up for the military a different option: Just take a one-month vacation to Iraq outside the so-called "Green Zone." You don't have to go through basic training, or advanced infantry training, don't have to get your head shaved, don't have to wear fatigues or obey orders. Just take a 30-day tour of Iraq. Based on Dick Cheney's knowing affirmation of the last throes of the insurgency, by the time you get there, it should be the great undiscovered cool locale for swinging right-wingers. Be a trendsetter!

Your president is triumphal in his optimism, and it is more than two years since "Mission Accomplished," so you should book now to get the exit row seat. You can make reservations at Air Gorilla.

Good Job, Chimpie! Making America Safer, part 73

I can't wait to hear the rightwing nutfucks rationalize or refute this:

The CIA believes the Iraq insurgency poses an international threat and may produce better-trained Islamic terrorists than the 1980s Afghanistan war that gave rise to Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, a U.S. counterterrorism official said on Wednesday.

Comforting, no? El Presidente Chimpie has managed to make the world less safe and the US less safe while bankrupting the treasury and getting America's best killed for no good reason. The little deserter chimp, the self-proclaimedd "war president" (that rancid ejaculation swallowed like a good whore should by Tim Russert on Meet the Press), the "Mission Accomplished" dress-up artist with the potato in the crotch of his flight suit, this inbred cretin has managed to make every goddamned thing worse.

But with one exception. I do want to be fair. The "No-Call" legislation, banning unlimited phone solicitation, did pass on his watch. Good job.

How many ways can you spell "failure"?

The Free Ride Is Over, Young Republicans

If you voted for Chimpie and you're between the ages of 18 and 39, then your country needs you right now! I won't quibble about which branch of the service you choose, unlike Jesus' General who thinks you all should join the infantry, but you do need to sign up.

Yes, I know Chimpie is your hero, but just because he deserted his post in Alabama doesn't mean it's right. Get your ass down to the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine, or Coast Guard recruiter right this minute, or you forever forfeit your right to claim to be a patriot. Real patriots aren't afraid to lay their own lives on the line, unlike your current heroes, for example, Dick "I had other priorities" Cheney, Tom "the minorities had all slots" DeLay, and Rush "What do you mean you can't tell where my anal cyst ends and I begin?" Limbaugh.

And yes, I'm a vet, assholes, 1971-74, so my money is where my mouth is. Trust me, you will make those recruiters so very happy and you'll get to play with the latest in weaponry and maybe even kill some non-Christians! Doesn't that make your little soldier stand at attention?

Chimpie: Addicted to Lies

Bush is out on the road now, trying to do for his criminal Iraq war what he imagined he could do for Social Security destruction, and probably with the same result. That is, he is going to lie his ass off even as it contradicts his own words. This is what he said in his radio address this weekend:

"We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address.

Now you'll note that Karl Rove has Chimpie do a smart thing here. He doesn't say "Iraq" even though that's exactly what he means, because if he's challenged by the kneepad press (unlikely) he can say, "What I meant was we went to war in Afghanistan because we were attacked." But of course what the presidential monkey's handlers want is that the Americans who haven't yet found out that there was no connection between 9/11 and Iraq will once again go to the mat on that mistaken and, frankly, boneheaded belief. But that's how the Bushits got into power--by playing to the dumbest fucks in the country. If any of you dumbfucks are reading this (doubtful, since most are illiterates, apparently) please read the following words from George W. Bush himself, and then burn them into your fucking forearm so you won't forget. This is from Septermber 18, 2003, okay? Got it? Pay attention. Now move your lips along if you have to.

President Bush said there has been no evidence that Iraq's Saddam Hussein was involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, disavowing a link that had been hinted at previously by his administration.

"No, we've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th," the president said yesterday after a meeting at the White House with lawmakers.

In the following paragraph from the same Washington Post article, we are reminded of the fact that this conflation of 9/11 and Iraq is an old tactic.

In stating that position, Bush clarified an issue that has long been left vague by his administration. On Sunday, Vice President Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press" that success in Iraq means "we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11."

A Washington Post poll last month found that 69 percent of Americans thought it at least likely that Hussein had a role in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Polling experts said Americans held that view mostly because of an instinctive suspicion of Hussein, but Democrats and some public opinion experts said Bush and his aides exploited that impression by implying a link.

Yes, at one point 69 percent of the American public swallowed that fucking lie, and now how many additional unnecessary deaths have there been because of it? How many impeachments? How many of these criminal motherfuckers under war crimes tribunal in the Hague? And is Bush backing off one bit, admitting a mistake, shifting policy? No, he's trotting out the same line of argument and hoping that his blowjob friends in the mainstream media will once again repeat the words without question, analysis, or really any rational and responsible journalistic investigation at all.

Fools, fools, and fools. It makes me want to puke. Because in this report, we just get the White House lies, with no goddamn refutation of the facts that Bush once again hopes he can obscure by just lying and lying and lying.

These people have no honor, no shame, no scruples and no crime is too large for them to commit to hold onto power. History will record this as a dark age in American history, when evil men held sway over a gullible people to commit one of the great crimes of modern history, all in the name of power and oil and a tiny elite of cronies who should spend eternity twisting on a spit over Satan's barbecue.

Yet still I have hope that ultimately justice will be done and these bastards will be known for the scum that they are for all time and generations to come.

Motto for the Bushits

If you ever saw the movie Blaze with Paul Newman and Lolita Davidovich, you might remember a great line from Newman as Louisiana Governor Huey Long: "Honey, old age and treachery will always overcome youth and skill." Modified for use in the current administration it would become, "Arrogance and incompetence will always overcome humility and competence, so long as you lie your ass off."

Furthermore, if the lies don't work anymore, then divert, obfuscate, ignore, and play completely dumb. Check out the pathetic and apparently witless Scott McClellan, White House spokesclone, trying to shut down a line of questioning that points out the lies of Dick "As Evil as I Wanna Be" Cheney. Just a sample:

Q But the insurgency is in its last throes?

McCLELLAN: The Vice President talked about that the other day -- you have a desperate group of terrorists who recognize how high the stakes are in Iraq. A free Iraq will be a significant blow to their ambitions.

Q But they're killing more Americans, they're killing more Iraqis. That's the last throes?

McCLELLAN: Innocent -- I say innocent civilians. And it doesn't take a lot of people to cause mass damage when you're willing to strap a bomb onto yourself, get in a car and go and attack innocent civilians. That's the kind of people that we're dealing with. That's what I say when we're talking about a determined enemy.

Q Right. What is the evidence that the insurgency is in its last throes?

McCLELLAN: I think I just explained to you the desperation of terrorists and their tactics.

It continues like this until Scottie finds the thread he started with to complete a totally circular path of logic, which is to say, there is no logic. Of course, the question I want answered is for the members of the White House press pool--why don't you ALL start getting tougher like this and pursue McClellan on his lying? I'm amazed that all of you keep from bursting out laughing every time he opens his mouth.

Anyway, getting back to the motto for the Bushits, as national polls show the American public souring on Bush and his illegal war, and some Republicans are now deserting him too, what will the Bushit camp do? Well, Chimpie is being sent out on a tour, based on the success of his Social Security propagandizing (yes, that's a joke), to try to once again create a national reality distortion field. Here's the arrogant and ignorant Scottie McClellan again:

"The president recognizes that this is a concern that's on the minds of the American people," McClellan said. "That's why he's going to sharpen his focus, spending more time talking about the progress that's being made on the ground — there's significant progress that has been made in a short period of time — the dangers that remain and that lie ahead, as well as our strategy for victory in Iraq."

Isn't our strategy for victory already in place? Wasn't it there on day one of the invasion? Didn't Chimpie declare "Mission Accomplished" two years ago while thrusting his enhanced crotch across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln?

See what I mean? Arrogance+incompetence="Strategy for Victory." And trust me, those words will be used over and over, directed at all opposition in the form, "Don't you support our Strategy for Victory?"

You see, for the Bushits, reality isn't the reason for slippage in the poll numbers, but rather an indication that their lying is not intense enough. So, liar-in-chief Chimpie will try to swell the bubble that surrounds him to include the American people again, but I don't think it's pliable enough to cover all those coffins coming back from Iraq that we're not allowed to see, or the legless and armless and blind veterans who are awaiting treatment. The general populace always wants to believe their leadership, but as they learned thirty-five years ago in Vietnam and as they've learned yet again, most leadership doesn't deserve such trust and should NEVER be given the benefit of the doubt.

As the motto of my old unit in the Air Force went, "Freedom through Vigilance."

Is the Mainstream Media Waking Up?

What's most interesting about this piece is that it's posted on the CBS News website:

Mid-May saw the leak of the so-called Downing Street Memo written by high-level British national security officials offering textual proof of what those of us who've been paying attention have long suspected: The Bush administration was determined to invade Iraq almost immediately after September 11, and the whole business with WMD, UN inspections, and so forth was just so much kabuki theater designed to lay the groundwork for a policy whose true motives lay elsewhere. This weekend, a second memo, leaked to the Times of London, provided further background. The British government, it seems, had committed itself to joining the United States in this war and was rather gravely concerned that the policy to which it had committed itself violated international law, making it necessary to design an appropriate pretext.

In other words, the deed was going to be done and the task at hand was to sell the rationale to the rubes in Britain and the U.S. To their credit, the British never supported the war in the majority, but I think they read, whereas here in America, TV news is king and, well, it took five weeks just to get these memos mentioned on U.S. television, and there never was a serious, literate discussion about going in in the first place.

Oh sure, that's all ancient history, the MSM will tell you, but these past deceptions inform us with regard to the continuing ones like the war is going splendidly, there's no mistreatment of prisoners nor detention of innocents, and that the Iraqi people are simply thrilled with how we've helped them out. We still aren't being shown the reality on the ground, the coffins continue to arrive at Andrews AFB with no coverage, and the stories on gravely wounded veterans are no longer aired.

But for the Bushits, it's coming apart at the seams. The story on Cindy Sheehan that was in a Kentucky paper has shown up in a mention in Editor and Publisher. The Democrats, probably thanks to the chutzpah of Howard Dean, are starting to show some gumption, standing up to Alberto "Tortureboy" Gonzalez in limiting the Orwellian-named Patriot Act. Even Donald "I am the God of War" Rumsfeld has admitted that the shit is worse now that it was in Iraq a year ago, but putting his typical rose-colored-glasses spin on it, "A lot of bad things that could have happened have not happened."

Tell that to the families of the 1706 dead Americans, you fucking war criminal. I hope you live long enough to be tried like the vile bastard you are, along with the rest of the Bush criminal empire. I don't think it's too much to hope that one day the platform will swing out beneath all the feet of these fuckers and the hemp around each neck will twang as it snaps at its end in a final jerk.

That, my friends, is called justice.

Orange (as in a jumpsuit) Won't Be Flattering to Chimpie; I Think He's a Winter, Right?

The Bush Evil Empire just slid another mile closer to the dock in the Hague this morning, thanks to the Los Angeles Times:

In March 2002, the Bush administration had just begun to publicly raise the possibility of confronting Iraq. But behind the scenes, officials already were deeply engaged in seeking ways to justify an invasion, newly revealed British memos indicate.

Now I understand the need for planning for contingincies, that is, if there is evidence of a real and imminent threat by Iraq to attack the US or its interests, there has to be planning in place. However, note that this says they need to "justify" an invasion already determined to be made, not to investigate whether or not an invasion was warranted.

The new documents indicate that top British officials believed that by March 2002, Washington was already leaning heavily toward toppling Hussein by military force. Condoleezza Rice, the current secretary of State who was then Bush's national security advisor, was described as enthusiastic about "regime change."

Although British officials said in the documents that they did not think Iraq's weapons programs posed an immediate threat and that they were dubious of any claimed links between the Iraqi government and Al Qaeda, they indicated that they were willing to join in a campaign to topple Hussein as long as the plan would succeed and was handled with political and legal care.

So the British seemed to know what those of us protesting around the world already knew, namely that there was no threat of WMD and no connection to Al Qaeda or 9/11. But, they figured, a successful regime change sold as such through a compliant corporate media could let them get away with it. At least they felt that they had to finesse the thing, which reveals that they knew damned well that the truth would not sell the war. And now that the war is successful--don't forget Chimpie's triumphant carrier landing!--the public is overjoyed at being conned, right?

The documents contain little discussion about whether to mount a military campaign. The focus instead is on how the campaign should be presented to win the widest support and the importance for Britain of working through the United Nations so an invasion could be seen as legal under international law.

Note the careful language here: "could be seen as legal," rather than "would actually be legal." Apparently they could feel the spectre of war crimes tribunals even if they weren't sure what was sending that chill up their spines.

Then comes the money shot.

The paper said the British view was that any invasion for the purpose of regime change "has no basis under international law."

But with no WMDs found, no Al Qaeda links (Dick Cheney's syphillis-induced hallucinations notwithstanding), and no ties to 9/11, what do the Repugs say now when all this is pointed out? "Aren't we better off without Saddam?"

Wrong question, boys and girls. If I preemptively take out my neighbor who everyone hates because he throws crap all over his lawn and beats his kids, as the police drag me away I don't think that my crying out, "Aren't we all better off with him gone?" is going to be much of a defense. The British acknowledged that international law does not permit invasion solely to change a regime, however odious. But that's what we did. And with 1700+dead American servicemen and women, tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis killed, maimed, and deprived of their families, with torture camps in hidden corners of the world, someone is going to have to pay.

They are going to pay.

If Only Chimpie Would Read

Cindy Sheehan of Vacaville, California, lost her firstborn son in Iraq and is not about to be reticent in her feelings for the people who sent him there. In Kentucky she addressed an interfaith group:

Sheehan ridiculed Bush for saying that it's "hard work" comforting the widow of a soldier who's been killed in Iraq.

"Hard work is seeing your son's murder on CNN one Sunday evening while you're enjoying the last supper you'll ever truly enjoy again. Hard work is having three military officers come to your house a few hours later to confirm the aforementioned murder of your son, your first-born, your kind and gentle sweet baby. Hard work is burying your child 46 days before his 25th birthday. Hard work is holding your other three children as they lower the body of their big (brother) into the ground. Hard work is not jumping in the grave with him and having the earth cover you both," she said.

Now think about Bush, the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, the crotch-enhancing flight suit, and the "Mission Accomplished" banner behind him. Think about the 1300+ Americans killed since then in an illegal war and the tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis senselessly slaughtered, each one mourned by a mother, a brother, a daughter, a grandfather.

Ms. Sheehan closed with this:

"We're watching you very carefully and we're going to do everything in our power to have you impeached for misleading the American people," she said, quoting a letter she sent to the White House. "Beating a political stake in your black heart will be the fulfillment of my life ... ," she said, as the audience of 200 people cheered.

And we'll be there to help you swing the hammer, Ms. Sheehan. God bless you and keep you after your terrible loss.

Question for Chickenhawk Dick Cheney

Dick "I'm so Evil, I make Satan shit his pants" Cheney, fellow draft dodger with Paul Wolfowitz, Tom DeLay, and the other wankers who cheer for others to do their fighting, had the gall to address a Special Forces conference in Tampa last week. Among his remarks:

Looking across this room, I see the diversity of our planet, but an identity of interests. None of us wants to turn over the future of mankind to tiny groups of fanatics committing indiscriminate murder and plotting large-scale horror. And so we must direct every resource necessary to defending the peace and freedom of our world, and the safety of the people we serve.

My question for Dick, and his deserter boss Chimpie, is this: If you really believe what you said, why don't you all hang yourselves over the front porch of the White House in full view of the pedestrians on Pennsylvania Avenue? Such an act might rub at least a tiny spot of dignity on the otherwise large, malignant stain you have left on our republic.

Monday Morning Dreaming

The public outcry, building slowly at first as the American kneepad press tries to bury the Downing Street memo, becomes an exponentially swelling tidal wave of rage. The people begin assembling in mass demonstrations to bring Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Gonzalez, et. al. down. Then there comes impeachment proceedings after the Democrats retake the House and the Senate in 2006. Bush, true to form, stonewalls everything, but is quickly removed from office, turned out by the Secret Service into the arms of federal marshalls who put him and his cohorts in orange jumpsuits and keep them in a special suite at Guantanamo Bay as the Internation Criminal Court in the Hague gets its apparatus in motion for the tribunal on war crimes. So sudden is Bush's fall from power, and so devastating and irrefutable is the evidence against him that the ICC has to rush to meet the demand for indictments.

The trickle of leaks soon becomes a relentless flood once prosecutors begin indicting individuals involved in the Bush administration lies, coverups, distortions of policy and other outrages, and the once hairy-chested macho posing of the Republicans turns into the belly-up, bug-eyed pleading of a bested cur, ready to comply with any order, eager to turn in anyone who could lead to a plea bargain.

Threaded together with lies and hubris, the right-wing hate machine comes apart astonishingly fast. A number of suicides plagued the former administration as apparently some shred of honor remains among a few despite the systematic attempts to expunge it. Finally, the hundred or so former officials to be indicted in the Hague are all placed on suicide watch, because the public demand for justice requires them to face their accusers and accept the blame and shame for the disasters they have caused.

Meanwhile, a constitutional crisis looms as the massive changes in the executive branch challenge the rules of presidential succession, but so great is the relief to have removed a corrupt regime that politics is rendered to the margins as the sobering effect of the people's uprising against the government shocks the remaining politicians into a mode of civic statesmanship tempered with large shakes of self-preservation. A glorious time.

And then I had to wake up and read the newspaper. Still, dreams can come true.

Dean Speaks Truth But Cowardly Dems Side with Their Elite Corporate Cash Brethren

Gee, I guess Howard Dean speaks the truth that the Republican Party is a party of white Christian men. Eighty-seven percent of them are white and Christian. Ninety-nine percent of ALL Republican legislators across the entire nation are white, and the vast majority male, even in Texas with a 47 percent minority population. Americablog's John Aravosis has more from the book The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America by Dr. John Sperling.

So will this cause Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi to reconsider their traitorous statements distancing themselves from John Dean even as he speaks factually? Don't count on it. Remember, it's not about truth but about power, and the hacks who have lost the White House and the Congress and now the judiciary to the theo-fascist wing of the Republican Party are desperately trying to hang on to their tiny remaining shred of power. If that means betraying the working people they are claim to represent, not to mention decency, truth, and the American way, well, they've been inside the country club. They're not going to shake their sucking mouths off the teat of corporate cash and walk out through those gilded gates and shed their special privileges and to mingle and be responsible to the rabble that is us. Are you kidding? They're clinking glasses with their Repug pals and having a good laugh.

Inside the beltway, there is only one party, and it ain't yours or mine.

Where's Superman when you really need him, anyway?

Lying Liars and the Cowardly Cowards Who Blow Them

Good Lord! Read this excerpt from a press forum with the New York Times' Elizabeth "I Can't Lose My Elite Status!" Bumiller and USA Today's Susan Page. It explains what we mean by "kneepad press."

Here's my favorite part, which sort of sums up Ms. Bumiller's identification with her, and Georgie W's, class of powermongers and servants of fascism:

That’s why it’s very hard to write those, because you can’t say George Bush is wrong here. There’s no way you can say that in the New York Times.

Yes, it is taken out of context, so go read the exchange at the link above. But it just kills me that Bumiller gets indignant with the audience for challenging her authority. Of course, she well understands that one does not get to be an elite reporter with the corporate-serving NY Times by challenging authority, even in an alleged democracy with a Constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press. Of course, as I've said before, the right to a free press does not require the press to actually behave as if it is free.

Liars, cowards and whores! Oh, my!

What Makes the Democrats So Gutless?

George W. Bush is the most vulnerable president in my lifetime (over half a century, if you must know). When he speaks publicly, as with Tony Blair this last week, one gets the impression of a cartoon character who has been shot full of holes who insists that he's fine. Then, when he drinks a glass of water, it comes streaming out of him in all directions. This presidency is like a sieve when it comes to truth or integrity or faithfulness to the American people--it doesn't hold water. The question is, then, why the fuck don't the Democrats make hay and start taking back our government?

We've had to watch Dems like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, who should be leading the assault, backing away from the only Democrat who seems to understand that attacking means being aggressive instead of assuming the kneeling position with hands held up in contrition. It's disgusting. So why are the Dems so weak-kneed?

They're in the club, that's why.

One of the interesting things about colonialism was the fact that after the European powers left Africa, for example, many leaders who emerged in those countries were horribly corrupt and bad news for their people, which seems puzzling, particularly when many of these leaders had come through oppressive colonial experience themselves. But what had happened to too many of them was that by the time they had gained power, they identified more with their elite white European counterparts than with the common people who they claimed to represent. Emperor Bokassa, Idi Amin and Sese Seko Mobutu are a few prime examples of this.

Now the Democratic Party in the United States once may have really been the party of the working class, but that was long ago. Now that someone like Howard Dean has the courage to go after the Republicans for the disaster that they are for this country, for the bigotry that grows from the extreme right-wing theological fanatics who have seized control, and for the corruption, cronyism and lies that this administration have made standard operating procedure, we can see the Democratic Party "leadership" for what it is--just another face of the elite class that runs this country and identifies with the working people only when they can be exploited for money or votes, but who have otherwise been abandoned in favor of the inside-the-beltway daisy chain that constitutes the ruling class in this country. Like the post-colonial leaders who had had too much of the good life under their masters, these folks, while mouthing words to soothe their betrayed constituency, are more frightened of losing the key to the executive washroom that the theo-fascists now control than they are of upholding the traditions and responsibilities of an opposition party.

They're traitors to their class. They disgust me.

The Welcome We Got

Arriving at Berlin Tegel airport for our European vacation, we were required to fill out no forms, make no declarations, and were issued no warnings about anything we might do or the official reaction thereto. When we crossed the border from Germany to the Czech Republic, a pair of officials representing each nation passed through the train for passport checks, but again, no forms, no warnings. So imagine my amusement at returning to my home country.

We were scarcely out of British airspace (after transfer from Prague at Heathrow) when the forms and regulations for entry in to the United States were introduced. In the seatback pouch before each passenger was a color-coded card explaining which immigration form non-citizens, non-greencard-holders and a few other categories needn't fill out, but those in the other categories had better have a grasp of boolean logic to figure all the "ands" and "ors" that directed them to either the white or the green form. But hell, what do I care? I just had to fill out a customs declaration. Easy. Just remember everything spent on goods coming back into the country, their itemized costs, etc. Fine.

But then there was this interesting bit of text written as the welcoming words to returnees and visitors alike, long before we had even set foot on the soil of the United States of America:

Please ensure you are in possession of the right form and have completed it correctly before arrival, failure (sic) to do so could result in a fine and cause you substantial delay on arrival in the USA.

Isn't that great? Aside from the comma-spliced sentence (which only embarrasses me in my role as an English teacher), I love the fact that folks start getting official threats of fine and detention before they even enter the country!

Welcome to America, where you can't even drink a beer on the sidewalk in front of your own house (open container laws) and where you still take off your shoes before boarding (not required in Prague or London, interestingly enough, since Richard "Shoebomber" Reid flew from Europe). I shouldn't bitch about the shoe thing though, because the "see through your clothing" X-ray glasses will soon eliminate that need.

I know I may seem petty for pointing this out, but the small things like this are manifestations of a fundamental view of the world, and I am sad to say that the "Land of the Free" seems far more obsessed with correct behavior and a continuous awareness of the presence of law and law enforcement than other places I have visited and lived. The tragedy is that it doesn't have to be this way.

A Nation of Atheists and No Devils in Sight

A week in Berlin, then a week in Prague was just about right for calming down. I got to drink decent beer, eat far too much schinken with wonderfully stinky Tilsiter cheese and Danish butter on black bread and reacquaint myself with Central Europe after far too many years. My internal clock is still not synched with local time here at home, and I yearn for more of those stinky sandwiches so I'm not yet anywhere near ready to reengage with the disasters that the Bushits are visiting upon the world, but there was something in Prague that really intrigued me.

You see, according to The Economist's annual fact book, and corroborated by Czech sources, over 85% of Czechs self-identify as atheists. Yet while there, probably much to the surprise and consternation of the American religio-fascists who read this, I witnessed no demons pouring like a pestilence from fissures in the streets, there was no mass bloodletting, and what you might expect to be more like a scene from a Hieronymus Bosch painting was quite the opposite. Women walked alone on late-night streets, children romped in city parks, the mail and phones and Internet worked, neighbor greeted neighbor and stranger alike, people enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather by dining alfresco and with no compulsion to eviscerate or defile the innocent. If the Rapture Index was in the "Heavy Prophetic Activity" range, just three points below "Fasten Your Seatbelts," the Czechs didn't seem concerned. For a country with so much vulnerability, not believing in invisible cloud beings and all, you'd think that Satan would be taking advantage of the absence of righteousness to get a head start on his reign of brutality. It was positively civilized, I tell you.

It's not like they haven't gotten the Word, of course. The Thirty Years' War started in Prague after all, and this part of Europe has had plenty of exposure to Catholic and Protestant fanaticism alike. But the good Czech people have simply opted out, and they aren't scared. What I want to know is why is James Dobson not doing something about this sinkhole of nonbelief, because it seems to completely refute his thesis about the only path to righteous living and being. Doesn't it bother him that there is a whole country that rejects his theology, and in fact all theology as the superstitious remnants of an earlier and far darker time? And these folks are not afraid to clearly and publicly declare this refusal of the Blood of the Lamb, which really must shave the buzz of the saved who await the front row seat for witnessing the unending torments of the rest of us when Christ returns. As Bill Moyers has observed, these loving, gentle people wet their pants at the prospect that come the Rapture, they "will be transported to heaven where, seated at the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents writhe in the misery of plagues—boils, sores, locusts, and frogs—during the several years of tribulation that follow."

But the Czechs just don't give a fuck. It was lovely, simply lovely to be among such people, even if only for a week. And the beer is divine and cheaper than soft drinks. Baby, the Rapture done already come!

Back in the Good Old USA

After a lovely week in Berlin, a second in Prague, it's home to the compound feeling a little too mellow, perhaps. After a self-imposed virtual news blackout, I may just mellow away completely. Ah, but tomorrow's Sunday and I'm sure a glance over the morning papers should end this blissful interlude, but who can tell? Perhaps my spleen is at last vented to the point of complacency, lethargy, boredom, apathy, and I can now turn the corner to stoogedom with an empty skull and an idiotic grin on my face.

We'll see.

Does This Make You Feel Proud?

Remember when Rush Limbaugh claimed that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were nothing more than the equivalent of fraternity hazings? I defy that fat, lying, morally bankrupt, anal-cyst-picking, drug addicted fuckwad to read this and claim that it's just the equivalent of fraternity hazing. And tell the Hillbilly Heroin Homeboy that it's not leftie propaganda; it's extracted from a 2000-page Army report, dig? Here's a sample that makes me, as a veteran, physically ill.

One captain nicknamed members of the Third Platoon "the Testosterone Gang." Several were devout bodybuilders. Upon arriving in Afghanistan, a group of the soldiers decorated their tent with a Confederate flag, one soldier said.

Some of the same M.P.'s took a particular interest in an emotionally disturbed Afghan detainee who was known to eat his feces and mutilate himself with concertina wire. The soldiers kneed the man repeatedly in the legs and, at one point, chained him with his arms straight up in the air, Specialist Callaway told investigators. They also nicknamed him "Timmy," after a disabled child in the animated television series "South Park." One of the guards who beat the prisoner also taught him to screech like the cartoon character, Specialist Callaway said.

Eventually, the man was sent home.

And I don't buy the Pentagon's bullshit that these are rogue warriors. This shit has official sanction, heavily implied when not explicitly ordered. That's how criminal regimes operate. One of the legacies of the Stalin regime is that Old Joe never actually signed a death warrant or any order explicitly calling for the death or imprisonment of enemies. His subordinates understood what they'd better do . . . or else. Since the Bushits are known for their extreme adherence to loyalty above everything else, what might be the likely outcome from El Presidente's utterances about prisoner treatment?

The platoon had the standard interrogations guide, Army Field Manual 34-52, and an order from the secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, to treat prisoners "humanely," and when possible, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. But with President Bush's final determination in February 2002 that the Conventions did not apply to the conflict with Al Qaeda and that Taliban fighters would not be accorded the rights of prisoners of war, the interrogators believed they "could deviate slightly from the rules," said one of the Utah reservists, Sgt. James A. Leahy.

"There was the Geneva Conventions for enemy prisoners of war, but nothing for terrorists," Sergeant Leahy told Army investigators. And the detainees, senior intelligence officers said, were to be considered terrorists until proved otherwise.

Voila! Bush is responsible for what happens under his watch, especially if his personal determination empowers his subordinates to commit war crimes.

He's bought himself and his cronies a ticket to the Hague as far as I am concerned.

Off to Get a Look Outside America

I don't know if anyone will notice, but for my one or two kind readers, I'm taking a research trip to Berlin and Prague over the next two weeks. The first part of the research is to give me the means to finish a short story collection about the Cold War. The second part is to get a perspective on the United States through the eyes of people not under the steady barrage of Michael Jackson coverage and surrounded by religious extremists trying to destroy the world before God summons them to his right hand in the Rapture. And third, perhaps I'm scoping out a home for future exile.

The Rapture Index, by the way, stands at 149, which means, according to Rapture Ready's website:

Rapture Index of 85 and Below: Slow prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 85 to 110: Moderate prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 110 to 145: Heavy prophetic activity
Rapture Index above 145: Fasten your seat belts

So tighten that sucker down, although if God is going to yank you out of your clothes, your toupee, your gold fillings and your pec implants, I don't see the need for a seat belt, but maybe I'm taking that warning too literally. Of course, that's the whole point for these folks, the "literal word of God," right? Well, they're full of shit, to put it bluntly. Here, from Matthew 24:35, they understood this much :

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

But they conveniently ignore the next verse, Mattew 24:36, which they also must take literally to be consistent, and of course we all know how consistency is a hallmark of the theofascist right wing, yes?

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

No man and no angel know when God will bring the apocalypse, but please, please don't be a dick and spoil the fun of the Rapture Ready people, or puncture the false piety and pretended belief of the likes of Bill "Cat Killer" Frist, or Tom "Giant Flying Cockroach" DeLay or George "I'm a Lying, Simpering, Costume-Wearing Poser" Bush, who play on the hopes and fears of the ignorant to execute their monstrous plans for our country. The apocalypse they will someday experience, if God is indeed just, will be something beyond their most terrible nightmares. And if it buys me a few more turns on the fiery spit over the eternal flames of Satan's blackest pit, I'm still going to gloat when it happens.

Don't spoil the surprise. Get 'em, God!

I'll be blogging as much as I can from Berlin and Prague whenever an internet cafe with good coffee or excellent beer opens upon my path, provided the money holds out, so look for firsthand reports from the former frontier of the Cold War. Since my time there in the 1970s, I am anxious to see if it is still true that "Berlin bleibt doch Berlin."

Newsweek Should Tell McClellan and His Boss Bushie to Fuck Themselves, a la Emperor Cheney

So Newsweek magazine published a story that may (according to Scottie "Mynah Bird" McClellan) or may not (according to Gen. Richard Myers, head of the Joint Chiefs) have contributed to riots in Afghanistan that left 17 people dead. The Bushit administration is going all out nuts on this story, screaming about a disputable and quite indirect effect while still playing us all for suckers when confronted with lies and crimes that have killed tens of thosands of Iraqis, over 1600 Americans, and tens of other coalition soldiers, not to mention while concurrently destroying our credibility worldwide, bankrupting the country, and appealing to a core of the most bigoted extremists in the country.

Am I to believe, then, that an erroneous story about flushing a book down a toilet is more damaging to the US image in the Muslim world than an illegal war, the murder of tens of thousands of innocent Muslims, the systematic and widespread torture of Muslims, many of whom arrested and detained with no due process, in addition to the many treaties pissed upon (Kyoto, ABM, etc.), attempts to jam John "I'm a Fucking Maniac and a Liar" Bolton into the UN, and on and on and on. A few inches in Newsweek merit more attention from the White House than all of that as damaging to our image abroad.

I would say that this in itself is equally, if not more, damaging to our image abroad, because now they know we're a totally deluded nation lacking any sense of proportion or responsibility for anything while we swing our considerable weight arbitrarily around the globe leaving death and rubble in our wake.

But getting back to what may have happened at Guantanamo with regard to the copy of the Koran, Molly Ivins reminds us of what conservative Andrew Sullivan wrote earlier this year:

On Jan. 9, 2005, Andrew Sullivan, writing in The Sunday Times of London, said: "We now know a great deal about what has gone on in U.S. detention facilities under the Bush administration. Several government and Red Cross reports detail the way many detainees have been treated. We know for certain that the United States has tortured five inmates to death. We know that 23 others have died in U.S. custody under suspicious circumstances. We know that torture has been practiced by almost every branch of the U.S. military in sites all over the world -- from Abu Ghraib to Tikrit, Mosul, Basra, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

"We know that no incidents of abuse have been reported in regular internment facilities and that hundreds have occurred in prisons geared to getting intelligence. We know that thousands of men, women and children were grabbed almost at random from their homes in Baghdad, taken to Saddam's former torture palace and subjected to abuse, murder, beatings, semi-crucifixions and rape.

"All of this is detailed in the official reports. What has been perpetrated in secret prisons to 'ghost detainees' hidden from Red Cross inspection, we do not know. We may never know.

"This is America? While White House lawyers were arguing about what separates torture from legitimate 'coercive interrogation techniques,' the following was taking place: Prisoners were hanged for hours or days from bars or doors in semi-crucifixions; they were repeatedly beaten unconscious, woken and then beaten again for days on end; they were sodomized; they were urinated on, kicked in the head, had their ribs broken, and were subjected to electric shocks.

"Some Muslims had pork or alcohol forced down their throats; they had tape placed over their mouths for reciting the Koran; many Muslims were forced to be naked in front of each other, members of the opposite sex and sometimes their own families. It was routine for the abuses to be photographed in order to threaten the showing of the humiliating footage to family members."

The New York Times reported on May 1 on the same investigation Newsweek was writing about and interviewed a released Kuwaiti, who spoke of three major hunger strikes, one of them touched off by "guards' handling copies of the Koran, which had been tossed into a pile and stomped on. A senior officer delivered an apology over the camp's loudspeaker system, pledging that such abuses would stop. Interpreters, standing outside each prison block, translated the officer's apology. A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans."

And by the way, Newsweek's source for their story, remember, was a government source.

I'm leaving for Berlin and Prague in a few days. I'm very interested to hear how Europeans view the ravings that pass for discourse in this country. I have the feeling that my little research trip is going to make my contempt for the mainstream media in this country so much greater that I may come back in an apoplectic state needing serious medication It is likely that my blog entries will be even more incomprehensible ravings. Consider yourselves warned.

Oh, and if you are one of those so offended by the Newsweek article, why don't you first weigh your outrage as if you were a Muslim: Newsweek mistake or tens of thousands of corpses. Come on, get that little peabrain working on it. Can you see the difference?

Back in the Saddle

Your pal Olaf, that is, I (and I shan't use the third person anymore, although it is tempting to adopt that style) have been off securing some semblance of a financial future by working across the divide between art and science. Yes, I've taken on a consulting job, which bangs the rust off some old technical joints and also will refuel the slowly depleting bank account. Although I'd thought I'd turned away permanently from the world of software engineering in late 2001 (terminal burnout combined with the tech implosion), an offer that I can't refuse and which will actually be fascinating and challenging work has plopped into my lap, thanks to an old friend whose generosity extends to giving me a chance to rehone my chops techwise.

So in the intervening days, I've been somewhat inattentive to the news, hustling around getting information, gear, and stuffing information into my noggin that actually will make me some money, as opposed to this solitary ranting that I send into the blogosphere in the hope that someone somewhere might actually read it. Then, after returning from a long day in the Big City, I happened to catch a rebroadcast of Bill Moyers' address last Sunday to the National Conference on Media Reform which had met in St. Louis. Watch this. Read the transcript. All the ranting I have made about mainstream media and how it has been coopted by power to oppress the working people is expressed by Moyers in such an eloquent, logical, and even entertaining manner that I have nothing to add. Here's a sample:

Who are they? I mean the people obsessed with control using the government to threaten and intimidate; I mean the people who are hollowing out middle class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class to make sure Ahmad Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq’s oil; I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into Karl Rove’s slush fund; who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets; I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy. That’s who I mean. And if that’s editorializing, so be it. A free press is one where it’s okay to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence.

You're going to hear a lot about this. Mr. Moyers is not going to retire quietly. He recognizes the danger we are in and he knows its source.

This speech is going to go down in history as the watershed moment for the left, and even more importantly, for the beginning of the end of the theofascist extremist attempt at a coup. Mark my words.

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?

Help Raise Funds for the Efficient Transport of "Spermatazoan-Americans"!

Oy, this is hysterical.

Does George W. Bush Know He's Going to Hell?

If George W. Bush is, as he claims, a born-again Christian, then for knowingly lying and repeatedly doing so, for signing death warrants, for waging war, for inflicting suffering on the poor, opening the environment even more widely to corporate rape, and on and on (the list is truly breathtaking), he must know that he's going to Hell. I mean, how many times does Christ have to continue to forgive someone, particularly one with such power to do good who instead knowingly chooses to do ill?

Of course, maybe George doesn't really believe in that stuff. It has been politically beneficial--brilliantly so--for him to claim he does, because Karl Rove understood the weight of a single unified block of anti-science, homophobic, speaking-in-tongues Americans was frighteningly large. But if Bush doesn't really believe he's going to Hell, then that means he's just punked the largest part of his constituency.

Either way, this life or the next, Bush ought to be damned.

Best Polite Indictment of the Corporate Press

I thought Craigslist founder Craig Newmark hits it on the head here:

But he believes the reason why newspapers are losing circulation is that too many traditional journalists are willing to quote politicians and business executives even if they're blatantly lying — merely for the sake of perceived objectivity. He'd prefer an "open source" model of journalism where legions of volunteers act as writers, assignment editors and fact checkers to challenge mainstream journalists.

"People are looking for attitude and guts in reporting — not full-on gonzo journalism, but hey, tell us what you think," said Newmark, who described himself as having Whig values — strong on defense, fiscally conservative but socially liberal.

Hardly some leftwing nutjob like me, right? Just when my hope was running dry as the corporate US media ignores the leaked British minutes, late on a Friday even, someone gives me reason to blog on, if only for its therapeutic value.

Is This How We Are to Be Judged?

Jesus Christ, if he comes back today, is not going to be pleased with us. The highlight:

Defence expenditure in the US will equal that of the rest of the world combined within 12 months . . . The US defence budget reached US$417.4 billion in 2003 - 46 per cent of the global total.

We're so fucked.

If the Leaked British Minutes Are Real, the Slide Has Begun

Rep. John Conyers (D, MI) and eighty-seven other members of Congress have written the White House about classified minutes of a secret meeting of the British prime minister and his advisors that occurred on July 23, 2002, eight months before the invasion of Iraq, which have been leaked to the British press. So what's the big deal? The minutes, if real and not a plant, corroborate the claims by former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, former White House Counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke and other insiders that Bush and his advisers manufactured and altered intelligence to support their planned invasion of Iraq. See William Rivers Pitts' article for an excellent and concise summary and analysis.

Rep. Conyers' letter asks the following questions based on these minutes:

1. "Did the Administration lie to the American people about its intentions with respect to Iraq?"
2. "Did the Administration engineer a confrontation with Saddam Hussein to justify the war?"
3. "Did the Administration deliberately manipulate intelligence to deceive the American people about the strength of its case for war?"

If I was a gambling man, I'd wager on the following answers: 1-Yes. 2-Yes. 3-Yes.

Actually, to be allowed to bet on this outcome would be like past-posting, that is, cheating. No one should be surprised by this fact of lies and distortion, of course, at least anyone who read a foreign newspaper or watched a little C-SPAN in the last two years. The big question is whether something is to be done about it.

They gambled, and they lost. They lied, and they've been caught. With over 1700 coalition troops killed, thousands gravely injured, 100,000 Iraqi dead, several hundred billions of dollars spent, nothing but chaos on the horizon in Iraq, and the only reconstruction efforts seemingly focusing only on a prolonged colonial US presence, there is now a time of accountability.

If George W. Bush had one ounce of decency in him, then someone should replay his crotch-enhanced premature ejaculcation from the Viking jet on the deck of the carrier U.S.S Abraham Lincoln in May, 2003. Then he should be shown his minutes of inaction in the Florida classroom on September 11, 2001. A decent man would resign immediately. No, that's wrong. A decent man would not have got us in this mess.

The Thuggery of Bush, the Gutlessness of Kerry; Yes, America is a Land of Choices

Here's why John Kerry lost (if indeed he did) the election last November: he and the other Democratic National Committee dopes as well as the dense Democratic Leadership Council have tin ears. Remember when Kerry caved on the issue of gay marriage but said he was for civil unions? Well now he thinks that even in Massachusetts it's bad policy. From the Boston Globe:

"I'm opposed to it being in a platform. I think it's a mistake," Kerry said shortly after hosting a forum on his universal children's healthcare bill in Baton Rouge. ''I think it's the wrong thing, and I'm not sure it reflects the broad view of the Democratic Party in our state."

When in God's name will these assholes (and I mean that affectionately) realize that marriage is a civil institution, and that if two people of the same gender, or any degree between genders, or any extreme beyond genders, for that matter, want to wed and they are consenting adults to the union, then the state should give them their fucking license and let them comingle assets, share childrearing responsibilities, etc. And if it was presented to the "broad view of the Democratic Party" in that way, I am certain that it would receive broad support. But so scared is the mainstream Democratic elite of what they perceive to be overarching backwardness of mainstream America that they cannot embrace true liberal values and seek to expand freedom and equality. That's right, equality. Having a separate civil institution for the joining of households is bigotry, period.

Not only that, and this is something fiscal conservatives should like, having to craft separate laws, separate regulations, separate forms and so on is inefficient. Marriage is already defined. Use it as it is, extended to all. No bureaucratic folderol, no clerical confusion at city hall. Fifteen bucks, a couple of signatures, a blood test (do they still require those?) and off to the justice of the peace or the nearest ship to take advantage of the captain's vested powers.

But such an idea is too scary for Kerry, even after self-loathing gay whore Jeff Gannon/James Guckert wrote for Talon "News" that Kerry'd be the first gay president if elected. That's why the homophobe bigots get to keep stomping him. Even if he gets fragged in the cultural war, he's hiding instead of driving for the enemy with mayhem on his mind.

What happened to you since Vietnam, John?

Democrats, Republicans...wimps or crooks, take your pick.

Berlusconi, Blair, Bush: Yoked Together in Lies, and Soon in Disgrace

According to AFP news, Italian prime minister and Bush bud Silvio Berlusconi intervened to tone down Italy's military intelligence report on the shooting of freed hostage Giuliana Sgrena and the killing of agent Nicola Calipari by American troops.

Rome daily Il Messaggero reported "The head of government asks for changes", while the opposition-supporting La Repubblica claimed "Berlusconi imposes prudence".

"The report must be technical, only technical," it quoted Mr Berlusconi as saying, without giving any source.

"It can even be tough, but it must not in any event prejudice to the slightest degree political understanding with the United States."

Silvio has learned his lesson well--do not fuck with the political thugs who rule the United States. Learn from them on how to shape investigation reports, how to cow the intelligence services for political ends, how to lie to your nation to preserve your own power. But that cat, as the old saw goes, is out of the bag.

In Britain, Tony Blair is finding that his lies and secret plans are now catching up to him.

Mr Blair was challenged on whether he had seen Foreign Office legal advice in a BBC interview with Jeremy Paxman on 20 April. He replied: "No, I had the Attorney General's advice to guide me." In fact, Mr Blair had seen the Foreign Office advice as early as 8 March 2002, in an annex to a secret Cabinet Office "options paper". That annex is published in The Independent on Sunday for the first time today.

Another cat slips from the burlap and yowls.

Will Berlusconi and Blair be evicted from office on these revelations? I wish I could predict that they would, that they would be dragged out of their chambers in shame and recorded in history as conmen and liars and traitors to their citizens, but I'm just a schmuck with a blog. However, wishes do come true sometimes. And as the light is shone into the corners of Italian and British government, revealing subversion of truth and the public will, and as it burns away the veneer that has covered up so much deceit about Iraq, perhaps as I type this, George W. Bush is cowering in his White House bedroom, praying to his twisted notion of God that the cleansing will stop on the far side of the Atlantic, that his allies in the media will not ask any of those mean questions, that his wife can tell some more ribald jokes to distract the public from the ugly truth of his misrule, that his daddy's pals will once again pull his ass out of the fire. He prays, he cries, he begins to shake as he realizes that his arrogance has dragged him over a sharp edge into infamy as the worst president in U.S. history, as a war criminal, as a betrayer of the American people, even beyond what they might have deserved for having been suckered in by the phony shitkicking demeanor and terrorized by the expanding control of his corrupt enforcement apparatus.

But the dam has cracked, Georgie-boy, you smirking little shit. Even the lickspittle Washington Post has opened a shutter on your darkness, giving light and space for an opinion that will only grow and strip from you the pretense and disdain and arrogance. In the spreading light will be revealed a pathetic little man who should have stuck with his dream of becoming baseball commissioner rather than the black stain he is now become upon the history of our nation.

What Should Be Front Page and Featured in Prime Time

Wouldn't it be nice if the pretty girls and boys on TV news or the uglier but no less irresponsible print pluggers could pry their wits off of the "Missing White Woman" story or the "Man Licks Custard off Missing Finger" story long enough to read the following paragraph published in Britain:

A damning minute leaked to a Sunday newspaper reveals that in July 2002, a few weeks after meeting George Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, Mr Blair summoned his closest aides for what amounted to a council of war. The minute reveals the head of British intelligence reported that President Bush had firmly made up his mind to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein, adding that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy".

The last sentence in particular is worthy of at least a $50 million-dollar Ken Starr-style special prosecutor. "Intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy," to justify an illegal war by selling the twisted information to the public through a kneepad press corps lining up to give an appointed president a rim job in the few instances when he deigned to show his ass to them. Yeah, Clinton's Whitewater thing and the blowjob really trump these sorts of shenanigans.

I'm so disgusted. I just hope Judith Miller of the New York Times and the others who pimped for the murder of so many innocents on all sides of this mess do the honorable thing, but of course, they're beyond honor, dignity, or truth. The First Amendment guarantees a free press, all right, but the provision of a free press lies in the hands of journalists, their editors, and apparently primarily under the thumb of their corporate overlords at GE, Disney, Viacom, et. al. The business of America is always just business, folks, and you're nothing but equipment for the death factory.

Enjoy yourselves.

Forget Wendy's Finger Chili, Forget Michael Jackson, Here's the Next Big Story Headed for Corporate Media Mass Distribution

If you were a television news producer, you might think that a constant fear would be having to resort to actual news, like the corrupting and corrupt presence of Tom "Giant Flying Cockroach" Delay, or the continuing slaughter in Iraq, or the Republican assault on Social Security, among others. But truly, you never need fear having to devote airtime to anything of substance, because in a country this size, you can always find a guy who mistakenly licked chocolate custard off a severed finger. Here's a taste, so to speak:

Clarence Stowers said he thought the object he found in his custard was candy so he put it in his mouth to get the ice cream off. He told a Wilmington TV station that he rinsed off the object and "just started screaming."

Now this story just surfaced today, so let's see how far in gets in the mainstream corporate media. It has the sort of elements that our crack journalists love: amputation, fast food, chocolate flavoring, and it happened in the South.

Of course, I'm as guilty for writing about this and avoiding the really pressing issues of the day, but as I must remind my one or two random readers (if that many) I am not now, nor have I ever been, a journalist.

So for those drawing fat paychecks and getting their hair and makeup done prior to primetime pontification, what the fuck is your excuse?

The Value of Some News Blackout

I just spent a few days in a most bourgeois indulgence down in a remote part of Arizona. How remote, you ask? Well, the town of Winkelman, Arizona, is the nearest post office. At Aravaipa Farms the indulgences are substantial and ought to be, given the cost, which makes my hair stand on end, but all work and no play, yadda yadda. Even a leftie deserves a little break--that's why I rarely eat out or indulge in $5 vanilla lattes (as much as I have an embarassing weakness for them). Thrift begets these brief but intense luxuries.

But the point of this was that it was a total news and communications blackout for three days: no telephone, no Internet, no radio, no television. A small group of us hiked up and back in Aravaipa Canyon, then spent the other hours staring into the Sonoran Desert landscape, drinking good booze and eating lovingly prepared gourmet meals. The net effect: total mellowosity (yes, I'm making a new coinage) this morning now that I'm back in my mountain redoubt.

We've been visited heavily by Evening Grosbeaks in the clusters that are typical of the species, but whose appearance is erratic in this part of the country, and watching them in the yard while I was drinking coffee this A.M. helped draw out the calmness that not even thirty minutes of NPR could upset. I turned the radio off finally, because it was like sand in the lube during great sex. The sun as pouring through the budding aspens, my neighbors were coming out to pick up their newspapers or put out their trash or walk their kids to the bus stop, and life was flowing as it always does, but for once I was just letting it take me, instead of standing in the stream shaking my fist and screaming outrage.

Of course, mellow is not my fundamental nature. In America, as an American, outrage should be as normal as breathing, given the assault on church-state separation, attacks on social security, illegal wars for private profit, chickenhawk warmongers, institutionalized torture, antigay campaigns, and so on and on. So much to rage about, so little time on earth, alas.

But you know what? Taking a few days to completely ignore this shit really does do a body and soul good. Now as I page through Buzzflash, I am able to do it with a sense of calm consideration, without acid gnawing my breakfast out of my gut, with a perspective that the struggle is endless, yes, but that it is right and worthwhile so long as we can retain a connection to the mundane, the everyday, the tiny transcendent moments that make it so good to be alive, like watching a seasonal bird crack a sunflower seed under newly-leafed trees on a mountainside on a clear May morning. Even the Bushits can't take that away.