And It's One, Two, Three, What're We Fightin' For?

Don't ask me, I don't give a damn, etc. (Thanks to Country Joe and the Fish)

Well, boys and girls, here's what the sacrifice of American GIs and Iraqi civilians has produced, manifested as a draft constitution:

The draft also stipulates that Iraq is an Islamic state and that no law can contradict the principles of Islam, Shiite and Kurdish negotiators said. Opponents have charged that last provision would subject Iraqis to religious edicts by individual clerics.

The Shiite and Kurdish negotiators also said draft calls for the presence of Islamic clerics on the court that would interpret the constitution. Family matters such as divorce, marriage or inheritance would be decided either by religious law or civil law as an individual chooses -- a condition that opponents say would likely lead to women being forced into unfavorable rulings for them by opponents demanding judgments under Islamic law.

So, Islamic law, Shiite domination under Iranian influence, and a mechanism by which men can continue to oppress women (who, in a divorce, gets to choose whether secular or Islamic law is applied?)

Yes, they're going to produce something that Chimpie and company are dreaming of for this country, just substituting mullahs Dobson, Robertson, and Falwell and the Bible in place of the Islamic clerics waving the Koran. And, just to show that we're not kidding, Robertson has issued a fatwa that a duly elected leader of a South American neighbor be assassinated. Shades of Salman Rushdie.

Good job!

Chimpie in Exile

Doesn't Chimpie begin to resemble Ferdinand Marcos all of a sudden? Well, maybe that's my own twisted take on all that happened last week, but increasingly he seems trapped and then booted from one location to another. He retreats to Crawford, and Cindy Sheehan pressures him into running away to Idaho, to dwell among white supremacists, I suppose. Now he's headed to Salt Lake City to speak to another hand-picked audience and try to make the moronic war in Iraq the equivalent of World War II. And, of course, having complete run out of lies to tell to justify the involvment and having yet had a single assertion actually prove to be true, he's going to pull out that old chestnut as rationalization that 9/11 made Iraq necessary.

Senior aides say Bush will attempt to portray the Iraq conflict in the context of long wars like World War II, which U.S. forces fought from 1941 to 1945.

They said the president also will invoke the September 11, 2001, attacks, arguing once again that the insurgents battling American troops in Iraq share the same ideology as the al Qaeda operatives who crashed hijacked jetliners into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a Pennsylvania field.

This is the rhetoric of desperation, when you recirculate lies that didn't pass the smell test the first time around. Bush is either so cynical or naive about the public's memory that he things this will work. And as his aides try to steer him only to venues which will preserve his delusion of righteousness, the rats are deserting the ship.

Hagel said "stay the course" is not a policy. "By any standard, when you analyze 2 1/2 years in Iraq ... we're not winning," he said.

President Bush was preparing for separate speeches this week to reaffirm his plan to help Iraq train its security forces while its leaders build a democratic government. In his weekly Saturday radio address, Bush said the fighting there protected Americans at home.

Polls show the public growing more skeptical about Bush's handling of the war.

Note that even as polls reflect the general public's increasing disillusionment with Chimpie's war, and a prominent Republican explicitly contradicts El Presidente's repeat assertions of victory, Bush remains true to script and true to form, unable to acknowledge anything counter to his calcified view of reality.

This guy must be fucking nuts.

Oh, yeah, Ferdinand Marcos . . . what I was getting at that even though Bush is headed to Salt Lake, which he must think will be a nice conservative bastion of monolithic Mormon support and will thus validate his endless repetition of lies, the mayor of SLC is calling out for mass protests to welcome the visit.

Naturally, as in Crawford, knee-jerk Republican supporter of Chimpie will organize a counter-protest, which is fine with me. There is one thing, however, that should be included in their preparations to support El Presidente and his misguided policies. Make sure that Army and Marine recruiting stations are set up around the counter-protest. Nothing tests sincerity like putting your life on the line. I'm sure a lot of those Brigham Young students will be eager to join to go and kill some infidels.

Hillbilly Heroin Homeboy On the Road to Oblivion

He'll end up as just another fat, drug-addicted has-been. At least in Minnesota, Rush Limbaugh's brutal daily public exhibition of the effects of human rabies is losing its appeal. And it's even worse for Sean "I'm So Stupid , I Think that I Think" Hannity, who is tanking like Mike Tyson squaring off against Buster Douglas.

Locally, conservative-talk icon Rush Limbaugh's show has lost 43 percent of its audience among 25- to 54-year-olds in the past year. Sean Hannity's show is down a whopping 63 percent. The shift is serious enough that "we're weighing where these shows fit for us in the future," according to Todd Fisher, general manager at KSTP (1500 AM), which carries both syndicated programs.

In a year or too, when the Vulgar Pigboy is found dead on the toilet like Elvis, clutching a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich, Daryn Kagan, current squeeze (doesn't that make you just shudder?) will tell her interviewer, "No one knew he was in so much pain."

Wrong. No one cared that he was in so much pain.

"Criminal" Is Not Just Rhetoric

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Misdeeds indeed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Do You Spell Hypocrisy?

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

Number of Americans killed in Bosnia and Kosovo? Zero.

Who's partisan now?

Here's a Good Thursday Morning Amusement

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

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

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

Some Levity and, Perhaps, Bizarre Nostalgia

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

Thanks to Americablog commenter jurassicpork for the link.

How Low Will the Bar Go?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is This War Won?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Something Else to Thank Chimpie For Making Possible

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mistaking the Medium for the Message

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meet One of that 38%

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

Oy.

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

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

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

How to Admit Failure Without Actually Admitting Failure

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Such Compassion!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Great Moments in Dumbass Punditry

Even when the most obvious answer is standing over you like a Kodiak bear about to tear your head off, some "experts" still manage to play dumber than Chimpie on 'ludes. Get this from the Washington Post about the Bush administration's mixed signals on Iraq.

"The Bush administration has lost control of its public affairs management of this issue," said Christopher F. Gelpi, a Duke University scholar whose analyses of wartime public opinion have been studied in the White House. "They were so focused on this through 2004. . . . I don't know why they've slipped."

Let me help you out, Mr. Gelpi, Duke University "scholar." Chimpie's criminal enterprise has slipped because even George Costanza couldn't keep this juggling act of lies and coverups going on even his best day. "Public affairs management" sort of breaks down when you've been proven to have lied, smeared, obstructed and demonstrated total incompetence in everything, including preventing 9/11, fighting terror, "stabilizing" the Middle East, managing the economy, and protecting the Constitution.

It's got nothing to do now with "public affairs." It's about indictments, impeachment, and a new American revolution against tyranny of the oligarchy that is the Bush criminal empire.

Oh, am I overstating things, do you think? Let's wait and see. Wait and see.

Picture Worth a Thousand Words

An iconic moment and image borrowed from Tiananmen Square which says everything necessary about this administration vis-a-vis the people of the United States. If you need the historical context (for you young 'uns out there) here's the 1989 reference.

Here's Your Scorecard to the Rove/Plame Affair

This list at Think Progress may find correspondence to the list of indictments Patrick Fitzgerald will be handing down soon. Although Bush and Cheney will have to be impeached prior to indictment, prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment on all of their crimes, the entertainment value of watching these various cohorts and underlings turn traitor to Chimpie and Dick to save their own virgin asses will be greater than any spectacle in the history of television.

And there's good news for some of Chimpie's friends in his downfall too. I imagine that the large media conglomerates might be waking up to the explosion of viewership of cable news shows that such events would bring and may be raising their advertising rates and lining up sponsors as I type this. After all, no matter what their loyalties to power, media executives' higher allegiance is to the accumulation of capital, so if the story of Chimpie's downfall comes true, they will be all over it like flies on a steaming shitpile.

Pop some popcorn and lay in a few cases of Pilsner Urquell, folks. It's going to be great!

Please Read Cindy Sheehan's Post

You'll find it on The Huffington Post.

Thanks to Anonymous for suggesting it in a comment on my previous post.

The Definition of UnAmerican

Cripes, this makes my blood boil.

Some have suggested that Sheehan is disloyal to criticize the president in time of war. Even in Vacaville, Sheehan said, some people say she is shaming her son's memory. Conservative blogger Michelle Malkin disdainfully called the activists promoting Sheehan "grief pimps."

First of all, what the fuck has loyalty TO the president got to do with anything? As I understand it, the president owes HIS loyalty to US, and that means to tell us the truth, not keep any secrets but those that could truly be used to harm us, and that he must earn that loyalty every god-damned day he's in office.

We don't owe any president of any party any loyalty, other than to be loyal to the duty to continually challenge all public officeholders to fulfill their obligations to the Constitution and the people whom they serve. And remember, THEY serve at OUR pleasure.

Anyone who demands loyalty should go find some kingdom or dictatorship to live in. That shit doesn't play in my house, motherfuckers.

One Can Only Hope This Guy Is Right

He may be a nut, but still, this piece is interesting in a fantasy sort of way. Here's the money paragraph:

Flocco reported last week that Fitzgerald's grand jury voted out "true bills" or federal criminal indictments against President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former CIA Director George Tenet, Presidential Senior Advisor Karl Rove, Presidential Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Vice-Presidential Chief of Staff I. "Scooter" Libby, imprisoned New York Times reporter Judith Miller and Vice-Presidential Senior Advisor Mary Matalin.

Talk about your grand slam, hat trick, hole-in-one. This would be a cause for a new national holiday.

However, don't quote these allegations as fact. Tom Flacco's stuff is supported by another fellow, Sherman Skolnick, of whom I know nothing, who adds this:

"Shown also as unindicted co-conspirators are two Judges on the U.S. Supreme Court, William Rehnquist and Antonin Scalia, who are among the "Gang of Five" also in Bush versus Gore. Because of the horrendous consequences involved, the indictments are suppressed and there may be an extended delay until they appear on the Chicago Federal Court open records.

To quote Al Michaels at the Winter Olympics in 1980 after the US beat the Soviet team, do you believe in miracles?

Yes, these guys may be of the tin-foil hat crowd, but we are allowed our dreams so long as we return to reality when there's fighting to be done. Unlike the Chimpie administration.

We Were Neck Deep in the Big Muddy...

...and the big fool says to push on.

The latest USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll is enough to knock Chimpie off the wagon, Jesus or no Jesus. Here are some highlights:

57% say the Iraq war has made the US more vulnerable, while 34% say it's safer.

56% say the war is going badly, while 43% say it is going well.

54% say the war was a mistake, and 44% say it was not.

54% say the war was "not worth it," and 44% say it was.

You can view the poll results here.

Scared Shitless in Crawford

We know Chimpie didn't fulfill his own military obligations, including avoiding service in Vietnam by getting his daddy's pal to put him in the "Champagne" squadron of Texas Air National Guard. Then he skipped out early on his service, despite having had a million bucks invested in his flying training. So that makes him a chickenhawk. Now please understand that I in principle sympathize with Chimpie in this--after all, not many of my contemporaries wanted to fight in Vietnam, but some of us did our duty anyway. Some got lucky, like me, and ended up in Europe watching the Russkies, while 58,000 others came back dead and a half million more came back maimed. But what makes the chickenhawk sobriquet so damning is that GW has always been a big believer in war, particularly when it's other people who are dying in it. And then, when you add the facts of this particular campaign and the lies and corruption that sent us into it, well, it makes George W. Bush a good candidate for impeachment and then indictment for war crimes.

I wonder why he hasn't been landing on carriers in his crotch-enhanced flight suit lately? Haven't the foes been vanquished, or at least aren't they in their "last throes"?

But Chimpie gets a promotion all the same this week, and all it took was a diminutive woman with a simple question to turn him into chickenshit. Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq last year just wants to talk to Bush, and is willing to camp outside his compound in Crawford all month, if necessary. So far, Chimpie has sent out two representatives (Stephen Hadley, Bush's national security adviser, who now fills the notoriously incompetent shoes of Condi Rice, and Joe Hagin, deputy White House chief of staff) to spout platitudes, and then had the Secret Service race its SUVs back and forth to scare Ms. Sheehan off the road, and then there was talk of arresting her. Anything, anything would be better than having to actually confront someone who disagrees with him. He's a chickenshit.

Not to mention completely tone deaf about the PR possibilities of trying to console her, but then, we know that as a functioning sociopath, Bush is incapable of empathy, and as a mentally ill megalomaniac, he really thinks that he can just wish things go away and someone will see to it.

So here we are, 1800+ sons and daughters sacrificed like Ms. Sheehan's son Casey thanks to a chickenshit chickenhawk's lies to the nation about the threat of Iraq embodied in the image of a mushroom cloud over an American city. Tens of thousands of other Americans are maimed. Over a hundred thousand Iraqis, the vast majority innocent civilians, also dead, and many many more made into amputees or blinded or emotionally destroyed.

The real shame of this, of course, is that it takes a lone mother of a lost son to do what we pay our legions of politicians in the House and Senate to do. The Democratic leadership is a disgrace, and the Republicans are a disaster wrapped in a criminal enterprise. Yet even with the entire apparatus of his criminal empire behind him, Chimpie Bush is afraid to exchange words with Ms. Sheehan, who sits baking in the sun asking only that her First Amendment right be honored--"the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Of course, Chimpie probably never read that part. He's still moving his lips as he works through the Ten Commandments.

Laziest Son of a Bitch in America

They can call it the "Western White House" or the Crawford Compound of Criminality for all I care, but this "chief executive" known as Chimpie who we have had thrust upon us wouldn't last one day in any reputable company on the planet. Not only is he incompetent, uncaring, a liar, and potentially a war criminal, he's a giant fucking goof-off, and he makes no bones about it. Julie Mason of the Houston Chronicle has a nice summary of his "hard work" as contrasted with the rest of us working stiffs who pay his salary:

Never a big fan of Washington, Bush much prefers his 1,600-acre ranch, where he can clear brush, toodle around in his truck and ride his mountain bike far from the hassles and scrutiny of the capital.

"I'm looking forward to getting down there and just kind of settling in. I'll be doing a lot of work; on the other hand, I'll also be kind of making sure my Texas roots run deep," Bush said last week.

In all, Bush has made 49 trips to Crawford for a total of about 325 days since he took office.

At this clip, Bush will surpass the vacation record of President Reagan, who tallied up 436 days in his two terms.

A recent poll commissioned by the travel Web site Expedia.com found most Americans get about 12 vacation days a year. The average American, according to the poll, will use all but three of those days.

Bush, according to the poll, takes about as many days off each year as a typical worker in France. The French get 39 days off each year and generally use all but one, the poll said.

So we're paying this fuckup/fuckoff to "toodle around in his truck" and do photo-ops of cutting brush, as if he ever does one goddamned thing he can't nettle his daddy or his ass-sucking allies to do for him. And the White House reporters? Well, they play along like the good little bitches they are, not asking him why he won't meet with Cindy Sheehan, or where Osama bin Laden is, or how we're paying for the war of lies in Iraq, or why the vice president's chief of staff Scooter Libby was meeting with Judith Miller and discussing Valerie Plame.

If Chimpie should fall off his mountain bike again or slash off his kneecap with his chainsaw, we'll know every detail, you can be sure, but Bush doesn't even answer questions when he's allegedly "on the job," let alone when he's in hiding in his version of Haus Wachenfeld in Shitheel, Texas. Don't ask him anything serious, for Christ's sake! He's got to preserve his energy for testimony to the impeachment hearings and the subsequent US and internation criminal courts.

Cut the boy some slack.

If Chimpie Were a Stock

Sell! Sell!

From the Associated Press:

An AP-Ipsos poll taken early this week showed public support of Bush's handling of the war had dropped to 38 percent, the lowest so far.

The First Thread Unravels

Sometimes my wife knits an entire sweater that she then decides she doesn't like, and then she'll ask me to unravel it for her, which is something I find fascinating to do. Considering all the hours she can spend carefully knitting and purling and counting and measuring, and admiring the exquisite work she puts into these constructions, it amazes me how the whole garment disappears back into a simple straight skein of yarn in just a few minutes.

Yesterday, Bob Novak, or "Douchebag of Liberty" as Jon Stewart of The Daily Show likes to call him, declared "This is bullshit. I hate that," before walking off the set at CNN. This was on live TV. Although it might have seemed that Novak was just peeved at fellow commentator James Carville's jabs at him wanting to appear tough for his right-wing masters, the host of the show, Ed Henry noted that he didn't get a chance to ask him about the Rove/Plame affair, and in that light perhaps what we witnessed was the first yank of yarn starting to unravel the vast fabric of lies that the Chimpie administration has constructed in order to pursue its selfish, malevolent, and seriously dangerous programs of war and greed.

One can only speculate as to Novak's real reasons for running away at CNN, but I'll still take the liberty, in honor of this Douchebag of same to consider that Novak may have reached his breaking point.

You see, the Chimpie criminal gang are now down in Crawford for the month and while no one suspects that monkey-boy will be doing any serious work for the nation, he is sweating bullets and staying up as late as 10:15pm trying to figure a way out of the mess that is going to drop on his head when Patrick Fitzgerald starts handing out indictments. Novak runs off the set, Chimpie runs to the ranch, Cheney is underground, and Karl Rove who one month ago set about claiming that liberals wanted to give massages to terrorist, has suddenly clammed up. And watching Bush on TV yesterday trying to put two words together for reporters ("We're workin' hard."--what a fucking orator that guy is) I couldn't help but sense that this was a man scared shitless for once, realizing that he had fucked up on such a monumental scale that neither his daddy, James Baker, or any of the other family goombas were going to either bail him out or take the heat for him.

The first loop comes undone, and then the next, and soon a sleeve is gone, and what once warmed an arm is now just a simple coil of yarn, as simple to see as a monstrous lie about weapons of mass destruction and anthrax and aluminum tubes.

Chimpie is indeed going to surpass the old man: he's going to actually become the most loathed and criminally liable president in the history of our republic, and his cronies are going to be getting a lot of love, federal-prison style, at the greybar hotels of Uncle Sam. And it's getting to him.

Just like it's gotten to Novak. And I think that Carville knows enough, being married to Cheney aide Mary Matalin, that there is some evil and indictable shit there in Fitzgerald's files that is going to throw this nation into a frenzy, and names like Novak, Rove, Libby, Cheney, Feith, Gonzalez, Fleischer, and McClellan are going to be infamously immortalized in American history as the gang that made Watergate a bush league caper compared to the international criminality of their own enterprise. That's why Carville was ribbing Novak--he knows that another tap just might push him over the edge, and it did. And George W. Bush, who is also teetering over an abyss of ignominity, will become a most villainous dope before assuming a historical posture as the comic idiot who tried to swindle a nation by diving head first into his own delusions of greatness rather than seeking medical help for the serious mental illness he has suffered from all his life.

Once that garment of treachery is unraveled, it will be easy to trace the single thread of lies and deception and secrecy from the election of 2000 until the day that Chimpie is removed from office, although the stench from his presidency will linger for decades. The garment of criminality will all be of a single piece, one long litany of contempt for the U.S. Constitution, human decency, and the tolerance of a decent if rather willfully ignorant people. Those who will cling to Chimpie until the bitter end are as sick as he is, and in a way it's sad, because they will still be claiming to see him wearing that sweater of lies, just like the emperor's new clothes, when all the rest of us know that it's simply a skein of yarn now piled at our feet.

Our Fearless Leader...

...goes back on vacation. Forty-ninth trip to the "ranch" by the chimp who is afraid of horses. Oh, sure, it's a "working" vacation. Given his record of short hours when he's "working" in the White House, I guess that'll mean taking a phone call from Karl Rove confirming the pardon he'll get once the indictments are handed down.

Meanwhile, as the chickshit chickenhawk prez chills in Crawford, fourteen Marines were killed, taking the number of American military deaths in Iraq to over 1800. No WMD. No mushroom cloud. No threat. The weakest nation in the Middle East. Osama bin Laden still loose. The Taliban resurgent in Afghanistan. Chimpie must be so proud.

That's right--he is proud. He's going to break Ronald Reagan's record for vacation days this month. Isn't it interesting how those of the rightwingnuttery orientation are the ones always blabbing about "hard work," like Bush reiterated over and over during his campaign last year?

Chimpie: monument to sloth. What a fucking role model of leadership. I don't suppose he could spare a day or two to attend a military funeral or comfort the families of those who have made the supreme sacrifice for his stupidity. No, that's not Chimpie's style. Never admit an error, never say you're sorry, never change course, even as you destroy your own nation.

Good work, monkey-boy. Maybe it's better you do stay in Crawford and keep your mitts off the controls of state. I don't know how much more of your "hard work" we can stand.

Bolton Is Bush's Middle Finger to the World

So Chimpie did what he is legal entitled to do and after stonewalling the Senate on requests for information on John Bolton, the screeching ape of American diplomacy was appointed as ambassador to the United Nations. As a classic stonewaller in his own right, Bolton is considered by the Chimpster to be his perfect expression of contempt for the UN. Here's an example of Bolton's diplomatic finesse.

Mr. Bolton proceeded to chase me through the halls of a Russian hotel -- throwing things at me, shoving threatening letters under my door and, generally, behaving like a madman. For nearly two weeks, while I awaited fresh direction from my company and from US AID, John Bolton hounded me in such an appalling way that I eventually retreated to my hotel room and stayed there. Mr. Bolton, of course, then routinely visited me there to pound on the door and shout threats.

When US AID asked me to return to Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan in advance of assuming leadership of a project in Kazakstan, I returned to my project to find that John Bolton had proceeded me by two days. Why? To meet with every other AID team leader as well as US foreign-service officials in Bishkek, claiming that I was under investigation for misuse of funds and likely was facing jail time. As US AID can confirm, nothing was further from the truth.

But what the hell--that's water under the bridge, right? As venal, pathologically cruel, and fratboyishly prankish as Chimpie is, there may be method to his madness in picking Bolton and placing him under the control of proven liar and incompetent Condoleeza Rice, now Secretary of State. Rice, who will do anything to keep Chimpie in power, has a perfect hitman in Bolton, who, I have a feeling, may be the first member of the UN to kill another member on the floor of the General Assembly.

Then there's the little detail of Bolton's possible involvement in the Rove/Plame Treasongate matter. Bolton was a prime force in pushing the Niger uranium story, and an action like that taken by Joseph Wilson must have had Bolton shitting on his desk and throwing the feces against the office walls. Once described by a former colleage as a "quintessential kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy," he can be trusted to destroy anyone who threatens the Chimpie imperial throne while simultaneously sucking the asses of Rice, Cheney, Rove and the monkey-boy himself just the way they like it done, and he'll discreetly wipe his mouth when he's finished, lest he stain his pushbroom 'stasche from it's nicely bleached semen color.

The reasons to be proud to be an American just keep on coming.

The Power of Denial

Raw Story has a terrific piece on how our beloved Chimpie is capable--or incapable--of resolving contradictions between his belief and actual proof in all matters.

Bush knows Rove is innocent because that is what Bush’s heart tells him; his brain is incapable of grasping the resulting circularity. This kind of knowledge, so widely and deeply embraced by his supporters, was the basis for Bush’s elevation to the White House. It explains his intransigent stance on Social Security, on John Bolton, and virtually everything else he has wrought since; the light of reason is not allowed to reach the dark place where Bush holds his beliefs.

It does seem to be a common capability required to become a far-right theo-fascist, as I witnessed in my old ex--brother-in-law, Knobhead, or in any of the radical Xtian wingnuts I deal with locally. It makes me wish that the second coming of Jesus would really happen, and he would return as a militant Marxist lesbian who tells all the theocratic nutballs that he meant what he said, that is, give away your shit, turn the other cheek, and follow me into a communal sharing and loving.

I'd love to see them reconcile that.

Meanwhile, here on earth, in the USA, the Rove/Plame matter bubbles on beneath the surface of the kneepad press's focus on Day 61 of the missing Alabama white girl in Aruba, but prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald steadily moves forward. As the Raw Story piece notes:

So our President knows Karl Rove is innocent of any wrongdoing, no matter what facts may bubble up from the tar pit he nurtured but cannot acknowledge. Because Bush cannot recognize the incompatibility between his knowledge and the facts that refute it, he cannot resolve that contradiction. Thus it falls to Patrick Fitzgerald to resolve it for him.

Yes, one can only hope that the ultimate effect of this investigation will result in impeachment, removal from office, indictment for criminal acts, conviction, and detention in a federal prison where the sociopath Chimpie and his minions can continue to live in denial without anyone getting hurt any longer by it.

I'm willing to compromise a little on this. Imprisonment in an international prison for war crimes would also be satisfactory, just so Chimpie has plenty of free time to ruminate over these--for him--difficult paradoxes.

Mr.Fitzgerald, Here's What I Want for My Birthday

Yep, my b-day is in a couple of weeks, and I can think of no better present than to have the head of Condoleeza Rice served up alongside those of Rove and Scooter Libby on a handmade plate of indictments from the special prosecutor. Counterpunch has a fantastic treatment of her complicity or complete control over the outing of Valerie Plame entitled "Condoleezza Rice at the Center of the Plame Scandal: The Source Beyond Rove" written by former National Security Council staff member Roger Morris.

In fact, though her pivotal role has been missed entirely ­or deliberately ignored-in both the media feeding frenzy and the rising political clamor, Condoleezza Rice was also deeply embroiled in the Niger uranium-Plame scandal, arguably as much as or more so than either Rove or Libby.

This article goes to the larger crime of which the Rove/Plame scandal is but a single part: the illegal war on Iraq.

Slowly, relentlessly, despite the evidence, the hoax of the Iraq-Niger uranium emerges as a central thread in the fabricated justification for war, and thus in the President's, Rice's, and the regime's inseparable credibility. The discrediting of Wilson, in which the outing his CIA wife is irresistible, becomes as imperative for Rice as for Rove and Libby, Bush and Cheney. And when that moment comes, she has the unique authority, and is in a position, to do the deed. Motive, means, opportunity-in the classic terms of prosecution, Rice had them all.

As the author notes, it's not a simple, easy-to-follow story, hence the kneepad press, who couldn't put two Legos together unless they were handed them already joined, has never reported it. But take the time to read this. It will be the new turn in the story, and when Chimpie's star player, Condi Rice, is ultimately indicted, it's going to be a thing of beauty to watch him try and squirm out of responsibility for what will follow.

Chimpie and the criminal cabal is finished. It's over, twerp!

Is It the Heat? Sorry, But I Can't Help It

How could I not point you all to this lovely headline?

GOP Should Probe Rove, But Won't

Wait. I thought that was what Jeff Gannon/James Guckert was doing at the White House. (Ba-da-bum!)

Sorry. I just can't resist a setup like that. Anyway, the opinion piece under that title is quite a good, concise summary of the case, although diplomatic. Here's the subtext: Your government has been taken over by extremists who will even excuse the most blatant criminality so long as they can maintain or increase their power from it.

Family values, my friggin' ass.

Why I Think Fitzgerald Is Going to Take Down the Entire Bush Empire

Patrick Fitzgerald knows something, and what he knows is that he is now bigger than Bush, and all of the lickspittles who have been carrying Chimpie's water all these years are terrified of the special prosecutor.

If you were in Mr. Fitzgerald's shoes, which would be a more meaningful career move, as well as a personal accomplishment--being a Chimpie chump, or taking down a sitting president and his entire corrupt criminal organization?

Which one do you think will assure the man a place in history?

And although I believe that Mr. Fitzgerald probably just wants to do the right thing, fulfill his obligation to his office, and follow the law, I can forgive him a little bit of ambition at what he now has the power to do to these bastards, especially after what they have so brazenly, arrogantly, and with evil joy done to our country.

It's gonna be sweet!

Get Rich Quick Schemes You Never Thought Of: Part One

Taking a break from Rove and Chimpie and all that crap, there is this:

An Italian couple stole 50,000 euros from a woman in the Sicilian city of Palermo after convincing her they were vampires who would impregnate her with the son of the Anti-Christ if she did not pay them.

I hesitated to put this story on my largely unread blog here, because spreading the word would, you know, undermine the likelihood that I could pull the same scam in my own community. But then no one reads this, right? So what the hell.

At least, I was plenty amused by it.

Reading for the Weekend

Daily Kos has a nice summary of the Rove/Plame case, and if you missed the Congressional hearing on leaked intelligence on C-SPAN today co-chaired by Rep. Henry Waxman of California and Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, here's a brief summary. Chimpie is earning the wrath he deserves from the intelligence service he has betrayed, and I've got to say, it's not wise to double-cross spies.

Or special prosecutors. Check out this piece in the Washington Post and another in the Los Angeles Times. Here's to another sleepless night for Karl and Scooter.

Here in the mountains of the southwest, the monsoons have at last arrived, complete with light and sound extravaganzas of lightning and thunder, which scares the shit out of my two dogs who follow my every step around the house. Makes me feel truly needed, you know?

Does This Constitute Treason?

In the New York Times today, there is a piece on Rove and Libby's role not only in the Plame case but also with regard to George Tenet's remarks when he was head of the CIA. Here, buried in the body of the text, is the most chilling text:

The effort was striking because to an unusual degree, the circle of officials involved included those from the White House's political and national security operations, which are often separately run. Both arms were drawn into the effort to defend the administration during the period.

Got that? They were not combining efforts to defend the country, mind you, but the administration, during a time of war.

The diehard Republican fantasists who still defend these motherfuckers are hopeless. Are you Bush-lickers still ready to go to the mat for this corrupt and stupid, stupid, stupid administration? Because they'd sell your ass out in a second to maintain power or to avoid the ugly truth. This administration is more dangerous to our security than any external threat. Get 'em out, indict, convict, imprision, and let's get some national leadership that actually cares about real national security above all else.

Why Karl Rove and Scooter Libby Are Hugging and Crying in the White House Coat Closet

Aside from certain Jeff Gannon/James Guckert-related reasons for Rove's being in the closet, what I'm talking about here is pretty simple. There's leaking classified information and then there's lying to the FBI about leaking classified information. And, in case you aren't already buried deep enough, you can then lie to a grand jury convened to investigate the CIA's belief that the leaking constituted a criminal offense.

Let's review: leak, lie to FBI, lie to grand jury. Oh, and have the career officers at the CIA pissed at you.

And the special prosecutor is Patrick Fitzgerald, a young man, an energetic man, a dedicated man who has an impeccable reputation as a prosecutor.

Karl and Scooter have never before been in a position like this, I would guess. It's a position not controlled by them any longer, nor to be helped by their influential friends, nor the cronies of the fathers of their influential friends, and they don't have any damaging material to leak about Fitzgerald. And, of course, even a sleazebag like Rove must realize the idiocy of trying to smear a special prosecutor once he's got the goods on you. About all that's left is to bitch yourself into the kneeling position and beg for mercy.

I'm so happy this morning. Yes, I know it's schadenfreude, but don't you think that this will be some real justice done for a change? If you were a CIA operative in the field, or a foreign asset working with our CIA, how would you feel about a White House official leaking classified information in time of war? And Chimpie's next, by golly. And Cheney. Chimpie and Cheney, just a hair's breadth from indictment city, baby. Yeah!

Go to Bloomberg and read all about it.

Dum-da-dum-dum (Dragnet Theme)

Another step closer to Club Fed for Karl "Pillsbury Doughboy" Rove, it seems from a front page story in the Washington Post today.

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials.

Now another piece of the puzzle snaps into place, although others are still being fitted. For one, did Karl Rove see that memo when he was on Air Force One on the Bush trip to Africa with Colin Powell, Chimpie, and Ari Fleischer, among others? If Rove did read the memo, who would know he did? And, finally, has special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald asked the necessary questions of one of those who might have witnessed Rove's perusal of the memo?

One sweet detail in the memo is that it puts forth the State Department's case for why they believed Iraq was NOT seeking uranium from Niger, the very thing Ambassador Joe Wilson made known from his trip there. So, if Rove read a classified state department memo that supported Wilson's claim and also contained the identity of his wife flagged as "Secret," and if Rove used that information in his attempt to discredit Wilson, Rove is then guilty of violating, at minimum, his own signed non-disclosure agreement, and at maximum the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982. If it's the latter, he could be facing ten years in a federal penitentiary. Given the venal, malicious, and dangerous manner in which this was done plus the fact that he withheld information on the case for over two years in an attempt to hide what he had done, there may be obstruction of justice charges and perjury thrown in as well. A "law and order" judge might decide to make an example of such a person in a time of war, wouldn't you think?

And here's a little bit of circumstantial evidence that does not bode well for Karl's other explanations of things:

The memo was delivered to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell on July 7, 2003, as he headed to Africa for a trip with President Bush aboard Air Force One. Plame was unmasked in a syndicated column by Robert D. Novak seven days later.

"How convenient," Church Lady might have said.

And then there's the possibility of conspiracy charges piling up. Who knew what when? Who was in on the disclosure and smear of Wilson before the fact? Who knew later? Who among those who were on Air Force One that day have known about the illegal disclosure of Valerie Wilson's identity and know that Rove read that memo but have failed to come forth?

Two words to Karl and any other members of the pre- or post-crime conspiracy: Fresh Meat!

Hey! Look Over There!

That's about all it takes to distract the mainstream kneepad press to get them to let go of a story. Okay, so Chimpie nominates John Roberts to the Supreme Court. We already know that the Democrats will cave and pass him, quietly wishing that the Republicans will be nice to them now, sort of like pathetic beaten dogs. The press, meanwhile, has shifted its short but broad attention to Roberts such that it is possible to switch to all operating cable and broadcast news channels and see Bush and Roberts displayed on every single one of them. If a station switches focus, it's only to cover the missing white girl in Aruba, unless it's FOX, in which case they'll devote a whole hour to it.

But meanwhile, the Rove/Plame story is oozing like a swollen yellow suppurating sore, pus dripping out and revealing the rottenness of this administration to more and more Americans, illustrating that the decay and corruption run all the way through Torture Boy Gonzalez, Scooter Libby, Flabsack Rove and up to the alleged president, Chimpie McChimperson, criminal-in-chief.

Drip, drip, drip. Someone has rolled on this White House (Ari? Colin?), and the indictments are going to be stunning and brutally damaging. Chimpie may hold on to the last, hoping, as usual, that Daddy's friends will bail him out, but this time he's going to face his well-deserved fate all alone, because even a power-mad fanatic like Karl Rove will recognize when it's time to cover his own ass so he won't be having it traded to other inmates for cigarettes.

So let the press slaver over Roberts, ignoring the real story. In a few days, unless Roberts is revealed to be in the KKK or buried some kids in his basement, this Supreme Court gassing will expire because nothing much will really happen (if anything at all) until hearings begin next month or in September. Roberts is a desperate and temporary ploy by Bush to try to get the press to run away from the Rove story. But Patrick Fitzgerald isn't running away.

And that means that Rove is itching his scabs with even more nervousness. When the spark comes, the whole rotten gasbag that is this administration is going to explode.

A Momentary Summer Vacation?

It feels like I should take one, even though it's been less than two months since Berlin and Prague. It's too hot to work, even here in the mountains where we're really spoiled by dry air and cool nights.

The Rove/Plame scandal continues to build, with the White House clearly panicking as Bush starts answering questions about it and even schedules a Supreme Court nomination tonight in prime time, perhaps because yet another shoe is about to drop. Oh, how I hope it involves Jeff Gannon/James Guckert, Ari Fleisher, two chickens, some Astralube, and an illegal prescription for Cialis. And Chimpie and Laura watching while Uncle Dick engages in some auto-erotic asphyxiation in the coat closet.

Ugh. I just creeped myself out.

Actually, the auto-erotic asphyxiation seems to be more Bush's thing--remember the pretzel incident? That was a coverup for what he was really doing. Doesn't that bastard look oxygen-starved to you? Yeah, too much choking the chicken while choking the Chimpie.

Yes, I'm well past the border of bad taste, but commenting on the news seems sort of pointless today. Bear with me.

Is Rove Taking a Bullet for Cheney?

I hate to get fooled again, and you've got to hand it to those Bush fuckers for being able, like good conjurers, to constantly divert our attention to something "big" while they slip something even bigger behind us.

But then it occurred to me that no one seems to be connecting the Valerie Plame Wilson affair, which involved the CIA, to the allegations that Dick Cheney visited the CIA offices at Langley as many as fourteen times, something that has been called unprecedented. Word was that he had been over there pressuring analysts to spin things the way the White House wanted for war, a war in which the chief beneficiary is the Halliburton company. Cheney, after serving as Secretary of Defense under Bush I then became CEO of Halliburton before becoming vice president. During his tenure as Secretary of Defense, he oversaw a massive privatization scheme in the military which set up the sort of transfer of duties and massive amounts of cash to private contractors.

So the question is this: is Rove taking a bullet for Dick? Is this a distraction from the real source of leaks to the press about Plame and others? Is it feasible that Dick Cheney would really have no idea who Joe Wilson was, even though it was Wilson who was acting ambassador to Iraq before the first Gulf War?

Just wondering. Someone else is wondering too, over at After Downing Street Memo. Go give it a read. Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald is purported to be a serious and thorough fellow and this observation by Justin Raimondo may prove rather prescient about what Fitzgerald is really after now:

If, however, Fitzgerald can prove there was a conspiracy inside the government to collect and selectively reveal classified information in order to crush political opponents, and shape U.S. policy, then the charges could be much more serious. By all accounts, the Plame investigation is said to be widening, and I would venture to say that by this time it is wide enough to include charges of espionage.

Indeed, against charges of actual espionage for political gain at the expense of national security, Rove's little leak would seem puny. Perhaps the plan is to throw Karl to the wolves, then pardon him and hope that Fitzgerald can't make any other charges stick.

Or maybe Cheney will conveniently croak just like William Casey did in time to damage the investigation into Iran-Contra. Maybe that's why Dickie hasn't been seen much lately. Maybe he's reading the writing on the wall and realizes that his number's up if he gets exposed as the real culprit here.

I wish I knew, but I'm still optimistic that these bastards are going to go down hard.

The Simplest Statement of the Rove Treason

It boils down to this:

Joseph Wilson went to Niger to ascertain whether or not Iraq was attempting to buy nuclear materials. Who sent him is irrelevant.

In the 2003 State of the Union Address, George W. Bush said this: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed piece entitled, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," contradicting Bush's claim.

Robert Novak, citing two White House administration sources, announced that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative.

The White House denied Karl Rove was a source. Bush said he would "take care of" anyone who is a leaker of classified information.

Two years later, Rove's attorney admitted Karl Rove was a source.

The White House refused to comment.

Rove currently retains his security clearance.

So in the course of two years, when did Bush know that Rove was the source? Why hasn't he followed through on his promise? Why is Rove still sitting behind Bush in cabinet meetings?

Wilson's motives are irrelevant. Who sent him is irrelevant. The facts are that Bush claimed Iraq sought Uranium, was proven wrong, and his closest aide disclosed the identity of a CIA agent who specialized in WMD in time of war in order to discredit Wilson, who had proven Bush wrong...or a knowing liar.

Rove is a traitor. He has aided and abetted the enemy by directly exposing an operative of the CIA who worked as a NOC, which means she had no diplomatic protection while undercover. All her contacts and assets in other countries--intelligence assets in the area of WMD--are now compromised. This has undercut our ability to fight the war on terror and prevent the proliferation of WMD into terrorists' hands.

Rove is a traitor.
Rove is a traitor.
Rove is a traitor.
And those who cover for him are traitors as well.

And don't take my word for it. Go visit Bloomberg News for their take on things--hardly a left-wing bastion.

It's Not Partisan Hype: Rove Was and Is a Threat to America's Security

When yours truly was doing his duty during the Cold War in a classified position, among the things emphasized in the non-technical part of the training was the absolute necessity of remaining silent about the mission, the people doing the mission, and anything at all in any way connected to the mission. The reasons for this were simple. Just as we pieced together seemingly disconnected bits of information into usable wholes, so were our adversaries doing the same. A question about what one did or who one knew could be innocent, or could be the normal data collection that most intelligence operations is made of. A name here, a location there, measure some antennae on a building, observe the comings and goings of people, and before you know it, you've figured out exactly what some intelligence entity is up to and you can now work to thwart their mission.

So when it came to light two years ago in Bob Novak's column that two White House officials had exposed Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, I naturally assumed that this would be one screwup that would not be countenanced by a White House which was staking its entire being on a war on terror. After all, exposing someone in intelligence operations, even someone who is not on a covert mission, is a very serious act, and had I or one of my colleagues back in the early 1970s done such a thing, we would have been stripped of our clearances, banished from any access, and likely court martialed for violating clear security rules. There would have been no question, no hesitation, and no spinning. You compromise security, it's over for you. Period.

So here we have the commander in chief of all US forces, a man who is at the top of the pyramid for our security, and his right-hand man, his deputy chief of staff, Karl Rove, tells not one, or two, but at least three reporters that Joe Wilson's wife is in the CIA. However, innocent he may have been of Valerie Plame's darker assignments undercover, and however ignorant he may have been of how useful such information might be to skilled intelligence services, he broke the trust of his position.

Something else that is not discussed by our kneepad press is what might have happened to all those foreign operatives who were connected to Valerie Plame when she was indeed working overseas to investigate WMD. What has become of them? Once her name was out, those known to have socialized with her or been involved in the cover business under which she operated were in deep jeopardy. Fraternizing with an attractive blonde woman in business circles surely gets you attention in the Middle East, and if that blonde woman suddenly becomes known as a CIA agent who did extensive work on WMD in your country, well, you might find your testicles wired up to a telephone generator at some point while your relationship is explored.

That's why Karl Rove is dangerous and even treasonous. I expect him to follow the same code I swore to back in my day, and I also expect him to suffer the same fate I would have had I acted as he did.

Karl Rove is a traitor at worst, or at minimum a political partisan to whom power means more than the security of the American people. He needs to be taken down. And if George W. Bush has known this all along, then he too must go, and I expect to see articles of impeachment drawn up within days.

Of course, with a Republican Congress, that won't happen, which shows you just how corrupt and dangerous that party has become to our entire nation.

Just Two Ways in Which the Bush Criminal Empire Is Ruining Our Country

First, there is this little matter of using the wife of someone who criticized one the administration's lies about why we should invade Iraq, that being that Saddam Hussein was trying to acquire yellowcake uranium from Niger. That "someone" was Ambassador Joseph Wilson, once ambassador to Gabon and also a former acting ambassador to Iraq in the run-up to the first Gulf War in 1991, whose actions won him high praise from then-president George H.W. Bush. Now that Karl Rove has been thoroughly fingered as the source for the outing of Wison's wife as a CIA agent (and fingering is going to seem quite pleasant compared to the prodding he'll get as this thing widens...and then there's prison life--ba-da-bum!), the White House spin is shifting to say that Rove did what he did only to discredit Wilson because Wilson was lying about who sent him to Niger and what he saw there.

The single largest charge against Wilson's credibility? That his wife recommended him for the mission. Given his background, it doesn't seem at all like the boss forcing you to take his ne'er-do-well son-in-law as your new supervisor, but that's the spin the White House and its whores keep making. They're intimating nepotism, but unfortunately for them, Wilson was possibly among the very best qualified people in the country for the mission. The White House just didn't like the results, because it directly contradicted their increasingly hysterical claims about Iraq's capabilities. Remember the "mushroom cloud" that Condie Rice and Chimpie kept saying would appear over us if we didn't invade?

So let's just weigh the credibility of these two men. Joseph Wilson is a lifetime public servant who put his own neck in harm's way on behalf of those in his charge, even showing up at a meeting with journalists in Iraq in 1991 wearing a noose around his neck. "If you want to execute me, I'll bring my own fucking rope," Wilson was reported to have said, staring down Hussein who had considered taking embassy personnel hostage. Wilson was also, as mentioned, ambassador to Gabon, and was familiar with the people, the culture, the politics, and the officials who were in a position to know something about their uranium supply and who might be in the market for it. He had also served as President Clinton's national security advisor on African affairs. He has had a stellar career, been honored by Republicans and Democrats alike, and has demonstrated courage under fire.

Then there is Karl Rove, fired by George H.W. Bush from his campaign in 1992 for leaking material to (surprise!) columnist Rovert Novak. He is known for his ruthless campaigns against Republican and Democratic opponents alike, the apotheosis of which was perhaps the smear campaign that took down John McCain in the South Carolina primary in 2000, after McCain had wiped the floor with Bush Jr. in New Hampshire. Rove's brilliance and "total war" approach in any campaign has proven quite successful for Bush Jr., who by any measure is a second-rate intellect wrapped in an adolescent's temperament. Given Rove's penchant for scorched-earth retaliation against opponents, no one expects Bush Jr. to be the one to put the brakes on.

So if Rove attacks Wilson on the basis that his wife, CIA agent Valerie Plame recommended Wilson as envoy to Niger, given his extensive experience and service, how does that discredit Wilson? And since it is Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove (that's Chimpie's nickname for him) doing the leaking of these allegedly damning charges, why should anyone believe him, he who orchestrated the campaign that claimed that John McCain collaborated with his torturers at the Hanoi Hilton while he was a POW?

You make the call. Here's the the Los Angeles Times' Robert Sheer has to say about it:

In the end, though, what Rove's leak and Novak's column really exposed was the depravity of the administration's deliberate use of a false WMD threat and its willingness to go after anyone willing to tell the truth about it.

"Depravity" is exactly the right word.

So now we're in Iraq. And the upshot? The Army is stretching to the breaking point. According Chicago Tribune piece,

According to the RAND study, the strain on the Army is so great that combat units are spending one of every two years deployed on overseas battlefields, instead of one of every three years, as called for in troop deployment guidelines.

These frequent absences from the U.S. and the exposure to combat not only have a negative effect on recruiting but interfere with the Army's ability to train troops in new skills or have them available to deal with contingencies elsewhere.

So are we stronger or weaker now after this ill-conceived war? Are we safer or in more danger?

And this takes us back to the crime that Karl Rove has committed, which is only one of many that were committed in leading up to the greatest, and international crime, of illegal war. Rove tried to suppress through intimidation and denunciation any report that contradicted the desired intentions of the Bushits to invade Iraq.

And even if there are a few of you hanging on to this notion of "pre-emptive war" as legitimate, you might want to take a gander at the U.S. Army website which contains a report by a military historian and analyst.

America will likely be unsuccessful in the war against terrorists through military superiority alone. A doctrine of preemption without a substantial nonmilitary component may well place the United States in a strategic box similar to that of Dulles’s massive retaliation: undertake military operations on the scale of a national invasion or do nothing at all. In practice as much as in policy, America’s defense doctrine must include, as the National Security Strategy outlines, more sophisticated and nuanced diplomatic initiatives and humanitarian programs, efforts designed, in former Secretary of State Colin Powell’s words, “to reduce the underlying sources of terrorist motivation and recruitment.”

With our military stretched to, and beyond, its limits, what seems like the most prudent path? More invasions based on more lies to feed the grandiose and increasingly insane dreams of glory for deserter George "Chimpie in a Flight Suit" Bush?

Now the iron is hot. This administration must be taken down. Bust Rove, impeach Bush, and send the whole criminal gang to the cells they deserve, or to the gallows, if the International Criminal Court dictates that it be so. This is our country they're destroying. It's time to take it back.

"A Climate of Fear"--Is This Our America?

From a Buzzflash interview with former ambassador Joe Wilson, whose wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA operative by Karl Rove, in retaliation for Wilson's blowing the whistle on the Bushit lies about Iraq obtaining yellowcake uranium from Niger:

BuzzFlash: Up until now, hasn't Rove succeeded? His goal and modus operandi is to use any weapon possible to intimidate persons critical of his candidates or elected officials, even if it is harmful to the national interest. Doesn't the acquiescence of the media to the White House spin and the relatively few whistle blowers indicate that Rove's reckless bullying has silenced many people who would otherwise come forth with the truth?

Ambassador Joe Wilson: I have always said that I believed the outing of Valerie was a signal to others that, should they step forward, the White House would do to their families what they did to mine. I have also had a number of journalists share with me their own experiences of being intimidated by senior officials in the White House. We should not be surprised that a climate of fear prevails in Washington.

I don't think that those who stood to defend our nation over our history did so to enable a collection of gangsters to rule through a "climate of fear." Sixteen years after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, we find our own "leadership" adopting the tactics of that regime in the quest of perpetual power, power to wage illegal war launched on lies and then to silence critics through personal destruction.

Take the country back. Send these criminals to the stockades, starting with Karl Rove. And when he squeals, the whole fucking enterprise is going to unravel, mark my words. Karl thought he was untouchable, a god. But when the rough trade in prison reaches him, he's going to remember what mortality means, and I think he is going to rat out the bunch of 'em.

Uptight Down in Dixie

Since it's Friday, how about something lighter? Here is one reason to get the hell out of the South. I realize that stripping can be an exploitive business, but really--should parents be arrested for giving their son a birthday thrill? After all, he didn't have sex with the woman (which I'm sure he wanted to)--not that that would make any difference, because the age of consent in Tennesee is fourteen, I believe, and young girls that age can be married off to lecherous old dudes with no problem. Anyway,

NASHVILLE, Tenn. - A couple pleaded guilty Thursday to hiring a stripper for their son's 16th birthday party and were sentenced to two years probation.

Landon and Anette Pharris, who were charged with contributing the delinquency of a minor, also were ordered to take parenting classes.

The parents hired the stripper to perform at a September party attended by about a dozen young people.

Good grief! You can read the rest of it here.

Forty-two Percent and Climbing: Impeach the Bastard

In a Zogby poll now available there is some really bad news for Bush, but excellent news for the country and the world.

Days after President Bush’s televised address to the soothe the nation’s anxiety over Iraq, the latest Zogby International released a poll finding that 42 percent say they favor impeachment proceedings if the president is found to have misled the nation about his reasons for going to war with Iraq.

That sounds about right. And this news from the red states isn't going to cheer Chimpie up either:

In the Red States, 36 percent say Congress should use it if the president is found to have lied on Iraq, while 55 percent reject this view

Even with whatever bounce Chimpie thinks he'll get from the London bombing, this is got to have the White House working overtime to distract and coverup the crimes of this administration. He's going down, and it's just a matter of how fast it's going to happen. Well, actually, there is a problem.

First, the mainstream media doesn't seem to think that this is news, as Dan Froomkin notes in his blog for the Washington Post:

But you wouldn't know it from following the news. Only three mainstream outlets that I can find made even cursory mention of the poll last week when it came out.

You also wouldn't know it judging from the political discourse in Washington, but that makes a little more sense. After all, impeachment is for all practical purposes a political act, not a legal one. So with a Republican-controlled Congress that doesn't even like to perform basic White House oversight, it's basically a moot point.

And second, as Froomkin notes, a right-wing Congress won't do its duty to the country that is now mired in an illegal war.

Vietnam becomes Vietnow.

More Tragedy, and Yet More Tragedy

Innocent people killed in London, and it is a terrible, terrible thing to attack people who only happen to live in the wrong place at the wrong time. I hope all of you will remember, even as you commiserate with Londoners after this terrorist attack, that tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have also paid the ultimate price for having committed no sin but being born in the wrong place at the wrong time. The killing of innocent, non-combatants is wrong, period, whether carried out by rogue terrorist groups or governments in the name of anti-terrorism.

That's something that George W. Bush will never understand, and that is why his words from Edinburgh today after the London attack are so offensive and hollow. His sociopathic view of reality prevents him from seeing the awful irony of his declarations, and that is a great danger to us all in this world.

The True Heart of Young Republicanism

Taking their cue from chickenshit chickenhawks George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearl, Karl Rove, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and countless other right-wing warlovers, young Republicans have learned that hypocrisy and insincerity are valuable assets. This summer, I want all college Republicans to really examine their hearts and see if there isn't the tiniest squib of honesty there that shames them about not throwing their own bodies up for a war for which they have bleated so loudly. As the Army struggles to meet its recruiting goals, it is considering lowering standards regarding criminal background, education, aptitude, and possibly even sexual orientation. This last alteration alone should have the good Republicans flocking to enlist to prevent gay soldiers from protecting their asses, even if conscience can't motivate them.

It's a simple equation, folks. If you support the war and yet do not volunteer to fight it yourself (or, if you are overage, then encourage your children to enlist), you are a hypocrite and a coward and not deserving the spittle that should be sprayed at you from those who have so honorably and selflessly served.

Here are a couple of people who are going in your place, you fucking chickenshits:

Many of those soldiers who have answered the call have come to Fort Jackson, S.C., for training. It's a place none of them really expected to be. In fact, very few expected to be mobilized at all.

"I automatically started crying for about two hours. I couldn't stop, because I knew I was gonna have to leave my babies," says Spc. Carey Trevino, who was called up in August.

She's 31, and has three kids; the youngest, a 7-month-old baby boy. She'll be leaving her children behind when she goes to Iraq for another year and a half.

"I need to serve my country and the call has come out, so I am doing that," says Chief Warrant Officer Margaret Murray, who did her active duty back in the '60s.

She's 55, and 4 feet, 8 inches tall. Her M-16 is almost as big as she is, but that didn't stop her from qualifying as a marksman this week.

Does she find it unusual that the Army is now calling up a female soldier in her 50s?

"No, although I think what they need to look at is our ability to perform in a tactical environment," says Murray. "For myself, I am going to find that a difficult thing to do physically."

Especially if Murray winds up in a place like Fallujah. Does she find that daunting? "Scary," says Murray. "[But] I need to do my job. … I did not retire. And so, now the Army's calling me back to service. And I'm here to do that."

Doesn't that make you feel proud, tough, like a real American freedom fighter?

Chimpie could go a long way toward improving his image if he put daughters Jenna and Barbara up as new recruits. Such a gesture from the "war president" would help stimulate the Republican base to get in the act instead of cowering on the sidelines, shitting themselves that they might be held accountable for the policies they cheerlead. Out of the bleachers, Republicans! Iraq and Afghanistan beckon to you to show your love.

This Land Is Your Land, Our Land, Belonging to ALL the People

This should be our national anthem. HAPPY FOURTH OF JULY!!!

THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND
words and music by Woody Guthrie

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walking a ribbon of highway
I saw above me an endless skyway
I saw below me a golden valley
This land was made for you and me

I've roamed and rambled and I've followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts
And all around me a voice was sounding
This land was made for you and me

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

The sun comes shining as I was strolling
The wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling
The fog was lifting a voice come chanting
This land was made for you and me

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

As I was walkin' - I saw a sign there
And that sign said - no tress passin'
But on the other side .... it didn't say nothin!
Now that side was made for you and me!

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

In the squares of the city - In the shadow of the steeple
Near the relief office - I see my people
And some are grumblin' and some are wonderin'
If this land's still made for you and me.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California, to the New York Island
From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters
This land was made for you and me