If It Wuz Up To Me, This Might be

pretty much how I think fascism might work:
Bush seeks immunity for companies in spy case
Verizon, AT&T face privacy suits for helping White House eavesdrop

Updated: 2:35 p.m. MT Aug 31, 2007

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration wants the power to grant legal immunity to telecommunications companies that are slapped with privacy suits for cooperating with the White House’s controversial warrantless eavesdropping program.

The authority would effectively shut down dozens of lawsuits filed against telecommunications companies accused of helping set up the program.

The vaguely worded proposal would shield any person who allegedly provided information, infrastructure or “any other form of assistance” to the intelligence agencies after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks. It covers any classified communications activity intended to protect the country from terrorism.

Any questions?

Neo-Colonialism: The Busheviki Plan

Here's the Busheviki strategy for the Middle East:
As much as possible, stir up sectarian competitions and conflicts among the indigenes.
Enable as much as possible violent strife among them; arm and encourage all parties.
Keep USer Troops in the Region, and use them in civil conflicts to keep the level of bloodshed high and provide stimuli for violent outbursts and conflicts.
Then, when the sectarian and civil conflicts have exhausted ALL the parties, reduced their military forces to impotence, and shattered the governing structures, return with neo-colonialist tools to take over and exploit the resources until they run out.
Wilkommen nach Real-Politik!

Another Anniversary: WEB DuBois

W.E.B. DuBois, the black American sociologist, scholar, author, pan-Africanist, communist, and one of the founders of the NAACP, died in Accra, the capital of Ghana, on August 27, 1963, where he had expatriated. He had been charged and tried in the U.S. for being a "foreign principle" in 1951 because he chaired the The Peace Information Center. It was dedicated to banning nuclear weapons but Secretary of State Dean Acheson designated it a Communist front. He was 95.
"Children learn more from what you are than what you teach. —WEB Dubois, 1897
Meanwhile, on August 28, 1963, only a day after DuBois' passing, Martin Luther King delivered the speech for which he is best remembered: "I have a dream." You can read the speech here or you can watch a vid here.

If Obama's NOT On The Dim Ticket, Will Black Americans Stay Home Election Day?

I think so.
I wouldn't blame 'em much, either.
So much hype surrounding his campaign!
If he doesn't take the nomination (he's NOT my choice), the disappointment and feelings of disenfranchisement may well drive Black Americans to abandon not only the Dems, but the whole process.
They're already pretty well estranged, one thing or another. It wouldn't take much, I shouldn't think, to completely turn'em off.
Whaddayathink?

Is Larry Craig's Name Being "Dragged Through The Mud?"

Digby sez several months ago Craig was picked-up soliciting sex in a men's room in an airport in Northstar Crossing, MN. He pled guilty.

Bus Plunge

The McCain campaign bus was driving through the countryside one day, on the campaign trail. The bus driver, caught up in the beautiful scenery, loses control and crashes into the ditch.

A farmer living nearby hears the horrible crash and rushes out to discover the wreckage. Finding McCain and his minions in the ditch, he buries them.

The next day, the police come to the farm to question the man. "So you buried all those Republicans?" asked the police officer. "Were they all dead?"

The farmer answered, "Waahl, SOME of 'em said they weren't. But you know how them GOP fuckers lie."
(h/t to Mike Kitts)

Even If A Dem Is President, The "State-of-War" Will Not End...EVER

Norman Solomon sez:
The warfare state didn't suddenly arrive in 2001, and it won't disappear when the current lunatic in the Oval Office moves on.

The USA's military spending is now close to $2 billion a day. This fall, the country will begin its seventh year of continuous war, with no end in sight. On the horizon is the very real threat of a massive air assault on Iran. And few in Congress seem willing or able to articulate a rejection of the warfare state[...]

[...]One day in 1969, a biologist named George Wald, who had won a Nobel Prize, visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- the biggest military contractor in academia -- and gave a speech. "Our government has become preoccupied with death," he said, "with the business of killing and being killed."

That preoccupation has fluctuated, but in essence it has persisted. While speaking of a far-off war and a nuclear arsenal certain to remain in place after the war's end, Wald pointed out: "We are under repeated pressure to accept things that are presented to us as settled -- decisions that have been made."

Today, in similar ways, our government is preoccupied and we are pressurized. The grisly commerce of killing -- whether through carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan or through the deadly shredding of social safety-nets at home -- thrives on aggressive war and on the perverse realpolitik of "national security" that brandishes the Pentagon's weaponry against the world. At least tacitly, we accept so much that threatens to destroy anything and everything.

War is the ONLY product of the Military/Industrial/Congressional complex, and the M/I/C complex is the ONLY form of Government.

Can't We Find Somebody To Give This Stupid Motherfucker A Blowjob?

So then we can impeach this feculent, reeking, drooling, blithering, lying, shit-whistling son-of-a-bitch!

"Iraq No Longer Exists!"

Amy Goodman for Democracy Now! interviews journalist Nir Rosen on how the US invasion of Iraq has led to ethnic cleansing, a worsening refugee crisis and destabilization of the Middle East.

I am more and more of the opinion that the actual policy of the US regime and the rest of the "West" for the future of the Middle East was and is to stir up as much discord and division as possible, and then watch--well, stir the pot with military intervention--while the various religious factions destroy one another and drag the entire region into wholesale turmoil.
Whereupon, when the factions have sufficiently weakened one another, the USer/Western coalition returns to re-colonialize the remnants and appropriate the resoureces without having to share with the indigenes...
Fuukin' BRILLIANT!

Didja ever notice, when the CorpoRats "manage" something,

some part of what it is they are "managing" dies?"

• "Managing" wildlife--wolves, bears, deer, whatever--means killing them.
• "Managing" health care means preventing people from getting it.
• "Managing" forests means cutting trees.
• "Managing" water means polluting it...

Please, lord, spare us the "managers"!

Will Durst: "I Am SO Sick Of..."

This was up on Open Left. Enjoy!

According to the Shit-For-Brains, Gutless, Chickenshit, Piss-Ant, Soi Disant Chimp-In-Chief

USer troops should STILL be fighting in VietNam.
That's right!
That's what the feculent, posturing, simpering, scampering, foot-stamping little coward told the VFW (or was it the Murkin Leejun) yesterday: Vietnam might be a 'democracy' today if the USofA'd had the intestinal fortitude to keep on killing our kids and theirs for the last 35 years. The gutless,little deserter in effect accuses USers of not fighting well enough, or hard enough, or long enough.
You think I jest? Je?!? Mais, oui, c'est posible! (What I really want to do is rip off his empty fucking head and shit down his throat. As a vet of the war he deserted, I believe I'm entitled.)
But Froomkin jests not.

Until Further Notice, This Surfer Is Officially (O-fish-illy?) "The Planet's Luckiest Man!"

Yup!
There were TWO of 'em...

An Historical Primer: Juan Cole Tells It Like It Really Is

You wanna know who, in the long run, is responsible for the current clusterfuck in the Middle East? Look to the Right.

Yup. The mother-fucking, senile, drooling, fuck-witted Gipper (and his minions, including just about every single member of the PNAC).

Cole lays out, in words and pictures that even your Christianist/dominionist/Jeebo-fascist asshole brother-in-law ought to be able to understand.

Swear to fucking christ, if for no other reason then complete incompetence, John Hinckley (scion of a family with close ties to the Bush Crime Family) should be imprisoned for life. I mean, he couldn't be trusted to drive, could he? He'd be on the Interstate on a fucking moped.

Department of Stranger Than...: Dwarf's Dick, Stuck in Vac, Sticks

EDINBURGH (AFP) - A dwarf performer at the Edinburgh fringe festival had to be rushed to hospital after his penis got stuck to a vacuum cleaner during an act that went horribly awry.

Daniel Blackner, or "Captain Dan the Demon Dwarf", was due to perform at the Circus of Horrors at the festival known for its oddball, offbeat performances.

The main part of his act saw him appear on stage with a vacuum cleaner attached to his member through a special attachment.

The attachment broke before the performance and Blackner tried to fix it using extra-strong glue, but unfortunately only let it dry for 20 seconds instead of the 20 minutes required.

He then joined it directly to his organ. The end result? A solid attachment, laughter, mortification and ... hospitalisation.

"It was the most embarrassing moment of my life when I got wheeled into a packed AE with a vacuum attached to me," Blackner said.

"I just wished the ground could swallow me up. Luckily, they saw me quickly so the embarrassment was short-lived."

Ya just can't make up stuff like this.

George Lakoff: "THERE IS NO CENTER!"

Like the mythical 'mean', the so-called center exists only in the misapplication of an abstraction onto an untidy reality.
There Is No Political Center, There Are No Centrists
By George Lakoff, AlterNet. Posted August 20, 2007.

"Centrism" is the creation of an inaccurate self-serving metaphor which marginalizes the progressive cause, and it is time to bury it."

There is no left to right linear spectrum in the American political life. There are two systems of values and modes of thought -- call them progressive and conservative (or nurturant and strict, as I have). There are total progressives, who use a progressive mode of thought on all issues. And total conservatives. And there are lots of folks who are what I've called "biconceptuals": progressive on certain issue areas and conservative on others. But they don't form a linear scale. They are all over the place: progressive on domestic policy, conservative on foreign policy; conservative on economic policy, progressive on foreign policy and social issues; conservative on religion, but progressive on social issues and foreign policy; and on and on. No linear scale. No single set of values defining a "center." Indeed many of such folks are not moderate in their views; they can be quite passionate about both their progressive and conservative views.

Barack Obama has it right: Get rid of the very idea of the right and the left and the center. American ideas are fundamentally progressive ideas -- the ideas this country was founded on and that carry forth that spirit. Progressives care about people and the earth, and act with responsibility and strength on that care.

The progressive view of government is simple. Progressive government has two aspects: protection and empowerment. Protection is far more than the military, police, and fire departments. It includes consumer protection, worker protection, environmental protection, public health, food and drug safety; social security, and other safety nets. It also includes protection from the government itself, and hence a balance of powers, openness, fundamental rights, and so on.

And so on.
To read more, follow the link.

"You Can't Be 'ANTI-GOVERNMENT,' and BE the fucking 'Government'!"

The senescent, syphilitic rantings of Raygun--"Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem"--notwithstanding.

This is both an ontological and an axiological proposition.

Discuss!
H/t, Thom Hartmann!

This'll Be On The Test

Is this the same dog in all the photos?

Does the Chimp Call MSHA's Dick Stickler "Sticky"?

This is a guy whose record is so tainted with conflicts of interest and ties to the industry he was appointed to regulate that his nomination couldn't even get through even a GOPuke Congress.

So the Chimp-in-Chief made him a recess appointee.

"Sicky" is the MSHA what "Brownie" was to FEMA....with fewer casualties.



Great Job, Sticky!!!!

"Owning a Business" is not a "Right."

It is a privilege granted to individuals by the culture and society which sustains both the 'bidness' and the social order. Therefore, 'the market' is not the sole,or even the most relevant source of the limitations upon the act of 'doing business,' even though everything possible has been done to sell that pack of lies...

If a business owner does not conduct her or his business in an ethical manner; If they cheat or lie or misrepresent either their products or their 'bidness' practices; If she or he does not pay a living wage to her or his workers with adequate benefits; If he or she does not do EVERYTHING possible to ensure the safety of her or his employees and prevent loss of life or injury, no matter how dangerous the profession; THEN the People, through their representatives in Government, have the right to demand that the business-owner either remedy their breaches of the 'business/social contract,' or fucking CLOSE!

Walkin' With Dubya Can Save The Planet

h/t Rick Perstein

Michael Vick, Dog-Killer: The "He's-Such-A-Sick-Vicious-Sadistic Shitheel" Story Keeps Growing

He is said by his co-accusees to have participated in the "drowning, hanging, an/or shooting" up to 8 animals which 'did not perform' in tests, and as long as 4 years ago, was photographed with his pals with a dog they were entering into a fight.

Michael Vick is toast, folks: There are seven — seven! — witnesses against him, four from the original complaint and the three ex-pals with whom he was charged, and all of whom have pled to various lesser charges... There is expected to be a mountain of forensic evidence, not the least of which are the canine carcasses unearthed at Vick's Virginia property. Dogs can't testify, of course, but imagine the looks on the jurors' faces when they are shown photographic exhibits of the brutalized animals. Or film from a dog fight, featuring one of Vick's dogs. I'd be willing to bet, because these fucking thugs are egotistical assholes as well as sadistic pricks, there are fotos of Vick and his pals KILLING dogs.

Actually, I think Vick should be allowed to play in the NFL this year.
But, when he loses, he should be treated the way he'd treat a dog which lost: drench the pig-fucking sadist with water, attach electrodes to his genitals, and juice his ass til he shits blood.

‘Behavior Detection Officers’ are now watching passengers’ facial expressions for signs of danger. Some WIERD FUCKING SHIT!

If it were March 31, I'd be REALLY suspicious. Or if The Onion were the source...
But, since it's the middle of fucking August, and the source is McClatchy, I guess this isn't a fucking joke:
By Kaitlin Dirrig | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Next time you go to the airport, there may be more eyes on you than you notice.

Specially trained security personnel are watching body language and facial cues of passengers for signs of bad intentions. The watcher could be the attendant who hands you the tray for your laptop or the one standing behind the ticket-checker. Or the one next to the curbside baggage attendant.

They're called Behavior Detection Officers, and they're part of several recent security upgrades, Transportation Security Administrator Kip Hawley told an aviation industry group in Washington last month. He described them as "a wonderful tool to be able to identify and do risk management prior to somebody coming into the airport or approaching the crowded checkpoint."

The officers are working in more than a dozen airports already, according to Paul Ekman, a former professor at the University of California at San Francisco who has advised Hawley's agency on the program. Amy Kudwa, a TSA public affairs specialist, said the agency hopes to have 500 behavior detection officers in place by the end of 2008.

Kudwa described the effort, which began as a pilot program in 2006, as "very successful" at identifying suspicious airline passengers. She said it had netted drug carriers, illegal immigrants and terrorism suspects. She wouldn't say more.

I can scarcely keep my loathing for the dumb fuckers in the TSA from erupting. So I don't fly anymore.

Clergy Recruited to Quell Dissent When Martial Law Declared

Reeking of TV Journamalistic Hyperbolic Irrelevance, the following story nevertheless gets at at an important issue: Yet another breach in wall between church and State, and yet another validation of Althusser's ISA (Institutional State Apparatus) theorem. It's on the website of KSLA TV, Shreveport, LA, of all places.

Could martial law ever become a reality in America? Some fear any nuclear, biological or chemical attack on U.S. soil might trigger just that. KSLA News 12 has discovered that the clergy would help the government with potentially their biggest problem: Us..
Charleton Heston's now-famous speech before the National Rifle Association at a convention back in 2000 will forever be remembered as a stirring moment for all 2nd Amendment advocates. At the end of his remarks, Heston held up his antique rifle and told the crowd in his Moses-like voice, "over my cold, dead hands."
While Heston, then serving as the NRA President, made those remarks in response to calls for more gun control laws at the time, those words live on. Heston's declaration captured a truly American value: An over-arching desire to protect our freedoms.
But gun confiscation is exactly what happened during the state of emergency following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, along with forced relocation. U.S. Troops also arrived, something far easier to do now, thanks to last year's elimination of the 1878 Posse Comitatus act, which had forbid regular U.S. Army troops from policing on American soil.
If martial law were enacted here at home, like depicted in the movie "The Siege", easing public fears and quelling dissent would be critical. And that's exactly what the 'Clergy Response Team' helped accomplish in the wake of Katrina.
Dr. Durell Tuberville serves as chaplain for the Shreveport Fire Department and the Caddo Sheriff's Office. Tuberville said of the clergy team's mission, "the primary thing that we say to anybody is, 'let's cooperate and get this thing over with and then we'll settle the differences once the crisis is over.'"
Such clergy response teams would walk a tight-rope during martial law between the demands of the government on the one side, versus the wishes of the public on the other. "In a lot of cases, these clergy would already be known in the neighborhoods in which they're helping to diffuse that situation," assured Sandy Davis. He serves as the director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13. Dr. Tuberville elaborated, "because the government's established by the Lord, you know. And, that's what we believe in the Christian faith. That's what's stated in the scripture."
Civil rights advocates believe the amount of public cooperation during such a time of unrest may ultimately depend on how long they expect a suspension of rights might last.

Remember "opiate of the masses"? or is it thorazine?

Remember, They Said 200 THOUSAND AK-47s And Other Small Arms Had Gone Missing In Iraq?

Upon hearing the news, my iconoclastic Santa Fe pal, Jim Terr, bestirred himself to pen the following LTE:

TO: Santa Fe New Mexican, August 9, 2007)

Happy face

I think we should be careful not to exaggerate the significance of the 190,000 firearms unaccounted for by U.S. officials in Iraq. Even assuming only 10 rounds of ammo per weapon, that would only be enough to put a bullet in the heads of fewer than 2 million people — less than 10 percent of the population of Iraq, even after taking down all the American soldiers there.

It’s tempting to use news like this to feed a dark view of the situation, but only if we ignore the fact that we’ve brought electricity, water, sanitation, education, peace, security, freedom and democracy to these previously beleaguered people.

Jim's an excellent snarksman. But he forwarded an addendum by Peter Weiss, which magnifies the original so aptly:

Or you could look at it this way, In addition to the electricity, water, sanitation, education, peace, security, freedom and democracy, we have also now provided them, free of charge, with useful tools to hunt down and kill rats and dogs so they can have food to eat. You know, "give a man a rat and he eats for a day, give him an AK-47 and teach him to shoot it and he can eat rats forever."

Who says there's no good news from Iraq?
Just them damn doomsayers, and cut-n-run"Defeatocrats"!

Ruin Is The Fucking Rule, NOT The Fucking Exception!

Live right, do the right thing, get sick, and the country sez: Fuck YOU!

By Mike Stuckey, Senior news editor, MSNBC
Updated: 4:17 a.m. MT Aug 15, 2007
LOMPOC, Calif. - Kathleen Aldrich, financially ruined by two bouts with ovarian cancer, is not who you might assume she is.

She raised three kids as a single mom. She worked hard for years. She had good jobs. She paid her bills. She lived in a nice house and drove a nice car. She had a decent credit rating. She had health insurance.

Now she has a record of bankruptcy and is the embodiment of the fear that nags at millions of U.S. families: that they are but one medical calamity away from losing everything. Like Aldrich, they — and perhaps you — could be.

What Mike Moore said in Sicko: Fear--of losing insurance, mainly--is the primary way by which CorpoRat Murki exercises workplace discipline, keeping the workers happy to have ANY job that offers health insurance.

Cuz any working stiff in the country is only one serious illness away from complete and total ruin.

Is THIS a GREAT FUCKING COUNTRY, or what?

Remember When We Used To Worry About Turning All Our Governmental Business Over To Corporations?

Neither do I. But I mighta been stoned, and missed it. So I'm relying on all y'all.

Does ANYBODY remember the public discussion of the wisdom--to say NOTHING of the propriety--of privatizing essential public services?

It seems to me the most completely ignored story of the last 20 years. There's been more interest in whether Gloria Esteban was fucking contestants.

Well, Jim Hightower took a look at the phenomena. Guess what?

It's already too late for a discussion. The deal's already gone down. The contracts are signed, the money's on the way to the Caymans. The deed is done!

Just outta curiousity: It's my sense that, once privatized, no resource has ever returned to the service of the common weal, afaik. On the same ontological premise, technology never turns back. Anybody got any counter-examples?

Happy Birthday To Social Security: 72 Years Today

On August 14, 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law, creating unemployment compensation, old-age benefits and aid to dependent children.

“We can never insure one hundred percent of the population against one hundred percent of the hazards and vicissitudes of life, but we have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family against the loss of a job and against poverty-ridden old age.” -- President Roosevelt at the signing

Vicious, Sadistic Prick, Dog-Killer Vick, May Miss Whole NFL Season

This couldn't happen to a nicer fella, could it?

Nahhhhhhh.

But I do wish the bastard would have to face the dogs, himself.

What's This I Hear About This "Free Market?"

Stocks Higher After Banks Add Liquidity
Monday August 13, 11:38 am ET
By Lauren Villagran, AP Business Writer
Stocks Move Higher After Banks Add Liquidity, Retail Sales Rise More Than Expected

NEW YORK (AP) -- Wall Street rebounded Monday after the Federal Reserve and other central banks added more cash to their banking systems, helping investors set aside some concerns about credit tightness.

The New York Fed, which carries out the central bank's market operation, minutes after the opening bell announced $2 billion in overnight repurchase agreements.

The Fed's "repo" follows a move by the Bank of Japan to put $5 billion into the markets and an addition by the European Central Bank of $65.3 billion; the ECB added more than $200 billion last week. The moves, following similar injections by the Fed last week, appeared to placate Wall Street for now and allowed it to look ahead to a week of fresh economic data. Since Thursday, the Fed has added $62 billion in liquidity.

So far, the central bank moves seem to be calming a market that has been torn by volatility for weeks.

"The environment we're in is really truly extraordinary. The best way for investors to view this is from a 30,000-foot view -- to be positioned defensively and to continue to pay close attention to the U.S. economy and the consumer," said J. Michael Barron, chief executive of Knott Capital in Exton, Pa.

In late morning trading, the Dow Jones industrial average rose 60.40, or 0.4percent, to 13,299.94.

---More---

Silly me.
I always thought the Market was supposed to take care of itself? Regulation is a BAAAAD THING! ?Como no?

I guess Govt. intervention isn't ALWAYS such a bad fucking thing, eh, fellas?

Has Jeff Gannon Got A New Gig?

The nation's best-known, least acknowledged 'top,' fresh from hs exertions among the Busheviks in the White House (I always thought he was Rover's "playboy"), finds a new gig, as avatar of the "Christian Warrior," the emblem of "Operation Straight Up," an "an evangelical entertainment troupe that actively proselytizes among active-duty members of the US military," both in the field and back in the CONUS.
The whole thing just simply REEKS of (not too deeply sublimated) homoeroticism, innit?
FWIW: Every veteran knows that "Chaplains' Assistant" is the MOS/AFSC for those who wish neither to ask nor to tell.

Average USer Life-Span Shorter Than 41 Other Nations

A baby born in the United States in 2004 will live an average of 77.9 years. That life expectancy ranks 42nd, down from 11th two decades earlier, according to international numbers provided by the Census Bureau and domestic numbers from the National Center for Health Statistics...Andorra, a tiny country in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain, had the longest life expectancy, at 83.5 years, according to the Census Bureau. It was followed by Japan, Macau, San Marino and Singapore...The shortest life expectancies were clustered in Sub-Saharan Africa, a region that has been hit hard by an epidemic of HIV and AIDS, as well as famine and civil strife. Swaziland has the shortest, at 34.1 years, followed by Zambia, Angola, Liberia and Zimbabwe.

A major factor in the USer ranking is the absence in the USofA national health care, and the lack for nearly 20 percent of the population of ANY health insurance. Also obesity is a major USer problem, with approximately two-thirds of the population "overweight." while almost one third of USers are clinically "obese." (Me? prob'ly 20-30 lbs too much.)
Another factor? Infant death/mortality rates: "Forty countries, including Cuba, Taiwan and most of Europe had lower infant mortality rates than the U.S. in 2004. The U.S. rate was 6.8 deaths for every 1,000 live births. It was 13.7 for Black Americans, the same as Saudi Arabia."
(That's right: Black children suffer mortality rates about TWICE those of Whites. Sooo-phahs, soooo-prahs!)
Nah, yer jist imagining: there's no racial inequality in the USofA anymore.

FWIW: It is my guess that the life-span will begin to decline, both world-wide and in the USofA as the effects of the toxic bath of noxious chemicals in the environment, which has been the invisible, but inescapable, and escalating part of the Lebensweldt since the '50s, begins to be felt.

The Blue Dogs

"Taking Care of Business," by George Rodrigue

The subject of this whimsical little work is the icon under which the soi disant Blue-dog Democrats assemble.
Really.
From what I understand, they all have at least one of Rodrique's works on their office walls.
And I just wanna say, they're doing dogs no favor: "yellow-dog" implied a dog-like loyalty, and fidelity; these 'blue-dogs,' by their behavior, betray an uncharacteristic (for dogs) selfishness.

Here's An Ad For The "Left Behind" Video Game

the Pentagon apparently endorsed sending to gamers on duty in the 'Dad, the existence of which was signaled HERE.


More, plus analysis, at alternet.org.

Nagasaki - - Where America Lost Its Honor

You may believe whatever you wish about the propriety of dropping the Atomic bomb on Hiroshima: Maybe it shortened the war. Maybe it saved American lives. Maybe. We might honestly--and honorably--disagree on the matter.

However the nuclear test over Nagasaki three days later was of another order of reality entirely. It was a war crime, and relegated the USofA into exactly the same class of criminality-against-humanity as the Japanese for the rape of Nanjing or the Nazis for the massacres at Baba Yar in the Ukraine (the Issei/Nissei camps had already too closely mirrored the Nazi social control model for comfort.)

Hillary's Big Proposal: $10 Billion Over 10 Years

No, really, that's what she said today.
I wouldn't make this up, truly. I'm not a Hillary-hater.

CONCORD, N.H. - Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton is arguing that unsafe bridges, crowded seaports and clogged highways endanger the economy as well as putting the public at risk.

<

Last week's fatal bridge collapse in Minneapolis underscores the critical need for infrastructure improvements nationwide, Clinton said in remarks prepared for delivery Wednesday afternoon in New Hampshire.

She proposed spending $10 billion over 10 years to repair and upgrade roads, bridges, waterways and seaports.

"Something is very, very wrong when, at the dawn of the 21st century, in the richest country on earth, people are actually nervous about driving over bridges for fear that they'll collapse. Or they're worried that their levees may burst, or their highways may buckle," she said. "The degradation of our infrastructure isn't just a serious threat to our safety — it is also a grave threat to our economy."

Spending about the same amount over ten years on repairing crucial infrastructure as even she will be FORCED to spend in ONLY ONE FUCKING WEEK OF WAR, even if she's president and bringing troops home (over such eventuality i am holding my breath -- NOT), does not strike me as a particularly generous, or forward-looking policy.
Pinche' would be what we'd call it here in my vecinidad...

A BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR is fucking chickenfeed, when you understand that's one tenth of what the ICORP of IRAQ squanders in a week.

EVEN 10 BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR for 10 years would be only barely scratch the surface, if the priorities of these rat-fucking oligarchs weren't so tainted by generations of in-breeding and excess.

TEN BILLION DOLLARS A YEAR, spend both modernizing, and retro-fitting energy efficiencies onto the aging infrastructure would pay enormous dividends down the road; would provide a bonanza in employment and technological innovation; would revive a sagging economy, might even resuscitate democracy (well, might not go that far; but still)...

Unfortunately, however, it wouldn't mean killing anybody, or expending expensive munitions profligately, or flying very fast all over the place feeling very important and deadly.

It makes one wonder, sometimes, if the oligarchs do not believe the whole charade/shebang is gonna last long enough to repay them their investment, innit?

The New Crusaders, The Next Crusade: Xian Missionaries Colonize US Military

Kill or Convert, Brought to You by the Pentagon

Max Blumenthal reports for The Nation (via TruthOut.Org):

"As an official arm of the Defense Department's America Supports You program, OSU [Operation Straight Up - an evangelical entertainment troupe that actively proselytizes among active-duty members of the US military] plans to mail copies of the controversial apocalyptic video game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces to soldiers serving in Iraq. OSU is also scheduled to embark on a 'Military Crusade in Iraq' in the near future."

What with the Xian Embassy occupying it's own offices in the fuukin Pentagon, and now with plans to ship blatantly Xianist propaganda video games to troops in the field, well-meaning, democratic Americans ought to take a couple dozen of these religious fuck-nutz hostage--just go all Taliban on their pious asses--and demand an end to the fucking ICORP as the price of their release.

Careers of the Future, Part 17: "Homeland Security Officer"

Now THIS is a great fucking idea: Granting 'degrees' in "homeland security."
The world has awaited the development of a new "major" for ineducable jocks and assorted other frat-house troglodytes waiting out maturity in college.
I mean, c'mon! Isn't that really what's been missing all along? This is the degree for Michael Vick. Hasn't it always struck you that what the country needs is the right credential for Blackwater's, or others', thugs, to lend the patine of scholarly legitimacy to their storm-trooper mentality: A 'degreed' corps of 'security professionals' trained in 'real-time crisis management'--including, one has no trouble imagining, extreme property protection and 'mob control,' and how to tell criminal 'looters' from desperate 'foragers' (hint: it's the hair)...
Yeah, if I were on the Faculty Senate someplace, I'd sure vote to start such a program at MY college/university/institution of higher learning...
With a minor in Transportation Safety Administration Inspection, it's life-time employment.

What Digby Said -- On The Dumbocrap Sell-Out On Spying (And Every-fucking-thing Else)

(read this and know thy meme!)

The idea that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi supposedly "allowed" themselves to be punk'd again on a constitutional atrocity with scare stories and slick legislative strategy is indefensible and at some point you have to assume that it isn't just political malpractice or even spinelessness. When you see this legislation, on the heels of the passage of the Military Commissions atrocity last fall, you cannot escape the conclusion that the Democrats agree with the administration that the government must have unfettered authoritarian power to "keep the country safe."

Sure, a good many of them voted against it. But the Democrats control the agenda now and no legislation passes without the leadership's approval in this congress. They approved it. The pander wasn't to the red staters. It was those who voted against it who were pandering --- to us. If the Dems had wanted to stop Reid and Pelosi from putting this atrocity up for a vote they could have. They didn't.

Ipso facto; q.e.d!

Chalmers Johnson - - "Nemesis: Last Days of the American Republic"

It's about 20 minutes, total.
Part 1:
Part 2:
You cannot ignore this stuff!

A Vick-tory!: At the Lamb, We're Never Sheepish About Tooting Our Own Horn

So tonight I proudly announce the Lamb is ONCE AGAIN # ONE!

We're Number Uno, Nummer Einz...

>Yes, it is true! If I could do screen capture, I'd show it to you!Though, apparently I cannot link directly to the goddam Google page.

The Well-Armed Lamb sits tonight as #One atop a list of 38,000 other sites housing the text string "Michael Vick Dog Fighting Ring", referring the curious reader to my excoriations of the accused sadistic fucknozzle, recommending he be, at minimum, bathed in fresh, hot blood and his genitals be dipped in gravy, and he be compelled to enter a dog-fighting ring himself, to confront and account for--and to--the fruits of his cruelty.
A truly modest, fair, and balanced proposal.

FYI:
The Spanish, conquering Mexico and Central America, fed their dogs with indigenous children, sometimes live, according to the Franciscan abbe, Bartolomeo de las Casas, who was along for the trip. He was pleading in Spain before a Court of the Inquisition that the Church should grant humanity to the indigenous peoples, who had hitherto been labelled not-human, and therefore liable for any slaughters and maltreatments. This was made mainly necessary to confer humanity upon the mestizo children of the Conquistadors and the indigenous women and girls whom they either raped or seduced.
Invasion and occupation bring out the worst in troops. Has football taken its military metaphors too far?

The Dems Will NEVER End The "War"

Because there is at least one defense/military contractor/employer in every Congressional district in the United States.
Ending the ICORP will be very bad for bidness, for those employers in those industries...
This is the genius of USer structural militarism/imperialism: every community in the country always already has in interest in starting/continuing international conflicts.
Izzis a great fucking country, or what!

Any Way You Look At It, You Lose...

The Single Most Vital Question For The (Democrat) Candidates: What Are Your Plans To Restore Constitutional Democracy In the US of A?

I am told that some folks (kinda timidly) tried to ask something similar of the Candidate/Visitors to Y-Kos, and and only Chris Dodd provided convincing answers (which, if true, is yet ANOTHER reason he's a long-shot?)(h/t, Lambert, Correntewire).

There might be several reasons for this apparent oversight:

1. They have no plan because they see no NEED for one, there being nothing sufficiently amiss to require such a 'plan.'
2. They can conceive of no plan by which to restore Constitutional Government, because the Bushevik 'coup d' Loi' has been irreversible.
   
3. They have a plan, but need to keep it quiet to prevent it its being co-opted by the Right..
   
4. They see no need for such a plan, because they DON'T PLAN TO RETURN THE USofA to a Constitutional, democratic republic.

As Paul Simon told Mrs. Robinson: "Any way you look at it, you lose."

(and, oh, yeah: The future's in plastics, man.)

Gutless, Feckless, Useless, Worthless Fucking Pimps: Fucking Dems Support Bushevik Warrantless Spying

TruthOut: House Passes Changes in Eavesdropping Program

Carl Hulse and Edmund L. Andrews report in Sunday's edition of the New York Times that "under pressure from President Bush, the House gave final approval Saturday to changes in a terrorism surveillance program, despite serious objections from many Democrats about the scope of the executive branch's new eavesdropping power."

GUTLESS MOTHERFUCKERS!
If you cannot support the fucking Constitution, then RESIGN and get the fuck out of town, you wimpy fucking asswipes.
Pelosi? Reid?
WHAT WORTHLESS PIECES OF SHIT!

And, lo, it came to pass that the Democrats again did yield

and fall back in disarray from the dauntless and indefatigable balls of the Tin-Pot Emperor, and did cast up their hands and, shrieking imprecations, did again ignore the will of the People--and violate the Law of the nation--for the 'good' of the State.

For, yea, 16 Democrats did join with the GOPubes to pass in the Senate of the People additional measures by which the Tin-Pot Emperor could more closely supervise the People; so better to protect them from even the threat of attacks upon their villages, flocks, and children, by the evil ones from the East.

So the Tin-Pot Emperor spaketh: "Verily, go, you, Congress critters, no matter your Party affiliation, and bring me a bill that I may sign; or ye shall linger here in DC through August"; and lo, the Democratic Congress, being fearful of the heat and vile humors of DC in Augusrt, did so oblige the Tin-Pot Emperor that he shall henceforth need not suffer the least scruple to surveille his domain and his people at his pleasure.

And it was good.

But verily, there came forth from Left Blogosphere such a wailing and ranting and commotion, it might have been thought that the Democrats had somehow betrayed the Left Blogosphereians.

Yet the angel of the Lord spake to his people in this wise: "Lo, verily, the Left Blogospherians were not subject to showers of slings and arrows, the wrath of the Right, that is launched against the Democrats when they are seen to betray the will of the Lord to make war against the heathens. For behold, in their girth and magnificence, their splendor and their affect, Democrats make fine targets.

Th angel continued: "Whereas the Left Blogospherians were pale and gaunt and gray, no fit target for the Armies Of The Lord. Indeed, only fit for O'Reilly, the least of the Lord's minions on Earth."

Whereupon the Left Blogospherians fell into fits of self- and mutual recriminations, and, in the fullness of time, they became so agitated that they turned themselves into buckets of butter.

And Lil Black Sambo, and his family, ate pancakes happily ever after...
(Cross-posted at MyLeftWing)

WASF, Installment the Next: Health Care For Kids

I will bet real money that you didn't know that the Dem-sponsored expansion of the SCHIP program for covering uninsured children was being financed, in no small part, by reductions in benefits available and paid to poor Seniors.

I learned this from Heather Wilson's (R. NM1) newsletter. John Dingell (D, MI) calls the reductions to Seniors an "acceptable price."

Of course, it's a stunning example of the logic of the false choice. There is no reason that there shouldn't be enough for both programs.

Well, there's that unpleasantness (originally typed "unpeasantness") in and around the Persian Gulf that's spilling 12 BILLION dollars a WEEK, and the blood of countless innocent victims, into the sands of Iraq.

But what of it? Surely there's only a spurious connection, at best...

WASF, Installment the Next: Woodsmoke

http://www.ashrafdehghani.com/literature/forest_fire.gif

Out here in New Mexico, one of the memorable sensory experiences is the smell of pinon woodsmoke on the winter breeze.
I hope the rest o'y'all like it too.
Cuz there's gonna be a LOT of it around for the next, oh, i dunno, 50-80 years, while the permafrost melts and all that peat chars under the flames of the burning boreal forest, as "civilization's" final throes exhaust the planet's last available resources, and the global crisis explodes in orders of magnitude with the addition of all that additional smoke and gas.

It'll be not unlike a couple of volcanoes erupting simultaneously over the North Pole. There might be an ice-age.

Humanity may have avoided nuclear winter, only to succumb to the older, more primitive, internal combustion model.

Or is this really the developing plot of the sci-fi novel of the future: of how the megalomaniac, space-faring humans now star-flung, during the Great Climate Crisis, pared their race down to the minimal number of the best and brightest, who lived through the mis-application of technology, and the tragedy it spawned, which their experience taught them thenceforth to avoid?
They then escape Earth, which they leave behind with no more affection than for the rusted-out hulk of an abandoned used car, and fan out through the galaxy like a cancer, carrying 'civilization' to the heathens: nobly bearing Humanity's Burden to the stars?
Hallelujah! Halleluljah! Halle-fucking--Luljah!

Rovemort: Quite Possibly Jason Alexander's Best Work Ever

Alternet's got the new vid from Campaign For America's Future.
It's very good; view it here.

Congress Is Constitutionally REQUIRED To Investigate Executive Mal- & Misfeasance

They seem to think the matter is optional or voluntary.
It isn't.
It is OBLIGATORY.

Truthout's Executive Director Marc Ash writes:

"We are not a nation of laws, if law cannot be enforced at the highest levels of our government. It's that simple.

Noting the Constitution assigns both the right and the obligation to Congress to intercede when the executive branch violates the law is one thing, asking Congress to actually do it, is apparently, quite another. While it is agonizingly obvious the time has more than arrived for Congress to do what the Constitution mandates, namely rein in a rogue president, such action would be extraordinary nonetheless.

Mounting a serious legal challenge to the executive branch is a daunting task for Congress under any circumstances. However, as the breadth and scope of this White House's transgressions are totally unprecedented, so too is the challenge Congress faces. Never in its history has America been confronted with an executive branch so determined to break every law designed to regulate its conduct."

However, pigs will fucking fly, and the Rio Grande will reverse its course before the cowardly, feckless, gutless, useless, worthless fucks in the Democratic party's so-called 'leadership' do anything about it...

What Naomi Wolf Sez!

There is no time to waste. We have to get it -- in a hurry -- that the assaults we are witnessing are unprecedented (by the Busheviks on the Constitution) and demand unprecedented responses from us.

There have been times of state repression in our nation before now; as others such as Joe Conason, author of It Can Happen Here, and Bruce Fein, a founder of the American Freedom Agenda, have pointed out, `the pendulum' has swung to extremes before now: President Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in some areas during the civil war -- but it was restored after the war came to an end. 120,000 Japanese American citizens were interned in detention camps (the fear was that they would engage in `espionage' and `sabotage') during World War Two -- and when that hysteria subsided, the camps were closed and these innocent Americans released.

Both writers note that previous eras of repression had endpoints: the wars ended, the threat subsided -- but the War on Terror is defined as open-ended in time and in space: there will never be a day of victory, and the whole world is a battlefield. So we can't count on the pendulum to swing back as it always has -- that is, not without a citizen uprising in defense of liberty.

What Caused The Bridge Collapse?

20 years of cuts:
20 years of tax cuts.
20 years of corner cuts.

I wonder if the Bush-voting Puke in the new Mercedes at the bottom of the Mississippi tonight still thinks those tax cuts, and the subsequent cuts in maintenance budgets, were such a really good idea? He can discuss it with the fish I guess.

By Jeff Wheeler, The Star Tribune via AP

WHo Would EVER Have Imagined Something Like This Could Happen?

US Attorney Became Target After Rebuffing Justice Dept. Demand For Leniency For Important Corporate Contributor

Amy Goldstein and Carrie Johnson report for The Washington Post that US attorney John L. Brownlee has testified he received a call from Michael J. Elston, then chief of staff to the deputy attorney general, the night before a guilty plea was to be secured from (Purdue Pharma) the manufacturer of an addictive painkiller, OxyContin. Elston, a Justice aide involved in the removal of nine US attorneys, called Brownlee at the request of an OxyContin executive urging him to slow down the prosecution. Brownlee went on to settle the case regardless, and eight days later, his name appeared on a list of attorneys suggested to be fired.

I know this come as a shock. My faith in my Government suffered a serious blow.
Btw: Had YOU ever heard of Purdue Pharma before today?

(Via TruthOut dot Org)