New Questions for Christians

I posted some new questions for Christians, but everyone is invited to answer, be they Christian, Jew, or miscellaneous.

"Hindu. There are 700,000 million of us."--Apu Nahasapitapetalan, The Simpsons

The new questions are in the realm of separation of Church and State, and the possible overturn of the Establishment Clause, leading to the establishment of state religions.

"We the people of the great Mormon state of Utah."

Oh, wait. Bad example.

"We the people of the Baptist state of Alabama..."

I was thinking about this today, while the Bush administration was attacking the character of anyone who dared question their precious little war, because the only way I could see that anyone would want to keep fighting this war is to increase the Rapture Index. And, of course, while they're waiting for Armageddon, they want to force everyone to pray and worship like them, or at least belittle and abuse anyone who doesn't.

And if Alito gets confirmed, you can bet we'll be seeing the Methodist State of Texas real soon, because a majority of the court will, for the first time, think that the establishment clause applies only to the Federal government, not the states, thereby freeing state goverments to establish official religions if they want.

"Isn't that special?" -- Church Lady, SNL

Bush lies by omission - fun with quoting Democrats

Some very clever research went into the Rude Pundit's post exposing Bush's fun with taking Democratic quotes out of context: Where Did the President Get Those Democratic Quotes?

Let's be a little bit wonky today: Yesterday, in another one of his pathetic little whines about critics of the Iraq war, George Bush, making a not-unlike-Nixon trip to Asia, stopped in Alaska to say: "Let me give you some quotes from three senior Democrat leaders: First, and I quote, 'There is unmistakable evidence that Saddam Hussein is working aggressively to develop nuclear weapons.' Another senior Democrat leader said, 'The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as Saddam Hussein is in power.' Here's another quote from a senior Democrat leader: 'Saddam Hussein, in effect, has thumbed his nose at the world community. And I think the President is approaching this in the right fashion.' They spoke the truth then, and they're speaking politics now."

Since Bush dared not speak the names of the Democrats in question or offer any context for their quotes, hey, why not do some good bloggy work here?

Go read the actual quotes Bush took those little clips from. Then ask yourself, is this a man who is honest and trustworthy? Is this the best the Bushies can do? Are they auditioning for jobs in newspaper movie review sections? Maybe they've been wishing they could write more like Maureen Dowd, who is a master at using elipses...

Or, maybe, with only Mommy, Laura, Karen, and Condi allowed in the Oval Office now, they're running without Karl, so the attacks on Democrats are becoming more, uh, nuanced?

Bush ass-grabbing with Saudi Royals endangers US

Well, Bandar Bush is at it again: Saudis getting waiver for US border security program.

One Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent at Dulles International Airport said he was recently told to waive the US-VISIT requirement for about 70 people arriving from Saudi Arabia who were affiliated with the Saudi royal family.

I'd sure like to hear some of you Arab hating Republicans explain this red carpet treatment for the country that supplied 15 of the 19 hijackers on 9-11... I know all you rabid wing nuts trashed Michael Moore for addressing the Bush-Saudi oil-soaked orgy of money and weapons, but I'd really like to know what you think of letting them in the country without having to go through the US-VISIT requirement that Bush said is going to protect us from the evildoers.

But you won't. You've all crawled back under the rocks Bush let you out from under. Right now, Bush's approval numbers are roughly equal to the number of you who think Adam and Eve road dinosaurs to church (thank you Amy Poehler for the best laugh I've had in years). And the literate ones of that number are just too scared to even argue for this pitiful little coke-head momma's boy you thought would be the greatest president ever. Now, he's making Richard Nixon look good. As Hunter S. Thompson said, "To say that this goofy child president is looking more and more like Richard Nixon in the summer of 1974 would be a flagrant insult to Nixon."

Did Cheney Know Plame Was Undercover?

David Corn has an interesting question I'd like to hear some wing nuts answer: Did Cheney Know Plame Was Undercover? If he didn't, then he's not as great at his job as he likes everyone to think. The Libby indictment tells us that Cheney found out from the CIA that Plame worked in the Counterproliferation Division. Are all you right wingers going to honestly tell me that Dick "Go Fuck Yourself" Cheney didn't know that she was covert? Puleeeeze....

He knew. No doubt about it. He may be a vicious thug, but he's no dumbass. That means he told Libby she was covert.

...on July 12, 2003--six days after Wilson published his op-ed--Libby apparently discussed with Cheney what he should say to reporters, particularly Matt Cooper, about the Wilson imbroglio. The indictment does not disclose what Cheney said to Libby at this point. But the next day, Libby confirmed for Cooper that Wilson's wife worked at the CIA.

Hmmmm... OK, wingers, explain that one.

I'll help you out. Dick Cheney told Scooter Libby to attack Joe Wilson by telling reporters that his wife worked for the CIA. There's a word for that: treason. Those of us who didn't shove our heads up our asses after 9/11 know what went on. And we know that these people don't really give a shit about National Security. They care about their narrow, neo-con agenda for spreading the military industrial complex into the energy and weapons centers of the whole damn world. And if someone like Joe Wilson dared get in their way, they were going to do everything they could to seriously fuck with him.

Well, payback's a bitch, motherfuckers. See you in court.

Another Fascist Appointment...

Yup. GW appointed another Motherfucker to the Supreme Court. Strip search your wife and 10 year old girl, even if they're not on the warrant? Why not? Sell machine guns in America? Hell yeah! Fire people with AIDS for, well, for having AIDS. Shit howdy! Force abused wives to tell their husbands they want an abortion? Better duck fast, honey.

I got a nice e-mail from a libertarian this morning. I'll post the conversation here if he'll OK it. I'm hoping to convince him that the Republican party has become the opposite of libertarians: fascists. Thank you, Dumbya, you fascist fuck, for making my argument that much easier today.

To find out if you're a fascist fuck, take the test at the political compass. If either of your numbers come out negative, you should be voting for Democrats. And while you're there, check out how close GW Bush and A. Hitler are on the chart. But, hey, I agree with Bill Maher. We should stop comparing Bush and Hitler. Hitler was a decorated war veteran who saw front line combat.

Expose the Obscenity

MaryScott, I have an idea for exposing the horrible result of our invasion of Iraq. I've been thinking about your recent diary about the obscenity of child casualties in Iraq.

I remember back before the election, someone here at the KOS encouraged Kossacks to go vote things up or down at Yahoo news. Using my Yahoo username(s), I often vote stories and photos up or down on the Yahoo Recommended Stories Page, which now has a Google PageRank of 8 (same as the KOS). This means that the Yahoo Recommended Stories page has a lot of incoming links, and, therefore, a lot of traffic. Because that page is reader generated, we can actually have an impact there.

For me, voting stories up or down at Yahoo has become a replacement (my family would say obsession), that replaced video games. I can't help it. I get so fucking angry about Bush that I have to do something to make people actually see the truth.

SHOW IT. Goddamn you sonofabitches, it will NEVER STOP until you start SHOWING IT. And yeah, maybe showing it won't make it stop... and then again, maybe it motherfucking WILL, you cowards.

I agree, MaryScott. That's why we should reward Yahoo for posting those pictures: click this heart-wrenching picture. Vote 5 on it (you'll need all your Yahoo usernames and passwords). I often manage to work pictures like this into the top twenty (it only takes ten votes to get listed), but they get pushed right off. People just don't like to be reminded of what these murderous thugs got us into over there. People don't want to face the fact that the neo-con cabal wants permanent war with Eurasia, er, the terrorists, and that the result of that war is thousands of casualties of the young, innocent type, like this young girl.

If the MSM won't help us, we'll have to do it ourselves. Yahoo news has a great section of Iraq pictures, constantly updated. You can rank the pictures, e-mail them (which also gets them ranked on the most e-mailed page), or, as I have done, print them, keep some in your car, and stick them on the windshields of Bush-Cheney stickered cars.

Careful on the last one. I've been assaulted. Of course, I live in a very Republican suburb of LA, and I drive around in this:

Please help. Yahoo News is a great resource that has lots of different news and wire services available, including the AFP. Even if you just spend a few minutes a day there, voting war pictures above anorexic models and panty shots of teenage tennis players, you'll be helping to keep this war in the minds of the people who go there to read news.

Demographics have shown that younger people tend to get their news from on-line sources and Jon Stewart. Yahoo is constantly listed as a high-ranking on-line source. The added advantage of this tactic is that we reach young people, the key demographic to future political success.

Cross-posted at the Daily KOS and My Left Wing.

Treason in the White House

As Josh Marshall points out over at TPM, the indictment gives us a very strong case that Cheney and Libby both knew, on or about June 12, 2003, that Valerie Plame worked in the Counter Proliferation division of the CIA.

Go to page 5 of the indictment. Top of the page, item #9.

On or about June 12, 2003, LIBBY was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson's wife worked at the Central Intelligence Agency in the Counterproliferation Divison. LIBBY understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA.

This is a crucial piece of information. The Counterproliferation Division (CPD) is part of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, i.e., not Directorate of Intelligence, the branch of the CIA where 'analysts' come from, but where the spies come from.

Libby's a long time national security hand. He knows exactly what CPD is and where it is. So does Cheney. They both knew. It's right there in the indictment.

This is very important, since the wingers and their lawyers are going to argue that they didn't know she was covert. Fitzgerald is going to go after more people than Libby, and this key bit of info is probably a good way to tell what and who.

But this points to a much more general issue that I've been experiencing first hand with wingers lately. When they know they've lost an argument, as Cheney and Libby certainly knew they had regarding the Niger Uranium, they attack the person they're arguing with in the most vile and viscious way they can. They attack relatives. They attack wives. They attack anyone they can in order to draw attention away from the actual argument.

So, we can conclude that they knew they were screwed, and their only chance at getting everyone to look at something other than the fact that they lied about Iraq wanting uranium from Niger was to attack Wilson's credibility by saying, perhaps also a lie, that his wife suggested him for the job. That brings up two questions: a) what the hell difference does it make who sent him?, and b) what about Wilson's charge that they were lying about Saddam trying to purchase yellowcake? Through their despicable attack-the-accuser tactics, the bigger question is being lost. Why couldn't they prove that Wilson was wrong? Why did they have to attack him and out his wife? Why have they still not addressed that issue, outside of Bush admitting that he shouldn't have put those 16 words in the State of the Union.

Let's face it. Bush admitted that those words, that Iraq sought uranium from Africa (said in the scariest way he could say it), should NOT have been in the SOTU address. He admitted they were wrong. So what's the point of outing Valerie Plame other than retribution for Wilson proving they were lying?

These, like all right wingers, are viscious thugs. They're in such a state of denial, that I'd be suprised if they weren't committing more crimes as they try to wiggle their way out of all this. They will, most certainly, attack everyone they can. Like a viscious animal, they are even more dangerous when cornered.

And they are certainly cornered now.

Enough already with calling Iraq a mistake

The Iraq war was treason. Stop calling it a mistake. Meteor Blades of the Daily KOS hits the nail, not the thumb, with this one:

A mistake is when you hammer your thumb instead of the nail. A mistake is when you choose c) instead of d) on the SAT. A mistake is when you put too much garlic in the minestrone. Invading Iraq was no damned mistake. And calling it a mistake is more than a mere slip of the tongue. It sets a precedent. Pretty soon, everybody will be saying invading Iraq was a mistake. And in 20 years, your grandkids will be studying out of textbooks that call it a mistake.

Instead of calling it what it really was. Sedition.

Send this one to your lists. Tape it on cars with Bush stickers. Nail it to your Church door (even if you're not Lutheran). Staple it to your Bush voting neighbors head, er, door. Read it out loud at the City Council meeting. Slip it into Bush-loving books at your library. Send it in to your newspaper. Or, just send it out to your e-mail lists.

The Iraq war is Bush treason.

Iraq was not a threat. The Bush Administration systematically and premeditatively lied about that fact. That is fraud. That is treason. That is sedition.

But it's worse. The real threat is getting worse because of the Iraq war. There was a reason we left a strong-armed dictator in highly controlled "charge" of that country. It's a hellacious place to try to control.

And even the real threat we face, Al Qaeda, gets blown out of proportion. These third world thugs aren't a threat to our freedom. Your sons and daughters aren't over there protecting my rights. They're over there doing the bidding of some coalition of theocratic-petro-plutarchs. And they're creating more terrorists who are a threat to our lives, but not to our way of life. The only power on this planet capable of ruining our way of life now is the Republican party.

Through their court stuffing, Patriot Act, fear mongering power grabs, they are turing this great country into a police state run by theocratic rich people who are going to force us all to live the way they say is right. Remember that James Dobson, who has strong ties to Republican leaders, believes gays should be given the death penalty just because they're gay. But more practically, almost the entire Republican party believes that if you can't pay for your own health insurance, you and your family should just die.

How long before James Dobson thinks YOU should be killed? How long before he becomes President? How many lives from these Christo fascists will the voters believe? And even if we don't believe them, how many pre-programmed voting machines will we let them put in swing states? How long will we allow Bill Kristol and Fox News to say that people without health insurance are just lazy welfare queens who don't want to work for a living? Don't those of you who work, but still can't afford health care or a house or a car or even a pot to piss in, don't you get ANGRY about this? If not, WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?

Bush and his neo-con cabal committed TREASON. Plain and simple. Where are the prosecutors? Perhaps more importantly, where are the Republicans willing to save their party from this treacherous path they're protecting? And perhaps most importantly, where is the leader of the opposition party?

"...if there is going to be an indictment that says something happened, that it is an indictment on a crime and not some perjury technicality where they couldn't indict on the crime and so they go to something just to show that their two years of investigation was not a waste of time and taxpayer dollars." -- Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, 10-23-05

"I do not hold the view of our Constitution that there must be an actual, indictable crime in order for an act of a public officer to be impeachable. It is clear to this Senator that there are, indeed, circumstances, short of a felony criminal offense, that would justify the removal of a public officer from office, including the President of the United States. Manifest injury to the Office of the President, to our Nation and to the American people and gross abuse of trust and of public office clearly can reach the level of intensity that would justify the impeachment and removal of a leader." -- Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas, 2-17-99

"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use them against our friends, against our allies and against us."--Vice President Dick Cheney

When he said that, the CIA was trying to tell him there was doubt. That makes Dick Cheney a treasonous liar. That means that he ignored evidence contrary to what he already thought, as if he could know more about Iraq's weapons than the CIA or Scott Ritter.

Mrs. Alan Greenspan is a treasonous liar

Yup. Andrea Mitchell, aka Mrs. Alan Greenspan, who still makes me laugh with her serious journalist act, is still lying to America in her obvious attempt to protect Vice President Vader, er, Cheney. TPM Cafe's Larry Johnson has a great pice on Andrea Mitchell's lies today, worth reading, because she is still trying to protect the liar Dick (I'm meeting you tonight for the first time Senator Edwards, and we know exactly where the WMD are) Cheney by calling Joseph Wilson a liar. And that really pisses me off, because Joe Wilson is a great American who was trying to make sure that this government told the truth, and learned the truth, before killing thousands upon thousands of people over a fantasy more fantastic than the tooth fairy.

Oyster Shots

Ever try one? It's a little bloody mary with an oyster in it. My wife and I have one every time a Republican gets indicted. Don't bother calling me tomorrow. If Fitzgerald gets busy in the morning, I'll be out of it by noon.

I'm a Law and Order fan. No, I'm not a closet Rethuglican who thinks the best thing for a guy busted with a little weed is to go to murder and mayhem school (prison). I'm actually for the legalization of drugs, like this former police chief.

I'm a fan of TV's Law and Order, and all of it's spin-offs, all season-passed on our Tivo. I've seen so many Law and Orders that I can sometimes quote case law used on the show.

I'm not a lawyer. I don't play one on TV. I can't stand Fred Thompson. But, I watch anyway.

I've learned that a good prosecutor could indict a ham sandwich, but it has to have a little meat on it. Fitzgerald has followed all the rabbit holes he can before the grand jury, and I bet we're going to have to wait until some people are actually frog-marched before the plot twists untangle themselves.

By then, Bush will probably just pardon these treasonous theocratic plutocrats. Maybe we should have a martini for every pardon? Stirred.

Karen Hughes is a fucking idiot...

"Many people around the world do not understand the important role that faith plays in Americans' lives," she said. When an Egyptian opposition leader inquired why Mr Bush mentions God in his speeches, Hughes asked him whether he was aware that "previous American presidents have also cited God, and that our constitution cites 'one nation under God'."

Furthermore, Karen Hughes is actually helping Bin Laden. Sidney Blumenthal's article in the guardian points out that religion is a secondary consideration for the terrorists. Their biggest driving force (and recruiting force) is a foreign army on their holy lands. From Mecca to Karbala, nothing pisses Muslims off more than having foreigners in their land. The fact that those foreigners have a different religion is just an added bonus. And when you start waving around the fact that our "president" is a ferverent believer in a God different than theirs, well, that only helps them.

Futhermore, there is no mention of "one nation under God" in our constitution. Maybe we could get a smart Muslim woman to try to improve our image over there. Sending an idiot Christian woman who supports having our troops stationed over there might not be the best thing for our "image" right now.

ASSHOLE

The Rude Pundit: "Totally Black" in New Orleans

"...the Bush adminstration has broken the basic social contract in New Orleans, the one that goes all the way back to Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, the one that says we adhere to laws because you agree to protect us, and thus the city and its citizens have returned to the state of nature, which is to survive, motherfuckers, just survive."

When you break the basic social contract, isn't that treason? Or is it something much worse: something so vile and cruel that one can only describe it as the viscious fire-cracker pranks from the adult-stage spoiled rich kid who used to torture small animals?

Hurricane Damage Will Be Worse, thanks to Bush

Yup. Bush has cut the budget for New Orleans' hurricane and flood protection efforts every year that he's been in office.

In 2001, the New Orleans district spent $147 million on construction projects. When fiscal year 2005 wraps up Sept. 30, the Corps expects to have spent $82 million, a 44.2 percent reduction from 2001 expenditures.

Shameful. But, hey, sorry all you liberal Orleaners. The rest of your state voted for him.

Oh, and where's the Louisianna National Guard? Bush will never be able to wash the blood off his hands.

Quotes from when Clinton committed troops to Bosnia:

"You can support the troops but not the president."
--Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)

"Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years."
--Joe Scarborough (R-FL)

"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?"
--Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99

"[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy."
--Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)

"American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy."
--Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)

"If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy."
--Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W Bush

"I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning . . I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area."
--Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)

"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today"
--Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)

"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
--Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)

I've added new Bush quotes to my Bush quote page, including this progression of gems on leaking confidential information about a covert CIA operative:

"Any sources and methods of intelligence will remain guarded in secret. My administration will not talk about how we gather intelligence, if we gather intelligence, and what the intelligence says. That's for the protection of the American people." — 9/13/01

"We can't have leaks of classified information. It's not in our nation's interest." — 10/9/01

"Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. And this investigation is a good thing." — 10/7/03

"I don't know whether we are going to find out the senior administration official." — 10/8/03

"If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration." — 7/18/05

Lie:

And I must say from a common sense standpoint, driving back and forth to work to the CIA headquarters, I don't know if that really qualifies as being, you know, covert.

- Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS), on CNN Late Edition, 7/24/05

Truth:

There are thousands of undercover CIA employees who drive through the three gates at CIA Headquarters in McLean, Virginia everyday.

- Former CIA intelligence official Larry Johnson, at TPM Cafe, 7/24/05

Thanks to DavidNYC at the KOS for his post about debunking Republican lies.

Guest writer explores the psychiatric nature of Arab Assassins

This is from my union brother Jeff.

Back in the '20's and '30's, Pavlov tortured and maimed dogs to try and prove that they could be conditioned to salivate when he rang a bell. "Uncle Joe" Stalin asked Pavlov to write down everything he had learned with an eye to how it could be used on humans. Thus was born "Russian brain-washing".

The West, in the traditional tit-for-tat vein, the CIA developed Cointelpro, or counter intelligence program some time after WW II. It was a vast black program which further developed "brainwashing" techniques by the use of drugs and deep sleep drug induced comas. People were placed in comas for months at a time and regularly electro-shocked. Canadian and American psychiatrists collaborated in this latter day stepped up version of Pavlovian and dehumanizing and very heartless and cruel program.

Osama's mentor, Ayman al-Zawarhi, an Egyptian rich kid and medical student was involved in the assassination of Abdul Nasser. He got caught and spent seven years in an Egyptian prison. Zawarhi was subjected to cointelpro techniques. He learned to despise America and finally got some measure of revenge on America on 9/11. Osama was a perfect dupe and Zawarhi, being a medical doctor made sure Osama received lots of opiates and heroin and amphetamines and electro shock and cointelpro behavior modification techniques.

Regular folk wonder how anyone could blow themselves up and murder civilians in the process. Well, in addition to being carefully selected beforehand, Suicide bombers are normally very heavily doped up on amphetamines and opiates.

The Arab culture is steeped in the lore of the "assassin". There were "Thugee" cults in India, but the Assassin is the Arab version. The word comes from "user of hashish". An unwitting and somewhat impressionable and imbecilic young man would be selected by agents working for Hashshashin, founder of Serif Arabi Cult of assassins.

This young goober would be slipped a mickey of hashish. He would pass out and be kidnapped and when he woke up, he would be in a harem tent and would be told he was in heaven. A couple of days would pass and this goof-ball would have enjoyed himself immensely. Then his mentor would say that he had been brought to heaven prematurely and that Allah needed just one more small task performed: "Kill so-and-so. And upon your success, you will at once be whisked back up to heaven".

The guy would be slipped another overdose of hashish and pass out and then be dumped back out on the street. The guy would be very highly motivated to kill Sultan so-and-so and with a fervent frenzy, could very well succeed!

Modern day al Qaeda techniques have this tradition. That is why their suicide bombers are so fervent and so dedicated. Intelligent or well schooled or educated or not; they are more or less suggestible to begin with. That is the primary criterion that the suicide bomber scouts look for
-- gullibility.

Add to this months of "brainwashing" and heavy doses of amphetamines and opiates and hallucinogens and voila! Suicide bombers made to order by the gross.

My point is that our psychiatric programs, the misguided and violently misanthropic programs that they are, were exported by the CIA and probably the NSA to various operatives in the field. And the Arab, already familiar with the history of the Assassins readily understood and embraced and combined cointelpro methods with what he knew of his history; the assassins. And thus he has really taken the West by the scrotum.

It is a tragic dilemma and there is no one-shot-cure. Using psychiatric techniques such as post-cointelpro dehumanizing and torture methods at places like Abu-Ghraib are kerosene thrown on the fire.

Jeff

The Real Conspiracy Theories
In Response to New 9-11 Conspiracy Theories

I only worry that by buying into this the Bushies can make us out to look like freakish UFO types.

At the very least, the Bushies IGNORED terrorism. The neo-cons said, in a PNAC report from the late 80's that they needed a "Pearl Harbor type event" in order to speed up American military intervention in the middle east, specifically, Iraq. Remember, these are the guys who wanted Bush Sr. to go all the way to Baghdad.

So, they just did nothing on terror. Richard Clarke was running around with his "hair on fire" trying to get someone in the White House to talk about terrorism and Al Qaeda (which Clinton and Gore had been very hawkish on), but they kept blowing him off.

So, hey, they got what they needed. Coincidence? Probably not? But an active effort from the upper echelons of the White House. I doubt it. After seeing the way they've handled everything else, I don't think they're good enough to pull something like that off.

What they are good at is getting the red-neck agenda front and center, so people won't look at the big picture. They get middle America voting on gay marriage, abortion, Terry Schiavo laws, and then scare the living shit out of them with their "we're strong on terror" lies - because they are actually the opposite. Terror helps them. Terror is the new cold war, vague and threatening, to justify new Viet Nams with new domino theories and new Gulfs of Tonkin.

But were more than just the 19 mostly Saudi hijackers involved? Most definitely. Could there have been other people in high levels of the military (ours or someone else's) actually helping the terrorists? Maybe. Did Bush have something to do with it? Hell, I doubt if he could tie his shoes without all the anti-depressants they're feeding him.

Al-Qaeda has changed; Bush strategy also needs to shift

For those who say Democrats offer no plan of their own, I suggest you follow the link above to a great article by General Wes Clark.

Protect your country from the American Taliban

While the 101st fighting keyboardists who love this war still refuse to sign up to fight it, a real threat to this nation's security has attacked us from the White House. Valerie Plame was an undercover CIA agent working on ACTUAL WMD PROLIFERATION. She has spent years setting up the cover operation that allowed her, and her operatives, to find out about old soviet nukes, where they were going, and who was trying to get them.

But this petty White House, while trying to justify their geo-political obsession with Iraq, decided to blow her cover, and the cover of all the people working for her, over some vendetta against her Republican husband, Joseph Wilson, who honestly and openly doubted Bush claims (and forged papers from someone) that claimed Saddam was trying to buy yellowcake from Niger. Furthermore, Plame's outfit had established covert ties into the Saudi Royal Family (long time Bush family friends and financiers) and their state run oil company, ARAMCO. All of the decades of work on WMD and ARAMCO are now worthless, the lives of the many operatives have been put at risk, and the US has lost a great source of intelligence into the ACTUAL terrorists trying to threaten us.

At the same time, it seems, the Plame affair prosecutor, Fitzgerald, seems to have stumbled into another National Security breach, perhaps originating in Dick Cheney's office, regarding the fact that someone in the White House gave classified information to Chalabi, the lying Iraqi exile who the administration loved for his bullshit "facts" about Iraqi WMD. This, or these, White House officials told Chalabi that we had broken Iranian codes. Chalabi then told the Iranians, who changed them. This is a violation of the Espionage Act of 1917, and is punishable by death.

So, while right wing nuts and pseudo moderates rant and rave about taking away your privacy, in the form of their ant-choice, anti-gay-marriage, American Taliban fundamentalism, their beloved hero, GW Bush, is harboring felons in his White House, the very one he and Dick Cheney, in 2000, promised to restore honor and integrity to. These felons have sold out American security for some neo-con dream of Middle East democracy and Israeli dominance of the region. They have made us less safe by spending hundreds of billions of dollars on some insanely illogical "fly-paper strategy" in order to "fight terrorists there instead of here," instead of spending that money on protecting our borders, our ports, our chemical and nuclear plants, and our transportation systems. They have cut money from first responders all over the country, and they lie about that, and then they cut funding for the very veterans they praise as having answered the highest calling (which very few of them did).

And now, as the Turd-Blossom shit has hit the fan, the White House is "restoring honor and integrity to the White House" in a very strange way. In fact, it's very similar to parsing what the definition of is is. They are lying. When they're caught in a lie, the lie that they never lied.

Here's what White House press secretary Scott McClellan had to say about the Valerie Plame felonies two years ago:

"No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the President of the United States. If someone leaked classified information, the President wants to know. If someone in this administration leaked classified information, they will no longer be a part of this administration, because that's not the way this White House operates."

Today, it was "Karl who?"

While Rove keeps on weaseling out of the facts, with beyond Clintonian statements like, "I didn't say her name," (no, Karl, you just said Joseph Wilson's wife), and "I didn't tell any reporter that she worked for the CIA," (no, Karl, you said the agency), the right-wingers in this country are going to continue to try to get swing state voters to believe that liberals are going to force you to be gay, force your children to become atheists, force you to give away your guns, force you to die if you don't want to, force you to have abortions, and force you to drive small cars with good gas mileage. These kind of bullshit lies are all they have left, because they've been exposed for what they really are: fascists.

They are the ones who want to restrict liberty in this country. They are the ones who passed the Patriot Act. They are the ones who lied to get us into a war to further the mad privatization schemes on a global scale. They are the ones who want to stop stem cell research because they think zygotes are people. They are the ones who want to stop talking to kids about birth control and safe sex. They are the ones who lie about the science behind global warming, health, pollution, grazing, wetlands, and many more important facts Americans need to protect our liberty from terrorists, whether they be Islamists, Timothy McVeighs, or corporate robber barons. They are the ones who put lobbyists in regulatory positions. They are the ones taking away your hunting and fishing lands for oil and gas wells.

Clear headed people who actually bother to read the news and form their own opinions, as opposed to letting Rupert Murdoch think for them, should look around and realize that even many conservatives are finding the Bush Misadministration too much to stomach. In 2006, the Democratic Party will be running someone in almost every single congressional district. In many of the conservative districts, they will be running pro-gun, pro-liberty candidates who are conservative and libertarian in many ways, but who will work to not only stop the bleeding of lives, limbs, and tax-payer money in Bush's global game, but who will vote to impeach this treasonous cabal, and hopefully bring honor and integrity back to the White House for real.

I urge you all to vote for the Democrat running for congress in your district. You don't have to join the military to protect your country. Protect your country by giving money to the party that will stop these fanatics. Protect your country by volunteering to help the Democrat in your district. Protect your country by putting a sticker on your car or a sign in your yard. Start now and don't stop until November 2006.

Find out more at the DNC web site.

Thank you.
Scott Supak
http://supak.com

Representative John Conyers should be the House Minority leader. He regularly posts brilliant entries in his blog, at the Huffington Post, and the Daily Kos. Check out this gem from today.

On Oct. 10, 2003, White House press secretary Scott McClellan was asked whether Rove; Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; or National Security Council official Elliott Abrams had told any reporter that Plame was a covert CIA agent. ‘I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this,’ McClellan said. ‘And that's where it stands.’ Reporters pressed McClellan to clarify that statement but he held to the words in his first answer until one reporter asked, ‘They were not involved in what?’ To which he replied, ‘The leaking of classified information.’ In the 90’s, there was a media uproar when literally accurate, but misleading, statements were made about a private sexual affair. Today, when such statements are made out a life and death matter -- the decision to go to war -- for a Nixonian purpose -- to smear truth-telling critics -- there is barely a peep from the press corps. In the days since Rove’s role became public, the White House press corps has yet to pose a question to the White House press secretary about it. Not a word about the disgusting hypocrisy of an Administration that came to office promising to “change the tone” in Washington now attacking a critic through his spouse.

Why is he the only Democrat on this talking point today? If every Dem. in the country was on this point all day, then maybe the White House press corps would pose a question to Puffy McMoon Face, er, the Press secretary, about it it.

But this story goes way beyond hypocrisy. This is treason of the highest kind. One very intelligent poster at the dKOS has suggested that the Plame prosecutor Fitzgerald has stumbled into some very serious breaches of national security. Specifically, it seems Fitzgerald may have discovered who leaked information to Chalabi that we had broken Iran's codes, information Chalabi apparently passed to Iran.

If true, that would be a violation of the 1917 Espionage Act, punishable by death.

It's times like these that I lament being against the death penalty.

Fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here

On this horrific day of London terrorism, I would like to hear one Bush voter step forward with a defense of the "we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here" theory of global anti-terror.

Doesn't seem to have worked for the British. And a majority of their public has always been against the Iraq war.

How many improvements to homeland security could we have made with the $200 BILLION spent SO FAR in Iraq? How many cops and firemen could we have hired? How many improvements could we have made to first responder infrastructure? How many more containers could we have searched? How many more Arabic speakers could the FBI have hired? How many computer improvements could we have made so law enforcement agencies could better share information on terrorists?

And they have the balls to call me a traitor. They have the balls to say I'm unpatriotic. Patriotism is a lot more than tattered flags on your SUV, a yellow troops ribbon next to your gas cap, or a bunch of fireworks.

The US war with Iran has already begun

Scott Ritter, author of Frontier Justice, proves that the war with Iran is already underway. The neo-cons realize they may only have 3 years of W left, so they're getting busy.

Defense Tech: Pilot Training Time Slashed

OK, any of you lame brain, Bush loving, morally superior fuck heads want to explain this one to me? Because Iraq has so drained the military, the Air Force is cutting back on pilot training time.

"They're not cutting fat, they're cutting to the bone," [Retired Gen. Hal Hornburg, former Air Combat Command commander] Hornburg said, noting the Pentagon has taken large sums of money away from the Air Force to pay for the Army in Iraq.

And we attacked Iraq why? I mean, screw all the lies and distractions, like WMD and ties to Al Qaeda, which are impeachable enough. What's the reason Bush gives NOW for being in Iraq? Spreading Democracy? We are shelling out billions and leaving ourselves poorly protected at home because Bush thought we should spread Democracy to a region where Bush's best friends next door (Saudi Arabia) are a monarchy that doesn't even want women to drive? That's making us safer? Spending money on a war in Iraq instead on pilots who could shoot down hijacked planes is making us safer. Spending HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS on a war that the new World Bank President, Paul Wolfowitz, said could finance itself is making us more safe than putting hundreds of billions into ports, first responders, chemical factories, and borders would have? Spending hundreds of billions while recruiting drops off and big chunks of the reserve and guard (people who help protect and serve at home, like after attacks or natural disasters) are fighting in Iraq because the army is stretched too thin makes us safer HOW? If we are attacked, where is the National Guard to help keep order and protect us from harm? Over in Iraq with crappy equipment, driving dangerous routes that Halliburton employees make 10 times as much for! I'd like just one of you Bush voting schmucks to tell me how this all makes us safer.

Daily Kos :: Smoking Bullet in the Smoking Gun?

Representative John Conyers is trying to get 100,000 signatures on a letter he is sending to President Bush, urging the administration to explain the Downing Street Memo. Today, new revelations have come from the London Times that the Bush and Blair administrations had greatly increased bombing of Iraq in 2002, in an attempt to goad Saddam into war. So Conyers, and the 88 congresspeople who signed his first letter, are the only elected Representatives in America who give a damn about lies that get us into quagmires for global business domination. Now Conyers is going to send a letter to Rumsfeld about these new revelations from, of course, the British Press. Apparently, the Bushies haven't figured out how to scare the British Press into submission yet.

Representative Conyers needs your help. Go to his site and sign the letter. But don't stop there. Write your local newspapers complaining about lack of coverage of the Downing Street Memo. Or check out this site: afterdowningstreet.org. Write letters to the networks, your newspapers, your local television stations, your Senators, your Representative, and anyone else you can think of who might actually care about our troops, instead of just putting a magnet next to their gas tank.

Stuff Keeps Happening

I'm sitting in the backrow of the Mark Taper Forum in downtown Los Angeles, watching my union brothers and sisters load in the new David Hare play about the Bush administration, Stuff Happens. While I wait for the electricians to cut work lights and focus, so I can focus projection, I've been blogging and reading. Check out my Backstage with Supak blog for more on this new, sure-to-be-controversial play. I stumbled upon this, thanks to mrboma's diary at the Daily KOS:

George W. Bush and his gang of neocon warmongers have destroyed America’s reputation. It is likely to stay destroyed, because at this point the only way to restore America’s reputation would be to impeach and convict President Bush for intentionally deceiving Congress and the American people in order to start a war of aggression against a country that posed no threat to the United States.

You know you're way too far right when the Reagan Republicans want to impeach you... If James Dobson can move his pinky and hurt your nuts, you may have too much in his palm, and that's where Bill Frist and his band of Dobsian Crusaders are stuck now, firmly in the hand of the new Jerry Falwells.

In my union newsgroup, my friend Jeff had this to say to this KOS post about recruitment problems:

Not surprising, really. We'll be recruiting 12-year-olds before you know it.

Per this NYT article, the only people who are voluntarily enlisting these days are one's who are at odds with society. Nice, eh? Nobody in their right mind; (and understandably) wants any part of Viet Nam: Act II. It is not a just war. That leaves the loonies. The "Kill 'em all" thugs; the psychos. Wow. This is bad.

I'm gonna miss a lot of things about this country. Too bad it's going down the shitter so fast.

To which I replied:

Well, what do you expect when blood thirsty idiots who lie and cheat take charge because idiot union voters buy their bomb-them-all bullshit?

Quick, one of you assholes down on your knees giving Bush a blowjob, tell me who attacked us on 9-11. Tell me where the Iraqi WMDs are? Tell me why Americans are dying in a country you think we should just turn to glass with nukes?

Yeah, I'm talking to the fascist pigs who refuse to defend the Bush administration any more, like the Jesus freaks who think God actually tells Bush to kill Muslims.

Yeah, I mean all you Bush voting union brothers who are too chicken shit to argue with me anymore, much less sign up for this glorious Holy war you love so much.

I just can't help it. I'm done with trying to get along with these people. No olive branches. We lose more voters by looking spineless than we do if we fire back at these people with better than what they give.

And the really sad part is that, in this country we just freed, our representatives in uniform are fast becoming the whackos. What a great impression these young nut cases must be making! I feel really sorry for the decent human beings in the military who will be screwed by these bad apples as they start to permeate the ranks.

Jim Lampley Gets Down with the Odds that Karl Rove Rigged the 2004 Election

Jim Lampley, yes the sports reporter, is mad as hell and he's not going to take it any more. In his post yesterday in the Huffington Blog, Lampley lambastes the fourth estate for it's collective silence in the Rovian/Machiavellian rigging of election 2004.

We know that professionally conceived samples simply do not yield results which vary six, eight, ten points from eventual data returns, thaty's why there are identifiable margins for error. We know that margins for error are valid, and that results have fallen within the error range for every Presidential election for the past fifty years prior to last fall. NEVER have exit polls varied by beyond-error margins in a single state, not since 1948 when this kind of polling began. In this past election it happened in ten states, all of them swing states, all of them in Bush's favor. Coincidence? Of course not.

Hey, if it takes a sports reporter to show these chicken shit journalists what odds makers understood from the exit polls, then I say "FORE!" Keep swingin' Jim.

BTW: that's twice in the first three days of it's existence that I heard about a Huffington Post post from another news source outside the internet. Nice goin' Arianna.

George Bush's Family Friends and the Dirty Bomb Blackmail

The Huffington Post got off to a bang--excuse the pun--today with an exclusive story about The House of Saud's dangerous self destruction mechanisms designed to force the west to protect their fascist regime and the world's largest supply of oil.

In "EMBARGOED BOOK CLAIMS SAUDI OIL INFRASTRUCTURE RIGGED FOR CATASTROPHIC SELF-DESTRUCTION," Arianna Huffington's new blog/newszine starts off with an exclusive story with mammoth proportions for Bandar Bush and George W. Saud. Since the actual goal of the jihadists is not the overthrow of the US, but the overthrow of the heretic monarchies and secular leaning governments of the middle east, Saudi Arabia, or, more specifically, the Saudi Royal Family, is very nervous.

How nervous? Nervous enough to rig their entire oil infrastructure with various conventional and radiological "dirty" bombs, which, in the event of a jihadist uprising (ironically from the very wassabist cults funded by the Royal Oils) or attack from a neighboring Islamist state, Bandar Bush and his majesty's family could push the button making the world's largest oil supply off limits for thousands of years.

Maybe they'll go for it soon! We'd sure find alternatives to fossil fuels then! Conservation would stop being a personal virtue and would start being the rule. Even Dick Cheney would have to stop using petroleum enimas.

Memo disputes Bush Iraq claims

Bush is a fucking liar. This is just more proof of that, albeit astounding proof from the upper echelons of the poodle Blair government. Why is Knight Ridder the only newswire picking this up? Rep. John Conyers and 88 other congresspeople are sending a letter to Bush about this memo.

Daily Kos :: 88 Representatives Want Answers on Leaked Memo

I first heard about it, of course, from Greg Palast: IMPEACHMENT TIME: "FACTS WERE FIXED.".

The Real Reason for the Rare Bush News Conference

Insurgent Attacks in Baghdad Kill 14 - Yahoo! News: "The Cabinet also signaled another surprising political comeback for Ahmad Chalabi, the one-time Pentagon favorite who later fell from grace over accusations he leaked intelligence to Iran and gave flawed evidence that Saddam Hussein was hoarding weapons of mass destruction. Chalabi, a Shiite, will serve as deputy prime minister and acting oil minister. His nephew, Ali Abdel-Amir Allawi (also the interim Defense Minister), was appointed finance minister."

There were a few stories noting this interesting appointment to Acting Oil Minister and Deputy Prime Minister. But for the most part, the strange occurrence of GW Bush "answering" press questions about a dead Social Security "plan" overshadowed the blatant neo-con payback to this convicted criminal, known liar, and the man most responsible for the crappy intelligence (via curveball) they just had to hear from somebody.

The sad thing is that I can't find anything, not even from the foreign press, about what kind of pressure the neo-cons put on the Iraqi "government" to make this appointment happen. Exactly how are we twisting arms over there? Is the military threatening to leave the Iraqi "troops" alone in some areas if they don't do as we say? Or is it our new, powerful "Embassy" that is exerting some other kind of pressure on the Iraqis? Did anyone ask the President about this last night? Of course not. Every "reporter" in that room realizes if they asked something like that, they wouldn't be invited back into the hand-picked bunch of ass lickers called the White House Press Corp.

What do the Jordanians, who convicted Chalabi of fraud, think of the appointment? What has become of "curveball" the crazy, drunken liar who Chalabi spoon fed to the insatiable neo-con appetite for anything that agreed with their blood-thirsty plans. Will he be appointed a cushy government job next?

This story gets stranger and stranger, and even people like Bill Mahr are starting to buy the neo-con crap about spreading Democracy. The appointment of Chalabi, his nephew, and who knows who else (the google translator doesn't work well enough for me to find that out) to the new Iraqi "Government" should dispel any inklings that this might actually work for the good of the Iraqi people. If they ever actually get back down to the number of annual assassinations that happened during the Hussein years, they'll look around and see their country being run by a bunch of US appointed thugs.

Same as it ever was.

So many Christians, so few lions.

While the right wing fanatics continue their building of an American Evangelical Theocracy, I'd like to point out that they are trying to build something that, when they're done, if they want to be consistent at all, they'll have to bomb.

Ted Nugent suggests we "Remember the Alamo" and forget the 7th amendment

Check out my post at the Daily KOS about Ted Nugent's anti-American rampage at the NRA meeting in Tom DeLay country this past weekend. Scary stuff, with the Motor City Madman, who recently moved to Crawford Texas, recommending instant vigilante death penalties for burglary and being Mexican.

Read My KOS Post about Wes Clark's Survey

And then take the survey. General Wes Clark is going to testify before congress on Wednesday about Iraq and Afghanistan. It should be worth watching. Clark has the kind of intelligence and insight the Bush administration is completely void of. Clark has actually put together international coalitions to win wars against tyrants (with no American lives lost) and has been a patriotic American since George Bush was coked up and defending the skies of Texas from the Viet Cong.

I just hope Wes talks exit strategy. We really need to stop punching this tar baby.

For the inside scoop on what General Clark will say on Wednesday, check out this post from Armando at the Daily KOS. He was in on the conference call this morning.

Response to a supporter of torture.

One of the red-necks in my union's unofficial news group actually had an answer for my forwarding a story about how the higher ups in Iraq OK'd torture.

Commander approved interrogations violating Geneva Conventions

He wrote back "Terrorists violate Geneva Conventions 9/11."

I replied "I thought we were supposed to be better than them. Are you defending torture, [name]? I thought you were ignoring me. Punk." He didn't defend himself, but he didn't like being called a punk. So here's my reply:

That's the nicest thing I could think to call you. You know what the definition of Punk is? Someone who picks on people who don't deserve it. So, if you're advocating torturing Iraqis, who had nothing to do with 9-11, then I'm defining you, not calling you names.

Here's the letter I took time out of my day to write you, because I really worry about people like you and what you are doing to the country I love:

You suggested that torturing Iraqis, many of whom have since proven to be innocent, was justified because the terrorists attacked us.

I just wanted to make sure you know that 16 of the 19 terrorists were Saudi's, you know, like the 160 friends of George Bush who he helped scuttle out of the country on 9-12, without asking any questions. Not a single terrorist was Iraqi. In fact, no Iraqi had anything to do with 9-11. And after lying about it for the entire year up to the war, the Bush administration, especially Dick Cheney, have now taken to lying that they never lied. People have read back their quotes to prove them wrong, and they just sit there and smile.

Are you supporting those lies, [snip]? Where are the WMD, [snip]? Where are the connections to Al Qaeda?

That's funny. Even the Bush liars Administration has said they were wrong. So, you and a few thousand skin head Republicans are the only ones left who believe the bullshit that has gotten over 1500 Americans killed, thousands more mutilated, and over 100,000 dead Iraqis.

Now say we only tortured people with a direct connection to 9-11, which we didn't. We tortured all kinds of people. We're making enemies faster than we can kill them. But say, for the sake of argument, that we did. What would that get us? False confessions? How does that help us?

In WWII, my Grandpa, who was UDT, was stationed next to a Japanese prison on Guam. He had friends who were guards. They were nice to the prisoners. The prisoners were so shocked that they weren't tortured, as they'd been told they would be, that it shattered their entire brainwashed view of Americans, and they coughed up all kinds of GOOD information.

If you've been keeping up with the news AT ALL, you'd know that we got no good info from those we tortured. In fact, we got crap.

Now I know red-necks like you are more than happy to throw away your Christian beliefs about how you're supposed to behave to your enemies. But I suggest that if we'd really like to stop terrorists from attacking us, we:

• Start setting examples of how CIVILIZED people live.
• Stop wanting vengeance and start wanting solutions.
• Start following the Geneva conventions for the sake or our soldiers who are captured in future wars.
• Stop listening to the Rush Limbaugh fueled bullshit that comes out of the mouths of vicious thugs who actually want a world-wide religious war.
  

Oh, and about that instant Karma. I hope you get to suffer that which you wish upon innocents.

Now, have you read up on how soil is created in a forest ecosystem yet [an ongoing ribbing because he won't answer to what he said about any tree that falls in a forest that we don't use goes to waste]? Punk.

Scott Supak
http://supak.com

Exposing Hypocrisy

We have finally reached a turning point in how far the right will be allowed to go. Plenty of libertarian Republicans are going to jump ship on this one. Democrats who think we need to move to the center should take note. Most Americans, including progressives like me, are way to the right of George Bush on this one. We are libertarians on issues of government in out private decisions. We should take this very personal tragedy, now that the Religious Extremeists on the Right have politicized it (thanks in no small part to Terry Schiavo's parents), and we should beat them over the head with it every day.

And when Terri Schiavo finally dies, we should remind people, every day, how plenty of other things Bush and his Orwellian friends have done are just like what they're doing with Schiavo.

Nothing has exposed the extreme right of the Republican party like the Terri Schiavo case. They have butted in where they are not legally allowed to be. They have tried to force their religious views on someone they didn't give a damn about force feeding when she really needed it, 15 years ago, when her eating disorder killed her. Ironically, now it seems Terri's parents got into this fight when they weren't allowed any of the money awarded to take care of her. These hypocrites have smeared and slandered Micheal Schiavo every chance they could, blaming him for her eating disorder, accusing him of abusing her, saying he just wanted the money, and other lies, in order to win an argument they couldn't win by telling the truth.

This case has exposed a typical right wing tactic of lying when the facts don't match their argument. George Bush lied about his tax cuts, WMD, terrorism, and way too many other things, while wimpy Democrats hemmed and hawed. Now we have an actual court case full of documents which directly contradicts the bullshit right on the facts of the case. We can use their lies about the Schiavo case to illustrate how they lie any time they find actual fact inconvenient, like in today's story that the Bushies covered up evidence in order to make the EPA ruling on mercury more business friendly (as if it were good for businesses to poison the fetuses that Bush wants to protect in his culture of life).

Why are people on my side of this argument trying to be so nice? Would Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter or Bill O'Reilly be nice to us if the tables were turned? Of course not. If we want working class social libertarians to vote for us (and I maintain that this will get us a substantial amount of Republican converts in the west and south) we have to be tough. If people hear Rush Limbaugh and vote Republican, then we need to speak in a language they understand. We need to be as harsh, nasty, vile, and vitriolic as Rush is. But we will have the added advantage of not having to lie.

George Bush, Buttinsky-in-Chief, did something that he wouldn't do right before 9-11. When the anti-terrorism people in his administration were running around with their hair on fire, sending memos warning that Al Qaeda was about to do something big, he stayed on vacation. Actually taking part in a high level meeting on terrorism wasn't important enough for Bush then, but signing an intrusive piece of legislation that ignores years of adjucation, specialists, and decisions of fair minded people who have looked at every aspect of this case, as they are supposed to by law, GW Bush flew back from his Texas vacation to sign yet another piece of big brother legislation. Ironically, the law he signed was the exact opposite of one he signed as Governor of Texas in 1999. His hypocisy has never been so obvious.

Instead of trying bowing down to the enourmous swing state power of the religious right, Democrats should be creating new swing states (Arizona, Colorado, Montana) by standing up to this sanctimonious fascism.

Now, as the "Reverend" James Dobson (focus on your own damn family) calls for legislation that would force EVRYONE to be kept alive, even if you have a living will demanding the opposite, the right is finally going pull some Republicans too far. We need to be there when they snap back to their senses. We can continue the Clintonian effort of smaller, smarter government, something the Neo-Con Bush Republicans have lost in their frenzy of pandering to an ever smaller block of fundamentalist voters.

This isn't about God, or a culture of life (from Bush, who executed how many retarded, born-again, under-age, and possibly innocent people in Texas?). It's about fascist control of our everyday lives, for the sake of HMO and drug company profits. The James Dobsons of this debate are just unfortunate cases of extremeists using the electoral college politics of swing states to force their minority views on the rest of us, who want no part of it. The George Bush's of this debate are up to something much more sinister.

Questions for Christians

When Terry Schiavo was starving herself into this persistant vegatative state, none of these pro-life protesters gave a damn. I wonder if they see the irony of force-feeding her now? Since the religious right seems to be caught in a deep pile of ironic shit on this, and many other issues, my wife Robin wanted me to start a blog where she could ask Christians to explain themselves. Seems to us that they have taken "ethical" postitions that create or prolong suffering.

Hence the name of our new blog: Questions for Christians. Comments are open to anyone, at least until we start getting those adorable Christian death threats...

A look at some Wolfowitz comments on Iraq

Here's the deputy defense secretary, who didn't know how many troops had died in his war, on the non-existent weapons of mass destruction:

They've worked at hiding things very, very deliberately. There's no question in my mind that there was something there. There are just too many pieces of evidence, and we'll get to the bottom of it.--May 31, 2003.

Here's the neo-con junta member who uses spit as hair gel on reasons for his war:

The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but ... there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two. ... The third one by itself ... is a reason to help the Iraqis but it's not a reason to put American kids' lives at risk, certainly not on the scale we did it.--Pentagon transcript of interview with Vanity Fair magazine, May 2003

Here's the PNAC worm who signed on to a report that the US needed a new Pearl Harbor to get us into the middle east, on the occupation of Iraq:

The notion that it would take several hundred thousand American troops just seems outlandish.--March 4, 2003.

And here's the tool of Robber Barons who's going to be in charge of the world bank on how you pay to fix what he broke:

There's a lot of money to pay for this. It doesn't have to be U.S. taxpayer money. We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction and relatively soon.--March 27, 2003.

Happy Days are here again. Buy Halliburton stock.

The Nation | Column | The Bankruptcy Bill: A Tutorial in Greed | Robert Scheer

"'I can't listen to Christian lawyers,' said the senator, 'because I would be imposing the Bible on a diverse population.'"

This essay on the indentured servitude to credit card companies bill may damn well be the best thing Rober Scheer has ever written. He's really been on a roll lately. But this quote from Senator Gassly had me LMFO.

I call Rethuglicans hypocrites all the time, but to hear a rabid Christian right wing freak, who consistantly votes anti-choice and anti-civil rights on biblical grounds, say he doesn't want to impose the Bible on a diverse population is the biggest pile of steaming pig shit since, well, since Grassly and his robber baron cronies allowed factory farms to keep piling up.

No More Mr. Nice Blog has a great list of Grassly actions and quotes that are directly contradictory to his conveniently new-found fair mindedness.

One last note: Credit Card Company Profits have risen 163% over the past five years (Harvard University). Gee, Chuck, good thing you bailed these guys out. The whole financial system might have collapsed at that rate...

Supak Politics at the Daily Kos

I finally started a KOS diary where I will focus on pure politics, i.e. what it will take for the left to win elections. I've been thinking about the subject of my first KOS post since that angry, dark night late last year when I realized the dark forces of Ohio politics had won a very dirty fight in which our side kept one hand tied behind our back. I hope you enjoy and comment.

Anti-war posters

We have a great collection of anti-war and peace posters including peace rally posters and peace sign posters. They are part of our oddball posters collection, which include new posters and vintage posters in all kinds of categories, like travel posters, band and musician posters, movie posters, Art Deco and Art Nouveau posters, and poster frames or poster mounting for all of them. Of course, the anti-war and peace posters will appeal to those looking for anti-Bush posters, as will many of the musician posters, like John Lennon posters.

SAVE US NOW environmental mental environmental blog

My wife Robin is getting the hang of blogging. When she really gets pissed, she posts something. And nothing pisses her off like the religious right trying to tell people what's best for them and their loved ones. Like me, she gets irate at people who say they are pro-life, who want to perpetuate the pain and agony of those suffering. From arresting cancer patients for smoking pot, to challenging Oregon's assisted suicide law (for people dying horrible painful deaths to go peacefully and still have insurance companies pay out), to Jeb Bush force feeding Terry Schiavo.

She had a mental disease with physical consequences, and that’s what killed her. The time to treat her malnutrition, to force-feed her, was before she destroyed herself. Anorexia, like alcoholism, is insidious; it doesn’t happen overnight. This illness develops when a person, usually female, feels they have no control over their life. That, combined with low self-esteem and the positive reinforcement that comes with being thin and looking “good,” can be fatal. The guilt the family feels must be overwhelming, but protracting her death is a selfish salve for not having been able to help her when she really needed it.

Many people suggest we turn the other cheek to right wing bullshit from the likes of Limbaugh. You know what that suggestion, and the people who have suggested it has gotten us? Republicans controlling the whole government. If it works for them, I suggest we start calling chicken shit liars exactly what they are every chance we get.

I suggest we tie a slip-knot around the balls of any right wing pundit upon whom we can find any balls, drag them behind a hummer limo at 75 MPH (if we can afford the gas) for a couple of miles, and then cut them loose right in front of the White House gates. Maybe that will stop the "liberals are wimps" BS that spews from their mouths.

Probably not.

My apologies to Hunter S. Thompson.

How I Treat Ditto Heads

Here's a recent reply to a misogynist, Harley-riding, vengeful God fearing, anti-union voting union brother of mine who's mind has been polluted with Lies He Likes to Believe.

You've been listening to Rush again. First of all, there is a lot less forest in the WORLD than there was 200 years ago. As for the US, if you'd bother to actually study the situation, instead of believing Limpass, you'd know that what we've done for the last 200 years is cut down hardwoods and plant super pines. These super pines are hybrid, and now genetically engineered, freaks that don't compare to the hardwoods for habitat, oxygen creation, undergrowth control, etc. These monstrosities are the creation of Timber companies and to suggest that it's better to have more of them than we did Oaks is just dumb.

The state tree of Arkansas, one of the Timber Industries favorite places, is the Pine tree. If you left Arkansas alone for a hundred years, it would revert to its natural state, an Oak-Hickory forest without a pine tree anywhere.

Oil was fine when there were only a billion people on the planet. But when you have fires burning in cars without pollution control all over the world, a billion people in China alone, then you've got a problem. Now you can say God gave us the oil to burn, we should burn it all you want, but that doesn't make it a smart thing to say.

You go on listening to Rush. It's easier than thinking.

But what really gets me going is their bullshit attempts at saying God put us on this planet to use up the resources.

John Stuart Mill was a philosopher who had a thing called the harm principle. If you're not hurting me, I have no right to tell you what you can and can't do. The foundation of libertarianism. When you start drilling everywhere you can and dumping the waste water down the streams, when you keep shipping oil around in single hulled tankers named the Condoleeza, when you change laws (passed by Republicans) that keep the air and water clean, then you are fucking with me and mine and I will seriously fuck back.

Now, when you start saying there's some plan, like you don't have free will, that everything that happens is determined by some God, then I think you're seriously whacked. Without free will, what's the point? If you're not free to destroy the environment, then you're saying God has decided to determine that we will destroy Her creation and that we are not then responsible for what we do.

If you do have choice, and your God is one of love, not war, then how can you and GW Bush have the same God?

Sometimes I wonder why I waste my time with these idiots. It's an awful lot of work to change the mind of one or two voters who may read this and think, gee, good point. Maybe these right wing zealots who get 90% of the drug company contributions, and almost 100% of the plundering and polluting industries contributions, aren't really looking out for the little guy.

Las Vegas SUN: Nevada Democrats decry Gibbons' remarks:

Seems Nevada Nazi Party Chairman and republican Congressman Jim Gibbon's wants to kill liberals.

"'too damn bad we didn't buy them a ticket' to become human shields in Iraq."

Apparently, he had a little tirade about tree-hugging (as opposed to tree-cutting) liberals (like all liberals are hippies). That's fine with me. Democrats are making a fuss, as they should, but I really love it when right wingers go off like this. Shows what hatefull fucks they are. And the more they do it, the more hateful I become toward them. Howard Dean is right. Republicans are evil. Just look at this guy, suggesting that anyone who disagrees with his Bush idolization and rotten little corporate empire expansion in Iraq should have been shipped out and blown up. Will Bush say this guy went to far? Of course not? Did they fire General Boykin? They need the hate. They love the hate. They get ignorant red-necks to vote for them because of the hate.

So, let's do some hating. Let's show Republicans what idiotic wimps they are when it comes to creative insults.

Jim Gibbons should be taken to Iraq and strapped to the undercarriage of an unarmored Humvee being driven by National Guard soldiers through IED alleys. Anyone who agrees with Jim Gibbons should be strapped down as Human Humvee Armor. Let's see how much they support the troops. Anyone who voted for Jim Gibbons can shell out the cash these National Guard troops need to keep their families out of bankruptcy, and to pay their, and their families', medical bills.

Bush Gets Stoned by the World Media (washingtonpost.com)

I really don't give a shit if he smoked pot, or even if he did so much blow that it ate half his brain cells. What bothers me is that, just like with everything else, he lies about it, or keeps it secret. Or blames the system, the press, his opponent, etc. Republicans used to get my respect for taking the personal responsibility angle to its logical conclusion. Now they have this whiny little brat who won't take responsibility for anything, won't even admit mistakes, and the moral minority that idolizes this man just ignores any fact that doesn't fit their view of their hero. This is a Republican right that has not only thrown out responsibility, they've thrown out logic as well.

We live in dangerous times, and it seems the only way to break the Bush-stoned moderates out of the propaganda funk is to shoot the truth at them from of a cannon, like Dr. Hunter S. Thompson's ashes, where they can hang in the crisp morning air for all to see. I sure hope there are some journalists out there willing to push the limits of what their Republican conglomerate CEOs will accept as "news." Like George Bush doing illegal drugs and not doing the responsible thing, like saying, yeah, I did it, and it nearly ruined my life. The way he's handled it is even worse, because kids can say, look, he did it, now he won't tell the truth about it, and he became president!

Hunter S. Thompson Quotes Hunter Thompson Books Gonzo posters

I"ve been adding Hunter Thompson quotes to my Gonzo page like crazy, and have started a neo-Gonzo blog to help keep up with the action.

The utter collapse of this Profoundly criminal Bush conspiracy will come none too soon for people like me. . . The massive plundering of the U.S. Treasury and all its resources has been almost on a scale that is criminally insane, and has literally destroyed the lives of millions of American people and American families. Exactly. You and me, sport -- we are the ones who are going to suffer, and suffer massively. This is going to be just like the Book of Revelation said it was going to be -- the end of the world as we knew it.

Hunter S. Thompson Quotes Hunter Thompson Books Gonzo posters:

"The president cannot be a Fool. Not at this moment in time--when the last living vestiges of the American Dream are on the line. This is not the time to have a bogus rich kid in charge of the White House. Which is, after all, our house. That is our headquarters--it is where the heart of America lives. So if the president lies and act giddy about other people's lives--if he wantonly and stupidly endorses mass murder as a logical plan to make sure that we are still Number One--he is a Jackass by definition--a loud and meaningless animal with no fundamental intelligence and no balls."—Hunter S Thompson

I admired HST because he was a tough-guy neo-liberal. My theory is that Progressives don't win elections anymore because people think they're all pussies. Hunter proved that was a lie with every ounce of his being. He understood that the tough-guy counter-culture movement of the sixties, like Hell's Angels, was the antithesis of George W Bush, and yet the baby-boom Harley set voted overwhelmingly for this rich brat who had convinced them, through a massive Madison Avenue campaign of lies and distortions, that he, the draft-dodger chicken hawk, was the tough guy.

I hope that Thompson's suicide will wake up the tough-guy neo-liberals of this country, and prompt them to get in the faces of the lying hordes of right wing radio listeners who spread bullshit on behalf of the pampered little rich-boy draft dogers in the White House who never had to do a hard days work in their lives. As someone who's been fighting the battle for the entire GW Bush administration, I can say I'm tired. I can certainly understand the deep funk that no drug can help, that no tequilla worm can make you forget, that no amount of ether can stupify away. No doubt that there's a small party in the Oval Office today, where the neo-Nixonites are celebrating the death of an old enemy over their non-alcoholic beers, while they bury the story about Bush lying about smoking pot. Just the thought of Georgie Boy Bush dancing on Hunter's preverbial grave makes me angry enough to keep going. I just hope there are more like me out there to help.

Hunter S. Thompson Quotes Hunter Thompsons Books Gonzo posters:

"We are living in dangerously weird times now. Smart people just shrug and admit they're dazed and confused. The only ones left with any confidence at all are the New Dumb. It is the beginning of the end of our world as we knew it. Doom is the operative ethic." - Written in the year 2000, in his last work, Hey Rube : Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness - Modern History from the Sports Desk

On Exposing the Agenda of the Right Wing Neanderthals

Wait, there's proof Neanderthals shared everything with their clan. Commie bastards. They should have gone back to Russia.

Second, connections to the underworld of corporate America abound in all three branches of Government. Hell, GW Bush actually did the very same thing that Martha Steward is in prison for, with Arbusto stock. Except, Martha did it for a lot less money, and her Daddy wasn't president with oil friends running the SEC when she did it.

You know about Cheney and Halliburton. Every regulator in the Bush administration is either a former CEO or lobbyist for the industry they're now regulating. It's the most crooked bunch of hooligans ever to run the White House, but people like [my idiot, anonymous, fascist, union brother] don't give a shit about that, because they think Saddam bombed the World Trade Center. They thought Bush was telling the truth when he said Saddam wouldn't let the inspectors in (they were already there). They thought Bush was telling the truth when he said the "vast majority" of his tax cuts went to the middle class.

They weren't paying attention to the fact that abortions have INCREASED under Bush. They weren't paying attention when oil and gas wells popped up all over BLM land in the west.

No, people like [my pseudoreligious union brother] and some other easily deceived people in this group, thought GW Bush was the second coming of the Lord himself, and if we could have changed the minds of 60,000 of them in Ohio, a man who defended his country, instead of snorting coke and dodging the draft, would be president right now. And I guaran-damn-tee you that he wouldn't be making National Guard troops cover their own health care after serving in Iraq, like Bush and Dick "I-had-other-priorities" Cheney are doing.

The true agenda? Please. Until we're back into back-alley, wire-hanger abortions (illegal, dangerous, and common), praying to Christ in classrooms, letting churches convert people for welfare money, increasing pollution and not making the polluters pay for it, bankrupting families and small farms, eliminating Social Security and the minimum wage and every union in the land, the Karl KK Roves of this country will not rest their fat fucking lily white asses.

And the union voters who buy into their robber baron bullshit should be ashamed of themselves, for their brothers' sake, and the sake of our children, who will be paying for these Neo Nazi Con misadventures for the rest of time.

War Helps Recruit Terrorists, Hill Told (washingtonpost.com)

"Islamic extremists are exploiting the Iraqi conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists."—CIA Director Porter J. Goss

I don't know how to argue with the Bush fanatics who threaten to kill me, but I do know how to argue with the Bush voters who believed the bullshit about Kerry wanting to arm the troops with spitballs (which I like throwing at Bush bumper stickers now, not that the idiots would get the reference). Iraq was a war to make us safer. Now it has become a war to liberate a bunch of people who most right wingers don't give a damn about. And it is a disaster, not just in terms of the incompetence that has been orchestrating it. The concept of the war itself has become a recruiting tool for terrorists. By pissing off the moderate Arab world, we have removed the one line of defense we had, the moderate factions of the Arab world. Goss went on:

"These jihadists who survive will leave Iraq experienced and focused on acts of urban terrorism... They represent a potential pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks in Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries."

But wait, there's more!

"Our policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment... Overwhelming majorities in Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia believe the U.S. has a negative policy toward the Arab world."—Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency

Is this more incompetence? Are these top-notch neo-con minds in the Bush administration really inept bumblers who saw a chance for corporate profit and jumped on it, security consequences be damned? Or do they realize they need a long-term threat to return their favorite industries to the kind of long-term profit they enjoyed during the cold war, and to drain funds from "socialist" programs that do as Jesus suggest for the least among us? Maybe the only chapter they've read of that Book they claim to love so much is Revelations. Just like them to peek at the ending.

One of the best quotes on this subject has made the liberal e-mail circuit many times. I suggest we try getting it to as many confused, naive, terrified, and decieved Bush voters as we can.

"Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger."—Herman Goering

Bush Administration's First Memo on al-Qaeda Declassified

If ignoring this memo isn't treason, I don't know what is. Everyone who lost someone in the attack should print this out, roll it up, and go shove it down the throat of the nearest Bush voter. I plan to keep a bunch of copies of it to put on the windshield of every car I see with a Bush sticker.. I'm going to tape it to the door of every Bush voter in my neighborhood. The whole argument for re-electing Bush was that he would be tougher on terrorism than Kerry. And this proves that Bush didn't give a shit about terrorism. This proves that "operation ignore terror" was in full swing in the Bush White House.

Is it coincidence that the Project for a New American Century said we'd need a new Pearl Harbor type event to start the neo-con attack on the middle east?

Industrial Disease lyrics by Dire Straits from the CD Love Over Gold

Read the lyrics to Industrial Disease, an old song from Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits. It's more relevant today than it was during the Reagan-Thatcher years it was written. If anyone has an answer to the question "How come Jesus gets Industrial Disease?" I'd sure like to hear it.

New York Daily News - Home - Bush press pal quits over gay prostie link

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Online Reporter Quits After Liberals' Expose (washingtonpost.com)

Online Reporter Quits After Liberals' Expose (washingtonpost.com):

"Jeff Gannon, who had been writing for the Web sites Talon News and GOPUSA, is actually James Dale Guckert, 47, and has been linked to online domain addresses with sexually provocative names."

Daily News reporter Helen Kennedy wrote this story yesterday, which really broker the story open: Bush press pal quits over gay prostie link.

For the Bush treason angle, I'm more interested in the supposedly permanent White House pass this wacko had which used his fake name. That is an apparent breach of security rules and possibly illegal. Of course his ties to the Valerie Plame affair could root out the treason and national security risks of outing an undercover CIA operative. Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, is extremely interested in this story.

This kind of tangled web of Republican dirty tricks that know no bounds of law or even decency is no suprise to those of us who study such things. But the denial by the every day SUV driver with a Bush-Cheney sticker is also as boundless as Republican ethical lapses. This makes Clinton's blow job look petty in comparsion, so they'll just ignore it, or say it's bullshit from us, and then turn their little brains off.

If we're going to change the minds of 60,000 Bush voters in Ohio, we need to grab these people by the proverbial collar, lift them up on their tired-of-dancing-around-the-truth-toes, and slap them in their fat cheeks (the other of which never gets turned) until they realize that all the lies of Osama-Saddam morphing and tax-cut-kool-aid are actually hurting them.