Blogs and Tabloids Are Abuzz With Rumors: The Chimp & Pickles Are Tacitly Seperated

It's not really a 'secret'. The tabloids--the supermarket check-out counter library materials-- are quite noisily discussing it. Pickles allegedly has moved into a swanky DC hotel, because the Chimp-in-Chief, our feckless leader, has 1) toppled headlong off the wagon (as a dry-drunk, this form of relapse was ALWAYS a possibility, even a probability), and 2) been shagging Condi Rice, his willowy, incompetent, gap-toothed, nappy-haired Secretary of State (as a kid, the Chimp probably lost his cherry to a black or brown whore down in the Deep Ellum, in Dallas, developing a life-long preference for 'dat brown sugah').

If the tabs are on it, the 'legitimate press' is hanging WAAAAY back: the better 'bred' members of the SCUM seem to not want to discuss these distressing possibilities at all. Apparently they fear causing unnecessary tensions among the First Couple while they try to sort out their marital arrangements. Possibly the agree that publicity of the sort that would attend revelations of this sort might tip the Dim Son over the brink and he'd incinerate the world in a fit of connubial pique.

As I consider this situation, it strikes me that this is one of the times when it would be nice to have a Faux Noise-type, liberal Teevee cabloid show to--very serioulsy, you know, very gravely--discuss whether or not the Chimp were back on the sauce, if he were banging Condi, whether Pickles had decamped. This could be handled at LEAST as tastefully as the discussions in 1997-98 about the Clenis' cigars, where they went, and what became of them in--ahem--the end.

Because you KNOW if there were ANY Dem in office about whom similar rumors--of marital discord, infidelity, and boozing--were circulating, the Flying-Monkey Echo Chamber would be ringing with the story.

Worm Dirt

Lee Hays & Pete Seeger:

If I should die before I wake,
all my bones and sinew take
put me on the compost pile
to decompose me for a while
worms, water, sun will have their way
returning me to common clay
all that I am will feed the trees
and little fishes in the seas
when radishes and corn you munch
you may be having me for lunch
and then excrete me with a grin
chortling there goes Lee again.

10 MILLION Good Jobs, Gone in 10 Years: Globalism's Unrefusable Offer

A Heretic Stalks The Faithful In The "Church of Free Trade" (from alternet.org)

The church of global free trade, which rules American politics with infallible pretensions, may have finally met its Martin Luther. An unlikely dissenter has come forward with a revised understanding of globalization that argues for thorough reformation. This man knows the global trading system from the inside because he is a respected veteran of multinational business. His ideas contain an explosive message: that what established authorities teach Americans about global trade is simply wrong -- disastrously wrong for the United States...

"The offer that many Asian countries will give to American companies is essentially this: 'Come over here and enhance our GDP. If you are here our people will be building disk drives, for example, instead of something less productive. In return, we'll help you with the investment, with taxes, maybe even with wages. We'll make sure you make a profit.' This works for both sides: the American company gets profits, the host country gets GDP. However, there is another effect beyond the benefits for those two parties -- high-value-added jobs leave the U.S."

Corporations have all the rights of individual citizens, and none of the responsibilities. Globalism exacerbates the inherent conflict between citizenship and profit. Why are multinational corporations allowed--fuck they're encouraged--to undercut the 'national interest' by outsourcing good jobs and impoverishing US citizens, yet are still permitted the privileges of their 'national' identity?

World-Class Snark: "Bush" on the French Elections

This popped up on the Eschaton crack-den today, reproduced herewith unretouched and entire:

in case you missed it

The White House

April 22, 2007

Statement from the President on the French elections

I congratulate the people of France on conducting a mostly free and fair election. However, reports of long lines at polling stations, malfunctioning electronic voting machines, and the reported high turnout may point to indications of voter fraud. Nevertheless, this is a big step forward for a country that lacks our western notions of freedom such as liberty, equality, and fraternity. I look forward to working with the eventual victor to restore the spirit of 1950s France -- one that recognized the threat from Communo-Islamism in Viet Nam and Algeria, even if it wasn't able to finish the job.
P O'Neill | Homepage | 04.22.07 - 5:54 pm | #

There was some debate as to the authenticity of the post. I thought from the very outset it had to be parody. But it is freakin' BEAUTIFUL parody, Parisian Prentemps du Parodie. If P O'Neill is the author, s/he deserves plaudits...

The REAL Bushevik Agenda

Spocko, et al: (posted simultaneously in the Comments at Digby's Hullaballoo!)

Anyone who holds the Busheviks to be failures utterly misunderstands the reasons and purposes for which they were installed, and have been so relentlessly maintained in power.

The sole goal and purpose of the Bushevik regime was, is now, and continues to be to inflict the greatest possible amount of damage to the institutions and instruments by which the People maintain their ever-more-fleeting and ever-more-tenuous grip on self-governance.

Can any of you name any tool of democratic republican governance they HAVEN'T attacked, haven't weakened, haven't undermined?

Let's make a contest of it. Name one: 25,000 quatloos to the winner...

And Homeland Security Agency doesn't count, for the express and explicit reason that it is one of the tools the Bushevik fascists have deployed to DESTROY American citizens' liberties, and to limit their freedoms.

Kids Chugging Psychedelic OTC Cough Remedies

Didja hear a story last week --perhaps on NPR--about how kids are chugging cough syrup w/dextromethorphan??? Brilliant hallucinations ensue (as I inadvertently discovered one time in Germany).

The commentators were astonished, just shocked, I tell you. The authorities are concerned. Lawmakers have acted. Solons have weighed in.

One only needed to web-search the name of the active ingredient, and it brought up 619,000 'hits', in fractions of a second.

When I was teaching school up north in 2000, I got to know a girl-kid of fantastically mixed heritage (gringo, hispano, indio-of-several-tribes) who laughed and laughed as she told me how she and a couple of her homies would go to the Wal-mart, in Espanola, then go up the aisle, opening and chugging cough syrups, and then putting the empties back in packages back on the shelf...

I checked it out: I went to the Wal-mart in question, and indeed several found packages with empty bottles. I asked an employee if they found many such, and discovered it was very common.; asked him if they knew what the kid told me they were doing, and he looked surprised. But he told me I'd better talk to the manager, if I wanted to know more.

I mentioned it to a counselor at the school and she said she was aware of it, but there was no official plan or policy.

I got to wondering if that wasn't a consequence of the value of those products in the cold-remedy market which has GOT to be worth hundreds of billions of DOLLARS per year...

You couldn't probably prove it, but it sher seems plausible that what we're having here is another of those public good/private profits conflicts which have so fundamentally shaped our private and public lives this last century or so.

PS: The link in the headline is to the "streetdrugs.com" page on DXM...

Imus, Revisited

I think the only--or at least the primary--reason Imus WAS vulnerable, and COULD have been brought down was BECAUSE he was just a sexist/racist/classist prick, withOUT an ideological ax to grind...

These rest of the other assholes, who are sexist/racist/classist (who knew shanty Irish hod-carriers and pig-farmers like Hannity and O'Reilly could be classist?) pricks, but who do it from within a political ideology have (paradoxically) cover from which they will not be flushed, because they're ideologically affiliated...

Zat make any sense?

A Bloody Day In Blacksburg, VA

At the Eschaton crack-den, we have been consumed with the events unfolding in the case of the mass murder of as many as 30 or more members of the university community at Virginia Tech.

The subject is compelling, and has consumed much energy. The pain felt is visceral, for all that the connection is but virtual.

The frailties felt in the aftermath of this horrific event, and the confusion engendered by the inability of the authorities to swiftly identify the killer, were enough to fray the nerves. But added to all this, tomorrow (4/17) was to have been the day on which Alberto (we all call him "Abu" in honor of his relationship with the tortures at Abu Ghraib) Gonzales was to have enacted the next act in the kabuki drama surrounding the firing of eight US Attorneys, an act never before recorded in the entire 233-year annals of USer Justice.

Near the end of the day, a commenter, m***, replies to another, t***, and her complaint of horror fatigue:
T*** - I don't know if it's horror-fatigue, but I'm just not sure I want to know. Why do we as a nation tolerate this shit?
m*** | 04.16.07 - 7:11 pm

Me? Automatically, I think: this isn't just a rhetorical question. So off the top 'o me fuzzy, bald pate, I replied:

M***: When you throw 300 million people together in a dog-eat-dog competitive society, with declining resources, artificial scarcities, and zero-sum rules for everything from kindergarten to love and sex;
and then put at the disposal of the frantic, obsessive creatures scurrying around under the ultimate pressure of "success" in this insane environment--it's not just school/job/love, it's the REST OF YOUR FUCKING LIFE--
virtually unlimited fire-power, and a media culture that idolizes and is saturated with voyeuristic violence, SOMEBODY (what are the odds? 1-300,000,000; lottery odds) is gonna crack...

Now add to this the fact that everybody in the game knows--at some level, and despite acre -feet of denial--in their heart of hearts, that they are not only doomed but disposable.

There are three or four senseless, stupid, horrific, more or less spontaneous mass-murders every WEEK in the (well-armed) blood-soaked USofA; to say nothing of the other, non-incidental, crime-related multiple executions...

What makes the events of today at VATech so horrific for much of white, middle-america, is that it happened at their (not literally, of course) alma mater.

Is NOTHING SACRED? Why, that girl coud have been Judy Garland, the killer Mickey Rooney.

Rather, it seems, the killer was a love-struck (obsessive), rejected (failed) "Sabu" (such because I cannot think of an "Asian" hero of the Garland/Rooney era...just saying), who cracked, loaded up on advanced weaponry and rage, and commenced to killing. The children of white, middle america , were slaughtered arbitrarily, innocent victims of ruthless, premeditated insanity, somewhere where they were supposed to be "safe." They happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. A tragedy.

Meanwhile, at least 7 USer soldiers were killed in Iraq today, too; along with so-far-unreported numbers other innocent Iraqi victims of ruthless, premeditated insanity; a different description, perhaps, but not really of a different kind.

Fair New Mexico? Well, Not So Much...

Click on the link in the headline, and enter your zip-code in the box provided.

Mebbe we're not living in quite the sump of toxic crap, sludge, and shit that afflicts Greater New Orleans or the lower Mississippi Valley.

But we're not far from it...

From the link:
We think American citizens have a right to know what toxic chemicals are being released into their communities. But the EPA recently proposed to limit the information that companies are required to disclose about the hazardous chemicals they release into our environment. By reducing the reporting requirements of its Toxics Release Inventory program, the EPA would take away an important tool for protecting public health and reducing industrial pollution.
We think American citizens have a right to know what toxic chemicals are being released into their communities. But the EPA recently proposed to limit the information that companies are required to disclose about the hazardous chemicals they release into our environment. By reducing the reporting requirements of its Toxics Release Inventory program, the EPA would take away an important tool for protecting public health and reducing industrial pollution.

Another link provides the gory details:

• In December 2006, the EPA finalized rules that raised reporting threshold to 2,000 pounds per chemical of releases to the environment and 5,000 pounds of waste managed.
  
• At a February 6, 2007 Senate Environment and Public Works hearing, the Government Accountability Office testified that EPA had not followed its usual procedures in developing and finalizing the rule, and that input from states and others at the agency had not been solicited, and, when supplied, had been ignored.
  
• President Bush issued an Executive Order on January 26, 2007 exempting federal facilities from reporting to TRI (EO 13423 — "Strengthening Federal Environmental, Energy, and Transportation Management"). This new EO rescinds a Clinton EO 13148 issued in 2000 (EO 13148 — "Greening the Government through Leadership in Environmental Management") which formally established the requirement that federal facilities report to TRI.
  
• An NET analysis reveals that the Defense Department is the top beneficiary of EPA's TRI rollback — 40 department sites are now exempt from reporting. Bush's EO may be an attempt to undermine the anticipated legislation and ensure Pentagon facilities get off the hook.
  

It's too late now to do anything about it, except to throw out the fascist fuckers who continue to put private profit above public safety and health. It is not too late for that.

Impeach
Convict
Impale

Jim Morin in The Miami Herald: Brilliant!

Franken's Dilemma

E&P looks at Anal Marie Cox report: “Don’t Laugh at Al Franken.”

He is running for the U.S. Senate in Minnesota and “at the moment,” she declares, “Franken is well positioned to become the state’s Democratic nominee” -- although the latest poll, she says, shows him losing to incumbent Norm Coleman in the general election by 10%. The Minnesota GOP has called Franken an op-researcher’s “dream,” she notes. They claim he has been hostile, “at times crude” and that “he’s got an anger issue.” While the Republicans admit most of his comments have been merely for fun, “Franken will need to convince voters,” she writes, “that his past remarks were ‘just jokes’ and that he is more than ‘just’ a comedian.”

Tricky bidness that last bit. Franken's a high value target for GOPuke oppo-research because he's been a comic, and harsh (rarely). But Wonkette cautions he be vulnerable unless he convinces voters he wasn't serious, without at the same time claiming he's just a comedian?

Man, this punditry bidness is confusing.

Blog-Pimping: Everything but the squeal

Blog-Pimping

My good buddy, Seamus, is spending a year (and mebbe two) teaching at the American University in Bishkek, Kyrgystan, and is blogging about the experience at Intransigent in Bishkek

I'm pimping his blog not only because Seamus is a guy of highly developed observational powers, and a high degree of fellow humanity--he is, after all, a trained, ph.d.-level ethnographer--which he is; but also because he's a very compassionate writer, and a trip to his blog is like a trip to the trans-caucasus, without the inconvenience of actually having to go there....Photographs informed with the same sensibility as his writing accompany many posts.

Everything but the squeal...but in the most elegant sort of way...

Today Is The 39th Anniversary Of The Assassination Of Martin Luther King

I listened to all of NPR's All Things Considered tonight, and also consulted their program listing and menu without finding or hearing a single reference to today being the anniversary of the assassination of the greatest African-American leader of the 2oth Century, and one of only a handful of authentically "great" Americans, the giant of the civil rights movement, Rev. Martin Luther King.

It will be of, at least, sociological interest to note, in June (6th), whether the equally obscure 39th anniversary of Bobby Kennedy's assassination expires un-remarked by the nationally, public So-Called-Unbiased-Media.

We might then test the proposition that pentennial memorials of fallen heroes are the only ones to be noted officially? Except for white martyrs?

Meanwhile, at TruthOut.Org, Jeff Cohen and Norman Soloman provide a fitting eulogy for the assassinated leader which is true to his development as more than a 'civil rights' leader, into a true leader of an emergent "Opposition." They don't say it, but it was this evolution that probably got King killed.

Three Courageous Americans Tabbed for Prestigious Award

President Jimmy Carter has been awarded The Ridenhour Courage Prize in recognition of his life-long defense of the public interest, his passion for social justice, and the courage he has displayed in speaking forthrightly on contentious and controversial subjects.

(This is gonna make heads explode all over the Zionist/Fascist world.)

Donald Vance has won The Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling. An American contractor turned FBI whistle-blower in Iraq, he was detained by American troops and held at the notorious Camp Cropper for over three months. Since being released by the US military without explanation, Vance has come forward to tell his story and call for accountability.

Rajiv Chandrasekaran is being presented with The Ridenhour Book Prize for Imperial Life in the Emerald City, a work of exemplary reportage that takes us behind the barricaded walls of Baghdad?s Green Zone to reveal how the Coalition Provisional Authority's bureaucratic arrogance and ineptitude led to disastrous postwar planning. Among the most interesting revelations? The role of Mr. Kate O'Bierne as procurer of young, ideologically virginal 'true believers' for the fascist PNAC schemes in Iraq.

Congratulations to all three recipients of these prestigious prizes.

The Busheviks Have Systematically Suppressed Environmental News Contradicting Their Policies

Did anybody pick this up last week?

If so, I didn't see it...

It was on ABC. The original report says there was supposed to be a big hearing in Congress subsequent tot he release of the report on Wed, Mar 28:

Researchers for the non-profit watchdog Government Accountability Project reviewed thousands of e-mails, memos and other documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and from government whistle-blowers and conducted dozens of interviews with public affairs staff, scientists, reporters and others.

The group says it has identified hundreds of instances where White House-appointed officials interfered with government scientists' efforts to convey their research findings to the public, at the behest of top administration officials.

The report is slated to be released tomorrow at a hearing before the House Science Committee, which is investigating the issue.

I wonder if somehow it didn't get lost in the fog of testimony--the majority of it totally irrelevant--in the Senate Judiciary Committee over the US Atty flap, where they're masterfully staging "show hearings' for the purpose of driving every-fuckin-thing ELSE off the front pages...

Oh, I know, I'm just a cynic...