I Wish Some Legless "Phony" Would Shove A Crutch Up Rush Slimeball's Ass

Iraq War Vet to Limbaugh: You're the Phony
By Jon Soltz
Posted on September 27, 2007, Printed on September 28, 2007

(This post, written by Jon Soltz, originally appeared on The Huffington Post.)

As Media Matters reported today, Rush Limbaugh, on his show said that those troops who come home and want to get America out of the middle of the religious civil war in Iraq are "phony soldiers." I'd love for you, Rush, to have me on your show and tell that to me to my face.
Where to begin?
First, in what universe is a guy who never served even close to being qualified to judge those who have worn the uniform? Rush Limbaugh has never worn a uniform in his life -- not even one at Mickey D's -- and somehow he's got the moral standing to pass judgment on the men and women who risked their lives for this nation, and his right to blather smears on the airwaves?
Second, maybe Rush doesn't much care, but the majority of troops on the ground in Iraq, and those who have returned, do not back the President's failed policy. If you go to our "Did You Get the Memo" page at VoteVets.org, there's a good collection of stories, polls, and surveys, which all show American's troops believe we are on the wrong track, not the right one, in Iraq.
Does Rush believe, then, that the majority of the US Armed Forces are "phony?"
Third, the polls and stories don't even take into account the former brass who commanded in Iraq, who are incredibly critical of the Bush administration, and it's steadfast refusal to listen to those commanders on the ground who have sent up warning after warning. Major Generals John Batiste and Paul Eaton left the military and joined VoteVets.org for that very reason.
Does Rush believe that highly decorated Major Generals are "phony soldiers?"
Finally, as Media Matters notes, just recently, members of the 82nd Airborne in Iraq wrote a New York Times op-ed, very critical of the course in Iraq, and suggesting it was time to figure out the exit strategy. Two of them just died. Will Rush call up their grieving parents and tell them that they should stop crying, because they were just "phony soldiers?"
Get the point here, Rush?
You weren't just flat out wrong, you offended a majority of those of us who actually had the courage to go to Iraq and serve, while you sat back in your nice studio, coming up with crap like this.
My challenge to you, then, is to have me on the show and say all of this again, right to the face of someone who served in Iraq. I'll come on any day, any time. Not only will I once again explain why your comments were so wrong, but I will completely school you on why your refusal to seek a way out of Iraq is only aiding al Qaeda and crippling American security.
Ball's in your court.

That last, of course, was a gratuitous jab at the pylonidal Tush's alleged propensity for young Dominican boys. Uncalled for, really. Incivil. Hrmph!

"Climate Crisis Skeptic/Denialist" Lomborg Gets Tongue-laved By Steve Insqueak

Listen here to Insqueak's inept, and credulous, interview.

Then sashay on over to Bouophonia and read a PROPER reply to Lomborg's CorpoRatist codswallop.

The...article reiterates Lomborg's call for economic triage and care rationing; like shrewd investors, we should put our money where it'll earn the highest return good. This sounds reasonable enough, until you remember that a lot of the problems Lomborg's talking about are interrelated, or even synergistic; and that in addition, attempts to remedy them must take projected climate change into account.

As an example, Lomborg mentions the vast number of people who don't have clean drinking water. Water supply and climate, obviously, are pretty intimately connected. Also, improving water safety involves issues like drainage, land use, and the ability of infrastructure to withstand flooding; all these things are likely to be affected by climate change (and we should bear in mind, here, that Lomborg is not a denialist when it comes to AGW).

There's also a larger issue, which is that a good deal of poverty and immiseration in this world is caused, sustained, and sanctified by the free-market orthodoxy that Lomborg champions as Our Only Hope. I'm not exaggerating here; Lomborg's Copenhagen Consensus identifies free trade as one of the humanity's four "top priority concerns"; the other three are hunger, AIDS, and malaria.

Free trade's right up there, I think, but perhaps not in the way Lomborg imagines. Like the other three, it is a world-class killer, the cure for which should be foremost in the minds of the worlds' peoples from now on.

What is "45.7-to-1"?

The ratio of Palestinians killed by Israelis to Israelis killed by Palestinians in the past year.

There's a very funny, very smart pod/blog called "MidWestTeenSexShow"

There's no 'embed' screen so just GO TO THE SITE!

Her Kid Was Killed, But That's Not Enough For This Bloody Bitch

Listen to this piece, from Morning Edition, today.
It's about Norm Coleman's waffling in his strident support for the Bushevik ICORP in Iraq. In it, a woman--a self-described war supporter--in effect says because her kid was killed in Iraq, more people's kids need to be killed in Iraq.
I wanted to smack the fucking bint.

I Should Do This More Often

Go over to Hecate's blog, I mean.
First there's always this stringent reminder right there:

You Know It's True
This civilization is killing the planet. They say that one sign of intelligence is the ability to recognize patterns. I’m gonna lay out a pattern here and let’s see if we can recognize it in less than 6,000 years. When you think of the hills and plains of Iraq, do you normally think of cedar forests so thick the sunlight never touches the ground? That’s how it was before. The first written myth of this culture is that of Gilgamesh deforesting that area to make cities. Plato complained that deforestation was drying up springs and destroying the water quality in Greece. The forests of North Africa went down to make the Phoencian and Egyptian navies. We can go north and ask, Where are the lions who were in Greece? Where are the indigenous of Europe? They’ve been massacred, or assimilated—in any case, genocide was perpetrated against them by definition because they’re no longer there. ~Derrick Jensen

Kicks a little ass, that does.
Then there's always poetry, both literal and visual.
I like her way of thinking; though we do not always agree, usually it's not so much in kind as in degree.
She started her blog about the same time as I started mine. She' gotten like (deservedly) 10 times more hits.
It's a neat site, is all I'm sayin'.

Billy Graham: Another Corpse Into Whose Dead Mouth I'd Gladly Defecate

I am really enjoying these folks, at The Peoples Voice dot Org.:

“The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.” - Stendhal
"The propaganda machine of the Evangelical Christian Right will soon be in counter attack mode. One of its darling preachers is about to take it on the proverbial chin. The Rev. Billy Graham, who has created a multimillion dollar media empire, that a Rupert Murdock would envy, is the subject of a shocking expose’ due out on Nov. 15, 2007. It’s entitled, “The Prince of War: Billy Graham’s Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire.” The author is Cecil Bothwell. He hails from Asheville, North Carolina and is an award winning investigative reporter. Bothwell’s unflattering portrait of Rev. Graham shows him as a wily warmonger and a lackey for the Establishment. He describes Rev. Graham as a public figure who “undermined the Founders’ skeptical Deism and sought to rebrand the U.S. as a Christian nation, [and] its armies [as] the rightful instruments of [a] Christian crusade and empire.”

Billy Graham, Dominionist motherfucker, par excellence! Nixon welcomed the greasy, anti-American, anti-democratic/theocratic shitheel into the ShiteHouse first. He might as well set up a fucking office. I guess he's not dead yet, mores the pity.

Anent Larry "Wide Stance" Craig (NYTimes)

The Money Quote:

Mr. Craig returned to the Senate last week. One of the first votes he cast was to support a Republican effort to block court access for detainees, people who have not gotten to see a judge or enter a plea at all.
The best thing that Mr. Craig has going for him may be that his case is being heard by a Minnesota state court, not a federal one. The last kind of judge Mr. Craig would want to appear before is one with the harsh legal philosophy he and his Republican colleagues have been foisting on the rest of us.

by Adam Cohen, Sept 24, 07...

...With Pitchforks, Torches, Tar & Feathers

Via TruthOut:
Bob Herbert writes for The New York Times:

"I applaud the thousands of people, many of them poor, who traveled from around the country to protest in Jena, La., last week. But what I'd really like to see is a million angry protesters marching on the headquarters of the National Republican Party in Washington. Enough is enough. Last week the Republicans showed once again just how anti-black their party really is.
The G.O.P. has spent the last 40 years insulting, disenfranchising and otherwise stomping on the interests of black Americans. Last week, the residents of Washington, D.C., with its majority black population, came remarkably close to realizing a goal they have sought for decades - a voting member of Congress to represent them."

Cuz, you know, the Southern Strategy coulda meant anything, right?

All Y'all, Please, G'won'n TELL Me, AGAIN, How Dick Vader DID NOT KNOW

everything about IX/XI except mebbe (and I mean 'mebbe') the exact dates and flight numbers.
Cheney Mulled Israeli Strike on Iran: Newsweek
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/092407B.shtml

Reuters reports, "Vice President Dick Cheney had at one point considered asking Israel to launch limited missile strikes at an Iranian nuclear site to provoke a retaliation, Newsweek magazine reported on Sunday."

The news comes amid reports that Israel launched an air strike against Syria this month over a suspected nuclear site.

Citing two unidentified sources, Newsweek said former Cheney Middle East adviser David Wurmser told a small group several months ago that Cheney was considering asking Israel to strike the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz.

A military response by Iran could give Washington an excuse to then launch airstrikes of its own, Newsweek said.

Wurmser's wife, Meyrav Wurmser of the neoconservative Hudson Institute think tank, told Newsweek the claims were untrue.

Wurmser left Cheney's office last month, the magazine reported. The steady departure of neoconservative hawks from the administration has also helped tilt the balance against war, it said.

Washington has been pursuing diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to alter its nuclear program. It has refused to take military options off the table, even U.S. resources are taxed by having 169,000 troops in Iraq.

Although some intelligence sources say Iran is years away from nuclear capability, Israel believes that military action may be necessary as early as 2008, Newsweek said.

Israel has declined to comment on the reported air strike, while Syria has denied receiving North Korean nuclear aid and said it could retaliate for the September 6 violation of its territory.

This, my friends, is real-politik as Kissinger knew it. Heinrich would be very proud. Cheney's on the original list of the PNACabal, the guys who famously bragged that all they needed was the next Pearl Harbor to cover their fascistic scams. These guys treated the whole COUNTRY of Iraq like Mengele treated his "patients." They're a buncha technocratic sadists wandering the wards of a hospital with the inexhaustible cattle-prod of FREIHEIT!!!

This Approaches Literature...

Verbatim, an e-mail received today. It's a variation on a wide-spread scam motif called, by the Intertubes cogniscenti, the "Nigerian Letter". Nigerians, apparently, are endlessly inventive, and USers, apparently, never cease to find ways to be fleeced.

Really, this is dang near Faulknerian...

Greetings.

As you read this, don't feel sorry for me, because it is the destiny of everyman to die someday. I am Sulaiman Balaa a naturalised Briton by birth and a business merchant based in the United Kingdom. I have been diagnosed with Esophageal cancer. It has defiled all forms of medical treatment, and right now I have only about a few months to live, according to medical experts. I regret that I have not particularly lived my life so well, as I never really cared for anyone (not even myself), but my trade. Though I am very well to do, I was never open handed; I was always hostile to people and regarded them like they never had hopes of becoming as successful as myself. Now I know that there is a lot more to life than just prosperity.

I believe that when I am given a second chance to come to this world, I would live my life a different way from how I have lived it. Now that death is eminent, I have willed and given most of my belonging to immediate and extended family members, as well as a few close friends. I want Allah to be merciful to me and accept my soul. Hence I have decided to support charity work; this is what I want to be remembered for. So far, I have been able to reach out to a few charity organizations in the Singapore, Algeria and Malaysia. Now that my health has deteriorated so badly, I cannot do this myself anymore.

I once asked members of my family to aid me in giving of alms to those organizations catering for the less privileged in Bulgaria and Pakistan; they refused and kept the resources to themselves. Hence, I do not trust them anymore, as they seem not to be contempt with what I have left for them. The last of my belonging which no one knows of, is the deposit of Four million US dollars that I have in a safe keeping company abroad, which I will want you to secure and bestow to charity organizations. Please endeavour to reply me. For your time and devotion, I have set aside a tenth of this for you.
Allah be with you.

Sulaiman Balaa.

A perfect gem of "eminent" mortality and moral redemption. You could send it in to a short-story contest with some expectation of being seriously regarded, lexical confusions and all.

My Pal, Mike K, Has Reached His Limit

Mike's a soft-spoken, intelligent, introspective fella, a vet like me, and an old 'dirty, fucking hippie,' who usually controls his temper.
The gibbering, simpering, swaggering, strutting, smirking Chimp's 'outrage' at the MOveOn ad--"General BetrayUs?"--broke through his normal reserve.

I don't usually Swear, but in this case.......
Quotes
"I was incredulous at first and then became mad." -- Zippy the CiC, on the "General Betray Us" ad.

Hey shithead, go fuck yourself!

In 1996, when Clinton was president, your party sold t-shirts that said, "Where is Lee Harvey Owswald when we need him?" so fuck you.

In 1998, your party impeached our president during war time, so fuck you.

In 2000, you said McCain betrayed his fellow POWs in Vietnam, so fuck you.

Also in 2000, you mocked Gore for going to Vietnam when you went AWOL, so fuck you.

In 2002, your party morphed Max Cleland into Osama, so fuck you.

At your party convention, assholes mocked John Kerry's Purple Hearts, so fuck you.

Does your precious General Betrayus have any shrapnel in his ass like John Kerry does?

You don't give a flying goddamn fuck about the dignity of the soldiers.

Hell you lied 3,800 of them into an early grave to steal Iraq's oil, so fuck you.

U.S. military cemetery running out of space:
A Kansas military cemetery has run out of space after the burial of another casualty of the Iraq war. "We are full," said Alison Kohler, spokeswoman for the Fort Riley U.S. Army post, home of the 1st Infantry Division.
Fort Riley can bury bodies on top of other bodies if family members want to share a plot, said Kohler.

Oh perfect!
Bush is killing so many soldiers they're stacking them up under the ground?
And you have a problem with MoveOn.org's ad?

Go fuck yourself, you AWOL, walking-disaster, murderer of good soldiers..

I just can't take any more!!!
Mike

The Chimp got MAD?
I have difficulty expressing how mad I am. Mad enough to wish with every corpuscle of my being that the grinning Simian's head winds up on the end of a fucking pike.

No, no, silly, the OTHER kind...

The "Shock Doctrine": The "REAL" Culture War's Ultimate Weapon

The crises change, but the right-wing fucktards' solutions are ALWYS the same. Milton Friedman was the guru of the movement, after Hayek died. They were all together at the University of Chicago: Hayek, Friedman, Leo Strauss, Richard "Dick' Posner, the whole neo-lib pantheon has its roots there.
You NEED to listen to this. Naomi Klein has an incredibly beautiful mind...It is in six parts. I'm gonna post Part one and link the rest.
Part Two, 2222...
Part Three, 3333...
Part Four, 44444...
Part Five, 55555....
Part Six, 66666....
Naomi Klein's a national treasure; unfortunately (for we USers anyway) she's Canadian. It must be something in the water.

You Don't Win Arguments WITH Fascists, You Win Wars AGAINST Them.

My new political maxim.
Like the "Real Estate" Maxim--"Buy Low; Sell High--this is an inviolable truth.
Like the Family Maxim of Tolstoy: "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
This is as true:
"You do NOT win arguments with Fascists; you win wars against them."
Scribe that on my surf-board.

Israel, of ALL the World's Nations, Ought To Abjure 'Collective Punishment."

But they don't:
In order to fend off the political challenge of the REAL Likudniks of Netanyahu, the weak, pseudo-Likud "Kadima" Govt has declared the Gaza Strip to be a “hostile entity” and is actively limiting supplies of fuel and electricity to the Territory; this is unquestionably an act of collective punishment by Israel. The Kadima-led coalition government has also said it will further restrict the transfer of goods and people in and out of Gaza. The moves are part of an escalating offensive against Gaza’s one-and-a-half million residents that could culminate in an armed attack. Can you say "ethnic cleansing?" I knew you could.

Ramming the religious 'State of Israel' down the throats of the indigenes and their neighbors in 1948 arguably has turned out to have been one of the biggest blunders of the entire 20th Century. Up there with the Treaty of Versailles, and the bombing of Nagasaki.
Remember the Stern Gang?

When Did The Concerns Of The Congress Pass From "The Citizen" To "The Consumer"?

Whenever it was, the character of the American Republic irremediably changed, and for the inexpressably worse, on the first occasion that some Representative of the People arose in the Congress and presented her or himself as speaking in behalf of the "American consumer," instead of the "American citizen," and NOBODY arose to swat her/him down. It had to have been sometime in the '50s. It's been all down-hill since then.
We have been sooooo fucked for sooooo long that, I think, we've lost the capacity, as a people, to register on a conscious level, how truly fucked we are.

Nearly $100 BILLION in War Contracts Under Investigation

Spencer Ackerman on Muckraker reports:

So what defense contract in Iraq didn't involve a kickback? What contract was awarded through competitive bidding? As Pentagon investigators conduct an unprecedented review into corruption in the department's Iraq contracting, it's a rare bid that wasn't crooked.
Yesterday, Congress learned that $6 billion worth of contracts are under criminal review. That's right -- criminal:

Military officials said Thursday that contracts worth $6 billion to provide essential supplies to American troops in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan — including food, water and shelter — were under review by criminal investigators, double the amount the Pentagon had previously disclosed.

In addition, $88 billion in contracts and programs, including those for body armor for American soldiers and matériel for Iraqi and Afghan security forces, are being audited for financial irregularities, the officials said.

Taken together, the figures, provided by the Pentagon in a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, represent the fullest public accounting of the magnitude of a widening government investigation into bid-rigging, bribery and kickbacks by members of the military and civilians linked to the Pentagon’s purchasing system.

House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton (D-MO) called DOD's procurement process "a culture of corruption," an assessment that appears to represent the bipartisan consensus. Yet the Pentagon's deputy inspector general said the contracting corruption was attributable to "isolated incidents." Yes, $6 billion worth of isolated incidents.

There's more.

What Is There About This Image

THIS ONE
that has brought hundreds of visitors to my site, like lemmings?
I found it inexplicable that somewhere around 300-400 hits on my site in the last four days, would have all been referred by that google search.
I half-way suspected something like a google scavenger hunt.

Wish in one hand and poop in the other and sniff which one gets stinky: The Oprah Solution

IF Oprah Winfrey had a fucking curly chinchilla of courage, integrity, compassion or social conscience, she take a couple of thousandths of the BILLION PLUS dollars she's accepted from the White/racist power structure of the CorpoRat Media, and she'd buy every single stick of property owned by Black folks in Jena, Louisiana, and provide a way for those poor people to escape that racist fucking swamp. The MINIMUM she should do is to endow scolarships to good schools for each of the kids the thug/racist pigs in Jena are trying to use as object lessons on 'know your place, kneegrow."

But she's too sold-out, too complicit, too gutless, to afraid of alienating mebbe one or two advertizers.

New Host on "The View," Sherri (something) Does NOT Believe Evolution, Cannot Say If World Flat Or Round

From Alternet, scroll down.
Here's the clip from YouTube:

Sherri's world ain't round, but it is FUCKIN FAT! From the Alternet blerb:

The latest mind-boggling exchange occurred between comedian Sherri Shepherd and her other co-hosts, including Whoopi Goldberg. After refusing to accept evolution, (Huckabee, we've found you a running mate!), Goldberg asked Shepherd whether she thought the world was flat (trying to make a point about value of scientific evidence) and Shepherd claimed she didn't know and if her kids ever asked her she'd have to take them to the library to "look it up." Check out the video to your right for more.

I guess drooling, stupid, vapid, moronic, fat-headed dumb-fux need a voice on TV, too. Sherri certainly qualifies!

The Tas-Arrest of the Persistent Kerry Critic Is HUGE On YouTube

And amazingly interesting. Talk about a viral meme!!!Comments are illuminating:

Page: 1 2 3 ... Oldest
river3782 (2 hours ago) -- the black cop tase him thats racism
JXjohn (2 hours ago) -- you are not totally right. Actually you can hear in background there is a brave lady yelling at police and was stopped by police. Aside of that I share your views to the rest of students at the place.
torontoman25 (2 hours ago) -- Fuck Skull and Bones when you guys gonna grow some balls and run up and get them all
KayLed7894 (2 hours ago) -- I agree sister, well there was one reason....people didn't want to here it
adtr1958 (2 hours ago) -- IT's Not Fascism When WE DO IT
fenomanom (2 hours ago) -- Screw you guys! Taser hurts! Just do what they say, even if it is unlawful! Do it!
confederateyankeegir (2 hours ago) -- YES, of course I had the same reaction to that crowd. (The word "sheeple" comes to mind...)
Even though the guy might have rubbed you the wrong way, please RECOGNIZE when someone's rights are being violated, and don't tolerate it!
Get educated, think for yourself, and for heaven's sake, WAKE UP to what is going on in this country!
samuelshepard (-- ur a babe
edlift (2 hours ago) --you are gonna get what is comin to yah?
Moniker179 (2 hours ago) --"was it true you are a member of skull and bones?" what a patriot!
next time someone asks, "who took a dookie in the urinal?" at an assembly, they might bring in martial law!
you've got the perfect look of "duh!"
dumb way to plug your website though,

There's a LOT of video out there on this issue.

A Letter To NPR

Yesterday, Sept. 18, on your program "Day to Day," there was a long segment discussing how many Americans were either misinformed, confused or ignorant about the purpose of the US conquest of Iraq.

You could have knocked me over with a feather when, by the end of the segment, I could not recall hearing the word "OIL" spoken even once: not in the citizens' sound-bites, not in the (labored) explanations of the predictable official sources, not by the 'journalists' conducting the interviews.

Nowhere in the entire procedings did ANYONE even REFER to what just about anyone with a single working neuron KNOWS was the OVERWHELMING reason for the so-called 'war': It's the OIL, stupid!

I cannot describe for you the self-restraint I needed to write so bland a missive, and how the swallowed invective STILL sticks in my CRAW!

Addendum:
npr_response@npr.org
To: konopelli@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: The Mission of/Purpose for the Conquest of Iraq (Ticket# 09192007N21580001:AR0003)
Date: Wed, 19 Sep 2007 17:50:24 -0400
Dear Woody,
Thank you for contacting NPR's Day to Day.

We are grateful for your comments to NPR News. Your feedback is important to us, and your thoughts have been noted.

NPR is always delighted to hear from listeners.

Thank you for listening to Day to Day, and for your continued support of public broadcasting. For the latest news and information, visit NPR.org.
Sincerely,

Preston
NPR Services
(202)513-3232
www.npr.org

-------------- Original Text -----------------

Date : 9/19/2007 1:31:53 PM
Yesterday, Sept. 18, on your program there was a long segment discussing how many Americans were either misinformed, confused or ignorant about the purpose of the US conquest of Iraq.
You could have knocked me over with a feather when, by the end of the segment, I could not recall hearing the word "OIL" spoken even once: not in the citizens sound-bites, not in the (labored) explanations of the predicgtable official sources, not by the journalists conducting the interviews. Nowhere in the entire procedings did ANYONE even REFER to what just about anyone with a single working neuron KNOWS was the OVERWHELMING reason for the so-called war: Its the OIL, stupid!

Addendum @6:30 pm
Thanks, Preston. I struggled to restrain myself, but I guess this was just a little too forthright for you? Too incivil? There were three segments, about 20 minutes of the show, and the word "OIL" was NEVER mentioned, spoken, or referred to? Just a coincidence, que no?
Chuy, tu pendejo, pujo, cabron!

We Are Sooooooo Fucked: The Rise of the Flying-fucking-Monkey Court

I'm probably going to have to read this book.

Clarence Thomas is the most conservative (some might say 'reactionary,') Justice on the Court since before Roosevelt.
Sandra Day O'Connor--may her soul rot--was replaced on the Bench by the man on the destruction of whose anti-choice opinion her reputation as a moderate jurist is built, Sam Alito.
John Roberts is, after all, and beyond doubt, an archetypal, blue-eyed Aryan enabler.
Kennedy is a protege of Ed Meese.
Three of the four 'liberal' Justices on the Court are likely to leave the Bench before ANY of the fascisti do: Stevens is old, Ginsberg is sick, and Souter hates the whole fucking thing.
We Are SOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Fucked!

Bill Clinton: Still the Hypocrite

Chris Hedges gets it right, even though he'll be accused of blasphemy:

Bill Clinton has written a new book...called Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World. He will give a portion of the proceeds to charity. Giving, the former president informs us, gives us fulfilment in life and is “the fabric of our shared humanity.”

His book is the political equivalent of Marley & Me . It is filled with a lot of vapid, feel-good stories about ordinary and wealthy Americans setting out to make the world a better place.

It smacks of the philanthropy-as-publicity that characterized the largesse of the robber barons—the Mellons and the Rockefellers—and has become a pastime for our own oligarchic elite. Clinton’s call for charity is the equivalent of well-scrubbed prep school students spending a day in a soup kitchen, doling out food to the people whose jobs were outsourced by their mommies and daddies.

The misery sweeping across the American landscape may have begun with Ronald Reagan, but it was accelerated and codified by Bill Clinton. He sold out the poor and the working class. And Clinton did it deliberately to feed the pathological hunger he and his wife have for political power. It was the Clintons who led the Democratic Party to the corporate watering trough.

The Clintons argued that the party had to ditch labor unions, no longer a source of votes or power, as a political ally. Workers would vote Democratic anyway. They had no choice. It was better, the Clintons argued, to take corporate money and use government to service the needs of the corporations. By the 1990s, the Democratic Party, under Clinton’s leadership, had virtual fund-raising parity with the Republicans. In political terms, it was a success. In moral terms, it was a betrayal.

He concludes:

Half a century ago, corporations paid 45 percent to 50 percent of the income tax. Today they pay 6 or 7 percent. This is why our infrastructure is crumbling, there is no universal health care, our public education is in crisis, regulatory agencies are impotent and our poor and working class are desperate.

It is no longer possible to argue between the lesser of two evils. The corporate state, which is carrying out a coup d’etat in slow motion and has already shredded most of our constitutional rights, is an unmitigated evil. We do not need charity. We need justice. And all of Bill Clinton’s heart-warming stories about giving are not going to save us from the corporations who sucked out his soul and seek to imprison the rest of us.

You got THAT shit right, Chris. Via Alternet, read the rest.

Arrrrh, Miteys!!! Tis Tawk Wike A Fuukin Poyrit Die, T'morruh

Aye, Jim, 'tis it 'tis.

An 'ere's the bluuddy tryler fer me on'iest Poyrit fillum!Watdefook? Loik th'text an'th' fuukin tawkin's NOT in Czech?

Naomi Klein on Shock as Operational Metaphor

This very smart person. You listen. You learn.

Nation columnist Naomi Klein explores a key argument from her new book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism: After 9/11 the Bush Administration launched a new economy, driven by the notion of an endless war against an undefined notion of evil. Read more in her 2005 Nation column "The Rise of Disaster Capitalism."

See, also, the short trailer shot to promote the book.

The Party's Over (Whew!): The Ex-pAtriots, and Others, Have Departed

Looking East, In Frijoles Canyon, Site Of Bandalier Nat'l. Monument

Although Mena's flight got canceled last night. She spent the night at a local motel, courtesy of United Airlines. A Wyndham--At least it wasn't a Motel 6. She flies out this morning.

The event was essentially a success, with the possible exception that we and Dr. Plotke were somehow unable to find one another at the Fair on Saturday.

The sojourn on Friday was an unqualified triumph. Bandalier, after the end of the summer, was almost deserted. The aspens in the Jemez Mountains were starting to turn, having reached the gauzy, pale, chartreuse tone they manifest just prior to erupting into the glorious gold of Autumn. They'll be splendid this weekend, because it's already freezing at altitude here (*and the Valle Grande's @ 9500 feet*), with snow forecast for the FAR north (Chama, and further). Lil Red & Olaf, Ruth, Uncle Smokes and Flory all took a raft of photos which I have begged them to send me, and which I shall post when they do. Smokes was also busy capturing the sounds--and some of the conversations--which accompanied the jaunt. We may expect some snippets on his next audio adventure.

Tena's new 'haos' in Taos is stunning, and she's furnished it in exceptional taste (just as one would expect); the place requires simplicity, almost starkness (say one who lives in the clutter of an abandoned museum--heh). Don Rumsfeld's newest vecina's adobe abode is a SUPER-cool northern New Mexico 'crib': old, wood floors and newer Talavera tiles, thick walls, gorgeous doors, spacious, airy, and happily convenient to the Guadalajara Cafe (north), and The Bean.

And the Beer-Beef-and-Beans-Fest Saturday night was enjoyed, long and loud, by both the visitors as well as some of my local amigos y amigas. We drank a LOT of beer, and there weren't many leftovers from the carnitas, carne adovada, guizado pollo, frijoles, etc; breakfast for a couple of days, is all... There is, however some residual beer, much of it still uncapped.

Flory, Tena, and Mena--who had stayed the night Friday in Taos, and arrove too late Saturday--went to the Fair Sunday. Both Flory and Tena found many lovely baubles, with which the Fair was and is always replete. Also much useful stuff. Along with that whole, wonderful panoply of critters, hooved and winged. And the people-watching is nonpareil (I am planning to go back on Friday to 'assist' Lil Red at the Cuidando Los Ninos booth.)

I saw, though I didn't get a foto of, the ultimate in "On-A-Stick" fetishism: Kid-On-A-Stick. This is a tot-sized tricycle with a long, rigid handle rising up from behind the seat by which an adult maintains actual control of the vehicle to prevent it plunging among the ankles of unwary adults, no small number of them of such girth and substance that the danger would be upon them before they saw, and and too quickly that they could avoid, the threat. Little kids unrestrained, on tricycles, would cast such a swath of wrack and ruin in that crowd as to strain the capacities of first responders state-wide; or they would be ground into the pavement by the vast, ambling herd of humanity before they could so much as level their first pedestrian. In any case, for gruesome carnage, it might rival a day in Bagdhad.

Already, plans are being crafted for another gathering, next year (though with a different itinerary for the tour: Maybe south, through Socorro and the wild-life preserve at Bosque del Apache; green chile buffalo burgers for lunch at the old, original Owl Grill, outside the Stallion Gate to the north of Trinity site; arts&crafts in Mountainair, and then the old pueblo ruins at Abo, Qu'arai, and/or Gran Quivera), with several folks who were unable to attend this year already planning to attend next time: probably Feral Liberal, vaguely mebbe ChiDyke. I could bring Budreau. We might need two vans. Anybody else?

All of which, and the preparations for same, I hope serves as explanation for the almost week-long hiatus from posting (though "who notices?" is a "fair" question).
C-Ya At The Fair!

The World, As Seen By Miss Teen South Carolina

My pal Dirk Gently had this on his blog, Albatross! Fuukin BRILLIANT!

CLICK TO ENLARGE!

Omnia Iraqa In Tres Partes Divisa Est

It has been SO fucking obvious, at least to me, from the very outset--I mean since Day fucking ONE--that partitioning of Iraq was gonna be one of the eventual outcomes from the USer ICORP (Invasion, Conquest, Occupation, Rape & Pillage) of of that benighted country, that it was and is still extremely hard for me to believe that it was NOT also an outcome desired, sought and anticipated by the Busheviks/PNACabal from the very fucking start... It was and is an instrumental--a tactical--end which was as certain to follow from the fall of Hussein as death follows a fall from a very great height. The inevitable dissolution began as soon as the first USer boot crossed the border from Kuwait.

Because Hussein held the country together. He was the glue. He not only wielded the absolute power of the state to consolidate the authority of the State, but he gave Iraq a sense of unity through ordinary Iraqis' quotidian fear and loathing of him. He fell, in effect, the first invading step taken towards Bagdhad. Nothing Iraq had was going to stop the Murkins. It was a done deal.

Nota bene: It's well to recall that, by my theory, there were really always three primary reasons for invading Iraq:

1. to overthrow the guys whose signatures, just coincidentally, were on existing oil agreements which shut Murkin & British interests out of the rich Iraqi oil "bidnuss": the fields, refineries and port (the main one);
2. to eliminate Iraq--the richest, most powerful of its adjacent adversarial neighbors (other than Egypt)--as a potential threat to Israel (which fate was probably sealed when Saddam Hussein fired the (impotent) SCUDS during the first ME conflict),
3. to install a large, powerful contingent of US forces on the ground in a strategically significant place in the region, from which they can extend USer "influence" over as great an area as possible, from the Mediterranean to the Caspian.
   

The tactical benefit of partition pertains to both the two last reasons for the invasion.

For the first (the second), partition is the unique expedient which ensures, better than any other could, that Iraq ceases to be a threat to Israel. The three parties cannot agree on the allocation of wealth; they won't be able to agree on jihad, either. It will take YEARS to rebuild a semblance of the infra-structure the ICORP has devastated. The Iraqis will be too busy rebuilding to attack anybody. There's enough work now for a generation or more.

For the second (the last), partition opens up weaker parties contending for influence and perhaps protection from USer military forces to deals which trade the long-term, well-armed presence of USer military in the region for the protection those troops afford against the possible predations of their richer, or their more aggressive bretheren elsewhere in the country.

But we should also not lose sight of the first point, that the primary reason for invading Iraq was to invalidate the signatures on a bunch of documents legitimizing oil deals Dick Cheney, GB41, and their pals wanted to re-negotiate. And of course, and for similar reasons, partitioning Iraq assists in the domination of the existing, contesting parties by the neo-colonial interests which will withdraw, in good time, onto the bases from which they will watch and occasionally stir the pot while the sectarian states around them descend intot debilitating conflict which, when spent, will leave the area ripe for the picking.

The "real" point here, that is, is the Iraqi Oil Law.

alMaliki will be retained in power by the US if an only if he gets parliament to sign off on the Iraqi Oil Law. This document, somewhat troublingly to many Iraqis, . Remember "the war's gonna provides for distributing about 70% of the profits from Iraqi oil for the next 20 years to foreign (read USer/Brit)oil companies. Remember "the war is gonna pay for itself"? Well, the Oil Law is where they're gonna raise the principal to do it.

Have you heard the volume and the number of complaints by USer pols on all sides about the weakness of al Maliki and the "lack of political progress"? It's the Iraqi Oil Law, stupid. "Political progress" = The Oil Law. Period.

Since the Iraqi parliament's inability (or unwillingness) to pass the IOL can--and probably should--be construed as an act of resistance against both the puppet Maliki regime and their puppet-masters in DC and elsewhere, it is very likely the Busheviki--at least the ones with ANY brains--are aware of the matter. If al Maliki gets it passed, he'll be hailed as the next fucking Attaturk. If he can't (or won't) do it, they'll install someone who can/will. Which is why the former prime-minister, the murderous Allawi, has been allowed to float his trial balloons lately, both in Bagdhad and in DC.

Me? Hell, I STILL think Ahmad Chalabi, if he lives, could become the 'eventual' Iraqi strongman. And install Judy Miller as his concubine. It's the part of a lifetime.

Park Polizei Hastle Anti-War Protestors

Cops everywhere are ALL the same: fascist pigs.
This vid's been all over the left blogosphere for about a week. It bespeaks the need, if you're going to DC this week for the Sept. 15 March, to bring enough money for bail and some antidote to tear gas...
.

Lee Rodgers & Melanie Morgan, The "KSFO Krewe of Kompassionate Konservatives" Tell NOLA Victims To "Grow Up, Stop Whining, & Get Over It!":

I really don't think violence solves anything (most of the time). Still, i'd love to see the two of 'em eaten, live, by sharks; i'd throw 'em in the bay myself, except it's already almost too polluted to surf--that, and it would be abusive to the poor fish.

The dauntless, and indefatigable Spocko has again caught the baying-bitch-and-bastard-by-the-bay in some more of their toxic rhetoric during programs broadcast by the Disney-owned station on August 28 & 29.

Folks like this present a very difficult dilemma to me. They themselves would claim to be mere 'entertainers', donning and doffing a rhetorical 'costume' to supply their audience with 'what they want.' We shouldn't, they would tell us, read their personal sympathies off their schtick.

Are they saying Andrew Dice Clay ISN'T a dick? Rush isn't a drug-addicted pedophile? Bush really ISN'T a dry-drunk psychopath?

I do not really see that by spewing this vicious and bilious dreck on the airwaves for the dilectation of their knuckle-dragging, incestuous 'audience,' they are much different from any other kiddie pimps or procurers, providing underage children to pederasts.

The inescapable conclusion is that Rodgers and Morgan REALLY ARE the odious, reeking, repellant shit-stains they 'play' to be on the radio.

Racism Isn't Dead! It Ain't Even Injured -- Jena, LA.

Some parts of the blogosphere are reacting with shock, anger, and surprise at the way the treatment of the Jena 6 is unfolding. I have treated with the story twice, already. These are the outlines of the conflict.

Jena, LA, is a cracker town, 85% white, up in the piney woods of central LA, around Alexandria, and near Barksdale AFB. There's one tree on the high school's campus, and siince 'time immemorial, the tree shaded white kids, but not black kids. Last fall, a group of black kids petitioned the school administration for permission to share the shade. The school admin apparently said they didn't care who sat where, and went home for the weekend. On Monday, whenthe school opened again, and the black kids went to avail themselves of the shade, they found the tree adorned with nooses (in the school colors, which I thought was a nice touch). The school investigated and identified the culprits, giving them brief suspensions.

This didn't set well with the black kids, and throughout the fall, tensions festered, leading eventually to a confrontation when one of the noose-hangers happened to stray away from his posse after a school dance. Then the brave boy got his ass jumped & kicked by a handful of black students, still chaffing from the explicit threat the nooses represented. Instead of taking his lumps for being a racist asshole, the kid called the cops and the cops arrested the black kids on felony assault and attempted murder charges.

From an Amy Goodman column, in July, '07:

Jena, a community of 4,000, is about 85 percent white. While the black community gathered at a church to respond, others didn't see the significance. Soohen interviewed Jena town librarian Barbara Murphy, who reflected: "The nooses? I don't even know why they were there, what they were supposed to mean. There's pranks all the time, of one type or another, going on. And it just didn't seem to be racist to me." Tensions rose.

Robert Bailey, a black student, was beaten up at a white party. Then, a few nights later, Robert and two others were threatened by a white man with a sawed-off shotgun, at a convenience store. They wrestled the gun away and fled. Robert's mother, Caseptla Bailey, said: "I know they were in fear of their lives. They were afraid that this man was going to shoot them, you know, especially in the back, running away from the scene."

The next day, Dec. 4, 2006, a fight broke out at the school. A white student was injured, taken to the hospital and released. Robert Bailey and five other black students were charged ... with second-degree attempted murder. They each faced 100 years in prison. The black community was reeling.

You can read the latest details here.

I recall the first time I attended an SEC football game: LSU v. UFL. It was the lesson which taught me that racism wasn't EVER gonna go away...

It was Emmett Smith's first game in Baton Rouge, and he had monster night: 200 yds, a coupla scores. UFL won, convincingly. As the parking out emptied after the game, the UFL crowd couldn't resist taunting their vanquished foes. But it was how they did it that was notable: "You coon-ass losers! Our niggers can beat your niggers ANYTIME!!!!" Mainly it was students...

As a retired professor who has taught at two, big-time, flagship state universities (LSU & Oklahoma), I noticed that the greatest preponderance of my students were (White) well-heeled 'legacies,' the children of alumnae: BMW-driving brats of parents who had the connections and resources to send their benighted off-spring anywhere the kids had the grades and brains to attend; it was telling that they ended up at state schools which HAD to take 'em.

No, brother, racism isn't dead. It ain't even bleeding.

(I was inspired to limn these lines by a piece I read here. H/t, Sinfonian.)

Rep. Kotex (R, Wis) Absorbs Another Lotto Win

(Via YahooNews)

MILWAUKEE - U.S. Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, already a millionaire and heir to the Kimberly-Clark fortune, is on a lucky streak.

The Republican hit it big in 1997 with a $250,000 jackpot in the District of Columbia lottery. Then, last spring, he won $1,000 prize in the Wisconsin lottery, and he won another $1,000 in that lottery last week.

"I got lucky," Sensenbrenner said.

Sensenbrenner, 64, was born into a family that helped build Kimberly-Clark Corp., maker of Kleenex tissue and Scott paper towels, and he recently reported a net worth of about $11.6 million. He said he spends about $10 a week on lottery tickets.

The latest winnings came in a Super 2nd Chance drawing, in which people who mail in at least $5 in losing tickets vie for 10 $1,000 prizes each week. Lottery officials put the odds of winning just one time at 1 in 5,000.

Call him lucky, but DON'T call him Rep. Kotex; apparently that REALLY pisses him off.

He Looks To Me Like Nothing So Much As A Slick, Scamming Real-Estate Developer Who's Just Sold The Dumb Chinaman A "Reeeel Nahs Proputty"

On Love Canal, or a parcel in the Lower Ninth Ward. Heh. Heheh. Heheheh.(AFP/Jim Watson) UUmmmmm... Doncha think you're taking the Camo thing a bit far. Is the next step loden, and lederhosen, and a natty moustache?

Haute Couture Meets Haute Torture

Presenting: The "Abu Ghraib" Look! It's what to wear to your next Rendition.
(Dress by: Cooder & Tuat; AP Photo/Oded Balilty)

Neo-Nativism & Xenophobia: The Twin Terrors of the '08 GOPuke Platform

Fanatical, swarthy, wild-eyed, well-armed, and desperate, "they" are coming at "us" from all sides. They don't HAVE to "follow us home." They're already HERE, and they're fucking OUR women!
That's the theme which, although unspoken, firmly undergirds the only issues upon which the extreme right wing of the Property Party has to run, if one may judge from the tenor and the tactics of the GOPuke "debate" last night.

Climate Crisis: MORE GOOD NEWS!!!

According to NPR's resident Bidness shill, Steve Insqueak, climate change is forcing bidness in the Arctic to "adapt." The warming over the Arctic might end the careers of the "Ice-Road Truckers," cuz it hasn't fallen below -40F in two years in Yellowknife, whence depart these heroes of industry and commerce to supply the mining industry, who need the freezing temps to keep their ice-hiways open and 'safe (Me? I hope they drown.).
So the people mining diamonds, as well as those getting ready to extract every drop of petroleum from under the (rapidly disappearing) perma-frost, are already eyeing the opening of the "Northwest Passage" with glee, and are planning the use of dirigibles in winter. (I expect the Polar Bears wish they could adapt so quickly.)
Personally, I hope that every one of these greedy fux trying to make money by further exploiting the despoiliation of the planet dies broke and in deep despair, afflicted with shingles, rickets and arthritis, diabetes, and scurvy...

Go Listen To Mrs Clinton

in this report on campaigning over Labor Day, on yesterday's All Things Considered, and then ask yourself, if she's so strong a believer in the rights of Labor, why she employs Mark Penn--ceo of Bursom-Marsteller, the notorious union-busting, beltway pr/lobbying agency--as her chief polling strategist.

You might also want to ask why that particular piece of information, well known to EVERYONE in the SCUM, was not deemed important enough to mention in the report.

Climate Crisis: The GOOD News!

NPR's Steve Inskeep (aka "InSqueek) narrated a story this morning that tolled the praises of global warming for all the commercial/bidness activity the melting of the Arctic ice might permit.
Really.
With nary a discouraging word, Steve led us breathlessly through an unparalleled piece of pro-bidness propaganda, all about the energy resources, plus GOLD and all kinds of other 'precious' stuff that 'opening' the Arctic will occasion the 'recovery' of (like it was fucking lost, or some shit?). What could be wrong widdat?

It seemed to me then, and still, somewhat unseemly that this paean to the commercial 'boom' coming to the North--complete with nationalistic claims and counter-claims, ships, bases, and troops--should have been presented as if it were unalloyed opportunity, good news, and fodder for more stock price increases, when what it in fact means is the complete and utter destruction of the natural habitat including the largest reservoir of fresh water on the fucking planet.
You cannot spell "Republican" without NPR: Your Bidness Connection!

WASF, Installment--Post Mortem: Requiem

This is depressing, as depressing as only the unvarnished truth can be. I have always known the 'liberal' system of USer democracy was fragile, and increasingly--with the advent of the EisenhowerDulles National Security State--diseased.
But I never dreamed I'd out-live it.
Chris Floyd sez:

The Republic you wanted -- and at one time might have had the power to take back -- is finished. You no longer have the power to keep it; it's not there. It was kidnapped in December 2000, raped by the primed and ready exploiters of 9/11, whored by the war pimps of the 2003 aggression, gut-knifed by the corrupters of the 2004 vote, and raped again by its "rescuers" after the 2006 election. Beaten, abused, diseased and abandoned, it finally died. We are living in its grave.

Where does that leave us? Up Shit Crick, without a paddle, friends.

(We) must also recognize that the kind of civil disobedience that Thoreau preached – and practiced – is immensely more difficult today, because the power of the state is so much greater, far more pervasive, more invasive…and much more implacable, more inhuman. No one would have dared put Thoreau in "indefinite detention" without charges, or torture him, or delegate some underling in intelligence apparatus (which didn't exist then) to kill him as a "suspected terrorist." Of course there were many egregious suspensions of Constitutional liberties and draconian measures during the Civil War; but these occasioned fierce fights in Congress, investigations, lawsuits, and outraged protests on the streets – the worst, by far, in American history, dwarfing the urban riots and war protests of the Sixties. But only the most ignorant fool – or devious liar – could compare these short-lived, ad hoc, inconsistently applied, frequently reversed and much-disputed depredations, carried out in the midst of a massive insurrection by fully-fledged armies on American soil, with today's thorough-going, systematic creation of an authoritarian state, on the basis of a zealous ideology of an unrestricted "unitary executive," operating in a nebulous, self-declared "state of war" that we are told will last for generations.

Thoreauvian/Gandhian/MLK-style "pacifism" is as impractical, as impossible today, as alchemy.

The technology available to the government today amplifies the scope of repression immeasurably, both in the pinpoint, surreptitious targeting of individuals and in larger-scale operations.
In a land crawling with armed – and armored – SWAT teams, with operatives from innumerable federal agencies packing heat and happy to use it, a land where more than 2 million people languish in prison (many of them captives of an endless "war on drugs" that has done nothing to curb substance abuse but has greatly augmented the power of the state and the criminal gangs whose laundered money enriches Establishment elites), a land where almost every transaction is wired up to some national grid, where national ID cards are now being imposed – a land where you literally cannot exist without placing your liberty, your privacy, your very life at the mercy of a government apparatus besotted with violence, coercion and intrusion, there is no place left for the kind of action that Thoreau advocated. His way – and that of Gandhi and King, who took so much from him – envisions a state opponent which one could hope to shame into honorable action by the superior moral force of principled civil disobedience. But the very hallmark of the present regime is its shamelessness, its utter lack of any sense of honor or principle, its bestial addiction to raw power...
...(D)espite the deep unpopularity of the regime, there is still a widespread reluctance to recognize its true nature, and what it will require to restore our constitutional republic. And truth to tell, there are a great many people uninterested in doing so. As long as the diversions keep pouring through the latest gadgetry, the monthly paycheck manages to cover the bills, and their own bodies are not subjected to the tyrant's evil, many people are happy to accept the authoritarian system. (This is not unique to Americans, of course; it is a constant in human history.) But even where there is an interest in discerning the reality of our times, and a yearning for change, again there is no broader movement to leverage an individual's dissent into a form large enough to thwart the tyrannical machine. And there is no American Sakharov on the horizon, someone to arise from the very center of the machine to denounce its workings and call for genuine liberty, genuine democracy, genuine economic and social justice.

There's lot more, much of it reiterating--albeit more elegantly--what I've been saying since "we, the People" acquiesced to Bush v. Gore. (H/t to "fortytwo" at MLW)

The Climate Crisis: Silver Lining Dept.

Well, if every drowned polar bear may yield the equivalent of a coupla tanks of gas for the Murkin Consumer, why bubble, bubble, lil bear. Tough.

That was the tone of voice I heard in the teaser for Morning Edition's promo on tonite's ATC, pimping a Morning Edition story of how the melting of the Arctic might yield huge energy resources, to be broadcast tomorrow. I thought Insqueak's effervescent excitement over the commercial possibilities of the Northwest Passage to be a bit self-orgasmic, as if the narrator held some commercial interest, or something, a bit unseemly, y'know?
I bet if I tried, I could retrieve that sound-byte.
Or somebody could.

Any Car-nuts Out There In Blogo-land?

A New York man retired. He wanted to use his retirement money wisely, so it would last, and decided to buy a home and a few acres in Portugal.

The modest farmhouse had been vacant for 15 years. The owner and wife had both died, and there were no heirs. The house was sold to pay taxes.

There had been several lookers, but the large barn had steel doors, and they had been welded shut. Nobody wanted to go to the extra expense to see what was in the barn, and it wasn't complimentary to the property anyway......so, nobody made an offer on the place.

The NY guy bought it at just over half of the property's worth, moved in, and set about to tear in to the barn.......curiosity was killing him.

So, he and his wife bought a generator, and a couple of grinders.......and cut thru the welds.

What was in the barn...............?

Go HERE and start wishing you had bought the place!!

HINT: just click on "Index" and see it all at once. Click on any picture to enlarge it.

Michael Gordon, the NYT's pre-eminent war-whore, was featured this morning on NPR's WeSun,

shilling for the Bushevik surge plans.

Nobody--especially not the intellectually lethargic Leanne Hansen, apparently--could bring themselves to mention the fact that, along with the entirely discredited Judy Miller, Gordon was the Times' foremost exponent of the ICORP in Iraq, and the Regime's most reliable SCUM acolyte for more war, and that, therefore, Gordon's 'report' should be treated like a Pentagon press release.

When I called to ask, in the politest possible way (really! I merely reported the facts), why that might be, the guy on the board--headline reader-cum-engineer--hung up me, without so much as a "hey, I gotta run."

Hey, NPR/KUNM? Fuck off; just fuck the fuck off, you SCUM-sucking pig-fuckers. I've been a loyal (albeit an occasionally curmudgeonly) KUNM supporter since they went on the air, 40 fucking years ago; and the dumb-fuck running the board just hangs up on me?

The End Of "Labor Day."

"Labor Day" has become an anachronism. Only one worker in 10 is a union member. I therefore predict that "Labor Day" will soon (within a decade) be replaced by a soi-disant "Patriots' Day," to commemorate the victims of 'terrorism.'
There is no sentiment in 'Bidness' to create another holiday, and when the next attack comes, there will be ferocious pressure from the Right to create a holiday to commemorate the victims. "Labor Day" being the most convenient date to the obvious Terror Day, Sept. 11, it will be sacrificed to expediency.