It sure looks like poor, ol' coastal Looseyana's gonna get whacked again

Here's a great storm-tracking link to follow the unfolding disaster. From the projected track, I'd guess Morgan City or Lake Charles could bear the brunt of the storm.

Via the Sydney (AU) Morning Herald (Sept. 1):

HURRICANE Gustav strengthened to a "dangerous" category four storm that threatens to strike US oil and natural-gas producers andfiners harder than hurricanes Katrina and Rita did three years ago.

Gustav may become a category five storm as it crosses the Gulf of Mexico.
It has already shut three-quarters of oil output in the region and refineries operated by Valero Energy, the nation's largest refiner, and Exxon Mobil, the largest publicly traded oil company.

The hurricane prompted a special trading session on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

"This storm will prove to be a worst-case scenario for the production region," said Jim Rouiller, a senior energy meteorologist for Planalytics.com. "This storm will be more dangerous than Katrina."

The National Hurricane Centre issued a hurricane watch as Gustav's winds were estimated at 240kmh as it made landfall in western Cuba and was forecast to pass into the Gulf overnight.

BP, Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell, Europe's largest oil company, led producers shutting wells and whisking staff ashore.

About 77 per cent of Gulf oil output and 37 per cent of natural-gas production was shut, the US Minerals Management Service said in a statement yesterday.

The Louisiana Offshore Oil Port, the nation's largest crude-oil terminal, closed yesterday.

Fields in the Gulf produce 1.3 million barrels a day of oil, about a quarter of US production, and 200 million cubic metres a day of natural gas, 14 per cent of the total, government data show. Hurricane Katrina in 2005 closed 95 per cent of regional offshore output and, along with Hurricane Rita, idled about 19 per cent of US refining capacity.

Exxon Mobil is shutting its Chalmette, Louisiana, refinery.

Non-essential employees have been released so they can evacuate as requested by local officials, Exxon Mobil said in a notice posted on its website yesterday.

The refinery, which can process 192,000 barrels a day, is run by Chalmette Refining, a joint venture between Exxon and state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela SA. Marathon Oil Corp began closing its 256,000-barrel-a-day Garyville, Louisiana, refinery yesterday, according to a statement posted on its website. Meanwhile, Valero was shutting its St Charles refinery west of New Orleans and may decide today whether to shut its refinery in Port Arthur, Texas, spokesman Bill Day said in an emailed message.

Three Louisiana parishes with refineries have ordered mandatory evacuations.

Refinery production slowed at some complexes owned by Shell and Motiva Enterprises LLC, its venture with Saudi Arabian Oil, Shell said in a statement on its website. "The big question for the market is going to be how quickly after Gustav passes will the industry be able to recover and get back online," said Andy Lipow, president of Houston company Lipow Oil Associates.

Enbridge, Canada's largest pipeline company, and its US affiliate closed conduits capable of bringing ashore 189 cubic metres a day of natural gas. Evacuation of Terrebonne Parish shut the flow of 15 million cubic metres a day of gas into the 16,900-kilometre Transco line to the US north-east, owner Williams Cos said in a statement.

Exxon Mobil said yesterday it had shut platforms producing 5000 barrels of oil and 1.4 million cubic metres of natural gas. BP, Europe's second-largest oil company, said it shut production in the Gulf of Mexico and evacuated all staff by noon local time yesterday. Its normal production is equivalent to 290,000 barrels a day from the region. Anadarko Petroleum, the second-largest US independent oil producer, said in a statement on its website yesterday that it had shut the equivalent of 105,000 barrels a day of production, with all of it to be closed tomorrow night.

Shell said it would shut daily production equivalent to 510,000 barrels of oil yesterday. Marathon Oil Corp and Conoco Phillips said they have shut and evacuated all Gulf production platforms. Workers from 45 rigs and 223 production platforms were evacuated as of 12.30pm yesterday, the Minerals Management Service said in a statement on its website. About 998,000 barrels of daily oil production have been shut down in preparation for the storm, as well as 70 million cubic metres of gas.

Crude oil futures on the Nymex fell 13 cents to $115.46 a barrel on August 29 on speculation supplies will be adequate to meet demand after the storm passes. Natural gas futures fell 10.7 cents to $7.943 per million British thermal units. Most US financial markets are closed until September 2 for the Labor Day holiday. Nymex said in an August 29 statement that electronic trading will begin at 2.30pm New York time tomorrow with trades dated September 2.

What We HAD Here Was A Failure of Imagination

Ten signs that the disasters and catastrophes of the last 8 years should have surprised NO ONE (I wrote this in December, 2000).

What if:
The self-declared "winner" of a closely contested, vital, national election LOST the national total popular vote, but "was declared the winner" based on some old colonial/imperial/racist holdover from the nation's pre-democracic and un-integrated past...

AND 2. The self-declared "winner's" "victory" turned on disputed votes cast--or preventded from being cast--in a province infamous for political chicanery, fraud, and abuse, and which is governed by the "victor's" brother...

AND 3. The self-declared "winner" was the son of the defeated, rejected (and humiliated!) former prime minister; AND the defeated, humiliated father/former prime minister was himself the former long-time member and later chief of that nation's secret police, international terrorist, assassination, and political dirty tricks squad, where he was still held in high regard, had impeccable connections, and was still owed a few favors...

AND 4. An overwhelming majority of members of that nation's most despised caste of former slaves, servants, and sexual playthings, fearing for their lives/livelihoods and the return of their oppression, turned out in record numbers to vote in near-universal opposition to the self-declared "winner's" candidacy...

AND 5. Hundreds of members of that most-despised caste were intercepted on their way to the polls by state police, operating under the authority of the self-declared "winner's" brother...

AND 6. There were internationally wide-spread, but locally ignored, allegations that ballots delivered to polling places of the members of the despised caste in the disputed districts were of the kind known for years to result in large numbers of "disqualified" ballots, AND which ballots may already have been 'pre-marked' so that they might be discarded later as bearing multiple voter's marks (source: London TIMES, NY TIMES, etc)...

AND 7. Poorly designed ballots and faulty machines in several voting districts -- especially those heavily favoring the OPPONENT of the self-declared "winner," in districts where the likely voters were preponderantly members of that despised class -- directly led to thousands of voters voting AGAINST their expressly preferred candidate, while many of those who noticed and requested new ballots were denied...

AND 8. While six million people voted in the disputed province, the self-declared "winner's" margin of "victory" was only 327 notes -- fewer, by far, certainly, than the vote-counting machines' margin of error...

AND 9. The self-declared "winner" and his political cronies opposed -- indeed, declared to be "criminal" and "dishonest" -- a more careful, by-hand inspection and re-counting of the ballots in the disputed province, or in its most hotly disputed districts...

AND ...10. the self-declared "winner," who himself was a governor of a major province -- which province had the worst human-rights record of any province in his nation, and led the nation in executions -- had recently signed legislation in his own province that REQUIRED such a "criminal" recount...

Would the estimable forces of (corporate) freedom and (financial) right in 4th estate of the USofA turn a blind eye upon all this, and urge a speedy resolution of the disputes and installation of the 'victor"?

I doubt it... unless, of course, he were an "authoritarian" leader dedicated to "free" markets and the suppression of dissent.

New Meme? Whaddaya Call Federal Workers Hired For Partisan Loyalty, Not Practical Competence?

"Goodlings"

Named for Monica Goodling, the blonde, brainless bimbo with a "law degree" from a religious diploma mill hired by the Bushevik "Justice" department to vet new career employee hires, and who notoriously used her position to ensure the ideological purity of prospective employees.

Here's how Wiki describes her qualifications:

Goodling, a conservative Christian, was a 1991 graduate of Northeastern High School in Manchester, Pennsylvania, and received her Bachelor of Arts degree in 1995 from Messiah College. After completing her bachelor's degree, Goodling continued her education at American University,[2] but she then transfered to the Regent University Law School, where she received her Juris Doctor degree in 1999. Regent University was founded by Pat Robertson, and it advertises itself as "America's Preeminent Christian University".

From "Messiah" College (WTF izzat?), she tried a real school (*American U.), but couldn't cut it and retreated to "Regency" University for here 'gimme' JD?

I, for one, am certain there were "Monica Goodlings" embedded by the Busheviks in every department of the government. And I am equally certain that while there, these fascist 'moles' hired deeply committed, neo-con cells, and installed them in every department, office, and bureau of Government today. For the foreseeable future, these 'moles' will oppose, interfere with, and try to stymie any and effort at liberalizing Government for the next 30 years, if not purged, handily and forthwith by an Obama regime, should he be installed in the ShiteHouse.

If 'elected,' the first thing Obama needs to do is set up a team to cull the records of every Bushevik hire since 2001 for the "Goodlings." Then fire them, all, summarily. Turn in your keys and your hard-discs, pack your crosses, rosaries, holy water vials, and get the fuck outta Dodge...

(This post appeared originally on The Pond. It will eventually find its way to MLW, to WWL, to PFF, and Station Charon.)

A Bridge Too Far?

There's this guy searching for proof of the Divine, and one day at the beach he encounters an angel, or anyway somebody who says he's one.

Of course, the guy's skeptical, but he gives the self-described angel a task to prove he's working for the Lord: the guy's a surfer, and he loves Hawaii, but he lives in California. So he tells the angel he wants the Lord to build a bridge from LA to Honolulu. That'd be definitive proof, he figgers.

The angel, understandably tries to get out of it, first complaining of the raw materials, then berating the guy for being selfish, for wanting to drive to Hawaii. The 'angel' asks the guy if he doesn't have a more doable, mebbe a more noble, thing that the angel could accomplish to prove his relation with God.

So the fella stops and thinks, and after a minute, tells the angel that, yeah, okay, he'll give up on the idea of the bridge. What he really wants is to understand women, he says.

The angel considers the request, and after a minute he sez: 'So this bridge? You want two or four lanes?'

Karl Rove only WISHES he'd thought of this...

Given the disaffection of such a (allegedly) large fraction of Hilary supporters (approaching 30%, according to some stories and polls), Bombin John, the POW PukeStain, could quite handily win both the battle of the snark and probably the 'election,' too, by naming Condi as his Veep.
She’d have strong appeal. “White” voters could vote for the PukeStain and at the same time assuage their ‘racial fairness’ paradoxes: they wouldn't "really" be voting for either a woman or a person of color, but they'd have a rat-fuck at the expense of the 'libruls.' Women, pissed (agree or not) at Obama, might also flock to the PukeStain ticket with the notable woman Veep candidate, figgering (rightly) "only a heartbeat, and he’s an old man…"

It would be an enormous propaganda coup for the GOP for it to happen that the first woman AND the first non-White preznint were both the SAME--incompetent, fatuous, shallow, bumbling, coproRat 'ho--Condi Rice, a Republican, innit???

Like I said, Karl Rove only WISHES he’d thought of it…

(This post originated on The Pond, where there's a coupla relevant illustrations. Likely it will also find its way onto MLW, WWL, & PFF. I am an equal opportunity offender.)

From "Screwed" To "Fucked": No, Virginia, You CANNOT Be President When You Grow Up. Fuggeddaboudit!

Rick MacArthur, president of Harper's Inc has a new book out: "You Can't Be President: The Outrageous Barriers to Democracy in America."

MacArthur, on Democracy Now yesterday (transcript) with Amy Goodman, says among other things (watch/listen here), that the popular notion that any American can become president only reinforces the “destructive national delusion that widespread, up-from-the-ground, truly popular democracy, both political and economic, really exists in America.” To assume that, he says, is equal to believing that Santa Claus exists. (Not unlike believing in "God": It may be comforting, but it is wholly irrelevant with respect to 'reality,' effect, or consequences.)

Friends, things are really, truly, completely, wholly, totally fucked up (yo!) if the members of the actual 'ruling class' (to which class MacArthur indisputably belongs) are dismayed by the catapulting propaganda.

Someone remarked on one of the other blogs--Drum?, S!N.?, TP,? (I fergit)--the other day that the Conventions reminded them of an annual corporate stockholders' meeting-cum-trade expo. Which is just about right: The Dims this week, and the Pukes next week, have brought together in the same place all the important functionaries of the apparatus where they can collect corporate largesse, schmooze with the Fat Cats, and feel like they're part of some 'movement.' It's where the Fat Cats can select from the array of potential sycophants, purchase the ones they want, and jam broomsticks into the spokes of party satraps who are not sufficiently friendly to the bipartisan, CorpoRat Agenda. Plus it is a terriffic propaganda show, now become truly a "pseudo-event," a 'thing' that only exists so that it should be reported on (Boorstin, 1961).

Matt Taibbi has made a similar point, on the Rolling Stone blog:

The truth is that the campaigns of both Barack Obama and John McCain are being inundated with cash from more or less exactly the same gorgons of the corporate scene. From Wall Street to the Big Oil powerhouses to the military-industrial complex, America's fat-cat business leaders know that the Animal House-style party of the last eight years that made almost all of them rich with bonuses, government contracts and bubble profits is about to come to an end, and someone is going to have to pay to clean up the mess. They want that someone to be you, not them, and they've spared no expense to make sure both presidential candidates will be there to bail them out next year.

They're succeeding. Both would-be presidents have already sold us out. They've taken the money and run — completing the cyclical transformation of the American political narrative from one of monopolistic Republican iniquity to an even more depressing tale about the overweening power of corporate money and the essentially fictitious nature of our two-party system.

In layman's terms, we've gone from being screwed to being fucked. Who knows — maybe Barack Obama will surprise us if he wins the election. But if you look at the money, it doesn't look good.

We are SOOOOOOOOOOOOO fucked, people. "We" Murkins have made the classic mistake: Believing our own promotional material, forgetting the spin imparted to make it plausible to the ignorant, and/or the terminally delusional.

FIFTY THOUSAND HITS!!!!! Wooooo-HOOOOO!!! 50K!@!@!@

Today, August 25, 2008, the sum/total of hits on "Woody's Associated Blogs"™ lurched in typical, ungainly fashion past the 50,000-hit milestone. Much "Hoopla" attended the event. Jollity ensued, universally. You had to be there...The small screen doesn't do it justice, you know?

The visitor who logged the 50,000 hit linked in from Los Angeles, on AT&T, at 7:49 pm, looking for this image, from almost 8 years ago, even then known as the Brooks' Brothers Rebellion, when hired GOPuke staffers rioted in the Elections Office of Miami-Dade County and forced the suspension of the recount which should have spared us the ensuing 8 years of mal- and misfeasance. A fair number of these little fucknozzles and shitwhistles ended up in the Bushevik Apparat, some in career jobs, some in patronage positions. If you know any of them, see if they commute anytime through the Metro at Columbus Circle. The escalators there are very long and amazingly steep.

Fantasies aside, if this notawble visitor will contact me through the The Pond, where the hit happened, and confirm their name and ISP, I'll be sending that person a 2 lb bag of New Mexico Pinon-roasted coffee, a package of Chimayo red (ground) chile and a package of blue-corn tortilla/pancake mix.

Squirt & Gulp: Obama, McCain Gleefuly Fellate Xian Flying Monkeys' Guru

That thing last weekend, with St. Randy of the Meg-Bux holding court and grilling the presidential candidates about their sectarian bona fides made me physically ill. I wanted to hurl, either my lunch, or handy, palm-sized stones.

Yet ANOTHER fucking "Faith-based blowjob" for the "faithful." The candidates got on their knees and sucked and swallowed the Kingdom Cum with downright disgusting enthusiasm...

Is it sweeter for it emanating from the Holy Scrote?

What a shameful performance! I never believed either Obama or McShame, but now I never shall respect them, either.

Squirt & gulp: The sound of Democracy cravenly collapsing before the false altar of theodicy...

Racism 101

I used to have to deliver this lecture--or one very much like it--once per semester in every class I taught in graduate and undergraduate teacher education programs, both in Oklahoma and Louisiana. It was depressingly necessary, because the perfusion of the specious, spurious claims by whites of being 'victims' of 'reverse racism' by blacks or other minorities on white folks.

I now find it necessary to pull it out about once every six months on the blogs, too, where--one could only hope--there might be a slightly higher level of critical acuity, given that so many bloggers are actually adults, in responsible positions. But, alas:

Racism is NEVER merely a matter of individual acts of bias or bigotry

(The following was occasioned by an exchange on MLW, part of which constitutes the first, italicized paragraph. One commentor had remarked that a couple of Southern states were in play for Obama this year because there were serious efforts underway to register an estimated half- to three/quarters of a million hitherto unregistered voters in those places.)

Are you saying that Black voters are racists? That they will vote for the Black candidate without thinking? That their only question is whether obama is Black enough?

Are you saying blacks are, in general, worse off today than in 1965 because of 'liberal' politics, affirmative action, voting rights, and the like? That seems a risible assertion. Perhaps because of racist reaction to traditional liberal notions of advocating for racial justice and social equity, I suppose that case might be made. But that's clearly a case of blaming the victims who have been historically deprived of equity and justice.

A black voting GOP, as JC Watts' daddy said during his campaign (which I worked on; though he wasn't the first person to say it, he was the first person I ever heard say it) for Labor Commissioner in Oklahoma in '98, is like a chicken voting for the Colonel...

Racism is not an "individual" fault. It is societal. The Japanese practice racism against the Ainu and Koreans, as well as all other 'gaijin.' In northern New Mexico until fairly recently (and still in the more remote villages and towns) Chicano 'racism' did occur, where it would be difficult for a Native Amreican, or an Anglo to get the good, county jobs, for example, because they were not part of the dominant Chicano culture of the area. Racism is the institutionalization of notions of racial superiority. Racism is prejudice PLUS power to enact prejudice to the detriment of the allegedly, customarily, 'inferior' group.

So the answer is No, they are not 'racists' for preferring Obama. They would be 'voting their best interests.' Their choice would, to me be about as anti-racist as any vote could be, because they would be voting against the (defacto) racist GOP a party which has only flourished these last 40 years because of their wholesale adoption of racism as the organizing principle of their Southern Strategy...

Unfortunately, because of racism among whites (which is the only kind there is in most of the USofA)--that is, the systematic, quasi-official, socially embedded exploitation of white prejudice, bias, and bigotry against blacks and other people of color to keep them in positions of degraded citizenship, economic adversity, and social repression (in 1950, the majority of convicts in US prisons outside the South were white; today, because the carceral system has been appropriated as a tool of racial control, the vast majority everywhere are 'minorities')--Obama is being forced by the white racist establishment--to foresake the traditional liberal positions advocating for racial justice and social equity to allay the fears that he won't turn the tables...

I used to assign readings by Tim Wise. This piece was published in 2000:

The most unfortunate thing about all of this is that by neglecting to address institutional racism and other forms of structural inequity, it becomes all the more difficult to adequately confront the individual-level attitudinal biases about which we hear so much. Put simply, so long as our society is one in which certain folks-say, white, heterosexual men-are disproportionately found in prominent decision-making positions, and certain other folks-say people of color, women of all colors, and gays and lesbians-are disproportionately found in subordinate positions, it will be seen by many as quite obvious (or perhaps not thought of at all, but simply internalized) that those straight white guys must be smarter, or harder working than the rest, and thus, deserve their position, while those without power must likewise deserve their subjugation thanks to one or another genetic, cultural or moral flaw. This is how the myth of meritocracy works with regard to class, and it works just as well with race, gender, or sexual orientation: inculcating the mindset that the winners won because the losers are, well, losers.

So long as identifiable inequity is allowed to exist to any significant degree between socially-constructed and classified groups, this stratification-alongside the subjective propaganda which holds that individual initiative is the key to success or failure-will continue to produce racists: those like John Rocker, and those like the millions of other folks who frankly agreed with what he said, differing only on the style of delivery. It's time we got busy addressing the problem itself, rather than merely its occasional, highly public, symptomatic manifestations. Sound advice: and you didn't even have to check yourself in for therapy to get it.

Or check this out:

Amy Alkon "Hearts" Woody!!!

Verbatim from her pathetic "advice" blog, here's "trannie Amy" herself, regarding yours truly. You can tell she's really hot for me, but is trying to conceal it:

Here's the blog of tiny little fascist Woody, who apparently is a 62-year-old man posting cracks like this --

"I had you as a trannie, but going the other way... no WAY that hair's 'real.' and that jaw! O, yeah, bite me, puh-leasze!!!!

-- on my blog.

His e-mail: konopelli@yahoo.com -- which is how I found his blog, posted without his name, of course, so still anonymous despite the e-mail address.

Here's his profile: http://www.blogger.com/profile/09205896988142798901

See, here's the deal, Woody. You are hiding under the cloak of anonymity. I'm guessing you're a tiny-dicked loser. I mean, what kind of 62-year-old man posts anonymous attack comments about a woman's looks on her website? Is this "progressive" behavior, trying to punish and intimidate me for speaking freely?

I don't post stuff I wouldn't say to somebody in person. It's uncivil to attack somebody about their looks. Also, I can't imagine somebody who posts anonymous attack remarks such as this having the balls to ever speak to me in public.

You are probably typical of the people Sadly Pathetic is sending over here. And you know my name, as I have the balls you couldn't dream of having to post under it, with my picture right there, because I stand behind what I write.

You might try it sometime, cowardly loser.

Posted by: Amy Alkon at August 16, 2008 7:05 AM

His blog is: http://walled-in-pond.blogspot.com/

Posted by: Amy Alkon Author Profile Page at August 16, 2008 7:06 AM

Gotta figger that crack about her hair and/or jaw got in there a little, hunh? But looka that JAWLINE! She could load sand with that thing. That's a half-yard bucket, at minimum!

Amy, in her inimitable way, had attracted the attention of the left-b/sphere for a column in which she said, in effect, that an innocent woman (a black mother of several ("a litter") children by different fathers), who had been killed by the cops during a drug-raid, had had it coming.

Such commentary, of course, immediately obviates any necessity for subsequent commentors to be in any way nice, polite, or kind.

Bwahahahahahahaha...Consume your own feces and expire, babe...

Light Posting Day: Hollywood Calling

Gonna be on a set today, a TeeVee show called "Easy Money."

I'm supposed to portray a grizzled, old, cowboy-type guy patronizing a titty-bar.

Damn, type-cast again.

I should also say, here, that the recent 'surge' in hits on my blogs, prompted by random mention in different blogs (S,N!, C&L) for several unrelated causes, suggests to me that the date of my blogs surpassing 50,000 hits (not huge, I know, but significant in my little world) will be sooner than I'd anticipated, and in fact probably will occur before Sept. 1. If you are the 50,000th visitor, I am prepared to supply you with a New Mexico "Care" package, including pinon-roasted coffee, and an assortment of yummy chile products.

I will post the ISP of the 50,000th visitor, and request that the winner contact me THROUGH THE BLOGS to claim their prizes...

Break a leg...

Murkuns Say: "Too Much About The Knee-grow!"

According to a Pew poll last week, about 48% of people/voters polled (just over 50% of Independents, 75% Pukes, and 35% Dims) reported they thought they were hearing 'too much,' about St. Change.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barack Obama may be the fresh face in this year's presidential election, but nearly half say they're already tired of hearing about him, a poll says.

With Election Day still three months away, 48 percent said they're hearing too much about the Democratic candidate, according to a poll released Wednesday by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. Just 26 percent said the same about his Republican rival, John McCain.

Obama, the 47-year-old Illinois senator who would become the first black president, has dominated political news coverage much of the year. According to an ongoing Pew study, Obama has appeared in more news stories this year and more people say they have heard more about him than McCain, the longtime Arizona senator who also ran for president in 2000.

Two-thirds of Republicans and about half of independents said they've heard too much about Obama, as did a third of Democrats, a significant number.

At the same time, nearly four in 10 said they've been hearing too little about McCain — about four times the number who said so about Obama. About half of Republicans, four in 10 independents and even a quarter of Democrats said they've not heard enough about the GOP candidate.

The poll was conducted from Aug. 1-4 and involved telephone interviews with 1,004 adults. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points.

I read this as further evidence of my thesis that Murkuns will be content to let Obama's nomination redeem them from the specter of socially embedded racism, withOUT they actually have to vote for him for President. McSame is probably gonna be #44, and by a pretty large margin--5-8 percent, @ 53-46. Their strategy, such as it is, is to provide EVERY WHITE VOTER with at least one (yeah, they're specious and spurious, but they possess plausible deniability) 'reason' not to vote for Obama. The same folks (amounting to over about a third of Dims) who are now asaying they're hearing too much about Obama will NOT vote for him when the curtain in the poll closes...It jis' ainta gonna happen, folks...

McGrampy's Campaigners Trash Social Security Birthday Cake

This story's on a bunch of National blogs this morning. It's the most notoriety poor, old "too far ftom Heaven, too close to Texas" New Mexico's gotten from the chattering class since the David Iglesias/Pajama Pete imbroglio in 2006.

However, there's no evidence that the local fish-wrap, The Albuquerque Urinal, had anything about this story. Nor did ANY of the Local Bleeding Leders have any film on the nightly broadcasts. I cannot understand why not, can you?

Albuquerque, NM- (Yesterday), the Democratic Party of New Mexico were joined by Patsy Trujillo, the Deputy Secretary of Aging and Long Term Care as well as Victor Raigoza, State Senate District 10 Candidate to attempt to sing Happy 73rd Birthday to Social Security outside the McCain headquarters office, only to have the birthday cake thrown in the trash by the campaign.

While McCain supporters screamed, "Obama sleeps with a Teddy Bear and a night light," staffers approached the Democratic group, yelling, took the 20 inch sheet cake that said "Happy Birthday Social Security" and threw it away.

"The McCain campaign is so out of touch instead of taking the cake to a homeless shelter or giving it volunteers, they just threw it in the garbage," said Conchita Cruz, Press Secretary for the Democratic Party of New Mexico. "What a perfect metaphor for why we can't trust John McCain with our social security, the campaign was literally throwing money in the trash."

I don't watch the local chuckleheads much. Did anybody hear about this BEFOREhand? Did anybody get video of the Pukes trashing the Social Security cake?

I was not surprised, of course, that there should be no attention paid. The local media are ALL 'CorpoRat SCUM," owned and directed from power-bases in distant cities. One must NEVER forget: In the Corporate State, corporate media--even local outlets--are the official State Media...

The Assassination Of The Arky Dim Party Chair

points to a growing, and to some an alarming, trend: Flying Monkey/Rightard nutcases, inspired --inflamed?-- by the 'eliminationist' rhetoric of most of the most prominent Rightard pundits--Coulter, Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Beck, Savage, etc. (yick, I feel the need to bathe just naming the slimey fucktards)--are taking the "law" into their own hands: "If the voters won't throw 'em out, then I have the right to kill 'em."

The killer allegedly had just lost his job. Why go to the Dim party offices? Cuz the Rightard/Flying Monkey pundits blame all the economic ills on Dims...It is NOT unlikely that this is, indeed, more of the Rightard/flying monkey, eliminationist rhetoric coming home to roost.

Recent events have strengthened my opinion that, should there occur another, bloody terra attack in the USofA, the knuckle-draggers and the mouth-breathers will be coming for anyone they regard as liberal with guns and ropes and dogs, because "we" prevented the Boooosh from protecting them, with our dissent on torture and spying...

I am armed, and trained in the use of my weapons (one good thing about being a vet, along with the GI Bill). They'll likely get me, but it'll cost 'em...

Obama Won't--Can't--Help With "Minority" Civil/Human Rights

Barack Obama’s no liberal. But he carries that mantle, for no other reason than his ("obvious" and certainly inevitable) popular association with issues important to “people-of-color” and with “minority interests” in general, which are defacto regarded as part of a “liberal” politics. Half black, half white, still he is taken as an avatar of black, and not white, America.

Way back, right at the beginning of this, I suggested all over the place that Obama’s candidacy wouldn’t be an unalloyed plus for so-called ‘minority/human interests,’ because it couldn't be, without alienating white voters wholesale. I guessed then that he would be forced to eschew interest in ‘fairness,’ or ‘equitability,’ or any other idea that makes it seem that that’s what WHITE folks haven’t been "fair," and that the distribution of wealth in Murka has been anything but "equitable," or have somehow been remiss in these departments. Just as Hilary Clinton would have been required to disavow any sympathy for "womens' issues," or "choice," because--though not a "feminist" per se--her gender destines her to 'represent' women. By some quirk of patriarchic hierarchicalizing, only white men are allowed to represent 'everybody.'

Therefore it does not strike me as particularly paradoxical that Obama would be called upon by the white, Village punditocracy to prove his electability by requiring him to to actually reject, and work to diminish, or overturn, minority “entitlements,’ in order to prove--to whites--that he would be “fair” to all.

Everybody knows that Obama's prominence, his presumptive position at the top of a major-party, national ticket, alone and by itself itself, proves that Murka has gone "past-racial." Racism is no longer relevant. Obama killed it. Now he must cut off the ears and the tail.

Of course, that means throwing “minorities” to the sharks, by explicitly rejecting anything that reminds Whites that they have had anything at all to do with the oppression of African-Americans and other communities of color.

Which side will he come down on?

Me? I wouldn't want to have anything really important riding on his candidacy, once he's forced by 'conventional wisdom' to wink and smile and ass-fuck his base constituency...

An Immodest Proposal

Probably, Chinese "Women's Gymnastics" is a misnomer.

Probably, it should be called the "Chinese Girl's Gymnastics," maybe even Chinese Little Girls' Gymnastics. They are accused of using under-age competitors, exploiting the physical advantages that little girls enjoy over more mature ones in the areas of flexibility, absence of mass, and lack of fear. The Chinese "women," except their one leader--who won over-all gold--have no tits, no hips, no asses, nothing to suggest they are, in fact "women."

The Chinese say their competitors are ALL at least 16 years old, the official minimum age for women's gymnastics competition. They say the children's passports prove it.

But it's easy enough to phony up a passport if the issuing agency is complicit with the fraud.

So I have a suggestion. If it is, indeed, "women's" gymnastics that is being contested, every competitor ought to be required to provide evidence that the competitor has had menses. Give the IOC a tampon or a pad with menstrual fluid, and a dna sample for comparison.

Most US Corporations Pay NO Taxes--No, really!

You hear almost hourly how the poor, afflicted USer corpoRats labor and slave under the heel of Federal taxes.

You'll not be surprised that the fuckers are lying:

Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress.

The study by the Government Accountability Office, expected to be released Tuesday, said about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period.

Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO's estimate.

"It's shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who asked for the GAO study with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

An outside tax expert, Chris Edwards of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, said increasing numbers of limited liability corporations and so-called "S" corporations pay taxes under individual tax codes.

"Half of all business income in the United States now ends up going through the individual tax code," Edwards said.

The GAO study did not investigate why corporations weren't paying federal income taxes or corporate taxes and it did not identify any corporations by name. It said companies may escape paying such taxes due to operating losses or because of tax credits.

More than 38,000 foreign corporations had no tax liability in 2005 and 1.2 million U.S. companies paid no income tax, the GAO said. Combined, the companies had $2.5 trillion in sales. About 25 percent of the U.S. corporations not paying corporate taxes were considered large corporations, meaning they had at least $250 million in assets or $50 million in receipts.

The GAO said it analyzed data from the Internal Revenue Service, examining samples of corporate returns for the years 1998 through 2005. For 2005, for example, it reviewed 110,003 tax returns from among more than 1.2 million corporations doing business in the U.S.

Dorgan and Levin have complained about companies abusing transfer prices — amounts charged on transactions between companies in a group, such as a parent and subsidiary. In some cases, multinational companies can manipulate transfer prices to shift income from higher to lower tax jurisdictions, cutting their tax liabilities. The GAO did not suggest which companies might be doing this.

"It's time for the big corporations to pay their fair share," Dorgan said.
(By JENNIFER C. KERR, Associated Press Writer)

"I Was A Stooge For The FBI.": Gerald Ford (Dec.)

Apparently, pretty much throughout his whole career, former football-player, stumblebum, and pardonner of Tricky Dick Nixon, Gerald Ford was an active stooge and flunky for J. Edgar Hoover.

From AP, via RawStory:

Former President Ford secretly advised the FBI that two of his fellow members on the Warren Commission doubted the FBI's conclusion that John F. Kennedy was shot from the sixth floor of the Texas Book Depository in Dallas, according to newly released records from Ford's FBI files.

Ford, still a congressman at the time, also told a senior FBI official about internal panel disputes over hiring staff, Chief Justice Earl Warren's timetable for completing the final report on the assassination and what panel members said about the FBI.

In turn, Assistant FBI Director Cartha "Deke" DeLoach confidentially advised Ford of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's position on panel disputes; discussed where leaks were coming from; and, with Hoover's personal approval, loaned him a bureau briefcase with a lock so he could securely take the FBI report on the 1963 assassination with him on a ski trip.

The new details were included in 500 pages of the FBI's large file on Ford, released in part this past week in response to requests under the Freedom of Information Act that The Associated Press and others made on the day Ford died in December 2006. The FBI intends to release additional documents about Ford in several batches, all with parts censored for law enforcement and privacy reasons.

That Ford served as the FBI's eyes and ears inside the commission has been known for years. Long ago, the government released a 1963 FBI memo that said Ford, then a Republican congressman from Michigan, had volunteered to keep the FBI informed about the panel's private deliberations, but only if that relationship remained confidential. The bureau agreed.

It was also well-known Ford was an outspoken proponent of the bureau's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy acting alone.

A newly released memorandum provides more details about Ford's role as the FBI's informant. DeLoach wrote on Dec. 17, 1963, to outline what Ford told him in the congressman's office about the commission meeting the day before.

"Two members of the commission brought up the fact that they still were not convinced that the President had been shot from the sixth floor window of the Texas Book Depository," DeLoach wrote. "These members failed to understand the trajectory of the slugs that killed the President. He stated he felt this point would be discussed further but, of course, would represent no problem."

There was no explanation of what Ford meant by "no problem."

Warren Commission records released in 1997 revealed that in the final report Ford changed the staff's original description of one of Kennedy's wounds. Ford said then he only made the description more precise. Skeptics said Ford's wording falsely made the wound seem higher on the body to make the panel's conclusion that one bullet hit both Kennedy and Texas Gov. John Connally more plausible.

Gerry Ford was always a reliable guardian of the "myth."

One Day Soon...

The WGG-Blog Empire--Walled-In Pond, Well-Armed Lamb, Woody Guthrie's Guitar, & A Chinchilla of Hope--are at this exact moment just under 1,150 hits away from the minor landmark, 50K HITS!!!.

That's right, some time in the next month or so (depending on how busy it gets), Site-Meter will record the 50,000th hit on my blogs.

I am prepared to recognize and congratulate the person who creates that landmark hit with assorted New Mexico goodies--including chili powder, blue-corn masa, an assortment of salsa, and some NM pinon-roasted coffee beans, a package worth at least $25, plus shipping--to the lucky 50,000th visitor. To claim your prize, when appropriate, send me your ISP that I may compare it to the Site-Meter record. If you are, indeed, the one, I'll contact you within a day or so, to arrange shipping details...

Pulitzer Winner Suskind: "Bushistas Told Premeditated Lies About WMD In Iraq"

I was shocked to hear it.

No, really I was. Nobody could have EVER anticipated that a regime infiltrated with and mainly 'elected' by a "bloodless," rightwing, fascistic, international militarist, petro-corp coup d'etat would misrepresent "Intelligence" in order to drag an unwilling Nation into a vainglorious, and neo-colonialist war of aggression to 'win' access to Iraq's oil.

Ah never would have guessed that could happen, not in the Yew-Nited Stets...Unnnnn-possible...

Listen to Suskind get the incredulous 'bidness' from NPR/ME's whiney, querelous, putz-in-residence, Squeak Inskeep...That tone of bemused disbelief NEVER shows up when he's tongue-laving the prostates of the Regime's toadies and satraps.

Fearless Prediction: Labor Day Is DOOMED!

Get with the Holiday Spirit! Coming Soon, to end YOUR SUMMER!

Labor Day’s toast anyway. Fuggeddabottit!

Probably in 2011, for the 10th Marathon Lachrymosary of the “Terra Attacks of Nine Eleven” (mebbe get Jerry Lewis as host), whomsoever is president, knowing how hard the Allied Chambers of Commerce would oppose creating a NEW National Holiday--and under a barrage of right-wing breast-beating and self-congratulatory, hagiographic hoopla to acknowledge the Martyred Murkin Heroes of that day--will declare the substitution of “National Patriots’ Day”–or some such jingoistic crapola–-for poor, old, (long-doomed) Labor Day as the ‘end-of-summer’ holiday.

And why not?

Nobody giffsafok about Labor anymore anyway.

Yeah, baby, we’re ALL middle class now. Yeah!

Ewe Ess Ayy Ewe Ess Ayy Ewe Ess Ayy Ewe Ess Ayy

DHS Goons Rifle, Pillage Travellers' Laptops

That's right. Jis' like them goddamn slant-eyed, Komminist Chinee are doing in Beijing!

Without any explicit legal authority, the US "Heimattssicherheitsamp" (DHS/TSA) has issued a ruling which gives the assorted, ill-kempt, slovenly, obese, drooling knuckle-draggers, morons, and sniffling mouth-breathers--who's job it is to make your travel experience as absolutely SHITTY as possible--a new weapon in their arsenal of petty annoyances and bull-shit instigations: They claim the authority to force travelers to open their laptops, share the data thereupon recorded and to relinquish them at demand. (Never heard of the fucking 4th Amendment, I guess. What 4th Amendment, you ask? Oh yeah, FISA, I forgot...)

This, it seems to me, is an effort--which is working, as all such efforts these last 8 years have succeeded--to criminalize information, to institute and reify a class of thought-crimes. It is phenomenally dangerous to intellectual freedom, because it conflates "unapproved" information with contraband.

"The new DHS policies say that customs agents can, "absent individualized suspicion," seize electronic gear: "Documents and electronic media, or copies thereof, may be detained for further review, either on-site at the place of detention or at an off-site location, including a location associated with a demand for assistance from an outside agency or entity."

Outside entity presumably refers to government contractors, the FBI, and National Security Agency, which can also be asked to provide "decryption assistance." Seized information will supposedly be destroyed unless customs claims there's a good reason to keep it.

An electronic device is defined as "any device capable of storing information in digital or analog form" including hard drives, compact discs, DVDs, flash drives, portable music players, cell phones, pagers, beepers, and videotapes.

There are some counter-measures, the best of which is full-encryption. But if DHS/TSA can just abscond with the machine, and there is no promise of it EVER being returned to you, there is no protection whatsoever afforded the innocent citizen. I volunteer to make a test-case of it, if I can get a guarantee of complete, full-appeal support from the ACLU or some such other guarantor of liberty and free speech.

Sen. Feingold's on the case, but Skeletor Chertoff says the DHS doesn't have to make public all it's rulings. And the Busheviks' notorious scorn and contempt for ANY Congressional oversight makes me think it will be in vain to pursue it. Also, I expect any new regime to stay with the existing policies, St. Barry, or Bombin' John. They won't easily relinquish such valuable perqs...

Gay-ron-FUUKIN-TEED, cher...

"And That's Just The Fuuking BEGINNING..."

From comments on Crooks & Liars today:

And that’s just the beginning (of the catalog of Bushevik crimes and excesses). Plamegate, the Libby pardon, the Abramoff affair, doctoring scientific reports, the end of habeas corpus, detainee torture, the politically-motivated firings of U.S. attorneys, illegal domestic surveillance, the theory of the unitary executive and the unprecedented assertion of executive privilege all show a President committed to doing neither what is legal nor right. And then, of course, there’s Iraq.

To say, say I, nothing of the blights of which we yet have no knowledge.

Example: 8 or 9 US Attys were fired for having too scant enthusiasm to loyally serve their local political masters. There are (or were) around 100. Eight or 9 were fired for, essentially, having a shred of integrity. Is anybody even asking: What about the rest?

So, what fell, diabolical, destructive, anti-democratic, fascistic deeds have those US Attys done to inoculate themselves against dismissal by this most partisan, most politicizing Regime since the rise of European fascism? To what kinds of mischief and miscreance have they been up? Is anybody even looking? These guys have their scalpels on the aorta of freedom...

The Siegelman case in Alabama hints at the depths of the skullduggery in which they are capable, skilled, and eager to engage. As we get closer to the actual, putative ‘election,’ what worries me is what invisible mischiefs have these US Attys been up to, of the kind that permitted them to keep their jobs, when the 8 or nine who were not enthusiastic enough tools of their local political patrons were fired?

And THAT’s just the beginning.

The busheviks have planted bureaucratic and administrative bombs throughout every branch, bureau, department, or office of government, from top to bottom, through and through. And they're not just policies and practices. The personnel they cannot fire might still have 25-year careers ahead of them, protected ironically by the very rules that were violated to get them into those positions. They’re in the infra-structure, inside the wall, so to speak. You’d have to bolt the doors and raze the buildings to clean ‘em all out.

Don’t be surprised when, if Obama does get in (it could happen...), the GOPhawks suddenly seem to become a lot less truculent, less enthusiastic about the war, and all its expense and loss of life, and to distance themselves from what they’ll swiftly and surely implant in the public mind through the instrument of their lapdog media, the idea of “Obama’s War.”

And if he follows his announced plan, not to end US military adventurism in central Asia, but to relocate the nexi of their energies, it will surely and inevitably become what the Pukes will be calling it at every occasion…Obama’s pledge to get the “combat troops” out of Iraq in 18 months only means he plans to redeploy them to Afghanistan…

Probably–but not certainly, certainly–Obama would not attack Iran, under most circumstances; far better is the possibility that Bombin’ John would…

That's pretty thin gruel in the ‘choice’/'change’ menu, even for the USofA (the United Stores of MickeyDs...).

"Just As With FISA, Obama Folded Like A Cheap Valise!" "No? Really? No..."

Yup, really.

Bent over like an old dollar bill and took off-shore and ANWR drilling right up the ass: "ST. PETERSBURG — Barack Obama said Friday for the first time that he would be willing to support limited additional offshore oil drilling if that’s what it takes to enact a comprehensive policy to foster fuel-efficient autos and develop alternate energy sources."

And he seemed to smile all the while.

Mebbe you can't blame him, I dunno. The rightards always have an advantage in arguments like this.

They can aim for the dumbest matherfockers in the room. There’s always damn near a majority of ‘em around, drooling and picking their asses with side-arms. That cracker Adkisson was one. Tim McVey? There’s millions more. And they don’t do nuance.

"Way ain' got 'nuff awl. Way need more awl. Awl cums outtn the ground, dunnit? Ere's more down thar, innit? So drill more fucking holes and fill MAH TAINK!"

I get so sick of newscasts, commentators, pundits, the whole class who let the oil drilling canards pass right on by without comment.

Two things will bring down the price of gas: More gas, or less demand.

That problem will not be solved by drilling more holes, nor by selling more leases, however. Those expedients just benefit the Big Oil Combines--Exxon/Mobile, Chevron/Texaco, BP, and Shell, mainly.

The problem, and the reason –in scare quotes– for the high price is that demand outstrips supply. Not the demand for "oil." The demand for gasoline and other refined products.

Actually, there’s really quite a bit of it still out there, above ground, but not refined.

But there is not enough refinery capacity to crack all the petroleum we’ve already pumped.

Nobody’s gonna build any more refineries because (according to T Boone Pickens, anyway) world oil production PEAKED at least three years ago, in 2005, and there’s not really enough oil left to amortize the costs of new capacity, no matter the prices at which it is sold. So that’s nagahapun.

The politics of "energy" has become pure political demagoguery, and the goddamn gutless, brain-dead, captive CorpoRat newsreaders should be saying so…

But of course, in the Corporate State, corporate media are State media.

Murkins Jist Don't Dew teh NUANCE:

And mainly, the people don't notice.

That's because, for the last nearly 40 years, critical thinking has been steadfastly and studiously ignored in Murkin schools, despite the fact that it became something of a 'buzz-phrase' in the '90s. They talked about it it a lot, but at the same time, the School Bidness was selling 'testing,' which cannot measure and does not even acknowledge the existence of truly Critical Thinking.

Critical Thinking is a pretty advanced skill, and I'd bet 95% of all high-school students are not called upon to understand nuance. Mostly, they havent been since Nixon’s regime. His people changed the character of the ‘education’ establishment, fundamentally. The regime saw that the kids in the streets, opposing them, were pretty well educated. They could think. They’d been taught how in school.

The hegemons were determined to undermine that, and they did. I taught in colleges of education, taught students who were ostensibly, anyway, pretending to be wanting to become teachers, all of whom were born and schooled (I refuse to call what Murkins do in school "education") since 1970. I'd bet a months' SS, that not one 20 of them had ever had a critical thought. I taught 14 years.

I could even now go back and at least name from pictures the students I taught at LSU and Oklahoma who had actually practiced recursive, reflective THOUGHT. Probably not more than even one in four or five graduate students. It was terrible: People going into teaching who not only cannot/do not think critically, but who actually despise the effort. Unfortunately, I couldn’t flunk them all…

By the way, it might help, too, if there were some real disincentives to price-jacking speculation in these markets. I like the way the Chinese treat crooked speculators in vital materiel: Make 'em dig a hole, strip 'em to their underwear, kneel 'em in front of their hole, put two small-caliber slugs in the brain, tip the carcass int the hole, and cover with quick-lime.

I don't know what deterrent effect this has, but it sure as hell stops recidivism.

PS: There is ONE drilling proposal I'd defend, a law which authorized drilling for oil or gas in US off-shore waters or other protected venues, stipulating that ALL oil and gas recovered from those sites be refined in US refineries and sold to USer users.

Yeah, I know. It'd never get through Congress, and if by a fluke it did, the Chimp'd veto it. But that would make the necessary point, nest paw: "This aint no fuukin way about the USer consumer, assholes; it's about more obscene PROFITS for BIG OIL, and donchew fergit it."

John McCunt: Viral Video (funny) NSFW

JOOC(JustOutOfCuriosity) why DOESN'T anybody ask Bombin' Johnnie if he still refers to his rich, young, tarty trophy-frau a "Cunt, painted up like a trollope?"
When we heard so much about Jesse Jackson talking about "cutting the niggers balls off," why is McCunt's comment off-limits?