Drinking Liberally Observes 4th Anniversary

As the 'host' of the (struggling) Albuquerque chapter of DL, i got this in the morning E-mail.

Dear Dedicated Liberal Drinker,

This week join us as we celebrate 4 YEARS OF DRINKING LIBERALLY...and help us make the next year the most significant yet.

Political change is brewing all across the country…and it's all because of YOU! Founded in 2003, Drinking Liberally hit its 200th chapter one month ago because people have stepped up to organize and attend local chapters, bring politics into their everyday lives and use these communities to make a more liberal America.

- Reading, PA: hosted 100 activists to meet grassroots candidates before the '06 election

- Gooding, ID: defended the word "liberal" from libelous attacks in the local newspaper

- Natchez, MS: created social space where black and white activists feel comfortable attending together

- Louisville, KY: built a network that pledged thousands of dollars to local public radio

The journey from local dive bar to national prominence has seen our drinking clubs grow into a new organization. LIVING LIBERALLY creates social communities around progressive politics in many forms: the Laughing Liberally national comedy tour; Eating Liberally meals, providing grass-fed grub and grassroot gab; Reading Liberally national book tours; Screening Liberally films; and Blogging Liberally discussions of democracy in the information age.

This 4th Anniversary coincides with another coming-of-age step for Living Liberally: co-founder Justin Krebs will be stepping into the role of the organization's first Executive Director to give the growing network the attention to make it an instrumental progressive partner in the political season ahead.

But no one person makes Drinking Liberally effective -- we all do. So please, offer suggestions for where DL can go next, how we can grow the network, deepen our chapters and increase our impact toward a more liberal nation. Email info@drinkingliberally.org your ideas for our 5th tremendous year.

And please attend your local Drinking Liberally gathering and help us celebrate around the country by raising a glass to "promoting democracy one pint at a time."

Best,

The Drinking Liberally National Team

Pretty Girls

They are: these are the five finalists for the title of Miss Universe (apparently the entrants from Aldeberan and Spica didn't make the cut). But women in the Trump-meister's Girlie Show also seem to be just about interchangeable: you could throw all their banners into a heap, and have each one just reach in and grab, and you could not tell which one belonged to which. By the way, Miss Japan (far right) was named the winner.

An OUTRAGEOUSLY Mixed "Immigration" Metaphor

The citizens of the USofA are, in relation to our recent immigrants, a lot like ship-wrecked passengers in a crowded, gated lifeboat in a gale. We're kickin' people over the side, to keep afloat, while the weight of the gates designed to keep the folks from crawling back sinks us deeper and deeper into the storm.

Just THINK! If USer Pols Had The Same Scruples, We'd Possibly Have Been Spared Abu Gonzales' Shameful Displays Of Dissembling and Lies

Don't You Wish OUR Politicians Had The Same Scruples?

TOKYO - Japan's agriculture minister died Monday after hanging himself just hours before he was to face questioning in a political scandal, officials said. The suicide may have dealt a powerful blow to the increasingly beleaguered government ahead of July elections.

Toshikatsu Matsuoka, 62, was found in his apartment Monday unconscious and declared dead hours later. Matsuoka's death comes just ahead of upper house elections, and as support for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet is plunging.

An autopsy showed that he died after hanging himself, according to a Tokyo Metropolitan Police official who spoke on customary condition of anonymity.

The minister was found hanging from a door in his apartment earlier Monday, and he left a suicide note, according to local media reports.

Matsuoka had faced heavy criticism over a scandal involving suspicious bookkeeping practices in his offices, and was scheduled to appear before a parliamentary committee Monday afternoon for further questioning.

Fucking "Rolling Thunder" Dumfux: Clueless Morons Riding Noisy Toys

They got lots to say about MIAs and the like...Look! Listen! Bright, sparkly, noisy motorcycles!

But they ain't got SHIT to say about ending the fucking illegal, murderous, immoral, criminal, imperialistic invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Notice whose grinning, simpering visage is prominently featured at the top?

Fucking assholes. Just fucking assholes...

Memorial Day: Man, I FEEL LIKE I'M FIXIN' TO DIE

(Illustration: Bennett, Christian Science Monitor)

Sing it, Joe!!!

Hip, Hip, Al Hurra!!!!

Dumb motherfuckers RULE!

Al Hurra television, the U.S. government's $63 million-a-year effort at public diplomacy broadcasting in the Middle East, is run by executives and officials who cannot speak Arabic, according to a senior official who oversees the program.

That might explain why critics say the service has recently been caught broadcasting terrorist messages, including an hour-long tirade on the importance of anti-Jewish violence, among other questionable pieces.

Facing tough questions before a congressional panel last week, Broadcasting Board of Governors member Joaquin Blaya admitted none of the senior news managers at the network spoke Arabic when the terrorist messages made it onto the air courtesy of U.S. taxpayer funds. Nor did Blaya himself or any of the other officials at the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees the network.

"How does it happen that the terrorists take over?" asked Rep. Gary L. Ackerman, D-N.Y., at a hearing last Wednesday of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee he chairs. "Is there no adult supervision?"

Blaya conceded that the top officials in the network's chain of command could not understand what was being said on al Hurra broadcasts.

Is ANYBODY Talking About That Fucknozzle Lieberman's Threats To Assfuck The Dems?

I dogpiled "Lieberman Changes Party" and got one hit.

But it sure sounds like Loserman's willing take the noses of the likes of his 'supporters' like HRC and Barak, and Mary Landrieu (again), and wipe his reaking, leaking, dripping, turn-coat ass with them.

One MIGHT, if one were of a certain sensibility, be inclined to declare 'jihad' on NoMoJo, the fucking ho, should he take that woeful step.

Ever since he turned on Clinton, it's been my opinion that he was an honest-to-fucking-christ, John LeCarre-style MOLE, a GOP agent INSIDE the Democratic Party. We're watching "the Jo, de Ho comin' in from de col'..."

Okie Anti-Environmentalist Senator Blocks Rachel Carson Memorial

One of two of men leading Oklahoma's long-term project to field the DUMBEST FUCKING DELEGATION IN CONGRESS has put a 'hold' on a Senatorial memorial to honor Rachel Carson on the centennial of her birth.

Which one?

Well, ya gotta choice: Jim Inhofe, who proudly proclaims there has NEVER been a faggot in HIS family; or Tom Coburn, the physician who claimed women's sports in Okiedom were promoting lesbianism in the lockerroom.

Through a spokesperson the Senator accuses Carson of responsibility for millions of deaths in the developing world because of her activism to reduce the spread of chemical pesticide toxins.

You'd think a state the mascot of which is a bunch of thieving cheaters would try NOT to call attention to the sloping brows, ridged eye-brows, and prognathous jaws of its populace...

Read the piece, linked under the headline of this post, for the answer.

Are 'Dumbocraps' Ready To Cave On Iraq Funding? Are They REALLY Gutless Fucking Shit-Stains? You Betcher Sweet ASS They Are!

7:30 am, May 22, '07-- NPR just reported that the Dim-o-craps are ready to send an Iraq Occupation Funding bill to the Chimp to sign which does NOT contain ANY restrictions insofar as continuing the occupation. No time-lines, no bench-marks, no nothing: The Complete CAVE-IN...You just knew they were gonna cave, the gutless, feckless, worthless, useless, reaking pieces of SHIT! You JUST FUCKING KNEW!

UPDATE: From The Pen:
WAKE THE FUCK UP, MURKINS!!!!

The following was in my e-mail, this morning.
Inescapable Conclusion: This has been coming for DAYS...

WE'RE ASKING ALL OUR PARTICIPANTS TO TELL CONGRESS: DON'T SURRENDER TO BUSH ON IRAQ

Please call NOW toll free at 800-828-0498, 800-459-1887 or 800-614-2803 and ask for your own House member and Senators. And ALSO leave separate messages for both Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi at their leadership offices. They represent you too!

ACTION PAGE: http://www.millionphonemarch.com/no_bush_surrender.php

Drafting this alert has been an enormous challenge . . . to find a way to express our anger in a way that is still civil. Please, Lord, help us to express this in a way that will have a positive result.

We are hearing reports that the Democrats are preparing to unilaterally surrender to Bush on the Iraq supplemental, despite a solid majority of the American people in favor of at least some kind of restraints on a war president run amok. If this is a trial balloon, or in part even a Republican trick to try to demoralize us, it didn't work. We're not demoralized, we're just angry.

The inside the beltway genius pundits, the ones who thought the Iraq invasion and occupation was such a bully-bully party for the first couple disastrous years, pontificate that if the Democrats don't completely cave in on yet another mammoth emergency funding demand it would be political "suicide". Like we really need them to self-appoint themselves as our campaign managers. Meanwhile, the death and destruction in Iraq continues unabated.

And for what? The latest rumblings in Iraq are that the stinky, smelly oil production sharing agreement that was the end game of this entire monstrosity is generating increasing resistance in even the puppet Iraq government, the harder we try to force it down their throats. This is the only benchmark Bush has ever been interested in. And is there any doubt that even if they are able to force it through by our military presence, that it be nothing but a casus belli for all eternity?

Is there any doubt that the Iraqi people, if not the entire Muslim world, will resent for generations, with the most blind and unanimous hatred, the way their natural resources were looted from them by an invading imperial army? Is there any doubt that insurgent attacks will continue to increase exponentially, the AlQaeda dream come true? Is there any doubt that any member of the Iraqi parliament who signs on to this does so at peril to his own life from his own
people?

Is there any doubt that our only net spoils from this war will be magnified threats of terrorist attacks against our own homeland in revenge?

In 1919, the Chicago White Sox UNEXPECTEDLY lost the World Series. Their biggest star, Shoeless Joe Jackson, the number three lifetime batting average champion of all time, had admitted under oath to being part of a conspiracy to throw the series, but he was only convicted of not reporting the scandal. On leaving the courtroom, it is reported that a young fan plaintively begged him, "Say it ain't so, Joe!" Joe Jackson was banned from major league baseball and
never played there again.

Democrats have majorities in both houses of Congress. They have done little but surrender, capitulate, and surrender some more since the day we gave them those majorities. One of the things we have heard is that they will attach the forgotten minimum wage increase now to a new total surrender version of the Iraq Supplemental. Somebody please explain to us why with a majority in both houses of Congress they could not have put the minimum wage provision on the
president's desk months ago.

Some say they will "seek other opportunities later this year to challenge Bush's handling of the unpopular conflict." There will be other opportunities for gratuitous grandstanding. But there will be few other opportunities for ending this insane occupation, short of impeachment (itself a necessity), UNLESS the Democrats stick to their guns just one time.

ACTION PAGE: http://www.millionphonemarch.com/no_bush_surrender.php

WAKE THE FUCK UP, America. We respectfully submit that if you are not angry by now, you are not paying attention. And we pray for you, that if you are motivated to express that anger to Congress, please do it in a way that cannot be construed as anything but a verbal expression of your policy position.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this message to everyone else you know.

Klaudt-Klones In MO Lege? Wouldn't Surprise ME: Patriarchs ALWAYS Lurvs'Em Dat YOUNG Pussy!

TruthOut.Org has the following: The Missouri Lege is ready to pass and to send on to Gov. Blunt--who has already pledged to sign it--a bill which would impose regulatory language on Mo. abortion clinics that would effectively drive existing abortion providers out of business, and prevent new ones from being established. It would also restrict 'sex education' in schools to programs dominated by the 'abstinence-only' stance.

Somebody check and see if Gov. Blunt's been giving "ovary checks" and 'egg-counts" to poor, teenage girls in foster care in the Guv's office...cuz that's the kind of sleazy shit these 'pro-life' fuckers pull, if nobody's watching 'em.

Iirc, Missouri was one of the 'pick-up' states, where tolerance was thought to be rebounding, based on the '06 election results...

What this illustrates most compellingly is that, when human rights are taken off the national table and relegated to the far less carefully scrutinized Leges in the States, human rights are far more vulnerable to challenge, if not out-right revocation, by the prejudices of the 'majority.'

Have the GOPhascist Fux ALREADY Stolen the '08 "Election"?

Probably.
Or at least they're well on the way.
That's the opinion of rogue investigative reporter Greg Palast, reported in a BuzzFlash interview late last week:

One 'money-quote':

Vote theft is mainly a racial issue in America, and it’s a class issue. The white caucus is a lot bigger than the black caucus. They don’t call the Congress a millionaire’s club for nothing. There aren’t many guys in there -- or women -- who are not millionaires. So it’s the millionaires versus us. It’s the white caucus versus the black caucus, which is of great concern. So the vote is along racial class and economic lines, not along party lines. Party lines are pretty much meaningless. There’s pretty much one party -- the party of the cash. But I’m not one of these people that says there’s no difference between the Democratic and Republican Party. The question is: is the difference meaningful? That’s all. When it comes down to voter issues, remember that the Democrats in power there were elected under the racist, broken, classist system. If you fix the voting system, a third of those Democrats could never win a primary. The last thing that they want is poor people to vote.

This of course echoes my long-held conviction thet neither Democrats nor GOPukes really want to expand the franchise, or make it easier for people to vote, or do anything that would change by even the least chinchilla the dnamics over which they now feel they are in control.

More Palast:

When I say the 2008 race has already been stolen, about a million and a half voter registrations have been turned down. Even though there have been massive voter registration drives among Hispanics and African Americans, as the churches fill up the bucket, there’s a hole in the bucket where the registrations are being dumped.

It used to be that you signed your name -- bang, you got through, you’re registered. Not anymore. About 40% of the registrations are being rejected on the grounds that they don’t match citizenship files. Well, you know what? It ain’t the Soviet Union. We don’t have citizenship files in the United States. They don’t exist. They can’t exist under the law, which is the U.S. Constitution.

Go read the whole thing.

SANTORUM!: Your Next Attorney General?

I do not expect Abu Bin Gonzo to resign as Attorney General. He is too valuable to the Busheviks, as a lightning rod and a blind behind which the rest of the regime may evade responsibility and accountability.

However, if he were to resign, I'd expect it to occur within days of a Congressional recess--Memorial Day, or 4th of July--so that the Busheviks can immediately install a sympathetic nominee via recess appointment.

I would not expect them to appoint a strong leader to the DoJ, because such a leader might interfere in the plans of the Busheviks to use the AS Atty's to help them steal the next election. They already fired a bunch of them, all of whom they thought they mightn't be able to trust to pursue their nefarious election-tampering schemes.

Should Abu Gonzo resign, the Chimp will undoubtedly regard it as a persona affront--a 'black eye,' in the terms Heller's Col Cathcart would understand. And the Chimp will move heaven and earth to shove a stick in the eye of those he regards as enemies. Such a sharp, pointy stick would be to recess-appoing ol' "Man-on-Dog" Rick Santorum, recently defeated in his bid to return to the US Senate.
Gay-Ron-FUUKIN-TEED, chers...

More On The (Alleged) Child-Raping, Sodomizing S.D. GOP (Former) State Rep.

These allegations were included in the .pdf in the previous post. But if you are a like I am, you'd rather have teeth pulled without anaesthesia than go through the rigors of downloading a .pdf file. Here, a newspaper reporter has done what I had neither the patience nor the stomach for. It's for this reason we NEED newspapers.

Meta: Somebody in the comments over at Digby, in response to a Tristero post on the matter, asked (rhetorically, I presume): (... how he could live with himself as probably the most obvious).

I replied: Did anyone mention that he probably CAN'T live with himself, and that's why he's tried to cover himself in so many layers of suet? It's the Picture of Dorian Grey, but worn as flesh, in public...

US Military Out-Sources Recruiting

Yep. Program is called GRAP (Guard Recruiting Assistance Program). Run by a company named Docupak (short for Document and Packaging Brokers, Inc). They call themselves, nothwithstanding the odd name, a marketing company. Their corpoRat HQ is (wait for it) ALABASTER, Alabama...

Contract awarded in 2002 - operates in all 50 states.

"Recruiters" collect $2k for every recruit who shows up at basic training.

More "GOPolice Blotter" Stuff: One Of The "Family Values" Is Really Young Pussy, Apparently

Former SD Legislator Arrested On Sex Charges

A former South Dakota legislator (photo: right) has been arrested.
Republican Ted Klaudt faces several charges including stalking and second degree rape. Klaudt is charged with eight counts of second degree rape, two counts of sexual exploitation of a minor, one count of sexual contact with a child under 16, two counts of tampering with a witness, and one count of stalking.

Klaudt turned himself in this morning to the sheriff's department in McIntosh. These cases are being prosecuted by the Corson County States Attorney, the Hughes County States Attorney, with the Attorney General’s Office assisting.

From Klaudt’s voting history, to reaction from his former constituents and the state, our news crews are working to cover all angles of this developing story.

There is a .pdf file which graphically details the explicit crimes of which Klaudt is accused.

I reckon he 'turned himself in,' alrightee. Where was he gonna hide that shape? And there was NO FUUKIN WAY he could get far fleeing on foot. The story doesn't report whether he's (was) married or not. Whaddaya think*?



(*he IS, with one child)

OH, PLEEEEASE DON' FRO ME IN DAT DERE BRIAH PATCH!!!

Gonzo ain’t gonna resign…
Indeed, i expect his behavior to become more and more outrageous and bizarre…
His job now is to draw ALL the attention of the Congress onto himself, to MAKE Congress impeach him, thereby drawing away all the oxygen from other efforts to impeach cheney/bush.
Any contemplated impeachment of Gonzales would occupy the Congress’s attention through the rest of this year, and probably well into the primary season. There's no way there could be enough energy--much less, the votes--needed to pursue aggressive investigations into Cheney/Bush's malfeasances with an 'on-going investigation' of Abu Bin Gonzo.
In a strange way, impeaching Gonzales would actually benefit the GOPhascist fux because it would focus attention on one, relatively minor actor in the drama, and relieve the rest of the Busheviks, and not incidentally the aspirants to replace them, of the scrutiny they so richly deserve and so desperately need.
And the greasy li'l pimp’ll be amply rewarded. One could expect dozens of “free Alberto" defense/slush funds to spring up, to be financed by donations from the wealthiest members of the GOPhascist inner circle. Proceeds from which he'd be free to dispose of as he wished.
Impeaching Gonzo will be GOOD for the GOPukes.
“Jis, PULEEEASE DON’ FRO ME IN DAT DERE BRIAR PATCH”!

(Cross-posted at Firedoglake.com)

Coming Attractions: The (Much-beloved) On-Going Investigation

I am pretty sure now that Abu Gonzales will NOT resign, and that the Chimp will NOT fire him, no matter WHAT crimes and excesses the Congress may be able to hang on him...

Instead, Gonzo will become more and more outrageous in his behavior; possibly--hell, prob'ly--he'll outright defy Congress, blow off their subpoenas, scoff at their threats. He knows there aren't the votes and there isn't the will on the Hill to actually send the marshalls to compel him.

Gonzo will, in other words, dare the Congress to impeach him (and fuck the DoJ as an instrument of the People's justice--which, of course, is what he was hired to do in the first place)...

In doing so, the Congress will start the 'on-going investigation' behind which all the rest of the malefactors and miscreants in the Regime will then hide-out while Congress obediently follows the fruitless chase.

Until the next 'election' installs a new Regime which will, out of bi-partisan comity or one-partisan CYA, drop the whole thing.

Game. Set. Match, Busheviks...

(More kewl cartoons by the guy whose work I shamelessly stole: Here and/or Here)

Apparently, 'Rev.' Jerry Falwell's Being/Been Gathered Into The Arms Of His Creator

If so, ONE MAY ONLY HOPE he finds his 'God' is every bit intolerant as Falwell himself was.

Here's a brief account of what he deserves to repent:

On 9/14/01: "The ACLU has got to take a lot of blame for this. And I know I'll hear from them for this, but throwing God...successfully with the help of the federal court system...throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools, the abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad...I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way, all of them who try to secularize America...I point the thing in their face and say you helped this happen."

"I listen to feminists and all these radical gals - most of them are failures. They've blown it. Some of them have been married, but they married some Casper Milquetoast who asked permission to go to the bathroom. These women just need a man in the house. That's all they need. Most of the feminists need a man to tell them what time of day it is and to lead them home. And they blew it and they're mad at all men. Feminists hate men. They're sexist. They hate men - that's their problem.

"The argument that making contraceptives available to young people would prevent teen pregnancies is ridiculous. That's like offering a cookbook as a cure to people who are trying to lose weight.

“I had a student ask me, "Could the savior you believe in save Osama bin Laden?" Of course, we know the blood of Jesus Christ can save him, and then he must be executed”

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals”

“Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions.”

“Someone must not be afraid to say, ‘moral perversion is wrong.’ If we do not act now, homosexuals will own America!.. If you and I do not speak up now, this homosexual steamroller will literally crush all decent men, women, and children who get in its way…and our nation will pay a terrible price!”

“The whole (global warming) thing is created to destroy America’s free enterprise system and our economic stability”

Jerry Falwell
US clergyman & conservative commentator (1933 -2007 ): RIP, motherfucker...

The Sexual Tension Between Them Was So Thick You Could CUT It.

US Vice President Dick Cheney(L) meets with Emirati Prime Minister and ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed al-Maktum at al-Bateen Palace in Abu Dhabi.

Jeremy Scahill on Blackwater

"I think that ultimately what we need to do is de-link corporate profits from an escalation of conflict...we need to get at the heart of a system that encourages the linking of war and profits. "

Democracy Now can occasionally be a little shrill...And their stratagem of proposing a wildly leading question and then ask the interlocutor--"Would you like to comment on that?"--is annoying.

But nobody in the media today deserves a Pulitzer more than Amy Goodman.

Today is the sad anniversary of Bob Marley's death: Lively Up Yourself!

Fer A Lil, Ol' Gal, You Got Quite A Setta Hooters, Doncha, Yer Highness?

What IS That Smell? Did That Vile Little Upstart Fart?

And To Think, We Once Fought To KEEP These Buggers IN The Empire

Feeling As Out Of It As Heiffers at a Horserace...

A coupla Lou-uhveels fahnest brood-mares...

"If This Smarmy Fucking Peasant Lays One Hand On Me, Rip Off His Fucking Arm

and beat him to death with it, Phillip."

Click To Support Mammogram Donations: A Favor for a Friend

Favor to ask, it only takes a minute....
*I * 6 *Y
Please tell ten friends to tell ten today! The Breast Cancer site is having trouble getting enough people to click on their site daily to meet their quota of donating at least one free mammogram a day to an underprivileged woman. It takes less than a minute to go to their site and click on "donating a mammogram" for free (pink window in the middle).

This doesn't cost you a thing. Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate mammograms in exchange for advertising.

Here's the web site! Pass it along to people you know.

AGAIN, PLEASE TELL 10 FRIENDS TO TELL 10 TODAY

Not-so-serious Must See TeeBee: K-Lo Uncovered

To see is to believe

Seriously, for a moment: Must See Web TeeVee

Michael Pollan moderates a panel discussion of the 2007 farm bill, now being debated, with guests Dan Imhoff, the author of Food Fight: A Citizen's Guide to the Farm Bill; George Naylor, Iowa corn farmer and president of the National Family Farms Coalition; Ann Cooper, Director of Nutrition Services for the Berkeley school system, and other leaders in the effort to reform federal agricultural policies.

Every five years or so, the President signs an obscure piece of legislation that determines what happens on a couple of hundred million acres of private land in America, what sort of food Americans eat (and how much it costs) and, directly as a result, the health of our population (and which allocates more than $90 BILLION). The American food system is a game played according to a precise set of rules that are written by Congress, typically with virtually no input from anyone beyond a handful of farm-state legislators. Nothing could do more to reform the American food system --an by doing so improve the condition of America's environment and public health-- than if the rest of us were to start paying attention to the farm bill.

Who Gets the Money?

For the simplest answer, one might twist a line from Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, "It's the commodity groups, stupid." Thanks to a growing number of nongovernmental, governmental, and mass media resources, following the Farm Bill money trail is not that difficult. (Excellent places to start include Environmental Working Group, Oxfam International, Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, the Washington Post, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.) According to the Congressional Research Service, 84 percent of commodity support spending goes to the production of just five crops: corn, cotton, wheat, rice, and soybeans. Half of that money currently goes to just seven states that produce most of those commodities. The richest ten percent of farm-subsidy recipients (many of whom are corporations and absentee landowners who can hardly be classified as "actively engaged" in growing crops) take in more than two-thirds of those payments.

A few other broad brushstrokes:

• Almost 50 percent of all commodity subsidies went to 5 percent of eligible farmers in 2005;
• Subsidies help the largest farms to acquire the best land and squeeze out smaller growers;
• The growth rate for jobs trailed the national average in nearly two-thirds of counties receiving heavy subsidies between 2000 and 2003, according to a recent report.

I'll Be TOTALLY Honest And Forthcoming

I mean, all that body-language stuff is pure guff, innit?

See, Man-yoo-ell, Ah Tol' Ya: Sloppy Seconds Ain' So Bad...Heh Heh

Step On A Crack...

Break your mother's back? He seems to be aiming for 'em, don't he?

"I need to get me one o'these fer the next Krawford Klavern meeting!

"This'n's jis' th' raht sahz! Ah kin jis' pull it raht ovah m'haid! Don' need no hood 'r nuthin!

"Oh, SHIT! Did I, Or Did I Not, Remember To Tie My Laces?"

On Yer KNEES, Peasants!

You WILL grovel before the Commander Guy!@!!

Tabula Rasa

New "Thought-Balloon" Technology Reveals Chimpy Mental Operations

"See, the bad news goes in here, and comes straight out the other side...heh heh"

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

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

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

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

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

Worm Dirt

Lee Hays & Pete Seeger:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

in case you missed it

The White House

April 22, 2007

Statement from the President on the French elections

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

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

The REAL Bushevik Agenda

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

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

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

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

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

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

Kids Chugging Psychedelic OTC Cough Remedies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imus, Revisited

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

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

Zat make any sense?

A Bloody Day In Blacksburg, VA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But we're not far from it...

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

Another link provides the gory details:

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

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

Impeach
Convict
Impale

Jim Morin in The Miami Herald: Brilliant!

Franken's Dilemma

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

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

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

Man, this punditry bidness is confusing.

Blog-Pimping: Everything but the squeal

Blog-Pimping

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Three Courageous Americans Tabbed for Prestigious Award

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

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

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

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

Congratulations to all three recipients of these prestigious prizes.

The Busheviks Have Systematically Suppressed Environmental News Contradicting Their Policies

Did anybody pick this up last week?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Rampton GOes To Washington: "Shaping the Message, Distorting the Science"

The Nutz:

"The manipulation of science for public relations or political advantage inevitably has a corrupting effect on science itself. It undermines the integrity and objectivity of scientific research. It creates confusion in the minds of policymakers and the general public. What is needed, therefore, is greater public transparency regarding the sponsorship of science and of organizations that claim to speak on scientific matters. The public and policymakers have a right and to know who is funding research, what strings are attached to that funding, and how it may be affecting the information we use to make decisions—especially decisions on policy matters that affect us all."

Remember the Exxon Valdez

On March 24, 1989 the unthinkable happened…

Eleven million gallons of North Slope crude oil began pouring out of the Exxon Valdez oil tanker into the pristine waters of Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Hundreds of thousands of fish, seabirds, bald eagles, otters, seals and whales were maimed and killed. The native communities whose lives depended on those waters for commercial and subsistence fishing were, and still are, devastated.

In 1994, ExxonMobil was found “reckless” by judge and jury and ordered to pay $5 billion in punitive damages to the 34,000 victims of the spill. ExxonMobil argues it should pay only $25 million. The company has appealed every verdict since, dragging the victims through thirteen years of litigation. Some 6,000 plaintiffs have died awaiting compensation. In 2006, the damages were lowered to $2.5 billion based on a recent Supreme Court ruling that lowers punitive damage awards. ExxonMobil has asked the court to reconsider.

After eighteen years and countless false promises, ExxonMobil has still not paid the billions of dollars in punitive damages that the courts have determined it owes the spill victims--this despite the fact that the company posted the most profitable year in 2006 of any corporation in history. In 1994, a federal court in Anchorage, Alaska, awarded $5 billion in punitive damages to fishermen, Native Alaskans, and other plaintiffs in a class action suit against the oil giant. But rather than accepting its obligations Exxon has been fighting the verdict, employing hundreds of lawyers, filing countless appeals and effectively buying science that supports its claims.
This has added injury to injury as more than 30,000 people whose lives and livelihood were disrupted by the spill have now been dragged through years of litigation. During this time, according to the advocacy group ExposeExxon whose excellent mailing prompted this column, 6,000 plaintiffs have died waiting for compensation.

If there is grounds for the death penalty to be inflicted upon an individual, there is grounds for a corporate death penalty: Death To Exxon!

Dick Gephart: Newest Peabody Coal Company Lobbyist...

From (the utterly invaluable) PRWatch.Org:

In yet another example of the government-industry revolving door, "Peabody Energy, the world's largest private sector coal company, has hired Dick Gephardt's firm to spearhead its drive to defeat efforts by Democrats to put caps on carbon emissions in a bid to combat global warming," reports O'Dwyer's. (Source: http://www.odwyerpr.com/members/0323gephardt_carbon.htm

Gephardt, a Democrat and the former U.S. House Majority Leader, will advocate for increased public funding of "clean coal technologies."

Peabody's coal generators produce 10 percent of U.S. electricity. The company says "clean coal" research will help achieve the "ultimate goal of near-zero emissions from coal." Peabody's corporate social responsibility report calls mandatory caps on emissions "irresponsible, contributing to adverse health impacts and economic harm through the loss of affordable electricity."

(Image: DIGGING THE LAND: The Big Sky Mine, run by the world’s largest coal company, Peabody Energy, stripped about 2.5 million tons of coal in 2001 a few miles north of the reservation, and shipped it by rail to the Minnesota Power company. foto: Larry Mayer)

Joe Conason: Karl Rove Is A Lying FUCK!

From Salon, today:

"Rove is a proven liar who cannot be trusted to tell the truth even when he is under oath, unless and until he is directly threatened with the prospect of prison time. Or
has everyone suddenly forgotten his exceedingly narrow escape from criminal
indictment for perjury and false statements in the Valerie Plame Wilson investigation? Only after four visits to the grand jury convened by special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, and a stark warning from Fitzgerald to defense counsel of a possible indictment, did Rove suddenly remember his role in the exposure of Plame as a CIA agent."

Impeach...

then IMPALE!!!!

The Busheviks Will Dodge The US Atty. Bullet, Because There Is No Smoking Gun

The furor over the firing of several US Attorneys in mid-career, which seems to be precipitating a Constitutional Crisis because the Bushevik ShiteHouse says it willl NOT permit Bushevik minions like Karl Rove, Kyle Sampson, or Harriet Meiers, to testify under oath, will turn out to be a tempest in a tea-pot. Much as it would be lovely to hoist the Bushits on some legalistic petard of their own devising, there's just no 'violation' here: no cum-stained blue dress, no dead bodies, nothing except partisan rhetoric.

The Dems in the Senate will fold like a cheap suit.

How Culpable Is The Media Monolith In The War-Crimes In Iraq?

The Time-line posted here provides some way to understand exactly the complicity of the SCUM in the prosyletization of the war.

Iraq and the Media: A Critical Timeline (FAIR)
3/19/07

It's hardly controversial to suggest that the mainstream media's performance in the lead-up to the Iraq War was a disaster. In retrospect, many journalists and pundits wish they had been more skeptical of the White House's claims about Iraq, particularly its allegations about weapons of mass destruction. At the same time, though, media apologists suggest that the press could not have done much better, since "everyone" was in agreement on the intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons threat. This was never the case. Critical journalists and analysts raised serious questions at the time about what the White House was saying. Often, however, their warnings were ignored by the bulk of the corporate press.

This timeline is an attempt to recall some of the worst moments in journalism, from the fall of 2002 and into the early weeks of the Iraq War. It is not an exhaustive catalog, but a useful reference point for understanding the media's performance. The timeline also points to missed opportunities, when courageous journalists—working inside the mainstream and the alternative media—uncovered stories that should have made the front pages of daily newspapers, or provided fodder for TV talk shows. By reading mainstream media critically and tuning into the alternative press, citizens can see that the notion that "everyone" was wrong about Iraq was—and is—just another deception.

What is the difference between a "Contractor" and a "Mercenary"?

Blackwater, USA, a powerful private army with its own military base, a fleet of twenty aircraft, and 20,000 soldiers, is run by a multimillionaire Christian conservative who bankrolls President Bush and his allies.

Acting, as Jeremy Scahill has written, as the Bush Administration's Praetorian Guard for the "global war on terror," Blackwater has been busy fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, establishing military bases in Iran, and patrolling the hurricane-ravaged streets of New Orleans. The problem, as Scahill points out, is that such power in the hands of one company embodies the "military-industrial complex" President Eisenhower warned against in 1961. Scahill is the author of the new book Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army

Personally, I shed no tears over the death or injury of mercenaries. Mercs sell their claim to human compassion when they take their blood-money.

Fuck 'em.

Recuerdos De Mi Madre y Padre, Vol. II (Revised)

Over at the Eschaton Crack-den today, with stories about the family values of potential GOPuke candidates, talk turned to marital fidelity, and I was stimulated again to recall my folks, whom I returned home to help through their terminal days:

My Pop was almost pathologically in love with his wife, my mother. She was beautiful--people compared her to Gene Tierney--and intelligent and funny, accomplished and well-bred. Privately, he called her his 'lassie.'

Mother had been a skilled equestrienne in her youth in both jumping and dressage. But a horse fell on her when she was just into puberty, I believe, and the physical complications of that event echoed throughout their married life. They had five children--four who lived; and one which was fatally damaged by rubella in utero--and each one of us was extremely difficult for her. She had kids because, as a Catholic, that's what Mother believed one did. Mother did "what one did," through her whole life pretty much.

Anyway she was ill, in one way or another, for almost the whole time they were married: she was on (and probably became addicted to) prednisone for nearly 40 years, from the late '50s onward almost until her death.

These factors combined to make her extremely uncomfortable with intimacy. I sometimes wonder whether they had sex more than a dozen times in 57 years of marriage, as much as she held him off, berated and belittled him.

As an example: they both happened to have health crises around X-mas, '99, that landed both of them in the same hospital. The nurses thought it would be 'nice' if they brought them together in their individual hospital beds for X-Mas eve. But when they appeared at the door of her room with Dad in his bed, she shrieked "Get him out of here!", and demanded they return him to his own room. She was unrelenting. It might have been funny, except that it wasn't.

Mother had been fanatically frugal (but also astonishingly profligate in strange ways, too: at her death she had 20, identical Brooks Brothers' khaki skirts). After she was gone, Pop decided to throw over the traces a little, and replace his old, slow computer with a newer, fancier machine. But the residual weight of a life-time of frugality persuaded him to scrimp on it, even though there was no longer any reason to be cautious. So I went to town and brought him back his new machine, the lower-priced of the new IMac machines of the period. He tried it, and was not happy, so he sent me to return the cheaper machine and bring him the more expensive one, which I did.

Wwhen I brought it home and set up the new machine for him, he actually seemed excited, for the first time in the several weeks since mother had died. Upon making his careful way to the desk, he turned on his new box. And just as it booted up, virtually in that very instant, the lights all over northern New Mexico went out.

Though we didn't know it at the time, a truck had hit a power pole and had taken out a crucial transmission line up in wilds of the Navajo country. Then, in the sudden, pitch dark, I heard Pop chuckling; I asked him he source of is amusement.

He said that, although there was probably a perfectly good explanation for it, he himself knew that the cause of the outage was Joan's (his recently deceased wife's) "chindi" --the Dineh word for 'spirit"--making him regret his extravagance. "She's out there, and she's howling," he said. When the power came back up the next day, we kept the newer, better machine anyway.

He was, as far as anyone knew or said, completely faithful to her for the entire duration of their marriage--they wed in '43 as he was on his way to the Pacific; she died in '00. He lived another year. And he loved her til he died.

The Fuckin Fix Was In...(UpDated Version)

If the Libby defense team had really wanted an acquittal, they'd have called Cheney. Then Darth would hgave had to face Fitzgerald's cross-examination.

NOBODY in the ShiteHouse wanted that to happen. Though it stretches credulity almost to the b reaking point to think so, possibly even Cheney might have balked at actually lying under oath.

So the Busheviks made a deal with the Libby defense: you leave Cheney alone and, if there's a conviction, we'll look after Scooter: support or the family, donations for the appeals fund, and a pardon if all else fails.

Yup...The fuckin' fix was well and truly in...

PS: Much as I respect the integrity of my barrister friends and acquaintances, and there are no small number of them, it beggars the imagination that they would believe that, somehow, Wells & Co. wouldn't throw the defense of Libby, if they had a sotto voce deal with the Busheviks by which Scooter'd take the fall for obstruction, and in doing so would deflect attention from Cheney's and Bush's criminal acts, but wouldd also in fact obstruct the Fed's investigations. There is a price for everything, all the more so in the exalted halls and seats of REAL power. Guys like Wells live and breathe money; it is the sole metric by which they measure their success, not their conviction or acquittal ratio. And the Busheviks are not strapped for resources they could designate to Libby's silence. If they wanted to buy off Libby, Wells, and the whole French Navy, they could do so without breaking a fucking sweat.

A poster on the Eschaton crack den today--nymed "mer," iirc--floated the not at all bizarre (to me) idea that the reason for outing Valerie Plame in the first place was not revenge, but rather was to actually put the brass-plate firm for which she "worked" out of the international WMD-monitoring business--which was her business--because the Busheviks were going to use extra-governmental channels to plant WMD in Iraq to bolster their excuses for goint to war in the first place, and Plame and her cohorts were positioned to notice and publicize it.

Another poster opined that the brass-plate intellegence outfit that covered Plame was in a position to further deflect or even ultimately to deter the long-planned Bushevik war with Iran The Busheviks had long hungered for revenge against Iran for at least two reasons: first to repay those "sand-niggah's" temerity for embarrassing the USer over the hostages, and second to prevent Iran from assuming its rightful place as a regional leader; there's a third reason, of course: the defense of Israel-qua State, in which the US has invested unimagineable amounts of blood and treasure already, and which also represents the best USer military toe-hold in the region.)

I am sure to be accused of having the tin-fopil wrapped too tight; but please: Knowing what is already widely known about the Bushe regime's practices, and its "ethics," which of those scenarios is REALLY all that improbable?

Against the Odds, The Jury Convicted Libby

Whether the smug lil fuck spends so much as a day in jail remains to be seen.

And even if he does, he'll spend it polishing his golf swing at some Club Fed, somewhere.

If part of the deal was the Scooter falls on his sword to save Darth Cheney, will the Chimp pardon him to fulfill that part of the deal?

What Appeals Court where's the ineviatble appeal? The DC Circuit is reliably GOPuke/Bushevik, innit?

By the time appeals have been exhausted, it'll be Dec, 08, and the blue "pardon" phone will be ringing for Libby, Cunningham, Ney, and all the rest of the fascist malefactors inadvertantly caught by the (replaced) US Attys.

And Libby gets a seat on the Carlisle Board?

That's my guess, anyway...
/

Privatization: Horror-Stories From Walter Reed

I REALLY LOVE Mike Luckovich's work!!! Guess who runs the company that--in response to von Rumsfeld's demands for efficiency and privatization in the military--was responsible for the conditions at Walter Reed Hospital?

A former colleague of Darth "Big Dick" Cheney, that's who.

And guess what?

There's been (or at least there should have been) an on-going investigation of this mis-and mal-feasance since 2004.

Profusely "Patriotic" Propaganda In The Heartland

I got an e-mail from relatives containing the images reproduced here as well as several others, all of the same feature: a rock in a gravel-pit somewhere in the wilds of Iowa which has been painted in profusely "patriotic" images by a local boy, named "Bubba" (I kid you not).

I wrote and circulated the subsequent text to the "reply to" addressees:

Nice work, here but I feel like I've missed something.

Cuz I don't see our smilin' bubba--the artist--wearing fatigues...has he enlisted? Or has he, like so many other advocates and apologists for the war, signed on with the 82nd Chairborne?

Hey, folks: you support the war? you go fight that bad boy...

Bubba's talents for propaganda are the equal of his graphic ability. There are so many things wrong with they images on that rock, I am at a loss. Does Bubba watch anything but Fox News?Not least of the falsehoods he reproduces is the connection between the unnecessary deaths in Iraq and the deaths resulting from the IXXI attacks.

Does Bubba not know, or just not care that there has NEVER been established ANY connection between Iraq, or Iraqis, or Saddam Hussein, or anyone else there and the attacks of 9/11. That, of course, is just another pervasive lie, ginned up and drummed in the collective psyche (efficaciously, as witness the sincere, and probably honest icons like this rock) to rationalize the neo-con/fascist/imperialist/militarist wet-dream of establishing a 'free-market" state on the bones of the Iraqi people.

I support the troops--I support bringin' 'em home...tomorrow...

And I support prosecuting the goddam fascist regime --The Chimperor, Darth Cheney, FeldMarshall vonRumsfeldt, Wolfowitz, Feith, Abrams, Rice, Powell: the whole feculent cabal that put'em there, in the full and complete knowledge that they were LYING IN THEIR TEETH-- for war crimes, for the murders of (so far) over 3100 US citizens, as well as every Iraqi who has been killed in the turmoil the illegal invasion prompted, began, and perpetuates.

We need no more brave quotations from cowards who never served, who had better things to do, who went awol to avoid drug tests. The names and presidencies of Jefferson and Kennedy are besmirched by their association with that of the lying, dishonest, idiotic, drooling siock-puppet, boooosh.

Nothing any of those miserable low-lifes have to say about war is worth a minute of anyone's attention. They lied and our citizens died--relatives, friends, strangers, even (gasp!) immigrants. We do not need to celebrate their courage, but to mourn their tragic, wasteful, useless loss; and seek justice for them on those who suffered them to die for--not a mere mistake--a calculated falsehood...

Yrs truly(WoodyG'sGuitar), Sergeant (E-4) , USAF, 1964-1968

And if y'all are offended by my words, to quote a phrase current during my enlistment:
DILLIGAF?

The Older I Get, The Better I Usta Be...