Clueless On Gaza: USer Reps Struggle For "Balance" -- In Israel's Favor

If there is one absolute, invariant, inflexible, inerrant truth about USer politics, domestic and foreign, it is this: Any aspiring politician who hopes to be selected on a sufficiently large scale--say for a national, or state-wide office--must swear undying, unwavering, unending, unequivocal "support" for and love of Israel. This means complete, never-ending, generous, enthusiastic votes for USer financial and military aid to Israel, as well as the (implicit) promise NEVER to publically criticize any act of the Israeli state, under penalty of being labeled, stigmatized, and reviled as an anti-Semite.

(The cleverer among you will have already noted a distinct parallel between the loyalty for Israel to which ALL USer pols are called, and the loyalty to Party to which all GOPukes are held. Anti-Semitism, in the one discourse, is equivalent to "anti-American" in the other. The sin is apostasy. The fault is disloyalty. The penalty is exile.)

In view of the horrendous Israeli violence levied against Hamas (but consciously, too, against ALL Palestinians) in Gaza, a mere handful of USer legislatiors have found the 'courage' to express any outrage--howsoever little it might be. Lois Kopps, a Dim Congresscritter representing Santa Barbara, CA, issued such a statement yesterday, which goes about as far as is allowable in Israel criticism from the USer power elite or their minions. Upon reading it, you will not fail to notice how rigidly even she toes the rhetorical line. The text is up on Jesus'(Manly) General, along with his own remarks on the matter, and some comments.

Including the rudiments of Yr. Obd't. S'vt's note, herewith amended somewhat:

"In order to stop violence in Palestine, the first thing you gotta do is stop the Israeli "settlers" (most of whom, it seems from the accents of those interviewed, are transplanted "Murkin" Jews aggressively playing Fort Defiance with real guns to kill the 'marauding savage' Arabs, with IDF cover. Some kind of "Manna-fest Destiny?")."

It is naive to think that Israel does NOT have territorial ambitions, and this is no in no part associated with the fact that it is a "Jewish State," except for the accident of history and geography. The "settlers" are knowing tools of calculated Israeli expansionism. So the Israeli Govt will not stop the settlers, because the settlers are their "unofficial" tools to keep Palestinians off balance and to provide future and subsequent provocations, when settlers are attacked or killed, to excuse the use of even more incredibly disproportionate violence to dispossess even more Palestinians, and further the Israeli State agenda of ethnically cleansing Arabs from the Land...Settlers are the 'thin edge' of the wedge, designed to cause friction and raise Arab tempers to the tipping point. They are--in ways that ought to be obvious to us, the beneficiaries of the same practical expedient on this continent--state-sponsored 'agents provocateurs'... It's how 'we' (Pres. Polk) got most of northern Mexico in 1846.

The scrupulous have noted the deaths of 3500 Israelis (since when? '48?, '67?) to 'terror' attacks by Palestinians/Arabs. It's a sad and terrible number, including too many children. Any scintilla of honor among such body-counters would require an equally comprehensive report on the numbers of Palestinians killed by Israel over the same period. Mostly, however, there is no such reporting in the USer SCUM (So-Called Unbiased Media). It's difficult to track down the numbers on the web search engines, too. What is common are uncontextualized reports of Israelis' killed or injured, and the numbers of (mostly, ineffective) "qassam" attacks.)

On average, over time, since, say 2000, the 'usual' kill-ratio is somewhere around 15 Palestinians killed by Israel for each Israeli killed by a Palestinian attack, except in the present case when it's up pushing 100 - 1 (well over 500 Palestinians killed, Israelis, only 4-5). In the last year, the ratio was on the order of 50-to-1. The ratio varies, but it has seldom fallen below 20-1 in the last 15 years.

I am not a mathematician or a sociologist (though I've played one on tv & stayed at a Holiday Inn Express)), but that number seems excessive to me, somehow.

In all this, Israel appears to exemplify this nostrum: "All is permitted in defense of that which is stolen."

Ecce: A note on the Qassam rockets
Mostly, they are very short-range, capable of only small--albeit deadly, if one is unlucky enough to be close-by--payloads. A range of under five kilometers--a mile-and-a-half, approximately--is considered extreme. So the report last week that a 'rocket' fired from Gaza had landed 20 MILES from Israel's 'secret' nuclear base, Dimona, deep in the Negev, was patently propaganda plant.

B'bye, Dixie-belle, My Big, Old, Beautiful, Golden Girl

She was my pal for almost 14 years. We covered a LOT of miles together, including a trip to Philadelphia in 2005 for the first gathering of Atriots. (I think the foto here was taken by Watertiger at that event.) She had the prettiest eyes I've ever seen on a dog, and the loveliest eye-lashes--in 1998, she was declared to have the prettiest doggy-face in Norman, OK.

Tuesday this week, she awoke as usual, and woke me to let her out. She came back in and made her way to the futon in the living room--her usual post for the day, when she wasn't out-side--and jumped up easily.

Forty-five minutes later, when I called her for her breakfast, she collapsed when her legs wouldn't hold her when she tried to jump down. She wouldn't eat, and hardly drank anything all that day, or the next, or the next (New Year's Day). Wednesday, I called my vet, and described the symptoms, and she was no more hopeful than I. Dogs know when it's time, and will tell you if you know how to read their text. Ceasing to eat and drink are the usual cues. All her internal functions were slowly shutting down. Mainly, I left her alone, taking her out into the sun to enjoy the sky and the breeze and the warmth of the sun.

I shall take her to the vet tomorrow, her last trip. I'll hold her on my lap when they give her the injection, and I'll be sure the last thing she hears is that I loved her dearly.

Too often this year (twice, cuz Mischief passed about 11 months ago), I have had recourse to this poem, which is my solace now:

The House Dog's Grave (for Haig, an English Bulldog)

I've changed my ways a little; I cannot now
Run with you in the evenings along the shore,
Except in a kind of dream; and you,
If you dream a moment,
You see me there.

So leave awhile the paw-marks on the front door
Where I used to scratch to go out or in,
And you'd soon open; leave on the kitchen floor
The marks of my drinking-pan.

I cannot lie by your fire as I used to do
On the warm stone,
Nor at the foot of your bed; no,
All the nights through I lie alone.

But your kind thought has laid me less than six feet
Outside your window where firelight so often plays,
And where you sit to read‚
And I fear often grieving for me‚
Every night your lamplight lies on my place.

You, man and woman, live so long, it is hard
To think of you ever dying.
A little dog would get tired, living so long.
I hope that when you are lying
Under the ground like me your lives will appear
As good and joyful as mine.

No, dears, that's too much hope:
You are not so well cared for as I have been.
And never have known the passionate undivided
Fidelities that I knew.
Your minds are perhaps too active, too many-sided...
But to me you were true.

You were never masters, but friends. I was your friend.
I loved you well, and was loved. Deep love endures
To the end and far past the end. If this is my end,
I am not lonely. I am not afraid. I am still yours.

Harper's New Year's Review

Bob Dylan Won a Pulitzer? Abu Dhabi bought the Chrysler Building? Bozo, the Clown, died, too? Who knew?

The United States marked the five-year anniversary of the war in Iraq. Over four million Iraqis had fled the country or been internally displaced, and the total cost of the war, currently about $650 billion, was expected to rise to $2 trillion over the next five years. Oil rose above $147 a barrel, and Abu Dhabi bought New York City’s Chrysler Building for $800 million. Somali pirates stole a Saudi supertanker. President George W. Bush announced that North Korea was no longer a state sponsor of terrorism. The CIA expanded its covert operations in Iran. Bozo the Clown died, as did Jesse Helms, William F. Buckley Jr., Paul Newman, Heath Ledger, Indonesian dictator Suharto, comedian George Carlin, didgeridoo master Alan Dargin, and, at age 110, Louis de Cazenave of the Fifth Senegalese Rifles, one of the last two living French veterans of World War I. “War,” he once explained, “is something absurd, useless, that nothing can justify.” Ariel Sharon was still alive, and Israel bombed Gaza in retaliation for ongoing rocket attacks. Tom Jones insured his chest hair for $7 million.

Australian police tasered a ram. France banned TV shows for babies. Pope Benedict XVI toured the United States, and the Vatican released a list of seven “social” sins–including littering, genetic tampering, and creating poverty–to complement the seven cardinal vices. The World Health Organization announced that virtually untreatable drug-resistant tuberculosis could now be found in 45 countries. Japanese men began to wear bras. The cost of rice increased by 30 percent, and food riots broke out in 30 countries. The United Nations expected the number of starving people in the world to rise to 950 million. North Korean hunger scientists announced a new noodle. In an expanding thousand-square-mile low-oxygen zone growing along the coast of Oregon and Washington, every fish, crab, and sea worm was dead. A 7.9-magnitude earthquake centered in China’s Sichuan Province left tens of thousands of people dead and millions homeless. The Summer Olympics were held in Beijing, heralded on television by fake, computer-generated fireworks. Structures built for the 2004 Athens Olympics were falling into ruin. A man in Swansea, Wales, died from eating too much fairycake, and an elderly German woman filed a lawsuit against a hospital in Bavaria after she went in for a leg operation and was instead given a new anus. Paddington Bear turned 50; both the cubicle and the assassination of Martin Luther King turned 40; Viagra turned 10. One in 100 American adults was behind bars.

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that detainees held as “enemy combatants” by the United States at Guantanamo Bay have a constitutional right to challenge their detention through habeas corpus petitions in federal courts. Scientists located the part of the brain responsible for understanding sarcasm. Global stock markets lost $3.1 trillion in four days, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell below 10,000 for the first time in five years. The real estate boom in Dubai slowed. Nobel Laureate V. S. Naipaul declared that there are “no more great writers,” and Bob Dylan won a Pulitzer Prize. Illinois Senator Barack Obama was elected President of the United States. Gunmen terrorized Mumbai, and inflation in Zimbabwe reached 23 million percent. Iceland went bankrupt. Zookeepers across the United States put their animals on diets, feeding gorillas according to a Weight Watchers point system and offering polar bears sugar-free Jell-O. The thoughts of a monkey in North Carolina controlled the actions of a robot in Japan. New York researchers used carbon nanotubes to create the darkest material known to man. Two teams of physicists, one in Calgary and the other in Tokyo, successfully stored nothing within a gas in the form of squeezed vacuum composed of uncertainty.

Man Of The Year: Grad Student Who "Monkey-Wrenched" Give-Away Energy Auction

(image above: Bryce National Park, Utah. Photo by Ron Niebrugge)

On Friday, December 19th, the BLM kicked off a hotly disputed oil- and gas-lease auction of public lands in Southern Utah near Arches, the White River, the Desolation/Green River region, Canyonlands, Nine Mile Canyon, the Book Cliffs, and Deep Creek Mountains. It had been organized, and pushed through as a parting gidt to the Busheviks' loyal owners and managers in the energy industry.

One man decided to screw it up. He's the recipient of

WINGS OF JUSTICE

Tim DeCristopher

Barack Obama's election ends an eight-year nightmare, but progressive change will only occur if individuals make change happen from the bottom up.

Tim DeCristopher did just that when he threw a monkey wrench into an anti-conservation U.S. Bureau of Land Management auction of federal lands for oil and gas development in Utah. In fact, DeCristopher is just a university student, but he decided that it was time for creative action.

So he registered as a bidder and managed to win the rights to 10 parcels and bid up other leases to cause chaos on behalf of preserving Southwestern unspoiled public desert land.

For his efforts, DeCristopher is facing federal charges -- and a large bill for the parcels that he was the highest bidder on.

But he's not repentant: "I decided I could be much more effective by an act of civil disobedience," he said during an impromptu streetside news conference during an afternoon blizzard. "There comes a time to take a stand."

Yes, indeed there does. Sometimes the talking has to stop and the innovative "doing" has to begin. Mahatma Gandhi knew that -- and so does Tim DeCristopher.

For that, DeCristopher merits this week's BuzzFlash Wings of Justice Award, and our best wishes as he squares off with potential prosecution for his act of civil disobedience.

Even the MSM were impressed, though cautiously so. Here's the Salt Lake City Tribune:

Taking a stand
Bidder's act wrong, intent honorable
Tribune Editorial
Updated: 12/29/2008 01:44:12 PM MST

"I think a lot of people are going to become very angry and they're going to resort to illegal methods to try to slow down the destruction of our national resources, our wilderness, our forests, mountains, deserts. What that will lead to I hate to think."
-- Edward Abbey, author and conservationist, in a TV interview, December 1982

We're not going to call Tim DeChristopher a hero.

When the 27-year-old University of Utah student disrupted a Bureau of Land Management sale of drilling leases on 149,000 acres of public land in Utah, he probably was acting outside the law, or at least outside federal rules governing such sales. We don't condone illegal actions.

Still, we understand DeChristopher's frustration with the way the lease sale was planned and conducted. We share his outrage over the promises made by President George W. Bush to open nearly all public lands -- including parcels in sight of national parks, in wildlife habitat, in fragile deserts, archaeological sites and wilderness-quality forests -- to thumper trucks, drilling rigs, bulldozers and constant truck traffic.

We've been critical of the BLM's rush to put thesejavascript:void(0) parcels on the auction block without giving the public adequate opportunity to comment or time for those comments to be thoroughly considered. DeChristopher said he took the only effective action that seemed open to him in the brief time left before the BLM sold off the drilling rights.

There's more, most of which is adulatory. Meanwhile, another blogger put it this way:

Despite my cynicism toward contemporary activism, a University of Utah student has temporarily restored my faith. 27-year-old Tim DeChristopher infiltrated a controversial land auction (i.e., Christmas present from the Bush Administration), in which oil and gas drilling rights were being sold to nearly 150,000 acres of Utah wilderness. DeChristopher had seen environmental activists protesting outside of the auction, but decided that something more needed to be done. After finishing a final exam, he found his way into the auction, grabbed a paddle, and started to bid. Before federal agents had the chance to intercept, DeChristopher had purchased over 22,000 acres of land.

A vanilla version of the story was published in the New York Times, but for the real deal, check out DeChristopher’s interview with Democracy Now!.

By ALL MEANS, read/listen to the Democracy Now interview! DeChristopher still faces Federal charges. A fund for his defense has been set up here.

HAPPY MONKEY!!!

Via PZMyers/Pharungula:

Perhaps you have been pondering the meaning of the new traditional greeting, Happy Monkey! (important usage note: it is not Merry Monkey, nor is it Happy Monkey Day. It is simply "Happy Monkey", full stop. Trying to change the phrase means you are waging war on the Monkey, and you know how they will respond.) I haven't. I've been bogged down in the end-of-semester grind for the last week, writing tests, giving tests, grading tests, and there has been little room in my brain for deep philosophical thought.

But then, just a few minutes ago, I reached an end. The exams and papers were all marked and graded, and I filled out the forms and submitted them to the registrar. And I had an epiphany. Happy Monkey is not a day, not a greeting card, not just a phrase. Happy Monkey doesn't come from a store. Maybe Happy Monkey…perhaps…means a little bit more. And what happened then…? Well, my small Monkey grew three sizes that day!

Happy Monkey is any moment that you feel the burdens lifted, that you feel a lightening of the mood, that you feel puckish and prankish and like kicking your heels. Happy Monkey can strike any time, any day!

So Happy Monkey, everyone! And may you have many Happy Monkeys in days to come!

Ps: If men were trained from childhood to auto-fellate, it would solve a LOT of the world's problems, cuz we'd never leave the house...

HAPPY MONKEY!

KARMA! BeYotch...

Susie on C&L today had this heartening report on the fortunes of a certain discredited, but still incredibly wealthy financier-cum-bunko artist with the apt moniker, Made-off:

Bernie Stashed His Cash Offshore
By Susie Madrak Monday Dec 29, 2008 1:00pm

My, this just gets better and better, doesn't it?

Investigators believe that Bernard Madoff has stuffed hundreds of millions of dollars in Ponzi profits into offshore tax havens from which they could prove tricky to recover.

In the weeks since his Dec. 11 arrest, forensic accountants have been scouring Madoff's books as federal officials ready an indictment against the hated hedge-funder, who remains under house arrest in his $7 million Upper East Side penthouse.

The accountants believe Madoff regularly sent bundles of money to offshore accounts in the Caribbean and Europe, the Observer newspaper in London reported yesterday.

[...] The tax havens are designed under local laws to be nearly impervious to subpoenas or other investigative inquiries, making it notoriously tough for US officials to seize or even see what's there.

So, now here's the 'karma' part:

Rumor has it that Bernie's stashed a fair bundle of his ill-gotten boodle in Israel. So, after he gets away with it--which he will--and either avoids prison altogether, or serves a ridiculous, short, and easy sentence in some Club Fed, like where Boesky and Millkin went, he gets out and rejoins his sons--who HAD to have been in in it from the start--and they all emigrate, with Bernie who absconds after his billions to Israel, and there they all get blown up, victims--the only victims--of an accidental, pre-mature car-bomb blast on the very day, within hours of when he lands to retrieve his swag...Clouds of blood-spattered $100 bills swirling around the Negev inside a dust-devil...

Now THAT'S Karma!

Addendum: Pure Story-board! I TRULY expect this plot summary to be picked up by one of the "Law & Order" franchises for the new season...I'd betta buck there's a Bernie-Madoff character who gets snuffed SOON, like the Murder on the Orient Express...

FIRE Sale, Part 3: The Real Estate Fat Cats Get "Theirs"

FIRE!!!!

Finance, Insurance, & Real Estate, that is: Those have been the 'fundamentals' of the economy since that drooling, cretinous, diseased, vicious, batty old fucktard Raygun and the Pukes (with the occasionally enthusiastic, but always reliable support of the 'globalist' Dims) started to deismantle USer industrial power and move it (and the jobs--take that, pesky middle class!--which went with them) overseas where wages were lower and margins were higher. Clinton's 6-year orgy of "free-trade" initiatives was an instrumental and vital contribution to the whole trend (e.g.).

"Finance" (Citi, AmEx, Goldman-Sachs) and Insurance (AIG, e.g.) have gotten their piggy-faces deeeeep into the trough of Congressional largesse. Not to be out-done, the commercial Real-Estate speculators are now lining up for their slops from the Trillion$$$$ Handout, according to a report up now on the invaluable and incisive Calculated Risk:

Sunday, December 28, 2008
NY Times on Possible CRE Bailout
by CalculatedRisk on 12/28/2008 08:54:00 AM (EST)

From the NY Times: A Wish List for Commercial Real Estate

Commercial real estate groups have been meeting with members of Congress, the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation as well as Mr. Obama’s transition team, to press their case. And they say they have a compelling one.

This is similar to the WSJ article I covered last week. The answer is there is no reason for a CRE bailout:

[T]his is really about property investors who bought commercial buildings at the price peak and are now underwater. But say the owners default and the properties are transferred to the bondholders - what is the risk to the economy? None.

The NY Times article claims CRE is in pretty good shape:

Although commercial real estate remains in better shaper than some other industries — there is a good balance between supply and demand, vacancy rates are modest and loan default rates have so far hovered at a rock-bottom 1 percent, according to trade groups — industry leaders warn that the sector faces significant problems.

Default rates are low - but starting to rise. However the balance between supply and demand is poor and vacancy rates are rising rapidly

Clearly, there are STILL some really wealthy constituents of the Dim-Tards and GOPukes who have not yet benefited enough from the going-away gifts being doled out by the departing Bushevik cabal which is draining what's left of the Treasury to repay and reward it's loyal donors, supporters and acolytes,a nd they're in a hurry, cuz there are only around 20 days (15 working days) til they can't anymore.

So the heat is on.

Why "President Obama" Could Disappoint On Issues of Justice & Equity

"I greeted Obama's electoral victory with very little enthusiasm but much relief that the lying slime- bag right-wing John McCain was defeated. I think Obama will be another Bill Clinton, perhaps not as bad. Some people see his accession to the White House as a great historic victory for African Americans and for democracy. But I am not all that impressed. When the victory is extended into social democratic policies that have a salutary effect on millions of struggling impoverished African-Americans and other working poor, then I'll start dancing in the streets."

--Michael Parenti, long-time, left-wing, media/social critic, speaking for an indeterminate, but I suspect large number of people, in an interview posted on MLW today.**

Parenti alludes to a question that I have considered for a while, at least 6 months: Will Obama disappoint? If so, why? And whom?

This is how it appears to me: As President, Obama will naturally excite fairly high--albeit likely tacit-- expectations from that segment of the culture which, because he is "of" it, makes his ascendancy such an historic event. Questions of equity, class, justice, fairness, equality would --one might think, SHOULD-- be high on the agenda of a member of the group which most frequently and consistently experienced them. People so afflicted could be forgiven if they expected some greater measure of justice, etc., when one of 'their own' rose to the highest office in the land.

Yet, exactly BECAUSE Obama is, de facto, the avatar of the Civil Rights/Social Justice/Economic Equity movements (no matter/despite his own personal or political propensities, he cannot avoid being linked with them, if only subliminally), any act or program enacted by "Pres. Obama" intended to extend justice to that population --"his 'people'", i.e., poor, disenfranchised, marginalized, people of color--of which he's REGARDED as a/THE paradigmatic representative (again, whether he is or not is irrelevant), will inevitably be regarded and portrayed by his GOPuke/Rightard critics' as 'pandering' and/or special pleading for "his" people, the charge of which contains the implicit criticism that such acts are 'unfair' as not meant for the benefit of "all the people." In order to be "President to ALL the People, he will be required to act towards "his people" in almost exactly the same ways they will have grown discouragingly accustomed under "white" authority.

No small irony: Obama's regime will NOT be able to advance the causes of social justice, economic equity, or civil rights, precisely because if he did pursue such an agenda, the flying monkeys would portray him as helping "his" people at the 'expense' of 'others' (i.e., themselves, hegemonic 'whites') who, under a regimen that was truly dedicated to social justice and equity, might be required to eschew or forfeit certain ("social") privileges they had enjoyed as a legacy of their former "superiority."

So, I do not look for much activity from an Obama regime in advancing the claims for fairness, equity, or social justice from the 'marginalized' communities of America. Indeed, I expect him to steer as clear of them as he can, for as long as he can, and to act reluctantly--if at all--if he's cornered.

(**: Parenti has been an always astute, severe, sometimes vitriolic, reliably controversial, but seldom inaccurate, cultural observer for at least 30 years. I first encountered him in journalism grad school in '84, but he already had achieved and admirable degree of notoriety by them, when he presented a paper at a conference I helped to organize.)

Merry SolstiFestiChrismaHanukKwanzEid!"

Scenes From My Santa Stints This Season:


The Mariachi, in their specially designed Holiday costumes, played accompaniment to the annual Albuquerque Special Olympics "Posole Ole'" gathering at the Balloon Museum, where Santa led the 'Walk-a-thon' fund-raiser's first lap, as well as being there for photos--and some of the best posole that ever goes down your food hole. This is my third year helping there.

The fotos below were taken at a local "family fun&pizza/pasta" joint called ItZ!, where I did Santa on seven days, Wed & Sat, since Dec. 3 (a paying gig!)




I consider my "Santa" as an 'acting role,' or a 'stand-up' (well, really a "sit-down") routine, and my resume reflects this fact.

The World According to Dick, Via The NYTimes

Sometimes the old Gray Lady finds the courage and stands up on her hind legs and lets fly. Case in point (EMPHASES SUPPLIED):

The World According to Cheney
Published: December 22, 2008

Vice President Dick Cheney has a parting message for Americans: They should quit whining about all the things he and President Bush did to undermine the rule of law, erode the balance of powers between the White House and Congress, abuse prisoners and spy illegally on Americans. After all, he said, Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln did worse than that.

So Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush managed to stop short of repeating two of the most outrageous abuses of power in American history — Roosevelt’s decision to force Japanese-Americans into camps and Lincoln’s declaration of martial law to silence his critics? That’s not exactly a lofty standard of behavior.

Then again, it must be exhausting to rewrite history as much as Mr. Cheney has done in a series of exit interviews where he has made those comments. It seems as if everything went just great in the Bush years.

The invasion of Iraq was exactly the right thing to do, not an unnecessary war that required misleading Americans. The post-invasion period was not bungled to the point where Americans got shot up by an insurgency that the Bush team failed to see building.

The horrors at Abu Ghraib were not the result of the Pentagon’s decision to authorize abusive and illegal interrogation techniques, which Mr. Cheney endorsed. And only three men were subjected to waterboarding. (Future truth commissions take note.)

In Mr. Cheney’s reality, the crippling budget deficit was caused mainly by fighting two wars and by essential programs like “enhancing the security of our shipping container business.”

Well, no. The Bush team’s program to scan cargo for nuclear materials at air, land and sea ports has been mired in delays, cost overruns and questions about effectiveness. As for the deficit, the Congressional Budget Office has said the Bush-Cheney tax cuts for the wealthy were the biggest reason that the budget went into the red.

Some of Mr. Cheney’s comments were self-serving spin (as when The Washington Times helpfully prodded him to reveal that even though the world might have seen Mr. Bush as insensitive to the casualties of war, Mr. Cheney himself made a “secret” mission to comfort the families of the dead.)

Mr. Cheney was simply dishonest about Mr. Bush’s decision to authorize spying on Americans’ international calls without a warrant. He claimed the White House kept the Democratic and Republican Congressional leadership fully briefed on the program starting in late 2001. He said he personally ran a meeting at which “they were unanimous, Republican and Democrat alike” that the program was essential and did not require further Congressional involvement.

But in a July 17, 2003, letter to Mr. Cheney, Senator John Rockefeller IV, then vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said he wanted to “reiterate” the concerns he expressed in “the meeting today.” He said “the activities we discussed raise profound oversight issues” and created “concern regarding the direction the Administration is moving with regard to security, technology and surveillance.”

Mr. Cheney mocked Vice President-elect Joseph Biden for saying that he does not intend to have his own “shadow government” in the White House. Mr. Cheney said it was up to Mr. Biden to decide if he wants “to diminish the office of vice president.”

Based on Mr. Cheney’s record and his standards for measuring these things, we’re certain a little diminishing of that office would be good for the country.
(A version of this article appeared in print on December 23, 2008, on page A28 of the New York edition.)

How Shall I Fuck Thee? Let Me Count the Ways

How Do I Fuck My Base? Let Me Count The Ways.
A poem by Barack Obama

How do I fuck my base.
Let me count the ways?
I fuck them by reaching out to homophobic pastors
and the bigoted throngs they represent.
I fuck them by embracing war-mongering apparatchiks
and the neo-con wet dreams they blindly followed.
I fuck them by allowing war-criminals and torturers
to escape the punishment they so richly deserve.
I fuck them by endorsing domestic spying
and allowing the telecoms to profit from their complicity.
I fuck them and smile
as I reach out to everyone but them.

From the always reliable, always manly "Jesus' General" blog.

"Weather" or "Climate": It's NOT Rocket Science!

Yeah, baby it's cold out side. And snowing! Throw another chair on the fire, and let’s put this Rightard/Fundie/anti-science shibboleth--that "more local snow means there’s no global climate change"--out of its misery, once and for all, shall we? "Weather" is not "climate."

Fact-check:

Fact: Average, distributed global temperatures are increasing. Check!
Fact: Rising average temperature does NOT mean that cold weather goes away. Check!
Fact: A warmer climate, world-wide DOES means more evaporation. Check!
Fact: More evaporation means more precipitation. Check!
Fact: Precipitation doesn’t care if it falls as rain or snow; but, if it’s cold where the precipitation happens, there will be snow. (Duh!)
So: The current extreme "winter weather" storm situation is the result of standard mounts of cold winter air engulfing greater than usual amounts of (global) evaporataion, with consequent increase in precipitation which, because it is winter, and cold here in the Northern Hemisphere, means more SNOW!

Rocket science, it's not, I know. But I wasn’t home-schooled, so I get it...

Pastor Warren: The Embarrassment That Keeps On Giving

Mr.O is still disappointing.

Not that I am surprised.

I have felt (and, unpopularly, frequently said) pretty much since the beginning that that would be the case. Starting with Rahm Emanuel, but followed closely by the financial team (Rubin/Summers clones), the defense team (Gates, Jones, McConnell), Salazar for Interior (Richardson would have been both a better pick and a better use of is talents, such as they are), and the naming of corpoRat clone Arne Duncan to Education, the list of Mr. O's picks is a litany of disappointments to anyone of a liberal/progressive bent who thought Obama actually meant to change the direction of the government.

But what the fuck is he thinking, naming Rick Warren, the multi-millionaire author and pastor to a homophobic Southern California congregation (and self-indicted liar), to "preach" the convocation at the Inauguration?

By naming (p)Rick Warren, the president-elect confers legitimacy on attitudes that are deeply contrary to the all-inclusive love of God. He is courting the powerful at the expense of the marginalized, and in doing so, he stands the Gospel on its head...as one believer recently put it.

I guess he's trying to get everybody over it before the inauguration.

Scott-Free? Yessiree!

With now fewer than 30 days until the scheduled exchange of power between the out-going and the incoming regimes, speculations about, and passion for, prosecution of the Busheviks for their near-decade of of excruciatingly documented predations upon the Constitution, the People of the USofA, and the rest of the nations of the world, are raging across the Tubez.

NAGAHAPUN

I bet I been sayin for the last year that nobody in the Bushevik regime would face justice from an Obama one. (I just checked. I intimated it in January, and in July declared it a done deal.) Sez me: "No President, of any party, persuasion, or predilection, will EVER set the precedent of prosecuting her/his predecessor, no matter what crimes, mal- and misfeasances in office scum-sucking fuckweeds did commit."

Why not, you ask? Why the fuck not?

Short answer: Wouldn’t be prudent.

There’s NO precedent for it–though since Nixon, at least, there certainly has been ample reason. The reasons in the case of the Chimp and his psychopathic satraps and minions are cumulatively more damning than perhaps any other gang of miscreants to ever run the place.

But to aggressively pursue the departing criminal perps would be counter-”productive” for Mr.O. Doing so would do nothing more than to invite his own ‘examination’ by hostile interests upon his own cessation from power. The quo ain't worth the quid. Along with setting himself for as bad or worse, any prosecution by the new regime would smack of–would certainly be portrayed by the Busheviks, and their allies as--"political payback." The Rightard punditry would scream bloody murder, and they would get LOTS of attention, and the Sisters of Sarah-Cooter will take to the streets with their babies and their bibles clutched to their heaving breasts, and the lap-dog SCUM (So-Called Unbiased Media) will scarf it up like Fido at the catbox…

The next refrain will be, “We have to bind the wounds.” And "There's so much work to do ahead, there isn't time for recriminations." They get a choir of castrati (from Dims in Congress) to sing it. In some ways, that's right, too. The clusterfucks upon clusterfucks--the international and domestic shit and blood stains--left behind by this pack of nauseating parasites present more than enough of a challenge to occupy the Nation's attention and resources. So, absent the kind of intervention that brought down Paul Wellstone and several other threats to the military/industrial/security "community," they'll all likely live long and prosper.

A commentor on another blog bemoaned the fact that "Our nation does not learn from history."

But that misstates the problem, as I explained:

This is a People who do not believe history guides them. That’s the problem with what’s called “American Exceptionalism.” It is a HIDEOUS national ideology by which American enterprises are elevated ABOVE the fray of ‘normal’ morality or rationality or behavior. Jusat as for Leona Helmsley, laws were for little people, so for American Exceptionalist orthodoxy, history was for losers. And America WINS!!!!

“We” do not learn from history because we deny its existence. “We” write history, and live by the lessons we thereupon transcribe. Exceptionalism--the dispensation (attributed variously to God and our own marvelous natures) from the normal laws--is, in an essential way, the root 'belief' of USer nationalism. It is what our "patriotism" celebrates.

Is there an organ or node of the “corpoRat media” which does not relentlessly promote this theme? Is there a curriculum in any school anywhere that does not revolve around that central belief? Is there a church anywhere in America from the pulpit of which you will NOT hear that ‘faith’ eternally promoted, its glories and wonders extolled--and praises unto the Lord in thanks for which be delivered? Is there an advertizement for anything from cars to carpet to condoms that does not require that assumption to make the sales pitch comprehensible--i.e., that it is YOUR distance from that Exceptional state which the product being hawked can repair?

Short answer: No…

Government Of The People, By The People, FOR The People? Fuggeddabodit!!!!

The "American Experiment" testing whether popular sovereignty is feasible--whether, as Franklin warned, a 'republic' can be sustained--is finished. The 'null hypothesis' is secure.

I have alluded to this in previous posts, but with a mere 30 days left in which the Busheviks can complete their agenda, it deserves repeating:

The whole, sole, and only raison d'etre of the Bushevik regime, their explicit instructions from their bosses and handlers in CorpoRat Murka, upon taking office, was to do demolish, undermine, subvert, and otherwise reduce to the fullest extent possible the capacity of the people to appeal to any institution of democratic self-governance to resist or roll-back the wholesale privatization of the People's 'commons,' and to trivialize, marginalize and if possible utterly remove any instrument that might abet appeal of those actions.

Mission: Accomplished.

Neither the Mocha Messiah, Mr.O, nor all the King's horses will put it together again. Mainly, of course, because it is soooo much easier to govern this way. Do NOT look for Mr.O to relinquish many, if any, of the powers arrogated to the presidency by the Bushies, at least until the "current" emergency passes.

What? You say the "current DISASTER" likely will NEVER pass?

Well, gosh, I guess NOBODY could ever have anticipated that, could they?

When Business Fails, Management Usually Is At Fault

But when schools "fail," it's the teachers and the students who get blamed.

What is wrong with this picture?

EJ Dionne, on his very best days, is a reliable hack for whatsoever the reigning status quo he can discover to adovcate, hasn't got a fucking clue.

Obama's choice for Ed. Sec. is just another of the disappointments I have come by now to expect from this saintly "changer."

What it ratifies is the long-standing--but ill-understood albeit widely distributed--practices by which USer Schools avoid 'education,' and specialize in 'training.'

Jonathan Kozol, way back in his first or second book, in the '60s, noted that that those who believe USer schools are failures do not understand the true purpose of the schools. American schools function to ensure that as few children as humanly possible are able to escape the socio-economic niches for which they were born. The true purpose of schooling in Murka is to imbue students with 'virtues' of obedience and passivity, while extirpating as completely as possible any inclination toward critique, skepticism or even mild curiosity. As another noted education scholar, Joel Spring, put it (albeit somewhat harshly or indelicately) around the same time, USer schools are part of a national sorting system by which children are assessed according to their abilities to meet the needs of elites for manpower. School provides evidence, a posteriori--by means of grades, scores, and the dreaded permanent record--to justify and rationalize decisions made, before a child ever steps foot in the door of a classroom, regarding the eligibility of any child to 'succeed.'

A symptom: There's a world of literature about 'drop-outs.' But that term blames the victim. What the term far too often describes is the phenomenom in schools by which kids are informed, usually informally, that they are not "our kind." They really are "push-outs," because the school administration makes it clear they are not wanted or needed, and that the heroic efforts of dedicated teachers are being wasted on 'em, so they might as well go get a job, cuz they ain' going nowhere.

"Coach" Arne Duncan is an all-too-predictable avatar of perpetuation of all those trends and tendencies. The best choice Obama could have made for the position, philosophically, was probably the man whom the Rightards chose to muddy the waters: Prof. Bill Ayers. Failing him, Linda Darling-Hammond was mentioned, and would have been a good choice, too.

The Douchies Are Out! The Douchies Are Out!!!

Speaking of Sickening Over-Indulgence

The 20 Worst Mall-Foods in America
The U.S. food industry has declared war on your waistline. Here's how to disarm its weapons of mass inflation
By: Matt Goulding
20. Worst Fast-Food Chicken Meal
19. Worst Drink
18. Worst Supermarket Meal
17. Worst "Healthy" Burger
16. Worst Mexican Entree
15. Worst Kids' Meal
14. Worst Sandwich
13. Worst Salad
12. Worst Burger
11. Worst Steak
10. Worst Breakfast
9. Worst Dessert
8. Worst Chinese Entree
7. Worst Chicken Entree
6. Worst Fish Entree
5. Worst Pizza
4. Worst Pasta
3. Worst Nachos
2. Worst Starter
1. The Worst Food in America

It’s that time of year again, when you’re logging more hours than ever at the mall. Blame stress, blame shopping fatigue, or blame the irresistible smell of food-court treats slamming your senses from the minute you walk in the door—whatever the reason, you’ll probably end up chowing down at the mall during your shopping trip.

Here’s the danger: Studies have shown that the more temptation people resist, the harder it becomes to continue resisting. That means after hours of being surrounded by last-minute sales, special offers and life-changing, one-time deals, your ability to resist the enticing edibles of the mall food court may be severely compromised. And considering the industrial-strength calorie bombs we uncovered while researching the Eat This, Not That! series, a lack of willpower in the presence of mall eateries can be a very dangerous thing.

Sure, a turkey burger sounds healthy. But is it, really? Not if you order the Bella from Ruby Tuesday, which packs a whopping 1,145 calories. (And yes, that's before a side of fries.) Fortunately, there exists a guide to help you navigate the nutritional pitfalls that pollute nearly every mall food court in America. That list above, of the worst foods, the authors discovered in their scramble to save shoppers serious calories in the holiday season.

To further enlighten you on the prevalence of preposterous portions, we spent months analyzing menus, nutrition labels, and ingredient lists to identify the food industry's worst offenders. Our primary criterion? Sheer caloric impact. After all, it's the top cause of weight gain and the health problems that accompany it. (As you read, keep in mind that 2,500 calories a day is a reasonable intake for the average guy.) We also factored in other key nutritional data, such as excessive carbohydrates and fat, added sugars, trans fats, and sodium. The result is our first annual list of the worst foods in America.

I don't think I've ever consumed even one of these delectables. I never tried to eat the 60 oz. steak at tht restaurant on the east side of Amarillo, either (Free, if consumed within one hour). My major extravagances in this area are a double green-chile/cheese Lota Burger with fries and a choc shake. Mebbe every 6 mos? But I have a tendency towards indolence, and that can be accompanied by a propensity towards corpulence, too, so I gotta watch my weight pretty closely (Height: 6'; Weight: 220 lb; Waist: 39")

While we're on the subject: Two Triple Cheese, Side Order of Fries, anyone?

Bernie Madoff's "Twinkie" Defense: BPD

That's "Borderline Personality Disorder" for the psychologically unaffiliated.

And that--not a deep, persistent, pathological dishonesty--was what made Bernie Madoff a crook.

He couldn't help himself.

I've always loved how, if you're high enough in the hierarchy, you can be forgiven anything at all.

Sure, people who invested in his scheme had to ignore the old maxim--that if it seems too good to be true, it probably IS--and by doing so, brought their fate on themselves. Still, it takes a thief...

Breaking!:

NEW YORK: Bernard Madoff, the New York financier who the authorities say has confessed to a $50 billion Ponzi scheme, will not be going to jail even though he failed to meet the original terms of his $10 million bail agreement.

U.S. government prosecutors said they had modified the terms of Madoff's agreement so that he would not need to find four people to co-sign his bond. Madoff was unable to meet that condition, prosecutors said. Even his sons, Andrew and Mark, were apparently unwilling to help. A lawyer for the sons said they were unaware of the scheme and were cooperating with the authorities.

This invites the next question: Why does the thieving, lying motherfucker have any resources left at all? Why haven't they all been peremptorily confiscated?

And in that foto (courtesy Shannon Stapleton/Reuters), he sure doesn't look too contrite, do he?

The Daily Dis-Appointment: Ken Salazar, Interior

Yesterday, it was Arne Duncan, a corpoRat shill for the Chicago oligarchy, and 'proud' school privatizer (via "charter" schools)--but long-time baskabaw buddy of the P-E--to lead the Dept. Of Education. Described as a "reformer," Duncan may be expected to advance the agenda of "corporatization" of schools: To be a school “reformer” is to support:

* a heavy reliance on fill-in-the-bubble standardized tests to evaluate students and schools, generally in place of more authentic forms of assessment;

* the imposition of prescriptive, top-down teaching standards and curriculum mandates;

* a disproportionate emphasis on rote learning—memorizing facts and practicing skills—particularly for poor kids;

* a behaviorist model of motivation in which rewards (notably money) and punishments are used on teachers and students to compel compliance or raise test scores;

* a corporate sensibility and an economic rationale for schooling, the point being to prepare children to “compete” as future employees; and

* charter schools, many of which are run by for-profit companies.

Today, it's Ken Salazar, the Blue-dawg/DINO Colorado Senator with close, deep and tight ties to corpoRat agriculture and mining interests. The Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management controls oil and gas production on federal lands while the Minerals Management Service controls offshore petroleum and renewable energy production in federal waters. The Office of Surface Mining controls coal and metals mining and the Fish and Wildlife Service administers the Endangered Species Act, a major determinant of energy companies' access to natural resources.

The Center for Biological Diversity, a group that's suing the Interior Department over its Endangered Species Act designations, has reservations about Salazar's appointment.

"While Salazar has promoted some good environmental actions ... his overall record is decidedly mixed, and is especially weak in the arenas most important to the next secretary of the Interior: protecting scientific integrity, combating global warming, reforming energy development and protecting endangered species," said Kieran Suckling, the Center's executive director.

Suckling pointed to Salazar's support for Gale Norton as one of Bush's previous Interior secretaries, whose tenure was marked by scandals probed by the Inspector General, and endorsement of William Myers to the federal bench. Myers, a former Interior solicitor and ranching lobbyist, was regarded poorly by many in the environmental community for much of his work at the department.

The best thing about appointing Salazar to DoI is that it gets him out of the Senate, where he would have (and already has) been one of the very unreliable "Dim" votes on important issues such as appointments (He opposed Alito, voted for Roberts). His record in the Senate is very MUCH like that of his new boss: Pro-FISA, he voted to allow firearms in the national parks; he's voted for offshore drilling several times; voted against requiring the Army corps of engineers to consider climate change impacts in planning water projects; voted against raising fuel efficiency standards for cars and trucks. So getting him out of the Senate might be a net plus--depending on whom the (Dim) CO Gov appoints in his place.