GlovesOff

Train Wreck

2009-01-18T22:35:00.000-08:00

Olbermann's a gem. Night after night he has pointed out what an international disaster this idiot and his "administration" have been. The narrative is exhausting and depressing. Good riddance, again, and again, and again

Good Riddance

2009-01-17T14:59:00.000-08:00

The gong should have been rung on this moron years ago.

The Devil's Rain

2008-10-14T14:40:00.000-07:00

Five and a half years, countless thousands of lives, billions of dollars wasted. What's left to win, Mr. McCain?

McCainiacs

2008-10-09T19:45:00.000-07:00

"There's no keepin' us mavericks down, my friends."

Aphasic Athena

2008-10-01T21:27:00.000-07:00

Like Athena, sprung from the forehead of Zeus, comes this airhead, sprung, one suspects, from the hollow cranium of George W. Bush. The resemblance is uncanny. Apologies to Zeus and Athena.

The Maverick and the Sycophant

2008-10-01T21:07:00.000-07:00

McCain and Hannity-pre-war 2003--two of a kind; twin sons of different mothers. Wrong then, wrong now. Not that they'd ever admit it.

2008-08-22T00:28:00.000-07:00

The Cost of Futility

2008-01-23T19:08:00.000-08:00

click here to learn more

When Will We Learn?

2007-09-13T20:56:00.000-07:00

I was a teenager who watched the news back in 1968.

Not much has changed.

The Decider...Thinking Out Loud

2007-09-07T22:28:00.000-07:00

The Decider, speaking at a gathering of minority journalists in Washington, D.C., on Aug. 6, 2004, with tangled synapses and mangled syntax on full display:

"Mr. President...what do you think tribal sovereignty means in the twenty-first century, and how do we resolve conflicts between tribes and the federal and state governments?"

"Yeah, uh, tribal sovereignty means that; it's sovereign. It's---you're a---you're a ---you've been given sovereignty and you're---viewed as a s-s-s-sovereign entity. And, therefore, the relationship between the federal government and---tribes is one between---s-sovereign entities."

That was three years ago. If you think he's gotten any sharper than you must be among the twenty-nine percent that comprise "the base."

To further quote the Chimp : "There's an old saying in Tennessee, I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee that says, "Fool me once---shame on---shame on you;---(awkward pause)---you fool me, (you) can't get fooled again."

Oh, how he makes me proud.

Nothing and No One

2007-09-06T20:38:00.001-07:00

I'm so sick and tired of the liars and thieves in this corrupt government—from the clueless, moronic "Decider", to his acolytes throughout his rotten, fetid administration, the Republican Party, and the national "news" media. For five years they have cynically and shamelessly attempted to conflate the terrorist attacks of 9/11 with the illegal invasion of Iraq and the never-to-end "Global War on Terror."

I'm equally fatigued and ashamed of the inept and useless opposition, the Democratic Party—from Harry Reid, to Nancy Pelosi, to Hillary Clinton—a caucus of craven political cowardice and moral bankruptcy, that, despite the election results of 2006, has time and again allowed the belligerent "Decider" to have his way with his delusional terror war, which he has maniacally ratcheted up in the months since the election.

And now he's talking of expanding the war into Iran.

From the recent American Legion Convention in Las Vegas: "Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere. ... We will confront this danger before it is too late."

Have we heard this before?

Expect to hear a "crescendo bellicoso" from the "Chorus of the Willing" in the coming months—from Fox News, The Weekly Standard, The Putrid Punditocracy—as they all speculate upon, (and genuflect before), the ultimate wisdom of the "Decider."

Pat Buchanan, no liberal, has recently written, "What is to prevent Bush from attacking Iran and widening the war, at a time and place of his choosing, and sooner than we think?"

"Nothing and no one."

This is a depressing comment on the state of the republic; a grave condition which seems to matter to no one, and for those to whom it should matter—our elected representatives, and our "free" press—means nothing.

2007-08-02T09:54:00.001-07:00

Social Distortion

2007-07-06T15:22:00.000-07:00

Independence Day

2007-07-05T21:10:00.000-07:00

Contemplation

2007-07-05T21:03:00.000-07:00

As I lay in bed this morning, this 4th of July morning, contemplating the silhouetted hairs on my forearm against the dawn’s early light, I couldn’t help but think of what an incompetant and absolute idiot George W. Bush is. To think, Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, Hamilton, Lincoln, Roosevelt, . . . Bush. God help us all.

The Commander Guy

2007-05-05T20:42:00.000-07:00

Who's Counting, Still?

2007-01-01T22:48:00.000-08:00

In November of 2005 I wrote:

"Perhaps fourteen months from now the three-thousandth flag-draped coffin will be unloaded at some air base in the middle of the night. Contained within will be what's left of someone who died, we hope, for something that he or she believed in. What's tragically ironic is that most of us who supposedly benefit from their sacrifice, a majority now, no longer think that their sacrifice was worth it. For that, the cabal of zealots that occupies the White House deserves nothing but contempt and disdain. We can only hope that the mounting numbers of casualties press heavily against their leaden souls.

But who's counting?"

Well, sad to say, it's taken only taken thirteen months to reach three-thousand, an awful number that appeared beneath the fold of the local newspaper, beneath the story of the playoff-bound San Diego Chargers. What has changed in the past thirteen months? For one, "stay the course" has finally been retired to slogan boot hill along with "where's the beef" and "you deserve a break today". Now if only we could find a way to rid the world of "support the troops".

A commission of elders has opined that the current course is a disaster, (it's only taken four years), and recommended a strategy for the lame-duck commander-in-chief, who has promised an announcement after the New Year, so as not to interfere with his holiday routine. As he has reminded us many times, his is "hard work".

The ultimate holiday rush has come, however, with the "You Tube" execution of the "Buthcher of Baghdad", Saddam Hussein, an event that for the corporate media, rivaled "Camp OJ" in its cynical pandering to the basest of the base. On cue, the networks repeated, ad nauseum, the hacknyed drivel of "good", (us), versus "evil" (him, anyone but us).

Amidst this circus we had the side show of the death and funeral of President Gerald Ford, an accidental figure of history who, by benefit of the twenty-four hour news networks, was elevated into the rarified strata of Churchill and Roosevelt. For a week we've heard, over and over, the sound bites, ("Our national nightmare is over") that the pundits use to excuse Ford of his most egregious crime--the pardon of Richard Nixon.

In pardoning his benefactor, Ford, in effect, prolonged the national nightmare, perhaps into perpetuity; criminal abuse of power was now protected by executive order. Nixon and his accomplices should have been tried for their crimes and sentenced. That they were not contradicts our arrogance and self-righteousness in regards to the "rule of law" and "democracy".

Rep. Gerald Ford, as a member of the Warren Commission, was instumental in persuading the Commission to adopt junior counsel Arlen Specter's risible and preposterous "single-bullet" theory in their final report, which other Commission members, including Richard Russel and Hale Boggs, did not accept, (President Lyndon Johnson, who appointed the Commission, never fully accepted the findings either).

In 1975 President Gerald Ford, with his Secretary-of-State, Henry Kissinger, visted Indonesia on the eve of that nation's attack upon the populaton of East Timor. Indonesian President Soharto delayed his attack until the American president had left his air space, after which he launched an assault, that over the next quarter-century, claimed over 200,000 lives.

Gerald Ford deserved a more mature reflection of his true legacy than the sycophants of the corporate media were willing to give. Instead, his was an embarrassing hagiography that reified the illusions of his greatest failures.

And so it goes with America. We will continue to delude ourselves with feel-good nods to a mythical past; with self-righteous homilies to freedom and democracy; with simplistic comparisons to good and evil; all the while ignoring our many disatrous failures. Sadly, the rest of the world must pay for our arrogance and hubris, and they're getting very tired of it, in larger numbers every day.

But, who's counting?

2006-08-31T21:06:00.000-07:00

Nothing

2006-08-25T14:58:00.000-07:00

In the coming weeks the nation will observe the fifth anniversary of the terrorist attacks of September 11 on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It will be a time of solemn remembrance of the 3,000 Americans killed in the attacks.

The war in Iraq is now in its fourth year with no end in sight. At least 150,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed as a direct result of the U.S. led invasion, according to Britain’s Lancet Medical Journal. Some estimates are as high as 250,000.

President Bush, at a recent news conference stated, “The terrorists attacked us and killed 3,000 of our citizens before we started the freedom agenda in the Middle East.”

A reporter asked, “What did Iraq have to do with that?’’

“Nothing,’’ was Bush’s reply, a stunningly flippant admission that effectively obliterates the carefully contrived nexus between Iraq and the terrorist attacks of 9/11 that he and his administration have repeatedly claimed as a rational for the preemptive invasion in March of 2003.

The president continues to preach, as he has for the past three years, that Iraq is “the central front” in the “war on terror,” a “war” that, in fact, sprang preconceived and fully formed from the rubble of 9/11. Indeed, without the carnage at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon it is doubtful that there would have been a rush into the nightmarish abyss that has opened up beneath the shifting sands of “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” Bush’s “freedom agenda” has brought nothing but death and destruction to the Iraqi people and helped to foster a future generation of nationalistic terrorism.

At the same time we still hear variations on the same theme, a cacophonous drone of self-righteous venom, vengeance and bloodlust from the garrulous ”patriots” on the far right; of a “post-9/11 world,” where “fighting them there before we have to fight them here” is arrogantly trumpeted as a rallying cry, while at the same time they spread a pathetic fear and paranoia that is quite unbecoming in the “home of the brave.”

The message echoes in mind-numbing reflections throughout the corporate media, where lethargic acceptance of the ever shifting cassus belli given by this mendacious administration for an immoral and illegal war has somehow become “mainstream”, and where those that speak out and question the obvious are ridiculed and marginalized.

Now, on the five-year anniversary of the terrorist attacks we will indulge ourselves in a self-pitying national lament about the American lives lost on that September morning, but will not give much thought to the devastation and suffering that we have brought to the innocent people of Iraq, a cruel and misguided retribution that they did not deserve.

It is my hope that amid the flag waving, the reveling in “freedom”, and yet more mindless exhortations to “stay the course”, and “fight them there”, the anguished cries of those that have felt our reckless wrath will fall upon our hardened hearts and remind us that this war of choice, in the words of the feckless man who started it, has been for nothing.

Commerce

2006-06-10T23:22:00.000-07:00

It is so sadly pathetic that the level of discourse and debate that dominates the major American news media—the MainStream Media, particularly television—is in reality nothing more than a well organized wrestling match between camps of opposing corporate interests.

Like a WWF ringmaster, the corporate media seeks to attract a fan base from competing sides that will fulfill their obligation as a target audience for the advertisers that pay increasingly exorbitant premiums for the cherished demographic. Moreover, the corporations seek to incite their compliant audience with invective, slander, half-truths and outright lies, meant to stir the passions of the audience into a frenzy of self-righteous hostility. Like a virtual Roman Coliseum, its thumbs up or thumbs down; liberal or conservative; left or right; us against them; Republicans against Democrats. And it seems to be playing quite well in Peoria.

The fertile intellectual soil that brought forth Thoreau, Emerson, Twain and Mencken is now polluted by the mindless banality of the likes of Ann Coulter and legions of like-mined “authors”; a noxious ether where anyone with an agent can write a book and take to the airwaves to make the big sale. As a result we are witness to an endless stream of media whores, who, through sheer decibel level, somehow manage to frame the public debate on many of the most important issues of the day.

You won’t hear scholar Francis Fukuyama (a conservative) on the highly rated cable news shows. Instead you get a steady stream of Laura Ingraham, Dick Morris, Michelle Malkin, and Glenn Beck. The collective life’s work of these four jokers don’t add up to one of Mr. Fukuyama’s undergrad papers.

The proud tradition of broadcast journalism, of Edward R. Murrow, Eric Severeid and Howard K. Smith has been poisoned by corporate self interest. Where Walter Cronkite once signed off his nightly newscast with “...and that’s the way it is...”, we now get O’Reilly hawking his “Factor Gear”, his next book, and crowing about his latest ratings. Fox News has succeeded in marketing its “fair and balanced” brand to its target audience as successfully as Apple has marketed iPods.

It is no wonder that Jon Stewart’s “The Daily Show”, in its satire and parody, has become as important a vehicle for real information as the nightly network or cable news—art reflects life; news has become comedy (now more than ever), and the irony is lost on everyone but the writers at Comedy Central.

What we are left with is the “journalistic” equivalent of “Battle of the Network Stars”—in this corner: The Dixie Chicks; in this corner: Toby Keith. Only this battle, despite the ultimate superficiality at its core, is given a patina of authority by the corporate monolith that seeks not the truth, but more and more mindless consumers.

Republican Guard

2006-03-14T19:44:00.000-08:00

The Smirk & The Sheik

2006-01-02T21:31:00.000-08:00

Deep Thoughts

2006-01-02T18:39:00.000-08:00

L'etat c'est moi!

2006-01-02T11:25:00.000-08:00

Desperados

2005-12-28T22:14:00.000-08:00

Resolve

2005-12-28T20:38:00.000-08:00

Realpolitik

2005-12-28T19:02:00.000-08:00

Texas Mis-step

2005-12-28T18:40:00.000-08:00

Stay What Course?

2005-12-18T20:51:00.000-08:00

Tonight the president delivered a prime time speech from the Oval Office, his first in three years. Anticipating a certain gravitas (don't they always?), the networks offered free time, with the pundits waiting, ready to dissect the every word of the dunce behind the desk, as if the fate of the world were hanging in the balance.

What did we get? More talk of “freedom”, with large doses of “terrorism”, “terrorists” and fear thrown in for extra measure. The same crap we’ve heard for the last four years. Bush XLIII has shown, time and time again, that his rhetoric is as empty as his head, with the persuasive power of a telephone sales pitch.

The post-mortems, from the “fair and balanced” crew of usual Fox News cheerleaders, (Brit Hume, Fred Barnes, Morton Kondracke, and Bill Kristol, administration apologists, all), to the laughingly swelling symphonic underscore of of Bush’s beedy-eyed rhetoric during the commercial breaks in Tucker Carlson’s segment on MSNBC, were predictable in their self-indulgent massage of political sophistry.

One point did emerge from the blather: almost all of the talking heads agreed that the misadventure in Iraq has been a screwed up disaster; but that we’re there, and now we have to get behind the resolute leader, or not.

Never mind that the resolute leader and his L'Eminence Rouge, (Dick Cheney), have been wrong at every turn of this disaster. From weapons of mass destruction, to Nigerian yellow cake, to smoking guns in the form of mushroom clouds, Bush and the powers behind his throne have fashioned a Potemkin village of impressive dimensions, with disastrous consequences.

Yet, as far as media are concerned, it’s still nothing more than a difficult public relations project for the White House, with the commander-in-chief, still lauded for his “resolve” and “strength”, needing to find only the right tone that will reassure the fearful masses. Hope continues to spring eternal in the cowardly pens of the unctuous fourth estate.

The discussions seem focused not so much upon grave issues of impending national doom, but more upon Bush’s standing in the polls, the upcoming mid-term elections, and the immediate dynamic of the political power structure.

Now we will be asked to support Bush's myopic vision of a democratic Iraqi future and forget about the anti-democratic betrayal that dragged us into the mess. As it has been since the start of this debacle, those who oppose the policy, who feel they were mislead, will be marginalized and ridiculed as "angry", "quitters", and worse.

"Chicken Hawk" Hannity, "Big Head" O'Reilly, "The Fat Drug Addict" Limbaugh, "Twiggy with Tourette's" Coulter, and an entire battalion of shouting heads are poised and ready to come to the aid of the befuddled Bush. Expect to see "Stay the Course" replace "Support the Troops" as the slogan of the day.

A majority may be mad as hell, but, as as "conservative" talking head Tucker Carlson says, “The same people who are always mad will always be mad, but they don’t vote Republican, so who cares?”

Who's Counting?

2005-11-18T21:22:00.000-08:00

Fourteen months ago I wrote:

Now that the death toll from “Operation Iraqi Freedom” has reached one-thousand, maybe the American public will finally begin to sober up . . . and begin to question the competence and policies of those that got them into this mess.

As we continue to “stay the course” the next thousand take their place in line. Who do you think will be the last to die for this mistake? He or she is somewhere out there as we speak. Maybe someone you know.

Well, fourteen months later the next thousand have come home in flag-draped coffins, and another thousand have taken their place in the Bush Mideast meat parade.

Iraqi casualties? Who's counting? As Tommy Franks said, "we don't do body counts."

Fourteen months later we are still asked to "stay the course", even though we now know that "the course" was conceived in lies and deception, charted with fantasy and delusion, and executed with utter ineptitude and incompetence. That this disaster of an administration could still gather a gnat-turd size of support (36% in the polls) is impressive. Hats off to the "base."

In the real world it seems as though a critical mass is finally starting to feel the strain, regardless of what the fair and balanced folks at Fox News or the puppeteers at the Weekly Standard would have you believe. A majority now feels that the country is headed in the wrong direction. Why they didn't feel this way last November remains a mystery, for the little man at the helm of this disaster has been nothing but a walking cardboard cutout his entire life; an empty-headed empty suit with a checkbook. And now, tragically, at his whim, we find ourselves in the most serious foreign policy mess since the Vietnam war.

So here we are, between Iraq and a hard place, like Odysseus between Scylla and Charybdis, and the block-headed commander-in-chief still sticks to his tired, delusional rhetoric—“We will fight the terrorists in Iraq. We will stay in the fight until we have achieved the victory that our brave troops have fought for. The defense of freedom is worth our sacrifice” —and the message is echoed ad nauseum by his acolytes throughout the media. However, unlike the flawed hero of Greek myth, Bush and his arrogant crew, awash in their own hubris, are unable, and unwilling, to resist the lethal song of their own deadly Sirens, and the world suffers.

Perhaps fourteen months from now the three-thousandth flag-draped coffin will be unloaded at some air base in the middle of the night. Contained within will be what's left of someone who died, we hope, for something that he or she believed in. What's tragically ironic is that most of us who supposedly benefit from their sacrifice, a majority now, no longer think that their sacrifice was worth it. For that, the cabal of zealots that occupies the White House deserves nothing but contempt and disdain. We can only hope that the mounting numbers of casualties press heavily against their leaden souls.

But, who's counting?

Apology?

2005-11-14T21:32:00.000-08:00

I received an e-mail today. It's an open letter from Lieutenant General Chuck Pitman, US Marine Corps, Ret. I thought I'd respond, point by point, to his "apology", which could just as easily have come from the Heritage Foundation, the Weekly Standard, the Wall Street Journal Op-Ed page, Fox News or The Project For The New American Century . My responses are in parentheses.

One Marine's Apology

"One marine's apology" posted on March 31st, 2005. This Letter of Apology was written by Lieutenant General Chuck Pitman, US Marine Corps, Ret:

"For good and ill, the Iraqi prisoner abuse mess will remain an issue. On the one hand, right thinking Americans will harbor the stupidity of the actions while on the other hand, political glee will take control and fashion this minor event into some modern day massacre.
(A minor event? The systematic torture of prisoners of war, in violation of the Geneva Conventions? I apologize for all of us "wrong thinking" Americans who find such tactics appalling and, dare I say, "un-American")

I humbly offer my opinion here:

I am sorry that the last seven times we Americans took up arms and sacrificed the blood of our youth, it was in the defense of Muslims (Bosnia, Kosovo, Gulf War 1, Kuwait, etc.).
(Bosnia, Kosovo, yes; Kuwait and Gulf War I? Try again)

I am sorry that no such call for an apology upon the extremists came after 9/11.
(In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the world was united behind the U.S. Since then our block-headed arrogance and belligerence has left us isolated and scorned throughout much of the civilized world)

I am sorry that all of the murderers on 9/11 were Islamic Arabs.
(To be precise, fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudis; not a single one was Iraqi)

I am sorry that most Arabs and Muslims have to live in squalor under savage dictatorships.
(That have been propped up and supported by U.S. financial and military aid for decades, not only in the Middle East but around the globe, from Central America to East Timor)

I am sorry that their leaders squander their wealth.
(The U.S. is the biggest debtor nation in the world. We outspend all the nations on earth, combined, on militarism and defense. It is tragic that our elected leaders continue to squander our enormous wealth, as we sink further and further into debilitating debt)

I am sorry that their governments breed hate for the US in their religious schools, mosques, and government-controlled media.
(I too am sorry that religious zealotry and demagoguery is used by the few to try and control the many. The U.S. is the most fundamentally religious of all the Western nations, and many of our religious leaders, such as Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, continue to preach hate and intolerance. Our religious wackos are no less menacing then theirs)

I am sorry that Yassar Arafat was kicked out of every Arab country and high-jacked the Palestinian "cause."
(I am sorry that the Palestinians were kicked out of their country by the U.N., which has led to the ongoing human tragedy that is the Middle East)

I am sorry that no other Arab country will take in or offer more than a token amount of financial help to those same Palestinians.
(You miss the whole point of the Arab/Israeli conflict; both sides believe that God/Allah has ordained this wasteland as their home. Why should the Arabs capitulate to the Israelis and visa versa? ‘Round and ‘round it goes. Got a solution? I thought not)

I am sorry that the USA has to step in and be the biggest financial supporter of poverty stricken Arabs while the insanely wealthy Arabs blame the USA for all their problems.
(I am sorry for the continuous stupidity of our elected leaders, who kiss the feet of Arab despots just so we can maintain access to their oil. That is why the U.S. has, and wants, to step in)

I am sorry that our own left wing, our media, and our own brainwashed masses do not understand any of this (from the misleading vocal elements of our society like radical professors, CNN and the NY TIMES).
(I am sorry that so many choose to be misinformed; studies have shown that a majority of Americans who watch the right wing Fox News, like our humble apoligist, I'm sure, believe that Iraq was involved in the terror attacks on 9/11. Who’s brainwashed?)

I am sorry the United Nations scammed the poor people of Iraq out of the "food for oil" money so they could get rich while the common folk suffered.
(I am sorry that the U.S. enforced sanctions against the Iraqi people after the end of the Gulf War caused the deaths of over 500,000 Iraqi children and, I would bet, quite a few common folk)

I am sorry that some Arab governments pay the families of homicide bombers upon their death.
(I am sorry that our government has increasingly out sourced military operations to paid mercenaries. A volunteer soldier will serve, and perhaps die for his country; a mercenary will serve for money)

I am sorry that those same bombers are brainwashed thinking they will receive 72 virgins in "paradise."
(I too am sorry that we choose to rationalize death and destruction by claiming that it is done “honorably”, that "the cause is just", and "noble")

I am sorry that the homicide bombers think pregnant women, babies, children, the elderly and other noncombatant civilians are legitimate targets.
(I am sorry and ashamed that my country has illegally invaded a country and killed countless thousands, many of them pregnant women, babies, children, the elderly and other noncombatant civilians)

I am sorry that our troops die to free more Arabs from the gang rape rooms and the filling of mass graves of dissidents of their own making.
(I too am sorry that our young men and women have to always be the ones to go in and clean up the mess created by their fathers and grandfathers; for years Saddam Hussein was supported and emboldened by the CIA and the U.S. defense establishment. Donald Rumsfeld was photographed shaking his hand in 1983, after he had gassed his own people)

I am sorry that Muslim extremists have killed more Arabs than any other group.
(A relative handful of Muslim extremists can’t hold a candle to the destructive power of the U.S. “shock and awe” campaign)

I am sorry that foreign trained terrorists are trying to seize control of Iraq and return it to a terrorist state.
(There wasn’t a single terrorist attack in Iraq, nor was there any breeding ground for terrorism until the U.S. invasion that has left a power vacuum; George Bush has accomplished what bin Laden could only dream of)

I am sorry we don't drop a few dozen Daisy Cutters on Fallujah.
(Yeah, kill a few thousand more of those dirty Iraqis who had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. But, who’s counting? As General Tommy Franks, of U.S. Central Command has said, “We don’t do body counts”)

I am sorry every time terrorists hide they find a convenient "Holy Site."
(Every time? Where’s bin Laden? Mullah Omar? Ayman Al-Zawahiri? Is the Pakistani border a holy site?)

I am sorry they didn't apologize for driving a jet into the World Trade Center that collapsed and severely damaged Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church - one of our Holy Sites.
(Again, I wish you would point to a single Iraqi who was involved in the attacks, let alone a link between the attackers and the Iraqi government)

I am sorry they didn't apologize for flight 93 and 175, the USS Cole, the embassy bombings, the murders and beheadings of Nick Berg and Daniel Pearl, etc....etc!
(Has the U.S. ever apologized for over half a century of meddling in Middle Eastern affairs? For propping up tyrants and despots, such as the Shah of Iran, Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, or the rotten House of Saud? All things being equal, I would say that the people of the Middle East have as much of a gripe with us as we claim to have with them)

We hang out our dirty laundry for the entire world to see. We move on. That's one of the reasons we are hated so much. We don't hide this stuff like all those Arab countries that are now demanding an apology. Deep down inside, when most Americans saw this reported in the news, we were like - so what? We lost hundreds and made fun of a few prisoners. Sure, it was wrong, sure, it dramatically hurts our cause, but until captured we were trying to kill these same prisoners.

(Most Americans have no idea what is really going on in Iraq, and if left to the liars in this administration, will never know. I always find it so strangely ironic that those that are constantly beating their chests and fanning the flames of war, all in the name of protecting our “freedoms” and “way of life”, are usually the first to point a self-righteous finger at those of us who think differently, questioning our patriotism. I am constantly reminded of Samuel Johnson’s observation that “patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel”. We have become a nation of scoundrels)

Now we're supposed to wring our hands because a few were humiliated? Our compassion is tempered with the vivid memories of our own people killed, mutilated and burnt amongst a joyous crowd of celebrating Fallujans.

If you want an apology from this American, you're going to have a long wait! You have a better chance of finding those seventy-two virgins.

(Perhaps as much of a chance as you have of sitting at the right hand of the heavenly father. But then again, we’ll never know, will we?)

Wild About Harriet

2005-10-15T00:11:00.000-07:00

The furor over the president’s nomination of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court is striking in that it has come most vehemently from the right. The ferocity of the invective, coming from the usual suspects of pundits and “experts”, has further exposed the complete hypocrisy of Bush’s conservative Republican “base”, an increasingly splintered army of medievalist zealots, political acolytes and apologists, that has been hyped into somewhat of an urban myth by the supplicant media.

In the midsummer pundit fest that followed the John Roberts nomination, whenever a critical voice was feebly raised--by a neutered Charles Schumer, or a self-indulgent Joe Biden,-- the mob on the right would scream, in its usual self-righteous indignation,“executive discretion!”, i.e.,the President is granted by the Constitution the power to appoint to the Court anyone he pleases. Very true. But it is also the constitutional responsibility of the Senate to advise and consent, in other words to approve or disapprove of the nomination. However, to the true believers, the “base”, to question this President, this self-proclaimed “war president,” is unpatriotic, un-American, “angry”, and by ultimate extension, blasphemous.

Roberts was somewhat of a political stealth candidate. With no Borkian paper trail to bedevil him he was, due to his yeoman’s service in the Reagan-Bush administration, given a pass by the neocons. His tribal loyalty seemed beyond reproach, given his pro bono work on behalf of W in the Florida election debacle of 2000, which led to Antonin Scalia’s laughable pilfering of the fourteenth amendment and states rights in Bush v. Gore, ensuring the anointment of the W. to the presidency.

Now Bush has nominated an uber stealth candidate and the “base” has circled the wagons--Peggy Noonan, she of the “thousand points of light” from Bush I, has urged Miers to “take the hit” and withdraw so the president could pick “one of the outstanding jurists thoughtful conservatives have long touted.”

In other words, we have a short list of true believers that are part of “our tribe.” Choose from one of them. To do otherwise will alienate the rest of the tribe.

From syndicated columnist (and Fox News contributor) Charles Krauthammer, “If Harriet Miers were not a crony of the president of the United States, her nomination to the Supreme Court would be a joke, as it would have occurred to no one else to nominate her.”

George Will chimed in with his turgidly precise prose, (Will’s columns are nothing, if not boringly precise). Yawn.

What has the poor Mrs. Miers done to warrant such derision from those within her own camp?

Not having been a judge, she has no extant record of judicial rulings, specifically Roe v. Wade, the bete boire of the hard right. Yet, there are judges waiting in the right wings, such as federal appeals court judges Edith Jones, Edith Clement, and Janice Rogers Brown, (blessed by Noonan and adored by the right), judges that can be counted on to overturn Roe v. Wade, judges that Bush, inexplicably, has chosen to ignore.

So here stands the majority party on the horns of a dilemma: support the president, alienate the base, and take a chance on the unknown Miers, or force a withdrawal of the nomination and further weaken an administration which, in the wake of Katrina, and mired in corruption and scandal (Rove, Frist and DeLay, three rapidly dimming points of light), is on the ropes. Either way Bush takes a direct hit, which he cannot afford.

The irony is amusing. In an effort to thwart “judicial activism” the neocons revert to their own brand of the same. Blinded by their cause, they march arrogantly onward, oblivious of the political consequences. Bush will dig in with his usual cowboy swagger, and the gunfight at the ’06 corral will be upon us.

Not to worry though. The Democrats remain comatose and on life support. If the toothless opposition cannot make gains in the mid-term elections next year, in this political climate, then perhaps it will be time to remove the feeding tube and pull the plug.

The Drogulus

2005-10-13T22:39:00.000-07:00

From Dick Morris, pundit turned advocate, in a Fox DaySide interview: "We're going to draft Condoleezza Rice to run for president in 2008”

Dick Morris, he of the most exquisite taste, with a penchant for toe-sucking hookers, announces his “Draft Condi” plan:

“...the only person that can defeat Hillary Clinton, that has a good shot to take away a large portion of the black vote, and to stop her from winning the female vote, is Condoleezza Rice. And, I don't believe she wants to run at this point, I don't think she has a burning ambition, but I think she has a sense of duty. I think she does an incredible job at anything she's asked to do. And I think what's going to happen is that Americans all over the country are going to form Condi clubs, draft-Condi movements, they're going to run their own slate of delegates, they're going to run people for delegate who are legally uncommitted but in fact are bound to Condi, and I think she'll start beating the candidates who are actually running. You know, there's a poem:

"When I was coming down the stair,
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today,
I do wish he'd go away."

And I think that's really what's going to happen with Rice. I think that she is going to be the person who people are going to be looking to because she'll be the savior against Hillary.”

“I don't care if she wants to run. We have to get her into the race.”

For the record, another Morris prediction, (before the election of 2000), “Hillary is sinking fast. The bottom line: She won't run.” Just a single nugget among his many errant prognostications. Take some comfort in that.

Also for the record, the verse by Hughes Mearns, (botched by Morris), reads:

As I was walking up the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today.
I wish, I wish he'd stay away.

Obviously Hillary is the “man who wasn’t there”.

Wasn’t Condi the “man who wasn’t there” in the months preceding 9/11? Didn't she ignore the warnings preceding the attacks? Did she not conjure visions of mushroom clouds that helped to pave the way to a foreign policy disaster that has bankrupted the treasury and cost thousands of lives? Quite a record, yet Morris anoints the saintly Condi as the "savior" against the evil machinations of the relentlessly ambitious Hillary.

Because of his past connection to the Clinton administration, Morris has become a favorite “voice from the Left” on Fox News, (he shows up regularly on O’Reilly to eviscerate Hillary). His animus toward the Clintons would be enough to disqualify him from local jury duty but he continues to foul the airwaves with his noxious “expert” punditry.

The philosopher A.J. Ayer coined the word “drogulus”, “...it’s not the sort of thing you can see or touch, ...it’s a disembodied being.” According to the OED it is “an entity whose presence is unverifiable, because it has no physical effects.”

Perhaps Mr. Morris should focus his mangled interpretations toward the disembodied spirits of those in power, for they are the ones we cannot see or touch, the ones who weren’t there yesterday, or again today. Their presence and their effect, though verifiable and physical, remain unseen. They are the drogulus, and how I wish, how I hope, they would all go away.

Hope

2005-10-02T19:49:00.000-07:00

A recent corrrespondence with a longtime friend, concerning the plight of "The Hammer", Rep. Tom DeLay, (may his rotten political soul rest in peace), was a stimulus of sorts.

He wrote:

By now, you have already heard the news. And by now, the Republican slime machine is already in action. Soon, we will be hearing the old "high tech lynching" charge. Of course, never mind that a grand jury--not just one person--indicted DeLay. Are they all in on the "conspiracy?"

I also find it ironic that the Republicans are reminding everyone about "presumed innocence." Too bad that all of that does not apply to those fellows down at Gitmo.

I responded:

How sweet it is. To think that DeLay would be indicted in Texas, of all places. Texas, where elections are as legitimate as Friday night bingo; where election law consists of a wink and a smile; where LBJ cut his politically corrupt teeth, (and don't forget his equally ambitious protege Bobby Baker).

I'm beginning to think that this system of ours is beyond repair. The intoxicating smell of money seems to have overwhelming aphrodisiac effect on anyone who heads to Washington D.C., which leads to an intense desire to screw us all.

DeLay, Frist, Cunningham. Three amigos. Fox News will be going to the mattresses.

His response:

Capitalism is the reason for the "intoxicating smell of money . . . . " But I still believe in our constitutional principles. Unfortunately, too many of the power brokers never live up to their patriotic blather. Indeed,
historically speaking, they often never do. This morning I told my class that pledging allegiance to a flag is meaningless. We should pledge allegiance to the constitution. Those who were still awake seemed to agree. Maybe there still is hope.

I responded:

I wouldn't blame capitalism solely for the woes of the current system. I think that greed, self-interest and tribalism are built into the human "reptilian " brain, (to borrow Carl Sagan's term), and fester and spread like a cancer throughout the most noble of ideals. It seems, sadly, that on this planet, at this time, (time being the scope of human history, past present and future), the wants and needs of the rich and powerful few, (and those with ambitions to wealth and power), will always outweigh those of the many. In this age of mass media, I fear that the powerful few have finally acquired the means with which to control the many through fear, deception and mass cultural sedation.

Ours is probably the most highly entertained and least informed society on earth, and the disparity between fantasy and reality increases exponentially by the day. We are an insulated and spoiled people who live in a delusional theater of the absurd: the darkened home theater of sitcoms, "reality" TV, and corporately manufactured "news", bound, gagged, and blindfolded by a lethal combination of misguided nationalism, organized religion and concentrated wealth; where "style" (or an increasing lack thereof), outweighs substance; where language is manipulated to confuse, and ultimately, obliterate truth.

With the advent of the post WWII national security state we have become an alarmingly dysfunctional family that refuses to recognize the madness that churns around us. Instead we continue to revel in past glories (real and imagined), and succumb to slick slogans and carefully contrived sound bites.

Meanwhile, the national attention span gets shorter and shorter, unable to sustain an interest in anything but a skillfully edited moving image on a flickering screen. The medium has, indeed, become the message, and the message is, in its subliminal totality, more and more a hypnotic suggestion.

Hope? If the mid-term elections in 2006 return a vote of confidence to the staus quo, to the hard right Republican Party-- to "staying the course" in Iraq; to an arrogant "with us or against us" foreign policy; to crushing national debt; to cronyism and corruption; to an increasing disparity between the haves and the have-nots; to favoring religion and superstition over science; to gutting a generation of environmental safeguards; to a return to the McKinley era--then I think hope will be in short supply among most of us political southpaws.

George W. Bush, a category 5 historical disaster, hovers at an anemic forty percent in the polls, which, in light of the events of the last week is remarkable. His second term has already been proclaimed DOA by many in the media who spout the conventional wisdom.

I'm not so confident.

With these poll numbers Bush is just a terror alert, (or anything with the "terror" association), away from getting a bump back to fifty. A little relief in gas prices, a "red" alert or two, and the "base", (the "haves and the have mores"), will circle around the hapless commander-in-chief and commence with a full court press upon the clueless Democrats. Fox News will go into twenty-four hour "news alert" status; the shouting heads on cable and radio will reguritate the RNC talking points and proceed to define the debate, as they have for the past thirty years.

Hopeful? In my middle age I've become less and less so. I find it hard to believe that we're still debating drugs, homosexuality, school prayer, the "Pledge of Allegiance", and abortion, among other "hot button" issues. But you can bet they'll surface again, in white-hot relief, next year, and the year after that, and the year after that. The needs of the many thus forfeited, in perpetuity, for the marginalizing of the few.

Hopeful? I'm always hopeful. But I bet against the Yankees last year when they were up 3-0 on Boston. And I'm a Yankee fan.

The A-Team

2005-09-06T19:22:00.000-07:00

In the wake of hurricane Katrina and the mind-numbing carnage that is the Gulf Coast come words of comfort and inspiration from the Bush team.

From the Commander-in-Chief:

“Out of the rubbles (sic) of Trent Lott's house -- he's lost his entire house -- there's going to be a fantastic house. And I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch.”

“The faith-based groups and the community-based groups throughout this part of the world, and the country for that matter, are responding.”

“And now we're going to go try to comfort people in that part of the world.”

At the airport outside of New Orleans, Bush lauded the increasingly desperate city as a great town because he used go there and “enjoy myself — occasionally too much”, (as if he has any recollection of what he may have been doing at that time in his reckless youth).

“Again, I want to thank you all for -- and, Brownie, (thoroughly discredited FEMA Director, Michael Brown), you're doing a heck of a job. The FEMA Director is working 24-- they're working 24 hours a day.”

From Mr. Brown: "I don't make judgments about why people chose not to leave but, you know, there was a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans."

Former First Lady Barbara Bush was out on the hustings, (what's a poor mother to do when the prodigal son is sinking like a stone in the polls?), and reaffirmed the age-old axiom of the acorn not falling far from the tree.

In remarks aired on American Public Media's "Marketplace" program, Babs chimed in with her compassioate conservatism:

"Almost everyone I’ve talked to says we're going to move to Houston." Then she added: "What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality.”

"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."

Where were other members of the A-Team when it mattered?

On August 31 Matt Drudge reported that Condoleezza Rice attended the Broadway play, “Spamalot”, (perhaps unwinding after an exhaustive day of shopping uptown). Dick Cheney was vacationing in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. On Saturday 9/11 "hero" (why is a guy doing his job considered a hero?) Rudy Giuliani was playing golf at the Maidstone, an exclusive Hamptons golf club.

Does anyone have a clue here?

Leave it to the good Reverend Pat Robertson to sort out God’s ultimate plan and put the calamity into proper perspective.

From the September 1 edition of “The 700 Club” broadcast on Christian Broadcast Network:

“Well, in a sense, they say it's an ill wind that blows nobody any good. Out of this tragedy, the focus of America is going to be on these victims, and inflamed rhetoric in the United States Senate is just not going to play well now because this is a time of healing and compassion and reaching out to people, and if they start going on a vendetta against Roberts in the Senate, it's just going to hurt them. And I think they know that, so, I mean, Judge Roberts can, maybe, you know, be thankful that a tragedy has brought him some good.”

The Lord does, indeed, work in mysterious ways. Why He continues to allow this clique of incompetent miscreants, eggheads and charlatans to hold onto the reins of power is a mystery to me.

Collateral Damage

2005-08-31T21:24:00.000-07:00

The images of devastation along the Gulf Coast are reminiscent of similar images in the wake of the recent Asian tsunami disaster. It looks like the sort of damage Americans are used to seeing in far away third world countries.

Hurricane Katrina was, indeed, a natural disaster of catastrophic proportions, a ferocious storm of a magnitude seldom seen or felt. However, it seems that the ensuing flooding that has turned New Orleans onto a festering cesspool may have been more made-made than few care to mention, and speaks volumes about the tragic direction in which this country is headed under this reckless administration.

According to Will Bunch, (senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News), writing in Editor & Publisher (www.editorandpublisher.com) following flooding in 1995 congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA. Over the next ten years the Army Corps of Engineers spent some $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations. $250 million in vital projects remained, but in 2003 federal funding slowed to a “trickle”. According to Mr. Bunch “At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane and flood-control dollars.”

Mr. Bunch reports that In June of 2004, Walter Maestri, emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, Louisiana; told the Times-Picayune: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay. Nobody locally is happy that the levees can't be finished, and we are doing everything we can to make the case that this is a security issue for us."

Also that June the Corps' project manager Al Naomi went before the East Jefferson Levee Authority, and “essentially begged” for $2 million for urgent work for which Washington was now unable to pay. From the June 18, 2004 Times-Picayune:

"The system is in great shape, but the levees are sinking. Everything is sinking, and if we don't get the money fast enough to raise them, then we can't stay ahead of the settlement," he said. "The problem that we have isn't that the levee is low, but that the federal funds have dried up so that we can't raise them."

Following the 2004 hurricane season, one of the worst in history, the Bush budget featured “the steepest reduction in hurricane and flood-control funding for New Orleans in history”. The lack of funding lead to a hiring freeze, as there was no money to start new jobs.

One unfinished project was at the 17th Street Canal, site of the main breach on Monday, according to Mr. Bunch.

He cites The Newhouse News Service article published Tuesday night that observed, "The Louisiana congressional delegation urged Congress earlier this year to dedicate a stream of federal money to Louisiana's coast, only to be opposed by the White House.“

The catastrophe along the Gulf Coast is the ultimate in collateral damage from the insanity that is the war in Iraq. Billions in resources have already been wasted on this fiasco (with countless billions still to be wasted), and the dimwitted commander-in-chief drones on and on with his alarmingly delusional rhetoric. Urgent priorities at home give way to "freedom" in Iraq and a maniacally relentless tilting at windmills in the sand.

We can only hope that an increasingly restive public begins to finally reject this madness. Maybe they will realize what a disaster they have bought for themselves with this little man from Crawford. For while he is a comfortable distance from the twisted wreckage and the stench of death and suffering (for which he will never admit any measure of responsibility), it will be left for others to clean up the mess, which will take years.

Summer Of Cindy

2005-08-17T20:44:00.000-07:00

The din from the ranks of the Bush apologists is thunderous--Fox News is in full attack mode; the noxious pundits, from the hateful Ann Coulter to the loathsome Michelle Malkin, from the Bush bootlicker Sean Hannity, to the "fat-assed drug addict" Rush Limbaugh, have descended, like a fetid mushroom cloud, upon the airwaves in a full court press to silence a grieving mother from Vacaville, California, (a location which Fox's John Gibson, another Bush ass-kisser, was quick to remind us, with a fair and balanced wink, is in close proximity to the UC campuses of Berkeley and Davis, whatever that means).

Bill O'Reilly was even distracted from his summer-long obsession with a missing teenager to focus his self-serving, bullying gaze upon the events in Crawford, opining that Mrs. Sheehan was "in bed with the Left", (which to O'Reilly and the neocon machine includes anyone a single degree to the left of Sen. John McCain). When Sheehan refused to appear on his show O'Reilly brought on Dolores Kesterson, whose son Eric was killed in Iraq. In an admirable display of humble truth to arrogant power, Kesterson refuted O'Reilly's accusations against Sheehan and withstood his barrage of regurgitated Bush/RNC tripe. Most telling was Kesterson's account of standing face to face with Bush and the utter lack of conscience that she felt from him.

Cindy Sheehan has struck a subliminal nerve in the country's collective conscience and the National Security State ghouls have descended upon her like antibodies attacking a virulent pathogen, hellbent on wiping out the offending organism before it inflicts lethal damage upon their most favored host. It should come as no surprise to anyone who has paid attention, that this women, the latest in a long line of administration critics, (specifically in regard to its Iraq policy), would be trashed and smeared, just like former Treasury Secretary, Paul O'Neil; former National Security aide Richard Clarke; former ambassador Joe Wilson; and UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, to name a few. In the shameful absence of the neutered and hapless Democrats, Cindy has emerged as the de facto "leader" of a growing anti-war movement, and will have to suffer the slings and arrows of the murderous right.

I don't expect that the President will meet with Sheehan. I wouldn't either. I wouldn't want to look in the eyes of a mother who lost a child in a war that I started under false pretenses. I certainly wouldn't want to risk the scrutiny of a private audience to the turgid platitudes that have been worn to bare threads from the once whole cloth of unity that enveloped the nation (and most of the civilized world) in the aftermath of 9/11.

Pat Buchanan, one of the few "conservatives" worthy of the the name, has written of Sheehan as an "anti-war catalyst" and of giving "a voice, a face, and a moral authority" to the growing anti-war movement. He makes comparisons to the summer of 1969, the nascent Nixon presidency, and the Vietnam War. Like many of us he's seen this kind of thing before.

Christopher Hitchens, condemning Sheehan in an essay at Slate.com writes, "I distrust anyone who claims to speak for the fallen, and I distrust even more the hysterical noncombatants who exploit the grief of those who have to bury them." I do not claim to speak for the fallen, and I too distrust anyone who claims to speak for them, but I distrust most of all the hysterical noncombatants who exploit the trauma of a national tragedy, and show absolutely no conscience at the carnage that they encourage, all in the name of "a noble cause".

The Art of Noise

2005-02-11T21:08:00.000-08:00

So it seems that a "journalist" from the Talon News Agency, one Jeff Gannon (not his real name), has been outed as a shill for the Bush White House. Evidently he has been given a daily pass for the past year into the exclusive club that has access to White House press briefings, without a shred of a true credential.

There he was at Bush's last press conference lobbing the softball "question"--"how are you going to work with these people who seem to have divorced themselves from reality", referring of course, to the opposition party, the hapless Democrats, (they are, it pains me to say, an easy target).

The "question" was nothing but a parroting of the RNC/WhiteHouse/Karl Rove party line. Media Matters for America has shown that "Gannon has served as a lifeline for White House press secretary Scott McClellan at press briefings and that Gannon copied GOP documents and releases verbatim and without attribution for use in his articles".

Gannon has since resigned from the Talon New Agency -- "Because of the attention being paid to me I find it is no longer possible to effectively be a reporter for Talon News."

Anyone smell a rat?

Has the story shown up in the "liberal" media? On Fox News? "Who's Looking Out For Us" O'Reilly? Not yet.

Just as odious:

From the February 7 edition of CNBC's Kudlow & Cramer, (with the venomous Ann Coulter):

LAWRENCE KUDLOW (host): We got a couple of seconds before the break when you guys are all going to come back, but, Ann, I just want to give you first whack at this. Eason Jordan, top news executive at CNN -- I mean, to me, this is absolutely incredible -- this guy says at a big conference in Davos that the U.S. military is deliberately targeting and assassinating American journalists. Huh? He still has a job, huh? You got a take on that?

COULTER: Would that it were so!

KUDLOW: Would what were so?

COULTER: That the American military were targeting journalists.

KUDLOW: Oh, no! (Laughing) Don't go there.

A right wing commentator expressing delight at the prospect of American journalists being killed by the American military. Outrageous!?

Well, not really. Has the story shown up in the "liberal" media? On Fox News? Where's O'Reilly?

Where is O'Reilly?

He's busy making sure that Ward Churchill, the college professor who wrote an essay three-and-half years ago, doesn't have a pot to piss in. He's busy outing any administrator at any level of any institution that has the temerity to allow this "misguided" "America hater" a forum in which to express his "hate speech".

Such is the state of political discourse in this culture that a pie-eyed piper like O'Reilly can exhort his armchair minions into cyber-action, overwhelming some hapless third-tier administrator with threatening e-mails, in effect leading a cyber mob aginst the evildoers.

Why doesn't he mention the hateful musings of Ann Coulter? He 's the first out of the box when one of the "Hollywood elite" or the "left wing nuts" make a disparaging comment about Bush.

Why? For the same reason that Gannon will survive his exposure as a fraud. He will be lionized as a "victim" of the"liberal' "elite" media.

It's a cultural war, indeed, and the neocons have mastered the art of noise.

Woeful State

2005-02-02T20:43:00.000-08:00

The state of the union seems to be dependent on the state of the 51st State, to the exclusion of all others. The fixation with Iraq is all that the hapless commander-in-chief has to hang his rather small sized hat on. Yet, for some peculiar reason, it continues to carry the day.

Freedom. Freedom. Freedom for the Iraqi people. Not a word about WMD, tons of bio-chemical weapons; "re-constituted" nuclear programs; mushroom clouds, etc. All of the fear-mongering blather of the winter of 2002-2003 is now lost, two long years later, in the bluster of the post -election promise of "freedom and Democracy". Not a word about bin Laden.

Two years ago we were hustled with "fear". Now we are being hustled with "the Iraqi people".

The lies and fabrications put forth with absolute conviction by Bush/Cheney/Rice/Wolfowitz have all but been forgotten. Critics are ridiculed, scorned and marginalized. The pundits gush. Bush is now King of the World from Fox to MSNBC, to CNN; the AM radio dial is nothing but an echo chamber for the RNC.

The exploitation of the fallen Sgt. Norwood by the draft-dodging coward at the podium was absolutely sickening. That his parents could stand there and applaud the craven liar who sent their son to a meaningless death was surreal. "Now it's my turn to protect you", Norwood wrote to his mother. From what? Who cares. It was, as Pat Buchanan said, "the show-stopping moment" of this year's state-of-the-union address. That's entertainment.

Bush stood there, earnestly smirking through the hugs and the tears, knowing full well that he had pulled off the coup of the millenium, forever frozen as a "media moment". That we are only five years into the current millenium makes the feat all that more impressive.

Nattering Nabobs of Neocon Nastiness

2004-11-19T20:23:00.000-08:00

The neocons are in high dudgeon over the video of an American soldier shooting a wounded, unarmed Iraqi. While most of us take a second to say, "...what?", the machine revs into high gear.

O'Reilly no spins from the opening moments of his "Factor".

The loathsome Hannity chimes in an hour later.

The Washington Times. The Weekly Standard. The Wall Street Journal. All fall in line behind the talking points.

On the airwaves the Imperial loyalists join in a unison chant of castigation. Locally, the pardoned felon Roger Hedgecock and the despicable Rick Roberts continue to do the heavy lifting, (as we all know, this much bullshit does weigh a ton!).

Hedgecock, the former mayor who was run out of office in the wake of the J. David/Nancy Hoover scandal, appears in KOGO promo spots, enthusiastically giving his blessing to the atrocity, suggesting that perhaps we should give the soldier who did the shooting a parade through the streets of San Diego, where he would be greeted by over 100,000 supporters.

I doubt that the soldier in question would want to be honored for anything. He'd probably just want to be home for the holidays. Only the chicken hawks who beat the sabers of war from behind their corporate microphones get a thrill out of this sort of thing.

The repulsive Rick Roberts at KFMB, defecating over the morning drive time airways, drones on against the "far-left wacko liberal socialists", (never a mention of the "far right wacko authoritarian fascists", who, by the way, are the ones in power). He brands the journalist who happened to videotape the unfortunate event as "the worst kind of American", and proceeds through a litany of cheap, sarcastic comments that call into question the journalist's competence and professionalism. Roberts even ridicules any notion of courage that could be attributed to this embedded reporter,
while he, Roberts, sits safely behind a microphone. What an asshole.

Both of these jerk-offs are the voice of "Bush Country"; where fighter jets over Miramar are the "Sound of Freedom" ; where "liberals" are the moral equivalent of rapists, murderers and child molesters, and all that is wrong in this world, and where Republicans are the embodiment of all that is good, moral, and strong.

These idiots are a small part of the media network that spews its intellectual crap over the national airwaves every day. It's ironic that the overworked and underpaid middle-class, stuck in gridlock for hours, tunes in ("conservative" talk radio is on all day), and actually begins to buy into the message of victimization and alienation that is delivered by these lunatics.

Many of us are still wondering how in the world Bush got re-elected. Listen to talk radio and watch cable media. While the “conservatives” continue to “work the refs” the progressive center sits on it’s collective ass and does nothing. Al Franken ain't gonna do it.

Tune in. Listen to the chatter. Like a virulent mold, it should make you sick.

What in the....?

2004-11-17T20:51:00.000-08:00

All aboard the "Minnow". Or is it the "Pequod"?

I'm still stunned. Two weeks and it's not yet in focus.

What a script. A feckless ne'er-do-well buys his way into national prominence and steals his way into the White House. In his four-year term he proceeds to invade a sovereign nation that had done us no harm, inflicting thousands of casualties and costing billions, as well as alienating most of the free world, of which he is supposed to be the de facto "leader".

He increases the national debt burden to staggering proportions. His tenure coincides with the biggest loss of jobs since the Hoover administration, an increase in poverty rates, and a widening gap between the rich and the poor.

He quietly and systematically guts over thirty years of environmental regulations and safeguards.

At least half of the electorate feels that the nation is headed in the wrong direction. By any standard his is a failed presidency.

What to do?

Re-elect him! Give him four more years! Four more years!

That the folks of Ohio would be the ones to put Bush over the top is the ultimate in bitter irony. The manufacturing base that has been nuked in the last four years would be enough, you would think, for most clear thinking Buckeyes to throw the bum out of office. However, he evidently scored major points with his cynical stance on gay marriage and abortion rights . After all, who cares about jobs when you're surrounded by homos, dykes and butchered babies?

The odd thing is that the average Buckeye has probably never seen, or will ever see, a gay or a lesbian, let alone two. They most likely don't know, or will ever know, someone who has had an abortion.

Yet, they voted to "stay the course".

The course? Pre-emptive war, crippling debt, rampant unemployment, shrinking wages, unattainable health care, a lethal environment, codified discrimination, and an increasingly polarized citizenry. That is the course set for this ship of state and Gilligan, unfortunately, is firmly at the helm for the next four years.

But, unlike the benign dunce of the TV show, this dunce masks a lethal reality--a seething and relentless Ahab, who armed with a perversely perceived "mandate", and a Biblical sense of self-righteous destiny, as well as both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court, is determined to steer the nation into deeper and darker waters that neither he, nor his divided crew, may be able to successfully navigate.

October Surprise

2004-10-29T22:01:00.000-07:00

Osama lobs a PR stink bomb into the three-ring circus of the Presidential election and the network media, caught by surprise, goes berserk with a frennzy bordering on the Grand Guignol --endless analysis and dire predictions; the usual line-up of worn out talking heads; Fox News alerts. The two candidates struggle to formulate a "reaction" to the dire developments. Partisan foot soldiers take to the airways to manipulate the spin that will ultimately reach the eyes and ears (forget the minds) of the anxious electorate. Bush remains resolute and steadfast, and reminds us that we are at war with the evildoers. Kerry, in his annoyingly stultifying way, points to Bush's failures.

Advantage Osama. The three-ring circus, now in its fourth year, consuming a near half-biilion dollars from the political parties, thousands of hours of air time from the networks, millions of words from the print media, and the collective energy of a minority of eligible voters, is eclipsed by the elusive shiek. His central theme, "stay out of our lives", will be ignored and swept aside by the arrogance and hubris of the American id.

Bin Laden figured us out a long time ago. That we still haven't figured out him should trouble any American with a conscience.

Strike Three

2004-10-13T20:13:00.000-07:00

After watching Bush do the "rope-a-dope" for three sessions with Herman Munster it's quite clear that he's in over his rather inflated head. With nothing but his feeble talking points (and an increasingly smirky, creepy countenance), as ammo he continues to drive home the central themes of his campaign: Saddam was a bad guy, freedom is on the march, you're safer with me. The hope being, of course, that the relentless repetiton of the message will steer the fearful electorate to exactly where Karl Rove has planned.

How Bush plans to continue the "success" of his first term has not been determined, neither by him or the pundits. Moreover, his enthusiastic supporters seem to have no idea what to expect in a second term. More preemptive war? Bigger deficits? Fewer and fewer jobs? Quite a record. Yet, he still has the solid support of half of the eligible electorate.

If four years of an Al Gore presidency had delivered this mess the Republicans in Congress would have already drawn up articles of impeachment, a special prosecutor would be running down the Halliburton connection, and the shouting heads in the media would be in full attack mode.

Mediocrity has reached dizzying heights in the last four years. It seems to be part of the culture. Hopefully the voters will have the good sense to see through the smirky veneer and vote mediocrity out of office.

Mixed Messages

2004-09-30T19:16:00.000-07:00

Poor commander-in-chief. Watching that walnut-sized brain work overtime in tonight's debate was as painful for me as it obviously was for him. The smirk was in full bloom. The chicken neck was visible in moments of complete cluelessness, and we now know without question that a free and democratic Iraq will solve all of our problems. Glad I watched.

Bush's mantra for the evening: mixed messages-- we can't send mixed messages; my opponent sends mixed messages, messed mixages, (he started to say that at one point), blah, blah, blah.

How ironic that the focus of the debate, the Iraq mess, a policy failure of staggering proportions, was, and continues to be, based on nothing but mixed messages.

I was hoping for Kerry to bring that up and use it to his advantage, but as usual, I was left wanting.

Indefensible

2004-09-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

National defense! National Security!! Weak on defense! Weak on security!! Defense! Defense!! Defense!!! Defense!!!! Defense!!! We need more defense!!!!!!

400 billion? That's not enough to protect ourselves from evildoers with boxcutters and dirty bombs? Watching the GOP (Zell Miller, Dick Cheney), on TV you would think that the security of this country was as rickety as a grass hut in a Vietnamese monsoon.

As they have for the past fifty years, the Republicans, (more correctly, the right wing of the party), have framed the national debate around the central issue of national defense. We are under constant threat. Danger lurks at every corner. We must keep our powder dry in anticipation of the imminent attack.

The people quail and quake. Candidates pander to the fearful multitudes. Pundits pontificate and bloviate their self-aggrandizing opinions upon the huddled masses who quietly succumb to the incessant marketing tactics of the slick and powerful, surrender their collective will to the perceived wisdom and competence of the powerful few, and march, in a state of delusional confusion, to the polls. Such is the state of "democracy" in America.

Where's Waldo?

2004-09-15T22:53:00.000-07:00

The stench from the current political climate has become so malodorous that Mother Nature has stepped in, with yet another Florida hurricane, and seized the current news cycle, if only for a moment, to cleanse the fetid air of the cable/radio wind bags and their suckling swine, the putrid punditocracy.

The latest gaseous cassus belli? The “forged” Bush National Guard documents, which have taken their place in history with Stern Magazine's “Hitler Diaries”, and the unforgettable Clifford Irving “authorized” biography of Howard Hughes. While the RNC and their shouting-head foot soldiers on cable and radio regurgitate the requisite talking points with surgical precision, they succeed once again, in turning our gaze away from the cockroach crawling across the white carpet.

Lost in the mayhem, of course, is the central question: where was Bush in 1972? Why, after all of this time, is it still a mystery as to where he was? Why hasn’t a single, solitary human soul come forward to say, “I was there with GW...? Perhaps because he wasn’t there? Doesn’t all of the confusion demand some,...uh,...clarification? Some definition? What’s the problem?

Well, could it be that the official record disputes Bush’s story? You bet it does. Yet, before this latest round of “Where’s Waldo?”, the uncomfortable truth had been ignored by every strata of the “liberal” media since before the 2000 election. Now that Bush has been morphed into Philip of Macedonia his indiscretions, (not to mention his outright fabrications), are somehow off limits and impolite.

The “forged’ documents have become more of a story, and a valuable political tool, than the facts at the center of the story, facts, which can be found at mediamattersforamerica.org., and countless other watchdog websites. Facts are facts, neither left or right, unless you inhabit O’Reilly’s “no spin zone”, where, expecting "real journalism" you may encounter the March Hare and the Mad Hatter, and come away thinking that you've been informed and enlightened.

Some facts, (according to MMFA):

The Dallas Morning News reported on September 15 that Marian Carr Knox, former secretary for Lieutenant Colonel Jerry Killian, purported author of the memos, said that although she did not recall typing the memos reported by CBS News, they accurately reflect the viewpoints of Killian and documents that would have been in the personal file. Knox told The Morning News: "The information in here was correct, but it was picked up from the real ones. ... I probably typed the information and somebody picked up the information some way or another."

Colonel Bobby W. Hodges, Killian's superior officer, has also confirmed that the content of the memos reflects Killian's true sentiments. He [Hodges] said he had not authenticated the documents for CBS News but had confirmed that they reflected issues he and Colonel Killian had discussed -- namely Mr. Bush's failure to appear for a physical, which military records released previously by the White House show, led to a suspension from flying.

Richard Via, another former Texas National Guard officer, told USA Today that "the documents were fakes but that their content reflected questions about Bush that were discussed at the time in the hangar at Ellington Air Force Base, where he had a desk next to Killian's."

... but primetime shows focused only on forgery question.

So we’ll continue to hear about Dan Rather, CBS News, Liberal Media, Bush-Bashing, Forgery Experts, Xerox Copies, yada, yada, yada.

Will anybody bother to ask “Where was Bush?” Don't count on it.

A Defining Moment

2004-09-11T22:40:00.000-07:00

When did Bush with the megaphone at Ground Zero become the eqiuvalent of Washington crossing the Delaware? Or the flag raising at Iwo Jima? I've repeatedly heard the pundits point to this too-good-to resist photo op as a "defining moment" of the Bush presidency. Chris Matthews referred to it as a "Reagan" moment (whatever that means). Tim Russert mentioned it in an interview with James Carville, the implication being, of course, that Bush with a megaphone in his hand was an inspiration to his countrymen and struck fear in the hearts of the evildoers at a pivotal point in the history of the nation.

I was on the planet then. I saw the moment in question on live television. I thought, "yeah, OK, nice". But now the moment has acquired some mythological significance with the punditry, whose interpretation of the imagery serves to bestow a badge of heroism and strength of character, possesed by but a chosen few, upon GW Bush.

I fail to see the connection between the megaphone moment and any real accomplishment. Moreover, given the overwhelming incompetence of Bush's prosecution of the "War On Terror", we should all grab megaphones, march up to the White House and create our own defining moment, ("...you'll soon hear from all of us!!"). That would be a moment to remember.

Fear Itself

2004-09-11T11:13:00.000-07:00

I remember having just left for work that Tuesday morning at around 6:45, and was half-listening to some report about a plane flying into the World Trade Center, and then. while making the left turn onto Escondido Avenue, hearing Bill Handel on KFI announce, in an unusually serious and grave tone, that a plane had just hit the Pentagon. An hour later I watched as the buildings tumbled to the ground.

In the days following the terrorists attacks of September 11 we were met with an overwhelming barrage of words and pictures, of sound and fury, that struck at the tightly wound nerve that binds the national conscience and that, sadly, continues to put an emotional stranglehold on the collective will to reason. What I remember most about that day is not just the fear, anxiety, hatred, and wreckless talk of vengeance, but the few voices who had the courage to ask why someone would do this to us.

I remember standing outside my classroom talking to a colleague, who was quick to remind me that world events don’t unfold in a political vacuum, and that men who could methodically conceive and execute such a catastrophic plan should not be dismissed as “madmen”, “lunatics”, or least of all, “cowards”. Perhaps there was some cause for such an extreme action that was worth discussion and examination.

I agreed with him, but advised him to keep his mouth shut, as that was the last thing that anyone would want to hear on a day such as this. How chilling then, that in a few days Bush’s press secretary Ari Fleischer would be advising the press, and by extension, everyone to “be careful what you say”. Comedian Bill Maher had the nerve to state his opinion on national television and was subsequently fired for doing so; Susan Sontag wrote a sober five-hundred word essay in the New Yorker and was vilified across the spectrum.

The ultimate irony in all of this is that those who continually spout of our “freedom” and our “values” are usually the first to try to take one away and violate the spirit of the other; and how willing the people are to let them get away with it.

Skyscrapers can be rebuilt and life will go on for the families of the victims, but the decietful betrayal of the people by a secretive, and ever more powerful government is the most dangerous legacy of 9/11. Fear the terrorist, perhaps, but don’t take your eye off of those who claim to keep you “safe”. They are the ones that scare the hell out of me.

By The Numbers

2004-09-09T18:34:00.000-07:00

Now that the death toll from “Operation Iraqi Freedom” has reached one-thousand, maybe the American public will finally begin to sober up to the fact that, well, people are really dying “over there”, and begin to question the competence and policies of those that got them into this mess.

Sadly, the voices of dissent are muted and scattered. While the far-right media juggernaut continues to slice and dice--Kerry has been spun into a traitorous wimp, Bush into patriotic überman--the larger questions of policy are lost in the backwash of who’s the more manly man. Soldiers continue to die in a hostile foreign land that was, and is, no threat to us, and the commander-in-chief that put them there continues to gain in stature. How strangely comforting it would be if Rod Serling were to step into the frame and offer his calm assurance that yes, we are in the Twilght Zone.

Not one of the reasons given for the Iraq war has turned out to be true. Such egregious miscalculations (lies?) would, you would think, be met with a resounding political thumbs down from a betrayed electorate. Not so in BushCountry. The Bush team, and the Republican Party, have masterfully changed the debate to their advantage, while those who opposed this calamity (anybody remember Howard Dean?) have been politically marginalized, with little, if any, help from the inept Democratic presidential candidate and the National Democratic Party. Half of the electorate still believes that it was a good idea to go into Iraq. That is a marketing miracle that puts Goebbels to shame.

As we continue to “stay the course” the next thousand take their place in line. Who do you think will be the last to die for this mistake? He or she is somewhere out there as we speak. Maybe someone you know.

Hannity

2004-09-08T21:19:00.000-07:00

Every time I'm within earshot of the loathsome Sean Hannity, the most toxic of all right wing junk dealers, (yes, topping even the poisonous Michael Savage, who makes no claim to being "fair and balanced", he's just insane), I marvel at his almost unique ability to be so incredibly stupid with a straight face, and make a lot of money in the process. Were he not a reverberating voice of the neocon punditocracy he could be laughably dismissed as the charlatan that he is.

Vice's Verses

2004-09-07T21:45:00.000-07:00

The latest excretion from the Republicans on the "unwavering leadership" of George W. Bush comes on the heels of Vice's (himself a heel with considerable credentials) comments regarding the ever present danger of the imminent terrorist attack. To wit, "vote for Kerry/Edwards and expect to be attacked", or, more succinctly, "vote for John Kerry and you will DIE!". Was Cheney (gulp!) politicizing the War On Terror!? Do ya think?

Before the words had barely left Vice's sneering lips the RNC dispatched its foot soldiers, a familiar cast of sycophants, supplicants, and apologists, to cable TV, including the perennially gnathonic Congressman David Dreier (R-CA). Dreier is as loyal a toady as a toady can aspire to be. On Keith Olbermann's cable show "Countdown", Dreier was quick to point out the mite's mass of validity in Cheney's comments. After all, we haven't been attacked since September 11, have we?

Well, yeah. Wouldn't you say that we all were caught completely by surprise that September morning? That in the intervening three years we have been, perhaps, a little more diligent in keeping our eye on the eight-ball? Other than the terror alert color-wheel offered us by Tom Ridge, what, if anything, has the Unwavering One and his sinister sidekick done that has been so extraordinarily effective in keeping you and me "safe"? (Answer: "well...we haven't been attacked again").

Why didn't the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor a second time? Maybe because the Americans would have been watching and waiting, (we were expecting bombs over Los Angeles, weren't we?).

Al-Qaeda prepared for years to pull off the attacks of September 11. Given the element of surprise, we're damn lucky that there weren't planes falling in every major city that day. They had their moment of opportunity and they used it very effectively. Now they're on everyone's radar, even the CIA's, the FBI's and that of the White House, (I won't rehash all of the chatter that the "Unwavering Leader" and his heroic henchman chose to ignore while vactioning in Crawford during August of 2001. Read the "9/11" report. It's no "Warren Report".)

It's not surprising to me that there hasn't been a subsequent attack on US soil. What's surprising is how this "war president" has shamelessly used the attacks to inflate his craven image to comically heroic proportions.

What's even more sadly comical is the image of the fugitive bin Laden and his lieutenants, God (Allah) knows where, patiently planning their next hit, while the princely Bush and his cabal of PhDunces, in control of the massive resources of the mightiest military force in the history of the world, frantically attempt to anticipate the shadowy shiek's next move, of which they haven't a clue.

Welcome!

2004-08-11T21:26:00.000-07:00

Where are the liberals? Why are they all wimps, whiners, and wusses? O'Reilly eats Krugman alive. Hannitty bitch slaps Colmes night after night. When are the lib/progressives going to realize that they have play as dirty as Karl Rove? Let's take off the gloves and start pointing our collective finger at O'Reilly's fat face. Let's tell Kerry and Edwards to quit mincing around the edges and go for the jugular.