Bad equipment blamed in tsunami warnings

Oh, that's what it was?
- - - - - - - - - - - -

Dec. 31, 2004 | Bangkok, Thailand -- Faulty equipment, poor communications and cumbersome bureaucracy are being blamed for the failure of nations around the Indian Ocean's rim to warn communities about to be hit by one of the world's most devastating natural disasters.

A sensor system in Indonesia that could have warned of Sunday's huge waves was not working because it had been hit by lightning. In India, bureaucrats faxed a warning of possible disaster to the wrong official. A Thai meteorologist acting on a hunch sent an alert to radio stations, but it doesn't appear the warning was widely relayed.

Even if the Indian Ocean had an international tsunami alert system, like one in the Pacific, the warning likely would have come too late for the people of Sumatra, the Indonesian island closest to the epicenter of the magnitude 9 earthquake that set off the killer waves.

For the love of whatever God you want to claim, if 100,000+ people dead in half an hour isn't enough for you to get over yourself, doing a CYA on this monstrous natural disaster, what will it take? Who do you think wants to hear your excuses?

Tell it to the the Tamil Tigers as they're burning the bodies of babies they're finding everywhere, babies they knew. I'm sure they'll be glad to know it.

Tell it to the families still alive who not only their lost loved ones and their homes -- they lost the land their homes were on. Tell them...

They'll be glad to know that it's really all about you and your system not working. Tell them, "Ooops." (It works for Rumsfeld and Bush.)

And it seems so familiar, not a surprise at all... and I'm reaching into my shrivelled brain to figure out... I mean aside from this being year 4+ of the Bushleague finger-pointing, mistake-denying, jive-ass, bald-face lying administration... it's ...

ahhh, I've got it:

"I ran out of gas. I had a flat tire. I didn't have enough money for cab fare. My tux didn't come back from the cleaners. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! It wasn't my fault, I swear to god!"

Jake Blues in The Blues Brothers Movie

It was funny when John Belushi did it.

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It doesn't matter who you vote for.
The government always gets in.

It's the darkness at the end of the tunnel

We can only be glad Winston Smith was never alive, thereby not alive to see this. But we are. I'm starting to get the idea that if the Tree of Liberty must occasionally be watered with the blood of patriots, those guys who so loudly proclaim themselves patriots have no one to blame but themselves. Check out what they're doing:

Today, in a story about the new "Pentagon Channel," the Washington Times lets it readers know exactly what it believes to be the role of the national media. Here's the lede of the Times' piece:

The Pentagon has created its own 24-hour television channel to cut out the middleman -- the national media -- in covering news events at the headquarters of the world's most powerful military.

The national media, it seems, is "the middleman" -- a phrase that implies its share of shadiness. The media's role, in this characterization, is merely that of a profit-driven peddler who adds nothing of value to the goods he's passing along. In other words, something we'd be better off without.

What's the matter? The Reverend Syun Myung Moon and his flunkies on the Times no longer marching in precise enough lockstep to the Bushwah drumbeat? The media -- including them -- are the "middlemen"?

So Pentagonal Press releases now will equal NEWS. As if Fucks TV wasn't strident enough ... well, on the other hand, actually, had anyone in the Bushwah admin listened to those in the Pentagon with experience, they wouldn't have gotten us into such a mess in the first ... nahhh, Redrum and his Henchmen will never let REAL soldiers play with the new toy.

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Susan Sontag -- she had the courage to keep her eyes open when all the big brave men ran around screaming in terror after 9-11. She was denounced by every limp-dick chickenshit right-wing, left-wing, and middle-of-the-road hysteric with access to media. And all she was saying, in essence, was this:"We were attacked but we're still here, standing tough. Unless you're so scared you'll pass some 'Daddy-I-had-a-bad-dream' legislation like The Patriot Act, and then they win, because, as the old Chinese saying goes, 'a dragon is only a dragon -- but men can make it a God.' "

Comments didn't seem to be working, but this comment (on Snowball) seemed too much to the point to lose

Neither the Nazis nor the Bolsheviks established their vicious dictatorships overnight when they came to power. In both Germany and Russia these regimes replaced liberal-democratic governments, and only put in their own iron-fisted policies gradually -- at first.

It was a little bit like the story of how you make frog stew even though you've lost the lid of your stewing pot. If you try to drop the frog into scalding hot water he leaps right out. Instead, you put him in comfortably warm water along with some carrots, celery, and potatoes. Feels nice to the frog. He just lays back and relaxes. Then you raise the heat so gradually that the frog doesn't notice the change. Eventually you will have a delicious pot of frog stew, and the critter never even knew that he was getting cooked.

So, the Bush regime doesn't actually institute censorship, at least not under that name. They don't openly attack the First Amendment. Not openly.

But the creepy Mr. Michael Powell at the FCC has a conniption fit over Janet Jackson 's right boob. A few months later half the ABC network affiliates decide not to show "Finding Private Ryan" -- not because the FCC says the film violates its rules but because the FCC refuses to say whether the film violates its rules, and the stations are afraid to take a chance.

Now NPR deletes part of the Christmas Elf story for fear of what -- upsetting homophobes?

Here's the funny part: I heard the full version of the Sedaris essay a couple of times in past years. Maybe I'm just dense or maybe I wasn't listening closely enough, but I never knew there was a gay angle in the story. I thought that the flirtatious elf was female, and she was simply coming on to Sedaris. I didn't know that he was gay, either.

So what does the present incident do? Hey, seems to me that it clearly publicizes and indirectly promotes the so-called "gay agenda." (BTW, I've never quite been able to learn what that agenda is, but then maybe I'm just dense or maybe I haven't been listening closely enough.)

Anyway, to change my culinary metaphor from frog stew to "salami tactics" -- do you remember that image? It was part of the Cold War propaganda struggle. The idea was that you and your enemy start with two plates and one salami, and the salami is on your enemy's plate. But you have a very sharp knife.

You reach over and slice off a very thin slice of salami, and transfer it from your enemy's plate to your own. The slice is to thin, it amounts to almost nothing on your plate, and your enemy hardly notices that anything has been removed from his plate.

But then you reach over and take another ever-so-thin slice of salami, and another, and another, until eventually . . . you have the whole salami and the other guy has an empty plate.

So much for our civil liberties under what is looking increasingly like America's first fascist regime.

Richard A Lupoff

(Oh, I have been told that NPR as such wasn't the censor, but that deleting Snowball was done on local levels . Still, the point of intimidation is applicable. You can't bust 'em or shoot 'em all -- only got to do one to quiet the rest down. Janet Jackson's right tit -- the most novel tool of Fascist intimidation ever.)

"Alas, poor Snowball!'

And again -- A friend in Denmark told me that while he was enjoying it, he didn't understand why the dollar had lost 40% of its value against the Euro and was expected to lose another 30% over the coming decade. Here's another reason we're melting away like the Wicked Witch of the East:

National Public Radio, the last bastion of the so-called liberal media, former ground zero of liberal commentary on the airwaves, and target of wingnut abuse for more than thirty years, has finally caved and gone to the dark side. The 'moral values' voters, and perhaps Michael Powell, have invaded NPR's Mass Ave offices and have censored a Christmas classic - David Sedaris reading from his Santaland Diaries, where Sedaris describes a month he spent as a Christmas elf for Macy's.

When Santaland Diaries was first aired 12 years ago, it was more than a little daring because of its description of a flirtation with Snowball, another male elf. It became one of the most requested tapes from NPR. Six months later, the New York Times had this to say about the Snowball business:

Before the broadcast . . ., which told of a brief and disappointing flirtation with another elf named Snowball, the 'Morning Edition' producers worried about Mr. Sedaris's discussing his homosexuality. 'You very seldom hear a gay man on the radio,' Mr. Glass said. 'I mean one who isn't talking about being a gay man with AIDS or discussing gays in the military. We got a lot of letters that said, 'Thanks for letting David Sedaris on the radio, not as a gay person, but just as he is.' '

Well, what worried the NPR producers in 1992 has them scared shitless in 2004. Snowball was cut from this morning's rebroadcast.

Here's the offending passage:

The overall cutest elf is a fellow from Queens named Snowball. Snowball tends to ham it up with the children, sometime literally tumbling down the path to Santa's house. I tend to frown on that sort of behavior but Snowball is hands down adorable -- you want to put him in your pocket. Yesterday we worked together as Santa Elves and I became excited when he started saying things like, 'I'd follow you to Santa's house any day, Crumpet!'

It made me dizzy, this flirtation.

By mid-afternoon I was running into walls. At the end of our shift we were in the bathroom, changing clothes, when suddenly we were surrounded by three Santas and five other elves -- all of them were guys that Snowball was flirting with.

Snowball just leads elves on, elves and Santas. He is playing a dangerous game.

So, when the next begathon comes around, call up your local NPR and ask them what the fuck they did with Snowball and then tell these craven cowards that you are not giving them another nickel until they bring Snowball back.

So what do we actually need NPR for, then? For Cokie Roberts to tell the world that no one in the mainstream was concerned about the feds stomping on state-approved Medical Marijuana Legalization? For a bunch of info-bureaucrats who thrill at thinking they're radical because rednecks and morons and Mormons denounce them as Liberals wvwn though they spend most of their time licking Bush Tush? There's Big Brother and Pacifica and us. And I know Pacifica. And NPR isn't Pacifica.

And that, Lars, may be the more root cause of the collapse of America.

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Well, maybe the truth is scarier than the lies

A friend in Denmark told me that while he was enjoying it, he didn't understand why the dollar had lost 40% of its value against the Euro and was expected to lose another 30% over the coming decade. This sort of thing may be one part of the reason:

The soldiers in Iraq desperately needing armor protection on their thin-skinned vehicles must also rely on Canadian steel for protection because the United States is incapable of manufacturing enough armor plate to meet the current demand for it in Iraq and Afghanistan.

...When U.S. policy makers decided to attack Iraq they apparently failed to consider whether the United States has the manufacturing capacity to produce all the special steel it needs to make armor plate required to “uparmor” the soft-skinned Humvees and trucks under daily attack from marauding insurgents.

Had they looked, they might have discovered the United States only has one steel manufacturer company currently capable of producing the specially made rolled homogeneous armor plate that is used to produce the armor kits being manufactured at DoD-run arsenals. The arsenals therefore depend on Canadian steel sold on the open market and supplied through an American distributor to supplement the limited supply of American-made steel, several experts said.

Hubris takes economic forms too, Lars.

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A lot of questions, but if we can't ask them, we never know what we're getting.

78 Reasonable Questions to Ask about Any Technology

STEPHANIE MILLS

(A long time ago, I walked into a friend's office and he pointed to a young college-age woman sitting there.
"That's a very smart lady over there," he said, and introduced us.
I've never had any reason to dispute that assessment.")


Ecological

1. What are its effects on the health of the planet and of the person?
2. Does it preserve or destroy biodiversity?
3. Does it preserve or reduce ecosystem integrity?
4. What are its effects on the land?
5. What are its effects on wildlife?
6. How much and what kind of waste does it generate?
7. Does it incorporate the principles of ecological design?
8. Does it break the bond of renewal between humans and nature?
9. Does it preserve or reduce cultural biodiversity?
10. What is the totality of its effects—it's "ecology"?

Social

11. Does it serve community?
12. Does it empower community members?
13. How does it affect our perception of our needs?
14. Is it consistent with the creation of a communal, human economy?
15. What are its effects on relationships?
16. Does it undermine conviviality?
17. Does it undermine traditional forms of community?
18. How does it affect our way of scene and experiencing the world?
19. Does it foster a diversity of forms of knowledge?
20. Does it build on, or contribute to, the renewal of traditional forms of knowledge?
21. Does it serve to commodify knowledge or relationships?
22. To what extent does it redefine reality?
23. Does it to raise a sense of time and history?
24. What is its potential to become addictive?

Moral

25. What values does its use foster?
26. What is gained by its use?
27. What are its effects beyond its ability to the individual?
28. What is lost in using it?
29. What are its effects on the least person in the society?

Aesthetic

30. Is it ugly?
31. Does cause ugliness?
32. What noise does it make?
33. What pace does it set?
34. How does it affect quality of life (as distinct from standard of living)?

Practical

35. What does it make?
36. Who does it benefit?
37. What is its purpose?
38. Where was produced?
39. Where is it used?
40. Where must go when it's broken or obsolete?
41. How expensive is it?
42. Can it be repaired? By an ordinary person?
43. What is the entirety of its cost—the full cost accounting?

Ethical

44. How complicated is it?
45. What does it allow us to ignore?
46. To what extent does it distance agents from effect?
47. Can we assume personal, or communal, responsibility for its effects?
48. Can its effects be directly apprehended?
49. What ancillary technologies does it require?
50. What behavior might it make possible in the future?
51. What other technologies might it make possible?
52. Does it alter our sense of time and relationships in ways conducive to nihilism?

Vocational

53. What is its impact on craft?
54. Does it reduce, deaden, or enhance human creativity?
55. Is it the least imposing technology available for the task?
56. Does it replace, or does it aid, human hands and human beings?
57. Can it be responsive to organic circumstance?
58. Does it depress or enhance the quality of goods?
59. Does it depress or enhance the meaning of work?

Political

60. What is its mystique?
61. Does it concentrate or equalize power?
62. Does it require, or institute, a knowledge elite?
63. Is it totalitarian?
64. Does it require a bureaucracy for its perpetuation?
65. What legal empowerments does it require?
66. Does it undermine traditional moral authority?
67. Does it require military defense?
68. Does it enhance, or serve, military purposes?
69. How does it affect warfare?
70. Does it foster a mass thinking or behavior?
71. Is it consistent with the creation of global economy?
72. Does it empower transnational corporations?
73. What kind of capital does it require?

Metaphysical

74. What aspect of the inner self does it reflect?
75. Does it express love?
76. Does it express rage?
77. What aspect of our past does it reflect?
78. Does it reflect cynical or linear thinking?

What Ever Happened To Ecology?

Epicurean Simplicity

Turning Away From Technology

In Service of the Wild

"... their grief is something I feel to my core."

Oh would someone have mercy on the rest of us and tell Redrum Donald to shut the fuck up?

"I am truly saddened by the thought that anyone could have the impression that I, or others here, are doing anything other than working urgently to see that the lives of fighting men and women are protected and are cared for in every way humanly possible," he said.

So ok, this is about YOU then, Donny, and what you're saying is that you're NOT a monster, just incompetent. Great.

Well, that plus some hypocritical Christian pizazz, Donny, MIGHT qualify you to be Chaplain-in-Chief, but it sure as hell doesn't make you pass the test for Secretary of Defense. (Maybe you could be a secretary FOR someone IN defense, you know, go run and get some coffee?)

People are dying and we have to listen to you flapping your gums about how you feel their pain?

Asked whether the criticism had undermined his ability to do his job, he said, "You get up in the morning and you think about what our troops are doing. And I must say, if they can do what they're doing, I can do what I'm doing."

In other words -- they die and you do a tap dance? Because you sure as hell aren't doing the job any better than you were before, i.e., not at all.

He was less upbeat about Iraq, saying that "ultimately," Iraqis would have to protect themselves. "It's their country," he said.

Well, isn't that what a suicide bomber's message is?
"It's OUR country so get the fuck out."

But please, Donny, don't end the press conference without giving us your patented excuse...

Regarding Tuesday's deadly attack on a mess hall at a military base near Mosul in northern Iraq, Rumsfeld said it was "an enormous challenge to provide force protection. (U.S. forces) have to be right 100 percent of the time. An attacker only has to be right occasionally."

Ahh, there you go -- that's the one. So comforting to hear you say it.
Again and again and again.
We know you only make a few mistakes, but they're doozies:

Starting a war in the wrong place without adequate preparation.

Playing politics with the troop numbers and sending in too few of them to get the job done, no matter how hard they try, no matter how much the military tradition of the US is for brave (maybe foolhardy) men and women to go in and fix the mess made by our truly ignorant politicians. (Perhaps they never met fools as incredibly foolish as you and your crew.)

Refusing to listen to General Officers with years of experience, people who know a bit about war and whose knowledge has been bitterly won trying to sort out the politicians' mess in the past, most recently and dramatically in Vietnam.

Being a smartass to troops who see their buddies dying every day.

Refusing to EVER admit you were wrong, but playing that little masturbatory version of a press conference where you ask yourself questions aloud and then answer them. Even for a civilian, jerking off in public is a no-no. (Pee-Wee Herman was sitting by himself in the dark porn theater and they busted his ass.)

Telling wounded, maimed, and mind/life-shattered Reserve and Guard veterans back from Iraq (assuming you ever let them GET back) that as far as medical care from the VA is concerned, they can just go fuck off.

I needn't go on.
If we can't get Monkey Boy out of the White House before he plunders Social Security along with everything else, perhaps we can force him to replace Rummy with a Secty of Defense who can do the job.

That, unfortunately, will actually reflect well on Bush.
(I'm not unpatriotic at all -- quite the opposite. I just figure, for the good of the country, the more bad things that happen to Bush -- voter fraud investigations, nominees dumped for being crooks, etc. -- the fewer bad things he'll be able to do to us.)

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Bush faults Iraqi forces -- And I thought, "Oh how cute -- he's got someone new to blame."

What a surprise!

The people who actually live there -- the people whose country it actually is -- they are somewhat reluctant to die trying to do what YOU want them to do with it.

Washington -- President Bush acknowledged on Monday that, 20 months after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the United States has encountered only 'mixed' success in training Iraqi troops to secure the country and that it was 'unacceptable' that some Iraqi units had fled as soon as they faced hostile fire.

Does the word "Vietnamization" mean anything to you, Monkey Boy?

No of course not, once you got your "Get out of danger" card, you were free to pursue your coke sniffing days without a care.

The way I read the Patriot Act is like this:

So long as I make no threats against the President (and that doesn't include the psychotherapeutic sense, where an insecure asshole construes simple criticism as a threat), I am legally allowed to call him a hypocritical, finger-pointing, blame-shifting, jive-ass, signifying, mother-fucking, popcorn fart monkey as a legitimate exercise of free political speech.

I ask you one question, GW -- do you understand what the words "Commander-in-Chief" mean? I would assume so, since you had them embroidered on your spiffy little jacket so you could prance around with the troops and they wouldn't have to ask, "Who is that asshole?"

It means YOU'RE IT.

You sent our people over there.

You were in charge.

Theoretically (homoerotic pecking order aside), you have authority over Don Redrum, so the equipment, the number of troops deployed, all that and more -- your responsibility.

The failure to provide therapeutic services for the maimed who were doing your bidding -- that's your responsibility.

Putting together the wherewithall to get those troops what they need to do their job with a reasonable chance of survival -- that's your responsibility.

Killing thousands and thousands of Iraqis so you could have a war and act big and get re-elected even though everyone knows you're a prancing poseur and a buffoon -- that's your responsibility.

Destroying the legitimate military forces of our country for your own personal agrandizement -- that's your responsibility.

You wanted to be THE MAN.
Well that takes some balls, junior, and guess what?
THAT takes a lot more than a padded crotch on a flight suit to do the job.

Don't tell us about it -- just remember, for all you talk as if you were a Christian, as if you understood and cared about what Jesus said, as if you tried in ANY way to live in accordance with those words -- since you believe in Hell, when the sulphur-smelling guy shows up and gives you the bill for carnage and horror you caused, don't start screaming like a little baby that it wasn't your fault.

It was.

It is.

And blaming it on some mealy-mouthed suck-up preacher telling you you're saved won't make any difference

Start draining the swamp.

(Oh, I'm sure you never read Faust -- ask Condi or Laura to read it to you.)

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No wonder THEY hate the ACLU so much ... the ACLU caught 'em in the again AGAIN

American Civil Liberties Union : FBI E-Mail Refers to Presidential Order Authorizing Inhumane Interrogation Techniques

NEW YORK -- A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as "torture" and a June 2004 "Urgent Report" to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up.

Just remember, Mr. President -- your grandpa's pals in the Third Reich -- Herr Hitler and Herr Goerring -- took the hero's way out .. another option you and your verdammt crew may not have considered.

The new (December) Crapshoot is up and has a few articles worth reading. It only has a few articles all together, so what I'm saying is this -- the new Crapshoot is worth reading.

Rick Brown points out the difference between what those rabid cross-mongers say they are (Evangelicals) and what they really are (Fundamentalist absolutist Christian Taliban). And even though he modifies a quote-ish comment from Jon Stewart by making a humorous suggestion that Stewart is going to Hell because he's Jewish (sorry, Rick, Jews don't do Hell -- Hell is only for those who believe in it, i.e., Christians), it's a sharp essay on getting outside our own self-absorbed reality system, and, quite appropriately, includes a letter from a young Indonesian woman currently in Ohio, sharing her vision of America with us.

Howard Pearlstein examines the phenomenon of America's extraordinary anger -- among many people in our country, the richer you are, the more pissed off you are -- and suggests ways out of that hot red circular insanity into a cooler reality, one which includes noticing (and even enjoying) the world as it is.

And, altho he didn't sign it -- two short and nifty peeks into Ted Kane's world.

Go, enjoy.

Ahh, loyalty -- it makes reality look like a bad movie

GOP Senators Spring to Defend Rumsfeld

In other words, he's a total fuckup whose stubborn insistence on "Please mother -- I'd rather do it myself" has brought death and destruction and loss of authroity for OUR country. To use a more current comparison, he's the flaky, deeply troubled character on MAD-TV who won't let anyone help him, even though his incompetence is at astronomical proportions.

This man has, through his intransigence, been responsible for the deaths of more than 1000 American military people, the permanent maimings, amputations, and total disabling of about 10,000 more (and we're still just on our side), has managed to disregard anything anyone ever learned from military history, and most recently, told our troops to shut the fuck up and stop whining about being blown up, and cost us the respect and friendship of countries that have been our closest allies for more than 100 years...

Is it excessive for me to repeatedly refer to him as REDRUM Rumsfeld...

BUT congress is paraphrasing what he himself said long ago about Saddam Hussein,

"He's a sonofabitch, but he's OUR sonofabitch,"

Congress is saying:

"He's a sociopath and an incompetent asshole, but he's OUR sociopathic asshole."

(Not mine, you spineless pieces of waste material who call yourselves Congress -- YOURS. And there will be Hell to pay when the troops come home and your thoroughly invertebrate behavior is tallied up.)

What Would Bill Hicks Say?

A contest for the best written answer to that question:

What Would Bill Hicks Say?

And Soft Skull Press, those heroes of basement publishing, have put out a book:

Love All the People
Letters, Lyrics, Routines

They link to the contest but they use a quote from Dennis Miller on their index page attesting to Bill Hicks having been a genius and having been "one of the five best comics I've ever seen in my life."

Funny, because if you really think about what Bill Hicks would say about Dennis Miller it would be something like, "He got all scared by 9-11 and started waving a flag so he could keep working and finally just became a whore for American fascism." The only wrong move I've seen Soft Skull make, using that nasty has-been to endorse his betters.

(Also -- check out the other books published by Soft Skull -- you won't see them around, or, more properly, they've published them BECAUSE you wouldn't otherwise see them around. Good stuff. Good people.)

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For all the veterans who could have voted for John kerry, but who watch so much TV they couldn't tell the difference between a man who'd been there, done that, a man who'd smelled the blood and heard the screams -- or a smirking punk whose reality comes from a combination of video games (2 hours a day while governor) and an invisible friend in his mind who tells him who to kill and when -- you've seen enough commercials to know the tag line that applies to you and your still-aching still-limiting wounds:

WOW! I COULD HAVE HAD A V.A.

Kreaking Krepitatious Krepuscular Kerik Goes Back to His Cave

BBC NEWS | Americas | New US security chief pulls out:

Well, sure, it could be embarrassing for the man who's chosen to run Homeland Uber Alles Security Forces somehow not quite figuring out the woman in his home was illegal.

"The man chosen by President George W Bush to take over as the new US homeland security secretary has withdrawn his nomination.

Bernard Kerik took the decision after uncovering tax and immigration problems relating to his employment of a nanny."

But by withdrawing, the press loses interest ("Old news, man") so they won't follow up the taser story about how he plundered Homeland Security while TomRidge was dishing out the payoffs.

And even more, they probably won't go far enough to look into/uncover his ties to the Saudis.

Bush is pretty much committed to making sure no one finds it easy to get the lowdown on his down low relationship to the people who killed 3,000 civilians in New York, i.e., the Saudis.

Bush and his appointees -- the Cosa Barbecue-Nostra.

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Doubts Persist About Election Results: Nixon Rises from his Grave

OK, so Nixon didn't rise from his grave. No one thought he would -- when dropping you in the hole gets a clear blue sky to give you thunder, lightning, dark clouds, and all sorts of unpleasant weather, you can pretty much figure he ain't coming back. One could only have said, "Hey, Dick, don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way into Hell."

But there is one thing about him that people insist on pointing to in praise, and Republicans keep pointing to as a way of crying "Foul" over any assertion of or investigation into election fraud in Florida in 2000 and a few other states in 2004 -- they praise the fact that Nixon declined an investigation into the rigging of votes for JFK in Chicago area in 1960.

They keep wanting to insist it was the act of a gentleman. Sure. Can anyone tell us one other time when Nixon acted honestly, let alone as a gentleman?

The fact -- which has been well-publicized and admitted laughingly by Nixon campaign operatives -- is that Nixon didn't protest Kennedy's Mayor Daly-assisted voter fraud in Chicago because he and his people did exactly the same thing in Southern Illinois. They just didn't do it well enough to take the state. Any investigation would have come right back to them.

In fact, as we have learned in ensuing years, there was ONE THING Nixon said that was true -- that everyone did what he'd done in regard to manipulating elections by fixing, tricking, lying, scaring, etc.

Of course, since the Reagan-Bush-Bush election cronies are pretty much the Nixon henchmen who are still alive, perhaps we can't be sure everyone does it.

The only thing we can be sure about is that fat, cigar-chomping southern sheriffs openly preventing other-side people from voting have been replaced ... by a fat, cigar-chomping White House schemer covertly preventing other-side people from voting, the man the President calls "turd blossom."

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United Press International: Homeless Iraq vets showing up at shelters

If anyone had any doubt that Bush and Redrumsfeld and the rest were smug, soulless, sleazy, slimy sonsofbitches, here's some more proof:

WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- U.S. veterans from the war in Iraq are beginning to show up at homeless shelters around the country, and advocates fear they are the leading edge of a new generation of homeless vets not seen since the Vietnam era.

"When we already have people from Iraq on the streets, my God," said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. "I have talked to enough (shelters) to know we are getting them. It is happening and this nation is not prepared for that."

I don't care how many excuses Rumsfeld gives us, this is the High Command without a conscience. It's time for that spineless piece of shit who wears a jacket identifying himself as Commander-in-Chief to come out of his dreamworld and stand up like a man -- it should be a new experience for him.

The Pentagon has acknowledged some early problems and delays in treating soldiers returning from Iraq but says the situation has been fixed...

"This is what happened with the Vietnam vets. I went to Vietnam," said John Keaveney, chief operating officer of New Directions, a shelter and drug-and-alcohol treatment program for veterans in Los Angeles. That city has an estimated 27,000 homeless veterans, the largest such population in the nation. "It is like watching history being repeated," Keaveney said.

It's not an accident.

Of all the people I have known who did some nasty stuff during the Vietnam Era, the man who was most ashamed of what he'd done was an Army doctor, stationed at Letterman, who was deeply ashamed that he'd followed orders. His orders? To try to convince seriously wounded soldiers to sign away their disability pensions. "Oh, well we COULD fix you up with a hip joint replacement, but we'd have to keep you here another year doing physical therapy to be sure you needed it. Because of the pension. But if you wanted to sign the pension away..."


It's deja vu all over again and Country Joe is singing:

So it's one, two three, what are we fighting for?
George Bush the oil whore,
So his friends can score some more

And it's five, six, seven, open up those VA gates
Ain't got no home to come back to
VA said "Hey, screw you."

Link

Sense of humor returns. Social environmentalists cheer.

You know you want it.

Check it out -- make sure your audio is working. Fun for the whole country.

Dear Mssrs Falwell, Robertson, Swaggart, Bakker, Wildmon, O'Reilly, Coulter, et al -- regarding our Founding Fathers' religious beliefs:

Get it?

A nation -- not a Christian nation.

Not a nation LIMITED to only one kind of fantasy.

A nation EXPANDED to INCLUDE ALL forms of insanity.

So get back in your boxes, you foam-flecked, hypocritical, cross-waving vampires.

We do not need your brands of hatred, intolerance and ignorance masquerading as Christianity.

Try converting the Taliban -- they think the way you do.

A pathetic display as Bush thanks U.S. soldiers at Calif. base

HOW PATHETIC WAS IT, JOHNNY?

Well, first of all, they're Marines, not soldiers, a distinction those people about to be fed into the maw of world domination-fantasies hold high.

And of course presidents rightfully thank the troops who, with few exceptions (remember, our country has had nearly 200 actual shooting wars in its history, most of them "wrong war wrong time" or outright criminal) have been the guys who stood up and been willing to go in and save the ill-advised bacon for the bozo politicans.

Here's what happened:

Dec. 7, 2004 | CAMP PENDLETON, Calif. (AP) -- President Bush chose a Marine base in southern California -- one with one of the highest casualty rates in Iraq -- to thank U.S. troops and insist that Iraqis go to the polls on time.

Bush was delivering a speech, having lunch with troops and meeting for more than 2 1/2 hours with families of servicemen Tuesday at Camp Pendleton, 38 miles north of San Diego...

Speaking on the 63rd anniversary of Pearl Harbor, Bush was to express appreciation for the troops' service and their families' sacrifice, especially during the holiday season. He also was to suggest ways Americans can actively support the troops.

Several options include a Defense Department program called "America Supports You," designed to showcase support for the military from individuals, businesses and groups as a way of encouraging others to do the same.

Well the whole thing of DoD Christmas PR programs is kind of pitiful and heinous (hey, how about restoring VA benefits instead as a Santa Special?)

But what was truly pathetic was that Boy George was wearing a modified Eisenhower jacket, no pockets on the breast ("I'm a BOY, Mommy. Boys don't have boobies! Boys have big 'Mission Accomplished' weenie packs!"). It was actually more a golf jacket than a military outfit, but with shoulder epaulets.

But truly pathetic was the handwriting on the nice flat left boob surface of the tan jacket:

George W Bush
Commander-in-Chief

No, really --that's what it said. So what is that -- the White House version of sewing labels into the kid's underwear so the other kids don't steal his stuff?

Or is it a costume for dress-up that tells him who he is supposed to be today? Does he have other jackets that say: "George W Bush, Bitch and Front Man For Oil Biggies," or "George W Bush, King of the World," or "George W Bush -- liar, thief, murderer, asshole?"

Or is it the other thing, the thing that made Nixon continually repeat "I am the President" -- a need to tell all those families and parents who you are? A clue, George -- if you have to tell them who you are, you ain't it.

Link

National guard hiring recruiters

Dec. 4, 2004 | CORAOPOLIS, Pa. (AP) -- Increasing numbers of soldiers are deciding not to join the Army National Guard after they leave active duty, a trend so troubling that the Guard is hiring 1,400 more recruiters to reverse it.

--Y'see, they're finally figuring out that along with the baggy uniform, a little bit of money, some potential of getting some college, there's -- oops, the catch -- a whole generation of kids who didn't read Catch-22, you get to have people force you to set down in some shit-hole that the oil people want while locals who are understandably upset steal your weapons and use them on you. And every time you get close to time to come home, they raise the number of missions. Not only that but...

"'If a soldier is near the end of their term of service and looking to stabilize their life, they know the likelihood is they're going to be deployed if they join the Guard,' said Lt. Col. Mike Milord, spokesman for the Guard's headquarters in Arlington, Va.

Jesus -- I know native-born Iraqi's who speak better English than that. With all due respect, milord, get thee to a copy of Strunk & White. But back to the gist of what this bozo lifer is trying to say:

You fall into the realm of the old cynical version of the Third Law of Thermodynamics (entropy): "You can't win, you can't even tie, and you'll never get out of the game."

"This is not your father's National Guard. The big joke used to be, 'It's one weekend off a month."'

This is not your President's national Guard either, where the joke was "I'll give you one weekend a year and you can send spades and white trash kids to die in my place."

Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Crawford, hmm, come to think of it, the Prez is STILL saying that.

Link

AGAIN?
I THOUGHT THIS DUMMY STUFF ENDED WITH JANE FONDA AND THE OTHER MANICHAEANS.

Regarding the post below, the fact that I regard GW Bush and his hench-thugs as a band of thieving, lying, murdering, scum does NOT imply that I think Osama Ben Ladn or Saddam Hussein are in any way any better.

I have posted here before that if you want to be some sort of "our guys are bad so their guys must be good" cheerleading moron like Jane Fonda was, you'd better have her old-time callipygian attributes -- a bubble ass as cute as they come. Because it wasn't for her political or social acumen anyone stood behind her -- it was to watch those charming posterior globes bounce up and down as she shouted inanities.

It is OUR right and obligation to attack and denounce our OWN government's thuggery, and that does not imply in any way that other ones are better.

Our duty as citizens is to chase out our own monsters first. As long as our putatively elected officials steal OUR money to kill people as a way of dealing with THEIR fears, then the place to start is obvious.

Get it? Patriotism means being willing to stand up and point to what needs fixing.

--now that this election has ended I find myself feeling as if I've just awakened from a flu-driven dream-fever, wondering why I paid so much attention to a bunch of self-serving hypocritical thieving, self-justifying, signifying, jive-ass lowlifes. After all, I never enjoyed watching soap operas about such folk. But I do have to admit one perhaps positive thing to have come out of it all:

Credit Bush with bringing back Old Time Religion in America.

He and his cronies have managed to do that. They have shown us time and time again that we are completely powerless, not only to stop their depredations, but to even be allowed to publicly discuss our areas of disagreement.

And of course the good old fashioned American method so aptly described by Ari Fleisher in reference to Saddam Hussein isn't feasible (an expression definitely coming from someone else in the administration, it being Good Ole Texican and ironically, usually directed at people like the Bush family). The comment? "He forgets that a .30 caliber bullet only costs a quarter."

Because my primary point of contention is this: "You can't just shoot, bomb, kill, crush, assault, smash down, maim, mutilate, or roll over anyone who isn't part of your little club." So of course taking violent means to address these people is out of the question.

Which brings us to Old Time religion -- the desperate hope that someday, somewhere, there exists some being of proportionate size and power that will slap the smirk off the faces of these conscienceless monsters, will set them down in some place where they can party for a long forever with every creature -- human or not -- every creature they have ever caused to be shot, bombed, killed, crushed, crippled or maimed, every person whose family and home they destroyed, every rotting resentful corpse they created for whatever bullshit reasons they had in mind, every desperate sick person without medical care, every desperate family whose Social Security got Enron'd into a Stock Market investment scheme, so that finally, they can all resonate throughout the universe acknowledging what it is they've caused to happen while pretending to be doing something fine in the name of something but that they can't remember exactly what it was.

Or as they say, more succinctly -- 'fess up.' Pay it all back.

Us nonbelievers have started to understand why -- other than the reason of comfort on dark nights -- why people turn to religion. Because it offers the promise of justifiable vengeance.

And when this particular horde of looters is gone from the face of this earth, I can only hope that the people of America, with our traditional simplicity and humor, build each and every one of them an appropriate mausoleum or headstone in the shape of a urinal, so those who have been subject to their games can offer up a final, fitting tribute.

(Oh, by the way, this isn't purely partisan -- the Kerrys and Liebermans and Feinsteins and all the rest who went along with supporting the killing of others rather than lose votes, who said not a word as the people of this country and others had their futures stolen from them -- we offer up prayers for you, too. There have always been people willing to throw others in an oven rather than be out of a job. You people can thank Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich and a few others for reminding us what it looks and sounds like when someone sticks to vision and principles rather than kissing ass for approval.)