Osama's new video? Who's agenda is he promoting for this election? As usual, he's promoting Osama

It's not always easy to seperate the bits and pieces of logic and reason from the blather when a sociopathic religious fanatic is talking (no, I'm talking about Osama ben Ladn right now, not George W Bush), but in this case, it seems almost everyone is missing the point. We're so wrapped up in ourselves, our response is "Does he want Kerry to win?" "Maybe he wants Bush to win."

What crap. This isn't about influencing our election. He doesn't care who wins.

We may think this election is the most important thing in the world, but the fact is, there's an entire world out there.

And this is about the fact that the entire world is watching our election and there isn't a PR man in the world who'd pass up an audience like that, so here comes Osama, like some dork in a joke-embroidered T-shirt standing up behind a mike-holding news person on the street and waving at the camera, "Hey, look at me! I'm important, too!"

Osama -- he's the guy at the NFL game with his face painted, pointing at the Jumbotron when he sees himself up there and then turning to the camera to shout "Hey! I'm on TV!"

Because he's only still news incidentally. He's past it.

He needs to remind every0ne, "Hey, I'm still here."

But he's so fucking irrelevant that if Bush didn't keep ringing that Fear Bell for his own benefit, we'd all be on another page.

Think about it:

We know that Bush didn't take out Wowie Zarqawi back before the war when they caught him in the crosshairs up there in Eastern Kurdistan where Saddam couldn't get to him because if we took him out, then the casus belli of "terrorists in Iraq" would be gone. That's been said, documented, established.

And if we'd caught Osama inTora Bora (as the Pentagon has finally verified, that he was there, and that we just stopped chasing him) well then we'd all have felt, at least to some extent, that the slaughter of all those people on those planes, in the World Trade Center and in the Pentagon had been avenged. And then what would he and his vile henchmen have to keep us from paying attention to the men behind the curtain?

Without Osama Ben Ladn, George W Bush is just a punk again.

Ben Ladn made one point in his video, one that anyone who actually paid attention to language knew all along. He said:

"We want to reclaim our nation."

The word "jihad" means "to drive out the invaders."

To make them go home and leave the locals alone.

Whether we should have been there in the first place or whether we should give up whatever benefits we've gotten from being there -- those things are irrelevant, and I'm not going to argue them.

This has been all about "Get the fuck out of my house."

Clear enough?

We heard it in Vietnamese.
The French heard it in Algerian Arabic.
Papa Doc heard it in French.
Batista and Somoza and Juan Peron and a whole slew of others all heard it in Spanish.

And Colin Powell has heard it loud and clear in Iraqi Arabic:

Secretary of State Colin Powell has privately confided to friends in recent weeks that the Iraqi insurgents are winning the war, according to Newsweek. The insurgents have succeeded in infiltrating Iraqi forces "from top to bottom," a senior Iraqi official tells Newsweek in tomorrow’s issue of the magazine, "from decision making to the lower levels."

But as to Osama? It ain't about him any more.

Ron Silver is crapping his pants in fear and calling it political independence. Isn't that special?

After years of playing liberal icons and demonic slimebags, and being somewhat convincing in either type of role, Ron Silver is now so terrified of dying he's willing to betray every social and political principle he's ever held. But let him tell it himself:


Ron Silver won't let his liberal tendencies stop him from voting for Bush
- James Sterngold, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, October 30, 2004

Like many left-leaning voters, Ron Silver, the popular character actor, says he is appalled by what he calls the incompetence of the intelligence services before and after Sept. 11, the abysmal planning for the war in Iraq and the failure to find either weapons of mass destruction or a link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

There's more. Silver is also a strong supporter of abortion rights, gay rights and stem cell research, all of which puts him sharply at odds with a handful of President George W. Bush's core domestic policies.

But you wouldn't know it from his stand in this election.

...Put simply, his concerns about terrorism are trumping everything else...

...Silver conceded that he has been troubled by disclosures that U.S. inspectors found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, a principal rationale for the war, and by what he sees as the botched occupation and growing chaos...

"I fully support the president and the war in Iraq," Silver said. "That doesn't mean the planning for the war was anything less than wretched. I would also say we just haven't been focused on public diplomacy. I think that's been a failure."

So it doesn't matter that he KNOWS Bush is a total incompetent, is unable to execute the events he's put into play, he's still gonna play out that "Texans are the REAL Americans and we Jews only visitors who need their approval," neurotic game. Shit Ronny, go talk it out with Phil Roth or Joe Heller.

...He said his concern about this election was not simply that Bush would be tougher on terrorists than Sen. John Kerry but also that Kerry's resolve might be softened by Democratic Party.

"I know and like John Kerry," said Silver. "However, I worry that the rank and file of the Democratic Party doesn't want him to do what he says he would do. It leaves you wondering where Kerry really stands. I guess I trust him, but I don't trust the party."

And you're right not to trust the party, Ronny, not if the party includes people like you. What's that term your new hero calls it? Oh yeah, "Flip-flopping."

So you call it conservative. I call it scared shitless.

The only pre-election poll you can trust

Salon.com directs us to James Wolcott who tells us that the results of the upcoming election will be Kerry 55, Bush 45. How does he know?

He checked the Nickelodeon poll as described in many media outlets and blogs from CNN to USC's student newpaper, The Daily Trojan to the (presumably neutral) Swissinfo to South Africa's Star to the Righty-Uptighty Liberty Post and came out with this conclusion:

... what I did was take the Nickolodeon Poll for kids, which has correctly predicted the last four elections, and work from there.

The bright youngsters who took part in this poll, 400,000 strong, voted Kerry 57, Bush 43.

Since kids are naturally exuberant, until it's beaten out of them by the System, I shaved off two points from Kerry, gave those two to Bush.

Kerry 55, Bush 45, that's my lighter than air prediction.

Regardless, since it would be kind of nice to have an actual democratic republic for a change, we can only hope that all the would-be voters actually get to vote and that all the votes are actually tallied, and that Josef Stalin's supposed retort to the rather undiplomatic American taunt ("In America, people can vote for whoever [sic] they want.") is not accurate THIS time around ("It's not important who they vote for -- it's only important who counts those votes.")

THOSE PESKY MISSING EXPLOSIVES

October 29, 2004

Video Shows G.I.'s at Weapon Cache

A videotape made by a television crew with American troops when they opened bunkers at a sprawling Iraqi munitions complex south of Baghdad shows a huge supply of explosives still there nine days after the fall of Saddam Hussein, apparently including some sealed earlier by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The tape, broadcast on Wednesday night by the ABC affiliate in Minneapolis, appeared to confirm a warning given earlier this month to the agency by Iraqi officials, who said that hundreds of tons of high-grade explosives, powerful enough to bring down buildings or detonate nuclear weapons, had vanished from the site after the invasion of Iraq.

The question of whether the material was removed by Mr. Hussein's forces in the days before the invasion, or looted later because it was unguarded, has become a heated dispute on the campaign trail, with Senator John Kerry accusing President Bush of incompetence, and Mr. Bush saying it is unclear when the material disappeared and rejecting what he calls Mr. Kerry's "wild charges."

...The ABC crew said the video was taken on April 18. The timing is critical to the debate in the presidential campaign. By the Pentagon's own account, units of the 101st Airborne Division were near Al Qaqaa for what Mr. DiRita said was "two to three weeks," starting April 10.

Then they headed north to Baghdad, and the site was apparently left unguarded. By the time special weapons teams returned to Al Qaqaa in May, the explosives were apparently gone.

So that's pretty much that -- what do you boys in the spin room have to say about it now?

The Pentagon also notes that it has destroyed 400,000 tons of munitions from thousands of sites across Iraq, and that the explosives at Al Qaqaa only account for "one-tenth of 1 percent" of that amount.

Great. Remember when the San Jose Mercury pointed a finger at the CIA for bringing huge amounts of cocaine into East L.A. as part of the gigantic drug deal that has come to be known as "Iran-Contra?" That it spawned the crack epidemic?

And after repeated denials and denunciations of the journalist, their defense was: "Hey, it's not our fault. We only brought in Five Tons of cocaine, and lots more than that came in during that time.

Must See TV -- Osama offers a deal, tells why he did it -- is this Rove's promised October surprise?

Must See TV -- Osama offers a deal, tells why he did it

Hey -- even sociopaths have reasons they think are real for what they do -- just look at Bush:

CAIRO, Egypt - Osama bin Laden, injecting himself into the campaign four days ahead of presidential elections, said in a videotape aired Friday that the United States can avoid another Sept. 11 attack if it stops threatening the security of Muslims…

"Your security is not in the hands of Kerry, Bush or al-Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands," bin Laden said, referring to the president and his Democratic opponent. "Any state that does not mess with our security, has naturally guaranteed its own security."

…Bin Laden accused President Bush (news - web sites) of misleading Americans by saying the attack was carried out because al-Qaida "hates freedom." Bin Laden said his followers have left alone countries that do not threaten Muslims....

Bin Laden suggested Bush was slow to react to the Sept. 11 attacks, giving the hijackers more time than they expected. At the time of the attacks, the president was listening to schoolchildren in Florida reading a book.

"It never occurred to us that the commander-in-chief of the American armed forces would leave 50,000 of his citizens in the two towers to face these horrors alone," he said, referring to the number of people who worked at the World Trade Center.

"It appeared to him (Bush) that a little girl's talk about her goat and its butting was more important than the planes and their butting of the skyscrapers. That gave us three times the required time to carry out the operations, thank God," he said.

And the administration's response?

"I'm glad to know that Michael Moore is giving aid and comfort to the enemy."

That's a reference to bin Laden saying "My Pet Goat." Wolf Blitzer, that prince of kiss-ass, set up the comment by suggesting that the only way bin Laden could have known about My Pet Goat (Actually "The Pet Goat") was from watching Michael Moore's movie.

Like saying the only way anyone could know Bush is bin Laden's mirror-image, a Christian rather than Muslim sociopathic true believing mass murderer whose reasons defy any sense of reality is from listening to The Rude Pundit.

Link

Scapegoat for dinner? Again?

All together now, Bushleaguers:

"Thank God for Ahmed Chalabi!
He always gives us someone to blame, so the buck stops there."

Don't they wish it actually could (stop there)?

And don't they ALMOST sound sincere as they try to slide gently away from the fact that they put him in that position over the objections of people with actual brains?

From The Washington Monthly

"CHALABI YET AGAIN....Via Digby, a Knight Ridder story today about al-Qaqaa contains the following priceless nugget:

Al Qaqaa was on a classified list of Iraqi weapons facilities that the CIA provided to Pentagon and military officials before the invasion, said the U.S. intelligence official.

But when the Pentagon and U.S. Central Command produced their own list of sites that a limited number of U.S. 'exploitation teams' should search, priority was given to those identified by exiled Iraqi opposition groups, he said. Al Qaqaa wasn't one of them.

'The top of the list was dominated by nuclear facilities and places where we expected to find chemical and biological weapons,' he said. 'Iraqi exiles had a very heavy hand in determining which places got looked at first.'

There is, it seems, literally no end to the damage that Ahmed Chalabi has done to American" security. No end."

And there seems to be no end to the amount of blame-shifting and finger-pointing this Band of Inept and Incompetent Brothers will do to try to squirm out of taking responsibility for any of their increasingly terrifying number of failures.

"Hey, lots and lots of people think I'm a good president..." This photo from a Bush-Cheney TV ad lifted from Salon.com article... just passing it along and giving credit where it's due ... seems the Bush people learned a lot of things from George Lucas and Industrial Light and Magic ... except for what happens to the ones who go to the dark side... or the ones who are so scared of being human, they can't possibly ever admit they have dark as well as light within. Those people need to sit in a safe quiet room somewhere, but not the oval office.
"In room, quietly sit," said Yoda, "other way to say, shut up and disappear."
Or as we useta say in the olden days,
"May the baby Jesus shut your mouth and open your mind."

Rudy speaks out about missing munitions -- blames troops in Iraq

Rudy -- wasn't he the retarded kid who put everything he had into trying to make the Notre Dame football team? Oh, Rudy Giuliani -- a different dimwit speaks out -- this one only pretending to be giving his all.

There he goes, a rec room patriot like all the rest of them --- too goddamn precious to answer the draft call, for all it didn't stop them from loving war -- as long as someone else or someone else's kid is the one to get gutted by shrapnel and lay bleeding his or her last juices of life into some nameless sand or soil ...

He's 60 years old -- he would have reached 18 and draft age in 1961 -- so what was his excuse? I think getting out of what was a bad war would have been fine IF THEY DIDN"T ALL DEVELOP A MID-LIFE HARD-ON TO HAVE A WAR (ONCE THEY WERE NO LONGER IN DANGER OF HAVING TO BACK UP THEIR BIG WORDS).

New Yorkers.

Texans.

(And as they say in the land of bigoted generalizations: "Hey, some of my best friends are Texans or New Yorkers." Which is actually true.)

I guess now that his prostate's gone, he has to get it up somehow. Here's his tough words from this morning:

Rudy actually kept a straight face when he told the Today Show camera the there was no reason to suggest that George W. Bush or Donald "Redrum" Rumsfeld had made a mistake and instead, pointed his decrepit finger at the folks who are becoming this administration's favorite scapegoats -- the troops

"No matter how you try to blame it on the president the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?" Giuliani said, and even if the explosives were gone, if the troops "searched carefully enough," they would have known.

Hey Rudy -- you should have let it go after you ramrodded the 9-11 monstrosity like a true hero. Plumping for gift-packs from Bush? Big mistake. Because now people are getting to see you as a truly unprincipled opportunistic shit -- is that your true persona? Or do you just play one on TV?

Maybe you'll get a visit from some of those troops when they finally get home from Iraq. Maybe they'll want to discuss your comments over a beer. Or over a carpet of broken glass.

Link

Good news ahead

From what I'm hearing, regardless of who wins this election, about 50% of the voting population plans to either move to Canada or slit their wrists. One side or the other.

Which means good deals on houses, furniture, stereos --- like after the Rapture.

Half us us will be dead and gone and the other half will get the stuff they left behind.

We can only hope the Democrats win, because the Republicans have better stuff.

Does THIS explain why Bush and Cheney hate Kerry so much?

Is Bush saying about Kerry, a la Saddam Hussein

"He's the man who tried to ... arrest ... my dad."

IS this why he hates him so?


The Case That Kerry Cracked

By Lucy Komisar, AlterNet. Posted October 22, 2004.

As a senator, John Kerry was a tenacious investigator and exposed BCCI, an international criminal bank, and its murderous clients. The experience should serve him well in dealing with the international threats we face today. ..

One gets an eerie sense of déjà vu watching John Kerry battle the Bush clan. He’s done it once before, against the old man, President Bush’s father, though many voters have probably forgotten. That battle involved the first Bush administration’s attempt to put the lid on an investigation that connected a worldwide criminal bank to narco-traffickers, terrorists, and to Middle East money men who helped the Bush family make piles of cash. Those links connect to people now on the U.S. post-9/11 terrorist list.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kerry fought to expose an international criminal bank, BCCI — the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. The bank was run by a Pakistani, working with Persian Gulf managers who operated through a network of secret offshore centers to hide their operations from the world’s bank examiners. They weren’t, however, hidden from the CIA, which not only knew what the bank was doing, but used the bank to funnel cash through its Islamabad and other Pakistani branches to CIA client Osama bin Laden, part of the $2 billion Washington sent to the Afghani mujahideen. The operation gave bin Laden an education in black finance. CIA director William Casey himself met with BCCI founder Agha Hasan Abedi. The CIA also paid its own agents through the bank and used BCCI to fund black ops all over the world.

Kerry took on not only the Bush clan and its friends, but the CIA, and members of Congress on both sides of the aisle. This is not irrelevant history, but important to examine, because it reveals a lot about Kerry and how he might respond to terrorism or other global criminal enterprises. Kerry’s record shows that he took on powerful political and bureaucratic interests, was a tenacious investigator, and savvy about international crime and money flows, which is crucial in the fight against terrorism.

Against the opposition of powerful Republicans and Democrats, and in light of a lack of cooperation from a very politicized Justice Department and stonewalling by the CIA, Kerry worked with investigators and ran Senate hearings that exposed the bank’s shadowy multi-billion-dollar scams and precipitated its end...

Jack Blum, who is not involved in the Kerry campaign, says: “There has never been a guy who has run for president who has, hands-on, known the kinds of substantive things he knows about the world of international crime, about banking and international bank regulation and finance, about the interconnectedness of the world finance system and how various intelligence agencies play into it. He is uniquely qualified.”

OR IS THIS WHY THEY HATE HIM SO MUCH?

How John Kerry exposed the Contra-cocaine scandal-

By Robert Parry

Oct. 25, 2004 | In December 1985, when Brian Barger and I wrote a groundbreaking story for the Associated Press about Nicaraguan Contra rebels smuggling cocaine into the United States, one U.S. senator put his political career on the line to follow up on our disturbing findings. His name was John Kerry.

Yet, over the past year, even as Kerry's heroism as a young Navy officer in Vietnam has become a point of controversy, this act of political courage by a freshman senator has gone virtually unmentioned, even though -- or perhaps because -- it marked Kerry's first challenge to the Bush family.

In early 1986, the 42-year-old Massachusetts Democrat stood almost alone in the U.S. Senate demanding answers about the emerging evidence that CIA-backed Contras were filling their coffers by collaborating with drug traffickers then flooding U.S. borders with cocaine from South America...

.

Wow -- seems like when you're looking for international criminals... there's a Bush under every bush.

Link

Rehnquist Hospitalized With Cancer in Md.

OK -- do we all get it NOW? It's not theoretical -- they had to trake him.

Uncle Thomas could be the lead singer of the Supremes in January... with 3 or 4 more of Bush's lizard people crawling out from under some rocks to fill the other vacancies...

Rehnquist Hospitalized With Cancer in Md.

30 minutes ago

By GINA HOLLAND, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, the second-oldest man to preside over the nation's highest court and its premier conservative figure, is undergoing treatment for thyroid cancer.

Rehnquist, 80, underwent a tracheotomy at Bethesda Naval Hospital in suburban Maryland on Saturday, the Supreme Court announced Monday. It said he expects to be back at work next week when the court will next be meeting to hear cases.

Even so, Rehnquist's hospitalization little more than a week before the election gave new prominence to a campaign issue that has been overshadowed by the war on terrorism. The next president is likely to name several justices to a court that has been deeply divided in recent years on issues as varied as abortion and the 2000 election itself...

During a tracheotomy, a tube is inserted into a patient's throat, either to relieve a breathing obstruction or as part of preparation for surgery. The court did not explain his procedure.

And bear in mind -- that incoherent babbling by Bush about Dred Scott -- aside from the fact that he had no idea it WAS a close reading of the constitution --- it was code:

DRED SCOTT MEANS "WE WILL OVERTURN ROE V WADE"

(even tho, ironically, the Dred Scott Decision is more applicable as a precedent to legalizing same-sex marriage than it is to justify federal intervention into the question of a woman's reproductive choices. )

So, no more dithering, oh ye undecideds -- how'd you like to see the totalitarian elements of Patriot Act get decided by a Supreme Court with four justices appointed by the people who pull Bush's strings?

--I live in a blue state, but so what -- if Kerry wins by enough popular votes -- 10 million or so -- even the Supremes won't be able to give it away without civil war.

Link

Bush is the Antichrist? How about the Auntie-Christ?

Ambidextrous, one of the best blogs around, posts an article from The Catholic Times, May 18, 2003, asserting that the Pope believes George W Bush to possibly be the Anti-Christ, and wishes he were youngerand stronger, to better be able to fight the threat.

The reasoning? Bush seems to fit and embody all the signs and symbols.

Of course, if you do a search, you will find there are people who blieve the Antichrist is here in the form of Keanu Reeves, David Hasselhoff, Prince Charles, or others.

(Some years ago, I personally had a suspicion that it was Garry Moore. the TV variety show host.)

Indian Casinos in California, a threat to the lives and routines of the good decent folk -- In the words of the late Livia Soprano...

"Boo-fucking hoo."

We live in a time of 'blame the tempter' rather than the transgressor, that 'devil made me do it' thing. Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy: "Look what YOU made me do."

In other words, blame someone else for what you did.

For example:

"They built casinos on the backs of guys like me." So begins the remorseful tale of Frank, a 53-year-old college-educated health care professional in the South Bay who has tossed away $500,000 in a lifetime of betting. And he's right: The gambling industry earns from 60 to 80 percent of its profits from the 10 percent of players who are heavy bettors.

And I say it again -- "boo-fucking-hoo."

I'm sorry his life has turned to shit, but when we get down to cases, I have no more sympathy for this fellow than I did for all the insecure semi-stars of the 70's and 80's who wept publicly about how they pissed away $4-1/2 million doing coke and lost their homes and families and... etc. I could only respond:

"You HAD 4-1/2 million dollars and you ran it up your nose?
Fuck you. You deserved to lose it all."

I smoked for many years.
If and/or when I get sick, it's not the fault of the tobacco producers. I don't care how much they lied about it. When I started smoking in the 50's, there wasn't anyone in my grade or middle or high school who didn't know it was bad for your health and would cause cancer. It doesn't matter that the large lights of the tobacco industry are slime-bags and vicious lying scum.

Is there anyone who has ever placed a bet without knowing the house always wins in the long run? The slots may pay off 92% or even 95% or 98%, but they still come out ahead, even if the occasional player can walk away with a few bucks more than before. It's just that players like to think they're special, that they can beat the odds. But it's not the fault of the casino owners -- they'll TELL you the odds if you ask.

Now, when John Edwards did the so-called "Jacuzzi case," that was something else. The product was supposed to be one thing but this one sucked out the innards of a little girl in a swimming pool and that WAS their fault.

But how does it get to be YOUR FAULT because I can't control myself?

Or how does it get to be THEIR FAULT because YOU can't control yourself?

Sex, drugs, alcohol, gambling, enemas, laxatives, shoe-buying, child-molesting, oh my.
Not my fault. they MADE me do it.

Peter Lorre justifying his child-killing in M, protesting the underworld judgment against him, saying that they steal and kill because they choose to but that he should be excused because he had no control over it: "Ich MUSS! Ich MUSS!" An early "addiction" defense.

If someone beats the crap out of you and takes your money, or imprisons you and forces you to take addictive drugs like heroin or tobacco, or rapes you -- that's one thing.

If YOU drive to a casino and walk in and start betting, guess who's responsiblity that is?

So that leaves the other issue, location of casinos near cities. Oh, the good folk of California do not like that as it would fuck up traffic patterns and make it easier for assholes like the above-mentioned Frank to impoverish his wife and kids so he can watch the wheels spin. (Actually, since it might collapse the Cal-Trans system and take traffic all the way to permanent gridlock on I-80, I-4, and elsewhere, it might help Frank to control himself.)

Well, hell, does anyone have any idea what the influx of gold-crazed Americans did to the traffic patterns of the Pomo and the Winto and all the rest of the California tribes? Actually, since most of them were killed or driven off their land, they didn't have to worry about it.

Which doesn't stop the most chutzpah-laden rationale we've seen in recent years (and given that we're at the end of four years of the Dubya Bush administration, that's going some):

"... Cheryl Schmit, director of Stand Up for California, which has opposed expansions of Indian gaming, disputes the Scotts Valley Band's landless status, saying it has a rancheria in Lake County.

"This (North Richmond) casino project, they could only go forward if they can prove they lived there forever,'' she said. "They can't.''

No, of course they can't. Read the history of the Modoc Wars, the last and best-documented Indian war in California if you have the stomach for it.

This isn't about "Oh those poor people, how much they've suffered," even though that statement is quite accurate. It's about "How many times do we lie and cheat and swindle our way out of a contract because we didn't like the way the deal turned out?" Get over it.

And it's not even payback, even though every one of us have reaped the benefits of those crimes. These few descendants of the even fewer who survived the concerted effort to exterminate their forebears are actually willing to pay to ease the disruptions their operations will cause -- roads, sewage, police, fire, etc.

As if it were possible for these people, finally getting a piece of the pie, to fuck up the beauty of California more than "The Americans" have.

We all know, don't we, if they were white, they'd have condemned the land under the right of Eminent Domain, paid off the legislature for zoning and subsidies, and would have it up and running, calling it something like "Game-World: The Family Gaming Center."

Link

Ok.

I'll bet the union guys who, first thing they did back in the 30's when they finally got their union was kiss the ass of management by throwing these guys out, these guys having been the ones who front-lined it to get those unions in the first place, who were the ones jailed and beaten and killed, and the new unions called 'em 'commies' and made a deal with bosses first thing, I'll bet the unions wish there were more of them around today. And they are still around, the IWW. Maybe if you apologize and ask them nicely...

Anyone -- even a senile old fudd who thought nothing of having someone murder the guys he didn't like, a guy who couldn't remember whether he had been in Hollywood or liberating Dachau, but who smiled and was cheerful -- even that guy seems a rosy memory compared to the guy whose psyche is currently disintegrating before our horrified eyes.

Some of us -- a lot of us -- really think this is the truth beneath the veneer. Something to do with killing thousands and thousands of people in order to stay popular.

It was a big screen movie. Then a smaller screen DVD or VHS. And has passed into cultdom as the best sendup of 50s horror flicks ever. Still at your larger, better stocked local video shop.

For everyone whining and pissing and moaning about 9-11 (or The Day the Saudis Gave the Bushes an Excuse to Shred the Constitution), here's a point to remember:

I have been in more than a few bars with collection boxes for the IRA Provos, and I have more than a few times put money in those collection cans. And I'm not even Irish. But it seemed to me the struggle was important, that the Irish deserved to be free of their foreign masters. Free the Hunger Strikers in the Maze!

It was a long time before I realized those weren't targets being shot or blown up -- they were people. And a large number of people in the United States were dropping coins in those cans, lifting a pint of Guinness or Harp and solidifying camaraderie with the other people in the saloon by shouting, "Up the IRA!"

(You may not know that while the varied national groups known as "Hispanic" represent the largest source of illegal immigrants in this country, the second largest group of illegals are from Ireland -- free access to Canada, surreptitious transit into the US.)

I know how many despotic murderers, from Saddam Hussein to Colonel Noriega to Fulgencio Batista to Somosa of Nicaragua the governmental "we" has installed, propped up, and helped to kill their own people. There really wasn't much I could do about that then. I did not know of or approve of Donald Rumsfeld giving Saddam Hussein the fixin's to "poison his own people."

But this -- dropping money into a can so that people who have been driven into psychosis could buy guns and construct nail bombs to kill people in London or teenagers in Belfast or churchgoers in Colombia or set car bombs in Omagh or blow up Lord Mountbatten was something I did. I did it personally and intentionally, and even if I didn't understand the implications of what I was doing, whether in for a quarter or in for a grand, I bought a piece of that action. A whole lot of Americans did the same.

So with our history of feeding the fires in the UK, I would have assumed that had Tony Blair been in possession of any balls at all, when Bubba Bush asked him to go along into Iraq, he would have given him a Dick Cheney greeting, i.e., told him to go fuck himself.

Maybe now he wishes he had.

F*ck Big Media: Rolling Your Own Network

If you can read this, you need to read THIS , Mark Pesce's insight to the shift in media and information conduits.

Thanks to Pat Phalen for calling my attention to it.

Is there anything I can add to it? Just to underscore his point -- the Coup d'Fou currently running our country (into the ground) thinks in terms of International Conspiracy, Missile Shields, Empire.. in other words, GIGANTIC ENTITIES. But this whole cycle of terror and trauma which has been used to usurp our rights was caused by 18 assholes with boxcutters.

All the missile shields in the world won't stop a tiny influenza virus.

Small is the new big.

Again.. read this brilliant transcript of Pesce's speech.

Link

I guess I was wrong about who they think they are

"The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.'' "

from Without a Doubt By Ron Suskind in October 17, 2004 New York Times Sunday magazine as quoted in Tom Englehardt's Tomgram in his post: Jonathan Schell on Bin Laden's illusions and ours, as a lead into Schell's article: Invitation to a Degraded World

And here I thought it was Tony Blair who wanted to be Queen Victoria, and Dubya who wanted to be Mommy Barbara.
Not so, apparently. Looks like Dubya is the one who wants to be Her Royal Majesty and Blair now aims for the role of smiling grinning irrelevant consort.

I guess so -- remember the second debate... Dubya retorting to Kerry, saying "All alone? Tell that to Tony Blair."

Link

Coverup? What coverup?

Brad Friedman has posted an article about how Bush and his people are reviewing and removing stupid and embarrassing items from the White House web site.

So what else is new?

Dubya's Harvard Business School Professor, Yoshihiro Tsurumi, remembers Bush for being an extraordinarily bad and offensive student.

He mentioned that Bush would make a stupid statement, and then, if challenged by another student, would deny ever having said it, "even if it was 30 seconds later."

So why wouldn't he and his people rewrite the past now to make it appear to be double-plus good?

Election observer, Florida, 2004

Voting for President, 2004

Robertson Says Bush Predicted No Iraq Toll-- Bush says "Yo' momma -- I never said no sich thang."

Oh, what does this little hissy fit tiff remind me of... some song, folk song... hmmm, maybe I'll remember later:

The evangelical broadcaster Pat Robertson has set off a partisan fight by telling a television interviewer that President Bush serenely assured him just before the invasion of Iraq, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."

Mr. Robertson, offering that account in an interview televised Tuesday night on CNN, said Mr. Bush made the comment when they met in Nashville in early 2003. At that meeting, he said, he warned the president to prepare the public for casualties.

Mr. Robertson, a former marine who...

---Actually, just to keep the record straight, Lieutenant Robertson, who became increasingly more nervous as his ship neared Korea, called his daddy, a US Senator, and said, "Puhleeese, daddy, don't let 'em make me go." Robertson spent the rest of his hitch supplying superior officers stationed in Japan with booze and various other comforts and luxuries, far away from any fighting or any chance of having to join his battalion in that frozen swirling toilet of death.

But, I digress from the wonderful tale:

...White House officials denied that Mr. Bush had ever uttered the remark. Karl Rove, Karen Hughes and Scott McClellan all told reporters in Eau Claire, Wis., that Mr. Robertson was mistaken.

"Of course the president never made such a comment," said Mr. McClellan, the White House press secretary. "The president both publicly and privately was preparing the American people for the possibility of a military conflict and the possibility that sacrifices may be necessary."

Mr. Rove, the president's chief political adviser, said he had attended the Nashville meeting and had not heard such a remark. "I was right there," Mr. Rove said.

And of course, Karl Rove would never even blur the truth, let alone lie to make his Bush-league Boy look better in the public eye...


Ahhh, I've got it.

It's the end of Stackerlee, after that Bad Man Richard Lee is executed for his crimes and goes to Hell, Georgie as a sort of frat-boy version of Stackerlee and Robertson in the role which he created himself -- already down in Hell, always putting on airs, telling everyone he's the Devil himself (which would be believable if he weren't such a whiny small-time punk).

And it would go something like:

Bush said to Pat Robertson
Let’s us have some fun.
You stab me with your pitchfork
and I’ll shoot you with my gun

Georgie said to Pat Robertson,
Put yr pitchfork on the shelf
I’m that bad Bush they call Monkeyboy,
Gonna rule hell by myself.

Yeah, something like that... so go to it boys... while we stand here and watch the fun, contemplating the etymological root of "hypocrite."

Link

Pat Robertson: I warned Bush on Iraq casualties

I have always imagined, were I to do such a movie, I would cast Pat Robertson as the whiney wormtongued demon whose smile is like a grin emerging from a sewer and who pours sugared poison into the ears of all he meets. I have never seen anyone either on the tube or on the big screen better suited to that role.

So it's fun to see him sliming Monkey Boy, now that perhaps Bush isn't the best horse to bet on. But, of course, in his usual way, Robertson is insisting he's NOT being detrimental and is still a loyal supporter.

Every time I've ever seen him speak, seen him as the demonic little shit he is, I think, "Boy, won't this guy be surprised when he gets home and finds out which side he's been on all along."

Or maybe he won't be surprised.

Viciousness, false witness, lying, rumor-mongering, betrayal of allies ... I guess they call it Hell for a reason.

NEW YORK (CNN) -- The founder of the U.S. Christian Coalition said Tuesday he told President George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq that he should prepare Americans for the likelihood of casualties, but the president told him, "We're not going to have any casualties."

"And I warned him about this war. I had deep misgivings about this war, deep misgivings. And I was trying to say, 'Mr. President, you had better prepare the American people for casualties.' "

Robertson said the president then told him, "Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."

The White House had no comment on Robertson's remarks.

Robertson, the televangelist who sought the Republican presidential nomination in 1988, said he wishes Bush would admit to mistakes made.

"I mean, the Lord told me it was going to be A, a disaster, and B, messy," Robertson said. "I warned him about casualties."

The Lord told him it was going to be a disaster and messy.
Sure he did, Pat. Sure he did.
And you warned Monkey Boy waaay back then.
Sure you did, Pat, sure you did.

Link

And now it's come to this, yes it's come to this -- and wasn't it a long way down ... and wasn't it a strange way down." Leonard Cohen Dress Rehearsal Rag

Out in the bush Family values...

Bush Family values ...

Cheney family values ...

Charles Busch family values...

Swing State Stickup --
Pennsylvania cops hunt Bush-face bank robber

--or was it actually Monkey Boy himself, just needed a little pocket cash, y'know, walkin' around money? -- wearing a mask of his own face to cover his own face (how Dada!) just continuing his policy of looting every treasury he can find from Daddy's friends' to Harken Energy to the US Government's and now this:

Bank robber wears George W Bush mask

OCTOBER 18--Police in the battleground state of Pennsylvania are looking for a man who robbed a bank Thursday night wearing a George W. Bush mask. The holdup man, who did not flash a weapon, demanded the money from a teller at a Commerce Bank near York. As seen in the below bank surveillance photos--provided to TSG by the Northern York County Regional Police--the robber wore gloves, a ski hat, and a fixed grin. A police spokesman would not say how much the Dubya doppelganger got away with.

To be fair -- here's the best reason to vote for Bush-Cheney

Because if they win re-election, they won't have to get their friends in Saudi Arabia to stage a "We-told-you-so" terrorist attack on the United States.

Cheney and Bush have both told us that Kerry's election would get us attacked again. And, given their hand-in-glove relationship with with the Saudi's (like the 15 that flew planes into the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon and a field in Western Pennsylvania), they're guaranteeing it. (Gee, you think they have some pull with their pals in the Ben Ladn family?)

You may consider that an outrageous statement, but given the continual manipulation of public fear through threats of terrorism by this venomous duo and their scuttling henchpersons, it seems a lot closer to being likely than any of the bizarre lies they've been coming up about what Kerry said in the debates.

The real issue is this: Do they think it's really acceptable to just stand there straight-faced and tell vicious lies -- or much more terrifying -- do they actually believe that's what Kerry or Edwards or Clinton or Gore or whomever actually said? Meaning they're hearing voices, little dogs telling them to kill Iraqis, angels telling them to drive the French out of France.

Does anyone believe that John Kerry or ANY Democratic candidate for the past 50 years honestly hated America and wanted our country to be defeated? But that's been the Republican line since Richard Nixon crawled out of the slime and started the long process of driving the people with a sense of decency out of the Republican party.

And, regarding the new digression and diversion they all want to stand on a chair and lift their skirts and scream about -- honestly, when a vicious prick like that old Nixon construct Dick Cheney is your father, you've got a lot more problems than someone mentioning your sexual orientation in a rather protective and positive way.

Best reason yet to vote for Kerry

Buchanan Reluctantly Backs Bush

"Despite Pat Buchanan’s stand against the war in Iraq and the ballooning deficit, the conservative icon and onetime presidential candidate officially endorsed President Bush on Monday. For Buchanan, some conservative is better than no conservative, he said in an interview...

Buchanan says if Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry should win, then a “civil war” will immediately break-out for control of the Republican Party – neoconservatives verses conservatives.

Link

Bush 'Genuine' in His Responses, Praised by Supporters -- HUH??

Sure, the last debate was Bush's best performance -- but it was a performance -- as artificial, poorly done, and ultimately, as empty as his promises.

Bush accentuated the lines he'd been told were important (either by God or Karl Rove) with clumsy, high-school theater club type grimaces and eyebrow waggles...

It was like a bad sitcom ...

"That's one of his ... (pause for effect, give a quizzical smile) ... exaggerations."

And I finally could only conclude that his followers are so completely conditioned to watching bad sitcoms, that's what passes for sincerity among them ("Once you learn how to fake sincerity, the rest is easy.") As long as he hits the code words -- "liberal" (boo, negative frowning face) "freedom," "liberty," "democracy," "faith" (smile with inner calm and satisfaction), etc.

I agree with Richard Cohen that in the last debate, Bush's weird routine of making a dumb joke, then giving a little snickering laugh most closely resembled a bad actor playing the mad bomb-maker who is getting even with some injustice or other (forced early retirement, job outsourced to Bangladore, etc) in an action-adventure film.

I think Bush is, and possibly has been for some time, completely insane, which is why it's such a burden for him to appear in daylight in front of anyone but cheering fans, why he seems totally unable to brook any disagreement. (Cheney, on the other hand, just couldn't appear in daylight at all until very recently, when vampire-safe Sun-Bloc PDF 10,000 became available.)

The difference between Bush and Osama ben Ladn? Not much.

Both had daddies who bought them countries to run -- Osama got Afghanistan and the Taliban, Bush got the USA and the GOP.

Both think it's acceptable behavior to terrorize and kill bystanders in some foreign geographical location where each one tinks the local point of view is a personally-directed insult.

Both are momma's boys who turned against their fathers in classic Oedipal acting-out.

Both recruit their followers from deeply frustrated people with laser-narrow focus on one or two issues, people who claim to be religious but really have just opted to play with an ultimate-authority invisible friend since they can't seem to reason out any argument for their point of view but the absolute: "Because GOD said so, that's why!" (To be clear, I distinguish his vocal followers from people witha sincere religious faith that is an actual source of personal and private revelation and sustenance, rather than a club with which to beat others down. Bush's "faith-based" followers seem to be vindictive, craven, greedy -- in other words, about as Christian as Pontius Pilate. And for Ben Ladn's followers, substitute "Because ALLAH wills it, that's why!" and the rest is mirror-image hypocrisy to the Christian version.)

Both have destroyed and/or are in the process of destroying the religious and political structures that allowed them to rise to a position of power.

Both make people who are part of those groups deeply ashamed of what is being done in their name.

Both need to be taken gently by the hand and led to a comfy rubber room where they can spend the rest of their lives contemplating their crimes. It's not exactly "putting them out of their misery," perhaps more like putting them INTO their misery, but it's the one they created for themselves (even if they thought they were creating it for others).

Life without parole may be cruel, but at least it offers the opportunity for repentance.

Link

Open (very brief) letter to George W Bush regarding his war in Iraq:

"If you get to it
And you cannot do it,
well then there you jolly well are, aren't you?"

Lord Buckley

--From the Marine Corps Times, October 15, 2004 -- Mutiny!

Platoon defies orders in Iraq

Miss. soldier calls home, cites safety concerns

A 17-member Army Reserve platoon with troops from Jackson, Miss., and around the Southeast deployed to Iraq is under arrest for refusing a “suicide mission” to deliver fuel, the troops’ relatives said Thursday.

The soldiers refused an order on Wednesday to go to Taji, Iraq — north of Baghdad — because their vehicles were considered “deadlined” or extremely unsafe, said Patricia McCook of Jackson, wife of Sgt. Larry O. McCook.

"Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so."
Bertrand Russell

But apparently not the Army Reservists from Mississippi.

This is Port Chicago all over again, the soldiers saying "There's a limit to how much total disregard for our lives we will take from the brass."

If Colorado passes the initiative to divide electoral votes in proportion to individual voting, we'll see 5 to 10 more states raising the issue in the 2006 election.

Then all we'll have to worry about is Republican scumbags depriving colored folk of their right to vote.

The President Vanishes

Richard Cohen may be auditioning for a writing job with Jon Stewart -- he writes about how good old George, the wise-cracking fellow some people think would be good company -- that George Bush doesn't seem to exist any more. And he does it with pointed perception and more than a small amount of wit:

"Where it has mattered most -- the three debates -- Bush has been wooden, ill at ease and downright spooky. He makes bad jokes, cackles at them in the manner of a cinematic serial killer and has lacked the warmth that he not only once had but that I thought would compensate for a disastrous presidency and give him a second -- God help us -- term. In short, he could take over the Bates Motel in an instant."

Link

If Dick and Lynne Cheney are ashamed of their daughter, that's THEIR problem

Oh they said "We're very proud of her," when her orientation was becoming better known, but they're obviously embarrassed.

It was a very simple statement, and a good one, that sexual orientation is not a matter of choice but inherent in the individual -- in essence "You and Dick Cheney both know a young woman who is a lesbian, and if you ever thought to ask her, she'd tell you that's who she is, not who she decided to become. And then you can look her in the eye and say, 'Sorry, we can't let you have equal legal rights in your life if it involves actual marriage. But we're rich, so you can buy justice when you need it.' "

Simply put, what Senator Kerry was saying to Blinky was this:

"You're really a two-faced hypocritical sonofabitch, aren't you, George? "

Senator Kerry is the first presidential candidate to say it right out loud in the middle of this emerging theocracy:
"We're all God's children."
Whether or not you believe in God, the sentiment is a good one.

Like Dred Scott, whom the anti-choice people love to mention as a code word, people of color were not regarded as actual people nor entitled to the rights and privileges available to all others. They use his name, and even though Monkey Boy obviously knew nothing of the Dred Scott case, (it WAS in the constitution, dummy. That case caused the constitution to be amended) but the principle of the case is EXACTLY the same principle which should afford people of same-sex orientation to the right to marriage.

Dred Scott is more relevant to allowing same-sex marriage than to abortion. So while you were telling all your intolerant low-life supporters not to worry -- you will definitely appoint justices who will try to take the right of choice away from OTHER women (after all, wasn't that a CHOICE you so-called Pro-Life women made yourselves? To follow the preachers and the aspect of God they claim to represent? You chose to do that, right? Or did you just nod meekly and look at your shoes and mumble and go along when you saw the way the mob treats women who choose differently?), while you guaranteed them a shitload of intolerance for the next generation, you were making a real case for the right of any human being to marry any other human being. Period.

But that's pretty much all we can expect from a president who has never read the constitution.

If Senator Kerry is elected, he'll be the first president to say that gay people are actually people, just as hetero people are people. (What a concept! They're people? Human beings? Like ... uhhh ... like us?)

(I watched that debate with a friend who thought Kerry crossed the line with his comment, but agreed with the point being made, and thought that Kerry could have put it more succinctly and safely by saying, "And when did YOU choose, George?" Wish I'd thought of that. Wish Kerry had thought of that.)

US State Department objects to having an office on anti-semitism

US diplomats balk at Jewish bill
By Jill McGivering
BBC's US State Department correspondent

The US State Department has raised objections to a bill approved by Congress that would require it to set up an office on anti-Semitism.

The bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, is expected to be signed into law soon.

It would require the State Department to appoint an envoy to monitor anti-Semitism worldwide, explore its causes, and produce an annual report...

State department officials oppose the bill, saying it is unnecessary. They argue they already have an impressive track record in tackling anti-Semitism and have proved it is a priority...

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said: 'Our feeling was that the issue of anti-Semitism is something that has been important to us, that we have been active on and is adequately covered by our efforts and by all the other reporting that we do.'

In other words: "We're on it -- we just don't want a bunch of kikes tellin' us what to do."

Link

As Oprah Slaps Bush / With 30 states poised to smack down women's rights again, the one true savior emerges

Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle can always be counted on to go so gracefully and wittily and cuttingly over the top straight to the heart of the matter, so to speak:

There was Oprah, doing what she does so freakishly well, cheerleading and extolling and impressing upon, getting women up and getting them angry and demanding that they exercise their hard-won right to vote and demanding that they quit dissing their feminist ancestors, the ones who worked so damn hard for suffrage and for freedom of choice and for the right to tell powerful sexist Republican men where they can shove their repressive sexist antichoice bigotry.

This was her fabulous, much-needed message: Take your rights for granted at your peril, ladies. Move, or else. Choose how you want the laws to treat and respect you and your body -- or someone else, someone who hasn't touched a vagina for 30 years and who thinks sex is only tolerable in the dark, fully clothed and with a respectable prostitute, will choose for you.

Check out the entire column, even better, subscribe to it on line and get your morning eye-opener a few times a week.

Link

FactCheck.org -- Bush Mischaracterizes Kerry's Health Plan

Not only that but more or less everything he says about Kerry.
This site has a long list of the shite Bush shovels.

And aren't they polite to call it "mischaracterizes?"

How about "He lies like a west Texas scorpion in a ditch?"

How about "He's a two-faced, lying, double-dealing lowlife sonofabitch?"

And so is the old bald-headed soulless undead one he rode in on.

And I AM smiling when I say that, podner. Laughing, even.


FactCheck.org

Link

O'Reilly Hit With Sex Harass Suit - October 13, 2004

Maybe, to him, "fair and balanced" means the way you have to do it with one of those wicker basket chairs that hangs from the ceiling...

Female Fox coworker details lewd behavior of cable TV star

OCTOBER 13--Hours after Bill O'Reilly accused her of a multimillion dollar shakedown attempt, a female Fox News producer fired back at the TV star today, filing a lawsuit claiming that he subjected her to repeated instances of sexual harassment and spoke often, and explicitly, to her about phone sex, vibrators, threesomes, masturbation, the loss of his virginity, and sexual fantasies. Below you'll find a copy of Andrea Mackris's complaint, an incredible page-turner that quotes O'Reilly, 55, on all sorts of lewd matters. Based on the extensive quotations cited in the complaint, it appears a safe bet that Mackris, 33, recorded some of O'Reilly's more steamy soliloquies. For example, we direct you to his Caribbean shower fantasies. While we suggest reading the entire document, TSG will point you to interesting sections on a Thailand sex show, Al Franken, and the climax of one August 2004 phone conversation. (22 pages)

Check out the imagined scenarios she tells us he told her -- the man does like to detail his fantasies.

Link

Why would Germany (or any other country come into the coalition?

Maybe because they think, once Bozo the Brain-Dead Chimp is voted out of office, someone with a good idea of what "diplomacy" means might help them all deal with a common threat.

Financial Times
By Hugh Williamson and Gerrit Wiesmann in Berlin
Published: October 12 2004 22:07 |

US, German and Iraqi flagsGermany might deploy troops in Iraq if conditions there change, Peter Struck, the German defence minister, indicated on Tuesday in a gesture that appears to provide backing for John Kerry, the US Democratic presidential challenger."

Mr Struck also welcomed Mr Kerry’s proposal that he would convene an international conference on Iraq including countries that opposed the war if he were to win next month's election.

Germany would certainly attend, Mr Struck said. “This is a very sensible proposal. The situation in Iraq can only be cleared up when all those involved sit together at one table. Germany has taken on responsibilities in Iraq, including financial ones; this would naturally justify our involvement in such a conference.”

Link

Heretics defy Bush -- continue to explore ways in which stem cells promote healing

From Scientific American


SCIENCE NEWS
October 08, 2004

Stem Cells Secrete Healing Chemicals

... A report published today in Science demonstrates a different approach, which rescued mice that otherwise would have died from a genetic heart defect before birth. Instead of replacing the defective cells, embryonic stem (ES) cells released chemical signals that caused the defective heart tissue to grow properly.

Mouse embryos that lack multiple Id proteins die before birth because the wall of the heart is too thin. To buy themselves more time to study the blood vessels, the researchers injected 15 normal ES cells into early mouse embryos. About half of the embryos actually survived past birth, and exhibited normal-looking hearts. “It came as a complete shock to us that they were born. We were just hoping to extend their lives by a day or two,” Benezra says.

You can't bomb beliefs -- Naomi Klein's current article in The Nation

"Muqtada al-Sadr ... still deserves to have his right to publish a political newspaper--not because he believes in freedom but because we supposedly do. Similarly, Sadr's calls for fair elections and an end to occupation demand our unequivocal support--not because we are blind to the threat he would pose if he were actually elected but because believing in self-determination means admitting that the outcome of democracy is not ours to control.

"Even under the best scenario, the current choice in Iraq is not between Sadr's dangerous fundamentalism and a secular democratic government made up of trade unionists and feminists. It's between open elections--which risk handing power to fundamentalists but would also allow secular and moderate religious forces to organize--and rigged elections designed to leave the country in the hands of Iyad Allawi and the rest of his CIA/Mukhabarat-trained thugs, fully dependent on Washington for both money and might.

"This is why Sadr is being hunted... because he is the single greatest threat to US military and economic control of Iraq. Even after Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani backed down from his opposition to the handover plans, fearing civil war, Sadr continued to oppose the US-drafted Constitution, continued to call for the withdrawal of foreign troops and continued to oppose US plans to appoint the interim government rather than hold elections. If Sadr's demands are met and the country's fate is truly left in the hands of the majority, US military bases in Iraq will be in serious jeopardy, as will all the privatization-friendly laws pushed through by Bremer."

Read the entire article here.

"People don't get what they deserve.
They get what they resemble."
William Blake

Time for an Election Campaign Reality Check

So let me get this straight:

The cardinal sin Kerry has committed is going along with the president when he asked for support? Voting for the president's request because he didn't assume the slimy little sonofabitch was straight-face lying? (Ooops, Bush wasn't lying, so he would say -- someone ELSE was responsible for false information. The fact that ANYONE who tried to tell him the facts was publicly castigated and villified and careers were destroyed, oh well, that was just ... what? Psychosis?)

Kerry is trying to show us all how he can be presidential, so he can't come right out and say that Monkey Boy's head is so far up past his anal sphincter, he's looking through his esophagus to his open yelling mouth and imagining he's seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

Reality check:

He's President of the United States and has at his command all the power and authority the position carries with it. (The office has the respect that supports authority even if he personally neither has nor merits any.)

His party is in control of the House of Representatives.

His party is in control of the Senate.

His people are more or less in control of the Supreme Court (there are still some up on the bench with consciences which rebel at the suborning and corruption of the Chief Justice and his cronies.)

So how the fuck is it Senator Kerry's fault that we are down the Rabbit Hole known as Iraq with no way out?

It was and is the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time -- but American soldiers sailors and Marines have always prided themselves at their willingness to go in and straighten out the mess created by some megalomaniacal fool in the White House.

As Bush once said to the UN (and I have no doubt he learned it from Barbara Bush who may well have said it to him when he was a 40-year-old drunken failure), I now say to him:

"Put some calcium in your spine (you little shit)."

Take some responsibility for what you've let Dick Cheney and Karl Roverer tell you to do.

Or as your immortal fellow drunk WC Fields said about someone just like you:

"I could carve a better man out of a banana."

You talk about standing up to al Qaeda -- hell, you can't even stand up to your own reflection in the mirror. It would be too terrifying -- the Dark Night of the Asshole.

Atrios at Eschaton directs us to the Kerry-Edwards web site for this:

Who did he mean when Bush said there were some appointments he wish he hadn't made, that were mistakes?

Because you know that Bush will always find someone else to blame. After all, he's only the President of the United States, appointed by God and Big Tony Scalia, so how could it possibly be his fault? Has to be the doings of those nasty senators from the minority party who went along with him. Or, in this case, the people Dick Cheney made him appoint.

During the second presidential debate, Bush was asked to “give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it.” Bush refused to answer the question directly, but he did imply he was unhappy with someone in his administration: “I made some mistakes in appointing people, but I'm not going to name them. I don't want to hurt their feelings on national TV.”

Ahhh, isn't that nice, he doesn't want to hurt their feelings.
And who are they?

The following is a list of contenders. Their profiles and reasons why they should be fired, publicly humiliated, tarred, feather, and forced out of town on an Amtrak local are at the Kerry-Edwards web site and you can vote for your top pick. Unfortunately, the way it's set up, you can't vote for all of them.

Colin Powell
Condi Rice
Donald Rumsfeld
Paul Wolfowitz
Paul Bremer
John Ashcroft
Tom Ridge
Tommy Thompson
Gregory Mankiw
Elaine Chao
John Snow
Rod Paige
Gale Norton
Dick Cheney

Paperwight's Fair Shot: Dred Scott = Roe v. Wade

Get it? If not, read on -- we're all picking this up via Paperwight:

October 09, 2004

Dred Scott = Roe v. Wade

Some people seem to be a bit boggled by Bush's Dred Scott remark last night. It wasn't about racism or slavery, or just Bush's natural incoherence. Here's what Bush actually said:

If elected to another term, I promise that I will nominate Supreme Court Justices who will overturn Roe v. Wade.

Bush couldn't say that in plain language, because it would freak out every moderate swing voter in the country, but he can say it in code, to make sure that his base will turn out for him. Anti-choice advocates have been comparing Roe v. Wade with Dred Scott v. Sandford for some time now. There is a constant drumbeat on the religious right to compare the contemporary culture war over abortion with the 19th century fight over slavery, with the anti-choicers cast in the role of the abolitionists.

Don't believe me? Here.

Further, Bush has to describe Dred Scott as about wrongheaded personal beliefs, rather than a fairly constricted constitutional interpretation because he needs to paint Roe v. Wade the same way, and he wants 'strict constructionists' in the Supreme Court, so he can't really talk about the actual rationale used in Dred Scott.

I can't emphasize enough how important this is, and how much it needs to be publicized."

And this list of additional references posted to Paperwight's comments:

Yup, the Dred case was just a code-word for abortion, meant for Bush extremists.

Here are some additional links:

http://abortion.netfirms.com/whoseside.htm

http://www.nrlc.org/news/1999/NRL699/slave.html

http://www.sonomacountyfreepress.com/body/holocaust_now_part_1.html

Link

"Look what YOU made me do!"

Bill Maher's New Rule: Everyone has to stop pretending that George Bush is so macho

As this shows, in the long run, best thing every happened to Bill Maher was Capitol Cities/Disney firing him from commercial TV.
Salon.com again -- they're having a very good day.

Because, plainly, he acts like a girl.

Oct. 8, 2004 | Not a woman -- a girl. Not a week goes by when John Kerry isn't attacked because he said something that hurt someone's feelings. According to Bush spokesmen, Kerry lost the first debate because of his 'new insult' to our allies when he said the coalition wasn't genuine. Poland had Lithuania over for a debate party that night, and now they can't look at each other without crying.

All of the attacks on Kerry involve his thoughtless words at the expense of someone's feelings: He hurt the Iraqi prime minister when he said he wasn't legitimate -- the bitch; he hurt the troops in Iraq when he said it was the wrong war at the wrong time -- men!; he hurt the Vietnam vets when he totally broke the girl code and told everybody about their atrocities. And worst of all, he hurt the president's feelings when he laughed at Whoopi Goldberg's jokes.

And another thing about John Kerry: He uses Botox, he spends too much time on his hair, and he's two-faced -- flip-flopper!

'Also, I bet John Kerry didn't deserve any of those medals. I woulda gone to stupid old Vietnam, but I wanted to be a stay-at-home soldier.'

Excuse me, this president isn't resolute: He's on the rag.

He stopped having press conferences, which is basically saying, 'I'm not talking to you.' He couldn't testify before the 9/11 commission without having a man by his side. I'll bet when they have lunch, Cheney orders for him. And then he just eats the salad.

They say Kerry is too sensitive, but they're the ones who turn everything into a big baby mama drama. Bush is the one who looked all crampy and pouty last week: 'It's hard work' -- I kept waiting for him to say, 'If you don't like how I do your shirts, then iron them yourself.'

He even ran for president like a girl in 2000. Promising to 'restore dignity to the Oval Office.' What man gives a rat's ass about restoring an office? A real man thinks the Oval Office lost all its integrity the day Monica Lewinsky stopped coming in there to blow the president.

And then, in the one area -- I'm talking about Iraq -- where he could use being a little in touch with his feminine side, he acts like the typical stupid male, who gets himself lost, won't admit it, and won't stop and ask for directions. No matter that we've already taken 10 wrong turns and are heading for what seems like it could be a cliff -- no, he's not stopping, not listening to anybody, not reading the instructions, just insisting, 'Please, I know what I'm doing.'

'Nuff said.

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Bush's flack backs away from The Bulge

That's right -- The Bulge has gotten so ubiquitous, it now rates capitalization.

(There hasn't been this much press about the Palmdale Bulge in recent times, and that one's going to open up like the jaws of Hell one of these days.)

Andy Card, trying to avoid the Baghdad Bob tag, is diffident about it:

Another update from Salon.com

The rest of the media gathered here in St. Louis may be focused like the proverbial laser beam on the latest job numbers -- the New York Times says jobs are topic 'A, B and C' tonight -- but we're determined to get to the bottom of the Bush bulge.

The latest clarification, explanation or evasion -- depending on your perspective on all this --- comes from White House Chief of Staff Andy Card. We caught up with him in spin alley here, and we asked him whether Bush was wearing a wire at the last debate.

to believe he was wearing a listening device at all.' So what was that tell-tale lump under Bush's suit coat? 'I don't even know what you're talking about. Maybe people didn't have very good eyesight.' Was the president wearing a bullet-proof vest? 'No, he was not, not to my knowledge.' Some are speculating that he was wearing some kind of medical device, like a portable IV machine. How about that? 'Not to my knowledge.'

Card, the pro that he is, quickly spun the conversation to Bush-Cheney talking points. The president is 'a regular guy,' he said. 'Maybe his suit had a little lump in it or something. I'll tell you, he was dressed for the opportunity to talk to the American people, and I am not aware of anything that was extra-ordinary in what he was wearing.'"

I still say Kerry and Charlie Gibson should jump him on stage, pull up his jacket, pull down his pants and let the world see what he's got.

Bulgy, bulgy -- more smoke and mirrors

From Salon.com

The surrogates and spinners on hand for tonight's debate in St. Louis don't agree on much, but they do see eye-to-eye on this: There's virtually no chance that George W. Bush wore a listening device during the first presidential debate.

Kerry campaign spokesman Joe Lockhart told Salon that it is "virtually impossible" that Bush wore a wire last week -- and that if he did, it didn't work very well. "If he had someone talking in his ear, he should have gotten someone better to talk in his ear," Lockhart said.

Asked whether he could categorically deny that Bush wore any kind of listening device, Bush-Cheney spokesman Steve Schmidt said: "It sounds like complete and total nonsense." Sounds like, or is? "Complete and total nonsense," Schmidt said.

--Well, they all remember the attacks on Hilary Clinton after she mentioned the "right wing conspiracy" going after President Bill, and even then it was public knowledge that Richard Mellon Scaife had put up mondo dollars to anyone who was trying to find dirt... so of course they'll say they don't believe it...

When your opponent is living in a vulnerable dream world, you don't want to do anything to suggest you may also be a flake.

In the words of someone who knew a little bit about tactics:

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
Napoleon Bonaparte

Just in case I haven't made it clear...

Rude Pundit is one of my daily delights.

Funny, profane and virulent, he has no love for the Scalia-led Coup d'Fou of the year 2000, or for any signifying jive-ass soul-stealing sonsofbitches at any level and he doesn't care who agrees or disagrees with his posts. Probably doesn't even care that I'm praising him, as he may be the most best universal "fuck you-er" since the legendary Sam Hall, he of the folk song.

Be warned: He uses the kind of language these sociopathic smiling demons deserve ...

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More on Bush's bulge -- but not from Bush's people

No, not the bulge in his flight suit during Emission Accomplished -- we know that was most likely a rolled-up pair of sweat socks -- this is the bulge on his back during the first debate (see earlier posting) -- the one on his back, allegedly a passive transducer (passive -- oh how appropriate) sending voice to a receiver in his ear giving key words, facts, phrases to help him answer questions.

The background, from D-Day to last week, of TV and radio picking up words said just before Bush says them is on isbushwired.com

Here's today's news as reported in Salon.com --

Rory O'Connor at Media Channel.org successfully reached Mark McKinnon, the Bush campaign's media director, for comment.

"I love this. Am tempted to say, 'I cannot confirm or deny,' and let the story get some legs," McKinnon responded by email to O'Connor's inquiry. (As a top media operative for Bush, McKinnon should probably know that the story has already run a marathon through the blogosphere.) "Or, how about, 'Since we put the metal plate in his head, we have had some measure of success with audio transmissions to the President.' Or, 'Yeah, but it clearly broke down during the debate.' Unfortunately, the truth is not nearly as interesting. The answer is, 'The President has never been assisted by any audio signal.'"

While McKinnon was not without a sense of humor in denying the existence of any audio aid, it's intriguing that he said nothing about what that odd little bulge actually might have been.

And there it is --

Ha-ha, no no, don't be silly ...

So what WAS that bulge?

Ooops, look at the time -- I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date... gotta run.

Tristero

Tristero: "The Odds
Courtesy Bill Bennett Memorial Betting Parlor, who compiled the stats.

Probability that:

Tonight's debate will be cancelled due to 'national emergency' .15

Next debate will be cancelled due to 'national emergency' if Kerry clearly wins tonight .95

Bush will storm off the stage in a fury before the debate ends .20

Bush will grimace and smirk .37

Bush will not lose his temper .50

Bush will blatantly lie either about Kerry, the economy, or taxes 1.00

Bush will blatantly lie about all three, above 1.00

Either candidate will mention Abu Ghraib .025

Either candidate will mention Guantanamo .015

Bush will repeat bogus figure of 10 million Afghans registered to vote .95

Kerry will correct bogus Afghan figures .50

Bush will mention Kerry by name more than twice .0005

Kerry will call Bush 'my opponent' or 'Mr. Bush' rather than 'the President' more than twice .0005

Kerry will mention Herbert Hoover in context of job loss .85

Bush will describe the net job losses of the past four years as 'job growth' .99

Bush will charge Kerry with 'class warfare' by proposing that wealthy pay their fair share .90

Kerry will get overly technical in explaining why 'class warfare' is a fallacious charge .50

Bush will win on the substance .00

Bush will win on style and persuasiveness .50

TV Pundits will call the debate for Bush if he lies but doesn't smirk or get visibly angry .90

TV Pundits will call the debate for Kerry if he tells the truth but uses the word a word like 'aggrandize' even once .01

Bush will mention 9/11 and the speech at Ground Zero on 9/12 1.00

The neglect of the country's security by Bush before 9/11 will be mentioned .00003

Bush will actually use the words 'flip-flop' to describe Kerry's position on issue X . 60

Bush's Texas drawl and 'aw shucks' mannerisms will get more pronounced .75

Bush will invoke some God-esque imagery 1.00

Kerry will mention God, other than in closing .60

Bush will make a surprise announcement that Osama has been captured or killed .11

Kerry will compare Bush to Nixon .20

Kerry will layout a plan for issue x, Bush will say he doesn't have a plan, pundits will agree with Bush .99
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 8:18 AM "

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