George Bush, Scared Limp?

"...they were appalled by Strongbow's assertion that any military expedition was merely a disguised sexual sickness, more specifically a profound fear of impotence... Thus armies were raised, he said, because it was likely their raisers could raise nothing else."

Edward Whittemore, Sinai Tapestry

Well, the late Mr. Whittemore was a CIA station chief in Beirut for a decade or two, so perhaps he knew whereof he spoke.

Ok, maybe the reason they diss the blogs so much is that I wasn't the only one to be saying this right out in the open months and months and months ago. HE'S terrified because it's him and his family and his cronies Osama was after, for what THEY have done.

But of course, the clerks and the bookeepers, the children and the working stiffs are the ones who pay for it when the planes come down.

1500+ dead American Military

30,000 American military maimed and/or driven mad, will spend the rest of their lives seriously fucked up, betrayed by penny-pinching policy (Bush & Cheney's pals pinched all the pennies), unable to even get treated without cost at a VA hospital

100,000 + Iraqi civilians dead

8% of the children in Iraq are malnutritive today (TWICE the number as when Saddam Hussein was in power)

THEY (and we know who THEY are) take OUR money to fight what THEY are afraid of.

And anyone starry-eyed enough, or patriotic enough, or, yes, this too -- dumb enough to still believe that the military serves our COUNTRY and not just THEIR PALS, the BAND OF THIEVES of this ADMINSTRATION, people who die for the people who wouldn't even leave their country clubs when their country asked them to go fight in another surreal bunch of stupid death-business. (Let us not forget, despite the corrosive reality-bath of Vietnam, just how starry-eyed and stupid WE were back then, and how young 18 is and was.)

When the aftermath hits, Monkey Boy will need MORE secret service and security forces AFTER his term is (oh pray for the day to come) OVER, when the people who voted for him get to see what he really did, what creatures from beneath slime-coated rocks he fronted for.

It's gonna look like the last scene of the Boris Karloff Frankenstein, the local people of Crawford, finally awake to the fact that this rich kid, this punk who bought his ranch in 1999, has forever condemned the name of Crawford to be a bad joke, and I can imagine those rural Texans carrying torches and pitchforks, advancing on the monster's castle.

Of course, while this is going on, we'll be scrambling in our own locales to deal with the Third World Fiefdom his Pals set upon us, and we'll only read about it in the papers, or maybe watch it on "Film at Eleven."

(The preceding sentence is the standard Post-Patriot Act Disclaimer that asserts I am NOT advocating any such behavior, nor am I planning it -- but having lived inTexas for a few years, I am merely seeing it as a logical and possible response by people who do not take kindly to being used, as they say, "till Hell won't have it.")

William Pitt knows this -- don't marginalize him as either Left or Right, just a man with open eyes and strong stomach. (Even if he IS a couple of years late noticing the obvious, that little boy Georgie Bush is scared of the dark.) Check it out.

A friend, many years ago, talking about Hollywood movie producers, said the reason there are so many terror, crime, murder, etc movies is because incredibly rich people (and he numbered the top dogs in Hollywood among them) spend their time worrying, KNOWING they have it all while others have fuck-all, continually expecting the poor and hungry to swarm up that hill any day now and take away their ill-gotten goods.

The marvelous Heathcote Williams wrote a brief play in the early 1970's about all the beggars and bums in London storming the Palace and throwing their own feces at the royal family.
Prophetic, in a way.

Maybe it can't happen, but we can dream, can't we?

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Some random thoughts and ironies concerning a distasteful subject

1. Texas's Advance Directive Law allows a doctor to override the wishes of a person's legal guardian (parent, husband, wife, etc.) and deny life support when the money runs out if a patient is terminal and incurable. The person (for example Sun Hudson's mother -- her 6 month old suffering from terminal birth defect) then has 10 days to find another facility or the plug is pulled -- as it was this past Saint Patrick's day on the little boy.

The Advance Directive Law was passed in 1999 during GW Bush's goobernatorial administration, and most bloggers seem to lay the hideous "Your money or your life" terms at his feet. Given his track record with Pay and Play contributors, it would seem likely. BUT unfortunately for those of us who despise that subhuman creep, as I read the entire bill, it seems the override section was passed as an amendment in 2003, more under Tom DeLay's influence than Dubya's. (Too bad -- 'cause you know, as I've said before, if I could blame the last Ice Age on Dubya I would.)

2. The irony of the feeding tube issue -- it was Mrs. Schiavo's bulimia that brought on the collapse that put her in this situation. And it was her husband's suit against the doctor who failed to diagnose it that brought him the million dollars he's spent to petition the courts repeatedly to let her go. And a lot of authorities would suggest that parents are more integrally involved in a child's bulimia than the man she marries.

3. The intrusive disgrace of showing those pathetic (and personal and private) clips of the poor woman over and over and over for the ghoulish edification of people whose business is ratings. Her sweet face not there, and if that intrusion doesn't curdle your whey, there's all the film and photos of her stomach. If she were to recover and found out what a side-show freak her parents and the New American Church of Christians-Without-Compassion turned her into for publicity to gain support for their personal agendas, she'd be so embarrassed she'd want to die.

4. It is, of course, purely coincidental that Congressman DeLay has mounted his Warhorse, his Nag of Righteousness, while being seriously investigated for using a Children's Cancer Fund as a conduit for illegal campaign deals and contibutions.

All together now: "Pay no attention to the sleazebag behind the curtain."

5. If those "traditional" people are so goddamned "traditional," then they might remember that in a "traditional" marriage ceremony, the father of the bride "traditionally" gives the daughter to her husband, establishing a "tradition" that the husband is now responsible for her, and not the father or mother any longer.

6. As they do to any young woman who is facing the psyche-rending choice of abortion or full term pregnancy (consider this: the "pro-life" people have MADE their choice -- they have chosen to refuse to have abortion, or have chosen to believe in a religious philosophy that prohibits it -- either way, they've chosen using their own personal standards but they don't want to grant the same right to others), those who scream righteousness in the face of others are out there, this time torturing a man who has had to make a painful and hideous choice, even though usually, they prefer to beat up on terrified 16-year-old-girls in trouble. Thanks from all of us, you fucking so-called Christians. YOUR version of Christ is so far removed from any concept of kindness, forgiveness, peace, or compassion, your behavior more resembles that of Osama ben Ladn than Mother Teresa.

7. And an addendum -- those self-righteous hypocrites in congress who are rubbing the pain of this poor woman and her family all over their mouldy public privates to get their righteousness on, can't even write the law well or clearly enough to make the judges, who will adhere to the law as written, do their vile bidding.

The good news is this -- those theocratic latter-day Cromwellian pieces of detritus that washed up on our shores hundreds of years ago and have done little other than to pervert and debase the concept of Christianity into a thing of meanness and fear and thrones and dominions, are overreaching in their arrogance. So I will write about more cheerful things in coming days because, as Napoleon (a fairly clever strategist and tactition before he, too, overreached and came crashing down) said:

"Never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake."

Mssrs DeLay, Cheney, Bush, Frist, et al, keep on doing what you're doing. And remember what another wise man once said:

"Be careful the asses you kick on the way up --
They're the same ones you'll have to kiss on the way down."

Pucker up, boys.

Oh, another point about parents caring more for their child...

... than a spouse, let us not forget that it was Nicole Brown Simpson's parents -- each time Nicole left O.J. to get away from his temper and his abusive behavior -- they persuaded her to return to him. After all, he has a wonderful good side -- right, he was paying for her sister's tuition and her father's business venture.

Bill (The Gambler) Bennett wondered "Where's the outrage?"

Right here -- I suggest it may be time to pick up the torches and pitchforks, the tar and feathers, and, as they did at the end of the Boris Karloff Frankenstein, head up the hill with outrage in our hearts, only, in this case, Capitol Hill.

Consider this brief portion of Digby's comments...


Hullabaloo: "By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient's family's wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother's wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terry Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.

Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terry Schiavo's care thus far. "

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I re-registered to vote yesterday...

...back to Libertarian. I had been a registered Libertarian for some 20+ years, and only re-reg'd as a Democrat this past election for some sort of something .. moral support for anyone going up against Bush, I suppose.

But the Democrats are such weenies, I couldn't bear it. And even though I have never been able to vote for a Libertarian candidate (I've known too many of them personally, and while they've sometimes been delights to drink and/or toke with, I wouldn't want to damage either their lives or mine by trying to put them into public office), I originally joined to help them get on the ballot, and never found any reason to change. Until this past time, and I was wrong.

Libertarians uphold the ideal.
And, it's not widely known that there is a Libertarian Left.

Most of all -- on the level of receiving justice and satisfaction from my political affiliation, there is deep delight in being able to turn to a Republican and say, 'You're really some kind of a LIBERAL, aren't you?"

Ahhh.

Scientific American: Eye Contact Triggers Threat Response in Autistic Children

Children suffering from autism pay very little attention to faces, even those of people close to them. Indeed, this characteristic can become apparent as early as the age of one, and is often used as a developmental sign of the disease. The results of a new study provide additional insight into why autistic children avoid eye contact: they perceive faces as an uncomfortable threat, even if they are familiar.

--ALL animals perceive direct eye contact as a threat. In the wonderful world of Nature's Law (" ...red of fang and sharp of claw"), anything that looks directly at you is thinking about dinner. And you'll get the same reaction from any kid coming home from school when a big kid or an adult stares directly at him or her.

This suggests the many observors who have theorized that autism is a condition of extreme heightened sensitivity to the environment, rather than one of diminished connection, may be right.

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Scientific American: Starless Galaxy Said Found

Astronomers announced yesterday that they have discovered what is believed to be the first dark galaxy ever detected, a starless mass of spinning matter located some 50 million light-years away in the Virgo cluster of galaxies.


Ahh -- It's that Virgo thing, trying to make it neat and clean. They'll probably find the stars in the closet and under the dark hole, just put there until after company leaves.

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Scientific American: Additive Might Fight Fast-Food Fat

Yeah -- it's called self-control.

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Zimbabwe freeze 'hurts children'

And people think Michael Jackson jacksoning-off some kid is real abuse... I personally, while not condoning the little monster's hands-on games with kids, find killing them a bit more harsh:

The head of Unicef has criticised international donors who cut off aid to Zimbabwe to punish President Mugabe.

Carol Bellamy says Zimbabwe's children suffering the most from attempts to send signals to the Mugabe government.

One child dies every 15 minutes from an Aids-related illness in a country that has seen the sharpest rise in child mortality, the Unicef head said.

But two leading donors - the United States and the World Bank - have disputed the accusation.

Hmmm, THERE's an ungodly duo -- they say the United States but what they mean is the Coup d'Fou currently laughing their way over the precipice.

Unicef says one child in eight dies before the age of five in Zimbabwe - a rise of 50% since 1990, mostly due to the HIV/Aids crisis.

Zimbabwe receives an average of just $4 per HIV-infected person compared with $74 elsewhere, Ms Bellamy told reporters in Johannesburg on her last tour of Africa as head of Unicef.

"The world must differentiate between the politics and people of Zimbabwe," she said.

"Some 110 Zimbabweans under the age of 15 will become infected with HIV/Aids today. Another 110 will be infected tomorrow."

On top of that, 160,000 children will experience the death of a parent this year - adding to the generations of children already orphaned because of HIV/Aids.

Unicef accused two of the main HIV/Aids donors - the US President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief and the World Bank's Multi-Country HIV/Aids programme - of giving no support to Zimbabwe for 2004-2005.

The World Bank's John Donaldson said the Bank did not loan money to Zimbabwe because it did not pay its debts - Harare was $335m in arrears as of last month, he said.

But he added that financial and political concerns were often intertwined in such cases.

"There is a dilemma you have in countries like this - you still have poor people and development needs," he told the BBC News website.

Sounds like Wolf O'Witless is the perfect candidate for the World Bank's next leader, after all, he brought one day of voting and more than 100,000 dead in 700+ days of bombings, murder, and mayhem to Iraq because he didn't like the man Richard Nixon and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney put in office a while before.

Mr Donaldson, a senior spokesman for the Bank's Africa regional office, said the Bank "cannot, nor would we make payments to the government there", but that it did work through other agencies such as UNAids and the World Health Organisation "to address the profound HIV/Aids problem".

A spokesperson for President Bush's global Aids coordinator said Zimbabwe had received money from his relief programme.

Elissa Pruett was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying Zimbabwe received $16m from the fund in 2004 and would receive $20m in 2005.

Zimbabwe lost favour with donors because of the political problems that began with President Mugabe's programme of land distribution in 2000.

Mr Mugabe has been accused of manipulating food aid for political advantage.

Parliamentary elections are due in Zimbabwe on 31 March.

So let's hope the Bushwah puppet gets elected so the people who live there can get some relief from our method of 'liberating' them and soon enough that there are still some children left alive.

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Liberal? You don't know the meaning of the word "Liberal."

And don't even ask me about people who call themselves "conservative."

Liberal -- used to mean people who chose to be tolerant of other people's points of view, other people's beliefs, ways of life, etc. Liberal people were people who thought it was a good thing to let other people live their lives as they see fit. Even help them with some supports. It did NOT mean helping people with supports at the cost of them living their lives according to their own consciences.

An old friend once said "Tolerant means you stink but I don't mind holding my nose." That was his opinion and he may have been right. But he was an ethical man and as much as he DID mind holding his nose, he did it because he recognized that live and let live was the only sane code.

Conservatives -- well they used to be people who held that conserving was a good thing -- don't piss away all your money, whether personal or governmental, you don't piss away the topsoil or the forests or the rivers, and under it all -- you don't interfere in people's personal lives. Their point of view as to what was good, vital important for the country differed from those of the liberal persuasion -- the Conservatives believed strong economic health and vitality was the most essential thing of all -- that businesses and farms and suchlike must be allowed to be run by their owners and rise and fall on their own merits, i.e., the merits accepted in the marketplace.

The Liberal point of view was that such things were fine -- let the businesses and corporations thrive, but only so long as people unable to compete in that marketplace were protected from eviction and starvation and injury and disease, workers were given a decent wage and enough benefits to have a decent life, and that businesses did not destroy the health and welfare of either the people or the communities.

Today, NEITHER of them seem to have a clue as to those meanings.

The Liberals (i.e., Democrats pretending they still have an idea as to what their party is/was about) wouldn't piss on a man on fire without demanding the right to check his or her home situation to see if perhaps they happened to have some piss hidden away they weren't using, but only if that piss had been inherited from his parents. Rather, it's not that they WOULDN'T -- they would strongly advocate the pissing, but ONLY under those certain conditions. Making rules intended to cover all possible situations, needing to SOLVE THE PROBLEM once and for all, even though social things change, move, balance and unbalance.

The Republicans wouldn't piss on a man on fire, period. Not unless he was properly religious. Or a pal and/or major contributor to the Cosa Mucosa we call our currently powerful band of slippery and slimy thieves. No welfare -- unless it's a big business that gave them a lot of money to help them get in. There was a time that conservatives were publicly religious only in the sense of common decency, i.e., NO conservative would have EVER allowed scum like Tom DeLay call himself either Republican or Conservative. And even when circumstances demanded a serious amount of fire-prevention pissing, the Republican/ Conservatives would have done it without demanding the people receiving this liquid blessing could prove they were living the proper life, as defined by the money and religious powers with their hands up the ass of the sock-puppets in the White House and Congress. But their fatal flaw -- they need to make rules intended to cover all possible situations, needing to SOLVE THE PROBLEM once and for all, even though social things change, move, balance and unbalance.

This country, as it exists today, is not being directed by vision, although there might be one or two visions out there a bit more noble than "take it all and run." The country is being run by fear and anger and hatred. People try to simplify this phenomenon by saying "they hate anyone different from themselves." Not exactly.

They are terrified that the absolutist crap they've been spewing all along might not be absolutely true-- telling everyone that THIS and ONLY THIS is the way life should be lived, THIS is what God wants you to do, THIS is what God tells you NOT to do -- that we may be weak and finite but I, the Preacher, knows exectly what the infinite, transcendent, omniscient GOD has on HIS mind (meaning, as long ago was discussed in The Realist, God must have a Willy if He is to be considered HE).* They are terrified that what they believe may not be universally true for EVERYONE, only true for themselves.

Or, on the other hand, the Liberals creed that we must let every person and point of view flourish has lost any sense of standard or criteria so sociopathic serial killers are made not born so you can't really hold them responsible. Everyone has a right to his or her own point of view, and as deconstructionists, EVERYONE ONE OF THOSE POINTS OF VIEW IS TRUE AND CORRECT. Except that anyone who disagrees with that is vile and should be silenced forthwith.

In other words, the possibility of a quantum universe in which all things are possible, perhaps even, as William Burroughs put it -- "Nothing is true, everything is permitted," scares the living crap out of all of them until they decide on one side to lay down and forego any standards at all, and on the other side to deny, deny, deny, scourge, assault, and hunt for traitors, turning Jesus into a pumped-up revenge-seeking kick-ass Protestant redneck, 10" uncut .

Consider this: these are the people who come to us to represent them, who make laws, determine allocation of billions and billions of dollars, and yet they piss our money and their time away investigating baseball players because they consider baseball players to be role models for youth, BUT THEY DO NOT CONSIDER THEMSELVES TO BE ROLE MODELS OR TO HAVE TO LIVE UP TO THE STANDARDS REQUIRED OF PEOPLE IN SUCH POSITIONS.

So they're not going to do it.

Which means we're going to have to do it.

Develop and increase the vision of what we can be -- as individuals and as a society, what we want to be, and choose to have that and not one goddamn bit less, no matter how many second-rate salesmen make us promises.

It is our own promises to ourselves we want to manifest, not some Blue Sky scheme with a devil's clause thrown in in the small print.

Remember this, whenever someone becomes a candidate and asks for your vote -- there is only one unchangeable and absolute law of the universe:

In every group, there's always one guy who doesn't get the joke.
That guy runs for public office.



*(Robert Anton Wilson in one of The Realist's first issues)

Public version of Saddam capture was fiction

Is any additional comment needed here?


RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, March 9 : A former U.S. Marine who participated in capturing ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein said the public version of his capture was fabricated.

Ex-Sgt.Nadim Abou Rabeh, of Lebanese descent, was quoted in the Saudi daily al-Medina Wednesday as saying Saddam was actually captured Friday, Dec. 12, 2003, and not the day after, as announced by the U.S. Army.

"I was among the 20-man unit, including eight of Arab descent, who searched for Saddam for three days in the area of Dour near Tikrit, and we found him in a modest home in a small village and not in a hole as announced," Abou Rabeh said.

"We captured him after fierce resistance during which a Marine of Sudanese origin was killed," he said.

He said Saddam himself fired at them with a gun from the window of a room on the second floor.Then they shouted at him in Arabic: "You have to surrender. ...There is no point in resisting."

"Later on, a military production team fabricated the film of Saddam's capture in a hole, which was in fact a deserted well," Abou Rabeh said.

Abou Rabeh was interviewed in Lebanon.

- -- Copyright 2005 by United Press International.

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Can't call 'em whores -- they're neither honest nor hardworking enough ...

As one San Francisco hooker said, many years ago in an interview, "We're not selling anything that doesn't belong to us -- and there isn't a businessman or a politician who can say the same."

We expect Republicans to vote for something like this -- Republicans believe the health of the corporate economy is essential for the health of the overall economy and welfare of the country. Democrats, on the other hand, espouse the belief that compassion for and assistance to those who, in a capitalist game, get pushed off the board like taken chess pieces, is essential for the economic and moral health of the country.

Whores allow their own bodies to be used as a means of making a living.

Politicans buy and sell other peoples', so:

Here's a list of the Democratic party sell-out sonsofbitches who decided it was easier (and/or more profitable to them in reagrd to their careers) to vote for a bankruptcy bill that guarantees those less economically fortunate will be treated like unwilling organ donors in China if they dare to get sick, lose their jobs, or pile up some credit card debt and THEN get sick or lose their jobs.

To these worthless sellout scumbags flying under the flag of FDR and others, I can only say:

"We thought you were human beings, decent people, but I guess it turns out you were just vicious self-serving sonsofbitches all along. May anal fissures and gastric disorders follow you all the days of your lives and may you find yourselves completely unable to control the angry noisy flatulence that is no more than the rotting gasses of your corruption escaping from your sack of putrid meat. Whether it comes out anally as loud embarrasing farts or orally as your lying sleazy campaign promises and Senate speeches, I can only hope even the dumbest in our society recognize it for what it is.
We believed in you, that you would protect us from the Bush-League Plunderers, but you betrayed us."

The Democratic Senators voting for the New Improved, Kiss-the-Ass of the CCCCC (Credit Card Companies Contributing to their Campaigns) Bankrupcy Bill:

Max Baucus
Evan Bayh
Joe Biden
Jeff Bingaman
Robert Byrd
Tom Carper
Kent Conrad
Daniel Inouye
Tim Johnson
Herb Kohl
Mary Landrieu
Blanche Lincoln
Ben Nelson
Bill Nelson
Mark Pryor
Harry Reid
Ken Salazar
Debbie Stabenow

---And what?
The only surprise on the list here is that Little Joey Lieberman isn't on it -- guess he's too busy kissing George W's ass personally to pull his nose out of the crack long enough to sell out the Democratic voter base.

Megalomania -- it rhymes with Mesopotamia

Bush Nominates Weapons Expert as Envoy to U.N.


WASHINGTON, March 7 - President Bush on Monday chose John R. Bolton, a blunt-spoken conservative known for his sharp skepticism of the United Nations and international diplomacy, as the new American ambassador to the world organization.

Administration officials said his appointment would strengthen efforts to hold the United Nations to effective standards. But the nomination brought expressions of concern from many diplomats speaking on the condition that they not be identified by name or country, many of whom noted that Mr. Bolton had been scathing in his criticism of the United Nations.