"I don't care if it rains or freezes/
Long as I've got my chocolate jesus..."

NEW YORK (AP) -- A planned Holy Week exhibition of a nude, anatomically correct chocolate sculpture of Jesus Christ was canceled Friday after Cardinal Edward Egan and other outraged Catholics complained.

The ''My Sweet Lord'' display was shut down by the hotel that houses the Lab Gallery in midtown Manhattan. Roger Smith Hotel president James Knowles cited the public outcry for his decision.

The reaction ''is crystal clear and has brought to our attention the unintended reaction of you and other conscientious friends of ours to the exhibition,'' Knowles wrote in the two-paragraph cancellation notice.

Matt Semler, the gallery's creative director, resigned in protest.

The six-foot sculpture was the victim of ''a strong-arming from people who haven't seen the show, seen what we're doing,'' Semler said. ''They jumped to conclusions completely contrary to our intentions.''

They think they own the copyright on Jesus and any and all images of same -- same as with the African Madonna with elephant dung representing magical fertility, but which Rudy Guiliani decided was an attack on the Catholic Church (as if there would be anything wrong with that as done by an art work and not via vandalism in a society dedicated to free speech. I still remember the young sociopaths coming after me screaming "Faddah said you killed our lord.")

What they actually do is devalue Jesus, turning him into a keychain ornament and the doctrine and dogma into a product -- a video game, actually -- and the Holy Roman Church into a particularly vicious Wal-Mart, selling indulgences to those who will toe the line.

In the words of Voltaire:

"As long as men believe in absurdities,
they will continue to commit atrocities."

On the other hand, when the dead Jew on the cross says "This is my body you eat..." and it's CHOCOLATE! Hey, ok. Might bring a few people back to the church.

And those darn Democrats and their deadlines -- the insurgents are just waiting until we pull out?

What'll they do then? Nuke themselves?


Bombs Kill at Least 104 in Shiite Areas
The Associated Press

Thursday 29 March 2007

Baghdad - Multiple suicide bombers struck in predominantly Shiite markets in Baghdad and in a town north of the capital, killing at least 104 people and wounding scores on Thursday - the day that new U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker took office.

Two of the suicide bombers struck a market in the Shaab neighborhood of northeastern Baghdad at 6 p.m., killing at least 61 people and wounding 40, police and security officials said.

About the same time, three suicide car bombers attacked a market in the town of Khalis north of Baghdad, killing at least 43 people and wounding 86, according to police and officials in the predominantly Shiite town.

I'm not going to argue right or wrong of this war...

...whether it was a good thing gone bad or a bad thing doomed from the start, or even a good thing that just needs more time to unfold ---

What's unseemly is the behavior of the putative leaders of our county (Prez and Veep, appointed by patronage receivers on the Supreme Court in 2000, despite losing the election; schemed in on th re-election in 2004 by the simple device of too few voting machines in Darktown areas, making people of color, who tend to vote for the other guys, wait in cold rain for up to 6 hours -- in other words, the Coup d'Fou).

Whining like little punk'd prison bitches the minute they don't get what they want.

Bush-wah throwing a drunken tantrum and stumbling over his own hostility -- maybe next he'll try holding his breath until he turns blue and then mommy and daddy will give him back the country he thinks he owns.

Cheney still denouncing anyone who DARES to disagree with him.*

Bill Maher made an interesting comment to one Mr Frum, right-wing defender of the faith, asking the question, in effect "Why should the people who have been wrong on every fact of the war from the beginning, be lecturing us now on how to continue?"

Cheney was successful, turned over the US Treasury to his bosses, even while continue to accept blood money-bribes from them.

Bush -- well, as the late Molly Ivins once pointed out -- he's never followed through or been successful at anything he's ever attemtped -- so, we can ask, why should we assume that THIS TIME he'll be someone else?

IT IS JUST PLAIN EMBARRASSING FOR AMERICA THAT THEY
WHINE AND WHIMPER WHEN THEY DON'T GET THEIR WAY.

CHICKENSHIT.

BIG BABIES.

LOSERS SPIRALLING DEEPER INTO FLOP SWEAT.

So, to those two and all their pals -- stand up and take it like the big tough men you pretend to be.

If you need a role model or two to learn how to do it -- watch the women of the Democratic Party.

They took their lumps when they had to and are now bringing down the hammer -- and they're doing it with a lot more style and class and strength than you two finger pointers ever did.

Just goddamn embarrassing whimpering whining little shits.


"People don't change -- they only stand more revealed."

William Blake


As I said -- goddamn embarrassing whimpering whining little shits.


-----------------------

*Vice President Dick Cheney on Saturday accused the Democrat-led House of not supporting troops in Iraq and of sending a message to terrorists that America will retreat in the face danger.

"They're not supporting the troops. They're undermining them..."

(Tell us about Ronnie "The God" Reagan who just turned tail and ran when a bomber killed more than 270 Marines in Beirut -- UNARMED by order -- and he was right to do it because they didn't belong there -- and if they were there, they needed more than empty rifles and spitballs. Tell us all about your hero. At least he didn't make excuses. Not like some whining whimpering finger-pointing little shit.)

People are actually thinking about the environment, courtesy of Al Gore and those people who are attacking him, so...

...it seems an appropriate time to re-post this piece:

78 Reasonable Questions to Ask about Any Technology

STEPHANIE MILLS

Ecological

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

Social

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

Moral

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

Aesthetic

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

Practical

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

Ethical

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

Vocational

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

Political

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

Metaphysical

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

78. Does it reflect cynical or linear thinking?

The Headline:

Bush: Dems Should Drop Partisan Politics

Sure thing, Monkey Boy -- just as soon as you stop ordering the murder of hundreds of thousands of people who never harmed any of us.

Just as soon as you stop wasting the lives of thousands of Americans who were ACTUALLY WILLING to serve in the military.

Is he f&&%king crazy or what?

Alzheimer's?

No short-term memory?

Brain Damage from Drug use?

(He was OBVIOUSLY drunk when he gave his "they'll tell the truth -- just not under oath or with a transcript or in public.")

Pointing a finger at the Democrats whose first exercise in backbone in 6 years made him cry.

Calling THEM partisan. But how could they do that -- how DARE they do that to the rich kid who always is supposed to get everything he wants, and never has to work for it or justify it?

MOMMY!!!

Even Stalin wasn't stupid enough to think people would believe something like that.

In the words of the late Howard Gossage --

"The man is trying to work his way up to being a horse's ass -- but he hasn't got what it takes.

And the evil scumbag monsters providing all the high explosives that are killing and maiming our military in Iraq?

Looks like it's not Iran after all -- it's us.
Well, not me.

I don't know who MADE them,
but I sure know who allowed the bad guys to have them --
Donald Rumsfeld, who waved off the munitions looting three years ago as "Things happen."

Just wasn't important enough to you, was it Donnie?
All those eyes and arms and legs.
After all, they weren't YOUR arms and legs and eyes.


Rot in Hell, Redrum.

March 22,2007 | WASHINGTON -- Explosives looted from Iraq munitions sites will likely continue to support terrorist attacks throughout the region, a congressional report said Thursday, finding that some sites were still not secured more than three and a half years after the war started.

Failure to guard the sites "has been costly," the Government Accountability Office report said, noting looted munitions are being used to make roadside bombs, the No. 1 killer of U.S. soldiers in Iraq.

Quoting from previous Defense Department reports, the GAO study says widespread looting occurred after the fall of Baghdad in early 2003 because war planners didn't put enough troops into the country to secure weapons depots and because officials incorrectly assumed, among other things, that Iraqi soldiers would surrender and help with security.

The report recommended that the Pentagon do an Iraq-wide survey of unsecured sites and factor already identified lessons learned into future war planning.

Defense officials said Thursday they would have no comment beyond what the department said in the report. That is that commanders are aware of the problem, have done similar surveys over the past three years and don't have the manpower for a new one without harming the war effort.

The report is an unclassified version of a classified study compiled from November 2005 through October 2006. At the time it was completed, U.S. commanders in Iraq "stated that some remote sites have not been revisited to verify if they pose any residual risk, nor have they been physically secured."

"Estimates indicate that the looted munitions will likely continue to support terrorist attacks throughout the region," the report said. The military "has taken many actions" in response to the problem but they're only "good first steps" that need to be encased in procedures for the future, it said.

Government Accountability Office http://www.gao.gov

The lying sonsofbitches inthe White House are sooo co-operative

Big news -- like we didn't know:

-- The White House will allow key presidential aide Karl Rove and former counsel Harriet Miers to be interviewed by committees probing the firings of U.S. attorneys, but they will not testify under oath, Rep. Chris Cannon says

In other words -- sure, we'll show up,
but don't expect us to tell the truth.

Let's see what Senator Leahy has to say about that.

In the words of the Late Lord Buckley :

"If you get to it

And you can NOT do it

There you jolly well are, aren't you?"

Jonah and the Whale

The Khalid Sheik Mohammed Deal

Our guys said -- "We need to take the heat off of our guys -- Scooter Libby, Iraq, Alberto Gonzales, Ben Laden still running around loose, and all the other stuff that's not supposed to catch up with us until we're out of office, so you confess and we make a deal."

"You can't get anything out of me with torture, you know that, and you can't bribe me ... but there's one thing..."

"What?"

"You agree to stop using that fucking photograph that looks like you just dragged me out of a dumpster..."

"Well we did, remember?"

"Doesn't matter. How do you think my mother feels? Stop using that photograph and I'll confess to anything you got."

"9-11?"

"Sure. And 10-11 and 7-11 -- those slurpies are criminal ... hell, I'll confess to trying to kill Jimmy Carter if you want. Anything that makes me look tough without making me look like I live in a sewer. And convince Ben Laden he shouldn't have dumped me as too crazy to be a suicide bomber."


And the deal was done.


And of course, the Feds went back on it.

Theme song for the BUSH-WAH Fantasy

When I hear his bully boys talk about how, in 50 years, with the Middle East transformed into American Protectorates, running democratic elections, freely choosing from among the candidates we allow them to have, people will all look back at George W Bush as the GREATEST.

Funny how that sort of megalomania is remembered in history, oh their names are remembered -- Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Mao Tse Tung, Stalin, Batista, Castro, Somoza, et al -- creepy fantasists who didn't care how many people died if there was the merest chance they'd be one of the BIG SHOTS.


Every time I look at photos or news footage of him, cold cold eyes looking out from behind a mask that's become increasingly more difficult to contort into a smile -- the eyes so cold they remind of nothing so much as Second City's Dave Thomas' terrifyingly accurate impersonation of Bob Hope working a crowd -- cold, calculating, manipulative -- except that Mr Hope (1) did it to make people laugh,* and (2) was able to make his act work.


And so thinking ahead 50 years (if that's even conceivable let alone possible) and the wreckage still being cleaned up from the madness of Boy George, I think of Billy Joel's song on 52d Street --- BIG SHOT (You Had To Be a Big Shot, Dincha?")**

I'm not the world's biggest Billy Joel fan, but he sure knew how to spot a phony with a swagger.

************************

* Monkey Boy ALSO makes people laugh, but AT him and not WITH him, and laughs filled with hatred and contempt -- a true showing of the teeth.


**
"...You had the Dom Perignon in your hand
And the spoon up your nose...

Because you had to be a big shot, didn't you
You had to open up your mouth
You had to be a big shot, didn't you
All your friends were so knocked out
You had to have the last word, last night
You know what everything's about
You had to have a white hot spotlight
You had to be a big shot last night"

And up pops Arlen Spectre, blowing crap in our eyes

(... yeah, I know I'm using the alternative spelling, the James Bond one.)

So, here comes old Mr. "Warren Commission Single Bullet Theory" trying to mend Republican fences after he was so treasonable as to actually make a stand on principle --

and he's spouting the party-line bullshit about US Attorneys serving at the pleasure of the president, and how Clinton replaced ALL of his...


Well so did Reagan, and so does every NEW president, and in fact the attorneys always put in their resignation whenever a new prez comes in, so that's just crap.


The point about the uproar, which the Bushwah Boys are trying to obscure is that these firings were done to try to mislead voters and shift the election -- except for the Attorney who ran down Duke Cunningham's received payoff and was on the doorstep of Rep. Jerry Lewis.

The point?

Obstruction of Justice ... Interfering with a Criminal Investigation ... using political pressure to force an attorney to file fals charges (in New Jersey) and to do it BEFORE Election Day...


Pete Domenici the felon on that last one.

As has been said and is worth repeating, the majority going to the Democrats in this last election (wouldn't have if Dominici has been successful), and despiste being full of the same chicken-shit scaredy-cat greeheads as the Republicans, means one thing:

SUBPOENA POWER

Against all fear; against the weight of what,

For lack of worse name, men miscall the law;

Against the tyranny of Creed, against the hot,

Foul creed of priest, and Superstition's maw;

Against all men-made shackles, and a man-made Hell ---

Alone - at last - unaided - I REBEL!

-Talbot Mundy*, 1914

-------------------------

*Birth name -- William Lancaster Gribbon

aka

"Makundu Viazi ("White Arse")"

"Talbot Chetwynd Miller Mundy (Son of Earl of Shrewsbury)"

"Thomas Hartley"

"Walter Galt"

------------------------

Some of his works:

The Tros of Samothrace Series (Tros, Helma, Liafail, Helene, Queen Cleopatra, Purple Pirate)

The Jimgrim Novels

and more...

--------------------

Materials Toward a Bibliography of the Works of Talbot Mundy

may be downloaded as an ebook for free (in the United States) from Project Gutenberg

-----------------------------------

"I have conversed with many Priests;
and some were honest men, and some were not,
but three things none of them could answer:

if their God is all-wise, what does it matter if men are foolish?

And if they can imagine and define their God,
must he not be smaller than their own imaginations?

Furthermore, if their God is omnipotent,
why does he need priests and ritual?"

Talbot Mundy in OM, The Secret of Ahbor Valley -- 1924

Who says true folksinging is dead -- here's a song from the 21st century

The wonderful Patty Griffin wrote and sang it (On The Impossible Dream CD)

COLD AS IT GETS

To the end of the earth

I search for your face

For the one who laid

all our beauty to waste

Threw our hope into hell

and our children to the fire

I am the one who crawled through the wire

There's a million sad stories

on the side of the road

strange how we all

got used to the blood

Millions of stories

that will never be told

silent and froze in the mud

I know a cold as cold as it gets

I know a darkness

that's darker than coal

A wind that blows

as cold as it gets

Blew out the light of my soul

I dream in my sleep

I dream in my days

Of some sunny street

not so far away

where up in a window

a curtain will sway

And you and I'll meet down below

You and I''ll meet down below

I know a cold as cold as it gets

I fight a war I may never see won

I live only to see you live to regret

Everything that you've done.*

The eternal nitpicking editor only regrets Ms Griffin using the word "live" twice in the third line of the final quatrain and is presumtuous enough to suggest one way to rewrite it might be "I live only to see you FINALLY regret")


and here I am, nit-picking one of the greats.

She's as dark as Dick Farina, and as bright as Bonnie Raitt.

-----

*Copyright 2004 Almo Music Corp./One Big Love Music (ASCAP)

---------

China Approves Property Law, Strengthening Its Middle Class

New York Times 3-16-07

How lovely, China finally gets a Middle Class, and the Bush-wah horde of plundering locusts is in the final stages of destroying the one America used to have.

And the wheel goes round and round.

A song from 40 years ago -- remind you of anyone?

Bold Marauder

Richard Farina / 1966

It's hi, ho, hey, I am the bold marauder!
It's hi, ho, hey, I am the white destroyer!

For I will buy you silver and gold and I will bring you treasure,
And I will bring a widowing flag and I will be your lover;
And I will show you grotto and cave and sacrificial altar,
And I will show you blood on the stone and I will be your mentor.
And night will be our darling and fear will be our name.

It's hi, ho, hey, I am the bold marauder!
It's hi, ho, hey, I am the white destroyer!

For I will take you out by the hand and lead you to the hunter,
And I will show you thunder and steel and I will be your teacher;
And we will dress in helmet and sword, and dip our tongues in slaughter,
And we will sing a warrior's song and lift the praise of murder.
And Christ will be our darling and fear will be our name.

It's hi, ho, hey, I am the bold marauder!
It's hi, ho, hey, I am the white destroyer!

For I will sour the winds on high and I will soil the rivers,
And I will burn the grain in the fields and I will be your mother;
And I will go to ravage and kill and I will go to plunder,
And I will take a Fury to wife and I will be your father.
And Death will be our darling and fear will be our name.

It's hi, ho, hey, I am the bold marauder!
It's hi, ho, hey, I am the white destroyer!

Debra Saunders -- knee-jerk right reaction as usual

JOINT CHIEFS of Staff Chairman Gen. Peter Pace ... "homosexual acts between individuals are immoral." ... critics branding Pace as a bigot, and demanding an apology.

Stop the presses: Someone in the military has issues with homosexuality. Is this a big story?

Some Americans think homosexuality is a sin. Who knew? They even dare say as much in public. Apparently, American media believe something must be done about that. We can't have people expressing their religious beliefs in public, now can we?"

God Ms Saunders, you sure do roll over for the Republicans when you'd be ripping flesh if a Democrat did something equally illegal ---

There is a point, and it's not freedom of expression. A general officer is prohibited by law from making public political and religious pronouncements. General Potted Plant is not allowed to criticize the Commander-in-Chief (not that he would).

We do NOT pay him to make moral and religious pronouncements.

If it's legal for him to do so when we're paying him to adhere to the UCMJ, then it should be equally proper to okay Mayor Guiliani's absolute insistence (from a few years back) that there be public financing of abortion.

I don't want to hear Tom Cruise or John Travolta's opinion of Anna Nicole Smith or Post-partum depression. Nothing I can do about that except avoid the journalists who love that stuff.

But as a taxpayer, I CAN object to the Chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff parroting his immature and inappropriate spouting of religious and immature phobic attitude about someone else's morals.

We pay him to kill people -- and HE'S UPSET ABOUT GAY PEOPLE and WHAT THEY MIGHT DO?

There's a very unpleasant side to what happens when military people declare an "us-and-them" situation, when they stand up like clowns and say "We're good and they're evil." It's damn near a license to kill.

Maybe that old thing about a rifle being a substitute penis is true, for all I always thought it crap.

We don't make fun of him dressing up like the missing member of The VIllage People with all his bright colorful bling on his costume, so who the hell does he think he is except some Bozo Lifer who sucked up enough to get promoted away from his total failure as a General Officer in Iraq.

He broke military law with that statement and should be court-martialled for sedition, regardless of whether anyone agrees with his statement or not.

Amazing -- a U.S. Senator actually talks straight to the point -- is anyone listening?

Thanks to my friend Pat for passing this along --

Joe Biden in the Senate yesterday,

cutting through the fog or war and the crap of spin to nail it dead center:



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v10p8vwF5UA

A little Ides of March curmudgeon-osity

1. I know deadlines are tough in the daily newspaper bidness, but would be nice to have some basic facts straight. Today's SF Chronicle, Christopher Heredia undermines a very good article on Lake Merritt development by putting an incorrect statement in his lead sentence:

"The long-sought long-planned rejuvenation of Oakland's natural jewel -- Lake Merritt..."

Too bad because the rest of the article is quite good, but Lake Merritt (known as Merritt's Lake for many years until it was actually, formally named) is an artificial tidal lake, donated, dredged, and built by Dr. Samuel Merritt (who got it from Sr Peralta, whose land it was originally), in order to keep San Pablo Ave -- also land granted by Sr Peralta -- from flooding in the winter rains, it being used to drive livestock north to the railhead.


2. Jon Carroll -- I am a regular reader and a long-time fan (going all the way back to one of his articles in RAGS in 1972 or thereabouts) even of -- and perhaps especially of -- his cat columns, so I'm not actually correcting an incorrect statement, but merely adding some background aspects of that info, which lack of space, no doubt, prevented from being included (it was not the subject of the column, merely the introductory premise) ---

In writing about Easter and Eggs and Bunnies, he points to those two traditions -- which have nothing to do with Jesus -- as holdovers from the ancient Spring Festivals. True enough.

The eggs -- definitely springtime-ish, but going back to Passover Dinner (The Last Supper) and the tradition of eating eggs because egg-laying fowl were not yet domesticated in any meaningful way, so that time of the year was the ONLY TIME the local birds laid eggs -- once a year.

The bunnies -- when Christianity was marketing its eternal plan, its biggest competition was ISIS worship. SO putting OUR resurrected-from-the-dead god up against THEIRS (OSIRIS) needed a hook.

One big one was no need to kill/sacrifice your best livestock on the altar, but still... Fertility?

Ahh, not really -- OSIRIS, the Brand X Risen-from-the Dead Zombie God was always identified as the rabbit. (I actually originally went to a source on that one -- the author of an encyclopedia of occult beliefs, and asked him "Why the rabbit?" I don't know if it's true, but it's authoritative, and as Jon Carroll can -- and often does -- tell you, those two are NOT necessarily the same thing.


3. Not any misiniformation in this article the Chronicle today except for the idiotic vicious homicidal misinformation politicians spout, i.e. people who get off on weird a form of sex they may consider oral since it involves mouthing insane platitudes for personal gain.

The article by Bob Egelko and Jim Herron Zamora is about Angel Raich, (see also an archival list of articles about this court case) an Oakland woman who an appeals court has ruled has no right to use Medical Marijuana even if it is all that keeps away pain and death. I commend the two writers for their objectivity (i.e., not just flipping out and advocating lynch law for the judges).

On the other hand -- it should have been on the front page, but that's the doing of the editors, not the writers.

--------------------

What Colin Powell meant ..

... when he said the thing about the "Pottery Barn rule -- if you break it you bought it."

The scum-sucking slimebags in the White House and State and Defense seem to think that gives them the right to continue killing and breaking and staying in indefinitely.

What that phrase means is "DON'T BREAK IT! BE CAREFUL WHEN YOU TOUCH SOMETHING SO YOU DON'T BREAK IT!"

But Monkey Boy and his minions from Hell immediately took that to mean "Let's break it as quickly as we can so the war won't end too soon for re-election, like my Dad's War."

Yeah, you arrogant little Schmuck -- but your Dad won that war.

(He always held that his dad's war ended too soon, and that's what lost him the election. How about the camera that could see he was a nice guy, but full of crap. As distinct from you -- a vicious creep only like your father in that you also are full of crap.)

You lost the war, Monkey Boy, and you lost any ill-placed respect anyone might have had for you and yours before you proceeded to act like a spoiled brat breaking his toys, you lost this country's claim to principles and integrity.

The Pottery Barn Principle is the way they protect themselves from clumsy, foolish, inconsiderate assholes.

What do we have, as a country, to protect ourselves from the same sort of person?


Well, the Democratic majority in congress with SUBPOENA POWER.

-------------------

Just in case some people don't actually KNOW any Hispanic (Latin American, Chicano, etc) people

Just want to make it clear -- A.G. Gonzales is not typical -- very few Latin American men will wee-wee on themselves in submission to a rich kid punk in temporary power, humiliate themselves and forever condemn their own reputations to being punked second-raters willing to sell out whatever principles they might have claimed in order to go along to get along.

Most of the Latin American men I have known have some solid sense of propriety, integrity, and self-respect.

But then, you have to figure ANYONE willing to join this Bush-wah band of second-rate, immature, greed-and-fear driven criminals wouldn't have much to begin with, regardless of how well they'd fooled the people watching them up to that time.

Here's the acid test: If AG Gonzales (and any of the rest) had ANY integrity and self-respect at all, he'd be willing to resign (even in disgrace) for having violated the most basic requirement of his oath (or oaf, as the typo wants me to have it), i.e., that he was assuming control of the JUSTICE Department.

JUSTICE? Get it? Blind, even-handed, and not easily bought with a cranky phone call from some closet-case in the White House.

*********************

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Peter Pace, says homosexuality is immoral and should be prosecuted

Peter Pace -- Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff --has declared that homosexuality is immoral and should be prosecuted**


Hey, General Pace -- we pay you to kill people AND THAT'S ALL -- we can make our own conclusions and handle our own opinions about who and what is moral.

We don't give you a hard time about how you dress up in little outfits like some 6 year old kid or the missing guy from the Village people and pin brightly colored bling on your chest, representing the honors you and the other officers give to each other.

I'm not even going to debate whether you're right or wrong -- because you are completely full of shit from word one insofar as you are and have been, all your adult career, on the public tit, taking every cent you've ever made from our taxes (or from insider info someone told you), and getting that money ONLY because you're supposed to be good at killing people, ONLY because you're supposed to be able to make strategic decisions and win wars -- and we have only to look at Iraq today to know how second-rate*** you are at that.

We do not pay you to tell us who qualifies for equal protection of the law.

We pay you to do the job and that job is to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States, and if you can't do that, then just resign and spend the rest of your life drawing a huge pension (that we pay for) and drinking good scotch with your pals and muttering about welfare cheats and homos.

You want to talk morality?

How about you and your Yamashita-esque troops who have been instrumental in the deaths of nearly 3/4 of a million civilians who never did nothing to us but suffer the terrors the monster that USA's Don Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Nixon, et al installed to torture and murder them.

You got pulled out of Iraq for being a total fuckup, and were promoted because Monkey Boy and his pals couldn't admit it. And they finally put in someone who knows a little bit about this kind of warfare -- General Petraeus -- someone whose advice you and Monkey Boy refused to hear for years, and someone who is a lot more than the puppet/potted plant you were, who stood beside the prez and smiled and nodded.

I would ask what is your problem, but I really don't want to know.

Just mind your own fucking business -- and commenting on ANYTHING immoral is seriously inappropriate for a man who has made a career out of killing whatever people who are standing in the direction some politician points you.

You weren't very good as a guard dog.

Even worse now that you've become a mad dog and decided you have a right to choose who gets bitten and who doesn't.

That kind of dog gets put down.

_____________________________

**Peter Pace? Talk about a gay porn alias joke name:

The wiser calmer, older gay man counseling the producer of all the Law & Order franchises, whose name -- Dick Wolf -- always sounds to me like a porn alias for an extremely aggressive, orally-fixated, gluttonous suckoff queen -- "Hey, Wolfie -- take it easy, take it slow, learn to develop a Peter Pace."

And the Joint Chiefs of Staff?

There was an old joke, during the Vietnam era, something about the military is like a joint -- the more you suck, the higher you get. And wow -- you're the Chairman of the Joint. Hmmm
-----------

*** My friend Richard takes exception to my ranking of General Pace so high as second-rate, saying:

"Second-rate? Second-rate? Compared to our incredible botch in Iraq, General Peter Pace compared to an actual second-rater would be about on a par with Private Doberman from the old (and brilliant) Phil Silvers show compared to Herr von Clausewitz."

I stand corrected.

----------------

I usually find myself in agreement with Rubern Navarette Jr, so my sense of disappointment today was a bit surprising...

Mr. Navarette's column on his interview with AG Alberto Gonzalez went into this area:

... So it was no surprise when, in discussing the firings of eight U.S. attorneys -- a subject on which Congress is holding hearings this week -- Gonzales started to sound like the manager of a team.

"What I care about," he said, "is, 'Are we trading up?' Are we going to make an improvement in the performance in that (judicial) district?"

That may not be easy to do. Most of those who were dismissed had stellar performance reviews. Still, Gonzales disputed the suggestion that the firings may have been politically motivated.

"Some of the reasons that have been speculated are just not true," Gonzales said. "For example, the notion that we would remove someone because they failed to pursue a public corruption case, we would not do that ..."

...Gonzales has one good argument on his side: U.S. attorneys serve at the pleasure of the president.

"We have to remember that these are political appointees," he said. "These people were put in initially in large part because we thought they support the president's priorities and support the president's policies. And the president is entitled to have the people he wants as part of his team."

------------

NO Goddamit! NO! The US Attorneys do NOT swear to protect, preserve, and defend the policies of the President -- their oath is to uphold the Constitution (as in the founding document of our government, not the effects of working out in the gym).

We went through this crap years ago with Reagan and the man from whose jizz this smirking little son of satan sprang, when a commission of appointees consisted entirely of Republicans who'd contributed to or been a part of the presidential camapign, and, when asked pointedly, the spokesman said:

"Why should we give the job to someone who didn't vote for us?"

BECAUSE you don't own the country or the government, ok?
Even if you think you do or that you should -- you DON'T OWN IT.
IT'S NOT YOUR TOY.

Reason Enough?

The Justice Department is supposed to be independent of and seperate from the Executive branch.

But who can tell that to this prancing smirking asshole?

Oh do I have to tell you WHICH asshole I mean? -- ok -- the one who was running around South America, quietly setting up hit squads to take out the "commies" (and, according to RUMOR, buying 100,000 acres in Paraguay to be his retirement residence) -- and acting as if his loathesome presence there will make all the little "pepper-bellies" (sic) just roll over and pee on themselves in adulation instead of what's been really happening -- throngs of panicked folk trampling anyone in their way so they can line up behind Hugo Chavez in droves, now that they've seen the unholy one close up.

I don't know what to do, what would be right action, but even waiting out 2 years with this monster in unacceptable --

Yes, old pal Dick, I agree with your evaluation -- I watched him speak as he kicked off his tour, looked into his eyes (as is pro forma with this bozo) and saw the reptilian calculating arrogance and condescension and contempt behind the smirking mask, and understood he's not JUST a fool and a dummy, not JUST a self-serving little shit whose family's Hitler money bought him a big ride -- he is a vicious, vengeful, idiotic, tool for the most debased, depraved, greed-ridden sociopaths our society has been able to produce.

And if we couldn't produce enough psychos, we imported them -- Batista's murders from Cuba, and from Vietnam, Madame Nhu's slaveys who were willing to betray their country because it seemed unimaginable the USA could not win the invasion, and from Iraq and Iran, and from the followers and employees of every country's opium-heroin producers (Madame Nhu, Chiang Kai Shek, etc) -- a melting pot of sociopathic tools for the ones who hide in the shadows

(You think Cheney is a creep? You ought to see HIS masters!)

But for now, all that can be done is tell Ruben Navarette Jr he's been on the job too long and doesn't even remember when the criteria for presidential appointments was that the individual could do something good for the country.

Of COURSE there were lots of political appointments, but there also was STILL a smidgeon of giving a flying fuck for the country.

No longer -- Not this crowd -- with them, the days of actual patriotism are over, dead, gone, defunct, and sold to the Saudis (who are financing Al Qaeda in Iraq, because they're Sunni -- what a tangled web) and the Dubee Dubee Do-wop Dubai'ians who are THIS war's version of Paraguay and Uraguay -- safe harboring for the very very rich war criminals (and pederasts).

They're so arrogant, they don't even fear justice.

But they should.

MAYA -- may mean "illusion" in some languages, but in this case it means dealing with cold, cruel reality --

Priests to Purify Site After Bush Visit

- - - - - - - - - - - -

By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA Associated Press Writer

March 09,2007 | GUATEMALA CITY -- Mayan priests* will purify** a sacred archaeological site to eliminate "bad spirits" after President Bush visits next week, an official with close ties to the group said Thursday.

"That a person like (Bush), with the persecution of our migrant brothers in the United States, with the wars he has provoked, is going to walk in our sacred lands, is an offense for the Mayan people and their culture," Juan Tiney, the director of a Mayan nongovernmental organization with close ties to Mayan religious and political leaders, said Thursday.

Bush's seven-day tour of Latin America includes a stopover beginning late Sunday in Guatemala. On Monday morning he is scheduled to visit the archaeological site Iximche on the high western plateau in a region of the Central American country populated mostly by Mayans.

-----------------------

* Time and the calendar begin on the equinox of 3/21 -- uh-oh -- and here comes the anti-whatever-you-got stomping on someone else's sacred grounds just before the big days.

----------------------

** Keep their names -- we will definitely need them and a whole passel of others to do a similar exorcism in the White House and the Veep's Residence in January 2009


------------------------

"How is the world ruled and how do wars start?

Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read."

Karl Kraus 1874 - 1936

A question about religious ethics --

or something like that:

Is it what the believers call "A Sin" for me -- an unbeliever -- to be developing something like a crush on TV Pastor Melissa Scott (the widow of Reverend Gene Scott)?

I mean above and beyond a healthy interest in what she's talking about, getting to thoughts of how amazingly charming she is when she limns the Greek and Hebrew, and noticing how graceful she is when she does her version of the Pastor Scott stalk.

(I used to watch her husband -- the late Rev -- discussing the same things, also with interest, but without the semi-erotic overtones. The first time I heard him say: "There are a lot of preachers out there who believe the first thing you get when you bring Jesus into your heart is a blow-dryer," I was a fan.)

So Anne Coulter's comment WASN'T "hate speech"? Or was it?

The American Conservative Union, the outfit that sponsors CPAC and invited Coulter to speak there, has finally issued a statement that condemns hate speech but doesn't say that Coulter actually engaged in it. "Ann Coulter is known for comments that can be both provocative and outrageous," ACU chairman David Keene says. "That was certainly the case in her 2007 CPAC appearance and previous ones as well. But as a point of clarification, let me make it clear that ACU and CPAC do not condone or endorse the use of hate speech."

******************

The CONSERVATIVES (i.e., Right-wing crazies who like to pretend they're not brain-dead by pretending to be actual Conservatives) actually said that? And here I thought it was supposed to the Liberals and Democrats who were chickenshit woosies.

If they haven't got the balls God gave Mr Coulter to stand up and say "This is NOT who we are or want to be associated with," and if the so-called self-named Christians in that Bizarro World community don't denounce BOTH Mr Coulter AND the Conservative Union, then they really need to learn how to exist without the rest of us paying their freight through their tax-exempt status.

************

So Anne Coulter said, in her defense, that "faggot" doesn't have ANYTHING to do with being Gay.
Right.
And it's NOT hate speech, but just a "provocative and outrageous" comment.
Right.

So if I said "Hey -- let's tie each one of Mr Coulter's skinny legs to a horse and whip them away in opposite directions, pulling him apart until his balls pop," would that be hate speech?

Nahhh, not even hateful.
Just provocative and outrageous.


**************

Yeah I heard all the stupid people who were sorry Cheney didn't get nailed over there -- made me ashamed to be on the Left ...

How stupid are these people?

Do they just hate Cheney the same way the assholes on the right hate "liberals?"

Since they obviously don't understand how ANYTHING works.

Let me state the obvious:

If some psycho killed our Vice President

HE WOULD BECOME A MARTYR!!

Get it?

One would have to be seriously into Satan-worship to not throw up at the idea of a State Funeral and glowing eulogies and ANYONE SAYING HOW WONDERFUL THAT CREEP WAS.

One would have to enjoy the sound of 200 million people vomiting simultaneously as eulogizing took place. The collapse of buildings as the sympathetic footsteps of those millions racing for the toilet bring them down. The total water supply infrastructure collapse as 200 million toilets are flushed repeatedly.

I wish you a long long life, Mr. Vice Resident and as Patty Griffin would have it "regret every thing you have done."


Let him simmer in his own slime and trust the universe to introduce him, late at night, to every person he caused to be killed, maimed, orphaned. Let him count his Halliburton money late at night as the myriad ghosts come angrily off the water into his home, pointing their fingers at him and demanding justice. Doesn't matter HOW MANY security devices and Secret Service agents he's got. They'll be having coffee and discussing how the Veep screams a lot late a night, wondering (or not) what that's all about.

(Although the truly monstrous like Cheney and Ken Lay always tend to get off easily. And every time I pay my PG&E bill, I still think someone should have made sure -- put a stake through Ken Lay's heart to make sure he doesn't get back up.)

Doesn't anyone wonder why the Bush-wahs are systematically firing Federal Prosecutors who DARE to turn their gaze in Republican directions?

Here's a clue, for example -- they do NOT want any more of these:

Libby Guilty of Lying in C.I.A. Leak Case
Ex-Aide to Cheney Convicted on 4 of 5 Charges


OK, just in case you haven't noticed, here's a background update:

Former Prosecutor Says Departure Was Pressured
By ERIC LICHTBLAU

WASHINGTON, March 5 — The former federal prosecutor in Maryland said Monday that he was forced out in early 2005 because of political pressure stemming from public corruption investigations involving associates of the state’s governor, a Republican.

“There was direct pressure not to pursue these investigations,” said the former prosecutor, Thomas M. DiBiagio. “The practical impact was to intimidate my office and shut down the investigations.”

Mr. DiBiagio, a controversial figure who clashed with a number of Maryland politicians, had never publicly discussed the reasons behind his departure. But he agreed to an interview with The New York Times because he said he was concerned about what he saw as similarities with the recent firings of eight United States attorneys.


************

ANSWER: Does the word "GETAWAY" bring up any memories of old Westerns where the nasty money guys in suits -- guys who were killing farmers for railroad land and stomping on the faces of widows and children -- remember those guys hauling ass out of town one step ahead of the Good Guys, the ones led by some guy who wore a tin star and who believed in the United States and its Constitution?

Yeah, like that. Scumbags on the run.

The only way it makes any sense at all --

The beautiful and immensely talented Australian artist, Joanna Terpstra, posted a comment on the item below that reminded me of something I'd been meaning to share --

She regards all this murder and mayhem by the empty suits in Washington DC to be "boys playing with their toys, and yeah, but there was another point I wanted to make.

I think she's right as far as it goes, but there's also something I rarely hear mentioned but am absolutely convinced is another major underlying fact -- beginning with Ronald McReagan, the Senile Clown, the policy of the Right Wingers who love to call themselves "Conservative" was simple:

"Piss away as much govt money as we can -- when possible into the pockets of our pals -- but where ever it goes -- SDI Star Wars, invading Granada, whatever insane bit of bizarro business we can come up with -- spend ourselves deeply into debt in order to be able to smile, and shrug our shoulders when it comes to money for health, schools, public works, care of the sick and elderly -- and say 'Gee, I wish we could but there's JUST NO MONEY FOR IT.'

Put the country so deep into debt, the next wave of politicians -- Like Bill Clinton's crowd -- will have to spend most of their time ALSO cuttingn programs just to dig out.

But nothing those vicious bastards in the Reagan admin (many the same players as now) came up with had the genius of Orwell and 1984 -- an endless war against an undefined enemy -- and -- the KICKER! -- hold it in a country that has nothing to do with any threat to us except the possibility of revealing how many millions and billions Saddam gave to Monkey Boy's father and daddy's pals back in Iraq-Iran-Contra days.

But she's absolutely right, even that comes down to emotionally stunted boys playing with their, uhh, toys.

You want to see something really nice? No, not JUST the lovely lady smiling happily -- but also some deceptively simple sculpture (the sexiest stuff I've seen since, as a kid, Constantin Brancusi's Bird in Flight. Or alternately,in brass, Bird in Space)

Sexy in the aesthetic "take your breath a few steps back, jump your heart a few beats up" -- pretty much above the waist stuff.

Go to her web site and enjoy. Wish I could afford some of the real ones. Maybe you, dear reader, can.

(PS -- they're STILL pissing our money into the Star Wars pot, even though it's not much of a deterrent against 19 Sunni Wahabists from Bush-family-pals' Saudi Arabia with lots and lots of advance planning* and box cutters. -- Only a fool believes in foolproof systems)


Check out Peter Lance's web site -- just watched his lengthy presentation (but riveting enough to keep me up till after 6AM) about Ali Muhammed, 9-11, the laughable 9-11 Commission, and the FBI's way of covering up embarrasment about Osama Ben Laden dating back to 1989.

I'm pleased to see that circumstances have forced the Bush-wah's to overcome their fear of being in the same room with Iranians and Syrians

Oh come on -- it's been simple -- they (the Bush-wah's) have been afraid of them (the local inhabitants of that area). Terrified of having to actually meet with them. ("I looked into his eyes and saw he was a sweetie-pie, that former KGB director.")

Even to the point that the USA and our allies in Saudi Arabia have been financing Al Quaeda Sunni's to keep the Shi'ia from benefitting from our destruction of the Sunni military.

Not as if they couldn't have made some moves to meet with them oh, 100,000 dead Iraqi civilians ago. (Yeah, I know, we're only supposed to count the Americans who died and were mutilated by Bush's video game called "I'll show Mommy that I'm BETTER than Daddy.")

I'm sorry -- I think, after this is all over, every family member of American, Iraqi, British, et al who were killed or wounded over there get to hit George W Bush once. Or piss on him. Their choice.

To be clear -- I do NOT hate America -- I love America (I actually went into the service when drafted -- silly me -- I thought I should, since it was THE ONE THING my country asked me to do to compensate for my privilege, even if I didn't like it) -- I hate the destruction of America this little rich kid pissant and his helpers have done and I want them to pay for it with pounds of flesh.

Call Wolfowitz back from the World bank. Drag Perle in by his balls. Karl Roverer -- grab him before he flees to Europe and exercises his dual German citizenship. Cheney, Gambon, Sleezoid Rice -- all the vile and vicious walking turds of this administration ("But I'm a nice person." "Oh yeah? Then how come EVERY THING YOU SUPPORTED either killed people or stole money for Cheney and his pals?")

Fuck 'em all.

We can only hope we no longer have to hear their names mentioned after 2008 -- except maybe as they're jumping back fences on COPS.

---Oh don't get all pissed off -- you ain't seen NOTHIN yet compared to the outpouring of total hatred the American public spews all over these guys as we -- more and more -- realize what they've done.

The only person who ever even came close to describing them was William Burroughs in Nova Express. He knew what Insect Conspiracy really meant.

The only real analogy to Hitler and WWII ---

The Republicans -- I just read Ken Mehlman's call for bipartisan collegiality and it's as if -- now that they've had their "fuck you" majority taken away, now with their yammer about "bipartisanship" and "collegiality" and all the rest of the hypocritical horseshit -- it's as if Hitler, seeing the Allies coming into Berlin from the West and South and the Russians coming in from the East, went on the radio to talk about Germany's great tradition of Heine and Schiller and all the Jewish writers and philosophers they either killed or banned, and said "Can't we all just get along?"

Sure.

Just as soon as they restore reputations and careers to the people they attacked and slandered

Restore limbs and organs to the people they maimed.

Restore lives and homes to the people and places they blew to hell because they loved the idea of Video Game War so much.

I'm not a particularly unforgiving person, but when they trot out this hypocritical crap, I tend to support the suggestion that the remaining Neo-cons are like the wolves they so dislike, and need to be culled by aerial hunters until the natural balance is restored.

They act so goddamned tough when they're riding around in mommy and daddy's shopping cart, but when it's time for them to take responsibility for what THEY did, well, they're all smooching the asses of those in power so wetly and slurpily and sweetly.

To hell with them.

Let the moderate Republicans they slandered and destroyed get ONE FREE SHOT at each of them.

And Bush -- let's raise the money to compensate for the deficit by charging anyone who wants to contribute ONE DOLLAR for the privilege of emptying his or her bladder on that vile monkey-boy's head.

Fifty Cents to do it to Cheney.

A dime for Karl Rove.

And the govt pays for the free beer to prime the pump.

They always knew -- or should know -- the adage:

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

And that starts with every Iraqi who's been hurt by them.