OK, NOW I'm getting nervous...

This from Tim Grieve who links us to President Freddy Kruger...


Maybe he really is "the commander guy"

As we noted the other day, we've heard two reports from what appears to have been the same visit some Texas-based bigwigs paid to George W. Bush recently.

In the president's version of the story, "a bunch of our buddies from Texas" visited the White House and asked him, "Man, how come you're still standing?" And he told them: "I'm inspired by doing this job. I believe strongly in the decisions I have made. I firmly believe that we are responding to this initial challenge of the 21st century in proper fashion."

In the version of the story posted by the Nelson Report, some "big money players up from Texas" managed to "get out exactly one question" before Bush went off on "an extended whine, a rant, actually, about [how] no one understands him, the critics are all messed up, if only people would see what he's doing things would be OK, etc."

Now, as Think Progress reports, there's a third version of the story. In the version set forth today by columnist Georgie Anne Geyer in the Dallas Morning News, friends of the president from Texas were "shocked recently to find him nearly wild-eyed, thumping himself on the chest three times while he repeated, 'I am the president!' He also made it clear he was setting Iraq up so his successor could not get out of 'our country's destiny.'"

-- Tim Grieve

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

OK, I knew he was drinking again -- I've seen enough dry drunks get wet when their fantasy worlds are attacked -- but this is beyond even Nixon's cracking. At least we had Al Haig to kick ass and take names (while Henry Kissinger snickered and smirked about it). Who do we have now? Karl Roverer -- he'll be long with his dual citizenship in Germans. Cheney? He'll retreat to some dark corner behind his web, an "undisclosed location."

But perhaps it explains why the Democrats really don't want to push him too far. After all, Miz Nancy HAS been in private conversation with him.

The scariest part? He INTENTIONALLY wants to fuck up Iraq so bad that the next president won't be able to untangle the murderous mess. Too bad if all those men and women who wanted to serve their country die or are maimed. HE'S THE PRESIDENT and he's dancing on graves as yet undug.

History -- if there IS any history -- will remember this scumbag as proof that evolution left some children behind.

In the words of William Seqard Burroughs, in Nova Express,:

"So pack yer ermines Mary 'cause the whole shithouse is going up in chunks."


I recommend, for Final Days reading, James Morrow's astounding novel, This is the Way the World Ends, a chillingly credible story of people who can not EVER admit they might have been wrong and the above-mentions Burroughs' Nova Express, which will explain in unpleasant detail exactly who these people are.

The way it looks, you'd better read fast.

YIKES!

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

Both Giuliani and McCain are "heroes" but there are probably other reasons, too, why we should steer clear of them

"Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy"

F. Scott Fitzgerald

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

*HERO: Greek word for a man sacrificed to Hera, possibly from Sanskrit Heruka, a Knowledge-Holding Deity, via Egyptian Heru or Harakhti, Horus-Osiris as a dying god.

The Greek May Day festival was Heroantheia, "Hero-Flowering." The "flower" was the hero's fructifying blood, represented by red or pruple flowers, and described by the same word applied in the Bible to menstrual blood (Leviticus 15:24).

The May Day Hero was therefore a flower-god: Narcissus, Hyacinthus, Adonis, or Antheus, who were all the same deity, sometimes called Naaman, "Darling," because he was Aphrodite's beloved.

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

"If he's a hero, then what is he doing still alive when the other guys are dead?"

Ente Grillenhaft

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

* From The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets by Barbara C. Walker, Harper & Row 1983, ISBN 0-06-250926-8

Information on the Encyclopedia is also at these sites:

Goddess Gift

Cybrone -- not every admirer is completely uncritical, and this presentation of her views on yoni-sorship, tantra and asceticism shows.

And Salmon River talks about "hags."

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

What do you mean "ILLEGAL" immigrants?

"LEGAL" is just a game of defining things the way you like them.

Like stealing someone's land and then drawing a line and saying "None of you people can come back here."

As has been done with the Pomo, the Sioux, the Iroquis, the Apaches, the Palestinians, and also the people who live south of the land we stole from them and called "Texas" and "Arizona" and "New Mexico" and "California."

LEGAL and ILLEGAL are just definitions that are made up to justify (usually) the most horrific of crimes.

SO ERASE THE LINE.

And if you like definitions, call those 12 million people by their more proper name:

Not Mexicans -- they're Native Americans.

Wounded Knee part 763.

I have been asked why I'm disappointed and disgusted by the Democratic cave-in on Iraqi Madness financing.. they tell me "they didn't have the votes"

Yeah, I know, nor did they have the courage, the integrity, but most of all none of them seemed to have the intelligence to pass a bill they they believed was what's right and make certain (use the Republican game of party-line 'Talking Points') and say it over and over and over until the whole world knows their point of view, i.e.,

"If the PRESIDENT wants to deny money for the troops by vetoing this bill then that's HIS decision. He's just playing 'It's my ball and if you don't let me make up the rules as we go along, I'm taking my ball and going home.'"

Is there anyone in congress who will please point out to that pezzonovante little prick in the White House the he DOESN'T OWN AMERICA, whatever his mommy and daddy told him?

Doesn't matter how much money his family made from financing Hitler.
Doesn't matter how many Billions in kickbacks his daddy got from Saddam Hussein and Colonel Noriega when he was Reaga's poodle.
Doesn't matter how vicious and vindictive and petty and creepy this entire family is, scaring the crap out of anyone who dares challenge their divine right.
That's just THEIR fantasy.

THEY DO NOT OWN OUR COUNTRY!

They may never ever admit it or understand it,
but we don't have to pretend they're not totally insane.

Blair -- he sure talks purty, but when you get down to it -- just as brain-damaged as Bush

This from The Sunday Times Online via Glen Greeenwald's blog on Salon.com:

"I was stopped by someone the other week who said it was not surprising there was so much terrorism in the world when we invaded their countries (meaning Afghanistan and Iraq). No wonder Muslims felt angry.

When he had finished, I said to him: tell me exactly what they feel angry about... We remove two utterly brutal and dictatorial regimes; we replace them with a United Nations-supervised democratic process and the Muslims in both countries get the chance to vote, which incidentally they take in very large numbers. And the only reason it is difficult still is because other Muslims are using terrorism to try to destroy the fledgling democracy and, in doing so, are killing fellow Muslims."

-- You see, the OTHER Muslims (who happen to ALSO live there), are BAD BAD Muslims, i.e., (although he sidesteps the question) in effect, any Muslim who is angry at wonderfu lwonderful us must by definition be BAD BAD Muslims. But he goes on...

"What’s more, British troops are risking their lives trying to prevent the killing. Why should anyone feel angry about us? Why aren’t they angry about the people doing the killing? ...

This extremism can be defeated. But it will be defeated only by recognising that we have not created it; it cannot be negotiated with; pandering to its sense of grievance will only encourage it; and only by confronting it, the methods and the ideas, will we win."



Overlooking the fact that we DID create it, financing Osama ben Ladn after taunting the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan, installing Saddam Hussein after the iraqis had a real grassroots revolution by taking out (with extreme prejudice, as the saying goes) the man they wanted and replacing him with OUR CHOICE, Saddam Hussein.

But whither the little leather boy Baby Bush goeth, so did Tony, his faithful poodle. (But it was only fair reciprocity -- another US president, Ronald Reagan, spent his administration licking the boots of Margaret Thatcher.)

It was an English movie, Performance, in which Mick Jagger sang the lines relevant to EITHER and/or BOTH Bush and Blair. The song was "Memo From Turner" and in it, Jagger sang

"I remember you from Hemlock Road back in 1956,
you were a faggy little leather boy
with a smaller piece of sticks.
You're a lashing smashing hunk of man,
your sweat shines sweet and strong,
your organs are working perfectly,
but there's a part that's not screwed on."



You can hear the lines preceding these one Amazon.com

Why John Edwards will be the Democratic nominee

Or at least, given the lengthy time till Primaries, it WON'T be Hillary or Obama.

Ahh, the Democrats (and I used to be one) will all say "Oh I have no problem voting for a woman or a black man for president," but I believe that as little as I believe our president when he says he reads intelligence reports or that he is actually the decider..

White Democrats will externalize their own biases by saying "Well I would vote for him or her, but those OTHER people wouldn't because of their prejudices ... so I'm going for John Edwards." And he'll get the nomination, and he'll win (something the Republican smear-factory obviously knows and fears, which is why they're already going after him) and he'll be a damn good president -- the first populist since, well since I don't know when.

And for all you may be saying, right now, that YOU'RE not like that, I respectfully disagree.

Every white person in the United States was raised -- intentionally or not -- with some degree of distrust and fear of black men. Most don't realize it. It's too much a part of the environment of upbringing.

I live in a thoroughly integrated neighborhood -- black, white, Latino -- on a rural-like block with no sidewalks, where we hang out in the street and talk about this and that. And I have found two things about myself -- and presumably many others -- from that situation:

1 -- That it is only when in continued social interaction with people of other races we can really see that we do have those scars from how we were raised -- and I was raised in a very liberal family by parents who had much more interaction with Black or Asian people than most at that time. But it was there, as I see looking back.

2. That it is only with continuing social interaction that we white boys can work that scummy residue out of our systems.


I was standing outside my house a few years ago with a friend, a very dark-skinned Jamaican man, waiting for another fellow to pick us up, and I mentioned that to him, what I'd seen in myself -- that all white people etc... and he turned to me in something like amazement and said "You're the first white person I've ever known who admits that." And I said, "Well, it's not exactly something to be proud of.

SO ...

And the fact is, if Hillary or Obama are nominated, the reality of sex* and race bias in the United States WILL make it possible for one of the Republicans to win the election.

Going way out further on this limb, my guess is that Bill Richardson will be his Vice Presidential choice. Their uniting factor? They're the only two willing to 'fess up when they made a mistake and admit they're not perfect.

Why I like both of them? They're not religious fanatics.

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

*Isn't it interesting that Americans are so terrified of SEX -- even just saying the word -- that they took a word that traditionally only applies to other words in grammar -- GENDER -- and decided to use it to describe bias against a person because of her sex. (We even have Trans-gendered persons rather than Trans-sexual ones.)I find it telling.

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

When I hear the words "Presidential Candidates," I reach for my poetry

3 Haiku for yet another bunch of self-important jerks looking to play King of the World


1.
The candidates talk.
The people want some answers
They make my ass ache

2.
The candidates dodge.
People don’t want honesty
My ass aches again

3.
The candidates lie
“Go fuck yourselves” I tell them
Now I feel better



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

A very wise woman -- the late Arlen Riley Wilson --
once put it more succinctly on the matter of politicians, candidates, and elections:

"THE SCUM RISES TO THE TOP."

--she is still missed.

The Ba'al Shem Tov Bitch-Slaps a Zionist

--This was originally published in Crapshoot in a slightly different form in 2002.

The Ba'al Shem Tov Bitch-Slaps a Zionist
(or Please Don't Shoot my Doggerel)

I had a dream that made me smile,
something I haven't had in a while.

A Zionist was haranguing me
as a boddhisatva wannabe,
my stance of wishing well for people,
(all the people)
ALL the people in that troubled land
that they would drop the totentanz
and live their lives in peace.

He quoted me both chapter and verse
that I was a self-hating Jew and worse,
that THEM, those others, were the devil,
insects, monsters, couldn't ever be a level
playing field cause all they wanted
was to see Jews driven out and hunted down.

He quoted rabbis, saints and sages
from this and then more ancient ages,
every quote designed to say
that I had fallen and betrayed
my people just by wishing well
for all there in that hell
they call the Middle East.

And then the Ba'al Shem Tov walked in
and looked at me and gave a grin
then turned to the Zionist, looked at him
and as he did, his face grew grim.

He spoke quite softly, gently sighing,
of pain and fear and death and dying,
children orphaned, mothers crying,
of homelessness and exile too,

"Which you should know if you're a Jew.
Diaspora -- did all those years
teach you nothing of the tears of others?
You don't know we all are brothers?
Call yourself an observant Jew?
And waste the gift that God gave you?

Yours is not the only life,

Yours is not the only strife.

All life has pain. All life has fear.

Think of Leonard Peltier*."

He stopped as if to walk away

but then came back again to say,

”I want to make this very plain --

You have no right to add more pain."

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

*Leonard Peltier , a maember of AIM (American Indian Movement) was convicted of the killing of two federal agents at the 1975 shoot-out at the Pine Ridge Reservation. At his trial in 1977, the federal prosecutor told the jury "We don't know who actually shot the agents, but SOMEBODY has to pay for it."

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

I have specifically refrained from likening Ahnold to those Third Reich folk BECAUSE he's Austrian, but really ...

Money for prisons taken away from the sick, the old, and the poor?

Let 'em die -- less cost for the state.

Money for prisons taken away from schools? (Why? Is he trying to guarantee full occupancy of those prisons?)

"We're not German," they always said so proudly, assuming we really knew nothing of history, "We're AUSTRIAN."

To which I could only reply, "Oh yeah, you're the people who VOTED to bring Hitler IN."

I was happy restricting myself to looking at his thuggishness as the product of being the son of a man who was a policeman during the nazi regime. But that's unfair to policemen.

With the whole population focusing on the need for health care, he embraces straight Nazi social policy -- kill the schools and build camps for the old, the sick, the poor, and the politically undesirable (meaning the ones who don't like you) where they can die off.

And we all thought he was getting better.

But he's just a strongarm thug who likes to bully people.

Nietzsche said "Beware of people with a strong desire to punish."

I guess the construction and prison guard industry are putting a whole lot of money into his 2008 run for the senate against Barbara Boxer.

And getting paid off in advance.

THERE'S integrity -- he can't be sure he can win against Senator Boxer, so he's paying off his backers with state money by selling the future of millions of California kids while he's got the signature to do it.

They all talk big when they come in, but they all end up bending over for the people with lots of loot who can play on their (and our) fears.

Just another sock puppet who talks tough.

As so many of us thought when he first came up.

Clever fellow -- his movies dying at the box office, so he gets to play The Terminator in Sacramento.

So here's a question I haven't heard asked:

Why would ayone assume that a Republican president and a Republican congress would better serve our national security and prevent ANOTHER 9-11 from hasppening when, despite all warnings to the contrary, all defined defenses put forth in the Rudman-Hart Report commissioned by Clinton, a Republican president and a Republican congress LET 9-11 HAPPEN THE FIRST TIME AROUND?

BECAUSE:

Oh, the Deomcrats' dog ate the NSA report.

Oh there were TOO MANY warnings

Oh, the colored gal didn't think it was important.

Oh, I had only been president for nine months. (Yeah, wasn't there something about "hit the ground running?" Never mind.)

Oh, Bill Clinton should have taken care of it.


Let's just get one thing straight about Bush, Giuliani, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al:

IT HAPPENED ON THEIR WATCH.

Not an obscure point of history.

IT HAPPENED ON THEIR WATCH.

So what is the logic behind claiming they should be better at defending us, when the worst attack in our history HAPPENED ON THEIR WATCH?

Why I register INDEPENDENT aka DECLINE TO STATE

From Tim Grieve, Salon.com's War Room

Playing chicken

Democrats in Congress said they wanted a timeline for bringing the troops home from Iraq.

The president said he wouldn't sign a war-funding bill without one.

The deal isn't done yet, but Democrats are clearly headed toward giving George W. Bush more money for the war in Iraq with no requirement that he bring it to a close.

"We don't have a veto-proof Congress," says Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. "The president has made it very clear that he is not going to sign timelines," says House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. "We can't pass timelines over his veto."

That's true.

But isn't it also true that Bush can't get his war funding without timelines unless Democrats give him a bill that disconnects the two?

*********

I am at a loss to decide whether the appropriate descriptive term is "chickenshit" or "bullshit" or "flakey" or what.**

In short, while I endorse the Richard A. Lupoff motto: "The worst Democrat is better than the best Republican,"* and while I was raised on the Left by a supporter of the IWW, I cannot in good conscience call myself an actual member of the party that is now proving itself afraid to stop mass murder because people might blame them next year for the monstrous slaughter that is the result of George W Bush's insane "I'll show 'em" mind of a 6-year old and the calculated manipulations of those who recognized a good patsy when they saw one.

At least the Republicans are somewhat straightforward in their goal of plundering the treasury and destroying anyone in their way, whether they call it that or not.

The Democrats are afraid to admit they went along with the shithead from Texas because they were (1) terrified of the Islamic jihad, (2) terrified of the wrath of the Bush family, and (3) terrified of not being voted for by people even more scared than they were, and (4) terrified that people might call them "unpatriotic" if they came right out and said "the sonofabitch and his puppetmaster Cheney are both sociopathic liars."

They're still afraid.

My comment to all of them -- if you don't stand up for what it right, guys, you'll lost the votes of those of us who always supported you.

You're acting like a bunch of scared babies -- are you too damned scared to make it clear that BUSH will be the one who denies funding for the troops? Are you THAT weak? That craven? The stupid?

Fuck you all.

I'm voting for John Edwards and Bill Richardson. The rest of you males go kiss the asses of your contributors for work in the private sector, while you're searching for your lost balls. (Mike Gravel is fun and NECESSARY for the debates, but really, like Ron Paul on the other side, vitally essential for truth-telling, but effective more as a gadfly than an executive.

But if Barbara Lee or Barbara Boxer or Nancy Pelosi or Barbara Mikulski or Patty Murray or Olympia Snowe -- yes, a Republican, but a sane one -- Maxine Waters, either of the Sanchez sisters, Linda or Loretta, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Sheila Jackson Lee -- every one of them willing to throw down for what's right and true -- I'd back her in a flash. The men may have no balls, but the women have .. hmm, what's the equivalent -- they gotta lotta ovaries.

There are probably a lot of other women of tough mettle and high integrity, but the news, always tending toward the local, doesn't really tell us too much about House members from other states unless they're caught with their fingers in the cookie jar.

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

*Always allowing for an exception in the case of Zell Miller a man who exemplifies the misuse of the word "conservative" as a polite substitute for "Right wing psychotic."


** Chickenshit, that's closest.

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

Two "minor" items of great importance ...

1.

Rove's former assistant, Susan Ralston, is currently seeking immunity to testify before Waxman's committee. Ralston is a former assistant to Jack Abramoff, the disgraced Washington super-lobbyist and Republican fund-raiser. As Rove's gatekeeper, she became special assistant to the President and the highest-ranking Filipino-American in the administration. For Waxman, she is a link between Abramoff and Rove. Ralston was deposed behind closed doors prior to her request for immunity. According to her friends, she has nothing to say that would cause problems for Rove. Her request for immunity was forwarded to the Justice Department, whose recommendation may or may not be followed by Congress.


2.

Endgame: Cheney And Rove Seek Immunity From Prosecution

Cheney is actually arguing that he and Bush are legally untouchable! From Carol D. Leonnig at Washington Post:

Attorneys for Vice President Cheney and top White House officials told a federal judge today they cannot be held liable for anything they disclosed to reporters about covert CIA officer Valerie Plame or her husband, former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV.

The officials, who include senior White House adviser Karl Rove and Cheney's former chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, argued that the judge should dismiss a lawsuit filed by Wilson that stemmed from the disclosure of Plame's identity to the media...

Attorneys for Cheney and the other officials said any conversations they had about Plame with each other and reporters were part of their normal job duties because they were discussing foreign policy and engaging in an appropriate "policy dispute." Cheney's attorney went farther, arguing that Cheney is legally akin to the president because of his unique government role, and has absolute immunity from any lawsuit.

The suit claims that Cheney, Libby, Rove and former deputy secretary of state Richard L. Armitage violated the couple's privacy and constitutional rights by publicly revealing Plame's identity in an effort to retaliate against Wilson. Plame's identity was disclosed in a syndicated column in July 2003, days after Wilson publicly accused the Bush administration of twisting intelligence to exaggerate Iraq's nuclear threat and justify an invasion....

...U.S. District Judge John D. Bates asked: "So you're arguing there is nothing -- absolutely nothing -- these officials could have said to reporters that would have been beyond the scope of their employment," whether the statements were true or false?

Battle lines have been drawn.
No wonder Bush's cabal is desperate to keep Abu Gonzales in his job.

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

Palms getting a bit sweaty Karl?
And not just from Rap-dancing on the graves of 3000+ dead American soldiers and Marines.


Looks like even Cheney feels the sulfur-tinged breath of his master on his neck, fearful that the free ride is over and it's time to join JerryFalwell in Hell.

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

Or as Sam Coleridge once put it:

" As one upon a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread.
And having once looked round, walks on
And turns no more his head,
Because he knows a fearful fiend
Doth close behind him tread."


Hey Karl Roverer, hey Dick Cheney -- remember --

"Watch out for the asses you kick on the way up --
same ones you have to kiss on the way down."

Pucker up mothafuckahs -- there's a lot of people waiting in line for their smooches.

I cannot fucking believe the callousness of Tony Snow and his friends

I turn on the news and there's Tony Snow and Bob Schieffer and a passel of Media Morons all jamming.

Tony Snow, taking a break from lying for Monkey Boy passes his time playing sax, flute, and guitar -- and playing them almost as well as he's playing the fool -- all the while 5 American soldiers are dying each day along with hundreds of Iraqis.

Absolutely enraging... it's bad enough that Bush is a jerk -- are they trying to act presidential? And even more disgucting, we've seen Karl Roverer do his rap act.

All I can think of is an old expression that may be illegal to think or say these days but just for documentation, it's:

"Up against the wall, motherfuckers"

They keep saying "They HATE Bush..." as if that's a bad thing

This man has caused the deaths and dismemberments, mutilations and maimings of tens of thousands of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and continues to do it rather than be embarrassed and admit he was wrong.

He has stolen two elections.
He has spied on and terrorized the people who he claims to serve.
He has allowed friends to plunder the treasury.
He has destroyed the military capability of America.
He has destroyed the Social Security system.
He has destroyed everything he touches.

Look at his buddies and the fag hags who are so close to him --- There would be nothing wrong with him being gay if he weren't in such denial as to try to cause harm to anyone else who is so oriented.

All of that is the behavior of a despicable little sociopathic baby who desperately needs a time out -- preferably in some place like Guantanamo.

If killing thousands and thousands of people without any purpose but his own aggrandisement -- all to prove he's more of a man than his father -- if that doesn't deserve the utmost of contempt, even to wishing the death penalty still existed for Crimes Against Humanity, then the people who shout "We've lost our values!" the loudest, seem to be the ones who have lost the most.

What sort of a breadcrumb sin is getting an extramarital blowjob compared to mass murder?


Hating Bush is the LEAST any moral human being can do, given what he is doing and that he smugly refuses to allow anyone to stop him.

Tim Grieve makes the case...

Tim Grieve in today's War Room

Did Card and Gonzales break the law?

The little visit Andy Card and Alberto Gonzales paid to John Ashcroft in his hospital room was brazen and breathtaking. It turns out it also may have been illegal.

Neil Katyal, the Georgetown law professor who served as a national security advisor in Bill Clinton's Justice Department, tells Time that "executive branch rules require sensitive classified information to be discussed in specialized facilities that are designed to guard against the possibility that officials are being targeted for surveillance outside of the workplace." Is a hospital room at George Washington such a "specialized facility"? Not exactly, Katyal says. "The hospital room of a cabinet official is exactly the type of target ripe for surveillance by a foreign power," he explains.

As we noted the other day, no one involved -- not Card, not Gonzales, not Ashcroft, not George W. Bush, not the White House -- has denied James Comey's account of the hospital visit. And in refusing to do so Thursday, the president inadvertently conceded one of the elements of potential unlawfulness here: He said he wasn't going to address Comey's allegations because they involved a "highly sensitive" and "highly classified" subject matter.

How is the administration responding to word that Card and Gonzales -- and, presumably, whoever sent them to Ashcroft's hospital room -- may have been breaking the rules? Well, you can probably guess. "I am not going to speculate on discussions that may or may not have taken place, much less attempt to render a legal judgment on any such discussions," Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department's National Security Division, tells Time.

-- Tim Grieve

But of course, Nancy Pelosi will NOT move to impeach for one simple reason -- she KNOWS from experience that a six-year-old (or a grown up spoiled brat rich kid punk with the emotional development of a six-year-old) will throw a totally destructive tantrum when cornered -- or as Randy Newman put it "They all hate us anyhow, so let's drop the big one now."

Rush Limbaugh and the Waste of Human protoplasm

Rush Limbaugh played a video in which some white guy, impersonating Al Sharpton, sings how Barack Obama is "the magic negro" because he "isn't black like me."

And Storm Bear as a Guest Blogger on Alternet , on loan from Daily Kos where he is much-enjoyed asks: "How is this possible?"

Well, duhhh ...

Someone told me, long long ago, "Oh listen to this guy, Limbaugh. He's something, very funny."

And I turned on the radio and ... this will tell you how long ago it was... he was mocking Chelsea Clinton, saying she was ugly and had bad hair and a lumpy body.

And I said, as I changed the station:

"Anyone who would try to humiliate a 13-year old girl on a national radio hookup is a talking piece of shit."

I didn't find him funny.

I still don't.

The idea of a vicious sexist, racist, rich white smug self-satisfied drug addict insulting vulnerable people for the benefit of morons (and also for some people I know who I know are smarter than I am so perhaps I'm missing something, in which case, I can cheer my ignorance for sparing me that particular form of ear pollution) -- he's a sort of craven, vicious, unfunny version of Andrew Dice Clay, but without the balls to stand up in a theater in front of a live crowd, more like Pat Robertson without the religion.

So, to Storm Bear, whom I usually enjoy, I answer your question (rhetorical though it may have been) -- it's possible because he hasn't let fame change him:

He's STILL a talking piece of shit.

(And if I were a believer, I think I would believe the only reason God allows a waste of human protoplasm like that to live is to provide some nicely marbled meat for the people who are starving after the honeybees are gone.)

New York Times

May 12, 2007

Guest Columnist

Bad Medicine, Sneaking In

By ATUL GAWANDE

As I read about the melamine-tainted pet food, and about the hundreds in Panama killed by phony glycerin from China, I remembered a patient I once saw. She was a dancer in her 40s who had hobbled into the emergency room one October night with a painful, bulging mass in her groin. I gently put my fingers to it. It was beet-sized and firm. When I placed my stethoscope on it, I heard gurgling. This was, I told her, a strangulating hernia — a rent in her abdominal wall had trapped a loop of intestine. The swelling was the knot of bowel; the gurgling, the fluid inside.

She was at risk of gangrene and agreed to an emergency hernia operation. It’s not a complicated procedure. But there are still plenty of ways it can go wrong. Inside her, I found the hernia defect — a one-inch gap in her muscle wall — and, protruding through it, a choked-off, purple, six-inch length of bowel. I opened the gap wider, pushed the bowel back in, and thankfully it pinked back to life. We’d gotten there in time. I closed the hernia with a polypropylene mesh cut to size. It was like sewing a patch onto a torn couch cushion. The next day, she went home. I saw her two weeks later. No infection. No troubles. She’d done beautifully.

Then I got an e-mail notice. The mesh manufacturer, Johnson & Johnson, was reporting that the mesh I’d put in was counterfeit. It was fake.

Someone had infiltrated the supply chain somewhere between Sherman, Tex., where the authentic mesh was manufactured, and Boston, where I’d operated on the patient. Apparently, mesh can travel through many hands. The original lot had gone to a Memphis warehouse, and then through at least two hospital goods distributors, which sell and trade medical supplies on what turns out to be a worldwide market, like oil. Somewhere along the way a counterfeiter replaced the lot with fake mesh packaged exactly like Johnson & Johnson’s, right down to the lot number. It is believed this happened someplace in Asia. But no one really knows.

The material looked like ordinary mesh to me. But according to the alert from the Food and Drug Administration, it wasn’t sterile. And although it seemed to be polypropylene, the fibers and weave were different from the manufacturer’s. It wasn’t clear what should be done. I called the patient to come see me.

I also began to wonder how I could trust anything I use. My sterile gloves come from the Philippines, surgical sponges from China, devices and instruments from Taiwan to Texas. The ingredients for medications come from all over the world.

This is how it is now. That’s not bad, I know. But it’s not all good, either. In the effort to get the best possible results for people, it seems hard enough make sure one’s decisions are right. I’d never considered that I had to worry about my supplies, too.

So what to do?

In the name of safety and simplicity, we could try to restrict medical manufacturing and distribution networks to our borders. This is, for example, the argument for blocking the sale of medications from Canada. It’s folly, though. Medicine’s success and affordability already critically depend on materials and distribution from around the globe. Yet market forces aren’t weeding out the shady operators, either.

So we’re left only with vigilance — police work. Put enough F.D.A. inspectors on the ground and tracing technology on the goods and we actually could block those who would put an industrial solvent in children’s cough medicine and fake, unsterile material in our surgical supplies.

This we don’t do, though. The number of F.D.A. inspectors has actually been cut — partly because of small-government ideology and partly because of tight budgets. And still they’re finding more cases than ever. (In recent years, they’ve found counterfeit Lipitor, Viagra, Botox, Zyprexa and birth control pills, among others.) We need many times more inspectors. But nothing like it has been considered. That is no longer acceptable.

I saw my patient and told her about the fake mesh. She was stunned. We then considered what to do. It wasn’t clear the mesh would hold; and in many other patients, it became infected and had to be removed. But she’d done all right so far, and redoing the repair is major surgery. So she decided to wait and see what happened.

Given the alternative, doing nothing and hoping for the best was a wise choice for her. But it’s a bad choice for the rest of us.

Atul Gawande, a surgeon at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and a New Yorker staff writer, is the author of the new book “Better.” He is a guest columnist this month.

Robert Louis Stevenson understood drug counterfeiters...

The New York Times article above talks about the problem we have today, but Robert Louis Stevenson described the best way to handle it then ... and frankly, even today, there isn't an honest jury in the world that would come back with anything but acquittal.

Remember "Jury Nullification" IS LEGAL. The Supreme Court said so, said that a jury has the right to DO IT, but DOES NOT HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE TOLD they have that right. Dick Wolf, Law and Order, Sam Waterston and Fred Thompson notwithstanding.

For more, read info about and writings by Lysander Spooner, a delightful 19th century libertarian (aka Anarchist, so-called) and legal theorist. No bomb-thrower he, other than intellectual and social theory ones.

MORAL TALES

I - ROBIN AND BEN: OR, THE PIRATE AND THE APOTHECARY

Come, lend me an attentive ear
A startling moral tale to hear,
Of Pirate Rob and Chemist Ben,
And different destinies of men.

Deep in the greenest of the vales
That nestle near the coast of Wales,
The heaving main but just in view,
Robin and Ben together grew,
Together worked and played the fool,
Together shunned the Sunday school,
And pulled each other’s youthful noses
Around the cots, among the roses.

Together but unlike they grew;
Robin was rough, and through and through
Bold, inconsiderate, and manly,
Like some historic Bruce or Stanley.
Ben had a mean and servile soul,
He robbed not, though he often stole.
He sang on Sunday in the choir,
And tamely capped the passing Squire.

At length, intolerant of trammels -
Wild as the wild Bithynian camels,
Wild as the wild sea-eagles - Bob
His widowed dam contrives to rob,
And thus with great originality
Effectuates his personality.
Thenceforth his terror-haunted flight
He follows through the starry night;
And with the early morning breeze,
Behold him on the azure seas.
The master of a trading dandy
Hires Robin for a go of brandy;
And all the happy hills of home
Vanish beyond the fields of foam.

Ben, meanwhile, like a tin reflector,
Attended on the worthy rector;
Opened his eyes and held his breath,
And flattered to the point of death;
And was at last, by that good fairy,
Apprenticed to the Apothecary.

So Ben, while Robin chose to roam,
A rising chemist was at home,
Tended his shop with learn'd air,
Watered his drugs and oiled his hair,
And gave advice to the unwary,
Like any sleek apothecary.

Meanwhile upon the deep afar
Robin the brave was waging war,
With other tarry desperadoes
About the latitude of Barbadoes.
He knew no touch of craven fear;
His voice was thunder in the cheer;
First, from the main-to’-gallan’ high,
The skulking merchantmen to spy -
The first to bound upon the deck,
The last to leave the sinking wreck.
His hand was steel, his word was law,
His mates regarded him with awe.
No pirate in the whole profession
Held a more honourable position.

At length, from years of anxious toil,
Bold Robin seeks his native soil;
Wisely arranges his affairs,
And to his native dale repairs.
The Bristol Swallow sets him down
Beside the well-remembered town.
He sighs, he spits, he marks the scene,
Proudly he treads the village green;
And, free from pettiness and rancour,
Takes lodgings at the ‘Crown and Anchor.’

Strange, when a man so great and good
Once more in his home-country stood,
Strange that the sordid clowns should show
A dull desire to have him go.

His clinging breeks, his tarry hat,
The way he swore, the way he spat,
A certain quality of manner,
Alarming like the pirate’s banner -
Something that did not seem to suit all -
Something, O call it bluff, not brutal -
Something at least, howe’er it’s called,
Made Robin generally black-balled.

His soul was wounded; proud and glum,
Alone he sat and swigged his rum,
And took a great distaste to men
Till he encountered Chemist Ben.
Bright was the hour and bright the day
That threw them in each other’s way;
Glad were their mutual salutations,
Long their respective revelations.
Before the inn in sultry weather
They talked of this and that together;
Ben told the tale of his indentures,
And Rob narrated his adventures.

Last, as the point of greatest weight,
The pair contrasted their estate,
And Robin, like a boastful sailor,
Despised the other for a tailor.

‘See,’ he remarked, ‘with envy, see
A man with such a fist as me!
Bearded and ringed, and big, and brown,
I sit and toss the stingo down.
Hear the gold jingle in my bag -
All won beneath the Jolly Flag!’

Ben moralised and shook his head:
‘You wanderers earn and eat your bread.
The foe is found, beats or is beaten,
And, either how, the wage is eaten.
And after all your pully-hauly
Your proceeds look uncommon small-ly.
You had done better here to tarry
Apprentice to the Apothecary.
The silent pirates of the shore
Eat and sleep soft, and pocket more

Than any red, robustious ranger
Who picks his farthings hot from danger.
You clank your guineas on the board;
Mine are with several bankers stored.
You reckon riches on your digits,
You dash in chase of Sals and Bridgets,
You drink and risk delirium tremens,
Your whole estate a common seaman’s!
Regard your friend and school companion,
Soon to be wed to Miss Trevanion
(Smooth, honourable, fat and flowery,
With Heaven knows how much land in dowry),
Look at me - Am I in good case?
Look at my hands, look at my face;
Look at the cloth of my apparel;
Try me and test me, lock and barrel;
And own, to give the devil his due,
I have made more of life than you.
Yet I nor sought nor risked a life;
I shudder at an open knife;
The perilous seas I still avoided
And stuck to land whate’er betided.
I had no gold, no marble quarry,
I was a poor apothecary,
Yet here I stand, at thirty-eight,
A man of an assured estate.’

‘Well,’ answered Robin - ‘well, and how?’

The smiling chemist tapped his brow.
‘Rob,’ he replied, ‘this throbbing brain
Still worked and hankered after gain.
By day and night, to work my will,
It pounded like a powder mill;
And marking how the world went round
A theory of theft it found.
Here is the key to right and wrong:
Steal little, but steal all day long;
And this invaluable plan
Marks what is called the Honest Man.
When first I served with Doctor Pill,
My hand was ever in the till.
Now that I am myself a master,
My gains come softer still and faster.
As thus: on Wednesday, a maid
Came to me in the way of trade.
Her mother, an old farmer’s wife,
Required a drug to save her life.
‘At once, my dear, at once,’ I said,
Patted the child upon the head,
Bade her be still a loving daughter,
And filled the bottle up with water.’

‘Well, and the mother?’ Robin cried.

‘O she!’ said Ben - ‘I think she died.’

‘Battle and blood, death and disease,
Upon the tainted Tropic seas -
The attendant sharks that chew the cud -
The abhorred scuppers spouting blood -
The untended dead, the Tropic sun -
The thunder of the murderous gun -
The cut-throat crew - the Captain’s curse -
The tempest blustering worse and worse -
These have I known and these can stand,
But you - I settle out of hand!’

Out flashed the cutlass, down went Ben
Dead and rotten, there and then.

Democrats will deal with their race and sex issues ---

And Hillary and Obama will be loved and admired and... people will deal with the underlying issues of Woman? Non-White? etc

And ok,I'm cynical, but regardless of inclination. Americans will externalize their OWN doubts about race and sex, and "play it safe" saying well, I would vote for them but those other people won't because THEY'RE racists sexist so the result will be a white southerner -- John Edwards, who will win the election and who will be one of the best presidents we've ever had.

There's a reason that he's being chipped away at, slandered and trashed --he is NOT A FRIEND of large corporations, and now that we live in a political situation of National Socialism (i.e., merger between govt and corporations with the corporations setting the agenda -- aka Fascism) the big tough corporate bullies are scared that they won't get their special treatment any more, that they'll have to bow to the "special interests" (meaning women, gay people, people of color, people of non-mainstream religions, labor, teachers, in fact "Special Interests" are STILL everyone but white corporate execs -- in other words the American Public -- all of us -- are special interests so far as they're concerned) and the Big Boys are terrified that the American public might get to have a say in how our country plays out.

First up -- baby boomers passing 60 years old -- universal health care and social security will catch up with something almost as good as that offered in France.

Automobiles -- European MPG standards will need to be met.

In other words, the corporate guys will FINALLY have to play on a socially-conscious level playing field.

So, out of the bias will come some good.

Let me get this straight...

Iraqi Prez Maliki is supporting the Shi'ia militias, and George Bush is enabling him by repeatedly changing the deadlines for Maliki to STOP doing that.

The big fear, supposedly, is that if we leave, the Shi'ia will wipe out the Sunni and the Iranians (who, though Shi'ia, despise the Arabs) will become influential, sort of the way US and Canada and Mexico all have influence to varying degrees with each other.

But the Bush family Buddies, i.e., Saudi moneypots, are financing the Sunni insurgents, who are what the Shi'ia Militia are fighting.

So the Bush family, in essence is enabling BOTH the Sunni insurgents and the Shi'ia militas.

Hmmm.

Just a thought, though our president -- even Monkey Boy and his flying purple monkey buddies -- couldn't possilby be so cold and cruel, could they? -- the thought that after Poppy lost his re-election bid, which Monkey Boy was managing, Monkey Boy blamed the loss on Poppy having let the war end too soon.* And so his strategy here -- and Karl Roverer's -- was to keep the war going as long as possible, until a Democrat gets in and then blame the inevitable crash on that person. SO what if a few thousand Americans and a few HUNDRED thousand Iraqi's get killed and even more get maimed. You go to war with the imaginary fears you've got, not the ones you want.

---------------------------
*But then MB is ALWAYS blaming someone else for his fuckups... so it's difficult to tell if that was really the case or just one more "The Democrats' dog ate my homework."

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

The Republican Debate - 10, count 'em - 10 candidates makes it a Massdebate

Keerist -- and I thought the Democrats' debate showed them to be stupid, pathetic, and self-serving...

Well, the Republicans always have to try to top the Dems in whatever they do...

The only bright spot is that the Republicans have Ron Paul, just as the Dems have Mike Gravel... and y'know, after 6+ years of Bush, the idea of a rather nutsy prez isn't that hard to imagine.

Thinking about one who is actually intelligent and not speaking as a sock puppet -- that's a bit more difficult.

At least they don't take orders from an invisible friend.

President Bush is warning Democratic leaders that any attempt to weaken federal policies that restrict abortion will be met with a veto.

Not that anyone is doing that, but the pissant in the White House has ALWAYS found it easier to kiss up to the lesser angels of his intolerant Base by waving imaginary threats in front of them.

Ahh, there is one thing in which the Arabs are superior to the English-speaking people . ---

INSULTS!

All that "You verminous son of a syphillitic camel..." and such...

But here's out chance to balance the playing field and close the Insult Gap ---

THE SHAKESPEARIAN INSULT KIT

(I can't remember from whom this came, or I'd give appropriate credit -- most likely some execrable Mensa-ite, but wottehell, Archie -- even a stopped clock (or an insuffreably self-serving and pompous one) may be right twice a day. So whether it's Bush or Rove or Reid or Cheney or Pelosi or Di-Di, here's an opportunity to do better than just "asshole," or "fuckwad" (not that those are incorrect, just overused).

Here's how to use it

Combine one word from each of the three columns below, and preface it

with the word "Thou":

Column 1 Columm 2 Column 3

artless | base-court | apple-john |

bawdy | bat-fowling | baggage |

beslubbering | beef-witted | barnacle |

bootless | beetle-headed | bladder |

churlish | boil-brained | boar-pig |

cockered | clapper-clawed | bugbear |

clouted | clay-brained | bum-bailey |

craven | common-kissing | canker-blossom |

currish | crook-pated | clack-dish |

dankish | dismal-dreaming | clotpole |

dissembling | dizzy-eyed | coxcomb |

droning | doghearted | codpiece |

errant | dread-bolted | death-token |

fawning | earth-vexing | dewberry |

fobbing | elf-skinned | flap-dragon |

froward | fat-kidneyed | flax-wench |

frothy | fen-sucked | flirt-gill |

gleeking | flap-mouthed | foot-licker |

goatish | fly-bitten | fustilarian |

gorbellied | folly-fallen | giglet |

impertinent | fool-born | gudgeon |

infectious | full-gorged | haggard |

jarring | guts-griping | harpy |

loggerheaded | half-faced | hedge-pig |

lumpish | hasty-witted | horn-beast |

mammering | hedge-born | hugger-mugger |

mangled | hell-hated | joithead |

mewling | idle-headed | lewdster |

paunchy | ill-breeding | lout |

pribbling | ill-nurtured | maggot-pie |

puking knotty-pated | malt-worm |

puny | milk-livered | mammet |

qualling | motley-minded | measle |

rank | onion-eyed | minnow |

reeky | plume-plucked | miscreant |

roguish | pottle-deep | moldwarp |

ruttish | pox-marked | mumble-news |

saucy | reeling-ripe | nut-hook |

spleeny | rough-hewn | pigeon-egg |

spongy | rude-growing | pignut |

surly | rump-fed | puttock |

tottering | shard-borne | pumpion |

unmuzzled | sheep-biting | ratsbane |

vain | spur-galled | scut |

venomed | swag-bellied | skainsmate |

villainous | tardy-gaited | strumpet |

warped | tickle-brained varlet |

wayward | toad-spotted | vassal |

weedy | unchin-snouted | whey-face |

yeasty | weather-bitten | wagtail |

I just don't understand why they call themselves "Christians."

This site is nearly enough to make one decide to have an all-out campaign to scourge these so-called Christians from our society.

The tragedy is that so many people don't actually know any actual Christians, i.e., people who actually try to live life in the path of Jesus. I have actually met people like that, so I know this pack of vermin is not typical, just typically bullying, loudmouthed, mean-spirited, hateful, and sociopathically vicious, justifying the WORST criminalities by waving the cross and the flag.

(I am neither kind -- not any kind of Christian at all -- just a pain-in-the-ass with attitude who goes about the business of pissing people off all on my own, WITHOUT claiming any divine license.)

Example:

George Herbert Walker Bush (Prez # 41):

"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God."

George Wanker Bush (Prez #43):

"I don't think that witchcraft is a religion. I wish the military would rethink this decision."*

"God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

Jerry Falwell:

"If you're not a born-again Christian, you're a failure as a human being."

"AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." (If this isn't a call for genocidal jihad, then God didn't make fat little hypocrites.)

Randall Terry:

"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good...Our goal is a Christian nation. We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism."


...and the Unholy One himself, the man who is living proof of the adage that "the devil can quote scripture for his own purposes, Pat Robertson:

"Just like what Nazi Germany did to the Jews, so liberal America is now doing to the evangelical Christians. It's no different...More terrible than anything suffered by any minority in history."
(I guess when the liberals packed all them Evangelical Christians into boxcars and sent them to mass death camps, that upset him. Of course, that Liberal New York Times never reported it.)

"The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians."

"You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense, I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist."

And lots more fun at this site -- The American Taliban

on the other hand, there ARE a few people with a few cells left in that mass of fatty tissue we call a brain:

"…If America could harness the power it wastes blowing smoke up its own ass, we could magically escape our energy-and-climate-change predicament.

James Howard Kunstler in Clusterfuck Nation

It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets elected

I don't get why Bush would keep referring to WWII and Hitler when his family fortune

I don't get why Bush would keep referring to WWII and Hitler when his family fortune not only came from selling bonds FOR Hitler, but BOTH grandfathers (George Herbert Walker & Prescott Bush became actual traitors in late 1941 as they continued sending money to the Third Reich for 10 months after we were at war with Germany.

Finally congress rebuked them under the "Trading With the Enemy Act" and told them to stop.

They were paying for the guns and bullets that were killing our soldiers and should have rightfully been shot for treason.

Poetic justice would have had them shot with German rifles.

Regardless of party, we should all support President Bush... the same way the Republicans supported President Clinton

Everyone remembers the "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" sign and

Bush on the aircraft carrier in his Big Boy Flyer suit with his genitalia highlighted bu straps and pads, trying to come off like "Captain Midnight Wins the Day," but really, justlooking like the missing member of The Village people ...

BUT...

just below the MISSION ACCOMPLISHED banner, there was another one. It read:

WHO'S NEXT?


That's one we don't see much these days.