Saintperle

8/29/07

Editorials asking "Why did it take Fredo so long to resign"

Are they kidding?

According to the 1996 Treaty against war crimes, both Fredo and Monkey Boy could be tried in the World Court (too bad if they don't recognize its authority) for crimes against humanity. And they'd damn well get convicted, too.

So why did it take Fredo so long to resign? Again -- are they kidding? They don't remember that man who disgraced his Marine Corps uniform by wearing it (despite not being in active service at the time) to make a visual plea in court (first case of symbolic whining I'd ever seen) -- you remember, Ollie North. And remember the "shredding parties?"

So why did it take Fredo so long to resign?

Because he had even more papers to shred than Ollie North did when Monkey Boy's dad was Veep and taking BCCI/Banco Lavoro kickbacks from Saddam Hussein and Colonel Noriega.

(Hey, if they can "lose" 4000+ emails sent, suspiciously, on non-White House servers, they can "lose" some incriminating documents.)

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8/27/07

Michael Vick says: "I was immature."


Mr. Vick
-- you killed dogs by strangling them or drowning them, not because they needed being put down out of compassion (although you put enough dogs into that dogfighting situation for gamblers to yell and scream and bet their money on), but because they were too wussy for your standards.

On what planet is that IMMATURE?
Wetting the bed is IMMATURE. (Although that's another characteristic of young sociopaths.)
Torturing and killing dogs is pure sadistic pathology.

Even Hitler was kind to dogs. Oh, right, he wasn't immature. (Get real, those swastikas and death's heads and uniforms were purely designed for 12-year olds). But ok.

So it's ok to torture and kill dogs when you're a kid?

Only for sociopaths.

SO please -- I am fully aware of the undercurrent of racism in ALL media cases involving African-Americans -- this is America and it's always there, but PLEASE -- the desire of most people to see Mr. Vick raped and tortured while in prison has NOTHING to do with his race but EVERYTHING to do with him learning a lesson about that old phrase:

"Shouldn't happen to a dog."

But to a dog-torturer?

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A couple of nice quotes from Marius404 on his Myspaace blog:


"Protest is the highest form of democracy."
Gen. Wesley Clark

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"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time,
and your government when it deserves it."
Mark Twain

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and from one of my favorite writers,
James Branch Cabell, I add these:


"Patriotism is the religion of hell."


"Mundus volt decipi"




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8/25/07

Meet the new boss -- worse than the old boss (and I mean Saddam Hussein), and oh, yeah -- you'd better count your fingers after you shake his hand.

No good deed goes unpunished, not in this administration.

Whistleblowing about theft, arming insurgents, and outrageous ripoffs of government money (more theft) gets results -- the person who points it out gets crushed...

From MSNBC



One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.

Or worse.

For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.

There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.

He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers — all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.

The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.

“It was a Wal-Mart for guns,” he says. “It was all illegal and everyone knew it.”

So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn’t know whom to trust in Iraq.

For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.

Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics “reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants...”

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I think this could arguably come under the heading of High Crimes and Misdemeanors. Some call it -- as the old right wing rabid book was titled -- some call it treason.


I'm one of them.

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But there's more. Lots more. Read on at the site.

So when I call this administration a bunch of thieving, murdering, conscience-less sociopaths, I don't think it's hyperbole at all -- I'm NOT exaggerating.

These sleazy back room thieves who talk about the values of the Old West?

Right -- in the Old West, every one of them would be hanging from a rope somewhere out on the range.

They really don't want the Old West's form of justice.

For that matter, they don't want ANY form of justice. Just plunder (and guess who's getting plundered?)

These people make the heretofore historically monumentally corrupt Grant and Harding presidencies look like Boy Scout Jamborees.

Fuck them all and the tainted Supreme Court Justices and the Go-Along members of congress (Republican and Democrat) they rode in on.

Despicable scum.




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8/23/07

Mike McConnell's Interview raises another point...

While most media were reporting on the interview as, well, what's the fuss, only 100 people were illegally wiretapped, so that's not so bad.
(Sure and only 3,000 people were burnt alive by the offspring of Bush-Pere's Saudi pals, so what's the big fuss? We kill more than that on the highways every month.. by the way, my cavalier attitude is sarcastic, not sincere, in case the type doesn't tell the tone of voice.)

Glenn Greenwald does a fine job of getting to the root of what I can only describe as McConnell's candid smokescreen ... that FISA was passed to end precisely the misdeeds that were done by the 21st Century Bush-League Presidency ... warrantless wiretapping -- and his bizarre request to retractively immunize the phone companies that broke the law from any law suits...

************
But that leads me to another point, the yammer yammer of the Republicans who say "Well, Bush and Bush and then Clinton and Clinton, as if the two were the same thing. (Which, interestingly, seems to me like a tacit admission that the two Bush-wah Administrations have been a disaster.)

Not even close.

First of all, it's Nixon, Reagan, Bush, and Bush -- different faces all backed by the same sociopaths lurking in the shadows of the White House corridors -- Karl Rove (Grasshopper to Donald Segretti's Master of Ratfucking), Eliot Abrams, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Donald Redrum, Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, et al.

Second, there was Bush-Pere's recession ending with a HUGE infusion of tax money intended to buy him re-election. Then Bush-League's economic semi-disaster, i.e., the assholes who revel in the stock market got all comfy at the expense of hundreds of thousands of layoffs, jobs and homes lost and families ruined, the administration going down on the Wall Street Wankers by changing the unemployment percentage to say that once your unemployment insurance runs out, you're no longer unemployed. A true count would give us something like 12 - 15% unemployed.

Third, Bill Clinton presided over a hot economy where even middle and lower middle income people got healthy economically .. plus social programs like Cobra and Compassionate Leave which suggested that Mr. Clinton actually gave a damn about the people who live in America.

I am -- believe me -- no fan of Hillary Clinton, but Wesley Clark is NOT going to the the next president. Still, it wouldn't be so bad if she won, and certainly not a treasury-plundering, Bill of Rights destroying, sneering, spit-on-the-poor and stop those children from sucking on the government tit for medical care their parent(s) can't afford regime. (Any government tit-sucking going on, it's going to be done by Hallibruton and the rest of the Usual Miscreants.)

Mrs. Clinton is an intelligent human being, a quality this country truly needs in the next president, even more than we needed it in vain in this one -- she a VERY intelligent human being (which is a problem with getting elected in a country that reviles and dislikes anyone who actually IS intelligent).

I still say the ONLY success of this administration has been to achieve the true goal in Iraq, i.e., lie our way into invading and then screw up the occupation so horribly that the USA can be convinced we need to stay there, in Iraq, forever, occupying all the permanent military bases we've built and thereby controlling who get oil, and more important -- who, in very few years, gets potable water from the Tigris and Euphrates. (Since we had to abandon the base Poppy built in Saudi Arabia that caused a blowback reaction by Osama ben Ladn and other Fundamentalist Muslims that culminated in the two bombings of the World Trade Center. Why, was there another reason he faked Saddam Hussein into invading Kuwait?)

That was the goal, and the masters picked the right little monkey boy to pull it off... they learned the hard way that if you have someone who is fully aware of the plan, like Nixon, people can tell from the TV camera closeups that he's hiding something.

Thus, the genius of finding two blissfully unaware self-absorbed smiling doofusses to sit in the oval office -- Ronnie Reagan, who actually could play it as if it were real, and George W Bush, who was always obviously reading lines. (George GWH Bush was merely the rear guard.)

Oh, one other point -- the people of America actually liked -- and still like -- Bill Clinton. Which may have something to do with the fact that he liked people.

We've got a whole year to see if Hillary loosens up or Obama grows up or Edwards's numbers move up before we have to decide if any of them (or anyone else) can possibly be as mean-spirited, vicious, vacuous, vindictive, stupid, sociopathic, conscienceless, and truly truly second-rate as Monkey Boy.

I doubt such a creature actually exists.

I actually think -- no joke -- Charles Manson has more of a social conscience than GW Bush.

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8/22/07

Of course, this is also very bad news for the Scientologists...

Once again, Boing-Boing steers us to this wonderful bit of total insanity...

Rajesh Kumar Singh / AP


By Matthew Philips
Newsweek
Aug. 20-27, 2007 issue - In one of history's more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is "an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation."

But beyond the irony lies China's true motive: to cut off the influence of the Dalai Lama, Tibet's exiled spiritual and political leader, and to quell the region's Buddhist religious establishment more than 50 years after China invaded the small Himalayan country...

At 72, the Dalai Lama, who has lived in India since 1959, is beginning to plan his succession, saying that he refuses to be reborn in Tibet so long as it's under Chinese control. Assuming he's able to master the feat of controlling his rebirth, as Dalai Lamas supposedly have for the last 600 years, the situation is shaping up in which there could be two Dalai Lamas: one picked by the Chinese government, the other by Buddhist monks. "It will be a very hot issue," says Paul Harrison, a Buddhism scholar at Stanford. "The Dalai Lama has been the prime symbol of unity and national identity in Tibet, and so it's quite likely the battle for his incarnation will be a lot more important than the others."

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Well, it's not just Buddhists -- I don't know if things have changed, but not too long ago, a Scientologist who wanted to join up with Sea Org had to sign a million-year contract (or was it a billion-year contract? Sorry, I'm not sure), so that the person would be legally obligated to stay with Scientology for all future incarnations. And it may not have been limited to Sea Org. The point is that the Church does offer (or require) such a contract, in some circumstances. And such reincarnation could not take place outside of China, while if one was inside China, there would be other unpleasantness.


Same would apply for Hindus except that they don't proselytize as consistently, internationally, and aggressively as the Church of Scientology.

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8/21/07

Drug czar calls marijuana growers dangerous terrorists

From The Redding News via the wonderful blog, Boing-Boing
the insanity of the rabidly religious:

The nation's top anti-drug official said people need to overcome their "reefer blindness" and see that illicit marijuana gardens are a terrorist threat to the public's health and safety, as well as to the environment.

John P. Walters, President Bush's drug czar, said the people who plant and tend the gardens are terrorists who wouldn't hesitate to help other terrorists get into the country with the aim of causing mass casualties. Walters made the comments at a Thursday press conference that provided an update on the "Operation Alesia" marijuana-eradication effort.

"Don't buy drugs. They fund violence and terror," he said...

"These people are armed; they're dangerous," he said. He called them "violent criminal terrorists."

Walters, whose official title is director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, said too many people write off marijuana as harmless. "We have kind of a 'reefer blindness,' " he said.

No arrests have been made so far in the four days of raids, the opening leg of what Shasta County Sheriff Tom Bosenko has promised will be at least two straight weeks of daily raids.

He said suspects have been hard to find because their familiarity with their terrain makes it easy for them to flee quickly...

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And they will continue to be hard to find until the Range Rover and Rolex dealerships have time to relocate.
**********************

The operation is named after the last major battle between the Roman Empire and the Gauls in 52 B.C. That battle was won by the Romans.

With the blitz of marijuana gardens around Shasta County, Bosenko said officials hope to not only get rid of the pot, but also win back the land for the public that owns it.

"These organizations are destroying our lands and wildlife," he said.

********************************
(OK, can we pause for a moment to fall rolling on the ground in hysterical convulsions of laughter that a Bush administration official is actually justifying the definition of a terrorist including "someone who destroys land and wildlife.") OK, back to Bizarro-World.
*******************************

Bernie Weingardt, regional forester for the Forest Service's Pacific Southwest Region, said the 28,000 acres believed to house illegal marijuana grows on national forest land throughout the state would cost more than $300 million to revive.

"These lands must be cleaned and restored," he said.

His estimate is based on a National Park Service study that found it costs $11,000 per acre to pull the plants, clear irrigation systems, reshape any terracing and replant native vegetation, said Mike Odle, Forest Service spokesman.

While Walters didn't give specific goals for Operation Alesia, he said anti-drug agencies aim to cripple the organized crime groups that he said are behind the marijuana cultivation.

"This business we intend to put into recession, depression and put its leaders into jail," Walters said.

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

If Osama Ben Ladn smoked dope or advocated abortion, you know he'd be dead with his head on a pike outside the White House. Unfortunately, both he and MonkeyBoy have the same religious insanity. (In other words, they're more alike than anyone really wants to have to consider.)

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SO maybe Rove, Bush, et al AREN'T homophobes -- they're self-haters -- or maybe, like Monkey Boy, Rove has his own daddy issues

Via Boing-Boing's presentation of the essay:

"I'm the proud owner of Karl Rove’s father’s solid gold cock ring."

(Piercing pioneer Jim Ward, who in 1975 launched what is now considered America's first contemporary body piercing business (The Gauntlet), remembers Louis "Indy" Rove, an early body modification enthusiast who is identified as the adoptive father of Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove. The elder Mr. Rove had (at least) 37 piercings, most of which were in his genitals, all performed by Mr. Ward.

Which then leads us to THESE links:
"New book reveals Karl Rove's Father Was Gay"

and

"The Closets of Karl and Ken"


and this CBS News link

which is slow and overloaded and may fail.

So, while I know some wonderful kids with one or two gay parents, I guess, for the people who know Mr Rove personally, perhaps he is the reason why people think having a gay parent will turn the child into a monster.

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8/19/07

All Al Quaeda All the Time -- Charlie Brown and the Death Machine with Dick Cheney as Lucy

So now it's AL QUAEDA that runs the eastern province of Iraq
(Ooo-ee-oo -- the one right next to IRAN -- ooo-ee-oo)

Don't we ever get tired of the same old same old "boogie-man in the closet" game they keep playing on us? Don't we ever learn -- THEY MAKE IT UP.

The generals say that the Iraqis who now call themselves Al Quaeda (kind of the way the pissant minor league hoods in the USA try to convince people they're connected to the real mob) constitute maybe 2% of the insurgents... but the press -- not just FOX but CNN etc, are all Al Quaeda all the time...

and I fell asleep watching Wolf Blitzer (what a great soporific he is) and I dreamed of Danny Kaye being Hans Christian Anderson singing:

Al Quaeda, Al Quaeda, tiny little thing

Al Quaeda dance, Al Quaeda sing,

Al Quaeda Al Quaeda, though you're really small

When we need an enemy, you're 10 feet tall.

(When there's evil in the world -- you caused it all.)

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OK, so they juiced up, but why didn't anyone notice?

Back a ways, Major League Baseball was getting worried about loss of attendance and revenues for the teams, and they really hoped that a bunch of crowd-pleasing home run hitters would emerge.

For all that the true devotees of baseball see it as an intricate game and love the pitchers' duel, the shutout, the no-hitter, the perfect game -- that's not what the masses want -- they want to see the ball go over the wall and a bunch of young millionaires high-fiving each other around home plate.

So maybe that's why people in a position of authority decided not to notice when such premier players as Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, Ken Caminiti, Jason Giambi, and quite a few others when, in the 1990's, they all blew up until they started looking like giant hemorrhoids on cleats -- because their slugging average went up along with their size.

As the old comedians used to say "They blowed up REAL good." Hard to miss.

Sure the players who used steroids cheated, whether from league and team pressure to produce or from greed or from ego -- doesn't matter, they cheated.

But I remember that Felonius Monkey Jim Bakker crying into the camera about how people hated Christians and that's why he was being attacked. And I remember thinking, "No Jim, it's not Christians we hate -- it's hypocrites."

Ssame thing with Bud Selig and Bart Giamatti and Faye Vincent and all the owners and all the sportswriters and all the rest -- a bunch of hypocrites who made certain they didn't notice the balloon men when they were putting cash in their pockets.

Hypocrites.

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8/18/07

White House Wants More Time on Subpoenas -- MORE TIME? UNTIL WHEN, when they make their escape to some non-extraditable country?

By DEB RIECHMANN Associated Press Writer

August 17,2007 | CRAWFORD, Texas -- The White House on Friday asked a Senate panel for more time to produce subpoenaed information about the legal justification for President Bush's secretive eavesdropping program.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy had set Monday as the deadline for administration officials already subpoenaed to provide documents and testimony about the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program.

In a letter to Leahy, White House counsel Fred Fielding * argued that the subpoenas called for the production of "extraordinarily sensitive national security information," and he said much of the information -- if not all -- could be subject to a claim of executive privilege.

Fielding asked Leahy to suspend the deadline until after Labor Day...


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


William Burroughs, the 20th Century's MOST brilliantly prophetic and insightful writer on matters of power, dirty dealing, fear-mongering, addiction, and business including those who ARE addicted to power, business, fear-mongering, etc, had this to say about this band of corrupt vicious non-human assholes. And he said it in a book (Nova Express) published 43 years ago, in 1964.

"Listen: I call you all. Show your cards all players. Pay it all pay it all pay it all back. Play it all pay it all play it all back. For all to see. InTimes Square. On Picadilly.

"Premature. Premature. Give us a little more time."

Time for what? more lies? Premature? Premature for who? I say to all these words aree not premature. These words may be too late. Minutes to go...

"Top Secret -- Classified -- For the Board -- the Elite -- The Initiates --"

Are these the words of the all-powerful boards and syndicates of the earth? These are the words of liars cowards collaborators traitors. Liars who want time for more lies. Cowards who cannot face your "dogs" you "gooks" your "errand boys" your "human animals" with the truth. Collaborators with Insect People with Vegetable People. With any people who offer you a body forever. To shit forever. For this you have sold out your sons. Sold the ground from unborn feet forever. Traitors to all souls everywhere...

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Ain't it cute how they behave as if the Late Mr Burroughs actually scripted this administration?

I truly admire Noam Chomsky's insights about the American government's covert (and overt) power games, but compared to William Burroughs, many years earlier, he's sort of like Bob Newhart compared to the late Lenny Bruce. On the right track, but a bit more gentle and forgiving than might be needed.

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*Fred Fielding -- another one of the many unindicted co-conspirators left over from the Nixon Administration to show up with Bush League.

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8/16/07

Fred Thompson waited too long.

The man who wants to be the smiling version of Dick Cheney should have read the classics -- Shakespeare -- "Ripeness is all."

This poseur waited too long and rotted on the vine.

His right-wing religioso perch has already been taken -- Gov Huckabee, a man who, abhorrent as his policies are (pretty much the same as Fred's), is a man with a quality the rest don't have -- he's likable (so is Ron Paul, but in a different way)

-- Every time I see him talk I can't help but think "DAMN! I like that man."

Look at Ken Doll Romney and Elmer Fudd Giuliani and the rest... all ill-tempered pezzonovantes.

But Huckabee is a guy who makes you smile.

Heavy heavy heavy power in that.


(Although I could never understand why so many people couldn't see Bush as a mean vicious smiling prick. Never could understand why anyone would want to invite him to the barbecue
or have a beer with him. So maybe my liking Huckabee means the others won't.)

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8/15/07

ORDERS OF THE DAY -- Talking Point Code Word is AL QUAEDA

Attention: Politicians, military officers, pundits, and all the rest of you Echolalian morons out there:

The almost totally discredited Bush League administration has been given one final (we can only hope) parting gift from Herr Rove --

"Anything that happens that's bad? Say Al Quaeda... Al Quaeda in Iraq ... forces killed an Al Quaeda official ... it was an Al Quaeda affiliated group."

(Al Quaeda is the new "liberal.)

Just say it over and over and over again ... resurrect that old "dancin' in the streets song" --

It was Al Quaeda Al Quaeda Al Quaeda -- they'll be totentanzing in the streets .. in Detroit .. in Philadelphia, PA .. in Boston .. in Fallujah .. in Baghdad .. in Darfur .. just say it over and over and over and over again... and maybe sooner or later, people who don't remember the way that device was used in Vietnam ("If it's dead, it was VC") won't catch it in Vietnam II: The Sequel.

Too bad that Al Quaeda, which according to CIA people didn't actually exist until the terrified kiddies in Washington ("We're rich, they're communists...aiyeee!") gave it a name to encompass a whole bunch of independent groups who were pissed off at our intrusive economic and cultural presence in their home towns ... BUT too bad they're not like the Hell's Angels who took action when some pissants in Dubuque started using their name and fabricating copies of their colors. I'm told that various members of the actual Hell's Angels made it a point to visit them and suggest they either come up to standards or stop.

So remember:

"If bodies are broken -- it was Al Quaeda.
If lives are lost -- it was Al Quaeda.
If women are raped -- it was Al Quaeda.
If people are tortured -- it was Al Quaeda.
If 200 people are blown to shit because of their religion, it's Al Quaeda (or George W Bush).

Al Quaeda all the time -- under your bed, in your closet, under the sink, coming up through the pipes in your toilet... it's AL QUAEDA AL QUAEDA AL QUAEDA.

It's not a UFO -- it's AL Quaeda.
It's not a mugging -- it's Al Quaeda.
They're not "illegal immigrants -- they're AL QUAEDA OPERATIVES sneaking into America.

---and oh yeah, you can mention the fact that the so-called Al Quaeda in Iraq NEVER takes credit for anything we say they did, but we'd rather you didn't.

It's the mantra the Republicans and the Liebermans and the Hillaries and the rest of the "kill 'em all" sociopaths in say as they circle the toilet bowl, refusing to believe they're getting flushed out with all the rest of the foul smelling stuff.


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8/14/07

I hadn't realized that Karl Rove had been one of Donald Segretti's Dirty Tricks jokers.

The ratfuckers, they called themselves, the Nixon guys who came from tour guiding at Disneyland and pushing authoritarian ads at J.Walter Thompson ("oh ain't we so cute when we commit felonies?")

But the prosecution thought he was too small time to worry about.

So they let him live. (Too bad for us.)

As to him being prosecuted for a felony, bear in mind, he has dual citizenship with Germany, where his grandfather was one of the engineers who designed the Birkenau portion of Auswchitz (there were three parts, like Gaul or the Trinity, and Birkenau was the part with the gas chambers and ovens).

(I guess he spent his life thinking "Well, I'm not as bad as gramps."

We'll see -- he may ultimately have caused even MORE pain.)

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Is the right wing right when they say we WANT the US to lose the war in Iraq?

Actually, yes.

Don't want our military people to get killed or wounded.

I want THEM to get to go home.

But looking at the long-term view of America, what will be best for us, for the country itself -- definitely -- would be losing this war and skulking our way home.

Even if we COULD win it, we shouldn't.

A pro-war fellow today admitted on Chris Matthews' show that the real reason we have gone in and destroyed Iraq and its people was to secure the empire with military bases in the Middle East.

Matthews was dumbfounded that this doofus would actually admit that.

But of course, the first Iraq war was fomented in order to get a base in Saudi Arabia.

Unfortunately, when Afghani Freedom Fighter Osama ben Ladn came home to Riyadh to ask for money to put together an army and go into Iraq and kill Saddam Hussein (not his ally) he was outraged to discover that the USA had defiled the sacred soil of the land the British Crown had given them for helping T. E. Lawrence change the map for THAT empire's convenience.

Basically, he told his father "Fuck you, too," and went back to Afghanistan to plan his attacks on the World Trade Center. First one (during Bill Clinton's presidency) was perp'd by morons.

The goons who pulled off the second were almost ALL Saudi men.

Ben Ladn's hope was that he would seriously fuck up the USA (which he did) and that THEN, since we would know that the perps of the mass murder that came to be known as 9-11 were all from the 'hood -- that we would then go after the Saudi Royals and take down those who conspired with us.

We didn't of course -- didn't even question the people who knew the dive bombers.

Free pass to Bush's Daddy's pals.

So Bush and Rove and Cheney and Wolfie and the rest, cooked up this bullshit to stampede congress and the public into rubber-stamping an invasion of Iraq.

So ...

the reason that losing this war is so vitally important to and necessary for the future health of our country is to discredit this form of sanctioned plunder and murder forever (which, as we've seen since Vietnam, means maybe 20 years).

On the other hand (don't say I never said anything nice about Monkey Boy) the good thing that The Resident of the United States (Mr. 43) has done has been to so totally fuck up the power grab his family has been working on for the past 100 years (see Kevin Phillips' American Dynasty) as to shine a light on it and seriously diminish any chance of them COMPLETELY destroying the constitution and turning the USA back into a Bush-league Monarchy.

Ain't gonna happen now because we all know what they're up to.

Sorry Jeb.

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

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8/13/07

Of course it's gonna be Huckabee

The sane people of Iowa realized this man was someone they actually liked.

And as absurd as I find his point of view -- anti-choice, anti-evolution, "I'm a Christian but I believe in killing my fellow man, as long as it's in Iraq" pro-war, etc -- I can't help liking him every time I see him.

There's something straight-on congenial and charming about the fellow, unlike Mitt Romney, the Evil Ken Doll who will forever blame his loss on "being Mormon," but he'll be wrong since Americans are generally "who gives a fuck what kind of Moonlight you believe in? You're a covert, calculating asshole and no one should trust you as far as they could throw you and your five sons."

And it won't be Rudy Giuliani, the man who happened to do his job as mayor after some insane motherfuckers killed a whole bunch of people.

And it won't be Fred "Too Clever By Half" Thompson who waited too long to bring his "I'm the Smiling version of Dick Cheney" act to the game.

It'll be Huckabee, a most likable fellow, even if he's if a "let's have a theocracy" visionary, and is actually more daft than Ron Paul (who is actually a very sane 'live your own life" Conservative, not a theocrat at all, and is ALSO quite likable fellow.)


It'll be Huckabee for the GOP, I think.

And that's sort of scary for people who want to change parties in the White House, because he's REALLY likable.

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8/11/07

Watching CSPAN this monring, listening to callers speaking to Anthony Cordesman, I was reminded of G. Gordon Liddy's comment about Americans:

So many were calling in to say "Well if we did THIS then it would all work out," or "If we don't elect Democrats..." or "If we don't listen to Republicans..."

Mr. Cordesman commented on the American love of the belief that there are simple solutions to problems...

And G.Gordon Liddy put it nicely when he said, long ago:


"Americans are distinguished from all other nationalities by one thing: A deep and abiding faith in the Easter Bunny."

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


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Amazing -- someone reporting on what he learned in repeated visits to Iraq -- WITHOUT SPIN

Anthony Cordesman -- his report on what we might look ahead to is objective, analytical, and clear ... I'm impressed (hey, I never said I was objective)

His report:

The Tenuous Case for Strategic Patience in Iraq: A Trip Report

A sample of the way he tells it:

Synopsis:

Everyone sees Iraq differently. As one leading US official in Iraq put it, “the current situation is like playing three dimensional chess in the dark while someone is shooting at you.” It is scarcely surprising that my perceptions of a recent trip to Iraq are different from that of two of my traveling companions and those of several other recent think tank travelers to the country...


Read the rest of the synopsis (and the entire report -- PDF file) at CSIS.org


He was on Washington Journal, CSPAN this morning (8/11) and the entire program, including callers (really worthwhile), etc should be posted by tomorrow -- 8/12 or Monday -- 8/13

I was especially impressed by his comments on the Biden "3 Countries Plan" which I really thought would be workable until I heard his explanation of why it wouldn't.

Amazingly refreshing to hear someone talk about something he actually knows -- and even more amazing, that something is Iraq's present and future situation.

Check it out.

It changed my opinionated mind -- not just about the Biden plan - it might prove enlightening for you, too.



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8/9/07

It's NOT the Pottery Barn reality ("You break it, you bought it.")
That's just the rationale used to keep us there, to keep pouring taxpayer's money and military personnel's lives down the rathole of Halliburton et al.

("We have ALWAYS been at war with Oceania.")

It's the HUMPTY DUMPTY reality -- "You break it and it's broken and all the king's horses and all the king's men can make billions on the back of the Iraqi dead and the Americans getting impoverished -- BUT IT AIN'T NEVAH gonna get put back together again ... not until we're gone and they can get to work on rebuilding THEIR OWN country, just as we could be doing with ours.

Bush - Rove - Cheney - Rice will be remembered as fondly in American history as Hitler - Himmler - Goerring - Goebbels are remembered in German history.

A small group of crazies will continue to worship them as visionaries and the rest of us will spit every time their names come up.

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Even Maliki sees what's coming

Iraq's Maliki met with Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and actually said things indicating that he believes Iran will be a positive influence in settling the hostilities,

Of course, the GOP/Lieberman fairy tale is that if we pull out of Iraq, the earth will crack on its axis and the two halves will spin out into space, one side to the dark and cold beyond Pluto, the other right into the flaming furnace of the sun.

Yeah, because they've been so right before, haven't they?

Here's what will much more likely happen:

We'll leave, the conflict will go on, Syria and Iran will come in AND STABILIZE IRAQ.

They live next door -- they do NOT want a raging civil war going on.

Iran is, of course, Shi'ia.

Syria is, of course, predominantly Sunni.

Each one will backstop on of the factions and THEN they'll work it out between them.

What terrifies this administration -- and so many of their jingoist death merchant pals -- is that IT WON'T BE ABOUT US. WE WON'T MATTER, except as the people who fucked it all up.

Bush is already pissed off that Maliki met with Iranian
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to talk about settling down the crazies.

President Monkey Boy is upset that, obviously, everyone in the Middle East considers HIM to be one of those crazies needed to be controlled.

As do some 7 out of 10 Americans.



What the Bush league is scared of is that things will work out much more simply once we're no longer there to stir things up.



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8/4/07

Ain't it curious how US military involvements seem to ALWAYS somehow INCREASE opium production and sales?

Vietnam and the Golden Triangle, the war in Kosovo (opium gorwn, processed into heroin, and primary trans-shipment route for South Asian opium) etc. And when not opium, cocaine (Iran-Contra -- a gigantic coke deal from which American govt people bought Rolexes, Mercedes' and ultimately, the 2000 presidential election. And of course, the Taliban, for all their faults, DID stop opium production in Afghanistan. Lyndon LaRouche may be crazy but he was right about the Islamic Brotherhood / Opium traffic. (Of course, he just happens to fill his diatribes with the names of Jewish people and Organizations with Jewish names even more than Pat Buchanan or Pat Robertson. And never even mentions the Bush-Walker family, the 19th Century New England patricians, etc. Just an oversight due to lack of bandwidth, I guess.) Although he does manage to point towards England which might help explain why former Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's poodle, was so willing to roll over and piddle on himself in submission. Couldn't let the USA get all that opium.


Another Record Poppy Crop in Afghanistan

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

By MATTHEW LEE Associated Press Writer

August 04,2007 | WASHINGTON -- Afghanistan will produce another record poppy harvest this year that cements its status as the world's near-sole supplier of the heroin source, yet a furious debate over how to reverse the trend is stalling proposals to cut the crop, U.S. officials say.

As President Bush prepares for weekend talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, divisions within the U.S. administration and among NATO allies have delayed release of a $475 million counternarcotics program for Afghanistan, where intelligence officials see growing links between drugs and the Taliban, the officials said.

U.N. figures to be released in September are expected to show that Afghanistan's poppy production has risen up to 15 percent since 2006 and that the country now accounts for 95 percent of the world's crop, 3 percentage points more than last year, officials familiar with preliminary statistics told The Associated Press...

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8/3/07

President Bush -- maybe I've had him wrong all along

I had all the information, just couldn't put it together, so I went on saying the war was wrong, the conduct of it totally incompetent, etc.

I remember reading that he had run his father's re-election campaign, and blamed the loss on the fact that "the war didn't last long enough."

And I figured that's what he'd done, decided to keep one going but it got out of hand from Day One. After all, he'd fucked up every other thing he'd ever done in his life, failed at every business. So why not this time.

And I knew his father had faked out Saddam Hussein in order to get a US military base in the Middle East (remember the statement April Glaspie was instructed to make to Saddam concerning Kuwait? "We have no interest in Arab to Arab conflicts.")

So we built one in Saudi Arabia.

And when Osama ben Ladn came home from Afghanistan, he demanded money so he could take an army north into Iraq to kill Saddam Hussein since he was "a disgrace to Islam," that he allowed women to drive and run their own businesses, not wear the veil, allowed hotels to serve alcohol, etc..

They were ALWAYS blood enemies, NEVER allies.

And then, while home, he discovered that THEY (his family and the ruling class) ALLOWED the USA to put a military base on their sacred soil, he stormed out vowing to take THEM down, too.

Which had more than a little to do with the two attacks on the World Trade Center.

But I never connected those things with that famous Karl Rove goal of making a permanent Republican majority.

And now it SEEMS that the war hasn't been conducted incompetently.

The plan was ALWAYS to fuck it up so bad that we -- the USA -- would have to stay in Iraq for the next 50 years or more.

We have built maybe a dozen gigantic military bases in Iraq.

Permanent bases.

And Monkey Boy was successful in his goal to not "let the war end too soon."

We just didn't know what "too soon" meant to these people.

At least until 2050 at which time the rising oceans will change the situation.

Just like the comedy movie:

"We kill, we steal, we debase and corrupt everyone who comes in contact with us, we destroy families, pervert the patriotism of young men and women, cme down viciously on anyone who disagrees with us or gets in our way, and then we laugh and dance and fool around and sneer at all of them."

"What do you call yourselves?"

"We call ourselves 'The Aristocrats.' "



**********************
So, the little shit FINALLY succeeded at something -- fucking up the world badly enough to make his little totentanz the center of realpolitik attention for the next century.

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

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Grassroots program for preventing future budget deadlocks

Not just here in California --

San Francisco Chronicle

LOOMING IMPACT

OF BUDGET IMPASSE

HEALTH SERVICES: Poor, elderly, disabled could be early casualties of stalemate after state freezes Medi-Cal payments

but everywhere. Pennsylvania just went through one, that I know of.

I was in a bookstore and someone who'd apparently just seen Inside Man or Dog Day Afternoon looked at the headline and suggested "We ought to do a hostage-type situation with those people. Make it legal to shoot one member of the legislature for every day past deadline. After all, we're paying them to work for us, right?"

And when I stopped laughing (with him, not at him), I said:

"Yeah, but who's gonna vote for that law? Not them."

To which he said:

"Make it an initiative. Put it on the ballot. WE will."

So, I pass along to everyone in Sacramento the fact that's there's more than a bit of frustration out here that you people don't seem to have the intelligence, decency, consideration, or sophistication of third-graders insofar as "works well with others" is concerned.

In the time-honored words we all remember:

"Get your shit together or get gone."

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More on the monsoon posting below:

As I said yesterday, only one reference in the first 50 hits Google gives for "monsoon."

(Others are restaurants and rock groups & etc. I didn't care to go any farther. Could be the first 100.)


But here's some more from the AP that I find on Salon.com but not in the New York Times or our local SF Chronicle:

Death Toll Rises in South Asia Floods

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

By WASBIR HUSSAIN Associated Press Writer

August 03,2007 | GAUHATI, India -- Hungry, frightened and shouting for help, families perched perilously in treetops or on the roofs of their flooded homes in Uttar Pradesh as the death toll rose Friday from a month of torrential rains...

One woman in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh who identified herself to television reporters only as Savitra said food was running low.

"We have not eaten anything for last two days," she told local Enadu TV. "Whatever we had at our home was washed away."

At many places in the state, river levels rose so fast that villagers couldn't flee.

"The gush of water was so sudden we did not get the time to react," Vinod Kumar, a resident of a flooded village in Basti district, told Enadu TV. "All of our things have been washed away. We do not have food, kerosene or even a match box...

"At least 12 people, mostly children and women, died of rain-related incidents in the last 24 hours," Surendra Srivastava, a police spokesman, told The Associated Press in Lucknow, the capital Uttar Pradesh.

Other parts of India were also hit hard. In Mumbai, the country's bustling financial capital, people waded through knee-deep water that covered many streets after severe overnight rains... "

MUMBAI? This is not some remote rural area. This is a metropolitan center of 20 million people (as in twice the population size of New York).

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/mapimages/indian_subcontinent/mumbai/mumbai.gif

Map from LonelyPlanet.com


This is not Bangladesh where this is a regular horror, since the first 100 or so miles inland are only inches above sea level. Not that those people in Bangladesh don't count, just that flooding is so terribly frequent there -- and a rise in the ocean of two inches should put most of it underwater. Those people don't just need help from time to time and concert to concert. They need a major project to either relocate to drier land or do what the Dutch did with their sea level situation. A topographical map says it all:

http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/bangladesh_rel96.jpg

Of course, a new video game ("ICED!") needs a full page in those daily magazines we like to call newspapers.

I know, what can anyone do? But to just not even notice it? That's a little cold, isn't it? Or has Dick Cheney set the standard for compassion in America.

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Do you find it curious and disturbing that this news item should have only 1 listing in the first 50 listings on Google?

I do.



Heavy monsoon floods displace 19

million people, kill 178 in India and

Bangladesh

The Associated Press Published: August 2, 2007

GAUHATI, India: Heavy monsoon rains and floods have killed at least 178 people and displaced another 19 million across Bangladesh and much of northern India, officials said Friday...

With rivers bursting their banks along the fertile plains south of the Himalayas, India ordered the army to help evacuate people from some of the worst-hit areas. Soldiers began Friday to evacuate people from some 500 villages under water in Uttar Pradesh, State Relief Commissioner Umesh Sinha said.

Some 14 million people in India and 5 million in Bangladesh have been displaced or marooned by the flooding, according to government figures. At least 132 people have died in recent days because of the floods in India and 46 more in Bangladesh...

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

19 MILLION PEOPLE?!

In 5 years of terror, chaos, and violent anarchy in Iraq, nearly one million people have been displaced from their homes (2 million have left the country).

This is 19 MILLION PEOPLE made homeless in one week.

500 villages under water.

And it doesn't appear on any TV newscast.

And it doesn't appear in any American newspaper.

19 MILLION --

That's everyone in New York City (all 5 boroughs) and a little more than half the entire population of New England from Bridgeport, Connecticut to Madawaska, Maine .



But hey, I guess I'm being weird to expect more when Lindsay Lohan got caught with coke in her pants and is being sued in small claims court by the woman whose car she hit back in April (FIRST listing on Google).





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8/2/07

Cheney makes an extraordinarily revealing statement

He sneers at the investigations and hearings being done by Democrats in congress as:

"They're just turning over rocks to see what they find."


So THAT's where his undisclosed location is, under a rock.

Hmmm.

Maybe not, but it certainly tells us he knows where those other slaveys that belong to him and Bushwah are lurking.

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