Saintperle

9/30/07

From Salon.com

Religious right may blackball Giuliani

Christian conservative leaders privately consider supporting a third-party, antiabortion candidate should Rudy Giuliani win the GOP nomination.

By Michael Scherer

Sep. 30, 2007 | A powerful group of conservative Christian leaders decided Saturday at a private meeting in Salt Lake City to consider supporting a third-party candidate for president if a pro-choice nominee like Rudy Giuliani wins the Republican nomination.

The meeting of about 50 leaders, including Focus on the Family's James Dobson, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins and former presidential candidate Gary Bauer, who called in by phone, took place at the Grand America Hotel during a gathering of the Council for National Policy, a powerful shadow group of mostly religious conservatives. James Clymer, the chairman of the U.S. Constitution Party, was also present at the meeting, according to a person familiar with the proceedings.

"The conclusion was that if there is a pro-abortion nominee they will consider working with a third party," said the person, who spoke to Salon on the condition of anonymity. The private meeting was not a part of the official CNP schedule, which is itself a closely held secret. "Dobson came in just for this meeting," the person said.

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Ahh, from Michael Scherer's lips to the ears of those who think God whispers into their ears.

Rudy's candidacy always seemed based on nothing more than the image of him standing up and looking tougher than the craven, shivering President Monkey Boy.

The fact that he's a vicious, nasty prick whose pig-headedness cost many many more NYFD lives than should have been lost doesn't matter. All the Christers care about is that women don't get to choose about their pregnancies any way but the way the Dobsons and the Perkinses and the Clymers tell them to.


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Fox News ABHORRED MoveOn.Org for implying that General Petreaus' integrity might be suspect.

But now, that tempest over, they have their own agenda to follow and Glenn Greenwald pointed it out:

Bill O'Reilly's favorite Military Towel Boy, Colonel David Hunt got to do a "Ready, Aim -- About Face -- FIRE" hit job on the Geneva Convention with this piece:

"Top Military Officials are a Disgrace to Those They Lead"

Greenwald's relevant comments interspersed:

Our generals are betraying our soldiers . . . again.
(Greenwald's introductory comment: To accuse a general of "betrayal" is, in military parlance, the equivalent of accusing him of treason to his country. Yet that is what this Fox News article does in the very first paragraph with regard to many of our brave Generals risking their lives for our country in a Time of War -- and it not only accuses Our Military Commanders of "betrayal," but betrayal of their own troops. It continues in this same Despicable vein:)

Col. Hunt's Text:
Our generals in both the Army and Marine Corps have cared more about their precious careers and reputations than their soldiers and Marines under them. The Marines have actually prosecuted a Marine for shooting a terrorist too many times . . . .

In Iraq, the story is the same. The Army rediscovered a trick we used in 'Nam' called "baiting," where you leave ammunition and pieces of explosive devices out and shoot whoever takes them. We used to leave exploding ammo to put in your AK -- when you try to fire it, the gun blows up. It worked then and it works now . . . but guess what the Army is now putting on trial: Ranger Snipers for doing their jobs. The rules of engagement were once again being followed and once again our generals put their careers over their men's lives. The chilling effect that these actions have over our soldiers is dramatic; this distrust weakens the very foundations of our military. It causes soldiers to second-guess themselves and their chain of command. We cannot fight like this and hope to win.

We should be putting these generals on trial, first for going along with Rummy and just as important for not trusting their soldiers. . . .

These poor excuse for officers do not deserve the soldiers they dare claim they lead.

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And my comment, as posted to the Greenwald blog --

What's the difference between this and the MoveOn.org Petraeus ad?

The difference?

The Petreaus ad ASKED A QUESTION -- DID (or WILL) the general betray us?

FOX news doesn't ask, it throws down in no uncertain terms (the way a bunch of neocon tough talking heads who somehow never managed to serve in the military can) that THOSE GENERALS WHO WOULD INTERFERE WITH OUR LINE SOLDIERS' RIGHT TO COMMIT WAR CRIMES are TRAITORS.

This is a more or less traditional kind of military crime.

In post-truce Korea, it was a way to break the monotony of guard duty -- Marines in the towers on the DMZ would wave cartons of cigarettes to N. Koreans on the other side, wave to them cheerily, in a friendly fashion to cross the Deadline, as if to say "Come on -- we know you're not a spy or a soldier, just some poor farmer."

And -- according to my fencing partner in college, the ex-Marine who told me about what he and the other guards used to do to relieve the boredom, would, of course, blow the peasant away as soon as he took one step into the free-fire zone of the DMZ. (I didn't go into combat when my turn came around, although we DID shoot across the estuary at the sailors when doing guard duty at MCRD San Diego. But they were armed and did the same to us. But that was for fun, just fooling around with live ammo.)

It was criminal behavior then and it's criminal behavior now. But in the age of cell-phones and other video cameras, we're seeing an evolutionary imperative in war crimes -- ONLY the more intelligent thoughtful criminal will be able to get away with it. (Hey, Nixon was a smart guy, but he didn't understand how tape recorders and Xerox machines changed the crook's universe.)

Fox news' problem?

They don't go HIGH ENOUGH UP THE CHAIN OF COMMAND to point the finger and call it treason -- like all the way to the Commander-in-Chief. But then, the current C-in-C is such a passive asshole ("Oh dear, what can I do about it? Congress should do something.") the only thing he can do is dressup and prance around shouting tough-sounding slogans.

Here's a tough-test question that may or may not be irrelevant -- how long do you think Bush (or any of Fox News' tough guys) would last as a gang-leader in any major American city?

Or more precisely (having grown up in Philly during the 50's)

"How many minutes do you think any of them would have lasted THEN, let alone NOW?"


You may be right even though I'm guessing that your estimate might be generous.




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9/29/07

OK, on the subject of prez candidates being liars and cheats:

What do all these people have in common?


Hillary Clinton. Joe Biden.

Barack Obama. Chris Dodd.

Bill Richardson. Dennis Kucinich.

Sam Brownback. Duncan Hunter.

John McCain. Tom Tancredo.

Ron Paul.



Yeah, they all want to be president of the United States, but that's not it.


Each and every one of them, even Ron Paul, promised his or her constituents to serve if elected and do the job they voted for that person to do.


And what are they all doing? Taking the money and running for another job.


In other words, they lied to their voters and cheated them out of getting someone to represent them, someone who would stand in there and do the job the voters needed to get done.


So what does that say about how much we can believe ANYTHING any of these lying, cheating, hypocritical, bags of scum say? Even -- gasp -- sob -- Ron Paul?


Not a goddamn thing -- we can NOT believe a goddamn thing ANY ONE OF THEM HAS TO SAY! THEY'VE PROVEN THAT ALREADY.


Good Christ -- does that premise suggest that YOU, the reader, could INFER that I'm saying that Rudy Giuliani, a lying vicious two-faced prick if ever there was one, could possibly have some integrity? Even worse, am i encouraging you to INFER that I think Mitt Romney even has as much of the integrity one might falsely attribute to Rudy "Dancing on the Bones of Dead Firemen" Giuliani.

NOOOOOO! I AM NOT SAYING THAT AT ALL!



On the other hand, Mike Gravel could be fun.

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The tragedy of Barack Obama

I thought it when he declared ...

"No, too soon. you'll break your teeth on this one."

But of course he went ahead, the smartest kid on the High School Debating Team, a kid who thinks he knows how nasty politics can be because of his Chicago background.

Well, LOCAL politics, yeah, but when you move to the level where you're doing body counts, it's another game, one you haven't had a chance to learn.

Here's the kind of thing that happens -- that gets said -- when such a person is over, done, finished, but doesn't quite know it yet -- and it's a saddening thing to see someone so smart and with such a non-homogenized point of view get blown away and turned into a certified loser, i.e., become a smart-ass:


Obama Seeks Support Quoting Bill Clinton
By HOLLY RAMER Associated Press Writer

Sep 29th, 2007 | CONCORD, N.H.

-- Democratic presidential hopeful Barrack Obama said Saturday his public service experience trumps that of rival Hillary Rodham Clinton's, and he tried to use her husband's words to make his point.

Obama, a first-term senator from Illinois, said his background as a community organizer, lawyer, professor and state senator is more valuable than Hillary Clinton's experience "working the system" as first lady and in other roles.

In doing so, Obama tried to throw former President Clinton's words back at him, quoting comments Bill Clinton made in a 1992 debate with the first President Bush.

"The same old experience is not relevant. ... And you can have the right kind of experience and the wrong kind of experience," Clinton said at the time.

"He's exactly right," Obama said at a rally. "What we need to do is put an end to the wrong kind of experience."


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Oh man, you could have had so much to give to the country and the world if you'd just had a little patience. But no, you had to bee what the English call "Too clever by half."

The USA has long long long needed to have a president of color and/or a woman president. Barbara Jordan would have been great -- regardless of color or sex -- she would have been one of the greatest EVER in our history and even better than great -- up there with FDR and Jefferson had she not gotten sick.

You could have been -- maybe -- in the mold of JFK.

Instead, you decided to be the black Harold Stassen.

You were smart enough, but not wise enough or tough enough.

And while I'm sorry for you, Mr. O, what hurts is that it's OUR loss.

Even worse (more painful) for the people who believed -- couldn't see you lost it all the day you declared.

But throwing Bill Clinton's words up use to slap Hillary? Pure schoolboy smartass bullshit. It's the kind of thing you mutter to your friends AFTER you realize the race is over for you.

And nobody likes a smartass.

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Think it gave the Iranian parliament the same kind of hard-on it gave OUR congress when WE did it?


Iran Labels CIA 'Terrorist Organization'

By ALI AKBAR DAREINI Associated Press Writer

Sep 29th, 2007 | TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran's parliament on Saturday approved a nonbinding resolution labeling the CIA and the U.S. Army "terrorist organizations," in apparent response to a Senate resolution seeking to give a similar designation to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The hard-line dominated parliament cited U.S. involvement in dropping nuclear bombs in Japan in World War II, using depleted uranium munitions in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq, supporting the killings of Palestinians by Israel, bombing and killing Iraqi civilians, and torturing terror suspects in prisons.

"The aggressor U.S. Army and the Central Intelligence Agency are terrorists and also nurture terror," said a statement by the 215 lawmakers who signed the resolution at an open session of the Iranian parliament. The session was broadcast live on state-run radio.

The resolution, which is seen as a diplomatic offensive against the U.S., urges Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government to treat the two as terrorist organizations. It also paves the way for the resolution to become legislation that — if ratified by the country's hardline constitutional watchdog — would become law. The government is expected to wait for U.S. reaction before making its decision.

On Wednesday, the Senate voted 76-22 in favor of a resolution urging the State Department to designate Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization. While the proposal attracted overwhelming bipartisan support, a small group of Democrats said they feared labeling the state-sponsored organization a terrorist group could be interpreted as a congressional authorization of military force in Iran.

The Bush administration had already been considering whether to blacklist an elite unit within the Revolutionary Guard, subjecting part of the vast military operation to financial sanctions.

The U.S. legislative push came a day after Ahmadinejad told world leaders at the U.N. General Assembly that his country would defy attempts to impose new sanctions by "arrogant powers" seeking to curb its nuclear program, accusing them of lying and imposing illegal penalties on his country.

He said the nuclear issue was now "closed" as a political issue and Iran would pursue the monitoring of its nuclear program "through its appropriate legal path," the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog.

Tensions between the U.S. and Iran have escalated over Washington accusations that Iran is secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons and has been supplying Shiite militias in Iraq with deadly weapons used to kill U.S. troops. Iran denies both of the allegations.

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(Declaring a branch of another government -- in this instance, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, an Iranian government agency -- to be a terrorist organization is, according to International Law, an act of war.

Good thing Bush doesn't believe in International Law.

Also a good thing that the Iranians have a sense of humor about kids who want to play in the International "Special Olympics." (We may be thankful for their traditional kindness to brain-damaged children.)

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Actual microphotographs of warm water brain-eating amoeba Naegleria fowleri



From NIH:

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The most egregiously passive-aggressive monster to ever occupy the White House -- I'd call him "the sack of shit that walks like a man," but ...

... he doesn't actually WALK like a man, but some weird pranced-out creature with its hoofed feet covered with the skin of dead cattle. He doesn't actually PROPOSE anything, does NOT create anything, just sits there, looking like a tired drunk telling us how CONGRESS needs to create something so he can either sign it or destroy it.

1. His cynical lying bullshit about how he wants the poorest, neediest children to be first (to received subsidized healthcare from SCHIPS)? And therefore, CONGRESS needs to create the bill HE wants...

BULLSHIT -- the late (and sorely missed) Molly Ivins pointed out that when he was governor of Texas, he LOWERED the allowable income to a lesser multiple of the poverty level than it had been in order to remove HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of impoverished women and children from getting the federally-mandated medical insurance they needed. *

So am I harsh on this asshole? A man (allegedly) who, in order to present a politically-shiny balance sheet DIRECTLY contributed to the suffering and deaths of thousands of women and children? Could anyone EVER be too harsh on someone like that? I don't think so. We can only hope his schoolboy believe in a hell of eternal punishment is actually true in his case.

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2. Looking ever more like a Sunday morning hangover in a suit, he sat in his chair and talked about how congress had to figure out a way to modify the FAA and prevent the false imprisonment of passengers on airplanes that sit on the ground for (seemingly) endless hours.

He's the President, right? Can't he actually SUGGEST something? I mean publicly, where someone can criticize it, rather than quietly whispered into the ears of his slaveys, those few in congress who still can't see past the glamour-spell to recognize the true form of this repugnant monster, or to smell the sulfur, as was pointed out good old Hugo Chavez, the funniest world leader around. (If anyone considers Rush Limbaugh to be even marginally funny -- and I know some very intelligent people who do -- then the same people MUST recognize Hugo Chavez as the sharpest pie-throwing heir to the mantle of Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, and Bill Hicks.)

Bush -- he's "The Decider," right?

Meaning: "I won't tell you what I want, Mommy, because I don't know what I'm supposed to want, but you tell me, and I'll decide whether or not to throw a tantrum about it as soon as the the people who tell me what I want tell me if I like it or not."

Classic "I'm the leader. I'm the leader. Where are we going?"

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Is there any way to NOT despise this passive monster who rides on the shoulders of humans while being whipped by even more execrable creatures?

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* There are 1.4 million children in Texas who have no health insurance. If eligibility were set at 200 percent of the federal poverty level, more than 500,000 of them would qualify to purchase low-cost insurance policies. Bush insisted, however, that the line be set at 150 percent, eliminating 200,000 children (The Nation, April 26, 1999)


** Lenny Bruce's apt description of an "adult" a lot like George W Bush: "When you're eight years old, nothing is any of your business."


*** Bill Hicks on TV news: “Today a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves. Here’s Tom with the weather.”


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9/28/07

Why does TD AMERITRADE claim "fair pricing" when they intentionally mislead about their pricing?

Or maybe they don't even realize it?

COME ON --

"When I do a trade, I want a straighforward price."

Well, get Sam Waterston to do the spiel, since Fred Thompson thinks his role as Waterston's boss qualifies him to be the President.is already

Sorry Sam -- you get to do the Petraeus two-step, i.e., compromising your integrity because someone asked you to.

$9.99 is just a sleazy way to pretend you're not charging $10.00 and a modest dishonesty.


If they actually said "$10," I might think they're really serious about being straight with us.

As it is, it's just one more company with a streak of contempt for their potential customers.

(I know it's such a common form of pricing that their copywriters -- and marketing people and executives -- might not even recognize it's a bit of a cheat, but that doesn't indicate a company that actually understand what "honesty" means.)

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6 Die From Brain-Eating Amoeba in Lakes

6 Die From Brain-Eating Amoeba in Lakes

Sep 28th, 2007 | PHOENIX -- ... A killer amoeba living in lakes enters the body through the nose and attacks the brain where it feeds until you die.

Even though encounters with the microscopic bug are extraordinarily rare, it's killed six boys and young men this year. The spike in cases has health officials concerned, and they are predicting more cases in the future.

"This is definitely something we need to track," said Michael Beach, a specialist in recreational waterborne illnesses for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"This is a heat-loving amoeba. As water temperatures go up, it does better," Beach said. "In future decades, as temperatures rise, we'd expect to see more cases."

According to the CDC, the amoeba called Naegleria fowleri (nuh-GLEER-ee-uh FOWL'-erh-eye) killed 23 people in the United States, from 1995 to 2004. This year health officials noticed a spike with six cases — three in Florida, two in Texas and one in Arizona. The CDC knows of only several hundred cases worldwide since its discovery in Australia in the 1960s.

In Arizona, David Evans said nobody knew his son, Aaron, was infected with the amoeba until after the 14-year-old died on Sept. 17. At first, the teen seemed to be suffering from nothing more than a headache.

"We didn't know," Evans said. "And here I am: I come home and I'm burying him."

After doing more tests, doctors said Aaron probably picked up the amoeba a week before while swimming in the balmy shallows of Lake Havasu, a popular man-made lake on the Colorado River between Arizona and California...

... Naegleria lives almost everywhere in lakes, hot springs, even dirty swimming pools, grazing off algae and bacteria in the sediment...

The amoeba destroys tissue as it makes its way up into the brain, where it continues the damage, "basically feeding on the brain cells," Beach said...

Once infected, most people have little chance of survival... people who have been attacked rarely survive, Beach said.

"Usually, from initial exposure it's fatal within two weeks," he said.

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Ahhh, it's too easy to make hideously poor-taste jokes about Bush, Cheney, the Iraq-Iran Neocon Policy and Brain-eating amoebas.



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9/25/07

Gingrich: Skipping Black Forum a Mistake

Sept 25th, 2007 | WASHINGTON -- Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich said Tuesday that top tier Republican presidential candidates are making a mistake by skipping a forum focused on issues of importance to black voters.

Gingrich, in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America," urged the leading candidates to reconsider their decision not to participate in a forum on Thursday at Baltimore's Morgan State University to be moderated by talk show host Tavis Smiley and aired by PBS.

"I'm puzzled by their decision. I can't speak for them. I think it's a mistake. I wish they would change their minds _ they still have a few days _ and I wish they would in fact go to the debate Thursday night," said Gingrich, who is considering entering the race for the GOP nomination.



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Good old Newt -- he wants to run so badly, he's taking the leadership role of elder statesman and is cautioning the GOP candidates:
"PLEASE please PULLEEZE!!-- don't abandon your racist hypocrisy NOW."

Actually, in my view, this is the first sign of Republican integrity* I've seen in damn near living memory -- the white boys (And House N***r Alan Keyes) saying implicitly, if not explicitly "We don't give a damn about black people -- they don't like us and we don't like them so why pretend?"

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* Other than Ron Paul and Barry Goldwater.
As to Democratic integrity, haven't seen that since Jimmy Carter, and they all make fun of him for it.

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From Salon.com

THE LIGHT'S ON BUT IS ANYBODY HOME?

An extraordinary brain study concludes that a woman in a vegetative state is aware of herself. It's a dangerous claim that could throw families and physicians into turmoil.

By Robert Burton

Sept. 25, 2007 | In a recent article in the Archives of Neurology, a team of British and Belgian neuroscientists describe a clinically unconscious accident victim who can, on command, imagine herself playing tennis and walking around her house. By showing that her functional brain imaging studies (fMRI) are indistinguishable from those of healthy volunteers performing the same mental tasks, the researchers claim that the young woman's fMRI "confirmed beyond any doubt that she was consciously aware of herself and her surroundings, and was willfully following instructions given to her, despite her diagnosis of a vegetative state."

Their extraordinary conclusions are beyond provocative; they raise profound questions about the very notion of consciousness. What's more, they could throw thousands of families and doctors into utter turmoil. As with the Terry Schiavo controversy, patient advocacy groups, self-serving lawyers and politicians with personal agendas could use the study's stamp of certainty as a given.

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Lots and lots of fuel for the fires of the hate-filled "See? I'm Right because My Invisible Friend Said so and You're Going to Hell" crowd.

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"Yet the study's conclusions are not beyond a doubt. There are plenty of questions about whether this young woman is conscious and capable of choice.


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Right, Evolution is ONLY a theory to those people, but you know this is going to be greeted as absolute indisputable straight-from-someone-in-the-sky FACT.

And we'll all view this in terms of our own possible situation, some little voice inside saying "Pleeese! Don't pull the plug!" And that's something to think about.

But as to the religious side of it?

When THOSE sanctimonious know-it-alls stand up against killing men, women, children, and animals while waging war, then I'll give them some respect.

Until then, to me they're just hypocrites who insist their friend in the sky is Omniscient but somehow, THEY know what said pal is thinking and why and what "HE" wants (assuming, as the late Robert Anton Wilson asked nearly 50 years ago in The Realist -- "Does God Have a Willy?" and if not, then why is God considered a "HE").

And if a person believes in eternal bliss of heaven, then why would it be so horrible to HAVE the plug pulled?


Still, I've always wondered if there was anyone in there.

You too, right?

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9/22/07

Cholera in Iraq -- more

As the disease spreads south into Baghdad, the poo-pooing* of tribal chiefs from last May ("Oh we have this every year -- never goes anywhere.") seems to have been rather Bushian (or Cheneyan or Rumsfeldian**) in its "I'm all right Jack, fuck you" blase posture.

One more thing about cholera -- perhaps 3 out of 4 infected people never show symptoms (i.e., they don't know they have it) but the bacterium remains active and infectious in the person's feces for around 2 weeks, making the congenial "Here, have a sip of my water" possibly worth your life -- and of course that old saw they tell you about not dating co-workers as "don't shit where you eat" take on life-and-death significance.

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*Not to make light of it, but "poo-pooing" about a fecally spread disease, is an unintended pun.
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** Just in passing -- if I were paying the immense tuition (either by parents or self or student loans) and working my ass off to maintain the academic standards demanded in a top level university like Stanford, I'd be pissed off too, if the Hoover Home for Over-the-Hill Right Wingers was bringing in a War Criminal like Donald Rumsfeld.

SF Chronicle

September 22, 2007

Stanford students, faculty protest Rumsfeld's Hoover appointment -- More than 2,600 faculty and students at Stanford University have signed an online petition to protest the appointment of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as a distinguished fellow to the university's Hoover Institution, the latest in a string of campus controversies that involve high-profile names and questions about ethics, free speech and political partisanship...

The Rumsfeld appointment is being protested by Stanford faculty, staff, students and alumni who do not want the university's name associated with an architect of the Iraq war.

"We view the appointment as fundamentally incompatible with the ethical values of truthfulness, tolerance, disinterested enquiry, respect for national and international laws and care for the opinions, property and lives of others to which Stanford is inalienably committed," the petition reads.

"This is an appointment that trades on the prestige of the name of Stanford University," said Pamela Lee, an art history professor who created the petition two weeks ago. "The petition is meant as a signal to the rest of the world that Donald Rumsfeld and Hoover do not represent the overall Stanford community."

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----------As much as I have always found most student demonstrations silly, even ones I was in, in this case I think they're right.

If pedophilic sexual predators have to maintain a distance of 2000 feet from playgrounds and parks, then a vicious and apparently soulless architect and engineer of a gigantic mass of Crimes Against Humanity should be kept at least the same distance away from any humans.

Like on the Space Station.
Alone.
Or with Dick Cheney.
And George W Bush.
And Wolfie.
And Dick Perle, the Prince of Darkness.
And Colin Powell.
And Condi Rice.

And, oh yeah, the ghost of Jean Paul Sartre.




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9/19/07

Bush's stairway to paradise


From Salon.com


Hoping that history will somehow vindicate him, the president has entered a phase of decadent perversity.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Sept. 20, 2007 | There has never been a moment when we were not winning in Iraq. Victory has followed victory, from "Mission Accomplished" to the purple fingers of the Iraqi election to, most recently, President Bush's meeting at Camp Cupcake in Anbar province with Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha, the Sunni leader of the group Anbar Awakening (who was assassinated a week later). . .

In his quasi-farewell address to the nation on Sept. 13, Bush assigned any possible shortcomings to Gen. David Petraeus and bequeathed his policy "beyond my presidency" to his successor.

After Bush pretended to deliberate over whether he would agree to his own policy as presented by his general in well-rehearsed performances before Congress -- "President Bush Accepts Recommendations" read a headline on the White House Web site -- he established an ideal division of responsibility. Bush could claim credit for the "Return on Success," whenever that might be, while Petraeus would be charged with whatever might go wrong. . .

As these events played out, Petraeus was detailed as Bush's Willy Loman to preside over the cooling of the special relationship with America's most important ally in the coalition of the willing. The general traveled to London to meet with Prime Minister Gordon Brown on the policy from which he is rapidly disengaging, already having withdrawn British forces in Basra to its airport before final evacuation. Such is the face of victory 10 days after Petraeus' march through Capitol Hill.

In his semiretirement, Bush engaged in appeals to history, which he now says on nearly every occasion will absolve him. Early on and riding high, he expressed contempt for history. "History, we'll all be dead," he sneered to Bob Woodward in an interview for "Bush at War," a panegyric to Bush the triumphant after the Afghanistan invasion and before Iraq. Now Bush cites history as justification for everything he does. "You can't possibly figure out the history of the Bush presidency -- until I'm dead," he told Robert Draper, his authorized biographer, in an interview for "Dead Certain." The use of the words "history" and "dead" between the Woodward and Draper interviews makes for a world of difference -- the difference between a president who couldn't care less and one who cares desperately but can't admit it. . .

Those around him have learned how to manipulate him through the art of flattery. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld played Bush like a Stradivarius, exploiting his grandiosity. "Rumsfeld would later tell his lieutenants that if you wanted the president's support for an initiative, it was always best to frame it as a 'Big New Thing.'" Other aides played on Bush's self-conception as "the Decider." "To sell him on an idea," writes Draper, "aides were now learning, the best approach was to tell the president, This is going to be a really tough decision." But flattery always requires deference. Every morning, Josh Bolten, the chief of staff, greets Bush with the same words: "Thank you for the privilege of serving today..."

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Read the entire article here.

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His legacy? How will history view him?

I don't really wish good or ill for Mr Bush any more. My personal dislike aside, here I'm merely commenting on what I think he's brought onto himself with arrogance covering fear, greed, craven behavior and disregard for human life or decency.

My guess: It doesn't matter how much he sneers and swaggers, how often the people who serve him kiss his ass, post-mortem history will see people line up to spit on his grave, even pay an admission fee to do it (how about "6 Lungers Over Texas Amusement Park")

... starting with the brothers and sisters and orphaned children and grandchildren of those men and women he caused to be killed because he was so terrified of ever admitting he made a mistake.

Then the Texans, whose trust and affection he just used and abused.

Then the Muslims -- special visas will be given to Iraqi's so that they can fly to Texas and line up to spit (or piss) on his grave, led by the descendants of the Guantanamo prisoners.

The lines will stretch for miles.

His legacy?

People will compare him adversely to Benedict Arnold as a man who betrayed our country and caused immeasurable damage for greed and craven servility.

(General Arnold actually acted from principle, rose by his own talents, not by purchase of position by friends and family. And who's to say he may not have been right? That the future of the United States might have been brighter and more civilized had we stayed within the empire, as, for example, Canada. Of course it's possible that Canada wouldn't be as democratic a country and as independent of England as it became without the threat of revolution present. I'd like to think it would have been be less likely that G W Bush would have become Prime Minister, even though fucking over Ireland to pay off cronies the way Elizabeth I did is the kind of thing he'd have done. Still, Elizabeth, hot to crush the Irish and give the land to her pals, would never have chosen an incompetent pissant like Bush to do the job.)

We're already comparing him adversely to Richard Nixon and Warren G Harding.

Back to Bush:

He's healthy and rich and should be able to live a long, long life, despite all the coke and booze, and I hope he does, and meets his ghosts every night.

I'm older than he is and probably won't live to see it happen -- but I have no doubt it will.

Lincoln -- the first Republican -- said: "You can't fool all the people all of the time."

Roger Price, in his masterpiece of political satire I'm For Me First (Ballantine Books, 1956) amended it to say: "But if you do it once, it lasts for four years."

Well, he didn't even fool all of the people once, but now we're in the 6th year, and his four-year "fool-the-people" game clock ran out two years ago.

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I figure it's because they were pissed of at the Tom Cruise fantasy and they wanted a reality rematch -- or maybe it's just the two-minute warning

Science Image:                                      A view of the crater caused by a meteorite crash in the southern Peruvian town of Carangas, near the border with Bolivia, September 16, 2007. Dozens of people living in a Peruvian town near Lake Titicaca reported vomiting and headaches after they went to look at a crater apparently left by a meteorite that crashed down over the weekend, health officials said on Tuesday. REUTERS/Miguel Carrasco/La Razon
From Scientific America


Peruvians get sick from apparent meteorite crater
A view of the crater caused by a meteorite crash in the southern Peruvian town of Carangas, near the border with Bolivia, September 16, 2007. Dozens of people living in a Peruvian town near Lake Titicaca reported vomiting and headaches after they went to look at a crater apparently left by a meteorite that crashed down over the weekend, health officials said on Tuesday. REUTERS/Miguel Carrasco/La Razon

By Teresa Cespedes

LIMA (Reuters) - Dozens of people living in a Peruvian town near Lake Titicaca reported vomiting and headaches after they went to look at a crater apparently left by a meteorite that crashed down over the weekend, health officials said on Tuesday.

After hearing a loud noise, people went to see what had happened and found a crater 65 feet wide and 22 feet deep on an uninhabited plateau near Carancas in the Puno region.

Experts from Peru's Geophysical Institute are on their way to the area 800 miles south of Lima to verify whether it was a meteorite.

"We've examined about 100 people who got near to the meteorite crater who have vomiting and headaches because of gasses coming out of there," Jorge Lopez, health director in Puno, told Reuters.

"People are scared," he said.

Lopez said people went to the site after hearing a crash that they thought might be an airplane.

"We ourselves went near the crater and now we've got irritated throats and itching noses," Lopez said.

The site is near the border with Bolivia and experts from San Andres university in La Paz said initial analyses of sand samples from the crater showed that it could be a meteorite, according to newspaper reports.

Luisa Macedo, a geologist with the Mining Geology and Metallurgy Institute in Lima, told Reuters the reaction between the elements in a meteorite and the Earth's surface can generate gases that then dissipate.

Meteorites fell in 2002 and 2004 in the Andean area of Arequipa in southern Peru, Hernando Tavera, head of the Peruvian Geophysical Institute, told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Carlos Alberto Quiroga in La Paz)






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9/18/07

Judge Malarkey -- Giuliani's free pass

Giuliani-Mukasey Ties Go Back Decades

By Alec MacGillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 18, 2007; A08

In 1985, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Rudolph W. Giuliani, was coming under intense criticism for his aggressive tactics in prosecuting organized crime, including his use of mass trials, his habit of holding defendants without bail and his practice of subpoenaing defense lawyers to testify at their clients' grand jury hearings, which lawyers argued was a violation of client confidentiality.

Springing to Giuliani's defense was a former colleague, Michael B. Mukasey, who argued in a strongly worded opinion piece that Giuliani's tough tactics were justified to defeat an enemy that, he said, was far more dangerous and powerful than Giuliani's critics were willing to acknowledge.

"The Mafia exists. It is not the creation of novelists or journalists. It has exacted a toll of misery that would shame the Inquisition and a toll in treasure that would embarrass the Pentagon," Mukasey wrote in a New York Times op-ed article.

Mukasey's public defense of Giuliani was but one example of the strong and lasting bond between President Bush's nominee for attorney general and the man leading in the GOP polls to replace Bush. Mukasey and Giuliani became friends while working in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney's Office in the early 1970s, becoming part of a close-knit group of ambitious young lawyers who together tackled police corruption, drug dealers and political self-dealing.

In his memoir, Giuliani says he bonded with Mukasey over their work together in building a case against Bertram L. Podell, a three-term Brooklyn congressman who had been given illegal payments to obtain a route for an airline. To help Giuliani prepare for the trial in 1974, Mukasey played Podell in a rehearsal and did such a good job that Giuliani eviscerated Podell in cross-examination, causing him to drop his glasses in nervousness one day and decide to plead guilty the next.

When Giuliani was considering a job offer from the New York law firm where Mukasey was working in 1977, Mukasey anonymously faxed a prank letter to Giuliani questioning his friend's qualifications for the job. "Giuliani showed me the letter," former federal judge Harold Tyler, a mentor to both men, recalled in a 1995 Newsday profile of Mukasey. "I said, 'Do you think this is a joke?' And Giuliani said, 'Yes, but I'm not sure.' So he called Mukasey and said, 'Damn it, I am qualified.' And he listed the reasons why. It was only then that Giuliani realized he should take the offer."

In 1994, Giuliani selected Mukasey, then a federal judge, to preside over his inauguration as mayor. The ties only strengthened after Giuliani left City Hall. Mukasey's son, Marc, a former assistant U.S. attorney himself, works as a partner at Giuliani's consulting firm, and Giuliani named Mukasey and his son to one of his presidential campaign advisory committees.

Mukasey and Giuliani "are two people who are extremely close -- extremely, extremely close -- and everybody knows that," said New York Assemblyman Dov Hikind, a Brooklyn Democrat. "This is a wonderful thing for Rudy Giuliani."

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A column by the ONE PERSON I'd vote for as president without qualms


This link to The Connecticut news source, http://www.theday.com was sent to me by a dear friend in Connecticut, whose name I won't mention, since association with the likes of me is not exactly a resounding social benefit. But she knows who she is, and to her I say thank you.


Next War Will Be Different, So Get Ready


By Wesley K. Clark , The Washington Post

Published on 9/18/2007 in Home »Editorial »Perspective
Testifying before Congress last week, Gen. David H. Petraeus appeared commanding, smart and alive to the challenges that his soldiers face in Iraq. But he also embodied what the Iraq conflict has come to represent: an embattled, able, courageous military at war, struggling to maintain its authority and credibility after 41/2 years of a “cakewalk” gone wrong.

Petraeus will not be the last general to find himself explaining how a military intervention has misfired and urging skeptical lawmakers to believe that the mission can still be accomplished. The next war is always looming, and so is the urgent question of whether the U.S. military can adapt in time to win it.

Today, the most likely next conflict will be with Iran, a radical state that America has tried to isolate for almost 30 years and that now threatens to further destabilize the Middle East through its expansionist aims, backing of terrorist proxies such as the Lebanese group Hezbollah and even Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank, and far-reaching support for radical Shiite militias in Iraq. As Iran seems to draw closer to acquiring nuclear weapons, almost every U.S. leader — and would-be president — has said it won't be permitted to reach that goal.

Think another war can't happen? Think again. Unchastened by the Iraq fiasco, hawks in Vice President Cheney's office have been pushing the use of force. It isn't hard to foresee the range of military options that policymakers face...


READ ON, IT GETS EVEN BETTER

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Just when you think the whole #%%## world has completely lost its sense of humor, this:

Sep 18th, 2007 | BRUSSELS, Belgium -- Hidden among the porcelain fox hounds and Burberry tablecloths on sale at eBay.be this week was an unusual item: "For Sale: Belgium, a Kingdom in three parts ... free premium: the king and his court (costs not included)."

The odd ad was posted by one disgruntled Belgian in protest at his country's political crisis which reached a 100-day landmark Tuesday with no end in sight to the squabbling between Flemish and Walloon politicians.

"I wanted to attract attention," said Gerrit Six, the teacher and former journalist who posted the ad. "You almost have to throw rock through a window to get attention for Belgium."

Six placed the advertisement on Saturday, offering free delivery, but pointing out that the country was coming secondhand and that potential buyers would have to take on over $300 billion (euro220 billion) in national debt.


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

Given that the only Belgians generally known outside the lowlands are the abominable (but crime-solving) Hercule Poirot and the even more abominable Maurice Maeterlinck (1862 - 1949) who, despite being a Nobel Laureate (mostly for his 1901 book Life of a Bee, plagiarized an entire book(The Soul of the White Ant -- i.e., termites -- 1928) from Eugene Marais (1871 - 1936), a South African middle-school teacher, poet, and scientist, renamed it The Life of the White Ant (1926), and got away with it since the original was written in Afrikaans, close enough to Flemish to be intelligible to Maeterlinck, but far enough away from other languages to insure the relative obscurity of the original. Marais, who also wrote the amazingly wonderful The Soul of the Ape. about his companionship with a pack of baboons for the first four years after the end of the Boer War (anticipating later work by Leakey and Dart on human evolution). Marais considered suing him, but a middle-school South African vs a Nobel Laureate? He opted instead for morphine and, ultimately, suicide.


So, after this digression, it's wonderful to realize that some Belgians have arelatively puckish sense of humor. Thank you Mr. Six.

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9/14/07

And now Cholera joins The Surge -- because those happy dancing Iraqi's didn't have enough horror and grief and pain and death in their lives before...

Now there's this -- from the New York Times

Cholera Epidemic Infects 7,000 People in Iraq

By JAMES GLANZ and DENISE GRADY

BAGHDAD, Sept. 11 — A cholera epidemic in northern Iraq has infected approximately 7,000 people and could reach Baghdad within weeks as the disease spreads through the country’s decrepit and unsanitary water system, Iraqi health officials said Tuesday.

The World Health Organization reported that the epidemic is concentrated in the northern regions of Kirkuk and Sulaimaniya and that 10 people are known to have died. But Dr. Said Hakki, president of the Iraqi Red Crescent Society, a relief organization that has responded to the epidemic, said that new cases had turned up in the neighboring provinces, Erbil and Nineveh, indicating that the disease had spread.

Most significant, Dr. Hakki said, were two cases in a village on the border between Kirkuk and Diyala Provinces, one involving a young girl. Baghdad is next to Diyala.

Because of that geographic spread, Dr. Hakki said, health officials at the Red Crescent estimate that cases will begin turning up in Baghdad in late September or early October, when temperatures are especially favorable for the growth of the bacteria Vibrio cholerae, which causes the disease by infecting the intestine.

Dr. Cerko Abdulla, chief of the Sulaimaniya health directorate, also said that the epidemic had begun spreading in adjacent provinces. “The water system represents the main problem,” he said. “The disease can spread widely through water, and that’s a very serious matter.”

In Baghdad, Iraq’s deputy health minister, Dr. Adel Mohsin, said that he was not aware of any cases on the Diyala border. But he said that further spread of the epidemic was “very likely” unless government agencies followed strict guidelines on water testing and maintaining sufficient levels of chlorination, which kills the bacteria.

In a chilling reminder of how difficult it may be to maintain those levels, Dr. Mohsin said that chlorine imports had been severely curtailed as a result of recent insurgent bombs that had been laced with chlorine, which in concentrated form can be deadly.

Dr. Hakki, of the Red Crescent, said that shallow wells contaminated by sewage around Sulaimaniya — which had at least two cholera outbreaks in the decades before the American-led invasion in 2003 — could have set off the epidemic. But problems that have developed since the invasion, like poor control of chlorination levels, have the potential to make this outbreak more dangerous, he said.

“If the water has low chlorination, Vibrio cholerae will go through the central supply,” Dr. Hakki said, and the disease will spread “like a fire in a haystack.”

Dr. Burhan Omar, deputy director of Kirkuk General Hospital, said that because of such problems, water purification plants themselves could be contaminated with the bacteria. Those plants, in turn, can “bring the disease from the northern parts to the middle and southern parts of Iraq.”

In fact, if those plants are contaminated, the epidemic could hopscotch all the way to Basra, in the south, Dr. Omar said.

Cholera is caused by infection of the intestine with the bacteria Vibrio cholerae. The infection can be mild or even have no symptoms, but about one in 20 infected people become extremely ill, with profuse watery diarrhea, vomiting and leg cramps. Without treatment, rapid loss of body fluids causes dehydration and shock, and a person can die within hours.

Cholera does not usually spread directly from person to person, so casual contact with infected people is not risky, and quarantine is not necessary. But household members, who have closer contact, may contract it, and can sometimes avoid getting sick by taking the antibiotic tetracycline.

People contract cholera by drinking water or eating food contaminated with the bacteria, which comes from the feces of an infected person. Exposure to raw sewage and contaminated, untreated drinking water can cause epidemics. If treated water is not available, boiling will kill the bacteria. During epidemics, people need to avoid raw vegetables.

The major human displacement caused by the Iraq conflict — people being driven from their homes or simply choosing to leave — is likely to be driving the epidemic, officials say.

Fadela Chaib, a spokeswoman for the World Health Organization, said: “Frankly speaking, it’s possible that cholera will spread to neighboring provinces and even to Baghdad, because there is a lot of people movement. People can be carrying the bacteria in their bodies and show no symptoms, and the bacteria can stay in the body for 7 to 14 days and be shed, potentially contaminating other individuals.”

She said the health organization had sent two truckloads of medical supplies to Erbil, in the north, including oral rehydration salts and intravenous fluids. The group is also testing water samples for contamination and helping the local government to distribute pamphlets and posters urging people to wash their hands and purify their water by boiling it or adding chlorine tablets to kill the bacteria.

Although there are vaccines to prevent cholera, Ms. Chaib said they were “not efficient,” and the health organization did not provide them or recommend them, preferring to emphasize hygiene, clean drinking water, sanitation and education.

Ms. Chaib said that health organization personnel were working in the north and that “it may be more easy for them to be in the north than in Baghdad, for example, because the situation in the north is more manageable than in the rest of the country.”

Should cholera break out in Baghdad, it would be far more difficult to send in health workers and protect them.

James Glanz reported from Baghdad, and Denise Grady from New York. Ali Hamdani contributed reporting from Baghdad, and employees of The New York Times from Kirkuk and Sulaimaniya.

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

When a disease -- contracted from drinking water (among other sources) -- causes extensive vomiting and diarrhea, and the water supply is not reliably purified, the increase in the infected begins to get geometric rather than arithmetic (because people need to drink water) -- I first read about this the week before last, and the number of infected was 100* and it was limited to a very small geographic area...

It wasn't just because of those screaming and dying from combat that Sherman said "War is Hell" - war is, as Von Clausewitz said "Schiess und blut"

So the surge may work in the same way that the Conquistadores' invasion of Mexico worked -- smallpox went out ahead of them and killed 9 out of 10 Aztecs ...

********************************
* Today the number of infected is up to 16,000 September 14., 2007
********************************

Other links to other reports:

The UK Guardian

World Health Organization's Report (September 10, 2007)

And this one, admittedly on a site dedicated to getting UK and US out of Iraq

About John Snow who figured out how cholera spread and stopped an epidemic in London in 1854

Symptoms: what cholera does, physically (probably best not to be eating while you're reading this one)

Another description
, this one from the Mayo Clinic

---I would be willing for the sociopaths in our government to spend $2 billion a month on getting tetracycline and clean water to the people of Iraq -- there's an old adage that I just made up that goes like this:


"When everyone is shitting themselves and throwing up, no one asks 'which side are you on?' except the 'Step-aside' so as not to get splashed."

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

AP Today -- September 20th, 2007 -- numbers going up:

"The latest WHO report, dated Sept. 14, reported a total of 24,532 cases of people with symptoms of cholera such as diarrhea and vomiting in the northern provinces of Sulaimaniyah, Tamim and Irbil."


---WHO warned of a possible cholera outbreak in Iraq in MAY of 2003




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Does THIS explain anything?

From the UK Independent:

President Petraeus? Iraqi official recalls the day US general revealed ambition

By Patrick Cockburn

Published: 13 September 2007

The US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus, expressed long-term interest in running for the US presidency when he was stationed in Baghdad, according to a senior Iraqi official who knew him at that time.

Sabah Khadim, then a senior adviser at Iraq's Interior Ministry, says General Petraeus discussed with him his ambition when the general was head of training and recruitment of the Iraqi army in 2004-05.

"I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said, 'No, that would be too soon'," Mr Khadim, who now lives in London, said.

General Petraeus has a reputation in the US Army for being a man of great ambition. If he succeeds in reversing America's apparent failure in Iraq, he would be a natural candidate for the White House in the presidential election in 2012.

His able defence of the "surge" in US troop numbers in Iraq as a success before Congress this week has made him the best-known soldier in America. An articulate, intelligent and energetic man, he has always shown skill in managing the media.

But General Petraeus's open interest in the presidency may lead critics to suggest that his own political ambitions have influenced him in putting an optimistic gloss on the US military position in Iraq .

Mr Khadim was a senior adviser in the Iraqi Interior Ministry in 2004-05 when Iyad Allawi was prime minister.

"My office was in the Adnan Palace in the Green Zone, which was close to General Petraeus's office," Mr Khadim recalls. He had meetings with the general because the Interior Ministry was involved in vetting the loyalty of Iraqis recruited as army officers. Mr Khadim was critical of the general's choice of Iraqis to work with him.

For a soldier whose military abilities and experience are so lauded by the White House, General Petraeus has had a surprisingly controversial career in Iraq. His critics hold him at least partly responsible for three debacles: the capture of Mosul by the insurgents in 2004; the failure to train an effective Iraqi army and the theft of the entire Iraqi arms procurement budget in 2004-05.

General Petraeus went to Iraq during the invasion of 2003 as commander of the 101st Airborne Division and had not previously seen combat. He first became prominent when the 101st was based in Mosul, in northern Iraq, where he pursued a more conciliatory line toward former Baathists and Iraqi army officers than the stated US policy.

His efforts were deemed successful. When the 101st left in February 2004, it had lost only 60 troops in combat and accidents. General Petraeus had built up the local police by recruiting officers who had previously worked for Saddam Hussein's security apparatus.

Although Mosul remained quiet for some months after, the US suffered one of its worse setbacks of the war in November 2004 when insurgents captured most of the city. The 7,000 police recruited by General Petraeus either changed sides or went home. Thirty police stations were captured, 11,000 assault rifles were lost and $41m (£20m) worth of military equipment disappeared. Iraqi army units abandoned their bases.

The general's next job was to oversee the training of a new Iraqi army. As head of the Multinational Security Transition Command, General Petraeus claimed that his efforts were proving successful. In an article in The Washington Post in September 2004, he wrote: "Training is on track and increasing in capacity. Infrastructure is being repaired. Command and control structures and institutions are being re-established." This optimism turned out be misleading; three years later the Iraqi army is notoriously ineffective and corrupt.

General Petraeus was in charge of the Security Transition Command at the time that the Iraqi procurement budget of $1.2bn was stolen. "It is possibly one of the largest thefts in history," Iraq's Finance Minister, Ali Allawi, said. "Huge amounts of money disappeared. In return we got nothing but scraps of metal."

Mr Khadim is sceptical that the "surge" is working. Commenting on the US military alliance with the Sunni tribes in Anbar province, he said: "They will take your money, but when the money runs out they will change sides again."

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9/13/07

Just got my Cassandra card punched with BONUS points


Monkey Boy will be announcing that he's made a deal with the Maliki government

TO ESTABLISH A PERMANENT MILITARY PRESENCE

IN IRAQ AS WITH WHAT WE HAVE IN KOREA

i.e., we are NOT leaving Iraq, EVER



Bush Pere tricked Saddam into invading Kuwait so he could trick the Saudis into believing there would be an invasion and therefuore they needed to allow a US Military base in their country -- coincidentally the one they were given by England in return for creating Iraq -- and then, when Osama ben Ladn came home from fighting the Russians -- whom Zbignew Brzezinski bragged about having tricked into invading Afghanistan -- ben Ladn looking for backing to invade Iraq and kill Saddam Hussein -- -- and discovered they'd allowed infidel military on their sacred soil, swore enmity to the royal family and to the Americans... and looked to how he could hurt the USA and make his point, and that was to destroy the mother-ship of international presence, the World Trade Center. Second try worked...

And now we're allying with the Shi'ite Maliki government FOREVER -- in other words, take a side (Iran's side) in a 1400-year-old civil war. Smart move, IF what is desired is endless war forever and forever...

Or if you're a Christing fanatic who wants to bring on the Apocalypse, because this announcement alone will electrify even those who have stayed neutral in the Muslim world and those poor bastards in that world who staked it all on "No of course not -- they don't want to take over the Middle East" will be dead before Christmas. Our pals.

Any doubt this of course wasn't planned when we built 17 permanent military bases in Iraq?

Of course not, they denied that. Whatsamatter? Don't believe the Prez?

Anyone still doubt that Bush needs to not only be impeached, but tried for treason?
Any doubt that fucking it up in Iraq WAS the actual strategy?

That jive-ass signifying sonofabitch has just thrown us into permanent war ...

and of course, David Petraeus will get to be The Man and run for prez in 2012, because Bush may be retiring to ride his bicycle around and beep his little horn, but the backing of the Bush Family money and connections COULD make it happen for that slimy sleazy sonofabitch Petreaus who sold all his honor and integrity for a future shot at being able to prance on the biggest stage --

Well, when the World Court tries them all for Crimes Against Humanity, they need to add Petraeus to hang as another part of the GIANT CALDER CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY CAPITAL PUNISHMENT MOBILE

@$*&@$($&%(*!!!

It's a pity cartoonist Greg Irons isn't still alive -- no one ever drew terminally corrupt politicians and military men the way he could.

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9/12/07

Two points I'd like to make:

1) -- I'm disgusted by the Democrats who say: "We can't overcome a veto so..."

So what?
You'll just sit there with one thumb in your mouth and one thumb up your ass and play "Switch?"

How about you write and pass bills you think are the right thing to do and MAKE the sonofabitch veto it? (It's called integrity -- ever heard of it? It's called courage -- ever heard of that one? It's called Honor -- how about that exotic concept? It's called backbone -- another idea you think is completely bizarre?)

How about you create bills that the people who voted for you want to see you write?

Oh no -- dither dither dither "Oh my what can we do -- Lame Duck Bush is scary and so is Cheney -- we dare not cross them."

Disgraceful chickenshit low-rent babies.

You were supposed to be different from the march-in-lockstep Republican robots. That's why people voted for you.

So, Ms Pelosi and Ms Boxer and Ms Feinstein and Mr Reid et al -- fuck you where you breathe -- take a look at people like Barbara Lee or Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich and see what it looks like when someone actually stands up for what he or she thinks is right...

2) -- Sincerity is overrated.
Who cares if Bush or Petraeus or Cheney actually believe the bullshit they espouse? That's even scarier than being cynical and lying.
Fuck sincerity. Fuck true belief.
True belief says the Earth is flat and only 4000+ years old.
True belief says that assholes are created in the image of their invisible friend.
How about using intelligence, reason, thought?

In the wise words of the late Charles Bukowski:

"Wars politics, causes.
For thousands of years
we've ended up with a sack of shit.
It's time we learned to think."

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9/11/07

Petraeus, Crocker, Bush -- Charlie Brown and the Iran Hostage Football

I find myself asking so often "How dumb do they think we are?"

The answer -- Apparently, THAT dumb.

Any populace who bought the inaugural day release of the Iranian Hostages but refused to believe that (1) the unelected George H.W. Bush had actually committed treason by negotiating foreign treaties, trading weapons for hostages, or (2) refused to believe that Bush Pere and Ronnie had actually arranged to DELAY the release of the hostages until their inaugural day deserves, I guess, what they get.

But I wasn't one of the coprophagic believers then and I'm not one now.


So is the public ready to buy yet another AMAZING COINCIDENCE?

That the Most Honorable General Petraeus thinks the strategically appropriate thing to do is to reduce troops JUST IN TIME for the 2008 election.

Just one more coincidentally partisan political happenstance.

This band of vermin in the Executive Branch has destroyed the integrity of more than one Army or Marine General -- so why should Petraeus be any different.

Remember, he's working for his boss, the man who promotes and appoints.

This -- Petraeus -- is a man who has made his career out of killing and maiming people. Granted, he does it in a uniform and with a flag, but still... his willingness to murder for the government is not necessarily an indication of honor and integrity.

Why should it be so incredible that he's also willing to cherry-pick facts and stats to serve his master? You either follow orders or you resign.

Peter Piper and "On this Rock I will build my house of cards" Petraeus and the rest made their choices. Colin Powell went along like a good little soldier and compromised pretty much everything he'd ever wanted to believe in -- but finally his gorge rose too high to swallow any more. And even though he'd already lost so much of his honor, he still decided to walk.
Good for him.

So fuck 'em. There's no reason I have to give respect to a man who has no respect for me or, apparently -- given his refusal to listen to senators or shut up long enough for them to ask the questions, but instead learned his political lessons well, i.e., just keep talking until the Senator (or congressman) runs out of time -- a man who has no respect for the constitution he swore to uphold and defend. (None of the people in uniform ever swore to give fealty to any President. It's the Constitution -- and apparently, General Petraeus has as little respect for that as do his Chain of Comman masters Bush and Cheney.)

The fact that he shows up wearing a costume with all sorts of bling, the same costume traditionally worn by men of honor, doesn't mean he deserves it.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that the game all along was to fuck things up so incredibly that the USA will have to (1) either take a moral stand, or (2) given how laughable that would be to imagine a prez doing, keep killing our soldiers and the Iraqis' civilians.

Did anyone actually think that there was any effort being made to end this abominable crime as soon as possible? Did anyone believe the aim was ever ANYTHING other than to create situation where we have to stay there, at war forever, ringing that "shut up for security or get abducted" bell.

Well, as Lord Buckley said in a routine, "Boy you keep ringing that bell, you're gonna bend that bell."

I think it's already bent and the arrogant pricks in power don't realize it yet.

They also don't realize that the media knows the nature of vicissitudes, i.e., "be careful the asses you kick on the way up -- same ones you'll have to kiss on the way down."

You think the press isn't waiting for Monkey Boy and the Spider in the alley?

Maybe they don't care yet.

If the Democrats had any backbone at all,
Monkey Boy and the Spider would be in real trouble.

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9/10/07

OK, maybe I was unfair

Unkind and possibly unfair to say what I did below (A Riddle: "What does one lying sack of shit say to the other lying sack of shit?)

Maybe it's what -- in this photo -- what does a true believer bozo lifer "only following orders" career Army officer say to the lying sack of shit who's his chain of command top dog --
"Tell me what I need to do, sir."
"General -- I didn't appoint you to lie -- I know you wouldn't do that.
I appointed you because you actually believe this shit we've been shovelling all over the American public. So, stay the course."




OK?
I do NOT think General Petraeus is a liar.
He just lives in a fantasy world that he calls "reality" since the world he creates when doing his job is populated with torn and dying men and women screaming in pain, insanely stoked live bodies screaming in aggressive angers, and rotting dead bodies that just lie there and don't say anything at all -- until they swell up in the sun and explode.

I'm sure he's a fine man with lots of integrity.

It's just that his job -- his career -- is to obediently go out and kill people wherever he's told to by whichever second-rate asshole had a rich daddy to buy his way into the Commander-in-Chief slot.

And that makes me suspect.

In fact, the entire General staff being willing to serve under this Texas Terrorist and not resign, is suspect.

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9/9/07

A bunch of dopers (no short-term -- or long-term -- memory) running this abortion they call an administration?


Bin Laden branded "Virtually Impotent"

Sep 9th, 2007 | WASHINGTON -- Osama bin Laden is "virtually impotent" and does not appear to be triggering a new attack against the United States despite the release of a videotape with his first message in a year, President Bush's homeland security adviser said Sunday.

"This is about the best he can do," Frances Fragos Townsend said about the fugitive al-Qaida leader whose terrorist network is believed to be regrouping in the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region.

"This is a man on a run, from a cave, who's virtually impotent other than these tapes," she said.

Townsend spoke in broadcast interviews two days before the sixth anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks that bin Laden masterminded.

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


OK, wait, this is a guy who has out-thought and out-maneuvered these American bozos on every front.

So BEN LADEN is the new Vietnam, i.e., declare him "impotent" and declare victory.

If I were in uniform and had a C-in-C who kept taunting the enemy that's killing our guys every day, I'd have to consider the propriety as to which direction our guns were pointing.

But I'm not in uniform, and from what I hear, I don't have to put that idea in the mind of any one of those who wear the uniform and sweat and die for this band of vermin.

More than ever this confirms my suspicion that the whole idea was to NEVER capture Ben Laden, thereby creating a never-ending threat. Because if we caught him, our lust for revenge would be satisfied, and that wouldn't pay the rent at Halliburton's new Dubai HQ.

Every word they say (from Bush on up), every action they take, is either (to be kind) the result of moronic insanity, OR, to be more likely, the active tactics of treason against America for the oligarchy that wants total control.

If there had been any doubt about that, I would have to say the quote in Mr. Goldsmith's book, that "we're one bomb away from fulfilling our goal' -- meaning one attack by someone we call Al Quaedea in order for the Bush-leaguers to have absolute authority --

Ein Homeland, Ein Ruling Class, Ein Fuehrer

We'd have to change the venue to some place like Uruguay, but it would still be the right thing to to do --- they love their yee-hah absolutes so much, the only resolution is this:


Try 'em for treason.

And -- once they're found guilty
after a fair trial in Guantanamo ---

hang 'em high.


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



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9/7/07

Senator Craig's list (of options)

Ok, we all know Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio popularization of the sleazily anti-semitic Vatican smear, that if you lie, your nose will grow, i.e., Jews lie and you'll become a Jew.


But when Senator Craig told his lies, who would have thought that growing nose would turn him into Jimmy Durante?

Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to go,
And still have the feeling that you wanted to stay?
Start to go,
Change your mind,
Start to go again,
Change your mind again...
Did you ever have the feeling that you wanted to go,
And still have the feeling that you wanted to stay?
Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do -
I go!
I stay!

(I found the lyrics on this Finnish web site )

Jimmy Durante sang the song (as a character named Banjo) in the 1942 movie of the stage play The Man Who Came to Dinner (Also again as Billy Kipp in the 1944 movie Two Girls and a Sailor. And sung again, but not by Durante and amazingly poorly in My Stepmother Is an Alien )

And of course, in recent weeks, by the mind-melting Senator Larry "I'm not gay just because I'll give you a blow job* -- my mother gave my father a blow job and you're not calling my mother gay, are you?" Craig.

I'm not unsympathetic to a person who is watching his career and his entire facade publicly crumble into shit, even if the person is a vicious hypocrite who destroyed lives of other gay men and women for his own personal gain.

I could even suggest another Jimmy Durante song that might be helpful:

Smile,
Though your heart is achin'
Smile,
Even though it's breakin'
When there are are clouds in the sky
You'll get by...

If you smile
Through your fear and sorrow
Smile,
And maybe tomorrow
You'll see the sun come shinin' through,
For you...

Light up your face with gladness
Hide, every trace of sadness
Although a tear
may be ever so near

Thats the time, You must keep on tryin'
Smile, what's the use of cryin'
You'll find that life is still worth while

If you just smile


Hang in there, Larry, and try to get really honest with yourself (Sometimes Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose) and maybe next June, I'll turn on the TV and see you up there in the Pride Parade, walking along with a rainbow flag right behind the Dykes on Bikes, leather harness all shiny and nipple rings polished bright as sunshine.



*( To be honest, I don't know if you were offering that cop your intent to give OR to receive.)

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The sleaziest, most perverted, most vicious, most despicable Iraq ploy yet -- is Karl Rove back?

Freedom's Watch, the towel boy for the Bush Administration's giant fuckover of Iraq, is running TV commercials that pretend to be using the words of the actual maimed and crippled soldiers and marines who fought there, but which betray their scripting.

First of all, as in every war, the foot soldier is the one least likely to have any idea how the overall war is going. They know if they're doing all they can, and I have no issue as to whether or not the troops are doing all they can. But they're tactical cogs in a strategic wheel, and they never see the whole picture. Usually, however, their confidence is justified, that someone, somewhere actually DOES see the whole picture, actually DOES have a real strategy.

So the administration uses these people who are patriotic enough, sincere enough, innocent enough and/or dumb enough to believe that this president and his puppeteers have actually sent them in to suffer and die in good faith and for an actually explicit cause (rather than a covert plundering of our own and Iraq's resources for their pals) instead of lying, cynically using them, and only giving them proper medical care grudgingly when they get caught shorting the veterans.

So when I see someone like the tragically manipulated former Marine Andrew Robinson talk to the camera about how we're winning in Iraq and how he "hears congress talk about surrendering..." I know he's saying what he was told to say.

"Surrender" is the completely inappropriate bullshit term used by the Karl Roverer faction to pretend there is anyone there to whom we would surrender.

We may lose this misbegotten criminal power grab, but the only surrender involved is one we ardently hope for -- that the Bush Adminstration surrenders to the American Public, to the Constitution, or -- a fellow can hope -- to the next administration's FBI warrants to turn them all over to the World Court to be tried for Crimes Against Humanity.

Write your congressman, he says.

You see, the fact that the voters of America want this monstrous criminal action ended doesn't count at all to the people who ride high on two stolen presidential elections.

The loss of so many of our people and the Iraqis' people to death, dismemberment, and/or devastating injury doesn't mean jack shit to Monkey Boy and the rest of his Rec Room Patriots, all of whom were just too goddamn precious to answer the draft call when it was their turn.

They know what it's like to be a band of brothers -- but only to the other sniggering, sniveling, smirking rich kids, or the mean, foul-mouthed poor kids who got an intro to the money river, but they haven't got a clue about what actual love of country means to anyone who is willing to serve it instead of using others' love of country to steal from it.

They treat those who serve for love of country like damaged refuse, but some of the inriguists know ENOUGH about that love of country to use them in shameless despicable fashion, as with Andrew Robinson, to feed the Halliburton vampires on their blood.

It's "my country right or wrong."
It's NOT "this particular administration right or wrong."
Unless Bush and his cronies are convinced (as it seems) of L'etat cest moi.

If only there were some other party besides the Republicans to make a stand. Not all the Republicans agree with Bush and his Flying Purple Monkeys, but those who don't are intimidated into submission and co-operation.

When I was a kid, there was this thing called The Democrats, and there were people who actually didn't always agree with and/or bend over for the Republicans.

Wish there were some of them around today.


And just in case someone might think I'm just being partisan, a disgruntled Democrat, I'll finish this ramble asking aloud what a friend of mine, Kayla, asked aloud the other night -- "What happened to Nancy Pelosi?"

My guess?

She got close enough to the center of power to become victim to instant corruption.

Or someone threatened her children or grandchildren.

Or whatever whatever whatever, she just decided to punk out and betray everyone who had some hope she actually meant what she'd said.

Her and Senator Reid, and Diane Feinstein, and all the rest -- just punked out and obviously scared shitless for anyone to point a finger at them.

Well, most of us are showing a finger TO them.

Except for Barbara Lee and a very few others.


So -- hello Democrats, political party I used to support:

Fuck you too, you second-rate snivelling shit bags. As the anthropologist said: "You bacame what you beheld. Looked too long at Monkey Boy and became one of his slaveys.

Scared of someone saying poo-poo to you?

You don't deserve to hold office -- none of you.

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Matthew Broderick -- after his embarrasingly annoying performance in the movie of "The Producers" is reduced to portraying General David Petraeus

Matthew Broderick
Before the fall (it's that warily knowing look they wanted)




Matthew Broderick pretending to be General David Petraeus,
pursing his lips to make a point.

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

My ace buddy, Dick Lupoff asked the question some time ago -- "When does Petraeus become 'Betray-us?' "

And I thought it was a cute play on words but not very applicable since the Bush-leaguers told us over and over again that the man wasn't some political tool.

Delay-Us, maybe.

But Dick was right. And the formerly supposedly honorable professional killer did the bidding of Monkey Boy's masters:

From 9-07-07 NY Times:

Seeing Iraq Gains as Fragile, Petraeus Is Wary of Cuts


What a surprise, eh? It didn't work so we have to stay at nearly full force.

It would betray those who have given life and limb for a bogus cause to decide not to kill or maim more of our military people...

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

Bonus Riddle:



What did one lying sack of shit say to the other lying sack of shit?

"We've gotta stay the course."

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