If the Republicans weren't so constitutionally unable..

... to say a complete declarative sentence without including some diss, slam, or attack on the president...

... to find something amiss in refusing to ask their their payoff masters to contribute a bit more to the government that protects them from the people they steal from (such as the hedge fund CEO whose personal income last year was $4.9 Billion)

... to imagine it might be a good thing -- an humane thing -- for the government to stand between poor people and cold painful disease and death

...to stop being pompous self-righteous pricks who invoke God to the point of inducing vomit in listeners but seem to believe in a form of Christianity that has Jesus telling the poor "tough shit," who kiss the ass of the Ruling Class, smooching their bums from morning to night, and attacking ANYONE who questions their right to stomp on the poor as "starting a class war."

If it weren't for all these and many other mental diseases they proudly display, I wouldn't find myself regarding H.L. Mencken's observation of people like that to be so apt.

Mencken said:

"Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats."

Purely a fantasy.

I guess the more modern version of that idle fantasy would be to ask the government of Norway is we might borrow or hire their pretty-boy crusader, Christ-mongering mass murderer Anders Behring-Breivik and see what he could do with a tour of our congress.

Addendum:

Right now, looking at the bend over FORWARD dance the Democrats are and have been doing, the fantasy is up to telling Anders -- a good Christian boy -- if he asks who to shoot, tell him -- since they all name-drop God the way Jimmy Olson name-drops Superman -- tell him the old military answer for "I've had all I can stand," i.e., "Kill 'em all and let God sort it out."

Of course that would mean, if it were any more than an idle irritable fantasy, BECOMING one of them.

Meanwhile back in reality -- it would be much much MUCH better (but even MORE of a fantasy, and much harder to imagine) if they learned how to say "NO" to the people who give them their election bribes, and actually do their jobs.

But that would mean they'd have to stop throwing tantrums and yelling at each other in the playground and stop yammering about "A FAMILY has to live within their budget."

Yeah -- does it ever occur to ANY of them that a family doesn't have to repair the roads, put out the neighbor's fires, protect their neighbors from human and natural horrors, get them chemotherapy, teach their neighbor's children to read and write and even learn something about history.

(And can SOMEONE actually mention that a couple hundred million dollars MORE invested in saving infrastructure would create several million well-paying jobs. MORE, rather than less.)

But -- oh fuck it -- a lot easier to throw a tantrum and parrot the same old shit than actually think, isn't it?
"We don't have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem."
"They keep moving the go0alpost."

and on and on and on and as the song once said:

"Waving flags and carrying signs. Mostly say 'Hooray for our side.' "

(And Buffalo Springfield is having a geriatric reunion tour (oops, 2011 Reunion Tour now the 2012 Reunion Tour), how about that?
Ever see someone play lead guitar while using a walker?)

One of Mencken's contemporaries knew it -- Don Marquis, he of Archy and Mehitabel and other philosophical cat & cockroach sagas"

"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you."

Great idealistic TV commercial tag line for Siemens Electric

"...and 10,000 people at Siemens are ready to do it again."

Hmmm... and I hear echoes every time they say it, every time they talk about how they've made cities into ideal places for people to live... and I think "Like at Ravensbruck?"

Preceding World War II, Siemens was involved in funding the rise of the Nazi Party and the secret rearmament of Germany. During the second World War, Siemens supported the Hitler regime, contributed to the war effort and participated in the "Nazification" of the economy. Siemens had many factories in and around notorious concentration camps^[8][9] to build electric switches for military uses.^[10] In one example, almost 100,000 men and women from Auschwitz worked in a Siemens factory inside the camp, supplying the electricity to the camp....
The major private firm that used slave labor at Ravensbrück was the Siemens Electric Company, today the second largest electric company in the world. In a separate camp adjoining the main one, Siemens “employed” the women to make electrical components for V-1 and V-2 rockets...

--Sorry -- there's no reason in the world these people and this corporation should be allowed to exist .. in Frederick Forsyth's 1972 novel: The Odessa File, the former SS Officer whose war crimes included murdering the protagonist's father -- a decorated German officer -- the criminal worked for a mythically-named electric company, but the name used in the book: Eduard Roschmann was the true name of a war criminal who was an executive at Siemens until the book exposed him.

Ravensbrück

---

Ravensbrück was a concentration camp for women, which had 34 satellite divisions. Located alongside Lake Schwedt, about 50 miles north of Berlin, Ravensbrück opened on May 15, 1939, and, three days later, the first group of 867 women arrived from Lichtenburg in Saxony, a fortress that had been used as a women's camp from March 1938 until May 1939. The first prisoners were mostly of German anti-fascists, either Social Democrats or Communists — some coincidentally Jewish, and Jehovah's Witnesses. A high wall with electrified barbed wire enclosed the women in the camp...

Ravensbrück housed Jews, Gypsies, Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Germans and prisoners of other nationalities. Designed to accommodate 6,000 prisoners, the number of inmates grew from 2,000 in 1939 to 10,800 in 1942. Between May 1939 and June 1944, an estimated 43,000 women were brought to Ravensbrück. During the next nine months, an estimated 90,000 more came...

Slave Labor

The major private firm that used slave labor at Ravensbrück was the Siemens Electric Company, today the second largest electric company in the world. In a separate camp adjoining the main one, Siemens “employed” the women to make electrical components for V-1 and V-2 rockets...

Human Statistics

Exact statistics are impossible to obtain, because the Nazis burned many records before they fled. The camp memorial’s estimated figure of 132,000 includes about 48,500 Polish women, the largest national group imprisoned in the camp. There were 28,000 women from the Soviet Union, almost 24,000 from Germany and Austria, nearly 8,000 French women, and thousands from other countries in Europe. There were even British and American women imprisoned at the camp. While no exact records are available, an estimated twenty percent of the total population was Jewish — more than 20,000 women.

Medical Experiments

Beginning in 1942, medical experiments were performed on the inmates; some women were infected with gas gangrene or bacterial inflammations, while others were forced to receive bone transplants and bone amputations. Other experiments involved sulfonamide and sterilization techniques. Pregnant Jewish women were sent to the gas chambers, while abortions were performed on non-Jews. The most infamous experiments used Polish women as “guinea pigs” to simulate battlefield leg wounds of German soldiers. Most of these women died or were murdered afterward, and those who survived were crippled and disfigured. .

Read the entire article that discusses slave labor, medical experiments, gas chambers, etc...


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Tuesday, December 16, 2008
A Little Reality

Siemens = Evil

If ever there was a company that deserves to be shut down forever it is Siemens AG.

Nazi Favorites
Siemens AG manufactured many of the items used by the Nazis to kill. They made great profit from this by using slave labor from concentration camps, most notoriously at the Ravensbruck Concentration Camp. Slaves would build electric switches for Siemens manufactured V-2 rockets in the morning and be murdered in Siemens-built gas chambers in the afternoon....

Heartless Marketers
In 2002 Siemens wanted to build gas ovens for the home using the trademark name Zyklon. That just happens also to be the name of the poison used in concentration camp gas chambers. Siemens continues to use that horrid name to market a line of vacuum cleaners in Germany.

Bribers Extraordinaire
As if to prove that time has not diminished Siemens AG's skill in immoral enterprises, it has engaged in a wide spread enterprise of bribery. This has led to the largest ever fine, $1.6 billion. Yet, the truth is that Siemens is getting off easy. The fine is small enough that Siemens has still made a good profit from their illegal activities. Also, they get to keep all of their government contracts and retain the right to go after still more government contracts. If Siemens has learned any lesson at all it is to disguise their bribery better.
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I'm sure we should all be delighted that Siemens has come to America to improve the quality of life in our cities.

Fascinating -- Boehner and Cantor and Sedition

I deplore violence, so please don't misunderstand this as any sort of advocacy -- but the cognitive dissonance created by the death threats being aimed at the Right Wing instead of at the Liberals is -- to use movie promo terms -- "New and exciting."

Not all that new -- my father and his Wobbly pals used to finish conversations with "Hang 'em from the lampposts."

And not all that exciting -- just unexpected.

What the Repugnicans are doing constitutes sedition -- intentionally attempting to undermine the authority (i.e., the ability to function) of the US Government.

If Eric Holder came out tomorrow with felony sedition indictments on Cantor and Boehner, well, THAT would be something new and exciting, and might just change the game a bit.

Tim Pawlenty -- not just an empty suit

Nossir -- he's a genuine posturing, primping, craven, filled right-up-to-the-top sack of shit.

Candy Crowley asks him: "What would YOU do?"

And he comes up with the same: "It's HIS fault! He didn't keep his promises! He should be leading!!"

So ok, he says "Balanced Budget amendment."

And she says, "But that wouldn't address the current problem, the debt limit, so what would you do right now?"

And he says: "He's bad... HE'S bad..."

And instead of going on, Ms Crowley, does what they all do ... lets up instead of risking access and risking that great big paycheck."

Tim Pawlenty: his campaign?

"Nigger nigger nigger*, evil faggots*, evil dykes*, evil liberals, president is a coward..."

"And what would YOU do, Governor with 2% of Republican voters saying they'd vote for you?"

"No traditional marriage. We need fiscal responsibility. If you let THEM get married, then OUR marriages are hurt. They're NOT equal to us, not not not."

Yup -- he's got an attitude a mile long, but ask him "what would YOU do?" and we see he's nothing but a feces-flinging second-rate primate. And not even an Alpha male.

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* I don't use this language or condone it, but when he speaks of the President or of Gay rights, I'm quoting the words being printed in big block letters across his forehead.

Hideous business in Norway

Right-wing Christian Fundie goes to a Labor Party Summer Camp and between his guns and the bomb, 93 dead.

Hideous enough, even if some Sea Shepherd supporters (like me) might feel inclined to compare the psychotic horror movie level of carnage to that perpetrated by Norway's Minke whale and baby Harp Seal killers. (I remember someone asking Rush Limbaugh -- of all people -- after the Japanese tsunami, why would Gaia harm Japan, after all, they make the environmentally friendly Prius. And I remember thinking, "Well if we're talking about directed havoc from a nature God or Goddess -- a sea deity like Poseidon -- "Go ask a fucking whale. ")

So it wasn't Muslim terrorists (sorry Pizzaman Herman Cain) but uptight white boy rightie(s), kind of like the USA's own Oklahoma City bombers, synagogue murderers, Abortion doctor killers, etc.

And then, in a classic bit of American bad taste, an American state department official protecting his ass and budgets while his people are flooding news outlets with threat threat threat of possible Al Quaeda offshoots, said: "Well, you know it's the exception that proves the rule, so even though it wasn't Muslim terrorists, maintaining Homeland Security measures might have prevented or limited this." (Yeah, and if Dick Cheney had actually read the 1999 Hart-Rudman Commission Report on preventing terrorism and acted on it as he was charged to do,if he'd read it instead of circular filing it, he might have prevented 9-11, except both Hart and Rudman were too decent to say so when asked.)

OK -- first of all -- It's the exception that PROOFS the rule, i.e., it TESTS IT, meaning if there is an exception the rule isn't valid.

The only rule that statement proves is that we have some seriously illiterate assholes representing the USA in the State Department, formerly (before the Red Scare Days), formerly a government organization staffed by educated people.

And it proves he's the sort of superficial asshole who never even thought about "proves the rule" and thought "That doesn't make any fucking sense at all."

Of course, anyone who thinks along those lines ("Does this make sense?") might not want to work for a government agency.

Second, Upton Sinclair once pointed out something absolutely important to know in a society where anything you see is sponsored by someone who's getting paid:

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it."

As I said, it's bad enough that some Xtian subhuman rained death on a bunch of youngsters gathered together to have fun and think about a better world.

It just compounds it when someone standing safely aside interjects himself and uses the horror to advance a political agenda.

Oh, really? Saying the prosecution and public were into a "kill the witch" mode in the Casey Anthony trial? That was excessive?

How about falsifying evidence?

Prosecutors in the Casey Anthony trial repeatedly asserted that the defendant searched for “chloroform” 84 times, but in reality she only searched for the word once, according to a software designer who testified at the trial.

The New York Times reports that the designer, John Bradley, came to that conclusion in June after redesigning the software used to tally Anthony’s computer searches. He says he immediately contacted police to alert them of the error, but the prosecution made no mention of the revised conclusion during the trial.

“I gave the police everything they needed to present a new report,” Bradley said. “I did the work myself and copied out the entire database in a spreadsheet to make sure there was no issue of accessibility to the data.”

I happened to see Nancy Grace asked a question on a news show this morning. She raised the flag for the First Amendment prefatory to saying, about Ms Anthony: "That's why she killed her baby and got that tattoo and went pole dancing while her baby was ROTTING in a swamp only 5 doors away from her."

Of course, Ms Grace, a former prosecutor, knew the likelihood of Ms Anthony filing charges for slander was infinitesimally small -- about the same size of -- or so it appears to me -- Ms Grace's conscience or sense of decency.

Casey Anthony -- not guilty, OK? This is more about "Burn the Witch" than law or crime

Real simple, the prosecution never proved the case. Nancy Grace and the rest of the harpies didn't need proof, they came right out from day one screaming "SHE'S A MONSTER -- BURN HER!!"
Sorry Nancy, you must have been looking in a mirror when you made that judgment.


It's interesting to me that a woman who once represented the law is so viciously opposed to any result in the legal system that doesn't meet her approval. It's like "prosecution" isn't a legal procedure to her, but a religion -- and the way she shrieks it -- a cult.

The similarity to the O.J. Trial is thin, except for the fact that it was obvious, when the O.J. Case went to jury, Marcia Clark and the rest of the team had failed to make a case any stronger than "Well... he probably did it. Maybe."
But then the time line didn't work.
Either way, you can't convict on "probably.
Of course she and Garcetti and the rest of them blame everyone but themselves.
The fact was they were outmaneuvered --- Robert Shapiro cornered them. He realized they shouldn't have arrested him so early, because it allowed him, according to the constitution, to demand they go to trial soon.

Too soon, since they had to open without the DNA results, and that made the prosecution act like the defense in anticipation of what the labs might say. And that was the trick. All it needed then was a brilliant trial lawyer -- enter Johnny Cochran. But the reality was: THEY DIDN"T PROVE THEIR CASE.

Same with Casey Anthony, and as one juror put it -- "We all thought she was guilty, but when the prosecution couldn't even establish the cause of death... well how do you prove she did it when they can't prove what happened, what she was supposed to have done?"
The difference? They prosecution had her in a cage for 32 months, and if you can't get enough evidence to convict in almost 3 years, it raises the thought of the prosecution having gotten its law degree in a Cracker Jack box

But now we have the dance of the mob screaming "BURN THE WITCH!!! DON'T LET HER GET AWAY!!!"
Traditional. People who think they're Christians have been torturing and killing young women for 1000 years and more. It's kind of a sexual thing, the prettier the girl, the more horrible they want the punishment to be.

Generally, standing around and watching and listening to her screams of agony (and inhaling the smoke like it's God's own doobie) while a young woman burns to death is the approved format.

Great book if you want to know the tradition of these Christ-mongering monsters: I>Europe's Inner Demons Norman Cohn (Basic Books, 1975 + many later editions)

You want to see a REAL demon? She's on the headline news channel almost every night.

What if your neighbor were like the congressional GOP?

Let's see ---

The guy next door spends and spends and borrows and spends and borrow more to buy guns and guns and guns and he glad hands the local bankers and businessmen buying them lunches and luxury items to keep his credit alive to buy more guns...

meanwhile his wife and kids are going without shoes and suffer from running sores and malnutritive diseases and are reduced to begging on the street with only the unwholesome option of kissing the ass of those Christian Charities that will help with food and all they want is for the suffering people to sell them your soul.

Would you think he's sane?

The GOP is another matter ...

They quote scripted lines -- "Can't tax the people who provide jobs" (so ok, let's tax every corporation that has LOST employees since the Bush tax cuts came in) "The government can't create jobs" (what about FDR and WPA, CCC, etc? "Those were just temporary jobs for a few years." But... "People got to eat and have a place to live and take care of their families for a few years..." "Liberal claptrap. Kumbaya whining.")

They quote statistics: "Every poll shows Americans want to reduce the deficit."

So...

If I can hold down my rising gorge and actually make a leap of faith and say
(1) they're not really lizard people wearing skin masks, but are actually human beings;
(2) if they ARE human, and they're not COMPLETELY psychotic ... then why do they act like that, like sociopathic 2-year-olds in suits throwing tantrums when anyone suggests they don't care about people, then what's left?

The bribes they take (ooops -- campaign contributions) bind them to their masters, and abandoning that debt promises dire consequences (Hey -- JFK and Bobby owed the Illinois mob for getting them into the White House and then, instead of repaying their debt, Bobby, that nasty little terrier who used to bark for Joe McCarthy, yapped and barked and snapped at and bit the people who put them up on top of the world ...)

SO:

As fond as I am of quotes (since people much wiser than I am have seen and commented on the same things) here are a few I think are relevant

A: How can they think all demonstrable needs for increased revenue are merely liberal "tax-and-spend" rationalizations (as opposed to GOP "spend-and-borrow" rationalizations)

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on not understanding it." Upton Sinclair

B: Why they think all all humanitarian issues are merely liberal bleeding-heart whining and they quote from their amazing list of made-up statistics:

"Statistics are human beings with the tears wiped off." Paul Brodeur

C: How did it all get so crazy?

"The biggest business in America is not steel, automobiles, or television. It is the manufacture, refinement and distribution of anxiety ... Logically extended, this process can only terminate in a mass nervous breakdown or in a collective condition of resentment..." Eric Severeid (Quoted in Organ Magazine, 1971)

D: SO, are they just a bunch of fanatics? Maybe.

"Fanaticism is overcompensation for doubt." Robertson Davies
"Fanaticism consists in redoubling your effort when you have forgotten your aim."
-- Santayana

E: Why does the public put up with it, can't they think?

"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you;
But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." Don Marquis (1878 - 1937)

BUT ... if you showed them...

"Any man who calls things by their rightful name will surely be hanged."
John Wilmot, 2d Earl of Rochester (April 1, 1647 – July 26, 1680)

BUT... come one...

"Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe."
— Albert Einstein

SO THEN, with the GOP acting like over-sugared kindergartners fighting and screaming and destroying themselves, why hasn't Obama been stepping in until now? Does he know something they don't?

"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821)

****************
--- I hope he's right...All I can add:

"Where in the waste is the wisdom?"
-- James Joyce Finnegans Wake

Are they liars? Or is it more a combination of wishful thinking and little or no connection to reality?

I'm talking about what we always so politely (and incorrectly) call "conservative" when they conserve nothing but the right to be pissed off. They quote the constitution, or at least quote things they think are clever, and CLAIM it's from the constitution. They are right-wing fanatics, theocrats obsessed with turning the USA into a fascistic country in which (the definition of fascism being "A merger between government and corporations") they add religion to the mix to come out with something like the Christian version of the Taliban.


What set me off on this is a bumper sticker using an imaginary quote from Benjamin Franklin:

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."

To put it politely:

A SACK OF TOTALLY FABRICATED BULLSHIT.

Here are some facts:

Widely attributed to Franklin on the internet, sometimes without the second sentence. It is not found in any of his known writings, and the word "lunch" is not known to have appeared anywhere in english literature until the 1820s, decades after his death. The phrasing itself has a very modern tone and the second sentence especially might not even be as old as the internet...

The quote never appeared anywhere before 1990.

Get it? The word: LUNCH didn't even exist until years after Franklin's death.

(This site also has other fabricated self-serving imaginary Franklinisms.)

Generally, the problem with these "Ben Franklin said" lies (or "Thomas Jefferson said," or, to paraphrase Tom Paine in Common Sense, "God said") is that they give themselves away the same way as art forgeries, only more blatantly, as the ignorance of the sayers seems to indicate they know little or absolutely nothing about the person (except he was famous and reportedly wise) -- in art forgery it would be like painting Julius Caesar wearing a wristwatch.

In other words, they're fucking stupid and have put together a political coalition of similar know-nothing sheep.

But, if these people want to be like the founding fathers, so be it. Of course, that means they should enjoy both the winners' prize and the loser's penalty of those brave men and women, i.e., if Washington and Franklin and Jefferson and Adams, et al had lost, they would have been hanged for treason.

Thus far, they seem to have only committed SEDITION:

sedition, crime against the state. Though sedition may have the same ultimate effect as treason, it is generally limited to the offense of organizing or encouraging opposition to government in a manner (such as in speech or writing) that falls short of the more dangerous offenses constituting treason.

Sedition:

1. Speech or behaviour directed against the peace of a state

2. (Law) an offence that tends to undermine the authority of a state

3. (Law) an incitement to public disorder

Also punishable by law:

US Code Title 18
§2384. Seditious conspiracy

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808; July 24, 1956, ch. 678, §1, 70 Stat. 623; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII, §330016(1)(N), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148.)

Historical and Revision Notes

Based on title 18 , U.S.C., 1940 ed., §6 (Mar. 4, 1909, ch. 321, §6, 35 Stat. 1089).

Amendments

1994—Pub. L. 103–322 substituted “fined under this title” for “fined not more than $20,000”.

1956—Act July 24, 1956, substituted “$20,000” for “$5,000”, and “twenty years” for “six years”.

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Nancy Grace -- human emetic

Prosecution is a religion with her and she's a religious fanatic -- Nancy Grace and all the other members of her cult -- total True Believer fanatics driven by hate & anger & and obsessive 'look-at-me' solipsistic need so intense it makes the amazingly talented Liza Minelli look like Mother Teresa -- God has told her that it's IMPOSSIBLE any prosecutor could be wrong ... and now Marcia Clark has added herself-serving antiquities, that this was MORE shocking and not like the OJ trial at all, cuz -- remember her whining excuse? -- OJ only got off based on celebrity and because of Rodney King and athleticism and...)

This IS the same as the OJ trial -- I listened to that trial while I was working, listened to it all, every day -- and when it went to jury I thought: "But they didn't prove it... he might be guilty, maybe even probably, but you can't convict on 'probably.' "

This case even less surprising.

When the character assassination was over what we had was (1) prosecution couldn't say WHAT was the cause of death, let alone if it even WAS murder {duct tape -- they said it was the murder weapon, BUT an actual competent pathologist proved it was put on AFTER death and decomp had started} (2) prosecution couldn't say what if anything Casey Anthony had to do with the baby's death.

And Ms Anthony's attorney in his summation put it clearly: "They have no hard forensic evidence so their case rests on presenting her as a slutty party girl." And then (THEN) the prosecutor walked right into it with his rebuttal -- finishing with a photo of Ms Anthony living high and wild, thereby confirming Mr Baez's assertion as fact.

Marcia Clark and Jeff Ashton will never admit the obvious reasons for their failures -- both are second rate lawyers who are so sure they're FIRST RATE, they lose because of overconfident arrogance.

Add Cyrus Vance Jr in a different way, i.e., won't prosecute unless he knows he has a vote-getting slam-dunk ("She was raped but she isn't a very good witness so I'm letting the rich guy go... how can you POSSIBLY suggest there will be a quid pro quo down the road?")

Gee -- Cyrus Vance Jr says he doesn't want to prosecute Dominique Strauss-Kahn

Gee -- want a definition of "chickenshit?" How about "see Cyrus Vance Jr."

Sure, he said, there were definite signs that she was sexually attacked but...

BUT?!?

But ...she wouldn't have been a believable witness... and so, since we can't call her a whore and a slut and a liar in court, D.A. Vance decided he'd do it now, and drop the charge. Not that Strauss-Kahn could have POSSIBLY offered any goodies to Vance if he did that.

Because it's only after-the fact coincidental that one of the richest men in the world found people to say "She's a liar," and Her boyfriend (who is in jail in Arizona accused but not yet tried, on a drug charge) says she was talking about how rich this guy is. Couldn't have PAID anyone in Guinea to say she was never gang-raped.

And it's not as if the old rapist couldn't help Vance to a plum job after the fact.

And Anita Hill couldn't have POSSIBLY been telling the truth about Clarence Thomas -- the Reagan administration's token. After all, she was an ambitious lawyer. And black.

And Judge Bork -- the only judge with little enough self-respect and large enough ambition to carry out Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre couldn't possibly have been voted down because he was substandard and more than a little crazy. No, it HAD to be a liberal conspiracy.

Ahhhh, so the DA, son of a Carter Admin muckety-muck with the same name got an offer he couldn't pass up.

So fucking what?

SO when people say "Cyrus Vance" we'll have to ask "Do you mean Jimmy Carter's Secretary of State? Or the crooked chickenshit D.A.

The debt limit and all the hoo-hah about raising it may just be more hot air and bs -- meaning it's not needed and may even be unconstitutional

U.S. Constitution: Fourteenth Amendment Adopted on July 9, 1868 -- one of the "Reconstruction" Amendments

Section 1. (You know, the birthers' favorite:)

"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

and blah blah blah stuff, but the point here is THIS:

Section. 4. "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned..."

SHALL NOT BE QUESTIONED!! Not "maybe" not "shouldn't be," but SHALL NOT BE QUESTIONED!! Perhaps the strongest, most unequivocally absolute statement in the entire constitution -- Get it? Only the courtesy of President Obama even ALLOWS you to reps and senators who need to pay off the debts you owe for the bribes took (and called them by that charming old school name: "Campaign Contributions") to dither, dicker, obstruct, and demand.

In other words, you fuck around too long, Republicans, and Obama gets the biggest line item veto in history. Maybe y'all ought to actually READ that constitution you pretend to honor.

...and as a "reconstruction" amendment, then goes on to say if you think we're paying one cent to you jive-ass slave-whuppin' sonsofbitches, you can go piss up a rope...

"But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void."

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SEE Also: Geithner on the Debt Ceiling being unconstitutional (because of the 14th Amendment)

The Atlantic article on the president's power to avoid default, no matter what Mitch McConnell and Eric Cantor says. ( Eric Cantor, by the way, owns stock in a fund the value of which, if the US DID default, will skyrocket. I may be naiive, but isn't this like a football coach betting on the opposing team?)

The American Square raises the issue without taking a pro-or-con position (i.e., "Just the facts, ma'am")