A Liberal Dose

Serendipity....

2010-04-23T00:11:00.004+09:00

Youtube is the greatest thing since .... For example:

To anyone that remembers the craptacular series that would not end, there were exactly two reasons to watch "Dallas", to wit:
Oh Yes
and Me Oh My

Otherwise, the show was generally the same ubiquitous spamtricious fare served across the spectrum to this very day.

That said, it was interesting to come across a video of the show's finale - which I never had the patience to reach. Seriously, seriously twisted:

Hit it boys:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwxJ46HWXbA

First solo live set prepared and translated!

2009-08-22T13:31:00.004+09:00

Okay!

Gotta live solo gig coming up and wanted to convey the song's meanings as deeply and effectively as possible, so have been writing band summaries and translating the lyrics into Japanese. This is the first of two sets:

A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM – POP LOVE SONGS

The first set begins with a Beatles medley, starting with an early Lennon-McCartney hit. This shows the innocence and optimism of the young musical geniuses at the onset of their careers:

All My Loving – Beatles
Close your eyes and I'll kiss you
Tomorrow I'll miss you
Remember I'll always be true
And then while I'm away
I'll write home everyday
And I'll send all my loving to you

I'll pretend that I'm kissing
The lips I am missing
And hope that my dreams will come true
And then while I'm away
I'll write home everyday
And I'll send all my loving to you

All my loving I will send to you
All my loving, darling, I'll be true

Close your eyes and I'll kiss you
Tomorrow I'll miss you
Remember I'll always be true
And then while I'm away
I'll write home everyday
And I'll send all my loving to you

All my loving, I will send to you
All my loving, darling I'll be true

All my loving, All my loving
Wooooo, all my loving
I will send to you

全部の愛

目を閉めて
明日君に寂しくなる
僕いつも忠実で覚えて
それから僕が外出中
毎日手紙を書くと
君に全部の愛を送る

僕はふりして
懐かしい唇をキッスをしているんで
全部な夢は事実になって見込む
それから僕が外出中
毎日手紙を書くと
君に全部の愛を送る

全部の愛僕君に送る
全部の愛最愛、僕いつも忠実
目を閉めて
明日君に寂しくなる
僕いつも忠実で覚えて
それから僕が外出中
毎日手紙を書くと
君に全部の愛を送る

全部の愛, 僕君に送る
全部の愛最愛、僕いつも忠実
全部の愛, 全部の愛
全部の愛, 僕君に送る

Next, we have three numbers by each of the Beatles songwriters, showcasing clearly the distinct musical and lyrical styles that evolved from each. Let’s begin with George Harrison, the spiritual/mystical visionary, and lead guitarist for the band. Here is his beautiful melancholy masterpiece, “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, featured on the White Album, with Eric Clapton adding a brilliant lead solo.

While My Guitar Gently Weeps
I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at the floor and I see it need sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps

I don't know why nobody told you
How to unfold your love
I don't know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you

I look at the world and I notice it's turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps

I don't know how you were diverted
you were perverted too
I don't know how you were inverted
No one alerted you

I look at you all see the love there that's sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at you all
Still my guitar gently weeps

僕のギターがそっと泣いている間に
僕は皆に見て、心の中で眠ている愛を見える
僕のギターがそっと泣いている間に
床に見ると掃除がいるのを気づく
僕のギターはもそっと泣く

なぜ誰も君に話さなかったのだろう
愛をほとばしらせる術を
誰がどう君を操っていたのか
君は騙され利用されたんだ

僕世界を見て、回していることに気づく
僕のギターがそっと泣いている間に
全ての失敗で習っているかもしらない
僕のギターはもそっと泣く

どやってそんなように変わされたか知らない
君も変になりました
どやってそんなように逆になせたか知らない
誰も君に注意しなかった

僕は皆に見て、心の中で眠ている愛を見える
僕のギターがそっと泣いている間に
僕は皆に見て
僕のギターはもそっと泣く

John Lennon, lead singer and chief lyricist of the Beatles was originally a very angry and somewhat violent young man, having never known his absentee father or mother. Upon the death of original bassist Stuart Sutcliffe, believed to be the result of a head injury suffered in a streetfight, Lennon underwent a profound, fundamental change, and became a fierce advocate for peace and nonviolent political action.

In his solo work Jealous Guy, you can hear the original angst, loneliness and deep melancholy that were the hallmarks of Lennon’s later, darker compositions.

Jealous Guy

I was dreaming of the past
And my heart was beating fast
I began to lose control
I began to lose control

I didn’t mean to hurt you
I’m sorry that I made you cry
Oh my, I didn’t want to hurt you
I’m just a jealous guy

I was feeling insecure
You might not love me anymore
I was shivering inside
I was shivering inside

I didn’t mean to hurt you
I’m sorry that I made you cry
Oh no, I didn’t want to hurt you
I’m just a jealous guy

I didn’t mean to hurt you
I’m sorry that I made you cry
Oh no, I didn’t want to hurt you
I’m just a jealous guy

I was trying to catch your eyes
Thought that you was trying to hide
I was swallowing my pain
I was swallowing my pain

I didn’t mean to hurt you
I’m sorry that I made you cry
Oh no, I didn’t want to hurt you
I’m just a jealous guy, watch out
I’m just a jealous guy, look out babe
I’m just a jealous guy

僕なんて嫉妬深いだ。
過去について夢して
心はドキドキをして
制御を失くなってし始めた
制御を失くなってし始めた

君を害をしたくなかった
君を泣かせたからごっめんなさい
しまった、君を害をしたくなかった
僕なんて嫉妬深いだ。

不安定だった
僕を愛わなくなったかな
間中に震えていった
心中に震えていった

君を害をしたくなかった
君を泣かせたからごっめんなさい
しまった、君を害をしたくなかった
僕なんて嫉妬深いだ。

君を害をしたくなかった
君を泣かせたからごっめんなさい
しまった、君を害をしたくなかった
僕なんて嫉妬深いだ。

君の目を合いたかった
君は隠していると思った
痛さを飲み込んでいた
痛さを飲み込んでいた

君を害をしたくなかった
君を泣かせたからごっめんなさい
しまった、君を害をしたくなかった
僕なんて嫉妬深いだ。気を付けて
僕なんて嫉妬深いだ。気を付けて最愛。
僕なんて嫉妬深いだ。

Of the Beatles, Paul McCartney was the only one with formal musical training, and the McCartneys were known to love get-togethers where the family would play together deep into the night. His background can readily be heard in Paul’s amazingly fluid, intricate bass lines and the complex chord and rhythm structures of his songs. McCartney’s songs have also always had a very whimsical, magical quality to them that has enchanted generations. Here is a wonderful classic, adapted for the solo acoustic guitar:

When I'm Sixty-Four
When I get older, losing my hair,
Many years from now.
Will you still be sending me a valentine
Birthday greetings, bottle of wine.
If I'd been out till quarter to three
Would you lock the door,
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.

You'll be older too,
And if you say the word,
I could stay with you.

I could be handy, mending a fuse
When your lights have gone.
You can knit a sweater by the fireside
Sunday mornings go for a ride,
Doing the garden, digging the weeds,
Who could ask for more.
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.

Every summer we can rent a cottage,
In the Isle of Wight, if it's not too dear
We shall scrimp and save
Grandchildren on your knee
Vera Chuck & Dave.

Send me a postcard, drop me a line,
Stating point of view
Indicate precisely what you mean to say
Yours sincerely, wasting away
Give me your answer, fill in a form
Mine for evermore
Will you still need me, will you still feed me,
When I'm sixty-four.

64歳になったら
年寄りになって、髪少なくなって
これから年度も後、
僕にもバレンタインを送って
誕生日のあいさつ、ワインのひとびんを一本？
もし三時までに外出したっら
ドアをかける？
僕も要る、僕にも料理を作る
64歳になったら？

君も年寄りになる
それから一つの単語で許可をくれて
僕は君と住む

僕は役に立つ、フユーズを替わて、
電気が消えたの場合
君は炉辺の前でセータが編むことができて、
日曜の朝運転する。
庭いじりをして、草を抜いで、
誰はその他が要るかな？
僕も要る、僕にも料理を作る
64歳になったら？

毎年夏にコテ―ジが借りられる
ウアイト島で、もし高すぎなかったら
僕達はけちけちして貯金する。
孫達膝に座って
ベラ、チャック、アンドデーブ。

葉書を送って、ノットを書いて
意見を知らせている。
ちゃんとに知らせて君の意味
君なの,亡くなっているん。
返事をくれて、アンケットを書いて
永遠僕の愛
僕も要る、僕にも料理を作る
64歳になったら？

Let’s end our Beatles medley with a final early-era George Harrison number, which personifies the elegant simplicity and incredible melodic and lyric power of a classic five-chord folk-rock Beatles ballad.

If I Needed Someone
If I needed someone to love
You're the one that I'd be thinking of
If I needed someone

If I had some more time to spend
Then I guess I'd be with you my friend
If I needed someone

Had you come some other day
Then it might not have been like this
But you see now I'm too much in love

Carve your number on my wall
And maybe you will get a call from me
If I needed someone
Ah, ah, ah, ah

If I had some more time to spend
Then I guess I'd be with you my friend
If I needed someone

Had you come some other day
Then it might not have been like this
But you see now I'm too much in love

Carve your number on my wall
And maybe you will get a call from me
If I needed someone
Ah, ah

もし誰かが愛のために要ったら
もし誰かが愛のために要ったら
君について考える。
もし誰かが要ったら。

もしもっと時間が過ごせる
君と一緒にいるかな
もし誰かが要ったら。

他の日に来たっら
このように違うかな
でも僕が今愛過ぎる

僕の壁に君の番号を切り分けて
多分君は僕から電話をかけられる
もし誰かが要ったら。

もしもっと時間が過ごせる
君と一緒にいるかな
もし誰かが要ったら。

他の日に来たっら
このように違うかな
でも僕が今愛過ぎる

僕の壁に君の番号を切り分けて
多分君は僕から電話をかけられる
もし誰かが要ったら。

It’s no exaggeration to say that the iconic Bob Dylan singlehandedly changed modern music, with his brilliant stream-of-consciousness lyrics, his earthy, ingenuous demeanor, and fusion of such diverse styles as country, folk, rock and rhythm and blues. Never one to shy from courting controversy, he drew shocked outrage the frst time he appeared onstage with an AMPLIFIED guitar.

Still, the anthems he has penned spurred an intellectual, cultural, social and political sea change destined to change the world forever. Here is one of the greatest modern songs ever written, a protest of the Viet Nam war; in the latter days of Bush’s Iraq invasion, it still has deep relevance. Here we see the exhausted soldier, near death, pleading and his epiphany – that war is always wasteful, empty and tragic.

Knockin on Heaven’s Door　　　　　　
Mama take this badge off of me
I can’t use it any more.
It’s getting’ dark, too dark to see.
I feel I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door.

Knock-knock-knockin; on heaven’s door.
Knock-knock-knockin; on heaven’s door.
Knock-knock-knockin; on heaven’s door.
Knock-knock-knockin; on heaven’s door.

Mama plant these guns in the ground
I can’t shoot them anymore.
That long black cloud’s comin’ down
Feels like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door.

Knock-knock-knockin; on heaven’s door.
Knock-knock-knockin; on heaven’s door.
Knock-knock-knockin; on heaven’s door.Knock-knock-knockin; on heaven’s door.

天国の門で叩くしている
母、このバッジを取ってくれて
これから、全然使わず。
暗くなっている,そうなに暗い見えなくなっている。
天国の門で叩くしている感じだ。

天国の門で叩くしている感じだ。
天国の門で叩くしている感じだ。
天国の門で叩くしている感じだ。
天国の門で叩くしている感じだ。

母、この銃を土に植えてくれて
これから、鬱つができない。
あの長くて黒い雲は下がっている
天国の門で叩くしている感じだ。

天国の門で叩くしている感じだ。
天国の門で叩くしている感じだ。
天国の門で叩くしている感じだ。
天国の門で叩くしている感じだ。

With the 1980s came the rise of disco, punk, new wave and heavy metal styles of music. Among the heavy metal bands, it was obligatory to write at least one melodic ballad, and some were quite deep, moving and melodic. One such band, known for their androgynous image, was generally scorned as “lightweight” and “posturing”, but the guitarist was particularly talented, and produced this wonderful melancholy pop song about love gone awry:

Every Rose Has its Thorns – Poison
We both lie silently still in the dead of the night.
Although we both lie close together,
we feel miles apart inside.
Was it something I said or something I did?
Did my words not come out right?
Though I tried not to hurt you,
Though I tried
I guess that’s why they say

Every rose has its thorns
Just like every night has its dawn
Just like every cowboy
Sings a sad, sad song
Every rose has its thorns.

I listen to a favorite song
playing on the radio
Well the DJ say loves a game
of easy come and easy go
But I wonder does he know
Has he ever felt like this
And I know you'd be here right now
If I could let you know somehow
I guess

(Chorus)

Though it's been a while now
I can still feel so much pain
Like a knife that cuts you the wound heals
but those scars, those scars remain….

I know I could have saved our love
If I'd known what to say
Instead of makin' love
We both went our separate ways
And now I hear you found somebody new
and that I never meant that much to you
To hear that tears me up inside
And to see you cuts me like a knife
I guess

(Chorus)

どのバラもはとげを持ってる
無声夜中、僕たち両方じっとして横たえて
近くに横たえてけど
マイルを多数離れて感じだ
何か言いたから?何かやったから?
僕の単語は誤解された？
君を害ないに試んだけど
試んだけど
それから例え彼らって

どのバラもとげを持ってる
どのよるも夜明けになって
どのcowboyも悲しい歌を歌いる
どのバラもとげを持ってる

気に入って曲に聞く
ラジオで
DJ は
「愛は早く会って早く分けてのゲム」って
でも彼が知ってる？
このように感じした？
君は今こちにいるはず
もし君を度やってお知らせられたら。
かな

コーラス

しばらくけど
そう何痛い
ナイフで切られったように怪我が治す
けどその傷、その傷残る。。。。

僕たちの愛が助かったことを理解して
もし正し言葉を知ったかたら
抱いて代わりに
別れてしまった
それから君は新恋人を見つかったって
僕は君に詰まらなかった
それを聞いたら僕の心を裂けて
君を見るとナイフのように僕を切る
多分

コーラス

The songwriting team of Bernie Taupin (lyrics) and Elton John (music) recorded some of the most moving pop songs of the last half century. Here is a classic known the world over, adapted for the guitar:

Your Song
It's a little bit funny, this feeling inside
I'm not one of those who can easily hide
I don't have much money but boy if I did
I'd buy a big house where we both could live

If I was a sculptor, but then again, no
Or a man who makes potions in a travelling show
I know it's not much but it's the best I can do
My gift is my song and this one's for you

And you can tell everybody this is your song
It may be quite simple but now that it's done
I hope you don't mind
I hope you don't mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you're in the world

I sat on the roof and kicked off the moss
Well a few of the verses well they've got me quite cross
But the sun's been quite kind while I wrote this song
It's for people like you that keep it turned on

So excuse me forgetting but these things I do
You see I've forgotten if they're green or they're blue
Anyway the thing is what I really mean
Yours are the sweetest eyes I've ever seen

And you can tell everybody this is your song
It may be quite simple but now that it's done
I hope you don't mind
I hope you don't mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you're in the world

I hope you don't mind
I hope you don't mind that I put down in words
How wonderful life is while you're in the world

君の歌
ちょっと可笑しい,この感じ
ぼくが隠し憎いなんです
お金はあまり持ってないけどあったら
私たちが住まれる家を買う

もし彫刻家だったら、でも違う
あるいはサーカスで水薬を作った男
これは詰らない物だが僕の一所懸命
僕のギフトは曲でこれは君なのだ。

君は皆にこれは君の歌を知らせられる
けっこ詰らないけどすみましたら
気にしないが欲しい
気にしないか欲しいこの単語を書いたら
君は政界にいるので生活はそうなに巣らしい

屋根に座ってコケを蹴た
色々の韻文はイライラをさせて
でもこの曲を書きながら太陽は親切で
君のような人々についているん。

だからこのことを忘れたのに許してくれて
それは緑か青いか忘れたね
とにかく僕の意味は
君の目は生活中一番美しいのだ。

君は皆にこれは君の歌を知らせられる
けっこ詰らないけどすみましたら
気にしないが欲しい
気にしないか欲しいこの単語を書いたら
君は政界にいるので生活はそうなに巣らしい

気にしないが欲しい
気にしないか欲しいこの単語を書いたら
君は政界にいるので生活はそうなに巣らしい。

Give Me Liberty or Give Me Head!

2009-04-10T05:14:00.003+09:00

The BBC and Alternet treat us to yet another "clever" and "enlightened" column about how low-quality and stupid porn is: "You and I... we're just too urbane and sophisticated to REALLY enjoy such lowbrow dreck, right?" (nudge nudge, wink wink).

Yeah, right. Like we've never EVER read or heard the "for RESEARCH purposes only ga-hyuck ga-hyuck" line before.

Personally, I find James's posturing much more annoying and offensive than any porn I've ever seen (well, almost any).

The cute little "American" thrown in his mishmash of demeaning adjectives makes me even less kindly disposed to James or his transparently admiration-seeking puff piece. Charming how, among his handy cliches, he resorts to the handy old standby - the crass, lowbrow American stereotype.

James's dismissal of the arousing effects of porn says more about his diminished libido than the quality of the genre.

Porn's an easy target, and usually nobody's willing to stand up and publicly defend it - who wants to admit to the world that they masturbate while watching others perform sex?

But eventually, after all the opportunistic public detractors have faded from the public's memory, porn continues to flourish and grow in popularity. In fact, yesterday's porn is inevitably elevated to the status of today's cultural treasures - witness Betty Page, Russ Meyer, D.H. Lawrence, Geoffrey Chaucer, etc., etc. Do we even need to mention the Greco-Roman era or Japanese pillow books?

People have never voluntarily lost interest in porn and never will. The popularity of hack writing, on the other hand....?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpWpYl6kmNg

Dubya.

2009-01-31T23:27:00.002+09:00

Just finished watching Oliver Stone's "W", and it was chilling and riveting.

I believe Stone tried to make it as objective and as faithful to reality as possible, which makes it all the more frightening to see how casually the Boosch gang made the decisions to invade Iraq, and etc., ad nauseum.

The film has a slightly comic delivery, and it's apt. The metaphoric last scene says it all.

Three thumbs up

:-)

And the world sez...

2009-01-21T09:18:00.002+09:00

Hope renewed around the world

Our Pals in Israel Cooking Babies Again....

2009-01-07T23:13:00.004+09:00

Two years ago, we ran a little brief called "A Modest Proposal for Israel". Sadly, the proposal apparently met with Israeli approval:

So we have Israel's mass internment of the Palestinians, denying them water, segregating them to ghettos, destroying their homes, confiscating their property and shooting their children for sport.

Why haven't they simply continued down the path of efficiency, providing Palestinians with seperate, special insignia (there may even still be a few perfectly serviceable ones lying about), recreation and facilities? After all, inside every problem is a solution waiting to be discovered -- and who better than the state of Israel to remember that maxim, right?

Let's not forget their recent jaunt into Lebanon:

"Collateral damage" in Lebanon

Israeli troops enjoying a jaunt into Lebanon

Rice appreciating the gravity of the situation
as she arrives in Beirut

Having learned all the wrong lessons from the Nazis, the statesmen of Israel are on a self-declared, long-term mission: the wholesale extermination of Arabs and Persians. Photos by Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France Presse show abundant, appalling proof that Israel is indiscriminately cooking Lebanese civilians with phosphorous and other chemical weapons. The photos are further corroborated by French and Belgian doctors in Beirut.

According to the BBC, Israel's air force has admitted to conducting 3000 bombing sorties since the offensive began, displacing nearly a quarter of Lebanon's total population of 3.8 million and utterly destroying the country's civilian infrastructure with nearly completely civilian targets.

Moreover, Lebanon is defenseless. It does not possess an air defense system and the Israelis know it. The number of declared targets is staggering....

The civilian infrastructure has been destroyed: water, telecommunications, bridges, airports, gas stations, power plants, dairy factories, etc. Confirmed by the British press, in towns and villages across Lebanon, schools and hospitals have been targetted with meticulous accuracy. in an utterly twised logic, the Israeli government has casually blamed Hizbollah for using the schools and hospitals as hideouts or launchpads to wage their terrorist activities. (ABC Australia, interview with Israeli Ambassador to Australia, Nati Tamir, 21 July 2006).
"This is not a war, this is a crisis"
To call Israel's response to the kidnapping of two of its soldiers (as bargaining chips for the estimated 9000 Palestinian and Lebanese prisoners it has been holding for years, many of them children) "disproportionate" is an astonishingly ignorant understatement -- at least if the Israeli press are to be believed.

Brutal, shocking videos only begin to convey the scale of the tragedy that has been escalating over the years:

Israeli tanks firing on a reporter interviewing Palestinians gathered for a funeral.

Israeli helicopters strafed two ambulances carrying a Lebanese father and his 12-year-old son. The ambulances had spotlights trained on their red cross markings and were flashing their blue lights.

They have been extensively targeting civilians with indiscriminately deadly cluster and phosphorous bombs (with results like those in the pictures above). Even worse, sources also say Israeli military forces have spent nearly a decade perfecting the most monstrous of weapons: gene-specific bioweapons designed to eradicate Arabs.

Further evidence of Israel's complete moral atrophy came when IDF forces obliterated a U.N. observer post in southern Lebanon with a bomb after shelling it for six hours on Tuesday, killing four international observers from Austria, Canada, China and Finland, in what U.N. chief Kofi Annan called a "deliberate attack":

UN peacekeepers in south Lebanon contacted Israeli troops 10 times before an Israeli bomb killed four of them, an initial UN report says.... The post was hit by a precision-guided missile after six hours of shelling, diplomats familiar with the probe say. The UN report says each time the UN contacted Israeli forces, they were assured the firing would stop. A senior Irish soldier working for the UN forces had warned the Israelis six times that their bombardment was endangering the lives of UN staff, Ireland's foreign ministry said....

Had Israel responded to the requests, "rather than deliberately ignoring them", the observers would still be alive, a diplomat familiar with the report said.

Annan said the post had been in existence "for a long time... was marked clearly, and was hit despite assurances from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that U.N. positions would not be attacked."

The precision-guided bomb made a direct hit on the observer post, said Milos Struger, a UN peacekeeping spokesman in Lebanon. As rescue workers tried to clear the rubble, Israeli troops continued firing "...even during the rescue operation," he added.

But according to the head of Israel's northern command, Major General Udi Adam, Israel's just getting warmed up.

Too bad the Bush "Administration" (sic) doesn't give a damn. At least not in any humanitarian sense: Condoleezza Rice personally ran interference on behalf of the PNAC wing of the State Department at the emergency international meeting in Rome.

So what ARE we doing about the situation? Well, worsening it. As Lebanese war refugee Esam Haider (one of 2,000 sheltered in an underground car park after their homes were destroyed by Israeli bombs) expressed it:

"Why does President Bush send billions of dollars of weapons to Israel and hands the Lebanese a few boxes of food and blankets? Is he just trying to fatten us up before he gives Israel bigger bombs to kill us?"

There is, however, a madness to the method; it's once again all in the name of moving some new product, to paraphrase the glib Mr. Card.

Not that Bush will lack support from the "followers of Jesus" among America's religious lunatic fringe; the Machivellian genius of turning Biblical prophecy into a propaganda tool was a Rovian masterstoke that -- prematurely supposing humanity survives -- historians may one day rank alongside the work of Goebbels.

So while purported "progressives" at Daily Kos and elsewhere are waxing knowledgable in taking up the cause of "poor, beset-upon Israel", contentiously siding with the unpopular view to appear possessed of some great, rare insight, promoting a "cause" destined to kill more innocent civilians in the name of conquest is the farthest thing from "progressive". The truth is, whatever insults and injuries Israel has borne after claiming its homeland through years of bloody conquest, it has extracted more than its kiloton of flesh with a disproportionate, ruthless, merciless brutality as morally repugnant as the historically unprecedented savagery of the Assyrians.

From destroying power stations and cutting off water supplies for refugee tent settlements, rolling tanks into the streets and strafing unarmed citizens with Apache helicopters, then rounding up newly-elected government leaders the state of Israel is on a genocidal rampage aimed at once-and-for-all "solving" the "refugee problem" and abetting the US in its myopic quest for political dominance in the Middle East.

Maybe their actions can be partly understood as a pathological nostaligia for the days of the Warsaw ghetto:

GAZANS OFTEN call the Gaza Strip their "giant prison." The name reflects the crowded, tense quarters where 1.1 million people live on some 360 kilometers square. The Israeli army surrounds the Strip, preventing Palestinians from leaving the area without special permits that are granted only in emergency situations.

Even within Gaza's borders, its people are confined. Israel has divided the strip into three zones of Palestinian towns and refugees that are surrounded by Israeli military hardware. Travel between the areas is allowed only at certain times, and at the whims of the Israeli troops manning the checkpoints - very much like prison guards.

If the Gaza Strip is a prison, its solitary confinement area is the agricultural part of Al Mawasi, just west of Khan Younis. Al Mawasi is effectively controlled by settlers and surrounded by the settlement of Gush Katif from the east and the sea from the south. The people of Al Mawasi can neither leave their area nor distribute their agricultural produce except by special permission from the Israeli authorities.

Abu Ibrahim says all this is unbearable and humiliating. "The settler who stole my land enjoys his freedom. But I, the owner of the land, cannot even leave my house without a permit. It is the age of wonders!"
But the complex of walls, fences, trenches and electronic surveillance devices Israel has erected around (and conveniently into agriculturally valuable areas of) the West Bank is nothing more than a simple land grab and forced evacuation of indigenous Palestinians, according to the UN.

The bottom line is still, as ever, the same: we need to get the Hell out of the colonialism business, particularly in the Middle East, where Israel's "solution" is no solution at all.

Now it looks like Israel's using the latter days of the Bush Presidency to fulfill their final wish - seizing all the territories of the Gaza Strip, and eradicating or chasing out its current inhabitant. If you believe the line that Israel's "just defending itself", unfortunately, you just haven't been told the truth. From the good folks at Adbusters:

Who Is Winning the PR War?
by Sarah Nardi Adbusters.org

Where does defense stop and aggression begin? Where is the line between proportionate retaliation and collective punishment? Is the media telling you what you need to know?

I have Palestinian friends. As an American, this fact places me squarely in the minority. It gives me a touchstone that the average citizen in this country doesn’t have. The average American doesn’t hear firsthand accounts of how frightening, humiliating and miserable life in the West Bank and Gaza can be. Perhaps that’s why the average American is rarely outraged by media coverage of the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis. Let me make one thing clear – by average I don’t mean people of average intelligence or average cultural sensitivity. I don’t mean it as a pejorative. I mean only that most Americans have no contact with those on the Palestinian side of the conflict. When considering media, therefore, most Americans don’t perceive the slant. Watching CNN coverage of the siege with my mother yesterday, I noticed that her face didn’t indicate any anger. I saw sympathy, helplessness – natural responses to a human tragedy on the other side of the globe – but no anger. “Mom,” I demanded, gesturing wildly towards the TV, “do those look like Hamas militants to you?” The CNN anchor was dispassionately describing Israel’s target as Hamas over images of bloodied women and children on stretchers. But for my mother, as for most Americans, the disconnect didn’t seem to register.

I’m not going to argue for the existence of a vast Zionist mechanism conspiring to shape our collective understanding of the conflict. I don’t think we need to elevate the discussion in such alarmist terms to make the point that when it comes to the issue of Israel and Palestine, the mainstream narrative is biased. Consider the opening sentence of today’s New York Times editorial: Israel has the right to defend itself. Who could possibly argue that it doesn’t? The ethically inviolable right to self-defense is a constant refrain – offered time and time again as justification for Israeli military action as well as its unwavering US support. It is also the premise upon which most Western media coverage seems to be built. That Israel is defending itself is a relatively unchallenged assumption in the mainstream narrative. And because it is seen as the defender, Israel cannot logically be perceived as the aggressor.

But consider this fact – the Gaza strip is one of the most densely populated urban tracts in the world – 1.4 million people occupy an area roughly twice the size of Washington D.C. Its borders – land and sea – as well as its airspace, are controlled by Israel. Life in Gaza, as a Palestinian acquaintance related, is like living in an overcrowded prison. “For the news to say that Israel is “targeting” Hamas inside Gaza,” he explained “is like saying they are targeting a particular fish in a barrel full of them.” That it would be impossible for Israel to target individuals without killing scores of innocent civilians is as well-known to the Israeli military as it is to the terrorized citizens of Gaza. But the average American doesn’t know. And they’re certainly not going to get any hints from the mainstream media. “According to Western media, Palestinian civilians are killed only when they’re sheltering militants,” says my acquaintance. “We’re not sheltering anyone. They are among us because we are all trapped here. There is simply nowhere else to be.”

Where does defense stop and aggression begin? Where is the line between proportionate retaliation and collective punishment? These are questions for the media, mainstream and otherwise, to be aggressively exploring as they relate to this conflict. If the last eight years have taught us anything, its that when the media fails to be a vigilant, objective seeker of truth, dangerous disinformation is disseminated quickly and widely. Here, as it has so often in the past, I fear the media isn’t giving us the full story…and we’re not paying enough attention to ask. What do you think?

Quote of the Day:

"I don't believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen, otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again."

-- 15-year-old Anne Frank, before being taken to her death in the Nazi concentration camps

How Bush, Reagan and Rumsfeld courted Hussein Before Knifing him in the Back

2008-12-02T19:29:00.000+09:00

CNN has just posted a summary of newly-released documents further showing how the Reagan and Bush I and II administrations (irrefutably a misnomer) armed and assisted Hussein in his genocide - before knifing him in the back.

(CNN) -- The U.S. diplomatic courtship with Iraq in the 1980s continued despite Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons. Click on the links to read once-classified documents from the Reagan administration.
Once-classified documents show the U.S. continued its courtship with Iraq despite use of chemical weapons.

Once-classified documents show the U.S. continued its courtship with Iraq despite use of chemical weapons.

Date: December 5, 1986
Subject: U.S.-Iraqi Relations: Picking Up the Pieces
Summary: After disclosures that the United States was secretly providing weapons to Iraq's enemy, Iran, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy recommends strengthening commercial ties with Saddam Hussein because "U.S.-Iraqi relations are in crisis." Read the document (pdf)

Date: March 3, 1988
Subject: Iraq's Foreign Policy: Deeper into the Mainstream
Summary: Anticipating an end to the Iran-Iraq war, a State Department official is optimistic that continued ties between the United States and Iraq will lead Saddam Hussein "deeper into the mainstream." The author concludes that "fears of Iraq's aggression seem exaggerated." Two weeks later, Iraqi forces attack Kurdish civilians in Halabja with poisonous gas. Read the document (pdf)

Date: December 29, 1988
Subject: Export-Import Financing for Iraq
Summary: In the closing days of the Reagan administration, the State Department's top human rights official argues that continued financial aid to Iraq "can simply not be squared with our worldwide human rights policy." However, Assistant Secretary of State Richard Murphy counters that U.S. financial ties with Iraq have "far greater use with Baghdad as a carrot than as a stick." A year and a half later, Iraq invades Kuwait. Read the document (pdf)

The story goes much deeper, as detailed in our original 2003 story "How we Came to Own Iraq"

Who needs CSI for stories of brutal murder and duplicity? We've got our very own serial killers still occupying the Red House.

Song of the Day

You gotta be crazy, you gotta have a real need.
You gotta sleep on your toes, and when you're on the street,
You gotta be able to pick out the easy meat with your eyes closed.
And then moving in silently, down wind and out of sight,
You gotta strike when the moment is right without thinking.

And after a while, you can work on points for style.
Like the club tie, and the firm handshake,
A certain look in the eye and an easy smile.
You have to be trusted by the people that you lie to,
So that when they turn their backs on you,
You'll get the chance to put the knife in.

You gotta keep one eye looking over your shoulder.
You know it's going to get harder, and harder, and harder as you
get older.
And in the end you'll pack up and fly down south,
Hide your head in the sand,
Just another sad old man,
All alone and dying of cancer.

And when you loose control, you'll reap the harvest you have sown.
[ Find more Lyrics at www.mp3lyrics.org/g3A ]
And as the fear grows, the bad blood slows and turns to stone.
And it's too late to lose the weight you used to need to throw
around.
So have a good drown, as you go down, all alone,
Dragged down by the stone.

I gotta admit that I'm a little bit confused.
Sometimes it seems to me as if I'm just being used.
Gotta stay awake, gotta try and shake off this creeping malaise.
If I don't stand my own ground, how can I find my way out of this
maze ?

Deaf, dumb, and blind, you just keep on pretending
That everyone's expendable and no-one has a real friend.
And it seems to you the thing to do would be to isolate the winner
And everything's done under the sun,
And you believe at heart, everyone's a killer.

Who was born in a house full of pain.
Who was trained not to spit in the fan.
Who was told what to do by the man.
Who was broken by trained personnel.
Who was fitted with collar and chain.
Who was given a seat in the stand.
Who was breaking away from the pack.
Who was only a stranger at home.
Who was ground down in the end.
Who was found dead on the phone.
Who was dragged down by the stone.

--"Dogs", Wright, Waters, Gilmore, Mason

Neverending Loads: Bored of Zehir

2008-11-30T19:03:00.000+09:00

Good God almighty; one would think it nigh impossible to screw up the stellar RPG franchise that boasted the mind-blasting brilliance of Mask of the Betrayer, but this new crew of >cough< "talent" did just that, to such a degree that one might think they were saboteurs from a rival company intent on permanently sinking the franchise.

Where to begin? Well, let's start from the worst and work our way down:

1. If you love loading screens (and, let's face it, what hardcore gamer doesn't?), boy are you in for a treat. With this title, you spend about 60% of the time watching loadbars on a static screen (I kid thee not!). These load screens are so prevalent, within a single afternoon's gameplay, I took to avoiding most encounters because it simply wasn't worth the wait. Which brings us to the second point.

2. Stinginess. From the measly 19 experience points for killing a shambling mound (!), to the crappy "treasure" (killing half a dozen lizardmen gives you four dozen arrows and a batch of choking powder - whoohoo!), after the twentieth hard-fought asskicking you deliver, one begins to ask "is it worth it?"

3. Boring NPCs. Little is described in depth, and the characters are either glorified 7-11 attendants or another set of "scary" snapping jaws. Somehow Obsidian has managed to completely remove the "roleplaying" out of this "rpg", reducing it to little more than a ColecoVision title with slightly better graphics (with the emphasis on "slightly"). Unlike Mask of the Betrayer (which literally brought tears to my eyes and gave me goosebumps), the "characters" in this game are completely hollow, as if they were randomly rolled up by some "ingenious" GM "personality generator" chart. Volo, a demigod-status hero in the D&D mileau, is a cowardly, powerless buffoon, offering little help or interesting commentary at all.

4. *&%^%^%!^%^! ANNOYING camera views. Trying to use the PC mouse to look around - even after adjustments in the options menu - is like jumping onto a high-speed Tilt-a-whirl machine at the fair that won't stop. The screen will spin madly and you have to settle for an "approximately acceptable" angle with which to view the "action" -such as it is.

5. Battles - the battles are either far too easy (as in, over in 15 to 30 seconds) or - very occasionally - crushingly difficult, as you helplessly watch your characters get slaughtered repeatedly.

6. Graphics - after being spoiled by Oblivion and Half-Life 2, gamers are likely to be sorely disappointed by graphics that hearken back to the days of Asheron's call.

7. Gameplay "improvements" - this title feels like roleplaying a fantasy-world accountant. For those who LOVE shuffling sparkly little pixel-rendered items from inventory box to inventory box, this is the title to die for. For the rest of us, however, it could be bottled up and sold as a sleep aid.

8. The Environment: Players are confined to spacial cubes a few hundred meters in area - until the next maddening loading screen. What's worse, in each new site there is only a single interaction and a single payoff. One begins to feel like a lab rat repeatedly pressing a lever for the meager "rewards".

Is there ANYTHING good to say about this title? Well, yes, two things actually. The audio is superb - great music, sound effects and voice acting, though many of the voices are from previous titles, which was yet another annoyance. Additionally, the ability to choose between which player responds in a social interaction is an excellent idea, and well implemented in an otherwise horrible package.

In short, may the phantom of Gary Gygax forever torment those responsible for foisting this bit of bloated snoreware upon a hapless, helpless, undeservedly innocent public. To say it sucks goat balls is being charitable.

A friend gave me this title, and I am consequently considering never speaking to him again. Was this some act of vengeance for a forgotten slight?

The title was given to me for free, and was vastly overpriced. I want my ten hours of life back, you bastards.

Song of the Day

"Code Monkey" - Jonathan Coulton

Wow. One I Wish I'd Written

2008-11-26T04:13:00.002+09:00

Spectacular tune I heard over a loudspeaker today. The vocals, keys and bass really pulled me in so I wrote down the lyrics and looked it up.

Former frontman from the band Bush, Gavin Rossdale, with the solo tune, "Love Remains the Same". Pretty deep. Dude should've ditched Bush and gone solo years ago.

Update:

Whoops; after studying the chords, I realized I DID write this song - about twenty-five years ago in a song called "New Shoes". At least the exact same chords and phrasings - but the singing melody and chords were totally different. Too bad!

Yes, 1 in EIGHT Americans poor now says Time....

2008-11-26T03:24:00.000+09:00

As we noted last week, thanks to the policies of the NeoKhans, American homeless are now living on the streets in Third World numbers. FINALLY, the media starts to take notice, as the number of HOMELESS American CHILDREN LIVING ON THE STREETS swells well past a million.

As the roster of corporations and financial institutions on line for government bailouts seems to grow, some public policy advocates in Washington D.C. are calling on policymakers to focus more efforts on the nation's poorest. The ranks of the destitute are growing quietly but alarmingly as much of the world focuses on troubles surrounding Wall Street. "Recent data show poverty is already rising quite substantially," says Robert Greenstein, the executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "There is a strong potential for more hardship and destitution than we have seen in this country in a number of decades."

Lyric of the Day

Down and out
It can't be helped but there's a lot of it about.
With, without.
And who'll deny it's what the fighting's all about?
Out of the way, it's a busy day
I've got things on my mind.
For the want of the price of tea and a slice
The old man died.

-- "Us and Them", Gilmore, Wright, Waters, Mason

Congress Needs Public Support to Block Bush Pardons

2008-11-22T02:17:00.001+09:00

David Swanson alerts us that Congressional Rep. Jerrold is looking for public support of his resolution "Opposing Possible Bush Pardons of His Own Subordinates for Crimes He Authorized"

From Jerrold Nadler, Chair of the Constitution Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee, we have H.RES.1531, "Expressing the sense of the House of Representatives that the President of the United States should not issue pardons to senior members of his administration during the final 90 days of his term of office," Sponsor: Rep Nadler, Jerrold (introduced 11/20/2008).

Swanson has posted an online petition promoting this resolution, through which you can write to your representative and senators at http://democrats.com/nadler-pardons

Says Swanson:

Senator Russ Feingold editorialized against these possible pardons at Salon.com yesterday; please urge him to introduce in the Senate the same resolution that Nadler has in the House.

Never before has a president pardoned himself or his subordinates for crimes he authorized. The idea that the pardon power constitutionally includes such pardons ignores a thousand year tradition in which no man can sit in judgment of himself, and the fact that James Madison and George Mason argued that the reason we needed the impeachment power was that a president might some day try to pardon someone for a crime that he himself was involved in. The problem is not preemptive pardons of people not yet tried and convicted. The problem is not blanket pardons of unnamed masses of people. Both of those types of pardons have been issued in the past and have their appropriate place. The problem is the complete elimination of any semblance of the rule of law by pardoning one's own subordinates for crimes you instructed them to commit.

Yes, of course, there's something absurd about knowing that a president authorized crimes, not impeaching him, not prosecuting him, not proposing any action with any teeth at all, but formally objecting to the idea of him issuing pardons of his own subordinates for crimes he authorized. But this is where we are. State, local, civil, foreign, and international prosecutions are likely ways of holding Bush, Cheney, and gang accountable, and pardons can't interfere with them. Pardons can't interfere with impeachment. But if we allow these pardons, we not only guarantee no federal prosecutions, and not only give Congress an excuse to drop its investigations, but we also establish the precedent that from here on out any president can violate any law and then pardon the crime. This is simply to end the idea of law. We cannot allow that.

Lyric of the Day:

(He's a joker, he's a joker, he's a joker)
Joker James, you did it again, caused somebody pain
(He's a joker, he's a joker)
You lived up to your name, Jimmy, he's Joker James.

Sally was a stamp collector, pretty little girl
One day she dated James, bringing love into her world
A tense romantic moment as they sat down on the couch
The whoopee cushion roared and I'm afraid it's over now.

(He's a joker, he's a joker, he's a joker)
Joker James, you did it again, caused somebody pain
(He's a joker, he's a joker)
You lived up to your name, didn't you, he's Joker James.

Lucy was a cool one, always got her high
Then she dated James and true love took her higher
The jester had suggested a new way to get stoned
Put itching powder down her neck and now she's all alone.

(He's a joker, he's a joker, he's a joker)
Joker James, you did it again, caused somebody pain
(He's a joker, he's a joker)
You lived up to your name, didn't you, he's Joker James.

Sense of humor cannot woo her
Her skin felt like heaven and laughter all the while
Her sense of humor throws him and deep in love he falls
But when he tries to sign the paper, the rubber pencil falls.

(He's a joker, he's a joker, he's a joker)
Joker James, you're not to blame, the joke's on you, now you're blue
(He's a joker, he's a joker)
It's such a shame, but that's the game, he's Joker James

(He's a joker, he's a joker, he's a joker)
Joker James, you did it again, caused somebody pain
(He's a joker, he's a joker)
You lived up to your name, Jimmy, he's Joker James

"Joker James", Pete Townshend, Roger Daltry, John Entwhistle, Kenney Jones

The Bush Push: A New Metaphor for Taking a Big Fat Dump

2008-11-22T01:41:00.001+09:00

Continuing the legacy that's made him such a popular guy around the world, Bush has rammed a few more spectacularly evil final "fuck you's" down the collective throat of the country he has ruthlessly betrayed, bankrupted and permanently hobbled in an historically unprecedented eight-year orgy of plutocratic greed, brutality and corruption.

Chronologically, if not morally, Mr. Bush's crowning achievement in monumental fuckuppery and paralyzingly amoral greed certainly has to be the $700 billion dollar pre-Christmas prezzie to the evil fucks that have been throwing American men, women and children on the streets in Third-World numbers, a move Rep. Dennis Kucinich characterized as "opening up a financial whirlpool of insatiable greed" that "will never be enough".

Rep. Major Owens is no less critical:

Look closely and see how a Ponzi scheme concocted by America's best and brightest, with superb logarithms and mysterious hedge fund equations, is launched for a second time within thirty years. It is the Savings and Loan (S&L) debacle all over again.

As it was in the era of the S&L swindle the collapse of many FDIC regulated banks is emerging simultaneously with the collapse of the chartered entities -- Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae -- which have a greater moral claim for more direct federal assistance. As it was in the earlier bailout, we can anticipate that the rescue operations will be legislatively merged as the FDIC coffers are emptied and new schemes are invented to assist powerful depositors -- Arab sheiks, Asian corporate czars, etc. -- whose accounts total more than the guaranteed 100 thousands dollars.

So how's that sweet little deal progressing?

"It's a mess," said Eric M. Thorson, the Treasury Department's inspector general, who has been working to oversee the bailout program until the newly created position of special inspector general is filled. "I don't think anyone understands right now how we're going to do proper oversight of this thing."

OVERSIGHT?!? WTF?!? What, was anyone really expecting ACCOUNTABILITY or HONESTY from the "party" that brought us such greatest hits as the Katrina disaster, Abu Ghraib, and the Mansonesque war crimes of the Iraq occupation?!?

Get ready, cause here it comes, as Bush takes a final giant crap on the country:
Allowing factory farms to freely dump countless tons of shit into waterways without restriction;
Okaying poison in human drinking water;
Removing scientific advisors from development projects;
Leasing parklands and protected wilderness for strip mining;
Allowing more lead emissions into the air;
Cutting aid to sex slaves; and
Creating a loophole to exempt some power plants from providing pollution controls

But wait; there's more:

Animals and plants in danger of becoming extinct could lose the protection of government experts who make sure that dams, highways and other projects don't pose a threat, under regulations the Bush administration is set to put in place before President-elect Obama can reverse them.

The rules must be published Friday to take effect before Obama is sworn in Jan. 20. Otherwise, he can undo them with the stroke of a pen.

The Interior Department rushed to complete the rules in three months over the objections of lawmakers and environmentalists who argued that they would weaken how a landmark conservation law is applied.

A Nov. 12 version of the final rules obtained by the Associated Press has changed little from the original proposal, despite the more than 250,000 comments received since it was first proposed in August.

The rules eliminate the input of federal wildlife scientists in some endangered species cases, allowing the federal agency in charge of building, authorizing or funding a project to determine for itself if it is likely to harm endangered wildlife and plants.

Current regulations require independent wildlife biologists to sign off on these decisions before a project can go forward, at times modifying the design to better protect species.

The regulations also bar federal agencies from assessing emissions of the gases blamed for global warming on species and habitats, a tactic environmentalists have tried to use to block new coal-fired power plants.

Fortunately, there are signs of sanity in other parts of the globe, as Macedonia plants six MILLION trees in a single day
and Canada steps in to save a super forest.

So here's my vote for theme song for Bush's final day in office:

Sayonara

Bitch.

A Bewildered Look Back

2008-11-20T23:42:00.000+09:00

'at Dave guy! always a larf!

And Katie Couric's got her some serious hot gams, don't she?

Bush has become a leper at the G20....

2008-11-20T15:52:00.000+09:00

It's amazing - the entire world body of leaders REFUSES to shake George Bush's hand.

The video, courtesy of Greatscat and Youtube:

11-19-08: CNN: George Bush snubbed at the G20 Summit. Everyone greeting each other and shaking hands, but Bush walks with his head down like the dejected most unpopular kid in high school.

Who?

2008-11-18T01:55:00.002+09:00

Went to see the Who live at the Budokan tonight.

For those of you who don't know, the Budokan is Japan's national martial arts arena, built for the 1964 Olympics and first brought to wider western attention by the album Cheap Trick Live at Budokan (to which a followup has just been released, BTW) and where the Beatles made their Japan debut.

Was a fantastic show - very amazed to hear Roger Daltry belting it out just about as well as ever, and though Townshend was about 30% less frantic onstage as he was 30 years ago, his guitar wizardry was still jaw-dropping.

Zack Starkey - how cool is being able to say Ringo Starr is your Dad and Keith Moon was your personal drum teacher? - is superb - very fluid, skilled, creative and bang on. Much better than Kenny Jones, and very good at pulling off Moon with a little of his own riffing thrown in as well.

Interestingly, Pete Townshend's brother Simon is also playing rhythm guitar with the band.

The missus also had a blast and I was quite gratified to hear her say she liked the Who much better than Bon Jovi - her previous alltime favorite band. Yatta!

I've always been a huge Who fanatic; the very first album I bought was Who Are You - back when I was about 11. For two years after, my prized possession was a captain's hat with a Quadrophenia button pinned to the front - I was the only kid in my preppy high school who wore any kind of hat other than a "tuke" in winter. Then my Ma sent me down to Seattle on a bus to see them live.

Knew every song by them by heart, and learned to play most of them by ear on a little nylon string - although I couldn't pull off pinball wizard until I was a little more skilled and had the help of a superb musician by the name of Paul Wilson Brown to walk me through it.

To a great degree, the lyrics and imagery of the Who's music shaped my attitudes and personality as a young 'un, and their music is just as powerful and relevant today.

So tonight, I felt like basically, for a short space of time, we shared the room with the coolest guys on the planet.

Sarah Palin's Latest Press Conference Didn't Go So Well....

2008-11-16T21:08:00.001+09:00

hilarious.

Get yer War On.....

2008-11-08T11:47:00.000+09:00

I approached this guy about syndication a year and a half ago, but looks like the Huffington Post got to him first - too bad, but they've got the cash....

Anyway, I give you the brilliant, "Get Your War On":

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

The Monster Years

2008-11-06T11:07:00.000+09:00

by Paul Krugman, NY Times

Last night wasn’t just a victory for tolerance; it wasn’t just a mandate for progressive change; it was also, I hope, the end of the monster years.

What I mean by that is that for the past 14 years America’s political life has been largely dominated by, well, monsters. Monsters like Tom DeLay, who suggested that the shootings at Columbine happened because schools teach students the theory of evolution. Monsters like Karl Rove, who declared that liberals wanted to offer “therapy and understanding” to terrorists. Monsters like Dick Cheney, who saw 9/11 as an opportunity to start torturing people.

And in our national discourse, we pretended that these monsters were reasonable, respectable people. To point out that the monsters were, in fact, monsters, was “shrill.”

Four years ago it seemed as if the monsters would dominate American politics for a long time to come. But for now, at least, they’ve been banished to the wilderness.

America Celebrates Obama's Victory!

2008-11-05T23:34:00.000+09:00

Lyric of the Decade:

Callin' out around the world
Are you ready for a brand new beat
Summer's here and the time is right
For dancing in the street
They're dancing in Chicago(chicago echo)
Down in New Orleans(down in New Orleans echo)
Up in New York City
All we need is music, sweet music
There'll be music everywhere
There'll be swingin' and swayin' and records playing and
Dancing in the street

Oh it doesn't matter what you wear
Just as long as you are there
I want ev'ry guy to grab a girl
Ev'rywhere around the world
They'll be dancing, dancing in the street

It's an invitation across the nation
A chance for folks to meet
There'll be laughing,and singing, and music swinging
And Dancing in the street
Philadelphia, PA
Baltimore and D.C. now
Can't forget the Motor City
All we need is music, sweet music
There'll be music everywhere
There'll be swingin' and and swayin', and records playing
And dancing in the street

Oh it doesn't matter what you wear
Just as long as you are there
I want to ev'ry guy grab a girl
Ev'rywhere around the world

There'll be dancing,
Dancing in the street
Way down in L.A.
Every day
Dancing in the street

"Dancing In The Streets" - Martha And The Vandellas

The End of Rove's Dream

2008-11-05T19:12:00.000+09:00

By Dan Froomkin Special to washingtonpost.com

Karl Rove's dream was that George W. Bush's presidency would usher in a permanent Republican majority. But as with so many of the Bush White House's big ideas, things didn't exactly go according to plan.

We'll know for sure by tomorrow, but it looks more and more like the end result of eight years of Bush has been the discrediting of his party and the loss of its commanding position in American politics.

Turning the executive branch into a political arm of the Republican Party, stoking fear and division amid the electorate, trashing opponents without mercy, and casting national security as a wedge issue -- all these tactics had short-term benefits, and indeed won Bush a second term. But ultimately, they seem to have lost America.

As John Harwood wrote in the New York Times last week: "In 2004, after President Bush won re-election with expanded Republican majorities in Congress, academics, journalists and party strategists wondered whether his blend of free-market economics, cultural conservatism and hawkishness on national security might create long-lasting Republican rule.

"'Something fundamental and significant happened,' said Ken Mehlman, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. On the eve of a second Bush term, he said, the Republican Party was 'in a stronger position than at any time since the Great Depression.'

"Today that Republican dream appears in shambles. The twin burdens of an economic crisis and an unpopular war have left Mr. Bush with, at 71 percent, the highest level of public disapproval for a president in the history of the Gallup Poll. Democrats see the chance on Nov. 4 to elect not just Senator Barack Obama but also House and Senate majorities large enough to enact his ambitious agenda."

Sidney Blumenthal writes in a Guardian opinion piece: "Today's election is poised to end the Republican era in American politics - an era that began in reaction to Lyndon Johnson's Great Society, the Vietnam war and the civil rights revolution, was pioneered by Richard Nixon, consolidated by Ronald Reagan, and wrecked by George W Bush.

"Almost every aspect of the Republican ascendancy has been discredited and lies in tatters - its policies, politics, and even its version of patriotism. . . .

"Now, certain factors that have dominated US politics for 40 years seem destined to recede to the far corners. In economics, supply-side panaceas and deregulation created the worst crisis since the Great Depression, requiring a conservative Republican administration to part-nationalise banks, something unimaginable under any Democratic administration. In foreign policy, neoconservatism led to the morass in Iraq and Afghanistan while undermining the western alliance. In social policy, the evangelical right battered science, the separation of church and state, and the right to privacy. Finally, the conservative principle of limited government has become a watchword for incompetence, cronyism, corruption, hypocrisy, and contempt for the rule of law."

Democratic activist Glenn W. Smith blogs for Firedoglake: "Karl Rove's deepest fantasy was that in the future, some lonely and ambitious young person would read of him as he once read of Mark Hanna, the political operative who guided President William McKinley's successful 1896 campaign. He saw himself as a right wing hero who had insured a generation of Republican rule. . . .

"This is the year America judges Karl Rove. It appears to be a harsh judgment. . . .

"For Rove, there's no exit from the hell he's created. America is at war in two foreign countries. America's reputation among the nations is at an all-time low. The economy is tanking. The Republican Party has been scattered.

"Winning campaigns is not hard. It takes no genius. Politics is checkers, not chess. It's true that the pathological sometimes have an advantage. But that advantage is due to their cold remove from a truly human universe. And it's always temporary, because, in the end, for better or worse, what is human is not virtual. We are not pretend. Politics is not PlayStation.

"And Rove's virtual fantasy has come unplugged."

Steve Chapman writes in his Chicago Tribune opinion column: "Regardless of what the polls say, it's not clear who is going to win the presidential race. But it is clear who is going to lose: George W. Bush. If this contest proves anything, it's that the electorate is sick of him and eager for someone very different. . . .

"Americans may decide to replace him with another Republican, but if Sen. John McCain emerges victorious, it will be a tribute to his efforts to convince voters that he and Mr. Bush have barely met."

As for Obama, Chapman writes that his strengths "have a way of mirroring the president's shortcomings. Mr. Bush got where he is with the help of first-class family connections; Mr. Obama had to rise through brains and initiative. Mr. Bush regularly loses wrestling matches with the English language, while Mr. Obama expresses himself with unnerving fluency.

"Mr. Bush becomes defensive and peevish when asked to answer the simplest questions about his policies; Mr. Obama never gets ruffled. Where Mr. Bush treats criticism like the Ebola virus, Mr. Obama conveys the impression that he hopes to learn from those who disagree with him.

"The response of so many people to his message of unity comes partly from weariness with the administration's nonstop scorched-earth tactics. He conveys the novel view that Americans can disagree without hating each other. . . .

"In the end, Americans may vote for either candidate. But after eight years of Mr. Bush, most of them will leave the polls singing the words of an old country tune: Thank God and Greyhound you're gone."

David Corn blogs for CQ: "Bush's style of politics, his policies, his political party--it's all been discredited. . . .

"Many presidents are elected as reactions to the previous president. George W. Bush's (faux) victory in 2000 was a reaction to the Bill Clinton soap opera. And a Barack Obama triumph would be the natural reaction to the W. years. Obama is the most progressive (or liberal) Democratic nominee since FDR ran for reelection. He is black (or biracial). He is an intellectual. He is no child of privilege. To sum up: he is the opposite of George W. Bush. Not only has Bush started two wars he couldn't finish, presided over a government that lost a major American city, and did little as a financial tsunami hit the nation; he has (I am guessing) created a yearning among many Americans for a non-Bush. And within the realm of conventional U.S. politics, Obama is about as non-Bush as it gets. No wonder Obama has a strong chance of becoming president. He spoke (endlessly) of change; he is an antidote to the Bush presidency."

James Fallows blogs for the Atlantic with four reasons to vote Democratic. The first is accountability: "There have been minor positive aspects to the eight-year Bush-Cheney era now coming to an end. But when the diplomatic, fiscal, Constitutional, economic, and other civic consequences are viewed as a whole, this era has, in my view, been a disaster for the United States. . . .

"For America to return the incumbent party to power after this record would make a mockery of the idea of ballot-box accountability and two-party competition. If an incumbent party retains power after this record, what is the meaning of party competition at all?"
The GOP View

Publicly, the White House denies that this is a referendum on Bushism.

Press secretary Dana Perino yesterday said Bush does not think this election is about him: "I think people have tried to make it about this President, but I think that whenever you are in America and you're looking towards the future, you want to know who's going to be your leader. And George Bush will not be the President on January 21st. The next President will be taking over, and they'll have all the responsibility that comes with that honor."

And here's an odd metaphor about a president who has never before identified with the unpopular kids: "Everybody would like to be popular," Perino said. "You can all remember that back in high school, everyone really wanted to be popular. Some of us just weren't. But that doesn't mean that you don't have principles and values that you stay true to. And that's what this President has done, and it's what he's taught a lot of us, including me."

The first lady was a bit more realistic about her husband's central role, speaking at a campaign rally in Kentucky: "After months of primary elections, campaign ads, and debates, tomorrow is finally Election Day. (Applause.) I'm really looking forward to Election Day, partly because it seems like George has been on the ticket this entire year."

Peter Wehner, formerly the director of the White House's Office of Strategic Initiatives and essentially its leading intellectual, argues that the election will be a referendum on Bush -- but not on conservatism.

He writes in a recent Washington Post op-ed that "it is a mistake to assume that significant GOP losses, should they occur, are a referendum on conservatism. In part, the GOP's problems stem from being seen as having become less conservative and less principled."

He concludes: "The wilderness years are never pleasant, but if Republicans find themselves there after Nov. 4, they have an opportunity to revive the GOP. If Republicans become champions of an ambitious conservative reform agenda, they will begin the road back to political dominance."

So the problem was that Bush strayed from conservative principles? That's certainly not what Wehner was saying a few years ago. Blogger Matthew Yglesias appropriately called attention to a December 2004 Washington Post profile of Wehner by Dan Balz, in which Wehner expressed confidence at the time that history would look kindly on his boss: "I think he's on the right side of history and is on the right side of the important debates of our time, and he's comfortable in that," Wehner said.

And where is that supposed distance between Bush and the Republican stalwarts?

Gary Kamiya writes for Salon, "to this day, the Republican Party and the mainstream right wing has never repudiated Bush."

And how could they? "How can conservatives repudiate someone who put into practice all of their most cherished ideas? To criticize Bush on substantive grounds, they'd have to explain not only why his policies violated conservative orthodoxy, but why they never once made that argument for the last eight years. They can't do either, which is why they are forced to take the evasive, intellectually dishonest line of blaming Bush's failures on his arrogance and incompetence. Of course Bush was arrogant and incompetent, but those shortcomings don't explain his failed presidency. He failed because he acted on the extreme right-wing ideas that Reagan only paid lip service to.

"The right wing is running as far away as it can get from Bush, but it still shares his beliefs. That's why it cannot and will not muster any real arguments against his policies."

And Patrick J. Buchanan writes in a San Francisco Chronicle op-ed: "The country wishes to be rid of the Bush policies and the Bush presidency. But where does the Republican Party think Bush went wrong, other than to be asleep at the wheel during Hurricane Katrina?

"The GOP needs to confront the truth: The failure of the Bush presidency lies not in a failed execution of policy but in the policies themselves and the neoconservative ideology that informed them.

"Yet, still, the party remains in denial, refusing to come to terms with the causes of its misfortune. One expects they will be given the time and opportunity for reflection soon."
A Fan

Drudge Report editor Andrew Breitbart writes in a Washington Times op-ed: "I still like George W. Bush. A lot.

"For starters, I am convinced he is a fundamentally decent man. . . .

"President Bush is far smarter, more articulate and less ideological than his plentiful detractors scream, and, ultimately, he will be judged by history - not by vengeful Democrats, hate-filled Hollywood, corrupt foreign governments, an imploding mainstream media or fleeting approval ratings.

"George W. Bush is history's president, a man for whom the long-term success or failure of democracy in Iraq will determine his place in history."
Revisionism Watch

Jeremy Lott writes in an opinion piece for Politico: "Revisionists who wish to argue for a more positive long-term assessment of President Bush's legacy have their work cut out for them. That hasn't stopped them from trying, though it needs to be said that their efforts thus far have not been terribly persuasive.

"Former Bush speechwriter David Frum argues that 'history is unlikely to remember the [Iraq] war as negatively as most assume.' . . .

"In a Newsweek cover story titled "What Bush Got Right," international editor Fareed Zakaria wrote that 'blanket criticism of Bush misses an important reality,' for 'wherever one stands' on his decision to invade Iraq, 'the [Bush administration's] foreign policies in place now are more sensible, moderate and mainstream. In many cases, the next president should follow rather than reverse them.'

"The military historian Edward Luttwak wrote in the British Prospect, 'That George W. Bush's foreign policy has been a total failure is now taken for granted by so many people that one usually hears it stated as a simple truth that need not be argued at all.' He proceeded to contest that truth, labeling Bush a modern Harry S. Truman, likely to be vindicated by history. . . .

"Wrong. Wrong. Wrong."

For instance, Lott writes: "When revisionists tout Iraq's symbolic importance, they make another strategic blunder. Iraq was a secular country run by a dictator whom the United States had caged, but his presence still served a purpose in the region. The biggest beneficiary of the American invasion was Iraq's sworn enemy, the officially theocratic and anti-American state of Iran."
Poll Watch

The final CBS News tracking poll finds: "Fifty-four percent of voters think McCain would continue Mr. Bush's policies, and the president is extremely unpopular: his approval rating now stands at 20 percent, the lowest ever recorded for a president. His disapproval rating of 72 percent matches his all-time high, first reached last month."

Dan Balz writes in The Washington Post: "State and national polls released yesterday underscored the steep hill McCain must climb in the final hours to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House. Burdened by President Bush's unpopularity and an economic crisis that redrew the race in September in Obama's favor, the senator from Arizona sprinted through a series of critical states yesterday -- all but one of which Bush carried four years ago -- exhorting his supporters to help him defy the odds."
Passing Things On

Remember all those times Bush said things like: "I came to this office to solve problems and not pass them on to future presidents and future generations"?

Mark Smith, in an Associated Press video, shows Bush expressing that sentiment. But Smith concludes that "the array of things he leaves his successor to solve is staggering."
Still There

Jennifer Loven writes for the Associated Press: "The world is anxiously awaiting new ideas and fresh leadership from America's new president to deal with the economic crisis that has encircled the globe with sickening speed. Unemployment is climbing, the stock market has plummeted and businesses are teetering.

"But for 77 days after the election, the problems will be George Bush's -- and both Barack Obama and John McCain have signaled they will defer to him."
And Still Causing Trouble

The New York Times editorial board writes: "While Americans eagerly vote for the next president, here's a sobering reminder: As of Tuesday, George W. Bush still has 77 days left in the White House -- and he's not wasting a minute.

"President Bush's aides have been scrambling to change rules and regulations on the environment, civil liberties and abortion rights among others -- few for the good. Most presidents put on a last-minute policy stamp, but in Mr. Bush's case it is more like a wrecking ball. We fear it could take months, or years, for the next president to identify and then undo all of the damage."

H.D.S. Greenway writes in his Boston Globe opinion column: "Although Bush has been keeping such a low profile up to now that many could be forgiven for thinking he has already left office, the grim and sobering truth is that he has 77 days left in power, enough time to do a lot of mischief. The administration is now free of any responsibility to the Republican Party or the election. As for the American people, they were never considered by this administration to be anything more than an entity to be manipulated and lied to in the interest of unrestricted executive power."
The World Waits

William J. Kole and Matt Moore write for the Associated Press: "The world was riveted by the election drama unfolding Tuesday in the United States, inspired by the hope embodied by Barack Obama or simply relieved that -- whoever wins -- an administration that spawned Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay was coming to an end.

"From Berlin's Brandenburg Gate to the small town of Obama, Japan, the globe geared up to celebrate a fresh start for America after eight wearisome years of George W. Bush."
Cheney Watch, Part One

Juliet Eilperin writes in The Washington Post: "President Bush's vision for protecting two vast areas of the Pacific Ocean from fishing and mineral exploitation, a move that would constitute a major expansion of his environmental legacy, is running into dogged resistance both inside and outside the White House and has placed his wife and his vice president on opposite sides of the issue.

"With less than three months before Bush's term ends, his top deputies are scrambling to try to execute a plan that would shield some of the world's most diverse underwater ecosystems. The original plan, which included four potential 'marine monuments' and was well received by environmentalists, has already been scaled back.

"Vice President Cheney and some officials in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands have argued that the plan could hurt the region's economy by barring fishing and energy exploration. First lady Laura Bush, along with a number of scientists and environmental advocates, has countered that preserving the region's natural attributes would attract tourism and burnish the president's record for history."
Cheney Watch, Part Two

So where is the vice president today?

Chris Cillizza blogs for The Washington Post: "The Vice President landed in Pierre, South Dakota, last night for his fifth annual hunting trip in the state. This time he is hunting near Gettysburg in the north-central part of the state. We hear he's staying at the Paul Nelson Farm. Nelson's son -- Ryan -- is a longtime aide to Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).

"In 2004, Cheney was joined by Thune and Scooter Libby on the hunt. Following the trip, Cheney checked into a Washington, D.C., hospital after experiencing shortness of breath. It turned out he had just caught a cold."
Late Night Humor

Jon Stewart sets up video of Cheney's McCain endorsement: "We knew it was going to happen: In the final days of the presidential campaign, you-know-who had to weigh in. The evil mastermind has resurfaced and released another grainy disturbing videotape featuring his sickly visage. . . .

"Vice President Cheney, endorsing John McCain: Clearly trying to influence the American election -- but which way?" Stewart notes that Cheney could barely get the words out without a coughing fit.
Cartoon Watch

Whatever else you can say about Bush, he continues to inspire some extraordinary political cartoons.

Here's what Mike Luckovich will miss about Bush (a New Yorker slideshow) , Tom Toles on the end of the Bush era, Jim Morin on what Bush and Cheney accomplished, Joel Pett on the morning after, Lee Judge on Bush's exit strategy, Jeff Danziger on Bush defeating McCain again, and Nick Anderson on the horror show.

Bush's Final "Fuck You's" to America

2008-11-05T18:04:00.001+09:00

As the editors of the New York Times tell us, His Heinous still has 77 days left to engage in evil fuckery at the expense of everyone who hasn't donated to his or his partners' campaigns before he hightails it to the his Paraguay sanctuary - famed hideout of Nazi war criminals. The good news? He only has three weeks left to do the most extensive damage. Still, how can one top looting the treasury for a 700 BILLION DOLLAR gift to the wealthiest micropercentage of Americans while somewhere around 3.5 MILLION of the "little people" are now homeless. What's even more heartbreaking is that A STAGGERING 39% OF THEM ARE CHILDREN, and 33% of them are veterans.

That's ONE OUT OF EVERY HUNDRED PEOPLE IN AMERICA AND ONE OUT OF EVERY 222 CHILDREN.

Look around you the next time you're in a mall, a park, a theater, a library, anyplace there's a crowd. Think of how many in that crowd would represent the homeless in America. It's tragic, inexcusable, and perfectly avoidable. This is the Republican legacy of Reagan, Bush 1 and Bush 2. We must not ever, ever allow this to happen again.

Americans have been trickled on one time too many.

So Little Time, So Much Damage

While Americans eagerly vote for the next president, here’s a sobering reminder: As of Tuesday, George W. Bush still has 77 days left in the White House — and he’s not wasting a minute.

President Bush’s aides have been scrambling to change rules and regulations on the environment, civil liberties and abortion rights, among others — few for the good. Most presidents put on a last-minute policy stamp, but in Mr. Bush’s case it is more like a wrecking ball. We fear it could take months, or years, for the next president to identify and then undo all of the damage.

Here is a look — by no means comprehensive — at some of Mr. Bush’s recent parting gifts and those we fear are yet to come.

CIVIL LIBERTIES We don’t know all of the ways that the administration has violated Americans’ rights in the name of fighting terrorism. Last month, Attorney General Michael Mukasey rushed out new guidelines for the F.B.I. that permit agents to use chillingly intrusive techniques to collect information on Americans even where there is no evidence of wrongdoing.

Agents will be allowed to use informants to infiltrate lawful groups, engage in prolonged physical surveillance and lie about their identity while questioning a subject’s neighbors, relatives, co-workers and friends. The changes also give the F.B.I. — which has a long history of spying on civil rights groups and others — expanded latitude to use these techniques on people identified by racial, ethnic and religious background.

The administration showed further disdain for Americans’ privacy rights and for Congress’s power by making clear that it will ignore a provision in the legislation that established the Department of Homeland Security. The law requires the department’s privacy officer to account annually for any activity that could affect Americans’ privacy — and clearly stipulates that the report cannot be edited by any other officials at the department or the White House.

The Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel has now released a memo asserting that the law “does not prohibit” officials from homeland security or the White House from reviewing the report. The memo then argues that since the law allows the officials to review the report, it would be unconstitutional to stop them from changing it. George Orwell couldn’t have done better.

THE ENVIRONMENT The administration has been especially busy weakening regulations that promote clean air and clean water and protect endangered species.

Mr. Bush, or more to the point, Vice President Dick Cheney, came to office determined to dismantle Bill Clinton’s environmental legacy, undo decades of environmental law and keep their friends in industry happy. They have had less success than we feared, but only because of the determined opposition of environmental groups, courageous members of Congress and protests from citizens. But the White House keeps trying.

Mr. Bush’s secretary of the interior, Dirk Kempthorne, has recently carved out significant exceptions to regulations requiring expert scientific review of any federal project that might harm endangered or threatened species (one consequence will be to relieve the agency of the need to assess the impact of global warming on at-risk species). The department also is rushing to remove the gray wolf from the endangered species list — again. The wolves were re-listed after a federal judge ruled the government had not lived up to its own recovery plan.

In coming weeks, we expect the Environmental Protection Agency to issue a final rule that would weaken a program created by the Clean Air Act, which requires utilities to install modern pollution controls when they upgrade their plants to produce more power. The agency is also expected to issue a final rule that would make it easier for coal-fired power plants to locate near national parks in defiance of longstanding Congressional mandates to protect air quality in areas of special natural or recreational value.

Interior also is awaiting E.P.A.’s concurrence on a proposal that would make it easier for mining companies to dump toxic mine wastes in valleys and streams.

And while no rules changes are at issue, the interior department also has been rushing to open up millions of acres of pristine federal land to oil and gas exploration. We fear that, in coming weeks, Mr. Kempthorne will open up even more acreage to the commercial development of oil shale, a hugely expensive and environmentally risky process that even the oil companies seem in no hurry to begin. He should not.

ABORTION RIGHTS Soon after the election, Michael Leavitt, the secretary of health and human services, is expected to issue new regulations aimed at further limiting women’s access to abortion, contraceptives and information about their reproductive health care options.

Existing law allows doctors and nurses to refuse to participate in an abortion. These changes would extend the so-called right to refuse to a wide range of health care workers and activities including abortion referrals, unbiased counseling and provision of birth control pills or emergency contraception, even for rape victims.

The administration has taken other disturbing steps in recent weeks. In late September, the I.R.S. restored tax breaks for banks that take big losses on bad loans inherited through acquisitions. Now we learn that JPMorgan Chase and others are planning to use their bailout funds for mergers and acquisitions, transactions that will be greatly enhanced by the new tax subsidy.

One last-minute change Mr. Bush won’t be making: He apparently has decided not to shut down the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — the most shameful symbol of his administration’s disdain for the rule of law.

Mr. Bush has said it should be closed, and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and his secretary of defense, Robert Gates, pushed for it. Proposals were prepared, including a plan for sending the real bad guys to other countries for trial. But Mr. Cheney objected, and the president has refused even to review the memos. He will hand this mess off to his successor.

We suppose there is some good news in all of this. While Mr. Bush leaves office on Jan. 20, 2009, he has only until Nov. 20 to issue “economically significant” rule changes and until Dec. 20 to issue other changes. Anything after that is merely a draft and can be easily withdrawn by the next president.

Unfortunately, the White House is well aware of those deadlines.

Lyrics of the Day

Hello! Hooray! Let the show begin,
I've been ready.
Hello! Hooray! Let the lights grow dim,
I've been ready.

Ready as this audience that's coming here to dream.
Loving every second, ev'ry moment, ev'ry scream,
I've been waiting so long to sing my song
And I've been waiting so long for this thing to come.
Yeah - I've been thinking so long I was the only one.

Roll out! Roll out with your American dream and its recruits,
I've been ready.
Roll out! Roll out with your circus freaks and hula hoops,
I've been ready.

Ready as this audience that's coming here to dream.
Loving every second, ev'ry moment, ev'ry scream,
I've been waiting so long to sing my song
And I've been waiting so long for this thing to come.
Yeah - I've been thinking so long I was the only one.

I can stand here strong and thin.
I can laugh when this thing begins.

God, I feel so strong.
I feel so strong.
I'm so strong.
I feel so strong.
So strong.
God, I feel so strong,
I am so strong.

"Hello Hooray!", Vincent Damon Furnier, Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, Neal Smith

Republicans Behaving Badly - as Usual....

2008-11-05T01:40:00.001+09:00

Now, I thought I understood the republican mind.

Greedy? Check.
Hypocritical? Double check.
Violent? Uh huh.
Sadistic? Yeppers.
Serial liars? Righto.
Criminals? Absolutely.
Opportunistic cowards? Can you even doubt it?

But sometimes they even surprise me. So when Rash Limpballs decided to say Obama only rushed to his dying grandmother's side because he wanted to cover up a fraudulent passport (unlike a certain bulgy-faced ex-straight-talker, demonstrably born in Panama), and the California Reuglycan party had the jaw-droppingly bad taste to file a LAWSUIT over the LEGALITY of his final visit to say goodbye, saying he used stolen campaign funds to pay for it, I was outraged yet again.

And let's not forget the severed goat's head on the Dem candidate's campaign HQ doorstep, or the Obama assassination plot.

But hey, in their eyes, it's WE who are way out of line. My guess is the following people were just too damned uppity to properly kowtow to their "betters"....

Read on:

I Mean Really, THOSE PEOPLE On the Upper West Side...
Pamela Troy's Journal

From the unspeakably bad timing department: Most of us have already seen the video of Shirley Nagel, the McCain supporter in Michigan who, on Halloween night, refused to give candy to the children of Obama supporters. To capture the full flavor of the current right wing insanity though, it really should be watched in tandem with an unintentionally funny video posted on Halloween, just a few hours before Shirley Nagel became an Internet star. It seems that Joe Scarborough’s young right-wing sidekick, Willie Geist, decided to film himself trying to drum up support for the McCain-Palin ticket on the Upper West Side in front of Zabar’s.

The result is a searing few minutes of footage aired on Scarborough Country that reveals the ugly truth about the unreasoning hatred boiling beneath the surface of “those people” living on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. See Willie Geist reel beneath cutting responses like, “No, ‘fraid not!” when he asks if McCain can count on a passerby’s support, and “I do not, thank you for offering,” when he asks if someone would like a McCain Palin t-shirt! Observe his heart break as an elderly gentleman says, “Well, frankly, I don’t think so,” when Geist asks if putting the t-shirt in the window a Zabar’s would get a good response! Watch as passersby smile and shake their head rather than give him a high-five for McCain, and then reveal their utter close-mindedness by being unconvinced even after he calls after them, “You’re not voting for McCain? You don’t want to put country first, huh?”

And those are just the milder examples. Some of the other things that were said, like, “You’re in the wrong neighborhood,” and “You gotta go to the east side for this one,” truly revealed something ugly in the liberal psyche. There were a few moments when, frankly, I was concerned for Willie’s safety, like when that cheerful elderly lady teased him about his t-shirt, asking, “Is that your Halloween costume? Pretty scary,” and the old guy told him, of voting for McCain, “I don’t know anyone, of any intelligence, who would vote for him.” And surely Madame DeFarge herself couldn’t be more sinister than the lady who answered his question, “You hate me?” with, “Palin, not you. I don’t hate you. But I wish you’d change your politics.”

“That wasn’t very nice,” he said, looking sadly at the camera.

”Wow! That is so troubling and interesting at the same time!” said Mika Brzezniski , who has apparently never before seen opinionated elderly Jewish liberals on the Upper West Side. Mike Barnicle pronounced it “an important culture piece” and added,” It proves why so many people are so ‘right’ (no pun intended) to really loathe so many on the left. I mean those people are so close-minded, that they couldn’t stop to talk to you…”

Well, actually Mr. Barnicle, some of them did, They were described by you on cable TV as loathsome for their trouble.

And then, just a few hours later, we all met Shirley Nagel…

Lyrics of the Day:
Big man, pig man, ha ha charade you are.
You well heeled big wheel, ha ha charade you are.
And when your hand is on your heart,
You're nearly a good laugh,
Almost a joker,
With your head down in the pig bin,
Saying "Keep on digging."
Pig stain on your fat chin.
What do you hope to find.
When you're down in the pig mine.
You're nearly a laugh,
You're nearly a laugh
But you're really a cry.

Bus stop rat bag, ha ha charade you are.
You fucked up old hag, ha ha charade you are.
You radiate cold shafts of broken glass.
You're nearly a good laugh,
Almost worth a quick grin.
You like the feel of steel,
You're hot stuff with a hatpin,
And good fun with a hand gun.
You're nearly a laugh,
You're nearly a laugh
But you're really a cry.

Hey you, Whitehouse,
Ha ha charade you are.
You house proud town mouse,
Ha ha charade you are
You're trying to keep our feelings off the street.
You're nearly a real treat,
All tight lips and cold feet
And do you feel abused?
.....! .....! .....! .....!
You gotta stem the evil tide,
And keep it all on the inside.
Mary you're nearly a treat,
Mary you're nearly a treat
But you're really a cry.
Pigs (Three Different Ones) (Waters, Gilmore, Mason, Wright)

Jane Smiley: Goodbye, Cruel World

2008-10-29T12:56:00.001+09:00

In terms of contemporary politics, there are five writers that I consider the best of the best, the most enlightened and articulate. These are Paul Krugman of the New York Times, syndicated political writer and cartoonist Ted Rall, William Pfaff of the International Herald Tribune and the man who singlehandedly broke the story of Katherine Harris and the purged Florida 2000 Presidential election voter rolls, BBC journalist Greg Palast. Also in that bunch is Pulitzer prizewinner Jane Smiley, with whom I feel exactly in alignment in terms of a moral compass. This week she once again brilliantly lays bare the truth:

The world would be a better place if the American right wing had never existed. Thousands of Americans and Iraqis would still be alive, tens of thousands or Iraqis would still be living in their own homes. The American economy would not have hopped from bubble to bubble if the right wing had not put all of their faith in deregulation, and American jobs would not have been sent abroad. Our tax dollars would not have flowed upward into the coffers of the rich, and the war machine would not comprise such a large part of our economy. We would have retained the respect of other nations, and not aroused the absolute hatred of those we have attempted to bomb into submission. We would get along better with one another if the right wing had not used tribal hatreds to arouse their base against black people, immigrants, liberals, and the well-educated. Our infrastructure, health care, and schools would be better if the billions spent on futile wars had been spent on domestic needs. The planet would be a better place if our addiction to oil had been broken 25 years ago.

But the issue goes deeper even that these practical matters. We would, in fact, be happier people if the right wing had not terrorized us with their horror-filled systems of belief. The Friedmanites are bad enough -- in their world, there are only winners and losers. Everyone deserves what they get, and if a child who gets melamine in his milk is a victim of "creative destruction", well, too bad, because some rich person is getting a little bit more money. In the capitalist world, you are not just supposed to starve, you are supposed to deserve starving -- insult added to injury, humiliation added pain. Of course, as Naomi Klein has shown, the "free market" is never free at all, it is fixed, by dictators and armies and oligarchs. But the thrust of the propaganda stands. We may call this the "Phil Gramm Position".

As bad as this is, far worse has been the effect of religious fundamentalism on the individual spirit and the national mood. By now, we all know some child (or former child) who has been terrorized by "the Rapture" -- who has come home after school to an empty house, only to panic because he or she is convinced that everyone else has been "raptured up." The left behind one has to reckon with the idea that not only is everyone he or she loves gone, he or she has done something wrong according to Jesus, and failed to deserve salvation. I call this child abuse. The religious right has been determined to enforce the unhappiness of others, no doubt so that that unhappiness will match their own. After all, they want to make sure that gay people understand that no matter how much they pay in taxes, they are second class citizens. They also want to make sure that every woman in the world understands that her interests are secondary to those of any embryo, any man, even, indeed, any sperm cell. This would be the "James Dobson Position".

The God of the right wing, and of the Bible, is a pretty arbitrary guy. He lays down the rules, but you can get those boils or those locusts even if you didn't knowingly do anything wrong, in fact, even if you didn't do anything wrong at all. Your personal God could punish you for something someone else did, as in the Bible he frequently punishes the enemies of Israel, men, women, children, dogs, cats, goats, etc., just for being the enemies of Israel. I love how right wing preachers pray away hurricanes, sending them to places like Bermuda. If your God is arbitrary, then of course you are always anxious and depressed -- your adrenaline is always pumping. And you are never motivated to understand how the world works. But locusts and boils and hurricanes have causes -- physical, medical, and ecological. Society can avoid locusts and boils and even mitigate the effects of hurricanes if it understands cause and effect, but if your God is an arbitrary authoritarian, and your father was an arbitrary authoritarian, then you never truly understand cause and effect in the world we live in. As we all know, no religion has ever successfully answered the problems raised by the issue of an omnipotent God. The best they offer is to forbid questioning, and to punish those who do. Because the right wing experiences the world as cruel and arbitrary, they have no inhibitions about enhancing that cruelty -- as in "Hurricane Katrina", as in "Iraq War", and in "Abu Ghraib".

This is the world we have been living in for the past thirty years.

In a week, we have a chance to leave this world behind. If we look at our two candidates, the differences between them are stark. John McCain, who was raised by and accepts the authoritarian model, is evidently never at peace. He is hot-headed, erratic, and has been remarkably cruel. He claims to have principles, but his principles change every time he loses his cool. The more he is pushed, the more it becomes evident that he lives by his own selfish desires -- for money, for power, for women. He's is a classic avoider, who can't even answer the simplest question -- if something "unpleasant" comes up, he changes the subject. Barack Obama rarely changes the subject, because he is fully capable of looking at an issue and considering it. He seems to have been reared in a non-authoritarian household, by a loving mother and loving grandparents. He thinks that the world is a rational place that can be understood and modified. His own family seems happy and loving. Right wingers think he is shallow, but he isn't shallow -- he's well-adjusted. And we've had two whole years to poke him and prod him and discover this. Obama has grown through campaigning because he has learned from it. McCain gets ever smaller and more weird as he campaigns because he doesn't understand what is happening to him. When we choose between these two men, we are choosing between two worlds -- the world of ignorance, fear, manipulation, and cruelty, and the world of rational investigation, weighing of options, and planning. This world is a world where sexual preference is not such a big deal, salvation is not an eternal mystery, and life goes on. It's a world where bad things happen, but there is no malign Godly intention behind them. It is world that understands the temptations of human nature and attempts to deal with them rationally and systematically. Some of these attempts will fail, but on balance, not as many as have failed in the last twenty-five years.

Most of my friends see the coming election as the most important we have known. The right wing has damaged our country, our livelihoods, our national honor, and our planet, but not yet fatally. If McCain gets elected, that could change.

ZOMFG! John McCain and Sarah Palin Are Socialists!

2008-10-29T08:22:00.001+09:00

from blogger Jed L at Daily Kos:

Down in the polls, John McCain's Divide & Flail™ strategy is to call Barack Obama's tax cut for 95% of Americans "socialism."

Well, John McCain must have once been a socialist, because it turns out that for years he supported higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for lower taxes on the middle-class. The YouTube don't lie:

Side note: Isn't it amazing how much John McCain has changed over the years?

AND,

Oh No, Sarah Palin Is A Socialist Too!

It's not just John McCain -- Sarah Palin is a socialist too! Hendrik Hertzberg notes (emphasis added):

A few weeks before she was nominated for Vice-President, she told a visiting journalist—Philip Gourevitch, of this magazine—that "we’re set up, unlike other states in the union, where it’s collectively Alaskans own the resources. So we share in the wealth when the development of these resources occurs."

Also discussed in The Wife of Bath's diary.

Lyrics of the Day:

We don't care what flag you're waving
We don't even want to know your name
We don't care where you're from or where you're going
All we know is that you came
You're making all our decisions
We have just one request of you
That while you're thinking things over
Here's something you just better do

Free the people now
Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it now
Free the people now
Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it now

Well we were caught with our hands in the air
Don't despair paranoia is everywhere
We can shake it with love when we're scared
So let's shout it aloud like a prayer

Free the people now
Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it now
Free the people now
Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it now

We understand your paranoia
But we don't want to play your game
You think you're cool and know what you are doing
666 is your name
So while you're jerking off each other
You better bear this thought in mind
Your time is up you better know it
But maybe you don't read the signs

Free the people now
Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it now
Free the people now
Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it now

Well you were caught with your hands in the kill
And you still got to swallow your pill
As you slip and you slide down the hill
On the blood of the people you killed

Stop the killing (Free the people now)
Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it now
Stop the killing (Free the people now)
Do it, do it, do it, do it, do it now

Bring on the lucie

"Bring on the Lucie" - John Lennon and the Plastic Ono Band

A Second Opinion from Wonkette....

2008-10-17T09:28:00.000+09:00

What Monster Did McCain Become Last Night?

A horrified America watched John McCain stagger up from his debate chair last night and turn into a monster. He almost caught our Barack Obama! What was happening? Clearly, the special anti-monster juice McCain drinks before public appearances was starting to wear off. They got him in the titanium-lined SWAT van just before he fully transformed. But fully transformed into what?

HORRIBLE MEDIEVAL WEREWOLF: This would actually explain a lot, including, probably, why McCain is always talking about medieval Ireland, when he was a boy, before he was bitten by a werewolf, which put a terrible end to his happy carefree days of being a Celtic warrior who always crashed his horse into the enemy’s village.

HORRIBLE CHILD-EATING DEATH CLOWN: No wonder McCain’s handlers try to get him away from those debate audiences so quick! He was just moments away from turning into this evil-ass thing, the New Hampshire Primary Murder Clown, Rich Uncle Pennywise! Imagine being stuck on Secret Service duty with this campaign. Imagine having to bury the bodies every night.

EVIL GORGON MEDUSA: Walnuts has always roamed the Earth, in his various guises, but by night, he shows his true death’s head, the GORGONEION from Hades, where he spent Five and a Half Million Years. (This is also the face he makes when he has sexytime! Your tax dollars pay for his Viagra!)

DISGUSTING CLASSIC-ROCK GIMMICK CAR: There is nothing more hideous than 700-year-old arena rocker Gene Simmons, so it stands to reason that John McCain is the demon father of the KISS monster. Legend says shitty ‘71 Volkswagen Beetles with home paint jobs and huge styrofoam monster skulls/tongues were frequently on the scene before the Crusaders lost Jerusalem to the Arabs led by Bill Ayers the Terrorist Muslin.

EVIL SILENT-MOVIE GERMAN VAMPIRE: And now, a quote from Bram Stoker’s Dracula: “As the Count leaned over me and his hands touched me… a horrible feeling of nausea came over me, which, do what I would, I could not conceal. When the Count saw my face, his eyes blazed with a sort of demonaic fury, and he suddenly made a grab at my throat.”

Yes, that sounds about right.

THE BEAST: But our demonic experts here on the Wonkette staff finally concluded McCain was turning into this hell-beast of yore, as seen here in a 16th Century woodcut. These demonic shit-monsters once roamed the Eastern Seaboard, until they were captured by Benedict Arnold in 1776 and taught Naval Command skills at Annapolis. The creatures spawn a single fetus from the “egg duct” every hundred years; the fourth spawn of the cycle is always a crazy, self-obsessed idiot who has no military skillz.

(And yes, of course we have demonic experts on staff! We are a Washington Politics website, after all.)

John McCain's Praising Speech at ACORN Rally

2008-10-17T07:24:00.000+09:00

So the Republicans think they've found a new bugbear with which to hoodwink voters. Turns out McCain is cynically, dishonestly and knowingly using ACORN as an election disruption tool. So much for the man of integrity he promised to be before his handlers dangled all the shiny pretties in front of him.

Said an ACORN spokesperson:

"In most states, ACORN is required by law to turn in every voter registration card -- even in cases where the cards are not valid," the organization insists, adding that ACORN "has reported almost all of the issues regarding voter registration cards..."

"Invalid voter registration cards do NOT constitute voter fraud. Even RNC General Counsel Sean Cairncross has recently acknowledged he is not aware of a single improper vote cast as a result of bad cards submitted in the course of an organized voter registration effort..."

"ACORN hired 13,000 field workers to register people to vote. In any endeavor of this size, some people will engaged in inappropriate conduct. ACORN has a zero tolerance policy and terminated any field workers caught engaging in questionable activity..."

"At the end of the day, as ACORN is paying these people to register voters, it is ACORN that is defrauded."

Quote of the Day

A damsel with a dulcimer (6)
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian (7) maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome in air,
That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice, (8)
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on honey-dew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise.

--"Kubla Khan" - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Still a Man With Direction - Just the Wrong One

2008-10-17T06:52:00.001+09:00

AP has finally cleared up the mystery of exactly what the fuck McLame was doing in this picture.

He's jovially displaying an admission of foolishness upon realizing that - yet again - he's been completely befuddled by the task of walking to the exit.

Metaphorically, of course, he's implying that even HE believes Obama should be leading.

And you can't argue with THAT.

Lyric of the Day

He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his nowhere land,
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody.

Doesn't kave a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man, please listen,
You don't know what you're missing,
Nowhere man, the world is at your command.

He's as blind as he can be,
Just sees what he wants to see,
Nowhere man can you see me at all?
Doesn't kave a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man, don't worry,
Take your time, don't hurry,
Leave it all till somebody else
Lend you a hand.

He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his nowhere land,
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody.

-- "Nowhere Man", The Beatles

No Comment

2008-10-16T17:07:00.000+09:00

Lyric of the Day

Folks
I'd like to sing a song about the American Dream
About me,
About you,
About the way our American hearts beat way down in the bottoms of our chests,
About that special feeling we get in the cockles of our hearts
Or maybe below the cockles,
Maybe in the sub cockle area,
Maybe in the liver,
Maybe in the kidneys,
Maybe even in the colon,
We don't know

I'm just a regular joe,
With a regular job.
I'm your average white,
Suburbanite slob.
I like football, and porno, and books about war.
I've got an average house,
With a nice hardwood floor.
My wife, and my job, my kids, and my car,
My feet on the table,
With a Cuban cigar.
But sometimes that just ain't enough,
To keep a man like me interested,
Oh no, no way, uh uhh.
No I gotta go out and have fun,
At someone else's expense,
Oh yeah, yeah yeah, yeah yeah yeah,

I drive really slow,
In the ultra fast lane,
while people, behind me, are going insane.

I'm an asshole
(he's an asshole, what an asshole)
I'm an asshole
(he's an asshole, such an asshole)

I use public toilets,
And I piss on the seats,
I walk around in the summer time,
Sayin' "How 'bout this heat?"

I'm an asshole
(he's an asshole, what an asshole)
I'm an asshole
(he's the worlds biggest asshole)

Sometimes I park in handicapped spaces,
While handicapped people make handicapped faces,

I'm an asshole
(he's an asshole, what an asshole)
I'm an asshole
(he's a big fucking asshole)

Maybe I shouldn't be singing this song,
Ranting and raving and carrying on,
Maybe they're right when they tell me I'm wrong.
NAAAHHHHH

I'm an asshole
(he's an asshole, what an asshole)
I'm an asshole
(he's the worlds biggest asshole)

You know what I'm gonna do?
I'm gonna get myself a 1967 Cadillac El Dorado Convertible,
Hot Pink!
With whale skin hub caps,
An all leather cow interior,
And big brown baby seal eyes for headlights.
YEAH!
And I'm gonna drive around in that baby,
At 115 miles per hour,
Getting one mile per gallon,
Sucking down quarter-pounder cheeseburgers from McDonalds in the old-fashioned non-biodegradable styrofoam containers.
And when I'm done sucking down those grease ball burgers,
I'm gonna wipe my mouth in the American flag,
And then I'm gonna toss the styrofoam containers right out the side,
And there ain't a God damn thing anybody can do about it,
You know why?
'Cause we got the bombs, that's why.
Two words, Nuclear Fucking Weapons OK.
Russia, Germany, Romania,
They can have all the democracy they want.
They can have a big democracy cake,
Walk right through the middle of Tiananmen Square,
And it won't make a lick of difference,
Because we got the bombs OK!
John Wayne's not dead,
He's frozen.
And as soon as we find a cure for cancer, we're gonna thaw out the duke.
And he's gonna be pretty pissed off,
You know why?
Have you ever taken a cold shower?
Well multiply that by 15 million times,
That's how pissed off the duke's gonna be.
I'm gonna get the duke,
And John Desimeties,
And Lee Marvin
And Sam Peckinpaugh,
And a case of whiskey,
And drive down to Texas,
And,
(hey, Hey, You know you really are an asshole)
Why don't you shut up and sing the song pal,
You know the whole time I thought I was that asshole,
And it turns out it was him,
What an Asshole

I'm an asshole
(he's an asshole, what an asshole)
I'm an asshole
(he's the worlds biggest asshole)

A, SS, HO, LE
Everybody,
A, SS, HO, LE

I'm an asshole, and I'm Proud of it!

Put McCain Out of His Misery

2008-10-16T16:37:00.000+09:00

From Robert Shrum at HuffingtonPost:

At first, Senator McCain seemed to be resentfully respectful toward the probably presidential Obama; I think McCain must have heard from the same Republican operative who said to me that in this third debate, McCain had to come across as "presidential too" -- as Obama already did in the earlier debates and in his reaction to the financial crisis. This reflects a stunning role reversal during the past month, and the dimensions of the challenge that faced McCain tonight. He had to be in command, steady and reassuring, but his partisans were urging all-out war on Obama's character. When he takes that course, and he soon did, the polls show that voters turn away. They worry a lot more right now about paying their bills than about some guy named Bill Ayres. (But that would come from McCain -- because that's all he's got. .) And McCain had to know Obama would be ready, not just to answer and dismiss the attacks, but to cite them as proof that McCain can't deal with real concerns like the economy. And he can't: he just keeps repeating his tired falsehood about Obama raising taxes on most Americans and the middle class, when in fact he cuts them and Obama wins the exchange hands down.

And oh God here comes earmarks again. McCain sounded like a wind up toy -- and Obama readily turned his metronomic attacks aside.. The beleagured heir to Bush couldn't convincingly separate himself from Bush economics. Instead the differences he cited were torture and climate change. And he violated the first rule of debate -- don't issue a challenge the other guy can meet. Obama deftly cited a range of disagreements with his own party.

McCain also sounded like an aggrieved coot who thinks this campaign is all about him. Obama nailed him cold when he reminded his opponent that it's not about the hurt the candidates may feel, but the economic hurt inflicted on the American people.

Halfway through McCain's hate emerged. He defended the extremists at his rallies. He babbled about Bill Ayers and vindicated Obama's suggestion that Ayers is the centerpiece of his campaign -- which reinforced the charge that his own aides say he can't compete on the economy. It was an ugly interlude.

It was matched by the absurdity of his incoherent defense of Sarah Palin as a plausible vice president. One of her qualifications apparently is that Todd Palin is some tough guy. And Sarah, well now that Americans have some sense of her, she has some tough poll ratings.

No one could have coached McCain to be this bad. His criticism of Obama on trade: bye, bye Ohio. His decision to talk about how he repeals the tax deduction for health coverage: McCain got squashed again. " Senator Obama voted against Justice Breyer": it was in 1994 and Obama wasn't even in the Illinois State Senate, let alone the US Senate.. And if he thinks this election is about school vochers, he really is a nitwit.

When it isn't sad, it's sinister. McCain isn't a candidate anymore, but a negative research dump-- a heedless purveyors of distortion and untruth, a man who started off running on his experince, but ends up now as a right-wing caricature stumbling toward defeat with dishonor.

For McCain, the urgent need tonight was not for McCarthyism on Ayers or ACORN ( this one will not grow into a mighty campaign oak), but for sounding empathetic, informed and authoritative on the economy -- a daunting objective for someone who unforgettably, irretrievably said he doesn't know much about economics and the "fundamentals" are sound anyway. And when he did venture a half-understood point on this issue, was fighting on what is now decidedly Obama's ground. His latest, rushed policy re-invention came just a day before the debate and with a glaring credibility gap; McCain's own staff previewed the plan as a politically driven maneuver to appeal to senior citizen in battleground states.s.

McCain had to be presidential but wasn't, maybe because he knows that's now catch-up ball for him, not a game changer.

So his real choice in the final debate -- as in the final weeks -- is between defeat with honor, or a desperate and debased resort to untrue and irrelevant attacks that will leave him both defeated and dishonored.

This performance was embarrassing. Put McCain out of his misery -- hold the election now.

Ah I Do So Love this Young Lady....

2008-10-16T16:32:00.001+09:00

See more Hayden Panettiere videos at Funny or Die

Republican yuck yucks

2008-10-16T08:08:00.001+09:00

At the National Press Club Republican Congressional Club Chairman Tom Davis has a laugh before saying Republicans would "...never, ever do any along the lines of" voter suppression - on the record of course.

His response draws big larfs from all present. showing just how entertaining plutocratic rule by vote theft can be - I mean who could argue that the last eight years under Herr Bush haven't been anything but a joyride for the "little people" all round the world?

Elsewhere in the news, his dark majesty has retired to his mysterious grotto to convalesce in his sarcophagus. I'm certainly crossing my fingers in an earnest wish.

Lyrics of the Day

For a while I thought I fell asleep
Lying motionless inside a dream

Then rising suddenly
I felt a chilling breath upon me
She softly whispered in my ear
(Forsaken)

Forsaken
I have come for you tonight
Awaken
Look in my eyes and take my hand
Give yourself up to me

I waited faithfully
For night to fall again
Trying to silence the fear within me

Out of the night and mist
I felt a stinging kiss
And saw a crimson sting on her lips

I have to know your name

Where have I seen your face before
My dear why don't you be afraid

Forsaken
I have come for you tonight
Awaken
Look in my eyes and take my hand
Give yourself up to me
Take me far away
Close your eyes
And hold your breath
'Til the ends of the earth

Forsaken
I have come for you tonight
Awaken
Look in my eyes and take my hand
Forsaken
Fly away with me tonight
Awaken
Renew my life
Now you are mine
Give yourself up to me

---"Forsaken" - James LaBrie, John Myung, John Petrucci, Mike Portnoy, Jordan Rudess – Dream Theater

McCain Hires Token Black Man to Give "Spontaneous" Rally Praise

2008-10-11T23:08:00.001+09:00

I thought this looked totally staged.

Gee what a surprise. It was. McCain's goofballs actually paid some guy to be a token black "supporter" for the Evil Empire. Gee he must be proud to cash THAT check.

They bought it; now you eat it.

Bon appetit

Lyrics of the Day
These are the days
These are the good ones
After this it’s all down hill
I got a raise
But something smells rotten
All good till you can’t pay the bill

Don’t know what this has to do with drinking
Hooking up, that’s all I want to do
But that old song’s got me thinking

Drink up all your sorrow
Drink up, it’s almost tomorrow
Drink up, time is borrowed
Drink up tomorrow we’re through

I’ve heard it said
Seen it written
You can’t stand still on a moving train
The seats are soft
Cabin’s air-conditioned
You can’t feel
The wind or the rain

You ride along laughing and drinking
Hooking up with whomever you do
But the train you’re on is a ship that’s sinking

Drink up all your sorrow
Drink up, it’s almost tomorrow
Drink up, time is borrowed
Drink up tomorrow we’re through

These are the days
Of ones and zeros
After this there’s nothing new
Of all the ways
We could’ve been heroes
Tonight’s the best we’ll do

I’ll figure out what this has to do with drinking
And hooking up when those days are through
As the harsh truth starts to sink in

Drink up all your sorrow
Drink up, it’s only tomorrow
Drink up, time is borrowed
Drink up tomorrow we’re through…
-- "Drink Up", by Willie Wisely

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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR TOOLS
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John McRage

2008-10-10T06:52:00.000+09:00

Be Afraid... Be Very Afraid....

2008-10-04T20:50:00.003+09:00

Although pronunciation-challenged (for fuck's sakes, it's "NU-CLEE-UR" you retarded fucks) Sarah Palin may come across as just a "gee whilikers, aw shucks ya'll" specimen of folksy down-homism, should she get anywhere NEAR the nuclear football, there is a serious chance she may doom us all (well, more quickly than her party's fiscal and environmental policies already have). If this outtake from her replies at the VP debate doesn't send an icy chill down your spine, you need to cut back on the meds:

Quote of the Day

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...strangers hand
In a...desperate land

Lost in a roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah

There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the king's highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby

Ride the snake, ride the snake
To the lake, the ancient lake, baby
The snake is long, seven miles
Ride the snake...he's old, and his skin is cold

The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here, and well do the rest

The blue bus is callin' us
The blue bus is callin' us
Driver, where you takin' us

The killer awoke before dawn. He put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and...then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside
Father, yes son, I want to kill you
Mother...I want to...fuck you

C'mon baby, take a chance with us
C'mon baby, take a chance with us
C'mon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
Doin a blue rock
On a blue bus
Doin a blue rock
C'mon, yeah

Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill, kill

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end.

"The End" - Jim Morrison, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, John Densmore

Your Taxes Are Paying for War Crimes.....

2008-10-03T00:00:00.006+09:00

Well, it appears we STILL haven't heard of all of the war crimes that were committed at Abu Graib:
Veteran Benjamin Thompson, an MP at Abu Ghraib, has been touring the country telling shocking details of 10-year-old prisoners, deliberate mass manslaughter, and more.

Of course there's worse that he wasn't privy too. Although we're still holding 360 children prisoner in Iraqi prison camps exclusively for (often prepubescent) children. Other shadow detainees, have also long been reported, and by irrefutable sources.

Then there's General Taguba's report to the Pentagon:

"I saw [name redacted] fucking a kid; his age would be about 15 - 18 years. The kid was hurting very bad, and they covered all the doors with sheets. Then, when I heard the screaming, I climbed the door, because on top it wasn't covered, and I saw [name redacted], who was wearing the military uniform, putting his dick in the little kid's ass.... And the female soldier was taking pictures."

And among the 87 Abu Ghraib photographs and four videos the White House blocked from release, even worse abuses were recorded; as Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina explained it, "The American public needs to understand we're talking about rape and murder here. We're not just talking about giving people a humiliating experience. We're talking about rape and murder -- and some very serious charges."

At the ACLU 2004 America At A Crossroads conference, Pulitzer laureate Seymour Hersh, who helped uncover the scandal, got a little more specific:

"I can tell you it was much worse, and the government knows it was much worse....

"Some of the worse that happened that you don't know about, ok? Videos, there are women there. Some of you may have read they were passing letters, communications out to their men....The women were passing messages saying 'Please come and kill me, because of what's happened.'

"Basically what happened is that those women who were arrested with young boys/children in cases that have been recorded. The boys were sodomized with the cameras rolling. The worst about all of them is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking that your government has. They are in total terror it's going to come out."

But Donald Rumsfeld's 2004 testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee makes the Bush Administration's view on the matter abundantly clear: "If these are released to the public, obviously it's going to make matters worse."

He was patently not speaking of matters getting worse for the PRISONERS -- after all, it's impossible to do worse than imprisoning, torturing, raping and murdering. It thus becomes transparently obvious that he was referring to a public backlash against the Administration and the senior military officers involved.

Which is why, as the New York Times reported, the White House has been doing everything it can to prevent Americans from seeing what is in those photos and videos, absurdly arguing in court that by not showing the prisoners in the act of being raped and murdered, they are "protecting them from humiliation".

True to form, the White House has stepped in to prevent any hindrance of their asserted right to anally rape little boys and beat shackled, hooded prisoners to death -- even if 70% to 90% of them are known to have been ARRESTED BY MISTAKE and INNOCENT -- as admitted by senior American military officers.

"Dick" Cheney immediately took control of the effort to hamstring anti-torture legislation before it was even out of the gate. In a moment that smacked of Omerta, the vice-rat-bastard-in-chief held a closed-door meeting with the three senior Republicans, reportedly warning senators that their anti-torture legislation "...would interfere with the president's authority and his ability to protect Americans against terrorist attacks", and that the White House would respond to any Senate approval of such laws with a veto.

What are the consequences likely to be for OUR side's POWs if we continue to engage in this horrific, ineffective, soldier-endangering and illegal activity?

Well, it won't be pretty. Just ask Senator McCain.

Quote of the Day: "From my experience as a physician, the Abu Ghraib images are not an exception to the rules. They represent the rules, I believe, by which the U.S. government and military exercise power over a non-servile population to optimize the economic and political interests of an elite few in the U.S. and abroad. What is not the norm, what is exceptional, is the graphic revelation to the world of these horrors. In his book A Miracle, A Universe, New Yorker writer Lawrence Weschler crystallizes the torturer's message to the tortured: 'Scream. Scream as much as you like. It doesn't matter. No one is listening. No one will ever hear you. No one will ever know.' The torturer, like the state sponsoring him, depends on the obscurity of the victim and silence of witnesses to continue his crimes.

We are all witnesses now."

Dr. Miles Schuman, documentarian, Canadian Centre for Victims of Torture.

Ah! The Life of Luxury - One of the Sprawling McCain Mansions

2008-10-02T22:03:00.000+09:00

A Man with Direction!

2008-10-02T13:24:00.000+09:00

Republican Computer Fraud Expert: E-Vote Fix Underway by Rove, other Bushian Thugs....

2008-10-01T00:09:00.001+09:00

Velvet Revolution has published info about Stephen Spoonamore disclosing that our voting apparatus has been compromised and is under the very real threat of being permanently controlled by the ultraright corporatists and plutocrats that have been royally fucking up the US over the last eight years.

Last week, VR interviewed GOP Cyber security expert Stephen Spoonamore about the upcoming election and his testimony in the new Ohio litigation to take depositions of Karl Rove and others.

The video is posted in full below with ten short clips for You Tube viewing. This interview is so important and explosive that we urge everyone to watch it. Spoonamore says that the GOP wanted e-voting to steal elections but now foreign governments will be hacking and the winner will be determined by the best hackers. He says that if the GOP wins the hacking competition, McCain will win 51.2 percent with three electoral votes over Obama, and it will be a stolen election.

Spoon makes valid points about the people who have been implicated in much of the election thefts such as, “they are religious extremists.” He names those who know about stolen elections and he insists that the only way to protect this election is with paper ballots, hand counted. Check out this extraordinary interview here. >

http://www.velvetrevolution.us/prosecute_rove/images/SpoonIntvw3.wmv

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyByZx5GEaw It’s a network, people.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YadsHqxid8I Electronic voting machines are a national security threat.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbxuXC4QlMk The genie is out of the bottle….
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOHkY7sJ4ZI Fifty ways to steal an election.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1--KHOo8tkM Mike Connell: Bush IT Guru
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJHmuG8d2bQ The Rapp Family: Ohio election cover-up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z7DK3LgiOA Evangelicals and voting machines.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8WTe8ppEIic Paper ballots please.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1lrFkRHrRDI McCain/Palin will win by theft.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s07oi2G_K4c People should doubt the vote, it’s being stolen.

Being Fantastically Rich has its Privileges - How to Rescue a Cratering Economy

2008-09-29T02:01:00.001+09:00

So lawmakers struck a deal on the bailout last night, but where was John McCain?

Was he part of the negotiations that he rushed back to Washington, DC to rescue? Was he valiantly battling the forces of the status quo to get something done for Main Street?

Well, it turns out that he wasn't. Instead, he indulged in a luxury dining experience at CityZen, an icon of haute cuisine in Washington, DC.

Politico reports (update: Politico has updated the article and removed the reference to McCain's dinner, but as you can see in this Google search, the reference was there in the original article):

As his colleagues worked on the deal at the Capitol Saturday night, McCain and his wife, Cindy, dined with Sen. Joe Lieberman and his wife, Hadassah, at CityZen, one of Washington's best private restaurants.

No word on exactly what McCain ate at CityZen (which boasts an 800-bottle wine selection), but there's a limited range of possibilities, according to the establishment's menu.

Three menus are offered: a three-course prix fixe menu, a six-course chef's tasting menu or a vegetarian tasting menu.

The six course meal costs $110, with an optional "Sommelier's Pairing" for $75.

The restaurant serves treats such as Monterey Bay Squid Ratatouille; Shaved Sashimi of Geoduck Clam; Basic Infused Lettuce; Fricassee of Summer Beans, Flageolets, and CityZen Chorizo; Fromage Blanc Soufle Glace with AN Almond Biscuit Navel Orange Salad and Orange-Licorice Emulsion.

In it's 4-star review of the restaurant, Frommer's wrote:

You choose among three prix-fixe menus: three courses for $75, a six-course vegetarian tasting menu for $90, or a six-course $105 tasting menu. Starting with an amuse bouche of fried mushroom with truffle butter; moving on to a grilled pork jowl with marinated French green lentils, micro watercress, and shaved foie gras confit; and further on to the crispy skin filet of Atlantic black bass served with Rancho Gordo shelling beans, CityZen chorizo, and baby leeks -- every taste is exquisite and out of the ordinary. Waitstaff bring intermission refreshments, such as olive oil custard topped with infused butter or ginger sorbet in homemade root beer. Only a food artist would think to create sensations like the cardamom-dusted orange cruller with kumquat marmalade and African amber tea sorbet. The restaurant's 800-bottle wine selection concentrates on bordeaux, burgundy, and California cabernet.

Washingtonian Magazine hailed the restaurant's "chili consommé with an oval of chili-powder mousse."

Quote of the Day:

Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who wasn't there.
He wasn't there again today
I wish that man would go away.

--Hugh Means "I Met a Man Who Wasn't There"

America's Passing....

2008-09-28T02:38:00.001+09:00

From Wonkette (where holy Christ the comments are always hilarious) we have the following video and summary:

Oh good sweet god jesus shit WHAT IS EVEN HAPPENING HERE? The YouTube description says, “I came home from football practice one evening and my parents were talking to our neighbors who were drunk. This is what happened … I live in southeastern kentucky FYI.” Well, you have been warned, America. Here are three drunk Kentucky hillbillies ranting about Obama while sitting on a filthy AIDS unicorn.

Lyrics of the Day:
I was driving home
early Sunday morning through Bakersfield,
listening to gospel music on the colored radio station,
and the preacher said,
"You'll always have the Lord by your side."
And I was so pleased to be informed of this
that I ran twenty red lights in his honor.
Thank you, Jesus.
Thank you, Lord.

I had an arrangment to meet a girl
and I was kind of late.
And I thought by the time I got there
she'd be off...she'd be off
with the nearest truck driver she could find.
Much to my surprise, there she was,
sitting in the corner, a little bleary,
the worse for wear and tear,
was the girl with faraway eyes.

So if you're down on your luck
and you can't harmonize,
find a girl...with faraway eyes.
And if you're downright disgusted
and life ain't worth a dime,
get a girl...with faraway eyes.

Well the preacher kept right on saying
that all I had to do was send ten dollars
to the Church of the Sacred Bleeding Heart of Jesus,
located somewhere in Los Angeles, California,
and next week they'd say my prayer on the radio
and all my dreams would come true.
So I did.
Next week I got a prayer for the girl,
well you know what kind of eyes she got.

So if you're down on your luck,
I know y'all sympathize,
find a girl...with faraway eyes.
And if you're downright disgusted
and life ain't worth a dime,
get a girl...with faraway eyes.
So if you're down on your luck,
I know y'all sympathize,
with the girl...with faraway eyes.

-The Rolling Stones, "The Girl With Faraway Eyes"

Well I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison
And I went to pick her up in the rain
But before I could get to the station in a pickup truck
She got run'd over by a damned old train

--Steve Goodman, David Allan Coe, "You Never Called Me By My Name"

Republicans Think YOU are a fucking MORON!

2008-09-27T03:22:00.001+09:00

They hardly even bother with changing the words anymore. Ladies and gentlemen, Jon Stewart:

Quote of the Day:
Welcome to the Grand illusion
Come on in and see what's happening
Pay the price, get your tickets for the show
The stage is set, the band starts playing
Suddenly your heart is pounding
Wishing secretly you were a star.

But don't be fooled by the radio
The TV or the magazines
They show you photographs of how your life should be
But they're just someone else's fantasy
So if you think your life is complete confusion
Because you never win the game
Just remember that it's a Grand illusion
And deep inside we're all the same.
We're all the same...

So if you think your life is complete confusion
Because your neighbors got it made
Just remember that it's a Grand illusion
And deep inside we're all the same.
We're all the same...

America spells competition, join us in our blind ambition
Get yourself a brand new motor car
Someday soon we'll stop to ponder what on Earth's this spell we're under
We made the grade and still we wonder who the hell we are

-- Dennis DeYoung, et al, "The Grand Illusion"

AHnuld!

2008-09-26T14:17:00.000+09:00

Having met Arnold Schwarzenegger on Robson Street, I can attest that he is a cool mofo. His book on bodybuilding rocks, and the way he won Mr. Olympia seven times through the power of creative visualization is inspiring. He may be in the enemy's camp for the time being, but I still think he's a good guy at heart and is not afraid of being honest.

McLame busted lying in front of 11 million live viewers

2008-09-26T03:48:00.001+09:00

To quote badass Keanu (in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure or the m%$#$%#$%f^^^&%in' MATRIX, take your pick): Whoah.

McLame ducked out at the last minute on David Letterman, claiming (in an apparent quote over the telephone) that he had to immediately rush to DC to "rescue America", then, in what may prove to be a nutsack kick to the McLame campaign, Letterman ran a LIVE FEED of the shifty septuagenarian calmly having makeup troweled onto his milquetoastian mug THREE BLOCKS AWAY AT THE SAME TELEVISION NETWORK DOING AN INTERVIEW WITH ANCHOR KATIE COURIC.

As you can see, Letterman was righteously pissed when he saw the live feed and realized what was up, and he let fly:

From what the Internet rumor mill says, Letterman is not a media figure to be trifled with, and he has a LOOONNNNGGG memory. What's worse for McCain is that others are picking up on - and propagating - the story:

Also here and here.

Could be worse. People could start hearing about his Five THOUSAND DOLLAR makeup job.... OOPSIE!

Quote of the Day:
“You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig.
You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change. It's still gonna stink.
We've had enough of the same old thing."
--Senator Barack Obama

Naomi Wolf: Sarah "Evita" Palin, Muse of the Coming Police State

2008-09-23T23:27:00.000+09:00

From the Huffington Post. It appears I'm not the only one thinking these chilling thoughts....

Please understand what you are looking at when you look at Sarah "Evita" Palin. You are looking at the designated muse of the coming American police state.

You have to understand how things work in a closing society in order to understand "Palin Power." A gang or cabal seizes power, usually with an affable, weak figurehead at the fore. Then they will hold elections -- but they will make sure that the election will be corrupted and that the next affable, weak figurehead is entirely in their control. Remember, Russia has Presidents; Russia holds elections. Dictators and gangs of thugs all over the world hold elections. It means nothing. When a cabal has seized power you can have elections and even presidents, but you have freedom.

I realized early on with horror what I was seeing in Governor Palin: the continuation of the Rove-Cheney cabal, but this time without restraints. I heard her echo Bush 2000 soundbites ("the heart of America is on display") and realized Bush's speechwriters were writing her -- not McCain's -- speeches. I heard her tell George Bush's lies -- not McCain's -- to the American people, linking 9/11 to Iraq. I heard her make fun of Barack Obama for wanting to prevent the torture of prisoners -- this is Rove-Cheney's enthusiastic S and M, not McCain's, who, though he shamefully colluded in the 2006 Military Tribunals Act, is also a former prisoner of war and wrote an eloquent Newsweek piece in 2005 opposing torture. I saw that she was even styled by the same skillful stylist (neutral lipstick, matte makeup, dark colors) who turned Katharine Harris from a mall rat into a stateswoman and who styles all the women in the Bush orbit --but who does not bother to style Cindy McCain.

Then I saw and heard more. Palin is embracing lawlessness in defying Alaskan Legislature subpoenas --this is what Rove-Cheney, and not McCain, believe in doing. She uses mafia tactics against critics, like the police commissioner who was railroaded for opposing handguns in Alaskan battered women's shelters -- Rove's style, not McCain's. I realized what I was seeing.

Reports confirmed my suspicions: Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal. The strategy became clear. Time magazine reported that Rove is "dialed in" to the McCain campaign. Rove's protégé Steve Schmidt is now campaign manager. And Politico reported that Rove was heavily involved in McCain's vice presidential selection. Finally a new report shows that there are dozens of Bush and Rove operatives surrounding Sarah Palin and orchestrating her every move.

What's the plan? It is this. McCain doesn't matter. Reputable dermatologists are discussing the fact that in simply actuarial terms, John McCain has a virulent and life-threatening form of skin cancer. It is the elephant in the room, but we must discuss the health of the candidates: doctors put survival rates for someone his age at two to four years. I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last true American election. She will be working for Halliburton, KBR, Rove and Cheney into the foreseeable future -- for a decade perhaps -- a puppet "president" for the same people who have plundered our treasure, are now holding the US economy hostage and who murdered four thousand brave young men and women in a way of choice and lies.

How, you may ask, can I assert this? How can I argue, as I now do, that there is actually a war being ramped up against US citizens and our democracy and that Sarah Palin is the figurehead and muse for that war?

Look at the RNC. This is supposed to be McCain's America. But you see the unmistakable theatre of Rove's S and M imagery -- and you see stages eight, nine and ten of the steps to a dictatorship as I outlined them in The End of America. Preemptive arrest? Abusive arrest? "Newly released footage, which was buried to avoid confiscation, shows riot cops arresting and abusing a giant group of people for nothing."

Journalists were arrested -- for reporting. Amy Goodman and ABC producers were arrested. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake and others were forced to lie face down as armed agents tied their hands behind their backs. The riot police wore the black S&M gear of the Rovian fantasy life and carried the four foot batons cops carry in North Korea. All this is not John McCain's imagery or strategy: it is Karl Rove's.

In McCain-Palin's America, citizens who are protesting are being charged as terrorists. This means that a violent war had been declared on American citizens. A well known reporter leaked to me on background that St Paul police had dressed as protesters and, dressed in Black -- shades of the Blackshirts of 1920 -- infiltrated protest groups. There were also phalanxes of men in black wearing balaclavas, linking arms and behaving menacingly -- alleged "anarchists." Let me tell you, I have been on the left for thirty years and you can't get three lefties to wear the same t-shirt to a rally, let alone link arms and wear identical face masks: these are not our guys. Agent Provocateurs framing protesters and calling protest "terrorism" constitutes step ten of a police state:

"In what appears to be the first use of criminal charges under the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act, Ramsey County Prosecutors have formally charged 8 alleged leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism... [they] 7 1/2 years in prison under the terrorism enhancement charge which allows for a 50% increase in the maximum penalty."

"Paid, confidential informants... infiltrated the RNCWC on behalf of law enforcement. They allege that members of the group sought to kidnap delegates to the RNC, assault police officers with firebombs and explosives, and sabotage airports in St. Paul. Evidence released to date does not corroborate these allegations with physical evidence or provide any other evidence for these allegations than the claims of the informants. Based on past abuses of such informants by law enforcement, the National Lawyers Guild is concerned that such police informants have incentives to lie and exaggerate threats of violence and to also act as provocateurs in raising and urging support for acts of violence."

Under the Palin-Rove police state, you will see escalating infringements on your access to a free internet:

"Sarah Palin was baptized at Wasilla Assembly of God...Last Sunday our research team released a video, a ten-minute mini-documentary, focusing on the Wasilla Assemblies of God and the video seemed on the verge of a massive "viral" breakthrough when YouTube pulled it down, citing 'inappropriate content'. At the point the video was censored by YouTube it had been viewed by almost 160,000 people. The short of it is that YouTube has censored a video documentary that appeared to be close to having an effect on a hard fought and contentious American presidential election..."

Under the coming Palin-Rove police state, you will witness the plans now underway to bring Iraqi troops to patrol the streets of our nation. This is not McCain's fantasy: it is Rove's and Cheney's.

Under the Palin-Rove police state, there will be no further true elections. Mark Crispin Miller has done sensational and under-reported investigating t o establish that -- as I warned -- indeed the GOP staffers on the US Senate Judiciary Committee have been .

The evidence is also buried on the Website of the Majority House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

WASHINGTON -- Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe. >From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications witho ut a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics.

-- "Senate panel's GOP staff spied on Democrats" By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | January 22, 2004

Do you think that spying like this will ever end under a Palin-Rove regime? Dream on. If she and McCain are elected, then every single strategy memo and speech and debate prep note from every opposition candidate from now and on into forever will be read by the regime in power while it is still in the computers of the challengers.

Under the Palin-Rove police state, citizens will be targeted with state cyberterrorism. Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda, a former Reagan official, warned me three years ago that the Bush team went after a Republican who had crossed them through cyberstalking: they messed with his email, messed with his phones and I believe messed with his bank account -- he became a cyber-pariah, unemployable and haunted. With modern technology, there really is less place to hide from the state than there was in East Germany in the Cold War era. I remember feeling a chill: of course. That is the wave of the future once we breach the protections around citizens of FISA and the fourth amendment. That way lies the abyss for us all.

Am I trying to scare you? I am. I am trying to scare you to death and ask you to scare your Republican and independent friends most of all. How do you know when it is war on citizens? When there are mass arrests, journalists are jailed, the opposition is infiltrated, rights are stripped and leaders start to ignore the rule of law.

Almost everyone I work with on projects related to this campaign for liberty has been experiencing computer harassment: emails are stripped, messages disappear. That's not all: people's bank accounts are being tampered with: wire transfers to banks vanish in midair. I personally keep opening bank accounts that are quickly corrupted by fraud. Money vanishes. Coworkers of mine have to keep opening new email accounts as old ones become infected. And most disturbingly to me personally is the mail tampering I have both heard of and experienced firsthand. My tax returns vanished from my mailbox. All my larger envelopes arrive ripped straight open apparently by hand. When I show the postman, he says "That's impossible." Horrifyingly to me is the impact on my family. My childrens' report cards are returned again and again though perfectly addressed; their invitations are turned back; and my daughters many letters from camp? Vanished. All of them. Not one arrived. Try explaining that to a smart thirteen year old. Try explaining it in a way that still makes her feel secure and comfortable.

I am not telling you this because it's about my life. I am telling you this because it is about your life -- whoever you are, Conservative or Liberal, independent or evangelical. Your politics will not protect you in a police state. History shows that nothing portects you in a police state. This is not about my fear and anxiety: it is about what awaits you and everyone you love unless you see this for what it is:

Scharansky divided nations into "fear societies" and "free societies." Make no mistake: Sarah "Evita" Palin is Rove and Cheney's cosmetic rebranding of their fascist push: she will help to establish a true and irreversible "fear society" in this once free once proud nation. For God's sake, do not let her; do not let them.

I'll See You on the Dark Side of the Moon

2008-09-16T00:18:00.005+09:00

Sad news today:
Pink Floyd founding member, composer, synthesized music pioneer and brilliant self-taught (!) keyboardist Richard Wright has died.

More here.

In Deep, Respectful, Fond and Appreciative Memory

Richard William Wright 28/06/43 - 15/09/08

"Goodbye cruel world
I'm leaving you today
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye all you people
There's nothing you can say
To make me change
My mind
Goodbye."

McLame's Greatest Hits...

2008-09-16T00:18:00.000+09:00

From the ever brilliant Stephen Colbert:

Ruh-Roh....

2008-09-08T02:29:00.001+09:00

In the immortal words of Keanu Reeves as Neo:

Whoah.

Seems Sarah Palin, who claims her water broke before delivering an April 2008 keynote Republican address in Texas, then, dripping amniotic fluid from the 1.5-month premature high-risk birth of a baby already diagnosed with Down syndrome, decided the sensible thing to do was to skip rushing to a local hospital in favor of an 8-hour flight and an hour-long car ride to an isolated small-town Alaska hospital.

Here's a delightful high-resolution picture of the guvner a mere six weeks before the arrival of her miracle baby. Hey! Great legs for a woman entering her third trimester.

Funny that the flight crew had no idea a woman was in labor on their flight:
"The stage of her pregnancy was not apparent by observation. She did not show any signs of distress," (Alaska Airlines spokeswoman Caroline) Boren said.

Equally remarkable, she didn't show any "signs" whatsoever ONE MONTH prior to the magical birth either. From the Anchorage Daily News, March 6, 2008

SEVEN MONTHS ALONG: Even her staff was unaware that the first family was expecting a fifth child.

JUNEAU — Gov. Sarah Palin shocked and awed just about everybody around the Capitol on Wednesday when she announced she’s expecting her fifth child.

That the pregnancy is so advanced astonished all who heard the news. The governor, a runner who’s always been trim, simply doesn’t look pregnant.

Even close members of her staff said they only learned this week their boss was expecting.

But people just couldn’t believe the news.

“Really? No!”said Bethel state Rep. Mary Nelson, who is close to giving birth herself.

“It’s wonderful. She’s very well-disguised,” said Senate President Lyda Green, a mother of three who has sometimes sparred with Palin politically. “When I was five months pregnant, there was absolutely no question that I was with child.”

Daughter Palin, however, mysteriously absent from school for five months with "mononucleosis", was a different story altogether.

Now here's where things get really, um... dodgy....

It seems the hospital where it was announced that the GOVERNOR GAVE BIRTH HAS NO RECORD OF THE BIRTH ON THE "OFFICIAL" REPORTED DAY. In fact, there is no record of the birth of a Palin baby ANYWHERE in the official posted nursery records either.

Hmm....

Quote of the Day:
'“Curiouser and curiouser!” Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).'
-Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carrol

Let the Liefest Begin....

2008-09-05T01:41:00.001+09:00

Let's start with the ever-scintillating Jon Stewart, who brilliantly juxtaposes the frightwing's most notorious coin-operated lie dispensers against... themselves:

And then, lo and friggin' BEHOLD, wonder of all wonders, the AP (now america's ONLY national wire agency) actually does some fact-checking on the GOP convention speeches:

But let's not forget the snowballing scandalfest that is Sarah Palin herself. So who is the GOP's last-minute VP pick?

Funny, a lot of people seem to be asking that: 2-year Alaska governor; twice mayor of a small town (pop 9,780, called Wasilla. Was under investigation for having fired the town's police chief, ostensibly for having supported her opponent during the election. The judge ruled that firing the chief, even for purely political reasons, was not a crime.

She's currently under investigation for something similar - firing Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan, ostensibly because HE refused to fire a state trooper who had divorced Palin's sister.

It gets worse:
Palin also believes abortion should be illegal even in cases of rape, incest and even if it would save the mother's life. Known to be extremely conservative in her stances on the abortion, the military and religion, she is also aggressively in favor of oil drilling and weakening environmental protection laws.

She's a global warming skeptic, wants mandatory creationism teaching, wants to further increase the health-care costs for patients and wants to ban all stem-cell research.

And, while she hasn't SPECIFICALLY endorsed public stonings for adultery yet, I'm taking a "wait and see" approach....

Additionally, she recently claimed to have given birth to Trig, a baby with Down Syndrome, but was suspiciously active (running 8 km, etc.) and not "showing" at all within days of the birth. This was so "remarkable" that many colleagues publicly commented on it.

However, contemporary photos(suspiciously removed right after the VP announcement) on the official Alaska state website showed Palin's 16-year-old daughter with a marked paunch (although obviously otherwise slender in build).

Apparently worried about the evidence that the aforementioned juicy family pictures contained (that is, before they were mysteriously pulled from the official Alaska state website the day after McCain's VP pick announcement)

Palin suddenly made the announcement that her 17-year-old daughter is five months pregnant. Hmmm, sure doesn't explain this March 9, 2007 family pic:

or this one

or this video, taken just two months before little Tyke was born, while 16-year-old Palin was in her 4th month of extended absence from school for "mononucleosis" (after several of her classmates said she was pregnant). (Grand)ma appears surprisingly trim and spry for a lady TWO MONTHS BEFORE GIVING BIRTH (lookiter GO!!! - and nice little comment about how she loves to "thrash her guts running up these hills")....

A month later, Governor Palin shocked her staff and colleagues by publicly announcing she was 7 months pregnant. People were reportedly stunned by the news, as she gave no signs whatsoever.

Conveniently enough, Palin reported going into labor while on an airplane, although all the flight crew reported a completely uneventful flight.....

Hmm....

More entertaining/enlightening vids:
http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=aoPK4pvOE4o

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=SrVab3EQY7I

Aside from that, she and her wayward young daughter certainly give me a boner. Hope like hell she and McLame lose. Perhaps then humanity might survive more than another few decades. Call me an optimist.

!

2008-09-02T03:54:00.001+09:00

The Pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons Group - Join us!

2008-08-23T19:07:00.000+09:00

One more for GG (who would've approved heartily):
Pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons Group
also:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/group/Pro-ObamaDungeonsandDragonsCrowd

With a Vorpal blade and Shield of Force, Boots of Speed and Red Dragon Armor of Light, let's go kick some serious ass!

Medley of the Day:
Rush - ByTor/In The End/In The Mood/2112

Grandaddy McWarBuck$

2008-08-22T09:52:00.003+09:00

Wow. McCain sure ain't hurtin'. Even by his own standards:

And, in fact, he and his >ahem!< esteemed second wife own more than TEN residences. No wonder he can't keep track. It's complicated. Thankfully, Architectural Digest is on hand to remind the septegenarian who would be king with a lurvely liddle picture tour.

Because, of course, ONE obscenely grandiose palace is simply inadequate:

And now, through the miracle of ye olde Internets, we can get a better handle on just how much turf Grampsies owns:

But a bird's eye view just doesn't adequately express the eye-popping scale of opulence:

Too bad Grumpy McSnurkle can't figure out how to watch it wifout a liddle help:

Whew! Gonna be a looooonnnngggg coupla months for gramps.

Lyric of the Day
If you didn't care what happened to me,
And I didn't care for you,
We would zig zag our way through the boredom and pain
Occasionally glancing up through the rain.
Wondering which of the buggars to blame
And watching for pigs on the wing.
"Pigs on the Wing", Roger Waters

Obama Hits One Outta the Park....

2008-08-22T02:06:00.000+09:00

Whoo-boy! McLame thought by going for the lowblows he could pull ahead.

His loss.

Because, let's face it, Barack Obama is LIGHT-YEARS beyond Jahn McLame in sophistication, wit, depth, morality, insight and raw intelligence. So, when it's time to hit back, Obama nails it in thirty seconds.

At least for the current news cycle, stick a fork in 'im, McLame's done.

Quote of the Day:
"Woohoo!"
--Homer Simpson

FRAT BOY BUSH AT THE OLYMPICS - Allen Roland and Gawker/Wonkette

2008-08-20T01:45:00.000+09:00

You know Allen Roland has a good heart. He spams the fuck outta me, and sometimes lays on the spiritual mumbo-jumbo malarky pretty thick, but all in all, his head and heart are in the right place. Witness the following wonderful bit of bloggery. Hat tips, of course also to HBBOM (hot blogging babe of the millenium) Wonkette, whose website, particularly the comments, never ceases to make me splorge my morning coffee out of my nose with uncontrolled hooting laughter.

There is a tendency, when you know the jig is up, to let it all hang out ~ after all how can I embarrass myself anymore than being the most unpopular president in American History ~ but George W Bush has accomplished that feat by making a fool of himself at the summer Olympics at Beijing : Allen L Roland

When the so-called Leader of the Free world, George W Bush, makes a fool out of himself on the world stage ~ it is news and here are the photos to record and prove it.
http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2008/08/13.html

Bush looking drunk at the Olympics
http://gawker.com/5035885/bush-looking-drunk-at-the-olympics

No one's saying teetotaling President Bush would actually try and sneak some shots of alcohol while enjoying himself at the Beijing Olympics as his apocalyptically bad presidency recedes into history. That's the sort of thing
you'd read in, say, the National Enquirer, which as everyone knows is full of trashy tabloid lies.

Besides, the president doesn't have to consume actual alcohol to act like a bumbling fraternity president. Still, it's worth noting that Bush has been doing a funny/terrifying impersonation of a drunk president for all the press photographers at the Olympics. He's even got the red face thing down! After the jump, enjoy a photo gallery of the president looking his most wasted, from that beach volleyball embarrassment to daughter Barbara looking embarrassed next to Bush at a swimming match, plus some of the other ones Wonkette found on Four Winds 10 last night and some other ones thrown in for fun.

The AP caption reads, "U.S. President George W. Bush stumbles as he and his wife Laura, front, arrive to watch the swimming competitions." So it's not that he's having trouble standing, as some have suggested. It's sitting that's the problem. Totally different.

"This is all you have to show for the past four years of your life?" Note the nose.

"
Kidding, heh. Actually I'll take this now." Note the red face.

"Nice flip turn or whatever, dude."

"Seriously, Dad, maybe just be a little presidential .."

"OK, what the hell are you even..."

"
Now you've gone and embarrassed yourself in front of both of Mitt's wives. Ugh."

Bush with Chinese president Hu Jintao, looking a bit ruddy....

...and a bit droopy-eyed.

To be fair, she asked him to back-spank her.

Looks like somebody fell!

(Photos: AP and Getty Images)

Out of control and out of touch ~ our frat boy President at the Olympics.

Allen L Roland http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2008/08/13.html

Dealing with Repugnut Spam.....

2008-07-11T02:25:00.003+09:00

To Hell with "reaching across the aisle" -- we're knee-deep in a do-or-die global class war instigated by the Bush-Reagan clan, and anyone who says different has either been sleepwalking through the last three decades or is a pathological liar.

Finding something fetid in my email box, I jotted off a polite little "thanks but no thanks" to the sender; to wit:

Sorry, but I can't stand Republicans. Amoral, evil, conniving, selfish, opportunistic, smug, heartless, greedy plutocrats one and all. Domenici was such a worthless bastard his own party threw hium under a bus - doesn't speak well for you that you were his loyal stooge.

But hey, thanks anyway, have a great day. Try not to napalm and eat any non-white children today, kthxby

A month later, the original sender's witty rejoinder arrived:

Go fuck yourself

So much for compassionate conservatism. Not to mention family values.

Song of the Day:
Handlebars - the Flobots

Tokyo Train Follies

2008-07-09T23:38:00.000+09:00

So, riding the train to my "albaito" (part-time job) today, I was in a rush and thus chowing down on a "bento box" (convenience store dinner), when the 50-something woman across from me remarked approvingly in Japanese, "My, how well you're able to use chopsticks!" and tittered to the woman beside her "isn't that so clever!"

To me, this is the "friendly" equivalent of "Gee, look at the monkey; it looks almost human! Isn't it clever!"

Having been raised in Vancouver, with weekly visits to Chinatown, it's safe to say I've been using chopsticks pretty much as long as she has, but, since that's a little lengthy to say, I just said, "Well, I HAVE been living in Tokyo six years, ma'am."

To humble herself for the comment, she twittered to her seatmate, "You know, I never could get the hang of those fork-and-knife things...."

I couldn't resist saying, "How are you with cups?"

Don't think she got it though.

Time to get a scooter.

You Have the Right to Remain Silent....

2008-07-08T22:32:00.000+09:00

The Repugnican brownshirts are gearing up intensely in advance of their conventions. They apparently anticipate trouble from American citizens on a scale warranting the use of the same weapons allegedly being deployed on terrorists in Iraq.

Now, color me naive, but if a government's acting in the interests of its citizenry, why on Earth would it need to turn weapons on its ~~constituents~~ employers?!?

There's also the nagging question about those thousands of acres of prisons they're building in the US....

Oh, wait a minute - no worries; Halliburton's on top of that one - at least if you believe such a fringe publication as BusinessWire. And guess what? Your personal interests are hardly at heart.

No wonder Bush is planning to go into hiding after his blessed retirement.

Sigh... plus ca change...

Lyrics of the Day
"The hills find peace
Locked armed guard posts
Safe from the screams
Of the children born as ghosts

Gates, guns and alarms
Shape the calm of the dawn
Peering down into the basin
Where death lives on

Where young run foaming at the mouth with hate
Where burning batons beat the freezing who shake
Under the toxic sunsets they dine and toast
Their walls deny the terror faced

By the children born as ghosts
Born as ghosts
A warning, you sufferers, begin to speak our words
Born as ghosts
A warning, you sufferers, begin to speak our words
Born as ghosts
A warning, you sufferers, begin to speak our words
Born as ghosts
Were the children born as ghosts

Born as ghosts

One book and forty odd
Stuffed in a room
Ah, the school as a tomb
Where home is a wasteland
Taste the razor wire

And thought is locked in the womb
The tales that tear at the myth of the dream
(myth of the dream, myth of the dream)
A suffering that shocks the lives off the screen
(myth of the dream, myth of the dream)

Born as ghosts
A warning, you sufferers, begin to speak our words
Born as ghosts
Born as ghosts"
-- "Born as Ghosts" - Rage Against the Machine

CIA Analyst: Bush Iran Invasion Imminent....

2008-06-24T10:56:00.000+09:00

Ray McGovern writes at consortiumnews.com that Bush and Israel's equally-popular prime minister Ehud Olmert have set the wheels in motion for a full-scale attack on Iran, and that Bush is being led down the war-garden path by His Dark Majesty.

How close are we to the next round of Bush genocide? According to Eric Garris, seven days away:

Iran War Resolution May Be Passed Next Week

Introduced less than a month ago, Resolution 362, also known as the Iran War Resolution, could be passed by the House as early as next week.

The bill is the chief legislative priority of AIPAC. On its Web site, AIPAC endorses the resolutions as a way to ”Stop Iran’s Nuclear Program” and tells readers to lobby Congress to pass the bill. In the Senate, a sister resolution, Resolution 580, has gained co-sponsors with similar speed. The Senate measure was introduced by Indiana Democrat Evan Bayh on June 2. It has since gained 19 co-sponsors.

Dennis Kucinich: "tink-tink-trink. HELLO?!? Is this thing ON?!?"

John Wexler (through a megaphone): "Mr. Conyers?!? Ms. Pelosi?!? Anybody?!?"

Let's hope they can be stopped. Says McGovern:

Unlike the attack on Iraq five years ago, to deal with Iran there need be no massing of troops. And, with the propaganda buildup already well under way, there need be little, if any, forewarning before shock and awe and pox – in the form of air and missile attacks – begin.

This time it will be largely the Air Force's show, punctuated by missile and air strikes by the Navy. Israeli-American agreement has now been reached at the highest level; the armed forces planners, plotters and pilots are working out the details.

Emerging from a 90-minute White House meeting with President George W. Bush on June 4, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said the two leaders were of one mind:

"We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat. I left with a lot less question marks [than] I had entered with regarding the means, the timetable restrictions, and American resoluteness to deal with the problem. George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on that matter before the end of his term in the White House."

Does that sound like a man concerned that Bush is just bluff and bluster?

A member of Olmert's delegation noted that same day that the two countries had agreed to cooperate in case of an attack by Iran, and that "the meetings focused on 'operational matters' pertaining to the Iranian threat." So bring 'em on!

A show of hands please. How many believe Iran is about to attack the U.S. or Israel?

You say you missed Olmert's account of what Bush has undertaken to do? So did I. We are indebted to intrepid journalist Chris Hedges for including the quote in his article of June 8, "The Iran Trap."

We can perhaps be excused for missing Olmert's confident words about "Israel's best friend" that week. Your attention – like mine – may have been riveted on the June 5 release of the findings of the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding administration misrepresentations of pre-Iraq-war intelligence – the so-called "Phase II" investigation (also known, irreverently, as the "Waiting-for-Godot Study").

Better late than never, I suppose.

Oversight?

Yet I found myself thinking: It took them five years, and that is what passes for oversight? Yes, the president and vice president and their courtiers lied us into war. And now a bipartisan report could assert that fact formally; and committee chair Jay Rockefeller could sum it up succinctly:

"In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when in reality it was unsubstantiated, contradicted, or even non-existent. As a result, the American people were led to believe that the threat from Iraq was much greater than actually existed."

But as I listened to Senator Rockefeller, I had this sinking feeling that in five or six years time, those of us still around will be listening to a very similar post mortem looking back on an even more disastrous attack on Iran.

My colleagues and I in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) issued repeated warnings, before the invasion of Iraq, about the warping of intelligence. And our memoranda met considerable resonance in foreign media.

We could get no ink or airtime, however, in the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) in the U.S. Nor can we now.

In a same-day critique of Colin Powell's unfortunate speech to the U.N. on Feb. 5, 2003, we warned the president to widen his circle of advisers "beyond those clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."

It was a no-brainer for anyone who knew anything about intelligence, the Middle East, and the brown noses leading intelligence analysis at the CIA.

Former U.N. senior weapons inspector and former Marine major, Scott Ritter, and many others were saying the same thing. But none of us could get past the president's praetorian guard to drop a memo into his in-box, so to speak. Nor can we now.

The 'Iranian Threat'

However much the same warnings are called for now with respect to Iran, there is even less prospect that any contrarians could puncture and break through what former White House spokesman Scott McClellan calls the president's "bubble."

By all indications, Vice President Dick Cheney and his huge staff continue to control the flow of information to the president.

But, you say, the president cannot be unaware of the far-reaching disaster an attack on Iran would bring?

Well, this is a president who admits he does not read newspapers, but rather depends on his staff to keep him informed. And the memos Cheney does brief to Bush pooh-pooh the dangers.

This time no one is saying we will be welcomed as liberators, since the planning does not include – officially, at least – any U.S. boots on the ground.

Besides, even on important issues like the price of gasoline, the performance of the president's staff has been spotty.

Think back on the White House press conference of Feb. 28, when Bush was asked what advice he would give to Americans facing the prospect of $4-a-gallon gasoline.

"Wait, what did you just say?" the president interrupted. "You're predicting $4-a-gallon gasoline?...That's interesting. I hadn't heard that."

A poll in January showed that nearly three-quarters of Americans were expecting $4-a-gallon gas. That forecast was widely reported in late February, and discussed by the White House press secretary at the media briefing the day before the president's press conference.

Here's the alarming thing: Unlike Iraq, which was prostrate after the Gulf War and a dozen years of sanctions, Iran can retaliate in a number of dangerous ways, launching a war for which our forces are ill-prepared.

The lethality, intensity and breadth of ensuing hostilities will make the violence in Iraq look, in comparison, like a volleyball game between St. Helena's High School and Mount St. Ursula.

Cheney's Brainchild

Attacking Iran is Vice President Dick Cheney's brainchild, if that is the correct word.

Cheney proposed launching air strikes last summer on Iranian Revolutionary Guards bases, but was thwarted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff who insisted that would be unwise, according to J. Scott Carpenter, a senior State Department official at the time.

Chastened by the unending debacle in Iraq, this time around Pentagon officials reportedly are insisting on a "policy decision" regarding "what would happen after the Iranians would go after our folks," according to Carpenter.

Serious concerns include the vulnerability of the critical U.S. supply line from Kuwait to Baghdad, our inability to reinforce and the eventual possibility that the U.S. might be forced into a choice between ignominious retreat and using, or threatening to use, "mini-nukes."

Pentagon opposition was confirmed in a July 2007 commentary by former Bush adviser Michael Gerson, who noted the "fear of the military leadership" that Iran would have "escalation dominance" in any conflict with the U.S.

Writing in the Washington Post last July, Gerson indicated that "escalation dominance" means, "in a broadened conflict, the Iranians could complicate our lives in Iraq and the region more than we complicate theirs."

The Joint Chiefs also have opposed the option of attacking Iran's nuclear sites, according to former Iran specialist at the National Security Council, Hillary Mann, who has close ties with senior Pentagon officials.

Mann confirmed that Adm. William Fallon joined the Joint Chiefs in strongly opposing such an attack, adding that he made his opposition known to the White House, as well.

The outspoken Fallon was forced to resign in March, and will be replaced as CENTCOM commander by Gen. David Petraeus – apparently in September. Petraeus has already demonstrated his penchant to circumvent the chain of command in order to do Cheney's bidding (by making false claims about Iranian weaponry in Iraq, for example).

In sum, a perfect storm seems to be gathering in late summer or early fall.

Controlled Media

The experience of those of us whose job it was to analyze the controlled media of the Soviet Union and China for insights into Russian and Chinese intentions have been able to put that experience to good use in monitoring our own controlled media as they parrot the party line.

Suffice it to say that the FCM is already well embarked, a la Iraq, on its accustomed mission to provide stenographic services for the White House to indoctrinate Americans on the "threat" from Iran and prepare them for the planned air and missile attacks.

At least this time we are spared the "mushroom cloud" bugaboo. Neither Bush nor Cheney wish to call attention, even indirectly, to the fact that all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies concluded last November that Iran had stopped nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 and had not resumed it as of last year.

In a pre-FCM age, it would have been looked on as inopportune, at the least, to manufacture intelligence to justify another war hard on the heels of a congressional report that on Iraq the administration made significant claims not supported by the intelligence.

But (surprise, surprise!) the very damning Senate Intelligence Committee report got meager exposure in the media.

So far it has been a handful of senior military officers that have kept us from war with Iran. It hardly suffices to give them vocal encouragement, or to warn them that the post WW-II Nuremberg Tribunal ruled explicitly that "just-following-orders" is no defense when war crimes are involved.

And still less when the "supreme international crime" – a war of aggression is involved.

Senior officers trying to slow the juggernaut lumbering along toward an attack on Iran have been scandalized watching what can only be described as unconscionable dereliction of duty in the House of Representatives, which the Constitution charges with the duty of impeaching a president, vice president or other senior official charged with high crimes and misdemeanors.

Where Are You, Conyers?

In 2005, before John Conyers became chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary, he introduced a bill to explore impeaching the president and was asked by Lewis Lapham of Harpers why he was for impeachment then. He replied:

"To take away the excuse that we didn't know. So that two, or four, or ten years from now, if somebody should ask, 'Where were you, Conyers, and where was the U.S. Congress?' when the Bush administration declared the Constitution inoperative...none of the company here present can plead ignorance or temporary insanity [or] say that 'somehow it escaped our notice.'"

In the three years since then, the train of abuses and usurpations has gotten longer and Conyers has become chair of the committee. Yet he has dawdled and dawdled, and has shown no appetite for impeachment.

On July 23, 2007, Conyers told Cindy Sheehan, Rev. Lennox Yearwood, and me that he would need 218 votes in the House and they were not there.

A week ago, 251 members of the House voted to refer to Conyers' committee the 35 Articles of Impeachment proposed by Congressman Dennis Kucinich.

Former Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman, who sat on Judiciary with Conyers when it voted out three articles of impeachment on President Richard Nixon, spoke out immediately: "The House should commence an impeachment inquiry forthwith."

Much of the work has been done. As Holtzman noted, Kucinich's Articles of Impeachment, together with the Senate report that on Iraq we were led to war based on false pretenses – arguably the most serious charge – go a long way toward jump-starting any additional investigative work Congress needs to do.

And seldom mentioned is the voluminous book published by Conyers himself, "Constitution in Crisis," containing a wealth of relevant detail on the crimes of the current executive.

Conyers' complaint that there is not enough time is a dog that won't hunt, as Lyndon Johnson would say.

How can Conyers say this one day, and on the next say that if Bush attacks Iran, well then, the House may move toward impeachment.

Afraid of the media?

During the meeting last July with Cindy Sheehan, Rev. Yearwood and me, and during an interview in December on "Democracy Now," Conyers was surprisingly candid in expressing his fear of Fox News and how it could paint Democrats as divisive if they pursued impeachment.

Ironically, this time it is Fox and the rest of the FCM that is afraid – witness their virtual silence on Kucinich's very damning 35 Articles of Impeachment.

The only way to encourage constructive media attention would be for Conyers to act. The FCM could be expected to fulminate against that, but they could not afford to ignore impeachment, as they are able to ignore other unpleasant things – like preparations for another "war of choice."

I would argue that perhaps the most effective way to prevent air and missile attacks on Iran and a wider Middle East war is to proceed as Elizabeth Holtzman urges – with impeachment "forthwith."

Does Conyers not owe at least that much encouragement to those courageous officers who have stood up to Cheney in trying to prevent wider war and catastrophe in the Middle East?

Scott McClellan has been quite clear in reminding us that once the president decided to invade Iraq, he was not going to let anything stop him. There is ample evidence that Bush has taken a similar decision with respect to Iran – with Olmert as his chief counsel, no less.

It is getting late, but this is due largely to Conyers' own dithering. Now, to his credit, Dennis Kucinich has forced the issue with 35 well-drafted Articles of Impeachment.

What the country needs is the young John Conyers back. Not the one now surrounded by fancy lawyers and henpecked by the lady of the House.

In October 1974, after he and the even younger Elizabeth Holtzman faced up to their duty on House Judiciary and voted out three Articles of Impeachment on President Richard Nixon, Conyers wrote this:

"This inquiry was forced on us by an accumulation of disclosures which, finally and after unnecessary delays, could no longer be ignored...Impeachment is difficult and it is painful, but the courage to do what must be done is the price of remaining free."

Someone needs to ask John Conyers if he still believes that; and, if he does, he must summon the courage to "do what must be done."

George Carlin: RIP

2008-06-23T23:49:00.001+09:00

George Carlin, comic genius, has just died of heart failure. Everybody's favorite foul-mouthed old uncle, he will be missed.

The O'Reilly Factor in a Minute

2008-06-22T08:56:00.001+09:00

23/6 ("Some of the News Most of the Time") has performed the valiant public service of sitting through a complete episode of the Shut Up! Factor and brought us the condensed version:

Significantly more palatable, as I'm sure you'll agree.

That He Did....

2008-06-21T01:56:00.000+09:00

Oh my, yes this is fucking funny.

And trashy.

File it under "things I love".....

:-)

In Case you'd Forgotten....

2008-06-11T04:54:00.000+09:00

Lest you forget the incontrovertible truth, Jarvis Cocker is on hand to provide a little reminder:

Running The World

C'mon, sing along! You know the words!

My Troll Comeuppance success story....

2008-05-25T17:48:00.000+09:00

A recent posting on DailyKos brought to mind a nasty tangling with an online troll a coupla years back.

This kid was a real winner - I mean a died-in-the-wool bastard of the worst sort. I had posted some political references during the runup to the Iraq Occupation, and apparently that didn't sit well with a certain young sociopath.

Because I was new to the forum scene, I was pretty naive, and none too careful with my personal data, posting my real name, noit to mention some details about my life, such as how my grandfather pulled me out of a life of street thuggery and poverty.

Said young man took it upon himself to ridicule and belittle me in the nastiest ways, referring in the nastiest terms to my dead grandfather, and scouring the webn to find out everything he could about me.

He eventually went so far as to track down my phone number, then call and harrass me at home.

I sought legal assistance at that point, but was told there was little they could do for various reasons.

So I decided to turn the tables. This particular young man suffered from an overinflated ego in addition to his varied mental derangements. For starters, his online alias was that of a famous serial killer, and he would repeatedly make "jokes" about the goriest, sickest topics you could imagine - child-torturing serial killers, cannibals, things of that sort.

At any rate, the kid (19 at the time) also was a little too thick to realize that reusing the same alias on other forums might not be the brightest idea.

And so I turned the tables - he had been bragging in the forums about how he was "hate-stalking" me and posing as me when sending letters out to policitians, joining lunatic fringe groups, etc.

I began following his footsteps online as well, carefully reading all his posts. He was indeed a nasty piece of work as it turned out - at one point he bragged about having jumped a retarded kid from behind in junior high school, beaten the boy severely and stolen his expensive new walkman. He bragged about laughing while the kid cried. As if this was something to be proud of.

Though it was a different forum, I knew I was on the right track.

All this time, mind you, he was periodically sending me hate emails and calling late at night, etc.

So I posed as an attractive young woman from his hometown, who had newly joined the forum. I had seen his picture and new his hometown and first name, but needed a tad more.

He started sending (decidedly crass and egotistical) come-ons through the forum, and I played along, until he gave me his last name and cellular phone number. Bingo! Had him.

All it took was a single phone call.

Didn't say a word, just called.

Hello? Hello?!? Hello?!?!?

Silence.

After a minute, he hung up.

That's all it took.

Two years since I made the call, and I've never been bothered again. But, should he ever dare hassle me again, I've kept his info. And he knows I can come for him anytime.

Vindication sure feels good.

Those Wacky Soviets.....

2008-05-22T02:26:00.001+09:00

Perusing a Russian photoposting blog turned up the craziest things...

Personal favorites:

And, sorry, I don't give a fuck what you say - Paris Hilton is hawt.

Did you ever notice that?

2008-05-19T12:14:00.000+09:00

Pinky and the Buzzcocks

2008-04-19T19:00:00.009+09:00

Much as I love animals in general and cats in particular, there are times when I'm filled with a nearly overwhelming urge to hurl Bibi, my 3-year-old ex-male Russian Blue, out the window.

Oh yes, I hear you; he's certainly cute and cuddly. But when he starts a-howling at 4, 5, and 6 am night after night after night, interspecies relations tend to break down a tad.

Still, there's something to be said for the notion that "no matter what your circumstance, someone is better off and worse off than you". Aptly demonstrated by Pinky the cat.

And when English teaching hell begins to fully erode one's sanity, thankfully there is always the opportunity to fuck with one's students' heads. Thus, last week's lesson included a short primer on the clever lyrical wit of the Buzzcocks:

Johnny want fucky always and ALL WAYS
He's got the energy, he will aMAZE,
'cause he's an OR-GASM ADDICT, yes he's an OR-GASM ADDICT
He's always at it.....

Orgasm Addict – The Buzzcocks
Well you tried it just once found it all right for kicks.
But now you found out that it's a habit that sticks.
And you're an orgasm addict. You're an orgasm addict.

Sneaking in the back door with dirty magazines.
Now your mother wants to know what all those stains are on your jeans.
And you're an orgasm addict. You're an orgasm addict.

uh huh, uh huh, uhhhhh [x3]

You get in a heat, you get in a sulk.
But you still keep a-beatin your meat to pulp.
And you're an orgasm addict. You're an orgasm addict.

You're a kid Casanova.
You're no Joseph it's a labour of love
Fucking yourself to death.
Orgasm addict. You're an orgasm addict.

Uh huh, uh huh, uh huhhhhh [x10]

You're makin' out with schoolkids, winos and heads of state.
You even made it with the lady who puts plastic bobins on Christmas cakes.
Butchers' assistants and bellhops, you've had them all here and there.
Children of God and The Joy Strings,
International women with no body hair.

Oooh, so where they're askin' in an alley and your voice ain't steady.
If your sex mechanic's rough you're more than ready.
You're an orgasm addict.
You're an orgasm addict.

Johnny want fuckie always and all ways.
He's got the energy, he will amaze.
And he's an orgasm addict.
He's an orgasm addict.

He's always at it.
He's always at it.
And he's an orgasm addict. He's an orgasm addict.

オルガスム常用者 -ザバズコクス
それを1回当たりを付けたと面白がるに大丈夫と思った。
然し今ではあなたがそれはねちねちな習慣なことを知ている。
そしてあなたはオルガスムの常用者です。オルガスムの常用者です。

不道徳な雑誌を持っていって後ろのとびらにスネークイン。
今お母さんはジーンズの上の染みについて説明が欲しいです。
そしてあなたはオルガスムの常用者です。オルガスムの常用者です。

うん。うん。んんん一。

あなたは熱の中にを得ます、拗ねる。
しかしもソーセージをパルプに強かっているんです。
そしてあなたはオルガスムの常用者です。オルガスムの常用者です。

あなたはキッドCasanova です。
あなたは Joseph ではない, 大好きな労動です。
死ぬまで自分で性交しています。
オルガスムの常用者です。あなたはオルガスムの常用者です。

うん。うん。んんん一。

学生, 飲んだくれ,政治家とペッティングしている
クリスマスケーキ作っている叔母さんもさえ最後までいった
肉屋の店員もベルボーイと彼方此方で遊んだ
神様の子ども達と「クリスチャンのバンド」ザジョイストリングズ
無毛な国際的の女の人達

汚い路地で彼らは尋ねているそれであなたの声は浮き腰です
もしあなたのセクシュアルメカニックは圭角の有ったらあなたは気負う。あなたはオルガスムの常用者です。
あなたはオルガスムの常用者です。

ジョン君は何時も、何でもかでもファックファックガ欲しい。
エネルギガ多くて、驚かせる。
そして彼はオルガスムの常用者です。
彼はオルガスムの常用者です。

彼何時もそれをしている
彼何時もそれをしている
そして彼はオルガスムの常用者です。彼はオルガスムの常用者です。

Next week, we'll address moral conundrums implicit in "Now I Wanna Be Your Dog", by Iggy and the Stooges, as interpreted by Johnny Rotten and the Sex Pistols. Who says teaching Engrish can't be fun?

Update: Buzzcocks guitarist Pete Shelley has just corrected me on the English lyrics. They reference the British gospel band "The Joy Strings". 'Tis an honor, sir....

Additionally, holy fuck this posthumous tribute to promoter/icon John Peel is the coolest remake ever - "Ever Fallen in Love" guest-starring Roger Fucking Daltry, Robert Fucking Plant, David Fucking Gilmore and Elton Fucking John. That's like virtually half of every single one of my personal Rock and Roll Gods in a single recording (the other half with the exception of Paul Fucking McCartney all being dead)....

Very, very cool....

Update: and lest we forget the timeless, brilliant original:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRE79bxfMtY&feature=related

Random Blatherings

2008-04-18T14:22:00.002+09:00

The Temple of Elemental Shite
First, there is the little issue of the D&D PC "tribute" called "The Temple of Elemental Evil".

May the phantom of Gary Gygax forever torment those responsible for foisting this bit of bloated, overpriced snoreware upon a hapless, helpless, undeservedly innocent public. To say it sucks goat balls is being charitable.

Although the graphics, interface, NPC interaction and "action" all respectively bring the genre to hitherto unplumbed depths of inferiority, of particular annoyance are the gratingly fake "British" accents adapted by the voice "actors".

A friend gave me this title, and I am consequently considering never speaking to him again. Was this some act of vengeance for a forgotten slight?

The title was given to me for free, and was vastly overpriced. I want my two hours of life back, you bastards.

A Gratifying Afternoon
Being a gaijin in Tokyo can be tough at times. Before arriving, a friend had warned me that young Japanese men are among some of the world's most notorious bigots, and he was correct.

Having spent time in rural North Carolina, I saw a lot of that kind of crap going down toward blacks, and have been in more than a couple of fights standing up to racist pricks, so when it's directed at me, it pisses me off all the more; but people are people, and the majority are afraid of anything different, so what can you do....

At any rate, the point of this rant is that if you ARE gaijin, the standards to which you're held are quite tough compared to native Japanese. If your conjugation of a single verb is off, it will elicit snickers of disdain from someone who can't even form a coherent sentence in English after some 12 years of constant study. And God forbid you're a few pounds overweight; I spent six months in intense Japanese study, and came out about 30 pounds overweight; think I'm allowed to forget it for a moment?

So I've been hitting the gym hard, and getting damned strong again. I'm two plates away from being able to do the whole stack on the butterfly press and the seated row (140 kg each, around 300 pounds, I believe); the entire stack on the leg press is a breeze (200 kg).

So it was gratifying when Mr. Sakuba, a former judo instructor for the police academy, came up to introduce himself and to tell me "You have a very, very stong body. You should train in judo". He wasn't trying to sell me; he no longer teaches, but was just being kind.

Afterwards, I also met a "rikishi", a professional sumo wrestler. At 5'10, the kid's a mountain. He's 21 and named "Okuma" ("Big Bear"). Pretty cool. He was a little like a kid; very shy, but nice.

At any rate, I sometimes forget what the endorphin flow of hard exercise can do for your moods; life just gets a whole lot better after a hard 5-km run.

I Believe You, Kerry
I remember during the '04 campaign when John Kerry said something to the effect of "These guys are the biggest group of thugs I've ever met", referring, of course, to the Bush gang.

After seeing scandal after scandal after scandal just blow away for these idiots without the slightest consequence, I've grown pretty tired of even discussing it anymore. But I believe Kerry completely, and now am certain that they're engaged in wholesale criminal activities across the board.

For example, remember the scandal where Tom Delay and his office were found to be conducting daytrading in the senator's office? Think the fact that the Bushites want access to every American's banking data and emails is just for fun? Guess again. It';s all about profit and power. Why bother with insider trading when you can just read exactly what everyone's buying and selling without a trace?

And you can bet your ass that when they're out of office, they'll still have access to the info.

Many people are also saying the reason they haven't suffered any consequences for their innumerable criminal acts is that they also keep a list of dirt on all their political enemies. If you've read anything about the dirty tricks of Lee Atwater and Karl Rove, this allegation won't surprise you in the least.

And it's now common knowledge that the CIA has had its proverbial fingers in the drug trade pie for decades; think it's a coincidence that while the most powerful military in history is occupying Afghanistan that its opium profits are at an all-time record high?

If, through whatever hideous twist of fate, McCain manages to win the election in November, the Repugnicants will have realized Rove's hellish fanatasy of securing a chokehold on American political power. And should that come to pass, there will be no turning back; America will never again escape from the shadow of fascism under which it's fallen.

Eurythmics in Nihongo

2008-04-08T01:14:00.003+09:00

I Saved the World Today - Eurythmics
Monday finds you like a bomb
That's been left ticking there too long
You're bleeding
Some days there's nothing left to learn
From the point of no return
You're leaving

Hey Hey I saved the world today
Everybody's happy now
The bad thing's gone away
And everybody's happy now
The good thing's here to stay
Please let it stay

There's a million mouths to feed
and I've got everything I need
I'm breathing
And there's a hurting thing inside
But I've got everything to hide
I'm grieving

Hey Hey I saved the world today
Everybody's happy now
The bad thing's gone away
And everybody's happy now
The good thing's here to stay
Please let it stay

Let it stay Let it stay
Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo the good thing

今日僕は世界を救ったユーリズミックス

月曜日はあなたを見つけてボムを似ている
長すぎるあちらで待ってて
出血している。

いくつかの日は習いることは何も残らなくて
帰らない所から
出発している。

Hey, hey今日僕は世界を救った
今皆は喜んでいて
悪いことが消えた
それから今皆は喜んでいて
良いことはこちで残っている。
そのままでいさせてくだっさい。

食べさせて口は百万あるで
僕は必用物が全て持っている。
呼吸している。

それから痛いことが入っていて
でも僕は全てを隠れている。
悲しんでいるあたしに注ぎなさい

Hey, hey今日僕は世界を救った
今皆は喜んでいて
悪いことが消えた
それから今皆は喜んでいて
良いことはこちで残っている。
そのままでいさせてくだっさい。

そのままでいさせてそのままでいさせて
Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo良いこと

Spectacular video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_taIhEUEIo

Tokyo Spring - Hanami

2008-03-28T00:09:00.000+09:00

If you don't know, springtime in Japan is very famous for its cherry blossoms, and festivals are held under the trees. The festivals are quite noisy, raucous affairs, with the beer and sake flowing, feasting and even karaoke (!)

Below are a number of Tokyo spring shots, courtesy of Doodlebug.

Fucking Brilliant.

2008-03-24T15:32:00.001+09:00

Now I KNOW it's the Obama team behind these video "endorsements". Check out the Hillary team. Not QUITE as effective as Raining McCain, but still stomach-hurtingly hilarious:

Hallelujah

2008-03-24T14:20:00.000+09:00

Well, if this doesn't sew up the election for the Depends canddate, nothing will. Behold, I give you:

Homebrewed Japanese translations 2 - Courtney Love & Hole's "Malibu"

2008-03-19T23:22:00.001+09:00

Before I read up on her, I unfairly resented Courtney Love for "capitalizing on the death of Kurt Kobain". Turns out she'd been a musician just as long as he had, and they met before either band hit the big time. Neil Strauss's encounter with her in "The Game" also gave me a new perspective. Still, it's no wonder Rolling Stone calls her "the most controversial woman in rock history". The classic "Malibu", a bittersweet ode to Kurt, while he was recuperating in rehab. Not incidentally, bassist Melissa Auf der Maur gives me total goosebumps. The lyrics follow in English and my somewhat wonky Japanese:

MALIBU - Hole
Crash and burn
All the stars explode tonight
How'd you get so desperate
How'd you stay alive
Help me please
Burn the sorrow from your eyes
Oh, come on be alive again
Don't lie down and die

Hey, hey
You know what to do
Oh, baby, drive away to Malibu

Get well soon
Please don't go any higher
How are you so ashes burnt when
You're barely on burning fire
Cry to the angels
I'm gonna rescue you
I'm gonna set you free tonight, baby
Pour over me

Hey, hey
We're all watching you
Oh, baby, fly away to Malibu
Cry to the angels
And let them swallow you
Go and part the sea, yeah, in Malibu

And the sun goes down
I watch you slip away
And the sun goes down
I walk into the waves
And I knew love would tear you apart
Oh and I knew the darkest secret of your heart

I'm gonna follow you
Oh baby, fly away, yeah, to Malibu
Oceans of angels
Oceans of stars
Down by the sea is where you drown your scars

I can't be near you
The light just radiates
I can't be near you
The light just radiates......

マリブホール
燃え尽き症候群
今晩ん全ての星が爆発だ
どうやってそなに自暴自棄に成った
どうやって生き延んだ
たすけて
目から悲しさを蒸発させて
お願い,もう一度生きて
寝ないで,死なないで

Hey, hey
してるよ
babyうんてんしてMalibuへ

直ぐ治して
もっと上に行かないで
どやって灰に成って
弱くって燃えて
天の使いに泣いて
君を救ける
baby, 今晩君を解放する
あたしに注ぎなさい

Hey, hey
僕たちあんた見ている
baby飛び立つMalibuへ
天の使いに泣いて
彼女らはあんたを呑込んで
行って海を割ってyeah,Malibuへ

夕陽は下っている
あんたの立ち去るのを見る
夕陽は下っている
波に入る
愛はあんたを切り裂くのを知った
それから心の一番黒い秘密も知った

あんたを付いて行く
baby飛び立つMalibuへ
天のの海
星の海
浜で傷跡を消す

あんたに近づけない
光は照り映えている
あんたに近づけない
光は照り映えている

homebrewed Japanese translations

2008-03-14T01:34:00.000+09:00

A personal favorite song by a great Canuck band - translated for your edification:

もし百万ドッラがあったら
もし百万ドッラがあったら (もし百万ドッラがあったら)
君に家を買う(君に家を買う)
もし百万ドッラがあったら (もし百万ドッラがあったら)
君に家の家具を買う
(多分素敵なソファかオットマン)
それからもし百万ドッラがあったら(もし百万ドッラあったら)
素敵なクライスラ車をかう
(素敵なリライアント自動車
もし百万ドッラがあったら、君の愛を買う

もし百万ドッラがあったら
僕たちのヤードに樹上の家を建てる
もし百万ドッラがあったら
君が手伝える、そなに難しくない
もし百万ドッラがあったら
たぶん小さい冷蔵庫などがどこかで入れられる
一緒に上がれて付き合う
例えば冷蔵庫を開けるとか
そちらに食事が用意されている。
例えば小さい包んだソーセージなど

もし百万ドッラがあったら(もし百万ドッラがあったら)
君に毛皮のコートを買う
(でも本物じゃない；それは残酷だから)
それからもし百万ドッラがあったら(もし百万ドッラあったら)
君にエキゾチックなペットを買う
例えばラマかエミュー
それからもし百万ドッラがあったら(もし百万ドッラあったら)
ジョン・メリックの骨組み
(全ての不思議な象の骨)
もし百万ドッラがあったら、君の愛を買う

もし百万ドッラがあったら
僕たちは店に歩かなくてもいい
もし百万ドッラがあったら
僕たちはリムジンに乗るもっと高いだから
もし百万ドッラがあったら
Kraft Dinner (マカロニ・アンド・チーズ)を食べなくてもいい
でもKraft Dinner をたべる
勿論、でももっとをたべて
高級なケチャップそれと買う
そうです、全ての一番上等なディジョンケチャップ
美味しいそうだ...

もし百万ドッラがあったら(もし百万ドッラがあったら)
君に緑色なドレスを買う
(でも真の緑色なドレスじゃない；それは残酷だから)
それからもし百万ドッラがあったら(もし百万ドッラあったら)
君に多少のアートを買う
(ピカソかガーファンクル)
もし百万ドッラがあったら(もし百万ドッラがあったら)
君に猿を買う
(何時も猿が欲しくなっかた?)
もし百万ドッラがあったら、
君の愛を買う

もし百万ドッラがあったら、もし百万ドッラがあったら、
もし百万ドッラがあったら、もし百万ドッラがあったら、
大金持ちだ!

If I had a $1,000,000
If I had a $1,000,000 (If I had a $1,000,000)
I'd buy you a house (I would buy you a house)
If I had a $1,000,000 (If I had a $1,000,000)
I'd buy you furniture for your house
(Maybe a nice chesterfield or an ottoman)
And if I had a $1,000,000 (If I had a $1,000,000)
I'd buy you a K-Car
(A nice Reliant automobile)
If I had $1,000,000 I'd buy your love.

If I had a $1,000,000
I'd build a tree fort in our yard
If I had $1,000,000
You could help, it wouldn't be that hard
If I had $1,000,000
Maybe we could put like a little tiny fridge in there
You know, we could just go up there and hang out
Like open the fridge and stuff
There would be already laid out foods for us
Like little pre-wrapped sausages and things

If I had $1,000,000 (If I had $1,000,000)
I'd buy you a fur coat
(But not a real fur coat that's cruel)
And if I had $1,000,000 (If I had a $1,000,000)
I'd buy you an exotic pet
(Like a llama or an emu)
And if I had $1,000,000 (If I had a $1,000,000)
I'd buy you John Merrick's remains
(All them crazy elephant bones)
And If I had $1,000,000 I'd buy your love.

If I had a $1,000,000
We wouldn't have to walk to the store
If I had a $1,000,000
We'd take a limousine 'cause it costs more.
If I had a $1,000,000
We wouldn't have to eat Kraft Dinner
But we would eat Kraft Dinner
Of course we would, we'd just eat more
And buy really expensive ketchups with it
That's right, all the fanciest dijon ketchups
Mmmmmm

If I had $1,000,000 (If I had $1,000,000)
I'd buy you a green dress
(But not a real green dress, that's cruel)
And if I had $1,000,000 (If I had $1,000,000)
I'd buy you some art
(A Picasso or a Garfunkel)
If I had $1,000,000 (If I had $1,000,000)
I'd buy you a monkey
(Haven't you always wanted a monkey?)
If I had $1,000,000
I'd buy your love

If I had $1,000,000, If I had $1,000,000
If I had $1,000,000, If I had $1,000,000
I'd be rich

-the Barenaked Ladies

EGG: RIP

2008-03-05T16:57:00.000+09:00

:-(

Clueless?!? Think Again!

2008-03-03T00:49:00.001+09:00

I've gradually come to a rather chilling conclusion: Bush, Cheney and his oil crony pals know EXACTLY what they're doing. In fact, while at times ad hoc, it's all generally part of a quite well-documented plan:

Four years ago this week, the tanks rolled for what President Bush originally called, “Operation Iraqi Liberation” — O.I.L. -- I kid you not.

And it was four years ago that, from the White House, George Bush, declaring war, said, “I want to talk to the Iraqi people.” That Dick Cheney didn’t tell Bush that Iraqis speak Arabic … well, never mind. I expected the President to say something like, “Our troops are coming to liberate you, so don’t shoot them.” Instead, Mr. Bush told, the Iraqis, “Do not destroy oil wells.“....

And that was the plan: putting a new floor under the price of oil. I have that in writing. In 2005, after a two-year battle with the State and Defense Departments, they released to my team at BBC Newsnight the “Options for a Sustainable Iraqi Oil Industry.” Now, you might think our government shouldn’t be writing a plan for another nation’s oil. Well, our government didn’t write it, despite the State Department seal on the cover. In fact, we discovered that the 323-page plan was drafted in Houston by oil industry executives and consultants.

There's more:

Insiders told Newsnight that planning began "within weeks" of Bush's first taking office in 2001, long before the September 11th attack on the US.

An Iraqi-born oil industry consultant, Falah Aljibury, says he took part in the secret meetings in California, Washington and the Middle East. He described a State Department plan for a forced coup d'etat. Mr Aljibury himself told Newsnight that he interviewed potential successors to Saddam Hussein on behalf of the Bush administration.

Secret sell-off plan
The industry-favoured plan was pushed aside by a secret plan, drafted just before the invasion in 2003, which called for the sell-off of all of Iraq's oil fields. The new plan was crafted by neo-conservatives intent on using Iraq's oil to destroy the Opec cartel through massive increases in production above Opec quotas. The sell-off was given the green light in a secret meeting in London headed by Mr Chalabi shortly after the US entered Baghdad, according to Robert Ebel.

Mr Ebel, a former Energy and CIA oil analyst, now a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, told Newsnight he flew to the London meeting at the request of the State Department.

Mr Aljibury, once Ronald Reagan's "back-channel" to Saddam, claims that plans to sell off Iraq's oil, pushed by the US-installed Governing Council in 2003, helped instigate the insurgency and attacks on US and British occupying forces. "Insurgents used this, saying, 'Look, you're losing your country, you're losing your resources to a bunch of wealthy billionaires who want to take you over and make your life miserable,'" said Mr Aljibury from his home near San Francisco.

"We saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, built on the premise that privatisation is coming."

Philip Carroll, the former CEO of Shell Oil USA who took control of Iraq's oil production for the US Government a month after the invasion, stalled the sell-off scheme. Mr Carroll told us he made it clear to Paul Bremer, the US occupation chief who arrived in Iraq in May 2003, that: "There was to be no privatisation of Iraqi oil resources or facilities while I was involved." ....

New plans, obtained from the State Department by Newsnight and Harper's Magazine under the US Freedom of Information Act, called for creation of a state-owned oil company favoured by the US oil industry. It was completed in January 2004 under the guidance of Amy Jaffe of the James Baker Institute in Texas. Formerly US Secretary of State, Baker is now an attorney representing Exxon-Mobil and the Saudi Arabian government.

The suspicion is that Bush went to war to get Iraq’s oil. That’s not true. The document, and secret recordings of those in on the scheme, made it clear that the Administration wanted to make certain America did not get the oil. In other words, keep the lid on Iraq’s oil production — and thereby keep the price of oil high. Of course, the language was far more subtle than, “Let’s cut Iraq’s oil production and jack up prices.” Rather, the report uses industry jargon and euphemisms which require Iraq to remain an obedient member of the OPEC cartel and stick to the oil-production limits — “quotas” — which keep up oil prices.

The Houston plan, enforced by an army of occupation, would, “enhance [Iraq’s] relationship with OPEC,” the oil cartel. And that’s undoubtedly why Condoleezza Rice asked Fadhil Chalabi to take charge of Iraq’s Oil Ministry. As former chief operating officer of OPEC, the oil cartel, Fadhil was a Big Oil favorite, certain to ensure that Iraq would never again allow the world to slip back to the Clinton era of low prices and low profits. (In investigating for BBC, I was told by the former chief of the CIA’s oil unit that he’d met with Fadhil regarding oil at Bush’s request. Fadhil recently complained to the BBC. He denied the meeting with the Bush emissary in London because, he noted, he was secretly meeting that week in Washington with Condi!)

Fadhil, by the way, turned down Condi’s offer to run Iraq’s Oil Ministry. Ultimately, Iraq’s Oil Ministry was given to Fadhil’s fellow tribesman, Ahmad Chalabi, a convicted bank swindler and neo-con idol. But whichever Chalabi is nominal head of Iraq’s oil industry in Baghdad, the orders come from Houston. Indeed, the oil law adopted by Iraq’s shaky government this month is virtually a photocopy of the “Options” plan first conceived in Texas long before Iraq was “liberated.”

In other words, the war has gone exactly to plan — the Houston plan. So forget the naïve cloth-rending about a conflict gone haywire. Exxon-Mobil reported a record $10 billion profit last quarter, the largest of any corporation in history. Mission Accomplished.

But the plans are much more insidious and sociopathic than even invading a non-threatening country and killing over a million civilians simply to line the pockets of the elite. It gets much, much worse:

The Bushies have a pattern and they stick to it in spite of every apparent reason to change course. It’s not as if we don’t know what pattern it is, and it’s not as if they haven’t advertised what the pattern will be--it is to break down the government so completely that it can’t be put back together again. Let’s take a look at the “mistakes” the Bush administration is said to have made, and, instead, ask ourselves if they are actually realized intentions:

1. Hobbling the government with debt by combining an expensive, prolonged war with perennial rounds of tax cuts.

2. Destroying the bureaucracy by making it impossible for neutral, expert, or objective bureaucrats to keep their jobs, replacing them with incompetents.

3. Destroying the integrity of the election system, state by state, beginning with Florida and Ohio.

4: Defanging the media by paying fake reporters, co-opting members of the MSM (why did the New York Times refrain from publishing stories unfavorable to the Bush administration before the 2004 election?) and allowing (or encouraging) huge mergers and the buying up of independent media operations by known conservative media conglomerates.

5. Destroying the middle class by changing the bankruptcy laws and the tax laws.

6. Destroying the National Guard and the Army by deploying them over and over in a futile war, while at the same time failing to provide them with armor and equipment.

7. Precipitating Iraq into a civil war by invading it.

8. Accelerating the effects of global warming by putting roadblocks in the way of mitigating its effects.

9. Denying healthcare and prescription medication to an increasing number of Americans, most specifically by ramming the prescription drug legislation through Congress, but also by manipulating Medicare and Medicaid so that fewer and fewer citizens are covered.

10. Encouraging the people in the rest of the world to associate the US with torture, military incursion, and fear, by a preemptive attack on a sovereign nation, by vociferously maintaining the right of the US to do whatever it wants whenever it wants, and by refusing to accept international laws.

Or, to put it another way, the Bush administration apparently wishes for and is working toward a chaotic Iraq, a corrupt American election structure with openly corrupt influence-peddlers like Delay and Abramoff in charge of policy, a world in which people suffer and die from weather-related catastrophes, a two-tiered economic structure in the US (with most people in the lower tier), and the isolation of the US as a rogue state from the other nations of the world.

How else are we going to interpret the satisfaction the President continually expresses in the results of his policies so far? As an example, when Bush said, “Heckuva job, Brownie”, outsiders generally assumed he was making a mistake--that he didn’t know what a bad job Brownie was doing. But let’s say that he knew perfectly well that Brownie had abandoned new Orleans to the forces of nature, and that THAT was the essence of the heckuva job he was doing. In the same way, many people assume that the administration is embarrassed that the extent of the American rendition gulag or the techniques of torture used at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo have gotten into the news along with the use of white phosphorus in Falluja, as if torture and rendition and white phosphorus were something that Bush does not want to do. But let’s say that torture and rendition are something that the Bush administration is happy to do, and doesn’t mind others knowing about. Likewise, many observers, let’s say Jack Murtha, for one, assume that the president does not want to destroy the army. But if the army is destroyed, then the services that the army provides at a relatively moderate expense to the taxpayer can be farmed out to companies like Halliburton. Let’s say that Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Bush have cast their lot not with the draft, or even the volunteer army, but with the mercenary army, which is more profitable, less subject to Congressional and public oversight, and, really, the appropriate army for a rogue state. And, with a mercenary army, there is no problem when a fallen soldier is sent home as a piece of freight. It is only citizen-soldiers who make the ultimate sacrifice out of patriotism. When we get rid of citizen soldiers, then we don’t have to respect them.

When Grover Norquist said he wanted to strangle the shrunken government in the bathtub, he was not kidding. He meant that the taxpayers and and voters would not be able to look to the government for any services whatsoever, but also that they would not have any control over the government does. The drowned and strangled government, having ceased to exist, would not only offer no benefits to citizens, it would offer no obstacle to those who wished to break the laws (for example against internal spying), because there would be no law to break. It is for this reason that the Bush administration pays absolutely no attention to the polls--they have already discounted the preferences of the citizens. When the government has been shrunk to nothing and drowned in the bathtub, the citizenry will be entirely powerless--that is the real goal, not an unintended consequence. Norquist and his fellow theorists understand perfectly that in a modern democracy, there are two competing modes of voting: there is “one person, one vote” and there is “one dollar, one vote”. They not only prefer “one dollar, one vote”, they want to entirely get rid of “one person, one vote”.

The outcome of such policies will be a dictatorship or a tyranny. Such policies cannot be reconciled with the US as we know it, or with the vision of the Founding Fathers. It is true that rogue elements have stolen elections before, as the slave interest stole the election in Kansas in 1856 by openly ferrying fraudulent voters across the river from Missouri, and then bullying the Congress into certifying the election in spite of plenty of evidence that the election was corrupt. It is also true that the public has been fed lies in the past so that they would support a questionable war (remember the Maine!). Corrupt administrations probably outnumber clean ones in US history. But the ten “successes” I cite above come together to present, I think, the greatest threat to the US since the Civil War. The US is not like much of the rest of theworld: France has always been France, and England has been England for many centuries, and Russia defined itself during the reign of Ivan the Terrible as Russia in contrast to the Tartars and Europe. Chinese history is, supposedly, the longest continual history of any people in the world, but the US is based on an abstraction--a certain set of ideas that divide up and share out power so that it does not become concentrated in the hands of a single tyrannical entity, either party or person. We are expected to participate as citizens in our government at the local, state, and national level, and our government has been expected, from the beginning, to be a shared enterprise, not an engine of power and wealth for a single oligarchic group. Our government was devised as a set of ideas about how to avoid kings, aristocracies, and tyrannies. If it fails at that, or is manipulated into producing tyranny, then we are no longer living in the US, we are living in a no man’s land, without an actual identity. This set of ideas, political techniques, and beliefs that holds together immigrants from every continent and every culture.

Think that's too crazy for even such rampantly amoral bastards as the modern GOP?

Think again. This isn't guesswork. They've been openly advocating the program for years:

President Bush loves to talk about his favorite foreign policy doctrine of pre-emption, the radical notion that even in the absence of imminent danger the United States should use force against any nation that might pose a threat down the road. What the president won't admit is that his administration has adopted the same doctrine toward government -- and Democrats -- here at home. For conservatives, a government that's not mortgaged to the hilt poses too great a threat of social activism. That's why, in 2001 and again this year, the Bush administration has launched pre-emptive attacks on the national treasury designed to leave the U.S. government so deep in debt it poses no threat to the conservative status quo. Its motto is: Stop government before it can help again.

The Bush White House will not acknowledge the existence of this domestic doctrine. It can't: George W. Bush owes his presidency in large part to the masterful illusion that he was a different kind of Republican from Newt Gingrich. He's even careful to avoid making overt spending cuts in popular programs, lest he give the enemy atrocities to point to.

But one of the leading strategists behind Bush's secret war on government is more than happy to tell the world all about it. His name is Grover Norquist, and he is the nation's leading advocate of "kill the taxes and you kill the government." If pre-emption is the most dangerous idea any president has had since Richard Nixon, Norquist may well be the most dangerous adviser. Perhaps more than anyone else, his growing influence on the Bush agenda helps explain not only the country's current economic woes, but also the long-term threat the new conservatism poses to a prosperous future. More and more, the administration seems to be thinking about taxes just like Norquist -- tax cuts are always good, because they take money from government.

Norquist, leader of libertarian-leaning groups like his unofficial leave-us-alone-coalition and Americans for Tax Reform (ATR), is renowned in Washington as the avatar of scorched-earth tax reduction. He's a hero to so-called "movement conservatives" (people for whom conservatism is religion) because they still see, through Reaganesque lenses, the government as always the enemy, never the solution. Norquist is the man who compared any and all recipients of government funds -- presumably excluding the Defense Department -- to cockroaches. He also famously announced that he and his brethren in the anti-government movement wanted to reduce the federal government to a size so small "that it could be drowned in a bathtub."

All this would make for an interesting, if grotesque, sideshow except for one thing: What once was right-wing braggadocio is now the heart of the Bush agenda. "What this administration is doing, and most people haven't figured it out yet, is an annual tax cut," Norquist recently told The Washington Post.

And, lest you harbor any remaining doubts, let's look to where Cheney's black, machine-driven heart lies:

...as it turns out, Kiplinger Magazine ran an article based on Cheney's financial disclosure statement and, sure enough, found out that the VP is lying to the American people for the umpteenth time. Deficits do matter and Cheney has invested his money accordingly.

The article is called "Cheney's betting on bad news" and provides an account of where Cheney has socked away more than $25 million. While the figures may be estimates, the investments are not. According to Tom Blackburn of the Palm Beach Post, Cheney has invested heavily in "a fund that specializes in short-term municipal bonds, a tax-exempt money market fund and an inflation protected securities fund. The first two hold up if interest rates rise with inflation. The third is protected against inflation."

Cheney has dumped another (estimated) $10 to $25 million in a European bond fund which tells us that he is counting on a steadily weakening dollar. So, while working class Americans are loosing ground to inflation and rising energy costs, Darth Cheney will be enhancing his wealth in "Old Europe". As Blackburn sagely notes, "Not all bad news' is bad for everybody."

This should put to rest once and for all the foolish notion that the "Bush Economic Plan" is anything more than a scam aimed at looting the public till. The whole deal is intended to shift the nation's wealth from one class to another. It's also clear that Bush-Cheney couldn't have carried this off without the tacit approval of the thieves at the Federal Reserve who engineered the low-interest rate boondoggle to put the American people to sleep while they picked their pockets.

Reasonable people can dispute that Bush is "intentionally" skewering the dollar with his lavish tax cuts, but how does that explain Cheney's portfolio?

It doesn't. And, one thing we can say with metaphysical certainty is that the miserly Cheney would never plunk his money into an investment that wasn't a sure thing. If Cheney is counting on the dollar tanking and interest rates going up, then, by Gawd, that's what'll happen.

We underestimate these evil fucks at our very grave peril, my friends.

Hilariously warped....

2008-03-02T00:32:00.002+09:00

This is just WRONG on so many levels...

In other words, I love it.

Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring, Ring....

2008-02-29T08:53:00.000+09:00

For all you Half Life 2 fans.... Gotta love it.

The GOP's Newest Dirty Trick: Smear by Proxy

2008-02-28T08:27:00.006+09:00

This is more of the reichwing's "clever" tactics - get a flunky to smear shit on the wall, and then have the candidate stand back and say (with calculated indignity) "Look at that shit on the wall! Isn't that horrible! Now who'd go and do such a nasty thing?"

Presto! Massive publicity for the wall of shit and the candidate is a paragon of cleanliness.

We should take a page from their playbook. How about Howard Dean opening with, "Some people might say it's unseemly for a Panamanian guest of America, hoping to be a Presidential candidate, to dump his recently-disabled wife with her crutches and their children for the much younger, drug-addicted daughter of one of the richest tycoons in the state, but we're just not gonna go there"....

The GOP is pre-emptively disarming McCain's opponents: McCain is getting his nasty secrets out into the sunlight before they can be dredged up by an opponent and used just before November. At that point, his campaign can just pull the Rovian classic: yawn and say, "that's yesterday's news".

Sigh....

Update:
There are some alleged Democrats on the web saying "aw... shucks, maybe McCain's just bein' a nice GUY..."

To believe THAT, you'd have to believe McCain AND his campaign manager would allow their emcee to come on WITHOUT A SCRIPT and just kind of "ad lib", when it's a neck-and-neck race for the Presidency and they're up to their balls in hock.

Riiiiggghhhtt.

But then, maybe some of the posters rooting for McCain are McCain camp trolls. Would make sense too.

Let's Hope....

2008-02-28T06:04:00.000+09:00

Colbert slams another one out of the park. Makes me proud of the Irish in me. Don't you wish you had a little Irish in you? No, no, we're not gonna go there....

Thanks, as ever, to Raw Story.

Quotes of the Day:

"John McCain also entered the fray last night, calling the decision 'a loss for the traditional family,' and noting that he supports 'the traditional definition of marriage as between one man and one woman.'"
--"McCain's selective defense of 'traditional marriage'" - Glenn Greenwald

"McCain was still married and living with his wife in 1979 while, according to The New York Times' Nicholas Kristof, 'aggressively courting a 25-year-old woman who was as beautiful as she was rich.' McCain divorced his wife, who had raised their three children while he was imprisoned in Vietnam, then launched his political career with his new wife's family money."
--"High Infidelity", Steve Benen

2008 Election Results Prematurely Leaked!

2008-02-26T17:49:00.001+09:00

But really, this is no laughing matter.

So who's in our corner?

Lyric of the Day:

Look what's happening out in the streets
Got a revolution - got to revolution
Hey I'm dancing down the streets
Got a revolution - got to revolution
Ain't it amazing all the people I meet
Got a revolution - got to revolution
One generation got old
One generation got soul
This generation got no destination to hold
Pick up the cry
Hey now it's time for you and me
Got a revolution - got to revolution
Come on now we're marching to the sea
got a revolution - got to revolution
Who will take it from you
We will and who are we
We are volunteers of America

"Volunteers" - Marty Balin / Paul Kantner, Jefferson Airplane

soo-WAIT JAYzus!

2008-02-20T03:39:00.001+09:00

Courtesy of the always brilliant Rawstory, we have a clip of "ol' crazy-eyes" Pat laying yet more nuttiness on humirkens:

Having played drums for a southern gospel band in uni, I know first-hand how "unGod-like" some of the fundies can get after hours, but sometimes I'm still occasionally thrown for a loop....

This begs the obvious question on everyone's mind: WWJS (what would Jesus Snort)?

Quote of the Day:

Greatest rock and roll song written. Ever.

A Little Something More....

2008-02-18T23:14:00.000+09:00

Because DAMN those harmonies are sweet. Once again, I give you Aly and AJ.

Wow.

Tom's Best....

2008-02-17T22:29:00.001+09:00

From my brother Tom in Vancouver:
Best bumper sticker slogans....

1. Bush: End of an Error

2. That's OK, I Wasn't Using My Civil Liberties Anyway

3. Let's Fix Democracy in this Country First

4. If You Want a Nation Ruled By Religion, Move to Iran

5. Bush. Like a Rock. Only Dumber.

6. If You Can Read This, You're Not Our President

7. Of Course It Hurts: You're Getting Screwed by an Elephant

8. Hey, Bush Supporters: Embarrassed Yet?

9. George Bush: Creating the Terrorists Our Kids Will Have to Fight

10. Impeachment: It's Not Just for Blow Jobs Anymore

11. America : One Nation, Under Surveillance

12. They Call Him "W" So He Can Spell It

13. Whose God Do You Kill For?

14. Jail to the Chief

15. No, Seriously, Why Did We Invade Iraq ?

16. Bush: God's Way of Proving Intelligent Design is Full Of Crap

17. Bad President! No Banana.

18. We Need a President Who's Fluent In At Least One Language

19. We're Making Enemies Faster Than We Can Kill Them

21. Bush Doesn't Care About White People, Either

22. Where Are We Going? And Why Are We In This Hand Basket?

23. You Elected Him. You Deserve Him.

24. Dubya, Your Dad Shoulda Pulled Out, Too

25. When Bush Took Office, Gas Was $1.46

26. Pray For Impeachment

27. The Republican Party: Our Bridge to the 11th Century

28. What Part of "Bush Lied" Don't You Understand?

29. One Nation Under Clod

30. 2004: Embarrassed. 2006: Horrified. 2008: Terrified

31. Bush Never Exhaled

32. At Least Nixon Resigned

Maybe you folks can use these to give our man in Cali a helping hand....

And you thought you had a long commute....

2008-02-15T15:51:00.000+09:00

Princeton has published a logarithimic map of the universe. Fascinating. Check it out:

http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~mjuric/universe/

You're only 18 once....

2008-02-14T15:04:00.001+09:00

The spectacular "Chemicals React", by Aly and AJ, the teenage sister duet.

At the peak of their lives, their voices young, sweet and incredibly vibrant, the blazing energy they project is palpable. Great, great stuff.

McCain '08: Like Hope, Only Different.

2008-02-12T11:54:00.000+09:00

Wexler Formally Calls for Cheney Impeachment - Help Him out!

2008-02-10T00:46:00.000+09:00

So far, Wexler has the support of 17 congressional co-sponsors, and 225,000 citizen signatures. Why isn't YOURS there?

http://www.wexlerwantshearings.com/

Here's the man himself on Capital Hill:

Quote of the Day:

Spread the word around, the rat is leaving town
The message is a song, the misery is gone
Shaking out a curse, nothing could be worse
Walking through the door, who could ask for more
Now i'm free, and I can see, and I can see

Please stay away

"Flight of the Rat", Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord and Ian Paice, Deep Purple "In Rock"

I Like When...

2008-02-08T10:51:00.000+09:00

This one's for Jesse, who's back online, and to Pam from Pam's House Blend, as I know she can relate.

;-)

Possibly my favorite music video of all time....

2008-02-04T18:44:00.000+09:00

Never get tired of this incredible lady's videos.

New Bush Coins

2008-01-24T09:59:00.000+09:00

Quote of the Day:

"Only when the last tree is cut; only when the last river is polluted; only when the last fish is caught; only then will they realize that you cannot eat money."

--Cree Indian Proverb

Let's Help Billy Help the Vets!

2008-01-17T18:20:00.000+09:00

Let’s urge Keith Olbermann and/or Michael Moore to Help Bill-O Help the Homeless!

Write them here:
letters@msnbc.com;
mike@michaelmoore.com

Bill O'Reilly says the whole "homeless Iraq vets" story is untrue and says:

ES: I think (Edwards’) message is strong and he has tremendous conviction, but I think he needs a little bit more material than just the “Two Americas” talk, he got to get a little bit deeper…

BO: Well, we’re still looking for all the veterans sleeping under the bridges, Ed, so if you find anybody, let us know, because that’s all the guy said for the last three nights…

ES: Well they’re out there, Bill. Don’t kid yourself.

BO: They may be out there, but there’s not many of them out there. Okay? So if you know where one is, Ed…

ES: Well, actually…Now, wait a minute…one in ..

BO: Ed, Ed. If you know where’s a veteran, sleeping under a bridge, you call me immediately, and we will make sure that man does not do it. Is not there.

source: Crooks and Liars

So how about bringing a few of the estimated 200,000 to Bill's home or FOCK SNOOZE so he can make good on his promise?

Offering to match his donations dollar for dollar and broadcasting his response might also be a good move.

Quote of the Day:
They say misery loves company.
We could start a company and make misery.
Frustrated, incorporated
I know just what you need,
I might just have the thing,
I know what you'd pay to see...

Put me out of my misery;
I'd do it for you, would you do it for me?
We will always be busy
Makin' misery....

We could build a factory and make misery.
We'll create the cure; we made the disease.
Frustrated, Incorporated

Put me out of my misery,
All you suicide kings and drama queens
Forever after happily
Makin' misery....

Did you satisfy your greed?
Get what you need?
Was it only envy....
...So empty....
'Misery', Soul Asylum

Things I f*ckin' LOVE!

2008-01-09T01:06:00.000+09:00

This is goddamned brilliant:

http://www.hash.com/amfilms/search/entry.php?entry=1051

And a Blast from the Past: Beautiful Belinda Carlisle and the Go-Go's:

Fun for the Whole Family! Collect 'Em All!

2008-01-07T05:26:00.001+09:00

Those wack folks over at a DailyKos, say what you will about them, are at times a clever lot. Today's light-hearted fun is a little contest. My own personal contributions (on the spur of the moment, no less!):

Doofus MccChucklefuck
Chimpus Maximus
Lunkhead McPretzel
Blunderboy

I'm sure you can add a few to this fine list (and yes, the lovely photoshopping is all mine).

But for real belly laughs, the posts (and comments!) over at Wonkette cannot be beat.

Tune of the Day:

Do you don't you want me to make you?
I'm coming down fast, but don't let me break you.
Tell me, tell me, tell me the answer --
Well you may be a lover but you ain't no dancer...

Look out! Helter Skelter....

Happy Damn New Year!

2008-01-05T03:02:00.000+09:00

Yee-frickin'-HAW!

Fresh on the heels of a resounding Obama victory in whitebread America, there is more fantastic news:

BBC News is reporting that a French company has developed a pollution-free car which runs on compressed air. India's Tata Motors has the car under production and it may be on sale in Europe and India by the end of the year.

The air car, also known as the Mini-CAT or City Cat, can be refueled in minutes from an air compressor at specially equipped gas stations and can go 200 km on a 1.5 euro fill-up -- roughly 125 miles for $3. The top speed will be almost 70 mph and the cost of the vehicle as low as $7000.

The car features a fibreglass body and a revolutionary electrical system and is completely computer-controlled. It is powered by the expansion of compressed air, using no combustion at all, and the exhaust is entirely clean and cool enough for use in the internal air conditioning system.

Tata Motors is known for its interest in innovation and has been selling compressed gas buses since 2000. It is currently working on producing the world's cheapest car, which will be almost 100% plastic and will sell in India for about $2500.

Tata is also expanding into the world market. It acquired Korea's Daweoo in 2004 and is now the top bidder to purchase the originally British Jaguar and Land Rover lines from the United States' troubled Ford Motor Company.

The following video is from BBC's BBC World, broadcast on January 04, 2008

Quote of the Day:

Hey hey I saved the world today
Everybody's happy now
The bad things gone away
And everybody's happy now
The good thing's here to stay
Please let it stay

Let it stay
Let it stay
Doo doo doo doo doo the good thing

Hey hey I saved the world today
Everybody's happy now
The bad things gone away
And everybody's happy now
The good thing's here to stay
Please let it stay

"I Saved the World Today" - Annie Lenox