You're a good man, Hosni Mubarak

"I also think there comes a time for everybody when it's time to hang it up and move on,"

Said Former Vice President Dick Cheney. It would seem that he didn't feel the end of his term in office was such a time for him, smoothly transitioning from denouncing all critics in an official and perhaps illegal fashion to doing as much as a private citizen. He's only moved out, not moved on.

He was of course referring to the apparent end game of Hosni Mubarak, a "Good man" says he.

"he's been a good friend and ally to the United States, and we need to remember that,"

That's a statement hard to remark upon so I won't. I'll only add the good Mr. Mubarak to the list of rogues our government has supported for similar reasons through the years, choosing "stability" over every other consideration. Like many administrations from Reagan, whose anniversary he was celebrating, to that of Cheney and Bush, we've provided weapons to tyrants while the people suffered from want. We've overthrown democratic choices and prevented elections and installed monsters and looked the other way at nauseating atrocities simply to serve our appetites.

Yes, Mubarak did what we paid him to do and you'll note that those are American tanks patrolling the streets, American jets overhead. He maintained an uncomfortable peace with Israel and helped us punish oil-rich Iraq. He did resist the pressure from fundamentalist Theocrats and he helped us to apply torture methods even our own flimsy consciences wouldn't allow -- and we paid him to do it and didn't place many strings on our largess. He was a good man.

Cheney as an unhealthy old man, younger but much sicker than Mubarak and I'm sure we can look ahead to other, not too distant days and the gathering of other people telling us Dick Cheney was a "good man" just like the other good and bloody handed friends and allies. Let the circle be unbroken.

Obama goes to bat for the bad guys

Well, I was there and I saw what you did
Saw it with my own two eyes
So you can wipe off that grin, I know where you've been
It's all been a pack of lies

-Phil Collins-

The truth can set you free, and it can get you hanged. It all depends on who you know and how much they owe you. Yes, we may live in a world of denialism, mythology and cover-ups but I hope truth still has a few teeth left. That's why I'm rarely the first to scream 'treason' when someone blows a whistle or leaks a secret. Sometimes it even gives me hope.

So people have been asking me, since my last post on the latest Wikileaks fatwah, just what we learned that was useful enough to warrant embarrassing our delicate diplomatic efforts. Well a number of things, in my opinion. For one, we now have cause to reflect upon the Obama administration's efforts to thwart international prosecution of Bush, Cheney et al, for using torture to extract confessions from suspects.

Spain has had a lot of experience with torture and gruesome treatment of prisoners from the Inquisition right up through the last of the Fascist dictators. I think they've grown a bit intolerant and perhaps touchy on the subject of right wing excesses. So perhaps when that country set out to prosecute the Bush administration for war crimes, our current administration had many reasons to worry about turning tables, embarrassing revelations and the repercussions of such an investigation on our future conduct. Without Assenge and Wikileaks, we might never have known that Obama and company had a rare bipartisan success in 'persuading' Spain to squelch the effort. It's nice to know and it sheds some light on the puzzling friendliness that Bush has recently shown the man his party has been presenting as something loathsome and dangerous.

We didn't need any breaches of state secrecy however to learn that Dick Cheney's vast ossuary of a closet still has occupants with inconvenient stories to tell. Nigeria is planning to charge him and his Halliburton cronies with bribery and to issue an Interpol warrant, says Bloomberg Businessweek. You may recall that the Right Wing US Chamber of Commerce has been pushing Congress to ditch The Foreign Corrupt Practices act which makes such practices illegal under US law. If you were puzzled as to why we needed so badly to do that so quickly, perhaps we now can answer the question.

Will Wikileaks make Obama think twice about protecting war profiteers and international criminals - maybe even think a third time about trying to portray leakers as dangerous traitors now that we have had a glimpse of what's been going on?

Cry havoc -- please!

Adis Medunjanin and Zarein Ahmedzay were arrested very early this morning in New York as part of an investigation into a foiled plot to explode a bomb on the 8th anniversary of 9/11/2001. Najibullah Zazi and two other men are already in custody on charges related to this attempt. The evidence against the men seems substantial and we can expect that he won't be the only one to spend the rest of his life in prison.

Of course this is an outrage. If we had a real Republican he-man in office we wouldn't be calling this a foiled plot or talking about trials and convictions, we'd be screaming Terrorist attack - terrorist attack and the cruise missiles would already be on course for somewhere.

So, I'm sure it won't be long before Snarlin' Dick is back on TV explaining to us that our educated and therefore unmanly President is pretending, by not running naked through the streets screaming TERRORIST ATTACK, that "we are not at war." Of course it takes considerable screaming and snarling to keep the discussion away from what a real war really is -- especially one in which victory is nearly impossible to define much less than to achieve.

Like our valiant war on poverty, war on drugs, war on crime and war on pornography, this one resembles a struggle against human nature; that nature including religion, nationalism and the tendency to hate people we see as exploiting and manipulating us. Fail to make that all change and you fail to win. In saner times and amongst saner people the eternal struggle against crime has usually been seen as the job of law enforcement and indeed this failed plot was foiled by good police work and a little luck. To men like Cheney, the danger in foiling plots and prosecuting the criminals who attempt to carry them out is precisely that we have a harder time crying war and without a war, we have to conduct ourselves more in accordance with the law and indeed with reasonableness and sanity.

That the terrorist acts carried out in Oklahoma City and at the World Trade Center resulted in the perpetrators being caught, imprisoned and even executed will remain a thorn in the paws of people like Cheney for whom the system needs to be shown as not working when it's under a Democratic administration and working well when under a Republican. So what if it results in hundreds of thousands of innocent casualties, the destruction of countries, the exile of its citizens and of course, the creation of vastly increased anti-American hatred. In this respect, Cheney's objectives, being aided by every attack and thwarted by every foiled attack or captured terrorist, are often congruent with the objectives of al Qaeda and similar groups. In other words, America's success -- Obama's success and Clinton's successes in finding and capturing terrorists hurts Cheney and Associates; hurts their chances of defaming the Democrats, returning the berserkers to power and keeping those huge Halliburton checks rolling in.

If you're following this line of reasoning, you won't be surprised that I'm concluding that Snarlin' Dick wants more than anything to keep us all crying "terrorist attack" and to keep them coming. By the way, isn't being on the side of terrorists treason?

Dick the Impaler

We seem to have forgotten about torture. Comedians and far right shamans still make jokes about how those still left in the cages at Guantanamo are the "worst of the worst." People are heavily against giving them any amenities like flu shots and some have the audacity to say we treat them too well, even though so many of them have never had any case proved against them or have been cleared: so many are guilty of little more than being Muslim or accused of something by an enemy.

That Dick Cheney, the once and in his own mind future Führer pokes fun at the idea that we ever engaged in torturing prisoners and although he's not well liked by any but the most extreme subhumans, he has never suffered any consequences for having directed and promoted things we used to hang people for when I was a boy: kidnapping, torture and murder. Republicans prefer to believe him, many of the rest of us believe so much in our essential virtue that we just don't want to hear any more of it.

It's not that there is no evidence of the Bush Administration's capital crimes, not at all. We have imprisoned and tortured many people with essentially no evidence against them, but there has been a constant flow of increasingly horrible information about kidnapping and the kind of torture even Limbaugh or Dick the Impaler himself couldn't pass off as a fratboy prank. Crain Murray, the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan now tells us, says Raw Story, that the people the CIA sent to secret dungeons there were raped with broken bottles and/or boiled alive until they "admitted" to being affiliated with Al Qaida. Some were forced to watch their children being tortured and all so that the Bush administration could justify destroying Iraq to the eager war lovers back home.

"I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles,"

he said at a lecture in October that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network.

"I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on."

I'm not ashamed to say that I'm ashamed of my country. I'm ashamed not so much by the monsters and tyrants and murderers of children some of us still revere as heroes and patriots, but by the way we still support what they did, still can't accept the horror, don't want to be told about it, still want to continue crimes as hideous as any ever committed, because after all, these people are "suspects." These people are "the worst of the worst" whether guilty or not and most of all they aren't Christian, like us. It's not really important anyway, not like gay marriage or insurance company profits or ACORN or tax breaks for Cheney and Bush.

SOP

It would be hard to substantiate a claim that the United States of America hasn't been a country safe from foreign invasion, at least since the war of 1812 ended, although politicians have been shouting "danger" and starting profitable wars to ward it off for a long time. Even during the infamous first year of this new millennium, more people died of influenza in the US than in the World Trade Center; more than ten times as many on the highway. There's no money in perspective however and there's no safety for the Republican party in it either and so we still have dishonest intellectual lightweights like Liz Cheney claiming that "We" have kept the country safe since September 11, 2001 by launching the second most expensive war in US history and torturing prisoners while essentially refusing to do a damned thing about the surviving perpetrators.

Her crime boss father may or may not be able to keep a straight grimace telling us tall ones like that, but she is and although she has no way of knowing much of anything (unless the old man has been giving away State secrets,) she claims that getting close to Cheney's crimes is demoralizing the CIA which is putting us all in further danger, danger, danger. Yes, the bogeyman will crash more planes into New York if we try to prove that her father broke the law by authorizing torture, lying to Congress and a host of other unprecedented crimes.

The evidence however is that the CIA isn't demoralized at all, but of course we have Fox and Friends to further the fallacy as they always do. It's their own private sector version of Screwing America for Profit, or from the viewpoint of the GOP, it's SOP.

Dishonesty is strength

Dick Cheney is a man of short declarative sentences. He packs a lot of venom and a lot of mendacity into each one.

"What I find disturbing is the extent to which he’s gone to Europe and seemed to apologize profusely, been to Mexico and seemed to apologize there,” said Cheney to Raw Story's David Edwards. “The world out there, both our friends and foes, will be quick to take advantage of that… I don’t think we’ve got much to apologize for."

"Seemed to" shouldn't slip past the reader unnoticed, since it's an attempt to elevate a convenient assumption to the point where his baseless argument can pivot on it. To be equally as curt and declarative: Cheney lies. It didn't seem so to me or to those who listened to all the words, rather than the tendentious extracts wrapped in tactical opinion we got from Republican sources.

It doesn't seem beyond the pale to recognize that swaggering "kiss my ass you dirty wogs -- I'm AMERICA" foreign policy that has been the joy of the thundering classes who see the world as ungrateful and arrogant for wanting some measure of independence. It doesn't seem like an unqualified, abject and grovelling approach when Obama says we haven't been fair to the world all the time either. It sounds, in fact, like honesty and of course to the man of the perpetually undisclosed location, who keeps his lunch and shopping list in a vault, that's a sign of "weakness."

It's "weak" to disclose that we tortured people to death and lied about it. It's weak to shake hands with Chavez, says Cheney -- but only if a Democrat does it -- and of course any sign of honesty, humanity or willingness to promote peace that does not depend on unqualified, abject and grovelling acceptance of American Empire can be a fatal weakness.

I have trouble understanding the level of fear Cheney lives with; the kind of fear that drove him and his puppets to military aggression, pathological secrecy and a domestic paranoia that led him to think the suppression of civil rights and constitutional law is "nothing to apologize for." It's harder to understand than starting a war on false pretenses for his own profit.

Paranoia: the feeling that even our friends will take advantage of us if we're not unrelenting in our refusal to admit mistakes and uncompromising in our rage for dominion; law, morality, truth and justice notwithstanding. Quite an opinion and what better place to discuss it than with Sean Hannity and what better audience than the people who still watch Fox News and who are sure to fail to notice just how Cheney and his party equate ganging up on a new administration in time of extreme crisis as patriotism, but of course these are the people who accused the Democrats of caving in to terrorism in 2001 even after they voted unanimously to support George W. Bush.

Accepting the consequences of your actions is so unmanly.

Cherche la slime

There is a broad and thick trail of slime following Mr. Cheney out of Washington and indeed if we could follow that trail, history could actually reflect what happened over the last 8 years, but sadly, Cheney seems to have succeeded in establishing a separate agency, outside the executive branch but funded by it, that is as invisible, yet as massive as the dark matter physicists are in love with these days. In short, the evidence that might foster indictments has disappeared, some reported destroyed. Of what remains, only that which Cheney allows to be viewed by posterity will be released. Cheney and Bush may have left behind a Temple of History as filled with booby traps, poison arrows, rolling boulders and pits of quicksand that no future historian, with or without fedora and bullwhip can penetrate.

District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, a US District Judge often sympathetic to the legal arguments of the junta, has written a 63-page opinion stating that:

"Congress drastically limited the scope of outside inquiries related to the vice president's handling of his own records during his term in office."

In other words, the National Archive will no longer be able to determine what's important to keep of the records not yet shredded or destroyed. Dick Cheney's legacy will be what he wants it to be, not what it is, and in the language of Tense Logic: p→GPp “What is, will always have been.”

Fifty gallons of crap in a ten gallon hat

Dick Cheney. Is he wearing that idiotic hat to cover up his horns or is he just reminding us that Nixon may be dead, but the cowboys are still in control?

Using a captive audience of Coast Guard Academy graduates to promote the idea that occupying Iraq is a "war on terror," Cheney persists in insinuating that because it is a war, it can be won and that because it is a war, to desist would be surrender, betrayal and dishonor. Because it is a war, anything we do is justifiable except to to pay for it.

The relentless cramming of the occupation of Iraq into this battered, stretched and sorely abused metaphor of war, the relentless evocation of cheap comparisons to every conflict since Rameses II rode into Kadesh, still stirs the souls of war lovers, a couple dozen of whom, calling themselves "a gathering of eagles," showed up "to support the troops" in some fashion far, far beyond my ability to comprehend.

"We're proud of our government," said one of the eagles.

I won't put words in anyone's mouth, but I would love to have asked him what it would take to turn that pride into shame, or indeed if anything could. I would love to ask whether he would feel pride if we sent troops to club baby seals and dishonor if they were forced to leave any alive. I would love to ask how defending a dishonorable act could be honorable; but of course I don't speak their language or follow their thought processes and I'm sure the answer would be less meaningful than the screeching of birds.

Fisher of men

The country is all agiggle about the reflection of Dick Cheney's hand in his sunglasses whilst on a Snake River fishing expedition, which if you're drunk or religious looks like anything from a naked woman to "never had sex" Mary.

Hardly anyone gives much of a second thought to further evidence and testimony on the AP wire today that the same hand gave a thumbs up to torturing people to get confessions.

"With each new revelation, it is beginning to look like the torture operation was managed and directed out of the White House,"

ACLU legislative director Caroline Fredrickson said. But of course the Media is "liberal" and the ACLU is "far left Liberal" and anyone is a Liberal if they're so conservative as to want to preserve and protect the Constitution. Who listens to them? Not us. Why ask the invisible man to damn America - we've done that all by ourselves.

Same old Dick

I'm rather tired of the false familiarity politicians sometimes use when trying to sound like one of the guys; as though they'd really rather be called Dick than Richard or even "Mr. Vice President" because power and status are uncomfortable to these log cabin born rail splitters with dung on their boots. I'm always happy to call our current VP Dick however, although the opportunity isn't likely to present itself unless we have another hurricane in my part of Florida this summer.

I was beginning to think for a while that Dick was in ill health or that George had sent him to his room so as not to embarrass the party, but he's back. He's back with the same old "go F*** yourself" attitude, the same old so what response to the will of the country he was elected to serve and the same old authoritarianism in conservative clothing. Like most mythological creations of religious organizations do, Dick speaks in parables and his latest and most overused parable seems to be tale of the democratically elected hero who knows much more and much better than does the peasantry about what needs to be done and so steps outside his job description and like a fat Napoleon, on to a white marble horse.

Gerald Ford, says Dick, exhibited the same sort of heroism in pardoning the other great Dick of American History that he and his administration did by fabricating a story requiring us to invade, demolish, pillage and occupy Iraq. Let's not be so formal as to call this sophistry, let's continue with the familiarity thing and call it a foul, stinking, crock of shit and worse: an effort to advance the cause of paternalistic, authoritarian and yes, imperial government. Of course no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of Americans and especially that of Republicans, but it shouldn't be too difficult to recognize that pardoning a cheap, chiseling, neurotic and alcoholic crook like Nixon could never have the same kind or degree of repercussions or involve the same kind of human and financial costs as did and does our occupation of Iraq.

But if anyone still needs help, arguing that because a president may sometimes have to temper the short term passions of the public, a ruthless dictator is ipso facto a good president, is a false argument of insidious intent. Get it?

Dick likes to pose as the long suffering victim of unintelligent and unappreciative liberal advocates of popular sovereignty whom time will eventually exonerate and promote. As you may recall, we were suffocated with similar sentiments concerning the other Dick and so far Nixon looks worse with every passing year and every transcribed tape. I'm afraid glory will escape Dick Cheney in his lifetime and in saecula saeculorum unless of course honest history fails along with our democracy and our republic.

Less is more

There's a lot of diminishing going on - in the mind of Pat Buchanan, that is. When Pat Washington Post reporter Dana Milbank agreed with that former Nixon speech writer who helped the previous pinnacle of corrupt and demented presidencies divide the country with scurrilous arguments, that President Carter's characterization of Dick Cheney as "a militant who avoided any service of his own in the military" is not appropriate for a former president and "diminishes" Carter. Sure, it's the same old argument that obedience is freedom but it's also irony; Buchanan having avoided service by faking a bad knee.

Why is it not appropriate? Beats me. Most Americans dislike Cheney and his intransigence in the face of constant error, constantly contradictory facts and failures of policy. There must be some reason why someone with foreign policy expertise and experience can't say what most people would agree with. (and please take note Ann: he's a committed Christian.) I guess it's the same reason Obama has to wear a tawdry flag pin to prove the required degree of mindless allegiance; or the reason decorated veterans can't give back their medals because of matters of conscience and for the same reason that no one can criticize a general for fudging the figures when there's evidence he has.

Poor Gerald Ford is apparently "diminished" post mortem for criticizing Cheney and Rumsfeld as well, even though I don't think any sane person can argue his right to apply his insight or his right and indeed duty as a public citizen to advocate for better government. But he's diminished, says the man who never thought to diminish the felons he worked for in the Nixon White House - so diminished that the shop worn effigy of Michael Moore can be brought out of the warehouse and propped up against the wall. That's diminishment!

I don't expect much different from that lying old Nixonian hack and supporter of disastrous and bloody wars. I expect that the same old patriotic nonesuch to be performed ad infinitum and I expect the United States, like some angry, lonely and delusional teenager with his diminished ability to deal with reality to reach for the weapons and go out in a blaze of violence.

Words of wisdom

What did Bush do with the real Dick Cheney?

The Ministry of Logic

And snarling Dick Cheney continues to channel Joseph Goebbels; furnishing a gathering of Marines with enough bullshit, steaming, bubbling and reeking, to fertilize all the poppy fields in Afghanistan forever.

We're fighting al Qaeda in Iraq, not local insurgents, not the Iranian trained operatives we were blaming last week, not the sectarian militias who are united only in their desire to have us long gone. We're facing an organized army led from a central headquarters, and we have to fight them in Iraq because they're fighting us in Iraq. Never mind that it isn't true that Iraq wants us there. Never mind that it doesn't make sense to fight "them" in Iraq, if the leaders are in Afghanistan. Never mind that there would be no al Qaeda in Iraq, if indeed there really are more than a few, if we hadn't invaded and allowed the complete collapse of law and order because of an arrogant preference for political theory over sound military advice.

"If you support the war on terror, then you ought to support it where the terrorists are fighting us,"

Or in other words, if you support A then you should support B where B is, even though the relationship between A and B cannot be shown. These arguments should be preserved in logic textbooks for students to study forever. One hopes that the marines forced to listen to this infantile babble have had enough training to wonder why, if we're not fighting Iraqis in the streets of Iraq, we would have to concentrate on foot soldiers and ignore the possibility of going after the alleged leaders in their headquarters; have enough military know-how to ask why we have to let "the enemy" choose the battleground. But I can only hope they are tired enough of the slaughter, the flag waving, the lying and the dying to see through it all.

Support the troops

The "support the Troops" stickers on cars and trucks are now so faded by the Florida sun that most are no longer legible. I don't see many new ones and I don't think that Taiwan has any difficulty keeping up with the demand. I still see Bush/Cheney '04 bumper stickers, but the "Is it 2008 yet?" tags are newer and fresher looking.

Supporting the Troops may still be used as a way to stifle dissent and thwart any attempt to end the occupation of Iraq, but it's become apparent that any physical or moral support they're getting comes from kind old ladies that send packages and letters to men and women who have been separated from their families and in harm's way for years now as the hope of coming home is dangled before them like a carrot on a stick. Of course Senate Democrats are trying to get them some time off from the meat grinder, but as usual Republicans are treating it like treason or worse, an increase in the Minimum Wage.

I'm getting tired of referring to Orwellian Doublethink, but since since an obvious morale booster can be objected to in the name of keeping up morale, I have only to conclude that the morale being protected is that of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. Republicans like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, see the Senate proposal to give troops some more time at home as a "backdoor way to hamstring" deployments. So I'm back to Orwell - support the troops means screw the troops.

The image of Richard M. Nixon telling us he wasn't a crook; that he had earned everything he got, is seared into my memory after three decades. I'm not likely to be here three decades from now, but perhaps some Fogg of the Future will still be thinking of Richard B. Cheney saying "go fuck yourself" or George W. Bush in front of his Mission Accomplished sign. I hope not, I dream that what remains in the mind and appears in the history books is the image of both of them in orange jump suits and handcuffs.

Back in the saddle again

Well back in the Executive branch at least.

"Two senior Republican officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that the rationale had been the view of the vice president’s lawyers, not Cheney himself," says the Politico.

Nice try Uncle Snarley; no lawyer is that dumb, unless it's one of those faith-based kind we find around the white house these days. You're going to have to take that subpoena and answer some questions or come up with another reason to claim you're above and beyond accountability for ignoring the constitution. I can't wait to hear what it is, but here are some possibilities:

• He's not an American
• He's not human
• He forgot about the constitution
• Clinton made him do it

I'm sure he'll have something equally as creative.

(cross posted at The Reaction)

The name of the beast

Turn up your iPods America. Get out the skateboards, turn on the ball game, tune in to Rush and pop open another Budweiser. Watch American Idol, download some ring tones and text your buds. We're almost there; we're almost stupid enough, angry enough and confused enough for the fascism we've wanted for over 75 years to take effect. Sure, the rich get richer and the smart eventually get smarter, but dumbass America never learns.

Some questions on a new Newsweek poll are frightening. Somehow, the disinformation machine has 41% of Americans believing Saddam Hussein was involved in planning, financing or carrying out the September 11th Attack on New York. Somehow a majority don't know that the attackers came from Saudi Arabia.

That 59% know Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House but 81% can't tell you who the Chief Justice is, indicates to me that whatever news they are getting is from the right wing rabble-rousers hell bent on making Nancy Pelosi the next Jane Fonda. The 20% who think that Saddam's non-existent nukes were found; the 15% who think Osama has been caught or weren't quite sure are less surprising. That no doubt represents the irreducible fraction of irredeemable idiots and is roughly equal to the percentage identifying themselves as Republicans.

So when I read about how Cheney has since his election, felt that he was a special branch of government designed to be above the law and not answerable to the people or their representatives, I'm not surprised. A man who answers "fuck yourself" to a senator who has a right to ask the question of who Cheney actually works for; a man who burns records when he bothers to keep them, who ignores subpoenas and makes money from a war he helped promote with falsified data and the suppression of facts, is just the sort of big league tyrant stupid, hysterical and ignorant populaces turn to. A man who has restructured the Executive branch by fiat and in defiance of the law would once have caused a revolution, but today one hardly hears of support for impeachment or even censure.

Yes, his popularity ratings are abysmal and yet the man who could stop him in his tracks is silent and supportive - and we elected him. I'm afraid that given the chance we'd do it again and I'm worried that we won't even have the chance come 2008.

While you wait

Is Commander Guy's sinister sidekick suffering from vascular dementia or is he sliding into paranoid schizophrenia? Is he simply so sure of himself that he offers an excuse so laughably flimsy for refusing to turn over documents as claiming he isn't part of the Executive Branch? Is he trying to point out the impotence of the Public when it comes to taking a renegade administration to task? Maybe it's both. Maybe he's the head of a new branch that makes the other three branches subordinate: Halliburton, but with Cheney's perennial contempt for being asked what the hell he's doing by people with the constitutional right to ask it, all avenues of speculation lead to comedy of one sort or another.

But while we're waiting to see whether his diseased heart will last as long as this diseased administration and wondering whether we or the Shadow will ever know what evil lurked there, we can entertain ourselves with the documentation of decades of secrets about CIA murders, assassinations, thefts, burglaries, illegal wiretapping, kidnapping, infiltration and surveillance galore. It seems that all the things we hippies, subversives, conspiracy theorists and leftist, pinko paranoids once said the government was doing were pretty much true and more like understatement than hyperbole. It's all due to come out next week when the CIA is planning at long last to air enough dirty laundry to stink up the solar system.

I will try to avoid smirking while we read about it; while the remaining true believers try to think of excuses. I'll try not to say I told you so and I will try not to get the dry heaves this coming Independence day when we go through the annual rituals, ceremonies and parades of self praise. I will recall, through the rockets' red glare that people are suffering and dying while yet another generation of evil men sit on the truth and tell lies.

Lil' Bush

Comedy Central's Lil' Bush isn't funny, or at least that's the news from the bunker states like Utah. Utah, of course isn't known as the mother of a thousand comics, nor is any place known for religiosity and Republican politics also known for thriving comedy clubs. The mocking of heretics, homosexuals, Democratic candidates and minorities seems to fill the niche.

But I didn't come to bury Donick Cary's new cartoon series but to praise it. It may in fact be "mean-spirited, ugly, amateurish, vulgar and unwatchable" but when it takes aim at Bush, there's something refreshing in seeing the characters we suspect of being the inner children of the little club that's ruined the world biting the heads off of birds (Lil' Cheney,) or trying to get Lil' Bush to smooch (Lil' Condy.)

Wednesday's episode, wherein the Lil' Republican rascals run off to Baghdad to find a present for Daddy Bush in the form of some "good news" reveals that there is no good news for anyone but Halliburton and after a bit of slaughter they can only find a maimed little boy they nickname "lamey" to bring back to Washington in a box. Dad Bush doesn't know what to make of the present and is relieved to toss him, crutches and all in the garbage after moronic Lil' Jeb accidentally breaks his neck.

Yes, as many reviews point out, it takes "liberties with the truth" but that's what satire is about and perhaps treating the House of Bush in this trenchant fashion makes it more revealing of inner ugliness than the House of Usher with its hidden, Gothic horrors. It's the use of sarcastic humor, albeit cruel, mean and ugly, that allows us to deal with the dimwitted Decider, the greedy, inhuman prince of darkness Cheney and their familiars. Perhaps as with any Medusa, you can't really look at such a hideous visage directly.

The picaresque first episode uses a competition to get the first kiss of youth as the grail the Weeble-like characters seek while destroying lives to get it. I think actually, that it's far more kind to show them thus: as childish, self involved innocents with undeveloped consciences, than to show them as they really are: childish, self involved sociopaths with undeveloped consciences, up to their knees in blood in their quest for power, glory and riches.

Cross-posted at The Reaction

Three is the lucky number

Maybe good news comes in threes. Darth Cheney's battery needs replacement. Maybe they should give the contract to Halliburton to replace it with something substandard and overpriced? Maybe the sinister Energizer bunny is finally going to run down, maybe not, but it just makes me feel good to know someone is taking a scalpel and making an incision in Cheney.

Paris is going back to the slam with tears ruining her makeup and snot running from her overly long nose. It's intellectually rewarding to think about her having to go through it again. Who can resist a smile?

If Secretary of Defense Robert Gates' recommendations are followed, General Peter Pace will be replaced by Admiral Michael G. Mullen the new Chief of Naval Operations who is getting some applause by jettisoning some unpopular brass seen as yes-men to the Bush administration.

We are a very long way from a military coup, but it does seem that sanity might be breaking out at the Pentagon. Gates appointment as head of CentCom, Admiral William Fallon has been opposing Neocon demands for yet another carrier group to be sent into the Persian gulf. According to Think Progress, Hillary Mann, the administration’s former National Security Council director for Iran and Persian Gulf Affairs, warned that some Bush advisers secretly wanted an excuse to attack Iran and were planning to provoke some response similar to the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Fallon has insisted privately that an attack on Iran won't happen on his watch. I don't want to seem too optimistic, but maybe some adults are finally going to take back the kindergarten from Commander Guy.

Morality is a joke, says Cheney

I remember standing outside the Federal Courthouse during the Chicago 7 trial and talking to another demonstrator who saw this whole movement as the wave of the future that would sweep away the war mongering and the anti-democratic and totalitarian evils that accompanied it. He was sure that in our children's time, it would be a brave new world. My reply was that no, they would simply go around us and propagandize our children and make us into the enemy and so they did. Now, in my grandchildren's time, I think I can say with sadness that not only did it work, but it still works and they're still doing it.

Behold the man. Dick Cheney, pictured with his arm raised like Hitler, addressing the graduating class of the United States Military Academy at West Point. While many have been concerned that the officers of tomorrow already take a dim view of the Geneva Conventions, Cheney chose to take the low road and make his appeal to the growing contempt for morality amongst the ever more radically fundamentalist military.

"Capture one of these killers" said the worm Cheney, assuming that everyone captured is a demon, " and he'll be quick to demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and the Constitution of the United States. Yet when they wage attacks or take captives, their delicate sensibilities seem to fall away."

Indeed, those whose country we occupy by force are not only the "enemy" but sub-human demons and that absolves us of being moral; that justifies any evil we might enjoy in the quest to bring American, Judeo-Christian traditions to the heathens.

"The terrorists know what they want and they will stop at nothing to get it. By force and intimidation, they seek to impose a dictatorship of fear, under which every man, woman, and child lives in total obedience to their ideology." And indeed that's just what they say about us and that's what Cheney wants of us.

And just who the hell is "they," Dick? would it be the civilians beaten, raped, tortured and killed in your dungeons and in their own homes? Would it be the victims of your shock and awe? Would it be the millions forced to flee and the millions living in fear and hunger and disease and heat and cold and poverty now that we have changed their regime? Is everyone objecting to your imperialist thievery a "terrorist?" and what the hell is the moral difference between a terrorist who tortures and kills and a sick, corrupt maggot like you who does the same thing in the name of "freedom?"

It's not often that I am a complete loss of adequate words to describe the moral abomination that is Dick Cheney and his gang of murderers, liars and barbarians. No biblical prophet ever execrated any man or act thoroughly enough to suit the crime of his very existence. No advocate of Satanism ever was more eloquent in setting forth his case than he.

I fear to live in a country whose Army is pressed into the same mold as Hitler's Waffen SS. I loathe living in a country where standing up for morality, ethics, decency, liberty, democracy and all I hold to be the foundations of civilization are considered by our leadership to be unpatriotic. Our constitution, our laws, our beliefs about the inherent rights of man; our traditional values, our aspirations to be moral leaders - none of these things mean anything but as objects of contempt for Cheney and not only is he the least moral of anyone pretending to be an American; not only is he the Devil's advocate and propagandist, he's guilty of more high crimes and misdemeanors against our laws then any loathsome invertibarate ever to hold public office.

Dick Cheney is a malignant and aggressive cancer that cannot be removed soon enough. Impeachment and a lengthy jail sentence in some filthy sewer of a prison would have been his fate years ago if this country were worthy of any of the things it still brags about being. Cheney must be impeached and removed from office or we have no reason to exist.