Shock and Awe

"It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself. The oil revenue of that country could bring between 50 and 100 billion dollars over the course of the next two or three years. We're dealing with a country that could really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."

Maybe you heard Paul Wolfowitz's words to Congress on the Daily Show 5 years ago when George Bush decided to pawn him off on the World Bank and everyone was laughing at the ridiculous bastard and e-mailing the clip to their friends.

Maybe the video of Karl Rove saying that what happened never happened will make the same rounds. Rove has always been able to rely on the gullibility of strangers -- and of course their defective and selective memories. Whether we write such things off to psychotic partisanship or bald stupidity or plain old evil is anyone's call but here's Karl on Meet The Press Yesterday saying the Bush Administration didn't say what the Bush administration said and even though you were an enthusiastic patriot for believing it then, you're a liar for believing it now.

"Now the revisionist floodgates have opened with the simultaneous arrival of Karl Rove’s memoir and Keep America Safe, a new right-wing noise machine invented by Dick Cheney’s daughter Liz and the inevitable William Kristol. This gang’s rewriting of history knows few bounds."

wrote Frank Rich the day before. He hadn't yet had the joy of hearing this latest jewel of denial.

Of course you know I'm not an optimist. I've won many bets by gambling that the American public will make the most ridiculously inappropriate choices in public policy and my money is on the prediction that before long the Bush administration will never have said the war will be over in weeks, that we will be greeted as liberators, that there will be almost no casualties, that reconstruction will be swift and cheap, that there were al Qaeda training camps, mobile chemical weapons factories, nuclear facilities only weeks away from making deliverable bombs and that "freedom" will burst out all over the Middle East and the silly Liberal losers who doubt it are flirting with treason for doubting it.

Truth having caught up with the men who murdered America, they're forced to retreat into an imaginary world where they never said what they said, or did what they did and where a minimalist government presided over 8 prosperous years of freedom and peace - just like the theory says. Too bad we can't lock the door behind them.

God is not religioius?

And invoking God on our currency is not religious either, or so say the judicial theologians sometimes known as the Federal Appeals Court. The California court decided 2 to 1 to overturn their own 2002 ruling that sided with atheist Michael Newdow's complaint that doing so established a State Monotheistic religion and violated the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state. Did they see the light, or did they feel the heat?

Why? It may seem hard to us to accept that God is not a religious figure or concept, but the reasoning behind the decision: that the government's power is limited by God's power, certainly is a religious atatement and even more certainy is at odds with the Constitution and the philosophy behind it. In fact the Biblical God seems very much against the idea of choosing leaders by popular vote if you remember the fate of Saul and that European Christians could be excommunicated for voting well into the 19th century.

The "pledge of allegiance" is also constitutional said the majority.

"The pledge of allegiance serves to unite our vast nation through the proud recitation of some of the ideals upon which our Republic was founded and for which we continue to strive,"

the two judges said." An interesting concept seeing as both of these shibboleths are rather recent and the founders of the Republic would have started a second revolution if they were around. I never feel more disunited with my countrymen than when at various club functions I have to stand up like a schoolchild and swoon over a symbol and affirm somebody else's religious delusion. Of course I always say "Under Fogg" but that's another matter.

As I've reminded my readers many times, the pledge was not originally about God or its relationship to our Republic, it was about the flag and nationalism and freedom and justice, two out of four of which are good ideas. Forcing children to swear to pray to God in a public school is an abomination and an attempt to punish people who do not believe. That everyone else has come to see this as a part of every public and private meeting or convocation is just silly, but the real comedy is watching federal judges bend over so far backward to be fair to people of superstition that their heads might just as well be fully inserted.

Born in the USA

Everybody's a Communist. Everything you say or do or want or don't want is Communism. The sun comes up in the Communist East and sets in the Communist West. Hamburgers are Communist, hot dogs, apple pie and motherhood. Reality itself is Communist according to Beck, the bombastic blond Aryan brother from Fox.

And that includes the song that's become all but a second National Anthem, Springsteen's Born in the USA. It's Anti-American propaganda because it's about the bittersweet truth of growing up in a country that fights wars for war's sake and abandons the worn out warriors to live in the streets; a country that's racist here and abroad, a country where some struggle and never get anywhere but a country we're proud of in spite of itself, like a prodigal child we love even through our despair.

The truth actually is Anti-American and Communist according to Glenn Beck because true Americanism is all about constant rage and hatred toward Americans and the government they choose and the contempt for civilization, the contempt for anyone different than Glenn Beck. In fact the Constitution is anti-American, the law, the truth: history is anti-American and so it's patriotic to lie and patriotic to distort, to defame, to libel and slander and bear false witness while fake tears run down his fat face. To be a "real" American, when Bruce and I were young, used to mean supporting the Vietnam war. Now it means supporting war for war's sake - just to show the world how tough we are. Now it means unalloyed hatred of the Black, Kenyan Muslim secretly in league with atheist communism and theistic radical Islam.

It's patriotic to pretend that we have nothing and never had anything to apologize for, that the age of white male suffrage, Jim Crow, lynchings, segregation and misogyny laws was a golden age. We were better off when half us lived in poverty, most of us died indigent, minorities knew their place, monopolies ripped us off and banks regularly collapsed. It's patriotic to be ignorant.

"It's time for us to wake, wake up, out of our, um, dreamstate." Said Beck, quoting Adolph Hitler's book. "Wake up out of the propaganda. The, you know, this is the thing that, people who come from the Soviet-bloc or Cuba, they're all saying, 'How do you guys not hear this? How do you not see this?' Well, that's 'cause we don't ever expect it."

No, it's true, we didn't expect that Bruce Springsteen hated America until you told us and we didn't expect it because it's a God damned lie like every word out of your mouth, you sick, greedy, ignorant treasonous bastard. We didn't expect that someone could make millions by doing what Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw Haw once did. We didn't expect such evil from any American.

Obama to impose ban on fishing

I feel left out. The hysterical e-mails about Obama's latest evil deed usually hit my in-box before Fact Check.org or Urban Legends.com or Snopes.com get around to debunking the latest scoop from the bottomless crock. Surprising indeed since nearly everyone where I live has a boat and loves to fish. Stuart, Florida, where my boat lives is the Sailfish capitol of America. This time I got wind of it before the fishy smell stank up my e-mail client

Obama, you see, wants to ban fishing. That's right, out of pure African-American freedom hating Marxist malice, Opie will have to throw away his bamboo pole and the Cat Fish House on Rte. 1 will have to close and of course we'll believe it because we'll believe anything that feeds our racism and anarchist paranoia. The public has a right to fish, you see, just like I have the right to kill every last damned bird in the federal sanctuary I live next to. The Bible agrees.

The real story of course is that an Obama administration task force charged with developing a comprehensive plan for managing U.S. ocean, coastal, and Great Lakes ecosystems stopped taking public input so it could prepare its final report. The deadline for writing letters simply ran out. That's right, just like the income tax is pure Marxism ( or Fascism if it suits your particular dementia better, ) scientific fish and wildlife management usually supported by sportsmen, is now a ban on commercial and recreational fishing.

It's all a case of slippery slopes, the fallacy behind virtually all Republican "principle' these days. Adjust the deer hunting season in Georgia, extend the snook season in South Florida and it will inevitably lead to an outright ban and therefore it IS an outright ban regardless of whether we've had such seasons and controls for a hundred years and regardless of the fact that we owe the continued existence of game fish and other wildlife to scientific management.

Will they ever tire of the daily lie? Not until you do.

Dimwits, Denial and Dementia

Einstein's theory of General Relativity has undergone a hundred years of testing and once again its predictions of the way mass interacts everywhere in the Universe has won out over a competing hypothesis that attempted to dismiss the idea of Dark Matter and Dark energy that seems so contrived and ugly but steadfastly resists debunking. Science is about constant questioning and constant refinement of measurements, and so it will continue to be tested and mankind will continue to try to work out a unified theory of how the universe operates on the very large and very small scales -- perhaps forever.

Likewise, the Theory of Evolution has survived all challenges and has steadily explained more and more about how life changes over time through naturally occurring processes and algorithms. The gigantic amount of new geological data argues irrefutably for our planet being billions of years old. In fact, these sciences may be much better understood and documented than the physics we all tend to accept, yet one set of theories has been under attack by people who deny all the data and pretend that it's a hoax perpetrated by scientists for unknown reasons that probably have to do with invisible sentient entities in dubious battle.

Of course quantum mechanics and relativistic theories of space-time, matter, energy and gravity are much harder to comprehend and to demonstrate to the vast majority of people but you don't see anyone building museums and amusement parks or wasting their time lobbying school boards in favor of a Jerusalem centered universe or insisting on the presence of a "firmament" or an invisible kingdom full of invisible but powerful creatures so close to us that one could build a tower and like Jack with his beanstalk, walk right in. The Bible affirms this world view and certain desperate people insist that the Bible proves a 6000 year old universe even though Einstein and the geologists can prove otherwise beyond the shadow of a sane doubt. I imagine a fifth grader could explain to you how few stars would be in the sky in a 6000 year old universe or why a million years of ocean bed lies at the top of the Himalayas.

Confusing isn't it? But then you'd expect the actions of the confused to be that way and you'd expect the people whose lives are filled with the pain of confusion and the ignominy of stupidity to act with anger against a world view that defies their ability to understand. And so they do.

Any fool can think he's putting himself on a par with Ed Witten, not by disproving his math or offering better solutions that M theory, but simply by denying, by insisting without evidence that it's all a hoax. For the idiot, it's like being born again, only this time with a brain. I deny, therefore I'm smart.

Every year, students from Liberty University, a fake educational institution run by deranged liars for the Bible make a trip to Washington to look at a watered down for public consumption display of evidence for the origin of species - and scoff and snicker like George Bush at the Louvre. With wild and wanton ignorance of geology and all the accurate methods we have to date fossils, minerals and rock strata,

Lauren Dunn, 19, a second-year biology student at Ding-Dong Liberty University opined of an early mammilian fossil:

"210 million years, that's arbitrary. They put that time to make up for what they don't know."

She knows only what her mentors teach: irrefutable proof is nothing and if mathematics argues with legend, mathematics is a hoax.

Now here's the lesson in evolution: there is no known mechanism weeding out the genes for such defective brains in our species and in fact they tend to breed and to succeed better at reckless breeding than our Newtons and Einsteins and Feynmans and in ages past they would kill such people and still wish they could. My question is this, will it be our whole species that will look at the rubble of civilization while gnawing on bones and picking lice or will it only be Americans?

Irreversible Ratchet

The barber shop I frequent looks like something out of the old West, or at least a Hollywood version of it. Cowboy movie posters, ammunition boxes -- It has more old guns and shooting paraphernalia on display than most small gun shops and indeed Bob the barber is a licensed gun dealer.

So anyway, there I am waiting my turn along with one deputy and the rest of my disreputable contemporaries and reading American Rifleman -- and the first thing I see is an article by Wayne LaPierre of the NRA telling us that the "irreversible ratchet" of gun control has been turned back in Canada after their gun registration policy has cost a fortune and produced no measurable results. Why am I laughing? It's because that "camel's nose" and "irreversible ratchet" argument has been used to death since I can remember to counter any gun control laws at all, reasonable and unreasonable. It's because all I hear from NRA sources is that Obama is a gun grabber and he's so close to grabbing your guns that you'd better stock up on ammo and bury it in the back yard because here we go down the slippery slope to disarmed totalitarianism. Catalogs are selling books on just how to do that and ammunition prices are sky high, along with the prices of military surplus waterproof containers. Shops can't keep AK-47s on the racks.

Then if one looks at the news and realizes that under the current administration gun rights have been expanded to allow concealed carry in the national parks, as they are in most state parks and nearly everywhere else, that the last bastion of handgun banning, Chicago, Illinois may be about to fall and that 309 members of Congress and a majority of Americans approve, -- one has a hard time believing that there is a nationwide confiscation program being planned or that any gun control measures are by nature irreversible. Nearly all the states now issue concealed carry permits while crime continues to decline, so if that policy of citing the slippery slope fallacy has been debunked, where is the apology for all the fear mongering? were they wrong? Did the will of the majority actually prevail over the evil gun grabbing Liberals just like it's supposed to?

No, the ratchet works both ways, the camel isn't interested in your tent and the slope wasn't so slippery after all. Do I suspect that the worst thing that could happen to the NRA would be a definitive affirmation of the second amendment of the individual's right to keep and bear arms and a legislative branch inclined to go along with them? Does a red-neck shoot in the woods?

Blackboard jungle

So let me get this straight -- a congressional bill designed to keep untrained school personnel from tying your kid to a chair or radiator and choking the life out of him is a bad thing, even though a 2009 report from the GAO found

"hundreds of cases of alleged abuse and death related to the use of these methods on school children during the past two decades."

"These methods" according to Raw Story, include a teacher sitting on a kid, mechanical restraints that might choke or restrict breathing and methods that in at least some cases, have killed children. "These methods," particularly when used against children with disabilities such as Cerebral Palsy have had grave and even fatal results and I'm quite sure that any of you with children would have something to say had your kid been strapped into a chair or held face down and suffocated. The Keeping All Students Safe Act, H.R. 4247 passed 262-153 in Congress and is designed to:

(1) prevent and reduce the use of physical restraint and seclusion in schools;

(2) ensure the safety of all students and school personnel in schools and promote a positive school culture and climate;

(3) protect students from—

(A) physical or mental abuse;

(B) aversive behavioral interventions that compromise health and safety; and

(C) any physical restraint or seclusion imposed solely for purposes of discipline or convenience;

(4) ensure that physical restraint and seclusion are imposed in school only when a student’s behavior poses an imminent danger of physical injury to the student, school personnel, or others….

Perhaps Congressmen don't have children or perhaps they are simply psychotic enough to see any federal action or regulation of any kind as a threat to freedom so grave that basic human rights are worth ignoring. 145 Republicans voted against the bill last week; only 24 voted yea. Iowa Representative Steve King probably spoke for many in insisting that the Keeping All Students Safe Act would be a first step toward a "federal takeover of the education system." We heard that scummy excuse in the 50's when schools were being desegregated and "states rights" became a euphemism for depriving people of freedom, justice and sometimes even life.

Do we have hypocrisy here, or just garden variety dishonesty -- or maybe it's more of that congressional multiple personality disorder that has these august idiots equating the abusive abridgment of civil rights by a school principal with freedom, but the Constitution's promise; the upholding of humane treatment or the very right to life of students is called a "federal takeover." When the government itself and the Republican party specifically is so afraid of the federal government that it will refuse to protect children from possibly lethal abuse by local government, perhaps it's time to sit on these dangerously disturbed, irresponsible, stupid and incompetent partisan child molesters and see how they like it.

Yes, we all want a government that has little to say about our personal choices and conduct, but that feeling is quite universal, as much as Republicans claim it for their own. What is not universal amongst sane and honest people is the desire to give the power of life and death to local school board Death Panels to prevent a wholly imaginary "federal takeover" and if there ever was a reason to restrain or isolate and punish anyone this is a perfect example.

If there is one thing clear and easily visible in American politics today, is that there is a political party that has been insisting 'it's a jungle out there' for so long, they've made America into one.

A strange kind of honor

Is David Frum having his "mission accomplished" moment?

" Israel may have to retire its title as the only democracy in the Middle East. With Sunday's free and fair national election, Iraq joins the honor roll as one of the very few Islamic democracies,"

wrote Frum on CNN.com today. If so it would be a strange kind of honor indeed, a ravaged, broken country with millions exiled, tens of thousands -- perhaps over a hundred thousand dead; a country cleansed of Christianity, where an election required massive military support and during which, dozens of people were killed.

Sure, it was an election that may actually reflect the will of the voters, but an election that could only be held because of the military might of an occupying invader; an election to pick a government that does not have the strength to run the country or to rebuilt it. Isn't it a bit premature to be portraying this as a "vindication" of George Bush's attempt to find al Qaeda training camps and Chemical weapons factories capable of attacking the United States within weeks? Is this somehow the conclusion of one of the longest and most costly wars in American history; a war which continues and the end of which is not yet in sight?

Certainly there is some hope for an eventual state of stability, but no assurance whatever as to what course a stable, self governing Iraq would take if not held at gunpoint. Certainly it's not time to have the Frum orchestra playing rhapsodies to a dishonest promise of the coming comity of nations and holding up Iraq as a model of enlightened and liberal democracy capable of spreading a Western model of government all over the Middle East. Can it be any more than dishonest when that still distant prospect is, at this point, the product of the wish to believe and more likely to be a fatuous dream than an accomplished mission?

David Frum is telling us that a distant shimmering mirage that never seems to get any closer as we move toward it is really a garden of Democratic Eden only steps away and that the unsubstantiated vision justifies having wandered in the desert wilderness for nearly a decade seeking one elusive promise after another. I wonder if, like the Moses he seems to think he is, he'll have to settle for seeing it from afar for the rest of his life.

Jesus needs jets

Coming soon, to an in-box near you:

"The Department of Defense denied a request for a military flyover at the 2009 'God and Country' rally. Obama denied a military flyover at the annual "God and Country" rally in Idaho, where new military recruits were inducted and all military were honored. This is the first time in 42 years that there has not been a military flyover in formation, and organizers were stunned that Obama refused to allow this. . . . . it was because of the event's "Christian nature." This is beyond unbelievable action by the Commander in Chief and President, and Americans need to know about it!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Yes, stunning - they were stunned, I tell you -- stunningly unaware that in November of 2001 the Department of Defense under George W. Bush decided to prohibit the Military's support of events that

"provide a selective benefit to any individual, group or organization, including events with religious themes."

Yes, America's memory is short and in only a year, the deeds of Bush can be attributed to his successor with impunity - and with outrage. Whether or not the event "honors the military" or was in previous years primarily for that purpose, it's organizers stated purpose for 2009 was that

"Our mission is primarily about spreading the Good News of Jesus Christ."

According to Snopes.com, the Treasure Valley God & Country Festival; "unabashedly a Christian event" has four steps to witnessing about Jesus Christ (i.e., bless people, fellowship with them, meet their needs, present the Truth), and say of the rally's program of events: "At the end of the evening, we move to step four, presenting the Truth. Each year, we ensure that the message of the Gospel is presented, and information is provided for those who have heard and want to know more about Jesus Christ."

That's all well and good, but not when it's done with taxpayer money; not when it requires the US government to spend a great deal of money proselytizing for any religious group, using the prestige of the US military to raise money for churches and doubly so in times when the public wants to justify every unnecessary expenditure. In a nation of churchgoers, government financing of revival meetings is more than just unnecessary, it's illegal.

Of course lying to the public to make it seem like the President "disrespects the troops" because of a decision made in accordance with the US constitution, almost a decade ago and under the previous and Republican administration , is in fact necessary to people who write these electronic cruise missiles. Necessary because they have nothing to offer but lies and no hope of being relevant without stirring up anti-American hysteria. Necessary because they need power the way a vampire needs blood and they'll do or say anything to get it including ripping the throat out of America. They need hysterical people and what better way to get them into the fold but to insinuate that Obama hates their religion?

To a rational person the unprecedented tsunami of false witness from the radical right would wash away any pretense to being Christian or to be of any other reputable religion for that matter, but that's where the hysterical irrationality, the gullibility and yes, the intellectual laziness of America comes in and any chance for a free and prosperous future goes out.

Who, me?

O that ye would altogether hold your peace! and it should be your wisdom.

-Job 13:5-

California state Senator Roy Ashburn (R-Bakersfield) is very concerned about the "gay agenda" and he's been a fierce opponent of same sex marriage and a "family values" blowhard for a long time. Although many don't agree with my feeling that such obsession is a cover up, examples keep emerging with regularity and it's hard even to list the most humorous ones. Senator Ashburn was recently arrested for drunk driving in downtown Sacramento early Wednesday morning. There's no particular surprise there and I imagine many other patrons leaving the gay bar "Faces" in the wee hours had had a bit too much to drink. He was given a field sobriety test and promptly taken off to jail. I don't know what happened to his "unidentified male companion."

Perhaps it will be less of a surprise to hear that Angelo Balducci, a "Gentleman of His Holiness," was caught on a police wiretap negotiating for the services of male prostitutes with a Vatican Chorister. No official comments have yet been published.

The pattern emerged a long time ago, even before Wide Stance Larry tapped his toes in Minneapolis and whether you do or don't agree with me, I'm going to bet that more often than not, the biggest and most assertive opponents of gay rights and fantasy fabricators are dealing with difficult inner longings. Perhaps after all, if you'll forgive my radical libertarianism, the best way to hide them and to avoid suspicion is to simply leave gay people alone?

Escape from New York

I'd call it the house that hate built, or the penthouse more accurately. It's one of Rush Limbaugh's abodes, on 5th avenue in New York with spectacular views across Central Park and a paneled Library. It has frescoes on the ceilings, antique furniture and a few sets of leather bound matched sets of books that look like they were bought by the yard rather than for the content. Perhaps there's a gilt edged Ayn Rand volume or two.

It's not that Rush really wants to move, but increasing real estate taxes are -- well, just so Marxist that it's, you know, a matter of principal. It's enough that he tips the doorman on Christmas and he shouldn't have to be taxed like some ordinary peasant.

I supposed he'll have to rough it at his obscenely huge oceanfront estate in Palm Beach, as cold as it is these days (it has nothing to do with climate change) in Florida. It has it's own charms and on a good day, you can plink at the Haitians floating offshore on styrofoam rafts.

At fourteen million bucks plus tax, it's just waiting for some Trotskyite Castro sympathizer to move in and share the wealth with those Liberal New Yorkers. I'd offer him no more than twelve though. It's a buyers market now that Obama caused the housing bubble and the credit crunch.

Stoning the Orca

"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes."

-Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, Dec. 6, 1813.

It was inevitable, since after all, this incomprehensibly huge and ancient universe exists only to provide a place in which God can test the mindless obedience to a farrago of meaningless and often contradictory rules of the sentient apes whose existence spans an infinitesimal part of the space time continuum -- anything that happens must be seen in the context of peremptory power and abject submission to the words of ancient men who went their whole, ignorant, bug-infested lives without soap. Or so saith the AFA.

A captive 6 ton top predator, by following its possibly God given instincts to grab and kill any smaller animal at water's edge was God's way of testing his demand that an Ox who gores a man must be stoned. That's right, the sad death of Sea World trainer Dawn Brancheau was God's punishment to "the west" for the very concept of animal rights and her death a test to see if we'd follow the commands of ancient, flea bitten, psychotics. By not "stoning" the Orca, it's only going to get worse. God will have his Oxen (and Orcas) stoned even if the hirsute brutes he chose to write down his words never heard of such an animal.

Have I been listening to too many paranoid schizophrenics at Nurse Ratched's cuckoo's nest? No, just the perennial font of psychotic idiocy called the American Family Association.

"Chalk another death up to animal rights insanity and to the ongoing failure of the West to take counsel on practical matters from the Scripture," wrote Bryan Fischer, at the AFA's official blog. “When an ox gores a man or woman to death, the ox shall be stoned, and its flesh shall not be eaten, but the owner shall not be liable.”

Do you think that if I stampeded some Oxen through their offices and gored the living shit out of Fischer and his batshit crew of straight-jacket candidates, the AFA would find me liable and sue me? I think so too but I would truly love to try it. After all, I could easily cite the 613 Biblical Commandments, 600 of which they routinely ignore, such as the "abominations" of the cheeseburger or using cotton thread to sew your linen clothes or turning on the lights on Friday night. A good goring and stoning would only be God's work, dontcha think? The work of that smelly, sociopathic little God who lives in some dank invisible basement in some invisible world and tortures animals for fun.

There is no place in a sane and decent society for these sick bastards and the curious selection of perverted bronze age superstitions they'd like to replace our laws with. The Bible, or whatever dubiously assembled antique political documents they'd like to tell us is the backbone of existence and the source of all goodness, is simply not compatible with decency, truth, freedom and the safety of humans beings or their families. Freedom from being ruled by its self appointed priesthood has been the long struggle of our kind and I will not have it snatched from us after two centuries of secular Democracy by these evil men.

"for I have sworn upon the altar of god, eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man," said Jefferson.

Yes, me too.

The meaning of is

It's funny how the things that characterized the United States in it's best and most prosperous years are being characterized as bad for the country and a one way valve in the sewer pipe that leads to Marxism, while the days before we had things like unemployment insurance saw poverty, hopelessness, homelessness, broken families, social unrest and egregious injustice far beyond anything we've had in generations.

Why for instance are unemployment benefits bad for America? because they encourage people to stay jobless said smiling Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) Yes, I've noticed that the families living in old cars, scrounging in dumpsters and sleeping in the woods or in shelters are really living the life of Riley in increasing numbers these days, taking vacations in the sun while hard working Republican Senators who have free health care have to support them. I mean that we were once the most productive people on earth even with social security, unemployment and disability benefits doesn't really tell us anything, does it?

Of course being of the same party, Republican Senate Whip Kyl would likely have defended most anything fellow Republican Senator Jim Bunning (R-KY) said that was an attack on one of those things that makes us a nation rather than a bunch of individuals looking out for themselves alone. Unemployment benefits are one of those things: things that make us a society with common goals and values rather than serfs doing without to support the lifestyles of corporate barons -- and Senators.

Of course to a Republican, a hypothetical reason for something to be bad is more to be believed and waved about as a tribal emblem than any mere empirical observation to the contrary. Unemployment insurance makes people lazy and unwilling to work, just like life insurance makes them want to die, health insurance makes them want to have surgery and liability insurance makes them suicidal drivers -- and insurance itself, being a system for pooling risk, taking a small amount from each participant so that no individual has a catastrophic loss, must therefore be Communism. The true Randian Monad will never accept any cost that might benefit anyone else as well as himself -- right? Of course the idea of insurance is saved from Communism only if instead of a 3% administration fee, someone makes 30 or 40% from it: the more money, the more justified by the grace of profit, amen. Unemployment insurance

"doesn't create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work,"

says the Senator, but of course that depends on what the definition if is is. If is denotes observable reality, the statement is shaky for want of evidence. If is denotes adherence to ad hoc dogma nailed together as an obstructive barricade, then perhaps Kyl makes sense. I'll leave it up to you as to whether you believe his peremptory proclamation or your lying eyes.

If you do side with Mister Jingles from Arizona, I'd like to ask you why, if we can't afford to temporarily keep the unemployed from starvation without running the risk of irreversible Communism and the irretrievable loss of precious bodily fluids, why then can we can bail out millionaires and give them special tax relief without similar concerns? After all, experience dismisses the argument that they will create jobs with the extra millions and shows that they will buy unregulated derivatives, invest in hedge funds and pump up the market until it crashes. Kyl? Are you listening? Kyl?

Some kind of savior

Pray for America: do all you can to block Obama's agenda says a letter from a local reader in yesterday's paper. The online edition has 165 comments, mostly favorable. I can't bear to read things like this any more -- and it's everywhere.

The agenda, of course is a hysterically hypothetical fabrication and without much resembling factual support from anything the administration has done, said aloud or published: "grabbing" our guns, raising taxes on working people and the middle class, giving massive handouts to the indigent, encouraging terrorist attacks, putting privilege in peril and deliberately raising the debt -- and of course sabotaging the messianic mission of Saint Sarah D'Arc in a most egregiously unfair way. Most of all, his agenda is dangerous to the divine right to make huge and ever increasing profits through collusion and dubious restraints of trade with no regard for the suffering of Americans who have to watch their children die so that some corporation can make 40% profits year after year.

"Americans need to stop sleeping and stand up before this becomes a third world nation" said the voice at the other end of the table this past weekend. "They saw this guy as some kind of savior and someone who would give them something for nothing."

The table, of course was in a room full of millionaires observing the change of watch at our yacht club, which as one expects, has a policy against discussing politics at club functions. Such angry lapses are more frequent of late however, as the propaganda and lies percolates up from the sewers of Fox, the Corporate funded think tanks and policy centers with deceptive, patriotic names.

Of course this voter remembers the posters, the paintings, the rhetoric announcing George W. Bush as being part of the second coming, sitting at the feet of and being anointed by Christ, and this writer certainly doesn't see either man in a religious context. Obama was the lesser risk of more of the same and vastly more intelligent of the two candidates but never mind, the meme is abroad and pandemic and there seems to be no way to stop it. With all indications that this administration and the current court has no interest in additional gun control legislation much less in disarming the country, the rage against Obama, the gun grabber grows. Obama, the clownish, dishonest watermelon-eating political devil from Birth of a Nation. Although over 90% of America has got a tax break, the conviction that Obama is going to squeeze them persists, driving otherwise sane people into public displays of ignorant rage.

Extending jobless benefits is now "communism" and it costs too much. The unemployed are going to have to suffer because the millionaires at yacht clubs all over America need the lowest tax rates in the civilized world to stave off Communism and can't be expected to pay down that debt incurred by Bush and Obama in order to bail them out.

Yes, America needs to stand up and continue howling as though Count Barackula had risen from the grave to suck us all dry and bark the louder so that nothing true, reasonable, factual or sane can intrude on the festival of tea soaked madness.

Obama's agenda, if you believe your eyes, seems to be about pacifying corporate (Republican) interests. It seems to be more of the same as concerns our two forever wars, the "Patriot Act" and weakness about standing up to the health care and drug cartel. His supporters weren't looking for someone who heard God's voice, but to get rid of a President who heard voices but not American voices. They were looking for a fixer and not a savior and if fixing the mess Republicans created takes more than an eighth of the time it took to ruin the economy, some are still willing to wait, just as we're still waiting for the "surge" to "win" the war we were called traitors for opposing. ( Remember when we were America-haters for suggesting it might take longer than 6 weeks?)

Third world country? Isn't that one where all the wealth is owned by a tiny percentage of the people? Is that Obama's fault or is that the result of the deliberate and consistent tax policies of the Republicans? Isn't that one where the police and military answer to the rulers and not the people and have a frightening amount of power? Who wrote the patriot act, ended Posse Comitatus and Habeas Corpus, built secret prisons off-shore so as to bypass not only the constitution but the fundamental and natural rights of man upon which it is based?

No, have another martini, go sleep it off on your yacht and tomorrow get up all refreshed and cry about Obama's agenda all over again because you'll never really get over that sense of entitlement, you'll never be as free of responsibility to your country as you'd like or as wealthy as you deserve to be.

Nerds to the rescue -- again

Well here we go again. On the Florida Amateur Radio Emergency Service nets this morning, I learned that the Florida contingent of radio Amateurs is wrapping up operations in Haiti. Most phone service is still out on the island, with cell towers destroyed and lines cut and power out. The same goes for the internet. Of course the military has it's own communications, but nobody else does. Haiti is too poor to have a resident base of radio operators, so volunteers from the US have been living there in squalid conditions without any pay.

Hams have been using techniques like Winlink2000, a digital PACTOR III based system which allows users in Haiti to send e-mail and data to a remote internet node elsewhere in the world and High Frequency voice communications using SSB are carrying the rest. Somehow the press thinks this is hilarious and despite the cutting edge technology none of them can understand, "low-tech." Yes, we've been sending text messages for a hundred years and making phone calls from our cars for nearly 40 years.

I'm sure the Chile earthquake this morning will have severely disrupted communications in that country and perhaps the inevitable tsunami will have terrible effects all over the pacific rim and islands. I'm listening to the SATERN net, run by the Salvation Army - now on alert condition 2, and the Intercontinental Traffic Net this morning, but so far I'm not hearing anything coming out of Chile. I'm sure that will change as the day goes on and I'll be listening in. If you have a radio that can receive 14,300 MHz and 14,255 MHz Upper Side Band, those are the primary US frequencies at the moment.

Yes, we're just funny old nerdy dinosaurs with our expensive microprocessor controlled digital equipment, our Amateur satellites and our Echolink internet radio protocols, but in 2004, my local friends were handling all the communications in West Central Florida after hurricane Charlie. It took a month for phone and internet communications to be restored in my county after Francis that same year. Guess who filled in. After Katrina, President Bush had to rely on Hams to send a message to the Governor of Louisiana because those cellphones you think work anywhere didn't work anywhere. No, you didn't hear that on CNN, but you should have.

When everything else fails, as it so often does, it's hams to the rescue.

You will recite after me. . . . or else

The pledge of Allegiance has come a long way from a short declaration appearing in a Christian Socialist Children's magazine in 1892 to its current status as a somewhat longer treasured icon of patriotic sentiment and theological affirmation recited by young and old in all sorts of settings. That was back when Socialism and Christianity were seen as allied ideas and back when our country was pumping itself up and cheering on its urge to empire and celebrating it's chauvinistic urges.

It's hard to overestimate the fanatical insistence of Americans that all must swear an oath that calls this secular Republic a "Nation under God," hard as that may be to define, and calls upon us to be an eternal ally of a piece of cloth. A few years ago , when someone in California filed suit against a school district claiming forced recitation of a religious oath was unconstitutional (it is) half the cars on my local roads, thousands of miles away had "Under God" painted on their windows by irate owners who were clearly in opposition to a citizen's right not to have official religious beliefs forced upon them and their children. The kind of people who hold an annual claim to victimhood and insist that no one impede their right to force religious observance on others. Freedom and justice for all? What are you, a damned Liberal?

67 years ago, or three score and 7 if you prefer, the Supreme Court ruled that forced recitation was a violation of the first amendment and that was a decade before the "Under God" was added by President Eisenhower to help make the USSR look more satanic at the expense of Americans who don't believe in disembodied spirits living in the sky.

You have to ask yourself; if it's unconstitutional to force a citizen to declare a political position, how much more unlawful is it to insist he declare religious feelings not his own?

Not lawful enough to dissuade a Maryland school teacher from shouting at, demanding recitation and finally having a student taken into custody by the police amidst a chorus of mockery for exercising the rights we love to flaunt in front of the world as "Our Freedoms."

In the American madhouse, where asking children to listen to an introduction by the President is compared with Pol Pot and the slaughter of millions, where government administered health insurance is compared with Hitler and Fascism and the very idea of progress is "Marxist," what should we say about people who are not only comfortable with forcing their political and religious views down the throats of other people's children? Well, we've run out of outrageous hyperbole, thanks to Fox and the Republicans. Most of us aren't quite smart or even sane enough to understand a careful explanation of how we have given away our birthright and become the same kind of oppressors our forefathers tried to escape by coming here and that we' don't have a hell of a lot to brag about in the freedom department that most other countries have more of.

Do yourself a favor - support the ACLU, because freedom can't protect itself and all the guns and bombs and battleships can't bring it back once Americans throw it away.

The Obama Code

What's black and white and red all over? What about proof that Barack Obama has a Muslim agenda?

The "Conservative blogosphere" as Raw Story calls that big ball of slime, is "abuzz" with much sound and fury now that the "Conservative" Drudge Report has identified the new logo of the Missile Defense Agency as a secretly coded message that Barack Obama is going to make the USA a Muslim country through the use of anti-ballistic lasers and missiles.

This fits in with my theory that because the US flag has red stripes and stars, Betsy Ross was a Chinese Communist.

"New Missile Defense Agency Logo Causes Online Commotion,"

says the Drudge Report. I'm sure he'd like that to be true and perhaps he will be able to create commotion amongst the large proportion of his readers with fewer working synapses than a jar of mayonnaise. Perhaps there are other mental midgets so terribly desperate for more absurd calumny to be flung at the White House they'll willfully suspend the kind of disbelief that would inhibit a normal person, but we'll see just how far the "conservatives" can pull that anti-American bandwagon before the clowns themselves jump off and the mules run away giggling.

Yes, it's red, white and blue and looks, if you're astigmatic, vaguely like the President's campaign logo based on the US flag. It has some curved lines perhaps to suggest missile trajectories and orbiting satellites. There's a point of light indicating a missile hit with a laser, which if you're trying hard might suggest a star and as everyone knows, the flag of Turkey, a predominantly Muslim secular democracy has a crescent moon, a red background and a star, and so does the American based Nation of Islam which has had known terrorist members like Mohammad Ali and Michael Jackson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and John Coltrane, so how can we avoid that hidden message shouting at us? Thorazine or some heavy anti-psychotic drugs perhaps?

Drudge packer Frank Gaffney, writing at BigGovernment.com, a Web site run by the well known "conservative" blogger Andrew Breitbart, says the new logo may be a sign that the Obama administration has "nefarious" plans for US defense. No, really. You couldn't make this up or at least you couldn't try to sell it while keeping a straignt face, even to an idiot -- or to American "conservatives" whichever is stupider and more demented.

Hey, have you ever noticed that the Capitol building has a dome? Like the Dome of the Rock maybe? And the Washington monument looks a lot like a minaret - and don't you hear those voices?

Yoo's a viper

John Yoo called it a "Witch hunt" but he's lucky it wasn't. I have a feeling he'd have fared far worse had he been tried by a cross section of the American public who would have been more disgusted by his maintaining the legality of crushing an innocent child's testicles or murdering an unlimited of innocent bystanders by Presidential fiat in order to "keep America safe" than the actual jury of his peers -- other lawyers.

He hardly even seems grateful for having avoided the tar and feathers and the pillory, considering that he's upbraiding President Obama for not recognizing his efforts to allow a president to "keep America Safe" by exercising unlimited executive power under the aegis of a war he has the power to start for no other reason than to give him that power. Did any of our fabled founding fathers really envision such a thing except as the perfect opposite of an American President?

Yoo's image of an American president as unlimited by law, treaty or moral scruple to a degree not unfamiliar to Attila or Tamarlane or Ghengis Khan should be producing more widespread disgust than it is, but that no doubt shows the immense power of the massive, corporate sponsored, Republican organized eruption of noxious gas and poisonous accusations: a smokescreen the likes of which hasn't been seen since the close of the Permian.

No, Professor Yoo is claiming that even though the proceedings against him were initiated under the Republicans and he was let go by Democrats, he's a victim -- Obama's victim. That ungrateful man of sorrows who apparently is all things contemptible because with the power to do evil, we would surely be overwhelmed and conquered by a few dozen guys with explosive jockey shorts. He's a victim and it's because he loves keeping America "safe."

"an entirely false narrative of his own victimization." says Joe Mathis at the Philadephia Weekly. "Get this straight, the so-called 'smear job' came under the Republican president. The so-called 'vindication' came under the Democratic president."

Preposterous by the strictest definition of the word; the same problem with cause and effect that makes Obama guilty of Bush's economic train wreck.

Guilty of professional misconduct and poor judgment is a slap on the wrist considering that his support of giving the President the power to break constitutional law ad libidem as long as "there's a war on" might at one time have been punished quite severely. You'd think he'd just thank his luck and the corruption of justice that's become institutionalized in the US, but no, he has to be a victim, he has to vilify the administration that let him go free and he gets to keep his tenured job, his law license and most likely will have a great number of books bought up by CPAC and distributed for free to contributors so that he can be on the NewYork Times best-seller list and gloat about Democratic "Royalists."

There's a lot of money, there's a lot of safety in evil.

What's in a name?

After listening to the self-contradictory, incoherent, quasi-literate and massively hate-packed rhetoric emanating from CPAC, where we were told that the concept of progress was a Marxist idea, that Progressives wanted to progress toward Communism. Liberals were the enemy of freedom and most insane of all: "Royalists" It's hard to hold on to any hope that what's left of the American Right retains even a rudimentary grasp on reality or any commitment to any ideal in any way related to Democracy and the Rights of Man. Taxes are Communism, protection of the rights of minorities is Communism, secular democracy is communism, but collusion between corporations and government isn't, as Mussolini Defined it, Fascism -- it's freedom.

A party that won a solid majority in a free election is an "insurgency." Teddy Roosevelt, his opponent Woodrow Wilson and Adam Smith are all Communists who tried to destroy us and Glenn Beck got what he calls a "free" education, not by attending any private school, but by using taxpayer funded, government owned resources at the public library. Yes those of us who have pushed through legislation that finally allowed women and minorities to vote or own property or live like free men and women are simultaneously Nazis, Bolsheviks, Trotskyites, Maoists, and yes -- Royalists. Those of us who think vast sums of corporate money are corrupting the system are any wildly preposterous political epithet that comes to mind, but also Communists, Marxists, Trotskyites and the kinky sex partners of the Taliban. That they're not calling non-Republicans Irridentists or Scrooby Separatists is only the result of their neglected education, but of course those things are only another form of Marxist Islamofascism and Trotskyite lesbo-Feminism with a bit of royalism thrown in for flavour.

"Protect our precious Medicare?" Well that's not communism even tough it and Social Security were until the country voted for health care reform. Why? because Obama is a Fascist follower of Pol Pot, trying to corrupt our youth and a Communist, Muslim, illegal alien, soft-on-terrorism, cannibal none the less - and because any hateful insanity must be true if it vilifies Obama - he's a Royalist.

No accusation is too ludicrous whether it contradicts all the other accusations or not. It' s not important to make sense or to tell the truth; it's only important to pump up the accusations, pump up the hate.

After listening to John Yoo describe a Republican justice department according to which, an American president like the one he served has more power than any European Monarch did in the age before Democracy, including the right to wage wars, internal and foreign, suspend civil rights, amend laws, refuse to obey laws, to lie, misrepresent and fabricate and to justify any action by Presidential fiat, it's hard to believe we're not simply listening to cross talk between parallel but vastly different universes. Is it legal for the President to order that the testicles of an innocent child be crushed to make his parent talk? But of course says Professor Yoo! Do as the President says shall be the law -- but we're Royalists all the same.

It's not so much that the Republicans seem to have defined conservative values as Marxist and indeed almost everything including evil itself as its opposite, they're inventing their own paranoid psychotic reality permeated by gibbering, drooling and incoherent rage, it's that we're not in open revolt against them; that they have a huge, armed and vastly wealthy base of support.

And we just sit and listen.

God retarded my baby

Giving birth to a disabled child is God's way of punishing women for having had a prior abortion, says Virginia Representative Bob Marshall, R-13th.

“In the Old Testament, the first born of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord. There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest.”

Yes it's redundant to mention that he's a Republican; a raging mob which for the last few decades has been the party of and a party to promoting such shameless indecencies. Of course some biblical scholars tell us that the story of Abraham and Isaac was a priestly way of moving away from a prior and very ancient practice of sacrificial infanticide, but indeed, the first born male lamb in the flock of a Hebrew shepherd was to be sacrificed and the first born son was at one, very pre-Christian time, dedicated to service in the Temple.

Of course there hasn't been a Temple since the 9th of Av in the year 70 CE, and Christians really don't hold with more than 9 or 10 of the 613 commandments and none of the Rabbinical laws, but that doesn't stop the kind of shoot-from-the-hip theology prevalent in these days of the senescence of American Christianity. Christians might suggest anything in truth, but if they're suggesting any such thing, it's a suggestion with no roots in the teachings of Jesus.

One might be tempted to ask Bob why, according to antique Jewish law largely set aside by Jesus and his followers, Christians who don't force their first born to become priests aren't subject to the same punishment, but his answer isn't very likely to enlighten us.

Surely anyone who still believes in a God with some tenuous attachment to decency if not actual justice will have trouble with the bloody Saturnine entity who condemns a child to a lifetime of pain and deformity because of something his mother did. But not Bob Marshall.

Some will have difficulty reconciling the position that it's indecent to mention that someone may be mentally retarded unless the mention is made by some pasquillant Republican creep like Limbaugh; but not Bob Marshall and probably not a large number of morally retarded, power hungry and profoundly ignorant Republican Theocrats who haven't bothered to consider that the enormously vast majority of children with deformities and defects and abnormalities are not born to mothers who aborted their first pregnancies.

Down Syndrome for one, seems more likely to affect children of older mothers. Conjoined twins, anencephalic babies, Spina Bifida, heart defects -- can anyone show any statistical correlation with sin? Of course not and anyone promising that virtuous people are less likely to give birth to lives affected by diseases and afflictions and deficiencies is likely to be a liar and an idiot, willing to use other people's tragedies to gain political power -- like Bob Marshall.

I await Sarah Palin's response to what could, amongst people who can actually reason consistently, be taken as an accusation of having had an abortion. I'm sure she'll choose to ignore it however, for fear of damaging the fabric of the alternate universe in which the ultra-right lives: where right and wrong, left and right, up and down are nebulous and interchangeable concepts and useful only to defame the enemies of these Insaneocrats and to yoke Jesus to their bandwagon like an ox.

Toxic Tea

It's the "liberals" and the "lefties" that have destroyed the black family, says the absurdly right-wing man of color. The resident blogger agrees, as he always does when anyone ascribes yet another evil to his shooting gallery of straw targets -- or Commies, Marxists, far-left Liberals, "pussies" or Homosexuals as he terms them interchangeably.

They're both educated people, if you can grant any credibility to what passes for education in the United States, but of course these are Tea Party people, proclaiming articles of faith to one another and in protected sanctuaries where the comments of the reasonable, the informed, the sincere are not permitted to be heard and the vilification of the more or less innocent is the flesh and blood in their Psychotic sacrament. Only in America can someone long for a future of miraculous anarchy, concentration camps, forced deportations and even mass murder -- and insist he's not only speaking for everyone, but is a conservative.

No, Godot will arrive, spend his two week vacation at my house and depart before anyone can explain how the emancipation of slaves, the restoration of civil rights and integration of the schools was an insidious Liberal plot against "black families" regardless of the length of time it took, in part because of the political and sometimes the armed resistance from conservatives. The question of why the end of race-based housing and employment discrimination broke up families; why the end of restricted hotels, separate but unequal restaurants, swimming pools, beaches, bathrooms, drinking fountains and public transportation was a vicious act designed to harm African American families, can only be explained by people who can't tell a tax cut from an increase when seen through a tea bag.

No, I won't link to that blog, since I've had long experience with rabid death threats to me and my family. I've had many long tirades threatening Liberals with deportation to North Korea at gunpoint or even extermination after "the producer class" stages their armed revolution when I've attempted reasonable, respectful and sincere communication with people like the college professor who runs the place, and I don't want to attract any more threats and hysteria to this blog. But be aware, they're out there in both senses of the phrase. You may not know of them, you probably don't read them and odds are ten to one you don't agree with them, but from such ugly sores, horrible diseases grow - and they're out there believing that 2012 marks the end of our world and the beginning of theirs.

Nationalizing Wal-Mart

So let me get this straight, President Obama, or if you're a Republican, just plain Obama, is a dangerous leader because when someone tried to blow up a plane he took hours before mentioning the magic word "War." That was bad. Never ever talk of criminal activity when you can describe it as an act of war, unless of course it's our criminal activity. The non-sequitur correlate of this principle is that no rules apply when the words are coming from on official right wing spokesman, like Rush or Sarah. So it's OK for him to call people "retards" on the air, but just disgusting for Rahm to use it in private. Likewise it's OK for Rush to insist there's no war on while all the rest of his party continue to justify each and every crime, transgression. Actually no rules apply to Rush at all, since he can get away with such statements as insisting that the President has already dealt the US a more devastating blow than we suffered in World War II without being called a liar, an ignoramus or the worst enemy Truth ever had by his party.

But let's start at the beginning, Rush claimed yesterday that Wal-mart was lobbying heavily to keep "Obama" from nationalizing the company. Lord knows they have lobbyists, but it takes a certain kind of person to broadcast that there is any likelihood of such an action and a really special kind of person to believe it. Now why would that be something awful you might ask Rush? Because there's no war on, says he, driving home the point that whether there is or isn't is situational and specific to any particular argument he's trying to make. There's a war when you can attack the President with it and there isn't when you can attack the President with it and both times Rush will be right.

"The last time this happened was World War II, but that was because there was a war on and it made sense"

The last time what happened, Rush? It may make sense to him, but not only are we losing men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan, we did not nationalize Wal-Mart then or ever, nor is anyone contemplating it but Rush.

"Country is under assault, more so than we were during World War II, other than the Japanese. But the Germans never attacked us, the Japanese did."

he continued and I'll leave it to you to figure out what alternate universe these "facts" come from. I suspect there are numbers of people who will simply accept that the current administration is more dangerous to our national security than what in the late 1930's was the most powerful military on Earth, will simply nod and accept that Germany didn't declare war on us and didn't over-run Europe and attack England and that we didn't lose almost half a million troops or that untold tens of millions of people didn't die -- Obama is dangerous and has already done us more harm than the Axis powers and without a doubt is going to nationalize Wal-Mart.

Does anyone reading this believe that Rush Limbaugh isn't stark raving mad with power, thinking he can invent alternate histories, create alternate realities and use them to attack the government and the people of the United States of America? There are millions who do and it may be that one or two of them will take it upon themselves to do Rush's bidding and rid us of the man who has already ruined everything for everyone.

Of course it's a United States of America where the president's imaginary "gun grab" has already taken place, where people who just got a tax cut are protesting an imaginary increase, where people who can't afford a check-up much less treatment for a serious illness are screaming about "Obama" taking away their ideal situation and somewhere, somebody is plotting acts of violence because after all, "Obama" is not only a Nazi, but a more dangerous one than Hitler. Thus spake Limbaugh.

You have the right to remain silent

Why is it that when Republicans only become creative when they run out of factual support? Lies, distortions, evasions, calumnies, falsehoods, fabrications, disinformation, distortions, propaganda, tall tales and slander; defamation, deceit, prevarications and mendacity: all kinds of colors in the "conservative" crayon box.

One lie I've heard far too much of from the Fox-poisoned Right, is how that lily livered, limp wristed, far-left Liberal and soft-on-crime Obama all but let Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab off the hook with his damned un-American insistence on justice and due process because he, having been read his Miranda Rights, immediately "clammed up." As is almost invariably true, the facts say otherwise.

The administration's timeline just released shows that the would-be murderer was removed to a hospital shortly after being arrested. There, he apparently began spilling the beans like a bratty one year old in a high chair until his medical condition deteriorated sharply - undoubtedly from having his genitals nearly burned off. The Miranda litany was recited only 9 hours after capture and after his condition was stabilized by four hours of surgery and questioning resumed but without response. How can you tell when the Republicans are lying? You don't need to, they always are.

Why is it that when Republicans only become creative when they run out of factual support? Sometimes they're so hard up for things to use to undermine our government, they just make them up from scratch or expand some minute and irrelevant mote into a universe of slime. If you haven't seen the latest chapter of Teleprompter Wars in your in-box yet, I'm sure you soon will. It's the one showing the President using two teleprompters to address a group of small children under the rubric of:

"Apparently there is no venue too small to require multiple teleprompters. I saw these pictures and first thought they were photo shopped, but it ends up they are actual pictures from Obama talking to an elementary school classroom. And they made fun of Bush's communication skills."

Well, no you didn't, the picture of the kids in the classroom and the President at a subsequent news conference in a different room do not show him using a teleprompter to address them and of course you know that. He was giving a speech to reporters who would be willing to use any misplaced word to attack him.

You know that he writes well, speaks well and is very much more able to communicate than his babbling, blathering predecessor and that looks bad for you -- and so you butter it over with lies and serve it up to your dogs for breakfast.

What do they hope to accomplish with such clumsy calumnies? Why are Republicans so desperate to believe anything that will make their visceral hatred of Democracy and uppity people of African descent seem to be less than the demented evil that it is? Why are they willing to sacrifice our country on some pagan altar of some bellicose god of war and conquest? Why do we sit by and let them do it?

Dying for the Gold

I never had much sympathy with the guy who decided that Hurricane Wilma was just the ticket for kite surfing fun in Ft. Lauderdale a few years ago, or even the guy who went paddle boarding last week off Palm Beach during an annual shark migration, but as dangerous as the luge is at any time, Nodar Kumaritashvili, the 21-year-old luger from Georgia deserved better.

Kumaritashvili's practice runs showed he was not quite up to snuff. He didn't finish one practice run and his speeds were significantly lower than other athletes', but the safety of this very fast course has been questioned and critics may have been right. He was killed in a crash yesterday, the second one in practice for the Vancouver games. Of all the things not worth dying for, "going for the gold" and for ephemeral national glory have to be amongst the least valuable.

I don't know if it's too late to correct the design, but let's hope nothing else like this happens.

Under my skin

It's strange to find myself on the same side of any fence with the Book of Revelation Literalists, a group for which my loathing is nearly boundless. None the less, the disturbingly Orwellian prospect of having RFID devices implanted in people so that their employers can track their movements scares hell out of them as much as it does me.

A Radio Frequency Identification Device is small enough to be placed under the skin with a hypodermic needle and it's a great thing for keeping tabs on cattle or identifying lost dogs. They can also contain data, medical or otherwise that can be read by a scanner. Most humans object to being forced to having one inserted however particularly as a substitute for a key or ID badge.

Civil Libertarians -- indeed any kind of libertarians -- tend to be militantly opposed to allowing this to be done to people but it's of course for reasons of privacy and the protection thereof, not because they give credit to what may be the looniest book to worm it's way into the Christian canon. There are many such people in places like Virginia and it seems to be they who are behind a bill designed to prevent such implants. Why? because John of Patmos almost 2000 years ago had RFID capsules in mind when he talked about the Mark of the Beast.

He didn't and the Beast is most likely Nero, but even if the enemy of my enemy is not really my friend, these things are the mark of some kind of beast, corporate or governmental and I'm as much against it as they are.

Hopey Changey

Can you believe there's a website called teleprompterpresident.com? The local trailer parks echo with teleprompter jokes, there are more teleprompter jokes clogging up blog comments than there are clumps of fat in Rush Limbaugh's arteries and that chattering little chipmunk Palin just can't let go of that chewy chestnut. I wonder was Abe Lincoln only a charismatic guy with some scrap paper? Yes, he was to be sure, but not only and the Small Government Conservatives slandered and murdered him anyway.

But of course the mini-skirt Moose Mom doesn't know, and doesn't care that you might know that the first time the electric note cards were used was at the 1952 Republican Convention by former President Herbert Hoover. It was the first one ever televised of course and he did it again in 1956. Whether he was charismatic or not I will leave to you and to Sarah Snickers, but Eisenhower used one from 1952 and virtually every other president, candidate and TV talking head pundit has used one too at various levels of charisma.

That's right, George W. Bush used a Teleprompter, there he is in the picture, although I'm told "that's different" by the snarksters and flim-flam bloggers and if you remember the TV Debates, Bush even wore some kind of device worn on his back. So it's hard to know what Governor Barbie had in mind, but it's clear she doesn't feel threatened by anyone who knows more than she does -- which is most of us -- because like most irresponsible pseudo-conservative snarko-terrorists, she's always surrounded by the like-mindless who think she's a genius.

Maybe if George had used one more often or had been able to read along with the moving words, he wouldn't have given us such delights as "the childrens is learning" but we'd be so much poorer without such things as part of our culture, or whatever remains of one.

So, yes The president is a charismatic man, which of course is required for political success in the age of Television, but that's a bit like saying he's a man who wears shoes. Compared to the most educated of recent Republican candidates he's a bit more than Charismatic and of course note cards or not , when he speaks he says something -- and in respectable English as well.

But when one really can't be described as anything more than political junk food, and that's the kindest thing I can say about Sarah Palin the human Twinkie; when you're a tasteless confection of sugar, oil and starch with no ability to do anyone any good, the best you can do is just what she does. Well never mind about the hope and change -- you're hopeless and intransigent. You abandoned Alaska leaving them with record debt and some incoherent story, but it was all about a better offer, wasn't it? So isn't that all you are -- a mendacious mediocrity and charismatic candidate for What Not To Wear -- with notes scribbled on your palm?

So hows that wiggly giggly thing working out for ya, Sarah?

Sarah Palin is a lying sack of shit

Why pull any punches? Ms. Hopey - Changey may have the IQ of a Barbie doll, but is just bright enough to know, if she bothered to think at all, that she's lying like the devil about her portrayal of the year old Obama presidency and the letter and spirit of constitutional law.

Why fool around, why worry about any one's "sensitivities?" She's a damned malicious liar and it's made no more palatable by her giggling, faux-adolescent presentation. Addressing the Tea Party Rebellion Saturday, she insisted that the administration has unconstitutionally given the right to a fair trial to a "terrorist" because apparently the presumption of innocence doesn't apply to any one of a group Sarah selects. The supreme court disagrees with Palin however, and with the Bush administration and I'll bet some of them have actually read the damned thing.

In 2008, the court ruled that you can't arbitrarily deprive anyone of a trial, dispense with the presumption of innocence and remove Habeas Corpus by crying War over and over and of course Sarah, in denial of the truth accused the president of "politicizing" the Christmas attempt by not crying war nearly enough -- which by the logic of stupidity means not politicizing an act is politicizing it. Don't worry, if that doesn't make sense you're probably not stupid.

Prattling on in full lying sack of shit mode, that "Paliney" thing on the podium continued to prevaricate by criticizing the treatment of Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who according to her wasn't properly questioned because he "lawyered up" and wasn't cooperating. The facts are quite dramatically otherwise of course. Umar has been gushing facts and giving up names like an open faucet and without any unlawful means of interrogation, but worse than being a damned liar, Sarah Palin is actively engaged in undermining the foundations of American justice by promoting the idea that justice can be waived by using the magic word "war" and that a fair trial gets in the way of justice.

How, in the name of God is there anyone left anywhere who doesn't see the horns and cloven hooves and smell the sulphur? What's to prevent someone from characterizing her assault on truth, justice and due process, her campaign against the government and against the Constitution as a war? What's to prevent her or us from torture, rendition, secret and indefinite imprisonment if some ambitious president declares he an enemy combatant?

Even Fox is showing signs that they're becoming frightened by the monster they've produced and should we be any less fearful of the beast?

Gagging a Fox

A friend at the Field Museum in Chicago once attributed the phrase "rotten enough to gag a maggot" to a staff taxidermist presented with a reeking and putrefying elephant hide. I can't confirm or deny it, but it's a useful concept and it came to mind when Fox News Host Brian Kilmeade dared this morning to say that Sarah Palin had gone beyond the snark limit in dismissing President Obama as a "charismatic guy with a teleprompter." Of course saying that while reading from notes written on her palm and bellowing to a snarling crowd seemingly taken right out of some medieval painting of Jesus in torment might just be expected to make even a Foxman gag at her unrestrained roguery. Was his stomach already upset at her dishonest hypocrisy evident in damning Rahm Emanuel and Excusing Rush Limbaugh for using the word "retard" as a noun?

Kilmeade evoked the Fox of the previous administration in saying

"The only thing I was uncomfortable with [was] when she said it is bigger than any guy with charisma and a teleprompter. That guy is still president. I think you got to -- you got to -- you're no longer the candidate. He's not the guy you're running against. I think you got to give that title its due even if you don't respect the policies."

Indeed, although the Fox of today isn't noted for recognizing the similarity or often the identity of Bush Vs. Obama policies, the Fox of the previous administration was fond of criticizing Bush's critics for questioning his wars, questioning his unconstitutional acts and policies, or the state of the economy or anything else for that matter. Remember when the FOX theme of the day was that the economy was robust and "Liberals" were only pretending otherwise? Well we won't get an apology for that one, but it seems at least one Foxer remembers the idea of respecting the President at some basic level, remembers their taunts that disrespecting the president was "hating America."

Can it be that Palin has become an embarrassment to Fox as well as to the human race or is this just the view of one talking head whose gag reflex has been triggered? It will be interesting to watch this develop.

Das Unbehagen in der Kultur

I've had enough of American TEA to be able to say with confidence that it has noting to do with any tax burden, real or imagined. What it seems to be is a collection of people searching for some rationalization for angers they don't full understand: anger about the demands of civilization, anger about the need for tolerance, being forced to live in a heterogeneous culture, a changing culture, a culture demanding more understanding and more education and more responsibility than they feel capable of. Not all of them are stupid or ignorant, but without the stupid and ignorant, they'd hardly make enough noise to be heard, even with the complicity and amplification provided by Fox News. They're much like the discontents Freud discussed, like the bomb bearing discontents abroad we tell ourselves hate us for "our freedoms."

Tom Tancredo has latched on to the Tea Party movement after being ousted from office by his constituents, in part because he needs to believe he wasn't rejected by his real constituents, but by an undesirable element who shouldn't be allowed to vote. That this disjointed movement contains many people who believe this is a Protestant white man's country and that others should feel grateful just to be allowed here and should not vote or be otherwise uppity is obvious. Hence when Tancredo told the Tea Party Thursday that President Obama was elected only because

"we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote in this country,"

it fell on grateful ears.

Mr. Obama's educational and intellectual capabilities and achievements are an obvious irritation to the sort of people Tancredo hopes to ingratiate himself with and when Tancredo allows them to feel warmly supported in their belief that the Harvard Scholar is stupid (he's black after all) and his success due to the stupidity of voters, their inhibitions melt away. They can tell themselves that they've been right all along for opposing civil rights for anyone but true (WASP) Americans and that the success of the civil rights movement has meant disaster for America. Not of course, the disaster of insidious economic policy, corruption, contrived and unnecessary wars and upside down tax structure, but the disaster of having a black president.

Ironically, so far only the darkness of Mr. Obama's complexion and the ability to speak clearly make him stand out among the presidents of the last century, but it's progress -- the idea of progress itself that motivates the snarling in the street. The golden era of laissez faire, white man's paradise they long for exists only in that nebulous Disneyland of the Conservative mind, where we didn't have wild, whipsaw boom-bust cycles, 40% poverty levels, massive social injustice, violence and all the rest of the real world long since buried under snowdrifts of revisionist rhetoric. In that world, black men don't vote, black people can't be trusted to vote, because they're stupider than the crackers and red-necks and bigots and reactionaries who carry signs and dream about a world that is friendly to their sociopathology and acknowledges their privilege and entitlement.

Does it say anything important about Tancredo's argument that the election was swayed by a host of illiterates if in the real world, Obama was heavily favored by educated people? Does it say anything about the real agenda of the Tancredo conservatives if he isn't hooted off the stage for wanting to bring back a shameful era? Sure it does, and that's why one should be forced to flunk a civics and literacy examination if not an IQ test in order to join the party.

Same old, same old

Seems "the most liberal Senator in all of American History" is even more of a hide bound conservative than I imagined, if it's true that he intends to beef up the misbegotten War on Drugs rather than admit that the 73 year old enterprise has succeeded on doing to drug use, to organized crime and public safety what the Volstead act did when it made private alcohol sales and consumption a crime.

President Barack Obama's new drug czar, former Seattle police chief Gil Kerlikowske told us just 8 months ago that the idiocy was over, that "We're not at war with people in this country" but action speaks louder than words.

The new budget for fiscal 2011's war on drugs is increased and the emphasis is still on "enforcement" which means more spitting on constitutional rights, more interference with private matters, more clogging up of courts, more disrupted families, more crime, more prisons training more harmless people to be criminals and more ruining the lives of innocent people. In fact it's more of George W. Bush and it's more of what has only made things worse and worse. Even so, that 15.5 billion dollar budget vastly understates the cost to the nation as much as that of our former administration because it ignores the huge cost of incarceration and due process.

From "the war on drugs is over" to

"In a time of tight budgets and fiscal restraint, these new investments are targeted at reducing Americans' drug use and the substantial costs associated with the health and social consequences of drug abuse"

took us only 8 months and a return to doing what always fails; a return to pseudomoralistic prohibitions, fraudulent medical data and a continuation of being the biggest jailer in the world makes liars out of the idiots shouting "Liberal" as much as it makes liars of our administration.

Rogue Vogue

Was the huge vogue for Going Rogue helped along by having SarahPAC purchase thousands of copies of the best seller? Campaign contributors' money and funds from right-wing publications were used to produce and promote the book by giving out free copies while she got royalty checks.

"Irregardless" as a Sarah fan might say, it did help her legally transmute PAC money into a royalty check and since she walked off the job and isn't running for another position of public trust, the conversion apparently wasn't illegal. For those of us still interested in why she quit the Governorship, perhaps the ability to pocket all that PAC cash and avoid going to jail for it might help us to understand.

Perhaps some will remember that before she donned the robes of roguery, it wasn't a particularly nice way to describe anyone. Certainly not as nice or as honorable as Maverick, the title she was forced to relinquish after threats from the descendants of the eponymous cattleman, but who can doubt that the robes fit?

Meanwhile, back at that rogues' paradise called Facebook, Sarah has been channeling the wolves she used to strafe from various aircraft and attempting to sink her teeth into the Obama administration by going after Rahm Emanuel for using the word "retarded" in an internal strategy session -- as though it had been directed at Down's syndrome children and the Special Olympics and not at the stupidity of a co-worker. No, Sarah, retarded is not like the "N word" and although you'd love it to be, and although Mr. Emanuel has already been put in the position of having to apologize to the Special Olympics organization, you haven't said much about the "witches" you've praised your beloved pastor for persecuting. There are no Witches, only innocent people who don't share your religion -- there are people whose cognitive skills fall behind the norm no matter what euphemism you prefer. There are people who are stupid and there are people who are inexcusably and viciously retarding the progress of our country toward Liberty and Justice for all.