Agent 86 Goes To Washington

Agent 86: At this moment we have this entire area surrouned with ...
KAOS Agent: I find that quite hard to believe.
Agent 86: Would you believe ....?
KAOS Agent: No...
Agent 86: How about ...?

-Get Smart-

The Washington Post has the audacity (or is it the sense of humor?) to compare Bill Clinton’s denial that he had sex with “that woman” with George W. Bush’s assertion that Rumsfeld would stay on until the end of his presidential term. As one who loves sophistry the way other people like football, I was delighted to see staff writer Howard Kurtz’s compendium of opinions on the matter.

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism, tells us that Bush’s tactical lie was "qualitatively different than saying 'I never had sex with that woman,'” yet still "a knowing falsehood. And it's odd because he could have said it many other ways.”

It’s qualitatively different when you take it out of context; keeping or firing Rumsfeld is a matter of worldwide importance upon which lives and fortunes hang. Clinton’s escapade may have made the earth shake for him, for a moment, but that’s all. But indeed, Bush could have approached it with a better story if he had had the mind to. What it reveals to me is that he simply doesn’t care what the proles think enough to bother with a convincing story any more. “So I lied and so what?” seems to be the presidential attitude du jour.

On the day after the election, Bush admitted in a news conference that he lied because it wasn’t convenient to reveal the truth at the time. That may have been a mistake since firing Rumsfeld may have gained votes for the Republicans, but as Joe Lockhart, former press secretary to Clinton said, ‘ It's a stunning admission that when something is politically inconvenient, you don't have to be straightforward."

I’m not stunned. Bush, like Maxwell Smart, always has another “truth” to offer when you don’t believe the first one – or the second or third.

White House press secretary Tony Snow explained that Bush lied because he wasn’t going to be "jerked around into making decisions on the basis of politics," which is a truly staggering bit of footwork considering that the man started a war on the basis of politics, but again, I’m not stunned. I never believed anything he said in the first place.

It's a Gay Old Party

"You dont go to the same Bath houses I do"

-Bill Maher to Larry King-

It seems like Bill Maher’s “outing” of Ken Mehlman on Larry King has made CNN so upset that they are going after bloggers who have posted clips on sites like YouTube; telling them to cease and desist, even though the use of an 8 second excerpt is considered fair use.

Maher’s assertion that many of the bigwigs in the GOP are gay is far from being new and far from being unbelievable in light of recent scandals. I have my own suspicions regarding those who protest far too much about the “gay agenda” and I did so even before David Brock published Blinded by the Right. It’s not that I would object if the entire party were gay, but looking at other organizations with a thousand years or more of gay bashing under their belts, I can see how the GOP might have become a hiding place for those who hate what they are and fear identification. What I object to of course is the mission of the party of smaller, less intrusive government to make everyone’s private business the government’s business.

Is Mehlman gay? I’m not a Washington insider or any other kind of insider, and I’m not going to claim that gay people are necessarily detectable even if I had the uncanny ability or any interest in identifying them, but I tend to credit Maher whatever his sources might be. You can still see the clip on the Huffington Post and decide for yourself.

CNN opines that Mehlman will be leaving soon, whether or not it has anything to do with his sexual preferences. Can we hope that Trent Lott will follow on his heels? Not that I’m suggesting anything.

That thou be not judged

The year is almost over and the annual Fogg Award for the most sanctimonious hypocrite of 2006 is likely to go to Pope Benedict XVI. It’s hard to imagine anyone surpassing the recent Vatican statement of “bitterness” at the planned gay pride parade in Jerusalem. The Roman Catholic Church, which has presided over and protected more gay activity of the non-consensual and non-consenting adult variety, is adamant that freedom of expression ends where the sensitivity of religious people begins.

"The Holy See has reiterated on many occasions that the right to freedom of expression, sanctioned by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is subject to just limits, in particular when the exercise of this right would offend the religious sentiments of believers,"

said a November 8^th letter from the Holy See to Israel’s Foreign Ministry.

Think about it. Many of the Gospel stories offend the hell out of me. The passion plays, the blood libels, the continuous little digs at the character and inborn nature of Jews I’ve personally heard from the mouths of priests: such things and such negative characterizations of Jews and other heretics have been intrinsic to the dogma for so long that no simple proclamation by any pope will make them go away. They offend me. School prayer offends me, the mistranslated Ten Commandments on walls offend me; the twisted interpretations of Jewish scripture offend me. The sticky, maudlin professions of faith that fall on my ears every day offend me.

Where are my rights here, Holy Father? Where are the rights of anyone who wishes to do any harmless thing that might offend the great authors of bigotry and sanctimonious self promotion to moral authority? Has anyone forgotten how your predecessors fought against Democracy, against science, against tolerance for other beliefs no matter how small the transgression?

Earlier this year, the Vatican said that gay marriage, abortion, lesbians wanting to bear children and a host of other practices it saw as threats to the traditional family, were signs of "the eclipse of God." What the Vatican means is the eclipse of impotent and epicene old men in gold dresses who pretend to speak for God and protect him from things he doesn't know how to handle.

And while I'm on this tack; It's not only the Vatican that's all agitated about allowing people to deny the authority of men in black, the Israeli Religious right have their beards all in knots over this as well. They've been setting fires and throwing stones and acting as badly as they know how to act out of some conviction that they also have the right to keep people under their moral bootheel. So I got your sensitivity right here, Ratzy. If anyone ever hated anyone for their freedom, it's you.

Free at last

For years we were told that Colin Powel had resigned his post as Secretary of State, but we now know that he was asked to resign. I suspect the same situation has occured with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld but as long as we are well rid of him, I can wait until the whole truth comes out before I gloat. His departure of course, may be a continuation of the too little too late policy that got us where we are in Iraq, but we shall see.

Anyway, with the House now a Democratic stronghold and the Senate only the width of a dream away, it may look like only another sunny Florida afternoon, but to me, it's a whole new day.

Jesus Crist!

Charles Joseph “Charlie” Crist, barring some divine interference, will be Florida’s next governor. He won the position over Jim Davis the old fashioned way; by answering every question, including the question of whether the 8 million dollars he took from developers looking to exploit what remains of Florida would influence him, by endlessly parroting “Jim Davis will raise your taxes”

The public seems to have little knowledge as to what a Governor can do and can’t do, but Floridians rich and poor, fear taxation more than all else even if a reduction won't affect them or costs them far more in the long run.

Charlie, like too many religiopathic phonies these days, always refers to any personal gain as a “blessing” and so he did once again in his acceptance speech last night – as though he won because of the invisible man instead of visible votes. The Attorney General, who presided over the illegal, immoral and improper exclusion by Katherine Harris’ cronies of at least 50,000 minority voters that guaranteed George W. Bush the opportunity to slither into the White House, said he has "truly lived a blessed life."

Charlie never missed a chance to point out that he reveres Ronald Reagan and loves Jesus and particularly when asked the kind of questions a voter would want to know about his finances. He calls Jeb “Big Sugar” Bush, America’s greatest Governor. His greatest talent perhaps, other than his mane of Gubernatorial white hair is his ability to look constituents straight in the eye and insist that the Republicans stand for smaller and less intrusive and of course less expensive government.

Of course you can’t underestimate his personal charm, the kind of charm that lets him lose a debate about specific issues and appear to have won. In this respect he does really resemble Reagan, but in other respects the 50 year old, carefully groomed bachelor reminds me more of Mark Foley.

Still we have to have some small consolation in knowing that Charlie is far less easily described as a conservative than either Foley or Bush. We shall have to wait and see whether he will stand up to major contributors and do something about the insurance companies that are milking my State and the Sugar cartel that is polluting it or the oil companies that want to drill here. We shall see whether Florida, a State without its own income tax can actually lower taxes and increase education spending to raise our educational standards from the bottom of the country. We shall see.

It's your fault.

There's always a reason to vote. There's always a choice worth making and if there weren't it would still be worth voting. Every citizen who opts out hastens the demise of what democracy we have left and if they argue we've already lost it; if they argue that all candidates are the same; that the entire system is corrupt and beyond redemption, the circularities they create are of the viscious kind and the society they undermine is the one that gave the only hope of choice, of liberty and democracy.

The "what difference does it make?" attitude gave us George W. Bush and his crusade. Fatuous excuses for not voting ensured that a candidate supported by barely half of the third who vote took over the government and brought the country to its knees. It makes a difference and the lesser of two evils is less evil, none the less. It makes a difference if it does no more than show the junta that they have to deal with all of us rather than just the bigots, the Xenophobes, the glossolaliac evangelists and the greedy corporations. It makes a difference.

Sure, everyone has a plausible excuse but some reduce to a hatred of democracy, some have their theocracies, their plutocracies, their Technocracies and other dipshit dogmas to sell and would welcome the chaos and collapse as fertile ground for their green utopias and libertarian plutopias and nitwit post-apocalyptic dream worlds. It may have been raining or snowing or too hot or too cold or they may have been too tired to vote. Doing the right thing is often uncomfortable. The road to hell however, is a lovely boulevard with no stop lights, no frustrations - and no off-ramp. Enjoy the ride and don't complain.

Long night of the American soul

Well my phone has stopped ringing – it must be near the end of the election and not a minute too soon. The cornered Republican Rats have been tormenting the public with their dirty tricks and non-stop phone calls and their jamming of Democratic phone lines. Now they have to get down to the dirty business of stealing the election.

It’s going to be a long night and whether Wednesday is morning in America or a nightmare that won’t end is yet to be determined. If the Republican insurgents win – or rather if they don’t lose, I have to decide whether this has been worth it and whether to continue. I’m running out of words that I can use to express my contempt, loathing, disgust and hatred of the goons and thugs that have stolen my country and if they don’t lose, words will have no effect anyway, so beer and pizza and a long evening it is.

God bless America.

A wooden stake?

Nothing has improved in Iraq or elsewhere, but I read in the Times that pollsters are claiming that Bush, like Dracula after sundown, is rising up from the dirt. Why? Are the idiots of America idiotic enough to think that the verdict against Saddam to be announced after the election means anything in terms of the fantasy that Iraq will stop being a hell hole and become a beacon of enlightenment values and democracy? In what possible way did this trial prove anything other than that we have the courthouse surrounded with troops?

I would like to think that nobody is that stupid. There has been no progress whatever toward any of Bush's stated goals in Iraq regardless of which of the various explanations they are contained in. Violence is on the increase, corruption in the puppet government and support of death squads is ever more apparent. All the money budgeted for the restoration of the country has been stolen, much of it by Bush's pet corporations and the vast majority of Iraqis want us out today if not sooner. I'm afraid that Americans are indeed that stupid.

The execution of Saddam will have no positive effect and will further mobilize Sunnis toward violence; will further promote our image as invaders, crusaders and despoilers and further erase any vestiges of American prestige.

This is a reason to vote for crooks, cooks, perverts, liars and Bush supporters. If the bastards win, America as we thought we knew it does not exist.

I'm packing my bags.

Rove's last tape

Hear the tolling of the bells
Iron Bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
In the silence of the night,
How we shiver with affright
At the melancholy menace of their tone!
For every sound that floats
From the rust within their throats is a groan.

-Poe-

This might be a bloody day if it weren’t for caller ID. I’m sure that the people who make political phone calls know what my political affiliations are and exactly how much money I have given to whom, yet they call and call and call and call some more. Seven days in the week from early until late, the robots and the volunteers call telling me how awful the other guy is and how my taxes will go up if I try to preserve my liberty.

As I said, I have caller ID and so don’t usually answer these incessant invasions and disturbances of domestic tranquility, but sometimes they trick me, like when it’s before sunrise and I react automatically thinking there’s some family emergency. The recorded messages are the worst of course, since you can’t tell them all about their mother’s hygiene problems or the various crimes of their candidates. New Hampshire residents have been given a partial break if their numbers are on the national no-call list, but here in Florida, all I can do is ignore the bells ringing and ringing me into dementia like some character from Poe.

Of course the Republicans are not stupid, they just know that we are and they know that we don’t want to be awakened, or pulled away from the TV or the dinner table or the shower to hear how some bozo will lower our taxes or how the Democratic candidate shares a bed with Osama. According to Democrats.com, the rodents of Rove have been using robo-calls that make you think it’s the Democrats who just dragged you out of the toilet or woke you up at 3:47 AM and if you hang up when they offer to give you information about Tim Mahoney or Jim Davis, they will call back again and again and again and again until you begin to wonder where you put that box of 9mm hollow point.

Of course there is one way to end it that falls far short of mayhem. It's not only legal, it's your duty – you can vote and you can drag every non-republican you know who insists that “there’s no difference between the candidates” or “my vote doesn’t matter” to the polls. Otherwise annoying phone calls will be the least of our problems.

The hanging of Saddam

As I fumbled with the remote this rainy Sunday morning, looking for coverage of the New York Marathon, the hidden voice of NBC told me that “some people” were pleased that the sentencing of Saddam to hang by his neck was an example of the independence of the Iraqi judiciary and therefore the success of Iraq’s brave new government.

Some things are hard to take in the morning and bullshit is one of them, but perhaps some of us with a level of intelligence above the Republican low water mark and the ability to see irony, might relish the notion that the ruling junta pretends to admire an independent judiciary. Of course being surrounded with armed, foreign troops and conducting a trial under the auspices of an occupying force intent on producing one outcome and one outcome alone isn’t my definition of independent, but then they’ve always been successful at dismissing arguments by calling them Liberal and I suppose it would work this time if my argument should happen to come to their attention.

At any rate, it’s good to know that George is protected against an independent judiciary in his own country as well as abroad, because the world he divides into “for us” and “with the terrorists” is significantly with the terrorists. Muslims around the world are warning that the hanging of Saddam will inspire a new wave of hatred against the US and many are pointing out that more people have died because of the US invasion of Iraq than because of Saddam. Whether or not this is true and whether or not many of Saddam’s victims perished because of US sponsorship of Saddam against Iran is irrelevant. Perception is the only reality and my perception is that nothing good will come of the death of Saddam, unless, like George Bush, you define good as the destruction of the world.

Sex, lies and Evangelicals

“Perhaps we must admit, with Plato, that lies are useful to the people”

-Erasmus of Rotterdam-

As bad as the ethical, sexual and financial scandals in the Republican party have been of late, the transgressions of religious figures have also been turning up right and left at an increasing rate. Whether it’s the molestation of children, misuse of church funds and contributions, or garden variety fornication, Christian leaders are at the vanguard. It shouldn’t be surprising given the feature of human nature that causes the guilty to hide behind and in the institutions of righteousness, and as the heavily theocratic Republican party has been in recent decades, the obsessive leader in matters related to condemnation, restriction and marginalization of homosexuals, it doesn’t surprise me that gaydar detectors beep so loudly when pointed to the right.

The Rev. Ted Haggard, who has just resigned from the presidency of the National Association of Evangelicals is another drop of slime, corruption and hypocrisy in the brimming collection bucket the Republicans consider to be their base. Haggard has the ear of the President and is said to report to Bush or his advisors every Monday; the rest of us have only a boot heel on our faces.

Is anyone really surprised at the credible allegations that Smiling Ted, the oral boy from Oral Roberts University has been having a homosexual affair with Mike Jones, a bodybuilder, personal trainer and male prostitute from Denver?

Nothing new about such things at all except the influence of such men in national politics and the allure they have for “values voters.” Values voters of course are people others might call hate voters or bigots, but that’s how Newspeak works and Haggard is a master of Newspeak. In response to a question of the lies told to justify the Iraq invasion, he replied:

“Listen, I think [we Christian believers] are responsible not to lie, but I don't think we're responsible to say everything we know.”

That’s values for you and I’m sure if you can read the Gospels in the original Greek, you’ll find where Jesus told you that the preservation of political power is more important than honesty and more important than saving the lives of others. I’m sure it’s in there somewhere.

Sic, sic, sic

I don’t need to cite Katherine Harris as evidence for my belief that our species is the lowest form of vertebrate life on Earth. Indeed, I’m sure that rats and moles and blue-assed baboons have their atavisms and throwbacks and genetic mistakes. It’s the fact that people, albeit a minority of people, do support her that makes me dream of some massive asteroid to cleanse our world of our miserable genome and allow some still humble type of life to progress beyond our pathetic limitations: perhaps some bacteria or slime mold could, given 100 million years or so, evolve into something less slimy and moldy than a Florida Republican.

The televised “debate” between the Republican Ms. Harris and incumbent Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson last night contained as few surprises as any of these contrived events do: Harris lies, twitters and evades pointed questions as to why Jews can't be trusted to serve in office and the obviously frustrated Nelson danced around the question of whether he would have voted to allow George Bush to invade Iraq if he had known what all of us now know and some of us now admit about Saddam’s fictitious arsenal. None of these events really change anyone’s minds and so many were calcified at birth or traumatized into irrationality in childhood that their political leanings might as well be genetic and perhaps some of them are.

You can see the evidence for the hopelessness of Democracy in the comments lift on the Palm Beach Post’s web site. To a rational person – assuming the possibility exists of finding one – the choice is clear: an imperfect, fallible, but basically sane and relatively incorruptible Nelson Vs. a drooling, twittering demented, desperately ambitious and massively dishonest Harris. To Republicans the answer is to vote Republican without scruple or concern.

After all, she believes in Church control of government and the NRA endorses her, but mostly she’s not a “Liberal,” a term which in the Republican vocabulary is an absolute and which requires no definition because it’s just bad. Liberals spend money and intrude on your life, but since Republicans spend more money and intrude much further into your life and your private beliefs while stealing from you, these things aren’t what it’s all about. Liberal is just Liberal and Liberal is just bad and so you read the comments of the rabble and you dream of the end of the world.

“Reading these comments from liberals is startling. How in the world would anyone in there [sic] right mind say nelson [sic] in [sic] a moderate he is a full blown liberal and why would anyone want to give congress more money. [sic]Do you have extra money you don’t want? There seems [sic] to be a lot of democrats in PBC that are in serious need of medical attention.”

says a typically illiterate Republican. Sic, sic sic and sick, sick, sick. I’m nearly as speechless as that writer is ungrammatical and I’m angrier than he is stupid. Come on Yahweh – the experiment is over and it failed. Just pull the plug, drop the asteroid, start the flood, and if you do send dead people anywhere, don’t send me where there are other people.

Trivial pursuits

“Explosive new controversy” my ass. The hysterical blowhard Blitzer has been hyping up Kerry’s statement about the uneducated being “stuck in Iraq” as though the future of the world hinged on finding something offensive in the Democrats while the Party of Evil drags us praying and patriobloviating down the road to fascism and tyranny. CNN and all the rest of the corporate media are desperate not to appear anything like a loyal opposition; desperate to create false balance by making much out of nothing and nothing out of much.

Who gives a damn if John Kerry insinuated that a large proportion of the kids showing up at enlistment offices have few other options in life? It’s true and it’s true that standards have been lowered to allow those with dubious backgrounds and marginal personalities to enlist. The fiction that kids are signing up in droves because they want to fight for freedom, the glory of the flag or any other resuscitated jingoistic cliché of the day, is more than fiction – it’s a lie. It’s a lie just as every step of our road to Iraq was a lie; just as every campaign promise and every bit of Christian posturing, every fake and cynical pretense at populism was a lie.

How pathetic is it that Democrats in the midst of the dissolution of American values, laws and principles; in the midst of a slide into plutocratic fascism, in the midst of unprecedented incompetence, corruption, theft of public treasure and at the beginning of the end of American leadership in the world, have to whimper and cringe because a former candidate didn’t for a moment maintain the façade – didn’t maintain the false fawning over the troops who are dying for nothing? Has Wolf been to war? Has Karl Rove, or any of the other fat assed barroom generals who send people to die to cover their lies?

There is only one controversy and you’re not going to hear it from Wolf or any other of the employees of the propaganda machine – and that’s whether after Tuesday even the silliest, Bush besotted and cringing cowards and deluded dimwits can continue to pretend that the country which once saved the world for freedom has retained the right to think of itself as having any more moral foundation than a troop of baboons.

If you don’t vote the criminals out of office, it’s you who are going to be stuck in Iraq; you who are going to be stuck in a country that is no longer answerable to the will of the governed, to the constitution or to a body of law. It’s either that we vote them out and hope they will actually leave or by default we vote freedom out and welcome endless war and the kingdom of Bush.

Don't get fooled again, Part III

Well here they go again. Some Early voters in Florida have been reporting problems with electronic voting machines, and wouldn’t you know it, there are reports that when one casts a vote for Democrat Jim Davis, the summary shows you voted for Charlie Crist, a Republican. Can you believe that – in Florida?

It’s been demonstrated again and again that the machines can be hacked, but here’s another one for you conspiracy theorists: a California based voting machine manufacturer owned by Venezuelans is being investigated by the Feds for possible ties to Hugo Chávez.

Diebold of course is the brand most in the news. For one thing its president is a Bush supporter, but like most American brands, the machines essential parts like motherboards and hard drives are made in China whence many alleged attempts at hacking US Government computers originate. I don’t think that hiding a malicious program in the boot sector of a hard drive is beyond the capacity of a Chinese grade school kid. Of course although their machines have failed every independent security test ever undertaken by a number of nationally-recognized authorities, Diebold considers all its software proprietary and there really isn’t any way to know what they’re doing without getting sued.

Sure there are paranoids everywhere and it’s easy to dismiss factual cases simply by calling them conspiracy theories, but consider Dr. Charles Corry, a PhD in Physics, listed in Who's Who in Science and Engineering, 4th through 9th Editions, 1998-2007 and who has served on the IEEE Voting Equipment Standards committee for 5 years. He thinks we’re getting screwed. He things they’re lying to us. We’ve been cheated twice in a row and it’s foolish to think we won’t be fooled again.

Getting so much better all the time

I've got to admit it's getting better a little better all the time

-The Beatles-

The US economy is doing just great, thank you very much, and it’s all because of George W. Bush’s two trillion worth of tax cuts.  Just ask any Republican candidate.  The Dow passed 12,000 and that proves it, and incomes are up half a percent in September.  What more could you ask for?

The truth, perhaps.  That rising tide may float those who have boats but those clinging to rafts and bits of flotsam aren’t doing quite as well. That’s the funny thing about averages.  Indices like the S&P and NASDAQ which more accurately reflect the value of American business have not recovered. The cost of living is climbing steadily: insurance premiums, property taxes and health care are escalating rapidly and long time residents of my area are being forced out of homes they had thought to spend their retirement in and are moving into trailer parks, but on the average, when you take into account the growing ranks of billionaires, things look better.

”The story used to be a rising tide raises all boats, and now it just raises all yachts,'' says Edward Tufte, a political scientist at Yale “The benefits of a good economy are much more narrowly focused now on the top 20 percent.''

It’s the same story with employment figures: they don’t reflect the number of unemployed nor do they reflect the large number of people now working at low paying jobs who used to have good ones or who are working two jobs or who now work 60 hours a week “part time” without benefits.

None of this is news to you, of course – unless you’re a Republican and if you are, I have some other news for you:  there is no war on terrorism in Iraq, Bush has no workable plan to bring peace and stability to Iraq or the middle east, much less a recognizable form of democracy and has made the world a far more dangerous place for Americans.

I remember saying “hey, it’s a free country” a lot when I was a kid.  It really isn’t any more. Censorship and warrantless surveillance is growing. Journalists are being detained without charges for reporting the situation in Iraq. The government can legally make anyone disappear forever or torture anyone forever with immunity to due process. The legitimacy of our election process is in question.

I remember people bragging about having the highest standard of living in the world.  We don’t any more and not even close by many measures. We no longer have the best transportation system, the longest bridges, the tallest buildings, the most modern cities. Our literacy, longevity, infant mortality and general health are way down on the world scale as is technical and science education. We are one of the most superstitious nations on Earth and proud of it.

Remember this when you vote next week.  If you vote Republican, the crooks win.

Mending wall

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,”

-Robert Frost-

But whatever that thing is, it is not the xenophobes who want to make hideous the wild and beautiful Rio Grande by building an iron curtain that is supposed to maintain the ethnic and racial purity of the United States. So it is that Lord Bush did sign a decree called the Secure Fence Act that authorizes congress to build one of those purportedly unlovable edifices on our southern border. Of course the proposal falls far short of the Great Wall of China, a far more expensive and extensive creation that also didn’t work to keep out the Mongols. Of course those neighbors to the North had other things on their mind than picking fruit and mending roofs and mowing lawns, but I digress.

It doesn’t actually matter that the proposed 700 mile fence can be walked around rather than climbed over or tunneled under, since it’s not going to be built and other legislation passed almost simultaneously assures that the money will go toward other Republican projects. “Let’s not and say we did” usually works well for the GOP.

The theme of Robert Frost’s Mending Wall is that good fences don’t really make good neighbors: the forces of nature bring down walls and nature intends for people not to be fenced in against each other. Whether it’s true or partially true or not true at all, The Republicans aren’t poets and the Republicans don’t actually care about walls or immigration or neighborly relations or the plight of the common man. What they wanted and what they got is short term credibility with the far right and another long term source of funds to be diverted for their benefit.

Depends on what the meaning of is is - Part II

It’s not torture if we say it isn’t – even if we say it is - and we don’t do torture even though we do a lot of it because we say it isn’t and besides, it’s necessary.

Make sense? It does if you’re Dick Cheney, or at least he wants you to think it makes sense to him. Personally I think his pacemaker is connected to his brain as well as his heart. The mechanical regularity of both of those impaired organs is disturbing.

According to the Washington Bureau, the Vice president has confirmed that US “interrogators” used waterboarding to extract information from suspects and that

"enormously valuable information about how many there are, about how they plan, what their training processes are and so forth. We've learned a lot. We need to be able to continue that."

Give the notoriously unreliable nature of this kind of information – in fact given the disastrously unreliable nature of all the intelligence used to promote the Bush Crusade, I wonder about that. Certainly no progress has been made that could be attributed to this information bonanza, but that’s another story.

So even though they torture people, it isn’t torture because Republican Senators John Warner of Virginia, John McCain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have said that a law Bush signed last month prohibits water-boarding and of course the President, being the law, can’t break the law and even if he does break it and admits it, can't be tried for it. Thanks Military Commissions Act! How did we ever survive for 130 years without it?

Cheney, in another one of those right wing radio ping-pong matches with “conservative commentator” Scott Hennen of WDAY Radio in Fargo, ND said this whole thing was a “no-brainer” and of course I agree. Neither Cheney or his dwindling base of support have functional brains, or any sense of decency or morality for that matter.

So Cheney admits that we torture but that the torture isn’t torture and Lee Ann McBride, a spokeswoman for Cheney, insists that while Dick admitted waterboarding, he didn’t actually admit waterboarding and besides that isn’t torture anyway. Is this starting to make sense?

CIA spokeswoman Michelle Neff said,

"While we do not discuss specific interrogation methods, the techniques we use have been reviewed by the Department of Justice and are in keeping with our laws and treaty obligations. We neither conduct nor condone torture."

Except that the law forbids it because it is in fact torture, so we have to say it isn’t even though it is and that makes it not. Surely you catch on by now?

Anyway that’s all the explanation I can stand and if you think I’m biased or a lyin' Liberal or making it all up, read the entire transcript at the White House web site.

Preference for truth and justice is bias!

Bias is a relative term and paranoid perceptions of bias are part of maintaining self esteem for those in morally untenable positions. The perception that the media is biased against your point of view is far easier to maintain than the possibility that your point of view is wrong and humans, like water or sheep, usually take the easy path and the low road.

From my point of view and from that of an increasing number of people who take the trouble to read many sources of information, the American media is increasingly influenced by the propaganda of big business and the interests of a power hungry leadership. Without listing the countless examples I see every day I can only refer you to my previous posts, but a look at who owns what should at least provide a clue as to who says what and why.

So when I read about Mark Halperin, ABC Political Director and Bill O’Reilly slinging the bull in that customary Fox News faux Socratic method, trying to convince the moronic masses of fatuous Fox listeners that the “media” are biased toward Liberal viewpoints, I have a hard time controlling my fury. Of course Halperin is trying to sell a book: trying one more time to cash in on the worn and threadbare myth of Liberal Media Bias in order to promote the bias of the Disney Empire. Of course O’Reilly makes a living maintaining a straight (under the pancake makeup) face while using the media to tell you the media is biased and to promote the biases of Rupert Murdock. Neither of these hominids has any more interest in illuminating current events than Hanna Barbera had in teaching paleontology by creating the Flintstones. It’s all about money and power and getting it by flattering the fools and bigots.

What is happening, says Halperin to O’Reilly; both spokesmen for corporations owned and controlled by ultra-conservative interests seeking power and money, is that the Liberal Media are trying to keep Republicans from voting by revealing the corruptions and perversions and transgressions against American values of the Republican Party. When Republicans say Liberal, they expect the Pavlovian response that has been trained into the American consciousness through decades of repetitive misuse. They don’t expect you to see ‘Liberal’ as representing opposition to abuse of power and advocacy for liberty. When they say Bias, they expect to be able to dismiss valid criticism by virtue of the fact that it is criticism. In fact, delivering an unbiased view of the news is an act that well fits their customized definition. A lack of bias must then be seen as bias, since clear reporting of theft, bribery, influence peddling, incompetence, election tampering, sexual harassment and even pederasty are not beneficial to the interests of the powerful who consider it their right to indulge in such things.

What Halperin and O’Reilly are selling here is not only a book, but an idea. That idea is that people who see abuse of power and the abusers of power as dangerous to liberty are biased and therefore wrong; that people who oppose injustice are Liberal and so are wrong.

What difference does it make if it’s morning in America if these bastards paint the windows black?

Be not deceived

μη πλανασθε φθειρουσιν ηθη χρηστα ομιλιαι κακαι

-1 Corinthians 15:33-

How do you insult something that’s disgusting beyond description? What would you call a stinking pile of fly covered putrescent dog shit on a hot sidewalk that could make it sound more nauseating, more repulsive than it is?

You could try calling it a pile of Limbaugh; that demonic bastard in pig’s clothing whose foul verbal flatulence turns the clouds over Florida brown and whose existence stains the reputation of some ancient crotch scratching, dung throwing, hairy hominid from which we all descend. Rush Limbaugh, whose subhuman delight is in humiliating an awkward adolescent girl on national TV by calling her the White House dog, stoops now to claiming that Michael J. Fox is faking his Parkenson’s symptoms to get sympathy for his campaign to promote stem cell research.

Sure, Rush is only the anus from which the stinking effluvia of the Republican Party emanates. Without the GOP and the witless and willing listeners who serve as his gaping toilet, that inflamed and bloated colon posing as a man would have no job, but that’s hardly an excuse is it?

If there really were an omnipotent Yahweh, for the sake of Rush alone he would destroy the human race. His dishonesty, smug stupidity and malice easily offsets the selfless lives of countless suffering servants of the good and although Rush is younger than I am, my fondest hope is to live long enough to enjoy his demise, may it be excruciating and humiliating, so that I can accuse him of faking it.

Déjà vu?

Nope, it’s just George – that old ventriloquist’s dummy selling that old idea of private Social Security accounts again, now that the Dow has recovered from its slump. Of course the Dow as a measure of economic recovery is not very meaningful and the NASDAQ, for instance, is still very much a shadow of its former self, but the trolls who control the President know you don’t know much and George is back to reading the script like some minimum wage telemarketer touting hot stocks from a boiler room in Ft. Lauderdale.

It will create an asset, says he. That’s possible if one is adept at playing the market, which few people are, but Joe the air conditioning repair man or Jose the roofer probably isn’t and may well see the sweat of his brow dry up long before he can hope to retire, or see the fruit of his labor turn rotten and disappear entirely if he followed George Bush’s advice of a few years back and put it all in something like Enron.

Social Security is about Security: insurance not investment. If the Republicans had any interest in creating assets for the working class, they wouldn’t have stifled any attempt at a minimum wage increase, but perhaps they’re just desperate to distract from their grotesque blunders in Iraq and Afghanistan and hope that as long as the puppet is reading from a script he won’t put his foot in his mouth until after the election.

Who knows, maybe they’re right. Maybe we are as stupid as they need us to be.