The perpetual foreigner

It's funny how the people who spend their lives trying to destroy democracy in America insist that everyone who stands in their way hates democracy in America. Barak Obama, regardless of what kind of a president he will turn out to be in the long run, certainly is an obstacle to the far right and their dubious objectives and of course, to the racists. Someone who doesn't give a damn about the country might find some humor in the myth making and the rebarbate logical fugues that characterize the believers and the creators and the marketers of Obamahate, but I'm not one of them. Unfortunately however, I seem to be on their mailing lists.

I wrote the other day about one US Army Major Stefan Cook who volunteered for duty in Afghanistan in order to generate enough publicity so that his claim that Barak Obama was foreign born would make the papers and boost publicity for the fabricated myth. His case was thrown out of court as expected, but the crusade wears on and it may soon be that you will receive another e-mail diatribe attempting to prove with every fallacy in the book that Obama's three week trip to visit a college friend in Pakistan proves he was travelling under a foreign passport, never had or had renounced his US citizenship, was born in Africa and must have received foreign funding of his education and travels -- which in turn proves a conspiracy to make him president a quarter century later: the same conspiracy begun 50 years ago with the intent of taking an African, Muslim baby and making him the president of the US sometime in the next millennium. It's the same conspiracy that involves the Honolulu newspapers and the Hawaii bureau of vital records.

The serial fallacy proceeds from a false premise: that it was illegal for a US citizen to travel to Pakistan in 1981. It wasn't. Supporting false premises are that it was part of a round the world cruise, which it wasn't and that it would cost a fortune to crash with a college buddy for three weeks, which it doesn't. It's worth reading the screed at Snopes.com simply as an example of poorly crafted, disjointed and clumsy fallacy and a lesson in the power of bigotry to overcome one's ability to spot it.

I should point out that Snopes has debunked so many of the products of the hateful underground that it itself was recently the subject of an e-mail and blog assault attempting to "prove" that it's owned by Liberals and so it's facts weren't facts even if independently verifiable.

I've made it my practice to denounce these never-ending viral e-mails and to hit reply all when doing it. I've irritated people, I've infuriated people, I've lost friends, I've made enemies -- but I've kept some sense of self-respect because I've not let lies and slander and subversive plots pass me by unhindered. Whoever it really was who told us that all evil needs to prosper is that good people look the other way was absolutely right. I hope you'll throw these things back at the perpetrators and the traitors as well.

The return of Crankyboy

It's only a few days short of 4 years since I started this blog and one of the reasons I did it was that a fellow calling himself Crankyboy challenged me to try, which of course I did and still do. He stopped posting a couple of years ago for reasons I understand anew every time I read the news or deal with a troll.

I thought his decision was permanent because I've often suggested to no avail that he start up again. Anyway, it's way to hot for hell to have frozen over and even too hot for pigs to fly, but somehow Crankyboy is back and you can read him at The Daily Curmudgeon once again.

Hypocrisy house

Republicans deal with the almost daily revelations of sexual scandal in the "family Values" party by reminding us that there are Democrats who cheat as well. Of course the Democrats aren't the ones claiming that government should be more intrusive into the private sex lives of private citizens and they haven't made that nebulous phrase part of every party platform for decades, nor do they seem to be so brazenly promiscuous. So I'm sure that the latest evidence that the Family valuers may be running a veritable school for scoundrels on 133 C Street SE in Washington DC won't have any more effect than Larry Craig's wide stance on their claim to moral authority.

The house in question is owned by a shadowy "Christian" group called The Fellowship, one of those insisting that we are a Christian Nation and should have "Christian Values" without of course giving us any idea what those might be or why they might be different from non-Christian values. They assert that our leaders should be led by God rather than by the will of the electorate which is shockingly reminiscent of the government our founding fathers found to be anathema, and of course it's their God as interpreted by them.

But it's a rooming house as well as a lobbying and indoctrination center and Congressmen board there and claim to find it a place to study the Bible and the commands of Faith-based lobbyists. Moral pillars of the community who have resided at the house on C Street, like John Ensign and Mark Sanford and Chip Pickering are and have been involved in extramarital affairs. Need I point out that three out of five is a considerable majority? It would be enlightening to compare the rent they pay with similar rents on that street of elegant brownstones - and of course interesting to entities such as the IRS. Is there quid pro quo or votes for rent?

To me, the question of whether religious conviction is a marker for moral hypocrisy and turpitude is less important than the fact that at least 5 Senators and Representatives may being subsidized by a lobbying group posing as a Church. The Fellowship, which has been criticized for supporting such tyrants as Suharto, is run by the Coe family who take down large salaries. David Coe, the presumptive heir to the throne, has suggested that members of The Family are here to learn how to rule the world.

Of course it's only my opinion, but I'm convinced that the constant howling about socialism and Marxism and Liberalism and secularism from the Right is a smokescreen for organizations like this who are declared enemies of democracy, freedom of speech and freedom of religion and are running Madrassas teaching revolution, one congressman at a time.

Hell no, he won't go!

Quite frankly the idea that our military has become an evangelical camp-meeting scares me more that the Obama presidency scares the people who think he's a Muslim secret agent or that the Hawaii Bureau of Vital Statistics cooked up a fake birth certificate and the Honolulu newspapers recorded his birth forty some odd years ago as part of a plot to make Baby Obama the future president. It's not just the Biblically deluded nature of such people but also the uncontrollable urges they have to believe things for reasons hard for others to understand.

It's hard to know whether U.S. Army Maj. Stefan Frederick Cook really believes the fantasy or whether he simply doesn't want to go to Afghanistan and couldn't bring himself to wear a dress. I would have to assume that he does believe. He claims that he has tremendous support from fellow soldiers -- 90% is his frightening claim.

He would get on the next plane says he if only it could be proved that his birth certificate was real. That's a remarkable statement and if birth certificates needed to be proved beyond establishing that the birth was properly registered, we could easily disallow every president. Quite a can of worms, this is and perhaps it's better to ask for some evidence that, like John McCain, he wasn't born in the USA. Of course there isn't any evidence beyond that malignant viral meme that seems to spread from loony to loony like lice in a flop house.

Of course it isn't just the loons and psychos keeping the idea alive. one of the favorite tricks of our scandal addicted media is to present nasty, stale old memes in new bottles and so we often have Fox hinting that "people are saying" when they aren't and we have Lou Dobbs, fresh out of stories about the Mexican Menace saying "new questions are being raised." No they're not, Lou, it's the same insane calumny coming from yet another psycho. and shame on you for trying to keep the meme alive for fame and profit.

Of course and as we expected, a Federal judge threw the case out this morning and the Federal dumpster already contains the smelly remnants of other similar suits, but thanks to Lou and Fox and the Army of Believers the idea will survive and perhaps longer than our republic. It's not completely new of course, Clinton faced opposition from some in the military based on some some notion that he wasn't really the President. What does it tell us, I have to ask, that the notion that the SCOTUS decision to stop counting ballots in Florida and the serious evidence of voting machine fraud made W's presidency illegitimate has faded away? Maybe it tells us that the great ship of insanity lists heavily to the right. New questions are being raised, you know -- and people are saying.

SOP

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

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

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

Guys like us

Boy, the way Glenn Miller played!
Songs that made the Hit Parade.
Guys like us, we had it made.
Those were the days!

We should worry. There are doubts. We don't know enough about her. She's "ethnic" and therefore might have "empathy" for other ethnics and therefore she might be prejudiced against us - and lets face it she's dangerous because we can't know how people like that think. Do we want someone with a special social or gender or ethnic perspective instead of a regular American anyway? It's not that we're prejudiced, it's that she probably is because, well you know. . . aren't they all?

And you knew where you were then.
Girls were girls and men were men.
Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.

Change the "she" to a "he" and you have the same whiny, timorous Archie Bunker mentality that assured us their fear and loathing of Obama had nothing to do with the fact that he was a Ni -- I mean African American.

Turn on C-Span this morning and you have the same white collar bigotry from the same, expensively dressed, white Anglo-Saxon senators from the same tradition and the same party that fought school segregation, supported restricted real estate markets and hotels and caressed their bibles while telling us it was and should be a felony to marry outside your race. The same people whose family values trump yours, who want you to affirm their religion regardless of what you believe, who would never, however be so rude as to use a racial epithet when blackballing you from the club. The same tailored suits who pretend to solemn deliberation to hide their knee-jerk prejudice. She's just not suitable, not one of us, don't you know old chap. It's nothing personal.

A wise Latina woman? Not at my country club, not on my court.

Didn't need know welfare state.
Everybody pulled his weight.
Gee, our old LaSalle ran great.
Those were the days!

Home from the sea

After days of overcast skies, it was refreshing to be awoken by sunlight streaming through a porthole on a bright Sunday morning. It was hardly refreshing to watch the usual Sunday TV Godblathering over breakfast. The Something Or Other ministries was appealing for last minute funds to fight the coming national disaster: the confirmation of Sonia Sotomayor, who would, because she is ethnic and her record notwithstanding, bias the court in favor of Hispanics in direct contradiction to God's will. It's nice to live in a country where such bigots get special tax status because they wave Bibles now and then, even if it's only to bludgeon people with.

We cast off and pulled out into the Intra-Coastal waterway just in time to wait 15 minutes for the Atlantic Avenue bridge to open and looking around the cloudless sky, I spotted something I haven't seen for a while - a skywriter. U + GOD was soon spread against the sky like an idiot screaming from a window.

An hour later. with an extra hundred gallons in the tanks and some $330 poorer; we were booming out of the Lake Worth inlet at 22 knots into the open and turquoise sea. It felt almost like an escape into a fresh, clean and fragrant world -- and not an easy one with all the small fishing boats who seem to think the middle of a shipping channel is a perfect place to spend the morning fishing. Switch on the radar, check the proper waypoints on the chart plotter and push the red button on the auto-pilot. Heading due North, the blue hull cuts through the swells and we're free of the land and its barbarism for a while.

If only it were as easy to escape the smell of religion, the reek of stupidity and the stench of bigotry.

Revenge of the morons

I'm not the least bit surprised at the Pew poll showing that only 6% of scientists are Republicans. Republicans, at least these days, are all about belief, whether it's in some magical beings and magical places and magical events or magical economic schemes that somehow never seem to be demonstrable. I was told some years ago of a Mensa study indicating that religiosity declined significantly in proportion to IQ, but I can't confirm it.

I was trying out the new digital TV spectrum on Blue Moon this morning. We're some 6o miles south of home port on the Florida coast. I was amazed at the proportion given over to bombastic preachers such as the one trying to "prove" with authoritarian proclamation and a bullying tone, that the first amendment really asserts a Christianist agenda and that secularists, scientists, intellectuals and of course "Liberals" are the enemies of freedom.

Is it just me, or do they sound just like Republicans arguing that they stand for small, cheap and almost impotent government?

Yes, digital broadcasting is a big improvement in terms of picture and number of channels available, but the price we pay is to suffer greater indignities against truth, reason, logic, history, justice and most of all -- freedom of religion. I have to wonder if the age of reason would ever have dawned, even as briefly as it did: I have to wonder if there would have been an American Revolution had the vast majority of militant, authoritarian dullards been able to have such means of expression as technology has given them.

Posted from the Delray Beach Yacht Club

No, Mr. Bond -- I expect you to lie

The only creativity coming out of the Republican tribe these days seems to center around new and ever more precious ways to denounce Barak Obama. Still sweating from the effort it took to convince themselves that Obama Supporters see him as the second coming, they're mocking him for not being a messiah.

Take Senator Kit Bond (R-MO) for instance. Hoping you won't remember George Bush's pathetic swoons about looking into Vladimir Putin's eyes and seeing a soul mate, Bond told reporters yesterday that The president's trip to Moscow was a huge pile of shit because nothing was accomplished but an agreement to reduce the huge pile of nukes. Obama should, says Bond, have stopped the repression of the Russian media and commanded them to sanction North Korea if he were a president worth his salt. Obama has simply failed, in one magical moment, to make Russia an obedient, American client state -- as John McCain and Sarah Palin surely would have done with a great flourish of bluster, threat and bravado - and at a lower cost. George Bush? Who?

Posted from Blue Moon,
Port Salerno, Florida

Glass houses

Maybe it's just me, but I have a hard time understanding the pervasive attitude toward the Chinese crackdown on rioting Muslim separatists in Xinjian - if indeed that's what is happening. Articles like this one at Newsweek.com stress the "spin" being put on the rioting and the government response to it and indeed the reasons behind the unrest. I don't pretend to have facts that would challenge any accounts of what's going on, but I do have some history that fairly screams hypocrisy.

How many countries, including our own, treat separatist, secessionist movements without violence? How many can claim fair treatment for ethnic minorities? After all we've taken the opposite side in Israel, we came down hard and violently against the rather small Black Separatist movement here in the 1960's and there can't be anybody who hasn't heard of the bloody suppression of a Southern separatist movement in the 1860's. And then there were the Indian wars. There was the brutal supression of the labor movement in tth 1930's, brutal supression of anti- Vietnam war protesters and enough more to suggest that we're living in a glass house.

We concoct stories of Mexican separatism to scare children and Republicans and to support arguments for ethnic cleansing, yet we allow freedom of speech protection to White Separatists and Alaskan Separatists. I could go on, but it's easier to ask what the US would do if Texas, Arizona and New Mexico were to ask to secede, taking all the mineral and oil resources with them for ethnic and religious reasons. I think you know the answer.

Are we going to tell ourselves we support the Uighurs while a good part of America writes me e-mails demanding that "we" throw the Muslims out of the US? While we won't accept Uighurs we've falsely accused and jailed and abused because we are afraid of them?

Sure, China is trying hard to suppress news coverage. Heard much first hand coverage from Afghanistan lately or from any of the provinces where we're bombing and killing civilians every day in Pakistan? Were you accused of being a terrorist supporter or accomplice for questioning the WMD idea or the destruction of a neutral country? Many of us were, yet here we are, China bashing with tarnished halos and blood on our wings.

Hot Florida nights, men in tights

Yes, despite the rain which delayed the fireworks, it was a great 4th of July in beautiful Stuart Florida. We watched the spectacle, sponsored by a local car dealer famous for bilking the elderly, aboard a friend's Hattaras and trying, as usual, to avoid talking about politics. As crazy as it was a year ago, it's crazier now that the last few decades of Republican policy and economic theory have been wilfully forgotten and new memories forged about the way we were.

In nearby West Palm Beach, not far from the homes of Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, politicians and propagandists were out working the crowds of tea flavoured idiots, some dressed in items of late 18th century attire.

"Yes, we do need change, you can start by giving me my money back!"

yelled Joyce Kaufman, of AM station 850-WFTL.

"I don't care which side of the aisle you're on, if you're taking money away from my children, you've got to go"

said GOP Congressional candidate Edward Lynch who lost the 2008 race to a Democrat. Of course he cares about little else, but who knows whether he really believes our current predicament derives from the expensive attempts of the current administration to keep our economy alive long enough to recover and not from the decades of "debt doesn't matter' and "upper bracket tax cuts boost the economy" and "freedom isn't free?"

"yes, I had doubts about George Bush, but this guy. . ." was a common theme, as though any of the people clinging to it actually did anything to question the years of borrowing, revenue cutting, removal of oversight, deregulation, expense bloating and war mongering, the newly legalized scams and frauds and schemes and practices that have characterized those on that "side of the aisle." In fact most of these people would have deported you, if they could have, simply for questioning the Right Wing Religion.

To me, it's like yelling about dental bills when you haven't brushed your teeth or seen a dentist for 20 years. It's like complaining about how the repair bills are putting you into debt when you let the Sex Pistols crash at your house for years and left your checkbook and credit cards and key to the liquor cabinet on the kitchen table. It's your own damn fault and many of us predicted this collapse years ago to a chorus of your jeers and accusations.

Sure the dentist may be too expensive or the contractor may not be the best, but when you let it all go to hell, when you wouldn't listen to any advice, it's your fault and wearing three-cornered hats, knee length pants and tights in the 90 degree heat isn't going to get "your" money back after you spent it on a useless war that cost nearly as much as WW II and on gifts to the richest men and corporations in the world.

Whither Sarah?

I have to say I'm grateful that Sarah Palin has somewhat abated the psychotic media obsession with a dead neurotic surgery addict. She has the media and the bloggers back to doing what we all do best: speculating. So why is she doing this? It's nearly impossible to tell from her tangled and mangled speech, which of course makes iher verbal mulch the the perfect medium for hydroponic conjecture.

David Wallechinsky seems to think Fox has made her an offer she can't refuse and we'll be seeing her in their little shop of horrors before long. He offers no evidence to interfere with belief, but it's filling and very satisfying, like comfort food, so I'll go along with it.

Max Blumenthal has what I think is a more credible scenario, based around the theory that an Alaska construction company, the same one that built the huge sports complex in Wasilla ( putting the town into serious debt) built her house as an inducement to get that job and future jobs after she became Governor. Todd and she have had personal and financial ties to the company of long standing.

Blumenthal also speculates about the effect a recent Salon article might have had on her decision. Revelations about her attempts to kill the stories about Husband Todd's affiliation with that Alaska secessionist group and provide false cover stories, may be about to blow up on her. Who knows, but of course the delicious irony, considering her attempts to portray Barak Obama as a "terrorist" who hates America, makes the idea hard to resist.

There are so many possibilities to delight the palate that I may be sorry if and when we ever figure out why! In a way I would love to see her as the next Republican presidential candidate, since she's so amazingly unqualified, but to be disgraced as a hypocrite and possible felon would satisfy my taste for justice perfectly. The worst outcome, in my opinion, would be to have her take her place on the Fox News Chorus, where hypocrisy, incompetence, dishonesty, lack of intelligence, irrational hostility and incipient dementia are prime qualifications. She could be as big a threat to our country as she would be in the white house, and of course there are no term limits on Fox.

The end of Independence Day?

Happy Independence day, my fellow Americans. Yes, it's Independence day and not the 4th of July as those damn liberal, Fascist bastards are trying to force us to say because they hate Independence. So why isn't Fox News telling us about this scandal? Why isn't Fox reporting the wave of legislation making fireworks illegal? Hmmmm.

People are speculating that Fox is supporting a declaration of dependence making the USA a subsidiary of News Corporation. The name would be changed to Fox Nation.

Hey, I just report, you decide.

PALIN QUITS!

One would think such a headline would push the Michael Jackson insanity aside long enough for some news to leak through, but although Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has just announced that she will resign from office within the next few weeks, further explanation seems elusive.

It's very tempting to speculate, but perhaps we'll just have to wait for the hysteria to abate before the networks can spare any personnel to find out what's happening outside the world of Michael Jackson.

Oh! The Outrage!

I wonder if the wingnuts have to take time out from raving about how they are insulted by intelligence reports warning ( correctly it seems) of increased militancy amongst hate groups, in order to find ever wilder ways to portray mainstream liberals and moderates as Bolshevik extremists -- or whether they can do both at the same time.

The party that told us it was ridiculous and outrageous to find anything questionable about the Palin family involvement with an Alaskan Independence Extremist group and witch murdering religious cult, finds it absolutely outrageous that Sonia Sotomayor once, many years ago sat on the board of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund which concerned itself with such outrages as Affirmative Action and voting rights; but far, far worse, opposed Saint Reagan's appointment of Judge Bork. Ridiculous and hypocritical you might say? Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) agrees, saying that the Republican Senate minority would find something to object to “even if the president had nominated Moses.” You remember, Moses; that bearded radical Israelite separatist, Zionist, baby killing, Jew-extremist Commie?

Anyway, despite the rash of wingnut murders and plots, they appear still ready to insist that anyone who is not a fanatic Obama Supporter is being and will be targeted by the government and not just slandered as a member of a hate group, but put in concentration camps. A far easier fate awaits a local gentleman and felon arrested today for having a garage full of explosives, guns and money. I don't know what his private gunpowder plot was about, but I'm willing to bet that he's not a liberal and like 2/3 of the residents of my red county, hates Mr. Obama.

Yes, yes, of course -- I'm just like Hitler for mentioning it, although to continue the metaphor to the point where the wingnuts start comparing themselves to the Jews may be beyond even their level of dementia and malice.

Well, at least we have our American Circus to entertain us while the "liberal" media crams that neurotic reject from Frankenstein labs up our noses 24 hours a day as though piling up teddy bears in the street is more important than blood and corpses in the roadways and Korean missiles falling from the sky and the continuing slide of our economic prospects. That's just how Hitler and the International Jewish Conspiracy took over Germany, I'm sure.

No lie too big, no mind too small

Get ready for it: another surge in the Anti-Obama Wars will be arriving in about a week with a new and more specious attack from the Derangement Rangers, or as these vampires call themselves the Our Country Deserves Better PAC. Twisting facts and flinging fallacy, they intend to pump up the rage junkies for some purpose we can only imagine and we can be sure that if someone stupid enough to buy their product acts on that rage, they will wash their hands of it and blame the liberals. In fact they're already doing it.

I can say that because the ad will apparently reference the recent intelligence report warning of increased right wing terrorist activity -- which of course proved true: blood, bullets, bodies and all -- as an example amongst many, of how Barak Obama is just like Adolph Hitler.

"As the regime spun out of control, they labeled political opponents domestic terrorists, and warned of confrontations between such groups and government authorities."

Is their view of an all too correct observation. Too damned bad more attention wasn't payed over the howls of offended wingnuts and too damned amazing that they're still howling after the warning was proved accurate.

Of course it takes a special person to see this alleged spin-out of the administration, but the accusation is quite predictable. Indeed every accusation made against Bush, no matter how true, is going to be re-labelled and returned in the same fashion as Watergate was reprised in every word and action and relaunched against Bill Clinton.

"They proposed a civilian security force, and a Congressman warned it was exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany. Opposition heightened after voter fraud by the president's allies, including thousands of bogus voter registration [sic]"

Since I'm personally involved with civilian security (Radio Amateur Emergency Services) I would have to laugh at a bunch of retired engineers volunteering to do emergency communications in a disaster being compared to Storm Troopers, but it's hard to understand why a thousand or two bad registrations, which don't seem to have produced any actual votes could account for the 9 million vote Obama victory. Hard, unless you're up to no good yourself and of course the OCDB PAC isn't. It's the illegitimate child of Howard Kaloogian, the fellow who during his losing campaign to replace disgraced Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham told us that Iraq was safe and almost free of violence and that the fact was being hidden by -- you guessed it -- the Liberal Press who of course support terrorism. Is there any doubt?

"And now the Obama Administration is warning law enforcement to focus their attention on the dangers of conservatives."

says their website. They're not, unless you describe murderers as conservatives, but I am and I can't help but mention that this kind of rhetoric and this kind of campaign was pioneered by Adolph Hitler himself.

These people are deranged, malignant well financed and well armed. Oh yes and dishonest, did I mention dishonest?

The Torturer of Tehran

Saaed Mortazavi is sometimes called the “Torturer of Tehran” but probably not to his face. The man also known as “Butcher of the press” has been given authority by the Iranian government to "interrogate" people involved, or said to be involved in the demonstrations in Tehran. Mortazavi earned his nicknames for his role in the death of a Canadian-Iranian photographer who was tortured, beaten and raped during her detention in 2003 says the Times Online. The TOT was behind the detention of more than 20 bloggers and journalists in 2004, held for long periods of solitary confinement in secret prisons, where they were allegedly coerced into signing false confessions.

I expect to be hearing a great deal about how Iranian concern over the strange results of the recent election are the products of American propaganda and the protest sponsored, choreographed and financed from Washington, DC.

Of course such things are more effective in terrorizing the locals than in convincing them that these confessions don'e have more to do with cattle prods and genitals than with American interference, but isn't it too bad that the US has lost any ability to deplore enhanced interrogation? Isn't it too bad that the US must remain silent about starting wars and killing people based information extracted by torture?

Thank you George W. Bush and all the other cowards that dragged our proud country down to the level of these savages!

Zero tolerance for zero tolerance

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Fear of terrorists, fear of drugs -- fear itself shall be the law.

Does the hullabaloo about legal "loopholes" allowing gun sales to people secretly on an FBI terrorist list but not charged with anything, have anything to do with allowing school officials to strip a young girl half naked and rummage around in her underwear? Should people working for a local high school have police powers yet not be restrained by the responsibility a policeman has to explain the accused's rights? I think both cases illustrate the struggle between expediency and respect for civil rights and in neither case do I feel that the foundation of our legal system was to make it very, very easy for any authority to treat suspects as convicts.

Clarence Thomas was the only Supreme Court member to think such things as a summary strip search of an 8th grade girl are legal, although he may or may not think it's wrong. True to his Republican principles, he differentiates between law and justice as though one was not to serve the other. Of course I might often agree with that, but not this time. Thomas clearly stated that the "scourge of drugs" trumps the right to due process and elevates a school principal above the powers and responsibilities a police officer has. In his dissenting opinion, he claimed the court was making a “deep intrusion” into the administration of public schools and their efforts, constitutional or otherwise, to fight the scourge of drug abuse. Fear trumps the law, fear trumps justice, fear trumps freedom, due process and in some cases, common decency. Fear is turning some of our schools into little versions of Stalinist Russia where any accusation is as good as guilt.

I haven't read the transcripts and I have never walked through the door of a law school, but the sense of outrage can't be exclusive to me or any other parent and the legitimacy of allowing school personnel, who would otherwise go to prison for doing what they did, to have such authority simply because of the grave danger that Savana Redding might have had an Advil hidden on her person. I can say with near certainty, that had it been my 13 year old daughter, there would be some folks at Safford Middle School in need of their own pain pills.

While most of us would disagree with Thomas and would side with the majority decision that the danger was so minimal that such a false accusation could not justify personal violation of that sort by people who are, after all, not policemen, some appear to be quite happy with using innuendo, suspicion and prejudice to deprive anyone of his civil rights. After all, we passed a Patriot Act designed to do just that and suggested that those who opposed it weren't true Americans.

In other countries; in countries that value freedom more than we do, there would be demonstrations in the streets against the things we ignore while giggling about the sex lives of Senators. It's sad.

Off with the habit, sister!

Some Republicans have been speaking up and saying they wish Barak Obama would be more like French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Considering the Republican obsession with French cowardice and perfidy, it's remarkable in itself, but Sarko made a rather more blustery statement about Iran and tyranny than did Obama and bluster is what Republican foreign policy has come to be.

I have no doubt that some Republicans, including those who fill my mail box with serial hoaxes about foreign leaders railing and howling about throwing out the Muslims, would be quite happy with such a president and his support of a ban on religious attire in France - at least as it pertains to Islamic attire.

France has launched a parliamentary inquiry into whether women should be allowed to wear the burqa in public. Sarkozy is on record as saying it's "not welcome" in France. Consistency requires, at least in a land of Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité, banning other forms of sartorial identification, such as Sikh turbans, large Christian crucifixes and Jewish yarmulkes as well and so it is proposed. I'm unable to discern their attitude toward the Roman Catholic burqa as worn by nuns, but I'm sure some accommodation could be reached.

Because we are a secular government, not a Christian one, our US constitution protects the freedom to practice our various religions as we choose and it's hard to see any such legislation being proposed here, but it must be of comfort to our resident bigots to know their favorite "surrender monkeys" are considering the surrender of another increment of freedom in service of bigotry and xenophobia.

If Joe McCarthy were a Democrat

"this new report is proof positive that known and suspected terrorists are exploiting a major loophole in our law, threatening our families and our communities. This 'terror gap' has been open too long, and our national security demands that we shut it down."

says Sen. Frank Lautenberg, (D-NJ.) No one my age can fail to be reminded of Tailgunner Joe McCarthy and his fake list of names. Frank, of course, is also a damn liar.

As might be expected, we're really not talking about "known" terrorists, but about people who have been put on a watch list, but against whom there is no evidence. The Justice Department tells us says CNN, that the FBI had thousands of names on its watch list based on outdated information and should have removed them. The GAO notes properly that being on a terrorist watch list does not mean that someone is involved in any terrorist activity, so as I said, we're not talking about "known terrorists" at all. Neither are we talking about a "loophole" here; we're talking about punishment without due process.

We should all be concerned when there's a proposal to make an accusation, an opinion, a conjecture or a suspicion reason to take away someones constitutional rights, but of course there are those so frightened of coming to harm that they just don't care, which makes them unfit to be participants in a democracy such as ours: a government of laws, not of fear. Sad to say, they're not all Republicans.

Lautenberg refers to a GAO report released yesterday, which reveals that about 90% of people who have sought to buy firearms and who had their names on a "watch list" were allowed to buy them because there was no evidence that they actually were involved in illegal acts. Perhaps they had opinions that were scary, beliefs that troubled the list makers and somehow knew other scary people: perhaps they were falsely accused or, as is often the case, had a name similar to that of a convicted felon. But of course our thoughts are supposed to be free and our associations as well. Should we start putting people who oppose abortion on a terrorism watch list because others with similar beliefs have committed crimes? What about people who have attended "Tea bag" parties? People with an 'unauthorized' religion? Why isn't thought crime abhorrent to us any more?

From his perch in the grandstand, Lautenberg claims to be introducing legislation that would give the U.S. attorney general "authority to stop the sale of guns or explosives to terrorists." That's something the law already addresses and of course it's deceptive since one is not a terrorist without some evidence of illegal activity and indeed without due process to determine guilt or innocence. So what Frank is saying here is that suspicion is guilt and suspicion trumps a fair trial and if you're different or someone doesn't like you, you have no rights. How long have we been fighting monsters that we're starting not to notice what we've become?

We're so vain, we probably think Iran is about us

Back in the day -- the 60's that is -- conservatives fostered and circulated the idea that the people who were opposed to continued armed interference in Vietnam were all but on the payroll of Chairman Mao. Mumblings about "front" organizations and accusations of treason were commonplace even without anything resembling the internet to make it easy. One of the planned results of the strategy was to make it easier to continue the war indefinitely, violate the civil rights of objectors and easier to get conservatives to support the violation. Suggestions that Ho Chi Min preferred the Democratic candidate was heavy ammunition against him.

Now of course the Mullahs of Iran are far smarter than the average American -- who isn't? -- and if Barak Obama were to take on the traditional Republican role of moral bloviator and condemn the crackdown in Iran, they would be delighted to have the excuse that the thousands in the streets are foreign agents, motivated and backed and perhaps even paid by the United States. Any kind of violence could then be justified against these "enemy combatants" on religious and political grounds. Our open support of the protests in Tehran would effectively taint the movement which could be discussed as a Western incursion and not an Iranian movement by Iranians to take back control of Iran from a corupt government.

Our Average American however, never can seem to resist a chance proudly to display anger and even more so when he can pretend it's moral outrage. CNN's current poll shows 76% in favor of having the President "condemn" the government of Iran as though he were himself an Ayatollah pronouncing a fatwah. Of course he has expressed sympathy for those seeking democracy and there is no one in the world who would think that we would support Khamenei anyway, but the contest between statecraft and soul satisfying, but counterproductive, rage has a predictable outcome.

I have severe misgivings and doubts about the way in which our economic predicament is being addressed, but when it comes to handling touchy and dangerous world affairs, Obama seems almost a genius compared to the man the Republicans would have had as president, strutting about a stage like an overweight, underpowered Mick Jagger, singing "bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran."

Pete Hoekstra - hero of the revolution

Believe it or not, very few Americans voted for Barak Obama. The 9 million or so difference between the count for McPalin and Obama was the result of election tampering by ACORN. This notion seems to be part of the ever-changing catechism of the Republican faithful because I've been hearing it over and over again and so it's not all that surprising that congressman Pete Hoekstra (R-MI) would feel encouraged to tell us that the internet activity and the massive street protests since the Iranian election was

" similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House."

He said, referring to last August when the Speaker adjourned the House before an energy vote. Jon Stewart joked last night about the parallels being eerie: "Not parallels, the perpendiculars” but to a party that has tried to compare the governments we've cobbled together in Iraq and Afghanistan to the formation of our own government, the humor will be written off as liberal meanness or deflected by some tale of an unfair joke about the Palins or Joe the Plumber. No, once again they're posing as victims of a corrupt system and a stolen election.

I can imagine the groans of his staff, who quickly told us what Hoekstra would have said if Hoekstra had been as smart as they are:

"The two situations do share the similarity of government leadership attempting to limit debate and deliberation, and the ability of new technologies to bypass their efforts and allow for direct communication. That’s the only point that he was trying to make."

No it wasn't and of course his party had been doing just that for 8 years. The reaction was swift, according to CNN, and one counter-twitter responded with:

"Except the Democrats didn't come after you with clubs and guns, did they?"

No, they did it with the ballot box and will all allowances made for poetic license, the perpendiculars are striking.

Man was made for the law.

At least while the remnants of Republican barbarism still control the court, the law is the law is the law; right or wrong .

Is anyone still so idealistic as to think that our justice system is about justice and not about upholding the authority of. . .well, authority? Well, maybe the latest ruling from the Old Bastard's Club we sometimes call the Supreme Court and the Republicans sometimes accuse of giving a damn, will change your mind. In a ruling today one might have expected from a Texas court or perhaps the Spanish Inquisition, it ruled that once you're convicted, you have no right to obtain evidence that might exonerate you at least in Alaska, one of the six states in which innocence is no defense once the infallible courts have ruled.

"Science alone cannot prove a prisoner innocent,"

read the decision and of course not, but it can prove him not guilty and it often has done just that. But I guess this is a good way to keep from the inevitable embarrassment of killing a few innocent people now and then.

So isn't it nice that at least one branch of Government retains it's contempt for the value of human life once it's had the chance to be baptized?

Who's the victim here?

Yes Sir, it's terrible how tasteless old far-left liberal David Letterman got away with some comment about the Palin family because the media is like you know all Liberal and hardly mentioned the grievous offense. Why if some God-fearing Christian conservative were to make some comment about Obama or his family? All hell would break loose, right?

You say you need evidence? Why how liberal of you, but look at how they're handling that really, really funny and tasteful picture of the 45th president of the United States that Sherri Goforth, an aide to state Sen. Diane Black (R-TN) sent out by e-mail? Why it's made international headlines, hasn't it? Well OK, at least it made some blog called Raw Story, but that's more exposure than the Palin story got from being headline material on all the media for days, isn't it?

Besides, you know, showing Obama as a pair of googly eyes on a black background is the funniest thing since the minstrel shows went away because of Liberal Fascist censorship and it just proves that far left Liberals have no sense of humor anyway. I mean none of us America loving patriots ever went beyond the bounds of truth or good taste by trashing Obama the Magic Negro and that only proves that it's them behind all the hatred and racism they throw at us Republicans who are the real victims here.

Training the Nazis

“I hate Arabs more than anybody, for the simple fact I’ve served over there and seen how they live, They’re just a backward people. Them and the Jews are just disgusting people as far as I’m concerned. Their customs, everything to do with the Middle East, is just repugnant to me.”

says Forrest Fogarty. He's an Iraq War veteran and a lifelong Nazi. Despite being covered in Racist and Nazi tattoos and despite having been expelled from High School for overt and unrepentant racism; despite his public support for ridding the US and Europe of non-white races, despite the fact that regulations forbid it, the US military has trained him in weapons and tactics he hopes one day to use in a race war.

Writing in Salon.com, Matt Kennard tells us in Neo-Nazis are in the Army Now that Fogarty left the US Army in 2005 with an honorable discharge and was asked to re-enlist. He is apparently not a unique case and a DHS report outlines how as the military has had to scrape the bottom of the recruitment barrel, issuing waivers for criminal behavior, militant extremist groups have benefitted from the increased hate and frustration - and the government's willingness to train current and potential hate-group members.

It's become very difficult for Americans to criticize the military and the image of our "warrior" heroes fighting for freedom is a sacred icon, as it often becomes when our government has to hide and distract from the lies and distortions and cover-ups behind an unneccesary and probably illegal war, but it seems to me that another of the victims of George Bush's War, along with the Iraqi people, is our military and its reputation. It's bad enough that we've abused their patriotism and dedication, left too many wounded by the side of the road without adequate care and benefits, but have we trained and disciplined another generation of domestic terrorists to carry out a racist, hate-based mission?

Minuteman -- what's in a name?

The right wing trolls have been parading their mock outrage recently about suggestions that the last 8 years have marked a new high ( or low, if you prefer) in Republican hate mongery -- unless, of course they're allowed to blame it either equally or entirely on "far-left Liberals," which group is comprised of anyone who criticized George W. Bush's presidency before the economy hit the fan.

Were the Doctor murderer and the museum shooter secret FLL's? is the question they're pretending to ask themselves in order to avoid the appearance of complicity, says Majikthise. Of course yesterday's arrests for home invasion and murder by leaders of one of the "minuteman" groups who pose as well-regulated militias doing what "the government refuses to do" will have to be integrated into the program of denial and blame passing. It's going to get more and more difficult, I predict, to discuss any question of responsibility.

Shawna Forde, leader of Minutemen America Defense, aptly called MAD, is a graduate of a San Diego terrorist Camp Vigilante. She's been arrested along with two other terrorist border patrol volunteer group members for having shot up a Hispanic family in their own home, leaving a father and his nine year old daughter dead. One of the other vigilantes is also a product of a Minuteman training camp, but of course the argument is being steered away from culpability and toward which of several groups get to use the Minuteman name, as the dance of denial and evasion begins.

Of course by suggesting that the rabid barking about Mexicans from Lou Dobbs on down to the self-appointed defenders of America's borders and undiluted bodily fluids has had any effect on the overall climate of murderous rage amongst the "conservatives" exposes me to accusations of playing the "Blame Game" and being ranked as another Far Left Liberal hate shouter in the false equivalence World Series and probably an America Blaming, crypto-terrorist, Fascist-Marxist follower of the false and foreign-born Messiah Obama as well.

Really, I should just go back to writing about Boats before my sense of guilt becomes overwhelming.

The annotated Pritchitt

People still laugh at the headlines proclaiming Dewey's victory over Truman but somehow it's rare that the breathless predictions of doomsayers, fear merchants and political liars are reexamined, hilarious though they may have become. I have a feeling that some of the hyperbolic, hypergolic, hyper-dishonest anti-Obama slander will be far funnier than any smiling picture of President-elect Truman holding up the announcement of his defeat -- that's if it doesn't just fade away, forgotten. Surprisingly, much of it is still making the e-mail circuit.

The letter that follows is circulating on the disinformation highway. Unlike many or even most, it's not a hoax. It's just another example of the endless assault on truth, the continuous appeal to fear and confusion and anger through lies, distortions, fabrications and slight of hand. Even though we now know much more about Barak Obama and he seems far less like the straw man his opposition put together during the campaign, this letter still circulates to the giggling approbation of the Ridiculous Right.

Lou Pritchett is one of those "motivational speakers" who keep vaudeville alive by soaking hopeless losers for "motivating" them. He was a former VP of sales for P&G, whose products I will think twice about purchasing. Have you seen it? It was turned down by the print media and so was launched on the last refuge of idiots and paranoids, the Internet. It's designed to allow idiots to confirm their vague fears without much analysis and that's why I've enjoyed picking it apart, lie, by lie. Perhaps you will too.

___________________________

AN OPEN LETTER TO PRESIDENT OBAMA

Dear President Obama:

You are the thirteenth President under whom I have lived and unlike any of the others, you truly scare me.

Not even a doubt about Dick Nixon? I'm surprised Roosevelt doesn't still give you nightmares.

You scare me because after months of exposure, I know nothing about you.

The argument from ignorance: I don't know A, therefore B. Nothing like starting our with a classic! The well known is described as unknown so that you can share the author's ignorance and false conclusions based on it.

You scare me because I do not know how you paid for your expensive Ivy League education and your upscale lifestyle and housing with no visible signs of support.

Argument from ignorance, only it's now ignorance about long since answered questions.

You scare me because you did not spend the formative years of youth growing up in America and culturally you are not an American.

The evidence is strongly otherwise and of course the "formative years" can be described in any way that bolsters the absurdly irresponsible accusation.

You scare me because you have never run a company or met a payroll.

Neither did Eisenhower, Jefferson or Washington or Lincoln. Bush did, by the way.

You scare me because you have never had military experience, thus don't understand it at its core.

No evidence that not being in the army leads to not understanding anything as vague and meaningless as "its core." Better watch what you say anyway since St Ronald never served either.

You scare me because you lack humility and 'class', always blaming others.

Baseless statement obviously at direct odds with his demonstrated humility and smooth demeanor - his most famous attribute. He's yet to blame Bush, yet this bozo is brazenly blaming Obama for things he hasn't done or had the chance to do!

You scare me because for over half your life you have aligned yourself with radical extremists who hate America and you refuse to publicly denounce these radicals who wish to see America fail.

No he didn't and no he hasn't and the most vocal calls for America to fail have come from the Republican party and its blowhards, like Limbaugh and Gingrich. Strange rhetoric from someone hoping that Democracy will fail.

You scare me because you are a cheerleader for the 'blame America' crowd and deliver this message abroad.

Only if "blame America" is described as taking responsibility for our actions and promising to support justice.

You scare me because you want to change America to a European style country where the government sector dominates instead of the private sector.

No evidence of that whatsoever and he's been a disappointment to Liberals who are of that intent. That's a bit of a tactical oversimplification about Europe, by the way. I wonder if he has ever been there.

You scare me because you want to replace our health care system with a government controlled one.

We don't have a system except for the government health care available to veterans, soldiers and government officials - and they tend to love it. Of course since he hasn't really told us what he does support, it's obvious that you're making it up as you go along.

You scare me because you prefer 'wind mills' to responsibly capitalizing on our own vast oil, coal and shale reserves.

Shows total and probably pretended ignorance of the costs of oil shale development, the lack of adequate oil reserves and the definition of the word "responsibility" there being no real reason not to utilize wind power. I suggest he owns a lot of AMOCO stock. "Responsibly capitalizing" does of course not mean accelerating the use of something we're running out of and of course you know that, which makes you a liar, doesn't it?

You scare me because you want to kill the American capitalist goose that lays the golden egg which provides the highest standard of living in the world.

We no longer have the highest standard - it having passed away during the Bush years and of course there is no evidence other than fantastic lies to support the assertion. In fact those Eurosocialist bogeymen are living better, healthier and longer than we are. In fact Capitalism suffered a great crash after years of Reaganomics and the bailout process was begun by Republicans, so you've disproved your own fake point.

You scare me because you have begun to use 'extortion' tactics against certain banks and corporations.

Yes, Extortion is lending money and demanding accountability, transparency and responsibility in return. That would make any kind of banking and investment - capitalism itself - a form of extortion. Paulson in turn demanded trillions and demanded that we not ask where it was to go, what it was for or when or if we'd get it back. That's extortion, Pritchett, old chap. You must have been a great soap salesman indeed with a line of bullshit like that.

You scare me because your own political party shrinks from challenging you on your wild and irresponsible spending proposals.

Vide supra and too bad your policy didn't shrink from the larger, murkier and legally questionable spending policies that made the bailout necessary.

You scare me because you will not openly listen to or even consider opposing points of view from intelligent people.

Actually he is famous for doing exactly that, in emulation of Lincoln. you really ought to make some reference to the truth occasionally because your lies are getting increasingly cheap. Do you think you're being tolerant of other viewpoints or misrepresenting, demonizing and lying about them?

You scare me because you falsely believe that you are both omnipotent and omniscient.

No evidence whatever - not even a hint of that. You'd like to insist that he claims to be messianic so you can accuse him of failure before he's had a chance to start and make every imperfection seem monstrous. Bush on the other hand told us he actions were directed by an omniscient and omnipotent God - or did you forget? Pictures were painted of Bush with a halo holding Jesus' hand and he claimed divine inspiration for lying to start a war and bankrupting the economy.

You scare me because the media gives you a free pass on everything you do.

Sure, we haven't heard any criticism at all, have we - especially from the most popular news channel, Fox.

You scare me because you demonize and want to silence the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Relllys and Becks who offer opposing, conservative points of view.

You've just contradicted yourself and of course, Obama never having suggested any such thing, we can see that you're lying. Please reference any occasion of Obama having called for censorship and particularly pre-emptive censorship. Please, comply because your credibility is on the line here Pritchy boy.

You scare me because you prefer controlling over governing.

A nice, but meaningless and inapposite point. Again, the guy's famous as a deal broker, but perhaps in Gopspeak there is some different interpretation of what it means to be President.

Finally, you scare me because if you serve a second term I will probably not feel safe in writing a similar letter in 8 years.

Try getting psychiatric help, because if you can't remember who it was that demanded we give up our freedoms for fear of terrorism, who tried to make the postman into a spy, you're either suffering from dementia or a damned liar. Frankly you're a scary guy yourself and for many reasons other than for being a liar, fabricator of disinformation, spreader of malicious and unfounded rumors, libel and just plain old hatred for freedom, justice and anything remaining of the American way after 8 years of Bush.

Lou Pritchett

You should be ashamed. I'd change the name, if I were you.

Holocaust.

When James von Brunn was sentenced to jail for the armed kidnap attempt of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors it was only because the Judge was a Jew and the jury was black. No doubt about it. He's been raging about Jews and Black people since most of you were children and he sees something called the Aryan race as victims of such inferior groups.

It's tempting, as a person who despises the growing culture of hate and defamation in the US, to tie this man and his hundreds of thousands of supporters to the hate shouters we're all too familiar with, but in good conscience, I cannot. Even so their endless derision of fabricated scapegoats has inured us to the danger of the terrorists out there among us. Their hate talk legitimizes and breeds more hate talk and we become habituated to it. Those standard scapegoats tend to include Jews, Blacks and the Federal Reserve Bank, all of which are also targets of people like James von Brunn.

Von Brunn has written that the "Holocaust Religion" is destroying Western (by which he means White) culture. It's common amongst people who would like to re-invent themselves as victims of relentless persecution to resent those who have actually been victims and so it's not surprising that the elderly hatemonger chose the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC for what was surely intended to be a suicide attack.

I'm probably less surprised about this than my Christian countrymen, since I've been listening to all the old calumnies and fantasies about baby-eating, blood-drinking, Christ-killing, warmongering, bank-controlling Jews all my life while many of them are just now beginning to accept that the vilification of Jews has been, if not the very backbone, at least a major buttress of Christianity. Certainly not all however and certainly they are not the only ones. Muslim vilification of the Jews in all their fantastic stereotypes is second to none and many of them consider the Jews to be in control of the United States, if not Europe, Canada and Australia as well.

There is a lesson here and it is that we have not only tolerated such people, but made heroes of some of them to a degree: men who will stand up to a government we blame for all our own excesses and deficiencies. They are not and their acts of terrorism are warnings that we should examine our own angers and stop blaming a host of straw men for having messed up our country.

Christian terrorists have more rights.

Scott Roeder is a terrorist by any definition and was one before he decided to murder George Tiller. He's been caught making bombs. According to Time.com, he's been involved in an armed standoff by the anti-government "freemen." He was apparently a subscriber to Prayer and Action News, a magazine that advocated "justifiable homicide" as a way of protesting abortion.

There were always strange cars coming and going at all hours of the night and Roeder has been warning from his prison cell of “many other similar events planned around the country,” according to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. Why then, if it could save lives, are we silent on the question of turture when it comes to this dangerous man. Why is it acceptible to have him in the US when he would likely do it again if he escaped? Why are we even giving him legal counsel and allowing him a fair trial if such people are deemed too dangerous with flimsier evidence.

Of course Olbermann and MSNBC are all liberal liberal oh so liberal and far too radical to be paid attention to by the good citizens of GOPistan or the Fox Reich or the kingdom of Jesus on Earth, but it's hard for the rest of us marginal, heretical, skeptics to understand why if it's so necessary to torture anyone who has been accused by anyone of harboring vague thoughts of terrorism, or who has a beard and sounds foreign. If we need to torture them for years and lock them up for years without trial -- why then, Mr Limbaugh, Ms Colter et al, do we not torture someone who apparently knows of terrorist plots to be carried out on US soil against US citizens? Let's hear your justification for torture one more time.

We won't get an answer from any of them, of course, but we really don't need one, do we?

What we have here is a failure

Sarah Palin says Obama is driving the country toward Socialism, although she's not exactly sure what that is or how he's doing it.

"We’re borrowing more to spend more ... it defies any sensible economic policy that any of us ever learned through college"

said she to Insanity Hannity although that's been the main thrust of GOP economic policy since Reagan. Never mind that she didn't actually study economics in her long, picaresque romp through a series of fourth rate community colleges and hasn't any real idea of who owns what part of American industry. If she did, perhaps the failed VP candidate, failed beauty queen and desultory student would have to blush about Alaska's state ownership of oil and gas resources and her failure to bring capitalism to her state.

But that's OK. Former Speaker of the House and thoroughly dispicable human being Newt Gingrich says that whatever Obama may be driving us toward, President Barack Obama’s plan to fix the economy has “already failed” and “bowing to the Saudi King is not an energy policy.” Of course not, and Obama would agree. Playing basketball after hours isn't either, but neither is it supposed to be, any more than being a serial adulterer like Newt is a guarantee he means what he says. Of course none of us will get the chance to ask him whether Cheney's collusion with oil magnates about raising the price of oil is an energy policy either, but it helps that whatever Obama has been falsely accused of doing, he's failed to do it.

Rush Limbaugh isn't ready to call Sonia Sotomayor a failure yet, but he hopes she will be. Racist and hack yes, he's ready to say that, but as he does with our president and our nation, he hopes for a good, solid failure. And besides, of course, as with Michael J. Fox's Parkenson's disease, Ms. Sotomayor's recent broken ankle is certainly evidence of lack of character.

“Now, the question is, would a white, male judge have fractured his ankle in the same circumstances?”

No, actually the question is whether Rush can say anything at all without his racism and misogyny creeping through, but we won't embarrass him by asking it, not while he's back on the Vikes and babbling.

Drug addicted, draft dodging Limbaugh however, hardly compares with Gordon Liddy, the convicted felon/conservative radio host who thought it important to speculate as to whether the judge's menstrual cycle will interfere with her judgment.

"Let’s hope that the key conferences aren’t when she’s menstruating or something, or just before she’s going to menstruate,"

Liddy said in a conservative fashion.

"That would really be bad. Lord knows what we would get then."

Yes, Mr. Liddy, and the Lord knows that would be bad regardless of which Lord you mean, just like conspiring to overthrow democracy in the US and bragging about it -- which seems to be your main "conservative" credential.

Yes, 4 months is soon enough to talk about failure and face it -- who is more qualified to talk about failure than the Republicans?

Hell, high water and Burger King

I've been watching the history Channel's Life After People series, which graphically illustrates the natural processes that would eventually turn every piece of evidence that the human species ever existed into geological strata of rust, dust and ashes. I find myself, after reading various newspaper editorials, blog comments and other sources, wishing it would all happen soon. While humans abound, we paint and rebuild and fix up and maintain our artifacts, but unlike other species, we also deliberately assure our demise. Have we reached the limit where our ability to ruin everything can't be controlled by our inadequate intelligence or sanity? I don't know, but I'm past caring whether we're too stupid to know that we are insane or too insane to know we're stupid. All I can do is laugh and rest assured that someday it will be a different world, inherited by different, better adapted kinds of life.

What can I do but laugh at the Memphis Burger King franchise owner in Memphis, Tennessee who is putting up ads all over town advertising that "global warming is baloney" as the evidence mounts that the situation is getting worse than the most radical advocates were warning about not long ago.

Truly, disbelief of the obvious now rivals belief in the non-existent for Americans, and just as everyone is now an economist, automotive engineer, biochemist, historian, geneticist and philosopher by virtue of some web-site or by acclaim from others equally as uninformed and dishonest; he's also a paleo-climatologist. In fact the only paleo-climatologists who do not now think that human activity has become the predominant factor in heating the planet are those with no background in it -- and of course the petroleum geologists. Of course they all could be wrong. Strong scientific consensuses have been overturned before, but then they have always been overturned by new technology, producing new data and not by giggling disbelief based on politics, total unawareness of the evidence or indeed, the arrogance peculiar to Americans that convinces them that the more they ignore the data, the more sensible they are.

Sure, it's possible that there's nothing we can do about the great warming. Given the political nature of Man, it may be likely, even if it does stem from or depend heavily upon human consumption, but the level of the evidence certainly doesn't argue that we should ignore the situation, attack the evidence, smear and libel the scientists and put up posters all over Memphis -- unless, of course you're like me and just can't wait for hell and high water to cleanse the Earth of the disease that is us.

Reading the riot act - again

I remember when "subornation of perjury" entered the common parlance; back when they told us it was a crime for Bill Clinton to say "don't tell my wife" even though he wasn't actually on trial for cheating on Hillary. It's all zipped away in my hypocrisy directory along with Ann Coulter's call for Federal Judges to be poisoned and the amazing comment about me on another blog where I was accused of calling for the bloody decapitation of Rush Limbaugh when I said that heads should roll at Fox News. Fairness, balance and objectivity, if I could find much of it, would occupy a smaller file.

None the less, it may be that incitements to violence have at long last lost some of whatever it was that protected them. Racist Radio bloviator, blogger and frequent guest of Sean Hannity, Hal Turner has been arrested in Connecticut after he advised Connecticut Catholics to get out their guns and go after two legislators and an Ethics Committee official. Is there a difference between that and asking listeners to poison Judges? Perhaps someone in Connecticut thought the threat a little too credible; a little too specific, seeing that Turner promised on his blog to publish the addresses of his targets. Perhaps a little too much not to take seriously following the latest murder of Dr. Tiller.

"Mr. Turner's comments are above and beyond the threshold of free speech,"

said Police Chief Michael J. Fallon according to Raw Story today.

"He is inciting others through his website to commit acts of violence and has created fear and alarm. He should be held accountable for his conduct."

Yes he should.

Does this signal the beginning of an era when people are called to take responsibility for their words? Don't be silly, but if prompts the media to begin to reassess those they dub "conservatives" I think all of us should welcome it no matter what we call ourselves.

¿qué has dicho?

My first reaction as a detail oriented person, was that Bustelo was an Italian brand of coffee and Pilon would have been a better choice if your trying to stereotype someone. My second reaction was "what the hell is he thinking?" Is he trying to tell us that Sonia Sotomayor is no more than some ethnic fortune teller whose advice is sold along with plantains and lotto tickets in some Puerto Rican grocery store? (and by the way, aren't those Puerto Ricans backward and picturesque?)

So what are you saying here, Mr. Danziger? Beats me - what about you?

Raping for Freedom

Somebody must be running a little bit scared since the Commander Guy has put away his toys and has entered the stage, making excuses about torture. It's legal and I did it to protect you he said in Michigan last night and perhaps many of those people who decide they're "conservatives" and therefore trust whatever the Republican government says, will buy the story despite their pretended anti-government stance. "I'm from the government and I'm here to inspect your hamburger meat" scares the hell out of them, but "I'm from the government and I rape and murder women and children to protect you" slides down the throat as easily as the Flavor-Aid in Jonestown.

To be up-front about it, I think the experiment is over and democracy lost, but as a cynical observer of our national hypocrisy I'm anticipating a great deal of entertainment if and when the statements of General Taguba and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) are graphically depicted to the public as irrefutable proof. I truly want to see the Decider reduced to justifying the sodomy of little boys to "protect" us. I want to see him justify his love of war and conquest with unscrupulous cowardice. I want to hear Cheney justify shoving light sticks and batons up the rectums of crying and screaming teenagers as "saving lives." Of course they've already done that, but they've portrayed it only as making horned and bearded terrorist devils "uncomfortable" and the man who delights in shooting tame birds laughs at our squeamishness. I want to hear Rush and Ann tell us that American prison guards were justified in forcing oral sex on captured Muslim women "because they might know something" and we all know they wanted it. I want to hear the lot of them giggle at these pictures. I want to hear them tell us that Iraq was not justified at rising up against us for these acts alone, costing us thousands of lives.

No, we didn't torture anyone, but when we did it was legal because we make the law and the Geneva convention doesn't apply because old women and boys don't wear uniforms and besides Geneva is in a foreign country when the men are all girly Liberals and Festus, Missouri would long since have become a Taliban stronghold if we hadn't. You may laugh or cry or sputter like a Republican, but that's been the argument.

Did Bush and his henchmen actually save my life in his chambers of horror? If so, my life is worth nothing and your life and your honor is worth less than nothing if you defend it.