Unreasonable Sheep

Ezra Klein has a very important post up. I really can't add much to it and Digby has done a fine job in this area.
What I want to do, however, is add something to the mix.
This is not just simply a discussion or fight about social security or health care or who wins the most seats in the next election. This is about the future of the world. "I wouldn't go that far." you say?
Think about this...we have a president who was elected by the overwhelming support of the religious right. These are the people who believe that war in the Middle East is a necessary step toward the "Rapture". These are the people who want this conflict extended to the final battle of Armageddon. These are the people who believe that God intended for humans to dominate the earth and that regardless of the depletion of resources and the dirty air and water God will provide. These are the people who believe that conservation is unnecessary as the "Rapture" is close and they and all others who have the true faith in Jesus will be lifted up whole into heaven to sit at the hand of God and enjoy the suffering of all the rest of us during the tribulation. Why conserve? These people believe every word in the Bible is true. These people believe that man lived with dinosaurs. These people believe that the theory of evolution is a lie. If you are gay these people will gladly see your basic human rights denied and a good many of them would gladly see you die. If you are a woman these people believe that they control your womb. If you are a black, Muslim or another non white, or even non Christian person these people believe you are an animal and should be treated as such.
The above crowd and their kin are cheering at the murder of Judge Lefkow's husband and mother. This bunch sees absolutely nothing wrong in our invasion of Iraq. These folks are cheering Bush on in his threats to Syria. (As if he can back them up).
We folk, whether we call ourselves Democrats, Liberals, Communists, Greens, Socialists or Progressives need to wake up to the reality of the world that is developing around us. The conservative right/GOP/KKK/Church of the Creator/whacko has no morals when it comes to getting their world vision forwarded. They lie, steal, cheat, murder, maim, whatever it takes to win. I am not advocating crawling down into the gutter with them...that makes us no better than them. To further Ezra's point we need to take every advantage of openings they present, especially those resulting from their over confidence. We should never refuse the opportunity to pull back the curtain on their true nature. They are creatures of the night and darkness and will wither in the full light of truth. We should not let our desire for civility keep us from taking the fight to them.
The thing we always have to remember, however, is that these people are not living in the real world. They do not listen to reason. The harsh truth of the world is not for them. They need their delusions of immortality. They need their feeling of superiority. They need someone to push down and denigrate. They need to find evil in the world. They do not want to accept an equal footing with their fellow man.
We have to work within the world they live in. It has been shown over and over that they will not be dragged into the light. How we do this is an entirely different issue and not an easy one but it can be done. They are sheep and cannot think for themselves and we just need to figure out how to supplant the "Wonder Bread" they are eating now with something of substance, flavor and nourishment for their withered souls.

Flabbergasted

I really need someone to explain to me why this is not illegal. How can the Bushites spend our tax money on propoganda against us. This is another example of these guys flaunting the law with impunity. What whould the MSM have done if Bill Clinton had done the same.

I am not MIA....Just Very Busy.....

Fouviere Basilica in the distance 

I know its been quiet here for the last week but holy smoke has it been busy. We have an hour commute each way via the metro to the client which includes a mile and a half walk from and to the metro station on the client end. On the hotel end we have mostly an indoor walk through the commercial center and only a brief exposure to the elements. Posting this on Sunday afternoon after a walk around. Quite cold about 25 F and expected to get into the teens tonight. I imagine the commute in the morning will be absolutely frigid. Not only that but it has begun to snow!
Everything shuts down on Sunday here. Not even a kiosk in the mall is open. I did manage to find a little market this am to replenish my water supply. Caught up on the time reporting and expense reports--so ready for another week.
Still unable to VPN out of here as the hotel has no public IP addresses to use..so no contact with the corporate network for 4 more weeks. The client refuses to allow us to connect to their network so I guess we a SOL.
This is the first picture to post to the blog. Enjoy and I will try and do more now that I have it almost figured out.
Intersting note. I turned on CNN last night out of boredom and lo and behold there was the Daily Show. I will have to check again and see if it is regular occurence. CNN international is a wee bit different from the domestic version it seems.
Au Revoir

Safe and Sound

Well safe and sound in Lyon. Snow on the ground and still snow showers around. It will only warm to a little above freezing here today. Please excuse typos for the next month or so as I am having to use a French keyboard and a lot of letters are in a different place that an on an English one. Sorry to hear about Hunter Thompson as he always seemed to get to the heart of the matter. Maybe the old saw about genius and insanity being just a thought apart is true. We've lost a special mind.
TOday is basically a through away as the team gets out security passes etc. We are not allowed to connect our laptops the the clients network and they, instead, are providing us with a PC (Win98) aarrgh. Interconnect with the team will be with thumb drives. Do have some access to the internet but it is heavily restricted by the client...I was actually surprised to be able to hit blogger. Anyhow off we go to get our security badges and lunch.

It's all Yours

Leaving today for an extended trip to the wilds of France. Limited internet access as the hotel charges 15 Euros a day...$20 at today's rate. See if you can't get the impeachment rolling while I'm gone and if not try and get the troops home from Iraq. If neither one of those things work out you might focus trying to get Rush convicted. Actually, now that I think of it there are lots of little things that could use some attention. Look around.

Just Great!

A convicted criminal (lying to Congress) is now being offered as the new head of National Intelligence. John Negroponte is probably one of the most corrupt men in the administration. A convicted liar and most probably a party to mass murder and torture. Wake me up somebody and tell me this is a dream.

The Five Morons

Paul Craig Roberts has a great rant over at Counterpunch

You see, the facts that the US invaded Iraq on false pretenses, killed and maimed tens of thousands of Iraqis, shot down women and children in the streets, blew up Iraqis' homes, hospitals and mosques, cut Iraqis off from vital services such as water and electricity, destroyed the institutions of civil society, left half the population without means of livelihood, filled up prisons with people picked up off the streets and then tortured and humiliated them for fun and games are not facts that explain why there is an insurgency. These facts are just descriptions of collateral damage associated with America "bringing democracy to Iraq."

And there is a bonus of a new derisive term for Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Cheney and Bush "The Five Morons"

Wal-Mart Wins Again

Nathan Newman has the whole thing but in a nutshell--the Dept. of Labor has agreed to let Wal-Mart know before it initiates any labor law violation against Wal-Mart.

Let me translate this into the actual Wal-Mart response.

We can violate any labor law we want without fear since we will be notified if someone complains and before an investigation is launched. This will give us time to fire the bastard(s) that complain or otherwise disappear the problem. Therefore we will have much more freedom to suck the life out of our employees because the chance of an indictment or fine is now zilch.

George Bush is our boy--we bought him and his soul--cheap!

Buffoons

New York Times

A test of the national missile defense system failed Monday when an interceptor missile did not launch from its island base in the Pacific Ocean, the military said. It was the second failure in months for the experimental program.



The previous test, on Dec. 15, failed under almost identical circumstances. The target missile launched, but the interceptor did not. Military officials later blamed that failure on fault-tolerance software that was oversensitive to small errors in the flow of data between the missile and a flight computer. The software shut down the launch; officials said they would decrease the sensitivity in future launches.

Grandmother does 100

Here we are in snowy and cold Western Virginia for a very special birthday party. My Grandmother turns 100 years old today the 11th of February. While I am not sure she will register all of the importance, it is a very special day. She will most often get angry if you tell she is 100 as she insists she is 89. It is virtually impossible to grasp what the 100 years has seen. Automobiles, electricity, radio, television, space travel, home computers and even iPods did not exist when she was born. Not only that but WW1, WW2, Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq 1, Iraq 2. Like I said it is not something I can grasp. She has outlived all of her brothers and sisters and all of her children and two husbands and it wasn’t easy.

Happy Birthday Ruby from your first Grandson.

The Elephant is Being Ignored

In all of the discussion about the deficit and the 2.7 trillion dollar budget we are not hearing much at all about the parts of the budget that have been created by Republican policies over the last 25 years. The real elephant in the room is that 25 years of Republican government have left this nation 8 Trillion Dollars in debt. We are paying 300 Billion Dollars per year in interest. The current Bush deficit is a spending program in itself and each year of 400 Billion Dollar deficits adds between 10 and 20 Billion Dollars a year of new interest spending. Folks, this is forever, or until we pay it off, whichever comes first. Do the calculations and you will find that the Reagan/Bush deficits are the largest federal spending program enacted since WWII. Guess what we are getting for this spending? Zilch, Zippo, Nada ducky. If you think about it it’s also the largest part of the budget that is untouchable. While Bush’s tax cuts are focused on the wealthy what is really important to understand, is that they shift the tax burden from investment/dividend income to earned income.
What needs to made clear to everyone talking about the deficit is that it shifts the tax burden from wealth to work. Not only are the increasing the current burden on the middle and lower classes they are also irresponsible because they shift a large portion of the tax burden to future generations. Talk about taxation without representation.
We need some serious discussion of where we would be if Clinton’s positive budget had continued, we were not spending 5-6 Billion a month on War, and we had not increased the Pentagon budget by 41% since 2001. If anyone expects the Repubs to raise these points they are living in a fantasy land. We need to bring them forward and frame as the moral issues they are.
The conservative economic agenda for America is hitting its stride and we are in serious danger of pushing the economy into a total collapse. The great social programs begun in 1935 are under serious attack and the time to fight is now.

Here's An Idea

Holden over at First_Draft has an idea

Politics Let's restore all of the domestic progam's Chimpy is cutting in his budget proposal by taking $8 billion from his supplemental request for neverending war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Certainly we can do the job there, now that glorious elections have been held in both colonies, with a healthy $72 billion

Wal-Mart to Market a House Wine

Wal-Mart announced that they will soon be offering customers a new discount item: Wal-Mart's own brand of wine. The world's largest retail chain is teaming up with E&J Gallo Winery of California, to produce the spirits at an affordable price, in the $2-5 range.

While wine connoisseurs may not be inclined to throw a bottle of Wal-Mart brand into their shopping carts, "There is a market for cheap wine", said Kathy Micken, professor of marketing, "But the right name is important."

Customer surveys were conducted to determine the most attractive name for the Wal-Mart brand. The top surveyed names in order of popularity are:

10. Chateau Traileur Parc

9. White Trashfindel

8. Big Red Gulp

7. World Championship Riesling

6. NASCARbernet

5. Chef Boyardeaux

4. Peanut Noir

3. I Can't Believe It's Not Vinegar!

2. Grape Expectations

And the number 1 name for Wal-Mart Wine:

1. Nasti Spumante

If you haven't guessed it's a joke I received from a friend and there is no source. If you are the author I will be happy to give you credit - it's hilarious.

New Budget Love for the Common Man

Let me see... so far as I have been able to glean from the news and the web the new Bush budget is making cuts in the following domestic programs, to name a few:

* Environmental protection
* American Indian schools
* Grants to local police agencies
* Grants to local fire fighters
* The National Park Service
* Home heating aid for the poor
* The Center for Disease Control
* Health programs, including those designed to respond to terrorist attacks
* Veterans Benefits
* Amtrak
* Medicaid
* Farm subsidies (Brad DeLong comments)

This is from a WaPo editorial

Between 2000 and 2003, the number of people living in poverty rose 14 percent. In 2003, the most recent year for which numbers are available, one out of every eight Americans was poor, a disproportionate number of them children. The number without health insurance was the highest on record; more Americans went hungry. The poorest fell further below the poverty line while the richest took home a greater share of national income than ever.

Here I am getting ready to break out in "The Star Spangled Banner" again.

Do You Know About These Crises?

Doctors Without Borders have produced a list of 2004's 10 Most Underreported Humanitarian Crises. These are basically getting no coverage in the media or if any not much. We in the US are focused on our own problems, which are considerable, but should at least understand these and allows us to put ours into perspective. I was especially shocked to read about TB which I stupidly thought was virtually wiped out except for an isolated case here and there. It kills someone every 15 seconds worldwide.

Don't Get Pulled In

One comment on the Social Security thing. I can't stress how important it is for the Democrats to stand aside and let the Repubs have the field for the time being. As Darth Cheney demonstrated this weekend they are slowly losing the focus and are doing themselves harm in the process. The time to respond is when they actually produce a plan, which of course will be assailable. Stepping into the fray now with a proposal will just give the Repubs the ability to point and say that "See even the Democrats see the need for reform". Don't play into their hands.
The only response to Social Security Private accounts should be:

The Democrats had a plan 70 years ago and it is still working and will until 2042,at least. We don't need to add trillions to the debt for something that is not broken. Bush's handlers know their deficit spending and war is putting the General Fund in a position where it won't be able to meet its obligations to the Social Security Trust Fund and they are looking for a backdoor way to default on that trust.

What Surprise?

There has been a lot of talk in the blogosphere while I was out of touch in the UK about how Bush is going to defaulton the trust fund debt. I realized the minute I heard him talking about the crisis in 2018 that it included the assumption that the trust fund was screwed. I am not nearly as smart as some of these folks and it hit me instantly. Whatever.

The Violent March of Democracy

Mark Morford always reduces it down to the raw stuff.

"Let's just say it outright: The ends do not justify the means. A barely democratic Iraq is fine and good, but you well know that if Bush had mumbled to the nation three years and $300 billion ago that we were going to start bombing this piss-poor country back to the Stone Age and gut the U.S. economy and put thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis in death's way to deliver it, all while sending the nastiest possible message to the world and actually increasing the threat of terrorism while turning our backs on every major U.S. ally, I doubt many Americans would have giddily waved the flag of support (except maybe Ann Coulter, who apparently loves anything involving guns and dead foreigners)."

Too Early to Tell

It will be interesting to see how much of the WH hype and media bias on the “success” of the Iraqi elections turns out to be true. Even here in the UK there are pictures on the tube of smiling Iraqis voting here and much hype around the millions that have voted. I am very suspicious of the whole thing considering the voting environment and the amount of input the US has had. We’ll reserve judgment for the time being especially with respect to ending violence and how this was a victory over the terrorists.

Way Too Much Attention to Jackson Trial

Well another day in Jolly olde. Watching BBC2 this morning I am amazed at how much time they are spending on the Michael Jackson trial. At least every half hour there is an update on what is happening which in the morning in England is absolutely nothing. Most amazing is the admission that pretty much nothing but jury selection is happening for the next month as they go through the initial pool of jurors of about 300 per day. The actual trial is not supposed to start for at least another month. Reports have it that there are over a 1000 journalists in the California town to cover the trial. Personally I think there is not a newsworthy moment associated with this at least until they have a verdict. Weird.

Safe and Sound

Made it to the UK with only some delay...closed the airport in Atlanta down to only one runway so, coupled with the ice and other stuff we were three hours lated leaving. The surving my reintroduction to driving on the left and finding my way to Hampshire from Gatwick wa the next step.
No internet at the hotel but i have access at the client....so may a post this week or two.

Traveling

Off to London for the week so activity will be light to nonexistent.

Good Speech by Ted Kennedy - about time

Senator Ted Kennedy has given a very impressive talk to the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies yesterday. It is decisive, pointed and a very welcome call to bring our troops home from Iraq. It is worth a read and has been released by Kennedy's office.

Chinese Bailing Out

From the World Economic Forum in Davos comes this tidbit. If you don't think this is serious -- have I got a deal for you!

Fan Gang, director of the National Economic Research Institute at the China Reform Foundation, said the issue for China isn't whether to devalue the yuan but "to limit it from the U.S. dollar."

"The U.S. dollar is no longer -- in our opinion is no longer -- (seen) as a stable currency, and is devaluating all the time, and that's putting troubles all the time," Fan said, speaking in English.

"So the real issue is how to change the regime from a U.S. dollar pegging ... to a more manageable ... reference ... say Euros, yen, dollars -- those kind of more diversified systems," he said.

"If you do this, in the beginning you have some kind of initial shock," Fan said. "You have to deal with some devaluation pressures."

Kids Come First

I received an email appeal from John Kerry concerning the Kids Come First Act which he is sponsoring. Take a minute and add your name to the list of co-sposors.

It is totally unacceptable that, in the greatest country in the world, millions of children are not getting the health care they need. That's why this week John Kerry introduced the Kids Come First Act. Help him push through the Republicans' political roadblocks and take care of the 11 million children without health insurance.

Please co-sponsor John Kerry's Kids Come First Act by clicking here:


The Republicans will try to prevent this important legislation from ever seeing the light of day. Help John gather one million co-signers for the Kids Come First Act, and we'll force them to act or to admit that they just don't care enough to act. Here's why it's so important to do something now:

* 1/4 of children are not fully up to date on their basic immunizations.
* 1/3 with chronic asthma do not get a prescription for medications they need.
* 1/2 of uninsured children have not had a well child visit in the past year.
* 1 in 6 has delayed or unmet medical needs.
* 1 in 5 has trouble accessing health care.
* 1 in 4 does not see a dentist annually.
* 1 in 3 had no health insurance during 2002 and 2003.

Oh God!

Reports are coming in that a helicopter crash in Iraq has killed 31 Marines. Five other Americans were killed in two other separate attackes. This is absolutely insane.

Link

Deeper and Deeper

If this is cutting the budget deficit in half I am glad they didn't promise to grow it! Well, at least they have the first part of the "starving the beast" plan worked out. Let's see them follow through now with the other part which will be election losing cuts in domestic spending. As Rich Little said at one of the coronation balls; "The War on Poverty is over and the poor lost." This brought wild applause from the crown--surprise.

From the Washington Post

An $80 billion request for additional war spending this year will push the federal deficit to a record $427 billion for fiscal 2005, and the government's long-term fiscal health appears to be only growing worse, administration and congressional officials said today.

Senior administration officials announced today they would soon seek at least $75 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan this year, plus an additional $5 billion to build an embassy in Baghdad, continue reconstruction in Afghanistan, offer assistance to the Palestinians and send relief to the Darfur region of Sudan. That $80 billion would come on top of $25 billion already appropriated for the war this year, pushing the total cost of fighting to $105 billion this year, up from $88 billion in 2004 and $78.6 billion in 2003.

We May Not Have to Worry about Social Security

If I may distill the essence of this article--
If the global temperature increases about 1.2 degrees from its present level, about 10 years or so, positive feedback will cause a further rise of an additional 3 degrees very quickly. This rise of 5 degrees should be enough to cause large amounts of the icy methane slurry at the bottom of the oceans to melt. This will add enough additional greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere to ratchet up an additional five degrees, while simultaneously killing most of the oxygen using life in the oceans.

The last time this happened, 95% of the life on the planet Died.

Have a Nice Day!

No on Gonzales

Armando at Kos has the definitive statement on why Alberto Gonzales should NOT be approved as the next Attorney General of the United States. I agree totally. This man's counsel has caused the United States to prostitute the most basic tenets of our society, the respect for the rule of law and human rights. It's time to "fish or cut bait" and to paraphrase, you are either for respecting human rights and the rule of law or you're not. There is no middle ground on an issue this fundamental to everything this nation stands for. Making this man the Attorney General is condoning every report and every picture we have heard and seen from Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib and giving any enemy tacit permission to do the same to our men and women in uniform. This is a black and white issue there are no nuances--none.

Give Barbara Boxer a Thumbs Up

click on the link below and let Barbara Boxer know you support her efforts to take the Senate's role of "advice and consent" seriously with respect to the confirmation of Condi Rice.
Petitiion Link
Barbara Boxer:
"During the full Senate debate over Condoleezza Rice's nomination tomorrow, I intend to take the floor, joined by many other of my Democratic colleagues, to express my frustration about Dr. Rice's lack of candor during the confirmation hearings -- her unwillingness to level with the American people about the misleading statements she made about aluminum tubes, mushroom clouds, and connections between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda to try to justify the war in Iraq.

Condoleezza Rice refused to come clean about the actual number of trained Iraqi forces on the ground. And perhaps even more disturbingly, she refused to tell us why she personally intervened to kill an anti-torture provision in a recent intelligence bill."

Follow Up on What Me Worry

In another link from the Finacial Times we have some additional details.

In 2003, the most recent year with full international statistics, central banks financed 83 per cent of the US current account deficit, with Asian central banks accounting for 86 per cent of flows.

A similar picture is emerging for 2004. Despite a good start to the year, when the private sector was a large net purchaser of dollar assets, central banks came to the rescue again. The People's Bank of China has let it be known that China increased dollar reserves by $207bn (€159bn) in 2004, financing nearly a third of the US current account deficit, estimated at $650bn.

While I am far from an economist even I get jumpy at the thought of some other country owning 83% of us. Couple this with the previous post and you may begin to see that the energy is being stored for something big and bad. If memory serves I paid a $1.18 for one Euro in November and today(I just checked) it is a $1.31. That may appear to be ONLY 13 cents but it is a huge number.

What Me Worry?

Central banks are shifting reserves away from the US and towards the eurozone in a move that looks set to deepen the Bush administration's difficulties in financing its ballooning current account deficit.

In actions likely to undermine the dollar's value on currency markets, 70 per cent of central bank reserve managers said they had increased their exposure to the euro over the past two years.

Of course you won't see this juicy little item on CNN.

Here is the link to the Financial Times.

Fallenmonk is Cold

Well...Atlanta is very cold this morning 19 degrees F. I wussed on my walk this morning. It is too damn cold. I can put on enough layers to stay warm but it takes the pleasure out of it. It's bad enough that I have to walk in the dark but add bitter cold and a good stiff wind and yours truly wimps.

Just the Numbers Please

Alterman reminds us of the numbers and for the life of me I can't find the good ones. Then again, they aren't showing the wealth of the "fat cats" -- you know the ones who are making the bombs, bullets and Humvees. They are also not showing the tax burden changes for the wealthiest five percent of the nation either.

Poverty Rate
2000: 11.3% or 31.6 million Americans
2003: 12.5% or 35.9 million Americans

Stock market
Dow Jones Industrial Average
1/19/01: 10,587.59
1/19/05: 10,539.97

NASDAQ
1/19/01: 2,770.38
1/19/05: 2,073.59

S&P 500
1/19/01: 1,342.54
1/19/05: 1,184.63

Value of the Dollar
1/19/01: 1 Dollar = 1.06 Euros
1/19/05: 1 Dollar = 0.77 Euros

Budget
2000 budget surplus $236.4 billion
2004 budget deficit $412.6 billion
That's a shift of $649 billion and doesn't include the cost of the Iraq war.

Cost of the war in Iraq
$150.8 billion

American Casualties in Iraq
Deaths: 1,369
Wounded: 10,252

The Debt
End of 2000: $5.7 trillion
Today: $7.6 trillion
That's a 4 year increase of 33%

Data from here

Billmon is Back

Thank the Goddess that Billmon is back. I have missed his writings and insight horribly. Today it is just holding up the mirror.

Sounds Like Victory
From where I sit in Iraq, things are not all bad right now. In fact, they are going quite well . . . In the distance, I can hear the repeated impacts of heavy artillery and five-hundred-pound bombs hitting their targets. The occasional tank main gun report and the staccato rhythm of a Marine Corps LAV or Army Bradley Fighting Vehicle's 25-millimeter cannon provide the bass line for a symphony of destruction.
Lt. Col. Tim Ryan
Tacoma News Tribune
January 18, 2005



You smell that? Do you smell that? That's napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell — you know that gasoline smell — the whole hill. It smelled like . . . victory.
Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore
Apocalypse Now
1979

Don't Forget - Not A Damn Dime

Don't forget that tomorrow, Thursday the 20th of January is Not A Damn Dime Day. To protest the the war in Iraq and the administration as well. Do not spend anything tomorrow. Defer any purchases until Friday if at all possible. Money is the only thing this administration understands so let's take some away.

Symptoms of Fascism

A recent compilation of data from historic fascist states presents a list of symptoms that will alert one to the development of a fascists state. Laurence Britt uses the examples of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesiav to create this list of fourteen symptoms of a fascist state.

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.
5. Rampant sexism.
6. A controlled mass media.
7. Obsession with national security.
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.
9. Power of corporations protected.
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.
12. Obsession with crime and punishment.
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.
14. Fraudulent elections.

Nice list, but I don't think we need to be concerned around here, do we? Ok Folks, move on, nothing to see here.

Good Times A'Comin

The noted Liberal financial magazine Forbes has the following little tidbit.

"We are going to go through one of the most trying financial times in U.S. history, including the Great Depression," Schiff says.

"The basic problem," Schiff states, "is that Americans don't produce enough, and don't save enough." Indeed, over the past 15 years, the savings rate has fallen from over 6% to less than 1% in recent quarters. As a result, the goods that we are consuming are being supplied to us by foreigners. Not only are they producing the goods, but they are lending us the money to buy them, and, in doing so, are driving the U.S. deeper and deeper into debt to the rest of the world, Schiff says.

"We are using dollars that we print to exchange for goods that we don't produce. We have to borrow from abroad as there are no domestic sources of savings, so the value of those dollars will continue to fall."

How bad will it get? "Very bad," Schiff says. The dollar will fall a lot lower than it already has -- dropping by perhaps 50% against the Japanese and Chinese currencies. How will the government respond? Could efforts to forestall the currency decline have a perverse -- and ultimately negative -- effect? No matter what the outcome, Americans will have to consume a lot less and save a lot more. Spending on cars, clothing and electronics will all drop dramatically -- perhaps right out of the economy.

"The further into the future this starts, the worse it will be for Americans," Schiff says.

MLK Reminds Us

"This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans
and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane,
of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically
deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year
to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death."

Don't Feed the Stray Cats

August updates an earlier post which I didn't link too because Atrios was already on it. He expands on what I was saying earlier though. We on the Left are just feeding the stray cats when we swing at these low balls launched from the right. August is right in that we should just figure out a way to ridicule them.

I think there are way too many times when we actually bother to entertain these attempts from warbloggers to feel much more important about what they're doing than they actually are. I think shows like Crossfire would have survived- and thrived- if people on the left just responded to Bob Novak by saying "are you fucking kidding me?" and staring his bullshit down with supressed laughter until he ran off the stage crying. Conservatives try to implicate the left for "lowering the discourse." They're not worried about us lowering- or raising- the discourse. They're worried that we might get a clue and stop engaging them in discourse.

We've raised Ann Coulter to new heights by trying to counter her. She doesn't care. Michael Moore is delegitimized by the Right by means of sarcasm and humor. Dean was destroyed by jokes about the scream. If Crossfire opened every show with "and look what that crazy bitch said today," followed by a shot of Paul and James laughing their asses off, Ann Coulter would be the leggiest assistant corporate attorney in Accounts Recieving right now.

The right-wing bloggers don't want to hear our rebuttals. The President doesn't want to hear the Democrats' counter-proposals. History will never look back on this time and discuss how changes were made through the art of rational bipartisan discussion. But I'm damn sure history has a chance to look back on this era... and laugh.

Simple advice on the Kos/Armstrong hoohah

Simple--Quit swinging at pitches in the dirt. As long as the left side of the blogospere (reality-based) keeps responding to these low pitches we are letting the right side control the dialogue.

Stop that! Your mother warned you that it would cause blindness and you already need glasses!

Is Screaming Allowed?

From Today's Washington Post

President Bush said the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.

"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."

Well, I can see that I am not the only one just absolutely aghast and the unbridled audacity and delusional words of the village idiot.

Maha is quoting Walt Whitman

Josh Marshall is referencing Cheap Grace

Mustang Bobby has spit coffee all over the Sunday Paper

Oliver Willis is calling on higher powers!

These few in the first blush of Sunday morning surfing........

Hitting Fallujah Again?

How many times are we going to lose the Battle of Fallujah?

Sad Headlines

Doesn't it just make you want to leap up and lead the room in "God Bless America"?

From FinanceGates

US credibility in maintaining human rights is challenged by the report from Human Rights Watch, a leading independent watchdog on human rights, that demands the prosecution of Sudanese and American government officials linked to the mass slaughter in Darfur and the prisoner abuse scandals in the Iraqi Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo Bay.

The report issued by Human Rights Watch says the response to each of the scandals is crucial for the global fight for the protection of human rights.

"The vitality of global human rights depends on a firm response to each -- on stopping the Sudanese government’s slaughter in Darfur and on fully investigating and prosecuting all those responsible for torture and mistreatment in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo," it said.

A Little Perspective

Via Hoffmania! : "200 armored Humvees with the best armor for troops in Iraq.
Vaccinations and preventive health care for 22 million children in regions devastated by the tsunami.
A down payment on the nation's deficit, which hit a record-breaking $412 billion last year.
Two years' salary for the Mets' new center fielder Carlos Beltran, or all of pitcher Randy Johnson's contract extension with the New York Yankees."

Passing on Thoughts as Promised

By E.L. Doctorow
The Unfeeling President
I fault this president for not knowing what death is. He does not suffer the death of our 21-year-olds who wanted to be what they could be. On the eve of D-Day in 1944 General Eisenhower prayed to God for the lives of the young soldiers he knew were going to die. He knew what death was. Even in a justifiable war, a war not of choice but of necessity, a war of survival, the cost was almost more than Eisenhower could bear.
But this president does not know what death is. He hasn't the mind for it. You see him joking with the press, peering under the table for the weapons of mass destruction he can't seem to find, you see him at rallies strutting up to the stage in shirt sleeves to the roar of the carefully screened crowd, smiling and waving, triumphal, a he-man.
He does not mourn. He doesn't understand why he should mourn. He is satisfied during the course of a speech written for him to look solemn for a moment and speak of the brave young Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice for their country.
But you study him, you look into his eyes and know he dissembles an emotion which he does not feel in the depths of his being because he has no capacity for it. He does not feel a personal responsibility for the 1,000 dead young men and women who wanted to be what they could be.
They come to his desk not as youngsters with mothers and fathers or wives and children who will suffer to the end of their days a terribly torn fabric of familial relationships and the inconsolable remembrance of aborted life . . . they come to his desk as a political liability, which is why the press is not permitted to photograph the arrival of their coffins from Iraq.
How then can he mourn? To mourn is to express regret and he regrets nothing. He does not regret that his reason for going to war was, as he knew, unsubstantiated by the facts. He does not regret that his bungled plan for the war's aftermath has made of his mission-accomplished a disaster. He does not regret that, rather than controlling terrorism, his war in Iraq has licensed it. So he never mourns for the dead and crippled youngsters who have fought this war of his choice.
He wanted to go to war and he did. He had not the mind to perceive the costs of war, or to listen to those who knew those costs. He did not understand that you do not go to war when it is one of the options but when it is the only option; you go not because you want to but because you have to.
Yet this president knew it would be difficult for Americans not to cheer the overthrow of a foreign dictator. He knew that much. This president and his supporters would seem to have a mind for only one thing -- to take power, to remain in power, and to use that power for the sake of themselves and their friends.
A war will do that as well as anything. You become a wartime leader. The country gets behind you. Dissent becomes inappropriate. And so he does not drop to his knees, he is not contrite, he does not sit in the church with the grieving parents and wives and children. He is the president who does not feel. He does not feel for the families of the dead, he does not feel for the 35 million of us who live in poverty, he does not feel for the 40 percent who cannot afford health insurance, he does not feel for the miners whose lungs are turning black or for the working people he has deprived of the chance to work overtime at time-and-a-half to pay their bills - it is amazing for how many people in this country this president does not feel.
But he will dissemble feeling. He will say in all sincerity he is relieving the wealthiest 1 percent of the population of their tax burden for the sake of the rest of us, and that he is polluting the air we breathe for the sake of our economy, and that he is decreasing the quality of air in coal mines to save the coal miners' jobs, and that he is depriving workers of their time-and-a-half benefits for overtime because this is actually a way to honor them by raising them into the professional class.
And this litany of lies he will versify with reverences for God and the flag and democracy, when just what he and his party are doing to our democracy is choking the life out of it.
But there is one more terribly sad thing about all of this. I remember the millions of people here and around the world who marched against the war. It was extraordinary, that spontaneous aroused oversoul of alarm and protest that transcended national borders. Why did it happen? After all, this was not the only war anyone had ever seen coming. There are little wars all over he world most of the time.
But the cry of protest was the appalled understanding of millions of people that America was ceding its role as the last best hope of mankind. It was their perception that the classic archetype of democracy was morphing into a rogue nation. The greatest democratic republic in history was turning its back on the future, using its extraordinary power and standing not to advance the ideal of a concordance of civilizations but to endorse the kind of tribal combat that originated with the Neanderthals, a people, now extinct, who could imagine ensuring their survival by no other means than pre-emptive war.
The president we get is the country we get. With each president the nation is conformed spiritually. He is the artificer of our malleable national soul. He proposes not only the laws but the kinds of lawlessness that govern our lives and invoke our responses. The people he appoints are cast in his image. The trouble they get into and get us into, is his characteristic trouble.
Finally, the media amplify his character into our moral weather report. He becomes the face of our sky, the conditions that prevail. How can we sustain ourselves as the United States of America given the stupid and ineffective warmaking, the constitutionally insensitive lawgiving, and the monarchal economics of this president? He cannot mourn but is a figure of such moral vacancy as to make us mourn for ourselves.
The novelist E.L. Doctorow has a house in Sag Harbor

Just Love the Greed and Avarice....Not even trying to Hide it.

From the Washington Post:"President Bush wants to lower barriers to building nuclear power plants, and the lobby that promotes nuclear energy could not be happier. To show its thanks, the group has given $100,000 to help pay for his inauguration. ...
The nuclear energy industry's contribution is part of a record-breaking outpouring of corporate cash for next week's inaugural festivities. At least 88 companies and trade associations, along with 39 top executives -- all with huge stakes in administration policies -- have already donated $18 million toward a $40 million goal for the country's 55th inaugural celebration.
Wall Street investment firms seeking to profit from private Social Security accounts; oil, gas and mining companies pushing the White House to revive a stalled energy-subsidy bill; and hotels and casinos seeking an influx of immigrant labor are among the 44 interests that have each given $250,000 and the 66 that have donated $100,000 to $225,000. And the money keeps pouring in."

Trade Deficit

How long do you think our trading partners are going to be willing to accept payment in dollars if our trade imbalance continues to soar?
A new record was set in October 2004 of $56 billion which was bad.
That record has now been shattered by November's which came in at $60.3 billion. This puts us on a pace to top $600 billion for 2004 which leaves the previous record of $496.5 billion for 2003 in the dust.
Oh the Humanity!

The Lie is Official

Well, it's official. There are NO WMDs in Iraq and they have stopped looking. Bush and company LIED , and now 1357+ Soldiers are Dead, 10,000 plus have been wounded and 100,000 civilian are dead. All for a Lie. Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month (washingtonpost.com)

Moral Clarity

Bob Herbert distills it pretty well in today's New York Times.

"Americans have tended to view the U.S. as the guardian of the highest ideals of justice and fairness. But that is a belief that's getting more and more difficult to sustain. If the Justice Department can be the fiefdom of John Ashcroft or Alberto Gonzales, those in search of the highest standards of justice have no choice but to look elsewhere.

It's more fruitful now to look overseas. Last month Britain's highest court ruled that the government could not continue to indefinitely detain foreigners suspected of terrorism without charging or trying them. One of the justices wrote that such detentions "call into question the very existence of an ancient liberty of which this country has until now been very proud: freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention."

That's a sentiment completely lost on an Alberto Gonzales or George W. Bush."

What He Said--

Nine More Today

Iraq Coalition Casualties
Nine American Troops Killed in Iraq
A roadside bomb killed seven U.S. soldiers in northwest Baghdad and two Marines were killed in western Iraq on Thursday, the deadliest day for American forces since a suicide attack on a U.S. base last month.
Do NOT let the American media cause you to ignore this. This should be on the from page of every newspaper in America and the lead off story on every new program. I'll be inerested to see where this big of news appears (if at all) in the supposedly left wing Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Update: 1/7 - Did make the front page of the AJC. Surprised..this is a change.

The Libertarians Awaken

I have never read anything by Lew Rockwell and I can't say after skimming through his site that I agree with everything he says. Howerver, since being linked over there by Maha, I actually enjoyed reading this article.

The following paragraph particularly crystalized something I had in the back of my head for some time and that is--How come all these die hard no tax, no government and leave me alone to shove the Bible up my kid's ass are all of a sudden wanting government to do everything but wipe your ass?

"The vigor and determination of the Bush administration has brought about a profound cultural change, so that the very people who once proclaimed hated of government now advocate its use against dissidents of all sorts, especially against those who would dare call for curbs in the totalitarian bureaucracy of the military, or suggest that Bush is something less than infallible in his foreign-policy decisions. The lesson here is that it is always a mistake to advocate government action, for there is no way you can fully anticipate how government will be used. Nor can you ever count on a slice of the population to be moral in its advocacy of the uses of the police power."

While I agree with Maha on the last sentence--that you can count on government as long as you have the controls in place to prevent wackos (John Ashcroft) from running amok.

Another paragraph that stood out is the following and confirms my thinking on exactly what is happening. This concept was also very compentently handled by David Neiwert over at Ornicus in a very good 7 part series.

"In short, what we have alive in the US is an updated and Americanized fascism. Why fascist? Because it is not leftist in the sense of egalitarian or redistributionist. It has no real beef with business. It doesn't sympathize with the downtrodden, labor, or the poor. It is for all the core institutions of bourgeois life in America: family, faith, and flag. But it sees the state as the central organizing principle of society, views public institutions as the most essential means by which all these institutions are protected and advanced, and adores the head of state as a godlike figure who knows better than anyone else what the country and world's needs, and has a special connection to the Creator that permits him to discern the best means to bring it about. "


Finally, I want to point at a final paragraph that is refreshing to see come from these quarters and that is a recognition that we liberals are not a "clear and present danger" to the U.S. of A. but the emerging New American Fascism that needs trimming.

"What is the most pressing and urgent threat to freedom that we face in our time? It is not from the left. If anything, the left has been solid on civil liberties and has been crucial in drawing attention to the lies and abuses of the Bush administration. No, today, the clear and present danger to freedom comes from the right side of the ideological spectrum, those people who are pleased to preserve most of free enterprise but favor top-down management of society, culture, family, and school, and seek to use a messianic and belligerent nationalism to impose their vision of politics on the world."

There is also a link in the article to another on lewrockwell.com that is also a good read and a refreshing wind from the right. This is an article by Paul Craig Roberts asking what happened to the conservatives.

Economic Darwinism and Stability

Marie Cocco in yesterday's Newsday plunges right into the middle of Bush's "reform" of social security.

"So why does Bush want to create a crisis that doesn't exist and provide a solution that doesn't fix it? Because he is an economic Darwinist. In Bush's view, the financially strong should be helped to prosper. The weak should pay the bill."

Maha discusses the potential effects of the Economic Darwinism but I think it needs a little more airing.

I agree that the programs like Social Security that were spawned by the New Deal are primarily to insure that there is a safety net for those who don't get the brass ring. The intent being that a progresive and democratic society cannot function effectively when too many of the folks are hungry. At its most basic a society cannot exist when there there is too much difference it situation between the haves and the have nots. Too much potential energy exists and as the disparity grows this energy will reach an explosive level and something breaks. Revolution, civil war or something. The society becomes unstable.
My concern is why this is not getting any more discussion. Surely, the Bush folks know what the results of these actions will bring. I cannot accept that they are that naive and if they do know why are they doing it?
I have to believe that they are intent on de-stabilizing the country but I can't fathom the purpose.

Anybody have any ideas?

Resolutions For The Damned

Resolutions For The Damned / A new year, a Bush-gutted, storm-ravaged world and you in need of some juicy, heartfelt pledges
Mark Morford, as usual, is right on key and funny to boot.

Every article he writes is worth reading. If you don't subscribeto his email you might miss one. In the one above he gives some alternative ideas for resolutions. Below are the last two paragraphs which pretty much wrap it up.

"Finally and perhaps most importantly, resolve to do all this even as you laugh more vigorously than ever at the divine circus of it all, at the great cosmic joke, realizing that these next four years are going to be just shockingly painful to anyone with a heart or a whisper of raw spirituality or the slightest hint of true environmental concern.

And yet there you are, shaking your head and sighing and grinning mischievously and moving forward anyway, as you crank your own personal vibration as much as humanly possible because that, really, is all you can do, and all you can ever do, and it is so desperately needed right now I can't even tell you, and because if you resolve anything this year, resolve to realize how essential you are to moving it all forward, making it all better, bringing it all into more divine focus."

Another Shell Game

The New York Times is reporting that the $350 Million in aid to the tsumami victims will come at the expense of virtuall all of our budgeted international disaster aid and famine assistance. The current budgeted amount is $384 billion for FY 2005 and the $350 mil will wipe it out.

Can someone in the pupply press ask one of the Bush toadies what we are going to do about the millions of starving people in Africa now that we are putting the food money somewhere else?

This is the most dishonest administration in history not to mention the most heartless.

Can anyone say "maybe it is time to rethink the 40 million I am spending on my coronation"? Maybe an additional appropriation?

Pile On

I would like to add my tiny voice to the thundering of Atrios, Wolcott and Digby, among others, who take exception to Andrew Sulllivan's stupid and thoughless comments about the soldier saying that he would rather be helping the tsunami victims than fighting a war.

"I'd much rather be doing this than figthing a war," - helicopter pilot Lt. Cmdr. William Whitsitt, helping the survivors of the south Asian tsunami.

As a veteran what really burns me is the following crap out of Andrew's mouth:

"I'm sorry but I pay for those soldiers to fight in a volunteer army. They are servants of people like me who will never fight. Yes, servants of civil masters."

Digby was right to quote Dwight Eisenhower--

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." --Dwight Eisenhower 1953 speech

And attaturk adds an additional quote from Eisenhower

"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can,
only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity"

People like Sullivan can really try my committment to non-violence. And people pay him for this crap.
Fuck You Andy!

New Depressing Milestone in Iraq

Iraq Coalition Casualties
The Pentagon announced today that the number of U.S. troops wounded in Iraq since March 2003 has now surpassed 10,000.

Five additional U.S. soldiers were killed today. Three in Baghdad by a roadside bomb and another in a roadside bombing north of Baghdad. A Marine was killed in action in the western province of Anbar.

This brings to 1340 the number of U.S. sons and daughters killed for nothing in Iraq.

Them and Us

In a short follow-up to the last post I think I need to make a further distinction between "Them and Us". I don't want anyone to accuse me of glossing over the signifigance of the last election.

The 51% that voted to "Self-Destruct" and gave Bush his "mandate" think that security and happiness is about power, dominance, control and fear. As long as you are in control and can enforce your will then all is well. As long as the other guys are afraid of you it will be OK. Additionally, they believe that our resources and ingenuity are limitless and that no problem in insolvable if you throw enough science, hardware or money at it. They believe in their greedy little hearts that our unlimited wealth and prosperity will command the world's grudging respect. You've heard Bush and company say that the terrorists are just jealous of our freedom and prosperity.

The other 49%--US, on the other hand, see the whole wealth and power trip as a false God and a dead end world view. Think about it! In the current state of affairs, with the actions of the last four years, we're making more enemies faster than ever. We value, instead, the peace and grace that comes from living harmoniously with our fellow residents on the planet. We also understand that everything is finite and the current hyper-consumerism, rape of the planet and ecomomic policies are insane and unsustainable. We know that there is TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch) and that at some point we will have to pay for what we are doing today. As the man says--Pay me Now or Pay me Later.

No Light at the End of the Tunnel

The New York Times had a great op-ed yesterday by Jared Diamond, who won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize for Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies.
Diamond writes:


When it comes to historical collapses, five groups of interacting factors have been especially important: the damage that people have inflicted on their environment; climate change; enemies; changes in friendly trading partners; and the society's political, economic and social responses to these shifts. That's not to say that all five causes play a role in every case. Instead, think of this as a useful checklist of factors that should be examined, but whose relative importance varies from case to case.

You really should read the whole article but below are the primary lessons that Diamond teaches:

1. Take environmental problems seriously.
If 6,000 Polynesians with stone tools were able to destroy Mangareva Island, consider what six billion people with metal tools and bulldozers are doing today. Moreover, while the Maya collapse affected just a few neighboring societies in Central America, globalization now means that any society's problems have the potential to affect anyone else. Just think how crises in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq have shaped the United States today.

2. Beware of bad group decision making.
There are a multitude of reasons why societies make bad decisions, and thereby fail to solve or even to perceive the problems that eventually destroy them. It sometimes involves conflicts of interest, where one group can profit by engaging in practices to detriment of the society as a whole. Another is focusing on short-term gain at the expense of long-term survival such as overfishing or irrigation to the point of salinization and sterile land.

3. Don't let the elite insulate itself from the consequences of its actions.
"That's why Maya kings, Norse Greenlanders and Easter Island chiefs made choices that eventually undermined their societies, they themselves did not begin to feel deprived until they had irreversibly destroyed their landscape."

4. Be willing to re-examine core values in the face of changing conditions.

Diamond brings all of these points together in an assessment of the U.S today:

Historically, we viewed the United States as a land of unlimited plenty, and so we practiced unrestrained consumerism, but that's no longer viable in a world of finite resources. We can't continue to deplete our own resources as well as those of much of the rest of the world.
Historically, oceans protected us from external threats; we stepped back from our isolationism only temporarily during the crises of two world wars. Now, technology and global interconnectedness have robbed us of our protection. In recent years, we have responded to foreign threats largely by seeking short-term military solutions at the last minute.
But how long can we keep this up? Though we are the richest nation on earth, there's simply no way we can afford (or muster the troops) to intervene in the dozens of countries where emerging threats lurk - particularly when each intervention these days can cost more than $100 billion and require more than 100,000 troops.

A genuine reappraisal would require us to recognize that it will be far less expensive and far more effective to address the underlying problems of public health, population and environment that ultimately cause threats to us to emerge in poor countries. In the past, we have regarded foreign aid as either charity or as buying support; now, it's an act of self-interest to preserve our own economy and protect American lives.

I think it is pretty obvious that we've lost our status as "leader of the free world," a position we still held when Bill Clinton was president. I really don’t think the rest of the world is thinking George Bush is going to lead us forward. You can look at the “dance of the aid promises” this week and see the evidence of that.

We can’t honestly say we are a super power anymore with our forces so stretched and demoralized.

We can’t point to a robust economy any longer and virtually every non-political economist of any worth is actually saying that the U.S. economy is going to crash soon.

In the last election, 49 percent of us voted for peace and sustainability; 51 percent voted to self-destruct.
The only thing that can save us now is a revolution and I don’t see that coming anytime soon. As they, get ready to hold on to your ass ‘cause the ride is going to be wild.

A Lost Cause

Did I forget to mention that we have lost this war?

From the Economist ( a day pass is available)

"There is only one traffic law in Ramadi these days: when Americans approach, Iraqis scatter. Horns blaring, brakes screaming, the midday traffic skids to the side of the road as a line of Humvee jeeps ferrying American marines rolls the wrong way up the main street. Every vehicle, that is, except one beat-up old taxi. Its elderly driver, flapping his outstretched hands, seems, amazingly, to be trying to turn the convoy back. Gun turrets swivel and lock on to him, as a hefty marine sargeant leaps into the road, levels an assault rifle at his turbanned head, and screams: 'Back this bitch up, motherfucker!'
The old man should have read the bilingual notices that American soldiers tack to their rear bumpers in Iraq: 'Keep 50m or deadly force will be applied.' In Ramadi, the capital of central Anbar province, where 17 suicide-bombs struck American forces during the month-long Muslim fast of Ramadan in the autumn, the marines are jumpy. Sometimes, they say, they fire on vehicles encroaching with 30 metres, sometimes they fire at 20 metres: 'If anyone gets too close to us we fucking waste them,' says a bullish lieutenant. 'It's kind of a shame, because it means we've killed a lot of innocent people.'"

James Wolcott talks about it too.

Year of the Year --1296

Fafblog says it best!

First of all we here at Fafblog wanna say that this year's Year of the Year award has been the toughest one of all to hand out. The contestants are all so qualified an you are all winners! So let's discuss the runners up for the most powerful and influential year of the year.


1938 was last year's winner and it put up a good fight this year too, with John Kerry as the Neville Chamberlain who would appease the Adolph Hitlers of Islamofascism. But who wants to see Hitler win every year? 1944 and 1864 were both hot contenders as years when we hadda reelect strong wartime presidents or else evil slaveholdin Confederate Nazis would overrun us an kill Abraham Lincoln! 1968 an 1971 were in the running on accounta the importance of what our presidential candidates did to fight terror in Vietnam. The Republican Party lobbied pretty hard for 1984, but the thing about 1984 is it can't define everything if you say it defines everything. And a darkhorse candidate was the year 1 AD for Bush-Cheney fans who saw the president as the rebirth of Jesus.

But in the end we had to give it to 1296 for its blase acceptance of torture, feudalism and theocratic rule. Congratulations an a Happy New Year!

Here is the LINK

Choose The Blue

Atrios reminds us that even the paltry amount of money can produce a synergy if we all pay attention where we spend it. The following site Choose The Blue let's you see how the company and it's employees spent their political dollars. If you have a choice in where you spend choose a blue or neutral company over a red one. Every little bit helps. I know I am shifting to Barnes and Noble and others that are blue. Home Depot is out, JCPenny is a no-no. etc.

Happy New Year

Let's hope that the next twelve months give us something to be proud of. This last twelve is not something to remember fondly.

Silent Protest

I recieved this from several directions but regardless it seems like a good idea and pretty painless. There is actually nothing we can do, at this point, to derail Bushco as they have done an admirable job of jamming the sheep. We just have to roll and jab when we can.

Inauguration Day, Silent Protest

Since our religious leaders will not speak out against the war in Iraq,
since our political leaders don't have the moral courage to oppose it,
Inauguration Day, Thursday, January 20th, 2005 is "Not One Damn Dime
Day" in America.

On "Not One Damn Dime Day," those who oppose what is happening in our
name in Iraq can speak up with a 24-hour national boycott of all forms
of consumer spending.

During "Not One Damn Dime Day" please don't spend money. Not one damn
dime for gasoline. Not one damn dime for necessities or for impulse
purchases. Not one damn dime for anything for 24 hours.

On "Not One Damn Dime Day," please boycott Walmart, KMart and Target.
Please don't go to the mall or the local convenience store. Please don't
buy any fast food (or any groceries at all for that matter).

For 24 hours, please do what you can to shut the retail economy down.
The object is simple. Remind the people in power that the war in Iraq is
immoral and illegal; that they are responsible for starting it and that
it is their responsibility to stop it.

"Not One Damn Dime Day" is to remind them, too, that they work for the
people of the United States of America, not for the international
corporations and K Street lobbyists who represent the corporations and
funnel cash into American politics.

"Not One Damn Dime Day" is about supporting the troops. The politicians
put the troops in harm's way. Now 1,200 brave young Americans and (some
estimate) 100,000 Iraqis have died. The politicians owe our troops a
plan -- a way to come home.

There's no rally to attend. No marching to do. No left or right wing
agenda to rant about. On "Not One Damn Dime Day" you take action by
doing nothing. You open your mouth by keeping your wallet closed. For 24
hours, nothing gets spent, not one damn dime, to remind our religious
leaders and our politicians of their moral responsibility to end the war
in Iraq and give America back to the people

Stingy Bastard

Let me see if I get this straight the mighty and compassionate George Bush is going to lavish a whole 15 million dollars on the countries that have been virtually wiped out by the tsunamis. He is one really big hearted SOB promising that much money(hasn't paid it yet) seeing as how he has already spent 30 - 40 million dollars(not including security) on his coronation. He probably had to look under the cushions to get that much.

Holiday Travel

Across the pond for the holidays. Limited posts. Everyone have a wonderful holiday.

Down and Down We Go

The White House can't explain why for the first time in 50 years the U.S. will not register an agricultral trade surplus.

Here is the link

The dubious milestone was met with odd silence at USDA. Odd because throughout the fall presidential campaign, Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman talked herself hoarse each time some farm community in a swing state dedicated a new, USDA-sponsored street light.

Now, as America is about to become a net food importer for the first time in generations, Veneman has no explanation of how Bush administration economic and trade policies have taken American agriculture from a $13.6 billion trade surplus in 2001 to a flat line in four short years.

Theology and Evolution

If you haven’t read the following article The Fundamentalist Agenda, by Davidson Loehr. Then do so. It will give you much insight into the enemy.
From 1988 to 1993, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences sponsored an interdisciplinary study known as The Fundamentalism Project, the largest such study ever done. More than 100 scholars from all over the world took part, reporting on every imaginable kind of fundamentalism. And what they discovered was that the agenda of all fundamentalist movements in the world is virtually identical, regardless of religion or culture.


The five characteristics are

1) Men rule the roost and make the rules. Women are support staff and for reasons easy to imagine, homosexuality is intolerable.

2) all rules must apply to all people, no pluralism.

3) the rules must be precisely communicated to the next generation

4) "they spurn the modern, and want to return to a nostalgic vision of a golden age that never really existed. (Several of the scholars observed a strong and deep resemblance between fundamentalism and fascism. Both have almost identical agendas. Men are on top, women are subservient, there is one rigid set of rules, with police and military might to enforce them, and education is tightly controlled by the state. One scholar suggested that it's helpful to understand fundamentalism as religious fascism, and fascism as political fundamentalism. The phrase 'overcoming the modern' is a fascist slogan dating back to at least 1941.)"

5) Fundamentalists deny history in a "radical and idiosyncratic way."

All of this is interesting and it's interesting because it crosses all religions, cultural and regional boundries. When the scientists were presenting their abstracts, "several noted that all their papers were sounding alike, reporting on 'species' when studying the 'genus' was called for, that there were strong family resemblances between all fundamentalisms, even when the religions had had no contact, no way to influence each other."

Now, evolutionary psychology theories of the moment can be awfully facile because mostly they reinforce certain social norms that can easily be explained in other ways. (No Virginia, women do not necessarily practice fidelity and men do not "need" to spread their seed far and wide because of their alleged biological programming. It's a lot more complicated than that.) Still, this explanation for fundamentalism --- and more importantly perhaps, why it rears its ugly head from time to time is very thought provoking:
The only way all fundamentalisms can have the same agenda is if the agenda preceded all the religions. And it did. Fundamentalist behaviors are familiar because we've all seen them so many times. These men are acting the role of “alpha males” who define the boundaries of their group's territory and the norms and behaviors that define members of their in-group. These are the behaviors of territorial species in which males are stronger than females. In biological terms, these are the characteristic behaviors of sexually dimorphous territorial animals. Males set and enforce the rules, females obey the males and raise the children; there is a clear separation between the in-group and the out-group. The in-group is protected; outsiders are expelled or fought.

It is easier to account for this set of behavioral biases as part of the common evolutionary heritage of our species than to argue that it is simply a monumental coincidence that the social and behavioral agendas of all fundamentalisms and fascisms are essentially identical.

What conservatives are conserving is the biological default setting of our species, which has strong family resemblances to the default setting of thousands of other species. This means that when fundamentalists say they are obeying the word of God, they have severely understated the authority for their position. The real authority behind this behavioral scheme is millions of years older than all the religions and all the gods there have ever been. It is the picture of life that gave birth to most of the gods as its projected champions.

Fundamentalism is absolutely natural, ancient, powerful—and inadequate. It's a means of structuring relationships that evolved when we lived in troops of 150 or less. But in the modern world, it's completely incapable of the nuance or flexibility needed to structure humane societies.

Revolutionary Change

Those of you who know me know I am still disgusted with the results of the recent national elections, disgusted and amazed that so many otherwise reasonable people can vote to return the idiot to office for another four years. I have been stewing for weeks over what to do. I am beginning to realize that we are near the need for some kind of revolutionary shift in the status quo. Our current voting system is illegitimate from the get go. Before the first votes are casts or counted the guy on the street is screwed. Why do I say that? To begin you have to have an actual democratic environment before the possibility of a democratic government becomes real. We currently have a system where big business/money are the targets of all the positive political activity. They get the all the tax breaks and all the value from weakening environmental laws. They reap the profits and benefits, with none of the costs, of the current war(s) and other military actions around the globe. Who do you think is pocketing all of the profits resulting from the purchase of everything from bullets to helicopters? Who do you think is smiling as Halliburton and ilk pocket boatloads of our taxes? Who, if we are successful, will, in the end, wind up with all of the profits and resulting power from Iraqi oil. For that matter, who is probably going to wind up with most of the money from the record opium production in Afghanistan? Finally, who do you think is going to gather the windfall of money generated by the latest scheme to rob the treasury by “privatizing” social security? Who will wind up having to bear the burden of the trillion or so dollars of debt created on this unnecessary con game?
Next, you have to have a system that is meant to energize and maximize political participation and competition rather than restrict it. The electoral college, gerrymandering, and campaign financing systematically discourage participation and encourage a sense of “my vote doesn’t count”.
Lastly, you need checks and balances on corruption and waste. We need to identify and prevent government giving out contracts to corporations who in turn make political contributions to those who vote for the contracts.
All of the above is necessary and it is not going to happen within the current system. You cannot win the vote when the opposition controls the vote and the counting of ballots.
Thomas Jefferson wrote the in the Declaration of Independence:

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established, should not be changed for light and transient causes . . . But, when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce [the people] under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security,"

While Jefferson was advocating the necessity of our separation from the British Empire, I think the concept applies in these times as well. I am afraid that the next four years of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and their gang of cronies and oil merchants will give a full measure of what the yoke of despotism and yes even fascism are truly like.

We've Lost in Iraq, and That's Good

An excellent article by Robert Jensen in the Fort Worth Star-TelegramHERE. Frankly, I am wondering why this guy is still walking the streets. THis is the kind of truth that the New American Fascist Movement really dislikes and they are dead set on making people tlike this very, very quiet.

Here is a snippet.
"The United States has lost the war in Iraq, and that's a good thing.

I don't mean that the loss of American and Iraqi lives is to be celebrated. The death and destruction are numbingly tragic, and the suffering in Iraq is hard for most of us in the United States to comprehend.

The tragedy is compounded because these deaths haven't protected Americans or brought freedom to Iraqis. They have come in the quest to extend the American empire in this "new American century."

So, as a U.S. citizen, I welcome the U.S. defeat for a simple reason: It isn't the defeat of the United States - its people or their ideals - but of that empire. And it's essential that the American empire be defeated and dismantled."

A Bigger Megaphone is a Bad Idea

Majikthise is 100% on target with her analysis regarding the attempt by the Bush administration to relax the strictures on proselytizing and discrimination when accepting government funds.
If we relax these restraints it is simply a government subsidy of hate and division and just gives these fringe organizations more weight to swing around.
There is already too much relaxation of the separation of church and state when you consider how many of the current laws are morals laws.

Only in Good Weather!

Yahoo! News - Pentagon Scrubs Missile-Defense Flight Test

AWWWWWW!! Looks like the enemy are requested to only attack us in good weather. Jeebus! What a bunch of maroons.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The first flight test in nearly two years of a planned U.S. missile-defense shield has been scrapped two days in a row this week because of bad weather, the Pentagon (news - web sites) said on Friday.

Republicans and Academics

Jonathan Chait has an excellent piece on Why Academia Shuns Republicans in the L.A. Times. The entire article is worth reading but there are a couple of very good paragraphs that deserve distribution.
<>
"The main causes of the partisan disparity on campus have little to do with anything so nefarious as discrimination. First, Republicans don't particularly want to be professors. To go into academia — a highly competitive field that does not offer great riches — you have to believe that living the life of the mind is more valuable than making a Wall Street salary. On most issues that offer a choice between having more money in your pocket and having something else — a cleaner environment, universal health insurance, etc. — conservatives tend to prefer the money and liberals tend to prefer the something else. It's not so surprising that the same thinking would extend to career choices."
<>
"That's not just a campaign ploy. It's how Republicans govern these days. Last summer, my colleague Frank Foer wrote a cover story in the New Republic detailing the way the Bush administration had disdained the advice of experts. And not liberal experts, either. These were Republican-appointed wonks whose know-how on topics such as global warming, the national debt and occupying Iraq were systematically ignored. Bush prefers to follow his gut.

In the world of academia, that's about the nastiest thing you can say about somebody. Bush's supporters consider it a compliment. "Republicans, from Reagan to Bush, admire leaders who are straight-talking men of faith. The Republican leader doesn't have to be book smart," wrote conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks a week before the election. "Democrats, on the other hand, are more apt to emphasize … being knowledgeable and thoughtful. They value leaders who see complexities, who possess the virtues of the well-educated." "

Sucking America Dry

In response to the announcement that a group of unions let by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. are going to institute a large advertising campaign to try and improve wage and benefits conditions at Wal-Mart.

A Wal-Mart spokeswoman,Christi Davis Gallagher, warned that higher wages could lead to higher prices. Duh!

"It appears the unions want to take millions of dollars in dues from their members and use them to rob average Americans of their right to pay less for the basics in life," Ms. Gallagher said. "You need to ask one question: Is it fair to ask American consumers to pay higher prices to subsidize a relatively small pocket of individuals just because they are making the most noise?"

The new effort, to be announced officially in several months, will also be unusual because most union campaigns involve just one union. Because Wal-Mart is so huge, labor leaders have concluded that several unions should work with the A.F.L.-C.I.O. on the effort.

Among those participating are the Service Employees International Union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union. Many union leaders have criticized the food and commercial workers for doing too little over the past decade to unionize Wal-Mart, but the union's new president, Joseph Hansen, has vowed to do more.

Ms. Gallagher of Wal-Mart said, "One thing that the unions seem to miss is that Wal-Mart's ability to offer the lowest prices around is driven by a passion to drive costs out of our business at all levels," including information technology.

She added, "While the unions want people to believe that we drive down our costs primarily through our wages or benefits, that is simply not the case."


Here's the response to Wal-Mart's to Ms. Gallagher:

Wal-Mart's low prices are due to low quality goods manufactured at the lowest cost possible. Wal-Mart's obsession with low prices threatens hundreds of thousands of American jobs. The list of American companies raped by Wal-Mart is a who's who of American enterprise.

Wal-Mart's low prices and resulting low wages are the major the reason many Wal-Mart employees turn to state aid for health care, costing tax payers millions per year. America's largest company spends more money on advertisings than on worker's benefits.

Wal-Mart is sucking the vitality out of American wages and main street America and, in turn' provides the least value and service possible for the every dollar spent. How can Costco and Target provide decent wages and benefits for the same work? Why is Wal-Mart an exception?

Low prices alone are not a good thing. Low prices need to be accompanied by a living, decent wage and working conditions or they doing nothing for the long term benefit of the consumer.

The whole story here:

This guy had better watch his back

via corrente
Let's just deep a big breath and hold it while we wait for CNN to pick up this story--OK?

Andrew Buncombe reports that this is the testimony of a former Marine who’s testifying in, yes, Canada, for the refugee status hearing of Jeremy Hinzman:

A former US Marine has claimed that he saw American troops in Iraq routinely kill unarmed civilians, including women and children. He said he had also witnessed troops killing injured Iraqi insurgents.

Jimmy Massey, 33, a staff sergeant who served in Iraq before being honourably discharged after 12 years' service, said he had seen troops shooting civilians at road blocks and in the street. A code of silence, similar to that found in organised crime gangs, prevented troops from speaking about it.

This Really Sucks!

He lost an arm in Iraq; the Army wants money

He lost his arm serving his country in Iraq.
Now this wounded soldier is being discharged from his company in Fort Hood, Texas, without enough gas money to get home. In fact, the Army says 27-year-old Spc. Robert Loria owes it close to $2,000, and confiscated his last paycheck.

Eyer on the Ball

The administration's record of the past four years suggests a foreign policy careening out of control, driven by ideologues who want to test their theories in the laboratory of the Middle East one minute, by domestic political considerations the next, and by spiteful attempts to punish those who disagree with their methods the next.

Where is this going? Who is in charge? Who knows? No one ever seems to be held accountable for the blunders, the failures, the wildly inaccurate presentations and projections or the painfully ineffective initiatives. Congress cannot simply accept more of the same, keep our heads down and hope that somehow we will muddle through. The stakes are far too high. Our national security, the stability of the world that our children will inherit, our troops - even our country's honor - are on the line. Congress has an obligation, not to oppose every administration effort, but to reassert our role in helping to steer the ship of state wisely rather than recklessly. I look at our foreign policy over the past four years, and I know that America is so much better than this. via "America Is So Much Betterthan This"

Be Democratic or die

Wait a minute, Atrios is right on this.
There is a big discussion going on between Kevin Drum and Atrios over the applicability or correctness of the Peter Beinart’s assertion that the left has to get “serious” about the “Islamofascists”. The argument seems to say that if you oppose the war in Iraq or Afghanistan then you aren’t serious about the war on terror or that you are some head in the sand peacenik. Well, I’m sorry. Using force is a complete waste of time and mostly it just makes matters worse. Show me a case where “expeditionary military force” was the saving grace and I’ll listen.
Accusing the left of being “soft on terror” is absurd. The reality is the left is not convinced that democracy at the point of a gun is the best way to go about it. The left should be pointing to the results of this method of “diplomacy” for what it is and that is stupid. If you believe that Iraq will see a truly democratic state anywhere in the near future you are crazy or delusional.

Them or Us.

Western governors got together last week with the Bush administration and Congress to plan how to change the Endangered Species Act. It must be changed, they all agree, because it costs loggers and ranchers too much money.


"We have to recognize that, A, we can't protect everything, and B, whether we should try to protect everything and at what cost."

Read the above a few times just to let it sink in! Bastards!

First the Jews

There is a signifigant post over at Unfogged. We cannot let the mind killers eliminate this from our thinking.

Very, Very Dirty Pictures

The following link to the latest Mark Morford article at SFGate is pretty typical of his work and why it is always read. In it he gives us a few links for actual pictures from Fallulah. The article is worth reading and the click through to the pictures is really important.
Very, Very Dirty Pictures / You want explicit? You want raw and uncensored and free of media bias? Here you go

Here are a couple of paragraphs--

This is what you won't see in the paper.
This is what you won't see on CNN or on MSNBC or CBS News or on any major media Web site anywhere and especially no goddamn way ever in hell will you see it within a thousand miles of Fox News.

You aren't supposed to see. You aren't supposed to know. You are to remain ignorant and shielded, and, if you're like most Americans, you have been very carefully conditioned to think Bush's nasty Iraq war is merely this ugly little firecracker-like thing happening way, way over there, carefully orchestrated and somewhat messy and maybe a little bloody but mostly still patriotic and good and necessary and sponsored by none other than God his own angry Republican self.

And hence you and I both have no real idea what the hell goes on in Iraq, no real images to gnaw on and be deeply horrified and saddened by, except for maybe a tiny handful of carefully sanitized snapshots of bombed-out Iraqi cities and maybe some grainy video of U.S. soldiers enjoying a dusty game of pickup football and a turkey dinner at the posh military digs way, way outside of Baghdad.
Here is the link to the pictures:

The War on Terror is Oversold

Tom over at Corrente has some interesting input concerning Beinart and Drum's points on what the left have to do for the future.
I agree. I think the conservatives and Bush have made the same mistake with the WOT that Truman did in over selling the communist threat. What are they going to do if there is an additional attack of the same magnitude and impact of the 9/11. What are they going to do to keep the sheeple dazed and confused and more and more deaths pile up in Iraq and it becomes clear that we are wasting billions of dollars on a losing effort? One can only dance so fast. I think we need to recognize that the threat of radical muslim terrorists is for the most part a local phenomena and would be solved in a moment with some rational changes is policy with respect to Israel. This is a very good discussion and vital to getting our heads around the issues.

Trying to Dull the Senses

Is this American?

There are more and more stories appearing the the main stream media that are what I call "Camel Stories". These are stories that resemble the fable of the the camel gradually getting his nose under the tent flap and then eventually getting in the tent completely.
We are being subjected to a de-sensitization campaign on a massive scale. We are being gradually innoculated against considering torture as shocking and absolutely rejected in any form. Now we are being led to believe that the testimony resulting from torture is OK for use in justifying the continued imprisonment of "enemy combatants" in Guantanamo. We have already been cajoled into conveniently forgetting the Abu Ghraib scandal. We need to pay attention and not let the psy-ops guys continue this unopposed.
The populace is already desensitized about war casualties, the economy, the loss of freedoms and privacy, the environment and more. We are allowing them to take away our ability to experience outrage and horror. Lambs to the slaughter.

What's with these Billboards in Arizona?

These Billboards in Arizona. are pretty amazing/disgusting. Joseph Goebbels would be very proud. I think I am actually speechless! As they say--

OBEY
CONSUME
MARRY AND REPRODUCE
NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT
STAY ASLEEP
THIS IS YOUR GOD
A TIME FOR HEALING

Dubya the Movie

Well, This is cool!
Thanks Atrios and Defective Yeti