Dungy

I'm watching Raptors-Pacers (I know - pretty sad dinosaurs) and what do I see? The crowd giving a standing ovation to Tony Dungy, coach of the Colts.

Tony's taking in a Pacers game tonight? He just buried his son this week.

I guess I shouldn't judge, but please. And a Raptors game?

Drop the Gloves!

Funny how every now and then a news outlet (usually American) will discover that there are US plans in place to invade Canada. It's happened again today, though I doff my touque in respect to Peter Carlson, who found just the right tone of humour for his story. Yes, there are American military plans for the invasion of Canada, going back to before there was a "Canada."

Which is okay by us, really. I mean, if you feel that strongly about it, come on up and we'll hash it out over a few brews and some shinney (might be kind of late though - ice time's pretty expensive during the day).

Americans forget that the British Empire was enemy #1 up to the First World War. The Revolution obviously upset them, and they had Canada to keep British. In the War 0f 1812 (and, really, could they not come up with a better name than that? It's been 193 years. Do we call the Civil War the "War of 1865?" Or the Great War "The War of 1918?") we invaded them and they invaded us. In the end, it was a draw.

And what side where the Brits on in the American Civil War? Yup - the Confederacy. In their efforts to keep their globe-spanning colonial empire together and turning a profit, it was vital for the British to oppose American interests.

Which brings us back to the impending invasion of Canada. Which Americans think is fairly silly - but there are plans, right? And there are circumstances that could arise to start the conflict. Sure there are.

Let's say that Canada discovers Dilithium Crystals in Nunavut. America's energy companies find out that oil will no longer be required as an energy source. Don't you think Georgie would hop up there and shut them up?

Or - less conspiratorially - if the US did rely on Canadian dilithium for all its energy, what if Canada cut an exclusive deal with the Chinese? Or, putting Star Trek aside for a moment, if American cities like Detroit became reliant on Canadian water, or if other American resources or things they import ever became scarce?

Do you think the Junta would wait a hot second before coming across the border in force?

But, more even than oil or money, the Junta runs on politics. And Canada is already a political sore spot. After all, our universal health care system - warts and all - covers 30 million Canadians at a far lower per-capita cost than the death-or-cash American system. Canada is not (yet) a wholly-owned subsidy of their medical industry, so the government sets drug prices. Companies can't gouge consumers like they do in the US - with not just the permission but the encouragement of the Junta.

So as a political liability (we even run efficient elections) and a possible source of science fiction supplies, Canada could become a juicy target.

Let me speak for all Anglophone Canadians: "to my American cousins, please go ahead and take Quebec. Soon."

Fitting End

I read this over lunch and just had to share it with you. If you watched Monday night's ABC football farewell, you saw Vinny Testaverde throw a TD pass in his 19th straight season, and NFL record. It may well be his last appearance in an NFL uniform, much less throwing a ball in anger. What did Vinny think?

"You couldn't have scripted a better ending."

Umm, Vinny? Your team lost the game. They're not even going to the playoffs. You're 3-12, for goodness sakes.

If you had, you know, scripted something, maybe it would have ended differently than a garbage-time TD pass to Laveraneus Coles in front of a disinterested Hank Poteat. Had you scripted, you know, the ending, maybe you'd be carried off by an adoring throng after a miraculous Super Bowl victory? You know. If you're scripting.

But he's right. Vinny has always put up good numbers in losing efforts (at least since he left Tampa, where he just lost). He's Drew Bledsoe without an AFC Championship ring (okay, and Super Bowl ring). He's a big tough guy with a cannon arm who can take a lot of hits.

For a couple of memorable seasons with the Jets, the Tuna and Assistant Head Coach Bill Belichick reduced his reads and gave him a few solid targets, and Vinny was golden. Without the special handling though, his ten-cent-head trumped his million-dollar-arm.

So here's to you Vinny. Just like you would have scripted it.

Try Again

Interesting bit this morning about a new strategic push from the Junta Central Fortress. They're scratching their heads over the lack of progress since their dirty re-election. They wanted to do all sorts of things, and yet have accomplished nothing but produce many more dead Iraqis and Americans (in Iraq and the Gulf Coast). And yet people like them less. Huh.

What's revealing is that they see everything in terms of its political implications. Iraqi policy needs to be re-lied about. The old lies are no longer operating, so how will new lies be manufactured and communicated? There's no hind of doing anything substantively different. There's no new approach to 'winning' in Iraq (whatever that means), but more attention to talking about it. How do we convince people we know what we're doing, regardless of the fact that we obviously don't?

Typically, there's this:

Bush agreed to try the approach [telling the truth!] so long as he did not come
off sounding too negative. Peter D. Feaver, a Duke University specialist on
wartime public opinion who now works at the White House, helped draft a 35-page
public plan for victory in Iraq, a paper principally designed to prove that Bush
had one.

"Sounding too negative" translates as "admitting to how badly run and disastrous it all is."

Others might think: "we have gigantic problems - how do I fix them?"

Georgie thinks: "we have gigantic problems - how to I conceal them?"

From Above

The Junta, as we all know, is the polar opposite of the New Deal. Where Franklin Roosevelt and his New Deal told people not to be afraid, and that 'the only thing to fear is fear itself,' the Junta is built on fear. Where FDR told us we are all in it together, the Junta tells you to look out for yourself and nobody else.

But why have we taken such a turn away from good government? Why did we sell out our humanity to these thin blooded (financial) elites?

One answer, of course, is that we never did. The 2001 election was stolen from Gore, that much is clear. And the widespread voter fraud (much of it through denial of access) was well-reported but never aced on in 2004. Funny, that. The other answer is a 180 degree shift in the media, with everybody but Knight-Ridder (now up for sale) turning into a propaganda arm of the Junta.

But there are more answers to be found in history. One interesting model is the Meiji Restoration in late 19th century Japan. Before Admiral Perry opened Japan to Western influences (and economic and military dominance), Japan had been a feudal state run by the Tokugawa Shogunate and the Diamyos (nobility). Nobles owned the wealth, with agriculture being the staple of the economy. Samurai were the warriors who enforced the system, keeping peasants in their place and holding down the growth of the merchant (middle) class.

But after the West started showing what a little industrialization could do, the Japanese noble class and growing middle class realized their way of life was unsustainable. A 'restoration' of Imperial power flattened the Shogunate and Diamyos, creating a strong middle class. Industry was created almost overnight - a feat reproduced half a century later in Stalin's Russia.

It was a 'revolution from above.' Where most revolutions were a pact between workers and the middle class, Japan saw a revolution of elites joining the middle class to continue putting the screws to the working class, but in a different way. Those early factories chewed people up and spit them out. They worked day and night for slave wages, men women and children, and often were worked to death.

It succeeded in making Japan a modern state when other Asian nations were still under Western domination. But the people never stood a chance. There has never been an effective union movement in Japan - how could there be? Traditional values, putting the elites first, have never been seriously challenged. Even in the aftermath of WWII, their system has thrived because the central role of their societal elites has never changed.

Which makes them exactly the system that the Junta strives for. They are racially and culturally homogeneous, they are aggressive and unapologetically for their historic wrongs, and they put economic success before all else.

All of which led directly to their war of aggression in Asia and their downfall at the hands of FDR and the Greatest Generation.

How far will we need to go before we can restore sanity? Will the Junta press for a 'Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere' to call his own?

I'll develop this idea more in later posts, but the similarities are shocking.

Rove for Shogun?

Study

Isn't funny how 'small government conservatives' always run screaming to government whenever there's a whiff of trouble for them? Sure, it's okay for all those kids to go hungry, and if they don't have prostheses for walking, that's G-d's will. But don't raise my taxes! And hey - that professor said mean things about Georgie - make a law!

Yes, as we've all heard at one point or another, conservatives are making noise because so many university instructors are the L-word - and not the fun TV L-word. Well, I guess that, too, but that's not the problem today.

The problem is that cute blond university conservative co-ed (why do we only use the term co-ed in a titillating sense? Are there not overweight computer geek male 'co-eds?' Are they not equally co-educational?) complained to some conservative at a picnic (and I'm not making that up - check the article) because her pottery instructor (or something) said bad things about Dear Leader.

Isn't that exactly how it works in North Korea? Except that they don't have blonds. Or picnics.

Here's the thing: conservatives who pretend to be 'intellectual' and find reasons to do all that damaging stuff that their sponsors want to do (like drill in ANWR) create their own reality. They don't live in the world that obeys things like gravity and the scientific method. They see disciplines like sociology as means to an end. If you want to cut social spending, use sociology to prove that social spending only hurts those it's supposed to help.

Except, in our reality where science works and people starve, social spending is what keeps some people alive and helps others get back on their feet. In any event, you can't use the conservative method and expect to pass your classes in school.

The scientific method:

1) experiment.
2) Observe.
3) Theorize.

The conservative method:

1) Conclude.
2) Write the paper.

For all the Tom DeLays and Bill StrangeFrists out there saying that stuff makes sense, there are a bunch of University of Alabama students wondering why they're flunking out.

So there must be a legislative alternative to professors teaching 'fact.' After all, we're not cutting educational funds for nothing - we have to get dumb quick. Blond conservative chippie Jennie Mae Brown (yes, that's her name) has pushed and small government conservatives have listened: more than a dozen states are considering an "Academic Bill of Rights" to address the fact-based community's academic disdain for conservative "thought."

Of course, this is exactly the sort of thing that tenure was supposed to protect us against. Hopefully it will produce a reaction from professors and not just more long naps.

And whatever happened to the conservative battle for ideas? Well, that never got off the ground. It was fine, in theory, to say that they have better ideas that will win out, but things have gone so horribly wrong for them since they've lied and cheated their way to power.

They've had everything they've ever asked for - all the power and all the money - and the result has been unmitigated disaster. Even the disaster was a disaster. Turns out, all their theories are wrong.

Which was fine back when they were just cashing 'think tank' cheques from corporations that wanted them to prove that we don't require clean air or water and that consumers are just fine under that boot-heel, but now that they're governmenting, the proof is there for all to see.

Private industry is hideously wasteful and far more costly to use than government employees. Sorry, Halliburton, but you've been outworked by the public sector. Starve the Beast (in it's guise as Trickle Down) is colossally destructive because there will never be the votes needed to savage the poor and middle class the way satanic neocons want. All it does is set up a great depression by destroying the economy. And the rich will circle that bowl with the poor.

On and on it goes - aggressive wars of convenience make us international pariahs and targets and far less safe. Everything they believe is based on a lie that's convenient for somebody. Look for who's making the huge dollars from a bit of misguided destructiveness and that's who's driving the policy.

So they want to bring this to the university? Believe me - an I know from experience - universities are already badly run political hell-holes. They don't need your help Jennie Mae.

Merry Christmas!

For those of you celebrating it, Merry Christmas!

Oh, and read this NYT editorial. Are we starting to get it?

Sighting

Since my employer has seen fit to go without my services for a couple of days due to their reading of the Christian Bible (which places the main character's birth around now-ish) and their devotion to federal law (which institutionalizes that presumptive day of divine emergence), I went shopping.

My first stop (which will come as no surprise to anyone who knows anything about me) was at the boozer. I picked out my bottle of poison (1.75 litre Jack Daniels which sported 10 Air Miles) and went to the cash register. Unfortunately, there was a line. I started following it back, back, around the back corber of the store, past the wine and liquors, past the beer and vodka, all the way around and forward to the front of the store where I'd first grabbed my Jack.

In fact, if I'd had any awareness of my surroundings whatsoever, I could have taken the Jack in hand and just stood there. As it was, I had my Palm and lots of Palm books loaded (I'm reading McCullough's Truman right now, and it's nice to have it on the palm rather than carry around the equivalent of two bricks), so the time on line flew fairly quickly.

Maybe that's why I was given the time off - for lines at the LCBO?

My next stop was at the video store. I thought I'd get a pile of movies I hadn't got to see yet but wanted to and veg out in front of them. I still can't get myself to watch Adaptation. It just seems grotesquely self-indulgent. I can't stand writers who write about how hard it is to be a writer (even a screenwriter). Get a job, you bum.

Anyway, I was browsing through drama (I'd already grabbed The Aviator which I still can't believe is as good as it's reviews) when a fellow movie browser caught my eye.

There I was, picking out feature film DVD's with none other than Kevin McDonald. I wasn't sure at first. If you look at the photo on IMDB, he clearly has a chin there. My Kevin McD had no such feature. His hair was a light brown, not black, and had no hint of grey. Also, the woman he was with was in no way hot.

It's been my experience in the few instances of star encounters I've had that no matter how chinless or career-challenged they are, famous actors always have very hot women with them (I saw the late Gregory Hines at a Raptors game once with a woman so hot the coaches had the players throw long passes up court because nobody could dribble past her). So I suppose that could have been his sister. But she could have put on some makeup to go to the Rogers video store with her famous brother, right?

Now I'm going to go hit the punching bag for half an hour.

Happy Holidays!

Create Me!

The whackjobs who were pushing "Intelligent Design" in Dover Pa., not only lost their School Board seats in November, they've now lost their court case to retain ID in Dover classrooms. I think it was the labeling issue that lost it for them; nobody seriously pushing this crayola-and-construction-paper special ed version of science is credibly "intelligent." They should have called it "Narrow Minded Design" or "Morons are People Too design."

They ran into a Georgie-appointed Republican judge who proved to be a disappointment to to the Junta, as he showed that he is professionally competent and cannot be induced to believe transparent but convenient lies.

The judge [John E. Jones III] also excoriated members of the school board in
Dover, Pa., who he said lied to cover up their religious motives, made a
decision of "breathtaking inanity" and "dragged" their community into "this
legal maelstrom with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal
resources."

"Breathtaking Inanity." Great name for a band. It could also be the motto for the club of Bush appointees that forms in prison in a couple of years. All the knuckle-draggers who were too slow to throw other Junta members under the bus when Americans re-took their Congress and White House and started prosecuting in earnest will get together and talk about the goos old days. "How could we have thought we'd get away with that stuff?

Cutting

In a rare pre-dawn session, House Republicans passed their viscous budget. How can these people hold power so tightly? Have Americans just quit on their own democracy?

Because there's no way in hell that a majority of Americans want their government to cut health, food, and foster care for the poor. And there's no (further) way they want to starve poor children and let them suffer without medical carte while spending that money and much more on tax cuts for the rich. It just can't be.

And yet there it is. Billions in cuts with laser-like focus on the less fortunate, offset by even more billions of cash gift to the more fortunate - targeted with the same lasers. Are there any voters that want this?

"I don't know what the poor, the elderly, the disabled, or our foster children have done to Republicans to deserve this. . . . just a few days before Christmas, ," fumed Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.).

And yet, Republicans continue to destroy us and then go on to keep power. Their deceptions of voters is unprecedented. And voters eat it up with a spoon. It's as though they've created an alternate-reality-inertiam, where the version of the world that they've whipped up ficticiously seems so real to the common voter that the imposition of reality seems surreal.

Did you know your Congressman voted to cut health care for poor children? Of course not - Rep. Greenback wouldn't do that! He's pro-growth! He's pro-life!

Right. And while they're starving them and denying them medical care, they're spying on them.

Not only did Georgie sign an illegal order for the NSA to wiretap Americans without court orders, he got the FBI to spy on groups and individuals like PETA and Greenpeace without any evidence or provocation - in defiance of law.

Just like the days of Hoover and his closetful of dresses and blackmail evidence, the FBI is not monitoring groups who might cause trouble for the only people who count in Georgie's America - the wealthy and the corporations. After all, who has Greenpeace ever hurt but environmental rapists?

Whether you're for or against the Catholic Workers league ("communists" according to the FBI - no, it's not 1955, it's still 2005), it's pretty easy to see that they're not the same sort of threat as bin Laden and his cohorts. While the surveillance and infiltration of the Catholics is going on, those agents are not looking for the next 9-11 attackers.

So, in really simple math that even conservatives can understand, more FBI agents on the PETA beat mean less on the terror beat. Got it?

Of course, protecting industrial profits has always come before protecting Americans to this Junta.

Canada, eh?

Though it may seem to be so, it is not true that this space has been utterly oblivious to to the Canadian federal election that is raging at the moment. Okay, perhaps "raging" is too strong a word. Still, the huge and elaborate mechanism of newsgathering and analysis has been working feverishly to understand and communicate the nuances of this election cycle.

Okay, maybe "feverishly" is too strong a word.

The essential problem is that this is a poorly timed election which is bound to result in the exact same government which was kicked to the voters a month ago. The Liberals have been in power a good long time - over 12 years - and that alone should be impetus for the population to want to try someone else. In a true democracy, it's tough for one party to remain in power that long because voters get bored of them, whether or not they like the policies.

But Prime Minister Paul Martin's governing Liberals have been given all the help they need by a Conservative opposition which dove on its sword two years ago.

As this space has indicated many times in the past, the merger of the center-right Progressive Conservatives and far-right Alliance (previously Reform) party made them all but unelectable. Canada is not Texas. Voters do not want the 'I'll tell you anything to get elected then gut you like a Christmas ham' brand of conservatism they're serving down south.

And Conservative Leader Stephen Harper does not project anything like the staggering self-assuredness of Georgie Bush. He doesn't have the cadre of loyalists who will kill for him. And - his fatal flaw - nobody believes his lies.

And you can't be a conservative if you can't lie effectively. There used to be a brand of conservatism that called for fewer foreign obligations, budgetary cautiousness, and military strength. Those guys got laughed out of the Republican party in the US and the Alliance Party in Canada. Now the insane lunatics are in charge. The difference in Canada is that the voters know it.

So even while polling national at around 20%, PC traitor turned his party in to the Alliance for a specific number of pieces of silver. Nova Scotia slope-brow Peter MacKay was the last PC leader, and the one who sold out his party after Joe Clark refused to administer the coup de grace. I hope his silver supply is not running out yet. Thirty pieces doesn't go as far as it used to.

So even tarred by a major political cash scandal, the long-ruling Liberals can expect to be back - with another minority government - after the election next month.

Football

It's a very nice football Monday which needs to be mentioned. The defending Super Bowl Champion New England Patriots faced a 9-4 Buccaneers team on Saturday. It was a game I'd described as a 'test' against a quality opponent to see where they are at this point in the season.

28-0 later, I'd say they've passed the test.

This is a Pats team that has seen their first, second, and third string players go out with injuries. Whereas past Patriot championship teams could rely on the second and third string to start and produce, this team has run out of guys who even attended training camp. They are playing guys - particularly at DB - who come off the 'street' - meaning that no other NFL team wanted them.

At first, the results were predictable. They couldn't stop their respective grandma's. They hadn't been to Belichick camp and were new to the Belichick playbook.

That was last month.

Now, they're catching up. They're in position. They may not have the talent of a Rodney Harrison or a Tyrone Poole, but at least they're standing in the right spot to make the play, and not leaving offensive players wide open.

On the health side, our entire front seven is back, including Tedy Bruschi. At first, I was against his return. I thought he should ride off into the sunset with his three richly deserved Super Bowl rings. But now I can't imagine that defense without him. The soft and talkative Monty Beisel has been relegated to special teams duty.

As usual, Belichick has his team peaking on the eve of the playoffs.

See you in a month, Dungy.

Enough?

Even in the cursory foot-dragging "we don't really wanna" Senate investigation of the administration's pre-war intelligence, it's become crystal clear that the White House had truckloads more information than they shared with Congress. How much more do they need?

A report out today confirm that, without saying what that itel is. Doesn't that scream for a full round of subpoenas? Shouldn't Americans of any party want to get to the bottom of it? And if they're not dirty (as if), shouldn't the administration want to be exonerated of the charge that they call "irresponsible" (among other things)?

Surely, that's what an American president would do: open the books. But we haven't had an American serving in the White House since Bubba was playing 'hide the cigar" in the cloakroom.

And we've had damn few in Congress - none in the ruling party.

Georgie's top excuse for Iraq has been that the congress saw the same intel he did, and they still voted for the war (actually they voted to authorize him to threaten war, which to him was the same thing). He pretty well throttled Kerry with the notion (interrupting Kerry's efforts to throttle himself).

But it was never true, and even a guy who usually doesn't get jokes and laughs when he sees other people laugh - Georgie - knew he was telling a whopper. Is that lie, in and of itself enough to impeach him? Why not?

They got Capone on tax evasion. And Georgie's evasions have been far more profound.

Speaking of throttling Kerry, what happened to Georgie's pledge against flip-flopping? Not that it was ever true - Georgie changed course at the crisp bark of a Rove order over some big stuff like Homeland Security.

But now he's got McCain sitting in the Oval Office pretending that they're reached a "compromise" over the torture amendment. This compromise consists of McCain getting exactly what he wants in the defense bill (a ban on torture) and Georgie pushing not one but two plans to circumvent it.

Plan A is the Lindsay Graham bill that will allow prosecutions based on evidence gathered through torture. Get out the thumbscrews, guys! It's anchors away at Gitmo when this thing passes - it also blocks the victims (I mean the accused terrorists) access to US courts. So whatever is done will never be seen or heard on the inside of a court of law.

Isn't law what this is all about in the end? We have a Junta of Republican fixers in power who believe that the law does not apply to them. And as long as they can keep a death grip on the congress and the courts, they can get away with their savage crimes.

Another report out today shows that Georgie signed the order to allow the NSA to spy on Americans in America - without first getting a court order. That's illegal. Can a president sign an order to 'allow' an illegal act? Sure, he can grant pardons in criminal cases, but only after a finding of guilt. Just like the Pope can no longer grant 'indulgences' prior to bad acts, the president can't pre-authorize crime.

But as long as the congress is run by bloodless co-conspirators, we're stuck. If by some miracle we can overcome the rigged elections that the Junta runs and get back the Congress, the investigations will make Watergate look like a snipe hunt.

Impeachment!

Can we please start talking about impeaching this Junta? Please? They did, after all , 'recall' Gray Davis to put their muscular conservative in the governor's seat in kully-for-knee-ooo. They gerrymandered Texas against the unanimous advise of Justice Department Staff Lawyers (who will no longer be asked for an opinion in such cases - yes you read that right. It will be a purely political decision).

Since they've made it clear that everything is political - even life and death - why aren't we going for the kill? Are we Democrats truly this soft? After five years, do we really need more?

You need grounds? Why? Ken Starr didn't. Okay, if you insist on grounds before you start the impeachment, how about Bob "Suns Himself on Rocks" Novak's claim - that Georgie knows who told the press about Plame? Sounds pretty impeachable to me. A crime and a cover-up have been committed on his doorstep. Hell, the guy is president of the United States and only talks to about three people - how hard can it be to nail him down?

Then there's the, you know, Iraq thing. Zogby polls show that a majority of Americans favor impeachment if the president lied about the start of the war. I know - "if?" How hard would that be to prove (and can a few more neocons for perjury in the process).

From day one, the Junta has lied because they know their policies are not only unpopular, they're illegal. Approving torture for the military and the CIA? Torture is illegal for any American. This is supposed to be a nation of laws, not men. Georgie must have been stoned the day they taught that in college. The president can't just decide which laws he will follow and which he won't.

And yet they still fight to preserve torture as an American ideal. Oh sure, they say "we don't torture," right between electroshocks and waterboarding. And in the next breath, they fight John McCain to keep torture legal.

But the House still has a few Americans reporting for duty. They voted to retain the McCain anti-torture language as-is. That was 200 American Democrats, 107 American Republicans, and 121 unAmerican neocon traitors for torture. There should be a rule - you can only go on record supporting torture if you've actually been tortured.

King Georgie likes to think that the "preznut" can do what he wants, and a subservient congress has let him. But what will happen when Americans re-take congress and start really investigating?

There is no end to the corruption and illegalities they've indulged in over the last five years. A sleeping congress is no excuse. 'Culture of corruption?' How about: 'culture of felonies?' Of course, Georgie says Tom DeLay is innocent - just as innocent as Georgie himself. That part, at least, is true.

Of course, Georgie stands to pardon anyone who is actually bagged. Scooter Libby knows that and sleeps well at night, indictment be damned.

It will take impeachment to behead the ogre.

Switcheroo

He should have seen this coming. I mean, he's been dealing with White House reptilian life forms enough to be a political herpetologist. And yet, it seems, John McCain got bushwhacked by the Komoto Dragons.

McCain's been fighting to keep a measure that he had passed overwhelmingly in the Senate to ban any US government representative from torturing anyone anywhere in the world. Seemed pretty straightforward - except to nine Senators and a deeply unAmerican administration.

So against all American values are the Junta Generalissimos who lead the nation, they've been fighting McCain on this measure since he first introduced the concept. Why not exclude the CIA - let them use the nudity and dog threatening and stuff? McCain, as a former torture victim and current holder of a soul, said 'forget it.'

But Georgie and Chicanery are big into the torture. Are they into the bondage straps and the whips and chains in their personal lives? Do they go home to their first ladies and get "waterboarded?"

Regardless, we shouldn't do it to people who don't beg us for it. And McCain was seeing to that, except that he made a tactical mistake.

His legislation calls for the use of the Army Field Manual to set the rules on treatment of detainees. Since the Junta can't get their vampire-like rules passed in Congress, they'll do the next best thing.

Yes, they changed the manual. They added ten classified pages which deal with how to pull the arms off and beat the 'suspect' with them.

McCain should have realized that unless he had his own references and rules, the reptiles would simply take all the mammalian references out on their own.

Meanwhile, Condo has just completed her tour of Europe and successfully delivered the standard Junta reply to concerns about torture: "shut the hell up!"

Lie and deny. Just another day at the Junta.

Shame

Are you fucking kidding me? (thanks DailyKos)

Lots and Lots

How many civilians dead in Iraq? According to a dangerously unscripted Georgie Bush, 30,000 "more or less." More or less? Lives? More or less lives? For what?

Putting aside our courageous service people who've given their last full measure in this benighted conflict - 2100 and counting - what ever gave Georgie the right to kill 30,000 innocent people? He continually harps on 'a world better off without Saddam,' but is that world worth 32,100 human lives?

And can we add that to the list of pre-war lies? We were told that we would go in with 'smart' munitions and pull off the invasion without breaking a lot of eggs - or bodies. Turns out, not so much.

Would the American people have okayed a mission that would slaughter so many innocents? At the cost of 30,000 civilians, couldn't we have let Hans Blix back in for another tour or two?

Of course the 'make Saddam agree to inspections' stuff was pure mouse pellets to begin with. It's becoming more clear by the day (as if was ever obscured) that the war was a done deal even before 9-11. But can the Republican Go-along still live with themselves? Can they stand that many bodies on their conscience?

I suppose I'm looking in the wrong direction if it's a conscience I seek. Those Republicans who had one in 2000 quickly sold out to the Junta. There are very few (if any) Americans left in that party.

John McCain wants to be one, though. As a POW, he was tortured as an American by the NVA. Surely, that gives him some standing when he insists that the US no longer torture prisoners. Of course, the Dick Cheney (who should, himself, be labeled an 'enemy combatant') knows better. Dick knows that you can't lie a country into war without producing lies labeled as 'intelligence.'

And it's much harder to manufacture that stuff without breaking a few bones.

Georgie says he's close to an agreement with McCain over torturing people. The fact that it's a disgrace to our once-proud nation to even have that conversation is yet another reality that Georgie is incapable of grasping.

Treatment

Most people - of any political affiliation - would agree that medical treatment should be offered to all people, regardless of their ability to pay for it. Sure, they may not agree that facelifts and tummy-tucks should be made universally available at no charge, but basic healthcare (including emergency services) is a human right.

unfortunately, our neocon masters don't see it that way. They believe that access to services to make our physical bodies go is something that should be granted to those blessed by their Official Deity to hold wealth. If you were one of those not deemed fit by the Official deity (perhaps you chose to be born poor or you chose to have a disability), than by accepting government medicine you are a Freeloader and need to be cut from the budget.

And so the Junta Senate and the Junta House are debating which form of Medicare cuts will be enforced. Either way, the program will be gouged by the Junta - no Americans are invited to be part of of their deliberations.

It's not what American want, to be sure. given the choice, Americans would overwhelmingly choose to cover their less fortunate brethren. But Americans were too docile and illiterate to penetrate Junta lies in the last couple of elections, so here we are.

"Here" being the place where the richest nation in the history of the world chooses to cut children and impoverished people off from medicine and food. It's a proud day to be a neocon. The only thing left to do is join our Egyptian friends and order the police to fire on groups opposition voters.

Still, history can't judge us that badly, can they? After all, there's a budget crisis for crying out loud. Okay, the budget was busted by giveaways to the wealthy. And an expensive unjust war. But we were lied to - can we just forget all that debt?

Indeed not.

We owe not ourselves (as the original concept of government debt envisioned), but the Chinese and the Japanese and the Koreans who own the paper on us. And we dare not cross them. If they stopped investing billions of dollars a day into our economy, we would grind to a halt.

No more Bubba-era surpluses for us. The Junta has us deep in debt. Yet they prefer to cut health care and food assistance for the most needy than gifts tied with bows for the least needy. Yes, the wealthy are getting nearly $100 billion in additional tax cuts. That's the money that you and I will have to pony up if we want to preserve services to the poor.

But as much as we want those services, the Junta wants to cut them just as much. And the people for whom the American dream is a daily reality of plenty, the Junta is going to give them trillions more reasons to be grateful.

But the Junta and their wealthy supporters should remember this: if there's any truth at all to their religious beliefs, they will be judged and judged harshly once they arrive at their secrarian and denomenational "Pearly Gates." Because even their narrow spindly anti-knowledge version of the common Christian deity cared about the poor.

So forget about the needless and cruel loss of life in Iraq. Forget about the rape of the environment and the lies (remember that lying itself is a sin - no really Georgie, it is!) and the theft and the greed (also a sin). The question, in their worlview, is inevitable:

"What did you do for the poor?"

And the answer (because you can't lie to St. Peter - or if you did, it would just count more against you) would have to be:

"We stole from them."

See you in Hell.

Priorities

As if we needed more reminders of the up-is-down priorities that our governing neocons impose on us, we have our newly-passed tax cuts to keep us cold this winter. Almost $100 billion in cuts, most of it in the form of gifts to the wealthy people who get all the love from the Junta.

This, of course, on the heels of $50 billion in budget cuts. Cuts, of course, that come in the form of a strip off the back of the needy. Student loans have been cut - because lord knows we need more non-skilled labour. Hey - it's not like we want our economy to run on brain power. We're perfectly content to let India do all of our thinking for us.

For neocons like Dick Cheney, education is only an excuse to stay out of a war. Well, that's why he studied, anyway. Army recruitment is down, so we need to force smart poor kids to duck a few bullets (or, in some cases, catch them) in order to deserve ane education.

Unless you're rich, you earn your education on the battlefield, not in the classroom. If they're the scion of the rich, they've already proven their worth through their parents' bank accounts.

Food stamps are cut, because if you don't know how to forage for food in the woods (or the inner city) now is the perfect time to learn.

And child support payment enforcement has been cut, because single mothers are clearly not nagging enough to get their payments. And if deadbeat dads are so bad, why did the neocon national deity make so many of them?

The most surreal part is that the neocons keep trying to sell the snake oil that 'tax cuts create economic growth.' Nope. Every time serious reality-based economists take a look at tax cuts, all they see are budget deficits. And since the cuts are targeted exclusively at the rich, the only people who benefit are the rich.

Look: Richie Rich is going to buy that Lexus no matter how much you tax him. When you hand him our nation's lifeblood in 'reverse Robin Hood' tax breaks, he's going to spend it in the Bahamas, not in the community. And he sure as hell isn't passing it along in the form of higher wages.

This is proof that there never will be a functioning time machine. If there were ever such a device, our progeny would be coming back from three generations hence to strangle us for pre-spending their money and handing them a crippling debt years before their parents have been born.

Abuse

So our figure-skating diva of a Secretary of State says. now, that the US does not torture anybody anywhere. Right. That's why Dick Cheney is burning up so much shoe leather around Capital Hill meeting with Congress-people to get them to block the McCain amendment that makes torture, you know illegal. Explicitly.

But for a moment let's accept that sexual humiliation and "waterboarding" (simulated drowning) and isolation and good old fashioned beatings are not "torture." No, scratch that. I won't be counted with Cheney and Rice and the rest of them, even rhetorically, even to make a point. It's torture, and it's shameful. And far more damaging to the United States than anything we got from a torture victim would help.

Bad, wrong, shameful.

But let's focus a moment on the other aspect of the secret CIA prison system, and the whole Gitmo situation. We are holding human beings against their will at places unknown and without any record of our own or report to the Red Cross/Crescent. They are people with no recourse to a lawyer or a court of law. They are 'disappeared' in the sence that half of Chile once 'disappeared.'

Are we not, still, the United States of America? How is it possible that an American could even contemplate 'disappearing' anyone? Didn't we used to be a nations of rights and laws? Of freedom?

When Georgie talks about 'freedom' it's a punch line to the joke he's been telling for five years now. We don't get why it's funny because we're not in on it. You have to be a power-mad torturing despot - or just a person of great personal wealth - to get it.

So we'll just play along now. The Euros got all bent out of shape about torture, but apparently we won't. We're used to having our most cherished beliefs thrown in the dumper by these guys.

It's just another day at the office for the Junta's America.

Infamy

It's Pearl harbor Day. That used to mean something. Time was, we could grind our teeth and spit about the cruel and unmanly sneak attack perpetrated on us by the fiendish Empire of Japan.

Now, not so much.

It's not that the Japanese are any better. Goodness knows, they've been getting worse for quite some time. By refusing to accept public and collective responsibility for their misdeeds (like genocide) in WWII, Japan has managed to move forward with a couple of generations who want nothing to do with war guilt. Guilt, that is, of their own and of their parents and grandparents.

Japanese culture and society is once again taking on the special flavor that led, back in the day, to the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" which ended up killing a few dozen million innocents. Since the Cold War, the US has wanted Japan to re-arm as a bulwark against international communism.

Lately, we've been wanting them to bulk up to replace all our Pacific Theater forces (PACCOM) which are tied up elsewhere. Like Iraq.

But it's Iraq that should get Imperial Japan off the hook. Unprovoked attack? Hello? Tortured prisoners? Come to Daddy! We're all Samurai now, Gaijin. The United States tortures. The United States invades others when they decide to, not when they are threatened.

Pearl harbor Day is another holiday to remind us of how much we've surrendered as a people to these raving psychotics. And rather than create and maintain an efficient war machine and militaristic state, they've let the whole damn thing fall to pieces. They didn't even follow the recommendations of the 9-11 panel.

How simple was that? Here's what you need to do to stop the next 9-11. Just do it. No, take the list. Take the damn list.

Nope. We're begging for another 9-11. Osama is the best friend that Georgie ever had. Osama kept him in power an extra four years over the four he stole. And, since he's running around free and all the ports and nuclear facilities are left unprotected, maybe Osama can gift Karl Rove with another 9-11 and another Georgie.

The Rove Junta is a lot like a drunk in a bar telling everyone what they'd do if they were president. Actually, that sounds a lot like Georgie himself. Or if the drunk were hockey commissioner. "I'd get rid of the blue and the red lines - I hate lines!"

You would only hope that the drunk would never put his hands on the lever of hockey power. All those stupid 'night before the morning after' ideas.

But we got our national drunk.

And it's going to be a long hangover. Happy Pearl harbor Day.

Iraq Solution

The increasingly neocon-friendly Washington Post (talk about picking the wrong horse) has a bit today on the divisions within the Democratic Party over the future of Iraq. Shame on them for thinking - they should be as monolithic and top-down as the Bush Monarchy.

Zbignew Brzezinsky (former Carter NSA) and Rep. John Murtha are running the 'get out now' faction. Others, like John Kerry, are saying we have to 'finish the job' before we withdraw.

I do have a solution for Iraq. I'm not a pundit who can only tear down the Junta - I can also fix their egregious errors. Sure.

The first mistake that the Junta made in Iraq (of too many to count) was to under-man the occupation force. That led to lawlessness, looting, revenge-taking, and insecurity. I live in one of the most peaceful cities in the world, and if there were no cops on the street I'd get a gun and stay at home. Imagine Baghdad with no security. Actually, you don't have to imagine - just go there now.

But security by itself is no answer. It's a good start, but security is the means, not the end. The failure to secure Iraq is part of the overall failure to make Iraq prosperous. And that failure comes straight from the ideology of the neocons who conned us into the war in the first place.

So step one for winning Iraq: stop the neocon ideology. Neocons are using Iraq as a petrie dish to experiment with their misbegotten cartel-capitalist-fake-free-market economic theory. Knock it off.

That means no more billions to Halliburton and no more billions to the Iraqi elite. Neocons hate a free market - free market talk is just one of their core lies. Instead, they want to establish a mercantile nobility. They want a class of corporate wealth to rule all, and have everyone else subservient to them. They don't ever want to compete for anything (because they lose). They want all goods handed to them and to their wealthy partners.

And that's the Iraq they're building. No sweat that the populace is suffering - just be sure the rich are okay and have power and water and security.

What I'm proposing is a "New Deal for Iraq." Get money and services into the hands of the populace. Dust off the FDR laybook and get Iraqis to work - the national unemployment rate is over 40%, and is 100% in many places - and you wonder where the insurgency gets volunteers?

Start a National Recovery Agency, public works projects (lord knows they need them), spend the money that's been allocated and then spend some more. Want other countries to get involved? Solicit their business (instead of shutting them out because they wouldn't believe our lies and join the invasion). The more the merrier.

Let the military stay and train the Iraqis as cops and counter-terrorists - not as a traditional military. The US military can keep the Iraqnians and Syrians out. Iraqis need a security force that will walk a beat and enforce the rule of law in favor of average Iraqis.

The problem is not security, it's prosperity. As long as Iraqis are poor and unemployed, and they don't have clean water and indoor plumbing (or any sewage system), and they don't have electricity to run air conditioners, they will hate us and support the insurgents.

They need an economy that works for them. The Junta has built a mini-Junta in Iraq, complete with a bought-and-paid-for media and fat cats who suck all the money out of the economy and into their pockets. Just like home!

And just like home, nothing there is going to work until the bums get thrown out of power. The "Brownies" of the Junta are destroying not only our future, but our reputation. A New Deal would fix it.

With that in place, we can draw down US forces in 2007.

The only thing certain about the course we're on now is that it will eventually bring down the US as well as Iraq.

Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." The more serve the neocons and 'stay the course,' the more we lose.

More Post

Josh Marshall has been monitoring the media's efforts to make the current Republican scandals into bi-opartisan affairs. The WaPo does its best to help that effort in its story today about how the Congressional ethics committee has done zippity-all in the past year.

Of course, nowhere does it talk about how the Republicans tried to change the rules to let their scumbags off. The process has always been that if the bipartisan committee couldn't agree to act on an accusation, the investigation would automatically start. That way, a partisan stonewalling effort couldn't save a wrong-doer from investigation.

Republicans wanted to reverse that - so that with no agreement, an accused Congressperson would be off the hook. So the Republicans on the ethics panel could effectively veto any investigation into a dirtball like Tom DeLay.

The Democrats wouldn't allow them to do it. The only way they could stop it was to stop the Committee. So the rule change hasn't gone through, but the COmittee's been sidelined as well.

But if you read the Post, you'll come away thionking that both sides are at fault, and that scandals like the Abramoff thing are tarring both sides.

Sorry, but no. This is all about Republican corruption and their efforts to hide it. Period.

New?

Zbignew Brzezinski has an op-ed in today's WaPo. In it, he takes Georgie to task for comparing Islamic Terrorism to world communism. And he's right. But you also get the sense that Soviet communism was the dragon that Zbiggy helped slay - don't go calling that dog that you're fighting a dragon, because it ain't. Don't compare the Joker to Dr. Doom, because Doom had an unbreakable force field, power armour, and the entire frickin nation of Latvaria. The Joker had gas.

But what was most startling in his piece was this paragraph:

The analogy to communism may have some short-term political benefit, for it can
rekindle the fears of the past while casting the president in the mold of the
historic victors of the Cold War, from Harry Truman to Ronald Reagan. But the
propagation of fear also has a major downside: It can produce a nation driven by
fear, lacking in self-confidence and thus less likely to inspire trust among
America's allies, including Muslim ones, whose support is needed for an
effective and intelligent response to the terrorist phenomenon.

Is he new? Did he just crack his first newspaper? Because, for those of us who've been watching, it's pretty clear that fear is the entire basis of Georgie's ideology (such as it is).

"Short-term political benefit?" There's nobody on the planet more addicted to immediate gratification than the Junta. If there are benefits that go past 5:00 today, they don't want to hear about them. Nobody's planned anything long-term in Washington since Bubba was dropping trou in the Oval Office.

Tax cuts have been a long-term disaster to buy short-term happiness among wealthy donors. The Iraq invasion was rushed - started before the 4th Division could get in place - and carried no plan at all for reconstruction and occupation. Nothing.

And fear? Not to belabor the point, but Georgie spreads fear like the damn Grim Reaper. Fearful voters went for him after he Swift-boated Kerry in 04. In every meaningful respect, George Bush is the world's leading terrorist. His foreign policy is entirely focused on creating fear of the United States. His neocon handlers believe that an isolated America that has a missile shield and a powerful military will be safe.

So no treaties, no exchanges, no foreign alliances will be kept. John Bolton will be dropped into the UN to stop everything from working. America will become a black hole and the rest of the world will be the 'event horizon.'

None of which is terribly new to the rest of us, but apparently Zbiggy hasn't been keeping up.

Diet of Irony

Scandalous! How could they do that? Like Captain Renault in the great Casablanca - who was shocked SHOCKED to find gambling going on in Rick's Cafe Americain (as he pocketed his 'winnings'), Georgie's White House Gang is just stunned and appalled to hear that the Pentagon is paying journalists and planting stories in the Iraqi media. Shocked!

Never mind that it's their own military that's doing it (if you don't believe me just ask Rummy whose military it is). And they paid a typically well-connected shady neocon company to do it. The company, of course, seems to have been set up just to suck in these donations.

But do these guys live on irony? Are they some sort of When on-universe demon cult that feeds on the energy generated by ironic hypocrisy? Because the air is just thick with the stuff. If there aren't any ironic-hypocrisy-eating demons around, we should invent a few because they'd be really happy and well-fed these days.

Because when Scott McClellan "that the Bush administration was "very concerned" about the reports of paid-for news," every irony-feeder on the planet has to groan at their delicious over-feeding.

Umm, you guys paid "journalists" for positive stories in the American media until you got caught. You produced news segments pushing your propaganda - and complicit TV stations broadcast them as news. Until you got caught.

"We asked the Department of Defense to look into this," said McClellan. "And
we're seeking more information. I know that the Pentagon is seeking more
information, as well. The United States is a leader when it comes to promoting
and advocating a free and independent media around the world, and we will
continue to do so."

Aside from the richness of the untruth and the teetering unreality of it all, isn't it further proof that the Junta knows they are wrong? Time after time, they deny what they've done. They publicly run from their beliefs. "We don't torture." "We had good reason to invade Iraq." "Tax cuts and corporate giveaways are good for the economy." "We're against false journalism."

None of those statements are true. They know that they torture, but they deny it. So they know torture is wrong but do it anyway. They know better than anyone that they lied to invade Iraq, but in denying that there were lies, it proves their consciousness of guilt. Tax cuts? They know they're killing the economy (it's what they want to do - "Starve the Beast"). And on and on.

And now this. What they're really opposed to, other than work of any kind, is telling people their real intent. By keeping the truth to themselves, they can keep that truth pliable. So when things go disastrously wrong (take for example everything they've ever tried), they can secretly re-define their original intent to make themselves right.

Things like a 'promise' or a 'public record' are for weak people who have 'morals' and 'ethics' that make them silly old 'Americans' and 'patriots.' Better to publicly smear a war hero than give up the no-bid cashola for Halliburton! Better to kill 20,000 Iraqi cilivians than to, well, do much of anything else.

And the insurgency is in its "last throes." There's a plan for victory - just keep doing the things that are losing, and eventually we'll distract you with something else so you'll stop asking.

Done?

Shouldn't that be it? I mean, when truth is told and not contradicted, shouldn't a 16 ton weight drop from the ceiling and end the sketch?

Retired Florida Senator Bob Graham says that, as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he was given little of the information the White House had. The information was cherry-picked to make the case for war. The stuff that supported them was left in, the (real) information that contradicted them was left out.

Georgie and the Junta say Congress had the same information they had in reaching a decision for war. That's untrue on the face of it, and virtually the whole (non-Junta) Congress says so.

But Graham's allegations - and those of others - have gone unchallenged into the public record. The only response has been a repetition of the old like: "you had what we had." But we've proven that's not true - there's a mountain of stuff that disproves the aluminum tubes and yellowcake and Curveball. You had this stuff for months, and we never saw it.

You had what we had.

It's as though an uninterested press and a Congress full of co-conspirators are turning their backs on the rest of the world. It's as if they caught the Watergate burglars, traced it back to Nixon, and everyone had just shrugged. "Oh. You messed with Democratic Party headquarters. Okay."

There's that air of surreality when you think that the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee says he was misled, and that the administration had no answer when he asked about the possibility of an insurgency or other problems in (a mythical) post-war Iraq.

"They ignored our requests. To the administration, it was always going to
be Paris in 1944: We would be embraced, we'd go home and the Iraqi people would
be happy," said Graham, who's teaching at Harvard University.

As a result, "there was no effort to assess a range of possibilities,
including an insurgency," he said.

Fancy that. And when we don't plan for things, and we don't ever talk to anybody who doesn't believe in our delusions, what do we get?

The most disastrous administration in American history.

Enjoy!