Where?

It's high time there were Hippies about. High time. Where are they? I mean, the last time we had an unjust war and a corrupt government, they were all over the place. Dick Cheney remembers - he used to pick them off the fence with loads of birdshot.

The whole 'counterculture' erupted in the late 1960's around the seemingly unlimited greed and crimes of the executive branch. Where are they now? I mean, Nixon was a piker compared to these guys.

Well, first, the right has spend a lot of the corporate dollars they've fleeced from taxpayers to set up 'think tanks' and scholarships and to buy the media outright. They tend to get to the impressionable set early, so that young radicals are more apt to join the College Republicans these days. For the rest, nothing they say or do will ever be reported on Fox News or CNN, so what's the point?

And then there's the internet. With blogs abounding with opinion and bursting with outrage (like this one), the young people who should be out in the streets fighting cops are at home in front of their keyboard thinking that they are making a difference.

And then there's the complete abdication of all Congressional authority and responsibility. When they caught the Junta red-handed breaking the law and wiretapping Americans without a warrant, they did nothing. They had the Attorney General in for one show where he told them "fuck you" and that was it. The response has been to fall all over themselves to find a way to legalize the illegal stuff that the executive has been doing.

Can you imagine if Congress had done that in the Watergate investigation? If they'd had non-leaders like Arlen Spectre at the helm, they'd have found a way to make burglary legal. The 'Dirty Tricks' would have been enshrined as law.

But Nixon could never lie like Junior. At least, nobody was stupid enough to believe him. Perhaps those years of Ford/Reagan/Bush Sr. were enough to destroy our once-proud school system to the point where Johnny can not only not read but he can't smell a rat when he's lied to repeatedly over years.

Where are the Hippies? Where is the Congress? Where have all the flowers gone?

Compete

Little Georgie thinks it's a good thing that American jobs are being outsourced to parts of the world like India. And why wouldn't he? He's never had to work a day in his life. What's all the big deal about 'work' anyway? Hey - if you need money just get Dick Cheney to cash in some options for you.

Outsourcing of work to less developed parts of the world is good for American investors and bad for American workers - which means it's perfect for neocons. Investors get to take advantage of the extremely low wages paid to even the most highly-skilled workers. That's good for the bottom line, and they make more money on their shares. Yay!

By lowering the overall spend on wages, Americans make less money. That's another win for business. Yay! But aren't we supposed to care about American workers? Not only are they making less when competing for jobs against foreign labour, they're losing their chance to compete when entire job categories are shipped out. Try getting an entry-level programming position or working at a call centre these days.

Didn't conservatives used to be protectionist? I can remember back when conservative politicians were ready to build thousand-foot walls at the coastline to protect American markets and jobs. Now we're selling our ports to foreign companies. There's just no ideology left. It's all 'whatever Bush/Rove wants' now - Rove isn't just "Bush's Brain;" he's become the brain for an entire generation of ovine Republicans who don't seem to remember why they joined the party in the first place.

I'm not saying, by the way, that protectionism is necessarily good or that India shouldn't get the work that they've earned. What I'm saying is that our government should be looking at ways to compete for those positions for the American worker - not gleefully offshore them. And that Indian workers deserve more wages than pennies on the dollar of American workers. The idea should be to pay everyone a fair wage, not to continually look for the cheapest sweatshop on the planet.

We used to worry about these things when Americans ran America. I'm starting to think that we secretly lost Work War II to Germany and are only now realizing it.

Critters

The other day it was the State Department - senior officials quitting after their efforts to prevent their beloved nation from making ridiculous and obvious mistakes were stopped by Junta political appointees. Now, it's the Bureau of Land management (BLM). It seems that they won't let the professional biologists out of the office to observe the wildlife they're supposed to be managing.

Instead, they are forced to spend their days caged up like zoo biologists doing paperwork to approve drilling in national forests:

The officials and documents say that by keeping many wildlife biologists out of the field doing paperwork on new drilling permits and that by diverting agency money intended for wildlife conservation to energy programs, the BLM has compromised its ability to deal with the environmental consequences of the drilling boom it is encouraging on public lands.

Here on the high sage plains of western Wyoming, often called the Serengeti of the West because of large migratory herds of deer and antelope, the Pinedale region has become one of the most productive and profitable natural gas fields on federal land in the Rockies. With the aggressive backing of the Bush administration, many members of Congress and the energy industry, at least a sixfold expansion in drilling is likely here in the coming decade.

Recent studies of mule deer and sage grouse, however, show steep declines in their numbers since the gas boom began here about five years ago: a 46 percent decline for mule deer and a 51 percent decline for breeding male sage grouse. Early results from a study of pronghorn antelope show that they, too, avoid the gas fields.

Yet as these findings have come in, the wildlife biologists in the Pinedale office of the BLM have rarely gone into the field to monitor harm to wildlife.

"The BLM is pushing the biologists to be what I call 'biostitutes,' rather than allow them to be experts in the wildlife they are supposed to be managing," said Steve Belinda, 37, who last week quit his job as one of three wildlife biologists in the BLM's Pinedale office because he said he was required to spend nearly all his time working on drilling requests. "They are telling us that if it is not energy-related, you are not working on it."

Belinda, who had worked for 16 years as a wildlife biologist for the BLM and the Forest Service, said he came to work in the agency's Pinedale office 20 months ago because of the "world-class wildlife." He has quit to work here for a national conservation group, the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership, as its energy initiative manager.

One of my great fears is that when Americans are able to take back their government, the Junta will have changed too much for them to reverse. Not just in volume of destructive and treasonous policies, but in obscurity. I fear that there are 100 stories like this for every one that gets published. Is there an 'undo' button for government? Obviously, we're not going to pay back the historic debt any time soon, and the economy may never be what it should have been.

But how many BLM's have been compromised across the federal government? How many irreplaceable herds of antelope have to be wasted as tribute to the over-privileged? And what other dumping or environmental ravagement is going on without anybody knowing about it?

Orwellian

George Orwell was a heck of a writer, but unfortunately for all of us he was an even better futurist. In his 1949 novel 1984, Orwell pre-documented many of the things we're living through today. One of them was the memory hole, a place where inconvenient historical documents are sent to disappear once they've been superseded by the new political truth.

It seem that the Junta hasn't just been spying on Americans without a court order, they've been building their own Texas-sized memory hole in the National Archives. According to today's New York Times:

"In a seven-year-old secret program at the National Archives, intelligence agencies have been removing from public access thousands of historical documents that were available for years, including some already published by the State Department and others photocopied years ago by private historians."

So, this must have been dynamite stuff, right? Plots to egg Khrushchev's house or 'pants' Mao Tse-Tung? Actually, not so much.

"The stuff they pulled should never have been removed," he [historian Matthew Aid] said. "Some of it is mundane, and some of it is outright ridiculous."

Among the 50 withdrawn documents that Mr. Aid found in his own files is a 1948 memorandum on a C.I.A. scheme to float balloons over countries behind the Iron Curtain and drop propaganda leaflets. It was reclassified in 2001 even though it had been published by the State Department in 1996.

Another historian, William Burr, found a dozen documents he had copied years ago whose reclassification he considers "silly," including a 1962 telegram from George F. Kennan, then ambassador to Yugoslavia, containing an English translation of a Belgrade newspaper article on China's nuclear weapons program."

But that's what it's all about: taking the mundane and ridiculous details of history out of circulation, leaving behind only the 'truth' of what the Junta political masters want known. To them, there is only their own power, and to prop up that power, they must lie and conceal.

Look at what the Nazis and the communists did when they took power: they re-wrote history. It's a powerful weapon to use against people - by erasing and re-writing their history, you can change people's perceptions of the world - and of themselves.

So they've spent over a million bucks building a secret room, and they've paid 30 staff to go over the files every day for seven years. In the end, odd bits and pieces of history will have disappeared down the memory hole, probably for good.

Oh, and the law that says anything removed to be re-classified must be listed? That's just another inconvenient law that can be ignored. See, the theory is - and this is not an intentional joke, it's just the way they think - that since it shouldn't have been declassified in the first place, it doesn't have to be listed as re-classified (even though it actually, in reality, was reclassified).

So yes, there is a real functioning memory hole in today's US of A. And your executive branch secret police are spending years and millions of dollars to erase the history of your nation to serve the most narrow and ugly political considerations.

Anna K. Nelson, a foreign policy historian at American University, said she and other researchers had been puzzled in recent years by the number of documents pulled from the archives with little explanation.

"I think this is a travesty," said Dr. Nelson, who said she believed that some reclassified material was in her files. "I think the public is being deprived of what history is really about: facts."

Exactly.

Boy, it's hard to be a Progressive Israel supporter these days. Since the insane neocon right has taken Israeli interests to what passes for their hearts, the left has chosen to camp out with the terrorists. Somebody needs to tell the Left (let's start with me) that it's okay to support Israel without turning into the foul John Bolton.

The right likes Israel because they support a bizarre and otherwise marginal fundamentalist Protestant reading of the Bible that informs them that Israel will come to take back the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and then the Rapture will start and all the Jews and Muslims and Catholics and other non-Them will burn and They will all go to Heaven immediately. It's a nice vision, if you're Them. And it's really nice if you are pandering to Them without believing a word of it - like the Junta.

The Junta wants Israel to dominate the region because the conflict keeps Arab nations weak and (in the post-Soviet era) dependent on the US to keep Israel from invading or nuking them all.

So Junta policy is to support Israel to keep lunatic religious creeps happy and Arab states weak and afraid. But that doesn't make their policy wrong - it just makes it right for all the wrong reasons.

The Left, meanwhile, has set itself up as the champion for Palestine. When they look at the region, they see a nation of Palestinians who are wrongly tarred with the mark of terror, and who suffer unjust limitations imposed by Israel. They are, in this view, innocents trapped in refugee camps who have done nothing to earn their fate but be born to the wrong parents. They only require support and the world's largesse to become happy productive citizens.

That's clearly Jimmy Carter's outlook in this shameful editorial in today's Washington Post. His point is this: it's wrong to cut off funding for Palestinians and for Israel to withhold taxes collected for Palestinians, because the mechanisms of the Palestinian governmental structure are such that the Hamas government won't be able to do bad stuff. Normal Palestinians shouldn't suffer because of the political tie-ups and the only way to peace is a negotiated two-state settlement.

Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy.

It's hard to know where to start. First, who cares how the Palestinian legislature works? Hamas is the government. Hamas is dedicated to the violent overthrow of Israel and the genocide of Israeli Jews. And Israel is supposed to pay them? Mahmud Abbass is set up as the moderate peacemaker in Carter's world, but Abbass has been entirely ineffective. He even lost this election - something the widely reviled (even among Palestinians) Yasser Arafat never did. Abbass is a fifth wheel, and everybody knows it.

Let's get past the idea of Israel doing anything to help Hamas - even if just for reasons of internal politics. Israel is a real democracy (just like Canada - the only true democracy on the continent) and no Israeli politician is going to do anything favouring genocidal baby-killing Hamas.

Should the US support the Hamas government? Why? What's in it for us? The Palestinians had every right to democratically vote for their chosen party to lead their government. America (and every other country in the world) has a right to not deal with grandmother-killing terrorists. It takes nothing away from the Palestinians' right to choose murderers as politicians. Just like a business can choose to put Charles Manson in as CEO. Sure it's their right - but nobody will buy their products.

Carter makes the feeble argument that the embargo will hurt moderates and help extremists. He says:

"This common commitment to eviscerate the government of elected Hamas officials by punishing private citizens may accomplish this narrow purpose, but the likely results will be to alienate the already oppressed and innocent Palestinians, to incite violence, and to increase the domestic influence and international esteem of Hamas. It will certainly not be an inducement to Hamas or other militants to moderate their policies."

What would be an inducement for them to moderate their policies? A pile of dead Jews left on their doorstep every morning? These people are extremist murderers. They won't be moderated. If "private citizens" are 'punished' for voting in murderers, so be it.

The mistake would be to reward them for their votes. If it was 'business as usual' with the Hamas government, that would be conclusive proof of the effectiveness of murder. It would tell them conclusively that Hamas' tactics work. You want something? Go kill some Jewish kids and you'll get it.

If Germany elected a Nazi government his year, what would the world reaction be? Would people have the right not to deal with them? Should governments sanction them? Would anybody question the backlash to that vote? Of course not - so why is this any different?

Carter finishes by digging up the body of the Oslo accords, which is the case that destroys his own argument.

"It was under this umbrella [the PLO] and not the Palestinian Authority that Arafat negotiated with Israeli leaders to conclude the Oslo peace agreement."

And it was by making the butcher Arafat think that he won the Oslo compromise by terroristic murder that made the Oslo agreement fail. When you dance with the Devil, he will inevitably kill you. He is the Devil. That's what he does.

What Carter and other liberals must realize is that there are no 'moderate Palestinians' anywhere but in their imagination. Now is the time for a wall and a period of unilateralism. Israel must do what it needs to for its own protection. You can't negotiate when the only people to talk to want to kill you and your family and your neighbours and your whole country and steal your possessions and dance on your mass grave.

Yes, John Bolton is crazed, but we can't let that stop Progressives from supporting Israel. Little George's wrongness does not mean that we must embrace terrorists.

America cannot support a Hamas government, and cannot allow others to do so. Making the case that Jimmy makes just forces people to see Democrats as 'weak on terror.' It doesn't play domestically and it doesn't play internationally.

Sorry

Sorry, America, you officially don't live in a democracy anymore. I know, I know, it's been a while since any of your votes counted and your voice has been stifled for a long time and those chains are getting pretty heavy. Sure. But today, the Senate folded up their tent and refused to hold hearings on the warrantless NSA spying.

That means, for you poor bastards living South of the US/Canada Freedom Border, that you no longer live in a nation of laws. The executive has formed a dictatorship where he has declared himself - loudly and publicly - above the law. And the Senate, by refusing to call him on it, has agreed.

The fact that this executive orders his forces to torture prisoners - many they know to be innocent of any crime - and holds possibly thousands of prisoners beyond any system of justice is not separate from his drive to dictatorship. Fascistic policies are part-and-parcel of the dictator-president. A fair minded man - an American - wouldn't want those extra-constitutional powers.

More and more, I worry about the change of power in '08. If it's still possible to elect a non-Republican (if the Diebold machines and voter suppression strategies can be defeated), will there be some invocation of the Commander in Chief powers to keep Bush in office?

Once again, it sounds insane, but what's happening to our government today would have been considered a crazy paranoid fantasy just five years ago.

Power-mad fascistic right-wing extremists have taken over the government. Who thinks they'll just hand it back?

Loose Wire

George Will sometimes seems like a Cray supercomputer that is missing an important chip, way way down in the machine's cortex. He just seems to almost get it, and then he crashes. Maybe it's the software.

Let's look at today's abendment:

No Check, Many Imbalances

Okay, so far so good. Georgie was wrong to push for unlimited power - great. Congress never meant to empower his to do warrantless wiretaps when it approved war after 9/11. Check. If he thought he had these powers, why push for the Patriot Act? Good point.

Here's a patricularly good one:

"Anyway, the argument that the AUMF contained a completely unexpressed congressional intent to empower the president to disregard the FISA regime is risible coming from this administration. It famously opposes those who discover unstated meanings in the Constitution's text and do not strictly construe the language of statutes."

"Risible!" That means it's funny! "Strict constructionists" choosing to read extra powers into the words of congress and the constitution. Risible indeed!

Okay, so along comes Will down the path - NSA wiretaps are bad, Congress has power over the president (even citing the sainted Harry Truman's over-reach in the Korean War).

The Cray just clicks right along, churning out, well, stuff that a lot of other people are saying, but saying it as George Will. And then, CRASH!

"Immediately after Sept. 11, the president rightly did what he thought the emergency required, and rightly thought that the 1978 law was inadequate to new threats posed by a new kind of enemy using new technologies of communication. Arguably he should have begun surveillance of domestic-to-domestic calls -- the kind the Sept. 11 terrorists made.

But 53 months later, Congress should make all necessary actions lawful by authorizing the president to take those actions, with suitable supervision. It should do so with language that does not stigmatize what he has been doing, but that implicitly refutes the doctrine that the authorization is superfluous."

What the hell? That can't be the output - check the code.

Will's solution is to - quick! - find that the president was right all along to save face. See - we authorized it! All is fixed!

And how can anyone know whether "the 1978 law was inadequate to new threats posed by a new kind of enemy using new technologies of communication?" He won't even tell Congress what he did - how can we know what the challenge was? How do we know what the methods were?

And if you do it without stigmatizing what he's already done, you make Congress a rubber-stamp. Is that what your whole argument is - that the executive needs to get a Congressional ass-slap after the fact? Future executives need to take a few minutes to high-five the Congressional Intelligence Committees or else - what?

Because unless there is a real remedy and real oversight and real consequences for law-breaking, it will not end. It will only get worse.

How many more civil liberties do we need to lose before we realize that?

Character

In a courtroom, "character witnesses" are often called to vouch for - or against - the good name of the accused. In political campaigns, it's become the ammunition of choice - paint the Democrat as a tree-hugging wuss while the Democrat keeps talking about all the things the Republican has destroyed through willful negligence.

Why does character matter? Because the only way to know what someone will do in the future is to examine their past. Past behavior is the only sure indicator of what truly resides in a person's heart, and of what decisions they will make when faced with a challenge.

And so the Swift Boat Traitors were assembled by Karl Rove to lie about John Kerry's war record. In doing so, they created enough doubt in the minds of the low-IQ crowd to cost votes and make the presidential race close enough to steal. The hunter-gatherers thought that if Kerry behaved shamefully while under fire in Vietnam - or lied about actually being under fire - he would make similarly timid and over-cautious decisions as president.

Which they were actually right about, in a sense. If there had been any truth to the disgusting lies of the Swift Boat Traitors, it would have meant that John Kerry was a coward and a liar.

But in fact, the only cowards and liars were the accusers. Which brings us back to Bush-Cheney.

Dick Cheney was successful in avoiding service in Vietnam. While maintaining hawkish conservative opinions about the fight, he hypocritically declined to serve. That's character.

Cheney has operated under the radar as the most powerful VP in history, and has pushed the Junta to its most catastrophic failures. He was the engine of the fabrication machine that drove the Iraq war, and it was his office that ignored the information about the broken levees that "Brownie" was calling in.

It's impossible to list all his failures, and to name the names of the dead he's left in his horrible wake, but we can look, once again, at his character after he recently became the first - to my knowledge - sitting Vice President to shoot a man.

Character, in an important political leader, influences all the important decision made around him. Cheney is so dark and malevolent that White House staff fear him - and would not make the right decisions about announcing his attack to the press when they had the opportunity.

Bad character led the Secret Service to turn away local police investigators until the next morning. Bad character led to Cheney continuing to hide from the American people to whom he has an obligation to explain his actions.

Bad character led him to ignore the rules of hunting (as I've read from numerous sources over the last several days) in whirling around 180 degrees to fire in an area he was unsure of. And it turns out that the victim was downhill from Cheney - meaning he had to lower his aim to hit his victim - extremely irresponsible behavior which indicates bad character.

Cheney allowed his host to call the local media instead of being a man and standing up to explosion himself to the national media. He has continued to allow his victim to be blamed for the incident - which is always the fault of the shooter.

Was Cheney drunk? Since he hid from the police until the morning, it will never be proven that he was drinking - but it will never be disproved either. I'd be curious to see if blood tests showed the presence of alcohol in the victim - perhaps an indicator of whether the hunting party was drinking.

Cheney, for all his macho bluster, has acted un-manfully. He has not stepped up to take responsibility for his actions, as a real man would. Hell, he hasn't even publicly alologized.

The incident is getting a lot of play in the press, and rightfully so. It's not that it's important to how the government functions, or foreign policy, or the record deficit.

It's the character test, and Cheney has failed.

Model

What happened to Dick Cheney's hunting buddy - by one account he took more than 200 bird-shot pellets to the face and torso - is the perfect model for the Junta's health care strategy. This is exactly how they see things happening. Dick must be so happy - not only is he seeing his national health strategy working first-hand, but he got to actually shoot a man.

He didn't just have to send troops around the world to pull the trigger. And he didn't have to get a sixth educational deferment to dodge the draft - no service to his country when people were shooting back at him. Just a spin and shoot - how satisfying it must be.

The health care system did work - a private helicopter air ambulance choppered in with a doctor on board, and the victim (unfortunately a Republican, but what are you going to do?) was airlifted to a waiting trauma centre with the best equipment in the world.

The key here is that the victim and the assailant were both rich and powerful. When rich and powerful people do things to each other - knife fight, pistol duel - there should be immediate choppers and medical technology waiting for them.

But when the victims are poor (or just not-rich, same thing), there should be a bottle of aspirin and the indifferent stare of an overworked receptionist.

See, Cheney's budget that he sent to congress cut all sorts of things, like children's health care and rural defibrillators. Hell, they even cut the research centre they opened in Christopher Reeve's name.

It's a little embarrassing, but the poor (once again: non-rich) need to take the hint: stop expecting health care. If you don't have the bank, don't expect the Doc.

At the very least, you can get shot by the Vice President. Don't get shot by some dirty street criminal or your spouse and expect to receive treatment.

And if you got Alzheimer's - forget it. No treatment for you - unless you're a president.

How Much?

How much more is it going to take? How many times do we have to hear about deadly impeachable failures by this Junta before people stop believing the lies? Before Congress starts to act as though they are Americans and start real hearings? Before there are Special Councils and indictments?

Two colossal chunks of evidence in the papers this morning. Add them to the pile. Picture Dick Cheney standing next to it, insisting that the ground is perfectly flat.

First, email messages and pictures that prove the White House knew the the New Orleans levees were breached on the night of August 30 - when the next day Little George was still clearing brush and cavorting in Texas, and HSD dude Chertoff was at an avian flu conference in Atlanta.

The email messages reached the top aids to Georgie and Cheney. So either they sat on the information or their bosses did. The Imperial White House is going to try and stonewall this, of course. They're not going to get out in front of it the way they've done with the warrantless wiretapping and claim they had a constitutional right to break the law.

"The unitary president has the constitutional right to drown people and let them starve to death on rooftops and watch them die in nursing homes, hospitals, and major sporting facilities. It was the intent of the Founding Fathers that the president be allowed to pick and choose which lives are worth saving, such as the unborn (worth it) or poor Black people in a decadent city (not worth it)."

That's a tough argument to make, and as Attorney General Gonzo made quite clear again in his Senate testimony, politics trumps all with the Junta. With the wiretapping, they claim to believe that their program is legal, but by their 'reasoning,' there is no difference between spying on Americans communicating internationally and Americans communicating domestically. So why not spy domestically? Because the political fall-out would be too severe.

They thought it would be a lot harder on them politically.

So when they say warrantless wiretaps were necessary, what they mean is they thought they were expedient could get away with them. The part they didn't think was politically palatable was somehow not necessary, even though clearly (by that logic) it would have been far more effective). In other words, there is no level of capability or necessity that will trump political considerations. You will never hear these guys make a politically unsavoury move and explain they just had to.

The Katrina strategy is threefold. First, explain that the locals and staties were just as bad as them (or preferably worse). Second, say that there were some mistakes made but we're learning from them. And third: ignore, lie, and stonewall about anything that's not being crowbarred be the press and the milksops in the congress.

The other chunk that's landed today comes from former top CIA Middle East expert from 2000 to 2005 Paul R. Pillar, who says that the Junta "cherry picked" (his words) intel to support their decision to invade Iraq. Further, they ignored all the information on what post-invasion Iraq would be like until a year later, and then called the report (which was dead on) a "guess."

This, even more than the NSA thing, seems to me the top impeachable offense by these monsters. While it's clearly against both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution for the executive to breech American's privacy without a warrant, having Georgie impeached on those grounds would be a bit like getting Capone on tax evasion.

Which, clearly, was the best thing to do to break his power, and will eventually be the wedge against the Junta. I Still, it would have been a better thing to put Capone down for being a gangster and leader of organized crime, and it would certainly be better to put Georgie down for leading a once-proud nation to war on the basis of premeditated lies.

Once again: how much more do people need? It wasn't the CIA or any other intel group that led to invading Iraq: it was Little George Bush and his ruling cabal of extremists who lied to the people of the US (and the world).

Worst president in American history, by a large margin. Now what are we going to do about it?

Cartoonish

As the fires burn throughout the Arab world, and the sermons ring out from Imams in the Muslim world and throughout the West, we must stop and ask ourselves the question most on our minds right now: "what the fuck?"

Back in September, some Danish rag published a bunch of lame cartoons featuring the likeness of Mohammed - seemingly on a dare. That was four months ago. Now, Muslims are using their single power of expression (violence) to express their single emotion (outrage). Weren't we supposed to reach out to them or something?

Really, when you think about it, the Arab world is a lot like Cartman in South Park. Shifting from smug superiority to outrage in the blink of an eye, Cartman wants nothing more or less than what he wants right now. And if he doesn't get it - look out.

Actually, that does a grave disservice to Cartman. At least he goes on adventures with his friends, and rarely murders innocents over perceived slights.

The central problem with the Arab world is the one the Junta is least able to deal with - that is, the entrenched power of oil money that dominates politically. It's the oil money that fuels the over-reliance on religion. Without a vast army of unquestioning religious zombies, the oil money might end up getting parceled out to more than about three people in each country.

These people are raised on nothing but religion. 80% of all PhD.'s given out in the Arab world are in Muslim theology. That's bad. The religious repression ties in with political repression and a closed society.

There is literally nothing rebellious youth can do. There is no music or dance or art of any kind permitted. You can't take a drink, for crying out loud! There's no political discourse, there's no debate on anything. Try to buck the system and the religious police will come and arrest you.

So when Saudi decided to whip up the masses over something, even something as patently stupid as the cartoon stuff, it works. People are desperate to be able to talk. They can't write protest songs. They can't normally march or do anything.

So the official leash comes off, and suddenly there are no limits. Kill the Danes! I mean, nobody's given the first shit about the Danes since they stopped raping and looting along the coast of Europe about 1000 years ago.

These Arab oil-and-religion dictatorships are frightened of the one thing that will break their power: a revolution. And by playing ball with them for the 60 years they've existed on the planet, we've made sure that when a revolution comes, it's going to be Islamic and they're going to hate us worse than ever.

But look on the bright side: they won't be commies!

Huh?

Please file this under: "why should we care?" The NYT ran this story today: Evangelical Leaders Join Global Warming Initiative. And?

Okay, so the reality is that these people pull things in Washington. Reptiles like James Dobson are running the mammals, and we better just lump it. But why do I have to read about a bunch of fundamentalist Protestants who woke up one morning and smelled the science?

There are two reasons why most of these megachurch people have been denying Global Warming. First, because their monied interests are with the Junta, and without the cash you can take the "mega" out of "megachurch."

And, by the way, the New York Times writes "megachurch" and not "mega-church" as I'd prefer. Still, we must follow the Gray Lady in style if not in content.

So the money is saying: "keep emitting the greenhouse gases to pile up the green piles of cash in the house." The Times (and I'm really picking on them today) calls them "business friendly" which has come to mean "deadly arch-enemy of the environment." Little George understands that, at 60, he doesn't give a flying fuck what sort of bankrupt cesspool his grandkids will grow up in. And neither does Dobson.

The other factor is homunculus Jeeboo himself. Megachurch attendees are told that this pseudo-deity will come back to earth, judge everybody, and lift off with his favorites (as per the megabest-selling "Left Behind" books). Apparently, his favorites do not include anyone who cottons to science or cares about animals or conservation or has ever had their own opinion on anything.

When that day comes, apparently, there should be no more trees or animals left. Global Warming is, in their thinking, a way to be closer to their deity by accelerating his return. Yes, pollution and despoilment is their theology.

Surprising it is then that there are now megachurch people who are not so convinced that the Rapture is upon us that they are willing to ruin absolutely everything on the planet. 86 of them signed a statement saying that Global Warming is real and something should be done about it.

And their belated return to reality is big news to us. No indication of what orthodox Jewish Rabbis say about it. Not a peep from the Imams (other than a lot of screaming about cartoons).

Let's face facts: our country has become close enough to a Protestant fundamentalist theocracy that this sort of garbage is news.

How sad is that?

Budget Spying

Two items dominate American news coverage today, appropriately. First is the latest Junta budget. As you would expect, it proposes continued and deep largesse to the wealthy, and equally deep cuts to programs to the poor. And yes, the people putting these priorities forward claim to be deeply religious Christians. Go figure.

Now, please don't get me wrong - I don't want thousands of angry letters on this. I'm not here to judge Christianity or Christians. Some of my best friends are, you know. But we can judge people's actions in part by judging their words. The Christian Bible, like it or not, says nothing explicitly about abortion or gay marriage, but says plenty about poverty. As in, please don't increase the affliction of the afflicted. Decrease it.

So when politicians run on their religiosity while at the same time governing on opposite values, you have to question it, don't you?

The budget also constructs the elimination of Social security as if that fight had not been pathetically lost (once again - why act to impoverish seniors?). That's not just window dressing, though. While the political fight was a loser, that's not to say that the Junta can't still impose their will. Remember, to them democracy is only valid when they can manipulate it. Once the population realizes how it's being screwed, the secrecy police come out and suddenly everything is an Executive Brach Secret. So if they can pass their universally reviled Social Security elimination plan without anybody knowing until it's too late, that's just what they'll do.

Just like with the illegal wiretapping of Americans, the second story today. Yesterday, Attorney General Gonzo defended the practice in the Senate, saying, in effect, "screw you, we do what we want."

And surely they do.

A couple of interesting things about Gonzo's testimony - where he wasn't sworn in, by the way. First, he continually referred to: "this program" or "the program the president has confirmed." What the hell else are these fascists up to? Is there anything that's over the line for them? Is there any limit to their violation of the constitution and the oaths they've taken to uphold it?
The other oddity - well, not odd for these guys, okay - was the reason Gonzo gave for not doing more domestic surveillance without warrants:

Gonzales also suggested in testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee
that the administration had considered a broader effort that would include
purely domestic telephone calls and e-mail but abandoned the idea in part due to
fears of the negative public reaction.

"Think about the reaction, the public reaction that has arisen in some
quarters about this program," Gonzales told Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.). "If the
president had authorized domestic surveillance as well, even though we're
talking about al Qaeda-to-al Qaeda, I think the reaction would have been twice
as great. And so there was a judgment made that this was the appropriate line to
draw in ensuring the security of our country and the protection of the privacy
interests of Americans."

Yeah, we don't do crimes when the political consequences are too big. We only do crimes that we think we can get away with. Really, for all the critics who have been saying for so long that the only thing that drives White House policy is the politics of retaining power, how much more evidence do you need?

And that's an interesting thought - "and so there was a judgment made that this was the appropriate line to draw in ensuring the security of our country and the protection of the privacy interests of Americans." So protection of privact interests are up to Gonzo and Georgie?

They don't come from any "inalienable rights" granted in some constitutional thingy, they are, in fact, up to how much a corrupt Attorney General and his Executive decide to grant the masses? "Let them have their little phone calls, Gonzo. We can always detain them indefinitely with no charges and no lawyers, and torture the living crap out of them any time we want. After all, we're Americans!"

I can't wait until the Democrats take back Congress this year and we can start all the prosecutions and impeachments.

Not So Super

If the officiating crew of Super Bowl 40 had been given $10 million each to throw the game for Pittburgh, the game would have gone exactly as it did last night.

To be sure, Pittsburgh played well enough to win the game. Parker's 75-yard TD was a lovely combination of blocking, running, and catching the Seahawks in the wrong defense. Or, more appropriately, beating them even though they were in the right (run) defense, with nobody playing deep to catch the breakaway. Nice. The Randle El pass to Ward - great play. It was set up by misdirection and had Seattle fooled. The Pittsburgh defense was stout and put shackles on league MVP Shaun Alexander. But.

But the referees made sure that no matter how well to poorly the Steelers played, they would be the new champs. It's hard to see it any other way.

First, they took away a Seattle TD pass on an offense interference call that was, to put it the nicest possible way, garbage. The WR and the DB both had their hands on each other - the very definition of 'incidental contact.' Neither pushed hard enough to change the other's direction. The WR broke away and caught the DB flat-footed for the TD. The blown call resulted in not just the TD coming of the board, but a make-able 44 yard figgie turned into a missed 54-yarder.

Two other referee calls at key moments decided the game. One, of course, was the Roethlisberger TD run. Clearly, he did not get the ball into the end zone. Replay shows the ball under his body short of the goal line. The referee who made the TD call hesitated before deciding (perhaps thinking of his bank account?) that it was a TD. The call was not overturned.
Look: the Steelers probably would have gone for it on 4th and goal. And probably would have gotten it. Or they might have taken the figgie. Either way, we were cheated - we didn't get the drama of a goal line stand. We didn't get the closer score that was deserved. It was a 0, 3, or 7 point swing - we'll never know because the referees botched the call.

And most unforgivable was the holding call that negated Stevens catch to the 1 yard line. That call was the game. The score was 14-10 Pittsburgh at the time. Seattle would have gone ahead on the score and had all the momentum. The bogus hold once again not only took away the score, but pushed the team back out of field goal range, which contributed to the Int that turned in to a lovely Pitt trick play TD. As John Madden (not enemy of the refs) said on the broadcast after looking at the replay: "if there was holding on that play, I didn't see it."

Seven penalties on Seattle to three against Pitt. And the worst calls saved for the worst moments of the game. And, of course, a slew of huge non-calls, like the Pitt OL holding on Ward's catch at the 5 on 3rd and long. Back that one up, and we'll see what the final score is.
This is not 1968 anymore. Fans have a better view and a better knowledge of the game than ever. That means that it's not just an indecipherable jumble for the viewer anymore. Years ago, penalties happened and that was the end of it. There was no five-angle replay and no legions of fans at home with TiVo to go over all the calls. If a call was bad, who knew? Only the players and coaches, and they'd be fined for complaining in the press.

Now, more people know what holding is and is not. They know what a push-off is and is not. They can catch the replay on TV or run the TiVo back.

If the league allows their officiating to be as bad and biased as this, then we've seen the high-water mark of the NFL. They cannot expect to engage millions around the globe and then screw up the product this badly. Part of what engages a modern technical audience is the complexity of the game and the many rules. But if the NFL can't apply its own rules and handle it's own complexity, they end up frustrating more than entertaining.

I didn't have a dog in this race. I predicted Seattle, but had no money on the outcome of the game. But to watch one team get ripped off repeatedly and the other get unfair advantages while never suffering a setback is just appalling. The sportsman in me - that part that the game is supposed to appeal to - is disgusted.

And is that how you're supposed to feel about the Super Bowl?

Oh, Dear

The Arab world in apparently in something of a tizz-wuzz over a Dutch newspaper's publishing of cartoons depicting the profit Mohammed. Not that they were particularly unflattering (although one showed his with a bomb in his turban), but any depiction of his personage is, apparently, considered a 'sacrilege' to his followers.

Of course, we have to take their word for how flattering or unflattering the pictures were. The courageous American papers who've followed the story haven't actually shown the cartoons in question.

The French have: "The Egyptian publisher of France Soir, which printed the controversial caricatures Wednesday, fired the paper's managing editor, Jacques LeFranc, late Wednesday night, saying, "We present our regrets to the Muslim community and to all people who have been shocked or made indignant by this publication."

Yes, we're so sorry about that, Muslim community. We know that you are insulted, and that you would never do anything like this to anyone else.

Oh, right.

There is no more racist, hateful, or religiously offensive media on our sad little globe than the Arab media. Every day of the week they publish hate - mostly anti-Semitic, but often anti-Christian and anti-anybody who doesn't march in complete lockstep with their view of divinity.

Want proof? Go to the Middle Eastern Media Research Institute. Read what they're printing. It's pretty chilling. And, just for kicks, go to Appendix III (a little more than halfway down the page) and see what their cartoons look like. See the one with the Arab dudes crucified? It's sure not kid's stuff - but that is what they raise their kids on. And we're still surprised at Hamas' victory?

So, while I am against any insult to any religious beliefs, it's hard to work up any righteous indignation on behalf of a major religion that treats all other religious like they're target practice. Mohammed with a bomb? Maybe if the murdering terrorists didn't use Mohammed and Allah as their justification for depravity, I'd say that was out of bounds. Maybe. But 'out of bounds' and 'in bad taste' still doesn't put a dent in the right to free speech.

The WaPo reporting on this is interesting, too, because they insist that Europe is 'secular.'
In another day of confrontation between the largely secular nations of Europe and Muslim countries where religion remains a strong force in daily life, Islamic activists threatened more widespread protests and boycotts of European businesses. While some European officials sought to defuse the crisis, many journalists insisted that despite Islamic outrage, religious sensibilities should not result in censorship.

Umm, don't we believe that, too? And why are the nations "largely secular?" European people are just as religious as anybody else - they just don't run church governments any more. And they don't vote for politicians like Little George who want to establish a theocracy. Because they're better at separating church and state than we are, that makes them 'secular?'

Some are questioning the timing of the publication - we're "at war" against Islamic terror. Is it really a good time to piss them off? Well, I would think that the ones who want to blow us up are already making their bombs. Those who are more inclined to just hate the West with our abominable speech freedom will continue to simply fund the terrorists. Where's the sea change here? They want me just as dead today as they did a month ago.

I'm going to go buy a pair of wooden shoes and eat whatever it is the Dutch eat, cheese or something, and buy some exported dyke or a painting or something.

The newly discovered theory of the "unitary executive" proves it's worthlessness and vacuity with every action of the executive "unit." After all, even if this empty bottle of a theory did indeed carry any liquid content, the executive would have to be in some way deserving of the exalted status. Perhaps some sort of divine-right benevolent despotcy, or at least a rubber-stamped one-party democracy commander-in-chief with a big cigar.

But alas, there are no cohibas in Little George's White House. There is no brashness - other than the coward's yelps from under the bed sheets. "You can't get me!"

A truly swaggering "unitary executive" wouldn't have to lie about absolutely everything and hide all of his papers under the sheets with him. Dick Cheney would make a much better unitary executive, because he has a permanent scowl and a diamond-hard black bitter heart.

By the way, I decided to stop calling him "Dick Chicanery" because "Chicanery" is too weak a word for the murderous fascistic beliefs of this war criminal. Really, these days is there any worse thing to call someone than: "Dick Cheney?"

Usually, Little George sticks with the "doin' a great job Brownie" and "we're winning in Iraq" sort of bald-faced lie. "Tax cuts help the economy" and "deficits don't matter" are more whoppers. But those are the out-front lies that are worthy of a despot.

The cowardly behind-the-drapes lies are what we're hearing now that the Junta is starting to unravel. These are the "no you can't see our Katrina papers - why do you ask?" It's related to the decision by Cheney's fishing buddy and fellow fascist Antonin Scalia's decision to allow the energy industry looting committee to write Junta policy in the early days. We the governed can't see the deliberations of our masters. The fact that industry greed formed the basis of vital energy regulations is just not any of your damned business.

Neither are the multiple failings of the Junta response to Katrina. They don't need your informed consent to fail - they can pile up the bodies quite nicely on their own, thank you very much.

Back when the drug plan was just a huge gift to Big Pharma, the Junta threatened to fire the Chief Actuary if he truthfully answered specific questions posed by Congress. How is that not criminal? The bill was sold as a $400 billion measure. The real cost is closer to $900 billion. And now we discover that it was created by people with the same far-reaching and deadly stupidity as those in charge of disaster management and Iraq policy.

But that's old news. And there can be little doubt that any of these - drug plan, Iraq, Katrina, taxation, etc. - could provide grounds for impeachment if Americans were in charge of Congress and followed the Constitution, where it says Congress is supposed to oversee the executive.
The news today is the illegal wiretaps performed by executive branch personnel. Already, requests by the Senate are being rebuffed by the Executive Unit of the unitary executive.

Really?

"When asked whether the classified legal opinions would be made available to Congress, a senior Justice Department official said Wednesday, "I don't think they're coming out."

"I don't think they're coming out." And this Junta believes they have a choice, just like Nixon did. Unlike the unfortunate Tricky one, this presidential Unit has had a whipped and compliant Congress, and has no need to fear their oversight.

But Chairman Arlen Specter has had to eat a lot of dog food from these guys. Just last week, Junta mining officials walked out on him after being explicitly asked to stay. Back in 2004, after the election "victory," there was a lot of talk that Specter wasn't conservative enough. When he kow-towed, his forehead didn't bleed enough. When the Religious Right spoke, he didn't cross himself fast enough. He had to endure the indignity of begging to retain his committee chairmanship.

Will he stay prone, or will he get up?

Either way, Little George has decided to lie less about the eavesdropping crimes. He's saying: "it was legal and I did it." Which may leave no choice but to convict and impeach.

Look, if you're on trial for murder and you have a sweetheart judge, Johnnie Cochrane back from the grave to defend you, an all-white jury each of whom you personally pulled out of a burning building, and a prosecutor who went to a basement law school for the IQ challenged, with all that going for you, you can still end up going to jail for life if you cop to the crime. "Sure I killed him, and I'd do it again."

"Say again?"

"I did it."

"Let’s have a recess and you can reconsider your words."

"No need - I did it, I'd do it again. Where do you want to have lunch?"

Sorry, no lunch. It will be a bit of a letdown, for sure, if Georgie gets impeached before Democrats get a shot at him after the '06 elections. But that's okay, because then they'll get their shot at President Cheney.

Hell, the congressional spittoon polisher will be president after all the Junta members get sent to jail.

Union State

In his fifth State of the Union address, President Little George tried to slow down and steady his aim. He thought, for kicks, he'd try to sound non-partisan (even finding the word "compassionate" in an old trunk from 1999 and bringing it back into use) and not present any wildly flawed or deeply unfair initiatives.

So far so good.

But even the most doe-eyed red state zombie can't possibly believe that he wants to make nice with anyone. That's half the reason they love him.

In a system of two parties, two chambers and two elected branches, there will
always be differences and debate. But even tough debates can be conducted in a
civil tone, and our differences cannot be allowed to harden into anger. To
confront the great issues before us, we must act in a spirit of good will and
respect for one another, and I will do my part.

Isn't that funny? The Bubble Boy King who will hear no nay-sayers or dissent wants to have a debate. And don't be all angry-fied.

Of course, you can never have a "debate" when one side tells viscous and destructive lies. How can you debate, in any tone, when a government refuses to reveal any information? When truths that will hurt them politically are withheld from publication.

So you go ahead with your "facts." When you nail us for stuff we mess up bad, we'll withhold the really bad stuff. And we'll just lie about the whole thing anyway, and then deny that we lied. And when you really pin us down by catching all the lies and somehow finding the truth that we tried to shred, we'll call you names and smear you.

Hell, we'll just smear you anyway. But don't be angry!

This years SOTU speech was pretty tame stuff. Democracy blah blah blah. Tax cuts, great economy, and a note to not be isolationist. Apparently, being violently unilateral and becoming more hated in the world than Islamic extremists is preferable to not doing anything outside our borders. I'm not sure the families of our 2,200 martyred soldiers and 30,000 sacrificed Iraqis would agree. They'd probably preferred we'd just stayed home and been isolationist.

But the best part was the stuff about criminal wiretapping. To wit:

It is said that prior to the attacks of Sept. 11 our government failed to
connect the dots of the conspiracy. We now know that two of the hijackers in the
United States placed telephone calls to Al Qaeda operatives overseas. But we did
not know about their plans until it was too late. So to prevent another attack,
based on authority given to me by the Constitution and by statute, I have
authorized a terrorist-surveillance program to aggressively pursue the
international communications of suspected Al Qaeda operatives and affiliates to
and from America. Previous presidents have used the same constitutional
authority I have, and federal courts have approved the use of that authority.
Appropriate members of Congress have been kept informed. This
terrorist-surveillance program has helped prevent terrorist attacks. It remains
essential to the security of America. If there are people inside our country who
are talking with Al Qaeda, we want to know about it, because we will not sit
back and wait to be hit again.

Isn't that sweet? "Previous presidents?" Who - Nixon? I think he got in trouble for doing that same thing. And for all the false FDR claims they make, the broken law was from 1978, not 1938.

"Members of Congress have been kept informed?" A handful of Representatives and Senators, all sworn to double secrecy and told they could do any research, talk to anyone, or have any staff involved. Congress is not there so you can tell them 'by the way, we're doing a bunch of stuff, don't tell anyone.'

The Constitution (lift your foot, Georgie, and you'll see it) mandates congressional oversight. Congress must know and approve, not just get a note stuffed in their locker.

This could be the end of the Junta, if there are still Americans in the Congress. No court has approved warrantless wiretaps. The legal justification put forth by Chief Torturer Gonzales has been laughed at by everyone outside the Junta.

When hearings start on this, we will have the start of a full-blown Constitutional Crisis. Chairman Arlen Spectre and the committee will have no choice but to move for impeachment as the executive either claims that it's legal or else withholds documents and refuses to cooperate. There will be no choice but to move for impeachment.

The whole thing will move to the Roberts-Alito Supreme Court, which will either convict Georgie and affirm that America still exists and that we live by a nation of laws under a constitution, or else they'll declare that the president is really unlimited and that all that "freedom" talk and the 1776 revolution was just a joke. Then we can move in an orderly jack-booted fashion to a Mussolini-style government.

And end up the same way they did.