Thank God We Live In A Country Like This?????

I wanna move to New York City! Evidently, the crime rate there is so low that the New York City Police had time to spy on antiwar activists for a full year before the 2004 convention. I guess the 889 murders, 3,636 rapes and 68,034 burglaries were solved immediately, so in their spare time, the police traveled across the country, to Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of those who planned to protest at the Republican convention that year. This is reminiscent of 1972, when J. Edgar Hoover and the Nixon White House began covert operations against John Lennon over fears he would disrupt the Republican Convention of that year in Florida.
America is rapidly evolving (or is it devolving?) into a corporatic dictatorship, while our soldiers fight and die for "freedom and democracy" in places that really don't seem interested in the principles at all, these same freedoms are evaporating here at home. You think I'm kidding?
Consider the case of Dr. Charles "Tom" Sell, a forensic dentist who has been held by our government for the last six years on charges of Medicaid fraud (a crime that would net him three years if convicted)while it argues with it's right to medicate him (Because he's delusional)so he can stand trial. I guess they can't waterboard everybody...yet.
And just what are Dr. Sell's delusions? Well he believed the government conspired to start a fire at the Branch Davidian compound in Waco. His beliefs stem from the fact that he was hired (as a forensic dentist) to indentify charred remains days before the fatal fire that killed 81 people and has the records to prove it! Another reason Dr. Sell is not ready for trial is because he's seems to be preoccupied with the abuse at the federal prison hospital in Springfield Missouri, and the federal judge refuses to release the videotape that Sell claims will vindicate him.
So the next time some troll tells me the last time they checked we were a free country and people could do and say as they pleased, I will have to agree with them. We are free to do and say as we please, as long as it's something that doesn't upset the corpocracy.

There Goes The Housing Bubble

The Commerce Department reported that housing sales declined sharply in February, following a 15.8 percent decline in January. Median housing prices fell to $250,000, and foreclosures are on the rise. Meanwhile, Republicans tell us the economy is "booming" under Bush, but the reality is the subprime mortgage crisis could hurt the economy. (Which, as Bernie Sanders put it is really only booming for one percent of the population.
Housing prices are not falling in the west, however, as most people are seeking to leave the rust belt for places where there will actually be jobs in the future. I eman jobs where you can actually afford a $250,000 median priced house.

They Must Have Been Crazy Before, They Joined The Army During A War!

It seems that the sociopaths in the Bush administartiomn has found a new way to screw returning Iraqi war veterans. The Nation has a piece on returning soldiers with injuries and PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) are told they really are suffering from a pre-existing condition. Anything to save a buck to line the pockets of defense contractors.

Defense Department records show that across the entire armed forces, more than 22,500 soldiers have been dismissed due to personality disorder in the last six years.

Well, it seems like the Army will just sign up anyone, without psychologically screening them.

Col. Knorr of Fort Carson's Evans hospital says he's confident his doctors are properly diagnosing personality disorder. The colonel says there is a simple explanation as to why in so many cases the lifelong condition of personality disorder isn't apparent until after serving in Iraq. Traumatic experiences, Knorr says, can trigger a condition that has lain dormant for years. "They may have done fine in high school and before, but it comes out during the stress of service."

Well? Not according to Keith Armstrong, a clinical professor with the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco.

"Personality disorder is a diagnosis I'm very cautious about," he says. "My question would be, has PTSD been ruled out? It seems to me that if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck, let's see if it's a duck before other factors are implicated."

So why is the Army doing this? By discharging soldiers under Chapter 5-13, the military could be saving upwards of $8 billion in disability pay. That's money better served lining the pockets of those wonderful folks at Halliburton, which recently announced it's moving it's headquarters to the UAE. Probably to be closer to the action.

Through The Looking Glass

It looks like the Evil Empire's dirty trick squad is up to something. First came the report of a break in at Minnesota's DFL headquarters, in which a lap top was stolen. This was followded up by reports of break-in at New Hampshire's Democratic headquarters, which came five weeks after a Manchester Democratic headquarters was broken into as well. Hmmmm. Curioser and curiouser.
Could it be someone is seeking dirt on the Democrats? Maybe to justify the firings of all them federal prosecutors? Bush has already stated he will fight Congressional subpeonas of his staff in the ever growing attorney firing scandal. Perhaps learning his lesson following the perjury conviction of I. Lewis Libby, Bush said he would allow them to testify in private and not under oath (kinda sorta like his and Dick's testimony before the 9/11 commission. Am I the only one seeing a pattern here?), in other words, giving them carte blanche to lie to Congress (Hell, Bush did it, why not his staff?). Can we start impeachment yet?

I Want A Fucking Apology

Today marks the four year anniversary of the US's illegal pre-emptive strike against Iraq. Many people commemorated it over the weekend in protests across the country.One such local protest took place at the home of Congressmen Vern Ehlers, who voted for the war. The basis for his vote? According to a letter he mailed to me it was based on an article in Esquire magazine. He responded to me, because I had opposed the war before it began, and emailed him and asked him not to vote for it. I told him there were no WMD, no links to 9/11, and no ties with alQaeda. As it turns out, I was right and he was wrong and now, I want a fucking apology!!!
This war, which was a violation of international law, was based on lies, and anyone who oppsed from the outset has had to endure insults and put-downs. We were called unpatriotic, and accused of giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Well guess what, fuckwads, the war in Iraq has created more terrorists than it has impeded, so much for making the country safer, asswipes. You were wrong to support the war, and you were wrong to question my patriotism because I knew the war wouldn't go as swimmingly as we were being told, so where's my apology? I want a fucking apology.
This morning on the Free Beer and Hot Wings Show, they copped out and stated that they didn't know the war was based on lies. I'm sure if they went throughn their archives, they would find that they probably had a caller who explained to them why the was wrong, and were probably shouted down by the asswipes on that radio station who think being louder and dumber makes them right. So while they were cheering the shock and awe, Iraqi children were having the faces stitched back together (see Why We Fight) with out anesthetic because under US/UK imposed sanctions, no medical supplies were allowed to be shipped to the Iraqi people. That hurt Saddam, I'm sure. At the time, I was barely computer literate, and I was able to ascertain that Bush was lying, why weren't you media savvy people able to?
Bill O'Reilly has stated that if we went in Iraq, and they found nothing, that he would apologize to the American people. I'm an American, and I'm waiting. I want my fucking apology.
But even more than me, these media types who fed us propaganda need to apologize to the families of the 3218 soldiers who died needlessly, in a war that was not only illegally, but unnecessary as well. Not only that, these sleazeball media types also need to apologize to the families of over 650,000 Iraqi civilians who have died because Bush had a hard on for war and couldn't get it down.
We also need an apology from the Democraps, who we voted for last November on the hope that they would do something, anything to stop the madness and bring our troops back home. They won't even pass a resolution to stop Bush from attacking Iran, which, as I have repeated over and over, has yet to be found in violation of the NPT, a treaty which the US has also signed. They also have a right to nuclear power for peaceful purposes.
Here is a short rundown of some of what George Bush's war and occupation has wrought:

Nowhere on Earth is there a worse refugee crisis than in Iraq today. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, some 2 million Iraqis have fled their country and are now scattered from Jordan, Syria, Turkey, and Iran to London and Paris. (Almost none have made it to the United States, which has done nothing to address the refugee crisis it created.) Another 1.9 million are estimated to be internally displaced persons, driven from their homes and neighborhoods by the U.S. occupation and the vicious civil war it has sparked. Add those figures up – and they're getting worse by the day – and you have close to 16 percent of the Iraqi population uprooted. Add the dead to the displaced, and that figure rises to nearly one in five Iraqis. Let that sink in for a moment.

Basic foods and necessities, which even Saddam Hussein's brutal regime managed to provide, are now increasingly beyond the reach of ordinary Iraqis, thanks to soaring inflation unleashed by the occupation's destruction of the already shaky Iraqi economy, cuts to state subsidies encouraged by the International Monetary Fund and the Coalition Provisional Authority, and the disruption of the oil industry. Prices of vegetables, eggs, tea, cooking and heating oil, gasoline, and electricity have skyrocketed. Unemployment is regularly estimated at somewhere between 50-70 percent. One measure of the impact of all this has been a significant rise in child malnutrition, registered by the United Nations and other organizations. Not surprisingly, access to safe water and regular electricity remain well below pre-invasion levels, which were already disastrous after more than a decade of comprehensive sanctions against, and periodic bombing of, a country staggered by a catastrophic war with Iran in the 1980s and the First Gulf War.
I guess I'll wait for my apology, until after you apologize to the Iraqi people.

"True" Tortured Confessions

The Same Guy?

Nothing could be more embarassing to the Bush administration following the tortured confession of who they allege to be Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, than this story, which purports the KSM trotted out by the Bushites is in fact an impostor. The claim is that in fact the man we see in photos is actually Ahmed Abdul Qudoos,the man in the above photo on the left. I'm not saying they are the same guys, there is enough discrepancy for me to be doubtful, but then there is the story that KSM actually died in a shoot out on September 11, 2002. If this story is true (and really, who believes the lies of the Bush administration any more?), then who is the man that they claim is KSM?
Even more disturbing is the story that the CIA also has KSM's two sons,aged seven and nine at time of kidnapping, in custody, in case the waterboarding doesn't work, you can always torture the children because what parent would stand by and watch their children be tortured by the assholes who represent our country. Suddenly, it sounds like we're not the good guys anymore when we stoop to that level, in fact, it makes us downright evil, and how any free thinking citizen of the US could justify these acts in the name of "freedom" or "democracy" shows just how far we've strayed in the past six years under the Bush regime.
But all that is irrelevant, since the whole "confession" has backfired on the US (although it has got the beer swilling NASCAR watching tube jockey's attention away from the US attorney scandal brewing in Washington, as well as the Plamegate trial)since in any civilized court, any confession derived under stress (a/k/a torture) is inadmissable, (which is just as well, since one of his confessed "terrorist acts" was towards a bank that wasn't even founded until after his arrest) under new rules adopted by the Bush regime and it's rubber stamp Republican congress, it's all fine and dandy.

Give It Up, Johnny Boy

Seriously, does John McCain really want the Republican nomination? His recent attempt to derail his own "Straight Talk Express" came when he used the term tar baby in a response to a question on a campaign stop in Iowa today.

"For me to stand here and … say I'm going to declare divorces invalid because of someone who feels they weren't treated fairly in court, we are getting into a tar baby of enormous proportions and I don't know how you get out of that."

Mitt Romney also used the term to describe Boston's big dig project, leading one to believe that, well, all Republicans are racists (and ones of the early twentieth century variety to boot).
McCain also stumbled on a question on whether or not he supported federally subsidized condoms to Africa to prevent the spread of HIV.
McCain has said he won't formally announce his candidacy until April. At the rate he's going, by then he won't even be a contender.

Pardon Me?

I guess they know a vendetta when they see one. After all, it was the Cheney regime's personal vendetta against Joseph Wilson for exposing their lies about Iraq that started this whole thing. But now , according to the UK Telegraph unnamed sources have stated that Scooter Libby will be likely to receive a presidential pardon for his crimes because they believe the prosecutor, Patrick Fitzgerald, was pursuing a "political vendetta" against them. You can really only be paranoid if you have something that you're trying to hide, and sure enough, these people are trying to hide the fact that they foisted a bunch of lies on the unsuspecting and trusting American people to gain support for a war that should never have been fought in the first place. A war that is now becoming a stinking sinkhole of American foreign policy as well as creating more terrorists that it ever could have hoped to have eradicated.
To those in the Cheney regime, perjury is not a major crime, but have they failed to remember this: it was a charge of perjury that Bill Clinton was impeached for, brought about by a special prosecutor with a political vendetta against the president. Kenneth Starr was a conservative Republican investigating the Whitewater mess (after the first one found nothing), and that had nothing to do with Monica Lewinsky or Paula Jones. Patrick Fitzgerald is a Republican prosecutor, so how could his vendetta be political?(Unless, as a proud Republican he was seeking to purge the party of all those who brought disgrace to it. Which wouldn't leave many Republicans in political office anywhere) No, the Cheney regime is just repeating the mantra of the left during the time Bill Clinton was being impeached, that his prosecution was politically motivated, which it was.
I'm sure the pardon is being offered as a carrot-on-a-stick to dangle in front of Libby to prevent him from rolling over on his former boss, so that when his appeals process runs out at the end of Bush's second term, he can receive one of those Christmas pardons like Bush I gave to all involved in the Iran-Contra scandal (where we sold weapons to Iran to fund Central American death squads killing nuns in the name of "democracy"), or like Marc Rich bought, I mean, received from Bill Clinton at the end of his term.

If I Were These People, I'd Start Looking For A New School

President Bush today visited Enterprise High School which was devastated by tornadoes. Eight students died when it was hit, while a hundred got alive, which Bush touted as a miracle. No, you stupid fuckhead, a miracle is when God makes the impossible possible, such as Jesus walking on water or turning water into wine, or when the American people get a swift response from this president when a tragedy occurs. What has happened here was merely a run on good fortune.

"These are very tough times for the people here," Bush said. "Out of this rubble will emerge a better tomorrow."

Meanwhile New Orleans is still having problems 17 months after the devastation of Hurricane katrina getting their city rebuilt. Says Bush:" Hey I sent you people a check. What else do you want me to do? There's a war on that has distracted my short attention for the most part of my presidency." (No, he really didn't say that, although he surely thought it.)
Bush also put out a call to volunteers to help Enterprise rebuild, which means that the government can dump more cash down the sinkhole that is the war in Iraq:

"The best help they can get is when a citizen comes and builds them a house."

No, the best help people can get is from a responsive government that hasn't privatized services to the lowest bidder who then cuts corners to reap a bigger profit. Look how well that worked over at Walter Reed.
And so you have what will be the legacy of the Bush administration, a White House more obsessed with global hegemony than in actually helping out the taxpayers who fund these wars for global conquest.