Hey, You! Remember Us? The People Who Vote For You And Pay Your Wages?

Today must be the day that all is right with this country. New Orleans has been rebuilt, our borders are secure, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have ended, Dick Cheney has impeached, and the White House has accepted subpeonas in the US attorney firing case. Oh, wait a minute, none of that has happened.
What has happened is the House of Representatives has passed H Con Res 21, which passed with only Reps. Kucinich and Paul voting against it. What this resolution does is pressure the UN to bring Iranian president Ahmadinejad with violating the 1948 Convention on Genocide and the United Nations charter. Something that has never happened. That's right folks, we're punishing a man for making a statement that he never said. What he did say was:

this occupation regime over Jerusalem" to "vanish from the page of time.'

This hardly qualifies as genocide (especially with regard to how Americans are slaughtering Iraqis and IDF forces are killing Palestinians), and would more likely be tantamount to suicide, since Israel has nuclear weapons and Iran has yet to be proved to have them. What this is in reality is part of the Likudnik party's "A Clean Break", which calls for breaking up all Arab states in the region into smaller pieces (like we're doing in Iraq, since the Neocons are so chummy with the Likudniks)for the security of Israel. This is also a ramping up of rhetoric against Iran in preparation for a US strike against them using tactical nuclear weapons, which will likely kill a lot of Iranian civilians, but in no way can that be construed as genocide.
While all this is happening, the US is committing war crimes, violation UN resolutions and the Geneva conventions, but that's okay (not really). And Israel stands in violation of numerous UN resolutions itself.
So with the conitnuing slump in housing sales, the health care crisis, global warming trends, outsourcing of jobs, and lack of support for the wars overseas, it's nice to know that Congress could get together on one thing totally irrelevant and unnecessary to the American people. Good job!
(Well, they also came together on a pay raise for themselves, after all, ignoring the American people is hard work.)

Will Cheney Ever Give It Up?

Time to put your thinking caps on, folks.
In the latest installment of a series on Dick Cheney in the Washington Post, James Baker III said:

He has been pretty damn good at accumulating power..

All the powers that Cheney has accumulated has been because of the "war on terror", and the chief executive's role as commander-in-chief....
The war in Iraq is more than likely to last well into 2009, thanks in part to the spineless cowardly Democrats....
The likelihood of a Democrat winning the presidency in 2008 are pretty good....
Would Cheney be willing to just hand over all these powers he has created to the "opposition" party?
Then there is NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD 51 and
HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD-20 which sets up a dictatorship in the case of a catastrophic emergency. The chances of this happening are much better than John McCain getting elected president.

You Can't Have It Both Ways, Dick

Dick Cheney is a guy who likes to do things in secret. Makes me wonder what he's got to hide. While we're all supposed to open our lives to the whims of the NSA, Dick feels everything he does should be shielded from the eyes of the public.
Like when the The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington sued to get a look at Cheney's visitor logs, he claimed "executive privilege".
Now, while refusing to comply with an executive order on the handling of classified information, Cheney has claimed that he doesn't have to do so because under the Constitution also serves as president of the Senate and therefore has both legislative and executive duties.
uldn't have a team of advisors helping him to circumvent the laws (along with a team advisors "fixing" intelligence on Iran, and planning an attack against Iran)and would welcome transparency. Cheney feels that he is the law, all that laws don't apply to him, because if they did, he'd be waiting to join Scooter when he goes to prison. Cheney has also invoked "national security" to prevent prying eyes from seeing the laws he is breaking, but as long as Ol' Dickhead is in office, our country will never be secure.

Who'll Clean Up L'il Georgie's Mess?

Like a cat who cries when it's litter box is full, the US has pressed the Iraqi government to clean up the sectarian violence. You know, the violence that started after the US occupation based on claims of WMD that were never there. In other words, if we had just lefy Iraq alone, there would be no sectarian violence there.
Also, 3528 soldioers would still be alive, over 655,000 Iraqi civilians would still be alive, and two million Iraqi refugees would still have homes. But don't expect the US administration to be held accountable for any of this, we're talking about a president who probably never had to clean up a danged thing his entire life. So better to point the finger of blame at the Iraqi government. As is always the case with the Republican party, personal responsibility is something they expect from the other guy.

The Clock Is Ticking On Your Fifteen Minutes

Kelly Clarkson has scrapped her plans for a summer tour because of poor ticket sales. Apparently she wasn't able to fill the stadiums she hoped for, so instead of scaling back her tour to smaller clubs and venues, she chose instead to fire her manager and cancel the whole the danged thing. Some of you may remember (she hopes!) Ms. Clarkson as the first winner from that odious offering American Idol, but hey, that was like five years ago, and since then we've been treated to other winners in that television contest, none of them able to quite match the success of Ms. Clarkson (except, of course, that country singer, but who didn't figure on country music fans showing a lack of good judgement in musical choices, from the same people who made Toby Keith a star). The thing is, television watchers will vote for you as long as they don't have to lift their girths of the sofa cushions. And they'll watch you on television shows, or your commercials, but expect them to leave home? Don't you know there are terrorists out there?
That's why I think you'll see changes within the polls once people actually have to, you know, vote. Any television watcher can answer the phone and say they back, say, Rudy Ghouliani or Hillary Clinton, but very few of these people will actually leave the sanctity of their HD televison sets with 300 channels, remote controls and plenty of fat-free snacks in the fridge.
But while these fleshsacs are getting the latest update on Paris Hilton's stay at the Graybar Motel, or vote in competitions that are reduced to irrelevancy on an annual basis, more people are getting their political news on the web, (while the ratings at GFox News are starting to slip), provign a boon for those candidates who really have something to say that the corporate media is trying to sweep under the rug and out of the view of most couch moistening television watchers. My guess is that by next year, even the cathode ray zombies will be sick of both party's front runners and looking for substance. Even conservative bloggers are jumping ship on Bush over his immigration plan, and more than likely, any candidate who supports this plan as well, we may find that for the front runners, like Ms. Clarkson, their fifteen minutes may be just about up, too.

Random Rantings

Last week, on Face The Nation, independent (yeah, right) Senator Joe Lieberman advocated the bombing of Iran. While not in line with the way many people feel about excelerating the MidEast conflict (most of them want it ended, hence the Democraps control of Congress in 2006), it is in line with the neocons and the Israeli government, who have been looking for an excuse to drop nuclear weapons on Iran for as long as two years ago. As Charley Reese put it:

Iran has no intercontinental missiles, and the only country in the Middle East with nuclear weapons is Israel. Please note that the United States flatly refuses to endorse the idea of a nuclear-free Middle East. Iran has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Israel has refused to sign it. Iran admits international inspectors. Israel flatly refuses to allow international inspectors. The only country in today's Middle East with weapons of mass destruction and a history of invading and occupying other people's countries is Israel.

As for Iran's alleged threat to "wipe Israel off the map," that is propaganda based on a mistranslation. Nobody in Iran has ever threatened to attack Israel militarily. The accurate quotes from Iranians have been simply that Israel as a Zionist state will eventually collapse, just as the Soviet Union as a communist state did. Iranian officials have even explicitly said they have no desire or intention of attacking Israel.

The Bush Doctrine Applied To Other Countries
Now suppose Iran, who has been threatened by not only the US, but Israel as well, decided to pre emptively strike first? Wouldn't that be okay? By the Bush regime's specious reasoning, the attacks on 9/11 were perfectly justified because the US had threatened the Taleban first with a carpet of bombs, after they rejected our carpet of gold to build a pipeline through their country.
Send Your Kids To Die, Leave Mine Alone
Mitt Romney has stated he wants to increase the size of the military. But like Joe Lieberman, Rudy Ghouliani, or any other war pimps running for the presidency (which includes everyone, with the exception of Dennis Kucinich, Ron Paul, and Mike Gravel), none of them have any family members in the military.
That's why there's the big push to pass the immigration "reform" bill, not only will it lower wages by flooding the labor pool, but:

a provision in the stalled immigration bill that would have allowed some undocumented aliens to join the military

What right-thinking white person wouldn't endorse a war where we send all them brown-skinned people from over here to fight all them brown-skinned people over there? When this bill passes, it won't matter that the Army missed it's recruitment goals, because there'll be plenty of people to send off to kill and die for big oil and the military-industrial complex. Especially when the war engulfes the whole MidEast because some idiots decided we needed to bomb Iran.

The Bitter Race For Third Place

Is the irony of John "Flapjack" McCain calling out Mitt Romney for his politically convenient position on abortion lost on anyone? Here we have the man who criticized evangelicals in politics now pandering to them. So now we have a real campaign, with two less-than-saintly people trying to outdoor each other in a holier-than-thou competition. Is third front runner status so important that these people have to start throwing each other under the bus?
I guess McCain has to make up for all the support he lost when he backed Bush's wacky immigration scheme, which was not too popular with the love-thy-neighbor-as-long-as-he's-white-speaks-english-and-votes-Republican crowd. And since Ghouliani has carved out a niche with his incessant invocation of 9/11 (which seems to be working, oddly enough), and Fred Thompson cannonballed into the pool of Republican contenders, knocking McCain back even farther than McCain was able to do on his own, McCain had to do something to save his, well "credibility" isn't the right word because he doesn't have any of that left, but something akin to it. So Johnny-Boy decided the best thing to do is to appeal to the Christiansane right. Next I expect he'll be equating Mormons with Satanism, which isn't too far off the mark, as far as the Bible thumping brigade is concerned. Let's hope the campaign gets more interesting from here.

Pardon Me, Pt.II

Now I'm not normally a violent person, but sometimes I wish I could reach into my television and slap that smug self-serving smirk off Bill Kristol's face every Sunday on Fox News. But, I would feel bad about it because, unlike Bill "Dr. Lizardo" Kristol, I have conscience. To him, the ends justify the means, and so what if Lewis Libby lied under oath, there was no crime committed because the Bush administration had declassified Valerie Plame's position.
The whole purpose of the Plame affair was to discredit Joseph Wilson for proving that Cheney's Office of Special Plans had manipulated intelligence (otherwise known as lied) about Iraq's nuclear ambition's.But one wonders if there was no crime to cover-up, why did Libby lie to the special prosecutor?
Bill is the editor of a right wing publication known as the Weekly (Double) Standard, where, concerning the Clinton impeachment he said:

if anyone lied under oath the way Bill Clinton did--knowingly and purposefully in order to thwart a legitimate legal process, or if anyone engaged in an obstruction of justice, the way Bill Clinton did, then indictments would be proper.

Libby's lies were under oath (hence, the perjury charge) which engaged himself in obstruction of justice (hence, the obstruction of justice charge). Like Fitzgerald's investigation of Cheney's office of special plans, the investigation under which Bill Clinton perjured himself, no criminal charges were filed. But because Libby is a neocon, he, like the president and vice-president seem to be out of the reach of justice.

Suppose They Gave A Straw Poll And Nobody Came?

Rudy Ghouliani came to town today, and while I didn't get the chance to go see him, perhaps it's all for the best as far I can see, I don't need to be arrested by his staff should I pose the wrong question (so much for freedom of the press under Blinky). But I guess I should be glad Ghoulianai showed up at all, especially after I read where both Ghouliani and McCain will skip the Iowa straw poll. No candidate in the straw poll's nearly 30 year history has bypassed the event and won the caucuses. And since the Iowa caucus is so important, either Blinky has no intention of winning, or he's relying on the Republican vote fraud machine to do it's dirty work.
Or maybe it's because the gargoyle knows that every online poll conducted following the debates like this one, or this one, or even this one (why do they all ask who was the snappiest dresser? Does that matter?)place Ron Paul as the winner. Even Fox News poll placed Ron Paul second. A straw poll now when Ghouliani the front runner is presumed to be the nominee would look pretty bad if he gets the tar beaten out of him by Ron Paul, unless, of course, he doesn't make an effort. Than he and the backing of the corporate media propaganda noise machine can once again discount Paul's support like this piece as a quirk, rather than the people trying to have a voice in the democratic process. The Blinky wins, and we all lose.

Those Damned Democrats........

.....soft on the idea of nuclear war. Who wouldn't want a nuclear war? That seems to the Republicans to be the most viable way to fight terrorism-drop nuclear weapons on Iran!
Those damned Democrats, living in the nineties, when people actually used things like diplomacy to achieve a goal, instaed of starting another war because somebody somewhere is doing something that Republican leadership doesn't like. If Iran is allowed to develop nuclear weapons (which, they insist they're not, but our government doesn't believe them because our government is populated with people who lie, therfore they don't trut other people to tell the truth) they might use them, even though any use by them (or anybody else) would be a violation of international law. But it's okay for us to use them, even though we're a bunch of duplicitous hypocrites who only want to control the world's oil supply so oil companies can gain a complete monopoly and gouge American drivers even more (watch your back, Chavez, you're next).
Those damned Democrats, who (claim to) want to end the war in Iraq, even though it means "the terrorists will follow us home", but only if you exclude the latest terror plot which only proves that killing mass civilians in Iraq hasn't dissuaded people from other countries from trying to attack us on our own soil.
Republicans have painted themselves in a corner with this whole "terrorism" thing (terrorism is what they do to us-Noam Chomsky) tying every other issue to it. Immigration bill? Depending which (lunatic) fringe of the party you're trying to appeal to, the new bill will either help terrorists, or hurt terrorists. I'm sure these guys can't even choose which tie to wear until they decide how it will hurt the terrorists (frankly, in the above picture, McCain's tie hurts me the most, so I can only imagine the devastating effects it will have on alQaeda).
Those damned Democrats don't have enough front runners either. While two or three Democrats can be considered front runners, the Republicans now have four, including that former GE employee with the hot trophy wife, who hasn't even joined the race yet.
(Of course, they don't include Ron Paul who leads this poll,even though analysts say he's really 3% higher than polls indicate)

Compassionate Conservatism In Action

Arkansa is going to need to upgrade it's image (Not that it had much of a positive one after foisting Bill Clinton and Mike Huckabee on the American political landscape). First US attorney in Arkansas Tim Griffin resigns after evidence ties him to illegal voter suppression. Surely you heard this story, it was buried underneath all the stories about William Jefferson, the foiled "terror plot" and Paris Hilton going to jail.The former Rove aide was "directly involved in voter suppression".
Now comes the story of the head of the Arkansas GOP saying, "we need more terrorist attacks, so people appreciate Bush". Much in the same way 9/11 helped people to appreciate Bush, who was sitting on the lowest poll numbers since Nixon, only to have them go up the next day. And Bush's numbers are way lower than they were on September 10, 2001.
Is it me, or does anyone else find it distasteful the way the Republican party, from George Bush to Rudy Giuliani, wave the "terrorist threat" around to garner votes. The war against terrorism has failed abyssmally, perhaps we should find anotheer way to deal with those wish to harm us. The problem is the Republican head is too hard on the outside and too soft on the inside to deal with terrorism in a rational way. Probably because fear gets them votes. Especially in Arkansas.

In Rudy's Dreams......

Rudy "Blinky" Giuliani said that yesterday's news of a plot to blow up fuel lines at JFK airport is an example of why he should be elected president, because he has the most experience fighting terrorism. Funny, I don't see a deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan on his resume`. There was that time on September 11, when he made some pronouncements from the safety of his office, but I don't think there were any terrorists there to fight (because, you know, they all died in the plane crashes).
In fact, I think that yesterday's foiled terror plot is one more example of why Giuliani shouldn't be elected President. It should be obvious to anyone with a brain that the war in Iraq hasn't made us any safer from terror plots here at home, and seems to have attracted more people to strike against us. Great job, fuck-ups!
No, the only one who has any experience fighting anything but a couple ex-wives is John McCain, and he flip flops more than that goldfish at the end of that Faith No More video for "Epic". Personally, I hope when Fred Thompson joins the race he wipes your scrawny blinky ass out of the race, even though as a former actor employed by GE, Thompson scares me more than any other Republican candidate.

Yep, He's That Crazy

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Mohamed ElBaradei in an interview Friday said "I have no brief other than to make sure we don't go into another war or that we go crazy into killing each other. You do not want to give additional argument to new crazies who say 'let's go and bomb Iran'." I'm sure Mr. ElBaradei wasn't aware that during the first Bush's tenure, the neocons in his administration were referred to as "the crazies", but I'm sure he's aware that there only two countries who think a military solution is the only way to solve the problem with Iran:the US and Israel.
While Dick Cheney prefers an "end run strategy" around the president if he doesn't get his war on, Secretary of State Condi Rice says The US is not preparing for a war with Iran (we just have half of our naval fleet floating around the Persian Gulf as part of their summer vacation plans) and that Vice President Dick Cheney is in step with that policy. Never mind that chief neocon Norman Podhoretz called for the bombing of Iran now, we're supposed to trust these people's blood lust, and their never ending quest for control over the Middle east's oil reserve, at the genocide of all indigeonous people who just happen to live above it.
In the meantime Bush has called for the release of three Iranian Americans detained in Iran (while still holding five Iranian diplomats "captured" in Iraq.) Of course, when you leak that you are sending covert operatives into Iran, you can't be too surprised at the outcome.
The US is struggling in Iraq, and still hasn't finished up in Afghanistan. Only a crazy person would think that another "pre-emptive" war would be more successful than the other two. Unfortunately, Cheney is as sound as a dollar.