The Selective Amnesia Of The Cheney Family

Does Dick Cheney have Alzheimer's? Did he contract it from his years of association with Ronald Reagan? In recently released FBI documents of an interview with then Vice President Cheney, he claimed that he has no idea" who leaked Plame's name to Bob Novak, he does not recall any discussion with Libby of perceived nepotism associated with Wilson's selection for the CIA assignment, and that the vice president is relatively certain that he spoke to someone about the article but he cannot remember exactly who it was.(UPDATE:A list of 22 things Cheney can't recall about the Plame affair) Which is pretty much the same testimony Reagan gave in the Iran-Contra case.
Well, if Alzheimer's isn't contagious, it certainly is hereditary. Take Cheney's daughter, Liz (Please). When President Obama went to Dover AFB to honor returning fallen soldiers, she shot back "I think that what President Bush used to do is do it without the cameras. And I don't understand sort of showing up with the White House Press Pool with photographers and asking family members if you can take pictures. That's really hard for me to get my head around...It was a surprising way for the president to choose to do this."
What she fails to remember is that President Bush never met returning caskets at Dover, EVER. Neither did her father. With cameras, or not, the previous administration loved to send US troops to die, make money for their crony friends doing it, and never having to be reminded of the end result of their handiwork. In fact, in 2004, Bush wanted to slash over one billion dollars from the Veteran Affairs budget.
So I guess it's okay for Liz Cheney to blather on about things she chooses not to remember, it's her right as an American. The problem here is that in their mad rush to torpedo the efforts of the Obama administration to undo all the evil inflicted by the previous administration (which is certainly no mad rush unto itself), the Fox "news" organization will put anyone on who is willing to lie or selectively remember events to cast an unflattering light on them to further their corporate right wing agenda.

Satan Is Better Than Jesus

Why, you may ask, and I will tell you.
Studies have proved that intercessory prayer doesn't work, that in fact, God and Jesus either don't have all the magic powers that their followers claim they do, or they really don't give a fuck about humans.
However, Halloween candy prayed over by witches are chock full of demons. So if God/Jesus can't do anything about the demon filled candy offered for free to good little Christian children, they must not be as powerful combined as Satan is on his own.
And if Satan is more powerful than God/Jesus, using the same system used to determine which football team is better than another by virtue of number of victories incurred during a season, that means that Satan is better than Jesus.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I feel compelled to dress up as The Dude and mooch Milk Duds from my neighbors.......

The Pinnacle Of Retardation

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) and 75 other House Republicans have introduced a resolution "expressing gratitude and appreciation to the individuals and families who participated in the Taxpayer March on Washington on September 12, 2009".
I'll let that sink in.



The irony of wasting taxpayer money "honoring" people who protested "skyrocketing deficits, taxpayer-funded bailouts, pork-barrel projects", in other words-wasting taxpayer money, is proof that the Republicans are more interested in embarrassing the Obama administration than actually accomplishinganything that falls beyond their limited abilities.
I mean, sure, those people should be commended for listening to some guy on television who told them when and where they should go, and what they should do when they get there. After all, we are not truly free until we blindly follow the commands of our favorite "journalists" on our favorite "news networks". And it was important to get these people off their couches, into the fresh air where they could walk on, drive on, or fly to taxpayer funded streets, sidewalks and airports to complain about taxes.
Good for you, Republicans, for acting like the self-involved and self-important people we always knew you were.

The Perfect Career Choice For A Prime Motivator

George W. Bush, a motivational speaker? Surely, a former alcoholic and cocaine abuser who skated through life on his famous father's political and business connections has no clue about motivation. Until you think about it.
After all, he motivated citizens of two great cities in two different countries (Baghdad and New Orleans) to find a new place to live. He motivated defense contractors to overcharge the US taxpayers for services in Iraq by cutting their taxes and stopping any oversight. He also motivated a group of cronies to loot money from the Iraqi people.
His lack of oversight within his own administration motivated the office of the vice-president to commit treason and out a CIA operative as retaliation for the people who were motivated to forge documents to start a war being exposed as the motivated liars they are by her husband in a NYT op-ed.
The Bush administration were also motivated not to regulate the banking industry, leading us into the economic mess were in now. Fortunately, he wasn't too much of a motivator that the alleged opposition party dare investigate any of the motivation behind his criminal acts.
And now, in the end, he has motivated the Cheney family and friends to fight to keep Dick out of jail for war crimes he authorized while Bush was off motivating the whole left blogosphere to rise up against him. So, for $100,000 a pop, Bush can motivate people to acquire an approval rating of 22%, just like he had.
And people wonder why the economy's in the toilet.

Grow Up, It's Halloween

The United States has become a haven for overly sensitive, namby-pamby cry babies whose sensibilities are easily offended any time some one dares to make a joke.
Take The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles. They've become deeply offended by an 'illegal alien' Halloween costume. the costume features an orange jumpsuit stamped 'illegal alien', a rubber alien mask, and a green card. While I will fully admit the costume isn't clever, or funny, only the most sensitive of types would be offended by it.
Like Jorge-Mario Cabrera, the director of communications for CHIRLA. who thinks because the costume comes with a green card, that it's "an ignorant attempt to poke fun at a small community." Yes, but a small community of criminals who have entered the US illegally. Now, I am not opposed to immigration. Everybody in this country has ancestors who have emigrated from some other place. What I am against is those who operate outside the law, and yet seem to want to claim so sort of legal protection. I'm sorry, but you're a fucking criminal, no better than the previous presidential administration we had, which placed itself above the law as well. And if you're offended-good, you should be ashamed. Don't do disrespectful things then demand my respect.
1 in 6 Americans are living in poverty, there is no work in California, and the real unemployment rate in this country is at 16%. An influx of more unemployed people who are willing to work for less flooding the labor pool is the last thing we need. So don't cry to me if some uncreative redneck decides to wear a costume poking fun at your illegal activity. I'm sure they would find it just as funny if you wore a toothless mask with singed eyebrows and went as a meth-head.
After all, it's Halloween!

Gang Raped By The Corporatocracy In The Permanent Terror-Security Industrial Complex

Remember back in 2000, when George W. Bush was running for the presidency, and a number of female Republican politicians stood up and told us repeatedly that "W stands for women!"?
Or how about last year, when John McCain cynically chose Sarah Palin as his running mate because the Democrats had abandoned women by choosing Barack Obama as their presidential candidate over Hillary Clinton?
Of course, we all knew it was bullshit. The Republicans only care about women when they're white, pregnant, of hooked up to a life support machine. The rest of the time they could careless about women, unless they're trying to keep their wives from discovering their mistresses.
When Sen. Al Franken added an amendment to a defense appropriations bill that would not allow the US to do business with corporations that will not let their employees seek legal action in rape cases, 30 Republican Senators voted against that bill, including that guy who last year wasn't going to turn his back on women, Sen. John McCain.
So while right wing bloggers make a big deal about Hollywood liberals defending Roman Polanski, there seems to be a lack of outcry from the right about Jamie Leigh Jones who was brutally drugged and gang raped by her co-workers. Keep in mind, Franken wasn't asking these companies to change their policies, he was asking the tax payer funded government from funding more atrocities by denying companies that condone gang rape any more government contracts.
Guess we know where the right really stands on the issue of women's rights. They're not as important as the right of the corporatocracy to rape them with impunity.

Scannon's Corollary To Godwins' Law

"As an [online] discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches."-Godwin's Law
Any online discussion about Israel will end with the probability of anyone critical of the state of Israel being called an anti-Semite-Scannon's Corollary to Godwin's Law
We weren't always the bad guys. back in WWII, we faced down evil and triumphed, only to become what we feared most, the governmental embodiment of evil.
And no, this is not directed at President Obama, who has been called a Fascist/socialist/communist by the same people who supported the country's shift to the right, extreme far right, under the previous administration.
Right now, the US is considering a reassessment of the 2007 NIE that stated Iran had abandoned it's nuclear weapon program in 2003. Thge terror-industrial complex needs a new monster to shake at us, now that Saddam Hussein is dead and Osama Bin Laden is more than likely passed on as well. That "monster" is Mahmoud Ahmedinejad, a man so scary to millions of people that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned Iran that "the world will not wait indefinitely" for Iran to meet it's obligations on it's nuclear plans. Iran has, of course, repeatedly stated that they are seeking nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, and has opened up it's nuclear sites for inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has found no evidence that Iran is doing anything except building a nuclear power plant thereby meeting it's "obligations" on it's nuclear ambitions.
In the meantime, the US has thrown it's support behind Israel, which has been accused of 37 different war crimes under the UN Goldstone report. The US, ready to impose economic sanctions on Iran for...absolutely nothing wrong, was one of the six countries voting against a resolution on the so-called "Goldstone report", which accuses both Israel and Hamas militants of war crimes committed during the 22-day Gaza conflict last December and January. Once more becoming part of the terror-industry complex.
Similarly, Israel has refused to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty and open it's nuclear sites up for inspection. And, by US law, according the the Symington Amendment, the US is forbidden to send aid to Israel until it does sign the treaty and open up it's sites to inspection.

So now we are the bad guys, the evil empire, ready to terrorize the world or our own people to meet our ends. WE threaten one country with sanctions for obeying the law while simultaneously enabling another to break every law of decency we used to hold as an ideal for the rest of the world.

Community Organized Television Is Coming....................................................Look Out!

Born At The Crest Of The Empire had a link to this post of how the television networks are jumping on the I-Participate bandwagon next week, with 60 television shows mentioning the program, or writing it into their scripts.
Which, since it's an Obama initiative, means once again the cries of "indoctrination" are rising from the right. Funny, I don't remember any complaints pre-Iraq war from these people about the propaganda foisted on the American people. But now, it's different, with that no Xmas celebrating secret Muslim in the White House.
But for me, the humor lies in the comment section over at Big Hollywood.
"I'd like to avoid this nonsense even if it means boycotting all TV for a week."-Oh, don't take such drastic measures. I'm sure Fox News isn't involved.
"I don't watch TV (except Fox news) anyway"-Ladies and gentlemen, the root of the whole problem.
"When coerced, it is not volunteerism, when service is involuntary or unpaid, it is slavery.
It is bad enough that the government is stealing our freedom, now they want us to help. "-Yes, we must do what the television tells us because we are all mindless zombies.
"Voluneerism is something that we should all be compelled to do because it is the Christian thing to do...it is expected of us. Certainly not because Pres. Opompous orders us to do it so it, like everything else, must reflect positively on him (because in Obamaland....EVERYTHING is about him!)."-Ladies and gentlemen, a true display of Christian love and understanding. Everything in America should be compelled to be about Jesus!
"I think someone should plan a counter campaign to turn off the tv during this period. Instead everyone should spend time with their families. I pledge to not watch tv during this period. I will instead enjoy the outdoors, spend time with family, or actually help another person without expecting payment in money or political credit."-As opposed to the rest of the year when you stay indoors, watch television ignore your family and don't do a thing without expecting financial enumeration for it.
It goes on and on, with people bemoaning their inability to watch television without being offended by someone actually asking them to be part of making a better society (oops, that's Socialism)and being indoctrinated into that whole community thing. In all this is a little less sinister than television participating in Nancy Reagan's Just Say No To (Some) Drugs program(which I'm sure they whole heartedly endorsed) back in the 1980's.
I know I will be watching very little of it, not because I hate Obama, but because television is a time thief, and 99% shit anyways. If you define yourself by what you watch on television, you are really nothing at all

2012

End Timers have been making a big deal lately about the Mayan Calendar which "predicts" the end of the world in 2012. While it may not signify the apocalypse, it's a fairly safe bet that the United States Empire will be gone by then, and not because voters will elect Sarah Palin as president.
What we'll begin to see very quickly is the wholesale looting of our country as the dollar loses reserve currency status. That means all those petrodollars the world bought from us to buy oil will be leaving the world's central banks and coming home to roost, drowning the banks we have left here in too much capital. This will spur a round of hyperinflation not dissimilar to what was seen at the end of the Weimar Republic. Foreclosures will increase, but this time it won't just be the lower classes suffering. Unemployment will increase as people scramble to take any job available.
So while the economy has been tanking, and the brokers have been looting, the corporate media lackeys in this country have been dutifully keeping the public distracted with protests against the wrong people, celebrity worship and too much sports coverage to notice that the ship is sinking.
Why is this happening? Because somewhere, someone decided that they didn't actually have to manufacture a product to make money, all they had to do was to convince the brainwashed masses into believing they needed a product bad enough that they'd mortgage their future to keep ahead of their neighbors. Fortunately for them, they had a Congress on their payroll that was only concerned with getting re-elected and so they would do anything they were asked to keep those campaign contributions rolling in. And why wouldn't you want to be a politician when you can work two and a half days a week, make $165,000 a year, and invest in wars you support. So now uniquely American products like the Hummer will be built in China.
And finally, when the American people wake up because their cable television has been disconnected, they'll take to the streets against the crooks who robbed them (the ones still in this country anyway) they'll find that the criminals will be protected by police who have evolved from Andy Taylor into something resembling Robocop. Good luck with that.

Living In Retarded Times

These are definitely interesting times we are living in right now. Despite continuing the war in Iraq, expanding the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan, and threatening Iran, President Obama has won the Nobel Peace Prize.
Then, following this announcement, Rush Limbaugh agrees with the Taliban (a move that would have him removed from the air at the height of the Bush administration), putting the alleged "patriot" on the side of the enemy in Afghanistan, what with al Qaeda pretty much removed from that country.
Code Pink, an anti-war organization, has announced it's rethinking it's anti Afghan war stance. I guess now war is acceptable, if it fits within your feminist agenda. But how feminist is it when you're sending men to women's rescue?
There is now a movement under way (by Republicant operatives, naturally) to Impeach Obama. Not for any high crimes or misdemeanors, mind you, but for "Obamaism", whatever the fuck that is.
I woke up one morning last week to find those that claim to be the most biggest patriots in this country cheering because the US lost a chance to host the Olympics. The jobs this would have created and revenue generated would go a long way towards helping lift the US out of the Second Great Depression we are in now.And make no mistake about it, we are in a Great Depression. And while jobs are being lost and people are struggling, these asswipes who pretend to be patriots are cheering, not so much for the failure of Obama's programs, but because Bush and eight years of Republicant policies so destroyed the economy that there's nothing that can be done to fix it. The middle class is slowly disappearing, worker's rights are slowly being lost, but rich white men are getting richer and whiter, all because stupid white men are getting stupider and stupider. And n one of this pettiness and bickering will restore us to the former flory that was once the greatest democracy on the planet.

Conservapedia Presents: The Ten Commandments-Revisited

In yesterday's post, there was a story about how Conservapedia was planning on deleting the "liberal" bias from the Bible. But why stop there? As you'll see, they seem to pick and choose which commandments to follow as well.

It's Not In The Bible Anymore

Does the Bible have a liberal bias? Of course it does, which is why the nice folks at Conservapedia have decided to delete the liberal bias from the Bible. No more of the love shit for them, now it's just going to be fire and brimstone and the wrath of God. That'll make for some exciting reading for them.
But why stop there? Why not make the Innkeeper a free market entrepreneur who was well within his rights to make those moochers Mary and Joseph sleep in the stable. Or portray Judas as having a keen business sense and as being loyal patriot for betraying Jesus for a few pieces of silver? There's a lot of Jewish people in the Bible,couldn't an anti-Semite just delete them all, and make Jesus a nice Christian boy who grew up worshipping himself?
It would appear that the wonderful Christians over at Conservapedia don't love Jesus as much as they hate "liberals", which I believe puts them squarely in violation of the whole "Thou Shalt Not Have Any Other Gods Besides Me" commandment. These twisted souls have shown how utterly useless their Bible is by changing the word of their God to fit their belief system, as opposed to changing their behavior to fit the word of their God. But, you would expect as much from the same people who changed the Constitution to allow torture, illegal wiretaps and indefinite incarcerations.

Who Runs This Country?

Or, better yet, who should run this country, seeing how were a republic and all? Lindsey Graham thinks that if we let the bloggers run the country than our best days are behind us. Uh, dude, our best days are behind us.
Who are these elusive bloggers I hear criticized by the people on the right while appearing on the news? Most blogs, big, small, and miniscule (like this one) are run by tax paying citizens who read and report the news that the corporate-owned media refuses to report, or buries while devoting more and more time and space to celebrity gossip or sports "news". Why would we, as a democracy, want the actual people deciding the future of the country. We have let the corporations run this country for too long now and we have rampant unemployment, a stagnant economy and two government sponsored quagmires on our hands. It's been great for the corporations, but bad for 99% of other people in this country.
But who does run this country? Who has been pushing for another war based on lies? The bloggers. or the people who "run" this country? Who is threatening to impose sanctions on Iran for obeying the NPT all the while violating the Symington amendment?
Most bloggers are people of conscience, and blog out of a sense of duty, or outrage at how far we have strayed. very few make a profit, if at all, and are not media darlings or part of the cultural elite. We are, however, citizens, and when the citizens no longer run this country than we have ceased to be the democracy we claim to fight for while dropping bombs on dark skinned people in democracy's name.