the Sunday Mail

Small-town beauty queens

2008-09-04T08:39:00.003-05:00

Hey Sarah, don't worry. We're all small-town beauty queens. Anybody can be, just enter the contest a few times. Your turn will come up.

RNC obviously doesn't care about actual experience, as they stuck us with Bush after some time riding the TX governor's mansion and failing famously in business.

The smart thing here is about familiarity. Where Hillary lost because we know her, and where McCain suffers from that familiarity we all have with the man he recently was, the RNC may be holding out some hope that she will occupy opposition research teams for the month of September, leaving only two months for us to catch up.

It's okay that she's got her life so under-control that Palin's ready to help control the rest of us. Carly Fiorina, also famous for her illegal spying and privacy violations at HP gave a rousing address but failed to mention the others running HP ran her out of town for the privacy practices of Bush, as applied to the HP board. I'm a little worried that the detailed report on each American human will cost a lot to maintain, but I don't believe they understand the nature of evidence enough to turn the domestic surveillance program into a jail-puttin' bureau. And Palin's not about controlling her people, so maybe she's not interested in controlling us either.

It does bother me that she derives her income from taxes in a state completely underwritten by the biggest problem of our time: the Oil Industry. Combine that with her apparent belief that the dinosaurs and primitive vegetation comprising that oil she's pumping couldn't have existed, that fossils are the tricky work of the devil, and it gets more bothersome.

But there's still a chance that McCain is playing a joke on the RNC for the shitty treatment he got at their hands when somehow the Dummy (sounds like 'dubya') got the nomination. I hope he can't be serious, because it gives me pain to learn that the admirable man has become dilute, deluded and addled enough to moderate his strong and credible MO to include the whackjob wingnut perspective he needs to become president.

This Endless War

2008-07-15T14:06:00.002-05:00

I resent it. You're wondering if I re-sent something, no? Actually, 'resent' is exactly the word here. I resent the wholesale hijacking of the national agenda, re-aiming every one of us at the rationalization of the failed, stupid, immoral and lazy idea behing the current Iraq 'War'. Now we must win, because we failed. We must win because we must win. There are many reasons why we must now 'WIN', but not a single reason why we must 'FIGHT'.

And the only Republican nominee this year making any coherent, conservative sense is the wack job. Not the Jesus-freak wack job, the Texan. Want to scare the terrorists? Pull out of Iraq immediately and return to Afghanistan.

Bush is a fucking moron, a very shitty person. He and those of you who want to be like him have to fuck yourselves.

My Bush SOTU Kiss-Off

2008-01-29T07:44:00.000-05:00

I didn't watch the address. Who could possibly bear that? I know some stalwarts looking forward to the return of democracy, rabid anti-anti-intellectualists, even triumph of reason types were probably compelled to watch it. But I already knew how it was going to go. "I'm okay, you're better off, and if you're not I'm not talking to you anyway."

Here's how it should have gone:
"My fellow Americans, the state of our union is stronger than ever for our ruling class. We have stirred the pot and left it to the market. And we have seen what over a decade of unrestrained Republican libido can achieve. We have held our ground against those who would invest in the health of Americans at the expense of my core constituency, namely the financial services community who underwrote both my presidential and previous campaigns, the healthcare industry, the automotive industry, the public utilities and indeed even our homeowner industry, in the interest of keeping the economy working for the financial services industry owners.

"My fellow Americans, Iraq is a cluster-fuck. I regard it as my only failure that Iran couldn't be drawn into the open there, despite zero barriers and no borders for the first four years of this 90-day war. We found their droppings, their serial numbers on the IEDs, their mullahs and puppets running the ghettoes there, setting up health care and public works projects in their evil axis-like way. But unable to draw them into a fair and square honorable fight on the streets and plains of Iraq, we've had to resort to passive aggression against them, in the form of empty warnings and long-distance pissing contests with people we've never actually seen. Boy, I'd love to smack that Mahamanamanamama mima Jod in the puss, but you see he isn't even the real president there. The Ayatollah is.

"So where has the Iraq mess succeeded? Well, we've enriched the US Mercenary community. And we've padded the balance sheets of some of the biggest Bermuda-banking construction firms specializing in nucular and oil. But best of all, we've succeeded in exporting 30,000 additional American soldiers against the objections of the entire country, except for John McCain.

"I credit this 'surge' of force with the newly-established peace in Iraq, where the only hotbeds of violence are in Baghdad and Mosul. Ethnic cleansing and vendettas pretty well completed, there was no longer reason for unrestrained violence and bloodshed, and coupled with the US military knocking down doors provided cover for the evil-doers to back down like sissies.

"North Korea, well, how about Russia... Poland is... much of the world is beyond our influence now. But we successfully shifted the blame for the first recession of my presidency from the stock market and financial services richies onto the college kids and their newfangled 'internet', which obviously didn't work. And now we're working hard to shift the blame for the second recession of my presidency from the financial services industry onto the unqualified homeowner.

"It's hard work being the CEO President, hard to not know what's being told to you, hard to focus on your supporters in the face of so much need. But that's why our new economic stimulus package is so important. The slowing of growth in the financial services sector of the economy means that nothing is growing, since that and the government sector have been the only sources for economic growth since my installation by the lawyers and litigators.

"Passing this dog without reading so much means the Chinese get another block of shares, but also that when you all spend your $600, or whatever, the owners of Visa and Mastercard will get about 5%, and at $150,000,000,000, that's over $7,000,000,000 for the owners of the brand on your debit card. And that's who this economy is really all about. Let's have a round of applause for our financial patrons.

"But my fellow Americans, let us not forget the way I've fanned the flames of muddied waters by funneling piles- buckets and bales of US currency into the hands of private religious consortiums, who so stridently fight for the right to discriminate against minority lifestyles. Who so vehemently oppose scientistic explanation of evolution and disease.

"And never forget our victory over privacy, in the interest of protecting our private property from terrorists- but not from terror itself. If we don't immunize telecom giants from litigation at the hands of lawyers and the ACLU, we can abandon all hope they'll ever set up giant eavesdropping programs on our behalf again.

"But when you list the achievements of my administrations, don't forget how hard I've worked to soften work rules and protections for the rights of Americans to work at their chosen job for honest pay and quality of life, without allowing the Detroit automotive fossil to be properly buried in accordance with the will of the market."

Those CIA tapes

2007-12-09T09:30:00.000-05:00

This is terrible, but I'm pretty sure about this. The past several years have revealed to the world cracks in our foundation, leaks in our roof, and fools herded in Novembers to elect partisan tools for undoing what's good for us. Right now we have a big problem on our hands. The Bush administration is going to leave (unless they declare a state of emergency and contract Blackwater and KBR to imprison us all) soon, and they've avoided everything for almost 8 years.

When the next administration ascends, we'll see a half-assed Afghanistan limping along, Pakistan is doing something wierd (hasn't made the news in the past week or so), China has lumbered forward to be the big greedy bully and they've politicked and bought their way into better competitive positions than ever before. Israel has been left to its own devices, not just the state but the whole situation. Africa is pretty well committed to its perpetual slide, the Amazon rain forest is approaching the tipping point, and the world science community has been sidelined by faithmongers in guiding US policy.

Now there are tapes. Just two, of course. They should have been preserved somehow, althouth being altered and remaining as primary evidence would be tricky... American agents, doing things to expose themselves to civil, criminal, or just plain honor-among-thieves justice, have been documented doing those things, those bad things. Yes, to a bad guy. Two bad guys. There are only two tapes. Ever.

I think (gulp) it's time to circle the wagons to stop letting the Bush team bury our international credibility and further fracture us as a nation. We're splintered now, and our allegiences are strained. Our economy is in the toilet, and our intelligence services have been beaten silly. We have to take the initiative to express our national interest pro-actively and say, "This failing has to stop. No further questions."

Ultimately, the Guantanamo detainees have to stand some kind of trial. Bush, et al, would prefer the olde-school methods of throwing them bound into a lake to see if they float. If the drown, they're innocent. These two tapes relate to two detainees? Only two? I suspect there is a body of circumstantial evidence against them. I think they can probably be put away Al Capone- style, using an unrelated charge to pack 'em away forever. And I know US prisons are hard to survive, although in that environment they may become new leaders.

But I think we should not allow this Executive cohort further damage us, expose our treasure and personnel, weaken further our international standings. We can come up with some way to punish this as a burocratic misdeed, and it probably warrants an obstruction charge- several. Or at least two. But let's not do it on the world stage. Let's get the initiative going to process Guantanamo first. The ground is too soft for a good footing, the tapes and their destruction have no independent standard. As the whole world is watching us work extra-constitutionally every day, let them see us dedicate ourselves to fixing it from within.

The Dyslexicon

2007-11-26T08:31:00.000-05:00

Dyslexia is a serious issue. It's hard to recognize at first, and makes for lots of frustration and family tensions, keeps some kids at the margins, and it's very hard to help. It happens to different degrees, and unfortunately looks just like simple indiscipline. If you have it, it makes everything look like a word scramble and you can't turn it into information.

That's what the present administration is trying to do to us. Many of our federal agencies are still there, but they aren't producing their work the way we would expect. Check out the Non-Informist Lexicon of 'information' produced by our 'President' and his 'administration':
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004766.php

I call it the Dyslexicon.

Let them beat each other up

2007-11-26T06:51:00.000-05:00

The most worn page of the Party Playbook is the one with instructions on handling opposition jockeying: Let them kill each other. They're self-destructing. Watch:

So now, the Senators vying for the Democratic nomination are feeding the opposition. Clinton and Obama both belong in the Senate, but their prominence within the activist communities made their banks fat and they've been elevated to Personalities. I like their political ambition, but I think the government is a train wreck and we won't know just how bad for years. These liberals are the wrong kind: Optimistic.

Job 1 for the next President is going to be cleaning the mold out of the basement, trimming the fat, tightening the belt. Only by doing that can our government be used to effect deliberate changes society can tolerate.

Inquirer Letters Section

2007-11-26T06:35:00.000-05:00

The letters section of the Philadelphia Inquirer are usually good substrates for discussion. Usually, they include one Republican hack, a self-defense note, something blue and national, and something relevant to Philadelphia-area readers.

This week, we start with a discussion of the Turnpike Privatization Scam. These are our roads. We paid for them already, and continue to pay as we use them. That's perfect, right? Bonds, real estate favors, tax money went to putting them there. It's not complicated, it's a flattened section of earth between two points, sometimes through mountains and over rivers. There are cash registers every so often to collect tolls, but mostly it's the flattened earth doing the work. So we need cashiers in the booths, and we need road crews. The PA Department of Transportation has those. And they know how to hire surveyers to check how flat the earth is, and they can commission work to go make it flatter as needed. Leasing it to a private company and then taxing the toll revenue will almost eliminate either toll revenue or flatness. Eliminate appointees, and as Barrish suggests we'll see a different budget environment over there.

Amtrak came up again. So many of us drive along railroad tracks an hour to work, and so few wish to travel with others that we are guaranteeing the retardation of public transportation. I favor not using gasoline whenever possible. Feet were made for walking. It's impossible to replicate the rail system of Europe or Japan here, we simply weren't intended to be a fiefdom, where the patron could wave his wand and squeeze juice from the serfs and make it happen. I favor a strong network of rails to ensure the safe and subsidized traffic in goods. And it seems obvious to me that if 20 people are going to Pittsburgh, they should split the gas and tolls by riding in a train. I'm a rugged individual, but like universal health coverage, transpo is something we all need, all benefit from.

This week's Republican sniper complains about socialism as the Senate runs a skeleton crew to prevent Bush's despotic recess appointments.

I want to work for Progressive Politics

2007-11-20T13:46:00.001-05:00

I want to do that. Work for Progressive politics. I don't really want to attach myself to a politician, although issues and I are already pretty tangled up together.

SOS! I'm crushed in the middle class!

2007-11-20T12:33:00.000-05:00

It's very hard to be en enlightened, open and generous member of our society. My trouble stems from my education and upbringing, but the leanings I have now were probably already there. Before the adults got to me.

I went to college and studied a whole lot of stuff without intending to use it to derive my living. But I studied a whole lot of stuff before that. I have a passport. I've studied world religion, world history, the various competing world philosophies toward economy, art, justice. And I've studied chemistry, biology, molecular genetics, language, you name it, I've tried to learn at least as much as I think people ought to know about each of these disciplines.

We all know there are more than one side to every story. But we also know those sides are 'colored' by our interest in the outcome, the verdict of history or even the immediate rendition of justice. At some point in the distance, these rays of hope converge on their source, likely a single point-event with a specific set of true characteristics.

In general, it's the testimony of the completely disinterested materially likely to bear the closest resemblance to the truth. And the truth as I see it puts industries on their own path, looking for self-preservation at any cost. Part of the cost is social stability. 'Elections' as we understand them involve the pushback by and against interests competing for their independence and self-preservation. And right now, the acutely felt push is being made on behalf of those larger industrial interests against the wishes and dreams of the humans living among them.

The ignorant undertow of the 'conservative' faction in the west has at its heart something honorable: Protecting the legacy handed us by our parents and theirs. But it elevates the conflict far beyond the reasonable. Change happens. It has happened, and denying it doesn't do anything to bring about its reversal. Just requires more things to be changed to suit that world view.

Consider that work was once sacred. It was considered a man's right to earn a living at his trade. But it interfered with capital. Capital's interest in earning and not paying trumps your right to be considered a professional. It also upends the playing field by taking the rules as they apply to doing business in one place, and simply ignoring them because you're doing that business somewhere else. This completely destroys the value of the individual lying between the priestly and political classes and the absolute bottom. If you can't find a patron, then you'd better find something meaningless and unproductive to do that will please the Capital class.

A small business in a labor town is strangled now by the avaiability of cheap labor. The same factors formerly commanding premium earnings are the ones a small business has to combat to stay open. Wages. Benefits. Environmental and OSHA rules. Payroll taxes. How can you employ Union carpenters and continue to win bids? You can't. Imagine trying to compete globally as a manufacturer, buying steel and fuel on the world market.

Friggin' Specter again

2007-11-05T06:29:00.001-05:00

Senator Arlen Specter, arguably the elder statesman and cooler head on the Republican side, is doing it again. He has a special problem with nominations during the Bush administration, holding his nose to approve the nominations of several anti-New Deal, anti-worker, anti-Me judges.

Now he's making a terrible and gratuitous concession to the dark side. Torture is illegal in the US, meaning the US government and our citizens are not allowed to do it. Waterboarding is torture. By refusing to accede that point, Mukasey paints himself as a politician. If he says it's not torture he won't be nominated. If he says it is torture he may be nominated to preside at Justice while war crimes prosecutions are assembled.

I'm okay with no head at Justice. We Americans have local judges and police, mayors, parents, all kinds of people in positions of authority who belong in our lives. Bush's AG has traditionally been the enabler for the decider, and not the advocate of public safety and order. The war on drugs, for example, doesn't need Mukasey, who would be more likely recruited to the cause of insider trading and corporate immunity.

Specter acknowledges he's voting aye on Mukasey despite the terrible position he's been placed in, but the important issue is simple rule of law. Bush routinely issues those infamous signing statements, written into the record as pro-forma absolution as he refuses to abide by the bill as he signs it into law. Allowing that wiggle room for this horrible sham of a 'President' is unacceptable. Mukasey's limp position here means Bush won't be prosecuted even though the technique is illegal because torture is illegal and waterboarding is torture.

Once again, this should invite another investigation. We were promised investigations by Fox, by the Republicans losing their seats, by the Democrats coming into power. Now they're in, and I'm glad they're strategizing for '08 and beyond. But we need to declaw these bastards and the front burner right now is assigning a lawyer to Justice who would hold the line and bring the administration back into the light.

PA Troopers in Casinos???

2007-11-02T07:18:00.001-05:00

No. This is stupid. We've made room for casinos to rapidly export the disposable income of Pennsylvania residents to other states and balance sheets, and we're paying for their security?

If they want to open their little casinos, let them fund an agency for security and self-regulation.

I was against 'gaming' in PA from the start, having actually been in Atlantic City, but now I'm angry about underwriting it.

SCHIP, Poverty and the Wastrel

2007-11-02T07:05:00.000-05:00

Bush doesn't know a lot of words, and having never been poor, challenged, or even held to account despite decades of poor performance and bad behavior he can't be expected to understand poverty, which has generally been hidden from television viewers. He's a protected, greedy and jealous snot, working for the first time in his entire boomer life to keep you from getting anything out of your tax payments.

I'm sure he doesn't get or care about the irony in his opposition to the present state of SCHIP legislation. He's been sheltered his whole life by the federal government, and is now protecting us from being protected by it. His parents were career government workers, and their extraction industry benefactors have also benefited non-stop from the largesse of the US Taxpayer.

In just the past few years though, gasoline has tripled in price. Milk is up to almost 2X. Everything has ballooned in price, although some markets are lagging. Per-capita income has dropped, if you excuse the financial services and energy swindle industries. So even if you weren't poor in the last days of Clinton, keeping your 4% annual salary raise wasn't enough and now you live per paycheck.

So that $60,000 per year anywhere near the formerly industrial northeast or midwest is peanuts. A family of four earning $60K is strapped. Mr. Bush takes home a salary nearly double that of his predecessor (properly aligning this executive salary with the insane disproportion of his corporate peers despite leaving the for-profit sector to go into Presidentin'), and he still sits on his blueblood cushion.

SCHIP gives Americans too much of what they want: something.

If we end it now

2007-10-26T05:50:00.000-05:00

If we end the Iraq thing now, as in 'poof- it's over', we'll have another 200,000 unemployed, with some medical benefits for a short time but soon to be on their own among us.

Suddenly civilians again, they'll be forced to readjust overnight. I doubt that's easy or even feasible without preparing (planning, Mr. Bush) for a big, national medical care overhaul and serious attention to emotional and psychological care.

The Relative Values of Voters

2007-10-23T11:02:00.001-05:00

The Republican Party blew off the NAACP with near unanymity.

According to the US Census (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/tables/07s0014.xls), there are only about 70-some million of THEM. Republicans get about 10% of their votes from THEM.

The '01 census counts almost 160 million Christians. So if they get half the Christian vote they're ahead of the guy with every vote from THEM.

That should explain why the comically uncommitted Giuliani, the desperate-for-despotism Huckabee, the charming old drunk character actor, the crotchety old man, the Mormon and the crotchety old Conservative all showed up at the Jesus Freak Convention to compete for their support.

So right now they're looking for room in their dogma to support serial-marriage Rudy, Never-did-nothing Thompson, McCain the rapidly aging or anti-everything Paul, so they don't have to vote for wacky-cult gay-marriage public insurance Romney.

If this were reality, we'd expect this freako fringe to be contemplating a ride on the next comet, or at least a third party to leave the things of this world to the students of it. But they're hypocrites too, and they really want to rule the world like the scion whose name it is a letter W.

Back in black & white, almost, and kind of

2007-10-06T23:47:00.000-05:00

If you want to look at some pretty fun rants about Tom DeLay and the rest of the scandal roster from early in this abyssmal political cycle, look at the stuff I already wrote. I've written a lot of stuff since that last post, intending to tune my craft. This page might have to be deleted, but I hope I can give you and others a chance to get some value from the provocative crap I can come up with sometimes.

Joy,
Joe Monster

As expected, the whitehouse whitewasher in spin cycle

2007-09-05T11:56:00.001-05:00

Once again, the Bush crew points to a new report, jumping up and down and still pointing, excited to tell us it means the opposite of what it says.

The GAO reveals a grade of sub-F for this escalation to date, based on the goal posts as agreed before the surge. Allowing 3 of 18 correct answers, the boy in the White House is a functional idiot.

I don't have time for this anymore. Somebody else has to be the grownup in charge, and I believe heads of state must be held accountable for the terrible things they do, ostensibly in the name of their countrymen.

Karl Rove is a big fat bitch, if there ever was a bitch

2007-08-20T11:58:00.000-05:00

Absolutely true: The democrats did the dividing. The Republicans did the unified marching. Some continue to march, even after the country admitted it was Democratic.

If the legislative Democrats weren't reflective, weren't trying to counter the cynical Republican agenda, weren't trying to represent American people in districts, they certainly would have also been marching, and there would be no opposition.

It would also have been the one-party state so useful to the Stalinesque/Neocon MO.

I'm glad that fuckhead went back to his own country, and I hope Bush sweats and whimpers without him, like the dog he is.

Unfortunately, since they said he's leaving, we can deduce he's not going anywhere. Because they can't speak without lying. Congenital. Their lying genitals are in each others' mouths.

Incurious George and the Bird Flu

2007-07-18T06:54:00.000-05:00

Of course, since it's been in the headlines as a growing concern among health and science professionals, we can expect the Bush administration to issue a warning next fall: Elect a Republican, or the absolute inaction we've been taking on this important issue we really consider an opinion will sneak up and follow us home from Iraq.

Also of course, we don't know anything about what our Executive stand-in-for-a-real-President is doing. He's priveleged.

Cheers,

How the Democrats do it

2007-07-15T13:52:00.000-05:00

This is how they are going to drop the ball:
I got a call from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Comittee soliciting funds for TV commercials targeting weak Republicans. As I told the nice lady caller, they don't need commercials. Bush and his thuglicans are already Democratic campaign commercials. They walk, they talk, and they do things, and every thing they say and do, everyone they walk with, only reinforce the general message that something's wrong and it rhymes with "Uglpew".

They have half the strategy working for them already, but the obvious second half, the B side is blank. What do they do? They ask for money to run commercials.

They are properly tying up the president. He's got the leash wrapped around both legs, and he can't keep up with his barking. But he is still President and Commander in Chief. He still gets to veto the laws passed by a Democratic majority. He's doing better at throwing back in the Democratic face than the Democrats are, and he is succeeding in making the Ds look ineffective and whiny.

But we want the investigations. We do. And we want the war to end. But we can't withdraw troops because we aren't the Commander in Chief. We can't dictate the budget because we aren't the final signatory.

The American people will appreciate the effective way Democrats in Congress are tying his hands, keeping his Attorney General lying in public at Congressional Committees, forcing everyone in the President's life to come forward and refuse to testify about his malfeasance. We will also be happy to hear the Congress has refused to provide a dime for the office of the VP. I want every thing the President does to be hindered so he can't screw things up any more than he has. That's enough for me.

But to take those extra seats from the party of the War (which we won years ago and have yet to win?) (which has transferred the treasure contributed by generations of working people into the hands of the few stockholders at KBR in the name of protecting the Saudi monarchy) (which has so altered the Justice Department and Justice System within the US that our children are reading civics books they can't possibly reconcile with the new ground rules) (which has passionately worked to protect the corporation from the person- in the legislature to exempt it from justice) the Democrats have to continue producing quality, clear legislation with no pork except what Republicans add, and to let Bush veto the "Save AIDS babies" bill, and the "Don't poison the babies" bill, and the "Don't burn up all the flowers" bill. Let him stand before us and hack progressive ideals to bits without the ability to hand out favors to donors or magnates.

This may be the only time in history when the high road can get us there. 1) Keep impeding the Bush agenda, 2) Defund the VP, 3) Quality, honest legislation written to make life a little easier for every human here.

Wow! Finally a firing!

2007-03-01T17:13:00.001-05:00

Wow! Hard to believe, but after pages and pages of lies in print, hours of audio lies and an aggressive miseducation campaign, tons of ordnance, fuel, food, machinery, even after the cave people developed methods for shooting down our helicopters (flying over Baghdad too long, those fucks don't have ANYTHING to do by figure out how to blow stuff up), after a list of senior military officers were dismissed for speaking frankly, FINALLY, a high-ranking member of this collossal cluster fuck got fired for cause. He wasn't in Iraq though, and he's being replaced by the fuckup he replaced.

So now I turn to you, the "Support our troops" phonies. Your shithead war, your shithead president, the shithead Secretary of Defense, the shithead VP, everybody on the button-pusher side of this bullshit phony 'war'. How are you? How do you feel about the terrible conditions some of the the wounded soldiers you care so much about have been subjected to WHEN THEY CAME HOME WITHOUT PARTS OF THEMSELVES. Makes me think of the imaginary soldier spitters greeting the Vietnam returns. What a fuck in the ass!

Plop atop that sundae the gag order. We've invited these young (and more mature) patriots to our new colony in the sunny fertile crescent to help Paul Wolfowitz pad his resume, force them to get blown up by guerillas after bowing to Al-Sadr and failing to install our puppet, let anybody with feet waltz across the border with anything they can carry (no beer though), we yodel and moo about increased security and Constitutions, we wonder why physics continues to work even though Bush is president (Nature abhors a power vacuum, just as Iran abhors Sunni Iraq's easy water access), we herd our maimed finest into a sty, and then we threaten them with jail if they exercise their first amendment right to speak about how shitty the Republican Party is.

You're not bad people, I think you're just crazy. Right now you're saying "This isn't the Republicans, it's the Iraqis blowing them up!" But Bush appointees run the military, because the Republican Party gets free blowjobs at the White House. Or something, it's got to have a reason for life to have meaning.

Wow! Finally a firing!

2007-03-01T17:13:00.000-05:00

Long time coming

2007-01-11T08:55:00.000-05:00

I think it's nice that Mr. Bush fired his lawyer, former Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, and replaced her with an even stronger defense lawyer.

His lack of consideration for all of us ad for his job is admirably reflected in the way he discarded this faithful companion when the lap-dog breed became less useful.

But I do think that letting him wreck the house for the past 6 years should be enough, there's no reason to waste the time of another 20,000 of us for an unknown duration.

These factoidal anecdotes come together to show us the Rove/Bush method at work again, defending the CEO against stockholders and employees. I hope it will backfire, but the intention is solely to put Democrats in an uncomfortable position, risking potential antipatriotic labeling in 2 years. I just hope it doesn't backfire by forcing Iran's hand. His cronies aren't competent to stand that trial.

Why is my father-in law an asshole?

2007-01-10T08:15:00.000-05:00

Over the holidays, I was rousted from sleep by a loud exchange in my kitchen. Sis-in-law, who has dated an actual black guy, was apparently attempting a discussion involving openness in human society. Pops wouldn't have it. He sees black people on TV, and despite the black neighbor he knows and basically likes he's sure black culture is the problem.

Now, I'm no black guy. I have a dusty but genuine Arkansas Ave. ghetto pass, I dated black girls at a frequency roughly mirroring demographics, and I can make fun of you very well. I think I’m in a better position to report on ‘Black Culture’ than most of us out here with no claim to it. I grew up in Wilmington, DE, in Claymont and then near Edgemoor. There were race problems, but it was the perception of race problems that gave the problem a body. Then (1970s), there, white people found themselves at the bottom, for the first time forced into contact with the Black people. "Who the hell let them in here?"

Remember, it was in the 1950’s that Black Americans were given the right to be seen in public. The co-incidence of wild economic disparity with the arrival of an essentially new ethnic minority implies linkage in newspapers and television, which ignore socioeconomics. Strip away insinuated status, and people see themselves busting their ass and resent the influx of others chasing the same precious paycheck, devalue the other’s contribution. America has attracted people from all nations, and has hosted plenty of racism and ethnic tension. But this father-in-law’s brand is the beer-hall variety, the dishonest cry of a chronically disgruntled working class. There is no outside object, no external cause for their lament. Hell- this guy doesn’t even have to go to work anymore! He just didn’t mature, never gained the personal confidence to meet difference with serenity. He still thinks the Sharks are going to come to his neighborhood and woo the chicks (and I think he thinks he’s a Jet!).

I’m fascinated that the short period of time that brought us birth control and sexually transmitted disease, sent many to Viet nam (sent this guy to friggin’ Greenland!?!?!?!) and a few to the moon liberated only a retarded xenophobia among some blue collar types, and that so much of our culture is frozen in that period. A guy my age recently cited Hanoi Jane as a good reason to vote for George the Lesser. WTF?

My son's grandfather isn't a racist, he's lazy- more of a bigot. He's another boomer, raised with the daydream of silver spoons, rudely awakened to the truth of life in Capitalism by the 1970s economy. He and the majority of his cohort stopped believing in idealism or hope and started bitching about the bounty. Blacks, Mexicans, Jews, everybody is a problem because he never outgrew his infantile vanity to see the other people standing near him in the mirror too.

Again, he's not a racist. He's a colicky baby. He's got discomfort with the facts of his world, and he complains. He doesn't do anything to alleviate the discomfort, which is important- because he can't do anything about it, can’t even narrow his irks down to a single problem. He's confused and dummed by too much television and not enough life, and like many gravitates to other bitchy people professing common sense. Black culture is the problem. Social liberalism is the problem. The fat cats are the problem. But the fat cats aren’t pawing his daughter, so let’s look a little deeper into the blackness.

African American as an ethnic group is a minority in this country. Very few of them gain the attention of the popular media. Those people are interesting to Wall Street, to Ted Turner but not to Jane Fonda, because they are interesting to CONSUMERS who are interesting to WALL STREET. To delude himself into thinking (he's not actively deluding OR thinking, just parroting teenage angst) he understands black culture from his lengthy excursions into television programming is a thought crime. He doesn't trust the media, but uses it in place of perspective. Instead of looking and talking and assimilating into American society, he waits in his storage facility for the news to come to him. He has come to the conclusion that the people of Blackdom are drugged up gangsta thugs with no jobs, no ambition, and no respect for the American way of life. Of course, the reinforcement of that opinion is a contortion: the Rappers and comics and talk show hosts and obnoxious athletes in his complaints do have jobs, ambition, and exhibit perfectly the American way of life, if crass.

Having an opinion about Blacks, Asians, Eskimos is fine. Embracing the idea that the media is a lie, basing your life on being discomforted by change, and then slavishly attending to every dot and dash broadcast from Wall Street makes people stupid, and people who stupidize themselves are assholes. Internal inconsistency is neurosis. A reflective, critical mind wouldn't tolerate the hunger for disinformation and the mistrust of it, certainly ought to shut up with the baby complaints with no possible resolution and turn off the fucking television.

If what you want can't exist, then pick something else. Your lot in life isn't the blacks' fault. It’s life and it’s pretty good here. The Capitalists, stock brokers and speculators are the people with a stake in your opinion, and they hold a little more leverage over your satisfaction in life than TO. Would we know anything about Owens’ bad classless behaviour without the banks financing the stadiums, the manufacturers sponsoring the halftime shows, the media broadcasting his name? I called him an asshole, in front of our whole family, and I did it pretty loud. I felt bad that it wasn't in context, but now it is and I feel better.

For a scholarly treatment of the above topic, please read What’s the Matter with Kansas? By Thomas Frank.

100% Rule

2006-10-13T07:05:00.001-05:00

Why is it that despite years of non-stop gross incompetence (Bush, Rumsfeld, et al), conflicts of interest (The Vice President), lying to start a war, lying about conduct of war (War. It's serious still, isn't it?), graft, bribery, contempt and outright sedition (the constitution smells like white-out, black sharpie and eraser crumbs), after painting itself into two corners at once in Iran and North Korea, losing top-dog status to Communist China and converting the middle class in America into capital's serf class, why is it that only now that another Republican Congressman has turned out to be a gay lecher the Christian bloc is reacting to values confusion on the Hill?

How can homosexuality trump mass death?

Why is the party that appointed and supported Foley as co-chair of the don't-bug-kids committee apparently falling apart now? Shouldn't that have happened when Bush doubled the national debt? Didn't he campaign on a no-nation-building platform? They're saying into microphones that government should provide electricity, and until Iraq's does, we won't stop killing ourselves there... ? That doesn't make sense- they also say government shouldn't provide anything while they stuff their families' pockets to avoid accusations of personal enrichment.

Safavian, Abramoff, Norquist, Norton- all these names in the paper today are headliners for the RNC, and they're all knee-deep.

I think the RNC stands for chaos. It must be defanged, neutered, descented and protected in a zoo somewhere so children can see what happens when we buy the lie that we can all be 100% selfish.

Casey vs Santorum

2006-10-13T07:05:00.000-05:00

I don't know who would win the fight. I suspect Santorum has a roll of coins in his pocket, but looks like more of a slapper, while the quiet adult Casey could probably do serious harm on the ground.

But the question of Santorum's work ethic was finally raised. We've known for years that he drives south to go home (PA is north). We know his thoughts on lobby reform- coopt the problem and use it to strengthen his party. We know he wants to be the President and Pope, and that he expects us to believe his 6 kids live in the 3-bedroom house in Pittsburgh.

But I hereby question his work ethic. He worked for starting and works for continuing the spent after-sex cuddling into which the Iraq war has degenerated. That does nothing for me here in PA. He's the front man (since the others involved are in jail or on their way) for the K Street Project, and that's in DC. Again, not helping me at all. The Islamic Fascists are in Iran. We invaded Iraq. That's an ex post facto bait and switch. Run and cover. Not good for me, really.

Ricky's not working for us, he's working for the RNC. The RNC isn't working for us, just helping those who help themselves to government largess while trying to make it cheaper to be rich.

When I get rich, I want to help people. People like me who live in PA. Goodbye for now Rickypoo.

Trouble with Korea?

2006-10-11T07:13:00.000-05:00

The problem may be as simple as the Republican monolith, whose White House spokesman questioned the significance of North Korea's nuclear test in an apparent administration effort to dim the lights on the role of their pinheaded foreign policy in bringing about today's situation.

The President said out loud on international television that Iran, Iraq and North Korea were the same thing, and invaded the least relevant one before he even fully dealt with our organized and effective enemies in Afghanistan. Therefore, the surely unreasonable Kimmy Illy Jongy-yo Tupac understood the bluff and called it by increasing the histrionics over there. Where the Clinton Administration was pushing to mellow the North's crazy, the Bush Administration was ready to meet the North's crazy with crazy and dying for a drink.

The historical problem, about which this administration can't plead ignorance, is their defensive position. The previous administration's engagement policy wasn't derived in a vacuum, other countries in the area including our ally in South Korea were pursuing engagement as a way to bring about change there. It won the Cold War, after all (complemented with a serious arms race).

This administration abruptly cancelled the "sunshine policy" and unilaterally started invading countries on the list the RNC's all-talk bullshit arts major/mannequin laid out. If they were serious about exerting American will and bringing an end to the chicanery over in Korea, they would have made some changes to weaken NK's defensive position.

What would work? I don't think anything will be good for South Korea, it's not the same as German unification. That was painful enough. Help build a bigger wall on the border with China. Call the bluff with an embargo. Drop a million copies of the Wall Street Journal on Pyongyang. Best of all, a coherent international strategy unfettered by the financial considerations of the Vice President and other capitalist elites in the administration would have retained the credibility and cooperation of the world and not left us out of the loop, impotent and stretched very thin.

Our friends in South Korea, left stranded on the tip of the peninsula there, might want to spend a few months sailing. Japan will be forced into the uncomfortable position of bedding again with US forces at a time when Japanese public opinion shows they're tiring of the trouble with ( a very small minority of ) US Marines misbehaving with impunity on their soil. China is nervous about the collapse of a populous state on its border, but they'll figure that one out.

The immediate victims here are US allies, until someone gets one of these smallish nukes into North America. The world will point to Bush, who clearly doesn't give a crap about allies or international committments.

The real world is clearly an endorsement of the Democrats this fall. Their message has been consistent: Engage, lead the world.

2000

2006-10-10T07:18:00.000-05:00

Hi! I'm from the past- the '90's. Clinton was managing a thriving economy, despite the constant ankle-chewing he was getting from the party of social and sexual repression, childish angriness and unquestioned unity.

During that time, the RNC learned to dominate the political debate by buying- or rather being bought by the media. Hard to say, but not the real point.

Also during that time, the 'state' of Florida advanced the political career of another of its own, the homophobic cheerleader Foley.

But in Clinton's last year as President, at least one of their team was informed of his proclivity for young boys. Teenagers actually, he performed some unwelcome one-way email sex on some of the volunteers who carry the coffee, fetch the files and otherwise lubricate the wheels of government. Jim Kolbe found out in 2000. He told some of his RNC colleagues- not the police.

Then the present speaker and majority leader of the house found out, at least two years ago. Representative Foley has been an interesting Republican, member of a Pro-Choice RNC coalition. But his appointment and retention as co-chair of the committee charged with protecting children from exploitation means something serious:

Conspiracy by the Republican Party to commit acts of perverted and unwelcome sezual opportunism.

Write!

2006-10-06T07:51:00.000-05:00

Good morning!
(If you're going to read any of these posts, please keep in mind I have zero respect for several people mentioned here by name. I made an effort to change my tone a few months ago, but it's been hard to afford the time it takes to write.)

The bad guys are having a hard time hiding their badness (see John 3:20, below). The press is starting to cover it, smelling blood in the water. Democrats have been successful at letting them do their own damage, but now we have to swoop in, take the issue and run with it.

Now is the time to work the body (I fight- watch out for flying metaphor!), and as Carville says, time to work the ref. We're looking for a TKO, which is worth exactly as much as a KO, which is as good as a decision.

I think editors are biased against professional-looking letters and fruity language.
I know editors are interested in length, I'm sure they have two column inches to fill sometimes.

The above text is 97 words long. Try not to go over 200 words. Anything over 200 words has either too many ideas or too many words.

Pick a topic dear to you, and express yourself. "corruption in DC" is very broad. "War" is broad. Be specific, and tie it to local races and issues:

Senator Santorum leads the fight against the National Weather Service, favoring private enterprises. But private companies can't mobilize the National Guard or evacuate cities, which should have happened in DC when the National Weather Service started sounding the alarm about Katrina about a month before it hit land. Our Senator should not be guilty of helping President Bush wipe a black blue city off the map by carefully ignoring the warnings we know he heard. But he is guilty in the Katrina failure, so we are tainted by his false residency claim and psychotic behavior as Senator. Punish that asshole*!

Yours,
Joe

*I would encourage the use of less 'vivid imagery' in letters to the editor.

John 3: 20

2006-10-05T09:53:00.000-05:00

“For everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed” –John 3:20

I assume the Bush administration has already purged every desk under its influence of all but the loyalest loyalists in his sect of the RNC party, so the list of incendiary leaks coming to light from the Executive and various Legislative committees can only mean one thing for sure. I infer a second thing.

First, professionals and Americans left in government after DeLay (see Developmental DeLay, Sunday Mail.blogspot.com), et al, purged the Legislative branch and the Executive of all but the loyalest loyalists are more afraid of the evidence they promulgate than being branded unpatriotic and terrorist-loving by the Republican Party, presently the government’s HR department.

I think the leaks are better late than never, that they reflect positively on the press for forcing accountability on the zero-liability accountability president. My second thing, an inference: it’s likely much worse than we think. I don’t think we can trust any Executive- or Legislature- produced information generated in the past six years. Now they’re saying the NIE doesn’t say what it says.

Change Congress in November, so America can check the pockets of this administration when they leave DC. PA should lead this movement: Joe Pitts is a DeLay/Abramoff pocket-mate; Ricky Santorum speaks very well for a psychopath; the Inquirer reported Specter voted for a piece of legislation Specter himself calls “unconstitutional on its face”!!

Lynn Swann doesn’t deserve to be pilloried for being the current RNC strategy stooge, it’s a shame the PA Republicans weren’t allowed to have debates or a primary. But since they follow National RNC orders, we must assume he’s another carefully chosen incompetent or criminal this RNC leadership and this RNC administration and their automatons at the RNC US Congress have burdened our payroll with since 2001.

Vote for Houghton, Herr, Murphy, Casey. And demand a receipt; the RNC may have paid for the voting booth.

Geography Lesson

2006-08-30T08:14:00.000-05:00

Could you find Pakistan on a map?

Their nuclear border with Afghanistan runs to nuclear China. A line runs from Beirut through Syria, Iraq, nuclear Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan. From Morocco, we travel east along the southern coast of the Mediterranean through muslim Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia and Somalia. These states are all more 'islamofascist' than they were before BushCo, right across the vital oil route from Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

I'm not intersted in making the investment required to ensure safe passage of petroleum from there to China, so we should all prepare ourselves to compete for Canadian oil.

And we’re in a corner at the UN. Iran is persuading the world to their cause. John Bolton is an idiot. What's the price of oil going to be when Iran cuts production? Are we so grateful to China for the cheap DVD players? Are we ready to lose Indonesia to the dark side? South Korea appears to be justifiably turned off to us, since we’re impotent in nuclear North Korea.

English again

2006-08-30T08:12:00.000-05:00

Islamofascism. Brilliant word.
Problem:
The US is the party making demands and seeking extraterritorial influence, and thus BushCo seeks to be the appeased party. I agree we need to prevent a nuclear Iran, but I also know better than to trust our Executive's information. So when Santorum brings it up again remember he thinks US Treasury Bonds are worthless when it’s convenient.

These Republicans seek general war. It's the only reason they're so carefully pushing the Islamic dictatorships into the same corner with their enraged fanatic subjects. Nothing at the RNC happens by accident. We have to assume they’re succeeding- they get paid too much to be incompetent.

English

2006-08-30T07:27:00.000-05:00

Play pool? English is what you put on the cue ball to make it spin correctly. You can make the cue ball ride all the way around a ball to hit the target, which could be set to spinning too. Sometimes you have to. But the shot happens once and it's over. The game continues, but no two shots are identical.

So why does the Blame the Democrats First party consistently try to spin "Blame America First"? I think we've all made it pretty clear we blame the Republicans. The whole mob tries like crazy to spin the story around the big ball in their path.

"Redeploy" is another piece of English. This time, it's us Americans being polite. Republicans of every stripe (maybe there are Republicans with other than a white stripe down their backs) complain: "Why don't they say 'withdraw' or 'surrender'?" I think what we're saying is this:

"Thank you very much Mr. Bush, you've done a super job. But now it's time to stop screwing up everything you touch. Go back on vacation. You said it yourself: Mission Accomplished. It was hard to ignore, you rode in a plane, landed on a carrier in the Atlantic and strutted before a big banner that read 'Mission Accomplished.' Still we wage war, so I guess that's the mission. Afghanistan was easy, relevant and incomplete- and with no oil or strong allies it wasn't causing any global trouble. Permanent war is the mission. I understand. Go back to Texas so we can return to a leadership position in the world. Ousting you would give us back the moral authority you squandered ineffectively as poilitical capital."

But this wouldn't be the first time they didn't read the memo.

Thank you Stentor Santorum!

2006-08-29T06:46:00.000-05:00

(Stentor is a filter-feeding aquatic microorganism. It attaches itself to a piece of rot where the circulation of fresh water gives it plenty of fuel to sustain itself. Like Rickypoo, it is a bottom-feeder and its peers are slime.)

According to a giant billboard in Philadelphia, Ricky helped defeat Colo-Rectal Cancer. My aunt, a PA native has been living abroad for a while, in Texas and now Virginia. She got it anyway. But fact-based reality won't affect Ricky. Three important things should.

1) Instead of arguing about when to pull out of the RNC frat party in Iraq, they keep steering it back to 'whether'. That's unfortunate. As Ricky himself shrieks, Mahmoud Ahmedinijad speaks for Iran, which is a psycho. Let's sketch the 'When' discussion. Will we pull out of Iraq now, while it's a mess, or in ten years, when it's a mess? I'm asking because unlike Mahmoud, Iran's going to be there for a long time. And with 70% of the Iraq population, any increase in democracy swings power to Shiites. The only Shiite state in the world is our dear enemy Iran, which already holds more social sway there than we do. On behalf of Iran, let me thank Sentator Santoru, Reps Joe Pitts and Gerlach for doing their part on behalf of the people of PA to ensure they have smooth roads, running water and stable electricity when the Ayatollas come to take possession of the second-biggest oil reserve we've also taken the trouble of plumbing for them. That's one thing that should matter to ol' Rickypoo, but it's beyond him.

2) I heard it first from President Bush, but Ricky repeated it passionately at the PA Press Club: Those IOUs in a file drawer in Virginia (he should know) are worthless. The IOUs are actually US Treasury Bonds, for decades the most stable investment in the world. They are what Social Security owns. They are what the Chinese government buys when they bankroll the small-government party's voracious pork diet. Before Bush, government jobs were pretty good, but now it's the only way for Bush to hide unemployment: Hire people to work for the government. Sure, right now there are relatively few informants and secret police. But as we've known all along, open markets change society. And we're taking so much from China it's only a matter of time. Either we learn to speak Chinese, or we'll end up having to repay some of the worthless IOUs in the file drawer. Debt matters, China matters, and the government's role in the economy matters to me and other Pennsylvanians, but with his US-Government pension, he's beyond worry.

3) Investigations probably do matter to Rickypoo. We built an infrastructure in Iraq, but not in Afghanistan where Bin Laden's gang lived and trained. With no oil revenues ever, they have no exports or indigenous industry and actually needed the help. We accomplished our Iraq mission, according to the President several years ago, but still we wage war. Is that the mission? Santorum, Gerlach and Pitts are going to have to explain where the money went when 'Fuckoff' Dickie's ol' boys got the Iraq job and stole billions of dollars from the Treasury they all mean to drain. Hurricane Katrina wandered slowly north from the tropics, and the Republican FEMA (Financing Exotic Millionaire Acreage) did nothing to help these blue black states. Terry Schiavo was headed for peace, and the entire government showed up and worked late to write laws against natural death.

Politics is about priorities. Ricky and his childish dimwit friends in the RNC have prioritized lionizing Iran, turning Korea into a bogeyman we are powerless to affect, pouring the country's current and future treasure into vanity wars, strengthening communist regimes, expanding the size while diminishing the strength of government and throwing money around like it's theirs over improving the conditions for freedom and prosperity in their home states. And now Iran is stronger, Korea more desparate. China and Cuba are no longer the only remaining Red states. They're screwing up the whole world.

Give that funny-head slanted grinner a retarded test.

3-way with Ricky Santorum?

2006-08-24T07:12:00.000-05:00

I'm interested in the rebirth of Ricky. Normal Catholics aren't reborn, but this one has to (tack left) appear more moderate now, good with the environment, pragmatic in his approach to sucking George Bush's dick. I guess sometimes he doesn't finish, and that's when Georgie gets frustrated and looks for less high-profile Americans to fuck in the ass.

But I can't forget Ricky's eloquent arguments against privacy as a Constitutional protection on the Senate floor. Equating homosezuality with bestiality seems a bit fucking loopy. And his book calls for an end to women in the workplace. Press materials for that book said he knew it was extrmee, but he had to be honest. And when he drives home from Washington, he goes south to Virginia. Like he actually drives. So he's what- extremely moderate? He can live in Virginia, represent Texas, and get paid in PA?

Now get this: Ricky recently endorsed an approach to generating stem cells he's comfortable with destroying in research. All you have to do is create a modified human! If it's not quite hunman, he won't mind. But a real human like Terry Schiavo has no right to die. Mortality will be a crime, and cyber-geno-manic stem-cell parts cars are part of his plan? A second class of humans, and of course a master race?

As the #3 man (could #2 smell worse?) in the RNC, Ricky IS the Republican Party, and he IS responsible for ruining 50 years of progressive movement in government, he IS part and parcel with the K Street/Abramoff/DeLay/Ney/Ralph Reed dung heap running our country, the proxies of Texas maniacs.

These RNC feds botched Katrina, right? After Ricky's skillful appointment of incompetents, we can't ignore Ricky's earlier calls to disband the National Weather Service (Which accurately and adequately raised flags during Katrina's approach) because the Weather Channel can do the same thing for profit. Bush was told about it to his face, and we have it on video. It was hard to ignore, but Ricky, Georgie and the rest of the frat pack rose to the occasion. Watching it on TWC would have helped how?

Now he's trying to reverse himself symbolically to rebrand as suitable for high office. Just forget everything he's said, done, participated in, where he lives or who he breaks bread with.

Letters to Editors

2006-07-27T07:39:00.000-05:00

I read Newsweek once in a while, and I've been reading the letters in our newspaper. I'm surprised at the lack of depth in some of the would-be reflective souls producing these letters.

For example, in last week's Newsweek a Republican (They usually say "I'm a Republican but...") wrote about how green his party is. Was. Teddy Roosevelt was green enough to turn vast tracts of the US into parkland for us to preserve and enjoy. Now they're building condos on those parks. Republicans are, because they're the ones benefitting from the real estate 'boom'. Banks, financiers, big machine dealers, lumber cutters and DuPont (that wrappy stuff around your house under the siding).

And what was going on when Nixon signed the Clean Water and Clean Air acts? This Republican hero had no real political power, his government was controlled by Democrats who wrote the bills and passed them.

The delusionists on the other side have a lot of reconciling to do. They're so bad they're even betraying the Nixon legacy by putting bullets in his Clean Air Act.

Nice letter from Santorum

2006-07-13T08:02:00.000-05:00

"Thank you for emailing me. I have detected, however, that your email message was not submitted through my website. Therefore, I am unable to process your email request. Please go to www.santorum.senate.gov and click on the "contact information" link and then select "Email Senator Santorum" at the bottom of the page. If you need further assistance, please feel free to contact my office at: 511 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510

Telephone: 202-224-6324

Thank you again for contacting me."

SenatorSantorum@santorum.senate.gov

Lynn and Rudy on a raft out of town

2006-07-13T07:44:00.000-05:00

Today's paper described a fundraiser in King of Prussia (where nobody lives) featuring America's mayor Giuliani stumping for Lynn Swann in the PA governor's race.

A quote: "somebody new...what we need in America right now."
Another quote: "When things aren't working, we need to bring in new people."

I agree we need a new president, the current one is too stupid and crooked, lacking character so acutely it's astonishing he got to where he is with sheer avarice.

But another telling line from the mayor: Lynn's candidacy helps to build the party."

Das Party. Again with building the party, again with ignoring the STATE of PA.

The Republican Party is about government failing people, and they have been successful elsewhere. We can't let them achieve defeat here.

I consider Swann the perfect candidate for the RNC: No experience, some name recognition, educated with the RNC three-week "How-to-campaign" course, briefed with the Cliffs' Notes, and bankrolled from out of state.

No Lynn Swann, and now Rudy Giuliani can go fuck himself.

Liars and tigers and Republicans- oh my!

2006-07-11T09:25:00.000-05:00

Interest anybody that we've gone through at least 50 years without hearing about any forged documents, but when BushII came to town we got false AWOL documents to prop up his image and fake spy docs indicating phony nuke sales to Saddam?

And now, the informants! Informants are everywhere. We're the police state we won the cold war fighting against.

Keep voting for Republican candidates, who can't govern. Vote for them despite their committment to undermining government. That's how you get your armageddon. It's a fantasy until you whip the unprincipled and untalented popularity merchants on the hill (pick a hill) into a stupid frenzy and they start firing missiles everywhere.

And because Bush's team seems to be ignoring the North Korean missile tests, assume it's important.

Swann? Lynn Swann? Really?

2006-06-30T09:37:00.000-05:00

That PA Republicans had neither debates nor a real primary, looking to their Texas bosses instead of Pennsylvanians to choose their candidate for governor is more offensive than presenting a collecibles-peddling former celebrity as a reasonable choice. No company should consider an entry-level candidate for their executive position, even if he is famous in Pittsburgh.
The RNC is calling us stupid. PA Republicans are being asked to help them execute their plan to diminish government through careful promotion of incompetence and meticulous disregard for common good.

Joe Matthews

GOP Liar Coward Pansies

2006-03-09T08:34:00.000-05:00

I apologize to any honest, pious pansies offended by this post. You are not included in this slur.)

Are you a Republican? An Eisenhower Republican or an Eisner Republican? Living in modern USA or Post-modern Hometown, Disney? Are you distracted by your crooked down-south business dealings and social Cleansing, or did you help the whole world win a just war and caution your countrymen about the amoral overthrow of your government by business politics? Do you support cynical and unamerican behavior at home, or only as part of your foreign policy?

Newsweek got some bad info and riots killed dozens.

GOP lied and Iraq II killed thousands of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis.

Newsweek apologized.

That's why we're in such a state. The personal responsibility party is also the zero-liability party. If nothing else, TORT reform is certainly carte blanche for somebody. Not you, but somebody must want it. Imagine suing someone who cuts off the wrong hand. Now imagine having no recourse at all.

Lying, evasive, cowardly, weak, pale, idolatrous, impious, pansy Republicans. That's who wants tort reform.

(Republicans don't understand the world of today due in part to their platform of stoic adherence to ignorance of the world as is happens. We just went back in time to speak the language of Das Good-Ol' Party in calling them names likely to anger them most. My parents were among the first to grow up with television, and almost nobody in national government is a Veteran- though almost everybody in the country is a baby-boom kid from the same cohort. In the 1950s, when their social utopia was realized-- if only on television, 'sissy' and 'pansy' were much worse than 'fag', which apparently didn't exist in the Republican-spun Golden Age of Nixon. I apologize to any honest, pious pansies offended by this post. You are not included in this slur.)

Republican National Committee

2006-02-28T10:23:00.000-05:00

markets itself as a non-profit, just like Tom DeLay's charities, Rick Santorum's charities, UNICEF and Habitat for Humanity. But there's an important difference.

Although anyone has a right to ask their representatives to support or fight a piece of legislation, those RNC assholes pay themselves to lobby themselves.

Lobbyist organizations like Abramoff's, Ralph Reed's, Santorum's, Pat Robertson's, etc. really ought to pay taxes to support their right to exercise rights in a free country, where everything's free only if you don't pay for it.

So the RNC sent me a nonprofit postage-paid voter registration form with Smirky G on the front. Some banners:
"Winning the War on Terror", although we've had to admit terrorist incidents have risen drastically under Bush and since Iraq.
"Securing our Borders" by granting Dubai-based shipping company access to our territory.
"Growing our Economy" by swelling mortgages and credit debt, transferring resources free-of-charge to profitable companies like Exxon.
"Restraining Government Spending" on some things like help for people or quality of lives, but in the aggregate spending more than anyone in history.

It goes on to cite record-low unemployment, meaning it's good to lose your job and take two to replace your salary. Obligations don't go away, especially since they've changed bankruptcy law from the easy pass it was when GWB got his.
Disingenuous, the count isn't based on hired people, just people no longer looking for work.

MoveOn and PFAW solicit input from Americans from time to time. WHat should they do to help save the democracy? Attack. Perhaps the most serious issue in the 2006 elections should be the lies, theft and ulterior motivation of the ruling party and its membership, who clearly must profit.

Not-for-profit my ass!

(I deliberately renamed Ralph Reed as Rex a few years ago, intending to merge the two identities: The useless, effeminate and somehow slightly popular Rex is a movie critic. Ralph is the useful, effeminate tool of the Armageddonist anti-Free Nazi Party of Faith, with illegal fraud money income, lobbyist cash, more access to your representatives than you, and probably a slightly sore asshole from the time he 'tried it' in college.)

Those wacky oil prices and ports

2006-02-27T15:40:00.000-05:00

When Oil hit a record $58/barrel, I stopped driving. I have a diesel automobile. It weighs thousands of pounds, and still gets better mileage than an SUV.

I stopped driving because, as a representative of Bush's jobless 'recovery (recovering from unprecedented plenty and prosperity)', I started my own business doing what I know how to do. And my family needs me to make good decisions. Like not paying $3/gallon for fuel or invading a country because I'm an asshole. Even though I'm an asshole, I won't invade your country without a reason, without a plan.

That's what happened that day. Fuel shot up in price to $3/gallon. Gasoline went up first, but then leveled off a little lower than diesel. Diesel fuel seems like simple unrefined petroleum to me. Certainly costs less to make. But $3. Overnight!

Now oil fetches a groovy $68/barrel, and the price of diesel in my market is back down to $2.65. Not a big deal, but certainly doesn't reflect economics.

How did the fuel companies make the record profits last year, even given the surge in raw material costs? I drove less. So did you. Demand went DOWN. Prices went up. A lot. I remember a cozy $1.25/gallon Clinton price. But when the world heard of the disputed US election in 2000 and foreign investment slowed, US operations of foreign companies like every drug maker on earth stopped research projects. And the oil companies represented by our President and his Men made big bucks.

It couldn't have been all the free real estate and mining rights passed out by the Republicans in government, that happened after all the bucks.

Perhaps there's an election dividend at work. They got their money, they're getting about the same per gallon, but it's a symbolic suspension of the raw rules of supply and demand working to keep our high fuel prices lowish while the Republicans run for cover under the smoke provided by the now-successful quagmire in Iraq and the kind blown up asses by the liberal media.

We're from Texas: You OWE Us!

2006-02-27T14:55:00.000-05:00

Perfect, huh? It sounds so right. It agrees with everything we've seen for the past 5 years. Look out America, here comes Texas.

Texas, where the ubercrooked Tom (Developmental) DeLay used laundered money to create extra Congressional seats for the Texas delegation. Texas, home of lots of dirty Abramoff swindles and even the 'holy' Rex Reed's dirty fingerprints. Texas, where Jesus is in charge, and Satan leads the charge.

What am I talking about? This morning on CNN, I watched some footage of the previous night's Mardi Gras festivities, replete with a filthy Texas family carrying a sign in struggling New Orleans:
We're from Texas.
You OWE Us!

Anthemic, right? The Great Satan itself, descending upon us all in the guise of a state where most of the church-going happens, none of the forebearance and free charity.

I hereby invite Texas to secede from the Union. We get most of our oil from Canada, and most of our hairspray harlots, Sunday-school sluts, birdie-hunting empty-headed he-men and way, way too much talk.

Oops- forgot to mention the poseur Bush. Mr. Connecticut.

We owe them nothing but the back of our hand. Fuck Texas and the assholes it rode in on.

I want to be a Republican

2006-01-26T09:55:00.000-05:00

Yes, I wish I were a Republican. It's got to be easy- the answers are all so easy-sounding, especially when we don't have to resolve them with the world around us.

I wish I could support turning over Republican House Ethics to the Republican Executive Branch's Justice Department. That would be great.

I wish I could tear out a few lines of the Constitution, to better enable the Government to protect what's left.

I wish I were able to plausibly deny on television what I can't simply avoid talking about.

I wish I could revel in my psychotic anti-community paranoia, expecting the psychotic neighbors to also be Republican and therefore supportive of my psychotic anti-communityism.

I wish I could say with a straight face that torture, deceit, graft and downright theft are okay, as long as it's a politician and not ever a free individual. In fact, I wish I could hope the government would database us all and round up the diseentors so we could be truly free to eat each other's throats in peace, albeit conflict.

One thing and its opposite are friends of mine. I believe them both, but only enough to say so. I really have no heart or mind. Oops- I'm already a Republican! Nooooooo!

Oh boy, here we are again still.

2006-01-25T09:23:00.000-05:00

This is it. I'm coming back. We stopped posting when the spammer idiot pansies contaminated the blog with their simpleminded alternative to work.

I'm posting this small thing now to ping the thing that causes them to come. Then I will act to prevent it. Comments will be moderated if I can swing it, and if I can't we'll go offsite, to:

http://www.SundayMail.org

If you're articulate, angry about the campaign of ignorance, fear and failure the 'conservative' bowel movement is trying to enforce as the status quo, I invite you to contact me about participating. We'll schedule events, promote candidates, and we'll be sure to stuff a thumb into the eye socket of anyone who stares at the TV too long, sucking up all the garbage spewed by O'Really?, Faggity and the rest of the know-nothing parrots. Remember, they're TV stars in TV shows.

That's enough for now.

Wish me luck,
Joe

PS- if we can get some donations together we'll get a host.

Pat Robertson is my favorite

2005-11-17T08:11:00.001-05:00

So what does he say?

I mean, when the millions of peasants picking through the rubble of his beloved tornado-infested midwest ask why God keeps punishing them with natural disasters, what does this fuckheaded tax-dodger charlatan lie to them about, besides the sins of others bringing God's traditionally irrelevant wrath upon the red-state faithful?

Maybe he tells them to go assasinate foreing authorities. Like Chavez.

When he tells me Dover, PA deserves natural disasters for electing to teach science in science class and refusing to admit social engineering nonsense into the math and science curriculum, I say he deserves a 50-year back-tax bill for his insanely profitable charlatanry.

Fuck Pat Robertson. He needs to be lobotomized and deported. To Sodom. Where Pat Robertson should be fucked in the ass until he dies. And he should be kept alive by science so he can be fucked in the ass for a few extra years.

And the empty-headed silly, misguided fools posting spam to my blog should be in charge of licking up the effluent.

Pat Robertson is my favorite

2005-11-17T08:11:00.000-05:00

Howard Stern is a Bastard

2005-10-31T08:21:00.000-05:00

I've been pissed off about the theft of our airwaves, having been forever swapped for some beads and a stinky blanket from Australia. Not even a Mexican blanket.

So I've been looking forward to life after Howard Stern. I first heard him in ~1985 or 1986. It was as if I got into a party at the young neighbors' house, with my parents and all their friends actually having a conversation. And joking- people were laughing about stuff. And they were being silly the way my uncle was silly sometimes. A daily shot of the rare honest moment in company. You may have heard he's leaving FM radio.

I resent the notion I ought to pay to be on an advertising drip. Like we're in the nursing home, every one of us with a media outlet receiver is paying a tax and a monthly fee to lie in our filth and watch the contrived lives of others. I like a good sitcom, but since I don't watch Fox I can't watch the only good one. Don't remind me about cartoons. Since Fox owns a piece of the filthy Family Guy, I might not really be able to watch that. Waiting for a sign on that one.

But now there's satellite. And Stern's going. And he said there's a weekly serial Fartman coming. And I feel comfortable he and his writing staff are still sufficiently insulated from taste, but with a better pool of idiots. And I needed a new radio anyway.

Bastard.

Oxford, PA Council Members for Retirement

2005-10-25T08:02:00.000-05:00

Per Open Secrets.Org, here is a sitting council member from my home town of Oxford:

WARE, JOHN H MR IV
OXFORD,PA 19363
RETIRED
1/13/2005
$2,000
Republican National Cmte

In Shreveport, LA, a Norman Kinsey has about $30K in to the thugs, with a wad coming from each company he 'works'.

We have a month to put these RNC pinheads out of 'work'.

Joe

George Will

2005-10-24T10:56:00.000-05:00

For a long time, I've listened to Mr. Will, helf the time calling him an asshole. We won't agree on everything, but in principle I have to say I understand him. And that he's right better than half the time.

Now I'm at a loss. He said anyone supporting the Miers nomination to the Supreme Court is not Presidential material. I agree, and am surprised to hear Mr. Will supporting the argument I've been making all along: Bush is not presidential material.

Thanks George,
Joe

Below C Level

2005-10-06T10:53:00.000-05:00

The infra-achieving President of the United States has brough mediocrity to a new low. With no standards for appointments whatsoever, he's relying simply on the carte blanche he's given by the GOP in the Congress to get his evil plans done.

And now he's appointing some fucking miscellaneous lawyer to the Supreme Court of the United States. It's no longer disinterest, his attitude has achieved obvious contempt.

After turning our fine nation into a Keystone Cops farce by sending the populations of several cities to the bottom of the ocean, and then several hundred miles north, then back, and then back north again, sending perishable trucked ice arriving in New Orleans to Maine for storage in a GOP-donor freezer (Americold or some shit), blowing thousands of gallons of now-precious fuel to keep the ice cold for the trip, after letting his asshole buddy Brownie stand up and blame others for his ignorant non-serious approach to sucking cash from the US public for whom the GOP has a nasty sanchez, it's time for us to blame ourselves for letting you vote for that piece of shit.

Coming soon: Pilleggi and Hershey voted for the ill-conceived PA government pay raise, and they have to be fired for it.

Joe

For the want of a nail

2005-09-29T11:16:00.000-05:00

Two new nails in the coffin of our democracy are being driven right now by the Republican government. At stake is the independence of the states, and the freedom of individuals. The important question is this: Do we exist to support the state, or does the state exist to guarantee freedom and justice to individuals?

Pace Comitatus means the central government can't enforce its will in local law enforcement. It means the US government can't go to Boston to arrest people guilty of being gay and married.

DNA Database compulsory on arrest violates the fifth amendment's protection against compulsory testimony on behalf of the state, and violates the fourth amendment's prohibition of unreasonable search and siezure. But this time the item being siezed is the essence of the person being searched.

Strict construction my ass! WHich one of you assholes is voting Republican next time?

How to improve a fuel economy

2005-09-26T13:43:00.000-05:00

A petroleum economy rapidly nearing cataplexy, the United States was last week the scene of a terrible scam. The government found a use for all those black people: Tell them that everyone along the gulf coast has to drive a hundred miles north.

At $4/gallon.

And maybe drive back (You'll have to rent a space to stay while you mop out the new swimming pool where your basement, heater, water heater, winter clothes, tools, packed-up memorobilia used to be. Now all that stuff is a blob. It would have taken about three days to pack it all up and ship it to your brother's house in New York for a few weeks. And it took weeks to arrive.) if the evacuation order is lifted. Can you stay in the city overnight? Luckily, everyone in Louisiana has one of those swamp boats, so you can still commute.

Guess 1 million trucks averaging 20 mpg. That's 5,000,000 gallons, about $20,000,000. And that's 5,000,000 gallons off the top of our national reserve. And back south makes 10,000,000 gallons.

Clinton would have had airlifts assembling DURING the storm.

But seriously, the Hurricanes

2005-09-26T13:41:00.000-05:00

I was in New Orleans once, and it was around 2pm on a Tuesday. I was, oddly, the only one walking around without my very own hurricane. Everyone around me was steeped in the local lore, everybody knows the berms are there to keep reality out.

And we're going to rebuild it on its foundation. Under sea level. Because George Bush is in charge and nothing matters. Decisions are being made by political appointees with less success in their backgrounds than even the failure W.

Old-time religion, modernity, and sea level

2005-09-26T13:38:00.000-05:00

Wow, can you imagine what it would have been like a hundred years ago, before doppler radar, satellite tracking and a National Hurricane Center? If a category 4 hurricane would have hit New Orleans, at the mouth of the Mississippi River?

For some reason, it would have been about the same, only with less damage, because George Bush is in charge and he is an asshole and his followers are unprepared, ill-thought out idiots.

One more today: The Accountability President

2005-09-09T12:08:00.000-05:00

"One report was due April 1. The other was due in early summer. Neither report has been done," he said. Homeland Security officials were not immediately available to comment.

http://go.reuters.com/printerFriendlyPopup.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=9601266

That was Tom Kean, Republican from NJ, former chair of the 9/11 panel, talking about the HS reports the HS president has so far failed to display, because his minions have failed to product them.

Talk about an arrogant p Rick!

2005-09-09T12:03:00.000-05:00

He's too important to be approached except under the prescribed methods.
Got this email from Santorum's office:

Thank you for emailing me. I have detected, however, that your email message was not submitted through my website. Therefore, I am unable to process your email request. Please go to www.santorum.senate.gov and click on the "contact information" link and then select "Email Senator Santorum" at the bottom of the page. If you need further assistance, please feel free to contact my office at: 511 Dirksen Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510

Telephone: 202-224-6324

Thank you again for contacting me.

I looked at this 'poll' he has posted there, a finger in the wind:

Do you support a reasonable increase to minimum wage?

Yes:
45.3%
No:
54.7%

45827 total votes

Investigation, Please

2005-09-09T11:40:00.000-05:00

Subject: Someone, please tell us what the government has been doing
Body: When the Bush gang defended themselves against accusations they ignored intelligence and that's why four airliners were hijacked on the morning of 9/11, there was something to it. Even though nobody could actually remember reading the memo called "Osama Bin Laden is goint to Hijack Planes and Fly Them into Things in the US," it was one memo and there are probably dozens of planes and targets in the US. It was nobody else's responsibility, but the President is very busy, in September of 2001 coming back from his month vacation by way of some campaign stops.
But this time, a storm the size of the Caribbean Sea hit three states, wiping a city off the map. It took weeks to get to the coast. I saw it every day on the weather channel. We knew to the minute when to expect landfall. And we've known a long time New Orleans is a death trap. So there was plenty of intelligence available, though maybe not in Crawford.

The President and everyone he knows knew the inlet to our country's fuel supply was right there. The Energy President certainly knew about the pipelines and tankers. The Senate knows this. Congress might even know.

In pre-election 2004 disaster money got to Florida BEFORE the hurricanes. How can we have an entire government- hundreds of professional public servants and their thousands of staff, let the manpower and defenses of this domestic territory be so misapplied? Why wasn't the National Guard mobilized? Why are they in Iraq taking care of Bush's other refugees?

I want an investigation of the Federal Government's response, and an audit of their responsibilites versus their activities over the past ten years, since the Republican Party hijacked our government. And I don't trust the Republican Party to take part in it.

Do we even know whether we understand how bad our condition may actually be? Eight trillion dollars. $8,000,000,000,000 dollars is the federal deficit. Can we trust their numbers? We certainly can't trust their words.

Joe Matthews

The Energy President

2005-09-09T11:13:00.000-05:00

Seriously: The Energy President. That's how they billed his candidacy. The first Harvard MBA business executive, coming to execute some brass-tacks business and get this country moving again!

But the price of everything is about double what it was under Clinton. The Obscene Surplus under Clinton's fiscal authority has become nearly $8,000,000,000,000 in Obscene Deficit. The military hawk has failed for almost an entire term to complete a mission in Iraq, and persists in failing to capture or kill Osama bin Laden. And oil now trades at $70 a barrel- it was around $20 for most of my life. An Enronergy Bill got passed: overspent Bush's goal, failed to change anything but the rules for building a nuclear reactor (=stationary BOMB), rewarded the oil industry with an extra $1,000,000,000 in gifts to help them find oil so they can continue to rake in record margins. And I bet that since no one at Enron went to jail, they're right now trading petroleum futures. After they and Anderson bankrolled Bush's 2000 campaign.

And he's a war hawk. Real Defense type. Except his typical failure in the national security arena has spread to our energy security by doing nothing to protect the ports or pipelines.

And now that the hurricane has landed, and the president has no one to blame for it, expect the GOP appointees at the turnstiles to start spending money to make the problem prettier. Lipstick on a Pig.

So when will Cheney have the Obscene Hubris to sell us out again to Halliburton with a no-bid rebuilding contract?

Letter to our Government

2005-09-09T11:09:00.000-05:00

I believe you've been pushing an agenda we're starting to see expressed in the calamitous poor response to Katrina. We're unrepresented. The minimalist approach to government works well when its inspiration is an interest in privacy and independent citizens. And the principle of taxing the fruit of American Opportunity is protective of the right to property.
But when it's used to redistribute our nation's wealth upward from lower to higher economic classes, the government simply turns the anti-altruistic Conservative peeve with taxation into a machine to install a new and opressive class system.

Other than that, I agree with PFAW's letter:

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina it is clear that Congress needs to take seriously the role of the federal government in meeting the needs of its people. I am urging you as my representative in Washington to:

1. Fund the health care, housing, nutrition, employment and education needs of the victims of Hurricane Katrina;

2. abandon all plans to extend or grant additional tax breaks to wealthy individuals and corporations; and

3. abandon the budget reconciliation plan to cut health care and nutrition programs for low-income families.

Yuck

2005-09-07T09:37:00.000-05:00

Is anybody besides me nauseated at the Stalinist ceremonial protocol of doom thing they have going on down there, with Roberts carrying the coffin of Rehnquist?

A Pallbearer.

Yuck.

Bush, Florida, and the Republican Failure Machine

2005-09-07T07:34:00.000-05:00

Well, at least they did nothing. Everything else they've touched has gone to hell.

This link takes you to an article written about our corporate Federal Government, and the way they look at doing their jobs: gather up all the talented, trained people they can find and ship them a thousand miles to train in a hotel banquet room in Atlanta for rescue work they'll complete In Louisiana and Alabama with colorful brochures and a Toll-Free Number you can call. The appointees here are stupid. The maniacs are running the circus. They have no phones. They have no water. (800) Call-FEMA: Your wait time is ...
...Press 8 if you fear your child's fever and diarrhea may be life-threatening, please consult your pediatrician when you GET THE FREAKIN' PHONES TURNED BACK ON.

http://www.perrspectives.com/blog/archives/000246.htm

I hope nothing serious happens in the domestic US requiring some manpower and skill until someone more responsible is president, and until the regime shows something different from the aggressive disregard this one has for us.

Our country has been run for over 20 years by leaders with contempt for government. They've slashed it, shrunk it, gotten rid of paperwork in it. But not until Bush came in with his retarded perspective on his perspective did they actually swell its ranks, maybe in part to absorb the ranks of the disenfranchised & outsourced. And the brochures and interagency falderal. Ineptitude at every level but electioneering, where the real skills are bending the rules, or breaking them under so many moving parts none can be seen as the casus belli. What happened to Valerie Plame?

How much money and free stuff have gone to Bush family members, companies and other non-citizen entities? What did you get? Easier wiretaps and narrower election rights. Protection for Cyanide and Mercury. Easier approval for nuke plants in your neighborhood, less property rights, and oh yeah- Nuclear Waste Cans on wheels bound for Yucca.

It's okay to be a Republican. Just stop doing all this evil bullshit until a purge can get your evil brood away from the tap. Just like, as Santorum says, "It's okay to be a gay, just no good to act like one."

Rick Santorum

2005-08-26T09:12:00.000-05:00

Rick Santorum might not be the biggest asshole on Capital Hill, but he is the only pure asshole on the Hill from Pennsylvania. I think Specter wants to do his part to make the world a better place, and wants to faithfully represent us Pennsylvanians.

And he might not be the biggest asshole on the Hill, but he wants to be. And he'll do or say whatever he has to for his wingnut party to elevate him to that position.

At last, there's a web site dedicated to outing him. You can't hold all his positions and remain rational. You can't hold all his positions and accept American Plurality. My German friend complained to me that the US is always waving the flag and shouting "USA!", but when a German expresses national pride, he is admonished. I explained that anyone can be an American. It's a universal term. Come here, be yourself, and 'poof!' you're American. I went on to remind him that the German state caused a bit of a hassle for the non-Germans by their chosen form of expression for their national pride. See, they wanted marginalization, even extermination for all non-aryans, non-heterosexuals and non-utilitarian artists. Hey- just like Rick!

I've believed for a long time that the people who express opinions like Ricky don't hold them. They express them for political gain. People care more when they're given a side to fight against than when they fight for something. Like liberty, justice and American plurality. That's what's made us the fine country we are: Pluralism.

Santorum, you fuckhead, here's a link to a site all about you and your gorgeous, immense, screwy head:
http://www.santorumexposed.com/

Things going badly

2005-08-24T10:19:00.000-05:00

Our President, and most of government thank you very much, relies on your ignorance and lack of sophistication to further his goals. Always mentioning unrelated items together, always tacking hard to the extremes while dismissing critics, he simply has to be ignored now. We don't get anything from him or his people. I've said it before, the only information we get from this administration comes in the form of Lies.

Bush daftly reduces the arguments against his hog-fest in Iraq to 0 vs 1. A complete and immediate withdrawal or endlessly hosing US money and blood down the gullet of US companies floating on their bloated bellies in the Caribbean. He thinks you're an idiot. His spin machine claimed a week of victories as Congress lifted our wallets as they rushed out the door to vacation on the dole, even though every vote exceeded or fell short of his dictats.

Oh- unrelated War in Iraq juxtaposes nicely with War on Terror, because it is assumed you interpret those both to mean "War on the Towelhead Motherfuckers". Of course there's a difference: The War In Iraq ended over a year ago, and the War on Terror isn't a real war (with objectives and maps and stuff). Bush has no plan but domestic stalemate, which is all a war against an -ism can be. But we got up and left after the middle of the real war we had in Afghanistan- oh, and it's still going. And we still have troops there. Spinning wheels.

What would happen to our international position if we withdrew 100% by next Tuesday? Nothing bad, except we wouldn't have room for all the returning soldiers. Bases closing, VA hospitals shrinking, no jobs. The contractors would come home and go on unemployment, assuming Halliburton et al pay into the UC system. The real danger is what would happen domestically if 200,000 people came home with no jobs outside Homeland Security. Bush the CEO knows that we will look weaker on paper when our annual report is published if we bring all those folks home. His refusal to pick a goal and place it on a calendar has more to do with padding our bond value than anything else. You simply can't believe what he says, so you have to look for the truth in the unpublished back story.

SO: what to do in Iraq? Shouldn't be doing anything anywhere near Iraq at this point. What's going on there anyway? Spinning wheels: Spin the Wheel of IED's- whose number gonna come up?

Remember Afghanistan? An election doesn't a democracy make. A Constitution in Iraq won't come but by dictation from over here. Sunnis want a Sunni/Baath state. Shiites want Sharia. Kurds want Kurdistan. Irreconcilable. So as a parting gift, Bush is putting another hole in the NATO boat by fomenting Civil War in Iraq. Syria and Turkey can't have domestic separatists looking over the border at a free Kurdistan, but that's what we'll force them to do.

How much more permanent damage are we going to tolerate from this chump and his glutton horde? I say screw Iraq. Get the hell out. Stop killing our young people, Mr. Bush, and stop taking our money, Mr. Cheney. Stop lying, Mr. Wolfowitz. Stop pretending to work Mrs. Rice. Stop picking fights, shorty Rumsfeld. I want a stalemate. Lame duck begins now. No on Roberts. No on everything this asshole wants, and no on everything his supporters dream they want.

A bipartisan resolution in Congress, the Homeward Bound Act (H.J. Res. 55), calls for a plan in Iraq with a timeline. We need to increase the number of co-sponsors before Congress returns in September. Please call Rep. Pitts today and ask him to sign on.

Congressman Joseph Pitts Phone: 202-225-2411

fdaFDA Approval is Meaningless

2005-08-20T07:33:00.000-05:00

Politicians, drug salesman and stockholders are always bitching about jury awards and trying to limit patients' rights to sue companies for killing them. The recent Vioxx verdict will be used as an example on FOX for a few months, to show how out-of-control juries are.

I agree that juries are made up of dumber people than we want to find. They know nothing about the case they're given to decide, which in the case of drugs and health is unforgivable. I heard one of the jury members say, "It looked like Merck tried to do the best they could, until the memos surfaced about tweaking the studies." The defense attorney said "Look- this is an FDA-approved drug!"

But in order to grant FDA approval, the FDA only requires the company to provide data to justify it. Lots of data. Lots of studies. To win FDA approval, Merck held some studies in the dark. Kept them quiet. Like the studies that showed increased suicide in antidepressant trials. And since the drug companies are the only parties to the drug sale represented in the Cabinet, the Congress and the lobbies, they can and do.

The ChiIndy Sheehan Thing

2005-08-19T06:31:00.000-05:00

MoveOn sent an email this morning about the vigils around the country. We're all with her, right? But let's be clear about something:
A trip to Iraq is not a death sentence. There are a lot of our people over there. I guess we can't count the mercenaries/contractors. Only some are dead.

The personal notes in the email suggested horrible fears that loved ones slated to go away for a while will come to bodily harm. But of course they will! They're in the military, which gets involved with bodily harm as a workplace likelihood.

It's important that we look for a positive ingredient in this shit soup, if only to do a better job than the administration in honoring the fallen and maimed. Bush wants them coming home in the dark so no one notices. I want us all to think about them, and never forget the way life changes for someone when the shrapnel from an IED costs a leg, arm or penis. Life-changing. Like when Bush stopped snorting coke and falling down drunk to be a Jesus freak working for Armageddon.

I think you should remember the part of protest that transcends your personal situation and interest: This is a waste of your loved ones' time and misappropriation of their talent in addition to a hasty risk of their life, limbs, independence. Not because it's a money-making diversion to liberate Iraq, or because it has no bearing on our security, or even because the whole fiasco was built on a lie. It's a waste of time because our spoiled and indolent leadership, indifferent to our interests and above the fray, only visit us on TV from time to time to pat each other on the back, reinforce our fears, and change the subject from their lack of a plan (NOW DOCUMENTED: They knew they had insufficient planning!) and lack of a goal and lack of a reason and lack of talent. Their distraction in Iraq diverts valuable assets from our real offensive projects to the prosecution of the war, which ended over a year ago when the President landed on the aircraft carrier in his Buck Rogers pajamas.

He went us there because he could. He saw an opportunity, although it had to be spelled out in decades of Neocon writing. Politics is the art of the possible, and Bush had the domestic political capital to get away with it. The GOP will spin responsibility away from themselves, but his friends are getting filthy rich, just like his buddies at Enron did when they figured out a scam. But if Enron had Halliburton and the other military contractors subcontracted, California would be their property today.

Iraq: only a few thousand miles away from our enemies in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea... Canada.

The Separation of State and State. Wha?

2005-08-18T08:57:00.000-05:00

1) Here's a link. Thanks Rich. It fits into the thing I wanted to write today:
http://www.unbossed.com/index.php?itemid=318

2) We've been watching televisions tell us about the growing disparity between the haves and have-mores, and once in a while we hear about the have-nots. But while we're running as fast as we can to turn the wheel and keep our stuff while we go out and get more (at near-zero-margin prices!), we're missing something important.

The government again. Still. Nobody on the hill except that coward veteran Kerry or that adopter of black kids McCain ever served in the military. None of their kids are going off to fight the war. Very few have ever had real jobs, although Frist opened old peoples' chests to vacuum money out, and DeLay was a destroyer of insects.

And the median income for a family of four is dropping. And the CPI is rising. And they voted themselves another pay raise. I haven't seen whether the Presidential salary was raised as well, but when Bush came in 2001 he accepted a $400,000 a year salary plus expenses and benefits including LIFETIME BODYfreakinGUARDS. For those who skipped that class, he made 40% more than Clinton the previous year ($250,000).

And in Pennsylvania, watching as jobs evaporate and population ages and flees for younger cities, with tax revenue declining and slot machines promising to make up the difference between what the politicians can promise in 30 seconds and what reality can provide, the lawmakers just passed around pay raises of over 10%. As health programs and municipal services are being whittled down to empty slogans.

So back to the link. Unbossed is a site apparently dedicated to freedom on the roads. But the roads are ultimately paid for and maintained by bodies. And when a company gets a deal to build a toll road they might be taking a share of the tolls.

Our local, county, state and federal governments are out making deals to get themselves paid hard, and we're paying them for it. I'm not a Democrat, but I plan to vote that way until the Republicans act like people living among people. I wanted to work to promote a third party, like the Greens, but I think taking over the Democratic Party with Progressives interested in the people who live here is a nobler goal.

So let's purge the governments of everyone in them, replace them with naive people who don't trust lobbyists and can't try to control their neighbors' attitudes, want to leave personal decicions to the Americans, and hope to get back to their real jobs after a little time off to serve the people. Let's.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment, Property Rights

2005-08-15T14:05:00.000-05:00

Our founders didn't specifically outlaw torture and brutal executions because they aren't effective deterents to criminal behavior. They forbade 'em because they didn't want their country to grow up to be cruel and despotic, capable of intimidating even its citizens into a state of unquestioning obedience.

It's disgusting behavior, beneath the dignity of us and our heritage.

That's all. It's uncivilized.

The Constitution was also set up to protect the individual from blocs. The notion that a few wealthy developers with more access to political appointments and sharing a steam room at the club with the governor or mayor can vote to take your ENTIRE NEIGHBORHOOD, hand it at charity prices to a real estate company, and put a friggin' mall on it is atrocious.

Two groups, the oil companies and the construction/development companies are thriving in this stagnant economy, and they should have to go out and buy their own raw materials. The wierdo-socialist government is propping up these companies, not because they're weak, but because they're too fat to stand up.

A billion dollars for the oil companies to go find oil in the 'energy bill'. Eminent Domain as a mechanism for companies to get tasty tax parcels at bargain prices. It's almost as bad as prividing the Republican State of Alaska with $3,000,000 to produce a film about road building in Alaska. But not disgusting, like officially standing on the principle that the Geneva Conventions against torture are 'Quaint'. It's not quaint, it's a founding principle of our Republic.

What is our country coming to?

Hold not thy nose

2005-08-12T16:15:00.000-05:00

So I've been hearing about a guy from Philadelphia, a Drexel professor, who threw his hat into the upcoming Pennsylvania Senate race. He's running as a Democrat against Casey Jr.

I don't like Juniors to begin with, especially the political dynasty juniors. But when they run for office using the same platform/paddle the bad guys use it turns my stomach.

And I don't plan to hold my nose and vote against Santorum without also doing something positive. The trouble is, Santorum can't be allowed to win. The other problem is: In a few years, someone is going to have to take the White House away from Georgie Junior, and when that happens the country is going to see they've stuck it together with crazy glue. Scratch that: FUCKING CRAzy glue.

I wonder whether it would be best for the long term to leave P(R)ick in the Senate to exlplain away and apologize for all the permanent damage he and his idiot horde have caused. Because the lies can't transfer so easily to the next administration.

We saw Specter at the gym the other day, and he's looking pretty bad. A faithful raquetballer, he's in good shape for an old, old, old man. But the cancer came up with the last two 'old's in that phrase. He was sprightly. And he'll vacate a seat after the coming 2006 'election'.

So let's talk about this Pinnochio fellow. Can he win ? Should Santorum be forced to stay? He wants to bail out to start runnin' fer Prezy-dent. Should we give him two years off ?

Pants afire, but lots of smoke too

2005-08-12T16:07:00.000-05:00

Where there's smoke there's fire. The President's smokescreen to obscure the past is thematic. Revisionist History, obstructionist history...

Don't you love the way they change the subject from Sheenan's vigil to "I just think it would be irresponsible to pull out of Iraq. I thought about it, but I don't think it's a good idea." I do. I love that. It makes me look forward to the next administration struggling to repair the damage done to the WHite House, the Congress, the Supreme Court, the Treasury, the Environment, the International FLow of Goods and Services, the ... the concept that Jesus doesn't want us to throw stones. Remember, he died at the hands of an angry mob.

One day there will be a National Park Trail, similar to the tracks of George Washington, but it will include plaques wherever Bush Jr. spoke, and it will say "George Bush Lied Here."

Never a dull moment, but still no surprises

2005-08-10T13:53:00.000-05:00

The White House is stonewalling on the Roberts files. Find 'em yourself.

The President slid ~~Strap-on~~ Bolton into you hiney. Should have been ready for it.

The highway bill, the energy bill, every bill has been about getting paid- except two kinds.

1) The bill coming due when China realizes they don't need our currency to be worth anything to buy their cheaply produced American stuff. Where are we going to go to get it? They have the technology, the brands, the infrastructure, if we need to get things to carry out our little American Dream, fuck us.
The West will sell us the rope we use to hang them"- Lenin.

2) Bill Clinton. Check my facts: The most popular president in the past 50 years balanced the budget, produced the military little Rumsfeld and equally little Bush used to half-ass conquer the lazy part of the middle east. His salary was $250,000. Bush blew the surplus and then some, plunged us into almost $8,000,000,000,000 debt, and gets a whopping $400,000 plus expenses. Talk about a CEO President! This asshole makes more money than his successful predecessor. And his supporters don't even realize they're voting for Enron-scale fraud, graft and downright shit-on-you disregard.

Tax the churches. Tax all income, not spending. Consider it your dues to belong here, where the opportunity is worth chasing. Check me again: a 1% tax on all earnings from business conducted in the US. Wages, interest, real estate.

Blabs

2005-08-05T08:22:00.000-05:00

Hey, this wasn't intentional. But I did it. Here: Look at a wart. It's okay to make the occasional mistake. I was going for something about how people can't keep their mind going in one direction with all the hyperdistracting reality around us. But you can see where it went. Lost focus.

I hate blogs. But I guess I don't.

Some people appear to be able to focus. I try hard to focus on the domestic US. This is where I live, and I grew up in a conservative household helieving that government is a lowly profession, government shouldn't affect our lives in a restrictive way, and that people should have real jobs producing something or providing a valuable service.

So I criticize the hypocritical 'Conservative' faction. They are as a rule reactionary and radical. But they want to get involved in our behavior. They want to throw markets out of balance and create special classes of person: the Company and the Leader. These two entities would operate above and transcend responsibility. They don't hug their kids or watch cartoons, they just wield and get.

So restrictions on the behavior of companies and leaders are Different. Leaders should have to check with their bosses before they leave their desk to use the bathroom. Gotta watch them. And companies are owned by individuals who learn they can profit immensely by ignoring, cheating, stealing, usurping,... A for-profit company is like a person, but without morality or conscience. Gotta watch them too.

Enron should have zero influence with our government. It's that simple. But they don't because the fox is minding the asylum.

So I'm for regulation of businesses and the government, and freedom for the people.

I think I'm starting to get it.

2005-08-05T07:35:00.000-05:00

So the energy bill, right? It doesn't solve any energy problems, but it eliminates problems in the energy industry, right? Things like taxes, the right of localities to influence where a nuclear reactor can go? Things like capital investment requiring money from the investor?

I don't like it. It's a bad bill. It's another empty list of words. All the Congress knows how to do it give money away and help themselves and others shirk responsibility.

Why Santorum would be better as actual shit than figurative

2005-08-04T11:14:00.000-05:00

You can use shit in your garden to help your flowers grow.

Seriously, I usually stop early in my analysis of Santorum. He earns his asshole stamp as soon as he argues against the existence of privacy. Then he gets another merit badge in buggery by equating homo sex with bestiality. By the time he blamed Puritan Boston for causing the Catholic Church around the world to condone and protect child molestation and homo sex, I was already on to the next page.

But here are some things we should also remember about that asshole Rick Santorum, USS:

Santorum believes millions of people are uninsured because, "some people don't want [insurance] - like the Amish." [Harrisburg Patriot, 6/10/97]
Santorum believes child care is a "Washington" issue that ordinary Americans don't care about. [Congressional Quarterly, 3/9/05]
He said that the environmental movement's days are numbered and that environmentalism is against nature. [Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 4/24/95]
He believes in privatizing Social Security. [Congressional Record, S3231, 4/5/05]
Santorum thinks it's wrong to help single mothers earn a college degree. In his book, It Takes a Family, Santorum said that "The notion that college education is a cost-effective way to help poor, low-skill, unmarried mothers with high school diplomas or GEDs move up the economic ladder is just wrong." [It Takes a Family, pg. 138]

I don't like Casey, but I hate this motherfucker. I hope he hasn't saved any of his Senator money, and that his family has to figure out like mine did how to survive on its own efforts in the George Bush Eco-Oh No!-nomy.

Public Enemy Number One

2005-08-04T07:51:00.000-05:00

The Rove story is now out of the news. Scooter and Cheney are nowhere to be seen. Bush is installing ~~Strap-on~~ Bolton as our interface with the rest of the world. Jesus freaks are glued to the 700 Club praying for their man Roberts no one else seems to know.

And Guess who's back: Scott Peterson! You remember him from such smokescreens as: Cheney bought the Energy Policy from Enron", and "Honey, the Supreme Court Went Duck Hunting with Cheney Before Hearing why we Shouldn't Know Anything about National Policy Decisions Made in Cooperation with the Most Crooked Outfit in US History ". He was also big during "Condoleeza didn't read the fucking memo either- It was the FBI's job."

Of course the Republicans had some influence over US Energy Policy, but they have some legitimate claim to that since they did get control of the government. The Most Crooked Outfit might be the RNC, but the one I'm poking at is ENRON. The ones who took your parents' retirement money. The ones who bankrolled their Houston savant into the White House. You know, their accountants are now in charge of auditing the government. Remember Enron?

Of course they did it by strictly controlling the message. And the news. And access to reality. And with the cooperation of Fox, the media wing of the Repsychoican party, they present daily talking points, hammer them for weeks, and complain about the terrible job the Democrats are doing running the country.

Scott Peterson. I never thought I'd hear that irrelevant name again.

Rick Santorum: Great Republican, Shitty Person

2005-08-03T16:45:00.000-05:00

I saw Rick Santorum hamstrung by the hard-hitting George Stephanapolous yesterday. Ricky's been thumping his new book, claiming the lesbians are taking over. Radical feminist leaders, you see, are conspiring to compromise the morals of our country and ruin our youth. And yes, the children have too many rights.

Asked by Georgiethe bulldog to identify at least one of these radical feminist leaders, Ricky said,"uh,... you know, I uh,... Gloria Steinem?"

He has no basis for his stupid book. He's just another Republican pimping his religion to help increase the tension between people who read the news and people who get it from TV. Fox.

Gotta lose this douche.

God Bless America! God Damn America! End the Save the World!

2005-08-01T13:45:00.000-05:00

Seriously, is the Republican Party blind, evil or just stupid?

They inherited a staggering surplus from Clinton, turned it into $8,000,000,000,000 in debt, and they're giving themselves an unfunded pay raise.

They gave up on our AntiCommunist Democracy-pushing foreign policy in Taiwan and elsewhere because China now owns $700,000,000,000 in US securities and is in a position to sink the US economy (Midwest be warned: They're moving into agriculture, and that's all we keep you around for).

They try to eliminate taxes for some AND death for Terry Schiavo, the two things we know to be true.

They rally around and appoint to lifetime jobs Evangelist wingnuts who claim social security is a communist victory, despite the ironic Red victory of their mortgaging our future and subordinating our foreign agenda to China.

The only labor money they get is from the Merchant Marine managers' associations, probably owned by another donor, Wal-Mart (opensecrets.org). They surround themselves with Dennis Koslowski, Ken Lay, Ahmad Chalabi, and gird themselves against Big Bird. They essentially pardon Eric Rudolph, and jail Martha Stewart- for NOT insider trading.

The Republican Party is perfect for you who want the world to permit opposites, who claim to be and to not be. You guys rule: I admire your youthful exhuberance for fantasy.
You do however need to be castrated and set out to pasture, perhaps in the pelagic sea, surrounded by those you care about. That's a joke. You can't all be out there AND be alone. I'm trying to speak Republican. Did you get it? Or are you stupid? Or maybe you just don't understand yourselves?

Wow, these Republicans don't care WHAT we think.

2005-07-28T11:58:00.000-05:00

Mr. Pitts,
Wow, the Party is on a roll!

In a rush to give yourselves a raise= cost-of-living adjustment before a 1-month vacation? A one-month vacation? Really? How about a 1/12 reduction in pay instead? How about doing something to strengthen the dollar by securing jobs at home ? No, that's your job. You don't deserve a raise if for no other reason than that you took $90K from DeLay. That really matters to me: Half your salary from a thief.

Instead, I suggest you get a job for that month, maybe practice earning a living- you'll have to start soon if you don't start working for Pennsylvania. I haven't had any time off since 2001, and I resent that your crew can't do anything but cut taxes, raise deficits, and bandy about the meaningless social issues your party gets elected to blabber about. That's it, right? You pander to the emotional social-control zealots uncomfortable with change- uncomfortable with the present, so you can follow the devil into the Armani boutique. Right? Gotta be, that's what you do.

Maybe you're in the wrong line of work. Lobbyists like DeLay make out very well, and they only have to be as qualified as a Congressman.

The Texans running the Congress and the Administration are stealing money faster than they can collect it, since they've absolved themselves from Taxation. They've also tried to outlaw death in the Schiavo case. Death and Taxes being the only things we're taught are true, it's fitting your party works so hard to overrule them.

Congress has failed to act on issues Americans care about, like skyrocketing gasoline prices, health care, and the ethics scandals. Congress is listening to the interests of big money contributors and lobbyists and not to us, the taxpayers. That's why I oppose the congressional pay raise this year.

That Damned Party

2005-07-28T11:54:00.000-05:00

Mr. Pitts:
I got a letter from you this week claiming the $8 Trillion deficit compels you to vote in favor of trimming the budget of some monies typically going to PBS. Now I see your colleagues don't care about such concerns, planning to dedicate about ten times that much to Sugarland, TX and a few companies in a position to affect and benefit from the rising price of energy. All this slipped in with the so-called Energy Bill.

I know you owe Mr. DeLay a lot of consideration, since he gave you $90,000, but your integrity is at stake. Your party's fiscal responsibility is at stake. Your job is on the line here.

Fix it. Get that non-voted amendment out of the so-called Energy Bill.

I'm appalled to read that Tom DeLay inserted a $1.5 billion giveaway to oil companies like Halliburton and Marathon Oil after the energy bill was negotiated between the House and Senate. I urge you to do everything you can to see that this provision is removed from the bill.

Joe Pitts is a chump

2005-07-26T20:19:00.000-05:00

Got a letter from Representative Pitts. His stamped signature acts as a postage stamp.

Said he's sorry we have a difference of opinion, there's just too much deficit to keep funding the CPB, nearly $8,000,000,000. Of course the Bush administration inherited a balanced budget and didn't grow the military yet. Shrunk it. And the Republican Congress wrote the laws that spent the red. And mortgaged ironically our functioning government to Red China. Whee! This is fun!

He didn't mention the $90,000 he took from Tom DeLay, and neglected the topic of the VP's residuals from the company walking away with tens of billions of unaccounted dollars in Iraq. Yes, Cheney, the Republican Vice President. Believe it or not, he's still getting paid by Halliburton. Or is it KBR? Bechtel? Not sure, the smog is quite thick.

But back to Pitts: He represents a Texan. He's a PA Congressman for the party that took a massive surplus away from America. Out with him.

Roberts v Voting Rights

2005-07-26T08:36:00.000-05:00

Why would the Reagan administration instruct a Solicitor to work at narrowing the applications of the Voting Rights Act?

And why would George Bush, the most contested US President in history, nominate Roberts to the Supreme Court after Roberts' decades as a business lobbyist and generally fringeoid Federalist Corporate Libertarian?

Because in his heart, Bush believes nothing. Just wants to corner enough cash to isolate himself and his peers from the coming environmental/geopolitical economic crises he's fomenting by empowering China to leverage more control over US foreign and domestic policy by owning the mortgage to the US Capitol.

Wheee,
Joe

A little-known Commandment

2005-07-26T08:28:00.000-05:00

"Thou shalt not bear false witness"

Okay, so Roberts is a great guy if your a Christian Jihadist. But you have to ignore that rule. Because he's already a liar.

That's one commandment I try to live by. I don't want to live in an alternate universe while interacting with y'all, so I try to make sure the things I claim are true in my imagination AND on the ground on the planet.

This is a problem I have with the Political Christianics: They don't act like Jesus, and they pick, choose, parse and apologize their way through the Ten Commandments. And they say "They're Commandments, not suggestions," relying on the Power of Suggestion to insinuate by repetition their participation in a community of Faith.

But if they have faith, if they have trust in the Lawd (can't pronounce it respectfully, can't write it in English. Put a name on it, you gain control over it. It.) they'll wait for the WILL to be realized and stop voting. And I really hope the give back some of the extended life expectancy they've gotten from Science.

And I hope they give back the tens of Billions of DOLLARS Halliburton et al have swindled while recouping profits lost during Dick Cheney's tenure as boss over there.

You're doing it again:

2005-07-25T14:36:00.000-05:00

Open letter to the media and journalism industry:

Remember when the war happened, and looking back we were unable to find anything in print critical of the war, demanding consistent rationale? And when we went to war to find the WMD Rumsfeld sold Saddam we didn't find them? And the journalists were pious and said they should have been more outspoken, actually reporting things they went out to learn?

Well, the whole Federalist Society thing came up today. The lying White House demanded a retraction, but more evidence that Roberts is interested in restoring a monarchy or at least a stratified society on our soil has come up. No outlets appear to be critical of anything new the President is trying to get away with, and the gushing grinning coming from the Pat Robertson crowd of for-profit professional lobbies doesn't appear to distract them.

But the Rove thing is still in play. And it's being ignored. Karl Rove violated American National Security Law, compromised our interest AND worked to further Bush's goal of nuclear proliferation by backwater bad guys like Pakistan.

You're forgetting it: You weren't going to be dumb cheerleaders any more.

President George H W Bush

2005-07-21T05:58:00.000-05:00

How does the former President Bush feel about the Valerie Plame imbroglio?

As the former spook-in-chief, he was understood to be very sensitive to the security and HR needs of his subordinates over there. On the George Washington Memorial Parkway, there's an exit to the GHWBush Center for Intelligence. The irony there is too thick to spread, but hey- A George Bush Center for Intelligence might look like the Crayola Factory in Easton, PA. They have tours for kids.

I want to hear from our former President about why his son makes kissy face with the Saudi Prince. Did he ever come down to the basement and catch George and his buddy Rove practicing their kissy faces together, in case a real girl would ever give..

It's hard not to write plain nasty things about them. But I heard from Colin Powell, he went on the Daily Show, clenched his teeth and smiled the impossible smile, reviewed the GOP talking points and tried to dodge the absolute shame he helped Bush bring upon our country.

Now I want to hear from the wimp.

Republican = Apologist

2005-07-15T08:09:00.000-05:00

Santorum bravely deflected the Church Sex Scandals toward the 'liberals'. Apparently, the liberal social mores of our oldest Puritan city encourage bestiality and privacy, which Santorum came from Virginia to defend Pennsylvania against.

He's a chump.

His wife should go home and make some cookies, and a Santorum daughter can look forward to a life of low-class toil. Because he works against everything a liberated human should want.

He's a fag.

Santorum is Latin for "Phony whore".

All kidding aside, Rick Santorum's another asshole Republican excusing the behavior of his allies and casting blame for their atrocious misdeeds on his political enemies. We enemies of the Apologist Republican Party ironically encourage the free trade of thought and discourse. And privacy. I bet Santorum has plenty of personal security, lots of high gates to protect his privacy, even though he got on the Senate floor and argued there's no such Constitutional right.

Let's look VERY HARD at the public Republican. They always say the opposite of their real message...

Rove, row your boat

2005-07-15T07:47:00.000-05:00

Karl Rove and his little friend George have no interest in our security. They're all about politics.

Rove committed a crime, and the Republicans are doing the same thing they always do: muddy the water.

Stay on task: Republican apologists must be removed from our government. They represent nothing but excuses, why the economy tanked, why they can't get bin Laden, why they didn't arm the soldiers they sent, why they turned Powell into a laughing stock when he did that stupid marionette dance for the UN. Accountability is the last thing they want and the first thing they promote.

They excuse Bush for lying to the world and sending hundreds of thousands of Americans to Iraq to generate SERIOUS military-industrial complex revenue. They excuse Cheney for lobbying hard to help out with the profits of the contractor he ran ineffectively during his brief civilian career. They excuse Rice for saying, "It wasn't my job" when asked why she wasn't on top of FBI and CIA reports and memos entitled "Osama Bin Laden is going to Hijack a Plane and crash into something Important." They excuse Frist for coming to the Senate as a secular pragmatist and converting to Wingnut to gain a solid constituency, prostituting his faith for money. They excuse DeLay for violating every rule of the Congress and of election finance and even of his own state. They excuse Eric Rudolph for bombing random passersby. Now, the architect of the coup, Karl Rove is getting a pass for violating a sacred trust and injuring our national security by outing Plame and helping the proliferators of weapons.

Helping the bad guys? Of course: These Republican leaders love our enemies more than they do us. Make no mistake. WHen they go off topic, stay on task: Rove committed a high crime. Eventually, one will have a hissy fit and go off script.

Where are they now?

2005-07-13T15:05:00.000-05:00

Where is:
Karl Rove's Prison Uniform?

The money Halliburton/KBR overbilled us and lost oversease?

The Iraqi money in the Iraqi Bank when Bremer took over ?

President Bush's military records, DUI records?

Where are the criminals executing for Nixon in Watergate?
Oh- I know where they are=> SPEAKING FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

Where is the guy who helped Reagan
1)Steal US missiles
2)Smuggle them into Iran
3)Trade them to Iran for money and hostages
4)Take the money to fund illegal operations in South America?

SPEAKING FOR THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

David Duke for Supreme Court? Why???

2005-07-13T14:58:00.000-05:00

The administration and the Republican Party have been working hard to marginalize their opponents. They've been working hard to increase the conflict everywhere they can identify wedge issues. It's important that these politicians stop it. They have to realize they're working for the country, representing a diverse population.

Far-out Fundamentalist cries for another polarizing move on the national and even more permanent level illustrate the disconnect. They want to marginalize the majority of Americans who live as individuals, work for progress and want the Constitution to continue defending their rights.

Bill Frist and his allies in that sect want a religious test for office, a fundamental contradition to the Constitution, and they claim strict constructionist leanings. They either lie or they don't understand the difference between their words and their works. Either way, they are an enemy to freedom and our nation. Traitors to the Constitution.

Mr. Bush's legacy will be one of discord and ruin if he chooses to brush off the realistic-minded among us with another wet kiss to the far right, and we'll all suffer when we have no defense against drug companies, insurance companies, real estate companies, all the industries freed to influence our government instead of us. We'll have the right to practice a Christian religion of our choice, but lose the right to do something worthwhile with our time.

Whether it's religion or business, the slant of this government reflects only a slim but animated segment of our society, and is gradually diminishing the value of the individual in our country in favor of the Bloc and the Lobby.

The News These Days

2005-07-12T07:20:00.000-05:00

If you were on the planet last week, you probably heard there were bombings in London, and then heard again, and then again. Speeches were made, short and impromptu at first, but becoming more consistent with practice. London has a history of being tough and isn't likely to go soft.

What else? We learned that among the traitors in the White House, the unelected oft-wedgied Karl Rove was the boss behind retaliation against Ambassador Wilson's downright public attempts to pull the wool off our eyes. I'm sure he'll get tough love. But then again, the Bush Justice Department let Eric Rudolph off with just a lifetime of free meals and cable TV. And the chance to get a law degree and publish, preach, lead. They should cut both their heads off- ROve and Rudolph. To let them walk after killing indiscriminately and disclosing national security secrets sends a tacit message to the extremists that it's okay. Bush is complicit. Haven't seen Cheney in a while...

Other stuff? Well, Reagan appointee Justice O'Connor surprised us all with a retirement. And the Christian Fun-go-mentalist movement is going apeshit. They hate God for creating us with Free Will, even denying it. They demand the government take our rights away so we can't sin. And they want the Bush appointee for the O'Connor slot to promise to help.

Far from uplifting the human condition, they want to deny it. They lie, they cheat, they move from Virginia to become professional Senators (Santorum) in other people's states, they imagine and promulgate a history with radical cultural figments. And they probably simply don't know the science behind germ theory or natural selection. I'm sure one of the DC landmarks they want to destroy is the Smithsonian Institution's Natural History Museum, with all those satanic dinosaur props.

Everything they do is wrong. God damn them.

Trumped

2005-07-06T06:32:00.000-05:00

Interesting that our property can now be seized not for petty non-crimes like marijuana possession but for the commercial interests of real estate development.

This country is getting pretty fucked up. Regime change time?

Faith in Science

2005-07-06T06:19:00.000-05:00

We're living a lot longer than we did (we are a species) in the Middle Ages, when the world was flat, the universe revolved around it, and every aspect of our society was influenced by the politicians through their use of the Church of the Fear of the Unknown.

We're living a lot longer, not because of our faith in a deity, or because we're marching under the direction of the preacher industry. It's because we killed millions of rats. And because we've disproven, discarded and replaced the dictates of the preacher industry. The Germ theory of Disease cured the concept that God wants us to be sick. The heliotropic solar system cured the notion that we occupy the center of the Universe. Emancipation argues that God doesn't supply our lot in life and demand we subjugate ourselves to our betters.

If your faith is such that higher education and science threatens it, then you should surrender your likely longevity. Do it now.

That speech again

2005-06-29T08:42:00.000-05:00

The president spoke last night, pleading for patience while his impromptu war in Iraq diverts our attention and treasure, and while his party uses their dysingenuity to frame letters like this one as unpatriotic.
I'd like some patience from my mortgage company. See, I need more time to work between payments because this president's aggressive bungling of US economic policy caused a plunging dollar and a doubling of energy prices, while Chinese voracity for resources are driving every other price higher, even as it cheapens the products Americans no longer make. This president confounds reason.
I'm not surprised he had the temerity to ask for patience, sending 200,000 US soliders and 20,000 contract killers to work in Iraq until his non-plan looks like it's working better than half the time. Think of 2,000 dead soldiers and unnumbered civilian deaths as a late fee on his war mortgage. Think of the invisible Dover flights of casualties as his ashamed and stammering excuses for not paying the bill on time.
His plan: We still have some soldiers left, and China is still covering our expenses, so let's see what happens if I'm allowed to continue this ridiculous money pit project to overpay my friends' companies to the tune of BILLIONS of dollars we raise by borrowing instead of taxing ourselves.
When Rumsfeld argued hard that the chemical weapons agents he sold Saddam when he ran Searle were an imminent threat to our security, he was lying. No patience.
When Wolfowitz argued hard that Iraq would finance its reconstruction and therefore we should destroy it, he knew better than anyone reading this that it was false- dramatically untrue, poppycock, nonsense. When dictatorships fall there is no capacity for self-governance, and after over a decade of sanctions no infrastructure can produce enough revenue to build a whole country. Certainly no patience for that.
When Bush lied about Yellowcake in Niger, when Cheney lied about Saddam cooperating with the rival Al-Quaeda, when Powell was lying to the rest of the world on our behalf, it was not at all like ignoring Japanese planes heading for Pearl Harbor. It was studied manipulation of the information we have access to in an effort to tie us up in an abstract unplannable war against an -ism, in a location where the -ism had nowhere to roost without our help.
No patience. Our opponent over there is killing people we need to defend our country against actual threats.
And what happened to those tens of Billions of Dollars Cheney's colleagues at the military-industrial complex misplaced, overbilled and otherwise stole from us? I want it back with interest.

Pensions

2005-06-15T10:59:00.000-05:00

When you accept a job offer, you might be joining a startup or a speculative business. That's what I usually do. I think that in order to do something significant, I have to accept some risk.

But ten years ago, when you or someone you know joined a company as a worker, if you were offered stock options as a benefit you accepted a risky proposition. By contrast, if you accepted a retirement package or a defined-benefits pension, you got a contract, legally executable in the United States as specified in the Constitution.

I believe companies offering these pensions owe those pensions. Stockholders on the board are there for the risky possibility of a boon. Salaried employees made a square deal. Defaulting on that deal without taking some of the damage is unforgivable.

I want a law. I want the SEC to require quarterly pension fund reports from every company offering a pension. And for each quarter in which managers or board members are compensated, or for every instance where profits are distributed aside from dividends to common stockholders, they must meet their pension obligations. Any underfunding of a pension fund will be met with cash from the pockets of the management, or else their shares of the company will be sold to make up for the shortfall.

Executives have been above justice too long.

Ignoring the middle

2005-06-15T10:49:00.000-05:00

Our politicians are applying their trade in a way that increases polarization and pathology. As an extreme moderate, I think the Christian Right has turned satanic, failing to recognize the impiety, arrogance and pride they express when they deny the omnipotence of their deity.

Of course God can create the universe. And of course evolution can happen by design. But it happens, and to deny it is stupid! More properly, the Fundo-Mentals deny God's ability to do more than they can imagine.

And the progressives fail themselves by creating their platform as a reaction to the right. We should be proud to practice altruism and proud to protect our families', friends' and neighbors' jobs, lives, standing. And some of the stuff being done in the name of art and liberty is pretty yucky.

But the whole government is trying to master the wedge right now, Republicans tweezing social issues apart in a way that forces people to choose between Constitutional reality and should-be-hypothetical abberations.

Democrats are scrambling to find their own wedge, something they can apply to shave membership off the big dumb block of the bare-minimum majority. But they both have momentum, and we're getting more polarized. They practice extreme rhetoric because they can't contribute in society. They can only find their place seated ABOVE us.

More on Brown, or Moron Brown

2005-06-14T19:45:00.000-05:00

Judge Brown was on my mind again today. She called the New Deal a Socialist victory, remember? Fitting. People on her side, the opponents of freedom, deliberately overlook the irony of their leader, the worst American President ever, has handed to China the keys to our kingdom, even blowing 5 decades of work started by their favorite dead president, Nixon.

We've been trying hard for 50 years to help Taiwan and Hong Kong maintain some independence from Communist China. But since these Bet-it-All-on-Red-and-keep-betting-'til-it's-gone versions of what used to be Republicans are presiding over a runaway train, a stampede of the unwashed, they must live in fear that China will cash in their US Bonds and bury the Dollar.

The Republicans mean death to us all.

Those pathetic fucks: Rough draft- might get rougher.

2005-06-14T19:17:00.000-05:00

They can't prosecute Enron for destroying thousands of retirement accounts, swindling entire states. They can't convict Andersen for cooperating with them. They can't do anything successfully when it's worthwhile, but those pathetic fucks sure know how to put a damper on culture.

Some things should be free, or at least public. But have you seen any deliberate attempt to protect municipal water supplies, even though they're listed as top terror threats? Well, the Republican leadership (and maybe some Democrats) don't want public water. They don't want to pay for it unless it helps their religious wackjob consituency (not the voters- you don't have money) achieve their goal of continental domination.

If it advocates appreciation for diversity, if it criticizes powerful positions, if it doesn't beat the drum for marching neo-Christianics, there's no room for it. Is that the argument? Or is it more a case of simple resentment of the critical unbiased reporting? Is it because Cookie Monster is Blue and Bert and Ernie live together?

If our leaders reclaimed 10% of the money simply lost by Halliburton in Iraq, a few decades of Clifford the Big Red Dog would help children learn about getting along with the other dogs. I want every leader in Congress drawn and quartered, but I'll settle for their financial ruin if it means their spouses and children turn to drugs and prostitution.

This isn't what Christians do. This is what the Nazis, the Communists and the Islamists have done. Sesame Street. Really.

If you're a Republican, you probably didn't get this far. You should be ashamed of yourself, at least enough to write your representative or senator. At least enough to vote America back. I'm not interested in making a rational appeal for calm and sober reconsideration. This is an emotional issue- HOW BAD ARE THESE REPUBLICANS? How bad can a human be? Empowered by religion, they descend into Lord of the Flies, demanding restrictions on their behavior, but if their mothers weren't evil they would be able to control themselves. But they are, so they can't.

Oy, these Judges !

2005-06-02T20:28:00.000-05:00

Dear Senator Specter,
Brown's all wrong. Mr. Specter, she's so far out, she's so far right she's left right.

The New Deal was not a victory for Socialism. It was a victory for SOCIETY, in which People live among us. Her inability to grasp that nuance should disqualify her from any role in government of the people, whose authority rests in the consent of the people.

And Pryor! Wow. Imagine believing the Constitution and Bill of Rights don't apply to People. And then, imagine believing in Jailing the gay people for what they do in bed!

Senator Santorum, you can leave the room, if the door isn't too complicated for you to operate. I know how you feel about individuals and their right to privacy, and how you think Americans are incapable of guiding their own lives. It must comfort you or something. But really, Senator Specter, you have to understand how completely inappropriate these people are to be sitting on the court where individuals appeal for their rights to be protected.

Vote against both of these nominees, and bounce Bolton, and get on with your work. This administration can't last forever. Just seems like it.

Thank you,
Joe

Judge Janice Rogers Brown

2005-06-01T20:58:00.000-05:00

Judge Janice Rogers Brown decries the New Deal as a 'Victory for Socialism', but she's an idiot. It was a victory for SOCIETY. The New Deal was a triumphant expression of our culture too.

But you know what is a victory for socialism? The fact that through the absurdity of the Bush administration our flaccid economy is currently underwritten by robust communist China.

Way to go, conservatives, you can't even see it, can you?

Globally mediocre idealist fish seeks pinheaded bicycle

2005-06-01T20:30:00.000-05:00

Can John Bolton be good for the United Nations? Ironically, yes. But predictably, he will not be good for us.

A sworn enemy of the UN, Bolton can be expected to take the battle to it, and carry with him the elitist psychopath attitudes toward everyone on the planet best expressed by President Bush and the Republican Party. Voinovich didn't vote against him, he held his nose and did the opposite of what his proper upbringing told him. And rather than advise and consent, this Senate Rubbers and Stamps to curry favor with the moneybringing juggernaut of the GOP. He is the worst person for the job of Ambassador to the UN, and illustrates a pattern.

Bush's decisions have disgraced Colin Powell as a marionette, who must be bound and gagged in some Foggy Bottom basement right now. So the UN knew what to expect when Condosleasa Rice earned her Secretary of State job by ignoring the PDB titled "Osama Bin Laden is Going to Hijack Planes and Crash them into Major Sites in the US". Hey- isn't she the Russia expert presiding over the security apparatus of the US? The same one who helped Bush stop securing portable Russian Nukes? The one in charge of State when Russia got a new Oil Pipeline because despite their terrible mideast relations they're better than ours are? And hey- she has Africa experience, sitting on the Chevron board when the machine-gunned all those dangerous Nigerians.

But good for the UN; Bolton will be singularly ineffective in furthering our interests but a uniter of our competitors. He already disgraced our partners in the North Korea project so badly the State Department stopped letting him speak for himself. The only interest he serves is conflict. There's a difference between tough guy and asshole, and this guy is the latter.

The secret CIA documents Senate Democrats are rightly demanding probably indicate the name of the CIA operative the Republican Party leaked to Novack. Since we'll probably be needing the UN to unite to protect us from the oligarchy being cultivated- Andersen's aquittal by the Supreme Court and inaction in the Cheney/Enron task force case indicate our best chance for justice will be the International Criminal Court. And we can expect our international neighbors to fight hard FOR strengthening it and AGAINST Bolton.

When are the sane Republicans going to redeem themselves and jettison this administration? Not until China stops underwriting Bush's insane spending and bounced us from the Security Council as obstructionist paupers.

Newsweek

2005-06-01T19:58:00.000-05:00

What will Newsweek do? I may stop reading because they're doing anything to apologize for their indictment of the Administration's disgusting behavior. Turns out it was kinda true, that the Koran was involved in the psychological torture practiced at Guantanamo.

A few dozen people died protesting behavior now shown to be at least substantially close to the truth. Big deal. Bush and his liar cabal got it nowhere near the bulls-eye and killed over 1,600 Americans. And they won't admit a thing.

Newsweek, I'm offended you're entertaining this false indignant posturing from the administration. You're endangering us. We need an independent media, and you did the right thing.

But since you brought it up, what will the administration do to make up for killing 1600 of us over false accusations?

Nothing, because they know their constituency, and their constituency wants liars to kill Americans.