Because it isn't just for Fridays anymore.

Only Marc Maron could use his cats to make you feel guilty for watching them:

Labels: cat blogging, health care, Marc Maron

The garden gnome at Eating Liberally. Just go and check out his name.

But on a more serious note, there are clearly starting to be some benefits to growing some of your own food these days, as I realized yesterday while making a lovely Greek village salad and wondering where the cucumbers had originated. The problem is that when you live in a neighborhood dominated by oak trees that are over 100 years old and over 40 feet tall, it's hard to find a place that gets enough sunshine to actually grow anything. My backyard gets ample sun in the morning, largely thanks to the removal three years ago of a hazardous split oak that was rotting inside, but by noon the sun is over the roofline and gone. My front yard gets sunshine in high summer, but I have a gorgeous, huge blue spruce in my yard that I'm spending a fortune paying an arborist to try to save from the fungal infection that is probably going to kill it anyway. It'll kill me when I have to cut it down, I don't want to speed that up.

Then of course there are the bunnies, the squirrels, and other fauna that already feast on my tulips, there have been deer sightings two blocks away, and recently, not three miles from my neighborhood of 75 x 100 lots, a bear was found in a schoolyard. My supervisor at work is an avid gardener, with huge property that gets hours of glorious afternoon sun. But having heard his tales of vegetative woe and his ongoing war against deer, woodchucks, and other beasts determined to ruin his Jeffersonian splendor over the last seven years, it strikes me that trying to grow food and having to be someplace other than your garden for eight hours or more every day seems somewhat incompatible.

That leaves farmer's markets, of which there are precious few in Bergen County during times when working people can go -- and half the stuff available there is trucked in from Pennsylvania anyway. There are a few farm stands left, but most of those truck in a good amount of their produce as well.

Still....every time I see one of those blogs where someone is holding up a lovely bunch of home-grown Swiss Chard, I wonder if there's any possibility of even managing a couple of porch tomatoes...

Labels: food

I hate the breaking news emails, the interruption of the current program for a special announcement, and just a little while ago I sat breathless watching MSNBC's breaking and ongoing story about Teddy Kennedy's hospitalization with stroke-like symptoms. The Cape Cod Times reported this morning that Teddy was at the Kennedy's Hyannis compound when he had symptoms and was taken to Cape Cod hospital (and excellent hospital in my experience,) and the transferred to Mass General (another excellent hospital.) There isn't much else yet except all of our hopes and prayers that whatever this is, its mild and something that he will pass right through. Teddy, at 76, is strong as a horse, and he is chomping at the bit for the upcoming Obama campaign.



Back to our regular programming, Russert's additional pre-taped show this weekend is about JFK and features his closest advisor's.

I will be following this story closely. Teddy Kennedy is not only someone who this country needs actively working in our government, but he has acted as the father and grandfather for 3 families, carrying quite a heavy load personally.

Do you want to see what this Kennedy is made of? Do you want to see who is speaking for you in our government? Watch him in action and then say a little prayer that we get to keep him for just a little while longer:



Update: HuffPo reports that according to Kennedy's doctors, the senator suffered what was apparently a seizure and was not life threatening. He is reportedly in good spirits and has some of his children, his wife, and his niece Carolyn with him. This thing was worrisome because of his recent surgery for a blockage in his carotid artery, but it is unclear what caused this seizure. seizures can be caused by many different things and can resemble strokes, but they aren't the same.
I'm relieved and looking forward to more good news on this story.

Labels: Kennedys, me

It just doesn't get any better than this: John Cusack on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson:

Labels: Craig Ferguson, John Cusack

His grandfather, Prescott Bush:

George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

The evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.

Yes, folks, the Bush family money comes from the blood of the very annihilated Jews the memory of whom the state of Israel is supposed to honor. When George W. Bush goes to his "ranch", it's with Nazi money. When he holds a big wedding for his daughter, it's with Nazi money. When he vacations at the family compound in Kennebunkport, it's with Nazi money.

You want to talk about appeasing Hitler? Bring it on, motherfuckers.

Labels: George W. Bush, Israel

John Ashcroft, call your office:

A Christian group based in San Diego found grounds for outrage over the new retro-style logo for Starbucks Coffee.

The Resistance says the new image "has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute," Mark Dice, founder of the group, said in a news release. "Need I say more? It's extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves Slutbucks."

The group, which claims more than 3,000 members nationwide and has found a place on the fringe advancing various conspiracy theories, is calling for a national boycott of the coffee-selling giant.

Wow! What an interesting look into the mind of the Jeebofascist! "...legs spread like a prostitute" -- unlike those good Christian women who keep their legs closed when they have sex only for procreative purposes. Maybe we should ask Michelle Duggar if she keeps her legs closed like a good Christian woman -- and if so, how the hell she conceived eighteen children.

Do you think we should tell Mark Dice that mermaids (which is what's depicted in the logo don't have legs?

(h/t Truthdig and Willie Geist on Morning Joe)

Labels: Christofascist Zombie Brigade, idiocy

I'd like to believe that all those who have smugly been raking in the cash in their Wall Street jobs for the last decade and now find themselves either unemployed or in danger of being unemployed learn that they are just so much flotsam and jetsam to their employers:

Thousands are losing their jobs as hard-pressed banks cut deep. But while layoffs are nothing new in the financial industry (they come with almost every downturn), this round seems different: it is eerily quiet.

So quiet, in fact, that people refer to these cuts as stealth layoffs. Some bosses hardly say a word after people are fired. At Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, for example, the first clue that someone is gone can be e-mail messages that are returned to senders from a former colleague’s inactivated corporate address.

[snip]

The idea that banks will slowly wield the knife again and again unnerves many employees. People know the cuts are coming — they just don’t know when or where.

“Nobody knows who is coming in; nobody knows who is going out,” said JoAnne Kennedy, who was laid off by JPMorgan Chase this year. “They want to keep it all as quiet as possible.”

To some bank workers, one round of layoffs seems to blur into the next. At Goldman Sachs, low performers were dismissed from January through March. A few weeks later, the bank quietly began letting more people go. All told, Goldman is axing about 8 percent of its work force, although incoming employees this summer will make up for some of that loss.

At Merrill Lynch, 1,100 people were laid off early this year, mostly in mortgage-related businesses. But in April, the firm announced 2,900 more cuts.

JPMorgan Chase said last fall that it would lay off 100 people in its fixed-income division and then followed up with several smaller rounds of cuts in other parts of the bank. The casualties will keep mounting as JPMorgan melds with Bear Stearns, the troubled investment bank it is buying.

Starting at the top, JPMorgan executives are eliminating jobs at their own bank, redeploying some people to other divisions and replacing others with Bear Stearns workers. As many as 5,500 Bear Stearns employees and 4,000 JPMorgan workers could lose their jobs before it is over.

The steady drumbeat of bad news on Wall Street is sapping morale. Wendi S. Lazar, a partner at the employment law firm of Outten & Golden, said companies are usually better off being open about cutting jobs.

“You’re seeing a very, very inconsistent message to employees,” Ms. Lazar said. “It’s, ‘I don’t know when it’s going to happen, it may be tomorrow, it may be next month; we may be able to keep you, we may not.’ ”

Layoffs are always difficult, but some of the recent cutbacks have been messier than usual. Some JPMorgan employees learned that people from Bear Stearns would get their jobs before the bosses said anything. JPMorgan clients told them first.

Some Lehman Brothers investment bankers found out their jobs were in peril when they saw cardboard boxes and dumpster bins in the hallways in March.

And when Bank of America dismissed some bankers recently, it told them that their annual bonuses had been almost wiped out and that their personal belongings would arrive in the mail. The bank announced many of the layoffs on Feb. 13, two days before many employees would be able to start cashing out stock options.

In January, when Ms. Kennedy was temporarily out of the office at JPMorgan because of surgery, her boss called to say her job had been eliminated. She did not return to her office and ended up asking the bank to send her the photos of her son that she kept on her desk.

I'd like to believe that our society won't be tempted again by the siren song of McMansions and luxury SUVs, but I remember the other times Wall Street headed down this road, and as soon as things get better, people go flocking.

Still, I don't think you can underestimate the damage that layoffs, even stealth layoffs like this, cause to employees. Corporate executives seem to think fear is a motivator, but there's only so long you can work with a sword over your head before you start wanting it to just drop already and put you out of your misery.

Labels: employment

Cernig makes an interesting point about Captain Codpiece's speech before the Knesset yesterday. The conventional wisdom, even offered by Keith Olbermann last night, is that it was Bush injecting himself into the presidential race while speaking in another country. But Cernig thinks it's about something else:

Most American pundits want to see Bush's remarks as an attack on Barrack Obama but folks - it's not always about your country and your political races. For one thing, as Brian Katulis adroitly notes, if negotiating is appeasement then the Bush administration has done an awful lot of appeasement itself over the last seven years. And Brian doesn't even mention working with Sunni Awakening members in Iraq who not too long ago were terrorists attacking US forces! For another, if Bush's remarks were really intended to help John McCain, the latter wouldn't go shooting himself in the foot like this:

“Yes, there have been appeasers in the past, and the president is exactly right, and one of them is Neville Chamberlain,'’ Mr. McCain told reporters on his campaign bus after a speech in Columbus, Ohio. “I believe that it’s not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.'’

Need I say that "Iran-Contra" and "appeasement" really do belong in the same sentence together?

[snip]

Bush, in his speech to the Knesset, signalled clearly that his administration will quietly support Israel if it decided to take direct action against Iran - as it did recently against Syria. It's worth noting that any Israeli attack on Iran would almost certainly have to transit Iraqi airspace.

It's no wonder that there are people in this country still muttering about the Jewish Lobby and the 12 Jewish bankers and Jew Jew Jew Jew Jew, when it often seems as if Israel is, in terms of Washington policy, not an ally like any other ally, but some kind of 51st superstate whose interests and needs (and paranoia) must by definition override all other foreign policy considerations.

It may be amusing to watch Tweety (who I notice is back to being Tweety again after correcting his recent red dyejob; perhaps he read He Who Must Not Be Mentioned and decided that he'd rather be Tweety than Gossamer after all) eviscerate the histrionic Kevin James (the radio idiot, not the stand-up comic) on national television (h/t):



...but leaving aside the fact that James seems to actually HAVE spent the last six years hiding under the bed with a roll of duct tape in one hand and a package of plastic sheeting in the other (and you'd also figure a pipeful of crack in his mouth, based on his demeanor), the level of hysteria on the right over poor, pitiful Israel -- the Hillary Clinton of nations in its ability to kick just about anyone's ass from here to Sunday when crossed, but which more useful to some people as a damsel in distress -- is profoundly disturbing.

Barack Obama's loyalty to this country is constantly questioned. I have even been asked by a friend whether I truly believe he's loyal to our country -- and the fact that she no longer wants to discuss the election with me means her wingnut friends sending her e-mails about how he's a secret Muslim terrorist have won that particular battle of the mind. His loyalty is questioned because of his funny name, the color of his skin, his African father and his hippie mother, and his ability to hold two thoughts in his head in the same time and see colors other than -- no pun intended -- black and white.

But lately it seems his loyalty to Israel is also constantly being questioned, because he doesn't follow the Official U.S. Line of Everything Israel Does Is By Definition Virtuous and Right -- a line that has done nothing to resolve the conflict in the area and which is an assumption that we grant to no other ally in the world. But more disturbingly, it seems as if pledging unquestioning loyalty oaths to Israel is a prerequisite for the presidency, in the eyes of the Republican Party.

It isn't about appealing to Jewish voters, either, though I'm sure that's part of it. But in a recent poll, only 23% of Jewish voters in the U.S. cited Israel as a top issue and fully 40% of Jewish voters regarded Israel as "extreme" -- a smaller percentage than regarded Iran, Hamas, or Hezbollah as extreme, but given the assumption that Israel trumps all in the minds of Jewish voters, it would seem that this No Questioning Israel litmus test is perhaps just a bit unreasonable.

Of course even as I write, Pat Buchanan is on Morning Joe insisting that Israel IS the most important thing on the minds of Jewish voters, so once again, it seems there is a disconnect between what's actually happening and what pundits say are happening.

Every four years we go through this assiduous courting of "The Jewish Vote", as if a group of the kind of polyglot, squabbling people that American Jews are, can ever be lumped together into one group. This year it seems to be even more ferocious, here at the intersection of Bonb Iran Lane Avenue and He's Really a Musliim Terrorist Lane.

Labels: Israel

Of course we all know that the invasion of Iraq was NOT to "liberate the Iraqi people from a tyrant", but let's just go with that for a minute. If it's a "noble cause" to liberate people of an oil-rich nation to "spread freedom", why isn't it OK to liberate people in a country devastated by the Pacific equivalent of a Katrina-level hurricane and flood from a tyrannical regime that won't even let aid get to its people?

Myanmar's junta announced Thursday that a pro-military constitution has won overwhelming support in a referendum, which was held despite widespread criticism and in the midst of a national tragedy — a devastating cyclone that the Red Cross says may have killed more than 125,000 people.

Myanmar's government issued a revised casualty toll Wednesday night, saying 38,491 were known dead and 27,838 were missing.

But the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said its estimate put the number of dead between 68,833 and 127,990.

Even though the figures seemed precise, spokesman Matthew Cochrane said they were not based on body counts, but were only estimate designed to provide Red Cross donors and partner organizations with an idea of the numbers being discussed within the aid community.

U.N. officials have said there could be more than 100,000 dead in the May 2-3 cyclone.

With up to 2.5 million people in urgent need of food, water and shelter, aid agencies were preparing or moving in a wide-range of relief supplies including material for temporary shelters, rice, drinking water, kitchen utensils and medicines, including 2,000 anti-snake bite kits.

The World Health Organization said an increase in snake bites was feared in coming days. U.N. agencies and other voluntary groups have been able to reach only 270,000 of the affected people.

But instead of accepting foreign help freely, the government continued to issue only a few visas to foreign aid experts, and all but shut them out of the hardest-hit areas.

The regime insists it can handle the disaster on its own — a stance that appears to stem not from its abilities but its deep suspicion of most foreigners, who have frequently criticized its human rights abuses and crackdown on democracy activists.

If George W. Bush really cared about spreading freedom and democracy throughout the world, he would send troops in a noncombat role to get this aid through. But then, Myanmar/Burma doesn't have oil.

Except that it does.

Labels: Burma

Keith:



There's something so Gilded Age about a child of Connecticut and Kennebunkport actually thinking that the sacrifice of a sport played in clubs that don't allow black people or women, clubs frequented by guys named Skip and Chip wearing plaid pants; on land that could be used to farm vegetables to feed poor people or shelter them; land that's artificially kept green as a carpet through pesticides that then get into the water supply and cause cancer, constitutes a way to express "solidarity" with the family of a kid from Flint, Michigan who died while serving in the Army because there was nothing else for him to do.

I think George Carlin had the right idea:

Labels: arrogance, elitism, George W. Bush, rant

How many 20th hijackers have there been now?

And the Bush record of bringing those responsible for 9/11 continues apace. Charges against another suspect have been dropped because of the Bush torture policy:

U.S. authorities have long considered Mohammed al-Qahtani one of the most dangerous alleged terrorists in U.S. custody, a man who could have been the 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, plot if he had not been denied entry into the country.

But yesterday, amid concerns about using information obtained during abusive military interrogations, a top Pentagon official removed Qahtani from the military commission case meant to bring justice to those behind the vast Sept. 11 conspiracy.

Susan J. Crawford, the appointed official who decides which cases will be heard in the largely untested commission process, dismissed the charges against Qahtani while affirming those against five other alleged terrorists to stand trial at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Prosecutors reserve the right to charge Qahtani again, and the military says it can hold him without trial for the duration of the counterterrorism wars. But his defense lawyers and officials familiar with the case say it is unlikely that Qahtani will face new charges because he was subjected to aggressive Defense Department interrogation techniques -- such as intimidation by dogs, hooding, nudity, long-term isolation and stress positions.

Those techniques were later rescinded because of concerns about their legality. In 2005, an official military investigation concluded that Qahtani's interrogation regimen amounted to abuse.

Officials close to the case said Crawford's office was reluctant to sanction the charges against Qahtani because prosecutors had little evidence against him outside of his own coerced confessions, a point that most certainly would have become a central issue at trial.

"Their case was only based on evidence derived from torture," said Army Lt. Col. Bryan Broyles, who represents Qahtani. "In six-plus years, the evidence comes down to what they beat out of him. The prosecution evidence was entirely unreliable and inadmissible."

Crawford has not commented publicly since taking over as the top official for military commissions, and a Pentagon spokesman said yesterday she has not explained her decision. Officials close to the case said the office's top legal adviser, Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Hartmann, concluded in an analysis that Qahtani's case was too weak to prosecute.

"Decisions relating to joining several accused are based upon such factors as the nature of the offenses, the evidence and applicable rules of procedure," said Navy Cmdr. J.D. Gordon, a Pentagon spokesman.

"My guess is that they will never charge him at all," said Charles D. "Cully" Stimson, a lawyer with the Heritage Foundation and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs. "It may be next to impossible to prove a case against him without what came out of his mouth."

And this is why torture makes a mockery of the legal system. But then, we have a president and an Administration who have made a mockery of the legal system, the offices they hold, the Constitution, and the nation. This is just one of their many travesties.

Labels: torture

If some guy named Sean O'Malley or Worthington J. Graham were to ask this, it would be tantamount to muttering conspiracies about Jewish bankers and the Rothschilds. But since it's Glenn Greenwald, a Member of the Tribe, it's worth reading his inquiry about why it is that American politicians are expected to swear an oath of loyalty to Israel in a way they aren't required to for any other American ally.

The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg conducted what he's calling an "interview" with Barack Obama regarding Israel, but it sounded much more like an inquisition. Goldberg repeatedly demanded that Obama swear his devotion to Israel and affirm prevailing orthodoxies ("I'm curious to hear you talk about the Zionist idea. Do you believe that it has justice on its side?"; "Go to the kishke question, the gut question: the idea that if Jews know that you love them, then you can say whatever you want about Israel, but if we don't know you –- Jim Baker, Zbigniew Brzezinski –- then everything is suspect. There seems to be in some quarters, in Florida and other places, a sense that you don’t feel Jewish worry the way a senator from New York would feel it"; "Do you think that Israel is a drag on America's reputation overseas?"; "If you become President, will you denounce settlements publicly?"). Afterwards, Goldberg pronounced himself satisfied: "Obama expressed -- in twelve different ways -- his support for Israel to me."

Marty Peretz, after a telephone conversation with Obama devoted primarily to Israel, similarly clears Obama of any suspicions of disloyalty, approvingly noting that Obama "recognizes" that Israeli settlements of the West Bank are not "the core problem" for the conflict with the Palestinians (to Peretz, such settlements "are very much a side-issue"). Peretz further decrees that Obama's "exhilarating experience with American Jews and with their bonds to the dream and realities of Israel" was evident in both Goldberg's interview and in Obama's call with Peretz.

Isn't it bad enough that Obama's loyalty to THIS country has been questioned because he doesn't like to equate the wearing of a fifty-cent flag pin made in China to love of country? Do we have to make him swear fealty to Israel too? Especially when Obama has a commanding lead over McCain among Jewish voters anyway? Who set up the Zionist punditocracy as the Arbiter of Jewish Acceptability?

Labels: Barack Obama, Israel

Now here's a guy who ought to make that thrill go up Chris Matthews' leg. Meet Scott Kleeb, who decisively won his primary race against a Republican-turned-Democrat in Nebraska yesterday with 69 (now, STOP it!) percent of the vote. Kleeb is running for the seat of the retiring Chuck Hagel against former U.S. Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns.

The good news? Well, LOOK at him, fer cryin' out loud. The other good news? His big push is about R&D into alternative energy, he's an environmentalist, and favors diplomacy over shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later. He's a bit more hawkish than I'd like, his talk of "simplifying the tax code" sounds kind of right-wing dog-whistle-ish, and he falls into the trap of assuming that retraining is some kind of panacea for job outsourcing. But he's about as progressive as you're going to get out of Nebraska, he's an ranch hand-turned-college professor with a Ph.D. in history, and well, uh, LOOK at him.

This would be a very nice Democratic pickup. It would mean that the Democrats would have picked up seats that used to belong to some of the most high-profile Republicans in the Senate and House.

With West Virginia proving yesterday that there are still far too many people who simply Will Not vote for a black man for president, getting to that 60-seat threshhold in Congress is going to be very important as a precaution against a McCain presidency run amok. Kleeb is running against an extremely well-financed opponent, so if you want to target a Senate race for donations, you could do worse than this one.

Labels: 2008 election, Scott Kleeb, Senate

Now if we can just get him to give up eating cake and attending Republican fundraisers during hurricanes…

In an interview with Politico and Yahoo News, George W. Bush showed us what a sacrificial kinda guy he is. He admitted, after blaming our intelligence community yet again for the intel that got us into Iraq (and what faulty intel, one might ask, is keeping us in there since it's admittedly turned into a Swedish clusterfuck?), that he gave up playing golf in honor of the troops that he’d doomed to death.

It only took him until August 2003, when the UN HQ in Baghdad got bombed, killing Sergio Vieira de Mello, a high-ranking UN official. He couldn’t even lie and say that he gave up golf for the 270 or so troops who‘d been killed by the time of the August 19, 2003 bombing. It was over de Mello’s assassination.

Here’s Bush’s answer to a question spoondfed to him by Mike Allen, who asked him if his not playing golf since 2003 had anything to do with Iraq.:

I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal… I remember when de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man's life. I was playing golf -- I think I was in central Texas -- and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, 'It's just not worth it anymore to do.'

Gee, what a fortuitous guess on Allen’s part, getting right to the heart of the matter with his intuition. And, gee, what a guy, caring about how he looks while driving the ship of state over the cliff.

Such as this tender moment while Hurricane Katrina was busy ripping up the Gulf Coast:

Luckily, Dear Leader ain’t obsessed with appearances, such as when he drove past grieving mother Cindy Sheehan, throwing up dust in her face as she stood in a drainage ditch, on the way to yet another GOP fundraiser. You know, keeping up appearances for grieving war mothers like that.

The story of Bush playing golf while Katrina was destroying lives by the thousands and property by the billions of dollars is apocryphal at best. No pictures exist of Bush playing golf either that day in San Diego or any of him since 2003.

But banning photographers while you’re playing golf in order to look more reverent than you are isn’t quitting. It’s just being sneaky and dishonest, which are two words that perfectly, if euphemistically, describe this administration from start to bloody finish.

So, the next time we see Bush playing golf, that’ll mean the war’s over. Right?

Don Rumsfeld may be gone, but his cronies are still in power. This ought to make your hair stand on end:

An ongoing exploration of the documents related to the Pentagon's "message force multipliers" program has unearthed a clip of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld suggesting that America, having voted the Democrats back into Congressional power, could benefit from suffering another terrorist attack, and doing so in the presence of the very same military analysts who went on to provide commentary and analysis of the Iraq War.

[snip]

But by far the most extraordinary part of this luncheon is the antipathy the gathered members exhibit toward the American people for having the temerity to vote the Democrats back into power. When Lt. Gen. Michael DeLong bemoans the lack of "sympathetic ears" on Capitol Hill, Rumsfeld offers that the American people lack "the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats." What's to be done? According to Rumsfeld, "The correction for that, I suppose, is [another] attack."

DELONG: Politically, what are the challenges because you're not going to have a lot of sympathetic ears up there.

RUMSFELD: That's what I was just going to say. This President's pretty much a victim of success. We haven't had an attack in five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it's not surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment. The same thing's in Europe, there's a low threat perception. The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack. And when that happens, then everyone gets energized for another [inaudible] and it's a shame we don't have the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats...the lethality, the carnage, that can be imposed on our society is so real and so present and so serious that you'd think we'd be able to understand it, but as a society, the longer you get away from 9/11, the less...the less...

So....why should anyone think THIS bunch is going to "keep you safe"? We have an election coming up in November, and voters may very well decide to elect a Democrat.

So do you feel lucky? Well, do you?

Labels: domestic terrorism, Donald Rumsfeld, LIHOP, MIHOP, Republicans

Hoff mentioned what a joke the GOP site is, so I went and took a look for myself. And hoo-boy, is he ever right:



Now, I could swear that one of these rotating banners said "9,400 members and counting!", but I sat for as many minutes as I could stand and it never came back. But what's here is priceless enough.

First of all, if you didn't know better, you'd think this was an Obama campaign site, because Barack Obama is mentioned more than the party's own presumptive nominee. Look at the headlines -- every last one about Barack Obama, and nothing about John McCain.

Now the funny stuff:

Note how the first headline is "05-12-08 - Obama's inability to hire good help rears its head -- again." Now notice the four rotating images under the picture of Obama. Look at the one to the far left: "The Republican Party is Hiring!!" Looks like their inability to hire good help rears its own head -- again. Now look at the image next to it: "Political Education": Learn some new political skills." Like what -- gay bashing, opposing a G.I. Bill because it might give people who enlist hope for a different future than just being cannon fodder?" And speaking of opposing the G.I. Bill, look at how Republicans support the troops -- why, they create a petition! Because nothing says "Thank you for your service" quite like signing a petition expressing your support for leaving the troops over in Iraq until they are "victorious" -- whatever the fuck that means. Does anyone even know? Helping them get medical care, housing, and education when they get home -- that's for sissies. Real men, real patriots, sign a petition. Oh yeah, and they donate to McCain while they're at it.

You don't even want to KNOW about the "Faces of the GOP". But if you look at this and think "Faces of Death", you're not alone.

Ah....OK, I reloaded the page and here it is -- a screencap crowing about how the GOP's Facebook group is "9,400 members strong and growing!!" (Pssst....Barack Obama's has 831,532 strong...and growing.)



And of course, this one has the ever-popular "Vote Fraud Updates" -- designed to make sure that the nonexistent problem of illegal immigrants deciding to expose themselves to government officials so they can vote is Taken! Care! Of! Let's click on that one, shall we?

It's a compendium of "vote fraud" cases. Let's see what we have....more than 500 absentee ballot applications rejected in Howard County, Indiana. They claim it's because parts of the applications were filled out by United Auto Worker officials. Now remember, these are not the ballots themselves, they are requests for absentee ballots. The beef here is that the UAW officials pre-filled some of the information, including checking off "Democratic" for the party affiliation. Now the UAW ought to know better, but the fact that they were all Democratic Party requests doesn't necessarily mean that there were any Republican UAW members who were "forced" to request Democratic Party ballots. And really, what's the big deal? It's not as if the Republican primary in Indiana was contested, and Rush Limbaugh was telling Republicans to cross over anyway.

So what else....OK, we have a blurb about the Supreme Court's upholding of Indiana's Voter ID law and we have ONE WOMAN who was allowed to keep her right to vote after being indicted for trying to vote twice in a local election last August. We have news of 14 indictments in elections dating back to 2003. That's nationwide. That sure doesn't sound like a serious and endemic "vote fraud" problem to me. I'm frankly a lot more concerned about 93,000 innocent Floridians who were disenfranchised by Karl Rove in 2000, or about the tens of thousands of largely minority Ohioans who were turned away at the polls in 2004 after standing in the rain for ten hours. If all you can do is come up with fourteen people -- even 100 people -- constituting "vote fraud" OVER THE LAST FIVE YEARS, that hardly seems like justification to implement laws designed to keep everyone lower on the socioeconomic scale than middle-class away from the polls.

But this is your 2008 GOP, folks -- a party that's ashamed to put its own nominee on its web site in anything other than a cursory manner, a party looking for onesies and twosies of "vote fraud" but cares not about mass disenfranchisement or voting machines that don't work and change votes when they do; a party selling a 5=inch pink elephant named Maxine -- yours for the modest sum of $35. Maxine is, of course, pink, which I guess is supposed to mean she's a girl, but since she is a pink elephant, feel free to insert your own Vito Fossella joke here.

Labels: assholes, Republic Party

We haven't come that far after all:

At a Clinton campaign rally Sunday night in Eleanor, only 30 miles down the road from Charleston (motto posted on the main drag: "The Cleanest Town in West Virginia"), the Secret Service held on to pocketknives for voters so they could give them back once the candidate left -- not exactly the norm at Obama's rallies anywhere. Even for Clinton fans this late in the game, the crowd was fairly hostile to Obama. R.K. and Peggy Horton, both 71, said they'd never voted for a Republican for president in their lives. But if Obama wins, they will, and they think a lot of their neighbors will, too.

Obama rubs the Hortons the wrong way because they think he's arrogant. It's the same thing you hear from voters in a lot of the parts of the country where Obama's infamous remarks about bitterness would probably also apply. But that's not his only problem in rural West Virginia. "They won't go for a black man, that's just it," R.K. Horton, a retired heating and air conditioning business owner, said of his neighbors. "I don't think it's being racist necessarily, they just don't like black people that well." For that matter, it's not just his neighbors. "The arrogance and all that bothers me more than black, but black is a close second," he said. "Our generation was back when blacks were the back of the bus, and it's hard to change that outlook. I just feel like I couldn't vote for him."

Has your head exploded yet?

What the fuck is wrong with these people? First of all, if you say you just don't like black people all that well, you are a racist. If you don't like ONE black person, that's dislike of an individual. Not liking "black people" means you are a racist. So admit it and then we can deal with it accordingly.

R.K. Horton is smart enough, and able enough to detach from his gut response to recognize that his "not liking black people" may stem from growing up when black people were the back of the bus -- but he's not able to transcend that and recognize that just because something comes from your gut or your upbringing doesn't make it accurate.

This is the minefield that John Edwards faced with the gay community when he acknowledged his "discomfort" -- a discomfort stemming from his background. The difference is that John Edwards recognized that "discomfort" need not result in "dislike", acknowledged that he was struggling with it, and admitted it wasn't something of which he was proud -- unlike R.K. Horton, who just shrugs his shoulders and figures he's entitled to be a racist because he grew up that way.

Meanwhile, the "uppity Negro" (sic) -- oh, excuse me -- the ARROGANT black guy -- had the temerity to recognize the dynamic of a bunch of people voting against their own interest because they can't seem to get past their own prejudices. He had the audacity to pull the cover off of this cancer with which the American white poor live all the time and try to transcend it. He recognized it for what it is -- bitterness -- and is chastised to this day for it.

Well, you know what, Mr. Horton? You go right on listening to the Republican dog whistles. You go right on voting for people who send your job overseas and who want to throw your Social Security into the giant sucking maw of the stock market and want to eliminate the Medicare you're going to rely on when you're old. You go on voting for these people because you grew up with blacks at the back of the bus.

But when you find yourself without so much as a pot to piss in, don't come crying to me. And don't you DARE blame those black people you still think belong at the back of the bus.

UPDATE: So much for race doesn't matter anymore. Ugly Americans indeed.

Labels: rant

Check out the creative minds of progressives at Obama in 30 Seconds.

Labels: 2008 election