The Phuquetard Buddha

Cross posted over at The News Blog.

“Peace comes from within. Which is why we need bunker busting nukes to get at it.” -- sayings of the Phuquetard Buddha (Also known as the Guantanamo Buddha.)

If you ever wake up and find yourself in the middle of a holy war -- involuntarily or otherwise -- it is advisable strategery to get ahold of the local maps and read 'em hurryupquick.

To get the lay of the land, and understand the dogmatic shape and size of the orbits your enemies.

And in the theopolitical headspace of the followers of Phuquetard Buddhism -- those lunatics and mouthbreathers who wage a fulminating 24/7 culture war on everyone one inch Left of Sean Hannity and one head smarter that Doug Feith

“Whatever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be kind, conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings…kill it immediately and sell its children for beer money.” -- sayings of the Phuquetard Buddha

-- there is only the Perfect, Eternal, Conservative Now.

There is no “future”.

No tomorrow.

There is no imaginary place down the timestream where the consequences of doing immensely reckless, stupid things might catch up with us.

And because there is no such place, people who persist in trying to apply “logic” or “common sense” or “causality” or “reason” or any variety of thinking that would generally not be associated with “massive head trauma, multigenerational inbreeding or gas sipping” in some linear, temporal way to show that decisions made in the perfect, eternal, Conservative Now might come with a terrible price down the road…

…are obviously traitors and terrorist lovers.

Their agenda is obviously Al Qaeda's agenda.

“A generous heart is…available on the Thai black market for the right price. I’ve got seven on dry ice in the White House mess just in case, plus the CardioBot 5000 that my pals at Halliburton knocked together for me.” -- sayings of the Phuquetard Buddha

For the Phuquetard Buddhist there is also no “past”. What happened five years ago, five weeks ago, five days ago or five minutes ago isn't simply irrelevant; except in cases of Democratic blowjobs and bad land deals, the “past” does not exist at all.

Because if it did, it would be bursting at the seams with all kinds of scary stuff. Like Dirty Hippies talking about the “future” and being shouted down as traitors and terrorist lovers.

Like the leaders of the GOP lying over and over and over again.

Confident/shrill pronouncements about the turning of corners and even louder and shriller pronouncement about the disloyalty those who point out that the makers of those shrill pronouncements have been wrong about ever single fucking thing.

So when the only product you have to sell is toxic, and the only leverage you have on Monday to move product is people’s fear and gullibility…

…by Wednesday you will come to require their willful ignorance...

…and by Friday you will begin to demand it.

And this is the terrible dynamic the GOP have roped themselves into.

That to survive they have become The People of the Lie.

A band of the corrupt and insane who cannot -- dare not -- tell the truth about…anything anymore. Anything. And for whom the past six years have truly been a sifting process.

“All suffering comes from indictment” -- sayings of the Phuquetard Buddha

In six short years, the Right has compounded their own lies so many times with so much vigorish in human lives and suffering. They have held the military hostage for so long now – alternately treating them like slaves and ass paper, while cowering behind them shrieking that any who speak ill of the Dear Leader are terrorsymps who hate the men and women in uniform, whenever they need to shut down honest debate. They have spent us so broke in treasure and reputation, that I do not exaggerate when I say that you can no longer be a Good American and a Good Republican.

Because while it is one thing to make poor decisions because you are not in possession of all the facts, it is entirely another thing to run screaming from the facts.

To hide from the facts in your Mommy’s basement like a Yellow Elephant dodging an Army recruiter, and then to slime the hell out of anyone who tries to sneak a few facts into you Cheetohs.

“Avoid aiming at anything less than the ruin of others.” -- sayings of the Phuquetard Buddha.

The Party of Lincoln has been abandoned to the cowards, the looters, the monsters and the insane. There is nothing left at its hollow heart. No place left for it to go but deeper into the abyss of doctrinally willful ignorance and the aggressively unexamined life.

No one left steering the ship but the acolytes of the Guantanamo Buddha who look neither forward nor back, but train their tiny, beautiful minds to live only in the perfect, eternal Conservative Now, which is why they cannot allow this “past” thingie to exist.

Because if it did, it might track its muddy, bloody, impeachable footprints right back into the Present and all over their nice, Lysol-fresh, perfect, eternal, Conservative Now.

“Right conduct is to form a proper livelihood to prosper by. Preferably something indoors, in the petroleum industry, with obscenely high margins, where your lies can topple governments and send a lot of people off to die, and yet you never go to jail.” -- sayings of the Phuquetard Buddha.

Just like those Dirty Hippies who, years ago, kept referencing some imaginary “future” and talking about “consequences” of invading Iraq, these Dirty Hippies who keep harping on the “past” and talking about “evidence” are obviously equally traitorous, and equally bent on helping terrorists destroy America.

What the Dirty Hippies traitors refuse to comprehend is that Time and Truth are Liberal Illusions.

There is no “future” full of pain and failure. There is no “past” full of lies and hypocrisy.

There is only the Phuquetard Buddhist Present within which all words of the Dear Leader glow with a special light of truthiness, and all decisions are glorious and sinless and perfect and pure, and will be so forever and ever.

Because nothing exists outside of the Conservative Now.

Which will always be -- Perfectly and Eternally – exactly one friedman long.

“To conquer oneself is a greater task than conquering others. But conquering others is a fuck of a lot more profitable.” -- sayings of the Phuquetard Buddha.

Comrade George Will Exhorts Workers:

"Produce more! Contribute more!"

Collective bargaining is counterrevolutionary!

In fact he pretty much says it right here, in the WaPo (Will has a certain kind of verbal incontinence when it comes to his ability to control his comtempt for working people, so emphasis has been added where Will’s uncontrollable bias and loathing first begin to leak through his pants.)

An Assault On Corporate Speech
By George F. Will
Tuesday, February 27, 2007; A15
Good for Adrienne Eaton of Rutgers University's Labor Studies & Employment Relations Department. Her forthright description of a central issue in the debate about the Employee Free Choice Act, which she supports, clarifies why that legislation is symptomatic of a disagreeable tendency in today's politics.

Labor unions hope this exquisitely mistitled act, which the House of Representatives probably will pass this week, will compensate for their dwindling persuasiveness as they try to persuade workers to join. It would allow unions to organize workplaces without workers voting for unionization in elections with secret ballots. Instead, unions could use the "card check" system: Once a majority of a company's employees signs a card expressing consent, the union is automatically certified as the bargaining agent for all the workers.

Unions say the card-check system is needed to protect workers from anti-union pressure by employers before secret-ballot elections. Such supposed pressure is one of organized labor's alibis for declining membership.

There are, however, ample protections against employer pressures that really are abusive. Tellingly, the act would forbid employers from trying to influence -- pressure? -- employees by improving their lot: It would fine employers that, to reduce the incentive to unionize, give workers "unilateral" -- not negotiated -- improvements in compensation or working conditions during attempts at unionization. Clearly, the act aims less to help workers than to herd them as dues-payers into unions.

Under the card-check system, unions are able to, in effect, select the voters they want. It strips all workers of privacy and exposes them, one at a time, to the face-to-face pressure of union organizers who distribute and collect the cards. The Supreme Court has said that the card-check system is "admittedly inferior to the election process."

Repealing a right -- to secret ballots -- long considered fundamental to democratic culture would be a radical act. But labor is desperate. The card-check shortcut to unionization comes before Congress after last month's announcement that union membership declined, yet again, in 2006, by 326,000.
…

You will notice that Will never bothers to attack any single union principle or directive as destructive or lazy or nuts, only the means they are using. And while there may be some point in having this discussion in the oxygen-deprived void of Conservative Theory where Will makes his nest, the idea that labor and management operate in the real world with some kind of parity when it comes to opportunities to present their respective cases is laughable.

So let’s look at the world outside of Will’s short and selective arrow-slit of perception. At a leader and poster-child for with the kind of reflexively berserker attitude towards organized labor that Will is tacitly cheerleading.

At WalMart which, outside of the federal government, is the single largest employer in the United States.

A few fun facts about WalMart from this site:

The poverty wages they pay:

A Substantial Number of Wal-Mart Associates earn far below the poverty line.

In 2001, the last year for which Wal-Mart has released figures for most occupations, sales associates, the most common job in Wal-Mart, earned on average $8.23 an hour for annual wages of $13,861.The 2001 poverty line for a family of three was $14,630. [“Is Wal-Mart Too Powerful?”, Business Week, 10/6/03 and US Dept of Health and Human Services 2001 Poverty Guidelines, 2001]

The people they work off-the-clock:

Wal-Mart forces employees to work off-the-clock.

As of the printing of their 2005 Annual Report, Wal-Mart faced 44 wage and hour lawsuits. Major law-suits have either been won or are working their way through the legal process in states such as California, Indiana, Minnesota, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington. [Wal-Mart Annual Report 2005]

And a merry assortment of violations of the FLSA:

Wal-Mart violates the Fair Labor Standards Act

In 2002, statisticians estimated Wal-Mart shortchanged its Texas workers $150 million over four years by regularly not paying them for working through their 15-minute breaks. [Sources include Associated Press, "Federal Jury Finds Wal-Mart Guilty in Overtime Pay Case," Chicago Tribune, Business 3, 12/20/03 and Steven Greenhouse, “Suits Say Wal-Mart Forces Workers to Toil Off the Clock,” New York Times, A1, 6/25/02)]

One week of time records from 25,000 employees in July 2000 found 1,371 instances of minors working too late, during school hours, or for too many hours in a day. There were 60,767 missed breaks and 15,705 lost meal times. [Steven Greenhouse, “Suits Say Wal-Mart Forces Workers to Toil Off the Clock,” New York Times, A1, 6/25/02]

Combine these with dozens of other examples and you get a Thurston Howell III Republican’s idea of perfect labor-management relations.

Of course in recent years they’ve learned to wipe the drool off their mouths and wear spiffy trench coats and gloves when publicly jerking off to the idea of a Corporate Feudal State with an elite 1% in unfettered command of every resource and institution, and the rest of us slobs are worked like rented mules until we drop in our traces, and then harvested for our organs

But they were not always so discrete about their disdain for working people.

Consider this from the Salad Days of their very own Dear Leader:

...
President George W. Bush was introduced to the film "The Grapes of Wrath" as a student at the Harvard Business School, where he got admitted on his family's name. "I wanted to give the class a visual reference for poverty and a sense of historical empathy," macroeconomics professor Yoshi Tsurumi told a researcher for Kitty Kelley's book, "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty."

"George Bush came up to me and said, 'Why are you going to show us that commie movie?'" Tsurumi recalled. "I laughed because I thought he was kidding, but he wasn't. After we viewed the film, I called on him to discuss the Depression and how he thought it affected people. [Bush] said, 'Look, people are poor because they are lazy.' A number of students pounced on him and demanded that he support his statement with facts and statistics. He quickly backed down because he could not sustain his broadside."

The incident and a semester of exposure burned into Tsurumi's memory a disturbing view of the future president. "His strong prejudices soon set him apart.... Most business students are conservative, but they are not inhumane or unprincipled. George Bush came across as totally lacking compassion, with no sense of history, completely devoid of social responsibility and unconcerned with the welfare of others."

Lacking compassion?

No sense of history?

Completely devoid of social responsibility?

And unconcerned with the welfare of others?

For humane people, average people -- normal people -- this sounds like the description of a sociopath.

For men like Will and Bush, it is their checklist for social policy.

Their's is a Perfect Randite Universe purged of meddlesome government, “activist” judges and unions.

A world where you – all by your lonesome – are pitted against global corporations who don’t give a shit about anything beyond shareholder value. Who have deeper pockets than you could possibly imagine and can tap vast armies of lawyers, lobbyists and a billion dollar marketing budget to lay the hurt on you if you starting raising a fuss about being herded down the economic slaughter line for the greater glory of the likes of the Family Walton.

Where there is no one left to take your side or intermediate on your behalf as you are pulverized in a rigged game that is the very definition of unfair and unbalanced.

So consider here just how far WalMart was willing to go to annihilate the tiniest inkling of the possibility that one group in one store might join a union.

...
A National Labor Relations Board judge recently ruled that Wal-Mart must bargain with unionized butchers at its store in Jacksonville, Texas, about 100 miles southeast of Dallas. About three years ago, butchers there voted seven to three to join the United Food and Commercial Workers. The vote had significance far beyond those puny numbers: It was the first time any union had succeeded in getting a toehold at America's largest retailer.

Wal-Mart, characteristically, fought every step of the way, before and after the vote. In one appeal, Wal-Mart alleged that the union had used "food, alcohol, cash and sexual titillation" to influence the vote--based on a meeting that took place at a topless bar.

From a packaging viewpoint, Wal-Mart's other reaction was more interesting. A week after the vote, the company announced that it was converting all its meat packaging to case-ready (that is, packaged by the meat processor), phasing out butchers entirely.
...

Got that?

When seven people in one store in Texas voted to unionize, WalMart went nuclear without batting an eye.

Seven meat cutters…and WalMart changes its global retail policy just to fuck with them.

Now there are many fine companies in this world that are not union shops.

Many places that treat their workers well, that are willing to haggle honestly about what salaries and benefits can be, given a fair assessment of what company profits are and the company’s future looks like. That see their employees as important members of the organization who make the place hum and grow, and reward them commensurately.

But having stipulated that -- and stipulate here and now that Unions have certainly had their own history of discrimination, corruption, inertia and any other of the deadly sin you’d care to name -- the WalMart ideology is becoming more and more universal.

Instead of reaching a consensus on how honorable labor/management relations should of be conducted – the genuine “Centrist” position if you will – that debate has followed the Radical Right's model of political, social, international and environmental feudalization in lock-step right off the cliff.

So as the as the “Left” has grow steadily more modest and practical in its goals, the “Right” has grown steadily more rigid, dogmatic and hysterical. Where there once may have been willingness to compromise, now there is reflexive opposition to any hint of collective bargaining and a bloody-minded keenness on the part of corporate America to take the working man to the mats over anything and everything.

This is real world of labor.

And in this world the distribution of guns, butter, cash and lobbying power all wildly favor the Corporate side over the worker, so to hint that there is anything like a fair fight or an even playing field between management and labor in the United States is a symptom of either a pollyannaish naiveté that might be cute in a four-year-old but is decidedly creepy in a smelly old crank like George Will..or the rankest kind of lying.

So as I said at the beginning, you will notice that Will never bothers to attack any single union policy or directive as destructive or lazy or nuts: he doesn’t need to. People like Will are programmed from the moment they are weaned off their Mother’s pickly teat and onto Adam Smith and Ayn Rand to despise labor.

To despise the working man.

To despise any attempt by free citizens in a democracy that also happens to be capitalist – and not a Capitalist Utopia that is still nominally democratic – to organize themselves in order to better their circumstance.

He opposes only the means they are trying to use to offer workers the choice of organizing or not, and it is this Radical Republican Elitism – this naked contempt for the whole idea of honest sweat for honest pay, honestly negotiated – that will eventually do them in.

Because, George, in the end most people are working people.

And it was the Twelve Labors of Hercules that made it into the pantheon of human mythology and will live there forever.

Not the Twelve Snippy Op-Ed Columns of Hercules.

"Behold a pale horse:

and his name that sat on him was Death,

and Hell followed with him."


This from the AP

Cheney OK after Afghan Blast; 14 killed

By ALISA TANG

A suicide bomber attacked the entrance to the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan Tuesday during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney, killing at least 14 people and wounding a dozen more. The Taliban claimed responsibility and said Cheney was the target.

Cheney's spokeswoman said he was fine, and the vice president later met with President Hamid Karzai in the capital, Kabul, before leaving the country.

There were conflicting reports on the death toll. Provincial Gov. Abdul Jabar Taqwa said 20 people were killed, while NATO said initial reports indicated three fatalities, including a U.S. soldier, a South Korean coalition soldier and a U.S. government contractor whose nationality wasn't immediately known. NATO said 27 people also were wounded.

It was unclear why there was such a large discrepancy in the reports.
Associated Press reporters at the scene said they had seen the bodies of at least 12 people carried in black body bags and wooden coffins from near the base into a market area where hundreds of Afghans had gathered to mourn.

Maj. William Mitchell said it did not appear the explosion was intended as a threat to the vice president. "He wasn't near the site of the explosion," Mitchell said. "He was safely within the base at the time of the explosion."

However, a purported Taliban spokesman, Qari Yousef Ahmadi, said Cheney was the target of the attack.

"We knew that Dick Cheney would be staying inside the base," Ahmadi told AP telephone from an undisclosed location. "The attacker was trying to reach Cheney."
Ahmadi said the attack was carried out by an Afghan called Mullah Abdul Rahim from Logar province.

The explosion happened near the first of at least three gated checkpoints vehicles must pass through before gaining access to Bagram.

…
There were 139 suicide bombings last year, a five-fold increase over 2005, and Maj. Gen. David Rodriguez has said he expects the number of suicide bombs to rise even further in 2007.

In the southern Afghan city of Kandahar, meanwhile, a suicide attacker targeting Afghan police blew himself up, wounding three people, said police officer Abdul Nafai.

NATO-led troops patrolling the city also fatally shot a civilian who drove too close to their convoy, police said, the third such fatal shooting this month. Squadron Leader David Marsh, a military spokesman, said soldiers had given signals for the car to stop but that it kept approaching.

I am, in all seriousness, glad Cheney is unhurt. All kidding aside, unlike many on the Right, I would never militate for violence against the leaders of any sovereign governments, foreign or domestic. It is not only morally wrong, it also sets a terribly dangerous precedent.

All I want for Dick Cheney is a public perp-walk, followed by an early court date in the Hague sporting the latest in orange jump suit fashions.

And all I want for Dubya is a nice retirement party with sheet cake and champagne and 99 luft balloons and 17 articles of impeachment. Followed by a long, loooong life down in Crawford where he gets drunker and shithouse-rat crazier every year until his public addresses become indistinguishable in style and content from Charlie Manson’s periodic parole hearings.

All I want is these reeking albatrosses hanging around the necks of the GOP for the next twenty years.

But I am also very confused by the story itself, since we know that the Taliban has been utterly defeated in Afghanistan.

How?

Well, because our government said so:

For your RDA of irony, we'll shall cite this from the People’s Daily January, 2002:

The United States on Tuesday formally announced that the Taliban has been completely defeated and can no longer control any territory in Afghanistan.

"I hereby determine as of this date that the Taliban controls no territory within Afghanistan and modify the description of the term 'territory of Afghanistan controlled by the Taliban' to reflect that the Taliban controls no territory within Afghanistan, " U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said in a statement published in the Federal Register.

The statement is a technical amendment to a presidential order which imposed sanctions against the regime.
…

Therefore there can be only one explanation.

In this excerpt from his future War Crimes testimony, Dick Cheney states that not only did he prove beyond a shadow of a doubt and using geometric logic that there were nukes in Iraq, that we are doing fabulously well there, that there is no insurgency, that Don Rumsfeld was the Greatest Secretary of Defense Evah!, that anyone who says otherwise is a traitor and that a duplicate key to the ward room icebox did exist

but also -- since there are no Taliban in Afghanistan -- that this attack could not possibly have happened in there.

Therefore Dick Cheney must have been in Iraq when this happened.

Yeah…Iraq.

And the perpetrators must have been…secret Iranian spies!

Yeah, that's the ticket.

Fucking secret Iranian spies! Always stealing our strawberries and making Dick Cheney drive the boat in a circle!

Trick Dick sez:

"Shit, even I'm embarassed by this.

If you can read this and see nothing wrong, then look no further.

You. Are. The. Problem.

(emphasis not just added but slathered by me)

February 26, 2007
Editorial Observer

Why Have So Many U.S. Attorneys Been Fired? It Looks a Lot Like Politics

By ADAM COHEN
Carol Lam, the former United States attorney for San Diego, is smart and tireless and was very good at her job. Her investigation of Representative Randy Cunningham resulted in a guilty plea for taking more than $2 million in bribes from defense contractors and a sentence of more than eight years. Two weeks ago, she indicted Kyle Dustin Foggo, the former No. 3 official in the C.I.A. The defense-contracting scandal she pursued so vigorously could yet drag in other politicians.

In many Justice Departments, her record would have won her awards, and perhaps a promotion to a top post in Washington. In the Bush Justice Department, it got her fired.

Ms. Lam is one of at least seven United States attorneys fired recently under questionable circumstances. The Justice Department is claiming that Ms. Lam and other well-regarded prosecutors like John McKay of Seattle, David Iglesias of New Mexico, Daniel Bogden of Nevada and Paul Charlton of Arizona — who all received strong job evaluations — performed inadequately.

It is hard to call what’s happening anything other than a political purge. And it’s another shameful example of how in the Bush administration, everything — from rebuilding a hurricane-ravaged city to allocating homeland security dollars to invading Iraq — is sacrificed to partisan politics and winning elections.

U.S. attorneys have enormous power. Their decision to investigate or indict can bankrupt a business or destroy a life. They must be, and long have been, insulated from political pressures. Although appointed by the president, once in office they are almost never asked to leave until a new president is elected. The Congressional Research Service has confirmed how unprecedented these firings are. It found that of 486 U.S. attorneys confirmed since 1981, perhaps no more than three were forced out in similar ways — three in 25 years, compared with seven in recent months.

It is not just the large numbers. The firing of H. E. Cummins III is raising as many questions as Ms. Lam’s. Mr. Cummins, one of the most distinguished lawyers in Arkansas, is respected by Republicans and Democrats alike. But he was forced out to make room for J. Timothy Griffin, a former Karl Rove deputy with thin legal experience who did opposition research for the Republican National Committee. (Mr. Griffin recently bowed to the inevitable and said he will not try for a permanent appointment. But he remains in office indefinitely.)

The Bush administration cleared the way for these personnel changes by slipping a little-noticed provision into the Patriot Act last year that allows the president to appoint interim U.S. attorneys for an indefinite period without Senate confirmation.
Three theories are emerging for why these well-qualified U.S. attorney were fired — all political, and all disturbing.

1. Helping friends. …

2. Candidate recruitment. …

3. Presidential politics. …
…

There is a saying that goes, when the facts are on your side, argue the facts.

If you find you can’t win on the facts, argue the law.

If you can’t win on the facts or the law, set the building on fire.

To which we can now add, if you’re the Preznit and you can’t win on the facts, the law, or distraction, then just sack opposing council.

Of course instead of the “Monday Morning WhoGivesAShit”, when Richard Nixon moved to fire a powerful attorney for selfish, venial, and purely political reasons they came to call it the "Saturday Night Massacre".

That was in October of 1973, when Nixon started sweating that special prosecutor Archibald Cox was getting too close to the cancerous, criminal rot at the heart of that Presidency. So he ordered his Attorney General (Elliot Richardson ) to fire Cox.

Richardson – a Republican – refused, resigned, and it fell to the Deputy Attorney General (William Ruckelshaus) to do the dirty work.

Well Ruckelshaus – also a Republican – also refused, and resigned, and so Nixon had to fall back on all-purpose GOP stooge and then-Solicitor General – one Robert Fucking Bork – to rid Nixon of his meddlesome priest.

But that was all a million years ago.

Back when Baby Jesus roamed the Earth solving crimes while riding a brontosaurus.

Back when Presidential lying about important matters, illegal wiretapping, tampering with the check and balances of the United State government and attempting to sabotage the workings of the judiciary were actually each considered and outrageous and impeachable act and not just another four things on Dick Cheney’s weekly “To Do” list.

Back when it is alleged that several Republicans possessed consciences. However it is now generally accepted that tales of the “Scrupled Republican” are just another fanciful legend of a mythological creature – like the Chimera or the Basilisk – plucked from the pages of the Bestiary of Imaginary Political Critters.

Quick! Look away!

Look away!

Look away, Dixieland!

I am reminded daily that the world is a small place.

But this small?

Sharpton: Thurmond slave link `shocking'

By Erika Hayasaki
Tribune Newspapers: Los Angeles Times

February 26, 2007

NEW YORK -- Rev. Al Sharpton said Sunday that it was the "most shocking" news of his life--he is a descendant of a slave owned by relatives of Strom Thurmond, the late senator who once championed the segregationist South.

"I couldn't describe the emotions that I've had over the last two or three days thinking about this," the civil rights leader said at a news conference. "Everything from anger and outrage to reflection, and to some pride and glory."

Sharpton found out about the connection to Thurmond last week after the New York Daily News got his approval to work with genealogists.

Researchers discovered that Sharpton's great-grandfather, Coleman Sharpton, was a slave owned by Julia Thurmond, whose grandfather was Strom Thurmond's great-great-grandfather.

"I know there's no such thing as a boring family tree," said Megan Smolenyak, chief family historian for Ancestry.com, who presented the findings to Sharpton on Thursday. "I knew we would find something, but I certainly didn't anticipate this."

The information also showed that Sharpton's great-grandfather had been freed.

In a phone interview Sunday, Sharpton said he had one "awkward" encounter with the South Carolina senator in 1991, during which the two men barely spoke. Sharpton said he had not decided whether he would meet with Thurmond's relatives.

A niece of Thurmond's, Ellen Senter, 61, of Columbia, S.C., confirmed that she had told the Daily News she would speak to Sharpton if he wanted to talk.

Thurmond died in 2003 at age 100.
...

Old times from the former fascist Southron Empire of the CSA are indeed not forgotten.

Sunday Morning Comin’ Down

welcomes you to Mouse Circus flight 50.

Or maybe 60.

Before takeoff, please make sure all pundits are in their locked and uptight positions.

Fox News Sunday: Condi Rice, followed by (Texas Guv) Rick Perry and (Pennsylvania Guv) Edward Rendell.

The Secretary of After School Special Wisdom dispenses her homilies on Iran. Iraq. People looking at stuff. People being worried about stuff. And Iran being under Chapter Seven.

Chris Wallace: What do you want from Iran? If they were clean up their act would you live with Iran as-is?

Condi: Yeah. Well, sorta. I mean there’s a lot of stuff they should stop doing, and it’d be nice if they stopped doing it.

Condi: The Iranian people want to be like other people.

Condi: We don’t need to do a damned thing but let the commanders on the ground do what they wanna do. Well, unless one of them wants do is something the Dear Leader in his Infinite Wisdom doesn’t want to hear about

Then we’ll just sack his ass.

driftglass: Yeah, but the “ground” on which the commanders on the ground are commanding is nowhere near the same ground on which we were told we would be fighting.

Condi (On Dems reigning in the Infinite Line of Credit and Get Out of Responsibility Free Card known as the war authorization): Some would say we’re in a different war. We owe stability to Iraq. To the United States. (And then, the Academy Award for pre-emptive Godwining goes to…)

It was as if after Hitler was overthrown we just said fuck it and walked away.

driftglass: No. It's as if we had overthrown Pinochet. Because of something that, oh, say, a bunch of Mexican nationals based in Paraguay had done.

Then screwed Chile into whole other dimension of clusterfuckery so completely that the Chilean people began to flee their own homeland by the hundreds of thousands. So completely that Chilean people wanted us the hell out Right Now, and came to believe that killing the Occupiers to end the Occupation was a perfectly reasonable course of action.

But,no, we could't leave yet, because first we had to loot their country and our own treasury to rain billion-dollar no-bid/no-performance contracts on the friends of Dick Cheney. Then arrange it so that, say, Paul Wolfowitz’s Chilean gardener was elected Prime Minister.



Then, three years, hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of dead American soldiers and tens of thousand of severely wounded American soldiers, and God knows how many dead Chileans later the Grand Strategy is...more of the same plus 10%, and continuing to berate the people who tried to stop you from triggering this catastrophe in the first place.

See, that’s what it would be like.

Wallace: Malaki keeps blowing one deadline and milestone after another.

Condi: Well you know I have talked very sternly to the Beav about cleaning his room, but it’s hard! Its difficult, existential stuff! Its not easy! But I have talked to him. And Ward has talked to him too.

Wallace: But what about Putin. I mean…pooty-pooty, bo-booty. Fee fie foe booty. Pooty!

Condi: Nah. It’s all good, Chris. Pooty’s just a grouchy sassymouth sometimes, but it don’t mean nuthin’.




On This Week…: Condi Rice and former president Jimmy Carter.

Rice and Peanuts.

Rice turns in a performance here that is in every way phonographically identical to her turn on Fox. It was so staged that she actually couldn’t help grinning, squirming in her seat and false-starting her canned response to the “Iran has no rewind button on its nuclear program” a few times, so anxious was she to get her line-of-the-day out.

Jimmy Carter on getting a certain misunderstanding about his latest book out of the way:

Yes. There is one sentence in my book that I regret. That was a mistake. I write every word in my books and that one sentence seems to imply that I endorse the Palestinians committing atrocities until they get what they want. That’s ridiculous and in contravention to everything else in the book. It was a mistake and it has been corrected.

Jimmy Carter on cutting off finds for Iraq:

I would never support cutting off funds for troops in the field. I would, however, consider capping it and saying you don’t get to keep running up the tab in blood and dollars forever.


Jimmy Carter on Cheney saying that Pelosi and Murtha “validate Al Qaeda’s strategy”:

Are you shitting me? You mean there are people still out there who actually take anything Dick Cheney says seriously? He is i-n-s-a-n-e. Got that? Cheney’s batting average over the last 3-4 years on Iraq has been abysmally low. He hasn’t been right about a single fucking thing. And calling for a change in strategy in Iraq is not validating Al Qaeda.


Jimmy Carter on the current crop of Democratic candidates:

I don’t get involved in the backing or endorsing candidate business. However, if Al Gore got into the race I would back him. His most passionate issue is global warming, and he could do infinitely more on behalf of that issues as the incumbent in the White House that he could making a movie.

But I’ve badgered him enough on the subject. He’s all but told me to STFU.




On Face the Nation Arnold Schwarzenegger and John Edwards.

Ahnuld talks about Centrism. He is in his “post-partisan” phase.

Ahnuld: Because it is aboud de serving da people and not dah Pahty. And zo force.

Ahnuld: And now vee verk togeddah. Vee give bird to dah ideas togeddah.

Ahnuld: And all of zose dings.

Bob Schieffer: Rush Limbaugh might say that all you have done is “gone Liberal”.

Ahnuld: I vood say dat ve verk vor dah people.

Ahnuld: You do not ave to give up you principles. Bud you ave to gompromise. Is not my vay or highvay.

Ahnuld: I made a mistake.

Ahnuld: Ven it come to Dah Voor, we need to elevate dah discuzzin.

Ahnuld: We should do everything ve can do to be Victorious. Bud a timeline is abzolutely impordant.

Bwahahahaha!

To survive in Cali politics, the Terminator has discovered his Inner McGovern.


Then on to John Edwards...

Edwards: What I would do as President? First confess that we don’t know what will happen when we leave Iraq. We just don’t.

Then draw down 40K – 50K troops. Redeploy more later. Some to Kuwait. Some to Afghanistan. Keep the navy in the neighborhood.

And then plan for containment, in case things spiral out of control.

Schieffer: Can you – or anyone – be elected President by saying “I don’t know what is going to happen in Iraq”?

Edwards: Well it’s the truth. And it’s important for the next President to be honest with the American people. To reestablish the trust that Dubya has wiped his ass with and then flushed down the shitter.

And to reestablish the trust with the rest of the world.

Because raw power alone is not enough to make you a world leader. We need moral authority. We need to do things that are beyond our own narrow, short-term interest.

Will you raise taxes to pay for health care?

Edwards: The tax cuts to rich people that George Bush implemented will have to go away.

Edwards: The whole Obama/Clinton thing is just silly. At all the house parties I went to in new Hampshire, the only people who asked about Hillary v. Barack were reporters. Everyone else – real people – wanted to talk about real issues like health care.



On Meet the Press.

Carl Levin being sensible and sensibly outraged, followed by Punkin Haid leading an off-off-off-Broadway production of the Battlestar Galactica Outtake Reel Players parsing trivia and sniffing panties.

Byron York is treacherous fop,

Dr. Gaius Baltar.


Dan Balz takes a run at playing

Brother Cavil. Not the best casting, but hey, we're on a frakkin' budget here.


Doris Kearns Goodwin reprises her customary Elosha role as the Interpreter of the Ancient Scrolls.


“And lo, in the Time of the Gods did Lyndon Johnson did say unto Everett Dirksen…”


And Maureen Dowd ironed her hair good n’ flat and jumped with both Manolos and a side of relish into the part of viperish journalist and Cylon Model Number Three,

D'Anna Biers.

And frankly, if the network ever threw Russert's rattletrap, Sunday Morning Prattlestar cartoon under the bus and rebuilt along these lines, perhaps the experience of watching it would finally become more engaging than a severe bout of something gastrointestinal.



Finally, Chris Matthews…proves once again that he is a lout and a clown and his show is about one mullet short of a bad garage band gone giggly drunk on PBR.

The “highlight” of his frat party was a clip of the Girl Scout barfight from “Airport!”. The comparing of same to the Democratic campaign. Followed by Matthews quipping that he wonders “which married guy they were fighting over.”

Chris Matthews: The reporter I’d most like to have a beer with.

And then another beer with. And then a big bottle of very cheap rum with his glass spiked with a double shot of the juice of the Tree of Michael Finn.

Followed by a brief call to a National Guard press gang, the exchange of signatures for signing bonuses, and a government-plated SUV disappearing over the horizon with a certain unconscious bobblehead strapped to the hood.

Followed by Matthews waking up in Tikrit dressed in used cardboard armor and an 11B MOS.

Mouse Circus flight 50 has now arrived at its destination, and we here at Sunday Mornin’ Airlines would like to welcome you to Chicago.

Please use caution retrieving your baggage from the overhead compartments as political opinions may have shifted in-flight.

Free Writer Lesson #43

The case of Rev. Lonnie W. Latham.

File under: Why “But this really happened!” doesn’t matter.

Why?

Because Life often = Bad, Sloppy Fiction.

Consider what would happen were I to assign a roomful of writing-hopefuls to spin me out a story about Bible Thumping hypocrisy.

There is zero doubt in my mind what the stale end-product of the lower quartile of the lower quartile of the class -- who put off doing their homework until the night before the assignment were due, and then just blindly grabbed and threw every dusty cliché from the back of the bottom shelf into the mix – would read like.

And then consider those lazy writerly choices side-by-side with these snips, mostly from this story from Bell South…

(with a big h/t to Pam's House Blend)

First, my bad students make him a strident, anti-gay crusader.

“The Rev. Lonnie W. Latham had supported a resolution calling on gays and lesbians to reject their "sinful, destructive lifestyle" ...”

Then they’d chuck any notion of making him something theologically unusual -- say, a Unitarian or Lutheran -- and play straight for the cheap laughs by making him a Suthun Baptist.

“He has since resigned as pastor of the South Tulsa Baptist Church and stepped down from the executive committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, where he was one of four members from Oklahoma.”

Then they’d have him get busted for cruising for naughty bad sex.

But not just any naughty bad sex.

Teh extra naughty bad gay sex.

And not just any gay sex, but gay-hooker-sex.

Going for an unearned Naughty Bad Literary Trifuckta, so to speak...

“Authorities say he asked the undercover policeman to come up to his hotel for oral sex.”

In the second act, they would then make sure he showed up for his extra naughty bad gay tryst in one sweet ride; something conspicuous and opulent and decidedly less “sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven” than how Jebus would roll. (h/t Pharyngula for this citation )

…
Latham was arrested and his 2005 Mercedes automobile was impounded, Becker said.

In the third act comes the next, entirely predictable jettisoning of the last of Our Hero’s alleged principles: he will now hide behind some Dirty Hippy Liberal law that says its OK to have gay sex!

His attorney, Mack Martin, filed a motion to have the misdemeanor lewdness charge thrown out, saying the Supreme Court ruled in the 2003 decision Lawrence v. Texas that it was not illegal for consenting adults to engage in private homosexual acts.

"Now, my client's being prosecuted basically for having offered to engage in such an act, which basically makes it a crime to ask someone to do something that's legal," Martin said.

Lasty, the Evil ACLU – who, according to the pillars of the Christopathic church, are directly complicit in the downfall the White American Christian Empire generally, and the attacks of 9/11 specifically

JERRY FALWELL: The ACLU's got to take a lot of blame for this [9/11].

PAT ROBERTSON: Well, yes.

JERRY FALWELL: And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen'.

– will weigh in on his behalf.

“The American Civil Liberties Union of Oklahoma has filed a brief claiming that Latham's arrest also violated his right to free speech.”

And as a final coda, the loudmouthed pulpit-pounder will actually run from the offer of an open microphone for the first time in living memory.

“On Thursday Latham declined to talk to reporters at the non-jury trial.”

Which why I would at best give Life a “Gentleman’s ‘C’” if it did a lot of extra credit and sucking up, and most likely flunk its indolent ass.

Because Life is a lazy writer.

How many Iraqis have perished

since “Mission Accomplished”?

[Illustration is W.W. Wereschtschagin: Pyramid of skulls (Wege ohne Dorma, 3/1995, p. 52)]

A thousand? Ten thousand? A million? A trillion?

As the old joke goes --

Q: "What is the difference between ignorance and apathy?"

A: We don't know and we don’t care. (emphasis added)

Americans underestimate Iraqi death toll

By NANCY BENAC, Associated Press Writer
Americans are keenly aware of how many U.S. forces have lost their lives in Iraq, according to a new AP-Ipsos poll. But they woefully underestimate the number of Iraqi civilians who have been killed.

When the poll was conducted earlier this month, a little more than 3,100 U.S. troops had been killed. The midpoint estimate among those polled was right on target, at about 3,000.

Far from a vague statistic, the death toll is painfully real for many Americans. Seventeen percent in the poll know someone who has been killed or wounded in Iraq. And among adults under 35, those closest to the ages of those deployed, 27 percent know someone who has been killed or wounded.
…

The number of Iraqis killed, however, is much harder to pin down, and that uncertainty is perhaps reflected in Americans' tendency to lowball the Iraqi death toll by tens of thousands.

Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated at more than 54,000 and could be much higher; some unofficial estimates range into the hundreds of thousands. The U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq reports more than 34,000 deaths in 2006 alone.

Among those polled for the AP survey, however, the median estimate of Iraqi deaths was 9,890. The median is the point at which half the estimates were higher and half lower.

Christopher Gelpi, a Duke University political scientist who tracks public opinion on war casualties, said a better understanding of the Iraqi death toll probably wouldn't change already negative public attitudes toward the war much.

"You have to look at who's doing the killing," said Neal Crawford, a restaurant manager in Suttons Bay, Mich., who guessed that about 10,000 Iraqis had been killed. "If these people are dying because a roadside bomb goes off or if there's an insurgent attack in a marketplace, it's an unfortunate circumstance of war — people die."

Gelpi said that while Americans may not view Iraqi deaths through the same prism as American losses, they may use the Iraqi death toll to gauge progress, or lack thereof, on the U.S. effort to promote a stable, secure democracy in Iraq.

To many, he said, "the fact that so many are being killed is an indication that we're not succeeding."

…

American culture is completely schizophrenic on three subjects, all interrelated: Sex, Faith and Stupidity.

Sex is a true, flat-out blessing. Period. And everyone damned well knows it. But while we soak our entire culture in it to the point of complete saturation, we also insist it is Harmful or Fatal if Swallowed!

Faith can be a blessing. It can almost miraculously nourish us and sustain us when we have nothing else. In utter darkness it can help lead us into an ascending path towards greater love, greater compassion and greater joy. And yet we use it as a sword to cut the legs out from under the Enlightenment. As a club to beat men down to the level of obedient beasts. And as a whip to form those beasts up into the ignorant armies that clash by night.

And then there is Stupidity. And to understand American culture you must first understand that it's not that some people don’t like to be stupid. Lots of people love being stupid, and lots of other people make millions of dollars every year telling them that it is perfectly OK to be stupid.

That it is a holy and noble and All-American thing to be stupid. That their God, in fact, requires it. That “elites” have ruined this country, and that only good, old-fashion, dumb as drywall morons can save us from their predations.

We generally refer to these people by the taxonomically correct term of “Republican”.

However while lots of people enjoy steeping in their own stupidity and bigotry, paradoxically, they are terribly frightened of appearing stupid.

So, for example, back in the Jesse Helms era of universal, Rightwing berserk condemnation of all things international, the general feeling on the Right was that we spend waaay too much on foreign aid.

Back then I used to have this kind of argument rather a lot; back before I finally learned that arguing with drywall about time-shares is more productive than arguing with a Republican about foreign policy. Or domestic policy. Or, really, anything.

They were and are absofuckinglutely convinced that something like a third or a quarter of our budget goes to ungrateful furriners. They’re willing to get into punch-ups over it.

What are the facts?

From Kevin Drum, in May of 2003:

...this Q&A from the Council on Foreign Relations:

Do Americans understand how much of the U.S. budget goes to foreign aid?
No. A 2001 poll sponsored by the University of Maryland showed that most Americans think the United States spends about 24 percent of its annual budget on foreign aid—more than 24 times the actual figure.

Do Americans support increasing foreign aid?
Yes. According to [a University of Maryland poll], the typical American would like to spend $1 on foreign aid for every $3 spent on defense; the real ratio in the proposed budget for fiscal year 2003 is $1 on aid for every $19 spent on defense.

24%! The average American thinks we spend a quarter of the federal budget on foreign aid!

The ignorance of Americans about the real world never ceases to amaze me. Ask them what percent of the population is black and they guess it's about a third. Ask them how much they pay in income taxes, and they figure about 50%. Ask them how big the foreign aid budget is and they're off by a factor of 24.

Is it any wonder our political decisions are so screwed up?

Anybody wanne bet that the people who had no fucking clue what we spend on foreign aid but are willing to come out swinging when the facts insult their ignorant opinions are the same people who think that maybe nine thousand Iraqis have died in George Bush’s war?

Ten thousand, tops.

Which is not to say that being a moron is not every man or woman's God given right.

One may choose to live one’s life in bewildered rage.

Choose to walk the Earth proud of being uncontaminated by contemplation, or doubt or mere realism.

Choose to die in fear and ignorance.

This is no kind of life for any sentient being, but it is certainly the right of any citizen live with his or her head up his or her ass. However what will no longer be tolerated is their loutish, pinheaded inferiority to go politely unmentioned and unmocked.

Because the hell on Earth in Iraq exists today because stupid people were allowed to unleash it.

Stupid people were allowed to kick over the Iraqi wasp’s nest and pound on it with a hammer.

Instead of being pelted with rotten produce and sold to a passing circus for beer money, stupid people in suits were actually listened to as if they were not stupid people.

And for the next generation we will all being paying a dear price for letting the Flowers for Algernon crowd (who will no doubt forget sometime in the next eleven minutes that it was their stupidity that got us into this mess in the first place) play at governance.

Which is why we can no longer allow you drag our country down into Stupidville with you any more.

One of The News Blog’s lesser-known features

is dating advice.

To do my small part to fill in the blogging gap caused by Gilly’s brief hiatus, here I believe I may have found all of the The News Blog’s woo-pitching wisdom distilled down into 47 seconds.

And with it, we set aside an 18-year-old Oban and instead raise a full glass of prune juice to the health of Steve Gilliard.

For it is a warrior’s drink :-)

If one were to go spelunking around

inside my head, it would look and sound a little like this.

Except Dostoyevsky, Babel and Carver are mysteriously absent, along with the porn and fart jokes.

Shat!

Ner!

Just to clarify

For any concern trolls, time traveling historians from a Better World, cultural Rip Van Winkles, aliens among us trying to pass as human, humans among us trying to pass as alien, Zealoti, Sarduakar, absent-minded deities, recently evolved bears or Republicans who might chance across this…

We did not go to war in Iraq because Uday and Qusay Hussein were evil motherfuckers.

I have no doubt that they were, but we never, ever had a debate that began

“Resolved: we will dispatch half a million American fighting men and women half a planet away in order to invade, conquer, decapitate and occupy the sovereign nation of Iraq because Uday and Qusay Hussein are evil motherfuckers.”

That never happened, and trying pretend that killing these fucks and hanging their Daddy – while terrific items to check off of any planetary “Better Dead” list -- had anything whatsoever to do with waging the largest, most bloody, most expensive and most monumentally fucked up war since Vietnam is the most “dumpster fire rat” desperate act of lying and hypocrisy I can imagine.

And then to cook up another steaming bowl of Fake Wingnut indignation when intelligent people dare to be outraged at your lies?

Who the fuck do you think you’re fooling?

Do you really think it would have somehow been cool that you burned down Pittsburgh because, hey, got rid of the roaches didn’t it?

That you flattened London, but Jack the Ripper is in the rubble…so STFU Liberal!!!

I mean I know Fox teevee and Hate Radio have spent decades and millions of dollars training mouthbreathers to think they can bluff their way right past anyone noticing that they are deceitful weasels who haven’t the slightest fucking clue what they’re talking about IF THEY’RE JUST SHOUTYCRACKERS LOUD ENOUGH, but, see, that only works when you control the microphone.

And have a pliant, boneless Mainstream Media.

And when can hire a ball-less Cabbage Patch “Liberal” like Alan Combes to be your tackling dummy.

None of which are true here.

So for any stoopids in the audience, I will type it

v-e-r-y

s-l-o-w-l-y.

We did not go to war in Iraq because Uday and Qusay or Cousin Ixnay or Uncle Atinlay were evil motherfuckers.

We went to war in Iraq because this guy



Said this guy




Was about five minutes away from making

one of these.


Which he was then going to hand over to this guy

Because they were practically terrorist reacharound buddies.


And he would then take out this place.



Or maybe this place


Although based on the way Homeland Security money gets larded around, this

is apparently the most likely target.


And we would never have to worry about the price tag, because this guy

Said it could be done for Mere!Pennies!A!Day!.


And we wouldn’t have to worry about the number troops, because this guy

said we could do it with a cast of dozens, a thousand daisy cutters, some CGI and friendly press.

The same guy also said we didn’t need to worry about finding WMDs, because he knew exactly where they were.


That we wouldn’t have to worry about an insurgency because this guy said we’d be

greeted with flowers and sweets.

Insurgency, insmurgency. It’ll be Death Throes and Purple Fangers, bitches!

Because the idea that the Sunni and Shia might, y’know, fucking hate each other and (with us clumsily, ignorantly striking matches in the gas-filled basement) would unleash hell on Earth was just a silly sociological fiction that we should just not even worry about.

At least that’s what this guy

said.


Granted there wasn’t much of a debate because anyone who was not an absolute cheerleader – who asked anything remotely resembling a tough question, or raised anything like a warning about the future of Bush’s war -- was immediately called out as a traitor and a terrorist lover…

…by the very same people who now say that anyone is a traitor and a terrorist lover who dares to tell the simple facts about the history of Bush’s war.


Well the worms are having their merry way with Uday and Qusay now, and that is just fine with me.

But the killing these two evil motherfuckers is not and never was the war we were sold.

Killing these two evil motherfuckers is not and never was even the pivot on which the war turned.

Killing these two evil motherfuckers is not what we were asked to expend thousands of American lives, hundreds of thousand of Iraqi lives, and hundreds of billions of our tax dollars to purchase.

When it is written, the abridged history of Iraq will be simple and terrible: We were deliberately lied into a disastrous war by Republican fanatics. That war was then turned into the biggest clusterfuck in memory by Republican ideologues in the single most spectacular display of greed, hubris and incompetence in modern history.

And through it all the morally hydroencephalic Conservative base – who had screamed at 1 million decibels every single fucking day for eight straight years for the blood of a Democratic President, over trivia, and in the name of the Inviolability of the Law, the Dignity of the Office and the Sanctity of the Constitution – predictably never said a fucking word.

Instead they spent the rest of their worthless lives inventing ever more bizarre, ridiculous, transparent lies and Rube Goldberg (Jonah's uncle) conspiracy theories to try to rationalize away their own cowardice and complicity in the high crimes and treasons their own leaders premeditatedly committed without batting an eye.

Instead they just clapped louder and call their betters names.

Because in the Age of Dubya, you can either be a Good American or a Good Republican.

But you can no longer be both.

Over at Baghdad Burning

Riverbend has this up (h/t to Mia Culpa)

The Rape of Sabrine:

It takes a lot to get the energy and resolution to blog lately. I guess it’s mainly because just thinking about the state of Iraq leaves me drained and depressed. But I had to write tonight.

As I write this, Oprah is on Channel 4 (one of the MBC channels we get on Nilesat), showing Americans how to get out of debt. Her guest speaker is telling a studio full of American women who seem to have over-shopped that they could probably do with fewer designer products. As they talk about increasing incomes and fortunes, Sabrine Al-Janabi, a young Iraqi woman, is on Al Jazeera telling how Iraqi security forces abducted her from her home and raped her. You can only see her eyes, her voice is hoarse and it keeps breaking as she speaks. In the end she tells the reporter that she can’t talk about it anymore and she covers her eyes with shame.

She might just be the bravest Iraqi woman ever. Everyone knows American forces and Iraqi security forces are raping women (and men), but this is possibly the first woman who publicly comes out and tells about it using her actual name. Hearing her tell her story physically makes my heart ache. Some people will call her a liar. Others (including pro-war Iraqis) will call her a prostitute- shame on you in advance.
…

And yet, as the situation continues to deteriorate both for Iraqis inside and outside of Iraq, and for Americans inside Iraq, Americans in America are still debating on the state of the war and occupation- are they winning or losing? Is it better or worse.

Let me clear it up for any moron with lingering doubts: It’s worse. It’s over. You lost. You lost the day your tanks rolled into Baghdad to the cheers of your imported, American-trained monkeys. You lost every single family whose home your soldiers violated. You lost every sane, red-blooded Iraqi when the Abu Ghraib pictures came out and verified your atrocities behind prison walls as well as the ones we see in our streets. You lost when you brought murderers, looters, gangsters and militia heads to power and hailed them as Iraq’s first democratic government. You lost when a gruesome execution was dubbed your biggest accomplishment. You lost the respect and reputation you once had. You lost more than 3000 troops. That is what you lost America. I hope the oil, at least, made it worthwhile.

Go read the whole thing, but be forewarned: it is utterly heartbreaking.

To it I have nothing to add but this:

If you read what Riverbend wrote and your reaction is something like “Merciful Christ. How will we ever be forgiven for what we have done to that country? How will we atone? And how can we still be debating this? How can anyone with a sliver of conscience still be invoking God and Homeland, Freedom and Faith, 9/11 and 'Fight Them Over There' to keep us trapped in this hell we sired?” you’re a Liberal.

If you read it, get halfway through, and your brain locks down and starts desperately scurrying around like a rat in a dumpster fire, looking for a way to rationalize it, to excuse it, to pick at its methodology…

Looking for a “Yeah, but…” to absolve you for having sown this wind and reaped this whirlwind…

Looking for today’s Magic Coward Words from Fox High Command that will let you complete the sentence “But the Democrats…” in some way that permits you to wriggle out from under your complicity in the Iraq Disaster…

Looking for some rebuttal, no matter how slight – maybe some anonymous email from somebody’s second cousin who has a friend, who knows a guy, whose half-sister is married to a guy, who went to high school with this dude who served in Iraq and says things aren’t really that bad – that will let you off the hook…

Or if you just sneer, say “Fuckin’ raghead bitch prolly had it comin’” and go about your business unmoved…

…then you are a Conservative.

And if you find that you are a Conservative, then you can quit bothering to hunt for phantom enemies within, like the Liberal Press and the Dirty Hippies, because you – personally and specifically -- are the enemy.

You – personally and specifically -- are what is wrong with America.

Unlike Wine

Inbred Racist CHUDs just get more repulsive with age.

This from the Southern Poverty Law Center, who do God’s work every single day.

Aging Aryans
The 25th Aryan Nations Congress featured racist rants about war,
by John F. Sugg

The old Echo Theater on the courthouse square in Laurens, S.C., is now dubbed the World Famous Redneck Shoppe. It's crammed with racist memorabilia, from cheap Confederate flag flip-flops and bikinis, to T-shirts that announce, "Ain't Racist, Just Never Met a Nigger I Liked." The shop's operator, John Howard, boasts that he's been a "member of the Ku Klux Klan for 40-some years."

On Sept. 16, the Redneck Shoppe was packed with avowed racists from across the nation and even Europe -- a "unity" gathering sponsored by Aryan Nations.

As the boisterous convention drew to a close, a black child, maybe 8 years old, rode past the Echo.

Howard, pointing a stubby finger at the kid, loudly sneered: "There's a nigger there I'd like to hang."

…

Preparing for War
The true believers in an all-white America arrived Saturday morning. They came from Florida, Washington, Wisconsin, Idaho, Arkansas and most of the states in the Deep South. At least two crossed the Atlantic to attend.

The leadoff speaker was the hulking "Pastor" Paul Brimie, the head of Aryan Nations' prison outreach program. The towering giant, described adoringly by colleagues as a "pit bull of Yahweh," had swapped his muscle- and tattoo-displaying tank top for clerical garb. "Everyone here knows who we hate, who we're against and who is against us," he proclaimed. "We must PREPARE FOR WAR!"

Run out of Idaho after losing $6.3 million in a lawsuit in 2000, Aryan Nations fractured, moved and has been attempting to reassemble itself. Currently, there are two major factions, one based in South Carolina, the other in Alabama.
…

Why two sets of Aryan Nations? A large part of the answer is simple lust for power: Two different sets of racists, each claiming to be heir to the well-known Aryan Nations legacy. And then there is ideology. Both contingents hate Jews. But Kreis' brigade has decided to embrace Arabs -- even promoting Al-Qaeda as doing the Lord's work as long as Muslims are killing Jews. Williams was incensed at such heresy. "I sympathize with Arabs, yes, sympathize because their lands have been stolen by Jews," he said. "But we have nothing for them [Arabs]. The simple fact is that they aren't white."
…

Sieg Heiling 101
During the congress, staccato blasts of whites-fighting-for-whites oratory were interspersed with that staple of all conventions, milling around vendors' tables. Big sellers included "The Apple Story" booklet, which claims Jews are descendants of Lucifer; and CDs, such as the Definite Hate rock band's "Welcome to the South" album, whose cover features an empty noose dangling from a leafless tree.

Many parents brought their children to play amid the swirling white, red, green and black Klan robes, and swastika-emblazoned banners. During a break, two moms, one holding a babe, the other corralling a toddler in camouflage jammies, could be overheard chatting about things that worry all mothers. "At that age," said one, "you've always got to keep an eye on them."

But normalcy ended there. One of the moms, in a turquoise blouse, is married to a Georgia Klansman and had a large KKK cross-and-drop-of-blood medallion around her neck. The other woman, wearing tight jeans and heavy blood-red lipstick, sported a T-shirt emblazoned with "88" -- code for "Heil Hitler."

…
'Blood in the Streets'
Josh Fowler, nattily robed in green, swaggered onto the Echo's stage flanked by two bodyguards, one bearing a round shield adorned with the Klan cross. The youthful grand dragon of one of South Carolina's Klan outfits brought the audience to its feet in cheers by announcing that what he "really hates is white women with little mongrel babies."

Fowler was followed to the podium by Virgil Griffin, a legendary Carolina Klan relic who participated in a 1979 Greensboro, N.C., confrontation that ended with the slaying of five left-wing union organizers. No one was ever convicted for the crime, yet an Aryan Nations officer named Ryan Brennan told the assemblage that Griffin "is my hero. Five commies went to hell that day."

With fists slugging the air, Griffin urged the crowd to "get every weapon you can get. We're gonna hit back." His most vitriolic comments were reserved for Hispanics. "They breed like rats, worse than niggers, and send their money back to Mexico," Griffin roared. "Only thing I got for them is a bullet right between the eyes. Ship their dead butts back to Mexico."

…
The scariest of the Aryan Nations speakers was Ryan Brennan, who lives in South Carolina. He capped his speech with a dance across the stage, a la Mick Jagger, and a bellowed challenge: "You want to see blood in the streets? I DO!"
…

Outside of slavery itself – which had tendrils everywhere and poisoned everything it touched -- the greatest housekeeping mistake this country ever was not annihilating every remnant of the Confederacy – root and branch – and then salting every inch of earth on which traitors like Jefferson Davis and Nathan Bedford Forrest ever walked.

Our mistake was not ripping out the wiring of the Evil White Christian Eliminationist Empire that had grown out of European imperial thinking into a distinctly American pathology.

Not drafting an honest version of Southron history and teaching it in every classroom and from every pulpit.

Not hunting down the Klan like the terrorists they were and are.

Not deNazifying every blood-soaked, lie-soaked acre of the CSA.

But we didn’t, and now various strains of its Ku Klux Karcinoma are found everywhere.

Taco Bell (Taco Bell? Yes, Taco Bell. Patience.) can roll out as many different menu items as it wants, but at the end of the day they make their margins mostly by remixing the same 4-5 cheap ingredients in different presentations. That’s what makes them Taco Bell.

Now note the Basic Ingredients of Racism from this core sample drilled from the raw, filthy heart of that movement:


Obsessive and delusional nostalgia for Glory Days of Olde that never existed.

Usually centered around their great-great-granddaddy’s failed fascist Confederacy.


A pathological hatred of the Black, the Arabs, the Jew and the Mexican. Also a firm belief that all just those uppity lib’rated “feminazis”

need is a firm hand. Possibly a firm hand holding two feet of rebar 'cause Big White Daddy needs teach ‘em who's the boss. Or the terrorists win.


Girded on all sides by a screeching ideology that is founded on a perversion of the basic tenets of Christianity.

One that does not simply overlook their insanity, but tells them to revel in their filth. That has no program for spiritual improvement but, instead, an aggressive regime of spiritual lobotomization.


A lyncher’s giggly, sociopathic delight at the thought of murdering anyone who makes them feel uncomfortable or inferior.

Which, needless to say, is everyone.


A loud, public celebration of Dumbassery and Yahooism

A call to both wear one’s mouthbreather atavism with pride, and to endlessly whine about how put-upon and victimized the stoopids are by the mongrel culture of "San Francisco values".



A casualness at the thought of mass slaughter. With letting their desire to annihilate whole groups drop into their everyday conversation as easily as a non-crazy person would mention the weather.

An unconcealed joy at the idea of lending genocide a helping hand as long as they’re the ones who get to drop the Zyklon-B into the showers this time, or at least watch.



And at bottom, a limitless sea of hatred.

A ferocious, feverish, wasting hatred that gives them the only direction and purpose they have anymore. A hatred that has devoured every other emotion and

suffocated any semblance of humanity.


And when you render it down to its essentials at look at it in a clear light, there is no mistaking that these foundation stones of American racism are exactly the constituent components that the GOP has carefully and deliberately used to build their political and cultural movement.

So, to take one, small example among thousands, the main story about the Virginia Senate race was that Jim Webb won, and what a good thing it was that he did. But the secondary story was that even after George Felix Allen finished his political Dunce of the Seven Veils and showed himself to be just another brain-dead bigot in a suit, his support never fell below 49.20 %.

Knowing beyond any possible doubt that George Felix Allen was a died-in-the-robes racist didn’t matter to 1,166,277 Virginia voters. Hell, I have to assume they were delighted by it and had he been about three I.Q. points smarter and not stepped all over his own dick every single time he turned around, I have no doubt he’d be back in his Senate office – giant American Swastika on one wall, and noose on the other.

Back on Meet the Press exchanging hair-care secrets with Tim Russert.

Back on the road to the White House.

It is mixed in different proportions for different venues. It is seasoned and wrapped differently here and there. It is laughed off as that mythical beast – “conservative humor” – whenever it is caught out in the open, but at the end of the day adherents to this ideology, however their particular version is prepared and plated, are simply failures as citizens and as human beings.

They are a continuing embarrassment to our nation and a continuing threat to our democracy, because in the Age of Dubya, you can either be a Good American or a Good Republican.

But you can no longer be both.