Southern Man

I will be taking a short break and touring the deep south, particularly its' culinary and musical offerings.

You get some odd looks when you tell people you're off to Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Maybe I will understand why when I return.

"How else you going to know what a place is like?", I sez.

I'll be back November 5th.

Sean Smith video

The Guardian's Sean Smith spent time with the 101st division of the US army in Iraq.

Here is a link to the film that resulted from the experience:

Iraqis Standing Up?

MCA06

Quest que se "Military Commissions Act of 2006"?

C'est crap

Please excuse my French.

Liberal Pride

This article entitled, "We Answer to the Name of Liberals", is long overdue.

I personally feel that if you want to have a great, stable society you need a large middle-class belt keeping the fat-cats in check.

Clinton understood that and it is why his policies targeted educating, feeding, housing, and increasing the wages of the ambitious poor. People moved from poverty to the middle-class in droves under his policies.

Sound liberal policy is also based upon sound reliable information, which we call science and president Bush calls opinion and seems to equate with astrology.

My favorite excerpt from the article is this one:

We have consistently and publicly repudiated the ruinous policies of the Bush administration, and our diagnosis, alas, has been vindicated by events. The Bush debacle is a direct consequence of its repudiation of liberal principles.

We Answer to the Name of Liberals

This could be the start of something good. As Bill Clinton said, "Our way works better. It just does."

Mmmmmmmm.

Here is how JFK defined a liberal:

Their health, their housing, their schools.

Gulf of Tonkin II?

With apologies to Gilbert and Sullivan...

We-e sail the ocean blue,
and our saucy ship's a beauty.
We are sober men and true,
and attentive to our duty.

Our saucy ship's a beauty.
We're attentive to our duty.
We are sober men and true.
We sail the ooooooocean blue.

To Iran.

Harmful convergence

Is it inevitable?

Republican meltdown

James Carville thinks there is a republican meltdown happening and details it in two parts:

Meltdown

Meltdown II

Let us hope he still has the gift.

Hard to reconcile

On October 17,2006 vice president Dick Cheney went on Rush Limbaugh's radio program and stated that the Iraqi government was "doing remarkably well".

Details here


On October 18, 2006 nine US soldiers were killed in Baghdad, bringing the total of US casualties in Iraq this month to 71, and averaging 3.94 deaths per day - the highest rate since March of 2003.

Details here

US Casualty statistics

How is it that the vice president, who declared we'd be welcomed as liberators, isn't considered a bigger fool than Dan Quayle?

October surprise

There are more and more stories of a US strike on Iran coming soon.

Could George W. Bush be this dumb?

Could smart people be so dumb as to follow him into another, even greater mistake in a long line of great mistakes?

Will military men continue to be political pawns, serving at the leisure of Karl Rove?


USS Eisenhower away

To be in a command position and lead young men into such folly ought to constitute a dereliction of duty.

I don't see how any idea this stupid, reckless, and predictably disastrous for America can proceed without concerted bi-partisan opposition.

How do you make things better when nobody pays attention?

U.S. Base Falcon attacked in Baghdad

As I recently watched a developing story on CNN I gulped. Iraq insurgents attacked US Forward Operating Base Falcon just outside the green zone and hit it's ammo dump with mortars.

The live feed showed explosions which lasted for hours lighting up the Baghdad skyline.

If you allow yourself to think about this for a moment, that insurgents were able to strike a US base near Baghdad, you ought to be disabused of the president's storyline that success is just around the corner.

We had better get out soon if we can't even protect our bases.

Fire erupts

Is staying the course in Iraq more important to you than healthcare for your family?

Is staying the course in Iraq more important to you than the policemen which keep your community safe?

Is staying the course in Iraq more important to you than affordable education for your children?

Is staying the course in Iraq more important to you than combating global warming?

Turning virgins into hellfire

There is a new product out there called Infidel's Revenge which is impressive in it's simplicity.

Devout Muslim suicide bombers believe that 72 virgins await them in heaven. However, devout Muslim suicide bombers also believe that a body defiled by pigs blood at the time of death faces eternal damnation.

So, Susblood labs devised a pen that will infuse pigs blood into the air if atomized in an explosion.

The idea is that if everyone carries them would-be suicide bombers will not strike their targets for fear of damning their souls to eternal torment.

Maybe airlines should pass these out free?

Infidel's Revenge

ADDENDUM: I have had feedback from a friend who says of this device,

"Bil Shahid kulu aswad" In the martyr - everything is white. If you fight for god all your blemishes are laundered. Every kid in he Arab world knows that.

But for westerners that do no understand any of that - it will sell by the ton.

How humbling.

Democracy's Garrison

Not so long ago people like Garrison Keillor embodied American values and ideals. Here's a man that came from nothing but through talent and hard work and imagination built up an audience for his old-time radio show called, "prairie Home Companion".

With the advent of president Bush and his devoted throngs of communist-style yes-men America is becoming something monstrous in the eyes of people like Garrison.

I thought of him doing his radio show and it struck me that his name is appropriate. He has built a garrison, a refuge, for the type of American values that have always defined us.

In this editorial Garrison seems to have reached the same level of disgust as myself with senators (it seems unworthy of capitalization anymore) that voted to grant president Bush the power to torture. This American values icon, this kind, hard-working, Beauty-appreciating man frets in a land where the love of Truth grows colder every day.


Congress's Shameful Retreat From American Values

Halliburton is building prisons on American soil.

The president now has the totalitarian power to disappear people.

Aren't we giving up too much to these machine men with machine hearts and machine minds?

Will Americans make a stand?

Still blaming Bill

John McCain and Condoleeza Rice are currently pushing the storyline that North Korean nukes are Bill Clinton's fault.

It is a charge that is easy to counter, and truth be told, nothing would make me happier than giving Bill Clinton another moment in the limelight.

For the moment, Bill Perry is doing an admirable job exhibiting the facts of the matter here:

Rhetoric and inaction

And Bennett Ramberg does not use velvet gloves here:

Now what?

The Bush administration does not seem to understand that when Americans compare GWB with WJC side-by-side it isn't very flattering to their policies.

They do seem to understand, though, how to keep the focus off Iraq in an election year.

Dear president Bush...

Dear president Bush,

When we were hungry for courage, you gave us nothing to eat. When we were thirsty for community, you gave us nothing to drink. When we felt isolated and attacked, you made us unwelcome in the world. When we needed strength, you gave us fear. When we needed food and clothes in New Orleans, you gave us excuses. When we needed ideas, you gave us ideology.

You don't have the courage our Constitution demands.
You don't have the intellect our challenges demand.
You don't have the integrity our allies expect.
You don't have the attention-span winning a war requires.

You are an embarrassment and if you are unashamed it can only be because your ignorance exceeds your incompetence.

Why don't you do humanity a favor and resign?

An American president should not be as partisan as you.
An American president should not be as desperate as you.
An American president should not be as power-hungry as you.

I am sick of your excuses, lies, and blame games. The accountability buck should stop on the president's desk.

Mr. Bush, it's time you left and took Mr. Cheney, Ms. Rice, and Mr. Rumsfeld with you.

Sincerely yours,

Moe Dubreuil

Continued reading...

Amen brother Olbermann

Keith Olbermann over at MSNBC news has been calling the president and his administration on their bull for a while. His manner has undergone a recent change, though, and he has started calling their lies "lies" and the people that tell them "liars".

When president Bush recently explained that a democrat that disagrees with his myriad of failed policies is with the terrorists, Keith Olbermann attacked the theory the way a Dobermann goes to his mark.


Bush Unfit for Office

Won't you take a bow, Mr. Olbermann?

Perhaps your candor will awaken the hearts and minds of enough Americans to vote republicans out of office and replace them with members of the opposition party. Nothing would be a bigger discomfort to president Bush.

Democracy isn't so much about electing great leaders as it is about having the power to discard or defy bad ones. The underlying premise is that when most of the country is against you then you are doing something wrong.

A leader, in other words, should have followers.

Mr. Hypocritical

"I have no problem with adult pornography. People are entitled to read it, watch it, see it in their homes or in public accommodations. Where I have to draw the line is using children for the excitement of those more mature people who should know the difference and know better."

Representative Mark Foley
Republican from Florida
2002 interview with National Public Radio

*****************************

"It's vile. It's more sad than anything else, to see someone with such potential throw it all down the drain because of a sexual addiction."

Representative Mark Foley,
Republican from Florida
speaking about Bill Clinton in 1998.

NOTE: Interestingly this quote regarding Clinton appears to have been scrubbed from Wikipedia recently.

Original (from Google cache): Unscrubbed edition

Current: Scrubbed edition

NOTE: According to a new note on the current page the site was recently vandalized.


*****************************


"We track library books better than we do sexual predators."

Representative Mark Foley
Republican from Florida

Source: Boston Globe

*****************************


Isn't it comforting to know Mr. Foley buttoned down our sexual predator laws just in time to face them himself?

I wonder what depths of denial will be plumbed by republican dead-enders in order to cling to the discredited notion that republicans are morality champions.

It seems difficult to make a man understand something when his pride depends upon him not understanding it.

Resistance

I feel that Ghandi's phrase "nonviolent resistance" has been reduced to "nonviolence" by the American left. People peacefully assemble in free-speech zones and pretend to be arrested by police pretending to arrest them.

Things might be changing.

Today (October 5th) is a day of mass protest. If you would like to participate here is more information:

Rocktober?

Is Fascism spreading in America?

A 30-year US special forces veteran discusses what he sees as growing fascism in America, and particularly within the ranks of the US armed forces.

This is a remarkably well-written article on the subject. Perhaps I feel that way because I agree about the warning signs.

In any case I recommend the article and expect detractors to respect the patriotism of Mr. Goff (unless of course they work for the Bush administration).

Sowing the Seeds of Fascism in America

The Nazi press wars

Why should citizens be wary when their government criticizes the press for what they report, as opposed to how they report?

In April of 1933 Edgar Ansel Mowrer (sounds like Edward R. Murrow doesn't it) published "Germany Puts the Clock Back". The German government did not like his book and started pulling strings to get him removed from his post.

Mr. Mowrer proclaimed, "My own stand is this: Freedom of correspondents must not be hampered by any kind of social or personal pressure provided they report the news on the basis of reliable information. To clarify this point I offer my resignation. Please decide for yourselves."

Mr. Mowrer's colleagues stood by him and had him reinstated. You can read all about it here thanks to the Google News Archive search:

That pesky Guardian

Find your own Nazi-era heroic defiance here:

Google News Archive