Posts from — July 2008

Well, not so much…

Today was the deadline that the Iraqi government was supposed to roll over and capitulate to the Bush- Cheney Administration’s demand for a Status of Forces Agreement that would formalize the permanent military occupation of their country.

The attempt to guarantee future investments of US oil companies in Iraq by transforming US troops into company security guards came with such onerous conditions that even the notoriously corrupt Iraqi politicians balked. Not the freezing of $5 billion of Iraqi funds in US banks, nor reported attempts to bribe individual members of the Iraqi Parliament with millions of dollars proved effective in the end.

Seems that turning their country into a colony of the military-industrioil-complex was a bridge too far.

The proposed SOFA included numerous gigantic permanent military bases, control of the skies under 27,000 feet, the freedom to launch military attacks against any groups deemed “terrorists”, the right to “defend” the country against any alleged attack by Iran, and immunization of military personnel and private contractors from prosecution or crimes committed against individual Iraqis.

Another fly in the ointment is a pesky provision in the Iraqi constitution that requires the Parliament to approve treaties, which the scale of the proposed SOFA certainly is.

Theoretically, the US Constitution demands the same thing from our Congress. But we all know how the Constitution has fared under nearly eight years of a power crazed “unitary executive” and its spineless, congressional enablers.

RIP.

[Image credit to http://tinyurl.com/5pr8pw]

I had delivered my wife to DIA for an early morning flight, and was cruising back to Boulder. The cruise control was nudging 75 in the 70 mph zone, the sun was bathing the front range in a soft bright white, and morning cirrus were already stretching their tails eastward; like most of mid-July Colorado, we could really use a good rain.

A glance at the r-v-m showed a car closing fast behind me, which meant someone was hammering along on the high side of 85. It was some Beemer YUP in red suspenders, all alone and on the phone. As he passed my eye caught the lower right hand corner of his back window— my monkey chatter stopped and gasped in disbelief— “McCAIN” it stammered out. Yeapa. My very first McCAIN bumper sticker spotted anywhere.

There it was, shrinking rapidly in the distance, its single two syllable message still reverberating through the flaunting of conspicuous consumption, still stuck on the in-yur-face intentionality of it; McCAIN. It had that little commie “star” thingy on it, too, that aged WWII vets will recognize as a Navy aircraft insignia; but other than that, it felt so. . . benign. And yet so. . . vandalicious. Vandalicious; you know: a yummy bite of political graffiti, a tasty bit of thuggery.

How. How could anyone vote for that senile old patoot, and why would they want the world to know? Why not get “stoopid” tattooed on your forehead? I mulled it over and over. Why did I have this urge to try and talk them out of it, like a hostage negotiator tries to talk a jumper off a fourth story ledge?

I know, I know, it’s all so subjective, to each his own, blah blah blah; but then again it’s the difference between day and night, right and wrong, good and oh so fucking evil! my monkey keeps chattering. So I google back in my mind to see if I can find what a McCain voter actually looks like, and the only thing I find is this great Ralph Steadman cartoon from the late sixties, that strikes the same note of horror today that it did back then. . .

“4 more years will be just fine, I guess.”

An involuntary chill rushes the back of my neck, before I reason that, like the poor, and the poor in spirit, the poor in mind will also always be with us. But maybe, just maybe, this critical election cycle, intelligent, educated, liberal-minded, cultural creative Americans will finally out-number the walking dead. Just. Maybe.

Impact of two terms of Bush’s management of the US Economy

The Bush Administration today issued a mind boggling record deficit projection of $482 billion for 2009. And that’s not even counting the off-budget estimated $80 billion being spent in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor the cost of the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac and homeowner bailout bill.

That’s a yearly deficit of over one-half trillion dollars, most of it borrowed from strategic competitors like China and Kuwait.

Skyrocketing energy costs are only beginning to ripple through the economy, showing up as higher prices in everything from food to tires to pharmaceuticals.

Home foreclosures are up a staggering 250% (in LA), unemployment is rising rapidly, and even successful businesses with great credit history can’t get a loan.

The entire financial system, ranging from Wall Street, investment houses, to regional banks is in a deep freeze driven by the fact that no one knows what anyone’s paper assets are worth. The economy is so bad that Bush has been forced to betray his conservative base by doing an about-face (legacy pun intended) on the aforementioned bailout. Ayn Rand must be rolling over in her capitalist grave.

Obviously, this is bad news for all Republicans running for office this year. Despite the tragedy of Iraq and the increasing threat of a reconstituted Al Qaeda and resurgent Taliban in Afganistan and Pakistan, we’re back to “It’s the economy, stupid” as the overriding political issue of the 2008 election. And it’s hitting the McSame Campaign like a Democratic mule kick to the gut.

McSame has admitted that the economy is not his strong suit, and that he’s trying to make up it for it by reading the book by the man who did as much as anyone to create the current crisis, former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan. Kinda like asking a surgeon with a history of amputating the wrong limbs to take a little off the top.

McSame’s answer to the ruinous cost of energy— his flip-flop on off-shore drilling, is a classic case of bad timing, considering that oil billionaire (and Swift Boat funder) T-Boone Pickens is currently spending $58 million on an advertising campaign that states that we can’t drill our way out of the crisis.

Oh well, McSame can still run as Commander-in-Chief of the “surge.”

As for his snuggling buddy, George Junior, the latter can sleep easy knowing that once again he has bested his father, the previous deficit champ. By racking up the three largest deficits in US history, W. wins the gold, silver and bronze medals. Now it’s on to the Beijing Olympics, where he has volunteered to judge the synchronized waterboarding competition.

UPDATES

July 29 (Bloomberg) Merrill Lynch, the third-biggest U.S. securities firm, will sell $8.5 billion of stock and liquidate $30.6 billion of bonds at a fifth of their face value to shore up credit ratings imperiled by mortgage losses.

July 29 (Reuters ) Home Prices Fall in May, Erasing Four Years of Gains. ...S&P said the composite index of 10 metropolitan areas fell 1 percent in May, for a 16.9 percent year-over-year drop. Regions that saw some of the largest gains during the housing boom, such as Miami and Las Vegas, were the worst performing markets in May. Miami home prices fell 3.6 percent in May from April for a 28.3 percent annual drop. In Las Vegas, prices in May slumped 2.9 percent, for a 28.4 percent decline from a year earlier.

That’s how the right wing meme machine is trying to define Barack Hussein Obama these days, a task made more urgent in the wake of his widely hailed visit overseas. An expedition that John Sidney McCain had taunted him to take. (Careful what you ask for, John.)

Frank Rich put his finger on what was probably the most salient image of the trip in his NY Times column yesterday:

“We have one president at a time,” Mr. Obama is careful to say. True, but the sitting president, a lame duck despised by voters and shunned by his own party’s candidates, now has all the gravitas of Mr. Cellophane in “Chicago.” The opening for a successor arrived prematurely, and the vacuum had been waiting to be filled. What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.

In a remarkable display of ADTD (Attention Deficit Tantrum Disorder), McCain/McSame went so far last week as to charge Obama with political treason:

“It seems to me that Sen. Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign.”

It should be noted that McSame unleashed this latest display of vitriol in New Hampshire, where he had been greeted by a grand total of ONE reporter, while Obama was overseas followed by some 200, including all three network news anchors. Reports the New Hampshire Union Leader:

The senator’s low-key arrival in Manchester stood in stark contrast to his Democratic rival’s ongoing visit to the Middle East. Sen. Barack Obama, of Illinois, was swarmed by media as he arrived in Baghdad yesterday for a meeting with Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders. . . In Manchester last night, there was just one reporter and one photographer waiting for McCain as his plane — a white, blue and gold Boeing 737-400 emblazoned with his campaign slogan, “Reform, Prosperity, Peace” —touched down on the Wiggins Airways tarmac.

A wee bit, jealous, Johnnie Boy? What’s next– accusing Obama of being responsible for the dramatic rise in gas prices? Surely, our corporatist media approved maverick would never go that far.

Hold the phone— what’s this? From last week’s Wall Street Journal Online:

McCain Advertisements Pin Blame for Gas Prices on Obama

To paraphrase Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now:

I love the smell of desperation in the morning. . .

——————————————————
* Presumptuous, the word currently in vogue with the right wing noise machine, is code for “uppity black.”

[Image: Krugerocks.com ]

Talk show host Michale Savage with John McSame during happier times

“…[I]t’s a fraud, its a racket…I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is.” - Michael Savage, 7/16/08

Nationally syndicated right wing radio talk show host and hate monger Michael Savage (real name “Michael Alan Weiner“), has had a rough couple of weeks. Basically, he hit the trifecta.

Not only was his radio show dumped from at least nine stations for his diatribe against autistic children, Newsday reports that he lost major advertisers like Sears, Aflac, DirectBuy, and Radio Shack, and yesterday a federal district judge threw out his copyright lawsuit against CAIR for daring to use his own words against him. (For background on same, see Jonathan Turley here.)

Media Matters posted the transcript of the show, which continues from the quote above as follows:

“What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.’ ” Savage concluded, “[I]f I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, ‘Don’t behave like a fool.’ The worst thing he said — ‘Don’t behave like a fool. Don’t be anybody’s dummy. Don’t sound like an idiot. Don’t act like a girl. Don’t cry.’ That’s what I was raised with. That’s what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You’re turning your son into a girl, and you’re turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That’s why we have the politicians we have.“

Re: the advertisers’ revolt,  Newsday reports that:

During a press conference in Manhattan on Friday, John Gillmore and Evelyn Ain of Autism United and State Sen. Craig Johnson (D-–Port Washington) applauded the “necessary” steps taken by the advertisers and radio stations.

“The companies who have spoken with their advertising dollars are exercising their free speech,” Johnson said. “What Michael Savage has done and has said borders, simply, on hate speech.”

Savage/Weiner was also fired by MSNBC in 2003 for screaming at caller to his show:

Oh, so you’re one of those sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig; how’s that?”

What’s next? His fellow hate monger Bill O’Reilly equating Daily Kos with the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazis? We can only hope things don’t go that far.

Stupid Fingers!

Rob Stafford writes over at HufPo:

“. . .here are four questions I’d like someone to ask Senator McCain, and that I’d like him to answer — without parsing, without equivocating, just answer. And if he doesn’t answer — we keep asking. And if these questions no longer seem topical—we ask something else. I don’t want to act like the Republicans, but I do want to make sure our narrative gets equal play—that’s what gets “teh Googles” to wake up and pay attention.

Well, I think McSame is so gosh-darn predictable, I’d like to answer those questions for him, Rob; so fire away, the Senator is awake, alert, and will not now answer your questions:

1. Senator McCain, it’s my understanding that Karl Rove, known to some as “Bush’s Brain” is acting as an informal advisor to your campaign. Are you aware that Rove is currently evading a congressional subpoena, that he has left the country & shows no inclination to appear?

Ah, Mr. Rove does not speak for me, or my campaign. And as far as I am aware, I’m totally aware, that he feels he has a right to declare executive privilege, regarding his activities in the government, and now it is an issue for the activist bench at our courts to decide. I wish him luck.

2. Are you aware that several members of the Bush White House have now failed to respond to congressional subpoenas? What is your opinion of people who show contempt for you & your fellow congresspersons in this way?

Well, I’d take issue with your use of the word “contempt,” even summers can be hectic in Washington, and the Bush team is pretty busy these days. My friends, it would probably be closer to the truth to believe that they’ll be getting round to the subpoenas just as soon as they can.

3. You have supported President Bush on many issues, including his handling of the war and his stance on tax cuts (which, before you were running for president you opposed), you have been photographed publicly embracing him, and yet now you have a little old lady arrested for holding up a sign that reads “McCain = Bush.” Please tell us why you would not like to be associated with President Bush? Why is he a political liability to you now?

Presdent [sic] Bush and I agree on the transcendent issues of today, and always have. He is not a political liability to me, or my campaign. The woman that, the protester that was arrested, was in violation of the rules governing the use of the facility, and it was only fair to the other attendees that she follow the rules as they did. Instead, she chose to be arrested. (shrugs)

4. I understand that you have distanced yourself from Phil Gramm’s comment to the effect that “We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” and yet, I find it hard to believe that you chose this man to work on your campaign on economic issues, you have worked with him closely for a year, and yet you were unfamiliar and/or in disagreement with this sentiment. Clearly, if Mr. Gramm had known this statement would embarrass you, he wouldn’t have said it. Do you think it would be unfair, given this context, to argue that you have distanced yourself from the public declaration of this comment, but not of the sentiment itself?

Yes, it would be unfair, I said before that Phil Gramm doesn’t speak for me, and that is still the case. But I think the press was making too much of his comments, in that he was pointing out the steady drumbeat of the blame America first crowd, who always take the negative over the positive, and overlook the power of the psychological over the minds of many Americans, who think the country is in worse shape than it really is, because that’s all they hear about from the cable monsters.

Well, Rob, there you have it. Milquetoast answers, all neatly packaged in mind-fog you can believe in.

Hateful to me, as are the gates of hell,
Is he who, hiding one thing in his heart,
Utters another.
—Homer, Iliad

. . . It’s Jesus Himself, come to anoint Senter Obama! Because He would rather we lose our war than Obama lose the election! Yeah, that’s the snark we’ve been waiting for.

The Vision Thing
Ever wonder how the old dude sees anything? How many 72 year old curmudgeons do you know that don’t wear bifocals? Yep, McBlink has had teh lazic, alright; and that may account for his heavy blinking schedule. Check these coke-bottle ends he wore in the ’80’s:

But they’ve been banned from the cameras; well except for the welding goggles the oldster likes so much, that hermetically seal out all sunlight from his cataract-craters. They come with a matching Mc-cane, but he keeps that hidden, too:

You know, John Sidney, deteriorating vision is a sign of old age; there’s really no disguising it. But it’s not really the vanity of trying to hide your failing vision that makes me groan, it’s your total lack of vision for America that makes you the worst possible choice for POTUS. You would be the literal example of Christ’s striking image:

“If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the pit.”

7 Things You’re Dying to Know

Sherry at A Feather Adrift has tagged me with a meme. The rules:

1. List these rules on your blog.

2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog.

3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

Fact #1. I don’t belong here— I’m innocent.
I’m only sorta kidding. Our planet Urantia is, in a peculiar sense, a prison/playpen for self-conscious monkey men. Granted, it’s a large, spectacularly beautiful and complex prison, and it would seem, a prison very poorly run, for the most part, by the most unqualified inmates; but there’s way more to it than that. There are no traditional “guards,” just a couple convenient things called gravity and an atmosphere that keeps us all on the surface, involuntarily breathing away, taking care of business, or fucking things up; that freewill thing, you know.

Generally speaking, the only practical way off the planet is with a toe-tag. It’s still a shame so few inmates realize they’re doing time here, or why, and even fewer actively seek the answer to that question, not to mention other essential information. It’s totally amazing, but true. They mostly just wander around the prison, occasionally shivving others, and getting shivved themselves, accidentally or on purpose. When they’ve done their time, most of them will wake up all slack-jawed in a new body on the next world, where they’ll spend the next 100 years or so learning all the shit they should’ve learned here.

Fact #2. I eat Cheetos.
It’s more than just the power of cheese, or the exquisite crunchiness; now they have jalapeño cheddar flavoring. Cheetos have always been my road trip snack of choice, despite yellow-sticky-finger. It’s no surprise that a dick like Joe Scarborough thinks he’s ridiculing bloggers who eat Cheetos in their undroos while we write; but the part about us wiping the cheesey goodness on our bare skin is Joe’s sick peccadillo, you can be sure; only he’s doing it while watching internet teletubbie porn:

Fact #3. My phosphenes have gotten nasty lately.
Not talking optical migraine here; but those little white critters that pop into your vision and swim a few strokes, then disappear, or sometimes they trigger an optical migraine. Maybe I should call them blogfiends; they always happen when I’m staring at a draft.

Serotonin Molecule

Fact #4. I make my own serotonin.
Yeh, yeh, we all do; but I make mine in the bathtub, twenty or thirty gallons at a time, two or three times a year, depending on the severity of the winter. Bulk chemicals, the whole nine yards. It keeps in a dark cool place, in an air-tight container; I use old wine bottles. Drink chilled.

Fact #5. I don’t wear a hat.
But I’m into guided self-observation, (see the clip) and have been whittling down the distractions that delay evolving my soul. If you don’t know how to self-observe, find yourself a copy of Letters of the Scattered Brotherhood and read it. Or better yet, The Urantia Book. You’ll see why. But be prepared to give up your hats.

•

Fact #6. I love water.
In Robert Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land, Michael Valentine Smith introduces earthlings to the concept of “water brothers.” When I read the book in 1971, it seemed like a cool way to define a relationship with prospective young females, since sex was what water brothers most often shared besides the water.

But in time I realized the sheer beauty of water spoke volumes about it’s Creator; from the contemplation of eternity inspired by the crashing of waves, to the infinite variety of form created on it’s surface, to it’s power to keep all living things alive. Share Water.

Fact #7. I’m enlightened, and you can be too! No. Really.
Relatively speaking, of course. It simply means I know what I am, where I am, why I’m here, and where I’m going. All things that are freely available to anyone; again, read The Urantia Book. Kind of perfunctory stuff, when you think about it. I have a genuine personal religious experience with my Indwelling Spirit. But enlightenment doesn’t turn you into Gandhi or the Dalai Lama. You are still just an imperfect flesh and blood creature, albeit with one unusually amazing potential aspect: to live forever. Get after it, you clowns!

The Seven. . .

Do it, Fran. Blue Gal

You too, Drifty. Driftglass

Suzie-Q. . . SUZIE_Q

Quaker Dave. . . Quaker Dave

Jolly Roger. . . ReConstitution 2.0

Propagandee. . . I know where you live.

Dr. Zaius. . . Zaius Nation

And you can see why. . .

Lofting PTSD* to new heights. . .

*Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

Um, yeah. . . Please don’t ask us how McCain manages to hold himself upright for these several dozen examples of a humanoid without a backbone. We have no frakkin’ idea.

Photo of McSame’s Botched Nip/Tuck & Hormone Treatment Said to Resemble Trash Media’s Bat Boy

ABOARD THE DOUBLE TALK EXPRESS  (C.U. News) — In an effort to close the perceived and actual age gap between himself and his much younger rival for the presidency, presumptive Republican candidate John McSame has apparently taken the advice of his surgically and chemically-enhanced wife to do some enhancement of his own appearance.

But in this photo, allegedly leaked by a horrified member of McCain’s inner circle and sold at a handsome profit to Weakly Whurled NEWS, the operation and hormone treatments have gone terribly wrong. Luckily for his campaign, a full head and face mold was taken before the alterations, and a latex mask fabricated that preserved his prior appearance.

“It’s a temporary fix,” explained a campaign aide, who insisted on anonymity. “We’re worried that as the heat of summer increases, the mask will start to sag and deteriorate. We’re also worried about how it will hold up indoors under the klieg lights during the debates.”

McSame, who’s on record saying that he’s a twentieth century kind of guy, is wrestling with whether to ascribe his 64+ changes in position to shameless pandering, poor flip flopping impulse control, the after effects of five years of torture as a POW in Vietnam— anything but symptoms of advancing senility.

“If we can just push John Sidney over the finish line in November, we’ll be in the clear. After that, we’ll have all the power of the White House at our disposal. Look how well Reagan’s people disguised his Alzheimer’s during his second term,” said the aide hopefully.

Asked whether voters deserved to know the truth about McSame’s current condition, he replied:

“Look, the American people have experienced enough traumas during eight years of the Dick-Bush Administration. Iraq, Afghanistan, 9/11, the tanking economy, the extreme weather effects of global warming— they can only take so much.

“There’s just some change not worth believing in.”

From John Tomasic.

Asked for comment on the media attention Obama was drawing for his trip, McCain simply said “It is what it is.”

But [Elizabeth] Bumiller writes that she got a less-resigned reaction from McCain’s entourage.

McCain’s comments were mild compared with the bleak mood and frustration on the part of his advisers, who have taken to referring to Obama sarcastically as “The One” and railing against the large amount of coverage Obama is receiving compared with McCain.
“There is nothing you can do about it,” said an acerbic Mark Salter, one of McCain’s closest advisers, while standing at the back of a modest crowd assembled to hear McCain speak at a picnic in South Portland, Maine. ” ‘The One’ went to Europe, and homage must be paid.”

ROTFLMFAO. I wonder who they have to blame for that. Obama? Certainly. McCain? Absolutely. He’s the useful tool that paid for the ad above. Even McCain’s toadies know Obama is “The One.” So who ya gonna call??

“The One” with First Lady Michelle, and Vice-President Gort