Inane Ramblings

31 August 2005

What do you expect the president to do?

An excellent story, cross-posted from Democratic Underground....

Here are just FIVE things that a REAL PRESIDENT would do that Bush has failed to do or could have done:

1. Hurricane season starts on June 1st. As hurricane strengths have been building, the last thing to do is to cut funds from Hurricane disaster recovery budgets (even if it was for next year). In fact, more funds should have been allocated, but I guess the HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of dollars going to OIL companies and DEFENSE contractors in IRAQ has sapped the treasury.

2. Get a team of advisers to help understand the most likely disaster scenarios when they realized either a Cat 4 or Cat 5 Hurricane was going to hit near (or directly) New Orleans. This would help the president decide what scale of military reservist operation would be required.

3. When the Hurricane Katrina was already rated a Cat. 4 hurricane before it's peak as a Cat. 5, it was known that it was going to hit New Orleans or very close to it, the president should have made an Address to the Nation (even if JUST by radio) to declare the following:
a. A call-up of whatever necessary number of the nearly a million military reservists to go on stand-by for preparation for the disaster (the hurricane took a couple days to arrive, they could have been getting ready) as well as deploying all-terrain vehicles and a fleet of choppers to help with the evacuation.
b. Preparation of relief funds to help in rebuilding the city; if the hurricane completely missed, these funds would be returned
c. To immediately revoke the budget cuts for Hurricane disaster recovery.
d. For those who could not be evacuated, military personnel would ensure they got to the Super Dome and ensure uninterruptible (military grade) communication systems were in place. Ensuring extra medical staff were available for the sick, ensuring military grade generators were in place and ensuring sanitation facilities could be maintained.
e. Let the people of the gulf coast know that America Stands With Them in their TIME OF NEED.

4. After the destruction occurred, the president could announce to the nation that plenty of military rescue boats were in place to patrol the neighborhoods for stranded people and get them to safety. The reserves of the Army Corps of Engineers (especially those familiar with New Orleans) could immediately begin work on dike repairs and getting pumps online (instead of allowing the water to keep rising in the city as he goes to fund raisers and plays guitar). A final acknowledgment of the tragedy and assessment of the damage to with assurances that the government would step in to help people recover from the disaster.

5. The last, minimum thing, the president could have done was immediately give leave to the soldiers in Iraq who have immediate family in the disaster area so they can return home and help or search for their family members.

The FREEPERS are right that the President CAN NOT STOP a HURRICANE, but they are WRONG in that he CAN DO SOMETHING to prevent the loss of life and ensure the security of the people and what little they have remaining in the disaster area.

If the President screws up this bad on something as basic as a natural disaster, what gives anyone ANY HOPE that he is doing ANYTHING TO PROTECT us against TERRORISM.

The plain simple fact is that BUSH and his CABAL of CRIMINALS only CARE ABOUT HOW MUCH LOOTING of AMERICA they can get away with!

Let's not let them GET AWAY WITH IT ANY LONGER.

28 August 2005

Dissent and Patriotism

On the morning of August 15, I awoke to the news that some despicable human being had run down 800 crosses bearing the names of our war dead at Camp Casey. I thought that I should do something, but being 1900 miles away from Crawford, here in Massachusetts, has rather limited my choices. I felt that the least I could do was to print the “America Stands With Cindy” banner from her website, and tape it to the back of my car.

In the two weeks that I have been displaying it, I’ve received no response from either side of the aisle. Until Friday.

Friday afternoon, an anonymous person taped a right-wing screed to my car that was so full of distortions, lies, religious intolerance, and personal attacks on Cindy Sheehan, that I heard Rush Limbaugh’s on voice in my head as I read it. And on Sunday, a young tough felt it was the height of courage to yell “Cindy’s a Disgrace!” at me as I drove by with my wife and child in the car.

To the young man, I’d like to ask him, “When do you start boot camp?” I can only infer by your outrage, that you are a person of strong moral character, willing to lay your own life on the line for the courage of your convictions.

And to the anonymous poster, I’d like to ask you, “Have you read the First Amendment recently?” The right of free speech, and the right of peaceable assembly to protest, were held in such high regard by the Founding Fathers that they gave these rights to us first, above all others.

There is no higher form of patriotism than dissent. In fact, without dissent, we would all be singing “God Save The Queen” and bowing before her Majesty.

26 August 2005

Bringing dignity and restraint back to the White House

From Capital Hill Blue:


While President George W. Bush travels around the country in a last-ditch effort to sell his Iraq war, White House aides scramble frantically behind the scenes to hide the dark mood of an increasingly angry leader who unleashes obscenity-filled outbursts at anyone who dares disagree with him.

“I’m not meeting again with that goddamned bitch,” Bush screamed at aides who suggested he meet again with Cindy Sheehan, the war-protesting mother whose son died in Iraq. “She can go to hell as far as I’m concerned!”

Bush flashes the bird, something aides say he does often and has been doing since his days as governor of Texas.
Bush, administration aides confide, frequently explodes into tirades over those who protest the war, calling them “motherfucking traitors.” He reportedly was so upset over Veterans of Foreign Wars members who wore “bullshit protectors” over their ears during his speech to their annual convention that he told aides to “tell those VFW assholes that I’ll never speak to them again is they can’t keep their members under control.”

White House insiders say Bush is growing increasingly bitter over mounting opposition to his war in Iraq. Polls show a vast majority of Americans now believe the war was a mistake and most doubt the President’s honesty.

“Who gives a flying fuck what the polls say,” he screamed at a recent strategy meeting. “I’m the President and I’ll do whatever I goddamned please. They don’t know shit.”

Bush, whiles setting up for a photo op for signing the recent CAFTA bill, flipped an extended middle finger to reporters. Aides say the President often “flips the bird” to show his displeasure and tells aides who disagree with him to “go to hell” or to “go fuck yourself.” His habit of giving people the finger goes back to his days as Texas governor, aides admit, and videos of him doing so before press conferences were widely circulated among TV stations during those days. A recent video showing him shooting the finger to reporters while walking also recently surfaced.

Bush’s behavior, according to prominent Washington psychiatrist, Dr. Justin Frank, author of “Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President,” is all too typical of an alcohol-abusing bully who is ruled by fear.

To see that fear emerges, Dr. Frank says, all one has to do is confront the President. “To actually directly confront him in a clear way, to bring him out, so you would really see the bully, and you would also see the fear,” he says.

Dr. Frank, in his book, speculates that Bush, an alcoholic who brags that he gave up booze without help from groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, may be drinking again.

“Two questions that the press seems particularly determined to ignore have hung silently in the air since before Bush took office,” Dr. Frank says. “Is he still drinking? And if not, is he impaired by all the years he did spend drinking? Both questions need to be addressed in any serious assessment of his psychological state.”

Last year, Capitol Hill Blue learned the White House physician prescribed anti-depressant drugs for the President to control what aides called “violent mood swings.” As Dr. Frank also notes: “In writing about Bush's halting appearance in a press conference just before the start of the Iraq War, Washington Post media critic Tom Shales speculated that ‘the president may have been ever so slightly medicated.’”

Dr. Frank explains Bush’s behavior as all-to-typical of an alcoholic who is still in denial:

“The pattern of blame and denial, which recovering alcoholics work so hard to break, seems to be ingrained in the alcoholic personality; it's rarely limited to his or her drinking,” he says. “The habit of placing blame and denying responsibility is so prevalent in George W. Bush's personal history that it is apparently triggered by even the mildest threat.”

22 August 2005

F A S C I S M !!!!!

Cross-posted from Air America Place/Daily Blog and 12th Harmonic...

A DJ's wild account!
I don't rave myself, but this is getting scary!
You must watch this video!

The helicopter dipped lower and lower and started shining its lights on the crowd. I was kind of in awe and just sat and watched this thing circle us for a minute. As I looked back towards the crowd I saw a guy dressed in camoflauge walking by, toting an assault rifle. At this point, everyone was fully aware of what was going on . A few "troops" rushed the stage and cut the sound off and started yelling that everyone "get the fuck out of here or go to jail". This is where it got really sticky.

No one resisted. That's for sure. They had police dogs raiding the crowd of people and I saw a dog signal out a guy who obviously had some drugs on him. The soldiers attacked the guy (4 of them on 1), and kicked him a few times in the ribs and had their knees in his back and sides. As they were cuffing him, there was about 1000 kids trying to leave in the backdrop, peacefully. Next thing I know, A can of fucking TEAR GAS is launched into the crowd. People are running and screaming at this point. Girls are crying, guys are cussing… bad scene.

Now, this is all I saw with my own eyes, but I heard plenty of other accounts of the night. Now this isnt gossip I heard from some candy raver, these are instances cited straight out of the promoters mouth..

* One of the promoters friends (a very small female) was attacked by one of the police dogs. As she struggled to get away from it, the police tackled her. 3 grown men proceeded to KICK HER IN THE STOMACH.

* The police confiscated 3 video tapes in total. People were trying to document what was happening out there. The police saw one guy filming and ran after him, tackled him and his camera fell, and luckily.. his friend grabbed it and ran and got away. priceless footage. That's not all though. Out of 1,500 people, there's sure to be more footage.

* The police were rounding up the staff of the party and the main promoter went up to them with the permit for the show and said "here, I have the permit." The police then said, "no you don't" and ripped the permit out of his hand. Then, they put an assault rifle to his forehead and said "get the fuck out of here right now."

Now.. let's get the facts straight here.

This event was 100% legal. They had every permit the city told them they needed. They had a 2 MILLION DOLLAR insurance policy for the event. They had liscenced security guards at the gates confiscating any alcohol or drugs found upon entry (yes, they searched every car on the way in). Oh, I suppose I should mention that they arrested all the security guards for possession.

Oh another interesting fact.. the police did not have a warrant. The owner of the land already has a lawsuit against the city for something similar. A few months ago, she rented her land for a party and the police raided that as well. And catch this, the police forced her to LEAVE HER OWN PERSONAL PROPERTY. That's right. They didnt arrest her, but made her leave her own property!!!


Defining characteristic of fascism:

11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts

Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education,
and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored
or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

21 August 2005

Thoughts on War

1. "You can support the troops but not the president."


2. "Well, I just think it's a bad idea. What's going to happen is they're going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years."


3. "Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?"


4. "[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy."


5. "American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy."


6. "If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy."


7. "I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning . . I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area."


8. "I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today"







Quotes from the Democrats about the current situation in Iraq? Guess again...these were all uttered in 1999, about President Clinton committing troops to Bosnia. The statements were made by the following politicians and commentators:

1. Representative Tom Delay, R-TX
2. Representative Joe Scarborough, R-FL (retired, now on MSNBC)
3. Sean Hannity, Fox News, 04/06/1999
4. Senator Rick Santorum, R-PA
5. Representative Tom Delay, R-TX
6. Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W. Bush
7. Senator Trent Lott, R-MS
8. Representative Tom Delay, R-TX


But here's the kicker:

"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." --Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)


Funny, now that the shoe's on the other foot, isn't it?

16 August 2005

Complete Bastard in Crawford

Last night, some absolute irresponsible, unpatriotic, BASTARD ran down the crosses that are part of the memorial at Camp Casey. In doing so, he shows just how low the Republican Kool-Aid drinkers will go in order to defend their lying sack of crap president. This is utterly unacceptable, and it should outrage Americans everywhere.

Just staring at the pictures fills me with a dark, brooding rage at what these people stand for, what they have done, and what this country has become under their leadership. This is not America. As of today, we have more in common with Nazi Germany than with anything the Founding Fathers had in mind.

The Story:
About an hour ago, we got a phone call from our friends up at Camp Casey saying that the line of gravemarkers along the road (Arlington West) had been run over. People there said that as they were talking to a few members of the press, a pick-up truck came down the road and stopped at the fork by the edge of the tents. The driver then jumped out and attached a pipe to the undercarriage with a chain and began to "swerve into the line of crosses," said Tammara Rosenleaf from Montana. "Then we heard the pipe being dragged over the gravemarkers and the pick-up's wheels crushing them."

Out of the 800 crosses, 500 were knocked down and 100 are irreperable. However, the driver was arrested by the local authorities. This is a prime example of how the Crawford sheriff's department has helped to protect us and our freedom of speech over the past week and a half. A big thank you to them!

Regardless of who did this, the fact is that respect for this country's dead is not a partisan issue. Putting up memorials of our country's fallen is not a "liberal" act. It is an American act. Even a group of counter-protestors from Dallas last week draped flags and flowers over many of the gravemarkers, and many were moved to tears at the sight of the long line of dead soldiers. It's too bad that someone else who disagrees with Cindy felt they needed to wipe out the memory of our fallen in such an obscene manner.

Now, more than ever, is the time for us to come together. We need your voice and your help to bring America closer to an ideal that all of us hold in our hearts. Cindy Sheehan is bringing us closer to that ideal and demonstrating its power to change this country.

-Japhet Els and Emily Sharpe

Photo #1

Photo #2

Don't just sit there, check Cindy's site for ways you can support the cause.

And at the very least, print this sign and put it in your car!

14 August 2005

Party for the Party

This September 11 marks the 4th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. So, what does the administration have planned to commemorate the event?

A solemn memorial, reading of names, and a missing man flyby?

How about a national prayer service?

Maybe a minute of silence right at 8:45 and 9:03 am?

No, this exploitative administration has decided that the best way to remember our dead is to hold a rally, a march, and a concert! That's right....the Freedom Walk is kicking off from the parking lot of the Pentagon on the morning of September 11...right where the plane impacted four years ago. They're then going to publicly desecrate Arlington National Cemetery by marching right through the middle of it. Finally, the progression is to end at the National Mall, and will feature a country-music concert by Clint Black, author of such ditties as "Iraq and Roll" and other such nauseating things.

Not only is this wrong on so many levels, it smacks so badly of propaganda and mind-control it isn't funny. For example, did you know that if you don't pre-register at the website, you won't be allowed to march? Apparently, they want to restrict this to the party faithful. (Those loyal to George Bush and his craptacular foreign policy.)

I have friends that were IN the North Tower after the impact...and miraculously lived to tell the tale. I can't possibly imagine what kind of turmoil and anguish the families of the dead must be going through, knowing that an official sworn to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States of America" is so skillfully exploiting the dead in order to advance his own agenda.

Am I the only one that looks at stuff like this, and ponders whether the similarities to these events is deliberate or just a coincidence? (To really be sure, check out when they used to hold these things.)

Every day brings a new outrage from this administration, but this one really takes the cake.

11 August 2005

Did we nuke Iraq?

This stunning little revelation comes to us courtesy of the 12thHarmonic Blog (Australia).

Depleted uranium is WMD

Leuren Moret

My grandfather, U.S. Army Col. Edwin Joseph McAllister, was born in Battle Creek in 1895. He does not know that his first grandchild is an international expert on depleted uranium. I have worked in two U.S. nuclear weapons laboratories, and in 1991 I became a whistleblower at the Livermore lab. Depleted uranium is very, very, very nasty stuff:

# Depleted uranium (DU) weaponry meets the definition of weapon of mass destruction in two out of three categories under U.S. Federal Code Title 50 Chapter 40 Section 2302.

# DU weaponry violates all international treaties and agreements, Hague and Geneva war conventions, the 1925 Geneva gas protocol, U.S. laws and U.S. military law.

# Since 1991, the U.S. has released the radioactive atomicity equivalent of at least 400,000 Nagasaki bombs into the global atmosphere. That is 10 times the amount released during atmospheric testing which was the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs. The U.S. has permanently contaminated the global atmosphere with radioactive pollution having a half-life of 2.5 billion years.

# The U.S. has illegally conducted four nuclear wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and twice in Iraq since 1991, calling DU “conventional” weapons when in fact they are nuclear weapons.

# DU on the battlefield has three effects on living systems: it is a heavy metal “chemical” poison, a “radioactive” poison and has a “particulate” effect due to the very tiny size of the particles that are 0.1 microns and smaller.

# The blueprint for DU weaponry is a 1943 Manhattan Project memo to Gen. L. Groves that recommended development of radioactive materials as poison gas weapons - dirty bombs, dirty missiles and dirty bullets.

# DU weapons are very effective kinetic energy penetrators, but even more effective bioweapons since uranium has a strong chemical affinity for phosphate structures concentrated in DNA.

# DU is the Trojan Horse of nuclear war - it keeps giving and keeps killing. There is no way to clean it up, and no way to turn it off because it continues to decay into other radioactive isotopes in over 20 steps.

# Terry Jemison at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs stated in August 2004 that over 518,000 Gulf-era veterans (14-year period) are now on medical disability, and that 7,039 were wounded on the battlefield in that same period. Over 500,000 U.S. veterans are homeless.

# In some studies of soldiers who had normal babies before the war, 67 percent of the post-war babies are born with severe birth defects - missing brains, eyes, organs, legs and arms, and blood diseases.

# In southern Iraq, scientists are reporting five times higher levels of gamma radiation in the air, which increases the radioactive body burden daily of inhabitants. In fact, Iraq, Yugoslavia and Afghanistan are uninhabitable.

# Cancer starts with one alpha particle under the right conditions. One gram of DU is the size of a period in this sentence and releases 12,000 alpha particles per second.

Before my grandfather died, he told me that his generation had made a mess of this planet. I wonder what he would say to me now I would tell him to see “Beyond Treason” (www.beyondtreason.com ), a new documentary about the history of treason by the U.S. government against our own troops: Atomic veterans, MK-Ultra, Agent Orange and DU. After Vietnam, Henry Kissinger said, “Military men are just dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy. . .” (from Chapter 5 in the “Final Days” by Woodward and Bernstein).

Leuren Moret is an international radiation specialist, with a B.S. degree in geology from University of California at Davis, a M.A. degree in Near Eastern studies from University of California at Berkeley and has done post-graduate work in the geosciences at UC-Davis. She is environmental commissioner for the City of Berkeley, Calif.

03 August 2005

Know Thine Enemy

There's an awful lot of information circling about the internet these days....so it pays to know your sources. If you're passed along anything from the following blogsites, I'd treat it with a big grain of salt.

Conservative Blog Taxonomy

1. Instapundit - Calling Glenn Reynolds intellectually lazy would be to praise him. He doesn't write, he grunts. Has gained prominence by posting a lot and never making his audience think; has done those things by never thinking too much himself. Never met a Democrat he couldn't casually accuse of treason.

2. Michelle Malkin - Far-right affirmative action hire who is so bigoted she'd arrest herself for trying to cross a border. Famously published a book praising internment of Japanese-Americans that was (a) incoherent and (b) probably not written by her. If she didn't have tits, she'd be stuck writing at Townhall.com.

3. Powerline - Bilious Minnesotans led by someone who nicknamed himself "Hindrocket." Talk about being manly in that protests-too-much way.

4. Little Green Footballs - If LGF didn't exist, Dave Neiwert would have to invent it. Heady stuff for young rightwingers, like the Völkischer Beobachter was in the good old days. Site gives off a strong scent of roast pork.

5. Captain's Quarters - Every so often on the subway, I find these screeds written in colored marker, in which the printing goes from edge to edge on the paper, often with words cut off in random spots at the end of the line and continued on the next. I am told that this style of writing is common among very delusional people. Ed Morrissey has the benefit of blogging software that paginates the words for him. He will deliver pages on any subject at all, always proving in his mind the perfidy of liberals and always making absolutely no sense. I bet Ed makes even other far-righters nervous.

6. Volokh Conspiracy - Doctrinaire right-wing lawyers who intellectualize and ward off reality, interspersed with flashes of viciousness. Fortunately, Volokh is so tone-deaf he has already excluded himself from the judgeship he obviously desires - he's described himself as a "law and order conservative" (code for putting blacks in jail) and praised torturing prisoners before executing them.

7. Hugh Hewitt - Death to Muslims! Death to Muslims! Death to Muslims! It goes on like that.

8. Dean's World - Dean Esmay is popular among right-wingers as one of those centrists who just happen to hate liberals and Democrats. A proud dry drunk, he works out his unresolved childhood issues of being raised in a union household by writing about his crackpot theories on HIV/AIDS, feminism, and capitalism.

9. Buzzmachine - A man with a face for radio, Jeff Jarvis has used his "credentials" as a television critic for TV Guide to get himself tapped by cable news as the "blog guy." Like TV news, Buzzmachine lurches from outrage to self-righteousness to the furious riding of several creaky hobbyhorses. Like TV pundits, Jarvis comes up with meaningless catchphrases that he repeats endlessly ("News is a conversation" being the most vapid) and poses as another neutral observer who just happens to hate liberals and Democrats. And like TV generally, Jarvis' presentation of any given issue is shallow and knee-jerk, and only really exists to promote the product, in this case, Jarvis. Caution: name-dropping zone.

10. RedState - Formerly known pseudonymously as Tacitus, formerly considered by some liberals as a reasonable conservative, Josh Trevino found that neither was conducive to promotion in Republican circles, so he dumped the name and his former site and founded RedState. Democrats or liberals are both banned and regularly accused of treason; Muslims are presumed dangerous. Darfur is an especially favorite topic, because it both shows Islam in a bad light and has the advantage of not having to actually do anything.


So, there you have it. Counter it with the truth at Air America Radio!