I approve this message.
Catch you later
Monday, April 28, 2008
Sunday, April 27, 2008
Christian Fundamentalists Amok in the U.S. Air Force
Downward Xtian Soldier.....
Guns and Jeebus, Part ??
Catch you later.....
Thursday, April 24, 2008
Monday, April 21, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Teacher Expelled Over Religion
From Texas, those wonderful folks who gave you George W. (teach the controversy) Bush!
If I don't believe in the Theory of Gravity, can I levitate? Sheesh...
Catch you later.....
I'm not bitter, I'm a: "Working Class Hero" - John Lennon
Wonder what John would have to say these days. Still greatly missed.
Catch you later.....
PATRIOTISM FOR SALE - CHEAP: Behind Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand - New York Times
Behind Analysts, the Pentagon’s Hidden Hand - New York Times
by David Barstow
"In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.
The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.
To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.
The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air."
by David Barstow
"In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.
The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.
To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.
The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air."
Long article but well worth your time.
Seems like the generals should have asked themselves, "Would I buy a used car from these folks?" Talk about drinking the Kool-Aid!
Contrast with these guys. Ask yourself which best demonstrates real patriotism.
Catch you later.....
CHOOSING WAR: A prima facie case for impeachment
Choosing War:
The Decision to Invade Iraq
and Its Aftermath
by Joseph J. Collins
www.ndu.edu/inss/Occasional_Papers/OP5.pdf
"Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the
status of a major war and a major debacle. As of fall 2007, this
conflict has cost the United States over 3,800 dead and over
28,000 wounded. Allied casualties accounted for another 300 dead. Iraqi
civilian deaths—mostly at the hands of other Iraqis—may number as high
as 82,000. Over 7,500 Iraqi soldiers and police officers have also been
killed. Fifteen percent of the Iraqi population has become refugees or
displaced persons. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the
United States now spends over $10 billion per month on the war, and that
the total, direct U.S. costs from March 2003 to July 2007 have exceeded
$450 billion, all of which has been covered by deficit spending.1 No one
as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans’ benefits or the total
impact on Service personnel and materiel.
The war’s political impact also has been great. Globally, U.S. standing
among friends and allies has fallen.2 Our status as a moral leader has been
damaged by the war, the subsequent occupation of a Muslim nation, and
various issues concerning the treatment of detainees. At the same time,
operations in Iraq have had a negative impact on all other efforts in the war
on terror, which must bow to the priority of Iraq when it comes to manpower,
materiel, and the attention of decisionmakers. Our Armed Forces—
especially the Army and Marine Corps—have been severely strained by
the war in Iraq. Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there
were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at
least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to
expand its influence throughout the Middle East.
(snip)
To date, the war in Iraq is a classic case of failure to adopt and adapt
prudent courses of action that balance ends, ways, and means. After the
major combat operation, U.S. policy has been insolvent, with inadequate
means for pursuing ambitious ends."
The Decision to Invade Iraq
and Its Aftermath
by Joseph J. Collins
www.ndu.edu/inss/Occasional_Papers/OP5.pdf
"Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the
status of a major war and a major debacle. As of fall 2007, this
conflict has cost the United States over 3,800 dead and over
28,000 wounded. Allied casualties accounted for another 300 dead. Iraqi
civilian deaths—mostly at the hands of other Iraqis—may number as high
as 82,000. Over 7,500 Iraqi soldiers and police officers have also been
killed. Fifteen percent of the Iraqi population has become refugees or
displaced persons. The Congressional Research Service estimates that the
United States now spends over $10 billion per month on the war, and that
the total, direct U.S. costs from March 2003 to July 2007 have exceeded
$450 billion, all of which has been covered by deficit spending.1 No one
as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans’ benefits or the total
impact on Service personnel and materiel.
The war’s political impact also has been great. Globally, U.S. standing
among friends and allies has fallen.2 Our status as a moral leader has been
damaged by the war, the subsequent occupation of a Muslim nation, and
various issues concerning the treatment of detainees. At the same time,
operations in Iraq have had a negative impact on all other efforts in the war
on terror, which must bow to the priority of Iraq when it comes to manpower,
materiel, and the attention of decisionmakers. Our Armed Forces—
especially the Army and Marine Corps—have been severely strained by
the war in Iraq. Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there
were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become, at
least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to
expand its influence throughout the Middle East.
(snip)
To date, the war in Iraq is a classic case of failure to adopt and adapt
prudent courses of action that balance ends, ways, and means. After the
major combat operation, U.S. policy has been insolvent, with inadequate
means for pursuing ambitious ends."
This article could easily serve as an exhibit in the impeachment of the present mis-administration.
I would enjoy hearing Grandpa McSame explain this at the first Presedential Debate in the fall.
Go to the above link and read the whole piece... just make sure to hide the sharp objects first.
Catch you later.....
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Bill Maher - New Rules (04-18-08)
Hell yeah, I'm bitter. If you're not bitter, you're not paying attention!
Catch you later.....
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
EXCELLENCE IN BROADCASTING
Had an interesting chat this evening with an old friend that I had not seen in a long time. She is a Public Accountant. Not Certified. Has to work for a guy who has his certification to work at her level. This features heavily in her talk about "how's it goin'". Oh well.
When I inquired as to her thoughts about the upcoming election, she startled me with a diatribe about how Hillary is a bitch and Obama is not a patriot.
She hates McCain, but the other two will ruin America!
When pressed for an explanation, she said, "Hillary is a bitch!" and "Obama didn't place his hand over his heart for the Pledge."
I tried to set her straight, calmly, but was blown away by assertions that "I heard it from Rush and Shawn" and therefore it must be true.
Wow! This is a gal I like. She knows hard times and usually can be counted on to know the score. Her visceral response was surprising.
We went over the issues, one by one, and she was progressively inclined on nearly every one.
But she just couldn"t see either a woman or a "colored guy" in the top job.
"What would other countries think! Women or Negroes!"
Nobody would call Marget Thatcher or Golda Meier pussies, I said
"That's different... We're America!"
I kept after her for quite awhile.
"Obama is too black"
What!
"Well, he should be blacker..."
What!?
"Bill cheated!"
So did both of your husbands!
"McCain will keep us safer."
How?
"I don't know, he just will, he's a patriot."
You seem bitter.
"I'm not bitter, I just seem to work all the time, I'm so tired."
Are you better off now than 2001?
"We're fine, but I need to get Jonah enrolled in Medi-Cal and get him some help to keep him in school."
What's wrong with Jonah?
"Environmental exposure to chemicals has left him with ADD."
What are the symptoms?
"Well, he just sits in the basement all the time, playing video games, eating Cheetoes, drinking Mountain Dew, and yelling about Liberals."
He's only twelve!
"Yes, we're bothered too, but he has an offer from someplace called 'Excellence in Broadcasting' for $1200 a week and in this economy we really need the money!"
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
McBush - Could we be that dumb?
McBush - Morphed Picture of John McCain and George Bush
Link to Political Humor at About.com (don't look into its eyes!)
Four more years?!? Are we, as a nation, that stupid?
I guess time will tell.
Catch you later.....
Link to Political Humor at About.com (don't look into its eyes!)
Four more years?!? Are we, as a nation, that stupid?
I guess time will tell.
Catch you later.....
Monday, April 14, 2008
Sunday, April 13, 2008
American Suicide - Losing Our Will - New York Times
Losing Our Will - New York Times
Op-ed by Bob Herbert
"I wonder what the answers would be if each American asked himself or herself the question: “How is the war in Iraq helping me?”
While the U.S. government continues to pour precious human treasure and vast financial resources into this ugly war without end, it is all but ignoring deeply entrenched problems that are weakening the country here at home....
...The war in Iraq stands like a boulder in the road, blocking progress on so many other important issues that are crucial to our viability as a society. We’ve seen this before. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which included the war on poverty, was crippled by the war in Vietnam.
On the evening of April 4, 1967, one year to the day before he was assassinated, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went into Riverside Church in Manhattan and said of the war in Vietnam: “This madness must cease.”
Forty-one years later, we can still hear the echo of Dr. King’s call. The only sane response is: “Amen.”
Op-ed by Bob Herbert
"I wonder what the answers would be if each American asked himself or herself the question: “How is the war in Iraq helping me?”
While the U.S. government continues to pour precious human treasure and vast financial resources into this ugly war without end, it is all but ignoring deeply entrenched problems that are weakening the country here at home....
...The war in Iraq stands like a boulder in the road, blocking progress on so many other important issues that are crucial to our viability as a society. We’ve seen this before. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, which included the war on poverty, was crippled by the war in Vietnam.
On the evening of April 4, 1967, one year to the day before he was assassinated, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went into Riverside Church in Manhattan and said of the war in Vietnam: “This madness must cease.”
Forty-one years later, we can still hear the echo of Dr. King’s call. The only sane response is: “Amen.”
We are witnessing the demise of the great American Experiment and seem powerless to act decisively, intelligently, in defense of our common values and bonds and with enlightened self-interest.
Our obsession with the trivial and meaningless blind most to what is happening before our very eyes. America has become a country in rapid decline.
Unless we act forcefully, soon, with a clear vision of the problems we face as a nation and with a determination to bear the costs of the solutions, America will cease to matter.
Unless the failed governance of BushCo. is soundly repudiated by sweeping Progressive victories in the fall, our downhill slide will simply pick up speed.
The consequences of maintaining the status quo will be devastating for the younger generations. It is they who will pay the highest costs for the greed and avarice of those who now simply dismiss the concerns of the majority with a "So?".
Our country is in peril. Patriots must act.
Catch you later.....
Saturday, April 12, 2008
Honest McCain Campaign Poster
http://johnmccainisyournewlogo.com/
Have fun creating your own at link above, courtesy Oliver Willis.
Catch you later.....
McCain: McSame as Bush
This straight-shooter, maverick B.S. has to be exposed ASAP. Four more years?
God help us all...
Catch you later.....
Why China is the REAL master of the universe | the Daily Mail
"...The global power shift from the West to the East is no longer just a matter of debate confined to learned journals and newspaper columns - it is a reality that is beginning to have a huge impact on our daily lives....
...The dire warnings from the International Monetary Fund this week that the West now faces the largest financial shock since the Great Depression, while the Asian economies are still powering ahead, simply underlines our vulnerability in this new world order....
...But the world order we have grown used to - and comfortable with - over the last century is coming to an end.
Napoleon III compared China to a sleeping giant and warned: "When China awakes, she will shake the world."
After a long hibernation, China, and her 1.3 billion people - twice the population of the U.S. and EU combined - is awaking almost overnight....
...Western governments are concerned that the rules of the game are changing. Most worryingly, as China's brutal suppression of the once independent Tibet shows, this is not a superpower that respects Western standards on human rights....
...Yet Western governments have been in such awe of China's looming power that their response has not been to challenge its abuses, but to try to silence their own protesters at home.
From the UN to the IMF to the World Bank, the international institutions that attempt to govern the planet were made in the image of the victors of World War II. Now power is shifting from West to East, the whole liberal democratic world order will face its first serious challenge in decades....
...Many fear that things could get ugly....
...There is only one thing worse than an unchallenged superpower - it is a superpower with a victim mentality, which feels the world owes it a favour. "
Just a few snippets from an excellent opnion piece by Anthony Browne for the Daily Mail.
I've bored my friends and family for years with my growing concerns about China and India. Pure math made it painfully obvious that a reckoning was due and a look at history made it a safe bet that the reckoning, when it came, would be painful.
Advice to the kiddies.....learn Chinese for a brighter future. I'm old, live in SoCal, so will continue to struggle with Spanish. But if I were still a student.....
Catch you later.....
Thursday, April 10, 2008
Monday, April 7, 2008
Religious Intolerence - Alive and Well in the Land of Lincoln
Change a couple of names and labels around in the above story; now imagine the outrage on the part of our more "godly" fellow citizens.
Hypocrites!
Catch you later.....
Spitzer?! I never touched her!
Ladies and Gentlemen, warm up your Tivos, it's going to be a bumpy ride.
Don't get your diapers in a twist, Sen., just try to lay back and enjoy yourself.
Catch you later.....
Sunday, April 6, 2008
Friday, April 4, 2008
"We don't govern by polls...."
HNN Poll: 61% of Historians Rate the Bush Presidency Worst
This is why you shouldn't listen to the educated elite.
And we all know that facts have a liberal bias.
God made W president and only He can judge.
God is male cuz the bible says so.
So line up, sign up and re-enlist today (w/ John W. McBush - Four more years!)
God save us all!
Catch you later.....
Thursday, April 3, 2008
True Patriotism
I'd say the man has more than earned his right to speak any freaking way he wishes.
www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/chi-oped0404wrightapr03,0,225570.story
chicagotribune.com
Factor military duty into criticism
April 3, 2008
By Lawrence Korb and Ian Moss
In 1961, a young African-American man, after hearing President John F. Kennedy's challenge to, "Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country," gave up his student deferment, left college in Virginia and voluntarily joined the Marines.
In 1963, this man, having completed his two years of service in the Marines, volunteered again to become a Navy corpsman. (They provide medical assistance to the Marines as well as to Navy personnel.)
The man did so well in corpsman school that he was the valedictorian and became a cardiopulmonary technician. Not surprisingly, he was assigned to the Navy's premier medical facility, Bethesda Naval Hospital, as a member of the commander in chief's medical team, and helped care for President Lyndon B. Johnson after his 1966 surgery. For his service on the team, which he left in 1967, the White House awarded him three letters of commendation.
What is even more remarkable is that this man entered the Marines and Navy not many years after the two branches began to become integrated.
While this young man was serving six years on active duty, Vice President Dick Cheney, who was born the same year as the Marine/sailor, received five deferments, four for being an undergraduate and graduate student and one for being a prospective father. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, both five years younger than the African-American youth, used their student deferments to stay in college until 1968. Both then avoided going on active duty through family connections.
Who is the real patriot? The young man who interrupted his studies to serve his country for six years or our three political leaders who beat the system? Are the patriots the people who actually sacrifice something or those who merely talk about their love of the country?
After leaving the service of his country, the young African-American finished his final year of college, entered the seminary, was ordained as a minister, and eventually became pastor of a large church in one of America's biggest cities.
This man is Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the retiring pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, who has been in the news for comments he made over the last three decades.
Since these comments became public we have heard criticisms, condemnations, denouncements and rejections of his comments and him.
We've seen on television, in a seemingly endless loop, sound bites of a select few of Rev. Wright's many sermons.
Some of the Wright's comments are inexcusable and inappropriate and should be condemned, but in calling him "unpatriotic," let us not forget that this is a man who gave up six of the most productive years of his life to serve his country.
How many of Wright's detractors, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly to name but a few, volunteered for service, and did so under the often tumultuous circumstances of a newly integrated armed forces and a society in the midst of a civil rights struggle? Not many.
While words do count, so do actions.
Let us not forget that, for whatever Rev. Wright may have said over the last 30 years, he has demonstrated his patriotism.
Lawrence Korb and Ian Moss are, respectively, Navy and Marine Corps veterans. They work at The Center For American Progress. Korb served as assistant secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration.
Copyright © 2008, Chicago Tribune
I simply loathe Yellow Elephants and Chicken-hawks. If you're so damn gung-ho for Bush's mis-adventure, if you really want to support the troops....shut the eff up and ENLIST!
Catch you later.....
Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Chris Matthews Sucks!
I am the oldest of eight, from a very large extended family.
That said, Chris Matthews reminds me of the sibling who is always clamoring for attention, using the most outrageous palaver to gain notice.
The verbal garbage emanating from that mouth was always meant for nothing more than “look at me, love me, I'm something, too.”
Tweety is growing more and more confrontational for confrontation's sake. Tweety also has a hard-on for the Clinton's that just begs for professional intervention. He's like most compulsive talkers... He never listens, is always looking for the next bon mot, just to get noticed, to seem as smart as the rest. And what is the deal with him and McLame? Is BBQ sauce an aphrodisiac?
Nothing added by Tweety is worth the time needed to listen.
His performance today with Mr. Obama shows a needy striver at his worst.
MS-NBC used to be the cable news network of choice in these parts; now however, with the obvious exception of Keith Olberman, it has become merely noise and embarrassing at that. They should give Rachel Maddow a show immediately and give Tucker and Buchanan a shove just as soon.
What Matthews adds to the national dialog is the stuff of tabloid journalism. His knowledge of what concerns the man on the street is constrained by his beltway view. He is so enamored of his own shallow POV that he has become irrelevant.
I no longer watch MS-NBC (except for K.O.), just like I no longer listen to that certain sibling.
Life is short, egotistical B.S. is abundant, one must choose.
I've made my choice.... Fuck Chris Matthews and fuck MS-NBC.
Catch you later.....
Edit 1/29/2010:
Tuesday, April 1, 2008
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