I love to hear right-wing economists screaming and ranting and raving about the "free market" and "letting the market decide" and so on and so forth. Of course, the second someone's stock portfolio takes a hit, they're shrieking for someone, anyone (specifically the government) to come save them.

However, it's a disaster in slow motion for the economy when this actually happens (as we've seen over and over again). Bear Stearns is a example. The free-market advocates demanded a hands-off approach that allowed them to risk enormous sums of money in an area that anyone should have been able to tell you was a bad bad bad place to risk enormous sums of money. Of course, no one was thinking of the long term. They never do. When the inevitable crash came, they all looked shocked, I tell you, SHOCKED! How could this have happened? How could anyone have foreseen this?

So, as Bear Sterns was going down in flames, investors cried out for a life preserver from the Fed. "Save us!" they cried. "Save us from this catastrophe that has befallen us that we could not have foreseen or prevented, given our level of nearsightedness and greed!"

And the Fed stepped in. $2/share, $10/share, whatever. The business failed. It should have been allowed to go all the way down.

The argument, however, is that if Bear Stearns had been allowed to collapse, it would have sparked a chain reaction that would have devastated the economy. Uh, sure. Bear Stearns was trading at over $160/share the week before it imploded. What exactly is the difference on the grand scale between $10 and $0? Not much. The only thing the Fed did was dump a sandbag on top of the levee and pray that the hurricane would just go away. The next investment bank that goes down (and it's likely to happen soon) will simply expect a bail-out. And when this crisis passes, as they do, firms such as this will have learned an important lesson:

Fuck it up as much as you want, Uncle Sam will bail you out!

This will, of course, fuel the next economic crisis. Rinse, repeat. Act surprised the next time it happens. You couldn't have foreseen it. No one could!

Allowing entire sectors of the market to fail really sucks for business. However, it's not all bad for consumers. Take the airline industry. Back in 2001, the airline industry, under the weight of its own stupidity, was having a hard time of things. The new Bush administration, looking for some way to help out megacorporations, found the perfect excuse - 9/11. Holy shit, people! The airline industry is going to go under because no one wants to fly! (never mind that it was pretty fucked up on 9/10, that's UNAMERICAN TALK AND THE TERRORISTS WIN).

So, they bailed out the airline industry. What would have happened if they hadn't?

Well, in the short term, a lot of people would have lost a lot of money as the legacy carriers went bankrupt. Mergers, acquisitions and the resulting layoffs would have put thousands of of work. To gain some sort of revenue, airfares would have skyrocketed. And then, something strange would have happened. Consumers would have decided that this was bullshit.

Amtrak's and Greyhound's ridership would have jumped up (higher than post 9/11, and more steadily). Smaller carriers with lower airfares would have seen an increase in business. Larger carriers would have disappeared. Services would have increased as airfares lowered in order to attract customers. The market would have corrected itself in order to win consumers back, or it would have failed. And how, exactly, is that a bad thing? Isn't that what the "free market" is all about? Isn't that capitalism? If there is no allowance for an entire segment of the market to fail because of its own inability to meet the needs of the consumer, what is the point of a free market? What is the point of private enterprise?

In the end, these bail-outs hurt more people than they help. They immediately saddle the taxpayers with the money required to guarantee solvency, and in the long run, it only validates and perpetuates the validity of the stupid decisions that led to the need for a bail-out. In the case of Bear Stearns, the Fed handed the company over to J.P. Morgan and said "We'll cover 30 billion in losses that you might incur." So, Morgan gets Bear Stearns' entire profitable portfolio and next to none of its losses, while you and I get upwards of 30 billion in debt and no possibility of reward if that debt is less and the portfolio proves to be more resilient than expected. We get the risk, private enterprise gets the reward. And for all the people who were lent sums of money they couldn't afford and told that it was all good, they get eviction notices. Sorry, but the government can't be bothered to help you out. You're not a "market segment," you're just a consumer. And who gives a shit about the consumer? Well, the free market would, because if it didn't, it would collapse. Good thing the federal government won't let that happen!

-pb

From General Petraeus' testimony today:

MCCAIN: Do you still view al Qaeda in Iraq as a major threat?

PETRAEUS: It is still a major threat, though it is certainly not as major a threat as it was say 15 months ago.

MCCAIN: Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shi’ites overall?

PETREAUS: No.

Uh, sparky, if you're going to run solely on your foreign-policy credentials, maybe you should at least know that Al Qaeda isn't a Shi'ite organization. If you can't tell the difference between the two biggest sects in the region we're currently balls-deep in, maybe you shouldn't be the guy calling the shots there.

This has not been an isolated incident. McCain's continuing narrative has him continually blurring the lines between Sunni and Shi'ite, Iran and Al Qaeda. One of two possibilities exist: he's really that dumb and can't tell them apart (they're all brown!), or he's deliberately trying to connect the two in the minds of the average person so that he can sell the "Al Qaeda is in Iran SO BOMB THEM" concept. He's either a nitwit who can't tell two distinct groups apart, or he's trying to lie us into a war. Wow, just what we need.

-pb

Now that more people are dying in Iraq, looks like we won't have to invade Iran after all! Cheney was starting to get worried that he might not hit his target body count before 2009, meaning that he'd be dragged straight into Hell upon the new President being sworn in.

-pb

So, John McCain has no idea who the people in the Middle East are. Shia, Sunni, Iran, Iraq, these distinctions meaningless to McCain, who, by the way, is touting his foreign policy experience as the reason you should vote for him. This is, of course, the equivalent of asking a devout Hindu to explain the taste difference between a Whopper and a Big Mac. And then bombing a country back into the Stone Age based on that advice. And then wondering why people are blowing themselves up and killing our troops.

So, here's how McCain sees the Middle East:



No need for international borders, we'll just crib a Beach Boys tune and start another failed war! And the best part for McCain is that he has Plausible Deniability! He won't remember who he gave the order to bomb!

-pb

This whole hullabaloo over someone at State snooping around in Barack Obama's passport file stinks like week-old fish. Now, suddenly, we've got State saying that they've been elbow deep beyond the borderline in Hillary Clinton and John McCain's files... so, don't worry, right? Because it wasn't politically motivated, our naughty naughty employees are snooping on everyone!

Bullshit, Pyle!

This goes back to the total disregard for the law and the Constitution that was the original wiretapping story. "Warrants that we can get after the fact that have a 99.9998% approval rate slow us down, so we need to completely ignore the court that was designed just for this purpose. After all, TURRISTS!" Why wouldn't they just get a warrant? Two possible reasons (neither of which were the stated one): 1) The 99.9998% approving FISA court would have said NO NO NO to the warrants they wanted to get. 2) They knew the FISA court would never approve a warrant form with the "Who do you want to spy on" field filled out with "Everybody."

I think scenario 2 rings a bell here. One guy peeking? Yeah, but that one guy is DICK CHENEY.

Kagro X at Daily Kos sums it up pretty well:

What an amazing development, eh? George H.W. Bush's State Department sticks their nose into Bill Clinton's passport file, but the "responsible" official resigns, and nothing ever comes of it. Lesson learned? Sure! Now George W. Bush's State Department is free to stick its nose into Hillary Clinton's files. Plus anyone else it feels like poking around on. And like almost everything that happens around Condoleezza Rice, no one could have foreseen it!

Dangerous domestic spying? Or just imprudent use of a new class of massive, all-encompassing, Total Information Awareness-style databases by unnamed and unidentifiable "outside contractors" and "low-level employees?" Who knows?

And does it really make a difference? So long as a government official in a proper-looking suit tells reporters -- from behind a proper-looking podium with a proper-looking seal on it and proper-looking blue draperies behind -- that it's "been taken care of," though they can't tell you the names of the employees (confidentiality, you know) or the name of the contractor (national security, you know), then everything's just find and dandy, right?

Besides, it's just another opportunity for Republicans to point out how "Big Government" doesn't work. Just look! We can't make it work, either! And if that contractor was a government employee, Teh UnionZ would make it impossible for us to fire him. So really, this breach was a terrific way for us to demonstrate that outsourcing really works! Sure, we had to let someone totally unvetted and totally untrustworthy access sensitive personal information about our opposition's top political leaders to prove it, but prove it we did! After all, we just announced that this unverifiable person was unverifiably fired. What more proof of our dedication to security and freedom could you want?

Yeah. That sounds about right.

-pb

Remember all of those bumper stickers demanding that we never forget that 2,998 3,017 people died? I'm thinking about making some that say "3-19-03 NEVER FORGET". Wonder how many people would even know what it meant?

Let's take a look back: (viked from DailyKos)

"Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof---the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."
-George W. Bush, 10/7/02

"We will, in fact, be greeted as liberators."
-Dick Cheney, 3/16/03

"There's a certain amount of pop psychology in America that the Shia can't get along with the Sunni and the Shia in Iraq just want to establish some kind of Islamic fundamentalist regime. There's almost no evidence of that at all. Iraq's always been very secular."
-Bill Kristol, 4/1/03

"It's amazing that more than two weeks into the liberation of Iraq---as residents in Basra are cheering British forces and Americans occupy Baghdad's airport and Saddam Hussein's main presidential palace---the antiwar crowd is still spinning a doomsday scenario. But it's getting harder and harder to take seriously the claim that freeing Iraq will make it harder to win the war on terrorism. Indeed, there's plenty of evidence to the contrary. [...] Who said war never solved anything?"
-Brendan Miniter, The Wall Street Journal, 4/8/03

"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals."
-Charles Krauthammer, 4/19/03

Ted Koppel: [Y]ou’re not suggesting that the rebuilding of Iraq is going to be done for $1.7 billion?
Andrew Natsios [Agency for International Development]: Well, in terms of the American taxpayer's contribution, I do. This is it for the U.S.
-4/23/03

[Liberals] can't deny that President Bush has won his two wars, and won them resoundingly.
-Paul Mirengoff, Powerline, 4/26/03

"The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."
-Tony Snow, Fox News, 4/27/03

-pb

I was listening to Nine Inch Nail's The Downward Spiral last week, and you know, there are some pretty blatant ideas in there. "I want to fuck you like an animal" and "he dreamed a god up and called it Christianity." Pretty pointed references. But, I though, what if you stripped all of those obvious meanings and replaced them with something else? Something that Trent Reznor never intended (yet would likely appreciate). The Downward Spiral came out in 1994. Fast forward 10 years, and I think it accurate (and eerily) describes the 2004 Presidential Election...

• Mr. Self Destruct - Dick Cheney, whispering in George W. Bush's ear.
• Piggy - Excerpt from John Edwards' memor, on John Kerry selecting him as a running mate.
• Heresy - Excerpt from Karl Rove's memoir of the election and wrangling the evangelical vote.
• March of the Pigs - Memo from a Swift Boat Veterans for Truth strategy meeting.
• Closer - Bush's speech at the Republican National Convention.
• Ruiner - The Democratic base to the Bush Administration, collectively.
• The Becoming - The Democratic Party, lamenting the loss of its identity and its inability to gain any traction on issues that should be simple to win on.
• I Do Not Want This - The Democratic base, to Kerry, the day after the election.
• Big Man with a Gun - More excerpts from Rove's memoir, on the aftermath of the election.
• A Warm Place - The numb soundtrack that the world heard the day after the election.
• Eraser - Kerry, conceding mere hours after declaring all votes would be counted.
• Reptile - Bush, referencing the voting population, 50.5% of which is "a mandate."
• The Downward Spiral - The Democratic base's response.
• Hurt - Kerry, addressing the Democratic base after Bush's second inauguration.

I don't have too much time on my hands, I swear.

-pb

"In addition to the importance of civilian control of the military, there cannot be even a taint of corruption or a hint of tolerance for human rights abuses."

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, 25 Feb 2008, addressing the Indonesian Council on World Affairs

Huh. Translation?

Nations of the world! Hearken unto our words, and DO AS WE SAY, NOT AS WE DO, or we will withhold the weapons of mass destruction that you so desire, which we may or may not attack you for having later!

-pb

A man is captured, declared an enemy of the state, refused habeus corpus, and held for an indefinite period of time. Eventually, he is brought before a military court and put on trial, where secret evidence and statements obtained through torture are admissible. If he is found guilty (and given the above, only a prosecutor with the intellect of a chipmunk would fail to gain a conviction), he will be sentenced to death.

Ok, what country am I talking about?

a) Russia, 1922-1953
b) Germany, 1933-1945
c) Cambodia, 1975-1979
d) United States, 2001-present
e) all of the above

-pb

Economy, War To Dominate State of Union

Blah blah, State of the Union, blah blah...

Wait, what's that in the second paragraph? (emphasis mine)

That is the problem Bush faces as he prepares to deliver his seventh and probably final State of the Union address tonight.

"Probably final?" WHAT DO YOU MEAN "PROBABLY FINAL?"

-pb

I'm on a message board discussing Stewart and Colbert going back on the air, and wow, out come the nutcases. Well, at some point, Bill Clinton came up (like he is wont to do when nutcases abound), and here's a little exchange I think you'll all get a kick out of:

hitlery clinton wrote:
ALL OF THOSE DEMOCRATS LIED WELL BEFORE THEY PUSHED BUSH INTO INVADING IRAQ

To which I replied:

Oh yeah, they pushed him kicking and screaming into invading Iraq.

Remember when Steny Hoyer and Frank Lautenbeg went over to the White House, strapped Bush to his own desk, and took turns punching him the the face and wailing on him with a belt while screaming "CALL THE PENTAGON! ORDER THE INVASION!"? Bush was sobbing and just kept saying "no, no, there's no evidence! Don't make me do it! THINK OF THE POOR IRAQIS!" But they wouldn't stop. They just kept hitting him.

And then Pelosi got on national television and was kicking Cheney in the stones and shrieking about how he was such a pussy for not wanting to invade one little country and that he should just man up. Poor Cheney almost had a heart attack right there, but he stayed strong. "We're not going in!" he declared in that voice that says "I've just been kicked in the stones with a five-inch stiletto heel."

They toughed it out, right up until Barney Frank shot Mary Cheney with the Gay-gun. Dick Cheney just collapsed and was blubbering and moaning "my poor daughter!" as she groped and fondled another woman in unholy lez-lust that no Cheney daughter would naturally come by.

Frank aimed that gun at the Bush Twins, and George, through bloody teeth, finally sighed and picked up the phone.

And that's how the Democrats pushed Bush into invading Iraq. True story. Happened right after that unicorn farted a rainbow on Tom Delay and made him do all those bad things.

-pb

From Mary Shaw at Philadelphia Freedom Watch: Bono speaks out against torture -- and gets censored

On September 27th, here in Philadelphia, the Liberty Medal for 2007 was awarded to Bono and his organization DATA (Debt AIDS Trade Africa), for their work in fighting AIDS and poverty in Africa. Each year, the National Constitution Center awards the Liberty Medal to a person or persons for outstanding work in advancing the cause of liberty around the world.

While Bono's entire acceptance speech was quite good, I was particularly moved when he spoke out against the use of torture. He said, "You do not have to become a monster to defeat a monster."

Indeed. Very well put.

And I wrote those words down right after I heard them, because I was so impressed and wanted to share the wisdom.

However, two days after the event, I downloaded the official video of Bono's speech at www.libertymedal.org. And I discovered that the official video had been edited so that it no longer contains the references to torture, or other portions of the speech that apparently were not acceptable to The Powers That Be. Furthermore, the edited version seems to over-emphasize the few gratuitous positive comments that Bono made regarding the current Bush administration. (By the way, George Bush Sr. presented the award.)

Not being a conspiracy theorist, I began to question whether I had heard it all correctly the first time.

Fortunately, I discovered that Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Daily News heard the same speech that I heard, and he wrote about it in his blog at www.attytood.com. Bunch's blog entry about Bono's speech fills in some of the gaps that are missing from the official video, including the context surrounding Bono's "monster" comment.

So, thanks to Will Bunch, here is what Bono had to say about torture:

Today I read in the Economist an article reporting that over 38 percent of Americans support some type of torture in exceptional circumstances. My country? No. Your country? Tell me no. Today, when I receive this great honor, I ask you, I implore you as an Irishman who has seen some of these things close up, I ask you to remember, you do not have to become a monster to defeat a monster. Your America’s better than that.

Yes, that is exactly what I heard.

But, in the official video, all is missing except the last two sentences.

Yes, this is America, land of the free. Or so it once appeared to be.

Indefensible! Disgusting! Is this nation so gutless, so spineless that criticism from those it awards for human service is to be supressed, lest it offend?

Bono, I fear you may be too late with those words.

March 17, 2003: "Saddam Hussein and his sons must leave Iraq within 48 hours. Their refusal to do so will result in military conflict commenced at a time of our choosing." - George W. Bush, in a televised address to the world.

February 12, 2003: "The Egyptians are speaking to Saddam Hussein. It seems he's indicated he would be prepared to go into exile if he's allowed to take $1 billion" - George W. Bush, speaking privately to lapdog (now former) Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar of Spain.

Saddam was indicating that he would leave for $1 billion. Bush decided that instead of Saddam in exile and the possibility for a peaceful transfer of power, he'd take door #2:

$600+ billion, 4,000+ dead U.S. service men and women, 1 million+ dead Iraqis, 4 million Iraqi refugees, and Saddam hanging from a rope.

Lies, murder and treason. The Bush legacy.

-pb

So, it's official: Republicans don't support our troops (but you knew that). Senator Jim Webb (D-VA), who used to be a Republican and Secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, proposed an amendment to a defense spending bill that would require equal time at home to time spent deployed. Defense Secretary Robert Gates urged against it, Bush threatened to veto it, and Republicans in the Senate managed to keep it under the 60-vote threshold.

Remeber when not supporting the troops was akin to heresy? Ahh, those were the good old days.

-pb

THE WAR PARTY - Ted Rall

Ted Rall tells it like it is, which is, incidentally, something I've been very annoyed about. Democrats are whining about how they can't stop the war because Republicans won't help them override Bush's expected veto. The truth is, if they didn't give Bush a defense budget to veto, they wouldn't have to override it. They'd just have to sit back, wait for the Pentagon to run out of war funding, and then bring the troops home on their own. Republicans like to spin it that Democrats attempting that would be leaving troops sitting in the field with no bullets, but all they're really doing is giving the Dems political cover. "We CAAAAAAAN'T end the war because Republicans won't let us! We have to fund the troops, timetable or not!" Bullshit. What Dems really want is to drag this fucker out until 2008, so they can batter the Republicans with the idea that we're still in Iraq because they wouldn't help bring the troops home.

Newflash: Democrats are extending the war be not cutting off the funding. They're in control. All Harry Reid has to do is say "Nope, we don't have time to work on your defense spending bill."

And, as Rall points out, the media is perpetuating the lie that their hands are tied.

-pb

VultureBush lands on the collapsed Minnesota bridge

Bush segues right from "so sad, bridge collapsed!" to "pass my spending legislation, you fucking Democrats!"

Nevermind that the Governor of Minnesota essentially said the same thing, even vetoing a number of transportation bills because they included tax raises for the top 2% of earners. Guess they didn't need that money after all. Give it long enough, and the problem will go away... right into the river.

-pb

Isn't it funny how the same people screaming about how amnesty for undocumented workers runs counter to the rule of law are the same people demanding a pardon for Scooter Libby?

Laws: They only apply to Liberals and Brown People and should be enforced to the letter, not the spirit.

-pb

"You think you're the only one doin' time, Derek? You think you're here all alone? You think I'm not in here with you?"

- Doris Vinyard (Beverly D'Angelo), American History X

We watched The Last King of Scotland yesterday. Great film. Forest Whitaker deserved every ounce of that Oscar, because his portrayal of Idi Amin scared the shit out of me. Nightmare on Elm Street? Aliens? Not even close. The Last King of Scotland is a horror film. The entire movie, I'm on edge because you never know when Whitaker's Amin is going to go from smiling to butcher. Knowing Amin's story kind of helped, but seriously, every scene in that movie (even the very early scenes), I was simply waiting for his visage to shift from a smile to that look that says "someone - maybe that five-year-old - is about to eat a bullet". Without a single shock segueway, The Last King of Scotland managed to keep me jumping the entire time.

But this post isn't about scary movies.

In the same way that Forest Whitaker scared me, fear is often a reaction to an unknown but possibly imminent "really bad thing". It doesn't even have to be something that's about to happen to you, just that it's going to happen, and it's going to affect you.

I didn't really understand that fear, but I've been introduced to it. Now, I don't like fear. I don't like the very concept. Fear is, as I see it, getting all worked up about futures that haven't happened yet and possibly might never happen. Just as I don't live with regret, I try to live without fear. I can't change the past, and there's no sense in fretting over a shadowy "what if". But as opposed to regret, which I diffuse with a simple assessment of my life and knowledge that changing even a single foul-up in my past would have put me somewhere else, I can't so easily dismiss my fears.

I quoted Beverly D'Angelo from American History X from the scene where she's talking to Ed Norton through the prison glass, explaining to him that people that love him are bearing the reality of his imprisonment, in effect, living in a prison of their own. I never really got that line until a few months ago, when my sister-in-law told us that she's shipping out for Iraq in September.

Now, I understand. She's not even gone yet, and I'm already there. I'm already afraid. Every day, it passes my mind that some day I might come home to see two officers standing on my porch. That thought isn't some shadowy "what if", in my mind. That day is tomorrow. They might be waiting for me right now. And that scares the shit out of me.

I just want you to understand the fact that when someone goes off to war, the people who care about them go with them. I might have a nice drive up the Turnpike every day, but once she's in Iraq, I'm going to be thinking less about the roads that I'm driving on and more about the one's that she's driving on. I'm going to be there as much as I'm here. I just want you to understand that we're not just sending 140,000 troops to Iraq, we're sending their families.

Understand?

So, imagine that fear, and now amplify it to a point you can't even comprehend.

Army Spec. Alex Jimenez is in the same division as my sister-in-law. He's one of the three soldiers captured in a raid that left four other soldiers and their translator dead. The body of one of the captured soldiers has since been recovered. Jimenez and the other soldier are still missing. They've been MIA for five weeks. I can't even begin to imagine the daily hell that Spec. Jimenez's wife, Yaderlin Hiraldo, has been going through every day. She knows now what it's like to have those two officers waiting for her, but she's left with the horror of not knowing. She can't begin to mourn yet, because they don't know if he's dead or alive. She can't allow herself the luxury of believing everything's ok, because it's not.

So, Yaderlin Hiraldo has a lot to think about right now. But, as if that wasn't enough, the INS is planning to deport her.

You see, she and Spec. Jimenez met in her native Dominican Republic. She later came to America to be with him in 2001 and married Jimenez in 2004. She's not here legally, but they'd been trying to get her legal status to remain.

An immigration judge has been sympathetic, putting the case on hold since Alex Jimenez was reported missing. But her case is in limbo, and her future in this country uncertain.

The worst part about this is, if she's deported and Spec Jimenez doesn't make it home, she'll never be allowed to enter the country legally to even visit his grave.

Here's two out-of-control trains this country has set in motion violently colliding. One, the disastrous war of aggression in Iraq, and the other, our inhumane immigration policy. Our government is putting our soldiers and their families through hell, and given the chance, they'll do what they can to compound it.

Of course, this government is run by a bunch of people that have never been afraid. Not the way that I'm afraid. Not the way that Yaderlin Hiraldo is afraid. And that scares me even more.

-pb

In discussing the Democratic capitulation on the Iraq war spending bill, Rahm Emanuel said "The way I would view this, I view this as the beginning of the end of the President's policy in Iraq in this way. It ends the blank check on more troops…"

Rahm apparently didn't understand that he voted for a blank check on more troops and a continuation of Bush's policies in Iraq. Oops! Your bad.

-pb

So, here's the rant you've probably all been waiting for:

Fuck you, Democrats. Seriously, fuck you. If it weren't for the fact that Pennsylvania doesn't haven an open primary, I'd tear up my registration card into 280 pieces and send one to each Democrat in the House and Senate. They might be trying to convince us that either of the two major bills right now are coated in lube as they shove them up our ass, but no, they're red-fucking hot.

Back in November, America rose up and said "fix this shit". Dems took over at the end of January, and all they've accomplished so far is loosing a game of political chicken with a lame duck moron with approval numbers in the toilet. How fucking dumb do you have to be? They lost a chess match to a blind guy playing on a different board. Great job, assholes. Great fucking job. And you wonder why this annointed Congress has approval numbers just a few points higher than President Fucktard?

Since taking over, Dems have:

• Caved to Bush's demand for unlimited war.


• Blubbered along while Alberto Gonzalez is revealed to be a corpse-fucking vampire who can't tie his shoes without kicking a puppy.


• Claimed that their steaming pile of dogshit immigration legislation was a "great comprimise" and we should all go gaga over it.


• Failed to provide even the illusion of leadership.


• In trying, made themselves look worse and then didn't bother to call anyone on it (Pelosi in Syria)


• Played to the tune of the most corrupt administration since (at least) Nixon's Crooks'r'Us

Way to win, Dems. Way to parley that great victory in '06 into... jack fucking shit. You'll be lucky to hold those seats in '08, and you'll be lucky if this fiasco doesn't drag the eventual nominee down with it.

I'm back to Edwards as my guy. Not only is he the one that I agree with the most (I'm starting to find Kucinich's desire for media at any cost to be a bit desperate), he's one of the few Dems not tainted by this by being in Congress at the moment. Yes, he voted for the war, but he's taken his licks for that. Obama can scream all he wants about not voting for the war, but at the end of the day, he's already said he'll vote for a bill with no timetables because Bush vetoed the first one. That's not leadership. That's not standing up for morals, no matter how unpopular. Fuck that. And Hillary? Not a fucking chance.

So yeah, fuck you, Dems. If you give me someone else besides John Edwards to vote for in the general, I have another candidate already lined up. (Seriously, Thom, it's Edwards or Truelove).

-pb

TheNewFormatSux is a fascist, genocidal frightfest from Allentown. He's the guy that used the phrase "The Muslim Problem" and didn't get it when I said "Huh, that sounds disturbingly like 'The Jewish Problem'".

Here's a little exchange I had with him:

TheNewFormatSux : Getting back on topic, the original letter is titled "Indict the Neo-Cons". The widely accepted definition of this new word "neo-con" is "new conservative". So I'm a little puzzled about who the letter writer wants to indict. Is it every American who has recently become a conservative?

Me : "Neo-", while meaning new, does not indicate what you're talking about. It refers to the ideology. A "neo-conservative" doesn't refer to someone who just became conservative, it refers to the school of thought being a new version of conservative thought. It also doesn't indicate an actual connection with the previous. Neo-conservatism doesn't have much in common with conservatism (less civil liberties vs. greater civil liberties, more government spending vs. less government spending, more rational foreign policy vs. cowboy diplomacy, etc.).

Just like neo-Nazis don't look too much like the highly organized political machine esposing national social ideals that the original Nazi party did, neo-conservatives don't look much like Abraham Lincoln's conservatives.

Of course, you knew that, you were just trying to set fire to your own strawman.

TheNewFormatSux : Phew - I'm glad you cleared that up for me and even more glad that I'm not a neo-con (indictable or otherwise). Since I believe in civil liberties (some of them currently illegal), less government spending (except when it goes towards eliminating the threat from Muslim extremism) and rational foreign policy (like hunting down and exterminating Muslim extremists wherever they breed). I'll sleep much better tonight knowing I'm not a "neo-con".

Me : So, I take it you'd like to see Bush out of office as soon as possible?

TheNewFormatSux : You take it wrong. I wish he could serve a third term because he has done more to fight Muslim extremism than any other president in our country's history. And Muslim extremism is clearly the biggest threat the civilized world has ever faced. Oh, and I love the tax cuts.

Me : Wow, your world sounds great! Because in the real world, the tax "cuts" amounted to an average of $300 and were just an advance on the next year's bill, and terrorism has steadily increased worldwide since we invaded Iraq.

Did Bush invade Iraq in your world? Probably not, because in the real world, that turned out to be a horrific blunder that gave terrorists a complete training course on "how to competely embarrass the U.S. Military", lead to huge recruitment numbers, increased Iran's power in the region, and sapped our already flagging credibility in the Middle East. Bummer. Guess that didn't happen in your world?

In the real world, climate change poses an even greater threat to economic stability than terrorism. Did they solve that in your world?

What other wonders do they have in your world? Flying cars? Dinosaurs that play chess? Talking dogs?

-pb

Number of illegal wiretaps required to bring down the cell plotting to assault Fort Dix: 0
Number of prisoners tortured for info to bring down the cell plotting to assault Fort Dix: 0
Actual cause for the downfall of the cell: a concerned citizen and some good old-fashioned police work.

Note to Bush: Apparently shredding the Constitution wasn't necessary, was it? By the way, what was your rationale for fighting them "over there" again? Some New Yorkers might disagree, but New Jersey is not "over there".

Fighting them over there makes us less able to fight them over here. It also makes us much less able to fight threats like hurricanes and tornados. And no, it's not because the governor of Kansas didn't fill out the paperwork correctly, you asshole. It's a simple matter of "all my fucking equipment got blown up or just left in Iraq".

Note to New Jersey jihadis: Fort Dix? Come on, are you fucking kidding me? FORT DIX? Wow, just... man, you should apply for jobs in the Bush administration. You've got about the right intelligence level for it.

-pb

So, Bush doesn't support the troops. He cut off funding. He hates America. He's giving aid and comfort to the enemy by not providing proper funding for our forces and weakening our position in the world.

Not much else to say besides "ITMFA".

-pb

http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070407/AUTO01/704070338/1148

[Ford Motor Co. CEO Alan Mulally] intervened to prevent President Bush from plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank of Ford's hydrogen-electric plug-in hybrid at the White House last week.

Come on, Mulally, you didn't have to go to all that trouble.

Seriously, though, how stupid is Ford for building a vehicle that has the potential for the user to blow themselves up by doing something that simple? It's certainly not Bush-proof. Again, we see to stupidity of American car manufacturers. They finally decide to get on the hybrid band wagon, but instead of coming up with their own version of proven technology, they decide to one-up Toyota and Honda almost ten years after the fact by making a car that doesn't use gasoline at all. Great, wonderful. Except that they don't even have the basics of hybrid technology down. They want to skip the baby steps part and go right into giant leaps. Guess what happens? They make something that the average user will blow themselves to smithereens with. Good job.

-pb

File this under "statements that are supposed to allay fears that actually provoke them":

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/03/27/us.gulf.ap/index.html

The U.S. exercises come just four days after Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines who Iran said had strayed into Iranian waters near the Gulf. Britain and the U.S. Navy have insisted the British sailors were operating in Iraqi waters.

U.S. Navy Cmdr. Kevin Aandahl said the U.S. maneuvers were not organized in response to the capture of the British sailors -- nor were they meant to threaten the Islamic Republic, whose navy operates in the same waters.

What the Navy was trying to say was "no, no, we're not going to blow up Iran over fifteen limeys that couldn't navigate", but what they wound up saying was "15 Brits? Jesus shit, people, we were ALREADY PLANNING THIS TO SHOW IRAN WHAT'S IN STORE FOR THEM".

Anyone want to take bets on the start of the invasion?

-pb

Majority rules!

And I urge the Senate to act promptly on this important nomination [of Samuel "Cavity Searches for your 10-Year Old Daughter" Alito] so that an up or down vote is held before the end of this year.

George W. Bush, October 31, 2005

Well, only if it's a Republican majority...

[T]oday, a narrow majority in the House of Representatives abdicated its responsibility by passing a war spending bill that has no chance of becoming law.

Georget W. Bush, March 23, 2007

Remember when he was all about simple majorities? Remember when he though it was soooo horrible to think that his nominees might need 60% of the Senate for approval, instead of his beloved mob rule 50%? We're talking about asking 2/3rds of the Senate (not 1/2) to confirm a guy who could spend the next 40 years affecting our nation, and he thinks that's too much to ask. But, BUT! Tell him that over 50% of the House said "Out of Iraq by August 2008", and what's his response?

"Make it 75% and we've got a deal".

-pb

House panel defies Bush, votes for subpoenas

Reread that title a few times. Not too much, though, because your head will explode once you grasp CNN's complete fucking grasp of our system of government.

The House of Representatives cannot "defy" the President. Defiance connotates refusal to act in a proscribed manner, like when my dog is on the couch, I tell him to get down, and he looks at me, looks a the floor, looks at me again and lays down. That's defiance. That's "I know I'm supposed to obey you, but, instead, how about you go fuck yourself, hmm?"

Issuing subpoenas is a right of the Congress, an integral part of their function of oversight, to be issued if it concludes that they are a necessity in an investigation. The President can scream like a petulant child all he wants in argument with that decision, but it's by no means a Constitutional crisis if he says "Don't issue subpoenas", and Congress says "We're going to issue subpoenas".

How's this for defiance? The SCOTUS says "detainees have a legal right to council". Bush says "yeah, whatever". Congress says "here's a law that says you can't torture people". Bush says "ok, I'll sign it, meaning I'll be bound by it, but I'm going to write a little note explaining how I fucked your mother in her asshole last night, and nothing you send me is going to change the fact that a) I'm your daddy and b) your laws don't apply to me".

That is defiance. Congress doing their job over the insignificant protests of a criminal? That's called the system doing its job. But CNN doesn't know jack shit about that.

-pb

Four years have passed since America launched an unprovoked and illegal act of aggression against a mostly defenseless country. It's cost us over 3,000 men and women, and it's cost Iraq nearly a million with an additional two million displaced.

We'll be at Bridge and Main in Phoenixville at 6:30 for a vigil, if anyone's interested.

-pb

Khalid Sheik Mohammad has confessed to a laundry list of foul deeds. Taking him at his word, he's a mass murderer, at best, an inhuman killing machine at worst. But, why would he bother to confess?

Because he knows he's going to die. And if he's going to die, better that he puffs himself up into the biggest, baddest martyr that he can possibly be. This is one of the failings of a system that advocates the death penalty against people who are apparently unafraid to die. Nice deterrent, huh?

KSM was held in secret prisons and tortured, so there's no way that they can bring him to a civilian trial. The only thing they can do now is to drag him through a kangaroo military tribunal where the only thing made public will be "Guilty - Penalty, death", after which point he will be disposed of. He knows this. He knows that regardless of what he says (No, you got the wrong guy! My name is Khalim Sheik Mohammad!), they're going to kill him. So, why not make a legend out of himself?

Why not take credit for WTC '93, 9/11, Daniel Pearl, Pearl Harbor, Harboring Joseph Goebbles, etc., etc, ad infinitum. He's guaranteeing that a) jihadis will remember him as a powerful martyr and b) U.S. intel will never know if he was lying or if the real perpetrators are still out there.

Smart move by a dead man. Dumb move by Bush for sentencing him before the trial.

-pb

I think I'm getting scandal fatigue.

Fuck that, I have scandal fatigue.

Let's recap 1992-2000, shall we? Feel free to point out things I miss.

Whitewater
Waco
Ruby Ridge
Monica Lewinsky

That's the four major cock-ups of the Clinton years. What was the end result? An impeachment proceeding.

Now, 2000-2007:

Katherine Harris
9/11
Afghanistan
Iraq
More time spent cutting brush than presidenting
Ken Blackwell
Warrantless Wiretapping
Katrina
Secret prisons
Abu Ghraib
Military tribunals
Harriet Miers
Jeff Gannon
Cheney's Got a Gun
Scooter Libby
FBI Patriot Act abuses
Prosecutor dismissals

And that's just the shit I can name off the top of my head. Two stolen elections, two wars, countless violations of the Constitution.

End result? One convicted staffer and a president who thinks that a 30% approval rating is a mandate to ignore the other two branches of government.

I keep thinking "maybe this is the scandal that brings it all down", but I know that it's not. The man was caught lying about a justification for a war that has cost over 3,000 American lives and just south of a million Iraqi lives and over two million refugees. The greatest security breach in American history happened on his watch because he didn't feel like reading a memo, and then any lessons that could have been learned from that were promptly forgotten, leading to the destruction of an entire city.

So no, the scandal du jour is not going to be the one that brings it all down. The only thing that we (hopefully) have to look forward to is January 20, 2009. That is, assuming, that 50.1% of the ballots counted aren't in favor of someone equally as repugnant.

-pb

two monkeys fucking a football
Pronunciation: \ˈtü ˈməŋ-kēz ˈfə-kiŋ ˈā ˈfut-ˌbol\
Function: adjective
Date: March 8, 2007

1: The Democratic and Republican Parties trying to figure out something, anything concerning Iraq.

With over 30% of the electorate begging and pleading Democrats to pull out of Iraq, and the rest of the margin of vicotry at least asking for a new direction, Democrats have pretty much decided that Dubya is more powerful than both branches of Congress, while the Republicans have pretty much said "we can't be held accountable for this war if it never ends! Ha ha!

Good job.

-pb

I'd just like to say that I don't care what kind of evidence Bush claims to have about Iran. I seriously don't care. Even if he shows us a tape of Ahmedinejad dancing with glee over IED attacks and taking full credit, I still won't believe it. I'll simply assume that he's fabricated the evidence. And if I'm wrong and he was telling the truth? Well, you can't trust a liar, so it's not my fault he hasn't given me reason to believe him yet.

-pb