Not Complicated

Can, we, however, please quit calling them the Bush "tax cuts" and call them what they really are: "The Bush Welfare for Paris Hilton Program"?

Bush, Not Those Who Would Prosecute Him For Torture, Turned Us Into A Banana Republic. Only In The Patriarchy. Only.

Media Matters has the full story about Republicans' attempts to portray prosecution of Bush officials for torture, rather than Bush's use of torture, trashing of the Constitution, and impoverishing of Americans, as turning the United States into a "Banana Republic."

Wiki explains what a "Banana Republic" is; compare and contrast w the U.S. from 2000-2008. Substitute corn syrup, or weapons, or chemicals for the word "banana".

More from Jensen concerning the parallels between our culture and abusive families: here.

We must prosecute the Bush torturers. For our own sake.

Audio by Derrick Jensen from Now This War Has Two Sides

Morning In America

My New Name For A Blog

What they said. Read the whole thing.

Picture found here.

You Ain't Gunnu Tern Me Over To Teh Haige, Iz Yuh?

Picture found here.

On Calling Sarah Palin A Bitch

Pretty Much:

(Seven Posts in Seven Days - Day 1)

I am surprised that some of you are up in arms about my calling Sarah Palin a bitch, or John McCain an ass or even George Bush a jackass. I read your comments about how I should be more respectable and not call Sarah Palin a bitch. Some of you are actually praying for me because I called John McCain an ass. In particular I am struck by the comments that suggest the problem with our country is that we can’t have an intelligent conversation to solve our problems without resorting to name calling like when I called George Bush a jackass.

Well this old broad is hurt. Clearly I didn’t start this blog to call Sarah Palin a bitch…or John McCain an ass… or even George Bush a jackass. I am so sorry if I have offended any of you. What was I thinking when I called Sarah Palin a bitch?

New rules:

I will stop calling George Bush a jackass when he stops calling me a terrorist: Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.

I will stop calling John McCain an ass when he stops calling Barack Obama a socialist at every dog and pony show on the Straight Talk Express tour.

I will stop calling Sarah Palin a bitch when she stops calling Obama a terrorist sympathizer. And I will stop calling Sarah Palin a bitch when she stops calling the parts of the country where I don’t live more Pro-American than the part of the country where I do live. And I will definitely stop calling Sarah Palin a bitch when she stops acting like a bitch.

I’m old enough to remember the Republican party of Barry Goldwater - when the party stood for fiscal responsibility, small government and personal freedoms. I remember when I could talk with friends about politics and just agree to disagree. And then religious nut cases decided that if you didn’t agree with them you were immoral. So they went and elected George Bush President so he could take the Republican Party from being a party full of respectable people to a party filled with asses, jackasses and yes - bitches like Sarah Palin.

I am tired of Rush Limbaugh suggesting that feminism is a dirty word. How hard did he fight to gain the right to vote? Or own property in his own name? Or get equal pay for equal work?

And I am tired of Sean Hannity suggesting I am un-American because I don’t think that war is the answer to everything. How many bullets has he taken defending his country in battle?

And I am tired that Sarah Palin can decide what she wants to do with her body but other women can’t make that decision for themselves.

NEW, New Rules:

If you are not for me, you are against me. I’ll get over it. Now kindly return the favor.

Oh…and one last thing. Elisabeth Hasselbeck is still a moron. There is just no way around that, Folks.

Thanks for stopping by everyone. I am doing fine. Thanks for asking. I mean it

It may be that this whole election is really about the fact that the economy tanked a few weeks before election day and that nothing else matters. But I'd like to think that this election has shown that you can no longer win by calling other Americans names, impugning their patriotism, lying about (Goddess guard us) their religion, or digging up the odd weird relative or former vague association. If true, that would be a really good thing, IMHO.

Update: Peter Beinart has some interesting thoughts on this topic.

You Pathetic, Oedipal Mess Of A Poor Excuse For A Human Being. Exit Stage Left.

Bush in 1999:

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade·.if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency." Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker."

Bush in November 2004

And it's one of the wonderful -- it's like earning capital. You asked, do I feel free. Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style. That's what happened in the -- after the 2000 election, I earned some capital. I've earned capital in this election -- and I'm going to spend it for what I told the people I'd spend it on, which is -- you've heard the agenda: Social Security and tax reform, moving this economy forward, education, fighting and winning the war on terror.

Bush last week:


New details emerged over the weekend of a remarkably
tumultuous White House meeting on the bailout Thursday. With
the session breaking up in disarray, according to two
participants, Bush issued an appeal, saying, "Can't we just
all go out and say things are OK?"
The group around the table, which included congressional
leaders and the presidential nominees-Republican John McCain
and Democrat Barack Obama -spurned the request.

Bush, today:

President George Bush expressed disappointment Monday after the House failed to approve the $700 billion plan to bail out the U.S. financial markets.
"I was disappointed in the vote with the U.S. Congress on the economic rescue plan," Bush said during a joint media opportunity with the Ukranian president. "We put forth a plan that was big because we got a big problem."

The bipartisan plan meant to address the root of the financial crisis -- home mortgage-related assets that have lost value during the housing decline -- failed on a 205-228 vote, falling 13 votes shy of the 218 needed for passage.

Bush said he would be talking with his economic advisers and his administration would work with congressional leaders on the plan to stabilize U.S. financial systems.

"Our strategy is to continue to address this economic situation head-on," Bush said. "And we'll be working to develop a strategy that will enable us to continue to move forward."

Art found here.

Why? Why? Why Didn't I Riot In The Streets In 2000? Why?

OK, now he's just fucking with my liver and going na-na-na-na-boo-boo I can give you cirrhosis and there's nothing you can do about it.

Sweet Mother of the Gods, where's that gallon jar of olives, that tablespoon of vermouth, and that truckload of Stoli?


Picture found here.

Watertiger Nails It

Go. Now.

A picture really is worth a thousand words.

Help A Witch Out

I need to come up with a list of about twenty of the Bush junta's worst lies.

I've got:

*Abstinence Education Works

*Outlawing Abortion Will Decrease the Rates of Abortion

*America Does Not Torture

*Faith-Based Initiatives Do Not Violate the First Amendment

Help me out in comments. I know we can come up with more than twenty.

Bush Terrifies Me

Every afternoon, I go halfway around Washington Circle and I sit at a light and look at this bit of masking tape that substitutes, here in DC, for freeway blogging. Periodically, the "authorities" come along and clean it off. And, then, immediately, it reappears.

It completely rocks.

My New Name For A Blog

What Ellroon Said.

Art found here.

You Ass

How many days has this traitor spent on vacation? Now, watch this drive.

More here.


Update: Of course, the Freeway Blogger says it best.

UpdateII: Adventus, via Olberman, says it most succinctly: Shut the Hell up.

My New Name For A Blog

What ellroon Said.

Wouldn't It Be Nice To Have A President Who Believed In Science?

From today's EEI newsletter:

Scientists Report Instances of Political Interference

More than half of the 1,586 EPA scientists who responded to a questionnaire from the Union of Concerned Scientists reported witnessing political interference in scientific decisions over the past five years, the Washington Post reported today. Francesca Grifo, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' scientific integrity program, said: "Things are not as they should be at the EPA. Scientific findings are being suppressed and distorted; 889 scientists personally experienced at least one type of political interference. ... Scientists are being pressured by outside interests."

More than 100 respondents said the Office of Management and Budget was the source of the interference, with hundreds of others blaming industry groups and other agencies, the Post reported. Wrote the Los Angeles Times: "Such allegations are not new: During much of the Bush administration, there have been reports of the White House watering down documents on climate change, industry language inserted into EPA power-plant regulations and scientific advisory panels' conclusions about toxic chemicals going unheeded."

J. William Hirzy, an EPA senior scientist and union official, said scientists also saw political interference during the Clinton administration but "what we're seeing now is ... the favoring of energy interests, coal-fired power plants. That's something different in this administration." Rep. Henry A. Waxman, D-Calif., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has sent a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson advising him to prepare to face questioning about the survey findings at a hearing next month. Waxman wrote: "These survey results suggest a pattern of ignoring and manipulating science in EPA's decision making."

As far as I can tell, the survey only includes scientists now at work at EPA, and not the many who have left, disgusted, over the past seven years. If there were a way to include those scientists, the results may have been even more alarming.

My New Name For A Blog

What Ruth Said

Not all countries on our earth, though, have been held captive by a ruling cabal that eschews good relationships based on diplomacy. Some are advancing their interests.

China has been moving into good relationships that include material advancement. It has trade agreements with Sudan, that it has not used to advance human rights there. It has also a few alliances our media does not usually talk about. I thought it might be a good idea to see what some of them are.

My New Name For A Blog

What Digby Said:

There was a time when the Village clucked and screeched about "defiling the white house" with an extra marital affair or hosting fund raising coffees. I would say this leaves a far greater stain on that institution than any sexual act could ever do. They did this in your name, Americans.

The vice president, national security advisor and members of the president's cabinet sat around the white house "choreographing" the torture and the president approved it. I have to say that even in my most vivid imaginings about this torture scheme it didn't occur to me that the highest levels of the cabinet were personally involved (except Cheney and Rumsfeld, of course) much less that we would reach a point where the president of the United States would shrug his shoulders and say he approved. I assumed they were all vaguely knowledgeable, some more than others, but that they would have done everything in their power to keep their own fingerprints off of it. But no. It sounds as though they were eagerly involved, they all signed off unanimously and thought nothing of it.

Naturally, the saintly General C. Lukewarm Powell was his usual evasive self when asked about it. (And if I hear one more person say he should be on the Democratic ticket I'm going to have an aneurysm):

Powell said that he didn't have "sufficient memory recall" about the meetings and that he had participated in "many meetings on how to deal with detainees." Powell said, "I'm not aware of anything that we discussed in any of those meetings that was not considered legal."

The Attorney General(!) also present and approving, was concerned that this was being done inside the white house:

Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."

That's what passes for integrity in the Bush white house.

He's certainly right about history not judging this kindly. Neither would a war crimes tribunal.


Derrick Jensen has a wonderful piece that he does about a time when he was still reluctant to use the word "apocalypse" to describe what's happening to our environment. A friend asked him, "What would it take for you to use that word? Would it take chemicals in the breast milk of every mother on the planet? We're there. Would it take dead zones in the Pacific Ocean? We're there. Would it take the extinction of carrier pigeons who were once so plentiful they darkened the skies? We're there. Would it take polar bears dying because they can't swim far enough to find the increasingly-scarce ice floats? We're there." And on an on.

I wonder what it will take for Americans to break themselves away from American Idol and Dancing With The Stars and America's Next Supermodel and take to the streets demanding consequences for this evil junta. Would it take the death of habeas corpus? We're there. Would it take warrantless domestic spying (almost certainly used on the media and Democrats)? We're there. Would it take lying the country into an illegal and immoral war that drained our economy of so much money that we had to go hat in hand to the Communist Chinese and look the other way while they slaughter Tibetan monks? We're there. Would it take the president of the United States of America shrugging and saying, "Well of course we discussed the sickening, obscene details of how to torture people"? Because, well, because we're there.

Creepy, Dirty, Rotten, Disgusting, Obnoxious Criminals

To the Hague.

There's nothing else for a decent person to say.

To the Hague.



Thanks, Sandra Day.

As a lawyer, and an officer of the court who had to swear an oath to defend the Constitution in order to practice the profession that I practice every day, all that I can say is that I believe, with every fiber of my being, that these pathetic perverts deserve a fair trial.

/Hat tip TheOtherWA in comments at Eschaton.

And People Wonder Why I Drink

Still processing an awful lot of the information from EschaCon II. I'd list the wonderful people I met, but I'd be sure to leave someone out, due, entirely, to my own Stoli-soaked brain. All of the panels were wonderful and any one of them could easily have been a full-day event. But one that really stands out for me was the lunchtime panel on Creating Constitutional Accountability. The panelists were Scott Horton, Bob Fertik (moderator), Kagro X, and Eric Johnson (Chief of Staff, Rep, Robert Wexler). Their message would have sobered up a six-day drunk on a ten-day bender.

Eric Johnson was an incredibly nice guy and one who's heart is really in the right place. But he said things that just made me want to take a hostage. He kept describing how the Bush junta would break a law, throw the Dems up against the chain link fence at the back of the schoolyard, pants them, make them hand over their lunch money, and then say, "What are you going to do about it, punk? Cry to your mommy?" and then the Dems would solemnly go, "Oh, no Mr. Bully. I'm brave. I'll never go cry to my mommy. Would you like my new baseball glove?" Sweet Lilith on a laptop, am I supposed to be impressed that, after Bush tore up the Constitution, turned it into a paper mache dildo, and fucked the Statue of Liberty in the ass with it, the Dems finally screwed their courage to the sticking point and managed to censure his AG or something? Oooh, censure. I'm sure that scared Bush and Cheney to fucking death. No, I'm not. I'm sure they almost killed themselves laughing, though.

Mr. Johnson took a question from the audience about why Nancy Pelosi took impeachment "off the table." He explained that, before the 2004 election, when the Dems weren't sure that they'd re-take the House, the Republicans said that, if the Dems won, they'd spend all their time impeaching Bush. So Nancy promised not to do that. Great. Way to get played. D'ja ever think that may have been their precise goal, Nancy? And we all know the Dems have done so much other v. effective shit since then. No. It's win/win for the Republicans. Do the Democrats ALWAYS have to let the other side frame the debate?

The straw that broke my back came when, at the end of the panel discussion about just how many laws the Bush junta has broken and how abjectly the Dems have stood by and allowed that to go on and on and on after the Republicans IMPEACHED THE LAST DEM PRESIDENT FOR GETTING A GODDAMN BLOWJOB ABOUT WHICH NO FUCKING SANE PERSON IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE GIVES A FLYING FRAP, Mr. Johnson began to list for us some of the legislation the Dems are introducing that would (except for the fact that the Republicans and the Blue Dog Democrats will never allow it to pass) basically make it illegal for the president to ignore the law.

Dude. Sit down. Take a deep breath. Another one. One more. Good. Ok, now focus. (/Makes two-fingered "points to my eyes/points to your eyes" gesture over and over.) Listen to me. I'm your friend. If the entire problem, as you and your fellow panelists just spent an hour proving, is that Republicans ignore the law at will, passing more laws is -- I'm going to put this gently -- NOT THE FUCKING GODDESS DAMNED ANSWER. It may make the Dems feel better as they basically piss away our Democracy out of abject fear, but it's no more effective than the kid who just gave away his new baseball mitt daydreaming about the day when he turns into Superman and makes that bully really, really, really sorry. This would all be funny if the Republic weren't at stake.

Don't make me turn you into a newt. If I do, you won't get better.

He's A V Popular Wartime Preznit

/hat tip to my brilliant friend, E.