Author: anarchronarchist

Cheney’s mastery of the gun is legendary. His reputation for the proper use of force for sport and otherwise is irrefutable at this point. Heck to listen to media coverage of his shooting of a hunting pal, it’s almost as if he were gardening or cooking when he shot that old man in the face and neck with a shotgun.

Here are the two turns of phrase that have been used over-and-over by MSM outlets and in this very blog:

‘peppered him with shot’ – sounds delicious!
‘sprayed him with pellets’ – that couldn’t hurt – it almost sounds refreshing.

From now on, let’s avoid these cutifications and simply state the situation for what it was: Vice President Cheney shot an old partner in crime in the face and neck, another example of his pattern of negligent use of military force due to violent obsessions, incompetence and myopic focus on the prey of his choice, despite changing circumstances.

OK, does anyone even know that the Democrats finally showed some proverbial ‘balls’ yesterday?

Not if they don’t watch C-SPAN. Another “I’m fed up with corporate media!” moment if there ever was one.

All the 24 hour news outlets started with coverage of the ‘Honest Leadership and Open Government Act’ ceremony, but cut out before anything more substantive than ‘Hello’ was said. When the story  re-surfaced on these same channels, the Dems were dismissed at best and ridiculed for pledging to make real reform happen in our Congress for the first time in years. Not even a sound bite of Rep. Louise Slaughter’s barnburner of a speech that ‘threw the gauntlet down’. It was treated by corporate media as if their proposal was even more ridiculous and self-serving than the Republicans, with their campaign contribution as ‘plenary indulgence’ take on reform.

Hell it’s barely getting discussed here!

Wolf Blitzer and Kieth Olbermann both basically laughed them off, without even presenting their case. Disappointing Shitheads (candidates for ‘Worst Person in the World’?). And now the story just fades and fades without ever really being told.

The Dems had better have some more follow through to get people aware of what they are up to.

And someone please shut that Polosi woman’s pie hole, it does us no good. Slaughter up front and center, with an Obama opener to get the crowd attentive.

I don’t know where she came from (well, upstate New York I gathered) but I was watching the Democratic presentation of their ‘Honest Leadership’ thingy-ma-bob and I saw American Democracy’s Saving Angel: Louise Slaughter.

With her obvious and emotional love of the very core American values I was raised on, and I think we have all felt jeopardized, she literally made me cry with her speech vowing their protection. Others have said it, but she knows what she means and means what she says. She’s the determined single Mom picking up the rest of the family and moving back home, now that Daddy’s drinking and gambling has lost the house and savings. Time to start over, but nothing will be as bad as this, she’ll be damn sure of that. And you could just see that was just the way it was going to be.

I don’t cry often, and never before from pride in an American politician, but there it was. When she was done with her incredible ‘truth bomb’ of her speech, and having thrown down the gauntlet of true reform for the Democrats and the American people, I looked down and I was unconsciously clapping and weeping. She hit the proverbial home run with me. If you get the chance, listen to it. It’s what we’ve all heard before, but just right, and from just the right person. Bravo.

The real shame of it all was that everyone but CSPAN cut the thing two speeches too early. She was the real deal that the Dems have to put forward as often as possible and really, they should take their lead from the likes of her: She looks like she gives the best hugs in the world, speaks with authority about the country we all thought we had and want back, and kicked the mob’s ass all over New York state.

As she put it, “There’s a reason they call me ‘Slaughter.'”

I hope Polosi shuts it for a spell and let’s her speak for the House Dems for a while..

Found this burried on MSN.com

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10740935/

What’s next? Faxes? All satelite communications (they do leave our borders, no?)?

Also remember the business of the US is business. We should find out if any info was shared with corporate america for the cooperation with domestic spying programs.

Those companies need to be punished for facilitating this.

I have way too much to say on this subject to be organized just yet, so look for more in my diaries later. Let me just start here by how I came to think this ‘War On Christmas’ is not merely an attention-grabbing red herring tossed up by Bill O’Rielly. It’s actually a seed of something much more ominous and horrible for our future as Americans. This is not just a War in some delusional pundit’s mind, it’s real, blood will spill, and it just might be mine..

When I first heard of this ‘War On Christmas’, I, like all good viewers was filled with outrage. I mean how wrong is anyone who would take Christ out of Christmas? These people must be stopped. But How? Mr. O’Rielly and all his fellow brave harbingers of this ill news didn’t answer any of the usual Whos, Hows or Whys – only What. I had to join this fray – in the name of every tinsel strewn present I or any other good child received under their family’s Christmas tree. There was no sitting this one out.

If only to show those coalstocking people what for, I thought short and soft:

The answer was obvious. The only way to support Christmas was to buy as much product from stores with the special code words boldly advertising it’s participation in this Great Struggle of the 21st Century: “Christmas Sale”. These brave compatriots need to be rewarded.

Before I set out on my 3rd purely patriotic shopping spree (first two sprees were, to quote the president’s choice re-use of someone else’s words, to ‘keep America rolling’), I looked outside my window at my sleepy little river town’s winter lights blazing, and heard the town church’s bells ringing and the proud citizens waging their person counter attacks by wishing their enemies and everyone a ‘Merry Christmas’ on their lawns, doors and window sills, in the cafes and on the sidewalks. I was never more proud, a nation’s true grit is shown at times of War. This was never more true than in America this day, my friend.

Sure enough, even formally ‘suspect’ stores had joined in, even joining together to supply a free gift wrapping station set up in an empty storefront. All to ease the pains of America’s new Christmas Defense warriors as they go about sticking it to the Grinch. Their credit cards slicing through this anti-Christian malevolence, their perfectly packaged purchases each a stone in the new city wall that keeps the Christ in.

Spend! Spend! Dear G-d, Spend! Mr. O’Reilly has implied that Christmas itself depends upon it. My heart was filled with joy: Just like with Iraq, it’s just nice to start a War we’re sure to win.

So, the ‘What’ is the War On Christmas. The How is through semantic and semiotic manipulations, like using the dread ‘Happy Holidays’ instead of ‘Merry Christmas’. Then I considered the Why. I mean, how awful a person must you be to want to take the Christ out of Christmas. Mr. O’Rielly marched out three or four experts on something-or-other who decried the motivations of the evil, and monolithic Anti-Christmas movement and also decried their undue sway over our retailers and media.

I began to see where O’Rielly was taking me and I went there. I hated these bastards at this point. Whoever these folks turn out to be. I can’t wait until Mr. Bill gets one of them on The Factor. As soon as he ferrets one of these rats out willing to pipe up, he’ll get him into the No Spin Zone, if only to be fair and balanced. I also hope he knows how disconcerting it is to be fighting an enemy which has yet to be named: I want to strike, strike from the depths of my most primal, religious anger, but at who’s breast? Where is my dragon? I’ll pierce his demon heart and instead of dragon blood, the blood of Christ will wash over this putrid Earth and cleanse it once and for all until the end of Days, to mix a few metaphors. So, like any viewer, I asked myself the next obvious question.

At whom do I strike?

Who is the enemy? Who’s name is so feared by even Mr. O’Rielly that to utter it on TV would cause his destruction (why else wouldn’t he tell us)? Who wants to keep the gift buying going during the ‘Holidays’ while removing Christ? Who has such influence over Retail and Media and holds the very odd opinion that Christ is not the Alpha and Omega of December shopping binges?

I, like any fair-minded viewer, came up with only one answer:

The Jews.

There. I said it. What us O’Rielly viewers who really pay attention can see is that they are using their undue influence over the media and retail to try and de-Christ America. I live in NJ and there wasn’t much of an audience here for these ideas (for some reason) but then I went to Kentucky for Christmas with my girlfriend’s large, Republican, Southern Baptist family. They got it. They really got it on a number of counts.

A large, salt-of-the-Earth family, they’ve always felt free to talk openly in front of me about setting up conveyor belts with meathooks on them from downtown to the river for nigger disposal or of ambiguous future plans for ‘them Mexicans’. Never a word about the Jews, but perhaps only because they know I am half Jewish. Now they could talk about Jews in terms of this anti-Christmas movement. And they did. Never once mentioning the Jews, everyone just knew what they we talking about. I think they believed that anti-Semitism would easily be hidden somehow from me, behind this War on Christmas screen. I did nothing to let on otherwise, basking in my more experienced fellow pro-Christmas-in-Christmas warrior’s knowledge of the world. By repeatedly going over how the same spheres of influence traditionally assigned Jews were in play in this War and how those manipulations had a negative effect on “Christmas” (which was taking on a broader meaning by the second), they could talk openly about a War against Jews without saying it, if you follow me. I practically went into the bathroom with a hacksaw to cut my left hand (the Jewish one, obviously) off then and there. I decided to just keep an eye on it until I could get out of these wonderful people’s Christ-centric holiday festivities. Christ was so omnipresent in their lives, no one had to even mention him at all outside of this War On Christmas conversation for the whole delightful gathering.

How comforting it was to be amongst such a pure and insightful people. I finished off my thrice-boiled greenbeans, jello and ‘seven layer salad’ Christmas dinner thinking that there have never been a people in all our history as blessed and free as these here American Christians. To try to remove Christ from Christmas is to attack freedom and all that is blessed. Man, I hate Jews. First Christ and now Christmas. Motherfuckers. The fact that my mother is Jewish is a matter for therapy much later, for now is a time of War and there is no room for self-doubt.

I sleep more comfortably nightly in knowing that the American Center-Right is now embracing anti-Semitism more overtly every day, that these ideas have popular support, that the same neo-fascist, America First money that brought both Hitler and the Bush dynasty to power in the first place has taken the reigns of the worlds largest economic and military power and has their media arm framing the chronic, yet traditionally minor conflicts between Secular Jews and Christians in terms of a “War”. A war for the soul of our very nation, between Christ and the Christ Killers.

If I could kick half of my own ass, I would. Beyond the greater war of cultures, it is a War for my very soul, being claimed by both my Methodist and Jewish heritages and identifying meaningfully with both. I can’t wait to see how it all turns out, and I am just glad Mr. O’Rielly decided to stir this hornet’s nest. Meanwhile, I am still shopping till I’m dropping so we don’t all lose a good thing.

More on the War

——- Postlude ———-

Someone else on Booman Tribune first wrote the following thought, which I can’t find right now to quote, but it is worth mis-quoting: ‘Bush is delivering an America that the Extreme Left has been warning against and the extreme Right has been promising.’

[From the diaries by susanhu. This is big. (News search results.) David Gunn is widely considered the best possible administrator of Amtrak. The Bush Administration’s Amtrak board appointees are clearly trying to destroy Amtrak. We need to contact our senators and reps.]

Just got this emailed to me from a former gov’t official and want to hear from anyone who knows more. I can’t believe Bush is still moving on stuff like this, even as he circles the drain. I like the phrase ‘perverted it’s management’.

“The Amtrak board has abruptly fired its president, David Gunn today, and has publicly insulted him.  This really is stunning; he is probably the very best manager Amtrak has ever had, and the action of the board pretty much removes all doubt from my mind that the White House is out to kill Amtrak. Having failed to do so through Congress, they have perverted its management.  This is an act of incredible arrogance and recklessness — meaning it is consistent with everything else the Bush administration has done.  But it’s very sad; it’s quite possible that recovery from this error will be impossible during our lifetimes.”

Sounds like Bush’s work, right? They’re turning our government into the monster they’ve claimed it was all along: corrupt, inefficient and inept.

Let’s say, as a result of the new Supreme Court’s composition, there is a ‘single act of judicial bravery’ that destroys the right to choose. Let’s leave aside how utterly disastrous that would be for individuals and the nation (if possible) and ask a crass question:

What would the political landscape look like?

It has been said that Reagan and Bush I knew better than to stack the court to overturn Roe, since it was their party’s fundraising bread-and-butter. It was politically astute and has lead to much of the GOP’s current success. Without that wedge issue, what would they have left?

I’d like to hear what y’all think first and foremost, but I’ll kick it off with some thoughts on where they are on their current themes and what those issues might look like in a post-Roe environment (not that it touches on all of them directly):

1. Right to Choose – The GOP loses one of their top fundraising issues. The Dems assume the old GOP role of the underdog crusaders and the fundraising boost (to be utterly crass).
2. Deregulation – Environmentalists have won this debate by having lost it for so long that dear Mother Earth is so damaged, she is showing us all obvious signs of ill health. It’s a great fund raiser for Dems going forward. It was foolishly avoided by Kerry.
3. Free Trade – Dems triagulated this in Clinton’s time, yet can now run on a Fair Trade theme. That transition is publicly supported, but would be near impossible for the GOP.
4. Fiscal Responsibility – yeah. right.
5. Honesty – See point 3.
6. Gun Rights – Dems are currently triangulating this one. Between Kerry and Dean, there’s a Dem hunter every which way you look these days.
7. Social Security – folks got that it was a big give away and cost way too much to get the same effect we could get by simply raising the annual IRA contribution limit..

These are what they have left?!!!?:

8. Gay Rights/Marriage – Only a few people care enough about this to donate money, but still a voting draw for some strange reason. If Rove is outed, we might have a chance to turn this issue (he likes those military studs).
9. Role of Religion in Government – This is about all they have left without a major swing in policy.

What am I missing? Oh yes..

10. The War on Terror. I think this is the real problem the Dems will have going forward. How do we win? How do we end it? It is a conflict against an undefined enemy – it can continue as long as you care to label someone a terrorist. But how can you end it before you defeat the enemies you’ve already named? Is it about finding Osama? Not really. Can it be won in the minds of Americans without bringing him down personally? Not really.
11. Homeland Security – Border and Port security prove that the GOP effort was corrupt in design, from the very top. The problem is that DHS is a rediculous boondoggle in it’s current form. It’s bleeding the budget dry and lining the pockets of every Tom Dick and Harry with phat no-bidders. The GOP is starving the beast while concentrating and centralizing it power.. How do you reform this without looking weak? How do you continue without destroying the Federal Gov’t as we know it?

Is it possible to talk post-Roe without getting irate? Hope so.
I’m still hoping/betting that Alito is a Sutter in disguise. If not, the GOP may have to get even dirtier with their nasty tricks, since their cash cow may be drying up real soon..

Please stop all this Plamegate prognostication crap. It is a total distraction.

HAS NOBODY HERE EVER HEARD OF A PRESIDENTIAL PARDON?

Libby fights this to stay of out of prison as long as possible and is pardoned in 2008. They can’t hang him for contempt of court.

STOP WAISTING YOUR WORDS!!

Please?

Had to put this alternative universe take on upcoming events:

Consider this a warning to keep in the back of your minds as you discuss who is cuter, Antonio Bandaras or Prosecutor Fitzgerald?

I put it into poem form to be even more annoying:

Bush advocates for the American plutocracy
Built on privateered WWII plunder.
His family position and wealth
Came entirely from dealing with the Axis.
The House of Saud are the massively wealthy
Benefactors of WWII resource plunder despite alliance
With fascists.

Germany, Asia, Africa and Europe were looted
And most of the Fascist controlled Capital
And the Fascists
Moved to the US and the Americas
And bought Senate seats, CIA directorships
And Presidencies.

Family Bush and House Saud are best friends
Literally kissing
And holding hands
Yet they are the heads of quasi-theocratic regimes
That are amazingly both allies and rivals
Depending on who you talk to.

The Producer requires the Consumer to Exist
And Vice Versa

Yet their empires are being redrawn
Dividing up the world unconquered by the cold war
In a show battle of proxy opposing forces

The Clone Wars
So that one may claim it all in the end.

The Defense needs the Attack to Exist
And Vice Versa

The US and SA are the two countries in all the world
That few countries dare turn against
At the same time.

Either you are with us or against us.
But what if they are the same thing?

Are there are no other choices?

That is the real question, now that
Bush is being sacrificed
To keep the fire he started lit.

How will they write the end of this myth
Of one Nation
Consuming the Other –
When all they are really doing is consumating
They eloped long ago, unabashedly
Literally kissing and holding hands
The rice at their wedding
Charred Bones and gold teeth and plunder

Remember these from the Memory Hole?
France was picked out by the right
As an enemy of the US
John Bolton was a real Freedom Fry
The UN was an unnecessary joke

But what ho?
Now France, John Bolton and the UN are providing legitimacy to a new War against Syria.
Is this not strangely symmetrical?

The only reason to go to war in a
Foreign country is to seek some economic benefit.
‘Preemption’ was a side bet.

The original benefit sought is still being reaped
Despite the lack of success on the ground
In fact, the inefficiency of the War
And Reconstruction
Means higher profits
For preferred stakeholders of War Mongers
Bush and Halliburton and Saud and Bin Laden Group
Carlyle and Blackwater
A war against Syria
or in Kashmir
or anywhere
will benefit the exact same people and agendas
Even if the ‘other’ side sells it to us.
Even if your Best Friend sells it to you

Want to know who the next ‘neo-cons’ you should watch out for are?
Shouldn’t you?

Are they wearing Blue ties or Red?

If there is War in Syria,
There will not be a draft
Despite our military being stretched further.

There will instead be a call
For the employ of private defense,
Intelligence and security corporations.

When this happens, sometime before 2012,
Fascism will finally have won WWII.

But now we are filling our heads with
Wet dreams of Mr. Fitzgerald’s file cabinets
A man hand picked by John Ashcroft.

What is really happening in the Big Game
While we sup on scapegoat meat?

Where has the other news gone?
Under the Corpse of Scooter Libby

( Scooter Libby will fight to put off jail
Only to be Pardoned in ’08 )
Protecting Cheney and Rove and the President
A job well done.

And in the mean time: WAR.

When is a man like Bush most likely to go to war?
When he seems least likely.
You know more War will come knocking
Even if we stop looking for it.
We don’t have to poke any more eyes
They are all bleeding
From Abu Ghraib and Lies and Death and Hunger
And Lies
Drums are beating in the distance

At home, everyone is still thinking small.
In WWII, we spent the equivalent of $14 Trillion dollars.
Bush has spent only a small fraction
Of what is to come
To light this fire that will consume Asia.
The Us doesn’t even have to be fighting
For prefered stakeholders to profit.

Even without Bush
We will outspend WWII in the same duration
Just you wait.

Even Kool-Aid capitalists know it is an unsustainable system on a global scale.
These men just want to control what comes
Next when the shit hits the fan.

They are choosing to preserve the system
That they control
Over the people they rule.

Too many people anyway, they guess.
Markets are working.
Logical, no?

This is how the Devil works.
Especially when we lose focus.

Even if the ‘pendulum’ of American politics
Swings as far left as you hope,
You must remember the lure of Fascism
To Progressives
If only you are willing to think Nation
Over Humanity.

And right now much of Humanity is on fire.
And doesn’t much care who is cuter:
Antonio Bandaras or Prosecutor Fitzgerald

Sorry, folks but he’s not going anywhere. He can’t be elected again. He won’t be a true lame duck because he has his party in control of congress. Even if we chastise him day and night, the best we could hope for is that he’ll just start implementing more of the congressional GOP agenda instead of his own. Big whoop. Capital Hill is full of even bigger head cases.

Stop focusing your ire on one man. He’s perfectly happy to accept all this blame. It is protecting GOP power. He goes away in a few years, and with him, all this blame for all these failed policies. That is one of the real weaknesses of our system: the sense that the slate is cleaned for each new administration.

It would be wise to try to focus this newly fired up nation of ours on a lasting enemy, be it party or policy. Not Bush. It’s a ton of waisted heat and energy, and we are all good conservationists, right?

It’s time to refocus our energies to the corruption and scandal that spreads throughout the GOP leadership. It’s time to redefine what liberalism means while everyone is paying attention: a liberal is someone who wants government to redress the inequities of the marketplace. Use NOLA as an example of why that is better than whatever it is the GOP does (they speak in terms ideology, but their actions are disconnected from thought let alone ideology). Don’t forget they publicly derided proposed levee-reiforcement money as ‘pork’.

Make the point that the GOP’s anti-science policy is the true source of the negligent lack of pre-hurricane resource movement. I can just hear Bush’s brain cell when he got the NOAA warnings: “Hurricane Shmurricane. What do those egg heads know anyhow?”

By the way, isn’t NOAA and absolutely awful acronym? I mean it’s sort of ironic at least, y’know. With all the flooding. Noah’s ark. Mmph.

Some more good news:
NOAA Raises the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season Outlook
Bulk of This Season’s Storms Still to Come