Friday Music Blogging

The Beatles

Self-explanatory.

Friday Kitten Blogging

I yam too still a kitmen! I am! I AM!

Nobody Asked Me, But...

Special God Help Bless America edition

1) Suing God? I understand the point behind this, an attempt to expose frivilous lawsuits, but come on...suing Bush would have the same effect for most people, and be a damned lot safer!

2) On a related point: Best. Picture. Of the Week.

3) Iraq: "Oh Blackwater, Keep On Rollin'"

4) Note To Mayor Bloomberg: I happily accept donations for my run for NotPresident, and they aren't subject to campaign finance laws! altho they aren't tax deductible, either So give generously!

5) To understand how bad things are in the Bush economy, for the first time in thirty years, the Canadian dollar is worth more than the US dollar.

6) Soon, we'll have people in Burkina Faso sending us foreign aid.

7) If you want to understand why New York Democrats are licking their lips over a potential Rudy Giuliani nomination, look no further. Keep in mind that the last time they went head to head, Giuliani had to drop out rather than be embarrassed by a carpetbagger, who is now much more formidable in red-state regions.

8) Good on you, Dan. We all know those memos are not only accurate, but genuine. Payback's a bitch, but you should have sued for an amount that would make CBS think twice before becoming any administration's bitch again.

9) MEMO: To Barack Obama: you can spin this all you want, but you punked out, and we will remember.

10) Imagine the uproar from the right if Muslims had prevented Jews from praying at the Wailing Wall tonight.

11) Turning now to Obvious Sports News...

12) By the way, I'm putting the Mets on notice: I have tickets to Game Three of the LDS, and if you fuckers aren't playing by then, I will send a strongly worded letter to the New York Times.

13) Republicans! Soon, you may have to drink your martinis at room temperature.

14) And yet, they still mock "Hillarycare".

15) I may have found a new candidate for the Democrats to run. I'd vote for her on this proposal alone.

Flawed Analyses

There's a distinct element of "Steal The Bacon" being played in the Republican presidential race:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - After months of campaigning, millions of dollars spent and hundreds of speeches, Republican presidential candidates are locked in a tight bunch with none emerging as the clear-cut leader.

True, Rudy Giuliani has maintained a fairly comfortable lead nationwide, but his campaign may run out of gas long before he hits the more comfortable states like Florida, New York and California.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney has built a pretty impressive organizations in early states like Iowa and New Hampshire (altho you'd think the latter would be a slam dunk for a former governor of a neighboring state), while both Fred Thompson and John McCain are hanging their hopes in South Carolina. McCain will also challenge in New Hampshire.

For one of them, it will be a good ol' Suth'n lynching.

It's the analysis within the ranks of the party pundits that gets to be laughable:

Party strategists and nonpartisan political experts say the race for the Republican nomination for the November 2008 election is muddled chiefly because unlike many previous election cycles, there is no sitting vice president or obvious party leader seeking the White House that the party can rally around.

Um. No. It's not muddled because there's no "clear cut" candidate. Rudy Giuliani is clearly the annointed White House candidate, even if the president is, by traditional, disallowed to intervene in the nominating process.

How do we know this? Bush's administration is jam-packed with former Giuliani cohorts, including Ben Bernanke, Michael Chertoff, and most recently, Attorney General appointee, Michael Mukasey.

Bush's feelings about New York City and the people living here are pretty apparent, so there must be some quid pro quo going on. It wouldn't surprise me if Karl Rove started appearing, wearing "Rudy 2008" paraphrenalia.

So then why is the field so muddled and the picture so...frothy?

Two words: sacrificial lamb.

The GOP has crunched numbers, run projections, taken derivatives and consulted oracles and they see what the rest of the country sees.

There is no credible Republican candidate for president who stands a ghost of a chance of defeating any combination of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, or John Edwards.

Those three could probably run OJ Simpson as Veep and walk away with the 2008 election, other things being equal (like California not splitting their electoral college).

Right now, the Republican party is shoring up their resources to maintain some sort of hold on congressional seats. They are in deeper trouble there than they are with the loss of the White House, and you'll notice that the more experienced Republicans in Congress are the ones speaking out against the Iraq War.

Usually, the situation is reversed when a President is from your own party: the younger bucks with a name to make will challenge him, while the old guard backs him to the hilt.

The savvy money is on a Democratic sweep of many more seats in both the Senate and the House, which would negate all the Republican legislation of the past sixteen years. In point of fact, the entire legislative process rests on less than ten Senate seats.

In New Hampshire, incumbent John Sununu Jr is trailing his likely opponent, former governor Jeanne Shaheen, by five points. Susan Collins of Maine has proposed a redeployment of 50,000 troops from combat in Iraq to training Iraqis, in anticipation of her re-election battle (which is shaping up to be a doozy, and Olympia Snowe, the other Senator from Maine, better take notes). Collins does have a veery high approval rating in her state, but stranger things have happened. Norm Coleman is under seige already from Al Franken in Minnesota, who's shown surprising political popularity and strength despite having been bi-coastal for the past 40 years.

In Colorado, Wayne Allard is retiring, and the seat is all but Mark Udall's to take (he's the son of Democratic icon Mo Udall). To boot, the Democratic National Convention will be held in Denver, so Udall's campaign will get an immediate jump-start by being seen with the next President early and often.

John Cornyn of Texas is all but dead in the water, and barring a primary opponent, the Democrats ought to wipe the floor with him.

John Warner of Virginia is retiring, as well, and wildly popular former governor Mark Warner has announced for the seat, making the gain already five Democratic seats if things hold to form.

If the Democrats can capture another five, not likely, but not impossible, especially if Collins' bellwether race tightens up, they will hold a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and will have likely carried an awful lot of House seats along for the ride.

The Republican national committee will be working overtime to make sure a plausible defense of any remaining seats, like Lamar Alexander in Tennessee, is presented, and is not going to be overly concerned with winning the White House. The strategy since 2004 has clearly been to play defense, rather than work towards positive solutions to problems.

In other words, pray the problems go away.

Hump Day Comedy Blogging

Blackadder II - How the name "Bob" can be hilarious

Alien Visitors: Our Friends

No particular reason for posting this, except to be able to say "Titicaca" on my blog:

LIMA (Reuters) - Dozens of people living in a Peruvian town near Lake Titicaca reported vomiting and headaches after they went to look at a crater apparently left by a meteorite that crashed down over the weekend, health officials said on Tuesday. After hearing a loud noise, people went to see what had happened and found a crater 65 feet wide and 22 feet deep on an uninhabited plateau near Carancas in the Puno region. Experts from Peru's Geophysical Institute are on their way to the area 800 miles south of Lima to verify whether it was a meteorite. "We've examined about 100 people who got near to the meteorite crater who have vomiting and headaches because of gasses coming out of there," Jorge Lopez, health director in Puno, told Reuters.

Until the site is examined, of course, there's no reason to think this is necessarily a meteorite. It could be a plane, a satellite, or some wayward missile.

However...initial sand samples taken near the crater seem to indicate it is a meteorite. The mystery then becomes, what made these people sick?

After all, let's say it was the worst paranoid fantasy of the far left wackjobs: a missile laden with biological weapons, fired by (insert nation here) as either a test launch or a very secret first strike against (insert nation here).

Nobody's died, so not a likely scenario, but let's play the game.

But if the object is indeed manmade, then the illness is easily explained, and treatment can begin. If, however, it is not terrestrial, well, then, how could whatever critter is causing these illnesses have, um, evolved to attack humans when no humans were around for it to adapt to?

The implications of off-planet life, no matter how simple, are enormous from a sociological and psychological outlook.

For instance, if we're God's chosen, you know, the whole Genesis story, where God created only the earth and only embued man with dominance over the planet, then the fact that any other life form on any other planet not only knocks that story into a cocked hat, but also minimizes our dominance over this planet, since we've learned that attain dominance, man had to overcome some fairly nasty obstacles.

If a mere bacterium can be the overlord of another planet, well, what does that say about our efforts?

Too, that whole Star Trek fantasy, about discovering we are not alone and the world suddenly banding together, looks very much in jeopardy as well, but for other reasons: take a look at how we squandered (and don't blame Bush, we Americans could have given a bigger damn about it) the world's goodwill in what was essentially a dry run for the first close encounter.

If we couldn't even put aside our differences to stop a relatively small, powerless group of fanatics, what's going to happen when we are confronted with a civilization that could conceivably wipe us out (assuming they came here first), without breaking a sweat?

Fear not, however, there may be a more prosaic description for what happened at Lake Titicaca: it farted:

Luisa Macedo, a geologist with the Mining Geology and Metallurgy Institute in Lima, told Reuters the reaction between the elements in a meteorite and the Earth's surface can generate gases that then dissipate.

There. I worked "Titi", "caca" and "fart" into the same post!

Wipha On The Storm

Quick: How many category 4 or better hurricanes have there been this year?

If you answered "two", Dean and Felix, well, you're wrong. By quite a substantial margin.

All told, there have already been twelve storms with wind speeds that qualify for category 4 or 5 status. Ah, but not all have been hurricanes! And number thirteen is bearing down on the Chinese coastline near Shanghai as you read this:

East China, including the commercial hub of Shanghai, is relocating people, closing schools and canceling festivities to prepare for what may be the most destructive typhoon in a decade, which is likely to make landfall early on Wednesday.

At 1:00 p.m., Wipha's center was about 400 kilometers southeast of Taizhou, a coastal city in eastern Zhejiang, and was moving northwestward at 20 km per hour, according to the Zhejiang Provincial Meteorological Station.

Wipha was likely to make landfall between the Yuhuan County of Taizhou and Cangnan County, of Wenzhou city in southeastern Zhejiang, before Wednesday morning, the station said.

The "super typhoon" was packing gale-force winds 198 kilometers per hour (roughly 120 mph) at its center, it said.

Since that story was written, at 5AM, EDT, the storm has intensified, with sustained winds upwards of 150 mph now.

Unlike the United States with Katrina and Rita in 2005, China seems to understand that typhoons/hurricanes are deadly. The government has undertaken the massive task of finding shelter for 14 million people, and evacuating 200,000 people from the caostlines near Shanghai.

Imagine the hue and cry conservatives would have raised in 2005 if the Bush administration had tried to do that in an area that might contain 1/5th that population.

Meterologists are predicting that Wipha may be the single most destructive storm in a decade. That's saying an awful lot when you consider that, yes, that includes Katrina.

Wipha has already passed Taiwan and Japan, killing at least two people, but caused more property damage than anything else, and shut down transportation on Taiwan and the Akita province of Japan.

And then it started building strength in the China Sea, where water temperatures have been an unusually balmy 85 degrees...

Not Sure This Will Help, Newt...

...or that you should choose to remind them of it:

Gingrich cited the Iraq war, the failed federal response to Hurricane Katrina two years ago and the inability to control U.S. borders and illegal immigration as evidence of a need for a complete overhaul of the U.S. system of governing.

"Now that may or may not make the White House happy. But I think that's the whole point about making a clean break," Gingrich told a group of reporters over breakfast.

He added: "I believe for any Republican to win in 2008 they have to ... offer a dramatic, bold change. If we nominate somebody who has not done that, they get to be the nominee but there is very, very little likelihood that they can win."

Gingrich echoed the view of many political analysts who believe voters are looking for a big change in 2008 and that Democrats hold a natural advantage after eight years with Bush in the White House.

It behooves us, Newt, to point out that in fact, you're responsible for an awful lot of the corruption and partisan political maneuvering that Republicans have done for the past 16 years and, in point of fact, much of Bush's legacy can be traced to how you handcuffed the GOP in the 90s with the continuous pursuit of a neoconservative agenda of destruction at the expense of real progress in this country.

Take "The Contract With America," more appropriately called The Contract ON America. Although proposed as "governmental reform" in the run up to the 1994, when the Contract proposals were introduced in the House of Representatives, they tackled entitlement and tax programs.

One can assume that this dubious substitution was instituted because Gingrich knew damned well that proposing a tax cut on the heels of a very successful tax increase in 1993 would be rejected out of hand by voters in 1994, not to mention tackling the then-third rail of American politics, Social Security reform.

Partisan politics reared its ugly head long before he was even Speaker, you see.

Gingrich, like Bush, squandered a golden opportunity to bring a nation together to move forward and progress into a new milennium. Instead, he tried dragging us back into the dark ages of postwar Republicanism, and tried even to undo the advances made under Roosevelt, advances that are unquestionably the most important advances made in this nation. Period. Including the Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

Keep in mind that Gingrich's term as Speaker was so toxic that, in 1997, before the Lewinski scandal really heated up, some of his own soldiers attempted coup on his Speakership!

So on the one hand, for Gingrich to speak about a "clean break" from Bush is, well, like an armed robber advising us to lock OJ Simpson up.

On the other hand, he should know from where he speaks, being the mentor to all the hatred and anger from the right wing.

After all, these are not the words of a conciliatory man...

Oh, General Betrayus! YooHoo!

There was a distinct sense of "whistling past the graveyard" in this week's dog and pony show trotted out by President Bush and his commander in Iraq, General Dave "I'm NOT coached, dammit!" Petraeus.

It seems they were hoping that lull in the action in Iraq meant the surge was working. Guess again:

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Militants stepped up attacks across Iraq on Sunday, killing at least 30 people in a spate of bombings and shootings that followed a threat by al Qaeda to launch a new phase of violence.

The U.S. military announced it had caught a suspected al Qaeda militant believed to be responsible for the killing last week of a key Sunni Arab tribal leader in Anbar province.

Sheikh Abdul Sattar Abu Risha, who met U.S. President George W. Bush two weeks ago in Anbar, was killed in a bomb attack on Thursday near his home. He led an alliance of tribes that helped U.S. troops push al Qaeda out of much of the vast western area.

Suspected al Qaeda militants shot dead 14 people in the predominantly Sunni Arab town of Muqdadiya north of Baghdad and torched at least 12 shops in the town, Iraqi police said.

What's particularly troubling about this new wave of violence is that, nominally at any rate, Shi'a leader Muqtada al-Sadr is in control of that region around Baghdad, while Al Qaeda has traditionally been a Sunni-based organization. If Sadr and Al Qaeda (either in Iraq or bin Laden's organization...they are not the same people) have made a deal, then the recent calm in the country was merely an adjustment and planning period for far deadlier attacks and far more sectarian violence, as well as violence aimed at American troops.

Keep in mind, as well, that Iraqi summers are hot, as hot as the deserts in the American Southwest, hundreds of degrees hot. It would be foolish to believe that the respite in attacks was not at least in part the result of that oppressive heat.

Which is now breaking as fall and winter approach.

An al Qaeda-led group, the Islamic State in Iraq, said on Saturday it was launching a fresh round of attacks to mark the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which started late last week.

A sustained campaign of violence would undermine U.S. and Iraqi assertions that a seven-month security crackdown had disrupted the Sunni Islamist network's operations in and around the Iraqi capital while also reducing attacks from other groups.

Bush, announcing a limited withdrawal of around 20,000 U.S. troops by July, last week said the cuts were possible because U.S. forces had made significant progress in improving security and "ordinary life is beginning to return" to Baghdad.

Just so. Desperate for any sign, any hint of progress in Iraq to hang his legacy on, Bush has tried to nail Jello to the wall. Surprise, surprise, the Jello is dripping off.

The right wing spin this week, if the Sunday talk shows are to be trusted, is that the Democrats in Congress were "disrespectful" of Petraeus and that the full page Moveon.org ad mentioning "Petraeus/Betray Us" was treasonous.

My opinion? The Democrats didn't go far enough in hammering Petraeus' credibility and the Moveon.org ad probably was more truthful than we know. At the end of this session of Congress, barring a miracle spine transplant into Democrats, Bush will leave office with precisely as many troops in Iraq as when the Democrats took over on a promise of troop withdrawals.

We ought to hold them accountable for that.

Run, Bank, Run!

Many of you are familiar with bank runs only from the movie "It's A Wonderful Life," a particularly syrupy little piece of treacle your parents made you watch a billion times as a kid around Christmas:So George Bailey dips into his own pocket and rescues his bank with his honeymoon money.

Yea, that would happen. But bank runs were a significantly contributing factor to the Great Depression, which is why that scene had to be put in the movie.

Which brings us to today. Despite the attempts at reassurance by the central banks of both American and European governments that the sub-prime lending crisis is contained, there are many who are not getting the message, and rightfully so. It is NOT contained, and banks are working feverishly behind the scenes to put out this wildfire before it spreads.

The defaults on subprime mortgages and the subsequent defaults on securities that are derived from those shaky, questionable loans, will mean less liquidity for some major institutions in the world. Less liquidity, less cash, and suckers people like you and me who deposited money with these institutions stand to lose our investments.

Thus, today's story has some very ominous overtones:

LONDON (Reuters) - Fears grew on Saturday that panic among savers at British bank Northern Rock will see a run of withdrawals after reports that 1 billion pounds ($2.01 billion) had already been taken out.

The Bank of England stepped in on Friday to rescue Northern Rock, Britain's fifth-biggest mortgage provider, pledging to provide emergency funds after a global credit crunch hit the bank's ability to raise cash in money markets.

Saturday's Financial Times said customers had withdrawn 1 billion pounds on Friday, or about 4 percent of deposits.

Citing a source familiar with the situation, the paper said a quarter of that amount was withdrawn from branches and more via the Web site, despite problems accessing online accounts.

It will be impossible to even gauge the impact of this run for some days. The fact that people can electronically move their money out means they can't even easily stop the flow or limit it. Northern Rock could go bone dry on Monday, and no one would know until Wednesday.

And this is after the Bank of England has stepped in to do a George Bailey!

Bank runs have their own unique momentum, fueled by rumour and truth in a volatile mixture. The conservatives have played this paranoia for their own benefit for seven years now, and I suspect we're about to see it blowback big time on them. Just try to stop Americans from withdrawing money, and you'll realize that all those terror rumours and anti-liberal, anti-human, anti-gay, anti-immigrant ghost stories took their toll on our psyches.

This won't be the last bank run, nor will it be the worst. And this depression could be worse than anything we've ever seen.

Friday Music Blogging

Dir En Grey - Kodou

Think "No Doubt" without the pretenses and some fucking blast-headed numbnuts lead singer.

Friday Kitten Blogging

Happy anneebersry, Dadby! See'd how much I growed since you 'dopted me?

Sorry 'bout eatin' da rug...

Nobody Asked Me, But...

THE WEEKLY WHIP-AROUND, PLANT PORN EDITION
1) That's it baby, polish my pistil, oh YEAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

2) How to shut a perverted sycophant up.

3) This story got buried by the Petraeus report and September 11 commemoration, but it's one that could conceivably change the course of the next year. Kudos to AgitProp for keepin' it real.

4) I can sort of understand the reasons for this, but come on...does anyone think this jackass's beliefs aren't common knowledge already?

5) Like to get under the hood of your car and tinker? Need $30 million?

6) Maybe we're finally growing up?

7) Or maybe not.

8) No, we're growing up.

9) And so are our relatives. No, really! (h/t not_over_it)

10) There's a certain dark poetry to this story.

11) There's two years missing here.

12) Sorry, Grandpa...If it's work, it's not enjoyment.

12) One-third of the people of the world are threatened so we can drive with cheap gas.

13) MEMO: To Democrats-- Just redefine "success", and bring our boys home now.

Too Little, Too Late

Thanks for noticing, Mr Bush:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush on Thursday is expected to endorse plans for limited cuts in U.S. troop levels in Iraq but will offer little else to skeptical Americans looking for a change of course in the unpopular war.

Trying to rally public support in the face of growing Democratic opposition to his Iraq strategy, Bush will deliver a televised address after two days of congressional testimony by his top military and diplomatic officials in Baghdad.

The president is all but certain to embrace Gen. David Petraeus' recommendation to gradually withdraw 30,000 troops by next summer, bringing U.S. force strength in Iraq back to what it was before he ordered a buildup in January.

An administration marked by the ultimate in flip-floppery-- "We're invading Iraq because (pick one) they hit us on 9/11, they have WMDs, they intend to build WMDs, they intended to build WMDs, Saddam Hussein is a vicious tyrant" and "Stay the course until we achieve (pick one) total victory in Iraq, a beacon of freedom for the Middle East, the end of sectarian violence, a political solution in Iraq-- has lowered the bar, yet again.

The "vision thing" has caught up with the Bush family once more. His father nakedly lacked any vision, preferring situational ethics of the kind only a CIA director could appreciate. His son, Bush the Childish, has put up the pretense of a vision but it is an essentially flawed vision filled with sparkly ponies and cotton candy pink clouds at sunrise and a Texas cowboy trompe l'oeil.

BAH!

Bush has touted Thursday's prime-time speech as a chance to "lay out a vision" for future U.S. involvement in Iraq four and a half years after the invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein.

But the White House has signaled little chance of a major shift in policy, which could make Bush's address a tough sell. Polls generally show Americans 2-to-1 against the war.

Even his own handlers don't buy his crap anymore.

You half expect Bush tonight to announce he's taking his bat and ball and "going heume!," to quote Cartman.

The Democrats need to seize on this opportunity the way Republicans and their orc army would: a twin-barrel assault on the President.

The leadership, the members of Congress and responsible spokespeople (/snark) need to come out and say that this is "too little, too late," that Bush's credibility and stroke in the country is so low that he needs to up the ante and bring even more troops home.

Meanwhile, the rabblerousers (myself included) ought to hammer home the point that even this little concession to the will of the American people was orchestrated ONLY because we and the Democrats held his feet to the fire and forced him to capitulate.

Let the right wing get a taste of their own medicine, and let Bush get it coming and going, a rat trapped in a rat trap with a couple of hungry cats circling, trying to pick out the tender cuts first.

WE forced this jackass to even curtsey in the direction of drawing down troops! WE made him realize that he has gone way over the line for the past seven years and WE will hold him more and more accountable to the American people. Bush believes he is out of the woods in terms of getting out of Dodge just ahead of the posse, but the posse switched to fresher and faster horses now, and WE will ride him down.

We on the left have persuaded the American people that this man is both dangerous and dimwitted enough to embroil our great nation in a conflict that will last generations AND take out thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of our citizens and our children. And we did it without a reliable national media outlet to hammer home this message, 24/7. WE beat Fox. WE beat Richard Mellon Scaife. WE beat the Washington Times, and the rest of the kneeling masses of mainstream media who bleat the sheeple line of this administration.

It is a small victory, yes, a very small one, but small cracks can open dams as they grow bigger and bigger.

Keep on Bush's case about this, yes, absolutely, just take a minute and reflect on what WE have accomplished in 2007. We humbled the most arrogant men on the planet.

(Ed. Note: Don't worry...no pussies were harmed in the posting of this blog)

Hump Day Comedy Blogging

The Latest From Lisa Nova

A Meeting Of The....Um, Minds?

OK, this ought to be interesting...

SEOUL (Reuters) - The removal of all nuclear weapons from North Korea next year could pave the way for a summit meeting between U.S. President George W. Bush and the reclusive state's leader, Kim Jong-il, a U.S. envoy said on Wednesday.

But U.S. Ambassador to South Korea Alexander Vershbow said it would be a mistake for the impoverished state to still expect international aid and an improvement in its diplomatic standing if it only takes half measures to end its nuclear program.

"I think that it (a summit) might be possible before the end of President Bush's term if North Korea makes the right decisions and is ready to go all the way, not just disablement but full denuclearization," Vershbow told a security forum.

That "Axis Of Evil" that Bush pinned his presidency on sure is getting kinda wobbly...we've failed in Iraq, we're kissing up to Kim and North Korea, and Iran is not-too-quietly rattling sabres about making nukes.

The summit talk grows out of a planned summit between Kim and South Korean president Roh Moo-hyun to be held next month in Pyongyang.

Given two things: a) that we've been in the region at the request of South Korea to bulwark them against North Korea (and it's ally, China), and b) South Korea never signed the armistice in 1953 with North Korea (you could look it up), that South Korea is holding a summit with the North is a significant step in the region.

See what "jaw jaw jaw" instead of "war war war" gets you, Mr Bush?

Roh's talks with Kim will not include nuclear disarmament (although I'm sure Bush has pressured Roh to bring it up), but focus on a peace treaty between the two nations, which have been "on again, off again" in their overtures towards reunification.

Now, we must keep in mind that, with two megalomaniacal tyrants involved, we're talking about a likelihood of a meeting somewhere north of a frozen hell. Still, both men stand to gain some measure of vindication in the world's eyes should this meeting go off, something sure to tempt a megalomaniac: Bush gets a gold star on his homework, for once (and likely the only time in eight years), while Kim would have gained some small measure of admiration and respect by facing down his enemy across a table and making some kind of deal with him, as trivial as that deal may appear to us.

Both sides will, of course, blow any deal well out of proportion for their home town "fans," and crow about how much they shook the other guy down for.

People like me, however, will be commentating from the sidelines, and will keep you informed about the real deal.

Meditations On Nine-Eleven

Call this a prayer. Call this a meditation. Call this an afirmation, sermon, an essay, whatever you like. This comes from my heart, and is something I've been meaning to say for a while:

I am not afraid.

In the days immediately following September 11, 2001, as I watched the plume of smoke rise off the rubble pile and glad-handers and hate mongers scramble to find some way to exploit the deaths of thousands and the loss of naivete of Americans, I was scared. As I watched the empty hospitals, devoid of casualties, I was terrified.

I remember sitting in my office that Friday, September 14, as the building-wide PA system clicked on announcing a bomb scare. It was time to evacuate.

After the initial scramble to gather up the few necessities...a wallet, cellphone, keys, making sure others got to the fire exit safely...I stood in a crowd waiting my turn to walk the stairs, not sure if I'd make it out of the building, and if I did, what awaited me there.

I could take a deep breath, and I sobbed. And then walked. The heat was dreadful, bodies packed the steps, and it was a hot and humid day, a rainy late summer morning.

An hour later, I made my way back to the building. Miracle of miracles! The bomb scare was a phony, the elevators were running and we all got back to some semblance of work.

But I am not afraid anymore. That single sob, that single teardrop on my cheek, was the only concession I've made to my fear, six long years ago.

I am not afraid.

I am not afraid of Al Qaeda, of Osama bin Laden, of Hamas and Hezbollah. I am not afraid that they can, and will one day, attack this nation again. Some may die, most will not, and by God's word, the next time we'll have a President and a people prepared to handle it like adults.

You took our innocence. You will never have that same result again. I am not afraid.

I am not afraid of George Bush, Dick Cheney, or Karl Rove. I am not afraid of Republicans and their lickspittle blogosphericals who harass and chide anyone who thinks for themselves when it comes to the direction this nation is headed. I am not afraid that they will do anything and everything they can to impose a reactionary, antediluvian agenda that turns the clock back on hundreds of years of progress in this nation.

You cannot succeed. You will not succeed. America has seen behind the curtain of hype, advertising and marketing that shoved an illegal invasion down our throats. We're pretty full, and about to explode. The blowback won't be pretty.

I am not afraid.

I am not afraid of the TSA, the NSA, the CIA, the DEA, the FDA, the FBI, the DHS, or the IRS. I am not afraid because ultimately, my freedom will prevail, even if I may not be in any shape to appreciate it, if even around.

You can take nearly everything from me, anything I might value. You can strip me naked, decide I'm some criminal, force me to the streets then arrest me, take my friends from me, and create a mythos about me. But you cannot take me.

I am not afraid.

I am not afraid of the fear-mongers, the mind-rapers, the heart-stabbers, the soul snatchers, who would parade fear around to sell newspapers or cable TV shows, while ignoring the very truths about themselves.

I am not afraid because I know, the American people know, that these jackasses are trying to scrape the bottom of the barrel for every last viewer and dollar that they can, and have sold their very beings to that end.

We pity you and laugh at you, not with you. Your words are meaningless, your thoughts inane, your shrieking "Talking Points" speak more about your own wet diapers than of our supposed inability to hear your Chicken Little screeches any longer. You miss the bigger picture because you are incapable of wrapping your pea-brains around the truth of the world: you've contributed to so much degradation and contumely in this nation that you, too, are now victimized by it. You've inadvertently Hannitized yourselves for our protection.

I am not afraid.

I will never be afraid again of this world that has been created around me by naked greed and hideous envy, for I am stronger than any of you who would see me buckle and bend to your hatred. I will be true to my soul, and true to my heart, and will fight you with every breath in my body and with every fibre of my being.

And long after you have gone to dust, long after I go to dust, the monument to truth and peace and freedom that I have added a few miserable pebbles to will stand tall and firm as a bulwark against the dark you attempt to bring to the world.

And it will have these words enshrined on it: I AM NOT AFRAID

Just The Way Republicans Like Them

Given the way we're continually told to support our troops by the righteous right wing blogosphericals...which in my mind means they think we should prop them up as targets...you'd think there would be much more of a hew and outcry about this:

Thousands of troops have been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, or TBI. These blast-caused head injuries are so different from the ones doctors are used to seeing from falls and car crashes that treating them is as much faith as it is science.

"I've been in the field for 20-plus years dealing with TBI. I have a very experienced staff. And they're saying to me, 'We're seeing things we've never seen before,'" said Sandy Schneider, director of Vanderbilt University's brain injury rehabilitation program.

Doctors also are realizing that symptoms overlap with post-traumatic stress disorder, and that both must be treated. Odd as it may seem, brain injury can protect against PTSD by blurring awareness of what happened.

But as memory improves, emotional problems can emerge: One of the first "graduates" of Vanderbilt's program committed suicide three weeks later.

Treat the brain, but not the mind, it seems.

We'll treat hemmorhoids as if they are a life-threatening, debilitating illness...possibly because the wingnut keyboard kommandos suffer from them, so they don't give much fuss to the administration...but a guy who comes home after having his brain scrambled inside his skull by an IED that took out three of his buddies?

Nah. Him, he has to fight the bureaucracy all the way up the ladder:

Though the full number of those suffering from TBI is still unknown, the problem is straining the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Until now, "they were dealing with a cohort of aging veterans with diabetes, heart disease, lung disease," said Dr. Jeffrey Drazen, editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine and a VA adviser.

Now, these young, brain-injured troops need highly specialized care, and how much it will help long-term is unknown, he said.

People with TBI have frequent headaches, dizziness, and trouble concentrating and sleeping. They may be depressed, irritable and confused, and easily provoked or distracted. Speech or vision also can be impaired.

Some sufferers have been misdiagnosed with personality disorders. Others have lost jobs because of unrecognized and untreated symptoms.

It's precisely this last bit that makes it so easy to ignore, and indeed, deride the disability as just one of those things: someone was born a hot-head, or a sad sack, or a loser. After all, why else would he have joined the army, keeping in mind that most of his critics have come no closer than a video game to actual combat? Republicans like 'em "dumb and loyal," I guess.

Ironically, these same bloggers probably get all weepy-eyed about their latest favorite athlete who has to retire because he's had his bell rung a few too many times by hits to the head.

Excuse me? That you'll give a damn about, probably even excusing the athlete's subsequent arrests for illegal prescription pain killers or his acting out his brain trauma on his wife and kids, but a soldier, who's fighting a war only you and 27% of the people in this country support?

That you get all "It's only a flesh wound" about?

There's something very wrong when the very youngest people with the brightest futures and happiest lives laid out in front of them pick up a gun and go fight a war that no one really understands, no one really wanted, and no one can really see a way out of that everyone can get behind, and come home to find out that the injuries and insults their bodies absorbed on our behalf are not only underappreciated, but UNappreciated by the blood-thirsty vultures who demanded this sacrifice from them in the first place.

How you can help: The Ten In Ten Project

Two For The Price Of One

The Afghan war was a war that I could actually get behind, and considering I've opposed nearly every American military venture in the past forty years, that's saying quite a bit.

But thanks to George Bush's infernal and imperterbable obsession with Iraq, it seems we may lose two wars for the price of one:

Afghanistan has slipped backward into a political "danger zone," the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies warned in March. In the broadest published evaluation of Afghans' attitudes, the center said Afghans are facing worsened physical security, greater threats from warlords, criminal gangs and corrupt officials, and more difficulty in supporting their families. Such alarms are ringing from every side: UN agencies, non-government aid organizations, scholars, some U.S. officials and ordinary Afghans.

In the battle against the Taliban for Afghans' hearts and minds, "support for America and for [Afghan President Hamid] Karzai is becoming less every day," said Eissa Wahdat, an Afghan government engineer who coordinates small development projects in Nuristan.

You might recall that, prior to our liberation of Afghanistan from the Taliban, Hamid Karzai was an advisor to Unocal on a pipeline through Afghanistan. He was also a staunch ally of the Taliban until he came to realize the Taliban had strong ties to Pakistan. As president, Karzai has had a running slap-fight with Pakistan president Musharraf over what to do about the tribal regions that span the Afghan-Pakistan border.

The strategic mistake America made in Afghanistan, apart from distracting ourselves with that idiotic venture into Iraq, was to try to cement the tribal warlords fealty with short term measures (notably, money). The history of the region shows us that warlords are about as loyal as, well, Britney Spears panties: here one day, gone the next. To say a bargain will be honored is to ignore a simple realty: warlords are in truth Republicans, and so the philosophy, "I got mine, Jack!" is taken to its logical extreme.

What we could have and should have done from day one was to go into Afghanistan full force and forgotten about Iraq. Afghanis owed us a debt of gratitude after we helped Osama bin Laden and the mujahadin drive out the Soviet Union's occupying force, and that could have brought us a lot more respect and a lot more assistance, if we showed we were serious about installing true representational rule that wasn't tyrannized by a minority party.

(Yes, we're still talking about Afghanistan, and not America)

Too, installing a president who was so willing to be a puppet of the Bush administration (and so clearly powerless outside of Kabul) was a signal to the northern alliance tribes that the US was not going to be around very long. Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun (meaning his ancestry traces from the region near Pakistan), was not an acceptable choice for the Nuristani factions.

That they've been willing to work this long with Karzai and the NATO alliance/American forces is a testament to their desire to have a freely elected government that will represent the people of Afghanistan, and not a terror organization. We ought to take that into serious consideration and do something to help, or else risk throwing not only South Asia into chaos, but having that chaos spread into Asia proper, including parts of the former Soviet Union as well as western China itself.

And that will create a conflict so far-reaching, it's beyond my ability to assess what could come of it, aside from some nebulous "and then the real war starts" comment.

Welcome To The Party, Pal!

For the record, let me state that, generally, I like Dick Durbin, bad hair and all. He was one of the few Senators to stand up against the Iraq war when the vote to authorize came up (in 2002, when he was running for re-election). However, he has voted to fund this war at every opportunity since. I don't think it's unfair to say that, with a re-election campaign on the horizon in 2008, Durbin's comments yesterday could be construed as a grandstand play:

"This Congress can't give President (George W.) Bush another blank check for Iraq," said Assistant Majority Leader Dick Durbin, who has always opposed the war but until now voted to fund it.

"I can't support an open-ended appropriation which allows this president to continue this failed policy," he said in a speech at the left-leaning Center for National Policy.

Durbin, from Illinois, said he and Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin were working on limits that could be attached to the next war funding bill, such as limiting troops to conducting counterterrorism operations and training Iraqi security forces.

Baby steps, to be sure, but a limit would be a step forward nonetheless.

Is it enough, though? Given that General Petraeus has already revealed that a major condition for the troop surge, the consolidation of the Iraqi government, is woefully behind any schedule benchmark, shouldn't this bill call for at least defunding the surge, since it's clearly not achieving its goals? After all, this Iraqi reconciliation was cited by Bush himself as a key, if not the key, to the troop surge.

Bush is asking for $200 billion for the Iraq invasion and the Afghanistan war, 70% earmarked for Iraq. By my calculations, about $25,000,000,000 will go towards supporting the surge (which comprises roughly 17% of the troops in Iraq). That should be cut immediately as a first step, with the immediate withdrawal of 30,000 troops from Iraq.

Next, we can redeploy remaining troops to secure the Anbar province, where it's generally agreed there may be some small measure of progress against the benchmarks that were established for Iraq as a whole. Those troops would be there strictly in a role of protecting Iraqi civilians and keeping the peace. Across the rest of Iraq, we would have limited troops deployed in training and counterterrorism details, which would greatly cut back our needs for personnel in country. We could likely pull another 50,000 troops out by next Spring, thus cutting American forces in half in the region.

Durbin's proposal appears to merely draw down some funding, keeping troop levels about constant but re-tasking them...sorry, that's right wing Pentagon jargon...re-assigning them to policing and training details.

That hasn't exactly worked in Baghdad, and I don't see much hope for that tactic to work in too many other places.

Senator Durbin, you and Russ Feingold have nothing to lose and everything to gain by taking a stronger stand now. Representative Murtha was hammered two years ago for speaking his mind precisely because he didn't have the weight of history on his side. Yet. While many of us who saw where the doomed Iraq invasion was heading could elicit that history would soon stand foursquare against the aggressor nation, the nation itself hadn't woken to that.

Now we have. Now we can set aside the chattering children of challenged intellect, who are about as relevant to this discussion as whether Pluto is a planet or not, and start to fix a problem that has been brewing since the invasion was announced, five years ago: how the hell do we get out of this mess?

Do it, Senator. You need to.