AltBrainNet

Solidarity

2011-02-19T07:13:00.002-05:00

Travels ...

2007-12-31T13:44:00.000-05:00

Figured I'd do an index of places I've been and shared with you:

Paris '05:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Our retirement home, I hope

Rome to NYC '06:

Livorno/Florence
Livorno/Florence 2
Monte Carlo
Barcelona
Valencia
Valencia 2
Lladro Factory
Misc stuff
Cadiz/Jerez de la Frontinera
Cadiz/Jerez de la Frontinera 2
Gonzalez-Bayass Winery
Cruise ships vs. Ocean liners
Ponta Delgado
Horta

Caribbean '07:

Leaving Manhattan
Leaving Manhattan 2
Lazy Day
Grand Turk
Tortola
St. Maarten
St. Thomas
San Juan
Home
Dam Ships

Germany '07:

Guten Morgen
Christmas Market
Our Town
Betschdorf
Soufflenheim 1
Soufflenheim 2
Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo
Judischer Friedhof
Burg Alt Dahn
Eis und Nebel
O Tannenbaum
Christmas 1
Christmas 2
Christmas 3
Christmas 4
Snow!!!!!!!!
Fabian
Random photos ...

Misc posts:

Paris '99
Paris '00
Germany '03
Natzweiler Struthof 1
Natzweiler Struthof 2

Links will also be posted in the sidebar at Worlds.

Good news from Iraq ...

2007-07-29T12:30:00.001-04:00

Talk about a morale boost for a nation that sorely needs it:

JAKARTA (Reuters) - Iraq completed one of sport's great fairytales by beating Saudi Arabia 1-0 in the Asian Cup final on Sunday to provide a rare moment for celebration in their war-torn homeland.

...

Fuck them too ...

2007-07-29T11:36:00.000-04:00

As I noted below, the idiots who wanted this war, the clowns who claim to "support the troops", also don't give much of a shit about the lives they destroy in their quest for Oil and Rapture:

Chart shamelessly stolen from Pygalgia.

Being it's so dangerous for those labeled 'collaborators', those who signed up for jobs with the 'coalition', let alone those displaced by our military machinations, you'd think we'd make it easier for them to find refuge here.

Ah, but that's the crux of the biscuit, isn't it? The morons who love this war have no love for people who are not white, English-speaking, or Christian. The Iraqis are nothing but sandniggers and savages and they sure as hell don't want them here. In their racist, bigoted minds, we got enough Mexicans and real niggers here already.

While the troops are just little green plastic men to be played with, the refugees are merely untermenschen, less than human, with no feelings, no lives, no hopes and dreams with which the chickenhawks should be concerned. They're the black shit between the elephant's toes, the slow-moving pygmies who couldn't get out of the leviathan's way. Of no consequence when oil is the prize.

But there are consequences arising from our actions, whether we acknowledge them or not, and those consequences will revisit us regularly for the foreseeable future. We will be paying for our sins in Iraq for a long time.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Vichy Dems Cave Again

2007-05-25T18:13:00.001-04:00

Your Wish Is Our Command Sire!

Fear has its use but cowardice has none.

-Mohandas Gandhi

Let it be heard loud and clear, from sea to shining sea that the newly empowered Democrats are poseurs, fakes and rank cowards and after the latest dishonorable capitulation of a president and his failed policy run amok let them forever be affixed with a scarlet letter of shame. The ugly little secret despite all of the big talk about change and accountability is that the jackass party is just as much an accomplice in creating the the catastrophe that is America’s political system as their more overtly fascist and assertive counterparts. The inexcusable caving in to our naked, drooling emperor over the much debated Iraq funding by removing any timetable for withdrawal and the asinine inclusion of non-binding benchmarks should serve as a glaring example of just how deep the systemic corruption goes and just how feckless that the so-called opposition party still is.

Harry and Nancy and Rahm and Hillary are just more of the same toadies of the oligarchy, their November victory and it’s so-called ‘mandate for change’ was just more window dressing to present the illusion that there is really much difference between either wing of the war party and the corporatists who now solely own America. The system itself is broken and all the king’s horses and all the king’s men will never be able to put it back together again. Far more radical changes are needed, specifically the elimination of the two-party sham democracy and a serious look at the very idea of the looter capitalism that it serves. The secret trade deal that was cut with Bush and Wall Street at further expense to the American workers last week are nearly as onerous and treacherous as the cave in refusing to withdraw from Iraq.

Everything was supposed to be different after November’s victories. The Bush junta and the neocon war criminal cabal were to be held accountable and a message on ending the folly of Iraq was to have been sent it was to be the first step on journey back to what once made America great – were we ever conned. Everything was going to change but alas, the Democrats did what politicians so often do in this sorry excuse for a country – they lied populated by simpletons and jingoism spewing armchair patriots. They talked big but did nothing, rolling over on the seeking an end to Bush’s war and then having the audacity of trying to spin it as though it were some sort of victory. The new Congress has failed abysmally after only a few months, bringing further dishonor on the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy and maybe the Rovian wordsmiths are right when they refer to this hollow shell of what was once a champion of the working class by the repeated dropping of the “ic” and referring to this sorry bunch of neo-Reaganists as the “Democrat” party – for they sure as hell aren’t what they used to be.

As the saying goes, you can’t polish a turd and that is exactly what this hideous debacle of failing to have the guts to cut the funding and bring the troops home is and the failure starts with the leadership. Harry Reid is a neutered little runt who exudes weakness. He is a perfect leader of Hillary’s temple eunuchs who can be absolutely counted on to continue to kowtow to the Republicans despite having a majority while not stepping on the toes of our queen in waiting. A real man and a real leader would ride herd, enforce discipline and mock the Bushist goose steppers mercilessly and publicly until they were shamed into compliance. And a real leader would put his thumb down on the conniving little gnat Joe Lieberman. Worst of all is that Reid’s very appearance is a HUGE liability to a dumbed down public looking for a guy who resembles a leader not a testosterone deficient little sissy, the Casper Milquetoast look just doesn’t cut it in image conscious America. The Dems need to roll out a burly ass-kicking type like Jim Webb or John Tester to rid themselves once and forever of the wimp factor that has so dogged them since the DLC takeover and the betrayal of organized labor. The GOP bullies and their toady Lieberman can laugh themselves silly kicking sand in Reid’s face but would think twice when confronted with a guy who looks like he could single-handedly win a bare knuckled brawl in a biker bar.

I really don’t understand why these people continue to fuck around with that little twit from Nevada and I am not alone. Last night on MSNBC Keith Olbermann devoted a blistering one of his trademark Special Commentary segments to the cowardice of Reid and the Dem dogs comparing them to none other than Neville Chamberlain while laying bare their failure in the starkest of terms even calling for half-measure Harry’s replacement:

Mr. Reid, Mr. Hoyer, and the other Democrats... have failed us.They negotiated away that which they did not own, but had only been entrusted by us to protect: our collective will as the citizens of this country, that this brazen War of Lies be ended as rapidly and safely as possible.

And

Those who seek the Democratic nomination need to—for their own political futures and, with a thousand times more solemnity and importance, for the individual futures of our troops—denounce this betrayal, vote against it, and, if need be, unseat Majority Leader Reid and Speaker Pelosi if they continue down this path of guilty, fatal acquiescence to the tragically misguided will of a monomaniacal president.

Today the blogosphere is on fire with righteous indignation, justifiable outrage and well deserved condemnation today. There are already efforts being mounted to rightfully run challengers against the quisling pro-war corporatist candidates whose latest resounding “Fuck You” to the voters may be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. The consultants and DLC apologists and their spinners like to pin the inability to hold the fucking war criminals accountable and restore a vestige of the civil liberties that were stolen away by the neocon fascists on “not having a big enough majority”.

I call BULLSHIT on this lame assed excuse because it WOULD have been much bigger had Rahm ‘Ass-Eyes’ Emanuel spent less time trying to appease his Wall Street investment banker cronies by deliberately under-funding progressive Democratic candidates last year. The scorn for the Vichy Democrats of Reid/Pelosi/Hoyer is coming from both sides signaling an increasingly dangerous trend for our political elitists whose bogus left-right paradigm built on nonsensical wedge issues and the faux democracy that it perpetuates is becoming exposed by the day. In one of the biggest ironies of our time the Bush regime has been so arrogant, so crazed by hubris and so brainwashed by their own propaganda that they have become a threat to the entire rigged game.

This latest capitulation and cave in on the war in which Americans are being murdered by our vainglorious politicians and their blood barter benefactors is being decried by thinking principled conservatives like Paul Craig Roberts:

Congress is complicit in the great strategic blunder. Republican flag-wavers led Americans like lemmings into the abyss. The Democrats have already abandoned the electorate that gave them control of Congress six months ago in the false hope that the Democrats would corral the White House moron and lead America out of the abyss.

Like the Republicans, the Democrats serve the few special interest groups that benefit, or believe that they benefit, from the war. By now we all know who these groups are: the oil industry, the military-security complex, and the Israel Lobby, AIPAC. This contrived war, based on lies and deception, serves no other interest.

As well as real progressives who prowl the heavily guarded perimeter outside the political force field of the fake left like David Sirota:

STOP WHINING ABOUT BUSH, YOU HAVE RESPONSIBILITY AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT

Various Democrats are doing their best efforts to pretend they have no ability to stop the war, as if they are innocent bystanders. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), for instance, is saying she will vote against the blank check bill, but she won't use her power to actually stop the bill from moving forward - as if she's just a lowly back bencher who has no power.

Similarly, many lawmakers keep saying that it's Bush responsibility - not theirs - to develop a plan to end the war. That may be true - but that doesn't mean lawmakers don't have many different ways to force him to develop a plan. For instance, I've suggested a method of doing so through a non-partisan commission. Another way to do it is through timelines tied to funding. Media zombies may regurgitate laughable right-wing lies about American troops having to run naked and unarmed through the streets of Baghdad should Congress dare to exercise its constitutional power of the purse, but the reality is if Congress simply said funding would be cut off on a certain date, that would force the Bush White House and military commanders to come up with a plan for redeployment.

To sum up - every time a Democrat claims they can't stop the war, they make themselves look stupid. Additionally, every time a Democrat says they are doing everything in their power to stop the war while refusing to use the powers they have they make themselves look like liars. As just one example, the next time you hear a Senator (and in particular, a Senator running for president) say they are using every resource at their disposal to end the war, you ask yourself why you don't see them on the Senate floor right at that moment reading the names of the troops who have been killed and then reading names out of a phone book in an effort to use Old School filibuster tactics to bring Congress to a screeching halt.

There is nothing that the ruling establishment fears more than having their entire spoils system exposed for it is a sham that has long stood to pit American against American while corporatists and global gangsters loot our country and there are promising signs that it is starting to become unraveled. The ability of the internet to allow for a real education on the rot of empire to those who seek it as well as a way to bypass the pocket media has hit the political elitists hard. It is increasingly difficult to defend against a decentralized swarm attack by bloggers and online activists who are able to spread the truth that this country is now ruled by thieves and whores who despite the intent of the founders to be our servants treat voters and taxpayers as second class citizens and annoying serfs in the new feudalism. What was once a trickle of truth has become a torrent and God help the motherfuckers when the tipping point is reached. Perhaps we can even have our very own Ceausescu moment, our toppling of the Saddam statue and the removal of they bloodsuckers from the buildings that we the taxpayers own – forcibly if necessary.

Look at the success of dark horse Republican candiate Ron Paul whose principled stance on many issues puts him at odds with many on both the so-called right (neocon authority worshipping freaks, theocrats, Christian Zionists, Wall Street) and fake left (DLC, AIPAC, Wall Street) yet his honesty transcends the party lines. His failure to adhere to the Rovian GOP party line during the South Carolina debates has made him an internet grass roots hero and a threat to the existing order of dyed in the wool phonies like Rudy the American Il Duce, the blathering pathetic old man John McCain, the ultra-shrewd and ruthlessly ambitious Hillary, the increasingly adrift Barrack Obama and every other insincere, sanctimonious sack of shit who has clambered upon a soapbox to pontificate on the standard sideshow issues while America is looted, our middle class destroyed and our young blown to fucking bits in the Middle Eastern charnel house that is the result of generations of failed foreign policy, dubious alliances with oppressive regimes and the insatiable hunger of the dark monopoly capitalist heart that beats within the monster that is The American Empire.

It was earlier today that Paul hilariously gave the mobster fear pimp Giuliani a reading list so that the buffoonish pompous ass can bone up before the next Republican ‘debate’. And to further illustrate the fear of a man who dares to question the system the pocket media has been sent on a search and destroy mission with their bread and butter of playing the all to easily swallowed and too often invoked Anti-Semite card. Considering that it was recently used on Jimmy Carter who dared to question Israel's dispicable human rights abuses against Palestinians I would say that Mr. Paul is in good company. And I am betting that Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel – the only two honest Democrats running for president will also become increasingly vocal and therefore targets of the Jew Baiting attack dogs of the court jesters media hacks who serve as a Praetorian Guard to the oligarchs.

Corporatist Democrats have yet to take under serious consideration any of the most flagrant abuses of the Constitution by the Bushreich and the silence has been deafening regarding the discussion of ANY of the police state policies of the 9/11 party.This is especially so for the candidates (with the exception of Dennis Kucinich (of course who is nothing but cannon fodder for the pocket media due to his big ears) and on occasion John Edwards who is vilified by the perpetual dumbass machine for having the audacity to overspend on a haircut. There is a bizarre sort of disconnect in demonizing Edwards for a $400 coiffing while giving a free pass to the Republican crime syndicate who typically have double that amount in loose change in their office waiting room furniture cushions alone let alone their illicit offshore bank accounts. Yeah, fuck John Edwards for being some kind of a hypocrite along with Al Gore for his energy usage while the Republican crime cartel gets rich from their golden rolodexes while acting as advocates for greedhead leeches who wrap themselves in the stars and stripes while sucking this country dry like a scurvy mutt digging the marrow out of as soup bone. Shit, strip-mining scumbags like Jack Fucking Abramoff wipe their asses with hundred dollar bills and the moron majority in TV nation scream in outrage at a motherfucking haircut. The same utter horseshit that they used against Bill Clinton in the first few weeks of his presidency although I have to question the wisdom of laying out four bills for a trim without getting at least a handjob included in the deal.

But that is my personal opinion and is another story for another time so I digress….

Thanks to the spineless nebbish Senate Majority Leader and his acquiescent gaggle of gutless wonders the Bushreich is now showing signs of punching it’s way off of the ropes and coming at the tomato cans to punch their tickets back to Palookaville. Another escalation (I refuse to use the fucking ridiculous PR term “surge”) is in the works and the violence is going to be jacked up. And now we find out that there has been an executive order to officially give dictatorial powers (I will examine this in the very near future) to Bush-Cheney that to no surprise was not covered by a media too fucking busy chasing after the all important story of who will be crowned as the next American Idol – here’s a new concept for a sequel: American Idiot – everybody can be a contestant and everybody wins and loses at the same time.

And worst yet the rollover has at least temporarily allowed the Bush-Cheney-Rove Axis of evil to seize the initiative. The neocon propaganda chop shop has already released the obligatory recently “declassified” bit of the same great intelligence that brought us the debacle in the desert in the first place declaring that Osama Bin Laden had used the dreaded Zarqawi as an advance agent to set up base for attacks on the Der Homeland smack dab in the middle of Iraq. Never mind that this story has already been debunked as bullshit to the extent that the military even admitted that the phantom menace Zarqawi was largely the creation of a psyops campaign or that he was such a pathetic loser that he couldn’t get a job milking Bin Laden’s goats there are a good thirty percent of dullards dittoheads and dumbasses (but I repeat myself) who will believe this tripe, cower in fear and cry out for ‘Strong Daddy’ to protect them. and rolling over like jellyfish much like the leadership of a certain political party that I know.

Gulags 2

2007-05-24T20:28:00.000-04:00

Thinking about the pics I posted yesterday from Natzweiler-Struthof, I remembered I made a video of the experience when we got home. I finally found it and it's my first YouTube.

And this is appropriate on several levels because the music is provided by MGV Hauenstein, the chorale group in my ancestal home of Hauenstein, Germany. One of the angelic voices you hear belongs to my cousin Birgit.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Springtime for Chimpy

2007-05-19T06:50:00.001-04:00

From the All Spin Zone:

...

Today, the newspaper of record, the one which was the blunt instrument of destruction of the Nixon administration, has finally placed George Bush in the crosshairs. In consciously invoking a play on some of the most damning words of the Watergate scandal, the Bush administration has been put on notice: the end is near.

Somewhere, Katherine Graham is smiling.

...

And the thing that got me was this:

...

"And so we will put in place programs to protect the American people that honor the civil liberties of our people, and programs that we constantly brief to Congress," Mr. Bush assured the country yesterday, as he brushed off requests for a more detailed account. But this is exactly the point of contention. The administration, it appears from Mr. Comey's testimony, was willing to go forward, against legal advice, with a program that the Justice Department had concluded did not "honor the civil liberties of our people." Nor is it clear that Congress was adequately informed. The president would like to make this unpleasant controversy disappear behind the national security curtain. That cannot be allowed to happen.

As I said a little over a month ago:

By the way, as Spring arrives, do you catch a faint scent of Watergate on the breeze lately? Heh ...

Great thanks to Skippy for the ASZ link.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

God who?

2007-05-05T19:33:00.000-04:00

[Since Ed was on a roll below, I figured I'd add this to the mix. ~ F]

As I've said a million times here, I don't give a shit who, what, or how you worship, as long as you don't proselytize to me and don't try to make your beliefs government policy. I don't believe in God, at least not in the form of some guy sitting up there, keeping score of whether I'm fucking around on my wife or kicking my dog (I don't, in either case, but I only think it counts to hypocritical guys in funny hats and dresses).

That said, being it's America and all, how come the Jesus freaks are all pissed off over a documentary about people who don't believe?

Conservative Christians are criticizing a plan by Public Broadcasting Service stations to begin showing later this week a three-part television documentary series on atheism, calling it "demagogic and propagandistic."

...

Janice Crouse, director of the Beverly LaHaye Institute for the conservative group Concerned Women for America, told Cybercast News Service that "airing the program gives credibility and cohesiveness to individuals who seek to undermine the beliefs and values on which democracy and the American dream are founded."

...

Let me say, I'll put my 'atheistic' values up against those of any 'Conservative Christian' any day. I'm willing to bet large amounts that in practice, I'm far more moral, tolerant (okay, so maybe there could be an argument in this case), and compassionate. In other words, Jesus would probably like me more than them.

Sorry folks, if your religion is so strong and you're so convinced of its 'rightness', a single TV show shouldn't do your cause any harm. I get the feeling though, that most Americans would probably see God more the way I do than the Jesus freaks do.

I don't want to undermine anyone's religion. If worshipping your god gives you peace, more power to ya. My family on both sides is devoutly Roman Catholic (two of my aunts are missionaries; nuns in Brazil), and I know some of the good works the Catholic Church has done (the town that is my ancestral home in Germany could not have been rebuilt after WW2 without the partnership between my grandfather, who was the mayor at the time, and the local church), but part of being tolerant is allowing others their own peace.

I've been called 'the Devil on Earth', a 'heathen', an 'infidel', and a whole host of names by people who were supposedly 'godly', let alone how the American Conservative Christians have painted all 'non-believers' over the years which, I think, has done more to undermine their religion than anything a buncha atheists could do to an institution 2000 years old.

And, as I said, this is still America. If the Congress can invoke the Lord before their sessions, I have the right not to.

Great thanks to C & L for the links.
Cross-posted at the Brain.

The Republican Perpetual Hate Machine

2007-05-05T14:54:00.000-04:00

"What was behind that consuming hatred? At first I thought that it was mere evangelical passion. Evangelical Christianity, as everybody knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love”

-H.L. Mencken

Mounting war casualties, global warming, millions of uninsured, inability to control our borders, skyrocketing deficits, falling dollar, whopping trade imbalances, gas gouging, corporate corruption, wars and rumors of wars, a burst housing market bubble, illegal government spying, rampant systemic corruption, torture, war atrocities, the growing threat of a domestic mercenary army, a crumbling infrastructure, Bin Laden still on the loose, failing schools, loss of competitiveness, war profiteering, a shrinking middle class, health care crisis, rigged markets, terrorist plots, congressional scandals, traitors residing in the White House, politicizing the judicial system, creeping police state paranoia: BIG FUCKING DEAL!

Overturning Roe v. Wade as a step towards relegating women to their rightful subordinate places in a strong daddy ‘Christian’ nation – “a glorious day of human liberty and freedom" according to the zealotous Sam Brownback - now that is a major crisis deserving of all the energy that a potential future Republican president can muster. Thursday night’s shameful parade of dissembling shitheads assembled at the iconic Ronald Reagan’s presidential library was a stunning exhibition of just how low that Republicans will go in order to pander to the American fascists of the Bible Belt Taliban - with the notalbe exception of 9/11 fear pimp Rudy Giuliani whose hedged response drew the media as sharks to chum or more apropos as flies to shit. Secondary to propping themselves up as bulwarks to shore up that all important wedge issue as a barricade between the godly and the godless was near lockstep unison (with the exception of Texas Congressman Ron Paul who will be marginalized very,very quickly) in adhering to continuing to wage perpetual imperialist wars lest the Rapture be postponed and the return of whoop ass Jesus to smite the heathens and liberals be put off.

Can you give me one big fucking heartfelt "Hallelujah"?

Somewhat lost in the media saturation coverage of the anti-abortion cacophony of parasites during that dog and pony show featuring ten nattering nabobs of nonsense pandering to a dangerous fringe element was the Pelosi-Hoyer House passage of a new hate crimes bill that could potentially deprive the right wing perpetual hate machine of much of the fuel that it needs to run at peak level. As the parable goes you should judge a man by his deeds and not his words, and may the mass Republican rejection of the addition of gender and sexual orientation to federally protected categories under hate crimes law be exposed for all that it is. In another era another rogue regime and it’s vicious mobs took to the streets to scream “JUDEN” and to smash windows, loot, pillage and burn and who in the fuck knows what sort of mayhem will be unleashed with our naked emperor’s decree of a coming veto which will place his seal of approval on the rapidly metastasizing cancer that is eating away at our society courtesy of an overabundance of well paid, frothing at the mouth fascist demagogues.

And in keeping true to his ongoing appeasement of the rubber fetus crowd Le Enfant Terrible has also served notice that the next one of his onslaught of vetoes post condoning mass pogroms against gays will be to continue to wage no holds barred culture war by striking down any potential legislative measures that impede the progress of the replacement of the Constitution with the Malleus Maleficarum. I am unabashedly in favor of abortion which I personally feel is vastly underrated as if applied correctly we could nip the mass production of the progeny of these goose stepping theocratic tyrants in the bud since they are anyway doomed to a lifetime of hateful ignorance courtesy of the retrograde moron home schooling that is so popular among the dominionists. If you don’t think that the children of the corn are potentially dangerous – then look at the American madrassas like the one in the movie Jesus Camp where these impressionable young minds are being programmed exactly like their Islamic counterparts who are taught to shoot a gun as soon as they are capable of holding one and where hateful ephitets are learned as parts of the vocabulary right after mommy, daddy and potty. In fact since these fucking retards don’t believe in birth control to limit their dumping of their toxic waste on society mass abortion should seriously be considered. Hell, we can even make it retroactive as far as I am concerned because the more of these fuckers that can be eliminated the better – but I am rambling and babbling now so I digress.

The ongoing Republican tailoring of the message in order to appeal to these lunatics is like the Antichrist himself is sticking his flickering forked tongue out for a longing passionate kiss from the pathetic degenerates of the base -serpentine, lascivious, steamy, lustful, begging for an embrace. Go to him, give yourself over to your darkest urges, unleash your desires and press your lips to his – only do not open your eyes as you will discover that it is a fetid demon reeking of brimstone and rendered rancid and unholy by the hatred that it feeds upon and the souls that it has so easily seduced.

The base must be fed, their primal instincts oozing from their unkempt, savage pores and polluting the air in their immediate vicinity with a palpable stench. Karl Rove like Colonel Kilgore recognizes a smell that can be equated to ‘victory’ and therefore mans the parapets above the rabble in the courtyard and chucks down chunks of bloody red meat by the shovelful because they must feed in order to survive, like the dumb animals that they are. The yokels that are the ignorant, unwashed, uneducated, hate crazed, Jesus juicing, bible thumping, cross burning, NASCAR watching, knuckle-dragging red state fascists need constant nourishment to keep their strength up for when they are unleashed on decent society.

And with the renewed ‘culture war’ offensive we all can rest assured that those KBR detention camps that have been funded by YOUR tax dollars will soon be open for business. Much like the right-wing prototype Adolf Hitler the Republican Nazi Party are once again eager to emphasize they are determined to assign subhuman status to a large group of their own citizenry. Never mind that the real subhumans are the same south of the Mason-Dixon line knuckle draggers whose slothful existence is an affront to the concept of a progressive civilization as well as to the idea of the superior intelligence of mankind over such lesser creatures as swamp dwelling slugs much like our southern brethren.

The Bush administration however is all too happy to cast their lot once and for all with the same ignorant sons of bitches and bastards whose complete lack of anything within their inner selves that even remotely resembles an ability to think either critically or rationally have damned near turned ‘democracy’ into a pox on western civilization. When a bewildered herd of dirty, rebel flag waving, grit sucking mongrels are allowed so much leeway in determining the outcome of the very elections that at least in theory allow for a representative government that acts on behalf of and in the best interests of all of the people to enforce their Neanderthal will down the throats of normal Americans it may be time to rethink this whole fucking mess and look for a more effective system. Don't count on the whores of the DLC to figure out how to build better mousetraps either, they are too busy collecting their regular installments of thirty pieces of silver from corporate greedheads who care even less about this fucking country than the GOP base or Al Qaeda for that matter - not that there is much difference as they share the same goals.

After all, these are the same goddamned idiots who gave us George W. Bush as their champion in the first place and subsequently turned us into both the enemy and the laughingstock of the entire civilized world. General Sherman shouldn’t have stopped with burning down Atlanta, he should have torched the entire fucking south and then sowed the fields with salt so that nothing could ever grow there again…we all make strategic blunders and unfortunately William Tecumseh Sherman couldn’t see into the future to where the rebel flag would fly again throughout the red states and the dumbest, most hateful, regressive toads in America would one day also hold the most political power. You see, to the peckerwood rubes of the south this is a continuation of the Civil War, a rematch and a chance to get even and their ancestors may have gotten their asses handed to them on the battlefield but they hold a mean-assed grudge that is passed down through each generation in a very European fashion and now they are determined to settle the score.

The fires of southern indignation are stoked by bigotry, religious intolerance, willful ignorance, belligerent nationalism, indignity over the loss of the civil war has been passed down through generations as well and the people have been turned mean. This cultural and intellectual malaise is further facilitated by poor educational opportunities, lack of upward mobility and by demagogues ranting about the evils of liberalism, the welfare state and those who would seek to remove god from their society. Being that a large portion of southerners are held in sway by the snake handlers in the pulpits of both strip mall and mega churches they are easily dominated and controlled by those who seek to exploit their regressive views and imbecilic mentalities to further their own abilities to hold power. Jim Crow is still alive and well in many areas of the south, only this time instead of being at the forefront of southern culture he exists just beneath the surface, like a killer shark lurking, waiting to feed and homosexuals are just the appetizer.

In Chris Hedges’ outstanding new book American Fascists the author often refers to his mentor Dr. James Luther Adams who had witnessed first hand the rise of the Nazis while in Germany in the 1930’s:

Adams, finally, told us to watch closely what the Christian Right did to homosexuals. The Nazis had used “values” to launch state repression of opponents. Hitler, days after he took power in 1933, imposed a ban on all homosexual and lesbian organizations. He ordered raids on places where homosexuals gathered, culminating in the ransacking of the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin and the permanent exile of its director, Magnus Hirschfield. Thousands of volumes from the institute’s library were tossed into a bonfire. The stripping of gay and lesbian Germans of their civil rights was largely cheered by the German churches. But this campaign legitimized tactics, outside the law that would soon be employed against others. Adams said that homosexuals would be the first “social deviants” singled out and disempowered by the Christian Right. We would be the next.

Radical cleric James Dobson and the rest of the blasphemous cocksuckers who have stolen Jesus under the cover of a television projected electronic umbrella of mass national ignorance are taking to their goat barn pulpits to roar hellfire and damnation at the godless heathen liberals for daring to limit their spewing of hatred against the mythical and dreaded 'homosexual agenda’. Dobson was among the first to threaten retribution against the White House if the hate crime bill wasn't smacked down immediately. Herr Dobson was quoted in an Associated Press story as saying that the intention of the legislation was :

“to muzzle people of faith who dare to express their moral and biblical concerns about homosexuality.” If you read the Bible in a certain way, he told his broadcast listeners, “you may be guilty of committing a ’thought crime.”’

I might elaborate in my own words that when it really comes down to it if you "read the bible in a certain way" you could also come to believe that Jesus is a bloodthirsty warmonger with a deep seated hatred of the poor and downtrodden that is only exceeded by his lust for war - and especially for the epic carnage of a bloodletting for the ages that would claim the lives of more Jews than were killed by Hitler so that the wet dreams of rapture pimps like Timothy LaHaye can come to pass.

Jesus Christ said not one fucking word about homosexuality but he did preach at length about that other dreaded H word that the right hates like a vampire hates garlic and a theocrat hates the constitution – HYPOCRISY! And what better example of this rampant hypocrisy than the notorious White House sex toy who is the phony reporter and gay prostitute Jeff Gannon (hotmilitarystuds.com) show up for the yesterday’s National Day of Prayer on the Capitol lawn as a spokesman for the International Bible Reading Association. And then there is Pastor Ted and every other closet dwelling, two-faced lowlife who whores themselves out to the Republican party’s anti-American agenda. At least atheists also showed up in Washington too announcing a National Day Of Reason (which didn’t garner much media attention) to offer a counter to the freaks which while having lower attendance than even a typical Tampa Bay Devil Rays home game had the best line of the day as attributed to Rick Wingrove via the WA PO’s Dana Milbank:

“This is the beginning of a theocratic dictatorship, or maybe a better name is a holy dictatorship. You might as well be reading the charter documents of the freaking Taliban”

Touché!

But it isn’t about Jesus Christ at all now is it? It’s all about power and the ability to exploit the blind spots in democracy in order to obtain the slimmest of margins and to then exercise the tyranny of the majority to use the power of the government in order to crush all those deemed as lesser beings beneath the jackbooted heels of a theocratic fascist police state. Were Christ to return to earth tomorrow he would be decried as a treasonous liberal by the GOP state controlled media, would be denounced as a long haired, anti-American peacenik who supports the terrorists, hates freedom, is a commie and is unpatriotic. Then after the electronic crucifixion would be arrested as an enemy combatant and would be just another Middle-Eastern man in an orange jumpsuit locked up in a tiny cell in Gitmo. You see, GOP Jesus and today's Pharisees and moneychangers have so successfully chased Jesus of Nazareth's ass out of the temple and he sure as hell ain't ever coming back as long as they have any fucking thing to say about it.

If there is such a place as hell then goddammit may all of these diseased pig-fuckers one day rot there and may they be forced to spend all of eternity blowing flock after flock of Satan’s personal pet goats all the while being heckled by the Reverend Fred Phelps and Rick Santorum. And when the goats are tired of being sucked off then may they all roast on spits until their rotten flesh boils and rolls off of their carcasses like tallow. But until then let there be legislation or whatever else that it takes to marginalize the utter vileness of these vomit spewing ass clowns. Let them be marginalized and mocked and chased from the public realm where they can conduct their black masses over the boiling and festering cauldrons of hate that are their congregations. Let them retreat to the confines of their taxpayer subsidized mega-churches where they hold their bund meetings and covet each other’s asses, wives and sports utility vehicles and let them stay there, stigmatized as the lepers that they are by a society that has no time for the psychopathic ravings of such scum. And let there be laws so that whenever they slime out for their thinly veiled pogroms that the police have the power to turn the fire hoses on them and to wash all of the rats into the sewers where they belong….and then weld the manhole covers shut to keep it down there forever.

Rudy: Just Another Republican 9/11 Fear Pimp

2007-04-28T07:44:00.000-04:00

Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it.

-Rudy Giuliani

Democratic aspirants to King George’s throne Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama justifiably expressed outrage at America's mayor Rudy Giuliani’s cowardly Rovian slurs that the jackass party would allow for another 9/11 style attack on American soil to occur. In the true lizard brain targeted Republican fear mongering insinuation the fucking traitors would practically collaborate with Osama Bin Laden in allowing it to happen – apparently the only question would be on just exactly who would issue the stand down orders this time.

Resorting to pulling out that devlish 9/11 card that has been so frequently played ad nauseam by Bush, Cheney and the rest of the international war criminals during their standard stemwinders on the rubber fetus circuit for the last six years reeks of the same sort of cynical petty thug mentality that has become so prevalent in Rove’s GOP. It is really about the only thing left when it comes to pandering to the yahoos and retrograde morons in that die hard thirty-something percent of Bushist dead enders that like an incurable herpes wart never seems to disappear. Rudy is only the latest ghoul to grab a ride on the riverboat by pulling out the most kick ass club in the bag.

Invoking 9/11 is a desperate and shameless ploy by a desperate and shameless man. Rudy is a man who has routinely participated in the ghoulish trafficking and exploitation of the horrors of that pristine Tuesday morning when death came screaming out of the skies, that day of infamy which should bring solemn remembrance out of respect for the victims but so have the rest of the snake oil salesmen and fear pimps. There is ALWAYS an ambulance chasing Republican scoundrel looking to milk that day for the maximum in both personal and political gain – it’s practically a requirement to join the club of looters, sadists, philanderers, deceitful charlatans, sleazy Elmer Gantry style preachers, perverts, sodomites and garden variety buffoons afflicted with serious psychopathic disorders who are attracted to that great big circus tent with the flashing neon sign that says FREAK SHOW.

Kudos to MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann for using his Wednesday Special Comment segment to scathingly condemn Giuliani and the Republican party for their incessant reliance on invoking fear and engaging in demagogy:

Only in this America of the early 21st century could it be true that the man who was president during the worst attack on our nation and the man who was the mayor of the city in which that attack principally unfolded would not only be absolved of any and all blame for the unreadiness of their own governments, but, moreover, would thereafter be branded heroes of those attacks.

And now, that mayor — whose most profound municipal act in the wake of that nightmare was to suggest the postponement of the election to select his own successor — has gone even a step beyond these M.C. Escher constructions of history.

And...

“How many casualties will we have?” — this is the language of Osama bin Laden.

Yours, Mr. Giuliani, is the same chilling nonchalance of the madman, of the proselytizer who has moved even from some crude framework of politics and society, into a virtual Roman Colosseum of carnage, and a conceit over your own ability — and worthiness — to decide who lives and who dies.

Rather than a reasoned discussion — rather than a political campaign advocating your own causes and extolling your own qualifications — you have bypassed all the intermediate steps and moved directly to trying to terrorize the electorate into viewing a vote for a Democrat, not as a reasonable alternative and an inalienable right ... but as an act of suicide.

And...

“The Democrats do not understand the full nature and scope of the terrorist war against us,” Mr. Giuliani continued to the Rockingham County Lincoln Day Dinner last night. “Never, ever again will this country be on defense waiting for (terrorists) to attack us, if I have anything to say about it. And make no mistake, the Democrats want to put us back on defense.”

There is no room for this.

This is terrorism itself, dressed up as counter-terrorism.

Let us all hope that this will be the beginning of a massive repudiation of the dancing on the graves of the dead for the sake of spreading fear and loathing.

Rudy is a fascist extraordinaire who would make George W. Bush look like Mohandas Fucking Gandhi if he is ever able to pander to the base instincts of the Jesus juicin’ card carrying KKK member, regressive redneck knuckledraggers in peckerwood nation to somehow win the GOP nomination despite his embarrassing cross dressing videos on You Tube, his connections to corrupt figures like Bernie Kerik and his wife’s former job as a saleswoman for a medical firm that specializes in murdering dogs under the guise of demonstrating surgical products. Dark rumors abound in the most sinister corners of cyberspace that fascist icon Benito Mussolini had a thing for ritualistic animal sacrifice – a good omen for the American Il Duce?

Then there’s Rosie O’Donnell’s abrupt departure from the ABC crapfest The View, this pocket media punch was telegraphed so far in advance that even the latest of the tomato can ringers that Don King is legendary for trotting out could have spotted it coming a mile away. O’Donnell was a goner the instant that she dared to question the holiest of holies that is the official 9/11 story. Not that I have much sympathy for Rosie, she was an uncouth loudmouthed blathering sow who could have made a guest appearance on Roseanne as the obnoxious boor of a sister who drunkenly pukes in the middle of the Thanksgiving dinner but she did make a good point every now and then. The right-wing goons were howling when she very accurately stated that: "Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America" and her insult war with the pompous jackass Donald Trump was treated as though it were an attack on that great American institution of predatory capitalism itself. I just don’t get this thing where CEO’s and unscrupulous plunderers like Trump are treated as though they are some sort of godlike figures in this society where their pathological greed and zero sum games have cut gaping swaths through the middle class and our once great industrial capacity but that is a story for another time.

The oligarchy just couldn’t afford to have a loose cannon like O’Donnell going off about the day when the reset button was hit on American history with an audience of millions who for once in their pathetic lives may have started to ask serious questions and do some of their own research. It is of course being spun by the ‘on the payroll’ right-wing mocking bird shithacks and the cable television squealing war swine pundits as ‘tit for tat’ revenge for the hanging of Don Imus’ weathered leatherface on the yard post but ABC would not sacrifice the sheer freak factor demographic in the ratings sweepstakes had O’Donnell not dared to question the well laid cornerstone of the authoritarian fascist police state that has risen after the modern day Reichstag fire. The official story on the departure is that it was a contract thing but I don’t buy that and neither should anybody else.

The oldest trick in the book is make an enemy
A phony evil so the government can do its dirt
And take away ya freedom lock and load, beat and search
Ain't nothin' changed but more colored people locked in prison
These pigs still beat us but it seem we forgettin'
But I remember 'fore September how these devils do it
Fuck Giuliani ask Diallo how he doin'-Paris

– What Would You Do

I really don’t spend much time dealing with the specifics of the official ‘terrorist’ attacks of September 11th, 2001 but I should – the official story is bullshit. I stay away from writing about it in depth because it is a complex topic and the disinformation and conspiracy theories are as thick as the swarms of Republican buzzards seeking to pick the meat from the corpses of the victims by incorporating it into their daily rhetoric. I strongly believe as do many others that as long as the official story is allowed to stand unchallenged that the political dynamic of the “post-9/11 world” will be allowed to continue and that the sound of those little cat feet that fascism creeps in on will only grow louder with each day that a real investigation – not a whitewash dog and pony show blue ribbon commission packed with lackeys, obfuscators and career fixers and rife with conflicts of interest – is not conducted. I mean for Christ’s sake, the Keane Commission didn’t even see fit to address the collapse of WTC 7 which wasn’t even hit by a fucking airplane and which very conveniently contained SEC records and files the destruction of which would impede the ability to conduct future investigations into the grand Ponzi schemes of the market itself.

The Bush-Cheney-Rove Axis of Evil vehemently resisted ANY investigation whatsoever before the political pressure from victim’s families became so great that it became an embarrassment and God forbid that anything stand in the way of Rove’s dream of a one party state and Cheney’s consolidation of power into an Oval Office dictatorship. The panel was created and the true intentions of the administration were exposed when they attempted to put Dr. Strangelove himself Henry Kissinger in charge of the damned thing.

Suffice it to say that 9/11 has NEVER been investigated honestly. I am not going to go into a reciting a litany of evidence contradicting the original story but will say that at best the Bush administration is conducting a massive cover up in order to conceal their myriad of relationships with the alleged perpetrators and the governments that backed them or it could have been to hide a complete compromising of our national intelligence system to allow for the perpetrators to take advantage of multiple war games and to prevent the scrambling of jets to intercept the wayward planes. At worst it could have been a false flag operation executed by rogue elements of our own military and intelligence apparatus in coordination with similar cells operating out of any number of other countries to advance a geopolitical agenda.

But I’m not going to get into all of that stuff and for those with the knee jerk reaction of screaming ‘tin foil hatter’ at me - go and do the research yourself because it just doesn’t add up and as I.F. Stone once famously said "All Governments Lie".

I do want to state for the record that while others are attracted by sweet smelling honey pots like missiles hitting the Pentagon, death rays, explosive pods or any other paranoid nuggets of disinformation the one area to focus on when scrutinizing 9/11 is on the alleged hijackers and suicide pilots themselves.

So who really was flying those planes? - It should be obvious to anybody with half a brain that the daredevil type of piloting finesse that would be required in order to execute the precision high-speed maneuvers that resulted in devastating direct hits on both towers of the WTC as well as the Pentagon are not exactly what could be reasonably expected from training in small time flight schools for puddle hoppers (one allegedly with a history of being used as a base for CIA black ops), especially considering the caliber of the losers who were enrolled to hone their 'skills' for the devastating kamikaze strikes. It is inconceivable that the supposed suicide pilots would be able to undertake this mission on the strength of the official story of their amateur flight school training alone. This to me is the critically contradictory piece of called evidence in the official story that should be subjected to the most intense scrutiny possible because let’s face it, this is the real world and Bruce Willis may be able to learn how to become an astronaut in order to save the planet Earth by valiantly flying off to destroy a killer asteroid in about a week’s time but movies are movies and fantasy is not reality.

The alleged hijackers were either complete phonies with official cover falsified histories that were immediately available for mass distribution through the media much like another patsy named Lee Harvey Oswald after another great national tragedy or their identities had been created as a cover for who they really were. The level of professional military caliber training needed to fly the hijacked airliners with the sophistication, skill and precision that they had to have been flown with in order to accomplish their mission almost certainly had to have been underwritten by a state with a highly advanced air force - the question is which state?

Considering that over three quarters of the alleged hijackers were from Saudi Arabia would it be too much of a leap in logic to consider that just perhaps they may have received training and practice either there or elsewhere - Pakistan, Israel, The United States or any combination of these or others - and not the official governments but rogue factions. Just look at who has benefitted in the aftermath and draw your own conclusions. This is the one part of the official story that is the most malodorous and yet is easily accepted by Americans accustomed to living in a world of television and movie adventure fantasies.

And besides – fanatical Islamic fundamentalists bent on remaining within Allah’s good graces for that longed for afterlife visit with all of those nubile young virgins don’t snort cocaine and eat pork chops. As Butch Cassidy once said to the Sundance Kid - "Who are these guys?"

From an Angry Soldier

2007-04-25T17:00:00.000-04:00

Via Skippy, reposted from craigslist:

Date: 2007-04-10, 1:00PM PDT

I'm having the worst damn week of my whole damn life so I'm going to write this while I'm pissed off enough to do it right.

I am SICK of all this bullshit people are writing about the Iraq war. I am abso-fucking-lutely sick to death of it. What the fuck do most of you know about it? You watch it on TV and read the commentaries in the newspaper or Newsweek or whatever god damn yuppie news rag you subscribe to and think you're all such fucking experts that you can scream at each other like five year old about whether you're right or not. Let me tell you something: unless you've been there, you don't know a god damn thing about it. It you haven't been shot at in that fucking hell hole, SHUT THE FUCK UP!

How do I dare say this to you moronic war supporters who are "Supporting our Troops" and waving the flag and all that happy horse shit? I'll tell you why. I'm a Marine and I served my tour in Iraq. My husband, also a Marine, served several. I left the service six months ago because I got pregnant while he was home on leave and three days ago I get a visit from two men in uniform who hand me a letter and tell me my husband died in that fucking festering sand-pit. He should have been home a month ago but they extended his tour and now he's coming home in a box.

You fuckers and that god-damn lying sack of shit they call a president are the reason my husband will never see his baby and my kid will never meet his dad.

And you know what the most fucked up thing about this Iraq shit is? They don't want us there. They're not happy we came and they want us out NOW. We fucked up their lives even worse than they already were and they're pissed off. We didn't help them and we're not helping them now. That's what our soldiers are dying for.

Oh while I'm good and worked up, the government doesn't even have the decency to help out the soldiers whos lives they ruined. If you really believe the military and the government had no idea the veterans' hospitals were so fucked up, you are a god-damn retard. They don't care about us. We're disposable. We're numbers on a page and they'd rather forget we exist so they don't have to be reminded about the families and lives they ruined while they're sipping their cocktails at another fund raiser dinner. If they were really concerned about supporting the troops, they'd bring them home so their families wouldn't have to cry at a graveside and explain to their children why mommy or daddy isn't coming home. Because you can't explain it. We're not fighting for our country, we're not fighting for the good of Iraq's people, we're fighting for Bush's personal agenda. Patriotism my ass. You know what? My dad served in Vietnam and NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

So I'm pissed. I'm beyond pissed. And I'm going to go to my husband funeral and recieve that flag and hang it up on the wall for my baby to see when he's older. But I'm not going to tell him that his father died for the stupidty of the American government. I'm going to tell him that his father was a hero and the best man I ever met and that he loved his country enough to die for it, because that's all true and nothing will be solved by telling my son that his father was sent to die by people who didn't care about him at all.

Fuck you, war supporters, George W. Bush, and all the god damn mother fuckers who made the war possible. I hope you burn in hell.

I stand without comment.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Purple Hearts

2007-04-24T19:48:00.000-04:00

When I read this story, I sat there with my mouth agape.

COPPERAS COVE – History will be made today when Copperas Cove resident Bill Thomas and his wife, Georgia, present President George W. Bush with a Purple Heart at the Oval Office.

...

This guy left a piece of himself fighting in some foreign land and he equates the piece of ass the Chimp is getting chewed off with that sacrifice? Hey, it's his medal.

...

Thomas said the Purple Heart he is presenting the president has special meaning to him because the injury he suffered to earn it occurred just after a friend, Richard Peterson, lost his life attempting to save him.

...

I wonder how Mr. Peterson, who did not come home from Vietnam, would feel about that? I wonder how Mr. Peterson would feel about a man getting that medal who used his daddy's connections to avoid combat? A man who finally just walked away from his commitment? A man who squandered the investment the American people made in him because it just didn't suit him anymore? I wonder how Mr. Peterson would feel about the lives this man has squandered in another war much like Vietnam?

Like I said, it's Mr. Thomas' medal, but I believe he is delusional if he equates his sacrifice, and the sacrifice of Mr. Peterson, who gave his life to save Thomas', to a man who's never sacrificed anything but the lives of other peoples' children.

Great thanks to POP for the link.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Cho Seung-Hui: A New American Idol

2007-04-20T06:32:00.000-04:00

Just when it appeared that our national disgrace of a media couldn’t get any worse they continue to surprise. Last night’s reprehensible airing of the crazed ravings of Virginia Tech mass murderer Cho Seung-Hui represents a new low in a profession ‘journalism’ that is now beginning to challenge the long held status of politicians and child molesters for the lowest possible form of scum on Earth. Why in the living fuck other than to exploit the human suffering and of course grab ratings would NBC air the goddamned thing while the memorial services were still in progress and the victims not even buried?

We all know the answer, the race to the bottom continues and well…if it bleeds, it leads. NBC only briefly got the jump on their precious exclusive but was of course rapidly followed by every other parasitical media organization looking to not fall too far behind in the Nielsen ratings. This is fucking intolerable – is there such a thing as crossing a line in this country anymore? Electronically assisted mental masturbation long ago passed reading as an acceptable pastime so is it any wonder that we suffer the curse of having the dumbest fucking population in the entire world? Sweet Jesus what an embarrassment, but what else can be expected from a nation of swine whose two most recognizable figures are George W. Bush and Michael Jackson. I wonder if FOX already has lined up the rights for Richard McBeef?

The Brain Colonists: The blowback resulting from the failure of the mainstream media to present an accurate and relevant storyline on issues of true importance is only now becoming evident and this latest sordid episode is an exclamation point on just how decadent, ignorant, mean and terminally fucked that the electronic crackpipe has made Americans. The emergence of an unbelievably dumbed-down populace – or at least the majority of it that chooses to live vicariously through a 24/7 orgy of bloodbaths, serial killers, pederasts, sports and celebrity – are primarily the ones who are responsible for the crimes of the despotic Bush regime, the ongoing losses in the relentless class warfare that the wealthy have been waging for the last quarter century since ‘The Gipper’ rolled into Washington with a bag full of tricks and Morning in America snake oil and the ruinous war in Iraq and god forbid, the glorious appearing of the upcoming one in Iran that the neocons and the Rapture ready lumpen Republicans so heartily advocate and live for.

Today more people vote on cheese talent shows like American Idol than in most elections. Alas, Ignorance is bliss and there is nothing more blissful than a herd of sheep transfixed by the cheap and easily accessible fantasy world of the electronic crackpipe. I always am fascinated by some of the random samples of comments made in Jerry Manders’ fairly obscure but very thought provoking book Four Arguments For The Elimination Of Television:

“I feel hypnotized by television”

“Television sucks my energy”

“I feel like it’s brainwashing me”

“I feel like a vegetable when I’m stuck there at the tube”

“Television is an addiction and I’m an addict”

“My kids look like zombies when they’re watching”

“TV is destroying my mind”

“My kids walk around like they’re in a dream because of it”

“Television is turning my mind to mush”

“TV is colonizing my brain”

Television also creates insecurity and mental illness. Viewers of too much television are often unable to make the differentiation between fantasy and reality, look at the rise in school shootings and generally deviant violent behavior. They live vicariously through the imagery designed to sell them caricatures of a lifestyle that they in turn believe that must be lived up to in order to be ‘normal’. The barrage of imagery as well as its calculated usage to influence the psyche by those whose craft is manipulation has a devastating effect on Americans. The inability to detach oneself from television worlds breeds violence, insecurity, greed and other such undesirable behavior. This is especially true for children who are very impressionable, there are highly paid marketing firms who specialize in trying to get the products and or ideas of those who pay them seared into the minds of kids from the earliest age possible in order to create lifetime customers. Is this evil? If not outright evil it is certainly devoid of any sort of decent ethical principle but then again isn’t this exactly the sort of deviant behavior that unchecked capitalism is intended to produce?

Will there be a time when television fantasy, physical reality and dreams become indistinguishable to some? Is that time already here? The psychological dependence on television to create identity and loyalty should be a national shame. Generations that have been born into the cable television era have become more violent, more superficial, more unquestioning and most importantly, far dumber than those who were their predecessors.
The rise to power of the evil regime of Adolf Hitler was borne on the wings of massive public rallies, fantastic gatherings steeped in the power of nationalism, symbolism, fire, resentment and demagogic ravings of destiny. The most famous of the state sponsored bacchanalia being the 1934 Nuremberg rally, meticulously choreographed and captured on film by Leni Riefenstahl. Triumph of the Will would become the benchmark for all German propaganda. The national madness of the German people can be seen in these rallies and films, the unraveling and descent of a sophisticated society into pure primal evil was enabled and facilitated by their entertainment. With television there is no need for mass rallies, the demagoguery and imagery can be delivered directly into living rooms now.

From My Cold Dead Hands: The last few days worth of harping and political posturing for gun control is as nauseating as the oligarchy mouthpieces trying to tie the VA Tech slaughter to Bush's bullshit war on terror. Let’s get this straight, in the ‘great society’ built by Republican fascists and eugenics freaks there has never been a more necessary period in American history for the citizenry to be armed to the fucking teeth. This country is so awash in guns right now and so poisoned by the media’s lucrative culture of violence that anybody who doesn’t own a gun is at serious risk of being swallowed by the food chain that is the end product of Social Darwinism.

Let me reiterate my point from a recent posting- there is a renegade private army for hire out there called Blackwater that is totally fucking unaccountable and does not operate under any sort of what would pass for acceptable law – translation: a ruthless and unconstitutional band of Nazis. Just what in the fuck do you think that this mercenary force, a highly trained army of killers with the best weaponry that money can buy and that was founded by extremist right-wing dominionists and rogue former intelligence operatives is going to do when it rolls into YOUR town? Don’t worry about calling a cop because they won’t be there to save you, get the point? Go forth and buy guns and ammo, fuck any past reservations that you may have had, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars – this is not your founding father’s USA. When Blackwater comes a calling it needs to receive a Fallujah style welcome - Gestapo goon squads for hire are just plain un-American and smashing fascism is as patriotic as it gets!

The Madness of Senator McCain: Mancurian McCain continues his ugly death spiral by bursting into – I shit you not – a tone deaf rendition of Bomb Iran sung to the tune of the Beach Boy’s Barbara Ann in front of a hooting audience of South Carolina peckerwood yahoos who hooted their approval. Ironic that in the very state where Karl Rove took his balls seven years ago that the pathetic old man may have finally (and mercifully) ended his political career. Cheer up peckerwoods, there is always Fred Thompson (the gravelly voiced big dude from Curly Sue and The Hunt For Red October) – who knows, the party’s standards are so low that a bad actor has become their iconic father figure so anything is possible with Hanoi John going down in flames, a ghoulish Gotham drag queen, a serial flip flopper from Massachusetts and an oversexed philandering fascist dwarf as potential successors to Le Enfant Terrible who is going to be one tough fucking act to follow.

Bring Me The Head of Alberto Gonzalez: And finally, I love the desperate defenses of that sleazy little prick Alberto Gonzales by right-wing mockingbird hacks who play up the racist angle that the damned Democrats are trying to take down a successful Hispanic man. Poor little Fredo is just an innocent albeit misunderstood victim of a lynch mob mentality being persecuted for doing nothing wrong in his whoring out of the Justice Department to Karl Rove, Corporatists and the knuckle dragging extremist base whose idea of good schoolin’ is a phony degree from Regent University. The reverse flea flicker playing of the race card by same bunch that fans the fires of bigotry by engaging in a crowd pleasing ‘war on wetbacks’ and screaming nfrom the rooftops the dangers of the brown menace creeping northward while at the same time fielding a presidential candidate well versed in the art of demagogy named Tom Tancredo is as sincere as the media’s bullshit excuse that the airing of the final manifesto of Long Duck Dong turned Terminator was newsworthy. I used to think that I was among the most cynical persons wandering the face of planet shit- kind of like Caine in Kung Fu but compared to the soulless, amoral, devious motherfuckers and deceitful charlatans who are running the system I am obviously a rank amateur.

If It Bleeds, It Leads

2007-04-18T05:55:00.000-04:00

We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde whoComes on at five

She can tell you bout the plane crash with a gleam In her eye

Its interesting when people die

Give us dirty laundry

-Don Henley

Welcome to Blacksburg, Virginia – the place where flocks of mockingbirds turned buzzards and seeking to feast on fresh carrion swarm. The aftermath of the causes of the worst school shooting in the nation's history that claimed the lives of thirty three innocent people will be pontificated upon, spun and desecrated with the coming 24/7 saturation coverage on cable television news networks. Some media sources are already dishonestly playing up the massacre as the worst mass murder in United States history which is as intellectually dishonest as it is revisionist, a country build upon the killing fields that were a product of the genocidal doctrine of Manifest Destiny does not have clean hands and there are many a state sanctioned slaughter of innocents in our closet. Gore Vidal is spot on correct in his reference to The United States of Amnesia although I might add willful ignorance and a deep seated callous indifference as well.

There will be much weeping and gnashing of the teeth in the guise of examination into exactly why this happened in the coming news cycles that will gobble up days, weeks and months.The grand story of the shooter and what exactly drove him to wreak bloody havoc on that horrible April Monday morning, nearly eight years to the week after the murderous spree of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold at Columbine Hight School has yet to be told. From early reports it was the standard stereotypical loner; a Korean born English student who wrote plays containing "macabre violence" and denounced others as "deceitful charlatans". As if that has any fucking thing to do with the price of rice in China. Among more notable literary figures with a penchant for the bizarre Stephen King has become a multi-millionaire writing stories containing “macabre violence” and I regularly rail against the abundance of “deceitful charlatans” that pollute this sick and terminally fucked up society and neither of us are mass murderers. Movie scripts like Saw and Hostel spawn smash megaplex hits by offering graphic depictions of sadism and violence and they gross millions so the writings of Cho Seung-Hui are yet another canard, a red herring used to justify the violent acts that are inevitable in a society that regularly worships at the temple of bloodshed and cruelty. You can always count on the public relations flacks masquerading as journalists for more wildly over-hyped horseshit and manufactured storylines to mesmerize the pathetic and bewildered herds of sheeple that have overrun television nation.

Careers are made off of stories like this and the fact that an ambitious ‘journalist’ could grab a ride on the riverboat, a seat on the gravy train and experience an O.J. Simpson moment is forefront in many minds of the death sucking vultures of the mainstream media whores. They are chasing ambulances as though they were white broncos. They descended on the ruins of the Gulf Coast not that long ago scavenging like feral rats in dumpsters amidst the debris of a ruined city rife with the stench of rotting food and bloating corpses, of misery and of the raw musk of ambition that fuels careers in the disgraceful fucking excuse for a media that this country has been stricken with. They rooted through the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina and then they were gone and while great swaths of New Orleans still lie ruined they moved on to the next big thing - John Mark Karr, Bennifer, Suri Cruise, Baby Brangelina, Mel Gibson, Paris Hilton, Britney Spears, Anna Nicole Smith or the child murdering pederast of the week. It is always the same – only the names change but mass murders in schools can be career makers. Of course the usual suspects were already picking out their Hokie memorabilia to shamelessly display while the bodies were still being autopsied – Paula Zahn, Geraldo and a pack of other lesser known predators seeking to pick whatever meat remains on the bones of dignity in America’s latest and greatest grand ratings spectacle. Fuck them all, they are vermin who only serve to perpetuate the culture of tabloidism, violence, death and celebrity.

"Seeing him descend bright-eyed and sweaty on wretched New Orleans, as he did in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, was like watching a vulture on crystal meth. The word that came to mind was not 'reporting,' but 'feeding.”

-Critic Tim Rutten on Geraldo Rivera

This latest horror of a society gone to seed is good death- mass murder, dread, fear, ratings – not bad death, the bummer of the war dead and the hundreds of thousands of non-Christian, brown skinned victims of a gross savagery undertaken in the name of freedom, freedom to watch cable television and the good death. The type that can be exploited, that pleases the sponsors and the political apparatchik seeking to point the fingers at monsters rather than themselves. I am dead certain that Karl Rove was so ecstatic to see the slaughter at Virginia Tech knock war, deleted emails, Gonzo and the rot of empire out of the headlines that he made some popcorn and pulled up a seat in front of his plasma flatscreen to enjoy the show. Millions of American ghouls joined them in front of their own glowing living room false idols. This is big time shit, never mind that far worse slaughters happen in Iraq every fucking day – 55 more of those whose lives are like mere insects or rodents in terms of their relative value compared to ordinary Americans were added to the tab of the war pigs yesterday.

But I digress…Never mind the actual victims they will still be dead come the next news cycle and there are grieving families to interview and shaken survivors to prod for the little bloody exclusive details of their moments when certain death passed them over and took their classmate, their lovers, their friends.

There are also precious political points to be scored.

There will be those who use this to further implement the creeping police state, surveillance companies will base their entire marketing campaigns on this tragedy. Right wing lackeys seeking to pander to their base will decry that every person in America is not required by law to wear a sidearm and the pathetic timorous candy asses of the Democrat wing of the war party will rail and demagogue against firearms in their run up to Hillary’s coronation in 2008. Their efforts to spin the killing spree in Blacksburg for the sake of scoring cheap political points is as shameless exploitation of the dead and the dishonoring of the bereaved loved ones as is George W. Bush’s latest photo-op at the Virginia Tech campus for Tuesday’s memorial where instead of the typical soldiers and snowflake babies he used the mourning students and families as stage props.

The neoliberal fake left (fittingly referred to as such after their treacherous sellout of labor by the parasitical DLC whose taste for corporate cash, war, globalization and special interest groups is an abysmal disgrace) is no better, quick on the draw to blame it all on the NRA and the availability of guns seeking to take a stand against the wrong highly influential lobby that is killing America. Knee jerk, politically expedient attacks on restricting gun ownership by party hacks at the same time that an unaccountable private army named Blackwater grows stronger by the day is a grave and dangerous threat to liberty. Thousands of trained killers for hire who are unchecked by any law and given carte blanche by the scofflaws of the militant Republican junta are a clear and present danger within our borders and a menace as unseen before in our history. If there was ever a time to strongly support a well-armed militia this is it.

Guns don’t kill people, people kill people and a society that exalts violence whether it be the latest Hollywood blockbuster, Jack Bauer breaking fingers, the blasphemous apocalyptic filth that permeates mega-church congregations or the latest in high tech, mega pixel slaughterhouses offered up by the video game industry should not be surprised when the carrion birds come home to roost.

St. Thomas

2007-04-17T11:41:00.000-04:00

Sorry, couldn't help myself. Heh ...

A happy Mrs. F. Just came back from taking advantage of the natives.

Two from the port at Charlotte Amalie. A name which I love because it's shared by my beautiful little niece.

St. Maarten

2007-04-16T11:44:00.000-04:00

Parallel parking only. Royal Caribbean Line's Serenade of the Seas tied up next to Noordam in Philipsburg, St. Maarten. For you ship freaks, the difference between a cruise ship and an ocean liner is evident.

Mrs. F making the natives restless, shopping for bargains. She already made the salespeople at Diamonds International cry. Nobody can bargain better than Mrs. F, she makes Persian rug salesmen look like petty thieves and I got myself a new watch in the process. Heh ...

The port at Philipsburg. St. Maarten is a beautiful island with turquoise waters.

No explanation necessary. Heh ...

Click pics to embiggen.

Tortola

2007-04-15T15:22:00.000-04:00

Sunset leaving Grand Turk

Pulling into Tortola, we were greeted by an old friend. Queen Mary 2 was moored out as we pulled up to the pier. We have fond memories of taking her home from London in 2004.

Passing through the Strait of Sir Francis Drake on the way to Tortola.

More from Tortola later or tomorrow.

Grand Turk

2007-04-14T12:14:00.000-04:00

Pulled into our first stop this morning. Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos.

Grand Turk (not so grand; 7 miles long and 1 1/4 mile wide) from our balcony. Just behind the buildings is an 8000 foot airstrip.

Mrs. F doing what she does best, shopping, taking advantage of the natives ... heh ...

If I ever hear another Jimmy Buffet song it'll be too soon.

As if Noordam was a landing craft. Amazingly, you can walk out to the rope line and then the floor drops out to 100 feet. I swam out there and tried to get down to the keel. She's got 40 feet below the waterline.

Sun and fun with Mrs. F, now that the shopping's over.

Lazy Day

2007-04-13T08:21:00.000-04:00

The rain and wind backed off yesterday afternoon and I got a chance to do what I do best ... nothing. Heh ... The top pic is of the sunrise that greeted me this morning at 0600. And since I did nothing but goof off and eat yesterday, I figgered I'd throw up a couple pics of the stateroom. Yes, we're at the back of the ship (by choice) because the balconies are bigger and the privacy factor is increased (you figure it out).

A bit of excitement last evening. About 2000 (8 pm) we made a detour toward Hatteras to rendezvous with a Coast Guard helicopter. They MedEvac-ed a crewperson off the ship whose appendix burst. The op took place on the bow and I tried to get a look but they cleared all the forward compartments just in case. It was dark and I didn't want to take a pic, knowing the flash would probably fuck up the chopper pilot. Good job on all parts, Noordam's crew and the always-professional Coasties. Once the chopper split, Captain Hans took us on a speed run which had Noordam at 30 kts for a few hours (this baby can fly when she wants to) and we're back on schedule.

Click pics to embiggen

Leaving Manhattan 2

2007-04-12T06:44:00.000-04:00

Lower Manhattan and the Battery.

Ellis Island, huddled masses and all that.

The two most beautiful ladies in NYC.

Going under the Varrazano Narrows Bridge.

Leaving New York Harbor.

Click pics to embiggen

Leaving Manhattan

2007-04-12T06:25:00.000-04:00

The Birthday Girl!!!!

Noordam waiting at Pier 92.

Yours truly framed by the West Side.

Mrs. F in front of her office building, 2 World Financial Center (the one with the dome). On the other side is Ground Zero. Yes, Mr. Bush, we know about 9/11 here.

The ubiquitous Staten Island Ferry.

Click on pics to embiggen.

Requiem For A Charlatan

2007-04-11T06:48:00.000-04:00

"Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct. "

-Thomas Jefferson

The Manchurian candidate has reached his career nadir, the straight talk express has jumped the track and the maverick has gone dinky dau. The unctuous sunbelt cheesemonger who never met a television camera or open mike that he didn’t like has reached the terminal stage of a long running campaign for the presidency and a slow unraveling has now left him as stripped bare as the naked emperor himself with his disgraceful mockery of a public relations stunt in the Shorja market. Manchurian McCain has allowed himself to be reigned in by Karl Rove and become a laughingstock as a result – turning off any potential voter who once saw his much overrated rebelliousness as an asset in the process.

Not only has McCain embarrassed himself by becoming George W. Bush’s personal lapdog and by kissing Jerry Falwell’s fat ass he has become yet another aspiring politician like Al Gore who has been burned by an alliance with that treacherous little ratfucker Joseph Lieberman. As the old saying about dealing with serpents goes “If you knew I was a snake why did you pick me up?” or something like that so goes throwing in with Lieberman – when will people understand a very basic fact – what is good for Joe Lieberman is BAD for America.

Sunday’s 60 Minutes piece on Senator McCain showed a hypocrite exposed, a dissembling, fudging and babbling old man who has evolved into a gross parody of himself – nothing could have been more disgusting than seeing him refusing to blame Bushist operators for the despicable slandering of him in South Carolina back in 2000. Manchurian Mac has never been the same after the brutal knee capping by Rove’s minions and has become a phony, a charlatan, a fraud, a hypocrite and just another of the braying jackasses out there selling bottles of anti-American, imperialist neocon snake oil. Maybe McCain has always been a fake, after all, in a fear stricken, television addicted nation of poltroons and sheep with the attention spans of gnats who could even remember the Keating Five?

But back to selling the bullshit war…

Frank Rich of the damned liberal New York Times excoriated McCain in his weekly column Sunday in the Market With McCain (NYT is subscription only so it can be viewed minus the hyperlinks here at our good friend jurassicpork's Welcome To Pottersville blog. Rich’s epic scourging roared out of the gates with:

John McCain’s April Fools’ Day stroll through Baghdad’s Shorja market last weekend was instantly acclaimed as a classic political pratfall. Protected by more than a hundred American soldiers, three Black Hawk helicopters, two Apache gunships and a bulletproof vest, the senator extolled the “progress” and “good news” in Iraq. Befitting this loopy brand of comedy — reminiscent of “Wedding Crashers,” in which Mr. McCain gamely made a cameo appearance — the star had a crackerjack cast of supporting buffoons: Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who told reporters “I bought five rugs for five bucks!,” and Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, who likened the scene to “a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime.”

Five rugs for five bucks: boy, we’ve really got that Iraq economy up and running now! No wonder the McCain show was quickly dubbed “McCain’s Mission Accomplished” and “McCain’s Dukakis-in-the-Tank Photo Op.” But at a certain point the laughter curdled. Reporters rudely pointed out there were 60-plus casualties in this market from one February attack alone and that six Americans were killed in the Baghdad environs on the day of his visit. “Your heart goes out to just the typical Iraqi because they can’t have that kind of entourage,” said Kyra Phillips of CNN. The day after Mr. McCain’s stroll, The Times of London reported that 21 of the Shorja market’s merchants and workers were ambushed and murdered.

The mention of the subsequent slaughter of the market’s barters (maybe even the guys who sold our pandering politicos their cheap fucking rugs) got no mention here in the mockingbird press in Fortress USA. It’s pretty goddamned sad that here in America that it has become necessary to read the foreign press for the truth but thank God that Al Gore invented the Internet in order to make it possible for the handful of us not mesmerized by the ongoing saga of Sanjaya to get our news on the mere trivialities outside of American Idol. McCain’s Baghdad market stunt proves that not only has Bush’s shill reached bottom but has called in a Haliburton exploratory crew to start drilling.

And just when it appeared that things couldn’t get any worse for Senator McCain he also came out in support of racist pundit Don Imus in the midst of the firestorm over scrotumface’s recent comments on the Rutgers women’s basketball team. That fellow GOP hopeful and 9/11 exploiting ghoul Rudi Giuliani did likewise shows not only the extent that the Republican party has institutionalized racism but how badly that the neofascist bunch seeking to produce a worthy successor to the throne of Emperor Bush is out of touch with mainstream America.

And all of that war hero crap is starting to wear thin too. McCain’s stance on torture and the elimination of Habeas Corpus last fall was sheer pandering and a dagger into the back of everything that America stands for. It is inexcusable that someone who was once a former prisoner of war who was tortured would roll over on such an important issue as the codifying the same barbaric practices for the sake of mere political expediency. McCain may have never broken during his stay at the Hanoi Hilton but then again maybe Charlie never realized that capitulation and propagandizing could be easier obtained by simply pushing the right buttons than through repeated beatings and proddings with the end of a pungi stick.

Caving in under repeated torture by the soldiers of Ho Chi Minh could be understood, caving in to the pressure to publicly kiss a rat bastard like Jerry Falwell’s big fat ass and morphing into just another lackey for the ruinous neocon Bush regime by pimping their illegal wars is tantamount to an act of treason. Turns out that the admiral’s son who could have gotten an express trip out of Nam had he just played ball instead of trying to be a hero now has the same degree of integrity as Joe Shit the ragman who sang like a canary, made propaganda films and spewed anti-American statements and as a result avoided spending years of his life getting the living shit beaten out of him instead of being a pig headed sack of shit who would one day roll over for vermin far worse than anything that the VC could produce.

John McCain was supposed to be different, he was actually able to fraudulently push himself off on Americans as a ‘renegade’ and a ‘straight shooter’ and now this. The bus that he once called ‘The Straight Talk Express’ may as well have been a traveling brothel where cut rate blow jobs were dispensed to anybody who happened to have even chump change in their pockets. I have to admit that McCain once had me fooled but that was back before he junked his reformer shtick to act as an outspoken advocate for scoundrels whose values are a hell of a lot closer to those of Bin Laden, Hitler and Khomeini than they are to Jefferson, Madison and Franklin.

Jor Klein: Monday morning quarterback

2007-04-08T13:56:00.000-04:00

A most interesting column from Joe Klein. He writes:

When Bush['s] hyper-partisanship has proved to be a travesty of governance and a comprehensive failure. I've tried to be respectful of the man and the office, but the three defining sins of the Bush Administration--arrogance, incompetence, cynicism--are congenital: they're part of his personality. They're not likely to change. And it is increasingly difficult to imagine yet another two years of slow bleed with a leader so clearly unfit to lead.

Wow. That's pretty tough stuff. These are thoughts I agree with, and I'm sure many fellow liberal (and conservative) bloggers may also agree.

So, we should be applauding Klein. Here is an influential MSM member forcefully speaking truth to power. I've complained bitterly about the how MSM are stenographers to power who would rather trade jokes and sip martinis with the powerful than hold the light of truth to them.

My problem is Joe Klein's history. Matt Taibbi recently excoriated Klein. Taibbi has known Klein for a long time, and rips him for the very point of stenographing the powerful.

Oh yes, Klein did write in April 2003 that the invasion of Iraq was a "big gamble". Back to Taibbi:

[A]ccording to Klein, he's been against the war since that September 2002 column[.]... Except for one thing -- while Klein in that column did point out many things that could go wrong in Iraq, and suggested that we all give the invasion a good thinking over before we signed off on it ("this should cause us to pause, slow down, talk this over"), he didn't actually say we shouldn't go. In fact, he would say just the opposite six months later, on Meet the Press:

MR. KLEIN: ... This is a really tough decision. War may well be the right decision at this point. In fact, I think it--it's--it--it probably is.

RUSSERT: Now that's twice you've said that: 'It's the right war.' You believe it's the wrong time. Why do you think it's the right war?

Mr. KLEIN: Because sooner or later, this guy has to be taken out. Saddam has--Saddam Hussein has to be taken out."

Now, it is gratifying to see Klein go off on BushCo; I wish more of the MSM would go off on BushCo. However, important members of the MSM - Bob Woodward, Tim Russert, Tom Freidman, Joe Klien, et al, had their chance - a once in a generation chance - to speak truth to power at an incredibly important time in our nation's history. These men had a chance to influence history, rather than simply swim downstream with the current.

The best I can say now about Joe Klein is an adept Monday Morning Quarterback.

The Practical Press Awards 2006

2007-04-08T12:05:00.001-04:00

The brains, heart, and vision behind The Practical Press, Kenneth Quinnell, has posted the nominees in each category (and yes, I am honored and humbled to receive a nomination; great thanks to those who gave The Captains a vote). Voting is open to all and I encourage you to go there and read the best work of the 'creative membership', my esteemed colleagues. You won't be disappointed. Also, while you're there, give Kenneth a big 'thank you' for putting so much of his time and energy into the site.

The good, the bad, and the whoring ...

2007-04-07T17:25:00.000-04:00

Saturday means the next chapter of my novel The Fourth Estate is up at The Practical Press.

And as you know, I don't shill my novels here on the Brain (at least not the titles up for sale; integrity and all that), but several have asked* (those who want to order one) which they should read first. I would recommend Special Operations because it's where the little world I've created 'begins'. That is all.

*See, I do read my email ... mostly.

Neocons Foiled - For Now

2007-04-07T16:16:00.000-04:00

So much for the rumored Good Friday attack on Iran that had been attributed to leaks by Russian intelligence sources. The week after the escalating crisis after the neocon bait of 15 British sailors was snapped up the attack plans will have to be put on hold after the Iranians shocked the neocons with Wednesday's surprise release of the 'hostages'. This has to but a king sized burr under Emperor Bush's saddle and hell hath no fury like madmen scorned, this really stings the war party and their extremist right-wing Israeli cohorts and they will undoubtably regroup to launch some other bogus provocation or false flag event but for now they are sulking and licking their wounds.

The release of the sailors was a public relations coup for Iran and a serious poke in the eye to the neocon war pigs who were hung out to dry and left holding a flaming bag of dogshit by their latest version of 'the new Hitler' who badly outflanked them politically. There is absolutely nothing that I find more hilarious than seeing the Bush-Cheney junta and the neocon loons getting butt-fucked in front of the entire civilized world. Touché Ahmadinejad, this is going to cause somebody, somewhere to be brutally murdered by the hitmen and mercenaries of the war party and their foreign partners in crime.I especially relished the invocation of religion by Iran’s President in proclaiming that the release of the sailors was an “Easter gift” to the British people. Even more delicious was the assist by Syria in the process while the Bushreich goon squad was labelling Nancy Pelosi as a traitor for daring to defy the king by visiting a hated enemy of the Likudniks so to the fucking dual loyalists at that roiling spring of fascist filth formerly known as the American Enterprise Institute and to Dick Fucking Cheney:

DIPLOMACY WORKS YOU DIPSHITS!

I’m surprised that lurking Dick didn’t issue a shoot down order on the plane carrying the sailors back to England since a turd was floated in the war party punchbowl and the lovely neocon plans were temporarily thwarted. But alas it’s only a temporary reprieve and the AEI fascist freaks will be even more determined to nuke Tehran now.

Cheney has already hit the airwaves on Radio Fat Republican aka The Rush Limbaugh Show to once more dissemble and to refresh the flash memory of the dittohead chips of the lumpen Republicans with yet another reciting of the big lie:

Cheney contended that al-Qaida was operating in Iraq before the March 2003 invasion led by U.S. forces and that terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was leading the Iraqi branch of al-Qaida. Others in al-Qaida planned the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“He took up residence there before we ever launched into Iraq, organized the al-Qaida operations inside Iraq before we even arrived on the scene and then, of course, led the charge for Iraq until we killed him last June,” Cheney told radio host Rush Limbaugh during an interview. “As I say, they were present before we invaded Iraq.”

Yeah Saddam and Osama had common interests - in BCCI. Along with the CIA, the House of Saud, international arms merchants, government sanctioned drug cartels and the fucking Nazi servant Bush family.And the of course the rest of the reich-wing neocon pundit punks are screaming over the cowardice of the Brits and their reluctance to die rather than go along to get along. God I hate those dickless vermin whose collective military service amounts to less than a millisecond, their pathological hatred for America is a goddamned disgrace and despite all of their macho posturing would cry like pussies if ever faced by the slightest adversity where they aren’t able to rely on their lynch mob bullying.

I especially get a kick of the oft-regurgitated talking point of ‘if we don’t fight them over there we’ll have to fight them over here’ and ‘they’ll follow us home if we leave now’. To this I say good, let them follow us home because I can fucking A guarantee you that the Limbaughs, the O’Reillys, the Hannitys, the Savages and the Becks along with their sycophantic angry ass clown army of losers and toadies will be cowering and pissing themselves while true Americans are out fighting THEM in the streets. Cowards like that pig fucker O’Reilly and his ilk are a dime a dozen, they’re like toilet paper – they eat shit and dissolve in water.

And with the weekend attack shelved, the media mockingbirds are spinning like tops with stories on how the poor sailors were threatened and blindfolded, bound, kept in isolation. I say that it's fucking lucky for them that they weren’t captured by American forces, they would be forced to pose naked in sweaty pyramids with someone’s crank stuck in their face, a chemical flashlight rammed up their asshole and then shipped off to Gitmo for a bit of waterboarding and homoerotic, sadomasochistic torture - the post 9/11 American way.

All that I can say is that I long for the day if and when it comes that the shit really does hit the fan and the right-wingers are ready to take it to the streets as they have so long talked about to throw down against the hated liberals and every other truly patriotic American who those son of a bitching fascists have smeared and railed against over the years. I am looking very forward to bagging my share of those chickenshit cocksuckers and then pissing on their shallow graves. To quote Travis Bickel “Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.” I hear thunder - and I am ready to swipe the slime into the gutters where it belongs with a big goddamned squeegee.

The Fourth Estate

2007-03-28T16:59:00.000-04:00

If you're interested in following The Fourth Estate, a new chapter is posted every Saturday at The Practical Press.

If you missed it, my previous novel The Captains is here.

Cross-posted at Worlds.

John McCain Walking Through the Streets Bagh-dad in the Rain

2007-03-28T16:44:00.000-04:00

My first post here. Here's a link to my blog on McCain's comment that its safe to walk around Badghdad these days.

Holy Crap! McCain is losing it!

--Ron

AltBrainNet

2007-03-28T16:40:00.000-04:00

This has fallen off the radar since the New Year and the Blogger switchover. I've resent invites to members. Post whatever blows your skirts up.

Hightower Video

2007-02-16T05:26:00.000-05:00

Rage

2007-02-15T14:07:00.000-05:00

About the way that I feel when I read the news each day.

Image is a detail from a war memorial in Horn, Austria. Photoshop work is mine.

Sunday morning Bond

2007-01-28T07:15:00.000-05:00

Shine

Victory

Join the surge ...

2007-01-27T11:08:00.000-05:00

Pensito Review:

Sign up! Sign up! Be part of the surge. Pres. Bush needs young Republicans to volunteer for service in Iraq. He especially needs the sons and daughters of members of his administration, his appointees and of Republican members of Congress to help him fight "the enemy" in Iraq.

...

Lose the Cheetos and finish the keg, lardass. Off momma's couch, drop the game controller, and head down to the recruiter's office. Move it! Move it!

I know a whole buncha guys who still have "W-'04" stickers on their F-150s and Tahoes who are young and able-bodied enough to help our guys out. You know who you are, the ones who go around saying we should 'kill all the ragheads'. The guys with the good union jobs who wouldn't give that up for $25-grand a year and a tent in the desert, though they can talk tough over a six-pack at lunch.

Talk is cheap. Our Army and Marine Corps are at the breaking point. 'Supporting' the troops with a yellow ribbon on your pickup just won't cut it anymore. At this point, put up or shut up.

And for all you wingnut bloggers who are 'fighting the war of ideas online', the Chimp's gonna do what he's gonna do and he doesn't need cheerleaders anymore - no one's listening to you anyway, nobody believes your horseshit anymore. Time for you to trade keyboard for rifle. We need sharpshooters more than bullshitters.

If you support this war and you're not prepared to go and 'kill some ragheads', shut the fuck up and let us figure out a way to end it, you spineless turds.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Casting Call at the Brain ...

2007-01-17T20:00:00.000-05:00

So, I've been debating this for a while now, since I got back from vacation in October anyway. I've let on how crazy my real world life has been lately and I've been wondering how I'm going to blog with even more coming down the pike, namely beginning contruction on the house in a couple weeks (I do all the work myself) and finishing a book I've been trying to write for 10 years that's now 6 months late (writing novels and blogging don't mix, due to the fact I haven't written anything worth a damn, novel-wise, for the 2 1/2 years since I started blogging, though I've tried). That, plus today the Angry Old Broad informed me she will be taking an indeterminate leave of absence to deal with family matters, brings me to the point where I'll need to make an addition to the team here at the Brain.

Since I started this blog, I've approached people whom I've wanted to come aboard and ~~begged~~ asked them. I ~~harassed~~ approached people whose work I was familiar with and thought would add a unique flavor to a blog run by a couple of crusty old vets (some a bit older and crustier than others ... heh). This time I'm gonna do it a little differently.

I'm gonna open it up to you folks, readers and fellow bloggers alike. I'm looking for somebody* who can post several times a day, preferably with a military background (but not a requirement) and a political tilt (well maybe more of a steep incline) to the left (if you're already a blogger, send me your URL so we can check out your stuff). I'm looking for somebody to take up my slack while I get my more pressing shit done over the next few months and remain a permanent member of the team once I (and hopefully AOB) return.

If you're interested in joining the staff here at the Brain or have any questions, email me; Gord and I will discuss it and get back to you. I'll leave this up top for a few days. I'm looking to do the hiatus thing by the end of January so I'd like to get this squared away before then.

I'd also like to take this time to thank the Angry Old Broad for her contribution to the Brain and pray she'll return when she gets everything squared away. She's our 'mom' and our conscience. We love ya, honey. The door is always open and we'll keep your chair warm.

*The Alternate Brain is an equal opportunity blog. We don't give a shit if you're a man, woman, red, black, white, brown, green, gay, straight, bi, transgender, Catholic, Jewish, Muslim, or Spaghetti Monster worshipper. Well, if you're a Rethug you're going to the back of the bus, but other than that ...

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Explosive - Bond

2007-01-06T17:28:00.000-05:00

I don't want to hear from all you classical music purists. I love the Bond girls.

Cross-posted @ Worlds.

What I want ...

2007-01-05T18:22:00.000-05:00

*Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

As this New Yorker waits for Governor Spitzer to be seated today, and the 110th Congress later this week, as I welcome 2007 in with hope it will be better than 2006, I just wanted to remind the people, the American citizens who continually voted to enable the thieving, lying, morally bankrupt administration and rubber stamp Congress that runs this nation, how they were played for sheep. There was a formula in place, devised by people far smarter than those using it now, and all of you fell for it. Thank you very much. It makes me wonder how many of you fall for the African 'get rich quick' email schemes that litter my Inbox.

The reason I'm bringing this up now, on the first day of a new year, this New Year, is because I'm tired. I'm battle fatigued fighting the 'Information Civil War'; at least that's what I call this situation between the reality-based folks and the Right Wing Noise Machine. I've been looking back through our archives this morning, randomly stopping at posts over the past 2 1/2 years and realizing that we (here and in Left Blogtopia [y!sctp!] in general) spent a lot of time rebutting untruths and spin shoveled in by the Right.

I'm fucking tired of you folks believing everything you hear on TV as gospel truth. Don't you question anything? Or don't you care because other people's kids are dying, or other families are the ones who can't make ends meet, or you won't be around when the environment finally succumbs to all the crap we've poured all over, in, and above the Earth? You don't care what goes on as long as you get your share. As long as you have your house, your SUV, your little urchins have their video games, and you can pay the bills, fuck everybody who can't. As long as your kids ain't dying in some misbegotten war, as long as you don't have to sacrifice for the nation, who gives a fuck what they do in Washington, right? I'm sick and tired of you sheep.

It was the sheep in Germany who allowed an evil group of men to take control of a proud nation and break it; only now, 60 years later can Germans begin to hold their heads up with national pride. It was the sheep in this country, those of you who thought the Chimp was somebody 'they wanted to have a beer with', who thought the Republicans would 'keep us safer', who believed all the spin, misdirection, and lies without the slightest iota of doubt, who willingly gave up their civil rights, and were willing to give up more of them, in a cowardly attempt to 'be safe'.

I'm sick of you fucking people.

You're the ones who are jumping on our bandwagon now. The 40-odd percent of Americans who now realize the mess they've allowed to be spread all over this country and now they're all pissed they've been fooled. Thing is, a couple years from now, you'll probably be fooled again. I've seriously lost faith in the intelligence and common sense of my fellow American over the past 6 years, because the situation we're in is your fault. Seriously, how many of you possess a deed to the Brooklyn Bridge?

I remember a time when being an American meant something good in other parts of the world. I remember, in the 60s and 70s, spending summers in Europe and being treated like a celebrity just because I was an American. I remember when people used to look to this nation as an institution to emulate, something to strive for in pursuit of personal liberties and freedoms, as a nation abiding by the Rule of Law and, while not perfect, a nation of people striving for fairness for all. It pains me to visit Europe now and see signs and grafitti saying "Fuck Bush" and comparing us to the more dastardly regimes of history. Thank you for making me feel unwelcome in my ancestral home, you sorry, cowardly sheep.

I also want all you armchair generals to shut the fuck up this year. Every day my ears and intelligence are assaulted by idiots who've 'had it with the Iraqis, after all we've done for them' and we should just 'bomb the shit out of them and get it over with'. We started this, you morons. The blood spilled already is on our hands. I'm truly sorry you never got to experience combat and your only connection with it has been through Hollywood offerings. I'm truly sorry that our children fighting and dying in some desert (or jungle) somewhere makes you more of a man (or woman) and satisfies your bloodlust. I'm sorry you're that insecure as a human being, but you make me sick. It sickens me that you have such little disregard for innocent human life, people who are more like you than different, just because their skin is a different color, or worship a different God, or speak a different language. Do something with your lives to give them validation instead of finding some sort of meaning in other people's sacrifice. It is you who are responsible for the carnage, no one else, for without your cooperation, your vote, your complacency, this would never have happened.

I hope you got your rocks off at Saddam's trial and subsequent lynching, because if you think any justce was done there you, as usual, are sadly misinformed. And for all of you who are of age to serve this nation, cheerleading from the homefront doesn't qualify. If you really support the occupation in Iraq, enlist and do your part. Because you hypocrites piss me off more than the regular sheep. Playing GI Joe at the paintball range or taking your AK-47 out to shoot up junk cars doesn't qualify, so refrain from telling me what you would do in Iraq. Enlist and show me how many ragheads you're gonna kill. Otherwise shut the fuck up because I've made a resolution to put you on your ass this year. There are now 3000 U.S. troops dead in the war you wanted, either put up or shut up.

So, for 2007, I have one request for the sheep. Stay out of the fucking way. The choice to elect our representatives is not American Idol or Survivor, it is serious business for an informed public. If you're not serious about your freedoms, rights, and privileges that come from being American, stay the fuck home on Election Day. The choice of who leads the world's only superpower is not a game, not a fucking reality show. Our representatives' decisions affect not just the lives of a third of a billion people in this nation, but the lives of six billion others who don't have the right to vote in America. If you can't take it seriously, if you can't inform yourself and rely on the dog and pony show in our so-called 'free press', just stay out of it and go about your business. If you've learned anything over the past 6 years, it should be that qualification for elected office, especially the Presidency, has nothing to do with a candidate's personality.

You've made our job, those of us who actually care what happens to this nation and the world now and in the long-term, that much more difficult. We'll deal with the hardcore morons and Kool-Aid drinkers, the 18% of socio- and psycopaths, the racists who want to turn this nation into Germany 1933, but it's you sheep that give them relevance and credibilty through your inaction and apathy. We're leading, either follow or get out of the way.

The Republican Party is a criminal organization and you sheep are just passive foot soldiers. They couldn't have created this mess without you as accomplices. Make up for it this year and actually pay attention to what's happening around you and stop parroting the horseshit you hear on Fox News. We're just beginning to straighten out the mess, let us do it.

*Great thanks to our pal Ed Encho for the Hermann Göring quote.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Happy New Year

2006-12-31T07:49:00.000-05:00

Die Roten Rosen - Auld Lang Syne

Be safe and happy. Celebrate well!

Happy!

2006-12-23T17:21:00.000-05:00

Happy Holidays everyone! I don't give a damn what god you worship, may the real spirit of this season be with you and the people you care for. As my esteemed blog pardner Gord said: Pray for Peace.

...

But say a prayer,
pray for the other ones
At Christmastime it's hard,
but when you're having fun
There's a world outside your window,
and it's a world of dread and fear
Where the only water flowing
is the bitter sting of tears
And the Christmas bells that ring there
are the clanging chimes of doom
Well tonight thank God it's them
instead of you

And there won't be snow in Africa this Christmastime
The greatest gift they'll get this year is life
Where nothing ever grows
No rain or rivers flow
Do they know it's Christmastime at all?

Here's to you raise a glass for everyone
Here's to them underneath that burning sun
Do they know it's Christmastime at all?

...

~ Great thanks to Bono for doing his damndest to keep our eyes open.

And at this time, do something to help those less fortunate.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Saturday night whore ...

2006-12-23T17:19:00.000-05:00

My weekly installment (Chapter 11) of my novel The Captains is up at The Practical Press.

More whoring ...

2006-12-17T11:01:00.000-05:00

Not for me this time. I realize that since I started posting over at The Practical Press, my long-winded chapters really glom up the page. Most of the folks who submit stuff are short story writers and that gets sandwiched in between my crap. So, to that end, below are links to the short stories and musical creations in between my saga of war and intrigue in the 22nd Century. Good stuff and I urge you to click on the links.

Farquiar, the Dragon.

The Preacher's Son

Small Town Boys - Chapter 39

I got a hold on you tonight.

Ode to Lost Flakes

Airplane Story

University. Of Massachusetts, please.

Just Like Looking Through Heaven. Or something.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Germany '03

2006-12-14T18:19:00.000-05:00

I was rummaging through pics for something else and I came across these. Two shots from the heights surrounding my family home in Hauenstein, Germany.

My lovely wife and I in Rothenburg ob der Tauber.

Click to embiggen.

Paris '05

2006-12-11T06:03:00.000-05:00

The last time we were in Paris. We've changed a lot in 5 years but we still love 'our city'.

Click to embiggen

Okay, the trip down Memory Lane is over. Other shit to follow.

Paris '00

2006-12-10T17:00:00.000-05:00

We looked so young then. Left to right: Me, Mrs. F, my cousin Birgit, her husband Peter. Birgit and Peter live in Germany and met us in Paris to celebrate Valentine's Day, 2000.

Click to embiggen.

And an aside, we are at Le Bistrot du 7eme on Boulevard de LaTour Mauberg. Our favorite eatery on the Left Bank.

Paris '99

2006-12-10T15:23:00.000-05:00

A blast from the past, before ~~digital cameras~~ I got a digital camera. 2 shots La Tour Eiffel from Eiffel Park, one of our favorite places in the whole world.

Mrs. Fixer on 'her'* bridge, the Pont des Arts.

As always, click to embiggen.

*It is said that everyone who lives in or visits Paris has a favorite bridge. As there are about 20 crossing the Siene. The Mrs. and I fall in love all over again on the Pont des Arts (well, we fall in love again all over Paris) every time we're there.

What I'm trying to do ...

2006-12-10T14:08:00.000-05:00

I started this a few months ago and haven't really done anything with it because ... well ... I been crazy. But I've had this idea to get a buncha bloggers together, not just the crew here, and have them post original content, or cross-posts from their own blogs, and tie the blogs together in a loose ring identified by this button:

Details here. I really don't care the direction it takes and I'd like it if it moves away from political or veterans' issues.

If you and your blog would like to become part of AltBrainNet, just email me and I'll send you an invite and the AltBrainNet blogroll code for your blog.

As always, no rules, no censorship.

Under Construction 2

2006-12-10T14:05:00.000-05:00

Okay, I'm done. Just clean up the dust and we can move in.

Sunrise on the Med

2006-12-10T08:10:00.000-05:00

Click pix to embiggen.

Under Construction

2006-12-09T16:44:00.000-05:00

Now that I've decided to get moving on this place, some housekeeping is in order. Changes to come.

If it's Saturday ...

2006-12-09T14:55:00.000-05:00

I must be whoring another chapter of my novel The Captains at The Practical Press.

Maritime art

2006-12-09T14:54:00.000-05:00

Since Gord brought up the subject of crusing, it reminded me of a book I bought while aboard MS Noordam a couple months back. It is a compendium of the works, and the stories behind them in the words of the artist, of maritime artist Stephen Card, commissioned by Holland America Line. You can only buy it through Holland America but I figured I'd introduce you to his stuff. If you're into maritime art, you know Mr. Card already. If you're not, go visit his gallery.

MS Rijndam entering the Upper New York Bay in 1953.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

On the homefront ...

2006-12-09T14:51:00.000-05:00

Seems the extended deployment of Guard and Reserve troops is having an effect* on more people than just their immediate families:

WASHINGTON - The deployment of thousands of police officers to Iraq, Afghanistan and other military reserve posts is costing local law enforcement agencies up to $1.2 billion per year, according to a new analysis of Justice Department data.

The review, prepared for a law enforcement trade journal by Justice Department statistician Matthew Hickman, found that the number of military call-ups is outstripping the pace of new hires at a time when agencies are struggling to find new recruits, and as crime is ticking upward after several years of historically low crime rates.

...

I did 2 years Active Reserve duty once my active-duty hitch was over and I know the part the Guard and Reserves play in their local communities. As you see with the cops, this hurts people who have no direct connection to the military and the war.

...

The problem is particularly acute in small police agencies, which often have struggled to fill gaps in patrol coverage left by cops who have been called to military duty, according to Hickman's analysis, just published in Police Chief magazine.

...

It's also tough on employers* who are obligated to keep a Reservist's job for them while on active duty. While I support the law, it does cause hardship when the Guard and Reserve are used interchangably with active duty troops.

WASHINGTON - The number of reservists and National Guard members who say they have been reassigned, lost benefits or been fired from civilian jobs after returning from duty has increased by more than 70% over the past six years.

...

Retired Marine lieutenant general Dennis McCarthy, executive director of the Reserve Officers Association, a private advocacy group, acknowledged the deployments can be difficult for employers, particularly small companies. "That burden is an acceptable cost when it's compared to the value of reserve service to our country," he said.

What will happen, is Guardsmen and Reservists will be denied employment in the future because of their military commitment and obligation. I can't run a business if I know one or more of my people will be gone for up to 18 months, come home for 6, and then leave for another year and a half.

This is what you get when you put incompetents, amateurs, and morons in charge of the world's strongest military. I dare anyone to tell me our military isn't broken. Like the underreporting of the violence in Iraq, I'll bet you anything they're hiding the fact our Army and Marine Corps are worse off than any of us expect.

*Great thanks to the lovely Pam Spaulding for the links.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Insurance

2006-12-03T15:32:00.000-05:00

My good pal Scout Prime was on my ass about this first thing this morning (as well as a whole bunch of other bloggers I see ... heh ... she's a pit bull).

St. Paul Travelers Cos. Inc., Louisiana's largest commercial insurance provider, plans to cancel all its commercial property policies in the New Orleans area next year, sparking fears that other insurers will follow and slow the region's economic recovery.

While the St. Paul, Minn., company refused to say how many commercial policies will be affected or specify where the cuts will be in South Louisiana, two insurance brokers who were briefed by the company this week say Travelers will not renew any property insurance for businesses in Orleans, Jefferson, Plaquemines, St. Bernard and eastern St. Tammany parishes. Cuts will also affect individual businesses in other parts of South Louisiana, including St. Charles and St. John the Baptist parishes.

...

I showed this to Mrs. F, an executive in Japan's largest insurance company,and she agrees that other insurers will most likely follow suit. Any excuse to limit exposure. The insurance companies will all jump on this statement by the insurance commissioner:

...

"They cited the state of the rebuilding of our levee system as the primary reason for their decision," [State Insurance Commissioner Jim] Donelon said.

...

The one to blame for this is your Commander-in-Chief and what he's done to FEMA and the entire emergency management infrastructure of the federal government. Don't expect anything to happen in NOLA until the Corps of Engineers rebuilds the levees to withstand Cat 4 and 5 storms. The insurers won't risk their bottom line to underwrite properties that can be washed away as easily as they were during Katrina. Let's hope something can be done before too much time passes and NOLA becomes nothing but a fond memory.

And just an observation. I give Mrs. F the willies when I can speak of combat, death, and destruction in a cool and detached manner. She does the same thing to me when she can talk about the value of a human life or property in purely clinical, actuarial, bottom line terms.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

We need our pound of flesh

2006-11-10T20:08:00.000-05:00

A lot of folks, more than I thought would, are saying impeachment might not be a good idea when the 110th Congress starts in January. They say, and I understand the point, that impeachment is not good for the country at this time, when we are in disarray and we have some really serious issues to deal with. Listen to me, impeachment has to be considered and acted upon. Why? We need our pound of flesh.

The people of the United States have to see that disregard for the laws of the land, the disregard for the Constitution, and the disregard of the international community cannot happen without paying a price. Just as you and I have to pay when we break the law, so must these assholes.

We cannot perpetuate the meme that because you're rich and connected you get to walk. We see it often enough with celebrities and the wealthy when they run afoul of the law, when they are given the benefit of the doubt because of who they are or how much money they throw around. This is far more serious.

George W. Bush is guilty of criminal acts in the United States and crimes against humanity in the international arena. Can we shrug and discount impeachment when the process was used against Bill Clinton for getting a blowjob? What does that say about the imeachment process itself? What does that say about our priorities as a nation? What does it say about us as human beings when we view an extramarital affair with more disdain than the murder of 3000 of our troops and countless Iraqis?

Internationally, impeachment would send a strong message to our allies and the world that we realize the mistake we made and are doing our damnedest to correct it. If we contain Bush for the next 2 years and then let him ride off into the sunset, we would send the message that we didn't care about the damage wrought in our name at his hand. Impeaching Bush would be a tangible act of contrition that would go a long way to restoring our credibility on the international stage.

No, ladies and germs, impeachment is a necessity for us to move on. The rule of law, shit on for the past 6 years, has to be reestablished and there is no better place to start than with the man who is responsible for this mess.

I want my pound of flesh.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Dave

2006-10-22T08:33:00.000-04:00

Looks like it's a 'Dave Mejias Weekend' here at the Brain. The New York Times*:

For Congress In Nassau

October 22, 2006

Elections in the Third Congressional District, which covers half of Nassau County and a slice of Suffolk along the South Shore, are usually yawners, with Democrats meekly stepping up to be stomped upon by the Republican incumbent, Peter King. He has not had a close race since his first, in 1992.

This year might be different. The Democrat David Mejias, is waging a lively campaign, brandishing his credentials as a member of the Nassau County Legislature and seeking to ride what he says is a general wave of disgust with Washington, with Congress and with President Bush.

Mr. King is the last Republican standing in Long Island's Congressional delegation, and judging from his lonely pugilistic persona, he just might like it that way. Many voters warm to his belligerence, believing it denotes independence and truthfulness.

Those in its receiving end of his rhetorical bombardments are surely less charmed. He has blisteringly belittled many, from constituents criticizing Mr. Bush's Social Security plan to Catholic clergy members who condemned Mr. King's immigration bill and got a lecture in return about pedophile priests and an admonition to go to confession.

(The Times was also in Mr. King's cross hairs, for writing - treasonously, he says - about a secret terrorist-surveillance program.)

We do not support Mr. King, but not because he wants us in jail. Our decision has to do with temperament, effectiveness and differences on issues from taxes and Iraq to abortion and immigration.

Mr. King does not get everything wrong. As chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, Mr. King has been a vocal defender of New York's interests in anti-terrorism funding. But he has also stood in zealous opposition to abortion rights and in support of Mr. Bush's harmful tax-cutting policies, and he has been an enabler of Mr. Bush's go-it-alone defiance of Congress, courts and the Constitution in waging the war on terrorism.

Mr. King also lost us with his singular devotion to hard-line immigration enforcement measures, particularly the bill he co-sponsored that would make felons of people giving charity to illegal immigrants.

Mr. Mejias is one of the few bright bulbs in the low-watt Nassau Legislature. He helped to create a bill of rights for domestic workers in Nassau, requiring that employers give them written statement of their rights under federal and state law. He has a good environmental record, particularly in efforts to preserve open space, and has been an important ally of County Executive Thomas Suozzi in restoring fiscal discipline to Nassau government. He promises to be a refreshing change in the Third District, and we endorse him.

*Via email from the Mejias campaign. I'll try to find a link later.

Update:

Peter King Watch has it.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Proud to be an American ...

2006-10-22T08:31:00.000-04:00

Or, Yankee Go Home. Seen on the main drag in Horta, Azores:

Cross-posted at the Brain.

9/11

2006-09-11T05:15:00.000-04:00

[I think I might have posted this before. It's a letter my wife wrote to my family in Germany a few days after 9/11, recounting her experience and to get it down as some sort of record:]

14 September 2001

I wanted to tell you what has happened here, from my vantage point. This is not to scare you, but to let you know what I have been through and that I have made it out ok.

My office is directly across the street from the World Trade Center. As Birgit [my cousin who'd visited NYC 6 weeks before] may have told you, my office faces the Trade Center, and the Towers are the only thing I truly see from there. If you have seen any of the local maps, they refer to the World Financial Center and the American Express and Merrill Lynch Buildings. My office was on the 44th floor of the Merrill Lynch Building.

I arrived at work at 06:40 hours and was preparing to leave the office at 09:15 with two co-workers to visit a client in New Jersey. We were to have left the building at 09:15 to get the car to drive there. At 08:45, the office was quiet as not everyone had arrived for the day. We heard, what I thought was the sonic boom of a military plane. [Fixer] and I had heard the same sound on one of our cruises when a Coast Guard plane "buzzed" the ship. The next thing after the boom, the building shook. Since all of our windows faced the towers, someone began to cry out, "My God, the plane is going to hit the Tower". Everyone raced to the windows to open the remaining blinds and I was no exception. I watched, in horror as the tail end of the first plane disappeared into the North Tower. At the same time it was disappearing, pieces of the fuselage were falling out of the plane while a huge fireball was coming out of the opposite side. We all stood there for about 45 seconds in total disbelief, thinking this was not real and rather a stunt for a movie script. At this time, I still was unaware the plane was a commercial jet and not a military plane. We believed this was a "freak accident".

My Vice President (the big boss of the department) was of sound mind enough to call out for everyone to evacuate the office. I grabbed my things and ran out, following my co workers through the suite of our office space. We considered this an emergency and walked down the entire 44 floors of the building, only to reach street level, almost directly under the burning North Tower. It appeared to me that my company were the only ones on the stairs. We have over 225 people working for the company, and with everyone coming out at the same time, the exit area was getting crowded. We had some people who had heart conditions. We tried to help them as much as possible down the stairs and out of the building.

We kept moving outside, to allow everyone an area to exit the building. While walking outside, I started to see pieces of the burning building floating down, seeming like a feather, until it impacted the street, and exploded like fireballs on the pavement.

I passed two people, who had apparently been pedestrians on the street, who were struck by burning debris. They were burned so badly, their bones were exposed. They were burned almost beyond recognition.

After being on street level, not more than 2-3 minutes, I kept saying , "We shouldn't be here. We are too close to the area." Just after I said this, I heard the second sonic boom, and the second plane impacted the South Tower, and debris again began to rain down on us. At this time, I was certain we were under attack by terrorists. All of this transpired in just 18 minutes.

We ran through my office building towards the Hudson River, on the West side of "downtown" Manhattan. I kept my wits together enough to know we had to continue to get away, moving North of the area. People were in a panic and many of us knew people who worked in the towers. One of the girls who worked in my accounting department had a boyfriend who worked in the Tower, apparently on the floor that was struck first. She was paralyzed with horror.

In the midst of all the confusion, I was able to locate my two immediate bosses. We stayed together and continued to walk North and away from the area. We continued about 15-20 blocks on foot as there were no vehicles to be seen with the exception of emergency vehicles.

We soon saw a taxi cab, that was locked with the driver standing by and watching with horror of his own. We were able to convince him to drive us to Penn Station. We were trying to get on a train to get out of the City as soon as possible.

It took us a long time driving, but we made it to Penn Station by 9:40. I made my way inside and called [Fixer] to tell him I was alive. It was now 0945. People were in a daze trying to figure out what was going on. No one that was in the Midtown area knew exactly what was happening, but they knew it was not good.

There was a train scheduled to leave Penn Station for my home at 10:15. My Manager and I were able to get on the train. We were packed into the train with no room, all hoping against hope to get out of the City.

At 10:30, an announcement was made that the train was cancelled; Penn Station was closed; and we would have to exit the train and get out of Penn Station, only to have to go out on the streets of New York City.

I was trapped in a City under attack, with no hopes of getting home in the immediate future.

My boss and I started walking away from Penn Station in case it was the next to be hit. We were also only two blocks away from the Empire State Building. We feared this may be the next target.

[Rumors were running rampant in the hours following the attack and if you listened to the news, bombs were going off everywhere ~ F]

There was no traffic in the streets because the City had effectively been closed. It was surreal to walk in the streets of New York City with no sounds of cars, trucks, busses or overhead planes. People were wandering aimlessly, walking in the middle of the major streets of NYC, without knowing what to do or where to go.

We made our way to 42nd street, and watched, on the large exterior televisions as the Towers collapsed.

All businesses and stores had closed by this time; however; there had been people working on construction sites who had radios on. They allowed us to listen to the news. We walked a little further and stopped by a truck who was stopped with his door open allowing us to listen to a bit more of the news as we continued to walk on.

We attempted to find a hotel to stay in, however, there were none to be found, nor did I really want to think about spending the night in the City.

After wandering for hours, we were told that one of the bridges leading out of the City and towards home would be opened to pedestrians. This was on the East side of town, and "uptown" from where we were. We continued to walk towards the bridge among the masses of people just wandering. We were on a "mission" to get home and out of the City, no matter how far we had to walk.

After a while, we were now at 53rd Street and 3rd Avenue, almost on the East River, and at the midpoint of the island. The subways began working again and we were among the first to get on and get safely out of Manhattan. It took another few hours before I finally made it home at 16:30.

We have remained in the house for the past few days, glued to the television, trying to get as much news about what is happening as possible. The death toll is expected to rise to almost 10,000, if not more. Entire companies of 1500 people or more have been lost. We have no information whether my building, which is considered to be in "ground zero", will ever be able accessible again or not. Telephones are sporadic coming into and out of NY. We are awake now, Friday, since 05:30.

There have been several arrests overnight, where they believe there were three different groups, attempting to get on planes out of Kennedy airport and LaGuardia airport in NY, who were going to try to do more damage.

The World Trade Center was truly a world in itself. There were businesses from at least 15 different countries who had companies and people in the Towers. Japan had 31 companies, most of which were clients of my company. Deutsche Bank had offices there and 4 German nationals are confirmed dead with numerous others listed as currently missing.

What you see on television, if you have been watching, is nothing compared to having been there. It still seems like a bad dream, however, it is not. I have had a lot of pain in my legs from all of the stairs I walked down, and all of the additional walking, however, I sit here and say, "thank goodness I am here to feel the pain".

The people of New York and the surrounding states have pulled together for the rescue efforts. We will get past this and we will come back bigger and better than we were, once we have had the opportunity to grieve and heal.

I wanted you to know that I am ok. That is all for now.

We send our love to you all.

[As you can see, not long after New York's blackest day, we, and I speak for most NYers, were already looking to the future. We are an irrepressable bunch and as history has proven, 5 years later we are back in stride, back to our old form. I am proud, honored, and privileged to call myself a born and bred New Yorker and will be until I die, regardless of where I choose to live. ~ Fixer]

Cross-posted at the Brain.

On career women ...

2006-08-27T08:28:00.000-04:00

A lot of the ladies in Left Blogtopia (y!sctp!) have been on this for a couple days, and Texas Jaye does a great point/counterpoint on this stupid article about why men shouldn't marry career women.

Point: Don't Marry Career Women
Counterpoint: Don't Marry An Asshole.

I figured, since I'm a man married to an exremely successful career woman, I should add my two cents. Simple, for these morons to understand.

The guys who have a problem with successful women have a problem with themselves first. If you're a 'stuff' kinda guy, one of those 'he who dies with the most toys wins', find yourself a subservient woman. Find yourself a girl who can live with being one of your toys. One of those who doesn't mind being an accessory to you, much as women accessorize their outfits with belts, bags, and shoes. An independent, successful woman won't put up with that attitude for long.

If the amount of money you make is a competition for you, marry a girl who doesn't mind working for minimum wage. Your little weenie is gonna take a serious whack when she starts making more than you do. Same thing if she reaches a higher position in the corporation than you do.

If you think that once you're married, your new wife should suddenly turn into your maid, find a woman who wants to stay home and pick up after your lazy ass. A career woman will come home from a hard day's work the same way you do, tired and pissed. Expecting her, after a full day of work, to start cleaning the house is selfish and stupid, and it's gonna bite you in the ass eventually.

If you're a guy who subscribes to the doctrine that your woman whould stay home and spit out kids, find a woman who wants that life. If you try and force a woman to do what she's not willing to, it will also come back to bite you in the ass.

If you have visions of grandeur, that you are the patriarch and what you say goes, period, find an American Christian woman. A woman who's a mover and shaker in her particular field ain't gonna come home from work and say 'yes, dear, whatever you want', not for long anyway.

Marry a career woman if you want a partner. Marry her if you want someone who can think on her feet, be able to socialize with anyone from the Hell's Angels to the Rockefellers, and stand her ground in adverse situations. Marry her if you don't care she makes more than you do, and actually take pride in her success. Marry her if you don't need her to make you a man, this means you Hummer and sports car drivers, and she doesn't need you to make her life complete. Marry her because you want to share the housework duties. Marry because you want to share your lives, not because you need each other to fill some little space on your trophy shelf.

I'm married to a beautiful, intelligent, independent woman who makes 10 times what I do, hobnobs with the presidents and CEOs of Fortune 500 companies and international conglomerates, and has a global reputation in her field. Mention her name from Tokyo to Paris and it will be recognized. Guess what? She doesn't need me. She wants to be with me, has been for 17 years, and I like that. She doesn't need me for a source of income or anything else. She wants to be with me for who I am, the kind of man I am, not for 'stuff' reasons, and that is a very good feeling because if she wanted she could get any man she set her sights on.

Don't marry a career woman? My ass. If you're fortunate enough for a career woman to take a shine to you, the onus is on you to be a real man because career women can tell the difference.

And let me just add this disclaimer after the fact. I do not mean to say women who are stay at home moms are any less of a woman than a career woman. The job of raising kids is one of the hardest jobs going and if the husband is a lazy bastid, there will be problems too. The Mrs. and I were of the same mind regarding kids, neither of us wanted them, and we hashed that all out before we got married. We were well aware of each other's expectations when we did say 'I do'. That doesn't mean it's been all bliss either but when two people honestly love and respect each other, anything can be worked out. We've changed and grown with each other and that's what makes for an excellent marriage. Marriage is about genuine compromise whether the woman stays at home and raises kids or is a big macher in business.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Driving

2006-08-20T07:30:00.000-04:00

Regulars here [Fixer & Gordon] know how I hate dealing with stupid, shitty drivers on my commute. This morning, Aunty Annti has some commandments for the road. Very good:

...

3. NO MORE CITY TRUCKS. Y'all know the ones that I mean. Anybody who puts too much chrome, oversized shiny rims, ground effects, air dams or scoops, or sparkly paint & airbrushing on a pickup truck, or even THINKS about dropping it to the ground and using those extremely useless flat tires around the giant rims --- should be pulled off of the road and pantsed in public, so that their teenaged kids won't be humiliated by them anymore, and they will finally have to admit that pickup trucks are not now, nor have they ever been, intended to impress hoochies at the club, nor are they designed to stand in for sports cars or bling-bling. IT'S A TRUCK, GAWDDAMMIT --- SHOW IT THE RESPECT THAT A TRUCK IS DUE, AND STOP MAKING IT LOOK LIKE A LITTLE DRAG-QUEEN BITCH OF A VEHICLE.

...

Cross-posted at F & G.

Are you a bigot?

2006-08-13T14:06:00.000-04:00

If you voted for or supported Ned Lamont, Peter King says you are. Dave Mejias' talks about that at dKos:

...

Still, Peter King doesn't think he's in danger to the same fate as Lieberman. You know why? Because, he says, "fortunately, [his district] is not composed of the left-wing bigots who went after Joe Lieberman."

So, if you supported Ned Lamont, Peter King thinks you're a bigot. If you are against the failed policies of the Bush administration, Peter King thinks you're a bigot. If you think America needs a change in leadership, Peter King thinks you're a bigot.

...

Support Dave in his race to unseat King in NY-03 (What's so bad about Peter King? Click here to find out).

Dave's ActBlue page here.

Dave for America.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

The Alternate Brain Network

2006-08-13T09:20:00.000-04:00

Blogs wearing this badge are part of the Alternate Brain Network.

Alternate Brain - Political speak from the Left. Republicans and the Religious Right receive no quarter.

Fixer & Gordon - Two ~~old~~ mature mechanics swap bench racing stories and auto tips.

Worlds - Creative stuff, sports, babes, and cross-posts galore.

American Progressive Party - Just in case ...

42 - "We're going to get lynched aren't we?" he whispered. "It was a tough assignment," said Deep Thought mildly. "Forty-two!" yelled Loonquawl. "Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?" "I checked it very thoroughly," said the computer, "and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the question is."

Station Charon - The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out...without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest,insane,intolerable. -H.L.Mencken

Revolt Today - Analyzing politics, society, the world. Come and join the debate!

Become part of the Network

Do you want the badge on your blog?

Requirements:

Political blogs: Must be Democrat, Progressive, or Liberal. If you support Dem candidates like Joe Lieberman, don't bother.

Other blogs: Must be devoted to a subject (ex. - automotive, knitting, sports) or creative (ex. - photography, writing, art).

Email me with your site URL and I'll consider it. If I like your blog I'll list it in the blogroll (displayed here and at the Brain) and send you the script for the badge. Yes, I know it's subjective but tough shit. ~~I'll also be promoting posts from member blogs here if they pique my interest.~~

Update - Saturday 9 Dec 06:

Any member blogs/bloggers will have posting rights here. As with all my blogs, no rules and no censorship.

AltBrainNet

Solidarity

Travels ...

Good news from Iraq ...

Fuck them too ...

Chart shamelessly stolen from Pygalgia.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Vichy Dems Cave Again

Gulags 2

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Springtime for Chimpy

Great thanks to Skippy for the ASZ link.Cross-posted at the Brain.

God who?

Great thanks to C & L for the links.Cross-posted at the Brain.

The Republican Perpetual Hate Machine

Rudy: Just Another Republican 9/11 Fear Pimp

From an Angry Soldier

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Purple Hearts

Great thanks to POP for the link.Cross-posted at the Brain.

Cho Seung-Hui: A New American Idol

If It Bleeds, It Leads

St. Thomas

St. Maarten

Click pics to embiggen.

Tortola

Grand Turk

Lazy Day

Click pics to embiggen

Leaving Manhattan 2

Click pics to embiggen

Leaving Manhattan

Click on pics to embiggen.

Requiem For A Charlatan

Jor Klein: Monday morning quarterback

The Practical Press Awards 2006

The good, the bad, and the whoring ...

*See, I do read my email ... mostly.

Neocons Foiled - For Now

The Fourth Estate

Cross-posted at Worlds.

John McCain Walking Through the Streets Bagh-dad in the Rain

AltBrainNet

Hightower Video

Rage

Sunday morning Bond

Shine

Victory

Join the surge ...

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Casting Call at the Brain ...

Explosive - Bond

Cross-posted @ Worlds.

What I want ...

*Great thanks to our pal Ed Encho for the Hermann Göring quote.Cross-posted at the Brain.

Happy New Year

Happy!

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Saturday night whore ...

More whoring ...

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Germany '03

Click to embiggen.

Paris '05

Click to embiggen

Paris '00

Click to embiggen.

Paris '99

As always, click to embiggen.

What I'm trying to do ...

Under Construction 2

Sunrise on the Med

Click pix to embiggen.

Under Construction

If it's Saturday ...

Maritime art

MS Rijndam entering the Upper New York Bay in 1953.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

On the homefront ...

*Great thanks to the lovely Pam Spaulding for the links.Cross-posted at the Brain.

Great thanks to Skippy for the ASZ link.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

Great thanks to C & L for the links.
Cross-posted at the Brain.

Great thanks to POP for the link.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

*Great thanks to our pal Ed Encho for the Hermann Göring quote.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

*Great thanks to the lovely Pam Spaulding for the links.

Cross-posted at the Brain.

*Via email from the Mejias campaign. I'll try to find a link later.

Update:

Peter King Watch has it.