Every Man (and woman and child) For Themselves

Governments are created and maintained at taxpayer expense to protect and serve the public, right? If they don't fulfill their end of the bargain then why the hell do we send our tax dollars to them? Or pay any attention to them at all?

Last year's hurricane season was vicious and today marks the start of this year's season. The gulf states have decided to scare people into helping themselves :

"This save-yourselves approach comes after government agencies were overwhelmed by pleas for help after last year's storms and strongly criticized as not responding swiftly or thoroughly enough to the public need. Now, officials have said repeatedly, only the elderly, the poor and the disabled should count on the government to help them escape a hurricane or endure its immediate aftermath."

Now I'm very self reliant and have tools and supplies and back up strategies for any emergency. I'd urge anybody to do the same. But this crap from government spokeflacks is wrong on all counts. First of all it's obvious that this so-called helpful scare tactic is merely announcing in advance that they ain't going to do shit for you if a hurricane hits. It's just cover-your-ass pretension so if another Katrina hits and they screw up again they can say "hey, we warned you, right?"

Also a lot of people just can't prepare very well. No resources, time or abilities. Sorry, losers. Guess it's good for the gene pool. And how are the authorities going to differentiate between their favored citizens who they'll help and the ones they'll ignore? Background checks?

Just more evidence of governmental ineptitude and irrelevance. The prevailing attitude at all levels is increasingly magisterial and disdainful and about as useful as their admonition to stock up on duct tape and plastic.

"The problem is, these yahoos have managed an ugly trick. They have turned criticism of the policies of Bastards in Suits into criticism of The People in Uniform Getting Shot At. This, of course, is completely wrong, as one can easily tell the difference between the Bastards in Suits and The People in Uniform Getting Shot At. One group is in Suits, and Not Getting Shot At, while another is in Uniform, and Getting Shot At. Please, try to grasp this. Not the same.

There is a flip side. Some people confuse supporting the Bastards in Suits for supporting The People in Uniform Getting Shot At. This is, again, ridiculous. If the history of modern warfare has taught us anything, it's that the Bastards in Suits spend an awful lot of time working the kinks out of plans involving The People in Uniform dying unpleasantly. They often screw that up. When they do screw up, it is incumbent upon Bastards in Suits to suffer criticism and fix the situation, as by comparison The People in Uniform are suffering shattered skulls, missing limbs and death. Which is, on my scale, exponentially more traumatic than criticism.

Some people even seem confused on how we are criticizing the Bastards in Suits. The Bastards have a job to do. They are not doing it. Period. Tommy Franks recently trotted out the classic bit of misdirection, attacking critics of Donald Rumsfeld:

"I don't care about your politics. I don't. Don Rumsfeld is an American patriot."

Yes, well, that's lovely. But we're not criticizing his patriotism. We're criticizing his job performance. One of the great mysteries of the last six years was how and when the Bush Administration turned public policy into Special Olympics. "Oh, I know Donny knocked over all the hurdles, but HE LOVES THE RACE, so you SHUT YOUR FILTHY, CYNICAL MOUTH." Jesus H. Christ."

More at Kung Fu Monkey

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Seperated at birth?


new head spook


loathsome killer from RoboCop

Bush is in trouble. Take cover.

Here's the problem we face. Most people just want to get on with their lives. We all have hopes for the future and work hard to live our dreams. Our work drains us, family and friendships take up a lot of energy, the bills need to be paid, we all have health issues. Probably for most people there isn't much time to pay attention to politics.

"Bush is in deep trouble. That means we will have to bear whatever dodge he uses in his attempt to escape accountability. They all duck responsibility the same way. They get a hold on our destinies. They use our lives as foils for the practice of their ideology."

But despotic scumbags have a way about them that won't allow others around them to just live their lives. They're constantly scheming and plotting to insert themselves and their designs into our existence. They're always on the attack, always planning several moves ahead, attempting to keep others confused while they manipulate events.

After 9/11 we know what the criminals are capable of and willing to do. They put the pedal to the metal with their agenda of world control. Now that their orchestrated nightmare is coming under fire from all directions it's an absolute certainty that they will pull another 9/11 on us. Jerry Mazza from Online Journal thinks it will go nuclear this time:

"In fact, the real danger here is that an administration in danger of extinction itself for its wars, its financial bungling, its corruption, its catastrophic Katrina, its trillions in tax cuts for the rich and subsequent debt, its utterly inhumane cuts to social services, in short, its horrible five years . . . the real threat is that this administration will use this go-real nuclear holocaust to blame on Al Qaeda, and get itself off the hook and hanging platform, and elevate national terror into a national state of emergency, eliminating all democracy, with a call for martial law, under Der Bush & Company"

I agree. When the synthetic "terror" event or events happen, it has to set the stage for the US arsenal to unleash it's own nuclear capabilities.

Of course, shilling-for-the-fascists websites like Newsmax and WorldNetDaily have been priming the Al Queda pump for years. Just like in the minutes after 9/11, the controlled media will jump on the Fanatical Muslim angle and sadly most overworked and fearful people will believe it. And we will be manipulated by our own government using our own tax money yet one more time.

Like it or not the politics will be forced down our throats.

Babies and the Incubators, Again

Back in 1990 after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the Kuwaiti government hired the PR company Hill and Knowlton to plead it's case. H&K then decided to make shit up and thus was born the infamous Baby Incubator Fraud:

"[They] first coached a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, identified only at the time as Naira, to testify before Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers remove Kuwaiti babies from hospital respirators. Naira claimed to be a refugee who had been working as a volunteer in a Kuwaiti hospital throughout the first few weeks of the Iraqi occupation. She said that she had seen them take babies out of the incubators, take the incubators, and leave the babies ``on the cold floor to die.''
Naira's emotional testimony riveted human rights organizations, the news mediums, and the Nation. That incident was cited by six Members of the U.S. Senate as reasons to go to war with Iraq."

The propaganda effort worked but later the entire episode was exposed as an outright lie and the girl turned out to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US. No matter that it was all just a staged stunt to sway people's opinions, it helped to pave the way for all the misery and death to follow. They gave those emotional chains a big, hard yank.

Now comes a somewhat similar lying tactic in this slow-motion-trainwreck lead up to war on Iran. Flying around the giant neocon echo chamber is this false assertion that the Iranian parliament passed a law that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims. It was supposedly on Drudge but it's been removed. As it was from here, the supposed originator.

Removed for good reason, as Juan Cole very ably demonstrates.
Yanking the chains again.
As he puts it, "The whole thing is a steaming crock."

Polls taken by SurveyUSA show that only in Idaho, Wyoming and Utah there are majorities that don't want to see Sockpuppet behind bars.
seen at Whiskey Bar

The Deadly Southern Threat

Good God! There's an outlaw country that's started to enrich uranium!
The government caused tremendous worldwide outrage in 2004 when it refused unrestricted inspections by the International Atomic Energy Association, arguing that providing full access to its state-of-the-art centrifuges would put it at risk of industrial espionage.
As if!
Likely story!
It's nuclear program began during a 1964-85 military dictatorship, and the ruling junta had secret plans to test an atomic bomb!
It has the world's 6th largest supply of uranium reserves!

When will we wake up to this menace?


INVADE BRAZIL NOW!

Crooks And Liars Hacked?

Quite a complex hack, if true.

Nuclear Proliferation

The big brouhaha over Iran and it's determination to enrich uranium for it's nuclear energy program is a phoney, manufactured crisis. The fascist push for war has nothing to do with the enrichment program and everything to do with the the proposed Iranian oil bourse that will trade in euros instead of dollars. Not only is the criminal cabal lying about their real motives, they're lying concerning the spread of nuclear weapons.

The nuclear non proliferation treaty has 3 tenets - non proliferation, disarmament and the right of all nation states to pusue nuclear energy. The criminals in Washington have violated all three terms of the agreement.

Iran has every right to do what they're doing under the terms of the treaty. The country wants to exploit it's plentiful reserves of U308 and has at least 10 uranium mines. It's interesting to note that before 1979 while the Shah reigned, France's sale of nuclear plants and technology to Iran was supported by the United States. Now the Russians are completing those same plants that were left unfinished. Just like Saddam with his close relationship with US criminals decades ago, Iran has been magically transformed into a world threat.

So what if Iran gets into the bomb making business? Most scientists think they're years away from building one crude one. They aren't a threat at all and they're surrounded by known nuclear states. Besides, the NPT clearly states that if a signee is overtly threatened by a known nuclear power, namely what the fascists in Washington are doing, that signee can bow out and go nuclear themselves.
"Article X states that any state can withdraw from the treaty if they feel that "extraordinary events", for example a perceived threat, force them to do so." (wikipedia)

But the biggest hypocrisy is the cabal's position on non proliferation. Wringing their hands and wailing that the world shouldn't have more kids on the block with nukes, the US has secretly made deals to let other countries have and use the bomb.
America currently has about 500 nukes in europe. "Nato has earmarked nearly a third of the forward deplyed weapons in europe for use by the air forces of non nuclear NATO countries, a violation of the Non Proliferation Treaty's (NPT) main objective." source



So add Germany, Italy, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands to the nuclear club. And those are the countries that we know of that have the authority to use American nuclear weapons, there could be more. If the US has done this, we should assume that Russia and China did it also with their allies and neighbors. Add Israel, Pakistan and India, and perhaps a dozen others with the resources and capabilities to initiate crash programs.

The formerly clear cut distinction between the have and have not nations is getting very, very blurry. Something to remember when the criminal scum stand in front of us and threaten Iran in hypocritical black and white terms.

Do It For The Homeland

I'm fully aware that some people who read this article in the WaPo about how women should constantly perceive themselves in a "pre conceptional" condition might think it's sound advice. After all, taking vitamin supplements, not smoking and other healthy behavior is a good thing, right?

"New federal guidelines ask all females capable of conceiving a baby to treat themselves -- and to be treated by the health care system -- as pre-pregnant, regardless of whether they plan to get pregnant anytime soon."

The federal guidelines related in the article are to help prevent unhealthy pregnancies. But what's the matter with women taking care of their own bodies for their own health's sake? Healthier women will translate to healthier babies, so why the hell does the government have to couch it in terms of a hypothetical pregnancy?

Could it be that our failing health care system and rising infant mortality rates are factors? That this incomprehensibly expensive and rotten system has to try to push the main burden and responsibility of it's failures on the people who try to use it? Nah.

Just like abortion, what first starts out trying to appear like caring winds up being a control issue. Women aren't baby factories. What a woman chooses to do with her body is her business, period, end of discussion. What's next from the government, criminal penalties for a woman who has more than one beer? Fines for being overweight? Jail time for not constantly fretting about her preconception duty to the Homeland?

The New Samizdat

Blah3 has a good observation about of what's been happening to the media in this country:

"The free press in this country has been utterly destroyed by the Bush administration, and they've done it without taking the usual extraordinary steps that most totalitarian regimes resort to.
When the issue of press freedom has been brought up in the past, a common response from the Right has been along the lines of 'No newspapers are being shut down. No TV networks are being censored. They can still print whatever they want.'
But the point is this - because they have decided to spy on media outlets and they've come right out and told those outlets they were being spied upon, there's no need for them to censor them or shut them down. Because their phones and networks are being watched, media outlets have altered their behavior - and that alone has changed the nature of news reporting whether anyone wants to acknowledge the fact or not.
When a major news daily has to go offline or buy disposable cell phones to work stories - when they have to resort to what the Bush administration describes as terrorist tactics in order to simply get their jobs done - it is no longer an exaggeration to state that free media in this country has been all but extinguished."

It's been a pattern of stealth fascism. They know they can get away with whatever they want if people think they're free. No need for all the clunky, overt trappings of a totalitarian state. Visible repression is always fought; this new fascism is quiet, behind the scenes and injects just enough fear in the right places at the right time for clandestine control.

Of course sometimes a little skull busting goes a long way too.

Nothing To Do With Actual Border Policy

But a whole lot of grandstanding and posturing for the Great Unwashed.
I get the feeling Sockpuppet was told to go out there and try to placate the rubes by ordering the guard to the border. I also think it didn't work. Any mention of "immigration reform" or "guest worker program" isn't going to please the close-the-border types. He tried to cut the baby in half and all parties concerned are even more pissed at this trainweck.

"Sending troops to the border" sounds fine until you realize they're going to be solely in a support capacity:

"National Guard troops tapped for duty on the border with Mexico will not chase down illegal immigrants but instead will play behind-the-scenes roles in support of border guards, officials said Monday.
Among the tasks they are likely to perform over the coming year: training federal Border Patrol guards, building barriers near the border, improving roadways, providing support for aerial and ground surveillance, analyzing and sharing intelligence, and providing communications systems and transportation, the officials said." source.

"Officials suggested their mission would be to play a supporting role by providing intelligence, training, transportation, construction and other functions, while leaving the actual guarding of the 2,000-mile line separating the United States and Mexico to the Border Patrol. The National Guard would be a stopgap force until the federal government could hire civilian contractors to take over administrative and support functions from the Border Patrol, freeing more agents to actually hunt for immigrants slipping into the country." source

After being absent without leave for years concerning this issue, the criminals have finally decided to use it to their advantage without actually doing anthing. They'll get yet more nifty photo ops with lots of uniforms, and no doubt the media will be all over it with great fanfare and lots of help from the DHS. Great campaign videos, you betcha.
And here come those plum, no bid contracts for civilian contractors.
Like Halliburton?

I'm With Stupid

Haha - Allan Uthman takes a good look at new white house spokesdroid Tony Snow and comes away somewhat underwhelmed.

"I’m looking forward to watching Tony Snow work as the new White House Press Secretary for a number of reasons. For one, Scott McClellan just wasn’t very good at it. With all his steely-eyed glares and vicious smiles, McClellan just made it look painful, and he never lost the palpable impression of someone who had been promoted to a job he didn’t want because his boss quit, and whose soul was being poisoned by his work. Plus he had the natural charm of a tarantula.

Snow, on the other hand, is a better choice by far. He has a camera-ready smile and his experience as a media shill makes him sympathetic to the press. This makes Fox News’ status as an extension of the White House official. But there’s one fact above all that makes Snow the perfect hire: He’s an idiot.

I don’t mean just that I disagree with Snow on most issues. What I’m saying is, he’s just really stupid. This is a huge plus for him in his new job, just as it was at Fox.

Think about it. One of McClellan’s major drawbacks was his rapid, unemotional delivery of denials and obfuscations, which sent a clear message to reporters and the public: “We both know this is bullshit, but I get paid serious money to say it.”

Distractions

see 'em yet?

This promises to be one rough week for the bushistas.

Little Boots dipped below the 30% approval rating for the first time, and I honestly don't know where they found enough dead-from-the-neck-up fanatically loyal, culturally backward oxygen wasters known as the “Republican Base” to get that high a number.

According to Truthout, Karl Rove let it be known that he's about to be indicted soon and that he'd immediately resign after being charged with "perjury, obstruction of justice and lying to investigators".

The meatgrinder continues in Iraq.

Bubble Boy's pick for the head of the CIA is coming under fire from all sides. Even the repugs don't want him there.

Late this past week another constitution shredding activity was exposed when it was announced that the NSA demanded and got all the phone records from telecommunication companies. Now a former NSA staffer, Russell Tice, will testify to the Senate Armed Services Committee next week that not only do employees at the agency believe the activities they are being asked to perform are unlawful, but there's much worse to come.
And a lot of it involves the above mentioned gen. Hayden.

So how would you respond to this avalanch of criticism and bad press? Well, if you're the flaccid puppet you'll go on television to announce you're sending the national guard to the Mexican border. That's right, pull a PR stunt while your administration is swirling the bowl and flail that reliable immigration canard. See, it's the little brown people folks.

You might think the national guard would have other things to think about, like say, the start of hurricane season.

Us Troops Prepared To Attack Iran - Bush Said To Be Seeking “Persian Gulf Incident”

This is an excellent article by William Thomas.
Ever since 9/11 we should all have known that the fascists declared they were going for broke. It's the end game. They're playing for keeps and they want it all. They're on a messianic mission to control the world, all the resources, and us.
They're about to up the ante by orders of magnitude. Those niggling problems - the 9/11 truth movement, the Iranian threat to the petrodollar, plummeting poll numbers - can be swept off the table by attacking Iran.
Thomas explains the logistics of why it will quickly go nuclear.


In January 2006, a major military base located in the western United States received voice instructions from National Command Authority (NCA) to get their logistics train underway and train up their troops for desert warfare.

The current National Command Authority is comprised of a Commander-In-Chief who deserted his post during the Vietnam War, and a Secretary of Defense who, despite never having donned a uniform in defense of his country, did succeed in cashiering and countermanding enough combat-experienced generals to engineer the current debacle in Iraq.

“Which desert?” the commander wanted to know.

“You don’t need to know,” he was told by the NCA.

With their mission unstated, infantry staff officers presumed that this redeployment of more than 10,000 combat-tested troops, as well as supporting armor, artillery and air reconnaissance would soon be heading back into Iraq—with enough force, as my source put it, to “finally go in and do it right.”

In preparation for this combat operation, all upcoming leaves between January and September 2006 were either cancelled or expedited. To insure that essential personnel would remain integrated throughout their units, military operational specialists nearing their end of duty commitments were either replaced or retained under “stop loss” provisions beyond the end of their contracts. “Hot action” would be coming soon—no later than September 2006.

As the troops began intensive training for desert combat during this 1st phase “spin up” to war, a complete inventory was taken of the bullets, beans and bodies required to initiate, sustain and complete a combat mission of unspecified duration in an as yet unspecified Theater of Operations—still assumed to be Iraq.

In February 2006, the 2nd phase of war preparations began as US personnel in Defense Data Management began tapping keypads and arranging “rides” for a still unspecified destination. Orders went out to various air, land and sealift commands to coordinate logistical support for an upcoming combat deployment to the most likely desert environment—the Persian Gulf.

All units involved had to prepare to deploy overseas on just 48-hours’ notice.

By late February 2006, military brass following mostly voice instructions from the NCA were growing uneasy. Neither inspired nor reassured by Donald Rumsfeld’s performance as an amateur armchair general, the bean counters became increasingly concerned when ordered to tally more bullets than beans. This skew in the logistics train indicated some kind of assault or invasion was in the offing, with enough ammunition available to take and hold defended ground.

A flurry of interrogatives peppering the Pentagon grew into a sustained barrage when war planners were told to prepare their own in-theater resupply depots and fueling capabilities.

Why do we need to ship fuel into Iraq, and prepare to airdrop big fuel bladders to troops on the ground, they wanted to know, when substantial ammunition and fuel depots were already secured in a country containing the world’s second biggest oil reserves.

“Shut up and do it,” the professional warriors were told by National Command Authority.

MORE

The question begs to be asked - why, at this time with US armed forces stretched to the limit, would the fascists risk a nuclear war with Iran and possibly Russia and China?
I think the ultimate aim is to shatter the American military much like their process of destroying the economy by design. They have global ambitions, and a greatly weakened America fits in with the next phases of the agenda.
Plus they're flat out fucking jesus crazed insane.

The 20s are Going to be Glorious

Aravosis is popping the champagne corks over at AMERICAblog

Flaccid Puppet hits 29% in new Harris poll!

General Hayden is Toast

This woman is Erica Proctor and you're probably going to hear a lot about her in the weeks to come if the man who Bubble Boy wants to be the next CIA director doesn't step aside.

She's an air force major and NSA employee who's ex husband claims had an affair with General Hayden. In fact her husband, a major Kevin Furlong, has set up a massive website to document her infidelities complete with lots of porn pictures of her. According to Furlong, she slept around with numerous higher ups, including Hayden, to advance her career.

I'm somewhat hazy on military protocol concerning extramarital affairs, especially hanky panky with those of lesser rank, it could carry some heavy penalties. When this becomes more widely known, and if it's true, I hope Hayden is treated as four-star General Kevin Byrnes was treated. In an unprecedented action this man was relieved of duty for screwing somebody other than his wife, even though he was seperated at the time.
So if Hayden abruptly fades from view it might be because of this stuff, but of course he's mixed up in Hookergate and illegal spying on American citizens.

And I thought that active duty military were supposed to spend their time defending America?

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Seperated at birth?

(Swiped from dudehisattva)

The Letter From the President of Iran

Just before the invasion and occupation of Iraq, Saddam sent a communique to Bush. I tried hard to find a transcript but failed, and I think that the message was deliberately kept hidden. The scumbags wanted their war and weren't going to allow anything to get in their way, especially rational correspondence which might sway people to recognize the intended enemy's humanity.

It's been translated from farsi into french then into english, but you can grasp the intended message. The propaganda mill has been going into overdrive to discredit this first top level communique between presidents since 1979. It's been denigrated, discounted and dismissed by the scum in Washington and their fawning media whores in their push for war.

Full Text : The President of Iran's Letter To President Bush

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Turkey openly wants to be bribed into supporting economic sanctions on Iran.

West Philadelphia High School Team Builds Hybrid Supercars

Has anyone heard about this? I sure didn't. Their vehicles get 50 miles to the gallon and accelerate 0 - 60 in under 4 seconds. If high school students can figure out how to do this then why can't the big auto manufacturers? Or maybe they can, and won't.





More photos here

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Dubya, the movie!
Only one man could play the president

Stupifying Season of Divertissement

The War Party is gearing up for a long, hot season of distraction. As the government stumbles on with one scandal, failure, and disaster after another, they'll begin to trot out the stupid wedge issues to try and distract the sheeple. And they'll succeed on the face of it. There are legions of dead-from-the-neck-up Faux news watchers who'll gobble it all up.

The whoring media is positively guaranteed to treat us to a slew of crap leading up to the next stolen election. Get set for plenty of race baiting via the immigration issue ! Rev your engines over proposals to have the national anthem only sung in english ! Hey, we still haven't decided one way or the other about gay marriage ! Start some popcorn as we get pummeled with that hoary old favorite - a flag burning amendment ! Don't forget abortion !

Throw in a few missing white women and there you have it - one big Hamster Wheel of a summer.

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Bush the Liberal?

Desperate to explain away Commander Codpiece's approval evaporation, that's apparently the right wing talking point. Michael Savage (nee Wiener) says he's a "liberal dressed in conservative clothing". The CSM runs Bush's Surprising Liberal Legacy. Jonah Goldberg at the National Review continues the theme.

But Glen Greenwald at Unclaimed Territory slices and dices this idiocy. See, when the Codpiece was up in the 70 range in polls he was the epitome of Manly Wartime Decider, a true - blue conservative. Only smelly liberals inhabit his flirting with 20s terrain.

Comet Schwassmann - Wachmann 3 Part Two

The comet continues to break up at an accelerated pace. But there's an interesting aspect to it.
This is the first time that a disintegrating comet is intersecting the earth's orbit so close to us. Astronomers really don't know what will happen because it's unprecedented.

The fragments are turning to fragments and are spreading out. The earth will pass nowhere near the calculated orbit of the original body but might go through this debis field. This is a screen shot of NASA's orbit simulator for may 25:



There's been a lot of talk around the net about doomsday scenarios occuring around may 25, spearheaded by a guy named eric julien, who maintains he's been guided by ETs. He says that collisions in the ocean will create giant tsunamis which will devastate the coasts. That may or not occur, time will tell.

However, back in 1995 there was a crop circle that appeared to show a schematic of the solar system with the earth missing. Curiously that was the same time the comet started to break up and the crop circle showed up on 6/25/95.



The positions of the other planets show the relative orbits for 6/25/06.
Time to party like there's no tomorrow?

Goss Resigns at the CIA

<>late night telephone call<>

Pssss, Porter - ya know those little, um "parties" that Cunningham and Abramoff had, you know, where you had such a "good" time? Tomorrow you oughta think real hard about takin' a real long vacation before certain pictures see the light of day, you folla?

<>click<>

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A small but telling factoid shows just how tall we can stand as Americans abroad these days. Our soccer team at the World Cup decided to take their flag off the team bus:

FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) - The official team bus to be used by the United States during the World Cup will not bear a flag for security reasons.
The 32 official buses were presented Thursday in Frankfurt and the other 31 buses have large national flags of the their teams painted on rear sides.

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It didn't take long for the swift boating to begin on the ex CIA guy who put the smack on Von Rumsfeld. Any critic of this dying presidency is instantly smeared.

Von Rumsfeld Told He's a Liar

A guy named Ray McGovern who is a 27 year veteran with the Cia grilled the mass murderer in Atlanta. You can see the video here.

It's interesting and heartening to see that the scum are being challenged so much in public. Up to now they've been quite successful in managing their highly polished images. But now that the dam's busted more people are finding their voices.

Thank You Jeebus, Mine is not on the List

The Top 10 Conservative Cities

And I'm not moving to them any time soon.

Comet Schwassmann - Wachmann 3

I yanked my light bucket out to the driveway last evening to try to catch a glimpse of the comet of the hour. It could be putting on quite a show as it's breaking apart and brightening considerably. Here's a shot taken by Hubble:



I waited until Hercules swung up and around a tree, but when I went outside - cloudy. I'll try again tomorrow night but the moon is waxing so there ain't much time.
Plus I have to see if M13 is still there.

White House Correspondent's Dinner

I just watched Steven Colbert's performance. Links to it are HERE.
I saw it along with my wife and after we discussed it. I remarked to her that on the face of it it seemed to be a gutsy move to bring up subjects that those there didn't like hearing. Ostensibly, such edgy banter should be praised, but there was something wrong.

After five years of Rovian, choreographed public propaganda I had a hard time believing that Colbert wasn't closely vetted, and that the material was given a pass for some tactical advantage. After all the staginess and props and filtered audiences and prepared questions, was the Machine really going to allow this comedian to spank the sockpuppet and his administration in such a public manner without gaining from it? Maybe this was some sort of safety valve of dissent, or an attempt to shed the Bubble Boy stigma?

No, I changed my mind after doing a little digging. Apparently this was a shocker that was unexpected by the handlers. Colbert rose to the occasion, nailed the fascists to their seats and proceeded to set them on fire. The proof is reading the reactions to what he did, and also in the absense of reporting it.

That the guy dropped bomb after bomb on the shrub to his face, is a huge story in itself. It wasn't pretty and was delivered in an edgy, ironic way which seemed to leave the audience gasping. (Unlike the previous comedic routine with Bush and an imitator which used one liners and sight gags, a far more easy way to generate laughs) If media chooses to ignore a story like that it shouldn't come as a surprise, but it means the PTB wished it would never have happened.

Came across this review at The Civil Engine:
"First of all, I have to say that the guy has some serious stones. The crowd was mostly silent, yes, but it was only because Colbert didn’t give the usual nods, nudges and deference to power that are so common at these types of events. He pounded the Administration and the press with equal measure and when the crowd was made up of the Administration and the press, well, what kind of reception would you expect?
I watched along with my sister (a Republican) and my girlfriend (a Moderate) and they were both in tears from laughing so hard. Does that mean we all have a poor sense of humor? No. It means that we can see Colbert’s schtick for what it is: Brilliant and brave."

I couldn't agree more.