City Shakes In Fear Of Talking Junk Food

Suspicious packages found in Boston a marketing ploy

"BOSTON – More than 10 blinking electronic devices planted at bridges and other spots in Boston threw a scare into the city Wednesday in what turned out to be a publicity campaign for a late-night cable cartoon. Most if not all of the devices depict a character giving the finger.
Boston police said Wednesday night that so far, one person had been arrested.
Highways, bridges and a section of the Charles River were shut down and bomb squads were sent in before authorities declared the devices were harmless.

"It's a hoax – and it's not funny," said Gov. Deval Patrick"



I'll tell you what the hoax really is - it's the bullshit fear campaign about a non existant terror organization that's blamed for what the governmant did to us on 9/11.


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Ode To The Crawford Village Idiot from cloakanddagger

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The last paragraph that Molly Ivins had published, seen at Blah3

"We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there. Hit the streets to protest Bush's proposed surge. If you can, go to the peace march in Washington on Jan. 27. We need people in the streets, banging pots and pans and demanding, "Stop it, now!"

The Very Essence Of Metaphor

"Wearing a pair of stylish safety glasses--at least more stylish than most safety glasses--Bush got a mini-tour of the factory before delivering remarks on the economy. "I would suggest moving back," Bush said as he climbed into the cab of a massive D-10 tractor. "I'm about to crank this sucker up."
As the engine roared to life, White House staffers tried to steer the press corps to safety, but when the tractor lurched forward, they too were forced to scramble for safety."Get out of the way!" a news photographer yelled. "I think he might run us over!" said another. White House aides tried to herd the reporters the right way without getting run over themselves. Even the Secret Service got involved, as one agent began yelling at reporters to get clear of the tractor.
Watching the chaos below, Bush looked out the tractor's window and laughed, steering the massive machine into the spot where most of the press corps had been positioned. The episode lasted about a minute, and Bush was still laughing when he pulled to a stop. He gave reporters a thumbs-up. "If you've never driven a D-10, it's the coolest experience," Bush said afterward."

3 Helicopters Lost in Iraq Since Jan. 20

"Since May 2003, the U.S. military has lost 54 helicopters in Iraq, about half of them to hostile fire, according to figures compiled by the Brookings Institution. In addition, an OH-6A helicopter owned by the private security company Blackwater USA crashed last Tuesday in Baghdad in heavy gunfire, killing four civilian contractors.
(...)
If the insurgents have new weapons or have decided to step up attacks on aviation, that would be a major problem for U.S. commanders, who rely heavily on helicopters not only in combat but also to move soldiers and supplies around the country. Helicopters have been used more and more as the war progressed to avoid a bigger threat from roadside bombs, the major killer of American and Iraqi forces."


Moscow's Graveyard

"His prayers were answered. At dusk, a formation of 12 Soviet copters appeared over the camelback hills, and Ghafar hoisted the missile launcher onto his shoulder, aimed, and pulled the trigger. The Stinger misfired like a dud firecracker and snaked crazily through the tall wheat. "I was worried that the Soviets had seen the missile flash and would be after us," Ghafar recounts. Calmly, he prepared another Stinger in the launch tube and shot again.
That moment was the turning point in the Afghan war. The Stinger, attracted by the heat of the helicopter's motors, struck home. "It was like somebody had thrown feathers in the sky, all these pieces from the destroyed helicopter came floating down," Ghafar recalls. He was under strict orders from his CIA mentors to launch only one missile, but elated by his triumph, he reloaded and shot. Again, a helicopter exploded in the sky. The remaining choppers scattered for safety. That afternoon, the Soviets lost their air supremacy over Afghanistan and the tide began turning against the Red Army."

Codpiece Ready To Blame Iran For His Charnel House

Bush Warns Iran Against Action in Iraq

"WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush said Monday the United States "will respond firmly" if Iran escalates military action in Iraq and endangers American forces. But Bush emphasized he has no intention of invading Iran."

Of course he doesn't. He's going to bomb the shit out of them instead.

21 Years Ago Today The Challenger Crew Died

My wife called me to tell me the news that morning. It was the worst accident that we know of to kill astronauts since the Apollo 1 fire that killed White, Grissom and Chaffee. That happened 40 years ago yesterday.

Name The False Flag Incident

William Rivers Pitt, in his piece A Cornered Animal :

"Question: What is the connection between a possible American attack on Iran and the perjury trial of I. Lewis Libby?
Answer: Vice President Dick Cheney."

Indeed. Most people know that the real president has been Cheney, not the pretend self proclaimed Deciderer. Some say Cheney has been Bush' ventriloquist. Some say they placed the Crawford moron in his position as a convenient lightning rod to deflect criticism for all the disasters we've seen, as sort of an inside joke. I wouldn't disagree.

But now because of the Libby trial Shooter's garnering a lot of attention as being in the middle of treasonous activity. It's very possible that he may be forced to testify. Cheney has stated publicly he won't, even if subpoenaed. That would bring on a constitutional crisis and all hell would break loose.

One thing that's written in granite in the fascist playbook is that things should always appear to happen externally to be capitalized politically, not vice versa. Start wars, get the bump in polls. Pull off 9/11 and pass fascist legislation. Don't get involved in dirty political brawls because it will weaken your ability to manipulate and control. They've had a free ride since Black Tuesday but with americans slowly coming out of their coma and the Libby thing threatening to expose lies and corruption, they need to knock their troubles off the front page.

Enter the long term plan for war with Iran. I thought they'd start their wider regional conflict around the midterms, so did Pitt:
"Wariness over a potential American attack on Iran has been on the rise for months. This wariness became outright fear in certain circles as last November's midterms approached; the idea of an Iran assault being used as the "October Surprise" to change the electoral geometry was bandied about extensively. No such attack came, but attention has not wandered far from the possibility since." Some things blindsided the fascist agenda and war was delayed for months. But since serious preparations have been at fever pitch lately it's more of a possibility now than ever before. A false flag event, some sort of synthetic terror blamed on you know who would kick start it nicely. But what would it be?

Gulf of Tonkin 2 - The US has crowded the 5th fleet into the Persian Gulf and another strike force is joining them. The situation is ripe to sink a ship or two and it's bombs away.

Domestic Terror - Most probably involving radiation because you'd have to trump the awfulness 9/11. A dirty bomb would be dandy as the fear factor would be worth many times the cost of small material damage, but some say Israel has a number of nukes already stashed around the country and the clock is ticking.

Hot Pursuit - Iranian involvement in Iraq 'proven', clashes begin with 'Iranians in Iraq', US planes downed by 'Iranians', a few artillery shells are lobbed, maybe something along the lines of the Gleiwitz incident, more shock and awe in Tehran.

Assasination - The corrupt MSM would have a field day whipping up murderous fervor if some american politician(s) happened to unfortunately, say, get blown up in middair.

Any others?

Movies

"Please welcome Pastor Sonny, a caring individual who loves hurting people.."


I just got done watching Jesus Camp, a film you must see.

Right at the start of this documentary radio host Mike Papantonio asks the question "Do you think you know your country? You don't". Without narration and with hand held cameras the makers of this movie allow the religiously insane show how they're meticulously molding a large section of the upcoming generation to turn this country into Jesusland.

The film is rated PG13 for the viewers, but I'd give the wackos in it an X rating for how they abuse the kids with their sickness. Mrs Lipstick is going to tell anyone who asks that this is actually an X rated horror flick. It was jaw dropping for me to watch as they systematically went about teaching the children to be soldiers for jeebus, to literally smash things they perceive as unholy, to be willing martyrs in their culture war. These kids have their childhood stolen from them and get blood and abortion prayers and death to Harry Potter for breakfast. It will take many years for them to recover from being immersed in such insanity, if ever they do.

This doc is unique in that for the most part it simply shows how evangelical crazies go about their business, and both people in agreement and critics of religion will believe it's a fair portrayal. They focus a bit more on a few certain individuals, and their total access makes you wonder what it was they told the nutcases but the makers use few techniques to sway your opinion. I looked on in horror when a camp meeting was turned into a madhouse with crying, babbling, twitching kids; people who believe will think otherwise. Nonetheless, this is what they do and it's important that as many people as possible see it for themselves. This is the batshit insanity thats in the driver's seat of our bus as we go flying off the cliff.

Pastor Ted's will truly make you squirm, and the facility was located on a Devil's Lake. Go figure.

Unfortunately this is probably the future for Jesus Camp alumnus:

NFL: No BBQ, No Beer, No Shmoozing At CorpBowl

Looks like you have to scream your support for your teams at the Super Bowl without enjoying the game the way you want to this year, and in fact every year from now on, according to the NFL. Don't forget to buy your souvenirs on the way out.

"(CBS4) MIAMI Die-hard football fans attending the Super Bowl game at Dolphin Stadium are getting a rude awakening after finding out that no tailgating of any type will be allowed within a one mile radius on game day."There is no tailgating allowed in the Dolphin Stadium parking lots," Sue Jaquez, a member of the Super Bowl XLI Host Committee, confirmed on Tuesday. "And there is no tailgating anywhere within a one-mile radius of the stadium." "And there are no RVs allowed."

You, yes You - stand still laddie!

Somalia Descends Back Into Chaos

It's capital Mogadishu, with a population of a million well armed residents, looks like it's sliding back into anarchy and misery after the US backed Ethiopian invasion. With attacks on churches and indiscriminate killings it might just as well be patterned after the Baghdad model. The US resumed it's air strikes on 'fleeing terrorists' like the one murdering seventy goat herders two weeks ago, while reports suggest the american involvement is far more extensive than is being let on. Some sources say american soldiers have been captured in the south of the country.

But hey, it's all to the good, because just like Codpiece and his Most Excellent Iraqi Adventure, Ethiopia's US backed invasion was purely in self defense.

A Portent?

"Comet McNaught falls into the class known as hippeus or horse comets because of the synchronic bands (striae) which resemble a horse’s mane. According to Hephaistion of Thebes they foretell the sudden fall of tyrants and the rapid change of the affairs of these countries."



"When beggars die there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes." - Shakespeare.

Seen at Orbit

Government To It's Own Citizens: Go Ahead And Rot

Yesterday Kindasleazy Rice flippantly promised three quarters of a billion dollars to it's puppet government in Lebanon. Of course this is in addition to the hundreds of billions flowing into the wars on the people in Afghanistan and Iraq. What got me was this paragraph:

"The donation, which must be approved by Congress, would include $220 million in military aid for the beleaguered Western-backed government of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora. The money could buy small arms, ammunition, spare parts and Humvees, U.S. officials said."

There's a pattern here that's sending out a glaring message and it stinks. Consider this - Katrina devastated New Orleans and 250,000 people left the city and are rotting in guarded FEMA trailer parks where the residents can't even talk about their conditions. Our fascists failed the people when the storm hit and are miserably failing them now.

Last summer after phonying up a war against Lebanon the zionists proceeded to gleefully destroy Lebanon's infrastructure, killing anyone who moved on highways while the scumbags in Washington hurriedly mailed them all the cluster bombs they wanted, courtesy of our tax dollars. The people in Lebanon will suffer for some time to come as most of those cluster bombs were older, leaving a lot of duds laying around to indiscriminately kill people later.

Now the US is shoveling money to the repressive government in Beirut to buy weapons to be used against the people who are striking and protesting their corrupt administration.

An endless supply of our money for subjugation, violence and control, but not much there when the people need help, eh?

Genderbenders

The photoshop pros over at Worth1000 are really, really good.

Willamina Murray

Jamie Leno

The Governatress

People Are Starting To Ask The Right Questions

Was Iraq War a 'Blunder' Or Was It Treason?

"New Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), is calling President Bush's invasion of Iraq a "stark blunder" and says that his new scheme to send 21,500 more troops into the mess he created is just digging the hole deeper.

I wonder though.

It seems ever more likely to me that this whole mess was no blunder at all."

The author goes on to mention something that I hadn't known. Paul Bremer, who became the real life embodiment of Doonesbury's Duke, viceroy in Iraq, ran the nation's leading risk assessment consultancy before being sent there. Someone who makes a living being paid for warning about making mistakes knows exactly what they're doing.

And there's the problem we face. We have to recognize the reality of the Iraq situation and call it for what it is - a calculated and intentional disaster that turned out according to plan and in fact exceeded the fascists' expectations many times over. They wanted the infrastructure in ruins - in fact water treatment plants, power stations, dams and utilities were intentionally bombed. They wanted the population to suffer unimaginable loss. They needed the various factions at each other's throats and so set about pulling off false flag attacks. They wanted an ongoing resistance which is why they didn't guard the millions of tons of munitions after the invasion. They planned for and eagerly awaited the theft of trillions from Iraq's resources and our pockets. Far from wanting an end to this shit, they want to prolong it and in fact, make it much worse.

Because once you start on in on a program so venal and vicious, you will never stop.

Pelosi and Reid and all the other so called opposition leaders in government mule and pule and pass wind but they won't do anything to rock this lucrative boat because they've been thrown a few more crumbs from their master's table. And so they know their job is to make it seem like this is all just a huge, horrible mistake, a colossal blunder that just needs some fine tuning to make it come out right. We can only expect half hearted measures and useless agreements and meaningless posturing from them. By focusing on the small stuff their job is to distract our attention away from the real issue - this is the way our overlords wanted it to be.

No wonder Bremer got that medal from Commander Codpiece.

What The Scumbags Applauded Last Night

Aside from the 650,00 plus dead from the US invasion of Iraq, we learn a new grim statistic - 3,700.000 Iraqi refugees.

"The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) reported this month that the US invasion and occupation of Iraq has forced one out of every eight Iraqis to flee their homes-more than 3.7 million people. The agency described the refugee crisis caused by the Iraq war as the worst in the Middle East since the ethnic cleansing that accompanied the creation of Israel in 1948. The Zionist military and paramilitary death squads drove an estimated 711,000 Palestinian Arabs from their land.
UNHCR estimates that two million Iraqis are now living outside the country-including those who left before 2003 but have failed to return due to the country's catastrophic situation. Some 50,000 Iraqi émigrés returned in 2005, but just 1,000 came back last year. Another 1.7 million Iraqis have been internally displaced. At least 500,000 people fled their homes in 2006 as a result of US military repression and the dramatic rise in sectarian violence between rival Shiite and Sunni militias in the wake of the destruction of a prominent Shiite mosque in Samarra last February. It is thought that 80,000 to 100,000 people are joining the ranks of internal and external refugees each month."

Putrid SOTU

The man had absolutely nothing to say and said it anyway. The wretched liar piled on the bullshit to cover fascism's depravity and vomited vague garbage about the future. For anybody to stand up and cheer this moronic mass murderer was despicable; it was a disgraceful display of how far we've been flushed down the toilet. We should all be shamed.

Crowds Pray To Frozen Virgin Mary In Store Freezer

"An ice formation inside a Morton, Texas, grocery store's freezer is prompting tears from people who see it and has apparently answered the prayers of some visitors, according to a Local 6 News report.
Morton Thrifty Foods employee Alma Avalos said when she went to the back she noticed that some drops of water from the ceiling had frozen.
As more and more people began to hear about the Virgin Mary, they started traveling in droves to see the ice.
Some people cried when they spotted the ice and others said it answered their prayers.
"I had a lump in my breast and yesterday when I went home it disappeared," a woman said. "I don't have it no more."



Praise Jeebus! We'll just light these candles and... OH NO!

Insufficient Fealty

Pa. Man's Letter Brings Secret Service

"BETHLEHEM, Pa. - An elderly man who wrote in a letter to the editor about Saddam Hussein's execution that "they hanged the wrong man" got a visit from Secret Service agents concerned he was threatening President Bush.The letter by Dan Tilli, 81, was published in Monday's edition of The Express-Times of Easton, Pa. It ended with the line, "I still believe they hanged the wrong man."
Tilli said the statement was not a threat. "I didn't say who — I could've meant (Osama) bin Laden," he said Friday.
Two Secret Service agents questioned Tilli at his Bethlehem apartment Thursday, briefly searching the place and taking pictures of him, he said."

Man Kicked Off Flight For Bush-Bashing T-shirt

"CANBERRA, Jan 22 - An airline passenger barred from a flight for wearing a T-shirt labeling President Bush a terrorist has threatened legal action against Australia's flag carrier Qantas.
Allen Jasson, 55, an Australian IT expert who lives in Britain, was stopped from boarding a London-bound Qantas flight at Melbourne Airport last Friday for wearing what the airline said was an offensive T-shirt.
Airline staff said the T-shirt of Bush with the tagline "World's number 1 terrorist" could have upset other passengers and demanded it be changed for another."

And let's remember that golden oldie -

Biblical 'Burning Bush' Remark Puts Man In Jail For 3 Years

"SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota (AP) --A man who made a remark about a "burning Bush" during the president's March 2001 trip to Sioux Falls was sentenced Friday to 37 months in prison.

Richard Humphreys of Portland, Oregon was convicted in September of threatening to kill or harm the president and said he plans to appeal. He has said the comment was a prophecy protected under his right to free speech.

Humphreys said he got into a bar-room discussion in nearby Watertown with a truck driver. A bartender who overheard the conversation realized the president was to visit Sioux Falls the next day and told police Humphreys talked about a "burning Bush" and the possibility of someone pouring a flammable liquid on Bush and lighting it.

"I said God might speak to the world through a burning Bush," Humphreys testified during his trial. "I had said that before and I thought it was funny."

The Gaudy Peacock

"South of the equator, Comet McNaught is putting on a gaudy show, popping out of the twilight with a "peacock tail" that amazes even experienced astronomers." Spaceweather

Countdown To Imperial Bread And Circus Day

Now that elimination is over and two teams remain for Super Bowl XLI, let the games begin. I wonder if Fatherland Security will announce Feb 4 as a "National Special Security Event" and drag out the biological sensors and radiation detectors. In any event Dolphin Stadium and the surrounding area will be locked down tight and swarming with all sorts of security, cops and agents. Last year at the Big Show in Detroit they banned parking and all mailboxes were removed from around the stadium while there were dive teams at the waterfront.

Anyone remember that utterly bizarre halftime show in 2000 at the Georgia Dome? Walt Disney did the extravaganza I guess and imported some Y2K show from Walt Disney World. They used spooky theatrical lighting to create this dark, foreboding mood. It came across as a giant cult ceremony with weird lurching puppets venerating some huge pagan god while Edward James Olmos intoned "Behold the Great Millenium Walk!" as Toni Braxton fellated her microphone. I think our overlords wanted to get some point across about their new world order but it just was a confused orgiastic befuddlement to me.



The grotesque spectacle which fast grew into an icon of Imperial America has sure turned into a communal myth with something for everybody. If you look real close there's actually a football contest in there. Since I couldn't care less about phony professional sports I record the game and play it back, zipping through the on field action to get to the Stuff of real importance - the commercials. I want to take a look at what the manipulators want us to see, and from that try to guess their intentions, what they might have in store for us. Along the way there's also some fun ads:

With this kind of spectacle that's viewed by half the country you know there's a lot of manipulation going on and it isn't just to make us want to buy a certain brand of car. They subject the participants and the viewers to a shameless creeping militarization, especially since 9/11. You can't have jet flyovers without close cooperation between the pentagon and the NFL. Last year Norad was even part of the security arrangements, and celebrities read parts of the Declaration of Independence. Of course they're going to have a big show of police state force with pat downs, metal detectors and gun toting goons, and some have suggested the area will be circled by global hawk surveillance drones. Remember the PSAs from the drug czar's office during the first SB after 9/11? They equated recreational drug use with aiding and abetting terrorists. Like I said, shameless.

"Writing about the previous ads, LA Weekly media critic Judith Lewis reported that their message plays well into Bush's anti-terror campaign because it keeps ordinary citizens under siege and the war on terror central in their minds."

They want to wrap it all up into one big warm bundle - adoration of all things military, patriotism, adrenaline, acceptance of a police state, all that heavy machismo and ogling those writhing cheerleaders . (When they cut away from the endless shots of men in uniform) What you won't see, and I'll guarantee this, is any sign of Bush or Cheney or even a video or picture on the big screen. It would be too hard for the manipulators to drown out the thundering boos and catcalls. The last time a Bush was at a game it didn't go so well and needed to be tweaked:

"It started with right winger Mike Tirico announcing George Bush Sr. to the crowd. Instantaneously you could hear an echo of cheers and not a single boo from the audio. But if you listen carefully to the audio, that audio was not live. ESPN shut off the sound of the Superdome crowd for a few seconds and played this audio of fake cheers."

That was Bush Sr., can you imagine reactions to Dim Son?

But that doesn't matter to our overlords even if he sank into negative polling numbers. They'll equate support for their glorious war of conquest and march to fascism at home with loud spectacle and emotion, coupled with rampant consumerism. America's colossal narcissistic jamboree is now one long dazzling paean to nascent fascism in general, and just like they co opted support for the troops with supporting Bush, when you're cheering for your team you're also cheering on the Empire.

Life used to be a lot simpler, like when the last time the Bears appeared at the Hoopla and the Superbowl Shuffle climbed the charts:

Oliver Willis rates rates campaign banners and finds that Jesus Camp graduate Sam Brownback comes in last compared to Edwards, Obama, Clinton and Romney.

Really, don't you think this guy would work best for us?

Mass Murderer Polishes His Turd With "National Sanctity of Human Life Day, 2007"

"NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim Sunday, January 21, 2007, as National Sanctity of Human Life Day. I call upon all Americans to recognize this day with appropriate ceremonies and to underscore our commitment to respecting and protecting the life and dignity of every human being."

The Coming Baghdad Bloodbath

In it's ongoing surge to increase division, animosity and fear the US is set to campaign across Baghdad, in fact the new offensive might already be underway. Although that link shows fierce fighting with Sunnis, this time the brunt of the occupation's terror crusade is going to be the Shiite muslims, and they know it. Leading cleric Moqtada al-Sadr got his family out of the way of the coming siege:

"In an interview with Mr Sadr, published in the Italian newspaper La Repubblica today, the cleric said 400 of his men had already been arrested.
"For this reason, I have moved my family to a secure location. I even have had a will drawn up, and I move continuously in a way that only few can know where I am," he was quoted as saying."

The goal of the invaders was and is to pit factions in Iraq against one another. By setting one group against another the US gains from civil strife rather than face concerted opposition from nationalists, while corporations rape Iraqi resources and assets. “Several [Iraqi] politicians [in the puppet government] have actually suggested that the U.S. is involved in the sectarian killings in Iraq; encouraging sectarian strife with the aim of weakening the Iraqi nation and destabilizing the country, which would justify extending its military presence there”, reported Al-Jazeera on 04 October 2005. If the various factions won't oblige and go at each other's throats the warmongers will not so gently nudge them in the right direction. For years now false flag death squads and bombings were intended to stoke sectarian hatred and fighting. Probably the most egregious act that the conquistadors committed was blowing up that beautiful al-Askari Mosque in Samarra. By destroying that revered Shiite site followed by a few Sunni mosques, it was mission accomplished.



Right from the very start of Iraq's conquest it was apparent what the strategy was going to be. Rumsfeld's boy, Paul Bremer, dismantled the standing army and replaced it with a force made up almost exclusively of Shiias and Kurds. Then all of a sudden there were deadly attacks on innocent civilians back and forth on Sunni and Shiia neighborhoods and mosques, something that was never seen in the country before the invasion. Proof that sinister black op forces are forcing this bloodbath is everywhere; google Haj Haidar for just one story.

Proof also that the fascists have no commitment to anything in Iraq other than tearing the country apart, stealing it's resources and squatting in their new shiny conquistador castles is the shifting nature of who the enemy is supposed to be. Forget 'Al Qaeda', that phony will o' the wisp CIA front. Basically if a news report mentions that name I automatically assume CIA activity is involved whether it's a fake video or a staged bit of violence. Up to now the occupation has had it's hands full with fighting the Sunni resistance. After summoning Cheney to Saudi Arabia in November it's apparent america's sugar daddy wanted Codpiece to switch his attention from the sheiks' Sunni allies to the Shiia. Maliki, his initially unhappy Shiia puppet, finally agreed not to try to interfere with this new round of warfare, and has pretended to order a crackdown on Shiite militants.

Another sign the occupiers are determined to pit all the various factions in Iraq against each other is the brilliant move to bring Kurdish pesh merga units into Baghdad neighborhoods to break down doors. The Kurds think this is insane. The city's Sunnis and Shiia don't think that'll go so well either:

"I advise the Kurdish people to apply pressure on their leaders to prevent this step," said Mohammed Daini, a lawmaker with a major Sunni bloc. Kurdish forces, he said, "will face firm resistance from both the Sunnis and the Shiites."
Sheik Abdul Razzaq Naddawi, an aide to anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada Sadr, agreed that Kurdish troops would not be welcome.
"The Kurds, frankly speaking, consider themselves superior to other Iraqis," he said. "Would they allow troops from the middle or the south to arrive in Kurdistan?" he asked. "Their borders are closed, and they are practically independent."

I swear you need a scorecard.

So all the indications are pointing to a drastic increase of violence in the coming months with Little Boots pouring gasoline on his smoldering shitheap. Since not many of his proposed surge of troops are available and won't be for some time I'm sure we'll see a generous use of air power in the crowded Shiite neighborhoods of Baghdad as the occupiers go after Al Sadr's Mahdi army.
It could be a repeat of what happened in Fallujah three years ago when Sunnis were the target.

We can expect more wanton destruction of mosques and shrines as the fascists delight in advancing their clash of civilizations. After all, what better way to kickstart a wider middle east conflict than to start another proxy war with Iran?

Comet McNaught over Auckland, New Zealand

Condi Ends Boffo Tour, Flies Home

Monsters and Critics

Lebanon`s an-Nahar said in a commentary Thursday that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice`s Middle East tour to sell the new Bush plan in Iraq has two problems: One she came with and the another she left with.
Kuwait`s al-Rai al-Aam said according to the new 'stupid American strategy' in Iraq, it alienates the country`s two most important neighbors although Iraq needs its neighbors` cooperation to contain the security conditions.

Peter Hain, Northern Ireland and Wales Secretary - on her sales pitch:

"It's not only failed to provide a coherent international policy, it's failed wherever it's been tried and it's failed with the American electorate."

Brunei Times

"Since Rice took over as the office of Secretary of State, she had made eight visits to the area without any concrete success because of the US tilt towards the Israeli regime"

Speigal Online

"Rice's trip was meant to signal a new start for trans-Atlantic ties, but if anything, relations are worse now."

International Herald Tribune

"Condoleezza Rice flies home Friday with just enough progress to shield herself from criticism that the trip was a bust."

Has Israel Already Tried To Hit Iran With Nukes?

According to William Thomas, Israeli warplanes were prevented from dropping nuclear bombs in Iran a little over a week ago.

"A recent strike by nuclear-armed Israeli Air Force fighter-bombers bound for targets in Iran was turned back after being intercepted by U.S. fighters over Iraq, this reporter has learned.
Two sources have independently confirmed the encounter, which took place on January 7, 2007. Though the first informant offered few details beyond an initial tip, a second source long-known by this reporter to have well-placed U.S. and “non-U.S.” military and government contacts provided specific information regarding the raid, which was aimed at the radical religious ayatollahs holding ultimate power in Iran."

I hadn't heard anything about this. In the high stakes cat and mouse games being played in these volatile times the intercept, if it happened, may have only been a feint sending a message. In fact later in his piece Thomas alludes to that possibility:

"According to my informant, the three “warning” nuclear strikes launched against Iran and aborted by Israel came in response to threatening military moves that accompanied belligerent public statements by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

William Thomas does have a lot of credibility with me. He's been a outspoken critic of the hidden-in-plane-sight chemtrail spraying program for years when not only would people refuse to believe what was going on over their heads but would ridicule those who'd raise the alarm.
However an attempted nuclear attack is serious beyond any measure and I'd sure like confirmation about it. If it's true the government of Israel should immediately be taken into custody before they're capable of doing harm.

Fascist Insanity

Remember that Iraqi cakewalk through smiles and petal strewn streets? The delusions of power must result in progressive wasting disease because they're at it again. Thinking that war on Iran will somehow distract us from, ameliorate and then somehow solve their public relations woes about Iraq, of course the fascists are gearing up to a victory dance. Like being warmly cheered on by joyous Iraqis, The Iranians will take having the shit bombed out them gently and in stride:

"Here is the victory scenario: Bush and Cheney will claim that their air attack on Iran succeeded in destroying Iran’s (non-existent) nuclear weapons program. The victory claimed by the Bush Regime and the propagandist US media will “make America safe from nuclear attack.” This will restore Bush’s popularity and move the US back to a 50-50 political split in time for Karl Rove to steal the 2008 election with the fraudulent electronic voting machines built and programmed by Republican operatives.
The former national security official believes that Bush will be able to claim victory over Iran, because Iran will avoid responding militarily. Iran will not use its Russian missiles to sink our aircraft carriers, to shut down oil facilities throughout the Middle East, or to destroy US headquarters in the “green zone” in Baghdad. Instead, Iran will adopt the posture of another Muslim victim of US/Israeli aggression and let the anger seep throughout the Muslim world until no pro-US government is safe in the Middle East."

Wheee! A win/win/win situation. Raining death on the Persians will convince the rubes that Deciderer and friends can tuck them in at night, will satisfy Israel and will change the political landscape enough so Rove can safely pull off another stolen election. Seeing as the manipulators with their corrupt media are straining to convince us that it's Iran's fault for all our woes in Iraq, bombing Tehran will be spun as reasonable and logical. Not only that, recipients of all the ordnance will just shrug it off and reach for some more joojeh kabab.

Despicable, deranged despots.

Movies

One of the fun things about being a cinephile is to recognize locations when production moved out of the studio and showed real backgrounds. If you have a good time with westerns the one place that's most easily recognizable is Monument Valley, even if you've never been there. A whole bunch of westerns were filmed there; John Ford made so many there that there's a point named after him. It's a stunning panorama of sandstone buttes towering over a flat desert plain and I guess there was never a shortage of Indian extras as it's part of the Navajo reservation.

There's another place that people have seen a gazillion times in all genres of flicks, but perhaps don't know where it's located. I don't know if this is true but probably more films, TV episodes, documentaries and matinee shorts were shot here than any other place in the country. It's called the Alabama Hills just outside of Lone Pine, CA. Mrs Lipstick and I went there last spring, most of these are my pictures.

If you watch television or rent DVDs, I guarantee you've seen this place. Ever catch Bonanza or Hopalong Cassidy? Seen Gladiator, Charge of the Light Brigade, Star Trek, Tremors, High Sierra, North to Alaska, The Postman? I saw a an older Squint Eastwood vehicle that was made there, Joe Kidd, just last night.



It's an ideal outdoor set for a lot of reasons. It's fairly close to the studios in LA by being just up 395 across from Death Valley. Mt. Whitney and the sierras form a gorgeous backdrop to the west. The hills themselves are an older, darker and more rounded formation that when juxtaposed with the jagged, snow covered, towering sierras make for some wonderful eye candy.





The broad Owens Valley slopes east to the Panamint range so from one location the filmmakers had a bunch of sweeping vistas. But it's in the hills themselves where a lot of the action took place. It's a perfect place for ambushes, car chases and shootouts. Plenty of climbable rocks and gulches and flat ground for stampedes. Tim Allen almost got squished here by the rock monster in Galaxy Quest.



Aside from the moviemaking history there's an awful lot to do in the area. Lone Pine is a sizable enough town as a base of operations. There's plenty of stuff to explore, museums, lots of hiking and four wheel driving trails, good fishing and there's Death Valley a few miles to the east. It's a wonderful place to visit. Better pack your gun though.

"It's The Job Of Thinking People Not To Be On The Side Of The Executioners" - Camus

There's hubbub floating around about the rightness or wrongness of being against the fascist invasion and occupation of Iraq before it even happened. I suppose there's a lot of teeth gnashing and soul searching going on right now as the rats desert the sinking ship. I don't know where this started or why but Kevin Drum asks this at the Washington Monthly:

"If anti-war liberals were right about the war from the start, how come they don't get more respect? Here's the nickel version of the answer from liberal hawks: It's because they don't deserve it. Sure, the war has gone badly, but not for the reasons the doves warned of."

Drum goes on to lambaste the dirty filthy hippies for being against preemptive war which he assumes to be the overriding objection back then.

From Jane Galt on the subject, after some mea culpa:

"However.
This has not convinced me of the brilliance of the doves, because precisely none of the ones that I argued with predicted that things would go wrong in the way they did. If you get the right result, with the wrong mechanism, do you get credit for being right, or being lucky? In some way, they got it just as wrong as I did: nothing that they predicted came to pass."

As if being against killing people for no reason forces you to make exact predictions as to what precisely will go wrong with that line of work.

I'll state the reasons why I opposed the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It took me all of two or three hours on the morning of 9/11 to know that terrible day was brought to us courtesy of Bush and company, and that they were lying through their fucking teeth. When the propaganda blitz started in on Iraq in September of 2002 I saw the same crew out there fucking lying again. I didn't care about their shitty preemptive war arguments - they were too stupid to bother with. Anyone with a thinking brain and a modem could see from the start that all their reasons were stupid lies and a lot of people were going to die. And I didn't need to cross the Ts and dot the Is about how their venture was going to be disastrous. Nothing that the venal, immoral, criminal scumbags say should be believed. Every putrid scheme of theirs is destructive and self serving. Every one.

That's why I opposed Operation Kill The Ragheads And Steal The Oil. There wasn't any "debate" about the invasion anyway - just insane herd stupidity and moral blankness and a sense of inevitability.

Someone Has A Fetish

A Kuwaiti guy with deep pockets wants "Saddam's noose"

"KUWAIT CITY: A well-known Kuwaiti businessman is negotiating hard to own the noose which hung ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to death.
Reliable sources say the businessman's representatives have asked the Iraqi Ministry of Interior Affairs to sell the rope to them.
The businessman is apparently ready to pay any amount of money for the noose. According to sources, it is with Shiite leader Muqtada Al-Sadr and the businessman's representatives are negotiating with him.
The businessman had earlier purchased the vandalized statue of Saddam Hussein which stood at Al-Firdous Square in Baghdad. Sources say he obtained the statue through American representatives and exhibits the head of the statue in his diwaniya (sitting room)."

Congress Openly Discusses Phony Terror

"I am concerned, however, that a contrived Gulf of Tonkin type incident may well occur to obtain popular support for an attack on Iran"

Rep. Ron Paul

Group: U.S. GIs fighting in Philippines - MANILA, Philippines - U.S. troops, in possible violation of the Philippines' constitution, have taken part in combat operations against guerrillas linked to al-Qaida, an activist group said in a report Monday.

End of Somali Islamists is Only Beginning for U.S. - “The U.S. invasion of Somalia would not last long. This is an experimental exercise meant to see whether there are Al-Qa’ida suspects in Somalia,” said a diplomat, who sought anonymity.

Retired colonel claims U.S. military operations are already 'underway' in Iran - "I would say -- and this may shock some -- I think the decision has been made and military operations are under way," Col. Gardiner told CNN.

Vietnam: U.S. Advisors 1955-1965 - By December of 1961, 3,200 U.S. military personnel were in Vietnam as advisors, supported by $65 million in military equipment and $136 million in economic aid.

New Execution Instrument Perfected

The Guillotine Rope (I thought this only happened to real fat guys)

"BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Two of Saddam Hussein's aides were hanged before dawn on Monday, the Iraqi government said, admitting that the head of his half-brother Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti was also ripped from his body during the execution."

Comforting to know that the example we're setting can be successfully duplicated by enterprising children around the globe.

Retired Air Force Colonel Tells What To Look For When Attack On Iran Imminent

From The Left Coaster:

"It is possible the White House strategy is just implementing a strategy to put pressure on Iran on a number of fronts, and this will never amount to anything. On the other hand, if the White House is on a path to strike Iran, we’ll see a few more steps unfold.
First, we know there is a National Security Council staff-led group whose mission is to create outrage in the world against Iran. Just like before Gulf II, this media group will begin to release stories to sell a strike against Iran. Watch for the outrage stuff.
The Patriot missiles going to the GCC states are only part of the missile defense assets. I would expect to see the deployment of some of the European-based missile defense assets to Israel, just as they were before Gulf II.
I would expect deployment of additional USAF fighters into the bases in Iraq, maybe some into Afghanistan.
I think we will read about the deployment of some of the newly arriving Army brigades going into Iraq being deployed to the border with Iran. Their mission will be to guard against any Iranian movements into Iraq.
As one of the last steps before a strike, we’ll see USAF tankers moved to unusual places, like Bulgaria. These will be used to refuel the US-based B-2 bombers on their strike missions into Iran. When that happens, we’ll only be days away from a strike."

Ready to be seen as the New Nazis, if we aren't already? All set to see hundreds of thousands if not millions die from your tax dollars? Ready to be at war with the rest of the world? Ready for gas at $10 dollars a gallon?

On The Boxer - Rice Dustup

Laura Knight - Jadczyk at Signs of the Times has an interesting take on neocons' favorite current phony outrage, the supposed slight that happened between Barbara Boxer and Kindasleazy. Boxer's comment came during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Thursday in which Rice was questioned on President Bush's new war plans.

Boxer said that both she and Rice weren't going to sacrifice because of their individual circumstances, but a lot of other families were going to suffer from Codpiece's Iraqi troop buildup. To the deranged brownshirts this was translated as insulting Rice as unmarried/childless/black or something. Wingnut bloggodumps went ballistic with indignation. Here's what she said:



Since this horrible affront centered around motherhood and chidbearing, Jadczyk suggests that perhaps there is something questionable about Kindasleazy's understanding of motherhood after all.
When zionists were bombing the shit out of Lebanon last summer Rice was quick to come to poor Israel's defense (as well as the fascists sending more cluster bombs as fast as they could) with this delightful comparison:

"Condoleezza Rice has described the plight of Lebanon as a part of the "birth pangs of a new Middle East" and said that Israel should ignore calls for a ceasefire.
"This is a different Middle East. It's a new Middle East. It's hard, We're going through a very violent time," the US secretary of state said."


Rice's vision of maternity

Update On The Camp Falcon Disaster

They're lying to us in a massive way.
The wrong people were hanged in Baghdad.

It's my guess that according to the zionist/fascist timetable war with Iran should have happened by now. After dragging up WW2 terminology and naming the countries on their hit list as the 'Axis of Evil' they went balls to the wall to get their war on. After invading Iraq immense effort went into preperations by constructing massive military bases both there and in Israel. After pulling off 9/11 they needed to move fast on their plans to milk our fear and willingness to go along with their agenda.

But three things got in the way on the road to a wider reshaping of the middle east. When Israel phonied up an excuse to mercilessly destroy Lebanon last summer Iran's proxy Hezbollah put up surprisingly fierce resistance. If the zionists were trying to drag Syria and Iran into the conflict it didn't work. Also the fascists needed to purge the US military of all the high ranking opposition to their upcoming nuclear war on Iran. And last October the largest ammo dump in Iraq was completely leveled by resistance attacks, resulting in a massive loss of life and material. Hushed up by corrupt MSM this disaster might have stalled the push to start a wider war with Iraq's neighbors.



You can see the intensity of the explosions about 4 minutes into this video taken 11 miles away from the base.

From TBR News:

"Late on the evening of October 10, 2006, Iraqi resistance groups lobbed mortar and rocket rounds into the immense ‘Forward Base Falcon,’ the largest American military base in Iraq. In addition to accurate mortar fire, Grad and Katyusha rockets were also used.
Iraqi contractors had assisted in the construction of the camp, which occupied nearly a square mile and was surrounded with guard tower-studded high concrete walls, and it is now apparent that the Resistance movement had been given important targets from “sources familiar with the layout” of the base.
After the initial shelling, fuel and ammunition stores began to erupt with massive explosions that could be heard, and seen, miles away inside the Green Zone where U.S. military and diplomatic units were heavily guarded.
The explosions, all of them termed “immense” by BBC reporters, continued throughout the night.
In response, US aircraft indiscriminately rocketed and bombed various parts of the city, BBC and AFP correspondents reported, trying to knock out the launch sites of the rockets
The BBC's Andrew North, in Baghdad, said the explosions started at about 2300 (2100 BST) and were becoming "ever more frequent" as the huge fires spread throughout the base, punctuated by tremendous explosions as more fuel and ammunition dumps ignited.
When the flames had been brought under control on the morning of the 11th of October, primarily because the entire camp had been gutted, nine large American military transports with prominent Red Cross markings were observed by members of the foreign media taking off, laded with the dead and the wounded.
Over 300 American troops, including U.S. Army and Marines, CIA agents and U.S. translators were killed or injured or died immediately afterwards en route to hospital or in hospital and 165 seriously injured requiring major medical attention and 39 suffering lesser injuries 122 members of the Iraqi armed forces were killed and 90 seriously injured members of same, were also evacuated to the U.S. military hospital at al-Habbaniyah located some 70km west of Baghdad.
Satellite pictures from neutral sources showed that Camp Falcon was almost totally destroyed and with it, almost all the U.S. military’s supply of small arms ammunition, artillery and rocket rounds, tons of fuel, six Apache helicopters, an uncounted but large number of soft-skinned vehicles such as Humvees and supply trucks. Foreign press observers noted “an endless parade” of military vehicle recovery units dragging burnt-out heavy tanks and armored personnel carriers to another base outside Baghdad.
The walls and towers of the camp were completely leveled as were all the barracks, maintenance depots, the huge mess halls that could hold 3000 soldiers, the huge recreation center with its basketball courts and indoor swimming pools and all the administration buildings
Although official U.S. DoD statements indicated that there were no deaths, that only a hundred men were inside the base guarding billions of dollars of vital military equipment and that there were “only two minor injuries to personnel,” the truth is far different.
Not only has the U.S. military machine lost most of its armor and transport, its entire reserves of ammunition and special fuel, but the casualty list for only the first day is immense."

The site goes on to list the 300 dead servicemen. Not a peep about them was found from 'official' sources or the totally corrupt MSM. If this information is correct then the destruction of Camp Falcon derailed war with Iran that was probably planned to coincide with last year's election cycle.
As for when the war will begin, since it's going to primarily be an air campaign my guess is that it could start at any time regardless of the hot summer season, after some synthetic event that serves as a useful kickstart for plans that were cooked up a long time ago. It may begin at the same time with more violence directed at Moktada al-Sadr's Mahdi army, now being set up for destruction as Iran's newest terror proxy.

Would You Buy a Used War From These People?

As frontmen for the fascists our public 'officials' are doing a piss poor job of marketing their absurd crap. Does it seem to anyone else that the Bush - Rice husband - wife team are flailing around when they open their pieholes about Iraq?

This headline sure caught my eye - "Bush to Skeptics: What's Your Iraq Plan?"
WTF?
What a sniveling, cretinous schoolyard taunt. Sure is great to be the Deciderer who also gets to fling his filthy handiwork in our faces as in "Yeah I fucked up an entire nation and committed genocide, so whaddya gonna do about it?" Never hurts to be reminded how our overlords got their jollies by installing as president a psychotic, murdering schmuck who isn't qualified to sweep the streets.

Rice got in on the action yesterday as she testified about the smoldering shitheap on capitol hill. She thinks the whole enterprise is just a sales job.
Selling the Vichy government to the Iraqis - "(The US's) most urgent task was to help the Iraqi government establish confidence among the Iraqi population."
Launching a new catch phrase for their escalation surge - "I would call it, senator, an augmentation that allows the Iraqis to deal with this very serious problem that they have in Baghdad."

This month only: half price on Iran.

Add Goat Herders To The Terrorist List

'Al Qaeda' must actually mean "skeet"

"The herdsmen had gathered with their animals around large fires at night to ward off mosquitoes. But lit up by the flames, they became latest victims of America's war on terror.
It was their tragedy to be misidentified in a secret operation by special forces attempting to kill three top al-Qa'ida leaders in south-ern Somalia.
Oxfam yesterday confirmed at least 70 nomads in the Afmadow district near the border with Kenya had been killed. The nomads were bombed at night and during the day while searching for water sources."

Same Speech, Differing Servility

from Media Matters:

"Summary: In its article on President Bush's visit to Fort Benning to promote his plan to increase troops in Iraq, the Associated Press claimed that Bush was "surrounded ... by cheering soldiers." Other media outlets, such as The Washington Post, however, reported that soldiers "saluted smartly and applauded politely" -- "hardly the boisterous, rock-star reception Bush typically gets at military bases."

"There Are Klingons In The White House..."

-------

Surge and mirrors: What Bush really said, by Paul Craig Roberts

"What do two US aircraft carrier attack groups in the Persian Gulf have to do with a guerilla ground war in Iraq?
The "surge" is merely a tactic to buy time while war with Iran and Syria can be orchestrated. The neoconservative/Israeli cabal feared that the pressure that Congress, the public, and the American foreign policy establishment were putting on Bush to de-escalate in Iraq would terminate their plan to achieve hegemony in the Middle East. Failure in Iraq would mean the end of the neoconservatives' influence.

It would be impossible to start a new war with Iran after losing the war in Iraq."

Deliberate Dismemberment

The probability is high that the american military is slated for destruction along with our economy. Say you were tasked to do things and create situations that stressed out and used up the military to eventually destroy it, aside from having it blown to pieces in an all out war. The question has to be asked - what would you do different than what Codpiece has done? In truth the answer is there ain't much different you would do.

Extended tours, weary ass troops, broken equipment, shitty morale - when even the MSM reports on these problems you know the situation is pretty dire. "The Army is coming to the end of its rope in Iraq. It simply does not have enough active-duty military personnel to sustain the current level of effort." says defense analyst Loren Thompson. Colin Powell said "The military already is overextended and “almost broken.” New defense secretary Robert Gates said, "America's military capacity is stretched thin."

So Codpiece the Deciderer deals with all these problems by publicly telling the nation that the military has to be stretched further, and that he has the ability to send an unlimited number of fresh bodies into his meatgrinder. That certainly seems to be the driving force behind ending active duty time limits for the Guard and the Reserve. This follows a prior decision to send another carrier group to the Gulf region, into waters so constricted and chock full of vessels that a US sub collided with a Japanese tanker this past week.

One would think that escalating efforts in failed military adventures is akin to throwing good money after bad and that responsible people would object to raising the stakes on a busted flush. Well they have - top brass are objecting to an insane escalation. Hell, even the lapdog Iraqi satrapy doesn't want any more of Sockpuppet's surge. By most polls the american people have had enough of this Vietnam flashback by a very wide margin. Even republican senators have had enough.

People tend to chalk all this up as misjudgment or some personality failure to be able to admit mistakes. But there are ominous signs that true to his very apt nickname, Sockpuppet is in this shitheap way over his psychotic head and the real forces behind his incompetent ass intend to widen this war. By backing Ethiopia's invasion of Somalia and jumping into the fighting the fascists have essentially opened up a whole new continent to foment strife. In what amounts to an act of war, massive amounts of US force stormed an Iranian diplomatic outpost in Iraq. After hinting that Iran's sovereignty will be dismissed when the Deciderer addressed his subjects, can this be looked at as anything but a serious provocation? Now come strong hints and leaks that our fascists have already started their wider middle east conflagration.

Iran has always been the real target. A weakened Iraq was merely a stepping stone where the US could build permanent bases and steal the oil as a precursor to going after Israel's true competitor in the middle east. Even with weakened army and marines, the fascists still have massive air and sea power to play with. War with Iran and it's cascading, disastrous consequences would no doubt destroy what's left of the US military. Supply lines to the troops in Iraq would be cut by pro Iranian Shiites and they would be exterminated. Basically all the warships in the Gulf are sitting ducks for advanced Sunburn and Yakhonts missiles. Forget about democrats toying with cutting funds to continue all the warfare - our bankrupt economy would collapse with the first flaming supertanker. The whole region would explode in violence with attacks on american interests.

Chris Floyd writes: "There have been many criminal episodes in the history of the United States government; but I am hard-pressed to think of one that has been so egregiously stupid and self-destructive, and so riddled with pathological aberrations."

But only if wasn't by design. Everything the fascists have done has deliberately led to this. Pretenses of mismanagement, the lies, the provocations, the bullying, the shredded constitution, the hypocrisy, the needless death and suffering. We're about to enter into the next phase in a New World Order agenda, one that doesn't have room for the country we used to know.

How Driftglass saw the Deciderer last evening:

Pissant's Pretentious Presentation

Of course it was all meant to happen, they're just making it up now on the fly. We have to remember that this wasn't and isn't a blunder, Iraq wasn't inaccurate intelligence that led to wrong decisions being made. The world's best trained chimp laid out our overlords' plan yesterday to intensify their resource rape and subjugate the middle east to empire's rule.

In a sane society this pathetically sick individual wouldn't even be fit for sweeping the streets, instead it's a huge inside joke that he's treated as president. The only way this happened was that he's been enabled and coddled every step of his parasitical existence. The hidden powers, the banksters and manipulators are having their way with their war agenda and throw this posturing grifter in our faces as a gag. Enablers in the MSM built up this wretched trifle like it was going to be God's Spoken Word. "Bush's last credible chance" says AP's Terence Hunt. Credibility?
Instead it was a redundant recitation of a fascist wishlist by a nauseating fraud who probably loves his image in the mirror.

Found some old photos of me I think I'll post, as if anyone cared.


30 years ago


20 years ago


20 years ago with cute, outdoorsy mrs. lipstick


spying on the neighbors 15 years ago

Of course I'm much more athletic and handsome now.

It Worked - High Profile Lynchings Do Worsen The Situation

Shia hostages hanged in streets in revenge for Saddam's execution
"Saddam Hussein's execution has inspired a gruesome cycle of revenge, with scores of Shia Muslims found hanged from lampposts in Baghdad.
(...)
Capt Mohammad Salim, of the interior ministry, said: "We have gathered 102 Shia bodies and believe that 90 per cent of them were taken hostage for Saddam Hussein's execution and then found hanging from poles by ropes."

Saddam hanging video sparks copycat suicides

Three children die in copycat Saddam hangings
"The deaths of an American boy, a teenage girl in India and a boy in Pakistan have been linked to the television coverage of Saddam Hussein's execution."

Deciderer Will Want More Needless Suffering

Punch drunk Fratboy will open his piehole tomorrow and announce some new, ego driven insanity that we'll all have to live with. To me, this is the watershed moment. If Deciderer wants to double down on his filthy shitheap in Iraq and the democrats fold, it will forever be to their unpatriotic and cowardly shame.

Few can match Driftglass when he zeros in:

"It will be more useless butchery. More graves. More widows. More families with a ragged hole that will never heal blown through them. More crippled Americans. More men and women -- sons and daughters -- wives and husbands -- lined up to be physically, mentally and emotionally mutilated.
And for no reason. As has been true for every aspect of this debacle since the day is was cooked up in its Neocon Petri dish, since there is no way this latest sacrifice the military and their families are being asked to bear will achieve the results the nation is being promised, the whole murderous waltz is all being acted out almost…fetishistically.
All of us, incarcerated by the stupid, hateful half of us inside the sodden nightmares of a weak and vicious idiot. Forced to watch as he walks us right off one cliff after another to the squealing cheers of the pig people."

Comet C/2006 P1 McNaught

visible only in the southern hemisphere

Bright New Comet Could Become Brilliant

"Comet McNaught's orbit indicates that it will sweep to within just 15.8 million miles of the Sun on Jan. 12. This rather close approach—less than half the average distance of Mercury, the closest planet to the Sun—suggests the comet has the potential to briefly evolve into a bright object. The big question is, just how bright?

Recent estimates have ranged widely from magnitude +2.1 (about as bright as Polaris, the North Star) to a dazzling -8.8 (about 40 times brighter than Venus)!"


Century 2, Quatrain 62
Mabus will soon die, then will come,
A horrible undoing of people and animals,
At once one will see vengeance,
One hundred powers, thirst, famine, when the comet will pass.

Victory!

Chris Floyd:

"The reason that George W. Bush insists that "victory" is achievable in Iraq is not that he is deluded or isolated or ignorant or detached from reality or ill-advised. No, it's that his definition of "victory" is different from those bruited about in his own rhetoric and in the ever-earnest disquisitions of the chattering classes in print and online. For Bush, victory is indeed at hand. It could come at any moment now, could already have been achieved by the time you read this. And the driving force behind his planned "surge" of American troops is the need to preserve those fruits of victory that are now ripening in his hand.

At any time within the next few days, the Iraqi Council of Ministers is expected to approve a new "hydrocarbon law" essentially drawn up by the Bush administration and its UK lackey, the Independent on Sunday reported. The new bill will "radically redraw the Iraqi oil industry and throw open the doors to the third-largest oil reserves in the world," says the paper, whose reporters have seen a draft of the new law."

So here we have it, the ultimate truth of why Iraq was targetted for 'special treatment' since at least the mid nineties and probably back before Poppy suckered Saddam into Gulf Slaughter 1. Weapons of Mass Destruction Freedom for Iraqis 9/11 Toppling Saddam De - nationalizing the country's oil fields was the primary driving force for the death and destruction brought to Iraq.

"From those earliest days until now, throughout all the twists and turns, the blood and chaos of the occupation, the Bush administration has kept its eye on this prize. The new law offers the barrelling buccaneers of the West a juicy set of production-sharing agreements (PSAs) that will maintain a fig leaf of Iraqi ownership of the nation's oil industry - while letting Bush's Big Oil buddies rake off up to 75 percent of all oil profits for an indefinite period up front, until they decide that their "infrastructure investments" have been repaid. Even then, the agreements will give the Western oil majors an unheard-of 20 percent of Iraq's oil profits - more than twice the average of standard PSAs, the Independent notes."

I wonder if Joe and Jane Sixpack will ever even realize the significance of this revelation, or if MSM will even make mention of this sweetheart deal the fascists have cooked up with their lapdog satrapy. In a sense, victory was assured as soon as Codpiece pumped his fist in the air and exclaimed 'feels good' when the US began the invasion back in 2003. They knew that getting into Iraq to start their appropriation of the oil fields was the hard part - when that was accomplished they could work up any number of excuses to stay there.

"So Bush's confident strut, his incessant upbeat pronouncements about the war, his complacent smirks, his callous indifference to the unspeakable horror he has unleashed in Iraq - these are not the hallmarks of self-delusion, or willful ignorance, or a disassociation from reality. He and his accomplices know full well what the reality is - and they like it."

Military Fashions Self Cleaning Clothes

Privates' privates are protected more now with underwear that can be worn for weeks without being washed. Millions went into research to develop clothes that resist bacterial infection:

"The new technology attaches nanoparticles to clothing fibers using microwaves. Then, chemicals that can repel water, oil and bacteria are directly bound to the nanoparticles. These two elements combine to create a protective coating on the fibers of the material.
This coating both kills bacteria, and forces liquids to bead and run off."

Of course this follows on the heels of billions being spent getting the soldiers infected in the first place:

"Doctor alleges water linked to infections -
Halliburton contends it met Army standards

In the latest broadside against Halliburton and its performance in Iraq, Senate Democrats produced an e-mail Friday from Capt. A. Michelle Callahan, a family physician serving at Qayyarah Airfield West, recounting how she treated six infections over a two-week period in January, at the same time she was noticing the water in base showers was cloudy and foul-smelling.
Follow-up testing of the water soldiers were using to bathe, shave and even brush their teeth revealed evidence of coliform and E. coli bacteria, Callahan wrote in an e-mail to a staffer for the Democratic Policy Committee, led by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D.
(...)
Once Callahan raised the alarm, Halliburton chlorinated the water in the area where the infections had occurred.
But the water was still cloudy, Callahan said. Further investigation revealed that the water the troops were using was actually wastewater from a purification unit, she wrote."

"How To: Disable Your Passport's RFID Chip"

From Wired Magazine:

Passports issued by the US State Department after January 1 will have always-on radio frequency identification chips, making it easy for officials – and hackers – to grab your personal stats. Getting paranoid about strangers slurping up your identity? Here’s what you can do about it. But be careful – tampering with a passport is punishable by 25 years in prison. Not to mention the “special” customs search, with rubber gloves. Bon voyage!
1) RFID-tagged passports have a distinctive logo on the front cover; the chip is embedded in the back.
2) Sorry, “accidentally” leaving your passport in the jeans you just put in the washer won’t work. You’re more likely to ruin the passport itself than the chip.
3) Forget about nuking it in the microwave – the chip could burst into flames, leaving telltale scorch marks. Besides, have you ever smelled burnt passport?
4) The best approach? Hammer time. Hitting the chip with a blunt, hard object should disable it. A nonworking RFID doesn’t invalidate the passport, so you can still use it.
– Jenna Wortham

Well That Didn't Take Long

Brand spanking new house majority leader Steny Hoyer decided to leave ambiguity at the door when he was sworn in today.

"Iran with nuclear weapons is unacceptable, new House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer told The Jerusalem Post hours after entering the party leadership position.
The Maryland Democrat said the view is shared by his party, rejecting assertions that the Democrats would be weaker than the Republicans on Iran.
He also said that the use of force against Teheran remained an option."

"He spoke to the Post on Thursday, the opening day of the 110th Congress, after making an appearance at the National Jewish Democratic Council reception honoring the six new Jewish members of Congress."

From Merriam - Webster's online dictionary:

Main Entry: fe·al·ty
1 a : the fidelity of a vassal or feudal tenant to his lord b : the obligation of such fidelity2 : intense fidelity

Jon Stewart On Livin' It Up In Iraq's Green Zone

AlterNet

jon: you write this incredible story of the guys that were going to rebuild some infrastructure. they brought three guys to do it. the germans had accomplished the same task in east germany. how much guys did they bring again?
Rajiv: 8,000.
jon: does that speak to the germans' laziness?

Sandstorm at Al Asad, Iraq, April 26, 2005

Dust in the wind: A wall of sand moves through Al Asad - Marine Corps News

"AL ASAD, Iraq (April 26, 2005) -- A dust storm similar to special effects on the big screen bellowed across the western desert of Iraq on April 26. The storm was spawned near the border of Syria and Jordan. Forward Operating Base Korean Village experienced tornadoes around 2 p.m. The storm moved in a northeasterly direction until it reached Al Asad, around 6:45. Weather forecasters here described the storm as a downburst. "A downburst is a strong downdraft resulting in an outward burst of damaging winds at ground level," said Gunnery Sgt. John B. Badeaux, weather forecaster for the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing (Forward). "Downburst winds can produce damage similar to a strong tornado," he added.

As the storm moved closer the sky changed to a shade of orange until total darkness blanketed the ground. The storm passed over in about 45 minutes, leaving a heavy sheet of dust in its wake. Forecaster say the wall of dust may have reached 4,000 to 5,000 feet."

Some brave dude took a video of it hitting the camp.

White House Secretly Closes Visitor Logbook

"WASHINGTON - The White House and the Secret Service quietly signed an agreement last spring in the midst of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal declaring that records identifying visitors to the White House are not open to the public.

The Bush administration didn't reveal the existence of the memorandum of understanding until last fall."

More secrecy. They must have a lot to hide from us, no?

Fox Doing What It Can To Smear Pelosi

Seen at Newshounds, thankfully holding their noses and watching Fox so we don't have to:
"On The Big Story today 1/4/07, host John Gibson contemptuously said of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: she "bragged 'I am the most powerful woman in America.' Doesn't that make you squirm, just a bit?"







And catch the snide, smarmy tone in their voices:



Fox will savagely attack any hint of opposition to Bush and his fascist agenda. Pelosi hasn't even been Speaker for a week and they've started in on her because she MIGHT represent a threat to their authoritarian gods. This childish peevishness is meant to tarnish her image and will probably make the dead-from-the-neck-up Fox viewers roar with laughter.
'I am the most powerful woman in America' - since brownshirt blogistan© is frothing at the mouth and bouncing that phrase around their echo chamber I doubt she even said it.

The Fox Method of Image Creation

Bailing Out The Miserable Failure Again

Probably in a move to create a dramatic backdrop for next week's useless bloviatings, Commander Codpiece is shuffling personnel around to make it look like he's actually doing something about his unholy nightmare in Iraq. General Casey is being sacked from his position as head of the multinational forces in Iraq. John Negroponte is being named deputy to sec. of state Kindasleazy Rice. (No doubt where he'll bring his death squad expertise to Iraq just in time for the spring offensive against the Shiites and probably Iran.) And Sockpuppet will probably install Admiral William Fallon, head of U.S. forces in Asia and the Pacific, as commander of The Coalition Of The Dwindling in the middle east.

It doesn't bode well for american troops and Iraqi civilians that Sockpuppet picked Fallon. He seems to be more of a political animal and public relations flack than a general who'll look after his troops and tell it like it is. In fact this is probably another political appointment that'll work out as smashingly as Bush's other spectacular decisions. Fallon has a history of shmoozing and being called upon to smooth things over when there's bad press.

Some years ago the navy decided to use new, more powerful sonar that obviously hurt sea mammals. In March of 2000 there was a whale beaching in the Bahamas where a number died. Things came to a head and vice chief of naval operations Fallon had to appear in front of a congressional hearing the next year to admit the navy's fault.

When a sub, the U.S.S. Greeneville sank that Japanese trawler and killed some people with Codpiece's buddies at the steering wheel it was Fallon who was called on to hand deliver an apology to prime minister Yoshiro Mori.

In 2004 Sockpuppet nominated an air force general named Gregory Martin to be the next commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific. But elsewhere there was a very real problem of a huge scandal coming to light where Boeing was going to rake in huge profits by leasing their 767s to the air force to be converted as aerial tankers, instead of the military buying them outright. Martin was neck deep in that scandal and Fallon was hurriedly brought in as a replacement to smooth over the mess. He was also a spokesflack for the military in that Vieques island controversy a few years back, where the people there somehow objected to their land being used for target practice and a toxic dump.

So Fallon seems to be just another one of Sockpuppet's stooges who's being called in to be a useful tool in his ongoing middle east tragedy. It may be that competent and realistic brass have all left the building and deserted Bush to his cataclysm, and all that are left are flunkies who's value is political expedience to the detriment of being a good military commander. It's a very bad omen of things to come when...

"A Chinese submarine stalked a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group in the Pacific last month and surfaced within firing range of its torpedoes and missiles before being detected, The Washington Times has learned.
(...)
The submarine encounter with the USS Kitty Hawk and its accompanying warships also is an embarrassment to the commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, Adm. William J. Fallon, who is engaged in an ambitious military exchange program with China aimed at improving relations between the two nations' militaries."

We Can Only Hope