More Ignorant Repug Crazy Shit Talk

Trying to prove that he can compete with the rest of the know - nothing repug lineup, Tom Tancredo from Colorado tried to appeal to the puffed chest crowd:

"OSCEOLA -- Followers of radical Islam must be deterred from committing a nuclear attack on U.S. soil, Colorado Congressman Tom Tancredo said Tuesday morning, saying that as president he would take drastic measures to prevent such attacks. "If it is up to me, we are going to explain that an attack on this homeland of that nature would be followed by an attack on the holy sites in Mecca and Medina," the GOP presidential candidate said."

Nothing like picking out a target enemy and lumping them all together. Mecca and Medina happen to be in Saudi Arabia, which at last glance was a firm ally of the bushista regime and the sales partner in a $20,000,000,000 weapons deal. I wonder how the saudis would feel, and maybe a billion muslims wordwide, after two saudi cities which happened to be the holiest sites in their religion were turned to ashes?

But idiot blather like this isn't new with the goose steppers. Remember during the second repug debate when sycophant Brit Hume set up that hypothetical terror situation and most of them tried to outdo each other in how vicious they'd be? (Oh yeah? I'd poke out their eyes, put'em on the rack and then I'd get medieval!) Not that the dems aren't just fine with the current WOT fraud, but seriously this GOP cluster of punitive goons is a wonder to behold.

Is This Who Really Controls US Policy?

And why is Israel always called a "state" anyway?

Rapture Of The Nerds

Religionist Virus Set To Infect Second Life

"It seems religious groups continue to take notice of the social interactions provided by Linden Lab's Second Life. Just recently, a Jesuit academic has sent out the call to fellow Catholics to start bringing their missionary work to the virtual world.

"Deep down, the digital world can be considered, in its way, mission territory," he said. "Second Life is somewhere where the opportunity to meet people and to grow should not be missed, therefore, any initiative that can inspire the residents in a positive way should be considered opportune."


"Epiphany Island"

Voila, Problem Solved

The problem of bad PR, that is.
Just like ignoring Iraqi deaths, or not letting the public know the white house logs, our criminal cabal deals with information that they'd rather you didn't know by just erasing it.

U.S. drops Baghdad electricity reports

"WASHINGTON -- As the Bush administration struggles to convince lawmakers that its Iraq war strategy is working, it has stopped reporting to Congress a key quality-of-life indicator in Baghdad: how long the power stays on.

Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last week that Baghdad residents could count on only "an hour or two a day" of electricity. That's down from an average of five to six hours a day earlier this year.

But that piece of data has not been sent to lawmakers for months because the State Department, which prepares a weekly "status report" for Congress on conditions in Iraq, stopped estimating in May how many hours of electricity Baghdad residents typically receive each day. Instead, the department now reports on the electricity generated nationwide, a measurement that does not indicate how much power Iraqis in Baghdad or elsewhere actually receive."

Giuliani And Partners Profit From Being Rapacious Scum

Jeebus do they love to milk those cash cows. Rudy's been sucking at the 9/11 tit for all it's worth and his law firm Bracewell & Giuliani LLP has been busy selling out the american people by representing a foreign firm that will build a monstrous highway through the heart of the country.
Now it seems they've been padding their bank accounts by selling out people who became unwitting addicts:

"Presidential candidates typically wait until they’re elected before they begin selling out American citizens.
Not Rudolph Giuliani.
The man considered the ‘front-runner’ in the GOP presidential race has engineered sinister alliances with multinational construction corporations and profited financially from a drug cover-up that ultimately proved deadly for some Americans.
This past May, the makers of the drug Oxycontin pleaded guilty to claiming to doctors that the drug was less addictive than other pain medications.
Rudolph Giuliani and his consulting company, Giuliani Partners, spent the last five years playing a key role negotiating with federal prosecutors on behalf of Purdue Pharma LP, the pharmaceutical company that made the drug.
The punishment for the corporate pushers who marketed this drug knowing it produced a heroin-like high and a commensurate addiction rate? On July 20, it was announced after a 4 hour hearing there would be no prison sentences; instead, a $634 million fine- chump change in big pharma world. The no-prison settlement was plotted by the man who wants to be your next president.
Since Rudy’s been auditioning for the job of leader of the free world, hardly a campaign speech goes by without him boasting of how he rid New York City of thugs and dangerous drug dealers while he was mayor. The next time you hear that well-worn spiel keep in mind the manufactured political maverick personally brokered a sweet deal for a large drug company’s execs who should clearly have done hard time. Giuliani made sure big pharma higher-ups each got a stay-out-of-jail card even though they knowingly marketed a highly-addictive pain medication which killed hundreds and hopelessly addicted untold thousands. It has since been referred to as a national addiction “epidemic.”

Seemingly Oblivious Limey Won't Mention Unpleasant Things In Polite Company

Never mind the raging hell in other parts of the world torn apart by these sickening war criminals, U.K.'s Brown Wants Bush Talks in U.S. to Focus on Trade, Darfur



"July 29 (Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Gordon Brown will push for progress on world trade talks and an end to the conflict in the Darfur region of Sudan when he travels to the U.S. to meet President George W. Bush today.
Brown, who took over from Tony Blair on June 27, will visit Bush in Camp David, Maryland today and tomorrow and address the United Nations in New York on July 31. His spokesman Michael Ellam said trade and Darfur are the ``main issues'' the British government wants to talk about. U.K. involvement in Iraq will also be discussed, he said."



Of course the main topic of conversation will be the Iraq abattoir, or Abattoiraq, but for public consumption some other ripoff and energy piracy will be showcased, in the most benign terms.

So How Much IS That Monstrous Iraq Embassy Costing?

You know, that gigantic luxury complex, the size of 80 football fields with six apartment buildings, a gym, a pool, a food court and its own power generation and water-treatment plants towering over the city ranked "worst place to live in the world"?

Well, figures are hard to come by and the state department maintains the fictional cost of $592 million. There are Congressional Research Service reports by a Susan B. Epstein that tends to paint a somewhat different picture:

Funding 2003-2007
$35.8 million (PL 108-11)
$105.75 million (PL 108-106)
$184 million (PL 108-106 - CPA funding)
$20 million housing and other expenses (PL 108-287)
$665.3 million (PL 108-287 - DOD funding)
$663.5 million logistical and security (PL 109-13)
$592 million new embassy construction (PL 109-13)
$1327.3 million operations and security (PL 109-234)

$3593.65 million Subtotal

Pending:
$823.9 million operations in Iraq (FY2007 supplemental request)
$1900 million operations in Iraq (FY2008 supplemental request)
$65 million regular funding for operations (FY2008 budget request)

$2788.9 million Subtotal

$6382.55 million Total
Or well over ten times what we've been told.
There is no intention of ever leaving Iraq.

Un Candidate's Non Campaign Suffers Non Shakeups

"Former Senator Fred D. Thompson has yet to make a formal declaration that he is running for president, but already his noncampaign campaign has gone through its first shake-up.
(...)
On Tuesday, Tom Collamore, a top adviser to Mr. Thompson, stepped aside. At the same time, Mr. Thompson’s political operation announced that it was bringing in Randy Enwright, a veteran Republican strategist with ties to the Bush family, and former Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham, to take over the prospective campaign. The next day, the organization’s research director quit, and other staff members walked out."

I'll make a prediction. This guy is nowheresville. All the big splash he's making as a non candidate will evaporate once he has to stand on his own and enunciate positions, once he undergoes real scrutiny under hot lights. I believe he's merely another cookie cutter repug whore who's one gaffe away from obscurity.

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One Of The Most Underreported Stories About Katrina

How the US ignored offers of assistance from foreign countries

"A new report reveals the US government turned down offers of help from across the globe in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, telling one diplomat "human assistance of any kind is not on our priorities list."
The report from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington relies on a review of 25,000 documents obtained from the State Department. The report reveals the US was interested mostly in cash assistance and materials, rather than direct aid from foreign relief workers and doctors, after Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast in 2005.
"A review of the State Department documents reveals distressing ineptitude," CREW's executive director Melanie Sloan said in a prepared statement. "Countries were trying to donate desperately needed goods and services, but as a result of bureaucratic bungling and indifference, those most in need of these generous offers and of aid never received it."
Offers to help came from 145 countries and 12 international organizations. The US did accept help from its top allies around the globe, but CREW's report shows it left unclaimed hundreds of thousands of prepared meals, water pumps, doctors and medicine."

Katrina was the catalyst that prompted me to start doing this. The government's response to our human tragedy was off the scale; it was the most disgusting display of consummate ineptitude and indifference I'd ever seen. Words can't describe how putrid they acted. The entire government should have been removed at that point.
The scumbags refused direct humanitarian assistance for the suffering people of the Gulf while demanding things and money instead. They felt that pictures of foreign aid workers helping the victims were worse than allowing them to die.
I'll say that again - they felt that pictures of foreign aid workers helping the victims were worse than allowing them to die.

Just one example - Bush Fails to Act on Offer of 1,100 Cuban Doctors

"Hurricane victims from New Orleans desperately need medical attention, and there are not enough doctors available to meet all of their needs. However, the federal government has not yet accepted Cuba's offer to send 1,100 doctors with more than 20 tons of medicine.
The front page of the Saturday New York Times features a grim photo of elderly patients — some in critical condition — lying on conveyer belts and stretchers at the New Orleans airport. There is not a nurse, doctor, or hospital bed in sight. A Times article explains that more than 2,000 patients were evacuated there from hospitals, and many died while awaiting evacuation to another hospital. As a Saturday headline on WLBT-TV, Jackson read: “Many dying at airport for lack of medical care.”

Study: Iraqis May Experience Sadness When Friends, Relatives Die

Finding astonishes americans

"CHAPEL HILL, NC—A field study released Monday by the University of North Carolina School of Public Health suggests that Iraqi citizens experience sadness and a sense of loss when relatives, spouses, and even friends perish, emotions that have until recently been identified almost exclusively with Westerners.

"We were struck by how an Iraqi reacts to the sight of the bloody or decapitated corpse of a family member in a not unlike an American, or at the very least a Canadian, would," said Dr. Jonathan Pryztal, chief author of the study. "In addition to the rage, bloodlust, and hatred we already know to dominate the Iraqi emotional spectrum, it appears that they may have some capacity, however limited, for sadness."

We're Going To See A Lot More Stories Like This One

It's come down to this. Passive, non violent protest at the way our country has been taken over by fascist scum is met with violence and arrest.

Here's a synopsis. Two patriots named Mark and Deborah Kuhn in Asheville, North Carolina flew an american flag upside down on their porch and pinned these signs on it to explain why they did so. This is what the story states:

"The Kuhns, who where hanging an upside-down American flag with signs attached to it on their front porch, said they flew the flag to protest the state of the country. An upside-down flag is recognized as a distress signal. The Kuhns said the signs pinned to the flag were to explain why they were displaying the flag upside down along with a photo of President Bush with “out now” written on it."



Some irate brownshirt notified a deputy sheriff who went to their property and tried to issue a citation under an arcane 90 year old law. The Kuhns refused, went inside their home and closed and locked the door. The deputy smashed the glass on the door to unlock it, rushed inside and arrested the couple. The cop says they slammed the door on his hand, breaking the pane and cutting him. That the cop is a lying shitbag is evidenced from the fact that Mrs. Kuhn called 9/11 to report he had broken in and was assaulting them:

"We have an officer here who has broken into our home and is violating our rights. He's assaulting my husband - I need someone here now!"

You can hear scuffling, a dog barking and screaming.

So a jackboot thug feels dissed and proceeds to smash his way into their home because they stuck pins in a piece of cloth, which was going to be the source of their ticket, not because the flag was upside down.

We're going to see this behavior ad nauseam all over this country very soon as the civil war commences. There's no turning back now, we passed all crossroads to take a different path and we're speeding towards a tyrannical police state. This is being forced on us and we can't ignore it or wish it out of our lives. The fascists have a stranglehold on our society which certain thugs like this cop embrace wholeheartedly with a sick, christopath, authoritarian righteousness. It's a top down, totalitarian dogma that demands complete surrender and obedience and violates life at all levels.

We're all going to have to face what's coming and reach very deep inside of ourselves to find out how we as individuals will respond when these moments arise.

I've lived a long life and I'm not afraid to die. Prior to breaking down my door, I would hope anyone would think first about trying to make me prove it.

Neoconservatism Is A Dead Piece Of Filth

Call it what you will, it's fascism with a smiley face, wrapping itself in a flag.
by Brent Budowski

"Neoconservatives are very special people, in their own eyes. When things go wrong they become the party of perjury and pardons, the party of abuse of power and abuse of executive privilege to cover up their failures and crimes.

Neoconservatives champion the politics of fear, desperately seeking to frighten the people to justify their attacks on freedoms guaranteed by statute and constitution.

Neoconservatives embody the politics of profiteering, masterminding and organizing the most corrupt occupation in world history, staffed by ideological partisans, rewarding their campaign contributors, mismanaging tens of billions of lost and stolen dollars, under the imperial arrogance of a proconsul awarded the Presidential Medal Of Freedom.

Neoconservatives know better than generals, with their contempt for the Geneva Convention and their actions that civilized people call torture.

Our neoconservative theoreticians believe that George Washington was wrong and George Bush is right. Even torture is done with the big lie that they are promoting freedom and democracy with their corrupt occupation, their war against the Geneva Convention, and their shadow CIA created in the bowels of Rumsfeld's neoconservative Department of Defense.

And then they try to keep their secrets.

And then they lie about what they do."


Meanwhile, this isn't a march towards a fascist state, it's more like a slow waddle to the refrigerator:

"Although, don't look for torch-lit processions thronging the nation's streets and boulevards; rather, look for a Nuremberg Rally of couch-bound brownshirts. Instead of ogling the serried ranks of jut-jawed, SS soldiers, a contemporary Leni Riefenstahl would be forced to film chubby clusters of double-chinned consumers, saluting the new order with their TV remotes."

Attack Of The Flying Manhole Covers

Manhole Explosion Closes 13 Mile Road Near John R.

"MADISON HEIGHTS, Mich. -- An explosion closed the westbound lane of 13 Mile Road between John R. Road and Stephenson Highway due to a manhole cover that blew up in the area, according to Madison Heights police."

Luoteis-Venäjällä räjähti kaasuputki

Explosion shakes St. James

"A quiet residential pocket of west St. James was shaken by an explosion in sewer lines on Monday evening."

Manhole spews oily liquid into garden

"A manhole cover burst spewing a fountain of oily liquid all over a man's garden in Selmeston village.
Ian Duffill, a retired boat builder, was at home, in The Street, when he heard a thunderous roar."

Manhole cover blown off in Orem

"A manhole cover at the intersection of 400 West and Center Street in Orem shot off its base at approximately 4:30 p.m. Friday."

Power restored in San Francisco

"Every time workers attempted to close those breakers to restore service, it caused voltage fluctuations - that, in turn, caused a transformer to fail in a manhole under 560 Mission St. Witnesses reported hearing a blast shortly before 2 p.m. and then seeing flames licking up through the manhole grate."

Blast knocks out power in Aurora

"About 88 homes and businesses in downtown Aurora went without electricity for most of Monday following an underground explosion that blew manhole covers 15 feet into the air and injured a firefighter."

And of course that thingy in New York a week ago.

Faux Noise - Progressive Bloggers Are Dangerous And Smell Bad

We should take it as a compliment that Faux decided that the progressive tubes have become a danger that should be attacked. Since the job of Murdoch's filth machine is to slime any opposition to the fascist agenda, it means the brownshirts are concerned, if not frightened of the clout we have in exposing it.

O'Really better know that what's good for the goose is good for the gander too when he exhorts the mouthbreathers to go after advertising. He has them too.

Reader's Digest Condensed Version Of Bush's Latest Speech

For the full version, go here

Halliburton Profits Soar Higher Than Drunk Astronauts

Halliburton Income More Than Doubles

Flashback: Halliburton's 'Sweetheart' Deal in Iraq and Cheney may still have Halliburton ties

Buzzed Lightyear

The Right Tight Stuff

"ASTRONAUTS were allowed to fly although their colleagues and flight surgeons warned they were so drunk they posed a flight-safety risk, according to media reports.
An internal NASA panel also reported "heavy use of alcohol'' within the standard 12-hour "bottle to throttle'' abstinence rule applied to NASA flight-crew members, Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine said."

Frankly, if I was strapped to the top of tons of explosives and given NASA's track record I'd want to be tanked to the gills at blast off too.

FBI Looking For A Few Good Snitches

Actually about 15000 of them


"The FBI is taking cues from the CIA to recruit thousands of covert informants in the United States as part of a sprawling effort to boost its intelligence capabilities.
According to a recent unclassified report to Congress, the FBI expects its informants to provide secrets about possible terrorists and foreign spies, although some may also be expected to aid with criminal investigations, in the tradition of law enforcement confidential informants. The FBI did not respond to requests for comment on this story."


Reading the wrong thing in public can get you in trouble

"I'll tell you what, Marc. Someone in the shop that day saw you reading something, and thought it looked suspicious enough to call us about. So that's why we're here, just checking it out. Like I said, there's no problem. We'd just like to get to the bottom of this. Now if we can't, then you may have a problem. And you don't want that."


Enemies of the state

"I continue to be amazed at the immense meticulousness of the Stasi," Engholm told German magazine Der Spiegel, "who even noted down the time and length of my visits to the toilet."

Movies

The Wilhelm Scream

In 1951 a picture called "Distant Drums" directed by Raoul Walsh and starring Gary Cooper was made. In the flick a fellow named Wilhelm takes an Indian's arrow and a sound effect scream was later added.



Being a stock sound effect the scream was later added to a number of movies, so much so that it's become a cult favorite that directors like Tarentino and Spielberg go out of their way to use. It's probably true that billions of people have heard the scream.

Coming Events

August 1-7 25th Annual Testical Festival
Clinton, Montana Thousands of drunk cowpokes devour rocky mountain oysters.



August 2-4 World Yo Yo Contest
Orlando Florida "The event hall has over 10,000 feet of yo-yoing space with 22 foot ceilings."

August 3-5 Twins Days
Twinsburg, Ohio



August 10-12 Humongous Fungus Fest
Crystal Falls, Michigan "Put the fun back in fungi!"

August 25 Mobile Phone Throwing World Championships
Savonlinna, Finland Release your inner Russel Crowe.

Deranged Bubble Boy Again Rants To A Captive Audience

The insanity continues. His handlers had Sockpuppet lecture a group of soldiers after lunch at the Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina. His talking points babble proves the fact that the criminal cabal stands for only one thing - fear.

That's it, that's their message. We have to be fearful and look to them for our safety. Talking about their CIA/Mossad/ISI creation that they dangle in front of us whenever they feel the fear level isn't sufficient, in the transcripts he mentioned "Al Qaeda" ninety three times in a half hour harangue. About twenty three times he brought up the name of the dead Osama Bin Laden and referenced 'terror' almost forty times.

With plummeting poll numbers they have to beat us over the head with this fear garbage to try to legitimize their crimes. They don't dare try anything else because they don't have anything else, and they don't dare let up with their lies and manipulation because even more people catch on to them. Here's where they're screwed - they've painted themselves into a very small corner with this. Most people are disgusted with this message. They're going to have to pull off another false flag 9/11 and as soon as they do not only will a lot of people recognize it as such, it will immediately prove all their laughable manipulation to make us 'protected' was total garbage. Just a heaping pile of bullshit.

Not that we have to wait for our overlords to kill americans and blame it on "Al Qaeda" for us to see through the BS. He used the old ~fighting them there so we don't do it here line~ “If we were not fighting these al Qaida extremists and terrorists in Iraq, they would not be leading productive lives of service and charity. Most would be trying to kill Americans and other civilians elsewhere — in Afghanistan, or other foreign capitals, or on the streets of our own cities." But oops Bubble Boy, your fearmongering wires are getting crossed.

So low numbers=more fearmongering. Get set for a lot more high anxiety.

Do You Get It NOW?

The Crisis Papers

"Though they tried for the longest time to hide it, the Bush Administration is operating on the discredited claim that the President is above the law -- nay, IS the law. (Nixon tried the same assertion when he was President -- "If the President does it, it is not illegal" -- and the Supreme Court shot him down quickly.) Cheney and Alberto Gonzales devised a theory of governance that claims the President can do whatever he wants, violate whatever laws he wants, when he's acting as "Commander-in-Chief" during "wartime."

As soon as they pulled off 9/11 the Bushista mob was fully prepared to exploit their window of opportunity while the american public was shocked and vulnerable to implanted propaganda.

As I understand it, implanted messages need to be kept simple and repeated many times.

Which is what the Bushistas did incessantly, as often and as soon as they could, about three key things which would set the stage for them to get away with their Fascist Agenda.

One, that things would never be the same again after Black Tuesday. Two, that our heroes were going to "smoke them out" and punish them and everyone who harbored them. And three, that we were now at war. It was striking and plainly obvious that these talking points were memorized and rehearsed and the scumbags droned on and on for days about them every time they opened their pieholes.

Pretending we're at war is their reason for acting illegally and above the law, which is why they pull off their stupid "terror plot" schemes and the brownshirts run in circles screaming about their "islamofascism". It's fraud, a scam, a putrid lie, and basically I'm fucking sick and tired of people who buy it.

Those Helpful Google Ads

Re-Branding The Slaughter

"Can the same techniques used to sell corn flakes, ketchup and power drills be used to sell the Iraq policy to the public and extend the U.S. occupation long into the future? The Bush administration and the Pentagon think so.

Madison Avenue To The Rescue

As more Americans called for an end to the U.S. occupation, the Pentagon secretly ordered a report on ways to extend it long long into the future with the help of "Madison Avenue" marketing techniques--the same techniques used to sell breakfast cereal and hardware products to the American public.
Now available for the public to read, (Enlisting Madison Avenue: The Marketing Approach to Earning Popular Support in Theaters of Operation, PDF File 1.37 MB), the report was prepared by the Rand Corporation and cost the American taxpayer $400,000 dollars.
On the heels of a deadly July, with more and more U.S. soldiers killed while Iraqi government officials prepare themselves for a month long vacation, the Rand report opens with a line that suggests the exact opposite of what Americans want:
Counterinsurgency (COIN) and other stability operations are prominent in the contemporary operating environment and are likely to remain so in the future.
Such a stunning and cynical opening line can mean only one thing: rather than looking for ways to get out of Iraq, bring our soldiers home, and redeploy the military for smarter national security--the Pentagon is ignoring the will of the American public altogether and seeking ways to re-brand the occupation."

Can the scumbags be any more filthy? Taking and using our tax dollars to find more effective propaganda techniques to ram their war crimes down our throats.

This isn't going to end until we force them to end it.

Cheney Determined To Strike In US With WMD This Summer

By Webster G. Tarpley

"The greatest threat now is "a 9/11 occurring with a group of terrorists armed not with airline tickets and box cutters, but with a nuclear weapon in the middle of one of our own cities."
-- Dick Cheney on Face the Nation, CBS, April 15, 2007

"A few days ago, a group of lawyers from western Massachusetts met with the local congressman, Democrat John Olver. Their request was that Olver take part in the urgent effort to impeach Bush and Cheney. Olver responded by saying that he had no intention of doing anything to support impeachment. He went further, offering the information that the United States would soon attack Iran, and that these hostilities would be followed by the imposition of a martial law regime here.

According to reports in the British press, the Cheney war party has gained the upper hand in the secret councils of the Bush White House, pushing aside the purported hesitations of Miss Rice, Secretary Gates, and the NATO allies to chart a direct course towards war with Iran."

Are we really that stupid?


I got in contact with my congresscritter about impeachment and was basically told to stuff it, only in nicer terms than that. He said impeachment was a waste of time and he'd rather work to overturn the egregious things that already have been done.
Sort of like shoveling frantically at the rear end of an elephant as he keeps shitting all over your head.

Speaking of whom - DeFazio Denied Access To Post-Attack Continuity Plans

"WASHINGTON — Constituents called Rep. Peter DeFazio's office, worried there was a conspiracy buried in the classified portion of a White House plan for operating the government after a terrorist attack.
As a member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, DeFazio, D-Ore., is permitted to enter a secure "bubbleroom'' in the Capitol and examine classified material. So he asked the White House to see the secret documents.
On Wednesday, DeFazio got his answer: DENIED."

US Forces Shoot 250,000 Rounds For Every Dead Insurgent

And since dead Iraqis and Afghanis are automatically labeled 'insurgents', that's a lot of bullets.

"US forces have fired so many bullets in Iraq and Afghanistan - an estimated 250,000 for every insurgent killed - that American ammunition-makers cannot keep up with demand. As a result the US is having to import supplies from Israel.
A government report says that US forces are now using 1.8 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition a year. The total has more than doubled in five years, largely as a result of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as changes in military doctrine.
(...)
John Pike, director of the Washington military research group GlobalSecurity.org, said that, based on the GAO's figures, US forces had expended around six billion bullets between 2002 and 2005. "How many evil-doers have we sent to their maker using bullets rather than bombs? I don't know," he said.
"If they don't do body counts, how can I? But using these figures it works out at around 300,000 bullets per insurgent. Let's round that down to 250,000 so that we are underestimating."

Rudy's Bad Omen

All the presidential aspirants pay attention to public opinion and try to at least bend with prevailing breezes. Demagoguery aside, they're not going to actively pursue policies that cause them to lose support, image is everything at this early stage of the election farce.

McCain's ambitions are ending in complete disaster because of one thing only - he totally ran with the war pigs while the american consensus is turning against Iraq and the seemingly endless grind of bad news and dead bodies. I think his bizarre trip to Baghdad and his ludicrous stroll on the street, dressed in body armor and flanked with security was the beginning of his decline. People saw right through that stunt. And more and more people are just flat out tired of this "war" garbage imposed on us by people who use fear as political expediency.

Which is why it's striking and ominous that Giuliani picked a foreign policy team that cheer leads the current bloodbaths and even wants to expand the carnage:

"Of the seven other members of Giuliani’s “Senior Foreign Policy Advisory Board,” several have also been associated with PNAC and the CPD, most spectacularly, the legendary former editor of Commentary magazine, Norman “World War IV” Podhoretz, whose most recent contribution to Western-Islamic understanding was his article, “The Case for Bombing Iran” A founding father of neo-conservatism, Podhoretz is also, of course, the father-in-law of Deputy National Security Advisor Elliott Abrams whose own work in frustrating serious peace efforts between Israel and its Arab neighbors has been second only to Dick Cheney’s."

You'd think that seeing McCain go down in flames and watching Sockpuppet's numbers go south that Giuliani would temper his Israel First! rhetoric and pick slightly less bellicose aides. But he seems to be striving mightily to have the war baton passed to him in this race.

What does he know that we don't?

Mitt's Private Posse

Stinking badges sink aide *

"A controversial aide has resigned from former Gov. Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign following a Herald story in which he was accused of creating phony badges allegedly used to strong-arm reporters and gain access to restricted areas.

(...)

Garrity is under investigation in Massachusetts and New Hampshire for incidents in which he is accused of pretending to be a law enforcement officer. In one incident, he allegedly pulled over a New York Times reporter and told him to stop following Romney’s motorcade between campaign stops in New Hampshire. In another, he is suspected of pretending to be a Massachusetts State Trooper in a bizarre phone call to a Wilmington plumbing company.
A campaign source told the Herald that those alleged incidents were part of a broader pattern in which Garrity continually pretended to be a security operative on the campaign. The source said Garrity issued bogus badges to subordinates and directed them to use the shields to project an image of security on the campaign trail.
The source said the fake badges were used on the campaign trail and other events to discourage reporters from approaching Romney with questions and to gain immediate access to restricted areas while planning events. In one instance, the source said, an aide flashed a badge to drive through a Massachusetts Turnpike toll booth without paying."

*sly reference to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

Space Exploration Anniversary

Thirty one years ago today the Mars probe Viking 1 landed on the planet.

Scientists Say Mars Viking Mission Found Life

Thirty eight years ago today Neil Armstrong bungled his prepared statement as he hopped onto the moon's surface.

"These "Babies" are huge, Sir!"

"According to a Dr. Vladimir Azhazha: "Neil Armstrong relayed the message to Mission Control that two large, mysterious objects were watching them after having landed near the moon module. But this message was never heard by the public -- because NASA censored it." According to a Dr. Aleksandr Kasantsev, Buzz Aldrin took color movie film of the UFOs from inside the module, and continued filming them after he and Armstrong went outside. Armstrong confirmed that the story was true but refused to go into further detail, beyond admitting that the CIA was behind the cover-up."

Showtime

This is a wake-up call that we are about to have another 9/11-WMD experience.

"A number of pundits have concluded that the reason the Democrats have not brought a halt to Bush’s follies is that they expect Bush’s unpopular policies to provide them with a landslide victory next year.
There is a problem with this reasoning. It assumes that Cheney, Rove,and the Republicans are ignorant of these facts or are content for the Republican Party to be destroyed after Bush has his warmonger-police state fling. “After me, the deluge.”
Isn’t it more likely that Cheney and Rove have in mind events that will, once again, rally the people behind President Bush and the Republican Party that is fighting the “war on terror” that the Democrats “want to lose”?"

It's the only thing the criminal cabal has left - fear. I wholeheartedly agree with the above prediction. It has been puzzling that the fascists blithely go about their filthy business seemingly without a care in the world, unbothered by the hellish mess they've brought on. In the case of Iraq it's been a raging success for them, achieving all the results they wanted - control of the oil leaving a shattered society society unable to threaten Israel. We look at it as a monstrous failure as they go on making it worse by the day. It's been a mystery why they're willing to continue to be the worst fuckups in the history of the world only if you believe they think like we do.

Their unconcern means one ugly thing - that they've already decided to take that final step to turn this entire hemisphere into an overt dictatorial police state. It's just a matter of timing now that they've taken care of the formalities. They're going to pull another lollapalooza and away we go into uncharted territory.

This is what I think should be done once that happens. If the US is hit with a terror event, false flag or otherwise, the entire criminal enterprise should be arrested and tried for treason. If it's self inflicted like 9/11 it's obvious what should be done, and getting successfully attacked by outside forces would mean everything the fascists did since 9/11 was a self serving load of crap. Either way it would be time to clean house.

When black tuesday happened the twin towers crumbled into their footprints, which was fortuitous for the owners because the trade center was due for an expensive overhaul and renovation. I'll just add that the USS Enterprise that recently joined the armada off the coast of Iran is nearly fifty years old and is due for decommission soon. Just saying.

"You Supply The Pictures, And I'll Supply The War"

Ernest L. Meyer wrote of William Randolph Hearst: "Mr. Hearst in his long and not laudable career has inflamed Americans against Spaniards, Americans against Japanese, Americans against Filipinos, Americans against Russians, and in the pursuit of his incendiary campaign he has printed downright lies, forged documents, faked atrocity stories, inflammatory editorials, sensational cartoons and photographs and other devices by which he abetted his jingoistic ends." --Chapter 17: Farewell: Lord of San Simeon, Lords of the Press, George Seldes

Hearst was the editor of the New York Morning Journal and had sent sketch artist Frederic Remington to Cuba to cover the rebellion against Spanish rule. When Remington cabled the paper saying "There is no war. Request to be recalled", Hearst shot back "Please remain. You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war." For months the Journal and other newspapers sensationalized the situation in Cuba, and after the Maine explosion they went into overdrive vilifying the Spaniards with Headlines like "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain" and "War? Sure!"

So now we learn through the freedom of information act in Britain that Tony Blair and media magnifico Rupert Murdoch were in close communication leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. It doesn't come as any surprise that war criminals hobnob with media ownership to get the right spin on the topics of the day, and we can imagine that the word went out to demonize Saddam and make up all that garbage about Iraqi intentions. Collaboration to whip up support for the war crimes is a given, what's interesting about this collusion is that Murdoch and his paper The Sun agreed to bash the chief cheese eating surrender monkey across the channel for opposing war fever:

The calls... and the editorial response

Phone call: 11 March 2003
The Sun says: 12 March 2003
"Like a cheap tart who puts price before principle, money before honour, Jacques Chirac struts the streets of shame. The French President's vow to veto the second resolution [on Iraq] at the United Nations - whatever it says - puts him right in the gutter."
Phone call: 13 March 2003
The Sun says: 14 March 2003
"Charlatan Jacques Chirac is basking in cheap applause for his 'Save Saddam' campaign - but his treachery will cost his people dear. This grandstanding egomaniac has inflicted irreparable damage on some of the most important yet fragile structures of international order."

On second thought-

MSM At Work

Pagans Not Happy With Marketing Campaign

"PAGANS have pledged to perform “rain magic” to wash away cartoon character Homer Simpson who was painted next to their famous fertility symbol - the Cerne Abbas giant.

The 17th century chalk outline of the naked, sexually aroused, club-wielding giant is believed by many to be a symbol of ancient spirituality.

Many couples also believe the 180ft giant, which is carved in the hillside above Cerne Abbas, Dorset, is an aid to fertility.

A giant 180ft Homer Simpson brandishing a doughnut was painted next to the well-endowed figure today in a publicity stunt to promote The Simpsons Movie released later this month."

Tower Of Power

The Arivaca Spy Tower

"ARIVACA, Ariz.—C Hues has vowed to moon it. Phil Benoit calls it a "search without probable cause." Jim Chilton has demanded a written statement that the radar won't harm his health—or his cows. That's just a sampling of the reaction this quirky town of 2,500 has had to the surveillance tower the Department of Homeland Security has erected on Tres Bellotas Road on the southern edge of town;
It's part of a "virtual wall" of technology that DHS wants to extend across the entire southern border of Arizona by the end of next year."

It seems like a dry run for enhanced spying on US citizens down in the town of Arivaca, Arizona. It's billed as a tool for stopping the flow of illegals but it's twelve miles from the border, with mountains blocking it's view. It's only a mile away from Arivaca though, and at about a hundred feet tall is pointed straight at the town.

It's part of a dept. of a homeland security project:

"Boeing Co. will earn $67 million to administer the so-called "Project 28" in Arizona, which it will use to evaluate the SBInet and improve it for implementation along 6,000 miles of northern and southern border. The final costs of the project are unknown, but experts have predicted it could cost about $2 billion over six years.

Program managers arrived in Arizona last week to begin planning and are aiming for spring rollout of tower-mounted sensors, cameras, radars and satellite communication that officials believe will allow Border Patrol agents to cover more ground, said Robert Villanueva, Boeing Co. spokesman.
"We are going to arm them with data information they never really had before," Villanueva said."

It could be that the idea to actually build a fence or a wall along the border with Mexico was scrapped and they're going to go all high tech with facilities like this instead, and that's whats got concerned citizens very pissed off. Even though it's supposedly not operational yet, without consulting them the tower will use "radar, infrared, lasers, microwave, iris biometrics and facial biometrics." It's already disrupting the town's internet connection as it uses the same frequencies. No word yet if Aravica will be buzzed with low flying suveillance drones. The environmental assessment for the project turned out to be a sick joke that got rammed through in the dead of night.

Just a word about who's working on this thing. Boeing is co-contracting with Elbit Systems of Israel, the wonderful folks who are involved in building the 500 mile long apartheid wall in Palestine. And a subdidiary of Boeing - Jeppesen DataPlan - is involved with those rendition flights to ferry prisoners for torture in compliant countries. After years of deliberately ignoring the southern border and creating a tempest of resentment, these are the folks tasked with "providing security" for the United States. Don't you feel all warm and fuzzy? But that's probably just the microwave emissions.

MSM Is A Cesspool Of Liars

Bin Laden Appears in NEW al-Qaida Video - Washington Post

Bin Laden appears in NEW web video - Timesonline (although they include the word 'undated')

Bin Laden Appears In NEW Al-Qaeda Video - CBN (although they include the word 'undated')

Usama Bin Laden Appears in NEW Video, Officials Probe Authenticity - Fox (who changed the title to "Previously Unreleased Bin Laden Video Posted on Web"

Osama Bin Laden Appears in 'NEW' Al-Qaeda Video - CityNews (notice the quotation marks)

NEW Al Qaeda Video Surfaces - ABC

It doesn't matter that a lot of these "news" sources, after it was proven that this footage is five years old, went back and amended their stories to equivocate about when this tape was made. The fact of the matter is that all of the headlines blare the word NEW, and to the unwary they are trying to drive the point home that Osama Bin Laden is alive and well and ready to come and kill them, which is the whole point of their entire lying effort.

The fact is that MSM exists now solely as a propaganda outlet of the forces that want to enslave us, and try to keep us so fearful of invented bogeymen that we won't notice it happening.

Prescient T-Man Comic From The 1950s

Seen at Boing Boing

I Feel Pretty

Jeez, they all do it. If you're going to play the political game you're going to pay for image consultants, makeup artists, hair people, you name it. Execrable MSM stories seem to concentrate on John Edwards though with his expensive haircuts and trained barking seals like Coulter and Limbaugh pile on with their not-so-veiled homo comments.

Safe to say those quick to trash talk about Edwards won't touch the revelations about Mitt Romney's face paint:

"What kinds of things do you think of when you hear "communications consulting"? Speechwriting? Message strategy?
Well, "communications consulting" is how presidential candidate Mitt Romney recorded $300 in payments to a California company that describes itself as "a mobile beauty team for hair, makeup and men's grooming and spa services."
Romney spokesman Kevin Madden confirmed that the payments -- actually two separate $150 charges -- were for makeup, though he said the former Massachusetts governor had only one session with Hidden Beauty of West Hills, Calif. That was before the May 3 Republican presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., co-sponsored by MSNBC and The Politico.
"We used them once but booked time twice and still had to render payment for the appointment time," said Madden, who said the disbursement was listed as "communications consulting" because it was paid from the communications division's budget."

This stuff truly doesn't matter - it's gutter politics where simplistic brownshirt types wallow and play - Limbacile loves his "Breck Girl" character smear of Edwards to the point of it clearly being another of those classic repug projection moments. But it's at least fair to point out that all politicos primp and get fluffed for public exposure since at least when Nixon refused makeup back in 1960.

Collective Punishment Is A War Crime

"Gaza's economy is being erased"

"At the largest crossing point between Israel and the sealed-off Gaza Strip, capable of processing 200 lorries a day, only one vehicle can be seen. Instead of unloading its cargo of soya inside the border facility, the driver dumps it on a conveyor belt normally used to transfer gravel and cement.
The belt runs more than 200 metres across Karni’s deserted parking lot, over the border fence and into Gaza, where Palestinian merchants reload it into lorries. No Israeli sets eyes on a Palestinian in the process. On such narrow lifelines – there are five crossing points from Israel – hangs the survival of Gaza’s 1.4 million people."

Yakking On A Cell Phone During A Concert

Impeach Now

Or Face the End of Constitutional Democracy - Paul Craig Roberts

"Unless Congress immediately impeaches Bush and Cheney, a year from now the US could be a dictatorial police state at war with Iran.

Bush has put in place all the necessary measures for dictatorship in the form of "executive orders" that are triggered whenever Bush declares a national emergency. Recent statements by Homeland Security Chief Michael Chertoff, former Republican senator Rick Santorum and others suggest that Americans might expect a series of staged, or false flag, "terrorist" events in the near future.
Many attentive people believe that the reason the Bush administration will not bow to expert advice and public opinion and begin withdrawing US troops from Iraq is that the administration intends to rescue its unpopular position with false flag operations that can be used to expand the war to Iran.
Too much is going wrong for the Bush administration: the failure of its Middle East wars, Republican senators jumping ship, Turkish troops massed on northern Iraq's border poised for an invasion to deal with Kurds, and a majority of Americans favoring the impeachment of Cheney and a near-majority favoring Bush's impeachment. The Bush administration desperately needs dramatic events to scare the American people and the Congress back in line with the militarist-police state that Bush and Cheney have fostered."

I sent a letter to my congresscritter exhorting him to begin the overdue impeachment of the most impeachable bunch of insanely criminal scum that ever disgraced the halls of office, just for kicks. He sent back to me a form letter saying it was better to try to work at reversing the damage than to punish the wrongdoing.

I replied saying this - if another "terrorist act" like 9/11 occurs, or if the US attacks another country a la Iraq, he will be held responsible for dereliction of duty.
If another "terrorist act" happens, every government official should be arrested and tried for treason.
It will be proof positive that everything this crime syndicate has done to us in the past six years has been a bald faced lie. All the billions of dollars stolen and the constitution shredding that was allowed to happen couldn't stop another "terrorist" event, because the "terrorists" will be the fucking government itself.

Our Subcontinent Rent-An-Army

Who knew we bought ourselves an entire Pakistani army?

"WASHINGTON: The United States is paying around $ 100 million a month for the deployment of 80,000 Pakistani troops on its border with Afghanistan ostensibly for the war on terrorism, a key US official revealed on Thursday.
The money is meant to be "reimbursements" to Pakistan "for stationing troops and moving them around, and gasoline, and bullets, and training and other costs that they incur as part of the war on terror," US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher, told a Congressional panel. "That's a lot of money," Boucher admitted before the panel about what amounts to a $ 1.2 billion per year reimbursement."

The AUM Crop Circle

The AUM symbol

reversed

Alton Barnes, Wiltshire, England

Happy Bastille Day

Mimi does the "impeachment dance"

Senate Doubles Bounty On Dead Patsy

For what it's worth, when he was still alive Bin Laden protested getting framed as the mastermind behind our own government's attack on it's citizens on Black Yuesday, and denied having anything to do with it -



Never mind that the guy died in December, 2001, and the whole war on terror shtick is an immense cover for control and resource grab. For Jeebus' sake, his will was even published a year after he passed away from renal failure. Apparently tired of wasting resources pretending to hunt down a dead man, the CIA even closed down their special "Let's capture a dead man" unit over a year ago. Faking that he's still alive and that nineteen Arab hijackers pulled off a brazenly successful attack on the world's most powerful country serves the fascists well, even though in their cases they seem to be doing pretty good for dead men-

"Another of the men named by the FBI as a hijacker in the suicide attacks on Washington and New York has turned up alive and well."

So if all this is well known and can be found all over the place in the public domain, including the little known fact that Osama Bin Laden isn't even cited on FBI pages that he had any role in 9/11, why is the senate pretending to raise the importance of catching him by increasing the bounty for his head?

Plainly put, they're lying shitbags who need to continue the lies, and coverup the immense crime of 9/11 and the all the myriad murderous activities since. They want us to think that the phony CIA/ISI "Al Qaeda" headed by brilliant mastermind Osama is still out there somewhere and still hating us for our freedoms, never mind the fact that the Bushistas are taking care of that end of it. Hence all the terror attack warnings and the pronouncement that despite trillions wasted in the GWOT the dreaded chimera is in fact putting on some muscle and is ready to pull off another 9/11.
Of course there will be a serious event or events, and the perpetrators will be the same criminal scum who did nine eleven, it's just that the people who get blamed will once again just be patsies in a scheme for more war abroad and a police state at home.

White House Manual For Shutting You Up

"So the truth comes out.
After a myriad of stories about people being excluded from events where the President is speaking, now we know that the White House had a policy manual on just how to do so.
Called the “Presidential Advance Manual,” this 103-page document from the Office of Presidential Advance lays out the parameters for how to handle protesters at events.
(...)
In another section, entitled “Preparing for Demonstrators,” the document makes clear that the intention is to deprive protesters of the right to be seen or heard by the President: “As always, work with the Secret Service and have them ask the local police department to designate a protest area where demonstrators can be placed, preferably not in view of the event site or motorcade route.”
The document also recommends drowning out protesters or blocking their signs by using what it calls “rally squads.” It states: “These squads should be instructed always to look for demonstrators. The rally squad’s task is to use their signs and banners as shields between the demonstrators and the main press platform. If the demonstrators are yelling, rally squads can begin and lead supportive chants to drown out the protestors (USA!, USA!, USA!). As a last resort, security should remove the demonstrators from the event site.”

Rally squads. Really. You mean like these characters at a "spontaneous" rally who stopped a Florida recount?



1. Tom Pyle, policy analyst, office of House Majority Whip Tom DeLay (R-Tex.).
2. Garry Malphrus, majority chief counsel and staff director, House Judiciary subcommittee on criminal justice.
3. Rory Cooper, political division staff member at the National Republican Congressional Committee.
4. Kevin Smith, former House Republican conference analyst and more recently of Voter.com.
5. Steven Brophy, former aide to Sen. Fred D. Thompson (R-Tenn.), now working at the consulting firm KPMG.
6. Matt Schlapp, former chief of staff for Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-Kan.), now on the Bush campaign staff in Austin.
7. Roger Morse, aide to Rep. Van Hilleary (R-Tenn.).
8. Duane Gibson, aide to Chairman Don Young (R-Alaska) of the House Resources Committee.
9. Chuck Royal, legislative assistant to Rep. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.).
10. Layna McConkey, former legislative assistant to former Rep. Jim Ross Lightfoot (R-Iowa), now at Steelman Health Strategies.

Why Oh Why Wasn't This Katie Couric?

http://view.break.com/329276 - Watch more free videos

(spoof, by the way)

Al Qaeda Baby Forces Flight Delay

And I thought that sippy cup terrorism story was the epitome air travel idiocy. If you haven't come across it, go see why this woman should sue the ever loving shit out of Continental airlines.

"A mother and her son were booted off a plane after a flight attendant became upset when the 19-month-old kept saying "Bye, bye plane" as the aircraft prepared for liftoff."

Is Gallup Lying?

There's a concerted effort not just to marginalize Ron Paul's message in this presidential campaign, there's a war underway in the despicable MSM to erase him from consideration. He's been excluded from debates:

"The Saturday, June 30th Iowa GOP debate did NOT include Congressman Ron Paul because he was NOT invited by The Iowa Tax Reform group. Yet, Ron Paul has NEVER voted for a tax increase in his 20 years in Congress. He has received a rating of Taxpayer's Friend by several National Taxpayer organization. Thousands of Paul supporters e-mailed the forum leaders and petitions with 1000s of signature were delivered to the leaders. Why was he excluded, given his proven record of fiscal responsibility?"

And now Gallup has chosen to present Paul with basically no support whatsoever, and with Giuliani enjoying first place in popularity:



Yet website tracking Alexa has, um, a slightly different perspective on the interest shown in Giuliani and Paul, at least on the internets:





Is Gallup lying? You be the judge.

"National Defense" Under Fascism

Soon to come to a neighborhood near you

"Veterans described reckless firing once they left their compounds. Some shot holes into cans of gasoline being sold along the roadside and then tossed grenades into the pools of gas to set them ablaze. Others opened fire on children. These shootings often enraged Iraqi witnesses. During the course of the interview process, five veterans turned over photographs from Iraq, some of them graphic, to corroborate their claims.

"'And we were approaching this one house,' he said. 'In this farming area, they're, like, built up into little courtyards. So they have, like, the main house, common area. They have, like, a kitchen and then they have a storage shed-type deal. And we're approaching, and they had a family dog. And it was barking ferociously, 'cause it's doing its job. And my squad leader, just out of nowhere, just shoots it. And he didn't--mother [expletive]--he shot it and it went in the jaw and exited out. So I see this dog--I'm a huge animal lover; I love animals--and this dog has, like, these eyes on it and he's running around spraying blood all over the place. And like, you know, What the hell is going on? The family is sitting right there, with three little children and a mom and a dad, horrified. And I'm at a loss for words. And so, I yell at him. I'm, like, What the [expletive] are you doing? And so the dog's yelping. It's crying out without a jaw. And I'm looking at the family, and they're just, you know, dead scared... At least kill it, because that can't be fixed....

"'And--I actually get tears from just saying this right now, but--and I had tears then, too--and I'm looking at the kids and they are so scared. So I got the interpreter over with me and, you know, I get my wallet out and I gave them twenty bucks, because that's what I had. I... told them that I'm so sorry that [expletive] did that. 'Was a report ever filed about it?' he asked. 'Was anything ever done? Any punishment ever dished out? No, absolutely not.' Specialist Chrystal said such incidents were 'very common.'

"According to interviews with twenty-four veterans who participated in such raids, they are a relentless reality for Iraqis under occupation. The American forces, stymied by poor intelligence, invade neighborhoods where insurgents operate, bursting into homes in the hope of surprising fighters or finding weapons. But such catches, they said, are rare. Far more common were stories in which soldiers assaulted a home, destroyed property in their futile search and left terrorized civilians struggling to repair the damage and begin the long torment of trying to find family members who were hauled away as suspects.

Once they were in front of the home, troops, some wearing Kevlar helmets and flak vests with grenade launchers mounted on their weapons, kicked the door in, according to Sergeant Bruhns, who dispassionately described the procedure: 'You run in. And if there's lights, you turn them on--if the lights are working. If not, you've got flashlights.... You leave one rifle team outside while one rifle team goes inside. Each rifle team leader has a headset on with an earpiece and a microphone where he can communicate with the other rifle team leader that's outside.

"'You go up the stairs. You grab the man of the house. You rip him out of bed in front of his wife. His wife sometimes may be exposed, because of her night garments in the middle of the night, which is humiliating for that woman and for that man and for that family. You put him up against the wall. You have junior-level troops, PFC specialists will run into the other rooms and grab the family, and you'll group them all together. Then you go into a room and you tear the room to shreds and you make sure there's no weapons or anything that they can use to attack us.

"You get the interpreter and you get the man of the home, and you have him at gunpoint, and you'll ask the interpreter to ask him: 'Do you have any weapons? Do you have any anti-US propaganda, anything at all--anything--anything in here that would lead us to believe that you are somehow involved in insurgent activity or anti-coalition forces activity?'

"Normally they'll say no, because that's normally the truth," Sergeant Bruhns said. "So what you'll do is you'll take his sofa cushions and you'll dump them. If he has a couch, you'll turn the couch upside down. You'll go into the fridge, if he has a fridge, and you'll throw everything on the floor, and you'll take his drawers and you'll dump them.... You'll open up his closet and you'll throw all the clothes on the floor and basically leave his house looking like a hurricane just hit it. "And if you find something, then you'll detain him. If not, you'll say, 'Sorry to disturb you. Have a nice evening.' So you've just humiliated this man in front of his entire family and terrorized his entire family and you've destroyed his respect.

SPC. Garrett Reppenhagen added this in his DemocracyNow interview: "The house raids were a very difficult piece of my experience in Iraq. We conducted a lot of house searches. And, you know, we felt we had to. We didn't have the initiative in Iraq.... So a lot of times we're just -- we're searching homes. We're going on whims, hoping that we can catch the Iraqis, the ones who are trying to do the US forces harm. We kick in the doors, and we separate the people.

"And, you know, we had a checklist where we went through -- did they have contraband? If they did, we apprehended them, and we would put a bag over their head and marked it with an 'A.' Did they have an identification card? If they didn't, we'd mark them with a 'B,' we take them. If they didn't belong in that house, if they didn't live in that house, we'd mark them with a 'C,' and we'd take them. So we take a lot of these people out of their homes. And a lot of these people, we push out through the chain of command, and they get interrogated, and they get pushed up further. And a lot of these people never make it home the following day or ever again."

"Sgt. Dustin Flatt, 33, of Denver, estimates he raided 'thousands' of homes in Tikrit, Samarra and Mosul. He served with the Eighteenth Infantry Brigade, First Infantry Division, for one year beginning in February 2004. 'We scared the living J---s out of them every time we went through every house,. he said.

Flag Foolishness

Frayed Flag Frets Frank Fede Fellow

"A veteran's complaint about what he calls a "torn and shredded" flag at a local car dealership should be remedied soon, the manager there said yesterday.
Frank Fede, 61, said he spoke to the manager at Mark Rizoli's Auto Village this week about the flag outside the business.
Fede said he did not like the attitude of the manager, Ed Weber of Rutland.
"His response was indifferent, like it wasn't a big deal," said Fede, who started noticing the situation a couple of weeks ago. "It is a big deal. It just seemed like this guy didn't really care.
"I just want him to acknowledge it and do something, especially at this time when we're at war. We have people dying over there."

Maybe your priorities are a little mixed up there, Frank. Shouldn't you be worried about getting them home safe rather than getting upset over a few flapping threads?

Man charged with bringing flag close to his penis

"When the police officer took him to the side, he sat down actually, put the flag in his pants, and sat down on the flag and then he was rubbing his privates with the flag. The police officer got very upset over that, you could tell," recalled Johnson.
White's now in jail on a $500 bond. He's charged with public mutilation of the flag."

Everything's fine, nothing is wrong, you can't do that

"Beth Hammer has turned her gated Wheat Ridge community upside down with her upside-down display of the U.S. flag.
On March 19 - the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq - Hammer decided to hang her flag upside down, which under the federal flag code is a signal of distress.
(...)
The association board notified Beth Hammer in an April 24 letter that the flag display is against federal flag code and is in violation of the association's "patriotic and political expression policy."
The letter gave her a week to right the flag or face fines that appear to range from $25 to $500."

Jeebus Cultists Shout Down Senate Invocation

h↑t to blondsense
Jeebus wasn't pleased

Iraq" War" A Monstrous Obscenity, Say Returning Vets

The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness - soon to be the core of a book from The Nation called "Collateral Damage"

"Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians. These combat veterans, some of whom bear deep emotional and physical scars, and many of whom have come to oppose the occupation, gave vivid, on-the-record accounts. They described a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.
Their stories, recorded and typed into thousands of pages of transcripts, reveal disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops in Iraq. Dozens of those interviewed witnessed Iraqi civilians, including children, dying from American firepower. Some participated in such killings; others treated or investigated civilian casualties after the fact. Many also heard such stories, in detail, from members of their unit. The soldiers, sailors and marines emphasized that not all troops took part in indiscriminate killings. Many said that these acts were perpetrated by a minority. But they nevertheless described such acts as common and said they often go unreported--and almost always go unpunished.
Court cases, such as the ones surrounding the massacre in Haditha and the rape and murder of a 14-year-old in Mah­mudiya, and news stories in the Washington Post, Time, the London Independent and elsewhere based on Iraqi accounts have begun to hint at the wide extent of the attacks on civilians. Human rights groups have issued reports, such as Human Rights Watch's Hearts and Minds: Post-war Civilian Deaths in Baghdad Caused by U.S. Forces, packed with detailed incidents that suggest that the killing of Iraqi civilians by occupation forces is more common than has been acknowledged by military authorities."

The end result of the scumbags trying to turn the american military into a gang of jack booted mercenary thugs:

Is the U.S. Responsible for the Death of Nearly a Million Iraqis?

Man Eating Badgers And Carp Who Love Corpses

Bombs, guns, gangs – now Basra falls prey to the monster badger

"British forces in Basra, blamed for a host of ills from militia turf wars to rising Iranian influence, are being held responsible for the latest danger to strike the city – a plague of giant man-eating badgers.
For weeks, the southern Iraqi city has been abuzz with talk of a bear-like monster stalking the suburbs and attacking livestock and humans alike. The appearance of the beasts close to the British military base at the airport has sparked rumours that soldiers released them to terrify the populace.
British officials were at a loss to explain the phenomenon until a local farmer caught and killed several of the animals, subsequently identified as honey badgers, a large, sharp-clawed mammal renowned as the world’s most fearless creature.
(...)
Sattar Jabbar, a 50-year-old farmer, claimed to have seen the badger tackling prey many times its own size. “I saw it three days ago at night attacking animals. It even ate a cow. It tore the cow up piece by piece,” he said. “I tried to shoot it with my gun but it ran away into the orchards. I missed it,” he said."

River's abundance of corpses ruins Iraqis' appetite for carp

BAGHDAD – River fish are off the menu in Baghdad.Dead bodies frequently pulled from the River Tigris have dulled the Iraqi capital's appetite for masqouf, its popular dish of grilled carp, after it was reported that clerics had warned that the fish dined on rotting corpses.

Don't forget the giant camel spiders...

Israel Gets Green Light To Launch Armageddon

Lieberman: US will back Israeli strike on Iran

"Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Avigdor Lieberman said on Tuesday that he received the tacit blessing of Europe and the United States for an Israeli military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.
“If we start military operations against Iran alone, then Europe and the US will support us,” Lieberman told Army Radio following a meeting earlier in the week with NATO and European Union officials.
Lieberman said the Western powers acknowledged the severity of the Iranian nuclear threat to the Jewish state, but said that ongoing conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq are “going to prevent the leaders of countries in Europe and America from deciding on the use of force to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities,” even if diplomacy ultimately fails.
The message Lieberman said the NATO and EU officials conveyed to him is that Israel should “prevent the threat herself.”

Hard to say if this is just more bluster from the zionists, but Israel has been preparing for wider war in the middle east and knows full well that the US would jump into any conflict that Israel initiated.

Plus - July 12 is the one year anniversary of the zionists staging that cross border intrusion into Lebanon to begin their inhumane bombardment of that country. Don't be surprised if they pull another false flag "incident" as justification to go to war with Lebanon, Syria and/or Iran.

Perhaps The Ultimate Nonessential Gadgetry

Company Rolls Out Electronic Toilet Tissue Dispenser That Spits Out 5 Sheets Per Wave

"ROSWELL, Ga. (AP) -- Richard Thorne grins as he waves his hand under a toilet paper dispenser in a women's restroom. The machine spits five sheets of tissue into his grasp.
A year in the works, the electronic tissue dispenser is being rolled out to the masses by Kimberly-Clark Professional as it seeks to capture more of the $1 billion away-from-home toilet paper market. The company believes most people will be satisfied with five sheets -- and use 20 percent less toilet paper."

I don't know about anyone else but five thin sheets is insufficient for me.

"Most people will take the amount given," says Thorne. Waxing philosophical, he adds, "People generally in life will take what you give them."

Is that so?

Magically Resetting Poll Numbers

They seem to do it every couple of months or so, anybody else see this? The rotten MSM is basically forced to recognize gradual deterioration in administration approval ratings, but they falsify the numbers so that they don't seem catastrophic. I would assume at this point, with Repug defections very publicly coming fast and furious, that Sockpuppet approval percentage is hovering in the teens somewhere and the Dick is in single digits but that truth can never be revealed. Like everything else with this crew of pathological liars, reality takes a back seat to contrived public perception.

This CBS poll result published back on May 10 showing our Mass Murderer in Chief at 24% and dropping like a brick is just one of many that came out over the past year that showed real distaste for the scumbags. Yet voila, the numbers constantly get reset back into the thirties and start all over again. The rigged game is exposed because headlines blare new lows of 29% when polls just a few weeks or months before were a lot lower.

The corrupt media has done this over and over again because it's an effort to prop the criminals up just like they've done time and again during our descent into fascism. Hardly anyone cares for what's going on; but it actually does take a while for fluoridated braindead americans to figure things out, and the situation is worsened by thoroughly polluted media outlets.

100 Years Of Easy Mother's Day Gifts

"The World's Largest Hershey's Kisses Chocolate was revealed at a ceremony at Hershey's Chocolate World in Hershey, Pennsylvania on July 7th. The 30,540 pound Kiss marks the 100th anniversary of the foil wrapped chocolates and qualifies as the "The World's Largest Piece of Chocolate" according to the Guiness Book of World Records."

As if to celebrate our Corporatocracy, the US government gets in on the hoopla by issuing a postage stamp to commemorate junk food.

However, One And A Half Hershey's Kisses A Day Could Keep High Blood Pressure Away

"Volunteers for the study ate just over 6 grams of dark chocolate daily for almost five months _ one square from a German chocolate bar called Ritter Sport, equal to about 1 1/2 Hershey's Kisses. People who ate that amount ended up with lower blood pressure readings than those who ate white chocolate."

Sensing Lack Of Sufficient Fear, Chertoff Gets A Hunch

Homeland security commissar and Israel First! proponent Michael Chertoff decided to sort of broadcast a warning to americans that the CIA/Mossad front group known as "Al Qaeda" may get instructions to launch an attack this summer.

"CHICAGO — Fearing complacency among the American people over possible terror threats, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said in Chicago on Tuesday that the nation faces a heightened chance of an attack this summer.

(...)

Still, Chertoff said there are not enough indications of an imminent plot to raise the current threat levels nationwide. And he indicated his remarks were based on "a gut feeling" formed by past seasonal patterns of terrorist attacks, recent al-Qaida statements, and intelligence he did not disclose.

(...)

"We could easily be attacked," Chertoff added."

Don't you just love the way these deluded criminals think they can have it not just both ways but every which way but loose? On the one hand they'll hold up the scary image of an omnipresent and all powerful terror group that could strike at any moment, yet this is after demanding, and getting, unlimited amounts of wealth and power over our lives in order to protect us from those same dreaded attacks. Dual Israeli/American citizenship Chertoff sure has chutzpah in that gut of his.

This is par for the course as they want everything their way all the time, no matter how outrageous or outlandish it seems. Take their 'Al Qaeda' strategy for instance. AQ is to their foreign hobgoblins as 'liberal' is to their domestic hobgoblins. Our fascist elements decided a long time ago to demonize the term liberal, and so now in in certain circles and across the vast wasteland of talk radio the word liberal is virtually a curse word, meaning everything vile and evil. After drilling it into our heads that 'Al Qaeda' was responsible for Black Tuesday, every adversary real and potential is AQ and all future devastating events will conveniently be blamed on them.

But AQ switches identities in our overlords' theater of the absurd so fast it makes your head spin, only we're not supposed to notice. Iran was to have helped them after 9/11 and still is today so that was why Sockpuppet included them in his "Axle of Weasels", yet supposedly AQ turned on their benefactors and is threatening war with Iran. US forces were battling Sunnis in Iraq until the Sunni Saudis took Cheney to the woodshed and so he made up an imaginary "AQ in Iraq" faction and now the US is arming the Sunnis. Those dead-enders baathists insurgents (Shiite and Sunni) in Iraq magically became Al Qaeda overnight and now the shameless MSM casually refer to them as such without skipping a beat. Goat herders were goat herders in Somalia until the US killed them and now they're AQ.

Help, Al Qaeda is everywhere!

It's no wonder people thought the dead Osama and Saddam were blood brothers and piloted the 9/11 planes - everything is meant to be confusing - you're only supposed to trust the government and take these 'terror concerns' as a sign the criminals are looking out for you. An alternative explanation is that we're indeed going to see some crap this summer to get the ball rolling toward a wider war in the middle east, with a false flag incident dished up to instigate it. Chertoff is walking a fine line with his 'gut feeling', knowing that if he makes a big deal about it beforehand people are going to ask why it wasn't prevented. Again they want it all - making us think they're on the ball yet seemingly taken by surprise when the event is launched, like cave dwellers defeating a trillion dollar defence giant on 9/11.