Tuesday, October 31, 2006

Air America Radio Must DIE!

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you… and you know what that means.

Wednesday, October 25, 2006

The President Says, "Suck It, Bitch!"

Just in case anyone has trouble parsing what the President said in his news conference this morning, I'm here to help with the simplified version that leaves all the confusing bullshit out.

Paraphrasing, the President said this:
The United States will not withdraw forces from Iraq until I'm personally satisfied with the situation there. I'm currently unsatisified, in case any of you scum-sucking zombies who call yourselves reporters are wondering.

From day one, our strategy for victory in Iraq has been simple and consistent: with sufficient willpower and U.S. military force, we can achieve miracles. I really believe that. Unfortunately, we are not as close to winning as I would like. This has not, I repeat, not been a matter of our strategy, you fscknuts. As I keep telling trying to tell you: it's our tactics.

We are now revising our tactics. Our tactics used to be: first democracy, then security will follow (or not, we'll worry about that when it becomes a problem for us politically); and our tactics were obviously flawed. Henceforth, as I have told Prime Minister Al-Maliki, our new tactics will be: first security (by whatever means are most expedient), then democracy will follow (or not, we'll worry about that if it ever becomes a political problem, but let's be honest campers— nobody gives a fsck about democracy for you ungrateful, lazy, hodgie vermin anyway).

So, in closing, Iraq will be pacified sooner or later. I promise you. Either the current Iraqi government will grow a pair and figure out how to do it, or we will depose it and install the second coming of Uday Hussain, to whom we will not have to explain such things.

I will now entertain your bleatings as if you were asking the questions I'm prepared to answer.
You're welcome. I'm here to help.

Just A Friendly Reminder...

..from your favorite spacebound malcontent, what television would look like if you lived in a free country.

Another "Salute The Flag" Moment...

What I Said About Proposition 87 On The Show Saturday...

Greetings, space monkeys-- and welcome to another episode in the long and terrible saga of Why California Is Doomed. Brought to you by The Chevron Corporation, Shell, Exxon, the usual rogue's gallery of California right wing tax-cut zealots, and every major newspaper editorial board in the state with the notable exceptions of La Opinion and the Oakland Tribune.

One of the initiatives on this November's ballot in California, Proposition 87, is a truly remarkable and revolutionary proposal. When I finish telling you what it will do, you will be astounded that it wasn't passed without debate, thirty years ago. The fact that it is 2006 and it *still* never has been done, explains more about what's wrong with California-- about what's wrong with America-- than pretty much everything else you are thinking about.

Just give up looking for a better symbol of California and American unravelling: this is it.

Proposition 87 is a plan to make ethanol flex-fuel vehicles a reality on California roads, and to pay for the investment in infrastructure this requires by charging a fee for the extraction of crude petroleum from California wells and offshore oil fields. Just about every state in America that has any oil in the ground to speak of charges a fee to the oil companies for every barrel they pump into the world's oil supply. Every state, that is, but California.

We're talking about billions of dollars in revenue that we've never collected because California politicians have never had enough spine to tell the oil companies that There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch. Can you imagine Texas not charging a tax on oil pumped from the West Texas fields? If you can, then I want to be introduced to your dope dealer.

Texas charges 4.6 percent on every barrel lifted out of the ground, which is even more than the tax proposed in Proposition 87. But, you know what? At 4.5 percent, Texas is practically giving it away, compared to Louisiana and Alaska, which set their rates at 12.5 and 15 percent respectively. California has the third largest reserves of oil and gas anywhere in the United States, and for the last N-mumbledy years, we've been letting the drillers pump the state down completely tax free. Now, there's *finally* a proposition on the ballot to make California oil drillers pay the same tax they do in Texas, and you can watch the oil biz paid smear artists come out of the walls to get you to vote it down.

They want you to believe the money will be raised at the gasoline pump. It's cleverly worded garbage, usually presented with pictures of fuel nozzles to help cement the misinformation in your mind.

Note very carefully: they'll say that gasoline prices will go up if Proposition 87 passes, but they won't tell you why or how. They want you to assume that an "oil tax" is the same as a gasoline tax, but look at their campaign materials. Their real argument is that the tax will somehow magically cause a drop in the global supply of oil, thus driving up crude prices worldwide and the fraction of oil coming into California from foreign sources, bringing about higher gasoline prices indirectly by that process.

The text of the law even formally prohibits vertically integrated oil companies from passing the costs of extraction in California on to the state's gasoline consumers-- which is pretty comic, if you think about it. How many times have we been treated to oil industry experts coming forward to explain to us, we poor benighted consuming gluttons that we are, that, of course, oil companies have no control over prices at the pump and they can't possibly be gouging us with price manipulations.

It's impossible, you see. They couldn't pass the Proposition 87 tax on to consumers even if they wanted to-- making it illegal just drives home the point. No, really. That's the truth.

Most importantly, they want you to believe that Proposition 87 will increase dependence on imports of crude oil from the Middle East. This is the worst fornication of the truth in the whole buggering perversion of a campaign the opposition to Proposition 87 is running.

The whole point of raising the four billion dollars from taxing crude oil extraction in California is to spend it on promoting a transition to E85 and flex fuels in our cars. For those who don't know, E85 is 15% gasoline and 85% ethanol. To use it, you need a slightly different engine and fuel system in your car, and more importantly a different fuel refining and distribution system in the marketplace. That's the part that's expensive, and it's what that $4 billion will go to do. If California could manage to do what Brazil did twenty years ago, and switch over to E85 in most of the cars on its roads, that would produce a *dramatic* reduction in California's consumption of crude oil from the Middle East. We can make lots of ethanol, right here in the Golden State ourselves. Only the 15% gasoline in E85 fuel needs to come from the Santa Barbara channel, Texas, or-- well, *Kaboomistan*. Indeed, that very concern is exactly why Brazil went for ethanol: for its own national security reasons. Look it up. It's true.

The opponents of Proposition 87 want you to believe that the funds raised from the tax will be managed without any accountability or transparency. This is just a naked and obvious lie. The proposed Authority will be a state agency, subject to all the accountability, openness and transparency standards of every such body. That means mandatory audits by an independent CPA firm, audit reviews by the State Controller's office, publicly issued reports, open meetings, compliance with the Political Reform Act and additional prohibitions against conflict of interest specifically written into the text of the act. No accountability or transparency, my left thumb. Where do they come up with people who can say things like this without having to unscrew themselves from their seat afterward?

They want you to believe that Proposition 87 creates a whole new bureaucracy. Again, this is just a horrible, vicious lie. It only reorganizes an existing one--one badly in need of reorganization anyway, for all the reasons the opposition wants you to think about the new one. Read the first page of the act. I've read the whole thing, of course, but it's pretty obvious that it doesn't create a new bureaucracy out of nothing. It's a reform package. The oppositions just lies on general principle, not even because it's fun--but because it's necessary for their brains to function, like breathing. The volition for it is entirely autonomic.

Are you going to buy all these lies from the opposition to Proposition 87. Will you vote against the single most revolutionary improvement in California law that's ever been proposed in our lifetimes? That's not an exaggeration.

Yes. You will. You'll buy it all. You'll vote it down, with a laugh and hearty job-well-done, because you're that fscking dumb.

You'll believe all those oily lies, and smile as you suck down the rotten air produced from burning all that gasoline that your ancient car engines need because they can't handle E85 or other flex fuels. You'll feel good about yourselves as you do it, too. And when the consequences for this stupidity finally comes clear to you-- when your grandkids ask you why nobody in your generation did the obviously smart thing to do when the time came-- you'll feel all dead inside, because you'll know you sold them out for no good reason.

Proposition 87 is losing in the pre-election opinion polls right now by a margin of about ten percent. The opposition campaign is funded to the tune of $100 million dollars. If you're going to get involved in a campaign, this is one of the crucial ones. Peace out.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Vote Instant Karma

I blame Kung Fu Monkey, who in turn blames Firedog Lake...

But I just can't get it out of my mind... I am going to be dreaming about this tonight...



Like a stunned fscking monkey...

mojo sends

I've Been Workin' On The Railroad / All The Live-Long Day

Via Chris Bowers.

--AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl

--AZ-01: Rick Renzi

--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth

--CA-04: John Doolittle

--CA-11: Richard Pombo

--CA-50: Brian Bilbray

--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave

--CO-05: Doug Lamborn

--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell

--CT-04: Christopher Shays

--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan

--FL-16: Joe Negron

--FL-22: Clay Shaw

--ID-01: Bill Sali

--IL-06: Peter Roskam

--IL-10: Mark Kirk

--IL-14: Dennis Hastert

--IN-02: Chris Chocola

--IN-08: John Hostettler

--IA-01: Mike Whalen

--KS-02: Jim Ryun

--KY-03: Anne Northup

--KY-04: Geoff Davis

--MD-Sen: Michael Steele

--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht

--MN-06: Michele Bachmann

--MO-Sen: Jim Talent

--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns

--NV-03: Jon Porter

--NH-02: Charlie Bass

--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson

--NM-01: Heather Wilson

--NY-03: Peter King

--NY-20: John Sweeney

--NY-26: Tom Reynolds

--NY-29: Randy Kuhl

--NC-08: Robin Hayes

--NC-11: Charles Taylor

--OH-01: Steve Chabot

--OH-02: Jean Schmidt

--OH-15: Deborah Pryce

--OH-18: Joy Padgett

--PA-04: Melissa Hart

--PA-07: Curt Weldon

--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick

--PA-10: Don Sherwood

--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee

--TN-Sen: Bob Corker

--VA-Sen: George Allen

--VA-10: Frank Wolf

--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick

--WA-08: Dave Reichert



I don't want to hear any more crap about how I voted in 2000 unless you're willing to really bring it.

100 Hours...

Nancy Pelosi finally shows some flash of leadership by laying out an agenda for the first 100 hours of a new Democratic majority in the House and the Senate...

Why haven't more Dems been hammering this as a platform, akin to the GOP's 1994 "Contract On America" snake oil that allowed a bunch of these oxygen-deprived mouth breathers to glorp into power in the first place...

Here are the highlights:
• Enact rules to weaken lobbyists influence
• Enact the recommendations of the 9/11 commission
• Raise the minimum wage to $7.25 an hour (still too little, I think)
• Cut interest rate on student loans in half
• Allow government to negotiate lower drug prices for Medicare
• Expand federally funded stem cell research
• Roll back the Bush tax cuts
I am sorry to say that there was no mention of investigations of the Bush crime-family or throwing the brakes on New American Mercantile Empire in Iraq, or re-establishing the rule of law. But it is still a good list, and things I would personally be pleased to see happen.

And it's none the worse for being unlikely to ever be a reality. It is highly unlikely that the Dems will be in veto-proof majorities in both chambers of Congress. This is still something that should be pounded on by Dem candidates, and then can be used as a coffee-break moment for voters as we head into the 2008 race... "you mean we coulda had less expensive medicine, more access to money for college and increased wages?"

That's why I would like to have seen something about Iraq or investigations, or repealing the Patriot Act or MCA as part of a comprehensive "First 200 hours" plan. Because as our military adventure in South Asia continues to swirl down the crapper, and the myriad criminal enterprises of the GOP are being dragged from under their rocks into the light of day, I think the choices between the parties become ever clearer.

As I have written before, if the Dems get both houses back, this will not be a panacea. Not everyone gets everything they want. But I find it difficult to believe things won't be measurably better on some level.

mojo sends

Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Stoopidest Thing Ever Said, 3.0 (Dangerously Dumb Edition)

Gird yer loins sports fans, it's time once again for the game sensation that's sweeping the nation: Stoopidest Things Ever Said!

Today's contestant is a cabinet level secretary, who enjoys long walks on the beach, fusion jazz and law enforcement fetish gear, please give a big Mojowire welcome to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff...

Now Secy. Chertoff is going to have to go big to get over on Van Allen Schooners and Jack Bauer Democracy, so let's see what the nation's top guardian had to say today:
"We now have a capability of someone to radicalize themselves over the Internet," Chertoff said on the sidelines of a meeting of International Association of the Chiefs of Police.

"They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination," Chertoff said. "Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites."
uhhmmm... yeah... I'm flashing on the "Know Yer Dope Fiend" bit from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, where Hunter Thompson is at a District Attorney's convention watching some clueless crank talk about the "Drug Culture."

Is he genuinely under the impression that the mighty tubes of the internets are an actual replacement for formal training in fieldcraft for would be trouble makers? That my experience playing Ghost Recon online would qualify me to lead a platoon of special forces soldiers or confer some competence to me in small arms combat or counter insurgency tactics? That downloading the Anarchist Cookbook would somehow constitute sufficient training or information for someone to conduct a sophisticated act of rat-fsckery?

This guy is worrying that the next terror threat is a bunch of l33t speaking, red bulled 15-year olds with high speed dsl... gosh Mr. Secretary it would be teh_sux if u got pwned...

You know, our preivious entrants were probably funnier, either because they were just goofballs saying some relatively wacky crap that probably didn't come out the way they wanted, or in the case of Laura Ingraham who's grasp of reality is truly tenuous, and who's intellectual vigor is flagging. Ingraham, like Peggy Noonan's incessant humping of the dead leg of Ronald Reagan, is a one schtick chick, and her act is pretty played out, but at the end of the day its real world effect is negligible.

But this concept of internet-as-terrorist-bootcamp from the DHS secretary is a genuinely dangerous thing. Dispassionate sarcasm aside, the frightening thing is that Chertoff believes that the disemination of ideas over the internet that he deems dangerous is what is of concern.

Thanks to those anti-American freedom haters at the ACLU we are starting to get a peek at how the Department of Defense is keeping tabs on peace groups. How soon until the Department of Homeland Security starts shutting down servers for being too critical of the U.S. government?

How soon until the President declares the operators, owners and content providers of those sites or servers as "unlawful enemy combatants" or their enablers per the newly signed Military Commission Act... that will get you a one way ticket to Gitmo, no warrant, no lawyer, no trial. Combine this with the fact that the CIA and NSA protective forces are about to be granted de facto plenary domestic police powers.

You know, we have been going on about this for years, now. Enough of the pieces are now in place for a radical change in our country, for a bonaifde police state, and all we get from the public is a giant collective yawn... and a change of the channel to see "Dancing with the Stars."

Never forget, America... when you realize a legally binding loyalty oath and official government permit becomes part of your internet service's user agreement, and your neighbors start getting disappeared for voting Green, you did this to yourself.

mojo sends

Monday, October 16, 2006

Attention shoppers: Brooklyn Bridge for Sale!

This has got to be the one of the most preposterous stories presented with a straight face of the last several weeks. For example:
If the panel recommends overhauling Bush's approach to Iraq, it could give a boost not only to critics of current policy but also to officials in the administration who have argued for broad changes.


And if monkeys fly out of Donald Rumsfelds bum, maybe they will be supportive of any sort of dipolmatic engagement with Syria and Iran.

Do the stenographers who write this stuff actually live on planet earth? Does anyone seriously believe that this President, or any of this foreign policy team are remotely concerned with changing their policy? "Well, the last million examples of policy failure didn't sway them, but now that Jim Baker points a few out, the entire culture and belief system at the White House will miraculously change."

Will this be before or after the White House is transforemd into a magical land of lollipops and candycanes, where little pixies dance and sing happy songs? Hellooo, this White House fought tooth and nail to make John Friggin' Bolten the U.N. Ambassador? Could you possibly find a greater example of the level of contempt and outright hatred the Administration has for diplomacy and engagement? These people are moving assets into the Gulf to whack Iran even as we speak. According to Sy Hersh, Generals at the Pentagon were in a panic after they witnessed serious discussions at the White House proposing using Nukes on suspected Iranian nuclear development sites. But, sure, some wonks hired by Congress are going to get a serious hearing at the White House.

Oh, wait..what's that you say?
The Baker panel, called the Iraq Study Group, was formed in response to a proposal by members of Congress. Nevertheless, Baker sought — and won — Bush's endorsement.

Well now that you inform me that the President endorses it, it must be serious. Just like he endorsed the 9/11 Comission, right? I'm sure it's mere coincidence that this White House "endorses" things it realizes it cannot change so they can pretend it was their idea, and then ignore whatever it produces. How many times do they have to do this before someone at the major dailies clues into how it works. And of course, I'm sure the upcoming elections has no effect on the Presidents "support" for the Iraq jackoff group.

When you read these articles, you can practically sing along. Let me take a stab at writing what the story would look like if real reporters with a stake in telling the truth wrote this:

Former Bush 41 consiglere James A Baker has been cast in the lead part of a new farce dubbed the Iraq Study group. Along with the usual cast from the Non-Partisan acting troupe, Mr. Baker will once again play his infamous character, Jimmy Baker, elder statesmen. This installment tells the story of how Jimmy and his non-partisan sidekicks pretend to examine and propose concrete and practical alternatives to the disasterous foreign policy of the Bush Administration. Hilarity ensues after the election when anyone attempting to convince the President to embrace these alternatives is shivved at the White House mess by David Addington on orders from Don Cheney and his lieutenant, Donny "Hennypenny" Rumsfeld. Washington Post reporters who bring their steno pads will get in free!

I cannot wait for the riveting mini-series ABC makes out of this...

Sunday, October 15, 2006

Service Means Citizenship

h/t TBogg
We're doing our part...would you like to know more?

If you don't get hard listening to the music in this thing, then yer a cheeze eating effete brainiac tax monkey from Old Europeland... just read through the comments... I bet this is the first time these guys have seen their own packages in years... better than viagra...

mojo sends

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Connecting the Dots

Via The Mighty Billmon the watchers are putting together some disquieting facts of late... looks like the fix is in, just in time for preemptive war with Iran...

...or maybe I, too, am being paranoid...

mojo sends

Thursday, October 12, 2006

Clutching My Head Like A Stunned Macaque

The amazing reality bending powers of the George W. Bush, the President of the United States of America:
These budget numbers are not just estimates; these are the actual results for the fiscal year that ended February the 30th.
Even the Gregorian Calendar is in league with Al Qaeda.

p.s. Apparently, we have always been at war with North Asia. North, you lumpheads, north! Not east, north!

Hmmm... this sounds familiar...

Where have I heard complaints about chemical torture in interrogation...

...oh yeah...the Dread Dr. Strychnine has been complaining about this for years, even before the neocon captivity, even.

Color me unsurprised...

mojo sends

Tuesday, October 10, 2006

A Declaration of Culture War

Professional right wing hack and alleged human being Dinesh D'osuza has a new bit of odious bloviation that has apparently found it's way into the mailbox of the The Mighty Wolcott

This is going to hurt...

Here's the money graf:"We're not the enemy, and if you engage us as the enemy, all you'll be doing is starting yet another war you can't win."

Word!

mojo sends

Monday, October 09, 2006

Play "La Marseillaise"...

Looking at the latest polls showing that the GOP is about to make a very large political crater on election day, I am getting the increasing feeling of living in the "La Marseillaise" bar scene from Casablanca

You know... Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh are all in their Third Reich fetish gear off in a corner slamming pitchers of Coors and singing Die Wacht Am Rhien when someone tells the orchestra "play La Marseillaise" and the orchestra leader looks over at Howard Dean who gives a barely perceptible nod, and with the first strains, 100 million voters stand up and start singing over fascists in the corner...

Of course, when it's done, the Major Hastert shuts down the Cantina, and runs everyone out of the place. But it's too little too late, the resistance has come to Casablanca, all it needed was a singular "unfortunate display" to galvanize it in the hearts and minds of the people there.

Of course Democratic wins will be nullified or otherwise denied, but that's irrelevant, now. The GOP's festulent lies and lust for power can no longer be hidden. Folks have had enough, it might take a while to politically run the pimps, thugs and degenerates out of town, but it will happen.

Anyone know a Free French garrison nearby?

mojo sends

Update: All of us here at The MojoWire sincerely hope that, when we get to that Free French garrison [or Quebec, if needs be], they will overlook our poor grasp of Français and kindly wait with patience while we learn to speak and write like civilized people. (I fixed the spelling of "La Marseillaise" in the title and the body of this post. —s9)

Now, With More Juche!

So, the DPRK has detonated a nuclear explosive device.

p1. This is neither a weapon, nor a weapon system, but it's not good news either.
p2. The reports of the yield suggest the Koreans still have some bugs to work out.
p3. None of this matters, because...

The hawks in the Bush administration have finally got their "Clarifying Moment of 2006" and nothing will stop them from wallowing in it now.

The open question remains: is this enough of an October "surprise" to wash the taste of Congressman Foley's juicy emails and instant messages out of the news cycle? I'm guessing, probably not. There's really not much the Bush administration can do in response to today's announcement that will benefit them politically. Dubya and his neocon clown-car crew went all in on this pot and it turns out the Koreans were holding the better hand. Oops.

Now, the GOP has only one trick left up its sleeve for retaining control of the Congress. Massive electronic vote counting fraud. In Poker terms, they are flat busted and now their only hope is to pay their gambling debts with counterfeit Benjamins. The good news is they probably can't do it without being exposed in the process. The information is that this has never been a problem for them.

How many reporters can you buy for a pack of smokes?

Glenn Greenwald raises an important point today, why are the major media outlets that cover government and politics such bitches for the GOP?

I want to return to what I think is an extremely important incident that occurred late in the day last Friday, when events typically get lost in the news cycle. As Think Progress documented, at some point during the day on Friday, the GOP decided to go on television and tell an outright lie -- namely, that when Denny Hastert learned the previous Friday about the IMs exchanged between Mark Foley and Congressional pages (as a result of the ABC story), Hastert delivered an ultimatum to Foley: either resign or be expelled. Thereafter, so the new GOP mythology claimed, Foley resigned.

This story is complete fiction. It never happened. It was just made up by Republican operatives in order to defend Denny Hastert and make him look like some sort of hard-nosed, no-nonsense tough guy who took extraordinary steps against Mark Foley. But there is no doubt that this never happened, and anyone who is saying that it did is, by definition, lying -- and is lying clearly and demonstrably.


Now, to be fair, they have told so many lies that keeping track of them is a full time job. Last time I checked though, most reporters are full-time. But this isn't some backbench CHUD on afternoon MSNBC drooling out lies to a few thousand viewers. This is the CHAIRMAN of the RNC, offering up a bold faced lie that anyone following the story knows, or can easily find out, is a lie. The appropriate response is to hold him accountable every time he is interviewed. They won't though. No one will confront the Chairman on this. When did this become acceptable behavior?

Seriously, Jouranimalists everywhere, you are the GOP's bitch. They are lying to your faces, and you are incapable or lack the stones to confront them. Your readers and viewers deserve better than to be lied to by their elected leaders and then have you not report it. And don't even play the bury the facts game 400 paragraphs into your story behind less important details on page A26. That isn't cutting it. If the public is being deceived, that demands front page above the fold. Yes, you cynical pricks, lying to the public is not "typical" behavior that should be shrugged off. It should be highlighted by you so the public can evaluate the facts. So don't even hand me your insider whatever attitude.

Another thing, if you lack the juevos to call the GOP out on lying to you and treating you like a worthless punk, then I don't EVEN want to read anymore of your "GOP sucks, but Dems are pussies" stories that you people churn out on a daily basis. Feel free not to do the GOP's job for them. Jesus, why is this so freakin hard. The Chairman lied to you. REPORT IT! Stop writing process stories to prove how smart you think you are and do YOUR DAMN JOBS!.

I'm not asking the Media to pimp for my side. If my side lies, fine, call them out. But the quantity of the false statements by the GOP, and the lack of accountability by the press covering the Foley story makes it clear the GOP believes they can get away with it. And they're right, they do get away with it. They will continue to do it unless you stop them. Don't blame Democrats for this, they don't publish the New York Times or produces stories on CNN. Democrats have been screaming this to the cold and uncaring stars for years now. It's hard to be heard when every Dem statement goes unreported or is "qualified" by a he said/she said story where some anonymous GOP hack is quoted alongside without further context. NO Mr. Broder, quoting Dick Morris anonymously is not equivalent to quoting Nancy Pelosi on the record. What do they teach you jerkoffs at Journalism school?

I know I'm painting the whole profession with a broad brush here. Look, I like journalists and I respect what the professions mission supposedly is. Our fellow editor Mojo is a recovering journalist. And he is quick to point out the many process and market reasons otherwise decent reporters end up producing this debased product. And in general, he's right, the marketplace has created a work enviroment that is enabling this. But this is beyond explanation by work conditions and market demands, this is directly contributing to dangerous policy outcomes that threaten the Republic. There are a lot of A-list beltway reporters who manage to do their jobs. Dana Priest and Sy Hersh immediately leap to mind. But their work is becoming the exception, not the norm. The Political media needs to start doing it's job, or we are all fucked.

NOTE: There is a valid argument we are already fucked. The premise of this piece is that on the odd chance that is not inevitiable, the press needs to find or borrow a pair for us to come through on the other side with our Democracy intact.

Sunday, October 08, 2006

Archied!

Bravo Zulu! Lt. Cdr. Charles Swift...

You stood a good watch. Thank you.

For what it's worth, you are well quit of this institution now... I look forward to seeing you bring the heat in the private sector.

mojo sends

Saturday, October 07, 2006

Photo Caption Contest...

Let's get some good captions for this photo:
bush-chick

I'll start:
This is a fine specimen gentlemen, look at these teeth, ideal for breeding... I will start the bidding at 100,000 quatloos... what lucky provider wants to take this home... do I hear 100,000 quatloos...
Any others?

mojo sends

Friday, October 06, 2006

You Seem Insufficiently Happy, Citizen

I can't tell you how happy this makes me...

really... I can't...

My only question is this: Is this research ongoing, or is it already operational and deployed and we're just now starting to hear about it?

mojo sends

Remember Ira Hayes

Can I say just how sick I am of WWII lionization?

Clint Eastwood is releasing a new film: Flag Of Our Fathers, all about the battle of Iwo Jima and American military triumpalism...

I can appreciate the battle as a significant event, and even be legitimately moved at the various aspects of what the U.S. Marines who fought and died there went through.

But any attempt to tell this story will be disengenous and fraudulent if it does not pay serious attention to the fact that one of our greatest military victories, also encompasses one of our greates national shames...

You wanna honor the dead of Iwo Jima and take something important from that event...Go read The Ballad of Ira Hayes. Every inch a true story by the way...a young man who fought bravely for country that, at the end of the day, crapped all over him for cheap political purpose...

I have said it before that this is the greatest country on earth and I am glad to call it my homeland...that is why this bothers me so...that we can superficially puff up ourselves up with jingoism and our military superiority in the face of that shame without lifting so much as a finger to redress it, says something ugly and horrible about this country, and it dishonors the men who fought and died in that battle

That needs to end, now!

mojo sends

The Money Knows All

The Mighty Billmon agrees with our man Mojo about the real reason Congressman Foley was allowed to continue his campaign of sexual harassment directed at adolescent boys in the Page office.

I should have known. Follow the money. It's always the money.

And now, something completely different

Ezra Klein points us to an excellent analysis of the works of HP Lovecraft in the New York Review of Books.

The reviewer correctly identifies Lovecraft as an early progenitor of Geek Nation:

In other words, he was a nerd. He was a nerd on a grand scale, though— a heroic nerd, a pallid, translucent, Mallarméan nerd, a nerd who suffered for his art. His art consisted exclusively of conveying horror, and in this his range was encyclopedic. As a setting for his horror he built a whole world—a whole universe, with a time-span measured in eons—which others could happily continue furnishing indefinitely. His horrors themselves are, with a few unhappy exceptions, described loosely and suggestively enough that in effect they present a blank screen on which the reader can pro-ject whatever visual imagery is most personally unsettling. This explains the seeming paradox of an exceedingly bookish writer enjoying a legacy that is to a very large degree extraliterary. As a supplier of instruments for the cultivation of horror he was custom-tailored for the suggestible fourteen-year-old boy, and the number of fourteen-year-old boys—some of them chronologically rather older, a few of them even female—is continually on the increase.


And a Happy Cthulhu fhtagn to you and yours...

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Breaking News!

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Denny Hastert puts together a last minue persser in his home district at about 1100 pst, CNN reports... the House Ethics Committee holds its own presser about 30 minutes later

Resignation? Maybe (but probably not, this will be about calling the tune)... but we'll see, stay tuned...

Update 1.0: HotLine Blog has some info on the pending presser, to wit:
"In a press conference scheduled for noon CT in Illinois, House Speaker Dennis Hastert plans to accept some measure of responsibility for failing to discover Rep. Mark Foley's misconduct with pages, a House official said this morning. " He is taking responsibility because the buck stops with him," the official said.

Hastert won't resign "because that would be giving into the Democrat party’s best wish," the official said.

He is expected to make several announcements, including one about revisions to the page program.
And while we're on the subject, Tony Snow is getting the snot beat out of him in the gaggle right now. He has a paper cup in fron of him that he is hitting... I'm willing to be it's vodka. Poor guy really looks like he's contemplating suicide.

mojo sends

Wednesday, October 04, 2006

...To Keep His Seat Safe, They Keep Saying

Bullshit.

The reason the GOP House Leadership didn't expose their chickenhawk Congressman from Florida wasn't because they didn't want to lose his seat to the Democrats. It was to keep the insipid little tool voting in line with leadership expectations.

Think about the night they held the voting open on the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. Exactly what part of Congressman Foley's anatomy do you think they twisted in order to get him to sell Florida seniors down the fscking river on that one? Foley was a TRMPAC recipient, too— and that right there ought to be enough to explain everything you need to know.

Come on, people! How difficult is it to figure this out?

The man was being blackmailed. That's why they didn't haul him up on ethics charges. He was more valuable as a reliable partisan vote. Jeebus, why do progressives not get this? I mean, I know why the Democrats aren't speaking up, but I don't get why Left Blogovia isn't catching the clue. It's like they're congenitally naïve or something.

Just Another Day

[Via Pharyngula] comes this horrible iconography:



Apparently, "those who feel that neither they nor their actions matter to God lose their motivation to care for the lives of others or for their own life." And that, dear friends, is why you should believe in Creationism.

If you don't, some evil atheist will shoot you with a gun. Or maybe, you'll shoot yourself. Or molest children and shoot up a school. Who knows? Without the controlling Authority of Joseph Darby's nightmare God of the Rapture telling you how to live your life and what to think, you might turn into a slavering, depraved, subhuman creature— like me.

You wouldn't want to be like me, would you? God would hate you. And make sure you spend all eternity in Hell, enduring unimaginable suffering forever and ever. And it will be a good and righteous thing, too.

Why, if it wasn't for the God of the Rapture, you'd be going on a three-state killing spree right now, wouldn't you?

You'd be raping every little boy you could get your hands on.

You'd be luxuriating in an orgy of violence, waste and destruction— and who would blame you? The rest of society? Don't make me laugh!

We're all just base animals, after all— Domesticated North African Plains Apes, homo sapiens. No different from enterobacter, really. You can see the resemblance if you just squint your eyes hard enough.

So. Embrace Darbyite Christianity today! Or we will tell the atheists where you live.

It Was Only a Matter of Time...

The GOP leadership needs to be given a pass on La Cage Aux Foley, or the terrorists win...

They're slippin'; frankly I'm surprised it took them this long to run this play...

mojo sends

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

Real Work at Hand...

Okay, the La Cage Aux Foley has been an amusing diversion, like any good car wreck, but time to look at the road again and resume driving.

Lies, lies and more lies.
At issue is a key meeting on July 10, 2001, between then-national security adviser Condolleezza Rice, then-director of central intelligence George Tenet, and Tenet deputy Cofer Black. (Rice is now secretary of state; Tenet is retired; and Black is an executive with private security contractor Blackwater.) The meeting, in which Tenet warned Rice of the al Qaeda threat, does not appear in the commission's final report, although it had already been publicly reported two years earlier -- and the panel had been briefed on its details by Tenet himself...

On the premise that Woodward's book was the first time the meeting had been mentioned to him, 9/11 panelist Ben-Veniste told the New York Times that the meeting “was never mentioned to us.”

“This is certainly something we would have wanted to know about," he told the paper.

When reporters confirmed Tenet's January 2004 briefing with the 9/11 commission yesterday, the Democratic panelist changed his tune. "Ben-Veniste confirmed. . . that Tenet outlined for the 9/11 commission the July 10 briefing to Rice in secret testimony in January 2004," McClatchy newspapers reported. But he wouldn't comment further, referring all questions about the content of the report to Philip Zelikow. Zelikow has yet to comment.
So the 9/11 commission was even more of a white wash than initially thought.

It appears that George Tenet has chosen his time to strike very well. So now we have something of a confirmation that the National Security team not only had advanced warning of the 9/11 attack, but then started firing people who complained about their inattention to it, like Richard Clarke.

Have we had enough yet?

mojo sends

Monday, October 02, 2006

Waterboarding Demo

Get your fresh torture porn documentary film here. Bonus: watching Alan Dershowitz explain why he thinks torture ought to be warranted.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

I Find Your Lack of Piety Disturbing

This government's unremitting war against religious minorities continued unabated last week with the passage of the Veterans' Memorials, Boy Scouts, Public Seals, and Other Public Expressions of Religion Protection Act of 2006. The Senate has it now, and will probably hold on to it until right after the election.

This will prevent attorneys from recovering fees in Establishment Cause actions, in an open attempt to discourage such actions.

Note to my fellow legal professionals: You should be actively looking for these cases right now, clog the fscking courts with them and do it on a pro bono. This isn't just about religious minorities, this is legislating your right to make a living, this is just the first such law in a long line of these to come.

Note to my fellow Christians: We need to be up in arms about this. This law is a big step towards an establishment of religion. And if you think this a good thing... you go to hell! Do not, I repeat do not, come crying to me about religious persecution when they come for you (and they will, rest assured!). I will be too busy standing next to my friend s9 where you fscking people should have been all along!

mojo sends

SCUMBAGS!

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Absolute fscking scumbags!

They should just change the name to Grand Ole Pedophiles...

Trying to equate adult consensual sexual conduct to a predatory child abuser... there is no floor for these people.

And the fact that the House GOP leadership knew this was going on, should make them all culpable as accessories to felony conspiracy to commit child sexual abuse...and because it was done across state lines with the internet, it's a federal crime... like that's gonna happen...

This really tears it, there is no place in this country for these people, and I think Brit Hume needs to be on the first airplane out...

Update 1.0: Once again, via The Mighty Billmon we have the definitive take:
"It's becoming increasingly hard to regard these "people" as anything more than cockroaches who for some strange reason have decided to put on suits and ties and go walking around on their hind legs.

We don't need an election. We need the Orkin man. Maybe DeLay could recommend somebody.
Word!
mojo sends