MUSIC: Intro/Hendrix, Star Spangled Banner
s9/ Prodigy, We Have Explosive
Exeunt/WildChild, Renegade Master
intro with Hendrix star spangled banner
J. Good Morning, and welcome to The Mojowire, Vol. 3, No. 9... I'm Mojo ...
S. And I'm Sean, it's Saturday, April 02, 2005, Day 1,447 of the Neocon Captivity, and here's the news for the week gone-by...
J. Brought to you by Mojohaus-fine journalism, afflicting the comfortable since 1988. Now headlines, from Mojohaus:
S. First this morning, we note the passing of Terri Schiavo, and examine how this horrific carnival of death fetishists has effected our national psyche and how this is translating into even more theo-Stalinist danger for the Republic.
J. Next, the President is finding things tough out on the road as he and his merry pranksters roam the countryside trying to spin tales of fear and degradation in an increasingly vain attempt scare people into letting them kill Social Security, and now they have resorted to impersonating law
enforcement, stay tuned for this one.
S. Then our special correspondent from low earth orbit, Dr. Strychnine, brings us perilous tidings of a dangerous time. Do we still really live in a Democratic Republic? Dangerous times indeed. What happens when the masses finally get the idea that they've been lied to and abused on that kind of scale?
J. The National Defense Strategy was released to the public last week, or at least the comic book version of it. A short screed on the necessity of the United States to keep acting like that one unruly party guest that who gets too drunk, won't quiet down, picks fights with the other guests and insists
on brawling with the cops when they inevitably show up. Rummy, fat, drunk and stoopid is no way to go through life, son.
S. Finally this morning, we geek on 2008, assuming we have full, fair and honest elections. Who is ploughing the Earth for the GOP's alien love gardners now and which cheese eating surrender monkies from the Democratic Party have the ability to rumble? We'll break it all down for you...
J. ... So stand by to stand by while we get ready to pull the pin on this thing ...
WAR ON FAMILIES
J. For those who were hoping that the hideous spectacle of the Terri Schiavo tragedy was finally passing, we have some bad news. It would appear that the Schiavo freek show has been but mere prologue for a religious conservative political machine that might be hearing the footsteps of a disatisfied population with a midterm election just barely 20 scant months away.
So the push is on to start rallying the troops now and get a legislative agenda rammed through Congress that would make Pontius Pilate weep. To start, The Center for American Progress’ most recent “outrage of the week” has the Schindlers, Terri Schiavo’s parents, in the depth of their grief and spirtual need, selling their supporters’ names and addresses through a conservative direct mailing house. So all those red-staters moved to send the Schindlers a couple bucks over the past years, watching them cry the blues on FOXNews, will now start to receive junk mail and unsolicited phone pitches from reactionary Stalinist nut jobs all over the United States.
Hey, doesn’t the U.S.A. Patriot Act make it a federal crime to make money by even being with otherwise innocuous groups who later in turn funnel that money to more questionable groups and people? But that’s a story for another time...
Fortuantely, it looks like the Stalinists in the administration have finally pushed the courts patience to the breaking point, and Judge Stanley Birch, an old school Constitutional Constructionist appointed by George the Elder, down to the 11th circuit, the day before Ms. Schiavo passed away, delivered a long overdue whoopin’ to Maximum Leader and his cadre of bloodless ghouls and religious inquisitors careening through Congress.
Look, it’s very simple... Separation of powers, got it? Not together; separate; one here, one there; like Brad and Jen.
Let’s go to the replay...
“The separation of powers implicit in our constitutional design was created “to assure, as nearly as possible, that each branch of government would confine itself to its assigned responsibility.” But when the fervor of political passions moves the Executive and the Legislative branches to act in ways inimical to basic constitutional principles, it is the duty of the judiciary to intervene. ...Pub[lic]. L[aw]. 109-3 is an unconstitutional infringement on core tenets underlying our constitutional system. Had Congress or the Florida legislature, in their legislative capacities, been able to constitutionally amend applicable law, we would have been constrained to apply that law...By opting to pass Pub[lic]. L[aw]. 109-3 instead, however, Congress chose to overstep constitutional boundaries into the province of the judiciary. Such an Act cannot be countenanced.”
This breath of law brought to the Schiavo tragedy resulted in almost unanimous howls of anger from the right, with scumbags like House Majority thug Tom Delay (who by the way, pulled the plug on his own father, many years ago, when his survival became inconvenient) swearing that firey biblickal vengenence would be wrecked upon the evil doers by the wrathful Old Testament hand of the pre-atomic space god Jehovah One with pillars of fire, lakes of blood, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria!
Though for sheer dadaism, you have to go with radically anti-woman terrorist Randall Terry, who really bent the fabric of spacetime with a performance art stream of consciousness to the assembled gaggle of ghouls and reporters outside the hostel shortly after Schiavo’s death was announced. “An autopsy can show what parts of the brain were damaged, but it can’t show what technology might soon exist, that is now on the table, that could have helped her.”
Unfortunately, the radio receiver in the communications shack down in the Mojowire International Headquarters Bunker burst into flame upon transmitting those words, and the rest of the rant went, thankfully, unheeded.
You see, R.T.’s respect for the frontiers of medical science seems a bit disingenuous to us here, given that on his own personal website, he equates stem cell research with child pornography and in August of 2001 had this to say about the necessities of medical research on the PBS News Hour: “Mr. Bush, you have a duty before god: These human embryos are made in the image of God. You must be their protector not their betrayer.”
S. And even as the last terrible hours of Terri Schiavo’s life passsed and the circus began folding up its tents, watering the animals and printing the handbills for the next town down the road, Maximum Leader’s personal clerics were still bent on scaring people away from reproductive health care by attempting to seize medical records of women. You might remember last year, when then-Grand Inquisitor John Ashcroft attempted the subpoena of medical records of women who had visited Planned Parenthood, under the thin veneer of upholding a new law prohibiting so-called late-term abortions.
His attempts at this kind of foolishness were batted out of every court at every level he attempted, much to his discomfiture. However, this has not stopped his spiritual thugs in the several states from attempting the same kind of intimidation and harrassment. State prosecutors in Kansas and Indiana (who no doubt are thinking about an upcoming election season), are now going after the records.
The Kansas State Attorney General, along with notorious anti-woman terorist Phil Kline, are trying to get their hands on records that include "sexual history, birth control practices, prior medical and personal history, notes from the physical examinations, and a number of other things that the clinics contend are protected by the patient-physician privilege," according to a news aggregation report from the Center for American Progress.
This follows a case in Wisconsin, where K-mart pharmacist Neil Nossen refused to fill a prescription for birth control pills, and then refused to even transfer the prescription to another pharmacy, calling the medication “intrinsically evil.” The University of Wisconsin student then sued the pharmacist and won $20,000 and a chance to see a judge break off a foot in Nossen’s ass, by recommending him for a two year license suspension and a requirement to alert future employers of his weird religious fetish, saying that he plainly violated state medical ethics and laws regarding patient safety.
Instead of getting on the side of patients, the Wisconsin state legislature wasted no time in drafting legislation that would allow pharmacists to insert themselves into the decision making process between a doctor and patient, by being able to countermand a physician’s prescription on the basis of personal bigtory.
It would seem that these examples, along with the whole push back on 1,000 years of scientific advancement in the cause of unthinking, unscriptural and spiritually bereft faux-Christian theology, we have been seeing recently, are part of an urgent undertaking on the part of a right wing facist political machine that seems to be acting like they need to do whatever they are planning right now, because they might not get another chance if the midterm elections don’t go their way.
They at least can read polls as well as the next group of people, even if they believe that the math used to construct the results was all satanically inspired fakery, and those surveys are telling them that even out in the vast cheese-dog and beer quaffing heartland, Joe Sixpack, a registered Republican and gun owning SUV driving NASCAR fan is starting to show some discomfort with the biblickaly inspired law making that is going on in his name. From the bankruptcy bill, to Congress insinuating itself directly into the most intimate moments of his neighbors and family, the whole tone of the current body politics has taken on a hue he neither voted for nor is comfortable with.
It was one thing when they could all make some sort of common cause against the evil hairy communist liberals, out to take their guns, ship their mothers off to forced welfare work camps and recruit their children into the homosexual cannibalistic atheism movement. But now they are in charge, and all those nagging doubts they had about how much they really wanted these guys in in the driver’s seat are coming back to haunt them.
Remember, wireheads, what it was like: “You gotta believe me, these people are freeks, who will roll back the Enlightenment and have you all living like medieval serfs,” and they always pushed back, “ohh... you with the hysterical liberal hyperbole; they’re not that bad, we can control them.”
Bollocks! Thanks again red state. Nice job Dr. Frankenchurch, your creature is now rampaging through the village tipping over apple carts and frightening the children. And your response? “Don’t look at me man, I just made the thing, I’m not responsible for it once it leaves the factory.” Well guess what, jack-hole, we are holding you responsible. Seriously, when we are all shipped off to the religious reeducation camps, we are going to come looking for you.
BAMBOOZLEPALOOZA
J. So word on the street is that the the administration is thinking of cancelling the remaining concert dates in their travelling carnival of Social Security mendacity. But not without first performing some of their greatest hits, like having Republican party operatives pose as Secret Service agents to roust the ideologically impure and blasphemers from the midst of the true believers.
And it’s important that they might want to do so, given that their current set of talking points are being batted out of the park by even the minimally literate in the heartland, who are beginning to get every bit as incredulous as us uppity leftists out here on the coast. It is difficult to know what W and his chimps were expecting. At some point, people are going to learn that there is no “Red Queen” to find in Three Card Monte, and that all you are doing is giving some cheap grifter all your hard earned greenbacks.
But I see we are getting a tad ahead of ourselves.
It would appear that the Social Security reform effort, currently on life support, may be about to get the plug pulled, if Maximum Leader and Ringmaster Rove can’t pull something out of their methane ports by Labor Day, the semi-official kickoff of the midterm election campaign season. To that end, W and his travelling road show have been making the rounds of city halls, Rotary Clubs and college campuses trying to scare the bejesus out of people in order to make them believe that unless they sign on to Maximum Leader’s non-proposal proposals, they will all be eating cat food in their dotage.
This has been termed the “Bamboozlepalooza” tour by one of our ranking
Blogistani Imams, Comrade Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo. He has devoted a goodly amount of his life to reporting on this issue in the past several months, so you might want to steer over there at some point and groove on his takes.
One the main features of these media side shows, has been the recurrent theme of only star-belly sneetches being allowed to come inside the tent to hear the preacher. Anyone who might be anything less than 101 percent loyal to the President with their every waking thought is being summarily escorted off the premises, apparently now by people who are skirting dangerously close to committing the serious felony of impersonating Secret Service agents.
We have this report from Denver last week of three people who managed to get into the event, and were then approached by a man who sported the uniform of the day of a Secret Service agent, including the earpiece and pythagorean precision haircut, who ID himself, or was ID by another event staffer as an agent. Apparently these three people, who were not being disruptive, carrying signs, wearing slogans, or even saying anything, arrived in a car that had a “no blood for oil” bumper sticker, which obviously tagged them as subversive American-hating liberals bent on the destruction of our God-fearing country’s way of life.
It was not until later that the real Secret Service, which, frankly, has to be getting really tired of this kind of nonsense by now, informed the victims of our little parable here, that the person involved was not any kind of Secret Service agent, and that they had no knowledge of these events.
This raises a disquieting possibility. Not only are Republican Party operatives getting their Tom Clancy on by getting into their Secret Service gear and rousting citizens at public events, but it would also seem that while the taxpayers are footing the bill for the President’s national tour to promote the destruction of Social Security, that many of those same taxpayers are specifically not welcome at the party.
And in case you are wondering, that is also prohibited by law. When the taxpayer picks up the tab, the taxpayer gets to come to the shindig, the end.
It’s not like this is an isolated incident, either. There was a situation about a month ago, when it was learned that the Fargo stop on Bamboozelpalooza was also being pretty exclusive. A “blacklist” of more than 40 local people was leaked to the press, including the names of local elected Democratic Representatives and activists, basically on the premise that they were not supportive of the President’s policies ... or is it non-policies, or his non-bidding against himself, it gets hard to follow his metaphors after a while.
The White House blamed this incident on an “overeager volunteer.” But now Scotty McClellan has quit trying to make up even bad excuses for the exclusions, instead now simply justifying them by saying things like “Well, there are plenty of opportunities for these people to be heard outside the hall.”
Hey, numbnuts, “those people” for whom you claim to have a mandate to rule, just wanted to hear the President and his gang speak on an important issue. You guys think you have some sort of imprimatur from the people to exercise authority, then why not act like it at least. Or are you really such a gang of weak-kneed waterheads that even the potential appearance of public criticism from the very voters you claim have nothing but undying love for Maximum Leader, is utterly intolerable and simply will not be admitted.
S. But the best part of the affair came from the faithful who were admitted to see the show and then -- like the bad horror movie it was -- laughed and catcalled at inappropriate moments (or appropriate moments, depending on your point of view) and many came away wondering how they could have ever put these low grade morons in power.
Apparently, one of the biggest laughs of the night belonged to Treasury Department Spokesman Rob Nichols, according to Talking Points Memo. Apparently, this guy delivered the line “there will be no transition costs in implementing the Bush architecture for Social Security” with a perfectly straight face and without breaking character. James Lipton would be proud. And now, the questionnaire made famous by Bernard Pivault...
Nichols apparently followed his hit “no costs” -- warning, don’t drink any liquid during this next part, but have some alcoholic libation close to hand for afterwards -- with his double platinum chart topper “10-year projection of $750 billion is not new costs, but simply like prepaying the mortgage.” It was ridiculous enough that Nichols had to finally retreat by saying that the financing issue was separate from the cost issue.
The line was taken ... poorly... according to witnesses on hand for the scene. Accoding to one Talking Points Memo reader who was on hand, “When the crowd reacted loudly, he repeated the claim saying ‘ this is precisely factual, [no transition costs]’. That just provoked laughter.”
At one point, the audience had become so incredulous, that Sally Canfield, a senior staffer for House Speaker Dennis Hastert, had to try to throw Nichols a life line by spewing out a series of numbers and claiming that each year the costs would be delayed by $690 billion until she was brought to a screeching halt by someone shouting “Liar” in the crowd.
But this is the line that is being repeated throughout the various levels of government, from Secretary of the Treasury John Snow all the way down the line, such as when Snow told a group of people in Bozeman, Montana that he believed personal retirement accounts funded by taking money out of Social Security would be cost-free for the existing Social Security system and would not effect the current benefits of retirees or near-retirees.
So with weak and pathetic rhetoric like this failing to sell even to the rubes and suckers who usually eat this stuff up like starving dung beetles at the fertilizer factory, is it no wonder that the advance people are wokring over time to scrub these events of the undesirable elements who would only ask uncomfortable questions and point out what everyone seems to instinctively know anyway, that Maximum Leader has no clothes.
As of this weekend, Maximum Leader is about half-way through his Rainbow Tour of America to sell this lemon of a policy idea to the American people, and the only thing he has managed to do so far is pretty much convince most people that he doesn’t have the first clue of how to fix a crisis that he invented out of whole cloth in the first place. Tell you what W, here is one for free from the Mojowire: You want to address the coming Social Security trust fund’s ability to keep the checks flowing to the elderly, stop spending money like a drunken sailor on his first shore leave in a foreign country you boob!
We do not have a Social Security problem, we have a problem with a structural deficit in the general fund that we can’t afford and which is only getting worse, since the President believes he has an unlimited America Card, recognized at fine establihshments all around the globe.
cue JAMES music
And now the music is telling me that we have an incoming transmission from the redoubtable Dr. S9…
J. That’s right. It is time once again for our regular contributor Dr. Strychnine, reporting from his super-secret, ultra-dope, mega-cool, extra-jiggy, Mojohaus spy satellite of love high in geosynchronous orbit above Baghdad by the Bay…take it away S9…
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