Category: Politix

I’m too busy to rant today.

If you need to be ranted at, you might want to check Ian Masters’ article at The Huffington Post. Just a taste:

…I’m told by sources involved that our Special Forces are already in Iran preparing for a pre-emptive strike, not against nuclear targets, but against the mullahs and their Revolutionary Guards. Trick or treat? Regime decapitation from invisible B2’s, with smart bombs sent by dumb leaders, surgically guided by lasers on the ground to smite evil in an October surprise. Another quick victory followed by a slow defeat from our wartime president who wins elections but loses wars.

The moral is – don’t take the Republican meltdown for granted. If they were honorable they’d concede this midterm election and go off somewhere to do penance and think about what they’ve done, and how they need to change to atone for their malfeasance. But all they really care about is holding on to power, and they could do anything to make that happen, up to and including vote fraud, voter intimidation, fake terror attacks, fake “intelligence” reports from North Korea and actually sending troops to Iran.

National revulsion at the antics of Mark Foley and the Republican leadership notwithstanding, in Karl Rove’s office it ain’t over yet, so stay focused, talk it up, register, vote and get your friends to do so.

This goes for you, too, Blue Girl.

Some things are too good for television.

Bill Clinton has taped an interview with Chris Wallace, to be aired Sunday (September 24) on Fox. The interview was supposed to be mostly about Clinton’s impressive charitable fundraising, but Wallace claimed his viewers insisted that he ask Clinton the all-important question Why didn’t you do more to get Osama bin Laden? and that’s when the fireworks begin.

I found out about this at ThinkProgress, and they have a transcript of the interview here (This link contains a synopsis, but there’s a link to the full transcript at the bottom.). The transcript reads like the best televised smackdown I’ve ever seen, sort of like Lloyd Bentsen’s famous putdown of that nincompoop Dan Quayle, only it goes on and on.

Fox will no doubt edit it to make Wallace look good, so I recommend you read the transcript first, then watch the show to see what they’ve done to Clinton’s words. As always, fast for at least twelve hours before tuning in to Fox News, to minimize the danger of choking to death on your own vomit.

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UPDATE, MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 25,2006: I watched the show on Sunday, and while I wasn’t following along with the printed transcript, I thought they ran the whole thing, so that’s to their credit. However, they did cut it into segments, introduced by Wallace, who (to my mind) kept implying that Clinton “went off” in an unexpected and inappropriate way. They teased the show all day, running little snippets. Their favorite one seemed to be the one where Clinton says “I tried to get Osama bin Laden and I failed.” They always cut that one off before he says “…and I regret that,” so the word “failed” rings in your memory as they cut back to whatever “news” announcer was on at the time. Then they followed the half-hour interview with a half-hour “analysis” of it, in which they tried but failed to portray Clinton as an unstable, hypersensitive, terrorist-loving peacenik who went crazy on the air. I was left wishing the rest of the Democrats were as willing to stand up for themselves and their party and values.

Now that the United States is under the complete control of the right wing, I’m kind of glad we still have elections.

Of course, the Republican Party seems to have figured out how to win the darn things every time, but hope springs eternal, eh? And I know this makes me a privileged, liberal, elitist, terrorist-lovin’ Volvo driver, but I think the Repubs have been using underhanded tactics to take over the country. I mean, from Karl Rove’s whispering campaign that Governor Ann Richards of Texas was an alcoholic lesbian to the theft of the White House in 2000 to the lies of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the strategy has been, well, shady, if not downright sleazy.

So to all you Democrats, liberals, progressives, socialists, communists and terrorists (just kidding – you terrorists talk among yourselves) who think that this November midterm election is going to be any different, that we have a good chance to grab a few seats in Congress and maybe even get a skinny majority in one of them; you who think The People have seen the light (or the darkness, as the case may be) and are ready to correct course at the polls; you who are smugly saying “We knew this couldn’t last,” let me remind you that Karl Rove and company are still the party in power, and I don’t use the word “power” lightly.

Rove is promising Republican insiders an “October Surprise,” some kind of staged event that might reverse the anti-Republican tide and keep the government firmly under one-party control for at least another two years, to add to the eternity it’s already been. I don’t think we’ve yet seen the lowest depths to which Karl can descend, but if I were him I’d pull out all the stops for this one. After all, it may be his swan song, since he probably won’t be involved in 2008, and no doubt he’ll want to go out a winner, which I believe is the technical term for what he’s done to the country during his career.

I hesitate to speculate on what Rove has in mind. Another attack? The capture of Osama? Given his history, I am prepared to be ambushed, and steeling myself for the worst.

So let’s not think it’s over. Let’s not stay home on election day. Let’s keep the pressure on in whatever way we can. Let’s support liberal, progressive, Democratic candidates. Let’s not concede one point, one vote, one precinct. If we lose, we lose. But let’s not quit, and let’s not get fooled again.

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PS: I found the advertisement above at the site about the October Surprise. Damned the Liberal Media, trying to hide from me the secrets of scoring with those hawt Republican babes.

I’m not sure where the press has been on this,

…but somehow the humongous 23-page Bill Clinton story in The New Yorker seems to have eluded them. Usually this kind of coverage of an ex-prez gets picked up and quoted everywhere for about a week, but strange silence surrounds this article. I’m not a subscriber, so I haven’t read it yet – hey, I live in LA, what do I want with The New Yorker? Heck, I don’t even know where I can buy a copy. I doubt if they have it at 7-11, the only store I pass on my daily commute. But I’ll find it somewhere, even if I have to go to the public library (I think they’re still open, like, one afternoon a week).

If you follow the above link, you’ll find just about the only mention of the article online, including what will probably turn out to be my favorite quote: “I am sick of Karl Rove’s bullshit.”

So am I, Big Dog.

Bravo to the British police for foiling a plot to blow up a bunch of airliners.

Jeez, these terrorists are obsessed, aren’t they? I wonder what got them so pissed off. I wish I could give a dose of it to the offensive line of the Minnesota Vikings. Those guys don’t seem real mad at anybody.

And, hey, kudos to whomever woke up President Bush this morning and got him to “make a statement” about the arrests. It sounded like he thought there might be some U.S. law enforcement involved, although it’s been the only story all day and I don’t think I’ve heard anything about U.S. cooperation in any of it. I’m sure by tomorrow Bush will have a better-spun version that implies that he was supervising the entire operation.

Seriously, this is the kind of police work needed to keep the world safe, not the Bush administration’s bull-in-a-china-shop, invade-first, ask-questions-later technique. I’m sure it’s not easy, but it’s the right way to fight the small number of wackos who want to become martyrs.

Chicken hawk and military deserter George W. Bush doesn’t want to do anything to halt the ongoing horror in southern Lebanon and northern Israel because he thinks that it is bringing “clarity” to the governments in the region.

What he means is “This is the kind of shitfire we can throw down on you if you don’t submit – in advance – to any and all of our requirements for peace. How do you like it, assholes?” I threw in that last part because I’d bet that’s the way he thinks – like a drunken frat boy with a D-plus academic average.

I have foolishly tried to use a moral argument in the past to suggest that the U.S. should urgently seek to put a stop to the slaughter. I was saying that it’s wrong to kill people, and I actually got a little heat about that, but never mind. Today I discovered an essay that brings a little clarity to me on the subject of war, killing and morality.

As Phillip Slater says in The Huffington Post:

To talk of morality in the context of international conflict is oxymoronic. Until there is a viable system of international government with agreed-upon ethical principles and enforceable laws, bringing morality into discussions of war and conflict is hypocritical posturing.

The fact is, everyone engaging in mass killing of civilians has no moral standing whatever, regardless of provocation or motive or alleged instruction from God.

Get it, everybody? Once you go to war there is no morality. Truly, all’s fair. Winning is the only thing. We are willing to accept atrocities committed by the military that are orders of magnitude more horrific than anything we will put up with on the streets. Slater again:

Supposing a man goes berserk, barricades himself in his house with women and children as hostages and starts shooting at the neighbors. The police come. They spend hours trying to get the man to surrender. They would never think that blowing up the house to get the ‘bad guy’ was a moral act. Or even a sensible one. That’s because police operate in a more or less civilized societal context with a more or less unified set of ethical rules.

Not so the parties to war. In this case, both Israel and Hezbollah continue to drop bombs and shoot rockets into innocent populations. The reasons each side gives for doing so are slightly different, but all are cruel, stupid and wrong.

I should have thought of this before. War lets us drop the pretense of caring about life. It means never having to say you’re sorry. Of course if the Bush administration vigorously pursued an immediate cease-fire, we could probably stop the killing and destruction long enough to talk out a more lasting solution. The U.S. can’t perform such a miracle alone, but the world can’t do it without the U.S.

If, as you have said, Mr. Bush, Jesus is your role model, have you asked yourself lately what he would do?

The U.S. is dodging its responsibility to work for peace in the world.

In spite of the Bush administration’s dimwitted foreign policy over the past six years, the United States remains the only country with the right combination of moral authority and actual muscle to talk some sense into the various factions that threaten the security of the world. Maybe it’s just my hippie penchant for trying to get along, but it seems to me that with those attributes comes the reponsibility not to look the other way.

It’s a very small world these days, and everybody’s got rockets and bombs and people who don’t mind dying for the cause, and hey – we’ve seen what a bunch of fanatic amateur pilots can do with a jetliner, so maybe it’s in our best interest to at least ask for restraint when a couple of hotheaded youngsters start going at it. We could get smacked in the back of the head while we are looking the other way.

For a week now, Israel has been bombing Lebanon, and Hizbollah has been shooting rockets into Israel. 300 people are dead, ninety percent of them civilians, the Lebanese infrastructure is being destroyed and the largest emergency evacuation since Dunkirk is under way, and there is no American diplomat over there knocking on the door saying “Hey! What are you guys doing?”

In fact, our President, the Compassionate Decider, was heard to say today “Sometimes it requires tragic situations to help bring clarity in the international community.” This nincompoop, this international laughingstock, this wannabe cowboy has actually mistaken himself for a wise elder statesman, and he is dispensing his wisdom to the world, while real leaders everywhere plead desperately for calm.

I wonder how tragic he wants it to get. In his soon-to-be-famous Mouthful-of-Dinner-Roll speech the other day, he told the Prime Minister of Great Britain (“Blair”) “…I think Condi’s going over there soon.” Today she said she’s not going until there is a chance of a long-term solution. Or when pigs fly, whichever occurs first. Maybe there’s a number they are considering, of deaths and dismemberments. Maybe there’s a dollar figure for rebuilding Lebanon, and they don’t want to act until that magic number is achieved.

Bush and Rice need to speak quickly and forcefully, to let the factions know this is unacceptable behavior, and the United States is willing to help broker a cease-fire. Tell the victims’ family members that we’re waiting for things to get real tragic, so we can have clarity. There is no time in the future that will be better than right now to start trying to heal the current mess in the middle east.

TODAY’S BONUS LINK: President Bush gropes German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Hey, chicks love this stuff, right?

I saw a short clip of Bill Clinton on The Today Show this morning.

Remember when we had a real President? I looked on the NBC site, and I couldn’t find the exact video, so I’m paraphrasing here, but this is pretty accurate. He was talking about the current conflict on the Israel-Lebanon border:

I am not one of those who thinks we should not be engaged in the Middle East because “they can’t make a deal” and we don’t want to be associated with failure. I just don’t define it that way. As far as I’m concerned, the more involved we are there, the fewer people die.

Imagine that. Despite the crippling and humiliating efforts of the Republican Party which probably doomed Clinton’s efforts as President to bring about an agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians, he is still more interested in diplomacy and saving lives than in looking good (even if he does wear the red-and-white checkered cowboy shirt better than President Howdy Doody).

In the mean time, here is how our current simpleminded forceful and direct president assesses the situation, speaking through a mouthful of buttered roll:

See, the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over.

As if I needed more evidence that the world has gone upside down.

UPDATE: Sky News has the Bush video here.

So I was freaked out that the voters in San Diego apparently haven’t had enough political corruption.

I wrote about it right after the June 6 election in California. It seems that noted Republican bribe-taker Randy “Duke” Cunningham was unable to serve as their congressional representative any longer because he was in prison – hello? – and I was hoping the voters down there would send a message to the Republican Party that the fun was coming to an end. I thought they could send that message by not electing another Republican, but to my surprise, on the morning of June 7, the Republican won it in a close race.

So the guy (Brian Bilbray) is already sworn in, which I’m sure must be some kind of a record for swearing people in – isn’t there supposed to be some waiting period, for certification or something? – but now it turns out that the whole election was a sham! Imagine this: a Republican wins a close race, has a quickie swearing in and marches off to Washington, only now it turns out that the voting machines they used were severely compromised, and no one knows for sure if the vote count was accurate, or even close! Does any of this sound familiar?

According to Brad Friedman (BradBlog):

The election was run on highly hackable Diebold voting machines that were sent home overnight and unsecurely with poll workers for days prior to the election which rendered the machines both illegal and uncertified for use in the election under both federal and state laws, requirements and statutes. The GOP has since rushed to swear-in Bilbray before the votes were counted, or the election even certified by the state of California.

In case you don’t want to track down all of these links, allow me to summarize: The Diebold voting machines have been examined by computer experts, who say they would have no trouble changing the software and the operating system in two minutes without a password. In light of this vulnerability, the State of California has a bunch of rules about securing the “chain of custody” of these machines prior to and following any election. Mainly, the idea is to ensure that the machines are not tampered with. But the San Diego registrar of voters, needing some temporary storage in the week preceding this past election, sent a number of the voting machines home with volunteer poll workers, to be stored in their spare bedrooms, garages, back porches, etc., and completely without official supervision.

This is against state and federal law, and it completely invalidates the results of the election as reported so far. The only way to know who won is to do a hand recount. I don’t know if this is even possible, but a complication might be that the newly “elected” official is already sworn in.

I’m not going to say that the Republicans are pulling a fast one here, but this is symbolically a very important election, and there is considerable evidence that the GOP is willing to do anything to stay in power (see Florida, 2000 and Ohio, 2004). Will Democrats roll over again, not wanting to be perceived as sore losers? At what point will the American voters say “Enough!”?

Personally, I’ve had enough. I think today maybe I will officially join the conspiracy theorists. Just because I have a crazy look in my eyes doesn’t mean I’m wrong about this. Elections have been and are being stolen, people. Get a good laugh at my expense if you like, but if you don’t think the power structure in this or any other country won’t do what it takes to stay in power and keep you out, take a look at some newsreel footage of the 1968 Chicago police attacks on demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention. The radical right wingnuts in this administration have done all they can to subdue the population short of shooting us.

Are we going to wait for that to start again?

If, like me, you are a little concerned about this, here’s something you can do: There is an online petition at Velvet Revolution. The form will be sent to the Busby campaign, the San Diego registrar’s office and California Secretary of State Bruce McPherson’s office. You may also send your personal comments only to your nearest daily local newspaper as well if you select that option. A recount might not change the outcome of this election, but we must defend the integrity of our electoral system. If we lose our faith in it we’re in for a rough ride.

Note: For the time being, the main page of The Brad Blog will be a good place to read about this story. If you happen to be reading this post at some time in the future, after President Jeb Bush has declared blogs illegal, relevant information can probably be found here.

I have been listening online to Neil Young’s powerful new CD “Living With War,” and I am deeply moved.

Since “For What It’s Worth” and “Four Dead in Ohio,” Neil Young has always been there speaking his mind, putting his career and his reputation on the line to say what needs to be said, what so many believe and what a lot of his peers are too busy or too afraid to say. Thank God for men like him, and to hell with the Republican attack dogs who will try to diminish this statement by saying Neil was born in Canada, so he has no right to protest. (What bullshit!!) Listening to this music is inspiring, and I hope a lot of people start now getting inspired. There is a lot of work to be done to clean up the horrible mess our “leaders” have created in the past six years, and it’s going to take a whole lot of inspiration, energy, focus and, yes, anger.

“Living With War” is an exhilarating experience. Old guys like me remember what power can be generated with music. Now you’ll get to feel it too.