FOX's Hume: "Somebody Needs to Hose You Down...."

Fawksnooze >cough!< "reporter" Britt Hume decided a little public humiliation and KKK-style intimidation was in order for Juan Williams for the crime of being an uppity black man in America.

Think Progress has the transcript:

JUAN WILLIAMS: You can try to minimize it, but the fact that you have Scooter Libby, so involved in justifying going to war, and in the posture of trying to smear a critic of that justification. I think is pretty revealing and pretty damaging to the Bush White House. I think they’re going to have to rebuild a sense of trust with the American People. And that’s why when Brit asked this question, why did he have to lie, he felt the need to lie if he did lie, but by all indications he’s going to say I didn’t remember it quite the way this person remembered and all the like. That’s not very strong in my book, and I think Fitzgerald did a terrific job on Friday. But the reason he felt the need was to make it clear that he was not involved in what really was a conspiracy to defame Joe Wilson.

BRIT HUME: Juan, somebody needs to hose you down.

Hume is, of course referring to the practice of turning firehoses and attack dogs on blacks who dared to protest in the 1960s.

Crooks and Liars has the video here.

It's time we gave Hume a hosedown of his own. Some folks who might be interested in hearing your thoughts about this:

FOX News

Their sponsors:

Crest Whitestrips

Delphi

Mercedes Benz

Comcast

Subaru

GMC Suv's

Best Buy

Travelocity

Capzasin

Orbitz

Ditech.com

eloan.com

Dawn

Toyota

Centrum

Nextel

Vehix.com

Gold Bond

Aspercreme

webmd.com

American Express

Holiday Inn Express

priceline.com

the FCC (1-888-225-5322)

and a few activists


Oprah Winfrey

The Black Commentator

AfroAmerica

Black Action Network

The National Association of Black Citizens Action

The Black Electorate

Black In America

The National Newspaper Publishers Association/Black Press of America
(202-588-8764)

Congresswoman Cynthia Ann McKinney
(202-225-1605)

Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee
(202-225-3816)

The Coalition of Black Trade Unionists

Michael Moore

Bob Herbert of the NY Times

and

People for the American Way

My message (feel free to copy verbatim or write your own):

Sirs:

I'm writing to you today out of extreme anger. I understand your company advertises with FOX News, where Britt Hume has recently suggested a black journalist be "hosed down" for expressing a dissenting point of view on television.

Turning firehoses and attack dogs on black Americans was the brutal method used to suppress freedom of speech during the 1960s.

Open-hearted Americans of all colors have fought too long and too hard against such hatred and intolerance. While Fox News continues to condone such appalling bigotry, I cannot in good conscience buy anything from a company that supports it. Please let me know if your company plans to continue supporting such appalling behaviour, or if my family, friends and extensive Internet contacts can consider purchasing your products again.

sincerely,
New American Patriot

Quote of the Day:"There is nothing more dangerous than to build a society, with a large segment of people in that society, who feel that they have no stake in it; who feel that they have nothing to lose. People who have a stake in their society, protect that society, but when they don't have it, they unconsciously want to destroy it.
-- Dr. Martin Luther King

Dick Chows Down

As Cheney frantically scurries for a dark, damp corner far from the painful glare of of the Fitzgerald investigation, like some latter-day Iago, he's still pulling the strings from hiding, insisting on the US's right to torture by virtue of its moral superiority -- in essence arguing that our torture is more sacrosanct than Saddam's.

And, as more and more "bad apples" are turning up by the bushelful, it appears his dark majesty's spooks are more than happy to avail themselves of his legal largesse.

Not that it's doing any damned good.

But who says Chief Pan Troglodytes isn't telling the truth about how swimmingly the enlightenment of the swarthy desert savages is going?

After all, (The) Dick's pet no-bid contract recipient is making two kinds of a killing, from blatantly stealing your money and selling rotten food and contaminated water to our troops, shanghaiing virtual slave labor, repeatedly commiting massive fraud, stealing money that could have bought life-saving armor and directly saved some of the 2000 of our fallen.

And while mercenaries in Iraq, whose base pay ranges from $130,000 to $390,000, are certainly enjoying their third of the $4 billion-a-month blood-and-money pie, they can't possibly be as delighted as Cheney, who's being handsomely rewarded by you, first with $178,437 in deferred Halliburton compensation (from the halcyon days when he was illegally selling nuclear detonators and uranium centrifuges to the very states he now wants to invade for possessing them), in tax deferments and dividends from 433,333 stock options (which most certainly ARE affected by company performance), which increased in value by 3,281% this year making them worth a total of $8 million. Sure, while it's politically expedient, Cheney is donating the current profits to unnamed charities, but you can bet he's hanging on tightly to those stocks for the fat little retirement bonus you've given him.

And then there's Cheney's third paycheck from you, for providing such excellent service to America, which comes to $202,900 + $10,000 for expenses.

Of course, life isn't quite so grand for those Americans on the ground eating bullets for Cheney's stock portfolio:

Base pay for a private: $15,480 after one year
Base pay for a corporal: $19,980 after three years
Base pay for commissioned officers: $26,200
Base pay for a movie usher: $14,144

And, when they get home, the Bush Administration has prepared a particularly special treat for them, once again showing their support for "our" troops, with that extra touch that only they know how to provide. Call it conservative compassion; heavy on the conservative, light on the compassion.

But while 82% of the Iraqi people may indeed want us to get the hell out of their country as of yesterday (at least according to the British Ministry of Defense), who says the Iraq occupation isn't a success?

It all depends upon whose wallet you're looking at.

Quote of the Day: "As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned, and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands, and the republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before even in the midst of war. God grant that my suspicions may prove groundless."
-- President Abraham Lincoln

Judy, Judy, Judy

Imagine it's you: you write a series on the hearsay of a man of dubious veracity, screaming to the world that a murderous Lex Luthor is bent on annihilating your country in the most horrific manner; since your newspaper has one of the largest circulations in the world and a rock-solid reputation, your word is as weighty as God's to the public, and is used as a cornerstone in drumming up support for a disastrous and wholly unfounded pre-emptive war.

As things start gradually getting nastier and nastier, it turns out your main "source" is one of the most notorious grifters in modern history, and your stories are proven irrefutably to have been a complete set of fairy tales.

Yet thousands upon thousands of Americans and Iraqis are to this day still marching to their horrific deaths on the strength of your arguments. Children are daily being blown to bloody chunks; civilians are massacred in the streets, in their homes, their places of worship. Thousands of KNOWN INNOCENT CIVILIANS are killed, maimed, reduced to refugee status, cast into prison camps without charge, trial or even word to their families based to a very great extent on what you wrote. Many are raped, tortured and murdered in concentration camps, thanks in no small measure to your "reporting".

When you discovered your source completely misled you(who knew?), and NONE of the evidence you trumpeted before the public as justification for the invasion was true, because you obviously completely BELIEVED your source to have written such incredibly weighty stories with such grave consequences, the discovery must be like ice water in your face -- horrendous shock -- a a paralyzing epiphany followed by the spreading chill of dread, the "Oh, my God, what have I done....?" voice of dawning awareness....

Hundreds of thousands are dead or horribly scarred; the lives of millions have been ruined. And it is undeniable that, because of your position of influence, you played a major part in this disaster that has caused unprecedented fear, pain and misery.

The guilt must be nearly unbearable.










Judith Miller, we feel your pain.











And who could doubt you're telling the truth -- you were so surprised to learn you'd been completely hoodwinked (bat-bat of the eyelashes)






















After all, in picture after picture after picture, you show the unmistakable mien of one who realizes they made a horrific, tragic mistake of historic, epic proportions.











We can see you're just beside yourself;








that you can hardly contain yourself;









that your emotions are about to burst forth















So how can anyone not believe you?

















Rest assured, when the day of reckoning comes -- as it surely will soon -- people of conscience around the world will be ready to show you the support you so richly deserve.

Quote of the Day: "The zeal which begins with hypocrisy must conclude in treachery; at first it deceives, at last it betrays".
-- Francis Bacon, Sr.

We WILL be Heard....

If you don't already know, this guy is bringing about a small, quiet revolution that may well have a huge impact.

He invites patriots to put up handmade signs on the freeways challenging the Bush Admininstration. Some very clever and thought-provoking examples have already forced millions of Americans to think deeply about their support for the Iraq occupation.

Recently, the Freeway Blogger sent out a letter urging action upon the impending announcement of the 2,000th American to die for Bush's murderous misadventure.




"...on the The day after the 2,000th U.S. soldier is declared dead in Iraq, people across the country will be putting signs up on freeways and major thoroughfares protesting the war. The suggested message is "2K Why?", but you can say whatever you want. Right now the number of dead stands at 1,996 and there are over a thousand of us participating. Please pass this along to everyone you know who might be interested in joining us. Cardboard, paint, and something to say... that's all it takes."

And folks, you don't have to be living in America to participate. Think of the impact if these started showing up in Berlin, Mexico City, Geneva....

Quote of the Day: "The most common way people give up
their power is by thinking they don't have any"
--Alice Walker

Pick a 'tard, any 'tard.....

On the eve of a storm of controversy over Iraq's recent >cough< "election" (and with Halloween right around the corner), now's a good time to revisit four of the most frightening videos ever made (wait for the downloads, 2 to 6 MB each, but worth it):

UNPRECEDENTED -- the Trailer

Greg Palast

Votergate -- the Movie

The most chilling testimony I've ever heard

Incidentally, it was these very concerns that led us to begin this blog, after four years of writing about the dangers of evoting. Samples:

Diebold at it again

With a little help from my friends

Three eyeopening editorials are here and here and here. Oh, and of course, there's this and this.

The amazing lady that first blew the story wide open can be found here.
And here's a new group hoping to lead the charge.

Incidentally, while I won't swear to its veracity, an engineer once told me one of these will take out a vote machine instantly. Remember the Boston Tea Party? Not that we'd advocate any massive-scale media-documented sabotage in the name of restoring our civil rights or anything.

Quote of the Day: "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything."
--Josef Stalin

No Need to Click Here - I'm just claiming my feed at Feedster

Ten Questions

While it gave us chills of pleasure to watch intrepid octogenarian Helen Thomas rip holes in the Rove sock puppet called Scott McClellan, there are still a few more salient questions we would love to pose to it during its next press "briefing":

1. Dick's Halliburton stock options rose 3,281% last year, even while the company was feeding US troops rotten food, contaminated water, using virtual slave labor and repeatedly commiting massive fraud -- does Bush see a conflict of interest? And if so, would he support contract suspensions and/or the revocation of Halliburton's corporate charter?

2. When the vast majority of Iraqis see us as occupiers and Iraq's parliament has repeatedly called for US withdrawal (which Colin Powell clearly announced we would do if asked), why are we still there?

3. Bush announced plans to veto Senator McCain's anti-torture amendment; does this mean torture is now official US state policy? If so, how are our policies distinguishable from those of the regime we claimed moral authority to topple?

4. The Pentagon has admitted using napalm, cluster bombs (both banned by the Geneva Convention) and massive amounts of depleted uranium, a known cause of cancer and the most horrific of birth defects (VERY disturbing images -- you've been warned); is their use now officially sanctioned by the White House?

5. Now that the Iraqis are enjoying their newfound freedoms, can we have ours back?

6. Why are we spending American taxpayer money on Iraq's education system while 24 million Americans still can't read?

7. How does Bush justify spending half of the national budget on the Pentagon while 2.3 million Americans, dubbed "America's army of the homeless", go without adequate food, shelter, education and medical care?

8. Now that we have imprisoned tens of thousands of Iraqis, torturing, raping and murdering scores of them in captivity, including children (as documented by General Tsuguba on behalf of the Pentagon), installed armed checkpoints, instituted curfews, closed down news agencies, introduced massive amounts of toxins into their environment and destroyed much of their infrastructure, at which point does Bush think we have given them sufficient freedom?

9. Now that Baghdad's governor, deputy governor, mayor, the leader of the Iraqi national accord, a number of judges, police chiefs and cabinet ministers have been assassinated, the Green Zone repeatedly compromised, control of al-Anbar province, Ramadi and al-Qaim seized by Iraqi insurgents, and even our allies are saying Bush's "flypaper theory" of how we're making the world safer is a (and I quote) "fairy tale", can we finally declare "Bungling Accomplished" and get our people back home?

10. At long last, sir, have you left no sense of decency?"

Quote of the Day: "Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes...known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. ... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."
— President James Madison

breaking...

The Many Faces of the Modern Repugnican A Retrospective Gallery of Original Liberal Dose Art

Here at A Liberal Dose, the little elves have been hard at work lampooning the evil bastards who have currently seized the reins of power in America and are doing their utmost to smash, eat, steal, rape and/or kill everything within reach of their tentacles.

So for your perusing pleasure, we proudly present a gallery of our own homespun subversive art.

peace,
NAP

THE MANY FACES OF THE MODERN REPUGNICAN

Infant

Plutocrat

Tyrant

Poseur

(Inept) public servant

Death merchant

Sociopath

Warmonger

Lowbrow

Corporate puppet

Nutcase

Moron

Fool

Opportunist

Glutton

alien

spook

Psychopath

Bungler

Master of Disaster

Note: The final image is a reworking of an original idea of the brilliant Bob Harris. Credit where credit is due.

Quote of the Day: "No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true."
--Nathaniel Hawthorne

Young Asshats for Freedumb

To those who remember the varnished hair, viciousness toward the poor, clownishly excessive man-makeup, empty platitudes and ever-pervasive undercurrent of dread of nuclear annihilation that was the era of President Alzheimer, the glaze-eyed website fawning of the laughably misnamed "Young Americans for Freedom" is an exercise in credulity strain. Read on:

Ronald Reagan and YAF became inextricably intertwined after he gave "The Speech" on national television in support of Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential candidacy....

Turns out the YAF weren't so "inextricably intertwined" with said dead brain meltee after all, as, sadly, they weren't buried with him.

But bad writing and sophomoric hyperbole aside, these young brownshirts have serious delusions about what transpired in the era of Donald Rumsfeld's gifts of gaseous gangrene, anthrax, botulism, cholera and numerous other bacterialogical and convential WMDs to Saddam Hussein; the era in which crazed right wingers such as John Poindexter, Elliot Abrams, Otto Reich, John Negroponte and Rogelio Pardo-Maurer (all of whom serve prominently within the current "Administration" [sic]) secretly sent 1,500 missiles to state enemy Iran, then secretly funneled the money to a particularly brutal band of guerrillas bent on overthrowing the Nicaraguan government.

But try telling the truth to these empathy-challenged warpiglets:

President Reagan's achievements speak for themselves. Reagan brought about the end of the communist enslavement in Europe, reestablished ...America's strong national defense, reignited ...America's economic engine through laissez-faire economics, and made the Republican Party a conservative party.

Funny, those of us paying closer attention distinctly remember it being a wonder-inducing accomplishment when said dodderhead managed to show up at a podium with his pants on.

But I digress; the point of today's spite-filled rant is to introduce a fresh spamlist to those of you of a mind to stir up a little trouble. Below are email addresses for the officers and every chapter of the College Republicans and YAF. For maximum effect, be sure to enable the "BCC" or "Blind Carbon Copy" feature of your email program, usually found under the View-Options menu. Since they claim to be such avid supporters of the invasion and occupation of Iraq, encourage a little constructive cognitive dissonance by inviting them to serve and questioning their courage in failing to have done so .

Any amount of soul-searching that can be induced among the fledging damned legions of Mammon can only be a good thing.

For inspiration, check out Operation Yellow Elephant or our own Golden Chickenhawk award, which you are encouraged to distribute to loud-mouthed armchair warriors everywhere.

peace,
NAP

alexander@handy.tc
UDYAF@cs.com
ngrafs@hotmail.com
jzmarks@aol.com
chadmorgan@chadmorgan.com
joinyaf@aol.com
vasquezc@fiu.edu
jason_harding@hotmail.com
jsheehan2000@yahoo.com
elj@pobox.com
texasconservatives@juno.com
joinyaf@yahoo.com
jonpastore@aol.com
ipse0001@tc.umn.edu
info@yaf.com
info@crnc.org
mikeinganamort@yahoo.com
nuhrig@wcrf.us
swanson@oregoncr.org
zimm2723@uidaho.edu
puetz@collegegop.org
ghiggins@crnc.org
zhowell1861@yahoo.com
adeguire@email.arizona.edu
kermit_84@yahoo.com
joeiyie@aol.com
csmith@cu.edu
sdarnell@nmgop.org
ritzertm@southwestern.edu
nodakcr@hotmail.com
jagiannonatti@ole.augie.edu
ryanloneman@creighton.edu
jbmgop@yahoo.com
benlepak@ou.edu
Salmon4039@hotmail.com
schaedel@hawaii.edu
quickchristine@yahoo.com
jeff.daker@ifcr.org
dreiling@slu.edu
chasedugger@hotmail.com
jkgates@aol.com
nmarklein@yahoo.com
afreidinger@eureka.edu
jbeeson@depauw.edu
hembree@mc.edu
shoup@bama.ua.edu
britton@gacr.org
lindsay.moffet@maryvillecollege.edu
carlson@mfcr.org
julie.corvo@notes.udayton.edu
CRFlorida@gmail.com
franklinnb@hotmail.com
heavyd2001@aol.com
tcostas@triad.rr.com
vwinn001@odu.edu
miccarel@sas.upenn.edu
backusmc@stu.lemoyne.edu
nwalton@bates.edu
amiller348@ignatius.wju.edu
tconnor@middlebury.edu
rlemieux@ksc.mailcruiser.com
capozzi@umbc.edu
sparm@conncoll.edu
pratik_chougule@brown.edu
gmoney_210@yahoo.com
seth@dejazzd.com

Quote of the Day: "All that is necessary for the forces of evil to win in the world is for enough good men to do nothing."
-- Edmund Burke

Jefferson, George and All the King's Men

"when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

These words became the catalyst for a chain of events that would rock the globe and launch a radical new form of government, designed to vest power in its citizens, and carefully balanced to prevent usurpation of that power. Arguably the greatest statesman and political mind the US has ever known, Thomas Jefferson had a prophetic insight into the very crises America faces today, when he championed the fight against a previous King George. "Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God" was the motto by which he lived, and his words are more vital than ever today.

A short time elapsed after the death of the great reformer of the Jewish religion, before his principles were departed from by those who professed to be his special servants, and perverted into an engine for enslaving mankind, and aggrandising their oppressors in Church and State; that the purest system of morals ever before preached to man, has been adulterated and sophisticated by artificial constructions, into a mere contrivance to filch wealth and power to themselves; that rational men not being able to swallow their impious heresies, in order to force them down their throats, they raise the hue and cry of infidelity, while themselves are the greatest obstacles to the advancement of the real doctrines of Jesus, and do in fact constitute the real Anti-Christ.

To preserve the freedom of the human mind then and freedom of the press, every spirit should be ready to devote itself to martyrdom; for as long as we may think as we will, and speak as we think, the condition of man will proceed in improvement.

[It is] the people, to whom all authority belongs.

Our duty to ourselves, to posterity, and to mankind, call on us by every motive which is sacred or honorable, to watch over the safety of our beloved country during the troubles which agitate and convulse the residue of the world, and to sacrifice to that all personal and local considerations.

State churches that use government power to support themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of the church tends to make the clergy unresponsive to the people and leads to corruption within religion. Erecting the "wall of separation between church and state," therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.

[If] the nature of ... government were a subordination of the civil to the ecclesiastical power, I [would] consider it as desperate for long years to come. Their steady habits [will] exclude the advances of information, and they [will] seem exactly where they [have always been]. And there clergy will always keep them if they can. [They] will follow the bark of liberty only by the help of a tow-rope.

History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.

I may grow rich by an art I am compelled to follow; I may recover health by medicines I am compelled to take against my own judgment; but I cannot be saved by a worship I disbelieve and abhor.

My opinion is that there would never have been an infidel, if there had never been a priest. The artificial structures they have built on the the purest of all moral systems, for the purpose of deriving from it pence and power, revolt those who think for themselves, and who read in that system only what is really there.

The priests of the different religious sects ... dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight, and scowl on the fatal harbinger announcing the subdivision of the duperies on which they live.

His religion was demonism. If ever a man worshiped a false god, he did. The being described in his five points is ... a demon of malignant spirit. It would be more pardonable to believe in no God at all, than to blaspheme him by the[se] atrocious attributes.

Quote of the Day: "The era of procrastination is coming to a close; in its place we are entering a period of consequences."
--Winston Churchill

Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Pigs of War!

Danes Sue PM Over Iraq Invasion....

TFF director Jan Oberg has issued a press release announcing a group of activists will be suing
Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen in the Danish High Court in Copenhagen

"...for breach of the Danish Constitution due to the participation in the war on and occupation of Iraq.... Denmark's participation, under American command and without a UN mandate, was based on the decision of 61 members of the parliament on 21 March 2003."

"The Prime Minister's decision is considered to be in breach of § 19 of the Danish Constitution, according to which the use of military force may only be applied under a UN mandate, and within the boundaries of commonly accepted international law. Furthermore, the decision is considered to be in breach of § 20 of the Constitution, as it does not fulfil the requirement of a 5/6 parliamentary majority in relinquishing sovereignty, the Danish troops having been placed under foreign command."

Hopefully, this will give a little more courage to the testicularly-challenged among our own >cough!< "opposition leaders".

And, on another note, just received this condescending, snarky little "explanation" from Salem Radio Network's Director of Programming Tom Tradup:

Mr. Patriot:

Thanks for your e-mail expressing your concern over an out-of-context
portion of a recent "Bill Bennett's MORNING IN AMERICA" program which
have been widely distributed by the news media across this
nation...distorting (whether intentionally or not) Dr. Bennett's actual
position on this controversial issue. We regret any offense taken by people of good will who may have misunderstood Dr. Bennett's comments. If Dr. Bennett had advocated what some news outlets are reporting, their outrage would be justified.

The widely-reported comment does not accurately reflect the actual
on-air discussion that occurred between Dr. Bennett and a caller on
September 28. Sadly, internet media sources took selected portions of
the exchange out of context to attribute to Dr. Bennett the exact
opposite position he was making about abortion. Dr. Bennett was
referencing the correlation on crime and abortion that is discussed in
the New York Times bestseller, Freakonomics. Dr. Bennett believes that
linking these two issues is an impossible, ridiculous, and morally
reprehensible thing to do, and he said so in just those words. He has
long been recognized for his consistent opposition to abortion, and for
his efforts to advance social and racial justice and equality.

Dr. Bennett's record on civil rights is well-documented and he has a
considerable body of published work that supports these views. He has
built a long and distinguished record of service in both the public and
private sectors. He was confirmed to Cabinet positions on multiple
occasions by the United States Senate with support from both political
parties.

Salem does not condone racism or racist behavior in any form. We take
our responsibility for truth and fairness seriously.

I would encourage you to review the entire transcript of the discussion
and Dr. Bennett's full explanation. You may do so by linking to
www.bennettmornings.com or referencing the attached document.

TOM TRADUP
Director of Network Programming
Salem Radio Network
6400 North Beltline Road, Ste. 210
Irving, TX 75063
E-mail: ttradup@srnradio.com

Aside from his obvious mistake in labelling me as "a person of good will" presumably towards Bennett, he insults my intelligence by first ingenuously belittling the import of Bennett's original statement, and by secondly stating his contention that obviously I lacked either the intelligence, the judgement or the moral generosity to read the entire transcript.

No, Tradup, while Bennett may assert till the flying pigs come home to roost that he is in fact "...a great and true friend of those watermelon-snatchin' dark folk", he still told 1.25 million of his receptive regular listeners that crime would go down if Black Americans were eliminated by aborting their babies. Yes, he added a cover-yer-ass caveat at the end saying he didn't really mean the action should be taken and that he believed massive racially-exclusive genocide is a bad thing, but THE POINT YOU'RE CONVENIENTLY OBFUSCATING IS THAT HE SAID HAVING BROWN SKIN MEANS YOU COMMIT MORE CRIMES THAN IF YOU HAVE WHITE (OR OTHER SKIN).

Seems someone else said essentially the same thing not so damned long ago.

But this conveniently ignores such real-world factors as the crushing disadvantages of poverty, racism, state-sanctioned subjugation, long-term political, and socioeconomic marginalization, and the fact that non-white Americans are much more likely to be convicted and more heavily punished than whites in America.

But it's mighty white of you to say so anyway, Tradup.

***

BTW, this is some funny shit.

Quote of the Day:
"It was a useless war, as every war is.... How god damned foolish it is, the war. They's no war in the world that's worth fighting for, I don't care where it is. They can't tell me any different. Money, money is the thing that causes it all. I wouldn't be a bit surprised that the people that start wars and promote 'em are the men that make the money, make the ammunition, make the clothing and so forth. Just think of the poor kids that are starvin' to death in Asia and so forth that could be fed with how much you make one big shell out of."
-- Former GI Tommy Bridges

A Man of Few (Comprehensible) Words....

Ah, THAT explains it... sort of.

Quote of the Day:
"Ordinarily he was insane, but he had lucid moments when he was merely stupid."
--Heinrich Heine

What 200 Billion Dollars, 4 Billion Bullets and 153,000 Gallons of Blood Has Bought....

Thursday Oct. 6 2005: An Iraqi man picks through piles of copies of the new constitution left rotting in the Baghdad garbage dump.

Meet the new boss;
same as the old boss.













Oh, but we've become a bloodthirsty lot, we the lovers of freedom, truth and light.

But let's see just what the bullets, blood and billions have bought us.

First the good news
For your (and your grandchildren's future) hard-earned cash, the US is now the proud owner of 14 semi-permanent army bases (named, appropriately, after oil companies)

Paul Bremer, George Bush, and their supporters have quietly legalized themselves into an estimated 3 trillion in oil revenues, and, with truly Mephistophelean evil ingenuity, managed to engineer the Iraq people into paying for the cluster bombs, napalm and depleted uranium being used to kill them.

The 120 contractors who contributed the most to Republican candidates ($2.5 million) have made a 20,000-fold return on their investment ($53 billion) -- enough money to bury a football field in over 35 feet of cash.

So what have we paid, in simple terms of bullets, billions and blood?

Bullets
4 billion bullets in two years -- enough to exterminate the entire populations of North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Australia TWICE (South America 299,150,000; North America 365,000,000; Africa 743,000,000; Europe 512,000,000; Australia 18,972,350; Antarctica 86 [winter] 250 [summer]).

Billions
$200 BILLION dollars (which increases by $4000 every SECOND) -- a mound of cash 600 feet long, 120 feet tall and 150 feet wide.

As an interesting aside, of this total, the GOP "Administration" managed to "lose" nearly $30 billion -- a mound of cash the size of a small apartment complex (oops!)

But with the Pentagon now swallowing over half (51%) of the annual budget ($399 billion), who's gonna notice?

Blood
The average human normally has about 6 quarts (5.6 liters/1.5 gallons) of blood.

Thus, with a total of 2,071 American soldiers and 100,000 dead Iraqis (50,000 of them women and children), we have now spilt well over 153,000 gallons of human blood, easily enough to water Bush's entire sprawling 1600-acre estate, repaint his 3387-square-foot home and that of over 650 of his neighbors, or keep his swimming pool freshly filled for years.

Though such latter-day Passover gestures certainly won't spare his mansion from the divine justice his own wrathful God seems determined to mete out, as Washington Monthly editor Stephanie Mencimer notes.

All this, of course, while the country is $8 trillion in debt (each citizen's current share at $26,842.12), increasing at an average rate of $1.62 billion per DAY since September 30, 2004.

Were any reputable businessman to do a more precise cost-benefit analysis on Bush's war, America's shareholders (you and me) would have bolted long ago -- long before the rain of indictments began to fall.



Quote of the Day: "I spent thirty-three years and four months in active service in the country's most agile military force, the Marines. I served in all ranks from second lieutenant to major general. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.

"I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

"Thus I helped make Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. "I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the raping of half-a-dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers and Co. in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras 'right' for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.

"During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, and promotion. Looking back on it, I feel that I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three city districts. The Marines operated on three continents."
—Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler

I, War Pig

Pieman rocks out, John Stewart nails 'em in a lie again, the Senate pays lip service to giving a damn about Bush's concentration camps, and the only focus group the White House listens to joins the rest of America in saying "enough is enough".

Next, Wayne Madsen reports the latest insanity from the once-White House:

And in something that would be commonplace in the old Soviet Union, Bush's neo-cons want to control the dissemination of information about the weather. A recent Commerce Department instruction to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, which operates the National Weather Service, requires media members who receive briefings from the agency to be pre-approved. Only the Bush administration could politicize something like the weather. However, in an era of global warming and more violent weather patterns, the Bush regime wants to spin the weather.

and the Vice-Crazy-Bastard, completely oblivious to the American public, demands decades of fresh young bullet bags in the global fight for freedom (or whatever it is now).

ThinkProgress and Madsen engage in a wonderful round of name-dropping, and, frustrated by polling companies' refusal to do their jobs, DowningStreet.org ponies up serious change for Zogby to pop the question.

CBS curmudgeon-in-chief Andy Rooney must have read our posting of last week.

And -- surprise! -- the Army's hiding the bodies again. In fact, Cryptome says the number's already over 2,000, and posts the names, circumstances and dates to prove it.

Meanwhile, William Bennett of "Abort a Black Baby to Stop Crime" infamy has officially hung his head in shame.

Folks, today's a great day to be a liberal.

peace,
New American Patriot

Quote of the Day: "I had been in thirteen battle engagements, had sunk a submarine, and was the first man ashore in the landing at Roi. In that four years, I thought, What a hell of a waste of a man's life. I lost a lot of friends. I had the task of telling my roommate's parents about our last days together. You lose limbs, sight, part of your life-for what? Old men send young men to war. Flag, banners, and patriotic sayings...

We've institutionalized militarism. This came out of World War Two... It gave us the National Security Council. It gave us the CIA, that is able to spy on you and me this very moment. For the first time in the history of man, a country has divided up the world into military districts.... You could argue World War Two had to be fought. Hitler had to be stopped. Unfortunately, we translate it unchanged to the situation today...

I hate it when they say, "He gave his life for his country." Nobody gives their life for anything. We steal the lives of these kids. We take it away from them. They don't die for the honor and glory of their country. We kill them."
-- Admiral Gene LaRocque

When Reality Mirrors Satire....

Unfortunately, turns out we weren't far off the mark when we snarked that the US military would now start recruiting the mentally handicapped to man its front lines.

As Mark Harriti of the Los Angeles Times reports:

WASHINGTON — Facing recruiting shortages brought on by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army has decided to accept a greater number of recruits who score near the bottom of military aptitude tests, the secretary of the Army said Monday.

Coming off a recruiting year in which the Army fell short of its goal of 80,000 active-duty soldiers, Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey announced that the Army would allow up to 4% of its recruiting class to be Category IV recruits — those who scored between the 16th and 30th percentile in the battery of aptitude tests that the Defense Department gives to all potential military personnel.
The Army until now allowed no more than 2% of its recruiting class to be from the Category IV level, fearing that letting too many low-achieving recruits into the Army might dilute the quality of the nation's largest military branch.

The continuing violence in Iraq has made the Army's annual mission to bolster its ranks especially difficult in recent months. The Army fell nearly 7,000 recruits short of its goal for the 2005 fiscal year, which ended Friday. Army officials have said that recruiters might be faced with an even bigger challenge during the current fiscal year.

Meanwhile, General William Odom, Ronald Raygun's director of the National Security Agency and former Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence (the Army's top ranking intelligence officer), has said he's come to the same conclusion so many of us reached before Iraq's invasion and occupation, saying:

"The invasion of Iraq I believe will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history."

The ever-amazing Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! has an excellent interview.

And, putting the lie to the rosy predictions of Chief Pan Troglodytes, a suicide bomber penetrated the cozy confines of Baghdad's Green Zone, reportedly killing three.

The facade of the Project for a New American Century's delusional world is beginning to crumble, folks.

Quote of the Day: "When Prince Prospero's dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and lighthearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court, and with these retired to the deep seclusion of one of his castellated abbeys. A strong and lofty wall girdled it. This wall had gates of iron.

The Prince had the bolts of the gates welded which left neither means of ingress or egress to the sudden impulses of despair or of frenzy from within. The abby was amply provisioned....The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure....buffoons...improvisatori...ballet dancers...musicians...beauty...wine. All these and security were within. Without was the Red Death."
--Edgar Allan Poe

Busy, Busy, Busy

Bearing witness to Bush's observation that "Our enemies never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we", the Reichwing have been proverbial beavers of late. Interesting to see the "Blame Game's" recent expedient growth in popularity.

First, Army Secretary Francis Harvey does his best Alfred E. Neuman as army recruitment plunges to its lowest since 1979 (the height of another completely unnecessary and botched wholesale slaughter of a destitute non-white population).

Fortunately, the esteemed Army secretary was able to place the blame squarely where it belongs, upon those damned meddlesome parents and civilian companies keeping perfectly serviceable bullet bags from the rightful clutches of the Pentagon. Not to worry, he assured all of us, the Army is raising its reward of 30 pieces of silver to 60, and will now accept the mentally handicapped as recruits for the front lines.

Meanwhile, Prince Periplaneta Tom Delay has informed the useless eater class that his indictment for the crooked shell game which helped toss five legitimately-elected Texan Democrats out of office is really just a partisan witch hunt on the part of a vindictive DA. Oh, and the $66 million opportunistically hoovered up from the Indians? It was his majesty's staff, according to lower-echelon lemures.

Madman-at-large Dick has issued the official proclamation that 9-11 occurred because we were pussies, a glaring deficiency he's working overtime to correct.

Dick deputy "Scooper" Libby's office mouthpieces have announced that pull-string lying doll Judith Miller's exploratory visit to Camp Oz was her own damned fault, though after signing a $1.2 million-dollar contract (reputedly not in dead American soldier blood), she's certainly likely to continue not giving a damn. At about 10 bloodsoaked dollars a head for each American GI and Iraqi civilian she helped murder, it's quite the take. They bought it. You eat it. Bon appetit.

As David Sirota reports, apple head doll and Bush family royal wiper Harriet Miers ran two major Ponzi schemes at the legal firm Locke, Liddell & Sapp, resulting in her company's prosecution and fining of over $30 million.

But as the indictments and prosecutions threaten to drown Bush and his cohorts in a sewer tide of their own effluvia, undoubtedly what is most appealing about the prim Ms. M is her prior experience at disaster management -- of the only sort at which this Administration excels. As Will Bunch notes in the Philadelphia Daily News:

"...she does know better than just about anyone else where the bodies are buried (relax, it's a just a metaphor...we hope) in President Bush's National Guard scandal. In fact, Bush's Texas gubenatorial campaign in 1998 (when he was starting to eye the White House) actually paid Miers $19,000 to run an internal pre-emptive probe of the potential scandal. Not long after, a since-settled lawsuit alleged that the Texas Lottery Commission -- while chaired by Bush appointee Miers -- played a role in a multi-million dollar cover-up of the scandal."

In emulation of his simian highness's favored modus operandus -- the sneak attack -- the Evil Empire have already engaged in a little pre-emptive lying on her behalf.

Next, the latest "Oh no; they don't even REALIZE it, do they?" blush of cringe-inducing sympathetic embarrassment at the Bush "Administration" comes from the release of 500 more Abu Ghraib prisoners that were, of course, irrelevantly innocent all along.

"Here kid, take this double-sawbuck and book. Sorry about the teeth. Now scram."

"What's that, Akim? Your family's adopted a mole, have they? How charming...."

To be fair, though, we haven't cornered the market in wanton brutality and callousness, as the Labour Party reminds us by forcibly ejecting an 82-year-old Nazi refugee who dared voice unwelcome dissent on the war.

But at least we're beginning to arrive at scientific understanding of the seemingly inexplicable hardness of the conservative heart.

And there's in fact a lot of good news of late, for example:

"West Virginia Second District Congresswoman Shelley Moore Capito says she's comfortable with her decision not to challenge U.S. Senator Robert Byrd next year."

California is saying "hasta la vista Ah-nuld" to "...save California from a catastrophe." Kenneth Matsumura, who is spearheading Save California Now, says:

"The grounds for the recall are as follows: threatening public safety and welfare by grabbing funds from local governments and demoralizing public workers, failing in general to deal with state's major problems as they near crisis proportions, and dismantling public education in California by starving schools of necessary funds while protecting special interest groups of wealthy taxpayers. California should not be known as the state with poor schools, poor healthcare, and poor disaster readiness, all caused by a governor serving only the rich...

so began our work to save California from a certain disaster under Governor Schwarzenegger, himself a beneficiary of another governor's recall two years ago.

Very few governors in American history have alienated so many groups of people in their state, in such a short time."

Meanwhile, a determined group in Oregon is demanding a recall of the video poker games currently masquerading as our election system.

And last, but definitely not least, Americans are most emphatically not buying the Bush line anymore.

Folks, there's something new in the breeze. Smell that?

It's called fresh air.

peace,
NewAmericanPatriot

Quote of the Day: "Almighty God, dear heavenly Father. In Thy name let us now, in pious spirit, begin our instruction. Enlighten us, teach us all truth, strengthen us in all that is good, lead us not into temptation, deliver us from all evil in order that, as good human beings, we may faithfully perform our duties and thereby, in time and eternity, be made truly happy. Amen."

-- Mandatory Nazi Germany school prayer

FUCK YES!