Monday, February 28, 2011

CIA Hires al Qaeda As Mercenaries, Colorado #1 In Child Abuse

Paul Krugman


"At the state and local level, however, there’s no doubt about it: big spending cuts are coming... And who will bear the brunt of these cuts? America’s children." - Paul Krugman


This morning it was officially announced that the CIA has hired al Qaeda to act as mercenaries in the Middle East. CIA director Leon Panetta said that since the contract was classified he couldn't give any specifics, but it made more sense than hiring American mercenaries, who didn't speak the language or know the customs of the host countries, and the Americans tended to offend and alienate the natives whenever they shot and killed someone.

An imaginary CIA case officer spoke from the bin Laden Beach Headquarters in Gaddani Beach, Pakistan, where they have been keeping Osama bin Laden stashed away: "Finally, it makes perfect sense. Besides, we've been shoving mojitos down this guy like he was some seven foot tall diabetic, you know? "

A spokesman for al Qaeda said that now they could be assured of a regular paycheck, and that many warriors are heading to Tripoli for their first official covert operation. " Besides," he said, "This way the American military is also guaranteed jobs and an enemy who won't go away. For us, we can now market and franchise our brand."

In addition to the Spring catalogue of jihadi wear featuring the latest in suicide vest fashions, al Qaeda will put out a philosophical magazine entitled The Jihad Quarterly, and sponsor an academic chair of jihad at Beirut University. "We won't stop until we can bring our guns into the American election boxes, and run a jihadi candidate next to the tea party..." The same imaginary spokesman said while lighting up a Cuban cigar. "Too bad your country still embargoes these bad boys." he scoffed.





It never fails, whenever Colorado makes the national news, it's always something embarrassing that I have to explain to my friends back in California. Today there were separate articles in the Denver Post that illustrate how the economic bad times are affecting people's behavior. The first, is that the number of robberies of pharmacies has risen dramatically, mostly stealing painkillers. In fact, many pharmacies no longer deal in narcotics and often put up signs saying that they don't keep any oxycontin and please go rob somewhere else.

And I will link it to the new fact that Colorado now houses the most amount of abused children than any other state in the US. On detractor said that that the reason the numbers are higher is because of the new training methods that are being used to detect and deal with abuse. Other state officials wonder what other factors might be attracting an unusual high number of abusive parents, like the cheap meth labs that have been springing up, trying to keep up with the medical marijuana industry... Or maybe there is a diaspora out of the deep South heading for John Denver country, or maybe it's the success of Dog the Bounty Hunter that's made Bobby Brown a rock star and every petty criminal wants him to chase their dumbass down... Or maybe people are flocking to the megachurches where they still have anti-gay restrictions, the parents are naturally repressed individuals who take it out on their children since no adult will bother to listen to them...

The price of food continues to climb upwards along with the jobless rate. With more teachers being laid off with the policemen, our town may soon resemble an evangelical wild, wild west. We have sold off our police helicopters, let the grass die off in the parks, and turn the street lights out at night; we're not sure what more we can do to stem the tide or change the additional millions we will have to cut from our budget this year and next. Will I vote for my local block of tea party candidates this next election even if I think their ideas juvenile? What happens when we get caught between that rock and the hard place, and our choices are The Good, The Bad, and Doug Bruce?




CIA Hires al Qaeda As Mercenaries, Colorado #1 In Child Abuse

Paul Krugman


"At the state and local level, however, there’s no doubt about it: big spending cuts are coming... And who will bear the brunt of these cuts? America’s children." - Paul Krugman


This morning it was officially announced that the CIA has hired al Qaeda to act as mercenaries in the Middle East. CIA director Leon Panetta said that since the contract was classified he couldn't give any specifics, but it made more sense than hiring American mercenaries, who didn't speak the language or know the customs of the host countries, and the Americans tended to offend and alienate the natives whenever they shot and killed someone.

A CIA case officer spoke from the bin Laden Beach Headquarters in Gaddani Beach, Pakistan, where they have been keeping Osama bin Laden stashed away: "finally, it makes perfect sense. Besides, we've been shoving mojitos down this guy like he was some seven foot tall diabetic, you know? "

A spokesman for al Qaeda said that now they could be assured of a regular paycheck, and that many warriors are heading to Tripoli for their first official covert operation. " Besides," he said, "This way the American military is also guaranteed jobs and an enemy who won't go away. For us, we can now market and franchise our brand."

In addition to the Spring catalogue of jihadi wear featuring the latest in suicide vest fashions, al Qaeda will put out a philosophical magazine entitled The Jihad Quarterly, and sponsor an academic chair of jihad at Beirut University. "We won't stop until we can bring our guns into the American election boxes, and run a jihadi candidate next to the tea party..." The same imaginary spokesman said while lighting up a Cuban cigar. "Too bad your country still embargoes these bad boys." he scoffed.





It never fails, whenever Colorado makes the national news, it's always something embarrassing that I have to explain to my friends back in California. Today there were separate articles in the Denver Post that illustrate how the economic bad times are affecting people's behavior. The first, is that the number of robberies of pharmacies has risen dramatically, mostly stealing painkillers. In fact, many pharmacies no longer deal in narcotics and often put up signs saying that they don't keep any oxycontin and please go rob somewhere else.


And I will link it to the new fact that Colorado now houses the most amount of abused children than any other state in the US. On detractor said that that the reason the numbers are higher is because of the new training methods that are being used to detect and deal with abuse. Other state officials wonder what other factors might be attracting an unusual high number of abusive parents, like the cheap meth labs that have been springing up, trying to keep up with the medical marijuana industry... Or maybe there is a diaspora out of the deep South heading for John Denver country, or maybe it's the success of Dog the Bounty Hunter that's made Bobby Brown a rock star and every petty criminal wants him to chase their dumbass down... Or maybe people are flocking to the megachurches where they still have anti-gay restrictions, the parents are naturally repressed individuals who take it out on their children since no adult will bother to listen to them...

The price of food continues to climb upwards along with the jobless rate. With more teachers being laid off with the policemen, our town may soon resemble an evangelical wild, wild west. We have sold off our police helicopters, let the grass die off in the parks, and turn the street lights out at night; we're not sure what more we can do to stem the tide or change the additional millions we will have to cut from our budget this year and next. Will I vote for my local block of tea party candidates this next election even if I think their ideas juvenile? What happens when we get caught between that rock and the hard place, and our choices are The Good, The Bad, and Doug Bruce?





Sunday, February 27, 2011

If Mubarak Were Still In Power Egyptian Army Would Have Freed Libya, COIN Failure, Conservative Terrorists



"Economists say that with all this unrest, gas prices could rise to $5 a gallon. The good news is that instead of this money going to ruthless America-hating dictators, it will go to ruthless America-hating democracies." –Jay Leno

"The king of Saudi Arabia announced that he is giving his people $37 billion in subsidies and payments. It's not a stimulus package, it's a 'don't overthrow me' package." –Jay Leno

"George Clooney says he's had sex with too many women to ever run for office. He was immediately made Prime Minister of Italy." –Conan O'Brien

"A new poll shows that Donald Trump could beat President Obama in 2012. The poll was taken by Trump Polls International." –Conan O'Brien

"Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says he wants to outlaw prostitution in his home state of Nevada. Prostitutes say they’re not going to take this lying down. For less than $50 bucks an hour." –Jimmy Fallon


It's ironic, if Mubarak were still in power, we probably could have convinced the Egyptian Army to have gone into Libya by now. They could become saviors of protesters all over the Middle East... Unfortunately, protesting is addictive. They are still protesting something or another in Egypt and Tunisia, waiting for an adult to come along and tell them to stop it, go home and clean your rooms...

The only other country to have used real bullets and killing its own people protesting was in Iraq. Guess we taught their military, police, and security forces well, we can be soooo proud of them! In fact, the most respected Ayatollah Sistani had to come out and make a public statement, asking the government to please listen to what the protesters are asking, and not to shoot them... Bombs were successfully planted in an oilfield, and may affect Iraq's ability to ship oil for export. Of course, it was blamed on the mythical al-Qaeda, instead of the faction in the government that is trying to shake down the Oil Ministry... Also noticed was the fact that over the weekend lots of news was generated over the Libyan atrocities, and the fact that we may never know how many people were shot and killed, while only a small paragraph was generated over the Iraq shootings. I guess 20 people count a lot less these days...

The US ignores these small blemishes because iraq is supposed to be our example of a successful democracy, what happens when the US uses military force to liberate one's inner democracy versus letting it happen through a more non-violent means, a more natural expression of a people's will. Iraq is also the jewel that proves how well COIN, or counterinsurgency theory, works. It works so well that we are using it in Afghanistan. COIN is a more humanitarian way to occupy a country, basically trying to keep the natives safe and not dominated by the nasty Talibans. The downside is that, despite the billions of dollars we have put into training their military, they are still considered to be a long way off from becoming independent or efficient. We have created a culture where the Americans do all of the fighting while the native Afghanis sit around and watch us, ready to turn on us at a moment's notice because we are still the invading infidel dogs and NOT Islamic heroes...


I also rant on about the runaway military budget, how quoting amounts of dollars in the billions has become so blase... If we took the amount of money that the Pentagon has requested for this year, we could balance the budget for all of the states and still have money left over...
Defense Secretary robert Gates is asking for at least $540 billion this year, and that does not include the costs of the war in Afghanistan, or spies in Pakistan, or advisors in Iraq... Drones cost extra, too.
“In my opinion, any future defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should ‘have his head examined,’ as General MacArthur so delicately put it,” - Rober Gates



It's become quite clear that the current Republican political objectives have no correlation to reality or what the American people think they want. (Damn, and I swore to never use the trite phrase "American people" like I was some two-bit jaded politician. Using that phrase means the speaker hasn't the foggiest clue what the "American people" want, they are just blowing smoke and hoping the reporter is blinded enough not to challenge them further...) During the mid-term election campaign, the Republican talking points were to focus on the economy and to create jobs, jobs, and more jobs. As soon as the election was over, the freshman dogs were let out, barking and sniffing each other over deficit reductions. Because, if we take in less money, and spend less money to where we have to lay off hundreds, if not thousands, of government employees, that is a good thing.

Conservatives are proving that the elephant is an appropriate symbol for their party, because they are bringing all of their old bugaboos that they had previously lost, and trying to shove them back down our throats again, in the disguise of financial responsibility. And to make things worse, Newt Gingrich wants to announce his candidacy for president in 2012, and expects us to take him seriously. Newt is such an old has-been, his ideas are stale, he is morally bankrupt and working on his third wife. Yet the GOP thinks of him as a front-runner. Well, he is ugly enough to be the poster boy for the new crop of Conservative Terrorists or Constitutional Jihadis... give them enough time to prove how soulless and mean-spirited they really are. All shell with no egg inside, with absolutely no intellectual or nutritional value at all. Better, to paraphrase my mother's favorite Peter Seller's character, there is no There, there...

Friday, February 25, 2011

al-Maliki Predicts Protesters Deaths, FBI In California And On The High Seas


Paul Krugman
Dana Milbank
Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdullahziz Al-Saud
"Under Walker's tribal political theory, governing is a never-ending cycle of revenge killings." - Dana Milbank
"Union-busting and privatization remain G.O.P. priorities, and the party will continue;its efforts to smuggle those priorities through in the name of balanced budgets." - Paul Krugman





I know the US government likes him, but Iraq's Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki is a thug wannabee... he wants to become the next strong-man dictator, a Saddam mini-me at just the wrong time in history. Sorry Nuri, but a balding, short man wearing glasses doesn't instill fear in the hearts of your enemies. The Iraqi military and factions in the government have been recruiting and providing the means for suicide bombers, and blaming them on al-Qaeda for years.

Last night, al-Maliki went on television to discourage people from attending protest rallies, saying that he had evidence that insurgents would try to use the protests to create unrest, no, wait, it's the doings of sympathizers ti Saddam, or actually it's the planning of "those who would destroy Iraq", sounding suspiciously like the US, or Iran, or all of those faceless plotters that keep him awake in the night... Sure enough, things got ugly this morning, with several instances of troops firing into crowds and killing protesters, all before noon prayers: "In Mosul, a restive, ethnically mixed city in the north, two people were killed when local security forces fired on demonstrators who tried to storm two government buildings.


In Baghdad, hundreds of people walked through the sprawling city to Tahrir Square, which has been a gathering point for demonstrations over the last few weeks, shouting and waving flags in a tumultuous call for government reform. The protesters in Baghdad pulled down two concrete blast walls that blocked access to a bridge leading to the Green Zone. Rock-throwing demonstrators clashed with security forces who, in turn, beat many of the protesters and kept them from crossing the bridge.


Demonstrations elsewhere in the country seemed to spiral out of control.


Iraqi soldiers fired on about 250 demonstrators in Ramadi in the west, killing one person and wounding eight. Those protesters were calling for the resignation of the provincial governor.


In Salahuddin Province north of Baghdad, Army troops fired on protesters, wounding five people.


Protesters tallied one surprising success in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. The provincial governor appeared before a crowd of 10,000 people who were demanding his resignation and announced that he would step down. A report on Iraqi television said the governor resigned at the behest of Prime Minister Maliki." Notice in each instance the Army troops are the ones who fired, not any imaginary insurgents. These protesters weren't even calling for a new government, at best they wanted a couple of provincial governors removed, electricity available more often, and not having to pay so many bribes to the police and officials. for this, they lose their lives. Perhaps this is what war does to a country, it cheapens the value of a human life...

And then there's the insanity in Libya, brought on by hallucinating dogs and cockroaches... The cleverest response I can find in the media is this kind of crap from David Letterman's The Late Show:

Top Ten Ways To Mispronounce Muammar Qaddafi

10.  Mallomar Cookie
9.   Milli Vanilli
8.   Grande No-Foam Latte
7.   Live! with Regis and Kelly
6   .Lady QaQa
5.   Mumizzle Qadizzle
4.   Mouthful of Taffy
3.   Kathy Mavrikakis
2.   Qadaffi Duck
1.   Qarmelo Anthony



Meahwhile, while the whole of the Middle East is desiring to live in a state of democracy, the anti-democratic powers that rule our lives are doing their best to tear down our institutions and foment hate and fear towards anyone of the Islamic faith. It seems that the FBI kept trying to hire informers to infiltrate California mosques. Once there, they start talking extremist trash and wait to see who rises to the bait...

Unfortunately, the dumbass who thought up this operation must have been watching the television series White Collar for inspiration, because he used a conman to do the infiltration. It didn't work out like it does on the tube, as soon as this guy started spouting jihad, jihad, the other members in the mosque called the FBI and reported him... If we want to cut back on government waste, we could start with operations like these...

Yesterday, there was another case of FBI screwing things up, only this time it cost four lives... The yacht that was hijacked by Somalian pirates, with four Americans aboard, was trailed and eventually surrounded by four US warships. The two head pirates came aboard the US flagship to negotiate, and they told the remaining pirates on the yacht that if they didn't hear from them by such and such a times, to go ahead and shoot the hostages.

The pirates knew that they were negotiating for their lives, and the negotiator for the US was an FBI hostage negotiator. Why, oh why was an idiot like this doing off of american soil is one question Washington has refused to answer... The FBI guy got impatient with the answers he was being given, so he had them put into the brig, which made the remaining pirates freak out when told that over the radio, so they shot the four Americans and forfeited their own lives. An investigation is discreetly being initiated to determine how much the FBI contributed towards the Americans losing their lives, but if it turns out like all other government whitewash investigations, he will be exonerated. He would have more of a chance of being reprimanded if the condom broke and he knew it...




And if you want to read the article in Rolling Stone about the Afghan psy-op team trying to ply their trade on visiting US Senators, the link is here. The article was written by the same guy who outed the irreverent staff of General McChrystal and cost him his job. Hopefully, this will do the same for Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops, and a man who evidently uses shoe polish on his head to make his hair look more youthful and darker. Never trust a bad dye job, but maybe this explains John McCain's behavior this past year, his erratic stance on the issues and turnabout becoming the most conservative voter in Congress...


All in all, it's been a busy week for our spies, and I haven't even touched on the boondoggle with the mercenary hired by the CIA getting caught killing tow guys in Lahore, Pakistan. We won't find out until March 14 just how much of a mess was created, then compounded by the US Embassy by their killing of two more innocent bystanders in a hit and run sent to rescue the merc... Do you feel closer to your Muslim neighbor or to the protesters in Egypt and Libya? If the answer was the latter, you love your television more than you love your fellow human beings. It's Friday night, so go get a brewski and turn on CNN for a dose of empathy...

Wednesday, February 23, 2011

Qaddafi and Rocky Horror, Devil's Handsign, Iraqi Military Admits To Funding Suicide Bombers

Fareed Zakaria
John Barry
Dana Milbank
"President Obama filled in as the coach of his daughter Sasha’s basketball team. Sasha evidently listened to her Dad, because all she did was drive straight down the center and piss everyone off." –Conan O'Brien
"If Gov. Scott Walker is driven out of power in Wisconsin, there will be a power vacuum that may be filled by the Muslim Brotherhood." –David Letterman
"Bill Clinton recently revealed that he only sent two e-mails while he was President. Then he added, "And it turns out those pills are just a scam." –Jimmy Fallon


Mummar Qaddafi is on Libyan television, dressed in a mummy-like shroud of his own design, proclaiming that he will never step down, that he will go down in flames... I'm waiting to see who will grant his wish, after all, it's just a gallon of gas and some matches... or, as Stephen Colbert imagines his downfall: "In Libya this could be the end for strongman and exhausted Lionel Ritchie impersonator Moammar Khadafy. With any luck we’ll get to see citizens storm the Palace and Moammar’s posse of 40 to 50 female bodyguards defend him. That news footage will be golden. The menacing click-clack of razor-sharp 5-inch stiletto heels. Choreographed waves of 6-foot amazons spin-kicking protesters in the jaw. It’ll be like a Janet Jackson video."

Qaddafi is recalling his mercenaries back to the capitol to defend him, as protesters are planning on a coordinated protest in Tripoli this Friday, as reported in the NY Times: "The looming signs of a new confrontation came as a growing number of Libyan military officers and officials said Wednesday that they had broken with Colonel Qaddafi over his intentions to bomb and kill Libyan civilians challenging his four decades of rule.


A vicious crackdown by Colonel Qaddafi’s forces, with armed militiamen strafing crowds from the back of pickup trucks, killed scores in Tripoli already, residents said. Bursts of gunfire extended the reign of terror in the capital on Wednesday, residents said.


The overall death toll so far has been impossible to determine. Human rights groups say they have confirmed about 300 deaths, though witnesses suggested the number was far larger. On Wednesday, Franco Frattini, the foreign minister of Italy — the former colonial power with longstanding ties — said the dead probably totaled more than 1,000 across the country." What kind of man will drop bombs on his own people? And what will happen to those mercenaries if Qaddafi leaves, do they go to the next Sub-Saharan dictator on the list who also is refusing to step aside?

The amazing thing is that these protests won't stop, and using violence against them only makes each succeeding rally larger and more passionate. What's even more morbidly fascinating is watching the public meltdown of each meglomaniacal personality. Qaddafi resembles a mixture of an over-the-top Elton John style fashionista cross-bred with a character out of Rocky Horror Picture Show. With his Swedish nurse squad in the background as a chorus line, I can hear him sing:

How do you do
I see you've met my faithful handyman
He's a little brought down
Because when you knocked
He thought you were the candyman

Don't get strung out by the way that I look
Don't judge a book by its cover
I'm not much of a man
By the light of day
But by night I'm one hell of a lover
I'm just a sweet transvestite
From transexual
Transylvania

As he goes out to meet his fate with the protesters, his children already having flown the coup...


There may be something to the thought that this is the Middle Eastern version of Woodstock, if nothing else, the US should send over some old hippy bands as a form of foreign aid. I think Country Joe is still alive, and Jesse Colin Young is now playing with his sons instead of the Youngbloods - anyway, it'll work. Look at the pictures that come in from Iran, Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain and Libya, see how many of them shoe people flashing peace signs. The peace sign was made to counteract the old sign of the devil, which has been used in modern times by cabals like the Illuminati, and you see it everywhere:






You get the idea...


This next piece of news came from the morning edition of the NY Times. In the afternoon online edition it had been edited out. On page A10 was a map of the Middle East with a synopsis of the unrest in the area. Iraq was listed, with the blurb:
"With demonstrations scheduled for Friday, the government's chief spokesman said that Iraqis were free to assemble peacefully to demand better services and to criticize the government. But a military spokesman in Baghdad warned that suicide bombers were planning to attack the protesters and that people at the rallies should be wary of gunmen with silencers."

Unless my eyes deceive me, this is the first time that someone from the Iraqi government has admitted that they are recruiting and funding suicide bombers. Al-Qaeda my foot... I've long suspected that al-Qaeda is pretty much long gone in Iraq, and all of the bombings of Shiites on their pilgrimages, and the bombing of Sunni buildings were done by different sects within the military, probably to get the US to keep on shelling out the cash to this poor country that hasn't recovered from the horrors yet... After all, who else can get hold of so much explosives?

Next revelation will be that American sport companies are making the actual vests, and will soon be including Western versions in their Spring catalogues... look, more pockets! And soon there will be versions for other countries and ethnicities, glen plaid for Scotland, refurbished Mao jackets with the sleeves torn off for China, Cheeseheads for Wisconsin... Jeez, and I haven't gotten around to prattling about the gunmen with silencers...


Monday, February 21, 2011

Monday Rant, Where The New Crop Of Republicans Get It All Wrong in Wisconsin, Washington, And Colorado

Paul Krugman
EJ Dionne Jr
Nicholas Kristoff
"For what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power." - Paul Krugman
"Thanks to the Tea Party, we are now told that all our problems will be solved by cutting government programs... Washington is acting as if the only real problem the United States confronts is the budget deficit; the only test of leadership is whether the president is willing to make big cuts in programs that protect the elderly; and the largest threat to our prosperity comes from public employees." - EJ Dionne Jr

I took a couple of days off from posting to rest up and read some fiction, while in the real world, the crisis never end. I'm wondering if blogs will soon die out like the dinosaurs, many of them are drying up, and the ones that are still out there seem to be edited by rude people. I've been taken off of a couple of blogrolls without their editors being polite enough to tell me why. I've also had people ask to be put on my blogroll because they "like" mine and have linked to mine from their blog, and would I be kind enough to reciprocate? Then, two days later they erase my link, making me feel foolish. I guess I gotta schmooze a bit more with other folks who write blogs, but by the time I finish with mine every day, it's time for a nap...



When the Republicans won the majority of the House, the new Speaker, Mr John Boehner, said that their focus was going to be on jobs, jobs, jobs. So far, absolutely nothing that they have done will create even a single job in America, unless those incoming freshmen stop sleeping in their congressional offices, which would allow an extra person be hired to clean out their rooms... Traditionally, Republicans have come with the same old baggage that seems to prevent them from thinking and being creative, actually looking for solutions to our problems. Unfortunately, it's the same old song, with a mean-streak of vengeance that's causing so much ruckus right now, from Wisconsin to Ohio, to Florida. The baggage is: tax cuts will solve everything, the government must be physically shrunk, and we must tear down Rowe vs Wade to make abortions illegal. Again, not one of these goals will address our unemployment problem. Less money coming in means cutting budgets and laying people off. Public jobs will be lost, but when you work for the government, evidently you are not considered to be human... I can see where this chain of abuse goes, keep our female aides away from being surrounded by crowds of rowdy young Republicans on the house floor...

The battle in Wisconsin, and mirrored in Washington and New Jersey and Florida, has to do with busting the unions of public employees, lessen their influence and ability to collectively bargain. Here in Colorado, they want to attack the teacher's union, probably blame them for the horrible drop-out rate and crappy education your kid gets. Which is killing the messenger and refusing to take responsibility. Education has been a football tossed around since the first public school opened its door, people have carped and criticized the system ever since. We're either throwing money at the schools or cutting the educational budget, creating a base of paranoia and worry that becomes the foundational attitude of the administrators. Plus, the system is built on the Prussian military school model, which doesn't leave much room for innovation.

Looking back, I can count on three fingers of one hand all of the really good teachers I've had, the rest were adequate or less than memorable; I've forgotten who they were. They were able to take the incredibly boring subject matter as presented in our textbooks, and make the subject come alive, inspired our imaginations, and we walked out of their classroom a better person than when we first went in. Who's fault is it if there are one or two gems among the pebbles, and what effort do our school administrations do to procure more of the sparkly baubles when they don't even know what to look for?

It's really no fault of the teacher if the material is presented in a way that's guaranteed to put you to sleep. There's no creativity in standardized textbooks, especially if they were created by a committee in Texas. There is a mind-deadening quality to having a subject for an hour each day, and going from English to science to math to lunch, to history to an elective course five days per week, over and over again. The smart ones and the dullest ones drop out. I've seen alternatives like home schooling both work out really well, and not work at all when the mother reads a paragraph from the Bible to her kids and considers that a lesson in English, reading, writing, and history... Ultimately, how do you get the individual to shoulder the workload and become responsible?

It's obvious that our public schools need a major overhaul, but instead of tackling the obvious we are attacking the teacher's unions who just want a fair wage for teaching this mind-numbing crap... It's not a Republican issue or a Democratic issue, it's a lazy politician's issue, who would rather mimic stale talking points than try to work together to restructure our educational systems, tweak them so they are relevant to our changing times.

It's the same thing with our government. Maybe it doesn't need downsizing at all, maybe the system needs tweaking so that it becomes more responsive to our needs and how they change depending on the economic situation. Maybe the answer isn't to take a sledgehammer to whatever paltry rights the employees were able to get over time, but to ask nicely and work with their unions to help solve the economic mess we have created. After all, who knows better than how to improve their jobs than the workers themselves; certainly not their supervisors or administrators or worse off, some newly elected politician with a wild hair up his/her butt...

Maybe we need someone to start taking responsibility, not the illusion of it. Again, it looks like this new class of Republicans doesn't have the vision or the strength to get it done. Oh yeah, where are the jobs?

It's ironic, that so much of the world is waking up to the wonderful possibilities of having freedom and democracy, and we are drifting off to resemble more and more the Russian model of governing... everything I have fought for, going quickly down the drain. Oh well, I can keep myself medicated and oblivious during my last few years, get some quack to cycle in some new meds, prescribe me some paxil with a medical marijuana chaser... and on Friday nights, viagra!





Friday, February 18, 2011

Sadism Rules In Bahrain

Paul Krugman
Dana Milbank
Philip Shenom
"The whole budget debate, then, is a sham. House Republicans, in particular, are literally stealing food from the mouths of babes — nutritional aid to pregnant women and very young children is one of the items on their cutting block — so they can pose, falsely, as deficit hawks." - Paul Krugman
"That’s why I say that Mr. Obama gets too little credit. He has done more to rein in long-run deficits than any previous president. And if his opponents were serious about those deficits, they’d be backing his actions and calling for more; instead, they’ve been screaming about death panels." - Paul Krugman
"The bottom line, then, is that while the budget is all over the news, we’re not having a real debate; it’s all sound, fury, and posturing, telling us a lot about the cynicism of politicians but signifying nothing in terms of actual deficit reduction. And we shouldn’t indulge those politicians by pretending otherwise." - Paul Krugman

The dark, repressive side to the Middle East will not go down without a fight, exposure to the light alone won't kill it. Unfortunately, what has been exposed is very sick and very deadly. There's no other way to say it - the King of Bahrain is insane, one sadistic dude. I can only imagine how he has kept his fetish alive over the years, probably volunteering to run a rendition camp for the CIA that makes water-boarding look tame. Compound this with the fact that the Sunni rulers in this area will not allow any kind of Shia uprising, turning the conflict in Bahrain into a religious war. Tunisia and Egypt was a secular uprising, with people of all religions gathered together, clamoring for basic human rights and dignity.

In Bahrain, at first the King tried to deflect any organizing by announcing that some democratic reforms would be made. When a gathering assembled in the capitol's main square, the government welcomed them as long as they were non-violent. Then they attacked them, trying to overwhelm them by the amount of tear gas used, along with rubber bullets and buckshot. The King appeared on television, apologizing for the mishaps, and promised to investigate one man's death... All that did was to attract even more people, who set up tents and were ready for days of protest. At three o'clock in the morning, police raided the camp, firing real bullets, trying to herd everyone out of the square. The King then went on television again, apologizing for the brutality, but there were people who had weapons and were planning on attacking the police, whereupon the screen showed a couple of antique swords that were taken from a museum and placed on a sleeping bag... This morning, all apologies were off, and the police shot and killed over 20 protesters, how dare you defy your King? This is classic tribal warfare, inviting your enemy into an ambush, making them feel safe so they let their guard down, then closing in...

Bahrain is unique because the US has its Fifth Fleet stationed there. At what point does the King cross the line, killing too many that the US feels it has to intervene? Or will the US sit by and do nothing like the Egyptian Army supposedly had done? There are two Iranian warships attempting to enter the Suez Canal on their way to Syria to act as a naval counterweight, in solidarity to the Shiite Hezsbollah in syria and Lebanon. Already there are elements who would turn all gains made by peaceful demonstrations into war...

The Iranians are completely over the edge, gone frothing mad. They have taken one of the opposition leaders, Mir Moussavi, and put him away in a secret spot, he has been missing since Tuesday, and it's feared that the calls for hanging him have come to pass... Even crazier, was the piece of street theater the Iranian government tried to perform. First, they killed a student, then claimed that he wasn't really a protester, but he was a pro-government agent killed by the opposition protesters. Nobody was believing that story, especially the kid's family. Then, the government decided to have a funeral for the kid, complete with carrying the casket through the streets surrounded by ayatollahs and basij. Worst, they didn't allow any of the kid's family to participate or even go near the spectacle, which was filmed and shown of the state run TV...

These fake spectacles that everyone can see are so fake and false reminds me of our Republicans trying to make cuts in the budget. None of them are thought out, they just took scissors to the printed pages of the budget and let some five-year-old kids do the cutting. It makes as much sense as any reason I've heard by John Boehner or Paul Ryan. When, oh when, will the Republicans let Rand Paul become their spokesperson, let him ramble on and on without making one logical thought?.. Now, there's a debate for you, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the sadistic King of Bahrain, and Rand Paul, all on one stage, certainly more fun than CPAC was... Make sure to read the Paul Krugman column that is linked at the top of this page...








Thursday, February 17, 2011

Chutzpa of Leon and Ken...




Washington DC reminds me of the Emerald City in the wizard of Oz, its inhabitants all hiding behind their particular screens venting like they are all powerful and mighty. Any moment I expect winged monkeys to start flinging their poo around... One particular piece of poo was slung by CIA Director Leon Panetta while testifying before Congress. He was probably embarrassed from telling them another intelligence lie, that Egypt's Hosni Mubarak would announce he was stepping down, when in reality Mubarak hunkered down and said no way am I leaving of my own free will.

I guess that Leon felt he had to puff out his chest and show just how tough he's become since becoming head of the CIA, that despite believing all of the bs his employees tell him, he still has some macho mojo going for him. The Denver Post reported that: "CIA Director Leon Panetta told Congress on Wednesday that if Osama bin Laden or his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri is captured, he will be held by the military and probably will be sent to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. It was the first time any senior administration official has outlined a detention plan for al-Qaeda's top leadership.


Panetta's statement was some indication that the administration is contemplating the future use of the military detention center in Cuba even though it says it is still committed to closing the facility." So now he wants to make a liar out of Obama, who had promised to close the place down. Next, we'll learn the Fannie Mae has turned Guantanamo into a bunch of townhouse units, sold as low income housing to the victims of Bernie Madoff's ponzi scheme, to be elegantly named The Cells at Guantanamo...

I used to have good feelings towards Leon, thought he was an above average honest bureaucrat. Sadly how quickly and far the wise have fallen. Another czar that I am losing respect for, is Colorado's own Ken Salazar, head of the Interior Dept.

OK, Ken had a tough row to hoe before him, what with some of the previous employees snorting cocaine off of their desks and having sexual orgies with female "lobbyists" hired by the oil companies. And he didn't handle the oil spill in the Gulf all that well, looks even worse now that reports are coming out saying, gee, if only regulations had been followed the entire oil spill and loss of of life could have been avoided...

His predecessors had neglected to collect the tax money owed to the government from leases made to the oil companies for drilling on Federally owned lands. As explained by the General Accounting Office: "The Interior Department’s management of oil and gas leases and royalties, which are among the largest sources of non-tax revenue to the federal government. One reason this area is at risk is that the department does not have reasonable assurance that all revenues are being collected. Indeed, in 2008, the G.A.O. reported that the Interior Department had not conducted a comprehensive evaluation of the federal oil and gas revenue system in more than 25 years, despite significant changes in the oil and gas industry.


We have also pointed out that royalty collection relied too heavily on company-reported oil and gas production figures. In fiscal years 2006 and 2007 we found that much of the data reported by oil and gas companies appeared erroneous, resulting in millions in uncollected fees. And the proportion of revenues that the government collected for oil and gas produced in the Gulf of Mexico, according to a major study, was lower than for 93 of 104 other owners of such resources..." So Ken was specifically hired to clean up this mess and to start collecting the money that's been owed us for some 25 years. Which he hasn't done, not one bit. Maybe we need to replace his spinal column with some bionic material, so we can program him to become an advocate who would go after the money like a pit bull on Michael Vick. Or tell him that from now on the funding for his staff are to come out of those revenues...


Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Mubarak To Die a Bitter, Broken Man, Afghan Govt Gives Up On Corruption,

Gene Dodaro
Dana Milbank
Condoleezza Rice
"Dick Cheney presented Donald Rumsfeld with a Defender of the Constitution Award. And, yes, the irony was lost on both of them." – Seth Meyers
"This whole revolution was started by a Facebook page. So Mubarak wasn't so much as deposed as de-friended." – Bill Maher
"Egyptian officials say that Hosni Mubarak is going through a 'severe psychological condition.' It's called 'getting dumped a week before Valentine's Day.'" – Jimmy Fallon

The Middle East is still the focus, protests have sprung up in Bahrain, Libya, Iraq, and Iran, with continued protests still holding in Yemen. In Bahrain, the King tried to deflect the protesters by stating that there would be reforms, and, in an act inspired by watching Oprah, every citizen would receive a check for  the equivalent of $2,500 dollars. Then, the government said that it welcomed peaceful demonstrations, but its police hunted down every group of three people and over, bombarding them with rubber bullets and overdoses of tear gas. People died, and it only made the Bahrainian protesters more determined, and today they are still holding out. Similar to demands in Egypt, the protesters want a new constitution, more human rights, and the resignation of the Prime Minister, but not the King.

Violence has broken out during the protests in many other countries, but so far the ones in Bahrain and Iran are committed to non-violence, which is amazing. Ghandi is rolling over and chuckling from his grave, now that the uplifting power of non-violent protests have been proven as fact, no longer listed in the realm of obscure possibilities. Perhaps old Gaia is giving us a moment of hope and reprieve before she shakes humankind off like fleas in 2012... Unfortunately, the dark side is emerging with the sexual abuse of CBS correspondent Lara Logan by a crowd of Egyptian men. She had to be rescued by a crowd of women and some Egyptian soldiers. And Hosni Mubarak remains a broken man, having lost the will to live and just wants to die in opulence at his Red Sea resort, surrounded by the billions of dollars he loves...

What can be said of the leaders of Iran? they demonstrate how narrow minded and pathetic they are in comparison. They have shown that they don't have the moral capacity to lead anyone anywhere in the Middle East compared to a fruitseller on the streets Of Tunis and Cairo... This is a real life demonstration of a Sufi teaching story writ large, and perhaps the Ayatollah Khamenei and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would do well to spend some time learning how to weave carpets or become a prison doctor... Instead, the puppets in their Parliament call for the hanging of the opposition leaders because they continue to call for demonstrations in the streets.

Or, as bobby Darin sang:

Now, no doubt some folks enjoy doin' battle
Like presidents, prime ministers and kings
So, let's all build them shelves
Where they can fight among themselves
Leave the people be who love to sing.

Come and sing a simple song of freedom
Sing it like you’ve never sung before
Let it fill the air
Tell the people everywhere
We, the people here, don’t want a war.


Two developments in Afghanistan indicate that the Karzai government will not remain in power much longer. The first, is that the government wants to take over running all of the women's shelters, which are almost all privately funded. Thoughts are that the government would like to appropriate the millions of dollars donated by private charities, and that they also want to stop the good work the shelters are doing for women. If the Taliban came back into power and instituted their unique, medieval version of sharia law, it's easier to disband the shelters if they are run by the current government that those meddling women from Western countries...

Also, the International Monetary Fund released a report today on the troubled Kabul Bank: "An International Monetary Fund review of the Afghan government’s progress in determining what went wrong at the nation’s largest bank and the steps necessary to fix it has concluded that so little has been done so far that there is no possibility of renewing the fund’s program here, diplomats in Kabul said.


What is needed is an array of measures to deal with the Kabul Bank’s problems, as well as those of the banking system, and putting the Kabul Bank into receivership, the I.M.F. said in a statement issued after its experts left the country.


“This will be followed by a process where the bank will be rapidly sold or wound down and the Central Bank is recapitalized with government resources as needed,” the fund said." The Kabul Bank had been used as a personal piggy bank by many of its directors, losing several billion dollars and making no attempt to reclaim the money. Foreign countries, including the United States, won't send any more foreign aid, which totals over a billion per year, unless there is a responsible banking program vouched for by the IMF. So, if the Taliban does come back to power, they won't be able to raid the treasury, because that has already been done by the Karzai government. I wonder if he will flee the country and move to Dubai, or will he attempt to move back to Quetta, Pakistan, a town the Karzai family shared influence in with the Mullah Omar..?


From the crazy in the USA dept:


  • There is a bill going through the South Dakota legislature that would make it legal to shoot and kill an abortion provider. Makes me wonder if they are desiring to annex their state as part of Arizona...
  • Anti-Muslim crusader Frank Gaffney was dis-invited to speak at this year's CPAC conference because of his allegations that CPAC has been infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood. Too crazy after all these years...
  • Michelle Obama has recently come out in favor of breastfeeding for babies, and the IRS said that breast pumps and other nursing supplies could be tax deductible, to which Rep Michele Bachmann responded on the Laura Ingraham radio show: "I've given birth to five babies, and I've breastfed every single one of these babies," Bachmann said. "To think that government has to go out and buy my breast pump for my babies, I mean, you wanna talk about the nanny state -- I think you just got the new definition of the nanny state." Remember, Ms Bachmann would like to be your next president, willing to sit up at night, waiting for that 3:00 AM phone call...


If you love dark roasted coffee and live in Colorado Springs, check out BB Bean on North Tejon. It's owned by a family from Indonesia, and they are graced by having a master roaster, who can coax more flavor from his roasting than anyone I've ever met, and I have become quite the coffee snob. I didn't even know that Bali grows coffee beans, but the Balinese coffee they sell is one of the most complex and aromatic I've ever tasted. Definitely my new favorite...

and if you are a fan of the smaller cigar, robusto or toro size on down, then go online to Cigar International for some of the best deals I've ever come across...















Monday, February 14, 2011

Repression Goes Full Circle Back To Iran

Paul Krugman
Robert Reich
"How can voters be so ill informed?.. And what they’ve been hearing ever since Ronald Reagan is that their hard-earned dollars are going to waste, paying for vast armies of useless bureaucrats (payroll is only 5 percent of federal spending) and welfare queens driving Cadillacs. How can we expect voters to appreciate fiscal reality when politicians consistently misrepresent that reality?" - Paul Krugman
"The Republican bromide -- cut federal spending -- is precisely the wrong response to this ongoing crisis... The best way to revive the economy is not to cut the federal deficit right now. It's to put more money into the pockets of average working families. Not until they start spending again big time will companies begin to hire again big time." - Robert Reich


Now come the attacks on Barack Obama, lightly veiled as analysis, on whether he did enough to help the citizens of Egypt, or that he didn't do enough. Publicly, he took a pretty neutral stand, while behind the stage he made a couple phone calls to Mubarak, trying to get him to see the light and resign. In reality, Obama and the US had no influence on whatever direction their revolution went, he ended up being a bystander. Hopefully, at the end of his term in office, he will not take credit for this event, much like the fans of Ronald Reagan took credit for the fall of the Berlin Wall. It just happened during Reagan's turn in office, he had nothing to do with it other than applauding from the sidelines.

What I want to know, is where the camels came from during the clashes between the protesters and the pro-Mubarak crowd. Do they keep camels within the city limits, or did these guys have to truck them in? Nobody ever explained this bizarre scene, or how much a camel jockey gets paid to run through a crowd, whipping people... Even more pathetic was the demonstration by Cairo policemen, protesting that they don't get paid enough, so they are forced to go out and supplement their salaries from the general population. Also, they were just taking orders, please don't hate them...

Equally brave, are the thousands of Iranians that took to the streets today, protesting in solidarity with their Egyptian brothers and sisters. The government has been saying for days that this is not sanctioned, and those who protest will end up as corpses, in that flowery descriptive way that only official Persian brings... Over 10,000 police and basij have been shooting into crowds and beating the crap out of anybody they could reach, yet still people came out knowing this would happen. And it could go either way, die down tomorrow or erupt into a violent frenzy, as citizens begin to fight back. A couple of chants that were heard were:
“An Iranian dies but doesn’t accept humiliation”
“Death to the dictator”
In response, the official: "Fars news agency called protesters “hypocrites, monarchists, ruffians and seditionists,” and ridiculed them for not chanting any slogans about Egypt has they had originally promised."

This could be attributed to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Friday speech, where he tried to take credit for Egypt's revolution being inspired by Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution, but nobody seemed to buy it. Actually, the student organizers in Egypt were influenced by an American political philosopher who said that the best way to topple a police state is with anti-violence. This was adopted by students in Kosovo, who used it to their advantage, and counseled the Egyptian students over the 18 days of protest. The iranian opposition decided to put Ahmadinejad's words to the test, and applied for a permit to protest Monday, with the results of 30 - 80 people reported dead. so far, the best advice seems to be coming from: "Turkish President Abdullah Gul, who is on a visit to Iran, urged governments in the Middle East to listen to the demands of their people.


“When leaders and heads of countries do not pay attention to the demands of their nations, the people themselves take action to achieve their demands,”




There's a lot of frenzied activity going on in the House of Representatives, where the tea party repubs try to coerce the old guard repubs into destroying as much of Obamacare's cost saving incentives as possible. None of this matters, since none of their proposals will make it past the floor of the Senate. during the midterm elections, we heard the repubs claim how their main priority is crating jobs, jobs, and more jobs. Not one bill addressing this issue has been introduced. Instead, there have been three anti-abortion bills, one amendment to the 14th Amendment, a couple of proposed budgets that makes gigantic cuts so that hundreds of federal employees will be laid off... The crazies like Little Jeffie Sessions and Peter King have been unleashed. Jeff is the kind of guy that makes you wonder if the people in his district knowingly voted in this retarded person, the danger being if they admire and look up to him. The only idea that I have is that his district is predominantly black folk, who voted him in as a kind of vengeance, a flippance at the system... From TPM: "Here's a fun exchange on CNN this morning that neatly encapsulates that culture. It starts with Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) -- the top Republican on the Senate Budget Committee -- attacking President Obama's budget proposal for not reducing the deficit by more than $1 trillion over 10 years. From there, Sessions dodges the expected questions about why his party doesn't take the first swing of the ax at Social Security. And after clumsily passing the buck back to Obama, Sessions admits that $1 trillion is a pretty good start ... when Republicans propose it!


"A one trillion reduction is insignificant," Sessions insists. "This is nowhere near what's necessary to avoid the fiscal nightmare that this nation is facing. ... It doesn't touch any of the entitlements, it only has some reductions in the discretionary accounts."


That's a slow ball, right over the center of the plate if your job is to reinforce conventional wisdom, and the anchor, Kiran Chetry, knocks it out of the park. "At what point does everybody get together and just say, 'Alright, it's time to tackle these bigger issues: Raising the Social Security retirement age. Medicare doesn't just go to everybody.' When is that gonna be tackled."


But, Sessions responds, on tough issues over which Congress has the ultimate say, it's the President's job to take all the political risk!


"We've heard nothing from our chief executive, the President of the United States," he said.


To Chetry's credit, she reminds Sessions that Republican leaders are mostly silent on this issue, even though they control half of Congress. But once again, the only options on the table are ones that make it harder for regular people to get by.


"Have we heard a lot of Republican leaders out there saying exactly what they would do when it comes to this," she asks. "I mean is anybody coming out and introducing a bill that raises the retirement age before you can collect your Social Security income?"


Nope -- Obama must go first. "None of this will ever pass if the President is not supporting it," Sessions added. "He should be helping us. He should be really leading. He's the leader. He asked for the job to be President."


So what is leadership? Apparently it's House Republicans, who recently proposed a bit under $100 billion in discretionary spending cuts this year. Multiply this by 10 and you approach $1 trillion. That's leadership! Just not when Obama does it.


"Even the $100 billion house proposal in reducing spending will amount to $1 trillion," Sessions said. "And that's a step!"

I lament that I can't be up watching television 24 hours per day, I miss about 70% of the good stuff, but I often need to be entertained by brainless pablum. My current favorites are Justified, White Collar, Harry's Law, and Fairly Legal with Sarah Shahi... Though there was an excellent Carlos Santana concert on HDnet last night, it attracted a local fox to come near the front door...