Notes From a Grumpy Old Man

Let It Rain Egyptian NGO's, Next Stealth Technology

2012-01-30T13:43:00.000-07:00

"New Rule: Someone has to tell Francesco Schettino that embracing a callous policy of "every man for himself" doesn't make you a sea captain. It makes you the Republican nominee." - Bill Maher

"New Rule: The NAACP must take Newt Gingrich up on his offer to stand in front of the their convention and tell them why black people should want jobs instead food stamps. This way I can finally answer a question that's been bugging me for years: can Newt Gingrich run?" – Bill Maher

"President Obama was in Disney World to introduce a new plan to boost tourism in the United States. And also because the Mickey Mouse ears fit perfectly over his real ones." – Jimmy Kimmel

"Yesterday in Florida, President Obama kissed a woman on the cheek after she told him he looks good. Which explains why last night, Michelle made him sleep on Air Mattress One." – Jimmy Fallon

I was reading an opinion piece by a friend of Sam LaHood in the Daily Beast. She didn't have much to say except that she was sorry that Egypt wouldn't let him leave the country while his non-governmental organization was under investigation, and that several leaders of NGO's are hiding out at the US Embassy. His NGO promotes democracy, whatever that really means, in 75 countries, and is so obviously a front for the CIA that it would take a dumb sixth-grader not to make the connection. One statistic she revealed in her pity piece is that there are currently about 300 NGO's under investigation in Egypt...

Whoa, stop right there. I knew that aid organizations and other NGO's were a money making scam, raking in over $6 billion last year in Afghanistan and Iraq alone, but that's a lot for one country. Though, the rent on office space is a major factor in buoying up the economy, such as it is... Almost every other country in the world seems to have some kind of organization administering a project in Egypt, which may prove how much the intelligence industry has grown and thrived since we first rolled tanks into Baghdad... If we assume that 20 out of the 300 organizations are CIA fronts, then who is funding the other 280? Or, is the US funding them all, including another 300 local groups? One umbrella organization, the America Development Foundation, states on its website: "One of ADF’s major projects in Egypt has been the NGO Service Center, a seven-year, US$33.7 million development activity of USAID to strengthen the capacities of Civil Society Organizations to effectively, responsibly and sustainably contribute to Egypt’s social and political development. The NGO Service Center (the Center) was a leading activity in the Democracy and Governance portfolio of USAID/Egypt under Strategic Objective #21: “Egyptian Initiatives in Governance and Participation Strengthened.”

The Center served as an umbrella mechanism to manage sub-grants and assistance to over 600 Egyptian NGOs..." No wonder the Afghan War is costing us so much money. The Pentagon is asking for $88 billion for this next year...

We use these groups to hire locals to build things for their cities, give food to the poor, and administer health services, all on a grander scale than we have here in the US. This is the price countries pay for allowing our spies and mercenaries to roam about, seeking targets for the next military adventure, another chapter in the book of Seal Team 6...

Anyway, back to Sam LaHood. Dude, you're not in any jail cell, you get to stay at home with your servants you hired with taxpayer money, and go to the office and pretend that you are doing something important. Most projects funded by NGO's are abandoned before they are finished, or are sub-standardly built to fall apart, or never get off the planning table so you can pocket the money or give it away in bribes. You signed on to enjoy the Egyptian culture, and you are still insulated from the more dangerous elements, so thank you and good luck. We'll cancel a lobbying contract in your name, that'll show 'em.

Recently, China publicly announced a successful test flight for their first stealth fighter jet. They were accused of obtaining most of the technology from buying parts of jets that had crashed in the Balkans, and getting the rest from countries like Russia. But the US could just as easily given it up. We sell stealth jets all the time to our allies. Countries like Turkey could lend one to Iran for reverse engineering, or India or South Korea to China...

Not to mention what you can purchase on the black market, so much cool stuff as technology advances. One firm in Austin, Texas claims to have created the ultimate in stealth technology: it was able to make a 3D object appear invisible... This means that a CIA agent could be sitting next to you right now, and the only thing you might notice is their heavy breathing... Finally, our technology is catching up to 1950's pulp fiction... They have done so well, that the American Psychiatric Association is re-writing their diagnostic manuals, redefining what they now believe autism is. That's right, they no longer believe in Austinism...

Putin Despises Russia, Israel and Iran Conjoined, Perry Can Still Kick Your Miserable Butt

2012-01-28T13:27:00.000-07:00

With all of the irrational, bizarre behavior going on in the world, you might think we were in the middle of summer, with temperatures in excess of 100 degrees, making everyone bitchy and mean.. Putin is getting ready for his landslide re-election in a couple of months, but he's hedging his bets by not allowing his main opponent on the ballot. He's forcing people to attend support rallies for the camera opportunity, although he hasn't made them take their shirts off or hunt for wild animals yet...

Iran has been in the news a lot, for all of the same old stuff, and the Israelis are getting hysterical, saying now is the best window of opportunity to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities, and it will soon be gone. They can't wait for a Republican president who will rubber stamp whatever insane ideas they come up with. Will the Israel lobby support a Mormon? Are they more than strangers in the night?.. Iran is having a difficult time with their economy, and if they lose major oil revenues, it may send it spiraling downwards enough to spark a regime changing revolution. The rial dropped 8% last week, and people are hoarding dollars in expectation that the rial may soon be worthless. And, as we always know, nothing helps the economy like a good war economy...

Some countries are getting tired of being fiscally responsible, like Zimbabwe in Africa. They are switching their currency over to the yuan, finally proving that China is a dominant player in the region. We can take our head out of the sand, now. We pretended that nothing was wrong when China bought up all of the land and businesses surrounding the Panama Canal, and ignored the amount of arms and explosives in the Middle East that came from China, almost as much guns and ammo as sold by the US and Germany...

It's been one year since Tunisia and Egypt rose up and got rid of their dictatorial leaders, what many have called the Arab Spring. Always makes me think of a bar of soap, which isn't a bad analogy, either. But Egypt isn't faring too well. Their military is still in charge and dictating policy, and refuses to give up any power, telling the young revolutionaries how it will be instead of working with them. The Muslim Brotherhood, which used to be outlawed, won many of the parliamentary elections, although its not as bad as we make it out to be. Finally, the economy has slumped this past year, and reserves have dropped to $10 million, which can keep the country afloat about a month and a half. If Egypt cannot solve these problems in a positive way, then it may well devolve back into a strong man dictator style of government, with a ruthless police and military, only this time it will be the government setting its citizens on fire, much like what's happening in Syria... One way out may be to hire out the Egyptian Army as mercenaries and march into Syria to stop the Assad government's insane tactics. They are so filled with blood-lust, that all reason has fled, and they are killing women and children, its OK as long as they are killing someone. The rats are leaving the country, it is getting ready to sink. Even Hamas has left Damascus, with the public head of Hamas saying that he is retiring to his cottage in Dubai...

Here at home, the GOP powers that be have taken aim at Newt Gingrich. They remember how reckless he was as Speaker of the House, and how mean he was to everyone. Now its payback time... Lots of ads in Florida saying what a crummy character Newt has, and out to lunch policy ideas on things like a colony on the moon. It might backfire, if the subtext that Newt also won't be their puppet and do exactly what they tell him to do, like they know Mit Romney would. Mit may be rich, but he's still a tool... Another secret, revealed during this last debate, is if you first come out and attack Newt, it throws him off his game, and he will retreat in pain and confusion, wussy that he is... doesn't it make you wish that all of the primaries and caucuses should be held all together this coming Tuesday? Then it might give the Florida primary some meaniing, instead of the red herring that is being bloated by the media, pretending that it is a whale...

Republicans in Texas were shocked by Rick Perry's poor performance on the national stage. Democrats are feeling even worse, because that dumb-ass alcoholic loser has been kicking their asses for the last 10 years. If he has dominated them at the polls, what sad excuses for politicians are they? If you can think of a good answer, let me know...

I Begin In Florida and Somehow End Up In Mexico...

2012-01-26T15:49:00.000-07:00

"Last night folks, Republicans held their eighteenth debate. The question on everyone's mind: Who cares?" – Stephen Colbert

"After Iowa and New Hampshire, Newt's campaign looked terminally ill, which is when he generally moves on to something better." – Stephen Colbert

“Rick Santorum (is taking) fire from the left. He may want to get a Kevlar sweater vest.” – Stephen Colbert

"We were ready for Romney to win the Republican nomination, so we had our puns ready: 'Bright Lights, Big Mitty,' 'Mittizen Bain,' and "Mormon-y, Less Problems." But then ... 'The Gingrich Who Stole South Carolina.'" – Jon Stewart

Someone please hit me in the head with a hammer, there's the 19th Republican candidate's debate tonight. Yes, they have been wonderfully entertaining, but also awfully boring with the same cast of characters, like life with the Kardashian sisters... And again, it will be another two hours not allowing Ron Paul to speak... The hype has all been on the ads run by Gingrich and Romney campaigns, telling what bad citizens the other guy is, no GOP solidarity to be seen for miles and miles. Throw in the fruitcake who was elected governor, and you have a fine mix, indeed. And, after the primaries, all the Obama campaign has to do is buy up the Republican ads against the Republican candidate, and have Obama appear at the end, saying "I approve this message..."

I just read my last post; what a disjointed, depressing mess it is. It shows that I could use a good editor. I suck at typing, and the keyboard on my laptop does weird things, like the cursor jumping around the page, so if I stop typing and then begin again without looking for the cursor, the rest of my sentence appears in another paragraph somewhere on the page. I missed making my main point with the rising rate of suicide, alcohol abuse, domestic violence, and oxycontin abuse in the military - that they either have to change the military culture, or find a better way to help soldiers decompress once they come home from war. Right now it looks like their only plan for the future is to use less boots on the ground, and to use a variety of drones to replace them.

Of course, drones were a part of the last two successful operations by Seal Team 6, but the most effective parts, shooting bin Laden and putting his body in a bag, and in Somalia, by killing off the drugged pirates in the middle of the night, were done by well-trained soldiers. This combination, of using drones and smaller teams making surgical strikes, is what the Pentagon is aiming for. We save money by having less troops to support, and drones are cheaper to build than multi-million dollar jets. One solution has been the proliferation of mercenary companies, touting themselves as professional security outfits. The US State Dept still is using 5000 mercenaries to guard the embassy staff in Iraq, while the Iraqi government is making it harder for other companies to renew their licenses and gun permits. Though the mercenaries continue to use the US for their major meal ticket, they are following the CIA around the world, wandering from continent to continent, hoping for work that needs to be contracted out. Hence, there are now 1,400 mercenary companies registered with the Mexican government, with an estimated 8,000 more working below the radar.

In Mexico, the ex-US trained troops meet and clash with the drug cartels ex-US trained henchmen. Yes, one by-product with the influx of Hispanic population over the last few years, has been the young men who sign up for US military service, get rained in all aspects of modern technological warfare, then go back home to become soldiers in the drug cartels. It's one reason the DEA has been outgunned and is losing the war on drugs...

Here in Colorado, we may have an initiative on the ballot this Fall, legalizing marijuana use. We already have a liberal law allowing medical marijuana use. I keep wondering why I haven't tried to get one, I'm certain that it would help my sister on days when her Crohn's disease, or those days when I can hardly hobble around the house... Anyway, the DEA has been making raids in Colorado and California on many of the larger growing operations, to discourage placing the initiative on the ballot in these two states. Colorado is a funny place, with displaced Texans nudging up the bar along with ex-Californians, and the ex-military guys pretending to see who can be the most conservative sounding group, yet most indigenous folks sit back and indulge in a joint or two, enjoying the show. Our legislature is one of the few that can work together if they have to, despite all of the whines and whimpers. And, by God, we have the best tasting water in the whole country, even from the tap... What we don't have, are decent mid-priced restaurants owned by locals...

Fortunately for the part of our economy that centers around foreign wars, all GOP candidates, except for Ron Paul, are hawks who pledge to become the world's top cop, dragging whomever promises to be our allies along with us. And it looks like the next operation for Seal Team 6 may be in Tehran, if for no other reason to prove that a successful operation can be run in Iran...

Supreme Court Puts Lipstick On Our Pigs, Military Suicides On Rise

2012-01-24T15:45:00.002-07:00

"Newt Gingrich's ex-wife went on nightline and said that he wanted to have an open marriage. This is the second wife, talking about him when he was fooling around with what became the third wife. Newt wanted apparently to have his wife and his marriage and also women on the side giving him oral sex. This way he could be nice and relaxed when he went to work and accused blacks of feeling entitled." – Bill Maher

"I have not seen anything this surreal since they cancelled 'Twin Peaks.' What else can you say about a Republican debate when the rich guy, who’s avoiding taxes – which they like, gets booed and the fat creep into threesomes gets a standing ovation?" – Bill Maher, on Romney and Gingrich in the CNN debate

"Newt was mad. He said 'I am not a philanderer; I am a blow job creator.'" – Bill Maher

"Newt said this is despicable to ask these questions. Why are we dwelling on the past? We should be concentrating on the future and putting America's children back to work." – Bill Maher

The Supreme Court unanimously rejected California's new slaughterhouse rule, in favor of places that see no problem with grinding up a horse or pig that cannot walk. The California law "requires the immediate euthanasia of “downer” animals and bars their slaughter or sale." Pig Magazine (no, I'm not making this up!) estimates that from 100,000 to one million pigs suffer from pig fatigue, where they cannot get up and walk around. They are still used for food and footballs after a federal inspector inspects them to make sure they are not diseased... Makes you stop and think before buying those baby back ribs...

The Supreme Court said that existing federal law should take care care of the problem, while the state of California said that the federal inspectors were lazy, if they bothered to show up at all. The other courts sided with California, as Adam Liptak relates in the NY Times: "The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, ruled that there was no conflict between the California law and the federal one because the state had merely disqualified certain kinds of animals from being used for food. “States aren’t limited to excluding animals from slaughter on a species-wide basis,” Chief Judge Alex Kozinski wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel of the court. “States are free to decide which animals may be turned into meat.”

Justice Kagan briskly rejected that analysis. “We think not,” she wrote.

The meat industry is filled with dodgy practices that would make you think twice before eating that Taco Bell burrito. At one point they would take all of the leftover parts that didn't make the cut, and grind them down into a slurry that they either fed to the cows, or sold it to places like McDonald's and Taco Bell. Its a disgusting practice that makes me think of soylent green for us humans, and might be where the idea came from, poor cows made to eat that sludge, which was banned by Britain as an import...

Something like this is what I think about when the word disgusting is bandied about, as Newt Gingrich lit into John King at the opening of the South Carolina debate. Newt's treatment of his ex-wives is so horrible that it will come up a lot in the future, as independent minded folks try to decide whom to support on the Republican side. The long primary season has often been likened to the walk as the animals are led into the slaughterhouse, their frightened eyes staring blindly into the television cameras as they try to think of an answer to that mean question that Newt has asked... The best drinking game is to have a drink or another beer every time Newt says something mean or condescending: then you'd be as drunk and rowdy as the crowd at Newt's South Carolina victory party. Say what you want about the South, they can turn anything into a party... Judging by last night's debate, Mit and Newt are trying to hard to knock each other down, that they've forgotten all of the finesse. It's certainly not scoring any points among the younger generations, who think its disgusting and ugly watching their grandparents squabble in public, yet still seeming so out of touch with any real issues facing our nation.

With all the rhetoric about creating jobs, go out to your local business district or shopping mall. How many businesses have closed down? If they were a mom and pop kind of store, there's no way that it will ever come back, and the family who owned it has exhausted all of their own money, and probably owes the bank thousands of dollars. The banks now make it harder to get a loan, so there won't be many other small businesses to rise up and take their place. Soon, we all will have to shop at our local Wal-Mart... The only thing that the government can do is hire government workers, adding more to an inefficient bureaucracy where most don't even do the jobs they were hired for. Don't forget the employees hired by Dick Cheney's office, whose job it was to burrow into the sector where they were placed, and purposely do a bad job, acting as a conservative monkey-wrench that results in anger over how crappy the government works... And I haven't even touched on laziness and the GS ratings... It doesn't matter, unless we start over from scratch and rebuild a more streamlined bureaucracy, it won't matter if a Democrat or Republican is elected president, as the surrounding government structure still pisses people off by their excesses, their laziness, and sense of entitlement; there will always be a certain percentage of the population offended by this. This anger can be pretty powerful, it inspired revolutions in the Middle East, propelled the tea party here in the US.

Probably the most dangerous use of our bureaucracy has been trying to stop the suicide rate of our active duty military. The rate has increased each year, with last year being the highest toll, and has left Army Generals bewildered and stymied. Alcohol abuse and domestic violence has risen, also. If you are a retired military personnel, well, they don't keep as good records on you, who knows how crazy you've become...

Another statistic just released says that about 20% of our population is mentally disturbed, about the same percentage that is considered to be extreme right wing conservatives... That's two out of ten people who probably are taking neuroleptic prescription drugs. The number one abused prescription drug among military and non-military alike, goes to oxycontin. It has inspired my new bumper sticker that acknowledges this problem:

Oxycontin - Its Not Just For Right Wing Talk Show Hosts Anymore

One of my father's favorite sayings, I don't know why he said it to us kids a lot while we were growing up, was: "sometimes I think that the whole world has gone mad, except for me and thee, and lately I have begun wondering about thee..."

Newt's Fake Moral Outrage, Spy Kids

2012-01-20T14:26:00.000-07:00

“I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that,” - Newt Gingrich

David Letterman's "Top Ten Signs Mitt Romney Is Getting Cocky"

10. Answers all questions with, "So's your mother"
9. Offered Santorum a 10,000-vote head start in South Carolina primary
8. He's forwarding his mail to the White House — Wow, that's cocky
7. Skipping next three primaries to go on tour with Young Jeezy
6. Started selling his own commemorative presidential plates on QVC
5. Donated $50,000 to Rick Perry's campaign
4. Now spelling "Mittt" with three T's
3. Ended debate by taking out wad of bills and "making it rain"
2. Wants to rename states Mittchigan, Mittsouri, Mittsissippi, and New Mittsico
1. Offered to help Newt with his concession speech

Newt Gingrich has found his niche, the call that invariably invokes the right response. Attack the questioners at the debate, receive a standing ovation... It seems to be the conservative, white, racist way of sticking it to the man, which is a form of craziness in itself, but works in places like Iowa and South Carolina. The predictability of Newt the attack muffin repeating this behavior in the next debate on Monday is around 100%. We tune into these debates hoping to see a Rick Perry melt down or make embarrassing statements. Proving that the best defense is an aggressive offense, Newt immediately lambasted moderator John King for asking the open marriage question. But he laid it on too thick, and I didn't quite believe his moral outrage, so I couldn't forgive him for his sins. He layered the cheese a little too thick on the Southern crackers...

In response, this morning many media pundits are saying that Newt has a good chance to ultimately beat out Romney for GOP presidential candidate. He's made more enemies within his own party than Mit has, so revenge might be sweeter when it comes time to throw him under the bus at the convention, and pulling a Jeb Bush out of a hat... After Newt got kicked out of Congress, it seems he made a deal with a demon, and her name is Callista. She is responsible for his transformation, from a broke-down, political hack, into a well-baked conservative muffin, who smells nice coming out of the oven, but is still frosted with slime...

Rick Perry withdrew from the race and gave his support to Newt, see what I mean? Rick will probably try to cheer himself up by executing a few inmates after a couple bottles of Jack, safe once again deep in the heart of Texas... But, no matter how many headlines these debates generate, it all pales in coolness to Barack Obama singing Al Green's Let's Stay Together at a fundraiser, and sounding good while doing it. You just know that he and Michelle have cranked that tune up on a few Friday nights...

When I was a kid, one of the coolest things I saw was the James Bond car from Thunderball, an Aston Martin. Actually, it was a bit disappointing, because they brought it to our local Sears store, and left it sitting out in the parking lot; there was no-one to demonstrate all of the hidden weapons. Nevertheless, it seemed the ultimate in spy gear, which the British cornered as smoothly as a martini, shaken, not stirred... Thirty years later, what marvels of technology have the British come up with, that will spark the imaginations of young boys everywhere? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you - - the Rock. Not just any old rock, either, but a clever place to hide a telecommunications device that was used as an information drop in Moscow.

Unfortunately, the Russians got wind of this fiendish plan, and filmed a pair of British spies using the rock, then they broadcast it on television, as well as showing the rock and how it worked. The British government denied that it was theirs, up until yesterday, when a representative of the government admitted that, yes, the rock was theirs after all. They were hoping that the Russians would take it for granite... Which makes one wonder about the abilities of our staunchest ally. After all, if we hadn't given the British military the use of our newly developed Stinger missiles, and satellite communications, they would have lost the War in the Falkland Islands. That's right, they'd all be speaking Spanish and dancing the tango right now... Maybe it's a good thing to know that, in this day and age of high tech surveillance drones and satellites circling the globe, that there remains a group dedicated to the basics, spying the old-school way. If it worked in Afghanistan, why not in the middle of urban Moscow???

RIP Etta James

From Dumberer To The Plumberer...

2012-01-17T13:19:00.001-07:00

"Seventy-six percent of people polled thought that Mitt was short for mittens. I'd vote for him if his name was Mittens Romney. Other nations would fear us for being so adorable." - Craig Ferguson

"Rick Perry’s presidential campaign is in trouble. So, they're now selling his merchandise two for one. You get a foam finger, a key chain & I forget the third thing." – Jimmy Fallon

"Researchers found a frog in new guinea that is so tiny, they believe it's the smallest vertebrate on the planet. It has the tiniest backbone of any living creature, except members of Congress." – Jay Leno

A recent Newsweek cover asked the question, "Why are Obama's critics so dumb?" Which, of course, pissed off every dumb, conservative critic in the nation. Oh, is he referring to me? From Mit Romney's debates and stump speeches, to Newt's historical bombast, to everything that redstate and Michelle Malkin ever printed, the criticism of Obama and his presidency have been based on fiction. Yeah, they make up the crap and hope that if its repeated enough times, dumbass people will start to believe it... Back in the 20's and 30's it was known as yellow journalism, and was well practiced by every Hearst Corporation newspaper. Wikipedia defines it as: "Yellow journalism or the yellow press is a type of journalism that presents little or no legitimate well-researched news and instead uses eye-catching headlines to sell more newspapers.[1] Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism.[1] By extension "Yellow journalism" is used today as a pejorative to decry any journalism that treats news in an unprofessional or unethical fashion." I would never do that, but then, I'm not a journalist, just a lonely, satirical commentator on the news, who's main contention is that the extremist right wingers are all crazy, mentally unstable, weirdly argumentative, hypocritical, and resemble a feral tribe of weasels who will think nothing of savaging each other of there's no other easy target... As we all know, crazy people are incapable of rational thought and prone to act out in irrational ways. I thank Andrew Sullivan for expanding on my thesis. It seems that much of what I write ends up on the Daily Beast a few days later...

Soon it will be your last chance to see the new, leaner, profile of GOP candidates debate before the South Carolina primary. Next up, will be the Florida primary, twelve days later. I know there has been too many debates this year, but it has been fun watching these weasels on stage, ripping into each other. They ought to make it a road show, with a debate in each state before a caucus or primary, give more people access to live entertainment... And let's bring back Herman Cain. We don't have to vote for him, no matter what Stephen Colbert says, but he caters to those who like their economic plans from children's computer games and think quoting pokemon is profound... Supporters of the Bush family are waiting until the tea partyers wear themselves out at the primaries. They feel that everyone will be so tired of Mit Romney, that folks will welcome it when they nominate Jeb Bush at the convention. He gets to be the candidate without having to waste all that money campaigning, Remember, candidates are chosen, not elected...

Speaking of dumbasses, our old friend Joe the Plumber is running for Congress in Ohio. He couldn't make it as political pundit, author, or plumber, and he has become addicted to the public spotlight. He still has the arrogance and egotism to believe that people are impressed every time he opens his mouth, when just the opposite is true. It only took Joe about three years to realize that his BFF and stepping stone to fame, if not fortunes, John McCain was using him, something that he bitches about every time he gets in contact with a journalist. John hasn't visited, or called, or supported his candidacy, or paid attention to him at all, and the let down is harsh, the disappointment a bitter pill to swallow...

Too bad the television networks won't go around the country and televise debates that promise to be entertaining, because I'd love to see Joe debate his Democratic opponent. Maybe a fist fight, if he gets too embarrassed and frustrated... Who knows, maybe the next series of reality shows will feature members of Congress. Kinda puts a new spin on the name Big Brother... Soon, there will be new parliamentary elections in Iran and Russia, unless they get canceled by some disgruntled, paranoid Vladimir Putin certainly is unhappy that there is an organized opposition to his becoming president again, no telling what he might do next. He canceled coming to terms with them after one meeting, a tactic he must have gotten from Israel and the Palestinians. Expect him to find ways to jail his opponents, or then to impale their heads on pikes...

Newt The Attack Muffin, Burning Hunk Of Arab Spring

2012-01-13T14:01:00.001-07:00

David Letterman's "Top Ten Ways Kim Jong Un Celebrated His Birthday"

10. Enjoyed ice cream made by Kim Jong Ben and Kim Jong Jerry
9. Laid in bed, depressed, like a typical Capricorn
8. Hit Vegas with his 'crew:' Putin, Chavez, Ahmadinejad and Zach Galifianakis
7. Had Marilyn Monroe lookalike sing, 'Happy Birthday, Mr. Supreme Commander of the People's Army, brilliant comrade, and great person born of heaven'
6. After seeing how good Charles Barkley looks, joined Weight Watchers
5. Nice quiet dinner with a few close human shields
4. Caught surprise Patton Oswalt stand-up set at the Pyongyang Comedy Store
3. Watched funny videos of North Koreans crying on YouTube
2. Treated himself to a deep-tissue jowl massage
1. Executed his pastry chef for using those trick birthday candles

I never thought I'd live to see this: that the country of Myanmar is releasing over 2000 political prisoners from jail, they are sponsoring more democratic elections that will even allow Aung San Soo Kyi to run for office, and last, that we will be sending an ambassador to their country. I guess North Korea and Iran will be next, for what, I don't really know...

I want to give a shout out to Stephen Colbert, and thank either him or one of his writers for playing my drinking game during the Republican candidate's debates: "During the debates I drank a shot every time I heard the word 'contraception.' I was more wasted than a contribution to Jon Huntsman." – Stephen Colbert

Here's a good piece written in the Washington Post, on the 5 myths of the Arab Spring:

1. Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech helped inspire the Arab Spring.
2. These are Facebook and Twitter revolutions.
3. The Obama administration threw Hosni Mubarak under the bus.
4. Saddam Hussein’s fall in Iraq inspired the Arab Spring.
5. The rebellions will further damage prospects for the Arab-Israeli peace process.m Hussein’s fall in Iraq inspired the Arab Spring.

The reasons are fleshed out in the article, and I have tried to promote myth #2 in different posts. The others are just ways that the US tries to slap itself on the back and garner compliments for its policies towards the Middle East, and a thank you for invading Iraq and Afghanistan. Worse than a thundering silence in response, or even a rasberry, are the claims still coming out of Fallujah, that there is an upward tick in birth defects and birth deformities due to exposure to depleted uranium, which we used to jacket bullets, encase missile heads, and line trucks and Humvees as armor plating. Other bad things going on in Tunisia, have been the rash of copycat self-immolations taking place, and not just by young people.

We have people in North Africa and Tibetan monks in China setting themselves on fire. We already know the similarities of Islam with Old Testament Christianity and Orthodox Judaism; now I'm wondering at the similarities between Islam and Buddhism, the religious impulse that gives people the courage to perform the ultimate in self-destruction. The closest I think we come to this in the US, is the acutely high suicide rate of returning soldiers, fueled by grief, guilt, and the realization that they no longer fit into society.

While we are debating the fate of our health care here, the government of Brazil has made a bold, new move: it has ordered its health services and insurance companies to replace any ruptured breast implants made by a certain French company. The now defunct company had used an inferior grade of industrial silicon in its implants, which have been prone to rupture easily. This might be a joke, if it weren't for the fact that they had sold over 25,000 sets of implants to Brazilians... Perhaps they just want to show how firm their domestic policies are, for when the Iranian President comes to visit...

While thinking of false boobies, the GOP presidential candidates come to mind, with the South Carolina primary coming up next week. All ready, the media is going on how Mit has become the front runner and has all but captured the nomination. Newt Gingrich, who once promised a positive campaign, has come out with the most negative ads against Romney, so much that the Democrats won't have to come up with anything of their own, they will just recycle Newt's ads... Even Fox News has dredged up Rudy Guliani to attack back at Newt, calling him ignorant and stupid, with its lady commentators calling Newt an attack muffin... They are accusing Newt of being a socialist, a Communist, and a Maoist for making a criticism about capitalism and Wall Street's losses two years ago. These are labels they usually save up for the actual candidate, and were the same things that they tried to use as a smear on Barack Obama...

I had never met or seen my Congressional Representative in all the time I have lived here in Colorado. I'd read several articles that he had ghost written for him in the local newspapers, but had not seen him on television. Until the other night, last week, where there was a quick interview with him over some conservative talking point. Listening to his speech patterns and physical demeanor during the interview, it was clear as day, and only the fact that this is one of the most conservative districts in the US showed that our emperor had no clothes. More specifically, he is such a closet queen, and I'm surprised that he hasn't been outed before now...
I'm sure that he knows hoe effeminate he sounds, which may be why he always declines to debate anyone, that and because he doesn't have an original idea to call his own...

HTTP://WWW.FREEAMIR.ORG

2012-01-10T02:30:00.000-07:00

"There's a plan for the Pentagon to cut almost half a trillion dollars from the military. The Pentagon plans to pay for future wars by divorcing Kobe Bryant." – Conan O'Brien

"The U.S. government is selling $30 billion worth of fighter jets to Saudi Arabia. Yeah, it’s part of a new initiative called, 'Operation Regret This In Five Years.'" – Jimmy Fallon

If you are an American-born Iranian picked up and accused of spying in Tehran, you sure got a speedy trial, along with a state-appointed lawyer that you first met during the trial. Today the Iranian court sentenced you to death, could there really be any other verdict? Your family back in Michigan said you were there visiting your grandmother, and that should be easy to prove, just provide the airline tickets to whichever country you flew to before crossing into Iran. The bad part is that the CIA has gone silent about you since your arrest, not even a belligerent denial that they even knew of you.

Iran doesn't acknowledge dual citizenship, you are either Persian or not, and Amir Mirzai Hekmati was accused of the ambiguous crimes of being Corrupt on Earth, and waging war with God, who just happens in this case to be represented by God's best friend, Iran. Since the Iranian judiciary has never provided a list as to what consists of being Corrupt on Earth, it ends up meaning whatever they want it to, on a case by case basis. Now, the government has a pawn to use for any future negotiations. Politics gets ugly, too bad we are playing with a person's life...

There are mixed reports on how well sanctions are working on Iran. The problem is that we are trying to coerce them into being sensible, when they just end up digging their heels in deeper, like some teenage boy throwing a snit-fit. Even if they can't afford it and it will wreck their economy, Iran has identified their nuclear program with a macho sense of national pride, and their leaders will never give it up. Expect Israel to actually try to bomb the new facility built into the mountainside outside of Qom within the next three months.

Panicking, many Iranian citizens have made runs on their banks, pulling all of their money out and asking for dollars. This has caused the government to announce that it would no longer be dealing in dollars as a backup currency, and future deals with other countries will be done in rials and the currency of that country. China and Russia won't go along with the new sanctions, so they will step up trading with Iran under the guise of trying to influence them to cut down their nuclear program. But, if Iran insists on continuing, Russia and china will be glad to sell them parts and technology...

Politically in the Middle East, Iran isn't very happy with its friend, Turkey. Turkey won't go along and support the Syrian government in committing genocide on its citizens. But then, it looks like no other country besides Iraq is supporting Syria. The Arab League was embarrassed to watch the Syrian army shoot people while they were observing, and having their observers being intimidated and bullied around. Qatar is even saying that maybe they should ask NATO to step in, similar to what happened in Libya. That way, if things go terribly wrong, the US can be blamed... Hmmm, maybe there have been outside paid agitators trying to rouse the Syrian population...

Is it just me, that the Republican primary candidates talking points are so far removed from reality as to make them inconsequential? I doubt that any of them can relate to any of the actual problems that us peons have to deal with. I shudder to think any one of them at the helm, especially Rick Perry.

My nephew is a chef in austin, and he has worked at a restaurant that is popular among Texas politicians. He's served Lady Bird Johnson, George W Bush, and, of course, Rick Perry. His impression of the current governor is that not only is Rick Perry incredibly dumb, but he is a big time alcoholic, as well. That might be good for the ol'-boys that use him as their puppet in running the state, but won't work in Washington DC... unless you like the idea of having our country taken over by Texas oilmen again. More bewildering, is why does Texas elect stupid men as their governors? I know that the Texas educational system is really bad, and it pains me to see the results in my sister's grandchildren, who are bright and smart and talented, being dumbed down in the public schools...

US Frees Iranian Crew Held By Pirates, Media focuses on Rick Santorum

2012-01-06T14:34:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to find out any more news on the Finnish investigation into the 160 tons of munitions and 69 Patriot missiles found on a ship loaded in Germany and bound for Shanghai, China. The only other tidbits of information that the Finns were trying to leave an opening for an explanation by the US government, was that they thought the ship was to stop in South Korea first... So far, the US hasn't been able to come with a credible story that doesn't resemble any argument made by the Reagan administration over the Iran/Contra affair...

On a kinder note, that balances the shrill tones coming out of Tehran lately, US ships rescued an Iranian fishing boat that had been captured by Somali pirates, and had held the crew as prisoners for over 45 days, using their ship as a mother ships for other pirate raids. To make it ironic, the rescue was performed by the John Stennis aircraft carrier group, the same group that Tehran had warned not to come back into the Persian Gulf. You're welcome... The crew was treated kindly and with respect, or so the spin that the press releases stated, before being sent back on their way to Iran. 15 Somali pirates were captured, no announcement was made as to what we will do with them.

Iran has been screaming bloody murder because if the US and Europe implement the sanctions against purchasing Iranian oil, there goes about 80% of Iran's income, and those Grand Ayatollahs and General in the Republican Guards won't be able to buy new cashmere clothes made from special herds of goats kept for just themselves. Maybe the Iranian leaders should reconsider their decisions regarding their nuclear program as being attached to their balls, the bigger the program gets, the more it makes them a macho man... I would hate to be a diplomate, all of the crap you put up with and posturing all sides make, and that's just for your own country. Double and triple the amount of posturing for each country you have to deal with.

Now that Rick Santorum won the Iowa caucus by eight votes, the media must get their investigations in before the New Hampshire primary this Tuesday. Since he was last voted out of office in 2006, Rick has made his millions the old fashioned way - by lobbying for K Street and cashing in on the connections he made while in Congress. Compared to Newt Gingrich's arrogant blowhards, Mit Romney's gaffs in public are rather quaint and endearing. But, if these guys make so many mistakes while campaigning, who knows what kind of lies they will attempt to get away with? At least with George W Bush, we could tell when he was telling a lie, his lips moved. Newt's lies mostly involve building himself up to make him look good, that he worked with Ronald Reagan to develop star wars or whatever, when he was a freshman representative that nobody had heard of before. While he did do some policy making as Speaker of the House, most of his policies led to his downfall, being ousted as Speaker and later, losing re-election. He was also known as the meanest person in Congress and enjoyed bullying. which is why many current Republicans are not big fans.

Like it or not, we should look at having a Mitt as viable candidate. The primaries so far have been vicious, and all of the backbiting and horrible stories from Romney's past should have come out, and the Democrats not having spent a dime. So, Obama can appear to be above that style of bickering, all he has to do is show how the criticisms that Romeny is leveling at him now, are based on small lies and distortions of the truth. This has actually been a more entertaining year in politics, and for that I have to say God Bless the Tea Party!

oh yes, don't ever Google the word: santorum. it's not pretty what you will find...

Leaving Iowa Behind, Nuri Must Be Impeached

2012-01-04T12:08:00.000-07:00

"The pro-adultery website ashleymadison.com - have you heard of this? It's a website for married people that want to cheat. Anyway, they have come out and endorsed Newt Gingrich for president. I guess it's their way of thanking him for all the years of business." – Jay Leno

"Yesterday in New York City, Donald Trump officially changed his political affiliation from Republican to Independent. And Donald's hair has switched from pelt to carpet sample." – Jay Leno

"John Edwards - remember that sleazeball who ran for president? He's asking that his upcoming criminal trial be delayed because he's been diagnosed with a medical condition. Lets hope it's erectile dysfunction." – Jay Leno

Thank God that the Iowa caucus is over, all of that media hype for less than 150,000 voters. Mit Romney won over Rick Santorum by eight votes, and that's about as much excitement as I can muster. Part of it is snobbery on my part; having grown up on the left coast, we always thought of ourselves hipper and cooler than those who lived away from the ocean. Folks from the Midwest were thought of as hicks who were stuck in a conventional way of living, with conventional ways of thought. I assumed that they would frown at my lifestyle and not comprehend the things I was interested in. Now that I am much older and living far away from the Pacific Ocean, I can see how my assumptions were based on the arrogance of youth and fondness for telling older folks to f**k off...

Also, I have never been to Iowa and other surrounding states. I never bothered to connect with relatives who lived in Kentucky and Arkansas, I had plenty of cousins and grandparents who had moved to California, and there was no way that they'd ever go back... Michelle Bachmann came in last and has dropped out of the race, though it would have been fun watching all of the ways her campaign used trying to keep her husband out of the spotlight and in the closet... In the days to come, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, and that blow-hard Newt Gingrich should also drop out, leaving Ron Paul alone as the champion of conservatives, Christians, disenfranchised elderly, and anti-governmental radicals under 30... If Ron Paul were to win the nomination, would he invite his son to run with him, or would he shun him for some other candidate, stop riding on my coat-tails, sonny, grow up and be a man...

What have we learned from the first Republican gab-fest of the season? One, that unless we have a national debate over the cult of Mormonism, Romney will muddle along. Second, that as long as there is a similar choice available, conservative, evangelical Republicans will not vote for a woman, and tell their wives not to vote for one, either. Third, the Heartland is probably not as radically conservative as I and the media make it out to be, that it is more a figment of the six o'clock news than reality. It is a lesson that the GOP has yet to learn, that it can only be revitalized by those of a more accepting and moderate persuasion. Even though catering to the extreme right wing crazies is fun and madcap, the rush is short-lived and you come down too hard. Yes, right wing politics is the Republican form of speed and cocaine... Which is why I've been saying that the right wing evangelical conservatives really need medical attention and a nice hospital ward instead of allowing them out on the streets, where it can only end up in violence and more shootings...

No sooner than the last American troops had left Iraq, ol' Mr Peanut-head of the Middle East set off bombs all across Iraq, either in celebration or a last thumbing of the nose to his friends and former allies. Nuri al-Maliki also issued a warrant for the arrest of the Kurdish Vice-Premier, accusing him of some trumped-up treasonous BS. It now looks like Iraq is sliding towards that civil war we tried to stop during eight years of occupation. Ironically, many Iraqis, trying to avoid the domestic bombings and everyday violence, moved to peaceful Syria...

Another irony, is that nowadays the Arab Brotherhood is seen as a moderating influence. While Afghanistan appears to be serious in trying to recover all of the money that was stolen from the Kabul Bank, newly- rich Taliban groups are opening up storefront shops in Qatar, a very long way from home. Oh yeah, it's better this way, to negotiate a peace with the Americans... The newly-rich Taliban is even trying to make peace with its Pakistani counterparts, to stop the bickering and internal warfare so that less innocent Pakistani civilians get killed. It might be a decent trade-off, to allow spy drones to buzz around all day if the damned CIA will only remove their operating bases... Which begs the question, with all of the fast moving changes of policies taking place in the Middle East, where are we going to put our rendition centers to torture and interrogate Islamic prisoners? Instead of closing the prison at Guantanamo, it looks like we are refurbishing the base and will keep it open. It may get a lot more prisoners, as we withdraw our troops from the international stage and begin to concentrate on the enemies within... maybe that's why our President signed into law on New Year's Eve, saying that we could detain indefinitely American citizens suspected of supporting terrorism. Don't need any proof, and it will be under military jurisdiction, so those detained won't get a speedy trial, we can hold you on any trumped-up charge that some paranoid right wing crazy in the Justice Department can think of... We have met the enemy, and he is us...

Ahh, but have we accomplished anything in Iraq? We spent bucket-loads of cash and it didn't prove to be a transformative agent. Iraq may also be the only country where al-Qaeda has a firm foot-hold, everywhere else they're thought of as a bunch of violent blow-hards. Which is good, because trying to convince other people to blow themselves up for you should not be a thriving business model... We never successfully rebuilt their electricity plants and other infrastructure. We haven't left its political institutions on solid ground.

About the only thing we did do right was help the Kurds establish a state of their own, one that is in jeopardy now that there no longer are US troops to keep the Iraqi military away. Strange, that the new government of Iraq may join with Turkey and succeed where Saddam Hussein left off, at destroying Kurdistan as a safe haven for ethnic Kurds. Or, we could use this as a good excuse to re-intervene sometime soon, especially if we get a new Republican president...

As We Begin The New Year...

2012-01-01T16:55:00.000-07:00

"There have been a lot of changes in the polls lately. It's unbelievable. President Obama's ratings are up, Ron Paul is leading in the polls in Iowa, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich are in a tie, and Rick Santorum is still two points behind Kim Jong-Il. He's got a way to go." –Jay Leno

"Rick Perry told reporters this week that he has a permit to carry a concealed handgun. He also has a concealed vocabulary, concealed knowledge of the issues, concealed tolerance..." –Jay Leno

"The independent Super PAC supporting Mitt Romney announced it would suspend anti- Newt Gingrich ads during Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. They said they're doing it out of respect to Gingrich, his family, and his mistresses." –Jay Leno

It's a new year, and I'm sobered by the fact that if I were a blogger in Vietnam, Syria, Bahrain, Egypt, or Iran, there's a good chance that I would be in jail for blogging, been abused and beaten for daring to express my own opinion. The bloggers who are in jail in these countries, and some have died while in prison, were charged with variations of making treasonous, or anti-Islamic behavior. In Egypt, a blogger was charged with spreading lies about the military, which ended up being true. He revealed that the military was performing virginity tests on the women they detained. This resulted in mass protests by Egyptian women, and the promise by the military to no longer probe them. We'll see how long that lasts... and the blogger remains in jail.

Each younger generation is going to be irreverent towards their elders, and this fight against the Internet is my generation's war against our children, trying to coax the genie back inside the bottle. Of course, there is always the danger like what is occurring in North Korea, where the 28 year-old leader now expects everyone older than he is to act as cannon fodder and throw themselves in front of any dangers to his life, but usually the younger generations are more moderate. Jung-un has to prove somehow that he is just as crazy as his father and grandfather were. But, what can you expect when the only advice you get is from old, old generals who have had their every whims catered to for the last 40 years.

Thankfully, the Pentagon is trying to get rid of most of these deadweight Generals with early retirements. If only other countries would follow suit, and as a special reward, we give them all medical marijuana cards so they can stay drunk and stoned until they die. It's just a little service that their wives and grandchildren will thank us for...

Speaking of drugs and alcohol, I miss them. I have given up my imbibing ways because of diabetes, it's difficult enough trying to keep sugar out of my diet, as its put into everything I buy at the store, even that loaf of organic wheat bread... The way that the political season has played out, I often wondered if I was finally having psychedelic flashbacks. Watching the Republican debates, I would blink my eyes and look for the Mad Hatter as the commentator running them. The cast of characters still don't seem real, which begs the question: how in the world did Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich ever get elected in the first place? We know that the southern industrialists like to finance some dumb pawn who will do whatever they say, but there are so many pawns in this race, that it looks more like a bad cartoon or animatronic figures making those gaffes.

Probably the most in-you-face and cynical choice of pawns, was the Koch brothers financing and choosing a black Uncle Tom figure in Herman Cain. Cain's speeches and platform seemed to have been written by a nerdy high school boy, with his economic plan taken from a Sims computer game, and his making references to Chris Tucker and the Pokemon movie when talking to the press. Herman was allowed to make some extra bucks from selling his books, but the brothers didn't do a very good job checking his background for anything that could be embarrassing, oh, say, a few sexual harassment charges and 13 year extra-marital affair...

This is what happens when elections are bought and too much money is floating around. Unfortunately, it will get worse before it gets better. The system will change at the same time that Wall Street becomes honest and transparent, which means never. The GOP was supposed to change the ways it did politics, create a larger tent to include more fresh ideas. Instead, they fed the psychedelic kool-aid to the masses while just sending in more clowns. Happy New Year, suckers...

I Spy With My Little Eye...

2011-12-29T02:25:00.000-07:00

The American born spy whom we sent to Iran has given a confession, and is being given a speedy trial. It began today, and may soon be over, because they might be able to use him as a trading pawn in the near future. The US is preparing another round of sanctions and may try to stop the sale of Iranian crude oil...

This is all regular political maneuvering, and the next part is pretty mundane, except how the announcements are delivered. Iran uses its state-owned television to make most of its major announcements, most of the time people have to listen to a two-hour speech just to get to the policy statements at the end. I think that the reason why the government uses it so much, is that it's one of the few countries where the media isn't owned and dominated by Rupert Murdoch... Fit in-between the pirated Walt Disney movies... Iran got a little shrill and said that it would block the Straight of Hormuz, all 23 miles of it, so no ship could get out of the Persian Gulf.

The US Fifth Fleet responded, by e-mail, that it would never happen, and they would do their best to keep it uncluttered and clear, since its considered to be international waters. I wonder if we are working towards one of those trigger events that the US and Israel agreed to, that would allow Israel to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities?

The US will also continue to use drones to monitor the situation. Evidently they don't believe that Iranian Intelligence hacked into the drone that they recently captured. Using drones to criss cross the globe is a lot cheaper than using the spy satellites we already have in orbit. With the satellites, my father used to brag that they could count the hairs on a gnat's ass. The optic resolution is much better with drones, so I'm guessing that there's a lot of extraneous gnat pornography being viewed in trailers on the Nevada desert...

Weird how we are now using the Internet to announce official policy. Now I'm going to have to follow the Department of Defense on Twitter, and friend my favorite politicians on Facebook. I thought that Sarah Palin was a failure when she used Twitter to express herself, who knew that she impressed someone in the Pentagon?

If you are a believer in conspiracy theories, then Twitter becomes part of the unconscious brain--washing of the public mind. By limiting people's expressions to 140 characters, we either limit our thought patterns or are making a generation of haiku masters. But, it limits the ability to have coherent thoughts. Coupled with the passive operant conditioning that happens when we watch television, with its rapid jump cutting from one image to the next, we learn to have shorter attention spans, just in time when the new masters of the universe take over at the end of 2012. A country run by Rick Perrys, Michele Bachmanns, and Newt Gingriches, all cheered on by the masses addicted to sweet tea...

RIP Cheetah

Iran Can Be Our New Friends, North Korea Too...

2011-12-26T13:57:00.001-07:00

"Last night Rick Perry compared himself to Tim Tebow. The difference? Tim Tebow actually has a prayer." – Jay Leno

"The candidates all have their position on the Federal Reserve. Ron Paul is anti-Fed. Mitt Romney is pro-Fed. And Newt Gingrich is over-Fed." – Jay Leno

"USA Today reports that the number of death row executions this year has hit a 35-year low. They attribute that to DNA evidence clearing more people and the fact that Rick Perry has been on the road campaigning. " – Jay Leno

"Gary Busey has just withdrawn his endorsement of Newt Gingrich. That's when you know your campaign's in trouble. " – Jay Leno

I don't have any lists of books or favorite news events that rocked my world for 2011, lord knows there are plenty of other blogs where they do such things. Then, I don't have some crappy editor to answer to, just myself, and I tend to let myself slide a lot. The only discipline I try to adhere to is keeping my writing to a few paragraphs, and not making references that are too obscure. Almost all news stories can be found in the New York Times or the Washington Post, though I often read a lot more sources. I'm in the process of adding source sites to my new laptop, and will soon add and subtract more blogs that I like. I have the ads in my blog because they were supposed to make some extra money, yet, to date, I've made less than $5 from Google ads, and MSNBC won't return my e-mails... So, I will have to rethink the ad thing. I have asked a couple of friends if they'd like to add content, but so far everyone has declined. It looks like I will still be the only author, and I will try to publish every two or three days, as a labor of love...

There's been a couple of signs that Kim Jong-un will be less severe as a "Beloved Leader" than his father and grandfather were. When his father died, there were military troops out on maneuvers, and one of the first orders Jong-un gave was to have them all return to their bases, giving some reassurance that they weren't going to over-run the borders. Second, he has received a delegation of diplomats from South Korea. Indications are that he's easier to talk to. Since he's only 28 years old, we might think about sending Kim Kardashian over as Ambassador, or our secret weapons of Beyonce and Christina Aguilara... If we make an effort, we could normalize relations with North Korea and change the tone of the whole region. I'm guessing, but I'll bet that North Korea wouldn't mind being more economically successful...

Another country that we might be able to have better relations with is Iran. Of course, we'd have to stop calling each other Satan and the Axis of Evil (if you want to use this to rename your rock band, you have my permission), and making other dumb accusations... For example, a New York judge has ruled that Iran is linked with al-Qaeda to the 9/11 attack, which is just not true. It's propaganda made up by the conservative elements in our State Dept to create guilt by association. Iran has never been friends with al-Qaeda, other than to sell them roadside bombs and suicide vests, but that's just business. Iran kept members of Osama bin Laden's family, a wife and some children, as hostages. They lived in some comfort in a compound on the outskirts of Tehran, and was Iran's guarantee that al-Qaeda would leave their country alone. Of course, Iran gets more mileage out of demonizing the US, take away the Great Satan as an enemy, and they wouldn't have any scapegoats to hide their mistakes and corruption, the Grand Ayatollah wouldn't last much longer as Supreme Leader ( OK, how about Supreme Leader and the Ayatollahs for another rock band's name???)

The most important event of this last year was the Arab Spring, how it evolved from a single man's protest to circle the globe and influence movements against corruption in the US, in Russia, and even in China. It remains a positive, inspired influence despite areas that devolved into violence in Egypt, Syria, and Yemen. Even in those places, the end results is a struggle away from autocratic styled rule to a more democratic one, unless you are a woman or a member of a minority tribe... It's just a few steps on a long journey in the right direction...

Merry Christmas To Our Spy In An Iranian Jail

2011-12-24T16:14:00.000-07:00

Hope your holidays will be filled with fun and family. I finally got my order of cigars, they weren't the ones I had back-ordered, but they are good enough, to get me through all of the football games during the next week. I have been trying to not write about the posse of GOP candidates, as it's too easy to make fun of them. I'm a gentler, kinder Grumpy Old Man this season, until the gloves come off next week. But most of the stuff I wanted to do, like compile the flip flops of Newt and Mitt, the old school racism of Ron Paul that bears fruit in Rand Paul, have all been done in the Washington Post and Daily Beast, so I need some new political gaffes for inspiration. I wonder what Sarah Palin's message is for the holidays?

I'm constantly amazed at how, there's no other way to say it, incredibly stupid our intelligence services are. The phrase "military intelligence" has become a standard oxymoron, yet the CIA is in a class by itself. I'm waiting to see what develops from the story of the Finnish police finding 160 tons of explosives laying around exposed on deck of a Dutch cargo ship, and 69 Patriot missiles in boxes marked as fireworks. Hopefully, the excuses will be more inventive than the one from the CEO of the shipping company: "There must have been a mistake..." I wouldn't be too surprised to find that Oliver North had a hand in this, or maybe I'm just feeling nostalgic... nor would it be surprising if the ship were to stop in Yemen or Bahrain, offloading its boxes of "fireworks..."

Even dumber than losing a secret-type drone in Iran, is sending an Arizona born man of Iranian descent back to Iran, and trying to have him pass on bogus information to the Iranian intelligence service in order to try and infiltrate them, or at least get them to recognize our guy as a credible source of info. They chose an ex-Marine, who also worked as a mercenary for some of the CIA fronted private companies, someone who has a murky past and would look suspicious if anybody checked up on him... Now he's in an Iranian jail, and I doubt we have anyone leftover from our last trade to swap for this guy, we warned you we'd disavow you when you accepted the job...

Throw in protesting the British Embassy in Tehran that resulted in its closing, and there is a much reduced footprint of western intelligence in Iran during these months that lead up to the next presidential election. Less chance that the CIA and other oxymoronic services will be able to reproduce the protests that accompanied the last elections. Barring any Iranian candidate from corrupt actions and ballot stuffing, which is guaranteed to happen, maybe it won't be so brazen to offend even the most conservative...

What is it with the right wing conservative element in each country, that they never support human rights and dignity? Let's get Newt to answer with Ron Paul before the Iowa caucus...

Mayan Calendar, Finland Confiscates 69 Patriot Missiles, Newt's New Ethics Complaint

2011-12-22T15:01:00.000-07:00

According to the Mayan calendar, we have one year left until the end of the world. Will it be one big party, or will there be such large natural disasters that we will be too busy to notice? NASA is predicting some large solar flares this next year, that could possible damage every computer on earth. Survivalists say that most communities have about two or three days of food available in stores, and all it takes is six or seven days without food and water before we turn feral and start attacking each other with guns. So the timeline from something like a solar flare to where we go feral and kill each other off is less than two weeks... From this kind of a scenario, the ascension of the faithful seems a lot more desirous, unless its the mother-ship that sucks them up, ready to perform anal dissection like we were some kind of supersnax...

From Bruce Cockburn's Last Night of the World:

I've seen the flame of hope among the hopeless

And that was truly the biggest heartbreak of all

That was the straw that broke me open

If this were the last night of the world

What would I do?

What would I do that was different

Unless it was champagne with you?

Here's a news item that will quickly vanish, and we may never know the outcome, from the AP: "The Finnish authorities on Wednesday impounded 160 tons of explosives and 69 surface-to-air Patriot missiles that were found on a British-flagged cargo ship. While the ship’s ultimate destination was Shanghai, officials said, it was not clear where the weapons were bound.

The cargo ship, M/S Thor Liberty, sailed from the German port of Emden on Dec. 13 and two days later docked in Kotka, Finland, to pick up a cargo of anchor chains, said a Finnish Customs spokesman, Petri Lounatmaa.

Investigating officers did not know the origin of the missiles or who was supposed to receive them, Mr. Lounatmaa said. “We have impounded the explosives and missiles and asked the Defense Ministry to transport and store them,” he said. At this point, he said, it had not been determined “if the Thor Liberty planned a drop before its port of destination in China.”

Detective Superintendent Timo Virtanen of the National Bureau of Investigation said dock workers found the explosives stored on open pallets instead of in closed containers. They alerted inspectors, who found the missiles in containers that were marked as fireworks. Interior Minister Paivi Rasanen said she had not heard of a similar case. “Of course, there are legal transports of weapons or defense material, but in this case the cargo was marked as containing fireworks,” Ms. Rasanen told the national broadcaster YLE TV. “That is quite unusual.”

The questions asked is, who is buying the weapons, and who is sending them? On the surface, it seems the Brits are up to something, but since 80% of intelligence forces are hired third parties, the missiles could be shipped by anybody acting as a middle-man. The farther from a government agency, the better the deniability. Patriot missiles are US made, and it would be scary to think that someone other than the US military can get their hands on 69 missiles. So, who do we secretly want to send missiles and munitions to between Finland and China? Probably either Libya, Egypt, or Saudi Arabia brokered out of a NATO stockpile in Britain... Flip the scenario if the explosives were brokered privately, then the whole mess could be destined for Palestine or Iran.. It could be that this is how an indebted country like Spain plans to get out of debt, not to rely on bailouts... To add to the Doomsday script, Russia just announced that it is building the world's largest bomb, to be called SATAN...

"How is it that voters loathe Obama, with a personal history of high moral standing and liberal policies, while supporting a conservative with a history of immorality?" - Walter Rogers

I almost feel bad about relating this next tidbit, joining with the GOP presidential candidates in attacking Newt Gingrich, hitting him from all angles until he no longer is the frontrunner... Mr Nasty is proclaiming to be running a positive, clean campaign, with no negative ads, and he's complaining, whining actually, over how he is being treated. We'll see how long that promise lasts, because everyone else is just lambasting him, with over 1200 negative ads against him in Iowa, so far...

A new ethics violation of the campaign laws has been filed against Newt's campaign, on how he is making personal money from public donations, specifically paying himself for the use of a: " personal mailing list. The Post reports that Gingrich paid himself for the list, even as the campaign was struggling to pay off nearly $1.2 million it owed to other vendors.

But the CREW complaint alleges that Gingrich never actually owned the list, noting that it has never been disclosed among the candidate's personal assets. Instead, the government watchdog claims that the list belonged to Gingrich Productions, the production company run by Gingrich's wife Callista.

“Newt Gingrich will do anything to make a buck, even sell his own mailing list to his campaign,” CREW executive director Melanie Sloan told Business Insider. "Of course, he has a long history of playing fast and loose with ethics rules, so this should come as a surprise to no one."

CREW also accuses Gingrich of improperly mixing campaign events and book sales. Referencing a recent New York Times article, the complaint alleges that while campaigning, Gingrich uses corporate funds from Gingrich Productions to subsidize his campaign events, while also using his rallies to push his book sales.

For example, at book signings, the Gingrichs collect the names of people waiting in line and put it on their political mailing list. At the same time, proceeds from the books go directly to the Gingrichs, not to the campaign. “There seems to be an uptick in candidates using campaign funds to enrich themselves," Sloan said. "And it looks like Gingrich is finding every way possible to gather names for his lists – he is crossing lines that he is not legally allowed to cross.

Gingrich's campaign has denied any wrongdoing, stating that the campaign and Gingrich Productions keep finances separate. "If the FEC considers the complaint, they will find that the rules are being followed and published regulations are being enforced," campaign spokesman R.C. Hammond said in a statement today, responding to the complaint."

Many people consider Newt's rise to front runner as a fluke, that all he really wanted to do was make money from his website, and feeding the addiction of public adulation by being in front of television cameras. He pretty much sucked as a history teacher, was denied tenure by his peers at West Georgia College, wherever that is, but that has developed into his current incarnation as teacher to the whole country, and grand intellectual of the GOP...

Take The Last Train To Pyongyang

2011-12-19T21:29:00.001-07:00

George W Bush's Axis of Evil just lost another rung with the death of North Korea's Kim Jong-il. Now we're going to have to refer to Iran as the Axle of Evil, or if we want to appeal to a slightly younger crowd, the Axl Rose of Evil...

According to the Korean media, the Beloved Leader died of a heart attack a couple of days ago, while he was on his personal train choogling around the countryside. Because parts of North Korea is a bit backwards, they had to ice the corpse down for the two day trip back to the capitol. This gave everyone time to compose themselves and decide if they were going to support Kim's heir, young Kim Jung-un, or drown him in a freak accident...

We'll see what happens over the next few weeks, what kind of a man Jung-un turns out to be. Will he be as crazy as his father and grandfather, or will he become a stooge for the miltary, or will he hide in his room playing World of Warcraft? South Korea isn't taking any chances, they are beefing up troops at the border, and China is dispatching a lot of diplomats, hoping to keep the situation stable.

North Korea has made paranoia an institution for the last sixty years, saying that all of their ignorance, poverty, and stunted sense of culture is because the USA wanted to invade and annihilate them. Only the diligence of their military and Beloved Leaders stood in our way. Unfortunately, the rest of the world pretty much forgot about them unless they produced a tantrum to get the world's attention. And just like all other countries run by their military and intelligence officers, they stole their citizens blind...

Here's hoping that young Kim Jong-un can step up and bring his country into the 21st century, but as cynical as I am, I doubt that continuing a corrupt line of dictatorship will be the way to do it... And here's hoping there will be enough time to make those changes, before our blood-thirsty politicians start hollering for "regime change..."

End Of Iraq War, Who Noticed?

2011-12-17T22:49:00.002-07:00

"Mitt Romney tried to make a $10,000 bet with Rick Perry during a presidential debate. Well, who says the Republicans are rich snobs out of touch with the common man?" – Jay Leno

"A campaign staffer on the Newt Gingrich campaign was fired because he was making negative comments about Mormons. I thought, 'Wait a minute, isn't Newt in favor of multiple wives?'" –David Letterman

"Ron Paul is in favor of letting states legalize marijuana, prostitution, and cocaine. So even if he doesn't win, that's going to be one heck of an election night party." –Jay Leno

Well, Congress is finished for the year, and the War in Iraq is officially over; we got a two-fer... Now comes the articles trying to spin the arguments that going to Iraq was a good thing to do in the first place. Hey, Saddam Hussein was a bad man and we did a favor by taking him out. Ok, that explains our actions for one month of one year, what did we do during the other nine years and 11 months that was constructive? They cannot even provide consistent days with electricity, one of those infrastructure projects we paid Haliburton $1.8 billion for that they never begun...

The Center for American Progress is trying to determine the cost of the war: "Coalition deaths totaled 4,803, of which 4,484 (93 percent) were American. The number of Americans wounded was 32,200. At least 463 non-Iraqi contractors were killed. Iraqi civilian deaths are estimated to total between 103,674 and 113,265. The UNHCR says the war resulted in 1.24 million internally displaced persons and more than 1.6 million refugees.

The Congressional Research Service puts the dollar cost of Operation Iraqi Freedom at $806 billion.
The cost for veteran's benefits was $422 billion."

So far, nobody has begun to tally up the amount of money that went through charities, another one of the biggest money-making scams out there. Less than five cents out of every dollar donated actually goes to a project. Projects are often abandoned or made haphazardly so they don't last.... The lack of oversight makes it impossible to determine if any charitable project has helped, the honest, good ones are very few and far between.

Probably the most dangerous thing we are leaving in Iraq, is Nuri al-Maliki in charge. He has a tendency towards autocracy, and could easily turn into a Saddam Mini-Me, even though he has said that he won't run again. Who knows if he gave away the secret to bringing down our drone to his BFF's in Iran?

There weren't any major parties or ceremonies to celebrate the Americans leaving, many units just packed up and left in the dead of night, without telling their Iraqi partners. Leon Panetta did show up to help fold the last American flag. Really, it must have been an awkward situation, err, sorry that we killed so many of your people, hope you like your democracy... The main problem is that a democratic Iraq won't survive for long surrounded by so many dictatorships like Iran, Syria, Saudi Arabia to destabilize it. The best hope is for the spirit of the Arab Spring bringing down those governments and entering Iraq to change it from within...

If you are a hawk like the GOP presidential candidates, except for Ron Paul, you can take comfort that we haven't pulled very far from Iraq, just to Kuwait and Bahrain, where we'll be able to re-invade at a moments notice. Who knows, perhaps we'll be able to manufacture a crisis before the primaries, if not the presidential election...

The Frontrunners, One's a Mudder...

2011-12-14T19:44:00.000-07:00

Dana Milbank
Thomas Friedman

"Gingrich and his rivals are most definitely for sale. The Republican nominating contest resembles nothing so much as a Christie’s wine auction, as candidates accept, and toss about, dollar figures beyond the comprehension of the people they would serve." - Dana Milbank

“Zany is not what we need in a president. Zany is great in a campaign. It’s great on talk radio. It’s great in print, it makes for fun reading,” - Mit Romney

Go, Mit, go! Mit is hitting hard back at Newt Gingrich, who passed him in the polls as the front-runner in Iowa. Of course, nobody else in America really cares what they think in Iowa unless you are a reporter or an Iowan. Then, its only some Iowans who care, those of the conservative persuasion, a few old white people and a handful of college kids who think they are rebelling by being boring. No, I meant kids who grew up in a conservative, religious environment and haven't the tools to think for themselves, yet. It's said that over 50% of people who attend the caucus are evangelical Christians, who aren't all that happy with either Mit or Newt, neither who have been consistent in their beliefs.

I've never been to Iowa, so I can only generalize about them, but we have caucasus here in Colorado, and it does feel very old fashioned and down-home going to one. I can't say how the Democrats conduct theirs, but my local little dictators really don't like to hear much variety of opinion. One of our rising young stars is the woman who thought up the personhood amendments when she was a mere home-schooled girl of sixteen... I get to feel vastly superior to everyone, as I sip my Starbuck's latte... but it really is an interesting way to conduct politics, even if we don't identify ourselves as a farming community.

If I were to vote for anyone right now, it would probably be Ron Paul, if only to see if he could slash the military budget and legalize marijuana. Ron is a true Libertarian in that he is a strange brew of solid ideas that you'd like to see enacted, mixed with some crazy shit that would drive the rulers of the GOP crazy, with some truly batshit ideas that should never see the light of day. But they do, in every speech he gives... The source for his ideas aren't just from obscure Austrian economists, but also from folks like the John Birch Society. I didn't even know that the John Birch Society still existed until I watched Ron Paul address them on CSPAN a couple of years ago. Needless to say, I had a creepy Friday evening...

When Newt first came to Congress, he vowed to enact a Contract with America, to move the policies of the government towards the right, and began the obstructionist behavior to try and get his way. He was known for being a nasty person, making more enemies than friends. We may never know the veracity of the ethics violations that were brought against him, but the end result was that his own Republican Party forced him to resign. One day you're Speaker of the House, the next you're selling books on a website and lobbying for Freddie Mac... What remained is a self-absorbed, pompous man who would lie to us and think nothing of it.

What it comes down to, can any of the GOP candidates beat Barack Obama in both a debate and the next election? Remember when Obama took on the entire Republican Congress in give and take, and creamed them all? As long as the Republicans keep on blindly trying to stop Obama at any cost, they will never come up with any practical solutions that the public can get behind. This is what happens when a political party has been taken over by a bunch of bitter, negative, rich men...

Who knows, maybe Rick Santorum will win, then he can demand that Google stops directing people who look up his last name to those web sites that define the word "santorum" as something that leaks out of the anus after sex...

I'm Back, Trickster Rules Republican Politics

2011-12-12T16:17:00.002-07:00

"In a surprise move, this mo"Herman Cain seemed to sense his supporters needed something to lift their spirits, which is what led to Herman Cain saying the greatest nine words ever spoken by an American politician: 'I believe these words came from the Pokemon movie…'" –Jon Stewart

"Herman Cain announced Saturday he was suspending his campaign. He brought his wife with him, so apparently he couldn't get a date. I guess he used up all his 9-9-9 lives. The closest he got to the White House was spending the night at Ginger White's house." –Jay Leno

"The good news: unemployment is down and people are out looking for work. That's good news. In fact today Herman Cain applied at Domino's, Pizza Hut, Round Table, and Little Caesars..." –Jay Leno

"This morrning Herman Cain's penis announced it's still in the race." - Conan O'Brien

I'm baack... my old laptop died and I had no way to access the Internet, so this blog has been neglected for the last three weeks. I could have gone to the library every day and used their system, but then my sister's car broke down, and we've also been stranded at home. I ended up getting a Toshiba laptop, and am now acclimating to using Windows again, as an operating system. I hate Internet Explorer, it's not as easy to use as Safari was, and Safari was set up better for research. I haven't figured out how to paste photos into my blog with either Explorer or Chrome yet, the relearning curve is frustrating...

Even more frustrating, was the Internet withdrawals I went through, just like any other addiction. I've been using computers on a regular basis for over 15 - 20 years, and the Internet has become part of my identity.
Though I am being passed by because I may never own a smart phone or ipad, and see no reason to develop apps or download any, I feign indifference because of my advancing years. I'm sure if I was younger I'd be a tweetmonster, living life in haiku-like phrases and thinking I was quite clever, especially now that every tweet ever made will be stored in the Library of Congress. Too bad they won't do that with blogs...
Unfortunately, in order to afford buying the laptop, I had to forgo some pleasures in life. I suspended my subscription to the NY Times for three months, and canceled my outstanding order of cigars, and hope that I can get through the next few months on my limited monthly income.

There are beings out there that feed on human misery, the more violent the better. They are part of every culture yet remain hidden and unidentified except as parts of fantasy and myths.These minor demons, or djinns, are firmly established in the Middle East; which may explain why almost every peaceful protest or movement ends up in a blood-bath. The psychic Stuart Wilde has said that after we die our souls tend to hang out circling the earth like an aura, and after all of the violent deaths from WW11, the aura surrounding our planet went from positive to negative, and it has accelerated the death of our planet. In the fight of good versus evil, evil has already won and it's time for our souls to travel on and fight over the next inhabitable planet...

Or not... But, if you don't want to question why every Muslim country enjoys killing each other and blowing each other up, then being ruled and influenced by some kind of lords of chaos may be your best bet for conversation. Can you prove that Bashar al-Assad and his family are sane, not under the influence of evil djinns? Or the country of Pakistan?

Because blood-thirsty Americans certainly aren't afraid of conservative Muslims, aren't they their fellow businessmen and best friends and trading partners? Both don't want too much change in society and will vilify each other - look at all of the articles warning what might happen if the big, bad Muslim Brotherhood wins the Egyptian election. Let them learn their own lessons how unreasonable and crazy the religious right really are...

Here in America, we are obviously in thrall to the Indian trickster manitous, what other reason explains the last few years of behavior by the Republican Party? When the GOP means " I'm not a witch," to Herman Cain quoting the Pokemon movie, the current crop of Republican candidates all seem like they have escaped from the loony bin. Otherwise sane people act like gibbering fools on debates and we treat this behavior seriously, as if it was presidential material... How else to explain all this than the old Indian curses coming true, letting the Trickster use his perverse sense of humor to tear down and destroy our corrupted system... It's about as logical as asking the Iranians to please return our spy drone because we don't want them to have the technology... It's about as logical as leaving soldiers in Iraq after Dec 31st and expecting them to not be shot at... It's like expecting something logical in a Rick Perry speech, or humility and honesty in one from Newt Gingrich...

I've missed reading my digital newspapers and have been going to the library for these past few weeks, catching up on some local history and myths. In Colorado, it often feels like there are more myths than actual events by real people, and my waking and dream moments tend to blend together. So, I'm thankful for the Internet back in my life, where I can just skim through the news and opinions each day, pretending once again to be a pundit.

GOP Frontrunners, Jerry Sandusky American Paedophile

2011-11-18T14:18:00.000-07:00

"There's another Republican presidential debate tonight. This one is focused on why there were so many Republican presidential debates." – Jimmy Kimmel

"Mitt Romney said he created thousands of jobs at governor of Massachusetts. Rick Perry said he created thousands as governor of Texas. Herman Cain said he tried to create a number of jobs for women but now he's getting attacked for it all of a sudden." – Jimmy Kimmel

"If I were Mitt Romney, I wouldn't show up anymore. I would just go to Hawaii and wait it out until the election, drink some caffeine free Diet Coke and watch Herman Cain and Rick Perry self-destruct." –Jimmy Kimmel

‎"The harassment allegations keep coming at Herman Cain -- like an uninvited hand up a pleated skirt." –Stephen Colbert

David Letterman's "Top Ten Herman Cain Pick-Up Lines"

10. "You're like a Godfather's pizza: a little doughy, but still hot"
9. "My name's Herman and I'll get you squirmin'"
8. "May I stuff your crust?"
7. "You put the 'ass' in National Restaurant Association"
6. "Can I buy you a glass of whatever Rick Perry is drinking?"
5. "Would you describe yourself as the litigious type?"
4. (Video: Newt Gingrich having sex with a vending machine)
3. "Baby, you're worth the forty grand in hush money"
2. "You don't know Gloria Allred, do you?"
1. "My tax plan is 9-9-9, but you're a 10-10-10"

There are about 12 more Republican presidential candidate debates left, which means that there will be at least 12 more lead changes in the polls. Every time one candidate jumps ahead, attention is paid to what they have been saying and reported on, making them appear to be the fools and craven liars they actually are. If there are any moderate Republicans left, they must be worrying if they'll ever be able to find a candidate who appears rational to the national audience.

After the last debate, and Herman Cain's melt-down over Libya, Newt Gingrich leaped towards the head of the pack, with a 32% approval rating. During the debate he answered the question, what did you do for the $300,000 that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac paid you, by saying that he answered some questions they had as a consultant, and did it in a historical way. No, he never has been a lobbyist ever in his life, ever, ever... Then the housing authorities answered that they had actually paid Newt over $1.6 million, and his job was to sell their housing policies to Republican Congressmen. So far, Newt has not offered to return the money, nor change his definitions of lobbying. It's lobbying when everyone else does it, and historical consulting when he does it. And don't quote him on anything that he's said before, because you will then be called a liar by Mr Gingrich, who keeps forgetting that its all recorded on the Internet...

Rachel Maddow contends that Herman Cain is not a serious presidential contender, that he is in reality an art project because he keeps making obscure references to cartoons and movies in his speeches. The most famous one is that his 9-9-9 economic plan was lifted from The Sims 4 computer game. Other rhyming lines in his speeches come from Chris Tucker in Rush Hour 3 (I'm the brother from another mother), and the Simpsons Movie (I'm a leader not a reader)... I keep getting spam links to Cain's 9-9-9 website, sent to me by an Ed Thurston, who is an automated software program named with reference to Thurston Howell 111 from Gilligan's Island???

I think that Herman being an art project to make pop culture references to see if we get them, may be giving too much intellectual credit to Mr Cain. He never reads a newspaper or magazine, is worse informed that Sarah Palin ever was, and doesn't seem capable of changing his ways, instead defends his ignorance. Personally, I think Herman Cain is a man who was selected by the Koch Brothers to be their black candidate, and he saw it as a way to rake in a few million. Which is why his wife has kept out of campaigning until she was dragged in by his previous sleazy behavior. The references to cartoons and black comic actors may be Herman Cain's idea of quick thinking - when pressed, his mind goes to these cliches that he has stored away in his unconscious, and they are retrieved when he can't think of anything else to say. There will be many more of these kind of moments if Mr Cain's candidacy continues, and he has to sit down and answer specific questions. In the past all he's had to do was walk away from reporters, and he won't be able to do that as much, not even with Fox News.

Jerry Sandusky, who currently is out on bail and seen showering at Penn state two weeks ago, is part of a lengthy past of paedophiles in the US. So far he has been classified as a loner, who used the charity he created to cull out young boys to have sexual relationships with. But investigators should look farther to see if he ties up with any paedophile rings, new or old. In the past there have been paedophile groups that included politicians, police chiefs and judges, rich businessmen, and celebrities. During the 1970's in Nebraska, their was a paedophile ring that had a wealthy businessman pimping out orphans from Father Flanagan's School for Boys, and also used runaway girls to populate cocktail parties for politicians (The Franklin Coverup). George HW bush is said to have attended a few... There have been other paedophile groups arrested in Los Angeles, St Petersburg, Russia, Japan, Thaland, Portugal, and in 14 other countries. Here in Colorado Springs we recently have had local police and soldiers from Fort Carson who have been arrested for being sexual predators with children.

The good news is that most child pornography sites on the Internet are traps set by the feds, who then capture your IP address and track your computer activities. They have over 100,000 they are tracking and spying on this way. In Pennsylvania, heads should roll for attempting to cover up these crimes for over 12 years, because it might affect the $70 million that football annually brings to the college. The charity Second Mile should be disbanded for not looking into previous allegations and gossip concerning Sandusky, and allowing the charity to be the predatory hunting grounds for little boys.

We definitely need to have more conversations on subjects like paedophillia and sexualizing our children. In Europe the age of consent is lower, and what we see as abuse, they take for granted as normal. But predatory behavior is never OK, and the real child porn sites involve infants and snuff films, things that you or I can't ever imagine happening to a kid, and using a religious based charity to fool innocent children into trusting you, is a good place to start telling these people that this behavior is not acceptable. Unfortunately, there is no cure for paedophillia, these folks are stuck with their obsessions for life, but we should at least be able to find a way for them to manage their obsessions, like quitting smoking. If we had a patch for that, would Jerry Sandusky take it? The only time he shows remorse is when he's been outed, and then it's fake remorse at that, similar to Herman Cain denying that he ever put his hand up a woman's skirt...

Clueless Cain Confounds Candidacy, Rick Perry Spends Over $400,000 Per Week To Forgive His Gaffes

2011-11-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

"When Herman Cain was in charge of the National Restaurant Association, there were allegations of sexual harassment. They have revealed one came from Sara Lee." – David Letterman

"Turns out 999 was just his rating system: she's a 9, she's a 9, she's a 9." – Jay Leno

"Of course, Cain still doesn't get it. Like he said he will address all these charges at a press conference tomorrow at Hooters." – Jay Leno

Top Ten Signs Herman Cain Is Losing It

10. Plans to raise funds by suing himself for sexual harassment
9. Now smokes more than his campaign manager
8. Was recently found hiding in a drainpipe with a golden gun
7. Keeps asking voters if they want to touch his mustache
6. Claims Justin Bieber is his father
5. Campaigning as his hilarious alter ego, Pee-Wee Herman Cain
4. Just paid a visit to Dr. Conrad Murray
3. Spent last of campaign funds betting on the Colts
2. Gave rambling, drunken speech -- oh I'm sorry, that was Rick Perry
1. He's engaged to Kim Kardashian

Well, I just had a few days lost in the ozone, consequences from not taking my daily meds. I also became very depressed, partly from the news last weekend that Israel was threatening to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. I am so tired of writing negative things about Israel, why can't they just go back to their policy from before 1992, when Iran wasn't their largest existential threat? Having a #1 bogeyman ensures that the ruling party can control the country. Much of the manufactured paranoia begins in Israel, and if it works, becomes adopted in the US by Republican fearmongers. Prior to 1992 the two countries had diplomatic relations, and Israel even sold Iran weapons. Even now Israel enjoys eating pistachios grown in Iran that have been exported to Turkey, where they are relabeled and shipped into Israel, an open secret... I get soo tired of trashing the right wing policies of Benjamin Netanyahu, that I could easily commiserate with Nicholas Sarkozy calling Netanyahu a liar, and Obama trying to soothe him by saying yeah, but I have to deal with him almost every day... Just as we begin to see real hope in the changes going on in the Middle East, Israel wants to ruin it for everyone, all because their leaders are getting old and impotent... To add insult to injury, I had to find out from a television commercial from a lawyer, and not my doctor, the detrimental side effects from a prescription I had been taking for the past three years...

But the recent Republican debate helped to cheer me up. Thank god we have a bunch of dumbass losers running for the Republican ticket, because there are only 13 more debates scheduled until we vote and choose one of them. The theme of these debates seem to be who can appear more right wing than the others, except for John Huntsman, who sounds the most sane and reasonable. Unfortunately for John, his approval ratings went down from 3% before the debate, to 0% afterwards, being called Mit Light...

Most people tune into these verbal slug fests to see who will crash and burn in real time, and this last one did not disappoint. Rick Perry had a giant brain freeze, where he lost rack of his thoughts and melted under pressure; looking at his notes didn't help, al he could do was to admit he forgot and then went "oops!" A week before, Rick gave a bizarre performance while giving a speech, with giggling, slurring of his speech, and weird outbursts in the middle of a sentence. Everyone thought that he was drunk, though I thought he took too many anti-anxiety pills. With his brain freeze, he proved that he wasn't drunk at all - he's just a doufus, and incredibly stupid man who never has had to prove or defend himself on the public stage, and is sinking his campaign. However, he has guaranteed a large audience at the next couple of debates, just to see what embarrassing thing he will do next before he withdraws his candidacy. 60% of his campaign funds come from rich Texas boys, and if they get tired of his gaffes, he won't be able to afford campaigning anymore. According to Politico, the Perry campaign is: "currently spending more than $400,000 a week on television and radio advertising in Iowa, presenting a determinedly folksy appeal. He’s also spending more than $100,000 a week on television advertising in New Hampshire and more than that blanketing Granite State radio."

Herman Cain is glad that Rick Perry took the heat off of his behavior problems, of being accused of sexual harassment in the workplace several years ago. I'm going to say some things about Herman and it won't be pretty: Herman's campaign got its start being financed by the super-rich, super-right wing Koch brothers; he was their version of an Uncle Tom political candidate, a black man who had less of a sense of humor than Michael Steele. That Mr Cain had allegations of sexual harassment in his past came from his campaign staff not doing a thorough history, examining his past for anything potentially embarrassing. As to the truth of the allegations, the fact that there are more than two women who say that he was inappropriate probably means that he was. Or, in other words, he's a guy, so he's a pig...

What I find interesting, is that here we have a black man married to a black woman, yet making passes at white women, and none at black women. Does that mean he has anger issues with white women, or a need to be rejected by them? Also interesting, is the only other allegation of sexual harassment against a black man in the government was placed against Clarence Thomas, who is married to a white woman, and was made by a black woman... I'm sure there are endless hours of therapy that could come out of all this, but I'm reminded by a quote I saw in a documentary from the 1970's about Stax records. A young black woman was asked why so many black men seemed to be going around with with white women at the time. She replied that it was because black women just wouldn't put up with their shit...

The next debate is Saturday night. To make it a drinking game, you will have to down a shot every time that Rick Perry commits a gaffe, Herman Cain sidesteps a question about taking a lie detector test or mentions 9-9-9 instead, or Newt Gingrich says something condescending and mean to the journalists asking him questions... Also, down a shot if Michele Bachmann gives a coherent answer... I want to say something about Ron Paul, but I like the old curmudgeon, he's even freakier than me. If only he didn't resemble your creepy grandpa that tries to get along with the children every year and fails miserably...

Oh, and sorry to those two guys who have been emailing me with the same response and link to Herman Cain's website. I published you guys once out of courtesy, but doing it every time you send me an email would be obnoxious. Personally, I'm not impressed with an economic plan taken from a SimCity computer game, not even Herman is able to talk beyond the few talking points he's memorized. He has shown that he's not interested is learning about foreign policy, and the only reason we should vote for him is because he projects friendliness and self-confidence, unless you are a young white woman...

More Accusations Against Cain, That Randy Dog, Arab League Proposes Syrian Solution

2011-11-02T15:53:00.000-06:00

Dana Milbank
Jesse Jackson

“Y’all were supposed to applaud,” - Herman Cain

"Herman Cain told a group of Occupy Wall Street protesters to go home, get a job, and get a life. That's the Republican version of hope and change, ladies and gentlemen." – Jay Leno

"That's why our blacks are so much better than their blacks." - Ann Coulter

David Letterman's "Top Ten Signs Herman Cain's Campaign Is In Trouble"

10. Can't afford cigarettes for new campaign ads
9. It's been fun, but there's no way we're actually electing a guy named 'Herman'
8. While campaigning, kissed a photo of himself and signed a baby
7. New campaign slogan 'Mayday!'
6. Even Michele O'Bachmann thinks his ideas are nuts
5. He trails Gadhafi's corpse in the polls
4. Refuses to acknowledge the road to the White House goes through me, Dave
3. He's acting less fun-crazy and more crazy-crazy
2. Just accepted million-dollar offer to pose nude in Playboy
1. There's a 0-0-0 chance he'll be president

I tell you, Herman Cain must be a psychic, the way that he can predict the future. When he told Fox News last weekend: “And the other thing that I would add is I’m sure there are going to be some more trumped up charges. People are going to try and dig up things.” Who knew that there would be a third woman coming forward to tell of sexual harassment from the Hermanator, including his invitation to her to come up and see him sometime at a corporate apartment he kept while being in top lobbyist of the US Restaurant Association... Dana Milbank, linked above, relates how Mr Cain quickly went from being Mr Nice Guy to the reporters asking him questions, to morphing into the Incredible Hulk, with bodyguards using elbows and fists to clear the way, as he refused to answer any more questions. It's a scene that fits in better in Syria or Yemen than in Washington, and the scrutiny of Mr Cain has barely begun. Like I said yesterday, its Mr Cain's anger and short fuse that will do him in, unless we find more pubic hairs on the Coke cans...

The biggest news story of the day was buried way back in the NY Times, that the Arab League went to Syria, made a proposal to end the violence, and the Syrian government accepted. The proposal is supposed to go into effect immediately, with the military and police to stop shooting and killing unarmed demonstrators. Supposedly, Bashar al Assad has been looking for a way out of the bloody corner he has painted himself into, and this allows his family to retain control and appear reasonable. The US responded that the only acceptable solution is for Bashar's family to step down. Bashar responded that Syria could easily be the next Afghanistan, so be careful what you wish for...

The Arab League is touting this a dawn of a new era in Middle Eastern politics, mainly because its the first time any country has listened to the Arab League and gone along with their suggestions. Whether they will have enough influence to steer a democratic government in Libya, or get the Egyptian Army to relinquish their strangle hold on the Egyptian government, remains to be seen. Who knows, maybe the rains of the Arab Spring will produce fields of flowers and crops instead of mud and quicksand...

But, just to be sure, and to ease the minds of the Iraqis who don't want us to leave their country, the US will be cramming as many troops into Kuwait as it can fit. Coupled with the predator drones and naval station in Bahrain, we are planning on having quick response units in case Iran responds to the next attack on them from Israel, err, I meant in case Iran moves troops into Iraq...

Next Mormon Migration, You Cain't Do That...

2011-10-31T14:17:00.000-06:00

Ruth Marcus
Paul Krugman

David Letterman's "Top Ten Things Overheard At Moammar Gadhafi's Funeral"

10. 'Honestly, how the heck did he spell his name?'
9. 'It's a shame he didn't live long enough to promote himself above colonel'
8. 'Is it too soon to hit on the Ukrainian nurse?'
7. 'After the services, come back to the house for cake'
6. 'Where's his hot daughter Kim?'
5. 'And now, a few words from Moammar's closest friend, Loni Anderson'
4. 'At least he died doing what he loved best — begging for mercy in a storm drain'
3. 'Incoming!'
2. 'Nice of Leno to send flowers'
1. 'Let's bury this guy'

Last week the head of the rebel group setting up a new government in Libya made a statement that pissed off his female audience, according to the NY Times: "In announcing the success of the Libyan revolution and calling for a new, more pious nation, the head of the interim government, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, also seemed to clear the way for unrestricted polygamy in a Muslim country where it has been limited and rare for decades.

It looked like a sizable step backward for women at a moment when much here — institutions, laws, social relations — is still in play after the end of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s 42 years of authoritarian rule.

In his speech, Mr. Abdel-Jalil declared that a Qaddafi-era law that placed restrictions on multiple marriages, which is a tenet of Islamic law, or Shariah, would be done away with. The law, which stated that a first wife had to give permission before others were added, for instance, had kept polygamy rare here.

“This law is contrary to Shariah and must be stopped,” Mr. Abdel-Jalil told the crowd, vowing that the new government would adhere more faithfully to Shariah. The next day he reiterated the point to reporters at a news conference: “Shariah allows polygamy,” he said. Mr. Abdel-Jalil is known for his piety."

Mr Abdel-Jalil may also be known for his insensitivity and his basic ignorance, the Herman Cain of Libya... Women have been fighting against the polygamy thing for the past 40 years in the Middle East, and traditionally men only have one wife in Libya. Perhaps old Mustafa is having visions of himself as ruler, complete with harem and slaves. Has he sent out requests for Qaddafi's Swedish nurses to return?

The acceptance of old and out-dated laws shows the problems that will have to be debated in countries like Libya, Tunisia, and Egypt, as they try to balance old, old, old conservative views with more lenient modern ones while writing new constitutions for their countries. The response among women at Tripoli University was overwhelmingly negative: "“To follow Islamic rules is a good thing. To have many wives is not a good thing,” said a 24-year-old biology student, Awatif Alhjagi. “I’m worried. People that did not have that right before may now get four wives,” she said. “Because he talked about it, they probably will do it now.”

There was disquiet that Mr. Abdel-Jalil had zeroed in on the marriage issue in a relatively brief speech. Unprompted, the young women circulating in a university courtyard angrily brought up his comments.

“All the girls are mad that he said that,” said Bushra ben Omran, a 20-year-old English student. “I don’t want to marry somebody who is already married.”

“He should not have said this in his speech,” Ms. Omran added. “He didn’t focus on all the injured people” from the revolution, she said. “I didn’t expect this.”

Rehab Zehany, 20, who said Mr. Abdel-Jalil was merely following the dictates of the Koran, added, when asked if she would accept her husband taking a second wife: “Of course not! I would kill him!”

The response in America was immediate: Mit Romney and John Huntsman announced that they might have to withdraw their presidential candidacies so they could lead their people to the next promised land. Conveniently, someone found some gold tablets buried in Indiana that predicted this would happen: their book of Mormon was trance written by an angel named Moroni, Libya was ruled for 40 years by a Moron; the coincidences are too close to be interpreted any other way... It looks like polygamy is the new "in" fad to practice, officially endorsed by every fugitive follower of Warren Jeff, and now old men who dye the color of their beards in Libya. wouldn't it just be cheaper to buy them some Viagra and send them home???

No He Cain't!

The latest screw-up by the Herman Cain campaign was in response to two women who said that while Herman was CEO of Godfather's Pizza, they were paid a settlement fee on a claim that he sexually harassed them...

At first, Herman claimed that there never were any accusations to Fox News: "During an earlier appearance at the American Enterprise Institute, Mr. Cain declined to address questions about the harassment allegations. But during the appearance on Fox, Mr. Cain for the first time confirmed that he had been the subject of the accusations. In the Fox interview, he did not talk in detail about the allegations against him, but called them “totally false.”

Then, a few hours later, he went on the attack: "Herman Cain called the accusations of sexual harassment against him “a witch hunt” and said he had been falsely accused while the head of the National Restaurant Association in the 1990s. “It was concluded after a thorough investigation that it had no basis,” Mr. Cain said to questions by Mark Hamrick, the president of the press club after Politico first reported on the allegations. “I am unaware of any settlement. I hope it wasn’t for much, because I didn’t do anything.”

In the press club remarks, Mr. Cain said that he had “recused myself” during the investigation into the charges made by the women. He derided the report in Politico as being based on “anonymous sources.”

“We are not going to chase anonymous sources, when there are no basis for the accusation,” Mr. Cain said. “I have never sexually harassed anyone and those accusations are totally false.”

In her column, linked above, Ruth Marcus talks how Mr Cain's campaign staff should have uncovered this news tidbit, so they would have a better excuse if it ever came up. It's standard operating procedure to leave no stone unturned about your candidate...

But what bothers me is the anger that Herman barely conceals whenever he is confronted, challenged, or asked to explain his views. It is a sign of an ego that won't allow a person to listen, and anger is not the first response I want in a President.

Barack Obama was elected because he was seen as an even-handed response to a hot- headed administration that was all Dick Cheney's way or the highway. It was refreshing to find someone willing to think a situation through before responding to it... Of course, now Obama is being criticized for always doing just that, and we fickle viewers of the national scene want more spectacle and drama from our politicians. On that, Herman delivers...

What Rough Beast is Slouching Towards Damascus?...

2011-10-27T00:58:00.001-06:00

Dana Milbank

Meghan McCain

"They found Gaddafi in a hole with a gun and luggage, or as it's known here, the middle class." – Bill Maher

"These Republicans, they will not give credit. They gave credit to the rebels, to the British, and to the French. But they would not mention the president. It was like they were on a game show and the password was 'Obama.' They're like the banks; they will not give a black man credit." – Bill Maher, on Qaddafi's death

"I'm guessing our soldiers are happy to be leaving Iraq. It is no fun being in a country where there's crumbling infrastructure and an ignorant population, but they said they're happy to come home anyway." – Bill Maher

I suppose it was a good thing that the body of Moammar Qaddafi was buried in a secret place. The reason given was they didn't want his burial place to become a shrine, or have his body dug up by loyalists and have fetishes made from his body parts... As it is now, in a few years, when the myths have grown to rival the conspiracy theories, we'll have the Qaddafi cultists prowling the desert at night, hoping to pull off a Graham Parsons ceremony. The only thing missing are the joshua trees; maybe the state of California will export some, making part of the Libyan desert into a theme park of sorts... Does the fact that both Osama bin Laden and Moammar Qaddafi were shot and killed instead of captured and put on trial mean that the Western style of judicial system has become as bankrupt as its economic system?

The problem once a dictator who has been in power for a long time passes, is that the people have forgotten how to make decisions for themselves. Can the groups that were the rebels work together to organize and plan a working government? Tunisia's hassle free election on Sunday should give its neighbors inspiration. It remains to be seen if the other Arab countries can put enough pressure on Bashar Assad in Syria, to stop being a vicious jerk, but that whole family may be too delusional to listen to any reality-based suggestions. I can't believe how long the protests have gone on in Syria and Yemen, and what a transformation if those stubborn old men leave peacefully. Because it's been shown that one way or another they will leave, there's a secret spot in the Libyan desert now being reserved just for them...

It's hard to believe that all of the protests throughout the Middle East, and probably the world, was sparked by one man who set himself on fire. When I was a kid, one of the most powerful images I witnessed was when a Vietnamese monk immolated himself in protest to the coming war. Yet, recently there have been nine Tibetan monks and nuns who have immolated themselves to protest the Chinese policies in Tibet, and the Chinese government insistence that they will be making the choices of who the successors are to reincarnating Lamas. I would bet that the Chines government has adopted the Ogden Nash rule on lamas:

The one-L lama,

He's a priest.

The two-L llama,

He's a beast.

And I would bet

A silk pajama

There isn't any

Three-L lllama.

The longer that the Occupy Wall Street protests last in places like Denver and Oakland, the more our police departments look like the Syrian military. The problem is that the occupiers have set themselves up without a graceful exit strategy, without an attainable goal where they can say that they have won, sort of like the US in Afghanistan. Hey, Goldman Sachs posted its first quarter loss, and the business section of the NY Times is full of stories of banks and businesses who are sitting on piles of cash,waiting for god knows what before they start lending and spending again. Maybe they are waiting for the Bat Signal, or Newt Gingrich to hold his breath until he turns blue, but one can't help wonder if these banks aren't in collusion with the Republican Party, willfully withholding helping to stimulate the economy as long as a Black Democrat is in office... Then, sure, I'd surely join in the nearest demonstration, as long as it wasn't in Oakland...

Moammar We Hardly Knew Ya...

2011-10-21T17:02:00.001-06:00

Ruth Marcus
Maureen Dowd

"You got to feel bad for poor Mitt Romney. He's in their plugging every week, and every week somebody gets ahead of him. The people who have led Mitt so far: Donald Trump, then Michele Bachmann, then Rick Perry, now Herman Cain. He's been led a reality show star, a crazy lady, a stuttering cowboy, and the guy who brings the pizza. That's gotta hurt a little." – Bill Maher

"Herman Cain's plan to save the economy is '9-9-9.' He keeps saying it every day like the Count on Sesame Street. Well, this week we finally found out where he got it from. Not from an economist. He got it up from the guy who works at his local Wells Fargo branch. Literally, it's like he went down to deposit checks, and the teller said, 'Can I help with anything else?' And he said, 'Yeah, can you re-write the tax code?'" – Bill Maher

"Rick Perry got the date of the American revolution wrong by two centuries. What is it with the right wing? Michele Bachmann doesn't know where the 'Shot Heard 'Round the World' took place, Sarah Palin doesn't know why Paul Revere went on his ride, Rick Perry doesn't know that 1776 happened in the 1700's. These aren't gotcha questions. I know this sounds mean about Rick Perry, but if was a child, you'd leave him behind." – Bill Maher

"This Occupy Wall Street movement is now in 1,500 places all around the world. I was at the Occupy Beverly Hills today. It's two Jews at Starbucks complaining that the scones aren't fresh, but still it's a start." – Bill Maher

with apologies to the Moody Blues:

Moammar Qaddafi's dead.

No, no, no, no, He's outside looking in.

Moammar Qaddafi's dead.

No, no, no, no, He's outside looking in.

He'll fly his US bought plane,

Set his tent up around the bay,

And lecture you the same day,

Moammar Qaddafi. Moammar Qaddafi.

Along the coast you'll hear them boast

About his compound that is filled with fear.

So raise your glass, we'll drink a toast

To the little man who tells you

now the coast is clear.

The jig was up, missiles brought him down,

Dragged by his feet firmly on the ground.

He flies so high, he swoops so low,

He knows exactly which way he's gonna go.

Moammar Qaddafi. Moammar Qaddafi.

He'll fly his US bought plane.

Set his tent up around the bay.

He'll lecture you the same day.

Moammar Qaddafi. Moammar Qaddafi.

Moammar Qaddafi.

“Ben Ali escaped, Mubarak is in jail, Qaddafi was killed. Which fate do you prefer, Ali Abdullah Saleh? You can consult with Bashar.”

Altogether, these past few years have not been kind to dictators, especially in the Middle East. It began with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Empire, and now has spread through the Middle East like a wildfire. Unfortunately, those who did not get out of the way suffered in the end. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is home to one errant dictator, and shelter of another, and they have propped up yet another dictator in Bahrain. If Yemen and Syria shed their dictatorial families, the politics of the region will have been changed forever. A test case in what to do after someone is deposed comes up this Sunday, with elections in Tunisia.

All of these protests and revolutions started out peaceful and non-violent, escalating into military action after the governments shot and killed unarmed civilians. The ultimate bloody results happened with pulling Moammar Qaddafi out of a drainage culvert, then shooting him execution style,and bringing his body back to town for viewing. (one o the secret places that Qaddafi had, was his place to watch porn. This makes me wonder if all dictators have their places to watch porn and if there's any special themes that might be commonly enjoyed between Qaddafi and bin Laden and perhaps Bashar Assaud...) Perhaps we can thank wahabism and al Qaeda for promoting their extremist views, which have only resulted in needless deaths by suicide bombers, and resentment among normal folks. Which is why the vast majority of Muslims preferred a peaceful approach to getting their message across.

I wish that life after Qaddafi and Mubarak and Ben Ali was going to be all rosy and positive, but they have left behind dysfunctional governments that may never be able to guarantee basic human rights, and their armies are sorely tempted to take over in a coup. They could easily devolve into becoming another Pakistan, and if their are enough Iranians salting the mix, end up with their share of paranoia and conspiracy fantasies.

The biggest loser in this soupy muddle are the Israelis. They could have shown more solidarity with the movements towards democracy, but that will never happen as long as the right wingers and Benjamin Netanyahu are in charge. The biggest winner is the US, and maybe France, whose role in this region is constantly changing, first you love us, then you hate us, then we invade someone until you love us again as we withdraw...

So, good-bye to an era, of colonial powers and client states, having the British deciding on the borders and which tribe would rule. Good-bye to allowing dictators to rule for years and years, and letting protests bloom if they disagree with your policies. Good-bye to religious intolerance and hello to dervish dancing and music. Good-bye to propaganda on television and hello to cellphones and the Internet. Who will design the next Facebook and Youtube for the Middle East?

Change Iran Can Believe In, The Hermanator Scam

2011-10-18T01:28:00.000-06:00

Roger Cohen
Paul Krugman

"The Occupy Wall Street protests continued in New York City. Today the protests have been going on for four weeks now. That's longer than most NBC sitcoms last." – Jimmy Kimmel

"Herman Cain has moved ahead of Mitt Romney. Can you believe that? Political analysts say this is because Americans don't understand Mormonism but they do understand pizza." – Conan O'Brien

"The Republicans had yet another debate the other night. This is their seventh one. They're apparently going to keep having these debates until Rick Perry can get one right." – Jay Leno

"The Saudi government is upset about this plot to assassinate their ambassador. As you know, Saudi Arabia condemns all acts of terrorism unless, of course, they're sponsoring them." – Jay Leno

Nothing really major happened over the weekend, unless you lived in the Phillipines or Southeast Asia, where the monsoons are even worse than last year. Both co-leaders of Iran gave lectures to the press, saying it wasn't our illustrious generals who were smoking the wacky weed; the so called assassination plot is a fiction by the Americans to divert attention away from their own economic problems. I'm trying to find something funny in that, except its probably true. Lord knows, Eric Holder is trying to divert attention away from the botched gun running activities of the DEA and Justice Dept is accused of letting continue on the border...

The more conservative leaders in Iran feel that President Ahmadinejad oftens plays the fool and presents a less than dignified portrayal of their country, and they are tired of having other world leaders laugh and make fun of them. In his speech, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei warned Ahmadinejad that Iran doesn't have to have the kind of government that has a presidency, that they can just as easily change over to a parliamentary style if he continues with his temper tantrums. This maybe the change they can believe in... So far, no reporter has been able to interview the guy who could answer most of the questions, did he come up with the plan all by himself, or did he have tutoring from some Qud generals and drug cartel informants...

With all of the focus on the high drama of the GOP candidate's debates and the collective whining of our congressmen, not much press has been given to what Barack Obama has been up to. This will change once we get into 2012 and election modes go into full swing, in a pretense to being fair and balanced. Pundits want to be the first to proclaim that it will be Mitt Romney who will be the Republican candidate, and the tea party folks will compromise and come around.

The slurs against the Mormons are beginning, and it will intensify during December and January. It's hard to come to the defense of Mormonism because yes, it really is a cult, and even the most politically correct liberal have a hard time generating enough indignant energy.

The stories of Herman Cain giving himself money from his campaign coffers is beginning to be reported, so it seems that I was justified in claiming that Mr Cain is out to scam the public. Donate your money, buy his book, and help this man secure his retirement, so he can fade from view just like Ross Perot did. But it sure beats trying to make a living as an inspirational speaker, entitled The Hermanator Experience...

Herman Cain Wuz Scammed, Rick Perry Scams Us, Those Naive Qud Generals

2011-10-15T23:02:00.000-06:00

Bruce Riedel
Paul Krugman

"One of the guys accused of organizing the Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador is a used car salesman from Texas. Just when you thought terrorists couldn't get any lower." – Jay Leno

"Rick Perry's advisers said he prepared for the last debate by getting a lot more sleep. Apparently, he did it during the debate." – Jay Leno

"At one point, Rick Aantorum was interrupted by a gay heckler. But then Michele Bachmann told her husband, 'Just shut up and sit down.'" – Jay Leno

Surprise surprise! The big swinging dicks of Wall Street may think that the protesters are lazy, naive hippies, but today there were Occupy Wall Street protests in over 900 cities world-wide. Commerce may be the lifeblood of our civilization, but ripping people off is not...

In the aftermath of the US revelations about the Iranian assassination screw-up, those pundits with vast knowledge of the professional ways of the Quds Force branch of the Revolutionary Guards all say that it just doesn't sound like how they would conduct business. Even the Ayatollah Khamenei dismisses it as so much American fantasy... But, let's be honest, the Revolutionary Guard is like most armies that haven't fought a battle in over 30 years, over-hyped and more interested in commerce and the easy intimidation of Iranian citizens and Iraqi nationals.

For a country whose top leaders don't get out much, and Mr Khamenei hasn't traveled much outside of his housing compound since 1979, they tend to rely more on the CNN headlines to tell them how the world works, and their viewpoint is flat and two-dimensional. When this naive type of person watches al Jazeera and sees coverage of Mexican drug cartels murdering people in great batches at a time, it's easy to assume that the enemy of your enemy could be hired to be your friend. And just as easy to believe that the cousin of a great Quds general is also a great person, not some poor used car salesman barely scraping by, dreaming of any kind of score involving easy money... If the cursed Israelis and Americans can kill off our scientists on our soil, it makes perfect sense to kill some of theirs on their own soil. And if the American President can have a hit list that justifies killing, why can't the leaders of every other nation have one, too?

Herman Cain got scammed, and he's just now figuring it out. Turns out that his much touted 9-9-9 economic plan was lifted from the 2003 edition of SimCity. Turns out that Mr Cain doesn't do any fact checking before putting it on his website, and in interviews he has said that his economic advisors are two guys that he has to keep secret, and one guy that works in a branch office of a Ohio Wells Fargo... Either his secret advisors are Beavis and Butthead, and they are snickering at the tube every time he mentions 9-9-9, or Mr Herman Cain is also scamming the American people. After all, he has taken a page from Sarah Palin's playbook and gone on booktour...

Rick Perry unveiled his solution to the jobs problem on Friday, and it proved to be a huge dud. Not only wasn't it original, but he copied from an industry report endorsed by the American Petroleum Institute. Mr Perry pretty much proves that he wasn't that great of a student... Basically, he wants to open up all Federal land to oil and natural gas exploration. It would mean more profit for the oil companies, and not much money to us for the oil leases; critics have said that it would not add any more jobs unless you are an unemployed geologist...

I figure that the reason most extreme conservatives are so dumb, is because its too difficult to both think while keeping their anuses puckered so tight...

Iranian Plots Again...

2011-10-13T14:32:00.000-06:00

Kenneth Pollack
David Ignatius
Pepe Escobar

"The Occupy Wall Street protesters gathered outside Rupert Murdoch's house chanting, 'What do we want?' Murdoch interrupted saying, 'I already know, I hacked your phones.'" – Craig Ferguson

"Sarah Palin gave a speech in South Korea. Just what the Koreans needed: Two crazy dictators in fashionable lady's glasses." – Conan O'Brien

"Herman Cain was in 2nd place in most of the national polls, behind Mitt Romney. Apparently his message of 'less government, more toppings' has been well received." – Jimmy Kimmel

The hawks among us are demanding a response to the Iranian plot to kill the Saudi ambassador on our soil. Dick Cheney must be drooling right now, wishing that he and his cronies were back in power, they'd show the world who was boss... The more tolerant are scratching their heads, wondering how such a professional group as the Quds could fall for such a lame operation. Well, people wondered at the stupidity of invading Iraq on the basis of a son trying to prove he has larger cojones than his wimpy father, but we went along. Do we invade Iran on just as flimsy evidence? If anything, we should let Texas secede from the Union, based on the dreams of a used car salesman thinking he had made his big score... Or make it a law to not allow anyone from Texas seeking national office, because the summer heat warps their brains and causes them to do irrational things... The problem with extremist behavior is that it appears so irrational and unbelievable to saner and more moderate people, it seems improbable that anyone would come up with such a dangerous plot, much less act it out. But to fanatical Iranians, what does it matter sacrificing a few hundred Iraqis, or Syrians, or Lebanese, or Palestinians, or American infidels, if it means promoting the Shiite cause?

The one scary aspect of this story that has been down-played, is what might happen if the South American drug cartels hooked up with regimes such as Iran or Afghanistan, forming a truly global drug trade. There already have been attempts to unload cocaine in Africa, and develop a route to smuggle it up to Europe and Russia. If Iran goes into wholesale drug smuggling, they may become the principal trading partner with Afghanistan after the US leaves, and they are also trying to develop economic markets for their goods in South America. We can only guess what a mess would be created if we decriminalized all drugs and not make them as profitable...

Rick Perry's Bad Back Makes Him Dumb, Iranian - Houston Terror Plot, Gilad Shalit To Be Released

2011-10-13T02:11:00.000-06:00

Dana Milbank
Thomas Friedman

"YouTube has launched a politics channel so that people can easily find videos of the presidential candidates. Today they posted their first video, 'Cat Winning a Debate Against Michele Bachmann.'" " – Jimmy Fallon

"Under Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan, everything would be taxed at 9 percent. Now, Rick Santorum says he has a better tax plan called 0-0-0. Oh, sorry, that's his chances of becoming president." – Jay Leno

"California had its first medical marijuana job fair. Over 2 million people meant to show up." – Conan O'Brien

Two days after I postulated that Rick Perry was under the influence of muscle-relaxers or reds during the Florida debate, his campaign said that he was suffering from back pain. So, I called it right. But, at last night's debate in New Hampshire, what was Rick Perry's excuse? We need to have all of our candidates and our elected officials disclose all of the drugs they take by prescription. It has a lot to do with how well they can function, and I don't want my congressperson nodding out or not comprehending proposed legislation.... It's bad enough most of them are dumber than stumps, and mix in something potentially addictive, and you get a Rick Perry...

And it's not just some good ol' boy from Texas that we have to worry about, it can also be some foreign born used car salesman from Houston that jumps to the front of the news... Our story begins with a couple of minor members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, sitting around and getting high, either on the locally grown marijuana, Somalian khat, or Afghani opium. They begin riffing on what kind of ways they could get back at the US and Israel for the computer virus and assassination of a nuclear scientist, and one guy says that he has a cousin who lives in America, why don't we get him to blow up the Israeli Embassy in Washington, maybe a few Saudi embassies in other countries thrown in. Yeah, why don't I give my cousin Mansour a call, what can it hurt?

An alternative theory is that this scenario was planned, or at least approved by the head Ayatollah Khamenei himself, proving that he never was the smartest student and his mental powers have devolved into something that resembles Alzheimer's, whatever you would call it in Farsi...

But wait, the weird part begins when the used car salesman suggests to hire a Mexican cartel to do this for us, and in return we can sell them huge amounts of heroin from Afghanistan. The opium growers increased their plantings of poppies this year in anticipation... Mansour asked around, and was soon introduced to a man who was connected to the Zeta cartel in Mexico, except that he was really an informant for the Feds... The deal supposedly solidified that the Zetas would assassinate the Saudi ambassador to the US at some restaurant near the embassy, hopefully getting a few US Senators in the process.

If the whole thing sounds amateurish, that's because it is. But the used car salesman was able to go back to Iran and have his cousin wire the informant $100,000 as a down payment on a $1.5 million fee. Mansour then flew to Mexico City, but Mexico refused him entry, put him on a commercial flight back home with a stop in New York City, where he was arrested. As Hillary Clinton put it:

"The idea that they would go to a Mexican drug cartel to solicit murder-for-hire to kill the Saudi ambassador, nobody could make that up, right?

This story will only get more bizarre over the next few days as Iran tries to disavow how dumb their professional soldiers really are, and the embarrassment of being caught out in public. Of course, if they had pulled it off, the Ayatollah Khamenei would be the new sweetback, singing his badass song in the Middle East, with the ghost of bin Laden passing him the terror torch...

Don't get your hopes up too high... Hamas and Israel have come to an agreement to get Gilad Shalit released from jail, where he has been kept by Hamas since 2006. The Israeli Prime Minister said that he should be home within a few days, but here is where there could be a snag. Israel will release 1,027 people from prison in exchange for Mr Shalit, and there was celebration in Gaza over so many of their children coming home. Ever since he was captured, Mr Shalit's family has staged public demonstrations and press conferences to put pressure on the Israeli government to try and negotiate his release, at one point over 10,000 Israelis joined them on a march from the Shalit's home in northern Israel to Jerusalem.

This is just the latest in the public relation wars between Hamas and Fatah for the hearts and minds of the citizens of Gaza. Both groups are trying to appear to be doing the most for their people, Fatah making an application for UN recognition, and Hamas with the release of Gilad Shalit. If they really wanted to resolve this strange pissing match, why don't they hold election? After all, elections should have been held three years ago, and neither parties want to hold another one in case they get voted out. Sure, will anybody believe that Hamas would peacefully leave Gaza if they lost an election? Even in these days of change in the Middle East?

Greenspan Hearts Bush Tax Cuts, Perry's Policy Speech, Ms Warren Causes A Stir

2011-10-10T13:22:00.000-06:00

Paul Krugman

According to a report released this morning, the recession is officially over. Feel any better? Most household incomes have not increased, many have actually shrunk. Also, over 50% of those who have applied for a refinanced mortgage have been denied by the banks...

The solid GOP facade on the economy is beginning to crack, with a freshman congressman complaining in public about Grover Nordquist and his peer pressure, making everyone sign a pledge against "no new taxes." By now everyone and their second cousin knows that tax breaks have nothing to do with creating jobs. Nordquist has formed an anti-tax mafia that has translated into blocking legislation for improved medical benefits for veterans who have lost a limb, and definitely against any new stimulus. Many states, including Texas, used the last stimulus to balance their budgets, then turn around and say how little good it did them. Unfortunately for them, this year and the next will be harder for them to balance their budgets, what will trickle down will be bad news for the local economies. Our city is planning on laying off 9 more police officers and more firemen, and not filling 37 vacant positions in city government. Oh, it looks even worse in Rick Perry's Texas, people may have no choice but to homeschool their kids, after the local school districts fold... The good news is that they can always turn the buildings into meth labs to help stimulate the local economies, like on Breaking Bad...

The current field of GOP candidates all have vague theories of policy while offering nothing concrete. Rick Perry maybe leaping to the forefront by announcing he will give a policy speech this coming Friday, with some ideas on solving the job problem. We have a week to guess whether he will deliver the goods, or relegate another attack on Mit Romney through a proxy. Lord knows he needs to generate some positive press, instead of the religious intolerant, racist, and bad debater images that have been plaguing him for the past two weeks. His handlers have been practicing debating with him, getting him to stick to the vague, scripted answers like the other candidates give. And, they are claiming that during the last debate, Rick suffered from lack of sleep, it certainly wasn't anything like muscle relaxers or anti-depressants that made him appear so out of it...

Back to the GOP economists, or, in Herman Cain's 9-9-9 plan, the lack of one... Even Alan Greenspan has made a public statement that he was wrong about the free market approach to the economy. Lately, he has even said that it is important to let the Bush tax cuts expire:

“If we do not get Simpson Bowles as a fallback,” Greenspan told CNBC, referring to a large-scale deficit reduction program proposed by the co-chairs of President Barack Obama’s fiscal commission, “I stand with allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire. You could do it gradually, whatever. But if we think we have this luxury of waiting for a couple of years with a little stimulus now and then later tightening up. I hope the bond markets are listening.”

“What’s driving the United States at the moment to a very large extent is Europe. You can’t understand the United States at all, I think, unless you know what’s going on in Europe.”

The Loneliest Woman in Europe, Angela Merkel, has announced that Germany and France are just about to sign a plan to rescue the rest of Europe, and hopefully, pull the economies of Greece, Spain, and Portugal out of the tank. In response, the stock market rose a few points. No telling what may happen if Europe no longer allows high speed trading by computer for large dollar amounts. A computer can issue over 1000 trade slips per second. Shady profiteers issue tens of thousands at a time, hoping to affect the price of certain stocks, then they cancel the most of the trades before they legally have to pay for them. This goes on all day, every day, and a lot of money can be made, or lost. Practices like this are what is being protested on Wall Street...

The last crack came in the form of a video, showing candidate Elizabeth Warren, that dreaded consumer advocate, making a common sense argument for rich folks to pay their taxes and stop their bitching, from EJ Dionne's column in the Washington Post: "The declaration heard ’round the Internet world came from Elizabeth Warren, the consumer champion running for the U.S. Senate in Massachusetts. Warren argued that “there is nobody in this country who got rich on his own,” that thriving entrepreneurs move their goods “on the roads the rest of us paid for” and hire workers “the rest of us paid to educate.” Police and firefighters, also paid for by “the rest of us,” protect the factory owner’s property. As a result, our “underlying social contract” requires this hardworking but fortunate soul to “take a hunk” of his profits “and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

Who knows what will happen this week, but it looks like the balance is tilting in favor of President Obama's modest proposals, and they might actually be passed by Congress. Again, government cannot create jobs in the private sector, all it can do is to hire federal employees or fund public projects that can be hired locally. The closest it gets to stimulating private businesses, is through the small business administration, but they used to have a $50,000 cap on their loans, so not much will be generated that way... Now I'm wondering if Rick Perry has decided that the best we can do is to pray away the depression...

Wall Street, Herman Cain In Lead, My Father's Premature Death

2011-10-07T01:43:00.000-06:00

Kathleen Parker
Nicholas Kristoff

"Big changes in the Republican field. It's a 10-way tie for Not Romney." – Stephen Colbert

"Sarah Palin announced she’s not running. Finally, a Palin who pulls out before it’s too late." – Jay Leno

David Letterman's "Top Ten Ways Rick Perry Plans To Spend $17 Million"

10. Death row taco bar
9. Two words: Alberto VO5
8. Hire staff to write some more great zingers like this . . .
7. Always wanted to see Branson
6. Spend a weekend at his hunting lodge with Hank Williams, Jr.
5. $8.5 million on campaign buttons; $8.5 million on bumper stickers
4. Health care for all Texans . . . I'm totally messing with you
3. Shut up or he'll execute you
2. Get a fabulous makeover from Michele O'Bachmann's husband
1. Buy lunch for Chris Christie

I was wondering how the spirit from the Arab Spring would manifest in the US, and the anti-corporate greed demonstrations on Wall Street and in other cities seem to be it. If nothing else, it lets us old farts know that the younger generation hasn't all gone bankrupt and has some morals... Interesting that the most common way that the repressive regimes in Syria, Yemen, China, and New York all respond with violence to their unarmed citizens camping out on the streets. If the protests were to happen in places like Ohio, Georgia, or South Carolina, the state legislatures would already be drafting legislation making such protests a violation against our capitalist way of life, and punishable by time in jail, a treasonable offense similar to what was passed in Russia, Georgia, Iran, and Tunisia...

Does anyone expect that the CEO's of Wall Street will break down and agree to stop their predatory habits, or to stop lobbying against the changes that are supposed to make their industry more transparent and honest? Not since they are back making huge salaries. But since they are intertwined with what is going on in Europe right now, there is a good chance that if Europe falls back into a continent wide recession, then so will the US economy, and people will be less comfortable with a CEO making over $26 million that year...

Is anyone surprised that Sarah Palin officially has said that she is not running for President? She has been making more than enough money with her books, reality television show, speaking fees, and being a pundit on FOX News, she doesn't want to start spending lots of money and going through the grind of raising enough money that a national election would entail. Plus, she really is crazier-than-batshit, a mean and vindictive person who would abuse the position of President to get back at all of her detractors, real and imagined... What is surprising is that Herman Cain is currently leading in the polls. He's taking a page from Sarah's playbook, to stop campaigning and go on a book tour for a month, try and make some more personal money to refurbish what he's had to lay out so far. Herman may be forced out of the running if the public finds out how much of a temper he has. So far, he's been able to deflect answering uncomfortable questions by saying well, we have differences of opinions, so let's move on... Don't ask embarrassing things like who are the economists that came up with his 9-9-9 flat tax scheme (hint, turn those nines over into sixes) or why he won't disclose their names, so let's move on... Once he starts being called on the outrageous claims he makes as the Black Walnut, he will be seen as the fringe candidate he really is, wackier than Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann combined...

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health went through the data for all 1,802,029 Medicare recipients who were 65 and older, who died in 2008. They found that an alarming number, one in three, people had surgery during the last year of their lives. One in five had surgery during their last month of life, and one in ten had surgery during their last week of life.

The implication here is that our nation is filled with greedy surgeons who perform unnecessary surgeries, knowing that their patients may die instead of recover from those surgeries? All for the sake of the Medicare fees? The researchers were shocked at the amount of surgeries they found, nobody asked why there hasn't been any earlier looking at surgical data or any oversight by Medicare itself. Hopefully, some kind of change will come from this, but I won't hold my breath.

My father was one of those people who had surgery and died within the week afterwards. He had last stage COPD, but had survived a couple of years longer than they thought he would. His doctor referred him to a surgeon, who said that he might be able to fix it so he could breathe better, and it was considered as a minor form of surgery, he would walk out within a couple hours afterwards. Unfortunately, their are more patients who don't survive the anesthesia than the surgery itself, my father didn't regain consciousness until sometime the next afternoon.

My father was kept in intensive care for three days afterwards, then two more days on a regular ward. I wanted my father transferred to a nursing home, but my younger brother said that he could take care of him better, because all my father wanted was to go home. Unfortunately, my brother, who is sociopath, won out and took my father home with him. My father died ten hours after he was released.

Needless to say, I'm still angry over my father's death. I'm angry at his regular physician, who seemed to not cared whether he lived or died once he was diagnosed with COPD. I'm angry at the surgeon who convinced my father that surgery would be beneficial to him, instead of leaving him alone and letting him live for another few months or couple years more. I'm angry at the anesthesiologist, who didn't seem to take my father's state of health into consideration when he administered his drugs. I'm angry at the doctors in the hospital who released my father prematurely. And I'm angry at my younger brother, who has been involved with the deaths of my mother and our youngest brother, as well as making threats towards myself... As the woman at the mortuary told me, it's far too easy to commit murder and get away with it in the state of California...

All Watched Over By Drones Of Loving Grace

2011-10-03T17:49:00.000-06:00

Paul Krugman
Christopher Dickey

Science fiction has long become a recognized and accepted form of popular literature, a genre long mined for television and the movies. Part of science fiction is devoted to predicting how our society will evolve in the future, from Jules Verne predicting the submarine, to Robert Heinlein predicting the use of LSD. Now its our turn to make predictions, with the rampant use of the drone in warfare.

Drones have recently been used wherever the CIA has been operating with mercenaries, in Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, firing missiles at those we deem to be enemies, kiss al Qaeda goodbye... Unfortunately, the missiles aren't always as accurate as we'd like, so there also has been more innocent civilians killed s collateral damage than targeted individuals. But the drone program has been counted as so successful that the Air Force is currently training more men to command drones by remote control than it is training pilots for fighter jets...

Domestically, drones have been used to patrol the border between the US and Mexico, to monitor the sea lanes into the US, and to look for refugees fleeing from Haiti and Cuba. The Department of Homeland Security currently uses four bases to launch and use their drones: Riverside, California; Sierra Vista, Arizona; Grand Forks, North Dakota; and Cape Canaveral, Florida. By expanding the use of drones, and coupling them with satellite imagery, soon we will have the entire globe under surveillance. Hook that information up to the cameras set up at every stoplight in every city, and the types of databases that can be accessed by our police and intelligence services, I would like to formally welcome you to A Brave New World, run by a New World Order. Oh, it's so much more than an episode of NCIS: LA. And it all happened while we were distracted by 9/11 and the economic crisis. Once these information controls are firmly in place, will the man behind the curtain reveal himself, or will we be forced to continue making silly conjectures about antichrists, raptures, and the return of our savior/and or the return of the mahdi? At least the Buddha never made those kind of claims, unless you believe in reincarnation and the Chinese government picking the next Dalai Lama... Recently, a couple of men were arrested for buying some of the larger remote-controlled toy planes (they actually are pretty sophisticated, that you can't really describe them as toys anymore), and trying to fit them with explosives for a terrorist act.

Ultimately, we will know that drones and their ilk have truly been integrated into our society, when we develop commercial uses for them, and put shows about them on television. Action shows such as Hawaii Drone-O, or Predator, Rise of the Drones, or comedies like Two and a Half Hellfire Missiles... With the ardent need for gamers to run the new military and security programs, we may soon see recruiters stalking the halls of the junior high schools, paving the way to lower the age for drinking, driving, and the use of recreational drugs, putting the coca back into coca cola...

Death Of Anwar, Rick Perry Should Resign

2011-09-30T13:11:00.000-06:00

Paul Krugman

"You gotta love Sarah Palin. She is now on her website asking her idiot fan base for donations for her to help make a decision about whether or not to run. She wants money now for just thinking? What a grifter." – Bill Maher

"President Obama and Bill Clinton played golf together. You know what you’d get if you crossed Obama and Clinton? Tiger Woods." – Jay Leno

"Pakistan warned the United States to stop the rhetoric against their country or 'they will lose an ally.' Pakistan could become an enemy harboring terrorists – as opposed to an ally harboring terrorists." – Jay Leno

Well, time to celebrate at the CIA and the Pentagon, as it has been confirmed that a Hellfire missile, fired from a drone in Yemen, has taken out Anwar al-Awlaki, the American citizen who was placed on the President's kill list. His crime? Making videos lecturing about how evil the US war in Iraq and Afghanistan was, aimed at English speaking Muslims: "Mr. Awlaki was a leader of Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, regarded as the most dangerous Al Qaeda affiliate. He was considered the inspirational or operational force behind a number of major plots aimed at killing Americans in the United States in recent years, most notably the deadly assault at an American army base in Fort Hood, Texas, and attempts to bomb Times Square and a Detroit-bound jetliner.

“The death of Awlaki is a major blow to Al Qaeda’s most active operational affiliate,” President Obama said"

The only problem is that there has never been any proof that Mr Awlaki was behind any of the plots attributed to the al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, it was all guesswork and conjecture by the CIA. But, whenever spokesman has talked about him, they have tried to link Awlaki to these events in the public mind, much the same way that Republicans are trying to link Obama with everything bad going on in our economy...

Anwar al Awlaki was a moderate speaking Muslim until 2004, when he moved to Yemen. What event occurred that turned Awlaki vehemently against his native country? He was detained in a Yemeni prison and interrogated by the CIA, then released. If my balls were hooked up to a car battery while I was being asked questions, it might leave me with some emotional scars, and maybe a few resentments towards the US intelligence community. I don't even trust my local police, and I've seen what kind of yahoos we had roaming around Asia; I doubt if the current crop of mercenaries are any better... Even in the middle of his being demonized, he sought to return to the US with his wife and children, and was willing to do some penance for his perceived crimes. Now, it doesn't matter, as he has fallen to the paranoid patriotic fantasies that right wing crazies so often have and shout about... Perhaps its time for Mr Obama to make the rest of his official hit list available to us, just so we can see which American citizen will be next... As Glenn Greenwald said in Salon: "Just think about this for a minute. Barack Obama, like George Bush before him, has claimed the authority to order American citizens murdered based solely on the unverified, uncharged, unchecked claim that they are associated with Terrorism and pose "a continuing and imminent threat to U.S. persons and interests." They're entitled to no charges, no trial, no ability to contest the accusations."

David Letterman's Top Ten Signs The Rick Perry Campaign Is In Trouble

10. Lost support from both whack jobs and nut jobs
9. At debates, he mostly goes with, 'That's what she said'
8. Downgraded from campaign bus to cheaper campaign Vespa scooter
7. He's too mitty for Newt supporters, too newty for Mitt supporters
6. His new slogan: 'C'mon!'
5. Advisers are thinking of replacing him with Luke Perry
4. Just went hiking on the border of Iraq and Iran
3. Even his wife is wearing a 'Herman Cain' button
2. Instead of 'Freedom' and 'Liberty,' his cowboy boots read 'It's' and 'Over'
1. Even Michele O'Bachmann thinks he's nuts

"If you're keeping score at home, they have now applauded executions at the Republican debate, they have cheered letting an uninsured man die, and they booed an active duty U.S. serviceman for being gay. I don’t know how you get to the right with this crowd but Ron Paul’s new campaign ad is just the Rodney King beating to the sound of children laughing." – Bill Maher

"Rick Perry did look dumb. I'm beginning to think that “Texas Miracle” was him getting out of high school." –Bill Maher

We still have a couple of weeks before the next Republican Candidate's Debate, maybe Rick Perry will get his beauty rest beforehand, and not sound so much like a drunken Sarah Palin. Or maybe its too much to ask for Rick to come out and play nice with the big boys. Or maybe Mit Romney is paying him big bucks to stand next to him and make him look good in comparison, the Great White Hopeful...

You'd think that with Rick Perry's wife being a nurse, that they'd have more sensitivity to health issues facing the citizens of Texas, or at least a sensitivity that goes beyond the well being of twelve year old girls. One in four Texans doesn't have any medical insurance, with more and more losing theirs, thanks to the recent fiddling with Medicare the state legislature performed.

My nephew drives an ambulance, and was called to a nursing home recently, to remove an 88 year old woman who had lost her Medicare benefits somehow. She had no-one to advocate or explore the situation for her, and the state was no longer paying for her nursing care, so the home wanted her put out on the street, then have the local sheriffs arrest her for fraud.

Except that the sheriffs refused to arrest an 88 year old woman, and my nephew refused to remove her. He then scoured the phonebook until he found another rest home that would accept the woman, and only then did he remove her from the evil rest home and transport her to the other. He said that he would have taken her in at his own home, if he had too. So, thank to Rick Perry and the great state of Texas, for their un-Christian-like behavior towards the elderly. Maybe that's their solution to the population problem, let the older folks die on the street. Sarah Palin let a lot of Native Alaskans die from cold and hunger the winter before she quit being Governor of Alaska; it wasn't Troopergate alone that made her quit... Too bad its been the right wing crazies that have gone out and assassinated politicians, because something really has to be done about the mess that Perry has created in Texas. It looks like the price of compassion is one Presidential election campaign...

Twelve More Years Of Putin, There's a Punchline, Somewhere, Florida Straw Poll Where I Rip Off the St Petersberg Times

2011-09-26T22:40:00.001-06:00

Matthew Sutton

The big news out of Russia, is the happy announcement that Vladimir Putin has decided that he will become the next Russian President again, and will appoint Dmitri Medvedev as Prime Minister. Since the tenure of President has been changed from four to six years, that means that Putin will be in charge for the next twelve years, until 2024... This officially means to the Russian people that all hope has disappeared. At least with Medvedev, he gave voice to the reforms he would make, too bad they were empty promises... To be honest, I can't think of any other industries that Putin needs to own or acquire as President, so it must be for his ego, strange and twisted as it is. Of course, their still has to be an election. What if nobody showed up to vote? Would they still go ahead with an Iranian solution? Interesting to see what BS he would come up with, eh?

Maybe he has a hit list like the Obama administration, and won't rest until they're all either in prison or have been assassinated... In that spirit, I offer some of the Putin jokes that have been making the rounds:

1) A Russian spy critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin was radioactively poisoned in a sushi restaurant. In a remarkable death-bed letter the spy accused Putin of killing him. Police recently uncovered the spy's Zagat survey form where he complained about the restaurant's "lack of ambiance" and warned diners to "stay away from the Polonium-210 Roll."
Putin maintained that there is no evidence that Alexander Litvinenko died a "violent death." He repeated his call for all Russians to get an annual radioactive flu shot and not to disagree with him in order to prevent further deaths.

2) ― Have you heard, Putin ordered the government to stop the inflation.
― Well, not exactly, he ordered to have it held back...and jailed.
(It is a pun: Russian zadierzhat means both to hold back and to detain.)

3) Stalin's ghost appears to Putin in a dream, and Putin asks for his help running the country. Stalin says,
"Round up and shoot all the democrats, and then paint the inside of the Kremlin blue."
"Why blue?" Putin asks.
"Ha!" says Stalin. "I knew you wouldn't ask me about the first part."

4) Vladimir Putin and Dmitri Medvedev go out to a nice restaurant. The waiter approaches them and asks what they would like to eat.
"I'll have the meat." says Putin.
"Very good sir," said the waiter. "And for the vegetable?"
"He'll have the meat, too"

After the last Republican debate in Florida, there was a straw poll, which has absolutely no meaning or validity of any kind. Herman Cain won that one, and he has been gloating all afternoon. But the folks at the St Petersberg Times want you to know that the Florida straw poll does have meaning and the lessons learned were enumerated by their columnist Adam Smith - Here are 10 things we learned about the Republican Party and its field of presidential candidates:

1. The idea of Rick Perry is a lot stronger than the reality of Rick Perry.

Republicans eager for a principled, proven conservative as an alternative to Mitt Romney hoped the Texas governor would roar to the front as a forceful contrast to President Barack Obama in the general election. Instead, they saw a halting and unsteady debater who looked over his head. Florida killed his front-runner status.

2. Conservatives are as hungry as ever for a Romney alternative.

No question Herman Cain wowed voters in the Presidency 5 straw poll, but many of his backers have no expectation he will win the GOP nomination. It was a particularly conservative part of the Republican electorate voting Saturday and it sent a thunderous message of rejection to the front-runners. Romney has been campaigning in Florida for at least five years and still finished third.

3. Electability matters. Debates matter.

Even in the tea party era where conservative purism is prized, Republicans are determined to beat Obama. Throughout the Orange County Convention Center, formerly enthusiastic Perry supporters backed away, saying his debate performance left them uneasy about his ability to take on the president. While debates are dominated by talking points and rehearsed one-liners, they've also been drawing big ratings. And in Perry's case, Thursday's debate proved how they can make or break a campaign.

4. Voters demand specifics.

In this economy it's not enough to just attack Obama, offer vague promises or, as Perry did, say he'll eventually deliver an economic plan for the country. One of the things many delegates said they liked about Cain was his relentless focus on his "9-9-9" plan: 9 percent national sales tax, 9 percent flat business tax and 9 percent flat personal income tax.

5. It's too late for another viable candidate.

Despite the chatter about New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie jumping into the race, Perry showed how hard it is to mount a serious campaign just four months before the voting starts. Courting major fund-raisers, developing a platform, preparing for debates and actual campaigning are extremely tough to do with so little time.

6. Perry made Romney a better candidate.

Forced by Perry's momentum to abandon his play-it-safe, inevitable nominee approach, Romney, right, is looking less like an automaton and more like a tough fighter.

7. Illegal immigration is toxic among Republican primary voters.

Not so long ago, then-Gov. Jeb Bush supported driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants and then-state Rep. Marco Rubio supported a bill to give tuition assistance to children of illegal immigrants without causing a firestorm. Those days are gone. Romney, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum bludgeoned Perry for supporting in-state tuition for children of illegal immigrants in Texas.

8. Michele Bachmann is no longer relevant.

Less than 2 percent of the straw poll voters supported the Minnesota congresswoman, right, who used to be the darling of tea party activists.

9. Republicans are energized.

They may be ambivalent about the top contenders in the race, but the Presidency 5 event left no doubt that the activist base of the party is fired up and passionate about making Obama a one-term president. He is the greatest unifying force Republicans have had in years.

10. Florida matters.

Three times the winner of the state party's straw poll has gone on to win the nomination. Cain will likely break that streak, but Florida demonstrated once again what an unpredictable and important political battleground it is. Cain may still be a long shot for the nomination, but the straw poll inflicted major damage to Perry, who campaigned harder than anyone.

Adam C. Smith can be reached at asmith@sptimes.com.

[

The Two Mahmouds, US Boring Protests, Ted Haggard To Swap With Gary Busey

2011-09-22T17:07:00.000-06:00

Ehud Olmert
Nicholas Kristoff
Dana Milbank

"Congress' approval rating has dropped to 12 percent. The other 88 percent are withholding judgment until Congress actually does something." – Jay Leno

"World leaders are here for the U.N. General Assembly. Today Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad went up to Central Park and arrested hikers. The Italian Prime Minister is also here. So good luck getting a hooker." – David Letterman

"Nobody likes hiking more than I do, but it seems to me that if you have an atlas, you can find many places to go hiking – that aren't Iraq or Korea." – David Letterman

"All the world leaders at the United Nations agree on one thing: Superman has got to do more." – David Letterman

David Letterman's "Top Ten Items On The United Nations General Assembly Agenda"

10. Screw with the Swedes
9. Recap highlights from last night's 'Two and a Half Men'
8. Goodbye, Euro. Hello, Chuck E. Cheese tokens
7. Pass resolution that Steve Carell 'was robbed' at the Emmys
6. Gently break it to the Russians that they've been writing their Rs backwards all these years
5. Finally nail down which one's Uruguay and which one's Paraguay
4. Pitch sitcom about Greece and United States called 'Two Broke Countries'
3. Do whatever China says
2. Congratulate whatever country came up with the 'Girl With the Dragon Tattoo' books, because those were awesome
1. Debate whether to renew the Letterman fatwa

Two things that happen every year that are as predictable as a tsunami hitting Japan: South Korean students rioting and the US walking out of Ahmadinejad's speech at the UN. Unfortunately, he mixes up crazy theories with the good ones, from the NY Times: "Iran’s president delivered a bombastic anti-Western tirade at his General Assembly speech on Thursday, blaming the United States, Israel and Europe for the global recession and a litany of other ills. The speech provoked what has become a ritual large-scale walkout of delegations led by the United States.

The president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, said poverty, homelessness and denial of basic rights were traceable to “greed for materialism in the United States and Europe.” The US and Europe, just about any country that had investments with AIG or Goldman Sachs, pretty much is responsible for the global recession. Poverty, homelessness, and denial of basic rights can be attributed to "greed for materialism." In Iran, poverty, homelessness, and denial of basic rights can be traced to conservative clerics and the Republican Guards... The American delegation and their friends showed how unimaginative they are by walking out. they could have stayed and thrown their shoes. They could have snuck up on Ahmadinejad and given him a cream pie in the face. They could have brought their boomboxes and blasted Aerosmith and Van Halen over and over again... if it was good enough to torture Noriega, it's good enough for Iran.

Someone needs to sponsor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Benjamin Netanyahu, take them to Disneyland. Let them ride together on a few rollercoasters and other rides, next thing you know they are BFF's, buying each other hot dogs and cotton candy. We could also invite the loneliest man in the Middle East, Mahmoud Abbas, to make it an axis of evil... Disneyland is the one thing that all lost little boys and dictators yearn for, from Kruschev on through Qaddafi. In fact, that is probably where the US went wrong in the Palestinian peace process; we didn't offer to hold the talks at Disneyland. Now it is too late, and those grumpy old men are going to try and embarrass us in front of the rest of the world by asking to be recognized as a state, which should have been done in 1948...

Tonight is yet another Republican debate, this time its broadcast from Florida. In addition to gang-jumping on Willard Romney, they will announce that Meg Whitman will take over as CEO at Hewlett-Packard. The decision proves how dysfunctional the HP board of directors really is, because Meg won't do much better than Carly Fiorina did, it's some weird game of one-upmanship among the West Coast conservatives... Hoping to dilute both Rick Perry's and Michele Bachmann's appeal, Mr Romney suggested that it would be exciting if Sarah Palin joined the race. He figures that he'd have a better chance against her, with two books out now that are critical of her career and family. I'm sure that someone is writing something about Rick and Michele, but so far the hit pieces have all been shorter, magazine length articles. I guess their lives aren't long and eventful enough for a book yet... I enjoy these debates because you never know what Ron Paul is going to say, too bad we couldn't add his son as an honorary debater... The debates need to add Louisiana's Buddy Roehmer, who also is a candidate, and maybe those 13 other Texans that filed their papers as candidates, whoever they are...

I still can't believe this is true: our own Ted Haggard is filming a reality television session of Wife Swap, with Gary Busey, as reported in Reuters: "Disgraced pastor Ted Haggard and actor Gary Busey will trade partners in an upcoming episode of "Celebrity Wife Swap," a spokeswoman for the show said on Thursday.

Haggard's participation in the episode comes five years after a stunning fall from grace for the former president of the National Association of Evangelicals. He was exiled from the Colorado-based New Life mega-church he founded after admitting "sexual immorality" and buying methamphetamines from a male masseur.

The air date for the episode on ABC starring Haggard and Busey has not been determined, but the two men will swap partners, said Brooke Fisher, a spokeswoman for the show.

Haggard's wife Gayle has written a book about her husband's gay sex scandal titled "Why I Stayed." Busey's longtime girlfriend is actress Steffanie Sampson, and while the two are not married they have a son together who was born last year.

Busey is best known for starring in 1978 film "The Buddy Holly Story" and he also recently had a recurring role on the HBO television show "Entourage." Apparently, Mr Busey is also a lay pastor with Promise Keepers, so the show felt that they were evenly matched on the spiritual level, if not the craziness dept. Comments to the article mainly asked why Mr Haggard's wife stays with him since he seems to hate her so... Anyway, this will certainly piss of the super conservative evangelists here in town; I know that my local paper has already written a couple of opinion pieces against it and published a score of mean spirited letters. As they say, it's must see TV...

Back to Iran, at least they finally released those stupid hikers, after receiving a million dollars in ransom. They were flown to Oman, where their friends and family were waiting. I wonder how much of the proceeds from the book they will write will go to the government of Oman as payback? Someone in our state department owes them, bigtime.

Pakistan Wins In Suicide Bomb Race, Euro Bank Failures, UN Meeting This Friday!

2011-09-20T00:44:00.000-06:00

Dana Milbank
Paul Krugman

"At the cusp of the 2012 race, we have a classic cultural collision between a skinny Eastern egghead lawyer who’s inept in Washington gunfights and a pistol-totin’, lethal-injectin’, square-shouldered cowboy who has no patience for book learnin’." - Maureen Dowd

"The occupational hazard of democracy is know-nothing voters. It shouldn’t be know-nothing candidates." - Maureen Dowd

I begin with some random facts culled from the weekend. The first is from the Asian Times. With all of the media's attention to the suicide bombings over the past few years, you'd think that Iraq or Afghanistan has a lock on bitter and disillusioned people, and you'd be wrong. The winner, is: "Pakistan suffered one suicide bombing before 9/11 - and 4,808 deaths in 303 attacks since." Pakistanis should spend less time worrying whether Westerners like or dislike them so much, and more time wondering why they hate each other...

Another congressional study report, released last Friday, put a conservative estimate the amount of money wasted during the last 10 years hiring third party contractors at $60 billion. We sent 260,000 non-military individuals to Iraq and Afghanistan at a cost of $206 billion. That's almost a billion dollars per person. No wonder why everyone and their second cousin has been trying to set up shop in Washington DC and Virginia, it's been the only section creating jobs... There has been almost no oversight or accounting where the money goes, so stealing and bribery has become the normal way that Americans do business, just ask your elected Republican representative...

It's estimated that 750,000 people will die in Somalia from starvation, most of them children. The saddest thing is that most of these people are beyond saving, their bodies have shut down past the point of being able to be revived without serious damage... For those who feel that the less government there is the better we all off will be, then consider Somalia. The US could easily be devolving into a feral state, ruled by religious extremist warlords, more concerned over getting a buck than saving anyone besides themselves. The Buddha asked what is the price of compassion, one that we should constantly be asking ourselves...

There are 47 major banks in europe that are on the brink of bankruptcy, they might be considered too big to fail. There is less regulation than here in the US, because most governments are run by right wing conservatives. Loans to banks exceed their deposits by 6 percent, with French banks running at 19 percent, and Greek banks over 32 percent. The financial institutions that sell credit insurance are in a lot of trouble if those banks went belly up, creating another crisis similar to what Goldman Sachs and AIG created here for us. And, to further reciprocate the love, it will affect our banking system also... We have had 80 banks go bankrupt since 2009, but they weren't big enough, so we let them fail.

In 1947 the UN OK'd the partitioning of the land of Palestine, creating the nation of Israel. It was assumed that both partitions would organize themselves, then apply for admission as separate memberships. Israel did just that, applying in 1948. In two days the Palestinian Authority is finally getting around to applying, with the US threatening to veto. This will signal the end of US influence in the Middle East, especially if Turkey and Egypt bond as economic partners. Saudi Arabia has already said that it would seek to punish or lessen US interests if we vetoed, the first thing would be to kick out all of the CIA contractors in Yemen. So be careful what you ask for, or deny to others, another lesson from the Buddha, the Bible, and the Koran...

Will Iran Ever Set Free The Timberland Two? Will Mahmoud And Hillary Ever Become BFF's?

2011-09-14T22:34:00.000-06:00

Jennifer Rubin
David Ignatius

"Michele Bachmann is for people who find Sarah Palin too intellectual. She is pure. She is always completely fact-free. She said the Founding Fathers worked tirelessly until they got rid of slavery. So from now on Thomas Jefferson’s slaves will be known as friends with benefits." – Bill Maher, on Jay Leno

"President Obama described himself as an eternal optimist. He then explained that he's the kind of person that sees the country as 'half employed.'" – Conan O'Brien

"A man wearing an Obama mask robbed a bank. Either that or Obama has an exciting new plan to reduce the deficit." – Conan O'Brien

The two US hikers who were recently sentenced to eight years jail time for spying in Iran have been used as a political football for the past two years. The three factors punting them around the field have been the religious ayatollahs, the military Revolutionary Guard, and the current government of friends and cronies surrounding the President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. When Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal were about to be sentenced, Mr Ahmadinejad tried to use his influence to get a light sentencing, with an eye of eventually releasing them "on humanitarian ground." The ayatollahs pretty much control the judiciary, and didn't appreciate his meddling, hence the eight year sentence.

Two days ago, Anne Curry asked him about the fate of the two hikers. Ahmahdinejad replied that they would probably be released by Thursday. This was assumed to be a stunt to create some instant goodwill for his annual pilgrimage to New York City and the UN general assembly. Today, the Iranian judiciary denied that they would be released anytime soon, that reports were still under review. One possibility under review was that the hikers would be released if a $500,000 bribe per person was given to the judiciary.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring, or if Shane and Joshua will ever see the sky outside of an Iranian jail cell for awhile? Will it take sending someone like Bill Clinton to Tehran to razzle dazzle the rubes, or will the hardliners mellow out once Ahmadinejad leaves the country? Perhaps Mahmoud will ask for asylum after giving his speech to the UN, or he might become the new BFF of the US State Dept, and together the two of them will solve the Syrian problem and the Palestinian situation. It may not be that far-fetched because Ahmadinejad is actually considered a moderate in Iran, A moderate who cheats at elections, but that is just age-old tradition, doesn't everyone in Asia and Africa cheat at elections?
Surrounded by enemies at home, he could easily turn to an outside source for n ally.

As for the two hikers, I don't believe that they were actual spies, just very stupid young men. what gives any weight to the spy story, is that the four young people were living in Damascus, trying to make a living that included independent journalism. They decided to fly to Turkey and to travel into Iraqi Kurdestan. The Kurds had been advertising for tourists to see "the other Iraq," and even made commercials that aired on CNN. Near the Iranian border was a famous waterfall and picnic spot that our intrepid hikers decided to visit. The fourth member of their group was sick and decided to stay at the hotel they were staying in during that fateful day. Despite signs posted at the hotel to beware and not go over the border, three of our hikers did just that while exploring the paths above the waterfall. Whether they were tricked across the border or not depends on whom you wish to believe...

The hot ticket next week won't be the next Republican debate, rather it will be the General Assembly of the UN. I keep getting conflicting stories if Mahmoud Abbas will petition the Security Council for recognition or not. The US and Israel don't want this to happen, and I've read that neither does Hamas, though they haven't given any coherent reason. So, the Security council route may have been nixed, but admitting Palestine as an observing nation to the General Assembly will most assuredly happen.

Protests and rioting is expected to happen in Gaza, Jordan, and possibly Egypt and Turkey. Israel already has allowed riot gear to be sold to the Palestinian Authority, and what a distraction it all will make, so that the world might ignore the monsoon flooding now happening in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, with the horrible loss of life being revisited on the region...

Also, next week the new book on Sarah Palin will be published by Joe McGuinness, called The Rogue. It's already drawing press and criticism from people who haven't read it. Joe dishes dirt on affairs, scandals, and a whole lot more that he obtained while living next door to the Palins in Wasilla, Alaska. And the best part is that it wasn't ghost-written...

“People around here don’t give a shit about Sarah anymore. They’re burned out on all her drama.”

— current Wasilla Mayor Verne Rupright, from THE ROGUE, by Joe McGinniss.

Making It Past 9/11

2011-09-12T14:05:00.000-06:00

Turki al-Faisal
Benny Morris

"Earlier this evening President Obama gave his big jobs speech. So what we had tonight was a guy whose job nobody approves of, giving a speech about jobs that don't exist, to people who don't have any jobs. So it's a real positive, uplifting..." –Jay Leno

"According to the latest L.A. Times poll, 75% of Californians believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. And 60% of Californians are so disillusioned, they're thinking about moving back to Mexico." –Jay Leno

"I don't get why everyone is hung up about getting jobs. Isn't it better to stay up until 4:00 in the morning watching reruns of 'Sanford and Son?'" –Jimmy Kimmel

Prince Turki al-Faisal was the Saudi ambassador to the US during the Bush administrations, and is telling the US to sit up and pay attention to the Palestinian effort to get recognition as a state through the UN. either come up with a better plan to get both sides back into negotiation, or step aside and let European allies and members of the Arab League flex their influence. No disrespect, but we may lose Saudi Arabia as an ally in the Middle East, including Iraq. It does seem like Obama has lost his will to fight injustice, after his spat with Israel's Netanyu and the grinding wear and tear of the conservatives here at home. It remains to be seen if Hamas can keep the more radical elements from shooting rockets into Israel on Friday nights, and learn to play with the big boys... It also remains to be seen if Israel can stop pissing off its neighbors. They might end up making a few bombing raids on Iran, just to relieve its frustration...

On September 10, visitors to New York City were welcomed by the sight of armed men stalking the streets, looking for trouble, the fabled threat from al-Qaeda. We no longer have to tell you what the threat is, we can give a vague reference and then flood the streets with cops, like any other military dictatorship... Get used to seeing sights like this, as we devolve further towards becoming a third-world country...

I made it through 9/11 without getting too depressed. I didn't watch any of the memorial shows made for television with their watered down facts and recurring visions of those planes hitting the twin towers. I turned off the sound on my TV set and watched football while also reading a book. Polls have said that about 1/3 of the American population doesn't believe in the official version of 9/11 events, that questions and conspiracy theories still float through the aether, no matter how often pundits try to debunk and discredit them. The families of the 9/11 victims posed 400 questions for the 9/11 commission to investigate and answer; it looked at about 20 of them. Here is a link to the top 40 questions that were ignored by the 9/11 commission. Most are very common questions, like how did the government come up with the names of the 19 terrorists? A simple disclosure of information could resolve so much, especially when it came up with the list really quickly. Unfortunately, we cannot go to the families and check any of the information about the named terrorists, because their families, their uncles and cousins are no longer among the living, thanks to Saudi intelligence... Here are the questions about the financial transactions that were made, and asking who made them and who profited from them? :

"Insider Trading
a. Unknown speculators allegedly used foreknowledge of the Sept. 11th events to profiteer on many markets internationally - including but not limited to "put options" placed to short-sell the two airlines, WTC tenants, and WTC re-insurance companies in Chicago and London.
b. In addition, suspicious monetary transactions worth hundreds of millions were conducted through offices at the Twin Towers during the actual attacks.
c. Initial reports on these trades were suppressed and forgotten, and only years later did the 9/11 Commission and SEC provide a partial, but untenable explanation for only a small number of transactions (covering only the airline put options through the Chicago Board of Exchange)."

What bothered me the most is how, through the media, we keep trying to re-write the script of history, that events happened in this order, and the meanings we carried away are these... And enjoy your loss of privacy rights and that freedom thingy that the tea parties keep harping on... So much of the grieving was a private affair, that it seemed sacrilegious to film it:

I hope that Barack Obama can get his mojo back and start leading the country once again, despite the major efforts to discredit his every thought and utterance. Maybe he will end up his term paraphrasing old ideas from the GOP, using their own words as the Gorgon's head to deflect the slings and arrows... It would be a shame if our election of Barack Obama, which was done in a spasm of hope and inspiration, ends up without meaning, leaving an empty, grey-haired, cynical shell of a human being. The process in Washington DC is cruel and chews up ideals like crunchy granola for breakfast...

GOP Debate and Obama's Speech

2011-09-09T01:34:00.001-06:00

Richard Clarke
Gail Collins
Eugene Robinson

"The oil industry said if they were allowed to drill more, they could create over a million new jobs. Of course most of those jobs would be cleaning oil off ducks." – Conan O'Brien

"The Republican debate was on earlier tonight. Side effects may include nausea, vomiting and sexual dysfunction." – David Letterman

"Sunday is the 10th anniversary of 9/11, which means it can only be another 5 years before we discover Saddam Hussein’s WMDs." – Stephen Colbert

David Letterman's "Top Ten Ways The United States Postal Service Can Turn Things Around"

10. Change name to UPS
9. Invent a stamp that licks back
8. Add wacky sound effects for mailboxes
7. Alter mail trucks to look like Millennium Falcon from 'Star Wars'
6. If your letter isn't delivered in 30 minutes or less, it's free
5. Bedazzled uniforms
4. New hit reality show: 'Real Mailmen of New Jersey'
3. Customers can now pay with gas or grass
2. Take the Packers and give three and a half tomorrow night
1. Ten cent surcharge to deliver my hate mail — you'll make millions

“I kind of feel like a piñata here at the party."

The weeks dramatic events are over, and my sense of cynicism for the political process is still intact. The Republican candidates debate yesterday did not inspire. There were more fakes and dodging answering questions than the Packer's running backs and wide receivers, even from the so-called straight shooter, Ron Paul. From now on, the debates should be conducted by the reporters from Univision, who care about getting an actual answer from the two-faced SOB's on stage. To get rid of the stupid and softball questions, we should start including a mixture of professionals from different fields. Instead of letting economic issues be summarized as: more tax cuts will solve everything, why not have an economist like Paul Krugman or Bruce Bartlett probe Mit's or Michele's policies and plans...

The consensus among the press and pundits is that Mit Romney and Rick Perry have emerged as the front-runners, and the rest are a bunch of whiny losers. But if either one becomes the Republican candidate, it will gurantee that Barack Obama will win re-election. The ugly truth is that Mit won't win because he is a Mormon. Despite the large amount of "I Am A Mormon" propaganda being put out, if Mormonism is scrutinized on the national level, folks will find out what a crock of crazy fiction that old con man Joseph smith assembled... Rick Perry, who used to be a Democrat, is unbelievable as a tea party fanatic, so he is an opportunist. He is the reason that Texas may swing Democratic in the next election, or so my family members from Austin tell me...

One of the highlights for me was when Michele Bachmann claimed that she could bring gasoline prices down to $2 per gallon. I guess she's become a tea party socialist, because the only way a president can affect gas prices is to socialize all of the oil companies. Rick and Mit will grant many more offshore drilling permits, but that just allows the oil companies to bring more oil to be sold on the world market, we don't even get to bid first. There hasn't been a new oil refinery built in the US in over 20 years, and we are running at 3/4 capacity. The ability to refine oil into gas has nothing to do with the price you pay at the pump. If it were, prices should have gone down to 35 cents per gallon, not well over $3...

The GOP was wise enough to not schedule a rebuttal after Obama's speech on job creation policies, but they did let individual congressmen grouse and bitch and moan. They have a negative enough image as the party that doesn't care about the middle class and poor folks, purposely letting our economy sink into another depression for the sake of trying to win another election. Besides, no-one has successfully described how a tax cut can create more jobs, unless you are dealing with imaginary numbers, where two negatives create a positive... Since half of Obama's jobs plan consists of ideas that are Republican retreads, it's safe to say that something will get passed before the end of the year. If Obama was really serious beyond using this evening for a re-election speech, he should have had legislation ready to go, that would be introduced in Congress tomorrow morning, to show that he is really a decision maker... The only thing that could ruin Obama's re-election is if there weren't any jobs created during the next few months and we sink back into a recession, like the rest of the world...

Will Perry Be A No-Show? UN Running Out Of Food As Somalian Famine Spreads

2011-09-06T15:39:00.001-06:00

Joe Nocera
Mike Lofgren

"I read Dick Cheney's book. I don’t want to ruin it for anybody, but in the final chapter he kills Harry Potter. If you want the book, in the bookstore go past the self-help section. It’s in the self-serving section." – Jay Leno

"Michele Bachmann is publishing her memoir. Why can't we pray that away?" – David Letterman

"The CIA is hoping Moammar Gadhafi's weapons don't fall into the wrong hands. Weren't they already in the wrong hands?" – David Letterman

If you do nothing else, read the link at the top to Mike Lofgren's article in truthout.org. Mike is a 26 year veteran, writing on national security issues from the GOP's perspective. He got sooooo tired of the cynical way that politics is manipulated from the conservative side, that he retired and penned this article. If you have read my blog over the past couple of years, none of his revelations will come as a surprise to you. From my perspective, it's always nice to have my opinions validated by others...

Tomorrow is the Republican candidates debate from California. It's the one that Obama was forced to postpone his speech to Congress on jobs policy. Fox News probably will not air it because it's sponsored by MSNBC. It will be the first time that Rick Perry has participated in a candidate's forum and debate, so we will see if he can hack it on the national level, and if his fellow poseurs turn and attack him like the weasels they are. They might draw straws, rigging it so that just Michele Bachmann gets to rip into Mr Perry. A good drinking game would be that everyone has to take a shot whenever something mean and derogatory is said during the debate, but that might leave you staggering and incoherent after the first 10 minutes... I'm checking my schedule to make sure there isn't a re-run of Hawaii 5-0 or Storage Wars...

There is nothing more heart-wrenching than watching a country starving to death from famine conditions. It's usually black or dark-skinned countries that suffer the most, because of lack of a sufficient amount of food and aid. The UN is having a hard time keeping food in reserve for the coming monsoon season, which previously affected Pakistan, India, and China. The cost of basic food staples has tripled this year alone. Today, the UN announced that the famine that has affected Somalia is spreading across the country, and about half of the population cannot get enough to eat, most of them children: "... officials warning that 750,000 people could die in the next few months unless aid efforts were scaled up. A combination of drought, war, restrictions on aid groups and years of chaos have pushed four million Somalis — more than half the population — into “crisis,” according to the United Nations. Agricultural production is just a quarter of what it normally is, and food prices continue to soar."

“We can’t give an exact figure, but we can say tens of thousands of people have died over the last three to four months, over half of whom are children. That translates into hundreds a day.”

Somalia hasn't had a functioning government for over 30 years, and is among the poorest. what little resources are ripped off, and then we have pirates, not to mention radical Islamic extremist rebels who have taken over half of the country. The rebels weren't letting the UN or Red Cross distribute food in their areas; now they let them in and take most of the foodstuff. That the UN sees this as an acceptable way to do business tells a lot.

Another sad fact is that you never hear about the Red Crescent or Islamic nations coming to the rescue of their darker brothers in religion. Look at the plight of Palestinian refugees, who were forced out of Israel and into camps in Lebanon and Syria 60 and 30 years ago. Many of those camps are still there. without plumbing, running water, or electricity. Both Lebanon and syria have refused to give citizenship or the same rights that their citizens enjoy to the refugees, nor has any economic help been given to the elderly and infirm. The refugees are also a sticking point in Israeli - Palestinian negotiations, with Israel not wanting to let them return to Israel, especially after all this time... No matter what results from Palestine being recognized by the UN, or the Arab Spring turns out in Syria and Lebanon, these poor refugees will get the short end of the stick. Allah may be compassionate, but his believers may not...

Saif In Charge, Let's Give Greece To Israel, Another Crazed Conservative

2011-09-02T19:28:00.000-06:00

Paul Krugman

"If you like light summer reading, Dick Cheney's memoir came out at midnight . In Washington, D.C. this is like a 'Harry Potter' book coming out. There were long lines of bald old men outside bookstores, putting electrodes on each other's nipples." – Craig Ferguson

"Reviewers say Cheney's book shows a new sensitive side and reaches out to his former enemies. Ha ha! No, he goes after his enemies like they're lawyers on a quail hunt. He blasted Rumsfeld and Colin Powell and even President Bush's dog Barney. He says, 'That dirty bastard was leaving dirt bombs all over the White House, and so was Barney.'" – Craig Ferguson

Well, let's see who hates each other right now... A family spokesman for the Qaddafi family called reporters, saying that NATO should negotiate with the family over ruling Libya, or there will be guerilla warfare similar to what has happened in Iraq for the last 10 years. This has been interpreted as eldest son Saif al-Islam jockeying for some kind of position in the next government, or at least secure his personal fortune so he will be able to spend it freely. Anyway, there is a narrow window of opportunity being offered, or else...

"Within even a few weeks, a few months, even a couple of years, we will have Libya back."

The UN released a report on the Israeli raid and subsequent deaths of nine Turkish citizens, when a peace flotilla attempted to broach the blockade of Gaza. The report said that the Israeli blockade is within its rights and is legal, but that the Israeli marines used excessive force. Ever since this incident occurred, turkey has wanted an apology from Israel, but the Netanyahu administration has said that it only apologizes to Egypt, and not to Turkey. Turkey had criticized Israel earlier for its military raid into Gaza, so nowIsrael will only show contempt towards their former friend. Today, Turkey withdrew all staff from Israel in protest...

Israel's philosophy is to be the meanest, toughest hombre in this one-horse town, always over-react to discourage future acts of defiance. It's an understandable attitude if you are etching out territory in a hostile environment. Which is why I have a solution for both Israel and the Middle East and the current European economic problems:

The richer nations in the European Union, which means Germany, see themselves as having to pay for the problems their poorer brethren have gotten themselves into. They refer to those problem nation-states as "the olive zone." To ease their pain, they could give these olive producing countries to Israel, and Israel could get out of the Middle East. We'd have to make up certain myths about how Greece was really the home of the Jews, due to a mistake in cartography by early mapmakers, or some such story... Not as unbelievable as the myth that a bunch of white people of Eastern European ancestry actually had ethnic roots in Palestine... History is what you make it, and myths only have strength as long as people believe them...

Other countries not on speaking terms are Iran and Russia. A few years ago Iran bought and paid for some Russian missiles, because Iran could only figure out how to build short-range ones. Russia got caught trying to sneak some of those missiles in a ship carrying lumber, and concocted a wild story that the ship was hijacked by disgruntled homegrown criminals or terrorists or patriots, take your pick. Benjamin Netanyahu then flew to Moscowand asked Dmitri Medvedev not to deliver the missiles, which he agreed to.

Now Iran is suing Russia for breach of contract in international court, and it remains to be seen if it will get the rest of the missiles. Russia says it will have to wait until international sanctions have been lifted, we are merely pawns in this and there are no refunds... The Ayatollah just can't get no respect...

From Russia, With Love

Ahh, me. If there is anyone left who wonders why the Republican Party is bereft of morals and in a dissolute stage, they only have to go to the World Net Daily website. there you can find writers such as: "Conservative columnist Matthew Vadum is just going to come right out and say it: registering the poor to vote is un-American and "like handing out burglary tools to criminals."

"It is profoundly antisocial and un-American to empower the nonproductive segments of the population to destroy the country -- which is precisely why Barack Obama zealously supports registering welfare recipients to vote," Vadum, the author of a book published by World Net Daily that attacks the now-defunct community organizing group ACORN, writes in a column for the American Thinker.

"Encouraging those who burden society to participate in elections isn't about helping the poor," Vadum writes. "It's about helping the poor to help themselves to others' money. It's about raw so-called social justice. It's about moving America ever farther away from the small-government ideals of the Founding Fathers." (From TPM)

China Finds Jose Cuervo, Michele and Sarah, Smarter Than A Sixth Grader?

2011-09-01T13:29:00.002-06:00

Ayad Allawi
Robert Kennedy

"Let Libya be engulfed in flames," - M Qaddafi

It looks like neither the US or the EU will be leading the way out of the current global economic crisis. Major European banks, yep, those that are considered "too big to fail," are still lobbying for more relaxed regulations, along with their American counterparts. To counter the pressure, citizen groups have suggested that the first $26 million of each banking loss come out of the CEO's paycheck... It was revealed yesterday that over 25 top US companies pay their CEO's more than they pay in income tax. The kicker is, most of these CEO's aren't smarter or more talented than you or me; the biggest decision the CEO of General Mills has had to make was determining the amount of sugar to put on your kids cereals...

So, the marketing of upscale goods is on an upswing in China and Asia, especially those parts that get US economic aid. Asia Times reports that: "China is second only to the United States for sales of Mercedes, Jaguars, Land Rovers and similar up-market cars while branded luxury bags, shoes and similar affluent appurtenances are selling so well that many of their makers are listing on the Hong Kong Exchange to tap local enthusiasm." Tequila companies have opened marketing offices in Shanghai. The bad part to this is having a nation think that Jose Cuervo is top notch tequila. The good part is that the Chinese can't produce a cheap tequila knockoff...

A recent report from the bi-partisan Wartime Contracting Commission said that the process of giving contracts to third party companies in a war zone is fraught with waste, abuse, and fraud, almost on the level of FEMA contracts to Rosemary Barbour... I've been posting this for over a year now, it's good to have it officially validated. The commission goes on to say that these types of abuses will continue on indefinitely into whatever war zone we interject ourselves, unless Congress acts quickly to change to contracting laws. There isn't any way to oversee the projects paid for, or trace the flow of the money to see where it goes, so a lot of it ends up in the Kabul Bank or Dick Cheney's trust account at Halliburton, or ends up paying for some retired general's farm in Virginia... Some of the money goes to fund our enemies in Afghanistan, we are the insurgents second largest funding source after the heroin poppy. Afghan warlords threaten violence to a subcontractor unless they are paid for protection, causing the subcontractor to ask for a few million more. Or, you can just fly in pallets of $100 bills in cash, like Paul Bremer did in Iraq, then pretend that he didn't recall where it all went... Or, it could be worse, if they were administered by the UN; then they'd be trading more than food for sex...

Michele Bachmann will be coming out with her memoirs in November. I believe that is also when Sarah Palin's next book is due, Tea Party for Dummies... I don't know why we consider someone an author who has used a ghost writer to actually write their book. Talking into a tape recorder for five hours makes you resemble Barbara Cartland more than an actual writer. We need a new section in the library and on bookshelves for these fake books, perhaps Revisionist History?

I'm waiting to see both Michele and Sarah together, where they are asked easy questions about history, geography, and foreign policy, if only they'd sign on to the next season of Who's Smarter Than a Sixth Grader?, or to revise it for the current political scene, Who's Smarter Than a Texas High Schooler? Texas has one of the highest drop out rates in the country, which is sad because the Texas school system does a poor job of educating their kids, anyway. When my sister's grandkids were going to school here in Colorado, they were having a hard time and getting C's and D's. When they went back to Texas, they didn't have to worry much about homework, and are cruising through with A's and B's... I think one reason that Rick Perry has jumped into the national spotlight is because the stagelights are growing dim for him in Texas. People are tired of the way he does business and his mean, bragging personal style. Hey Rick, you used federal stimulus money to balance your state budget how many times???

"Why should I go and do something like that? But the Lord says, 'Be submissive wives; you are to be submissive to your husbands." -Rep Michele Bachmann

"Well what I want them to know is just like, John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa. That's the kind of spirit that I have, too" -Rep Michele Bachmann

"I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out: Are they pro-America or anti-America?" -Rep. Michelle Bachmann

"He who warned, uh, the British that they weren't gonna be takin' away our arms, uh, by ringing those bells, and um, makin' sure as he's riding his horse through town to send those warning shots and bells that we were going to be sure and we were going to be free, and we were going to be armed." -Sarah Palin

"But obviously, we've got to stand with our North Korean allies." --Sarah Palin

"We used to hustle over the border for health care we received in Canada. And I think now, isn't that ironic?" --Sarah Palin

Democracy In North Africa

2011-08-31T01:12:00.000-06:00

Michael Tomasky

"My problem with Perry’s zeal is one of my problems with the Tea Party generally: Though it claims to be libertarian, it is remixing the religious right’s greatest hits." - Dana Milbank

So, we've spent over $60 billion on Iraq and Afghanistan, we can sit back and view our accomplishments with pride. The other billions of dollars that European countries contributed in humanitarian aid and buying townhouses in Dubai by friends of Hamid Karzai, demonstrates what happens when you throw money down the rabbit-hole. They don't even get any free heroin for their efforts...

Thinking that after 10 years of occupation, the folks of Baghdad might have some advice for the dazed citizens of Libya, the NY times reporter, Michael Schmidt, walked into a crowded cafe and began befriending people and asking questions. The results were pretty interesting: "The men said they had learned the hard way what they never understood living under decades of repression: that democracy is not just the absence of oppression, but that it also involves challenging concepts of tolerance, compromise and civic responsibility yet to take root in Iraq, or in Libya."

Other advice was directed at the Ahmed Chalabi wannabees now traveling back to Libya: “People came from the outside to run Iraq, and they didn’t understand the suffering we had lived through,” said Firas Abdul Hadi, 28, an engineer in the office of the mayor of Baghdad, referring to how Iraqis who fled the country under Mr. Hussein’s rule tried to claim power when they returned.

“They came back and claimed to be patriotic,” he said. “The Libyans should vote for people who suffered like them. People who were abroad didn’t feel what they did.”

I had been wondering why the US spend all of this time, money, and effort in Iraq, only to watch them adopt the British style of government. It makes no sense, and I haven't yet found an account of how this came to be. Unfortunately, it's a more dysfunctional style of governing and Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Libya would be better off coming up with a simpler form that will serve them better: “The parliamentary system in Iraq has failed,” said Thaar Abdul Kadhum, 34, a contractor. “They should have a president who can make all the decisions, and not have all these blocs like we have now.”

The character of the politicians matters, too, they said. If the leaders do not have strong enough personalities, the men said, corruption will be rife, as it is in Iraq, where bribes are commonplace. “People with weak personalities are seduced by the power, and they use the power to steal money from the people,” Ahmed Ali, 46, a shop owner, said shortly after losing a game of chess.

Finally, people of Libya, Syria, Egypt, and Tunisia, be careful in what you ask for: "The men said that Libyans should be wary of freedom of speech. In Iraq, they said, they are now free to express themselves, which they could not do under Saddam Hussein. But this right is almost useless, they said, because the government is not responsive to the public.

“Nobody listens to the people,” Mr. Hadi said."

Eight years after the United States-led invasion, there are still bombings and assassinations in Iraq almost every day, and unemployment is high. It is far from the country that the Bush administration had hoped for after Saddam Hussein’s government fell... amen to that, brothers. I have to use the word amen because we are still so Islamophobic in the US, or at least in Herman Cain's and Rick Perry's America... For $60 billion we could have bought every citizen a Chevy and an air-conditioning unit, with change left over...

An Italian news station claims that Moammar Qaddafi is still inside Libya, holed up in a town about 60 miles south of Tripoli. I would have thought that he had made plans for a safe, quick getaway, but after 42 years in the same bunker inside the same compound, he got complacent. Probably began believing his own BS about being beloved by all of the people, before he went crazy. I know, using the word crazy is politically incorrect, but then, so is being a dictator. To be honest, Qaddafi wasn't all that bad, as far as dictators go. He has a wacky charm, and if he'd shared more of the oil revenue with the rest of Libyans, he might still be in power today. It will be interesting to see if these countries can avoid the sectarian fighting, and if they end up substituting a religious dictatorship for the post-colonial autocrats they just deposed...