Assassinations OK'd By Judge Bates, Let's Add 14 Year Old Hookah Smoking Israeli Boy

Eugene Robinson
John Avlon

"Congress is buried under a crushing surplus of cynicism, while the White House seems paralyzed by a deficit of courage." - Eugene Robinson

"There is one point of growing agreement between the left and right: this president is a lousy poker player, with no love for the tough-minded gamesmanship of high-stakes negotiations. He believes in reasoning together, even with unreasonable people. This honorable approach leaves him liable to get rolled." - John Avlon

It may prove that having wikileak's founder Julian Assange arrested in Britain was the best thing that could have happened to him right now. Nobody likes living in a jail cell, but the alternative could have been that President Obama puts him on his personal assassination list... In a ruling today, Federal Judge John Bates (insert Master jokes here) said that having an assassination list is the kind of decision that only rests with the executive branch and is not open to judicial review

The judge further avoided answering any of the other questions regarding having an assassination list in the first place. Here's the blurb from the NY Times: "A federal judge threw out a lawsuit on Tuesday that sought to block the American government from trying to kill Anwar al-Awlaki, a United States citizen and Muslim cleric accused of playing a significant role in Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen.


The ruling clears the way for the Obama administration to continue to try to kill Mr. Awlaki and represents a victory in its efforts to shield from judicial review one of its most striking counter-terrorism policies.


The court not only rejected the lawsuit on the grounds that Mr. Awlaki’s father had no standing to file it on behalf of his son, but held that decisions to mount targeted killings overseas are a “political question” for executive officials to make — not judges." Instead of getting into any ethical questions, the judge threw out the court case based on the father filing the case to protect his son, and only the person Anwar al-Awlaki has the right to file. The argument is that when a decision to take the life of an American born citizen, that decision should be open to a judicial review. The judge said it ain't so, the President can kill anyone he wants to. Thank god this decision didn't happen when Dick Cheney was still in charge, since this kind of hit list originated with him, with George Bush adding Osama bin Laden after 9/11. They both used mercenaries to find and kill people on the presidential list, and towards the end of Bush's term he was even hiring commando units from Britain and Germany in trying to find bin Laden. I guess the next thing to do is to find out who else is on the hit list without getting themselves added, too.

“If the court’s ruling is correct, the government has unreviewable authority to carry out the targeted killing of any American, anywhere, whom the president deems to be a threat to the nation. It would be difficult to conceive of a proposition more inconsistent with the Constitution, or more dangerous to American liberty.” - Jaleel Jaffer, ACLU Lawyer

The most disheartening part to me about this whole wikileaks affair, is how quickly American companies like Amazon and Paypal turned feral on their own customer by kicking him out of their systems at the slightest pressure from the government. Another reason why Meg Whitman should not have been elected as Governor of California? There is something vaguely sinister about this, and once Mr Assange is turned over to Sweden to face sex charges, he will then be sent to the US, who will try to put him away like he was Manuel Noriega. I guess that's what you get for tilting at windmills in our modern age of drive-by shootings and suicide bombers; your romantic self-image doesn't match up with the reality based disconnect... If the military had already repealed its Don't Ask Don't Tell policy, then Private Manning wouldn't have been so bitter and not have downloaded all of those files... As a result, more of the dumb and mundane will be classified top secret, surfing the Internet to sites not approved by your government may result in your loss of using the Internet and having your hard drive confiscated by your local police. The madness will build to a crescendo when a 14 year old boy gets put on the hit list and ends up assassinated, in a not too distant day and age when a hookah-smoking 14 year old boy can start the largest forest fire in the short history of Israel. Questions inevitably get asked, like if Israel is not prepared to put out a fire by itself, how can it possibly be ready to fight a country like Iran?

With the distractions of the wikileaks and the forest fire, Israel and the US had stopped pointing their fingers at each other and blaming the other for the stopped negotiations over a Palestinian state. Today the US will announce that its pressure on Israel to stop building in disputed areas is not working. Instead, we hope to resove where the borders will be for the state without having to sit down again, then Israel can build all it wants, as long as its not within the agreed upon boundaries. Already Argentina and Brazil have recognized Palestine as a separate state, that coincides with the PA's push for recognition as a state from the UN. It has become a game of chess, and every time Israel blocks one move, another strategy must be employed. Maybe Israel can use those illegal settlers to replant the areas burned by the forest fire instead of the illegal workers it has imported to do manual labor, then reward the children of those people by kicking them out of the country and denying them any chance at citizenship, a strategy that is hoped to be adopted here in the US by the fervid anti-imgrates...

Are you thrilled that the Bush tax cuts will be extended for another two years, that is, if some Democrat doesn't decide to filibuster... add another $90 billion to the deficit over the next two years, if that's what you are concerned about. Myself, it's the realization that it doesn't matter one bit whether the tax cuts are extended or they expire, because either way will not do anything towards providing jobs. Our economy will not bounce back within the next two, four, or even six years enough to bring the jobless rate down significantly. If someone tells you different, they are lying or misinformed, probably both...

My biggest gripe with my conservative brethren is that they believe that a tax cut will solve everything, therefore they don't bother to come up with any more ideas. I have finally begun hearing some people talk how we need to rebuild our manufacturing base. The Chinese have the world-wide market in solar panels locked up, so we need to be more innovative in the alternative energy markets; after all, we can't rely on clean coal technology forever... Otherwise, there will be a world-wide escalation of nuclear plants and technology, with Iran leading the way, our future resembling a nuclear meltdown, with the poorest countries on each continent turned into a waste dump for the others...

Julian Assange: Angel Or Demon? Paedophile Barbie, Mormons On The Run

Paul Krugman
Marc Thiessen

"Yes, letting taxes go up would be politically risky. But giving in would be risky, too — especially for a president whom voters are starting to write off as a man too timid to take a stand. Now is the time for him to prove them wrong." - Paul Krugman

"You are either with us, or you are with WikiLeaks." - Marc Thiessen

"WikiLeaks continues to release thousands of classified documents, but some of the leaks are just gossip. Like the one saying Iranian President Ahmadinejad was once offered a 10 pm show on NBC. I guess they were just trying to ruin his reputation." – Jay Leno

Switzerland just froze all of his bank accounts, and now Julian Assange is trying to negotiate with British police to turn himself in. I can't believe how outraged many pundits and politicians are over wikileaks, they should be published in a pocket book form for light bathroom reading. People of an authoritarian mind set, whom I like to call fascists, want to see this guy punished in the worst way, see Marc Thiessen's link above. Marc used to work for the Bush White House and thinks that the NY Times should also be held responsible for publishing so much of the files this past week. It will end up in the courts, of course, and might have a similar ruling that the Pentagon Papers received, which then allowed them to be published in full. The distinction being made here is that the Pentagon Papers is the Pentagon's internal historical document being made public, and these wikileaks files are of opinions from current officers working in the field. Or are they seeded, as Dr Zbignew Brzinski suggests, with nuggets of disinformation from sources like Israel? The plot thickens...

The old hippie in me rears its ugly head and says question authority wherever it seeks to impose itself in a punitive way. The reason most things are labeled top secret is that they are mildly embarrassing if they get out, and the wikileak files is proving to be just that. They are mildly embarrassing, but there are no gonzo moments of withering descriptions of our allies, just mild criticisms that they already should be aware of, if they were any good at their jobs. In fact, there are instances of spin that show our diplomats were doing their jobs and performing well, even showing the absurdity of certain political events in a volatile world.

Robert Grenier, who worked for the CIA for 27 years and was Director of the CIA’s Counter-Terrorism Center from 2004 to 2006, points out that any system as poorly designed to allow: "... a ubiquitous military system for storing and sharing classified information which permitted a junior enlisted man of no particular account, located off in some minor military intelligence unit in Iraq, to have access to literally hundreds of thousands of classified documents on topics of little if any concern to him, as well as the means to independently download them, ought to be shot." Like most of the government's software and databases, they have been cobbled together over the years by grafting different systems onto much older, antiquated systems. In this case, it was designed to allow access by over 2.5 million employees worldwide, so the security had to suck eggs, big time.

Mr Grenier goes on to talk about the problems we've always had towards leaks of sensitive information: "Even more important, however, is the inconvenient truth lying at the heart of this whole matter: that even at this late date, the US government has not devised a straightforward, effective and intellectually honest means of dealing with the conflicting values at play when a serious leak of classified government information occurs.


This is true even in the context of normal press leaks, let alone when dealing with the issues generated by mass information-storage devices and the internet. The US government is well equipped to deal with cold-war-era espionage: Individuals providing classified information clandestinely to foreign – usually hostile – powers. The law here is quite unambiguous, and there is a large body of case precedents to back it up.


Where the press is concerned, however, the US government, even after many decades, still has not arrived at a clear, viable means of balancing the legitimate need for a free, open and unfettered press (to use an archaic term) with the equally legitimate government requirement to protect certain information for the public good.


In fact, there routinely are press leaks every bit as harmful as old-fashioned espionage. About the only thing one can say in favor of leaks, as against compromise of the same information through classic espionage, is that at least in the former case, you know when you’ve been robbed. Indeed, in the latest WikiLeaks case, the harm to national security and international relations is all the greater precisely because it was an open leak; at least a hostile power having acquired the same information would have treated it more discreetly."

Pepe Escpbar wites in the Asia Times that: "...at the same time, the US government and virtually the whole establishment - from neo-conservatives to Obama-light practitioners - want to pull out all stops to delete WikiLeaks or, even take out Assange, as George W Bush wanted to do with bin Laden. Grizzly nutjob Sarah Palin says Assange is worse than al-Qaeda. Such hysteria lead an Atlanta radio station to ask listeners whether Assange should be executed or imprisoned (no third option; execution won). Redneck Baptist priest Mike Huckabee, who might have been the Republican contender for president in 2008 and is now a talk-show fixture, goes for execution as well.

Who to believe? These freaks, or two frustrated US federal investigators who told the Los Angeles Times that if WikiLeaks had been active in 2001, it would have prevented 9/11? " Wikileaks as horrible demon bent on destroying our established bureaucratic way of doing things, or potential savior, bringing things up from the muck into the light of day? Interesting that the Pentagon still hasn't gotten around to fixing the security weak links, and more files can still be potentially downloaded...

Personally, I'm enjoying reading about the wikileaks, as presented each day in my newspaper. It makes it so much easier than going to the website itself and flagging to law enforcement that I've been there, and having intelligence service follow me back to my blog. Many older versions of browsers allow for the kind of software that checks your history, all of the other websites that you have been to. It was developed so that marketers could customize their advertising to you according to your browsing history, even planting a sniffer to detect where you go next on the Internet and report back to mama... Most newer versions of your browser have corrected the flaw that allowed that software to operate, so upgrading your browser to its newest version is a good thing, and make big brother's task a bit harder. although if they really want to, all they have to do is trump up some bogus charge and confiscate your computer and copy its hard drive, which would put me out of business. Good thing I am just grumpy and not obnoxious like I was when I was younger, when I thought it was fun to piss people in power off...

Well, this is just a creepy story. I don't know whether to be alarmed at the FBI's warning over the new Video Camera Barbie, or more alarmed that some sicko in the Sacramento office would come up with such a use: "A memo to investigators warned that the Barbie Video Girl could be used for the "production and possession of child pornography".


An FBI spokeswoman said there had been no reported evidence that the doll, made by Mattell, had been used in any way other than intended. The agency stressed the alert had been intended only for internal circulation.


It was issued by the Sacramento field office of the FBI, to raise awareness among investigators of "unconventional avenues" by which child pornography can be obtained, the spokeswoman added. The Barbie Video Girl doll, which went on sale earlier in the year, can record up to 30 minutes of footage through a digital camera on its front. The images can be viewed on the doll itself, or can be uploaded to a computer via USB cable.


Mattel said its products were "designed with children and their best interests in mind". Its statement added: "Many of Mattel's employees are parents themselves and we understand the importance of child safety - it is our number one priority." And one of the child's parents would have to be a child molester and personally upload the Barbie video to their computer. Guess how long this item will remain on the shelves this year?... I always thought that Mattel toys were made with ulterior purposes, now the FBI has confirmed it... Which reminds me, my sister's youngest grandchild just told us that she is now too old for dolls and not to get her any this Christmas. Oh crap, where does that leave us for presents?

I was wondering where our local allotment of Mormon missionaries had gone, there had only been one or two knocks on the door this year from those polite young men with bad haircuts. Now I know that they have been reassigned to Southeast Asia, as reported in the Asia Times: "The Mormon church is focusing more of its considerable resources on its "frontier" in Southeast and South Asia. The dedication of its young missionaries is paying off in Cambodia, where the number of converts passed 10,000 in March. Vietnam is the next big target in the region for grassroots proselytizing. - "


Maybe they feel that they've worn out their welcome in the US... I grew up with strange cultist books like the Book of Mormon and the writings of Mary Baker Eddy around the house. I also had a great-great-great grandfather who was a gunfighter, a punk who migrated to Colorado from Utah with two stated missions in his life: One - to fall in love and marry an Indian girl, and Two - to find and kill as many Mormons as he could. I know he was successful at his first objective, but not so sure as to his second, although he did end up becoming the sheriff of Canon City before the Civil War...

Will Iran Be A No-Show In Geneva? McCain's Homo Experience

Maureen Dowd
Robert Kaplan
Howard Kurtz

"A 19-year-old Somali man was arrested in Portland for allegedly planning to detonate a bomb at a Christmas tree lighting ceremony. His parents are devastated. He had such a promising career as a pirate." – Jay Leno

"WikiLeaks shows our allies are also funding the terrorists. So we’re like the commissionless middlemen in a war we’re waging against ourselves." – Jon Stewart

"The head of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, has gone into hiding. They say he's some place all alone where no one can find him. In fact, officials believe he may be hiding in a theater showing 'Burlesque.'" – Jay Leno

Now that we have realized that the 250,000 pages of diplomatic documents released by Wikileaks have no real importance than to illustrate how lower-level employees file their opinions, it's interesting to see which world leaders are still getting their panties in a bunch... The more emotionally false, arrogant ones like Putin and Karzai take offense. Whoa dudes, wait until the next level of documents get released and the world sees even more what kinds of douche bags you are, no wonder now that Hillary Clinton is having a good laugh in private - without any aides writing down what she says, of course. The information contained in the documents aren't anything earthshaking enough to change relationships between countries, most of it has already been reported as speculation, like China hiring a bunch of its hackers to get information from american networks. In response to that , China arrested 646 of its hackers, so they wouldn't go public with more their personal parts in the nefarious plans...

This week the UN committee on nuclear energy is meeting in Geneva, to talk about Iran's program. The games have already begun, with the new head of the committee claiming that Iran is not being cooperative with the UN inspectors, who want to see if Iran's recent claims about progress is true. Iran is saying that it won't discuss its enrichment program, that its intentions in attending the meeting is to point out the benefits of a nuclear Iran, to the world's energy problems and stability in the Middle East... All of the big boys: the US, France, Britain, Germany, China, and Russia is hoping to persuade Iran to rejoin the world community in a diplomatic way. Egypt says if that doesn't work, it wants to put in orders for some nuclear plants to be built in Egypt, signaling a possible nuclear race among Middle Eastern countries. Economically, this would help Germany, France, and South Korea, who already have some kind of contract in place with the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

The two differing viewpoints are illustrated by what Ahmadinejad said on state-run tv, and Hillary's response: "We are ready to negotiate but... (world powers) should acknowledge that the rights of the Iranian nation are non-negotiable. They should also stop being hostile," said Ahmadinejad. Included in those hostilities are the murdering of Iran's nuclear scientists. Hillary responded in a speech in Bahrain: "We hope that you will come to it, as we will, in good faith and prepared to engage constructively on your nuclear programme." Clinton acknowledged that Iran has "the right to a peaceful nuclear programme," but said Tehran must fully address the world's concerns about its atomic activities." Tehran then tried to calm the fears of its neighbors by sending personal notes saying that it doesn't have designs on the region, but just wants to be a good neighbor, if only you'll let them...

This morning Iran announced that it has processed the first batch of raw uranium into yellowcake, and is now in control of the whole fuel-making process. Hillary has yet to respond to this nugget of information, but the prognosis for Geneva doesn't look good. China seems to have the most pragmatic goal, it will be happy if the parties agree to meet again... Who knows, if Iran can prove to its Sunni neighbors that it doesn't want to establish a Shiite hegemony, that it won't take over and invade Iraq within the next five years, that it will stop sending over suicide bomb vests and other munitions into Pakistan and Afghanistan, that it will finally give up the spot where Osama bin Laden is hiding, then maybe the US and Russia might be convinced, too. Until then, a game of Stuxnet anyone?


The wikileak backlash wave has been organized and launched, and it will end up playing havoc with some of our institutions and personal freedoms, what little there are that's left. First, the US intelligence service used its hackers to find out where wikileaks keeps its servers, and successfully pressured companies like Amazon and Paypal to kick wikileaks off of their servers and no longer accept their business. Next, all government employees and members of the military have been ordered not to link to wikileaks, or else. The implied threat is being tried for treason, if the justice dept ever figures out a way to bring any charges against wikileaks. Students at colleges like Columbia have been told that if they ever hope to have a job in the govt, then do not link to wikileaks. And if you have ever linked to wikileaks.org, it's possible that you might be getting a threatening e-mail sometime soon, for what it's worth...

Paranoia strikes deep.

Into your life it will creep.

It starts when you're always afraid.

Step out of line, the MAN come and take you away.

It's time we stop.

Hey, what's that sound?

Everybody look what's goin' down.

The more stubborn and erratic that Sen John McCain's behavior gets in opposition to repealing the DADT policy about gays serving in the military, the happier I am that I didn't vote for him as President. He makes me look positively cheerful, even his best friend, Joe Lieberman, has taken him to task during the recent congressional hearing. DADT was a taboo subject at the McCain house this thanksgiving, with both mom and daughters supporting the repeal.

The more irrational he gets makes me think that my former assessment of his behavior is correct, and it means that the man should go and see a therapist. It's not just the men of his generation's blind fear of all things homo, that some guy will try to cornhole you while under stress in some foxhole, or to admit to even seeing another man's penis is an admission that you aren't all macho that you can be...

I believe that John McCain's fears run deeper, because while he was incarcerated as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, he had homosexual experiences to relieve suppressed sexual tension, much like men in our prison system do because they have few options available to them. I believe that John McCain has repressed these memories, more so because they contain torture and elements of cruelty; and the fear of having to revisit them makes him stubborn and a little batshit. It also means that he will no go gently into that good night, ever become reasonable on the subject, and the only way he will change his mind is if he experiences a huge meltdown in public, some kind of temper tantrum in front of the television cameras.

Elections, PakUSAstan, Aliens Among Us, Pelosi Pulls Rabbit Out Of Hat

Gail Collins
Dana Milbank

Dear world, how's that let's-have-elections-to-promote-democracy thingy coming along? I don't know if we've always had such a blatant amount of election fraud and corruption, and the results of the recent elections in Afghanistan, Egypt, and the Ivory Coast are very disappointing. In Egypt, the government just scoffed and waved a dismissive hand at the fact that the major opposition group didn't win any seats at all in parliament, where last year they had won 88. In the Ivory Coast, an election official was taped bringing out the results for an area, looking at what was printed on the page, then angrily ripping the results paper up and tossing them. The current dictator, Laurent Gbagbo, has said that losing the election to his rival is unacceptable, so look forward to some more African violence...

 But Afghanistan takes the cake by arresting the honest election officials because its unhappy with the results. In Karzai's case, the areas where he has tribal affinity with the Pashtuns are now under-represented in parliament because it was too dangerous for people to come out and vote. So, it must be the election official's fault, who won't fudge any winners that are loyal to Karzai... the end results are the people's increased cynicism in this type of government along with the US's increasing impotence to influence the government officials.

We might as well rename Pakistan right now, into PakUSAstan, since it's become clear the our military is over-running the country. The Pakistani parliament has given up and directed the military to deal with all further exhortations to root out al-Qaeda groups, and the Prime Minister is in negotiations to buy a house in Qatar or the UAE for his family to live while he finishes serving out his term in office. First, it was the unmanned drone flying over the border, then, it was the skirmishes with mercenaries and the CIA. Now, we have groups of our military riding along with the Pakistani military, as they go out on patrols. Next, it will be General Petraeus setting up a headquarters in Islamabad, all the better to share information, you know...

Another disquieting incident is the arresting of 39 suspected members of al-Qaeda in Iraq. That's not too bad, except they are wearing the orange jumpsuits adopted by the US jail system. In Iraq, these accused face the death penalty, and there is a loud protest that a trial is too good for them, let's execute them all right now...! Take note, we might hear similar sounds if the US AG ever finds the founder of Wikileaks and hauls his butt over to the US...

For years Hollywood has made science fiction films about the Earth being attacked by aliens, with smaller films made about one or a few aliens living among us, with mixed results. Today, NASA announced the discovery of a life-form that is based on arsenic, something that will take quite some imagination getting used to, but something that had been imagined not too long ago. This television season we were introduced to The Event, so it may not be much longer before we are introduced formally to the Brother From another Planet. Or, it may take on the Wolfen variety, an entity that was here before humankind. My guess is that we will soon become aware of beings described by David Icke, beings that fueled the conspiracy theories for hundreds of years, from gods who seeded the human race to vampires and demons. So, if Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann both have guests on their shows who are shape-shifting lizards that mostly live in another dimension, I would pay very close attention on whom they support in the upcoming election... These lizard people are supposed to be very resistant to change and personally resent the phrase Don't Ask Don't Tell:

And Nancy Pelosi has proven once again why the conservative Republicans hate her guts, because time and time again she has proven to be the most effective Speaker of the House, ever. TPM reports that: "Using a wily procedural maneuver to tie Republican hands, House Democrats managed to pass, by a vote of 234-188, legislation that will allow the Bush tax cuts benefiting only the wealthiest Americans to expire. John Boehner is livid, but really, everyone saw it coming, it was announced for months as the strategy that Obama wished to pursue, and if Republicans bitch too much about it, then they look like they care more for the rich than anyone else. Besides, the tax cuts that will expire just go back to where they were during the Clinton administration, and nobody complained then. Besides, leaders like Eric Cantor and Mitch McConnell were getting too full of themselves, thinking that the wussies were going to lay down and do whatever they proposed...

"Harry Potter, eat your heart out..."

There Must Be A Pony In that Room Full Of Teabags, Somewhere!

George W Bush
Glenn Greenwald
Howard Fineman

"The name 'WikiLeaks' doesn't sounds like espionage. It sounds like Barbara Walters interviewing Ricky Martin." – Craig Ferguson

"According to the TSA, most of the people protesting the new body search procedures are men. At last they're getting to see what it's like to be groped by someone who won't take no for an answer." – Jay Leno

"In a recent interview, Sarah Palin said we must stand with our North Korean allies. When she was corrected she said, 'Listen, geometry was never my strong suit.'" – Jay Leno

On a recent radio show, Rush Limbaugh told Barack Obama to keep his hands off his teabag. Next thing we know, Obama is rushed to the hospital and got 12 stitches on his lower lip. Coincidence? I don't think so... I never thought that I'd provide a link to anything that was ghostwritten for George W Bush, but his opinion piece for AIDS is worth reading. I give him points for continuing to support the fight against AIDS after he is out of office, especially in Africa. Few presidents or first ladies continue to support charitable causes once they finish their terms in office; I'm thinking of Betty Ford and Nancy Reagan here. Jimmy Carter is probably better known for his charity work after he left office than for what he accomplished while he was in office, few American politicians live up to the Christian ideals they so loudly espoused while they hypocritically served, so Jimmy earns bonus points for practicing what he preaches. Clinton looks like the perfect elder statesman, yet Alzheimer's is keeping George HW Bush from doing much in the public spotlight, to give him a pass...

"Rush, don't tea bag me, bro..."

Interpol has issued an arrest warrant on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, based on bogus sex charges filed in the Netherlands. Ecuador has offered him a place to live and promises never to extradite him, nice to find a safe haven. The grandstanding hasn't died down over the latest batch of wikileaks, it's like each country is being made to stand up one after another and introduce themselves to the 12 step crowd: "Hello, I am Turkey, and I have been wikileaked..." Putting things in a more sensible perspective, the NY Times quotes Defense Secretary Robert Gates: “Let me just offer some perspective as somebody who’s been at this a long time. Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve, and it has for a long time. And I dragged this up the other day when I was looking at some of these prospective releases. And this is a quote from John Adams: ‘How can a government go on, publishing all of their negotiations with foreign nations, I know not. To me, it appears as dangerous and pernicious as it is novel.’


“Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it’s in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments — some governments — deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation.


“So other nations will continue to deal with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share sensitive information with one another. Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.’’




Despite all of the bluff and bluster that conservatives have let off over how Obamacare is unconstitutional, among other things, and every Republican state attorney general were itching to file a lawsuit against it, so far their results have produced zero. Nothing, zilch, big fat goose-egg... As the NY Times reports: "For the second time in two months, a federal judge has upheld the constitutionality of the new health care law, ruling on Tuesday that the requirement that most Americans obtain medical coverage falls within Congress’s authority to regulate interstate commerce... The measure is designed to cover the majority of the country’s uninsured by requiring that most people have insurance and providing subsidies to make it affordable.


Judge Moon rejected the argument by plaintiffs around the country that the Commerce Clause of the Constitution does not empower Congress to require Americans to buy a commercial product like health insurance. To do so, they argue, would amount to the regulation of inactivity.


In disagreeing, Judge Moon embraced arguments made by the Justice Department. “Far from ‘inactivity,’ ” he wrote, “by choosing to forgo insurance, plaintiffs are making an economic decision to try to pay for health care services later, out of pocket, rather than now, through the purchase of insurance.” So, it looks like our homegrown constitutional scholars are again misinterpreting the intentions of our founding fathers. I can only wonder what else they have gotten wrong...

Actually, I know what our tea baggers have gotten wrong. Instead of listening to Rush and Glenn everyday, and I would rather shoot myself in the head, I go to the library and check out at least one or two socially conservative books, to try and keep up with their arguments. I don't know if there is really such a large audience out there for political conservatism, but there certainly is a lot money going into publishing a lot of these books. I know that many of the old money that supported George W Bush were riled when a lot of books were published over his incompetence and cronyism, and that their current goal is to totally discredit Obama in every direction he turns; but the sheer volume of vitriol and lies and total bullshit is astounding. We could solve our energy problems if we put all of that hot air to use turning turbines instead of launching slings and arrows of ninja misfortune. With negative brainwashed slanders relentlessly invading our consciousness, it's no wonder that I wake up in the morning doubting all faith I had in Barack Obama.

I still am naive enough to believe in bi-partisanship solutions, though it's obvious that John Boehner, Mitch McConnell, and Eric Cantor don't plan on playing along. They won't be happy until Obama bends to their will and bows to them in subservience, a black man that knows his proper place... In fact, Obama's appointing his most recent bi-partisan commission reminds me of the old joke that describes the definition of an optimist:

A young boy was very happy all of the time, much to the dismay of his older relatives. They decided to teach him a lesson. On his next birthday they gave him as a present a room-full of shit. When the boy opened the door and saw what was in the room, he gave an exclamation and dived right in, laughing and digging away.

When the older relatives asked him why he was so happy, digging in a room full of shit, he replied: "But, there must be a pony in here somewhere!" I guess if we substitute the Senate floor for that room, the analogy would be perfect...

In the meantime, if anything gets passed during this short session of Congress, it will happen at the very last minute, as Congressman and women are darting out their doors to finish their Christmas shopping. It's very rare for both of Russia's leaders, Dmitry Medvedev and Vladimeer Putin to tell Congress to pass the nuclear non-proliferation treaty or else... Will that make  idiots like John Kyl look up from the trough enough to paw twice for yes? Or will he and others like him keep their sheepish heads down... My own House Representative Doug Lamborn, recently wrote how he is more concerned with more important issues, like ending any more funding for National Public Radio, which is liberal and therefore, biased and needs to go... Let's see, ending the possibility of a nuclear war on one hand, or never again listening to "All Things Considered..." what a tough choice to make for our lockstepping mindless marching morons (points if you know the 1950's sci fi author who used that phrase as a title of his collection of short stories...)

Wikileaks Or Planted Leaks, Worm Or Head Of Snake, Close Enough?

Dana Milbank
Richard Cohen
David Brooks

"Guns, gold, vodka, showers of $100 bills, a Chechen rebel leader, a shady oil oligarch, and wedding guests on Jet Skis with bellies full of boiled sheep: This is diplomacy as it ought to be." - Dana Milbank

"This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests, it is an attack on the international community." - Hillary Clinton

 “The will of the people seems like it was manipulated by a well-funded campaign of hate, bigotry and xenophobia.”  - Imad Enchassi

Yes, Dana Milbank's opinion piece is as wonderful as his quote above, well worth reading. For those who haven't been able to link to Wikileaks web site over the past couple of days, it has been mysteriously jammed, perhaps by the intelligence service of some western democratic country, I really can't say and they won't either, nudge, nudge, wink, wink... You can, however, read the much edited versions on the NY Times website, which includes the entire missive from the Dagestan wedding. Supposedly, Wikileaks will only post the same ones that der Spiegal and the NY Times publish, then wait awhile before putting the whole 250,000 cable files on its site. So we currently have only what the editors believe are newsworthy and mildly embarrassing to the US State Dept. Already the spin is being put out how much better Obama's diplomats are than the Bushies, who tended to stomp and tromp on other people's toes... My brother-in-law sees all this as further proof that we are waning as a superpower, and that's the impotent frustration you hear as our empire falls...

Take the schizophrenic situation with North Korea. Everyone is freaking out because North K sent some ammo shells onto an island containing a military base and some more people got killed. The US implores china to do something, thinking that china is the only one who has enough clout to smack North K around a bit and get away with it. China, believing Obama when he earlier said he wanted to continue talks and negotiations, rushed around and got North K to agree to sit down and talk about stuff with itself, South K, Japan, and the US. To which we said are you freaking kidding? We won't sit down and talk with them!!! Along with freezing the pay of all federal employees, it looks like Obama is going all tea party on us... Time for Rahm to pay a visit and do some pragmatic yelling and cursing at Old Split Lip...

As the US and South K continue their war games in the water, provoking the North into more temper tantrums ( I wonder if that's how the royal family communicate with each other, and why there aren't many sit down, family dinners together...), maybe enough to escalate its bad behavior, enough to give the US, South K, and China the excuse to invade and end the madness once and for all...

Or not... Maybe there isn't a plan at all, and little communication among allies, and we are holding our collective breath, waiting to see what the rogue brat will do next. Maybe, we won't really know what's going on until the next batch of wikileaks files come out... or are the wikileaks files cleverly planted disinformation aimed at the Chinese because we would like them to support regime change in North K, and we would like all of the Arabian monarchs to support Israel's position towards Iran. It doesn't matter now if they said the things they have been quoted saying, the damage has been done. It's like asking someone that age-old question, when have you stopped beating your wife?

We haven't seemed to quite figure out what the Ill-Suns are up to, we don't have the handle to mess with their heads like we are doing with Iran. The wikileaks have shown them how much they are unloved, how their dreams of a Shia hegemony in the Middle East is resented by their Sunni neighbors, who were upset enough when the US, in effect, gave Iraq over to iran on a silver platter by letting Nuri al-Maliki form his governments. And now they seem to want the head of the snake cut off... And we are trying to please them, two important Iranian nuclear scientists were just assassinated in broad daylight, one who was their expert in fighting the Stuxnet worm. Worm, snake, isn't that close enough?

With this latest in-your-face action that the Israelis so dearly love, Iran is very very very pissed. Angry enough to take some kind of retaliation? Angry enough to stir up the hordes of Revolutionary guards and baton wielding basij and spill over their borders and take up the fight in Pakistan and Afghanistan? Or will it be content to bully around the Lebanese leader into accepting Iranian Revolutionary Guards into his military to act as liaisons with Hizbullah militants in the south? In the meantime, Iran says that it is all the US and Israel's fault, don't play into their taunts through wikileaks, we are all still brothers in the same faith, and order us a couple extra six-packs of Red Bull for the nuclear conference next week in Geneva, we need to recharge... all to an embarrassed yet thunderous silence throughout the Middle East...


I further wonder at the insanity that has become our system of justice. Sometimes agencies like the CIA and the FBI get something right, but usually they arrogantly ignore your human rights, and will lie, trick, and deceive you to commit a crime so they can lock you up and bring you to trial. Unless they shoot you instead. If you read books about the real CIA, it seems that they missed the intelligence boat on every major political event, from the fall of the Berlin Wall onwards...

Here is a troubling statement made to justify the scenario where the Somali-born teenage kid tries to kill a bunch of people lighting up a Christmas tree in Portland. They led this kid on for two years, feeding his fantasies of domestic jihad, even making a realistic car bomb for him, then saying they are justified doing this because: “So long as that person has expressed an interest in committing a crime, it’s appropriate for the government to respond by providing the purported means of carrying out that crime so as to make a criminal case against him.” Dudes, I've expressed an interest in getting rich, or just getting a job, or being able to feed my family this Christmas, and it looks like I'm not going to get a response from the government. Maybe we would all be better off, make more friends and get free money from the FBI if we stated a desire to all be jihadis or petty criminal master-minds...


I end with today's new bumper-sticker:

End all Bush tax-cuts

And let the IRS sort them out...

Holiday Ranting Season Begins Monday

Peter Beinart
Robert Reich

"The point is that in foreign policy, even more than other aspects of government, secrecy is both necessary and dangerous" - Peter Beinart

"Welcome to National Fiscal Hypocrisy Week." - Robert Reich

"Bristol Palin lost to Jennifer Grey in the finale of 'Dancing with the Stars.' The good news is, when a Palin loses they tend to just quietly disappear." – Conan O'Brien

"Hillary, wikileaks must die"

For the important issues that are happening in Congress this week, click on the above link to Robert Reich's  opinion piece, try to not be outraged by what won't get done... The wikileaks backlash will begin during the next two days, as certain foreign countries release their own diplomatic assessments of US leaders and politicians. It won't be anything that we already don't know, but it will be funnier coming from Berlesconi's mouth, and I can't wait to hear what Putin has to say about Hillary. The US's biggest complaint is that these document were classified secret and now the secrets are out. Big deal. I've said worse things in my posts. We will be mildly embarrassed for a few days and then move on. Personally, I was hoping for juicier stuff, so maybe it means that we hire boring, unimaginative people to be our lower tier diplomats... The other secret that is out is that we use our embassy staffs for collecting information, or spying on certain locals. Ho Hum, this has been done by embassies even before there was the United States. Every embassy in every country has their spies, they all label them differently. Iran has theirs in the US located within the Pakistani Embassy. We have ours in the Swedish Embassy in Tehran. The Russians had theirs in the embassy in Mexico that attracted Lee Harvey Oswald...

"Diplomats, like politicians and journalists, are also human. They too love to exchange gossip." - John Kornblum

From an interview that der Spiegal magazine had with former US ambassador to Germany, on why the current wikileaks could just as well have happened anywhere, even in Germany: "The documents were apparently taken off an official American internet network, to which 2.5 million persons are said to have access. Ironically, this system was set up after 9/11 to improve international cooperation by ensuring that all relevant information on terrorism would be widely available. But no security system on earth can guarantee safety on a network which offers so many people access to such highly sensitive information. In the highly charged political atmosphere of today's United States, the temptation to make a political point by stealing sensitive information is great."


My apologies to Willie Nelson:

Mama don't let your babies grow up to be jihadis

Don't let 'em pick up explosives and drive them old trucks

Make 'em be doctors and lawyers and such

Mama don't let your babies grow up to be jihadis

They'll never stay home and they're always alone

Might even Bomb someone they love...

I don't like the spin that's now being used on the kid who was duped by the FBI into the fake car bomb attack in Portland, Oregon, adding this incident to the list of potentially dangerous plots against our homeland by foreign born jihadis, but raised in the US... Doesn't this now confirm once again the argument that we should now profile and suspect all of our Muslim population? Isn't Oklahoma correct to amend its state constitution to outlaw using sharia law, and aren't the Republicans correct in writing federal immigration legislation along the lines of Arizona's? For people who want to limit the federal government's powers, they sure are itching for the government to take away our personal powers and freedoms. like the good, unsuspecting fascists they really are.

"Get out, all you foreign born mo'fo's"

If the good people who work for us in Washington DC were surprised at the anger and backlash generated by the loss of conservatives being in power and whipped into an elderly frenzy by the likes of Dick Armey and Sarah Palin, then they will be caught off-guard again as people react to the continued shenanigans by the new GOPers. It's enough to make me lose my temper and conduct a good whup ass on my local Republican representative...

By continuing to obstruct solving our economic problems by creating more tax cuts, I'm gonna punch the guy in the mouth if I hear that one more time... By not signing the nuclear non-proliferation treaty that's been sitting there on the desk, I'm gonna punch my representative in the mouth next time I see him... Filibustering and not extending jobless benefits once again, I won't punch anybody, but I will stand back and watch as families end up stealing food or toys for the Christmas holidays... I guess everyone will end up at Walmart... Who knew that Scrooge this year was named Doug Lamborn in my district, maybe Scott Brown or John McCain in yours... What I'm trying to say is that if I don't have a job in two years, I and many others will take it out on the conservatives one more time, but the anger will be worse, it will be righteous and genuine, and it won't be deflected by asking for Obama's birth certificate or distracted by other bright and shiny objects...

"Google, google..."