Thursday, November 29, 2007

TODAY

Waiting and waiting for
The crack of doom
This world seems to
Be going insane
But I still go out
And buy milk, bread and eggs
Until the next day of shame.
War is in the air and
The air’s full of war and
Although the Homeland is without war
America is at war because
The WAR MACHINE
Is busy
Making its billions
Making its new cruise missiles
Making its new depleted munitions
To fight tomorrow’s war.
The ice caps are melting
But the oil cartels are laughing
Don't worry about tomorrow
Worry only about today
You need more oil to burn
And
We need more profits to earn.
Waiting and waiting for the crack of doom
Is making us insane.
War is in the air and
The world’s full of war
Waiting and waiting for
The crack of doom.

IT'S THE OIL STUPID!



Wednesday, November 28, 2007

SHOCK AND AWE




Cardiologist
O.K. Dick. Are you ready for us to give a SHOCK to your heart?

DC

Yep. Just make sure you don't miss. I sometimes do.

Cardiologist

Don't worry, sir, my aim is excellent.

DC

Good. Leave the ducks and quail for me to shoot.

Cardiologist

Yes sir.

Aide to Cardiologist:

Sir, phone call for Mr. Cheney.

Cardiologist:

Who in the blazes is it? I'm almost ready to give Dick his SHOCK.

Aide to Cardiologist:

It's the Decider.

Cardiologist

Who? Oh, you mean George W. Bush. Dick, it's your former boss.

DC:

Quack! Hello?

GWB

Dick, have you had that SHOCK thing done yet?

DC

Not yet sir.

GWB:

Good. I want the doctor to also give you some AWE.

DC

Yes, yes. I love SHOCK and AWE. Thanks for thinking about me.

GWB:

O.K. Doc. Fire away!

Cardiologist:

Quack!




DICK CHENEY AND GEORGE W. BUSH: LIARS AND KILLERS

Sunday, November 25, 2007

THANKSGIVING LEFTOVERS

I just had my fifth turkey sandwich.
I ate two today.
I think this will be my last turkey sandwich until next year.
I throw a little sea salt on the turkey that lies between two pieces of toasted bread slices that have a slight amount of mayonnaise.
The latter is made from Canola oil...thanks to my cholesterol level.
This year the turkey roasted in one of those roaster things, so the house didn't reek of turkey like it usually does.
I know reek is a harsh word.
At first, the aroma of a turkey cooking in the oven is pleasant, but after a few hours one can do without this overwhelming, fowl aroma.
I always want more dressing, and there is never enough.
I bought a package of organic dressing. I haven't cooked it yet.
This year the stores ran out of cranberry sauce.
I guess it was a bad year for cranberries. I like the jellied kind.
This year I bought a frozen turkey two weeks before Thanksgiving day.
I usually wait until the last minute, and there aren't many turkeys left.
Other turkey musings:
I once dropped an entire turkey dinner on my lap. I let my dog eat this dinner. I went back and was more careful with my second plate.
I was in Red River, New Mexico when the daughters of the motel owner announced,
"Here come the turkeys!"
This is what Texans are called, at least in Red River, New Mexico.
If Ben Franklin had gotten his way and the turkey had become America's national bird, what would we eat on Thanksgiving?
Eagles?
Beavers?
Porcupines?

Thursday, November 22, 2007

UNPARDONABLE AND LYING HUBRIS



To keep impeachment "off the table," knowing that the president and vice president brazenly lied to the American people and to the Special Counsel's office about such a serious offense, is to make a mockery of the Constitution and the law.

Bush and Cheney must be impeached at this point if only to save school districts across the nation the cost of having to buy all new American history and civics texts, revised so as to remove all discussion of the notion of Constitutional checks and balances and the word "impeachment."

An impeachment hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, with full subpoena power granted to that committee, would lead to revelations and exposures far beyond that of Scott McClellan's, though putting McClellan under oath on national TV in such a hearing promises to be as enlightening and entertaining as was the testimony in 1974 before the same panel by Nixon White House attorney John Dean.

From McClellan's Dish

Impeachment is Back on the Table
By DAVE LINDORFF

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff11222007.html





You've pardoned

A turkey

But who will pardon your

Thievery?

You’ve pardoned

A turkey

But who will pardon or forgive

Your spies and your

Treachery?

You’ve pardoned

A turkey

But who will pardon

Your unpardonable

Hubris?

A turkey will live

But our soldiers

Are dying

For this.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

THE SALUTE




If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator.
George W. Bush


[NOTE: I have postponed posting this until now.

Just yesterday I saw George W. Bush walking on the White House lawn, looking as happy as a loon.

As he smirked and waved his wiggling fingers on an outstretched arm, there it was again, that stiff-armed salute.

It certainly wasn’t Hitler’s Nazi salute, but it again gave the television viewer an eerie recollection of Hitler’s ugly gesture].

I know that after what is read here I will be called a leftist and liberal kook, an IslamoFascist sympathizer, a super-hater of George W. Bush, and a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist (O.K. I am already called this).

I thought at first that I was just over-reacting and over-reaching.

I thought that I was only seeing what I wanted to see.

I thought that it was just one still-frame---one isolated incident.

Now I don't think this is the case.

I now think that there is more here than meets the eyes; more than what the mind wants to confront.

I saw it again tonight.

George W. Bush was walking beside the new prime minister of Great Britain.

He and the Prime Minister had just finished talking to the media on the lawn of the White House.

The Decider was walking away with that nonchalant gait.

Then...

THERE IT WAS AGAIN!

The Long War President thrust out his arm (his merry wave) in a similar and spooky way that reminded one of a “salute” that a German dictator used to make.

NOW I knew that it was purposeful.

Now I knew that it was no accident.

I have now seen the president doing it over and over.

No, I am not taking any drugs (legal or illegal), nor have I been drinking any alcohol.

There's always more than meets the eye.

Keep your eyes and mind open.

In fact, the Decider sort of smiles when he does it.

CREEPY.

It’s the oil stupid!

Wednesday, November 14, 2007

HYPOCRITES AND CRIPPLES

NEW ALBANY, IND. -- Intensifying his battle with Congress over federal spending, President Bush on Tuesday vetoed an appropriations bill for the first time, rejecting $150.7 billion in spending for school aid, healthcare and other domestic programs.

But as he complained about the cost of that bill, which would have increased spending on these programs by 4.3% over last year, Bush signed a $471-billion defense appropriations bill that pushed up military spending by more than 9.5%.
Los Angeles Times
November 14, 2007

"It is patently absurd that President Bush, whose irresponsible policies instigated record budget deficits and added more than $3 trillion to the national debt, now wants to pretend that he is somehow an exemplar of fiscal responsibility."
House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-M)

Mr. Hoyer needs to put his ethics where his mouth is.
He talks the good talk, like most Democrats, but he's a hypocritical cripple when it comes to walking the walk.
Mr. Hoyer says no to voting for the impeachment of Dick Cheney, the primary mover and architectural malefactor/deceiver who gave George W. Bush, the Decider, his bloody green light to transform Iraq into a crimson and radioactive wasteland.
Mr. Hoyer, you do not have the courage to REALLY do something to halt
the spurious, wrong and forged Bush-Cheney War in Iraq.
Mr. Hoyer, you are like so many of my own high school students and fellow colleagues:
ALL YOU DO IS COMPLAIN
COMPLAIN
COMPLAIN...
BUT things STAY THE
SAME!
It's the oil stupid!

Monday, November 12, 2007

THE PRESIDENTIAL PANORAMA



Hillary will win the Democratic nomination.

Rudy will win the Republican nomination.

Or he may not.

With the dogmatic arms of Pat Robertson now around Rudy (they had their big hug for us all to see), it may be a big pie-in-the-face for Giuliani, who

is as much (or more) the war hawk as George W. Bush.

Pat Buchanan has this to say about Rudy’s advisers:

Best known of Rudy's advisers is Norman Podhoretz, who wrote in June, "The Case for Bombing Iran" in Commentary, thinks we are in "World War IV" and writes that "as an American and as a Jew, I pray with all my heart" Bush will bomb Iran. Podhoretz sees us at Munich in 1938 and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as Hitler.

"Like Hitler," writes Podhoretz, Ahmadinejad "is a revolutionary whose objective is to overturn the going international order and to replace it in the fullness of time with a new order dominated by Iran and ruled by the religio-political culture of Islamofascism."

Time to return to Planet Earth. Ahmadinejad is not only jeered at Columbia but at colleges in Tehran. He is openly attacked by rivals. He does not control the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. He does not decide on war or peace. He runs a regime with 2 percent of U.S. gross domestic product, no nukes and no navy or air force to rival ours. He is a Shi'ite in a Sunni world. How is this 5 foot, 4 inch Persian going to strong-arm the United States, Russia and China ­ not to mention an Israel with 300 nukes ­ into his "new order"?

After the axis-of-evil speech threatening war on Iraq, Iran and North Korea, Podhoretz wrote that Bush had not gone far enough.

The "regimes that richly deserve to be overthrown ... should extend to Syria and Lebanon and Libya, as well as 'friends' of America like the Saudi royal family and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, along with the Palestinian Authority." After toppling them all, wrote Podhoretz, as he mocked the "timorous ... incorrigibly cautious Colin Powell," let's find "the stomach to impose a new political culture on the defeated."

Bush found the stomach. Near 4,000 Americans are dead, 27,000 wounded, Walter Reed is full, and Norman is looking for new wars. On a recent National Review cruise, he ranted that Iraq was an "amazing success," "a triumph. It couldn't have gone better." As for Saddam's WMDs, they were secretly "shipped to Syria."

After meeting with his candidate, Podhoretz emerged happy to assure us, "There is very little difference in how he (Rudy) sees the war and I see it." If true, a vote for Rudy is a vote for endless war.

And, as James Madison said, wars are the death of republics.

Other crystal ball forecasts:

Mrs. Hillary the Giggle will select as her running mate John Edwards, Bill Richardson, or Barack Obama (but these are stretches of the imagination.)

Mr. Rudy the Grin will select either Fred Thompson or Newt Gingrich to be his vice-president (but these are more stretches of the imagination).

Playing the roulette wheel and winning is more likely than any of these predictions.

New variables and unexpected surprises will enter the presidential panorama.

But one thing is for certain, and this is that the American people (and the world) are fed up to the gills with all of the lies and demagoguery.

The most likely outcomes are likely to become something quite different.

It's going to become more and more interesting.

Now is the calm before the storm.

The GOP will make Iran one of its trump cards.

There won’t be any shoe-ins or sure things.

Candidates such as Bill Richardson, John Edwards, Ron Paul, and yes, even Mr. Nobel Prize winner Al Gore could pull some fast ones (i.e. fast wins) when all is said and done.

But even after everything is said and done, the corporate and behind-the-scenes masters will pull the strings of anyone who is elected.

That is why mavericks such as Kucinich and Ron Paul will never be picked…

I mean elected.

It’s the oil stupid.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

NO MORE "CON" JOBS PLEASE

Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was on one of the Sunday political pundit shows.
She was asked questions about Pakistan.
Ms. Rice mentioned how the United States has to view the situation in Pakistan "in steps".
I guess Ms. Rice wants America to persevere some more and be patient.
Let us hope that Ms. Rice is not giving us another CON job.
Like the one written about below.


Condi Rice, 9/11 and Another Nest of Lies
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 02 October 2006

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice may have committed perjury in her testimony before the 9/11 Commission in May of 2004. At a minimum, her testimony was a convenient mishmash of half-truths and omissions which served to paint the White House as innocent bystanders as the attacks of 9/11 unfolded. Certainly, her testimony omitted the fact that the two most senior intelligence officials in the nation delivered a stern warning regarding an impending terror attack two full months before 9/11.

Sunday's edition of the Washington Post carried a story titled "Two Months Before 9/11, an Urgent Warning to Rice." The story described a desperate attempt by CIA chief George Tenet and CIA counterterrorism chief J. Cofer Black to draw Rice's attention to the looming threat of an al-Qaeda strike against the United States. Tenet and Black insisted on a meeting with Rice on July 10, 2001. This meeting was first reported by Bob Woodward in his new book, "State of Denial."

"Tenet had the NSA review all the intercepts," read the Post story, "and the agency concluded they were of genuine al-Qaeda communications. On June 30, a top-secret senior executive intelligence brief contained an article headlined 'Bin Laden Threats Are Real.' Tenet hoped his abrupt request for an immediate meeting would shake Rice. He and Black, a veteran covert operator, had two main points when they met with her. First, al-Qaeda was going to attack American interests, possibly in the United States itself ... Second, this was a major foreign policy problem that needed to be addressed immediately. They needed to take action that moment - covert, military, whatever - to thwart bin Laden."

The meeting, according to Tenet and Black, went nowhere. "Tenet and Black felt they were not getting through to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off. President Bush had said he didn't want to swat at flies," the Post story reported. "Rice seemed focused on other administration priorities, especially the ballistic missile defense system that Bush had campaigned on. She was in a different place."

"Tenet left the meeting feeling frustrated," continued the Post story. "Though Rice had given them a fair hearing, no immediate action meant great risk. Black felt the decision to just keep planning was a sustained policy failure. Rice and the Bush team had been in hibernation too long. Afterward, Tenet looked back on the meeting with Rice as a tremendous lost opportunity to prevent or disrupt the Sept. 11 attacks. Black later said, 'The only thing we didn't do was pull the trigger to the gun we were holding to her head.'"

The Post story concluded with a remarkable Editor's Note: "How much effort the Bush administration made in going after Osama bin Laden before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, became an issue last week after former president Bill Clinton accused President Bush's 'neocons' and other Republicans of ignoring bin Laden until the attacks. Rice responded in an interview that 'what we did in the eight months was at least as aggressive as what the Clinton administration did in the preceding years.'"

This comment suggests the entire Post story was inspired by former President Clinton's remarkable denunciation of the Bush administration's efforts to thwart bin Laden in a recent Fox News interview. The seriousness of this meeting, however, goes far beyond political sniping and gamesmanship.

Peter Rundlet served as counsel to the 9/11 Commission, and has accused the White House of hiding the meeting between Tenet, Black and Rice from the commission. Rundlet practiced at the influential law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, and was formerly associate counsel to the president and a White House Fellow, serving in the Office of Chief of Staff to the President, before joining the commission.

Writing for the online news magazine Think Progress, Rundlet stated, "Many, many questions need to be asked and answered about this revelation, questions that the 9/11 Commission would have asked, had the commission been told about this significant meeting. Suspiciously, the commissioners and the staff investigating the administration's actions prior to 9/11 were never informed of the meeting. As Commissioner Jamie Gorelick pointed out, 'We didn't know about the meeting itself. I can assure you it would have been in our report if we had known to ask about it.'"

This is a remarkable revelation in and of itself. The head of CIA and the head of CIA's counterterrorism branch delivered a warning in the strongest possible terms to Ms. Rice two months before the attack, yet this meeting was not revealed to the 9/11 Commission. It may well have remained a historical non-event had Woodward not written about it.

Which brings us to Ms. Rice's sworn testimony in May 2004 before the commission.

At one point in this hearing, Commission Vice-Chair Lee Hamilton directly asked Rice about the so-called intelligence failures leading up to 9/11: "At the end of the day, of course, we were unable to protect our people. And you suggest in your statement - and I want you to elaborate on this, if you want to - that in hindsight it would have been - better information about the threats would have been the single - the single most important thing for us to have done, from your point of view, prior to 9/11, would have been better intelligence, better information about the threats. Is that right? Are there other things that you think stand out?"

Rice responded, "Well, Mr. Chairman, I took an oath of office on the day that I took this job to protect and defend. And like most government officials, I take it very seriously. And so, as you might imagine, I've asked myself a thousand times what more we could have done. I know that, had we thought that there was an attack coming in Washington or New York, we would have moved heaven and earth to try and stop it. And I know that there was no single thing that might have prevented that attack."

Not only did Rice fail to mention the dramatic warnings given to her by Tenet and Black, she goes on to flatly state that neither she nor the administration had a clue that an attack was coming. Further, she claims that "no single thing could have prevented that attack."

"The July 10 meeting between Tenet, Black and Rice went unmentioned in the various reports of investigations into the Sept. 11 attacks," read the Post report on Sunday, "but it stood out in the minds of Tenet and Black as the starkest warning they had given the White House on bin Laden and al-Qaeda."

Combined with the August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing delivered to Bush, which explicitly stated that bin Laden intended to attack the United States, the revelation of this meeting between Tenet, Black and Rice indicates that the Bush White House should have and could have made a far greater effort at thwarting the 9/11 attacks. Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission on the matter may rise to the level of perjury. At a minimum, it exposes yet another nest of lies delivered by a member of this administration.

"A mixture of shock, anger, and sadness overcame me," wrote Peter Rundlet in his Think Progress article, "when I read about revelations in Bob Woodward's new book about a special surprise visit that George Tenet and his counterterrorism chief Cofer Black made to Condi Rice, also on July 10, 2001. If true, it is shocking that the administration failed to heed such an overwhelming alert from the two officials in the best position to know."

Indeed.


William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know and The Greatest Sedition Is Silence. His newest book, House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation, will be available this winter from PoliPointPress.

It's the oil stupid!






|


Saturday, November 10, 2007

Norman Mailer




A day after I had finished my little Ode On Death poem, I woke up to find that Norman Mailer had died.

Mailer as a personality, much like Gore Vidal, was as interesting as his writing.

As with Mr. Vidal, I liked Mailer's essays more than his short stories or novels.

Mailer spoke with quick, short sentences that captivated.
He was always enthusiastic.
One could tell that he was enamored with ideas and words.

Neither he nor Vidal will be added to the pantheon of Nobel prize winners.
But both have stamped time with the ink of their creativity.

Norman Mailer.
R.I.P.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

The U.S. Supreme Court is ruling on whether lethal injection is cruel and unusual punishment.
What about killing someone?
Isn’t that cruel and unusual punishment?
The Old Testament guides today's morals more than the New Testament.
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche said,
"The last Christian died on the cross."
Perhaps he was right.

“Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date at which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not encountered in private life.”
Albert Camus



Tuesday, November 06, 2007

BANKROLLING DICTATORSHIPS IN THE GLOBAL STRUGGLE FOR OIL AND THE FIGHT AGAINST TERRORISM


Sometimes you have to take the good with the bad, the sweet with the sour.

We can’t allow Al-Qaeda to get any of that hegemony or control of the oil.

We will not let the enemies of our way of life win.

You still want to drive your Humvees and SUVs, right?

If we have to support Dictators to fight the radicals and terrorists, then that's what we'll do.

I don't like dictators any more than you do.

We keep the ones we need, and we weed the ones we don’t.

Pakistan is our ally in the fight against terrorism.

We can't let a coup, the elimination of a free press, or the arrests of protesting lawyers deter this alliance.

We have to take the good with the bad and the ugly.

We’ve got to keep spreading peace and democracy, even if authoritarian rule is required.

O.K.

Give me some beer and pretzels.

I'm going to Crawford to break in some camels and clear the brush.

It's the oil stupid!

Sunday, November 04, 2007

DEAD EYE DICK


Rep. Dennis Kucinich introduced H.Res. 333 in April to impeach Vice President Cheney for his pre-war lies about Iraq and for threatening an invasion of Iran.
Speaker Pelosi blocked Judiciary Committee hearings on the bill, but Rep. Kucinich will force a floor vote on Tuesday using his right of personal privilege.
Kucinich's courageous act will put members of the House on record. Are they going to fulfill their oath of office to "defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic"? Or will they support a Vice President whose lies about Iraq cost the lives of nearly 4,000 Americans and possibly $2.4 trillion in our tax dollars - and whose lies about Iran threaten to start World War III?

Quack!
Dick here.
I'm primin' my
Gun...
Getting’ some
Pheasant huntin'
Done!
(Peasant or Pheasant?)
But my endgame will be to hunt Iran.
This is just some target practice before the real Shootin' starts.
Quack!
I see a pheasant now!
Kind of looks like Mr. Ahmadinejad, too.
Bang!
Whoops!
It wasn't him.


It's the oil stupid!

Saturday, November 03, 2007

PARENTHETICAL RHYMES


Chickens on Trains

(Onions for Brains)

Blueberries for Mice

(Strawberries for Lice)

Murder, guts and gore

(Rotten to the core).

American as apple pie

(For the red, white and blue).

The Iraq war was based on a lie

(But there are more bombs to make).

There’s still land to shake and bake.

(It’s going to be a bumpy and scary year)

Cheney and Bush are once

Again pumping us with fear.

(“Come out with your hands up!”

Or your country will be eviscerated.)

It’s the oil stupid!

Thursday, November 01, 2007

MASTER OF WAR

Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only by love; this is the eternal rule.
Buddha
After ignoring the "Democrat" party (as he calls it) for his entire administration, and ignoring the will and voice of the American people on his misbegotton and meretricious war, President George W. Bush is now telling us that he will veto domestic spending.
That is to be expected.
He has to keep increasing the funding to spread war, death and destruction...I mean Democracy.
The Homeland will just have to wait.
The Decider, who now uses a fake Texan drawl when he speaks, prefers to throw dollars and lives onto his self-made pyre in Iraq.
I know that when one of the Democratic presidential candidates becomes president (if the Supreme Court, Voter Fraud or some other coup doesn't "kill" the real winner), he or she will most likely not be able to undo the festering debacle in Iraq.
I guess that the best that can be hoped for is that the Decider doesn't ride into a sunset shrouded with more war smoke billowing out of Iran and the entire Middle East.
It's the oil stupid!