portrait

provocatively drest

Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which increases earthquakes,’ Hojatoleslam Kazem Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media.

Notice how evil such as adultery or earthquakes are all the fault of women, which is, of course, the "official line" of all of the "Big 3" (Judaism, Christianity, Islam).

It's all the woman's fault like it was all Eve's fault.

And it continues today, as it was and ever shall be. It's the fault of those immodestly dressed, lustful, horny, aggressive women, victimizing us innocent men by leading us astray and into adultery.

I love it! & Psychiatrists love it so much they have a name for it. 

grease

A new book by D.C. insider Mark Leibovich tells how things actually work in our nation's capital. A detailed analysis of who does what for whom in that town provides an anatomy of corruption.

For example, Leibovich tells how Geoff Morrell, a public relations man for the Pentagon, was wondering out loud at a D.C. party what he'd be doing now that his boss, Robert Gates, was stepping down. Fortunately for him, he was overheard by the famous lawyer Bob Bennett, whom he just happened to know personally, who landed him a jackpot pr job with BP America.

How could this happen? you might ask; an administration official gets a top job with an enormous corporation with the assistance of a top D.C. fixer, as chronicled by an elite, insider journo. The reason it can and  does happen is because they all know each other.

They call it "networking," which is a polite name for the reality of the place: it's who you know and to whom you kowtow that determines the payoff. Ability, merit, virtue (God save us), and even ideology have little to do with it.

And everything in Washington D.C. has a cash value, because that's the bottom line of how it works. Nothing happens in the village without money changing hands. If you want to move anything at all, you have to grease the skids first.

So, when politicians tell us we should "Believe in America," what is it again we're supposed to believe in, exactly? Where does "We the People" come in?

rehab & revise

George W. Bush's presidential liabrary opens today on the SMU campus in Dallas. It's  architecturally identical to an artist's rendering of Orwell's Ministry of Truth in 1984.

And devoted to the same purpose. It's also, at over a quarter million square feet, the largest presidential library (Herbert Hoover's is the smallest at 66K sq. ft.), and the most expensive. Franklin Roosevelt's was the cheapest, because architects adapted it from some sort of sketch the president drew of a rustic cottage.

The Guardian's (UK) preview of the gala opening tells us Visitors to his official library, which opens in Dallas on Thursday, will be presented with the interactive exhibit 
asking them to second guess four key moments in his presidency: removing Saddam Hussein, the US army "surge" in Iraq, bailing out the banks and responding to hurricane Katrina.

How about you, Mr. Pat Answers of Bugle Call, Idaho? Would you have "gone in there in the first place?" or "left brutal dictator Saddam in place to practice his brutal dictatorship?" And once "in there," would you have decided to "pull out now?" or "stay in there and surge, and get the job done?" I tell you, it's hard work, being the decider. Decisions, decisions.

As you can tell, the purpose of all this is to revise and rehabilitate Dubya's reputation, and apparently it's working. 47 Percent of us now think Dubya was an OK prez  (that number again!), while 50 percent still think he was an unqualified mess, and three percent are comma toes.

No matter how hard they work at it, though, the revisers are having a hard time coming up with an actual accomplishment or two to recall from the boy king's eight years, so they pull out that old chestnut, "He kept us safe from the terrorists." Yup. Guess he did.*

*After 9/11, of course. This is like saying the Soviets had a great safety record for their nuclear power program, except for Chernobyl.

blood sacrifice

I was reading this story about Jokar Tsarnaev in Rupert Murdoch's New York Pile this morning, about how prosecutors have figured out that he's eligible for the death penalty if they'll charge and convict him of using weapons of mass destruction.

This follows hard on the stupid (and still ongoing) debate about whether the Marathon bombing suspect ought to be given his first-amendment rights, i.e., the Miranda stuff. Since he's an American citizen, and the Constitution makes no provision for "special circumstances," there actually is no debate. Either the gov will abide by own laws, or, what's more likely, it won't.

All this raises the question of what we're looking for in this case. Justice? Or a bloody ritual sacrifice.

Many Americans have now devolved to the point where, like primitive and superstitious people everywhere, they have a conscious urge to propitiate and bribe the deity to protect us from those who would  harm us, by offering it their hearts and their blood.

Suspense

I'm sorry to say I have to suspend work on this blog for a little while, because it's become too difficult to read or type on the computer.

I'm seeing a doctor at the end of the month who will probably change up my meds. That and a new computer should do it.

Until then, work on the other blog, "Leave no Stone Unturned" (see sidebar) will continue intermittently.

he's just getting started

Looks like this show is on the road.

Next week he'll speak at Mt. St. Mary's in LA, and explain to students there that Democrats are the real anti-Latino party, and it was a Democratic president, James K. Polk, who invaded Latin America, kicked their ass and stole their land.

That second part is true, of course.

satiricalpolitical.com/2013/04/12/rand-p...

(Satire alert)

by their nuts ye shall know them

I know, Jesus said "By their fruits..." but times have changed, and "fruits" is a homophobic slur.

It's very unfortunate what can happen when a Republican congressman from Texas wants to devise a bumper sticker with both guns and abortion on it. This is where the nuts come in

liberalvaluesblog.com/2013/04/12/wingnut...

And I just threw a bottle at the jukebox, 'cause they tried to play a cheatin song agin. 

very scary stuff

If you live in the Pacific northwest as I do, and would rather not know about things that will worry and upset you, even if they're true, or maybe especially if they're true, then stop reading now, go to another site, and come back tomorrow.

If, however, you're the kind of person who would rather know the truth, even if it's disturbing and worrisome, read on.

The article I'll link you to is by a geologist, but fear not; his writing is clear and easy to understand, even though he uses terms such as "tectonic structures," "Tsunami-generating," and the truly frightening one, "Cascadia subduction zone."

The belly of this thing is pointed right at the Olympic Peninsula, offshore and toward the northeast, which is the same direction the Juan de Fuca plate is moving as it gets shoved under the North American plate, creating strain and tension. 

Yikes.

press science

As predicted here yesterday, sort of (I thougtt he might, but couldn't be sure), Russian President Valdimir Putin today 
issued a "torture list" of 18 Americans banned from entering Russia, to counter the US's release of the "Magnitsky list," of 18 Russians banned from the US because of their possible involvement in the death of the whistle blower Sergei Magnistsky, who died in a notorious Moscow jail  under suspicious circumstances.

The Americans barred from Russia include two officials from President George W. Bush's administration who the ministry said were linked to the "legalization and application of torture" - David Addington, a former chief of staff of Vice President Dick Cheney, and John Choon Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer (pictured here, and chief author of the Bush torture memos, ed.).

The list includes two ex-commanders of the U.S. military detention centers at the Guantanamo Bay U.S. Naval Base, whose detainees have included Russian citizens.

news.yahoo.com/russia-bars-18-americans-...

I think Putin should have made a list of 21 instead of 18, for reasons I've he stated in the post directly below.

what i'd say if I was him

You know, I'm glad to see you, but is shame President Obama doesn't come come visit, as my guest, and then we would talk some of our difficulties out, man to man.

You probably remember, your President George W. Bush visited me here one time. He was very amusing -- sat there right where you are now and lectures me on democracy, I'm not democratic enough for him. So then I ask him how's democracy going in Iraq, and he sits with face full of cordon bleu and says "Just wait. Heh heh." Very funny guy.

Now comes your President Obama with very serious face on, with list of Russians not welcome in United States because Magnitsky. He was very sick man, you know, when he went to jail. He was in jail less than a year, then gallstones killed him. Prison hospital care is not very good, but we are working on making it better.

And anyway who is President Obama to lecture anyone on human rights? Is he Holy Joe, with his Guantanamo Bay, and what is just now coming to light, drone-bombing random people on ground?

Look, if I am interested in playing poogly, childish games, I will make list of Americans banned from Russia, for waterboarding, torture, and so on. Then, when I show list to Obama, I will say "Mine is bigger than yours, bezoomnik."

snap crackle pop, clink & clunk

Hang on to your socks, cause everything's dropping.

Stock exchanges suddenly turn down, after days of falling commodity prices. Crude is down to 91, gold to 1500! Silver loses a buck and hangs tough,

Even a sad and depressed Euro crept up a little against a weakening dollar.

For all markets, today concludes the worst week in 2013 so far, and follows immediately upon a bad weakly jobs report. It was one of those "weaker than we expected"  weeks we've come to expect around here.

It ain't the end of the world, God Nose. It's just the good ol predictable spring swoon. But the details this time clearly show the chronic feebleness of the US economy going forward, and the complete inadequacy of the government's approach to it.

News item: According to a report by the Associated Press, 'most war-related costs are actually incurred after the wars themselves are concluded.'

For example, forty years after the last U.S. combat troops left Viet Nam, the government is still paying veterans and their families more than $22 billion a year in war-related claims.

Perpetual warfare is a dubious luxury we can no longer afford.

We never could really afford it, but unfortunately it proved impossible to live on the same planet as Adolf Hitler and the Japanese military. Beating them required the full mobilization of society, for it was total war. The US role as "arsenal of democracy" or supplier of weapons and materiél as the essential element in the allied plan worked well.

Now we're stuck wth it. The economy of this country can't function unless we're at war or preparing for war. The price we pay needs to be accounted for in a lot more than just money.

First of all, it has led to habitual belligerence, so that the Uncle Sam, rather than Hitler or Tojo, is now that SOB the rest of the world can't live with.

Secondly, being always at war and having a thousand or so overseas bases from which to wage it means we have become an empire now. I don't remember when the people voted that their country should become an empire. If they had, they might have reflected on the choice between empire and democracy, cause you can have one or the other but not both.

Finally, in a thousand different ways, wars and huge standing military forces undermine and destroy a people's freedom. You really need to see James Madison on this topic if you're not familiar with what he thought of wars and armies. Militarism has destroyed our freedom in ways most are not even aware of. For example, many people would hesitate to write what I have here, even if they wanted to.

Illustration: Five Diamonds, ©2013, 2001, by Dave B. a.k.a. catboxer.

go down old hanna

Rand Paul's got brass, I'll give him that. But he's not as clever as he thinks.

A clever speaker would not have pulled out one of the standard rhetorical falsehoods from the catalogue of standard Republican lies the way Paul did when he spoke at Howard University yesterday. It takes a while for this to sink in, but at this stage of the game their opponents know the catalogue as well as the Libertarian/Republicans do.

This one is #17 in the catalogue, and it goes like this.

17. Some people think Republicans are racists, but our party is the one that stands for freedom and equality. We're the party of Lincoln, the party of freedom. The Democrats were proslavery then, and they're the real racists now. The end.

Get it? Got it? Any questions? Good.

Actually Senator Paul, I do have a question. Do you know who Mark Hanna was, and why he was important?

Mark Hanna pretty much made the big change in the party, from emancipation to corporatism.

He found a presidential candidate, Bill McKinley, who would do whatever Hanna suggested, and "looked   presidential," and managed his election in 1896 and 1900.

Shortly after his reelection, Hanna told McKinley, "All you have to do is stay alive till 1905, and our plans will be realized." He was planning permanent Republican rule, as Karl Rove would later do.

But then in 1901 Mckinley got shot. "and now that damn cowboy will be president," said Mark Hanna. He was referring to Teddy Roosevelt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8cIKeRoKh4

vashika (yearly) bajata riporta

Our soft-shelled president just finished a press conference during which he explained the rationale for his budget. According to Kos, Obama was "defensive" about the Social Security cuts, blamed the Republicans, and said it was their idea. As he was speaking of Social Security, he never mentioned it by name.

Markos Moulitsas, founder and proprietor of the very successful Daily Kos web site, and still one of the most concise and effective pundits on the internet, comments:

Nobody could've predicted this, except everyone:

1. Release a budget with cuts to Social Security.
2. The base pushes back: Um, we're Democrats. We don't cut Social Security!
3. President Barack Obama gets defensive: But it's the Republicans' idea!
4. Except that the Republicans didn't include Social Security cuts in their crazy draconian budget. Why? Because only a moron would step on that third rail.
5. Re-read step #1.
6. Republicans begin 2014 campaign, charging that Democrats want to cut Social Security.

If there's any silver lining in this debacle, it's that it'll allow congressional Democrats the opportunity to distance themselves from this bumbling White House.

whoa. Did Kos just call Barack  Obama a moron?

www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/10/120078...

Something tells me the big O is all done, the same way Dubya was finished by 2006, and those still faithful to his standard are starting to circle the wagons.

from god's mouth to karl rove's ear

If you were watching CNN today, you may have seen this preview of the Republican 2014 campaign ads.

The chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, Mark Walden,  told Wolf Blitzer that using the chained cost-of-living index to Social Security "is balancing the budget on the backs of seniors"

I appreciate the sentiment, and sincerely hope more Democrats will, uh, get a clue. However, the fact remains that Social Security has nothing to do with Teh Budget (it's got its own), the debt, or any of the rest of that hoo haa.

Up until now the Repus have thought of puncturing Social Security as a means to even greater billionaire tax cutting. But now they seem to have suddenly discovered that 1) Many if not most of their constituents are old people (a.k.a. "senior citizens"), and 2) they vote. Some have even figured out how to write blogs.

Hey, Obama, nice little Senate you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.

both sides now

Rand Paul will speak at Howard University today. His topic "Inclusion in the Republican Party."

Should be interesting.

I wish I could be there, so I could watch the audience as Paul fields a question about his opposition to the Civil Rights Act of '64, and how that plays in the Senator's inclusion plans.

goodbye to chains that bind me

Rapper L.L. Cool J. has created a small clusterschnazzle on Twitter his morning by tweeting:

"I'll 4get da chains if u 4give my gold chains."

Translation (for those who need it): I'll forgive your past transgressions against me if you'll just accept me as I am now.

Silly man. Don't you know you're as enslaved, held prisoner in a perpetual adolescence, by those gold chains? It's not like wearing shackles and being made to hoe the crops, but still...

There's a lot more to being truly free than just taking the handcuffs off. 

the anatomy lesson

This just gets better better better.

Mother Jones released a tape this morning on which McConnell and aides talk about how they'll handle an Ashley Judd run for the Senate, with McConnell saying they can use her religion against her, along with the fact she's battled depression at times in her life.

The best part is McConnell wants to call in the FBI to investigate the leak. He says Mother Jones obtained the tape illegally, and he's superpissed that MJ would pull back the covers and give the public a close look at the reality of how our political elites conduct their business. What a big blubbering baby he is! I thought career politicians were tougher than that.

to speak ill of the dead

Everyone knows it's bad form to say bad things about those who have recently died, and also that former prime minister Maggie Thatcher died  yesterday.

Keeping that in mind, I can do no better than to turn to President Obama's eulogizing Ms. Thacker yesterday, saying "If you're old enough (!) you'll remember how she stood shoulder to shoulder with President Reagan during the Cold War."

I'm old enough, and clearly remember how she stood shoulder to shoulder with St. Uncle Ron as he was murdering tens of thousands of campesinos in Nicaragua and Salvador.

But as Shakespeare said, "So are they all honorable men." And nowadays, some are honorable women. The more things change...

renard le renard

This beautiful guy taking his ease at home among an assortment of freshly-slaughtered`domestic fowls, has just been made chancellor by the king. Not so long ago he was a well-known criminal and fugitive, but now the wheel Fortuna has turned, and he hopes his sons will inherit his high station.

Reynard the Fox was first told in Flanders in medieval times, but the smooth-talking sociopath who triumphs over all might be the most up-to-date fable there is. The idea that a person can get away with pretty much anything, given enough charm, an ability to flatter effectively, and good line of b.s., is an idea whose time comes and goes with the seasons.

The fox is in hot water with the authorities throughout most of Goethe's novel-length poem, and manages to survive two capital trials, drawing pardons both times, the first as he was standing on the gallows with the string round his neck.

Then there was a third trial, of course, because in these old stories things always happen in threes, but this one was different, for it was decided by mortal combat, in the medieval fashion, between nobly-born enemies. Everybody expected the larger and heavier wolf to win easily, but Reynard gained the victory through the simple expedient of cheating -- he threw dirt in his enemy's eyes, then proceeded to injure him grievously.

Then, presumably as a reward for his having achieved the status of a master criminal, the king made the fox his chancellor, as if to underscore that in politics, no bad deed goes unrewarded.

So if you're one of the earth's humble denizens, take heart. because no matter how grandiose your heart's desire, you can realize it. It's all in knowing who to butter, who to ignore, and who to rob. Employ violence only when necessary, make bombastic, patriotic speeches when the opportunity arises, and learn to do apology with tears running down your face. Timing is everything, those who can't help you are nothing, and deserve lies and bad faith.

Remember these things, and you too can become president of the US.

The illustration, executed by English engravers after a design by Wilhelm von Kaulbach, was one of dozens accompanying Thomas Arnold's translation of Goethe's poem, and was published in the US by Gebbie and Co. of Philadelphia in 1894 in Vol. IV of their five-volume "Library of Wit and Humor," by which I was first acquainted with this wonderful fable.

the biggest problem

What's the biggest problem this country faces going forward? The deficit? Not even.

How about gay gun abortion control? D'ya think?

Global climate change? You're getting closer, but that's a global problem, and there's an even bigger one peculiar to us.

The blood-sucking monster in the living room no one even wants to acknowledge the existence of is the simple fact that our economy cannot exist in its present form unless the country is at war or seriously preparing for it.

Eisenhower was the first and only president to understand the full implications of this, and issued an alarm after spending eight years doing nothing to stop it.

This has been the situation for 65 years, since 1948. It's so wrong on so many levels, including strategically, yet we refuse to acknowledge we've become a threat to the peace and safety of the world, and a danger to ourselves as a result.

It will take well over a generation to dismantle the war machine, and we don't seem to be in any big hurry to start. Who in Congress other than Barbara Lee is able to admit the depth of the problem?

That's the main reason prospects for this country don't look so good going forward. As long as we deny who we are, we'll be dealing with major, major difficulties just getting through life.