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  • You are currently browsing the American Street weblog archives for May, 2007.


Reading Between The Lines

Here’s a couple of things that caught my eye today:

[all additional clarification of all kinds courtesy of the Funny Farm Editorial Staff]

Bush unveils climate strategy ahead of G8

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - pResident Drunken Cokeheaded Usurper unveiled a long-term strategy on climate change on Thursday after refusing to engage in a discussion about it with the rest of the world, with plans to try and gather the countries that emit the most greenhouse gases and set a global emissions goal after losing any credibility the current crop of clowns running america had on the world stage on the subject.

Putsch would also promise to cut tariff barriers to sharing environmental technology while actually doing nothing about it, just like everything else he’s lied about since he stole the 2000 election as part of a strategy announced as he prepared to attend a Group of Eight summit in Germany next weekly likely to be dominated by addressing global climate change, and after trying to downgrade the G8’s declaration on global warming before the summit even started.

The U.S. strategy calls for stalling any progress on this issue consensus on long-term goals for reducing the greenhouse gases that spur global warming, but not before they slink out of the White House the end of 2008, White House spokesweasel Dana Perino said, leaving another mess for their successors to clean up.

The Deciderer plans in the fall to con the american people into believing that he’s going to convene the first in a series of meetings on ways to limit global emissions by a set amount by the time he’s pining for the fjords about 2050. About 15 countries would be invited, including two nations that like the United States are major polluters, China and India, but, unlike the US, did not pull out of the Kyoto treaty because it was signed by a Democratic president, and they’re Republican’ts.

“The United States pretends to take this issue seriously, so stop asking us about it!” the Texas Souffle said, barely suppressing a giggle.

Read the rest of this entry »


“But do you understand, Senator McCain, what the New York Times
wants, and the far-left want? They want to break down the white,
Christian, male power structure, which you’re a part of, and so
am I, and they want to bring in millions of foreign nationals to
basically break down the structure that we have. We’ve simply
got to put a cap on the number of Keith Olbermann fans allowed
to enter this country!”


Squidward Identified as One of the Conservative Religious
Leaders Who Secretly Visited Vice President Cheney at His
Official Residence at the Bottom of the Sargasso Sea

Curing the disease afflicting Bushists

No, not Viagra. Even better.

(h/t to Rook’s Rant)

Hostage Situation

The Politico, as far as I’m concerned, is the Note, only bigger and more pathetic because the people who thought it up at least had the opportunity to have seen the Note and should have learned what happens when corporatism and a bunch of kewl kidz collide.   So I wasn’t  surprised to see that the two guys who write the Crypt, Politico’s "Congress blog," think that it’s funny that BushCo’s Congressional lickspittles want to support Dear Leader’s promise to stall the budget process by vetoing any appropriations bills that exceed the president’s outright ridiculous spending limits.

This show of strength illustrates the fun Republicans can have in
the minority as they attempt to reclaim their brand as fiscal
conservatives. I mean, who beyond Campbell and Hensarling would have
signed this letter if the GOP still held the House? Conservatives
protested spending during the last two years of the Republican
majority, and leaders fumed over their apparent insubordination.

Sure, it’s easy to slam these bills now that Democrats are the ones
drafting them, just as it was easy for Democrats in the minority to
criticize Republicans for letting the budget fall into deficit during
Bush’s presidency. Whoever’s in charge, the minority’s mantra has
always included fiscal responsibility and balancing the budget, because
they don’t have to make the tough choices to reform Washington.

Sure it was easy for the Dems to criticize the bankrupting of the United States of America at the hands of a lunatic president and his enabling Congress because it’s what was happening.   But stalling - or what these Politico guys call "criticizing" this budget, which will provide for less non-defense spending in 2008 than the budgets of 2001 - 2006 did, is an act of rank partisanship by the Republican members of Congress and an act of aggression in BushCo’s continuing war against the balance of powers and poor and working America.   But that wouldn’t fit into the wacky tit-for-tat narrative these guys have going.   They’re all the same these Dems and the GOP.  What a bunch of knuckleheads!

And meanwhile the poor and nearly poor, who would have benefited from the small increases in the proposed budget, can join our soldiers, who are also being held hostage by our lunatic President and his mindless Congressional supporters who never miss a chance to choose party over country.

Related: The NYT editorial page gets it right.

Quelle Surprise!

Valerie Plame was a covert agent when the Douchebag of Liberty blew her cover. Um, somebody tell me, what’s the definition of treason again?

And what, pray tell, do our opposite numbers in the conservative blogosphere think of this revelation?

Shorter Protein (lack of) Wisdom: it’s okay to blow a CIA agent’s cover if we think she’s being mean to the pRetzelDunce.

Shorter Captains Quarters: It’s all Tenet’s fault!

Shorter Heading Right (off a cliff): Nuh-uh, she wasn’t covert. And you lefties are all poopyheads!

Shorter American (No) Mind: Why didn’t they tell us she was covert sooner?

Shorter FReeperville: Why is Fitzgerald talking about this? it’s none of his business…

Please note the lack of actual discussion on the subject at hand, the ducking of any sort of responsibility for committing treason during wartime, and the attempt to pin the blame on non-Republican’t operatives.

And I’ve only gone into the shallow end of the Republican’t gene blog pool for these links…


“See the guy over there with all the gray hair and glasses?
That’s Richard Cohen, columnist for the Washington Post.
He’s the one, you remember, who said you are a ‘neoliberal’
and a ’sentimental softie’. Pardon my French, Mr. President,
but I know a douchebag when I see one.”

Paying For the Surge

When Bush defeated Kerry in November 2004, the Iraq response produced the deadliest month of the war. The second deadliest month had occurred in April of that year, after the photos of the Abu Ghraib torture reached the public.

137 and 135 were the number of US troops who paid those costs. With ten deaths yesterday, May 2007 became the third deadliest month at 116. And there’s two days left.

No 6 month period produced more than 3 months with 80 or more troop deaths. Except the past 6 months, which gave us 6 out of 6… the deadliest stretch since the invasion began.

It’s amazing, really. No matter how poorly Bush’s war performance has been, he continues to create new ways to make it even worse.

Cheney visited by Osama Bin Laden

But he quickly destroyed all the evidence of the recent visit.

What? You don’t consider that plausible?

I’d submit that it’s as plausible that his decision to destroy the visitor logs was done without intent to hide something ugly from the public.

Funny way for a public servant to act. Sneaky and unworthy of any trust. Thus I presume he’s secretly meeting with Osama, selling us out.

Prove otherwise, Dick.

The effectiveness of Sadism is under review, but maybe it misses an ulterior motive

Ah yes, that ironically named 98 pound weakling of our defense capabilities is in the spotlight again: our intelligence forces. You remember them. They missed the imminent collapse of the USSR, though many objective observers could see that Gorbachev was promoting major, even revolutionary reforms, trying to stave that off long enough to reach a Cold War truce with NATO Alliance countries.

Now the intel community is on the hot seat for adopting the techniques of Communist Russia at its most brutal. Defenders of the torture programs tout their success at eliciting some information via their crude methods, wholly indifferent to the possibility that better interrogation techniques might have gained many times more.

Fortunately, they’ve weeded out Arabic translators who are gay and Valerie Plame. An excess of competence would be disastrous to their reputation.

Critics of this administration’s efforts to deter terrorism regularly point out that they’ve actually increased the number of anti-American enemies. But maybe they’re overlooking the administration’s actual intent, which could be to increase those enemy ranks.

If we suppose that the administration’s real goal is to take more direct control of Middle East oil supplies and/or drive oil prices up for purely profit-generating reasons, isn’t it useful to have a ready and steady supply of scapegoats to justify any and all military endeavors that advance their imperialist aims?

Viewed in that light, ham-handed incompetence such as the decision to torture could actually conceal their real goals, which are monetary, and have nothing at all to do with our nation’s defense.

Scary thought, eh?

Supremes abort economic justice for women

When they defend pay discrimination by really reaching for illogic, it makes our responses necessary and clear:

1) Write your Congresscritters to request corrective legislation, as Scott Lemieux suggested.

2) Write or call Goodyear Corporation to tell them you’ll boycott their products till they reform their payscales and provide a fair financial settlement to Lilly Ledbetter.

The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company
1144 East Market Street
Akron, Ohio 44316-0001
(330) 796-2121
Fax: (330) 796-2222

or email them here.

3) Then boycott them. For as long as it takes. For Lilly Ledbetters, past, present and future.

Cindy is correct

With Cindy Sheehan’s departure from so national a public stage, her critiques of the Democratic Party, the two-party electoral system and the peace movement are certain to bruise many an ego and provoke numerous defenses and rationalizations. But the fact is, she’s right, in every particular that the mainstream press has reported.

Her son, Casey, lost his life in vain. He benefited nobody by dying in a war fought for the imperialistic pursuits of a small cabal of powerful people, almost exclusively privileged and exceedingly dishonest men. It’s easy to dismiss her pointed commentary directed at movement allies as the words of one tasting bitterness, but I continue to find her words exceedingly well thought out. Her emotions may be on full display but it doesn’t diminish her logic at all.

There are thousands of mothers who know this. Fathers, too, as well as millions of other family members. Across all borders and conflicts. Most soldiers, however heroic and memorialized, ultimately die for reasons that do not add up to anything more than serving the interests of a few. There is no ‘good’ war but there have been wars made necessary by more overt and dangerous aggressors. Most wars the US has fought in the past half century do not meet that standard. Our rulers ultimately impose the choice upon us: will we risk any possibility of being attacked by a brutal bastard, or isn’t it better to accept the rule of our own brutal bastards?

It’s not an acceptable choice. I encourage Americans to refuse it, I urge military volunteers to avoid re-upping and applaud those troops who, guided by conscience, peacefully withdraw from the process at risk to themselves alone.

And what does Sheehan’s departure mean to war opponents and the electoral process? Most likely, it means her own efforts and sacrifices have also been in vain.

I’m sure online activists will reject that as cynicism, defeatism and an ineffective surrender. None like to hear that the problem lacks any solution. But that’s not what I’m saying.

The most likely solution will parallel the solutions history projects. Imperialist nations play out their hands and eventually fail, becoming less powerful in the process. Such failure is no longer abject with power completely diminished. The British Empire, for example, is far smaller than it once was, though the Brits still retain significant power. But they can deliver no guarantees of safety to their citizens from terrorists and other aggrieved parties. In short, the solution is not much in the way of a civil social advance.

Other solutions? I can continue to hope for real innovators to come up with any. After all, like I feel at the end of an inconclusive movie, it’s terribly frustrating when no closure comes.

Working to build a populist and humane third party makes sense, though it’s likely a lifetime project. Ending legal ‘personhood’ for corporations and clean campaigns publicly financed are also two great advances that could help curtail political corruption. Both are overdue, yet long struggles remain to achieve them, too.

In the meantime, the only personal solution is to refuse to play the prevailing game, to act as if lives matter, American or Iraqi or whatever its brand. That, ultimately, is the one thing each of us fully controls. The battle can be won when enough take that step. But that takes eternal patience and enormous confidence that the desired outcome will eventually be gained.

I can’t predict that, nor can you. I can express my condolences to Cindy and millions who suffer from such grievous losses. I can welcome them to my heart and promise them my friendship as they heal. I hope most will be wise enough to do at least that.

It’s important to understand that Osama Bin Laden is a threat to us. It’s equally important to recognize that threats as great and greater exist in the actions of powerful people who claim to lead us and claim they act lawfully, when it’s abundantly clear they are ethical midgets, capable of enormous atrocities, too. How we deal with that recognition is a personal decision. You may choose to vote, to pay taxes, to remain a willfull participant out of the notion that there’s enough that’s worth the ethical trade-off to you. Or you can choose an alternate course, likely at some personal risk.

Remaining willfully blind to it all is another alternative that many will choose. They also will make Casey Sheehan’s efforts, and his mother’s, worthless. It sucks, but it is what it is.

Update: The Freewayblogger’s response is must reading on this.


“God has spoken to me,” Tom DeLay says. “I listen to God, and what
I’ve heard is that I’m supposed to devote myself to rebuilding the
conservative base of the Republican Party before every living thing
is destroyed by the Great Democratic Flood.”


“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Dick thought, “your applause for
my commencement address here at West Point is about
as genuine as this kewpie doll you gave me for winning
Tip the Tombstone, a fucking carnival game!”


A slump in the landscaping market has left
many garden gnomes unemployed.

Can Anybody Tell Me?

Are wild, unfounded, and inaccurate allegations like this, this, or this considered slander and thus legally actionable? Or can we all just make up crap, fling it against the wall, and (if we’re a card-carrying Putsch fellator), have the mainstream media report it as fact?

I’m so old, I remember when we had an adversarial press that didn’t lob softballs (dumbed down for the target audience) at the pResiDunce, and then move on when he couldn’t even answer them with a semblance of coherence or rationality…

Memorial Day, A Better Way

The Civil War had ended and widows in Columbus, Mississippi had been decorating the graves of fallen Confederate soldiers on that April day in 1866. They noticed the nearby unkempt graves of Union soldiers and decided that would not suffice. By tending to them, too, they began an act of healing for a nation torn asunder. That was the first Memorial Day.

It’s been 141 years since those women’s acts of kindness were first noted. Fallen troops from our Civil War have been joined by those from the Spanish American War, World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War, the current wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and other, smaller conflicts. We memorialize each for their sacrifices with little regard for how they lived or what motivated their service. That they died in uniform is the only certain commonality.

Too rarely do any ask why. It’s considered sacrilege to suggest their deaths were unnecessary or their service was in vain.

“We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans — born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage — and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this Nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
This much we pledge and more.

To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United, there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided, there is little we can do — for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.

To those new States whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom — and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.” (JFK; Inaugural Address, 1961)

There are many courageous men and women who died deserving of every honor we can bestow. Most of our war dead were motivated to defend our country. In domestic struggles, some have fallen in pursuit of liberty and justice who aren’t accorded similar honors, though they should be.

And some died not because of the acts of foreign governments and groups, but because of the ideological pursuits and dishonesty of political and powerful men within our own government.

War has been with us throughout recorded and oral history. Too many times in the course of my 54 years, I’ve watched them fall for that second reason, the victims of our own political and powerful men. While their corpses will be showered with honors by many, including a slew of dishonest political men, I believe the best honor I can offer is one to direct the living towards a future that will reduce the pace of fresh graves dug and fresh lives destroyed by the dishonest architects and engineers of war, foreign and domestic.

Please take time to listen, to hear, and to heed the call for better ways to address human conflict.

One Of These Mornings. (Be sure to return after these many video links.)

Hole In The World - Eagles

“The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.” (Black Elk, 1863-1950)

Often, children can lead the way, but we must also be willing to believe them. Often. Consider what 40 Israeli kids and 40 Arab kids were saying for us all at this event.

That’s what we must do: not defeat others by the ages old method of exterminating them, but by winning them with the powers of great hearts and creative minds. Killing’s so easy an insect can master it. It’s time we walk forward on the path of evolution.

Read the rest of this entry »


“Pssst, buddy! The word on the street is ‘Vote for Rudy
McRomney’. Pass it along.”