Fine, okay, it's a blog already!

“You either have security incompetence or security insensitivity.”

- Al Sharpton on Cheney "not seeing" the Confederate flag at his new hunting grounds

Cheney's staff swears he didn't see a Confederate flag at the location he went hunting at over the weekend. Which is weird seeing as a photographer found it with a long range lense and that the Secret Service probably went over the entire facility with a fine-toothed comb.

I'm not saying he's a racist, but I am saying he thinks we're all idiots for believing he didn't know he was partying with racists.

The Iraqis are finally planning to strip the immunity from all the contractors/mercenaries running around killing their civilians. The CPA created the law back after the invasion. If nothing else, it shows that the Iraqis can actually pass legislation for the good of their country, which is something we've been waiting to see.

Apparently the Army can't find enough recruits, hitting their lowest level of new recruits since the era of the all-volunteer army. Yeah, Iraq isn't hurting recruitment at all.

The end of chemistry sets in the age of terrorist fearmongering. We'll give the bin Laden family free flights out of the US but stop nine year olds from making small chemical reactions. If nothing else proves how hypocritical and moronic the Bush administration is, this is a good indicator.

The hatemongers at Westboro Baptist Church have been ordered to pay a man $11 million dollars for their "God hates fags" and "Thank God for dead soldiers" hate speech at his son's funeral after he died in Iraq. Personally, I think we should try to sue every hatemonger and at least create a situation where they can't afford to spread their evil.

As if the war wasn't bad enough, or having to deal with hateful Republicans, troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan are increasingly turning to suicide, an issue the VA is hoping to deal with better. Good luck to them and the troops.

Over at the State Department, foreign service envoys are being forced to serve in Iraq. Bonus insult to injury, the 88% of State employees who think Condoleeza Rice is not on their side are being told they are like the percentage of people who used to believe in slavery. Nice touch.

Pat Robertson says real Christians should have avoided the "festival of the Devil", which you and I know better as Halloween. No word on his thoughts on Arbor Day as a potential Wiccan holiday.

A cross-dressing Republican congressman in Oregon state who had sex with a random guy in a sex shop got outed for not paying the other man the agreed amount. So, the one time a Republican tries to be fiscally responsible, he's trying to cheat a prostitute. You really can't make this stuff up any better.

Meanwhile, apparently all is forgiven with the GOP as they have let Larry Craig keep all the earmarks he had added to various bills for his constituents. Sure, he's a hypocrite and a liar and a two-faced shill. But even though he himself is a closet gay, he's still very openly a sex discriminating hatemonger, which still makes him a fine Republican in their eyes.

More on Bush's likely racist head of the Voting Rights division of the DoJ.

The latest post from the Home Fires blog written by soldiers who have returned from the wars overseas. If you've read this entry this far, please take the time to at least link to this posting.

Alright, I've been distracted by life for awhile and thus, no posting.

That said, you should be happy for me not having enough time at the keyboard so deal with it.

I've been sitting around reading newspapers and magazines lately. Various reasons why, but I have been re-acquainted with the idea that most of them are filler with occasional nuggets of goodness. Which is why I still don't have subscriptions to much beyond Wired, Smithsonian, and Star Wars mags.

First off, in a recent issue of Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria challenges our "We're Number One" mentality in light of, well, what truly is.

I usually find the US News & World Report to be a fascist propaganda machine. Maybe it's the advent of FAUXNews making it look better or the problem of finding slacked-jawed conservatives who can actually read, but I found a couple articles related to women's interest. The first one laments the culture of pig-headed, let-someone-else-kill-'em-all Bush league machoism that has been the norm in this country since 9/11.

The other article concerns the quickly rising cost of birth control, and how it particularly affects college students. Funny, that a law originally designed to save citizens money on drugs has allowed pharmaceutical companies to double or triple their prices. Wait, you say, drug companies are not working in our best interests? Yeah, seems that way. So yeah, I'm sure this will lead to a rise in pregnancy and drop-out rates among those who just want to better their lives.

Another Newsweek article, this one on the arrogance of our politicians. Giuliani, Clinton, we're talking about people like you.

Apparently, as much as Bush would like it to be, we are not in Judge Dredd land yet. For some reason, sentencing guidelines for cocaine have been lowered. Now look, I don't do any drugs - no, really, I don't - but if you are going to nail someone to the wall and make them do time for drugs, then maybe coke and heroin would be the way to start. Now I realize this may be some asinine way to improve race relations for Bush and friends, but maybe actually providing social opportunities instead of reduced penalties for committing crimes is the way to go. Nah, that would fly in the face of being Republicans I guess.

Giuliani is apparently hinting that he used tactics akin to torture back when he was trying to get info out of the mob. Seriously, when your race for president improves when you say you like torture, isn't that a sign America is seriously way off track?

Not surprising however, during the Bush years, prosecution of white collar crime is down 27% and cases involving official corruption are down 14 percent. I'd like to say I'm surprised by this, but the same guy who keeps appointed corporate interests to oversee - well, corporate interests - would definitely not wake up every day making sure laws aren't being broken that hurt America.

Giuliani got endorsed by Pat Robertson today, proving that you can cheat on your wife and get the endorsement of the Religious Right as a "moral" man. Frigging hypocrites.

In Russia, a celebration of Stalinism in the Age of Putin. Apparently, the Russians are not immune from ignoring a brutal past as a supposed Golden Age.

Speaking of corruption, former Illinois governor George Ryan is finally going to prison for being an all-around snake and accomplice to murder.

More Blackwater news as they are being investigated for sneaking silencers into Iraq as well as trying to steal Iraqi jet fighters. Meanwhile, since we are too busy paying mercs to operate in Iraq to pay for the war in Afghanistan, same mercs (including Blackwater) are being hired to provide helicopter support for our troops in that forgotten war.

Meanwhile, with the high volume of crimes, many causing deaths of our military and Iraqi civilians, being unpunished, a couple of guys hacking grades in California have received a quarter million dollar fine and 20 years in jail. I'm not saying you shouldn't be punished for breaking the rules, but some mercenary assclowns can shoot 17 civilians and not even get charged and these guys spend two decades behind bars for pumping up a GPA? Really?

More bad news concerning the dollar.

This one is kind of disturbing. A mother recently had her dead son cremated, only to have him get arrested somewhere else. Oops.

And, I found this one really interesting, a look at the justification of suicide bombing by way of playing Halo3.

Got pulled off my on call to go to a casino near the Salton Sea in California. Now, there may be some attractive draws to the place, but I didn't see it in the time I was there. I *did* get to cross the border into Mexicali for a good dinner but that may have been the highlight of the trip.

So I got back home and immediately got back on-call. So yeah, much joy this weekend.

Anyway, while getting called at two in the morning or waiting for remote connections to open up, I've found a few choice Republican idiots out there. Plus, being Veteran's Day, a few sobering observations on the state of how we treat our military vets.

"I am concerned with the Bush administration’s assault on American liberties … how the administration deals with habeas corpus and the administration’s posture on electronic surveillance. This administration has gone farther than any other.”

- Barry Richards, the guy in charge of Bush's recount lawsuit suddenly having a change of heart. Too little, too late, I think.

Bush has authorized an increase in the debt ceiling, and for the first time in US history we are over $9 trillion dollars in debt, despite Bush walking into office with a surplus that was going to get us out of debt in the near future. And don't give me that 9/11 is the reason for everything crap. This guy hasn't found anything he doesn't want to spend money on other than children, education, and equipment for our troops.

The government is doing extensive spying on our travel habits. Considering I went out of the country a few times last year and constantly have last second travel changes, I am positive this has absolutely no silver lining for folks like me.

Tom DeLay is back in the news and is even more of an imbecile than he was before, if that's at all possible. He was in the UK recently and declared that, despite the fact that at least 47 million Americans have no insurance, no one is forbidden medical treatment in the US. He was openly laughed at, mostly because he's flat wrong. Oh, for comparison purposes, the estimated population of the UK is 60 million plus and they all seem to have health care, insurance, and access to both.

The Iraq War is now costing us $720 million a day. The site has a whole lot of ideas how that money could be better spent.

Former interrogators consistently say torture does not work, even in those "you've-been-watching-too-much-24" type ticking bomb cases.

That is, when said former interrogators are *allowed* to testify, such as one fellow who underwent waterboarding, found it to be torture, and was blocked from expressing his findings.

And this is how we're gonna to get yet another Attorney General who gets a hard-on thinking about torturing people. Such moral people, no?

The GOP must have figured out they have finally locked the racist, xenophobe vote since they are now planning to attend a Univision-sponsored debate. A little secret for you guys, you locked down the racists and bigots back in the 60s when the Democrats last showed a spine by choosing the moral stance on equal rights that you asshats wouldn't.

Turns out that one quarter of all homeless are vets. And apparently the number of homeless from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is growing faster than in any previous conflict.

More news regarding the decline of African-American recruitment, with a focus on vets and the community at large. Here's a hint: with Bush only getting 9% of African-American support (probably 1% if you exclude people related to Rice, Clarence Thomas, and JC Watts), I don't think there's much of a rallying cry to go fight and die for George Bush's war.

Believe it. I didn't even want to know the Illinois-Ohio State score until I was watching WGN News tonight and it was mentioned that they won.

Seriously? I had to check. Here's the writeup on the game.

Better yet? How about some highlights from the game?

Enjoy.

An Oregon teacher lost her case that would have allowed her to a pistol to school. Apparently she's got a jackass of an ex-husband, so I sympathize with her. That said, get the damn football team to walk you to your car.

I don't get conservatives. I really don't. Why the hell would you want weapons around hundreds of hormonally imbalanced teenagers? They say it is to prevent school shootings. Hell, look at Finland this week. This stuff happens everywhere. And to be honest, if I knew I could potentially get away with blowing away a high school rival in the unlikely event of an already occurring school shooting and had a gun in my backpack, I'd seriously be thinking about it.

Oh don't be like that, you'd probably do it too.

The US is near the bottom of the list for infant survival rates among developed nations. But hey, George Bush doesn't think there's a health care crisis, and neither do any of his pals running for the GOP nomination. Can we officially drop their elephant logo for an ostrich with it's head in the sand?

The Deputy Director of National Intelligence tells us we should expect a loss of privacy as our government has stopped pretending it is going to treat us like potential terrorists and spy, spy, spy on us.

With the Senate labelling Iran's military as a terrorist organization, Condoleeza Rice swears the Senate didn't give her boyfriend the right to declare war on Iran. Wait, didn't we hear that about Iraq once too?

Giuliani blames Bill Clinton for our military being overstretched. It would have nothing to do with Bush's policies, Rumsfeld's poor planning, much less the fact that before trying to invade two countries at once, we were doing great with Clinton's military in Afghanistan.

Do these assholes take responsibility for anything?

The LAPD is planning to map where Muslims live in Los Angeles. Erm, doesn't this bring shades of Manzanar to you too?

George Bush is pissed that Gordon Brown doesn't seem to blow up stuff like, say, Iran as much as his hetero life mate Blair did. God forbid the English think for themselves for once.

In case you weren't sure, we've had a 17 percent drop in foreign visitors since 9/11. Our currently is down like 25% against any respectable coin of the realm and they still aren't coming. Gee, I wonder why?

Barry Bonds swears he will turn down induction into the Hall of Fame if his record-breaking home run ball (branded with an asterisk) is put on display. Two comments. One, he assumes he'll ever get voted in. Two, most fans would say good riddance anyway.

More on Bush's SCHIP lies.

Plus, an odious story on how anti-war veterans were barred from a Veteran's Day parade. So much for supporting the troops.

Here's a glimpse at the testimony of one of the Blackwater goons that gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians. You can try to attribute some of this guy's opinions to fog of war, but really it's a sign of the lawlessness and tendency to overkill these mercs have.

Oh, I'm sorry, "private military consultants". And we're not "occupiers", we're "liberators". And to think Republicans used to hammer liberals about political correctness. What do you classify all of this under? I mean, besides Newspeak.

A review of the many ways we execute death row inmates.

The operations manual for Gitmo was leaked recently with some disturbing findings in it. Read the story and try to get to the document before the Feds do.

Bush still thinks he's king or something and blames Democrats for putting veteran's care funding into a larger bill, even though he never had an issue with Republicans doing it. That said, he pointedly hates paying for health care, education, and labor and would rather build a bridge to nowhere or give oil companies tax breaks or something.

With his new ambigious torture lover now in charge at the Department of Justice, Bush declares that he will help "rebuild" the department. Hmm, this is the same guy who got the Supreme Court to intervene on his behalf to become president, who thinks anyone who doesn't agree with his is a traitor, who has endorsed torture, spying, and false imprisonment and starts illegal wars. Whose prior Attorney General resigned in disgrace but is still praised by Bush for "his integrity, his decency, and his deep dedication to the cause of justice". Frankly, I didn't see any of that from his tenure in government, but what do I know? I'm some kind of traitor or something.

Anyway, I doubt we'll be seeing any true justice from said department anytime soon.

So, I accepted an invite and went to a debate watching party for Barack Obama. It was on the way home and a decent crowd showed up. Basically, there was nowhere to sit and nigh impossible to get a beer. That said, I'm glad to see that many people show up. Besides, they really didn't have the best selection of beers so I didn't really miss out. Since the medicos are telling me to cool my jets I am even more picky than usual about what I do and do not consume.

Anyway, granted I was in a partisan crowd but the debate I watched had no common ground with what the talking heads were discussing after the debate. I saw Obama come out guns blazing, juggle a few questions poorly, challenge Blitzer about the latter's lack of faith in America, and line Clinton up as a quasi-Republican.

I saw Edwards increasingly take absolutely no responsibility for any of his votes, which is sad because I genuinely like the guy's approach usually. Kucinich, Dodd, Richardson are both funny and can say whatever the heck they want as, barring a meltdown, they know they are out of the running but still needed to keep things focused.

Biden is having the time of his life, and it shows. He's still running and oblivious to anything that says otherwise. Cheers to him.

Clinton? She came off shrill and mean, though not as defensive as she has been lately. I still say every other candidate should express how they would or would not use Bill Clinton in their administration (regardless of whether he would sign on or not) and take her biggest weapon away from her. Because, let's face it, why *not* make him Secretary of State? She can't, but Obama could, for instance.

Anyways, so much for what I think. Every "expert" declared her the winner. But we didn't have to listen to their crap for long since Obama swung by the bar I was at and gave some thanks and a quick speech. Check out a pic and a listen to the speech here.

Never mind that Bush wants to wipe his ass with our Constitution, thinks that spying on us is democracy and brands those who don't agree with him as "traitors". Never mind that our nation's dignity is in shambles thanks to his 21st century idea of manifest destiny. Never mind the world in general hates us for either invading it, locking people us and throwing away the key, and basically just for re-electing the asshat.

Let's take a look at some of the people he's allied us with.

Our pals the Saudis (remember them? Bush likes to hold their hands) have doubled the sentence of a woman who reported that she was gang-raped by seven guys. So now, for reporting that she was raped, she gets 200 lashes and six months in prison.

Real equal opportunists, no?

Over in Afghanistan, our warlord pals are into sexually abusing young boys. Real macho men there too. Sheesh.

Meanwhile, Bush has only recently begun to sour on Musharaff. And honestly, I don't think it's that he really disapproves of what his good pal did, just the realization that we'd finally get pissed off enough to riot in the streets if Bush did what the General has done in recent weeks.

I mean he's crapped on the Constitution, but hasn't dissolved it. He has used the Supreme Court to his own ends, but hasn't fired it and replaced it with cronies. Well, he's done the latter, but in accordance with the law. I guess. He's branded the Democrats traitors but actually hasn't arrested them. And he never needed to take over the media. Rush Limbaugh and FAUXNews have already done it for him.

So yeah, it *could* be worse. But we're not as well off as we thought.

And in unrelated but significant dictator news, Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are asking OPEC if it would be useful to move oil away from dollars and over to Euros. And for once, the argument is based on economic reality and not on pure anti-Americanism.

"All conservative arguments can be reduced to hating people who don’t look, think, or behave the way they do, in order to maintain power and privilege. Everything else is chaff."

- Blog comment by Del Capslock at ThinkProgress.

Yes, that title is sarcasm. Turns out that hate crimes are up last year, and likely throughout the Age of Bush. This would have nothing to do with fundamentalist Protestants running the government and deriding all other religions? Or the fevered attack on Islam by the same "holy" people? Or the rising anti-immigrant hatred spewed by the GOP? Or just the fact that the Republicans' rise to power is based mostly on absorbing the racists from the Democrats?

Color me unimpressed.

The above quote is tied to a story about evil witch Laura Ingraham, who is pissed off that Chris Dodd answered a question partially asked in Spanish...in Spanish. Funny when Sparky McChimp strings together random Spanish words in a sentence (much like he does English) the GOP raves about it. But if a Democrat does it....

Apparently that atrocious "diamonds and pearls" softball question at the debate last week was staged by CNN. Which, honestly, I'm not surprised by the Hillary lovefest seeing as most of the commentators worked for her husband.

On FAUXNews, while trying to dismiss the concept of racial profiling, one guest on the Hannity & Token Democrat show mimed having "Chinese eyes". Nice.

Some of our Iraqi allies are suing American Airlines after being mistreated by passengers and crew on a flight that was grounded from fears of what they would do. What were they here for? To train our Marines about Iraqi culture. Turns out they got an education of American hysteria and racism instead.

Bill O'Reilly is disturbed by the tolerance of gays in our society. Wow, O'Reilly is a bigot? Go figure.

Planning on voting? Here is how your candidate of choice stands on immigration.

Meanwhile, Ron Paul, for whatever reason, is attracting a lot of supporters from white supremacist circles. I hate to tell him this, but, um, his party is full of those types.

This month's Wired has a wonderful article on how we should stop calling it the Theory of Evolution and make it a Law. Anyone not mentally dwelling in the 12th century has accepted that you can believe in God and still know evolution has been proven to occur, so let's stop giving "intelligent design" Neanderthals ammunition for their backward beliefs.

Also from the issue: what your Thanksgiving meal looks like under the microscope.

One other interesting article on the green power revolution courtesy of our military minds. At this point, I'd imagine our troops would be the most willing to cut our national umbilical cord to all the fundamentalist assholes trying to kill them overseas.

Speaking on warmongers and idiots, Bush's pal John Howard is out of office in Australia. The new PM, Kevin Rudd, is a bit of a mixed bag but should be head and shoulders above Howard.

And why aren't anti-war protests covered in the media more? Yet more damning proof to the big lie of a "liberal media". If liberals were in charge of the media, all Bush sound bites would be his lips moving to the sound of a chimp talking and we'd never have a member of his administration spreading lies. Instead, we get FAUXNews and simpletons like Lou Dobbs, Paula Zahn, Campbell Brown, and Glenn Beck on CNN. Liberal media, my ass.