Thank you for your service

It's that wonderful time of year in New Mexico, when we pack dried-out tents full of explosives, which are sold by sweating meth-heads smoking cigarettes.

Every year, this state loses thousands of acres of land to wildfires. And we celebrate independence by firing pyrotechnics into dried grass. Because that makes sense. But let's not worry about little, unimportant questions like "physics." Instead, let's consider the realities of living in the 21st Century.

For example, a few years ago, we had the C-Student President, whose advisers felt we needed a permanent base in the Middle East. So he took us to war. Around 68 hundred American soldiers died for this idiotic attempt to flex our military muscle. But, more importantly for (but oddly related to) the following issue, 970,000 soldiers were damaged (mentally or physically) in the course of fighting in those two related wars.

I figured out, some years back, my own minor insanity. I have the mildest case of PTSD ever reported - I just get cranky and irritable when shit starts blowing up. Which, if you think about it, just qualifies more as "survival instincts" than truly being PTSD.

But here's the problem: explosions have somewhat lost their thrill for a certain percentage of the American populace.

Remember, more now than for any generation of American people in decades, when shit blows up, it doesn't make you want to stand proud. It reminds you of a time when you didn't have control. When your friends and comrades were getting killed around you, and there was nothing you could do.

There was a time when the Republican party celebrated the sacrifices of the American fighting forces. Now, they'd like to forget they exist.

But maybe, just maybe, you can remember them, just for this year. Every time you blow something up, you're reminding them of a time that they'd rather forget. Every firework you set off hurts someone in ways you can't begin to imagine. Be respectful of our troops.

Some of them sacrificed more than you think.

The Long Bowe Hunters

Let's talk about Bowe Bergdahl, shall we? The Right Wing, like always, has been looking for a reason to attack Obama. And their latest one just happens to be the polar opposite of one of their earlier ones. For the past five years, Bowe Bergdahl, the only captured American prisoner, has been a cause célèbre for the GOP, a consistent placard that they could hold up to punctuate the phrase "Obama doesn't care about the troops!"

At least, that's how it was until there was a possibility that Bergdahl might be released. Now, suddenly, people who've been crying out for his release are calling him a traitor. They have literally reversed their position on the subject. And why? Because it might have ended up looking good for the black guy.

Sarah Palin. Senators John McCain (Arizona) and Kelly Ayotte (New Hampshire). Every un-American, small-minded, troop-hating maniac on the right has spun their position 180 degrees away from what they were saying as recently as the beginning of this year. And why? Because they don't care about the military; they only care about attacking the president.

Now, suddenly, all they can say is "Obama has endangered the country! He released terrorists! And for a deserter!"

Let me explain this as clearly and rationally as I can. Anyone who says that we should not have made a deal to get Bowe Bergdahl released can suck my balls.

Are you saying that we should have left an American citizen in the hands of the Taliban? That he deserved to stay in their custody forever? If you believe that, you are a pustulent sore on the asshole of humanity. Oh, and fuck you.

Let's be clear on this - no investigation has been done. There has been no trial. You don't get to convict American citizens on the basis of rumors, half-truths and outright lies. If you want Bowe Bergdahl punished, then you bring him back to the States, and let the military do their job. And if it turns out that he is guilty, then they get to punish him. Not you, not Fox "News," and not every cowardly, Cheeto-eating, overweight loudmouthed blogger on the planet.

Fuck every one of you, you chicken-shit, scum-sucking, America-hating losers.

The military has jurisdiction here, and they've never been shy about using it. Look up the case of another PFC, a guy named Robert Garwood: a POW in Vietnam, he was returned to the US in 1979, where he was tried for desertion and several other charges, court martialed and convicted (they lost the desertion conviction, but got him on other things).

That's the military's job. They're pretty good at it.

Oh, but incidentally, bad news for all you amateur lawyers out there: the maximum punishment for desertion can only be death in a time of war - and the US never declared war in Afghanistan. Plus, there's only been one person given the death sentence for desertion since the Civil War: Eddie Slovik in 1945. The military prefers to avoid that. Most likely, he'd get confinement, demotion and forfeiture of pay. But he'd only get it after a trial. That's how these things work.

The various branches of the Special Forces have taken the position that "you don't leave a man behind" for decades, for one simple reason: it's difficult to get people to risk their lives, if they don't believe that you'll be supporting them later when things go wrong. We support our soldiers for having sworn an oath to protect their country to begin with, and we continue to support them, even if we don't agree with their statements on every subject.

It's called "free speech" - if you stop wiping your ass with the Constitution for a few minutes and read the fucking thing, maybe you'll discover that it gives the American people all kinds of rights that don't involve guns.

We keep hearing that he was responsible for the deaths of soldiers who were searching for him. Unfortunately, you can't really blame him for every death that happened in theater at the time; the records from the region don't really support that.

Mr. Bethea wrote that of the six men killed in August and September, two died in a roadside bombing while on a reconnaissance mission, a third was shot during a search for a Taliban political leader and three others were killed while conducting patrols — two in an ambush and one who stepped on a mine.

He suggested some connection to Sergeant Bergdahl for several of the deaths, saying the Taliban leader and a village that was in the area of one of the patrols were "thought affiliated with Bergdahl's captors." He also said a village in the areas of the other patrol was "near the area where Bergdahl vanished."

Still, those villages and insurgents were in the overall area of responsibility for the soldiers, and the logs make clear that the region was an insurgent hotbed. A log on May 21, 2009, for example, said it had historically been a "safe haven" for the Taliban.

A retired senior American military officer, who was briefed at the time on the search for Sergeant Bergdahl, said that even though soldiers were instructed to watch for signs of the missing American, they would have been conducting patrols and performing risky operations anyway.

"Look, it’s not like these soldiers would have been sitting around their base," he said.

And incidentally, while we're cutting through the lies, can we stop with the phrase "we don't negotiate with terrorists"? Is it because George W. Bush kept repeating that canard? Did you know that he would say it almost immediately after completing a series of negotiations with terrorists for (as one of his chief negotiators pointed out) "information, supplies, personnel — a lot of different topics."

In fact, every president has negotiated with terrorists, whether drug traffickers or radical Islamic factions. Whether it was Carter getting 52 American hostages released in Iran by unfreezing assets from American banks, or Reagan selling missiles to Iran, America has a long history of negotiating with terrorists. As does every other country in the world.

But to hell with that. It doesn't matter what it took to get Bergdahl's release. We got it. Because we had to get it. Here's two quotes for you that explain why: the first is from President Obama. I know, you don't like him, because he's all black and uppity and stuff. Doesn't matter - he's the Commander in Chief of the military, and as he put it:

"Regardless of circumstances ... we still get an American prisoner back," Obama said during a news conference in Warsaw, Poland. "Period, full stop -- we don't condition that."

And if that isn't enough for you, how about the words of the Pentagon spokesman, Rear Admiral John F. Kirby:

"When you're in the Navy, and you go overboard, it doesn't matter if you were pushed, fell or jumped," he said. "We're going to turn the ship around and pick you up."

So, are we clear on this? If you say we should have just left him in the hands of the Afghani's, you are a crappy American. You're allowing your hatred of a black president to make you into a traitor, a coward, and an idiot. Fuck you, and go find a country that shares your beliefs. Try Somalia: you'll like it there - everybody has guns, and women don't have rights.

Veterans Week, Part III: V-Day +1 +1

I cannot say a word of this better than my friend, Robert, did in his November 12th blog post at Plead Ignorance. I haven't yet obtained his permission to re-post his article, but, just this once I conclude that it is, indeed, "better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission." It's that good.

Veterans Day +1

Yesterday was Veterans Day, in some places, Armistice Day; a day when we are supposed to remember and honor the men and women in uniform who serve, and who have died serving, our nation in times of war and peace. And today, the day after Veterans Day, we can then return to forgetting those sacrifices and ignoring the unequal price they pay to ensure the comforts we enjoy.

Since the Conservatives recently regained their section of Capitol Hill turf the news media has been awash in championing their agenda; which is to cut government and reduce taxes (aka: foster unfettered expansion of moneyed interests). Example: CBS news anchor Katie Couric (who I believe has no more stature as a journalist than the kid who delivers the daily paper) touted all the ways in which the Conservatives plan to reign in government and runaway spending. With no fact checking or journalistic inquiry, she parroted the “facts” about the Social Security System being in “red ink” and on the brink of collapse and being a major cause for the burgeoning deficit. That fact is, that is NOT true!

So now the new prevailing and perceived shining path toward restoring America’s Greatness reads as follows: Ending tax cuts for the wealthiest 1% of our elite is off the table. Targeted instead are the costs of supporting the poorest of our citizens; Social Security, Medicare, Welfare. It will be an ironic twist of fate if any Tea Baggerson unemployment voted Republican – unlikely UC benefits will be further extended, these folks might be the first to realize how they just voted to cut their own economic throats.

But among all the gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands over concern for our increasing national debt, the absence of the cost of our unnecessary and fruitless war in Afghanistan is the overlooked Elephant in the Room. We are borrowing close to One Billion dollars A DAY from China to maintain this war which has no expectation of any positive outcome whatsoever. Instead, we will continue to pay for it off the backs of people perceived as too lazy to go out and get jobs… which, incidentally, don’t exist. Large segments of our nation are apparently thirstily drinking the Kool Aid being served up by our political leaders.

The cost to our country for this war, and the Iraq war, have been deftly shielded and sanitized for our consumption. This has not always been true in our history. During World War II our nation sold bonds to finance the war. Everyone paid taxes to fund the war and few complained. It was necessary for all citizens to participate in one way or another in the defense of freedom. Everyone felt the pinch; consumer items such as sugar, coffee and materials like rubber and gasoline were rationed. No one was exempt, if you were not serving in uniform you were, in some way, supporting the soldiers who were. We were pulling together.

Again taxes were increased during the Vietnam War. In some sense, the cost to the taxpayer for Vietnam was but one of many pressures the public felt, in addition to the photos of caskets being shipped back home, which forced the government to yield to the growing outcries to bring that war to a close.

That is not the case today. Only recently the Obama administration has lifted the prohibition of pictures being released of flag-draped caskets being returned from the Middle East. But these images seldom make it into the consciousness of the news media; apparently more newsworthy: a Tea Bagger in a three-cornered hat with a misspelled sign calling the president a Socialist is the media’s primary focus.

Those in power have taken great pains to insure that this war costs the American taxpayer nothing; unless, of course, it happens to be YOUR child or loved one who has chosen to serve in the active military. I have not heard one public official suggest taxes be increased to pay for the War on Terrorism. And now it is quite clear that they neither want to factor in the cost of the war anywhere into the incendiary discussions about the rise of our national deficit.

I find it tragic that every day men and women go out on patrol in desolate places of the world based on pointless strategies, facing death and/or injury; while at home, Americans stop but one day a year to honor their commitment with parades and plastic flags made in China. Well hey… they volunteered to be in the service, didn’t they? I wonder who’s on “Dancing with the Stars” tonight?

Further reading:
1. "Bush-Era Tax Cuts Depart From History of America War Finance" Urban Institute
2. “The history of America’s tax system can be written largely as a history of America’s wars.” and Taxes, by Steven A. Bank, Kirk J. Stark, Joseph J. Thorndike."

Good work, my skeptical friend.

Chasing Bubbles With A Butterfly Net

For someone like me with a well-developed startle response and a self-imposed posting deadline, the last few days in the news have been exhausting. It's the silly season in America, of course, with just days to go until the mid-term elections and the culmination of all our anxious imaginings, regardless of our political starting points. But it isn't just any election and it isn't just an America in isolation; it's a globe in transition 'midst an era of revving change. Back peddle? Plunge forward? Stand up on the or accelerate--with or without a prayer? Shit or go blind? (Do NOT fuss at me; that's a perfectly good Anglo-Saxon term with a rich, fertile history.)

The week's been either a blogger's dream or her worst nightmare: more material than I could ever want, flitting past me far too fast, and me with only a sieving mind to capture it. I wake up every morning to chase the tantalizing NYTimes headlines, browse among the big, syndicated blogs, and find it impossible to choose a spot on which to land--a hummingbird on a sugar high.

Should I go with the eerie tolling in my brain from Angela Merkel's "Multikulti has utterly failed" statement? No matter how the Germans are spinning that one today, my head still rings. I've finally gotten so old that a first-hand knowledge of history is more than just a Trivial Pursuit advantage. Swell.

An Instability of Ideas

Notions on the war in Afghanistan are tumbling through my mind and tugging on my emotions, demanding to be processed, refusing to coalesce, and threatening me with the dreaded bugaboo, cognitive dissonance. Don't want to write about them; can't stop thinking about them; let's see what happens when I throw them into the blog blender.


[But, first, the disclaimer: I support Democratic candidates, except where they are obviously unqualified, in which case I support the Green candidate (think SC, where they let me vote). I think Obama has done an heroic job. I think it's time for liberals and progressives to pull together. Having said that much, perhaps I should just stifle my issues with the war. Robert McNamara once said, when he was damned if he did and damned if he didn't on Vietnam, "And I would rather be damned if I don't," meaning that he'd finally decided it was time to STFU. Because, of course, he'ds actually been damned for what he did. So, should I bring this controversial topic up at a time when we need to pull together? Damned if I won't.]

Charles Krauthammer's Op-Ed for the Washington Post, Monday, Oct 4, 2010: "Has Obama Abandoned The Troops He Sent To War?"

"What kind of commander in chief sends tens of thousands of troops to war announcing in advance a fixed date for beginning their withdrawal? One who doesn't have his heart in it. One who doesn't really want to win but is making some kind of political gesture."

Krauthammer goes on to Bob Woodward's book, O'bama's Wars, and the quotation by the CinC that can be spun so many ways: "I can't lose the whole Democratic party." Krauthammer's spin is:

First, isn't this the party that in two consecutive presidential campaigns--John Kerry's and then Obama's--argued vociferously that Afghanistan is the good war, the right war, the war of necessity, the central front in the war on terror? [....]

Did he suddenly develop a faint heart? Or was the party disingenuous about the Afghan War all along, using it as a convenient club with which to attack Geroge W. Bush over Iraq, while protecting the Democrats from the charge of being reflexively anti-war? [....]

One can only conclude that Obama now thinks Afghanistan is a mistake. Maybe he thought so from the very beginning.

Krauthammer is shrewd. He's given the "weak president" spin to what had to have been and continues to be the toughest decisions a president is called on to make. That spin is predictable, despicable, typical of the right at the moment.


What I recall is that in the first days the new president was under enormous pressure from top military advisors to go all out in Afghanistan, to throw everything we had at a war he had doubts about. What I recall is that the surge and withdrawal target date announcement struck me as compromise, forcing me to trust that the President knew things I didn't...had come to know things he hadn't known during his campaign.


I continue to believe that the compromise was not politically based, but was chosen because Mr. Obama saw some possibility that a troop increase could further the goals of our war with Al Qaeda, but wanted to see smaller scale results before committing all our treasure and all our soldiers to the effort.


As to the effects of Bob Woodward's "revelations," I haven't yet read the book, but I have read more articles and blogs on the book than I can count. I've assumed that pundits like Krauthammer have culled what they consider to be the most damning quotations and I think they fail to damn. What I find damning is Krauthammer's conclusion in this piece:

"Sen. Kerry, now chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, once asked many years ago: 'How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?' Perhaps Kerry should ask that of Obama.

"'He is out of Afghanistan psychologically,' says Woodward of Obama. Well, he may be out, but the soldiers he ordered to Afghanistan are in.

Some will not come home."

I had my doubts about the surge then and I have them now. I wanted the soldiers home then and I want them home now. And I wish the President had worked harder to communicate with us about his decisions. But I find Krauthammer's conclusion to be a cheap shot in a profoundly significant discussion.


I believe these statements by the President, also quoted in Woodward's book and reported in the NYTimes and Washington Post, depict a leader wrestling with the best information and advice he could get his hands on, including interviews with former Sec'y of State Colin Powell, who advised, “don’t get pushed by the left to do nothing. Don’t get pushed by the right to do everything.”

 “I’m not signing on to a failure,” President Obama is quoted saying near the end of this book. “If what I proposed is not working, I’m not going to be like these other presidents and stick to it based upon my ego or my politics — my political security.”

************ 

“Everything we’re doing has to be focused on how we’re going to get to the point where we can reduce our footprint. It’s in our national security interest. There cannot be any wiggle room,” 

***********

 “In 2010, we will not be having a conversation about how to do more. I will not want to hear, ‘We’re doing fine, Mr. President, but we’d be better if we just do more.’ We’re not going to be having a conversation about how to change [the mission] ... unless we’re talking about how to draw down faster than anticipated in 2011.”  

What I want to know is, what's the Right's position on Afghanistan? Are they still sorting that out? Michael Steele was roundly condemned for calling Afghanistan "a war of Obama's choosing," and, "not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in," (July, 2010). For once, Lindsey Graham said something I value in response to Steele's idiocy: "It was an uninformed, unnecessary, unwise, untimely comment. This is not President Obama's war, this is America's war. We need to stand behind the president."


The Republican Pledge To America acknowledges that we are a nation at war and makes not one statement on how it intends to deal with the war in Afghanistan other than that tired old phrase about supporting our troops, as if only Republicans fight. As if only Republicans care or worry for those who fight.

Last night, I watched "The Fog of War," a documentary based on a long interview with Robert McNamara on the Vietnam War. Certain quotations haunt me:

On the workings of President Johnson's mind, "People did not understand there were recommendations and pressures that could carry the risk of war with China and of nuclear war."

On allies, "If we can't persuade nations with comparable values of the merit of our cause, we'd better re-examine our reasoning."

On escalation, "This has gone from being a nasty little war to a nasty middle-sized war."

"How much evil must we do in order to do good." 

 Quoting LBJ for a memorandum on the war, "This morning, Senator Scott said, 'The war which we can neither win, lose, nor drop is evidence of an instability of ideas.'" (my emphasis) 

 I cannot sort out the jumble. I am relieved that Obama set a date to begin withdrawal, pending conditions (which ones?!). Must we maintain another presence in the region to contain Iran? Is Afghanistan our only door to terrorist training camps? Does the warrior nation mentality, which Obama opposes, demand that we keep an active front somewhere, always, and--if not in Iraq--well, then we never should have lost our focus in Afghanistan? That may well be the mindset of what Andrew Bacevich calls the Washington rules, but that is not, to my understanding, the mindset of Barack Obama.


Bob Woodward on Sept. 28th, to George Stephanopoulos:

He is an intellectual, as we know. He's the law professor...And so, intellectually, he realizes [that the situation is] real, real, hard. He knows as commander in chief, he has to do something.

And for the first time, you can see his internal struggle, his intellectual struggle. His dealing with the military. He's dealing with his political advisers.

I see a country, its political advisors, its military advisors, and its President struggling hard to do the right thing in Afghanistan--right for the Afghans, right for the Americans, right for the soldiers. There is another total review of the war scheduled for December. That process will be exhaustive, of that I am sure, because that is this President's way.

Charles Krauthammer turned this agonizing national decision into political fodder by exploiting our pain and our anguish about the human costs of war. Those costs are too real to be politicized. To imply, as Krauthammer does, that President Obama has lost interest in Afghanistan, that he doesn't care about the soldiers he's committed to that war, is the ultimate in irresponsible partisanship. Mr. Krauthammer would have been better off following McNamara's STFU motto, "I'd rather be damned if I don't."


P.S. For an excellent review of the President's decision process on the surge and withdrawal date, go to the Washington Post's Interactive Timeline for the period of September through December of 2009.

IMO: What's Right On What's Wrong

No pictures today. No jokes. There'll be plenty more to come, I imagine. Today, I want to spell out what I think is happening in our country, what I think it means, and where I believe true morality lies. This is for me. And for JMartin.

I had a couple of comments on a recent post( on my individual blog) from JMartin who made it clear that he or she did not agree with me, but was not swayed by demagogues like Beck and Palin. This commentor was interested in what others, who did not share his or her opinions, had to say. I realized that I read so many progressive blogs--from writers who are dead serious, to writers who use sharp-honed humor beautifully, to writers who wax obscene to make their point--I just assumed that everyone knows all the arguments, all the issues, all the stances available on the left. And that anyone can instantly recognize all of my positions by extrapolating logically from a joke here and a jab there. Or, else, I assume that no one gives a damn what I think. Well, maybe someone might.

So, here's what I think (and I'm not taking time to justify or explain these positions on this post):

1. The War In Afghanistan: The President could not have gotten elected if he had run on pulling us out of both wars at once, so he chose the one on which public opinion had most obviously soured. The Afghanistan surge was a waste of men and money, an expedient that just stirs the hornet's nest. Continuing to back Karzai was wrong. We can't afford to stay on in Afghanistan. The task now is to get out with some balance between saving global face (which ain't what it used to be, if it ever was) and minimizing further loss of life. And that's a balance that cannot be struck. It will be ugly for the Afghans; it will be publicized; we will be vilified; we will have deserved it. Bite that bullet, Mr. President. Fight terrorism as a police action, because terrorists are criminals; proceed accordingly. If there'd been a draft, neither war would have happened; we'd have cared enough to pay attention.

2.The Koch Party: At the bottom of the pile is the duped herd that actually thinks it is part of a grass-roots movement. This mass thinks it's been had, but it is confused about who the enemy is. It's members follow pied pipers, demagogues, and fools (Beck, Palin, Limbaugh) who are blinded by their own celebrity; they are delusional narcissists. Behind the mass and driving it are politicos who are determined to regain power at all costs (Gingrich, Boehner) and who believe that the end justifies the means. And, above the dust of this cattle drive are the Kochs, Murdoch, Cheney and corporate Robber Barons who believe that they belong to an entirely different species from the rest of us...and that works for them as long as we agree with their assumption that they deserve to be in control.

3. The Fundamentalists:  These are often so braided into The Koch Party and the Republican Party, they can be fooled into thinking they have a vital role in both--even a leadership role. Their primary cause is opposition to abortion and to anything that legitimatizes the LGBT citizenry. In fact, they provide a smokescreen that permits the Robber Barons to operate freely to ensure their financial monopoly. As long as the Fundamentalists are willing to beat the morality drum, Big Money will finance their cause. It's about the money. Corporate interests could not care less who gets an abortion, who marries whom.

The Republican party is hoping to let Reverend Beck and Spokesmodel Palin hold the moral hot potatoes for them, leaving the Repubs free to go after independents who have been scared into believing that only unfettered free markets can save us. We tried that already; they didn't and they won't.

4. Wall Street, Big Bank, and Capitalism: Investing is a game of chance largely played by computers now. We've applied our creativity and our energy to designing more and more complex financial products with which to rip off  the working class. Capitalism is a fine thing, but it is a cancer if it goes unregulated. The function of markets is amoral. Greenspan should be prosecuted. Elizabeth Warren should chair Consumer Protection, not advise it...unless there's a Cabinet position for her, even better.  Free markets will NOT operate indefinitely on their own to benefit individuals and the society, as the Bush years proved. In a society that worships The Free Market, money operates as a test of right and wrong--the good make it and the bad fail. And that's not right; hell, it's not even wrong.

5. The Economy, Taxes and Jobs: Mr. President, dump Geithner and Summers. Repeal tax cuts for the wealthiest echelon and save the endangered middle class. But do incentivize banks to loan to small businesses, which are more inclined to grow and hire. (Huge corporations are primarily motivated to perpetuate themselves and continue to grow profits by laying off, dropping benefits, and going off-shore for cheap labor; they do not turn tax cuts into jobs for Americans. They haven't in the last eight years and they won't, period.)  And, Mr. President, push those infrastructure jobs now. Not later; now. They won't put enough of America back to work to turn the economy around, but they might prevent another man-made disaster. We are already becoming a Second World country, with our potholes, our failed levees, our crumbling bridges and rupturing gas lines.

6. Healthcare: Change had to begin, but, no matter how many times I read about the palatable separate ingredients included, I fear that too many crooks cooks spoiled this broth. Glad we did it. Worried about it.

7. The Democrat's task: The real moral message is that the Koch Party, the Party of Wall Street, the Party of Big Oil, the Party of Big Insurance does not care one iota about those of us who earn less than that proverbial $250,00 a year. They sure as hell don't care about those of us who earn less than $100,00 a year. What's truly immoral is that our earnings are stagnant or reduced, our retirement funds were raped and left to die, we all know someone who was laid off and can't find work. We were seduced by predatory lending and our hopes, our credit, our very country, was destroyed when Wall Street bet that we couldn't pay off those loans. Small businesses cannot get loans now; they'd hire us if they could.

8. The Deficit Reduction Commission: Alan Simpson is demented. Social Security is not the problem; years and years of war is a much bigger problem. If Soc.Sec. is privatized, Wall St. will get that, too. At which point, every state might as well legalize assisted suicide.

How could anyone vote for the party that designed and engineered those moral crimes? How could anyone vote for the confused Koch Party candidates? How could anyone vote for the Republicans who ignored our streets, our gas lines, our levees? How could anyone vote for the party that was brought to you by Big Oil, and radicalized beyond the point where they are recognizable? How could you vote for any party that doesn't care enough about the unemployed to extend them the pittance of unemployment compensation? How could anyone vote for the party that wants to hold the middle class hostage to tax breaks for the richest 2% of the country?



[Imma turn the mic back over to Slutticia von Heretik, now]

p.s. Well, okay, maybe just this one picture. Big H/T to Tom Degan at The Rant

The Odd Couple

No, not Felix and Oscar, but Joe and John: Lieberman and McCain. Putative Democrat and the Republican quondam candidate. Often appearing to be on the same side, their opinions drive us to confusion and not to any conclusion.

The right wing outrage machine has been like a chorus of vuvuzelas, blaring accusations that the classified rules of engagement instituted by General McChrystal on his own initiative were in fact forced on him by president Obama and his opposition, despite his sworn public testimony to the contrary, was the reason he was relieved of command. I suspect Joe Lieberman agrees, although I know he knows better.

The policy of trying to reduce the heavy civilian casualties so as to give the US less of the appearance of an invading horde bent on its own objectives and with no concern for innocent life or limb, is misguided says Lieberman; as though to say we shouldn't be concerned to appear as liberators with the best interests of Afghanistan at heart. We shouldn't care that people whose children we've cavalierly blown to hell aren't going to try to make our efforts any easier and so he's advising General Petraeus to shoot first and ask questions later. It's hurting our morale, says he as though 9 years of getting nowhere can be blamed on being the kind of nation we're supposed to be and more importantly as though it were president Obama's fault for worrying too much about worthless Muslim lives.

Perhaps John McCain's statement that even another ten years of war may not be too much to ask of our country, fits with Lieberman's disinterest in having the country we tell ourselves we're helping on our side. Ten more years of shooting up innocent families at weddings, on the streets, in their cars and in their homes will likely draw us into many more decades of war, and that McCain thinks this war is self justifying if not actually morally or functionally satisfying is not beyond conjecture. Another ten years, another 3, 4, 5 trillion dollars and who knows how many more dead: economic and moral collapse -- that should make the country crazy and enough to elect another Republican.

Pretty clever, and to think I thought McCain was an idiot.

"YOU GO TO WAR WITH THE SECRETARY OF DEFENSE YOU HAVE"

According to Politico:

Adm. Michael Mullen told a House committee Wednesday that Gen. David McKiernan, who led U.S. troops in Afghanistan between 2008 and this year, had asked for 20,000 troops for the effort but was rebuffed.

“We didn’t have them because they were pushed to Iraq,” the four-star admiral said during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing in response to a question from Indiana Republican Rep. Mike Pence. “That was the priority of the president.”

Rumsfeld, you arrogant bastard, UP YOURS!

AN INK-THE-AQUARIUM SPECIAL EDITION: WHAT MAKES (O)CT(O)PUS LIVID !!!

(O) (O) MICHAEL JACKSON ON CNN (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) MICHAEL JACKSON ON MSNBC (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) ABC HAS MICHAEL JACKSON (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) CBS HAS MICHAEL JACKSON (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) BOUGHT A NEWSPAPER (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) JACKSON HERE (O) (O) (O) (O) JACKSON THERE (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) MICHAEL JACKSON EVERYWHERE (O) (O) (O) PLEASE! (O) (O) (O) (O) (O) ENOUGH ALREADY! (O) (O) (O) (O) NO MORE MICHAEL JACKSON NEWS !!!