Gustav bears down on New Orleans during Republican convention

Oops!

That nasty reality is popping up again, serving as a poignant reminder of the gross incompetence and negligence of the bushcheney crew when Katrina hit the Gulf Coast 3 years ago, almost to the day. This was not just a minor scandal. Many people died and were injured due to their “Heckuvajob Brownie!” response.

The “recovery” that cheneybush promised never materialized, and many in the area are still struggling. The ones who actually did receive the dreaded FEMA trailers are suffering the consequences of extended formaldehyde exposure.

Let us never forget: this was the Republican’s finest hour…

McCain believes women are idiots

By his selection of a radical kook conservative, whose positions are anathema to intelligent thinkers everywhere and to women in particular, McCain has demonstrated very clearly that he is convinced that will convince the disappointed supporters of Hillary Clinton to vote for him instead of Obama. 

He believes that these Clinton supporters, and the women among them in particular, are so stupid that they would vote for a ticket which stands for everything they oppose, and which, if elected, would set women back decades in their march to equality. He believes that these women will vote for him simply because he chose a woman as his running mate.

Given McCain’s age and health, there is a very real chance that Palin could indeed become President. McCain believes women are idiots.

While the upcoming debate between Palin and Biden will  be entertaining, in a sad sort of way, it will show quite clearly that McCain made a huge error, and doesn’t understand what is happening in this country and around the world. He thinks having a grossly unqualified pretty face running with him will bring in all of the “disaffected Hillary supporters” but he is in for a surprise.

His choice of Palin will serve to mollify the disaffected conservative base of the Republican party, who are angered that McCain, as bad as he is, is not loonie enough for them.

But McCain could not find a Republican to serve as his running mate who is not enmeshed in scandal. Palin has her share of dirty laundry. She is under an abuse-of-power investigation because of allegations (and considerable evidence) that she tried to get her former brother-in-law fired as a state trooper due to a messy divorce with her sister.

• Investigation dogs Alaska governor Aug 14, 2008
• Palin’s first scandal began as family feud August 29, 2008 

The Republican party is apparently excited just to have a running mate whose views are as out of touch and misguided as what is left of their “base.” The party is in a free fall, having shown the world over the last 8 years just what they would do with the power to put their twisted policies and incompetent and corrupt cronies into place.

cheneybush, and their merry band of co-conspirators, have hammered the final stake into the party. Good bye, good riddance, don’t let the door hit you on the way out… to prison where you belong.

Bush confesses…

In December 2005, after the NY Times did what the legitimate press is supposed to do (are you paying attention FauxNews?) and revealed that his administration was violating the law and our constitutional rights by spying on US citizens without search warrants, or in fact without any court supervision whatsoever (Bush Lets U.S. Spy on Callers Without Courts, December 16, 2005) bush publicly confessed (actually boasted) that he had violated the law of the land:

…The activities I authorized are reviewed approximately every 45 days. Each review is based on a fresh intelligence assessment of terrorist threats to the continuity of our government and the threat of catastrophic damage to our homeland. During each assessment, previous activities under the authorization are reviewed. The review includes approval by our nation’s top legal officials, including the Attorney General and the Counsel to the President. I have reauthorized this program more than 30 times since the September the 11th attacks, and I intend to do so for as long as our nation faces a continuing threat from al Qaeda and related groups.

…Yesterday the existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports, after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemies, and endangers our country. 
President’s Radio Address, December 17, 2005

Putting aside the obvious non sequitur of bush acknowledging that his long-standing practice of revealing classified information to advance his political goals is in fact illegal (does the name Valerie Plame Wilson ring a bell?), he also admits that they view US citizens as “our enemies.” This is consistent with their many other offensive and illegal practices, including “Extraordinary Rendition” and other instances in which they kidnap people and throw them into prisons and subject them to torture, both in the US and around the world, based solely on bush’s “judgement” (these are not 2 words you often see together beyond FauxNews) that they “pose a threat.” There is no oversight, and no evidence that this illegal spying is not being inflicted on citizen’s communications not involving suspected terrorists. In fact, there is a lot of reason to believe that they are spying on anyone they view as a political threat, i.e. anyone willing and able to reveal the truth about their criminal enterprise.

This band of fools apparently believes that we, the sane intelligent citizens, are just not interested and not paying attention when they commit these crimes, and that the laws of the land just don’t apply to them. They are seemingly confident that they will never be called to account in the criminal justice system for their behavior. I beg to differ…

When (not IF) they are hauled into court, this public confession will be one of the prime exhibits against them.

This is hardly an isolated incident, in fact it is another in a long line of serious criminal offenses committed by cheneybush, and entirely consistent with their attitude that “if the president does it, it is by definition not a crime.”

The clock is ticking, and in a few months we will send bush back to his “ranch” to “clear brush” and watch sitcoms, or whatever else his simple mind can handle. Then the real work will begin, of cleaning up their colossal messes and restoring sanity and the rule of law to this nation, and restoring our credibility and alliances which he has trashed around the world.

Through the looking glass, yet again…

No regime should ignore the will of its own people and calls from the international community without consequences. 
George W. Bush, 25-July-2008 

The First Fool has confessed that the illegitimate cheneybush regime has been a disastrous failure from beginning to end, as it wreaked havoc around the world and violated the first and most important tenet of a legitimate democracy and contributing citizen of the world: No regime should ignore the will of its own people and calls from the international community without consequences. And oh, the consequences…

These idiots and their enablers and apologists have inflicted their delusional vision of big business and neocon heaven on this nation and the world, with disastrous consequences, the effects of which will be felt long after these cretins are gone. 

See video of bush’s boss proudly confessing:

It is left to us, the sane intelligent people, to clean up the colossal mess left by these lowlife criminals. A good start will come in the November elections when we sweep these parasites out and send them back to whatever rock they crawled out from under.

They have done their best to sell out the American people to big business and the mining and oil companies, enabling staggering profits and devastation to the economy. Our legacy lands have been sold off and regulations rigged to allow great harm to befall all of us — from encouraging  the wanton pollution of our environment, to turning a blind eye to unsafe workplaces, to planting willing stooges at the top levels of federal agencies which are supposed to protect us from unsafe food/drugs/products entering the marketplace, to sending thousands of our children, brothers, sister, mothers, and fathers to die and be horribly injured in an unnecessary war, based on lies, and conjured up by these idiots to advance the interests of the oil companies and play tin soldier. It is telling that none of these idiots actually had the cojones to serve in the military themselves, preferring to leave that to the riffraff…

Perversion of Justice

The hits just keep on coming… One thing (there are so many…) that these fools were and are just too dumb to learn is that the truth eventually finds its way out into the light of day.

Ideology-Based Hiring at Justice Broke Laws, Investigation Finds (Washington Post, June 25, 2008)

Read it for yourself, it is enlightening reading. Here is the link to the actual report issued by the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General and Office of Professional Responsibility:

An Investigation of Allegations of Politicized Hiring in the Department of Justice Honors Program and Summer Law Intern Program (PDF) (June 24, 2008)

Under Attorneys General Ashcroft and Gonzales, applicants with superior qualifications were passed over in favor of those who were far less qualified but who could be counted on to be so grateful to have a job that they would carry out the warped policies and missions of the new, ”improved” cheneybush compliant Justice Department.

Laws were broken, once again. This is an ongoing thread running through the cheneybush years - flagrant criminality in all agencies coupled with the removal of qualified US attorneys, and the installation of incompetent political hacks who are so unqualified (”Heckuva job, Brownie!”) as to present substantial threats to public safety and rule of law. In the case of the fired US attorneys, their apparent sins were that they were unwilling to overlook the rampant criminal behavior throughout the cheneybush administration and instead sought to enforce the laws of the land, and to uphold and defend the Constitution. In other words, they could not be counted on to be “loyal soldiers” in the ongoing cheneybush assault on the Constitution and the rule of law. They were unwilling to sign on to the cheneybush mantra: “if the president does or condones it, it is legal…”

In the case of this latest scandal coming to light in the Justice Department under dumb and dumber Attorneys General, this ensured that honest and competent staff were replaced with those who can at best charitably be considered too dumb to realize they were being used as pawns to carry out the goals of the criminal conspiracy that is the underlying theme of the cheneybush administration.

Note as a prime example of the “new and improved” hiring practices, the bottom-of-the-heap “law school” at televangelist Pat Robertson’s Regent University, founded by Robertson to provide “Christian leadership to change the world,” became a prime source for compliant underqualified staff.

Scandal puts spotlight on Christian law school Grads influential in Justice Dept.
(The Boston Globe, April 8, 2007)

How a ‘fourth tier’ religious law school infiltrated the US Government
The hiring of 150 graduates of a poorly regarded faith-based law school has raised questions about the influence of faith on the American political process, says a New York trial lawyer
(Times Online [UK], July 5, 2007)

Apoplectic

Do you ever listen to the RRWKF (Radical Right Wing Kook Fringe) cheering section in the media? You know, the wannabe self-proclaimed ”journalists” of FauxNews and the “analysts” including the motley crew of deranged imbeciles including O’Reilly, Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, etc.? 

They are always shrill and comically uninformed, in denial of the reality all around us and apparently unaware that they are individually and collectively national punchlines.

It is fascinating to watch them becoming increasingly alarmed as even they, dumb as they are, are starting to see the writing on the wall. There will be a sea change in November. Not only will Obama win by a sizeable majority but the House and Senate, and state races everywhere, will see Democratic victories by margins unprecedented in modern history.

The Republican party had its chance to demonstrate for us all, in excruciating detail, just how damaging and deranged their vision and view of reality is. Handed the White House by the 5 supremes in spite of losing the election, to the court’s everlasting shame and embarrassment, and holding majorities in the House and Senate, with their unbridled power they did what they always do, but more out in the open and unencumbered than in the past.

The corruption and incompetence and flagrant criminality were breathtaking both in breadth and depth, and we, the sane intelligent people of the world, got a clear view of their warped world view in action.

Now that the world has seen clearly what they are about, we the citizens who these clowns work for have had enough. They no longer can hide behind any pretense of sanity or working for the best interests of anyone other then themselves. They are being dismissed for cause.

Not only are they out on their collective behinds, but the ensuing investigations will reveal the depth of their crimes in all of its depravity. The whistleblowers are already coming forward, and this will only increase as time goes on. Those in the position to have seen for themselves are gradually letting us all in on the dirty secrets.

These clowns are looking at much more than being discredited and shamed before the world, as they justifiably are and will be. Not that many of them would care anyway. But many of them are looking at hard prison time, and this cold harsh reality is starting to dawn on them. Criminal behavior has consequences.

The truth inevitably comes out. This is often much later and slower than many of us hoped for, but it does eventually come out…

This crowd was so convinced of their invincibility that it never even occurred to them that corruption and incompetence on this scale cannot and will not remain hidden forever And folks, we are talking about serious crimes here — not just the obvious bribery and corruption and malfeasance, but clear violations of the law in their warrantless wiretapping and monitoring of citizens, without any pretense of due process or provable evidence. Courts and the rule of law were apparently considered no more than pesky inconveniences that clearly didn’t apply to the royal court of King George the Disaster.

Then of course there are many counts of war crimes for their actions in their grand false Iraqi  misadventures, and arguably murder and aggravated assault against the American military they used as pawns for their actions, and who died and were injured as a direct result. Since Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/ Rice et al never stepped up to serve their country in the military, and since they ignored the advice and counsel of the actual military leaders who warned them of their folly, they went about their dirty business as if these were toy soldiers and it was all just a grand glorious game to them.

And let us not forget the “extraordinary renditions” in which they kidnapped people outside our borders and either imprisoned and tortured them at Guantanamo (supposedly and conveniently considered “foreign”), or sent them to other countries to do the dirty work, with no opportunity to review the “evidence” against them or prove their innocence. In fact, it is becoming increasingly clear that many of these people were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, and”evidence” was later fabricated to justify their kidnapping and imprisonment.

Due process? Confront your accuser and the evidence against you? The US Constitution? The rule of law? Ha!

This crew is a lot of things, but they will never be accused of sparkling intelligence. They installed legions of clueless party apparatchiks to do their dirty work in all of the government agencies that mattered, flagrantly disregarding and overruling and censoring the career professionals and scientists who actually knew what they were doing and protested, trying as they were to fulfill their real duties to us, the citizens these idiots work for. As a result much harm has been inflicted on us and our environment, which we and our descendants will be working to correct and clean up for generations. This is but another feather in King George the Disaster’s cap…

I imagine that prison is not fun, and I have thankfully never experienced it first hand and never will. This is an easy blanket statement to make since I am a lay-abiding person. This band of treasonous imbeciles will have plenty of time to think about what might have been, and to write their memoirs apologizing and explaining to the world just how they let themselves go so wrong…

“Conservatism”?

How odd that that this band of treachorous, treasonous radicals who have hijacked the Republican party and inflicted their delusions onto us for the last few decades call themselves “conservatives.” In the real world, where we sane intelligent people reside, nothing could be further from the truth.

The fact that they so revere Reagan, who was one of the most idiotic and corrupt presidents in recent history, is very telling. Does “Iran-Contra” ring a bell? How about “voodoo economics” which is what George H.W. Bush correctly termed their ridiculous “trickle-down” economic theories in which

2-2=bazillions?

In fact this cabal of delusional “neocons” and the most loony and vile fringes of the fundamentalis religious “right” have combined to create a world view that can only be described as radical in the extreme. There is nothing at all conservative about them. They simply use that word as a marketing ploy in their attempts to convince the American people and the world that they are something which their every action and statement proves they are not; corrupt, incompetent, and delusional.

Every day that goes by reveals yet another crack in their facade of sanity, as the truth surfaces (as it eventually must) about their various crimes and true allegiances. Between the long running attempts by Christian kooks like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and their ilk, to inflict their bizarre and hateful world views on us (sane, intelligent people).

Their continual ranting about the growing ”evil” they perceive in anyone who doesn’t share their insanity is their justification for their continued attempts to prevent we sane intelligent people from living our lives without kowtowing to their insane fundamentalist religious fantasies.

Their bizarre literal interpretations of religious texts are simply ridiculous and reflect the depth of their delusion. The rest of take them for what they are - collections of parables and metaphors reflecting an ancient culture long gone and not very relevant today to those of us who are, well, sane and intelligent. Like religious fundamentalists of any faith, their misunderstanding and misinterpretation of religious texts to support their bizarre and hateful world views are indeed the source of the vast majority of hate and pain in the world for several centuries, and even more so today. 

The “fundamental” truth their hatred and delusions have blinded them to is the consistent guiding principle behind all of the world’s religious traditions: the Golden Rule, Karma, do no evil, be nice, respect everyone.

The fact that these radical kooks claim to be Christian doesn’t make them any better or different from their soul-brothers in evil and insanity, the Taliban. They are just as evil and destructive in their own self-righteous ways…

“On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more powerful ally one can claim in a debate than Jesus Christ, or God,or Allah, or whatever one calls this supreme being. But like any powerful weapon,the use of God’s name on one’s behalf should be used sparingly. The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious cloutwith wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following theirposition 100 percent. If you disagree with these religious groups on a particularmoral issue, they complain, they threaten you with a loss of money or votes or both.

I’m frankly sick and tired of the political preachers across this country telling meas a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in ‘A,’ ’B,’ ‘C,’ and ‘D.’ Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claimthe right to dictate their moral beliefs to me? 

And I am even more angry as alegislator who must endure the threats of every religious group who thinks it hassome God-granted right to control my vote on every roll call in the Senate. I amwarning them today:  I will fight them every step of the way if they try to dictatetheir moral convictions to all Americans in the name of ‘conservatism.’ “

Barry Goldwater

Speech in the US Senate (16 September 1981)

http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Barry_Goldwater

Fear and Loathing

Fear:
The Republican Party, and their vile loon cheerleaders and apologists in the media (O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, Coulter, Malkin, FauxNews, etc.) are afraid. They are very afraid of the light of day shining on the extensive crimes against the people committed by Cheney/Bush et al. And they are right to fear the truth coming out, for it increases the likelihood that they will serve hard time in prison for their crimes. The more that the American people know about the activities undertaken by this crowd, the greater the Democratic majorities will be in all of the upcoming elections, from the presidency and congress, all the way down to the state and local levels.

See for yourself their attempts to prevent the American people and the world from hearing evidence of their criminal activities: 
http://thinkprogress.org/2008/06/12/video-two-straight-days-of-gop-obstructionism/

They have much to fear. As evidence comes out, and it surely will over time, many of the perpetrators face indictment on crimes too numerous to count. The prospect of hard prison time is something they will do anything to avoid, and thus the coverup will only increase in vigor.

Loathing:
These treasonous vile loons, corrupt and incompetent as they are, loath all that this country is and stands for. They loath the pesky constitution and the rule of law, for it stands in the way of their criminal activities and abuse of the citizens. They loath the citizens they claim to serve and represent, since nothing good (for them) comes from the people standing up to the abuse they are bringing upon us. 

They loath what they dismissively term the “main stream media” as a vast biased liberal conspiracy out to get them with fictional stories of wrongdoing, when in fact they loath the fact that legitimate journalists continually investigate their crimes and expose them for what they are. They far prefer the few fake media outlets they can count on to ignore the truth, especially FauxNews and the Washington Times (owned and controlled by Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church (aka “Moonies”).

This is not at all a secret, in fact the Unification Church proudly acknowledges it:

• http://www.unification.net/2000/20000202.html
• http://www.unification.net/2002/20020521_1.html
• http://www.unification.net/2002/20020521_2.html
• http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1569
• http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/cult/unification/main.htm

Cheney/Bush’s assault on the constitution set back

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/12/AR2008061204283.html

The Supreme Court’s decision to grant habeas corpus rights to the detainees was a huge victory for the constitution, and for those of us for whom it is still important. Cheney/Bush have been hard at work for years trying to defeat the constitution, and in the process wreak endless havoc and abuse on the people they claim to serve. FINALLY some relief, although it is clear from the grim look on Bush’s face in his statement yesterday that they will do all they can to delay and obstruct the court’s ruling and continue their egregious violations of the law.

As detailed in this investigation by McClatchy Newspaper, the US government has a long history of detaining innocent people abroad, based on sketchy evidence at best, and either dumping them into our own prisons or handing them off to other nations — the dreaded “extraordinary rendition” – for torture and abuse. 

Many detainees’ ties to terrorism doubted
Inquiry shows most freed at Gitmo had low-level link at most to militants

Thus it is no surprise that they so desperately resist allowing these individuals the opportunity to review the evidence against them. Their imperial claim is that the mere fact that the US government claims that a person is guilty makes it true. No trial, no evidence, no justice required. Off to prison they are sent, with no opportunity to prove their innocence. 

By the twisted imperial logic of the US government, any person anywhere in the world is subject to being arrested and thrown into prison and tortured, with no opportunity to review the evidence against him/her nor the opportunity to prove his/her innocence. 

Make no mistake, presumably there are indeed some very guilty people included in these broad sweeps, but the fact that the US government is unable or unwilling to prove their guilt in court is unacceptable. Their broad claims of government secrecy have proven in the past to be merely a smokescreen, an attempt to cover up their crimes and incompetence.

The wheels are coming off Cheney/Bush’s bus, and the growing fury spouted by their vile loon cheerleaders and apologists in the media is evidence of their frustration and fear as the nation gradually attempts to repair the extensive damage caused by these wretched criminals.

Priorities

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/us/politics/12campaign.html

In an interview on the NBC “Today” show, Mr. McCain was asked whether, if the troop escalation he had long advocated in Iraq was working, he had “a better estimate of when American forces can come home.”

“No, but that’s not too important,” Mr. McCain replied. He then went on to say, as he has many times, that the most important goal is reducing casualties in Iraq, and that American troops were still in South Korea, Japan and Germany without any fear of harm.

“We will be able to withdraw,” he said. “But the key to it is that we don’t want any more Americans in harm’s way.”

See the video for yourself: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/25091600#25091600

As if it were not already evident that McCain is very confused and out of touch with reality, here is yet another crystal clear reminder that this clown would inflict more of the same disastrous Cheney/Bush idiocy on us. Although it is obviously not important to McCain, nor to Cheneybush’s enablers in Congress and throughout the Republican Party, it is VERY IMPORTANT to us. 

Remember us? We the people? The troops who have been stuck in this quagmire for 3, 4, 5+ tours, that Cheney/Bush conned the nation into; the troops who have been injured and killed at a staggering rate; the troops whose blood is on Cheney/Bush’s hands; the National Guard troops sent into battle leaving their states unprotected in case of real emergencies; the troops they so shamelessly failed to support with adequate armor and equipment while in harm’s way; the troops and veterans they abuse and ignore when they return home seeking help for their injuries? And the families of these troops, who suffer so when they are in harms way, and when they are injured and killed? And the taxpayers who have incurred a staggering debt, growing at an estimated $10-12 Billion/month, passing the debt onto our children and grandchildren and beyond? 

And for what? For Cheney/Bush to swagger in their parallel universe and pretend that none of it matters? To pursue some insane neocon delusions?

When Cheney/Bush’s needless war is brought to an end and the troops brought home is important to us, and it is important to us that we elect a president who is not stuck in the bizarre alternate universe of Cheney/Bush-land.

We the people, the sane intelligent people who have suffered at the hands of these idiots, have our priorities straight…