BartBlog

Ron Brynaert, The Raw Story, May 4, 2007

Former White House correspondent Jeff Gannon, also know as James Dale Guckert, has a new gig these days, according to a Washington Post report. The one-time reporter for the one-time conservative news site GOPUSA.com has now become a spokesman for a Christian bible group.

“Let us pray that, on next year’s National Day of Prayer, there is better attendance at the ‘Bible Reading Marathon’ on the West Front of the Capitol,” Dana Milbank writes for the Post.

Milbanks noted that only “37 of the 600 seats were occupied, though many of those people were tourists eating lunch,” and asked “Where was everybody?”

“‘This isn’t that kind of event,’ explained Jeff Gannon, spokesman for the host, the International Bible Reading Association,” Milbanks writes. “Gannon, actually a pseudonym for James Guckert, had earned fame in 2005 representing a conservative Web site at White House briefings until it was revealed that he posted nude pictures of himself on the Web to offer his services as a $200-an-hour gay escort.”

Milbanks jokes, “Let us pray for the power to understand how Gannon made his way from HotMilitaryStud.com to the International Bible Reading Association.”

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A Sad Parallel… 

I bought a bird feeder. I hung it on my back porch and filled it 
with seed. Within a week we had hundreds of birds taking advantage of 
the continuous flow of free and easily accessible food. But then the 
birds started building nests in the boards of the patio, above the 
table, and next to the barbecue. Then came the poop. It was everywhere: 
on the patio tile, the chairs, the table…everywhere. Then some of the 
birds turned mean: They would dive bomb me and try to peck me even 
though I had fed them out of my own pocket. And others birds were 
boisterous and loud: They sat on the feeder and squawked and screamed 
at all hours of the day and night and demanded that I fill it when it 
got low on food.

After a while, I couldn’t even sit on my own back porch anymore.

I took down the bird feeder and in three days the birds were gone. I cleaned up their mess and took down the many nests they had built all over the patio. Soon, the back yard was like it used to be…quiet, serene and no one demanding their rights to a free meal. 
 
Now lets see……our government gives out free food, subsidized housing, free medical care, free education and allows anyone born here to be a automatic citizen. Then the illegals came by the tens of thousands. Suddenly our taxes went up to pay for free services; small 
apartments are housing 5 families: you have to wait 6 hours to be seen by an emergency room doctor: you child’s 2nd grade class is behind other schools because over half the class doesn’t speak English:

Corn Flakes now come in a bilingual box; I have to press “one” to hear my 
bank talk to me in English, and people waving flags other than “Old 
Glory” are squawking and screaming in the streets, demanding more 
rights and free liberties. 
 
Maybe it’s time for the government to take down the bird feeder.

Rozius, All Things Democrat, May 3, 2007

You fools! You’re in danger! Can’t you see?
They’re after you! They’re after all of us!
Our wives, our children, everyone!
They’re here already.

–Dr. Miles Bennell, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

As one peruses the daily collection of news and opinion pieces found in the main stream media and on the internet tubes a reoccurring theme seems to keep popping up. In any article or pundit piece that mentions public opinion on many of the issues of today, including those who rate George Bush as doing a good job as president, those who support us staying the course in Iraq, those who want to make abortion illegal for any reason what so ever and those who feel that America is a Christian nation that should be governed not by the Constitution but by the Bible the figure 30% keeps raising it’s ugly head.

Who are these 30% and what convergence of childhood head trauma and poor potty training makes them so reactionary and separated from reality?

I can come to no other conclusion but to support the theory that 30% of the American public has been kidnapped by aliens and replaced with alien pod people. It also seems that the alien scientist who designed the brains of these Bushie Pod People messed up in his research and programmed their thinking as if they were from the 1950s and not from today.

Now, before you hit the back button while snorting “another damn conspiracy theorist” please hear me out.

The next time you are driving on the freeway just look around you and consider that approximately 30% of those drivers within your vision believe that we are fighting in Iraq to avenge 9/11. You might even catch a glimpse of Dick “Dark Lord” Cheney driving by with a fully loaded shotgun hanging on his rifle rack. One never knows when one might spot Osama walking down the median of I-90 demanding that one take patriotic action.

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John Dickerson, Slate, May 2, 2007

If you plan to run for president, you have to get your reading list straight. Inevitably a reporter will ask you to name your favorite book or a book you’re currently reading, hoping to uncover a truth about your inner self. Candidates quickly learn to name either biographies of heroic ex-presidents or safe best sellers like Einstein. If a candidate is going to take a risk and go with fiction, it must be an affirming airport novel or a classic like Bleak House safe enough to be adapted by PBS. A candidate wants to show depth, but not so much depth that people hide their daughters. Even Barack Obama wouldn’t want to have to explain his love for Portnoy’s Complaint or Lolita to a gymnasium full of Iowa caucus-goers.

The modern media addiction to this trope appears to have started with John F. Kennedy, who said he liked reading Ian Fleming’s novels.* The dashing president who liked the ladies seemed to be mirrored in his choice of books, so journalists kept asking the question. Bill Clinton, a man of wide appetites, couldn’t name just one book and thereby reaffirmed the idea that by their books ye shall know them.

Answering this question correctly can be helpful to a would-be president. If you’re Rudy Giuliani and you want people to think you’re like Churchill, it’s a good idea to tell reporters you were reading a biography of the prime minister on the night of 9/11. (The only less subtle hint would be nicknaming yourself Winston.) But naming the wrong book can send dangerous signals. Last summer, President Bush reportedly read The Stranger. Having launched an unpopular pre-emptive war in the Middle East, it can’t possibly be helpful to announce that you’re reading a book where the main character is an unrepentant Arab-killer.

Recently, GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney was asked to name his favorite books. Romney is a man who likes to prepare. In the months before announcing his presidential bid, his foundation donated to social conservative groups that he now hopes will support him. He once seemed to enjoy distancing himself from the NRA, but before running for the GOP nomination he joined the influential gun lobby. So, it was a pretty good bet that among the current crop of candidates, Romney would have the most calculated reading list. Or perhaps, in keeping with his other policy evolutions, he’d say in his youth Gore Vidal’s Myra Breckinridge was his favorite but now he reads only Edmund Burke.

What books did Romney claim as his favorites? The Bible is his favorite book. His favorite novel is Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard, the science-fiction writer and Scientology founder. The first we would have expected, but the second is so wacky, it breathes new life into the tired old reporter’s trope: There must be something we can learn about Romney by examining this answer.

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Well, it’s finally over.  Mostly.

Anna Nichole Smith is six feet under in the Bahamas, and the drive-by media is finding something new to frenzy over.

But the question remains – why?

Why the utter adoration of her by the mainstream media?

The news weenies at ABC, CBS, NBC, and FOX were deer in headlights for over three weeks; night and day, rain and shine, nonstop.

Even Britney Spear’s shaved head could only give momentary pause to the onslaught. Talking heads frowned, pretending to care for the music diva, then right back to Smith.

I understand the drive-bys believe we are all stupid and as entranced as they are with Anna Smith, but still I paced the floor and wondered out loud,

“How could this Hollywood bimbo get such rapt attention?”

Overhearing the raving, my teenager poked her head around the corner,

“It’s the knockers, Dad.”

Grimgold

Robin Pomeroy, Reuters, May 2, 2007

The Vatican’s official newspaper accused an Italian comedian on Wednesday of “terrorism” for criticizing the Pope and warned his rhetoric could fuel a return to 1970s-style political violence.

In an unusually strongly worded editorial, L’Osservatore Romano said a presenter of a televised May Day rock concert, which is sponsored by Italy’s labor unions, had launched “vile attacks” on Pope Benedict in front of an “excitable crowd.”

“This, too, is terrorism. It’s terrorism to launch attacks on the Church,” it said. “It’s terrorism to stoke blind and irrational rage against someone who always speaks in the name of love, love for life and love for man.”

At the concert, held every year in front of the Saint John in Lateran basilica — Rome’s cathedral where Pope Benedict sits as bishop — one of
the presenters, Andrea Rivera, spoke out against the Pontiff’s stand on a number of issues.

“The Pope says he doesn’t believe in evolution. I agree, in fact the Church has never evolved,” he said.

He also criticized the Church for refusing to give a Catholic funeral to Piergiorgio Welby, a man who campaigned for euthanasia as he lay paralyzed with muscular dystrophy. He died in December after a doctor agreed to unplug his respirator.

“I can’t stand the fact that the Vatican refused a funeral for Welby but that wasn’t the case for (Chilean dictator Augusto) Pinochet or (Spanish dictator Francisco) Franco,” he said between musical acts at the open-air concert.

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How to Achieve Permanent Peace in the Middle East.

 By Grimgold

Bullet-riddled buildings, bomb craters, and black husks of burning vehicles compete for the camera as an enthusiastic media pans endless footage.

In between the blonde hard-body showing yet another exercise machine and a new, improved pill for erectile dysfunction, the television talking head announces the latest “breaking news!” terrorist atrocity as the worm crawls across the bottom of the screen soundlessly totaling up the number of American soldiers killed in Iraq, daily reminding us of Moslem stupidity.

Al Qaeda-trained soldiers carry 1000-year-old grudges in their hearts; raised to hate, determined to kill and be killed.

So what’s the answer? What is the lasting solution to this perpetual blood fest that has gone on for centuries and shows little sign of resolution?

Simple.

Give women: equality in education; the right to vote in secret ballot; even-handed justice under the rule of law, especially concerning divorce and rape; the right to practice religion alongside men as equals; the right to wear western clothing without fear; the right to hold political office; the right to publish; and the right to own property.

But why would this solve anything?

Because women don’t want a new AK-47.

Women don’t want to blow up American tanks.

Women don’t want to wander the streets screaming “Jihad!”

Women want home, family, and community. They want shopping malls, safe streets, good schools, and, above all, peace.

Give women equal rights, protections, and opportunities under the law, and begin the establishing of these as societal custom, and peace and prosperity will pour across the Middle East.

Grimgold

Maureen Dowd: The New York Times, May 2, 2007

Instead of George Tenet teaching at Georgetown University, George Tenet should be taught at Georgetown University.

There should be a course on government called “The Ultimate Staff Guy.” A morality saga about how much harm you can do as a go-along, get-along guy, spending so much time trying not to alienate the big cheese so he doesn’t can you that you miss the moment where you have to can him or lose your soul.

If Colin Powell and George Tenet had walked out of the administration in February 2003 instead of working together on that tainted U.N. speech making the bogus case for war, they might have turned everything around. They might have saved the lives and limbs of all those brave U.S. kids and innocent Iraqis, not to mention our world standing and national security.

It would certainly have been harder for timid Democrats, like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and John Edwards, to back up the administration if two members of the Bush inner circle had broken away to tell an increasingly apparent truth: that Dick Cheney, Rummy and the neocons were feverishly pushing a naïve president into invading Iraq with junk facts.

General Powell counted on Slam Dunk — a slender reed — to help him rid the speech of most of the garbage Mr. Cheney’s office wanted in it. Slam, of course, tried to have it both ways, helping the skeptical secretary of state and pandering to higher bosses. Afterward, when the speech turned out to be built on a no-legged stool, General Powell was furious at Slam. But they both share blame: they knew better. They put their loyalty to a runaway White House ahead of their loyalty to a fearful public.

Slam Dunk’s book tour is mesmerizing, in a horrifying way.

“The irony of the whole situation is, is he was bluffing,” Slam said of Saddam on “Larry King Live” on Monday night, adding, “And he didn’t know we weren’t.” Mr. He-Man Tenet didn’t understand the basics of poker, much less Arab culture. It never occurred to him that Saddam might feign strength to flex muscles at his foes in the Middle East? Slam couldn’t take some of that $40 billion we spend on intelligence annually and get a cultural profile of the dictator before we invaded?

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Aqeel Hussein, The London Sunday Telegraph, May 1, 2007

BAGHDAD – Criminals in Baghdad are stealing corpses from the scenes of car bombings and killings in order to extract ransoms from grieving relatives.

In a macabre offshoot of the capital’s kidnapping epidemic, the gangs pose as medics collecting bodies to be taken back to the city’s overflowing morgues.

Instead, they take the corpses to secret places and demand payments of up to $5,000 to release each body to relatives for burial. Because Muslim custom dictates that a body must be buried as soon as possible after death, many families simply pay up, rather than involve the police.

“We have seen 40 families to whom this has happened, where people said that they have had to pay money to receive bodies,” said Dr. Mohammed al-Nasrawi, an official at the Baghdad city morgue.

The new racket in “dead hostage taking” is thought to be run by gangs connected to the city’s sectarian militias, many of whom are involved in conventional kidnappings.

Iraqi police said the gangs often respond to car bombings, which can leave more than 100 corpses on the streets. In the chaos, police and army units seldom question the credentials of people posing as ambulance crews.

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William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t, May 2, 2007

“There are some similarities, of course. Death is terrible.”

- George W. Bush on comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam, April 19, 2007

Four years after a humiliating strut across the flight deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, four years after declaring major combat operations in Iraq ended and the mission accomplished, four years and more than three thousand dead American soldiers later, four long years to the day, George W. Bush delivered a veto that only ensures more wretched and bloody carnage.

“Bush used his veto pen for only the second time Tuesday,” reported NBC News, “after Congress sent him a war spending bill that would impose timelines to withdraw US troops from Iraq, which he called a ‘prescription for chaos.’ The bill is unacceptable because it ‘substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgments of our military commanders,’ the president said in a nationally televised address to explain why he was vetoing a bill that would also provide more than $100 billion in emergency spending for the war.”

Take a moment to absorb the twin-bill nonsense within that explanation.

The now-vetoed, multi-billion-dollar Iraq spending bill, which contained withdrawal timelines demanded by Congressional Democrats, “substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgments of our military commanders,” according to Bush. Many of us must have missed the memo explaining how Bush, Cheney, and the rest of this administration aren’t politicians anymore. We also missed the memo explaining how it was the “judgments of our military commanders” that sunk us into this mess to begin with.

Speaking of military judgments, here are two worth considering; both came after Bush deployed the veto pen on Tuesday.

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SilentPatriot, Crooks and Liars, May 1, 2007

Yes, you read that correctly. The Iraqi parliament – who our brave young men and women are fighting to protect and preserve – is planning on taking a two month vacation during the months of July and August. This is wrong on so many levels. Exactly what are we fighting for again? This doesn’t seem like a government committed to getting things done, despite our huge investment and sacrifice. Absolutely shameful. And we thought the 109th Congress was the “do-nothing” champion. It should come as no surprise that Secretary Rice’s top priority is the having the Iraqis finish up the oil laws.

Senator Levin weighs in:

The committee considering amendments to the Iraqi Constitution appears to be as far from completing its work as it has always been. Meanwhile, the Assembly is apparently planning to go on a two month recess at the end of June. Let me repeat that since it is so unbelievable – the Iraqi Council of Representatives is apparently planning to go on a two month recess at the end of June. And incredibly, Hasan Suneid, a lawmaker and adviser to Prime Minister Maliki, was quoted in the paper the other day as saying that “time is irrelevant.” Well time is plenty relevant to us, our troops and their families.

“Time is irrelevant,” huh? Tell me again why we should let Bush continue his open-ended, no accountability policy …

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Have you noticed prices going up lately? Not just gasoline, but other things.

Juice and cereal are put in smaller containers, so less can masquerade as more; medical bills have gone through the roof and those with HMO’s have seen their co-pays increase and simultaneously become more restrictive; gold and oil have doubled in price over the last few years; and even the stogy euro stands at about $1.30, meaning the dollar has lost 30% of its value in Europe.

But why?

What’s going on?

Simple.

Our beloved government is printing huge amounts of money to pay its bills. With more dollars chasing goods, each dollar is worth less. This causes higher prices. In other words, the Fed has inflated the total amount of money dramatically.

But why?

To pay its bills, to fund things like the Iraq war, and bridges to nowhere.

Rather than trying to raise taxes, which is unpopular, it quietly increases the money supply – inflates it.

You probably thought inflation was prices going up.

Nope.

Inflation is when the dollar becomes worth less.

This isn’t a new problem. Since FDR took us off the gold standard in 1930, our currency has steadily inflated until the dollar is now worth about four cents. Four cents!
Take a dollar out of your purse or wallet. Look at it. Notice there is nothing printed on the treasury note you use to buy milk and bread, stating its worth. It used to be redeemable for something of value, but no more.

Now, sometime during this reading your head is supposed to hit the keyboard with a thud.

I am, after all, writing about economics. Dull, dull, dull.

And that’s exactly why the government gets away with inflating the currency. No one understands or cares to understand economics.

You know who is hurt the most by inflation?

The poor and elderly. When Uncle Sam prints more unredeemable dollars and pumps them into the economy, in the act of paying its bills, prices of stuff go up, and Grandpa Nelson can no longer afford his winter heating bill.

So what can you do?

First, read what I have to say about this, more will definitely follow, and

Secondly, demand that the Fed quit trying to convince us that “A little inflation is a good thing.” It’s only good for a greedy federal government, not you, me, or Grandpa Nelson.

Grimgold

Jeremy Scahill, Salon, May 1, 2007

The Democratic leadership in Congress is once again gearing up for a great sellout on the Iraq war. While the wrangling over the $124 billion Iraq supplemental spending bill is being headlined in the media as a “showdown” or “war” with the White House, it is hardly that. In plain terms, despite the impassioned sentiments of the antiwar electorate that brought the Democrats to power last November, the congressional leadership has made clear its intention to keep funding the Iraq occupation, even though Sen. Harry Reid has declared that “this war is lost.”

For months, the Democrats’ “withdrawal” plan has come under fire from opponents of the occupation who say it doesn’t stop the war, doesn’t defund it, and ensures that tens of thousands of U.S. troops will remain in Iraq beyond President Bush’s second term. Such concerns were reinforced by Sen. Barack Obama’s recent declaration that the Democrats will not cut off funding for the war, regardless of the president’s policies. “Nobody,” he said, “wants to play chicken with our troops.”

As the New York Times reported, “Lawmakers said they expect that Congress and Mr. Bush would eventually agree on a spending measure without the specific timetable” for (partial) withdrawal, which the White House has said would “guarantee defeat.” In other words, the appearance of a fierce debate this week, presidential veto and all, has largely been a show with a predictable outcome.

While all of this is troubling, there is another disturbing fact that speaks volumes about the Democrats’ lack of insight into the nature of this unpopular war — and most Americans will know next to nothing about it. Even if the president didn’t veto their legislation, the Democrats’ plan does almost nothing to address the second largest force in Iraq — and it’s not the British military. It’s the estimated 126,000 private military “contractors” who will stay put there as long as Congress continues funding the war.

The 145,000 active-duty U.S. forces are nearly matched by occupation personnel that currently come from companies like Blackwater USA and the former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, which enjoy close personal and political ties with the Bush administration. Until Congress reins in these massive corporate forces and the whopping federal funding that goes into their coffers, partially withdrawing U.S. troops may only set the stage for the increased use of private military companies (and their rent-a-guns) that stand to profit from any kind of privatized future “surge” in Iraq.

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Robert Scheer, The Pasadena Star News, April 29, 2007

Blame it on the military, but make it look like you’re supporting the troops. That’s been the convenient gambit of failed emperors throughout history as they witnessed their empires decline. Not surprisingly, then, it’s become the standard rhetorical trick employed by President Bush in shirking responsibility for the Iraq debacle of his making.

Ignoring the fact that we have a system of civilian control over the military, which is why he, the elected president, is designated the commander in chief, Bush hides behind the fiction that the officers in the field are calling the shots when in fact he has put them in an unwinnable situation and refuses to even consider a timetable for getting them out.

He did it again April 23, responding to the prospect that both houses of Congress seem in agreement on setting guidelines for the “progress” that the president continually proclaims is at hand. “I will strongly reject an artificial timetable \ withdrawal and-or Washington politicians trying to tell those who wear the uniform how to do their job.”

This is disingenuous in the extreme, because Bush is the Washington politician who plotted this unnecessary war from the moment the 9/11 attack provided him with an excuse for regime change in a country that had nothing to do with the terrorist attack.

It was Bush who sent the troops to invade Iraq with the mission of ridding it of weapons of mass destruction, which he should have known Iraq did not have, and to end ties with al-Qaida that, the record shows, he knew never existed. And it was the Bush administration that micro-managed every aspect of the occupation to disastrous consequences, ranging from the de-Baathification that isolated the Sunnis to premature elections that put Shiite theocrats in power. The economic reconstruction of Iraq has been a failure for everyone except the U.S. corporations that have ripped off U.S. taxpayers to the tune of many billions of dollars.

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The New York Times, April 30, 2007

Last fall Edward Lazear, the Bush administration’s top economist, explained that what’s good for corporations is good for America. “Profits,” he declared, “provide the incentive for physical capital investment, and physical capital growth contributes to productivity growth. Thus profits are important not only for investors but also for the workers who benefit from the growth in productivity.”

In other words, ask not for whom the closing bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Unfortunately, these days none of what Mr. Lazear said seems to be true. In the Bush years high profits haven’t led to high investment, and rising productivity hasn’t led to rising wages.

The second of those two disconnects has gotten a lot of attention because of its political consequences. The administration and its allies whine that they aren’t getting credit for a great economy, but because wages have been stagnant — the median worker’s earnings, adjusted for inflation, haven’t gone up at all since the current economic expansion began in 2001 — the economy feels anything but great to most Americans.

Less attention, however, has been given to the first disconnect: the failure of high profits to produce an investment boom.

Since President Bush took office, the combination of rising productivity and stagnant wages — workers are producing more, but they aren’t getting paid more — has led to a veritable profit gusher, with corporate profits more than doubling since 2000. Last year, profits as a share of national income were at the highest level ever recorded.

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