Specific, Credible Threat Against America June 30, 2007

An Associated Press story on the London car bombs noted:

White House press secretary Tony Snow said: “There is no specific or credible evidence of any threat of any kind against the United States of America.”

And once again Mr. Snow is a) lying b) misinformed c) both.

The major specific and credible threat against the United States today comprises the criminally sociopathic George W. Bush, his staff, his neocon supporters, his Justice Department (it is certainly no longer ours) and the Supreme Court he built.

Go, Tony, go! We just love that deep, measured voice you use to dispense the administration’s ignorance, arrogance, hypocrisy, and lies, and utter lack of rational awareness of what they’re really doing, of what results their actions cause in the real world. Damn, I think we should all chip in and buy Tony Snow a cheerleader’s costume that he can wear to his press gatherings.

Car Bombs In London! Wow! Who Woulda Thunk It? June 30, 2007

Anyone who’s surprised by the car bombs found in London really needs to have their sense of reality examined by a competent professional.

Paisley Dodds of the Associated Press writes today:

Professor Paul Wilkinson, chairman of the Center for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews University, said a number of factors would have come together to prompt the thwarted attacks.

“With the change in prime minister this could be the work of Al Qaeda,” he said. “They have a track record of trying to influence political change through violent means such as in the Madrid train attacks.”

A couple of notes on that. The change in Prime Ministers had already taken place. And these people were most likely not really al Qaeda. Hell, they couldn’t even put together a working car bomb. I doubt that al Qaeda training has fallen off that badly. We’ll probably find these were local wannabes who couldn’t figure out how to do a good bomb. Which is most fortunate.

Then there’s this:

US authorities said there was no specific terror threat to the United States, and the national alert level, currently at yellow (elevated) was not raised.

Well of course it wasn’t raised. There’s no election scheduled this time of year.

Next year, though, wow oh wow! If someone sets off a firecracker in August, the Republicans will put that terror color thingie right up through the frigging roof. They’ll be shouting “Nine eleven! Nine eleven! Vote Republican. Democrats are weak-kneed traitors! Nine eleven! Nine eleven!”

The pathetically funny thing is that al Qaeda, the real al Qaeda, would love to pull off a big one next year in order to keep the Republicans in office. Bin Laden & Company know that their best friend and biggest supporter is George W. Bush and his neocon sociopaths. He’s carried their water since 2001 and if another Republican gets into office, that one will carry their water too. Republicans are the best recruiters and trainers that al Qaeda has.

Romney Tortures Dog, Part Two June 30, 2007

Well, the Mitten claims the dog loved the fresh air. Good recovery, Mittsy. Makes you look like a bigger idiot.

While I hope to see the Mitten go down in flames for any reason, any reason at all, it would be great justice for Seamus the dog if this is the story that takes the putz down.

Sears Repair Center: The Worst Gets Worse June 29, 2007

Ten days ago the refrigerator, four years old, broke down. I called Sears Repair Center. I told them an elderly frail person in poor health, my mother, lives here,

Three days later, between 8 and 5, a Sears repairman came to diagnose the problem. Dead compressor. He ordered a new one.

Yesterday, a week later, the compressor arrived. I called Sears Repair Center.

Sears said a repairman could be here next Friday, July 6, between 8 and 5. Then they said he’d be here today, June 29, between 8 and 5.

He shows up at 8 a.m. today and says he’s not qualified to install compressors and he leaves, ostensibly after notifying the company.

An hour later I call Sears Repair Center and I’m pissed off. I told them again about my mother. I expressed my anger over the delays and the incompetence. The woman said she would have one of the higher ups get back to me within the hour. Two hours later I’m still waiting. I have no idea when, or if, the goddam refrigerator is going to be repaired. It’s under a Sears warranty, which is apparently a pathetically useless piece of legalese, but unless I want to pay a bundle of money to someone else, I’m stuck.

I don’t know what the hell is the matter with these people, but I do know I will never buy a major product from Sears again. Ever. They may not care, but I will make sure as many people hear this story as I can reach.

Update:

Finally the repairman showed up at about 3:30. It was Yoshi, the fellow who originally diagnosed the problem. He’s very friendly, very competent, and did the job in about two and half hours.

Of course going along with SRC’s poor performance, the new compressor is only warrantied for three months, and it’s not a match for the original compressor, thus the extended installation time.

My central complaint has to do with the management of the repair system, not the personnel I dealt with. Ten days to fix a fridge is not acceptable. Especially when an elder person is involved. Okay, she’s not an elder person – she’s an old lady. But she deserves better than what happened here.

Romney Tortures His Dog June 28, 2007

Here’s how good old Mittens treats his pets. It’s indicative of the way he wants to treat humans.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1638065,00.html

For more on this go to TPM Cafe Election Central

Muslims Don’t Trust The Little Psycho. Big Surprise, Eh? June 28, 2007

Bob Deans of Cox News Service, in today’s Globe, reports on the recent Pew Global Attitudes Project, which found that in 37 of 47 countries surveyed “majorities say they have little or no trust in Bush to do the right thing in world affairs.”

Oh my goodness, I had no idea Bush’s victims would turn on him like that. Oh my!

Andrew Kohut, president of Pew Research Center, notes that the Muslim’s image of the U. S. is “abysmal”.

But Little Georgie is going to do something about it, by golly!

Bush seemed to acknowledge as much, announcing that he would soon name a special envoy to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a coalition of 57 majority-Muslim states, to try to improve the US image across the Islamic world.

“Our special envoy will listen to and learn from representatives from Muslim states, and will share with them America’s views and values,” Bush said in a ceremony marking the 50th anniversary of the Islamic Center in Washington.

Sure, Georgie. You haven’t listened to anyone who actually knows anything about the Middle East, or anything else for that matter, except how to corrupt politics at home, since you got into office. You certainly haven’t learned anything. And suddenly you’re going to start listening and learning? I don’t think so, Bubba.

Instead you’re just going to tune out anything they say, and then ‘share’ (read ‘shove down their throats’) your pathetic ideas of what American democracy is. You know, the democracy that you and your sociopathic crew have done so much to destroy.

How about you stop killing Muslim women and children and men? How about you stop destroying cities and infrastructure in your insane lust to make a name for yourself? How about you stop lying to the American people about what you’re doing in their name?

Yeah, I know. Not a chance. Once a delusional cokehead, always a delusional cokehead.

Just to salt the wound, here’s a couple of those Pew numbers on approval ratings for the Chief Crazy:

• Turkey at 9 percent
• Egypt at 21 percent
• Pakistan at 15 percent
• Germany at 30 percent
• England at 51 percent

Note that the first three are “key players in US anti-terrorism strategy.”

Way to go, Georgie.

Clutzy Putzy Headline in Globe Sports June 27, 2007

Banner headline on the Globe’s sports page today:

Putz keeps a closer’s eye on Papelbon

Honest! It really says that.

Paris Hilton Escapes June 27, 2007

Paris Hilton gets out of jail.

The so-called news networks go nuts. Talk about insanity.

On the one hand they’re drooling all over themselves to get tape and interviews.

On the other hand they’re drooling all over themselves saying how bad it is for them to be drooling all over themselves to get tape and interviews.

Can’t hardly wait for the Larry King interview tonight. I’m looking forward to ignoring it.

Hell, I can’t even work up a halfway decent sex fantasy over the broad. Now, my ex-wife on the other hand… she still wows me. And that was decades ago. (Yeah, yeah, I really ought to get a girlfriend!)

Consumer Confidence? Does Anybody Know What’s Going On? June 27, 2007

I was just reading a story on consumer confidence in the Globe’s business section. It says confidence in the economy is down, and tosses some statistics around.

Tomorrow we’ll find a story that says the economy is in good shape, and that story will toss around some statistics, too. And another story somewhere will say something else.

Read enough of these and you can get the distinct impression that no one actually knows what the economy is doing. Which means any predictions are based on large piles of pig crap and smell just as bad.

What we can be sure of is that as long as Bush and the Republicans are in charge, the only people who will benefit will be the rich people and the people with connections into the heart of the Bush criminal enterprise… oh, sorry… the Bush presidency. Everybody else gets screwed, and so do everyone else’s children and grandchildren.

Keep your money close, people. If it’s in the ‘market’ it’s in the wind.

Giuliani Says It’s All Clinton’s Fault June 27, 2007

According to the Associated Press, old Rudy says all this terror stuff is Bill Clinton’s fault. Here’s the dope:

“Islamic terrorists killed more than 500 Americans before September 11. Many people think the first attack on America was on Sept. 11, 2001. It was not. It was in 1993,” said the former New York mayor.

Giuliani argued that Clinton treated the World Trade Center bombing as a criminal act instead of a terrorist strike, and said it incited other attacks.

The United States government, then President Clinton, did not respond,” Giuliani said. Osama “bin Laden declared war on us. We didn’t hear it.”

Rudy conveniently leaves out that the people who carried out the 1993 attack are in prison, having been hunted down and captured by the Clinton administration.

And Rudy, a terrorist attack is a criminal act. It is not an act of war.

And as long as we’re toting up dead Americans, perhaps we should add up all the dead people around the world that Americans and American policies have killed, including the half-million or so dead Iraqi children who died as a direct result of the sanctions following the first Gulf War, sanctions that the US fought to keep in place. And let’s not forget the immortal Madeleine Albright claiming that those dead kids were a reasonable price to pay to contain Iraq – a toothless Iraq at that. And you wonder why a lot of people wish us ill, including some with the ability to return some of the pain we’ve caused?

And finally, Mr. 911, you conveniently forget that the Bush administration was warned, time and time again, by its own intelligence agencies and counterterror experts, that it was likely that an attack on US soil was imminent. Remember Ms. Condo Rice, reputed to be the National Security Advisor, saying there was no warning, and then having to read, before the Iraq investigative committee, the security document title that was an actual warning?

Giuliani has nothing to run on but fear and 9/11. That’s his whole game. And when you look close at him you find he didn’t really do squat about 9/11, that his actions and decisions before then were part of the reason the death toll was so horrific among firefighters and police, and that his judgment since then has been, to say the least, questionable. Remember, this is the guy who supported Bernard Kerik, a man with proven ethical failures, for Secretary of Homeland Security. And his state chairman, Thomas Ravenel, in South Carolina was just indicted on federal cocaine charges. Rudy, smart guy that he is, replaced him with Ravenel’s father, who wants to fly the Confederate flag at the State House and who called the NAACP the “National Association for Retarded People”.

Real Presidential timber there, aren’t you, Rudy?

More like a splinter festering in the body politic.