Libya August 22, 2011

Congratulations to the Lions of Libya.

They probably don’t call themselves that, but they should. A few months ago they were a ragtag amateur collection of angry young men seeking freedom from a forty-year tyranny.

They didn’t have a chance in hell of succeeding but they charged into battle against professional, disciplined forces. And got their collective ass kicked. And refused to quit.

NATO forces saved them, kept them going, helped train them and turn them into a force that could survive and learn. But those guys did it themselves, did the fighting, did the dying. Their blood stains the sand from one end of Libya to the other. And as of this morning they’ve bloodied Tripoli and are on the verge of ending Kadhafy.

I hope they hold it together and develop a rational, egalitarian government with a minimum of bloodshed.

Was the United States right to get involved?

Morally? Yes.

Financially? No.

The United States is failing to care for its own people, to take care of its own governance. Does it have the right to interfere in the governance of other countries?

Does such interference nonetheless make the United States a moral country in such matters?

No.

Syria’s tyrant continues to slaughter the Syrian people and continues to lie to the world about his actions. The United States does virtually nothing, its proclamation of sanctions an empty gesture, unsupported by other major players in the sanctions game. Will the Syrians, if they get rid of al-Assad, look to Libya and ask where was the United States when we fought and died?

And Bahrain, what of Bahrain? The people rose up, were slaughtered, were further victimized by Saudi troops, while the United States looked on, supported the Saudi move, said nothing, did nothing, unwilling to risk losing its military assets in Bahrain. What will the Bahrainis ask when they look to Libya?

Afghanistan? The United States, and its so-called allies, continue to brutalize that country by fighting, on the ground, in a civil and religious war. They have succeeded only in destabilizing the entire region, and continue to honor their own dead by insuring that more Americans and many more Afghanis will die in pursuit of a vague goal that makes no sense on any level, to wit, that no terrorist ever attacks the United States from Afghanistan again, completely ignoring that the attack in question came not from Afghanistan, but from airports and flight training centers in the United States and could just as easily have been organized in Peoria and operated from Dallas. But the killing and the waste goes on under the aegis of bobblehead politicians in Washington and their profiteering corporate masters.

Iraq? What’s to be said of Iraq? Only that George W. Bush and his cohort of amoral greedmeisters should long ago have been arrested and locked up in Guantanamo with the so-called terrorists from overseas. The Bushies would have been the real terrorists in Gitmo cages.

So while the Libyan fighters deserve their victory, the United States, which helped the Lions of Libya defeat their tyrant, once again appears to be the clumsy elephant in the room, the amoral giant which has eyes only for its bright and shiny drug of choice – oil – and cares not a whit who dies as it pursues its addiction, pursues it right to the graveyards of Asia and the Middle East as it makes a graveyard of the world.

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The March of Orwell’s Lemmings (You Listening, Barack?)(No, I’m Not!) August 21, 2011

Good piece (short one) by Ray McGovern over at Common Dreams on the United States’ lemming march to the sea of Afghanistan (and other istans, if you will).

And BTW, according to one commenter (dreamdancer), the whole lemmings march into the sea myth was a cruel deception created by those wonderful animal abusers at the Disney Empire of Bambi.

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Rick Perry, The Comic Book Hero, In His Own Mind August 18, 2011

It strikes me that Rick Perry’s education consisted solely and entirely of adolescent comic books centered on two subjects: the Cold War after WWII and fundogelical Creationism.

He behaves and talks like an adolescent, thinks like an ignorant, barefoot country boy from the 19th century, and acts like an arrogant know-it-all.

He’s already threatened Russia. He denies the science behind global warming. He denies that evolution is true. He’s accused the head of the Federal Reserve of treason and threatened him with bodily harm. He’s a Christian fundogelical, which automatically means he engages in delusional thinking. He has lied about jobs in Texas by taking credit for jobs he had nothing to do with creating.

He has an ego the size of Texas, a heart the size of a pinhead, and a brain that apparently stopped developing when he turned twelve years old.

It’s unfortunate that a goodly percentage of the electorate thinks all of that is a good thing in a President. Just what the country needs – another psycho blowhard jackass from Texas as President.

Can’t hardly wait for that.

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And More, From David Michael Green, On Wha’ Hoppened August 13, 2011

To add some more spice to the Michael Moore piece touted below, add this piece from David Michael Green.

A sample:

Really, you have to give this country credit where credit is due. No contemporary developed nation in the world can touch us where political stupidity is concerned. We’re the best at that! American exceptionalism, man! Take that, you cheese-eating European socialists!

And this…

[Obama] is the anti-FDR in every meaning of that term. FDR saved the country. Obama is burying it. FDR created the Democratic Party as we (used to) know it, once probably the most formidable political machine in American history. Obama is dragging it curbside. FDR gave America its social contract. Obama is dismantling it. FDR reveled in the hatred of the greedy thuggish scum who despised him. Obama keeps hoping they’ll like him and invite him over for a beer if only he lets them pass his limp body around the jail cell one more time. FDR was America’s greatest president. Obama is undoubtedly one of its worst.

And this…

The most disheartening thing about the American political condition is the degree to which people don’t get what has happened to them, and still continues to happen, destroying the body politic. It’s as if you were staring at an x-ray of a giant tumor in your belly, and nevertheless still sat there in befuddled consternation, wondering what the hell was making you feel so ill. It’s as if you then thought to yourself, “Oh, what the hell, I guess I’ll just drink a keg or two of this here Tumor Growth Potion. Maybe that will cure me.” In the latest sign of this diagnostic idiocy, voters in Wisconsin this week had the opportunity to respond to the tumor that is their Republican governor, through the mechanism of recall elections. The results were hardly a ringing endorsement for sanity, or even self-protection from the predators for whom Scott Walker and his party (as well as most of the other party) shills. That’s really depressing.

And you gotta love…

Fox News only makes sense if you’re stupid.

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Wha’ Hoppened? Michael Moore Tells All August 13, 2011

In a piece at Common Dreams Michael Moore explains how we got to the dismal place we’re at today, living in a country that’s sliding into plutocracy and theocracy, sliding down a chute greased by Ronnie Raygun, the phony Christians of the right wing, and the money guys in the banks and on Wall Street, the corporatocrats, and oh, yes, by the AFL-CIO.

Does anybody remember PATCO?

It’s a good read. 

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Another Sickening Republican Wants Into The Senate From Nebraska August 9, 2011

This guy is the Attorney General of Nebraska. He’s disgusting and he’s a hypocrite.

Republicans really can’t stand poor people, disadvantaged people, people who struggle to feed themselves and their family, people who aren’t filthy rich, people who have little or no political power.

There was that piece of Republicrap South Carolina Lieutenant Governor last year comparing the poor to stray animals. Now there’s this Nebraska wannabe degrading welfare recipients…

“The raccoons – they’re not stupid, they’re gonna do the easy way if we make it easy for them. Just like welfare recipients all across America. If we don’t send them to work, they’re gonna take the easy route."

TPM has the story.

Why is he a hypocrite? Here’s some interesting info from a commenter at TPM.

73 percent of Nebraska farmers received some sort of payment in 2009.

10 percent of Nebraska farmers collected 62 percent of the
money.

$306.1 million in direct payments was collected by Nebraska
farmers in 2009.

10 percent of Nebraska farmers collected 56 percent of payments from 1995-2009.

Nebraska was fifth among states in total farm payments at $14
billion from 1995-2009.

Source: Environmental Working Group.

Guess those Nebraska farmers must be some of the laziest bastards in the country, eh? And how much do you want to bet that the top gummint welfare recipients among those farmers are big donors to the Republican party which this scumbag Bruning calls his political home?

Yowsah! Republicanism at its finest!

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Rick Perry’s Dream World: The Hypocrisy of Wealth and Religion August 9, 2011

Want to see what a Rick Perry regime looks like, what a Rick Perry presidency would look like? It’s a wealthy theocrat’s dream, and a nightmare for sane people who have to live in the real world that Crazy Rick wants to create.

The world got a look at 30,000 delusional Christians bowing before Rick Perry and John Hagee’s creepy bullcrap last Saturday, but not at the 90,000 people lining up a few miles away hoping to get free school supplies and food because good ol’ boy Christian Rick Perry cut four billion dollars from the education budget. Apparently Perry considered it more important to fund sonograms for women seeking abortions than in providing quality education to all the living, breathing children.

Another sick puppy crawls out of Texas to seek the White House to house his vast ego, tiny heart, and cracked brain.

Take a look here at Common Dreams and read the links.

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Obama Speaks: Pablum and Bullshit August 8, 2011

Obama just finished his latest little speech, his pep talk aimed at… well, maybe at the people living on Mars. For ten minutes, nine of them on the economy, he spewed pablum and drool, saying he was hopeful our economic problems could be solved.

No mention of the people who brought us to this condition. No mention of the Republicrazies in the House who jammed the country into a deeper hole. No attempt to actually embrace and address the realities of the paralytic, divisive, ideological madness driving Washington politics.

Nope, nothing of substance. Just blither about the United States being the greatest country on earth blah blah blah.

The man has gone from being a great candidate to being a pathetic President.

And that ninth minute – more pablum about the dead soldiers in the helicopter some Afghans shot down over the weekend in a senseless war. More useless deaths of Americans, and Afghans. More wasted lives, their substance and future spent on the political bullshit of Washington politicians who don’t mind killing American soldiers in the political quest for votes and re-election.  (See Ray McGovern’s article on this waste of lives.)

Of course the media is now blithering about the speech and devoting their considerable intellectual skills to pretending that the empty rhetoric Obama just spewed held any meaning at all.

Ten minutes of worthless bullshit. Of pablum for empty minds.

He should pull a Lyndon Johnson and announce he’s not going to run in 2012. The country can’t take much more of this failure of leadership, this cozying up to the destructive elements in the corporate world, this constant licking of the Republitea boots.

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Drew Westen on Barack Obama August 7, 2011

Have you wondered why this President is so ineffective, so weak in the face of irrational, violent opposition in Congress, so unwilling to take a stand?

Drew Westen nails the story. A must read.

Sometimes Chris Christie Makes Sense August 4, 2011

 

 

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