I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
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"Blessed are those who write memos turning war crimes into acts of bold, resolute leadership for they are tomorrow's judges and cabinet members."
OT-- Did Brahmini just quit...
OT, from the NY Times:
"The U.S. launched many more failed airstrikes on senior Iraqi leaders than has previously been acknowledged, and some caused significant civilian casualties."
'oops, good thing it was only Iraqi civilians' Joe Sixpack thought to himself.
Another BushCo/neocon/military industrial complex myth explodes - sanitized war, precision guided bombs, little collateral damage - right.
=====
Too true to be funny, unfortunately.
The General is one of my favorites. I'm waiting for the whole revision of the Beatitudes.
Scorpio
Eccentricity
OT-- Did Brahmini just quit...
yep
So if George II is "Dear Leader", is "Great Leader" Reagan or George I?
So Brahimi Quits, and we have reports of an even "Dirtier" Sanchez.
Fabulous.
Torture
Theocracy
Tax-free police state
Vote Republican!
Your Totalitarian Ticket for 2004!
Yankee Doodle came to terms,
Writing Martin Buber.
Stuck a Fuehrer in our back,
And called it Shicklegruber
Just a few minutes ago, live on during the News From Lake Woebegone segment, Garrison Keilor made the most overtly political statement I've ever heard him make. The monologue went something kind of close to this:
We all used to be drunks, smokers, and romantics. But now we are all sober, but goodness knows what bad things the righteous ones can do. (pause).
Who would have ever thought that Americans were capable of torture. It is wrong (applause). It is a shame that soldiers might someday suffer for the policies of their leadership.
Righteous people can be much worse things than the drunk smokers sometimes when they never change their mind, etc...(applause)
Ok, my recount isn't even close, but that's the gist, and it was quite a condemnation coming from a normally meek man.
UK Telegraph has picked up on this story:
Train blast was 'a plot to kill North Korea's leader'
By Sergey Soukhorukov in Pyongyang
(Filed: 13/06/2004)
Officials investigating the devastating North Korean train explosion in April now believe that the blast was an assassination attempt on the country's leader, Kim Jong-il.
first reported in.
http://english.chosun.com/
w21dat...0405240030.html
Anybody know where Ollie North was about then?
I heard that on PHC forgetting, I had it on in the background, but your synopsis sounds about right.
Very strong for Keillor (who is a liberal but not exactly strident)
Meanwhile, the NYT finally tumbles to grok what Bushie has been bawling loudly for everyone to know: the handover is already well under way, ha, ha, ha 
.
.....
UK Telegraph has picked up on this story:
Train blast was 'a plot to kill North Korea's leader'
What is REALLY sad is that this story breaks when HESIOD has hung it up.
Atrios if you have a chance, you should put this story up on the main board and dedicate it to Hesiod who immediately assumed an assassination plot.
Atta, right he was more artful in his telling for sure. I wish I had a transcript, but they probably don't even post sound archives hasta manana.
OT:
Limbaugh is competing with J-Lo
.....
bo - Thanks for the reference. I'm not surprised. That train wreck scenario stank to high heaven right away.
Is there something wrong with Andrew Sullivan?
This is the ONLY way to read Crazy Andy.
What's interesting is that Keillor's got a real low profile minister thing going on, which seems to reflect a different sort of values than those who wear religion like a badge of honor. Not only is he correct, but he's funny in a drole (did I just use that word, shoot me) sort of way.
OT subthread Lil Kim
Plot to kill Dear Leader (Korean Version)-interesting. This would certainly fit the pattern of Iraq and so many other places: try ineptly to kill the head of state, try to support a coup, try to support an invasion, and if each of the three have failed in their turn, invade them yourself. It also echoes the loathesome NeoNazi's "not woth negotiation" attitude to NK.
OT: Can any of you help me find information or statistics on military spending-- statistics that break down the military budget into categories including military salaries and benefits, dependents benefits and veterans benefits among all the other categories? I want to be able to compare historical expenditures by Republican and Democratic administrations. The objective is to address the proposition that Republicans put more money in the pockets of soldiers, while Democratic adminstrations make them less well off.
Thanks.
Merle:
You might try the Council for a Livable World website for its 2004 Military Budget Analysis. It's rather thorough.
Here's a link:
http://www.clw.org/milspend/dodb...d/
dodbud04.html
forgetting -
Thanks for the heads up on Garrison. It came in time for me to catch the second hour of the show here in AZ. Have it on right now, listening to Leo Kottke (one of my favorite musicians, for all of you from the open thread on Friday).
As to getting a transcript, I turned the show on in time to hear Mr. Keillor make a comment during the hour break that on their website they have past scripts (skits), and I think he said transcripts as well. No, I don't know the web address, but googling Prairie Home Companion should get you there swiftly.
Oh...and here's their breakdown by general categories for defense expenditures:
FISCAL YEAR 2004 BUDGET BY TITLE
=============================
$ 98.6 billion - military personnel
$117.0 billion - operations and maintenance
$ 72.7 billion - procurement
$ 61.8 billion - research, development, testing and evaluation
$ 5.0 billion - military construction
$ 4.0 billion - family housing
$ 17.9 billion - other Pentagon programs
$ 2.8 billion - other
$379.9 billion - TOTAL DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE ONLY
$ 19.3 billion - Department of Energy and other
$399.1 billion - TOTAL NATIONAL DEFENSE
Keillor not strident? Have you read his screeds on Norm Coleman? I use the word screed glowingly.
Has anyone else noticed the enormous disconnect between the endless images of Ronnie's casket and the prohibition on showing folks honoring the Iraqi casualty caskets? I guess Bush is telling the troops that their lives are worth a lot less than a senile decrepit Gipper's.
That General is one smart guy. He's got a keen sense for sniffing out the hypocrisy of the Administration.
The strange thing is the even if you showed the Chimperor and his gang the list and explained in small words some examples of why that list is true (at least as this lot presents the US to the world), they still wouldn't get it. It's a phenomenon I've always seen in the very religious. They are incapable of comprehending any argument that requires logic to follow. Blind self-righteousness.
It boggles the fricking mind.
Bush Asked for Vatican's Help on Political Issues
'On his recent trip to Rome, President Bush asked a top Vatican official to push American bishops to speak out more about political issues, including same-sex marriage, according to a report in the National Catholic Reporter, an independent newspaper.
In a column posted Friday evening on the paper's Web site, John L. Allen Jr., its correspondent in Rome and the dean of Vatican journalists, wrote that Mr. Bush had made the request in a June 4 meeting with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state. Citing an unnamed Vatican official, Mr. Allen wrote: "Bush said, 'Not all the American bishops are with me' on the cultural issues. The implication was that he hoped the Vatican would nudge them toward more explicit activism."
Mr. Allen wrote that others in the meeting confirmed that the president had pledged aggressive efforts "on the cultural front, especially the battle against gay marriage, and asked for the Vatican's help in encouraging the U.S. bishops to be more outspoken." Cardinal Sodano did not respond, Mr. Allen reported, citing the same unnamed sources.
A spokesman for the Vatican declined yesterday to disclose the contents of the meeting, which followed the president's brief meeting with the pope. Jeanie Mamo, a spokeswoman for the White House, said: "They had a good, private discussion. They discussed a number of priorities of shared concern, and the president's and the Vatican's positions on these issues are well known."
and in keeping with Dear Leader's moral values, the FBI has declared a national alert (selected cities only) for World Naked Bicycle Ride Day!
Google News has got it.
LJ: thanks. From that site I also got to the Center for Strategic and Budget Assessment, although I'm not yet finding the numbers I want for, say the past 20 years.
Funny that Keillor's coming out against torture is considered 'strident'.
Garrison Keillor "strident"?
I don't think you could make him sound strident if you shot him full of amphetamines and pumped 20,000 volts into him.
He has perhaps the most soporific voice of our era.
I could never stand his show. But after hearing him trash Bush a few times, while scanning the dial, I started liking him personally.
grypetype - Now irony is officially dead. When Kennedy was running, I was a small kid, but I remember people running around saying he was going to bring to pope to this country to run everything.
Now we've got a prez who is asking to pope to get his people involved in American politics. And the prez is a fundie.
Irony just hung itself from the roof beam.
Tena, just about every day, there is a new outrage.
"to pope" twice instead of "the pope"?
grypetype - I know; it's well beyond outrageous; I don't know what it is anymore. We've all said for so long that we're through the mirror, but the joke was on us - it continues to get more surreal daily.
If Rove told the Chimp to eat dog shit steaming off the White House lawn live on CNN. Then he would swallow it with a smirk. He would then tell everyone in America it was chocolate and 50% would praise him.
General's list: "What's the difference?"
"You're either with the torturers, or with the terrorists."
It looks like the emergency funding bills for the DoD are not included in the above summary.
GPO Access
Also, there are the supplementals (October & April & June--not sure which budget years each are applied to) for Iraq/Afghanistan.
New York Times' OKrent (Okay for Rent) has a mealy-mouthed editorial on why they go with "unidentified sources". Boils down to: everybody does it and they were making fun of our reporters.
It is a "complicated" issue.
As long as the checks clear.
So Brahimi Quits
And the bronze cast of his likeness to be displayed in the Rotunda of Shame is being forged as we speak.
Rotunda of Blame, dammit!
Keilor has is spot on. One thing I cannot stand about fundie churchies is the fact that they go off talking about how accepting they are... but only if you join the church, drink the Kool-Aid, and make sure you give up all your bad habits. In other words, be just like them and they'll be happy to like ya.
Drunks? Shit, they might be wasted but they'll take anyone, no matter WHAT. I've seen the most racist person I've ever met buy a round for a black friend of mine; he was my buddy and 'cause we were all drunk that was good enough for him. Imagine a fundie buying something for a woman who just had an abortion, or a drinker, or... heaven help 'em... a free-thinker...
Asking the Vatican for help? What do Americans - the regular tax paying kind - think of that?
That's fucked up - what a pathetic piece of shit GWB is - he's asking for ourside interference in an American election? Is that even legal?
"Train blast was 'a plot to kill North Korea's leader'"
Yanno, this pisses me off blind. It's truly scary to think that the leader of North Korea could believe this (regardless of if it's true, which I believe it is), and think to retaliate against us with his REAL WMD, and we'd be sitting ducks because W has so fucked up our relationship with our allies, and would merrily lead us into the apacolypse. Or howeveryouspellit. Fucktard.
It's hard for the Bush Administration to keep upping my level of outrage, but that story (above) about him telling the Pope to put pressure on the Catholic bishops to speak out in favor of Bush's policies has steam coming out of my ears.
How dare he? If he were Catholic, which he clearly isn't, it would be outrageous of him to try to get the Pope to do his campaigning for him. For a fundamentalist (who, I daresay, believes that we Catholics are damned to hell anyway) to do this is unbelievably offensive.
I'm almost afraid to see how much lower he can go.
About the military stats, I think the DOD's site has them posted somewhere.
http://www.defenselink.mil/
About our dear leader, I wonder what else he can screw up in the time he's got left in office. Hoping it's only about a half a year, I still gotta start think about the unlikely event that he should win, which country I'm going to move to, etc...
Yeah, he's a real saint.
Reading some of these posts, I think we had too much Reaganpolooza this week, everyone's been building up their outrage. 'Sploding all over the place, just in the nick of time.
humanitarian do-gooder:
Like Dear Leader would retaliate against "us". He would kill innnocent Koreans and Japanese. Doesn't have the range for the US but doesn't care either. And needless to say, the Original Fascist party in Tokyo will have no obstacles to push for a nuclear Japan if the US is any less competant than they've been in handling Lil Kim. And South Korea will start to go backwards. And China will--do whatever it is the inscrutable Chinese do in cases like this.
ahh, dumb blind american patriotism, "wrap that up in flag to go for me, would ya". meanwhile bush admin. continues with extra legal torture. helluva campaign message.
from freinds, some righties, some more or less neutural, kerry sux, so the campaign comes down to who sux the least. they won't be my friends any more if they pick bush.
because i think John Kerry Kicks Ass!!! it's all intuition with me but i think he will actually be one of the best presidents in my lifetime. on the other hand, guess we could stay with war criminal bush, that's been working out real well.
garrison kiellor's humer is very upper midwest and VERY lutheran. where WE have quiet faith, like water. it is still, but deep. and i think george offends him more than he offends me.
Hmmm,that's the first time I've seen ads in the comments.
I would not jump to conclusions that the US was behind the plot to get Kim all blowed up.
It could have been the NK military, China, Rev. Moon, Brother Sun, Sista Soeul-ja, ...
The General is an 11...
"For a fundamentalist (who, I daresay, believes that we Catholics are damned to hell anyway) to do this is unbelievably offensive."Nora,
oh yeah, definitely going to hell, you have heard of the 'Great Whore'? of course a lot of the world is looking at the U.S. that way these days. so for bush you know "whats the difference".
besides i know the pope (dottering oldster tho he may be) thinks the president is a WAR CRIMINAL, which he is. but i haven't read the article. this is going to be one ugly assed election.
Now we've got a prez who is asking to pope to get his people involved in American politics. And the prez is a fundie.
Irony just hung itself from the roof beam.
Too bad it didn't take chimpy with it in a suicide pact.
Speaking of values, I just watched Frontline's April 29 "The Jesus Factor" for the second time.
What struck me on this second viewing was a statement made by Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals:
"The secularist, you see, wants to relegate religious belief to the margins of public life, and the evangelical with his pietistic influence says absolutely not, I'm going to bring those religious values right into the center of all of life"
The idea that religion holds a monopoly on morality or "values" is a closely-held belief among reactionaries like Mr. Cizik. But most areligious people I know (and I count myself as one) are far more principled, truthful, egalitarian, and compassionate than the leading lights of the Christian right.
The manner in which so-called Christian values have permeated the policies of the Bush Administration bears this out. Case in point: the "Compassion Capital Fund" has distributed over $100M in taxpayer funds to "faith-based" organizations, skewing support toward evangelical recipients far in excess of their representation in the US population. Says Frontline, "so far, this money has gone only to Christian groups and a handful of inter-faith organizations. Even though they've applied, no charities run by Jewish, Muslim, or other non-Christian faiths have received money from the fund."
To Mr. Cizik and the cynical leaders of the religious right, I say this: Values are manifested by deeds, not by words or religious affiliation. If your view of practicing the precepts of Christianity is to wage elective war and sacrifice thousands of human lives in the narrow interests of family and political cronies, block legislation that protects our troops in battle and compensates them for hardship, redistribute wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich, grant carte blanche to corporations that value profitability over social and environmental responsibility, prohibit the by-products of fertility clinics from benefitting humankind through stem cell research, expose sensitive intelligence programs and the lives of intelligence personnel out of political spite, authorize torture against mainly innocent civilians around the world, channel an unprecendented level of taxpayer money to politically-connected corporations, avoid enforcing antitrust laws in the face of obvious collusion in the oil industry, exploit every opportunity to pander to Christian voters with meaningless actions by the FCC, plunge our country into unparalleled deficit spending, establish the largest and least effective bureaucracy in human history (Dept of Homeland Security), manipulate the news media by planting stories designed to scare Americans and distract them from politically damaging news, and in general, promise one thing, do another, lie about it, and then take credit for results that have not materialized, THEN YES, WE WANT TO RELEGATE RELIGIOUS BELIEF TO THE MARGINS OF PUBLIC LIFE!
Your chara
Is Ronald Reagan still dead?
Nora hit one nail on the head (if the rumor is true) 'it would be outrageous of him to try to get the Pope to do his campaigning for him.'
Imagine a Catholic asking the Pope any favor in American presidential campaigning. It'd be an outrage. Hell, that was one of the reasons people naysayed Kennedy.
And what's with the president becoming involved in the Austrailian election? I think surfdom covered that somewhere...
Good thing is abroad, those who rode with Bush are taking hits at the ballot box. I only hope same holds true here.
Another Bruce,
I was wondering the same thing.
In any event, go to the General's website and check out his "Republican Jesus" merchandise. I especially loved the mug with the caption, "The hell with all this 'Blessed are the peacemakers' crap. This savior's packing heat."
I actually busted up laughing when I read that.
In fact, I know at least one right-wing fundie fanatic to whom I'm thinking of sending one of these mugs.
"For a president to try to get the leader of any religious organization to manipulate his fellow clergymen to support a political candidate crosses the line in this country."
see the frontline special on how bush realized pat robersons' successes could win him texas, and it worked, so on to the big enchilada, where it almost worked but, he has a cabal of thugs so he made it work anyway. of course i can't substantiate that last sentence, but i aint no tinfoil hat guy, and i still believe it has substance. one, very, ugly assed election, com'n up.
but you know it's all a holy war anyway "so what'''''''''s the difference".
any one remember d.lynches strip the angriest dog. ran for years in the City Paper. always the same pic. black silhouette of angry dog, straining at chain, total graphic tension. sometimes the caption was current/topical, but often, just about the pissed off dog. then d.lynch (probably flush with twin peaks success) decided to end the strip. the chain snaps, the dog dies. end of story.
Wow Charley, I never heard of that strip until now.
Noey can doey the hyperlinky but
http://www.davidlynch.de/angry.html
RE: Garrison Keillor - what about his song "We're all Republicans now"? I always thought that was pretty nervy. Michael Feldman drops a good line or two every once in awhile, too.
Does the 'Brahimi is quitting' story come from numerous sources?
I'm googling the news and all I get is ha'aretz dispatch, pas plus.
"Is Ronald Reagan still dead?" Another Bruce,
i don't know about all that heaven and hell crap. or staring into the abyss, or dancing along it's edge, or green pastures under blue domes (did reagan really have a horse named Nancy D.?) but when you are dead you are Dead for along time.
but you are right, they will try to resurect him.
"Jeeeebus, Save Ussss"!!!!! j.morrison
"you cannot petition the lord with prayer" also j. morrison
they will try to resurect him.
Mainly because they have to resurrect Bush's campaign. Look for Ronnie's corpse to put in a comeback performance at the republican convention.
another bruce
you so made my nite. thanx for finding it. blogs kick ass. it's in my favorites.
if anyone wants to see it Another Bruce 12:24. these days i'm more sedate (except about bush) and i really appreciate 'Get Fuzzy'
Glad t' help Charley, it's a cool strip. Didn't know DL did this.
i was going to post this what a hypocritical bitch glenda hood is.
then i found this WHOA
Scott Silliman, director of the Center for Law, Ethics and National Security at Duke University Law School, said the Department of Justice argument that a wartime president cannot be bound by international law is "an extraordinary and breathtaking theory."
Silliman, a former Air Force lawyer, said such an analysis would create "a culture where avoidance of international and domestic law was accepted."
"When you do that you should reasonably conclude that there are going to be results from that like what we saw" at Abu Ghraib, he said.
if you read alot you have already seen the above, but the link indicates moving the investigation up the chain. presumably to get sanchez ie. make the fall guy.
duncan hunter, is another brain dead zombie from nite of the dead republicans. how do you kill those mother fuckers anyway? VOTE KERRY? and anyone else who has a (D) next to their name, then hold them accountable. otherwise it is FASCISM, pure and simple, i looked it up in the dictionary.
the dog is getting angry again, i feel a strain (ok a slight tug) on the chain.
BBC reported that Michael Moore is going to next produce a documentary on Tony Blair because he holds Blair more responsible for the war in Iraq than he does Bush.
I love MM's reasoning: "Blair knows better. Blair is not an idiot. What is he doing hanging around this guy?"
OT: In San Francisco there's a must-see film playing, called "The Corporation. " More radical than Fahrenheit 9/11. Ask for it at your local non-mega-plex theatre, if there is one.
I despise a system which has Kerry not daring to attack Bush with the true measure of his intellect, because he doesn't want to alienate the swing voters, those people who, after 3 years of Bush horror and idiocy, still don't recognize the worst presidency this country has ever had.
The media has a new playbook, and it's all about fast and cheap. Forget substance. Corporate commerce cuture has us all by the privates, and if anyone can see a realistic way out, I'd like to hear it.
K Stone: I do have a non-mega-plex theatre in my SF neighborhood, and I will request "The Corporation".
Sounds good, and thanks for the tip.
The Corporation is LONG. Just a warning. It could do with some editing. It is a pretty strong film, I didn't think it that radical though. Unfortunately it only discusses how corporations became legal persons in the US, not anywhere else.
Definitely worth seeing, though.
Bring on the long! Fog of War should've included its OAV second-half [which is in the DVD version and] deals with McNamara's arguably far worse tenure with the World Bank.
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