F*$K You, You Got Yours
Posted on
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
by Gary A. Ballard
I have many times in the last year and a half written or tweeted about healthcare reform, an issue I am very close to for many personal reasons that have nothing to do with this article. I have harangued critics who want no real change to the healthcare landscape at all, for being badly-misinformed puppets of monied special interests and the puppets they employ in our government. Today, with the apparent impending passage of a weak sauce insurance industry handjob of a healthcare bill in the Senate, a bill so watered down as to be almost completely useless, I want to take this momentous occasion in history to thank every one of you ignorant cocksuckers out there that made this limp-wristed pile of monkey shit inevitable. To those of you who have continually criticized any sort of public option or single-payer healthcare, especially those who complained about it for no other reason than it was "socialism," I want to give an extra special thanks in the form of this statement.
Fuck you, you got yours.
This thank-you statement is, of course, what we as a nation should now adopt as our national motto, the creed, the very philosophical foundation on which we will build the future we deserve. Why? Nothing says ignorant bag of self-destructive cockgobblers like the attitudes we have taken towards providing basic goddamn healthcare to anyone without the means to pay than "Fuck you, I got mine." So for each individual in the following groups, I want to offer this saying.
Fuck you, you got yours.
To all you motherfuckers on Medicare who screamed at town hall meetings that Obama was a fascist who wanted "death panels" and that a public option was socialist, fuck you, you got yours. Your continued health, your very fucking life is entirely dependent on a "socialized" system that every working American pays into their entire working lives, and by all accounts works with more cost efficiency than private insurance, including the Medicare plans administered by private companies. And how do they do that? By negotiating lower rates with doctors, which according to most of the free market cocksuckers out there, is an abject sin.
To all those veterans who have given their lives and limbs to our country but complain that we might give public, socialized medicine to people regardless of their ability to pay, fuck you, you got yours. Before President Bush and the Neocon Parade drove our military straight into the ground with a useless fucking war in Iraq and overloaded it, the VA medical system was as efficient and well-run as Medicare. It was also completely funded by taxes that we all pay. It's not even a remotely equitable trade - you give up your lives for our freedoms and we give you healthcare. It's the least we can do. But don't complain when we want similar care paid for with our taxes.
For all of you with employer-provided healthcare, fuck you, you got yours. Yes, you most certainly do pay your premiums - but your employer pays more. Not only that, but both you and your employer's purchase of that insurance is subsidized by the government, which means its partly paid for by our taxes. These subsidies are in the form of the tax breaks for premiums (since they are taken out pre-tax) on individuals, but also tax breaks on employers. Incidentally, I am in this group myself - my employer pays most of my individual premium, and we both get tax breaks for it. The fuck me will come when I have to use this insurance and it's fairly large deductible and varied procedure schedule - something that will hit me directly in the pocket book at times when I can't work. I actually have to pay another premium for supplemental insurance to help cover those costs when I do get sick. As good as my subsidized plan is, I still could face serious financial ruin if I get deathly ill. And I can't afford the high premium to cover my self-employed wife with that, so fuck me twice.
To every motherfucking one of the Senators and Representatives currently bitching, moaning and complaining that ANYTHING that restricts the health insurance industry in the slightest is potentially passing through Congress, a huge fuck you, you got yours. You currently suckle at the best government healthcare teat imaginable, paying fuckall for a Cadillac insurance plan funded by the taxpayers, complete with your own fucking at call doctors and nurses in the same goddamn building. They don't even charge a co-pay. Their fuck you also covers anyone working in a government job using government health insurance who doesn't want to extend that coverage to the rest of us.
In short, YOU ALL GOT YOURS, and fuck the rest of us. Thank you very much for torpedoing any sort of real healthcare reform in favor of vague, idiotic worries about a political system you don't even understand, a knee-jerk buzzword taught you by vapid cuntwhistle pundits like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, used repeatedly to bludgeon the fear of anything that might hurt their master's bottom lines into you. These bastards don't even deserve the courtesy of a fuck you. They got theirs years ago have are merely fattening their larders on your sheep-like stupidity.
And finally, I'd like to direct a special fuck you, you got yours to Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, both of whom did everything in their power to ensure that real healthcare reform never made it into the bill being considered now. Lieberman appears to have done so simply to be pissy, while Nelson whored his vote for full Medicaid funding for his state and no one else. Congratulations, citizens of Nebraska, you are now the welfare state. Fuck you, you got yours.
I only hope when the clusterfuck that this bill creates comes crashing down around all our ears in five to ten years, all you bastards will be without the socialized care you currently enjoy. Maybe then you'll start to realize that every other fucking country in the world does healthcare for everyone in their country better and cheaper than we do with that evil socialism you ignorantly harp on about. Until then, wake up every morning and say the new national motto.
Fuck you, I got mine.
Fuck you, you got yours.
This thank-you statement is, of course, what we as a nation should now adopt as our national motto, the creed, the very philosophical foundation on which we will build the future we deserve. Why? Nothing says ignorant bag of self-destructive cockgobblers like the attitudes we have taken towards providing basic goddamn healthcare to anyone without the means to pay than "Fuck you, I got mine." So for each individual in the following groups, I want to offer this saying.
Fuck you, you got yours.
To all you motherfuckers on Medicare who screamed at town hall meetings that Obama was a fascist who wanted "death panels" and that a public option was socialist, fuck you, you got yours. Your continued health, your very fucking life is entirely dependent on a "socialized" system that every working American pays into their entire working lives, and by all accounts works with more cost efficiency than private insurance, including the Medicare plans administered by private companies. And how do they do that? By negotiating lower rates with doctors, which according to most of the free market cocksuckers out there, is an abject sin.
To all those veterans who have given their lives and limbs to our country but complain that we might give public, socialized medicine to people regardless of their ability to pay, fuck you, you got yours. Before President Bush and the Neocon Parade drove our military straight into the ground with a useless fucking war in Iraq and overloaded it, the VA medical system was as efficient and well-run as Medicare. It was also completely funded by taxes that we all pay. It's not even a remotely equitable trade - you give up your lives for our freedoms and we give you healthcare. It's the least we can do. But don't complain when we want similar care paid for with our taxes.
For all of you with employer-provided healthcare, fuck you, you got yours. Yes, you most certainly do pay your premiums - but your employer pays more. Not only that, but both you and your employer's purchase of that insurance is subsidized by the government, which means its partly paid for by our taxes. These subsidies are in the form of the tax breaks for premiums (since they are taken out pre-tax) on individuals, but also tax breaks on employers. Incidentally, I am in this group myself - my employer pays most of my individual premium, and we both get tax breaks for it. The fuck me will come when I have to use this insurance and it's fairly large deductible and varied procedure schedule - something that will hit me directly in the pocket book at times when I can't work. I actually have to pay another premium for supplemental insurance to help cover those costs when I do get sick. As good as my subsidized plan is, I still could face serious financial ruin if I get deathly ill. And I can't afford the high premium to cover my self-employed wife with that, so fuck me twice.
To every motherfucking one of the Senators and Representatives currently bitching, moaning and complaining that ANYTHING that restricts the health insurance industry in the slightest is potentially passing through Congress, a huge fuck you, you got yours. You currently suckle at the best government healthcare teat imaginable, paying fuckall for a Cadillac insurance plan funded by the taxpayers, complete with your own fucking at call doctors and nurses in the same goddamn building. They don't even charge a co-pay. Their fuck you also covers anyone working in a government job using government health insurance who doesn't want to extend that coverage to the rest of us.
In short, YOU ALL GOT YOURS, and fuck the rest of us. Thank you very much for torpedoing any sort of real healthcare reform in favor of vague, idiotic worries about a political system you don't even understand, a knee-jerk buzzword taught you by vapid cuntwhistle pundits like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly, used repeatedly to bludgeon the fear of anything that might hurt their master's bottom lines into you. These bastards don't even deserve the courtesy of a fuck you. They got theirs years ago have are merely fattening their larders on your sheep-like stupidity.
And finally, I'd like to direct a special fuck you, you got yours to Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut and Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska, both of whom did everything in their power to ensure that real healthcare reform never made it into the bill being considered now. Lieberman appears to have done so simply to be pissy, while Nelson whored his vote for full Medicaid funding for his state and no one else. Congratulations, citizens of Nebraska, you are now the welfare state. Fuck you, you got yours.
I only hope when the clusterfuck that this bill creates comes crashing down around all our ears in five to ten years, all you bastards will be without the socialized care you currently enjoy. Maybe then you'll start to realize that every other fucking country in the world does healthcare for everyone in their country better and cheaper than we do with that evil socialism you ignorantly harp on about. Until then, wake up every morning and say the new national motto.
Fuck you, I got mine.
Labels: Corporate Corruption, Government Corruption, Government Idiots, Health Care, Things I'd Like to Fire Into the Sun
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 11:31 AM
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The Jesus Co-Pay
Posted on
Monday, July 13, 2009
by Gary A. Ballard
After some interesting Twitter discussions about healthcare reform last week, I began to think about the conservative right position against universal/socialized/single-payer/public-option healthcare in America. Since the Republican party has so inextricably linked itself with the increasingly odious politically evangelical Christian movement in order to win elections, I'm rather insulted at the hostile reaction our Republican political establishment has shown towards any option that doesn't allow private insurance companies to bankrupt ordinary Americans with high premiums and denial of coverage on financial grounds. No one in favor of some form of public option for healthcare is under any illusion that the program won't be costly. I personally feel that it should likely be expected to cost the country a metric fuckton. If there was ever a government program for which deficit spending is a necessary evil, it's providing healthcare to every citizen regardless of ability to pay. Better to lose a dollar saving a life than to spend fifty cents taking a life in war. But the argument I'm so often hearing against healthcare is the "I shouldn't have to pay so some lazy bastard without a job can get healthcare."
Let's cut the bullshit. For the record, you are already paying for the lazy bastard without a job to get care at the emergency room. The law does not allow emergency rooms to refuse care to anyone. When that "lazy bastard" gets care at the ER, he does so on the hospital's dime if he cannot pay. The hospital passes that loss off to the people who can pay - if you have health insurance, that's you and your insurance company. You pay higher costs at the hospital, the insurance company charges you a higher premium, and healthcare costs continue to balloon well past the normal rate of inflation. Of course, just calling that person who can't pay a "lazy bastard" assumes that the ER isn't the only healthcare outlet for the working poor, who often can't take afford to take time off of work to visit a doctor during banker's hours.
But continue to call anyone who receives any kind of government aid a "lazy bastard" if that's what helps you sleep at night knowing you are condemning working mothers with three kids as shiftless drains on society. Forget the fact that not only do you receive government benefits for paying insurance premiums (it cuts down on your taxable income - so in effect, it's a tax credit) but your employer does as well (who also gets deductions for providing health insurance). We can quibble about the amount of benefit you receive in comparison, but don't act like you aren't sucking at a government teat just a wee bit.
The most galling part about hearing someone who claims to be a Christian criticizing a universal program as forcing them to pay for "lazy bastards" is how dissociated that attitude is from the teachings of Jesus Christ. Now, I'm no Christian - I find organized religion odious. Nor am I a Biblical scholar, but having grown up with Baptist and Assembly of God teaching, as well as having done my own reading, I can safely say that your attitude would make baby Jesus weep.
Jesus did a lot of healing in his short time as wandering prophet. He healed lepers, cripples, whores, the poor - you know, pretty much every shitheel he could find. If you believe the stories, he even cured a zombie (or created one - we don't know if Lazarus developed a taste for brains). I don't ever remember Jesus asking for a co-pay, or checking for an insurance card. He didn't even moralize about your life choices, or refuse to help someone who might have been gay, or had an abortion, or didn't vote Republican. He didn't ask if you were crippled from birth and therefore might not be eligible for MessiahCare™. Perhaps the disciples forgot to mention Jesus easy payment terms, or the fact that he took checks, debit or credit cards for service. No, Jesus healed the sick with nothing more than a few words about his father and a helpful life lesson. Maybe he asked for a loaf of bread or a fish for his posse, but even then, he was the original Discover card - give one fish, get five back in his handy Fish Back™ program.
If Republicans/Conservatives want to claim they are Christians and that our nation is a Christian one, founded on Christian values, it's time to put up or shut the fuck up. Jesus didn't charge a co-pay. Of course, neither the government nor healthcare professionals are Jesus; they can't practice medicine without some costs. Jesus had no drug costs, his time was free and his materials were divine. But the philosophy is what's important here. Jesus wanted to heal the sick, regardless of whether they were "lazy bastards" or working members of society, whether they were moral followers or the dregs of immorality. The government may not be Jesus, but they damn sure should aspire to one of the basic tenets of the founding of America: every citizen has the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," all of which is difficult when one has to choose between crippling bankruptcy or crippling sickness.
It's almost like the political establishment expects everyone to get their healthcare from this guy.
Let's cut the bullshit. For the record, you are already paying for the lazy bastard without a job to get care at the emergency room. The law does not allow emergency rooms to refuse care to anyone. When that "lazy bastard" gets care at the ER, he does so on the hospital's dime if he cannot pay. The hospital passes that loss off to the people who can pay - if you have health insurance, that's you and your insurance company. You pay higher costs at the hospital, the insurance company charges you a higher premium, and healthcare costs continue to balloon well past the normal rate of inflation. Of course, just calling that person who can't pay a "lazy bastard" assumes that the ER isn't the only healthcare outlet for the working poor, who often can't take afford to take time off of work to visit a doctor during banker's hours.
But continue to call anyone who receives any kind of government aid a "lazy bastard" if that's what helps you sleep at night knowing you are condemning working mothers with three kids as shiftless drains on society. Forget the fact that not only do you receive government benefits for paying insurance premiums (it cuts down on your taxable income - so in effect, it's a tax credit) but your employer does as well (who also gets deductions for providing health insurance). We can quibble about the amount of benefit you receive in comparison, but don't act like you aren't sucking at a government teat just a wee bit.
The most galling part about hearing someone who claims to be a Christian criticizing a universal program as forcing them to pay for "lazy bastards" is how dissociated that attitude is from the teachings of Jesus Christ. Now, I'm no Christian - I find organized religion odious. Nor am I a Biblical scholar, but having grown up with Baptist and Assembly of God teaching, as well as having done my own reading, I can safely say that your attitude would make baby Jesus weep.
Jesus did a lot of healing in his short time as wandering prophet. He healed lepers, cripples, whores, the poor - you know, pretty much every shitheel he could find. If you believe the stories, he even cured a zombie (or created one - we don't know if Lazarus developed a taste for brains). I don't ever remember Jesus asking for a co-pay, or checking for an insurance card. He didn't even moralize about your life choices, or refuse to help someone who might have been gay, or had an abortion, or didn't vote Republican. He didn't ask if you were crippled from birth and therefore might not be eligible for MessiahCare™. Perhaps the disciples forgot to mention Jesus easy payment terms, or the fact that he took checks, debit or credit cards for service. No, Jesus healed the sick with nothing more than a few words about his father and a helpful life lesson. Maybe he asked for a loaf of bread or a fish for his posse, but even then, he was the original Discover card - give one fish, get five back in his handy Fish Back™ program.
If Republicans/Conservatives want to claim they are Christians and that our nation is a Christian one, founded on Christian values, it's time to put up or shut the fuck up. Jesus didn't charge a co-pay. Of course, neither the government nor healthcare professionals are Jesus; they can't practice medicine without some costs. Jesus had no drug costs, his time was free and his materials were divine. But the philosophy is what's important here. Jesus wanted to heal the sick, regardless of whether they were "lazy bastards" or working members of society, whether they were moral followers or the dregs of immorality. The government may not be Jesus, but they damn sure should aspire to one of the basic tenets of the founding of America: every citizen has the right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," all of which is difficult when one has to choose between crippling bankruptcy or crippling sickness.
It's almost like the political establishment expects everyone to get their healthcare from this guy.
Labels: Corporate Corruption, Government Corruption, Government Idiots, Health Care, Politics, Religious Corruption
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 10:30 AM
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Yes, June, the United States DOES Torture... But Only a Little
Posted on
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
This morning's news provided me fodder for a new political posting from two separate but related stories. The first is from CNN, a report from a group of physicians dedicated to human rights that confirms what we already knew, some of the detainees held at Gitmo have been tortured. The second report, from the Wall Street Journal of all places, confirms that as early as 2002 Pentagon lawyers were looking at and approving harsh interrogation techniques that some military lawyers were pretty adamant could be considered torture. So yes, June, the United States really does torture people, has done for years and by the way, at least 11 of those people were never charged with any crimes despite being held for over three years.
In other words, we detained, tortured and imprisoned innocent people who were not terrorists.
The report in the CNN story came after two-day examinations with 11 former detainees who came from Afghanistan or Abu Ghraib in Iraq and were later shipped to the legal black hole of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Both medical and psychological tests proved these people were tortured, including such lovely treatment as "beatings, electric shock, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and sodomy." And unlike our own prison system, this treatment wasn't administered by other prisoners but by the jailers. Is this the type of treatment we should be inflicting on anyone?
Bear in mind, these people were not terrorists. They had not been charged with any crime when these acts were perpetrated. They were given no reason for their imprisonment. They were given no access to a jury of their peers, shown no evidence to explain why this punishment was being inflicted. They were just rounded up, shuttled off from one prison to the next and beaten, sodomized and electrocuted. And after three years of this vile shit, they were let go, completely innocent of any wrongdoing. These weren't suicide bombers, or decapitators. These were just people in the wrong place at the wrong time. They weren't allowed to speak with someone from their country's embassy. How would any American react if an American citizen had been treated this way? For fuck's sake, much of America was up in arms when a 19-year old American citizen was caned in Singapore, and he at least got a trial. How can we honestly claim moral indignity when American hostages are kidnapped overseas if our government is doing the exact same thing?
We can't, not without being the biggest fucking pile of hypocritical assholes on the planet. Our President and everyone he allowed to perform this kind of brutality on detainees are guilty of war crimes and should be suitably punished. Nothing would fill me with greater pride in our country than seeing this cabal of brutal fucksticks brought before an international war crimes trial and convicted.
The Wall Street Journal story is just as infuriating. In 2002, just months after Gitmo was opened, Pentagon lawyers debated and ultimately approved "harsh interrogation techniques." That includes approval by the grand pappy of the Pentagon himself, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. When it was suggested to these lawyers that perhaps asking the experts on interrogation, the FBI, about the efficacy of such extra-legal measures, they refused. Rummy was apparently "very jealous of other agencies" and it would have been "unthinkable" to bring that up to the Secretary.
Yeah, fuck you Donald. Rather than sully yourself by speaking to experts on the subject, you'd just rather try to drown some brown people. Even some military criminal investigators thought these techniques would "shock the conscience of any legal body" and warned that it "looks like the kinds of stuff Congressional hearings are made of." And yet, they went forward with these techniques based on a legal redefinition of the detainees' status, the idiotic "illegal enemy combatant" tagline that justified ignoring the laws of our land and the Geneva Conventions.
Tell me again why our President and his administration should not be impeached, convicted and thrown to the wolves of the international community for war crimes? The United States is no longer a place where the moral high ground exists, not when this type of behavior is encouraged by the Secretary of Defense, the Vice President and the President himself.
In other words, we detained, tortured and imprisoned innocent people who were not terrorists.
The report in the CNN story came after two-day examinations with 11 former detainees who came from Afghanistan or Abu Ghraib in Iraq and were later shipped to the legal black hole of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Both medical and psychological tests proved these people were tortured, including such lovely treatment as "beatings, electric shock, sleep deprivation, sexual humiliation and sodomy." And unlike our own prison system, this treatment wasn't administered by other prisoners but by the jailers. Is this the type of treatment we should be inflicting on anyone?
Bear in mind, these people were not terrorists. They had not been charged with any crime when these acts were perpetrated. They were given no reason for their imprisonment. They were given no access to a jury of their peers, shown no evidence to explain why this punishment was being inflicted. They were just rounded up, shuttled off from one prison to the next and beaten, sodomized and electrocuted. And after three years of this vile shit, they were let go, completely innocent of any wrongdoing. These weren't suicide bombers, or decapitators. These were just people in the wrong place at the wrong time. They weren't allowed to speak with someone from their country's embassy. How would any American react if an American citizen had been treated this way? For fuck's sake, much of America was up in arms when a 19-year old American citizen was caned in Singapore, and he at least got a trial. How can we honestly claim moral indignity when American hostages are kidnapped overseas if our government is doing the exact same thing?
We can't, not without being the biggest fucking pile of hypocritical assholes on the planet. Our President and everyone he allowed to perform this kind of brutality on detainees are guilty of war crimes and should be suitably punished. Nothing would fill me with greater pride in our country than seeing this cabal of brutal fucksticks brought before an international war crimes trial and convicted.
The Wall Street Journal story is just as infuriating. In 2002, just months after Gitmo was opened, Pentagon lawyers debated and ultimately approved "harsh interrogation techniques." That includes approval by the grand pappy of the Pentagon himself, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. When it was suggested to these lawyers that perhaps asking the experts on interrogation, the FBI, about the efficacy of such extra-legal measures, they refused. Rummy was apparently "very jealous of other agencies" and it would have been "unthinkable" to bring that up to the Secretary.
Yeah, fuck you Donald. Rather than sully yourself by speaking to experts on the subject, you'd just rather try to drown some brown people. Even some military criminal investigators thought these techniques would "shock the conscience of any legal body" and warned that it "looks like the kinds of stuff Congressional hearings are made of." And yet, they went forward with these techniques based on a legal redefinition of the detainees' status, the idiotic "illegal enemy combatant" tagline that justified ignoring the laws of our land and the Geneva Conventions.
Tell me again why our President and his administration should not be impeached, convicted and thrown to the wolves of the international community for war crimes? The United States is no longer a place where the moral high ground exists, not when this type of behavior is encouraged by the Secretary of Defense, the Vice President and the President himself.
Labels: Bush Administration, Dick Cheney, Government Corruption, Iraq, Politics, Torture
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 10:17 AM
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Things I'd Like to Fire Into the Sun: So-Called Experts
Posted on
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
I've never been a fan of Hillary Clinton's, despite the respect I have for the presidency of her husband. She is a thoroughly unlikeable woman, whose good ideas are balanced by an equal weight of bad ideas. Since her carpetbagging move from Arkansas to New York in order to run for a Senate seat, I have felt the same unfortunate vibe from her that I do from her husband, i.e. that both are rabid politicians, who will say or do anything to get elected. While Bill Clinton's geniality and ability to properly fake human sympathy make him likeable, Hillary Clinton's entire personality is not only acerbic, but rings of a striking phoniness down at the gut level. Even so, were she to win the Democratic nomination, I would vote for her over John McCain, if only because McCain's chorus of "Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran" and his flip-flopping on the propriety of torture have convinced me he is as much of a rabid politician as any other. But some of Sen. Clinton's comments in today's Chicago Tribune story make me want to fire her into the sun.
According to the article:
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but being the wife of the President is not an elected position. It is not typically a position that comes with any civil authority whatsoever other than perhaps the running of the household at the White House. Any authority or power of the position is at most granted out of deference to the wife of the President.
So how fucking arrogant do you have to be to claim eight years as first wife as any kind of governing or foreign policy experience? Whispered pillow talk does not make for foreign policy experience. Listening to your husband vent about the Republican noise machine does not make for crisis management. And while Mrs. Clinton was certainly the target of many personal and nasty attacks during her time as First Lady, that no more prepares her for service as Commander in Chief than running the drive-thru at a fucking McDonalds.
As for your time on the Senate Armed Services Committee, let's see where that time got this nation. Oh right, it got you to vote to give this cluster fuck of a President authorization to use force in Iraq. Five years later, this country is still paying for that mistake in blood and treasure. If that is the kind of whip smart decision-making your experience will give us, then I will kindly tell that experience to fuck right off. If you'd like to run on your record of experience, your record tells me you are an easily-led tool who has enabled our President to skullfuck this country into the ground. Do you really want to run on your experience?
Senator Obama may be young and fresh-faced. He may not have been the snuggle bunny of a sitting, popular President. That doesn't mean he can't approach foreign policy as well if not better than you or any of the other clowns who've had a hand in our foreign policy for over a decade. And unlike you, Sen. Clinton, Sen. Obama did not vote to invade Iraq, which tells me he has more foreign policy foresight than you showed.
First Lady is not a position of authority, and it is not the kind of experience you can put on a resume. Please shut up about your time as Wife-in-Chief or get the fuck on the Sol Rocket Express.
According to the article:
Speaking at George Washington University, Clinton chided Obama for what she said was a lack of experience that could rival a Bush administration that had a strategy based on "false choices and then is indifferent about the consequences -- force versus diplomacy, unilateralism versus multilateralism, hard power versus soft."
"We've seen the tragic result of having a president who had neither the experience nor wisdom to manage our foreign policy and safeguard our national security," she said. "We can't let that happen again."
Clinton cited her experience in the White House with her husband during times of crises as well as her service as a two-term New York senator on the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong, but being the wife of the President is not an elected position. It is not typically a position that comes with any civil authority whatsoever other than perhaps the running of the household at the White House. Any authority or power of the position is at most granted out of deference to the wife of the President.
So how fucking arrogant do you have to be to claim eight years as first wife as any kind of governing or foreign policy experience? Whispered pillow talk does not make for foreign policy experience. Listening to your husband vent about the Republican noise machine does not make for crisis management. And while Mrs. Clinton was certainly the target of many personal and nasty attacks during her time as First Lady, that no more prepares her for service as Commander in Chief than running the drive-thru at a fucking McDonalds.
As for your time on the Senate Armed Services Committee, let's see where that time got this nation. Oh right, it got you to vote to give this cluster fuck of a President authorization to use force in Iraq. Five years later, this country is still paying for that mistake in blood and treasure. If that is the kind of whip smart decision-making your experience will give us, then I will kindly tell that experience to fuck right off. If you'd like to run on your record of experience, your record tells me you are an easily-led tool who has enabled our President to skullfuck this country into the ground. Do you really want to run on your experience?
Senator Obama may be young and fresh-faced. He may not have been the snuggle bunny of a sitting, popular President. That doesn't mean he can't approach foreign policy as well if not better than you or any of the other clowns who've had a hand in our foreign policy for over a decade. And unlike you, Sen. Clinton, Sen. Obama did not vote to invade Iraq, which tells me he has more foreign policy foresight than you showed.
First Lady is not a position of authority, and it is not the kind of experience you can put on a resume. Please shut up about your time as Wife-in-Chief or get the fuck on the Sol Rocket Express.
Labels: Bush Administration, Government Corruption, Hillary Clinton, Politics, Presidential Campaign 2008, Things I'd Like to Fire Into the Sun
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:12 AM
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The Surge of Success! Or Yet Another Carefully Crafted Iraq Lie
Posted on
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
by Gary A. Ballard
We've been told for over a year now that the surge of troops would be a rousing success. That in a year's time, the extra bodes thrown at the problem of Iraq would cut down on the violence, giving the Iraqi government time to make political headway on the most pressing issues the country faces. Those issues include things like regular electricity, potable running water and really, any of the things you expect a government to be able to provide. Thankfully, the violence in Iraq HAS gone down. Unfortunately, the Iraqi government's various ethnic and sectarian factions have done absolutely nothing in the way of providing anything close to a working government. Yet, despite that lack of important political progress, advocates for the surge have all been gleeful because the violence is down. The surge has worked! Success. The only problem with that success is that it's a carefully constructed lie.
Yes, it is true that the violence has gone down in Iraq. That's something I should be ecstatic about, but I can't help but feel sickened by the flim-flam with which such a positive result was achieved. In order to more effectively fight Al-Qaeda in Iraq, a group that did not exist prior to our invasion, by the way, the military began supplying Sunni insurgents with weapons and cash. That's right, those same Sunni insurgents who used to blow up American convoys with IED's are now aiding the American occupation in rooting out Al-Qaeda. This tactic is incredibly brilliant, in that the best way to actually defeat a guerrilla insurgency is to involve them in the positive future of their country. Defeating a bunch of foreign fighters intent on sowing sectarian discord in Iraq is most certainly something that all Iraqis, Sunni or Shia should be cheering.
But from the American perspective, it should be seen with the proper context. First, the Sunni insurgents are terrorists, at least in the eyes of the administration. So that administration, by allowing payments to the Sunni insurgents have now "negotiated with terrorists," which is something they claimed they would not do. This shows how hypocritical the administration is, but at least they finally acknowledged that just being bull-headed "kill 'em all" psychopaths was not a tenable long-term solution. This deal with the Sunnis also has nothing whatsoever to do with the tactic of putting more troops in country. Whether you had 100,000 or 100 troops in Iraq, this tactic would have likely born fruit. The Sunni insurgency's main beef has always been that America is an occupying force. If they don't want Americans occupying their country, they won't want Saudi or Jordanian or Lebanese terrorists doing the same thing, especially when those terrorists start bombing centuries-old mosques. Their other aim has been to ensure that the newly-empowered Shia majority, with the aid of the U.S. military, is attempting to oppress them in the same way their minority oppressed the Shia under Saddam Hussein's reign. Attempts at communication, even funding the Sunni militias, make them feel a part of the process instead of an oppressed minority.
But the real kicker to the entire "surge is succeeding" lie is that it's an accurate lie. The violence has gone down, but it isn't just because we tossed 20,000 more troops into the mix. The Sunni insurgency's main weapon has been the IED, the improvised explosive device, otherwise known in not-doublespeak as the roadside bomb. Now that the Sunni insurgency isn't targeting Americans and Shia anymore, focusing instead on Al-Qaeda in Iraq, those IED's aren't being seen as much. Isn't that a coincidence? No, but you won't hear anything about that particular connection from the proponents of the surge. All you will hear is "THE SURGE HAS WORKED!!!!" Never mind that it was a political solution and not a military one that caused much of the drop in violence. It's all about the military.
Don't believe it. The military has done an impossible job as best they can, but Iraq is the kind of problem that can never be solved with purely military solutions. Insurgencies do not get defeated by anything less than sustained genocidal insanity, something I hope our government doesn't consider a viable final solution. The violence has dropped, because we bought off some of the insurgents. Saying it as anything else is a flim-flam job meant to win elections.
Yes, it is true that the violence has gone down in Iraq. That's something I should be ecstatic about, but I can't help but feel sickened by the flim-flam with which such a positive result was achieved. In order to more effectively fight Al-Qaeda in Iraq, a group that did not exist prior to our invasion, by the way, the military began supplying Sunni insurgents with weapons and cash. That's right, those same Sunni insurgents who used to blow up American convoys with IED's are now aiding the American occupation in rooting out Al-Qaeda. This tactic is incredibly brilliant, in that the best way to actually defeat a guerrilla insurgency is to involve them in the positive future of their country. Defeating a bunch of foreign fighters intent on sowing sectarian discord in Iraq is most certainly something that all Iraqis, Sunni or Shia should be cheering.
But from the American perspective, it should be seen with the proper context. First, the Sunni insurgents are terrorists, at least in the eyes of the administration. So that administration, by allowing payments to the Sunni insurgents have now "negotiated with terrorists," which is something they claimed they would not do. This shows how hypocritical the administration is, but at least they finally acknowledged that just being bull-headed "kill 'em all" psychopaths was not a tenable long-term solution. This deal with the Sunnis also has nothing whatsoever to do with the tactic of putting more troops in country. Whether you had 100,000 or 100 troops in Iraq, this tactic would have likely born fruit. The Sunni insurgency's main beef has always been that America is an occupying force. If they don't want Americans occupying their country, they won't want Saudi or Jordanian or Lebanese terrorists doing the same thing, especially when those terrorists start bombing centuries-old mosques. Their other aim has been to ensure that the newly-empowered Shia majority, with the aid of the U.S. military, is attempting to oppress them in the same way their minority oppressed the Shia under Saddam Hussein's reign. Attempts at communication, even funding the Sunni militias, make them feel a part of the process instead of an oppressed minority.
But the real kicker to the entire "surge is succeeding" lie is that it's an accurate lie. The violence has gone down, but it isn't just because we tossed 20,000 more troops into the mix. The Sunni insurgency's main weapon has been the IED, the improvised explosive device, otherwise known in not-doublespeak as the roadside bomb. Now that the Sunni insurgency isn't targeting Americans and Shia anymore, focusing instead on Al-Qaeda in Iraq, those IED's aren't being seen as much. Isn't that a coincidence? No, but you won't hear anything about that particular connection from the proponents of the surge. All you will hear is "THE SURGE HAS WORKED!!!!" Never mind that it was a political solution and not a military one that caused much of the drop in violence. It's all about the military.
Don't believe it. The military has done an impossible job as best they can, but Iraq is the kind of problem that can never be solved with purely military solutions. Insurgencies do not get defeated by anything less than sustained genocidal insanity, something I hope our government doesn't consider a viable final solution. The violence has dropped, because we bought off some of the insurgents. Saying it as anything else is a flim-flam job meant to win elections.
Labels: Bush Administration, Dick Cheney, Fascism, Government Corruption, Iraq, Politics, Presidential Campaign 2008
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Again, On Bended Knee
Posted on
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
Here's a message to the Democrats in the Senate, especially those who campaigned so hard on ending the war in Iraq during the 2006 campaign season. Shut the fuck up, you sniveling twats. You have absolutely no call to ever speak badly about the Bush administration again, because today's news proves that other than a small block of 24 Senators, you have all decided that aiding and abetting this President's criminal activities is more important than following the will of the electorate. You have capitulated again and again and again.
My rage at Democratic passivity this morning comes from this story. It involves the passage of a government spending bill to the tune of $555 billion. Now a spending bill alone wouldn't necessarily raise my ire. I'm sure there are plenty of things that might get me upset in the details of the bill, but the most prominent cause of my anger is the addition of $70 billion in Iraq war funding to the bill. That's right, despite their continued news cycle rhetoric about ending the war in Iraq, about forcing the President to adhere to the Constitution, nothing is being done.
The bill as passed by the House limited the additional war funding to use in Afghanistan only. A few Senators tried to put conditions on the money, forcing the President to adhere to timetables in order to use the money for the war in Iraq. But those measures failed. Only 24 Senators voted for it, all Democrats. I suppose those Senators should be commended.
Only, I don't feel like commending any Senators, because in the end, they all gave up. They gave the President $70 billion MORE of American taxpayers' money, with no strings attached to do what he wants. Again. And every single time the Democrats have capitulated to this President in the last year, they claim it's the last time they will allow it to happen, like some beaten wife who vows to finally go to the cops the next time her husband lays hands on her.
I don't believe you fuckers anymore. Sen. Harry Reid's leadership in the Senate has been a colossal fuckup. If you truly want the war in Iraq to end, STOP FUNDING THE FUCKING WAR, YOU SIMPERING CUNT. Just... Stop... Funding... It. This President is not going to play ball, he's not going to cooperate. If he were going to cooperate on anything, don't you think he'd have done it in situations where he is clearly wrong by the laws of the land? Don't you think he'd respect the subpoena powers of Congress instead of instructing his ex-employees to ignore it, and telling the Justice Department not to enforce those subpoenas? This President doesn't negotiate, he doesn't compromise, ever. You have to force him, like a petulant child refusing to eat his veggies. And as long as you continue to hand him a blank fucking check, he doesn't have to cooperate at all.
No, you giant pussy, you do have leverage. You have the law of the land. You have the power of the purse strings, the power to deny him funding for his war. You have the power to declare war, and you have the power to end it. This President never asked you to declare war, and no war was ever declared, which means that everything he does with the military is done because Congress has authorized it. Retract that authorization. While I know that wouldn't pass, I do know that defunding the war takes no action. All it takes is to have the balls to say to the President "No more
Every single soldier's death in Iraq, every single Iraqi civilian death from this point forward, is on the heads of those 76 Senators who voted to give the President more money for the Iraq war. That blood is not going to wash off, and I hope it haunts your dreams for years to come.
My rage at Democratic passivity this morning comes from this story. It involves the passage of a government spending bill to the tune of $555 billion. Now a spending bill alone wouldn't necessarily raise my ire. I'm sure there are plenty of things that might get me upset in the details of the bill, but the most prominent cause of my anger is the addition of $70 billion in Iraq war funding to the bill. That's right, despite their continued news cycle rhetoric about ending the war in Iraq, about forcing the President to adhere to the Constitution, nothing is being done.
The bill as passed by the House limited the additional war funding to use in Afghanistan only. A few Senators tried to put conditions on the money, forcing the President to adhere to timetables in order to use the money for the war in Iraq. But those measures failed. Only 24 Senators voted for it, all Democrats. I suppose those Senators should be commended.
Only, I don't feel like commending any Senators, because in the end, they all gave up. They gave the President $70 billion MORE of American taxpayers' money, with no strings attached to do what he wants. Again. And every single time the Democrats have capitulated to this President in the last year, they claim it's the last time they will allow it to happen, like some beaten wife who vows to finally go to the cops the next time her husband lays hands on her.
I don't believe you fuckers anymore. Sen. Harry Reid's leadership in the Senate has been a colossal fuckup. If you truly want the war in Iraq to end, STOP FUNDING THE FUCKING WAR, YOU SIMPERING CUNT. Just... Stop... Funding... It. This President is not going to play ball, he's not going to cooperate. If he were going to cooperate on anything, don't you think he'd have done it in situations where he is clearly wrong by the laws of the land? Don't you think he'd respect the subpoena powers of Congress instead of instructing his ex-employees to ignore it, and telling the Justice Department not to enforce those subpoenas? This President doesn't negotiate, he doesn't compromise, ever. You have to force him, like a petulant child refusing to eat his veggies. And as long as you continue to hand him a blank fucking check, he doesn't have to cooperate at all.
"In the end, we had very little leverage to do anything," Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) said as the once-heated war debate closed with little suspense and no drama.
No, you giant pussy, you do have leverage. You have the law of the land. You have the power of the purse strings, the power to deny him funding for his war. You have the power to declare war, and you have the power to end it. This President never asked you to declare war, and no war was ever declared, which means that everything he does with the military is done because Congress has authorized it. Retract that authorization. While I know that wouldn't pass, I do know that defunding the war takes no action. All it takes is to have the balls to say to the President "No more
Every single soldier's death in Iraq, every single Iraqi civilian death from this point forward, is on the heads of those 76 Senators who voted to give the President more money for the Iraq war. That blood is not going to wash off, and I hope it haunts your dreams for years to come.
Labels: Bush Administration, Dick Cheney, Fascism, Government Corruption, Iraq
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 10:00 AM
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Saving Lives, Damning Souls
Posted on
Tuesday, December 11, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
The CIA has always operated as a shadowy organization, sometimes following questionable policies with enough moral ambiguity to provide a fertile ground for equally questionable tactics. Mining the harbors of Nicarauga, smuggling drugs and selling weapons to Iran to fund the Contras, secret drug research programs, brainwashing techniques, propping up the Ba'ath Party in Iraq, overthrowing the government of Iran and installing the Shah in 1953, all of these things have been attributed to the CIA since its inception. It comes as no real surprise then that the CIA has been the frontrunner organization in America's recent embrace of torture to fight the war on Terror. Just last week, we learned that videotapes of torture sessions involving waterboarding by CIA operatives were destroyed to "protect the identities of the operatives involved." Of course, the protection such operatives required was not from revealation to our enemies but from criminal prosecution once our government de-assified its collective head and chose to follow the law again. But now we have a former CIA operative who participated in torture speaking out, and his words are a slap in the face.
This man admits he used waterboarding. He admits that now he considers waterboarding torture, and that he regrets using the technique. How nice of him. The most galling part of his statement is that the use of the technique he now regrets "saved lives." He traded away America's good name, America's soul, to "save lives."
Bully for you.
I do understand that there are people working their asses off to make me safe. I understand there are a metric fuckton of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who are now more likely to be tortured and decapitated when they are captured because someone thought waterboarding was A-OK.
I also understand that as a citizen of this country, I never authorized agents to torture in my name, to break the laws of this land to make me safe. The cost is entirely too high. Every person, guilty or not, who was tortured in the war on terror, was ostensibly tortured IN MY NAME, and in the name of every other American citizen. Those acts of barbarism were done without my knowledge, without my consent, without even the backing of the laws of this land, and they were wrong. They tarnish the very soul of this entire country and everyone in it. Not only were the wishes of the American people that we NOT torture anyone made explicit in the law, those wishes were ignored for what? The sake of expediency? To justify more abuses of the law such as warrantless wiretapping and indefinite imprisonment without the right to object to such confinement?
Kiriakou says that he regrets the torture because "Americans are better than that."
No, it was not necessary at the time. We haven't moved beyond that because not only are we still doing it, the Bush administration has been attempting to make sure those techniques are legal now and are retroactively legal. His cronies in the CIA are destroying evidence just in case he can't bless those acts with the legal stamp. We haven't moved beyond it because assholes like you haven't accepted that such acts are wrong now and more importantly were wrong then. The lives that were supposedly saved, a quantity that cannot be measured because we'll never know what would have been, those lives were not worth damning our souls with the stink of barbarism.
America is SUPPOSED to be better than that, but we've let ourselves believe the lie. We've let ourselves believe the lie that we can do no wrong, that we are better than everyone else. The ugly truth is we have allowed ourselves to fall to a mentality that is no better than the vicious bastards we claim to oppose.
This man admits he used waterboarding. He admits that now he considers waterboarding torture, and that he regrets using the technique. How nice of him. The most galling part of his statement is that the use of the technique he now regrets "saved lives." He traded away America's good name, America's soul, to "save lives."
Bully for you.
"It's easy to point to intelligence failures and perceived intelligence
failures, but the public has to understand how hard people are working to make
them safe," [Kiriakou] said.
I do understand that there are people working their asses off to make me safe. I understand there are a metric fuckton of soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan who are now more likely to be tortured and decapitated when they are captured because someone thought waterboarding was A-OK.
I also understand that as a citizen of this country, I never authorized agents to torture in my name, to break the laws of this land to make me safe. The cost is entirely too high. Every person, guilty or not, who was tortured in the war on terror, was ostensibly tortured IN MY NAME, and in the name of every other American citizen. Those acts of barbarism were done without my knowledge, without my consent, without even the backing of the laws of this land, and they were wrong. They tarnish the very soul of this entire country and everyone in it. Not only were the wishes of the American people that we NOT torture anyone made explicit in the law, those wishes were ignored for what? The sake of expediency? To justify more abuses of the law such as warrantless wiretapping and indefinite imprisonment without the right to object to such confinement?
Kiriakou says that he regrets the torture because "Americans are better than that."
"Maybe that's inconsistent, but that's how I feel," he said. "It was an
ugly little episode that was perhaps necessary at that time. But we've moved
beyond that."
No, it was not necessary at the time. We haven't moved beyond that because not only are we still doing it, the Bush administration has been attempting to make sure those techniques are legal now and are retroactively legal. His cronies in the CIA are destroying evidence just in case he can't bless those acts with the legal stamp. We haven't moved beyond it because assholes like you haven't accepted that such acts are wrong now and more importantly were wrong then. The lives that were supposedly saved, a quantity that cannot be measured because we'll never know what would have been, those lives were not worth damning our souls with the stink of barbarism.
America is SUPPOSED to be better than that, but we've let ourselves believe the lie. We've let ourselves believe the lie that we can do no wrong, that we are better than everyone else. The ugly truth is we have allowed ourselves to fall to a mentality that is no better than the vicious bastards we claim to oppose.
Labels: Bush Administration, Dick Cheney, Fascism, Government Corruption, Habeus Corpus, Iraq, Politics, Presidential Campaign 2008, Torture
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 8:54 AM
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The Poor in New Orleans Still Getting the Shaft
Posted on
Thursday, December 06, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
The poor people of New Orleans were treated with the utmost disrespect before and during the Katrina disaster. Years of governmental neglect from the local to state to federal level contributed to the shabby state of the city and its life-preserving levees, and bear a great deal of responsibility for the Katrina disaster. It is incumbent on the government to help those of its citizens who need the most help, and by and large, that is the impoverished. Public housing projects in New Orleans were home to thousands of residents. Those residents were forced to leave the city in 2005, with the understanding they could return to the homes once those homes were classified as habitable.
But HUD (Housing and Urban Development) and HANO (Housing Authority of New Orleans) have closed those housing projects, prohibiting the former residents from returning to them and scheduling many of the projects for demolition. This is despite the fact that most of the units are completely habitable with repairs, repairs which will be paid for out of the taxpayer's money allocated to restoring housing in New Orleans. The demolished low-income housing would not be replaced with new low-income housing except in reduced numbers.
The Advancement Project: Hurricane Katrina is a site documenting the struggle against the federal government to save this housing and allow the former residents to return. It's an interesting documentary about the problem and the lawsuit that has resulted. I urge you to watch it and remember that the massive disservice our government did to the people of the Gulf Coast region is still going on today.
But HUD (Housing and Urban Development) and HANO (Housing Authority of New Orleans) have closed those housing projects, prohibiting the former residents from returning to them and scheduling many of the projects for demolition. This is despite the fact that most of the units are completely habitable with repairs, repairs which will be paid for out of the taxpayer's money allocated to restoring housing in New Orleans. The demolished low-income housing would not be replaced with new low-income housing except in reduced numbers.
The Advancement Project: Hurricane Katrina is a site documenting the struggle against the federal government to save this housing and allow the former residents to return. It's an interesting documentary about the problem and the lawsuit that has resulted. I urge you to watch it and remember that the massive disservice our government did to the people of the Gulf Coast region is still going on today.
Labels: Bush Administration, Corporate Corruption, Government Corruption, Hurricane Katrina
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 3:56 PM
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Congressional Democrats Need a New Agenda
Posted on
Wednesday, November 07, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
This story from the LA Times gave me a brief moment of hope, which was quickly dashed by political pussyfooting. Presidential candidate and noted leprechaun Dennis Kucinich filed three articles of impeachment in the House of Representatives against Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday, proving that this diminutive Ohio Democrat has more balls per square inch than the entire Senate put together. The articles were, of course, doomed to failure, much like the tiny Congressmidget's presidential campaign, unfortunately. But it was a statement by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer that got my tits in a twist.
According to the article:
That's great, Steny. What exactly is the agenda, then? Is it upgrading S-CHIP? That's already been vetoed and you couldn't muster the votes to override the veto. Is it the war in Iraq? You've already rolled over like whipped dogs and let Bush scratch your belly, giving him every cent he asked for without holding him to any of his own benchmarks. Is it the U.S. Attorney firing scandal? Nope, you've pissed that one away by refusing to actually hold administration officials in contempt for not answering your subpoenas, and let Alberto Gonzales get away with lying directly to you under oath. Is it exposing fraud in Iraq war contracting, or Bush's private militia Blackwater's actions, raising the minimum wage or the fuckups of FEMA during Katrina? That's right, you've done fuckall with those issues as well.
So what is the agenda? From where I sit, you've been stymied at every opportunity by procedural shenanigans, or by Republicans in Democrats' clothing like Joe Lieberman. You've been made to look like complete pussies by the Republican noise machine's framing of all the important issues as failings of your party. Is there some other agenda, maybe like not rocking the boat too much and avoiding nuclear showdowns so you can sneak a Democratic president into the White House next year and get a rubber stamp Democratic Congress?
Look, I understand the political reality of the impeachment situation. I realize that you believe impeaching an obviously criminal, lame-duck president during a war would make you appear to be partisan hacks, just like the Republicans in 1998. I realize you believe the backlash would lose you seats in the Congress. Only, that isn't what happened to the Republicans. By 2002, they'd won a majority in Congress despite the supposed backlash over the trivialities of the Clinton impeachment. I realize you feel it would deadlock the Congress with a process that most likely would not result in the removal of Cheney or Bush from their positions of power.
But at some point, the Democratic leadership in Congress has got to wake the fuck up and realize this President has no intention of compromising on anything. He is the ultimate child king, an immature demagogue holding his breath until he gets his way. His way means the lives of troops in Iraq will be wasted, health insurance for poor kids goes unfunded and the pillaging of this country's treasury by corporate raiders with no sense of responsibility to the country that has made them rich beyond measure. He is not willing to work with you no matter what you offer. He is not willing to end the war in Iraq, he's not willing to stop torturing detainees whether innocent or guilty, and he's not willing to do anything that might make him anything less than an absolute ruler.
It's almost certain that impeachment would fail. It would be a terrible, ugly scene with sniping back and forth, partisan politics juiced to their most ugly spectacle. But it would be the right thing to do. And it would finally expose some of the nastiest political tricksters this country has ever seen as the devious shitheels they really are. It would serve as a warning to future Presidents that such evil will not be tolerated, an example that apparently Watergate did not provide to someone like Dick Cheney.
The Congressional Democrats need a new agenda, and fast. The one they've got is based on faulty logic and the misguided hope that a Democratic President will fix all the nation's problems. Without the precedent of an impeachment against the Executive, it will only serve to embolden future power-hungry assholes, and this country has shown a startling desire to elect such power-hungry assholes, and then re-elect them.
According to the article:
"Impeachment is not on our agenda," said House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer(D-Md.). "We have some major priorities. We need to focus on those."
That's great, Steny. What exactly is the agenda, then? Is it upgrading S-CHIP? That's already been vetoed and you couldn't muster the votes to override the veto. Is it the war in Iraq? You've already rolled over like whipped dogs and let Bush scratch your belly, giving him every cent he asked for without holding him to any of his own benchmarks. Is it the U.S. Attorney firing scandal? Nope, you've pissed that one away by refusing to actually hold administration officials in contempt for not answering your subpoenas, and let Alberto Gonzales get away with lying directly to you under oath. Is it exposing fraud in Iraq war contracting, or Bush's private militia Blackwater's actions, raising the minimum wage or the fuckups of FEMA during Katrina? That's right, you've done fuckall with those issues as well.
So what is the agenda? From where I sit, you've been stymied at every opportunity by procedural shenanigans, or by Republicans in Democrats' clothing like Joe Lieberman. You've been made to look like complete pussies by the Republican noise machine's framing of all the important issues as failings of your party. Is there some other agenda, maybe like not rocking the boat too much and avoiding nuclear showdowns so you can sneak a Democratic president into the White House next year and get a rubber stamp Democratic Congress?
Look, I understand the political reality of the impeachment situation. I realize that you believe impeaching an obviously criminal, lame-duck president during a war would make you appear to be partisan hacks, just like the Republicans in 1998. I realize you believe the backlash would lose you seats in the Congress. Only, that isn't what happened to the Republicans. By 2002, they'd won a majority in Congress despite the supposed backlash over the trivialities of the Clinton impeachment. I realize you feel it would deadlock the Congress with a process that most likely would not result in the removal of Cheney or Bush from their positions of power.
But at some point, the Democratic leadership in Congress has got to wake the fuck up and realize this President has no intention of compromising on anything. He is the ultimate child king, an immature demagogue holding his breath until he gets his way. His way means the lives of troops in Iraq will be wasted, health insurance for poor kids goes unfunded and the pillaging of this country's treasury by corporate raiders with no sense of responsibility to the country that has made them rich beyond measure. He is not willing to work with you no matter what you offer. He is not willing to end the war in Iraq, he's not willing to stop torturing detainees whether innocent or guilty, and he's not willing to do anything that might make him anything less than an absolute ruler.
It's almost certain that impeachment would fail. It would be a terrible, ugly scene with sniping back and forth, partisan politics juiced to their most ugly spectacle. But it would be the right thing to do. And it would finally expose some of the nastiest political tricksters this country has ever seen as the devious shitheels they really are. It would serve as a warning to future Presidents that such evil will not be tolerated, an example that apparently Watergate did not provide to someone like Dick Cheney.
The Congressional Democrats need a new agenda, and fast. The one they've got is based on faulty logic and the misguided hope that a Democratic President will fix all the nation's problems. Without the precedent of an impeachment against the Executive, it will only serve to embolden future power-hungry assholes, and this country has shown a startling desire to elect such power-hungry assholes, and then re-elect them.
Labels: Bush Administration, Corporate Corruption, Dick Cheney, Fascism, Government Corruption, Habeus Corpus, Health Care, Iraq, Presidential Campaign 2008
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:26 AM
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Things I'd Like to Fire Into the Sun: Campaign Strategists
Posted on
Monday, November 05, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
Political campaigns bring out my stabby side. From the carefully constructed, focus-grouped to death, faux personality masks worn by all the candidates the closer to victory they come, or the sheer deluge of lies spewed forth by proxy from the Mr. Ed-like mouths of mouthpiece candidates, election season is a time that breeds pure, violent cynicism so concentrated, it could be cooked on a spoon and shot into the veins of junkies everywhere. Such distilled essence of jaded hatred would induce murderous rages in everyone exposed to the narcotic byproduct of our nation's grand democracy illusion. With that in mind, I find myself wanting to place a number of people into a giant pit, filling the pit with cement and then firing the said missile of maladjusted, loosely-defined humanity into the heart of the sun. The people deserving of my ire this day are the various campaign strategists on all sides of the American political spectrum.
The most famous of these type of wonktastic twats in recent memory is Karl Rove, everyone's favorite Turd Blossom. While Rove's evil heart has been well-revealed to those with enough independent thought left to pierce the narrative of bullshit spun about himself and his candidates, he is only the most visible symptom of the great cancer eating the heart of American democracy. Every campaign has a Karl Rove, a shitheel of varying degrees of evil and disingenuousness, someone to take all the polls and opinions and craft them into a message that fools the target demographic into believing his or her candidate. This person is a master of PR, the abbreviated avatar of public relations, the masterful liar wrapping layers of bullshit around a kernel of truth. And while most PR people are empty, soulless shells of humanity with less respect for their fellow man's intelligence than for a dung beetle's skill with the cello, campaign strategists are the lowest form of a very low rung of the demon army. They are lies made flesh.
Over the last few weeks, the media has done one bang-up job of crafting a specific narrative about the Democratic primary race. Instead of a three or two person race between Clinton, Obama and Edwards, the media has now presumptively anointed Hillary Clinton the "frontrunner," delegating every other candidate to a hind-teat-sucking also-ran. Much as Howard Dean was trumpeted as the saviour of the party in 2004 before getting dickstomped by the moribund Kerry when America was given the choice, Hillary Clinton has been practically handed the nomination, at least by the mainstream media with a vested interest in seeing the status quo of American politics continue. As a result, the campaign strategists of most of the other Democratic candidates have shifted focus.
Rather than talk about their own campaign's positives, now all Obama and Edwards want to talk about is how they are different or better than Hillary. The last Democratic debate was an almost overwhelming pile-on by both Tim Russert and the other candidates, all trying to one-up the other's Hillary-bashing cred. Obama's visit to the Saturday Night Live set treated us to a skit where Obama made fun of Hillary, if not in a nasty way, in a certainly unseemly manner. Yes, hunting season has begun, and everyone's trying to kill the golden goose.
I'm not naive enough to believe that attack ads and negative campaigns don't work. All evidence is that they do work and work well. But in a political climate where the stakes are so goddamn high, the one thing the Democratic Party and its candidates need to do is focus on why their party would be better for America than anything the Republican party has to offer, not just in its current form but in its future candidates. No matter what Hillary's flaws are, and trust me, they are legion, she's still a better candidate than anything on the GOP ticket. Sniping at the media's frontrunner just makes the whole process seem as seedy as the red light district in Amsterdam. The campaign strategists for all the Democratic candidates, and the Republicans as well, should be dropped into a pit, sealed in with concrete and shot into the heart of the sun, never to trouble us again. Only the white-hot nuclear fusion of the lifegiver can possibly eradicate the darkness these wastrels drag around them like the shrouds of death.
But the true problem with these people isn't even their own shameless evil. No, they only highlight the problem with privately-financed elections. The campaign money the media makes during election season is as much a poison to the system of democracy as the fundraising necessity is for a candidate's impartiality. If we are eventually to achieve some form of egalitarian democratic system, we need public election finance, with money distributed evenly to each candidate and airtime donated to the political process.
We'll have the rocket capable of firing campaign strategists into the heart of the sun before we'd ever see that system in place. Still, one can dream.
The most famous of these type of wonktastic twats in recent memory is Karl Rove, everyone's favorite Turd Blossom. While Rove's evil heart has been well-revealed to those with enough independent thought left to pierce the narrative of bullshit spun about himself and his candidates, he is only the most visible symptom of the great cancer eating the heart of American democracy. Every campaign has a Karl Rove, a shitheel of varying degrees of evil and disingenuousness, someone to take all the polls and opinions and craft them into a message that fools the target demographic into believing his or her candidate. This person is a master of PR, the abbreviated avatar of public relations, the masterful liar wrapping layers of bullshit around a kernel of truth. And while most PR people are empty, soulless shells of humanity with less respect for their fellow man's intelligence than for a dung beetle's skill with the cello, campaign strategists are the lowest form of a very low rung of the demon army. They are lies made flesh.
Over the last few weeks, the media has done one bang-up job of crafting a specific narrative about the Democratic primary race. Instead of a three or two person race between Clinton, Obama and Edwards, the media has now presumptively anointed Hillary Clinton the "frontrunner," delegating every other candidate to a hind-teat-sucking also-ran. Much as Howard Dean was trumpeted as the saviour of the party in 2004 before getting dickstomped by the moribund Kerry when America was given the choice, Hillary Clinton has been practically handed the nomination, at least by the mainstream media with a vested interest in seeing the status quo of American politics continue. As a result, the campaign strategists of most of the other Democratic candidates have shifted focus.
Rather than talk about their own campaign's positives, now all Obama and Edwards want to talk about is how they are different or better than Hillary. The last Democratic debate was an almost overwhelming pile-on by both Tim Russert and the other candidates, all trying to one-up the other's Hillary-bashing cred. Obama's visit to the Saturday Night Live set treated us to a skit where Obama made fun of Hillary, if not in a nasty way, in a certainly unseemly manner. Yes, hunting season has begun, and everyone's trying to kill the golden goose.
I'm not naive enough to believe that attack ads and negative campaigns don't work. All evidence is that they do work and work well. But in a political climate where the stakes are so goddamn high, the one thing the Democratic Party and its candidates need to do is focus on why their party would be better for America than anything the Republican party has to offer, not just in its current form but in its future candidates. No matter what Hillary's flaws are, and trust me, they are legion, she's still a better candidate than anything on the GOP ticket. Sniping at the media's frontrunner just makes the whole process seem as seedy as the red light district in Amsterdam. The campaign strategists for all the Democratic candidates, and the Republicans as well, should be dropped into a pit, sealed in with concrete and shot into the heart of the sun, never to trouble us again. Only the white-hot nuclear fusion of the lifegiver can possibly eradicate the darkness these wastrels drag around them like the shrouds of death.
But the true problem with these people isn't even their own shameless evil. No, they only highlight the problem with privately-financed elections. The campaign money the media makes during election season is as much a poison to the system of democracy as the fundraising necessity is for a candidate's impartiality. If we are eventually to achieve some form of egalitarian democratic system, we need public election finance, with money distributed evenly to each candidate and airtime donated to the political process.
We'll have the rocket capable of firing campaign strategists into the heart of the sun before we'd ever see that system in place. Still, one can dream.
Labels: Elections, Government Corruption, Humor, Presidential Campaign 2008, Television, Things I'd Like to Fire Into the Sun
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:35 AM
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Mukasey and the Water
Posted on
Friday, November 02, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
One of the stories coming out of Washington this week has been the contentious debate over the confirmation process of Judge Mukasey as Attorney General. For weeks, it seemed as if Mukasey would be a shoe-in to replace Raging Douchebag Alberto Gonzales as AG. Democrats spoke of Mukasey as a consensus candidate, one without any huge ideological hangups. But then a strange thing happened. Someone in the Senate Judiciary Committee asked Mukasey a simple question, and Mukasey's answer was neither simple, nor did it especially answer the question. The question was a masterful political move, and one I hope signals a sea change in the manner in which the Senate handles the White House from this moment forward.
The question was, "Do you consider water-boarding torture?"
Sane, rational people without any sort of authoritarian agenda should be able to answer that question quite easily without resorting to semantic discussions or abstract wankery. The phrase "a shock to the conscience" does not need to be invoked. To my mind, one shouldn't even need to reference the Geneva Conventions to determine the answer to this question. One only need examine the history of the "interrogation technique" known as waterboarding to determine the answer. One only need look at the names our country will be associated with, and the answer becomes clear.
The caring priest of the Spanish Inquisition used waterboarding. A prisoner in the tender embraces of Stalinist Russia could look forward to a terror dunking. One shouldn't forget that Cambodia's Khmer Rouge used the technique. In the halls of history, the United States of America, the "we don't torture" Americans, the "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" Uncle Sams, the "no cruel or unusual punishment" champions of the U S of A, we use waterboarding. We will be placed in history among the luminaries of oppression, brutality and needless slaughter such as Josef Stalin.
If waterboarding isn't torture, then we should apologize to Cambodia for illegally bombing the country during the Vietnam War (something we should do anyway). If waterboarding isn't torture, we should apologize to the Soviet Union for the Cold War. And if waterboarding isn't torture, the Spanish Inquisition should be given its reputation back. After all, these people used waterboarding against a great enemy that threatened them and such harsh techniques were justified until that enemy was defeated.
It is torture, Judge Mukasey. Claiming you can't answer one way or the other because it's a classified technique is legal waffling, considering just how much knowledge the public has of the technique. Refusing to comment affirmatively because to do so would require you as Attorney General to actually prosecute those who ordered and carried out the use of the technique is a gutless, weasel move that speaks of cowardice and systemic corruption. If you as Attorney General would not confirm this technique as illegal and against the tenets of the Constitution, then you are no more effective a replacement for the spineless, mewling twat that was Alberto Gonzales than a cardboard cutout.
The Justice Department has been eaten away from the inside by an institutional cancer, a disease of the heart and mind that has replaced integrity with obedience, politics with justice. The department needs a firm hand to weed out the inbred political incompetence and base corruption and restore one of America's vital government institution. It requires someone who would actually enforce the legal subpoenas issued by the Congress on people like Harriet Miers and Karl Rove, no matter what the White House had to say about it.
But most importantly, the job requires that you take a stand against the vile attacks on America's soul that criminals like George W. Bush, Jr. and Dick Cheney have launched. It requires that you admit that waterboarding is a torture that stains all Americans' hands with blood
Update: I found this fantastic article on waterboarding, written by Malcolm Nance, a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California. This man knows all about torture techniques, as he's trained our soldiers how to resist such techniques for years.
The question was, "Do you consider water-boarding torture?"
Sane, rational people without any sort of authoritarian agenda should be able to answer that question quite easily without resorting to semantic discussions or abstract wankery. The phrase "a shock to the conscience" does not need to be invoked. To my mind, one shouldn't even need to reference the Geneva Conventions to determine the answer to this question. One only need examine the history of the "interrogation technique" known as waterboarding to determine the answer. One only need look at the names our country will be associated with, and the answer becomes clear.
The caring priest of the Spanish Inquisition used waterboarding. A prisoner in the tender embraces of Stalinist Russia could look forward to a terror dunking. One shouldn't forget that Cambodia's Khmer Rouge used the technique. In the halls of history, the United States of America, the "we don't torture" Americans, the "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" Uncle Sams, the "no cruel or unusual punishment" champions of the U S of A, we use waterboarding. We will be placed in history among the luminaries of oppression, brutality and needless slaughter such as Josef Stalin.
If waterboarding isn't torture, then we should apologize to Cambodia for illegally bombing the country during the Vietnam War (something we should do anyway). If waterboarding isn't torture, we should apologize to the Soviet Union for the Cold War. And if waterboarding isn't torture, the Spanish Inquisition should be given its reputation back. After all, these people used waterboarding against a great enemy that threatened them and such harsh techniques were justified until that enemy was defeated.
It is torture, Judge Mukasey. Claiming you can't answer one way or the other because it's a classified technique is legal waffling, considering just how much knowledge the public has of the technique. Refusing to comment affirmatively because to do so would require you as Attorney General to actually prosecute those who ordered and carried out the use of the technique is a gutless, weasel move that speaks of cowardice and systemic corruption. If you as Attorney General would not confirm this technique as illegal and against the tenets of the Constitution, then you are no more effective a replacement for the spineless, mewling twat that was Alberto Gonzales than a cardboard cutout.
The Justice Department has been eaten away from the inside by an institutional cancer, a disease of the heart and mind that has replaced integrity with obedience, politics with justice. The department needs a firm hand to weed out the inbred political incompetence and base corruption and restore one of America's vital government institution. It requires someone who would actually enforce the legal subpoenas issued by the Congress on people like Harriet Miers and Karl Rove, no matter what the White House had to say about it.
But most importantly, the job requires that you take a stand against the vile attacks on America's soul that criminals like George W. Bush, Jr. and Dick Cheney have launched. It requires that you admit that waterboarding is a torture that stains all Americans' hands with blood
Update: I found this fantastic article on waterboarding, written by Malcolm Nance, a former Master Instructor and Chief of Training at the US Navy Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape School (SERE) in San Diego, California. This man knows all about torture techniques, as he's trained our soldiers how to resist such techniques for years.
Labels: Bush Administration, Dick Cheney, Fascism, Government Corruption, Presidential Campaign 2008, Raging Douchebag Week, The Stalin Monologues, Torture
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The 60-Vote Fallacy
Posted on
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
In today's information-soaked media environment, a meme can gain such a ironclad hold on the imagination of the public with startlingly ease. The mainstream media is the Ebola monkey of viral memes, spreading such fantastic misconceptions as Iraqi WMD with the speed of a Level 4 outbreak. The latest meme to really gain hold in the American political media is what I've termed the 60-Vote Fallacy. It refers to Senate votes and the Democratic majority's attempts to pass a bill forcing the President to end the war in Iraq and bring our troops home, and it's such a simple mangling of the truth.
Senate bills require a simple majority to pass. However, bills can be filibustered, a procedural shenanigan the minority party uses to kill a bill that might pass by simple majority vote. Filibustering consists of talking, and talking and talking, talking so much that the asses of Senators literally fall off and wither up like the dissected segments of an earthworm. A successful filibuster is the nuclear option for minorities, an option scorned by the Republicans when they were in the ascendancy but one which they are all too willing to threaten now that they are in the minority. And in order to defeat a filibuster, the Senate calls a cloture vote, which means that the bill or amendment under debate goes up for an immediate "yay" or "nay" vote. Cloture requires 60 votes to pass, which means 60 votes is required to defeat a filibuster. This is different from the 67 votes needed to overturn a Presidential veto.
The media, in its rush to soundbite the most important news so that it may continue to focus on the inane trivialities of celebrity baby daddy's, has cut to the chase with their Senate coverage lately. They've simplified things for us complete idiots out there. Rather than try to explain what a cloture vote is and how it's used, instead they say that legislation such as that calling for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq has been defeated because the Senate couldn't get the required 60 votes. The media fails to mention, perhaps purposefully, that the bill wasn't actually voted on at all, or that the Republicans who claimed for years that Democratic partisanship was destroying America with filibusters chose to use their filibuster power without actually going through with the filibuster. No, the coverage is dominated by the implication that the Senate Democrats are impotent because they don't have a 60-vote majority.
The media gets it wrong all the time, of course. They are factually incorrect, in so much as the facts they spread do not tell the entire picture and the devil is in the details. But what I find most disturbing is an even more subtle implication that may or may not be an actual Democratic strategy. By repeating this meme over and over on bill after bill, it almost seems as if the Democrats are attempting to gain the same sort of one-party majority in the 2008 elections that the Republicans battered the country with since 2002. It's almost a certainty that the White House will be Democratic in 2008, or at least it should be given the abuses the Republicans have inflicted with that power. By not correcting the mainstream media's mistaken framing of the 60-vote rule, are the Democrats insinuating to the voters that without a 60-vote majority in the Senate, they can't get anything accomplished?
I am wary of any political party which has the kind of rubber stamp majority exercised by the Republican Party since 2002. It is an absolute power that is absolutely corrupting in every sense of the word. While many of my political beliefs fall under the Democratic tent, especially since the hijacking of the GOP by the evangelical moonbats, the very problems inflicted upon the country by the Bush administration have been because of the lack of a check from an empowered minority. I find nothing in any political party that makes me believe the Democrats are above the temptation to rob this country blind should the most important checks and balances be removed. I no sooner want to see America as a one-party Democratic state than I did a Republican one.
Democrats do not need 60-votes to end the Iraq War. They need a backbone. Defunding the war does not require a successful vote at all. It just requires being frank with the American people, and it requires standing up to the Bush junta with purse strings pulled tight. It's high time the Democrats said no to tyrants.
Senate bills require a simple majority to pass. However, bills can be filibustered, a procedural shenanigan the minority party uses to kill a bill that might pass by simple majority vote. Filibustering consists of talking, and talking and talking, talking so much that the asses of Senators literally fall off and wither up like the dissected segments of an earthworm. A successful filibuster is the nuclear option for minorities, an option scorned by the Republicans when they were in the ascendancy but one which they are all too willing to threaten now that they are in the minority. And in order to defeat a filibuster, the Senate calls a cloture vote, which means that the bill or amendment under debate goes up for an immediate "yay" or "nay" vote. Cloture requires 60 votes to pass, which means 60 votes is required to defeat a filibuster. This is different from the 67 votes needed to overturn a Presidential veto.
The media, in its rush to soundbite the most important news so that it may continue to focus on the inane trivialities of celebrity baby daddy's, has cut to the chase with their Senate coverage lately. They've simplified things for us complete idiots out there. Rather than try to explain what a cloture vote is and how it's used, instead they say that legislation such as that calling for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq has been defeated because the Senate couldn't get the required 60 votes. The media fails to mention, perhaps purposefully, that the bill wasn't actually voted on at all, or that the Republicans who claimed for years that Democratic partisanship was destroying America with filibusters chose to use their filibuster power without actually going through with the filibuster. No, the coverage is dominated by the implication that the Senate Democrats are impotent because they don't have a 60-vote majority.
The media gets it wrong all the time, of course. They are factually incorrect, in so much as the facts they spread do not tell the entire picture and the devil is in the details. But what I find most disturbing is an even more subtle implication that may or may not be an actual Democratic strategy. By repeating this meme over and over on bill after bill, it almost seems as if the Democrats are attempting to gain the same sort of one-party majority in the 2008 elections that the Republicans battered the country with since 2002. It's almost a certainty that the White House will be Democratic in 2008, or at least it should be given the abuses the Republicans have inflicted with that power. By not correcting the mainstream media's mistaken framing of the 60-vote rule, are the Democrats insinuating to the voters that without a 60-vote majority in the Senate, they can't get anything accomplished?
I am wary of any political party which has the kind of rubber stamp majority exercised by the Republican Party since 2002. It is an absolute power that is absolutely corrupting in every sense of the word. While many of my political beliefs fall under the Democratic tent, especially since the hijacking of the GOP by the evangelical moonbats, the very problems inflicted upon the country by the Bush administration have been because of the lack of a check from an empowered minority. I find nothing in any political party that makes me believe the Democrats are above the temptation to rob this country blind should the most important checks and balances be removed. I no sooner want to see America as a one-party Democratic state than I did a Republican one.
Democrats do not need 60-votes to end the Iraq War. They need a backbone. Defunding the war does not require a successful vote at all. It just requires being frank with the American people, and it requires standing up to the Bush junta with purse strings pulled tight. It's high time the Democrats said no to tyrants.
Labels: Bush Administration, Dick Cheney, Fascism, Government Corruption, Politics, Presidential Campaign 2008
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 3:12 PM
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43 Senators Who Hate the Constitution
Posted on
Thursday, September 20, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
A cloture vote was taken in the Senate yesterday on the Habeus Corpus Restoration Act. For those unaware, Habeus corpus is one of the fundamental rights granted in the Constitution, the right for the accused to challenge his detention, be informed of the charges held against him and access to the evidence supporting those charges. It is the very backbone of our criminal justice system. Habeus corpus is so important to a fair system of justice, and so fundamentally ASSUMED by every American citizen that to even consider it as anything other than an unbreakable commandment is un-American.
And yet, there are 43 Senators in the Congress this very day who do not believe it is worth fighting for. Here is a listing from Restore-Habeus.org detailing how each Senator voted on the cloture motion. Keep in mind, a cloture vote is only to allow the bill to go to a final up or down vote. Without passage of a cloture vote, the bill can be discussed and amended until it's dead. Passage of a cloture vote with 60 ayes will break any filibuster. So the passage of the cloture vote by 56-43 is essentially a failure for the bill given the amount of minority opposition, as well as obvious White House opposition.
Feast your eyes upon Senators who do not give two rat shits whether you or anyone else are given the right to challenge unlawful and indefinite detention. I find it particularly galling that Sen. Larry Craig, he of the bathroom foot tapping and quick, cover-me-up guilty plea voted to deny habeus corpus as well. I wonder if his vote would be different were his detainment for men's room shenanigans to last more than a few hours, or to include naked man pyramids. Never mind, he's probably dreaming of that scenario right now.
These fuckers are despicable, and I count my Senators Thad Cochran and Trent Lott among the pack of shiftless shitheels I wouldn't cross the street to piss on were they on fire. Perhaps they should sack their lawyers, since they see no reason to be allowed to challenge criminal charges leveled against them.
And yet, there are 43 Senators in the Congress this very day who do not believe it is worth fighting for. Here is a listing from Restore-Habeus.org detailing how each Senator voted on the cloture motion. Keep in mind, a cloture vote is only to allow the bill to go to a final up or down vote. Without passage of a cloture vote, the bill can be discussed and amended until it's dead. Passage of a cloture vote with 60 ayes will break any filibuster. So the passage of the cloture vote by 56-43 is essentially a failure for the bill given the amount of minority opposition, as well as obvious White House opposition.
Feast your eyes upon Senators who do not give two rat shits whether you or anyone else are given the right to challenge unlawful and indefinite detention. I find it particularly galling that Sen. Larry Craig, he of the bathroom foot tapping and quick, cover-me-up guilty plea voted to deny habeus corpus as well. I wonder if his vote would be different were his detainment for men's room shenanigans to last more than a few hours, or to include naked man pyramids. Never mind, he's probably dreaming of that scenario right now.
These fuckers are despicable, and I count my Senators Thad Cochran and Trent Lott among the pack of shiftless shitheels I wouldn't cross the street to piss on were they on fire. Perhaps they should sack their lawyers, since they see no reason to be allowed to challenge criminal charges leveled against them.
Labels: Bush Administration, Fascism, Government Corruption, Habeus Corpus
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 4:05 PM
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Forgetting the Lessons... Again
Posted on
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
The mainstream media is quite literally retarded. I don't mean retarded in the Internet sense whereby anything even remotely stupid is labelled as the produce of mental defectives. I mean that as a collective whole, the mainstream media is suffering from some mass form of congenital brain defect, a defect which causes it to completely forget the lessons of its own past. Not only does it forget its distant past, it forgets its recent past in the rush to utterly desiccate the latest story before a new story comes along to dazzle its minuscule attention span. This week has seen story after story focusing on O.J. Simpson for returning to his criminal ways. And just like that, anything important is swept aside in the feeding frenzy.
The story is a simple one. O.J. thinks some guys stole his sports memorabilia and are trying to sell it. O.J., like the great detective he is, vows to get his merchandise back with greater alacrity than he has exhibited in hunting down his wife's killers. He sets up a sting with some buddies, planning to steal the merchandise back from the "thieves." Only these thieves actually call the cops and O.J. is busted for a bunch of charges that could net him 30 years or so in prison. I can only assume that O.J. neglected to toss the gloves this time.
An interesting story, if only in that "Hmmm, O.J.'s in jail again, I hope they nail that fucker," sort of way. It's worth maybe a 30-second spot on the network news cycle, some late-night jokes and a few shrugs before tackling the important stories. Unfortunately, the mainstream media has completely forgotten those important stories and are instead focused on dissecting in detail the particulars of the case, as if re-enacting the bathroom scene in Larry Craig's fantasies.
Here's a hint, mainstream media. Congress still hasn't had a response to those subpoenas on Karl Rove and Harriet Miers. The Vice-President is still claiming to not exist as an entity in the U.S. government. New Orleans is still a fucking wrecked mudhole, and the evacuees are still living in potentially-hazardous, formaldehyde-laced trailers. Gen. Petraeus' report is still using inaccurate casualty figures to make the security situation seem more positive than it really is. There are still more private mercenaries in Iraq on the U.S. payroll than actual military troops. The Pentagon and the White House are still trying to drum up support for military action on Iran without a shred of credible evidence to justify said action. There is rampant corruption and fraud in the Iraq contract process, and tons of corporations to be nailed for stealing openly from the taxpayers. In short, there are about a billion other stories still ongoing that are absolutely critical to the American people that you could be covering besides a murderer getting busted for strong-arming collectors.
The mainstream media has a fantastic ability to pick one story and fuck it to death. That ability is a very good thing when it is used responsibly, when it picks the stories that are in the public's best interests. Unfortunately, like a retard easily distracted by shiny objects, the mainstream media too often applies this ability to whatever its corporate overlords think will garner the most viewership. It's high time the mainstream media remembers why freedom of the press is both an important protection and a grave responsibility.
The story is a simple one. O.J. thinks some guys stole his sports memorabilia and are trying to sell it. O.J., like the great detective he is, vows to get his merchandise back with greater alacrity than he has exhibited in hunting down his wife's killers. He sets up a sting with some buddies, planning to steal the merchandise back from the "thieves." Only these thieves actually call the cops and O.J. is busted for a bunch of charges that could net him 30 years or so in prison. I can only assume that O.J. neglected to toss the gloves this time.
An interesting story, if only in that "Hmmm, O.J.'s in jail again, I hope they nail that fucker," sort of way. It's worth maybe a 30-second spot on the network news cycle, some late-night jokes and a few shrugs before tackling the important stories. Unfortunately, the mainstream media has completely forgotten those important stories and are instead focused on dissecting in detail the particulars of the case, as if re-enacting the bathroom scene in Larry Craig's fantasies.
Here's a hint, mainstream media. Congress still hasn't had a response to those subpoenas on Karl Rove and Harriet Miers. The Vice-President is still claiming to not exist as an entity in the U.S. government. New Orleans is still a fucking wrecked mudhole, and the evacuees are still living in potentially-hazardous, formaldehyde-laced trailers. Gen. Petraeus' report is still using inaccurate casualty figures to make the security situation seem more positive than it really is. There are still more private mercenaries in Iraq on the U.S. payroll than actual military troops. The Pentagon and the White House are still trying to drum up support for military action on Iran without a shred of credible evidence to justify said action. There is rampant corruption and fraud in the Iraq contract process, and tons of corporations to be nailed for stealing openly from the taxpayers. In short, there are about a billion other stories still ongoing that are absolutely critical to the American people that you could be covering besides a murderer getting busted for strong-arming collectors.
The mainstream media has a fantastic ability to pick one story and fuck it to death. That ability is a very good thing when it is used responsibly, when it picks the stories that are in the public's best interests. Unfortunately, like a retard easily distracted by shiny objects, the mainstream media too often applies this ability to whatever its corporate overlords think will garner the most viewership. It's high time the mainstream media remembers why freedom of the press is both an important protection and a grave responsibility.
Labels: Bush Administration, Corporate Corruption, Government Corruption, Mainstream Media, Television
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 2:51 PM
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This FEMA Trailer Sure Does Stink
Posted on
Friday, July 20, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
Something at FEMA stinks. We've known this since 2005, of course, when the bodies of dead New Orleans residents started flowing down Canal Street as the survivors of Katrina were left to boil in the destruction of the Superdome. But since those early days, Americans seem to have assumed that FEMA would take care of the problems, would bring New Orleans back from the brink of destruction, despite all evidence to the contrary. Congress seemed totally uninterested in figuring out how such a tragedy could occur on US Soil, at least until the Democrats regained a majority in the House and Senate. Now we know that the stench coming from FEMA smells like formaldehyde.
That's right, FEMA was providing residents of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast with trailers so full of formaldehyde, the air was literally killing them. For over a year now, FEMA field staff had let the top brass at the agency know of this problem, and for over a year, their pleas were ignored. Not because there was no evidence, because the one time FEMA actually allowed testing of a trailer under living conditions, the trailer was found to have 75 times more formaldehyde than is allowed in the workplace. After that one test found a positive result, they halted testing. Why? According to Rep. Henry Waxman's statement in the video linked above, because FEMA attorneys didn't want FEMA to have to deal with the issue.
What is it these poor, mostly black homeless bums from New Orleans want? FEMA got them a damn trailer for free. They want to be able to breathe in it? If FEMA let those subhumans breathe in their trailers, FEMA might have to actually clean up their city which is still in ruins. That's like... hard and stuff. Oh and it doesn't enrich Republican donors, or land developers looking to scoop up land on the cheap.
I feel it necessary to point out that the preceding paragraph was written with an overdose of sarcasm. But it really does seem as if FEMA and Homeland Security really does want to exterminate the residents of New Orleans. First, we let them swelter in ungodly heat, flood waters and filth for almost a week claiming that entry to the city was impossible, even when we saw hordes of reporters and actors sweltering alongside the city's residents. Then we discovered that the levees were not only not built to withstand a hurricane of Katrina's strength, but were built incorrectly as well. Next, we found out that a private company charged with rebuilding and upgrading New Orleans' flood-prevention pumps was incompetent and incapable of doing so. And now this. The message is clear. Homeland Security and the Bush Administration don't just dislike poor black people, they are actively engaged in trying to exterminate the poor mendicants.
When do they start sending in the trains to collect the unwashed masses?
That's right, FEMA was providing residents of New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast with trailers so full of formaldehyde, the air was literally killing them. For over a year now, FEMA field staff had let the top brass at the agency know of this problem, and for over a year, their pleas were ignored. Not because there was no evidence, because the one time FEMA actually allowed testing of a trailer under living conditions, the trailer was found to have 75 times more formaldehyde than is allowed in the workplace. After that one test found a positive result, they halted testing. Why? According to Rep. Henry Waxman's statement in the video linked above, because FEMA attorneys didn't want FEMA to have to deal with the issue.
What is it these poor, mostly black homeless bums from New Orleans want? FEMA got them a damn trailer for free. They want to be able to breathe in it? If FEMA let those subhumans breathe in their trailers, FEMA might have to actually clean up their city which is still in ruins. That's like... hard and stuff. Oh and it doesn't enrich Republican donors, or land developers looking to scoop up land on the cheap.
I feel it necessary to point out that the preceding paragraph was written with an overdose of sarcasm. But it really does seem as if FEMA and Homeland Security really does want to exterminate the residents of New Orleans. First, we let them swelter in ungodly heat, flood waters and filth for almost a week claiming that entry to the city was impossible, even when we saw hordes of reporters and actors sweltering alongside the city's residents. Then we discovered that the levees were not only not built to withstand a hurricane of Katrina's strength, but were built incorrectly as well. Next, we found out that a private company charged with rebuilding and upgrading New Orleans' flood-prevention pumps was incompetent and incapable of doing so. And now this. The message is clear. Homeland Security and the Bush Administration don't just dislike poor black people, they are actively engaged in trying to exterminate the poor mendicants.
When do they start sending in the trains to collect the unwashed masses?
Labels: Bush Administration, Corporate Corruption, Dick Cheney, Fascism, Government Corruption, Politics, Privatization
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Preaching Choirs: Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency (Book) Review
Posted on
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
Written by Lou Dubose and Bernstein, Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency is a book that manages to both succeed and fail simultaneously. Seeking to pull back the curtain of secrecy on the "shadow government" being run by the vice president, it goes to great lengths to document the unethical and potentially illegal actions of the Office of the Vice President. From the outright illegality of the Plame scandal to the more esoteric procedural wranglings of Cheney's attempts to create an untouchable fourth branch of government that isn't judicial, legislative or executive, the book does a great job of providing what facts it can. And that's where the trouble begins.
You see, the book is exhaustively researched. Dozens of friends, former staffers, legislative enemies past and present are interviewed. Documents are quoted. But as the book itself makes clear, many of the things Cheney has accomplished as vice president cannot be traced back to him or his office. While Cheney's stench permeates most of the policy decisions the Bush administration clings to so fiercely, his fingerprints vanish under close scrutiny. Staffers draft memos and executive orders that mouth the words of Cheney, but without any evidence to show that Cheney actually guided the writer. As far as most of the official records go, Cheney might well have been a ghost in the White House, his invisible hand throttling the Constitution from beyond the grave. As a result, the book does a fantastic job of raising the ire of those already inclined to dislike Cheney and his policies, while not really providing much proof to those who might be neutral or supportive of Darth Veep.
This lack of concrete proof just serves to make the book fail on the most important level a polemic such as this might fail on. It does a great job of preaching to the choir, confirming the beliefs of those who are already against Dick Cheney. But its tone is one of extreme vitriol. The tone alone would be likely to turn off those who might be neutral on the subject prior to reading the book, as it is acerbic in its distaste for the man and his politics. Those readers who might be Republicans willing to listen to potential malfeasance on the part of their Vice will instead be able to paint the book as another "left-wing hit job," and they'd be not far from the truth in that respect. The book most certainly starts with a prejudiced premise, one which I happen to agree with. I am, however, one of the choir in this case. Were I a previous Bush voter, I'd be less likely to see the book in a favorable light. With the disdainful state of political discourse in our country, and the even lower state of media, a book tackling the subject of the Dick with a more even-handed tone might do a better job of stimulating debate as opposed to arguments.
Despite all that, it is a compelling read, one which offers a great deal of "WHUUUUU????" moments from Dick Cheney's past. One of the most memorable occurred in the 1980's, as he and a diplomat visited Russia for nuclear disarmament talks. After a day of talks in which the Russian team seemed genuinely interested in drawing down weapons, Cheney strolls through the city's beautiful scenery with his diplomatic partner. Rather than be awed by the beauty, so rarely seen by Americans in those days, he instead describes the open square as "Ground zero." A telling glimpse into the man's character, this chilling scene speaks of the hypocritical dichotomy of Dick Cheney. A man who took five deferments from the Vietnam War seems to relish the idea of using the men and women of the military in whatever fashion he sees fit.
If you have even the slightest inkling that Dick Cheney perhaps isn't playing with the same rules as other politicians, or that his actions might be harmful to this country, read Vice. If you often refer to Democratic politicians as "the Democrat party" or "left-wing liberals" then you will likely not make it through the first twenty pages. But despite its flaws, it is a book that should have been written years ago, and its shenanigans are the things the mainstream media should have feasted upon for years. I'd give the book 3.5 stars out of 5, 2 stars if you lean Republican.
You see, the book is exhaustively researched. Dozens of friends, former staffers, legislative enemies past and present are interviewed. Documents are quoted. But as the book itself makes clear, many of the things Cheney has accomplished as vice president cannot be traced back to him or his office. While Cheney's stench permeates most of the policy decisions the Bush administration clings to so fiercely, his fingerprints vanish under close scrutiny. Staffers draft memos and executive orders that mouth the words of Cheney, but without any evidence to show that Cheney actually guided the writer. As far as most of the official records go, Cheney might well have been a ghost in the White House, his invisible hand throttling the Constitution from beyond the grave. As a result, the book does a fantastic job of raising the ire of those already inclined to dislike Cheney and his policies, while not really providing much proof to those who might be neutral or supportive of Darth Veep.
This lack of concrete proof just serves to make the book fail on the most important level a polemic such as this might fail on. It does a great job of preaching to the choir, confirming the beliefs of those who are already against Dick Cheney. But its tone is one of extreme vitriol. The tone alone would be likely to turn off those who might be neutral on the subject prior to reading the book, as it is acerbic in its distaste for the man and his politics. Those readers who might be Republicans willing to listen to potential malfeasance on the part of their Vice will instead be able to paint the book as another "left-wing hit job," and they'd be not far from the truth in that respect. The book most certainly starts with a prejudiced premise, one which I happen to agree with. I am, however, one of the choir in this case. Were I a previous Bush voter, I'd be less likely to see the book in a favorable light. With the disdainful state of political discourse in our country, and the even lower state of media, a book tackling the subject of the Dick with a more even-handed tone might do a better job of stimulating debate as opposed to arguments.
Despite all that, it is a compelling read, one which offers a great deal of "WHUUUUU????" moments from Dick Cheney's past. One of the most memorable occurred in the 1980's, as he and a diplomat visited Russia for nuclear disarmament talks. After a day of talks in which the Russian team seemed genuinely interested in drawing down weapons, Cheney strolls through the city's beautiful scenery with his diplomatic partner. Rather than be awed by the beauty, so rarely seen by Americans in those days, he instead describes the open square as "Ground zero." A telling glimpse into the man's character, this chilling scene speaks of the hypocritical dichotomy of Dick Cheney. A man who took five deferments from the Vietnam War seems to relish the idea of using the men and women of the military in whatever fashion he sees fit.
If you have even the slightest inkling that Dick Cheney perhaps isn't playing with the same rules as other politicians, or that his actions might be harmful to this country, read Vice. If you often refer to Democratic politicians as "the Democrat party" or "left-wing liberals" then you will likely not make it through the first twenty pages. But despite its flaws, it is a book that should have been written years ago, and its shenanigans are the things the mainstream media should have feasted upon for years. I'd give the book 3.5 stars out of 5, 2 stars if you lean Republican.
Labels: Bush Administration, Dick Cheney, Fascism, Government Corruption
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A Craven Congress
Posted on
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
The Senate has disappointed me once again. We've now had months and months of hearings on the US Attorney firing scandal, including a clueless stooge testifying to his lack of recall about everything to do with his job, a turncoat Jesus-freak "lawyer" pleading the Fifth while showing almost complete ignorance of the law, and story after story painting the whole thing as a political purge by the White House. And yet the Senate still will not exert even the most basic oversight on this government. Today, Senate Republicans, may of whom have called for Attorney General Gonzales' resignation, voted to block a resolution expressing no-confidence in the AG. Yes, a non-binding slap on the wrist can't even be voted on for fear of political retribution.
It's time for this Congress to get some goddamn sack.
My own Senator, Trent Lott, opened his festering gob to offer this gem of Constitutional ignorance.
Actually, Trent, it IS the Congress' job to hold forth on a member of the President's Cabinet when that member is breaking the fucking law. When that Cabinet member has lied to Congress, dissembled, obfuscated and flip-flopped on his and his subordinates' roles in an obviously illegal way, it is exactly the Congress' job to punish that sort of shit. Not doing this job for four years is what lost the Republicans their majority in 2006, it's what got people killed in New Orleans during Katrina, and it's what continues to get our soldiers killed needlessly in Iraq.
The craven nature of politics in this Senate is astounding. This paragraph should get the blood boiling.
That list is full of pussies, if you'll forgive my profanity. That list is full of people who think it's acceptable to say Gonzales should be fired, but won't grow enough of a pair to actually vote on a resolution that puts that belief on Congressional record. Lieberman shows that he is a liar, having pledged to vote with the Democratic caucus despite his "Independent" status. He has consistently voted in lockstep with this White House.
But the worst offenders of craven cowardice in this Senate seem to be coming out of the Democratic majority.
I think it's time the Democrats stop gently nudging the intransigent rock that is President Bush and his cabal, and starts swinging a John Henry-sized sledgehammer. It's time the impeachment process was begun on a great number of administration heavyweights, not the least of which is Gonzales. He has been caught lying to Congress on multiple occasions. One such lie was the claim that he had not spoken with any of the upcoming witnesses in the hearings beforehand. Monica Goodling stated under oath that he did meet with her, to "comfort" her. He's consistently said one thing in press conferences, only to change the story in front of Congress when new evidence came to light. Perhaps the Democrats lack the votes to impeach, or do not want to be seen as the Congressional Republicans were seen after the useless Clinton impeachment.
The difference, of course, is that while Clinton's crime was certainly impeachable, it lacked the true weight of what most reasonable people would consider "high crimes and misdemeanors." If a politically-motivated purge of the nation's prosecutorial vanguard isn't a high crime, I don't know what is. Perhaps lying to the public to get us into a costly, unnecessary war. Maybe even giving good ole boy contracts to corrupt corporate campaign contributors then watching as those contractors defraud the government out of billions of dollars. One might even say that letting an entire major metropolitan area drown while giving sweetheart contracts to contributors who fail to even deliver ice to the evacuees would be a high crime worthy of impeachment.
But in order for that to happen, this Senate, this entire Congress is going to have to grow a pair. You were elected to clean up the shitpool that is the Bush government, by whatever Constitutional means are available. The clock is ticking. Don't waffle about vote counts, don't let the threat of an inevitable veto forestall your efforts. You know the President is going to use every tool at his disposal, including the extralegal ones he makes up on the fly, to cover his own ass. So stop throwing spitballs, and start lobbing Constitutional grenades.
You have the backing of the Constitution and of at least 65% of the American people. Get to work.
Update: Here is a list of those Republicans who did vote against the filibuster, as well as a listing of presidential candidates who did not even vote. Obama, Dodd and Biden didn't even show up to vote, which sorely disappoints me.
It's time for this Congress to get some goddamn sack.
My own Senator, Trent Lott, opened his festering gob to offer this gem of Constitutional ignorance.
Whatever Gonzales may or may not deserve, some Republicans said, it's not the Senate's job to hold forth on a member of the president's Cabinet.
"This is a nonbinding, irrelevant resolution proving what? Nothing," said Sen. Trent Lott (news, bio, voting record), R-Miss. "Maybe we should be considering a vote of no confidence on the Senate or on the Congress for malfunction and an inability to produce anything."
Actually, Trent, it IS the Congress' job to hold forth on a member of the President's Cabinet when that member is breaking the fucking law. When that Cabinet member has lied to Congress, dissembled, obfuscated and flip-flopped on his and his subordinates' roles in an obviously illegal way, it is exactly the Congress' job to punish that sort of shit. Not doing this job for four years is what lost the Republicans their majority in 2006, it's what got people killed in New Orleans during Katrina, and it's what continues to get our soldiers killed needlessly in Iraq.
The craven nature of politics in this Senate is astounding. This paragraph should get the blood boiling.
Among the Republicans voted for the no-confidence resolution were four who
had already called for a new attorney general: Sens. John Sununu of New
Hampshire, Gordon Smith of Oregon, Chuck Hagel of Nebraska and Norm
Coleman of Minnesota. Joining them were Specter and Maine Republicans
Olympia Snowe and Collins.
Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, an independent who often votes with the
Democrats, voted no.
...
Those not voting included Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a presidential candidate who had called for Gonzales'
resignation.
That list is full of pussies, if you'll forgive my profanity. That list is full of people who think it's acceptable to say Gonzales should be fired, but won't grow enough of a pair to actually vote on a resolution that puts that belief on Congressional record. Lieberman shows that he is a liar, having pledged to vote with the Democratic caucus despite his "Independent" status. He has consistently voted in lockstep with this White House.
But the worst offenders of craven cowardice in this Senate seem to be coming out of the Democratic majority.
Short of impeachment, Congress has no authority to oust a Cabinet member, but Democrats were trying anew to give him a push.
I think it's time the Democrats stop gently nudging the intransigent rock that is President Bush and his cabal, and starts swinging a John Henry-sized sledgehammer. It's time the impeachment process was begun on a great number of administration heavyweights, not the least of which is Gonzales. He has been caught lying to Congress on multiple occasions. One such lie was the claim that he had not spoken with any of the upcoming witnesses in the hearings beforehand. Monica Goodling stated under oath that he did meet with her, to "comfort" her. He's consistently said one thing in press conferences, only to change the story in front of Congress when new evidence came to light. Perhaps the Democrats lack the votes to impeach, or do not want to be seen as the Congressional Republicans were seen after the useless Clinton impeachment.
The difference, of course, is that while Clinton's crime was certainly impeachable, it lacked the true weight of what most reasonable people would consider "high crimes and misdemeanors." If a politically-motivated purge of the nation's prosecutorial vanguard isn't a high crime, I don't know what is. Perhaps lying to the public to get us into a costly, unnecessary war. Maybe even giving good ole boy contracts to corrupt corporate campaign contributors then watching as those contractors defraud the government out of billions of dollars. One might even say that letting an entire major metropolitan area drown while giving sweetheart contracts to contributors who fail to even deliver ice to the evacuees would be a high crime worthy of impeachment.
But in order for that to happen, this Senate, this entire Congress is going to have to grow a pair. You were elected to clean up the shitpool that is the Bush government, by whatever Constitutional means are available. The clock is ticking. Don't waffle about vote counts, don't let the threat of an inevitable veto forestall your efforts. You know the President is going to use every tool at his disposal, including the extralegal ones he makes up on the fly, to cover his own ass. So stop throwing spitballs, and start lobbing Constitutional grenades.
You have the backing of the Constitution and of at least 65% of the American people. Get to work.
Update: Here is a list of those Republicans who did vote against the filibuster, as well as a listing of presidential candidates who did not even vote. Obama, Dodd and Biden didn't even show up to vote, which sorely disappoints me.
Labels: Bush Administration, Fascism, Government Corruption
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The Shortest Term
Posted on
Friday, May 25, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
The last week has been a depressing one for anyone following Congressional activity, unless you are a fan of the current administration and its army of sycophantic fearmongers. First we had the news that a "compromise" had been reached in the immigration battle, a compromise which promised to give President Bush and his corporate backers the cheap slave labor it wanted. Then, we were treated to the news that the Democrats in Congress had reached a "compromise" with President Bush on Iraq war funding. The word compromise is in quotes because both of these deals are nothing like a compromise, unless your definition of compromise is the one used by the Bush administration. You know the definition, as seen in their wonderful diplomatic relations with North Korea, Iran and the UN. Give us what we want or we'll do it anyway and blame you when it fails. And if we're being really petulant, we'll blow the shit out of you and everyone we love in a fit of pique. The two deals struck by Congress with the White House this week represent a low point in politics, and are a depressing reminder that the Democratic party still have not gotten their collective shit together.
This Democratic majority came in with clear mandates from the people of this country. The message was clear. The Bush administration and its rubber stamp Congress were driving this country into ruin, and the Democrats were needed to fix it, real quick like. The main symptom of the problem was clearly the war in Iraq, but it was only a symptom of the real problem. This president and his vice president in charge were dangerously abusive of their power, and were constantly seeking to legitimize that overreaches of power through lies, deception, political wrangling and worst of all, redefining the terms of their office's authority. More than just ending the war in Iraq, the Democrats needed to attack the disease at its core, a runaway rogue branch of government doing what it wanted, when it wanted with no checks to its authority.
These two bills are wretched displays of simpering surrender, resembling the servility of a whipped dog who has rolled over to show its belly to its master. I realize its difficult to go against an obstinate President without the two-thirds majority needed to override his veto. I get that. But that doesn't mean it's suddenly acceptable for this Congress to give up after the first veto.
The immigration bill is a joke. It's a bald-faced paean to the gods of exploitative capitalism. Not only does it grant amnesty to law-breakers, giving illegal immigrants a clear path to citizenship while not helping those immigrants who have chosen to follow the hard yet legitimate path, but it does so for the worst of reasons. Grading immigrants on a point system, it gives greater emphasis on work-related skills than anything else. It's almost a recruiting application for corporations seeking to hire illegals. Even worse, it favors those job skills over family units, which is the galling part. The bill reads like nothing more than a corporate wish list for cheap yet skilled labor. Does this country really want to change the slogan "Give me your tired, your poor,. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" to "Give us your doctors, your engineers because American labor wants too much money and too many benefits?" Protecting the working man from exploitation by corporate greedheads is supposed to be one of the planks of the Democratic Party Platform, and this bill shits upon that ideal.
But the Iraq war funding bill is worse. The Democratic majority was elected to end the Iraq War. Poll after poll after poll have proven that the vast majority of Americans want us to get the fuck out of Iraq as quickly as possible. We are tired of watching Americans die because they are trying to referee the worst type of civil war, one fought over which religious sect gets to control the political power in a country. There may never have been a more obvious mandate for any Congress in history. But the Democratic majority has pissed upon that mandate by offering a bill that gives the President everything he wanted in the first place.
To the Congressional Democrats who voted for this spending bill, I must ask you. What do you think this accomplished? Do you think that by giving the President what he wants now, he'll later show you some love on something you want? If the President were a reasonable man, that might happen, but the President is not a reasonable man. He is the bullheaded retard puppet with Dick Cheney's hand pulling the strings. Dick Cheney is an unreasonable cunt, who believes that compromise involves you agreeing with him completely. They will not budge because they do not have to. Furthermore, despite their intractability causing disruptions in funding to the troops, they will continue to blame the Democrats for the delays and their servile news media will let them do so. These people are cut from the same mold as Newt Gingrich only less cuddly. They will not quit, they will not give up, unless you compel them to do so.
The proper course of action for a responsible majority who cannot override a veto is not to just give in. Every minute our troops are in Iraq is a minute they are the target of someone. They have no support over there. There is no functioning government, police force or army for our troops to get support from. They are in an unwinnable situation, with no fucking idea what conditions will constitute a strategic victory. They are living day to day, trying to keep their head down so that it doesn't get shot off or blown up by one of any number of hidden enemies. The responsible course of action for the majority is to meet the rock with a hard place.
Keep hammering at the timelines. If he vetoes one bill with timelines, send him another goddamn bill with timelines. If he vetos that, send it again. No amount of jiggering, rejiggering, semantics or wordplay is going to garner a Presidential signature if the bill compels him to do anything he does not want to do, especially if it compels him to take responsibility for his failures. And when it comes to the time that the military has no more funds with which to carry out the Iraq war, if the President still will not accept timelines, then refuse to fund the war. Refuse it. It's going to hurt and it's going to seem intransigent. But you know what?
It's the right goddamn thing to do.
The President needs to have his arm twisted. The Congress controls the purse strings. Funding his wars only makes you culpable in senseless slaughter. And if the President still refuses to bring our troops home, impeach him. God knows he's done so many things worth impeachment that I'm quite sure SOMETHING would stick, if nothing more than obstruction of justice and the crime of lying to the American people.
Stop being pussies. Stop worrying about taking the blame in the short term. Take that short term political hit. Nothing will erase the memory of defunding the military like pictures of the troops coming home right as we head into primary season. Republicans who supported the President, who support the war in Iraq will be unable to fight against the image of military families embracing on the tarmac after a long nightmare of separation. That's the image you want to hang on Democratic Presidential Candidates, those joyous reunions of the bravest of men and women in the world.
I would like to give thanks to Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama and all the others who voted against the funding bill. Now if the rest of the Democrats would grow some sack, perhaps we could end this shameful chapter in American history and get back to cleaning up the rest of the administration's messes. New Orleans residents still need houses.
This Democratic majority came in with clear mandates from the people of this country. The message was clear. The Bush administration and its rubber stamp Congress were driving this country into ruin, and the Democrats were needed to fix it, real quick like. The main symptom of the problem was clearly the war in Iraq, but it was only a symptom of the real problem. This president and his vice president in charge were dangerously abusive of their power, and were constantly seeking to legitimize that overreaches of power through lies, deception, political wrangling and worst of all, redefining the terms of their office's authority. More than just ending the war in Iraq, the Democrats needed to attack the disease at its core, a runaway rogue branch of government doing what it wanted, when it wanted with no checks to its authority.
These two bills are wretched displays of simpering surrender, resembling the servility of a whipped dog who has rolled over to show its belly to its master. I realize its difficult to go against an obstinate President without the two-thirds majority needed to override his veto. I get that. But that doesn't mean it's suddenly acceptable for this Congress to give up after the first veto.
The immigration bill is a joke. It's a bald-faced paean to the gods of exploitative capitalism. Not only does it grant amnesty to law-breakers, giving illegal immigrants a clear path to citizenship while not helping those immigrants who have chosen to follow the hard yet legitimate path, but it does so for the worst of reasons. Grading immigrants on a point system, it gives greater emphasis on work-related skills than anything else. It's almost a recruiting application for corporations seeking to hire illegals. Even worse, it favors those job skills over family units, which is the galling part. The bill reads like nothing more than a corporate wish list for cheap yet skilled labor. Does this country really want to change the slogan "Give me your tired, your poor,. Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" to "Give us your doctors, your engineers because American labor wants too much money and too many benefits?" Protecting the working man from exploitation by corporate greedheads is supposed to be one of the planks of the Democratic Party Platform, and this bill shits upon that ideal.
But the Iraq war funding bill is worse. The Democratic majority was elected to end the Iraq War. Poll after poll after poll have proven that the vast majority of Americans want us to get the fuck out of Iraq as quickly as possible. We are tired of watching Americans die because they are trying to referee the worst type of civil war, one fought over which religious sect gets to control the political power in a country. There may never have been a more obvious mandate for any Congress in history. But the Democratic majority has pissed upon that mandate by offering a bill that gives the President everything he wanted in the first place.
To the Congressional Democrats who voted for this spending bill, I must ask you. What do you think this accomplished? Do you think that by giving the President what he wants now, he'll later show you some love on something you want? If the President were a reasonable man, that might happen, but the President is not a reasonable man. He is the bullheaded retard puppet with Dick Cheney's hand pulling the strings. Dick Cheney is an unreasonable cunt, who believes that compromise involves you agreeing with him completely. They will not budge because they do not have to. Furthermore, despite their intractability causing disruptions in funding to the troops, they will continue to blame the Democrats for the delays and their servile news media will let them do so. These people are cut from the same mold as Newt Gingrich only less cuddly. They will not quit, they will not give up, unless you compel them to do so.
The proper course of action for a responsible majority who cannot override a veto is not to just give in. Every minute our troops are in Iraq is a minute they are the target of someone. They have no support over there. There is no functioning government, police force or army for our troops to get support from. They are in an unwinnable situation, with no fucking idea what conditions will constitute a strategic victory. They are living day to day, trying to keep their head down so that it doesn't get shot off or blown up by one of any number of hidden enemies. The responsible course of action for the majority is to meet the rock with a hard place.
Keep hammering at the timelines. If he vetoes one bill with timelines, send him another goddamn bill with timelines. If he vetos that, send it again. No amount of jiggering, rejiggering, semantics or wordplay is going to garner a Presidential signature if the bill compels him to do anything he does not want to do, especially if it compels him to take responsibility for his failures. And when it comes to the time that the military has no more funds with which to carry out the Iraq war, if the President still will not accept timelines, then refuse to fund the war. Refuse it. It's going to hurt and it's going to seem intransigent. But you know what?
It's the right goddamn thing to do.
The President needs to have his arm twisted. The Congress controls the purse strings. Funding his wars only makes you culpable in senseless slaughter. And if the President still refuses to bring our troops home, impeach him. God knows he's done so many things worth impeachment that I'm quite sure SOMETHING would stick, if nothing more than obstruction of justice and the crime of lying to the American people.
Stop being pussies. Stop worrying about taking the blame in the short term. Take that short term political hit. Nothing will erase the memory of defunding the military like pictures of the troops coming home right as we head into primary season. Republicans who supported the President, who support the war in Iraq will be unable to fight against the image of military families embracing on the tarmac after a long nightmare of separation. That's the image you want to hang on Democratic Presidential Candidates, those joyous reunions of the bravest of men and women in the world.
I would like to give thanks to Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama and all the others who voted against the funding bill. Now if the rest of the Democrats would grow some sack, perhaps we could end this shameful chapter in American history and get back to cleaning up the rest of the administration's messes. New Orleans residents still need houses.
Labels: Bush Administration, Government Corruption, Iraq, Politics
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:34 AM
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Yet Another Government Outrage: VA Officials Given Hefty Bonuses
Posted on
Thursday, May 03, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
It has become an indisputable fact that the Bush administration is one which rewards failure in all its forms. The examples are legion. We have the promotion of Condi Rice from the top National Security Post to Secretary of State despite her overseeing the greatest national security intelligence blunder in history. George Tenet receives a Medal of Freedom, ostensibly for overlooking evidence that contradicted the administration's public statements about Saddam's WMD's. Competence, forthrightness and efficiency are not rewarded in the Bush administration, unless these qualities are accidentally attached to unquestioning obsequiousness. Failing upward is a Bushie trademark. But some days, the bullshit just gets to be too much. Today is one such day. How else but incoherent, frothing rage is one to react to this story about Veterans Affairs officials receiving sizable bonuses?
Is this supposed to be the sign of a functioning, small government? These assholes are the same ones who determine budgets for places like Walter Reed Army Medical Center. These bloodsucking profiteers are the ones who set budets for the department, a department created to pay claims to those brave Americans who are wounded in our wars, including the wars we don't need like Iraq. Anyone who has had veterans in their family can attest to the insane amount of time it takes such medical claims to crawl through the bureaucratic belly of the VA. My grandfather used to complain of that problem in the 80's and early '90's and over a decade later, it's still a problem. According to this story, claims take an AVERAGE of 177 days to be paid, over SIX FUCKING MONTHS for wounded verterans to recieve any sort of promised recompense for their sacrifice.
And these fuckers get bonuses? Some of the officials who received a bonus were the same sniveling bitches who used fallacious accounting to hide a $1 billion shortfall in their budget from Congress, most likely because President Bush didn't want to ask for more money for veterans in his budget. While the bonuses these assheads received were not of the obscene amounts that Raging Douchebags like State Farm's Ed Rust, Jr. received, they were still sizeable, some ranging as high as $33,000. I can guarantee you that a vet with a prosthetic leg is a fuckton more deserving of that much money than a burueacrat gathering saddle sores riding a desk in Washington. That $33,000 could probably have gone a long way to removing mold from some rooms at Walter Reed. It might even have paid for an exterminator so the vets wouldn't have Stuart Fucking Little's thug cousin Arturo as a roomate. But the statement made by a VA spokesman really puts this beyond the pale.
You sniveling motherfucker. That's some serious audacity right there. You might as well have walked to the podium of a giant press conference and laid your junk out on the glass for all to see, rubbing your engorged genitalia all over the cameras for good measure. Where the fuck do you get off?
We're not talking about rewarding good service to the American people, you festering gob, we are talking about rewarding people who have shown ineptitude on a grand scale. We are talking about the fact that these assholes have shit upon our men and women in service while reaping bonuses for such insults. In short, we are talking about the pattern of rewarding failure that is the very definition of government corruption. Knowledgeable public servants do not take money for failure. Committed leaders do not grab the cash while their department flounders in incompetence and illegal accounting practices. Leaders lead people to achieve better things, and if they get rewarded for it, it's because their efforts succeeded.
Stop rewarding thieves like this bunch, and perhaps career public servants won't leave for the private sector. Stop handing out sweetheart government contracts to outfits like IAP who are ill-equipped for the task. Stop stealing from the American people while your fearless monkey leader whines about opposition to his treasury-sapping war not supporting the troops. It's your jobs to support the troops, VA, so start fucking doing it.
Is this supposed to be the sign of a functioning, small government? These assholes are the same ones who determine budgets for places like Walter Reed Army Medical Center. These bloodsucking profiteers are the ones who set budets for the department, a department created to pay claims to those brave Americans who are wounded in our wars, including the wars we don't need like Iraq. Anyone who has had veterans in their family can attest to the insane amount of time it takes such medical claims to crawl through the bureaucratic belly of the VA. My grandfather used to complain of that problem in the 80's and early '90's and over a decade later, it's still a problem. According to this story, claims take an AVERAGE of 177 days to be paid, over SIX FUCKING MONTHS for wounded verterans to recieve any sort of promised recompense for their sacrifice.
And these fuckers get bonuses? Some of the officials who received a bonus were the same sniveling bitches who used fallacious accounting to hide a $1 billion shortfall in their budget from Congress, most likely because President Bush didn't want to ask for more money for veterans in his budget. While the bonuses these assheads received were not of the obscene amounts that Raging Douchebags like State Farm's Ed Rust, Jr. received, they were still sizeable, some ranging as high as $33,000. I can guarantee you that a vet with a prosthetic leg is a fuckton more deserving of that much money than a burueacrat gathering saddle sores riding a desk in Washington. That $33,000 could probably have gone a long way to removing mold from some rooms at Walter Reed. It might even have paid for an exterminator so the vets wouldn't have Stuart Fucking Little's thug cousin Arturo as a roomate. But the statement made by a VA spokesman really puts this beyond the pale.
A VA spokesman, Matt Burns, said the department was reviewing Akaka's request. Burns contended that many of the senior officials had been with the departmentfor years, with an expertise that could not be replicated immediately if they were to leave for the more profitable private sector.
"Rewarding knowledgeable and professional career public servants is entirely appropriate," he said. "The importance of retaining committed career leaders in any government organization cannot be overstated."
You sniveling motherfucker. That's some serious audacity right there. You might as well have walked to the podium of a giant press conference and laid your junk out on the glass for all to see, rubbing your engorged genitalia all over the cameras for good measure. Where the fuck do you get off?
We're not talking about rewarding good service to the American people, you festering gob, we are talking about rewarding people who have shown ineptitude on a grand scale. We are talking about the fact that these assholes have shit upon our men and women in service while reaping bonuses for such insults. In short, we are talking about the pattern of rewarding failure that is the very definition of government corruption. Knowledgeable public servants do not take money for failure. Committed leaders do not grab the cash while their department flounders in incompetence and illegal accounting practices. Leaders lead people to achieve better things, and if they get rewarded for it, it's because their efforts succeeded.
Stop rewarding thieves like this bunch, and perhaps career public servants won't leave for the private sector. Stop handing out sweetheart government contracts to outfits like IAP who are ill-equipped for the task. Stop stealing from the American people while your fearless monkey leader whines about opposition to his treasury-sapping war not supporting the troops. It's your jobs to support the troops, VA, so start fucking doing it.
Labels: Bush Administration, Government Corruption
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 9:45 AM
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10 Steps to A Freedom-Less America
Posted on
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
by Gary A. Ballard
I realize it's Godwin's Law to invoke Hitler, fascism and the Nazis in any Internet discussion. Such hyperbole generally shuts down all rational discourse left. But this article by Naomi Wolf is a fantastic compiliation of all the reasons one has to ignore Godwin's Law when discussing the American government these days. This article really should not be a reasonable thing, not in the America I know and love. But it is, and that's why it's supremely important for the citizens of these United States to wake up and keep themselves informed.
Labels: Bush Administration, Fascism, Government Corruption
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posted by Gary A. Ballard @ 3:04 PM
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