Bush Panders to Religious Crackpots

The entire "Terri" business makes me crazy. This is one of those stories that should have been of import only to family and friends. Instead, it became the tabloid fodder that kept the mainstream talking heads jumping up and down and screaming at one another for most of the last week. The freak faction of the Republican party (most of it, that is) joined in the moaning, hand-wringing, and sanctimonious display for the benefit of the credulous media.

OK, I've got a question about all this stuff. Why do people who think they are talking to God have to talk funny? you know what I mean - the moaning, quivaring voice - the shaking and kneeling of the body - the waving hands and rolling eyes. I mean, these people act as if God refuses to hear people who aren't acting is though they are possessed. What is that all about? And why do mainstream reporters ignore it? It's weird - and somebody needs to call them on it. There is no scriptural justification for it; the Bible doesn't - anywhere - suggest that believers put on this kind of display. Far from it. On the contray, Jesus suggests that when people pray they should do so in private and avoid appearing like the hypocrits who pray publicly in order to be appreciated by the public.

Ya know, you just have to believe that if God created the entire Space/Time Continuum and all its complexities he doesn't need some inbred dipshit Southern Baptist to explain to him what he should do about a particular situation. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.

One can only hope that the inherent irrationality and silliness of the "Christian Right" will do them in. But experience demonstrates that many truely stupid movements - the Nazis, for example - survived for a long time and did terrible damage before finally self destructing.

Bush vs SOB's Peace of Mind

SOB woke up at 3:00 AM this morning from a frighteningly real dream of apocalyptic doom; sharply rising gas prices, declining stock prices, push-back from foreign countries no longer willing to support the self serving policies of an American empire playing blind-mans-bluff with the world, resulted in the to be expected collapse of U.S. trade and the value of the dollar, an increase in the crushing growth of the national debt, collapse of consumer confidence, dramatic rise in unemployment, etc, etc - bleak times.

Then what? From that position - which is almost certainly on the horizon - where can we go? How do we make progress? I don't think anyone in our "representative" government has a clue how to make this right. We deserve better than this.

Billmon vs Wolfowitz

Billmon is the best; his take on the appointment of Paul Wolfowitz to be President of the World Bank is priceless.

The Army Says US Losing Iraq War

In a truely strange twist, a report by the US Army's official historian claims that the US started to lose the war in Iraq within three months of toppling Saddam's regime:

"In the two to three months of ambiguous transition, U.S. forces slowly lost the momentum and the initiative gained over an off-balanced enemy," the report said. "The United States, its Army and its coalition of the willing have been playing catch-up ever since." . . .The report disclosed the lack of planning by the U.S. military for the occupation of Iraq. Over the last year, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his aides have been blamed for lack of post-war planning based on their assessment that the military campaign in Iraq would be brief and quickly lead to a democratic and stable post-Saddam Hussein government.

In contrast, Wilson said army planners failed to understand or accept the prospect that Iraqis would resist the U.S. forces after the fall of the Saddam regime. He deemed the military performance in Iraq mediocre and said the army could lose the war.

"U.S. war planners, practitioners and the civilian leadership conceived of the war far too narrowly," the report said. "This overly simplistic conception of the war led to a cascading undercutting of the war effort: too few troops, too little coordination with civilian and governmental/non-governmental agencies and too little allotted time to achieve success."

So, the Army's own official report says we are fucked in Iraq but could still pull things out if we recognized our mistakes. George W. Bush, however, never makes mistakes - at least not any that he will admit. So, we continue to plod along without a plan and pretend that everything is just fine. What a crock.

Bush Gives the UN the Finger

Back when Bush appointed the very sinister John Negroponte to be Ambassador to the UN, SOB figured things couldn't get much worse. I mean, after all, Negroponte had one of those evil, in the shadows kind of "diplomatic" backgrounds connected to an ugly series of US covert actions - from the Phoenix assassination program in Viet Nam through the illegal Contra wars in Central America where he covered up the actions of US supported death squads and terrorist repression of uppity local populations of the poor. Then Negroponte was appointed ambassador to Iraq - of course - an entire new population in need of righteous blood letting. Unfortunately, that opened up his old job at the UN. Now comes George W. Bush, fresh from his "fence mending" tour of Europe, and one could hope that he would reach out to someone who could do justice to the needs of the UN post.

But no. That would be expecting way too much. Bush is, after all, a mean, spiteful and vendictive little man. So, just to show the world what he really thinks of it he tapped what is probably the worst possible choice for the job - John Bolton, the ultimate idiotic neocon; a man who has spent years in a simple minded focus on attacking the UN and all cooperative actions between the US and other countries. Just as he was installed in the State Department to undermine every real diplomatic move made by Colin Powell, so he is now picked to be the man to preside over the deliberate sabotaging of the UN.