2008 Elections: Nuckin' Futs

Does this make you uncomfortable?

Because this is Sarah Palin's church and, quite frankly, we hope never to encounter them:


Sarah Palin's Churches and The Third Wave from Bruce Wilson on Vimeo.

There's some old country-western song we like to listen to, and a couple of lines just earworm us to death. Something about "you better not come on my land, or you'll get buckshot in your pants."

Hmmm ... maybe we should put a sign up on the ol' homestead?

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2008 Elections: More of the Same

From Mark Frauenfelder over at BoingBoing, a graphic (in many senses of the word) illustration of the past 8 years with Chimpy McDrunkensot and Dick "dick" Shootemintehface.

Vote for this guy if you want more of the same:

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The Police State: Rally

Post-rally post here. Pre-rally post here.

The city of Berwyn Heights is holding a rally in support of its Mayor, Cheye Calvo, who was recently subjected to the power of the police state in its rawest and most brutal form when a SWAT team kicked in the door to his house, shot his two black Labs to death, and handcuffed the Mayor (in his underwear) and his aged mother-in-law and interrogated them without benefit of counsel or even clothing (the Mayor's, anyway), for several hours. From the WahPoo:

A rally in support of Calvo and in memory of his dogs has been scheduled for tomorrow evening at a ball field in the town. Berwyn Heights Police Chief Patrick Murphy said his eight-person department has been besieged by phone calls from as far away as Louisiana from people who mistakenly believe his officers were involved.

Murphy said he is angry that, instead, his officers were not informed ahead of time of that the county planned a major operation inside the town limits, especially in light of a 2006 incident in which then-Prince George's Police Chief Melvin C. High expressed formal "regret" that Berwyn Heights police were not told of threats made to an abortion clinic.

"I believe there is absolutely no credible reason why notification to my police department should not have been made," Murphy said. He said he is confident his officers could have entered Calvo's house without violence.

Cpl. Clinton Copeland, a spokesman for the Prince George's police department, said officers had a "no-knock" warrant, which allowed them to enter the house without alerting Calvo. Such warrants are issued when police fear they might face armed suspects. He said they notified Murphy immediately after entering the house.

La Casa de Los Gatos extends its condolences to the Mayor on the loss of his dogs. Labs are just too sweet for us to resist. Not the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but good, sweet doggies.

The Calvo/Tomsic doggies

We sure hope the Mayor sues the asses off the Prince George's County police and the Sherriff's office. Those thugs blatantly violated the Constitution, and, as one of the WahPoo's commenters pointed out, that's just a piece of paper unless its provisions are enforced.

Please consider schlepping over to Berwyn Heights to demonstrate your support for Mayor Cheye Calvo's constitutional rights, if you live out that way.

Just remember, the police are supposed to "protect and serve" the citizenry. Not kick their doors in or shoot them or their children or dogs on mere suspicion. The Constitution's Fourth Amendment requires "probable cause":

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

The police clearly had no reason to suspect Mayor Calvo, his wife (an employee of the State of Maryland) or his mother-in-law would be armed and dangerous, which might have justified the probable cause requirement of the Fourth Amendment. A little research — a friendly conversation with the Berwyn Heights police, for example — would have told them that the couple lived a quiet low-key sort of life and were respected professionals of standing in the community, not drug dealers and scofflaws.

Mind you, the Constitution was created to protect everyone, not just quiet, low-key middle-class white professionals. So the cops don't get a pass for the shooting of Tarika Wilson, either.

Calvo says police did not show him a copy of the warrant, and the press has not been able to obtain a copy:

Mayor Calvo has not been arrested, and neither has his wife or mother-in-law. But, police say anyone living in the house is a person of interest in their investigation. Calvo says he was never shown a search warrant during Tuesday night's raid, and FOX 5 was unable to obtain a copy from circuit court.

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Civil Rights: Holy Quacking Duckshit

You know it's getting bad when you can hardly finish blogging one case of thuggish assault against the citizenry before another is reported.

So, Ohio, you got a little competition here. Missouri's trying for the crown. They're behind, but you never know.

Raw Story is reporting that Missouri police tasered a 16-year-old boy with a broken back and a broken foot NINETEEN TIMES. Read that carefully and slowly, because it needs to sink in. The kid is 16 years old. He's not the type of 16 year old who stands 6' 7" and weighs 350 lb. Judging from the photo, he looks like a skinny teenager, average size or less.

Not too long ago, police in Lousiana tasered a man nine times. He died after the seventh tasing. The man, Baron Pikes, was a healthy 21-year-old who weighed 247 lbs. The incident was clearly race-motivated and made us too fucking furious to blog it. So, if a healthy, large man dies after seven shocks with a taser, what the hell have the cowardly Missouri police done to this kid?

From the article:

Ozark Police Capt. Thomas Rousset attempted to explain why the taser was used:

"He refused to comply with the officers and so the officers had to deploy their Tasers in order to subdue him. He is making incoherent statements; he's also making statements such as, 'Shoot cops, kill cops,' things like that. So there was cause for concern to the officers."

Oh, wow. Real scary, huh, guys? First off, he's a kid. OK, maybe he was on meth or PCP, under which circs even a skinny kid could be a danger to others. But hey, looky here, the kid's broken his fucking back, fer crying out. What was he gonna do, whip his dick out and piss on you from a prone position? And what means "he refused to comply"? The kid's back was broken, you cowards. Did he refuse to get up against the wall? Well, he couldn't, could he? Does that mean you have to taser him nineteen fucking times?

Maybe we were better off when these assholes only carried guns. At least if they shot the kid, they'd be in clear violation of his civil rights. Now that they've got this deadly new toy, they can injure all kinds of people repeatedly and get off scot-free. Because, yasee, no one will admit (except for the victims and a few of us liberal bleeding-hearts) that it is a fucking deadly toy.

Come to think of it, why are such wussy, terrified people being hired as cops? Clearly they'd be better off working in daycare for infants or something. Oh, waitaminnit. They're the type to taser "dangerous" infants.

Geez, being cynical these days is a losing proposition. The more cynical you get, the faster reality exceeds your expectations. So, Jor Jee, about these here freedoms that teh terr'ists hate us for? The ones that you sent everybody's kids and relatives and friends off to fight for "over there" so we don't have to fight them over here? What are they exactly? Because, yaknow, not to nitpick or anything, but between FISA and the wholesale breakdown of law and order, we're not seeing a whole lot of these here fucking freedoms. Just sayin'.

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Politics: The Police State

Hello, What. The. Fuck? Ohio? What is going on here?

Police in Ohio apparently went to the home of a legally blind diabetic cancer patient in her fifties, looking for her son, a felon. The woman, Denise Harris, was suspicious, for legitimate reasons WHIO TV says they will air tonight in an interview with her.

Police are claiming they knocked on her door and she "became combative" and didn't want to talk to them. So they tased her.

Excuse me? They fucking WHAT? Is somebody putting mind-altering drugs in the water in Ohio? The Hope Steffey case wasn't bad enough? The Tarika Wilson case wasn't bad enough?

Look at me, Ohio, I am talking to you goddammit. What the fuck is this? Tasering a woman in her fifties because she doesn't want to talk to you? Have your fucking idiot police ever heard of the Constitution? Specifically the Fifth Amendment thereto?

Oh, yeah, we forgot, Jor Jee wiped his ass on it so you can't read it any more.

Jesus fucking J.H. Christ on a pogo stick with bells on! What the hell gives that you people actually think it's OK to use a weapon that can kill on a blind, diabetic fucking cancer fucking patient???

Just one point in your favour: you proved that you don't discrimate based on race when you slammed blonde, white Hope Steffey face-first into a police cruiser, stripped her naked, forcibly and physically violated her on the pretext of a full body search, threw her shivering beaten naked ass in a jail cell, and videotaped the whole disgraceful thing.

Of course, you killed Tarika Wilson because her boyfriend was a drug dealer. Shot her to death in front of her children.

People, look at this long and good. The police state, which we've blogged repeatedly before, is upon us. Commenter Sungold points out that a pregnant woman was tasered in Ohio last fall. These cops need to have tasers taken away from them.

The "security bracelet" favoured by the DHS in lieu of a boarding pass is looking more likely by the second.

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Politics: Martial Law

When, not if, says the FBI, martial law is imposed, businesses have the right to use deadly force to protect their portion of the infrastructure.

Waitaminnit, dudes. Are those portions not built with wealth created by the labour of the people? On whom is this deadly force to be used? American citizens, who created this infrastructure? Because you don't use private businesses &mdash possibly with the sole exception of Blackwater and such mercenaries, whose sole business is peddling private armed might &mdash to conduct a deadly-force response to well-armed terrorists. For that, you need the military and the police.

It sounds like the FBI wants businesses to either hire mercenaries or arm their workers to use deadly force against unarmed citizens. Can this be?

Rothschild's report details InfraGard, a program set up between the FBI and a number of businesses engaged in maintaining elements of "critical national infrastructure," such as agriculture, banking and finance, the chemical industry, defense, energy, food, information and telecommunications, law enforcement, public health, and transportation. The program's 23,000-plus members provide information to the FBI and in turn receive privileged information from the FBI on threats to infrastructure.

Raw Story has the details. The FBI denies it. However, thanks to Nixon and the lying scum who have succeeded him in the halls of power, plausible deniability has gone the way of the dinosaur.

What the hail is going on here? Is the FBI admitting that the military is broken and the police are not up to the task of guarding our infrastructure against terrorists? Or is it empowering corporations to kill and maim citizens with impunity? Does that, to quote George W. Bush, "goddamned piece of paper," the Constitution, carry any weight with anyone anymore?

Mind you, just yesterday the InnerTubes were ringing with talk about how the FBI is planning to create, at our expense, a billion-dollar biometrics database that will hold information about each and every one of us, down to the whiskers on our collective chinny-chin-chin, the schmucks.

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World: Slipping Into The Fascist State

Image from ToddAlbert.com

Unlike parodist Jonah Goldberg, we do not throw the term "fascism" around lightly. Like the estimable Dorothy Parker, we would like to throw it aside with great force. Preferably into the rubbish pile of history.

Our dictionary defines fascism as:

NOUN: 1. often Fascism a. A system of government marked by centralization of authority under a dictator, stringent socioeconomic controls, suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. b. A political philosophy or movement based on or advocating such a system of government. 2. Oppressive, dictatorial control.

Over in the U.K., Scotland Yard is, presumably at the bequest of the authorities, engaged in electronic eavesdropping of a Labour Party MP whose sole claim to their attentions appears to be a boyhood friendship with an imprisoned constituent who is

accused of running a US-registered website in the late 90's that raised funds for the Taliban and for Chechen militants. He is being held by British authorities pending deportation, although there are no charges against him in that country.

The MP in question, Sadiq Khan, is an activist lawyer who had brought a series of controversial malpractice cases against London police. Khan has campaigned actively against the extradition.

We posit that the actions taken against Khan constitute suppression through terror and censorship, given that the bugging apparently

... violates a long-standing official policy against eavesdropping on members of Parliament.

If there are no charges in the U.S. against the imprisoned constituent Babar Ahmed, why is the British government attempting to deport him? Where are they deporting him? To the U.S.? Have they tried him in a court of law? Of what crimes has he been found guilty?

These questions trouble us. If we are not a nation of laws, if we do not respect our own laws, then what are we?

The movement from democracy and a rule of law to fascism, dictatorship, and a rule of men is a slow slide, not a rapid change. Germans would have risen as one against Hitler if he had immediately proposed a move from a nation grounded in law to a fascist dictatorship. The Munich Beer-Hall Putsch proved that, despite a disillusioned and beaten populace, mass confusion, poverty, and the bleak aftermath of defeat in war, people would not willingly renounce their civil liberties and accept an outright dictator. It took nearly a decade of lies, manoeuvering, chicanery, and an election before the fascistic Nazis could come to power.

We have lived through eight years of rule by an individual with all the mental wherewithal of a shrub. The UK has had his lapdog equivalent in Tony Blair. If we are to halt the slide towards fascism, we - all of us - must speak up and act as best we can.

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World: Suharto Dead

Image from boardgamegeek

Good riddance to bad rubbish, we sez. Under his tyrannical dictatorship, over one million Indonesians lost their lives and even more suffered torture, repression, and loss of their families, wealth, and livelihoods. We will never forget the bodies floating in the rivers, Suharto, you filthy bloodstained monster. Hopefully, he is spending a long hot time in the worst of hells, suffering all the tortures that he inflicted upon the millions of Indonesians who were so unlucky as to be alive when he, with CIA money and assistance, overthrew Sukarno and sold Indonesia piecemeal to Western capitalists.

Of course, it goes without saying that the U.S. is commemorating this lousy dictator who escaped being another Saddam Hussein by a couple of hairs or less. Is the State Department staffed by the psychotically insane, or what? Because anyone who can make a speech like this should be immediately tested for Alzheimers', some other form of senile dementia, massive drug abuse, or clinical psychosis:

"President Suharto led Indonesia for over 30 years, a period during which Indonesia achieved remarkable economic and social development," ambassador Cameron Hume said in the release.

President Suharto is directly responsible for murder and torture and massive political repression in Acheh, East Timor, Irian Jaya, mass resettlements in Bali, and the deaths of at least one million Indonesians, mostly of Chinese descent. Any bets that thousands are saving for the trip to spit on his grave?

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World: Pakistan - The Beginning Of The End

Raw Story reports that "Islamic militants" overran Sararogha Fort in Pakistan, close to the Afghanistan border, killing seven soldiers. The military claims that, of troops in the fort, 20 are missing, while 15 managed to escape to another military outpost some 22 miles away.

Of course, the Pakistani military is famous for its assertions of success in the face of defeat. The veracity of the military and governmental spokesweasels is such that anyone betting money on them will be lucky to come home in a barrel, sans shoes, at that. The "Islamic militants," for example, could be resurgent Taliban. They could equally well be Balochs or Pathans in revolt against the hideous oppression that's been meted out to them for some three or four decades. Oppression that has intensified recently, as witnessed by clashes in Balochistan.

In a poignant quote, the reporter states about the military spokesweasel's announcements:

It was not immediately possible to verify the army's claim that 50 attackers died in the assault; in the past the rebels have given much lower figures for their own casualties.

With the recent expulsion of an American journalist, it appears other writers must be more circumspect than to outright call the various apparatchiki liars, as such.

Now Musharraf's spokesweasels announce that he is leaving soon on a trip:

... Pakistan's Foreign Ministry announced Musharraf will travel next week to Belgium, France, Switzerland and Britain to meet with European leaders and attend the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.

Meanwhile religious extremist and corrupt tinpot Nawaz Sharif waits in the wings. Sharif's primary claim to fame is that he made Pakistan a nuclear power. That should be real reassuring to the idiots in the West who schemed and plotted and pushed Benazir Bhutto into returning to Pakistan so she could be assassinated, even as they propped up their good friend and "gentleman" Pervez Musharraf to the tune of billions of dollars.

A pertinent quote about Sharif's relationship with Musharraf:

There was personal bad blood between General Musharraf and Mr Sharif, added Hussain. The President was angered that Mr Sharif once refused to allow his plane with 200 other passengers on board to land, until it was forced to make an emergency landing with five minutes of fuel left: while Mr Sharif resented General Musharraf for ousting him from power and throwing him into jail.

Will Musharraf suffer the same fate as other unpopular heads of state who have been deposed in absentia?

Pakistan's fractured condition is the definitive pronouncement on Bush's failures in foreign policy.

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World: Pakistan - How Long?

Auntie Beeb reports that Pervez Musharraf's government has deployed paramilitary troops to guard wheat supplies around the country. Wheat is a staple food in Pakistan, and Musharraf's government is accusing hoarders and suppliers of manufacturing a crisis in the food supply.

Such crises usually occur when a deeply unpopular government gives people reason to fear for their future. People begin hoarding necessities, like food and petrol. Many flee the country or go into hiding. A substantial black market springs up. Prices go higher, scarcities get worse,and eventually, an enraged populace brings the government down. Or another power player decides the time has come to move and engineers a coup.

Anyone who thinks Musharraf will escape from this with a whole skin has another think coming. One of the reasons Musharraf can yawp about not being impeached is, he's rigging the elections. The other, more significant but never discussed, reason is - Pakistan has a history of executions rather than impeachments.

And Benazir Bhutto's assassination has opened deep ethnic rifts in the failed state of Pakistan. The tribal areas of Baluchistan and the Northwest Frontier provinces have been in open revolt for quite some time now - several decades. And the assassination has caused a break between the Punjabi population and the Sindhi population. Musharraf's status as a mohajjir (immigrant from India) plays into this, with no good consequences foreseeable.
Pertinent snips from Auntie Beeb's article:

The state-run Utility Stores Corporation has been selling flour at the official rate of 18 rupees ($0.30) per kg.

However, the BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Karachi says those queuing up outside are often told that the store has run out of stock.

There have been wheat and rice shortages across South Asia in recent weeks and world prices have reached record highs.

Yet, Musharraf claims that posting paramilitary guards at stores will prevent store owners from selling more than the government permits them to sell. Does that sound good - or sensible - to you?

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World: Pinkie Bhutto Update

What a surprise. Not. Bhutto told a supporter in the U.S. via email that if any harm came to her, Musharraf would be responsible for failing to provide adequate security, says Raw Story.

A telling quote from the story:

"Benazir was very concerned by the lack of security that she had on her arrival in Karachi on October 18th," Siegel said. "The circumstances around the attempt on the night of the 18th, the morning of the 19th, was very, very suspicious. ... There was no investigation of that horrendous killing which killed 179 people. She had asked that Scotland Yard and the FBI be brought in for forensic help for the investigation. The government of General Musharraf absolutely refused."

Why refuse top-notch investigators? Unless, that is, you have something to hide.

Raw Story has the video clip of the news program on which this information aired.

Meanwhile, Musharraf's government is now claiming that Bhutto hit her head on a lever in her sunroof while attempting to duck (duck what?), and that caused so severe an injury that her brain oozed out of her skull. Say what? Story's getting less likely by the second, innit?

More interesting -

• Musharraf's security police, who were supposed to be protecting Bhutto, abandoned their posts shortly before her death;
• Doctors at the hospital to which she was taken are now saying there was no evidence of bullet or shrapnel wounds to the head and no bullets in her skull or body;
• No autopsy was performed;
• She is now buried - it may appear that the burial took place with unseemly haste, but it is customary among Muslims to bury as soon as possible after death.

Still, these are some interesting questions, it should be popcorn-worthy to see Musharraf's spokesweasels attempt to answer them.

So far, said spokesweasels have been working hard at drumming up the old bogeyman, al-Qaeda. Sorry, Perv old boy, but if al-Qaeda could assassinate Bhutto when she was under your protection, and in such a public manner, then your intelligence and security people are not doing such a great job at all, don't you think. What's more, why should al-Qaeda target Bhutto now? Much better for them to target you, and wipe her out at their leisure in the ensuing chaos. After all, all she had was a bunch of supporters "willing to die" for her. You have the army, air force, navy, police, ISI, and who knows what-all else.

And, according to Raw Story:

... it remains unclear precisely who was responsible and some speculation has centered on Pakistan's intelligence service, the ISI, its military or even forces loyal to the current president Pervez Musharraf. Rawalpindi, where Bhutto was killed, is the garrison city that houses the Pakistani military's headquarters.

"GHQ (general headquarters of the army) killed her," Sardar Saleem, a former member of parliament, told Shah at the hospital.

Whatever the case, Bhutto's precise cause of death may never be known because of the failure to administer an autopsy. The procedure was not carried out because police and local authorities in Rawalpindi did not request one, according to IBNLive, but the government plans a formal investigation why this was the case.

Perhaps the local authorities were told that they'd better not request an autopsy?

Pervy, we suspect your European and American paymasters - who were definitely backing Bhutto over you, since her corruption merely involved money, not arms, ammo and nuclear weaponry - are not buying your story at all. In fact, since they were working hard and paying top dollar to have her jointly holding power with you, they're probably upset enough to turn the money tap off, old chum. Then where do you go?

Islamic nations are pretty pissed off with you, for sucking up to the Chimperor. And as for the non-Islamic nations, the only ones that have any interaction with you are the U.S. and the U.K. The U.S. is the prime real estate for deposed dictators, but you made little georgie mad, as well as royally pissing off a ton of Pakistani-Americans. Besides, people don't mind paying for the hangman to do their dirty work, but nobody invites him over for dinner.

The jig is up, Pervy. Better get ready for the neck-stretching coming your way. At least we won't have to look at your dreadful rug any more.

Interestingly, the U.S. is beating the drum of al-Qaeda so hard, one can only wonder if the chimperor's people were somehow involved in helping with the assassination. Without telling Dumbwit McFuckpants, of course. I don't think Cheney tells george much of anything, just feeds him the results afterwards and smiles a twisted smile watching the idiot dance as he tries to explain the facts.

Raw Story has some of the details.

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Politics: Presidents and Serial Killers

While rooting around in Watertiger's comments, today, we came across an interesting link which led us to this:



Does it bother you that the current occupant of the highest office in the land bears such an eerie resemblance to a famous serial killer?

A link on the site led us to this article in the Guardian about Bush. It's a good article, but we disagree with one premise, that Bush believes his enemies are evil. We don't think Bush believes anything. We think he is so consumed by rage and fear that he spends every minute of every day distracting himself from his inner landscape, so that he never truly has to think or feel. Because if he allowed a thought or feeling to escape from his tight control, all the rest would follow, and then that country-hick facade would crumble to be replaced by the terrified, empty, furious, worthless little man that he truly is. And he doesn't want anyone to see that. See what we mean?


Another thing: why do the British papers have so much better coverage of American news?

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Politics: Impeachment Hearings

Yay for Robert Wexler. He's taking the impeachment resolution to the Web. Wanna impeach but can't because weak-kneed asskissers and weasels in Congress insist impeachment is "off the table"? Put it back on the table with Rep. Robert Wexler.

Raw Story has the details. For those too impatient to bother about the story, go directly to Rep. Wexler's impeachment site and let him know how you feel.

This round it's Cheney. Next round, if the Chimperor hasn't gone yet, it'll be his turn.

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World: Benazir Bhutto Under House Arrest Again

Associated Press reports that Pervez Musharraf has placed Benazir Bhutto under house arrest again. Lovely.

Bhutto's aide, Sen. Safdar Abbasi, said the seven-day detention order was not binding because neither Bhutto nor one of her representatives had been served with the document.

"We will go ahead with the march," he told The Associated Press.

The U.S. and the U.K. have been meddling in Pakistan's internal politics, and the whole mess has now blown up in their faces. We don't endorse Musharraf or Bhutto, but Pakistan is a sovereign nation, with the right to determine her own path. Bush is an utter failure at foreign policy or, indeed, any policy matters. He simply doesn't have the experience or wisdom to formulate policy. His idea of policy is to bind his balls up and strut across the deck of an aircraft carrier. That's not policy. That's braggartism.

Needless to say, all the messes that Bush has created were quite foreseeable to many - no, any - people with a reasonable degree of education and an understanding of negotiation and interaction. You don't win arguments by threatening to beat people up. You win them by understanding that everybody involved in an interaction has to feel like they're winning something, whatever that something might be. If you try beating up everyone else, either they'll join together and beat the holy living shit out of you, or they'll resent you and keep looking for ways to get back at you. And no one wins those prolonged, endless battles.

Well, I guess now that Idiot Boy has fucked up in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia, and "Old Europe," it might be time to send him off to do what he does best - get drunk and clear brush. Impeachment, anyone?

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Politics: Judge Slaps White House With Restraining Order

Oh, my. At last, a judge has the gumption to stand up to the lying shills in the WH. According to a Cox Newspapers Washington Bureau report, the WH has been told to

“ ... preserve media, no matter how described, presently in their possession or under their custody or control, that were created with the intention of preserving data in the event of its inadvertent destruction,” wrote Kennedy in a Nov. 12 opinion in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

The order was sought by the National Security Archive, a public interest library at George Washington University, and the Washington-based watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

Will we finally get to see what the crooks, liars, and thugs hiding in the White House have been up to all these years? Let's hope so.

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Human Rights: Burma (Update)

Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the U.N.'s special envoy on human rights in Myanmar (Burma) visited Myanmar's notorious Insein prison today as part of his probe into rights abuses and the actual death toll from the junta's suppression of pro-democracy protests.

Now there's a man with guts. I'd like to see the Chimperor visit any country without full security detail.

Pinheiro will try to meet political detainees and investigate claims of abuses against ethnic minority groups. He leaves Burma on Thursday. He visited the notorious Insein jail outside Yangon for about two hours, according to Myanmar's state television. He was accompanied by UN and government officials, and escorted by police, witnesses said.

That would be Burmese police, of course. Think the Chimperor would dare visit Iraq with an Iraqi police escort? He takes his own security detail to friendly countries, where they foul up the traffic and irritate thousands of ordinary citizens who need to get things done, but must sit in their cars instead as the Lord God High Panjandrum Monkeyface and his minions drive by.

Pinheiro also held talks with senior Buddhist monks on Monday, the UN said, but did not reveal any details.

A Myanmar official confirmed that earlier Monday the envoy visited the Ngwekyaryan monastery in South Okkalapa, a satellite town of Yangon.

According to the Raw Story report on the visit,

Political analysts say the generals have allowed the UN visits to reduce pressure on them ahead of the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which opens in Singapore on Sunday.

Daw Suu Kyi, the democratically elected leader of Burma, deserves your energies and activism on her behalf and the behalf of her brutally repressed people.


Talk to your political representatives and urge them to do something. The Chimperor is an ineffective and worthless loser, and no one is listening to him. Congress, or your equivalent parliamentary body, needs to do something. Instead of meddling in Iraq where we don't belong, and which we've now set on fire like a careless child with a box of matches, we should have been concentrating all along on Afghanistan and Burma and other such countries. But, no. The chimperor preferred killing your children and other people's children.

It's time to impeach the son-of-a-marsh sponge.

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Human Rights: Burma

Pic courtesty of Auntie Beeb

The International Herald Tribune tells us that Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the U.N.'s special envoy on human rights in Myanmar (Burma) has been invited to that country by the military junta for a discussion next week.

The junta, which seized power in 1988, refused to hand over power to Aung San Suu Kyi's National Democracy League when it won a landslide victory in 1990. Aung has spent 10 of the past 17 years under house arrest.

Things heated up again this year when Buddhist monks led protests against the junta, and the brutal military response caused worldwide reaction. Although the reaction so far has been limited to apparent fainting spells followed by enthusiastic application of fans and smelling salts, one can only hope that eventually governments everywhere will do the right thing (we're looking at you, India, China, Singapore, Malaysia), and let the junta know that its actions are beyond the pale.

According to The Independent, the scale of the protests have the military worried. Major General Hla Htay Win was "permitted to retire," as the junta euphemistically expresses it, for being "too lenient" with protestors in Rangoon. Given that this is the same general who ordered bloody predawn raids on monasteries resulting in the arrest, imprisonment, torture, and beating deaths of many monks, and firing into unarmed crowds of peaceful protestors, one wonders what General Than Shwe, the despotic monster of the dungheap that constitutes the military junta, had in mind.

According to rumours, that worthy (Than Shwe)

... was worried enough as the street protests grew, that he sent his family to safety in Dubai.

"The stories are that he is isolated and that his staff are afraid to give him bad news but we do believe that he is the one to give the orders to crack down, so he is not totally out of touch,'' said Shari Villarosa, the US charge d'affaires in Rangoon.

Meanwhile, Pinheiro, who has been barred from Burma since 2003, had this to say:

... he "welcomes" the invitation to visit Nov. 11-15.

The statement, issued by the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva, said Pinheiro noted that the invitation "sends a positive indication of the desire of the authorities to cooperate with his mandate" to investigate human rights in Myanmar.

After getting initial permission last month for the visit, Pinheiro said he would demand access to prisons and try to determine the number of people killed and detained by the military government in September's crackdown on peaceful protesters.

"If they don't give me full cooperation, I'll go to the plane, and I'll go out," Pinheiro said.

Mr. Pinheiro, could you lend one of your testicles to our Democratic party? They seem sadly lacking in that respect.

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A Coup Has Occurred

© Copyright 1998, Regents of the University of California

A friend sent me an email with a link to a speech made by Daniel Ellsberg on Sept. 20, 2007. In it he warns us of the consequences of what will happen if a 9/11-like event happens again before the next Presidential elections. Also, he sums up what has happened in the past 5 years: essentially, a coup has occurred.

And, lastly, he urges us to convince the Democrats, especially the very influential ones, that they must be true to the oaths that they swore when they took their office: to protect and uphold the Constitution. But, they haven't been doing it.

To read this very important transcript of Ellsberg's speech, click here.

You can read more of Daneil Ellsberg's recent writings here.

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Immigration - Fit Hits Shan

Well, we blogged it back when, and nobody listened.

Seems to me the only time we hear people whining about immigration is when their own comfort is somehow affected. But do they target the people responsible for their discomfort? The big multinational corporations that ship hundreds of thousands of decent paying jobs overseas to be performed by prison labour and slave labour while simultaneously insisting on huge tax breaks and multimillion dollar salaries and bonuses for the executive echelon?

No, their wrath is aimed at the illegals from Mexico, Guatemala, Salvador, Nicaragua, who toil in the fields for a pittance, and often end up unpaid and turned in to the authorities to be deported.

Now farmers are saying it, and is anyone listening?

NBC reports that farmers in California are worried that their produce will rot in the fields because no illegal immigrants are showing up to pick it, thanks to tightened border security.

We already know that heating costs are going right through the roof this winter.

We know that the recent push for corn-based ethanol is sending food costs climbing.

We know that the Iraq war is costing us $720 million PER FUCKING DAY. And that's after underfunding the VA, refusing soldiers mental health treatment, making them wait 6 months before their benefits kick in, using dirty tricks to deny them college funding via the GI bill, underestimating the rate of TBI (traumatic brain injury) and denying them treatment for it, and illegally refusing to increase their basic pay.

Chimpy McBrainless claims he's listening, but farmers ain't buying it:

The Bush administration has learned of the possible loss of millions of dollars for thousands of farmers throughout the country, and is attempting to loosen visa requirements for workers.

However, farmers told Garza the attempt is "too little too late."

Of course, the Idiot 'n Thief only claims he's listening because that lets him blame - Congress, not the rabid conservative base who have been threatening to desert what's left of the Repuglican Party in droves in retaliation for its perceived "support" of brown people.

Well, be careful what you wish for, you fucking troglodytes, because you might get it.

Experts expect the impact on agribusiness to affect Americans' pocketbooks, Garza said.

[...]

The owner of JJ&F Food Store, John Garcia, said in the long run consumers will feel the impact of fewer farm workers.

"The supply is going to be down," said Garcia. "Demand is going to be up. It's going to increase. It's going to increase a lot."

I'm telling you. These mean "compassionate conservative" motherfuckers are planning to starve us to death. When food riots break out, they'll send in Blackwater (because the National Guard and Army are off in Iraq, where they can't protect the citizens against the government's unwarranted seizure of power) and kill us in the streets like rabid dogs.

Impeach the bastards NOW!

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Human Rights - Mutiny in Myanmar?

Via Raw Story comes a report from Newsdesk Special that the army in Myanmar is mutinying, refusing to shoot protestors and turning their guns against each other. If this is true, it is good news for this small, troubled, isolated country. The article states, in part:

The organisation Helfen ohne Grenzen (Help without Frontiers) is reporting that "Soldiers from the 66th LID (Light Infantry Divison) have turned their weapons against other government troops and possibly police in North Okkalappa township in Rangoon and are defending the protesters. At present unsure how many soldiers involved."

Soldiers in Mandalay, where unrest has spread to as we reported this morning, are also reported to have refused orders to act against protesters.

It is long past time that this repressive military regime were gone. Let us hope that the Burmese people can resolve their problems in a peaceful way, that the military junta is disempowered permanently, and that Aung San Suu Kyi regains her rightful position as the elected leader of Burma.

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