The River

Friday, October 29, 2004

MOSH



"We gonna charge, we gonna stomp, we gonna march through the swamp,
We gonna mosh through the marsh, take us right through the doors...."

Thursday, October 28, 2004

John Kerry and John Edwards celebrate Boston victory

(this one's for you, Linda)

One man's war



“Nothing is sacred to liberals.”

He reads the headline on the piece by conservative columnist Jim Wooten in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Hot coffee on the breakfast table at his elbow . In his head, he talks back.

Nothing? Surely there’s something. Ya know, like maybe they love their kids. Maybe? (He shrugs.)

“No! Nothing! Nothing is sacred to liberals. Immoral heathens. America haters. Godless. Me! Me! Me! Be gone with you!”

Lord have mercy. Last night it was your favorite channel. Fox. Only about 30 seconds. It’s all I can take, but it's all I need to get the entirety of their message. Last night it was, “can you believe the disgusting, liberal, fifth column New York Times is trying to take down our commander in chief with this missing explosives story? Incredible. Nothing is sacred to liberals.”

Just like you, Jim. One note. Let’s see what else…(he reads some more). So, Wooten, you say it’s the 60s, eh? Gave birth to unfettered immorality. You're talking about the decade that gave birth to me and all that I hold holy and sacred. Oh but it scares you, right? Right, Mr. Newspaper Columnist? Without conservative conformity, you might have to become an individual, deal with all that messy stuff. What to do? Become a conservative! Kill the 60s! Kill yourself!

No, wait. Just the 60s.

What do you say, Jim? (He reads further)

“You can be saved. Jesus. Come to Jesus. Vote Republican. All will be forgiven.”

(jabing his finger at the area that would be Jim’s chest, if the mug shot wasn’t cropped so closely) Do you really want dialogue? Or are you going to continue to preach from the pulpit your time-honored homilies? Hey, isn’t that where Puff the Magic Dragon was from, a land called homily?

Joking. 60s, you know.

So you say John Kerry is a product of those traitorous 60s and that explains a lot. Well I am too, although I was just a tot. That Kerry, though. Famous anti-war protester! Yow!

Can he be saved? (he scans hungrily)

Hmm…not likely, eh Jim?

“The U.S. -- and God -- are behind 0-7, thanks to John Kerry. Because of his antiwar activities, we lost to Vietnam! Vee-eht-Nam! But thanks to George W. Bush, we will score in Iraq! Tie it up. And then…”

Iran? (“What honey?” Asks Leigh, pouring milk for the little ones.)

(He peeks from behind the paper) Nothing.

“If coach Sharon calls that play, by God, it will come to pass.”

Wow. That would be something, Jim. What do you suppose the ad rates for something like that would be? Better than the Superbowl?

“You think you’re funny.”

Oh, no. I wish I was. But what I want to know, Jim, is do you really think the 60s liberal assault on all that is good and right in our government came “without any responsibility for preservation of social order or for offering workable alternatives”?

“Yes.” (flatly)

Projection! I call upon the court to note. The conservative is projecting.

“What, uh, I…”

That doesn’t describe the civil rights movement, it describes the neocon plan for Iraq!

(Bringing the paper closer, nose almost touching the newsprint) Then you go on to say, (rapid, back and forth eyeball movement) in this column, that “the left,” like it’s some organized goon squad ready to march on your suburban chateau and turn your son gay, was hypocritical and “shrill” when it “attacked” the Catholic Church for its failure to stop priests from sexually abusing children. You say it proved liberals are all about “me” and are unconcerned with the survival of the institution. Gee, that doesn’t sound anything like the right’s attack on Clinton, does it? Except the former is legit and the latter was bogus!

Projection!

...Jim? Jim! (he ruffles the paper) Stop smiling so idiotically and speak to me. I’m right! I’m right! Come on, say it. I beat a conservative. Yes! Stunned him into silence by my superior intellect. Hahaha.

Jim. What are you doing? Why are you on the phone? You can’t call in an air strike. No! No one knows my coordinates. I’m too good for that. I’d never reveal my…..

(he dives beneath the kitchen table)

“Sweetheart, NPR just said Kerry is up in the polls.”

(from beneath the table) Doesn’t matter. Read this. (hand with newspaper appears from below the table).

They’ll come for him. Jim Wooten will lead them. Followed by O’Reilly. Airstrikes. Maybe metaphorical. Maybe not. They keep smiling. Nothing shakes the smile. “One paar-tee. Wuuhhnnnn paaarrteee. Nuhthiing is sacred to lib-ruhls.” They’ll keep chanting it. I think they’re zombies.

“Yes. Subscription department. Yes…..Hi. I’d like to cancel our subscription…”

Wednesday, October 27, 2004

The River makes its first political endorsement

Craig Hill (Green), of the great state of Vermont, for U.S. Senate.

Craig Hill's speech given to an antiwar gathering on the Vermont (US) State House lawn on 25 September 2004

(excerpt)

The official conspiracy theory is that a man in a cave in Asia pulled off 9/11, the catalyzing event that allows for these big money-making wars. $1.4 billion to George W. Bush Senior and the Carlyle Group alone.

How ever did Osama keep our air defense grounded for 1 hour 51 minutes, an air defense second to none, which had performed swiftly and carefully 67 separate times in the 12 months prior to 9/11 in surrounding and escorting wayward aircraft flying outside their flight paths? 67 times from 9/11/2000 to 9/10/2001, but which failed so completely on 9/11.

Osama didn't do that.And neither did Saddam. Bush and his gaggle of warmongers were responsible for that. The question is whether they allowed it or orchestrated it.

The entirety of our air defense was not out for coffee and donuts for 1 hour and 51 minutes that morning. The 9/11 Commisssion says our air defense was confused. I'll tell you where the confusion lies, it's that the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, was a former aide to Condeleeza Rice, and so directed it to the conclusions it reached: Whitewash. No, not Whitewater: Whitewash.

Ask any family members of the victims of 9/11 how that commission refused to ask the questions the family members wanted answers to, but didn't get.

Now, I have put together a 25-minute video detailing what I will tell you bluntly was treason against the People of the United States of America on 9/11. I call it "Treason Inc". Which is not only a description of their behavior since the day the Anarcho-Republican Supreme Court stole the election for the Buscists, "Treason Inc", as in "Murder Inc", the old 1950s term for the Mafia in America---and my apologies to the real Mafia for borrowing that term from them.

The traitors populating and infecting our government are much, much worse. At least in the real Mafia, there is some sense of honor, so the novelists tell us. There is no honor with the scum we know as the Bush administration.I like to say that treason is like botulism: Expose it to oxygen and it dies.

[more]

Tuesday, October 26, 2004

It's like Canada doesn't exist


Hand Counting Can Be Efficient, Fast, Reliable

"An MIT/Cal Tech study done in 2001 shows that manually counted paper ballots are the most accurate system out of the 5 systems used in the last 4 presidential elections. They are totally verifiable, and first-world nations across the globe still use them, including Canada which counted their last presidential election in four hours.

And yet I am told repeatedly by vote reformers that there is no hope of America ever returning to paper ballots because too much money has been spent on the machines, and because the public is being sold on their benefits.

...

A Brief History of Computerized Election Fraud in America
By Victoria Collier

t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Excerpt--

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" --Thomas Jefferson .

... Folks, let's look at this honestly. We are already deep into a horrible and expensive mess that could all be avoided by skipping the computerized middleman and simply counting paper ballots.


These vote machines should be dumped by a righteously angry crowd in a metaphorical Boston Harbor post haste.

More, of course, at blackboxvoting.org

Monday, October 25, 2004

The draft is TOTALLY GONNA RULE

What else is gonna be cool about a draft?

- This time around there won’t be college deferments, so even if you’re already in college, you’ll get to go. It’ll be like cutting class for four fucking years.

- At boot camp, you don’t have to hit the gym anymore because they have personal trainers to scream and beat you at 5 in the morning.

- Okay, it’s not like being a real celebrity, but Michael Moore might include your grieving mom in his next movie.

- The military will give you free health care if you lose a major body part, and they will totally pay for your funeral.

Friday, October 22, 2004

Like a breath of fresh air

It's refreshing when you run across the truth.

Atrios writes:

It's a Good Thing Fareed Zakaria's Name Isn't "John Kerry"

On the Daily Show he just said, "[Iraq] had a good functioning government."

Zakaria thinks Saddam's government was good!

[and, yes, in context it was of course clear what he meant.]


And in the Haloscan comments, JD tells it straight:

What's your point. All Zakaria said was that we destroyed a functioning government and replaced it with chaos. Zakaria's not my favorite pundit but he's not wrong. Saddam was not Hitler. We have killed as many if not more Iraqis than he has if you count the years of sanctions. We sold Saddam the gas that he used on the Kurds. And in the name of so called freedom we have destroyed the Iraqi infrastructure, the culture, and the people. Who is the worse monster here? Zakaria is a rat deserting a sinking ship but he is only saying what he should have said last year before we attacked. As an American my conscience bothers me and no amount of denial is going to soothe me. First we have to destroy the monster within by fully facing the fact that we were wrong to go to war with Iraq. No excuses. The blowback from this will affect us and our children for generations to come. Get mad at Zakaria, George Tenet, even Richard Clarke or John Kerry, etc. for not speaking up sooner

Reading the media 101

And at first, I thought it was just some cartoons on brown paper bags. But no, BAGNewsNotes is a great media analysis site.

Check out A Real Cell Job

and

The Kerry Album: NYTimes Returns To (De)Form

Thursday, October 21, 2004

Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004

By DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON

--

need I say more?

Wednesday, October 20, 2004

Let Freedom Reign

The Bremer Administration Embezzled $8.8 billion



You've probably seen it already, but it's so freaking good I can't not blog it, and Linda has the most complete transcript I've seen: Jon Stewart Bitch Slaps Tucker Carlson on His Own Show

Tuesday, October 19, 2004

The First Bush-Kerry Presidential Debate

SPEAKERS: GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

U.S. SENATOR JOHN F. KERRY (MA), DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE

JIM LEARER, STAFF WRITER, PBS'S "THE NEWSWHORE"


LEARER: Wasup, people? I’m Jim Learer of the Peoples Bullshitting Service, the straight bullshit the people deserve.

I’m sitting in for Jim Lehrer. I'm here at the University of Miami Convocation Center in Coral Gables, Florida, where these two dudes got some ideas ‘bout how American government should be run are gonna go at each other. Listen to what they have to say, so you can make an informed choice on which of the two should have ungodly power.

The debates are sponsored by Frito-Lay, makers of fine TV-watching snacks. And when you’re thirsty, make it a Bud Light.

Tonight's nasty sniping should last about 90 minutes, following detailed rules of engagement worked out by the two dudes. Although they don’t know it, I have not agreed to enforce their bullshit guidelines.

The umbrella topic is foreign policy and homeland security, or how to set the world on fire and sell the fire hose. The questions were composed by me last night at my kitchen table while hammering coffee. The candidates have not been told what they are, so they’ll probably be as surprised as me.

For each question there can only be a two-minute response, although hopefully the questions will haunt the candidates for much longer. There’s supposed to be a 90- second rebuttal, but they can keep going if they’re on a roll. Conversely, really crazy bullshit will be mercilessly buzzered. It could be a quiet night.

There is also a backup buzzer system if needed, wired by a friend of mine, an ex-felon, but a good guy. Just before air time, I asked him how it worked, and he just laughed maniacally. Let’s hope I don’t have to use it.

Candidates may not direct a question to each other. There will be two-minute closing statements, but simply cheesy grins for openers.

There is an audience here in the hall, but they’ve been told to lie back and think of America, except for now, when they join me in welcoming President Bush and Senator Kerry.

(hummummmummcough-bullshit-cough-bullshit-coughmhumummmumm)

LEARER: Good evening, Mr. President, Senator Kerry.

As determined by a coin toss, the first question goes to you, Senator Kerry. You have two minutes.

Do you believe you could do a better job than President Bush in preventing another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States?

KERRY: Yes, I do.

LEARER: Yeah, me to.

KERRY: But before I answer further, let me thank you for moderating. I want to thank the University of Miami for hosting us. And I know the president will join me in welcoming all of Florida to this debate. You've been through the roughest weeks anybody could imagine. Our hearts go out to you, because after the election, you’re going to wish the hurricanes had finished the state completely. But I have a plan for that….

I can make American safer than President Bush has made us. How? My first act as president will be what I call The Kerry Shield. Every man, woman and child (cough, above the poverty level, cough) will receive this shield, which is really a protective, terrorist-proof suit. Some scientists say it cuts off oxygen to the brain, but that should only affect what’s left of our higher cognitive functions, and we’ve proven we can dominate the world without those.

Once you achieve safety at home, you have to look abroad. The other bosses, uh, government leaders, are not happy with how we structured the hostile takeover of Iraq. I too, am deeply offended at President Bush’s lack of business acumen.

I believe American investments are safest and strongest when we are world’s leading deal broker, which means better cooperation between all involved terrorists…I mean interests.

I'll never give a veto to any country over our deals. But I also know how to lead those alliances.

I have a plan, yes, I say unto you I have a plan. A grand plan for grand hand-shakes and back slaps all around the world, so that white men know what’s what and our club is more clubby. The president has fouled the atmosphere, and I, for one, am tired of the irate phone calls.


LEARER: Mr. President, Kerry just hinted at your utter failure. What do you have to say about that?

BUSH: I, too, thank the University of Miami, and say our prayers are with the good people of this state, who've suffered a lot.

And suffering is what good Christians do. For example, I have to suffer this asshole. And especially since September the 11th, we must suffer. September 11th changed how America must look at the world – as victims of the latest Arab bogeyman. Since that day, our nation has been on a multi-pronged crusade to secure the world’s oil and wealth, also knowN as the War on Terra.

We pursued Al Qaida wherever Al Qaida tries to hide. I can’t help it that nobody got it that Al Qaida were in Ire-ack. They hide right around the world’s biggest oil wells. It’s the darndest thing.

We've upheld the doctrine that said if you harbor a terrorist, you're equally as guilty as the terrorist. And the military carries out this doctrine every day when they kill and torture innocent men, women and children in Iraq, in their homes and in their prisons.

And the Taliban are no longer in power. That’s what happens when you refuse an oil deal.

Listen, my opponent and I have a fundamental difference of opinion. I believe that all you need for empire are bombs and PR, and he thinks we need to add diplomacy to the mix, and if we don’t, somewhere down the line we’ll get whacked. But nobody whacks a Bush!

But after September the 11th, BZZZZZZ

LEARER: Our President, ladies and gentlemen. New softball, this time for you, Mr. President. Two minutes.

Do you believe the election of Senator Kerry on November the 2nd would increase the chances of the U.S. being hit by another 9/11-type terrorist attack?

BUSH: No, I don't believe it's going to happen. I believe I'm going to win, because the American people know I know how to lead. I've shown the American people I know how to lead.

I have -- I understand everybody in this country doesn't agree with the decisions I've made. And I made some tough decisions. But people know where I stand.

People out there listening know what I believe. And that's how best it is to keep the peace. September 11th ..BZZZZ

LEARER: I’m gonna have to translate that, (which up to “Sept. 11” is straight from the transcript) cause it’s some serious BS. You said that you don’t think another terrorist attack will happen because you don’t expect to lose, implying that you think it would happen if Kerry won.

Then you told America that it’s okay to disagree with you but that you know how to lead, people know where you stand, what your beliefs are, and that you know best how to keep the peace. You TOLD them what they think.

I’m so deeply offended, I don’t know where to start. For the ones who love that god-bless-America, faith-based bullshit, it’s like a hit of heroin. For the ones who don’t, it’s a promise that you’ll do exactly what you want to do to bring “peace” to the world, which in your Orwellian language means more wars of aggression.

He’s making you look good, Senator. Your response?

KERRY: I believe in being strong and resolute and determined. And I will hunt down and kill the terrorists, wherever they are. BZZZ

LEARER: What are you, fuckin Rambo? Don’t stoop to his bullshit, man.

KERRY: I was just about to say, But we also have to be smart, Jim. And I hope and pray there are enough undecideds who can identify with my obvious intelligence over his corny bullshit.

Iraq didn’t attack us, Jim. We pinned that on Osama bin Laden, and smart means you have to at least give him a new identity and anything else he wants and pretend you killed him. Smart means you sell people on the idea of removing Saddam Hussein, not on the easily disputed WMD charge. It’s another case of bad PR, Jim, and as president, the people will know exactly why I’m sending out the troops and I think they’re so addicted to consumer culture that they’ll approve of it. I have faith in the American people, Jim.

Now, with respect to Osama. If you’re going to play this manhunt game with him, if he has truly turned rogue, you don’t let him escape in the mountains of Tora Bora. We had him surrounded. The president relied on Afghan warlords to get him and he got away. He outsourced that job too. That's wrong.

This president has made, I regret to say, a colossal error of judgment. He thinks we can outsource our killing, but I say we have the best-trained killers in the world. That’s why my military budget will be bigger than his.

LEARER: President Bush?

BUSH: First of all, of course I know Osama bin Laden attacked us. I know that! ….He did, didn’t he?

LEARER: (slow, deliberate nod).

BUSH: Right… let me finish…..need some wood? No? How about some helicopter gunships? I have more than he ever dreamed about. And my military budget will skyrocket in 2005, count on it.

I saw the first plane hit the tower, and I thought, that’s either a bad pilot or today’s the day. So I went to the United Nations. I didn't need anybody to tell me to go to the United Nations, except my dad. He said that way when I launched my war, I could say it was because the U.N. was a buncha do nothing appeasers. He said I’d also get a sense of where the European powers stand on our new American empire, pop-a-cap-first doctrine.

Well, god damn, Jim, it worked like a fuckin charm….okay, I KNOW, yeah, sorry.

(ahem) Jim, after September 11th BZZZZ!

LEARER: Senator Kerry?

KERRY: God, I’m losing to this guy.

BUSH: Of course you are. I’ve bombed Arabs and you haven’t.

KERRY: That’s the first intelligent thing I’ve heard you say. But there are other parts of the world with more educated and progressive populations, and they don’t like that attitude.

BUSH: Fuck’em. We were attacked on September 11th.BZZZ!

Fuck you too, Jim.

September 11th BZZZZ!
September 11th! BZZZZ!
SEPTEMBER 11th (BOOM!)

LEARER: Senator Kerry?

KERRY: Is he…?

LEARER: Comatose. Smoking, but comatose. You have the final word.

KERRY: Thank you, Jim. My fellow Americans, George W. Bush and his cronies engineered the September 11th attack on America. They made the decision that all powerful bureaucrats make – what is the trade-off in loss of life for our profit margin?

And so, they allowed the attack so that they could convince Americans that we have to fight in the Middle East. Because they know that the world’s oil supply will soon be gone. But they also know that war requires massive, fear-based propaganda, so they concocted a surefire way to demonize the people in the way of our resources.

I say we need a change. I say we can go about it like we did when we invaded this country. Genocide validated not by fear of the other, although there’s always that, but by manifest destiny – our right to take what we want from inferior peoples. But we will share the spoils with our allies under my presidency, because I am the more competent deal broker.

We can make America strong again, a truly monolithic empire of steel and glass and rampant corruption. But we don’t have to abandon our core values – one people, under god, who really, really need most of the world’s rapidly dwindling supply of oil. And a country still willing to cut deals with other superpowers.

Look up Peak Oil on the Internet. Then tell me if you feel better with a lying, incompetent chimp for president – one that can be easily demonized and attacked, just as we did with Iraq – or a real politician who dresses everything in more palatable clichés and believes that you need smarts as well as might to negotiate the future of American Empire.

The choice is yours, America.

Thank you, and good night.

LEARER: And it ain't much of one. But what are ya gonna do? That ends tonight’s debate. Stay tuned for major spinning.

From behind Bush’s podium: September 11th….fuck Saddam….some call you the elite…God told me to strike….he did…I’m president, see, I don’t have to explain…I hate Kerry…he can’t hide….hehehehehe

Thursday, October 14, 2004

Vote for change

In which I defend my vote for Kerry to The American Street.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004

Television is ghastly

And Aaron Brown is the antichrist.

For my money, there is no better example of the banality of evil than Aaron Brown. The man sits in his comfortable little studio. He seems to think he is “covering” something, a news man telling you “the way it is.” So reasonable, erudite.

And yet, in his low-key way, he is every bit as jingoistic as Sean Hannity. Neither know nor care what is happening in Iraq or anywhere else in the world. Neither have the mental capacity nor courage to see what is happening.

I happened to watch a bit on CNN two nights ago, and I’m still in shock, because what I saw so clearly illustrates the unreality foisted upon an unsuspecting populace as a fait accompli by moral midgets.

So I punch in CNN on the remote, and there’s Brown “whipping” around the globe. He introduces a reporter who shows us the now-famous video from Fallujah, in which we see what it looks like when you’re the pilot who drops a bomb on a crowd of people. The casual, routine nature of the "operation" is chilling.

Before and after the airing of the footage, the video becomes the backdrop for the reporter, electronic wall paper.

And the discussion between Brown and the reporter, after a brief chat about whether the Iraqis were civilians or insurgents (even though it's obviously NOT a concern for the military), is about how the video got out, and how it had been circulating on the Internet. And that’s when Mr. Brown decides to “editorialize,” and “show a little humanity,” by wondering aloud, in that insipid way of his, about “the world.” Yes, to reflect on the PROCESS by which the video became news.

The lives snuffed out do not even register.

And people wonder what’s wrong with America.

Friday, October 08, 2004

Every Friday

Chris Floyd cranks out a new Global Eye column, always detailing in lucid prose the machinations of American empire, well illuminating the horrific implications. (note: his column is only up free of charge for about a day now)

Despite the public flip-flop, the Bush-Hastert torture measure is still very much alive in the congressional sausage-factory. But whatever its eventual fate, it has already served its larger purpose. Bush was hoisted into office by a corrupt elite openly committed to imposing "full-spectrum dominance" over world affairs, by any means necessary -- including decades of "pre-emptive" war. Such a thoroughgoing program requires the coarsening of an entire society, the creation of a more war-like people willing to countenance state terrorism on a massive, sustained scale. "This is who we are now," the rendition bill, like the Iraq War, says about the United States; "this is what we stand for: torture, murder, aggression, brute force."

[more]


The great political cartoon Karl and King George publishes every Friday too.

The Rise of Pseudo Fascism

By David Neiwert, The American Street

(excerpt)

Today we have a milieu in which this administration’s manifest incompetence is hailed as moral clarity; in which the torture of prisoners at American hands is dismissed as a fraternity prank; in which the internment of Japanese Americans in World War II is defended as a necessary step (that may need to be repeated); in which a policy to further denude America’s forests is called the Healthy Forests Initiative, and the evisceration of the nation’s public education system is named No Child Left Behind. We’re relentlessly sold an image of Bush himself as strong and resolute, and yet when he appears for a national debate on TV, what we see instead is a “peevish and bored” caricature of a leader, a man more likely to remind us the feckless pointy-haired boss we all once had than an actual president.

At times it seems, when dealing with the modern conservative movement, as if we’ve entered a gigantic and remorseless mirror funhouse. Or more to the point, a dark and labyrinthine cavern, twisting in an endless maze, whose architecture we can only vaguely discern through upheld torches.

Every now and then, though, someone within the movement hierarchy – often one at the very top – will let slip a bit of the curtain, flashing a little light on the vastness and shape of the metastatic architecture of the conservative movement. When it happens, it can be a little like the scene in Aliens when Ripley’s flamethrower lights up the interior of the lair into which she has wandered.

[more]

Thursday, October 07, 2004

They're related

The Free Speech Movement at 40 Years

Wood S Lot at four.

Congrats Mark.

You're kidding

More to say on Fahrenheit 9/11? Yep, over at The American Street.

Tuesday, October 05, 2004

Cutting through the bullshit

(including my own)

Kurt Nimo, Another Day in the Empire

Debates? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Debates

Debates are less than worthless.

In fact, they are noxious, even harmful.

Debates convince millions of us that these “candidates” actually care about something other than what multinational corporations, AIPAC, and lobbyists tell them to care about.


Ductapefatwa

Bush, Kerry Debate the Best Way to Kill Iraqis

Bush, the shorter aspirant for Crusader-in-Chief, deprived of his earpiece for the evening, haltingly struggled with the words on his cue cards outlining his familiar if barely coherent argument that America does not need to share any more of its Iraqi oil money than it is already doing, while the taller multimillionaire reiterated his usual position that it would be cheaper to offer generous cuts of the war loot to several other countries in exchange for their loan of expendables to do more of the wetwork.

The only candidates allowed to participate in the infotainment extravaganza were those sanctioned by the two "parties" funded by the corporate oligarchy, and rare the American viewer, and even rarer the voter who is even aware that any other option exists save having the United States defined by a bestial horde of torturers and sexual predators, who roam the globe at the command of their warlords.

Both candidates essentially agree that the earth, its people and its resources are the property of the United States, and anyone anywhere who begs to differ with this view constitutes a grave and imminent danger to important US business interests, and must be murdered posthaste.


Mike Golby, YBLOG ZA

No Questions Asked

Read the transcript and listen to the subtext. bush is on song; shadowbush remains...well, shadowbush (with a finger reminding me of P.W. Botha in his heyday). Not that it matters. Neither will be inclined to mess with a neocon agenda forty years in the planning and execution. Should shadowbush triumph and ever find himself inclined to do so, he and those he brings in ("Who are these guys?") will be assassinated. The neocons believe in their cause and they are comfortable with extrajudicial methods.

Friday, October 01, 2004

Kerry in a TKO

That's exactly the opposite of what the pundit's are saying about tonight's debate. Nearly every one is calling the debate a draw. But there's no question Kerry finally aimed his swift boat for the spot between Bush's eyes.

And those eyes were wide tonight. Bush looked like a deer in headlights, at one point blinking dumbfounded into the camera for several seconds. He repeated his mantras over and over, as if they must be true because he’s said them dozens of times and no one has questioned them.

It was obvious the man has little connection with the facts on the ground, any ground. All we learned is that spreading freedom, unlike peanut butter, is hard work, mainly because there are people in the world called “terrorists” who exist for the sole purpose of attacking freedom when they see it start to spread.

Ok, that last bit about terrorists describes U.S. foreign policy, but I’ll be damned if Kerry didn’t stand up there, confident, composed, articulate, and sketch a picture of a world in need of less belligerence – he even called unequivocally for a halt to mini-nuke development – and more inclusive and constructive dialogue.

He said we would not construct permanent bases in Iraq (hasn’t he been briefed on the Peak Oil thing?).

He had command of details that were notably lacking in Bush’s meanderings which strung together various ways of saying, “I did Iraq, I’m doing Iraq, and I’m gonna keep doing it, because it makes us safer. And it's hard work.” Lalala lalala.

Yeah, it was a slamdunk. Bush is a complete wuss. It should be obvious to the American people after tonight.

--

(note: I’m off for an annual trip to the mountains with friends, be back here Monday, hopefully.)