Diane Feinstein Speaks Under The Cone Of Dumbness

Do you remember the "Cone of Silence" that never seemed to work the in the old TV comedy "Get Smart?" Well in Washington, DC, we have the Cone of Dumbness. It extends around the Beltway which surrounds the city, and every time an event is officially predicted or analyzed it usually occurs under that dome. Even so, if you're head of the Senate Intelligence Committee, you might want to consider not saying things like this:

At a hearing, Feinstein expressed surprise over Pakistani opposition to the campaign of Predator-launched CIA missile strikes against Islamic extremist targets along Pakistan's northwestern border.

"As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base," she said.

You can be vicious. You can be stupid. And you can be viciously stupid. Feinstein just moved the Fall of Pakistan up to this calendar year. Predator drone strikes that kill people's families at dawn are perceived as being worse than the Taliban pulling men out of a marketplace and executing them. I can see why military folk might not "get" that. But if we can't get better out of our leadership, there really is going to be a Global War On Terror, for real, and my side will lose. Get Smart, Obama.

Oh, and all those nice things I just said about women? Do not apply to Diane Feinstein. Now if you excuse me, I have people to go kill.

Cheney Telegraphs Nuclear Or Biological Attack With Skillful Cheer

Today Dick Cheney granted an interview to Politico, of all places. From this we know his wheelchair was not rolled into a pool of starving piranhas, that his Pumphead heart still beats and he has embarked on an internet-savvy PR campaign. We learn he owns an Amazon Kindle, that he's planning a book which will reveal how torturing people kept American soil from being attacked by external terrorists for 7 years. With the help of his earth-daughter Liz, his cloaking device worked pretty well throughout the session, so he managed to come off as remarkably life-like...at times even achieving a disarming quality. Until one examines the synthetic output:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.

Can't we hold this anarchist in jail, or something? He provides more specific detail of the horrific event:

Cheney said “the ultimate threat to the country” is “a 9/11-type event where the terrorists are armed with something much more dangerous than an airline ticket and a box cutter – a nuclear weapon or a biological agent of some kind” that is deployed in the middle of an American city.

“That’s the one that would involve the deaths of perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, and the one you have to spend a hell of a lot of time guarding against,” he said. “I think there’s a high probability of such an attempt."

Indeed. To approach the shock levels which followed 9/11, the loss of life from an attack would have to be at least an order of magnitude higher. So here's a red-blinking dot to connect, or not. Cheney's skillful Politico messaging was imparted just as a global threat warning was being issued by the State Department on Monday, February 2nd. A similar warning was issued to embassies and military installations on September 7th, 2001, and then updated on September 10th, 2001.

This "entity" is legion, they are in the business of threat-mongering, and where none sufficient could be conflated, they created one. That's a proven practice in their individual and collective histories as related in "To Russia, With Hate." Given the fixes necessary to feed their dreary highs, one should not disallow the proactive arming of a threat if it serves their continuing interests. Therefore, the Entities personified by Dick Cheney can be suspected as Public Enemy #1, and the threats they always pose are as serious as the mushroom clouds they're fixated upon. This is their business, this is their livelihood, and if you climb into their unhinged calculating heads you may hear questions such as these: "What's the acceptable loss, and where would it have greatest effect on funding?"

Perhaps there are such things as coincidences, the timing of the World Caution notice is mere prudence, and hopefully I'm even more paranoid than Cheney and nothing he chimed on with will happen if we stop torturing people from the third world whose uncle stole someone's goat 60 years ago and got turned in for a vendetta. Just as cheerfully I hope, probably forlornly, that Team Obama is closely monitoring the whereabouts and communications of Cheney and his associates. The most prudent thing to do would be to dispense with trials and proceed to glib denials and unfortunate accidents.

Obama To Sign Order Shutting Guantanamo, Halting Military Tribunals

Now that title felt good to write! A sanctioned White House leak states:

The Associated Press has learned that President Barack Obama plans to sign an executive order Thursday to close the detention center within a year and halt military trials of terror suspects held there. The executive order was one of three expected imminently on how to interrogate and prosecute al-Qaida, Taliban or other foreign fighters believed to threaten the United States.

A senior Obama aide said the president would sign the order on Thursday, fulfilling his campaign promise to shut down a facility that critics around the world say violates domestic and international detainee rights. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because the event has not yet been announced.

(Update) Some in the blogsphere are displeased Gitmo didn't get closed right away, but at least the war crimes trials were suspended today. The real problem is figuring out what to do with the inmates, with legal complexities ranging from merely bewildering to impossible. For example, one Canadian is accused of killing a US sergeant with a grenade in Afghanistan 7 years ago. The accused was 15 at the time. Can he really be tried in a US civilian court? As an adult? What justice could a "jury of peers" dispense? Would love to hear any case precedents for that one. Probably best to send him back to Toronto and let them figure it out.

Regardless of guilt, the US would be wise to offer each of the inmates $250,000 or more in exchange for agreement not to sue for damages arising from torture and wrongful imprisonment. Then give them a plane ride home. Many Americans would argue that doing so would let a lot of guilty people go, including Kaleid Sheik Mohammed (who would like nothing better than execution) and five other alleged 9/11 plotters. Too bad, game over.

America lost when it tortured these men, and torture invalidated both their confessions and their guilt. To put that in perspective, most anyone who comes through here, including myself, would confess to being a Sylvania light bulb, 60 watts, after about 20 seconds of waterboarding a.k.a. drowning. I've drowned a.k.a. died, it's not pretty, and these people went through far, far more than that.

For over 7 years, they were in a place scientifically designed to elicit human misery, their keepers inclined to extract revenge. Not surprisingly, the few sane ones left recently tried to starve themselves to death, as a final protest, and feeding tubes denied the privilege. If we let these people go without agreement or closure, guilty or innocent, imagine the flight paths their grievances will take. There are crimes to be punished here, oh yes. And the orders to torture may well prove to be the instruments of it coming to that.

Anti Claus: Cheney's Highest Moment In Office

By his own account, was 9/11:

WALLACE: Highest moment the last eight years?

CHENEY: Hmmm. Highest moment in the last eight years. Well, I think the most important, the most compelling, was 9/11 itself, and what that entailed, what we had to deal with. The way in which that changed the nation, and set the agenda for what we had to deal with as an administration.

WALLACE: And I assume that was also you're lowest moment.

CHENEY: Yeah...sure.

Bodies and their shadows often concur, but the wreckage of our skies confirm separations. Dick Cheney was in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center (PEOC) with his wife Lynne on that morning, before Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta arrived. Mineta gave the only sworn eyewitness testimony regarding Cheney's activities during the terrorist operations:

No, I was not [aware that shoot-down orders had been given]. I was made aware of it during the time of the airplane coming into the Pentagon. There was a young man who would come in and say to the Vice President, "The plane is 50 miles out...the plane is 30 miles out..." And when it got down to, uh, the plane is 10 miles out, the young man also said to the Vice President, "Do the orders still stand," and the Vice President turned, whipped his neck around and said, "Of course the orders still stand! Have you heard anything to the contrary?"

Orders? What orders? Presumably, they pertained to either shooting down the incoming planes or not. Subsequently, despite being integral to the timeline and tragedy, the implications of Mineta's testimony were strenuously avoided; there are no records of shoot-down orders or otherwise. They were suffocated in the bassinet of bureaucracy, yet Cheney regards 9/11 and what followed as his best time in office. And if I were in the White House bunker on that day, in command and responsible for the deaths of Americans no matter what I decided, it would not roll it off the top of my head as a "highest moment."

And what about the "young man?" How was he keeping Vice President Cheney minuted? He must have been scurrying back from the FAA-integrated Secret Service operations screens in the PEOC bunker. The Secret Service was monitoring the hijacked flights during Global Guardian, a yearly threat-response exercise, and its 2001 airborne subset Vigilant Guardian, a live-fly wargame focused on inter-agency response to hijacked commercial airliners (disputed by answers to the 9/11 Commission, but previously center-pieced in an Air Force powerpoint presentation, Amalgam Virgo 01). By FAA procedure, a passenger jet which turns off its transponder immediately appears on military radar as a potential threat. Any commercial flight which did so that morning would have looked like an additional bogey to the military.

The notion that 19 non-pilots evaded the defenses of the most sophisticated airspace in the world for two hours begs credulity, as does lack of forensic evidence and transparency. This is partially mitigated by the report that five of the hijackers received training at US military bases in the 1990s (source MSNBC/Newsweek article). At least some of them could fly. But they chose the day from caves in Afghanistan when the US Air Force was conducting an anti-hijack exercise which involved every major security entity in North America (read the powerpoint)? That strains credulity into a double-hernia.

I want my suspicions and all my body's senses (for I drove by the twin towers at 8:31 on 9/11, was there for its aftermath, and my former boss and co-workers died for having breakfast in Windows on the World) to be wrong, wrong, wrong. I and 70% of my fellow New Yorkers are biased. If you can downplay or disagree, please send us contravening facts to set our minds at ease. We are all passengers in this car, and like the EPA says, your reality may differ.

The media provoked this post by the offence of giving air-time to a non-convicted architect of horrors, which none likely to come here would dispute. Bush and Cheney ordered programs of torture based on nothing more Constitutional than a Berkeley lawyer's opinion (known as "Dr. Yes" in the White House). My point is about burdens of evidence, that they're not on you or me but on a government which failed to provide them. Then stonewalls. Then gives interviews, and gloats.

If you find footage of a plane flying into the Pentagon, one of the buildings with the highest monitoring of closed-circuit TV cameras in the world, you'll be my Santa Claus. Google away. Meanwhile, evidence was provided by a most credible witness in congressional testimony about a man's decision-making on that morning which killed Americans. We don't know what decision was made, but incinerations and all the sins which followed from it are broadcast as the highest moment. May he never have another.

Blagojevich Might Skate

I previously marveled that the Blago case broke with the tradition of political corruption cases because no money had actually changed hands. Turns out there's a reason. The Chicago Tribune blew it for federal prosecutors by ending its cooperation with Fitzgerald, who had requested they hold a story, by running it on Dec. 5th. The run-down is given in a dynamite inside-reporting WSJ online article:

Conventional wisdom holds that U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald ordered the FBI to arrest Rod Blagojevich before sunrise Tuesday in order to stop a crime from being committed. That would have been the sale of the Senate seat vacated by President-elect Barack Obama.

But the opposite is true: Members of Fitzgerald’s team are livid the scheme didn’t advance, at least for a little longer, according to some people close to Fitzgerald’s office. Why? Because had the plot unfolded, they might have had an opportunity most feds can only dream of: A chance to catch the sale of a Senate seat on tape, including the sellers and the buyers.

The precise timing of Tuesday’s dramatic, pre-dawn arrest was not dictated by Fitzgerald, nor was it dictated by the pace of Blagojevich’s alleged “crime spree.” It was dictated by the Chicago Tribune, according to people close to the investigation and a careful reading of the FBI’s affidavit in the case.

At Fitzgerald’s request, the paper had been holding back a story since October detailing how a confidante of Blagojevich was cooperating with his office.

Blago read the story, called his brother, and told him to "Undo that thing." Slimeball? Yes. But it is not a crime to advance agendas, or to go over a list of preferred candidates and discuss one's future political career, and Blago can honestly say he didn't take a dime for the governor's prerogative regarding appointment of vacated Senate seat. That's why he's not resigning. The way he sees it, having a third party set up a charity which he and/or his wife could run is not illegal, and I don't know that he's technically wrong on that. He figures a local jury will see it his way. Expect taped evidence and testimony that makes him look like a pig, but America has elected worse.

As for the rumors that Rahm Emanuel or Obama are mixed up in influence peddling? Hopeful tempest, meet pretty teapot. They promised nothing but appreciation. It's right in the complaint.

(Update: The pic is of Ann Cavello of the Bay City Bombers, inspiration for Jim Croce's hit, Roller Derby Queen, "the meanest hunk o' woman anybody ever seen, wham-a-bam, whoa, wham-a-bam.")

Frozen Scandal

Scandal is our growth industry. Revelation of wrongdoing leads not to definitive investigation, punishment, and expiation but to more scandal. Permanent scandal. Frozen scandal. The weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist. The torture of detainees who remain forever detained. The firing of prosecutors which is forever investigated. These and other frozen scandals metastasize, ramify, self-replicate, clogging the cable news shows and the blogosphere and the bookstores. The titillating story that never ends, the pundit gabfest that never ceases, the gift that never stops giving: what is indestructible, irresolvable, unexpiatable is too valuable not to be made into a source of profit. Scandal, unpurged and unresolved, transcends political reality to become commercial fact.

Frozen Scandal - The New York Review of Books.

Raisin' Some Hell For 2012

Video #1 is a strange paen to Sarah Palin by a PAC called "Ethnic Cleansing for America." (Ok, just kidding. Sort of.)

In video #2, we have the Palinator doing a folksy, quite charming interview in front of a slaughterhouse for turkeys, in which turkeys...are being slaughtered...right behind her. A special touch when the turkey farmer, while draining out their blood, stares vacantly at the camera.

I'm sure you've seen these through your various real or fake nooz outlets, but I just need to embed these for posterity, and note that once upon a time, people, even Americans, would look at themselves and say, "Whoa, I can't put that on teevee because it'd look like, ahh, I'm an ignominious twit."

Also, I wish noticed that Presidential hopeful Mike Hukabee, the republican governor of the Land o' Goshen, already kicked off his 2012 campaign in Iowa.

Naomi Klein Is Hot

As a firecracker on the Fourth of July. So, here's the deal...if you entered "Naomi Klein is hot" into a search engine and dropped into here, you owe me a comment. Right after you read her Rolling Stone article, "The New Trough," excerpted below. Funny how the Wall St. bailout looks a lot like Iraq--a "fraud-free zone:"

See if any of this sounds familiar: As soon as the bailout was announced, it became clear that Treasury officials would hire outsiders to perform their jobs for them — at a profit. Private companies wanting to help manage the bailout were given just two days to apply for massive, multiyear contracts. Since it was such a mad rush — after all, the entire economy was about to implode — there was no time for an open bidding process. Nor was there time to draft rigorous rules to make sure that those applying don't have serious conflicts of interest. Instead, applicants were asked to disclose their conflicts and to explain — and this is not a joke — their "philosophy in fulfilling your duty to the Treasury and the U.S. taxpayer in light of your proprietary interests and those of other clients." In other words, an open invitation to bullshit about how much they love their country and how they can be trusted to regulate themselves.

The first major contract to be awarded in the bailout was for legal advice — and the choice Treasury made was Halliburton-esque in its audacity. Six law firms were invited to bid, but four declined, either because they didn't want the contract or because they had too many conflicts of interest. Rep. Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said the fact that so many law firms chose not to bid "shows that the guidelines are sufficiently rigorous."

Or it may just show that the bidder who won the contract — Simpson Thacher & Bartlett — takes a more relaxed approach to conflicts than its colleagues. The law firm is a Wall Street heavy hitter, having brokered some of the biggest bank mergers in recent years. It also provided legal support to companies trading mortgage-backed securities — the "financial weapons of mass destruction," as Warren Buffett called them, that detonated the banking industry. More to the point, it was hired to provide legal services to the Treasury in its negotiations to spend $250 billion of the bailout money purchasing equity in America's banks. The first stage of the plan involves buying stakes in nine of the country's top banks. Incredibly, Simpson Thacher has represented seven of the nine: JPMorgan, Bank of New York Mellon, Bank of America, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch.

According to its contract, Simpson Thacher has agreed not to represent any of the banks "against the U.S." when they negotiate with Treasury for the equity money.

There were two kinds of people who wrote, passed, and signed that bailout contract: bumbletwits and goniffs. Naomi Klein, on the other hand, was sagacious enough to decode the shpiel. Her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism describes the long prelude to this series of unfortunate events, and it won't put you to sleep. (At least not if you Googled the title.) Her work will endure, she's the Upton Sinclair of international finance, and richly deserves a Pulitzer Prize. Here's the rest of the article and here is her blog. Now tell me why you think she's hot--me, I've always been a sucker for smarts.

Temper Mental

John McCain runs on hate, you can't read much about him before coming to the simple conclusion. Bottom line, it's miraculous he has not publicly exploded of late. With almost a full month to go until the election and his campaign doing a credible imitation of the stock market, however, there's still hope. Brave New Films, the folks who brought you the acclaimed documentary "Walmart: The High Cost of Low Price," has assembled some people willing to go on the record about witnessing his rage episodes. They're worse than suspected. In the video, a credible witness claims he back-handed a female POW-MIA advocate named Jeanette Jenkins so hard she spun around and hit the wall. They show a copy of her subsequent complaint to the Senate Ethics Committee.

Insane Swedish Twins Take On The M6

My last post mentions running out into traffic in the throes of mental illness as an economic metaphor, so I later Googled for visuals. Turned up more than I bargained for.

The incident in the video above defies description; it is real, but bizarre, disorienting, beyond rational analysis. For reasons of their own, Swedish twin sisters run onto the M6 in England and get hit by vehicles. One gets run over by a heavy truck and survives. The other gets hit by a second car, a first one having hit her to no effect some minutes before. The second vehicle does manage to briefly knock her out, but she stands up without any sign of injury, sheds a policewoman trying to restrain her, and runs into traffic again. It takes six people to eventually subdue her enough to strap her down and shove her into an ambulance. The very brief BBC news story says that both women recovered. Recovered?? One of them was run over by a truck and helicoptered out. The other bashed in a car's windshield, folded in the crease of its roofline, and stressed the metal enough to split it. Police directly on the scene thought they were both fatalities, but all it seemed to do to the sisters was piss them off more, and they were already suicidal.

A Swedish newspaper says the twins were charged with murder for fatally stabbing a 54-year old English male in the heart back in May, and one of them had previously jumped off a bridge over highway A50, breaking her ankles and skull. The only thing I could find about this in the British press was a reference to Sabine Eriksson being held in jail the next day for assaulting an officer. What exactly must one do to get some help for mental illness?

American Mania, Pt. II: "You Maniacs! You Blew It Up! Damn You! God Damn You All To Hell!"

Where to begin. The scheduled intervention fails, 777 DJIA points and $1.15 trill go ba-bye in a few hours. I've seen worse, but this falls probably somewhere in Phase 3 of the manic cycle, the part where the victims devolve into terrified grandiosities, deciding to run out into traffic because they think they're privy to the Special Knowledge and can control cars with their minds. Both they and their rescuers will become very confused and can't put together why they got hit and flew through the air, because it makes no sense. I meditate on minds, markets, and money, on religions, and quests for immortality. As it is on the micro-individual, so it is on the macro-collective.

What the hell were they thinking, and what are they doing out there? South Sea bubbles, popular delusions, madness of crowds, marathon weekend meetings, tulip crazes unwinding, dot-com business and bailout plans rejected, broken shop windows burning and can't we all just get along as the batons rain down on our Rodney-Kingness. If maniacs survive the impact, they'll just respond with indignation, and serve out venomous recriminations. When you hear those creative obscenities, it means they're almost at the end of the cycle.

In the first stage, mania is easily camouflaged in masks of optimism and bliss. When you feel great, better than great, when you're able to directly hear the music of the spheres, the twitching muscles of the bull are at your command. You expand, you swell, you exuberate, and your exuberations are infectious. You form magical ideas, dwelling on them until you assemble them into energetic arguments, so you start to run, calling others to follow, and some do.

You run faster, faster still, shedding your past self, and so you shift into the second phase of mania. Into what they call hypomania. The compass of your body is pointed at the elixir and is propelled by fire. It's pressed down into inexhaustible white embers, stoked and sheltered in your ashes, difficult for many to detect. Your animus can outlast, it can baffle and overcome all who would assail it, and you silence the doubts of the skeptics and naysayers, even the ill-advised on cocaine. Your convincing crystalline vision sweeps them aside like a UFO sweeps away Model Ts. Risks and expenses be damned, disposable servants of supernatural vision. You will change the world.

You become impatient. The slow parts of the world do not serve quickly enough, they lag, and you are surrounded by uncomprehending fools who dispense intolerable ridicule upon you. What the spheres have revealed must work, it is destiny, and these detractors are irrational simpleton. Why do they not see? They refuse your simplest requests. You have an urge to do them harm, if only it would do some good, but your mission is to help them because you're their Messiah. It's far better to show them what you mean, to construct a perilous illustration of your powers which none can deny, so you hoist upon your back the crucifix, you'll walk out onto that freeway, the oncoming Pharisees and cars at your command.

You are hit and cry. Why hast thou forsaken me? Your tired dopamine receptors, your burned dendrites and glazed synapses unlock as the pain starts to break through, and your joy circuits begin to realize they've been overladen for so long, so long. You're brought broken into a den, nay a cage, angry, angry with God, angry with those who thwarted you, angry with the ones who rescued you, angry over the passage of time, angry at the pointless waste, at the reversion to the human mean, flooding with anguish and self-doubt, wondering how to bear your unbearable humiliations, knowing and needing to reconstruct who and what you are.

Compared to the rest of the cycle, the hibernation is short. We're all going to heaven, we are all going the other way, and this is what we have to go through.

(Note: I've stolen from so many unattributed sources in this post, it's silly. If you're one of them, complain.)

The McCain Prescription For America's Health Care

Here's what John McCain wrote in the new issue of Contingencies, the exciting bi-monthly magazine for the American Academy of Actuaries:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

Available in a .pdf file, John's plan, Better Care at Lower Cost for Every American, explains that the Liberian Medical Model (LMM) offers a promising roadmap to innovation. Liberia's health care system is completely free of state regulation, so innovative products are naturally super-abundant. Also, outcomes-based witch doctors are the backbone of the compelling system, and these doctors compete so vigorously they sometimes kill each other, eating the deceased medicine man's brain in order to capture his healing powers.

LMM is far more cost-effective than the current US health care system, is even better at customer service, and might duplicate the last decade's banking industry miracles. Sign us up, John!

Does Life Begin At Rape For The Republican Base?

What with the recent excitements and claims on time, I've sat too long on a news article Lord Wife passed on from The Frontiersman, Alaska's newspaper. It's just the story those Special Republicans in your life need to know about: Sarah Palin isn't pro-woman. She's more like a Moosellini, and she was for rape before she was against it. Once upon a time, back in 2000, then-governor Tony Knowles signed a law expressly intended to stop the Wassila police department from charging rape victims for their post-assault exams:

The new law makes it illegal for any law enforcement agency to bill victims or victims insurance companies for the costs of examinations that take place to collect evidence of a sexual assault or determine if a sexual assault did occur.

When the law was passed, Police Chief Charlie Fannon's reaction was to bitch that it might cost his department an extra $5,000 to 14,000 per year. Who was responsible for such blatancy? Sarah Palin. Yep. Charisma-saurus fired Fannon's predecessor in 1997, a man who had not thought it appropriate to bill rape victims $1,200 for their "rape exam kits." And don't tell me she wasn't aware of what was going on: the governor of Alaska publicly slapped her policy down.

The story of how Sarah Palin privatized rape in Wasilla is spreading through the blogsphere. Hopefully it will reach mainstream coverage, as it should on oppugnant Base States like North Carolina which jackboot their rape victims in similar fashion. It's not benign neglect. This is the lowest, most niggardly, mean-spirited, screwed-up pie-eyed pile of puritan crap in the whole vile bumper crop of government-as-business bullshit. It's preying on victims at their most violated and vulnerable, as in, "Oh, you were raped? How unfortunate. Here's our $2,000 bill for your police exam, doctor's exam, lab tests, and nurse assistance."

I made a $10 donation to Planned Parenthood in her name, and the thank-you recipient is the McCain campaign, as suggested by Firedoglake affiliate TBogg:

In discussions with various people in my real life (not the Demonic Conservative Ridicule Machine I play at night) I find that people are willing to brush off or justify Sarah Palin's lack of experience, qualifications or, well. smarts because of her novelty factor. But the one thing that stops them dead in their tracks is the story of Sarah Palin and the Pay As You Go Rape Kits:

I sat with a rape victim during the “harvesting of evidence”. Mascara smeared eyes stared blankly out from a cave of shame. “We’ve got swimmers,” announced the forensic tech in the lab next door. My friend didn’t look surprised. In her 60’s, she was still asked if she felt the need for emergency contraception. Surviving the process would have only been compounded and made worse with an itemized bill; victimized twice courtesy of Sarah Palin and the city of Wasilla.

Much can be learned about the Palin Administration’s family values from reviewing their spending priorities. Former Chief of Police Irl Stambaugh included forensic rape kits (up to $1,200 per kit) in his budget requests. He was fired by Palin in 1997. In her termination letter, Palin wrote, “…I do not feel I have your full support in my efforts to govern the city of Wasilla. Therefore I intend to terminate your employment. . . ” Staumbaugh headed the police department since it was created in 1993. Before that, he served 22 years with the Anchorage Police Department rising to the rank of captain. Sarah Palin hired Charlie Fannon as the new Wasilla Chief of Police and said it was one of her best decisions as mayor. Fannon eliminated the forensic rape kits from the budget. Though the number of rapes weren’t reported, Fannon claimed it would save Wasilla taxpayers $5,000 to $14,000 a year.

When Eric Croft, a Democrat Legislator from Anchorage, learned of Wasilla’s policy, he drafted HB 270, which Governor Tony Knowles signed into law. The new law made it illegal for any law enforcement agency to bill victims or victims’ insurance companies for the costs of examinations to collect evidence of a sexual assault or determine if a sexual assault actually occurred. Upon signing the law, Governor Knowles said, “We would never bill the victim of a burglary for the cost of gathering evidence, nor should we bill rape victims just because the crime scene happens to be their bodies.”

Wasilla Police Chief Fannon protested the new law stating it would require the city and communities to come up with more funds to cover the costs of the forensic exams. Really? Are the true costs of sexual assault and forcible rape in a community only measured and reflected in the dollars spent on the forensic rape kit?

God only knows how Sarah Palin would answer that question and, as we well know, she ain't talkin'.

Fortunately the state of Alaska saw fit to remedy the benign neglect that characterized Pailn's attitude towards rape victims. But there is still something that you can do for all women in all fifty states since they can hardly count on Vice President Palin to look out for anything other than her own blind ambition.

Per an email I received last night (and also noted here):

Instead of us all sending around more emails about how horrible Sarah Palin is, let's all make a donation to Planned Parenthood.

In Sarah Palin's name.

And here's the good part: when you make a donation to PP in her name, they'll send her a card telling her that the donation has been made in her honor.

Here's the link to the Planned Parenthood website

You'll need to fill in the address to let PP know where to send the "in Sarah Palin's honor" card. I suggest you use the address for the McCain campaign headquarters, which is:

McCain for President
1235 S. Clark Street
1st Floor
Arlington , VA 22202

PS make sure you use that link above or choose the pulldown of Donate--Honorary or Memorial Donations, not the regular "Donate Online"

The minimum donation is $5 ...and did I mention that it's tax deductible?

Being a slow blogger has its rewards: ABC News is reporting online that Sarah Palin actively impeded and de-funded an anti-rape initiative in Alaska, a state which has the highest rate of sexual assault in the country. The initiative was formulated by Public Safety Commissioner Dan Moneghan, whom she fired.

There's No Place Like Rome...There's No Place Like Rome

Davo over at Wombat's Waffles (link at right) put up the picture of the Catholic leader, perfectly accessorized with bold red Prada shoes. Nothing against gayness, pontiff, but Nathan Lane's outfits in the American remake of La Cage aux Folles weren't as flaming as those goddamned shoes:

"Why, what are you insinuating, my son? Straight non-pedophiles wear shoes just like these all the time! And nothing supernatural whatsoever occurs when I click the heels together. Now kiss the ring before I spank you."

Seems the pope, whose online screen name is PBXVI, was visiting Oz this week because around 40 active Catholics live there. To paraphrase the guy in Sling Blade, "Some folks just need drillin,' hrrmmm." If I have offended any Catholics, god be with you, and please feel free to comically eviscerate what is technically still my religion. Mormonism.

"We Used To Fry Squirrels In A Popcorn Popper"

Huckabee. The gift that keeps on giving.

After pulling an upset in the Iowa caucus, Mike Huckabee has now placed a respectable third in two northern primaries, New Hampshire and Michigan, but he has hopes of doing much better in South Carolina.

Huckabee spoke to MSNBC's Joe Scarborough from Columbia, SC, saying enthusiastically, "South Carolina's a great place for me. I mean, I know how to eat grits and speak the language. We even know how to talk about eating fried squirrel and stuff like that, so we're on the same wavelength."

"Mika, I bet you never did this," Huckabee went on, addressing Mika Brzezinski. "When I was in college, we used to take a popcorn popper, because that was the only thing they would let us use in the dorm, and we would fry squirrels in a popcorn popper in the dorm room."

Full article here.

Bush World Tour: Bombing Auschwitz

Now that doctors aren't using it anymore, "First do no harm" should really be a motto for heads of state, even elected ones. POTUS 43's visit to any furren country is always an occasion for hi-jinks which can run the gamut from amusing gaffe on to casual sexual harassment, then straight to casus belli. His recent visit to Israel left a rich vein for historians to mine, along with a bunch of very unimpressed Palestinians rolling their eyes and pantomiming self-abusive gestures.

I mentioned in a previous post that Bush was moved to say at the Israeli Holocaust Memorial, "We should have bombed Auschwitz." In this case he meant as a way to save lives, not to kill more condemned people, but this statement can cause some confusion given his enthusiasm for capital punishment, and a grandfather who funded the first eugenics center in the US (at Yale, 193x.) As a holographic trademark of all that is Bush, this one's hard to top. It's gangrene burlesque, and distills a whole lot of misguided, drunken, pathetic, fumbling, insane, violent ignorance down into just five words. We should have bombed Auschwitz. It's a nearly perfect representation, not just of Himself, but of the entire murderous Bush family.

Let's just say that his revanchist wish had been granted. Heck, throw in Sobibor. Bergen-Belsen. Dachau. Treblinka. Throw in the other 190 camps, too. True, I admit, concentration camp inmates would have had the privilege of dying cheerfully from the explosions and concussions of Freedom Bombs, knowing they were sent down by the good guys. But what else would have happened? Would the German guards have put up with it? "How dare zose Amis," they would have said in the ensuing movies, "zey haff no right to kill our prissoners. Vee vill show zem. Line ze Yuden uppen and shooten zem at once!!" Extreme? Unlikely? The reaction would've been right in line with the deadly farce and legal dada-isms of what Germans still refer to as "die Kah-tzet," the German proununciation of the letters KZ, short for "concentration place."

It is a matter of record that Jewish authorities asked the War Department to bomb the rail lines leading to Auschwitz, that the request was rejected, and that there has been a raging debate over the "whether or nots" ever since. George McGovern, once a bomber pilot based in Foggia, Italy, later said we should have bombed the gas chambers at Auschwitz to slow the killing. Holocaust docents consistently condemn Roosevelt for not bombing Auschwitz. To these good people and kind sentiments, I have a few respectful observations:

1) while I agree it would have been good symbology, how exactly would bombing the rail lines or the gas chambers have helped? Lives would not necessarily have been saved or prolonged.

2) the Auschwitz Protocols on which many assumptions are now based, were written by two escapees in 1944 who quoted rumors as fact, as is apparent from the report itself and from later contradicting statements. While the rumors may have been true, military operations, some history notwithstanding, are usually not launched on hearsay.

3) President Roosevelt, the Pope, and others did effectively intervene, diplomatically prevailing upon Admiral Horthy to stop the deportation of Hungarian Jews on July 9th, 1944. These parties used the Auschwitz Protocols to convince Horthy and his prime minister in their decision. Those who were saved surely appreciated these efforts more than bombs.

4) a serious investigation into the gas chambers leaves their existence, location, and extent of operation in doubt. While this doesn't absolve the Nazis of their super-abundant war crimes whatsoever, it shows they did not require gas chambers to kill millions of victims, a fact which calls bombing as a solution further into question.

The US should have done much more, much earlier to save European Jews from the Nazi regime. The book 'The Abandonment of the Jews' explains why it didn't happen, how they were turned away. By the time the question came to bombing concentration camps, it was far too late, and I suspect had they been bombed, the same voices might now be condemning the brutality and idiocy of the perpetrators. It simply wasn't practical at the time, and had it been attempted, the unintended consequences would likely have far outweighed the benefits. Even the statement "bomb Auschwitz" is, philosophically, an oxymoron.

In BushWorld, however, in the special place, all bombs hit their desired targets. Bombing concentration camps would not cut wires nor destroy fences, bombs would not scare people into running away to find cover, which would not result in temporary break-outs, which in turn would not mean a massive security risk, so all the inmates would not have to be shot upon contact. In BushWorld, the German high command would not be effervescing that the Allies were willing to take time out of their busy schedule of strategic bombing to go after propaganda targets. They would have been greatly distressed that we were saving their worker-Jews by bombing them, and they might have even sued for peace. The world would've stood in awe, the Russkies storming westward ho would've said, "Aww, the hell with it. Let's go home," and Eastern Europe wouldn't have gone commie. Because we can control everything with bombs. Like magic. Just the right amount of bombing will always do the trick.

Bush On Israel

"I wish as many people as possible would come to this place. It is a sobering reminder that evil exists, and a call that when evil exists we must resist it."

Ok, ok, that was intentionally out of context. Bush said the above while visiting the Holocaust Memorial. Humans are supposed to have the capacity for self-reflection, but sometimes they don't get that far, with ironies tending to sail past the heads of paranoid megalomaniacs. On the same day, he said the allies should have bombed Auschwitz. Sigh. Even when he right talk the English, he screw up it.

Polity, Declination, And Re-Boot, Pt. VII: Cheney-Gonzales 2008

Remember a teen-age ago, when the Cold War was over? At root, theories of governance are disagreements about how best to generate and apportion wealth. Precious few sources provide good views into the consequences. Rare is the surgeon of the human condition who can, more or less healthy and equally, be both dispassionate and sane. We didn't change the horsemen mid-Apocalypse.

I went to witness the Cold War's presumed end. I wanted to see Germany re-unify from the considered distance of an impregnable mountain redoubt in Switzerland. To me, re-unification seemed a certainty. An ecclesiastical organization I worked for bought land near Leipzig in 1983, when the Stasi still reigned supreme as the most ruthless, pervasive secret terror-service in the world. They knew what was up, and as a functionary I saw them break ground with a golden spade.

Then, on one rainy day in November, 1989, East Germans were allowed to travel freely to the West. There were celebrations, young German engineers leaping around for joy in my office, I mean they were really leaping, crying for joy, glasnost busting out all over the place. You don't see Germans do this much. Not unless they've maybe annihilated Caesar's legions in Teutoberger Wald or polished off a couple genocides. I misted up pretty good myself, and the beers and Jaegermeister helped. But at the same time I was thinking, "You poor bastards. Just wait until you see the bats. The Cold War's not over 'til we say so, bee-yatch."

Being a cynic was not my preference. Yet all the ideologies, philosophies, and theories which have steeped and brewed the world's conflicts for the past 50-60 years haven't changed, and they aren't exactly heading for detente anytime soon. After the wall was chunk by chunk hammered on down, I flew into New York to see my Wall Street mentor, a girl, and in a strange coincidence Robert DeNiro's Orthodox Jewish butler. Who was a cousin of Meir Kahane. My comparatively stable mentor was Joseph Palmeri. Over breakfast one Saturday morn in Tribeca he said that the stock market was primed to go up on "The Peace Dividend." Ever the sophisticate, I started to laugh but instead inhaled a fair portion of my blueberry and whipped-cream pancake (god, Joe, that was a great breakfast. Thank you forever.).

When the obstruction had mostly worked its way out of my lungs, my voice wheezed out through my tears: "Peace dividend?! Wha-da-fa? Yeltsin will be lucky to be alive in 6 months. The chances of a civil war are 50-50. Either way, generals will be looking to sell nuclear warheads, a third of which are in the Ukraine, gonna haul ass out of the Union. The Saint Pete girls really knock me out. Oh, yeah. Almost forgot. We're going to invade Baghdad. Is that the Peace Dividend?"

At the time, I had never heard of Leo Strauss or Paul Wolfowitz, and my mental space was nearly devoid of Dick Cheney. Blissfully so. Well. Once you name something, you can begin to deal with it. The Cheney. Drawing distinctions between communism, socialism, fascism, or capitalism is past history. A waste of time. I've been wondering what the word "conservative" means, and what's "neo-liberal" supposed to mean anyway? Does Webster's apply anymore? Up is down, down is up. Labels, logos, and brands often stoop to dishonesty, and all I know is they have pretty colors and always seem to say "New and Improved" on the laundry detergents. So let's apply Adam and Eve's naming power anew.

There are only two competing philosophies that matter today. One is the idea of purely free, unfettered Year-Zero market capitalism. The other philosophy is espoused by people who think massively inefficient regulations and standards are still needed. Free market utopianism, once derided as idiotic, is now as orthodox as Nike T-shirts made in Sri Lanka. Corporatism rules every meaningful roost. Regulations and standards are old hat, as if we wear hats anymore. I wear freebie caps when it rains, and when it rains...it's friggin' pourin', my friends. Effulgent markets decree that we should lay in a ready stock of RPGs. You Eagle Scouts should secure some 60 millimeter mortars. Very handy. I mean, look at Liberia, or Darfur. The Suzuki Sidekick, it's the Official Car of the Tsutsi Rebels. Good for mobile artillery, and an enterprising fellow could make some real money there. Back in '03 I wanted to fly to Baghdad in a bad way, and Lord Wife was dead serious about not letting me. Something in my gut told me they were flying 363 tons of $100 bills there, and that they'd spread out near and far. Lord Baby was new at the time, and my corporate prostitution conviction was recent.

The Cold War? Never cold. Never over. Russia, Iran, China and even Brazil are still out there stalking cozy Midwesterners sleeping soundly on their Sealy Spring-Air Mattresses. But speaking of cold...the Arctic Circle's warming up a little every day, you can still stake out a claim and make a killing. The Four Horsemen are hopped up on meth, Lipitor, and cumiden. They're running loose and free, and Cheney-Gonzales can still make the ticket in '08. If they run much further, please: Jesus Christ, Father in Heaven and the Holy Ghost help us. They hold the bridles yet, and could still win.

Prozac The Clown & William Bennett Do Las Vegas

[Prat-falling off the Segway he was slumped onto, Prozac makes his entrance to the Family Research Council Conference's day care facility. A crowd of impeccably-scrubbed kids lose their composure, whooping with schadenfreude-steeped joy .]

Hiya, boys and girls! I'm here because Bill the Bennett, one of the greatest clowns in the whole white world, my esteemed colleague and drinking bu...very close friend, is upstairs talking to your parents right now. So he sent Prozac! Prozac'll tell ya right now, kiddies, he can't hold a candle to the Bennett when it comes to dosing out a case of the clown crazies. But what he can do is...this! [Prozac turns, then runs full-speed into the wall, nearly knocking himself unconscious, reeling and collapsing on the floor. The children squeal with ear-splitting hysterical ecstasy.]

Toot-toot! Sheesh, those walls sure can sneak up on you! And that's just what Bill the Bennett would tell you if he were here. In fact, it's what he's saying to your mommies and daddies in the Big Room upstairs right now:

"Battlefield surrender comes from cultural surrender. Cultural surrender comes from befuddlement."

Let Prozac explain what that means. See, Bill the Bennett is a very smart clown, and he's also very brave. With his own two eyes, Prozac has seen Bill stay up all night at Caesar's Palace playing high-stakes Black Jack. What he means is, the wall that snuck up and hurt Prozac is just like the Liberal Media. That's right. Liberals are losing a war against Bad People, who want to come here and hurt your mommies and daddies. Bad People want to come here and hurt you, too. How bad are they? Well, for one thing, they would burn down all the McDonald's and Burger Kings everywhere. So you could never have another milkshake ever again! That's how bad! [Prozac makes his sad face, the children get totally quiet and little creased frowns of worry build upon their brows.]

Hey, c'mon you great little Americans, don't you worry. Not even for a minute. We're going to kick Bad People Booty. Toot-toot! And here's a little hint from your buddy Prozac, to make you look smart to your parents. So smart they'll buy you a milkshake and all the fries you want. So: when you're going home with them in your SUV, tell them that the Nazis only surrendered because their Liberal Media confused everybody with defeatism. And Japan's "Left Wing" [Prozac flaps left arm, holds nose] got "befuddled" by Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

What's defeatism? Very good question from the little girl in the yellow dress. Well, it's spelled d-e-a-f...whatever, defeatism means you love to lose. And only sick people, like Liberals, do that! And befuddled means, ah, messed up. Tell your parents the next time you see someone from the Liberal Media, you're going to kick them in the bee-hind, and that you need to eat a Big Mac right away, so you can grow up big and strong and dish out lots of Collateral Damage.

Ok, you got it? Liberal Media! Defeatism! Milk Shake and Big Mac. Aww, you're such good boys and girls, and Prozac loves you all. But he knows Bill the Bennett must be feeling a mite parched right about now, so he's gotta go help out before it's an emergency. [Prozac precariously mounts his Segway.] Now, do you remember the Prozac Motto? That's right: Take Your Ritalin, Be a Good Citizen!

Of Mercenaries And Black Waters

A good rule of thumb in military history is to bet against a belligerent which hires mercenaries. For bad ideas, it generally ranks up there with press-ganging peasants into service and sending them into battle armored with straw, carrying scythes and pruning hooks. Commingling the former with the latter is more than a rule of thumb, the results as predictable as throwing a match into a keg of gunpowder which is lying under an outhouse near a propeller. Unless, of course, one adversary is determined to outbid the other in terms of simple stupidity. There is an undeniable element of luck in battle, as those who lived through them attest. The famous Hans Holbein engraving, attached above, conveys the image of confusion without the blood.

There are exceptions to these rules, of course. In the article below, for example, economic warlock Paul Krugman needlessly takes Machiavelli far out of context, even falsely construes his meaning, in order to denigrate the US security services firm, and the regrettable haven of our bad fortunes, Blackwater USA.

In truth, Machiavelli did not say mercenaries are worthless. He said they're unreliable, and also wrote a great deal about their relative utility and employment, praising in particular the dreaded Swiss pikemen who were renowned for their competence and ruthlessness. In the Hundred Years' War, if you didn't have your Swiss piker contingent, or a larger one than your opponent, the starting odds were considered as stacked against you. They were impervious to cavalry charge and pretty much everything else but another heavily armed pike box, such as another formation of Swiss mercenaries. They wouldn't fight each other, however. Their supremacy in Europe only began to dim with the increasing effectiveness of firearms circa 1500, but they remained on the battlefields there until the early 1800s. Even today, their last contingent guards the Vatican.

More commonly, mercenaries, the Swiss included, have always been known for their abominable behavior off the battlefield. They are known for freebooting, looting, murder, pillage, rape, protection rackets, and the indiscriminate application of senseless violence. Nearly four hundred years after the fact, bad memories of mercenaries remain compressed into an expression of disgust in German: Schwedentrunk, or "Swede's mead." In the Thirty Years' War, in which 20%-40% of Germany's entire population died, Swedish troops swarmed down throughout the land to ostensibly persecute Catholics. Their rear, or "black" guards devised an expedient to aid in finding hidden food, treasure, and women: they would take manure and liquify it with urine, fill a funnel with it, and force a servant or farmer's jaw open. The practice was recorded in the baroque satirical memoir of that war, Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus (English title: Simplicissimus):

They lay the bound servant on the ground, stuck a wooden wedge into his mouth, and poured into his belly a bucket full of foul manure water, which they called a Swedish Drink.

The quibble with Krugman is past history. Blackwater USA, founded by evangelical crusader Erik Prince in the here and now, is the private muscle of the Bush Administration. Prince has donated $168,000 to the Republican National Committee. Iraq's population has been preyed upon by its lawless mercenaries and 20% of its population is already dead, maimed, tortured, robbed, raped or displaced. Blackwater had a lot of help with that, but they did play a prominently annointed part. To think that Blackwater's mercenary role departs from the norms of history is utterly naive, which most of my fellow citizens still choose to be, as is thinking that the American Legacy retains its former status. Which we all prefer to do. Here's the article (via Cat in the Bag):

by Paul Krugman
NY Times

Sometimes it seems that the only way to make sense of the Bush administration is to imagine that it’s a vast experiment concocted by mad political scientists who want to see what happens if a nation systematically ignores everything we’ve learned over the past few centuries about how to make a modern government work.

Thus, the administration has abandoned the principle of a professional, nonpolitical civil service, stuffing agencies from FEMA to the Justice Department with unqualified cronies. Tax farming — giving individuals the right to collect taxes, in return for a share of the take — went out with the French Revolution; now the tax farmers are back.

And so are mercenaries, whom Machiavelli described as “useless and dangerous” more than four centuries ago.

As far as I can tell, America has never fought a war in which mercenaries made up a large part of the armed force. But in Iraq, they are so central to the effort that, as Peter W. Singer of the Brookings Institution points out in a new report, “the private military industry has suffered more losses in Iraq than the rest of the coalition of allied nations combined.”

And, yes, the so-called private security contractors are mercenaries. They’re heavily armed. They carry out military missions, but they’re private employees who don’t answer to military discipline. On the other hand, they don’t seem to be accountable to Iraqi or U.S. law, either. And they behave accordingly.

We may never know what really happened in a crowded Baghdad square two weeks ago. Employees of Blackwater USA claim that they were attacked by gunmen. Iraqi police and witnesses say that the contractors began firing randomly at a car that didn’t get out of their way.

Yeah. We know pretty well what happened. And what else is happening. Krugman goes on in language suitable for polite society at the NY Times.