channeling the zeitgeist

A blow for freedom

Seen on a sign at recent DC protest:

"WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE GIVE HIM A BLOW JOB SO WE CAN HAVE HIM IMPEACHED."

Hmmm, I thought Jeff Gannon/Guckert already did that.

Dick Cheney wants to torture folks

"Big Time" Dick wants the CIA to be able to legally torture folks. How can this man have cardiac problems? He has no heart.

VICE PRESIDENT Cheney is aggressively pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected official of the executive branch: He is proposing that Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans. "Cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment of prisoners is banned by an international treaty negotiated by the Reagan administration and ratified by the United States. The State Department annually issues a report criticizing other governments for violating it. Now Mr. Cheney is asking Congress to approve legal language that would allow the CIA to commit such abuses against foreign prisoners it is holding abroad. In other words, this vice president has become an open advocate of torture.

And, lest you think that this is some 'leftist rag', the above is from the Washington Post, not the World Socialist website. Read the whole editorial here.

The Little Head and the Big Head

Need help with the cryptic headline? Sorry 'bout that. My wife and I have discussed how often men allow the "Little Head" to overrule the "Big Head" in times when judgement is required. If you've ever wondered why so many successful marketing and sales types are attractive women well...

In the world of the African cichlid fish the interaction between the Little and Big Heads is even more pronounced. God sure has a sense of humor doesn't she? 

PROMOTION can go to people's heads. But for fish taking a step up in social status, the effect is literal. Changes in gene expression appear in the brain within minutes of their promotion.

African cichlid fish live in stratified societies. One male, who is reproductively active, dominates several subordinate males with underdeveloped testes, each waiting for their chance.

Sabrina Burmeister of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and colleagues removed the dominant male from an aquarium, and within minutes of realising he was gone a subordinate male changed from dull grey to the flashy blue or yellow of a dominant fish.

The new top fish's brain changed too: cells in the anterior preoptic area swelled to eight times their previous volume as they filled with gonad-stimulating hormones, his testes grew and matured, and sperm production went into overdrive (Public Library of Science Biology, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0030363). All this was down to the switching on of a gene, egr-1: levels of the protein it expresses changed within 20 minutes of the fish's promotion. "Egr-1 does not cause dominance, but rather responds to a rise in dominance," says Burmeister. It connects the social environment to reproductive physiology, she says.

Egr-1 is also found in humans and may help us to respond to social cues.

Fascinating.

Ponder this, Gaia before Lovelock

If you aren't familiar with Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology Newsletter you should check it out. He's a mystic with a hand grenade and he's out to help you find what is true. He's no New Age "crystal hugger, chakra rubber" with that blissed out look of the cultishly convinced. He's out to question it all then question the answers he gets.

Bill gives him 5 stars.

Below is an excerpt from his latest newsletter.

WHAT IF EVERYTHING'S ALIVE

Yua is a term the Yupiit people of Alaska use for the spirit that inhabits all things, both animate and inanimate. A rock, for instance, has as much yua as a caribou, spruce tree, or human being, and therefore merits the same measure of compassion. If a Yupiit goes out for a hike and spies a chunk of wood lying on a frozen river bank, she might pick it up and put it in a new position, allowing its previously hidden side to get fresh air and sun. In this way, she would bestow a blessing on the wood's yua. (Source: Earl Shorris, "The Last Word," *Harper's,* August 2000)

You can bet Brezsny is a big hit with the Bush-Cheney crowd! Wonder if he got a Christmas card from Dick and Lynne? Remember that one?

"And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?"

Christ those people are creepy. Which is why folks like Brezsny are so important now, and so subversive. Because everything is alive, or should be treated as if it was. He's the perfect antidote for a world gone dark. He's a roman candle poking out from under the alcolyte's black robes.

His website is here.

Sign up for his newsletter here.

Pronoia, his recent book, is here.

Condi explains why we went into Iraq

This is a truly lazy post. I was reading Atrios this AM which led me to Think Progress which had this little gem from our Secretary of State:

"The fact of the matter is that when we were attacked on September 11, we had a choice to make. We could decide that the proximate cause was al Qaeda and the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go after al Qaeda…or we could take a bolder approach."

Wow. A bolder approach. Or as a poster on Atrios said so well:

after my bicycle was stolen i could have gone after the guy who stole it or i could have decided on a bolder approach and

BURNED DOWN HIS NEIGHBOURS HOUSE
earl in | 10.16.05 - 11:45 am | #

Dead on.

From the man who didn't serve in Vietnam

Comes this little nugget from today's Mesopotemkin propaganda palooza. In the latest scripted and choreographed session with the boys over there Sir George the Dim actually said:

I wish I could be there to see you face to face and thank you personally. Probably a little early for me to go to Tikrit. Perhaps one of these days the situation will be such that I'll be able to get back to Iraq.

Well Dubya, I bet a lot of them would like to see you face to face too. They'd probably have some choice words to say if those thick-necked boys with the wires in their ears weren't watching.

Funny thing is that this stuff is actually getting play in the press. And not just with the tinfoil hat crew, this is out on the wires!

And the indictments are coming...

“I will bring honor and integrity back to The White House.”
-George W. Bush, aka: Shrub-

Priorities

Quote of the day:

“The Americans brought electricity to my ass before they brought it to my house.”
Iraqi detainee, upon release from Abu Ghraib prison {from Dahr Jamail}

Bulb changing - Dubya style

Ha:

How many members of the Bush administration does it take to change a light bulb?

1. One to deny that the light bulb needs to be changed;
2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed;
3. One to blame Clinton for burning out the light bulb;
4. One to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of light bulbs;
5. One to give a billion dollar no-bid contract to Halliburton for the new light bulb;
6. One to photograph Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a ladder under the banner: "Light Bulb Change Accomplished";
7. One administration insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how Bush was literally in the dark;
8. One to viciously smear #7;
9. One to campaign on TV and at rallies on how George Bush has had a strong light-bulb-changing policy all along;
10. One to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country;
11. And finally, one to explain that 911 changed everything, including the light bulb.

Right idea, wrong theocracy

Mitt Romney explains the nefarious Islamic threat to our government, our way of life, our malls, and white women everywhere.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- Venturing into foreign policy, Governor Mitt Romney yesterday told a largely Republican audience that Islamic terrorists ''want to bring down our government" and ''want to put in place a huge theocracy."

'We're under attack, as you know, militarily," Romney told about 150 people gathered at an exclusive Raleigh country club. ''They're not just intent on blowing up a little bomb here and there at a shopping mall, awful as that would be. They want to bring down our government, bring down our entire economy. They want to put in place a huge theocracy."

''Thank heavens we have a president of the United States who recognizes this for what it is and has declared war on it, and thank heavens we have a military that consists of the strongest and bravest and most able men and women in the world," Romney said.

Where to begin? Unless Mitt has access to information that no one else has this is one of the more asinine things I've heard in a while. Osama bin Laden's attack on us was in response to decades of American Foreign Policy that propped up corrupt regime's in exchange for oil. We, the CIA from the good old US of A, trained bin Laden so that he could fight the Soviets in Afghanistan as our proxy. Osama's specific justification for 9/11 was that he wanted American troops out of Saudi Arabia, the site of Mecca, Islam's holiest shrine. Clearly his agenda is broader than that but at least that's how he marketed his work.

On a more fundamental Mitt's comment above indicates that we have declared war on Islam, or at least a segment of it. If that is truly his belief then he needs to explain what victory/success will look like. At this point all he is doing is feeding the perception amongst Islamists that our "war on terru" is actually war against them.

Finally, the biggest threat of our country becoming a theocracy comes from our very own Taliban, the Fundamentalist Khristian right. These people are about as anti-American a group that we have produced in our 200 plus years of history.

Social commentary through spraypaint

I had heard of Banksy's graffiti art and was intrigued. Today a friend gave me the link to his site.

The man is a genius. Below is an image he painted on the wall that the Israeli's built around the Palestinians.

Click for larger view.

Jeebus is coming...

So say's "Crazy-ass Pat":

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Prominent US preacher Pat Robertson said that recent natural disasters around the world point to the end of the world and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

"These things are starting to hit with amazing regularity," Robertson told CNN, remarking on the coincidence of a major earthquake that killed thousands in Asia Saturday and recent killer hurricanes slamming the United States.

Why does violence always precede the Prince of Peace?

Bush's first veto

May be used to block legislation that seeks to abolish the cruel and inhumane treatment of American prisoners. Says something about the man's priorities don't you think?

The man behind the legislation, Republican Senator John McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner in Vietnam, said the move was backed by American soldiers. His amendment would prohibit the "cruel, inhumane or degrading" treatment of prisoners in the custody of America's defence department.

The vote was one of the largest and best supported congressional revolts during President George W Bush's five years in office and shocked the White House.

"We have put out a Statement of Administration Policy saying that his advisers would recommend that he vetoes it if it contains such language," White House spokesman Scott McClellan warned yesterday.

The administration said Congress was attempting to tie its hands in the war against terrorism.

Tie it's hands?!? Did they really say that? Maybe they meant, "tie it's hands then strip it naked and run it through a gauntlet of dogs till it shits itself in terror." Or maybe they meant, "tie it's hand then electrify it's genitals while taking pictures"? Or maybe it meant, "tie it's hands then strap it to a board and submerge it's head in a water filled drum to simulate drowning." Hard to pick, too many choices.

Why do I keep thinking it can't get any worse, that we can't possibly stoop lower, only to have this administration prove me wrong?

I never thought I'd be ashamed to be an American. RIght now I am. George W. Bush is, by far, the worst thing that has ever happened to our country. And we allowed it to happen.

37%

Bush's popularity swirls lower and lower in the white porcelain bowl.

John McCain on the vote against torture

My feelings about John McCain wax and wane. They hit a real low when he came out and endorsed Dubya. Particularly since it hadn't been that long after RoveCo had smeared him as possibly unstable after his POW experience. I think that was a real low point.

Right now John's talking like someone I can respect again:

Mr. President, war is an awful business. I know that. I don’t think I’m naïve about how severe are the wages of war, and how terrible are the things that must be done to wage it successfully. It is a grim, dark business, and no matter how noble the cause for which it is fought, no matter how valiant the service, many veterans spend much of their subsequent lives trying to forget not only what was done to them and their comrades, but some of what had to be done by their hand to prevail.

I don’t mourn the loss of any terrorist’s life nor do I care if in the course of serving their ignoble cause they suffer great harm. They have pledged their lives to the intentional destruction of innocent lives, and they have earned their terrible punishment in this life and the next.

What I do regret, what I do mourn, and what I do care very much about is what we lose, what we -- the American serviceman and woman and the great nation they defend at the risk of their lives – what we lose when by official policy or by official negligence – we allow, confuse or encourage our soldiers to forget that best sense of ourselves, our greatest strength – that we are different and better than our enemies; that we fight for an idea – not a tribe, not a land, not a king, not a twisted interpretation of an ancient religion – but for an idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights.

I have been asked before where did the brave men I was privileged to serve with in Vietnam draw the strength to resist to the best of their ability the cruelties inflicted on them by our enemies. Well, we drew strength from our faith in each other, from our faith in God, and from our faith in our country. Our enemies didn’t adhere to the Geneva Convention. Many of my comrades were subjected to very cruel, very inhumane and degrading treatment, a few of them even unto death. But everyone of us knew, every single one of us knew and took great strength from the belief that we were different from our enemies, that we were better than them, that we, if the roles were reversed, would not disgrace ourselves by committing or countenancing such mistreatment of them. That faith was indispensable not only to our survival, but to our attempts to return home with honor. Many of the men I served with would have preferred death to such dishonor.

The enemies we fight today hold such liberal notions in contempt, as they hold the international conventions that enshrine them such as the Geneva Conventions and the treaty on torture in contempt. I know that. But we’re better than them, and we are the stronger for our faith. And we will prevail. I submit to my colleagues that it is indispensable to our success in this war that our servicemen and women know that in the discharge of their dangerous responsibilities to their country they are never expected to forget that they are Americans, the valiant defenders of a sacred idea of how nations should govern their own affairs and their relations with others – even our enemies.

Those who return to us and those who give their lives for us are entitled to that honor. And those of us who have given them this onerous duty are obliged by our history, and by the sacrifices – the many terrible sacrifices -- that have been made in our defense – we are obliged to make clear to them that they need not risk their or their country’s honor to prevail; that they are always, always – through the violence, chaos and heartache of war, through deprivation and cruelty and loss – they are always, always Americans, and different, better, and stronger than those who would destroy us.

God bless them as he has blessed us with their service.

More of this would be good, really good. Call your Congresscritter and thank them if they voted to support McCain. If not, ask them if they are mentally ill or just morally bankrupt.

Bush gave another speech today apparently

Unfortunately I had other things to do.

Thankfully the good folks that inhabit the Atriosphere have some good comment threads up. It's just like being there minus the pain and aggravation of watching and hearing that simpering ijut.

Best summary of the speech I did not hear was posted by Culture of Truth:

"Dark skinned people want to kill your white daughters, and I'm the cowboy who's gonna stop 'em."

Sounds like every other speech since 9/11. Can we move to a new topic please?

All I want to know is when are the indictments coming down? Now that I could watch.

If Bush hasn't started drinking again

now would be a real good time to start.

Bush's approval is at 40 percent. Social Security reform seems dead. Disapproval of Bush as a war leader is now two-to-one, and half the nation believes Iraq to have been a mistake and that we ought to get out.

Pile on top of this the daily beating that the president gets for Katrina, gas prices at $3 a gallon, Americans about to get the first bills for home heating oil, consumer confidence plunging to a two-year low, Bush's refusal to deal with the border crisis and a GOP rebellion over spending, and you have the ingredients of a party uprising and a political tsunami in 2006.

Who wrote that? Why that pinko Pat Buchanan.

90 to 9

Some positive signs of serious unrest in DC. With the "indictapalooza" taking out Delay and Bush insiders on the fast track for some indictments of their own you know folks  in the White House are in "every man for himself" mode. When their former chief procurement official gets nailed they don't have a lot of spare bandwidth for our clueless pResident. I suspect he's doing some of that "hard work" of 'pResidenting' on his own for a change.

Which may explain some things. Katrina was a disaster ("Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job"), Rita wasn't/isn't much better, and Bush is asking for MORE authority to use the military on American soil when the "bird flu" hits? (More authority = martial law folks.) Then he drops "Adoring Harriet" Miers into the SCOTUS hopper and conservatives go batshit crazy on him?!? (The Daily Show nails this, as usual.)

Couple all that with plummeting support for Iraq, Bush's own plunging poll numbers, and the looming 2006 elections and you have a recipe for Republicans actually listening to their constituents. With Kommandant Karl sidelined with a bad case of jail fear you know that Dubya's riding without training wheels or a helmet. He might even be drinking again but that woud just be icing on an already tasty cake.

So now, when John McCain puts forth the crazy idea that there should be rules and guidelines for the humane treatment of our POWs he gets 90 to 9 agreement in the Senate. Why it's almost civilized!

The Senate defied the White House yesterday and voted to set new limits on interrogating detainees in Iraq and elsewhere, underscoring Congress's growing concerns about reports of abuse of suspected terrorists and others in military custody.

Forty-six Republicans joined 43 Democrats and one independent in voting to define and limit interrogation techniques that U.S. troops may use against terrorism suspects, the latest sign that alarm over treatment of prisoners in the Middle East and at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is widespread in both parties. The White House had fought to prevent the restrictions, with Vice President Cheney visiting key Republicans in July and a spokesman yesterday repeating President Bush's threat to veto the larger bill that the language is now attached to -- a $440 billion military spending measure.

--------snip--------

In its statement on the veto threat, the White House said the measure would "restrict the president's authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bringing terrorists to justice."

Uhmm, restricting the pResident's authority to brutalize human beings is EXACTLY what Congress should be doing - - for a change. So, who didn't agree?

Allard (R-CO)
Bond (R-MO)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Stevens (R-AK)

Evil bastards every one. Remember those names.

Posse Comitatus rewritten by Bush. Now reads Posse comeandgetus

Take this:

A dictatorship would be a heck of a lot easier, there's no question about it.
Dubya - July 26, 2001

Add this:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush asked Congress on Tuesday to consider giving him powers to use the military to enforce quarantines in case of an avian influenza epidemic.

Then add this:

Two teams of scientists reported that they re-created the influenza virus that killed as many as 50 million people in 1918 and 1919. The findings suggest that the threat of an avian-flu pandemic might be greater than previously thought.

Researchers from the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Mount Sinai School of Medicine said that the historic, killer flu-bug strain probably originated as an avian bug and then spread in humans without undergoing complicated changes that many experts had thought necessary for a human pandemic.

Then add this:

A flu pandemic could happen at any time and kill between 5-150 million people, a UN health official has warned.

David Nabarro, who is charged with co-ordinating responses to bird flu, said a mutation of the virus affecting Asia could trigger new outbreaks.

"It's like a combination of global warming and HIV/Aids 10 times faster than it's running at the moment," Dr Nabarro told the BBC.

Connect the dots.

"the refeudalization of the public sphere."

Say what you want about Al Gore, he's one very bright guy. He's probably our "real" President too, at least he was in 2000, but I'm not going there on this post. He gave a speech this AM that eloquently summarizes our current level of discourse and why it matters. Excerpt below:

unlike the marketplace of ideas that emerged in the wake of the printing press, there is virtually no exchange of ideas at all in television's  domain. My partner Joel Hyatt and I are trying to change that - at least where Current TV is concerned. Perhaps not coincidentally, we are the only independently owned news and information network in all of American television.

It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no "meritocracy of ideas" on television. To the extent that there is a "marketplace" of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly,  with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.

The German philosopher,  Jurgen Habermas, describes what has happened as "the refeudalization of the public sphere." That may sound like gobbledygook,  but it's a phrase that packs a lot of meaning. The feudal system which thrived before the printing press democratized knowledge and made the idea of America thinkable, was a system in which wealth and power were intimately intertwined, and where knowledge played no mediating role whatsoever. The great mass of the people were ignorant.  And their powerlessness was born of their ignorance.

Ignorance may be bliss but it's no foundation for democracy. Sadly, there are folks in power now that don't believe in the ideals that this country was founded upon. They are actively working to subvert the free flow of information and to disrupt real discourse. Nothing matters to them but power and control. It's up to us, all of us, to resist this at every turn.

Read all of Al's speech, it's long but worth it.

Unintentional and excruciatingly accurate

All of the fuss about Tom Delay led me to do a Google image search on the bugman. Didn't see any of him in a spanking new orange jumpsuit but I can still dream can't I?

However, I did find Congresscritter Clint Moore's online photogallery and it's a scary sight. Scroll down just a bit and you'll find, under the unintentional and excruciatingly accurate heading "Impacting Washington DC", pictures of Clint and Tom Delay, Clint and Phil Gramm, Clint and Kay Bailey Hutchinson.

Uh, Clint? "Impact" is a noun. Being "impacted" is an uncomfortable condition caused by extreme constipation. You and your brethtren may indeed be "impacting" Washington DC but I would suggest that this might not be something you should advertise. Particularly given the sensitivities to that sort of behavior from the Khristian Taliban that support you.

Besides, I think DC is "impacting" all of us.