Republicans REFUSE to learn from Europe

Suddenly, Junior wants to talk immigration, mostly to get everyone off the war, the NSA wiretapping, the CIA covert operative, the (fill in your favorite Junior Admin horror show here!)

Plenty of others are talking about plenty of flavors of this issue, so I'll stick to Section 1 of the 14th Amendment. You know, "All persons born...in the United States..., are citizens of the United States..." (This is also the amendment that Junior is violating with Gitmo and 'extraordinary rendition.' Read up!)

Seems the Republicans want to repeal that Section, cause y'know them wetbacks just keep coming here to have those American babies. And it really conflicts with those Republican family values to break up a family, shipping mom and dad back to TJ while the infant citizen stays here and fends for itself (?)

This, just as France has had fourth and fifth-generation Algerian youth rioting in the streets, burning cars and mugging people, largely because they were born in France, as were their parents, yet French law for many years refused to allow them citizenship. So they are outcasts in the only country they know, with no allegiance to any nation, and no ability to work their way up the ladder of French life.

The same thing's happening in Germany. Just in 1999 were the laws changed to permit many of the Turks born in Germany to be declared citizens. There are still laws on the books there defining 'German' by the mother's bloodline. These go back to 1913. So only 40,000 of the 2,000,000 Turks in Germany have become citizens, even though more than half of these Turks were born in Germany and speak German as natives. They all live in enclaves and most are excluded from voting, or running for office.

Yea, let's get us some more of that racial segregation and artificial underclass here. Apparently the Republicans just can't get enough of that racial hatred...


sing along:
"Should Americans pick crops?
George says 'No!'
'Cause no one but a Mexican
would stoop so low.
And after all, even in Egypt, the pharaohs
Had to import Hebrew braceros"
- Tom Lehrer, 1965 from the song "Senator George Murphy" (elected 1964, California)

SSDG - Same Shit, Different George!

Mourn on April 30th...

(was on vacation, watching Spring Training. Hope you missed me!)

Lots of noise about the third anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Marches on the left, Bush stumping to the right. So what?
I'm waiting for April 30th. THAT'S the date that Dems and Progressives ought to focus on. Why?

"[The war] could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."
- Sec of Defense Rumsfeld, 2/7/03.

So, on April 30th, six weeks from now, let's remind everyone of the third anniversary of when this pre-emptive strike was supposed to be over, leaving our troops lanquishing in a diabetic haze of thrown candies, needing their gas masks on to protect them from the heady scents of piles of flowers for the victors.
And remind them of that oh-so-deadly self-delusion that this doddering refugee from the Ford Administration uses for judgement.
My one regret about Rumsfeld is that he'll die long before he is universally recognized for the incompetent he is.

Late To the Job Market, Part II

Junior was down in New Orleans a couple days ago, surveying the damage he's responsible for. I have never heard anyone I'm supposed to respect whine so much about how hard the work is as this clown does at almost every press conference. And I'd put money down that Junior is the first US president, at least since Hoover, and maybe before, to use "how hard the job is" as an excuse for mistakes made by himself or his administration.
But I'm not surprised by his whining. He's never had to show up, much less on time, even for the few months he spent hiding out in the Texas Air Nat'l Guard. He's finally got a job that he wants credit for doing, but he doesn't want to do the job itself, because 'it's hard work!' Hard work? Maybe for you, rich, pampered, whining boy! The guy you followed could negotiate legislation, talk peace with opponents on conference calls, AND get a blow-job, all at exactly the same moment, in the Oval Office. That's a whole different kind of 'hard work,' and we NEVER heard him complain!

Christ, Jan 21, 2009 can't come soon enough!

Late to the Job Market

Why is Junior so irritable?
Wouldn't you be if suddenly you found yourself with a job you were expected to show up for? Where your absences and vacations were national news? And where you couldn't just quit and sell the business to one of your daddy's friends?
Remember, this is Junior's first full-time job. The governorship of Texas doesn't count. It's the weakest of the 'weak-governor' offices in the US, and the legislature only meets for three months every other year. His entire tenure only had two legislative sessions! And the Lieutenant Gov signs most of the real business. Junior kissed babies, shook hands, and laughed at women being executed. Mostly he went to games at his old ball park!
Why'dja think the family parked him in Texas, and put the bright one in Florida?
Personally, I think they got him the presidency so there'll always be someone to take care of him after his folks kick off and can't cover his ass anymore.
At least he'll have Secret Service protection. God knows he'll need it. I figure he may be the first President who'll want to retire to a foreign country. But who'll have him?

Building the Republican Wall between Church and State

I swing wildly, from immediate news commentaries to hopefully higher-level pieces of analysis. Case in point today.
I think a part of the Democratic outreach to Christians should point out the Democratic party's incorporation of Jesus's teachings into government's role in people's lives. Feed the hungry, cloth the naked, shelter the homeless, heal the sick, halt and lame, whenever they ask. We are our brothers' (and sisters') keepers, regardless of creed or color. Those are New Deal, Fair Deal, Great Society ethics. By incorporating these into government's relationship to its citizens, this becomes reliable help, not 'random acts of kindness' provided by the local church as best it can with the paltry tithe it gets from its parishioners.
These sure as fuck aren't Republican principles! These are Republican "entitlements for the weak" that need to be cut back to provide more tax money to the already-obscenely wealthy, that top 1/10th of 1 percent, most of whom inherited it. Like our president, for example...
The joke here, I guess, is that a true separation of church and state would mean that we would become truly Republican, cutting off any spending on programs for the health and feeding of children, the poor and the elderly. So I guess the latest ReagaNazi budget proposal is in the most absolutist reading of 'a wall between church and state.'

Negatives versus Positives

Junior's negatives at this point in his 2nd term are the ones Republicans had HOPED for at this point in Clinton's. And at this point in his Administration, Bill was in the process of being impeached! Instead, Bill was in the mid-60 percent range.
Maybe, just maybe, the best way to run the country isn't having one-party rule, electing an incompetent president, and then appointing cabinet heads and support staff that are even more incompetent.
'Course, it's a great way to line Republican pockets...As an example, apparently, (and I can see this headline on a couple of subscription sites, but not on any mainstream news feed) Republicans have proposed cleaning up the United Arab Emirates ports deal, by having an American company join with Dubai Ports World to manage the US ports. Guess what US company" Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Yup! Halliburton...

C'mon! You can't make this shit up!

I gotchya 'free markets' right heah!

Groucho Marx often recounted the tale of a dinner party at which he propositioned a starlet sitting next to him. 'Would you sleep with me for a million dollars?' Groucho asked, laughing. The starlet, blushing, nodded agreement that she would, and they both laughed.
Later, over drinks, Groucho asked, 'Would you sleep with me for twenty dollars?' This time, the starlet slapped him, hissing 'What kind of girl do you think I am?!'
Said Groucho, 'I know what kind of girl you are. Now we're haggling for price!'

A legislator asked a vintner how he'd feel if he was allowed to mail his wine to any customer in the US, overriding all state liquor sales regulations other than age requirements. The vintner, having wanted to mail his California wines to New York and Florida customers for years, praised the legislator's good sense at eliminating these costly restrictions on the free market.
The next session, the legislator asked the vintner how he'd feel about having to compete against marijuana distributors and cocaine manufacturers for the recreational dollars of his customers. The vintner was appalled that the legislator would propose such a dangerous, unAmerican idea, and wondered what he could be thinking!
Said the legislator, "Now, we're haggling for the meaning of 'free!' "

Whenever I hear anyone (other than a few hard-core libertarians from the Cato Institute) bad-maouth regulations and talk about 'free markets,' I always pause to ask if they endorse selling beer to 12-year-olds, SAMs to the Crips, or marijuana to anyone. If they say 'No!', then we both know what kind of person they are.
Then, the conversation can move on to 'acceptable manners and levels of market regulation.'
At least then the discussion is a rational and realistic negotiation.
To paraphrase Clinton, it depends on how free 'free' is!

Post Traumatic Sedition

Everyone else will be blogging today about the newly-revealed videos of Junior's Katrina briefings. My only comment is that the ReagaNazis didn't need a video tape to impeach Clinton, but now we have Junior on two videos, lying about using court orders for all wiretaps, and for claiming that no one could've anticipated the breaching of the levees. If a Democratic president committed these crimes, this Congress would be doing NO other business but impeachment. So, again, another instance on to the pile of two-faced-ness that has created hypocrisy-fatigue in the American populace.
No, I want to talk about the new assault by the ReagaNazis on our troops, our vets, those guys and gals in uniform that these asses use up like toilet paper, but won't join in battle (Five-Deferment Dick Cheney, for example.) It's not been enough to reduce death benefits, to reduce VA funding, to send the troops off through multiple deployments with insufficient armor, dirty water and poisonous food (aw, hell, I'm not doing links, look it up!) The lunch room at one of my clients got a new USERRA poster yesterday, and the protections for returning soldiers, especially ones in the Guard and Reserve, are pathetic.
Now, it's an assult on the possibility that these soldiers suffer from mental damage as a result of being in battle, and being treated like this. Yesterday's NY Times sported an opinion from an AEI shill, Sally Satel, who wrote that many of the soldiers claiming post-traumatic-stress syndrome (PTSD) are just baby-boom slackers who see this as financial security. She worked the wards of the VA during the reign of Bush the Elder, but her attitude here reminds me of Patton's walk through tents of the injured in WWII, and abusing soldiers with shell-shock. She uses the fact that some of these soldiers took years, maybe tens of years, before finally showing up for treatment, as evidence that they're probably faking.
How long, how hard, how much time and money, have we spent trying to get soldiers who are psychologically damaged by their service to come forward and ask for help? yet here's this clown, with NO military service, setting up the ReagaNazi excuses to cut back on the financial disaster that is coming from the support America owns our soldiers, even at the current, niggardly levels of the Junior Administration. The $2 trillion estimated total long-term cost of the Invasion of Iraq needs to be cut back to allow more money to flow into crony pockets, and to the ReagaNazi marketing centers, like the Hudson Institute, the Heritage Foundation, and the AEI that Satel shills for.
Not only do these slacker vets need to be cut off, but anyone who sympatizes with them, or thinks Junior's doing a lousy job, needs to be investigated for sedition. Like Laura Berg, a nurse at a VA hospital who wrote a letter to a local paper criticizing the government's Katrina response and VA support. She finally spoke out this morning on Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now show. The transcript of the interview might inform the AEI's Satel as to why many vets are having resurgences of shell-shock. Instead, the government is apparently trying to shut Nurse Berg up.
It's what we've come to expect from the chickenhawks and cowards that populate the White House and the rest of the Republican Congress: the vets should suck it up and not ask for help, on the battle field or afterward, and anyone who says otherwise needs to be threatened with arrest.
War on the cheap, and don't ask questions! These people have no shame.

Pravda and TASS (for those of you old enough...)

One of the coffeeshops I frequent got suckered into a cable-n-broadband package, and hung a big flat-panel up to entertain the folks as they wire up for the morning. The broadband's wireless, so I can pick-up e-mails at lunch, for free, and do some posting.
The owner's a liberal, but by the time I get there, he's switched from the CNN he opens with, to FOX to calm the ReagaNazi cluster at the main table.
This morning, while another guy stood beside me, sipping his coffee and waiting for his breakfast order, I asked the owner when he switches back to CNN.
He said he usually doesn't.
I said 'I can't watch Pravda!'
The coffee came out the nose of the guy next to me.
Obviously, he got the reference, but I wasn't sure how he took it (other than strongly) until he finished coughing, and started laughing.
'Course, the more correct reference would be TASS, the broadcast agency. Pravda was print. Like the NY Post and the Washington Times.

By the way, have you ever noticed the naming (unoriginality? riding another's reputation? assumption of a stupid, confused readership?) of the REAL newspapers and the RNC fishwrappers in NY and DC? It's truly a bizarro-world arrangement:
NY Times and Washington Post - (formerly) REAL newspapers
Washington Times and NY Post - Moon and Murdoch publish their versions of Pravda for the RNC