Tag: buhdacious rant

The Cheney was born with the stars

The Cheney has always existed

It is the Cheney that rustles the grass behind you

As you walk through the dark woods

It is the Cheney’s eyes that you glimpse

Behind the hung clothes in the dark closet

The Cheney is it, that goes bump in the night and  that hides under the bed

It’s passage bring goosebumps

The Cheney has always been here

They say

The Cheney is in the eye

Of the shot and dying once caged quail

The Cheney is in the eyes

Of the thin Iraqi child

As she she cannot sleep from hunger

The Cheney , so they say

Spies on lovers, but for a pleasure obscene

To catch them breaking rules

The Cheney bursts forth

In the explosion of sorrows in a drunken barfight when it has all become too much

In the lovers fist and the regret that follows the change

When it cannot be taken back

The Cheney lies in the dark, waiting, plotting, watching, stalking

Feeding on despair and brimming anger

Feasts on hurt and death and pain

And gnaws at the bones of our weaknesses

It sleeps in your fears

In all our fears

Where the sunlight never goes

The Cheney has always been here, so they say

That before one passes from this place

A new one must be born

It will always haunt our dreams

To show us what true meanness is

And now…. it wears a dress???

I am grumpy and going to rant, deal with it! If you are in the mood for something uplifting or fun, this is not the essay for you!

I don’t like humans much. Sure individuals like YOU are fine and generally fairly inoffensive, but as a species they have little to recommend them. Some decent art, though the best of it is still just a pale imitation of nature. Those few of us who actually think and communicate well are often inspiring and almost worth making the effort to get out of bed for, though thanks to the net you don’t even have to do that. So there is another good thing on the ledger, Al Gore creating the internet. Plus…. there is some great take out food out there, particularly in the “Mexican” genre. But other than that what are they good for? Oh yeah, sex is good too. So that is a few things that save us from being irredeemably worthless.

But as organisms who are allegedly capable of thought,  we have a loooooooong way to go. And a short time to get there. As I look around at my fellow humans, it often takes all of my willpower not to despair or just start yelling at them!

Sure, we can blame the pace of development due to the exploding population for the lack of an intelligent approach to living on a planet with limited resources. But that is more an excuse than exculpatory. We have the information we need and have had it for decades. Despite all of the efforts by the PTB to quash it, we now have the technologies that we need either in hand or within easy reach. And we certainly have the evidence we need that the conditions to support human life on our little oasis of a planet are deteriorating at an alarming rate. So alarming, in fact, that those humans who have been ‘blessed’ with ignorance and the nearly unlimited human capacity for denial have succeeded (once again) in halting or slowing the efforts of those who have the capacity of thought necessary to save the planet for their children and grandchildren because they are fearful, superstitious, gullible and unwilling to face the fact that the lifestyle they value above all else is unsustainable and in fact a form of slow suicide for our entire species.

There is a scientific term that describes this lack of adaptability to new information perfectly: extinct.

                                     

John McCain wants to stay in Iraq. John McCain wants to increase troop levels in Afghanistan. The unstable and temperamental John McCain wants to “Bomb, bomb. bomb” Iran. The Russians are furiously signalling that if Iran is attacked they will react.  John McCain showed the world during the recent crisis in Georgia that he wants to take a hard, aggressive line with Russia, even at the risk of restarting the Cold War.  John McCain wants war. His rhetoric and stated policies reek of it.

And Quickdraw McCain is willing to FORCE your son or daughter….. or YOU ….to fight and kill in his wars. John McCain can’t come right out and say it…..as with so many things that the hot headed McCain can’t come out and say to a nation tired of and bankrupted from war….but if John McCain wants to pursue his aggressive, war centered foreign policy “to the gates of hell,” John McCain NEEDS a draft.

Let’s not pussyfoot around here, a draft means one thing and one thing only: Forcing America’s youth to kill. FORCING Americans to die or be wounded, for his policy of using force, force, and more force. The same policies that have failed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The purpose of a draft is to select unwilling young men (and presumably women) take them away from their lives and families and make them into soldiers…..by force of law. Young men and women who have chosen NOT to volunteer to fight will be MADE to join the military and be trained to kill…and die…for the sake of the “Global War On Terror. ” A war that cannot be won, a perpetual war. A war that does NOT rise to the level of an existential threat to America, which should be the ONLY reason forced conscription is ever instituted.

Being a series of gross oversimplified generalizations written in various stages of being on both pain and painkillers, with a happy ending:

I spent five hours in the Las Vegas airport Saturday night. I can’t think of a better reintroduction to America.

A pleasure city built in the middle of the desert to serve the repressed desires of puritanical Americans, who would deny themselves and others pleasure. An illusory mirage of freedom from the constrictions of self imposed illusory moral rectitude. Sin City, it is called. What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas….because you aren’t allowed to have fun anywhere else! Built in the middle of the desert…where no body will notice it, lol. A pleasure city to which, in part the mighty Colorado River has been sacrificed. The Colorado River, in case you did not know, no longer reaches the sea. Every drop of it is diverted now, so that Americas can have fountains and golf courses and swimming pools in the middle of a dessert.

Truly a symbol of Americas power. Americas indisputably great power, and Americas indisputably VERY odd use of its great power.

People here object to the kind of language….that I used to my wife…..in front of a bunch of people….so we can’t talk about what I called my wife…. in front of a bunch of people, that would be wrong…..but it wasn’t wrong for me to use that kind of language……in front of a bunch of people.

We are in Iraq for the oil!………..No we aren’t!………….ok, um….ok, um……Ok, um….sorta?

Tweety

   

“You know, if somebody else were to say that, they would be accused of being a communist, or radical, or a leftist…for John McCain, a war hero, to say that we’re fighting in the Middle East to protect our oil sources is an astounding development.”

If we cut the gas tax….the Oil Corps won’t just raise their prices!

Kick Russia out of the G-8! I’m sure they won’t mind a bit!

Fareed Zakaria calls “the most radical idea put forward by a major candidate for the presidency in 25 years.”

Tyranny: a government in which absolute power is vested in a single ruler.

Democracy: a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or indirectly through a system of representation usually involving periodically held free elections.

Accountability: an obligation to accept responsibility or to account for one’s actions.

Justice: the administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments

There is no more tyrannical act than a ruler taking the law into his own hands to torture or kill a person.

There is no greater injustice than to have evidence…overwhelming evidence….of such an oft repeated immoral and tyrannical act, but to have no means of accountability.

There is no greater evidence of the substitution of tyranny for democracy, than to have the very agent charged with upholding justice refuse to do so.

The Department of Justice is that agent, in our democracy, and it is refusing to hold George Bush accountable for his confessed illegal actions.

By the act of politicizing and corrupting the DOJ to the point where it will not act against him under any circumstances, George “the Torturer” Bush has effectively escaped the Rule of Law and become a unaccountable ruler. Unaccountable to The People, unaccountable to justice itself. In other words, a ruler who makes his own laws, a tyrant.

This sounds like hyperbole, but it is where our nation stands at this point in time.  

The strength of Progressive/Liberal/Democratic activists (hereafter referred to as The Left) has always been their passion.

The weakness of Progressive/Liberal/Democratic activists….. has always been their passion.

That weakness is haunting us again, right now. Passionate people are easy to manipulate. Passion overwhelms thought and causes emotional, rather than analytical decision making. That passion and emotion has united The Left into a powerful force in the past around many issues such a Civil Rights, Womens Rights and the Peace Movement. That passion has also been used to easily sow division in The Left, by introducing  agents provocateurs to redirect that passion from its Right Wing targets….and to foment division in The Left. Thus fracturing it.

The only real way, unfortunately, to tell if this is happening is to wait and see if it happens. If The Left ends up fractured over some issue, you can bet that operatives from The Right have had a hand in fracturing it.

As it is ….coincidentally?….. fractured right this very moment over the primaries.

When The Left is fractured, the RW wins. This phenomena, plus propaganda (as BarbinMD highlights) and organized voter suppressions effort are some of the prime reasons the RW has been able to gain and keep power throughout the Baby Boom. The Left had/has superior numbers, The Right had/has superior, if despicable, tactics.  

As Youffratia said in the tip jar of I’m mad as hell

” Oh, hell, it’s been a rough week…”

And so it has. Pfiore and others seem to be echoing the sentiment after watching the Doug Feith Video, so let’s make it official.

The cosmic weather report this week has been for sun spots around Uranus….iow, this week has burned my ass. You know what else burns my ass?

Flames about three feet high.

IOW. No. I am NOT going to list all of the things that have burned my ass this week, that would just incinerate my gluteas maximi all over again. Suffice it to say that they have been sufficient to burn my buns. I have felt like at least two of the Seven Dwarves, Cranky and Grumpy. What’s that you say? Cranky wasn’t one of the Seven Dwarves?

Hmmm.

Fuck You.

I honor of the fact that a couple of days from now will be the anniversary of the first Docudharma Official Policy Statement….. What’s that you say? It hasn’t been a year? See above.

Or as I said in Ask A Kossak on Sunday, but wish to readdress from just the media to every mother’s son or daughter above the rank of sergeant in charge of this sorry ass pisshole masquerading as reality, to wit: …………..the godammed mothraforking shitehead icehole media, what WILL we do with these seemingly genetically engineered dufilicious morans??? I needed to vent, maybe you do too? If so have at it in the comments. Go ahead and scream, curse, throw things, and of course YELL LOUDER

Good Morning America! In the news today….President Bush admits/brags of authorizing torture. Here is the front page of the New York Times. And CNN? Why are they not reporting that the President has committed War Crimes, you ask? Because the entire Bush administration defense of their conspiracy to torture rests on their definition of what torture…..is. Sound familiar?

From ABC

The CIA has confirmed Zubaydah was one of three al Qaeda suspects subjected to waterboarding. After he was waterboarded, officials say Zubaydah gave up valuable information that led to the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad and fellow 9/11 plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh.

Mohammad, who is known as KSM, was also subjected to waterboarding by the CIA.

In the interview with ABC News Friday, Bush defended the waterboarding technique used against KSM.

“We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it,” Bush said. “And no, I didn’t have any problem at all trying to find out what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed knew.”

In interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson last year, Tenet said: “It was authorized. It was legal, according to the Attorney General of the United States.”

“Why are we talking about this in the White House?” the network quoted Ashcroft as saying during one meeting. “History will not judge this kindly.”

From Raw Story

In one, (memo) dated Aug. 1, 2002, then-Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee defined torture as covering “only extreme acts” causing pain similar in intensity to that caused by death or organ failure. A second, dated March 14, 2003, justified using harsh tactics on detainees held overseas so long as military interrogators did not specifically intend to torture their captives.



Both legal opinions since have been withdrawn.

From Wikipedias article on the Clinton impeachment:

Clinton denied having a “sexual affair” with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. At the deposition, the judge ordered a precise legal definition of the term “sexual relations”  that Clinton claims to have construed to mean only vaginal intercourse. A much-quoted statement from Clinton’s grand jury testimony showed him questioning the precise use of the word “is.” Clinton said, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is. If the-if he-if ‘is’ means is and never has been, that is not-that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement”

If a co-conspirator gets to define what torture….is. It isn’t torture. Can we please have “the judge order(ed) a precise legal definition of the term “sexual relations” torture.  

The world is made up of nearly seven billion people. In order to change it, you have to change the minds of those people. That’s a LOT of changing! Should we try to sit down and have a conversation seven billion times to change each individual mind? Obviously not. The travel expenses alone are prohibitive.

Margaret Mead said:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.

So how does this small group change the world? By indeed, the only method that has ever worked.

Propagating ideas.

If an idea is specific but not simplistic, but can still be stated relatively simply, and the truth behind it is potent enough, iow if it resonates with enough people…if it changes enough minds….it changes the world.

But there is a problem….or two…hundred.