No More Mr. Nice Guy!

United States, RIP 7/4/1776 - 9/29/2006

As I indicated last night, it's been a depressing week. Even my schadenfreude at Len Munsil making an ass of himself over Arizona's 9/11 memorial is short-lived, as today's Repulsive reveals that the memorial commission is set to cave like a West Virginia coalmine in response to the bullying and blustering of Munsil and his brutish supporters (who phoned the employers of some members of the non-partisan commission and demanded their firing). Gotta love that christian compassion!

Meanwhile of course, our elected representatives in Washington did us proud. Last week alone, in a fit of pre-election gimmicks, cheap stunts, and cowardly capitulation to the Torturer-in-Chief after he stamped his feet and threatened to take his ball home, they voted:

• To "compromise" with the Junior regime on torture. It's now official policy that the US will do a little torture, but not as much as Junior wanted, so that makes everything hunky-dory.
• To pass the Public Expression of Religion Act of 2005 which is designed to discourage people from suing the government when it violates their rights and promotes religion. Now, even when victims (like this family) win a lawsuit, they can't be paid monetary damages and will be stuck with a massive legal bill.
• To build a Berlin wall along 700 miles of our 2,000-mile border with Mexico. Only someone as ignorant as George W. Monkeynuts could fail to see a problem here. The only action that could make a measurable difference - meaningful sanctions against illegal employers - is the one thing the corporatist rethug party will never consider. Instead we get a billion-dollar boondoggle which will cause massive environmental damage, and disrupt the lives of Native American tribes like the Tohono O'odham who live along the border, but won't make a whit of difference to the tsunami of illegal immigration.

So there you have it - a trifecta of cowardice, mindless jingoism, and good old Merkin dumbassery. Oh, and by the way, buried deep within the torture bill is a little gem defining non-allegiance to Bush as terrorism which "shall be punished by death or such other punishment as a military commission under this chapter may direct."

It's official - the US is a third-world cesspit of a dictatorship which tortures political opponents, imposes a fundamentalist theocracy and turns its territory into a prison. Maybe that border fence makes sense after all. It isn't to keep people out - it's to stop them from escaping.

Desperately seeking...

It's time once more to take a look at funny/weird search queries people were using when they found this site. Several months after I posted an article on V for Vendetta, that's still the top search query. What do you think, should I change my name to No More Mr. Nice Guy Fawkes? But there are lots of other interesting, funny and just plain strange queries in the server logs. Here's a sample:

abdallah dear possible uses of stem cells
best university bitches in miniskirt websites
bush singing
but it turned out to be an ordinary guy faking a british accent
co workers bitch revenge
definition of insanity in irish culture
even bush hates you
evil fascist lunatics
george bush suck
guy with machine gun
hispanic attack
len munsil victory has janet scared
monkey nuts crouch end
no more christian nice guy: drinking
riduclous orgasm
spoiler virgins master abortions
venal dementia
veritas hares -modify enabled

I've no idea why some of those strings matched my site. Anyway, even if you didn't find what you were looking for, I hope you were entertained and will come back!

The Munsilly season

Lots of depressing stuff happening on the national scene, so I thought I'd blog on a more uplifting subject - the inevitable burial of Len Munsil in the November elections.

Munsil is the rethug candidate for governor in Arizona who offers an embarrassment of riches in the idiocy department. He is an extreme-right christocrat whose only leadership experience is as head of a fringe anti-sex, anti-gay group which preaches abstinence, though he himself admits he had sex before marriage. (He's also the author of a gay-bashing ballot initiative designed to drag out the neanderthal vote and get him elected. And his campaign manager is Nathan Sproul, who presided over the wholesale illegal destruction of Democratic registration cards during the 2004 election campaign. And his leading supporters are barking mad racists - but I digress.)

Even though Arizona is (ahem) a very red state, i.e. a fetid, miasmic swamp of Junior-is-Jeezus reactionary conservatism, Munsil is trailing badly in the polls to Democratic incumbent Janet Napolitano. So he recently tried to stir the pot by denouncing the state's 9/11 memorial, calling it "anti-war and anti-American", and vowing to tear it down if elected. He and other rethugs are also calling for a special session of the state legislature to tackle the vitally important issue of demolishing this monument, which was chosen by a non-partisan group that included 9/11 victims' families. (This after the legislature ended a session which was record-breaking both for its length and for its lack of accomplishments, with whole weeks wasted on gay marriage and other bogeyman wedge issues.)

Of course, this kind of bloviating buffoonery is red meat to the hard-right mouth-breathing fundo-fascists who are the bedrock of 'thug support. But even in the Arid Zone, Munsil's craw-thumping, hate-mongering and know-nothingism seems to be passing its sell-by date. Munsil's despicable little stunt has backfired on him, earning him well-deserved scorn and derision. And he's still way behind in the polls, while his hateful and divisive initiative is going nowhere.

Even in Arizona, there is still hope.

Reason is the reason for the science

One more post "inspired" by today's Repulsive, while I can still keep my eyes open. Rob-squared writes,

"This is a dangerous state of affairs for humanity," the pope said, "as we see from the disturbing pathologies of religion and reason which necessarily erupt when reason is so reduced that questions of religion and ethics no longer concern it. Attempts to construct an ethic from the rules of evolution or from psychology and sociology, end up being simply inadequate."

As best I can tell, this did not engender death threats to the pope from atheistic or agnostic biologists, psychologists or sociologists.

Tsk, tsk, PZ Myers! Falling down on the job!

Seriously though, I'm sick and tired of being told that reason and religious faith are two sides of the same coin, equally valid ways of discovering the truth, yada yada yada. I'm also Christ-weary of being smugly preached at, "science doesn't answer moral questions." Goddamit, that's not science's job!

The purpose of science is to understand how the universe works. Science proceeds from the assumption that there is something which we call "reality" which exists whether you believe in it or not, or for that matter whether you exist or not. This "reality", we further assume, is governed by naturalistic laws and relationships which are in principle understandable and repeatable. This means we can perform experiments and learn something from the results.

Some people complain about this "naturalistic bias" of science, which only shows how ignorant they are. What other basis could science have? If the universe is governed by invisible, irrational forces whose every whim affects our lives, experiments would not be repeatable and any attempt to study the universe would be a waste of time.

With me so far? Good. Now, here's an important point. Science does not answer moral questions, nor does it claim to. Evolution, for example, does not say: "We descended from monkeys, therefore we are nothing but monkeys" - a tediously common creationist strawman which is oxymoronic and self-refuting on its face. Just as the theory of gravity doesn't say you should push little old ladies off tall buildings, as Richard Dawkins put it.

On the other hand, religion doesn't answer moral questions either! Although of course it claims to. But all religion has is unsubstantiated assertions. Needless to say, every flavor of religion has a different set of assertions. What, you believe in transubstantiation rather than consubstantiation? Death to you, heathen! And of course when religion intrudes into scientific questions, the results are typically comic (e.g. creationism) and/or tragic (e.g. creationism).

That's the difference between religion and science. There is room for disagreement in science, but in the end, the theory with the best evidence on its side wins, and a consensus develops. In religion there is no consensus because there is no evidence. Anyone can make any kind of outrageous claim and cite some ancient scroll in support. Religious disagreements cannot be settled by reason, which is why holy wars are always the bloodiest.

The idea that one has to accept some package deal or other of irrational superstitions and taboos in order to be a moral person is a great steaming pile of holy horsecrap. In fact, I would say that religion and morality have nothing to do with each other. Though reason and science are not the same thing, I would say that reason is the foundation of both science and morality. In the case of morality, reason must be joined with empathy for one's fellow creatures. That's really all we need - no cosmic Peeping Tom, no old man with a beard waiting to throw you into the lake of eternal fire. Simply treat others as you would wish to be treated, and let your judgment by guided by reason and by the best knowledge available, and always tempered with empathy.

The pope's attempts to make reason the handmaiden of (his particular brand of) religion are as offensive to me as his Paleologos quote was to Muslims. Reason and religion cannot be reconciled, because religion is fundamentally irrational! One or the other has to win, and if it's religion, we are all seriously screwed.

Spin, spin, spin your swift boat...

Life is but a scream.

The sleaze, lies and hypocrisy of the Junior junta and its water-carrying poodles have been coming so thick and fast the last few days, I haven't been able to keep up. So in this post I'm just going to address a few random points, not terribly coherently, and let the rest go. I'll be back after I've made some headway on my sleep deficit.

First of all, a couple of items from yesterday's Repulsive. (I can always count on that slimy snotrag to provide fodder for righteous anger.) Let's start with this breathless headline: "Bush's approval rating is at highest point in a year." Whoopy-doo! A whopping, nosebleed-inducing 44%! Which means a mere half of the population has turned against Junior since his poll high point just after 9/11.

Then there's a mouth-foaming editorial against the powerful VoteVets TV ad which highlights the refusal of the rethugs to provide the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan with adequate (if any) body armor. The ad isn't even airing in Arizona (though you can change that) but it's obviously causing mass outbreaks of brown underwear syndrome in 'thug circles, to judge from the frenzied vitriol of Doug MacEachern's reaction. (I can always tell when MacEachern writes the lead editorial, from the way he works himself up into a berserk lather over total falsehoods.)

In the first place, MacEachern's frantic fulmination against VoteVets' "joltingly graphic hit piece", which he accuses of being "pure deceit", is itself the nadir of dishonesty. Whining about the Democrats not specifically mentioning body armor as the highlight of the spending bills they tried to pass, which the 'thugs shot down, is simply pathetic. However MacEachern tries to spin it, the undeniable fact remains that the 'thug administration and the 'thug-controlled Congress had to power to provide US troops with modern body armor, and repeatedly chose not to do so. Jon Kyl in particular has specifically voted against both body and vehicle armor on several occasions.

The 'thugs have also consistency "supported the troops" by cutting their pay and benefits, denying health care to them and their families, even paying Halliburton millions to feed them rotten meat, and generally cutting them off at the knees. What a bunch of insufferable hypocrites! Why do they hate the troops?

Of course the Repulsive's outrage against campaign ad distortions is highly selective. I don't recall them leaping to correct Junior and Cheney the Dick when they repeatedly lied about John Kerry's voting record. And needless to say they eagerly embraced the even more despicable lies of the Swift Boat Sewer Rats for Junior.

But it's an encouraging sign that the 'thugs are so scared of the VoteVets ad, they are launching a pre-emptive strike against it before it even comes to Arizona. (They're pretty good at pre-emptive strikes against perceived enemies, not so good at follow-up.)

The beauty of this ad is that if you donate to get it on the air, you can specify which state you want it to run in and which senator you want to defeat. This is an issue on which Junior's water carrier, Jon Kyl, is very vulnerable, and Jim Pederson is running such a limp campaign, he needs all the help he can get. Here's that donation link again. I'm in for $25 - how about you? We've been endlessly barraged with 'thug propaganda, now it's time to catapult the truth!

The clothes with no emperor

There was a time that's still within living memory - though rapidly fading - when the US was a beacon of hope and freedom to people around the world. No we are the most despised nation of earth, and with good cause.

It sickens me that torture is official US policy. It disgusts me beyond words that the Chimp-in-Chief, a sick, psychopathic little son of a bitch who tortured animals as a child and who pumped his fist and screamed orgiastically, "This feels good," when informed that the bombardment of Baghdad which killed thousands of innocent civilians was underway, is now petulantly fighting for the right to torture, and sulking and stamping his feet when people call him on his lies.

I've written previously that Junior is a psychopath who enjoys the suffering of others and is unable to recognize them, or relate to them, as fellow human beings. Everything since then has strengthened and confirmed this opinion. But the really sick thing is that Monkeynuts has dragged this country down to his own depraved level. His reign has brought out the lowest and nastiest impulses of his supporters and let them run riot. He has, as already mentioned, made this country the most hated on earth - and that is one of the things I really hate the bastard for.

George Bush Junior is a twisted combination of Damien and Charles Manson - an evil child who commands an army of mouth-foaming fanatics. His only pleasure in life is wielding power for the sake of hurting and destroying. But behind the sadistic smirk and the peevish frown, there is - a void. Quoting from a link above:

I think when we begin to see pictures of little children blown apart or whatever, Bush will simply not feel anything, and he will be surprised that others do. That I believe is also the reason why he always talks as if he doesn't know what he is saying - because he doesn't. It doesn't come from the heart, there is no heart, no soul. This is not the emperor with no clothes, it's the clothes with no emperor.

I read the Repulsive so you don't have to

Occasionally, as a service to you, the reader, I post headlines from news stories so fresh they haven't actually broken yet. Today I'm doing something different. Here is a preview of the Arizona Repulsive's endorsement for the governor's election in November.

First, a little context. After decades of rethug governors who were lunatic-right wingnuts, mental midgets, ethical pygmies and flat-out criminals (and that's not even mentioning Jeff Groscost, Rick Renzi or J.D. Hayworth, just three of an endless parade of corrupt rethug Arid Zone buffoons), the people of Arizona finally copped on in 2002 and elected a Democrat, Janet Napolitano. Already highly experienced and respected as a US Attorney, Napolitano has since won kudos from all but the most mouth-foaming extremists for her performance. She inherited a record deficit, but her fiscal responsibility, hard work, combination of pragmatism and far-sightedness, and her skill at building consensus have put Arizona on a better footing than it's enjoyed in decades.

Naturally, this presents a dilemma for the Repulsive. The field of candidates in the 'thug primary was unusually weak, dominated by two stark raving lunatics who frantically tried to out-wingnut each other. Would the Repulsive endorse the Chief of the anti-sex police, Len Munsil, or the deranged would-be builder of concentration camps for illegal aliens, Don Goldwater? After much mental anguish and tearing of hair on Van Buren Street, the Repulsive finally issued a Munsil endorsement that was a masterpiece of squirming embarrassment. "Yeah, Munsil sucks, but you have to vote for someone so it might as well be him" pretty much sums it up. I defy you to read the editorial without getting a mental image of a six-year-old wanting to go potty.

So now that the mouth-frothing Munsil has won the primary and expects to defeat Napolitano in November, it's easy to predict what the Repulsive's spin is going to be.

Yes, Napolitano is an experienced, pragmatic leader who turned this state around from near bankruptcy. Yes, she has won bipartisan support with her effectiveness, common sense and hard work.

True, Munsil's only leadership experience is as head of an extremist fringe group that wants to police every bedroom in the state. True, he is just another conservative who believes morality begins and ends with sex, but preaches: Do as I say, not as I do.

Yes, he would drag Arizona back to the days when rigid ideologues and ethically challenged leaders made our state a nationwide laughing stock. Yes, his only weapons are divisiveness and hatemongering - he's even written an anti-gay ballot initiative which will hurt gays and straights alike, and hopes to ride on its coattails into the Governor's office.

But he's a Republican, so hold your nose and vote for him.

Fortunately, at least some Arizona voters aren't that stupid...

9/11 FUQ (Frequently Unanswered Questions)

I recently learned that I lean towards LIHOP rather than MIHOP. It has nothing to do with pancakes.

Despite suggestions that 9/11 was an inside job, I am not convinced. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and the accounts of controlled demolition of the Twin Towers, and cruise missiles striking the Pentagon, seem to have been refuted by experts with no political axe to grind.

On the other hand, there is a great deal of disturbing evidence that certain elements, very high in the US power structure, knew about the 9/11 operation in advance - and decided to let it happen, perhaps even impeding FBI investigations which might have prevented it, in order to profit from it.

Consider the following points.

Follow the Money: First of all, in the days immediately after 9/11, the media was abuzz with stories about abnormal trading patterns on the stock and options exchanges just before the attacks. Then the stories suddenly disappeared from the media. They didn't just fade away - someone abruptly pulled the plug on them! Most likely because the paper trail leads straight to George Bush Senior cronies at the highest echelons of the CIA.

Party like it's 9/11: On the morning of 9/11, several eyewitnesses saw a white van pull up to the New Jersey waterfront opposite the WTC. A film crew of several men set up operations before the attacks started. Then as the planes hit the towers, the men cheered and high-fived each other while continuing to film. Responding to calls from witnesses, police arrested the men and discovered that they were Israeli agents.

Very probably, Mossad knew of the attacks in advance and allowed them to happen. The reason why can be discerned in the difference between European and Israeli news headlines after 9/11. While Europe commiserated and declared, "We are all Americans now" (and only a moronic and venal chimp like George Bush Junior could squander so much goodwill), the Israeli media reported with considerable smugness: "Today the Americans are all Israelis." They knew that the mighty but brainless American giant would blunder into the Mideast with all guns blazing, and figured that Likud's ultra-hawkish agenda would be the beneficiary.

Puff, the Magic Passport: one of the most incredible but unreported facets of the events of 9/11 is that, although Mohammed Atta's plane was vaporized when it struck the North Tower, his passport was found unsinged, sitting atop several tons of rubble in the street a few blocks away! Then there was the Arabic-language flight manual found mere hours after the attacks, in one of the thousands of cars parked at Boston's Logan Airport, and the mile-wide trail of credit card transactions left by a supposed team of highly-trained crack terrorists - in their own names. Anyone who has read a John Le Carré novel could do a better job of covering his tracks! Or was someone planting false evidence?

Sheiks on a Plane: Two days after 9/11, while all air traffic in the US was grounded - even for aircraft flying donated organs to hospitals - the Junior regime was busy chauffeuring hundreds of Saudi princes, including immediate relatives of Osama bin Laden, around the country and gathering them at a central point from which they could be shipped out of the US with unseemly haste, before the FBI had a chance to question them. What was the purpose of these phantom flights? Did Junior, who has made millions from his connections to the Saudi royal family, feel that his obligations to them outweighed his obligations to his country? Events at Tora Bora a few months later, when a catalogue of incompetence allowed bin Laden to escape from certain capture, only add to the urgency of this question.

I stress that I am not stating as a fact that certain insiders knew about 9/11 in advance. I'm just pointing out that there is evidence that needs to be addressed. I doubt that Junior himself was in on the secret - heck, if you were Dick Cheney, would you trust Macaca with that information?

It may be that there are innocent explanations for one or more, or even all, of the above points. If so, the administration must release those explanations into the public domain. When they instead react defensively and heavy-handedly against anyone who questions the official party line, and accuse them of Islamofascism and what not, they only weaken their own position.

One way or another, the full story has never been told, not by a hell of a long shot. Maybe if we take back one or both houses of Congress in November, and gain subpoena power, we have a chance of making progress towards the truth. A prospect which has the rethugs pissing their pants as never before, and guarantees that their campaign this election season will be dirtier and more frenzied than anyone can currently imagine.

But the truth - whether it involves incompetence or something far worse - has a way of coming out eventually. They can't hide the truth forever.

We don't need no edjookayshun...

This is the sort of thing that makes me bang my head against a wall in despair at the terminal stupidity of those who hold a monopoly on political power in this country.

Recently I wrote about the abysmal state of the education system in the US in general and Arizona in particular. Well, some schools are trying to make a change for the better.

Arizona schools are beginning to offer children in Grades K-10 a teaching model used around the world that pushes students to become proficient in at least two languages, think critically instead of regurgitating memorized answers and learn from a global perspective by studying other cultures.

Who could possibly be against such a project? Why, a religious-right wingnut, of course.

Despite gushing praise from school administrators, the program has faced scrutiny from parents and lawmakers troubled by an organization based in Switzerland that is influencing the education of American students.

The School Board for the Upper St. Clair School District in Pennsylvania voted to remove the program from schools [...] One board member reportedly said the program went against "Judeo-Christian" values.

When lawmakers in Texas were considering a bill to mandate state universities to give credit hours to students with an IB diploma, the conservative Texas Eagle Forum, the group organized in the 1970s by activist Phyllis Schlafly, warned legislators about the program's international focus and philosophy.

And if you scroll down to the reader comments, you see this gem:

This probably started out as a great program in 1968...but now it's just one more tool in the tool bag of the secular-progressive globalists at the UN. Whether our local school officials believe it or not, this is just one more process to remove the borders from our nation and chip away at our sovereignty.

First of all, this doesn't even have anything to do with the UN... oh, forget it. Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. But it's frustrating that so many Merkins are so proud of their knee-jerk ignorance, xenophobia and know-nothingism.

At least it confirms what I've always suspected. The religious right opposes critical thinking, and supports regurgitation of rote-memorized answers and ignorance of other cultures. No surprises there.

9/11 fatigue

I know it's taboo to say this, but I can't be the only one who feels it: I'm tired of 9/11.

That is to say, I'm tired of it being used as an emotional bludgeon to beat me over the head with. Like everyone else, I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news, and those images of planes hitting the Twin Towers and turning into fireballs are seared into my brain.

I don't want 9/11 to become Groundhog Day. I don't want to be told to relive the horror over and over again. Most of all I don't want to be manipulated into giving the Junior Junta carte blanche to wage their greed-fueled wars of imperialism that have nothing to do with bringing the perpetrators of 9/11 to justice.

Yes, 9/11 was a great tragedy and outrage. It was the day a bunch of religious fanatics hijacked planes and used them to destroy the World Trade Center. But an ever bigger atrocity was the day a bunch of religious fanatics hijacked the United States itself, and used it to destroy our Constitution, our ideals, our democracy, everything that once made this country great.

Osama bin Laden could knock down the Twin Towers, but he could never destroy America. Yet that's exactly what Macaca Bush and his gang of corrupt criminal traitors are doing. They're well on the way to turning this country into a fascist theocratic police state where an unelected king has unlimited power, and where anyone who dissents can be disappeared into a secret torture gulag with no due process whatsoever.

People keep saying 9/11 was the day everything changed. No, it was the day the USA's foreign policy chickens finally came home to roost. The CIA has a term for it: blowback. Some kind of terrorist attack on US soil was inevitable - and only a rightie would be stupid enough to think that by pointing out this simple fact, I am condoning the 9/11 attacks.

9/11 should have been the day we woke up and realized what kind of horrific things are being done in our name, with our tax dollars. It should have made us realize what it was like for innocent Chileans, Iranians, Iraqis and other victims of US state terrorism. Instead it drove a majority of Americans into their cave, from which they have still to emerge.

9/11 was the best thing that ever happened to Monkeynuts and his neonazi-con puppetmasters. They believe they can dine out on it in perpetuity. I for one refuse to let them get away with it.

Bush's war on America

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." --George Bush Junior

You know, it's a really good thing the US president during most of World War II was a cripple in a wheelchair, rather than a mental cripple on a bicycle. Otherwise we'd still be fighting the "War on Blitzkrieg" - and getting our asses royally kicked.

Today, amid much pomp and fanfare (and with obviously partisan timing), over four years after declaring "Mission Accomplished", the Monkeynuts regime announced yet another reheated slop of stale, empty bromides masquerading as policy and analysis. As always, craw-thumping soundbites and lowest-common-denominator fearmongering, aimed at the useful idiots in the cheap seats, takes the place of any attempt to analyze the problem and arrive rationally at an effective solution.

Notably, although Bubble Boy is divorced from reality - in fact, reality seems to have served him with a restraining order - he is forced to admit that the US is still not safe, despite his having had a monopoly on political and judicial power over the last five years, and that he has failed to deliver on his promises. Except of course to his ultra-wealthy puppetmasters.

However, we still get treated to the standard "they hate us for our freedom" mind-rotting drivel which is all the regime is capable of producing. Terrorism, which used to be simply a tactic used by disparate and unrelated groups, is now "a transnational... movement fueled by a radical ideology of hatred, oppression, and murder" with a "perverse vision of oppression and totalitarian rule" (which the US combats by promoting "freedom and human dignity" - like in Camp Guano and Abu Ghraib?)

I know there are some intelligent and well-informed (albeit evil) people in the administration who realize that this is a crock of simplistic and infantile crap which is worse than useless. So why does the Corrupt Bastards Club keep giving us the mushroom treatment? The answer is obvious. First, because they don't care how stupid they look to educated people - they only care about keeping the useful idiots riled up and pissing their pants in synchronization. Second, because with the Corrupt Bastards Club it's always about appearances and superficiality. They have the attention span of a two year old; they'd much rather declare "Mission Accomplished" than actually take the time and effort to accomplish a mission. The Macaca-in-Chief can't tell the difference anyway.

With the 'thugs, everything - especially the critical issue of terrorism, and above all the overwhelming tragedy of 9/11 - is just another prop to make Junior look semi-competent, and a stick to beat his opponents with. Petty partisan game-playing trumps every obligation they have to the US public. And the "liberal media" is more than happy to play along with lies and bare-faced propaganda.

The most corrupt, venal and incompetent administration in US history is also the most smug and sanctimonious about exploiting our collective tragedy for its slimy, self-serving ends. We have to stop them before they destroy us all with their greed, hubris and ineptitude.

Impeach! Indict! Imprison!

The Phony War

Remember that stupid color-coded threat alert level system from a few years ago? What were all those colors supposed to mean? What was the difference between red and orange, and what were you supposed to do? Apart from peeing your pants in inchoate fear and dread every time Faux News regurgitated the latest scaremongering talking points from Karl Rove. (I bet he held stock in duct tape companies.)

Of course, once the system achieved its one and only purpose - getting Macaca elected (I refuse to say re-elected) - it quietly disappeared down the memory hole. Now it emerges that something very similar happened to the war on brown-skinned people terror.

Terrorism prosecutions shot upwards in the aftermath of 9/11, but have since fallen just as sharply to pre-9/11 levels. More than 90% of terrorism charges are never prosecuted, in many cases because of weak or no evidence. Only 14 people (out of thousands charged) have been sentenced to 20 years or more. More than half get no prison time at all, and for those who do, the median term is a laughable sentence of 28 days - for terrorism, let me remind you.

It's pretty clear what's going on here. The Junior junta is obsessed with fighting a PR campaign to show that they are cracking down on terrorism, but they don't give a rat's ass about actually, you know, fighting terrorism. That's hard work - it's hard work! (heh heh heh) They are inflating the figures by attempting to prosecute every nickel-and-dime petty crime as a deadly international terrorist plot. They are rounding up innocent Muslims on specious and flimsy charges. And when they still can't meet their quota, they create terrorist plots out of whole cloth. Remember that pathetic bunch of losers in Miami? The ones who were going to blow up the Sears Tower but couldn't even raise the Greyhound fare to Chicago?

Not only did [FBI] informers provide money and a meeting place for Batiste and his followers, they gave them video cameras for surveillance as well as cellphones, and suggested that their first target be a Miami FBI office, court records show.

Meanwhile of course, our borders and ports remain wide open. George Bush Junior and his handlers are too busy staging PR stunts to actually do their jobs and make the people of this country safer. And that's without even mentioning the whole new generations of Osama bin Ladens that are being created by the junta's massively illegal, immoral and incompetently waged war against Iraq.

Every time I think the Monkeynuts regime has hit absolute rock bottom in terms of brainless blundering ineptitude, it plunges to new depths of jaw-dropping incompetence and hypocrisy. And yet it continues braying in its smug, self-congratulating way that Democrats are soft on terrorism, and only the Boy Chimperor can save us from dying screaming in our beds. And millions of Merkins buy this bull!

Let's declare stupidity a terrorist offense, then we can ship the Potemkin Village Idiot and his entire courtly retinue to Camp Guano.

In dictionario veritas

If you look up "Malkin" on dictionary.com, you get the following definitions:

1. an untidy woman; slattern.
2. a scarecrow, ragged puppet, or grotesque effigy.
3. a mop, esp. one made from a bundle of rags and used to clean out a baker's oven.
4. a cat.
5. a hare.

Yikes! No wonder she's unhinged.

Not reading is fundamentalist

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

--Thomas Jefferson, in a letter to Colonel Charles Yancey, January 6, 1816

I always knew that the US has the worst educational system in the developed world, but I read some statistics in today's Repulsive that were really shocking.

Schoolchildren are not expected to be able to read until third grade - that's eight years old! And even this low standard is only met by 31% of children nationally, and fewer than a quarter in Arizona, the Mississippi of the Desert.

In Europe, such a statistic would lead to governments collapsing and education ministers resigning in disgrace. I thank my lucky stars that I grew up in a country that has an outstanding public educational system (Ireland). The more I learn about the US system, the more I realize that it is nothing but a glorified conveyor belt for moving children through the system and keeping them off the streets for a few years.

It was only a few years ago that I realized, to my astonishment, that most schoolchildren do not have to pass any kind of exam to graduate from high school - they just get an automatic diploma as a reward for being a warm body and showing up. Here in Arizona, there is endless hand-wringing over the abysmal results of the AIMS test, a recent experiment to test whether children have in fact learned anything during their years in school. Shocked by the realization that most of them haven't, Arizona pols are seeking to rectify the problem by dumbing down the test. Brilliant!

Most astonishing of all is the relentless attack by the religious extreme right on public education and science education. Creationism rears its ugly head over and over again, however often it is slapped down in the courts and exposed as a crock by scientists. And school vouchers are an ill-disguised attack on public education itself, and an attempt to have the taxpayer fund religious schools which can cherry-pick schoolchildren and teach all kinds of stark raving religious lunacy without oversight.

Of course it's not so astonishing when you consider the real agenda of the extreme right. They don't want an educated citizenry. They don't want people who can think for themselves. They don't want anyone who is ambitious and aspires to rise above his station. What they want is unthinking masses of slobus vulgaris americanus who can be manipulated with empty soundbites and mindless jingoism and religiosity. They want peons who will be happy to work for a minimum wage with no benefits, and can be fobbed off with pie in the sky when they die.

And the scary thing is: it's working. While millionaires are becoming billionaires thanks to Junior's endless handouts, wages and standards of living are at best stagnant, and for most people, declining significantly. And of course they are losing health insurance, leaving them one accident or illness away from living on the street. Simply stated, they are working harder than ever and getting paid less. An educated populace would never stand for this wholesale theft.

The Junior junta is turning the United States into a third world cesspit. And Merkins are too ignorant to do anything about it. Happy Indentured Servitude Day...

So, how's that "culture of life" stuff working out?

The infinite hypocrisy of the reactionary religious right is well illustrated by this video. Remember when Junior got off his little mountain bike and stopped clearing brush long enough to issue the first veto in the five years of his reign? Remember how he made a big song and dance about surrounding himself with "snowflake babies" to underline his love and reverence for (American, non-black) human life?

The result? Over 350,000 human embryos, the excess production of fertility clinics, end up in the trash every year instead of being used for medical research that could potentially cure or alleviate a vast array of diseases. Junior's royal fiat hasn't done an iota to protect human life; on the contrary, it's been a slap in the face to millions of actual, born, suffering human beings.

Come to think of it, why don't the fetus people forget about blocking, bombing and harassing abortion clinics and transfer their tender, loving christian concern to fertility clinics? And if they really want to reduce abortion rates, why are they fighting tooth and nail against Plan B, against fact-based sex education (and replacing it with "abstinence only" bullshit), against everything with a track record of reducing abortions? (And I won't even get into their support of cruel, petty rethug economic policies which throw millions of women into poverty and force them to abort, because abortion isn't a moral issue - it's an economic issue.)

The answer is simple. The vast majority of the anti-choice brigade are not motivated by concern for life. Their twin impetus is the desire to control the lives of other people, especially women, and the desire to bask in their own moral superiority and condemn to hell everyone they disagree with. These smug, sanctimonious pillocks have no intention whatever of actually helping to make anyone's life better.

Every sperm is sacred, every zygote should be given the same rights as a living, breathing, walking-around human being. Meanwhile, here in the land of milk and honey, hungry people get six-month jail sentences for taking food from a dumpster.

Need any more be said about the moral idiocy and imbecility of the lunatic extreme right?