I am now a kucinichista.
I have had it with the same old Democratic bullshit. I heard on NPR about the “debate” among the eight Democratic contenders. Kucinich — and this other guy I confess I had never even heard of, Mike Gravel — were the only ones with the balls to point out that if you want to stop the war, cut off the funding. Stop re-authorizing it by continuing to give the Whitehouse the all money it wants, as these wimps in the Senate have just done. Sure, Bush will veto the latest bill because it tries to prevent the Whitehouse from staying in Iraq “until the end of time,” as Jon Stewart puts it. But it still gives him the money because these lame-ass pols are way behind the American public and, apparently, are too timid to step up and make a sincere effort to stop the war.
Kucinich, on the other hand, not only advocates really stopping the war; he has now introduced articles of impeachment against Dick Cheney for falsifying the intelligence and getting us into this illegal and unjustified war.
Is Hillary in favor of impeachment? Hell no. Obama? Dream on. You know what? Fuck these wimps. I am going to write in for Kucinich, even if some of my centrist-liberal friends give me a great pile of shit for it.
Category: politics
Yo Alberto: Resign!
Come on, Alberto González. Clean out your desk and get the fuck out, won’t you please? What’s it gonna take? Does there have to be a mob encircling your house with pitchforks and torches, like on an old Frankenstein movie? At this point there might as well be.
Come now. You know what time it is. Show a modicum of honor and dignity, and respect for reality. Resign.
Time for a coup d’état in the USA?
I got an email from TheNation.com saying “in his address to the nation last week, President Bush accused Iran of ‘providing material support for attacks on American troops,’ and added ‘we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.'” OK.
I also read in El Diario/La Prensa an AP story that stated that middlemen had acquired, on behalf of Iran, parts for the F-14 Tomcat fighter. That was illegal, so Customs agents seized the parts and returned them to the Pentagon. Which turned around and sold them off again, this time to another buyer who also turned out to be “suspected of” working on behalf of Iran. Close enough.
Therefore, the White House must be planning to seek out and destroy the Pentagon.
This is all fucked up, don’t you think? Look at what’s happening: the Bush administration is driving the country into the ditch as fast as it can. It launched an illegal and unjustified invasion of Iraq — true, with the support of most of the cowards in Congress — and now flatly refuses to listen to anyone about how to mitigate the horrible bloody clusterfuck it has created. Not the Congress, nor the Iraq Study Group, nor the generals on the proverbial ground. Fuck all a y’all, George is saying. I’m gonna escalate. But I ain’t gonna call it an escalation, see. I’m gonna a call it a surge. Gonna do a surge.
Fuck that. It’s time for the Pentagon to launch a pre-emptive strike on its own — against the White House. Generals, call him on the phone and say, you have three hours to get the fuck out. Resign. Beat it. Step down. If he says no, negotiate a little. Give him four hours. Oh what the hell, make it five! Be reasonable. And if he still refuses, then let the tanks roll down Pennsylvania Avenue and set shit off. Coup d’état. We’ve tried democracy for over 200 years and it’s been a partial success, but it is in grave danger now, so grave we have to destroy it in order to save it. Overthrow the Bush regime, establish a military government. Dissolve the Congress, govern for a few months until things stabilize, then hold free and fair elections and start over. Why not?
Celebrity death update!
Woa, excuse me! I spoke too soon about there being three celebrity deaths in this month of December. Now they’ve hung Saddam, that makes four.
Nice to know that his execution is such an important step towards establishing democracy in Iraq, according to Mr. Bush’s handlers. Yeah right.
I heard some think tank wonk holding forth on NPR, telling us that some people oppose capital punishment on principle, but it is appropriate in “extraordinary circumstances” such as these. You know, like when there is incontrovertible proof that you’re responsible for the death of thousands of innocents. If that’s so, it would be only fitting to apply that same logic here at home. I oppose the death penalty, but I have to admit it might be kind of cool to watch the hangings of Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush on Fox. Over and over again.
How to React to Three Celebrity Deaths in December
(1) Augusto Pinochet. You are dancing in the street. It’s a pity that he died too comfortably, and that we did not get “closure” through the criminal process, but my, it’s great that he’s dead. Let the champagne corks fly.
(2) James Brown. You feel rather sad and wistful, especially if you grew up with that DC Sound in your ears. He had soul, and he was super bad. He may have had a fucked up personal life, but the man was one hell of a performer and his contribution was major. Let us raise our glasses and drink to his bad self.
Here’s a quick James Brown/LSD anecdote. Once upon a time a buddy and I were doing acid. As the drug’s effects were coming on, we listened to the Greatist Hits CD on which the second track is Sex Machine (Get Up). It begins with James Brown proudly proclaiming how he intends to do his thing. Then the music kicks in, — a-pampampampampampampam Get Up, Get On Up — and suddenly you’re in this exquisitely transparent and open texture, a perfect balance between the instrumental parts, with just enough space between the notes, and a bad-ass groove that defies description. Then come the self-referential lyrics about taking it to the bridge, threatening to take it to the bridge, building up an immense tension… it is music that celebrates itself, boasts and braggs about itself, revels in itself. I remember listening, incredulous, astonished at the genius of this achievement. I decided then and there that this was one of the greatest songs in the history of recorded music.
This is, by the way, an example of the Acidmaster’s Paradox. It often happens that tripping on LSD takes you not farther from but closer to the true nature of reality. You may be fucked up beyond reason, yet you are seeing things revealed as they are. I knew Get Up was great, but I didn’t fully appreciate its magnificence until I heard it while tripping.
But I digress.
(3) Gerald Ford. You don’t really give a shit one way or the other. You dismiss the mainstream media bullshit about how heroically he healed the Watergate-traumatized nation by letting Trickie Dick slide. There was a deal, so he dealt. He played the game. Now we are hearing about how he told Bob Woodward — gasp! — that the Iraq invasion was a mistake! Oh, what genuis, what vision! By the way, it was no “mistake.” It was a major crime against humanity for which its authors deserve to hang, not unlike the above-mentioned General, come to think of it.
If you went three for three above, high five.
Pinochet: que en paz no descance
El general Pinochet, asesino corrupto, ha muerto. Que en paz no descance.
Es de veras angustiante que tanta gente siga elogiándolo como si fuera un héroe, y que justifiquen las muertes, torturas y desapariciones en aras del libre mercado y la lucha contra la subversión.
A mi modo de ver, la gran aportación de Pinochet no fue intenciónal de su parte. Su caso marca un hito en la evolución del derecho internacional y de los derechos humanos. Claro que es una pena que la muerte lo haya salvado, y que no haya sido condenado a cadena perpetua. Pero los precedentes legales, tal como la aplicación de la doctrina de jurisdicción internacional, puede que sirvan para enjuiciar a otros criminales como Bush, Cheney y Rumsfeld. No te rías. Los tiempos están cambiando. La impunidad ya no se puede dar por sentada.
overseeing the what?
I heard a snippet on NPR this morning in which they were saying something about “increasing the oversight of the [Bush administration’s] warrantless wiretapping program.” You have to wonder if the whoever wrote that sentence intended it as ironic. I thought oversight was the whole point of the seeking of warrants from the judicial branch.
Media circle-jerk around the corpse of al-Zarqawi
So the US has wacked Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Big deal. Judging from the media circle-jerk around his corpse, you would think this meant peace, democracy and stability were at hand. Let’s wait and see whether the bloodbath continues. My money is on the carnage.
Bill of Rights now sounds like anarchy
Now that the Bush administration’s illegal domestic surveillance program has been eclipsed by the false issue of the Dubai ports deal, I thought I’d try to refocus our attention for a second or two by sharing this audaciously radical, subversive, revolutionary little snippet. The most disturbing thing is that in today’s environment, that’s what the Fourth Amendment sounds like. Are you ready? OK, here it is:
The right of the people to be secure in their
persons, houses, papers, and effects, against
unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be
violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon
probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation,
and particularly describing the place to be
searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Pretty cheeky, don’t you think?
Chile, ¡te felicito! ¡Brava Michelle!
Chile, tienes una presidenta que es mujer; que además de mujer, socialista; además de socialista, divorciada; además de divorciada, agnóstica. ¿Cómo te atreves? ¿Qué te crees, Finlandia?
En serio, me parece fenomenal que en tantos países latinoamericanos le estén diciendo un rotundo no al neoliberalismo y desafiando a la oligarquía.
¿Por qué los gringos no podemos hacer lo mismo? ¿Y por qué será que en paises supuestamente menos avanzados y desarrollados, son capaces de sacar del poder y meter en la cárcel a sus jefes de estado corruptos, y aquí no? Debe ser que aquí en EE.UU. no hay una democracia auténtica. Parece que las masas, en general, tienen el cerebro lavado por los medios masivos que sirven al poder, o tienen una actitud derrotista que les impide actuar para defender sus propios intereses. Qué pena.