Gitmo Haiku

The Caribbean.
Wow, what a stunning sunset!
. . . Let's go smash a skull.

That's not human blood
that flows from Mohammed's face.
That's just terror juice.

Jihadis aren't men,
they're dogs. And like dogs, deserve
to be kicked while caged.

Tour's been extended.
Buddies all fucked by Rummy.
Bars taste good, raghead?

Garrison Keillor and the Methodists of Dallas

No, Keillor didn't put a new band together. The title is a reference to the following commentary, which I thought worth reprinting here:

---

No need to worry about human rights - we're doing just fine
Garrison Keillor
Syndicated columnist
Article Last Updated:10/02/2006 09:09:28 PM MDT

I would not send my college kid off for a semester abroad if I were you. Last week, we suspended human rights in America, and what goes around comes around. Ixnay habeas corpus.

The U.S. Senate, in all its splendor and majesty, has decided that an "enemy combatant" is any non-citizen whom the president says is an enemy combatant, including your Korean greengrocer or your Swedish grandmother or your Czech au pair, and can be arrested and held for as long as authorities wish without any right of appeal to a court of law to examine the matter. If your college kid were to be arrested in Bangkok or Cairo, suspected of "crimes against the state" and held in prison, you'd assume that an American foreign service officer would be able to speak to your kid and arrange for a lawyer, but this may not be true anymore. Be forewarned.

The Senate also decided it's up to the president to decide whether it's OK to make these enemies stand naked in cold rooms for a couple days in blinding light and be beaten by interrogators. This is now purely a bureaucratic matter: The plenipotentiary stamps the file "enemy combatants" and throws the poor schnooks into prison and at his leisure he tries them by any sort of kangaroo court he wishes to assemble and they have no right to see the evidence against them, and there is no appeal. This was passed by 65 senators and will now be signed by Mr. Bush, put into effect, and in due course be thrown out by the courts.

It's good that Barry Goldwater is dead because this would have killed him. Go back to the Senate of 1964 - Goldwater, Dirksen, Russell, McCarthy, Javits, Morse, Fulbright - and you won't find more than 10 votes for it.

None of the men and women who voted for this bill has any right to speak in public about the rule of law anymore, or to take a high moral view of the Third Reich, or to wax poetic about the American Idea. Mark their names. Any institution of higher learning that grants honorary degrees to these people forfeits its honor. Alexander, Allard, Allen, Bennett, Bond, Brownback, Bunning, Burns, Burr, Carper, Chambliss, Coburn, Cochran, Coleman, Collins, Cornyn, Craig, Crapo, DeMint, DeWine, Dole, Domenici, Ensign, Enzi, Frist, Graham, Grassley, Gregg, Hagel, Hatch, Hutchison, Inhofe, Isakson, Johnson, Kyl, Landrieu, Lautenberg, Lieberman, Lott, Lugar, Martinez, McCain, McConnell, Menendez, Murkowski, Nelson of Florida, Nelson of Nebraska, Pryor, Roberts, Rockefeller, Salazar, Santorum, Sessions, Shelby, Smith, Specter, Stabenow, Stevens, Sununu, Talent, Thomas, Thune, Vitter, Voinovich, Warner.

To paraphrase Sir Walter Scott: Mark their names and mark them well. For them, no minstrel raptures swell. High though their titles, proud their name, boundless their wealth as wish can claim, these wretched figures shall go down to the vile dust from whence they sprung, unwept, unhonored and unsung.

Three Republican senators made a show of opposing the bill and, after they'd collected all the praise they could get, they quickly folded. Why be a hero when you can be fairly sure that the Court will dispose of this piece of garbage.

If, however, the Court does not, then our country has taken a step toward totalitarianism. If the government can round up someone and never be required to explain why, then it's no longer the United States of America as you and I always understood it. Our enemies have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They have made us become like them.

I got some insight week before last into who supports torture when I went down to Dallas to speak at Highland Park Methodist Church. It was spooky. I walked in, was met by two burly security men with walkie-talkies, and within 10 minutes was told by three people that this was the Bushes' church and that it would be better if I didn't talk about politics. I was there on a book tour for Homegrown Democrat, but they thought it better if I didn't mention it. So I tried to make light of it: I told the audience, "I don't need to talk politics. I have no need even to be interested in politics - I'm a citizen, I have plenty of money and my grandsons are at least 12 years away from being eligible for military service." And the audience applauded! Those were their sentiments exactly. We've got ours, and who cares?

The Methodists of Dallas can be fairly sure that none of them will be snatched off the streets, flown to Guantanamo, stripped naked, forced to stand for 48 hours in a freezing room with deafening noise, so why should they worry? It's only the Jews who are in danger, and the homosexuals and gypsies. The Christians are doing just fine. If you can't trust a Methodist with absolute power to arrest people and not have to say why, then whom can you trust?

Say it Ain't So! CRIME in the West Bank?!

I just about crapped my pants when I read this headline from the local paper:

Palestinians face a new threat: crime

Crime?! In the West Bank? What the hell is the world coming to? I'd always thought of Gaza and the West Bank as idyllic little oases in a sea of madness, a cultural utopia of social order and civility. It's like my whole world has been turned upside-down! What are they going to report next? That Republicans are amoral megalomaniacs? That launching missiles could spark a war? That hazardous waste plants and air pollution are potentially damaging to public health? I suppose next somebody is going to report that the Earth's oceans are dying, or that the liberation of Iraq is not going as planned, or that Americans no longer enjoy the right of Free Speech.

Pshah. Yeah, right, liberal media. You go on and keep telling those lies. We know better than to buy into that propaganda. I'm going to go get some real news from FoxNews.com...

But wait! What's this? FoxNews is reporting that marijuana may not be pure evil after all? OMGWTF? Time for me to start running around screaming and crying in a manic fit with my pants around my ankles!

How About Denny's Other Crimes?

If helping to cover up the odious behavior of Mark Foley isn't enough to unseat House Speaker Dennis Hastert, then how about accepting bribes from foreign government officials, possibly even organized crime? Or perhaps he should be forced to resign for offering bribes to and/or blackmailing a Republican colleague on the House floor? How about for subverting democracy by acting as Jack Abramoff's chief enabler? What about for using the federal government as his own personal cash machine?

Just what would it take to throw out a corpulently corrupt bastard from the House of Representatives, anyway? Furthermore, it certainly says a lot about the mass media that only now, after the 'naughty emails' surfaced, a situation in which his only involvement seems to be non-involvement, is there even talk of his resignation, after all of those other times when he was personally shoving his dick in a big crime pie. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Perhaps I've stumbled upon something there. Maybe if the media framed all those instances of Hastert's corruption in perverse sexual terms, they'd actually report them, and generate an appropriate level of outrage.

For example:

House Speaker Dennis Hastert reportedly date-raped Representative Smith of Ohio yesterday on the House floor, during deliberations over the Medicare bill. Analysts say the reforms will painfully ass-fuck millions of unlubricated seniors on their pharmaceutical prescriptions and...

or

It has since emerged that Hastert, in a solo bukkake performance into the faces of the House Ethics Committee, molested the real estate holdings by securing $207 million in earmarks in an auto-erotic legislative reach-around...

and so on.

A pedophile is a pedophile

"Any suggestion that Mark Foley is a paedophile is false, categorically false"
-- David Roth, Mark Foley's attorney

Oh, really?

Main Entry: pe·do·phil·ia
Pronunciation: "pe-d&-'fi-lE-&, 'pE-
Function: noun
Etymology: New Latin
: sexual perversion in which children are the preferred sexual object

Let's be clear: you don't have to have had sex with a child to be a pedophile, any more than having intercourse with a person of the same sex is a requirement for being homosexual. It's like saying you can't possibly be a liberal or a conservative if you don't vote, or you're not a criminal if you haven't been convicted.

Maf54 (8:08:31 PM): get a ruler and measure it for me
Maf54 (8:10:40 PM): take it out
Xxxxxxxxx (8:10:54 PM): brb…my mom is yelling

I'll bet she's yelling a lot louder now.

Mark Foley: Another, Littler 9/11

Lest the whirlwind of press surrounding the revelations about the Republican pedophile Mark Foley obscure from view the many revelations from Bob Woodward's new book "State of Denial", allow me to connect the two stories in your mind. Specifically, I aim to demonstrate how the Mark Foley fiasco is like another 9/11, in miniature -- at least in the way it demonstrates the consistency of the Bush Administration's depravity and overriding concern for the retention and expansion of power to the exclusion of everything else.

To recap:

In July 2001, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice did have a meeting with CIA Director George Tenet about the threat posed by al Qaeda, but the information presented to her was not new, her spokesman said Monday.

A new book by Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward says Tenet and Cofer Black, then the U.S. counterterrorism chief, demanded a snap meeting with Rice to warn her of a growing al Qaeda threat to U.S. interests and possibly the U.S. homeland. The meeting took place July 10, 2001, two months before al Qaeda suicide hijackers attacked New York and Washington, killing nearly 3,000 people.

According to Woodward's book, "State of Denial," Tenet and Black left the meeting with the sense that Rice had given them "the brush-off." And the meeting was never reported to the independent commission that investigated the attacks, Woodward writes.

-- from CNN.com

Obviously some fucked up shit here. The aggressively blatant hypocracy of Rice's counterattack against Clinton for his comments during a Fox News interview with Chris Wallace comes to mind. And by the way, if the information was "nothing new", as Rice's spokesperson claims, how does that enhance her credibility? Basically, we're being assured that it wasn't only two months that the National Security Advisor chose to do nothing about warnings of impending terrorist attacks, but more than two months. Oh, gosh, well I guess you're off the hook now, Condi!

"What I am quite certain of, however, is that I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says, that there was about to be an attack in the United States," she said. "And the idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible, especially given that in July when we were getting a very steady stream of quite alarmist reports of potential attacks."

Incomprehensible indeed. Almost as incomprehensible as the fact that the 'steady stream' illicited no action from her, which I guess is of little surprise considering the fact that she considered the warnings to be 'alarmist'. Almost as incomprehensible as Rice's claim during her testimony to the 9/11 commission that the Presidential Daily Briefing (PDF) of 8/6/01, entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." was an "historical document" rather than a warning. Remember that? So she receives an urgent warning from the CIA director about the possibility of terrorist attacks in early July (complete with a PowerPoint presentation!), and a month later that information is distilled into a PDB and presented to the President, who, I'm obliged to remind you, responded to the CIA agent who presented it to him with the comment, "all right--you've covered your ass, now," yet Cuntaleeza, we're expected to believe, viewed this PDB as an "historical document".

Rrrrrright.

As if this isn't enough to whip up the 9/11 conspiracy theory people into a frenzy, she has the audacity to claim that she didn't believe at the time the threats pertained to the "homeland". Yet she gave instruction to brief John Ashcroft about this threat, even though the Attorney General has no jurisdiction over international matters.

Now it's time to challenge your memory a bit. Do you remember anything strange about John Ashcroft from back then (in 2001)? I mean, aside from his totally dorky general demeanor and his singing and his having the bare breast of a fucking statue of Justice covered by a $8,650 drape? Something that those 9/11 conspiracy theorists pointed at and claimed was a sure sign that senior gov't officials knew damn well the attacks of 9/11 were coming? That's right: John Ashcroft stopped flying during the summer of 2001, saying a "threat assessment" made him do it. And yet, from today's Washington Post:

Meanwhile, Ashcroft said Monday that he should have been notified of any such report dealing with a pending attack on the United States. "It just occurred to me how disappointing it was that they didn't come to me with this type of information," he said in an interview with The Associated Press.

What a fucking joker, that Ashcroft. So Rice says Ashcroft should be briefed about possible terror attacks that she claims had nothing to do with the geographical boundaries of the United States. Soon after this instruction is given, Ashcroft receives a "threat assessment" and stops flying on commercial airlines. Then he says over 5 years later that it sure would've been nice if somebody had told him about all this potentital terrorist attack stuff! Golly gee! We really have always been at war with Eurasia, haven't we?

Remember too, while you're at it, Rice's statement "I don't think anybody could have predicted that these people...would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile." That is an absurd lie, just like pretty much everything else that comes out of that horrible sycophantic wench's mouth.

The 27th G8 summit was held in Genoa, Italy (RIP, Carlo Giuliani) from 7/18 to 7/22/2001. From wikipedia:

The G8 meeting was held inside a "Red Zone" in the center of town that had been declared off-limits for non-residents and surrounded by a barricade, leaving protesters no chance to communicate with summit delegates. Fears of terrorist attack at the time had also led to an air exclusion zone around the city, as well as the stationing of anti-aircraft missiles.

"No one could have predicted..." yet "fears of terrorist attack" led to "the stationing of anti-aircraft missiles" around Genoa to protect the President. Hmmm...

Ashcroft stopped flying. Extra protection for the President. Having taken measures to protect their own asses, what did anybody at the highest levels of government do to protect the American people from these terrorist threats? Richard Clarke was sidelined when he repeatedly tried to set up meetings with senior Bush officials to discuss the al Qaeda threat. Two of the 9/11 hijackers lived with an FBI informant in California, yet disappeared without raising an alarm just before the attacks. Several of the hijackers were actually on terrorist watch lists, yet boarded those flights with their real names. And people fucking wonder why 9/11 conspiracy theories are so abundant?!

At a minimum, the Bush Administration received numerous warnings about impending terrorist attacks prior to 9/11, and DID NOTHING. I could easily be persuaded to believe that they actually welcomed the attacks, not only because those PNAC fuckers seemed to really hope for a 'new pearl harbor' to justify an invasion of Iraq, not only because of the shocking indifference they displayed when confronted with grave warnings, not only because of their well-demonstrated indifference to the well-being of ordinary Americans, but primarily because 9/11 was like their starter pistol, signalling the beginning of a seven-year race to incrementally repeal the US Constitution (starting with the immediate passage of the "PATRIOT Act", which was already written prior to 9/11, and passed in a hurry without any lawmakers actually having read it) and continuing right on through to today, with many examples of illegal and un-American acts intended to concentrate executive power while neutralizing impediments to that goal. Who have been the big winners in the US since 9/11? The Republican crime family they call a "party", defense contractors, oil companies, Halliburton, and an assorted hodge-podge of other big-money Bush campaign donors. Who have been the losers? Everybody else. And I mean EVerybody else.

Who can believe that Team Bush is so mind-bogglingly stupid that they legitimately believed that all those terrorist attack warnings were not geniune, or didn't require immediate attention? Sure, maybe Bush himself is, but certainly not Rice or Cheney. Not the whole team. No -- they chose to ignore those threats. Whether it's because they were more focused on comforting the comfortable or because they were secretly hoping the terrorists would succeed isn't particularly relevant when it comes to measuring their culpability. That distinction would certainly help settle the question whether these people are truly evil or simply stunningly incompetent boobs, but it doesn't effect the scorn and blame they deserve heaped upon them one bit.

And here we are, five years later, learning that a 52-year-old Republican Congressman was trying to lure teenaged boys onto his lap, and the Republican leadership not only knew it was going on, but tried to cover up the whole sordid mess, demonstrating to all of us, once again, that they don't give a FUCK about you or those boys or the people in those towers or residents of the Gulf Coast. They care only about their power, power, power, and the retention and expansion thereof.

If I believed in the notion of Hell, I might take some small comfort in the knowledge that all of these monstrous people will surely be spending an eternity there. Given that I don't, I have to clutch an unrealistic hope that a new Congress with a Democratic majority will this winter begin impeachment proceedings against Bush and Cheney. And given the Democrats' track record in recent years when it comes to standing up to these right-wing authoritarian cretins, I sure as shit can't hang onto that hope too tightly without being regarded as a loony. And what a goddamned, unjust shame that is.

Rock, Paper, Scissors, Sex

Rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, paper beats rock, and sex trumps everything.

As previously discussed, even though Congress last week took a scissors to the US Constitution, and the House, virtually unnoticed, threw rocks at the Establishment Clause by changing existing law to require you to pay your own legal fees if you prove the government has violated your Constitutional rights, what's going to occupy the most space in your paper (and your RSS reader and TV screen) is a discussion about a good ol' fashioned sex scandal. One can't deny the delicious irony of a Republican who worked to pass legislation to crack down on online sexual predators turning out to be an ePredator himself (and a gay pedophile one at that). But should this really overshadow the ongoing, radical redefining of our most fundamental American principles and values? I don't think so, but then again, my brain is admittedly a little taxed at the moment trying to understand why a teenaged boy would masturbate by grinding his mattress instead of practicing the ancient, tried-and-true, rub-and-jerk tradition that's been a great success since the evolution of the primate penis.

So since even Kos seems to think this shit is a more pressing issue than the virtual repeal of the US Constitution, based on the staggering Lamont/Lieberman-esque volume of material posted on this subject already, I hereby present to you a choice except from an online chat between former Congressman Foley and his teenaged male page:

Maf54 (7:46:33 PM): did any girl give you a haand job this weekend
Xxxxxxxxx (7:46:38 PM): lol no
Xxxxxxxxx (7:46:40 PM): im single right now
Xxxxxxxxx (7:46:57 PM): my last gf and i broke up a few weeks agi
Maf54 (7:47:11 PM): are you
Maf54 (7:47:11 PM): good so your getting horny
Xxxxxxxxx (7:47:29 PM): lol...a bit
Maf54 (7:48:00 PM): did you spank it this weekend yourself
Xxxxxxxxx (7:48:04 PM): no
Xxxxxxxxx (7:48:16 PM): been too tired and too busy
Maf54 (7:48:33 PM): wow...
Maf54 (7:48:34 PM): i am never to busy haha
Xxxxxxxxx (7:48:51 PM): haha
Maf54 (7:50:02 PM): or tired..helps me sleep
Xxxxxxxxx (7:50:15 PM): thats true
Xxxxxxxxx (7:50:36 PM): havent been having a problem with sleep though.. i just
walk in the door and collapse well at least this weekend
Maf54 (7:50:56 PM): i am sure
Xxxxxxxxx (7:50:57 PM): i dont do it very often normally though
Maf54 (7:51:11 PM): why not
Maf54 (7:51:22 PM): at your age seems like it would be daily
Xxxxxxxxx (7:51:57 PM): not me
Xxxxxxxxx (7:52:01 PM): im not a horn dog
Xxxxxxxxx (7:52:07 PM): maybe 2 or 3 times a week
Maf54 (7:52:20 PM): thats a good number
Maf54 (7:52:27 PM): in the shower
Xxxxxxxxx (7:52:36 PM): actually usually i dont do it in the shower
Xxxxxxxxx (7:52:42 PM): just cause i shower in the morning
Xxxxxxxxx (7:52:47 PM): and quickly
Maf54 (7:52:50 PM): in the bed
Xxxxxxxxx (7:52:59 PM): i get up at 530 and am outta the house by 610
Xxxxxxxxx (7:53:03 PM): eh ya
Maf54 (7:53:24 PM): on your back
Xxxxxxxxx (7:53:30 PM): no face down
Maf54 (7:53:32 PM): love details
Xxxxxxxxx (7:53:34 PM): lol
Xxxxxxxxx (7:53:36 PM): i see that
Xxxxxxxxx (7:53:37 PM): lol
Maf54 (7:53:39 PM): really
Maf54 (7:53:54 PM): do you really do it face down
Xxxxxxxxx (7:54:03 PM): ya
Maf54 (7:54:13 PM): kneeling
Xxxxxxxxx (7:54:31 PM): well i dont use my hand...i use the bed itself
Maf54 (7:54:31 PM): where do you unload it
Xxxxxxxxx (7:54:36 PM): towel
Maf54 (7:54:43 PM): really
Maf54 (7:55:02 PM): completely naked?
Xxxxxxxxx (7:55:12 PM): well ya
Maf54 (7:55:21 PM): very nice
Xxxxxxxxx (7:55:24 PM): lol
Maf54 (7:55:51 PM): cute butt bouncing in the air
Xxxxxxxxx (7:56:00 PM): haha
Xxxxxxxxx (7:56:05 PM): well ive never watched myslef
Xxxxxxxxx (7:56:08 PM): but ya i guess
Maf54 (7:56:18 PM): i am sure not
Maf54 (7:56:22 PM): hmmm
Maf54 (7:56:30 PM): great visual
Maf54 (7:56:39 PM): i may try that
Xxxxxxxxx (7:56:43 PM): it works
Maf54 (7:56:51 PM): hmm
Maf54 (7:56:57 PM): sound inetersting
Maf54 (7:57:05 PM): i always use lotion and the hand
Maf54 (7:57:10 PM): but who knows
Xxxxxxxxx (7:57:24 PM): i dont use lotion...takes too much time to clean up
Xxxxxxxxx (7:57:37 PM): with a towel you can just wipe off....and go
Maf54 (7:57:38 PM): lol
Maf54 (7:57:45 PM): where do you throw the towel
Xxxxxxxxx (7:57:48 PM): but you cant work it too hard....or its not good
Xxxxxxxxx (7:57:51 PM): in the laundry
Maf54 (7:58:16 PM): just kinda slow rubbing
Xxxxxxxxx (7:58:23 PM): ya....
Xxxxxxxxx (7:58:32 PM): or youll rub yourslef raw
Maf54 (7:58:37 PM): well I have aa totally stiff wood now
Xxxxxxxxx (7:58:40 PM): cause the towell isnt very soft
Maf54 (7:58:44 PM): i bet..taht would hurt
Xxxxxxxxx (7:58:50 PM): but you cn find something softer than a towell i guess
Maf54 (7:58:59 PM): but it must feel great spirting on the towel
Xxxxxxxxx (7:59:06 PM): ya
Maf54 (7:59:29 PM): wow
Maf54 (7:59:48 PM): is your little guy limp...or growing
Xxxxxxxxx (7:59:54 PM): eh growing
Maf54 (8:00:00 PM): hmm
Maf54 (8:00:12 PM): so you got a stiff one now

OMGWTF?!?!?!?!!

The Third Option: Everybody Else

The 'there are two kinds of people' propositions generally omit an everpresent third option: "c) Everybody Else." Only when this third option is reclaimed do the questions pertain to reality. Dog people or cat people, (R) or (D), morning person or night owl, these premises are false choices without the addition of the 'everybody else' vote.

After googling for the link above, I took the OKCupid! test, and was subjected to such an anxiety-ridden flare-up of emotional torment that I IMd my lawyer in the event there are grounds for a claim. In particular, question 18 inflicted greivous harm upon my person. Monkey or robot? That question was like a kick to the juevos. "Monkey or robot? How am I supposed to choose between monkey and robot? Monkey is monkey, and robot is robot! They are not opposing forces! I dream of robot monkeys all the time. It's like choosing between a lovely beverage and ice cream, I mean you wouldn't ... Oh my GOD! There's no third choice! I HAVE to choose between monkey and robot! Crap! Aw man, how can I .. but shit, oh shit it's got to be monkey, doesn't it? Oh, man that hurt. Screw these people for making this test. GOD they suck." I'm sure your thought process was or would have been basically the same, so you see what I mean. And in the end I scored "70%". Of what? What does that even mean? Is "100%" a perfect match with anyone else who has taken the stupid test like I just did, or is it a perfect match with a specific person's results, or what? If so, it seems like a 70% score would either make me an oddball or the pool of respondants limited. There are only 20 questions, right?

But that was a tangent, because what I was really talking about was the need for the third option. There's always an 'everybody else' category that is incredibly overlooked in most appraisals of Red State or Blue State ( c: whatever color is the exact opposite of those two colors mixed (yellow?) ), dog or cat ( c: love 'em both ), country or western ( c: actual music ).

There's a third option to 'stay the course' vs. 'cut and run' just as there is a third option to coverup vs. spin and another for chocolate vs. vanilla and so on.

And before I finish, allow me to copy and paste the photo captions from this article about a robot:

The robot is helping to develop artificial intelligence
Robo-monkey must first swing its legs
Balls help it find its way around in space
The robot must reach out for the next branch

Amen, computer-generated sci/tech article with no byline. Amen.