Worst of all...

"Every day there's more information about the cover-ups, the efforts to misguide the public and - worst of all - their absolute lack of remorse."

Time to clean House

I was finishing an NYT oped just now and had a moment of clarity. It seems that many of those who promise that they are on the job when it comes to US "safety and security" just aren't living up to their basic job requirements. Whether the position is elected or appointed, a certain level of knowledge, and the accompanying continuing education and due diligence, are necessary in order for that person to be an effective representative or administrator. Without current and important facts, the best that we can expect from them is that they occasionally get lucky and do the right thing. Even a broken watch is right twice a day.

But with that level of expectation, I just don't think we are getting our money's worth. These folks are drinking deeply from the public teat. Who among the commoners wouldn't like a GS-umpteen level income? I know my employer expects me to be competent in my basic job requirements(and then some), plus continuing education. All for a whole lot less than a congress member or counterterrorism expert pulls down. And don't even think about the benefits; the insurance, the paid holidays, the sweet retirement package. Oh my. I'm getting dizzy. The point is, you or I would be out looking for a job if we were as incompetent as some of our employees seem to be.

These people have got to go. The cost/benefit analysis is deep in the negatives. It is unacceptable, and too too ironic, for a member of the House intelligence committee to be this out of the loop:

"I asked her[Rep. Jo Ann Davis, R-VA] if she knew the difference between Sunnis and Shiites.

'Do I?' she asked me. A look of concentration came over her face. 'You know, I should.' She took a stab at it: 'It's a difference in their fundamental religious beliefs. The Sunni are more radical than the Shia. Or vice versa. But I think it's the Sunnis who're more radical than the Shia.'

Did she know which branch Al Qaeda's leaders follow?

'Al Qaeda is the one that's most radical, so I think they're Sunni,' she replied. 'I may be wrong, but I think that's right.'" (op. cit.)

Yes darling, you could be wrong, you could be right. The trouble is, like a broken watch, you just don't know. I bet you know who your top 3 bag men, errr contributors are, don't you? Yes, and that is why you have to go. You and your kind are not good enough to keep your job. Not with that "bad attitude":

"Did she think that it was important, I asked, for members of Congress charged with oversight of the intelligence agencies, to know the answer to such questions, so they can cut through officials' puffery when they came up to the Hill?

'Oh, I think it's very important,' said Ms. Davis, 'because Al Qaeda's whole reason for being is based on their beliefs. And you've got to understand, and to know your enemy.'" (op. cit.)

Right. Keep up the BS. That'll help.

Don't know why I bother
There's nothing in it for me
The more I see the less I get
The likes of you and me are
An embarrassment
(PiL - Chant)

What's that smell?

The spreading stench of corruption.

A smart politician could make good use of this mnemonic, "used to remember the criteria for antisocial personality disorder", in the coming election:

C - cannot follow law
O - obligations ignored
R - remorselessness
R - recklessness
U - underhandedness
P - planning deficit
T - temper

[source: Wikipedia]

Come on down and take the "World's Smallest Political Quiz" and see if you have been voting for the wrong people all these years. Over 8 million have been served.

Here's where I fell...

right, errr left where I belong.

I caught a trailer for the soon to be released "Marie Antoinette" movie. I was delighted to hear the song "Natural's Not In It" by Gang of Four playing in the background. For my money, this is the most danceable punk blast you will ever hear. A great choice for the opening credits.

Vote Brian Moore for U.S. Senate

For Florida Greens, liberals, progressives, forward thinkers and voters sick of Bill Nelson, Katherine Harris and their neocon stripes, I say you Brian Moore, independent candidate for the U.S. Senate. Anti-war, pro-freedom, anti-deficit, pro-universal healthcare and so much more. He's got my vote.

Lou Dobbs says, "fight back now"

I don't agree with everything CNN's Lou Dobbs says, and I don't watch his show very often, but I can't disagree with this:

"I don't know about you, but I can't take seriously anyone who takes either the Republican Party or Democratic Party seriously -- in part because neither party takes you and me seriously; in part because both are bought and paid for by corporate America and special interests. And neither party gives a damn about the middle class."

Mr. Dobbs is right. Last year, after 25 years as a reliable Democratic voter and fed up with that party's continued shift to the right, I changed my registration to Green. I plan to waste my vote for Green candidates whenever possible. If not Green, then Libertarian or Reform or whatever.

Go ahead and do it. Free at last!

Here is an excellent article from Harper's magazine, "Stabbed in the Back! The past and future of a right-wing myth" by Kevin Baker.

It is a pretty damning short history of the post WWII rebirth of right wing power in the US. Through the use of hero worship and accusations of treachery, a political tactic used by the Nazi party and others, the American right wing has become more and more fascist in word and deed.

What is North Korea's nuclear message?

It seems that it may be "weeks or even months" before we know whether the N. Koreans(DPRK) have punked us with their "unusually small" test explosion. If this was a successful test, and by that I mean the yield was what was expected, and not a failed nuclear device or an attempt to simulate a nuclear explosion with huge amounts of chemical explosives, then what do we take away from this day? By showing us, not that they possess a serious multi-kiloton(kt) nuclear deterrent but instead, that they can pop off a 0.5-1.0 kt mininuke, what message is the DPRK sending us? They are certainly trying to tell us something.

All day long I have been following this story and from the beginning, in spite of all the breathless hype, it has looked more like a failure or a fraud than a successful initiation into the nuclear clubhouse. If it was either of these, then the only public diplomacy benefit the DPRK will reap will be internal. Although the political fearmongers and media types most likely will continue to worship the worst case scenario as long as possible, that is until 07 November, most people will eventually know whether or not this thing was real. If, after the intervening "weeks or months" all we have is some seismic waves and no other evidence, then the DPRK's deterrent will remain theoretical.

However, the last sentence of this NYT article made me stop and think:

“If the lower-yield estimates are valid, then it’s not a militarized system but also not something a terrorist would reject.” (emphasis mine)

What if the DPRK message is not, "don't mess with us or we'll vaporize something you care about, like your troops in S. Korea or maybe Seoul or Tokyo", but instead it's "...we'll give this little device to your most ruthless enemies, and they'll vaporize the Statue of Liberty or the Pentagon", something along those lines. I don't know which side of the Iraqi civil war the DPRK might support, but the thought of a suicide bomber with the equivalent of 1 or 2 million lbs. of TNT...well, it doesn't matter if they're Sunni or Shiite.

Let's hope the commies are, and keep on, screwing it up.

Expert: N. Korea Nuke Test Maybe Faked
Larry O'Hanlon, Discovery News

"Oct. 9, 2006 — North Korea’s provocative weapons test Monday was either an unusually small nuclear bomb, only partially successful, or possibly even a faked test done with conventional explosives, say seismologists studying the latest freely available seismic data from South Korea and China."

What I find really disturbing is how many supposedly educated commentators on this NK explosion are going "NUKULER" with their pronounciation. Whether consciously or not, are these folks aping the Fearless Leader's (affected?) Yale/Harvard good-ol'-boy metathesis in discussions of SERIOUS matters that effect the planet?

I wish I had the time and resources to see how much of this has developed since BushInc. was elevated to the bully pulpit. If the talking heads and commentariat have weak and suggestable minds, or are fond of displaying their BushInc. shibboleths (Faux News...I'm looking in your direction), then why should we pay attention to them at all?

From Bloomberg (italics mine):

"Tremors Detected

The U.S. Geological Survey detected a tremor of magnitude 4.2, which is within the 'range' of previous underground nuclear tests by others, said Bill Leith, a seismologist at the agency. Amy Vaughan, a geophysicist at the National Earthquake Information Center, said the tremor occurred in the northeastern part of the country. South Korean officials said their instruments detected tremor of magnitude 3.58 to 3.7. [the Richter scale is logarithmic, meaning each whole number increase equals ten times the previous force...so that's a significant difference]

Bush and other administration officials said the U.S. still was analyzing the data, and some experts said they remained skeptical about North Korea's claim.

'There are lots of questions about this test,' said Jim Walsh, a nuclear weapons expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who visited North Korea last year. While the tremors detected were within the range of nuclear tests, he said, they were on the lower end. [the ? is...which number is he talking about?]

'Unusual' Test

'It's very unusual for countries that are testing for the first time to have such a small test,' Walsh said. 'People are going to ask whether this was a failed test -- in other words, a fizzle -- of a much larger bomb that only half went off, or a fake.'"

More from NYT (italics mine):

"If the test occurred as the North claimed, it is unclear whether it was an actual bomb or a more primitive device. Some experts cautioned that it could try to fake an explosion, setting off conventional explosives; the only way to know for sure will be if American 'sniffer' planes, patrolling the North Korean coast, pick up evidence of nuclear byproducts in the air."

What a smorgasbord of "news" today. Which way to turn?

At NYT (italics mine):

"United States intelligence analysts have determined that the strength of the weapon tested by North Korea was less than one kiloton, extremely small for a nuclear explosion, one official said today.

'We have assessed that the explosion in North Korea was a sub-kiloton explosion,' said the intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. He added, 'We don’t know, in fact, whether it was a nuclear explosion.'”

"There was widespread agreement that there had been some sort of seismic event in North Korea — The United States Geological Survey said it had detected a tremor of 4.2 magnitude. But monitoring agencies disagreed in their estimates of the force of the blast, raising some question about exactly what the North Koreans had done."

"President Bush denounced North Korea’s announcement as a 'provocative act.'”

"...he said that 'such a claim itself constitutes a threat to international peace and security.'”

"...Bush said the move requires an 'immediate response.'”

On MSNBC, this 0.5 kiloton "nuclear" test is at the "theoretical low end" of possible designs. But, "we should be scared." Big surprise.

From Spiegel Online:

"Clearly something rattled the ground in North Korea. The US Geological Survey said it recorded a seismic tremor focused in northern Hamgyong with a preliminary magnitude of 4.2 -- which experts said would indicate an explosive strength of about 550 tons of TNT. That's half a kiloton, far smaller than the nuclear bombs dropped by America on Japan during World War II. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima had the destructive power of about 15 kilotons.

Some experts cautioned that North Korea could try to fake an explosion by setting off conventional weapons, and South Korea said it was still trying to detect escaped radiation near the site. A top Russian military officer, though, said Russian monitoring systems had 'detected the test of a nuclear weapon in North Korea ... It is 100 percent (certain) that it was an underground nuclear explosion.'"

CNN's Barbara Starr, while noting that N. Korea's claim of a "nuclear" explosive test is not verified and may have been less than 1 kiloton, apparently doesn't know what a kiloton is. I have twice seen her report on live tv that NK's test was "less than 1 kiloton" which she then explains is "less than 1000 pounds" of explosives. Arrg!

FYI Ms. Starr, a kiloton is 1000 tons. Further, in case you are also uninformed about what a ton might be, that's 2000 lbs. Sooooo...1 kiloton = 1000 x 2000 lbs., or 2,000,000 lbs., or 2 megapounds, if you will. Get it straight.

In spite of the blazing headlines, it is very possible that this is nothing but a scam by the NK military to convince either us or Kim that they are nuclear capable. Wait and see how this shakes out before you start digging that bomb shelter in the backyard.

Florida governor and election fraudster Jeb Bush goes into the closet:

"...Protesters greeted Florida Gov. Jeb Bush on his way to a campaign event for a Pennsylvania senator, and he briefly took refuge in a subway station supply closet to avoid the anti-Republican demonstrators...The protesters, made up of members of the United Steelworkers union and the anti-war group Uprise Counter Recruitment, chanted, "Jeb go home," and said Bush blew them a kiss...Bush, accompanied by a security guard and an aide, retreated into a nearby subway station and was followed by about 50 picketers...Officers used stun guns to subdue two protesters..."

More details from the local paper.

Condi's a LIAR.

Rummy's a LIAR.

Cafe Press

In "The Elephant in the Polling Booth", Mark Crispen Miller briefly describes:

"...a vast, complex and incremental process of mass disenfranchisement—which is, in fact, the only way the Bush Republicans could ever get 'elected,' as their program is not conservative but radical, irrational, apocalyptic: i.e., unacceptable to most Americans, liberals and true conservatives alike."

All of the links in his article are recommended reading for anyone who is unaware of how vote fraud is corrupting this nation. A good start would be Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s first and second studies of Ohio 04 and beyond.

Last night, the BushInc. CEO was called on his LIES by our 21st century Ed Murrow.

I was kinda halfway thinking about voting for Katherine Harris for senator, just to give Bill Nelson the middle finger after he voted for that despicable detainee treatment bill, not to mention the flag burning amendment, the Iraq invasion, yada yada yada.

But after seeing that...whatever she is twisting reality like THIS!!!, I think I'd better write in "NONE OF THE ABOVE".

More on torture.

Isn't Syria supposed to be one of the evil doers?
Why send a guy over to the supposed enemy for the purpose of extracting "information"?
What makes BushTortureInc. believe that the Syrians would expose the plans of other evil doers?

If all of my congressional representatives:

• Bill Nelson, US Senate (D-FL)
• Mel Martinez, US Senate (R-FL)
• Jeff Miller, US HoR (R-FL-1)

voted to cover the executive's ass on infinite detention and torture of prisoners, suspended the right to challenge imprisonment in court, and stripped the judiciary of it's constitutional role as the 3rd branch of government... why don't I feel safer? Why do I feel nauseous?

Detainee bill lifts Bush's power to new heights