The madness of King George

A Jungian psychologist evaluates Bush and his followers. Scary.

A piece of the NSA phonecall-monitoring puzzle.

As you know, in the wake of USA Today's revelation that the NSA has possession of the phonecall records of all Americans who use Verizon, AT&T and Bellsouth, those companies have each denied turning their records over to the NSA. So what's a citizen to believe?

Well, this may be the answer.

Is there no point where someone says, Stop the madness?

Now we're going to use laser-guns to blind oncoming drivers at checkpoints in Iraq. More humane, it's claimed, than bullets.

You want humane? How 'bout getting the fuck out of their country?

Rassmussen Reports

Regular followers of this blog know that I follow Rassmussen Reports for daily polling. It's a conservative-oriented poll that regularly reports higher numbers for Bush and his policies than other polls. But even Rassmussen can't escape the facts, including this precipitous drop by Bush in the polls, to a new low of 36% approval-rating. And note the huge "strongly disapprove" numbers. And note also that these figures arose from polling largely after Bush's speech on immigration "reform."

It's getting to the never-can-recover level. Let's hope so.

CNN International

Okay, Congressman Murtha's report about the Marines' massacre of Iraqi civilians (Murtha is a former Marine) has made it to CNN International. Any more traction, or have we become immune to American atrocities.

The media scripts

In this too-long piece, the "media scripts," as the writer calls them, are examined for Senator John McCain and Al Gore. The Senator has been dubbed--"scripted"--by the media as "Saint John" and/or "Sun God John McCain," with each report of him being cast, sometimes directly, mostly by assumption, in such terms. This media scripting lies at the root of MSM reporting, the article says, and governs public perception of a candidate.

The script for Gore is akin to "buffoon," a negative sense of some sort of wayward loser. And I must admit that in my various conversation, even with kindred peacenik crazies, I get a mixed reaction to the prospect of Gore's candidacy for president in 2008. And yet he's right on on the environment, opposed the Iraq invasion, is a genuine liberal on most issues--and he beat Bush in 2000. He could be cast as the "comeback candidate" or the "happy ending" winner. But I agree with the article, that says that until we consumers of news take on this media scripting question, until we confront and attack it, we'll be stuck with "Saint John" in the White House in 2008, and Gore or Hillary or whatever Democrat on the outside, doomed by the media's characterization.

Another watch to watch

Knight-Ridder reports Congressman John Murtha's recitation of a Pentagon report of a massacre by US Marines of Iraqi civilians. An awful event, first reported months ago, but obscured by the accounts at the time.


Not on the scale of My Lai massacre in VietNam, but not very savory, either. Will we learn about this on the MSM? Don't hold your breath.

He who lives by the sword

This is fun to watch. Bush has for five years cultivated and catered to the Far Right, his base, and now with the Dubai ports deal, the half-measure immigration proposal, the sale of goodies to India and so forth he's losing them. He didn't realize what radical crazies they were. But I did. I spent five hours driving along the I-10 a few months ago listening to a radio talk show from somewhere in southern Arizona. The question was "immigration" and the language was foul. Minutemen calling in, calling their fellow citizens (lumped in with legal and illegal immigrants) Spics and losers and pachukos and worse. Calling for on-sight shootings of wetbacks (even though there's no river to cross in Arizona), calling for martial law.

So Bush finds himself caught between a rock (the bigoted base) and a hard place (the capitalist pigs). The former want all the people of color gone from America, the latter want some kind of "limited" work-release program that allows them to exploit Latino labor without having to pay benefits, a living wage, and provide any security.

Rove, I know, conjured this latest gambit, trying to play the "immigration card" to staunch the bleeding, the inexorable drop in the polls of his puppet. But he didn't realize how rotten was his base.

There's a good novel here, except that it's really happening. And I'm really enjoying the show.

What's good for General Motors is good for America.

Check out this article to learn the converse--and then tell your broker to dump your common stocks.

Out in the cold

I'm one of the disenfranchised--that is, the unpolled--because I have only a cell phone, no land line, and so am not polled by the major pollsters. Here's an article citing the effects of the exclusion of cell-phone-only folks like me on the percentages shown in poll results. Not too significant yet, but growing.

"The Americans have wristwatches, but we have the time."

A saying of the Iraqi insurgency.

Talk about your quagmire...

Check out this situation in Iraq.

King of the world

Whatever happened to "no entangling alliances"? Gone in favor of a permanent military presence in the Middle East, with bases throughout the region. This administration is America's worst nightmare, dooming it to becoming the world's policeman and enforcer of its interests eternally. Our kids and their kids will be paying for this forever.

By way of explanation

I want to tell you why I'm so fixated on the Plame-gate issue, why it's so important that it be tracked to its ultimate conclusion. It's because all the other excesses and illegalities of the Bush administration (except, of course, his social security craziness and his various other economic debacles) are cloaked in claims of "national security": the torture and rendition thingees, the invasion of Iraq, the spying on us, the secretive usurpation of power.

But this Plame thing is different. If it's proven that Rove/Libby/others leaked Valerie Plame's name and function as a CIA operative in order to denigrate Joe Wilson's reportage from Niger, that's just plain ol' politics. Just like Watergate, or, as John Dean says, Worse than Watergate, because it's possible that Plame was working on intelligence of Iran's nuclear capacity, Iran, one of the members of Bush's "axis of evil."

I'm here to tell ya, if Rove is indicted and the case proceeds toward trial in the next several months, this could be the end of Bush's administration. Not by impeachment--that's too much to hope for. But by disgrace and discredit, which will lead to revulsion by Americans, which might lead to a period of fair and intelligent government.

So--tick, tick, tick...

...tick, tick, boom.

Now it's being reported that Fitzgerald has handed Rove's attorney the sealed indictment, and that an announcement of the charges will be forthcoming next week. Jason Leopold, the author of this report and of the report I linked to above, is the same man who broke the story of the Libby indictment in the hours before it was announced by Fitzgerald, so it's hard fact. Rove is going down, baby.

Unfriendly fire

I suppose that's the word for when units of an army, in this case the US-trained Iraqi army, attack one another.

Tick, tick

Time is running out for Karl Rove.

Staking out Fitzgerald

Reliable sources--trust me on this, I don't want to surf to find them--have noted that Plame-gate prosecutor Fitzgerald released the information about Libby's indictment on a Friday afternoon, and that he's about due to announce Rove's indictment too. They've taken to roosting in front of Fitzgerald's office every Friday, and I'll roost here, waiting, waiting, waiting and wishing.

Whaaaa?

A bunch of Ugandan soldiers sodomized at a US military base in Iraq? Whazzup with that?

What are we to do?

Those of us Americans--and there are millions and millions of us--who want sanity in our foreign policy, starting with getting the hell out of Iraq, are in jeopardy of failing our mission if the Democrats are split between the sane ones and the warmongers: H. Clinton, E. Bayh, Lieberman, Biden and their ilk. That split can hand the Republicans continued control of Congress and, possibly, the White House in 2008. We've got to get a plan, as well as a much louder voice!