Monthly Archives: March 2007

The Beeb (news.bbc.co.uk) is reporting the Israeli Ambassador to El Salvador, Tzuriel Refael, is being recalled from his posting.  This is not actually news, except that he was tied up in bondage gear, had a ball-gag in his mouth and was found in the courtyard of the embassy, drunk and naked.

Considering that the Israeli Government has been doing that to its’ citizens for years, it seems only fair that someone has returned the favour.  If only we could do that here to adjust the attitudes of some of our elected representatives. 

(You’re going to have to use your brains on this one.  I’ll even give you the link now to http://www.wikipedia.org so you can do some fact-checking.)

Republicans, by definition, are American political party members.  The Republican party has been around in various incarnations since 1854 as a coalition of Northern Democrats, Whigs and Anti-slavery Free-Soilers.  Abraham Lincoln was the first big Republican President, who did a few nice things, like the Emancipation Proclamation and a couple of ugly things, the US Civil War, as an example.

Essentially, the Republican Party has been in favour of business and free trade with a dash of keeping the government the hell out of the way.  Some of this attitude led to Herbert Hoover being tossed out of office by Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal during the Depression.  The America-First wing of the Republican party would have kept the US out of WWII, even if Britain fell, as Europe wasn’t on their maps. 

Post-war?  There was Eisenhower and Nixon in the 50’s, where Ike pushed the containment of Communism with a side order of Internationalism, while Tricky Dick ran the national agenda.  The Interstate Highway system is a result of the Ike and Dick show. The admission of Hawaii and Alaska as states is also an Eisenhower-era accomplishment.  Ike coined the term "military-industrial complex" in reference to the mammoth business interests cloaked in secrecy who wanted more, bigger and more violent wars that they would supply the guns for.  I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the 1957 era segregation riots.  Ike called out the troops to insist that the Little Rock Central High School become integrated.

Then there was Richard Nixon.  The phrase "Lying Sack of Shit Who Would Do Anything To Stay In Power" comes to mind, but I’ve promised myself not to say such things about Henry Kissinger anymore.  Nixon was a vile, vicious punk and cheap-jack hustler who got elected to the highest office in the US.  Twice. 

The next Republican of note was Ronald Regan:  A walking logo for America.  More correctly the walking logo for a Hoover-esque America where assistance from the government was cut through the bone.  Remember PATCO?  In one day Regan fired all the air traffic controllers in the US because they had the temerity to belong to a union and ask for a raise?  Remember airline deregulation?  Remember Iran-Contra?  Remember the economic meltdown of the late 70’s?  Remember the Gordon Gecko-Greed-Is-Good-Bonfire-Of-The-Vanities mentality of the 80’s?  Trickle-down Economics?  James Watt as Secretary of the Interior?  Alexander Haig?  Ed Meese?  James Baker?  If those names seem familiar, go look at the meatsacks that were also in Daddy Bush’s Cabinet and inner circle. 

After that, you got George Bush I who melted down in one term with Gulf War I, then Slick Willie who was roped and saddled by bottom feeders like Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America.  Say what you will about Clinton, but at least he was getting some from a female who could consent and had reached the age of majority.   

Then there is President Jo Jo The Idiot Boy.

Where Jo Jo The Idiot Boy went off the rails was in the selection of the swine he surrounded himself with.  Doug Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Karl Rove, Shotgun Dick Cheney, Donnie Rumsfeld, Irving Scooter Libby, John Bolton, John Ashcroft, Richard Perle and Alberto Gonzalez.  Ideologues all, who wanted to fight someone, anyone, anywhere, but preferably someone big enough that the war could be a long-term earning proposition.  Unlike Dutch Regan who only attacked Grenada and that was over in an afternoon.

The greed and power fueled rapacity of that group of Regan and Nixon era remainder bin cutouts makes one almost long for a return to Jimmy Carter.  At least you knew Carter screwed up with good intentions, if nothing else.  

Democrats, if the truth be known were not a lot better.  FDR did what needed to be done to end the Depression, but you could tell his heart wasn’t in it.  LBJ was handed a wounded nation and gave up when he found that he couldn’t win in Viet Nam.  Carter meant well.  Clinton meant well, but only talked a good game. 

JFK was caught between a military-industrial complex that wanted to nuke Cuba and a CIA that was styling reality as vigorously as they do now.  Had JFK not had his migraine headaches cured on November 22, 1963, things might have turned out differently, but we’ll never know.

Viewed in the totality, no, Republicans are not Evil.  Republicans are sensible when it comes to Taxes (Less is Good) and Government (Less is Good).  When it comes to Social issues, they suck about the same as the Democrats. 

Internationally, the Republicans are so inept as to be funny, if they weren’t so damn dangerous to global peace.  Which is the real issue:  Have the Republicans made the US a pariah on the international stage?  Emphatically, regrettably, yes.

My bias is out front: I’m a male of the species and have been the owner-operator of a dick and a pair of balls for nearly fifty years.  Which means I can’t, don’t, won’t and shouldn’t speak for women.  However, I have had chance to observe that 51% of the population who are females, at various times in my life.  Some observations:

My mother was barely 5 feet tall.  When I was about 13, she and I re-shingled the roof of the carport at home.  A bale of asphalt shingles weighs 150 pounds.  Mother weighed perhaps 100 pounds.  She slugged the bale over her shoulder and started climbing the ladder to the roof, as if she was carrying a cup of tea.  Lesson:  Men and Women are just as physically strong.  The major differences between males and females, aside from the obvious ones, are that I can write my name in the snow with a reasonable amount of accuracy. 

Women combat soldiers in the Second World War, notably on the Russian front, were just as ferocious and violent as the male combat soldiers.  In some ways the German Werhmacht were scared senseless by the Russian women, as the women didn’t understand the concept of surrendering under a flag of truce:  They tended to shoot first and then ask what "Nicht Schissen!" meant while walking over the bodies.  Lesson:  Women are just as savage as Men given the same circumstances.

Computational engines and computer programming were both invented and perfected by women.  Ada Lovelace and the ENIAC programmers were all women.  None were recognized for inventing the whole thing.  Lesson:  Women are as smart as Men.  Frankly, they’re smarter, but they choose not to show it off.  I don’t know why, but it’s probably cultural conditioning.

Women can choose to do any number of things valuable to society.  Men, generally, are limited by our social conditioning to only hunt and gather, meaning go to work.  It is the extraordinarily rare man who would take five or ten years out of his career and earnings path to care for his children.  Women seem to do this as a matter of course, then swing back into the workforce hunter-gatherer role.  In exchange for this exceptional emotional and socially valuable flexibility, we reward them by paying women about 25% less than men for the same job.  Lesson:  Men, we’re lucky we haven’t been all killed in our sleep, save a few hundred kept as breeding stock.

The summary?  Men might be perplexed by the other half of the species, but we’re dumb animals at the best of times.  All we can ask, is that the women put up with us and we’ll try to fix things as best we can, with your guidance, love and support.

Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby has been found guilty of obstruction, perjury and lying to the FBI in an investigation of the leak of a CIA operative’s identity.  He was acquitted of one count of being a bullshitter to the FBI.  Technically, he’s looking at 30 years at the Crowbar Hotel, but reality says that ain’t gonna happen.

The backstory is easy enough, Irving was Shotgun Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff and told a bunch of media wanks that Valerie Plame was a CIA spook to put the arm on her hubby, Ambassador Joe Wilson to play ball with the whole yellowcake-Saddam Has Nukes fantasy novel.  Then he lied his face off about it.

The jury came back with guilty on three of four charges after a few days of deliberations.  By happenstance, Shotgun Dick is in hospital with a blood clot in his leg.  As of right about now, Shotgun Dick is doing a limping, shuffling happy dance that Scooter didn’t do a John Dean and spill his guts about the kind of systematic reality-styling that went on in the Vice-Presidential offices. 

Now the stonewall begins.  Watch the White House isolate Scooter as a wild-card, off on his own, freelancing data off his desk.  Watch Shotgun Dick have to spend a couple of weeks recovering at his Undisclosed Location.  Watch Karl Rove start to badmouth Scooter with the right-wing nuts.  I’m even waiting for some meatsack like Senator Sam Brownback claim that Libby is being disloyal to the troops.

Stay tuned.  This one isn’t over yet.