The GOP — One Ugly Crowd (And Bat-shit Crazy, Too)
Filed Under Bullshit, Lying, Politics | Leave a Comment
(Illustration found here).
One must always keep in mind when giving any thought to how Republicans govern to this heart-felt comment from mush-faced twit Mitch McConnell from last October: “The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.”
All GOP action dovetails to this one, succulent point.
In the history of US politics there has never been a more nasty-toned political debate (unless one looks back to the election of 1876) over some of the most-dangerous and long-lasting problems facing this country — a seemingly perfect storm of energy, financial and environmental disasters already gathered and just waiting for the final size 10 shoe to drop.
And it’s pretty close.
In just more than a month, the gong will chime on the now-infamous US debt ceiling — the debt deal is a cap set by Congress on the amount of debt the federal government can legally borrow, first instituted in 1917 with a ceiling at $11.5 billion, the whole thing is now out-of-whacked-control as the tally is currently at $14.294 trillion.
Despite President Obama’s seemingly willingness to compromise, a couple of GOP pricks Eric Cantor and John Kyl (not to be confused with calling Obama a dick)) took a power from the talks, took whatever balls they have, put them in a mayonnaise jar and went home.
From Forbes:
Still believe that the Republicans really want to make a deal?
They do not — at least not unless they get it at 100 percent in spending cuts with a big goose egg in raised revenues.
Our governing system is built on good faith negotiations and compromise.
Yet, clearly, one of our political parties participating in this discussion has no interest in perpetuating that system.
Indeed.
There’s been so much bickering, even Obama quipped at his presser Wednesday night: “They are in one week, they are out one week,” he said. “You need to be here. I’ve been here. I’ve been doing Afghanistan and bin Laden and the Greek crisis.”
The GOP don’t give a shit, however.
They are willing to blow the US boat out of the water instead of trying to bring this fractured place into some kind of normal, easier-to-manage operation, and all they seemingly know how to do to cry, whine and lie.
All of the GOP presidential candidates just make shit up — a must read is Matt Taibbi’s profile in Rolling Stone magazine of total nutcase, flipped-out crazy Michele Bachmann, who could be the ultimate Republican front-runner in 2012.
What a mess.
Paul Krugman in his column in the New York Times this morning nails the GOP onto the block:
Bear in mind that G.O.P. leaders don’t actually care about the level of debt.
Instead, they’re using the threat of a debt crisis to impose an ideological agenda.
If you had any doubt about that, last week’s tantrum should have convinced you.
Democrats engaged in debt negotiations argued that since we’re supposedly in dire fiscal straits, we should talk about limiting tax breaks for corporate jets and hedge-fund managers as well as slashing aid to the poor and unlucky.
And Republicans, in response, walked out of the talks.
So what’s really going on is extortion pure and simple.
As Mike Konczal of the Roosevelt Institute puts it, the G.O.P. has, in effect, come around with baseball bats and declared, “Nice economy you have here. A real shame if something happened to it.”
Yes, a bat-shit crazy shame.
Shame
Filed Under Bullshit | Leave a Comment
George W. Bush, president: “We don’t torture.” (November 2005)
George Jr., nit-twit civilian: “I sanctioned torture of 9/11 mastermind.” (November 2010).
Another excerpt from the US shame files was cut open this week with the New York Times release of some WikiLeaks documents on the nefarious Guantanamo Naval Base — most likely you’ve heard or read already — and how Americans misbehaved way-badly, doing shitty things to people, which in reality and which in the end, gained nothing but the hatred and loathing of the entire freakin’ planet (not to mention a massive recruiting tool for insurgencies everywhere).
And on top of that, and as it turned out, a goodly group of these so-called inmates weren’t the bad guys: In at least 44 cases, U.S. military intelligence officials concluded that detainees had no connection to militant activity at all, a McClatchy Newspapers examination of the assessments, which cover both former and current detainees, found.
(Illustration found here).
Even as this torture, oops, I really meant “enhanced interrogation,” was going on at Gitmo, physicians on duty there, and it was there duty to call this shit out, turned a blind eye away.
From the abstract of a study conducted by the Public Library of Science (h/t antiwar.com):
The medical affidavits in each of the nine cases indicate that the specific allegations of torture and ill treatment are highly consistent with physical and psychological evidence documented in the medical records and evaluations by non-governmental medical experts.
However, the medical personnel who treated the detainees at GTMO failed to inquire and/or document causes of the physical injuries and psychological symptoms they observed.
Psychological symptoms were commonly attributed to “personality disorders” and “routine stressors of confinement.”
Temporary psychotic symptoms and hallucinations did not prompt consideration of abusive treatment. Psychological assessments conducted by non-governmental medical experts revealed diagnostic criteria for current major depression and/or PTSD in all nine cases.
And concluded:
The findings in these nine cases from GTMO indicate that medical doctors and mental health personnel assigned to the DoD neglected and/or concealed medical evidence of intentional harm.
Another take on the NYT Wikileak-Gitmo-dump comes from the searing keyboard of Chris Floyd and how torture is downplayed against the bad guys:
Money words:
Almost as sickening as the atrocities themselves, however, is the way the release has been played in the New York Times, whose coverage of the document dump will set the tone for the American media and political establishments.
The Times’ take is almost wholly devoted to showing how evil and dangerous a handful of the hundreds of Gitmo detainees were, and to justifying Barack Obama’s betrayal of his promises to close the concentration camp.
We are treated to lurid tales (many if not most of them extracted under torture, but who cares about that?) of monsters seething with irrepressible hatred of America, and so maniacally devoted to jihad that they inject themselves with libido-deadening drugs to ward off any sexual distractions from their murderous agenda.
Ugly, huh — read the whole post.
One main reason for all this horror is the institutional lie that’s become the norm, especially among the GOP, which just loves war, torture and death panels.
A great post on this shameful aspect was up yesterday at Mother Jones.
Rick Perlstein starts with the sinking of the Maine in Havana Harbor and works up to the current line of bullshit from Republican assholes:
And here, in the end, is the difference between the untruths told by William Randolph Hearst and Lyndon Baines Johnson, and the ones inundating us now: Today, it’s not just the most powerful men who can lie and get away with it.
It’s just about anyone — a congressional back-bencher, an ideology-driven hack, a guy with a video camera — who can inject deception into the news cycle and the political discourse on a grand scale.
Sure, there will always be liars in positions of influence — that’s stipulated, as the lawyers say.
And the media, God knows, have never been ideal watchdogs — the battleships that crossed the seas to avenge the sinking of the Maine attest to that.
What’s new is the way the liars and their enablers now work hand in glove.
That I call a mendocracy, and it is the regime that governs us now.
And when a US senator gets on the floor of the US Senator and lies through his asshole, and then later walks back the lie by proclaiming the statement was “not intended to be a factual statement,” and no one calls the shithead a freakin’ liar, then something’s way-wrong.
And no amount of clothing will cover the shame.
Long War Lost — Collateral Damage Without Reason
Filed Under Just Plain War, War & Politics | Leave a Comment
In a conflict that’s moving quickly from mismanaged to just plain foolish, Afghanistan is seeing a spike in civilian deaths, especially in the southern part of the country where US and NATO troops are attempting, once again, to drive out the Taliban.
The International Red Cross, despite reporting the number of bystander injuries are “hitting record highs,” the number of causalities found at local hospitals are just the “tip of the iceberg.”
(Illustration found here).
While the ICRC report detailed the rise in civilian causalities, NATO issued its own document stating the exact opposite — The number of civilians killed or injured by coalition airstrikes has dropped dramatically over the past several years, despite an increase in fighting in Afghanistan.
NATO says only 88 Afghan civilians have been killed so far this year.
And to that claim is an one word answer — bullshit.
An UN report says there’s been a 31 percent increase in civilians being killed — total number of civilian casualties in the first six months of this year is 3,268 – including 1,271 deaths and 1,997 injuries.
Due to the nature of the violence — IEDs, drone rockets, helicopter strikes — the Red Cross also reported a “drastic increase” in the number of amputations from war injuries, and as the war continues to bog down via quagmire style, collateral damage will only get worse.
Just to add a spice of dumb-shit and to counter the slaughter, King David Petraeus has ordered a drastic increase in the number of air strikes being launched across the nation.
Blasting the Afghan ground from above increased 172 percent in September — 700 sorties as compared to just 257 during the same time in 2009.
And to make this little story so asshole-like and sad — the Afghan war is a conflict in futility.
History writer John Prados via HuffPost:
The difficulties of war — any war — in Afghanistan are immutable and rooted in physical reality.
These problems dogged Soviet armies in the 20th Century and British ones in the 19th.
They are more deeply embedded in the fabric of the situation than the headaches of Afghan politics, the divergent goals of the Karzai government, rampant corruption, military ineffectiveness, Taliban determination, or the features of a harsh land.
…
In 2009, according to Pentagon estimates, allied forces were consuming over half a million gallons of gasoline per day, a figure that nearly doubled before the new “surge” troops began reaching the country.
During the Vietnam war the Pentagon calculated that every soldier in-country represented $7,000 in the war budget.
For Afghanistan that figure is $1,000,000.
…
In the American military, the saw is that captains and majors study tactics, colonels do strategy, and generals plan logistics.
But in Afghanistan, American generals have created a logistics nightmare incapable of solution, and then compounded the dilemma by demanding a surge that pushes the deployed force to the very edge of the abyss.
…
This conflict has reached the point where the failure modes are many and obvious, and the path to success obscure, under conditions where Americans are at risk.
The handwriting is on the wall.
To proceed further under these circumstances is to march into folly.
Stop the killing — bring US GIs home.
(h/t to Jason Ditz at antiwar.com)
War’s Children
Filed Under Just Plain War, Madness | Leave a Comment
From Jason Ditz at antiwar.com:
NATO is scrambling to do damage control tonight after a number of weekend incidents led to the deaths of Afghan civilians, including several children.
US troops killed two civilians, including an eight year old girl in a shooting in Logar Province, while NATO air strikes in the Helmand Province killed another three civilians and wounded a number of children.
NATO troops also shot and killed a child in Kandahar Province.
(Illustration found here).
In war, a parent’s anguish never abates and is never quiet.
One of the horrors of being a parent is seeing/and/or hearing about one of your kids getting hurt, in trouble, or the worst of the unspeakable — getting killed.
And in this time of pure war, parents all over the planet are mourning.
According to UNICEF: Between 1945 and 1992, there were 149 major wars, killing more than 23 million people, including two million children killed, four to five million disabled, 12 million left homeless, more than 1 million orphaned or separated from their parents and some 10 million psychologically traumatized.
And those records are now two decades along — more than enough branches on Anne Frank’s Tree.
Since March 2003, 4,424 US military service people have died in Iraq with 31,964 wounded, while in the ongoing second theater of slaughter, Afghanistan, where after nearly nine whole years of fighting, 1,206 US troops have died with more than half that total killed in the last two years alone — 354 this year and 303 in 2009.
A nasty, terrifying ordeal for the more than 6,000 set of parents, along with other relatives and friends.
The anguish of war for parents also in the horror of the US war machine.
Case in total point, the parents of Spc. Adam Winfield, shown at left in an undated photo with their son, who is accused along with four other US Army personnel of murdering Afghan civilians “for sport,” despite Adam’s attempts to warn his dad about the situation.
(Illustration found here).
According to salon.com:
Winfield wrote his father, Chris, on Feb. 14 about his concern that two members of his platoon had the previous month murdered “some innocent guy about my age just farming.”
The correspondence from that day illustrates the young soldier’s horror at the murder, and also reveals a shocking indifference about the killing among the other troops in his platoon.
“Well, it was two guys who did it actually killed the dude (sic) but the whole platoon knew about it,” Winfield wrote to his father. “Theres (sic) no one in this platoon that agrees this is wrong.”
…
“There are no more good men left here,” Winfield wrote in the Feb. 14 exchange released to Salon by Chris Winfield through his attorney, Neal Puckett.
At one point, Winfield seemed to echo Sen. John Kerry’s haunting 1971 testimony about Vietnam when Kerry asked rhetorically, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”
“I started to think whether I should quit and just give up because it’s stupid to get smoked in Afghanistan,” Winfield wrote.
“The Army really let me down when I thought I would come out here to do good maybe make some change in this country I find out that its all a lie (sic).”
Adam’s dad tried to alert the Army, but he was shit-out-of-luck:
Chris Winfield has said that he made multiple calls to the Army (including at least four to various offices at Fort Lewis) in an effort to report the murder his son described to him. On Friday, the Army announced that it is investigating this claim.
…
He said nobody ever got back to him. Members of his son’s platoon allegedly committed at least two more murders in the months that followed.
The Army has now implicated Adam Winfield in one of those later killings.
“The Army had the opportunity and they dropped the ball,” Chris Winfield said.
“The Army has the blood on their hands on those two [later] murders.
They want to sweep it under the carpet and make it disappear,” he claimed.
“I’m not going to let them do that.”
War is bad, ugly shit for parents, too.
Forever Dying
Filed Under Just Plain War, Orwellian | Leave a Comment
Insane or not: Why would the US shackle itself to a place that’s been called the, ‘graveyard of empires,’ and where most of the world’s heroin has its birth?
Or as Marie asked: “Uh, he went out the window. Why would someone do that?”
Yes, why indeed.
So why with all the shit, would bullet Bob Gates blubber this out last May: “We’re not leaving Afghanistan prematurely,” Gates finally said. “In fact, we’re not ever leaving at all.”
In August, Gates retorted himself: “We’ll have completed the surge. We’ll have done the assessment in December. And it seems like somewhere there in 2011 is a logical opportunity to hand off.”
And King David Petraeus also shitting out his face: “You have to recognize also that I don’t think you win this war. I think you keep fighting. It’s a little bit like Iraq, actually. . . . Yes, there has been enormous progress in Iraq. But there are still horrific attacks in Iraq, and you have to stay vigilant. You have to stay after it. This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.”
(Illustration found here).
And while these assholes blubber and lie and stall and backbite, young US peoples and Afghan peoples of all ages are dying, being blown apart, and just not living.
Despite President Obama insistence the US will hand-off the war to the Afghan government next July, he told Rolling Stone magazine, “[I]t’s going to take us several years to work through this issue.”
And the dying is forever:
2010 is already the deadliest year of the Afghan war for U.S. forces. So far, 354 U.S. troops have been killed in Afghanistan this year compared to 303 in 2009, which was the second deadliest year of the war.
A total of 650 U.S. troops troops have been killed in Afghanistan since President Barack Obama was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2010, after campaigning for president vowing to shift the focus of U.S. military efforts overseas from Iraq to Afghanistan.
The 650 U.S. casualties in Afghanistan since Obama’s inauguration equal almost 54 percent of all U.S. casualties for the entire duration of the war.
Given that Obama has been president for 618 days, U.S. troops have been dying in Afghanistan at a rate of more than one a day since he took over as commander in chief.
And apparently the killing will continue forever.