Month: January 2007

Bush Completes Military Takeover of All U.S. Intel Agencies

Jon Ponder
Using the military to fight a civilian force like al Qaeda is like using a chainsaw to perform an appendectomy.

Path to oligarchy: Pres. Bush’s not-so-stealth campaign to turn the United States into a giant banana republic is happening on so many fronts, and so quickly, that it is hard to keep up. Over the past few years, he has appointed (and the Senate has confirmed) military officers rather than civilians to head the nation’s intelligence agencies:

The expected confirmation of retired Navy Adm. Mike McConnell as director of national intelligence will complete the Pentagon’s takeover of the intelligence community and end any pretense of civilian influence, let alone control, of the community. Flag officers are now in control of the Central Intelligence Agency [Gen. Michael V. Hayden] and the National Counterterrorism Center [Vice Admiral (VADM) Scott Redd] as well as the key position of undersecretary of defense for intelligence [Lt. Gen. James R. Clapper Jr].

This is another area in which the Republican-controlled Senate of the 109th Congress failed to provide a check on Pres. Bush’s reckless disregard for the institutions of our democracy.Now the Democratic-controlled Senate has an opportunity to take corrective action:

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Senate Armed Forces Committee must agree to abolish or at least weaken the position of undersecretary of defense for intelligence, which was created by former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to solidify the Pentagon’s control over the intelligence community. The Pentagon played a major role in the politicization of intelligence that was used to justify the war against Iraq.

Using the military to fight a civilian force like al Qaeda is like using a chainsaw to perform an appendectomy. The military is tied to its contractors who need multimillion dollar contracts to satisfy their shareholders. Spending billions on giant weapons programs will not stop a single terrorist attack.

WingNut Daily Columnist: Soy Causes Homosexuality and Small Penises

Jon Ponder

Listen up, men. WorldNetDaily columnist Jim Rutz has a warning for you: If you consume soybean products such as tofu or soy milk, you will become gay and, worse, your penis will get smaller:

Rutz says homosexuality is a choice — and yet it is still caused by consuming soy products. Doh! I can’t win.

Soy is feminizing, and commonly leads to a decrease in the size of the penis, sexual confusion and homosexuality. That’s why most of the medical (not socio-spiritual) blame for today’s rise in homosexuality must fall upon the rise in soy formula and other soy products. (Most babies are bottle-fed during some part of their infancy, and one-fourth of them are getting soy milk!) Homosexuals often argue that their homosexuality is inborn because “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t homosexual.” No, homosexuality is always deviant. But now many of them can truthfully say that they can’t remember a time when excess estrogen wasn’t influencing them.

Of course, none of this is even remotely true:

While it is true that soy products contain estrogen, there is nothing to support that it causes homosexuality or “feminizing” of men who eat them.

Rutz notably fails to quote from a medical source to support his argument, merely referring to generalizations that he spins to his own ends. In searching for any medical reasons for his arguments, I found the opposite.

The official stance of the American Psychological Society [APS] is that there is no defineable single cause for homosexuality, and that it is likely a combination of biological, genetic, and environmental factors….

[The] APS states that there is no evidence for a rise in homosexuality. Rather, there is a rise in people willing to admit they are homosexual.

Talk about having it both ways. Rutz says homosexuality is a choice — and yet it is still caused by consuming soy products. Doh! I can’t win.

Even funnier is the idea that research exists on human males that correlates soy intake with genital size.

If King Were Alive Today, He’d Likely Protest Bush Policies

Trish

Celebrating amazing courage in the face of fear is what today is supposed to be all about. And when you realize what the followers of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. went through, you feel kind of puny for not doing more to protest our presence in Iraq. Or at least I do.

King and the civil rights activists stuck to their pledge to wage a nonviolent fight for desegregation. But it’s a good thing improvised explosive devices weren’t around back then because people on the other team probably would have used them.

According to my hometown paper, you can’t throw a rock here in St. Augustine, Florida without hitting a site where someone, um, threw a rock during the civil rights struggle. A short list, with me substituting descriptions for the actual addresses, since you probably don’t need those:

The black dentist was beaten by the Ku Klux Klan, and his home was shot up, narrowly missing his pregnant wife and killing the family dog

A “safe house” at the beach: In the summer of 1964, King was moved to this house from [town], because of the fear for his life. Ironically, this house was then shot up and firebombed. King was not there at the time but returned later, and a famous photo (above) shows him pointing to the bullet holes.

House in the north part of town, near me: Nothing is there today but the brick steps. The house was destroyed by fire, believed to be arson, after the…family who lived there sent their sons to integrate previously all-white Fullerwood School. The investigation of this fire was so significant that it is included in the 700 pages of King’s Florida FBI file, now at the University of Florida Smathers Library.

Old Woolworth & Co. downtown: Just weeks after the first lunch counter sit-in in Greensboro, N.C., in 1960, Florida Memorial College students [a teaching college in St. Augustine for black future instructors] conducted a three-day sit-in at the Woolworth’s on King Street…[Another sit-in] in June 1963, resulted in the teenagers known as the St. Augustine Four spending six months in jail and reform school. They were finally released by the action of the governor and cabinet in January 1964.

A house in West Augustine: The home of Dr. Robert B. Hayling, a [black] dentist who was the best-known leader of the St. Augustine efforts. He was beaten by the Ku Klux Klan, and his home was shot up, narrowly missing his pregnant wife and killing the family dog. He later moved to Fort Lauderdale, but in 2003 he came back with his family for ceremonies re-naming the street in his honor.

On Saturday, King’s former secretary, Dora McDonald, died from cancer in Atlanta.

An Associated Press story Sunday said King entrusted his family to McDonald’s care when he was in jail or traveling, and it was McDonald who told Coretta Scott King that her husband had been assassinated on April 4, 1968, in Memphis, Tenn.

In a 1989 interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, McDonald described her role as King’s secretary at Ebenezer Baptist Church and later at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference as “a 24-hour-a-day, seven-day-a-week job.”

McDonald never married or had children, and has no immediate survivors.

McDonald was working on a book about her life called, “Sharing the Dream: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Me.”

Are Hangings and Accidental Beheading a Cover-Up?

Trish

Can this get any worse?

The official video of the hangings showed Hussein’s half-brother lying headless below the gallows, his severed head several yards away

Iraq hanged two of Saddam Hussein’s aides early Monday, and one of the men was decapitated in the process.

The official video of the hangings showed Hussein’s half-brother lying headless below the gallows, his severed head several yards away, The Associated Press reported.

Good Lord.

The new barbarities come as people continue to question the timing of Saddam’s recent hanging, which took place after he was found guilty of a charge that paled in comparison to the biggie — gassing thousands of Kurds. Some observers, such as Ghada Karmi in The Guardian, wonder if the Bush administration wanted to see Saddam die before American support for Iraq’s 1980 — 1988 war on Iran, which took place while Junior’s dad was vice president, could be explored.

But it was also essential to stop him revealing secrets about the west’s past enthusiasm in supporting and arming his regime. Hence he was tried on the relatively minor charge of killing 148 people in the village of Dujail, after a plot to assassinate him. Far better to put him away safely for that rather than risk his exposing western hypocrisy, treachery and double-dealing.

Bush on Saddam’s Execution: ‘I Didn’t Watch the Whole Thing’

Jon Ponder
Sneering at the pleas for clemency from a woman he is about to have executed, George W. Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, “Please — don’t kill me.”

The only unqualified success in Pres. Bush’s misadventure in Iraq is the capture, trial and execution of Saddam Hussein. So it’s odd that he told “60 Minutes” that he couldn’t stomach watching Saddam die:

He said he was discouraged by the handling of Saddam Hussein’s execution, which he saw on an Internet video but stopped watching before the trap door opened under the former Iraqi leader. “I didn’t want to watch the whole thing,” Bush said.

What happened to the macho governor of Texas who, in a 1999 interview with rightwing writer Tucker Carlson, sneered at the clemency plea of Karla Faye Tucker, a convicted murderer whom he had approved for execution:

In the weeks before the execution, Bush says, a number of protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Karla Faye Tucker. “Did you meet with any of them?” I ask. Bush whips around and stares at me. “No, I didn’t meet with any of them,” he snaps, as though I’ve just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. “I didn’t meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with Tucker, though. He asked her real difficult questions like, ‘What would you say to Governor Bush?'” “What was her answer?” I wonder. “‘Please,'” Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, “‘don’t kill me.'” I must look shocked — ridiculing the pleas of a condemned prisoner who has since been executed seems odd and cruel — because he immediately stops smirking.

So George W. Bush has the courage to put a woman to death — and to mock her while he is at it — but is too cowardly to watch a video of the death of a man he toppled a nation to apprehend.

New Poll: The Military Thinks Bush Blows Too

Trish

Bush has never been less popular among American troops, maybe, as Jon pointed out, because he stands in front of them and tells them bold-faced, transparent lies.

No doubt there are other reasons, too, such as demanding they serve…and serve…and serve as he, himself, was never willing to do.

A poll released at year-end by the Military Times shows our soldiers are no longer pickin’ up what Bush is puttin’ down.

Barely one-third of service members approve of the way the president is handling the war

For the first time, more troops disapprove of the president’s handling of the war than approve of it. Barely one-third of service members approve of the way the president is handling the war, according to the [Dec. 22,] 2006 Military Times Poll.

When the military was feeling most optimistic about the war — in 2004 — 83 percent of poll respondents thought success in Iraq was likely. This year, that number has shrunk to 50 percent.

Only 35 percent of the military members polled this year said they approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, while 42 percent said they disapproved. The president’s approval rating among the military is only slightly higher than for the population as a whole. In 2004, when his popularity peaked, 63 percent of the military approved of Bush’s handling of the war…

Just as telling, in this year’s poll only 41 percent of the military said the U.S. should have gone to war in Iraq in the first place, down from 65 percent in 2003. That closely reflects the beliefs of the general population today — 45 percent agreed in a recent USA Today/Gallup poll.

The poll was taken before His Assholiness spoke the other day.

Whatever war plan the president comes up with later this month, it likely will have the replacement of American troops with Iraqis as its ultimate goal. The military is not optimistic that will happen soon. Only about one in five service members said that large numbers of American troops can be replaced within the next two years. More than one-third think it will take more than five years. And more than half think the U.S. will have to stay in Iraq more than five years to achieve its goals.

Almost half of those responding think we need more troops in Iraq than we have there now. A surprising 13 percent said we should have no troops there. As for Afghanistan force levels, 39 percent think we need more troops there. But while they want more troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly three-quarters of the respondents think today’s military is stretched too thin to be effective.

And they should know. So much for Bush listening to those “boots on the ground.”

Cult of Personality Around Bush Has Broken Down

Jon Ponder

Gene Lyons:

Bush is wrecking the GOP everywhere but in the South.

Although polls show slight majorities favoring impeachment, the votes just aren’t there. Even so, it’s not hard to imagine how it could happen. Because to allow an arrogant, arguably delusional president and his shrinking band of ideologically driven aides to double-down in Iraq, gambling the “lives and sacred honor” of American soldiers to save face in a misbegotten war also would do incalculable harm to the idea of self-government.

To remove Bush, however, Republicans would have to take the lead. As Bush is currently wrecking the GOP everywhere but the Deep South, chances may not be as remote as they seem.

The cult of personality surrounding the White House has broken down. Last November, American voters delivered as clear a verdict on Iraq as an offyear electorate can possibly render. No Democratic incumbent lost anywhere. Yet Bush acts as if it never happened.

Bush Caught Lying to Troops about Escalation Plan

Jon Ponder
Here we have one branch of the Traditional Media reporting the true facts on the ground only to have the elite crew in the White House press corps ignore it when the president lies about these same facts to the very uniformed military personnel he intends to send into harm’s way.

If I’m lying, you’re dying: Pres. Bush was caught rewriting recent history in a speech he gave Thursday to the troops at Ft. Benning, Georgia, some of whom are preparing for their third deployment to Iraq. Here is the transcript of the president’s load of bull:

“The [Iraqi] Prime Minister came and said, look, I understand we’ve got to do something about this violence, and here is what I suggest we do. Our commanders looked at it, helped fine-tune it so it would work. . . .

“The commanders on the ground in Iraq, people who I listen to — by the way, that’s what you want your Commander-in-Chief to do. You don’t want decisions being made based upon politics, or focus groups, or political polls. You want your military decisions being made by military experts. And they analyzed the plan and they said to me, and to the Iraqi government, this won’t work unless we help them. There needs to be a bigger presence. . . .

“And so our commanders looked at the plan and said, Mr. President, it’s not going to work until — unless we support — provide more troops. And so last night I told the country that I’ve committed an additional — a little over 20,000 more troops, five brigades of which will be in Baghdad.”

Meanwhile, back in reality, the facts are quite different. The strategy of escalating the war came from the West Wing, not the Iraqi leadership or Bush’s generals:

[A Washington Post story Wednesday] made it abundantly clear that adding U.S. troops was not an idea that emerged from the American commanders — nor, for that matter, from the Iraqis.

And, as it turns out, two stories in this morning’s New York Times add to the evidence: “A narrative pieced together from interviews with participants and from public testimony suggests that through much of the process, generals who had been on the ground in Iraq during the past year had favored that the new strategy begin with a substantially smaller force than the one that President Bush announced to the nation on Wednesday night. In the end, it was Mr. Bush who appeared to drive his commanders along to the conclusion that more troops were needed.”

Not only were the Iraqis not involved in creating the plan, they are not happy about it, according to another Times report:

So, not surprisingly: “Iraq’s Shiite-led government offered only a grudging endorsement on Thursday of President Bush’s proposal to deploy more than 20,000 additional troops in an effort to curb sectarian violence and regain control of Baghdad. The tepid response immediately raised questions about whether the government would make a good-faith effort to prosecute the new war plan.”

Where was the White House press corps on this? Didn’t anyone in that elite corps of journalists know the facts about the origins of the escalation?

Or maybe the president lies so often, they’re inured to it.

Here we have one branch of the Traditional Media reporting the true facts on the ground only to have the elite crew in the White House press corps ignore it when the president lies about these same facts to the very uniformed military personnel he intends to send into harm’s way.

Your Tax Dollars at Work

Trish

Sen. Mel Martinez (R-Fla.) sent an otherwise party line newsletter to constituents this week extolling the boldness of Pres. Bush’s new strategy for Iraq. Yeah, whatever.

But this little tidbit was buried toward the end. Mel congratulated the “city” of Umatilla, Florida’s volunteer fire department for receipt of a nearly $35,000 grant from the Department of Homeland Security.

And they even have a weekly newspaper!

Umatilla calls itself “the gateway to Ocala National Forest” on its website. It’s home to the Florida Black Bear Festival, “a fun and educational event” held each October. Although it was once a citrus-growing area, today you will find, “shops, restaurants, a honey co-op, doctors & dentists, a pharmacy, banks, and a weekly newspaper. Our community also features active civic clubs, churches, a library, exemplary schools and ample recreational activities.”

Its Wikipedia listing said it had a population of 2,214 in 2000 but it grew to 2,502 by 2004.

Martinez issued a press release announcing the grant, which he evidently views as tax money well spent.

“The AFG grant is terrific news for this department in Umatilla. The continued financial support for the men and women who voluntarily serve their communities will aid in the life and property protection services that they provide,” said Martinez.