deadissue.com

Driving my wife’s car today, I listened to a good deal of talk radio, and my brain is feeling the squeeze.  Sean Hannity was discussing the UAE port deal with Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and the discussion was something I hadn’t experienced in right-wing talk in a long time.  Both agreed that the simple argument that one private corporation from the UK cannot be compared with one run by a Middle East dictatorship.  Bush’s primary defense has been to label those who oppose the deal as being racist against Arabs, and as far as he’s concerned, every bit of data we have available to compare the UK and UAE in terms of freedom of the press, civil rights, etc. don’t apply.  Basically his position ignores the fact that the United Arab Emirates is a country that posts a lowest possible score when it comes to human rights, as well as the fact that it’s government has supported Osama Bin Laden and Al Quada.  Looked at side by side with his “you’re either with us or against us” statement regarding the War on Terror, there’s absolutely no spin imaginable that could square his position with reality.  Sean Hannity of all people believes in what I’ve just written here 100%, and said so over the radio about fifteen minutes ago. 

That said, his criticism of the deal is characterized politically as a mistake based on having not brought more people into the discussion beforehand.  The mistake basically being that the negotiations were done out of the public’s view, and that dissenting points of view were ignored along the way.  Nevermind the fact that Bush-Cheney have made every single critical decision since gaining power in this same exact way, in Hannity’s opinion, the fact that Democrats are politicizing this deal is what he’s most angry about. 

Think about that for a second now.  His position, as well as many on the right-wing, is that the deal should not go through and that the President is wrong, yet somehow it’s equally wrong for the minority party to use it for political gain?  What are Democrats supposed to be doing?  They disagree with the policy, voice their dissent, are agreed with by almost everyone on the other side of the aisle, but shouldn’t gain any political points at the same time? 

Alright, I’m talking about someone as partisan as they come, but how can anyone rationally disagree with this decision and not walk away from it questioning: 

1. Where President Bush’s loyalty lies, with the people or his business associates 
2. How serious Bush really is about spreading freedom and democracy, with it being so easy to overlook an ally’s human rights abuses
3. How many other decisions have be made based on similar values, like have been exposed here

You can’t have it both ways.  Politically you either have to support this deal for the sake of the President, who you truly believe in – OR – disagree and accept the fact that political ground is going to be lost because of it. 

Because the larger issue here has nothing to do with ports or security, but the idea that a corporation is somehow a higher entity than a government.  In Iraq the conservative vision has been put in place, with a 15% flat tax and an idea that the Iraqi citizens should not look towards government for services and protection, but instead to the coporations that operate within their communities.  That being the case, electricity cannot be counted on consistently for more than 8-12 hours a day in some areas, drinking water is not widely available and the corporations that were supposed to fill in these gaps are acting consistently with what we all understand to be a corporation’s nature…to make money!  Not the fault of these business entities that they were assumed to have the ability or desire to provide what a government should, the very concept of what a government should and should not provide it’s people is the issue here.

So of course a third world dictatorship with a horrible human rights record is seen with the President’s eyes as entirely seperate from the corporation they own and operate.  It’s the ideology that’s been bought into by the right-wing of our country for decades now.  Read More

Cartoons, your version of Islam is 1% different than mine, western culture is making me horny and I don’t like it…whatever your reason for becoming a mass murderer, may I offer a bit of advice?  Get to work on killing the royal families already!  Monarchy had it’s day, and mankind has since evolved. 

Believe it or not, mass amounts of people realized one day that if they all just work together, they can kill off every last member of the royal family and finally get a chance to run their own country.  You’ve got the killing part down, but like Europe in the 100 years war, you’re stuck in the cycle of ’kill that person over there because my king and his holy advisor said it was a good idea’. 

Never realizing that both the king and his holy advisor are stealing food from your table, as they did to your parents and their grandparents before them, it’s obvious that a lack of education is to blame here.  These people in the Middle East and some parts of Africa simply fail to grasp the whole ‘strength in numbers’ concept. 

The same can be said for their apparant inability to realize that ‘spiritual leader’ can and does often equal ‘greedy bullshit artist’.  Here in America we just recently uncovered an entire generation of priests who were having sex with the altar boys and getting away with it.  While that’s horrible, it’s been years since American preachers have been able to convince people to riot.  In fact, the last uprisals inspired by religion here involved non-violent protest. 

With that in mind, Ghandi was busy smacking around the Brittish empire using that exact same method over 50 years ago, and here you folks are still killing your neighbors like it’s the year 1200!  It’s time to step back and realize for once that a common enemy does exist, and regardless of what you’re hearing down at the mosque, it’s not your fellow peasant countryman. 

It’s the rich folk who’ve been keeping you down for centuries.  People of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, UAE, Pakistan, Egypt…it’s time to smarten up and get real about this thing called life.  Your leaders have been playing you for fools for hundreds of years now, and it’s high time reality played a roll in the violence over there.  Your kings don’t care about Allah, they care about money.  It’s never going to change unless you take them out.

America isn’t going to solve your problems, neither is Allah.  We do more to keep these people in power than any other nation in the world.  As far as we’re concerned, if the oil stays cheap, your royal families can keep you down forever.  Torching an oil field, a neighbor’s house or their mosque isn’t the answer.  

Demand education, jobs, security, clean water and uninterupted electricity.  When your leaders fail to provide these things, if you can’t vote them out of power, take them out the old fashioned way!  That’s what we did here in America in 1776, and look where we are now. 

The caption says it all…

Seriously now, fess up…who here watches this channel and why? 

I had to share this

I was contemplating this today for whatever reason…something like this has to be handled just right, or you’re not getting a dime of that insurance money.  Best to involve a boat Read More

Could it be a bill littered with bacon, earmarks like this country has never seen before?  No…Bush has pledged to veto any kind of legislation that would prevent control over the management and security of US ports to the United Arab Emarites.  Makes sense…after all, the House speaker and Senate Majority Leader have said publicly that they oppose the deal.  Better to stand up for who really matters and make these chumps understand that when the King makes a deal, it stays made!

History, facts…it should be obvious to everyone at this point that Bush has no time for either.  Read More

This universe in a bottle painted red, white and blue is comfortable.  Broken limbs, skulls and spirits number less inside than outside, belly full more often than pained empty, ecstatic glee over nothing in particular widespread from sea to shining sea.  Nonetheless, a naked trip to the hospital can sometimes kill this outlook, as sickness is fixed at a cost known to many as the black hole that sucked up their house and everything in it.  Liquidated, these inhabitants of the bottle learn to take the unwavering pride all around in stride, perhaps they also decide one day to finish the job the medical bills started, a civic responsibility for the sake of everyone else in the bottle, those of us who still have futures worthy of hope and a stomach for the kool-aid, to disappear quietly, back into the earth, so the rest of us can get back to whatever it is we’re smiling about at a given moment.  A herd being a herd, doing what herds do, with a touch of bottle colored magic dust to take the edge off.     

American life prompts periodical sadness and comfort depending on whether I’m watching television, playing with my kids, reading the newspaper or hanging the stars and stripes outside the front door in the morning.  Riddled with give and take, the process of becoming numb to whatever type of suffering the cycle serves up can often do more harm than good as it festers, much like the way stress ignored over time can result in a brain tumour for the right person.  So folks like me face a natural challenge, deciding whether to choose optimism and blinders or optimism and a bullhorn.  The herd shuns the sound, calls it noise, taking it to mean I hate the bottle, that I’m someone who’ll always blame the bottle first, when nothing could be further from the truth. 

Am I proud to be an American?  Yes, but some days not as much as others, like when I read about a middle class family, working, paying taxes, obeying the law, thrust into bankruptcy because an uninsured child of theirs was diagnosed with leukaemia.  Read More

I’m sure everyone’s aware of the fact that a company from the United Arab Emirates has been awarded a contract to guard some of our nations most vulnerable ports.  Aside from the fact that 9/11 money was funneled through that country, it does seem odd that we’d outsource homeland security work as critical as port security. 

All kinds of things can be moved into the country in canisters, to include: drugs, weapons, human beings, stolen merchandise and dangerous chemicals.  Checks are done randomly by port security, and like all things in life, a bribe to the right person can ensure a safe delivery of just about anything. 

Does anyone think that the Arabs are above aiding criminal activity?  With that in mind, what exactally takes place on the continent of Africa or in the Middle East that convinces our high-level leaders to award a contract like this to one of those governments?  Who owed who a favor, and for what? 

Here’s what Chertoff, our Homeland Security Chief in President Bush’s Cabinet, had to say about it:

The discussions are classified. I can’t get into the specifics here…As far as my agency is concerned, port security really rests principally with the Coast Guard and Customs and Border Protection.

So hey, it’s out of our hands, and people like you and I need to just trust that everyone involved knows what they’re doing.  To me, his words here sound a lot to me like what was being said after Katrina hit.  I’m not buying it.  Neither should anyone else.  President Bush can nix this deal if he wanted to, but unfortunately for us, the motivations and decisionmaking process of our elected leaders has been ‘none of yer business’ since these people took over.

Auntie Erinn (Heather’s sister) is here for the weekend.  It’s a whole new experience having people over to stay now as opposed to the past five years of apartment living.  Not being regulated to one room where everyone will fit comfortably is pretty sweet. 

Two helicopters crashed in Africa during a training mission…pay attention to the news and you’ll notice that this happens often.  CSPAN had a house debate over death benefits a while back, and a Republican I named in a piece back in the day argued that when this happens, the spouse doesn’t deserve the same as when it happens in a warzone.  I disagree. 

Cheney was on FoxNews talking about how he has the authority to declassify information, which in a free country should result in a press release.  How this administration goes about it though is to tell a friendly reporter, who then prints the information and attributes it to ‘unnamed sources’.  Why is that?  Think about the runup to the Iraq War…

7% of red light district employees in Amsterdam have HIV according to an article I read yesterday.  Something about Amsterdam’s red light district as opposed to others in Europe is it’s spread out all over the place as opposed to congregated in one area.  I’d bet that the bunny ranch near Right Thinker has a 0% HIV rate. 

Catholics in Massachusetts, the organization that condoned widespread sexual abuse of children for decades, has come out saying that same sex couples shouldn’t be allowed to adopt.  It’s obvious to me that the church does more good than harm, but on this particular topic they’ve got zero credibility. 

The only appeal a high school reunion has for me is the fact that they might have free booze.  Since I’d have to drive two hours to get there

The discussion topic of ‘what makes a moderate’ over on Sonicrusk got me to thinking about the various Republicans I admire.  It’s a list that grows larger or shorter depending on what I happen to witness on CSPAN in a given week.  Some I’ll love one week hate the next, but for the most part they’re people I’ve come to respect quite a bit.    They’re the ones who sound the least like Ken Mehlman I suppose.  The ones who don’t approach every piece of legislation like an industry lobbyist, and don’t get up on the House or Senate floor to create a sound byte, but instead to engage in honest political debate.  Using this standard, I’d rather see Trent Lott running the show than Bill Frist, and a military veteran or ‘elder statesman’ will always make more sense to me than hollow shills like Rick Santorum or James Inhofe.   

There is one though that beats out all the rest in my mind, and in fact is someone I would vote for in the 2008 presidential campaign if Republicans were smart enough to nominate him.  Chuck Hagel from Nebraska.  Above and beyond his history and accomplishments, his military service, his honesty, his belief that a person’s religion is their own business…it’s the idea that government can be run well if the right leaders step up and get it done!    ‘Competent Governance’ is the phrase that Hagel believes in 100%, yet a concept that Republicans have been running and governing the opposite for well over a decade now.   Read More

Armstrong said she was watching from a car while Cheney, Whittington and another hunter got out of the vehicle to shoot at a covey of quail.

Whittington shot a bird and went to look for it in the tall grass, while Cheney and the third hunter walked to another spot and discovered a second covey.

Whittington “came up from behind the vice president and the other hunter and didn’t signal them or indicate to them or announce himself,” Armstrong said.

“The vice president didn’t see him,” she continued. “The covey flushed and the vice president picked out a bird and was following it and shot. And by god, Harry was in the line of fire and got peppered pretty good.”

So they drive around until they find some quail to shoot at?  Hunters can do their thing, I’ve got no problem with it for the most part.  One thing I do expect though, is that the hunters aren’t sitting in a heated SUV until they spot something to shoot at. 

Incidentally, when Cheney goes fishing, I hear he uses dynamite instead of a pole. 

Source Article

Not true, but the difference between a blue and a white sky has a way of taking it’s toll on my motivation.  Politics are driving me nuts – this new budget is an abomination.  Tax cuts for the richest American earners are being cut at the same time as college loans.  The Iraq War has put us into an enormous amount of debt, and sacrifice is being demanded of the poor, while the rich are given more. 

Morally bankrupt…this period of American history is led by a man whose voters value ‘family values’, yet for millions of families across the nation, life is tougher now than it was in 1998. 

Everyone’s forgotten about 9/11…wait, Bush mentioned that several times in his State of the Union speech, yet mentioned Katrina only once.  

This movie should win every single Oscar it’s nominated for.  I’m probably never going to see it, but I’m behind it 100%.  High time we provided the cowboy hat wearing public with some sort of motivation to finally feel as stupid as they all look. 

I understand the dynamic where you want to wear what the people singing on TV wear.  Most of us grew out of it, but to some it’s a lifelong neurosis.  Halloween on-demand, don’t even have to push a button or anything, some take to it like a crackhead to a pipe, feeling cool the whole time.

Enough’s enough already.  We need to get these people straightened out.   

I’ve made this connection in the past, and have written about it here many times.  The idea being, bombs won’t accomplish as much as solid case-work and efficient investigations.  In Iraq today, the insurgents receive funding from the country’s oil industry.  Corruption and intimidation are used in pretty much the same way American organized crime sydicates operate. 

Officials compare the insurgents’ ability to infiltrate and steal oil, sabotage pipelines, with the mafia.  This article I’m posting (first in a while) is a fantastic read for anyone interested in Iraq. 

Oil Graft Fuels the Insurgency, Iraq and U.S. Say

Read More

Employers and the uninsured are feeling the squeeze of skyrocketing medical costs, so the answer is what?  Do we look into why the cost of treatment here in America is more expensive than anywhere in Europe?  Perhaps we can allow the government to import cheaper drugs?  What’s the answer?

The President’s answer is to shift responsibility from employers onto individuals, and ultimately onto the government through tax cuts for out of pocket costs.  Will this reduce the cost of a procedure or a pill?  No.  That’s not the idea at play with savings accounts or the new prescription drug plan.  With both, the federal government is creating situations that please insurers, bankers, health providers and drug makers, at the expense of everyone else, to include itself. Read More

Who the hell comes up with this?  Tom Kaine…governor from a Mason-Dixon line state, talking super slow, looking ridiculous on the wide-lens shot of what I figured must have been the ladies parlor of some church nearby.  I hate it when the Democratic Party shits a cheese-ball like this.  John Murtha, his points ring true and he doesn’t look like a ‘Ken doll’.  He speaks in front of a PODIUM!  Imagine that, all ‘official looking’ and dignified. 

This is what I know.  There are Karen Hughes clones all over politics, from the local level on up.  Some take up the cause by chance, being married to a politician or in the right place at the right time.  Some simply have a character flaw that draws them to a job like ‘director of bullshit, drapes and wardrobe’.  Worse than that though, is the clown who allows this to be done to them. 

It’s a simple concept.  Sit the person down, or have them stand in front of a podium.  Speak clearly, and try not to look like you’re hawking jewlery on home shopping at 3AM. 

She’s beautiful Right!  How’s little Susan and her momma doing?

A Daughter is Born