Saturday, January 17, 2009

Juan Cole's Farewell to W

Juan Cole does an amazing job encapsulating most of what should be remembered in this very well stated send-off to George W. Bush. One of the more important passages is directed at the Bush apologists who thinks W. can now get a pass on Iraq:

There are weasels among the pundits who say that
Bush has been vindicated, insofar as Iraq has regained better security
than it had in 2006. This is like saying that the Norwegian brown rat
was vindicated when the Black Death ran its course, having killed a
third of Europe before it subsided.

Bush has not redeemed the
Vietnam War but rather made us live through something very like it all
over again, the only difference being that this time we are likely to
have the sense to get out before we are thrown out.

But what we must always remember about the humiliating embarrassment that was the presidency of the spoiled, rich, frat-boy George W. Bush, is that he ran this country like he ran everything else he helmed, into the ground.

Bush never escaped the habits of his
ne'er-do-well undergraduate days at Yale. In the end, he replaced being
drunk on beer with being drunk on power. He replaced wooing the women
with wooing the corporations. He replaced frat boy hijinks with ruinous
wars that wrought a devastation across the rugged expanse of West Asia
unlike anything seen since the pagan Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258.

Our nation renews itself, and makes small revolutions with its political
campaigns. We have the opportunity now, to choose truth over
propaganda, responsibility over recklessness, compassion over
brutality, altruism over self-interest, and ability over incompetence.
We have the opportunity to repudiate the past 8 years, and to transcend
them once and for all, to redeem ourselves as a nation. The persons we
choose to serve us as first among equals in our republic can bring us
shame or honor as a nation. But it is our choices as individuals that
make us shameful or honorable in ourselves. We must never again allow a
crew of crooked bullies to make us underlings, lest we be laid to rest
in dishonorable graves.


I hope W. fades away faster than Nixon did. The only news I ever want to hear of that sorry bastard is that he's been convicted of war crimes, and will meet justice accordingly.

We could all be so lucky.

(thanks Shan!)

Friday, January 16, 2009

Inauguration Speech Generator

Animal Farm Friday - It's Not the End of the World

Okay, so not really animals, but the band is Super Furry Animals, and the song is It's Not the End of the World. I'm indifferent to the song, but the video is really cool, and seems perfectly relevant in light of Gaza, and Dick and Bush's much anticipated and long awaited departure.



Here's a bonus Super Furry Animals video which is actually just as appropriate, Presidential Suite (reminds me of W flying over NOLA in AF1 after Katrina. Georgie's safe and content inside his cocoon, all happy, carefree and indifferent to the waste and destruction he's left behind.):

Adieu!



(h/t to htk!)

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Obama's sit-down with conservatives

From Kossack Filegirl:

Basically its a room full of people whose work over the past year and a half or so was dedicated to defeating Obama. And now they have to sit down at a table with the living, breathing proof of their total defeat.

Heh. I feel better already.

What just happened?

I'll need a few drinks and some happy pills before I read this Bush timeline.

War Crimes? What War Crimes?

Glenn Greenwald continues to make an eloquent case for all the reasons the Bush Administration won't be tried for war crimes, at least not by anyone in the US. For the simple reason that Democratic members of Congress like Pelosi and Rockefeller, and the Beltway Establishment "journalists" were aware of and complicit in allowing war crimes to be committed, they will do nothing to bring any Bush administration officials to justice. Because, in order to do so, they would expose their culpability int he commission of war crimes, and could even be found just as guilty.

Of course, as the economy continues to crumble, and our political leaders are ignoring the will of the people, the government better start worrying about a popular uprising. If that happens, a lot of those folks could find themselves in a whole lot of trouble.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Humility

http://russellsteapot.com/images/comics/2007/Image065.jpg

Sen. Vitter (R-Bordello)

Hahaha! Nice one, Josh!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

An Appalachian tale

Monday, January 12, 2009

Holy Bile: the damage that atheism has caused and is causing

This from a sitting US congressman:

I was very moved by the song that talked about the damage that atheism has caused and is causing. It was very moving…. The songs carry the sense that evil will not prevail, and so the message is that the truth ultimately prevails…. These times will pass because eternal truth will survive atheism and the difficulties of the 20th Century.
-Lincoln Diaz-Balart, R-FL CD21

Can you imagine what the reaction would be if an atheist congressperson were to intone about the damage religious fervor has done to this country?

Of course, atheist politicians are as real as Clean Coal. But it does astound me when any religious person makes the claim that atheism is damaging and destructive, especially in light of the Christian and Jewish wars against Islam currently taking place in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in Gaza. Don't even pretend for a moment that these are wars on terror. There would be no Islamic terrorists if it were not for Christians and Jews stealing Arab land and resources.

That's hot!

Bush's Failures

The full list. Go ahead and rank them while you're there.

Sunday, January 11, 2009

On torture and cowardice

Apart from the douchebag wanna-be tough guys - like Alan Dershowitz - who get erections from watching Jack Bauer torture bad guys on 24, and soil themselves from reading true accounts of Americans torturing detainees, most of us with the capacity for thinking with our brains and not our testicles know that torture is more likely to produce false information more akin to what the interrogators want to hear, rather than anything resembling the truth.

This article from the December issue of Vanity Fair makes it pretty clear.

But setting aside just for the moment that it doesn't work, the real problem with torture is simple: It is sick, and it is wrong. Torture is the manifestation of everything that is bad about humans. It is sad to see what little it takes to get humans to regress to their most base and vile state, shrug off any morals they may have once had, all because of fear.

Torturers, and those who support it, are the weakest of cowards.