In an opinion piece in today's Washington Post Ruth Marcus poses the question:

"Should Bush administration officials be put on trial for crimes such as authorizing torture?"

The answer to that question is a simple and unequivocal "not yes, but, Hell yes, absolutely, yer darn tootin'."

Bear in mind that I live in a flyover state where many have limited tolerance for carefully parsed, nuanced or constipated prose, preferring instead to "throw it out on the lawn and see if any dogs come up and pee on it."

Ms Marcus says, less pithily and with a bit more ambiguity, that she is:

"just relieved to have this crowd heading out of office and its policies -- on torture, on indefinite detention, on warrantless wiretapping, on overweening executive power -- soon to be inoperative."

I share her delight in the departure of this gang of criminals but I fear that if they do not leave Washington in handcuffs and leg irons aboard a Federal prison bus that the chances of rendering the "policies" stated above "inoperative" are approximately ... zero.

It is, or should be by now, plainly evident to most observers that the current crop of Republicans will run the kind of Rovian sleazoid campaign that has worked so well for them in the past.

They will co opt the message of the Democrats at every opportunity and swift boat anyone who gets in their way. They will, as in the past, use the politics of personal destruction, of sneer and smear, a style that has become a necessity in modern Republican strategy as it so purely reflects the mentality and ethos of a sizable and increasing fraction of their base.

The party that has come to reflect the endemic racism, sexism, religious intolerance, and the rapidly widening schism between economic classes in this country has nowhere else to turn. They have become directors of a noisy, and potentially dangerous lynch mob. A criminal mob acting to serve the interests of an out of control business culture and an irrational priesthood that sees the face of God in its own self righteousness.

Republicans dare not run on their party's record of governance over the last eight years. The record is abysmal and they know it. As much as possible that record will be kept in the dark dank shadows with the sordid history of the modern Republican Party. It will be hidden in that shameful place where they will store Bush, Cheney, their denial of health care to America's children, denial of decent wages to America's workers, our terribly fractured economy, serious unemployment, two misguided and mismanaged wars and the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocents.

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded.
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed.  
Everybody knows the war is over.  
Everybody knows the good guys lost.  
Everybody knows the fight was fixed.  
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.  
That's how it goes.  Everybody knows.
~~Leonard Cohen

But, that particular memory is overshadowed by another, a more recent memory that has led to a shared painful reality, a reality that some say has divided and fatigued an entire nation, a reality most of us witness from the comfort of our homes and communities, a reality that is nightmarish, a shared but awful truth of where we the people find ourselves today.

Did you ever wonder what kind of speech Bush would like to  give to us little old peons? I think I was too kind to him but this is probably a polite version of what he says in private!

Enter G. W. Bush.)

Good Evening

Ms....er...uh...Madame Speaker -- Hi Sweetie, Hasn't it been a fabulous year? Vice Dick... Yo Dead Eye, thanks for keeping that squirmy little Dennis Kucinich and his impeachment resolution out of my face.

(Waves and points to where members of the Supreme Court are sitting)

A special thanks to the fabulous Supreme 5 for putting me in this office. It's been fun guys! Good evening to you.

That was the headline for an Associated Press article by Dave Gram that ran in the Seattle Times December 29.

A picture appears with the accompanying story showing Kurt Daims, a Brattleboro, Vermont activist, who is leading the drive to make Bush and Cheney subject to arrest in the town.

The story reads as follows:

"Montpelier, Vermont - President Bush may soon have a new reason to avoid left-leaning Vermont.  In one town activists want him subject to arrest for war crimes.

With the end of the Bush administration's term of office in sight, members of the administration have been surprisingly successful in lining up employment in the entertainment industry, with two key members accepting roles in the final Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Vice President Dick Cheney has agreed to take on the role of archvillan Lord Valdemort, and Education Secretary Margaret Spellings will play the part of Dolores Umbridge. "They are naturals for the roles, explained a spokesperson for the production company. "They won't require any special makeup, because they already look like the characters they play, and they are a director's dream come true. All they have to do is `act naturally.'"

In other news, author JK Rowling has announced that if she writes another Harry Potter book, Defense Against the Dark Arts will be renamed Defense Against Karl Rove.

(Blatent attempt to copy the magnificent style of Andy Borowitz (borowitzreport.com)

Watching congress do whatever it is that they do is like watching my screen saver, a lot of movement, a bit of color, a little cheap entertainment but ultimately a waste of time.

I would like to have 10 percent of the monetary value of the man hours expended by members of the House, the Senate, and their respective staffs that was piled atop the redolent heap of history's wasted gestures in the recent exercise in futility that was the fight over the Iraq supplemental appropriations bill.

Republicans joined with Democrats in making a spectacle of themselves as ineffectual windbags without a cause, proving publicly, once again, that most of them have no respect for this republic, it's people or the business they are paid so handsomely to conduct.

Knowing that the eminently hardheaded little man who occupies the big house on Pennsylvania Avenue would veto any bill which included deadlines for troop withdrawals, and knowing that the same cynical little man would use the pork content of the bill against them, they made him a gift of a bill that he could veto and look "presidential" while doing it. They gave Bush exactly what he wanted.

1st Armored Division Soldiers conduct a combat patrol in Tal Afar, Iraq in their M2 Bradley fighting vehicle.
Photo by Staff Sgt. Aaron Allmon

Editors note: The photograph above was taken in February 2006 at a time when Bush was reporting Tall Afar as an Iraqi success story.
I think Bush saw the city as an example of the Iraqi version of "no child left behind."

The headline reads: "Gunmen Go On Rampage In Iraqi City" above a story by Joshua Partlow in this morning's Washington Post. It seems that the Malaki/Bush/Cheney/Hallibur ton Democracy left a few legal and procedural fundamentals out of their Police Academy training manual or perhaps they are using a revised Middle Eastern version of the Chicago Police manual which allows for the summary execution of Sunni suspects following violent episodes.

In the Chicago version you're only allowed to beat them up, in Tall Afar though, this is civil wartime, and the Shiite police and their auxiliaries have gone on yet another orgy of reprisal and revenge, killing as many as 70 Sunni suspects, men, women and children, some as young as fifteen, with a bullet to the back of the head in the Mesopotamian democratic tradition so reminiscent of other great democratic leaders like Saddam and Stalin.

Appeasing The Gods Of The Shareholders

There was a time when, as a matter of policy, America went to war only as a response to an attack by an aggressor. In 1962 John Kennedy had every reason to make war with Cuba and Russia when Kruschev talked Fidel into parking several dozen  Soviet nuclear missiles ten minutes from Washington and 90 miles from spring break.

Most of the Joint Chiefs, especially Curtis Lemay,(General Bat Guano?) along with a sizable faction of Kennedy's closest advisers urged the President to invade. Lemay wanted to send his B52s, (presumably not to drop leaflets) while others preferred a massive land invasion, perhaps to restore the Cosa Nostra to control of Cuban Casinos, the way God intended.

There is an apocryphal story told that Marine Commandant David Shoup (under whom I served at the time) presented the assemblage of top level civilian and military advisers with an easel containing a map of Cuba, over which he had placed an acetate overlay of a tiny Pacific atoll named Tarawa. Tarawa, which the Marines had invaded early in WW2 was shown graphically as a small speck against the background of Castro's Caribbean worker's paradise.

He then proceeded to inform the gathering that the insignificant speck had not been at all pacific, having cost the lives of over 1000 Marines and the wounding of 2200 others, creating a great storm of protest at home over what was seen as a needless squandering of lives to gain a tiny piece of real estate. Tarawa, he is reported to have explained, was defended by 4500 Japanese while Castro would field 150,000, and perhaps as many more.

The zeal for a land invasion was somewhat diminished by General Shoup's presentation. Cooler heads prevailed, the young president proceeded to threaten Kruschev with massive nuclear retaliation, Niki packed up his nukes and went home, diplomacy or a good bluff, worked, the republic was saved, 250,000 young troops did not have to wade ashore and spill their guts on Fidel's beautiful but hostile beaches and I pull shore leave in San Juan and discovered how to drink Cuba Libras past the point of absurdity.

Those were still the good old days in the world of war making, when Presidents, Congress, large segments of the press and a sizable portion of the body politic banded together with the men and women who were to be slaughtered, made whatever sacrifices necessary to get through the horrible, bloody task and achieve victory.

Businesses as well, were asked to make sacrifices, to retool from the making the products of peacetime, the creation of tractors or Packards or hula hoops to building tanks, rifles and ships, and asked to bid competitively for the right to participate in the glorious business of waging war.

It worked well, victories were had, foes were vanquished, medals were awarded to the mothers of the dead, the prosthetics business flourished and everyone was happy.

Then came Vietnam.

Twice a week I have a physical therapy session at the Dayton VA Hospital. I had a heart attack last March 15, (beware the ides?) in October they referred me to cardio pulmonary therapy to build me up for whatever years may lie ahead. They have done an excellent job and I am pleased with my future prospects.

I have been treated at the Dayton VA several times over the years, have volunteered there performing Veteran's memorial services as part of an honor guard, and three years ago said good bye to my father who died in the VA hospice at the age of 80.

My experiences with VA medical care have been almost entirely positive. The medical staff has been competent caring and willing to communicate with me. My physical therapist (Kinesiologist) whom I refer to as Ms Torquemada has enabled me to return to a relatively normal life and I love her for it. The hospice ward is amazing, they treated my Dad with the dignity and respect he deserved in his final days on this planet and were equally wonderful with my family. The people in the ER and Cardiac Intensive Care wards saved my life which fact may leave me with some bias on the issue at hand.

I have personally witnessed the operations of this facility during the current federal administration as well as during the Clinton years and I have seen a noticeable decline in the state of the physical plant and the attitudes of some employees during the Cheney/Bush era.

What once was a well funded and squeaky clean facility has deteriorated noticeably and budget cutting has caused serious staffing problems. I believe that this decline is due to the penny pinching policies of the knuckle heads who are passing themselves off as our government.

CLICK TO ENLARGE




"The Camp X-Ray Tango"




[DICK]

Cock.

[SCOOTER]

Fitz.

[DENNY]

Swish.

[GEORGIE]

Uh uh.

[DONNY]

Gitmo.

[TOMMY]

Dipshits!

[ANCHORMAN]

And now the six merry treasonists of the Guantanamo Bay Facility in their rendition of "The Camp X-Ray Tango"...

In 1972 the United States Congress ratified the http://www.cdi.org/... 1972 Biological Weapons Treaty. To make the world a safer place, here we are three decades later, and we are spending money as a nation hand over fist to break this treaty, in the words of our President "trust me".  

I might trust him that it is for our nations own good, except the history of the two men next to him, scares the hell out of me, given their involvement in "human experiments" with chemical weapons and drugs and Rumsfled's prior concurrence in Nixon's cabinet prior to 1972 in the biological human tests at Fort Detrick, Maryland. They have shown they have no regard for the "volunteers' lives. They refuse to do complete health studies of the Cold War veterans  today and still ignore the dead and disabled veterans and widows from Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick.  http://www.dailykos.com/...

I am a TEST VET.

We took an oath of secrecy.  Honorable men keep their oaths.  But there is no honor in protecting the predators who used us and then abandoned us.  It is time for the TEST VETS to speak out.

On August 25th, I will be 51 years old.  I have had a stroke, 7 heart attacks, a failed triple bypass, heart ejection fraction of 25%, COPD, skin abnormalities, foot fungus and rashes.  This all started in 1992 when I was 36.  I am in contact with 11 other "test vets" and we all have heart problems and multiple health issues. We are all ignored by the VA

Why the hell won't anyone ask Cheney and Rumsfeld about their Chemical Weapons and drug experiments in 1974 and 1975?   While they were in the Ford Administration, Cheney and Rumsfeld, violated the Nuremberg Codes of 1947 by using enlisted men as human test subjects for chemical warfare.   From 1952 thru 1975, they used 7120 enlisted men in these experiments.  

The health study contacted the participants in 2000 and found that 75% of them were either dead or disabled.

"Oil Company Expert" Demonstrates Use Of
"State Of The Art High Tech Equipment"
To Clean Up Oil Spill

The Alaskan Pipeline, or one of BP's feeder lines connecting to it is suddenly so rusty that it has to be shut down indefinitely, causing an instant 8% drop in US production capacity.

This fact translates into an instant and enormous revenue loss for Alaska, and:

The event will be followed by an instant double jump in gas prices and an instant double secret jump in oil company revenues.

Now, I'm not an oil expert, (Beer is my area,) I have never been fond of the flavor of "Crude Light", although I once drank some Old Milwaukee and found it somewhat reminiscent of 10w40 when served stale, at room temperature, in a dirty glass. But I digress.

Please, join me below the fold.