John McCain continues his slide to ethical irrelevance

I shudder to think this was why he spent five years in a Vietnamese POW camp – so he could come home and some thirty-plus years later sell out everything he used to stand for in order to gain the favor of a powerful voting bloc in his party, a bloc for which he has expressed nothing but disdain, if not open contempt, for the past few years.

According to the latest story to hit the wires, he took time yesterday to not only reiterate his long-held stand on a woman’s lack of a right to choose (in an important early Southern primary state), he even managed to squeeze in a speech to a kids’ Abstinence-Only program.

“Abstinence-Only?” That’s a whole different thing than saying “I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned,” as he did in his earlier appearance. That’s been red meat for the base for decades. But rolling over on Abstinence-Only ‘education’ is just despicable. Dastardly. Fucking stupid and yes, I’ll say it, a cowardly, craven move on Sen. McCain’s part.

I’ve always disagreed with most of McCain’s political opinions – that’s just the nature of a right-wing outlook versus a left-wing one – but I always respected the man. So the fact that I disagree with his latest positions is no great surprise and not why I’m bothering to vent.

What’s so disheartening is watching a formerly stalwart fellow, a good man, crumble from the inside. What’s gonna happen when he’s addressing NAMBLA in New Hampshire? How tightly is he going to have to hang onto his ankles to endorse their agenda? Where will he draw the line? Is there any formerly deeply-held belief he won’t auction off to win the approval of the GOP primary voters he not-so-secretly despises?

I’m afraid we’re going to find out. It’s gonna be a long time till the nomination. A looooong time. McCain should remember the advice given by Jesus in Mark 8:36, a chapter and verse the demographic he’s courting ought to be well familiar with, “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”

Brit’s New ’Do

I’m sure I won’t be the first one to make the joke about Brit’s drapes matching her carpet now, but I hope I’m in the early running.

Why We Fight…

According to a report on cnn.com:

U.S. to allow 7,000 Iraqi refugees

This story kicks ass in so many ways. If Lou Dobbs (not to mention a resurgent KKK) is pissed that the Mexicans are sneaking in to steal our cotton-picking jobs (literally), this should give him a stroke. Thousands of indigent brown people who don’t speak our language or “share our values” who will either be on the dole or doing the jobs that Mexicans don’t want to do, and oh yeah, may well be harboring the kind of terrorists we’re supposed to be fighting over there so they don’t come over here!

You’ve got to give the policy-makers credit for this: They keep finding creative ways to further invalidate the premises of their own stupid war. This one’s a doozy.

Remember when the USA opened its doors to Cuban refugees and that crafty old fucker Castro threw open his prisons and loaded up the boats with Cuba’s convict class? Well, this new breed of insurgent/terrorist could teach Castro a thing or two. “Send us your poor, your tired, your huddled jihadists yearning to blow themselves up...”

Yes, this short piece contains more crazy per capita than the Arkham Asylum psych ward at midnight during an unscheduled lunar eclipse.

[SPOILER ALERT: Conspiracy Theory ahead]
Unless… unless you think maybe people in or around the Bush administration are getting desperate for a different ‘story’ and better poll numbers, and they’re guessing that a new act of domestic terrorism may just be what it takes to reunite the country behind our stalwart Whatever-he’s-calling-himself-this-week-in-Chief before he rides off into the sunset in 23 more long, long months (really – longer than this sentence) to work the rubber chicken circuit.

By the time anyone figures out any possible connection between the refugees his administration just agreed to admit to “The Homeland” and the act of domestic terrorism that Bush surfs out his second term on, he really will be long gone. In a blaze of glory that will piss me off more than the actual attack.*

And whoever has replaced him will be as crazy as he is for even wanting the job.

I’m not optimistic.


\/vv\/


* Unless I myself happen to perish in said attack. In which case, please disregard.

A(nother) Time To Worry, Yet

So I just turned on one of the news nets, expecting to bask in some empty-headed blowback about Barack Obama’s having just made it official. I’m in the middle of my work-week; I can use a little feel-good newsiness right about now.

Instead, the headline was another one in a slowly swelling chorus of ones along the lines of “Is Iran Supplying Iraqi Insurgents!” or some such nonsense. It doesn’t just have a familiar ring to it, it has a familiar mushroom cloud to it. Validating what all the left-wing “crazies” have been predicting for years, the talking points coming from the White House increasingly are of alleged imminent dangers from Iran. The drumbeat is building once again, ominously, familiarly. It really is like watching a giant wave grow off in the far distance, in slow motion, knowing there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

I would have never given them credit for having the stones to move on to Iran after Iraq had gone so badly for them. It’s like they don’t care. Like it’s a mathematical calculation to them, upon the outcome of which rides their pride (and the inevitable private gentleman's wager or two), but precious little else.

Again, just like the build-up to Iraq, the administration is saying one true thing, and conflating it into a completely different, unrelated thing for sale to the rubes. Yes, Saddam was a bad guy but the USA is not better off with him gone; yes, Iran is almost certainly funneling resources to the insurgency in Iraq, but so is every other fundamentalist government and goat-herder in the region – why are we singling out Iran, unless they’re already on our to-do list, just like Iraq was.

I know that it’s the government’s job to look at the big picture, and the Bush administration is nothing if not imaginative about some things (mission accomplished, few dead-enders, death throes of the insurgeny); the problem is they’re deliberately deaf to any evidence that is contradictory to or exculpatory of their predetermined outcome.

When you’re using that method to make war decisions, that’s not just unscientific. That’s criminal.

[next morning]

Some idiot (GOP bigwig Johnny Boehner on “Meet The Press”) just compared W to Lincoln, and then in the same breath, FDR. It was a breathtaking example of partisan rat-going-down-with-the-shippery. According to press reports, lately W has been fancying himself more of a Truman – wildly unpopular at the time he left office, but eventually (depending upon whom you ask) exonerated by history.

Plus, Truman had balls, just like W imagines he does. He did nuke the Japs. Twice. That’s probably the part that captures Bush’s imagination the most.

Pretty, pretty mushroom clouds in the sky. He’s been seeing them in his head since 2001.

Too many Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq now. Wouldn’t be prudent.

…

Hhhhmmmmm. Not very many Americans in Tehran…

Sinead O'Connor: Still The Bravest Woman in Pop Music

This is a live version of a new song, available here, here and here, called “If You Had A Vineyard.”

Sinead is still a working musician, and is doing some of the best, boldest work of her career right now. Her last CD, “Throw Down Your Arms” was terrific and the next one seems to hold a great deal of promise if the two previews available online are any indication.

Wake up, People! Grammies my ass.

You May Be Misreading Your Holy Texts If…

…your religious celebrations look anything like this one, which took place last week in Iraq:

“Lord, if I’m missing your point, just give me a sign! Anything! A bluebird outside my window, a rainbow on a sunny day, blood streaming down my shaved head from self-inflicted knife wounds…!”

A Modest Proposal: An A-Bomb For Iraq

I have a question: Why in the name of all that is sweet-smelling do people continue to congregate in Iraq?

Every single fucking day I wake up to news of the latest massacre from W’s Excellent Middle-Eastern Adventure, and one thing is always the same – the killers blow themselves up in places where there are throngs of eager victims gathered.

Since nobody but nobody – not W, not his Generals, not John McCain nor Barack Obama nor all the king’s horses and all the king’s men – can figure out how to stop the violence, doesn’t it make sense for the citizens of Iraq to do the one thing they can do to minimize their exposure to said violence, and avoid crowds?

I’m not even being glib. I’m totally serious. There have to be off-hours in which to get the family shopping done. Praying can be done from home... How many mass gatherings have to be suicide-bombed before a light goes off and Iraqis stop clumping themselves together into attractive mass targets for the lunatics living among them?

Maybe our military should turn their attention from achieving an impossible “victory” in Iraq and launch a putting-a-man-on-the-moon-level effort to craft an Agoraphobia Bomb that we can drop on the whole damned country, and rob the insurgents and terrorists of the victims they need to achieve their headlines?

Your country is a shithole anyhow, folks. It was that way when we got there, and we’ve only made things immeasurably worse since then. You’ve got nothing to lose by staying home but getting blown to bits.