December 2006: Hillbillies And Other People Of The Year

hillbillybento.com

Given responsibility to arrange catering for the year-end faculty bash, Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant chose someone from her neck of the boondocks.

Party time approaches, with no sign of food delivery.

Jesus' BAA makes a frantic call to the caterer...

Who done wrote the wrong day on his calendar.

Clever Sister, who long worked in the food biz, raises virtual eyebrows—

OMG!!!!! That's something!
Did they run out to the 7-11 to get some vittles?

The lunch is moved to the next day, when the guy promises there will be much wonderous comping.

"Bologna & velveeta? Stuck on frilly toothpicks?" asks CS.

Time has met the Person of The Year, and it is Us.

watertiger agrees that she is the Average American—

1. I'm adamantly against the war.
2. I think George Bush is a criminal failure who should be impeached.
3. I hold down at least 2 (well, 3, if you count the blogging) jobs to keep ahead of the cost of living.

And so on.

whitehouse.org captures the quality of year-end reporting. The bloodthirstiness and triumphalism around Saddam Hussein's execution, here and here.

And of the tears shed over another death—Remembering Gerry Ford: President Bush Mourns Loss of Innovative Bestower of Felony-Erasing Pardons.

In other predictable events, the Frat Boy-In-Chief sneers at a persistent reporter: "It's bad in Iraq. That help?"

And baits Senator-elect Jim Webb about his son serving in Iraq. This, after being asked to be especially sensitive, because of the son's recent, narrow escape from death.

Not a circumstance Bush could conceivably have had anything to do with.

December 2005 (I): War On Brains

Soon after my arrival in this office, Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant forwards me a pantyhose coupon—"I hope you can use this! I send them to all my friends!"

She has "friends"? When the other workplace fundies try avoiding her, because she creeps out even them?

Of course, it may only have been meant to suggest that pantyhose are something I should be wearing...

Jesus' BAA does take sartorial improvement as one of her Rapture™ preparation duties.

Once, as I'm looking through the Chair's Office drive for a file, I come upon a Word doc of hers: "How to choose the right purse for your personality," copied from a cheesy site by one "Crystal Coons." I can't find the document or that site (if it still exists)—too bad I didn't save Jesus' BAA's extracurricular work at the time.

In over a year of having to brace myself to go to this environment every week day, listening to "Morning Sedition" until 8:00 was a sanity preserver. Something no longer there, since Air America yanked the show this month.

Considering how much we, the peons, have our lives ruled by executive decisions over which we have no say, this is a small thing. Yet it reaches some classic level of executive stupidity, connected as it is to the media climate we live in.

After the cancellation was announced last month, the network was deluged with support for the hosts and pleas to continue the show. But the program was deemed "not funny" by an audience of one: the CEO who wanted the show axed. Air America may not have much of a reach, but its management proves,unsurprisingly, that those who control media are those who shouldn't.

It's true that the show often made me late getting into the shower. And—a geezer on a rush hour bus full of sullen, half-asleep undergrads—I often had stretches of laughing uncontrollably.

There are audio archives here, thanks to a fan. This has selections for entire shows and individual segments, including the Jim Earl bits that had me hopelessly cracked up on the bus. "Rapture Watch" and "The War on Brains"—what could have been more appropriate, just before my daily in-person encounter with such things.

Jesus' BAA has been out since having shoulder surgery at the beginning of the month. This was supposed to have happened next March, but the hospital suddenly re-scheduled a few weeks ago.

Cruella was livid that Jesus' BAA "just ups and leaves when she feels like it!" She has spent the whole month bitching about Jesus' BAA, to everyone in earshot.

That even includes me—when I have to ask Cruella about something, I get a tirade on the lines of, "it's here, though it should have been done this way, but Jesus' BAA is incapable of that."

There already was a temp working on this floor; she has since been planted at the empty desk in our office, where she can listen daily as Cruella and Ghengis attack the missing one.

Whenever Jesus' BAA is not around, Red State Girl can be counted on to step in and keep up the annoyance level. She's another character I might feel a little sympathy for, if she weren't so obnoxious about trying to bully the other women into her schemes as would-be social director. And she always comes across like she's taking names of the gals who don't fall in line.

RSG is forever bringing in fund-raising projects on behalf of nieces and nephews, and I often hear her talk about how much time she spends with them. Judging from how officious she is with the female employees, I assume that she hijacks the kids to have people small enough to dominate. And I also assume that she uses them as a public shield, to look as if she were really a married lady with kids.

RSG's current project: selling plastic baggies of "Reindeer Food"—

Make a wish and close your eyes tight,
Then sprinkle on your lawn at night.
As Santa's reindeer fly and roam
This food will guide them to your home.
For your gift to the reindeer and Rudolph
Your wish may be real,
Your dreams may come true.

A pome so bad, I was sure she wrote it herself. Until I found it all over the Web—along with the recipe for oats mixed with glitter. Schools all over the Murkan Heartland must be making the kids raise funds with this. So there must also be mass wildlife poisonings from glitter ingestion.

I have no idea what blend of horror at the thought of idleness plus need for martyrdom motivates her. But on the 23rd Jesus' BAA drags herself from her sickbed, stopping by to distribute "gifts"—bags of homemade cookies and candies.

I didn't see her (or what kind of condition she was in)—just came back from lunch to find the bag left on my chair. Sugar cookies, three kinds of fudge, chocolate-coated peanuts, and peanut butter balls. I unloaded nearly all of it in the lunch room, but kept some of the peanut things, thinking my choc-aholic brother-in-law might like them.

He wasn't home when I got there, but Clever Sister tried a chocolate. And immediately spat it out, with an outraged—"Is she trying to poison you?!" The peanuts tasted rotten, the coating was dollar store quality fake flavor... of course I should have known better than to think anything from Jesus' BAA could be edible.

This is Jesus' BAA in a [rancid] nutshell: she believes she's doing a wonderful good deed and goes to so much work over the gastronomic equivalent of her "camp crafts."

Jesus' BAA will return to work early in the new year. When she will sit happily at her keyboard, and say, "It's amazing how much your shoulder hurts after surgery!...eh HEH eh HEH eh HEH..."

December 2004 (I): Ukraine, Ohio

Grand Lake Theater

Late last month:

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell on [November 24] said the United States does not accept the results of Ukraine's presidential elections as legitimate, citing "credible reports of fraud and abuse."

Powell has said plenty of other things with a straight face throughout his career.

But the irony is not lost on Columbus-based The Free Press, as it continues ongoing election coverage, including numerous county by county reports of November 2 vote-rigging, undercounting, and withholding of voting machines.

Citizens groups file legal action to force a recount—which will be conducted largely in precincts picked by a key figure in the fraud, Ohio Secretary of State and Bush campaign co-chair, J. Kenneth Blackwell. As The Free Press describes in its final report of the month, Ohio's official non-recount ends amidst new evidence of fraud, theft and judicial contempt mirrored in New Mexico.

Clever Sister forwards this, from the Ukraine—

A third exit poll, by Frank Luntz, a pollster for the U.S. Republican Party, and Douglas Schoen, of the Washington based market research company Penn, Schoen & Berland, showed Yushchenko winning with 56 to Yanukovych's 41 percent, Schoen said. The margin of error was 2 percentage points.

"Crap - that was Kerry's problem," adds CS, but "Yuschenko's American wife worked for Reagan & Bush Daddy."

It happens that the Columbus area is the site of an actual prosecution of charges connected to the Iraq war. The nature of the prosecution—

At a time when some U.S. troops in Iraq are complaining they have to scrounge for equipment, six Ohio based reservists were court martialed for taking Army vehicles abandoned in Kuwait by other units so they could carry out their own unit's mission to Iraq.

The six receive six-month sentences for theft, destruction of Army property and conspiracy to cover up the crimes.

The sentence comes just a few days after Rumsfeld's encounter with some other guardsmen. Also reported by whitehouse.org: MEDIA ALERT: CORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF SECRETARY RUMSFELD'S FRIENDLY, NON-CONTENTIOUS BULL SESSION WITH JOYOUS, 100% GUNG-HO NATIONAL GUARDSMEN IN KUWAIT.

After a few weeks at boot camp, the son of Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant has left the marines. It was a medical discharge: Sonny, Jr. injured himself wearing a pack.

I've spoken to Sonny, Jr. when he's phoned Jesus' BAA. As I've spoken to Sonny, Sr., and the daughter: they're all mouth-breathers.

It comes as no surprise that Sonny, Jr. couldn't march and carry a pack at the same time—really not a cheap joke, just a fact. And I'm happy for Jesus' BAA, that her son will not be In Harm's Way. But I also know how puffed up she will be that Sonny, Jr. "served in the Marines." While he's safe, and other people's sons die for her Leader.

November 2006: Psychopaths? We Got 'Em!

A faculty wit signs a report, then returns it to me—addressed to the Department's "Oval Office."

Maybe he wanted to suggest my address is exalted—not that our Department administrators are psychopaths.

My read is certainly the latter.

Speaking of the type... the loathsome Joe Lieberman keeps his Senate sinecure. Having been unable to win a primary and unwilling to abide by the results, he's re-elected—by Republicans.

But, they always have been responsible for his career. Some background from Howie Klein—

In 1988 he challenged progressive Republican incumbent U.S. Senator Lowell Weicker-- attacking from the right-- and beat him. Lieberman ran a brutal and viciously negative campaign, mocking Weicker personally and even red-baiting him for being soft on Castro (William Buckley formed a PAC to raise money for Lieberman and later Jack Kemp called him "one of us.")

OpEdNews has more on Lieberman's history of Buckley/National Review backing here.

Now Lieberman has a new lease on doing Republican work—still Chairman of the Homeland Security committee, and ready to block a Katrina investigation that he claimed to want, pre-election.

As well as being in place to do as much other sabotage of the public good as he can. Kelly Caldwell—

Where does he find the time?

Not only has Sen. Joe Lieberman been working overtime to smother health reform, he's parked himself squarely in the path of another badly-needed, long-awaited change.

Namely: preventing restoration of FEMA to the previous status it had as an autonomous agency, before it was subsumed and subverted by DHS.

In other news of psychopaths: Bush waits until the day after the election to announce Rumsfeld's resignation—which Rummy submitted just before the vote.

Think Progress updates the post above

—The word "Iraq" doesn't appear in former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation letter. Neither does the word "war."

And Clever Sister forwards this amusing post-midterm piece from the Washington Post: Republicans' Angry Factions Point Fingers At Each Other. Michael Grunwald writes that—

After minutes upon minutes of soul-searching, Republicans are now in recrimination mode. And the GOP's various factions all agree: This wouldn't have happened if the party had listened to us.

And in Grunwald's description, finger-pointers attribute the party's losses to its rejection of "popular causes such as the minimum wage, embryonic stem cell research and lobbying reforms while ignoring health-care issues that did not involve Terri Schiavo." [!]

Along with communiqués addressed to the Oval Office, the month at work opens with a mysterious absence by Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant. As the hours go by without my hearing a word of explanation, I wonder if she has finally been Raptured™ away.

"Medical emergency?" suggests Clever sister.

Perhaps... Could there have been another starfish attack?

The mystery is solved late in the morning, when Dr. G. Zuss asks me to do something. Taking being spoken to as an opening for me to speak, I ask if Jesus' BAA will be in today. She will, is the answer. But sometime later—because, "the dog is delivering."

CS: "Family sick leave, then?"

Jesus' BAA is out of my life for the entire week of Thanksgiving. In the process of straightening out a mess she created, I cc her on an e-mail. Then get her so very professional out-of-office message: the dates she will be away; who to contact for assistance; and—

Have a very blessed Thanksgiving!

November 2005: Lies, Spies, Pies

With no major elections to propagandize this year, Bill O'Reilly has been busy with his "War on Christmas" publicity grabbing shtick.

Yes, the threat is all around—as in the incessant Christmas fundraising at the public institution where I work.

But anything to distract the masses is a win for Republicans.

On another, highly orchestrated, win: Rolling Stone publishes James Bamford's, The Man Who Sold the War. Bamford documents the activities of—and publicly-funded fortune taken in by—"Bush's general in the propaganda war," John Rendon.

After the CIA, in an "extraordinary transfer of secret authority," hired the Rendon Group in 1991—

Rendon assembled a group of anti-Saddam militants, personally gave them their name -- the Iraqi National Congress [INC] -- and served as their media guru and "senior adviser" as they set out to engineer an uprising against Saddam. It was as if President John F. Kennedy had outsourced the Bay of Pigs operation to the advertising and public-relations firm of J. Walter Thompson.

Rendon helped to install as head of the INC Ahmad Chalabi— whose "primary focus was to drag us into a war," former Baghdad CIA chief Whitley Bruner tells Bamford. On Chalabi's behalf—

Rendon made considerable headway with the INC, but following the group's failed coup attempt against Saddam in 1996, the CIA lost confidence in Chalabi and cut off his monthly paycheck. But Chalabi and Rendon simply switched sides, moving over to the Pentagon, and the money continued to flow.

Under Chalabi's direction in 2001—and with the new political opportunities after September 11 of that year—came Adnan al-Hadieri's fake testimony to being a civil engineer who had helped bury tons of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons still hidden in Iraq. The phony information then needing to be disseminated, Paul Moran, a freelancer in Bahrain with access to Australian Broadcasting Corporation work—as well as being an employee of Rendon's—was in place to broadcast the story.

Next—

The INC's choice for the worldwide print exclusive was equally easy: Chalabi contacted Judith Miller of The New York Times. Miller, who was close to I. Lewis Libby and other neoconservatives in the Bush administration, had been a trusted outlet for the INC's anti-Saddam propaganda for years. Not long after the CIA polygraph expert slipped the straps and electrodes off al-Haideri and declared him a liar, Miller flew to Bangkok to interview him under the watchful supervision of his INC handlers...despite her vaunted intelligence sources, she claimed not to know about the results of al-Haideri's lie-detector test. Instead, she reported that unnamed "government experts" called his information "reliable and significant" -- thus adding a veneer of truth to the lies.

Her front-page story, which hit the stands on December 20th, 2001, was exactly the kind of exposure Rendon had been hired to provide. AN IRAQI DEFECTOR TELLS OF WORK ON AT LEAST 20 HIDDEN WEAPONS SITES, declared the headline...

For months, hawks inside and outside the administration had been pressing for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq. Now, thanks to Miller's story, they could point to "proof" of Saddam's "nuclear threat." The story, reinforced by Moran's on-camera interview with al-Haideri on the giant Australian Broadcasting Corp., was soon being trumpeted by the White House and repeated by newspapers and television networks around the world. It was the first in a long line of hyped and fraudulent stories that would eventually propel the U.S. into a war with Iraq -- the first war based almost entirely on a covert propaganda campaign targeting the media.[my bold]

Bamford describes more levels of the post-9/11 war propaganda effort—

Still another newly formed propaganda operation in which Rendon played a major part was the Office of Global Communications, which operated out of the White House and was charged with spreading the administration's message on the War in Iraq...The office also worked closely with the White House Iraq Group, whose high-level members, including recently indicted Cheney chief of staff Lewis Libby, were responsible for selling the war to the American public.

In a suicide bombing on day three of the invasion, Paul Moran—

freelance journalist and Rendon employee [became] the first member of the media to be killed in the war – a war he had covertly helped to start.

...

Although Moran was gone, the falsified story about weapons of mass destruction that he...had broadcast around the world lived on. Seven months earlier, as President Bush was about to argue his case for war before the U.N., the White House had given prominent billing to al-Haideri's fabricated charges. In a report ironically titled "Iraq: Denial and Deception," the administration referred to al-Haideri by name and detailed his allegations -- even though the CIA had already determined them to be lies. The report was placed on the White House Web site on September 12th, 2002, and remains there today. One version of the report even credits Miller's article for the information.

Which brings us to the little matter of the indictment of I. Lewis Libby, on one count of obstruction of justice, and two each of perjury and making false statements.

At work, the topic is raised by one of the occasional visitors who braves trying to inject a little reality into the room. Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant drops her normal mask of feverishly happy righteousness, to say—with quite the cold little sneer—"How can there be an indictment? There was no crime! Everyone knew she wasn't undercover!"

"She" being Valerie Plame, and Jesus' BAA sure has received her instructions on this subject.

Talking points of the delusional aside, it's easy to see that, if Cheney's immediate objective was to discredit and silence Plame's husband, it was an unexpected win for the warmongers to simultaneously sabotage years of undercover work in weapons of mass destruction proliferation.

There is no shortage of bizarre twists to be found in observing the criminal outfit that runs this country. This reminds me of how, after Plame's cover was blown two years ago, some outraged former CIA people appeared on Nightline.

Clever Sister and I watched the program together. And were amazed to realize: the CIA are the good guys in this!

Watching interviewees with their identities concealed, we were struck by hearing a woman whose peculiar vocal quality was apparent even through electronic distortion.

It took no more than a second or two for CS to catch on: "It's Julia Child, former spy!"

A couple days later, we happen be browsing in a remainder bookstore, when CS spots the book at top. Recipes not from the Culinary Institute of America, but courtesy of the United States Central Intelligence Agency Family Advisory Board.

But, hey: that mango pie recipe sure is tastier and more wholesome than the concoctions cooked up by our neocons and their subcontractors...

In other literary efforts, Libby himself made a notable contribution to the crowded genre of salacious novels written by members of the Party of Family Values. Lauren Collins, on Scooter's Sex Shocker–

Libby has a lot to live up to as a conservative author of erotic fiction...from Safire...to Buckley...to Ehrlichman...to O'Reilly...extracurricular creative writing has long been an outlet for ideas that might not fly at, say, the National Prayer Breakfast. In one of Lynne Cheney's books, a Republican vice-president dies of a heart attack while having sex with his mistress.

...

So, how does Libby stack up against the competition? This question was put to Nancy Sladek, the editor of Britain's Literary Review, which, each year, holds a contest for bad sex writing in fiction. (In 1998, someone nominated the Starr Report.) Sladek agreed to review a few passages from Libby. "That's a bit depraved, isn't it, this kind of thing about bears and young girls? That's particularly nasty, and the other ones are just boring," she said. "God, they’re an odd bunch, these Republicans." Unlike their American counterparts, she said, Tories haven't taken much to sex writing. "They usually just get caught," she said.

Well, ours certainly have much worse crimes to answer for. And they've been "caught," all right—just not stopped.

Instead, we get what happens to someone like Steven Kurtz–

...a Professor of Art at SUNY Buffalo and a founding member, with his late wife, Hope, of the internationally acclaimed art and theater collective Critical Art Ensemble...

In May 2004 the Kurtzes were preparing to present Free Range Grain, a project examining GM agriculture, at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art... when Hope Kurtz died of heart failure. Police who responded to Kurtz's 911 call deemed the couple's art suspicious, and called the FBI. The art materials consisted of several petri dishes containing three harmless bacteria cultures, and a mobile lab to test food labeled "organic" for the presence of genetically modified ingredients. As Kurtz explained, these materials had been safely displayed in museums and galleries throughout Europe and North America with absolutely no risk to the public.

The next day, however, as Kurtz was on his way to the funeral home, he was illegally detained by agents from the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force, who informed him he was being investigated for "bioterrorism."

This month, Prof. Kurtz is released from pre-trial supervision, over the objections of the DOJ.

And it will take fours years before Kurtz is finally cleared of all charges. When he will say, after being asked for a statement–

I don't have a statement, but I do have questions. As an innocent man, where do I go to get back the four years the Department of Justice stole from me? As a taxpayer, where do I go to get back the millions of dollars the FBI and Justice Department wasted persecuting me? And as a citizen, what must I do to have a Justice Department free of partisan corruption so profound it has turned on those it is sworn to protect?

These have become sadly mundane questions we can all ask of this regime.

October 2005: Fright Fest

Versions of this object suddenly hang from the women's room cubicles at work. On the inside of the cubicle doors—to instill seasonal cheer, while serving as a reminder of being observed here, too, it appears.

When she sees aggressively ugly made-in-China decorative objects, Clever Sister will say, "now that was made by the Falun Gong prisoners—it's a cry for help!"

At noon on the 18th, I watch Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant, Dr. G. Zuss, and two women from his research staff leave the premises. They're off to a Boss' Day lunch! I can see it in Jesus' BAA's face, which glows even more feverishly than usual. She undoubtedly arranged this, in her ceaseless pursuit of Rapture™ preparedness points.

An Irish journalist has been very naughty toward he who presumes he is Boss Of The Whole World. Carol Coleman describes in great detail White House minions' pre-taping orchestration of her ten minutes with Bush. Including the offer of a possible interview with Laura, held out to ensure Coleman's good behavior.

That offer is withdrawn after Coleman tries cutting through Bush's talking points with, "...there is a feeling that the world has become a more dangerous place because you have taken the focus off Al-Qaeda and diverted into Iraq. Do you not see that the world is a more dangerous place?"

The event going off White House script as it does, an official complaint is lodged with the Irish embassy.

In another British reporting effort—BBC: God told me to invade Iraq, Bush tells Palestinian ministers.

About that so very holy war, Greg Palast describes a behind-the-scenes battle in which the State Department plus oil industry power brokers conquered Pentagon neoconservatives. Causing a "switch to an OPEC-friendly policy for Iraq...driven by Dick Cheney himself." Palast concludes that—

...Cheney, far from "putting the squeeze on OPEC," has taken his de facto seat there, assenting by silence to the oil monopoly's piratical price gouging. But hasn't OPEC's stratospheric crude prices choked the life out of America's auto industry and bankrupted half a dozen airlines? In the Vice-President's bunker the elimination of jobs of Democratic-leaning union members is likely seen as a bonus for the good deed of boosting oil industry profits far above the ozone layer.

Staggering amounts of death and destruction always being a small price to be paid—by other people.

And of course civil liberties have been a casualty all along—beginning with the initial election that had to be stolen for this gang to take power. There are always new examples, small and large.

A North Carolina high school student's assignment to take photos illustrating the Bill of Rights gets him a visit from the Secret Service.

And James Yee's book is just out. In this Democracy Now interview, Yee tells how, as a Muslim chaplain in 2001, the army relied on him to educate soldiers being sent to Muslim countries. And how much his superiors respected his ability to bridge the culture gap.

After being stationed in Guatanamo, Yee witnessed conditions for prisoners deteriorate over his time there. And, he began to hear reports of Muslim personnel being detained when they returned to the U.S.

Which is what would happen to Yee. He was taken to the naval brig where the American "enemy combatants" Jose Padilla and Yaser Hamdi were also held. In the manner familiar from this, Yee was transported to the brig wearing sensory deprivation devices, then held in isolation for 76 days.

Ultimately, all phony charges were dropped. Yee–

But what’s important is why did they bring those accusations against me? Clearly, to divert attention away from what the real issue was, what the real problem was, that the U.S. military, the U.S. government, made this huge mistake. They wanted to divert attention away from that and discredit me, because they knew, ultimately, I had raised many concerns and complaints about the treatment of detainees to the command.

In other domestic horrors, it's only a couple of months since Katrina, but they've been profitable ones for some. Naomi Klein on Purging the Poor. And Bob Herbert on Bush's photo ops: Bush's Pledge? The Joke's on the Poor.

Rosa Parks, R.I.P. With all her generation had to fight against, there were parts of the media that sometimes felt moved to point to things considered shameful.

October 2004: A Nightmare On Pennsylvania Avenue

2004's Scariest Halloween Costumes...
With what's at stake in the coming election, a couple brave members of our Department try talking sense into Cruella and Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant.

Since one of these is faculty, Cruella puts on a show of listening, while the guy—who really is quite conservative—talks reality about Bush.

Another time, I hear a youngish guy talking to Cruella. I haven't seen him before, but know he is Not Faculty. He's quite soft spoken and I pick up almost nothing, except an occasional, "Bush" ... until Cruella explodes, "Of course you'll LIE! You're A DEMOCRAT!"

I've been biting my tongue for months—yet another reason to curse the length of American campaign seasons! Now, I can't take it any more. I get up, walk across the room, and say with as innocent an expression as I can muster, "Cruella, are we supposed to talk about politics at work?"

She blasts back: "Oh, we talk about it all the time!"

She pauses, as something occurs to her. Then: "Don't tell me I hired a LIBERAL?!"

I smile, say nothing, then: "Oh my gawd, I CAN'T BELIEVE WE HIRED A LIBERAL!!"

Me (slowly, patiently): "Cruella, what do you think 'liberal' means?"

Now, in all the years I will know her: ask a question, and she will unhesitatingly blurt out some load of bullshit. The less she knows about a subject, the more confident she is of her bullshit—of course, this personality identifies with Bush, or with any thug who never admits to being wrong.

But just this once, on being asked to explain what a "liberal" is, Cruella slows down and hedges enough to show she has no idea of how to even bullshit an answer: "Now... that's a... tricky definition ..."

Rescued as Ghengis walks through the door, she turns to him: "WE HIRED A LIBERAL!"

Ghengis jerks his head toward her: "In my office!" She follows him there, and the door closes.

For an uncomfortable moment I imagine they are discussing what to do about the LIBERAL in their midst. But I calm down, knowing they have bigger fish, so must be working on plans for the frying.

By now, the visitor has turned his attention to Jesus' BAA. Soon to be heard saying, "We did too find so many WMD in Iraq!"

It's painful to witness the know-nothingism on display. If there were ever a reckoning for Bush, et al, these people will be like the Germans who still say, "The only thing Hitler ever did wrong was to lose the war."

Meanwhile, their fine, upstanding party engages in stuff like this—

Terry Anderson, a Democrat running for a state Senate seat and a former hostage in Lebanon, walked out of a debate with the Republican incumbent, Senator Joy Padgett... over Ms. Padgett's use of a photograph of him with an official of the Hezbollah terrorist group. Mr. Anderson said that the photograph in a Padgett brochure suggested that he was soft on terrorism, when in fact the picture was taken when he returned to Lebanon to confront the terrorists who held him captive from 1985 to 1991.

This in Ohio—which in terms of national election-rigging efforts is shaping up to be the Republicans' latest version of 2000 Florida.

Columbus-based Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman, on Twelve ways Bush is now stealing the Ohio vote—

The Republican "November Surprise" to steal the 2004 election is in full force here in Ohio. With polls showing a dead heat, the GOP is staging an all-out attack on a fair vote count in the Buckeye State.

Fitrakis and Wasserman outline some highly creative techniques for infringing on the voting rights of "the wrong people."

Methods ranging from this—

Under an archaic Ohio law, both the Republican and Democratic Parties, or any slate of five candidates, may embed official election challengers inside polling places. The New York Times reported on Oct. 23 that the Republican Party intends to place thousands of lawyers and other GOP faithfuls inside the polls to challenge voters. Republican insiders confide here that the key goal is to jam lines and frustrate new voters... This is certain to be a major tactic in Cleveland's Cuyahoga County and other Democratic strongholds. The GOP is not planning to challenge voters in Republican districts.

To this—

Secretary of State Blackwell ruled that any voter registration form on other than 80-pound weight bond paper would not be accepted. This is an old law left over from pre-scanning days. Many voters who had registered on lighter paper, had their registration returned, even though the forms had been officially sanctioned by local election boards.

Because—

No Republican has ever won the presidency without carrying Ohio. This year the GOP seems determined to win it, no matter what they have do to the electoral process.

The more intense the activity, the more likelihood of slipping up, and some GOP e-mail traffic becomes public—

OCTOBER, 2004: Recently, we at GeorgeWBush.org happened to notice that our mail server had a default "catch-all" mailbox, which for the past several months had been quietly gathering any and all e-mails addressed to [INSERT-ANYTHING-HERE]@georgewbush.org. We felt the need to share.

GeorgeWBush.org being another project of the whitehouse.org team.

Attached to two of the E-mails are spreadsheets labeled, "caging." These files contain names and addresses of Jacksonsville,FL residents of predominately black areas—evidence of plans to target these voters and keep them "caged," through election day challenges.

In the years to come, the caging planners will be rewarded with high positions in government, and in that criminal enterprise, the Republican Party.

This year, it's up to We The [wrong] People to spend every possible moment before deadlines registering new voters—in hope that increased numbers can outweigh the vote suppression efforts.

And it's up to us to convince everyone we know to vote Democratic.

A month ago, Clever Sister forwarded the plea she sent to an ex-pat friend who prides himself on not voting. Besides outlining just how bad things here have become in four years, CS sends thorough directions on overseas registration, absentee voting, and all possible voting options and sources of information.

Among her entreaties—

Bush stole the election by only 537 votes in Florida!
Every vote counts this year.
SO your vote could be the one that rids us of Bush.

In spite of the media spin & news blackout
NBC owned by GE
FOX very right wing
CNN Time Warner
50% of the country gets it & wants Bush out...

We spend every free hour working to defeat Bush –
don't let the polls fool you: they are bullshit!
They don't call people with cell phones, people with caller ID don't answer - they only call elderly republicans!

And I've been typing my fingers to the bone, trying to get through to a friend I've known since 6th grade. From all I know of her history, I would expect her to be turned off by the pitch to the authoritarian personality. But then again, decades of right-wing propaganda and corporate media consolidation have done their work.

It all leaves my friend, like so many, as easily misled—all her time is taken up by work and family problems. She isn't exposed to "news" until her husband tunes in Fox. She believes that she was able to repair the car and squeak by one more year because Bush gave her a "tax rebate." And, there's no convincing her the latter is actually an "advance," to be repaid many times over in the future.

And she keeps bringing up what her has husband told her: that gunshots were fired at a Bush campaign office. CS tracks that down as being reported only in TN: by local papers saying, by the way, there was a bank robbery in progress across the street!

That's all it takes to create a legend to terrify my friend, distracting her from the fact that she has a draft-age son. So I keep trying anything—excessive caps and all—to get her attention:

I met Max Cleland briefly at a rally a couple months ago. He's a Viet vet/TRIPLE AMPUTEE who was head of Vets' Admin, then senator from Georgia. He lost his Senate race in 2002 after Rove ran ads calling him unpatriotic & comparing him to Osama! He was very popular in Georgia, & the election was conducted on touch screens controlled by a Republican company, so it's probable that he actually won.

But I mention it because this gang slimes anyone they run against, and they MAKE UP EVERYTHING! There's absolutely no relation to reality, but they lie over & over until a lot of the public believes it.

I was just reading a long article about past campaigns by Rove, & the tactics he uses over & over (including a phony recount in '94). One time, Rove printed up smear literature against HIS OWN candidate, to make it look like the other side was pulling dirty tricks!

They're getting away with sending inadequately equipped troops to be sitting ducks. All the years Kerry's been in Congress, vets from all over the country (not just his own state) knew they could go to him when they had problems with the VA, & he's always helped them. But how many people who won't admit that Bush is exploiting the military will fall for the lies about Kerry? They have to paint him as opposite of what he is: someone who knows what war is like, deeply cares about vets, & wouldn't go looking for unnecessary wars.

And on that last point—there's new confirmation of what's seemed apparent all along—

Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade?. If I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency." Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. The moment, Herskowitz said, came in the wake of the September 11 attacks. "Suddenly, he's at 91 percent in the polls, and he'd barely crawled out of the bunker."
...

According to Herskowitz, George W. Bush's beliefs on Iraq were based in part on a notion dating back to the Reagan White House - ascribed in part to now-vice president Dick Cheney, Chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee under Reagan. "Start a small war. Pick a country where there is justification you can jump on, go ahead and invade."

September 2004 (II): Missives

Photo: solarbreeze69
Of all the regime's feats of pulling wool over 'Murkan eyes, one of the most impressive has been the turning of AWOL George into Commander-in-Chief, beloved by The Troops. And the process of creating this "War President" has combined emptying the treasury into the pockets of cronies with shanghaiing the National Guard as roadside bomb targets.

The abuse of the National Guard has been particularly stunning—and as ignored by the major media as most real stories are. William S. Lind, a military (and conservative) commentator calls the process exactly what it is—"Destroying the National Guard"—

...Desperate for troops as the situation in Iraq deteriorates, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld is using the National Guard in a mission for which it was never intended: carrying on a "war of choice" halfway around the world. Most Guardsmen enlisted expecting to help their neighbors in natural disasters, or perhaps maintain order locally in the event of rioting. They never signed up for Vietnam II.

Eric Boehlert has been covering Bush's AWOL history at length, with a recent review here. From the latest round of document dumps—just out, after the AP wins a suit to obtain previously missing documents—Boehlert writes a primer of Bush's Guard record. This covers the period beginning 1972, when Bush still had over two years of service to evade.

Citing a Bush friend on the 1970s as "an irrational time in [Bush's] life," Boehlert says, "It may have been an irrational time for him, but Bush managed to focus intently on not serving in the Guard in any significant capacity again." Boehlert notes page after page of Bush's "focus"—chronic absenteeism and blowing off orders. None of which he ever had to account for.

The regime manages the CBS "controversy" to distract from the truth of Bush's military record. The rightist outlets running the attack on CBS are tied to anti-Kerry "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" operatives and Republican PR outfits, as Boehlert details here.

The "blogger" who instantly discovers supposed font discrepancies "proving" forgery is revealed as—quel surprise!—a Republican operative—

It was the first public allegation that CBS News used forged memos in its report questioning President Bush's National Guard service — a highly technical explanation posted within hours of airtime citing proportional spacing and font styles.

But it did not come from an expert in typography or typewriter history as some first thought. Instead, it was the work of Harry W. MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer with strong ties to conservative Republican causes who helped draft the petition urging the Arkansas Supreme Court to disbar President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal...

Of course, the distraction works as intended. A couple of samples from Media Matters—Media obsesses over CBS documents, ignores uncontested evidence that Bush didn't meet his Guard obligations; and, Trees everywhere, forest nowhere in sight: Media ignores witnesses who confirm memo content

It's left to Texas journalist James Moore to get at the story behind what may or may not be forgeries—

...People who know the truth about the president’s time in the Texas Air National Guard are angry that the cover up of his failings has been so effective. And now there are suspicions that the individuals who have long sought after the truth may have succumbed to the power of fighting a well-told lie with another; not so well-told...

... Lt. Col. (Ret.) Bill Burkett [suspected of fabricating memos]... told me that he had witnessed hard copy documents being dumped out of Bush’s file and into a wastebasket. According to his memory, there were "retirement points" and pay sheets in the trash and he had a moment to "lightly rummage" through them as two other officers stepped away to talk... In 1997, when this was supposed to have occurred, Bush was preparing to run for re-election as governor and was prepping a presidential campaign. Cleaning up a hard copy file and then controlling access to the microfilmed record was a simple method for hiding the facts. Bill Burkett either had a fanciful imagination or his unfettered access to senior officers in the Texas Guard had serendipitously put him a few right places at all the wrong times...

Moore notes that "at least a dozen commanders," some still in active service, hold former Governor Bush responsible for inadequate funding and training of the Guard. Burkett had been hired to oversee solutions, but was prevented from implementing his recommendations. And Bush was "said to have turned down millions of dollars in federal money to pay for improvements when it was offered by the Clinton administration."

Why ever would he have done that? From Moore's Texas sources–

No one understood the decision to not upgrade the guard until Bush ran for president. In his first policy speech, given at the Citadel, candidate Bush told the assembled cadets, "If the commander-in-chief were today call upon all of our armed forces to defend America, at least one full division would be unable to answer that call." The only "full division" that was incapacitated at the time of that speech was the Texas National Guard. The governor of Texas is the only governor in the country who has command of a full division. It struck Texas Guard commanders then, even some who supported Bush, that they had been used as a political ploy and their lousy training and equipment was part of a plan.

This rings only too true of the user psychology at work here. Bush first learned he could use the Guard to evade going off to a war in Vietnam he was so enthusiastic about having less fortunate sons die in. Knowing his connections had let him exploit the Guard, he went on to misuse it as governor, and in his run for president. All roads lead to: sacrificing the Guard as targets in Iraq.

Despite the non-stop perception management, this time around they aren't taking chances with the military vote. From NYT editorial, "Denying the Troops a Secret Ballot"–

Members of the military will be allowed to vote this year by faxing or e-mailing their ballots -- after waiving their right to a secret ballot. Beyond this fundamentally undemocratic requirement, the Electronic Transmission Service, as it's known, has far too many problems to make it reliable, starting with the political partisanship of the contractor running it. The Defense Department is making matters worse by withholding basic information about the service, and should suspend it immediately.

This is contracted to Republican-connected Omega Technologies, whose CEO refuses to discuss details, proclaiming "I will not allow the public to invade the privacy of the employees of Omega."

The editorial notes–

The secrecy of ballots could be breached at several points: when they are faxed or e-mailed from the field, when they go through the contractor and when they are received by local officials. The Pentagon has not explained why it is acceptable, or legal, to ask soldiers to waive their right to secret ballots. Laughlin McDonald, director of the Voting Rights Project of the American Civil Liberties Union, says he cannot recall another group of voters being asked to give up such secrecy. It is particularly inappropriate, he says, for soldiers, who are under the direct control of the Defense Department.

And this guy also seems to know something–

Vice President Dick Cheney on Tuesday warned Americans about voting for Democratic Sen. John Kerry, saying that if the nation makes the wrong choice on Election Day it faces the threat of another terrorist attack.

Now that Sonny, Jr. is across the country at boot camp, Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant begins taking lunches in full public view. She plants herself in the lobby, stationery and pen in hand, writing a line, then pausing to stare soulfully into the distance. Rehearsing her new role as Mother Of A Troop.

Which doesn't make sense in English, even if it has become the usage.

Which is no mere quibble: getting people to use nonsensical language is part of getting them to fall for anything.

September 2004 (I): Objects Of Admiration

Photo: Steven Peterson

The Republican Convention opens for maximum date proximity to and exploitation of the magical 9/11 anniversary.

New Yorkers and others speak out, with CNN headlining a story, "GOP convention protest covers miles of New York." And also reporting the "miles" were filled by "tens of thousands of demonstrators."

Organizers estimate 500,000.

There's also this on September 1: Three-Mile Long 'Unemployment Line' Gives Bush the Pink Slip.

Over 1800 arrests are made in the course of the convention. Police documents will finally be released in 2007, after years of ACLU efforts. From James Ridgeway: the documents show the NYPD began plans in May to arrest protestors at the August convention instead of issuing summonses. Meaning, "You got to a judge in New York faster during the convention than you would have had you robbed a bank." And—

The documents show the cops themselves agreed with the protestors in that 40 officers filed occupational health forms complaining about environmental conditions at the 57th Street pier, a former MTA bus depot, that served as a holding and processing facility. The officers said they were exposed to asbestos, carbon monoxide, sludge, oil, fumes and toxic materials.

At my workplace the wingnut women go on about listening to Laura's speech and how wonderful she is. From Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant: "she humanized him!"

Also according to Jesus' BAA, "Vice President Cheney has a lot of good ideas, too...I don't remember what they are ... [pause to rev up manic laughter] ...Eh heh! Eh heh! Eh heh!"

Charles Pierce later observes of this election season—

...At the end of August 2004, the Zogby people discovered that 57 percent of undecided voters would rather have a beer with George Bush than with John Kerry. Now, how many people with whom you've spent time drinking beer would you trust with the nuclear launch codes? Not only is this not a question for a nation of serious citizens, it's not even a question for a nation of serious drunkards.

The regime has two strategies of public image management. One is the story for the rubes—George is a regular fella, with adoring, properly Stepfordian, wife by his side.

Which must be what Jesus' BAA meant by Laura's "humanizing" her awesome leader. It no doubt takes a zombie to identify with another one, and this one sure seems to feel a kinship with Laura. In the case of Jesus' BAA, I have no idea if the glazed eyes and fixed smile are just the mark of a 100 percent true believer. Or if Jesus' BAA is emulating her heroine's level of medication.

Of course, when anyone with access to the public ear and eye tries telling a story different from the regime's, that activates the other tactic: to smear—and if possible, destroy—the subject. (A little on some recent efforts in Part II.)

Meanwhile, the glow that comes from a well-cleansed mind sometimes departs the face of Jesus' BAA, and worry over Sonny, Jr.'s departure for boot camp takes over.

The wheels begin turning—she works for Dr. Gott, a big man in his field who travels the world attending professional meetings. Jesus' BAA asks the good doctor for travel advice, as she plans a family trip before Sonny, Jr. is to leave. Specifically, could Dr. Gott suggest good places to eat at -----burgh?

Now, this place is about 50 miles from here: one of those staving off Depression foothill/mountain towns (there are a few around the country), that made themselves into "alpine" theme towns following the loss of logging, or whatever economic source they once had. Low-budget Disney, in other words, and Jesus' BAA's idea of an exotic trip.

For which she seeks guidance from the world traveler...she's so pathetic, there are times I start to feel sorry for her. But I soon get over it, as I listen to the rest of what she spouts.

Charles Pierce again, from a piece this month, "Daddy Darkest"—

[Andrew] Card...had to interrupt the ensemble reading of The Pet Goat in order to tell George W. Bush that someone had flown airplanes into the World Trade Center, thus starting the clock on the now-famous Seven-Minute Glaze. Card was talking... about that moment, clinging to the GOP talking points like a nun to her beads. The president "didn't introduce fear into any of those young children or through the national media, to the American people," explained Card. Then, he attempted to explain how the president feels about the 200 million-odd souls who are, after all, his employers:

"It struck me as I was speaking to people in Bangor, Maine, that this president sees America as we think about a 10-year-old child. I know as a parent I would sacrifice all for my children."

Let us leave aside any discussion prompted by Card's remarks that might uncomfortably contain the word "Fatherland." Let us take him at his word -- namely, that the president of the United States looks at the world's longest-standing free democratic republic and sees . . .

A middle-schooler.

...what Card said perfectly encapsulates this administration's approach to governance -- its fundamental contempt for democratic restraints and its hubristic insolence toward any limits on its political appetites. Our president is our Daddy. He will make his wars to keep us safe, and all we have to do is love him back, and do what he tells us to do. Go shopping. Go on happy vacations. Leave the decisions to Daddy and to Daddy's friends. They run things so we don't have to.

"Love him back"—and give him your first-born.

They've certainly tapped into the psychology of my office.

August 2007: In The Path Of Destruction

"Isn't that terrible!" Cruella and Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant exclaim over the Minneapolis bridge collapse.

There's no connection, after all, between the kind of Republicans they vote for and this starving public works of funds...

"Nation's Crumbling Infrastructure Probably Some Sort Of Metaphor," suggests The Onion.

But not to worry, says whitehouse.org—"Minneapolis Bridge Collapse: President Comforts Grieving Families With Pledge to Continue Rebuilding Iraq's Infrastructure."

In Utah, while miners remain trapped in the collapsed Crandall Canyon mine, owner Robert Murray commandeers press conferences to blame the union—to which his workers do not belong. Tula Connell covers the scenario, in which Murray also claims a non-existent an earthquake caused the collapse. Anything to deflect from the mine's being cited—by Bush era inspectors—for 325 safety violations since January 2004.

How unsurprising: workers' lives in jeopardy, and the media can't get enough of a camera-hog Republican activist who previously called concern over worker safety, "anti-American." Meanwhile, the trapped miners die, and three rescue workers are killed trying to reach them.

This month also marks the 20th anniversary of the hit job on the fairness doctrine, by Reagan-appointed FCC commissioners. Since then, two decades of ownership concentration, plus the rise of christianist broadcasting have done the job of destroying any semblance of information in the public interest.

Media Matters attempts the month's worth of debunking in seven pages, starting here. Ranging from "Wash. Post's Marcus ignored key info in concluding Gonzales not guilty of perjury" (8/1), to "Media ignored Mississippi's use of waivers to redirect funds designated for low-income Katrina victims" (8/30).

A Mother Jones piece by Jean Casella and James Ridgeway—Windfall: How Conservatives, Contractors, and Developers Cashed In on Katrina—is a second anniversary review of events. It's also a reminder of how the media woke up for a few moments, expressing outrage not to be sustained for long.


On August 16, Jose Padilla is found guilty on all counts, after a day and a half of jury deliberations. Since its start in May, Lewis Koch has covered the trial for firedoglake. Links to stories are here, here, and here. Koch on July 13–

The prosecution has concluded its case against Jose Padilla, and two others charged with conspiracy to help support violent Islamic extremist groups worldwide. The total hard evidence against Jose Padilla consists of an alleged Al Qaeda training camp application form document Padilla allegedly signed in July 2000. The paper was among a myriad of documents handed to a CIA agent in a remote area of Afghanistan by a complete stranger.

Koch does an admirable job of covering the issues created by Padilla's imprisonment and trial. An American citizen stripped of all constitutional rights after being classified an "enemy combattant," to be held in isolation and under 24-hour observation, for three and a half years. The shackled Padilla is then taken to court wearing blinder goggles, for a trial that would never have been held if the administration hadn't needed to head off a Supreme Court challenge.

Democracy Now interviews forensic psychiatrist Dr. Angela Hegarty. After interviewing Padilla for 22 hours to evaluate his mental health, she concludes, "What happened at the brig was essentially the destruction of a human being's mind...[Padilla's] personality was deconstructed and reformed," the final product of the severe isolation being consistent with brain damage.

More detail from Dr. Hegarty's observation of "Padilla's absolute state of terror, terror alternating with numbness"—

It was as though the interrogators were in the room with us. He was like—perhaps like a trauma victim who knew that they were going to be sent back to the person who hurt them and that he would...subsequently pay a price if he revealed what happened...

Also he had developed...a tremendous identification with the goals and interests of the government. I really considered a diagnosis of Stockholm syndrome. For example, at one point in the proceedings, his attorneys had, you know, done well at cross-examining an FBI agent, and instead of feeling happy about it like all the other defendants I’ve seen over the years, he was actually very angry with them. He was very angry that the civil proceedings were "unfair to the commander-in-chief," quote/unquote. And in fact, one of the things that happened that disturbed me particularly was when he saw his mother. He wanted her to contact President Bush to help him, help him out of his dilemma. He expected that the government might help him, if he was "good," quote/unquote.

Scott Horton in "Bush and the Art of Breaking Human Beings" concludes, "The Padilla case is important as a demonstration of the power of isolation tactics to destroy a human being—without producing anything of gain."


"As flies to wanton boys are we to the Mainstream Media; They kill us for their sport"—driftglass, on the death of Richard Jewell at 44. From the AP report: "The Jewell episode led to soul-searching among news organizations about the use of unattributed or anonymously sourced information. His very name became shorthand for a person accused of wrongdoing in the media based on scanty information." From driftglass—

It is well to remember that once you have had a target painted on your back and the shelling begins, you are never whole again.

...And it is also well to remember that this ever-hungry slaughterbeast that rips men apart and drives them falsely to infamy, despair, suicide and ruin is the favorite pet of the GOP...

And that it was not Richard Jewell who murdered and maimed so many in Atlanta, but White Conservative Christopath Terrorist Eric Robert Rudolph.

Who, like White Conservative Christopath Terrorist Timothy McVeigh, did nothing more than implement in deed the kind of homicidal Jebus Jihad against liberals and government employees that the Mullahs of the Christopath Right like Tom DeLay, Jerry Falwell, Pat Roberston, Ann Coulter and Michael Savage (to, sadly, name only a few) have been relentlessly and hysterically fomenting for the last 30 years.

God's peace be with you, Mr. Jewell, and with your loved ones.

I'm sorry our culture destroyed you.

July 2008: Pictures, Words

When the daughter-in-law of Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant threatened to abandon unemployed Sonny, Jr. (and baby) for an army paycheck, J's BAA went into action.


Sonny, Jr. has now worked in our Department for nearly a year.

By hiring Sonny and making Jesus' BAA happy, the IT manager surely made Dr. G. Zuss happy, too.

This couldn't have been nepotism because, according to Jesus' BAA, Sonny, Jr. is a computer jeenyus. Just like his pappy, who is, "a geek in civilian clothes...just a nice guy..." Unlike your usual satanic computer guys, apparently.

Whatever talents Sonny, Jr. may possess, they don't include figuring out how to compose an email and send it to the appropriate persons. The entire Department—over nine hundred strong—receives an All Staff—

Subject: sonny not coming in today

7/16/08 8:59 PM

i have a dentest and doctor appointment today so i will be missing today

Which doesn't even make sense in terms of time stamp/"today" correlation...

Clever Sister remarks:

"Dentest"
It ain't in the dictshunary

"will be missing"
MIA?

Wow! What does this person do?

A rhetorical question, as I've already told her what Sonny does—be related to our Department Chairman's admin assistant...

Later, CS actually finds a "dentest"...


With McCain's campaign so busy setting up their candidate as the butt of jokes, water tiger keeps busy with photo enhancement opportunities.

There was McCain's Baghdad jaunt at the end of March—

One of Mr. McCain’s colleagues on the visit to the Baghdad market was Rep. Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican, who marveled at the peaceful scene and compared it to a "normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime."

Earning water tiger's response—

John McCain Visits Indiana

In April, visits continued to be paid...

John McCain Visits Orlando...

...San Francisco...

...The Lower East Side...

...Portland, Maine...

This month, water tiger on McCain's trip to Columbia (with soulmates Joe & Lindsay)—

The Sunshine Boys play Cartagena

In contrast to that bunch of losers, are the real players:

Well, somebody accomplished his mission.

From Think Progress:

In a 1998 interview, Osama bin Laden — the terrorist organizer of 9/11 who still roams free — listed as one of his many grievances against the U.S. that Americans "have stolen $36 trillion from Muslims" by purchasing oil from Persian Gulf countries at low prices. The real price of a barrel of oil should be $144, bin Laden demanded.

Ten years ago today, the price of a barrel of oil was just $11. Heading into this holiday weekend, the price of a barrel of oil rested at $144 — a thirteen-fold increase.

water tiger is such a treasure, I was thinking of just using this month's space for links to her recent stuff.

Then as soon as I had that thought, I saw

Bush looks to legacy at last G-8?

From McClatchy:

"People read the American poll numbers and realize there's no juice behind Bush," said John Hulsman, an analyst for the German Council on Foreign Relations, a research center. "They (other G-8 leaders) will be polite, they'll be respectful, they'll listen to him, but they can't wait for him to leave the room."

They're not the only ones. Let's recap, shall we?

Followed by water tiger's compilation of some key images from the last few years: the smirking frat boy juxtaposed with some of the consequences of his having been placed where he is.

Sometimes a picture of Bush is worth a thousand laughs.

But the pictures that remind us of his victims—there's no counting the tears or measuring the pain caused by what those images represent.

July 2007: Hot Fun In The Summertime

Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant returns from camp—on crutches, after spraining an ankle in an overzealous volleyball move. Due to thinking, "the higher the leap, the closer to God"...?One year after Sonny Jr's wedding, the couple and kid still live in the basement, chez Jesus' BAA. Sonny III is six or seven months old, and called "S3" by his parents. Is that supposed to sound like a truck model? Or, maybe it's to emulate the family heroes: the dynasty where father and spawn refer to each other as "41" and "43."

Sonny, Jr. just lost the job he'd gotten recently. He had been sick for a day, then in a vehicle accident and out a second day. Which exceeded his "one absence per first six months of employment"...

Jesus' BAA relates this without comment. And she may very well think it's just dandy—that God has directed the company to make the rules, and the employees to obey.

In any case, Sonny is unemployed. The fights over money have begun... and Elly May threatens that, if Sonny doesn't start earning some pronto, she will join the army.

This is about all these people have in their repertoire.

Dr. G. Zuss may not yet have gained control over employee work station décor, but this month he compensates with an art-shopping spree for the executive suite and surrounding areas. The budget for this includes the services of—an Art Consultant. Who guides Dr. G. Zuss in finding art both to his liking and suitable for "Our Department's Brand."

Because I see the receipts, I know a bundle has been spent on a number of rooms and other spaces. Including the hallway outside the executive suite: a space so narrow it's impossible to look at what's on the walls without walking either into people passing or the art itself.

And "Our Brand" is...what? Most departments hang art that has something to do with their field—or else with the University in general, or the sports teams.

Our CEO mainly wanted to coordinate art to his new wall colors. And he likes mildly abstract pictures—so we now have architectural detail photos of buildings in anonymous locations, shot in extreme close-up and "creative" angles.

Jesus' BAA must have been especially shocked that her boss likes abstraction.

Cruella, on the other hand, barges into the room, oohing and ahhing to Dr. G. Zuss, and announcing, "your taste is just like mine!"

Dr.G. Zuss gets the mildly pained look that comes over him when the underlings speak without having been spoken to. He makes no reply, and Cruella's gambit doesn't seem so effective. But for her, currying favor with authority is a life-long campaign, not to be slowed by a momentary setback.

There's another notable change in the surroundings.

For years, there's been an unmarked room outside the executive suite. It would appear to a storage room, but the unlocked door periodically swings open to reveal a sink and toilet stall.

These are used only by Dr. G. Zuss and Mr. Ghengis. There is an unstated rule that the toilet is off-limits to everyone else—even the most senior male faculty and division chiefs pass it by, to use the men's room farther down the hall.

As the redecoration spree winds down, I walk in one morning to find new wall signs outside the rooms. The room that was previously private, but discreetly so, is now marked, "Executive Washroom." Which is repeated in Braille—presumably, one can't be too careful about blind people entering places above their station.

I report this to Clever Sister, as well as to friends and relations in other departments. In total, the sample represents many decades of experience throughout the University. And the amazement over this piece of chutzpah is unanimous.

The University is a hierarchy, but it's also a public institution, and distinctions are not usually flaunted this much; not so publicly, in a hallway with a lot of traffic. The upper reaches may well have executives-only facilities, but I've never been around a department that's announced it so blatantly. Nor has anyone I know.


Dateline: July 4, 2007—

American citizens will now be compelled to allow British soldiers to live in their homes, thanks to a new signing statement from President Bush.

By negating the Third Amendment, the new order completes the abrogation of the entire United States Bill of Rights. High-level White House sources have indicated that this was Bush's sole purpose in issuing the statement.

Actually, from a "prediction" by Bob Harris, a year ago. Not really so over the top, the joke being based on too much painful truth—

The signing statement — Bush's once-controversial practice of amending and interpreting laws as he signs them, arrogating to himself the traditional roles of both the Congress and Supreme Court — was the 1,745th of Bush's presidency. Previous signing statements have negated the prohibition of torture, eliminated oversight of Bush's use of the Patriot Act, and declared "Englesh" the official language of the United States.

Some constitutional scholars claim that Bush's total number of signing statements is actually 1,744, and that statement number 1,309 was, in fact, an uncompleted seven-letter game of Hangman.

As for our moronic political campaign season, driftglass writes of the Sunday morning pundit show commentary:

Hoss race toutin'.

Feh.

If I want to see overpaid men running in meaningless circles, NASCAR is only a click away...

Among the paragons already in office is David "Gays Threaten Marriage" Vitter. Elected to the House from Louisiana in a 1999 special election—after an adultery scandal led to Bob Livingston's resignation.

During his 2004 campaign for Senate, Mary Jacoby's Salon profile described Vitter's political rise, despite "rumors involving a prostitute and a secret alliance with neo-Nazi David Duke"—

He presents himself as a morally righteous, clean-cut family man, and his wife and three young children have become virtual campaign props. The Harvard-educated Rhodes scholar is also extremely intelligent, observers say, and runs perhaps the most effective political ads in the state. But there are hints of a dark side: allegations of an affair with a prostitute and a lawsuit claiming he lost his temper and physically charged at a woman at a town hall meeting.

And as his political career got underway—

Asked by an interviewer in 2000 whether she could forgive her husband if she learned he'd had an extramarital affair, as Hillary Clinton and Bob Livingston's wife had done, Wendy Vitter told the Times-Picayune: "I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he does something like that, I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me."

But Republicans are nothing if not forgiving.

Even after Vitter is publicly identified as a "D.C. Madam" client, Mrs. Lorena Bobbitt Vitter Stands By Her Man.

And even after becoming known as "Diaper Dave," his Republican colleagues gave him a standing ovation on his return to the Senate. An event commemorated for posterity by water tiger.

July 2006 (I): Invitation

Photo: etsyapril

An envelope appears on my desk. In the handwriting of Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant, addressed to "[My Name] and Guest."

Enclosure #1 is a printed card:

Two lives, two hearts
Joined together in friendship
United forever in love.
It is with joy that we,
Elly May Xxxxx
and
Sonny Xxxxx
Invite you to share in a celebration of love
As we exchange our marriage vows
[date/time/church location]
Cake Reception to follow in the Fellowship Hall

"Cake Reception"...? Clever Sister informs me this is a Southern Baptist rite: cheap sheet cake and fruit punch, which eliminates booze and the expense of a meal, while allowing the family to demand gifts.

Jesus' BAA seems to be in some sect that perhaps stops short of snake-handling, but includes glossolalia. [Although wouldn't the deaf parishioners have to sign in tongues?] But the cheapness and alcohol phobia definitely fit.

Enclosure #2 is an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet [done on the office printer?]: the couple's photo, with groom's smiling display of his bad teeth. Below the photo—

Sonny is the son of Sonny Xxxxx and Jesus' Best Administrative Assistant.
Sonny is pursing a career in network administration.

[Translation: he's struggling to not flunk out of community college.]

Elly May is the daughter of ...
Elly May is pursing a career in sales with Lia Sophia jewelry.

A "career" in home sales parties! And she's being "mentored" in this by Jesus' BAA, who's been doing these parties.

Though Clever Sister suspects this is what she's really selling.

A NYT "Weddings" page power couple, this ain't. Though since the bridal shower, the gift begging has become slightly more ambitious:

Sonny and Elly May are registered at Sears (Sears.com)...[local chain]...Target (Target.com) and Mikasa (Mikasa.com).

The wedding is at the end of the month. Typically, Jesus' BAA is only taking a couple of days off, so is available to be annoying throughout most of July.

Which is when there's a huge local story—Google has announced plans to open a facility in town...and the residents are bewitched by visions of dollar signs dancing before their eyes. It sounds like there will be only a handful of jobs, but a large segment of town seems to believe they personally are about to be hired. And the real estate owning types expect Google will buy their particular piece of property.

I know about this because people are blogging furiously, and Clever Sister has been sending me links. Then, this arrives from CS:

Does anyone have information on where Google is interviewing or on how to apply? There is nothing on the Google website indicating they have openings.
—[signed with first name identical to that of Jesus' BAA]

CS' reaction—

Is it her? If u are too stooped to figgur how to apply don't...

Jesus' BAA most certainly would believe she can get Sonny a job—she sees herself as a first-rate expert who knows exactly how things are done in the professional world.

But I think it's too unlikely the post would be hers. Her name isn't all that uncommon, for one thing. But mainly, I don't see her finding her way to an "urban" blog—who knows what kind of heathens might be hanging around there, after all.

But Clever Sister is convinced that the post is really from Jesus' BAA. CS goes into action, replying to the poster of the question about interviews—

If you can't figure out to apply maybe you or your family should not bother?
—Larry & Sergey

That post is followed by a helpful person, John Q, who offers a link to the job postings.

Followed by a reply—

John Q,
Are you forgetting your Darwin?
—Larry & Sergey

24 hours later, CS says about the thread:

So far, since yesterday, L&S have the last word!
They must think that was really from L&S and Google won't build here if they reply!

In other news this month, C.I.A. Closes Unit Focused on Capture of bin Laden . Mission Accomplished, no doubt. And bin Laden certainly has served his purpose when there's been the need to fill the media with a boogeyman.

And as Jonathan Schwartz observes, We're Making Real Progress! Comparing remarks by Bush slightly before the Iraq invasion with some after the mid-month G-8 meeting—

You see, he's learning! ...Bush doesn't know who or where different kinds of Muslims are. But still, after a brief 5 years of our "war on terror," he has learned they exist!

And Bush vetoes stem cell legislation—to date, his only outright veto.

Because, the transcript says, science "offers temptations to manipulate human life and violate human dignity"...

Something Bush and crew are already doing only too well on their own.