Friday, December 10, 2004

All is hunky dory in Iraq! -- half of America gullibly believes . . .

Concrete proof that Moron America does indeed exist.

Click here to read the sad story.

A big thanks to the corporate media --- their track record of misinformation and under-reporting is as strong as ever it seems.

Voting reform direly needed to save Democracy . . .

America --- banana republic extraordinairre?? . . .

20 Amazing Facts about Voting in the USA

Must read if you have any interest at all about salvaging what's left of this country's representative democracy.

Just click here.

Bill O'Lielly update . . .

Bill "Spin Drone" O'Reilly has his loofah twisted in a knot again.

He's raging against David Brock's organization - www.mediamatters.org - calling them "the most vile, despicable human beings in the country."

Wholly understandable though, considering the FACT that MediaMatters continues to studiously document and publish O'Reilly's constant spate of lies, slander and misinformation across the airwaves via his FOX television show and his radio show.

How anybody in their right mind can put any faith into this lying flatulent gasbag O'Reilly's views simply astounds me. I guess P.T. Barnum was right when he said "there's a sucker born every minute."

From living in a foxhole to living in a cardboard box. . .

Another story about America's "disposable culture." Only this time the disposable commodity is homeless Iraq military vets.

Once again --- who really supports the troops in this country??

They were, and still are, expendable . . .

Another horrific example that the Bushistas have bestowed upon America. Being a military vet myself, this story just burns me up.

Who really supports the troops?? The phony flag-wavers of the moment or those who were brave enough to stand up in the beginning and beg the war-mongering Bush crowd not to send our kids off to die in their bogus, deceitful oil war??

The moron-America crowd has a lot of blood on their hands. I hope the bastards sleep comfortably at night.

Tuesday, December 07, 2004

Another faux GOP witch hunt in the making . . .

A couple of my red-state conservative pals recently tried to goad me into an argument over the alleged corruption in the UN-administered oil-for-food program.

They had their panties in a bunch over this faux scandal and were actually thinking they had me over a barrel on the issue and were looking for the nearest oak tree to string U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan from.

Sometimes you have to wonder at the level of stupidity and rank hypocrisy which courses through the cold veins of today's conservative ReThuglicans.

Here's (scroll down a bit) a great response to the allegations against Annan and the U.N. - - - - -

ACCOUNTABILITY FOR THAT GUY, BUT NOT THOSE GUYS!

House Republicans -- some of whom presumably don't care for the United Nations, period -- are in high dudgeon over alleged corruption in the UN-administered oil-for-food program. Some of them are calling for Kofi Annan's resignation, and more:

Rep. Scott Garrett (news, bio, voting record), R-N.J., said stepping down may not be enough for Annan.

"To me the question should not be whether Kofi Annan should remain in charge," he said. "The question is whether he should be in jail," he said.


Garrett and four other Republican lawmakers spoke at a Capitol news conference in support of a bill that would withhold some U.S. dues to the United Nations if the organization doesn't fully cooperate with investigations of the program.


Three other Republicans, Rep. Vito Fossella of New York and Reps. Dan Burton and Mike Pence of Indiana also said Annan should resign. The bill's sponsor, Rep. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., declined to join them, saying he didn't want calls for Annan's removal to distract from the oil-for-food investigations.

Separately, another lawmaker, Rep. Roger Wicker (news, bio, voting record), R-Miss., said he would introduce a House resolution calling for Annan's resignation.

"These allegations of corruption and mismanagement have seriously undermined Mr. Annan's credibility and his capacity to head the U.N.," Wicker said.


I know I'm more or less wasting my time to expect any consistency from these guys, but still, for the record: None of these guys voted against the DeLay Rule allowing GOP leaders indicted for a criminal offense to retain their posts. Rep. Garrett, who thinks perhaps Annan deserves to be in jail, took $15,000 from DeLay's PAC. And more to the point, I don't see them making a fuss over the 27 separate criminal investigations into Coalition Provisional Authority contracts in Iraq, involving millions of dollars of fraud and waste of taxpayer money. No outrage at all, really, no calls for accountability or resignation, let alone jail time for those at the top.

It's easy to see what's really going on here, of course. As the left-wing pinkos at the Financial Times put it today:

The witch-hunt against Kofi Annan and the United Nations over the Iraq oil-for-food scandal is, quite simply, a scandal all on its own. The leaders of this lynch mob in the US Congress and the rightwing commentariat are not gunning for Mr Annan so much as aiming to destroy the UN as an institution. That would be a disaster - for all of us, including, especially, the US. ...

First, the oil-for-food policy was devised and run by the member states of the UN Security Council, not by the UN Secretariat. All of the roughly 36,000 contracts were approved by a Security Council committee dominated by the US and the UK. Of these, about 5,000 were held up. But objections were entirely about imports to Iraq that might have offered Baghdad dual-use technology with which to reconstitute its weapons programmes. There was not one objection about oil-pricing scams, although UN officials brought these to the attention of the committee on no fewer than 70 occasions. ...


If the independent inquiry headed by Paul Volcker, the former Federal Reserve chairman, finds any UN official complicit in Iraq's roughly $4.4bn oil price skimming, then that person should have his diplomatic immunity lifted and be prosecuted. But there is nothing here to be laid at the door of Mr Annan, even though the lobbying activities of his son Kojo, who was still receiving severance payments from a company seeking Iraq's trade after oil-for-food started, will have hurt him.


Well said.

As to my dear conservative acquaintances and their zeal to bash the U.N. - - -

well -- what do you expect from these hordes of uninformed ditto-heads, Hannity hacks, and O'Reilly boot-lickers? When those three serial lying, millionaire pundits comprise one's sole source of news and information, it's quite easy to see why my friends are so stupid.

End of discussion of this subject. I win.