BULLY

"Scour Romney’s record for a single example of real political courage -- a single, solitary instance, however small, where Romney placed principle or substance above his own short- term political interests. Let me know if you find one ... His campaign has been an exercise in feeble appeasement. The only thing he appears to be dedicated to is abasing himself to the hard-right wing of the Republican Party. Consider the way he allowed a foreign-policy spokesman to be drummed out of the campaign simply for being gay ... Romney flunks the character test. He seems incapable of making the hard, sometimes unpopular, choices that are part of the job," - Gerald Rafshoon, former spokesman for president Carter.

Mr. Entitled

At what point does somebody disqualify himself from the Presidency of the United States by nature of his own sense of entitlement?

Evidently, anyone who criticizes predatory capitalistic practices that enrich the amoral few at the expense of the working many is simply envious:



The only times we can talk about income inequality, according to Mitt's very words in this video, is in "quiet rooms." Does he mean quiet backrooms where the real political deals are made, over cigars and cognac? Or quiet, padded rooms where dissenters disappear into?

Credit where credit is due: a SuperPAC supporting Newt Gingrich just released this devastating documentary, featuring real people who lost their jobs when Mitt Romney's Bain Capital took over the companies they worked for and made hundreds of millions in overburdening the companies with debt through to bankruptcy -- heartbreaking human tragedy by people who only envy the lives they had before Mitt:



Here's to hoping Mitt enjoys a quiet room in his La Jolla estate where he retreats after losing the General Election to the sitting President in a landslide.

Fascism Watch: Voter Suppression

Finally, the mainstream media is starting to notice that the GOP is systematically suppressing voting rights. From today's LA Times:

Early voting was reduced from two weeks to one week. Voting on the Sunday before election day was eliminated. College students face new hurdles if they want to vote away from home. And those who register new voters face the threat of fines for procedural errors, prompting the nonpartisan League of Women Voters to suspend voter registration drives and accuse the Legislature of "reverting to Jim Crow-like tactics."

What is happening in Florida is part of a national trend, as election law has become a fierce partisan battleground. In states where Republicans have taken majority control, they have tightened rules for registering new voters, reduced the time for casting ballots and required voters to show photo identification at the polls. The new restrictions were usually adopted on party-line votes and signed by Republican governors.

During Florida's legislative debate on the new law, a Republican state senator argued that it should not be easy or convenient to vote. Voting "is a hard-fought privilege. This is something people died for," said Sen. Michael Bennett of Bradenton, the chamber's president pro tempore. "Why should we make it easier?"

This is their way of undermining democracy in the U.S. Perhaps they feel only landed gentry - male - should have that right...per the original rules in the Constitution? Back when a slave was only 3/5 of a vote?

Seven states — Alabama, Kansas, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin — voted to require registered voters to show photo identification at the polling place. Democratic governors vetoed such bills in five other states.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law estimated that new laws across the nation "could make it significantly harder for more than 5 million eligible voters to cast ballots in 2012." The new restrictions will "fall most heavily on young, minority and low-income voters," the group said.

The Jim Crow Republican Party, with the photo i.d. as poll tax.

If Obama wins this next election, it'll be an even greater victory thanks to these rigs.

The Exploitation Memorial

Jon Stewart nails it oh so well, yet again, another topper:

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God bless America.

The Return of the Dick

Former Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney, the man who was acting President for George W. Bush's first term, the man who has done the most damage to America since the year 2000, is back with his memoir. Don't even think about an Amazon link for this one.

It turns out he's such a continuing asshole that those he smears in the book, including Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice from the same Administration, are calling him out on it. Whatta guy.

Here's the list of questions someone should ask him on the tour. Got to imagine he's an ultimate "get" for The Daily Show. Think he has the guts to go up on Jon Stewart -- and think Stewart would do any better with him than he did with Rumsfeld?

And, by the way, how much had you been drinking when you shot your best friend in the face?

Even better: Did You Tell Scooter Libby To Leak Valerie Plame's Identity As A CIA Agent To The Press?

I Knew It

Michelle Bachmann Revealed To Be Elaborate Joaquin Phoenix Performance Piece

“I also wanted to see just how long I could get away with it. I’m sorry if it spun a bit out of control. I honestly thought I’d get called out after two, maybe three weeks tops. No one is as surprised as I am that people took ‘Michelle Bachmann’ seriously.”

...

“Seriously, I’ve completely run out of ideas for where else I can take this character. It seems there is literally nothing I can sign, do, or say, including making vague death threats, that will cause people to meaningfully question ‘Michelle Bachmann,’” Phoenix said. “I’m releasing her rap album next week. Between that, and this press conference, I imagine this whole social experiment will finally come to an end.”

And the shameless Rick Perry - hoax as well?:

Who else would compare the Civil Right Movement to lifting taxes and regulations on the rich?

Back in Red

Sorry for the vacation break -- had some sign-on issues while I was away. Thanks to all regular readers who were checking, hope the lack of posts did not drive you away forever.

While the News Corp scandal is a blast and there's other interesting news, the Debt Limit Crisis is #1 with a bullet, and unfortunately that bullet is aimed at the heart of America and the global economy. If there was ever a reason to despise tax-pledge false god Grover Norquist or one-track Teabagger thinking, this is it. No matter what Reps. Bachmann or Gohmert might say or actually believe, they are wrong -- there's no way to successfully prioritize government spending under default, and no way that it won't raise interest rates through the room and further decimate the job market. Per a real economist:



As Norm Ornstein says, this group of Tea Partying freshmen Representatives have created, arguably, the Worst Congress Ever (or at least since the Civil War):

That brings us to the 112th Congress. House Republicans are adamant about refusing to compromise with the president, and are able in most instances to make good on the threat. When they are not able to maintain this unity, they are simply unwilling to bring up or pass measures that would lose significant GOP votes and require as many or more Democrats in support. This is a formula for gridlock, or worse. is the Republicans are simply declining to govern.

We have seen problems emerge on more issues than the fiscal issues now before Congress. For instance, the painful effort to find broad bipartisan support for three significant trade agreements that are clearly in America's national interest, including its economic and diplomatic interest (and which first had to overcome substantial Democratic opposition), have been thwarted of late by Republicans' refusal to negotiate with the president over a much more minor issue of implementing trade adjustment assistance.

Political tactics to provoke confrontation, during a time when the permanent campaign reigns supreme and the competition for majorities in both houses is fierce, have combined with the rise of partisan media, one with far more reach and immediacy than the partisan press that thrived in the 19th century. When a phalanx of conservative media outlets, from the Wall Street Journal editorial page to talk radio and blogs, chimes in that breaching America's debt limit would at worst be benign and at best could actually do the country some good, and are joined by presidential candidates like Michele Bachmann and Tim Pawlenty in those messages, it encourages the confrontationalists to ignore the reality that damaging the full faith and credit of the United States will cause long-lasting economic turmoil at home and abroad.

Know Nothingism lives.

Reelected

As the President said, justice has been done. Not that it'll ever bring back those lost to families, friends and our society on September 11, 2001, but now, just four months shy of a decade, the man responsible for the most deadly and destructive attack on our nation is shot dead through the head. It's a huge, overdue victory for the United States of America, for our security, and for peace in the world. It's a monster victory for U.S. military special forces, for U.S. counter-terrorism professionals, and for all of our allies in Pakistan and elsewhere that helped us take out Osama Bin Laden, head of the Al Qaeda terrorism network.

It's also, of course, a very good night for our President, Barack Hussein Obama and his hand-picked national security team:

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Raw politics:

• The President's approval ratings will go through the roof and, after it eventually starts down again, will never be as high during his term. Barring disaster, they should last strong enough through the 2012 election. Imagine how small all the others look now. (Watch for which GOP candidates congratulate President Obama by name in their statements - good job, Gov. Pawlenty - and which don't have the character to do so.) NBC even preempted Donald Trump firing maybe LaToya Jackson the last 15 minutes of Celebrity Apprentice. So much for that candidacy.
  

• America always wants a sheriff as President, from General George Washington to Hollywood cowboy Ronald Reagan. With a more cerebral warrior it can take longer for the public to realize when a guy's for real, i.e. Abraham Lincoln. Obama is now officially America's sheriff, cleaning up the streets.

• Obama has always been underestimated, starting with him Democratic rivals for the nomination, then by the GOP and all the pundits (always), and then by the opponents of Health Care Reform. As I've said the past, our enemies would learn about underestimating Obama as well, and it would go even worst for them that it had for the others. As of tonight, Obama's steel is now no longer an issue. Will Mitch Daniels reconsider running?

• As Andrew Sullivan points out:

• 12.08 am Can I say how deeply moving it is that a man named Barack Hussein Obama gave the order for the operation that killed Osama bin Laden?
  
  The pre-eminent symbol of our the multicultural, multiracial society of the future defeated the pre-eminent symbol of the darkest, bleakest throwback to medieval religious fanaticism. Im not ashamed to use the following language: Good defeated evil. And hope rekindles again.

• Huge celebrations right now outside The White House and at Ground Zero that are going to go on all night, V-J date 2011 for young American adults
  

• With this news, Qaddafi has to be reconsidering his options in Libya, especially after reportedly losing his second-youngest son and several grandchildren in a bombing last night.

• Also, per Sullivan:

• When a man's partner is killed, he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it. And it happens we're in the detective business. Well, when one of your organization gets killed, it's-it's bad business to let the killer get away with it, bad all around, bad for every detective everywhere.

  - Humphrey Bogart, as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon.

• This is a huge victory for the law-enforcement theory of counter-terrorism, rather than the massive violence approach. The Obama scalpel of intelligence and cooperation vs. the big-budget Bush blunderbuss of unilateral war.
  
  In 8 years, Bush couldn't get Osama. In less than 2 1/2, Obama brings his head on a stick.
  
  And the guy Bush did destroy a country to get didn't even attack us.

• What a great movie this is going to make -- all the secrecy, practicing and preparation, one helicopter down with mechanical failure, then a 45 minutes fire fight operation ending with Navy SEALS taking bin Laden's body as a souvenir. Paul Greengrass directing?

• Huge validation for Obama's decision to escalate in Afghanistan, where the operation must have been launched from. I always said that the action in Afghanistan was all about what we needed to do in Pakistan. This should help Obama on the Left.
  

• This is the type of victory that lets America know it is not impotent, that it can do great things, and you may see a corresponding lift in the economy. People spend when they celebrate.

• We picked the right guy to lead the country at the right time. Good job, America.

• The 66th anniversary to the day of the announcement of Adolf Hitler's death. The 8th to the day of Bush's premature Mission Accomplished speech. Nice.
  

• There were no leaks -- the President's announcement surprised everybody. Wow.
  

• Fuck off, birthers.
  

Since we all pay taxes for operations like this, contribute to the national character with our own, and did vote the first black guy into office against all odds back in 2008, this is certainly a victory for all Americans. So congratulations, America. There will always be tough days ahead, whether another attack, or another drop down the environmental disaster ledge, or a family losing a child in the military, or persistent unemployment.

But for the moment, for tonight, we're finally winners again.

Poison Tea

It turns out that a highly experience Republican operative, Sal Russo, is both funding of Tea Party Republican candidates and reaping the big bucks for himself:

Unlike many of the newly energized outsiders who have embraced Tea Party ideals, Mr. Russo, 63, is a longtime Republican operative who got his start as an aide to Ronald Reagan and later raised money and managed media strategy for a string of other politicians, including former Gov. George E. Pataki of New York. His history and spending practices have prompted some former employees and other Tea Party activists to question whether he is committed to, or merely exploiting, their cause.

Mr. Russo’s group, based in California, is now the single biggest independent supporter of Tea Party candidates, raising more than $5.2 million in donations since January 2009, according to federal records. But at least $3 million of that total has since been paid to Mr. Russo’s political consulting firm or to one controlled by his wife, according to federal records.

Yep, those 'baggers are so good with money. That's why Republican Senate nominee for Delaware, Christine "Li'l Sarah" O'Donnell seems to make all her income off of running for office and could be indicted for how she's has misused previous campaign funds for her personal expenses:

Now, the FEC, the Federal Election Commission, allows you to spend money after a campaign to retire debt, but not to add to the debt. And she has lots of debt from 2008, which troubles a lot of people. They think it's hypocritical, because -- because she wants America to spend what it has. But let us show you some of these checks. You can decide for yourself if she should have written these checks from her campaign money. For example, a check for 475 bucks, she labeled it as mileage reimbursement. Remember, this is three months after the campaign is over. This means she drove hundreds of miles and she submitted this with campaign funding.

Also, $157 on a phone bill from Verizon Wireless; by all indications, this is her personal phone. Also, $28 at a gas station -- the gas station in the town where she's originally from -- Moorestown, New Jersey. She still has family there. This is campaign money. There's no campaign going on.

Six hundred dollars for her utility bill paid to Delmarva Power. Also, there are little piddly expenses, but increasing her debt. And these are very telltale. You wouldn't need to spend this for any campaign, let alone a campaign that is not going on anymore.

$19 at a place called the Pike Lanes. The Pike Lanes is a bowling alley. That would pay for about eight games of bowling.

Also $26 for a meal at Ruby Tuesday's restaurant -- campaign money once again.

And then she even used campaign money for a $2.84 charge at Staples. In addition, she paid rent money with her campaign funding.

Maybe that's why O'Donnell cancelled Sunday morning appearances on both CBS' Face the Nation as well as Faux News, where Chris Wallace went to the unusual length of - gasp - criticizing her as well as Bob Schieffer. Or maybe it was her "dabbling" in witchcraft?

How about 'baggin' Republican Senate nominee in Alaska, Joe Miller? Miller has been on the Federal payroll as U.S. Magistrate for half a decade but is touting his Constitutional interpretation of enumerated rights to say that unemployment benefits are unconstitutional -- and refused to answer any questions from, again, Faux News anchor Chris Wallace on what in hell he'd actually do to help all those Americans suffering due to the economic crisis:



It all seems like a witches brew of bad tea to me.

Crazies

Any politician or scam Fox pundit who calls Barack Obama anti-American is at best a cowardly McCarthyite liar, at worst pure evil doing Satan's bidding. That's Christine O'Donnell, Republican Party Senate nominee for The First State, Delaware:



That's today's GOP.

Any two-bit fascist who says that, if elected, he will use his powers as Governor of The Empire State, New York to make suddenly, single targeted, authoritarian use of eminent domain to keep Cordova House from being built, make it a war memorial, and block any buildings of an Islamic tint from any place in NYC that the dust from the World Trade Center bombing reached, is at best a major league reactionary or, at worst, the Devil walking the earth, i.e. the Republican nominee, Carl Paladino:



And any candidate who still thinks Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional at around eighty and forty years down the line and who's platform is basically to end them is at best a buzzkill and at worst Lucifer made Galt, Republican Senatorial nominee in Alaska, lawyer Joe Miller:



or Nevada Republican Senate nominee Sharon Angle:



Or Colorado Senate Republican nominee Ken Buck.

They aren't the GOP, they're the Republican Party on steroids, led by the 2008 Republican Vice Presidential nominee. This is the Party coming home. This is people power in that Party, and it is like the mask ripped off to reveal rubes who have turned the tables. It's hilarious that Karl Rove is feuding with them, because he fed them his red meat and his bosses' red meat every day for eight years and more before that.

There is no moderate Republican Party in this election. Any power they get is power to Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) who could be the next Senate Majority Leader, if the same people that elected Barack Obama let these candidates win.

Because any or all of these candidates could win their races in the November mid-term election. This is serious stuff, threats to the Republic.

If you want to be petulant, if you want to be apathetic, if you don't see that as flawed as it may be, it is a clear choice, and elections are all about choices, then you're being reckless.

Then you're just as crazy as they are.

I Love America, Too

(Now with 50% less snark than yesterday's post.)

The late Verna Oller of Washington State understood the meaning of community:

There are two things about 98-year-old Verna Oller that just about anyone around her neigborhood in Long Beach, Washington can tell you. She was feisty, and she was frugal.

...

Oller never made much money, earning an hourly wage filleting fish until she was in her 70s. She cut her own firewood until she was in her 90s. But Oller was carrying a secret, a big one, and she entrusted the Glenns to keep it. It turned out she was a master investor.

"She went to the library and read Barrons," Guy Glenn said. "She read the Wall Street Journal."

...

The sturdy old lady with no formal education amassed a not-so-small fortune: $4.5 million. It was up over $5 million before the recession. Before she died, she directed Guy Glenn to spend every cent of it, but not on her, on her home town.

"She wants a swimming pool to be built, that was her main goal," he said.

Mission accomplished. Part of Oller's money will go to building the town's very first indoor swimming pool. The pool was important to Oller because as a poor little girl growing up there it frustrated her that kids often had no place to swim even though they lived on the ocean. But the shoreline can be dangerous in the Pacific Northwestern town. Money will also be set aside for scholarships and grants for local teachers.

...

When Oller died, she didn't want a funeral or even an obit. In fact, she didn't want any credit at all.

And then there's this America, always breaking the boundaries of homicidal behavior and language taboos, on the Today show, no less:

Kayla Manson, a 13-year-old Florida girl accused as an accomplice after her boyfriend allegedly attempted to murder her best friend, recalled the text messages that her friend and boyfriend exchanged before he attacked her.

Manson said she did not see the texts where her boyfriend, Wayne Treacy, threatened to kill her best friend, Josie Ratley, but rather only ones in which they called each other names.

Manson said the two text messages she saw were "the one where she calls him a rapist, and she calls him a cunt, I mean the one where he calls her a cunt."

"We just have to be careful with our language, but that's all right, sweetheart," Meredith Vieira said.

Reminds me of the classic Kurt Vonnegut short sci-fi story, "The Big Space Fuck," set in a future where all the words have been exposed, so the last obscenity left is "jizzum."

Thank you, young Kayla Manson.

Hmm. Any relation?

B to the P

So is "top kill" a.k.a. Armageddon underwater going to work? Are there more holes down there than we're seeing? In some ways, the massive damage already inflicted on the Gulf of Mexico and surroundings by what appears to be criminal negligence on the part of British Petroleum is too much to deal with until the hole is plugged...if it ever can be.

Per Philippe Cousteau Jr., the grandson of the legendary Jacques Cousteau, after taking a dive through Gulf waters tainted by both oil and the lethal chemical dispersants, it's a "nightmare" down there. We may lose a species (of whale, no less) thanks to our unquenchable thirst for oil, Dick Cheney-led watering down of regulations, and BP's unmitigated quest for "big and important" profits. Take a look at the ABC News report with Cousteau -- if you have the stomach for it:



For those complaining that the Obama Administration hasn't gotten off the dime, check out this list of actions they've taken. Maybe there's more to do, but at some level they need to be riding BP rather than nationalizing BP's liability. I'd like to see some Tea Party Baggers show they're actually more than identity politics partisans by protesting every BP gas station, U.S. office and even fly over to their home headquarters to show them how America feels about being used as their toilet bowl. They can go protest Halliburton as well, and Dick Cheney at whatever undisclosed location he might be hiding. Then I can give them credit for coherence. More likely, they'll blame Obama.

BP has a terrible reputation within the oil industry. Whatever you may think of big oil, we're addicted to the stuff, and not just in our cars. This PC I'm typing on? There's oil in it. That iPod? iPhone? iPad? And the second iPad you bought for your spouse or kids? Oil. So if we're draining the earth of it's oil and turning it into pollution, at least the companies with the better safety records should be the ones doing it.

Because if you think this is the last time BP is going to have spillage problems...welcome to Alaska.

From the Inside Out

According to the creators of the new SyFy show, Caprica, the premise of the series is that Caprica is beautiful and technologically advanced on the outside, but completely corrupt to the core on the inside.

Think maybe that might be a comment on our times?

I just watched The Daily Show report on how banks are jacking up credit card fees right and left, in advance of new regulations going into effect. They can even charge you for underutilizing your credit card -- charging you for not buying things!

Good luck to Obama attempts to reform Wall Street, which is clearly rotten on psychotic profiteering and won't change their ways without a deathmatch loss.

And I just watched the moron who made a name for himself by moronic behavior, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) repeating over and over again that we have the best health care system in the world, when that is demonstrably false. (Credit to Dylan Rattigan for calling him out.) Meanwhile the GOP is playing pouty games over the possibility that we actually get comprehensive reform, saying instead there should be either no real reform or, worse, piecemeal reform -- the kind that doesn't work because it doesn't address all the interrelated elements of the existing system.

Hey, but the health insurance companies are currently -- I kid you not -- exempt from anti-trust laws! So we must have the best system!

Then we've got red states going nuts expanding gun rights for nuts, playing on the fear that Obama will someone take their guns away -- even though he doesn't talk about the issue and has neither proposed nor offered support for any new gun restricting legislation. This, as more guns go off in Littleton, CO schools.

And can you believe that the U.S. military is riddled with private mercenaries, i.e. armed contractors? Good luck to House Dems trying to phase them out -- when the Republicans in the Senate have bottled up 290, count 'em, 290 pieces of legislation passed by the House.

Per BAGnewsNotes, you just can't deal with these people. It's all about money, that and inability to synthesize new information and grow with it. It's a recipe for disaster for America's future, and that includes any Democratic enablers.

It'll leave us to continue rotting from the inside out.

Lieberdouche

Step back. Has their ever been a more vile, self-centered politician? What is it about his unique combination of sanctimoniousness, opportunism and obstructionism that makes him a leader in his category?

Take Notice

Here's some of the billboards up in Missouri calling for armed insurrection against our nation's current democratically-elected Democratic-led federal government. At no time during the Cheney-Bush Presidency, not once despite all the intense antipathy so many of us Americans felt towards George W., did I ever see a public billboard, paid or owned by some company, lobbyist, media outlet or individual, that advocated armed insurrection if we didn't start getting our way.

This blog has been honest about its concern for the first even partially African-American President's health and the Becks and Bachmans inciting violence towards him, the droning dehumanization, just as Bill O'Reilly emotionally enabled thinking like the assassin of Dr. George Tiller on a Sunday morning in a church in front of the doctor's wife.

Arianna's dead right, so to speak:

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That wingnut world isn't fun, it's dangerous, proven lethal throughout history. At least sometimes they turn on themselves. Because no matter what the agenda-driven rightwing or copy-cat mainstream media tells you, people don't like Liz Cheney's ideas, and there is consensus that Obama was right again, say, on the stimulus.

And with water now discovered, there is hope of a lunar colony.

Oh, and there will be a bong shortage this Xmas.

The Racist LaRouchies Descend

Saturday in Santa Monica had me running across two separate Lyndon LaRouche activists with Obama-as-Hitler posters hanging from their tables. I told them in no uncertain terms how filthy I found their posters, how offended I was that my kids would see them, and they loved it. They love getting argued with and yelled at. They are that smug.

A couple we know complained at one table, in front of Whole Foods, where the owner is already being tagged as perilously close in philosophy to these LaRouchies, and as she is Chinese-American and he's a naturalized citizen originally from England, they were each told by LaRouche supporters to "go back to their own country." Um, that would be this one.

So the LaRouchies reveal themselves, plain and simple, as racists. LaRouche himself is a known vile anti-Semite (he uses "British" often to code it) and gay-hater. And with Obama he's gone wild with the reverse-thinking comparisons to Hitler. As in, Americans must "quickly and suddenly change the behavior of this president ... for no lesser reason than that your sister might not end up in somebody's gas oven".

His brother-in-spirit is the Glen Beck, who's website has anti-Semitic and racist "skits." It's time to call bullsh*t on these people for their reactionary ways, the Fox News anti-Americanism. I don't know if this is the dying gasp of the deep dark racist America, the spiritual if not literal descendants of slaveowners, union-busters, Indian slaughterers, lynchers and Jew-killers, or if we'll always have them here in some force.

But America is changing, and my interactions yesterday make it clear that these scumbags want anger, want fear, want blood for it.

Sleight of Hand

Once upon a time a single player health plan for America was at least an option for discussion. Now insurance industry shill Sen. Max Baucus (R-MT) and his Republican buddies are cutting out a public health insurance option that competes side-by-side with for-profit private plans:

Officials say that a bipartisan group in the Senate is edging closer to a health care compromise that omits a government insurance option that President Barack Obama favors. Nor is it expected to require businesses to offer coverage to their employees.

Whatever happened to the moral question?

The Secret

Vice President Richard Bruce Cheney a.k.a. The Grand Vizier had at least one secret group inside the CIA doing his bidding. It now appears that he personally ordered them to lie to Congress about their activities. And while the cover story seems to be a revelation that it was an anti-Al Qaeda assassination ring, that's not exactly as scandalous as this conjecture, should it turn out to be true:

But two former ranking CIA officials have told TIME that there's another equally plausible possibility: The program could have required the Agency to spy on Americans. Domestic surveillance is outside the CIA's purview -– it's usually the FBI's job – and it's easy to see why Cheney would have wanted to keep it from Congress.

Both officials say they were never told what was in the program, and that they're only making calculated guesses. But their theory gibes with other reports, quoting ex-CIA officials, that say the program had to do with intelligence collection, not assassinations.

I've always thought that the warrantless wiretapping was actually political ops, ideally for Karl Rove's perusal. After all, Cheney was in Richard Nixon's Watergate White House and never once admitted that there was anything wrong with the illegal eavesdropping -- only that Nixon should have stonewalled all the way. And it was on Nixon's crime-ridden reelection campaign that young Rove made his bones as a dirty trickster.

If there's any justice, let's get to the bottom of it and air it out for all to see.

If there's any justice, Cheney in the docket.

Here's Their Man

Scott Roeder was insane precisely because of how completely his whole existence became being against a woman's right to choose. As the guy who believed all of the Bill O'Reilly and Randall Terry hate speech, he was by definition insane:

Roeder's family life began unraveling more than a decade ago when he got involved with anti-government groups, and then became "very religious in an Old Testament, eye-for-an-eye way," his former wife, Lindsey Roeder, told The Associated Press.

"The anti-tax stuff came first, and then it grew and grew. He became very anti-abortion," said Lindsey Roeder, who was married to Scott Roeder for 10 years but "strongly disagrees with his beliefs.

"That's all he cared about is anti-abortion," she said.

Those noble anti-tax teabaggers. Hotbed of crazy and violent.



Doctor killer Roeder had been building towards this for awhile, using the casual epithets of those enjoying the rapture of their totalitarian hatred:

Arriving for an early shift around sunrise, a nurse at the Kansas City clinic, Aid for Women, noticed the man trying to pour super glue into a lock on the back door, another clinic worker said. Spooked, the man fled, but not before the nurse noted his license plate number, which the authorities later linked to Mr. Roeder.

The man seemed strident, the clinic worker said, and repeated phrases like “baby killer.”

Baby killer. By his standards. Repeated, like the simpleminded. The desired endpoint of the repetition of that phrase by Terry and O'Reilly, which in the media always means deliberate branding. The brand worked, they got some action finally, sated for a moment, their message reached and filled up a murder vessel for Bill O'Reilly, with Terry's Operation Rescue in touch with Roeder on the ground.

Premeditated:

In the days before Dr. Tiller’s death, Mr. Roeder’s behavior seemed erratic in other ways. He invited his 22-year-old son to dinner and a movie on Friday night, something unusual for Mr. Roeder, according to his former wife, Lindsey Roeder. Ms. Roeder said he usually rested on the Sabbath beginning Friday at dusk, and that he rarely made outings of any sort with his son, with whom he saw “Star Trek.”

“He really wanted to prolong the evening with dinner and ice cream,” said Ms. Roeder, who lives in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park. “Looking back, I think it was a way of saying goodbye to his son.”

Sorry Dr. Tiller didn't get that opportunity with his family.

Instead the anti-choice zealots left this outside Tiller's office -- on Monday, the day after one of theirs murdered him:


There's insensitive.

Then there's sick.

American Terrorists and their Enablers

My father was an OB-GYN and on quite a number of occasions performed abortions for women who were anti-choice...except when it came to themselves. He would ask how they voted on the issue and the incidence of hypocrisy was high. They had legitimate reasons. Like not being able to financially handle a sixth child. Being too old to have to go back to dealing with a baby. For their emotional health.

I write this because the rightwing voices calling the assassinated Dr. George Tiller so many names are at fault in his death for the very use of the word, "abortionist." Obstetricians who perform abortions are doctors, plain and simple, with patients who come to them with private, often agonizing decisions. The American terrorist who murdered Dr. Tiller in his place of worship today, where he was a church usher, in front of his wife who sang in the choir, could just as easily killed my father.

My father acted under the law, which in New York State limited abortion to the first trimester except in certain cases threatening the life of the mother. But what if he did perform a third trimester operation and he had vicious enabler Bill O'Reilly either purposely or irresponsibly goading the violent-minded by branding him a "baby killer" over 28 episodes of his show?

I look forward to the negligence lawsuit again O'Reilly.

Dr. Tiller wasn't bloodlusting for abortions; he actually refused to perform them when spurious, and then there are many women who are forever grateful that he helped them late in their pregnancies when the so-called "pro-life" alternative was actually greater horror.

Here's the man:



Yep, survived an earlier assassination attempt. And those most opposed to female reproductive freedom appear the least saddened. Take Randall Terry, messianic leader of the egregious Operation Rescue, with what can't really be called condolences:

"George Tiller was a mass-murderer. We grieve for him that he did not have time to properly prepare his soul to face God. I am more concerned that the Obama Administration will use Tiller's killing to intimidate pro-lifers into surrendering our most effective rhetoric and actions. Abortion is still murder. And we still must call abortion by its proper name; murder."

After President Obama's wise bridge-building statement about coming together to reduce abortions in his Notre Dame speech, one can only hope that he brings the hammer down, since Terry and the group he leads are equally if not more guilty than O'Reilly in inciting this act of violence against Dr. Tiller:

The following words are used to describe George Tiller in the Operation Rescue video posted here: "corrupt, alcoholic, drug addict, blasphemer, liar, defiler, butcher, perverse, foul, evil, unethical, murderer, malicious." It concludes: "You may be the difference between life and death for a child."

The video, full of grotesque superimpositions, is foul and disturbing to watch -- far from holy, if that's what supposedly drives these people. What we know about he suspect under arrest, Scott P. Roeder, is that he mimicked this violent hate speech in his own web postings:

Scott Roeder
Mon September 03, 2007, 09:49:40

It seems as though what is happening in Kansas could be compared to the “lawlessness” which is spoken of in the Bible. Tiller is the concentration camp “Mengele” of our day and needs to be stopped before he and those who protect him bring judgement upon our nation.

Yep, Scott has supported killing doctors performing abortions for a long time:

"I know that he believed in justifiable homicide," said Regina Dinwiddie, a Kansas City anti-abortion activist who made headlines in 1995 when she was ordered by a federal judge to stop using a bullhorn within 500 feet of any abortion clinic. "I know he very strongly believed that abortion was murder and that you ought to defend the little ones, both born and unborn."

Dinwiddie said she met Roeder while picketing outside the Kansas City Planned Parenthood clinic in 1996. Roeder walked into the clinic and asked to see the doctor, Robert Crist, she said.

"Robert Crist came out and he stared at him for approximately 45 seconds," she said. "Then he (Roeder) said, 'I've seen you now.' Then he turned his back and walked away, and they were scared to death. On the way out, he gave me a great big hug and he said, 'I've seen you in the newspaper. I just love what you're doing.'^"

Roeder also was a subscriber to Prayer and Action News, a magazine that advocated the justifiable homicide position, said publisher Dave Leach, an anti-abortion activist from Des Moines, Iowa.

And is also a member of the "Freemen", which is where it gets even scarier:

Roeder, who in the 1990s was a manufacturing assemblyman, also was involved in the "Freemen" movement.

"Freemen" was a term adopted by those who claimed sovereignty from government jurisdiction and operated under their own legal system, which they called common-law courts. Adherents declared themselves exempt from laws, regulations and taxes and often filed liens against judges, prosecutors and others, claiming that money was owed to them as compensation.

In April 1996, Roeder was arrested in Topeka after Shawnee County sheriff's deputies stopped him for not having a proper license plate. In his car, officers said they found ammunition, a blasting cap, a fuse cord, a one-pound can of gunpowder and two 9-volt batteries, with one connected to a switch that could have been used to trigger a bomb.

Jim Jimerson, supervisor of the Kansas City ATF's bomb and arson unit, worked on the case.

"There wasn't enough there to blow up a building,'' Jimerson said at the time, ``but it could make several powerful pipe bombs...There was definitely enough there to kill somebody.''

Now's where you need to read about the metastasizing of the American terrorist movement:

More and more, anti-abortion extremists, white supremacist groups and the conspiracy-minded "Patriot" movement have come to share the same enemies list. Many in these previously separate movements agree that everything smacking of "one-worldism" — the Olympics, the United Nations and any other global agency — is part of a massive plot to subject Americans to tyranny.

Activists in all three movements describe homosexuals as "sodomites," people who deserve capital punishment. And in the latest development, many of those involved in these groups are bitterly attacking abortion.

"Eric Rudolph is symbolic of this new merger," says Dallas Blanchard, chairman of the University of West Florida's sociology department in Pensacola. "Militia types have shown more and more interest in the abortion issue, while anti-abortionists are becoming more and more militant and allying themselves with the militia movement."

Since the early 1990s, Patriot and white supremacist groups have used mainstream issues like gun control and land and environmental regulation to draw people into their organizations. Now, they are taking up the banner of fighting abortion.

America's Invisible Empire, a Klan group, describes abortion as "America's greatest crime." White Aryan Resistance, another white supremacist group, calls for "future Aryan justice" for abortionists — except in the case of non-white abortions. Leaders of the U.S. Taxpayers Party, a Patriot-linked group, have called for the death penalty for abortion doctors and even their patients.

Sound like logic and exhortation relatively similar to that of an anti-tax television extremist like, say, Glenn Beck?:

Beck literally advises his audience not to worry about the consequences:

"Still, most tax evaders don't end up in jail. [...] Let's just say a million people don't pay - not because they're cheap - but because they believe the principles that we were founded on have been violated. And they think this is wrong and they try to do something that they think is the only thing they can."

Then Beck tells them to...

"Put aside the fact America's federal, state, and local prisons are already overcrowded. They are packed 36% beyond their rated capacity. Overcrowded to the maximum. [...] All in all, it's probably not worth the government's time to toss you in jail."

Since I believe the entire "teabagging" mini-movement, as goaded and abetted by Fox News, has violent, seditionist and racist undercurrents, I'm hoping that Al Giordano is right and this murder actually works against these rightwing interests. My fear is that we're only seeing the beginning, which will be fueled as well by the economic depression, leading to more violence from those who traditionally kill when Republicans lose the Presidency.

The main target, of course, is the man of color at the top. And as I've said before, if anything happens to that leader or any member of his family, then it's those like Beck, who incites his viewers with violent imagery like this, who must be held accountable.

I say let's not wait until tragedy strikes to hold them accountable.

Let it begin now.