Irregular Times Diaries: Unfit Discussion

If there is a God up there, watching us all, he is retching. The Los Angeles Times talked to a Marine photographer who saw the aftermath of an American massacre in Iraq:

“They ranged from little babies to adult males and females,” Lance Cpl. Roel Ryan Briones of Hanford, Calif., told a reporter for The Times. “I’ll never be able to get that out of my head. I can still smell the blood. This left something in my head and heart.” Briones said he took digital photographs of the victims that he later erased, assuming that they had been downloaded.

Don’t we get it as a people? Don’t we learn anything?

And yes, I mean as a people. We are responsible. You are responsible. This is a representative government that took us to war. This is a government that took us to war with majority support. Supermajority support. I remember talking to my brother in law as the war started, and he justified the whole thing by saying “we have to go over there and kill all of them before they kill all of us.” Them. Us. Go ahead, we said. Do it. Go, go, go! I remember people selling “Bomb Iraq. Then Bomb France” stickers. Ha ha ha ha ha! What funniness! Do you remember the time? How many people thought this was just such a great idea? What a lark! Wheeeee! Let’s go to war!

And then this happens. I WILL NOT be one of the people who blames this on the marines in Iraq. OK, yes, well, I do blame those particular Marines who did it, obviously. But I guess what I mean is that I cannot come out of reading this horrific story of blowing babies’ brains out and come to the conclusion that all soldiers are culpable. I’m not going to go spit on returning soldiers and call them baby killers. Because you know what? You put me in that situation, and I can say from the comfort of my warm den in the USA that I would never do it, but you know what? I bet I would. I bet if you sent me to Iraq again and again and again and you kept those Iraqis bombing me and my friends at weird, bizarre intervals, and NOBODY could tell me when the whole shit-stained mess was going to end, I BET I WOULD END UP DOING CRAZY, HORRIBLE SHIT TOO. That’s what happens to humans when you put them to war. War is hell. We have turned Iraq into hell. All the Iraqis are living in hell. We are sending hundreds of thousands of young Americans to hell. And hell is made by what people in hell do to each other.

So if you supported this war in the first place, I not only don’t want to hear your sanctimonious cries about how superior you are to the Marines, or the Iraqis, or to some “hand-wringing liberal” — I want to see YOU take responsibility as an American for this SICK-ASS WAR that KILLS INNOCENT BABIES! THEY WERE GODDAMNED BABIES! PUT THAT IN YOUR GODDAMNED HEAD AND KEEP IT THERE!

If you supported going into Iraq, the blood of those INNOCENT BABIES is on your hands.

Dear God, I think I’m going to be sick.

Can I ask a favor? Next time some moron in the White House tries to tell you that declaring an unnecessary war is a good idea, don’t wave your little Chinese-produced American flag, alright? Shout out loud: FUCK, NO! Then IMPEACH THE BASTARD.

“They ranged from little babies to adult males and females. I’ll never be able to get that out of my head. I can still smell the blood. This left something in my head and heart.”

– Lance Corporal Roel Ryan Briones, talking about the victims of the Haditha massacre by US Marines

Now you’ve got it straight from a Marine: Babies were killed by US Marines at Haditha. Lance Corporal Briones had to take photographs of it all, and clean up the “mess”. That mess included a little girl whose “head was blown off and her brain splattered on his boots”. They don’t put that sort of image into the Marine Corps recruiting posters.

So, where are the Pro-Life demonstrators? Why aren’t they protesting this massacre?

Oh, that’s right. They’re too busy engaging in anti-gay protests at the funerals of American soldiers.

Golly, that makes the right wing look bad. So, the President of the United States just signed a new law banning such demonstrations, even though the law is plainly unconstitutional, violating the right to free speech.

It was an odd choice for President Bush, who has refused to attend the funerals of the soldiers he sent off to their death to find weapons of mass destruction that never existed.

No sense to any of it.

I don’t get it. A Congressman is videotaped committing a crime, betraying his constituents by accepting a $100,000 bribe. In order to obtain additional evidence, with a search warrant, police search his office on Capitol Hill. What’s the big deal?

Representative Bill Jefferson, Speaker Dennis Hastert, and practically everyone else in Congress is outraged. They say that the search violates the Separation of Powers outlined in the Constitution.

Like hell it does!

Tell me where it says in the Constitution that members of Congress are above the law. Where is that?

It isn’t there, you congressional jackasses! The Executve Branch and Legislative Branch have separate powers, not mutually exclusive powers! Congress can impeach the President, and the President, through groups like the FBI, can investigate criminal wrongdoing by members of Congress. The search conducted this week is an example of how things are supposed to work, you dimwits!

William Jefferson committed a crime, pure and simple. He was treated just as you and I would be treated, pure and simple.

Now, tell me why those members of Congress are not at all outraged when the President conducts illegal searches against tens of millions of Americans without the warrants that are specifically required by the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Tell me. Come on, someone tell me, damn it!

Gas prices coming to an all time high at 2.99+ (US) a gallon. However the gov’t can’t seem to understand why there is such a problem. “The evidence collected in this investigation indicated that firms behaved competitively,” the commission said.
The real problem is that minimum wage is 5.35 (although youend up taking a little over $5 after taxes.) How can America afford to maintain their lives above the poverty level, when we cannot afford to buy the gas to take us to work to earn the pennies that pay for our apt’s and food.
The solution? To become less dependent on our foreign oil. Which of course every one wants to say is immpossible, however perhaps the answer lies with Brazil. They have switched their vehicles to methane gas, Ford too has switched quite a few vehicles to the flexy fuel. We could also do to take the land back from the alaskan Indians and start drilling for oil.. I mean is anyone going to be super suprised if we take more land from the Indian, haven’t we been doing it since the founding fathers? really Americe needs to stop waiting for others to solve our problems!
Just solve your own damn problems..

Do you ever think about cows? I do. Let’s see what cows can teach us about politics.

LIBERAL
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Instead of giving your neighbor one of your cows, you write to
your congressman, demanding that he pass legislation for more
government programs to help your neighbor get a cow.
You hold a concert to raise awareness for the cow-lessness.
Barbara Streisand sings for the cow-less, who couldn’t attend
because ticket prices are so expensive that only people with 3
or 4 cows can afford to attend. You wear a ribbon that signifies that
you care about cow-less people, even though you really haven’t done
anything to help them at all.

CONSERVATIVE
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So?

SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.
You cram four cows into the space for one and get more cows.
Cows get sick –hey, pump ‘em full of antibiotics and you save money.
Feed them ground-up sheep brains and you save more.
Fatten them fast on growth hormone, then butcher quick before they die.
Deny any link between sick consumers and your practices.
Hire spin artists to dismiss Mad Cow disease.

DEMOCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
The government taxes you to the point you have to sell both to
support a man in a foreign country who has only one cow,
which was a gift from your government.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
The government takes them both, shoots one, milks the other,
pays you for the milk, and then pours the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd
one. You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows.
You are surprised when one cow drops dead.
You spin an announcement to the analysts
stating you have down sized and are reducing expenses.
Your stock goes up.

FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary
cow and produce twenty times the milk. They learn to travel on
unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer,
give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour.
Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don’t know where they are.
While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have four cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have eight cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really
have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don’t milk them because you cannot touch any creature’s
private parts.
Then you kill them and claim a US bomb blew them up while they
were in the hospital.

IRAQI CORPORATION
You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send radio tapes of their mooing.

POLISH CORPORATION
You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

CALIFORNIAN
You have a cow and a bull.
The bull is depressed.
It has spent its life living a lie.
It goes away for two weeks.
It comes back after a taxpayer-paid sex-change operation.
You now have two cows.
One makes milk; the other doesn’t.
You try to sell the transgender cow.
Its lawyer sues you for discrimination.
You lose in court.
You sell the milk-generating cow to pay the damages.
You now have one rich, transgender, non-milk-producing cow.
You change your business to beef.
PETA pickets your farm.
Jesse Jackson makes a speech in your driveway.
Cruz Bustamante calls for higher farm taxes to help “working cows.”
Hillary Clinton calls for the nationalization of 1/7TH of your farm
“for the children.”
Gray Davis signs a law giving your farm to Mexico.
The L.A. Times quotes five anonymous cows claiming you groped
their teats.
You declare bankruptcy and shut down all operations.
The cow starves to death.
The L.A. Times’ analysis shows your business failure is Bush’s fault.

DICTATORSHIP
You have two cows.
The government takes both and shoots you.

ENVIRONMENTALISM
You have two cows.
The government bans you from milking or killing them.

FEMINISM
You have two cows.
They get married and adopt a veal calf.

FEUDALISM
You have two cows.
Your lord takes some of the milk.

TOTALITARIANISM
You have two cows.
The government takes them and denies they ever existed.
Milk is banned.

PURE COMMUNISM
You have two cows.
Your neighbors help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM
You have two cows.
You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

FASCISM
You have two cows.
Give the milk to the government.

PURE FASCISM
You have two cows.
The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

NAZISM
The government shoots you, takes the cows and feeds one to the army and the other to the police.

ANARCHISM
Keep the cows.
Steal a few more cows.

ANARCHY
You have two cows.
Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to kill you and take the cows.

CONSERVATISM
Milk the cows, enbalm the cows, freeze the milk, nuke the cows to keep from spreading the disease.
Phase out over five years the amount of milk you’re required to give to the government.

LIBERALISM
Give the milk back to the cows.
Let them escape.
Put the cows on the Voter Registration list.

LIBERTARIANISM
Milk the cows and keep it for yourself; hope the populace can find milk elsewhere.

MILITIAISM
Start shooting if they come for your cows.

MILITARIANISM
You have two cows.
The government takes both and drafts you.

PURE DEMOCRACY
You have two cows.
Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.

AMERICAN DEMOCRACY
The government promises to give you two cows if you vote for it. After the election, the president is impeached for speculating in cow futures.
The press dubs the affair “Cowgate”.

BRITISH DEMOCRACY
You have two cows.
You feed them sheeps’ brains and they go mad.
The government doesn’t do anything.

REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY
You have two cows.
Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

SINGAPOREAN DEMOCRACY
You have two cows.
The government fines you for keeping two unlicensed farm animals in an apartment.

SURREALISM
You have two giraffes.
The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
You are associated with (the concept of “ownership” is a symbol of the phallocentric, war-mongering, intolerant past) two differently-aged (but no less valuable to society) bovines of non-specified gender.

COUNTER CULTURE
Wow, dude, there’s like… these two cows, man. You got to have some of this milk!

Yesterday, the United States Senate joined the House of Representatives in voting for legislation that makes English the only official language of the United States of America, and authorizes the denial of government services to anyone, even American citizens, who do not speak English.

This is not just nationalism. It is hateful nationalism. It is nationalism fueled by ethnic-based hatred.

There is no real crisis in immigration. There is no real problem with people choosing what language they want to speak.

The real crisis is hatred. Our government is now encouraging a gigantic wave anti-Hispanic hatred. Watch out! When the truth about the war and about the programs to spy on us citizens gets too much for the government to handle, they come out with a new campaign of hate. Most Americans seem to be loving it.

Hispanics are the new scapegoats in George W. Bush’s War on Terror. We’re told to fear the Hispanics, to hate them for not surrendering their own culture to join ours, and so the Republicans, with some significant help from the Democrats, are now beginning to say that it is the Hispanics who are the real danger to America, and that if only it weren’t for the Hispanics here, speaking their dirty Spanish language, America could be great once again. So, they propose a series of measures to purge America of Hispanic influence, to make America ethically pure once again…

Does this not seem familiar to anybody here? Come on! The Hispanics are beginning to play the same role for our right wing government that the Jews played for the Nazis. The White House and Congress are making Hispanics the ethnic scapegoat, the group to blame for everything that goes wrong, and they must be purged, purged, purged…

We need to stop this anti-Hispanic campaign of hate!

America is descending into right wing nationalist fascism. Pay attention!

We have government spies used against us. We have the use of war as a political tool to create unity behind our leaders. We have the military being used within our borders for law enforcement. We have the special powers for corporations beloved in fascism. We have ethnic-based hatred, and the beginning of cultural purges. We have our own leaders telling us that we need to give up some of our freedoms for the sake of the Homeland.

Wake up, America! Can’t you see what’s happening?

This is history repeating itself. Don’t just watch it. Push back, damn it! Push back hard.

You all probably know me, at least by name. I’m God and I’m going to borrow Damen’s account for a little while. I know this goes against my usual method of butting out of humanity’s business (after the New Testament, of course. I was a pissed off old bastard way back when) but fuck it, I’m God and I’ll do whatever the hell I want.

I just want to clear a few things up tonight. First off, I did not talk to Pat Robertson. He heard a voice in his head telling him that if he puts his fingers to his scalp and squints really hard he’ll look like a gypsy and get money. What do you know, but it worked. If I were going to tell anyone My plans for the human race, who in their right mind would think I’d tell a doofus like Pat Robertson?

Secondly, Pat Robertson is not one of my children. He sold his soul to Lucifer back when he was 14 to clear up his pimples and for a lay from Lilith. The devil cleared up the acne for an hour, but Lilith wouldn’t go near him. Someone tell me why I kicked her out of Eden again? That girl’s got brains and standards.

Now, for those of you who live in Virginia, I’m sorry I sent that hurricane your way. I was just getting really pissed at Patty and I kinda went Old Testament on his ass. Back in the day I could have got him with that hurricane or maybe a lightning bolt but I threw my arm out when at the Holy Baseball game. I tried to trick Chronus with a sliding curve and pulled a muscle. I’ve never been able to send My wrath exactly where I want it since then. And to make matters worse, Chronus ended up hitting the winning home run anyway.

Also, I wanted everyone to know that F.G. Fitzer was right and to look out for storks with their tongues hanging out of their beaks.

~ God

P.S. I am not infallible and I don’t have a personal hand in creating every human on earth. If I did, do you honestly think I would create George Bush?

So, the big day came in here Oregon this week, and as usual, the institutional Democrats won the contest. Ted Kulongoski has been widely recognized as an ineffective governor, by Democrats and Republicans alike. Yet, what did the the Democratic Party establishment in Oregon do? They stood like stiff wooden planks right by Kulongoski, and used their resources to make sure that he got a victory in the primary on Tuesday.

That’s the way things go, I guess, but there is still one candidate in the race who has the ideals of progressives truly at heart. Joe Keating is running for Governor of Oregon as a member of the Pacific Green Party.

Joe Keating has real guts. He’s calling for Ted Kulongoski to recall the Oregon National Guard out of the Iraq War, and back home where it belongs. That takes real courage, so Joe Keating has my vote.

As for those establishment Democrats who tell me that my vote for Keating is a waste, I say screw them! Screw them! My freedom to choose how to cast my own vote for myself is never a waste.

Senator John Kerry came out quickly with a response last night to George W. Bush’s plan to put the American military into a non-emergency law enforcement role within the United States, along the border with Mexico:

“This is a moment when the far right is horribly wrong and leadership is required to set a course for common sense. We need a comprehensive answer to immigration that includes tightening border security, but putting another burden on the backs of the National Guard troops who are serving their second tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan isn’t the right answer. The National Guard which has borne the burden of a broken policy in Iraq shouldn’t have to bear the burden of an incomplete immigration policy. The right answer is to listen to the 9/11 Commission and put the border patrol agents we need right there on the border. It won’t satisfy the right wing, but it’s the right policy.

That’s why I’m introducing a plan to put an additional 1,000 additional Border Patrol agents on the border next year, plus more than100 helicopters and 250 more power boats to secure our borders.

We know the problem and we know the solution. Rather than try and rescue his poll numbers, President Bush can rescue good immigration policy from the right wing that’s exploited it, and he can provide presidential leadership that’s humane, realistic and responsible.”

I’m not sure what to think of John Kerry’s critique and counterproposal. Not militarizing the border is a good idea. Bush’s use of the military within the United States for law enforcement purposes looks frighteningly like a shadow of martial law. But do we really need the additional 1,000 border patrol agents when they’re already having trouble recruiting? After all, there’s not much indication that there are more illegal immigrants now than there have been in recent years. This whole issue seems like an artificial crisis developed just in time for congressional elections this year.

So, what are we to make of John Kerry’s statement?

I recently posted an article on communism and socialism and one of the recent visitors to this website left a comment in that post.

In response to one of Comrade Stalin‘s flippant remarks in which he has to say

Our Peoples Health care will make sure you could see a doctor Free.
(Of course doctors will receive a Government salary set by me, so
can’t say about quality).

This is another argument I always see against communism and by extension, universal healthcare. However what these people fail to see is that all it would take to ensure quality healthcare for everyone in the USA (yes, that includes you, Bill Gates), is to just take maybe five or ten percent from the military budget. A few billion here and there and everyone can have a decent level of healthcare. And, quite frankly, I think healthcare should be available to everyone, not just those who can afford it.

And now I foresee people screaming at me “If we reduce the military funding we won’t be able to stop the axis of evil!” Bullshit. We already spend more money on the military than the rest of the planet combined, so a few billion ain’t really gonna make much of a difference. Shit, if we cut the military spending by half we could solve all of our domestic problems and most of the problems of the rest of the world. But no, the Navy has to have their new Super Carriers, the Airforce has to get it’s next squadron of F-22s, the Marines just can’t survive without their XM8s and XM-29s and gods forbid the Army has to give up it’s next batch of Abrams tanks and Apache helicopters! Why, without these things, we can’t fight the evil doers! Want to see how utterly fucked up the military budget is? Take a look here.

You honestly telling me that without a fraction of that we can’t fight the evil doers and ensure a standard of medical care? Are you fucking insane?

Never mind that the trillions of dollars we’ve spent on a pointless war could have funded a fucking transatlantic tunnel from New York to England. For the price of the Iraq war, we could have had fucking quality healthcare, funding for cancer research, planned parenthood, AIDS research, as well as being able to feed all the starving children. Yes, I’m going to throw out the christian fundamental belly-achin’ when they see something they don’t like “WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN!?” Are these people really telling me that they would rather give the military bottomless funds in the exchange for the illusion of security (a huge advanced army didn’t stop some loons from flying themselves and civilians into those buildings, did it?) rather than give their kids the very real security of healthcare when they need it? When I see christian fundamentalists bitchin’ about homosexuality and sex in the media and start screaming WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN! yet remain silent when the proposal for universal medical care is shot down in congress I have to clench my teeth to keep from screaming at the ceiling because of these sexually repressed homophobes. According to these people, they’d rather let the children die of a preventable illness because they can’t afford the shot but god forbid these youngsters see a couple of dudes swapping saliva!

People say that universal medical care paid for by the government won’t be of the best quality, then tell me why fucking Cuba has a medical and education system that’s second to none? Why is it that most of the civilized world will provide healthcare to it’s citizens free of charge while the USA tells it’s citizens to go die in the gutter. Tell me why the USA has a oh-so-much better system than Cuba, the UK, Canada, etc, etc, etc. Tell me why it’s better to let insurance decide which life-saving treatments it will pay for but not others? Why is Viagra covered in insurance, but not abortion or heart transplants? Yeah, great system of ours. The best of quality in healthcare…but only if you can afford it, otherwise we just have to stabilize you, then boot you out and bill you $50 bucks for an aspirin.

Tell me all of that and tell me against why communism is so bad and capitalism is so great.

~ Damen