Forget the political ideology, the oil, the money and the all the sorryass excuses for starting this debacle in Iraq, just look at the ground. The article below beat out a few others with much the same stories but lower “kill numbers”; one right after another, day in and day out. This one really takes the cake.
250 Are Killed in Major Iraq Battle (excerpt NYT 1/29/2007)
The precise affiliation of the militants was unclear. Asad Abu Ghalal, the governor of Najaf Province, said the fighters in the orchard were Iraqi and foreign, some wearing the brown, white and maroon regalia of Pakistani and Afghan fighters. He said they had come to assassinate Shiite clerics and attack religious convoys that were gathering in Najaf, one of Shiite Islam’s holiest cities, and other southern cities for Ashura, a Shiite holiday that starts Monday night. Mr. Ghalal said the fighters called themselves the Soldiers of Heaven, and seemed to be part of a wider Sunni effort to disrupt Ashura, which marks the seventh-century death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussein. But two senior Shiite clerics said the gunmen were part of a Shiite splinter group that Saddam Hussein helped build in the 1990s to compete with followers of the venerated Shiite religious leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. They said the group, calling itself the Mehwadiya, was loyal to Ahmad bin al-Hassan al-Basri, an Iraqi cleric who had a falling out with Muhammad Bakr al-Sadr — father-in-law of the Shiite leader Moktada al-Sadr — in Hawza, a revered Shiite seminary in Najaf.
So, are you now clear on who doesn’t like who, why they don’t and what’s to be done about it? I am no rocket scientist, but as I sat here four years ago - embarrassed to be an American - watching the Awe and Destruction of Baghdad, that same article was already running through my head. I even predicted public hangings and heads rolling on the ground. I saw a clip of 50 Iraqi women dressed head to toe in black with narrow slits for their eyes - so they are at least allowed to see - with their arms raised making high shrieking Curly noises - whoopwhoopwhoopwhooopwhooop. These people murder, torture and kill school children for GOD. The entire region is soaked in religious fundamentalism out of the Dark Ages, based upon the worst of human conditions, revenge and violence. It is an alien world in which we have no business being, sacrificing thousands of our own, or tens of thousands of others. Only a president also from the Dark Ages (Texas) could have got us into this mess.
I lived through this same thing 40 years ago during Vietnam and find the differences negligible. It's a brown world rather than green, with lots of brown. They hide in rubble in lieu of jungle, with lots of rubble. It's hot and dry rather that hot and wet, with lots of dry and lots of hot. It is not even a matter of which city, town or building to bomb, but rather which person in which room of what hut, with lots of huts. And of course the same old show stopper, they are our friends by day and enemies by night, making the entire thing a lose-lose situation. Even a person of middling intelligence and an average concept of common sense could have seen what would come. It took half of America seven years to grasp what the other half had understood the day this dufus was named President.
Fox News Sunday Morning (the Simpson's channel not the News channel) has given Newt Gingrich about 15 minutes of their program once a month to an audience of millions. Most of whom are barely smart enough to remember a few sound bites, intellectually unable to hear what he is actually saying. The most watched news network in America, billing itself as Fair and Balanced, gives their podium to a man who is out of his fucking mind.
To recap, Gingrich's own party threw his crazy ass out as Speaker of the House which caused Newt to give up his congressional seat because his head is far too big to return as a lowly congressman. From Speaker of the House to selling laptops to truckers. Rupert Murdock and Brit Hume rescued his deranged fascist ass by offering him big bucks to join the Fair & Balanced team at Fox.
Instead of initiating a presidential exploratory committee as all sane contenders for the White House do, Gingrich is using a four pronged media blitz: With two books, a Political Action Committee and his access to an audience of millions of viewers through Fox News.
The first tome sets the stage, Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America, a no nonsense directive to tear out the government's partisan civilian bureaucracy, stamp out Judicial Review which does not reflect Newt's non partisan views, and shift that loss of power to the non partisan Pentagon and Executive Branch. The kicker here is that the most partisan man in American history, lays the success of his agenda on non partisan approval of all his ideas. Those who refuse he defines as poor Americans whose loyalty should be suspect. Gingrich's PAC, Winning the Future, is just that same book in the form of creating more cash for Newt. His more recent book is Rediscovering God in America. Without even going past the title, you know damn well what that one is about, Gingrich's non partisan plan to force religious indoctrination into the government, public schools, and the military.
This Sunday he went over the top. The issue that Fox News decided needed the immediate attention of Mr. Gingrich's gravitas was Bush's troop buildup in Iraq. First came the media hook, his prediction that we have only a 1 in 5 chance of success in Iraq. Attention! Gingrich is deserting the President! Think again.
Then Newt once again outlined Winning The Future, highlighting the need for non partisan agreement or failure. Next came the cries of incompetent government! The fault of our failure in Iraq is on the shoulders of the Dept of State, Dept of Defense, Dept of Commerce, and yes, the Dept of Agriculture! Then came the long mishmash of percentages confused with change in percentages proving the eminent collapse of our government because it is 90% inefficient. Not a hint of anything wrong with the Pentagon or the White House.
Before closing he uses the GOP's greatest vote winning bonanza. FEAR. Newt explains we are AT WAR with Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Taliban, al Qaeda, Eastern Pakistan, the Palestinians, most of Lebanon and some local grenade wielding Muslim in Peoria.
Then the close. Newt looks into the camera, Fox zooms in, and Newt says if the Democrats want to pull out of Iraq, fine, but they will have to take the consequences. And those consequences are the destruction of freedom, liberty, the America way of life and death of our children.
Bottom line, Newt Gingrich without actually saying it, demands that the Democratic Party join his non partisan ideology (a one party system) to destroy the civilian bureaucracy (democracy), moving power to the President and the Pentagon (fascism) and go into full World War mode against the entire Middle East or die. As we began, the man is out of his fucking mind, and... Fourth runner up in the polls for GOP candidate for President.
What the Christian Corporate Media calls Sectarian Violence is in reality the same Religious Violence that has been going on in the name of God for millennia.
This guy is such a class A lamer it’s often quite hard to pen anything specific about him without rambling on forever regarding every dumbass thing he does. Being from Texas and remembering his antics here as Governor, I was taken aback when he feigned condemnation for the taunting during the execution of Saddam Hussein.
During her last appeal -- with the help of the Catholic Bishops, the Pope, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson – Born Again Christian murderer Carla Tucker gained enough celebrity to get on television for a minute to beg mercy from the executioner. A few days later, Governor George W. Bush got behind a microphone and in a squeaky woman’s voice, mocked the woman’s plea by giggling “Please don’t kill me!Please don’t kill me! Hehehe.” That’s the kind of person we want running our country!Yes it is, yes it is!
Now he is defying the will of the people, the will of the Congress, the will of his father’s men, the will of the Iraqis’ and the will of the entire world in lieu of the will of Allah. The quiet question: Can the President and Vice President be impeached at the same time?
All over the talking head circuit William Kristol has been the most ubiquitous media propagandist for this war. He was one of those who designed it in the 1990’s, promoted it to Bush when he moved into the Whitehouse, helped initiate it with his lies of WMDs and 911 connections, and now he is the primary media voice to pour more Americans (other than himself) into the meat grinder. Often refereed to as the Alfa Neo Con, Kristol is the publisher of the Right-Wing rag The Weekly Standard. He wears such a sarcastic condescending smirk, that there is something very wrong with anyone not wanting to put him in a headlock and smack him in the nose, repeatedly.
Mass Murderer Saddam Hussein went to the noose calmly, bravely and dignified while those carrying it out acted like a gang of Naziboys in black hoods. As soon as the video was released the Right-wing airways sang in unison that reporting the execution in a negative manner proved the liberal bias of the media, and of course the the un-American, unpatriotic cowards who represent it. But a week later a large fly got in their ointment. Charles Krauthammer, one of the essential Jewish Neo Cons behind the Iraq war, jumped ship on the War over this very issue.
The civilized world saw this execution for what it was, hate filled sectarian revenge, just as the so called Liberal Media reported it. A decade ago a similar end met another mass murderer, Timothy McVeigh. He also faced his execution with a stoic dignity and bravery, making a racist dirtball murdering gunloon a hero in the eyes of millions. Correction, tens of millions.
There is something intrinsically wrong with tying a person up, pushing them down a hall or a street and killing them. Perhaps a better idea would be to just drop them off unfettered inside the gates of Ted Nugent’s Texas ranch and have Ted and his Tribe gather up their arsenal shoot them down. 500 times.
Executions are a bad idea based more upon vengeance and our barbarian nature (which we have spent millennia trying to overcome) than justice. The negative results of capital punishment; innocence, equal justice, economic justice, cost, martyrdom and forcing blood onto all our hands outweigh its only positive aspect, the executed do not repeat their crimes. The few people who suffer by the perpetrator actions getting their rocks off watching him die is not a positive aspect of anything at all. It’s an example of “being all we cannot be”.
Criminals who are sentenced to life in prison, or enter the door as young men and leave as old men do not commit their crimes again either.
As the end of slavery concerned the weighty issues of freedom, liberty, and human rights which appreciably gave a jump to humankind on the “civilization” timeline, so one day will the end of capital punishment.
There are many reasons given for Democrats taking the House, the Senate and winning statewide and local offices from coast to coast. Most put the blame on the head of George W. Bush and his war in Iraq. But there are other reasons:
The GOP bleating to round up, arrest and deport Mexican Lawn Boys moved the Hispanics from a previous vote for Democrats from 60% to 70%.
The failure of the Bush Administration to deal effectively with Hurricane Katrina, causing Black voters to move even further into the Democrats’ pocket.
In Missouri the Senate was lost to the GOP’s puritan stand on stem cell research (Rush Limbaugh’s clown act contributed to the loss).
Lobbyist corruption surrounding Tom DeLay in the Abramoff Affair.
Republicans covering up the homosexual emails of Congressman Mark Foley.
The Rev. Ted Haggerty showing us the hypocrisy inherent in fundamentalist religion.
The progression of younger voters becoming a larger voting bloc. Our kids may be shallow, spoiled and self centered, but they are not the intolerant bigots the GOP has tried to train them to be.
Or? Will history lose track of the single issues and see this election as a turning point. A movement back to normalcy from a generation lost to religious intolerance, a boisterous callous disregard for the least of us, and the indifference which allowed it to happen?
I wish to be an optimist, but sadly, They know how best to push the buttons of religion, patriotism, ethnicity, race and hate to win elections. They have been around since They first clubbed Their first woman over the head to get laid, and They aint going anywhere anytime soon. It’s the Nature of The Beast.
One thing is sure though, there was a geographical change. Much like after LBJ muscled through big Civil Rights bills of 1964 and 1965, he said the Democrats were now dead in The South. A similar dynamic played out last November. Across the nation moderate Republicans lost seats at a higher rate than did the wingnuts. The Mountain West and the Midwest rejected the religious intolerance, lack of international diplomacy and economic abandonment they have suffered from the GOP for the past 12 years. Leaving once again the concentration of ignorance, intolerance, prejudice and religious fervor where it has always so happily resided, the Confederate States.
Over the past few days CNN has done not a few hours of live coverage of James Brown’s funeral, both outside the Apollo Theater in New York and in Augusta, North Carolina. At the same time there was limited coverage of Gerald Ford’s funeral. The contrast went beyond race and culture into the realm of different Galactic disparity.
While one Galaxy was filled with somber old White men in dark suits hanging around black limousines listening to military bands play depressing music, the other Galaxy had a throng of thousands following a white funeral carriage drawn by a white horse around the block in Harlem.
As old White people filed past a closed casket in the Capitol Rotunda to choir music, in the other Galaxy James Brown’s open casket lay in front of the stage of the Jame’s Brown Arena in Augusta as a ten piece guitar driven funk rock band wailed in the background.
While the widow of the president quietly choked back tears and received a folded flag from a few military men standing at attention, the widow of James Brown took the stage to do a rocker behind his coffin, often leaning over to kiss him.
As such notables as Henry Kissinger spoke quietly of Gerald Ford, MC Hammer got lost in the music and slid across the stage in front of Brown’s coffin with moves that made Michael Jackson seem old.
After a few hours of the 8000 in the arena and the thousands more out in the street doing their funk rock best, it finally settled down as Reverend Al Sharpton took to the podium for the main eulogy. He hit the crowd and the culture hard with Jesse Jackson and Michael Jackson standing beside him.
He said he had talked with Mr. Brown just a few days ago on the phone. Mr. Brown asked what happened to us all being Black and Proud? And why has our music have us calling each other niggars, ho's, pimps and bitches? Sharpton said Brown told him we need music that we can sit down and listen to with our grandkids and our grandmothers.
Michael Jackson, out of hiding in Boystown, Burundi, made a few comments. Mike needs a new DO. He has been locked in that Mary Tyler Moore look now for far too long.
Gerry Ford made Richard Nixon feel good by pardoning him.
James Brown made hundreds of millions feel good with his music.
“White men are an endangered species. I absolutely believe what with affirmative action and everything... We want things to be the way they used to be.” Helen Chenoweth
Helen Chenoweth, once a mining and timber lobbyist, became Congressman Chenoweth (Idaho – R) arriving in Washington with the Newt Gingrich Class of Inexperienced Wingnuts of 1994. The Wicked Witch of the West served three terms and retired. By 1998 she had gone so far into Right-wing La La Land that even Newt himself passed her by on a scheduled campaign stop. History will serve her as the most conservative woman to ever gain national office. She should hold that record in perpetuity unless Ann Coulter becomes President.
Chenoweth was the default spokesman for the American militia movement always getting great and grand reviews from David Duke, the Aryan Nations and the Ku Klux Klan. She even defended the Oklahoma bombing. Above all else, Helen enjoyed publicly splashing her rabid anti-environmentalism across the land, with her much publicized endangered species cook offs. She once claimed she would cut down every tree in Idaho. As an adulterous slut herself, she was perhaps the loudest voice screaming for President Clinton’s impeachment.
On October 5, 2006 while riding in a jeep with a baby on her lap, and wearing no seat belt, she was thrown from the vehicle. Her neck was broken and died on the spot. The ground killed her. One of her anti-environment friends and Gingrich Classmates, Sonny Bono, got even better justice from Ma Nature, he was killed by a tree.
Forget the political ideology, the oil, the money and the all the sorryass excuses for starting this debacle in Iraq, just look at the ground. The article below beat out a few others with much the same stories but lower “kill numbers”; one right after another, day in and day out. This one really takes the cake. 
Fox News Sunday Morning (the Simpson's channel not the News channel) has given Newt Gingrich about 15 minutes of their program once a month to an audience of millions. Most of whom are barely smart enough to remember a few sound bites, intellectually unable to hear what he is actually saying. The most watched news network in America, billing itself as Fair and Balanced, gives their podium to a man who is out of his fucking mind.
All over the talking head circuit William Kristol has been the most ubiquitous media propagandist for this war. He was one of those who designed it in the 1990’s, promoted it to Bush when he moved into the Whitehouse, helped initiate it with his lies of WMDs and 911 connections, and now he is the primary media voice to pour more Americans (other than himself) into the meat grinder. Often refereed to as the Alfa Neo Con, Kristol is the publisher of the Right-Wing rag The Weekly Standard. He wears such a sarcastic condescending smirk, that there is something very wrong with anyone not wanting to put him in a headlock and smack him in the nose, repeatedly.
There are many reasons given for Democrats taking the House, the Senate and winning statewide and local offices from coast to coast. Most put the blame on the head of George W. Bush and his war in Iraq. But there are other reasons: 
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