Thursday, August 10, 2006

On Whose Watch Did 9/11 Happen?



On Whose Watch Did 9/11 Happen?
If they're going to keep telling us to remember 9/11, let's remember it clearly.

The Bush team and their rubber stamp Republican mocking birds need Osama bin Laden tapes and the memory of al-Zarqawi so they can make up cheap talking points to stupidly insult the intelligence of Democrats and to try to scare as many Americans as they can into voting for the Cheney and Bush roadshow of flaming failure.

In the Republican party, they love to keep the horror alive and the hopes dead.

In reality, we are doomed if we keep any of these warring mooks in power because they've looked for trouble (and have gotten it) in Iraq while nobodies in the middle of the UK have blown up the Tube and filled shampoo bottles with flammables. At least the UK and Canada are catching their terrorists with good old-fashioned detective work. We've got reduced civil liberties, burning mosques in an unnecessary Iraqi civil war, worn-out troops, authorized torture of prisoners of war, and a few bad and burned-out soldiers raping a 14-year old girl and killing her family in cold blood.



Before 9/11, nobodies took flying lessons in the American southwest and didn't bother inquiring about the part of the lessons where they'd learn how to land. Bush and his team did a really great job of stopping them on 9/11, didn't they? At least Bush didn't cut and run. He stayed until the job was done. He made sure he went nowhere until My Pet Goat had been read from cover to cover.



Bush turned nobodies into al Qaeda legends and, after sufficiently lying to Americans, went after a country that had nothing whatsover to do with the 9/11 attacks they'd failed to stop. This created future generations of terrorists in Iraq that would likely never have come to pass had it not been for Bush's failed foreign policy.

Are you sick of failure yet?

The only thing more disgusting than the failure is hearing the total losers insulting the political leaders who, like us citizens, see the failures so clearly.


Kevin Smith Talks About the Rolling Roadshow & Clerks II



Kevin Smith Talks About the Rolling Roadshow and Clerks II



Oh, man, this looks like it would've been a blast. Folks in Red Bank, N.J. got a real treat Tuesday night. A great movie on a giant screen backed by the river and a full moon. Aaaah. I love Red Bank - I've has a lot of fun times there and in Asbury Park - sure wish I could've been there for an outdoor showing of Clerks II. Clerks filmmaker Kevin Smith says:
I can't impart this emphatically enough: if you get a chance to attend ANY of the Rolling Roadshow screenings over the next few weeks, GET YER ASS THERE! It's a pretty incredible experience.
Weird highlight: The day before, some fans said they camped outside as early as 3 a.m. to meet and greet Kevin Smith at Jay & Silent Bob's Secret Stash in Red Bank. One fan asked Kevin to sign her butt-cheek.

• VIDEO: Fans talk with Smith (dialup)
• VIDEO: Fans talk with Smith (broadband)

Josh Ritter on Conan O'Brien Friday



Josh Ritter on Conan O'Brien Friday

If you're a Josh Ritter fan like I am, you'll want to know that he's going to be on Conan O'Brien tomorrow night!




Androminos' Questions about the Middle East



Androminos' Questions about the Middle East

How long does the international community think ANY nation has to suffer the kidnapping and murder of its people?

To all who are feeling unsure about what position to take on this, let's just be sure not to sit back and tell ourselves that this age-old problem is something new and that the destruction of innocent lives and displacement of human beings is the right or the moral solution to the back-and-forth violence between state and non-state that has been going on for so long in the territory. One look with an untainted eye will tell you that it's absolutely untrue. How long has there been tribal struggle in the Palestinian region between diverse groups of people? What about Rwanda? Darfur?

Where is a Western leader with moral authority today? The world longs for him. A just God cries out for him (or her). The U.S. will never be a good ally to Israel until the U.S. makes good-faith efforts to stand behind her with an active diplomatic effort for a two-state solution that never sleeps. The past five years have been a disastrous slumber with a wrong-headed approach to protecting Israel on the part of the United States.

What we need is order - a fight for the protection of human rights and a proper prosecution of the rule of law among nations. This isn't some pie-in-the-sky notion. The work of peace and the keeping of order in this world is a tremendously difficult task, yet I am dismayed when I see that President Bush and his administration are only serving to stir up the pot of hatred and distrust amongst the people of the Middle East. You can see proof by the numbers of hard-line extremists being elected in these nations. A moral Western leader who respects and believes in the rule of law would try to guide the world with wisdom, respect for all peoples, and the promise of opportunity and participation for all in the global economy, provided that they are willing to compromise along with the West. Empire is a goal that comes with violence and unjust treatment of the weakest. The goal of Empire must be laid aside if America truly wants to help its ally Israel.

What then is a solution. And I don't just mean to end the current round of fighting. I mean what is the solution to the very real and legitimate problem faced by Israel who is surrounded by combatants and terrorists committed to her destruction?

A new commitment to non-Empire. Allowing Middle Eastern nations to govern themselves rather than hanging an anvil around their necks with the threat of violence and destruction whenever unrest (they call it "terror") occurs in their own respective nations. There will be no healthy Western-friendly democracies born in the Middle East until the people of the Middle East desire it. Let's use of heads. Put a moral thinking cap on. Destroying innocent people is no way for them to desire the rule of monsters that inflict such misery. As the Reagan years approached in the U.S., over thirty years ago, neoconservatism was born and with it came the hope (and determination) that new democracies would spring up in the Middle East. In the meantime, and most hypocritically, evil regimes were embraced by the U.S. government for political gain. The people of this world aren't stupid. They know when a motive is sincere and when it is merely a position taken to gain oppressive power. We embrace Saddam Hussein one day and he's the monster-du-jour the next.

The problem is, neoconservatism went from a left-leaning idea about freedom to a today's dogmatic hard-line right revolution that most of the American people do not desire.

When Ned Lamont beat Joe Lieberman in Connecticut this week, this is what the American people were screaming about!

There must be a change in U.S. foreign policy about which the world will sit up and take notice.

How does one stop the terrorists from attacking? Expecting Israel to go back to the status quo of accepting terrorism against it's people from those along it's borders is hardly a viable solution.

"Accepting" terrorism is one thing. Creating conditions that will ensure a whole new generation of terrorism is totally another. For what is terrorism? It is a tactic used by those who choose to opt out of the international community - those who chose to return to the law of the jungle rather than the international rule of law.

For all intents and purposes, President Bush opted out of the internatiuonal rule of law when he made a pre-emptive strike on Iraq.

Israel has used the excuse that a few kidnapped soldiers is legal reason to destroy the infrastructure of southern Lebanon and displace 25% of the Lebanese population.

The leaders of the U.S. and Israel are going about this in a way that is front-loading the best likelihood of a new World War whose sides will not be lined up as they were in the last two world wars. They call the rebellious and violent tactic used by non-states "the enemy." A tactic is an "enemy" - not a specified state or group of states. Tell me - how do you conquer or vanquish a tactic? How do you "conquer" hatred? Who do you kill? How do you quantify such a win? What will be acheived when that "win" is quantifiable and qualifiable (if it ever could be)?

Let's remember that there were a group of upstarts who caused violence in a civilized place called Concord, Massachusetts well over 200 years ago. They reared up against a great power and used non-traditional and brutal tactics to resist their enemy. After the ragtag rebels caused Great Britain to lose their political ability and will to win, they formed an independent new government and we sit here today calling ourselves the recipients of and the fighters for the symbol of freedom. A nation had been living in the hearts of men and women in Lexington and Concord, but that nation was not yet a part of the world until they made it so. Those colonist rebels in America didn't prey on the innocent, but they were ruthless in battle. Who are we to say that there are not new nations living somewhere in the hearts of some people in the Middle East? Who are we to determine their destiny for them? Who are we to languish in Iraq when the destiny of that nation, in light of freedom, belongs to them? We can't be the world's policeman. No one nation has a right to do that.

There are international forums for political crises. The U.N. is the first one that comes to mind. If they have become an impotent joke to some, it's because the people who have had the most poewer to make it succeed have sabotaged it for the past five years. Without a strong and effective forum with which to iron out international problems, we may as well forget that we are a civilized world and leave the world to savages.

Lieberman Wants to Play Nice With Rubber Stampers While He Allows Our Democracy to Shrivel Up and Die



Lieberman Wants to Play Nice With Rubber Stampers While He Allows Our Democracy to Shrivel Up and Die

Joe Lieberman's still looking for old-school civility and old-time protocol in a world where unprincipled Republicans have taken advantage of every good-faith and civil effort on the part of Congressional Democrats and any other sap who has stood in their way in the name of truth. It would behoove poor old Joe to understand that there's an expiration date on how long you can fool people. Joe's problem is that he's fooling himself. We've watched him hold on to the liferaft of "bipartisanship" long after the mothership had sunk and a sea of rubber-stamping sharks chomped on his legs with talking points and dirty tricks. He was too complacent to realize that, as a representative of the People, it wasn't only his legs being bitten off. It was our legs, too. He's been so numb that he didn't feel the pain while we could only watch and scream in agony at the joke that liferaft of "bipartisanship" had become.

I think David Beckwith is really on to something when, in a post titled McCain & Lieberman to launch "Arrogant Has-Been Party," he writes:



According to New York Times columnist David Brooks,

..the "three major parties in America" are "the Democratic Party, the Republican Party and the McCain-Lieberman Party," and "all were on display Tuesday night."

"The Democratic Party was represented by its rising force -- Ned Lamont on a victory platform with the net roots exulting before him and Al Sharpton smiling just behind," Brooks opines in Thursday's edition of The Times. "The Republican Party was represented by its collapsing old guard -- scandal-tainted Tom DeLay trying to get his name removed from the November ballot."

"And the McCain-Lieberman Party was represented by Joe Lieberman himself, giving a concession speech that explained why polarized primary voters shouldn't be allowed to define the choices in American politics."



Mr. Beckwith goes on to comment:



Moderate Republicans need to realize that the immoderate Republicans are corrupt, jaded, mediocre, hateful, incompetent, bloodthirsty, Mammoniacal, greedy, self-rightous, ego-centric, micranimous, war-profiteering, war-mongering, murderous, liars and thieves. And many of them can't wait for WWIII.

Lieberman once said: "If you want to live like a Republican, you need to vote like a Democrat." I take it he wants to live like a Republican. I guess he is impressed by the corrupt, jaded, mediocre, bloodthirsty, Mammoniacal, greedy, selfish, ego-centric, micranimous, war-profiteering, war-mongering liars and thieves. Who knows. Maybe he was talking about moderate Republicans, but there is a reek of obsolescence among this diminishing sect.



I am also impressed by Mr. Beckwith's latest observations, where he employs his satirical genius about Bush (and his rubber stampers') tactical misleadings. He's got these fear-mongering bastards all figured out.



Don't miss Beckwith's special Lieberman close-up photo underneath the headline:
Loserman Paying for Kissing Bush Ass