Last night Republican Presidential candidate, ex-Arkansas Governor, Huckabee said something delirious. He talked about how he initially supported the invasion of Iraq, then stated "so did many of the Democrats" and then mentioned that George Bush had the courage to invade Iraq to make sure that the next 9-11 terrorist attack didn't come from Iraq. He compared the not having Weapons of Mass Destruction to Easter Eggs. "Just because you don't find any Easter eggs, doesn't mean they weren't planted."

This rationale is horseshit. Rogue operators with a private agenda took it upon themselves to engineer a full scale propaganda campaign. False ex-patriots were trained to lie to reporters who printed stories based upon the interviews. The normal intelligence channels were hijacked and turned into an office overseen by the Vice President. Forged documents were used to foment yellowcake sales so that Saddam would appear to have a nuclear operation. All of the neighboring countries -- including Turkey, Eqypt, India, Russia, and Saudi Arabia -- were not in agreement with the need for the invasion.

Then when the invasion happens, chaos was permitted to reign. Vast looting destroyed plenty of what was left, including the ancient museum of Baghdad which was utterly destroyed. The only building that was protected by American forces was the Ministry of Oil. The Nuclear Ministry was not protected. The Electric grid and the water pumps were not protected. The Army was disbanded immediately and 40 something billion dollars of Iraqi reserves disappears. Contractors get cost- plus contracts, most without bidding. The general in charge of reconstruction (Jay Garner, who in the Iraq of 1991 did the same thing) was fired, and long-time corporate Lawyer Paul Bremer was brought despite having no experience in the region. Bremer promulgates a new constitution and sells off pieces of Iraq to non-Iraqi corporations. Young idealistic Republicans without experience were recruited to do important reconstruction tasks. The contractors perform badly, waste resources, perform shoddy work, and are not under the military chain of command. Meanwhile, millions of Iraqis are displaced from their homes, hundreds of thousands are killed, orphans and widows abound, and the left-over residue of depleted Uranium is leaving parts of Iraq as a toxic haven.

The invasion of Iraq was not only a complete fraud, it is also a complete disaster. The only effective way to fight terrorism is to coordiate law enforcement activity with regional forces. Our ability to track terrorists cannot be improved by creating enmity and sowing hatred of the United States. Instead we are bankrupting our future and giving the middle east to Russia and China, who stood away from this fiasco. China owns about 40% of the United States debt. And wasn't Russia public enemy number one 50 years ago?

Oh, the precious weapons of mass destruction? They were never there, and the neo-con administration knew they were never there. Most of the rest of world knew they weren't there. They were destroyed after the first Gulf War. They didn't go to Jordan. They were'nt secreted out in the night to the Becca Valley in Syria. They weren't there in 2003. They wern't there in 1995 either. The intelligence services knew this too. The real threat of loose nukes on the open market comes from the leftover piles of Russian nukes, but nothing is being done to safeguard these assets. There are reports that rich Russians can buy their own personal nukes, and of a recent find in Slovakia of a jar of yellowcake said to come from Russian sources.

It wasn't that everyone "got it wrong" or that there was "faulty intelligence". The intelligence was there. The professionals in the CIA and State department were always correct. What the administration did was far from "courageous," because what they did was lie, and orchestrate a vast insidious propaganda campaign to convince American Citizens that falsehoods were true, and that scoundrels were saintly patriots.

The need for the Invasion was to pursue the private policy agendas of the Bush family and it's minions. Meanwhile how many people are dead or suffering from the actions of these perfumed bastards who live in limosines and private palaces?

It disgusts me to hear Huckabee stand there and say he thinks George Bush courageous. The man is nothing but an impish spoiled brat, who has done more harm to this country with his appointments and complete lack of oversight. Bush ignored all the warning in the 9 months prior to 9-11, and the Huckster wants to praise him for having "courage" to invade Iraq? What the fuck !? The man lied. The man knowingly used forged documents. The man handled everything incompetently and has used sinister secretive means to take power for the Presidency, knowing the current Supreme Court is stacked in his favor -- you know, the court that handed Bush the presidency.

FLORENCE, Ariz. — Thomas Warziniack was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has held Warziniack for weeks in an Arizona detention facility with the aim of deporting him to a country he's never seen. His jailers shrugged off Warziniack's claims that he was an American citizen, even though they could have retrieved his Minnesota birth certificate in minutes and even though a Colorado court had concluded that he was a U.S. citizen a year before it shipped him to Arizona

...U.S. citizens who are mistakenly jailed by immigration authorities can get caught up in a nightmarish bureaucratic tangle in which they're simply not believed.

An unpublished study by the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York nonprofit organization, in 2006 identified 125 people in immigration detention centers across the nation who immigration lawyers believed had valid U.S. citizenship claims.

Vera initially focused on six facilities where most of the cases surfaced. The organization later broadened its analysis to 12 sites and plans to track the outcome of all cases involving citizens.

Nina Siulc, the lead researcher, said she thinks that many more American citizens probably are being erroneously detained or deported every year because her assessment looked at only a small number of those in custody. Each year, about 280,000 people are held on immigration violations at 15 federal detention centers and more than 400 state and local contract facilities nationwide.

280,000 people a year? That's more than 1 million people every 4 years, or 750 people a day. And if you apply the ratio of 125 per 12 from the 2006 study to the total of 415 sites mentioned in the last sentence, there are potentially 4000 persons being held by mistake (For the record, 415 divided by 12 times 125 = 4322 exactly).

Are we really deporting that many people? Who are those who get deported, where do they go, and how to they get there? There has to be oversight of this entire process. Right?

This is yet another reason why we have habeus corpus. Because "if" the government makes a mistake, you don't have to wait for two years in a detention center before you are released.

A toll road will cross through the upper right of the picture and meet the Interstate in the bottom right, piercing the land with automobile noise and smog residues.

The gubernator came out in support of the private toll road project. Here is how he explained his position, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Backing away from his neutral stance, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on Tuesday urged the California Coastal Commission to approve a controversial tollway in Orange County that would pass through San Onofre State Beach, one of California's most popular parks.

"I have concluded that this project is essential to protect our environment and the quality of life for everyone in California," Schwarzenegger said in a letter to Patrick Kruer, chairman of the Coastal Commission.

"The project can be built in a manner that will enhance and foster use of the coast and protect coastal resources."

...Schwarzenegger noted that the Foothill South project was a public-private partnership that would rely on private capital, not state and federal funds, for construction.

He also mentioned that the TCA had offered $100 million to reduce the effect of the road on the park and provide improvements to San Onofre, San Clemente State Park and Crystal Cove State Park.

"The State Route 241 project gives us a chance to protect our parks and our coastline and reduce one of the most damaging environmental problems that plagues our state: traffic gridlock," Schwarzenegger said in his endorsement letter.

Hmmm, so we protect our parks and coastline by tossing a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter. How do you reduce environmental problems by adding a private toll road through a large state park? Note the tense of that verb in the 5th paragraph. He also mentioned that the TCA HAD offered $100 million . This is not a guarantee, nor is the $100 million offered part of a contractual obligion. What is this man talking about? What a lot of crap this governor is.

Here's what Robin Everett of the the California Coastal Commission thinks.

Last week, Governor Schwarzenegger voiced his approval of plans to destroy a state park for a toll road stating that “this project is essential to protect our environment and the quality of life for everyone in Southern California.” Since when does destroying a state park improve our environment and quality of life?

The California State Parks commission hates the idea too. So do a majority of Orange County voters according to a poll (see the link).

“The survey indicated that while a majority of Orange County voters support toll roads in general (53%), a large majority (70%) oppose a toll road through a state park and more than half of all surveyed (52%) strongly oppose toll roads through a state park.

The Center for public integrity has just completed a data base of all the false statements the administration made regarding Iraq or foreign policy between 2001 and 2007. Apparently there are 935 false statements total. Go to the site and have fun !!!!

Here's the instructions:

The 380,000-plus-word database presented here allows, for the first time, the Iraq-related public pronouncements of top Bush administration officials to be tracked on a day-by-day basis against their private assessments and the actual “ground truth” as it is now known.

Throughout the database, passages containing false statements by the top Bush administration officials are highlighted in yellow. The 935 false statements in the database may also be accessed by selecting the “False Statements” option from the “Subject” pull-down menu and may be displayed within selected date ranges using the selection tool below.

Searches may also be limited by person or subject, or both, by using the appropriate selections from the pull-down menus.

Yesterday, the supreme court ruled 5-4 that Officers employed by the Federal Government are immune from being sued when property belonging to someone else gets lost or stolen. Here is the first sentence of the New York Times job on the story.

Federal law enforcement officers are immune from lawsuits for mishandling, losing or even stealing personal property that comes under their control in the course of their official duties,

Justice Kennedy wrote a dissent for the minority, while Ruth Ginsberg turned out to be the swing vote. The New York Times doesn't give you the Dissent. You have to go to the Washington Post for that relevant information.

The confusion in the courts comes because the immunity is mentioned in a section of the law that blocks lawsuits against the government over the "loss of goods, merchandise or other property" detained by customs or excise officers. The law then adds "or any other law enforcement officer."

... Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the dissent for the rest of the court. He said the court was wrong not to look at the context of the statute -- that it related to customs rather than prisons -- and said the implications of the decision were great.

"The seizure of property by an officer raises serious concerns for the liberty of our people and the Act should not be read to permit appropriation of property without a remedy in tort by language so obscure and indirect," Kennedy wrote.

And that's the point. The context of the law is always important. When customs agents seize goods from merchants and/or illegal operations, can they be sued when the stuff they seize disappears or gets stolen? This is a quite different scenario than a prisoner transferring from a Georgia Penitentiary to a Kentucky Prison who has his stuff stolen in the transit. The stuff was not part of a group of illegal items that were seized, the stuff was personal property. Justice Kennedy has makes a very good point.

Here's a link to the supreme court docket where the Ali case PDF of the court opinions exists.

We now have a court which liberally interprets laws out of context to serve the masters who put them on the court.

~ ~ ~

A Note on the difference in the 2 articles. The Washington Post article is much more informative. The New York Times piece (probably given to a rookie reporter, and probably ruthlessly edited) gives you the impression that the decision was just a minor update of interpretation of an ambiguity. The Times article doesn't give the reader the necessary background information of the court case, or the various issues involving the interpretations of the law .

Lesson #23,567 : Never rely on only one source of information.

[SOURCE:  | Economic Policy Institute | 19 July 2006]

The dark horizontal bars represent after welfare, food stamps, and tax deductions are included. The light bars represent before these various government transfer payments (subsidies from tax revenue) are included.

26.6% of our children live in poverty before government programs are included; 21.9% are still in poverty after such payments are included. Oh my god. That's somewhere between 20% to 25% of the kids. And as a measure of relativity, notice the bar on the bottom. That is the average percent of all the countries except the U.S. Our percentage of child poverty after government assistence is greater than the average of all the other countries combined.

It's pathetic is what it is. We can blow 2 trillion dollars on national disaster in Iraq, but we can't just make a life-long financial investment in every citizen's education from pre_K to Post- Bac. Instead, we prefer to deal with the social consequences as the costs of frustrated young people who manage to scrap by working a service-related job. Some might manage a few years at a community college, only to still find themselves in the service sector 10 years later. It would be a better allocation of resources to fund opportunity for our young people. Some of the investment will get wasted, but then nothing is ever 100%. But unlike the Iraq debacle, all of the money would be invested in the USA, rather than line the pockets of the Defense contractors. And then what? Did the invasion beget a "more stable" middle east? Did it "secure" a stable oil supply?

Ha. We have to pay the Sunni Sheiks each $100 a day to not raise up the fight against the US troops. Do a google yourself, if you don't believe me. That's how despicable this whole thing is to me. The wasted lives and the wasted funds are disgraceful.

The above is the oil painting I've been working on for 4 years now. Or rather, the place where I stopped and put the painting down is 4 years ago.

I don't know why I just stopped, or why it has been four years, but it has something to do with a certain struggle with the universe that I've been having over the last 4 years. I get disappointed very easily by the actions of others (and myself -- it works both ways) when I feel things don't happen the way I'd like. People will disappoint you in life, and you still have to wake up and be that great pleasant guy everyone loves. So what I did was hibernate. I closed off the world and escaped, or tried to, but since there is no escape, all I really did was vegetate into oblivion. Yet nothing ever really numbs the disappointment, and instead you just dig a deep lonely hole that you don't think you'll ever get out of.

Well, about 3 months ago, I finally got the courage to stop digging. I am currently getting the layers of dirt out of my eyes, and I'm finally starting to deal with a lot of things that I just plain buried. I tried to stop the feelings, but of course, they never go away. Now, I accept the pain, and try to better understand the origins and the most beneficial reactions. I also realized that everyone else is fucked up too, and started channeling my innate curiousity into pondering everyone's unique contribution to fucked-upp-ed-ness.

As you can see, the painting is only 2 to 3 hours away from being complete. All I really need to do is finish the sky, and I couldn't finish the sky in the last four years, because there was no blue sky in my life. My best friend killed himself 3 years ago. My home town was destroyed 2 years ago, and I was going through something close to a mid-life crisis while avoiding a host of related issues. My way to handle these various issues was also unhealthy. I couldn't feel the blue when my horizons were colored with grey.

I just bought a whole new bunch of paint, new paint-brushes, and new jugs of Linseed oil and Mineral spirits. Hope has sprung from the once frozen earth.

The short story: it is Governor Schwartzeneger's own damn fault.

There are several areas where the Governor, with his current goals and agenda--on the budget, health care, and other issues--is hamstrung by his previous policy stances.

• Many have made the point that today's budget crisis yielding $10 billion in budget cuts is a direct result of his early actions. He reduced the vehicle license fee, which in the current budget year creates a $6.1 billion hole (booked as state spending because of the county backfill). There's another $3 billion that we are paying to service the debt he create with his bond package--a decision he made rather than to either raise revenues or make additional cuts. So that's over $9 billion right there. If he had made different decisions, he wouldn't be in the whole he is in today.

FACTBOX-Security developments in Iraq, Jan 20
20 Jan 2008 14:22:55 GMT
[SOURCE:  | Reuters | 20 January 2008]

Jan 20 (Reuters) - The following are security developments in Iraq at 1400 GMT on Sunday.

• BAGHDAD - A roadside bomb targeting a police patrol killed a civilian and wounded two policemen in Zayouna district in eastern Baghdad, police said.

• NEAR NAJAF - Iraqi security forces have arrested 45 gunmen from the Shi'ite "Soldiers of Heaven" cult in the last three days in the provinces of Basra, Nassiriya and Najaf, a Najaf provincial spokesman said.

• BAGHDAD - The U.S. military said the final death toll in multiple truck bombings targeting Iraq's minority Yazidi sect in northern Iraq last August was 796.

• FALLUJA - A suicide bomber killed six people in a town south of Falluja where people were celebrating the release of a man from U.S. military custody, local officials said. The bomber walked into the man's house and blew himself up.

• MOSUL - Police said they shot dead the driver of a car rigged with explosives during an attempted attack on a police checkpoint in eastern Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad. The car detonated, wounding two people.

• BAGHDAD - Iraqi soldiers killed eight gunmen and arrested 54 others during the last 24 hours across Iraq, the Defence Ministry said.

• BALAD - Five people were killed and 20 were wounded when mortar bombs hit Shi'ites observing Ashura rituals in Balad, 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad, on Saturday, police said.

• BAGHDAD - U.S. forces detained 16 gunmen on Friday and Saturday during operations targeting al Qaeda in central and northern Iraq, the U.S. military said.

• DIYALA PROVINCE - The U.S. military detained 10 gunmen during a raid in northern Diyala province on Thursday, the U.S. military said.

  Writing by Aws Qusay, editing by Ross Colvin

The surge is working, damn it. Can you believe these ungrateful Iraqis attacking their "liberators" ? Had they risen up against mean old Saddam back in 2003, we wouldn't have had to invade Iraq and post troops all over their country for the next 20 years. Keep in mind that after the end of World War Two when American troops were stationed in Germany and Japan, NOT ONE AMERICAN SOLDIER WAS KILLED IN ACTION.

If the Iraqi's want us to leave, why are we still in the country performing security operations? The nation is no more stable or any less corrupted by our insistence on remaining.

...Andrea Mitchell is still at it. She calls the Nevada outcome, based on their exit polls showing African Americans going for Barack in a big way while women and "Latinos" going for Hillary, as a "historic divide" within the party, and "not something that any Democrat would want to see." That's right - it's nothing but doom and gloom from Mrs. Alan Greenspan at the sight that women and Hispanics go for Hillary while African Americans go for Obama.

Can I just say how much I deeply detest the frauds on TV, the ones like Andrea Mitchell - among many others?

First of all, if Sen. Obama☼ is the great uniter that he claims to be, isn't it more than reasonable to think that he would unite behind the eventual Democratic nominee (if Sen. Clinton☼ wins the nomination) and get his supporters to do the same? Does anyone seriously believe that a charismatic Democrat who says he can unite Republicans and Independents with Democrats cannot unite Democrats with other Democrats?

Secondly, what is more important here is the fact that the "stars" in the media - those who get paid undeservedly princely sums to pontificate ignorantly and spread lies and division - routinely keep people uninformed. I wrote earlier that despite the Rev. Jesse Jackson having gotten historic primary wins in the 1984 and 1988 Presidential campaigns - a generation earlier - many in the media have repeatedly ignored that to create the false impression that Sen. Obama's campaign was uniquely historic.

Over the last week, the Chronicle has pushed the race theme by offering Carla Marinucci and sidekick piece of shit "political analyst" Joe Garofoli to pathetically assert that Hillary and Obama lost all the progress they made over the weekend because they handled "race" inadequately during the debate.

The front-runners for the Democratic presidential nomination realized something in the past week: Talking clumsily about race in America is the quickest way to turn off new voters and silence the buzz generated in the early weeks of the campaign.

That was the opening paragraph to the politicalese that passes for journalism these days. And this story was on the front god damn page. There was nothing substantive in the entire article, and plenty of speculation. If you read the entire article, the piece moves to conjecture about what young voters will do to a statement of campaign personality, before highlighting one selected voter experiencing the sub-prime mortgage pain (a daughter's mother died and missed only one payment, the month she died), followed by mentioning a Bill Clinton speech which discusses a policy position on how to address the mortgage crisis, followed of course with the typical Republican excuse to do nothing while destroying the government of the people ....

Clinton told the crowd his wife "believes we should freeze all forecloses for 90 days" and work with lenders on policies that would protect homeowners who are faithfully making payments.

In the meantime, "the most expensive thing we can do is to throw all of you out of your homes," he said. "If we allow this to take its course, it will cost us far more." He said that, according to estimates, "the net cost to society is a quarter million dollars every time you foreclose on a house."

That, he said, is "the dumbest thing we can do."

Republicans are dubious that Sen. Clinton's proposals to solve the mortgage crisis would work.

"The changes Sen. Clinton proposes to deliver would result in massive tax hikes, government-run health care and weakened national defense," said Republican National Committee spokesman Paul Lindsay. "As long as she and her surrogates attempt to mislead voters on these critical issues, Clinton will continue to lack the trust that Americans expect in their commander in chief."