Cindy Sheehan Says Good-Bye

Cindy Sheehan says good-bye to her public life in a heartfelt diary entry at DKos titled "Good Riddance Attention Whore".

I am going to take whatever I have left and go home. I am going to go home and be a mother to my surviving children and try to regain some of what I have lost. I will try to maintain and nurture some very positive relationships that I have found in the journey that I was forced into when Casey died and try to repair some of the ones that have fallen apart since I began this single-minded crusade to try and change a paradigm that is now, I am afraid, carved in immovable, unbendable and rigidly mendacious marble.

Camp Casey has served its purpose. It’s for sale. Anyone want to buy five beautiful acres in Crawford , Texas ? I will consider any reasonable offer. I hear George Bush will be moving out soon, too...which makes the property even more valuable.

This is my resignation letter as the "face" of the American anti-war movement. This is not my "Checkers" moment, because I will never give up trying to help people in the world who are harmed by the empire of the good old US of A, but I am finished working in, or outside of this system. This system forcefully resists being helped and eats up the people who try to help it. I am getting out before it totally consumes me or anymore people that I love and the rest of my resources.

Good-bye America ...you are not the country that I love and I finally realized no matter how much I sacrifice, I can’t make you be that country unless you want it.

It’s up to you now.

She's returning to her family life, and I wish her well. I disagreed with her support of Venezuela and her protests in Crawford. I felt that she was running too hard trying to escape the emotional stress of her loss. I think this is the best move for her and for the anti-war movement. It shouldn't be represented by a single face.

Good luck in your new life, Cindy. And thank you for devoting so much of yourself to spread the message of peace. You showed the world that Americans are not represented by the Dittoheads on Fox News.

A Weaker Standard

I felt like shoving a railroad spike into my skull today, but I decided to just go over and read The Weekly Standard instead. (Alleged) Uber War Strategists Kagan and Kristol have come together again to beat the War Drum against Iran, Syria, "Foreign Fighters", and Democrats. Their headline proclaims "Congress Gives In On War Funding Now can we fight the enemy?" Gosh, guys. You've only been in charge of this war for five years. Maybe you should have considered fighting "The Enemy" sometime before now...

Of course, the denial of reality continues far beyond the headline:

The war over the war in Washington is quiet for the moment. Congress has finally appropriated funds for America's warriors without setting a deadline for their defeat. Now the president can turn his undivided attention to fighting the enemies who are attacking our soldiers.

Ahhh, the ol "deadline for defeat" tautology. As far as I can tell, the Republicans are the only ones accusing our troops of losing. Our troops went to Iraq to secure possible WMD locations, topple Saddam's regime, and introduce democracy to the people of Iraq. That's why the troops went to Iraq, and they achieved their goals. However, that's not enough for the Republicans. They want to keep moving the goalposts for the soldiers and play a shell game with the American people. We want a definitive list of goals for our troops and the Iraqi government. That's it. That's not a deadline for defeat, it's a sign of respect toward everybody who has made a commitment of resources to this lengthy endeavor. (And the idea that the President can now turn his attention to the war is laughable. The President has turned this war over to a "war czar" so he can turn his undivided attention to that rampant wildbrush insurgency at his ranch.)

But this diatribe from Kagan & Kristol hardly focuses on Iraq. In fact, it's a call to arms against Iran and Syria (who appears to have replaced North Korea on the global Evil Axis). That's certainly something to ponder on this Memorial Day. The Administration that will remain in power until 2009 isn't satisfied with sinking half a trillion taxpayer dollars and sacrificing thousands of lives in Iraq alone. Their highly profitable war machine hunger grows as its size increases, and every mainstream Republican candidate for President promises to continue feeding this beast.

Template Change

I decided to update the look of the blog. Let me know if you want or do not want.

Breaking News On The Clinton Marriage

There are two new books about Hillary and her marriage to President Clinton, and boy do they have some shocking revelations:

• Bill had an affair with another woman and almost divorced Hillary to be with the other woman. I know what you're thinking. This just doesn't happen in America. No way.
• Hillary Clinton is the only female lawyer in America that is self-righteous, ambitious, and driven to success. Kinda takes your breath away, huh?
• Immediately after 9/11, New York Senator Hillary Clinton supported the initial plan to invade Iraq. For some reason, she felt compelled to stand with a popular President and endorse a war that that most of America supported.
• Hillary and Bill created a secret plan in the 1970's to share four Presidential terms. And like all secret plans hatched in the 70's, success is inevitable. Especially when one of the plotters is an ambitious woman!

Now, some of you might say that this doesn't seem like news. Hell, you might even argue that this secret pact sounds completely retarded. But you're missing the picture. These books are written by important journalists, therefore this goes beyond innuendo and becomes something that almost resembles news. Kinda pathetic, huh?

More Awesome War!

I guess some progressives are a little upset that the Dems have capitulated to the Bush Administration's demands to give a blank check to fund the Iraq War for another few months. I guess it does suck a little bit, but I think it's fair to look at the context of this decision. Bush was elected President, and he can choose to pour as much of our tax money into Iraq as he wants. The Republicans f'ing LOVE this war. The troops LOVE this war. So let them own it. Let them bask in it. It's not my place to tell them that it's a huge waste of money.

The Dems are in a pretty nasty position. Everybody (that uses logic) wants to leave Iraq, but nobody wants to give the order. Bush is going to force his successor to actually make a decision. The Republicans still think we're fighting back against the 9/11 attackers. The Democrats have been beaten up so badly that they are afraid to do anything. The troops don't seem to give a sh*t one way or another.

If the Republicans insist on owning every aspect of this war, let them have it. They own it all.

Amnestah!

You may have felt a general sense of unease in the air lately. Well, if you're a Republican, that is. Michael Moore's new movie premieres tomorrow night and that's always an uncomfortable experience for the Right Wing.

But that's not the biggest problem in your life. A new immigration bill is close to passing, and it doesn't have anything about setting fire to anybody lacking proper paperwork. Strike One. It doesn't have anything about shutting down Telemundo or soccer. Strike Two. And worst of all, it offers amnesty to everybody everywhere for everything. Strike Three.

But don't take my word for it, let's go to the intellectuals of the Right Wing.

The aptly named Hot Air blog says:

A huge new population of legalized unskilled workers means not only new Democratic voters but unionization, possibly on a grand enough scale to bring about a reawakening of the labor movement. If so, that’ll encompass unskilled Americans too. Granted, it’ll be a cold comfort to those Americans that the jobs they would have gotten if not for the immigrant labor glut now pay a lot more than they did before

Holy shit. Every illegal alien will vote Democrat and create a union for jobs that Americans covet. Translation: "Real" Americans will be jealous of the newly formed Democratic Orange Workers Union. Think about the last time you went to a restaurant and looked at the hispanic dishwasher and said, "Damn. That could be MY job!" And you thought you were jealous of all the illegal aliens that don't speak english working on Wall Street? Just wait until they have a union. I think I have the vapors...

Hence the new, expansive “brown person” formulation, which pits most racial minorities against conservatives in one fell swoop by suggesting that “brownness” itself is somehow frightening or intolerable to us and thus the real cause of all this hand-wringing over open borders. That term of art hasn’t trickled up to the party establishment yet, so far as I know, but it surely will have by the time illegals are legalized and begin to unionize and register in numbers. If the rhetoric is deployed skillfully enough (and the left is very, very good at this sort of thing), it could raise what they’d doubtless call “brown consciousness” to the point where it’s worth another 10-20% of the already large and growing Latino vote.

Yeah, the Democrats have been working on the "brown person" formulation for a long time now. I think it's called Howard Dean's Brownie Derivative. Yes, it's formulated to pit racial minorities against conservatives in one fell swoop. I would've thought it might take two fell swoops and possible a single scooch, but Dean has this one nailed. Maybe if the "brown conciousness" would read blogs like Hot Air, then they'd realize that they were duped. In one fell swoop.

The doyenne of "brown semi-conciousness", Michelle Malkin, sums up the bill like so:

Let me boil it down to fundamentals: Bush-Kennedy amnesty is the J. Wellington Wimpy plan:

"I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today."

Amnesty is the hamburger. Enforcement is the payment that will never come.

Now I understand. Illegals are the "brown conciousness" that have infiltrated the sesame seed buns of Canada and Mexico. In between lies the expansive brown soy formulation where you would expect to find pure American red meat. Those fucking illegals. And they've done this in one fell swoop. I suspect Carlos Mencia is to blame. We should at least deport that son-of-a-bitch.

The Voice of Iowa provides a voice of logic-like residue:

If Congress wants to reform immigration, that’s fine. But you cannot do it without FIRST securing the border. If they build the wall and secure it with plenty of people to patrol it and the technology to help them monitor it, then I would have ZERO problem with just about any program they come up with, and that even would include a full-blown amnesty. But you leave the border that wide open, it guarantees that we’ll be back to this point again in the near future.

Hmmm. First the goddamn voices in Iowa forced us to go to Iraq and spend something like half a billion dollars because they got ants in their pants over one type of "brown conciousness". Now they want spend more of our money to build a two thousand mile fence because they got ants in their pants over another type of "brown conciousness". Seems like the voices from the Heartland are costing us waaaaay to much money.



And what is the deal with this unbelievable amnesty program? It blows a ton of money on a fence that appears to be at least a thousand miles shorter than the border. Strike One. It requires employers and employees to spend more resources to prove citizenship. Strike Two. We have to pay for another government program to create 'Z Visas' that are the first step of a 12-year program toward citizenship. Strike Three. And the American Taxpayers are Out!

Seriously, I think I'm a little tired of seeing my tax money being spent to support the "brown conciousness" in every damn country except my own.

My solution to the immigration "problem"? Let me toss out my own expensive, ridiculous solution: Buy Mexico. Legalize their drugs and sell them to the millions of Americans who use them. Invest in companies that will generate good jobs in Mexico. Hell, do "something" positive instead of calling them criminals or lumping them into something called "the brown conciousness". We can blow a lot of money on a program that won't work, or we can tackle it head-on and make positive changes in our country and theirs.

Oh, and get us the f-ck out of Iraq while you're at it. I'd rather spend that money on security in the ports 20 miles from my home. Thanks.

News? Yes!

That's right. There's news in the world.

Summit Fever hits Mount Everest. Check these links for detailed reports.

The US Troop surge in Iraq isn't reducing the number of attacks or fatalities. But don't worry. Things will be very peachy six months from now.

President Bush gets a War Czar! He's basically the Chief Commander for our wars while our Commander-In-Chief takes catnaps and works on the junior jumble. When he's done, he might start thinking about an exit strategy from Iraq.

Jerry Falwell overdosed on Crazy Flakes. Now who will blame the next 9/11 on militant lesbians and Deadwood?

While we're on the topic of Hell, I guess I should mention that I agreed with Andrew Sullivan. Twice. In one day. He defended Ron Paul and proclaimed him co-winner of the Republican Debate. It's kinda interesting that mainstream Conservatives are treating the only classic Conservative as a pariah. What the hell do these guys actually stand for? These people argue that we should shut down the Department of Education in the US, but we should rebuild all the schools in Iraq.

Lots of Antartic ice melts. It's that gosh-darned sun. Why is it getting so much hotter?

Everest Season

I'm a bit of an Everest junkie and love to read the compelling diaries of those who attempt the summit. It's Summit Season, and I thought I'd share a few online diaries of those brave adventurers.

PeakFreak's Khumbu Chronicles
This diary is tracking expeditions on the North and South sides of the Mountain.

London Business School's Rock and Mountain Club
Jolly group of chaps who are raising money for The Prince's Trust charity. They are attempting to place the first Welsh and Egyptian women on the summit.

Caldwell Xtreme Everest
A research expedition that is studying the effects of hypoxia. According to their last update, they are halfway complete with the program and are preparing for their summit attempt.

Coleman Everest Expedition
This looks like a small team sponsored by Coleman Outdoor products. They are carrying the ashes of an 11-year old boy who died of leukemia in 2004. This is a pretty cool site that has a lot of information, including videos.

Project Himalya
Commercial expedition from New Zealand. This will link you to their latest dispatch. You can use the menu on the left to go through all dispatches from the beginning. Lots of good quality pics!

International Mountain Guides
Another commercial expedition attempting the South route.

Greatoutdoors.com Expedition
Sponsored expedition that seems to be updated almost daily with a few pics.

Himex Expedition
Commercial expedition led by Russell Brice, foremost Everest guide/evil greedy bastard. If you watched Discovery's Everest : Beyond the Limit mini-series, then you'll be familiar with Brice and his controversial company. It appears they are filming a new season, and we're waiting in anticipation to see if there will be another David Sharp controversy.

Tao of Everest
Controversial guide Ian Woodall is making his last trip to Everest. However, he's not going for the summit. He's returning to bury Fran Arsentiev, first American woman to climb Everest without supplemental oxygen but died tragically on the way down. He also plans to bury an Indian who died in the 1996 storm. The Daily Mail reported that he will also cover David Sharp's body, but I don't see that on the Tao of Everest site anymore.

What Would Jesus Drink?

Oh, those poor, poor Christians. Even society's cups are turning against them:

An Ohio woman is steaming after reading an anti-God message published on the side of a Starbucks coffee cup.

Y'know life is getting difficult when you're coffee cup points out that your god is an imaginary symbol. Sounds like Starbucks will be losing a valuable customer. What's her favorite drink, you wonder?

Incanno of Springboro, Ohio, admits she had been a huge fan of Starbucks before discovering the message, always ordering a large, house-brewed coffee with nonfat milk and two Splenda.

LOL. I wonder if the cup is really what's bugging her? Or could it be the chlorinated quasi-sugar that's been reported to cause "drug-like feelings of disorientation and confusion, headaches, depression, anxiety, diarrhea, extreme fatigue, and more."


Then again, maybe it is the cups:

As WND reported in September 2005, officials at Baylor University told the Starbucks store on its Waco, Texas, campus to remove a cup said to promote homosexuality.

I'm glad that I finally woke up from my seven-year long Jesus fugue. Or I'd be living in fear of what the next coffee cup might say to me.

Al Qaeda Netflix Strikes Again

Seems like it's been a while since we got our last videotape from al Qaeda. Fortunately, we've got a new one just in time for the start of bikini season. This edition contains a threat (!) from some crazy religious fundamentalist. (The series is getting a little stale IMO.)

OBL is nowhere to be seen in the video, nor do we see his rack of guns. This video features Ayman al Zawahiri, Al Qaeda's Number Two Man. (Personally, I think we should call him Number One just like we did with Commander Riker on Star Trek:TNG.)

So, what's up with al Zawahiri? He doesn't have anything to say about Paris' jail sentence, but that's understandable since this video was made a couple weeks ago. Number One wants to talk a little about the Democrat's plan to set a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. A al Z doesn't like this plan at all. He pleads with Bush to keep our troops in Iraq so they will be practice targets for Al Qaeda. In fact, he says he wants to kill over 200,000 US troops. We can only take that to mean that al Qaeda wants Bush to double-down and surge even more of our resources into Iraq.

The Republicans will surely contemplate this and agree to the proposal. We can take glance over at the poor confused ho at Atlas Shrugged for proof. (Don't name your blog for a Libertarian book and then advocate for anti-Libertarian values, moron.)

Here's the headline as from Ms. AS:

Al Qaeda Wants More US Blood And the Democrat Pussies say whaaaaa

So, I guess the ultra-right wing want to give more US blood to AQ. It's really hard to keep up with these people, because I thought they'd want US soldiers to keep their blood.
Continuing Ms. ASshat's post:

Someone explain it to me again why the Democrats want to surrender the fate of our great nation to the jihad?

Which nation is she talking about? Why don't these people move to Iraq if they love it so much? Does she think "the jihad" only exists in Iraq? We could wipe that country off the face of the planet and "the jihad" would still be going strong. Iraq is just a distraction.

Let's recap:

Al Qaeda: Please don't leave Iraq. We'd prefer to have US soldiers around for target practice.

Bush: I'LL NEVER LEAVE IRAQ!!!!!

Al Qaeda: Cool. Would you mind sending more troops because we want to kill at least 200,000 US soldiers.

China: Yeah, we'd kinda like to see you spend more money in Iraq, too.

Bush: You support more surge? Finally, somebody agrees with me.

Republicans: Hey! Some of us are still delusional enough to agree with you! General Petraeus is a stud! You should send more troops!

Al Qaeda: Yeah, but only send those troops to Iraq. And please stay out of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Saudi Arabia.

Bush: Don't worry. I probably can't afford to send resources there. Our credit's a little maxed right now.

China: Good.

Russia: Awesome.

Venezuela: Works for us, too.

Al Qaeda: Bush, you're the best thing that ever happened to us.

Bush: Oh, stop! I'm blushing.

Conservatives Find Another Playground

Conservatives have decided that Youtube is waaay to liberal for them, so they started their own copycat version of the video-sharing website. It's called Qubetv.tv which may sound a little redundant, but these are the same people who have to be told that we're "making progress" in Iraq everyday. Here's a little bit from their blog:

Will there be standards? “Sure. No pornography—we’re a family site. And if some al-Qaeda type sends footage of an American kid being killed, unlike the New York Times, we will have the common sense and decency to get the thing removed ASAP…as conservatives we are big believers in the Constitution, which includes the First Amendment,” pointed out Lord.

So, they are conservatives who believe in the Constitution and the First Amendment. Which means they will censor their content. Natch.

Also, they won't show any casualties from the Iraq War. Because it's one thing to send troops over to be sniped in Iraq neighborhoods, but it's gross to actually see it. That's how Conservatives support our troops! We'll buy you the plane ticket to Baghdad. But if you get hurt, you better keep it on the down-low.


So, what kind of important journalism has been uploaded to Qubetv.tv?

- A clip of Hillary talking about providing health care to all Americans. The video is from a black-and-white movie, while Hillary provides the audio. I'm not sure if there's a point to this one or not.

- Another audio clip that doesn't really warrant the bandwidth to become a video. It's an audio clip from Rush Limbaugh's show where he is playing another audio clip of Barney Frank accidently saying the word "cock" instead of "clock". It's funny because he said one word instead of another, and one of the words was a dirty word and you're supposed to find some type of deep meaning from it and ahhh... whatever.

- And here's another one from a very creepy looking guy suggesting that you log onto Youtube and post comments about his videos so they will show up on Youtube's "Most Discussed" page. Because that's where all the hard-core "Youtubers" go. He also has another video that is a haiku or something about being covered in liberal feces. I suggested that he stop working inside of pay toilets. (NOTE: This site that claims to support the First Amendment has deleted my comment questioning why this guy claims to be covered in liberal feces in the first place!)

- Here's yet another audio clip that's been turned into a video. (At least the creepy guy had a webcam!) This one features Michael Savage ranting about the immigrant invasion.

- This one is a classic. It's a series of images from the Virginia Tech massacre claiming that one trained, legal gun owner could have prevented Cho's rampage. Yeah, I'm sure that nobody but Cho carries guns to school. I wonder if anybody at NASA might have something to say about letting anybody and everybody to carry weapons in engineering departments...

Basically, this is yet another pathetic non-idea from today's Conservative movement. Google/Youtube should be happy that somebody else is posting this crap and wasting bandwidth.

Has It Really Been Four Years?

Has it really been four years since Pretzel-Dunce Bush declared that the war in Iraq was over? Honestly, it feels like twenty.

Bush says that it doesn't make sense to tell the enemy when we are going. Yeah, "the enemy" needs to keep waiting in suspense.

George Bush and his Republican sycophants don't give a damn about the troops. They'll keep our troops in a foreign sandbox for the next hundred years if they can use it as a weapon against those dirty hippies that made us leave Vietnam.

Enjoy this anniversary, Republicans. This is your war. It doesn't matter what Harry Reid says. It doesn't matter where Nancy Pelosi goes. It doesn't matter where Cindy Sheehan pickets. YOUR President represents everything you stand for. American soldiers are pawns in your political game.

Republicans don't care that Al Qaeda is an autonomous cellular terror organization. Republicans don't care that they still can't find a single definition for this mission. Republicans don't care about the length of soldier's tours. Republicans only care about sniping at the Democrats.

You broke it. You bought it. Mission Accomplished.