Cannon Fodder

The actual term is archaic; it first described those front line soldiers, in the time of linear warfare, who marched straight into cannon fire during an attack. Unfortunately the phrase has never been given the time to truly fall into disuse. And BushCo. have done their best to make sure it didn't go out of style in their time.

That most dangerous and feared weapon of the insurgents in Iraq and now, more and more, Afghanistan is the IED - Improvised Explosive Device. Those soldiers caught in the blast of such a device - the ones not killed outright - are left with broken or missing limbs and faces and with permanent, debilitating brain injuries.

But BushCo. has repeatedly said - about many things - "we couldn't have known!" And, after all, you have to go to war with the military you have, right? But every time they've uttered those words, it's turned out to be a lie. This time is no different.

The Pentagon "was aware of the threat posed by mines and improvised explosive devices (IEDs) … and of the availability of mine resistant vehicles years before insurgent actions began in Iraq in 2003," says the 72-page report, which was reviewed by USA TODAY.

[snip]

Marine Corps leaders "stopped processing" an urgent request in February 2005 for Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles from combat commanders in Iraq's Anbar province after declaring that a more heavily armored version of existing Humvee vehicles was the "best available" option for protecting troops, the report says.

Why would Marine "leaders" stop processing such an urgent request from their comrades in the field? I've known lots of Marines and the only thing that would keep them from helping a fellow Marine is pressure from the top. Lots of pressure. Remember that BushCo. was still suffering under the delusion that they could prosecute two wars on the cheap and could "transform" the military into a lighter, more deployable force. I'm sure there was plenty of pressure to keep costs down and to keep materiel as light as possible. No matter the human cost.

Add this to the way-too-long list of stories you can tell your conservative friends who still believe the lie that Republicans "support the troops."

No One Could Have Predicted...

How many times did we hear that from BushCo. over the past eight years? Too many to count about too many things.

Here's another one to add to the list; seems that they were warned about the mortgage crisis and financial meltdown:

"Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.

So they were warned, just like "Bin Laden determined to strike the U.S." and like Katrina storm damage warnings and like so many other disasters in waiting that BushCo. ignored.

So, what did they do?

Bowing to aggressive lobbying -- along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK -- regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.

But of course there were consequences, right?

Many of the banks that fought to undermine the proposals by some regulators are now either out of business or accepting billions in federal aid to recover from a mortgage crisis they insisted would never come. Many executives remain in high-paying jobs, even after their assurances were proved false.

January 20 can't come fast enough.

Worst. President. Ever.

Purple Haze

Deregulation. Self-regulation. Cost-benefit analysis. Free market solutions. De-funding regulatory agencies. Non-enforcement of regulations.

This is what the GOP has pushed on the American people and BushCo., not content with the damage already done, is actively pushing this same agenda on the rest of the world. Fortunately he doesn't have much time left to wreak more havoc on the world.

But can this trend be reversed? Can we undo the damage done, not only to our government but to our planet?

Here's what completely unregulated, unchecked industry has wrought:

A noxious cocktail of soot, smog and toxic chemicals is blotting out the sun, fouling the lungs of millions of people and altering weather patterns in large parts of Asia, according to a report released Thursday by the United Nations.

We must have a more sane policy approach to our impact on the world. I hope that an Obama administration will be up to the task.

And I hope we are not too late.

What Constitution?

Chris Matthews and Keith Olbermann have gotten lots of mileage out of the fact that neither Sarah Palin nor McCain spokeswoman Nancy Pfotenhauer could state the Constitutional role of the Vice President. While this in itself is disturbing - if for no other reason than it's reasonable to expect an applicant for a job to at least know what that job entails.

But, really, we shouldn't be surprised.

Just think of all the other aspects of our Constitution and our laws that Republicans have ignored over the past eight years:

1. Habeus Corpus? Check.
2. Extra-legal prisons on foreign soil? Check.
3. Trashing the Fourth Amendment? Check.
4. Illegal war? Check.
5. Lying to the American people? Check.
6. Suppressing and/or stealing votes? Check.

Well, you get the idea.

So while I appreciate Matthews' and Olbermann's humor, I just can't be surprised anymore. I can only hope that we can win in November with a large enough margin to swamp any attempts at stealing another election and we can move on towards healing.

But - just because we can - add to the comments your favorite "extra-Constitutional" activities of the last eight years. Don't be shy, there are plenty to go around!

Smile, You're on Candid Camera

It was just last Thursday that we learned that because of the now numerous "previously unseen provisions of the Patriot Act" the government would now be using U2 spyplanes on you and me. Some said that this was an aging platform and couldn't fly all that much and really where was the harm. I said this:

And the Democratically controlled Congress just handed BushCo. even more authority to use the full panoply of U.S. spyware on you and me.

This administration has never met a slippery slope it couldn't immediately make steeper and more slippery. And this was no exception. Now we learn just how quickly BushCo. decided to slide right down the bottom of the slope.

Local and federal agencies are to have vastly expanded access to information gathered from spy satellites in the U.S., the Wall Street Journal reports.

Information from "some of the U.S.'s most powerful intelligence-gathering tools" will soon be at the disposal of a wide array of law enforcement agencies at all levels of government, reports Robert Block in the Journal Wednesday. Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell decided to increase access to the spy data earlier this year and asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff to facilitate access to the spy data by civilian agencies and law enforcement.

Right to the bottom. Who'd have thought they'd do that?

Oh, and thanks (read f*ck you) again to those Democrats who voted for this.

The Biggest Rat of All Jumps Ship

Now that Bush's Brain has abandoned the ship of state where does that leave the Bush of very little brain?

Does this mean that Uncle Karl avoids Congressional subpoenas? Does this mean that he's no longer protected by the ever-expanding sphere of Executive Priviledge?

Will this leave Bush literally running around like a chicken with its head cut off? Although, really, how would we know the difference.

And to Rove, leaving the People's White House; "don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out."

Oh, and this: "see you in court."

Vick's Got Nothing On BushCo. for Dog Abuse

If this administration were a dog it would be dead from whatever the animal version of shaken-baby syndrome is. At every turn Bush, Cheney and their coterie of Dementors has wagged the hell out of the dog with upgraded terror color alerts and bogus warnings.

Perhaps it was news that Bush is now less popular than the Head Death Eater Cheney, but suddenly - from out of nowhere - terrorists are conducting "dry-runs," practicing how to sneak explosives aboard airliners. Of course there are no specifics and TSA workers are told to watch out for "ordinary objects," including - I shit you not - block cheese.

Can somebody in Congress - anyone, really - just stand up and throw down a big bullshit flag on these bastards? Enough already.

Nancy Pelosi, are you paying attention at all? Pull that fucking rule book out and put Impeachment back on the table. You and the rest of your Democratic colleagues are standing by while the worst President - the worst administration - in our history is slowly destroying our country.

Bush has to go.

Now.

Romney Accidentally Reveals "Secret" Republican Plan to Destroy Our Government

Of course it's a poorly kept secret and anyone really paying attention already knows it, but I'm not sure any Republican has so baldly stated the case before.

If you've ever wondered why BushCo. has repeatedly assigned unexperienced political hacks to head important government agencies or continually interfered in the operation of formerly effective offices, wonder no more. In disparaging Democratic initiatives at universal healthcare he said the following, letting slip the real purpose of Rebublican meddling:

At a town hall meeting in Exeter later Sunday, he said, "I don't want the guys who ran the (Hurricane) Katrina cleanup running my health care system."

Of course the "guys who ran... Katrina..." were all Republicans; appointees who wouldn't know a cyclone from a vacuum cleaner. But that's the whole idea: these guys want government to fail. They want to be able to say things like Romney did, above. And they'll use the failures that they've caused to justify handing everything over to the private business sector.

Where their political contributors can profit the most.