Adam Corolla hangs up on Ann Coulter (LANGUAGE)

Slate Magazine - Impeach Cheney

Bruce Fein lays out the case against Dick Cheney

read more | digg story

Giuliani's 9/11 Conspiracy Theory

Giuliani claimed that Clinton treated the 1993 World Trade Center bombing "as a criminal act instead of a terrorist attack," which "emboldened other strikes" on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, Kenya, and Tanzania, and later on the USS Cole.

read more | digg story

Musharraf's Military Reaches Deep Into Pakistani Society by Griff Witte

Nusrat Riaz, a doctor for 17 years, has spent the past three directing a clinic that provides care to thousands of poor patients in this remote, wheat-farming village on the plains of Punjab.So Riaz was surprised this spring when he learned the government had appointed a monitor to look over his shoulder as he worked.

read more | digg story

Elizabeth Edwards Confronts Ann Coulter Live on Hardball

Elizabeth Edwards calls in to Hardball to confront Ann Coulter, who has called John Edwards a "faggot" and yesterday said "[I]f I’m gonna say anything about John Edwards in the future, I’ll just wish he had been killed in a terrorist assassination plot."

read more | digg story

A Message from Al Franken

Waterloo

Watch This!

Waterloo

A rose for their graves ... by Penny

It is only recently that I have come to think of myself as a war widow.The casualties continue to mount after they come home ...David Fickel, a 25-year-old Minnesotan honorably discharged from the Marine Corps after serving in Iraq, used a shotgun to take his own life on Memorial Day, 2006Ed. Note... There is so much more...



read more | digg story

White House Defends Cheney's Refusal of Oversight

The White House defended Vice President Cheney yesterday in a dispute over his office's refusal to comply with an executive order regulating the handling of classified information as Democrats and other critics assailed him for disregarding rules that others follow.



read more | digg story

Cheney not part of Executive Department? Please Congress, make it so!

Vice President Harry S. Truman plays the piano as actress Lauren Bacall, perched on the instrument,
looks on, at the National Press Club canteen in Washington, Feb. 10, 1945.

After extensively researching the US Constitution this morning before I attacked the crossword puzzle I have discovered that the term Vice President appears in that revered and trusted document and its amendments no less than than twenty four times. In no instance does the term appear near the words "shall be an employee of the executive department," however, the term also does not appear near the words "shall maintain an office in the White House where he will hold secret meetings with the various "Captains of Industry" and where it will be convenient for him, from time to time, to pick up the President by the ears for a good corrective shake."

I guess what we have here is something historians call a "Constitutional Mexican toss up" which will be decided by the courts long after the deaths of the parties involved.

I do believe however, that a cursory study of photograph of the Vice President engaged at his duties above will convince even the most disinclined observer that the Vice President has historically exercised executive functions.

If anyone needs further research on this please wait until later, I still have to deal with that puzzle.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

How Many Degrees Separate Mengele from the APA, The Gestapo from the CIA?

The EDSA Revolution, also referred to as the People Power Revolution and the Philippine Revolution of 1986, was a mostly non-violent mass demonstration in the Philippines. Four days of peaceful action by millions of Filipinos led to the downfall of the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos and the installation of Corazon Aquino as president of the Republic. EDSA stands for Epifanio de los Santos Avenue, the main highway in Metro Manila and the main site of the demonstrations.

In the last year or so I've posted more than a few articles protesting various aspects of the Cheney/Bush administration and their ill conceived, illegal and insane policies and on several occasions I've led the pieces with pictures that cast Cheney and Bush in Nazi uniforms. I have no facility with Photoshop so I "borrowed" the images from here and there around the web. My apologies to those unheralded graphic geniuses whose work I "borrowed."

The pieces were generally well received around the liberal blogosphere but locally, here in Dayton, Ohio I took no small amount of heat for comparing Cheney/Bush and his criminal minions with Hitler and his henchmen. I received some very unflattering comments, some hate mail, more than a few invitations to an ass kicking, mine was intended I believe, and one grammatically challenged death threat.

It is not always a friendly house we play to here in the "heart"land, this crowd can get tough.

I've long believed that no matter how great my fears of the criminal depths to which the government of my country has sunk, no matter how bad I suspect things have become, the reality is always, always, worse. much worse, way worse.

That is why I'm seldom surprised by reports of governmental abuse of the rights of our citizens and other human beings around the world and why I wasn't surprised when I read an article ("The CIA's torture teachers") in Salon today in which Mark Benjamin points out the emerging facts in several investigations currently underway which point to the active participation of members (Doctors, I believe) of the American Psychological Association with the CIA and Special Force components of the US military in the criminal interrogations of prisoners being held at Guantanamo and other sites known and unknown around the world.

I also believe that I've reached an age and a level of experience at which, if I notice that if someone is pissing in my boots and simultaneously trying to explain to me that it's raining, I have no problem kicking his ass without benefit of further evidence.

Bullshit, I feel, announces itself well in advance by it's unmistakable aroma, and my sniffer has only improved with age. And so, I believe, has yours.

This makes me what they call a loose cannon, so be it.

I knew, for example, long before the first court proceeding that Scooter, along with everyone in the VPs realm and the entire "unitary executive" had signed on to destroying Joe Wilson, his wife was just necessary "collateral damage." And so, I believe did you.

I knew that Bush's pathetic little sycophant at Justice was balls deep in doing exactly what Karl Rove told him to do the moment I read the first story of the attorney firings in the press nearly a year ago, as, in my mind at least, did you.

And, to the point, I knew when these assholes started beating breasts and investigating and charging and arranging courts martial for a few poor enlisted saps, and hanging fully expendable reserve officers out to dry over their involvement in the criminal abuses at Abu Graib, I knew that the policy directives/orders had flowed like water, down the big hill, always seeking the path of least resistance, right from the headwaters of criminal madness in the big White House on Pennsylvania Avenue, down through the office of "Gee Willikers" Don, to be signed off on by every cowardly, ass kissing "General" in the sickening group of careerist traitors that passes for military leadership in this Alice in Neocon world, and rolled inexorably on, like some, some, giant nightmare snowballing turd, crushing the hapless, low level few who would be sacrificed so that the dreams of empire could continue on and the profits would not abate. Somehow, I don't believe that I was alone in my "knowledge."

This story, of which I'm sure I have not heard the end, coupled with the "The General's Report" in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh about the downfall of Antonio Taguba, an honest and honorable officer and how he became one of the millions of human casualties of the human filth in neckties who have taken control of my America and Glen Greenwald's piece this morning about Norman Podhoretz the lunatic who represents the "spiritual" core of this piratical band of psychopaths has pretty much driven my rage level to the ceiling.

I now live in a country that forces brave men like Antonio Taguba into retirement for behaving like honorable men, like soldiers, a country that rewards pathological scum like Norman Podhoretz the "Presidential Medal of Freedom."

I was right to portray Cheney/Bush as Nazis, but they are potentially far worse.

I'm ready for the barricades. I know it... let me know when you know that you are.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

Celebrating World Refugee Day

Africa has it--We want it

Another great oil story!



read more | digg story

A tragic legacy by Glen Greenwald at Salon Books

We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely kind intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell. -- Sir Karl Popper, twentieth-century British philosopher of science



read more | digg story

Circus Maximus Politicus And That Urpy Feeling, A Rant

Eight faces that I'm thoroughly sick of.

Ten faces that make me vomit, projectile style.

Now, the man on the stand he wants my vote,

He's a-runnin' for office on the ballot note.

He's out there preachin' in front of the steeple,

Tellin' me he loves all kinds-a people.

He's eatin' bagels

He's eatin' pizza

He's eatin' chitlins

He's eatin' bullshit!

Bob Dylan "I Shall Be Free"

I knew this would happen when they started campaigning for the 2008 election five minutes after the 2006 mid terms. I felt it coming, like the feeling I get when I eat a giant sausage sandwich with peppers and onions at midnight, I know that indigestion is in my immediate future.

I'm sick of politics, thoroughly, fed up, to the gills.... Urp!

I know, I know, being sick of politics is like being tired of living, OK so what what what do you do about it? Shut up? Quit bitching? Take up residence in the nearest hermitage? Find a cuckoo's nest and commit to it?

I've been reflecting in the last few days about lofty goals, the dreams and visions of changing the world expressed by the alpha personalities parading before us in this increasingly irrelevant, interminable and irritating beauty contest of a presidential election campaign.

I met a person recently whose goal every day is to help people in one remote village get a second meal each day, just that, help someone who normally eats once in every twenty four hours to get an extra tuna sandwich.

There are thousands of such people who arise each day, not thinking about building a nuclear reactor, desalinating the Indian ocean, irrigating a billion acres of desert, creating productive farmland to feed an entire continent, but simply concern themselves with helping Julius Mukembe provide a second meal for himself and his wife and children as well as the families in the other 17 huts in some remote part of nowhere.

A remote part of nowhere, where a scientific breakthrough is a septic system and mass transit is a foot bridge that enables livestock to forage in new pasture land and cuts hours off the daily task of gathering fuel or food.

A remote part of nowhere where a health care program is clean water, where feeding the hungry means sharing your dinner.

I no longer believe that any of the high class whores depicted in the circus pictures above will do anything that will make life easier or better for the common people in this or any other country. They will not solve a single one of the enormous societal challenges that lie like an enormous weight on our public chest and that lie in wait to restrict our children's future.

Whether we talk about war and peace, energy or health care, social security or child mortality I cannot find the face of a savior or even a halfway decent prophet in any ring of this circus.

I know that I can trust all of them to say one thing publicly and the opposite when the cameras amd microphones disappear. I know that everyone shown on the stages above has, and will in the future, sell out the interests of the working people of this country and others to the first corporate lizard with with a handful of campaign cash. I hear their phony pronouncements, so carefully crafted by their handlers and spin doctors and reject almost every word I hear.

I am sick of hearing from everyday people around me that "they're all alike, Republicans, Democrats, it doesn't matter, they're all crooked."

I'm sick of hearing that statement because it's so damn true. The instant that the election returns were counted last fall my Democratic leadership began groveling at the feet of the same corporate interests that put the Bush/Cheney fiasco in office.

They will provide for the future, trust them, "their future," but when the pie is sliced and served we will still be eating cake... Urp!

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

People of the River, "If Fields Could Be Carried"

Hamatika School

Gwembe valley

October 4, 2002

Dear Aunty Grace

Thank you very much for the food that arrived yesterday. Mother was thrilled to see

it. She cried because she had not seen so much mealie meal for months.

Straightaway she cooked a really big meal of nshima. We ate really well last night

and I still feel full today.

Some days when I'm unable to write at home, too lazy to make breakfast, or just need a better cup of coffee than I make around here, I head for a local Internet Cafe. Java Street is a very pleasant spot run by a gracious friend named Stacy and habituated by a generally interesting and diverse group of people.

Yesterday as I settled in, plugged in the laptop and ordered breakfast I spoke to a couple of the regulars who play chess most mornings trading quick coffee house greetings. As I opened the morning paper I noticed at the next table a very pretty young woman (I'm a professional, a trained observer, it's my job) wearing a headset, engrossed in her work and seemingly oblivious to the coffee aromas mixed with the lingering memory of burnt toast and the low murmur of breakfast banter wafting in her vicinity.

I wonder where you managed to find all that food? There has been nothing in the

market here for weeks now and the last maize that came was so expensive that we

could not afford it. The harvest from our farm ran out in July, after only a few

weeks. Since then father has been walking to the next village to work as a brick

maker. He gets really tired with the long walk and the hard work but the boss pays

him in food so at least we have had something to eat, even if it is often only one

meal a day.

I decided when I got up yesterday, to not try to write and instead, take care of some of the administrative jobs on the website, fixing links, window dressing, doing a little promotion, responding to comments at other sites etc. I had written several short things in the last week and felt myself reaching, grasping for more, and knew that I should take a day off lest I succumb to my inner literary greed.

Unfortunately he has been told there is no more work after next week

and so no more food. Mother says my brothers and I will probably have to leave

school for a few weeks to look for food in the bush and to help in our fields in the

hope that we get a harvest this April.

I'm not sure how but after breakfast, after the the checkmate at the next table, after the headset was removed, and my busywork was done I caught the eye of the lovely young woman (blue eyes filled with wit and humor, with intelligence, curiosity and charm) and asked her what she was working on.

I hope things are better for you in Lusaka. We always imagine the capital city will

be really rich, with plenty of food and it must be wonderful to be able to watch

television! Lots of my friends want to come there to get jobs and get rich, but I am

not sure, what do you think?

Please write soon

With love

Joy Mweeba

Her gaze was direct, her smile pleasant, if somewhat quizzical, and her tone frank as she explained that she was a graduate student in anthropology, preparing to leave in a few days for a summer research project in Africa.

I heard the roaring of lions, the gentle thrumming of rain on the jungle canopy, the rhythm of distant drums, I was smitten, smitten with Africa and of course, ancient though I am, with this, this, young lady, this girl really, younger than my shirt, so lovely and young so brave and earnest.

Half a century ago, when I was a boy, before high school, before John Kennedy, Vietnam, marriage, a dozen years before the birth of my son there was a great dam built in what once was Northern Rhodesia on the Zambezi River. Kariba Dam among the worlds largest was built to interrupt the flow and harness the power of the mighty river, power that was needed to run the colonial towns and cities in what would become Zambia and Zimbabwe.

As the river rose, foot by inexorable foot behind the dam, as the great fertile valley became Lake Kariba, now one of the worlds largest man made lakes, great efforts were made to save and relocate the wildlife of the area.

The wildlife of Zambia is the stuff of legend, of history merged with legend, Livingstone and Stanley, Great White hunters, safaris, a magnificent remnant of some ancient Eden.

Project Noah it was called, a great relocation of wild creatures which preserved untold thousands of wild and exotic animals who made their home in the Zambezi valley. They commemorated this rescue with a plaque in Kariba.

There were other residents of the valley of the Zambezi, the Tonga of the Gwembe valley, they called themselves "Basilwizi" the river people. They were the river, a part of the Zambezi and the river was part of them, flowing through them body and soul as surely as the blood that courses in their veins.

They had been there for centuries, living, farming in the rich alluvial soil along the banks of the Zambezi, year after year planting and tilling their crops and and erecting rain shrines all over the basin where they performed Mpande, ceremonial rites to ensure that the rains would come and the the harvest would be plentiful and there would be food to eat.

The Noah project neglected to treat the River people with the same care shown to the animals, the same sensitivity in their relocation. The British made promises, promises of good housing, of schools and roads and loan opportunities, their area, the new one that is, would be a showcase of clinics and wells and grinding mills.

Promises

Promises made to nearly sixty thousand who were relocated on higher ground where the sandy soil no longer supported their crops, where no amount of prayer and supplication or appeasement of the spirits would bring the rich harvest of the past or provide fodder for their cattle, their goats.

The Basilwizi, the River People describe now how their shrines are submerged by the waters, "there was no way the shrines and some of the spirits could be carried with us," they say.

"Life was very good in the Valley when I was growing up. We had more than enough food," they say.

"If fields could be carried, we could have carried them with us," they say.

I've had breakfast this morning and coffee and writing was easy with the grass and the rabbits, the leaning blue spruce and the breeze blowing through the window from the back yard.

I'm going to the coffee shop anyway this morning ,

I want to find that earnest and lovely and brave young woman.

I want to ask her to be my friend, to write to me and share what she finds in that place, that Africa.



I want a piece of the adventure she is about to embark upon and I want her to share with me,

to share, these Basilwizi,

her people of the river.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust

Bush Pardons Libby? Wouldn't We Be More Shocked If He Didn't?

There is an ad currently running on Comedy Central for David Spade's show in which the comic says that Michael Jackson is having a 50 foot robot of himself built which will roam the desert shooting laser beams from it's eyes. He then asks the viewer, "Wouldn't we be more shocked if he didn't?"

Looking around the net this morning and perusing a few of the thousands of "will Bush pardon Scooter?" stories, that ad kept popping into my mind.

I think that Bush will pardon Scooter, I will be shocked if he doesn't, the real question, for me, is when?

You can be sure the question is being discussed in hushed tones in the West Wing this morning, but the hand wringing is audible out here in the heartland.

"Obviously, there'd be a significant political price to pay," said William P. Barr, who as attorney general to President George H.W. Bush remembers the controversy raised by the post-election pardons for several Iran-contra figures in 1992. "I personally am very sympathetic to Scooter Libby. But it would be a tough call to do it at this stage."

In the West Wing, Pardon Is A Topic Too Sensitive to Mention
By Peter Baker - Washington Post

My guess is that the administration is at this very moment pulling out all the stops to gain bail for the poor abused family man and pillar of the community pending his appeal, which, with some luck, will take Cheney/Bush to the end of the term when Bush can issue the pardon just before the oval office door closes behind him.

If they don't succeed in influencing the court to allow bail, Bush will probably be forced to pardon him. I may be wrong but I don't think Scooter will remain silent through a long stay in prison.

At the same time, some White House advisers said the president's political troubles are already so deep that a pardon might not be so damaging. Those most upset by the CIA leak case that led to the Libby conviction already oppose Bush, they noted. "You can't hang a man twice for the same crime," a Republican close to the White House said.

In the West Wing, Pardon Is A Topic Too Sensitive to Mention
By Peter Baker - Washington Post

I like that kind of reasoning, it's just what I've learned to expect from this White House, indeed from government in general, the predictably pragmatic cynicism that these guys don every morning with their silk ties, expensive suits and anchorman hairpieces. It's never an issue of right or wrong, what matters is will we be damaged politically?...How badly?...Is it manageable?... How long will Scooter have to stay in Sicily before this blows over? Wait that was Pacino.

The reaction from the White House: Dana Perino told reporters that the president felt sad for Libby's family but would have no further comment about the case, the sentence or the possibility of a pardon at this time.

From the War Room by Tim Grieve at Salon

As I said there are thousands of articles this morning on the "Pardon, will he or won't he?" question, a Technorati blog search returned over 4800 and though I probably won't try to read them all but I'd like to share my two favorites so far. First from Booman:

Just what might justify pardoning Scooter Libby? I mean, if you are George W. Bush, what principles would you rely upon to rationalize the neutering of the judicial process? The jury was clear, the judge was clear, the case was clear...Scooter Libby intentionally and knowingly lied and obstructed an investigation, which is quite clearly a crime. The federal government payed a great deal of money to investigate the Plame Affair and jurors (grand, and otherwise) dedicated months of their lives to ascertaining the facts. The Justice system did its job and concluded that Scooter Libby deserves to do two and a half years in prison for the crimes that he committed. If you are going to wipe that away, you must have some theory about how, ultimately, this sentence is a miscarriage of justice.

From Booman Tribune by Booman

Booman makes a good argument that the government, having concluded that a crime was committed is going to expect someone to pay, if that person is not Scooter than the crime must lie at the feet of those he lied to protect, Cheney? Bush?

He concludes:

No matter how you look at it, there is no way to justify pardoning Scooter Libby without it being an admission of guilt by the President.

Any innocent President would be furious with Libby and wouldn't pardon him in a million years.

But Bush is not innocent. Libby lied for the President. And if Bush pardons Libby then we will know for certain that the President himself is the one that should be doing jail time for the crime that Libby covered up.

From Booman Tribune by Booman

I got my first good laugh of the day over Marty Kaplan's plaintive snarky plea for a pardon at Huffington Post:

I want Bush to pardon Libby.

I want every Republican candidate running for President and Congress to be forced to applaud Libby's pardon and to inscribe their names alongside Scooter's other distinguished defenders, from Rumsfeld to Bolton.

I want American history to possess forever a crystalline illustration of Cheney's whack-ball theory of the unitary executive exempt from the rule of law.

I want the persistent presidential nullification of the Constitution to be perpetually exemplified by an unambiguous act of unmistakable arrogance.

I want Scooter Libby's fate to be be ironically and irrevocably linked to Paris Hilton.

From Pardon Me by Marty Kaplan at Huff Post

In the grand scheme of things I don't know whether it matters but yes he should go to jail and the sentence should be significant, after all we like to discourage our senior people from lying to those who might have occasion to investigate their bosses, or do we?

Scooter is a big boy, a lawyer I believe. He knew every step of the way what he was doing, he was aware at once, while he did it, in real time, each time he lied, obstructed and worked to thwart the investigation.

He has not admitted guilt, nor has he offered to do what is the right thing for the country and tell the truth about the entire affair, the reasons for the character assassination of Joe Wilson and the outing of his wife and the various roles played by everyone involved including his bosses. The right thing for history would be to explain to the people who paid his not insignificant salary why he and his bosses felt that lies had to be told to insure our involvement in a war with Iraq.

It may be that Scooter will look at this as a post graduate course in being a stand up guy and despite the trauma to his family keep his chin up and do the time while preparing for a lucrative career on the wing nut lecture circuit or perhaps start a ministry of his own.

That approach seems to have panned out well for Charles Colson, Gordon Liddy and others convicted during the Watergate era.

He, like those before him will walk out of prison and into the arms of the largest and best funded of prison support groups. An entire wing of his party has dedicated itself to helping formerly incarcerated Republicans regain their rightful place in the halls of privilege and power.

These guys stick together.

Bob Higgins

Worldwide Sawdust