Grumpasaurus.com

Remember how I found dad’s xmas gift last week? Well, it looks like now I’ve found Ms. Grumpy’s

The Tesco Direct site advertises the kit with the words, “Unleash the sex kitten inside…simply extend the Peekaboo pole inside the tube, slip on the sexy tunes and away you go!

“Soon you’ll be flaunting it to the world and earning a fortune in Peekaboo Dance Dollars”.

The £49.97 kit comprises a chrome pole extendible to 8ft 6ins, a ‘sexy dance garter’ and a DVD demonstrating suggestive dance moves.

God that’s hot. I think I’ll get it for BoonDoggle’s 2 year old.

Sowing the Seeds of Fascism in America

There was nothing more inflammatory in my first book, about the 1994 invasion and occupation of Haiti, than my assertion that Special Operations was a hotbed of racism and reaction. “Hideous Dream – A Soldier’s Memoir of the US Invasion of Haiti” (Soft Skull Press, 2000) was my personal account of that operation, and I was explicit not only about the significant number of white supremacists in Special Operations but how the attitudes of these extremists connected with the less explicit white male supremacy of white patriarchal American society and defined, in some respects, the attitude taken by U.S. occupation forces in Haiti toward the Haitian population.

The resistance to this allegation was particularly fierce, and not merely from those inside the Special Operations “community,” whose outrage was more public-relations stagecraft than anything else. There was outrage from people who hadn’t a moment of actual experience in the military at all. This is an affront to something sacred in the public imaginary of a thoroughly militarized United States: that we are an international beacon of civilized virtue, and that our military is the masculine epitome of that virtue standing between our suburban security and the dark chaos of the Outside. Questioning the mystique of the armed forces is tantamount to lunacy at best and treason at worst.

It’s a great article and well worth your time. I’ve previously argued that we’re already living in a fascist state (there’s a movie too, and that post could use an update in the post-Minuteman world). Rather than focus on endpoint analysis, Goff’s article goes over much the same ground, but also addresses some root causes responsible for making that fascism acceptable. A how-did-we-get-here look (or, pedantically, a look at how some key elements for the establishment of a fascist state are already normative values in American society). All this from someone who was SpecOps for many years.

Much of the article focuses on the neonazis in the military – and how the invasion of Iraq has accelerated our military’s destruction from within by neonazis – but there are asides to Straussian ideology, master-race impulses, gender issues, and the like. This is more of a precis for a journal article, but in internet terms, it’s a tome. Go read it.

and plays fiddle while the Constitution burns

A team of American and Iraqi epidemiologists estimates that 655,000 more people have died in Iraq since coalition forces arrived in March 2003 than would have died if the invasion had not occurred.

The estimate, produced by interviewing residents during a random sampling of households throughout the country, is far higher than ones produced by other groups, including Iraq’s government.

It is more than 20 times the estimate of 30,000 civilian deaths that President Bush gave in a speech in December. It is more than 10 times the estimate of roughly 50,000 civilian deaths made by the British-based Iraq Body Count research group.

The surveyors said they found a steady increase in mortality since the invasion, with a steeper rise in the last year that appears to reflect a worsening of violence as reported by the U.S. military, the news media and civilian groups. In the year ending in June, the team calculated Iraq’s mortality rate to be roughly four times what it was the year before the war.

Of the total 655,000 estimated “excess deaths,” 601,000 resulted from violence and the rest from disease and other causes, according to the study. This is about 500 unexpected violent deaths per day throughout the country.

I’ve been sitting on this because I don’t know quite what to say. The total deaths caused by our country in an illegal, elective war of invasion, brought about by the lies and bloodthirsty sociopathy of a small number of chickenhawks is beyond my powers of comprehension.

Maybe this will help. Iraq had approximately the population of California. Due to our invasion of Iraq we have wiped out the equivalent of most of San Francisco, or all of Anaheim and Bakersfield. Or Sacramento and Fremont.

All of those people are dead because of us. Because of Bush. Impeachment is an insufficient remedy, but it is at least a step towards justice.

Oh, and the story? It was carried on page A12 of the WaPo. A-12, people, so that the valuable front page real estate could carry things like a warning of the demise of handwriting. What liberal media?

This is the #4 result on Google when searching for “will I have children”

Love your kids? Prove it by beating them.

How come everyone today is too much of a pussy to smack their kids around? That’s what I want to know: why are parents afraid to beat their kids? When I was a kid and I screwed up, my parents beat my ass. We didn’t have a conversation about it. I didn’t have a “time out.” In fact, I’ve never even once been grounded in my life. What’s the point? Send your kid to his room and make him play video games and read comic books all day? Great idea, why don’t you take him to a psychiatrist while you’re at it so she can pull some disorder out of her ass to hide the fact that you’re a bad parent?

Putin silent as fiercest critic is murdered

A crowd of protesters gathered in central Moscow yesterday to express their anger at the assassination of the crusading journalist Anna Politkovskaya, who at the weekend became the 13th Russian journalist to be killed in a contract-style killing since President Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000.

Politkovskaya, 48, had today been due to publish an article on torture and kidnappings by pro-Moscow forces in the restless southern republic of Chechnya, her colleagues said.

That’s a nice little “free press” thing you’ve got there. It would be a shame if anything were to happen to it.

That GIMP’d pic is totally © me, btw.

Bitch shouldn’t have been in that parody alluding to ass fucking.

The firing of Melanie Martinez, 34, marks the second PBS moral values scandal. The first was the censorship of the “Postcards from Buster” episode last year where Buster the Bunny, who regularly visits families in every episode, went to visit a family with two mommies. Previous families featured in “Postcards” episodes have included Mormons, Hmong and Pentecostal Christians.

Melanie Martinez was fired from her position as host of PBS KIDS Sprout’s “The Good Night Show” because she appeared in two 30-second online films when she was 27, “Technical Virgin” and “Boys Can Wait,” that spoofed abstinence-only education. The PBS ombudsman dedicated two of his columns to voice his opposition to the firing of Melanie, but her job wasn’t saved. Melanie says there is no lawsuit in sight.

The Technical Virgin parodies were genius and not inappropriate (the videos have all been taken down so far as I can tell, or I’d link them). Martinez’ firing is on par with that schoolteacher who was fired for taking a class to a museum where a nude statue was seen. This statue:

© Thomas Hawk

Ooooh, yeah, baby. Can’t you just feel the prurient interests being piqued?

Feel free to sign the petition to PBS about Martinez, though she’s already been replaced.

What the hell is this country coming to?

Just like we did in Fallujah and every other Iraqi town we’ve bombarded. Why clusterbombs should be outlawed

Up to a million cluster bomblets discharged by Israel in its conflict with Hezbollah remain unexploded in southern Lebanon, the UN has said.

The UN’s mine disposal agency says about 40% of the cluster bombs fired or dropped by Israel failed to detonate – three times the UN’s previous estimate.

It says the problem could delay the return home of about 200,000 displaced people by up to two years.

The devices have killed 14 people in south Lebanon since the August truce.

They’re the same as unexploded mines, particularly in urban environments. Don’t believe me? Ask the Lebanese kids who think the bombs are toys and are dying for their curiosity.

When the guns went silent in Aitta Shaab, a war-ravaged village close to the Israeli border, three children skipped through the rubble looking for a little fun.

Hurdling over lumps of crushed concrete and dodging spikes of twisted metal, Sukna, Hassan and Merwa, aged 10 to 12, paused before a curious object. Sukna picked it up. The terrifying blast flung her to the ground, thrusting metal shards into her liver. Hassan’s abdomen was cut open. Merwa was hit in the leg and arm.

“We thought it was just a little ball,” said Hassan with a hoarse whisper in the intensive care ward at Tyre’s Jabal Amel hospital. In the next bed Sukna, a ventilator cupped to her mouth and a tangle of tubes from her arms, said even less.

or how the crazy fuckers in the GOP are going to attack with or without approval? I have? Oh. Because they are. And they’re totally a bunch of crazy fuckers.

House approves Iran Freedom Support Act

The House voted Thursday to impose mandatory sanctions on entities that provide goods or services for Iran’s weapons programs. The vote came as U.S diplomats continued to press the U.N. Security Council to penalize Tehran if it fails to end its uranium enrichment program.

House sponsors of the Iran Freedom Support Act said they had hoped for Senate action as early as Thursday night, sending it to President Bush for his signature. But they said there was resistance from Senate Democrats to passing it without a debate.

The bill, passed by a voice vote, sanctions any entity that contributes to Iran’s ability to acquire chemical, biological or nuclear weapons. The president has the authority to waive those sanctions, but only when he can show that it is in the vital national interest.

Reading the article, my question is – if these are codifying the sanctions in place for the last 27 years… why now? Why voice vote only? What possible reason could you have for creating a false urgency for a situation that will be at least 10 years in the making?

This totally doesn’t remind me of the runup to Iraq. At all. For one, they’re not releasing bullshit “intelligence” leaks of the DANGER we are in. Where are the anthrax-spraying drones/barnstormers?

Shit, if we’re going to nuke a country without pretext, causus belli, a declaration of war, or any rational justification, at least give me a fucking show.

Free sailing to the north pole. Woohoo! Hey, everybody, look over there! It’s a new car model/faux-bisexual celebrity coke addict! Wakka wakka wakka!

EUROPEAN scientists voiced shock today as they viewed pictures which showed Arctic ice cover had disappeared so much last month that a ship could sail unhindered from Europe’s most northerly outpost to the North Pole.

The satellite images were acquired from August 23 to 25 by instruments aboard Envisat and EOS Aqua, two satellites operated by the European Space Agency (ESA).

Perennial sea ice – thick ice that is normally present year-round and is not affected by the Arctic summer – had disappeared over an area bigger than the British Isles, ESA said.

Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse, this just in:

WASHINGTON (AP) — Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne said:

Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before they are used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions in the international community over any possible safety concerns, said Secretary Michael Wynne.

”If we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation,” said Wynne. ”(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.”

The Air Force has funded research into nonlethal weapons, but he said the service isn’t likely to spend more money on development until injury issues are reviewed by medical experts and resolved.

The fact that he even consider this a viable testing procedure is absolutely apolling.
Where’s the sanctity of being a citizen of the United States of America?

Civil liberties, we don’t need no stinking civil liberties.
The Military Industrial Complex is out of frigging control to even suggest such a test!
Corporate Facism in full bloom I’m sorry to say!

American terrorism is alive and well it appears!

::

because the George Will I know and loathe would never have written something like this:

The London plot against civil aviation confirmed a theme of an illuminating new book, Lawrence Wright’s “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11.” The theme is that better law enforcement, which probably could have prevented Sept. 11, is central to combating terrorism. F-16s are not useful tools against terrorism that issues from places such as Hamburg (where Mohamed Atta lived before dying in the North Tower of the World Trade Center) and High Wycombe, England.

Cooperation between Pakistani and British law enforcement (the British draw upon useful experience combating IRA terrorism) has validated John Kerry’s belief (as paraphrased by the New York Times Magazine of Oct. 10, 2004) that “many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror.” In a candidates’ debate in South Carolina (Jan. 29, 2004), Kerry said that although the war on terror will be “occasionally military,” it is “primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world.”

Immediately after the London plot was disrupted, a “senior administration official,” insisting on anonymity for his or her splenetic words, denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point. The official told The Weekly Standard:

“The idea that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, lovable, God-fearing people if it weren’t for U.S. policies strikes me as not a valid idea. [Democrats] do not have the understanding or the commitment to take on these forces. It’s like John Kerry. The law enforcement approach doesn’t work.”

This farrago of caricature and non sequitur makes the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional. But perhaps such rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism, and that the war, unlike “the law enforcement approach,” does “work.”

/me *rubs eyes* *blinks*

At least, the George Will I know wouldn’t have written this article back when the GOP was on the ascendant. Welcome back to the reality-based community, George (provisionally granted).

So, let’s go with res ipsa here. Bush seeks expanded military tribunal role

The White House is seeking legislation that would allow people not affiliated with terrorism to be prosecuted in military commissions — with far fewer rights than afforded civilians.

A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such ”commissions” to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not al Qaeda members or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism, according to officials familiar with the proposal plan.

Military commissions, just so you know, are outside the Constitution’s protections. Read: no bill of rights. No habeas corpus (the right to hear the charges against you). No evidentiary rights. No right to counsel.

Essentially, this would allow the administration to jail anyone, any time, for any reason whatsoever and the target of this action would have no recourse.

Well that plan certainly makes my little soldier stand at attention. It’s interesting how these neocon imperialists in the Cheney administration operate – every time they lose (and they always lose), they double down. Wrong about Iraq? Let’s invade Syria and Iran! SCOTUS overturns your military tribunals? Let’s make everyone subject to military tribunals!

It would be comical if, you know, they weren’t holding all the reins of power.

Holy shit

Fields of wheat, durum and barley in the Dakotas this dry summer will never end up as pasta, bread or beer. What is left of the stifled crops has been salvaged to feed livestock struggling on pastures where hot winds blow clouds of dirt from dried-out ponds.

Some ranchers have been forced to sell their entire herds, and others are either moving their cattle to greener pastures or buying more already-costly feed. Hundreds of acres of grasslands have been blackened by fires sparked by lightning or farm equipment.

Many of the potential worldwide cataclysmic disasters are frightening to me in an abstract sort of way. Earthquakes, for example; you know it could happen and it would be horrible, but it doesn’t really feel dangerous in the present moment. You’ll deal with it when it happens. Global warming? I can handle floods and massive dislocations, famine, and anarchy. Intellectually, anyway.

But drought? Drought scares the shit out of me. Don’t know why really, but it’s the one weather pattern that makes me get reaaallly nervous (and I know droughts will be more common with increased global warming (as will flooding and torrential downpours and increased variability and severity overall)). Maybe it’s because I always assume there’s a way to desalinate ocean water to make it potable and, thus, we live… while it’s rather hard to make water out of thin air. *shrug*

So, anyway, … drought! Ayeeee!!!1!11!1

Then again, maybe it’s just more media scaremongering.

Las Vegas Makes It Illegal to Feed Homeless in Parks

Las Vegas, whose homeless population has doubled in the past decade to about 12,000 people in and around the city, joins several other cities across the country that have adopted or considered ordinances limiting the distribution of charitable meals in parks. Most have restricted the time and place of such handouts, hoping to discourage homeless people from congregating and, in the view of officials, ruining efforts to beautify downtowns and neighborhoods.

But the Las Vegas ordinance is believed to be the first to explicitly make it an offense to feed “the indigent.”

Wouldn’t want to have any of those unsightly people interfering with the beauty of our fake non-desert landscape architecture in the desert now, would we? Because when you start feeding the homeless in the park, then they all flock there, leading to domestication, rampant shitting on the lawns, and algae blooms in the water. They must be stopped!

is that they’re always going to fill them.

You could be on a secret government database or watch list for simply taking a picture on an airplane. Some federal air marshals say they’re reporting your actions to meet a quota, even though some top officials deny it.

The air marshals, whose identities are being concealed, told 7NEWS that they’re required to submit at least one report a month. If they don’t, there’s no raise, no bonus, no awards and no special assignments.

…

“That could have serious impact … They could be placed on a watch list. They could wind up on databases that identify them as potential terrorists or a threat to an aircraft. It could be very serious,” said Don Strange, a former agent in charge of air marshals in Atlanta. He lost his job attempting to change policies inside the agency.

That’s why several air marshals object to a July 2004 memo from top management in the Las Vegas office, a memo that reminded air marshals of the SDR requirement.

The body of the memo said, “Each federal air marshal is now expected to generate at least one SDR per month.”

There are tensions in any system such as this. One where you want to ensure that your goals for effectiveness or efficiency are being met while at the same time measuring employee performance. In this case, I’m sure there are political considerations, such as flagging X number of terrrrrists for the head honcho’s yearly review.

Given that you-the-organization want to have a safe flight, you want to reward your best workers, and you want to incentivize them to try hard, I would posit that creating a monthly floor for reported suspicious activities is an amazingly wrongheaded way to go about it… unless you are solely measuring the “number of suspected terrorists identified.” I think if you measure something else, like, say, air miles flown without incident or actual attempts thwarted, then your procedures for rewarding those goals would be much more rational.

Now take me off the damn no-fly list, bitches.

Update: it appears that the story was based on old information