If “success” in Iraq is so critical to free people everywhere….

Why is that it we’ve gotten to where we are? and why is it that no one in the White House has time to look after the war? and why don’t other free people see it as so critical that they will send any troops? and why don’t we re-institute the draft?

Moving toward a veto of a war spending bill, President Bush said Tuesday that Democrats who made the legislation a showdown over withdrawing U.S. troops could turn Iraq into a “cauldron of chaos” with their approach.

“Success in Iraq is critical to the security of free people everywhere,” Bush said at the headquarters of U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Middle East, including Iraq.

link

Tuesdays at the Rapture: Beast Government

The Rapture Index, that speedometer on the Hummers to Heaven or Hell, has dropped by one point this week. The change was due to “inactivity” in the under-appreciated Beast Government category. Now all you Bush haters, don’t jump to conclusions; this may not (or may) have anything to do with him:

33. Beast Government

(Rev.17:12) The Roman Empire will revive under the leadership of Ten
rulers. This revived Roman Empire will exist for only 7 years.
(Rev.17:13),(Rev 13:5) After the Roman Empire has been revived for
3 1/2 years into a seven year rule, the Antichrist will take over and
rule for the remaining 3 1/2 years.

Now, this seems to get pretty specific about things. If we are now “inactive,” what was it like when it was “active?” Who was/were lookin to be the “Ten Rulers?” Could Dick Cheney be the Anti-Christ? Is a seven year rule approximately two US presidential terms?

This is important, and we need some guidance; I hope everyone will either write to the Rapture Index Guy, or “close eyes, mumble and listen for voices.”

ps: no change in the Satanic Attacks on Farm Animals. I’ll keep you posted.

“Voter fraud”: all you need to know about this fraud

At TPM Muckraker is the story of how the US Attorney in Missouri lowered the boom on four hapless voter registrars, right before election.

News coverage of the indictments tended to buttress the notion that liberal groups like ACORN were conspiring to steal the election. The indictments were covered by Fox News (where a Kansas City election official was quoted as saying that it was “the worst case of registration abuse in the last quarter century”), as well as the AP, CNN, and other nationwide outlets. Schlozman announced in a statement that “This national investigation is very much ongoing.”

….

According to Elyshya Miller, ACORN’s head organizer for Kansas City, ACORN identified certain forms as potentially fraudulent and turned them over to prosecutors in late October; four organizers were responsible. A week later, all four organizers were indicted by a grand jury.

But in their evident haste to indict, the prosecutors made a mistake — they indicted the wrong person. Three weeks after the election, Schlozman’s office dropped the charges against one of the defendants, Stephanie Davis, admitting that her identity was used without her permission. It was not until January of this year that Schlozman’s office finally indicted one Caren Davis, who was apparently the person they were really after. Caren Davis’ lawyer Dana Altieri told me that Davis is currently undergoing a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether she is competent to stand trial.

But let’s look at the indicted crimes themselves. The four defendants were accused of forging the registration forms for a grand total of six voters (Caren Davis was responsible for three). In some cases, the defendants simply made people up; others forged the registrations for real people.

As The New York Times has noted, “the forms could likely never be used in voting.” Other U.S. attorneys had declined to pursue similar cases — in fact, despite Schlozman’s “national investigation,” these were the only charges filed against ACORN organizers nationwide in 2006.

Somalia: Elliot Abrams’ new sandbox: people are noticing

Dirty business in Africa, and I have to think that Abrams has this in his portfolio; with the aerial attacks on civilians, invasion, and the rest….I imagine that Cheney gave him Somalia to play with, so Elliot wouldn’t feel bad about not allowed to bomb Iran.

But the world isn’t totally blind, Mr. Abrams:

THE UNITED Nations’ Office for Coordinating Humanitarian Affairs in Somalia reported that the recent clashes between Ethiopian troops and Somali resistance groups killed more than 1,000 civilians and displaced more than 350,000 residents of Mogadishu. The European Union has reacted to this carnage and it is investigating whether war crimes were committed by the Ethiopian forces and Somali government militias. The EU argues that forces intentionally targeted civilian areas.

The United States, however, is on a different page. When the Union of Islamic Courts defeated the US-backed warlords, the Bush administration — using the war on terrorism as justiciation — supported the Ethiopian occupation, arguing that the Islamists were an emerging threat to the US interests.

But approaching the complex and multilayered Somali conflict in this simplistic way and linking it to the war on terror was a mistake.

The United States inadvertently stepped into a local, tribal, and regional political quagmire.

What’s new?

A word of caution on melamine: avoid eating liver

If poultry, hogs, cows or other animals ingest toxins, they tend to remove these substances in the liver. If there is danger to humans from eating animals who have ingested melamine, it might well be the liver which contains a high concentration of the substance.  I would also suggest that eggs might contain melamine.

I offer this suggestion because I don’t think that Bush’s FDA is in any way trustworthy……melamine is a tumorogenic substance, of that there is NO doubt…..protect yourselves, women and children first, etc…

A good book: Joan Didion’s Miami

“Miami” is an old non-fiction Didion book that illustrates her literary and journalistic skills, and her dry humor. If you’d like a short and very clever introduction to the Miami scene, particularly the background of the Cuban element, this is for you. It’s probably at your library.

The US and Iran: Condi’s flower garden

Yesterday I commented on the veritable blossoming of flowers in what had been Elliot Abrams’ Iran sandbox, filled with toy soldiers, toy tanks, and toy bunker busters.
The sudden reversal of foreign policy towards Iran is drawing attention in other quarters, as well:

Authorizing Rice to talk substance with Mottaki “is a complete reversal of the Bush policy of the last six years. I just haven’t seen any administration back down with such speed,” said Iran expert Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

Many experts have long urged Bush to engage U.S. adversaries, arguing that sustained diplomacy with Iran — and separately with North Korea — was essential to persuading both to abandon their rapidly expanding nuclear programs. Pyongyang has acknowledged its weapons program. The West says Iran’s is also for weapons but Tehran insists it only wants to generate electricity. Now Bush, eager for a foreign policy success before leaving the White House in January 2009, has shifted on both issues. Analysts say this reflects a triumph of realism over “neo-conservative” ideology, whose advocates encouraged a hard-line approach toward U.S. adversaries but increasingly have lost influence and left the administration.

A Bush visit to Iran would be beyond bizarre, at first glance; but if you were around when Richard Nixon, America’s number one anti-communist (okay, maybe behind J. Edgar Hoover) decided to visit China, you know that such things happen when presidents are desperate.

Nixon sent Henry Kissinger on a secret mission to China in July 1971, after which a stunned world was told that Nixon intended to visit Communist China in 1972. As a result, many countries that had previously opposed the PRC’s entry into the United Nations changed their stance. Despite frantic lobbying by the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, George H. W. Bush, in October 1971 the UN General Assembly voted to give to the PRC the seat that had been held since 1945 by America’s ally, the Republic of China (ROC), and expel the ROC from the UN. In February 1972 Nixon grabbed the world’s attention by himself going to China to have direct talks with Mao. During this visit he privately stated that he believed “There is one China, and Taiwan is a part of China.”^[3] Fearing the possibility of a Sino-American alliance, the Soviet Union yielded to American pressure for détente.

Israeli commission criticizes Lebanon war

Very Important Post by Glenn Greenwald today; Israelis are not afraid to criticize their government about the decision to go to war or about the conduct of the war….before, during and after:

The Israeli Commission’s stark and open condemnation of the Israeli Prime Minister for his conduct in the Lebanon War is the polar opposite of the mindset embodied by the likes of Joe Lieberman, who infamously warned his then-fellow Democrats that “that in matters of war we undermine presidential credibility at our nation’s peril,” and who just recently warned that criticisms of the Leader’s Glorious Surge should be stifled because they “encourage the enemy.” And it highlights just how obnoxious and odious was Bill Kristol’s recent attempt to impose on Americans the decisively un-American duty “to remain quiet for six to nine months” with regard to the war.

Second, such sweeping criticisms of the Israeli war did not merely arise once the war was over. Objections to the war were loudly voiced by Israelis across the spectrum during the war itself, and it was those objections which likely forced the government to end the disastrous bombing campaign and counter-productive occupation.

There is much more at the link. Greenwald uses the Israeli Commission as a model to criticize rightwing Israelis in this country who trumpet any criticisms of Israel as anti-semitism. Further, he compares Israel’s aggressive self-criticism with the virtual censorship which the Bush administration attempts to impose over the war in Iraq.