Water ice on Mars: confirmed by NASA

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Lost in the unprecedented shocker about John McCain injecting racial smears into his presidential campaign against Barack Obama comes a news note from The Red Planet. NASA tonight announced that the Phoenix lander has collected ice from martian soil, melted it at 32 degrees Farenheit, and documented the presence of water molecules in the experimental chamber. Really. From the Associated Press. Ho hum.

If the water on Mars story were ever to gain traction, which it won't because it's not mentioned by God in the Bible, McCain can always pick up and run with this related story from a blog called "The Jed Report". In addition to Jed's photographic evidence of Obama's alien connections, the name "Barack" clearly has a Cardassian sound to it. Look for McCain to play the Xenobamislamofascist card right soon.

Cockroach ranchers

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Apropos of the 1990s Rwanda talk radio man who incited the Hutu majority to exterminate the "cockroach Tutsis" (not to mention raping, hacking apart, and burying them alive), Media Matters for America traces the short but continuing history of a persistent McCain campaign smear of Barack Obama that has been spread and perpetuated relentlessly by the corporate media even though it has been authoritatively debunked by the likes of DC celebrity pundit Andrea Mitchell. And Mitchell is no lefty fellow traveler --- she regularly appears as an Atrios "Wanker of the Day." (Sorry, I can't find an example of Mitchell's wanking because Atrios doesn't provide us with a search engine for his site.)

This is how it's done by genocidal dictators: transform the mass media into an unrebutted echo chamber for hate speech. Create a scapegoat class through broadcast slander and then sic the fear-addled bigots on them. Are we almost there yet? With one more stolen presidential election, maybe.

Nighty night.

Big Rock Head was here

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As reparations for making Big Rock Head frown at me, provoked (for once), I herewith reproduce a scan of one of his recent hilarious cartoons. This one was sketched on the top of a foam fast food doggy box.

Eternal truths

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A contribution from that Master of Science and all-around West Iowan worthy, Big Otis. Take it away, Big Otis:

American humans may be more ignorant about cause and effect than many insects.

Eternal truths

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A poignant milestone in the life of any father is the night No. 1 son announces that the house is running low on gin, tonic, and limes.

Accessories to terror

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Apropos of the hideous Unitarian church shootings in Tennessee over the weekend, R.J. Eskow makes a point about right wing media that I've made for years at neighborhood happy hours and elsewhere. The basic point is that words matter, especially when they are scripted subject to editorial review by media corporations before broadcasting to a mass audience.

The corporate infotainment industry has long-since debased the journalism profession to the point where reporters simply cannot be assumed to have their facts straight or to be working impartially. But it's much worse than that: millionaire propagandists posing as journalists have drifted over into packaging hate speech and calls to violence as conservative political punditry. This is simply not an exaggeration and cannot be denied in good faith: it's an obvious fact. Eskow cites some examples:

...right-wing rhetoric toward liberals and humanists like those who attended the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church has been exceptionally violent for years. Liberal groups are often called "Nazi" or "Nazi-like" by [Bill] O'Reilly.... [Michael] Savage says he'd "hang every lawyer" who tried to establish constitutional rights for Guantanamo prisoners, describes Obama as an "Afro-Leninist," and said the folks at Media Matters were "brownshirts"....

He reminds us that Sean Hannity has said "there are things in life worth fighting and dying for and one of 'em is making sure Nancy Pelosi doesn't become the speaker (of the House)." And that Ann Coulter has shared her considered opinion that "liberals should be beaten with baseball bats and tried for treason." Soulless, whoring, tax-evading former Bill Clinton advisor and Republican hater Dick Morris says "liberals are 'traitors' who should be decapitated," according to Eskow.

Commentary on this sort of right-wing incitement to violence against liberals has been easy to find on lefty blogs for years, and Media Matters for America frequently documents prominent national examples. It's not a secret.

So how do the networks who employ Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilley and Ann Coulter retain their sponsors? How does this content make it past network Standards and Practices departments when an extemporaneous "fuck" issuing from Bono's mouth can cost a network half a mil in fines (until the ruling is laughed out of court on appeal)? As "Stone Cold" Steve Austin would say, "IT DOESN'T MATTER WHY THESE THINGS HAPPEN!" It mainly matters just because they happen. (See keywords below anyway.)

I wonder how long many of these right-wing pricks would keep their jobs if broadcast executives were held liable as accessories to terrorism in cases such as the Knoxville church shootings.

Note about image: found on Bob Cesca's blog, it's an actual McCain political poster curently marketed by an outfit called ConservativeBuys.com. Yours for 18 bills.

Eternal truths

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If we've learned anything at all from Popeye it's that we can render a steer into link sausage and steaks if we punch it hard enough.

Balls of purity

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Time has a big takeout on this new conservative family activity called "purity balls," during which the paterfamilias takes his virgin daughter, sometimes as young as 4 years old, to a formal dance in which a herd of like-minded dads swear their female offspring to sustain their own purity until marriage. The title of the article, "The Pursuit of Teen Girl Purity," pretty well nails the sleazy double entendre --- unintentionally, of course --- that characterizes these events.

I have nothing to add either to the blog post linked here, at Feministing.com, or the commentary that follows it, except for one thing: the Time photo included with the Feministing post seems reminiscent of "Sisters," David Hamilton's 1972 erotic photography monograph depicting young women as totally innocent, sexually overripe vixens, probably with lesbian tendencies. But in the Time treatment, there are highly respectable geezers in the pictures, dressed in James Bond drag.

Saturday night fever

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Oops. Looks like someone has jacked up John McCain's weekend. I'll bet McCain calls Nuri al Maliki a "trollop" before Monday comes. I'd also give even odds that Cheney has al Maliki's head shipped to him in a Rubbermaid canister by DHL within that same "general time horizon".

Eternal truths

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As Red China becomes more like the United States, the United States becomes more like Red China.

And speaking of dead assholes...

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When I first read the news about North Carolina Sen. Liddy Dole wanting to name an international HIV/AIDS medical aid act after the late Sen. Jesse Helms, I reacted somewhat like Atrios. I thought it was amusing that the name of this homophobic cadaver would be associated with legislation intended to prevent the spread of HIV. He would be certainly be mortified by the development were he not already mort-ified.

But because I am not gay or lesbian, my first reaction to the story lacked empathy for the victims of Helms' epic style of sociopathic, bigoted politics. Pam Spaulding at Pandagon explains it so the rest of us can understand, though, with some NC-level political tinge, to boot.

Afterword: For readers who are on Blog Inconsistency Patrol at this moment, I do not believe that the tone of this post is out of keeping with what I wrote yesterday about dead people who are horrible. My tone is overtly vulgar here because Helms' life work deserves no respect by any stretch of civility. Neither Helms himself nor any of his loved ones could seriously believe, in good faith, that there was any moral content whatsoever to the dead senator's soul. I'm not the judge, but I'm not responsible for the discredit he brought upon himself through a lifetime of peddling hatred to his enablers in return for income and political power.

Late update: I hereby honor Senator Dole by naming an important component of my home infrastructure after her. We shall heretofore refer to the seat of our busiest porcelain throne as the Liddy My Toilet. That something y'all can get behind, North Carolina?

Eulogizing bad people

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I don't speak ill of the dead unless I would have spoken ill of them while they were alive.

Tim Russert was the moderator of venerable Sunday public affairs show Meet the Press which, to his embarrassment (presumably), was revealed during the Scooter Libby trial as Dick Cheney's favorite venue for launching new partisan political narratives and slanderous whispering campaigns disguised as news commentary.

Tony Snow was a right-wing media personality who used his talents to promote illegal war, inhumane economic policies, and perpetuate an ideology that empowers and invites transnational corporations do whatever they wish with our democratic republic while Grover Norquist's cosa nostra tries to twist its frail neck shut forever.

Media commentaries like this one after the death of people like Russert and Snow, by one Bob Franken, are to be expected, I suppose, if the author happens to be an "Emmy-award winning reporter, recently inducted into the Society for Professional Journalists Washington Hall of Fame." I accept Franken's assertion that Russert and Snow were both, on a personal level, nature's noblemen; all Hall of Fame Washington journalists have probably shared many liters of alcohol and buckets of chicken wings with both of the late worthies. And, no doubt, both Russert and Snow "squeezed every last bit of pleasure" from their work, as the Franken notes, with a concomitant amount of joie de vivre.

Well, why wouldn't they enjoy their privileged lives to the hilt? Both Russert and Snow must have felt indescribable thrills with each success catapulting the propaganda on behalf of absolute power. But Tim and Tony were not "champions of the honorable disagreement, where skeptical reporters and passionate advocates could hash out the best solutions to society's problems through intense debate", as the eulogist Franken wants us to believe. Russert was a skilled interviewer who used his position to deny adequate access to opposition points of view, and too often played "gotcha" journalism with them when he did invite them. Tony Snow was a political propagandist who promoted a right-wing agenda in every public appearance I ever saw or heard. Russert and Snow were champions of the "honorable disagreement," as Franken calls it, only because they could easily afford to patronize the guests they vanquished with sophistry, phony civility, and by owning their own venues.

The families and loved ones of such men must grieve for their loss because (1) nobody can choose their family members and (2) the deceased were no doubt kind and generous to a fault... to those who belonged to their tribe. Josh Marshall, who may be the most authentic gentleman among liberal bloggers, characterized the loss of Tony Snow to cancer at age 53 as "sad news." But the news was not sad for me. Just to be clear, the news was not happy for me either, even though I do not hesitate to say good riddance to both.

In his 18 months as the senior propagandist for the Bush administration, and as a substitute host for Rush Limbaugh, and as a right-wing commentator for Fox and CNN and syndication, Snow must in the end accept his share of blame for thwarting the public will for affordable universal health care, and for undermining the public's faith that the U.S. government is capable of providing it. I think it is safe to assume that Snow's health care never suffered as a result of government policy. And the administration's efforts to promulgate illegal war, torture, and cataclysmic economic policies never suffered as a result of the decisions Tony Snow made about how to use his media talents.

Russert, who gave more-than-equal time to our government's worst sociopaths and corporate looters, as well as their enablers and hangers-on --- while shutting out or piling on those with opposing voices --- can petition his sky god for entry through The Pearly Gates despite his role in neutering the press in the service of absolute power. His professional malfeasance, in my opinion, is even worse than Snow's. A constitutional democracy can't survive without a robust, independent press that questions authority and doesn't accept the propagandist's answers at face value. Russert, for reasons unknown to me, chose to abet power instead of the everyday people with whom he claimed to be as one.

Without meaning to denigrate anyone's personal grief for either man, I see nothing wrong with stating my belief that America is a better place today without Tim and Tony. Both men contributed directly or indirectly to the misery of untolled thousands (at least) throughout the world... and the grief of the many must count for much more.

NPR Fuct Check: the U.S. Constitution

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All Things Considered reporter Tom Gjelten extruded a Grand Old Piece of crap this afternoon in his puff piece about an outstanding new idea by aged establishment hacks James Baker (R) and Warren Christopher (D). These former U.S. Secretaries of State (who served, respectively, under Bush I and Reagan II --- I mean Clinton) think we need to replace the unconstitutional yet ineffectual War Powers Act of 1973. I say "unconstitutional" because the Act enables a President to attack a sovereign nation without seeking a Declaration of War from Congress. I say "ineffectual" because the so-called safeguards built into the Act have never been complied with. Nevertheless, this democracy-eroding law has facilitated a sense of normalcy in the American psyche regarding "fine little wars" that the President says are beneficial to us, and that is bad. Given that the War Powers Act has facilitated the transformation of this nation from a republic to an empire, it's hard for me to understand why people corporate imperialists like Baker and Christopher can't just be happy with the way things are.

But judging from the tone of his dutiful reporting, Tom Gjelten sounds sold on the idea that what America needs now (instead of that musty, outdated Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution) is "a special joint congressional committee made up of House and Senate leaders, as well as the chairmen and ranking members of key committees" that the President "would have to consult with that group before sending troops into any 'significant armed conflict.' "

Former Secretary Christopher tells us that this new War Powers Consultation Act is necessary "[s]o that when the president decides he wants to go to war he has to take into account the independent views of the members of Congress, and not just any members of Congress, but this selective group of the leaders of both parties of Congress and of both House and Senate." "Selective." That's a good one.

Achtung, assholes! Consult this: "The Congress shall have Power... To declare War...." There is no "question of how a U.S. president and Congress should approach war decisions," as Gjelten asserts on the basis of having found a presidential historian to tell us that Thomas Jefferson himself desired to circumvent Congress when waging war. The only people who question the plain language of the Constitution regarding the separation of war powers are imperialist Presidents, their co-conspirators, and their media apologists. This separation is not an "ambiguity," Tom Gjelten: it is an intentional limitation on both branches of government.

This kind of reporting infuriates me. It contributes to the mass-culture idea that the President is the supreme source of authority in the United States. If Tom Gjelten is confused about the plain language of the U.S. Constitution, maybe it's time to reassign him to a less challenging beat such as spitting into the burritos at Taco Bell. What a d-bag.

Eternal truths

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The more syllables you need to order your coffee drink, the "gayer" it is.

Simpler times

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Of topical interest, our Fifty50 Military History Correspondent provides a clipping from page 4 of The Fort Riley Post (23 August 1963) giving an account of “‘Realistic’ POW Conduct Training” offered to unsuspecting soldiers of Company B, 8th Infantry, in West Germany. During a training-oriented deception operation, the soldiers were ambushed, captured, blindfolded, shackled, and detained in a barbed wire compound. The putative POWs were then given the business, thusly:

A good-cop interrogator offered the prisoners “liquid refreshment” (read “booze”) and cigarettes and conversationally probed them for religious and racial prejudices and “other possible character weaknesses.” Next, the men were moved to a venue where they were questioned by an attractive female, “dressed only in a negligee.” Then, because not everything was Rat Pack and Camelot during the Kennedy Administration, geopolitically speaking, the captured soldiers were moved to a “‘torture area’ where they were given a modified water torture and shock treatment.” Even then, the U.S. Army had lots to teach soldiers that previously had been learned from the Commies.

It would be interesting to know if torture has ever been documented to produce any outcome other than the confession that the torturer had expected to extract in the first place. Along those lines, it also would be interesting to know whether that preordained confession might be produced more quickly and humanely through a judicious offering of vice. U.S. military and civilian intelligence agencies must have catacombs full of data on this very subject (as do the Chinese). For more information on the subject, be sure to file a Freedom of Information request (with the Chinese).