New Feature: Critical analysis of Republic candidates’ websites

With my faithful Wunderhund Maybelle ever lounging on the futon as she likes to stay within reach of Daddy, we shall begin our new series with Mike Hugabe — je m’ajuste — Huckabee. We are sorry for that slight slip of the electronic pen there, but after the news hit the blogosphere and the wires of the former governor’s most unenlightened views on quarantine of we poor Latter Day Lepers, we thought of the soon-to-be-late Mugabe of Zimbabwe.

Celui-là is such a kidder! The fat are so jolly! Wait! He’s been lidoed and the skin surgically removed (enough we hear to have put an entire Haitian village to work gearing up for the upcoming baseball season). He is no longer fat. It stands to reason that he is no longer jolly . . . so his site must be serious.

Well, Maybelle has had a bit of fake Mozzarella. Skim milk, not sure from what animal, but we’ve a feeling it ain’t buffa. The price of dairy is outrageous these days! So she can begin her nightly foray into squirrel eradication by dream, and i can write. Where were we? Oh, yes, Hugabe.

His first bit is wisdom is to extol the virtue of the “Fair Tax,” which we liken unto “Safe Coal,” by telling us that “When the FairTax becomes law, it will be like waving a magic wand releasing us from pain and unfairness.”

I’m sorry Mike, but is that lifted from a funeral sermon? “Releasing us from pain and unfairness” — “magic wand” — we can’t help but to think that Susan Sontag died much too early, much, much too soon for those bits not to be in a postulated update of “Notes on Camp.” So Mike likens himself to what or whom? Tinkerbelle? Taxes are death? We always thought that they were the price of a civilized society.

The wand and funereal imagery are bad enough, but let’s see what the Bland Baptist hast wrought on foreign policy: “Iraq is a battle in our generational, ideological war on terror. The Democrats delusionally deny that the war in Iraq is part of the war on terror even as we fight Al Qaeda there. Al Qaeda is a major ally of the Sunni insurgents in their fight against the Shiite majority. One of the most significant events in the Iraq War was Al Qaeda’s bombing of the Shiites’ Golden Mosque in Samarra in February 2006. That bombing led to the dramatic rise in sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiites we’ve seen ever since, furthering Al Qaeda’s goal of fomenting chaos and civil war. What’s in it for them? They need territory, a place to plot their evil and train their murderers for another September 11.”

Evidently he didn’t get news from September 2001: al Qaeda is an Arab Peninsular phenomenon, or was, until even the Arabs got tired of them and booted them first to Sudan and then Afghanistan. Then we invaded Iraq, a secular state whose goal was to be the New French Empire East, trumpeting Baathist unity with no room for silly Wahhabi nonsense, but lots of soldiers and oil revenue to march them. Now they may or may not be in Iraq. Who knows who has the legit franchise and who are 14th ST knockoffs? I think if you look closely, you will see the dye on the LV’s are a bit askew from the genuine article . . . oh, that is for handbags. Our Arabic here is pretty limited to foodstuffs (something I am sure M. Hugabe knows a bit about) like kofta, pita, babaganoush, kebab, etc., and a few odd religious phrases and words, so I can’t be sure if they are genuine or not in Irakistan. I am pretty sure they were in Afghanistan.

We shall give him a B+ for the attempt at alliteration with “Democrats delusionally deny” but that is pretty lame, not up with Buchanan’s “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

Well, we don’t need to say that loss of a progressive income tax for a VAT is not going to happen. Has one ever heard of a tax going away? When we were in economic exile in the wilds of Long Island, Land of Mystery and Largely Unexplored Suffolk County, we discovered while needing to clean some paint brushes, via Newsday that some little bitty draw bridge in Nassau had been paid for by a toll and a tax. They were levied in the early 1920s. They were used to support the relief of the toll takers. No maintenance had ever been needed for them, being built in the 1920s and not much ship traffic is inbound from the teeming Brooklyn wharfs these days needing a short safe harbor. In short they were a patronage job, a sinecure for and from the Republic Party of Nassau County for the benefit of its loyalists.

But I digress. Let us get back to Flat Tax/Clean Coal. This, The Huck assures us, would only be for new products, not used. Glory hallejulah! We not-working working lads can rejoice for we rarely buy anything new and retail. Can’t one see the container ships coming in from Genoa and Marsailles, filled to the brim with European used couture! Why I might have that 42 R Armani suit after all! Tax free! Imagine, we will all look like people from New Guinea, with odd tees with logos so oddly out of place that we once again wish Sontag were still with us, only in haute couture. I rather fancy the idea of Butch and Leroy ditching their Rustlers for some Matinique. I don’t know about you, but I am not above buying used Liberty of London shirts, frayed cuffs and odd Euroodors be damned, if I can get it tax free! Screw you VAT!

His Immenseness –I correct myself again! — what is a Baptist preacher’s title? Brother, I presume, like Francis, Brother Hugabe is on something there: a government based on thrift stores. The dollar is so weak it won’t be long until our betters who were relying upon our continued conspicuous consumption shall be reduced to offing their relics in consignment stores for pence on the pound and we shall be there to gobble them up, well, have we any money, we shall.

Lest anyone think I lie, look up the hilarity on http://www.mikehuckabee.com for yourselves.

$100,000 USD per hour towards Iraq; Civil War in Iraq and Congress.

Besides the Republican sex scandal in Washington which has DC and the talking heads abuzz, several recent developments are definitely worthy of comment. We refer not to the latest Enabling Act of the BushCo, Inc. administration re: habeus corpus and unitary executive legislative/executive power, two other events are especially pressing. While many might not immediately assume that the two are directly connected, they are in more than a mere cursory manner. These two are the cost of the Iraqi debacle, known as the “War on Terror” and the US Congress playing politics and local funding politics at that over an international issue, the full and equitable funding of the FY 2007 Ryan White Care Act.

The Los Angeles Times article by Mark Mazzetti and Joel Havemann, entitled “Iraq War Costing $100,000 per Minute,” via the Seattle Times on 3 February 2006 reports the following:

WASHINGTON — The White House said Thursday that it plans to ask Congress for an additional $70 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, driving the cost of military operations in the two countries to $120 billion this year, the highest ever.

Most of the new money would pay for the war in Iraq, which has cost an estimated $250 billion since the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

The additional spending, along with other war funding the Bush administration will seek separately in its regular budget next week, would push the price tag for combat and nation-building since Sept. 11, 2001, to nearly a half-trillion dollars, approaching the inflation-adjusted cost of the 13-year Vietnam War.

At the same time, the intercine civil war in Iraq is claiming as many as 150 victims of torture and murder in a 48 hour period, even during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. News reports of as much of $9 Billion missing from the US Iraq reconstruction project are scandalizing the Iraqis, the US general public and the entire world.

At the same time that all this money is seeming to be the equivalent of keeping out rats by stuffing the holes with paper money, a catfight erupted on the floor of the US Senate and between HIV/AIDS advocacy groups over the funding of the Ryan White Care Act. Hillary R. Clinton (supposed D, NY) took to the Senate floor to basicly say three things: (1) Leave Metro NYC funding alone, since (2)it is the fault of people moving to NYC for HIV treatment from other states that we have the highest case load in the country and (3) that maybe someday soon the other more rural states will get what they need, but NY can’t lose a dime. She does reiterate the fact that a shift in priority needs to occur in the country regarding HIV/AIDS care and that Medicare should be offered as soon as a person presents HIV positive, but that Congress doesn’t seem too interested…

However, as she pointed out, NY doesn’t want to lose any money, claiming that the higher cost of living and more per capita cases in New York means that more monies are required. But what she neglects to mention is that there is a wealth of HIV/AIDS social service organizations that are well funded and organized offering a wide range of services that a smaller city, such as Huntsville, Alabama or Columbia, South Carolina lack.

Sen. Clinton held up the bill for a while, but caved in once the compromise was reached. Had she been more for HIV funding and less for New York, she would have held her breath until she turned blue, ready to filibuster until she fainted from exhaustion.

One blog,
“From the Left,” notes via Jeffery Birnbaum’s WP article on 23 August 2006 that:

Clinton (D-N.Y.) said she opposes the measure because it would lower funding for her home state. But some AIDS groups also see broader political motives at work. Other states that would lose out include California, Florida and Illinois — all places Clinton would need to win if she seeks the presidency. Her critics also note that many of the states that would receive higher funding under the new formula are rural and Southern, which tend to vote Republican.

Birnbaum’s article concludes that she was the only nay in the entire Senate… Quite a few comments came in to this blog, some most virulent towards Mrs. Clinton and the entire AIDS charity network. These include:

Sign the God damned bill Hillary, before no state, including your own, can get a dime of Federal money to treat the epidemic. Tweak it later, add appropriations to other bills, but get the God damned Federal money now before Bush spends every last cent in the US Treasury on Iraq!

and

What is the Gay Men’s Health Crisis thinking by supporting her? These silly queens must be swept away by the Cult of Hillary, just as they are by the Cult of Barbra, Liza, Cher and Mariah.

Time to wake up, gay America! Hillary Clinton is NOT our friend. Never has been and she never will be. Hillary takes care of Hillary.

In the interest of fairness, one must admit that there are defensive comments as well in rebuttal. However, the fact that it appears to be less than Lily White, does give us cause for alarm… Mrs. Clinton has the appearance of counting potential electoral ballots prior to nomination and of making an international crisis one of county lines.

Let us face fact, this Congress, collectively, doesn’t give a proverbial rat’s ass about HIV. If they did, they would fully fund Ryan White, and give up some of the $9 Billion they shat away in Baghdad to contractors that are not rebuilding Iraq and maybe a few hours of the Iraqi Adventure.

HIV funding should be national and not a hodgepodge of self-replicating mini-ministries. The funding should follow the cases and education and outreach should be universal — the same adverts should be in New York and Newark as are in Baton Rouge and Birmingham or Binghampton. The social service organizations and medical clinics should be funded by two criteria: that of case load and that of overhead, not by luck of geography.

The face of HIV is changing, and it is becoming darker and female. It is time for the United States to decide where we want our month of Adventure to go: to Bush’s gulags and fresh cannon fodder on the streets and in the markets of Iraq or to FULL FUNDING for not only Ryan White but active education and social and medical services whether in Brooklyn or Birmingham or Boise.

Noone should play politics with peoples’ lives. It is not only unseemly, but immoral, and just plain old-fashioned bullshit, whether dressed in a senator’s suit or a Talibangelist’s stole.

Screeching Rats: a Quest for the Regaining of Reason

The title, Screeching Rats, comes from a comment I made this August of 2006 regarding the defeat of an ultraconservative candidate in a school board race in the state of Kansas. Not an important election, one might presume, but her tirade against the “liberals” in the Republican Party who shot her candidacy down was what prompted the remark: she was shrill and bitter, to which my reply was, “The rats always screech the loudest and most shrill as the sinking ship’s waters engulf them.”

That is my hope: for the neo-conservative, paleo-fundamentalist anti-Enlightenment antilabor movement will be sunk as deeply as the Titantic. That it will become a mere relic — a fossilized historical curiousity of which much is legend, but ultimately merely an obscure wreck.

This writer sees current U.S. administration as being held hostage to a small group of disparate individuals who have often-competing aims, yet have managed to form a grand coalition. These are the people who worship at the altar of Ayn Rand and Paul Wolfowitz; the people who think there is a reason for the United States to back stab its former ally Iraq in the back and try to foist a “democracy” upon the Iraqi people which is nothing more than a rewording of Mussolini’s fascism. These are the people who toss out phrases such as “terrorist enabler” to describe a candidate who opposes continuation of a military adventure in Iraq and claim that the bright sunny future is merely around the corner, when the Iraqi people suffer random sectarian violence that makes an Orange Day parade in Derry look like an eucumenical picnic in comparison. These are the people who want to restrict our most cherished liberties in order to keep us free. These are the people who want to make conservative fundamentalist Christianity our state religion in all but name and whose eschatology is truly frightening in its implication, the raputurists, the tribulationists, the Dominionists and the “World is six thousand years old” crowd.

Even more frightening, for their present power, per se, and not mere electoral power, are the neo-conservatives: the Trotskyites of conservatism, those for whom “Ayn Rand in one country” is not allowed, rather, permanent war in order to keep the barbarians at bay in order to form a single world of a permanent underclass of ill clothed, underfed and nonmedicated workers who are allowed no dissent under penalty of retribution, that is, the denial of their daily bread given in exchange for their long hours of labor with a permanent uberclass of corporation leaders in charge of them all. This is an Orwellian, Huxleyesque vision of the future with billions of epsilons and two minutes of daily hate for all.

While all these people are frightening in their goals, what distresses me the most is the direction the Democratic Party has turned towards becoming enablers of that lot. A party of Jackson and Jefferson become a party of Miller and Lieberman. A party in which its brightest leaders with some of the largest followings becomes a party of back benchers, silenced by the corporate media, save occasional snipes at Kucinich, Conyers, and Feingold. A party where HR Clinton has been “anointed” the leading candidate yet was hobnobbing with the minions of corporate media power and when a true alternative candidate for her Senate race is running, is unable to have his voice heard.

Our party is sick, but not terminal, unless the status quo continues. It is up to the people to read, and then analyze what they have read along with the votes that are cast and follow the debates. It often seems that the debate has little connection to the vote, as some are willing to say one thing then explain it away when voting the other, coerced by the monied powers of the corporate lobbies. It is a sad day when it takes a lone elderly man hobbling on two canes, hands trembling to denounce the destruction of the Constitution, while dozens of able-bodied men and women do not even grace his presence in the chamber. It is a sad day when claims of necessity and fear of the corporate funds drying up allow only a single senator to vote against the adventure in Iraq and the horrid Patriot Act. It is a sad day when the Senate cannot stop a thug from becoming a federal judge. It is a sad day when there has to be a blog dedicated to this topic.

But in fairness, it is always darkest and coldest before the dawn.