US politics – Page 51

The Big Swingin’ Dick’s Been Busy Swingin’

Published on May 9, 2007

dept. of dubious rumors
Oh Hey, Cheney’s Maybe On the DC Madam’s List

Thanks to the 700 people who sent in the latest “anything’s possible” rumor from angry local blogger Wayne Madsen. Here’s the new Contract With America: We will post it, and you will quit e-mailing it to us. Okay? Okay.

The “former CEO” supposedly on the DC Madam’s phone list is “former” Halliburton CEO Dick Cheney. He paid money to some poor girl and stuck his thing in her deal. ABC News all but dropped the story when Cheney threatened to jam that prop phone up three feet up the ass of Brian Ross. That’s why the formerly explosive scandal story instead got seven minutes at the end of whatever ABC News show Friday night.

There, are you people happy now? Didn’t think so. Do you know why we’re underwhelmed by this rumor? Because even if it’s a fact, which it probably is, there’s no way it would have any impact on Cheney’s “career.” This is a draft-dodging half-human war criminal with a pregnant lesbian daughter who tells senators to fuck themselves and shoots his own friends in the face. Ordering an outcall hooker is positively innocent compared to the well-known things Cheney does every day.

Cheney Rumor You Have To Scroll Down For Because Wayne Madsen Still Doesn’t Know What a Permalink Is

Given that the escort agency’s speciality was ‘fantasy sex play’ I bet a shooting in the face was involved there somewhere. Or maybe a game of of ‘you be the insurgent, I’ll be the marine captain’ or maybe he just wanted to be told a bedtime story about Jimmyjeff, the commander in chief and the tin of bald-head polish.

I could go on with this for hours…

Comment of The Day

Published on May 5, 2007

Today’s is for anyone who thinks the US population is one big amorphous monocultural blob and there are no regional animosities; it comes from TPM Muckraker’s excellent piece on corruption in the Alaska State legislature (the accused even had the brass neck to have had hats made with with ‘Corrupt Bastard’s Caucus’ on them).

The comment drips Californian contempt for Alaskan provincials:

What isn’t ugly about US Alaska, besides the scenery and people and the culture there before it became a US state? Let’s be blunt, the only reason it’s a US state is so we could plunder it for resources. The people who go there are mostly unintelligent and coarse people only made more so by the harsh environment and wild west atmosphere. There are excepts I’m sure, but I have yet to meet one.

Having never been there I can’t claim to be an expert. But if the people I’ve met are representative, it must be awful.

I’ve met several Alaskan oil workers and they were peanut brained, alcoholic, cave men. Some of the stupidest, crudest, and most brutish bipedal primates I’ve ever had the displeasure of meeting.

I had the misfortune of sharing a hot-tub in Hawaii with some Alaskan vacationers once. They began by complaining their stay was going to be too short, complained about Alaska, and didn’t seem to even like each other very much, including their spouses.

They kept asking me about the weather in California, and when I told them it was nice, they really looked displeased by that fact, and complained Alaska weather was terrible. Then they looked at me like it was my fault. Amazing. What kind of moronic inferiority complex causes a person to ask questions they already know and dislike the answer to?

To top it off, both guys were big fat red necks (literally burnt red necks, wife beater tans, one rocking a mullet) and their wives were middle aged desperate housewives or something with too much makeup like blue eye shadow. The wives wanted to sit beside me in the tub and talk about arts and culture, while their husbands became increasingly hostile.

If all Alaskans are like that… no wonder the state is a giant armpit.

They sound like janners to me.

I don’t know if this is all part of some California/Alaska long-running grudge match, or whether it’s just simple snobbery, but it does seem this commenter is inferring an awful lot from a very small sample of Alaskans. I haven’t met any. Was this a typical experience?

Impeachment IS On The Table

Published on May 4, 2007

Nice one. From Raw Story:

[…]

At a dinner honoring Pelosi Saturday evening, pro-impeachment activists slipped elegant placecards onto each place at the table. The cards read:

Remember, We’re the Deciders.
Impeachment is on the table.
Investigate and Impeach Cheney and Bush!

[…]

Secret Service agents blocked Jeeni Criscenzo, the endorsed Democratic Congressional candidate who ran against Darrell Issa, from unfurling a banner at the dinner which read:

Impeach Bush-Cheney Now
No Attack on Iran!

“Where is our freedom?” asked Criscenzo. “Thousands of people have signed this banner and they won’t let us present it to the Speaker quietly and respectfully.” Criscenzo added that she “might just go to Washington for Mother’s Day” to try and present the banner to Pelosi.

Read more

War By Other Means

Published on May 3, 2007

It’s a tragic and criminal fact that where there’re modern armies there’s prostitution, child sex and human trafficking – Halliburton and Dyncorp in the Balkans war being a case in point – but prosttution was never historically organised openly by the Army command structure – was it? Shadow of The Hegemon has an outraged post at what’s emerged about the US’ postwar occupation of Japan: :

The Americans Kept Comfort Women

There are times when I feel that there’s no real point to keeping one of these things up… when I look at the readership stats and think “is it really necessary”?

Then I read something like this, and remember what it really is… a place to be able to speak out, at least in some small way, and say that THIS IS INTOLERABLE.

Japan’s abhorrent practice of enslaving women to provide sex for its troops in World War II has a little-known sequel: After its surrender — with tacit approval from the U.S. occupation authorities — Japan set up a similar “comfort women” system for American GIs.

An Associated Press review of historical documents and records shows American authorities permitted the official brothel system to operate despite internal reports that women were being coerced into prostitution. The Americans also had full knowledge by then of Japan’s atrocious treatment of women in countries across Asia that it conquered during the war.

Tens of thousands of women were employed to provide cheap sex to U.S. troops until the spring of 1946, when Gen. Douglas MacArthur shut the brothels down.

The documents show the brothels were rushed into operation as American forces poured into Japan beginning in August 1945.

“Sadly, we police had to set up sexual comfort stations for the occupation troops,” recounts the official history of the Ibaraki Prefectural Police Department, whose jurisdiction is just northeast of Tokyo. “The strategy was, through the special work of experienced women, to create a breakwater to protect regular women and girls.”…

And now we’re finding out that the single most egregious crime of the Imperial Japan, sexual coercion (if not out and out slavery), was enthusiastically embraced by the American occupation? That the “heroes” of the Pacific War, the lions of history, the grandfathers and great-grandfathers that all Americans look up to and venerate were lining up en masse to pay to violate some poor Japanese girl over, and over, and over again?

With the official sanction of the American occupational government?

INTOLERABLE.

Read more.

We hear so little about other places in the world under historic American or allied ~~occupation~~ protection that it’s easy to forget that US and allied troops have been stationed for many years in large numbers elsewhere than Iraq or Afghanistan. Japan, for instance. It’s easy to take no notice of what they’ve been up to there when there’s much more exciting, photogenic stuff happening elsewhere. So when what really happened comes out, no wonder people are shocked.

Morals On Sunday: It’s The Hypocrisy, Stupid

Published on April 29, 2007

The fact that politicians frequent prostitutes wouldn’t even be a scandal if their own hypocrisy didn’t make it so. Personally I don’t give a damn about politicians’ (non-illegal) personal proclivities except in the mildly prurient, nosy way that we all, despite our protestations, secretly do, but this sex scandal’s not about sex so much as the public exposure of the moral hypocrisy of the Bush administration and of Washington culture.

The demise of a call-girl ring and pending trial of an alleged madam claiming thousands of clients has the US capital riveted by the chance powerful men may now be caught with their trousers down, with a senior state department official apparently first to fall.

Deborah Jeane Palfrey, 50, dubbed the DC Madam in local media, has been arraigned in federal court on charges of operating a Washington prostitution service for 13 years until her retirement in 2006.

This is going to run and run and I shall quite openly enjoy every moment. Part of that enjoyment will be watching the religious right twist themselves into theological and rhetorical knots trying to excuse exposed Republicans. Hmm. I wonder how long it’ll be before lots of loyal Bushies mysteriously start pre-emptively checking into rehab and finding Jesus?

There’s 10,000 prominent DC men’s names to come, all said to have been clients of the escort service and Condi’s deputy Randall Tobias – “she loves him, the president loves him” – resigned on Friday.

Expect to see lots more stories like this from Think Progress :

Official Caught Using Escort Service Demanded Anti-Prostitution ‘Loyalty Oaths’

Former U.S. AID director Randall Tobias, who resigned yesterday upon admitting that he frequented a Washington escort service, oversaw a controversial policy advocated by the religious right that required any US-based group receiving anti-AIDS funds to take an anti-prostitution “loyalty oath.”

Aid groups bitterly opposed the policy, charging that it “was so broad — and applied even to their private funds — that it would obstruct their outreach to sex workers who are at high risk of transmitting the AIDS virus.” But President Bush wouldn’t budge. He signed a 2003 National Security Presidential Directive saying prostitution “and related activities” were “inherently harmful and dehumanizing.”

Several groups and countries had their funding cut due to the policy. Brazil lost $40 million for “one of its most successful anti-AIDS strategies, persuading sex workers to use condoms or other measures to stop spreading the disease.”

During an “Ask the White House” online chat in 2004, Tobias defended the policy, saying the U.S. was “partnering with communities” to begin “fighting sex trafficking and prostitution, while still serving victims of these activities.” Tobias added that he was overseeing several “highly successful” relationship programs “aimed at men and boys to help them develop healthy relationships with women.”

A truly inspired idea, having someone who pays for “gals come over to the condo to give me a massage” run programs on developing “healthy relationships with women.”

And this is just one of the many hypocritical wingnuts in high positions about to be exposed. The Heritage Foundation and the Hudson Insitute had better start taking on admin staff to deal with the massive influx of wingnut welfare applications they’ll be getting….