Stay classy, Pat

With the disaster in Haiti that's going on right now, it was a mad dash to see who could be the most insensitive Christian fundamentalist right wing prick to be the first one out of the gate blaming some form of immorality for the destruction. Of course evangelical leg press world record holder Pat Robertson was able to get his chastising comments towards people dying in and earthquake out first, barely edging Rush Limbaugh at the line. He's a spry fuck for a rotten old bastard.

You see, it's that pact Haiti made with the devil. Not a pact they made because they allowed gays to exist or women to expose their ankles, no. A literal pact with a man in a red suit carrying a hayfork.

"Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it," he said on Christian Broadcasting Network's "The 700 Club." "They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it's a deal."

Robertson said that "ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other" and he contrasted Haiti with its neighbor, the Dominican Republic.

Classy as always. Good old Pat, always quick to blame people for their own suffering, like Jesus did.

If you'd like to actually do something to help and somehow don't feel like inventing stories about red devil bewitching the mud people quite does it, you can donate to Oxfam, Google has a page up for UNICEF and CARE, text "HAITI" to 90999 to donate $10 to the Red Cross and text "YELE" to 501501 to donate $5 to Yele Haiti's efforts, and Huffington Post has a larger link to all the non-profits running relief efforts and doing work on the ground.

Oh, we're also going to have to tolerate Wyclef Jean being back in the public eye for a while and I'm sure he'll have a charity single that we'll all have to pretend is good too. It's a burden, but we'll do it anyway.

Those choosing instead to just alter their Twitter of Facebook page will get their face mashed in by the first decent person that can be sent around to their place. Prayers for the death/humiliation/humiliating death of Pat Robertson can be offered to the heavens at any time.

Quote of the Day

It seems we all owe everyone in the Bush Administration a big apology. We've made sport of the poor sons of bitches for years now and it seems we've done so unfairly. See I was operating under the misapprehension that they were running the country from January 2001 to January 2009, as I'm sure you were as well, which caused me to believe that they were the cause of everything the government touched turning to some form of exceptionally noxious pig excrement. It turns out they weren't even in office at all. I know it sounds confusing, but perhaps I'm not explaining it right. Let Dick Cheney explain.

But Cheney rejected any suggestion that Obama had to decide on a new strategy for Afghanistan because the one employed by the previous administration failed.

Cheney was asked if he thinks the Bush administration bears any responsibility for the disintegration of Afghanistan because of the attention and resources that were diverted to Iraq. “I basically don’t,” he replied without elaborating.

See! The only other logical explanation is that someone else was in charge, otherwise it would simply be ludicrous to claim that you were in no way responsible for the results of a war you presided over for eight fucking years.

As for who is at fault for things like letting bin Laden waltz away? I don't know, as per tradition we'll have to find the nearest available goat to blame it on. But it definately wasn't the Bush Administration.

Shocking revelations of an unfathomably surprising nature

Cheney Says He Was Proponent for Military Action Against Iran

Former Vice President Dick Cheney hinted that, in the waning days of the Bush administration, he had pushed for a military strike to destroy Iran's nuclear-weapons program.

In an interview on Fox News Sunday, Mr. Cheney described himself as being isolated among advisers to then-President George W. Bush, who ultimately decided against direct military action.

"I was probably a bigger advocate of military action than any of my colleagues," Mr. Cheney said in response to questions about whether the Bush administration should have launched a pre-emptive attack prior to handing over the White House to Barack Obama.

Wouldn't that have just been the perfect ending to the Bush Administration? "Here black dude, we just bombed the everliving shit out of Iran because Dick really, really wanted to. I think that makes it three wars in the Middle East we're leaving you with. Oh, and the crippling economic collapse. Ah well, good luck. I'll be in Dallas if you need me!" Those must have been a hellish last couple of weeks for various Bush Administration officials. You're trying to find a new job after this current one has tainted your reputation and every few days you have to run over to the White House to form the opposition to some half baked military invasion that Dick Cheney wants to enact, whether it's Iran again or he wants to carpet bomb Central America because he thinks the guy that fucked up his lunch order was vaguely Panamanian.

This was all part of the Dick's wide-ranging, some would say tragically sycophantic, interview with Chris Wallace. In the interview they covered such subjects as why Cheney is not only cool with torture, he's cool with interrogators going above and beyond the specific torture methods they approved, as well as his consternation about how politicized the Justice Department is now, and a few overt dares to investigate his various crimes. He even caused John McCain to stand up and take notice, deriding the effectiveness of torture and the vapidness of Cheney's arguments, though with the caveat that despite the illegality and Geneva Conventions violating nature of the crimes that the best way to move forward and make sure it never happened again was to not investigate one single thing about it.

God love Dick Cheney's media tours, he's such a font of rage inducing hypocrisy. Did I mention he's writing a book? I can't wait for that thing to come out, I think it might cause Keith Olbermann and Bill Maher's heads to explode at the same time.

You have betrayed the beast, George

Things are becoming more gruesome, off in the wilderness of Wyoming. The mutilated animal carcasses, a routine discovery for citizens and game wardens, are looking more and more to be the product of an increasing rage and violence. The beast that stalks the Tetons is displeased with current events, but rages at something else. As the creature reflects on his own career and recent, he is angered by the weakness he now realizes was present in his co-creatures. They have betrayed him, they all have betrayed him! None have his moral strength, now none will survive his wrath. Now there will be no mercy.

"In the second term, he felt Bush was moving away from him," said a participant in the recent gathering, describing Cheney's reply. "He said Bush was shackled by the public reaction and the criticism he took. Bush was more malleable to that. The implication was that Bush had gone soft on him, or rather Bush had hardened against Cheney's advice. He'd showed an independence that Cheney didn't see coming. It was clear that Cheney's doctrine was cast-iron strength at all times -- never apologize, never explain -- and Bush moved toward the conciliatory."

The two men maintain respectful ties, speaking on the telephone now and then, though aides to both said they were never quite friends. But there is a sting in Cheney's critique, because he views concessions to public sentiment as moral weakness. After years of praising Bush as a man of resolve, Cheney now intimates that the former president turned out to be more like an ordinary politician in the end.

Does that description of Bush by Cheney sound in any way like the Bush anyone remembers from his eight years? Conciliatory? Showing care towards public reaction or criticism? Independent? But I guess Cheney didn't get what he wanted near the end of the term (the carpet bombing of Iran and any other country with an 'I' in it's name, Scooter Libby on the $20, or a sufficient enough supply of kittens to drown in the Potomac) and he blames Bush for not heeding every one of the Vice-Overlord's commands. Worse, he thinks Bush committed the most cardinal political sin, the unforgivable act: possibly being concerned with how the citizens of this country viewed the actions that were being taken on their behalf.

I think that sums up Cheney pretty well. He doesn't view torture as a moral weakness, illegal wiretapping as a moral weakness, outing CIA agents as a moral weakness, or any of the other hundreds of barely legal and illegal activities he secretly presided over as a moral weakness. He views listening to the voter as a moral weakness. How apt. His book is going to be great. Even better is that his daughter describes the book as historical record for posterity. That ought to be great, the most secretive and dishonest man in politics writing what is, in his opinion, a definitive historical account. That's all I needed to hear, I'm buying two copies.

Who could have foreseen?

Sorry to break some bad news to you. But it turns out that our lawless system of rendition and torture may have had a few kinks in it's execution. I'm as surprised as you. But the important thing is that we acknowledge the problems, so that we may better correct them for the next time we decide all of this is a good idea. First problem to fix? Make sure the guys you hire to run your torture program are actual experts, just not two weekend masochists who low bid the project, had "no relevant scholarship", and who had to Google "brutal tactics" and "Chinese communists" and then took notes on what came up.

Jim Mitchell and Bruce Jessen were military retirees and psychologists, on the lookout for business opportunities. They found an excellent customer in the Central Intelligence Agency, where in 2002 they became the architects of the most important interrogation program in the history of American counterterrorism.

They had never carried out a real interrogation, only mock sessions in the military training they had overseen. They had no relevant scholarship; their Ph.D. dissertations were on high blood pressure and family therapy. They had no language skills and no expertise on Al Qaeda.

But they had psychology credentials and an intimate knowledge of a brutal treatment regimen used decades ago by Chinese Communists. For an administration eager to get tough on those who had killed 3,000 Americans, that was enough.

On the bright side, I'm sure these two will be in for a harsh rebuke when the Justice Department decides to only look at low level operatives in the upcoming "comprehensive torture probe". Still this is yet another crushing blow to the belief that the Bush Administration was an evil bunch of Machiavellian plotters, unleashing their brilliantly diabolical plans onto an unsuspecting nation. It turns out they were just cheapskate sadists on a tight time schedule and they proceeded with their colossally reckless notions in the laziest and ham-handed way possible. They were allowed to succeed because of the general lazy cowardice and general incompetence of their supposed overseers in Congress.

Ouch, I'm going to need to sit down. It's always hard to come to grips with the fact that what you thought was a higher class of evil, turns out to be dime store evil mixed in with garden variety stupidity. Talk amongst yourselves.

Cheney Hate Triad

That son of a bitch popped his head up and started talking again yesterday. Naturally, as he can't seem to ever stop talking, there are numerous fallacies, straw men, and lies to go over. Even the thes and ands are false. Let's hit on a couple of noteworthy parts of his remarks.

"On the question of whether or not Iraq was involved in 9-11, there was never any evidence to prove that," he told the "On The Record" host in a joint interview with his daughter Liz. "There was "some reporting early on ... but that was never borne out," Cheney said.

You know,that would have been a nice thing to mention when you were mentioning there was solid evidence to prove Iraq and al-Qaeda were working together. That "reporting early on" was you. What tipped you off? Was it the complete lack of evidence or the fact that you spent all that time waterboarding prisoners to find out what the connection was and they never gave you anything good? Thanks for finally coming to the conclusion six years, two wars, thousands of lives, and a couple hundred billion dollars later.

At least he's finally dealing with 9/11 and criticism towards the Bush Administration like an adult.

CHENEY: You know, Dick Clarke. Dick Clarke, who was the head of the counterrorism program in the run-up to 9/11. He obviously missed it. The fact is that we did what we felt we had to do, and if I had to do it all over again, I would do exactly the same thing.

That's right, he's blaming Richard Clarke for 9/11. That's the same Richard Clarke who was trying to convince them to focus on terrorism while they were focused on missile defense. The same Richard Clarke who couldn't get a meeting with the Bush Administration. The same Richard Clarke who sent countless memos and e-mails to Cheney and guys like Cheney with titles like “Bin Laden and Associates Making Near-Term Threats”. The same Clarke whose 2000-01 terrorism plan languished inside the Bush bureaucracy. The same 9/11 that happened 8 months into the Bush Administration's reign. Clearly Richard Clarke's fault and not the guys who wouldn't listen to him.

Then there's this odious little comment.

Asked if “some form of legalized marriage” was “inevitable in the United States,” Cheney said that “freedom means freedom for everyone.” “I think people ought to be free to enter into any kind of union they wish,” said Cheney, adding that believes marriage should be regulated at the state level.

See...wait. He just said something I agreed with. Getting dizzy...head spinning....world collapsing....urge to vomit increasing....

There. Recomposed myself. This raises an important question: If Dick Cheney supports gay marriage, is there a chance that it might be as morally ruinous as Christian Fundamentalists claim? I think we have to consider that possibility now. Though frankly, this would have been a nice thing to say during those eight years when you were running things and your party was making big hay out of demonizing gay marriage. I guess you were too busy violating the Constitution to notice. Isn't that always the way it happens?

Shorter Dick Cheney

The Dick:

"Yeah, I fuckin' ordered torture in an attempt to prove my bizarre conspiracy theories. It was awesome. Do something about it! Wait, let me go wrap myself in the flag and go stand on some 9/11 corpses I dug up. Indict my ass, I double dog dare you."

Calling bluffs

Cheney Calls for Release of Memos Showing Results of Interrogation Efforts

Now that the memos showing the rulings of interrogation techniques have been released, the Obama administration should release additional documents that show what the interrogations yielded, former Vice President Dick Cheney told FOX News on Monday.
...
Cheney said he's asked that the documents be declassified because he has remained silent on the confidential information, but he knows how successful the interrogation process was and wants the rest of the country to understand.

"I haven't talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw, that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country," Cheney said. "I've now formally asked the CIA to take steps to declassify those memos so we can lay them out there and the American people have a chance to see what we obtained and what we learned and how good the intelligence was."

Gee, Cheney went and spouted off like a tough guy to Sean Hannity about how he knows for sure waterboarding was effective. I'm sure that this story is not going to have an obvious conclusion at all.

A CIA inspector general's report from May 2004 that is set to be declassified by the Obama White House will almost certainly disprove claims that waterboarding was only used in controlled circumstances with effective results.

On Monday, the Washington Post reported the impending release of a May 7, 2004 IG report that, the paper added, would show that in several circumstances the techniques used to interrogate terrorist suspects "appeared to violate the U.N. Convention Against Torture" and did not produce desired results. It is difficult, the report will conclude, "to determine conclusively whether interrogations have provided information critical to interdicting specific imminent attacks."
...
The important things to take away from the footnote seem clear: for a period of time interrogators were using the waterboard with a "frequency and cumulative use" that had to be toned down. Moreover, they were doing it in a way that was determined to not be "efficacious."

Cheney....lying? Waterboarding....not effective? Obvious conclusions....obviously concluded? World....spinning....out...of...control. Nothing....makes sense. How could The Dick have lied to us? How could a technique that the Chinese, Cambodians and Spanish Inquisition to elicit false confessions for political purposes turn out to have caused false confessions? How come calling something 'enhanced interrogation' doesn't magically make it not torture? I thought we all knew waterboarding was effective when we learned they had to do it 100 times in one month to a guy. Surely it must be effective if you have to do it so many times to the same guy. I'm just so shocked at all of this I can barely shake my head in disgust over the state of affairs in this country, nor am I able to even to imbue my cries of "arrest this fucking vice-cretin" (replete with menacing finger point) with the necessary venom.

I mean how could a bunch of professional liars with no understanding of torture, the techniques they were approving, their historical uses, international law, torture law, US law, oversight, effectiveness, restraint, basic human decency, who were also reading constant reports about the ineffectiveness of these techniques, ever get it so wrong? It all seems so foolproof.

Dear GOP, listen to this man

Not content to merely have killed the Republican party for the near future, former Vice-President Dick Cheney has decided to take off his pants, dig it a deeper grave and start firing point blank shotgun blast into the corpse, cackling while he does it. Why? That's just the kind of guy he is.

"I don't believe that's true," Cheney said, when asked to respond to Obama's statement that interrogators may not have needed to resort to torture. "That assumes that we didn't try other ways, and in fact we did. We resorted, for example, to waterboarding, which is the source of much of the controversy, with only three individuals."
...
Attributing Obama's decision to end such policies to an attempt "to appeal to the far-left in their party," Cheney was not-surprisingly adamant that investigating these interrogation techniques was a bad idea. He also called on the White House to "do everything they can" to stop foreign governments from prosecuting the Bush hands who carried out these practices.
...
Calling politics cyclical, he concluded that the party did not need to go through a process of moderation.

"I think it would be a mistake for us to moderate. This is about fundamental beliefs and values and ideas...what the role of government should be in our society, and our commitment to the Constitution and constitutional principles," he said.

This man needs to never stop talking. Whenever he opens his big mouth about how waterboarding is the awesomest thing ever, you can feel public support for prosecutions grow. But it's nice to know he's at least moved his lies forward some. Instead of only ever having waterboarded three times, now we've only ever waterboarded three guys, albeit about a hundred times each. The paean not to let the dirty Spaniards ever hold him responsible was nice.

At least he has a concrete plan to get the GOP down to a political party that's only relevant in Oklahoma, Alabama, and the extra-rural parts of Appalachia. These massive electoral defeats and party defections are nothing to worry about. Moderating? That's what they need to worry about, because that would violate their Constitution based principles. "We believe the opposite of what rational people believe" is in the Preamble, right? But belief in the Constitution has been a hallmark of the GOP and Cheney over the last few years. Oh, not in any of the rights, liberties, or laws enumerated in it, but they do believe the Constitution exists. Lindsay Graham totally swears he saw a copy of it once. C'mon Dick, your boys are primed and ready to listen. Don't give them this "don't moderate" nonsense. Give them specific instructions. "Purge the nonbelievers" "Harder right" "Get me 30 pounds of raw meat". How's this party going to become the pure vessel of Dick Cheney's essence without specific instructions?

Torture in pursuit of a fantasy

As disturbing as the revelations of torture were, on at least some level if you stood back, squinted, ignored the consequences, ignored the law, ignored the damage to our country at home and abroad, and just didn't concentrate too much on the guilt or innocence or level of knowledge that the detainees you tortured had, you could at least say "Well, they at least were trying to protect the country after 9/11 from threats they saw as imminent." Yeah......not so much.

The Bush administration applied relentless pressure on interrogators to use harsh methods on detainees in part to find evidence of cooperation between al Qaida and the late Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's regime, according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official and a former Army psychiatrist.

Such information would've provided a foundation for one of former President George W. Bush's main arguments for invading Iraq in 2003. In fact, no evidence has ever been found of operational ties between Osama bin Laden's terrorist network and Saddam's regime.

The use of abusive interrogation — widely considered torture — as part of Bush's quest for a rationale to invade Iraq came to light as the Senate issued a major report tracing the origin of the abuses and President Barack Obama opened the door to prosecuting former U.S. officials for approving them.
...
"The main one is that everyone was worried about some kind of follow-up attack (after 9/11). But for most of 2002 and into 2003, Cheney and Rumsfeld, especially, were also demanding proof of the links between al Qaida and Iraq that (former Iraqi exile leader Ahmed) Chalabi and others had told them were there."

Ahh, Ahmed Chalabi, how could you have steered us wrong? If you can't trust a man who made his living off of getting government money for telling the US what it wanted to hear about Iraq and funneling funds through his phony "Iraqi National Congress" after he made his living defrauding and failing a bank, who can you trust?

Kind of makes you all warm and fuzzy inside to learn that stress positions, bug caskets, extreme temperature variations, sleep deprivation, walling, and waterboarding were all done in our name on the premise that the Bush Administration really wanted someone, anyone, to tell them what they wished was true. What's it say that multiple rounds of torture on multiple detainees still couldn't get one of them to even make up a story? I guess this stuff is what Cheney is referring too when he says the Bush Administration doesn't "got much to apologize for."

We deserve it, we elected Democrats

Dick Cheney's on the loose again, ready to jump out of the closet and say "Boo!" in an attempt to get us to shit ourselves. This time he's warning of terrorist attacks killing everyone we love because Democrats have weakened our defenses that were bearing so much positive fruit during the Bush years. Unclear if Cheney was on a street corner with a sandwich board with "THE END IS NEAR" printed on it yelling this or if someone really thought we needed to hear Dick Cheney's thoughts on why everyone will be killed if we even take a second to reconsider Bush policies.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney warned that there is a “high probability” that terrorists will attempt a catastrophic nuclear or biological attack in coming years, and said he fears the Obama administration’s policies will make it more likely the attempt will succeed.

In an interview Tuesday with Politico, Cheney unyieldingly defended the Bush administration’s support for the Guantanamo Bay prison and coercive interrogation of terrorism suspects.

And he asserted that President Obama will either backtrack on his stated intentions to end those policies or put the country at risk in ways more severe than most Americans — and, he charged, many members of Obama’s own team — understand.

Only Dick Cheney understands the dangers we face, except he didn't actually understand them enough to implement a single useful policy during eight years. But he did have a man sized safe. What he fails to understand is that many Americans would welcome a terrorist attack, the more dead the better. It'll be less competition out there for jobs, food, and the position as dominant ape in your post-apocalyptic tribe. Frankly if we want any shot of rebuilding after Bush's economic apocalypse we're going to need Obama to give us a nuclear apocalypse just to give us some breathing space to reassess and move forward.

It's a good article by any rate. You hear Cheney defend some indefensible policy that has hindered our attempts to fight terrorism or protect our borders and you can almost see him excitedly putting his hand up for a high five and holding it there for an awkward amount of time, before slowly lowering it and glaring at the interview who wouldn't hit him up high or down low. Most interesting were his thoughts on diplomacy (doesn't work), American prisons (somehow unable to handle Arab terrorists), the McRib sandwich (a taste explosion in his mouth), and his grandchildren (they're going to get a lot of spankings and time in the shame closet).

A These Bastards lexicographic declaration: Cheneyed

Henceforth, whenever a malevolent public servant whose battered, hate-fueled body is ceremoniously rolled into the capital on a rickety wheelchair for the express purpose of bearing witness as absolute power is finally and formally removed from his bloodstained, white-knuckled hands, we will deploy the transitive verb, Cheneyed.

Note: This term is also applicable should anyone be shot in the face and/or frightened into believing a series of transparent lies concocted to start wars and sodomize the Bill of Rights.

Wheels of steel

Admit it, this is probably the second time in your life Dick Cheney made you smile. The first being right after you said "Wait, he shot a guy? In the face?" God bless him for throwing out his back murdering stray dogs moving boxes. Now, for the short term, Wheelcheney at least looks as physically crippled as he is ethically and morally crippled. Strike that, there's no way for him to look that physically crippled unless he was some hybrid of Two-Face and the Toxic Avenger.....with one of those Tiny Tim crutches.

Now if only we could get to see what he looks like while facing charges for torture and war crimes. I imagine it's way funnier than this.

Into the lair of the madman

The Bidens Meet the Cheneys

Following Monday’s meeting between President-elect Obama, his wife Michelle and President Bush and First Lady Laura Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney plans to roll out the red carpet for his successor on Thursday.

Mr. Cheney and his wife, Lynne, have invited the future vice presidential couple to their residence at the Naval Observatory for an evening sit-down, according to a statement from the Obama-Biden transition team.

I don't care how nicely Lynn asks you Joe, DON'T GO INTO THE CELLAR! That's where...HE...waits. That's where...HE...works his evil magics.

You've taken the smart first step: you've announced the day and hour of your meeting. Now people will know where you are. All you have to do know is make sure there is video of you arriving and give an hour at which you will leave, after which SWAT teams should be sent in to rescue you. Let photographers get good shots of your face so we have a reference, lest the ancient one tries to skin off your face and wear it as a mask, claiming another four years as VP under the guise of his Biden skin suit. If you do all this...you just might escape alive.

Also, bring holy water, lots of holy water. And hide fire somewhere on your body. You'll need plenty of it when HE looses The Worm that Gnaws in the Night on you.

Upon further review, North Carolina wins

Western Pennsylvania and Southern Ohio officially have nothing on North Carolina.

CULLOWHEE, N.C. (AP) — Police at Western Carolina University and wildlife officials were investigating the discovery early Monday of a dead bear cub draped with a pair of Barack Obama campaign signs.

Racist epithets and tree decorations are one thing. But whomever did this is in an entirely different class of craven fuck.

Karadzic to defend himself

Yesterday Radovan Karadzic, a man who committed genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity was captured. The long and short of it is, any time you see some crazy Serb ex-military bad guy, with a psychotic and violent backstory in warfare in a movie/TV/comic and you think "Well isn't this just a little too crazy and unrealistic", no it isn't and it was based on this guy. If the fact that he was a psychotic mass murderer, disguised himself as a holistic doctor who looked like Santa Claus, make you question his sanity, he came out today and decided to defend himself in court. 11 counts of war crimes, including genocide, for the massacre of 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica and the 12,000 deaths during the siege of Sarajevo and he's going to defend himself.

"He is going to have a legal team in Serbia but he will be defending himself [without a lawyer] during his trial at The Hague," Vujacic told Reuters. "He is convinced that with the help of God he will win."

Can we have a rule from now on? If you are a war criminal and you want to defend yourself, you are automatically deemed guilty and sent to jail. Your only intent is to waste everybody's time defending crimes that the world's best team of lawyers couldn't get you off of. The final petty fuck you after over a decade on the run for crimes against humanity. You're going to prison forever and if there is a hell you will spend eternity there, could you at least comport yourself with some dignity during the trial? No? It was worth an ask.

Cutting corners and electrocuting soldiers

If you had to guess whether or not facing down insurgents and al Qaeda or taking a shower and hanging around the base was more dangerous, you'd probably pick the terrorists. You might be wrong.

Shoddy wiring on US military bases has been responsible for hundreds of fires (averaging out to almost 1.5 fires a day during the most recently measured period) and dozens of deaths from fire and electrical shocks. The Army has classified this problem as the 'most urgent noncombat safety hazard for soldiers in Iraq.'

What government contractor is responsible for these mistakes of incompetence that is killing soldiers? Former Halliburton subsidiary and no-bid contractor KBR. KBR is the same company that brought you unsafe drinking water for troops, failing to protect female employees who were sexually assaulted and raped, and they overbilled the Government for their inadequate services.

The electrical problems are also electrician 101, things that any idiot who spent one day on a job site would know, things like: don't expose wiring and ground the distribution panels. But then they didn't hire skilled electricians to do the work, the hired unskilled Iraqis and pocketed the profit. KBR was warned by some of their employees about this, but their concerns were either ignored or not understood becuase the officials lacked the training.

The Pentagon also knew of these problems and did little to address them until Green Beret, Staff Sgt. Ryan D. Maseth was electrocuted in January. But even now they aren't addressing how widespread the problem is, just the specific circumstances that specifically led to Maseth's death. Unsurprisingly we also learn that there weren't enough government inspectors to do the job either.

Quite simply this is war profiteering. When you so drastically cut the level of competence and skilled labor so you can squeeze as many nickels out of the project as you can, so much so that your awful work is killing soldiers, you are committing a crime.

And when degenerate flag humping cretins like Joe Lieberman, control oversight panels that could do something about this and refuse even to hold hearings, they can also rot. But maybe Joe is too busy stumping for McCain to worry about the troops. Why should John and Joe worry if soldiers are killed in showers, they're too busy trying to get them killed in Iran.

That the policies of Bush, Cheney and the Pentagon led to this and are standing in the way of getting something done are of little surprise. When you emphasize free money for the taking and speed over competence and oversight, this is all you can expect. But, at this point, this is just another thing that's etched into their already awful legacy.

Oh, universe, you shouldn't have!

Really, universe, you've done too much. I was content to spend the birthday I share with this fading republic in a traditional manner: start drinking at 9 am, eggs benedict off a prostitute's stomach around 11:00, incite my first race riot at noon, sharpen machete, urinate on the Ron Paul headquarters down the street from my new apartment, and greet the evening by strolling from rooftop to rooftop, idly chucking sticks of dynamite into the streets while firing an automatic rifle randomly into the air. Because, hey, who's going to notice?

I don't ask for much on my birthday, apart from a good, old-fashioned day of celebration befitting mine and our nation's similar sociopathic tendencies. I am a simple man with simple tastes.

But then you went and gave me this...



Former Republican N.C. Sen. Jesse Helms dead at 86

I'll admit, I'm getting a little weepy here, universe. You're just too much.

And for fun, a few of Sen. Helms' greatest hits.