Dear Family Values Voters: Thanks for bringing down the empire.

let us eat cake

Regular readers will attest that I am no genius. Just one of many (ha ha, I kid). But whenever I've come across a blog that asks what will be the legacy of the Bush presidency, for five years at least my answer has been "His presidency will mark the beginning of the end of the United States' role as world superpower". Generally, my opinion was that we wouldn't notice ourselves in a post-American era until after he left office, but it seems that the end of the empire is all too evident right this moment.

In 1989 I was an intern at the United Nations (yes, this gives me more foreign policy experience in spades than Sarah Palin.)That September, I saw George H. W. Bush give his speech before the UN General Assembly. At that time the Berlin Wall had a little less than two months left to go but the jokes at the UN went that GDR (the acronym for East Germany-German Democratic Republic) stood for Gradually Disappearing Republic. History was flipping over in those days, but honestly, inside the UN there wasn't alot of discussion of re-alignment, or the "New World Order".

I don't even recall what Bush talked about. I think it was fairly standard fare. The General Assembly hall was full to the rafters. I sat up in the gallery, next to a Russian staffer. When Bush concluded, the General Assembly cleared. "Who's next?" asked the Russian next to me. "I think Poland speaks next" I said. "Oh," contemplated the Russian" and then in thick Boris accent he said "Unnn Luckkky Poe-lund!" You see, the president of the United States was always such a big draw that any following speaker was left feeling deflated giving a speech to the backs of exiting diplomats.

Reports from Bush v.43.2 at Tuesday's UN General Assembly speech are that many attendants were anything but attentive.

According to the German journal Spiegel

George W. Bush has grown old, erratic and rosy in the eight years of his presidency. Little remains of his combativeness or his enthusiasm for physical fitness. On this sunny Tuesday morning in New York, even his hair seemed messy and unkempt, his blue suit a little baggy around the shoulders, as Bush stepped onto the stage, for the eighth time, at the United Nations General Assembly.

He talked about terrorism and terrorist regimes, and about governments that allegedly support terror. He failed to notice that the delegates sitting in front of and below him were shaking their heads, smiling and whispering, or if he did notice, he was no longer capable of reacting. The US president gave a speech similar to the ones he gave in 2004 and 2007, mentioning the word "terror" 32 times in 22 minutes. At the 63rd General Assembly of the United Nations, George W. Bush was the only one still talking about terror and not about the topic that currently has the rest of the world's attention.

"Absurd, absurd, absurd," said one German diplomat. A French woman called him "yesterday's man" over coffee on the East River. There is another way to put it, too: Bush was a laughing stock in the gray corridors of the UN

The Post American Era. Welcome to it.

Now here is the thing. The last two elections were so close that one was stolen and the next one was so close that it probably was stolen. What got W re-elected after a dismal four years was reportedly "Family Values Voters" meaning not family values at all, but hysterically anti-choice people voting for Bush on the dream and a prayer that he would make abortions illegal and that all cell divisions past the second one would be protected with the might and weight of the full United States Government-all the way up until birth. (And then those babies formerly known as fetuses are on their own.)

In two hundred years and beyond, students of history are going to be baffled by the idea that the right wing fundamentalist hope that women must be forced to bear children that they could not afford nor raise responsibly would be the issue that brought down the greatest superpower in history. This is particularly true because we are also at the end of an era where sustainability is a polite and hopeful word and turning toward an era where every activity of human commerce will need to be sustainable.

I use an easy definition of sustainable as "anything the 6 billion inhabitants of the world can engage in without destroying the earth". The stock market, because it measures progress only in growth is not sustainable. Our shopping malls and markets that produce more waste than useable products that will glut refuse sites and continue to pollute the earth are not sustainable. Having unlimited children and increasing the population further is not sustainable. How the future deals with over population is beyond me. I simply have no idea, but I do know there will be a fundamental shift in thinking between now and then. Perhaps it is a bit like looking back and trying to figure out how a fear of witches could produce hysteria in the new world. We're pretty far removed from the supernatural hopes and fears that guided people in the 17th century.

So, right wing fundie mouth breathers: for bringing us two terms of George W. Bush's reign of error- thanks so much for the Post-American Era. I hope you enjoy your Chinese overlords. BTW, have you heard about their ideas for family planning? Bet you're not too thrilled with those.

A Turn For the Worse Is Still Change

A group of anarchist protesters at the RNC convention in St. Paul
were sitting down to eat dinner and watch a movie when police conducted a no-knock raid, breaking down doors and entering the space with guns drawn. There were children there.

Police claimed that they were searching for bomb-making materials. Later the charge was a fire code violation.

Outrageous. Where is the media that kept an eagle eye on the Chinese waiting for a juicy story of governmental abuse of power?

In other news, Blackwater has put out a call for mercenaries, preferably cops with semi-automatic weapons-not revolver only-to report to the Gulf. Evacuees are being bar-coded and recorded so that authorities will know where they are going and what they are doing.

I think the Packer management did the right thing.

Hey, it's not a popular opinion, but then I recently got up the guts to announce my true hidden feelings about the Beatles.

Talk amongst yourselves. I'll berate your dumb opinion love to see what y'all've got to say when I get back.

(Time for some vacation).

Ticks!

We went for a hike in the country yesterday. I came home with three ticks. The problem is that I didn't find them until 1:45, 2:15 and 3:30. AM. Then I stayed awake for a very long time with the itchy creepy crawlies.

Fortunately, Lotta (7yo) had given me a pebble that she found interesting which was on the base of my lamp. I used it to crush those little bastards and line them up in a row like frontier rattlesnakes on my nightstand. Now they rest in peace in a baggie I can give my doctor when the lyme disease sets in.

Oh, and I'm tired as hell.

A Torch Song for Valentine's Day

Maybe you remember that I posted a love song for 9/11 on September 11th. That is the day that I very first kissed my husband in the coatroom at my sister's wedding. (I met him the day before). Well, now that it is the international day of luuuuuv and romance, I thought I'd let you know that for me, it harbors really bad memories.

Dork that I am, I got married on Valentine's Day once. Not in hindsight but in actual fact on that day, it was one of the worst days of my life. Lots of people say they knew they were making a mistake on th day of their wedding. Count me among them.

We had a big Friday evening wedding. To me, it was a pain in the ass. There were 200 or so guests. It was lent, so half the catholics had ordered fish and somewhere along the line the most devout of the catholics were served steak. The band we hired -- I refused to have a dj -- changed their lead singer from the time we hired them to when they played. He both sucked and looked like a freak. My mother's friend decided to freestyle the decorations without me knowing about it and plastered brass cupids throughout the room. The hotel was hosting a children's group. Kids rode up and down in the glass elevator right next to the cocktail reception, pushing the buttons for each floor. My suitcases were left in my car and the best man who was supposed to bring them up to the room earlier in the day was too busy drinking at the open bar and smoking cigars to get them for me. I did it myself. Have you ever seen a bride schlepping her own luggage through her own reception? My dad bugged, ran after me and yanked the bags out of my hands taking care of the errand for me.

I remember having about thirty drinks in my hand and taking a sip out of each one, setting it down and losing it. No, I did not get drunk because there wasn't the opportunity. I think I had to dance to the electric slide, macarena and the chicken dance though the band was specifically instructed against those songs. I couldn't find my new husband when the time had come to dance with him. My friend started a fight with his sister because she thought his sister had taken his bouquet.

The two families didn't like each other, though we've known each other since I was in kindergarten. My ex-father-in-law thought giving me the finger at the altar during the rehearsal was high humor.

It was on my wedding night and during our honeymoon that I discovered my new husband had a phobia against having sex in hotel rooms. (He thinks they spy on you). In fact, the other guests at the small tropical resort where we stayed were always amused that the husband of the newlywed pair was always up late in the bar and the bride was always up early reading books on her patio.

We lasted eighteen months. I'm cool with that now. It turns out that "starter marriages" are hip. Wow, me, hip! Whodathunk?

Real Quotes by Rapidly Fading Politicians

h/t Buzzflash, who may be thinking this was said recently. It was not. Nosferatiuliani's comments were made a mere 7 years prior to 9/11.

Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeepyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

Is this supposed to make Americans feel better about the dipshit the dipshit is married to?



Heard on the other end of the line "........If you would like to make a call please hang up and dial again......."


P.S. Does anyone else see the irony in the guy who failed to set up decent communications systems in NY (which led to the deaths of all those firefighters) touting the amazing ability of the modern age to keep us all in constant contact?

This is too funny not to share.

If you've ever wanted to post at Townhall (why would you I don't know) you'll find that you need to register. And then you get lots and lots of paranoid schizophrenic e-mail messages and daily updates. The daily updates are like Huffpo but with lots and lots of misogyny, bigotry and good old-fashioned hate. They also send their loyal readers hokey get rich scams. So much for sharing the love. We know frightwingers would eat their own pondering only the choice of bar-b-Q sauce.

So today I got this e-mailed to me:






So I voted in the poll. I voted to support illegal alien amnesty. The results from the big group of mouth breathing next door neighbor neocons and hate mongerers?

Tada!:

Nice of them to provide links to such great organizations, too! Maybe I'll stop by and chuck some money the ACLU's way. (I am a card carrying member, but you guessed that!)

I think he's being treated unfairly due to his celebrity.

Don't you?

Blackwater has been banned from Iraq

From CNN:

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- Iraq's Interior Ministry has revoked the license of Blackwater USA, an American security firm whose contractors are blamed for a Sunday gunbattle in Baghdad that left eight civilians dead.

Sunday's firefight took place near Nusoor Square, an area that straddles the predominantly Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Mansour and Yarmouk.

In addition to the fatalities, 14 people were wounded, most of them civilians, the official said.
....

"We have revoked Blackwater's license to operate in Iraq. As of now they are not allowed to operate anywhere in the Republic of Iraq," Interior Ministry spokesman Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Khalaf said Monday. "The investigation is ongoing, and all those responsible for Sunday's killing will be referred to Iraqi justice."

Blackwater is one of many security firms contracted by the U.S. government during the Iraq war. An estimated 25,000-plus employees of private security firms are working in Iraq, guarding diplomats, reconstruction workers and government officials. As many as 200 are believed to have been killed on the job, according to U.S. congressional reports
......
Iraqi authorities have issued previous complaints about shootings by private military contractors, but Iraqi courts do not have the authority to bring contractors to trial, according to a July report from the Congressional Research Service.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee estimated in February that nearly $4 billion had been spent on security contracts amid the insurgency that followed the U.S. invasion in 2003 -- costs that have forced the delay, cancellation or scaling back of some reconstruction projects.

Note that the number given of 25,000 contractors are for those involved in security functions only. The rest of the 180,000 contractors in Iraq are the food service workers, the sanitation workers, the truck drivers and the like.

It will be interesting to follow this development. I somehow doubt that Blackwater will in the end actually leave Iraq. But I am a pessimist when it comes to Christian Fundamentalist whack-jobs, accountability and this administration. (Blackwater is owned by a fundie with 'loofah my back, please George' closeness to the president).

If they should leave, I would think that things would be better for our own troops and for the Iraqi people.

Grazie Signore Pavarotti - 1935-2007

I am one of those schmucks of the hoi polloi who probably never would have experienced opera much if it weren't for you.

Here Bono shows just how hard what you did was, by not being able to do it!