Caturday!

Well! Hasn't this been an exciting week!

• Bishop Willard "Mitt" RomneyCare started the week claiming to have created 100,000 jobs while at vulture corporation Bain Capital, but ended it whimpering something about "6,000 jobs."

• After claiming that Romney won the Iowa state caucus, the GOP had to reverse itself and announce that Santorum actually won (Headline: Santorum easily slides ahead?)

• Jon Huntsman (who? Oh, c'mon! You know! The guy who was polling at 1% or lower but the media still insisted he was in the race, even while refusing to let Buddy Roemer or Gary Johnson speak!) finally took his two million dollars worth of dental work and three hot daughters out of the public eye by announcing that he's dropping out of the race.

  In a slap-in-the-face to all the "liberals" who love him (because the Republicans/conservatives hate his motorcycling ass with a passion), he endorsed Bishop Willard. WTF, Jon? Y U treat us so bad, after telling us that schmuck was unelectable? Did the Temple Leaders threaten to take away your planet, or what?

• Rick Purreh finally took pity on a suffering America and took his moronic undereducated dumber-than-the-last-Texas-hick ass back to N*****head Ranch where I guess he's keeping the local coyotes in fear for their lives and asking God "Why? Why me, Lord?" as he weeps incoherently into his bourbon-and-branch.

  Whom did he endorse? None other than "amoral jewelry-debt piglet"* Newt Gingrich, the man with the plan for trinkets from Tiffany's.

• Meanwhile, the Godbag Faction of the Republican Party met last Sunday to anoint Santorum as their Chosen.

  No, not with santorum, you sick little puppies. In any event, those Fuckus on The Fambly turds, those Christianist Bible-bashers and homo-haters and misogynistic morons of Rightwingnuttia decided that their Not-MittRomney candidate would be Rick Santorum. These assholes were totes backing (P)Rick Perry just last week, so, talk about pivoting on a dime here. Faithless sluts.

• Perennial punching bag and media slut-moron Sarah Palin apparently has lost even more of her brain to whatever deadly disease was making her spew word salad.

  After being informed that Newt's second wife, Marianne Gingrich, would be interviewed by ABC right after the South Carolina Republican debates, Babble Spice snorted that this would help Gingrich soar. Puzzled media bobbleheads have finally figured out that she meant Newt's amoral and perverse sexual shenanigans might have left him a little *sore,* or something. **

• Over in Wisconsin, the Recall Walker campaign announced that it had received more (lotsmore) signatures than the minimum required to achieve their aim. Down, down, down goes Snotty Wanker, erstwhile governor of Wisconsin and rent-boy for the Koch Bros.

So, what's the deal, Republicans? Are y'all just tired of being a party, or what? Because this is some pretty weak fucking sauce, here, jes' sayin. I know we here at La Casa de Los Gatos have been saying for a while that President O could just cold phone it in, but, man? Do y'all have to make it so EASY for him? Y'all spent six years telling us he was a weak-ass n*****, a compromiser who caved on everything and apologised to everyone and bowed to foreign leaders and was morally weak. Meanwhile, he's been kicking y'alls asses nine ways to Sunday every day of the week.

I have heard Republicans telling me for six years or more about the fight against terrorism and how y'all are going to follow bin Laden to the gates of hell, and y'all know where he is and will take him out but only if we elect you (WTF? Treason much?). So, do we wanna talk about who might actually have taken bin Laden out? Because, you know, I don't remember that Republican President we had before Mr. Obama, you know, the one that NOBODY seems to want to talk about, I mean, they're *still* talking about Clinton and Carter, but you know, that guy, seems like everyone's done gone and forgotten about him, when he said he didn't care about bin Laden any more, and he disbanded the task force that was supposed to be looking for bin Laden, I don't recall ONE SINGLE Republican saying anything then. Not one word about following him to hell, or they will pay, or none of that shit. No, sir. None a that shit. And now Mr. Obama, he took out that Mr. bin Laden, and he took out that Mr. al-Zawahiri and he took out a whole bunch of these here, what the Republicans was calling "terrorists," round about ten years ago. He took them all out. And what do you suppose our fine Republican friends did about that? Did they say "Thank you, Mr. Obama"? Did they say "Thank you Mr. President, for keeping our country safe"? No, sirree, they did not. They said he illegally invaded a sovereign nation. These people, who had no problem with the US invading the sovereign nation of Iraq, which was NOT involved in any attacks against us, got all upset because Mr. Obama had to send a surgical strike team to take out the man who masterminded the most recent attack on American soil, who was being sheltered on Pakistani territory, by our "allies." Imagine that. Did you think you'd live to see the day when a bunch of "America, right or wrong! America, love it or leave it!" assholes would be more upset about the rights of those who shelter our enemies than about our right to pursue those enemies who kill our citizens?

And when he's not the Caveman-in-chief, he's supposed to be some kind of Superman who is singlehandedly preventing yon teabaggers from getting anything done while shoving unpopular measures down the collective throat of the American people. He's a Marxist, a Stalinist, a Fascist, and an Islamist, he controls the courts (which, nevertheless, stubbornly refuse to rule in his favour on certain issues, why, no one can say). He's using mind control techniques to hypnotize the weak willed sheep who are cowed by his bullish tactics even as they are seduced by the pork he proffers. Geez, no wonder we're obese. Half our metaphors are about spectator sports and the other half about food. Oh, NOEZ!! He's forcing states to take care of sick people, disabled people, poor people, babies and children who might be hungry, starving people, old people! How AWFUL!

What the FUCK kind of world are we living in where these nutbags can turn reality into something resembling sausage, i.e., chopped up, mixed up, and stuffed up a pig's anus? Seriously. There is a styful of pigs on the Republican side of this election. Fortunately, it's thinning. Still, the choices fucking suck.

So it's off to Florida for Mittens and Newt and Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, while the rest of America stabs itself in the eye with a fork over and over and over, just to dull the pain.

Happy Caturday, y'all!

* Forever indebted to Kirsten Boyd Johnston of Wonkette for the so-fitting sobriquet of "amoral jewelry-debt piglet" for Newtie.
** Apparently, Bobblehead Barbie was correct, and them South Carolinians just LERVE them some amoral pigfuckery of the adulterous, wife-dumping, intern-humping, vow-breaking Nouveau Papist variety. Newt Gingrich just won South Carolina.

Stumble It!

World: Counting the Dead in Mumbai

Amiran White/NYT

Raw Story is reporting that 195 people lost their lives in the attacks on Mumbai, the financial and showbiz heart of India. The number includes 26 foreigners and 15 of the security forces who fought them. Eleven terrorists were also killed, and one terrorist, a Pakistani national, is in custody.

The Times of India is reporting that the captured terrorist has told his police interrogators that the terrorists received assistance from locals in Mumbai. Given the extreme carnage and destruction in Mumbai carried out by a mere dozen terrorists, it is possible that a significant number of terrorists got away and blended in to the local population. Sources among the survivors have claimed that the terrorists appeared to be quite familiar with the layout of the hotels they took over. However, survivors of violent incidents are not the most reliable source of evidence.

Also, given interrogation methods favoured by the Indian police, it is quite possible that the suspect in custody is telling them whatever he thinks they want to hear. Other things the suspect, the unfortunate Azam Amir Kasab, has told the police: The terrorists' specific mission was to target Israelis to avenge atrocities on Palestinians.

This is why, he claims, they attacked Nariman House. Times of India's sources said Kasab's colleagues killed in the operation had stayed in Nariman House earlier. Interesting. How would Muslims be able to rent in Nariman House, a building owned by an Israeli businessman who rented only to Jews?

Also, the dead terrorists who had previously stayed at Nariman House assumed the identities of Malaysian students. Does this mean that Malaysians are involved? Or is the guy just saying whatever comes to mind?

Meanwhile, the Independent reported on Friday that two of the arrested gunmen appear to have been Britons of Pakistani descent. Since there is only one gunman in custody, it is clear that some sort of misunderstanding occurred. Moreover, the unfortunate Kasab has given the names of all his colleagues at this point and claimed that they are all from Pakistan (although that claim may embrace a multitude of sins, given that many individuals who are Pakistani or Indian or Chinese by ethnicity but citizens of the U.S., UK, or any other nation, often make trips to the old country to visit friends or relatives, or merely to ascertain their cultural roots.

The foreigners killed appear to have come from various nations, including Mauritania, Singapore, and Cyprus. Earlier reports that the terrorists specifically targeted U.S. and U.K. passport holders appear to be incorrect.

Some 300 people were injured. The terrorists, who appear to have been well-trained in military tactics, well-armed and provisioned for exactly such a battle, took three buildings — Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, Oberoi and Trident Hotels, and Nariman House, the last being a building owned by an Israeli who rented to Chabad-Lubavitchers. Apparently, some of the Lubavitchers were U.S. citizens.

All eight inhabitants of Nariman House were killed before Indian commandos retook the building. The terrorists also targeted a hospital and the main Mumbai railway station. The New York Times is reporting that the terrorists immediately killed everyone they came across in the various buildings they invaded, although they allowed security forces to assume that they had taken hostages. The terrorists also fired randomly at people on the street and in facing buildings, killing several bystanders whose only crime appeared to be being within the line of fire.

CNN is reporting that the terrorists had planned on killing 5,000 people.

U.S. intelligence is stating that it has no firm opinion as to who is behind the attacks. According to the NYT, the Indian government seems to believe that Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, assisted the Lashkar e Taiba, or LeT, a militant Islamic group in Pakistan, in carrying out the attacks.

The terrorists claimed membership of the "Deccan Mujahideen." The Deccan is the mountainous plateau that divides North and Central India from South India. Mujahideen roughly translates to "freedom fighters." The group has not been involved in previous incidents and appears to be virtually unknown.

Indian security forces based their suspicions on the discovery of a boat adrift off the coast of Mumbai. The captain of the boat was discovered bound, face-down on the deck, dead. Four crew members are missing; and the logs from cell-phones retrieved from the boat indicate that they had been used to call Jalalabad, in Pakistan. Indian security have also, according to the Times of India, recovered multiple identity and credit cards from many different organizations. The level of sophistication involved is believed to indicate ISI involvement.

The current leader of Pakistan, best known for being the husband of Benazir "Pinkie" Bhutto, the corrupt Asif Ali Zardari, has warned India against holding Pakistan responsible while simultaneously, through the other side of his neck, warning Pakistani militant groups of a strict response should any of them be found responsible.

Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer, advisor to President-elect Barack Obama, as well as previous presidents, and a supposed expert on the Middle-East and South Asia, claimed in his book, The Search for al-Qaeda, that Usama bin Laden assisted the ISI in developing LeT. A devastating attack on India's Parliament was carried out in 2001 by another terrorist group, Jaish e Mohammad, also apparently in collusion with the ISI. It is not clear at this time which of these two terrorist organizations is behind the current attack.

The ISI has long operated as an independent force in Pakistan. It is controlled by no one and beholden, apparently, only to U.S. military and intelligence who supply it with arms and aid. It has been instrumental in the downfall of politicians who have not toed its line. It is quite possible that the ISI, acting on its own, planned and executed the attack on Mumbai with the intent to destabilize relations between India and Pakistan: an attempt that may well suceed, given the increase in such incidents since George W. Bush first took power.

For evidence of such increase in terrorism, see Rep. Henry Waxman's letter to Colin Powell written in 2004. The letter points out that while the misadministration of Gee Dumbya manipulated data to make it appear as if terrorist incidents decreased during his ill-favoured reign, the underlying data make it clear that the number of incidents had actually increased.

The only good news that has come out of this is that President-elect Barack Obama has already formed and announced an emergency advisory team to deal with intelligence received on the Mumbai situation. However, unfortunately, Obama does not assume the reins of power for a little over fifty days as yet, during which time the Idiot-in-Chief can fuck the situation up in a hundred different ways.

And before I forget - thank you, George, for leaving the world in the shitty state it's in. We couldn't have done it without you, ya little schmuck. While you bombed the crap out of women and children in Iraq, destroying the cradle of civilization, al-Qaeda had plenty of time to build up in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Thanks.

Stumble It!

2008 Elections: John McCain's VP Pick

From ICHC, purveyors of fine lolcattery

Quotable quotes from Sarah "Failin' — it's what I do best" Paiin:

"There's, of course in the great history of America there have been rulings, that's never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know, going through the history of America, there would be others but ..."

[...]

"Well, I could think of ... any again, that could be best dealt with on a more local level. Maybe I would take issue with. But, you know, as mayor, and then as governor and even as a vice president, if I'm so privileged to serve, wouldn't be in a position of changing those things but in supporting the law of the land as it reads today."

[...]

Again, John McCain and I, that commitment that we have made, and we're going to follow through on that, getting rid of that corruption.

[...]

But we do need tax relief and Barack Obama even supported increasing taxes as late as last year for those families making only $42,000 a year. That's a lot of middle income average American families to increase taxes on them. I think that is the way to kill jobs and to continue to harm our economy.

[...]

I do take issue with some of the principle there with that redistribution of wealth principle that seems to be espoused by you. But when you talk about Barack's plan to tax increase affecting only those making $250,000 a year or more, you're forgetting millions of small businesses that are going to fit into that category. So they're going to be the ones paying higher taxes thus resulting in fewer jobs being created and less productivity.

[...]

But here, again, there have -- there have been so many changes in the conditions of our economy in just even these past weeks that there has been more and more revelation made aware now to Americans about the corruption and the greed on Wall Street.

We need to look back, even two years ago, and we need to be appreciative of John McCain's call for reform with Fannie Mae, with Freddie Mac, with the mortgage-lenders, too, who were starting to really kind of rear that head of abuse.

And the colleagues in the Senate weren't going to go there with him. So we have John McCain to thank for at least warning people. And we also have John McCain to thank for bringing in a bipartisan effort people to the table so that we can start putting politics aside, even putting a campaign aside, and just do what's right to fix this economic problem that we are in.

It is a crisis. It's a toxic mess, really, on Main Street that's affecting Wall Street. And now we have to be ever vigilant and also making sure that credit markets don't seize up. That's where the Main Streeters like me, that's where we would really feel the effects.

[...]

And East Coast politicians who don't allow energy-producing states like Alaska to produce these, to tap into them, and instead we're relying on foreign countries to produce for us.

[...]

I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.

[...]

And Maliki and Talabani also in working with us are knowing again that we are getting closer and closer to that point, that victory that's within sight.

[...]

And as for who coined that central war on terror being in Iraq, it was the General Petraeus and al Qaeda, both leaders there and it's probably the only thing that they're ever going to agree on, but that it was a central war on terror is in Iraq. You don't have to believe me or John McCain on that. I would believe Petraeus and the leader of al Qaeda.

[...]

An armed, nuclear armed especially Iran is so extremely dangerous to consider. They cannot be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons period. Israel is in jeopardy of course when we're dealing with Ahmadinejad as a leader of Iran. Iran claiming that Israel as he termed it, a stinking corpse, a country that should be wiped off the face of the earth. Now a leader like Ahmadinejad who is not sane or stable when he says things like that is not one whom we can allow to acquire nuclear energy, nuclear weapons.

[...]

Certainly, accounting for different conditions in that different country and conditions are certainly different. We have NATO allies helping us for one and even the geographic differences are huge but the counterinsurgency principles could work in Afghanistan. McClellan didn't say anything opposite of that.

But as for as Darfur, we can agree on that also, the supported of the no-fly zone, making sure that all options are on the table there also.

[...]

Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again pointing backwards again. You preferenced your whole comment with the Bush administration. Now doggone it, let's look ahead and tell Americans what we have to plan to do for them in the future. You mentioned education and I'm glad you did. I know education you are passionate about with your wife being a teacher for 30 years, and god bless her. Her reward is in heaven, right? I say, too, with education, America needs to be putting a lot more focus on that and our schools have got to be really ramped up in terms of the funding that they are deserving. Teachers needed to be paid more. I come from a house full of school teachers. My grandma was, my dad who is in the audience today, he's a schoolteacher, had been for many years. My brother, who I think is the best schoolteacher in the year, and here's a shout-out to all those third graders at Gladys Wood Elementary School, you get extra credit for watching the debate.

Education credit in American has been in some sense in some of our states just accepted to be a little bit lax and we have got to increase the standards. No Child Left Behind was implemented. It's not doing the job though. We need flexibility in No Child Left Behind. We need to put more of an emphasis on the profession of teaching. We need to make sure that education in either one of our agendas, I think, absolute top of the line. My kids as public school participants right now, it's near and dear to my heart. I'm very, very concerned about where we're going with education and we have got to ramp it up and put more attention in that arena.

Most of these comments were taken from the transcript of Paiin's VP debate with Joe Biden, as reproduced in the New York Times. Most of them are a frightening combination of Gee Dumbya Bush at his mushmouthiest and, maybe, Chauncy Gardener?

How many outright lies, misstatements, gaffes, blunders, and plain old idiocies can YOU spot?



Eight years of Teh Stupid has us in a position where Europe, Russia, and China are talking about a new international financial system and they haven't even invited us to the talks. Makes sense when you consider that our children and grandchildren will be paying them for all the loans we took to start a war in Iraq. Hey, where's Osama bin Laden? And how come the Saudis, who manned and probably financed that little explosion of the twin towers, are still best buds with our Preznitwit?

Jeez, people, check your voter registration, tell all your friends and neighbours and relatives and colleagues to check theirs, and VOTE! And, unless you really want to lose your house, your job, your business, your life, your children, and pretty much the rest of the country — be sure to vote for Obama/Biden. There's only one way out of this shitpile, and it ain't a tunnel named Paiin/McCain't.

Stumble It!

Bring The Troops Home NOW!

Well. Isn't that just ducky? Raw Story tells us that, after reviewing hundreds of thousands of captured Iraqi documents, the Pentagon has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein had any connection at al with al-Qaeda.

Apparently, the only links between Saddam and any terrorist groups were just like ours. Just as we funded and armed Osama bin Laden to wage Islamic Jihad against the Russians when they invaded Afghanistan in support of Babrak Kamal's government, Saddam Hussein funded and armed groups to attack "Iraqi exiles, Shiite Muslims, Kurds and others he considered enemies of his regime."

The study is due to Congress and for general release by midweek.

The article, penned by Warren Strobel of McClatchy's Washington Bureau, states, in part:

[...] the upcoming Pentagon report promises to be a particularly stark and thorough refutation of one of the primary Bush administration arguments for the invasion of Iraq [i.e., that Saddam Hussein was linked to al-Qaeda. Another Bush Misadministration argument, that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, has already been thoroughly refuted.] The subsequent war has come at the cost of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, nearly 4,000 US troop deaths, and some half a trillion US dollars and counting.

Mr. Strobel's math skills are poor &mdash or perhaps McClatchy prefers to err on the cautious side of the balance ledger. Current wisdom has it that the total cost of Shrubya's Little Misadventure will run to over three trillion dollars. These costs do not address the Iraqis we've maimed and wounded, or the bills that other countries foolish enough to join in the "coalition of the willing" face. Britain, for example, announced today that their estimated cost will total approximately ten billion pounds sterling.

The article adds that the Bush Misadministration continues to lie about Saddam's Iraq and al-Qaeda, despite previously released documents and reports indicating the same findings as the forthcoming extensive review. As recently as last April, Vice President Dick Cheney again asserted a link between the Iraqi dictator and the terror network. So, if you know anyone stupid enough to listen to them and believe, please buy a copy of the review when it is released and use it to beat some sense into them.

The study is entitled "Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents." Although it has been essentially complete since last year, it has been undergoing what one U.S. intelligence official described as a "painful" declassification review.

The article notes, in a painful aside, that "In fact, al Qaida in Iraq didn't emerge until 2004, a year after the invasion." Was that before or after Commander Codpiece was strutting around on the deck of an aircraft carrier in a uniform before a banner that screamed "Mission Accomplished," to the collective spooging of the shameless press corps?

Photo montage from grupo-utopia.com with the request that you spread it around

Meanwhile, we note that almost exactly a month ago, Auntie Beeb published a piece about the "reverse surge" that appears to be grimly prophetic. That article was pointing out the increase in violent incidents, many of which seemed to be targeting the Sunnis that the U.S. has been wooing with large sums of money:

US commanders on the ground [...] have pumped money into local economies by employing tens of thousands of young Sunni men as local auxiliaries - now re-named "Sons of Iraq" after several unhappier titles such as "Concerned Local Citizens" - to act as the eyes and ears of the US and Iraqi troops in the struggle against the militants.

They are also trying to encourage the Baghdad government to be more proactive in providing services and job-creation schemes in areas where the insurgents have been driven out.

But as we, and many others, have pointed out, the war has been going on for five years at this point. It's a bit late to start trying to win "hearts and minds." What's more, as the U.S. military strategy in Vietnam might suggest, the buying over of the "Sons of Iraq" sounds suspiciously like Tricky Dick's "changing the color of the corpses."

Al-Qaeda, and those Iraqis who are fighting the U.S. military will treat as traitors any Iraqis who side with the U.S. military. The U.S. is not going to stay in Iraq forever, John McCain or no John McCain. We simply cannot afford to. Sooner or later, our internal economic straits will be so dire, as a result of siphoning money out of the country to fund a prolonged war, that our economy will collapse. The U.S. is not willing to accept Iraqi refugees in any significant number. Despite the fact that more than 4 million Iraqis are now refugees, either in their own country or in Syria, Jordan, and other neighbouring nations, only approximately 7,000 have been accepted into the U.S. to date, and the original target of 25,000 has been lowered to 7,000.

Besides, the "hearts and minds" that the U.S. military is trying to win are deeply split even among themselves. We've said this repeatedly: Iraq has always been a fractured, heterogenous nation, with many different ethnic and religious groups, divided loyalties, in many ways still adhering to family, clan, tribe and feudal notions of society.

Thus, it should come as no surprise that Auntie Beeb once again informed us just yesterday that a woman had detonated her explosive vest when she came calling on a Son of Iraq. Chances are that, just like the Issawi celebrants mentioned in the previous link, the woman was either a member of the tribe of the slain "Son of Iraq," Thaer Ghadban al-Karkhi.

According to Auntie Beeb, Al Karkhi was the head of one of the majority-Sunni Arab Awakening Councils, allied with the US military against al-Qaeda in Iraq. How true that is, we have to wonder, since the same piece identified "Sheikh" Abdul Sattar Abu Risha as the head of the Awakening Council in Anbar, a key US ally who was widely credited with having defeated al-Qaeda in much of western Iraq. Greg Palast can give you the lowdown on the "Sheikh."

We ourselves have blogged about the "Sheikh's" mysterious trips with U.S. money. $75 million worth, fellow-taxpayers.

Meanwhile, to add further credence to Auntie Beeb's prognostications, Raw Story is telling us that forty-two people died in Iraq today as the result of violence. Forty-two. Do you know forty-two people? Add up your family members. You might have to include a few neighbours or colleagues.

Now imagine that these people who you, maybe, love, or like, or just know, were blown to smithereens. An assemblage of body parts, bloody meat, barely recognizable as human. Now imagine that happens to you every day. You probably don't know enough people to sustain that kind of loss every day for a year, probably not even a month. Well, for the Iraqis, this has been going on for five long years. And some days, it's a lot more than forty-two people.

In other news, eight U.S. servicemen were also killed. When are we going to bring our troops home? Because this has gone on too damned long. The troops did the job they were sent there to do. An army's job is to fight. They fought. The other stuff has to be done by non-military qualified and experienced civilian personnel. But Boy George wanted to send his friends and cronies out there to bilk the taxpayer, and because they're the friends and cronies of an incompetent boob, to no one's surprise they too are incompetent boobs. So now we have a failed state, in which people are being killed every day in large numbers. And it's too dangerous to send qualified experienced civilian personnel out there to help to fix the mess we made.

Every day that the soldiers stay there is one more day that they present a target to a people furious that their country has been invaded, their jobs are gone, their economy is faltering, they don't have power or light or working telephones, their streets are unsafe, and their wives, sisters, mothers, and daughters are being raped and beaten and killed, while their sons, brothers, fathers, and husbands are kidnapped, tortured, and killed. Get them out NOW. Bring them home.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, articles like this are just beginning to show up on the radar. The article states that railcars due to ease congestion in Philadelphia will be delayed. See if you can guess why.

New SEPTA Regional Rail cars will be at least four months late, delaying relief for riders on the increasingly crowded rail lines, SEPTA officials said yesterday.

[...] delivery of the rest of the 120-car order will also be pushed back at least four months, Nowakowski said. Final delivery of all the railcars is now scheduled for October 2010.

Rotem [the company building the cars, Ed.] was unable to procure enough of the type of steel specified in the SEPTA contract because the U.S. government has cornered the market; it is using the steel for armoring vehicles bound for Iraq, Nowakowski said.

For the sake of the dying, dead, maimed and wounded, in Iraq and at home; for the sake of the faltering economy, the people losing their homes, the people without health care, or with inadequate care; for the sake of the families that are being fractured by the stresses of this war; for the sake of the nation that is tottering under the accumulation of debt and the loss of its sons and daughters &mdash bring them home. End the war now.

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World: The Assassination of Benazir Bhutto

Ahmed Rashid at The Pakistan Daily Times has an interesting take on Bhutto's assassination - one shared, we suspect, by most people who know something about the history and politics of Pakistan. That would not include our State Department, Condoloser Rice, and the Republicanidiots currently making policy.

It should come as no surprise to anyone, except the aforementioned pinheads, that Pakistanis in general see the U.S. as meddling in their internal politics. The Boy Emperor, impatient to ensure a democracy somewhere (except, apparently, in the US) as a legitimizing basis of his "legacy," pressured the corrupt and power-hungry Bhutto to return to a Pakistan that was ruled by an even more corrupt and power-hungry Musharraf. It is now clear that Musharraf had no intention of keeping the promises he made to Bush even while siphoning off billions of US taxpayer dollars from the Treasury which we placed in the hands of that incompetent fool.

As our banks and financial institutions drown in a sea of worthless subprime paper, as our housing industry and homeowners circle the toilet, as our people lose their jobs, their homes, their health, and their children, the Chimperor keeps paying for goodwill and reaping only rancour.

I'm sure he wonders why.

Meanwhile, the finger is pointing at Musharraf, and there's no denying that if he did not actively plan to assassinate Bhutto, then he knows who did, and probably inspired said assassins.

First, Musharraf's government claimed she was shot. Then doctors at the hospital in Rawalpindi released X-rays purportedly showing no bullets had penetrated either her body or her skull. The government then asserted that she had fractured her skull when she hit a lever in the sunroof of her vehicle. When their hearers responded with disbelief, they amended their story to claim that gunshots had caused Bhutto to duck back into her car, whereupon a suicide bomber detonated his explosives and the ensuing shock wave slammed her skull into the lever of her sunroof with sufficient force to fracture it. At some point, that claim was further amended to allow the possibility of bomb fragments having caused a bruise or scrape on her head that might have then caused a fracture.

Subsequently, they produced what purported to be a tape of an intercepted conversation with an al-Qaeda leader who is congratulating one of his minions on having achieved the death of Ms. Bhutto. al-Qaeda, never shy about taking credit, has denied any involvement. Even if they were involved, it says a lot for the incompetence of Pervy's government that they have failed to capture Osama bin Laden, who is within their borders, for over seven long years now, but managed in less than 24 hours to track a supposed al-Qaeda assassin.

They must think Americans are even stupider than we think they think we are. Either that or their long dealings with Mr. Bush and his coterie of extremely stupid and incompetent lickspittles has convinced them that Americans are no smarter than their leaders.

Musharraf's toadies have also claimed that Bhutto's husband did not permit an autopsy; yet contradictory reports claim that Rawalpindi police halted the autopsy that should be standard operating procedure when a suspicious death occurs.

The Pakistani ambassador to the US has now contradicted the Pakistani government's official claim that they do not need a UN-style inquiry into the assassination. Scotland Yard is already on the scene mounting an investigation at the request of the Pakistani government. A third investigation is being carried out by high-ranking members of Musharraf's cabal.

And now Raw Story informs us that US intelligence officials believe the suicide bomber was targeting the gunman who shot at Bhutto. It was apparently an attempt to get rid of evidence that implicated the actual assassins. Certainly, the Rawalpindi police displayed an unseemly haste in hosing down the area where the assassination occurred. One might wonder if, coupled with their earlier action in deserting their posts when they were supposed to be providing security for Ms. Bhutto, they were not somehow implicated in the assassination themselves.

To quote Frank Zappa, "Questions, questions, questions, flooding into the mind of the concerned young person today."

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Politics: Sibel Edmonds

A.Q. Khan, renegade Pakistani nuclear scientist considered a hero in Pakistan

Seen anything about Sibel Edmonds' testimony in the paper lately? I recall reading something about a week ago, but it's been pushed off the front page by the much more thrilling business of an intoxicated Britney Spears losing her mind or her kids or her underwear.

The Times of London has an interesting article today on Edmonds' testimony. Sibels worked for the FBI as a Turkish language translator, and, as part of her job, listened in to hundreds of sensitive intercepted conversations while based at the agency’s Washington field office. An excerpt from her testimony as described in the article states, in part:

... foreign intelligence agents had enlisted the support of US officials to acquire a network of moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions.

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.

However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

If true, this is simply scandalous. Pakistan is known to be a hub of nuclear weapons information. Its top nuclear scientist, A.Q. Khan, has been proved to have sold nuclear weapons technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea. Although he is supposedly under house arrest, no attempt has been made by Pakistani authorities to punish the man.

Despite the expenditure of billions of dollars from U.S. taxpayers, American officials have never been permitted to question Dr. Khan. They are not even permitted to ask him questions directly. All questions must be submitted to the Pakistani intelligence authorities, the notorious ISI. The ISI presumably submits the written questions to Dr. Khan and delivers his replies to the U.S. intelligence officials.

Seems like a poor return on our investment. How do we even know that Dr. Khan is responsible for the answers?

Edmonds told the Times that Turki officials acted as a conduit for ISI to deflect suspicion from the Pakistanis.

Intercepted communications showed Ahmad (General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief) and his colleagues stationed in Washington were in constant contact with attachés in the Turkish embassy.

Intelligence analysts say that members of the ISI were close to Al-Qaeda before and after 9/11. Indeed, Ahmad was accused of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.

The results of the espionage were almost certainly passed to Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist.

Khan was close to Ahmad and the ISI. While running Pakistan’s nuclear programme, he became a millionaire by selling atomic secrets to Libya, Iran and North Korea. He also used a network of companies in America and Britain to obtain components for a nuclear programme.

Edmonds also informed the Times that one of her fellow translators at the FBI was the daughter of a Pakistani embassy official who worked for Ahmad. The translator was given top secret clearance despite protests from FBI investigators.

Feel safer now, America? While Bush's boys in Afghanistan and Iraq were rounding up innocent civilians and incarcerating them for years in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, where they were tortured, his people in the State department were employing ISI moles at the behest of their Pakistani bribers. State was smuggling known terrorists out of the country as a favour to the Pakistani government, lest they "spill the beans."

While we were using napalm and white phosphorus against civilians in Fallujah, the real terrorists were eating our lunch right here at home. Jeezus, this is repulsive.

Is there a single reason left to keep impeachment of Dick and boy george "off the table"?

Nancy? Harry? Are you slimy gutless worms out there?

Go read the whole article for yourself. Try not to vomit.

All this time, we've been chasing illusory monsters in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Meanwhile, a total of $10 billion dollars of taxpayer money has been paid to the Pakistani government, which is sending money to terrorists and permitting Saudi Arabia to run madrassahs in Pakistan that espouse an anti-U.S. position. What are we doing to combat this? We're giving $22 million to - get this - Pervez Musharraf to "promote democracy."

Pervez Musharraf. A military man who led a coup against the civilian government and refuses to resign either his military or his civilian position. Who routinely jails opponents and suppresses dissent by the simple expedient of having dissenters killed. Who is undoubtedly largely responsible for the murder of Benazir Bhutto and several hundred of her followers.

We wonder what the size of his Swiss bank account is.

Meanwhile Preznitwit Stupie McMidas has announced plans to involve the U.S. military in the border areas of Pakistan. To which the Pakistani army and foreign ministry have replied unequivocally that Stupie and his minions are decidedly unwelcome in Pakistan. And it cost us only $10 billion to buy that endearing response. For $10 billion, we deserve better, George. How about a rebuilt bridge in Minnesota, or a repaired levee in Truckee, or a lawsuit against your brother's flawed pumps in New Orleans, for which the beleaguered city is still paying? How about fixing one single fucking thing at home?

And Hillary Clinton, who ought to know better, rushed in to stick her foot in her mouth with some yammer about a joint U.S.-UK team to oversee the security of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. The Pakistani military spokesman put paid to that idea in no uncertain terms:

"We do not require anybody's assistance. We are fully capable of doing it on our own," said [Major General Waheed Arshad].

Good work, Hill.

In essence, Pakistan is a failing, if not failed, state. If we had paid attention to the true perpetrators of the incidents of September 11th, we would not be in this position now. But no. We had to elect the biggest idiot on the planet, a fool who will go down in history as a total failure in foreign policy.

He really does have the reverse Midas touch, doesn't he? Everything he touches turns to shit.

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Environment: A Compressed-Air Car?

How cool is THAT? Tata Motor Company of India is working with a French company to produce a car that runs on compressed air. Tata has been manufacturing and selling compressed-air buses for nearly eight years now, so the compressed-air car should not be much of a challenge for them at all.

Details about the car:

The air car, also known as the Mini-CAT or City Cat, can be refueled in minutes from an air compressor at specially equipped gas stations and can go 200 km on a 1.5 euro fill-up -- roughly 125 miles for $3. The top speed will be almost 70 mph and the cost of the vehicle as low as $7000.

Mini-CAT? City Cat? Too damned cute for words.

$7K for a car. I can't remember when they cost that little.

Raw Story has the video clip and the details.

We here at The Political Cat believe that no one can have too much CAT in their lives. OK, we did once top ten of the little fuckers, and that's dangerous territory, but for a Cat this cute, we'd make way. And will that take the country off the foreign oil teat, or what?

Even though the primary source of oil imports into the U.S. is Canada, Saudi Arabia follows close behind, and it would be worth it to wipe the smug grins off the faces of the people who sponsored Osama bin Laden. If we stopped buying their oil, they wouldn't be able to fund the retrogressive Wahabi school of Islam that is responsible for the jihadist madrassahs that are turning out "martyrs" and "fighters" for the troubling wars attempting to destabilize Pakistan, India, and Afghanistan.

And besides, it's hella cute, that little Cat car.

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World: Martial Law Declared In Pakistan

Pervez Musharraf

AFP is reporting that Musharraf has declared martial law in Pakistan, suspending the Supreme Court and cutting off all land and mobile communication lines. Television channels were also apparently shut down.

Pervez Musharraf had been negotiating a power-sharing arrangement with Benazir Bhutto, a move that had been pushed by the U.S. and Britain, despite the fact that Bhutto and her government have given ample evidence of corruption. Bhutto has warned that her opposition party will not tolerate a declaration of emergency by Musharraf.

Musharraf had originally pledged to step down from power no later than November 17, if he did not win the elections. However, through his ministers, he had previously hinted at the possibility of declaring a state of emergency if the court overturned his election.

The court has announced that it will not be cowed by the ministers' hints.

We continue to support this petty, tinpot dictator - ruler of a regime that houses the infamous A.Q. Khan who has openly provided nuclear technology to regimes hostile to the U.S. A despot who has refused to take any action whatsoever on Khan except to place him under supposed "house arrest," which has not prevented Khan from meeting with representatives of hostile regimes or publishing scientific papers detailing information on nuclear weapons technology.

Musharraf continues to turn a blind eye to the presence of Osama bin Laden, who might be somewhere in the tribal regions between Pakistan and Afghanistan. He certainly is not doing anything about the presence of the Taleban in northern Pakistan, other than attempting to dodge their bombs. Meanwhile he has all but promised to leave the tribal areas of Waziristan alone to continue to provide aid to the Taleban and possibly Osama bin Laden's entourage. All this while, in Baluchistan, Musharraf's army continues to assault and commit human rights violations against a helpless civilian population.

Not that Bhutto would be a significant improvement, with her siphoning off the contents of the national coffers, but why are we supporting this nest of vipers, exactly?
Benazir Bhutto

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War - The Monster Rears His Ugly Head

Why is this abomination of a purported human being allowed to sit in the shadows and weave his webs of deceit and warmongering? Why is he still in the halls of power, whispering poisons such as these into the ear of a shallow incompetent sot with his finger on the doomsday button? McClatchy's Washington Bureau recently reported:

Cheney, who's long been skeptical of diplomacy with Iran, argued for military action if hard new evidence emerges of Iran's complicity in supporting anti-American forces in Iraq; for example, catching a truckload of fighters or weapons crossing into Iraq from Iran, one official said.

Now, we all know that if such evidence doesn't exist, Cheney will happily manufacture it, lie about it, spin it, and try, once again, to force the country into a new war, on a new front, with the same tired old military. A military that is not meeting its recruiting goals, that is redeploying its soldiers repeatedly, that is reducing time off between deployments, that has cannibalized the National Guard, that is sending home corpses, the wounded, crippled, maimed and destroyed, that is recruiting gang members, that has dropped its standards, that is nurturing psychopaths like Stephen Green.

He must be impeached before he can destroy what's left of this country.

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War - Where Else We're Winning

Because it's not enough to "win" the war against hurricane damage and collapsing bridges in your own country. It's not even enough to start a pre-emptive war based on lies, and depose and hang the (admittedly despotic) ruler of a foreign nation that poses no threat to you. If you can't get your war jollies, what the fuck are you going to do?

I mean, imagine for one minute that you're a shallow, somewhat stupid, bugfuck crazy alcoholic coke addict who's never been a success at anything, and would be living under a bridge drinking out of brown paper bag wrapped bottles if your daddy didn't have loads and loads of money.

Imagine that somehow you hooked up with a fat, pasty Machiavellian who had a plan to present you as the front man in a massive con job. All you had to do was read stuff that your own private Machiavelli would hand you, and you could have a really nice House, a staff to wait on your every whim, well-armed studs to escort your sozzled troublemaking sprog around and keep them out of trouble.

You could ride your bike all you want, and you'd get a month or three of vacation every year, and people would look up at you and to you. If anything went wrong, you could blame everyone else. In fact, you didn't even have to do it. Your Machiavelli would. You'd just read the words he told you to say.

Sounds like a great gig, don't it? Except for the winning part, that is.

See, apparently we're winningly winning so well in Afghanistan that the desperate, beaten-back, almost-extinct cowardly Taliban are - horrors! - staging bold frontal attacks on us.

The insurgents attacked Firebase Anaconda from three sides, using gunfire, grenades and 107 mm rockets, the coalition said. A joint Afghan-U.S. force repelled the attack with mortars, machine guns and air support.

They must not realize we're winning.

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Gross!

Ha'aretz reviews a book by Uri Dan, titled "Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait". Sharon is personally very interesting to me, for many reasons. But out of the review came a little tidbit that struck me as completely inappropriate, in fact downright gross:

Speaking of George Bush, with whom Sharon developed a very close relationship, Uri Dan recalls that Sharon's delicacy made him reluctant to repeat what the president had told him when they discussed Osama bin Laden. Finally he relented. And here is what the leader of the Western world, valiant warrior in the battle of cultures, promised to do to bin Laden if he caught him: "I will screw him in the ass!"

I suppose this is all of a piece with his groping of the German Prime Minister, addressing the British Prime Minister with a "Yo, Blair," through a mouthful of half-chewed bread, his completely inappropriate attempted dragging around of the Chinese Premier, and his rubbing the heads of just about any bald man within a hundred feet. Why do they let this idiot take trips abroad, anyway? He hasn't the first clue about how to behave in public. And what is with his barely disguised homoerotic behaviours? Be as gay as you want, buddy, just don't make me privy to your sadistic sodomy fantasies. Yeesh.

(review discovered courtesy of watertiger, via Atrios via Tom Tomorrow.)

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