To all the right-wing hawks saying that we can't abandon the Iraqis by removing our military, or that leaving akin to defeat:

While more than 130,000 U.S. troops remain in the country, patrols by heavily armed soldiers in hulking vehicles have largely disappeared from Baghdad, Mosul and Iraq's other urban centers. Iraqis danced in the streets and set off fireworks overnight in impromptu celebrations of a pivotal moment in their nation's troubled history. The government staged a military parade to mark the new national holiday of "National Sovereignty Day," and Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki made a triumphant, nationally televised address.

"This day, which we consider a national celebration, is an achievement made by all Iraqis," Maliki said. " . . . Those who think that Iraqis are unable to defend their country are committing a fatal mistake."  

. . .

"The Army of the U.S. is out of my country," said Ibrahim Algurabi, 34, a dual U.S.-Iraqi citizen now living in Arizona who attended a concert of celebration in Baghdad's Zawra Park. "People are ready for this change. There are a lot of opportunities to rebuild our country, to forget the past and think about the future."

But then reality has little meaning to right wing, especially those of the drug addled variety.

Nice:

Antiterrorism training materials used by the Department of Defense teach that public protests should be regarded as "low-level terrorism," according to a letter of complaint sent to the department by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
"Teaching employees that dissent on issues of public concern is something to be feared, rather than encouraged, is a dangerously counterproductive use of scarce security resources, making us less safe as a democracy," Northern California ACLU staff attorney Ann Brick and ACLU Washington national security policy counsel Michael German wrote in the letter to Gail McGinn, acting undersecretary of Defense for personnel and readiness.
"DOD employees cannot accomplish their mission of protecting our nation and its values unless they understand that those values encompass the right to criticize our government through protest activities," they wrote. "It is imperative that they are taught the difference between political, religious or social activism and terrorism." 

There is good news however, public exposure and pressure still means a lot: 

The Pentagon has removed a controversial question from its anti-terrorism training exam that labeled “protests” a form of “low-level terrorism,” calling the question “poorly worded.” 

Gotta keep an eye on those keeping an eye on us.

The bad economy has yielded some repugnant examples of base class war:

Premiums for Washington's Basic Health Plan will as much as double in January as part of a strategy to drive thousands of members off the popular but cash-strapped state-subsidized insurance program.
Ending weeks of deliberations, officials announced this morning that they will boost Basic Health's rates by an average of 70 percent as part of their effort to boot 30,000 to 40,000 working-class people off its rolls. 

That's right, up here in Washington State the health care for the poor, during a time when thousands are losing their health care, is to be made more expensive.  That makes sense, that way we will have more uninsured people who will further drive-up the cost on everyone else.

Nice, but old news really.

Recently Seattle's (formerly excellent) Public Library (SPL) got into the act, by cutting the amount of materials that people (many who are strapped for cash) could use: 

The librarians are making some noise. Saying "someone in the outside world should know," a Seattle Public Library (SPL) staffer forwarded The Stranger a series of internal documents proposing policy changes designed to decrease services and extract money from the library's most vulnerable patrons: old people, poor people, immigrants, and children. (The staffer requested to remain anonymous, citing a "sort of 1984 atmosphere at the library these days... morale is low.")
According to the documents—internal e-mails, budgets, and meeting minutes and agendas—the proposed changes include charging $5 for interlibrary loans (when SPL borrows a title from another library system), adding late fees for ESL and children's materials, cutting the number of items a customer can put on hold from 100 to 25, and halving the number of items anyone can check out at one time to 50. The leaked papers also explain the reason for these new policies—increased fines "could result in an estimated $36,000 in annual revenue." 

What attracted me to this story was not the 1984 reference (although I did enjoy it), but instead the fact that I use the library regularly for not only the books that I read, but for virtually every DVD I watch at home.  It is way cheaper than renting (as it is free as long as I return it on time), and an anti-authoritarian lefty like me just can't pass-up the opportunity to use a socialist institution like the public library.  But now that I will be restricted to just 25 holds, I'm not going to be able to do that as easily (unless I get cards for my 2 cats and 1 hamster).  

It breaks down like this.  When a movie, say Tom Cruise's one-eyed Nazi pic, Valkyrie comes out on DVD, I put it on hold.  But so do about 300-600 other patrons, so many of us have to wait.  But while we wait we are getting a lot of other DVDs, books, and CDs to use since we can have up to a 100 things on hold.  Soon that will drop to 25, and pretty quick I will be waiting for materials, but have nothing at home to enjoy in the present.  It gets even worse when you think about the new 50 item limit on checked-out items, because now what could happen is everything I waited for comes in at one time, I hit my limit (which could happen over a period of a few weeks), then Valkyrie arrives, and now I can't bring it home.  So now I will never know just how funny (and I do mean funny) it is to see a closeted Scientologist portray a "good" Nazi with an eye patch.

Of course I am making light of this, when, as the Stranger points out, it deeply impacts people who depend on the library for not only entertainment, but also as the only way to educate themselves:

On SPL intranet threads forwarded to The Stranger, one staffer says homebound and bedridden patrons, who only receive services once a month, would be disproportionately hurt by the tighter borrowing limits. "We are frequently their only source of information and entertainment," she adds.
A librarian at a branch of SPL with a great many Spanish-speaking patrons—but not so many Spanish-language materials—believes that charging $5 for interlibrary loans "will seriously inhibit our ability to provide good basic services to new Americans and other non-English speakers." Another laments that SPL has "spent years in outreach... educating parents that SPL is fine-free for children's materials" to "encourage access for all," especially low-income children struggling in school. Another chastises the library for monetizing late fees: "Fines should serve the purpose of educating young patrons and encouraging timeliness, NOT increasing revenue."
A few complaints fall just shy of calling the policies racist, especially language stating that they will "encourage responsibility." One staffer suggests that some immigrants and refugees hold two or three jobs, become overwhelmed with responsibilities, and are already afraid or embarrassed to come back to the library because they returned a book late. Fining ESL and children's books, the staffer says, would only exacerbate the problem. 

 

All of this leads me to believe that the new Seattle City Librarian, Susan Hildreth, was not being entirely honest when she told us:

We are committed to keeping our collection fresh and introducing new services to meet your needs. We value your opinions and suggestions concerning our services and collection. 

Right now it feels like the only thing she is  committed to is driving-up business for the folks over at NetFlix.  Hey Ms. Hildreth, do ya own any stock?

It doesn't matter where:

It doesn't matter when:

All struggle against illegitimate authoritarianism looks the same:

And it unfortunately elicts predictable response from those bent on protecting their power. 

I knew you could:

Perhaps nowhere have the cuts been more disruptive than in Arizona, where more than 1,000 frail elderly people are struggling without home-care aides to help with bathing, housekeeping and trips to the doctor. Officials acknowledge that some are apt to become sicker or fall, ending up in nursing homes at a far higher cost.
Ohio and other states face large cutbacks in child welfare investigations, which may mean more injured children and more taken into foster care. Despite tax increases, California has ended dental coverage for adults on Medicaid, all but guaranteeing future medical problems. 

Gary Randall has uncovered a scary conspiracy.   And it leads from "homosexual activists" to Obama to . . . the FRENCH!!!!

Yesterday we were told that President Obama and others in the United Nations have elevated homosexuality to a new level.

Austin Ruse, president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute said Obama actually signed a press release that had been drafted previously by the French. The French had expected him to sign because they know he supports the homosexual agenda, and he did.

Ruse says the press release encourages, "The acceptance of gender identity and sexual orientation as a category---that will stand along side race, religion and other widely accepted categories of non-discrimination." 

Oh no!  Gays would be included in "widely accepted categories of non-discrimination?  But how certain theocrats be able to remain in the closet if they can't harrass and discrimante against those who are out of it?

The structure of our fake, "beard," families is at risk. 

What is the connection between this:

Gay-Marriage will destroy the institution of marriage itself, which is the fundamental cornerstone of any successful society. Benefits has never really been what the "benefits" demands have been about. It has always been about incrementalism. Each "benefit" acquired has been a stepping stone on the pathway to "marriage".

However, homosexual marriage is ultimately not the end game either. Homosexual leaders have been advocating their vision for "family" and society in general as being something much beyond mere homosexual-marriage. 

And this:

Eleven gay bars in Seattle were sent letters Tuesday threatening ricin attacks — in what some are describing as a hate crime.
The anonymous letters say, "I have in my possession approximately 67 grams of ricin with which I will indiscriminately target at least five of your clients. ... I expect them to die painfully while in hospital."
A 12th letter was sent to the alternative weekly The Stranger, according to its Web site. That letter says the paper should be "prepared to announce the deaths of approximately 55 individuals."  

Well one is the gateway for the other, even if the author of the first quote (our friend Gary Randall at the theocratic Faith and Freedom Network) renounces the terrorism of the second.  That is because it is only after you dehumanize a group, and make the part of a dark conspiracy against society as a whole is it possible to consider terrorism and murder as a viable alternative.

Blackwhite:

Israel will not allow a humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said on Sunday as troops pushed deep into the Islamist Hamas-ruled enclave.
"Israel is not fighting against the Palestinian people in Gaza," Olmert said at the start of a weekly cabinet meeting. 

The reality (if you have the stomach for it): 

Why quit now?  The president (for 17 more days) did not flinch when it came to asserting base blackwhite reasoning to the current assault on Palestinians in Gaza:

President Bush issued a sharp condemnation of Hamas on Friday, accusing the Palestinian Islamist movement that controls the Gaza Strip of provoking Israeli military action with rocket attacks and then increasing the death toll by hiding among civilian populations.

In a recorded radio address that was released a day early, Bush avoided faulting Israel for civilian casualties and called for a monitoring system to curtail weapons smuggling into Gaza. Bush's remarks, released in Washington, were his first public comments on the conflict since Israel began an intensive campaign of airstrikes against Hamas a week ago.

His Secretary of State also joined in the fun:

"Hamas has used Gaza as a launching pad for rockets against Israeli cities, and has contributed deeply to a very bad daily life for the Palestinian people in Gaza and to a humanitarian situation that we have all been trying to address," Rice told reporters.

This will come as surprise to those who read only the US press , but that isn't exactly the truth.  It does, however, fit a pattern practiced by the rightwing ideologes that control the US and Israeli governments.  This feature is only recognizable to those of us crazy enough to see it.  So to the ultimate fringe of dissent we go to hear from Noam Chomsky:

In January 2006, Palestinians voted in a carefully monitored election, pronounced to be free and fair by international observers, despite US-Israeli efforts to swing the election towards their favourite, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah party. But Hamas won a surprising victory.

The punishment of Palestinians for the crime of voting the wrong way was severe. With US backing, Israel stepped up its violence in Gaza, withheld funds it was legally obligated to transmit to the Palestinian Authority, tightened its siege and even cut off the flow of water to the arid Gaza Strip.

The United States and Israel made sure that Hamas would not have a chance to govern. They rejected Hamas’s call for a long-term cease-fire to allow for negotiations on a two-state settlement, along the lines of an international consensus that Israel and United States have opposed, in virtual isolation, for more than 30 years, with rare and temporary departures.

Meanwhile, Israel stepped up its programmes of annexation, dismemberment and imprisonment of the shrinking Palestinian cantons in the West Bank, always with US backing despite occasional minor complaints, accompanied by the wink of an eye and munificent funding.

That was from almost a year-and-a-half ago, and little has changed, besides the current concentration of a military assault.  The justification from the right-wing militarist cabal in Israel is the rocket attacks by Hamas into Israel.  To be sure these attacks are inexcusable, and serve only to further the cause of further destruction.  But even if we put aside the disproportionate nature of Israel's response (431 killed and 2,200 injured in Gaza, and 4 dead in Israel), when we take a look at the basic and systematic denial of human rights (down to the most trivial level) to Palestinians in Gaza, we begin to see that the assualt has almost been uniformally perpetrated by the powerful parties in this situation.  It is a wonder that the rocket attacks were only a recent feature of the Hamas strategy.  Suicide bombings can't be far away.

That is why this crime must go unmentioned by the Bush administration and the US press; despite the fact that this insanity threatens the security of Israel and the United States, which the crime is alleged to protect.

I know, I know we don't really need to suffer through anymore evidence of how reality had no place in the Bush Pentagon.  But here we go anyway. . .  The NY Times has a frontpage story  on its web site on a new official history that gives us a view of just how insane it all really was:

The history, the first official account of its kind, is circulating in draft form here and in Washington among a tight circle of technical reviewers, policy experts and senior officials. It also concludes that when the reconstruction began to lag — particularly in the critical area of rebuilding the Iraqi police and army — the Pentagon simply put out inflated measures of progress to cover up the failures.
In one passage, for example, former Secretary of StateColin L. Powell is quoted as saying that in the months after the 2003 invasion, the Defense Department “kept inventing numbers of Iraqi security forces — the number would jump 20,000 a week! ‘We now have 80,000, we now have 100,000, we now have 120,000.’ ”
Mr. Powell’s assertion that the Pentagon inflated the number of competent Iraqi security forces is backed up by Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the former commander of ground troops in Iraq, and L. Paul Bremer III, the top civilian administrator until an Iraqi government took over in June 2004. 

Poor Bush, he isn't even out of office yet, and just about every former administration offficial is sandbagging him.  That most likely has more to do with resumé padding than an epiphany resulting from an ethical crisis.