Just imagine what the reaction would have been ...

... if some had suggested that it would be right for the US military to stage a coup during the Bush years!

Newsmax: Military Coup Would Take Care Of "Obama Problem"

And the press just rolls on with their decades old path of amplifying all things crazy and obscuring all things rational.

All hail the unified corporate press!

"Whatever the military’s plans are for Mexico, brace yourself, we’re in for a whole new adventure."

Posse Comitatus Revisited

Obama, remember you are the Commander and Chief of the US armed forces ...

... or are you going to try bi-partisanship on them too and let the military run you like the GOP is doing?

Sack Odierno

You ARE President. The country needs a President and you are IT. You are going to get criticized no matter what you do. You might as well do the good and right. You will not stay popular by doing nothing. This is not a game!

Precious ...

Looks like the whales lose.

Couldn't the US Supreme Court bench sitters pretend to be wise and open minded before they decide in favor of the GOP extremist ideas of greed and destruction? Guess not:

Justice Stephen Breyer: "I thought the whole point of the armed forces was to hurt the environment."

and

Justice Samuel Alito: There is "something incredibly odd" about a trial judge making a decision "contrary" to the Navy's requirements.

and

Justice Stephen Breyer: "an admiral (who) comes along with an affidavit that seems plausible" might outrank a "district judge who just says" the training should stop.

Outrank? When did judges start reporting to the military which reports to the President. Oh, 9-11, that's right, how could I forget?

We already know that the GOP mind cannot comprehend (or does not care) that at some apparently fast approaching (or maybe it's already passed us by) point the steady environmental destruction cannot be reversed. Or is it that they don't really believe that the human race could depend on a livable environment for it's survival. Processes that take centuries are beyond their ability conceptualize, I suppose.

Words fail ...

[This post edited after posting.]

The US Army is going to help h.s. dropouts get their GED's so it can use them as targets in the mideast.

Holden, 18, of Medford, Ore., is racing through her first week of practice tests before taking a formal GED exam soon. She left home at 16, one of nine children of a mill worker, and wants to be a military police officer.

"There's no jobs out there, nothing. It's just horrible. And it got hard just trying to support myself and go to school at the same time," Holden said.

Send enough US jobs overseas and it becomes much easier to recruit that all 'volunteer' army.

What I don't understand is why the irrational concern about those crossing US borders looking for low paid jobs? I'm surprised the Bush administration and their think-alikes have not conscripted them into the Army.

Given the Bush administration's propensity to invent (illogical and irrational) rationales for torture, kidnapping and imprisonment without trial there should be no barriers to stop them from sweeping illegal border crossers --many of whom come to the US looking for a better life, or maybe just survival, and end up working at low-paying and dangerous jobs-- into the US Army.

A very brave man ...

Taking a stand against a corrupt administration, that has turned the US justice system into a political arm of the Federal government and instituted untold authoritarian, thugish and pre-FLDS like refinements to both American civilian and military life, is very brave indeed.

Sgt. Matthis Chiroux, who served in the Army until being honorably discharged last summer after over four years of service in Afghanistan, Japan, Europe and the Phillipines, today publicly announced his intention to refuse orders to deploy to Iraq. (via C&L)

There obviously are many brave and honorable US citizens around the country. If a sufficient number of them had been in Congress (or even the press) we might not have been in the situation we find ourselves in now.

We, the American People, have done a very poor job of keeping tabs on, and control of, OUR government.

Yesterday's QUOTES ...

... quite a few yesterdays as I have been camping in the White Mountains.

... scientists now predict that, at least among insects, global warming will take its biggest toll in the tropics--home to more than half the world's species.

... 20 percent of returning U.S. soldiers have post- traumatic stress disorder or depression

... As I often note these days, we are drowning in lies. Yet it is still no small wonder that this entire conversation about Wright, King, et al. proceeds in the almost complete absence of a discussion of what Wright has actually said, just as no one seems to remember what King actually said.

... [the chieftains of the Terror War] do not and have never cared a single instant about the freedom and well-being of the Iraqi or the Iranian people. (Or the American people, for that matter.) They are engaged on a long-range project of perpetual war toward an eventual goal of iron-clad military domination of a strategic portion of the world's energy supplies and distribution, and the establishment of America's "unipolar domination" over geopolitical affairs.

crAZy Person: Jon Kyl


In fact, the only way McCain's bankrupt domestic policies will not cause one misstep after another is if he confines himself to whistle-stop tours of gated communities and medieval castles.

Yesterday's QUOTES ...

Man, I'm sick of reading Pravda in NY Times drag

Elitist finger wagging at members of an oppressed group is not only counter-productive, but it is consistent with how minority groups are dealt with around the world. ...

Rape In The Military: The Other Inbound Wounded

Third rate candidates talk about events.
Second rate candidates talk about issues.
First rate candidates talk about principles.
Can The Press Really Elect McCain?

So I ask again, should these US Attorneys not be suspended while Congress investigates so that they can not further damage the legal system in the interim? Should state legislatures be this afraid of a US Attorney appointed by a President of a different political party, so afraid that they have become (as NYT notes) paranoid and nervous enough that a northern publication, the New York Times, would actually run an article on it and even title it "Fear, Paranoia and, Yes, Some Loathing in Alabama State House?"?

Apparently, Alabama is running toward the Soviet model with open arms and Mississippi is close on its heels, while the Congress has failed to demand something as basic as the temporary removal of these prosecutors while they investigate allegations of corruption against these three US Attorneys.

Yesterday's QUOTES ...

... one must assume that a "government of national unity" means a government that will confirmation 100% of all conservative judges, the destruction of social security, retroactive immunity of telecom companies, and the mass deportation of twelve million people. If this third-party did not favor these things, then there would be absolutely no need to form "a government of national unity." Those four things are the sum total of what Democrats in Congress have prevented Republicans from passing, and thus are the entirety of what Democrats have contributed to "gridlock in Washington." Every other reform has been blocked by Republicans. -- AWWMNUUBM?
Tragically, even as the Army is wrecked in equipment and officer retention, it still has the frightening ability to produce a lying political enabler like General Patraeus. Something has gone horribly wrong with the leadership of the Army when it sacrifices its people for lies
Workers and their unions increasingly see themselves now as fighters in a full-fledged class war. This attitude is perceived, surprisingly, by people in corporate boardrooms more than by many workers themselves, even in the current strike by the nation’s writers against the big media moguls.

Yesterday's QUOTES ...

The problem is the underlying system of representative democracy. It is no longer capable, at least as structured around the world, of providing for the common good.

It simply enables two groups of politicians with radically different rhetoric to get elected and then use the power of the state to reward the people who made it possible for them to hold office.

It’s the system. Not the people in it which is the problem.

— [Comment to Krugmans's Blog] Posted by Edward Murray

[AND an answer]

Exactly. The Republicans are no longer the party of small government (were they ever?) but rather the party of public jobs for cronies. The Democrats also share this honor.

The real division in politics is no longer between left and right, its between the political insiders, and their friends and cronies who get the government contracts, and the rest of us, who pay for it all.

— Posted by Paul

... comparing the seasonally adjusted August 2007 numbers with the average rate of sales in 2005 tells us that home sales are off 38%.

There’s an infinitesimally small possibility, one supposes, that the Pentagon will wake up to what tools and suckers they’ve been to swear allegiance to Republicans (delivering a broken Army and Marine Corps, for starters) and fire Rush from the AFR as a sign of independence, a way to show that no, the Pentagon is not the disgusting boot-licking Republican prostitute everyone thinks it is. ...

Republicanism blueprint ...

1. Take advantage of a shocking tragedy to rush through emergency legislation.

2. Award a fat private contract with almost no oversight.

3. Kick the cost of everything you've done down the road so you can pretend to be for "small government" by never paying for anything.

Amid the twittering of politicians, military reality?

McClatchy reports: Despite Iraq reports, troops' future is set by Nancy A. Youssef and Renee Schoof

No matter what Army Gen. David Petraeus tells Congress about the surge in Iraq on Monday, the course for U.S. troops there is already set: Next April, the 30,000 troops who were added this year will begin coming home.
...

U.S. military officials are assuming that the buildup of 30,000 additional American troops will continue until April, although a senior military official told McClatchy Newspapers that they may redeploy a brigade ...

By the end of March, however, Pentagon officials said, deployment schedules will force a reduction and the five brigades added for the surge will begin leaving, one month at a time.

Pentagon planners say they can't maintain the surge beyond that without extending deployments beyond the current 15 months, and the nation's top military leaders have said they can't do that with inflicting significant damage on the Army and the Marine Corps.

As if they care? No one in power has paid more than timid lip service to the realities of what the United States is doing to itself and others. Why start now? Geez ...

The article goes on to quote Reid as follows: ""We're not backing off anything," Reid said Thursday." Not backing off? They do nothing, but they are not backing off of doing nothing. How brave ...

Goodness, Pelosi started the new session of Congress with a plan ... now, after a well paid and lengthy vacation her amorphous organization returns to Washington with a well thought out "they might do this and they might do that" ...

In the House of Representatives, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., is considering putting up a measure for a vote that would require military planning for a withdrawal. The House also might take up a measure similar to the Webb amendment on longer rest time.

... or they might do nothing just like the Senate, more likely.

And then there's this statement from a Republican Congressman from NC, Walter Jones: "You cannot just sit back and just watch." They have gall, those Republicans.

Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said Congress had put off a real discussion of what was right for national security, waiting for the Petraeus and Crocker reports. Now, he said, debate must begin on a strategy that will be sustainable and that fits with other national security interests.

That's right, they waited months and months for 'a report' and 'a visit' from Petraeus and now they must strategize on what they will wait for next.

Good show.

Is there anything my country won't do ...

I never thought the U.S. was perfect but, nonetheless, I was proud of a country that appeared, to me, to take two steps forward for each step it took backward.

BushCo, however, opened up a whole new world. He must be the most successful person ever at galvanizing all that is bad with the U.S. and in human kind in general. He has mixed up a horrible concoction of spite, intolerance, meanness, crudeness, cruelty and violence. And he's proud of it.

And there's not much pretence left when

One-Third of Troops in Iraq Support Torture, Majority Condone Mistreating Innocent Civilians by Winslow Wheeler

Some of the press accounts of the surgeon general's study, "Mental Health Advisory Team (MHAT) IV; Operation Iraqi Freedom 05-07," also reported the more detailed findings from its chapter on "Battlefield Ethics." The information became more disconcerting; the problems were clearly more serious and pervasive than the executive summary indicated:

• "Only 47 percent of soldiers and only 38 percent of Marines agreed that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect."
• "Well over a third of soldiers and Marines reported torture should be allowed, whether to save the life of a fellow soldier or Marine … or to obtain important information about insurgents…."
• 28 percent of soldiers and 30 percent of Marines reported they had cursed and/or insulted Iraqi noncombatants in their presence.
• 9 percent and 12 percent, respectively, reported damaging or destroying Iraqi property "when it was not necessary."
• 4 percent and 7 percent, respectively, reported hitting or kicking a noncombatant "when it was not necessary.
• The study also reports that only 55 percent of soldiers and just 40 percent of Marines would report a unit member injuring or killing "an innocent noncombatant," and just 43 percent and 30 percent, respectively, would report a unit member destroying or damaging private property.

It is notable that these are the responses the survey team received; there are probably more soldiers and Marines who may have been reluctant to respond completely and accurately to an Army questionnaire on such sensitive topics. Therefore, the data recorded should be regarded as a floor, not a ceiling.

A headline the GOP will love ...

UPDATE: Here's how the Sierra Vista Herald starts the story:

'Joke' report leads to alarm on border by Jonathan Clark, Herald/Review

NACO, Sonora, Mexico — A false report Friday that a heavily armed team of gunmen were advancing on Cananea, Sonora, led to widespread alarm in the local border area, with schools and businesses closing in Mexico and U.S. citizens reporting rumors of massive carnage in Sonora and Border Patrol pullbacks in Arizona.

Apparently Jonathan Clark is actually a reporter. Not like the fiction writers at the Daily Star.

---------------------------------------------
Want an image of scared little people so the GOP can promise (promises being all their good for) to protect everyone while they rip them off. Well here's one:

Report of armed convoy alarms Naco

By Brady McCombs and Lourdes Medrano

Arizona Daily Star

NACO, Sonora — A report of an armed convoy of drug cartel gunmen heading toward Cananea and Naco sent local residents scrambling for cover Friday as police and government officials in Sonora and Arizona braced themselves for another round of violence.

Was that scary enough. The Arizona Daily Star has been writting GOP headlines for sometime now. Does the story get worse from there? Well no and then yes:

It turned out to be a false alarm, but the mobilization of law enforcement and the school and store closures in both Nacos illustrated the tension, fear and uncertainty that have overtaken the border region.

My all those scared little people, like we have here in the US, must be hidding behind the nearest Bush (as in vegetation not the one in the WH).

Keeeriiiiist, I think he just said that soldiers will be soldiers ...

There's continued violence in Sonora, Mexico. Yesterday I linked to this article: 20 dead following shootout in Sonora; gang had earlier killed four police in Cananea in the Sierra Vista Herald.

Today the Tucson Citizen passes on an Associated Press story about the continued violence. It appears that the military may be as bad as the 'criminals.'

Cops, copters pursue Sonora killers --City officers vanish after 5 executions, federal police

The official National Human Rights Commission said Tuesday that there was credible evidence that some of the newly deployed troops committed rapes, illegal search and other rights abuses.

"Soldiers are not trained to carry out police work," said Jose Luis Soberanes, president of the rights commission. "If you make them do it, they go overboard, and we see these type of cases."

But political analyst Oscar Aguilar said withdrawing the army from the countryside is not an option.

"It's one thing to say they've committed abuses, and entirely another to say 'send them back to their barracks,'" Aguilar said. "They are our last line of defense, our last bastion, and we know that."

Boys will be boys and soldiers will be soldiers? But we need them (in the way Iraq needs the US?) so let everyone else beware.

Closer to the border the Sierra Vista Herald writes: Sonoran violence concerns area mayors by Gentry Braswell

Borane traveled immediately to Agua Prieta for a briefing from Cuadras, then the Agua Prieta mayor traveled to Douglas for a meeting at Borane’s office.

The city government facilities in Agua Prieta are on very high alert, surrounded by police soldiers, Borane said. The same cautious attitude is taken by Douglas officials, he said.

Mayor of the border town of Douglas for 11 years, Borane maintains a close relationship with people in Mexico. Cuadros reported authorities in Cananea are still pursuing the people in the hills near Cananea, Borane said. He was escorted by armed guards, from the border to Cuadros’ offices for their meeting, Borane said.

Schools in Cananea, Sierra Vista, and Radebeul, Germany, interact with one another through a sister-cities program, and Sierra Vista Mayor Bob Strain said he sent a letter of concern and best wishes to the Cananea mayor Thursday. “Beyond that, I don’t know what it is, that we might have suggested to us,” Strain said.

Regarding any further assistance, Strain said, “I’ll admit the thought had crossed my mind, but I don’t know what it would be.”

Just keep that yellow ribbon on your car's rear, ignore the rest and be happy ...

For those who wish some understanding: Trained to Harm: How the Military Abuses Its Own by JoAnn Wypijewski

The truth is, a system dedicated to transforming psychologically healthy people into people capable of performing what in any other setting is considered a pathological act can't help behaving badly -- not all the time or in all of its realms, not monolithically so that everyone associated with it is scathed. But inevitably the ends deform the means, and inevitably someone pays. No one is talking about it, but what happened at Walter Reed to soldiers injured in war is not shocking at all if one ponders what happens at Army posts to soldiers injured in basic training.

The Sierra Vista connection ...

March 1, 2007
SIERRA VISTA AZ CHILDHOOD LEUKEMIA CLUSTER

March 3, 2007
HOW MANY CASES OF CHILDHOOD LEUKEMIA ARE THERE IN SIERRA VISTA?