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Empire… 23 February 2010

Posted by marisacat in Culture of Death, DC Politics, Inconvenient Voice of the Voter, WAR!.
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Google Earth Image of the the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group     [Photo: BARCROFT]

From the article at the Telegraph:

The 2,600 acre facility, officially known Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, is home to thousands of outdated aeroplanes and helicopters mothballed by the United States Air Force and other allied forces.

Click here to see a high-resolution image of the “The Boneyard”

 The article seems to strive for usefulness of the boneyard, in stating that fully a fifth make it back to flying and fighting.  Or floating and killing or whatever the toys do… Meanwhile they, all 22 Billion worth!, lie there, shrinkwrapped no less!

I call it what I called the massing of the troops on the border of Iraq in February and March of 2003:  OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM.

In a sense.

Meanwhile Ob and his Oblettes chew on their own fingers and toes and service the various industries they are tied to.

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Comments»

1. Madman in the Marketplace - 23 February 2010

When Miscarriages Are a Crime…

If the governor signs the bill into law a woman in Utah who intentionally or accidentally induces a miscarriage can be charged with criminal homicide and sentenced to life in prison.

Um… Utah?

If every miscarriage is a potential homicide, how does Utah avoid launching a criminal investigation every time a woman has a miscarriage? And women have a lot of miscarriages: one in four pregnancies end in a miscarriage. And how is Utah supposed to know when a pregnant woman has had a miscarriage? You’re going to have to create some sort of pregnancy registry to keep track of all those fetuses, Utah. Perhaps you could start issuing “conception certificates” to women who get pregnant? And then, if there isn’t a baby within nine months of the issuance of a conception certificate, the woman could be hauled in for questioning and she could be indicted for criminal homicide if it’s determined that she intentionally or accidentally induced a miscarriage.

Handmaid’s Tale, here we come.

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marisacat - 23 February 2010

I think it is high time that the fetus is INSURABLE. Separate from the mother. Let all those lousy christian insurance cos (esp those run by Catholics) insure the damned things.

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2. Madman in the Marketplace - 23 February 2010

Florida Bill Would Raise the Cost of Abortions to Life in Prison for Doctors

Along with not protecting victims of rape and incest, the bill would make induced abortions illegal and punishable by up to life in prison, allow doctors and hospitals to refuse to provide abortion services, and make women jump through two physician sign-offs to ensure that an abortion is medically necessary to save the life of the mother.

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3. Madman in the Marketplace - 23 February 2010

The Democratic Party’s deceitful game

This is what the Democratic Party does; it’s who they are. They’re willing to feign support for anything their voters want just as long as there’s no chance that they can pass it. They won control of Congress in the 2006 midterm elections by pretending they wanted to compel an end to the Iraq War and Bush surveillance and interrogation abuses because they knew they would not actually do so; and indeed, once they were given the majority, the Democratic-controlled Congress continued to fund the war without conditions, to legalize Bush’s eavesdropping program, and to do nothing to stop Bush’s habeas and interrogation abuses (“Gosh, what can we do? We just don’t have 60 votes).

The primary tactic in this game is Villain Rotation. They always have a handful of Democratic Senators announce that they will be the ones to deviate this time from the ostensible party position and impede success, but the designated Villain constantly shifts, so the Party itself can claim it supports these measures while an always-changing handful of their members invariably prevent it. One minute, it’s Jay Rockefeller as the Prime Villain leading the way in protecting Bush surveillance programs and demanding telecom immunity; the next minute, it’s Dianne Feinstein and Chuck Schumer joining hands and “breaking with their party” to ensure Michael Mukasey’s confirmation as Attorney General; then it’s Big Bad Joe Lieberman single-handedly blocking Medicare expansion; then it’s Blanche Lincoln and Jim Webb joining with Lindsey Graham to support the de-funding of civilian trials for Terrorists; and now that they can’t blame Lieberman or Ben Nelson any longer on health care (since they don’t need 60 votes), Jay Rockefeller voluntarily returns to the Villain Role, stepping up to put an end to the pretend-movement among Senate Democrats to enact the public option via reconciliation.

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marisacat - 23 February 2010

Rotating several ring circus…

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marisacat - 23 February 2010

The vision of which could put a mortal off food.

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marisacat - 23 February 2010

hmm I sort of took today off… and missed this ditty. Geesh.

The Obama administration accused Europe’s leaders of endangering peace today because of their growing ­pacifism and reluctance to foot the bill for adequate defence.

In a withering attack on what Washington sees as European complacency in the face of new security threats, Robert Gates, the US defence secretary, demanded root-and-branch reform of the transatlantic alliance, voiced exasperation with Nato bureaucracy and said it was becoming increasingly difficult for the US and Europe “to operate and fight together”. Gates told a Washington meeting of Nato officials and security experts “the pacification of Europe” had gone too far.

“The demilitarisation of Europe, where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it, has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st,” he said. “Not only can real or perceived weakness be a temptation to miscalculation and aggression, but … the resulting funding and capability shortfalls make it difficult to operate and fight together to confront shared threats.”

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, joined in what was a concerted warning to the Europeans, calling for an “honest discussion” of European defence spending and complaining that the alliance was at risk of turning into a talking shop ….

bolding is mine…

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4. Madman in the Marketplace - 23 February 2010

Deer Creek Middle School Shooting: At Least Two Shot In Incident In Littleton, Colorado

UPDATE: 7:58 PM — LITTLETON, Colo. (AP)- Teachers tackled and subdued a man armed with a high-powered rifle just after he shot two teenage students Tuesday at a suburban Denver middle school that’s just miles from Columbine High School, the site of one of the nation’s deadliest school shootings, authorities said.

The seventh-grade math teacher who tackled the suspect, David Benke, is a 6-foot-5-inch former college basketball player who has taught at the school for about 10 years, his wife Sandra Benke, told KUSA-TV. Other teachers quickly piled on the gunman, the station reported.

“Some staff acted very quickly, and very heroically,” Jefferson County Sheriff’s office spokeswoman Jacki Kelley said.

One male and one female were shot at about 3:30 p.m. outside Deer Creek Middle School in Littleton, Kelley said. Both students were taken to a nearby hospital and were expected to survive.

The school typically finishes its day at 3:05 p.m. The mother of one uninjured student, Sheri Hasse, said students were boarding buses when the shootings took place.

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5. lucid - 23 February 2010

Hi guys… been very busy. Hope all are well… for anyone in the NY area, I’m doing 2 shows with Sarah covering ‘After the Gold Rush’… check it out if you’re able, very fun.

Murtha, Haig, maybe Cheney? Three’s a charm…

As others have said before:

Take all your overgrown infants away somewhere
And build them a home, a little place of their own.
The Fletcher Memorial
Home for Incurable Tyrants and Kings.

And they can appear to themselves every day
On closed circuit T.V.
To make sure they’re still real.
It’s the only connection they feel.
“Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome, Reagan and Haig,
Mr. Begin and friend, Mrs. Thatcher, and Paisly,
“Hello Maggie!”
Mr. Brezhnev and party.
“Scusi dov’è il bar?”
The ghost of McCarthy,
The memories of Nixon.
“Who’s the bald chap?”
“Good-bye!”
And now, adding colour, a group of anonymous latin-
American meat packing glitterati.

Did they expect us to treat them with any respect?
They can polish their medals and sharpen their
Smiles, and amuse themselves playing games for awhile.
Boom boom, bang bang, lie down you’re dead.

Safe in the permanent gaze of a cold glass eye
With their favorite toys
They’ll be good girls and boys
In the Fletcher Memorial Home for colonial
Wasters of life and limb.

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marisacat - 23 February 2010

hi dear…

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Madman in the Marketplace - 24 February 2010

that song sums them up so well.

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marisacat - 24 February 2010

I esp like the last stanza:

Safe in the permanent gaze of a cold glass eye
With their favorite toys
They’ll be good girls and boys
In the Fletcher Memorial Home for colonial
Wasters of life and limb.

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6. lucid - 23 February 2010

Allo, allo… I’ve been so out of the loop. Didn’t even know about the IRS plane crasher until a week after the fact…

Sometimes it’s good to turn off the television, though in this case, I’ve not really been on the net much either, just working & playing the guitar…

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marisacat - 23 February 2010

In celebration of your show have a glass of champagne for me dear… ;)

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lucid - 23 February 2010

will do… maybe a negroni too! :)

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marisacat - 23 February 2010

there you go… the more drinks the merrier……………..

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7. BooHooHooMan - 24 February 2010

Isn’t that pic of “the Boneyard” truly nauseating?
On Google Earth you can see the only lush spot in the middle of the AF Base…well tended and watered green like money is no object….
is a fucking golf course.
The only other thing rivaling it for miles around…..
another golf course in Tucson.

Talk about castes apart.
The War Pigs and their Par 5′s, the dependent professional and service classes in these plate glass glass pork palace cities like Tucson, the lesser DoD piglets in hamlets nearby.
Prol is –> they’re everywhere…..In the sense that Military Entitlements are so carcinogenically dug into the bone of our “Boneyard” Society if you will..

::

What is the PTB to do when the whole structure they built is now a MIC Death Star? BUT** – With no worker bees to support it–
we’re talking 20% unemployment , 30-40 underemployment. With every governmental retainer and corporate class type definitely dependent on the bubble gum holding this shit canned vulture culture together and everyone else’s well being hanging in the balance..

They are going to print more money. .
No news, right?
Well..Glen Ford of BAR was in a panel discussion @ MIT..going over the dissolution of the Anti War Left, that AA falling in unquestionably behind Obamallama influence the White Left too …bottom line everybody fell hard for Barry… and here’s the point – just at a time of unprecedented opportunity for the Left with Wall Street on it’s knees……He gave his take on the whole breakdown.

I agree with most of what he said in review.
Which reminds me – LOL – He had a good line in explaining why the White Left all fell for Ob… something like ::

~ Well, The White Folks on the Left all went :

“What are the Black Folks doin? Goin’ for Obama? Well. O-kay.”

Aside from what I call the racial Fauxtharsis …I think there was also a lot of the weird cathartic It’s Still All About Me misplaced pennance for far too many living off those well watered MIC greens in one way or other. . Hey, I’ll kick in an Our Father, but not for Obama. When I work, it’s as a no-benny-provided per diem in trauma centers. And at least a few night shifts a year earn my pay with my well gloved hand in the hemorrhaging rectum of some well covered, well liquored Disaster Capitalist Porsche driver’s exsanguinating asshole so he doesn’t bleed to death before the Disaster Capitalist Surgeons can quit talking about the car.

So I palm that fistful of MIC money as surely as I pack my fist on the banker’s bleeders.

Which brings things around to the point:
bloody stop gap/ pressure point measures can only continue for so long. Surely GF would agree . At MIT he suggested that perhaps an irrevocable opportunity had been lost with Obama’s Ascendency:
Perhaps “once in a Lifetime” the type of transformative catalyst we’ve just seen, the opportunity presented and lost with Capital on its knees.

Not so. Because, like some of these people you see in the middle of the night ,and you just know they’ll be crashing back around the drunken bend, eventually planting themselves –
along with their next. new. Porsche at Boneyards End,
our PTB still think they have a whole world of deserts to fill Air Bases and Golf Courses and Boneyards….

And it will all work out as long as the …well …JUST PRINT MONEY.

Don’t ask me how I came across this but check this out…
The level of detachment is truly astonishing in the rarefied air:
“An entirely new standard of indulgence and convenience centered around you”

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marisacat - 24 February 2010

“An entirely new standard of indulgence and convenience centered around you”

Speaking of which… coming to a golf course near you — and soon!

Deputy Chief of Staff Jim Messina and senior adviser David Axelrod are likely to play key roles in a reelection campaign already quietly being planned
:twisted: … Get the spin: They say Axe is likely to LEAVE THE WH, return to Chciago lead the effort.

I m guessing the theme will be… Hope and Change!

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marisacat - 24 February 2010

:oops:
.
I just got to page 2…………………….

Obama’s campaign will get a head start from the large machine he has built at the DNC, including Organizing for America, the successor to his campaign grassroots operation.

OFA is now a DNC project with staff in all 50 states, and has worked to keep Obama’s army active through engagement on health care and other issues. …

Well Politico wrote this one from the fax machine. Or E-mail… or whatever is used in modrun America

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marisacat - 24 February 2010

It descends. They can’t decide whether to run the campaign as GW did in 2000, from “home” or do as Bush Cheney did in 2004, run it from Arlington. I cannot believe I am reading this.

Top sources say they will be surprised if the headquarters is not in Chicago, which will always hold a certain magic for the president and first lady Michelle Obama. Obama for America senior staff felt there was a huge advantage in having distance from insiders in Washington who were constantly giving advice and asking for things. And Obama advisers see the advantages George W. Bush reaped by basing his original campaign in Austin, giving it a beyond-the-Beltway aura. “We were able to focus on nothing but the campaign,” said one Obama for America veteran who plans to saddle up again. “We didn’t play the inside-Washington game, and that’s a huge piece of who we are.”

However, some top advisers are skeptical that running the campaign from Chicago would have the same advantages that it did last time, since face-to-face contact will be necessary between top officials from the different arms of Obama’s operation.” It was hard enough to get people to move there in 2007,” said one Obama for America alumnus. A compromise might be to follow the example of the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign and put the office in Virginia, a swing state.

The themes for Obama’s campaign are not yet chosen, but a top adviser said not to expect a radical surprise: “He knows who he is.” ….

It begs for the jokes. It just does.

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catnip - 24 February 2010

New campaign slogan for Obamalama (which I lifted from a kossack):

I never realized that “hope and change” actually meant “hope I’m out of office by the time change takes place.”

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8. marisacat - 24 February 2010

hmm I think the shorter version is… Timmy polls really really badly so let’s send him to the hinterlands to stand with lettuce. And stnd with Michelle.

Bonus points for being thin, ignore he is a lunatic and a thief….

unbelievable. Who writes this stuff? Who faxes the text? Does anyone believe this ????

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catnip - 24 February 2010

lol…Timmy – wilting heads of lettuce wherever he goes.

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catnip - 24 February 2010

But the real question remains: which is actually more human? Tim Geithner or a head of lettuce?

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marisacat - 24 February 2010

I notice Geithner is overdue for his Botox between the eyebrows. They now knit togetehr again, the way they did in his terrible hearings.

I’m holding out for the lettuce being more human.

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9. catnip - 24 February 2010

Ray LaHood is kind of an annoying blowhard, isn’t he?

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marisacat - 24 February 2010

yeah he is…………..

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10. catnip - 24 February 2010

:)

Williams’s hair casualty of operation, premier sports new post-surgery hairstyle

SARASOTA, Fla. — Danny Williams is sporting a new look after his heart surgery, and it’s not just a surgical scar.

For years, the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador has parted his hair down the middle. But Williams is now parting his hair on the left side of his head, combed towards the right.

“I was violated in my sleep,” Williams joked in an interview.

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11. catnip - 24 February 2010

How UnCanadian. lol

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12. marisacat - 24 February 2010

oh the mournful jokes, they write themselves…

Hedges

[O]ur destitute working class is beginning to grasp that Barack Obama and other elected officials in Washington, who speak in a cloying feel-your-pain language, are liars. They are not attempting to prevent wages from sinking, unemployment from mounting, foreclosures from ripping apart communities, banks from looting the U.S. Treasury or jobs from being exported. The gap between our stark reality and the happy illusions peddled by smarmy television news personalities and fatuous academic and financial experts, as well as oily bureaucrats and politicians, is becoming too wide to ignore. Those cast aside are reaching out to anyone, no matter how buffoonish or ignorant, who promises that the parasites and courtiers who serve the corporate state will disappear. Right-wing rage is being fused with right-wing populism. And once this takes hold, a protofascism will sweep across our blighted landscape fueled by a mounting personal and economic despair. Take a look at Sinclair Lewis’ “It Can’t Happen Here.” It is a good window into what awaits us.

“One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, and by homosexuals, will be wiped out,” the philosopher Richard Rorty warns in his book “Achieving Our Country.” “Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. [Never left, but most assuredly has accelerated, imo, AND as I said during election 08, unlike racism, does not have to be apologised for... --Mcat] The words ‘nigger’ and ‘kike’ will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.” …

Well stupid fake funerals for “nigger” sure won’t do the job…. plus “cunt” “whore” and “ho” never went away… I’d rather change things deepr than words, or start censoring Huck Finn, etc.

I now see righties, when they quote Rev Wright on “God Damn America!”… leave out the “o” in God…. as in G-d.

What is the purpose fo such foolery… get a grip!

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13. marisacat - 24 February 2010

“Shamu” lands one. Or, the trainer slipped and fell.. depends on the source. via Truth Dig who links further to Orlando Sentinel.

Lest it be forgotten, Shamu and his orca pals aren’t called killer whales for nothing. Although watching humans gambol about with orcas and other sea mammals has become a tourist staple at water parks around the country, that brand of family entertainment doesn’t sit well with some animal rights groups, and it can be deadly, as an incident on Wednesday at SeaWorld in Orlando, Florida tragically illustrated. According to reports, a SeaWorld trainer was killed by Telly, a giant male orca, as she was at work teaching visitors about killer whales, but details differ about how she ended up in the tank with Telly depending on the source. —KA

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marisacat - 24 February 2010

hmm apparently ‘Telly” bagged his third. He has been “involved” in two other deaths… I am not kidding, “involved” is the word being used.

hmm Kept around ‘cuz he did the tricks so well? ‘Til the day he did not?

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brinn - 24 February 2010

As a friend of mine wrote on FB about this story:

Score one (or 3?) for the higher mammals….

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14. brinn - 24 February 2010

By the by — kid the larger (with the broken femur con bone cyst) went to school today all on crutches (no wheelchair at all!!) yay! AND he’s using the toilet again, for both!

It’s been a hell of a 6 weeks! ;)

lucid — good to “see” you!!

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marisacat - 24 February 2010

hey hey brinn… you survived the at home invalid…
;)

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brinn - 24 February 2010

Yeah, I did, huh? He’s been at school since the last week in Jan, but hell, picking him/wheelchair up and into/out of the car 2x per day was killing my back!

I’m really proud of him though, he’s been pushing through the pain and discomfort and is just getting better each day! Oh, and the bone cyst is filling in too!! YAY kids’ metabolism and growing things (like bone and stuff)!
;)

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marisacat - 24 February 2010

a wheelchair is very wearing to handle, fold up, lift it, move it, unfold it… … gah.

Good that is over!!

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brinn - 24 February 2010

Indeed! Thant and emptying bedpan/urinal as well!

And thanks, yer da best! ;)

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15. marisacat - 24 February 2010

Bageant… long but worth it………….

[R]ead Tocqueville’s description of earlier Americans’ relentless buying and selling fever. Everything and everyone was always up for sale from the start. Read about the greed and stinginess of the “refugees from religious persecution,” such as slave owning Quakers, Presbyterians and Methodists. Read about how the founding fathers ripped off the Revolutionary War veterans for the IOU script they so patiently held for many years in payment for fighting, buying it up for pennies on the dollar, then passing legislation to pay up on the script. Or how not only the business class, but also the supposedly bucolic and wise heartland American farmers cheered as the government troops shot down hungry striking miners, burned out their families, lest they disturb the order of the Republic of commerce. …

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brinn - 24 February 2010

Thanks for that one, Marisa! I may have missed it otherwise….I remember when I was living in Japan, before I ever set foot in Texas, rolling tortillas with a wonderful native Texan who now lives in Ithica, NY — where I was born — with a couple of empty Kirin quart bottles….

best damned tortillas I ever had.

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marisacat - 24 February 2010

yes the Mexican slice to the Bageant was wonderful to read… tortillas AND the snippet about Mossad in the corridors of power a month after 9/11.

We are so skreweeddd…

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brinn - 24 February 2010

As it ever was…

8)

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16. marisacat - 24 February 2010

neue……………..

LINK

……………………… 8)

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