My Thoughts Exactly

Shocking News! Rich People Cheat!

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Via Suburban Guerilla Suzie, to whom I was sent by a dog-barking surrogate Atrios, this little newsbite:

This will be a lot of fun, I think:

Hundreds of super-rich American tax cheats have, in effect, turned themselves in to the IRS after a bank computer technician in the tiny European country of Liechtenstein came forward with the names of US citizens who had set up secret accounts there, according to Washington lawyers investigating the scheme.

A good apetizer for the magnum opus essay I’m working on as a sequel to Harold’s recent Gods of the Marketplace story. Filthy-rich tax cheats with secret accounts in Liechtenstein, a brave young Licthensteinian data entry clerk convicted Licthensteinian fraud selling purloined bank records to German & British & American tax investigators, now in hiding with a new secret identity. . . trust me, it’s great stuff. Check it out.

Life imitates art: Shark Attack! edition

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Maybe this article from the Martha’s Vineyard Times Online won’t strike you as funny as it strikes me,

Edgartown prohibits swimming following shark sighting
Published: July 10, 2008 : 5:40 pm

Edgartown beach officials said a large shark identified as a great white was spotted off South Beach in Edgartown today. Edgartown park commissioners acted on the report and closed South Beach to swimming.

But then again, you probably don’t live on Martha’s Vineyard like I do, and you probably haven’t seen Jaws 45,356 times, like I have.

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The words seem oddly familiar. . .

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Dogbark Master had this “deep thought” up today:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

I know I’ve heard that before. It’s right on the tip of my tongue. . .

Contrary to Wes Clark, I DO believe that getting shot down in an airplane does qualify one to be President of the United States

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I don’t watch TV, but even I know that Retired General Wesley Clark farted very loudly in the Church of St. John McBush McSame McCain two days ago when he opined that

“I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.”

Au contraire, General Clark!

Heck, George Bush the first got shot down TWICE, and he was president, wasn’t he? JFK didn’t get shot down in a plane, but he got shot down in a boat, which is close enough. Jimmy Carter served in a submarine, which is a boat which gets sunk on purpose, Ronald Reagan acted like his horse had been shot out from underneath him, George W. Bush got grounded by the Texas Air National Guard for being a drunk coke-head, and Bill Clinton had Monica Lewinsky go down on *him*! I trust you see the pattern here.

By contrast, John Kerry’s Swift Boat Did not get sunk, which proves pretty conclusively, I think, that he was unqualified to be President (although I won’t go so far as to say he was a coward and traitor–let the reader form his or her own opinion, sez I). Digby, that hard-hearted commentator, is actually making fun of the whiney-ass titty-babies of the McCain camp and their perpetual hand-job crew in the so-called national so-called media for the little fainting spell they’re having over Wes Clark’s (horribly incorrect but nevertheless not incivil or disrespectful) opinion about the good senator’s unfortunate encounter with a heat-seeking missile as it relates to preparing one for the Oval Office, so to speak.

After the jump: But what about Admiral Stockdale?

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Jail……………………………….Break!

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AMSTERDAM, Netherlands – Amsterdam police say 15 camels, two zebras and an undetermined number of llamas and potbellied swine briefly escaped from a traveling Dutch circus after a giraffe kicked a hole in their cage.

Police spokesman Arnout Aben says the animals wandered in a group through a nearby neighborhood for several hours after their 5:30 a.m. breakout.

From a Associated Press wire story. I know I said I was boycotting AP, but when a story this big comes up, I think the public’s need to know trumps any moral quibbles about the fair use bastardy of our corporate overlords.

Woof! Arf! Bark! Bark! Arf! Woof! Woof! Woof!

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For the record, I believe the presidential election was stolen by Katherine Harris & the Supreme Court in 2000, and by Kenneth Blackwell & Diebold, Inc, in 2004. I believe that they will try to steal it again in 2008.

Scientists at CERN say they “probably” won’t create a black hole and destroy the world in their new particle collider.

Gee, after the FISA deal I feel especially great about the plans of the US Air Force to take over the Internet and Outer Space. With insane Christianists and dispensationalists in charge of the Air Force and eager to hasten Jesus to bring on Armageddon, they may be able to achieve what the CERN scientists cannot.

I believe there is a 50/50 probability that the 9/11 attacks were either false-flag, or that some Saudis knew about them and dropped broad hints that Cheney chose not to pick up.

If you extrapolate Moore’s law out only a few centuries, you get computers as dense and as hot as neutron stars. What kind of information processing would a computer like that be doing? Beats me. This is why I am not a pure atheist. Are the stars we see in the sky just God talking to himself in God language? Maybe, who knows.

MONARCHY RESTORATION ACT PASSES IN US HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES!

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NANCY PELOSI JOINS REPUBLICANS IN 293-PERSON CURTSEY TO KING GEORGE

BARACK OBAMA ISSUES PRESS RELEASE PROMISING TO BE “KINDER, GENTLER MONARCH” WHEN HE ASCENDS TO THRONE

HARRY REID GOES FISHING ON LAKE TAHOE, SAYING HAIL MARYS

The horrible FISA bill passed yesterday, despite heroic rear-guard action by our own Harold Feld. Nancy Pelosi, the best-looking Republican grandma in the People’s Chamber (who also happens to be the Democratic Speaker of the House, go figure) led the charge. Obama was invisible before the vote and issued a watery piece-of-shit press release afterwards. Harry Reid said some empty nonsense.

Congressman Delahunt, who represents me (among others), voted against. Go Bill Delahunt. (Maybe the 3,342,985 calls I made to his office over the last few months gave him the encouragement he needed, but the action was his alone.)

Well, so, immediately after the roll call was published I went down to the Tisbury Town Hall, into the Town Clerk’s office. There, I made damn good an’ sure I’ve got nothing to do with the Democratic Party. Fool me once, shame on you; fool me 4,345,395 times, shame on me. I told said clerk, “I want to change my registration,” and she said, “Yeah, and I know why.”

I don’t know how it is where you live, but in my little home town, a DemocraticPartyectomy takes less than a minute. I highly recommend the procedure. It does wonders for one’s blood pressure.

After the jump: Democrats–monarchists or fascists: which one of these?

UPDATE: I edited this post for clarity. My points are probably still unclear, but I wanted to be up front about my revisions.

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Noble Cause update: “Kick their ass and take their gas”

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The courageous Cindy Sheehan famously asked the coward George W. Bush to tell her what was the “Noble Cause” for which her son Casey had given his life as a soldier in Baghdad. Bush was too cowardly to answer, of course, but over on Eschaton, Atrios the dog-barker has a pithy little post that pretty nearly sums it up, and addresses Harold’s question about citizen and “real” journalism at the same time.

So we’ll spend a hell of a lot of money and lose a lot of lives presiding over an occupation and using our military to provide security for the private security which will be guarding the commercial interests involved in oil extraction.

And since it’s against Village etiquette to suggest that we we are engaged in an imperial colonial adventure, it will be almost impossible to debate the merits of our policies in Iraq or even have a vaguely honest discussion about what those policies are.

Like Atrios, I don’t think the war was about oil alone. It was about Bush’s vanity and sociopathy, the Cheney/Cheney cabal’s lust for war and conquest for the sake of war and conquest, the Cheney/Cheney cabal’s lust for war profits, and the Cheney/Cheney cabal’s hatred of the constitution and the idea of demoncracy. It was fueled by the infantile jingoism of a lazy and kitsch-loving populace and a reasonable admixture of patriotic altruism on the part of some of the troops.

But now it’s about the oil, mostly. And Bush’s vanity, and the Cheney/Cheney-cabal lust for war profits. But mostly it’s about the oil. Possession of which satisfies all the other subgoals.