Cosmic Iguana - Voice of the Evil Doers

Apparently, McCain only acts mavericky when he isn't running for anything: AZ REPUBLIC:

...Poole, who compiles a widely respected analysis of all Senate votes, ranks McCain as slightly less conservative than most Republicans throughout his career and near the far edge of the right while running for president.

During the 10 years The Republic examined, McCain crossed over to vote with Democrats 19 times in 82 close votes. He did so just once in the four years he was running for president: 1999, 2000, 2007 and 2008.... [*]

That's a profile in courage for you!. Well, what do you expect when the guy is as mavericky as those mavericks Trent Lott, Larry Craig and David Vitter [*].

Posted by cosmici at 09:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

TRUTHOUT:

The Department of Defense statistics are alarming - one in three women who join the US military will be sexually assaulted or raped by men in the military...

But, now, even more alarming, are deaths of women soldiers in Iraq and in the United States following rape. The military has characterized each death of women who were first sexually assaulted as deaths from "noncombat related injuries," and then added "suicide." Yet, the families of the women whom the military has declared to have committed suicide strongly dispute the findings and are calling for further investigations into the deaths of their daughters. Specific US Army units and certain US military bases in Iraq have an inordinate number of women soldiers who have died of "noncombat related injuries," with several identified as "suicides."

Ninety-four US military women have died in Iraq or during Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Twelve US civilian women have been killed in OIF. Thirteen US military women have been killed in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF). Twelve US Civilian women have been killed in Afghanistan.

Of the 94 US military women who died in Iraq or in OIF, the military says 36 died from noncombat related injuries, which included vehicle accidents, illness, death by "natural causes" and self-inflicted gunshot wounds, or suicide. The military has declared the deaths of the Navy women in Bahrain, which were killed by a third sailor, as homicides. Five deaths have been labeled as suicides, but 15 more deaths occurred under extremely suspicious circumstances.... [*]

If there are one third of all female personnel who have been assaulted in some fashion that would be around 67,000 total based on numbers provided by the DoD [*]. I wonder if they included the women raped by Halliburton [*]. Probably not. But the coverup of rape/murders by the DoD itself is in its own way as outrageous as the original crimes.

Posted by cosmici at 03:19 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Official stats show about 36K total casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, including nearly 4500 KIA. But that's just the tip of the iceberg. Then there are another 38K casualties that are "non-hostile." Then there is this - CBSNEWS:

... Sullivan points out that the military's casualty reports also exclude the "enormous number [of new veterans] flooding the VA," often with medical problems developed due to the war. A January report by the Department of Veterans Affairs showed 299,585 veterans who recently served in the Middle East had been treated by the VA since 2002. Forty percent (120,049) of the Iraq and Afghanistan veterans who sought care from the VA did so for mental health disorders.... [*]

That is roughly equal the entire 2000 population of Tampa, FL [*].

Posted by cosmici at 03:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

TPM:

Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) on Obama: "I'm going to tell you something: That boy's finger does not need to be on the button. He could not make a decision in that simulation that related to a nuclear threat to this country."... [*]

There has been alot of hollering about racist codewords and such like "articulate" , "bitter" and "typical white person", so I'm expecting a big shout-out about this one. After all, "boy" is what Southerners called black men no matter what their age to demean them for the last hundred years.

On second thought, I expect no such outcry. After all, he is a Republican. IOKIYAR. Hey, and at least he didn't call him "nigra." That would've sounded bitter.

Posted by cosmici at 12:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

You decide:

_{Not a warmonger?}

CNN:

John McCain criticized Barack Obama Saturday for not denouncing comments from a speaker at a North Dakota Democratic Party event calling the Arizona senator a "warmonger."...
"
...Obama campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Saturday McCain should not have been described that way.

"John McCain is not a warmonger and should not be described as such. He's a supporter of a war that Senator Obama believes should have never been authorized and never been waged," she said.... [*]

Well, then what IS a warmonger but a person who advocates unnecessary war? Dictionary.com lists several definitions, like "a person who advocates war or warlike policies," "One who advocates or attempts to stir up war," "a person who advocates, endorses, or tries to precipitate war"... [*]

That sounds to me a lot like the person who sings "Bomb, bomb, bomb... bomb Iran..." and says we'll stay in Iraq for 10,000 years. But then what do I know, I'm an iguana....

ABC:

"I'm sure people view me as a warmonger and I view myself as peacemaker..." [*]

Posted by cosmici at 05:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

LATAAN:

Last October, 2007, Moktada al Sadr and Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, two of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite leaders, agreed to put their differences aside in an effort to confront their common enemy, the US occupation. For a while the two groups pulled their heads in while they reconfigured their approach to the problem.

It seems now that they are ready to take on the US and the Iraqi puppet government. With the support of Iran, who are backing and supplying the insurgent Shiite forces opposed to the US occupation... [*]

Kevin Drum wonders if the central govt could lose the battle for Basra [*]. Maybe, or maybe not. My hunch is the US won't let them lose. One thing is clear to me, though. They cannot win it. Even if US bombing and support in the end prevails in Basra, the city won't stay pacified.

Al Sadr's forces rose up in 2004 directly against the far superior US forces, and in a military sense were put down. But they never were defeated and at the time of their ceasefire with the central govt in August were the largest sources of US casualties [*].

Iraq is really three countries, each of which is experiencing a separate civil war: In the south, it's Shiite vs Shiite (SII C and Badr Army vs. Al Sadr), in the west: Sunni vs Sunni ("The Awakening" vs "Al Qaeda") and in the north the Kurds vs the Sunnis.

Once each area is secured by the dominant coalition, it is back to Sunni vs Shiite vs Kurd. Either that or the country simply splits up.

UPDATE: As I predicted, everything back to normal... As in Situation Normal - All F*cked Up: [*]

Posted by cosmici at 02:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Fable for Our Times

Once upon a time, there was happy country called Murka located in between two oceans and far from the partisan lands of Yurp. Peace prevailed because the wise Murkan politicans avoided acrimony and conflict and went to the same cocktail parties at night, patronized the same hookers and ate at the same restaurants. Yes, there were two political parties, the mockRATs and the Publicranes, but they worked out their differences. For example, the mockRATs controlled the Congress where they taxed and spent to their hearts’ delight. The Publicranes controlled the Presidency by attacking the irresponsibility of the tax and spend mockRATs. For the their part, the Publicranes used their control of the Presidency to invade small countries to make them safe for Corporatocracy. The mockRATs attacked them for being warmongers, but it was all very polite and everyone kept getting re-elected to their respective offices. The non-partisan press of the country observed this and labeled the mockRATs as spendthrifts and cowards, but no one minded because everyone knew that media secretly supported the mockRATs and if they wanted to call themselves bad names, who should stop them?

Not that things were perfect – Murka kept falling further behind Yurp where somehow the nasty partisanship hadn’t prevented their people from being more productive and having more time off, and even getting free health care, not that Murkans would ever want that.

Eventually, the mockRATs started passing bills to give family leave and other items which the Publicrane President Bush the Oldguy vetoed. This gave rise to what the media called Gridlock which bipartisanly everyone condemned as partisanship.

A mockRAT named Clinton the Male audaciously decided to run for President by being a “New” mockRAT, i.e. one that wouldn’t be a spendthrift or a warmonger and thus end the evil gridlock. (Ed. Note: Here we can see EXACTLY whose fault it was!)

Amazingly he won, which caused great pain to the Publicranes , such as Bush the Youngguy who swore revenge and Newt the Grinch who vowed to take over Congress. The Grinch succeeded and promptly shut down the government. Now gridlock was in reverse, with the MockRATs running the Presidency, and the Publicranes running Congress. This so upset everybody that they went to the Internet and bought things accidentally stimulating the economy.

This in turn, so upset Newt the Grinch, that he impeached Clinton the Male, who’d made the mistake of having sex with a non-prostitute. (Impeachment is a quaint Murkan ritual where Congress throws peaches at the President until he resigns.)

Amazingly, Clinton the Male responded with a unjustified attack of partisanship and refused to resign.

The astonished non-partisan media was outraged, but fortunately a new election was coming so the media resolved to have revenge by defeating Clinton’s heir apparent, Algore the Green by saying he was wooden from hugging trees and claimed to invent the Internet.

The Publicranes nominated Bush the Youngguy who campaigned as a “Uniter not a Divider” to end gridlock the right way, i.e., by having a Publicrane in the White House.

Surprisingly, the voters of Murka didn’t agree because they voted for Algore the Green, but that little problem was solved by having the non-partisan Supreme Court pick Bush the Youngguy, and a spirit of Bipartisanship prevailed.

Bush the Youngguy used this spirit of Bipartisanship to give the Murkan people what everybody wanted - like tax cuts for billionaires and wars in Goatistan and Oilistan.

Unfortunately, the Murkan public was fickle and soon turned against Bush the Youngguy. Fortunately, the media remained non-partisan and turned its attention to non-partisan figures like Mavericky John the McCain [*].

Now the nation is once again at a Crossroads. Will it chose a mockRAT partisan like Clinton the Female or a Black Person who has partisan friends like Baracky the Flying Obama?

Or will it remain non-partisan and choose the Mavericky McCain, who will continue the non-partisan ways of his predecessor until Oilistan and Goatistan become democracies, the economy recovers and pigs start to fly (as they someday surely will).

-The End (for now).

Posted by cosmici at 01:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I mean corporate bailout.... BLOOMBERG:

...JPMorgan, with backing from the Federal Reserve, agreed two days ago to buy the New York-based securities firm for about $2 a share in stock to prevent a collapse. The value of the transaction has climbed to $2.31 a share as the bank's stock price has rallied. Bear gained $2.12 to $6.93 at 1:30 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading... [*]

Unlike some people, including some economists [*], I'm not surprised. Not satisfied with a can't lose $30 bil guarantee, Morgan bargained itself into a double can't lose price. And the Feds, negotiating with other people's money, said " sure, why not."

With 100 million shares outstanding that's quite a profit in 2 days. All made on the back of shareholders.

Posted by cosmici at 11:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

They told us this war was going to pay for itself. NYTIMES:

...at least one-third, and possibly much more, of the fuel from Iraq’s largest refinery here is diverted to the black market, according to American military officials. Tankers are hijacked, drivers are bribed, papers are forged and meters are manipulated — and some of the earnings go to insurgents who are still killing more than 100 Iraqis a week.

“It’s the money pit of the insurgency,” said Capt. Joe Da Silva... [*]

And so it is, for the other guys, at least. Kinda like poetic justice in a way.

Posted by cosmici at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

AP:

Dozens of U.S. troops in Iraq fell sick at bases using "unmonitored and potentially unsafe" water supplied by the military and a contractor once owned by Vice President Dick Cheney's former company, the Pentagon's internal watchdog says.... [*]

The article is inaccurate in saying that KBR is no longer owned by Halliburton. Although they planned to sell KBR in 2006, they backed off when they discovered how profitable it was and only sold a minority stake [*]

Halliburton is notorious for ripping off the war effort in every possible way, including fraud and kickbacks [*], denying insurance payouts to its own employees [*], denying first aid to other companies' contractors [*], charging for pipelines it never built [*], and on and on.

Oh yeah, and it's also been caught serving unsafe food to our troops [*]. American capitalism at its best.

Posted by cosmici at 12:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CNN:

...Documents submitted by FAA inspectors to congressional investigators allege the airline flew at least 117 of its planes in violation of mandatory safety checks. In some cases, the documents say, the planes flew for 30 months after government inspection deadlines had passed ...

...whistle-blowers say FAA managers knew about the lapse in safety at Southwest, but decided to allow the airline to conduct the safety checks on a slower schedule because taking "aircraft out of service would have disrupted Southwest Airlines' flight schedule."...

... The safety inspections ignored or delayed by the airline were mandated after two fatal crashes and one fatal incident, all involving Boeing's 737, the only type of airplane Southwest flies.... [*]

Gee, I don't suppose having another crash would have disrupted flight schedules. This is the M.O. of modern corporations and their government enablers. It's cheaper risking disaster than it is making it safe. At least in the short term.

Posted by cosmici at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

_{Actual Official White House Photo}

We've been hearing for years just how awesomely mavericky John McCain is, and finally I decided to find out for myself. Fortunately, the awesomely liberal Washington Post (you know the same folks who brought us the Clinton impeachment) have bipartisanly put up a list of just how partisan (the opposite of mavericky) each Senator is [*]. In the last Congress, due to Democrats having control, they outrank Repugs in partisanship by 6%. But enough of that, just how partisan is Mr Maverick?

It turns out he votes with his party 88.5% of the time. So he is a maverick 11.5% of the time. Doesn't seem particularly mavericky, but well, numbers mean nothing by themselves, so maybe let's put it in context.

The next even more mavericky person in the senate is that awesome maverick Trent Lott (with 88.4% partisanship - 11.6% maverick). Yes, Mr "Strom Thurmond should have been President" is more mavericky than John McCain!

Even more mavericky is Idaho's remarkable maverick Mr. "Wide Stance" Larry Craig (11.7% maverick). Well, you knew he swung both ways after all.

More mavericky yet, is Mr "I bonked a hooker, but I repented" David Vitter (11.9% maverick). I guess you can see that McCain's recently exposed peccadilloes are just part of the maverick territory.

Far more mavericky (by a couple percent) is "Global warming is a myth" James Inhofe (13.1% maverick). Now that's what I call a real maverick.

PS: The WPost page listing the maverick quotient of our US Senators is down: Either it was crushed by the wave of Iguana visitors (yeah, right...) or maybe they got upset about embarassing the press's favorite candidate. But in case you were wondering, the Senator that scored highest in maverickiness was Olympia Snowe with 32%.

Posted by cosmici at 06:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Colonscopies are a most unpleasant procedure. The only thing good about it is that the worst part of it happens when you're knocked out. But that was scheduled to change April 1st. DKOS:

... In a naked attempt to squeeze a few more millions of dollars in profit out of Americans, Aetna is in the process of adopting a policy of refusing to pay for anesthesia services for colonoscopy. Understand that this will absolutely lead to more cancer deaths, or more complications from the procedure, or both. All to earn a few more millions for the CEO and stockholders. The policy has been delayed a bit due to outrage among physicians, but don't worry. Aetna will keep pushing till it's a done deal... [*]

My suggestion - The Govt should out-contract their "enhanced interrogation" to Aetna so the sadistic bastards can get their jollies out on suspected terrorists. Just kidding, of course, but then the US could announce it was done waterboarding, and Aetna could continue to make money off others suffering.

Posted by cosmici at 12:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

THINKPROGRESS:

Today, the Children’s Defense Fund Action Council released its 2007 Nonpartisan Congressional Scorecard. CDF reports some positive news, particularly that average scores for members of Congress “improved from the previous three years with more Members scoring 100 percent than in 2004, 2005 or 2006.”

Many, however, did not fare so well. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) received a 10 percent rating — the worst in the U.S. Senate... [*]

That is because Saint McCain is serious. Serious means issues like invading countries and occupying them for decades. Children is a women's issue. That's because they are the future, and real men (i.e. Republicans ) know the future is someone else's problem.

Posted by cosmici at 12:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Be very afraid. RAW STORY:

More that 900,000 people are currently listed as suspected terrorists on the US government's "do not fly" list, and that number will grow to beyond 1 million by summer, says the American Civil Liberties Union...

... If there were a million terrorists in this country, our cities would be in ruins," Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Program, stated in a press release from the group. "The absurd bloating of the terrorist watch lists is yet another example of how incompetence by our security apparatus threatens our rights without offering any real security."... [*]

I am assuming that the exponential growth of potential terrorists won't stop until a Democratic president stops it, or until the airlines go out of business for lack of customers NOT on the list.

Posted by cosmici at 01:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

No reporting of this in US papers. GUARDIAN:

... a new forensic analysis of the only audio recording of the fatal shots has given new weight to a controversial theory that there were in fact two shooters, and that the man convicted of Kennedy's killing — Sirhan Sirhan - did not fire the fatal shots....

.... The recording quality is poor, but it is possible to make out 13 shots over the course of just over 5 seconds, before what Van Praag describes as "blood-curdling screams" obscure the sound. That is more than the eight rounds that Sirhan's cheap Iver Johnson Cadet 55 revolver carried.... [*]

Once the conspiracy can of worms is opened, then everything is suspect. Which is why things like this don't get published here, only half-baked and easily disproved things like last weeks "JFK transcript" of Lee Harvey Oswald's "meeting" with Jack Ruby [*]. The truth is only the most unlikely of conspiracy scenarios needed to have them meet, and even if true it would've only proved a conspiracy of two, rather than the more far-ranging and probable one that featured Dallas police chief's (and brother of the ex-DCI that Kennedy fired) last-minute rerouting of the motorcade to go in front of Dealey Plaza [*].

We don't know who was behind RFK's murder but odds are it was the same folks that killed JFK. We'll never know because unlike JFK's murder this was considered to be an open-and-shut case.... until now.

And that is why it is important that security breaches like the one that happened at the Obama rally in Dallas below are addressed: [*]

Posted by cosmici at 04:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

NEWSWEEK:

... hours after the Times's story was posted, the McCain campaign issued a point-by-point response that depicted the letters as routine correspondence handled by his staff—and insisted that McCain had never even spoken with anybody from Paxson or Alcalde & Fay about the matter. "No representative of Paxson or Alcalde & Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC," the campaign said in a statement e-mailed to reporters.

But that flat claim seems to be contradicted by an impeccable source: McCain himself. "I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue," McCain said in the Sept. 25, 2002, deposition obtained by NEWSWEEK... [*]

As numerous folks have already pointed out, McCain is just plain acting guilty. Instead of shrugging it off by saying , in a trademark McCain style "Well, I had a little crush, but fortunately it didn't go anywhere...", the McCain campaign launched into scorched-earth mode labeling the nuanced article as "scurrilous" and "despiccable." McCain canceled a press conference where again he could have shown he was untroubled by the accusation [*]

There's a similarity with the Judi Nathan and Guiliani love nest affair. One analyst pointed out:

...McCain and Vicki Iseman had "a very close relationship. . . . The only thing that seems to be in dispute is whether it was a romantic relationship, and that, frankly, is the least important part of it."... [*]

The real point about the l'affaire Giulani was his corrupt spending of public funds, not the sex, which was already known about. Here the issue is the undue influence of a corporate lobbyist based on a personal relationship of whatever kind - and the hypocrisy of that being done by Mr. Anti-lobbyist himself.

PS (humorous): Is Vicki Iseman related to the Frederick Iseman the private equity magnate of the edible panties fame [*]? Enquiring minds want to know...

Posted by cosmici at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

EDITOR & PUBLISHER:

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported late Thursday that security details at Barack Obama's rally in Dallas (of all places) on Wednesday "stopped screening people for weapons at the front gates more than an hour before the Democratic presidential candidate took the stage at Reunion Arena.

"The order to put down the metal detectors and stop checking purses and laptop bags came as a surprise to several Dallas police officers who said they believed it was a lapse in security," reported the paper's Jack Douglas, Jr.... [*]

This is reminiscent of what happened there in 1963 as Secret Service agents were pulled away from JFK's motorcade just moments before the shots were fired. So this time, was it a mistake or just setting a precedent for another time?

UPDATE: The media and Secret Service are now covering up the security lapse pretending it didn't happen at all: [*].

Posted by cosmici at 09:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This past week's story of the "recall" of 143 million pounds of beef (mostly already eaten by our kids), is utterly predictable based on the information I've posted here over the last few years.

In 2006, the Department of Agriculture cut its testing for Mad Cow by 90% just weeks after finding a third case of Mad Cow [*]. It also forbid farmers from testing their own herds since the first outbreak in 2003 [*], eased rules designed to prevent Mad Cow spreading to humans by allowing additional body parts to be used in sausages [*]

BushCo is apparently pursuing a policy of "Don't ask, don't tell" when it comes to meat safety.

But it's all good - after all, if we knew how safe our meat was - well, we wouldn't eat it - and that would lose the cattle and meat packing industries billions. Really, our kids' brains is a small price to pay.

Posted by cosmici at 10:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

She [*] was just writing my legislation...

From back in December... OPEDNEWS:

... involved in the story according to Drudge is a certain "woman lobbyist who may have helped to write key telecom legislation," and who "has retained counsel and strongly denies receiving any special treatment from McCain."... [*]

I'm sure it was very professional

I mean. doesn't she just look like the kind of person a politician would have serious converations with?

Posted by cosmici at 07:34 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jon Soltz writes in with this:

...The Marines reported the other day that the delay in getting Mine Resistant Armor Protected (MRAP) vehicles led to the deaths of hundreds of Marines. They had sent an urgent request up the chain in 2005, asking for the heavily-armored MRAPs, only to be ignored by Donald Rumsfeld. To his credit, Rumsfeld's replacement, Secretary Robert Gates, did make acquisition of MRAPs a priority last year. However, we were quite disturbed to find that one of the companies awarded a contract to produce MRAPs was....

Sioux Manufacturing.

That's right. On November 12, 2007, the Bismarck Tribune reported that Sioux, which was under litigation for cheating the troops out of helmets that met specifications, received one of three contracts to produce MRAPs for the troops. That's in addition to their multi-million contract to produce even more helmets.

The original article dealing with thefailure to provide MRAPs and the consequent hundreds of deaths is here [*]. John recommends we sign the petition at Vote.vets.org here: [*].

Posted by cosmici at 12:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)