Raquel Welch takes your questions on various topics

"Miss Welch, how do you feel about Dick Cheney and others trying to rewrite history to absolve themselves on any blame in the mess in Iraq?"

"In case my expression doesn't say it all, it's pretty disgusting of the pigs who dragged us into two wars to try and cover the asses by blaming Obama for their failure to see that invading Iraq was a pretty damn dumb thing to do in the first place."

"Yo, Raquel, how can I protect my neck from the bites of Luis Suarez?"

"Do this."

"If you were a hood ornament how would you look?"

 "Like this."

"If humans evolved from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?"

 "Those who are ignorant of what the theory of evolution actually says often ask that stupid question.  You see, we didn't evolve from monkeys, but humans and monkeys and every other living thing on earth evolved from a single common ancestor, that's what the theory of evolution says in a nutshell."

"You're awfully pretty and all, how'd you get so smart?"

 "Being 'pretty and all' doesn't preclude one from having intelligence.  Stop judging women by how they look you sexist freak."

"Do you ever pretend to be a robot?"

 "Your simplistic question does not compute.  Danger!  Danger!"

"If you could do one thing over again what would you do?"

"I'd not agree to be in this silly post on this silly blog.  Oh wait, I never agreed to it in the first place, some smart ass scanned a bunch of pictures of me and is putting words in my mouth.  But if I could truly do one thing over again, I'd find Dr. Monkey and make sweet sweet jungle love with him.  And then I'd set him up with my smokin' hot daughter Tahnee."  

Lying liars and the wars they cause

So the Iraqi defector Curveball finally admitted his lies, the lies that took us and other countries to war.  The war that's made our national debt soar.  The war that's taken the lives of hundreds of thousands of people and maimed and shattered the lives of countless others.  The war that in part took our civil liberties from us in the name of protecting us from terrorism.

The bastard finally admits he made all that shit up so we would go in and remove Saddam Hussein from his country for him.  And his lies were the central reason Bush and Cheney and their gaggle of blood thirsty pig fuckers gave for going to war.  And Bush and Cheney and their cabal of war boosters knew his lies were lies and they took us to war anyway.

All those people dead, millions of Iraqis homeless and displaced for most likely forever.  Hundreds of thousands of our military people have had their lives shattered, their physical being shattered, their minds ripped and riddled with PTSD because of the lies told by this Iraqi scumbag and because Bush and Cheney took his lies and built a case for war based on them.

Can we prosecute all of them now?  Is it not evident that the whole thing is a huge crime against humanity?  Will the Waffler in chief in the White House put his Attorney General on this?  The Iraq war has been a debacle from the start, a disaster that's still affecting us.  It's bankrupted us and made us less safe.  It's past time for those who led us into it to be tried for their crimes.  And now with the admission of the defector, we have most all the evidence we need to prove how guilty the men at the top are.  It's a fucking crying shame that I'll win the Mega Millions and the Powerball jackpots before those lying murdering thieving bastards go on trial for their crimes. 

It's world AIDS Day again so here's what I have to say about that:

Fuck AIDS and fuck HIV. If we put one third or one quarter of the money we've wasted on Iraq and Afghanistan into curing HIV/AIDS, then we'd have it cured by now. But since it's mostly gays, blacks, and drug users who contract HIV/AIDS, the government doesn't give a shit. It's more important that we prosecute an illegal immoral war on brown skinned people who live in an oil rich part of the world than curing a disease that hits gays, Africans, and drug users.

Admission of guilt

Bush the Idiot, seen here enjoying a cool drink after a hard day of sitting on his ass and watching him some Cartoon Network,
finally came out and admitted publicly that he approved waterboarding. And most of us acted like his admission was nothing. No big deal.

Well kids, it was a big deal. In the words of our current Vice President, it's a big fucking deal.

You see, when the Japanese army waterboarded people in World War 2, we said it was inhumane and torture. When Texas sheriff James Parker and three of his deputies did it in the early 1980's they all got fired and were sent to prison for it and guess who prosecuted them for it, St. Reagan's Department of Justice. Military dictatorships in South America did and we loudly and publicly condemned them for doing it, but in private we shoved money and weapons at them because they kept the Commies out of this hemisphere. You see where I'm going with this, bad people used waterboarding. Slimy human right violators used waterboarding and most all of them were imprisoned for doing so. Except for George W. Bush and Dick Cheney.

If it's wrong for the Japanese to do it in World War 2, then it's wrong for us to have done it. If that sheriff in Texas got four years in prison for doing it, then Bush should be tried and convicted for doing it. The fact that a privileged white man ordered people to torture in the name of the USA doesn't make it right. If it's a war crime for Asians to do it, it's a war crime for Americans to do it. And the excuse that 9/11 'changed everything' doesn't hold water. The bombing of the Twin Towers didn't make torture an accepted thing to do. The deaths of over three thousand people didn't make it suddenly right to torture. Wrong is wrong, no matter what.

It's a god damned shame that our establishment President, the man we elected because he told us he was going to change things and bring hope back, won't prosecute Bush for his war crimes. Well, to be honest, I see why Obama won't prosecute Bush. It's because Obama is a war criminal himself. His use of unmanned drones by is a violation of international law because the CIA is in charge of that program. If it was under the aegis of the military than it would be legal under international law, it still wouldn't be morally right, but it would be legal. Can't have one war criminal going after another, it just wouldn't be right. But the irony here is that if Obama ever orders the use of waterboarding, then the Republicans and the pundits in right wing echo chamber aren't going to pat him on the back and thank him for 'keeping America safe,' nope, they're going to scream that the negro socialist tortured people and he should be drawn and quartered for doing so.

So Bush dragged us into the torture gutter, got us mired in two wars we can never ever 'win,' (although I'm not sure just what there is to win in Iraq and Afghanistan), and made the use of torture an acceptable part of intelligence gathering. And he walks away from all of it with a smirk on his face and a spring in his alcoholic step. It's times like these that I wish the Christian fairy tales were true and that there was such a place as hell and that Bush and all the others who were in charge and who ordered the waterboarding torture of others would spend the rest of eternity in a lake of fire getting burned and gang raped by hoary demons and rabid animals.

Wait, no. That punishment is too good for Bush and his crew. Fuck it. History will judge them to be the craven stupid shortsighted bastards they really are and that's punishment enough I guess.

It's re-caption time!

"If they asked, I'd tell 'em both of us wuz gay. I'm so sick of occupying Iraq that I'd do anything to get home."

Let's call a spade a spade

I haven't written about the Fort Hood shootings any because I wanted to see what the fall out would be and what the shooter would have to say if and when he ever talked. But since the rabid Christian right is shouting and braying that the alleged shooter (and that's the correct thing to call him since it has not been proven in a court of law that he did the shootings yet, and please you right wingers, remember that our justice system is based on the principle of innocent until proven guilty) is a Muslim terrorist I'm going to wade into this bullshit.

They claim that the alleged shooter is a Muslim jihadist bent on taking down Americans and the American way of life (but what they mean when they say 'American' is Christian). To them since he contacted a Muslim cleric in some dusty Middle Eastern country then he's got to be a terrorist, never mind that he contacted him for information relating to a paper he was writing for the Army. They also go on to say the President Obama is at fault for not weeding him out of the Army because doing so might have made some other Muslims mad, after all the President is a Muslim himself so he wanted to be politically correct and save his Muslim homeboys from embarrassment, never mind the fact that the alleged shooter was seen as a threat while Bush was in charge and nothing was done back then.
The guy is a Muslim and he killed Christian Americans and he shouted "Allahu abkar!" before he opened fire, so he's a terrorist.

What they fail to mention is that this guy is also a terrorist:
Remember him? He's the guy who shot up a Unitarian church in Knoxville because he wanted to kill liberals, which he did by the way until one of those lily livered liberals kicked his ass and held him for the cops, and he's the guy you never hear anything about on FOX Noise anymore because they don't want to be tarred with his stink. He's a Christian and he used violence to achieve his desired political ends, and that's the classic definition of terrorism. Oh yeah, he also explicitly said he wanted to kill all the people in Bernie Goldber's book 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America. And his house was full of books by people who work for FOX News.

They also gloss over this guy:
He's the Christian who shot up the Holocaust Museum, which he chose as a target because he hated Jews. And they love to forget to mention, when they mention him at all, that he's a former white supremacist, which is a far right wing political movement, of which the Tea party crowd are a part and so are Libertarians.

Here's another Christian terrorist:
He's latest killer of doctors who perform abortions, which is still a legal medical procedure in this country by the way. They tie themselves in logic knots when trying to prove that this animal isn't a terrorist. But since this Christian man used violence to achieve his desired political end, he's a terrorist. He's a Christian and he's a terrorist. And to the anti abortion crowd, he's a hero.

And finally we end this parade of infamy with the American Christian terrorist who killed the most people in one fell swoop ever on US soil:
The late Tim McVeigh. He was in the US Army and he was a Christian. He killed to achieve his desired political end and he was caught, tried, convicted, and murdered for his crime. But they never talk about him when they talk about terrorists.

The point here is that if you're going to bitch that people aren't calling the Fort Hood shooter a terrorist because they are being politically correct and you're not calling those Christians who committed terrorist acts terrorists, then you're intellectually cowardly and you're hypocrites. And the argument that only good things come from the Christian god doesn't apply, because if you believe that the Christian god created everything then he created everything, including terrorists of all kinds, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, etc. The other point is, and this is the one that most people, and by most people I mean the right wingers, is that religious extremism of any stripe is bad, be it Muslim, Christian, Jewish, etc.

If this tragedy shows us anything, it shows us that we need to get the hell out of the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan and that we need less religion in our world.

No nukes

So it turns out Iran is working on a nuclear bomb after all. And the pundits and the press are claiming it's President Obama's fault even though he's been in office for less than a year, which proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that nobody brings the crazy like the pundits and the press in this country.

For the eight years the preceded President Obama's ascension to the highest office in our land this country's policy was to not talk to countries we didn't like. And those countries were North Korea, Iran, and our former Reagan/Bush era ally Iraq. How'd that Bush era diplomacy work out for us? Oh yeah, it didn't. As we now know, they lied to us about Iraq so they could start a war to finish the one they didn't get right the first time and to subdue and force the Iraqis to bend to the will of our corporate overlords, North Korea is still a threat and is testing more missiles than it produces food for it's citizens, and Iran is developing a nuclear bomb.

So now everybody is up in arms because Bush once again was too busy deregulating markets, ignoring the needs of disaster victims, and screwing the poor and middle class to do what should have been done on the world stage. The heads of the G20 are sternly warning Iran that they'll face more sanctions unless they start behaving and drop their bomb making. And Israel has jumped in to the fray as well, their blowhard Prime Minister, who never met a Palestinian he didn't want to imprison, says that Iran must be subjected to severe sanctions. Crazy, huh.

First of all I'm all for Iran not having a nuclear bomb. I'm all for India and Pakistan not having any either. Same for Israel, France, Germany, Russia, and the USA. I want no country on the face of this earth to have a nuclear bomb because history has shown us that if we make one, we'll use one. We're fucking up this place fast enough without some jack ass country getting it's nose out of joint and nuking someone else over some bronze age religion disagreement.

Secondly, I'm all for severe sanctions on Iran but only if Israel faces the same sanctions over their treatment of the Palestinian people. What they are doing to the people of Palestine is genocide and those in power in Washington DC know it and they condone it.

Thirdly, any country caught making nukes again after complete disarmament will be forced to pack up and move to North Dakota during the dead of winter. A few months of life in that desolate hell hole will teach them to play nice and not build nukes again.

I know none of these things will ever be done but maybe, just maybe we can come to an agreement on the world stage using diplomacy instead of bluster. Maybe we can just laugh at the ass-hats like John Bolton and John McCain when they call for bombing instead of talking. Maybe we can have a Secretary of State who will step up and do some good for all of us and not just Blackwater, Haliburton, Wal Mart, Microsoft, and Pepsi/Coke for a change. And I say all that knowing that even that may be too much to ask of our corporate beholden leaders.

Don't forget to remember

On this Veterans Day, or Remembrance Day for my Canadians readers, don't forget to remember all the veterans who gave their lives, their limbs, and sometimes their sanity to their country. But while you're at it, don't forget to remember all the Iraqi's and Afghans who have been murdered in this war of terror for oil. And don't forget to remember all the people who got killed, maimed, and or tortured in all those countries where despots and dictators that we supported ruled and still rule. Remember all the people the Contras killed in Nicaragua when Saint Ronnie was President, and keep those folks who Nixon's pal Pinochet killed Chile in your minds on this day of remembering.

And remember that while you have a modicum of freedom and free speech, millions of people in the countries that are allied with us and who do business with us do not. People in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, China, and other countries are not free and we help keep them down due to our addiction to foreign oil and cheap consumer goods.

And finally, remember that bloodthirsty bastards who have been in charge of this country for the past eight years, Bush and Cheney, should be thrown into Gitmo before it's closed or at the very least they should be led from the White House in handcuffs and taken to be tried for their crimes against humanity at The Hague. They are after all responsible for the deaths of thousands of our soldiers and for the murders of hundreds of thousands Iraqi and Afghan citizens.

Not done yet

The news that the Iraqi government has cancelled all the no bid oil contracts with western oil companies means that we'll have to stay in Iraq a lot longer than we previously thought. Oil, after all, is what all this was about so we're not going to ever leave until we have control over it.


Or until we elect someone who will get us out of that Bush McCain led mess.

Try to remember

While the corporate media keeps harping on stories like how bad Sen. Obama is for opting out of public financing for his campaign and Bush McCain is a maverick for opting out, that Michelle Obama is a bad angry black woman for saying she was really proud of her country after she saw how white people embraced her husband's candidacy and how Bush McCain is a good guy for admitting that he wasn't proud of America until he was stuck in a POW camp, where incidentally he was broken and said jeebus knows what under torture, and how Cindy Bush McCain is such a great gal despite the fact that she was involved with the Keating savings and loan scandal in the 1980's and she used her own charity as a front so she could steal prescription drugs to feed her pill popping habit, while they report all those "stories," they are neglecting the biggest story of all: the clusterfuck in Iraq.

Yes people, the Iraq war is still going on. People are still being bombed by US forces in Iraq. Innocent people are still being terrorized and made homeless because Bush the Idiot wants to avenge his doddering old daddy and make the middle east safe for western corporations. Iraqi's are still with out decent medical care (hell, so are most Americans), without electricity, without schools, without roads, without farms, while a billion dollar embassy/compound/playground is being built for American diplomats in Baghdad.

We're still making a generation of Iraqi children look like this:A generation of Iraqi parents are doing this: Americans, Brits, and others are still coming home looking like this:
While more and more of our men and women are coming home like this:
So remember all that when you hear Bush McCain, Bush the Idiot, and Traitor Joe claim we're winning in Iraq and that we'd win easily if and when we bomb Iran. And as food and gas prices creep ever higher as we march toward the general election in the fall, remember which candidate said that it would be okay with him if we stayed in Iraq for a hundred years (in case you forgot, it was the one who called his wife a cunt) and who is being advised by the people who are behind the high corporate profits and high prices being brought to you by those same corporations.

Out of Iraq now, end the war now, corporate oversight now, vote Obama in '08.

Sacrifice

Sacrifices must be made in war time.  

Our men and women in the military have sacrificed their lives for our war of terror on Iraq:

We citizens of the USA have sacrificed our civil liberties and our tax dollars for the warwithoutendAmen:
Laura Bush has sacrificed what was left of her drug addled mind to support her insane drunken husband:
Jenna sacrificed her sobriety and her self esteem to support her deranged daddy and her arranged marriage to Karl Rove's ex aide:
But perhaps the biggest sacrifice was made by our Chicken Hawk in Chief:
No, he did not give up drinking.  No, he did not give up listening to the voices in his head that he claims are really his god talking to him.   What our idiot President has sacrificed is his golf game for the war.  He stopped playing golf while the war has been going on.  What a noble compassionate man he is for giving up playing golf so that he can play executioner to millions.  I'm sure the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi dead, the thousands of dead American and British soldiers would rather he had stuck to playing golf and that he had left something as serious as war to those who knew what the fuck they were doing.  I'm sure it's little consolation to the millions of injured and displaced people that he stopped playing golf so he could "focus" on the war.  

Every dead soldier, every dead Iraqi, every family torn apart by his treachery in causing this illegal war and keeping it going with no end in sight all wish that the Democrats in Congress would develop some back bone and move to impeach Bush and Cheney both.  We've got to stop the war this minute and we've got to make sure that warmongering Bush McCain and Hillary Clinton do not get elected to replace our current Abortion in Chief.

And now here's word from our Idiot in Chief:

We're good thanks. No, seriously, we're good. We mean it.

Growing up in Michigan for the first 13 years of my life I learned that Big Ten college football was a passion with people in the midwest. When I moved south in 1974 I learned that college football down here was something different, I learned it wasn't just a passion, it's a religion. And it's adherents down here are more than mere followers, they're crazy, rabid zealots for whichever Southeastern Conference team they root for. People in the south live and die each Saturday in the fall depending on which team they follow.

In the are of the south where I live now, the mountains of east TN, there is only one team that most people around here root for and that team is the University of Tennessee Volunteers. The Vols are loved by people not just all over the state of TN, people in southwest Virginia and western North Carolina love them rabidly as well. The current success of the men's basketball team is nice but people down here know that in Knoxville and in a 150 mile radius of that city football is king. Football brings in the bacon and fries it up in the pan. It pays the bills and therefore it's put on a pedestal. It's sacrilegious to speak against the Big Orange football machine around here.

Yes, there are other colleges and universities that field football teams but none has the following that UT does. Case in point, the East Tennessee State University Buccaneers. ETSU is a smaller institution of higher learning than UT but one would think since it's located in Johnson City that people in my town would have embraced their local school's football program. Well, you'd be wrong. For many years ETSU put a team on the field, not in the same division of the NCAA as UT but still football is football right?, and for may years not many people cared. People in this area stayed away from ETSU football games in droves because the only team they cared about was UT. UT played in the marquee bowl games, UT had shots at the national title, UT played on TV on ABC, CBS, ESPN. ETSU was lucky to get radio coverage or a reporter from the local TV stations to cover their games. In short no one gave a damn about ETSU football, they stuck by UT and that was that.

So about 5 years ago ETSU decided to save some money by dropping football all together. They said that while it might be painful to some, it had to be done. Attendance at games was laughable, media exposure was slim, and so it just made sense that they drop it and put that money towards something else, they still had a highly regarded basketball team that made the NCAA tourney once in a while and a very highly regarded golf team. So the axe fell and we waved bye bye to ETSU football.

But a group of ETSU football alums wouldn't let it go. They were sure that people wanted ETSU football, they were sure that people were going to rise up and demand the Bucs be allowed to live again. They wailed and gnashed their teeth, they cried foul, they spoke to anyone who would listen to them. And yet there was no clamor for ETSU football to return. No one gave a damn that it left, well no one except for the guys who used to play.

After a few y ears of crying over the loss of their beloved sport, they hit on the bright idea of letting the ETSU students vote on whether to bring back football. The university let the students know that if they brought back football then fees would rise, all fees that is, as in all fees to all students, even those who did not like football would have to pay for it. The football alums patted themselves on the back because they were sure the students would vote to bring back football but when they dust of the election settled the measure to bring it back was resoundingly defeated.

So you'd think in the face of widespread public disinterest, student apathy, and a fan base that will never be disloyal to UT, they just give up. Well, you'd be wrong. A hardcore group of these ETSU football alums got together and they paid some outfit to do a study on how they could bring football back to Johnson City. After studying the matter and looking at things the group doing the study said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "In order to bring football back you're going to have to remove all the obstacles that got it removed in the first place."

Duh. I could have told them that. Hell, I could have told them that and I would have charged them half what they paid the other guys. Oddly enough, or maybe this is a sign of how delusional these bitter decrepit old football jocks are, they got excited about putting a plan of action together based on the findings of the study. I'm not sure what they plan to do about the dominance of UT football in this area or what they're going to do about the thousands of of fans they don't have, but if it makes them happy to think they can do the impossible then more power to them.

Me, I just wish they shut the fuck up and accept the fact that ETSU football is dead and that it will never come back. It's kind of sad to see these frustrated old jerks pine for the glory days when the seats in the Mini Dome, that's right they used to play ETSU football indoors, were two thirds empty and no one gave a damn if ETSU won or not. They remind me of the Republicans who keep saying we're winning in Iraq. They think that if they pour more money and more time into study after study that shows if people came to games here that the local economy would grow like gang busters. Just as there is a fatal flaw in the Bush led war on Iraq, there's a fatal flaw in the dreams of those reviving ETSU football, just as the Iraqi's hate us and want us gone, Johnson City and the area as a whole hates ETSU football and they want it gone forever.

But like the delusional Republicans, the faded football jocks of ETSU still cling to their dream of winning hearts and minds back to Buc football. Anyone close to both situations can see that there is no such thing as victory in Iraq and there sure as hell ain't ever gonna be a victory for ETSU football in the this area. I can only hope one day we'll stop trying to "win" something in Iraq and that the cry baby ETSU football jerkoffs will stop their pointless crusade to bring football back to Johnson City.

Lord Cheney got yet another one wrong

The callous cancerous tumor we call our Vice President got yet another one wrong in a recent interview with ABC. He said that President Bush had it worse than the 4000 dead American soldiers because the responsibility of sending them to war rested on Bush's shoulders.

How delusional is that uncaring unfeeling old bastard?

To say that Bush has it rough in this illegal immoral war is an impeachable offense in and of itself. Bush doesn't have to put on a uniform and go fight for the multinational corporations like he's made thousands of our men and women do. He won't ever get shot or killed on a field of battle and he certainly won't ever suffer from a disabling wound. He won't come home paralyzed from the neck down and he won't ever be severely injured and made little more than a vegetable as a result of having to go fight a war that should never ever have been waged in the first place. Neither Bush nor his family will ever have to suffer him going off to countless deployments to hold people hostage in their own country while they suffer through a civil war that we caused. Barbara Bush won't ever have to worry if her son's war wounds were exacerbated by being exposed to weapons that contained depleted uranium. Laura Bush won't ever have to worry if her husband comes home in one piece or not. Jenna and Not Jenna will always have their daddy around in one piece and they certainly won't have to worry about him suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for the rest of his life.

But you know what? Thousands of military families will have to suffer through all that. Thousands of our soldiers will have to suffer and possibly die because Bush and Cheney sent them to war.

And let's think of the Iraqi people for just a minute. I'm willing to bet they're suffering a hell of a lot more over this war than George Fucking Bush ever will. He's got a nice house to live in, he's got his family around him, he's a got a job, all his ill gotten wealth, he's got his future ahead of him, what have the Iraqi people got? They've got no electricity, little medical care, little fresh water or food, they've got terrorists in their country that weren't there until we illegally invaded. They've also got the US military holding them hostage so that Bush and Cheney can rake in millions of dollars in war profits.

You know what Lord Cheney? I'd say Bush and yourself have it pretty fucking easy in this war. All either of you have to do is to order more death and dismemberment so you and your pals in Haliburton, KBR, and Blackwater can rake in millions more in blood money. You know what else Lord Cheney? If you chickenhawks have it so rough, how about you try putting on combat fatigues and going to fight in Iraq. Your "boss" says if he didn't have to run things over here he'd love to be in Afghanistan, maybe if and when you two ever leave office you'll both go do your patriotic duty and go fight over there. And while we're at it, you can take all the war hawks in Congress, all the corporate media war cheerleaders, and all the folks in the military industrial complex who were war boosters with you and then you maybe our young men and women can come home.

You are an international disgrace Lord Cheney and you can't be gone from office soon enough to suit me.

Takin' it to the streets

After psyching our selves up by listening to our favorite pre-protest music, which for us these days is the song Not Ready to Make Nice by the Dixie Chicks, we arrived at the preapproved site for yesterday's Iraq war protest. It was a sunny day with temps in the low 60's but since the wind was blowing it felt more like the high 50's when the wind gusted. Somehow we put up with the cruel indignities the weather tossed at us.

We got our signs and we met up with Snad and John, the stalwarts behind Concerned TN Citizens. We chatted for a moment and then we took our places on the corner and we began brandishing our signs and waving to the people who drove past us in their cars. In very short order others joined us on the corner and the protest began in earnest. We may be mad as hell over this insane war but we're not stupid, so that means we basically want to let others know that not everyone in this conservative are of east TN/southwest VA/western NC supports our Idiot in Chief and his petulant little unconstitutional war so we protest by holding our signs and showing our support for sanity and peace. We shy away from being confrontational and from shouting inflammatory slogans.

The response we got yesterday was generally very positive, which frankly in this conservative area always surprises me but it really shouldn't because when you think about it most people in this country don't support the war so I'd say that most people around here don't support it either but they are just too afraid to speak out and say so. Of course we had some people drive by and show us they thought we were #1 by showing us their middle finger and we had a few that shouted things like, "Go home!" or "Kill all the rag heads!" at us. Others simply ignored us and drove by in their gas guzzlers. One woman shouted at us, "I'm proud my son is in the army!" If I had had the chance I would have told her that we had nothing against people like her son and that we were probably proud of him too. I would have told her our problem was not with her son but with the people who are his commanders who lied to us in order to drag us into a war that is bankrupting our country and causing the deaths of millions of others.

It's rare at our protests when someone get so angry at us that they get out of their car and say something to us, but yesterday was one of those rare times. Some guy ran over to Rev. John and a guy who was standing next to him and he started jabbering about how we were cowards and criminals for daring to be against the war. He insisted that we had no right to protest if we had not been to Iraq or Afghanistan. I'm never one to miss an opportunity to get my nose in someone else's politics, and neither is my friend Snad, so she and I went over to talk to the little bald dude. He got really mad when we told him it was our Constitutional right to speak out and to protest, we not so gently reminded him that the Bill of Rights says that we not only have freedom of speech in this country, we also have freedom of assembly too. He started screaming about the American rights in Iraq and Snad reminded him that there is no such thing as American rights in Iraq and that Iraq was a sovereign country that we invaded illegally. He kept sputtering that we were cowards who had no right to question the war or the men who run it and we kept telling him that it was not only our right, it was our obligation as patriotic Americans to do so. In the end he finally walked away.

Despite that guy's little display of ignorance and the others who flipped us off, I was heartened by the hundreds of people who drove by and honked in support of us and who gave us the thumbs up in support of our position. The tide out here is turning even more against the war of terror on Iraq and Afghanistan and hopefully that tide will be a tsunami that will wash out more pro war politicians in November. All in all it was a good day to protest because the roads were full of people, I'd say at least 1500 people saw us out there. All in all it was a good protest too because I'm sure that someone who was against the war but felt afraid to say it saw us out there and they now know that they are not alone in opposing the war.

And now lets meet some of the 30 some people who were out on the firing line yesterday:

I never can remember the lady in the foreground's name but she's been to a bunch of demonstrations and I'm pretty sure she goes to Rev. John's church. The lady in the purple jacket is also a veteran on the local protest scene.

Speaking of the man, the myth, the legend that is Rev. Shuck, there he is in all his agitating glory.

And that fat bastard is me.


The skinny guy is Snad's husband John and I forgot the woman's name who is next to him.

These fine looking male speicmens name's are Ron and JW. They both had nice things to say about me and my blog so you know I'm not just blowing smoke when I say that they're two of the finest human beings I have ever met and they will go down in history as two of the most intelligent critical thinkers of this or any other time.

There's one of my heroes, Miss Francis. If I'm half as sharp and on the ball as she is when I get to be her age then I'll be doing damn good.

I didn't meet all these people but I was damn glad they were out in the wind with us yesterday.

And finally here's a shot of Sand, she's on the right, and her brother Mike. They, along with Snad's husband John, have been the engines that have driven the anti war movement in this area for the past year and I'm glad to know them and glad to be their friend. If it hadn't been for them Sparky and I would never have become as active in the movement and we would have never met such great folks like Rev. John, Joseph and Vanessa, Miss Francis, Keith and his sons, and all the other folks who are committed to ending the war and to making this country a more just and peaceful place.

So?

Is anyone really surprised at all that Miss Abu Grahib won't take any responsibility for her actions and that she now blames the media for the fall out of what she and others did?
It doesn't surprise me a bit. Why should she take any blame? Further up her chain of command they don't take a bit of blame or any responsibility at all.
This asshole thumbs his nose at us every day as he changes his justifications and reasons for taking us into the Iraq quagmire. He refuses to admit that he's done anything wrong and he never will see all the harm he's brought to our country because he's too stupid to know that he's done everything the opposite way of how it should have been done. Why should that little gal accept any responsibility when her delusional Commander in Chief doesn't?And by now I'm sure you all heard what this malignant tumor had to say when he heard the two thirds of us oppose his fucking war, if you haven't heard it he said, "So?." So. As in so fucking what? As in "So? Why should I care what the plebes think? I'm in charge here and you people better keep quiet or we'll turn this whole country in to Gitmo." So long to sane sober leadership that listens to the people, so long to leaders who are under the rule of law like the rest of us are supposed to be, so long to common sense and decency, so long to thousands of years of precedent, and so long to your rights. He's going to do just what the fuck he wants and he'll do it for as long as he pleases, no matter what the American people think. After all he's not accountable to us, he's only accountable to the people who help put him in power, the multi national corporations, the crooked Republicans who fixed the elections in Ohio and Florida, and the stooges in black robes that we call the Supreme Court.

I've had enough of their sneering contemptuous rule and their refusal to get help for their delusions. And I've had enough of this fucking never ending war. So I'll be on the streets of Johnson City Saturday with my pals from Concerned TN Citizens and we'll be protesting this insane war from 1:00PM to 3:00PM. We'll be protesting in front of the First Tennessee Bank building on the corner of Mountcastle and Roan if any of you want to join us. I know that protesting two hours on a Saturday might not change the way things are right away but if one or two or fifty or a hundred people see us then maybe they'll get emboldened to take action too and then maybe more people will get involved as a result of that and then maybe our voices will be heard and it'll be like a tsunami and the resulting wave of protest will sweep out the bastards in Washington DC in November and then come January we can get the hell out of Iraq and we can go after the real enemy of this country, the multi national corporations who been running roughshod over all of us in their immoral lust for more and more profits.

I'm proud to say I know a Winter Soldier

While I'm proud and glad that former soldiers who served in the fiasco that we know as the war of terror on Iraq and Afghanistan are speaking out, I'm even prouder to say that I know Jason Hurd, the soldier featured in these videos. I met Jason one morning on a trip to meet with my local douchebag war mongering Congressman. We went to my Congressman's office to ask him to stop supporting the war, the trip was organized by my friend Snad and Rev. Shuck and a couple from his church joined us as well.

Jason also joined us in our march against the war last September and he has, as you can see, not stopped speaking out. Let's all keep speaking out and demanding that we get the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan and that this country puts an end to war as an instrument of foreign policy.

Winners?

So it's now been 5 years of the war of terror on Iraq and Afghanistan and we've got over a million people dead, millions more displaced, and we're not any safer than we were before Bush took us into this mess.

Who's winning this war?

The Iraqi people?Nope. If you ask them they'll tell you they're worse off since we invaded. They'll tell you they don't have electricity, hospitals, schools, or a sense of safety like they had before. They are hostages in their own country and they want us out now.

Are our troops winners in this war?
Nope. They've been lied to and shit on by everyone in our incompetent administration. Our troops need real support, they need to come home now.

Are US taxpayers winners in this war?
Nope. The war is a huge drain on our economy and it's responsible in part for dragging us into the recession we're in now. We've had to pay billions for a war that most of us never wanted while they tell us that national single payer health care for all is too expensive.

So who's winning this quagmire?
Yep. The ass hats who got us into it are winners because they and their pals in corporate America are all making money hand over fist off this debacle. Ain't that a bitch?

5 years of senseless slaughter is 5 too many.

It's time to end this war the only way we can, let's impeach Bush and Cheney both. We'll be the winners when those two are made to pay for all the death and destruction that they have wrought.

Let's go back once again down deep in the bowels of the White House

(Our sensitive White House mics picked up this conversation recently.)

Dang, who left the TV on down here? Must have been Not Jenna, she watches all those smart aleck shows on all them fancy dan news networks. What's that say? Am I an idiot? Heh heh heh, I may be, but I'm still President until I leave heh heh heh. Damn I looked good in that suit. And my finger smelled real good that day too. I remember it like it was yesterday, hell it could have been yesterday for all I know. Hang on, what did I do yesterday?
Was yesterday the day I wore them fancy silky dresses with Pooter and that Chinaman?
No sir.
No? Who said that? Who's there?
It's me daddy. Jenna.
Oh hey baby girl, come here and give daddy some body sugar.
Num num nums, that makes Daddy feel so good when you rub up against him honey.
Umm Daddy, this is kind of creeping me out. I'm getting married soon so can we stop this kind of thing now?
In a minute baby, Daddy is almost there. He's almost to his happy place. Talk dirty to me honey and this'll go faster.
Oh ok, if you promise to hurry it up. Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton...
Yeah baby. More.
Medicaid, welfare checks...
Oh baby, you're so nasty....
Daddy, hurry up!
Almost...there...say it...baby doll...
TAX CUTS!!!!
Aieeeeeeeeeee, yes oh yes.
You know how to make Daddy feel good don't you? What am I gonna do without you? How am I gonna get along when you get married?
You'll manage. Maybe you'll get Mom to rub up against you.
(Our mics picked up a thumping sound.)
Hey, I recognize that beat, it's my Negro friends! Go let them in Jenna and then you run along.
Yo Prezi-dizzle, what up hometown?
Not much a nothing guys. I'm just sitting around doing my simple President thang. You know, I'm keeping it real for you black soul brother men.
(A phone rings.)
Hello? Karl is that you? I can't hear you. Speak up dang it. Karl? Karl? Aww screw you, whoever you are. If you ain't going to speak up then I'm gonna hang up!
Yo, Dub-a-dizzle, you had the phone all backwards and shit. We told you about that shit last time we hung with you.
Oh yeah. Heh heh heh, I forgot. Hey you guys got any Chronic on your bad selves? I sure could use something to relax me. I'm all worried about this Iraq war stuff. I think I might have made a mistake in sending our boys over there. I think maybe we're in a quagmire we can never get out of. I think maybe I've squandered too much of our country's money over there. I also may have fucked up by cutting taxes so much on my rich friends, the remaining tax burden on the working class and the poor may be too much for them to bear.
(All three men erupt in laughter.)
Dang G, you almost got through that with out crackin' up.
It's a good thing I'm not stoned yet or I'd be on the floor laughing my ass off. Pass me that joint my dusky black a Moor buddy.
(The room falls silent as the men smoke up. Then a loud female voice is heard.)
George? Are you down there smoking in the basement again?
Oh shit! It's Mom!
Later Prez-i-dizzle Dub-a-dizzle, we're out of here. Your Moms scares the shizzle out of us.
Okay fellers, ya'll be good. Thanks for the buzz! Bye now!
George? What are you doing down there?
Don't come down here Mom, I'm not smoking pot I promise. I'm just choking my chicken, that's all!

Man, I love being President. After I finish choking my chicken, I'm gonna cut taxes for my buddies once more and then I'll bomb Iran before my buzz wears off. Hail to the Chief bitches!!!!