Political Tidbits 5/17/06

Political Tidbits-A Patrick Kennedy rant….please forgive. Also, the country to be a millionaire with only ten American dollars.
Pic of the Day

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Quote of the Day Nobody can make you feel inferior without your permission. -Eleanor Roosevelt-

A magazine recently ran a "Dilbert Quotes" contest. They were looking for people to submit quotes from their real-life Dilbert-comic-strip-type managers. These were voted the top ten quotes from the managers we work for in corporate America, circa 2004: " As of tomorrow, employees will only be able to access the building using individual security cards. Pictures will be taken next Wednesday, and employees will receive their cards in two weeks." (This was the winning quote from Fred Dales, Microsoft Corp. in Redmond WA) " What I need is an exact list of specific unknown problems we might encounter." (Lykes Lines Shipping) " E-mail is not to be used to pass on information or data. It should be used only for company business." (Accounting manager, Electric Boat Company) " This project is so important we can't let things that are more important interfere with it." (Advertising/Marketing manager, United Parcel Service) " Doing it right is no excuse for not meeting the schedule." (Plant Manager, Delco Corporation) " No one will believe you solved this problem in one day! We've been working on it for months. Now go act busy for a few weeks and I'll let you know when it's time to tell them." (R&D supervisor, Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing/3M Corp.) Quote from the Boss: "Teamwork is a lot of people doing what I say." (Marketing executive, Citrix Corporation) My sister passed away and her funeral was scheduled for Monday. When I told my Boss, he said she died on purpose so that I would have to miss work on the busiest day of the year. He then asked if we could change her burial to Friday. He said, "That would be better for me." (Shipping executive, FTD Florists) "We know that communication is a problem, but the company is not going to discuss it with the employees." (Switching supervisor, AT&T Long Lines Division)

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Political Tidbits

Patrick Kennedy: We Can't Resist

Normally I like to keep this column limited to political "tidbits", duh, and leave the bigger stories out there across the Blogosphere for readers to choose their own sources, commentary and opinion.

How can I possibly resist the Patrick Kennedy pack of lies foisted upon us idiots out here in la-la land? For if ever there was a political saga so packed with lies and obfuscation, it would be this tale of yet another Kennedy gene-pool victim dealing with a car that just won't drive straight.

Fortunately for yon reader, myself was a full-grown adult with ears and eyeballs when Patrick's father, Teddy "The Swimmer" Kennedy, too got involved with a car that wouldn't stay on a bridge. In Daddy Kennedy's case, a young woman died. In Daddy Kennedy's case, the same lies, obfuscations and urinating upon our feet while telling us it's raining, also occurred. In Daddy Kennedy's case, there was no Blogosphere, no Internet, no talk radio. I missed the chance to post a very public mockery of just what I thought of Teddy and his stupid lies.

With Son Patrick, I shall not pass by the chance.

Before, let's ruminate a bit on that damaged gene pool that is known as the Kennedy family.

John F. Kennedy was the hero of my youth. He was handsome, personable, had a beautiful wife and perfect children. He also faced down the Russians during the Cuban missile crisis and by me, was the last Democrat that showed any love for this country. In my later years, I discover that JFK was a very flawed man, possibly addicted to pain medicine with a groin that worked overtime.

HIS son, JRF jr. was very handsome and via his mother, seemed to possess some semblance of class. Only he gets it into his head that he can pilot an airplane with little experience on a foggy night with no co-pilot in sight because heh, he's a Kennedy and Kennedy airplanes do not crash.

Then there's the son of Robert, the rapist. Yeah, the guy got off but hey, these were Kennedys. Kennedys do not rape, they just have to be a bit more forceful in the sack.

And how about the one, God this is pathetic, who got it into his head that he could play touch football while speeding downhill on a pair of skis? Trees, folks, trees. A tree split this Kennedy almost in half.

Even if only a Kennedy by marriage there seems to be some flaw in the gene pool. For one ersatz Kennedy bashed in Martha Moxley's skull but did not go to jail for almost thirty years after the murder.

Yet another Kennedy got himself all involved with the family babysitter and God knows what we don't know about that episode.

It doesn't matter how long a Kennedy's been married or even if they have a bunch of kids. By the miracle of the name, voila, a convenient annulment is awarded by the Catholic church with a smile and a hand held out for the check.

Teddy Kennedy is said to love his alcohol and let us not forget Chappaquidick.

Not we have Patrick, the Ambien-popping, sleep-driving fool whose troubles have been aplenty.

When Ted Kennedy's car disobeyed, as so many Kennedy automobiles seem to do, and went OFF the bridge instead of ACROSS it, I was in my early twenties. With Mary Jo Kopechne as passenger, both Teddy and Mary Jo found themselves at the bottom of a small Massachusett's creek.

Patrick's father did the brave and immediately exited the car, swam to the surface, and ran off to immediately find his lawyer. The accident was not reported, even with poor Mary Jo Kopechne still in it, for over 19 hours.

I recall the media frenzy over Chappaquidick and recall being so disgusted. I had no doubt that a politico who runs off a bridge and leaves a young woman to die alone in his car would immediately get kicked out of office. And oh my, how well I recall the day that Teddy went out and about after the accident at Chappaquidick wearing that neck brace. A neck brace, folks, poor guy, got whiplash of the neck. He was an object of national derision.

And yet, oddly, here we are over thirty years later and Ted Kennedy lives and thrives and continues to be elected by the people of Massachusetts. My derision has, and continues, to expand to include the voters of Massachusetts because for the life of me I shall never understand a populace that would vote a man in for senator who was so heartless as Ted Kennedy was to Mary Jo Kopechne. Surely there is someone else in Massachusetts, someone not a murderer for instance, in that state who could be their senator?

Now we have Patrick Kennedy and he evidently too has the Kennedy curse that has cars disobeying human commands. In Patrick's case he ran into a concrete barrier. This right after he just missed hitting a marked patrol car. Damn, Patrick's headlights wouldn't even listen to him as, even though it was night, they were not on and shining.

To add to my disgust, because I must assume that lying car-wrecking politicians are somehow okay in that they keep getting elected and everything, Patrick immediately unzips his pants and begins the process of urinating upon our feet and telling us it's raining.

First, even though three in the a.m., Patrick was wise enough to immediately assert he was headed to congress for a vote. Patrick, fruit of Teddy's loins, knew that there is a constitutional provision to protect congress critters heading to the chamber for a vote.

Then he tells us he took an Ambien, which is some sort of sleeping pill, and combined it with some sort of anti-nausea drug. This pill combination caused him to get up out of bed and begin his strange exercise in sleep-driving to a congressional vote that the meds caused him to believe he had to do.

When all of this was not enough, Patrick resorted to the option of last resort. He admitted he had a "problem" and checked himself into the Mayo clinic. You see, at the Mayo clinic he will be safe. Patient info will not be divulged, it's far from his home state, the incident will be forgotten.

Just when you finally think you've heard it all, Patrick then tells us, as he continues to urinate upon our feet, that he had a woman who was a witness to his sleep-driving and will attest to the fact that he had nothing to drink that night. Well why didn't Patrick tell us this earlier for God's sake?

We also have the capitol police who aid and abet criminals such as Patrick Kennedy by giving them a cushy ride home, far away from such as breathalyzers and other annoyances.

Now we discover that young Patrick has a history of driving cars that do not follow human commands. Only one month ago the man was stopped in Rhode Island and folks get a load of this citation as completed by Patrick Kennedy. It looks like a four-year-old wrote it.



One of these days Patrick Kennedy is going to kill somebody. Likely that somebody will be an innocent citizen, one of the middle class who carry this country on their back. Perhaps PK will kill a child.

When that happens Patrick Kennedy will, of course, immediately unzip his pants and begin doing what he does best. Then he’ll tell you it’s raining.

From the WAPO:

While Kennedy, the 38-year-old son of Ted Kennedy, was widely reported to have held a news conference Friday, it was nothing of the sort. He read a statement designed to elicit sympathy, saying he was going into rehab, and took no questions. This amounted to an age-old damage-control technique: changing the subject.



Kennedy refused to respond to questions about his crashing into a Capitol police barrier at 2:45 a.m. Thursday and whether he had been drinking -- as one Hill bartender told the Boston Herald -- or, as he has maintained, was in a stupor caused by Ambien and another prescription drug. The story gained the whiff of a cover-up when a Capitol Police supervisor blocked any sobriety test.

The Al-Queda Letter of Woe
Here is another tidbit that should not be a tidbit. In fact, had the soldiers of World War II chanced upon a document written by a high ranking German soldier who admits the Nazis are losing the war, the American public would have been overwhelmed by the screaming headlines.

Last week, Centcom found a similar document as the WWII hypothetical document described above. Not only are the headlines silent, one would be hard pressed to find any mention of this document save across the Blogosphere.

From Powerline.com we read this excerpt from just such a letter.

The policy followed by the brothers in Baghdad is a media oriented policy without a clear comprehensive plan to capture an area or an enemy center. Other words, the significance of the strategy of their work is to show in the media that the Americans and the government do not control the situation and there is resistance against them. This policy dragged us to the type of operations that are attracted to the media, and we go to the streets from time to time for more possible noisy operations which follow the same direction.

Or, again, Centcom quotes a translated document:

Al Qaida in Iraq attacks Mosques and other public places to draw media attention and is having difficulty recruiting members because the people of Iraq do not support its cause.

These Al Qaida terrorists admit that they stage events just for the benefit of the media! And right above, bolded, is the letter writer's admission that the people of Iraq do not support Al Qaida. This is a terrorist admitting this!

Captain's Quarters has the entire letter with an excellent analysis.

The Kook Who Attacked Rumsfeld

Recall the fellow who accused Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld of lying about the Iraq war. His name is Ray McGovern and he is allegedly a former CIA Analyst.

During the press conference, McGovern asked Rumsfeld why he lied about Iraqi WMD's. The guy was on his way out when Rumsfeld said no, that he'll respond to McGovern's hostile questioning.

For a few days McGovern was a darling of the media, appearing on all the cable news shows and lauded for how he "spoke to power".

Now we discover that not only is this McGovern character part of the CIA anti-American cabal before he got kicked out on his ear, he is also, well "kook" works here.

Seems that McGovern, as far back as 1993, was a bit of a hell-raiser. For Ray McGovern didn't take kindly to the notion that his daughter could never be a priest in the Catholic church.

From Tboyle.net:

TURMOIL AT HOLY TRINITY PARISH

At Sunday School, in 1993, Christin McGovern and the other sophomores of Holy Trinity parish in Washington, D.C., were studying the sacraments. When the teacher got to holy orders, young Christin said she wasn't interested in learning about a sacrament she couldn't receive. Her father Ray, decided his daughter was right and a few week later began standing throughout Mass to protest the exclusion of women from holy orders. The "Standing," as it became known, and how the parish grappled with it are the subjects of James Naughton's book Catholics in Crisis: An American Parish Fights for Its Soul. (Addison-Wesley. pp 273-24)...

When the theologically sophisticated Ray McGovern is given an opportunity to explain his protest to his fellow parishioners, he centers his talk around the question, "Why can't mommies be priests?" He notes that just a few years ago, mommies could not be doctors or lawyers either.

McGovern continued his protest up until 1998.
From Our Ladyswarriors.org

Call to Action 1998 Conference Detailed Agenda

Justice for Women: A Matter of Conscience

Ray McGovern has made a sustained witness against the subordination of women in our Church: his silent standing and stole-wearing at parish Mass in Washington, DC is described in Jim Naughton's book, Catholics in Crisis. Ray speaks personally about why he did it (including a young daughter's dismay at being told one sacrament is off limits), the volatile reaction of a progressive but fearful parish, and the lessons learned. He challenges other men to join the struggle. McGovern spent 26 years as a foreign affairs analyst for the CIA. He and his wife Rita have five adult children. Sat., 1:30 PM and 8 PM. Incl. Q/A.

But of course Ray McGovern is a Catholic and has the right to protest Catholic church rules with which he does not agree. An argument his admirers might make, as I suppose. I also suppose that there are kooks in this world than there are kooks. This background reveals a lot of Ray McGovern and the sorts of people who populated this country's CIA for the past 25 years.

Hardly the sort of pundit the public will respect, I'd argue.

A Glimpse Into African Misery

A family in Zimbabwe needs to make $41 million dollars a month in order to survive with just the basics. The problem, what with 60% unemployment, the average Zimbabwean only brings home $4 million a month.

You read correctly. The inflation rate in Zimbabwe is 1000 percent. One U.S. dollar is equal to $101,000 in Zimbabwe currency. Robert Mugabe is the vaunted leader of Zimbabwe. Mugabe seized all farming land once plowed by commercial interests in that country ostensibly to return to the land to Zimbabwean citizens.

It's a mess folks, no mind how Bono implores us to send our money to these awful leaders.

Economics might bring change to Zimbabwe quicker that politics ever could.

From Timesonline:

Visitors arriving at Harare's smart, modernistic airport quickly become millionaires simply by changing $10 at the official rate of Z$101,000 (55p) to the US dollar. The black market rate is roughly double that. "Yes, I am a millionaire - a millionaire who can afford nothing at all," Mr Chikamba says. "Zimbabweans are all millionaires today.

We are a country of millionaires, but it goes nowhere and no one has anything."

Bird Flu Weapons of Mass Destruction

The lovely North Korean Dictator, Kim Jong-Il, has turned his efforts from selling nuclear materials to our enemies and is now busy trying to weaponize the bird flu.

From World Net Daily:

LONDON-The pariah state of North Korea is trying to weaponize the bird flu virus, making it the ideal threat for al-Qaida, the British intelligence agency MI6 has learned

This will NOT be an easy thing to do, yea it's probably impossible. As lovely as the terrorists would have it, such as virus’ simply do not spread well when delivered by rocket or other such device.

Kim Jong, however, needs some quick cash as the world is on to his little projects such as selling WMD's to our enemies. Since his exports are so often being stopped as they travel the high seas, good ole Kim needs other products to keep his market eager.

The U.N. In Action

Okay, the U.N. can do nothing about the genocide in Darfur. It can't send U.N. troops because, well because there are NO U.N. troops unless it's Americans wearing blue helmets.

Is it too much to expect the U.N. to police its own workers? For about forever we've been hearing about U.N. peace workers and how they exploit the very people they are supposed to protect.

Oh, wait. The U.N. will "look into the matter". They've been looking into it for over four years. Still the abuse goes on.

From BBC.com:

Young girls are the most vulnerable

Young girls in Liberia are still being sexually exploited by aid workers and peacekeepers despite pledges to stamp out such abuse, Save the Children says.

Girls as young as eight are being forced to have sex in exchange for food by workers for local and international agencies, according to its report.

The agency says such abuse is continuing as people displaced by the civil war return to their villages.

The UN in Liberia said it would investigate specific allegations.

The United Nations promised to put safeguards in place after sexual abuse in the refugee camps of West Africa was first revealed four years ago.

The Killing of Atwar Bahjat

Atwar Bahjat was an Iraqi Journalist. She worked for Al Arabiya newspaper and she loved her country.

Atwar Bahjat was brutally murdered. Brutally.

Atwar Bahjat spoke "truth to power". Read about how she died.

From the Mudville Gazette:

We now know that it was not that swift for Bahjat. First she was stripped to the waist, a humiliation for any woman but particularly so for a pious Muslim who concealed her hair, arms and legs from men other than her father and brother.

Then her arms were bound behind her back. A golden locket in the shape of Iraq that became her glittering trademark in front of the television cameras must have been removed at some point - it is nowhere to be seen in the grainy film, which was made by someone who pointed a mobile phone at her as she lay on a patch of earth in mortal terror.

By the time filming begins, the condemned woman has been blindfolded with a white bandage.

It is stained with blood that trickles from a wound on the left side of her head. She is moaning, although whether from the pain of what has already been done to her or from the fear of what is about to be inflicted is unclear.

Just as Bahjat bore witness to countless atrocities that she covered for her television station, Al-Arabiya, during Iraq's descent into sectarian conflict, so the recording of her execution embodies the depths of the country's depravity after three years of war.

A large man dressed in military fatigues, boots and cap approaches from behind and covers her mouth with his left hand. In his right hand, he clutches a large knife with a black handle and an 8in blade. He proceeds to cut her throat from the middle, slicing from side to side.

Her cries - "Ah, ah, ah" - can be heard above the "Allahu akbar" (God is greatest) intoned by the holder of the mobile phone.

Even then, there is no quick release for Bahjat. Her executioner suddenly stands up, his job only half done. A second man in a dark T-shirt and camouflage trousers places his right khaki boot on her abdomen and pushes down hard eight times, forcing a rush of blood from her wounds as she moves her head from right to left.

Only now does the executioner return to finish the task. He hacks off her head and drops it to the ground, then picks it up again and perches it on her bare chest so that it faces the film-maker in a grotesque parody of one of her pieces to camera.

The voice of one of the Arab world's most highly regarded and outspoken journalists has been silenced. She was 30.

Now tell me about Stephen Colbert and Ray McGovern speaking truth to power.

She WILL Win Dammit

...Even if she has to take money from every sleaze bucket across the planet.

Because ladies and gems, this country NEEDS Hillary Clinton. And if us peons out here in la-la land are too stupid to know it, not to worry. Hill and Bill will take care of it.

Yet another questionable money source for the Hillary Clinton presidential run comes to light. John Burgess owns International Profit Associates. The company is in trouble because of an extensive sexual harassment suit as well as numerous complaints about its fraudulent business practices to the Better Business Bureau.

As for John Burgess, well here's a lovely fellow. He was once charged with soliciting sex from an underage prostitute and he pled guilty. He also pled guilty to a charge of stealing money from a client's bank account.

So we have Ron Burkle, supermarket magnate from the left coast, paying Bill Clinton millions for doing essentially nothing. Now there's the lovely Burgess from the bogus IPA company and let's not forget Hillary's buddy "Daniel" Lee from South Korea, a fellow who had to resign his ambassador post when it was discovered that he controlled a large slush fund for questionable political activities.

Because, ladies and gems, Hillary WILL win.

The country needs her.

From Captainsquartersblog.com:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has collected more than $150,000 in contributions from executives of International Profit Associates, some as recently as September, and spoke at a company event in 2004. As a group, company officials and their spouses are one of the largest sources of contributions to Mrs. Clinton's re-election campaign.

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