Reconstitution 2.0

And wonder of all wonders, they did it. The solar farm experiments going on will continue to expand. This is absolutely great news; in this era of probable Peak Oil and increasing fossil fuel pollution, this was the absolute right thing to do.

As much as it pains me to do it, I have to re-introduce an idiotic talking point from our unnamed Wingtard of the Month, just to re-emphasize how clueless the ‘tards are.

It is the Socialist Environment groups who are now suing the government to stop building solar energy farms in the desert - the same tactic they used to stop off-shore drilling.

And since the ‘tards are clueless, I’ll remind them: Sanders is the former SOCIALIST Mayor of Burlington, Vermont. He sits in the Senate as an Independent, and unlike LIEberman, he actually is one.

The potential of both solar and wind power is tremendous. Wind power, of course, can be rough on the birds, but I am quite sure that belching pollutants into the air constantly probably doesn’t do them a whole lot of good either. With solar, there really are few downsides, and what downsides there are can probably be worked around. The important thing is that we’re still working on it, learning as we go, and setting up a cleaner future for those who follow us.

Thanks, Bernie. Future generations may well owe you big time.

At a U.S. Senate field hearing today, Senator Bernie Sanders extolled the extraordinary potential of solar energy and welcomed a Bureau of Land Management decision to rescind a moratorium on new solar projects. At the outset of the Energy & Natural Resources Committee hearing, Sanders had urged the Bush administration to rescind a “very unfortunate” decision made late last month to place a two-year moratorium on new solar plants on public land in the West. He applauded news of the about face that was e-mailed to senators midway through the hearing.

“I congratulate the bureau for making the change and for understanding the enormous potential of solar energy,” Sanders said. He urged the bureau to devote more resources to processing a growing backlog of applications for permits.

The hearing at the Sandia National Laboratory here was held at Sanders’ request, Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) announced.  It focused on the potential of large-scale solar generating plants that use so-called concentrating solar power. Concentrating plants – like the Nevada Solar One plant Sanders toured yesterday in Boulder, Nev. – use mirrors to aim beams of sunlight toward a fluid.  The liquid is heated and converted to steam that powers a turbine and generates electricity. Photovoltaic technology – like the massive array the senator saw at Nellis Air Force Base and the small solar units atop homes and businesses – converts sunlight on solar panels into electricity.

“This hearing reinforced my view that there is extraordinary potential for concentrating solar in helping us reverse global warming, break our dependence on fossil fuels and create hundreds of thousands of good-paying jobs,” he said afterward. “We have optimum solar resources in the Unites States and we have to take advantage of it.”

Sanders also cited tremendous potential in generating power from wind, geothermal and other clean renewable sources, especially at a time when skyrocketing prices for oil have whetted demand for alternative sources of energy, sources that also would help address the crisis of global warming.  “I hope Congress and a new president will aggressively address this,” he said.

Sanders is the lead sponsor of legislation to encourage the installation of 10 million rooftop solar units on homes and businesses over the next ten years.

Our wingtard of the month for July is going to remain anonymous, as I don’t wish to put a spotlight on him. He’s a private man, and I will endeavor to keep him that way. The way he thinks (or doesn’t think,) however, will both horrify and fascinate you at the same time; It is a topic worthy of discussion, for a lot of reasons which we’ll look at later.

Let us begin by looking at what set this wingtard off, and then we’ll look at it line by line. Repetitive to be sure, but I think it benefits one to read the message in its original context before breaking it down. Here is a piece of an E-Mail chain between our wingtard of the month and a member of the reality-based community:

———- Forwarded message ———-
From:  <wingtard_of_the_month@reconstitution.us>
Date: Thu, Jul 3, 2008 at 2:10 PM
Subject: Re: ANWR
To: reality_based@theworld.com

—–Original Message—–
From: Logical Thinker <reality_based@theworld.com>
To:  Wingtard of the Month <wingtard_of_the_month@reconstitution.us>
Sent: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 12:09 pm
Subject: Re: ANWR

God forbid the country actually try to conserve. We all know people need those 15mpg SUV’s to drive their two kids to soccer games. We don’t need more oil, we need less demand.

Remember, it was the convenient Liar, Al Gore, who said the government should artificially raise the price of gas to $5.00 a gallon. Irregardless of the burdens or suffering it caused people.  It is the Socialist Environment groups who are now suing the government to stop building solar energy farms in the desert - the same tactic they used to stop off-shore drilling.  If the Socialist Elitist(a.k.a. Democratic Party) had not stopped the drilling in ANWR in 2002, we would not now have an oil crisis.  It is the Elist Socialist who have tacked on 85 cents in txes to the $4 gasoline for bread and circus programs to buy off the “poor.  If it were not for these Socialist Elitist Fascist, we would not be depending on foreign oil and the towel heads could do whatever they wanted because we wouldn’t need their oil.  They would be China’s problem, instead of China being our problem.  We would not be risking the life of my son and thousands of other young people to preserve our freedom and standard of living.  And who are you and your Fascist friends to deny Americans free will and free choice.  If a person values their families safety and chooses to protect them in an SUV, that is their American Right.  If you choose to compromise your family’s safety in a puny Prius, that’s your American Right.  You have to be willing to accept the intended and unintended consequences, so if you pull in front of an SUV with your eco-car and it wipes out your family, it was your choice, your optioned consequence.

Environmentalism has become Socialist terrorism.  It has long since passed any relationship to conservation.  Socialist environmentalism has long since passed good sense and smart management.  Socialist environmentalism wants to turn America into Amish Land with out the religious aspect.  Boy Scouts has long taught to leave your sight better than you found it.  That’s far from forbidding controled functioning and management.

There are two things that make human beings different. On is an immortal soul and the other is free will.  The Socialist fascists you are siding with are very successful in stomping on the immortal soul, separating church and state, a doctrine that is only found in the Constitution of the Soviet Socialist Republics.  They are diligently working to stomp out free will, as they feel only they and the government they control are capable of deciding what is good and right for the world.  Think about that environment for your daughters.  Go back and re-read George Orwell’s 1984; is that what you wish for your daughter’s.

I’m sure you are familiar with the Sermon of the three servants who where given coins (talents) by their master. One invested wisely forgave debt wisely and prospered greatly, one saved at minimal interest and one buried the money. The servant who buried the money was cast out.  The one who saved minimally was stripped of his coins and all of the coins were given to the servant who prospered.  A parable from Jesus which provides a clear understanding as to the will and design of God. Far from the Socialist elitist plan you are following.

It is time to stand up for America, time to stop the America Haters.  America has provided (given, not taken) more wealth to the world that any other country.  America has provided more health benefits in medicine, procedures and equipment than any other country.  In any time of crisis or national diaster, America has provided more aid that anyone else.  America brought peace to Europe.  America rescued Eastern Europe from Communism and look at how those countries are propsering under free enterprise.   America has provided more industrialization to underdeveloped countries to raise their standard of living.  All of this without sacrificing our own standard of living.  Only countries that refused these changes and modernization are suffering - based on their political decisions.

Time to realize that no government can make you happy.  America is lead by it’s people.  So be a leader, not a robot.  Do what you believe, don’t wait.  Put solar panels on your roof.  Trade in your cars for hybrids.  Till up your back yard and grow vegetables for the summer and winter.  Make your own clothes.  Home school the girls.  Stand up and do the life style you support.  Don’t be afraid.  Don’t be embarrassed.  Because  of freewill, that is your God given right.  As it still stands today, you can live any way you want in America.  The Amish are not ashamed.  The Menonites are not ashamed.  Choose your lifestyle and live it, don’t be a hypocrite. But don’t impose your choices on me or my children.  We’ll choose our own.  I choose less government, because true history teaches us that less government is more productive.

And no, I don’t support John McCain; he is a rino.  But I am scared to death of what would happen to America if Obama Hussein and his Socialist Fascist cronies take over.

P.S.  My Jaq only gets 19 mph (93 octane);  the Mustang GT get 18 mpg (93 octane);  and the 4 cylinder Escort with the turbo charger get 17 mpg (93 octane).  None are SUV’s.  Do you want to take both my cars and my guns away from me?  I earned them. I paid for them.   And I’m willing to pay the price to enjoy them.  That’s what America is about; working for and enjoying success, not punishing it.  Now your buddy wants to add on taxes to my stock portfolio.  The government did nothing to help me get to my situation.  I used after tax money.  I took the risks!  I suffered the losses. I enjoyed the gains.  Now Obama Hussein wants to punish that. That’s not the American way.  The median income is not $30,000.00, it is $90,000.  If some people are willing to sell their talents short, that is their choice.  There is no right of government to be Robin Hood.

Less government, less taxes, more freedom!

I have not changed a punctuation mark of this message chain besides rearranging its order and blacking out the recipients. What you see is a very real exchange, as hard as that might be to believe.

Let us now highlight some of the idiotic talking points, and give them the standard Reconstitution treatment, shall we?

Remember, it was the convenient Liar, Al Gore, who said the government should artificially raise the price of gas to $5.00 a gallon. Irregardless of the burdens or suffering it caused people.  It is the Socialist Environment groups who are now suing the government to stop building solar energy farms in the desert - the same tactic they used to stop off-shore drilling.  If the Socialist Elitist(a.k.a. Democratic Party) had not stopped the drilling in ANWR in 2002, we would not now have an oil crisis.

Do you believe this bullshit? This idiot thinks that environmentalists stopped the solar energy farms. Where in the HELL did he pull that one up from? And even more stunning, this moron apparently believes that ANWR would have fixed all of our energy problems already, in spite of absolutely no one in either Government or the oil industry saying anything of the sort. 10 YEARS is a conservative estimate of how long it’ll take to get the first barrel, and even then at most there may be 18 months’ worth of oil. This passage shows us just how selfish the average wingtard actually is; they want what they want, and the hell with ANYONE trying to stop them! And don’t bother me with your frigging facts and figures either!!!

Yeah, that one was a stomach churner…. but there’s more…

It is the Elist Socialist who have tacked on 85 cents in txes to the $4 gasoline for bread and circus programs to buy off the “poor.  If it were not for these Socialist Elitist Fascist, we would not be depending on foreign oil and the towel heads could do whatever they wanted because we wouldn’t need their oil.  They would be China’s problem, instead of China being our problem.  We would not be risking the life of my son and thousands of other young people to preserve our freedom and standard of living.  And who are you and your Fascist friends to deny Americans free will and free choice.  If a person values their families safety and chooses to protect them in an SUV, that is their American Right.  If you choose to compromise your family’s safety in a puny Prius, that’s your American Right.  You have to be willing to accept the intended and unintended consequences, so if you pull in front of an SUV with your eco-car and it wipes out your family, it was your choice, your optioned consequence.

Do you believe that this idiot has a son in the service, who could easily get killed any day, and STILL believes this bullshit? Have I not said that if Chimpy sent all the wingtards’ daughters off to China to work as “comfort women” to pay off those debts he racked up, that the wingtards would find a way to blame it on Clinton? This wingtard is prepared to blame anyone but the CAUSE of the problem for the situation he finds his son in. Shocked enough? If not, I am sure you just love how this idiot thinks that we have a RIGHT to gobble up as much of a finite resource as we want, no matter who may actually be in possession of it. Using his logic, the next time I get hungry, would it be OK to bust into this moron’s house, knock him in the head, and swipe whatever he has in his fridge? Apparently the answer to that is “yes.” And again, this wingtard is showing his ignorance, as figures are readily available that show that there are MORE deaths per mile from SUV travel than there are from economy car travel. Wrong, again.

Since I can barely stomach reading this talking-points wingtard trash, I’ll excerpt one more section and be done with it.

There are two things that make human beings different. On is an immortal soul and the other is free will.  The Socialist fascists you are siding with are very successful in stomping on the immortal soul, separating church and state, a doctrine that is only found in the Constitution of the Soviet Socialist Republics.  They are diligently working to stomp out free will, as they feel only they and the government they control are capable of deciding what is good and right for the world.  Think about that environment for your children.  Go back and re-read George Orwell’s 1984; is that what you wish for your children.

I’m sure you are familiar with the Sermon of the three servants who where given coins (talents) by their master. One invested wisely forgave debt wisely and prospered greatly, one saved at minimal interest and one buried the money. The servant who buried the money was cast out.  The one who saved minimally was stripped of his coins and all of the coins were given to the servant who prospered.  A parable from Jesus which provides a clear understanding as to the will and design of God. Far from the Socialist elitist plan you are following.

It is time to stand up for America, time to stop the America Haters.  America has provided (given, not taken) more wealth to the world that any other country.  America has provided more health benefits in medicine, procedures and equipment than any other country.  In any time of crisis or national diaster, America has provided more aid that anyone else.  America brought peace to Europe.  America rescued Eastern Europe from Communism and look at how those countries are propsering under free enterprise.   America has provided more industrialization to underdeveloped countries to raise their standard of living.  All of this without sacrificing our own standard of living.  Only countries that refused these changes and modernization are suffering - based on their political decisions.

Classic projection, with a side-order of bullshit. Thanks to mindless wingtard Chimpleton worshipers like this one, we are LIVING 1984, an era in which you can trust nothing-not politicians, not law enforcement officials, not the justice system, and sure as hell not the press. We also learn in these passages that this intellectual titan knows nothing of the writings of Jefferson, Adams, or Jesus Christ-yet he feels expert enough to try to tell someone else what it was these men believed. And we all know how “well” quite a few of the countries “freed” from Communism have fared, among them Yugoslavia, Albania, and Russia. Of the three aforementioned, Yugoslavia no longer exists, and Serbia, its biggest Republic, is still dealing with a dramatic drop in their standard of living and the aftereffects of years of fraternal war with other Yugoslav regions. Albania was plunged into a nightmare world of chaos from which she only recently emerged, and Russia saw a stunning collapse of their standard of living that was only halted by the sharp rise in the price of oil. And who in the hell is stupid enough to believe that America “provided the industries” to places like China and India in order to “raise their standard of living?” Where do you get this kind of crap from? The Indian poor are substantially worse off in this era of “free” trade, and China is being turned into a bubbling cesspool of filth. American corporations don’t give a damn about the standard of living anywhere they go-just ask one of the tens of millions of American workers cut loose so American firms could move to China or India and provide those big fat bonuses to their CEOs.

Can you now see why I am so dismissive of the wingtards? How can I even begin to have a discussion with someone who doesn’t know what in the hell is actually going on? I am so sick of them that these days as soon as I hear a talking point, I’m on the attack. They’ve cheerfully sent kids off to die, fucked the financial resources of this nation for at least 50 years, and wiped their asses with our Constitution-all in the name of “freedom.”

If this is what the wingtards mean by “freedom,” then buddy, give me that socialism….

Truly a great moment for our President as he tours an area of spectacular devastation.

On this July 4th, you should take a moment or two to reflect at how far we’ve fallen from that which we used to be.

America has always stumbled here and there, but American notions of justice and humanity were firmly enshrined in the hearts and minds of many Americans in the World War II era. We were going to show the world we had the better way by the only means that makes a difference in peoples’ minds-we were going to live by our words. People will be able to cite individual examples of where our words and our deeds didn’t match up, but there was a real commitment to American priniples from top to bottom in this country.

Then, of course, McCarthyism and “Red scares” started to alter a lot of peoples’ thinking. The horror stories of Stalinist brutality in the USSR, China, and North Korea frightened the hell out of Americans, newly prosperous and living out their suburban dream lives. A lot of Americans began to agree with some neofascists in this country who insisted that in the name of American “freedom,” our ends justified our means. Americans felt little outrage at some of our own behavior in places like Korea and Indochina, which caused Cambodia’s Prince Sihanouk to remark that “Americans will not be moved by the killing of yellow people.” We had begun a slow turn away from the principles that made our way a better one, and the world took note; it was largely due to indiscriminate American bombing in Cambodia that the Pol Pot regime was able to take over in Cambodia and begin a genocide that wiped several million Cambodians off the Earth. American atrocities at My Lai in Vietnam surely assisted the aims of the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong, who won the war against us in South Vietnam largely because the South Vietnamese welcomed the Communists as “anybody but us.” Cuba was overrun by Fidel Castro in no small part because of our support for the brutal and corrupt regime of Batista in Havana, and most of the rest of Central America developed an abiding hatred of us due to CIA behavior in places like Guatemala, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Panama, and Colombia. We have, from time to time, tried to retool ourselves to adhering to our WWII-era principles, but the wingtards always drag us back to the gutter. We “destroy the village in order to save it” way too often.

But this is perhaps the most telling example of how far we’ve actually turned away from the principles that once guided us. We once decried the torture tactics used by North Korean and Chinese operatives to extract false “confessions” from brutalized American POWs, but in the era of the chickenhawks now infesting the upper echelons of Government, we no longer decry Chinese torture methods-we copy them. Yes, down at Gitmo (and without a doubt in Iraq and Afghanistan,) Americans have been going “by the book” when they interrogate detainees. The problem is, they’re going by Mao and Kim Il Sung’s book, and applying tortures not only long outlawed under the Geneva Conventions, but well known to produce little to nothing in the way of useful information. Americans who were outraged at the treatment of our soldiers at the hands of the Koreans, Chinese, and Vietnamese can now put their anger aside, because we’re all the same now. Brutality in American policy is exactly the same brutality that people like John McCavein experienced as prisoners of war. McCavein’s interrogators and American interrogators read from the exact same script.

Is it, as the cowardly wingtards like to say, “un-American” to decry what our Government is doing? Are we supposed to just sit there, silent, as this vicious pack of deranged scum makes a mockery of everything this country is supposed to stand for? What emotion can any of us feel upon seeing how our Government behaves itself, except shame? Are we going to sign on for 4 more years of this? If we do, will this country even be recognizable to those of us who still remember how we once were, or at least how we were trying to be?

In November, we’ll find out for sure just how far we’ve come. We’ll know once and for all if the majority of us are too scared to step up and do the right thing. The election of John McCavein, who is now surrounding hikmself with the proteges of Karl Rove, would signal to the world that we approve of the brutality and stupidity of the Boy Blunder. America, in the eyes of the world, would cease to exist as a society worth trying to engage.

Quite frankly, America will cease to exist as a worthwhile society in the eyes of a lot of Americans, too. Let us hope that we will at least try to turn away from the cliff right in front of us, instead of charging over it as we did in 2004.

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Some methods were used against a small number of prisoners at Guantánamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military. The C.I.A. is still authorized by President Bush to use a number of secret “alternative” interrogation methods.

Several Guantánamo documents, including the chart outlining coercive methods, were made public at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing June 17 that examined how such tactics came to be employed.

But committee investigators were not aware of the chart’s source in the half-century-old journal article, a connection pointed out to The New York Times by an independent expert on interrogation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Albert D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.

Those orchestrated confessions led to allegations that the American prisoners had been “brainwashed,” and provoked the military to revamp its training to give some military personnel a taste of the enemies’ harsh methods to inoculate them against quick capitulation if captured.

In 2002, the training program, known as SERE, for Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape, became a source of interrogation methods both for the C.I.A. and the military. In what critics describe as a remarkable case of historical amnesia, officials who drew on the SERE program appear to have been unaware that it had been created as a result of concern about false confessions by American prisoners.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said after reviewing the 1957 article that “every American would be shocked” by the origin of the training document.

“What makes this document doubly stunning is that these were techniques to get false confessions,” Mr. Levin said. “People say we need intelligence, and we do. But we don’t need false intelligence.”

Before we begin, let me take the time to issue a rebuttal.

I have heard a few separate complaints in the last week about my use of the term “the moronic monkey” to describe the lifetime failure and obvious idiot now occupying the Oval Office. One of the complainants went so far as to accuse me of using “MoveOn talking points” and “drinking the MoveOn kool aid.”

Anyone who thinks this is an idiot, or is severely comprehension-challenged. I don’t have anything to say about MoveOn one way or the other, because I honestly don’t believe I’ve ever seen one of their ads, or visited their website. What you have to understand, is that people capable of independent thought can look at what’s going on today and come up with LOGICAL conclusions, as opposed to wingtards, who wait for the RNC and Sean Hannity to supply them with their conclusions. I don’t doubt that MoveOn, or the DNC, are going to see a lot of things the same way I see them. I also don’t doubt that they probably do NOT agree with a lot of what I say. So be it; Reconstitution isn’t partisan, and one of us has flat-out stated he won’t vote for Obama. I, on the other hand, see Obama as a means to an end, as I’ve said many times here. Worshiping politicians is a tradition of the wingtards, and it’s a practice I don’t intend to engage in. I will make my decisions based on whatever seems to me to be the most direct course to the ends I’d like to see achieved.

Anyway…. since “the moronic monkey” seems to bother so many people, I will omit it from my postings for awhile. What I will not do is replace it with “the President,” or any other term that suggests I respect the present occupant of the White House. I have the same contempt for him that he has for me, and my country.

Now that I’ve gotten THAT out of the way…

Looks like Admiral Mullen has decided to become another seditious surrender monkey. Where was he when the Boy Blunder laid out the new definition of “appeasement?” Doesn’t Mullen realize that the act of talking to a bad guy is an act of surrender? I cannot believe that Admiral Mullen has strayed so far from the reservation on this! Something must be done, I tell you!!!

Yeah, I know…. North Korea. But THAT was different. The DPRK, after all, doesn’t sit anywhere near an oilfield, does it? Admiral Mullen really needs to get his head right and fall in line, lest he wind up sitting on the porch with Shineski, Pace, Fallon, Abazaid, Sanchez, and the rest of the surrender monkeys.

An Iranian leader said on Wednesday he detected a better mood in talks over his country’s nuclear program as the top U.S. military officer called for more dialogue to avoid a confrontation with Tehran.

Tensions have flared in recent days amid reports Israel is planning for a possible strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, sending crude oil prices near record highs.

But Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said he did not think the United States or Israel would attack Iran at least through January, when the Bush administration ends.

Mottaki also said he saw a “new sort of atmosphere” in nuclear talks with six big powers after a recent approach to Tehran through the European Union.

President George W. Bush reiterated that diplomacy was the first option to address Iran’s nuclear program, but he repeated that Washington had all options on the table.

At the Pentagon, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he believed Tehran was “still on a path to get to nuclear weapons” but stressed he wanted to see the dispute with Iran resolved through peaceful means.

“I’m convinced that the solution still lies in using other elements of national power to change Iranian behaviour, including diplomatic, financial and international pressure,” said Mullen, recently returned from a two-day trip to Israel.

“There is a need for better clarity, even dialogue at some level,” he said.

What is this guy drinking? How DARE he want to cozy up to those heathenous murderers. Why is it so hard for Chimpy to get him some officers that know their jobs?

Many years ago, “Shooter” Cheney said that the Iraqi rebellion was in its “last throes.”

He couldn’t have been more wrong about the Iraqi rebellion, but it does appear that this war he loves so much has started to send a key component of his (and his monkey’s) base into their last throes.

It is, of course, no surprise to the aware among us; I grew up in the sticks near a small town, and there were two things that were a constant there; wingtards and poverty. You simply do not make much of a living most of the time if you live in or near one of these places. But right along with the poverty one will encounter in small-town America, one will also find plenty of wingtard ignorance. The small-town voter draws a knife across his or her throat in nearly every election cycle, but in 2004 there seems to have been an almost suicidal component among the “values” voters. What was bound to happen was crystal-clear; it was ALREADY happening. But the “values” set went ahead and played Russian roulette with a loaded revolver by voting for Chimpy in overwhelming numbers.

Those chickens are coming home to roost now, as more and more small town dwellers are discovering that they simply cannot afford to live where they are anymore. In this age where most people work outside the home, the typical small town dweller is usually forced to seek work some distance from his or her home (for a little over 4 years, I had an 80 mile round trip every day to get to my job, because there was simply nothing to do where I was living.) Chimpy’s Glorious Oedipal War on Iraq, the moronic monkey’s saber-rattling at Iran, the growing demands by countries like China and India for Middle Eastern oil, and-last but not least-Chimpy’s devastation of the dollar through his drunken-sailor borrowing policies, have combined to send the price of oil to a level that has put his most fervent supporters in a tightening vise. They may have loved their monkey so much that they refused to part with him in spite of all the dark clouds gathering over their heads, but they are now going to pay dearly for their blind worship of a useless moron.

I have to be honest here-I don’t know if this is such a bad thing. I’m from the sticks, and I loved the freedom that living in a rural area afforded me-but even as a teenager, I was growing increasingly skeptical of “conservatism” as I saw it practiced locally. If the wingtard “values” are so ingrained in small town America that they canot be separated from the small town dweller, then maybe the disappearance of small towns isn’t the worst calamity that could happen. Long-term, it will undoubtedly be of some benefit to the environment, as cities are usually better-equipped to take care of things like waste and sewage. There may be another advantage to living in a larger urban setting though, and that’s the value of getting to know and understand other cultures. The era of “white flight” is directly responsible for the mess we now find ourselves in, as millions of isolated voters continued to vote against their own interests, and the well-being of the United States, based on a warped sense of others in America. The loss of that isolation means that many fervent wingtards are about to be introduced to a world that many of us have known, and struggled in, all our lives. It could be an invaluable education.

My father told me that when he was younger, it was the whites who lived in the cities, and the minorities that got pushed out to the exurban areas. Chimpy has set down a policy that may indeed bring back a revival of whites in the cities-but his economic policies almost guarantee that the cities, while growing in numbers, are also going to shrink in actual size, meaning that minority populations aren’t likely to be shoved out into the sticks. It sounds like it’s time for all of us to heed Rodney King and learn to just get along.

Leeton, Missouri - In this small town south of Warrensburg, directions usually begin with, “From Casey’s, you go …”

That would be Casey’s General Store, the only gas station in town. It’s where folks fill up while talking about goings-on, politics, weather and who’s got the best-looking tomatoes.

These days, they’re also cussing and shaking their heads about the price of that gasoline. People are doing that everywhere, but in small towns such as Leeton, population 619, it’s even more of a gut punch because nearly every working adult commutes to jobs elsewhere.

These days, there had better be a really good job on the other end of that trip.

Don Campbell’s daily commute to Kansas City - about 100 miles each way - costs him roughly $866 a month at $3.90 per gallon. But he’s a union iron worker (also a class despised by the wingtards. ~JR)and says he can make the math work.

Most of his neighbors can’t. For them and thousands of other small-town residents across the country who drive long distances to jobs that pay little more than minimum wage, the high cost of gas is making that daily commute cost-prohibitive.

So much so that economists predict that over the next few years, the country could see a migration that would greatly reduce the population of Small Town America - resulting in a painful shift away from lifestyle, family roots, traditions and school ties.

“This town’s the only place I know,” said Louie Rector, who drives 35 miles to his job at a window factory from his home in tiny Dixon, Mo., about 20 miles west of Rolla.

“I grew up here … raised my kids here. I got my family and friends all here. I don’t want to pack up and leave. But it’s getting to the point where a fella can’t afford to drive to work, and that don’t seem right to me.”

Towns such as Dixon and Leeton are everywhere in America. Many don’t have much beyond a post office, a grocery and maybe a school. Economists use Wymore, Neb., as an example in that 68 percent of working adults in town commute to jobs elsewhere, most to Beatrice, Neb.

The expected exodus from small towns, said Don Macke, a widely considered authority on rural economics and head of the Center for Rural Entrepreneurship in Lincoln, Neb., will be far more profound than the gradual erosion that has been going on since World War II. That decline was due to the country’s shift away from an agrarian economy and a choice for convenience: People wanted to be closer to jobs, shopping and entertainment.

The new flight, Macke thinks, will be more out of necessity.

Most commuters from small towns are high school graduates. They are driving 50 miles or more to work as school cooks, hospital aides, office workers, dental assistants and unskilled factory workers.

“The reality is that those jobs don’t pay all that well,” said Macke, who is also a visiting scholar with the Rural Policy Research Institute at the University of Missouri. “They’re spending up to $500 a month on gas. A third to half is already technically working poor.

“And as gas goes higher, they will get poorer and these towns will soon struggle to hold on to these people.”

David McGranahan, a senior economist with the Economic Research Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, added that the decline would not be entirely longtime residents moving away.

“Young people who leave these towns to go off to college or the military may decide not to go back - as many have always done in years past,” McGranahan said. “Also, fewer people will leave the city to move to small towns in search of a quiet life.”

But nobody is writing off small towns. Who knows what type of vehicle will come along next? There’s carpooling. Computer technology increasingly allows people to work from home. And some communities are working on ways to provide jobs in town.

“I have a lot of faith in ingenuity and the entrepreneurial spirit,” Macke said.

That rescue better happen fast, said Leeton Mayor Larry Mudd. He has lived all his 62 years there and used to commute to Kansas City to work as a school administrator - back when gas was cheap.

He hears the talk around town and he expects to see people, particularly young families, move away.

“People are mad as hell, but they don’t know who to blame,” Mudd said. “I know we got people here who are buying gas instead of paying bills.

“What a lot of towns are going to end up with is a bunch of empty buildings and empty houses.”

They don’t know who to blame? Are there no mirrors left in small town America?

The pious, Jesus-spitting “Family Values” empty suit in the White House sure practices a strange brand of Christianity. In this country, he’s done everything in his power to strip the poor of all the silver he can shake out of them in order to transfer that silver to his rich cronies. Unless the eye of a needle is a hell of a lot bigger than it used to be, Chimpy has condemned most of his peers to an eternity of suffering. Chimpy has also invented Christian issues like the banning of gay marriage, the justification for which simply does not exist anywhere in the New Testament. I don’t want to call Chimpy the Antichrist, because I really don’t think the Dark Prince would send somebody that stupid to do his bidding, but I think Chimpy must have a severe reading problem; he gets just about all of Christ’s pronouncements ass-backwards.

No better example of Chimpy’s reverse Christianity exists than in Iraq, which has been destroyed so that Chimpy’s rich buddies can get their hands on all that oil (and it couldn’t be any clearer by now that oil was always what Iraq was about, since we know now that the US has been heavily involved in writing Iraq’s oil law. If you still believe that Iraq was ever about anything but the oil, you’re probably too far gone to be reading this; go check out Blogs for Victory instead.) In the process of destroying Iraq, Chimpy has also destroyed one of the larger outposts of Christianity in the Middle East. As you can see in this story, a Christian in Iraq has two choices these days; flee or die. The delusional Nero of Washington has set the lions of war loose on the Christian community in Iraq, while his rich cronies cheer from the stands and his Chimpleton worshipers all give the Iraqi Christians a big “thumbs down.”

Among the other things that Chimpy will be remembered for when history is written should be that the great Christian man was personally responsible for wiping out a fairly sizable outpost of Christianity. Chimpy has done for the Christian faith in the Middle East what Hitler did for Judaism in Europe.

And yet, about 1 in 5 of us think he’s the second coming. The capacity for stupidity in Americans is way too large, isn’t it?

“The room is full of children, it’s full of women, but I don’t see the men. Where are they?” Pelley remarked.

“They are mainly killed. Some are kidnapped. Some are killed. In the last six months things have got particularly bad for the Christians. Here in this church, all of my leadership were originally taken and killed,” White explained. “All dead. But we never got their bodies back. This is one of the problems. I regularly do funerals here but it’s not easy to get the bodies.”

Many Iraqi Christians’ churches are destroyed or abandoned. The congregation is smuggled in and out of this secret sanctuary. Even letting 60 Minutes come to the service was a terrible risk. White is among the last Christian ministers here, a savior with crosses to bear. Larger than life, stricken with MS, and by his own reckoning, driven a little bit mad.

He was first sent to Baghdad by the Archbishop of Canterbury nine years ago, well before the Christian persecution.

“You were here during Saddam’s reign. And now after. Which was better? Which was worse?” Pelley asked.

“The situation now is clearly worse” than under Saddam, White replied.

“There’s no comparison between Iraq now and then,” he told Pelley. “Things are the most difficult they have ever been for Christians. Probably ever in history. They’ve never known it like now.”

“Wait a minute, Christians have been here for 2,000 years,” Pelley remarked.

“Yes,” White said.

“And it’s now the worst it has ever been,” Pelley replied.

To understand the history of Iraqi Christianity, start with the Last Supper. One saint to the right of Jesus is the Apostle Thomas, who took the gospel and headed east after the death of Christ.

In modern times, under Saddam, Christians were treated much the same as Muslims; Saddam’s right hand man, Tariq Aziz, was Christian.

Before the war, it’s estimated there were about a million Christians in Iraq. They were a small minority, but free to worship, free to build churches, and free to speak the ancient language of Jesus, Aramaic. But, after the invasion, Muslim militants launched a war on each other and the cross.

On Sunday, Aug. 1, 2004, five churches were bombed. The Iraqi Christian community, which had survived invasions by Mongols and Turks, was driven out under American occupation. No one can be sure, but White estimates most of Iraq’s Christians have fled or been killed. Those still here are too old, too ill or too poor to run.

“Why are you feeding them all?” Pelley asked.

“Because, this is the only decent meal they’ll have in the week,” White explained. “They can’t afford food. So we’re just moving from every other week to every week because they’ve got nothing.”

Nothing for many, not even their families. The 60 Minutes team was confronted with one of many stories of depravity as the congregation left.

“Outside the church service this gentleman put these pictures in my hand. I can’t show you the pictures. They’re just too much. They’re pictures of his children. His daughter who was 15 years old. And his son who was about four years old. They’ve both been shot in the head,” Pelley said.

His children were killed, the father said, because he ran a liquor store. Liquor stores are typically Christian businesses here, legal, except under the Islamic street justice that rules since the invasion.

“So I hear stories of shootings, death, torturing, kidnapping, mutilation. I hear it all,” White told Pelley.

Back in 2004, he reviled the Swift Boat Liars Against the Constitution, but these days Johnny just can’t get enough of them. Just the other day, one of them came to Johnny’s defense against an assertion made by General Wesley Clark (often the recipient of the treatment from scum like the SWLAC himself.) And they’ve been really generous with their contributions to Johnny, as we can see here.

Republican John McCain, who four years ago condemned independent ads challenging Democrat John Kerry’s military record, has accepted nearly $70,000 for his presidential campaign from the top donors of the group behind the attack ads and their relatives, a USA TODAY analysis shows.

That’s nearly four times the amount McCain received from those donors in the 14 years before launching his current campaign at the end of 2006, campaign finance records show.

In 2004, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (later called SwiftVets and POWS for Truth) bankrolled ads charging that Kerry had lied about the incidents in Vietnam that led to his military decorations. The group included former members of the Navy who served in the same kind of river patrol boats as Kerry. McCain, a former Vietnam prisoner of war, called the group’s advertising “dishonest and dishonorable.”

McCain campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds said in an e-mail that McCain accepted the money because the donors are “interested in supporting (his) agenda of reform, prosperity and peace.” He said McCain has been critical of so-called 527 groups — named for the tax code section under which they operate — and argued that “virtually every attack-style 527 group on the airwaves” is aiding Democrat Barack Obama. (a lie, as noted here before. ~JR)

McCavein rejected Parsley, and McCavein rejected Hagee, but he has no problem with a group of equally dishonest, conniving scum because they “support his agenda.” If I remember correctly, they were also big-time supporters of the corruption, warmongering, and incompetence of the moronic monkey-the agenda that got us to where we are right now. Is there any question in your mind now that McCavein is, in fact, running for a third monkey term? There shouldn’t be.

I would like to take a few sconds to address what General Clark said here. What Clark said (that getting shot down doesn’t qualify you to be President) is true, but also inaccurate insofar as McCavein’s total record of service goes. McCavein climbed to the top ecehelons of the Navy before he left, and his overall service record is an admirable one. I don’t think Clark meant for a second to disparage McCavein’s service (and Obama shouldn’t have done the shrinking violet thing when the wingtards started crying.) Clark is not a politician; he’s used to handing out orders, and as we can see from Johnny himself, living that kind of a life will make you a hair ineloquent. Both men are admirable men insofar as their record of serving this country goes, and the wingtard “outrage” at Clark’s statement was purely for the purposes of muddying the waters.

The hysterical wingtard reaction to a fairly bland statement gives us a look at their blueprint for the 2008 election season. They are going to cry like starving babies every time anyone says anything the least bit cross about Johnny, and the MSM is going to aid them in every way that they can. Do not get distracted by the screaming; keep your eye on what Johnny says, and does. And who he associates himself with, too.

I’ve said it enough times that you’re tired of seeing it by now, but I’m going to say it again. A country that shits on the people who sacrifice themselves for it is a country that does not deserve to exist.

Strangely enough, today I won’t be decrying the moronic monkey’s latest middle-fingers to our wounded and disabled veterans. I’ll be decrying what appears to be a mirror image of Chimpy’s policy towards veterans. The Government of Iraq seems to have as much contempt for veterans as ours does. Maybe even more.

Dawoud Ameen, a former Iraqi soldier, lay in bed, his shattered legs splayed before him, worrying about the rent for his family of five.

Mr. Ameen’s legs were shredded by shrapnel from a roadside bomb in September 2006 and now, like many wounded members of the Iraqi security forces, he is deeply in debt and struggling to survive. For now, he gets by on $125 a month brought to him by members of his old army unit, charity and whatever his wife, Jinan, can beg from her relatives. But he worries that he could lose even that meager monthly stipend.

In the United States, the issue of war injuries has revolved almost entirely around the care received by the 30,000 wounded American veterans. But Iraqi soldiers and police officers have been wounded in greater numbers, health workers say, and have been treated far worse by their government.

A number of the half-dozen badly wounded Iraqis interviewed for this article said they had been effectively drummed out of the Iraqi security forces without pensions, or were receiving partial pay and in danger of losing even that. Coping with severe injuries, and often amputations, they have been forced to pay for private doctors or turn to Iraq’s failing public hospitals, which as recently as a year ago were controlled by militias that kidnapped and killed patients — particularly security personnel from rival units.

No one knows the exact number of wounded Iraqi veterans, as the government does not keep track. In a 2006 report by the Congressional Research Service, Maj. Gen. Joseph Peterson, the American commander in charge of Iraqi police training, said that in just two years, from September 2004 to October 2006, about 4,000 Iraqi police officers were killed and 8,000 were wounded.

That number does not include soldiers in the Iraqi Army, who are far more numerous than the police and, Iraqi commanders say, have suffered injuries at a far greater rate.

Human decency seems to be lacking in politicians, wherever they may be. Iraq has had a financial windfall of staggeringsize from the runup in the price of oil-and they can’t even throw a few bones to the soldiers and policemen who have been utterly destroyed due to their service. THIS is the Government that so many of OUR soldiers are being busted up for. We’re spending 12 billion dollars a month to prop THIS up.

The way they operate, is it any wonder they NEED propping up?

No, I don’t mean that all of a sudden GM has found a way to get around all of its own bad business decisions and knows the secret to surviving the ravages of The Bush Economic Miracle. I mean that GM stock prices are now at a level last seen back when the Cunninghams, Fonzie, Potsie, and all their friends were rocking ’round the clock.

Who could have predicted that this would happen? Not the supposedly business-savvy Chimpy, in spite of his MBA. Not the execs at General Motors, all of who appear to have been asleep during the entire period of 1974-1982. Not the American people, who seem to be suffering from a similar narcolepsy. Apparently it was only me and a few other people in the blogosphere who were awake during that entire time period and knew what had to happen.

There is something else that has to happen, and soon. Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter paid a heavy price for setting this country on a conservation path, but they did the right thing. Saint Ronnie benefited massively from the emphasis on conservation launched in the Ford and Carter eras; without it, I am pretty sure his economic expansion would have been a joke. Right now, we have a President and a CONgress who seem to be able to do nothing but trade accusations as the country slides down an oil-slicked path right to bankruptcy and national Depression. We need, in the worst possible way, for the Federal Government to again step up and start doing some leading. People need to understand that the era of the Excursion and the McMansion is over for good this time, and that energy policy is a national security issue. We need to start tightening standards RIGHT NOW, so that a few years from now we again have a little breathing space. And perhaps even more importantly, we have to stop rewarding coeporations who offshore jobs with tax breaks; if anything those corporations need to be penalized for gutting the American commons. The louts who sing the glories of “free” trade are going to have to shut the hell up, and understand that gutting the domestic industrial base has left us completely vulnerable to a loss of way too many goods due to the expense of transportation. Let us now do as Obama has suggested, and begin to hand the tax breaks out to American companies who continue to operate here in the United States.

These measures will not end this crisis for several years, but we know this; we’ve been here before. What these measures will do is put in place the beginning to the end of this crisis. Someone is going to have to step up and begin this process; if the monkey refuses to do his job, then we need some leadership in Congress explaining the need to move forward to the American public.

Yeah, I know. We don’t have any leadership in the present CONgress. And it sucks; for you, for me, for just about everyone save a few of Chimpy’s cronies.

General Motors’ stock price fell on Monday to levels last seen in 1954, as investors fretted over its falling sales and as some analysts wondered if the iconic US automaker’s glory days are in the rearview mirror.

Analysts are questioning if GM will be able to remain a component of the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average stock barometer, which groups some of America’s biggest industrial groups.

The Detroit-based auto giant, which is due to unveil its June sales tally on Tuesday, joined the index of leading stocks on August 31, 1925.

But analysts say its falling sales and troubled finances could put it at risk of being ejected from the index after decades of membership.

Industry analysts say GM’s demise had been triggered for two reasons: rocketing crude oil prices and because consumers are turning away from pickups and other gasoline-guzzling vehicles that the auto-maker rolls off its production lines.

GM’s shares hit a record high of 93.62 dollars on April 24, 2000, but fell at one point Monday to 11.12 dollars, marking its lowest level in over half-a-century. Its shares subsequently closed down slightly at 11.50 dollars.

Since the beginning of June, GM’s share price has tumbled over 35 percent.

“The situation is very serious for GM,” said Rebecca Lindland, an automotive analyst at Global Insight.

She said US automakers partly have an image problem as consumers think they only produce big vehicles, such as sport utility vehicles, and trucks.

The combined market worth of US automakers ranks in the billions of dollars, but plummeting sales and related financial problems have made them vulnerable to potential takeovers, analysts say.

Some analysts point out that GM’s debt mountain, of around 16 billion dollars, could, however, put off possible corporate suitors seeking to acquire a big US automaker.

Potential suitors may also be wary of GM being potentially downgraded from the Dow Jones index, as such a move could make fresh financing harder to win.

Analysts say GM could issue new shares to help bolster its finances, although such a move would be likely to dilute the holdings of existing shareholders.

“GM has to raise capital, that is the problem. GM has to cut the dividend and raise capital, ultimately that is what they will be forced to do, to sell equities and cut the dividend,” said Mace Blicksilver of Marblehead Asset Management.

Any capitalization plan could run afoul of cash-strapped banks, however, who are facing their own losses from the sharp downturn in the US housing market.

“Cash is very limited for everybody and when you couple the very tight credit (squeeze) and combined with very poor automotive sales, then it just aggravates the difficult situation,” Lindland said.

If the credit crisis, which has made it much harder for American consumers to get car loans and credit from stressed banks, continues, GM’s place in the Dow could be in danger, analysts say.

“GM is the weakest member of the Dow Jones” index, said Blicksilver.