Even wonder if MSM network is feeding you s–t?
What they’re doing is, working you by the polls.
Iraq > Bush >>> Inflation
http://tinyurl.com/83t9z
Islam > Christianity >>> Zionism
http://tinyurl.com/duc66
Energy > Finance >>> Commodities
http://tinyurl.com/cr7sp
Bush > Sports >>> Arts
http://tinyurl.com/ax7ms
Condi Rice > Princess Diana >>> Banda Aceh
http://tinyurl.com/a6kal
Supreme Court >>> Tax Reform > Budget Deficit
http://tinyurl.com/cqapq
Partying > Human Services >>> Tax Cuts
http://tinyurl.com/dk7ed
Partying = Peace >>> War
http://tinyurl.com/9z66s
finally, the roll-up you’ve been waiting for:
Partying >>> War > Finance
http://tinyurl.com/7hd3r
There you have it, nobody really gives a s–t!
Turn off your TV, turn off your PC and party,
for Tomorrow we shall die, each and every one.

Posted by: Loose Shanks | Jan 1 2006 20:27 utc | 3

Clowntime is Over: The Last Stand of the American Republic
So now, at last, the crisis is upon us. Now the cards are finally on the table, laid out so starkly that even the Big Media sycophants and Beltway bootlickers can no longer ignore them. Now the choice for the American Establishment is clear, and inescapable: do you hold for the Republic, or for autocracy?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 1 2006 23:19 utc | 5

i just can’t stand this pressure anymore. it’s really getting to be too much to try and hide it any longer. according to the person playing the role of the president, the last thing this nation needs right now is another anonymous leak (probably no longer possible over the web anyway, eh?), so i feel it best to go ahead & get this on the record tonite. i have made it my new year’s resolution to come out and admit that i, yes i, have been helping to fund terrorism. for quite some time now. decades, actually. that’s right. i’m not proud of it. matter of fact, it literally makes me sick to think about how i got caught up in this mess & what acts of terror my money has helped facilitate over the years. of course, it all started innocently enough – i was still in high school, naive as hell, just excited to have a real job & an income of my own. how was i to know where some of my tax dollars were going? i mean, as kids we were heavily indoctrinated into the belief that our government was there to serve its citizens and that by paying our share of taxes, we were making our communities and lives better. how was i to know? it wasn’t like our textbooks or popular media ever let on what was really happening in our names. but excuses probably don’t mean much coming from a character who would fund state terrorism – knowingly or not. there is no excuse for this irresponsibility and i want to publicly state that i am truly sorry. i am so ashamed.
The US may be the only country that is officially and publicly committed to wholesale international terrorism as a standard policy instrument.
noam chomsky,no longer safe, 1993

Posted by: b real | Jan 2 2006 5:17 utc | 7

TEN WAYS BUSH ESCAPES SCANDAL

Posted by: anna missed | Jan 2 2006 8:20 utc | 9

Oh my…. and since we now have now a moonbat confessional tribulation, I like my brethren in an early springtime blossoming confessional, which, while we’re at it, to quote my spiritial mentor Jimmy Swagert: “forgive me for I have sinned” — yeah, more than once, so what “it was gooood” — I too have also sinned, and in such a rareified and ignominious mood, pickled as I am in the unholy Glen- Livett moment of confessional I now find myself (thanks alot Mono-), I, while having resisted (so far) bank robbery and paying (so far) federal taxes, I am least not yet so clean, as to be washed in the blood of a small sheep, to purify, assuming this is a metaphore (I mean really, you’d think they could do better than that, Ukk) which I could embrace, I try to anna — lies how could I contribute to the greater glorification for which I have been so far delinquent, for which if you think about it, must be without qualification — the primier reason for the failure, on all fronts without question, the historonic deflation of the american ideal before the audience of the world — Damn, what was I thinking? Hey, you watch next time I’ll do better………………………Sorry bout that.

Posted by: anna missed | Jan 2 2006 10:40 utc | 11

My X-wife would surely testify to all the above.

Posted by: anna missed | Jan 2 2006 10:50 utc | 13

(nocturnal) jonku,
Indeed.

Posted by: anna missed | Jan 2 2006 11:03 utc | 15

@ b
That item reads is if the three men were caught in the act and the other casualties happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In fact, men spotted ‘acting suspiciously’ on the ground were tracked by air as they made their way by car over a distance of some miles, parked up and entered a building. The ‘precision strikes’ hit more than one building (incidentally, I’d be interested in hearing a scientific explanation of how the blast from 500lb bombs could ever be neatly confined to one room), and killed ten persons in total. However the U.S. military tries to dress it up, the lethal targeting of ‘suspicious characters’ (and accompanying loss of any intelligence value arising from anything as old-fashioned as an arest), is frequently a hi-tech game for pilots conducted with no regard whatsoever for innocent civilians in the sites being attacked.

Posted by: Spotter | Jan 2 2006 16:30 utc | 17

Unkka–re your link-
Floyd’s insistence that only the establishment can take down Bush right now indicates how little direct democracy we really have, doesn’t it? Or have ever had. We started out holding others as property, treating those with property as “more human” than the rest, and we have never been able to get past that imbalance of power in American political, social and economic life, as Katrina also attests.
One moment in the history of this nation makes me think something else might be possible, and that is the civil rights movement in the south…it’s probably no coincidence that the one group, other than women, who were systematically treated as less than human displayed the most humanity when they insisted that this world must change.
but how many ppl now, ppl who have a jobs, a houses, a families…middle-class Americans, as King and his followers were in their segregated community, are willing to stand up to hateful police and hoses and attack dogs because basic principles have been continually violated by this administration?
I too have the feeling that the 2000 coup, as bad as it was, was much, much worse than most all of us understood at the time.
Last night I watched Visconti’s The Damned. He takes an industrialist family and mirrors the larger conflicts in Germany starting with the Reichstag fire and trailing off with Hitler’s consolidation of power after The Night of the Long Knives. It all seemed eerily similar to today’s power structure and struggle.
I too have the feeling that if Congress does not step up and begin an investigation into impeachment, we have lost any vestiges of democracy. They cannot let Bush get away with this, or they might as well have “Bush’s Bitch” tatooed on their asses and bend over the lecturn to receive the latest abuse of power.
Some conservative, I read somewhere, asked all those who hate Bush to name one way in which he has personally harmed them. I was stunned by the assumption that living as a citizen in a nation that openly justifies the torture of innocent people does not somehow impact those people…does not somehow make them soul sick.
Not to mention the ways in which Bush has stolen from every taxpayer with no bid contracts to Halliburton, just to start…the money part, unfortunately, makes people pay attention, but it’s the coarsening of our actions around the world that makes all of us live in a world that is not likely to soon find ways to deal with non-state terrorism in a way that promotes the greater good.
If the establishment doesn’t use their elitist power to derail the bush/cheney monorail to hell, how are they any different than that family in Visconti’s movie?

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 3 2006 3:25 utc | 19

@Uncle $cam I don’t know if I hold to Chris Floyd’s philosophy that only the establishment forces can hope to derail BushCo.
Unless the electorate gives them a really strong message that impeachment must be instigated it won’t happen. Really although the issues appear more vital now the slow reaction on the part of the establishment towards the vietnam war and Nixon’s crimes was pretty much identical.
The establishment finally moved against Nixon because like everyone else they felt ‘something in the air’. There was a great impetus for change and importantly it came from young people in a society that worships youth.
I reckon that politicians have so little insight into young people that they can’t hold them in contempt as ‘failures’ as they do with everyone else who hasn’t chosen to go for their type of materialist self indulgence.
There is no doubt that a lot more people are dis-satisfied with BushCo now than they were 18 months ago but unless that desire for change is at least partially driven by the young people that politicians secretly admire and fear I don’t see them sticking their necks out.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 3 2006 8:03 utc | 21

fauxreal, you said
“but how many ppl now, ppl who have [a] jobs, [a] houses, [a] families…middle-class Americans, as King and his followers were in their segregated community, are willing to stand up to hateful police and hoses and attack dogs because basic principles have been continually violated by this administration?”
I will stand. I have done so before and I will again.
Thanks for asking in such clear terms, fauxreal. As they dither, I hear about one hundred and more thousand dead and more murders all the time.
As for the discussion at hand: I watched The Interpreter movie over the weekend, it was pretty good — Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman, starring the United Nations.
I had a minor epiphany after seeing Penn’s character, a Secret Service officer, call in helicopters and all that.
A scary view of what is, as shown in this movie by Sidney Pollack, all too real.
My minor epiphany is this: with the power seen in the hands of the rank and file, the men and women of the departments and units of the world’s, and the US’s spy teams, why would you even try to fight.
They are an awesome power unto themselves. Unbeatable.
So the obvious solution is to use this force for good.
That is it. New leaders from the top. I mean leaders.

Posted by: jonku | Jan 3 2006 10:40 utc | 23

While the MI complex is part of the “establishment” the GIs who are doing the killing and dying are not. A Military Times poll shows that support for Bush’s Iraq policy has dropped to 54% from 63% last year. Regarding the poll sample:

The respondents were “on average older, more experienced, more likely to be officers and more career-oriented than the military population.”

In other words, those actually suffering the personal consequences of the policy were under represented in the poll.
The military voted overwhelmingly for Bush and Republicans in 2000 and only a little less so in 2004, so this result indicates a significant erosion of support from within the Republican base. While one must be careful not to generalize poll results, this poll – conducted by a publication directed to a military audience – adds to other anecdotal indications (from my vantage point, anecdotal is the best I can do) of dissatisfaction with the Iraq war within the military. Other indications include the failure of selected military audiences to cheer on cue to scripted applause lines during recent speeches by prominint administration figures as well as public statements by people like Murtha, Wilkerson, Odom and Skowcroft who spoke for many in the military who could not speak publically.
During the Viet Nam war, the young protested because they were the Americans who would pay the personal price for the war. Without a draft, that price is confined to those serving in the military and NG.(I don’t count the contractors who are betting with their lives to make money.) The establishment,, through it’s media arm, has lionized “our heroes” while muffling their voices, thus containing the eruption of wider dissent. Once Our Heroes start to speak freely, the dissent can break out into the open in a way that the establishment cannot ignore or marginalize. It will have to take seriously the objections of the population it has been elevating to celebrity status in order to glorify what it has been asking them to do.
I have long felt that this is the part of our population that could force the rest of the us to look hard at what our govt is actually doing in Iraq – skin in the game, as RGiap says. They know first hand what we have been doing to the Iraqi people and many feel the consequences in their own damaged humanity and understand that their govt has betrayed them. I hope some of the vets will begin to push this into public view in 2006. The public needs to look at the non-sanitized truth of the war fought in their name and feel shamed (those who still can) for the same reason that Emmet Till’s mother insisted on an open casket for her murdered son to shock white America into awareness of racial injustice.
The “establishment” will not take this step. It’s decision makers use and manipulate people to further their own ends and are insulated from the personal effects of their policies. Only the used can effect change.
But it is not enough to oppose and stop the Iraq war. The policy assumptions and world view that got us into it must also change or other interventions will follow. Conservative war critics like to trace US interventionism back to Wilson, but they conveniently ignore Teddy Roosevelt’s intervention to create Panama and the canal, the Spanish-American War to create empire and the annexation of an independent Hawaii (initiated during the Harrison administration and ratified during McKinley’s, both big business Republicans, after four years of Cleveland’s anxious, fretful dithering) on behalf of US sugar plantation owners. In other words, US interventionism is not rooted in the Wilsonian “vision,” though it’s propaganda usually blathers on about those ideals; it is rooted in powerful US economic interests and always has been. The human cost of these interventions (overt and covert) has mostly been paid by non-Americans with Americans remaining blithefully unaware, partly because our govt does most of it’s dirty work out of sight; only when Americans are paying does opposition in this country surface. The rank and file of our military is currently hurting because our leaders believe we are an empire that must expand and dominate; I hope that in 2006 the Americans who are paying the personal price for these policies – dying for the bottom line – can begin to force the rest of to feel it and then extend that empathy to the Iraqi people as well as others our govt’s policies have been harming. Only a profound change in our attitude toward the rest of humanity will result in substantive foreign policy change. Even the realists see the world as a chess board to dominate, so present a choice only as far as tactics are concerned. If all the world is a chess board, most of it’s people will be pawns subject to sacrifice by the powerful. Many in our military – such as Pat Tillman before he was killed – now know this includes most Americans. I hope they will begin to make this clear to the rest of us.
This is a lot to ask and I am not optimistic about Americans changing willingly until our current policies result in a lot more pain to us. I’m afraid it’s coming.

Posted by: lonesomeG | Jan 3 2006 17:17 utc | 25

Abramoff Pleads Guilty to 3 Felony Charges

Former high-powered lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty today to three felony charges in a deal with federal prosecutors that helps clear the way for his testimony about members of Congress and congressional staffers in a wide-ranging political corruption investigation.

Looks like this will unfold just in time for the 2006 election. I wonder how the Cheney administration will divert the public from all these scandals blowing up around them.

Posted by: b | Jan 3 2006 20:34 utc | 27

Deeper Abramoff: Bush’s connections to Abramoff. In 2002 Bush Obstructed Justice For Jack, Recount Bill NEVER PAID

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 3 2006 23:12 utc | 29

Cosma Shalizi makes a very interesting research proposal – how could we measure the extent to which cronyism allows incompetents to land plum jobs in the Bush administration?
Further, how can we measure the methodical putting of people in positions of power to protect and headoff probes into BushCO crimes.
Anyone endorsed by the Bush administration is corrupt.
To the core. That is why they are endorsed.
There are no exceptions to that rule.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 3 2006 23:31 utc | 31

Shouldn’t we do this for the Executive office/branch the most powerful and dangerous office in the land?
Database of 11 million job applicants’ honesty/psych tests
Snip:
Over the past few years, personality assessment tests have moved from the realm of experiment to standard practice at many of the nation’s largest companies, including the Albertson’s grocery chain and retailers such as Neiman Marcus and Target. A recent survey found that about 30 percent of all companies use personality tests in hiring. To many companies, the tests are as important, if not more important, than an applicant’s education, experience and recommendations.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 4 2006 0:18 utc | 33

@Uncle I must admit to being gobsmacked at your link on applicant testing.
I spent a year or two in the recruitment industry and testing was largely discredited by the late 80’s. Why?
Well for a start, like IQ tests or any other type of alleged ‘objective’ assessment no matter how hard the test writer tries to make the test as neutral as possible, the tests are always culturally subjective. That is; the way that different groups of people process the same concepts/statements differently will ensure that some cultures will always ‘do better’ than others. Yet give the same diverse groups lengthy and well constructed ‘values’ assessments and the spread of values will be mirrored across the different groups. Nothing surprising in that. People have the same range of reactions to thieves, liars , murderers, heros or the truly dedicated in any culture but the way they express that value is likely to vary hugely between, cultures, languages and belief systems.
These tests which have been simplified to the point of stupidity make it very easy to ‘beat the box’.
I mean if you were in the unfortunate position of having to apply for a job as cashier in a large supermarket chain what response do you think might be the one most likely to satisfy an employer who asked “to what degree they agreed or disagreed with statements such as, “It’s maddening when the court lets guilty criminals go free,” “You don’t worry about making a good impression” and “You could describe yourself as ‘tidy’.”
Yet if tidiness were really such an issue with the particular vacancy the person was applying for, walking the applicant back to their car after interview would be a much better way of establishing that person’s committment to neatness.
Which takes us to the next problem with testing when the same test is applied across a range of different occupations requiring a range of different skills.
That is employers frequently include selection criteria which they consider to be vital but which when the skillset for the job is objectively assessed is completely irrelevant.
Neatness would be one that would fall into that category because although it can matter a great deal for a builder doing maintenance work in large shopping complex it is really totally irrelevant as far as the cashiers are concerned yet which is more likely to be tested and rejected on the grounds of untidiness by a dull employer?
At the end of the labour market where these tests are being used few applicants will be 100% on all criteria so it is vital that applicants only be measured against the criteria essential for completing the various tasks the occupation requires.
However I must confess apart from the injustices that can be inflicted upon jobseekers I have a great deal of difficulty caring about the fact that WalMart are wasting time and resources on ineffective recruitment methodology.
It has been demonstrated time and time again that the person best suited to select a staffmember is that person’s prospective employer or co-worker.
Wal-Mart would probably regard that suggestion with a mixture of shock and amazement on the grounds that this may lead to the development of relationships detrimental to Wal-Marts objectives, ie the supervisor may choose to only hire people supportive of organised labour.
There are a few anecdotes to that effect around so that is the way most big employers go and they dismiss the idea that most people respond to responsibility, responsibly.
Of course just as insidious are the tests that organisations give to those workers unfortunate enough to be on a large corporation’s career path.
I stay as far away from large organisations as I can nowadays but there was a time when being subjected to to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator at the start of a stay over ‘team building exercise’ was almost mandatory.
Carl jung was a really interesting person and I don’t want to offend anyone who considers him to be one of their ‘main men’ but even if Myers & Briggs had been successful in devising a test that accurately assessed people according to Jung’s definition of personality type, and that is a big if, I really don’t see how Jung’s almost mystical concepts can be successfully used to assess whether one person or another would be better at crunching numbers or interacting with clients. Asking people what they like doing and then trying them out in it is rather more effective.
Same goes for staff development. A quick and dirty skills and attitudinal assessment based upon two people intercting with each other is far more likely to give a good indication of a staff members development needs.
Since there are one or two psychologists frequenting MoA I would be interested to hear their response to this issue.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 4 2006 1:43 utc | 35

Unembedded: Four photojournalists on the war in Iraq
….And that’s it, isn’t it? Embedded with US troops means that you are only with them, you only see what they see, only understand what they understand. You are covering the war (engagement, conflict, whatever…) strictly from their perspective. And that is where things start to go very, very badly, that is where we become people who know only one version of the events; that is where it becomes very easy for us to be mislead.
That is where we are today.

Posted by: kw | Jan 4 2006 4:22 utc | 37

Well said lonesomeG. I’ve always said, “360 degrees from fucked-up is still fucked-up.”

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 4 2006 7:29 utc | 39

Souvereign Iraq? Sure, but only with U.S. cronies in the lead.
Iraq Wants U.S. Choice Out as Chief Of Brigade

Over the strong objections of U.S. commanders in Baghdad, the Iraqi government has nominated a new leader for a brigade that is set to assume control over some of the capital’s most sensitive areas. This dispute appears likely to postpone an already overdue handover by American forces for at least another month.
…
.. a transfer ceremony that was to be attended by top generals was canceled three days beforehand, after Iraq’s Defense Ministry said it would not approve the officer groomed by U.S. forces since August to command the unit, Col. Muhammed Wasif Taha, a 23-year Iraqi army veteran.
…
American officers who work with the unit reevaluated the brigade without Taha in charge and lowered its readiness rating from Level 1, meaning it can operate without U.S. assistance, to Level 3, which means significant help is required. That rating, in force for a month, made it officially unqualified for the proposed new responsibilities.

Posted by: b | Jan 4 2006 9:02 utc | 41

“It is not our job to seek peaceful coexistence with the Left. Our job is to remove them from power permanently.”
Jack Abramoff, 1983.
It is times like this that my capacity not to engage in petty Schadenfreude is sorely tested.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jan 4 2006 17:46 utc | 43

Debs I agree with what you wrote. (And I even teach HR pyschology – gonna hafta quit soon!)
The ‘testing’ of various types fulfills a different function: it signals to the aspirant employee, you must conform; you must allow questioning, testing; you must reveal your personality, your thoughts, if we demand; you must show clean hands, bow down. It is an initation ritual of a most pernicious type. It has no ‘selective’ use beyond attitudinal indoctrination (lets not forget the money earned by the ‘specialists’ who do the testing or sold the tests to the company…huge amounts of money are made…)
There have even been studies that showed that picking ppl on their qualifications only was superior to any kind of testing, or even interview.
The rigmarole goes on because people need jobs – there aren’t enough of those, and psychologist and HR specialists have capitalised on the difficulty of ‘choice’ employers gleefully think they face.
Then, there is the corporatocracy – Brave New World, all that.

Posted by: Noisette | Jan 4 2006 18:01 utc | 45

oops.
Russell Tice link.

Posted by: manonfyre | Jan 4 2006 20:10 utc | 47

Debs- when I, and I assume Floyd and Uncle $cam, talk about the establishment stopping Bush, I do not mean to in any way imply partisan politics in that action. If I remember my small intro to elite theory in politics, it’s a mistake to refer to elites in society as tho they are of one mind, or that they don’t compete with one another for favoritism, etc….and there is a media elite, a political elite and business elite (and subsections of this…right now I’d say the oil biz had disproportionate influence…also the pharma elite…), a banking elite (and sometimes these defs. overlap) etc. and it is the powerful from these groups who must realize that it is in the best interest of this country to bring down this junta.
otherwise, yes, ppl can strike, can march in the streets, can call their congresspeople, etc . but if the money that funds all the institutional power in America doesn’t recognize it is better off without the current junta, they will be hard to bring down by everyday ppl who do not control the news cycle,etc… most Americans do not read blogs. Most get their news, the bits they get, from maybe thirty minutes of news a night.
but it is in the interests of the elite to bring them down because, although they may really rake it in with the repukes, the stock market does better with dems, the economy does better, and there is less reason for more ppl to fight to bring down all the power structures.
I’m obviously no scholar in any subject, but from what I know, one of the BIG problems with the left during the time was an unwillingness to compromise…to win something rather than have nothing, and worse than nothing, by compromise. It makes me angry to compromise, but this country moved so far to the right because the extreme right was willing to compromise until they had this moment to seize power.
and the corporocrats were so afraid of bolshevism that they preferred fascism, even after they knew this group had no time for rule of law. That’s where I see we are now, and why I saw the establishment elite will have to bring down the junta. they’ve gained too much institutional power now. Hitler used the political offices available to him to create his dictatorship…he didn’t suddenly appear out of thin air and declare that he hated jews and bolsheviks (oftentimes the same group). And you know the part about Germany refighting a war it lost…our economy isn’t as totally scary for the moment, but how much of it is built on lies, and how much has Bush allowed his cronies to loot the treasury?
anyway, long digression to say that elites are not always bad in their actions. They supported desegregation long before the masses did..and still do. Of course, at the same time, they don’t generally support educational and economic reforms that can break the patterns of poverty…but neither do the masses, for the most part.
so, yeah, I agree with Floyd because I do not see any white Americans willing, in large enough numbers, to sit in front of the white house and tell Bush to get out, to go to Den Hague to face charges for torture…lots of us were in the streets before the war, and that didn’t make a damn bit of difference. I don’t see how it can matter more now.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 4 2006 20:11 utc | 49

@fauxreal I can see what you’re saying and you’re right that in the end the ‘establishment’ will be the cohort that ‘calls the shots’ and brings BushCo down.
The thing is though they will only do that if all alternatives appear worse. Throwing out BushCo is a risky endeavour indeed and certainly not without the danger of severe ‘blowback’.
I believe the time for compromise is long gone. That ‘doing deals’ in congress is exactly what has brought your republic undone.
The only way to turn this around using the rule of law, is if the population puts enough pressure on the legislators who are then aware that their future depends upon ceasing the BushCo/Rethug future.
Anything else will just be a symptomatic treatment that will guarantee the US will be in a far worse predicament in the near future.
My point was that the western culture is very much a ‘youth culture’. This probably began by accident. For example the difference between the experiences of the ‘diggers’ which were those raised in the great depression and who then went on to fight Hitler and the ‘baby boomers’ raised in the era of Keynsian hope and prosperity who were being asked to kill those who to quote Mohammed Ali “had never called me nigger” meant that these two generations would be practically at war with one another.
Young people do tend to spend more ‘disposable’ income so these differences were exploited by elites to sell, cajole and rule.
This has created a syndrome where people assess the propensity for change by listening to youth.
Youth are an important segment of any society’s population. They aren’t the only important segment or even the most important segment but looking at the way our culture sees itself anyone could be forgiven for thinking so.
Therefore unless a large chunk of young people passionately oppose the fascism now brutally apparent throughout society, the politicians who are always worried about which way to be seen jumping won’t bother with anything more than a quick whitewash job.
If they think that a cultural revolution of the strength of the one in the 1960’s may occur, then they will be falling over themselves to get on the correct side of history.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 4 2006 20:52 utc | 51

SHARON Suffers a Cerebral Hemorrhage

Sharon, 77, suffered a “significant” stroke and was brought to Jerusalem’s Hadassah Hospital from his ranch in the Negev desert, an official said. Channel 2 TV said Sharon was suffering from paralysis in his lower body and was taken into the hospital on a stretcher.
Dr. Shlomo Mor-Yosef, the hospital’s director general, said Sharon was under general anesthetic and was receiving breathing assistance while doctors assessed his condition.
A few minutes later, Mor-Yosef emerged to say that initial tests showed Sharon had suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, or bleeding in his brain.

Posted by: annie | Jan 4 2006 22:11 utc | 53

I don’t subscribe to the ‘higher power’ theory of life and have always felt ‘karma’ to be the unconscious consequence of repressed guilt.
Asshole the war crim doesn’t act like he has a guilty bone in his body in which case hopefully his stroke will leave him a drooling idiot on the outside, incapable of wiping his own ass but on the inside he will be aware enough to fully comprehend his miserable condition.
In which case I would take a higher power, guilt, or straight bad luck as the root cause quite happily.
If that sounds harsh so be it. I still remember Jomo Kenyatta’s words when Hendrik Verwoerd considered the architect of apartheid and then president of South Africa was assassinated in 1966. “As a black African I want to jump for joy but as a human being I must grieve this senseless death.”
I feel no such qualms about asshole the war crim, who seemed to be much sicker than a ‘mild’ stroke would allow. He was far too quick to jump back in the saddle and I’ve never really heard of a ‘mild’ stroke. I watched my father who I only felt slightly more kindly towards than asshole the war crim die of cerebral hemorrhages and a small stroke is almost inevitably followed by a large and extremely debilitating stroke.
In the next few days while the MSM wrings its hands in ‘shock’ and ‘grief’ we should push any feelings of empathy for asshole the war crim we may have to one side.
Instead we should think about the largely forgotten women and children of Sabra and Chatila. Nearly 2000 of them were slaughtered in direct contradiction of assurances asshole had given his US backers. Slaughtered by troops under the direct control of the war crim. When it appeared that the truth would finally out, the primary witness against this lowlife died in a Beruit car bombing.
We should also remeber the dead of Jenin How quickly these names pass only to be superseded by a new horror!

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 5 2006 1:00 utc | 55

fauxreal-
I agree with your brilliant deconstruction of the deflecting coverage in the NYT. I realize that being a reporter for the NYT involves a lot of skill. First, internalizing elite values to minimize internal conflict, and secondly, finding ways to deflect coverage, as you have portrayed, when elite values are at risk.
Remember, all elite New Yorker finance types care about is the stock price, not the labor conditions. As an aside, I remember being at a large rally in the summer of ’89 for the Pittston Coal Strike in Carbo, VA. What a day! I got to meet Richard Trumka and Jessie Jackson. There were about 5,000 people all gathered on a large field on a beautiful late summer afternoon. Bread and Puppet had driven down from Vermont, in solidarity, and their huge puppets were catching the sun and bobbing up and down over everyone’s heads. Jessie swept in, tall and handsome and confident, radiating an almost god-like charisma. This was white hillbilly country and you could have counted all the black people in attendance on your hands, after you had suffered an industrial accident! A nervous hush fell over the crowd when Jessie got up to speak. This wasn’t exactly the Rainbow coalition around him, and the MSM was doing its best to inform any liberal doubters, like us, that Jessie was running around calling Jews “kikes” and New York “Kiketown.” I have never heard anybody speak like Jessie. It was also obvious that this was after the election, and he didn’t need to be there. Man, he won over that crowd like a preacher giving away free tickets to heaven. Now that was a politician. But what brings this story to mind, is that in this exact case the CEO of Pittston was some New York corporate raider type who actually lived on Park Avenue, and he made it clear in his public statements, which were Bush-like in their vitriol and confrontationality, that he didn’t give two shits about the miners and their concerns.
But, as far as the accident itself, I imagine the situation is much the same as when I worked in the oil refinery: Everybody there knows what really happened, but you will never hear about it in the press. And the reason is liability. With deaths there will be lawsuits. The company will attempt to implicate the workers for negligence and not following procedure. The union will bring up past grievances demonstrating company dereliction. If there are outside contractors, highly likely, like pipefitters or safety inspectors, the finger will be pointed at them too. And, of course, the insurance people will be down in droves attempting to demonstrate where the contract was broken, so they don’t have to pay. The lawyers are probably booking every hotel room in sight and filling up every restaurant with cigar smoke, and cheap perfume from their “traveling secretaries.” Oh boy, what a capitalist melee. Every emotion will be felt by the participants, but Justice will be nowhere in sight. Hopefully, there is a budding Waugh, or Tom Wolfe type to write about it.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 5 2006 2:10 utc | 57

b-
I hope you set up a separate thread for the wilted rose of Sharon.
Debs-
You are wrong medically about strokes.
One can have very mild strokes, so mild as to be unsure if you actually had them. In older people, dementia is frequently caused by a series of these undiagnosed strokes. Called TIAs, transient ischemic attacks are minor or warning strokes. In a TIA, conditions indicative of an ischemic stroke are present and the typical stroke warning signs develop. However, the obstruction (blood clot) occurs for a short time and tends to resolve itself through normal mechanisms.
Even though the symptoms disappear after a short time, TIAs are strong indicators of a possible major stroke. Steps should be taken immediately to prevent a stroke.
Most common are ischemic, or clot types of strokes, which acount for 80% of all occurances. Again, there are two sub-types of these. Cerebral embolism refers generally to a blood clot that forms at another location in the circulatory system, usually the heart and large arteries of the upper chest and neck. A portion of the blood clot breaks loose, enters the bloodstream and travels through the brain’s blood vessels until it reaches vessels too small to let it pass. A second important cause of embolism is an irregular heartbeat, known as atrial fibrillation. It creates conditions where clots can form in the heart, dislodge and travel to the brain.
As doctors announced that they had found a heart problem after Sharon’s first stroke, and he was due to have had surgery for it tomorrow, this is almost assuredly the type of stroke Sharon first suffered.
The last type of stroke, which my mother had and almost killed her, though she largely recovered from, are hemorrhagic strokes, which results from a weakened vessel that ruptures and bleeds into the surrounding brain. The blood accumulates and compresses the surrounding brain tissue. Again, there are two sub-types of these. This is the type of stroke Sharon had tonight.
Now, I’m not a doctor (Is there a doctor in the house?), so I’m not 100% sure of this, but after Sharon’s first stroke he was probably given medication to reduce his chance of forming a clot. The side effect of this can be a greater tendency to bleed. If he already had a weak blood vessel in his brain, the medication could have precipitated the second stroke. It is even possible that he could have been given too large a dose on purpose to finish him off, though that is highly unlikely. If it did happen, it undoubtably came from the right, as Bibi seems to be the big winner in all of this.
What effect this will have on Israeli politics remains to be seen. It is even possible that the old war horse himself, Peres, may be led back from pasture and finally see his day in the sun. Will Labor use this opportunity to distance themselves from Kadima, or will they now triangulate even more?

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 5 2006 2:40 utc | 59

@ Malooga I’ve no doubt you are technically correct about strokes and their severity. The point I was trying to make was that when asshole had his first stroke mild or severe; a ‘normal’ person who wasn’t alternately spewing vitriol at the helpless and sucking as much material benefit as possible out of everyone else, would have ‘put their feet up’for a bit. Having your first stroke whether it be medically mild or severe is kind of a major milestone in your life.
Instead the war crim went out of his way to pretend all was well.
He was desperate to prove that he was still the potent force in Israeli politics, when in fact since even before the stroke he has looked more like a raged out bull so depleted that his balls drag along in the mud behind him.
Asshole couldn’t risk that; either because he needed one more term to collect backhanders or because he hadn’t completed moving his ‘share’ of profits and kickbacks from illegal settlement development away from prying eyes and possible recovery by astute investigators.
I suspect that asshole’s demise must leave the Labour Party (although in Israel that’s not saying much) in the box seat. The war crim knew that the people couldn’t bring themselves to so openly support the murderers, torturers and thieves by voting for Likud once more so asshole plonked himself in the middle to block the flow of votes back to Labour.
Now that he has gone I think that the media will no longer be able to pretend that Kadima is Likud’s only viable opponent. Peres must be shy on credibility by now, he’s hawked his fork amongst the voters for so long that giving his name the tick must feel like throwing the proverbial salami up the alley.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 5 2006 3:12 utc | 61

annie, as an atheist I too believe you get your punishment in this life or not at all, so I have to agree with you and Debs that having the grossly obese mass murderer suffer for awhile has a certain poetic justice about it.

Posted by: ran | Jan 5 2006 3:51 utc | 63

@annie- I have most of it on CD (sometimes I was too busy to notice the recording was over), but it’s not on line.
@debs- I agree with you politically, but disagree medically. A stroke can be a small event that doesn’t change your life. Here in Boston we have a professioanl football player-Teddy Bruschi sp.?–who had a much worse surprise stroke last year because of a similar heart defect and went back to playing violent american football this year with the doctor’s blessing.
This article corroborates what I said medically (boy, would I hate to be the doctor who prescribed the blood thinners):
(CNN) — Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffered massive bleeding in his brain from a type of stroke called a cerebral hemorrhage, his doctors said Wednesday.
A cerebral hemorrhage happens when small blood vessels bleed in the brain and cause a blood clot. This causes pressure on the brain, eventually killing normal brain cells, which can cause permanent disability or death.
It was Sharon’s second brain attack in less than three weeks. After the first, he was put on blood-thinning medications which may have contributed to the hemorrhage.
Having a previous stroke, having high blood pressure or smoking can increase a person’s chances of having a stroke.
Sharon was taken by ambulance Wednesday to the hospital after complaining of chest pain and weakness, said Ra’anan Gissin, his senior adviser. He was conscious when he arrived at the hospital, Gissin said.
“After that, apparently there was some worsening of the condition,” he said.
Doctors sedated Sharon and performed an MRI scan, Gissin said. They diagnosed a cerebral hemorrhage and he was taken into surgery to remove the blood, a procedure which was expected to take several hours.
Sharon had suffered a smaller stroke caused by a blood clot on December 18. He never lost consciousness during that incident, according to Tamir Ben Hur, head of neurology at Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital.
“There was no slurring. He was not confused. He suffered from a certain difficulty in speaking. A small blood clot briefly blocked a blood vessel in his brain,” the doctor said.
Ben Hur said the clot was dissolved by medication, adding, “Our comprehensive investigation has shown definitely that the stroke will not leave any damage or traces.”
It was during treatment for the first stroke that doctors discovered he had a small hole in his heart that could have led to the formation of the clot that may have caused the mild stroke.
The second massive stroke came hours before scheduled surgery to repair the hole in his heart.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 5 2006 4:21 utc | 65

Sure. It hard to imagine anyone looking more the part of an evil, corrupt, sadistic, venal, meglomaniacal, sclerotic walking id of a homunculus than Sharon. He is the personification of infinite appetite, a veritable Buddhist “Hungry Ghost”.
But we should resist believing that Sharon is the cause of Israel’s intransigent criminality anymore than believing that Bush is the cause of America’s. There is near unanimous support among the Israeli ruling elite for Sharon’s policies. And Israel’s economy is even more militarized than the US’s (third largest arms supplier in the world), perhaps it is the most militarized world-round, on a per capita basis. The agents of death need to continually exercize their abilities in order to justify them. In other words, Israel’s economy is one huge self reinforcing killing machine, or a Chomsky might say, “The second greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” Sharon is, or was, just its public face.
But what a face. Too bad he didn’t become an actor instead of a politician. Besides Shakespeare–Lear and the other tragic kings, I would have loved to see him play the part of the conservative government minister, Mr. Dindon, the head of the Tradition, Family and Morality Party in “La Cage aux Folles.” He’d be a real screamer in drag, making a quick exit in lipstick and heels!
So celebrate his passing. Dance on his grave. It will be large enough to invite all your friends, too. But not for so long that you neglect to oppose his sucessor just as much, for the policy won’t change with the leader.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 5 2006 6:27 utc | 67

grrr, the above was me-Unka
and I forgot to say, damn good point Malooga. Classic Lateral Thinking, and trans lateral wholistic thinking.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 5 2006 8:58 utc | 69