B’Man’s Hypocrite Watch: American Terrorism

Terror. Just the word strikes terror in the hearts of many Americans.

Our government and complicit media has us duped into thinking that we are nobel and lovingly taking care of the world in our ‘leadership’ role we have taken on for ourselves. But the truth is that we are hypocritically the world’s worst terrorists.

Allow Noam Chomsky to explain:

h/t missykcar

It’s Official: I Live Among The Brainwashed and Ultra-Racists

McCain has big lead in South, poll of 11 states shows

By Roddie Burris | The State (linked by McClatchy)

Read a question-by-question analysis of the poll.

Republican U.S. Sen. John McCain enjoys a 16-point lead — 51 percent to 35 percent — among Southern voters over rival Democratic U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, a new poll by Winthrop University and ETV shows.

And, the further into the South you go, the larger McCain’s lead grows, the poll of likely voters in 11 Southern states shows.

Likely voters in the Deep South — those in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and South Carolina — preferred McCain by a 25-point margin, 56 percent to 31 percent.

Southern voters said what they want most in a president is honesty, experience and shared values. Southern voters rated McCain ahead of Obama in each of those categories.

B’Man: Jesus Christ, rednecks. Are you shitting me? I am no Obama fan and won’t vote for him, but this is insane. Have you no sense about you, whatsoever? There is no way that ‘thinking’ people could ever come to this conclusion.

McCain’s strongest support comes from white working-class Southerners — who favor him by a 34-point margin — and white evangelicals — who favor the Arizonan by 54 percentage points.

The poll, which was conducted Aug. 1-17, has a margin of error of (plus or minus) 2.97 percentage points…

…On the issues, McCain trumped Obama nearly across the board in the poll.

The economy easily was the most important issue to Southern voters in the upcoming presidential election. McCain bested Obama on which candidate would handle energy and gas prices better, and who would do the better job on taxes.

McCain also far out-distanced Obama on who would do a better job of handling the Iraq war and terrorism.

None of that surprised Jeanette Smith of Chapin, who described McCain as honest and decisive, strong on national security and unlikely to be manipulated by a foreign government.

“The economy and national security are neck-and-neck for me,” said Smith, a 54-year-old bookkeeper and mother of four. “In fact, I’m not even sure they are separate issues.”…

B’Man: I read this shit and I scratch my head wondering how in the fuck someone could be so out of touch with reality and then I remember that these ignorant morons only listen to Rush and the other radical freaks mimicking anything and everything the neocon asshats want remembered. I am working to wake you rednecks up, but it is becoming apparent that some are simply too far gone from reality to ever wake up. Normally I would be sad for you, but your idiocy is fucking up my world. Hence, I have nothing but disdain and anger towards those who continue to spread false and dumbass commentaries about McCain, as if he could or WOULD do any of that.

Fools.

However, Deep South and working-class white voters disagreed, saying McCain understands them best.

“Senator Obama has a great deal of work to do if he plans to turn the Southern states in his favor,” said Adolphus Belk Jr., who helped design the poll and teaches political science and African-American Studies at Winthrop.

Belk said Obama has to do a better job at defining himself for voters, moving beyond simply being a new face on the national stage. Obama also has to overcome religious and ethnic misinformation that continues to plague his candidacy, Belk said.

That’s no short order in the South, either, said Obama supporter John Hines Jr. of Effingham, S.C. “For older Americans, I think color is still an issue,” said the 53-year-old paper maker.

Of those polled, 86 percent said race would not be an important factor in how they choose to vote. However, a quarter of all likely Southern voters surveyed said that if a candidate had a Muslim parent, it would impact their votes. Obama, who is a Christian, had a Muslim father.

Hines said he thinks race matters despite the poll results.

“I hate to knock on the color thing, I really do,” said Hines, a native South Carolinian. “But I think it’s a factor.”

Still, Hines also had kind words for McCain. “I really think whoever is elected, it will be good for America,” he said.

Obama supporter Willie Greene, 50, of Patrick, S.C., said the Democrat has to focus on pocketbook issues, and be more assertive and less contemplative in responding to questions.

“Right now, they’re seeing color,” said Greene, a treatment plant operator. “It’s a big hurdle he would have to overcome, and I hate to say it, but he is at a big disadvantage in the South.”

B’Man: Idiots. Neither of these power mongers are going to be ‘good’ for this country. McCain sure as hell will be the very worst that we could ever even consider at this point in time of our history. How people can even think it baffles me.

I am at wit’s end. Logic disallows the computation of this bullshit.

B’Man’s Redneck Watch: $13 Barbie rod lands record catfish (no charters, no guides)

McClatchy reports on a cool grandpa redneck who seems to have done the impossible: catch a 21# catfish on a Barbee fishing rod.

$13 Barbie rod lands record catfish (no charters, no guides)

By Bruce Henderson

David Hayes knew from earlier catches that lunker catfish patrolled the acre pond a few feet behind his rural Wilkes County home.

But he never suspected it held a state-record channel cat. Or that he would land it with a hot-pink Barbie rod and reel 2 inches shorter than the fish.

How that happened is a whale of a fish story, which says something about a 3-year-old girl’s bond with her grandpa.

Hayes told it this way:

It was 7:30 p.m. on a Tuesday, Aug. 5. Hayes was home in the Shoaly Branch community after work running the dye house for a local textile-maker. Granddaughter Alyssa Hayes, who lives nearby, helped Hayes pick tomatoes. Then she decided she wanted to go fishing.

Fishing and riding four-wheelers together are what Alyssa loves best with her Papa.

Hayes, who’s 56, caught a few crickets and baited the hook on her 2 1/2-foot Barbie rod and reel combo — $13 at Wal Mart. Alyssa caught a couple of bluegills.

Then she had to go to the bathroom and thrust the tackle in Hayes’ hands as she turned for the house.

“They hadn’t no more than closed the door than the cat hit the cricket and took off,” he said. “He turned the water over and I saw his tail was about as wide as my two hands.

“I knew I was in trouble.

“By the time she got back out there, she said, ‘Papa, you’re going to break my rod,’ because it was bent double.”

After 25 minutes, pink plastic and 6-pound-test line prevailed.

Hayes netted the exhausted fish. Alyssa “squealed and her eyes got as big as silver dollars.”

Scales at a local grocery said the 32-inch fish weighed 21 pounds, 1 ounce. A state fisheries biologist certified the record, nearly three pounds over the previous mark.

The fish will go on the wall, along with Alyssa’s Barbie rod.

“It looks like a toy,” Hayes said, “but it’s a functioning toy.”

Booze Kills, Pot Doesn’t

Many years ago, when I was 17, my dad was best friends with my hometown police chief. I was wild as a buck and was known to partake in the evil weed and could be known to be crazy as hell.

Back then, I would drink, but simply for social reasons… I never really have liked getting ‘drunk’ (even though I did it quite often). I feel horrible the next day and I don’t really like the feeling I got especially after the initial ‘buzz’. I also seemed to get into trouble when drinking and was known to take my redheaded temper to extremes.

But weed never did me that way. Hell, it wouldn’t cause anger, it calmed me down.

Anyway, I came home one day close to graduation and I noticed that Jack’s Chief car was in the driveway. This wasn’t uncommon, so I didn’t think too much about it… UNTIL I went in and realized that they were waiting on me.

Both men are dead, so I can say this now, but as they railed on me about the evils of weed, they were smoking cigars and drinking a Scotch and water ( we lived in a dry county, which means this drink was also illegal).

All I could say was that if I had a choice between the two evils (the one they enjoyed or the one I enjoyed) I would choose the one that didn’t cause me to be a maniac and sick as a dog. I also told them that the day they could put down the cigars and alcohol would be the day I put down the weed.

Both of these men smoked and drank until the day they died…

From Alternet:

Booze Kills, Pot Doesn’t

On Aug. 19, the Associated Press reported on a group of college presidents proposing reconsideration of the legal drinking age. I’ll refrain from wading into the emotional debate about what the legal age for alcohol should be, but a graph that accompanied the story in some outlets, including the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, raises larger questions about our national policies toward drugs and alcohol.

Two things are striking:

1. The number of alcohol poisoning deaths in the United States is shockingly high, consistently between 300 and 400 each year. The number of annual deaths from marijuana poisoning remains — as always — zero.

2. The number of alcohol poisoning deaths spiked just as the U.S. government started going all out to demonize marijuana, deploying hundreds of millions of dollars worth of anti-marijuana ads on TV, on radio and in print.

One can’t help but wonder if this is really just coincidence. The recent low point came in 2000, with 327 alcohol poisoning deaths overall, 16 of them among college-age Americans. In 2001, the Bush administration came into office, with anti-marijuana zealot John Walters taking over as drug czar late in the year. Shortly thereafter, Walters began his anti-marijuana crusade.

The airwaves were soon filled with commercials telling teens and their parents that lighting up a joint could lead to shooting your friends, getting pregnant, running over little girls on bicycles or supporting terrorists. Walters made wild statements, claiming that marijuana potency had increased up to 20-fold (a claim he’s since backed off from but never directly retracted). The message was clear: Forget everything you think you know about marijuana being relatively harmless — this stuff is dangerous, addictive and scary.

When sensible individuals noted that alcohol is in fact far more dangerous health-wise than marijuana, Walters told the Albuquerque Journal that the idea was “frightening.” And the anti-marijuana crusade sped onward, with new waves of ads directed at both young people and their parents.

According to government surveys, marijuana use did decline modestly (though the decline had actually begun before Bush and Walters took office, a point the administration generally neglects to mention). And in 2002 — the first full year of Walters’ modern “reefer madness” — alcohol poisoning deaths spiked to 383, a level they’ve roughly maintained ever since. Booze deaths among college-age young people also ratcheted upward and in 2005 set a recent record of 35 in one year — a 250 percent increase in just four years.

And during that time, the government maintained virtual silence about the dangers of binge drinking.

No one wants to encourage kids to drink or smoke marijuana. But if you keep bombarding young people with propaganda about the dangers of marijuana while saying nothing about the possibility that booze can literally kill you — which is precisely what our government has done — well, that just might be “sending a message to young people,” as the federal bureaucrats say. And that message could kill.

It’s not unreasonable to suspect that it already has.

The withdrawl of adjectives only—

Well folks– it’s all about the ‘verbage’ isn’t it. Now we are up to 2011– and wanting immunity for our troops from Iraqi law. So– let’s read again and absorb what the deal is–

“… U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have now also agreed to a conditions-based withdrawal of U.S. combat troops by the end of 2011, a date further in the future than the Iraqis initially wanted. The deal would leave tens of thousands of troops in supporting roles, such as military trainers, for an unspecified time. According to the U.S. military, there are 144,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, most of whom are playing a combat role. …”

so when these guys say ‘immediate withdrawl..” be sure to read literally!

“..The Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), has said he will continue current policy. His Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), has said he will begin an immediate withdrawal of U.S. combat forces, to be completed within 16 months. …”

U.S., Iraqi Negotiators Agree on 2011 Withdrawal Rice’s Baghdad Visit Ends With Accord on Departure Date; Legal Immunity Is Still a Sticking Point

 

and– needing immunity for the remaining ‘tens of thousands’ because they will be doing what??? that they would need this for???

Karen DeYoung and Sudarsan Raghavan

Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, August 22, 2008; Page A01

 

BAGHDAD, Aug. 21 — U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have agreed to the withdrawal of all U.S. combat forces from the country by the end of 2011, and Iraqi officials said they are “very close” to resolving the remaining issues blocking a final accord that governs the future American military presence here. Iraqi and U.S. officials said several difficult issues remain, including whether U.S. troops will be subject to Iraqi law if accused of committing crimes. But the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were unauthorized to discuss the agreement publicly, said key elements of a timetable for troop withdrawal once resisted by President Bush had been reached. “We have a text,” Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said after a day-long visit Thursday by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Rice and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki spent nearly three hours here discussing key undecided issues. The accord must be completed and approved by both governments before a United Nations mandate expires at the end of the year. The question of immunity for U.S. troops and Defense Department personnel from Iraqi legal jurisdiction — demanded by Washington and rejected by Baghdad — remained unresolved. Troop immunity, one U.S. official said, “is the red line for us.” Officials said they were still discussing language that would make the distinction between on- and off-duty activities, with provisions allowing for some measure of Iraqi legal jurisdiction over soldiers accused of committing crimes while off-duty. But negotiators made progress on a specific timetable outlining the departure of U.S. forces from Iraq, something Maliki is under considerable domestic political pressure to secure. In the past, Rice and other U.S. officials have spoken of an “aspirational time horizon” that would make withdrawals contingent on the continuation of improved security conditions and the capabilities of Iraqi security forces.

Officials on both sides have said they hope to split the difference, setting next year as the goal for Iraqi forces to take the lead in security operations in all 18 provinces, including Baghdad.  U.S. and Iraqi negotiators have now also agreed to a conditions-based withdrawal of U.S. combat troops by the end of 2011, a date further in the future than the Iraqis initially wanted. The deal would leave tens of thousands of troops in supporting roles, such as military trainers, for an unspecified time. According to the U.S. military, there are 144,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, most of whom are playing a combat role.

Negotiators agreed several weeks ago to reduce the presence of all U.S. forces in Iraqi cities, among the most dangerous places soldiers operate, by the end of next year. That process would entail consolidating U.S. troops now deployed in small neighborhood posts into larger bases outside city centers, according to U.S. and Iraqi officials involved in the talks. “They have both agreed to 2011,” Mohammed al-Haj Hamoud, Iraq’s chief negotiator, said in a telephone interview. “If the Iraqi government at that time decides it is necessary to keep the American forces longer, they can do so.”

The fragile nature of security gains over the past year was evident in the secrecy surrounding Rice’s one-day visit here, which was not announced until her arrival from Incirlik Air Base in Turkey. U.S. negotiators hoped that her participation in direct talks with Maliki and visits with the Shiite and Sunni vice presidents would help conclude the immunity and timeline discussions. “What my presence can do is to identify any final obstacles,” Rice said Thursday as she began the Baghdad leg of a trip that has included a NATO meeting in Brussels on the crisis in Georgia and a stop in Warsaw to sign an agreement to station parts of a missile-defense system in Poland.

“It’s a chance for me to sit with the prime minister and really get a sense of if there is anything else we need to do from Washington to get to closure” on the Iraq security accord. At a joint news conference before her departure, Rice and Zebari said that significant progress had been made. “We are working together as partners to make sure we cover the concerns of both,” she said. The United States, Zebari said, had shown “a great deal of understanding” and flexibility in response to Iraqi concerns. The issues were “sensitive,” he said, and “that’s why it takes a long time.”

“We think this is a very good agreement,” Rice said, adding that “the United States has gone very far” in accommodating Iraqi issues. She then noted that some obstacles remain, saying it would be an “excellent agreement when we finally have agreement.” Shortly after negotiations began in March, Iraq rejected an initial U.S. draft, which Maliki later publicly branded a “dead end.” The draft called for immunity for both troops and U.S. civilian contractors, as well as unilateral U.S. control over its military operations and detention of Iraqi citizens. It did not include a timetable for U.S. troop withdrawal. With talks at a stalemate and time growing short, the two sides scaled back hopes of reaching a full status-of-forces agreement of the type that outlines the rights and responsibilities of U.S. forces in more than 80 countries around the world. In early June, after President Bush instructed U.S. negotiators to be more flexible on Iraq’s key concerns, compromises were reached on military operations and detainees, and the United States abandoned its immunity demand for contractors.

Last month, Maliki said that the end of 2010 would be a reasonable goal for the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops. Facing challenges from within his own majority Shiite group, as well as from minority Sunnis and Kurds, Maliki pledged that there would be no “secret deals” with the United States. He said the agreement would be put to a vote in Iraq’s fractious parliament.  “Time is of the essence,” Zebari said at the news conference. “We are redoubling our efforts” to conclude the deal in time for it to be signed by Maliki and Bush before the U.N. mandate expires on Dec. 31, he said.

Without a formal, bilateral agreement, there is no international legal basis for U.S. forces to remain here.  The first Iraqi political test will come Friday, Zebari said in a conversation with reporters after the news conference, when Maliki’s executive council will examine the parts of the text that negotiators have agreed to, as well as proposals to deal with immunity and other issues. “Tomorrow is a very important day,” Zebari said.  The next step is consideration by a larger council of representatives from the leading political blocs. Then the document will be submitted to parliament, which is in summer recess until Sept. 9.

The Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when all business slows amid fasting, also falls in September. U.S. negotiators have told Iraqi officials that a change in U.S. policy in Iraq could come when a new president takes office in January. The Republican candidate, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), has said he will continue current policy. His Democratic opponent, Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.), has said he will begin an immediate withdrawal of U.S. combat forces, to be completed within 16 months.

glumbert – Cyril has a fishy card trick

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