Strike The Root Blog

In response to Joe Biden’s prediction that Dear Leader Barack Obama would face a major foreign affairs crisis within his first six months in office (read as: some foreign government[s] won’t do what he tells them to do), John McCain proudly declared while shamelessly pandering to Pennsylvanians yesterday (maybe they got a lot of adjustable rate mortgages?) that he’s already been tested by crisis:

McCain recalled being ready to launch a bombing run during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which Biden said over the weekend tested a new President John F. Kennedy and was the template for the kind of “generated crisis” the 47-year-old Obama would face within six months of taking office.”I was on board the USS Enterprise,” McCain, a former naval aviator, said in the capital city of Harrisburg. “I sat in the cockpit, on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise, off of Cuba. I had a target. My friends, you know how close we came to a nuclear war.”

As the crowd of several thousand began to swell with cheers and applause, he added with dramatic effect: “America will not have a president who needs to be tested. I’ve been tested, my friends.”

As the article notes, McCain has previously written of his experience in the Cuban missile crisis:

“The Enterprise, sailing at full speed under nuclear power, was the first U.S. carrier to reach waters off Cuba,” McCain wrote in his memoir, “Faith of My Fathers.” “For about five days, the pilots on the Enterprise believed we were going into action. We had never been in combat before, and despite the global confrontation a strike on Cuba portended, we were prepared and anxious to fly our first mission.”

He added: “Pilots and crewmen alike adopted a cool-headed, business-as-usual attitude toward the mission. Inwardly, of course, we were excited as hell, but we kept our composure and aped the standard image of a laconic, reserved, and fearless American at war.”

In other words, McCain and his fellow would-be executioners could barely contain their glee at the juicy prospect of dropping bombs on Cubans. Ye gods! In both his speech and the book you can practically hear him lick his lips in anticipation of the opportunities for slaughter he thought awaited him and his comrades.

(And take note of Biden’s creepy “Stand By Your Leader” exhortations in Seattle…)

(Cross-posted at The Postmodern Tribune.)

Power mad- Nationalists think they can hold back a hurricane:

McCain rallies are looking eerily familiar….

….as are his supporters:

And the ceremony for the innocent victims killed in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan is when?

Sometimes the state grants just a bit of slack:

Puzzling mysteries. Scientists seek the origin of the Neo-con brain:

Sarah is responding well to training:

Emotional weakness will only allow the terrorists to win:

When not busy caging you, they bully, order, and abuse:

Gustav takes the French Quarter for a ride……

….and gives another chance for the road fascists to shine:

US Crusaders find a new beat to walk….

….and gather the sheep to explain the rules:

Looking to have a quiet, peaceful dinner?….

….while watching your liberties flushed down the sewer?

Let nothing block the path….

….of making eye contact with your adversaries:

An obvious provocation….

….deserving of pepper spray:

The Paulians know what this all about:

Stay on message- Rudy and crew continue promoting 911 hobgoblins:

The Afghan killing fields continue to be productive:

Monster in the house. Someone please page J.W. Boothe:

Hey Hillary! There’s a new War Wench in town:

I absolutely cannot believe that I totally forgot the terrible significance of this day. I feel like such an ass for not giving it a single thought until now, as the sun begins to set on me and my neighbors.

But now that I’ve been reminded, I’ll be thinking about those hundreds of thousands of people slaughtered in cold blood. The mothers. The fathers. The children. All of them–total strangers though they were, who lived long before my time–are on my mind right now.

Nobody in this country should ever forget what this day means. Nobody. Ever.

Nobody.

Ever.

This latest news on the Transportation Security Administration’s valiant efforts to keep us all safe and protected from the Islamo-Fascist Terror Menace comes to us by way of Manuel Lora at Lew Rockwell’s blog:

For arguing with a TSA agent, Robin Kassner wound up being slammed to the floor. She’s filed a lawsuit.

“I kept begging them over and over again get off of me…and they wouldn’t stop,” Kassner said.

And it wasn’t enough for another woman to show TSA agents nipple rings that set off a metal detector. The agents forced her to take them out.

Mandi Hamlin said, “I had to get pliers and pull it apart.”

In Chicago, people like Robert Perry are subjected to exhaustive security checks. He was patted down, his wheel chair was examined and his hands were swabbed, all in public view in a see-through room at the security checkpoint. Perry, 71, is not alone.

“It’s humiliation,” Perry said.

Perry was also taken to a see-through room by a TSA agent when his artificial knee set off the metal detector.

“He yelled at me to get the belt off. ‘I told you to get the belt off.’ So I took the belt off. He ran his hands down over and pulled the pants down, they went down around my ankle,” Perry said.

At that point, Perry was standing in his underwear in public view. He asked to see a supervisor. That made things worse.

“She was yelling ‘I have power, I have power, I have power,” Perry said. The power to stop him from flying to Florida with his wife that day to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

“It makes you feel like you have no rights,” Perry said.

(more…)

It would appear that the legally privileged gangsters of “the People’s” Republic of China have traded the boot stamping on a human face for the calm, soothing injection to oblivion within the comfortable confines of a “mobile execution chamber.”

By way of Disinfo.com, I found this report by Tim Boucher:

What is that fine looking vehicle, you ask? Why, it is part of “China’s new fleet of mobile execution chambers.”

Makers of the death vans say the vehicles and injections are a civilized alternative to the firing squad, ending the life of the condemned more quickly, clinically and safely. The switch from gunshots to injections is a sign that China “promotes human rights now,” says Kang Zhongwen, who designed the Jinguan Automobile death van.

The AOL News link that Boucher cites doesn’t appear to be working, but I found this June 2006 USA Today article on the execution of convicted murderer-rapist Zhang Shiqiang in one such death chamber-on-wheels (which appears to be the article Boucher quoted and attempted to link):

The country that executed more than four times as many convicts as the rest of the world combined last year is slowly phasing out public executions by firing squad in favor of lethal injections. Unlike the United States and Singapore, the only two other countries where death is administered by injection, China metes out capital punishment from specially equipped “death vans” that shuttle from town to town…

For years, foreign human rights groups have accused China of arbitrary executions and cruelty in its use of capital punishment. The exact number of convicts put to death is a state secret. Amnesty International estimates there were at least 1,770 executions in China in 2005 — vs. 60 in the United States, but the group says on its website that the toll could be as high as 8,000 prisoners.

I could just see something like this being supported by both major parties here in the United States. Why, just think of all the “terr’rists” they could round up and execute!

And it’s all perfectly humane! No muss, no fuss.

(Cross-posted at The Postmodern Tribune.)

Scott Horton has posted an interview with freelance investigative journalist Christopher Ketcham at Antiwar.com Radio that I highly recommend.

Ketcham discusses his latest article for RadarOnline, “The Last Roundup”, in which he tells of a government data base (or perhaps network of government data bases) allegedly code named “Main Core”, which may contain names and personal information on as many as 8 million Americans considered to be potentially obstructive of Uncle Sam’s “Continuity of Government” operations in the event of some kind of national crisis or emergency. These individuals “could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention,” according to Ketcham.

(more…)

Once a frat boy……

…….always a frat boy:

Even Chelsea is stunned by the huge debt:

Moms get their kids back…….but not without a lot of state baggage:

Neocon kooks terrorize the fashion world……

….but “terrorist adornment” surely is not as offensive as Fashion for Peace:

Certainly a more productive and peaceful pursuit than being president:

Rolling Blunder- Maybe these motorcycle Viet-Vets have been inhaling too much CO:

The half-billlion dollar discovery by NASA- there are rocks on Mars:

Some of the last people remaining with “total autonomy:”

Room for another head? Time for the dead white guys to move over for The Anointed One:

A trail of blood……..

…..that leads to:

The US government has spent billions on attempting to curb the growth of terrorism abroad, and as usual has failed miserably. Meanwhile, eco-terrorists continue to strike at home.

I found an amusing entry for the Earth Liberation Front (ELF) at Wikipedia: “Any direct action to halt the destruction of the environment and adhering to the strict nonviolent guidelines, listed below, can be considered an ELF action. Economic sabotage and property destruction fall within the guidelines.”

Since when is any form of destruction nonviolent? The obscenity of willful property destruction is bad enough. The worse crime is to suggest that it’s justifiable.

Ahh, the hypocritical. I’m willing to bet that there’s not one Christian member of ELF, and they’re all shrilly opposed to any law that smacks of religious morals. Good for them. Yet at the same time, they force their morals on the rest of us, acting as judge, jury, and executioner for those who offend their environmental sensibilities.

My recommendation for those threatened by ELF: arm yourself, and defend your property to the death if necessary. Make it bloody if you have to. The government’s too busy fighting terrorists elsewhere, even though the ELF has been identified as the #1 terrorist group in the US.