Toshikatsu Matsuoka, positive role model for scandal-ridden Bush administration

CNN reports that Japanese agricultural minister Toshikatsu Matsuoka has committed suicide rather than face the music in the face of a corruption scandal. May I modestly suggest that corrupt, scandal plagued members of the Bush adminstration follow in his footsteps. Karl Rove? Consider leaving the oven on and un-lit. Alberto Gonzales? Consider potato stuck in your car's exhaust pipe. Dick Cheney? Oh definitely razor blades and a tub of warm water.

It's memorial day, do the right thing. Perhaps in memory of the almost 4 thousand Americans whose lives you have wasted and the thousands upon thousands of Iraqis whose lives you have stolen.

Cold War Veteran's Association

I've developed a full line of CWVA items for The Scarlet Menace. They have a sense of humor, but I realize they're also expressing something--all of the Scarlet Menace is actually--about what I feel. It's not that I'm an ideological communist. Read anything about Stalin, Mao or the rest of their ilk and the deeper you go the more the more you realize what a facade they maintained. But at the same time I miss that facade. For me the propaganda, the socialist realism, the imagery of people united and struggling, is a kind of religious vision: an idealized expression of a world that didn't really exist and certainly doesn't now. The soviet secret police was the self-destructive reality behind many of the iconic expressions of freedom and justice. The red and black are strong spiritually compelling colors. That world is gone, but that spiritual hunger for equality, for righteousness, for freedom, for collectivity, for a reality that matches our aspirations, that remains. The ideology is discredited, and probably for good reason. But the symbols holds their power.

I am a veteran of the cold war. I served its front lines by being a more-or-less card-carrying communist for almost ten years. Its struggles informed my childhood; its memories color our new world of narcissistic money-based nihilism. The desperation of the so-called terrorists, the desperation of the so-called warriors on terror, it's all a reflection of the destruction, along with everything that was bad about the cold war era, of everything that was good about it and its time of politically and ideologically-based liberation struggle.

Yes, there were firing squads and brutality behind Mao's cultural revolution. There were firing squads and Siberian camps behind Stalin's nationalization of the Leninist ideal. But there was something else as well. Something the world misses.

Hope.

WTF with this liar

So WTF, Bush has some nerve talking about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden being a threat. How can anybody listen to this liar? Wasn't Bush saying a couple years ago that Osama was no longer relevant and finding him was no longer so important? Didn't he start a war with Saddam instead of follow through with Al Qaeda? Get these war-mongerers out. The so called war on terror is a farce.

1 point Obama, 1 point Hillary

Well the democrats showed their spinelessness and voted for the war money. I am happy, and honestly surprised, to report that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama voted against them. Let's hope that is the beginning of some real leadership. I sent emails to both of them. It's very easy to do, and presumably these politicians have people tallying up the emails that come in.

But the war still needs to be ended. And soon.

spineless democrats

According to the Huffington Post, Democrats in congress are preparing to pull any language demanding withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq from the war funding bill to end the impasse with Bush. What a pathetic cave in. The war needs to be ended, why can't these fools just stand up to principle? U.S. TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ--NOW AND FOREVER!

I'm sure hoping the alleged anti-war presidential candidates currently in government vote against any stripped down funding proposals. Anything less is supporting no the troops, but the president and his malicious war-mongering folly.

Jesus Is My Comrade

I'm proud to announce a new line at The Scarlet Menace. "XXXX Is My Comrade" will combine imagery from two of the world's great religions. Now available, "Jesus Is My Comrade" mugs, tees, bags, and tiles; and "Thor Is My Comrade" mugs and mead steins. Our deities stand in for Mao courtesy of the "Miracle" of modern technology. Happy shopping and God(s) bless. More to come.

the good die young

Jerry Falwell has died at age 73. (Thanks to Joe.My.God. for being first on the news!) Except for the fact that I don't believe in hell, I would wish that he rot there. Sadly, he spent his entire life trying to make the world a living hell for those who didn't fit his bigoted, narrow vision of religious morality. A vengeful militarist, a man who campaigned tirelessly to show his hatred for gay people, the world is now rid of him. Unfortunately, he leaves behind him several hundred thousand rabid believers. Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps, Ted Haggard, the rest of your ilk--Jerry Falwell requests the pleasure of your company six feet under.

Long live Tinky-Winky!

wasted lives

An article I found through the Huffington Post says that U.S. officials are saying we should "brace for a jump in casualties" in Iraq. Nowhere is there sadder, more tragic evidence that the war in Iraq must end now, and immediately. Somehow Bush believes that doing more of the same, wasting more young American--and countless Iraqi--life will have different result than the chaos it has produced in the last four years.

The Democrats must tell it like it is. Every single loss of life in Iraq from this day forward is a tragic waste. Every life lost to Bush's folly is another life squandered. While the American politicians debate and equivocate, and Iraqi politicians do lord knows what, people are dying, and none of those deaths mean a thing. These lives are not an obscene investment, that somehow things will get better if they are spent now. These lives are flesh and blood people, loved by many, that will be gone for nothing.

Many people now realize that the U.S. should not have upset the Iraqi apple cart in the first place. But this is the truth that must be embraced now: The US can do NOTHING now to prevent further deterioration in Iraq except leave. The longer the US stays, the more wasteful death, the more tragedy, the more hatred that young middle-easterners will feel toward this country.

Stop the debates. Stop the so-caled bipartisan negotiations. End this war now. Withdraw today, or tomorrow, but NOW.

Support the troops? Then bring them home!