Anyone that loves the cheesey appartment scene from Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver, where De Niro arms himself against the "screwheads" of the world, will enjoy this:

                                Robert De Busho

Just ran across this 3 year old post at, The Peking Duck: Hate George Bush? Have I got a site for you. We continue to wallow in this mire.

It Is Tough Being a Republican in 2004, because somehow, you have to believe concurrently that:

1. Jesus loves you, but shares your deep hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.

2. The United States should get out of the United Nations, but our highest national priority is enforcing U. N. resolutions against Iraq, [just update that to Iran:Iran News - More Iran defiance to bring new sanctions: Bush]. Gene

3."Standing Tall for America" means firing your workers and moving their jobs to India.

4. A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multi-national corporations can make decisions affecting all humankind without regulation.

5. Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

6. The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches, while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

7. Group sex and drug use are degenerate sins, unless you someday run for governor of California as a Republican.

8. If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.

9. A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our long-time allies, but then demand their cooperation and money.

10. HMOs and insurance companies make profits and have the interest of the public at heart.

11. Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.

12. Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

13. It is okay that the Bush family's "Carlisle Group" has done millions of business with the Bin Laden family.

14. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him and Rumsfeld reassured him he was our buddy. A bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him. But, then a bad guy again when Bush junior needed a prop for his re-election campaign as the "war president"

15. A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying about WMD existence, to enlist support for an unprovoked, undeclared war and occupation, in which thousands of soldiers and civilians die, is, somehow, solid "defense" policy in a "War against Terrorism".

16. Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which should include "banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet".

17. The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's Harken Oil stock trade should be sealed in his Daddy's library, and is none of our business.

18. What Bill Clinton or John Kerry did in the 1960s was of vital national interest but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.

19. Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a "spirit of international harmony".

20. Affirmative Action is wrong, but it is OK for your Daddy and his friends (here and in Saudi Arabia) to get you to graduate from Yale without studying much; to dodge the draft in the Texas Air National Guard; to bail out your company Harken Oil and the Texas Rangers; to get the Governorship of Texas and then to have the Supreme Court appoint you President of the USA.

21. You are a conservative, but it is OK to spend like there is no tomorrow and run up deficits that your grandchildren will have to pay,while at the same refunding as much tax money as possible to rich people who do not need it. This illogical behavior can take a toll on a healthy mind. So if a friend of yours has been acting a bit dazed and confused lately, be nice: he or she may be a Republican!

 

Posted by: Anonymous at June 24, 2004 05:22 AM

What are you doing reading this when you could be reading: Whatever It Is, I’m Against It?

           Virtual decision making, so what's different?              

Are new weapons to be lauded? Is NPR becoming a Republican mouthpiece? Answer yes to the first and you have to answer yes to the second. On Friday, yesterday, when I heard, Predator Drone to be Supplanted by Well-Armed Craft, hear it here: NPR Audio Player, I was waiting for the counter argument. It never came.

I've heard and read about NPR's shifting political bias for some time but, honestly, hadn't heard anything, from NPR, that led me to conclude it was true, until yesterday. 

Perhaps, if we were in a legitimate war against a nation that posed an actual threat to us, reports like this would be justified. But for NPR to laud a new, unmanned assassination machine capable of carrying 3000 pounds of weapons, reeks of consent and approval.

Consider, from the transcript, Mary Louise Kelly, quoted below, is conducting the interview for NRP.

KELLY: That represents a huge step forward for the military. The Reaper can carry as many bombs as a fighter jet, but it's unmanned status means it's lighter, so it can hover for hours waiting for a terrorist target to appear. It can carry missiles at the same time, if you don't want to level a whole building but just take out, say, a single sniper sitting in a third-story window, and with the pilot sitting safely back home in the States, no American lives are risked.

It's just wonderful isn't it? Someone, labeled a terrorist by the military or Bush or the next tin-horn dictator wanna-be, will be blown to bits from the comfort of a fully stocked command center, complete with kitchenette, by the stroke of a joystick and our kids are now training themselves, with our approval, for combat.

Killing at a distance, who will be safe? How will we be able to invest in anything but military technology once every nation has killer drones, once the world has gone mad?

KELLY: Chesser, [a pilot in training] also sees a distinct advantage to flying by remote control. Instead of long tours of duty overseas, he points out you get to go home and eat dinner with your wife.

Report from NPR by Mary Louise Kelly, dissenting opinion by, Gene

**********************************************

Here's the entire transcript in clear violation of copyright laws:

Predator Drone to Be Supplanted by Well-Armed Craft

April 20, 2007 from All Things Considered

ROBERT SIEGEL, host: A small drone aircraft known as the Predator has emerged as one of the most useful and controversial weapons in the U.S. military's arsenal. The Predator played a role in catching Saddam Hussein; in killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq; and in killing suspected terrorists in Pakistan and in Yemen.

Well, now a bigger, stronger version of the Predator is about to be rolled out. It's called the Reaper. NPR's Mary Louise Kelly made a visit to Creech Air Force Base in Nevada to check it out.

MARY LOUISE KELLY: At 36 feet, the new Reaper is nine feet longer than the Predator. It's also faster and it can fly twice as high. But let's get to the point.

Lieutenant Colonel JONATHAN GREENE (42nd Attack Squadron, Creech Air Force Base): One of the very big differences is its ability to carry 3,000 pounds of weapons.

KELLY: Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Greene. He is commander of the Air Force's 42nd Attack Squadron, which is home to the Reaper. Greene and I are standing in a hanger in the Nevada desert, about an hour's drive north of Las Vegas. And we're staring at the hulking silver silhouette of an MQ-9 Reaper.

Col. GREENE: We're looking at the wings now. We'll typically fly right now with GBU-12s, which are a 500-pound laser-guided precision weapons, bombs, or AGM-114 Hellfire missiles.

KELLY: This is a Hellfire right here.

Col. GREENE: Yes, it is.

KELLY: And this is the key advantage a Reaper can offer. Like the Predator, it's a drone in military jargon, a UAV, or unmanned aerial vehicle. When the Reaper flies combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan this fall, the pilots will be sitting right here in Nevada controlling their planes by a remote control.

But while the smaller Predator was conceived as an intelligence-gathering tool, and only later retrofitted with a couple of Hellfire missiles, the Reaper was designed to attack. Here's an example of what that means. Last summer, when the U.S. military was engaged in a massive manhunt for Zarqawi, Colonel Greene says the Predator helped find him.

Col. GREENE: Saw him, followed him and then commanders in the field used that information to call in the air strikes from the F-16s.

KELLY: They needed F-16s because the Predator is too flimsy to carry the big bombs needed to blow up the house where Zarqawi was hiding.

Col. GREENE: If that was a Reaper there, we could have done the whole thing ourselves. I mean, we could have watched them, followed them, gotten the clearance to strike, and we could've done it.

KELLY: That represents a huge step forward for the military. The Reaper can carry as many bombs as a fighter jet, but it's unmanned status means it's lighter, so it can hover for hours waiting for a terrorist target to appear. It can carry missiles at the same time, if you don't want to level a whole building but just take out, say, a single sniper sitting in a third-story window, and with the pilot sitting safely back home in the States, no American lives are risked.

Now, all this is not to say the Reaper is without problems. Legal and ethical questions are bound to be raised about a machine the military has branded the first hunter-killer UAV. Critics have accused the Predator of carrying out assassinations and asked whether terror suspects who pose no immediate threat shouldn't be arrested rather than blown up. Green(ph) concedes similar questions will be asked about the Reaper.

Col. GREEN: But I think those questions get raised about anything you do in combat when you're fighting a war. As long as you have the legal authority and the moral high ground, then that's what we're out there to do is protect out country in the war on terror.

KELLY: There are also technical challenges for the Reaper to overcome.

(Soundbite of truck)

KELLY: That's the sound of a truck backing a Reaper off the runway and into its hangar. On the day we visited, dark clouds hung low, and wind was kicking up dust clouds big enough that the officers greeted me with a friendly welcome to Baghdad. High winds mean a Reaper can't fly. Like the Predator, it's a glorified glider. Any precipitation or even clouds can cause it to crash. That's a real limitation in the mountains of Afghanistan.

(Soundbite of buzzing)

KELLY: The hangar doors slide shut to keep out the dust and wind. Officers are taking no chances with this Reaper. It's an $8 million investment, and it's also the only one they've got. Another is scheduled to arrive here next week, then one every month over the summer as the squadron gears up for combat this fall. Intensive training is underway for the flight crews.

Unidentified Man #2: All right, we're getting going again. We're going to knock out the (unintelligible) section where...

KELLY: Major Casey Tidgewell(ph) is one of the instructors here at Creech Air Force Base. His students, sprawled around a conference table, mostly come from fighter and bomber backgrounds. Tidgewell says they need those combat instincts to fly a Reaper. One pilot in training, Major John Chesser(ph), arrived here from the cockpit of an F-15E, known as the Strike Eagle. He argues he might actually see more action flying an unmanned drone.

Major JOHN CHESSER (United States Air Force): For example, a thousand hours of Strike Eagle, never dropped a real bomb, did training the whole entire time. Come here, probably within the first, I don't know month or two, will have dropped several bombs. So it may not be as sexy, but we're going to definitely get the mission done.

KELLY: Chesser also sees a distinct advantage to flying by remote control. Instead of long tours of duty overseas, he points out you get to go home and eat dinner with your wife. Mary Louise Kelly, NPR News.