Gay Bomb? Don't Ask, Don't Tell!

Your tax dollars at work...

Pentagon Confirms It Sought To Build A 'Gay Bomb'
Hank Plante
Reporting

(CBS 5) BERKELEY A Berkeley watchdog organization that tracks military spending said it uncovered a strange U.S. military proposal to create a hormone bomb that could purportedly turn enemy soldiers into homosexuals and make them more interested in sex than fighting.

Pentagon officials on Friday confirmed to CBS 5 that military leaders had considered, and then subsquently rejected, building the so-called "Gay Bomb."

Edward Hammond, of Berkeley's Sunshine Project, had used the Freedom of Information Act to obtain a copy of the proposal from the Air Force's Wright Laboratory in Dayton, Ohio.

As part of a military effort to develop non-lethal weapons, the proposal suggested, "One distasteful but completely non-lethal example would be strong aphrodisiacs, especially if the chemical also caused homosexual behavior."

The documents show the Air Force lab asked for $7.5 million to develop such a chemical weapon.

"The Ohio Air Force lab proposed that a bomb be developed that contained a chemical that would cause enemy soliders to become gay, and to have their units break down because all their soldiers became irresistably attractive to one another," Hammond said after reviwing the documents.

"The notion was that a chemical that would probably be pleasant in the human body in low quantities could be identified, and by virtue of either breathing or having their skin exposed to this chemical, the notion was that soliders would become gay," explained Hammond.

The Pentagon told CBS 5 that the proposal was made by the Air Force in 1994.

"The Department of Defense is committed to identifying, researching and developing non-lethal weapons that will support our men and women in uniform," said a DOD spokesperson, who indicated that the "gay bomb" idea was quickly dismissed.

However, Hammond said the government records he obtained suggest the military gave the plan much stronger consideration than it has acknowledged.

"The truth of the matter is it would have never come to my attention if it was dismissed at the time it was proposed," he said. "In fact, the Pentagon has used it repeatedly and subsequently in an effort to promote non-lethal weapons, and in fact they submitted it to the highest scientific review body in the country for them to consider."

Military officials insisted Friday to CBS 5 that they are not currently working on any such idea and that the past plan was abandoned.

Gay community leaders in California said Friday that they found the notion of a "gay bomb" both offensive and almost laughable at the same time.

"Throughout history we have had so many brave men and women who are gay and lesbian serving the military with distinction," said Geoff Kors of Equality California. "So, it's just offensive that they think by turning people gay that the other military would be incapable of doing their job. And its absurd because there's so much medical data that shows that sexual orientation is immutable and cannot be changed."

(© MMVII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)

Chaos, Inc.

What, me worry?

Only his second frickin' veto. Amazing. And his justification is that a timetable would cause chaos. So, what would Bush call what's been going on in Iraq so far? Order???

Tweedledum and Tweedledumber

Democrats roll over, play dead with war provisions, while Republicans stand tall, ignoring reality.

Dems Abandon War Authority Provision

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By DAVID ESPO and MATTHEW LEE Associated Press Writers

March 12,2007 | WASHINGTON -- Top House Democrats retreated Monday from an attempt to limit President Bush's authority for taking military action against Iran as the leadership concentrated on a looming confrontation with the White House over the Iraq war.

Officials said Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other members of the leadership had decided to strip from a major military spending bill a requirement for Bush to gain approval from Congress before moving against Iran.

Conservative Democrats as well as lawmakers concerned about the possible impact on Israel had argued for the change in strategy.

The developments occurred as Democrats pointed toward an initial test vote in the House Appropriations Committee on Thursday on the overall bill, which would require the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq by Sept. 1, 2008, if not earlier. The measure provides nearly $100 billion to pay for fighting in two wars, and includes more money than the president requested for operations in Afghanistan and what Democrats called training and equipment shortages.

The White House has issued a veto threat against the bill, and Vice President Dick Cheney attacked its supporters in a speech, declaring they "are telling the enemy simply to watch the clock and wait us out."

House GOP Leader John Boehner of Ohio issued a statement that said Democrats shouldn't count on any help passing their legislation. "Republicans will continue to stand united in this debate, and will oppose efforts by Democrats to undermine the ability of General Petraeus and our troops to achieve victory in the Global War on Terror," he said.

Sigh

I'm a little ticked at the sudden "Airline Passenger Bill of Rights" idea invoked in the wake of the JetBlue stranded airlines fiasco.

Several things bug me about it: first, just like the overused "War on XXX" (War on Poverty, War on Drugs, War on Terror) I think invoking a Bill of Rights-style (Patients' Bill of Rights, etc.) concept cheapens the actual Bill of Rights. That's a seemingly stupid point, but it takes the fundamental freedoms that, bundled together, make America a desirable place to be, and transforms it into a euphemism for citizen outrage. I'm sorry people were stranded, but if there's an Airline Passenger Bill of Rights, then how about a Highway Commuter Bill of Rights, a Public Transportation Bill of Rights, and a Shopping Mall Consumer Bill of Rights, too? Lame! Seems to me that people should just be going after JetBlue and/or the FAA (or the TSA?) for boning up the process so that the passengers were stranded.

A second thing that bugs me is how quickly and vehement the response has been to these people trapped 11 hours on a plane. Again, it's lame and irritating, but I couldn't help but think of the hapless people in New Orleans, who had a helluva lot more going on than the JetBlue passengers, and where was the help for them? I think there's more than a little class and race bias in the publicity around the JetBlue thing, and the push for reform, compared to New Orleans, which is still a mess, and is likely to remain so for a long, long time, victim of not-so benign neglect (some of which created the problem to begin with). But inconvenience some airline passengers, and it's suddenly a big issue. Why? Because they had cellphones with cameras, captured those Kodak moments?

A third thing that pissed me off was how JetBlue's stock went up in the wake of the JetBlue fiasco! My rule of thumb about the stock market is this: if it's bad news for working people and consumers, then the stocks go up; good news for everyday people, and the stocks go down. That's common enough to be, in my eyes, almost a truism. Chrysler axes thousands of workers, and I bet its stock goes up. A company lets its workers unionize, its stock'll go down. So, we have JetBlue blowing it, utterly failing to do what people are paying it to do, and it gets rewarded on the stock market. It's that topsy-turvy kind of accounting that lets CEOs garner massive salaries and benefits packages even as their companies tank. Enough, already.

Outfoxed

Oh, lordy. Fox is trying to do comedy, trying to do their own reactionary "Daily Show" -- it's going to be a trainwreck! The clips they've shown already are just terrible! About at this level...

Krusty Komedy Klassic

Fox should take a bath on this venture, unless people just watch it to laugh at it, to see how bad it is. Still, I can't imagine it lasting for long, this dog-and-pony show. Fox probably has interns watching "Laugh-In" and trying to put a right-wing spin on it, so they can be current and edgy. Baahah!

The biggest joke is Fox even trying this.

Pentagoners

Oink! Oink! Oink! The Pentagon wants more and more. And this article doesn't even get at the real number: anywhere from $739 to 745 billion already budgeted to them. We're way, way overspending on our military, and keep in mind: our even-then huge military did nothing to prevent 9/11 from happening.

Proof Positive

Why the whole national defense and national security state apparatus is so much bullshit, unable to actually defend the country from very much at all...

Electrocuted Owl Cuts Power to 23,000

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February 06,2007 | CASPER, Wyo. -- An owl electrocuted itself in an electrical substation, briefly knocking out power to almost 23,000 customers in south Casper.

Margaret Oler, spokeswoman for Rocky Mountain Power, said the bird tripped the high-voltage line at 10:20 p.m. Sunday, shutting down that and three other substations. She called it the largest outage she's seen in 25 years.

"Our equipment operated exactly as it should have and did not allow the damage to go further," Oler said.

It took about an hour to restore power.

Astrogate and Afrikakorps

Jeez. That astronaut's going to be charged with attempted murder. Even NASA's not immune to the culture of corruption and criminality that has beset the American government. Maybe with the shuttle program winding down, the woman figured she had nothing to lose. It's a weird story, for sure, but definitely not what NASA needed.

Also, it looks like Bush is creating an Afrikakorps, adding a Pentagon command covering Africa. Apparently it's going to be using the Pentagon for humanitarian aid functions, which'll further lead to the atrophying of the State Department. Here's the new symbol they're using for it (just kidding). But it really bugs me how the Bush League increasingly rely on the Pentagon to cover all phases of government action abroad. Small government? Not hardly. It's just another extension of the Fortress America conception the Bushies have created, largely through their own inept actions and their willfully wrongheaded warmongering.

Pentagon Gravy Train Rolls On

Looks like Bush is doing his usual crap. It's long, long overdue for us to go back to the pre-1969 budget, that correctly separates out the Social Security TRUST from the budget, to reveal that the Pentagon actually occupies a greater chunk of the budget than we're led to believe.

"A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Our arms must be mighty, ready for instant action, so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction...

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together."

-- Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, 1961

His speechwriter originally referred to it as the "military-industrial-congressional complex" but they didn't want to torque off the Congress, so they struck that. Are we allowed to talk about it, anymore??

Pentagon Big Winner in Bush Budget Plan
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By ANDREW TAYLOR Associated Press Writer

February 03,2007 | WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon is the big winner in President Bush's proposed budget for next year, while domestic items such as aid to schools and grants to local governments will get only the slightest of increases.

[Compassionate conservatism. *koff*]

Medicare and the Medicaid, the health program for the poor and disabled, would shoulder modest but politically difficult cost curbs in the budget the White House is submitting to Congress on Monday.

Some $18 billion in budget savings would come from farm programs over five years.

Bush's spending plan totals almost $3 trillion for the budget year starting Oct. 1. It would produce a surplus in five years, helped by steady revenue growth and a squeeze on the one-sixth of the budget that covers domestic agencies such as the departments of Education, Energy and Health and Human Services.

Domestic agencies would not face an outright cut, as proposed last year, but would see increases averaging less than inflation, White House Budget director Rob Portman said. Higher costs for veterans' health care probably would eat up most of any such increase.

The Pentagon, which also consumes one-sixth of the overall budget, would get a whopping 11 percent increase, to $481.4 billion in its core budget. And that is before accounting for an additional $235 billion in war costs over the next year and a half.

[AAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH! Gnashing teeth!!]

Bush's plan will get a skeptical reception from the Democratic-controlled Congress. Democrats say it meets the president's promise to balance the budget by 2012 by omitting war costs and expensive changes to the alternative minimum tax and assuming politically untenable cuts in payments to doctors under Medicare.

"There's this continuing deception about our real fiscal condition," the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee said in an interview Saturday. "Over and over again we see things left out of his budget that we know are going to have to be dealt with," said Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D.

[Yes, there is real deception going on.]

Democrats also say Bush's estimated cost of about $6 billion for increasing U.S. combat troop strength in Iraq greatly understates the likely total.

For months, Conrad has worked in back channels to establish a group of administration officials and lawmakers that would try to rein in costly benefit programs such as Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But the president's refusal to consider some tax increases has scuttled the idea, at least for now.

Bush pushed the balanced budget idea -- to applause -- before a meeting Saturday with House Democrats in Virginia. But he seemed to acknowledge that a large-scale budget agreement with Democrats is a long shot.

"I'm under no illusions of how hard it's going to be," Bush said. "The only thing I want to share with you is, is my desire to see if we can't work together to get it done."

There is room for some modest steps such as an increase in the maximum Pell Grant for low-income college students to $4,600, $550 more than the current cap. House Democrats last week passed an increase in the maximum grant to $4,310.

The federal contribution to the popular State Children's Health Insurance Program would rise slightly to address chronic shortfalls. States, however, would get less money to cover children in families at twice the poverty level or more. Democrats are pressing for far greater increases in the children's health program.

The White House's budget also would trim $12 billion from Medicaid, mostly through lower payments to states for administrative costs. About $5 billion or so would go toward addressing SCHIP shortfalls, according to the White House budget office.

[That's a real dick move, there.]

The proposed cuts to Medicare and Medicaid are relatively modest, given the overall size of the programs. The reductions would come in part from smaller inflation adjustments for hospitals, nursing homes, home health care providers and hospices. More higher-income older people would face increased premiums.

Hospitals in particular are a powerful lobbying group and often are some of the leading employers in lawmakers' districts and states. Smaller Medicare cuts of $36 billion cuts proposed last year went nowhere in a GOP-led Congress, and Democrats quickly pounced on the new proposal.

"I think that sounds like the president is declaring war on us and the poor people in this country," said Rep. Pete Stark, D-Calif.

[A new front in the War on Terror? Gnash.]

Stark and other Democrats probably will go after what they see as excessive payments to private managed care plans that provide care to about 8 million Medicare beneficiaries.

Democrats also must deal with a scheduled 8 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors, a byproduct from a 1997 budget bill. Bush's budget would leave the cut in place, though Congress is virtually certain to provide relief as it has since 2003 with other scheduled payment cuts. Such a move would eat up Bush's proposed Medicare savings and then some.

All told, Bush is seeking $96 billion over five years from mandatory programs providing fixed benefits such as Medicare, farm subsidies and Medicaid and whose spending rises each year as if on autopilot.

"Unless we act, we will saddle our children and grandchildren with tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded obligations," Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address. "They will face three bad options: huge tax increases, huge budget deficits or huge and immediate cuts in benefits."

[Yeah, since they'll never take money from the Pentagon lockbox. Christ, it's so infuriating. Remember when Eisenhower belatedly warned about the military-industrial complex? Now it's standard operating procedure.]

Yo, Joe?

So, Joe Biden's really going to try to be President??! Buh?

It just confirms my contention that there should be a constitutional amendment banning anybody who wants to be President from running, because you'd have to be either insane or stupid to want to be President. Why should only people who can pay for the privilege have the office?

Biden's going to go up in smoke very early in the game, so why not fritter away some Biden bucks, right? I'll never forgive him for some of his confirmation votes before 2006, where he'd go on (and on and on) about how bad a given Bush appointee was, only to vote for them in the end. Way to go, Joe.

Anyway, he's crazy!