Thursday, February 14, 2008

Same Old News


A couple of weeks ago the Pentagon announced that a disabled U.S. spy satellite would soon fall harmlessly to Earth. Today we are told that the satellite poses a potential hazard and the military plans on launching a missile attack on our own surveillance device.

President Bush ordered the action to prevent any possible contamination from that hazardous rocket fuel on board, and not out of any concern that parts of the spacecraft might survive and its secrets be revealed, officials said. The challenging mission to demolish it instead on the fringes of space will rely on an unforeseen use of ship-based weapons developed to defend against ballistic missile attacks. That makes it a real-world test both of the nation’s antiballistic missile systems and its antisatellite capabilities, even though the Pentagon said that they were not using the exercise to test their most exotic weapons or send a message to any adversaries.
Gosh. I thought it was just a cynical opportunistic ploy by BushCo and the Star Wars defense lobby to drum up support for the useless, lucrative contracts they've been seeking since the Reagan era, but it's really just for our own safety. The Pentagon is going to use missiles to save us from our own space trash, targeting the satellite as it hurtles out of orbit. To make us safe.

If we don't shoot down that spy junk, maybe it'll land on a FEMA trailer park and make the 'temporary' housing even more toxic and uninhabitable than it already is.

ATLANTA -- U.S. health officials are urging that Gulf Coast hurricane victims be moved out of their government-issued trailers as quickly as possible after tests found toxic levels of formaldehyde fumes.

Given this administration's record on public safety, it's probably better if they stay the fuck out of gravity's way and just let the goddamn thing burn up in re-entry. I'm from the generation that survived Skylab; I'm not afraid of space junk. I am afraid of incompetent fuckwads with more bombs than sense though. They'll probably wind up blowing the moon out of orbit by mistake.

The government also feels that it cannot protect America unless it first protects AT&T, Verizon and other telecom giants that are currently subject to dozens of multi-million dollar civil lawsuits for illegally spying on Americans. If we, the people, are allowed to sue Verizon, the Taliban wins and everyone dies.

Meanwhile, John McCain has changed his mind and decided that waterboarding isn't torture after all and has decided to support Bush's decision to veto any anti-torture legislature that might cross his desk.

In [a recent] BBC interview, Bush was asked whether, given waterboarding and other human rights abuses, he could claim the US still occupied the moral high ground.
Bush said: "Absolutely."
I'm not sure if he said that before these letters from Gitmo were released or after the House of Representatives ruled that his confidantes Harriet Miers and John Bolten are in contempt of Congress for refusing to respond to Congressional subpoenas during the investigation into politically motivated Justice Dept. firings.

I guess it really doesn't matter. No one who deserves punishment will get it. We the people will have our asses waterboarded by Verizon and the government will be there to make sure we stay gagged...on the positive side, it's pretty unlikely that we'll be crushed by a falling satellite.

6 comments:

yellowdoggranny said...

gee, arent these the same schmucks that flew a plane across the united states with 4 loaded bombs on it?..and oops, they didn't know?...run...run for your lives..

TiG said...

So if we blow up our spy satellite does that make us terrorists for destroying American military equipment with you know, a bomb?

Allan said...

No, torture, rendition and illegal wars make us terrorists. The satellite just makes us stupid.

whimsical brainpan said...

Maybe the satellite will fall on the White House. One can always hope.

Susannity said...

I think we should let the folks paying $1M to go up in space have the chance to pay extra to get to shoot it down.

the blogger formerly known as yinyang said...

Aww, but death by falling satellite would be cool!