ohmy, this is it!

2007-12-06T13:45:00.000-07:00

invisible force field to fend off spam bots
invisible force field to fend off spam bots
ignore this post, its just to keep the robot crawlers out of my comments

Books I want to read:

2006-12-06T13:52:00.000-07:00

MAYFLOWER
A Story of Courage, Community, and War.
By Nathaniel Philbrick. Viking, $29.95.
This absorbing history of the Plymouth Colony is a model of revisionism. Philbrick impressively recreates the pilgrims' dismal 1620 voyage, bringing to life passengers and crew, and then relates the events of the settlement and its first contacts with the native inhabitants of Massachusetts.

THE OMNIVORE'S DILEMMA
A Natural History of Four Meals.
By Michael Pollan. The Penguin Press, $26.95.
"When you can eat just about anything nature has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety," Pollan writes in this supple and probing book. He gracefully navigates within these anxieties as he traces the origins of four meals - from a fast-food dinner to a "hunter-gatherer" feast -

THE PLACES IN BETWEEN
By Rory Stewart. Harvest/Harcourt, Paper, $14.
"You are the first tourist in Afghanistan," Stewart, a young Scotsman, was warned by an Afghan official before commencing the journey recounted in this splendid book. "It is mid-winter - there are three meters of snow on the high passes, there are wolves, and this is a war. You will die, I can guarantee." Stewart, thankfully, did not die, and his report on his adventures - walking across Afghanistan in January of 2002,

Retarded Child Emperor is Full of S@#$

2006-12-06T13:32:00.000-07:00

Go to YouTube, watch this

Warren Buffet pays less taxes then you do!

2006-11-27T20:50:00.000-07:00

Article from NYTimes by Ben Stein

Bush failed histroy class at Yale

2006-11-27T18:54:00.000-07:00

In the Shadow of Ho Chi Minh by Robert Scheer

Triumph of Unrealism

2006-09-13T09:12:00.000-06:00

By George F. Will
(Don't forget, Will is considered a very conservative writer---to see entire article click title)
emphasis added
The "new Middle East," the "birth pangs" of which we supposedly are witnessing, reflects the region's oldest tradition, the tribalism that preceded nations. The faux and disintegrating nation of Iraq, from which the middle class, the hope of stability, is fleeing, has experienced in these five weeks many more violent deaths than have occurred in Lebanon and Israel. U.S. Gen. George Casey says 60 percent of Iraqis recently killed are victims of Shiite death squads. Some are associated with the Shiite-controlled Interior Ministry, which resembles a terrorist organization.

The London plot against civil aviation confirmed a theme of an illuminating new book, Lawrence Wright's "The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11." The theme is that better law enforcement, which probably could have prevented Sept. 11, is central to combating terrorism. F-16s are not useful tools against terrorism that issues from places such as Hamburg (where Mohamed Tower of the World Trade Center) and High Wycombe, England.

Cooperation between Pakistani and British law enforcement (the British draw upon useful experience combating IRA terrorism) has validated John Kerry's belief (as paraphrased by the New York Times Magazine of Oct. 10, 2004) that "many of the interdiction tactics that cripple drug lords, including governments working jointly to share intelligence, patrol borders and force banks to identify suspicious customers, can also be some of the most useful tools in the war on terror."

. . . Kerry said that although the war on terror will be "occasionally military," it is "primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world."

Immediately after the London plot was disrupted, a "senior administration official," insisting on anonymity for his or her splenetic words, denied the obvious, that Kerry had a point. The official told The Weekly Standard: "The idea that the jihadists would all be peaceful, warm, lovable, God-fearing people if it weren't for U.S. policies strikes me as not a valid idea. [Democrats] do not have the understanding or the commitment to take on these forces. It's like John Kerry. The law enforcement approach doesn't work."

This farrago of caricature and non sequitur makes the administration seem eager to repel all but the delusional. But perhaps such rhetoric reflects the intellectual contortions required to sustain the illusion that the war in Iraq is central to the war on terrorism, and that the war, unlike "the law enforcement approach," does "work." The official is correct that it is wrong "to think that somehow we are responsible -- that the actions of the jihadists are justified by U.S. policies." But few outside the fog of paranoia that is the blogosphere think like that. It is more dismaying that someone at the center of government considers it clever to talk like that. It is the language of foreign policy -- and domestic politics -- unrealism. Foreign policy "realists" considered Middle East stability the goal. The realists' critics, who regard realism as reprehensibly unambitious, considered stability the problem. That problem has been solved.

Interview With Sidney Blumenthal

2006-09-13T08:47:00.000-06:00

(click title to see entire interview)

LiberalOasis: What makes the Bush presidency "radical" as opposed to merely "conservative" or "right-wing"?

Sidney Blumenthal: It's certainly not conservative in any classical definition of the sense of conserving something.

And, it's radicalism, in some ways is of the Right, but it is a unique radicalism...

...we're in the grip of this radical presidency, and I don't think that the country is fully aware of how radical Bush is, what the true and sweeping agenda is, and how this is changing our country fundamentally, including an attempt to change the nature of our government and Constitution.

It is unique because it's a kind of perverse mutation of conservatism and right-wing thought, but it's unto itself.

And it is unique in that Bush is more radical than any other president we have ever had in American history.

LO: You say that many Americans don't know what the agenda is. How would you summarize that agenda?

SB: I think that agenda is to completely transform our system of government, so that we have an unaccountable, unfettered concentration of power in the Executive.

It's an agenda that also seeks to transform the place of the United States in the world.

Bush has discarded 60 years of broad bipartisan consensus in foreign policy and internationalism.

And in place, asserted an agenda of, using the attacks on 9/11 as the proximate cause, ... first-strike pre-emptive attacks, unilateralism, de facto dismissal of internationalism.

He has shattered our traditional coalitions, including the Western Alliance.

And you can go through the whole foreign policy, but particularly, point to the immense dangers that he has created to our national security interests, coming from the utter fiascos he has engendered in the Middle East.

He also [is] the only President ever to show hostility to science.

Cheney's argument is empty for those who are actually dying

2005-11-26T09:11:00.000-07:00

from WaPo

We are now very close to that point of general agreement in the Iraq war. Do you believe that if Bush, Cheney and company could turn back the clock, they would do this again? And now, thanks to Rep. John Murtha, it is permissible to say, or at least to ask, "Why not just get out now? Or at least soon, on a fixed schedule?" There are arguments against this -- some good, some bad -- but the worst is the one delivered by Cheney and others with their most withering scorn. It is the argument that it is wrong to tell American soldiers risking their lives in a foreign desert that they are fighting for a mistake.

One strength of this argument is that it doesn't require defending the war itself. The logic applies equally whether the war is justified or not. Another strength is that the argument is true, in a way: It is a terrible thing to tell someone he or she is risking death in a mistaken cause. But it is more terrible actually to die in that mistaken cause....

The last man or woman to die in any war almost surely dies in vain: The outcome has been determined, if not certified. And he or she might die happier thinking that death came in a noble cause that will not be abandoned. But if it is not a noble cause, he or she might prefer not to die at all. Stifling criticism that might shorten the war is no favor to American soldiers. They can live without that kind of "respect."

Earth to America - Will Ferrell

2005-11-25T15:58:00.000-07:00

watch this video here

What Bush Isn't Addressing on Iraq

2005-11-20T09:03:00.000-07:00

It would be nice if, even once, the Bush administration addressed the strongest version of the case against its Iraq-and-terrorism policy, rather than relying on bromides ("fight them there, so we don't have to fight them here") and knocking down straw men ("some say Iraqis don't deserve freedom...").

It probably won't happen.
On available evidence, the President himself has not grasped the essential criticism of moving against Iraq when he did: read on

"I think this has the potential to be the biggest scandal in Congress in over a century,"

2005-11-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

The Justice Department has signaled for the first time in recent weeks that prominent members of Congress could be swept up in the corruption investigation of Jack Abramoff, the former Republican superlobbyist who diverted some of his tens of millions of dollars in fees to provide lavish travel, meals and campaign contributions to the lawmakers whose help he needed most. . .

The investigation by a federal grand jury, which began more than a year ago, has created alarm on Capitol Hill, especially with the announcement Friday of criminal charges against Michael Scanlon, Mr. Abramoff's former lobbying partner and a former top House aide to Representative Tom DeLay. . .
Scholars who specialize in the history and operations of Congress say that given the brazenness of Mr. Abramoff's lobbying efforts, as measured by the huge fees he charged clients and the extravagant gifts he showered on friends on Capitol Hill, almost all of them Republicans, the investigation could end up costing several lawmakers their careers, if not their freedom.
read on

Two cheers for immorality.

2005-11-18T18:39:00.000-07:00

Good little esssay about morality from Deepak Chopra --link--

Nobody is immoral just because someone else says they are. Keeping this in mind is important. It comes in handy when self-righteous moralists take the stage and try to denigrate and punish those who disagree with them. In the eyes of the right wing, it is immoral to oppose the war, have an abortion, or not believe in Jesus and the literal word of the Bible. . . .

Murtha in Full

2005-11-17T22:11:00.000-07:00

War Hawk Rep. Murtha (D-PA) Calls for Immediate Iraq Withdrawal

"The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion. The American public is way ahead of us. The United States and coalition troops have done all they can in Iraq, but it is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf Region...read on

Murtha, a Marine intelligence officer in Vietnam, angrily shot back at Cheney: "I like guys who've never been there that criticize us who've been there. I like that. I like guys who got five deferments and never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done."

Watch video here at C&L

2005-11-17T00:08:00.000-07:00

click here for larger image

Under Democratic Pressure, GOP Senators Pass Advisory Measure For Admin. To “Explain” Iraq Strategy…

2005-11-16T23:50:00.000-07:00

also from HuffPo . . . . . . . . link

Big Oil Execs Deny Meeting With Cheney To Develop Energy Policy, Wash Post Has Doc That Shows They Did...

2005-11-16T23:46:00.000-07:00

from Huff Po

link

Bush admin. recent assertions about war critics are deceptive

2005-11-16T23:28:00.000-07:00

From the Washington Post

Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) strongly criticized yesterday the White House's new line of attack against critics of its Iraq policy, saying that "the Bush administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them."...
"To question your government is not unpatriotic -- to not question your government is unpatriotic," Hagel said, arguing that 58,000 troops died in Vietnam because of silence by political leaders. "America owes its men and women in uniform a policy worthy of their sacrifices."...
Hagel supported the 2002 resolution to authorize military action in Iraq, but he has emerged as a strong skeptic of the Bush administration's handling of the war. In his speech, he called for a regional security conference to help invest Iraq's neighbors in the effort to stabilize the country....
At one point, while answering a question from the audience about Syria, Hagel suggested that the Middle East is worse off after the invasion because the administration failed to anticipate the consequences of removing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "You could probably argue it is worse in many ways in the Middle East because of consequences and ripple effects," he said.

Rumsfeld described an evolution of U.S. policy toward Iraq embraced by Democrats and Republicans. He read several quotes from 1998 from then-President Bill Clinton, Vice President Al Gore, Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and national security adviser Samuel R. "Sandy" Berger. They predicted that Hussein, if unchecked, would again use weapons of mass destruction.
However, many of the comments cited by Rumsfeld were used to justify continued sanctions on Iraq, not to invade it. Moreover, the Clinton administration officials did not cite the problematic intelligence that formed the core of the Bush administration's case for an invasion, such as allegations that Iraq sought uranium in Africa and tried to obtain aluminum tubes as part of a resurgent nuclear program.

Rumsfeld also pointed to congressional actions in 1998 and 2002 calling for Hussein's removal. But the 1998 law, signed by Clinton, said "nothing in this act shall be construed to authorize or otherwise speak to use of United States Armed Forces" to implement it.

Letters, postcards, notes on the fridge: Pining for the blowjob dodge

2005-11-16T22:58:00.000-07:00

read this, very good piece

2005-11-14T21:01:00.000-07:00

on the McLaughlin Group, Pat Buchanan not only acknowledged that the Iraq War is destabilizing the entire region of the Middle East, but added that it was in fact the objective all along (video).

Pat Buchanan says it out loud . . .

2005-11-10T17:28:00.000-07:00

Thus, in March, 2003, Bush, in perhaps the greatest strategic blunder in U.S. history, invaded an Arab nation that had not attacked us, did not want war with us, and did not threaten us—to strip it of weapons we now know it did not have.
(...)
Democratic imperialism is still imperialism. To Arab and Islamic peoples, whether the Crusaders come in the name of God or in the name of democracy, they are still Crusaders.
read on

Interesting back and forth on the issues

2005-11-06T00:01:00.000-07:00

here
Mark Shields and David Brooks

I think this debunks the whole gay marriage thing quite well

2005-11-05T22:28:00.000-07:00

video link here

Calling the Republicans on their hypocrisy--priceless

2005-11-04T10:21:00.000-07:00

How's that Hooker Dick Morris? (from Crooks and Liars)

Thom Hartmann had Dick Morris (I am the toe man) on his show today and there was a very interesting exchange. Morris was prattling on about how wonderful Condi Rice is when Thom questioned her job performance. Immediately, Dick began assaulting Sandy Berger so Hartmann reminded Dick of his hooker obsession. Morris hung up on him.

Audio-MP3

Albino Dolphin has the full interview.

Sandy Berger told me personally Dick that he told Condi Rice when she came into office-that his words to her were look out for Osama Bin Laden. He's coming to get you. You need to be paying attention. This has to be your number one priority and she said, "OK thank you very much for that information," and did then nothing.

Morris: Did he, did he take the documents out of his socks when he told you that?

Hartmann: Come on Dick, do you want me to talk about hookers with you? Come on Dick.

Morris: Okay, well thanks very much for the interview. Bye-bye. (hangs up)

If more talk show hosts did this sort of thing there wouldn't be many extreme right wing apologists left on the airwaves.

Congress is slashing food stamps, student loans and heating assistance

2005-11-04T10:12:00.000-07:00

from DailyKos
Finally, while Congress is slashing food stamps, student loans and heating assistance to save money (the Bridge to Nowhere remains intact, thank god), Molly Ivins looks elsewhere and comes up with 60 pain-free billion dollars:

Just for starters, is there anyone---anyone---who thinks we need more than 1,000 nuclear warheads in order to have a credible nuclear deterrent at this time? By cutting back to 1,000, we can save $13 billion right there.

Another $26 billion would be saved by scaling back or stopping the research, development and construction of weapons that are useless to deal with modern threats. Many of the weapons involved, like the F/A-22 fighter jet and the Virginia Class submarine, were designed to fight the defunct Soviet Union. All of this is according to Lawrence Korb, whose credentials are endless---senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, senior adviser to the Center for Defense Information, former vice president of Raytheon, etc. The $26 billion does not include the old Star Wars program, now called missile defense, which could be cut back to basic research for a savings of $7 billion.

I'm trying to give you some sense of scale here. According to Korb's research, we could take $60 billion out of the defense budget, 15 percent of the total, without remotely affecting military readiness.

Amazing---she didn't even break a sweat.

Another excellent debunking of ID as science

2005-11-01T12:50:00.000-07:00

from Slate

The Price of Loyalty

2005-10-30T23:19:00.000-07:00

This article has great info and the guy is a good writer as well, please read:

The consequences of a bias for loyalty over debate have been devastating. Issues don't get aired; downside risks remain unassessed.
(...)
Instead of reaching out and encouraging disagreement, Bush let neocons like Libby and Paul Wolfowitz hijack his foreign policy. Amazingly, the pros and cons of invading Iraq were never even debated in the National Security Council. If you had doubts, like Colin Powell, you were marginalized. (Powell's former chief of staff, Lawrence Wilkerson, said last week that a "cabal" of isolated policymakers ran a government of dangerous "ineptitude.")
(...)
By showing how evidence of Saddam's WMDs had been cooked, Wilson undermined the very reason Augie Schroeder and the rest of the U.S. military went to war. He was more than "fair game," as Karl Rove called him. He was a mortal threat.

This has been the Bush pattern. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill presciently says a second tax cut is unaffordable if we want to fight in Iraq—he's fired. Bush's economic adviser Larry Lindsey presciently says the war will cost between $100 billion and $200 billion (an underestimate)—he's fired. Army Gen. Eric Shinseki presciently says that winning in Iraq will require several hundred thousand troops—he's sent into early retirement. By contrast, CIA Director George Tenet, who presided over two of the greatest intelligence lapses in American history (9/11 and WMD in Iraq) and apparently helped spread "oppo ammo" to discredit the husband of a woman who had devoted her life to his agency, receives the Presidential Medal of Freedom. read the whole article

Advice to Washington Democrats:

2005-10-30T08:27:00.000-07:00

from Huffpost

Here’s some simple deductive logic: The President told us that he wanted to get to the bottom of the Valerie Plame affair. He told that Mr. Rove and Mr. Libby had been asked—by him or on his behalf—whether they had anything at all to do with it and that they had assured him they did not. It is now a matter of public record that both Rove and Libby were involved.

ERGO: ROVE LIED TO THE PRESIDENT.

I don’t care whether he broke the law or not. He cannot continue to work in my White House because he LIED TO MY PRESIDENT. Surely the President cannot continue to take advice from a man he cannot trust. Faced with this logic, the President has two only two possible responses: Fire Rove or admit that he, the President, was complicit in the lie.
This is serious. What if the President’s closest aides lied to him about WMD in Iraq? Oh my, what if he started a war because he believed them?
Oh Democrats, my Democrats. Don’t take the Republican bait. Please don’t debate the role of special counsel and the arcanery of law. Just explain and repeat, explain and repeat:

Nobody lies to my President and gets away with it.

Driftglass on the modern GOP

2005-10-29T10:23:00.000-06:00

Driftglass as usual is long winded, but speaks to the real truth. Here are the salient points: (read the whole post here)

Sometimes we paint the place Red, and sometimes Blue, and sometimes what those colors mean changes completely, but the compact requires -- absolutely requires -- that we respect the house itself.

And it is in this signal betrayal that the Modern Republican Party is singularly infamous.

They are not remotely interested in changing the artwork or the crown molding; they're going after the walls, the floor and the brickwork. They're setting fire to the foundation stones themselves, and the indictment of Scooter Libby is only the latest link in the chain.

Consider just these few core samples taken from the anthracite soul of the Party of Darkness:

On Making War.

There is a proper way a modern Great Nation goes to war. When describing how a Great Nation undertook the gravest decision any country can make, the watchword damned well better have been "Deliberate". And Cautious. Reluctant. Even Sad. As a last, possible resort. The gravity a Great Nation must feel down to it's bones before going to war might best be summed up by Lincoln in his Second Inaugural:

"All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, urgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish.

And the war came."

For sober-minded adults, the days of undertaking mass slaughter for martial glory and piqued pride disappeared in the trenches of World War I, and were permanently entombed under the rubble of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But instead, this Chickenhawk Administration came to the table iron-hard, leg-humpin', Priapistic for war. For the profit it would bring as well as the suppressing fire it would provide for its political agenda. War as Distraction. War as Photo-Op.

And to accomplish this end, they ate away at the decision-making apparatus itself. When, like this Administration, you see war as just another means to a profitable end -- and you have no ethics-bound limits on what you are prepared to do to advance your partisan agenda -- you end up lying lavishly because you no longer recognize Truth or Falsehood as points on a moral compass.
(...)
So again we see the perversity of the GOP on a cellular level.

Because it affronts the sensibilities of its loyal swine, the Republican party is actually willing to wage war on Evolution; a science whose fundamentals have been settled beyond any serious debate across an entire, global community of literate, learned humans for over a century.

Except here.

Except with the panderers that run the Republican Party who, for sordid electoral wages, are more than happy to run three centuries of Enlightenment through the wood chipper.
(...)
And because it might impinge on the bottom lines of their corporate overlords, these same illiterate, innumerate whores are quite willing to rewrite the laws of physics and meteorology in Crayola, and pretend that Global Warming is just the kooky notion of a handful of addled intellectuals
(...)
Again, it is not a particular decision or theory against which the GOP has set themselves, but the entire idea of Man using Reason to make decisions against which they have set themselves.

They make war on the idea of Enlightenment itself.

How much more of an enemy of Democracy could they possibly be?
(...)
And now...Scooter Libby.

What is the Scoot Man charged with?
Blow away the smoke and just listen to the sturdy poetry of the indictment itself to understand what is at stake here.

When all is said and done, what Libby tried to do was no less than attempt to destroy the instrumentality by which the truth itself could be found.
On a matter of National Security.
During a time of war.
He did it as cooly and deliberately as a suicide bomber going after a troop carrier, which is treason to the bone, and only a traitor would defend it or spin it as anything less.

The Rude Pundit frames it in his own special way

2005-10-29T10:01:00.000-06:00

Patrick Fitzgerald: The Grown-Up in the Room:
But sometimes, into the fantastic realms of juvenile imagination, an adult must walk in and point out the reality of the situation. Looking around the destroyed room, the adult calls things by their names: No, Scooter, that's not a unicorn,... read on

Grand jury indicts Libby in CIA leak case

2005-10-29T09:26:00.000-06:00

WASHINGTON — I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, resigned Friday after being indicted for lying in the investigation of the leak of a covert CIA operative's identity. full story

Stop those atheists!!

2005-10-27T08:57:00.000-06:00

Are you bothered by those people that dare to doubt the reality and truth of the Bible? Then click here ...Does it irk you that those atheists want to take over the government and prevent you from celebrating Christmas and remove all the Ten Commandments displays from city parks? Then click here...

Also if you are a true believer, be sure to go here

Special Preview of New Anne Coulter Book

2005-10-27T08:36:00.000-06:00

It won't be a good day for liberals when this hits the shelves. Included in it are pretty compelling arguments that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian (Coulter says she saw Clinton with her own eyes at a closeted dyke party, although why Coulter was there isn't clear), that Al Franken is a current drug user, and that Liberalism is the product of a genetic mutation resulting from incest and spicy European foods.

Scarborough on the Plame investigation and Iraq war

2005-10-27T08:29:00.000-06:00

Harsh words from this normally rah rah Republican for the Bush admin. Go to Crooks and Liars for the video clip.

On Cheney:

Joe: In middle America, voters would call that a lie. He told Tim Russert something that was not the truth. Why is that important? It's important because you're talking about two thousand Americans killed in Iraq.

even more in the clip, watch it

Casualty reports on Page One

2005-10-27T08:15:00.000-06:00

Write to your local newspaper and urge them to print casualty reports on the front page. Click here to use the easy tool to send a letter to the editor of your local newspaper to insist they properly Honor the Fallen.

"either "we" are out of our minds, or "they" are"

2005-10-26T10:26:00.000-06:00

Scroll down the list of blog items here at HuffPo and you'll see one world.
But glance on over at the dinosaurs of the Corporate Mainstream Media and by and large you'll see a completely different world. It's been that way for some time in America. Two competing and polar opposite "realities".

I've often said over the last many months that either "we" are out of our minds, or "they" are. But most decidedly, one of us is completely fucking loony and wholly out of touch with reality.
Some of "us" received some validation that it wasn't "we" who were insane last June when Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel said what all of "us" have been thinking for quite a while. He said, out loud, "the White House is completely disconnected from reality".
(...)
The Mainstream Corporate Media has almost entirely bought into the Administration's version hook, line, and sinker for at least the last four years. The top headlines on almost every network and cable news all still look a whole lot like Tom DeLay smiling: Nothing to worry about here folks! But the answer to which of America's two "realities" is actually the reality, may soon be upon us. While every network, every cable news channel, and almost every carbon-based newspaper, continues to help "them" convince America that everything's fine, America might very well see the Vice-President of the United States resign from his office within a week.
(...)
David Gergen, Republican advisor to to four American Presidents was intellectually honest enough to ask The Question: "What did the President know and when did he know it?" On ABC's This Week of all places! Out loud!

Well that would change everything! Unless, of course, you are the Corporate Mainstream Media and the really really big "news" in your "reality" concerned a teen-aged blonde female who unfortunately decided upon Aruba for her Spring Vacation.

read the whole article by Brad

Records Show Definitively Frist Knew Of Stock Holdings When He Said He Did Not...

2005-10-24T12:42:00.000-06:00

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) was given considerable information about his stake in his family's hospital company, according to records that are at odds with his past statements that he did not know what was in his stock holdings.

Managers of the trusts that Frist once described as "totally blind," regularly informed him when they added new shares of HCA Inc. or other assets to his holdings, according to the documents.
read WashingtonPost article

VIDEO - Republican Congressman Alleges 9/11 Cover-up by Pentagon

2005-10-24T12:30:00.000-06:00

"Am I concerned about retribution? Absolutely!" he replied. "But this is larger than the party…this is about 3000 dead people, the worst terror attack ever on U.S. soil. And, as (former FBI director Louis Freeh) told Tim Russert on Meet the Press last week, Able Danger is "the kind of tactical intelligence that would make a difference in stopping a hijacking.” So why can’t Congress and the American people hear about it? Ultimately, the buck stops with Rumsfeld."

watch video here
(QT and WMV)

Who smiles for their mugshot?

2005-10-23T08:06:00.000-06:00

Media Matters corrects the top GOP lies about RoveGate

2005-10-22T21:08:00.000-06:00

This is a concise rundown of pertinent facts--good read
(via America blog)

Hurricane Katrina and a president who thinks like a (failed) C.E.O.

2005-10-21T23:19:00.000-06:00

from Vanity Fair

2005-10-21T08:54:00.000-06:00

click image for larger format

2005-10-21T08:45:00.000-06:00

click on picture for larger format

David Gergen: "Wheels are coming off" the Bush Admin.

2005-10-21T00:35:00.000-06:00

David Gergen was a political advisor to Reagan and 3 other presidents. He's no hack and not prone to spreading rumors. Well respected by both rep and dem. Listen to what he has to say about plamegate, etc. here at C&L

Court issues warrant for DeLay

2005-10-19T14:16:00.000-06:00

Bail set at $10,000 for former House Majority Leader

Updated: 3:30 p.m. ET Oct. 19, 2005

AUSTIN, Texas - A Texas court issued a warrant Wednesday for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to appear for booking, where he is likely to face the fingerprinting and photo mug shot he had hoped to avoid.

Bail was initially set at $10,000 as a routine step before his first court appearance on conspiracy and money laundering charges. Travis County court officials said DeLay was ordered to appear at the Fort Bend County jail for booking.

read on

"It was exactly the kind of staged encounter that Saddam used to have with his troops."

2005-10-19T11:29:00.000-06:00

(yes this is somewhat long, but read it all--excellent commentary)

Leading by (Bad) Example
crossposted from mcphillipsorama
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
Published: October 19, 2005

WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 (Iraq News Agency) - A delegation of Iraqi judges and journalists abruptly left the U.S. today, cutting short its visit to study the workings of American democracy. A delegation spokesman said the Iraqis were "bewildered" by some of the behavior of the Bush administration and felt it was best to limit their exposure to the U.S. system at this time, when Iraq is taking its first baby steps toward democracy.

The lead Iraqi delegate, Muhammad Mithaqi, a noted secular Sunni judge who had recently survived an assassination attempt by Islamist radicals, said that he was stunned when he heard President Bush telling Republicans that one reason they should support Harriet Miers for the U.S. Supreme Court was because of "her religion." She is described as a devout evangelical Christian.

Mithaqi said that after two years of being lectured to by U.S. diplomats in Baghdad about the need to separate "mosque from state" in the new Iraq, he was also floored to read that the former Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr, now a law school dean, said on the radio show of the conservative James Dobson that Miers deserved support because she was "a very, very strong Christian [who] should be a source of great comfort and assistance to people in the households of faith around the country."

"Now let me get this straight," Judge Mithaqi said. "You are lecturing us about keeping religion out of politics, and then your own president and conservative legal scholars go and tell your public to endorse Miers as a Supreme Court justice because she is an evangelical Christian.

"How would you feel if you picked up your newspapers next week and read that the president of Iraq justified the appointment of an Iraqi Supreme Court justice by telling Iraqis: 'Don't pay attention to his lack of legal expertise. Pay attention to the fact that he is a Muslim fundamentalist and prays at a Saudi-funded Wahhabi mosque.' Is that the Iraq you sent your sons to build and to die for? I don't think so. We can't have our people exposed to such talk."

A fellow delegation member, Abdul Wahab al-Unfi, a Shiite lawyer who walks with a limp today as a result of torture in a Saddam prison, said he did not want to spend another day in Washington after listening to the Bush team defend its right to use torture in Iraq and Afghanistan. Unfi said he was heartened by the fact that the Senate voted 90 to 9 to ban U.S. torture of military prisoners. But he said he was depressed by reports that the White House might veto the bill because of that amendment, which would ban "cruel, inhuman or degrading" treatment of P.O.W.'s.

"I survived eight years of torture under Saddam," Unfi said. "Virtually every extended family in Iraq has someone who was tortured or killed in a Baathist prison. Yet, already, more than 100 prisoners of war have died in U.S. custody. How is that possible from the greatest democracy in the world? There must be no place for torture in the future Iraq. We are going home now because I don't want our delegation corrupted by all this American right-to-torture talk."

Finally, the delegation member Sahaf al-Sahafi, editor of one of Iraq's new newspapers, said he wanted to go home after watching a televised videoconference last Thursday between soldiers in Iraq and President Bush. The soldiers, 10 Americans and an Iraqi, were coached by a Pentagon aide on how to respond to Mr. Bush.

"I had nightmares watching this," Sahafi said. "It was right from the Saddam playbook. I was particularly upset to hear the Iraqi sergeant major, Akeel Shakir Nasser, tell Mr. Bush: 'Thank you very much for everything. I like you.' It was exactly the kind of staged encounter that Saddam used to have with his troops."

Sahafi said he was also floored to see the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan agency that works for Congress, declare that a Bush administration contract that paid Armstrong Williams, a supposedly independent commentator, to promote Mr. Bush's No Child Left Behind policy constituted illegal propaganda - an attempt by the government to buy good press.

"Saddam bought and paid journalists all over the Arab world," Sahafi said. "It makes me sick to see even a drop of that in America."

By coincidence, the Iraqi delegates departed Washington just as the Bush aide Karen Hughes returned from the Middle East. Her trip was aimed at improving America's image among Muslims by giving them a more accurate view of America and President Bush. She said, "The more they know about us, the more they will like us."

(Yes, all of this is a fake news story. I just wish that it weren't so true.)

For the first time Rice was actually being honest with the American people

2005-10-17T12:31:00.000-06:00

(from The Huffington Post)

Whether she was doing so on purpose is another matter entirely. Joining Tim Russert, she said:
"But the fact of the matter is that when we were attacked on September 11, we had a choice to make. We could decide that the proximate cause was al-Qaeda and the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go after al-Qaeda and perhaps after the Taliban and then our work would be done and we would try to defend ourselves. Or we could take a bolder approach, which was to say that we had to go after the root causes of the kind of terrorism that was produced there, and that meant a different kind of Middle East. And there is no one who could have imagined a different kind of Middle East with Saddam Hussein still in power."

I thought the reason we went into Iraq was because they had WMD’s? Members of the administration even outed an undercover CIA agent and smeared her husband in retaliation because somebody actually had the nerve to do a little fact checking on the lies that the White House told about Iraq's WMD capabilities. As Ari Fleisher said on 4/10/03:

"But make no mistake -- as I said earlier -- we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. And we have high confidence it will be found."

Or as Dick Cheney said on MTP on 3/16/03:

Russert: What do you think is the most important rationale for going to war with Iraq?

VP Cheney: Well, I think I’ve just given it, Tim, in terms of the combination of his development and use of chemical weapons, his development of biological weapons, his pursuit of nuclear weapons.

What about those pesky mushroom clouds Condi touted with Wolf Blitzerr on 01/10/03:

"The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."

Weren’t al-Qaeda and Iraq best buddies? Now, Condi finally spews the PNAC company line of changing the face of the Middle East while Osama remains at large and as Judd notes:
"...the invasion has become “a potent recruiting tool for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.”

So nice of you to level with the American people after all else has failed. Might a " bolder approach" have been honesty from the beginning? You should try it sometime. It's a moral value after all.

Strict constructionism is a load of crap

2005-10-17T11:57:00.000-06:00

Excerpts from: Alive and Kicking: Why no one truly believes in a dead Constitution.
By Jack M. Balkin
(original article here)

Nobody, and I mean nobody, whether Democrat or Republican, really wants to live under the Constitution according to the original understanding once they truly understand what that entails. Calls for a return to the framers' understandings are a political slogan, not a serious theory of constitutional decision-making.
In fact, the contemporary movement for originalism began as a conservative political slogan used to attack the Warren Court's decisions on race and criminal procedure. It mutated from a concern with the original intentions of the framers, to the intentions of the ratifiers, to how the public would have understood and applied the Constitution's words at the time they were adopted.
(...)
Many Americans fail to realize how much of our current law and institutions are inconsistent with the original expectations of the founding generation. A host of federal laws securing the environment, protecting workers and consumers—even central aspects of Social Security—go beyond the original understanding of federal power, not to mention most federal civil rights laws that protect women, racial and religious minorities, and the disabled from private discrimination. Independent federal agencies like the Federal Reserve Board, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Federal Communications Commission would all be unconstitutional under the original understanding of the Constitution. Presidential authority would be vastly curtailed—including all the powers that the Bush administration regularly touts. Indeed, most of the Bush administration's policy goals—from No Child Left Behind to national tort reform—would be beyond federal power.
(...)
Even the Supreme Court's two professed originalists, Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, believe in the living Constitution. Scalia's concurrence in Raich v. Ashcroft—this term's medicinal-marijuana case—demonstrates that he long ago signed on to the idea of a flexible and broad national power that came with the New Deal. And Thomas argues for First Amendment protections far broader in scope than the framers would have dreamed of. Both Justices joined the majority in Bush v. Gore, which relied on Warren Court precedents securing voting rights under the 14th Amendment. There was just one tiny originalist problem with that logic: The framers and ratifiers of the 14th Amendment didn't think it applied to voting.
(...)
Today's originalism is hauled out to attack decisions that judges and politicians don't like. But when it comes to decisions they do like, or would be embarrassed to disavow, the same judges and politicians quickly change the subject. In practice contemporary originalists pick and choose when they will demand fidelity to original understanding. Sometimes they even mangle the history to get to results they like.
(...)
Rather than a set of shackles designed by long-dead slave-owners, the framers bequeathed to us a Constitution that could adapt to the needs and aspirations of each succeeding generation. Their faith in the possibilities of the future, and our enterprise in realizing that future, have made us the great and free nation we are today.

Weekly Radio Address: The Future of Education

2005-10-15T12:35:00.000-06:00

you gotta hear this!; too funny

click picture for audio link

Too funny--from Bill Mauer

2005-10-15T08:49:00.000-06:00

click here for video clip (QT)

TIME Magazine: notes on health and medicine

2005-10-14T19:28:00.000-06:00

Friday, Oct. 14, 2005
Why Pot May Be Good for your Brain
By Michael Lemonick

Alcohol and most other drugs of abuse are physically bad for brain cells, and you'd naturally expect that marijuana would do the same. Not so, say researchers from the University of Saskatchewan, writing in the latest issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Xia Zhang and colleagues administered HU210, a synthetic chemical that mimics the action of cannabinoids, the active compounds in pot and hashish, to both embryonic and adult rats. The compound not only didn't harm brain cells: it actually stimulated the growth of new neurons in the hippocampus of both babies and grownup rats, a part of the brain that helps regulate mood. This new growth, they suggest, can explain some of pot's anti-anxiety and anti-depressant properties.

George Will finally comes to his senses, at last an Intellectually Honest Conservative

2005-10-14T18:50:00.000-06:00

Quotes from his recent op/ed in Newsweek/MSNBC describing the current administration and congress, slamming both Bush and DeLay

Agriculture subsidies increased 40 percent while farm income was doubling.
...51 percent increase in the budget of the Education Department that conservatives once aspired to abolish.
...prescription-drug benefit to Medicare. The time was needed to browbeat enough conservatives to pass the largest expansion of the welfare state since LBJ—an entitlement with an unfunded liability larger than that of Social Security.
In 1987 Reagan vetoed a transportation bill because it contained 152 earmarks—pork—costing $1.4 billion. The bill President Bush signed contained 6,371, costing $24 billion. The total cost of the bill—$286 billion—is more, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than the combined costs of the Marshall Plan and the interstate highway system.
DeLay, who neither knows nor cares any more about limited government than a camel knows or cares about calculus,
DeLay is exhibit A for the proposition that many Republicans have gone native in Washington. Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, leader of the more than 100 conservative members of the Republican Study Committee, charges that some Republicans think "big government is good government if it's our government."
Since 2000 the number of registered lobbyists in Washington has more than doubled, from 16,342 to 34,785.
Conservatives are not supposed to be cuddly, or even particularly nice. They are, however, supposed to be competent.

GWB, lying about torture

2005-10-14T08:17:00.000-06:00

from BuzzFlash

George W. Bush.

Now, here is a guy who kept saying that the White House didn't condone torture and that any abuse of Muslim prisoners that occurred was do to a "few bad apples."

There were just a few things wrong with this PR spin. For one thing, it was a lie. There's even the proof in the form of a memo by then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales laying out the legal justifications for torture. Two, despite confirmation that senior Pentagon and White House officials were aware of torture, they were virtually all promoted -- while the low level stiffs took the rap. Hey, Gonzales got to be America's Attorney General.

Then, last week the normally Stepford Republicans in the senate revolted and passed a bill that included a ban on torture. Surprisingly, there were only nine pro-torture Republican votes! Hmmm, is that progress or what?

And what did Bush threaten to do? Why, to veto the entire bill because it prohibited the kind of torture that George claimed the administration didn't engage in.

Okay, so if we understand Bush's policy, it's something like this: we don't torture people, but you better not keep us from torturing people, because we do.

Whoa! That's some jaw-dropping hypocrisy. Bush did have a macabre joy in setting the record for executing people when he was Governor of Texas, so you can kind of understand why torture would hold a special spot in his heart.

But if torture is your official policy as a president, then stand up like a man and admit it. Otherwise, you're just the BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite of the Week, yet again.

The Republicans are finding out the meaning of the phrase: You reap what you sew!

2005-10-14T00:03:00.000-06:00

Read this from The BradBlog on most recent political polls and scroll down to watch the report by Tim Russert ( video links for WMV and QT)

George Bush debates himself

2005-10-13T10:28:00.000-06:00

You could say he is the master-debater:

Bush Debates Bush on "The Daily Show"

The real GWB, before Rove put lipstick on the pig

2005-10-13T10:09:00.000-06:00

click pic above for QT link

(here's the link for WMV version)

Believe it or not, this was filmed while he was the elected governor of Texas. What a great role model for young Texans.

Andrew Sullivan: To become like them, is to lose the war...

2005-10-13T09:15:00.000-06:00

watch the clip on OneGoodMove, says it all about the torture issue(click on the picture)

Who Isn't against Torture?

2005-10-13T09:07:00.000-06:00

Who Isn't against Torture?
By Bob Herbert
The New York Times

Monday 10 October 2005

Some people get it. Some don't.

Senator John McCain, one of the strongest supporters of the war in Iraq, has sponsored a legislative amendment that would prohibit the "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" of prisoners in the custody of the US military. Last week the Senate approved the amendment by the overwhelming vote of 90 to 9.

This was not a matter of Democrats vs. Republicans, or left against right. Joining Senator McCain in his push for clear and unequivocal language banning the abusive treatment of prisoners were Senator John Warner of Virginia, the Republican chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a former military lawyer who is also a Republican and an influential member of the committee. Both are hawks on the war.

Also lining up in support were more than two dozen retired senior military officers, including two former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Colin Powell and John Shalikashvili.

So who would you expect to remain out of step with this important march toward sanity, the rule of law and the continuation of a longstanding American commitment to humane values?

Did you say President Bush? Well, that would be correct.

read on

Intelligent Design 101: Short on science, long on snake oil

2005-10-12T13:06:00.000-06:00

Good article debunking Dr. Michael Behe, ID’s leading scientist. link
(thanks to OneGoodMove)

During War Speech, Bush Calls Himself a 'Tyrant' and a 'Radical'

2005-10-08T22:37:00.000-06:00

Interesting perspective from Huffington Post

Bush's speech today at the National Endowment for Democracy was loaded with what author Mark Crispin Miller has observed as Bush's pathological tendency for "projectivity."
Bush on his six week vacation: "There's always a temptation in the middle of a long struggle to seek the quiet life, to escape the duties and problems of the world and to hope the enemy grows weary of fanaticism..." He's referring to opponents of the war, but he's actually talking about his own desire to escape from the day-to-day onslaught of bad news.

Bush on his domestic and international policy: "...a radical ideology with immeasurable objectives to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world." Bush knows a lot about intimidating the world. And his single-minded re-alignment of international policy and diplomacy can very easily be defined as radical and ideological -- if not downright insane.

Bush on his exploitation of Christianity to suit his party's political goals: "The time has come for all responsible [Christian] leaders to join in denouncing an ideology that exploits [Christianity] for political ends, and defiles a noble faith."

Bush discussing more of his own penchant for exploitation -- but also, his inability to accept blame, as well as his policy of war over diplomacy: "The radicals exploit local conflicts to build a culture of victimization, in which someone else is always to blame and violence is always the solution." read on

Rescuing Jesus

2005-10-08T22:22:00.000-06:00

excerpted from Rescuing Jesus By Alessandro Camon

A lot can be said about the theological fallacies and over-simplifications of the Christian right. Take the way it reads the Commandments. What, for example, does "not to take the Lord's name in vain" mean? Is it a prohibition against using the word "God" in casual conversation? Or does it forbid Christians from going to war in the name of God? And what about "love thy neighbor"? Does it refer to the guy next door, who shares our tax bracket? Or is it about all of our fellow humans, whether similar or different? In fact, is it not an exhortation to love precisely those who are different?

Most important, though, is how Christians actually relate to Christ.
Jesus was a poor man. He started a movement of the poor, for the poor. This isn't socialist revisionism: This is what the Gospels say. Jesus defied authority, and spread a message of hope, tolerance, inclusion.

He said:

Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal ... For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

He also said:

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.

Moreover:

You have heard that it was said, "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say to you, do not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."

And of course, he said:

I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me. (...) Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of my brothers, you did it to me.

Does this sound like the voice inspiring this administration? Or the voice they go out of their way to ignore?

Last month, President Bush said that Hurricane Katrina exposed the problem of persistent poverty in this country. But why did the problem need to be exposed in order to warrant his concern? Was the president not aware of it before? And what about poverty in the rest of the world -- a problem that the Bush administration stubbornly refuses to make a priority, which in fact its policies greatly exacerbate?

To hold a president (or a justice) up to such a high standard as the teachings of Jesus would be unfair, if it weren't the president himself who claimed to act in Jesus' name. It's time for Bush, the Republican Party and the Christian right to be confronted with their failings as Christians. If there is a worthy measure of anybody's religious commitment, it has to be how it's expressed in action. It's not how you talk the talk that makes you a true Christian. It's the deeds you do -- and those you don't.

Liberals have let the right claim Jesus for themselves. But the legacy of Christ is far too precious to be left in the hands of the hypocrites who use it to justify war, bigotry and injustice. It is time to reclaim Jesus -- not to start another religious party, but to free him from the one that's hogging him as their poster child. It's time not just to ask "what would Jesus do?" but to actually listen to the answer.

It's about poverty. It's about peace. No true Christian can have anything more important in mind.

2005-10-08T08:03:00.000-06:00

AP-Ipsos Poll Finds President Bush's Core Supporters Are Disappointed With His Performance

2005-10-08T07:45:00.000-06:00

from: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=1195027

The president's overall job approval is at 39 percent with 21 percent strongly approving.

The number of people who strongly approve of Bush's job performance has eroded over the last year, most notably among key groups like evangelical voters, down from 49 percent who strongly approved in January to 33 percent now; Republican men, down from 57 percent to 42 percent; Protestants, down from 36 percent to 25 percent; and Southerners, down from 32 percent to 22 percent.

Who cares if she gets cervical cancer, at least Jesus is happy that my daughter isn't having premarital sex

2005-10-08T07:30:00.000-06:00

From: http://www.newscientist.com/channel/sex/mg18624954.500

Yes, belive it or not that is actually the stance taken by the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group. Don't belive it? Here's the quote by Bridget Maher and the link:

In the US, for instance, religious groups are gearing up to oppose vaccination, despite a survey showing 80 per cent of parents favour vaccinating their daughters. “Abstinence is the best way to prevent HPV,” says Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council, a leading Christian lobby group that has made much of the fact that, because it can spread by skin contact, condoms are not as effective against HPV as they are against other viruses such as HIV.

"Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful, because they may see it as a licence to engage in premarital sex," Maher claims...

Let them have cervical cancer....... so sayth the fundies

Lawrence O'Donnell on Plamegate and Rove

2005-10-06T18:13:00.000-06:00

This is very insightful analysis from a Washington insider

--link--

Does George Will hate America?

2005-10-06T17:03:00.000-06:00

Can these words be real? Has George Will finally seen the light, or has he just grown so weary of upholding "the emporer's new chlothes" nonsense that his head is exploding?
Here's snips from his op/ed piece in the Washington Post:

He has neither the inclination nor the ability to make sophisticated judgments about competing approaches to construing the Constitution. Few presidents acquire such abilities in the course of their pre-presidential careers, and this president particularly is not disposed to such reflections.

...the president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution.

The crowning absurdity of the president's wallowing in such nonsense is the obvious assumption that the Supreme Court is, like a legislature, an institution of representation.
Under the rubric of "diversity" -- nowadays, the first refuge of intellectually disreputable impulses -- the president announced, surely without fathoming the implications, his belief in identity politics and its tawdry corollary, the idea of categorical representation. Identity politics holds that one's essential attributes are genetic, biological, ethnic or chromosomal -- that one's nature and understanding are decisively shaped by race, ethnicity or gender. Categorical representation holds that the interests of a group can be understood, empathized with and represented only by a member of that group.
(empasis added)

Does George Will hate America? How dare he not fall in step with Dear Leader, just like he and all the rest of the Republican heavy weights have been bellowing for all of us unpatriotic "Liberals" to do for the last six years. Your only now recognizing the intellectual shallowness of GWB? Into what oriface has your head been buried that you couldn't here Democrats yelling these very same observations for years?
As Driftglass puts it:

"I believe your reply on Election Day, 2004 went something like, “Shut the f___ up, Liberal traitors. Iraq is going great. The economy is going great. The war on Terra’s going great. And George Bush is a hero, as well as being, “...the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life.”
...
How dare you act shocked you spindly, little pimple: Dubya is doing nothing more than behaving exactly as the Evil Liberals warned all you mentally-underclocking 286 chipset Republicans said he would behave."

Bush claims God speaks directly to him, tells him what to do with foriegn policy

2005-10-06T10:04:00.000-06:00

So reports a BBC documentary:

President George W. Bush told Palestinian ministers that God had told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq - and create a Palestinian State, a new BBC series reveals.

In Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs, a major three-part series on BBC TWO (at 9.00pm on Monday 10, Monday 17 and Monday 24 October), Abu Mazen, Palestinian Prime Minister, and Nabil Shaath, his Foreign Minister, describe their first meeting with President Bush in June 2003.

Nabil Shaath says: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"

Rove's attorney stops denying that Rove is a target

2005-10-06T09:34:00.000-06:00

this from Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The federal prosecutor investigating who leaked the identity of a CIA operative is expected to signal within days whether he intends to bring indictments in the case, legal sources close to the investigation said on Wednesday.
(...)
As a first step, prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald was expected to notify officials by letter if they have become targets...

Rove's attorney, Robert Luskin, declined to say whether his client had been contacted by Fitzgerald. In the past, Luskin has said that Rove was assured that he was not a target.

.. - - - - -..

We can dream can't we?

once again it's the Fake News that delivers the Truth

2005-10-04T12:37:00.000-06:00

OneGooMove has Jon Stewart clip on MESS 0' POTAMIA (scroll down past Andy Roony to the 2nd picture link for Jon Stewart)

---link---

WMV go here

Bush Republicans care only for their moneyed corporate interests

2005-10-04T11:00:00.000-06:00

here's a quote from dailyKos that I think rings really true:

" Bush Republicans care only for their moneyed corporate interests. They don't care about "conservatism", except as a means to power. They don't care about the Jesus crowd except as cheap election-day labor and votes."

Kos said this in response to a newsletter sent out by conservative activist Richard A. Viguerie.
Viguerie says:

"President Bush has presided over the largest growth in government since Lyndon Johnson, and now he appears willing to lose all credibility with conservative voters by failing to fulfill his campaign vow to nominate an openly Scalia- or Thomas-like justice," Viguerie concluded.

Conservatives are also exceedingly disappointed in the Republican Leadership in Congress as well. Conservatives will now begin to seriously consider why they should continue to give their support -money, labor, and votes - to Republican politicians who take their conservative base for granted by continually lying to them.

It's my belief that many average work-a-day middle and working class "Republican" voters have no real notion about Bush's "true base", which are as Bush himself refers to them: the "haves and the have mores".
He panders to the red state Jesus Republican voters, and pulls in the old style small gov't, states rights conservatives, and scares all the rest with his "remember 9/11" fear mongoring, but as Kos points out, it's the moneyed corporate interests (especially big oil and 'inherited wealth' family dynasties) that he truly works for.

Dem Rep. Rahm Emanuel sought to put a counteragenda on table:

2005-10-03T12:40:00.000-06:00

these ideas seem so obvious and straightforward, something even the most average citizen could wrap their brain around; why is it so hard to pass an agenda like this when the majority of Americans would benefit? Am I alone here?

on Meet The Press,(transcripts here)
EMANUEL: One, we make college education as universal for the 21st century that a high school education was in the 20th...

...Second, we get a summit on the budget to deal with the $3 trillion of debt that's been added up in five years and structural deficits of $400 billion a year.

Third, an energy policy that says in 10 years, we cut our dependence on foreign oil in half and make this a hybrid economy.

Four, we create an institute on science and technology that builds for America like, the National Institutes has done for health care, we maintain our edge.

And five, we have a universal health-care system over the next 10 years where if you work, you have health care.

That says fiscal discipline and investing in the American people by putting people first.

The policies that the Republicans have offered have gotten us in the ditch we have today.

MR. RUSSERT: In order to pay for those programs, you'd consider raising taxes?

REP. EMANUEL: I think in this time and age, when we face the challenges we have, everybody has skin in the game.

And I think the tax policies we have in place reward the type of culture of cronyism where, in fact, what we're doing is protecting the most well off while we throw middle-class families in front of the train.

Andy Rooney speaks for me about Iraq war

2005-10-03T10:29:00.000-06:00

Watch his video clip,
for WMV format see Crooks and Liars

Miers, Bush's Lawyer, Selected for U.S. Supreme Court

2005-10-03T10:11:00.000-06:00

Oct. 3 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. President George W. Bush chose White House Counsel Harriet Miers, a fellow Texan and longtime confidant who has never served as a judge, to succeed swing vote Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court.

conservative reactions:

William Kristal: Disappointed, Depressed and Demoralized
http://frum.nationalreview.com/:He has chosen to put that legacy at risk
The Associated Press: Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers gave $1,000 to Democrat Al Gore's unsuccessful presidential bid in 1988

2005-10-02T15:03:00.000-06:00

from old american century.org

I want to know why....?

2005-10-02T14:55:00.000-06:00

by Last Night in Little Rock from TalkLeft

I want to know why lying about sex warrants impeachment but lying about a justification for war that has killed 1935 and wounded 7700 Americans does not?

I want to know why the Republican members of Congress are openly two-faced and get away with it? They are so rankly political that party loyalty comes before loyalty to their country. Isn’t that a form of treason, or at least a violation of their oaths of office?

I want to know why the Democratic members of Congress don’t have the guts to at least introduce Articles of Impeachment. I think I know the answer to the latter: The Republican “swift-boat” apparatus. Anybody who would take out Max Clellan, a triple amputee Vietnam War veteran for supposedly being “anti-veteran,” has no moral scruples at all. They will lie as a matter of course. As time goes on, as things get worse for the President and the Republican Party, they will ultimately turn GOP from “Grand Old Party” to “Government Operating on Perjury.”
What about Bush’s gross dereliction of duty, both pre-Katrina and for and after Katrina? Does not dereliction of duty as "Commander-in-Chief" mean something? Isn't the "Commander-in-Chief," by definition, supposed to command? Or may he just act like a deer in headlights, paralyzed as he's run down?
The Starr investigation cost $40M and proved absolutely nothing, except that Clinton lied about sex. BFD in the overall scheme of things, but enough for fanatical Republicans to vote Articles of Impeachment.

Here we are, five and one half years after the impeachment acquittal, and nothing is being done about far more serious allegations. Why? The Republicans control the House. Period.read on

I love to here this man speak, so articulate

2005-10-02T14:34:00.000-06:00

wheather you agree with him or not, he speaks in a civil tone, using reasoned dialouge to support his position. Not all that yelling and attempt to divert and blindside like Hannity or Coulter

A British Anti-War Perspective
George Galloway, Respect Member of British Parliament

--video link--

go here form other formats

Here's a bit of reality you don't get from mainstream media owned and controlled by pro-Bush corporatists like Rupert Murdoch

2005-10-02T14:23:00.000-06:00

--QT video link--

Anti-War March in Washington, DC

if you don't like Quicktime go here for other formats

How can anyone continuue to take this man seriously?

2005-10-01T18:41:00.000-06:00

During a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rumsfeld was asked:

"There are ''continuing reports that the Iraqi police and security forces we're training are substantially infiltrated by insurgents"

Here's his latest rationale about insurgents infiltrating the Iraqi forces:

''It's a problem that's faced by police forces in every major city in our country, that criminals infiltrate and sign up to join the police force."

I ahve to say, I'm not on the inside when it comes to police hiring, but even I know that is absurd, who does he think he's kidding, or his he really just that "out to lunch"

here's the story over at C&L

2005-10-01T18:31:00.000-06:00

Donald Rumsfeld began yesterday's daily briefing for the president by stating:

"Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed in Iraq."

"That's disastrous," the President reportedly exclaimed, "That does it: we have to withdraw!"

His stunned staff reportedly watched the president slump with his head in his hands, until he finally looked up, his face ashen, and asked:

"How many is a Brazillion?"

(thanks to krupsjustsayin)

Retired general: Iraq invasion was 'strategic disaster'

2005-10-01T18:10:00.000-06:00

It doesn't really matter anymore what you believe about why or if we should have gone into Iraq. It is the consequences of having done so that matters. Instead of listening to the Bush administrations obvious attempts to coverup and gloss over their mistakes, listen to the people who really know about war and how it should be waged. Like Retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom, a Vietnam veteran; heres what he has to say:

The invasion of Iraq was the “greatest strategic disaster in United States history,” a retired Army general said yesterday, strengthening an effort in Congress to force an American withdrawal beginning next year., Retired Army Lt. Gen. William Odom, a Vietnam veteran, said the invasion of Iraq alienated America's Middle East allies, making it harder to prosecute a war against terrorists.

The U.S. should withdraw from Iraq, he said, and reposition its military forces along the Afghan-Pakistani border to capture Osama bin Laden and crush al Qaeda cells.

“The invasion of Iraq I believe will turn out to be the greatest strategic disaster in U.S. history,” said Odom, now a scholar with the Hudson Institute.read on

and now for the bad news:
Top U.S. General Says Number of Capable Iraqi Battalions Drops to One

In June, the Pentagon told lawmakers that three Iraqi battalions were fully trained, equipped and capable of operating independently. On Thursday, Casey said only one battalion is ready.

"It doesn't feel like progress," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

Despite the drop, Casey hailed significant progress in training Iraqi security forces and noted that U.S. troops are embedded with more Iraqi units in mentoring roles than before. "Have we lost ground? Absolutely not," Casey said.

Casey said the Pentagon's standard for what constitutes a fully capable Iraqi battalion is high and that it's been difficult to ensure logistical support for Iraqi units. "I understand how it could be perceived as disappointing," he told Collins. link to AP story

If going from 3 to 1 doesn't constitute losing ground I don't know what does.

More bad news, listen to what Bush has to say about the issue:

President George W. Bush sought on Saturday to dispel concerns about the readiness of U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces, declaring himself "encouraged" even though his top generals say the number of battalions that can fight insurgents without help has dropped.

And then Rums-failed chimes in with this:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld sought to play down the new estimate on Friday, saying, "Its relevance is minimal. here's the Reuters article

Richard Dawkins on Charlie Rose

2005-10-01T10:38:00.000-06:00

Richard Dawkins explains the difference between reasoned, scientific disscussion about evolution and blind "faith" tryng to cram an enormous, mystical universe into a little box.

-mp3 link at OneGoodMove-

GOP candidate distances herself from Bush , The rats are jumping ship.

2005-10-01T10:24:00.000-06:00

By MICHAEL R. BLOOD, Associated Press Writer Fri Sep 30, 1:56 PM ET

IRVINE, Calif. - Marilyn Brewer, a leading Republican candidate for the nation's only open House seat, stared into the TV camera and proclaimed her support for the president.

She was not talking about George W. Bush.

"I stand side by side with Ronald Reagan on less taxes and less government," Brewer told voters at a candidate forum.

The former state assemblywoman also praised Nancy Reagan for her devotion to stem cell research, an issue that has bedeviled the Bush White House. And she touts as her prize endorsement Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), the president's sometime rival and critic.

Not a word about Bush.

Later, the self-described loyal Republican who voted for the president in 2004 explained her calculus: "If the election was this year ... he would not be re-elected."

Audit Assails the White House for Public Relations Spending

2005-10-01T09:57:00.000-06:00

By ROBERT PEAR, NYTimes

Published: September 30, 2005

WASHINGTON, Federal auditors said today that the Bush administration had violated the law by purchasing favorable news coverage of President Bush's education policies, by making payments to the conservative commentator Armstrong Williams and by hiring a public relations company to analyze media perceptions of the Republican Party.
read on

Now go back and read Of course, he was talking about a blow job here. See what the House Majority leader says about the rule of law. Where is the outrage and blowhard speechmaking about Bushco breaking the law. Yeah, I thought so, it was just a bunch of bullshit demagoguery and partisanship in an attempt to bring a president down.

Here's Americablog on the same subject

2005-10-01T09:26:00.000-06:00

Hunter from Daily Kos has a message for Blogs for Bush and they aren't too kind.

"Welcome to the world of the politics of personal destruction, you tubthumping, chin-jutting, Bush humping gits. Welcome to the nasty and partisan world that Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, and a legion of insignificant lowest-rung toadies like yourselves nurtured into fruition daily with eager, grubby hands, and now look upon with dull-faced faux horror."

(via Crooks and Liars)

Top 20 new slogans for Bush/Cheney

2005-09-30T15:28:00.000-06:00

from dailykos

"Our enemy never stops thinking of new ways to harm us and our country, and neither do we."
"Iraq, Katrina, The Highway bill: Your Great-Grandchildren's Tax Dollars at work"
"2,000 dead soldier's can't be wrong"
I'm making my daddy look better every day!
Bush/Cheney- Making tomorrow's enemies today!
Pop-gun president lying with impunity, soundbyte policies and photo opportunities
Just Wait. Daddy's friends always bail me out.
"Jesus loves me this I know, for James Dobson tells me so, Righteous ones to him belong, All the others--go f*ck yourselves!"
"Protecting American against gays since 2001"
"Why does America hate me, Turd Blossom?"
Robin Hood had it backwards
At least I don't lie about sex!
Stop hating me and hate who I tell you to hate!
More wine for my friends!
"We're helping cut out the middle man- and giving your money straight to the Corporations"
It's Bill Clintons' fault!
Look over there - Terrorists!
Bushco, Inc. - 'When you care enough to send the very best Arabian horse manager.'
"Moving Forward Together In A Handbasket"
A society of sheep will in time beget a government of wolves." - Bertrand de Juvenal

Pentagon still not reimbursing troops who buy own body armor

2005-09-30T10:51:00.000-06:00

from the Seattle Times

this is outrageous if you ask me:

" the Pentagon still hasn't figured out a way to reimburse U.S. troops for body armor and equipment they purchased to better protect themselves while serving in Iraq.
...Men and women in uniform "are serving halfway around the world. And they shouldn't have to rely on bake sales and lemonade stands to raise money" to get them the equipment they need."

Also read about this issue here and here

Miller released from jail; to testify regarding Libby very soon... Fitz to make his decision soon on whether to bring charges

2005-09-30T10:32:00.000-06:00

linklinklink

Amazing article here--Genetically altered mice regrow vital organs

2005-09-30T10:21:00.000-06:00

Genetically altered mice discovered accidentally at the Wistar Institute in Pennsylvania have the seemingly miraculous ability to regenerate like a salamander, and even regrow vital organs.
Researchers systematically amputated digits and damaged various organs of the mice, including the heart, liver and brain, most of which grew back.
The mice seem to exhibit regenerative capabilities similar to that of human fetuses in the first trimester, said Dr. Stephen Badylak, a surgery research professor and director of the Center for Pre-Clinical Tissue Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh's McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
Heber-Katz discovered the strain in 1998 accidentally while working with mice altered genetically for studying autoimmune diseases.

read on

'nother John Stewart clip

2005-09-30T10:05:00.000-06:00

this one is with New York Senator Chuck Schumer, also listen to racist Bill Bennett at very end, amazing. link OneGoodMove

Army recruiting through iTunes

2005-09-29T23:27:00.000-06:00

Yes-it's that bad. Join up and get 3 free downloads. I kid you not.

cross posted from C&L

Media complicit in spreading false GOP smear of district attorney investigating DeLay

2005-09-29T10:57:00.000-06:00

Republicans have claimed that Travis County, Texas, District Attorney Ronnie Earle, who is investigating DeLay, is doing so for purely partisan reasons. This charge was dutifully echoed on FOX News Channel, and most other news outlets have reported it -- without noting that Earle has, in fact, prosecuted more Democratic politicians than Republican politicians.
read on

Jon Stewart on Michael Brown, need I say more...

2005-09-29T10:45:00.000-06:00

video link at OneGoodMove

From GWB, statesman and world leader:

2005-09-29T10:32:00.000-06:00

"We look forward to hearing your vision, so we can more better do our job. That's what I'm telling you."

Actual quote during a meeting with local officials and business leaders, including Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour, see transcript and video here

Of course, he was talking about a blow job here.

2005-09-29T10:20:00.000-06:00

DailyKos

Tom Delay (re: Clinton)
... I believe that this nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law. Sometimes hard, sometimes unpleasant, this path relies on truth, justice and the rigorous application of the principle that no man is above the law.

Now, the other road is the path of least resistance. This is where we start making exceptions to our laws based on poll numbers and spin control. This is when we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us, when we ignore the facts in order to cover up the truth.

Shall we follow the rule of law and do our constitutional duty no matter unpleasant, or shall we follow the path of least resistance, close our eyes to the potential lawbreaking, forgive and forget, move on and tear an unfixable hole in our legal system? No man is above the law, and no man is below the law. That's the principle that we all hold very dear in this country.

Of course, he was talking about a blow job here. Much, much more important than conspiracy and a Republican culture of corruption that has earned the Hammer three reprimands by the House ethics committee and the first-ever indictment of a member of the U.S. House leadership.

Just how many 'Number 2,' 'Number 3,' and 'Number 4' men can bin Laden and Zarqawi possibly have, anyway?

2005-09-29T09:53:00.000-06:00

(VIA DAILYKOS)

Once again Bush is just flat out lying in order to garner some positive public relations.

"Every few weeks, the Bush administration trumpets the killing or capturing of another #2 person in the Al Qaida operation. Bush did it again Wednesday morning.
With Bush's poll numbers in the toilet and Tom DeLay about to be indicted, it wasn't at all surprising that this claim was made this morning. When Bush needs good news and there isn't any to be had, they just make it up. But promoting Abu Azzam to such a position of importance? There must be sheer desperation at the White House if they're stretching this far. Nice to see that at least some in the media aren't biting this time."

...U.S. intelligence officials and counterterrorism analysts are questioning whether a slain terrorist—described by President Bush today as the “second-most-wanted Al Qaeda leader in Iraq”—was as significant a figure as the Bush administration is claiming.(Newsweek)

...The $50,000 offered for Abu Azzam pales in comparison to the $25 million, $10 million, $1 million, and $200,000 offered for others. If he was "the second most wanted al Qaeda leader in Iraq," as Bush referred to him, why such a small reward?(MyDD)

The characterization of Abu Azzam as No. 2 to Zarqawi is “not quite accurate,” said one of the officials. According to this official, it would be more correct to describe Abu Azzam as a “top lieutenant” to Zarqawi who was involved in “running” terrorist operations in Baghdad—not all of Iraq.

FEMA no-bid contract awarded to Carnival Cruise lines

2005-09-29T09:23:00.000-06:00

The federal government would actually save millions of dollars by forgoing the status quo and actually sending evacuees on a luxurious six-month cruise...
[...]
The Carnival deal is only one of several instances in which a lack of FEMA preparation may have left federal taxpayers with an outsized bill.
[...]
Carnival's public records boast "that substantially all of our income in fiscal 2004, 2003 and 2002 . . . is exempt from U.S. federal income taxes," largely because it maintains that its operations are not in the United States but on the high seas.
[...]
After it won the FEMA bid, Carnival appealed to Treasury Secretary John W. Snow for a waiver of U.S. taxes. "We do not want to jeopardize our tax exemption, nor do we want to interrupt our relief efforts for failure to secure this assurance from the Treasury Department," wrote Howard Frank, Carnival's chief operating officer.
[...]
FEMA's requirements ... included full meal service, between-meal snacks, linen and maid service
read on

FEMA's Long-Term "Strategic Plans" - My, How They've Changed:

2005-09-28T12:58:00.000-06:00

So apparently, under James Lee Witt in 1997 and then under Michael Brown's college roommate and boss, Joe Allbaugh, in 2002, FEMA laid out two very different long-term plans for how the agency was to improve and how its success was to be measured. What becomes evident is a stark contrast between the Clinton-era emphasis on saving people and communities as goals in and of themselves and how the Bush administration's FEMA sees itself as serving "customers."
read on (rude pundit)

Here's one response to Bush's conservation speech

2005-09-28T12:52:00.000-06:00

Department of Stop it! You're killing me! Bush says "we"
read on

Under reported: Katrina caused nine oil spills totaling more than 7 million gallons, together ranking as one of the biggest U.S. spills in history.

2005-09-28T12:45:00.000-06:00

A century of poor planning and industrial abuse has stripped away much of the Gulf Coast's natural protection against storms and flooding. More than 1 million acres of coastal wetlands in Louisiana have been drained, lost to development, or starved of the Mississippi River sediments they need to survive. These wetlands could have absorbed storm surge and floodwaters, substantially reducing the storm's impact. When the storm came ashore, it swamped aging, underfunded drinking water and sewage systems and hit more than 60 major industrial facilities and four Superfund waste sites hard in New Orleans alone, adding unknown toxins to the stinking, toxic flood.
read on

But if the president is serious about this leadership thing,

2005-09-28T12:35:00.000-06:00

he's got to go all the way. It's not enough to ask us to conserve; he also needs to be willing to upset his pals in the oil and car industries by demanding that fuel-efficiency standards be raised. (The energy bill he signed in August once again failed to increase mileage standards for passenger cars.) Doing so would result in the greatest conservation of fuel achievable with a single legislative act. Increasing mileage standards for SUVs and light trucks by just one mile per gallon a year for five years would save America one million barrels of oil a day by 2020.
read on at huffington post and here

DeLay Indicted in Campaign Finance Probe

2005-09-28T12:23:00.000-06:00

By LARRY MARGASAK, Associated Press

WASHINGTON - A Texas grand jury on Wednesday charged Rep. Tom DeLay and two political associates with conspiracy in a campaign finance scheme, forcing the House majority leader to temporarily relinquish his post.

DeLay, 58, was accused of a criminal conspiracy along with two associates, John Colyandro, former executive director of a Texas political action committee formed by DeLay, and Jim Ellis, who heads DeLay's national political committee.

DeLay is the first House leader to be indicted while in office in at least a century, according to congressional historians.
read on