Standing up

I stole this from Pauly.

Hon. Pete Hoekstra, Chair
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Washington, DC

Dear Congressman Hoekstra:

As a matter of conscience, I am returning the Intelligence Commendation Award medallion given me for "especially commendable service" during my 27-year career in CIA. The issue is torture, which inhabits the same category as rape and slavery - intrinsically evil. I do not wish to be associated, however remotely, with an agency engaged in torture.

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The obeisance of CIA directors George Tenet and Porter Goss in heeding illegal White House directives has done irreparable harm to the CIA and the country - not to mention those tortured and killed. That you, as Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, show more deference to the White House than dedication to your oversight responsibilities under the Constitution is another profound disappointment. How can you and your counterpart, Sen. Pat Roberts, turn a blind eye to torture - letting some people get away, literally, with murder - and square that with your conscience?

If German officials who were ordered to do such things in the 1930s had spoken out early and loudly enough, the German people might have been alerted to the atrocities being perpetrated in their name and tried harder to stop them. When my grandchildren ask, "What did you do, Grandpa, to stop the torture," I want to be able to tell them that I tried to honor my oath, taken both as an Army officer and an intelligence officer, to defend the Constitution of the United States - and that I not only spoke out strongly against the torture, but also sought a symbolic way to dissociate myself from it. [my ems]

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What did it take for the man to do this? He has to sleep at night.

Desperation?

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It appears that, to close the deal during his visit, Bush directed his negotiators to give in to India's demands that it be allowed to produce unlimited quantities of fissile material and amass as many nuclear weapons as it wants.

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That's good.

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But now the criticisms may focus on this question: By enabling India to build an unlimited stockpile of nuclear weapons, would this agreement set off a new Asian arms race?

And here's another question: Were Bush and his aides so eager for some good headlines -- for a change -- that they gave away the store?

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Ya think?

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"Last week, during a private meeting with a group of congressional leaders, [undersecretary of state for political affairs R. Nicholas] Burns suggested it was unlikely the sides would be able to quickly bridge significant gaps on the separation plan. But a last-minute decision by Bush to accept India's demands sealed the deal. . . . [my ems]

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Let's see. I remember all the puckered assholes around here when the U.S. and Soviets were building ICBMs at an astounding rate in the 60s. We're gonna have another arms race, this time in far more unstable places than the U.S. and Soviet Union circa 1968, just to further Republican political goals. Tell me how this will make us safer? Tell me why Chimpy shouldn't be dragged out of the White House in irons right now?

Great thanks to C&L for the link.

NOLA

I've been remiss in not directing you to First Draft and Scout Prime's reports from New Orleans. Go to the bottom of the page and scroll up.

Strong-arming

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This truly is an unprecedented move: the Senate Majority Leader is threatening to make the Intelligence Committee a political rubber stamp because the White House and the Republican leadership are so terrified that the President's actions won't withstand scrutiny and will be found illegal by the Committee.

Bill Frist is nothing but a cheater, who is trying to rig the Committee -- a majority of whose members WANT to provide oversight and actually DO their jobs. This is the single most craven, pathetic and weak move -- the fact that the interests of the nation would be served by an oversight hearing takes a back-seat to Karl Rove's marching orders that George Bush's authority not be questioned. Ever.

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FDL.

So when do we go out in the streets? I mean, Frist is saying he is willing to bring this nation one step, a big step, closer to a dictatorship/monarchy. How long will we sit back and do nothing? Will it take the '06 elections stolen? Will it take another terror attack in the U.S.? Or will we just roll over and play dead?

Make up yer minds

Wax on, wax off.

Friday Saturday Cattle Dog Blogging

Princess Shayna says, "those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it."

La Legion Etrangere Americaine?

MM

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I noticed a new proposal being floated to solve the manpower shortfall...offering expedited citizenship to the undocumented aliens in the country...another "pay for play" scheme.

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and Lurch

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I have to admit I gasped when I read this. It's an idea that does have some merit, in a quirky way. I'm sure there are thousands of young men around the world who would leap at the chance for a green card, and eventual citizenship.

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have been talking about the idea we should create a new military unit(s) made up of non-Americans, the reward being U.S. citizenship at the end of their honorable service a la the French Foreign Legion. Do you think the U.S. should travel down this road?

One down

SAN DIEGO - Former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham began his first day in prison after being sentenced to eight years and four months for taking $2.4 million in homes, yachts and other bribes in a corruption scheme unmatched in the annals of Congress.

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Let's hope we can say this about DeLay and the rest of the Crooked Congressional Republican Club soon.

Thanks to AMERICAblog for the link.

Cartoons

Bob Geiger and his great Saturday roundup.

George the Unready

Paul Krugman courtesy of Tennessee Guerilla Women.

Iraqi insurgents, hurricanes and low-income Medicare recipients have three things in common. Each has been at the center of a policy disaster. In each case experts warned about the impending disaster. And in each case - well, let's look at what happened.

n short, our country is being run by people who assume that things will turn out the way they want. And if someone warns of problems, they shoot the messenger.

Some commentators speak of the series of disasters now afflicting the Bush administration - there seems to be a new one every week - as if it were just a string of bad luck. But it isn't.

If good luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity, bad luck is what happens when lack of preparation meets a challenge. And our leaders, who think they can govern through a mix of wishful thinking and intimidation, are never, ever prepared.

And they don't give a shit or think it matters, either.

Wet Dreams

Go see Ed.

More McCain bashing

I think McCain is more of a danger to this nation than the Chimp because he's nothing more than:

...George Bush in sheep's clothing (if said sheep were a bleating old man whose desperation for the presidency is evident in every inch of its wool)...

Stop Fucking Him

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If your man doesn't understand that if he's entitled to an orgasm, you're entitled to an unoccupied uterus -- stop fucking him. If he can't get it through his thick skull that his fleeting pleasure poses a mortal threat to you -- stop fucking him. No handjobs, no blowjobs, no orgasms for him whatsoever except by his own hand, until you can be completely assured of a baby-free future, at your discretion.

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Remember: You can hold out longer than they can. I promise. Your sex toys are better,* your self-control is superior, and your stakes are higher. Stop fucking them. You deserve better. You deserve someone who is aware that your body is your domain, and who respects that. If he doesn't respect that, stop fucking him.

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I've said this to women in the past. Ladies, you have more power than you know and it's right between your legs.

Pay off your credit cards, set off a terror alert

This one grabbed my interest big time, both for its hypocrisy and its ramifications. On the one hand, we have Chweeney telling folks to pay off their credit card debt and save more. Carpetbagger Report:

"The American dream begins with saving money and that should begin on the very first day of work," Cheney told a conference here exploring how to encourage people to boost savings and be better prepared for retirement.

Not to mention making more money available for this administration to borrow and squander.

And Dick "deficits don't matter" Cheney believes he has the credibility to tell Americans they're not saving enough?

And then...if you do pay off your credit cards, like I did last year, this is what can happen :

The balance on their JCPenney Platinum MasterCard had gotten to an unhealthy level. So they sent in a large payment, a check for $6,522.

And an alarm went off. A red flag went up. The Soehnges' behavior was found questionable.

And all they did was pay down their debt. They didn't call a suspected terrorist on their cell phone. They didn't try to sneak a machine gun through customs.

They just paid a hefty chunk of their credit card balance. And they learned how frighteningly wide the net of suspicion has been cast.

They both learned the same astounding piece of information about the little things that can set the threat sensors to beeping and blinking.

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

The full article is at The Providence Journal.

That fuckin' Cheney is talkin' out both sides of his mouth again, or maybe out his neck. Here he is telling folks to try to pay off their credit card debt and save more, even though that's getting harder and harder to do, the way Bush is fuckin' up the economy, and when they manage to do that it sets off alarms at Homeland Security.

If they come to my house to ask me where I got the money to pay off my cards, I think I'll quote The Dick: "Go fuck yourself."

If that doesn't work, maybe a vertical butt stroke'll get my message across.

This is just fuckin' ridiculous.

Loofah Twofah...

On Bill O'reilly's latest garbage mouth trash at AlterNet:

Keith Olbermann's unapologetic digs at disingenuous and media personalities is really beginning to wind Bill O'Reilly up. After Olbermann named him the Worst Person in the World for the second night in a row, O'Reilly began a petition to replace Olbermann.

Olbermann responded and the duel is on...

Mike Stark decided to add a bit of gas to the fire by calling O'Reilly and mentioning Olbermann's name...

O'Reilly promptly cut him off and proceeded to tell him that "we have your phone number by the way" and that he should expect a visit to his door from the local authorities so that "you will be held accountable. Believe it."

According to Stark: "It didn't get broadcast - Bill dumped it. This sound comes from the Bill O'Reilly premium membership I just paid for. (I vomited in my mouth as I hit the 'Finalize Order' button). Listen to it [HERE].

Also another post at Calling All Wingnuts.

By the way, Olbermann has been doing a hilariously great job of bustin' O'Reilly's balls lately. I've fallen off the couch a buncha times and my sides hurt!

OK, that one was fun. Here's another one about O'Reilly goin' off on Walter Cronkite over the War on Some Drugs:

Cronkite came up on O'Reilly's radar when he penned a fundraising letter for the Drug Policy Alliance, a nonpartisan group seeking a more humane approach to drug issues. "Today, our nation is fighting two wars: one abroad and one at home," Cronkite wrote. "While the war in Iraq is in the headlines, the other war is still being fought on our own streets. Its causalities are the wasted lives of our own citizens. I am speaking of the war on drugs."

For O'Reilly, attacking drug reform is a favorite pasttime, and he was on Cronkite like a hungry dog on a juicy bone. On the Feb. 24 edition of "The Factor," O'Reilly began by portraying Cronkite as "a very far-left guy" who lives "in the same left-wing precinct" as Bill Moyers and Tom Brokaw. Not to put too fine a point on it, said O'Reilly, Cronkite is "more far-left; he's always been that way, but he masked it."

"Anyway," O'Reilly continued, "he wants to legalize drugs." Actually, Cronkite didn't say that, but for the talk show host it's "truthiness" rather than truth that counts. Worse, said O'Reilly, Cronkite "lied" by saying the war on drugs had not made our streets safer. "That's not true; the war on drugs broke the back of the crack that was out of control in major cities all across the country," O'Reilly claimed.

Not only does O'Reilly not know his ass from a hole in the ground about nearly everything, he's liable to get his ass handed to him by a reality-based 80-something "lefty", "lefty" being defined as anyone with more brains than mouth. One who's still got more credibility in his little finger than O'Reilly could buy with all his ill-gotten money.

I guess that one's fun, too!

More on voting theft in Ohio

From AlterNet:

Did 308,000 canceled Ohio voter registrations put Bush back in the White House?

It turns out, we missed more than a few of the dirty tricks Karl Rove, Ken Blackwell and their GOP used to get themselves four more years. In an election won with death by a thousand cuts, some that are still hidden go very deep. Over the next few weeks we will list them as they are verified.

One of them has just surfaced to the staggering tune of 175,000 purged voters in Cuyahoga County (Cleveland), the traditional stronghold of the Ohio Democratic Party. An additional 10,000 that registered to vote there for the 2004 election were lost due to "clerical error."

As we reported more than a year ago, some 133,000 voters were purged from the registration rolls in Hamilton County (Cincinnati) and Lucas County (Toledo) between 2000 and 2004. The 105,000 from Cincinnati and 28,000 from Toledo exceeded Bush's official alleged margin of victory -- just under 119,000 votes out of some 5.6 million the Republican Secretary of State. J. Kenneth Blackwell deemed worth counting.

There are more than 80 other Ohio counties where additional pre-November 2004 mass eliminations by GOP-controlled boards of elections may have occurred. Further "anomalies" in the Ohio 2004 vote count continue to surface.

In addition, it seems evident that the Democratic Party will now enter Ohio's 2006 gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races, and its 2008 presidential contest, with close to a half-million voters having been eliminated from the registration rolls, the vast majority of them from traditional Democratic strongholds, and with serious legislative barriers having been erected against new voter registration drives.

Stay tuned.

You bet yer bippy we'll 'stay tuned', buddy. Keep on this.

There's a lot in between the quotes. Go read. There's a lotta Repubs in Ohio need to go to prison with Bush so we can have our country back.

More on 'brown skinned beauties'

I love it when a big-time blogger like The Rude Pundit expands on an idea from one of my posts:

Since he was a young man in Midland, the President has had a favorite cow. Indeed, he used to fuck a particularly sassy hereford heifer in the barn on his family property. Young George thought it was love; indeed, love would never be as pure for George, even if sometimes Laura puts on the rubber udders for him to fondle. Jeb found out about it, spying on his brother through a knothole in the old red-painted wood, and, being a particularly enterprising Bush, he started charging the neighbor kids a buck a peek. It's the reason why so many particularly incompetent and/or evil people from Texas seem to have positions of great power in the Bush administration: if a man has watched you fuck a cow, you better treat that man well.

Where can I get one of those 'rubber udders'? If I stuck it on a bull, I bet I could fool Fixer into...

Naturally, I'm only kidding. I would never do that to Fixer. That's a disclaimer so I don't have to have someone else start my car for me.

In the right sidebar next to the above paragraph at the Rude One's are the words "Coulter's Snatch". Click it if you got a strong stomach.

Oh the enormity of it

From the wonderful folks at After School Snack, an encyclopaedia, so to speak:

Below is a list I compiled with the help of Elise and Christopher, regarding Bush related fiascos. If you like it, we all contributed, you don't, blame me. After watching some of the recently released FEMA briefings, I was pissed off. (If you haven't yet, go look at the AP video and see what Bush knows before he says that no one could have seen this coming.) Fuckers!!

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Time for a new keyboard

...During his surprise visit to Afghanistan, Bush sought to revive the image of a general on the frontline...

A general? Every time I look at Bush, the Mel Brooks line comes back to me:

The King looks like the piss-boy!

Great thanks to Rising Hegemon.

Frustration

I know where David's coming from:

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The outcome of all that - I'm not sure how to say what I'm gonna say, so I guess the best thing is to be blunt - is this:

I am renouncing my country.

The Democrats will not save us in 2008, assuming one gets elected and assuming we'll even have an election. They will not save us even if they take back Congress and the Presidency. Nothing can undo what the Bush administration has wrought on the world in a four-year term. The cure would be so harsh, shocking, and devastating that any politicians who tried would be thrown out of office.

It cannot be be undone.

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Oh man I was in a bad mood. But not any more, because the upshot of all that angst and anger and gnashing of teeth was this: I've decided to leave the US.

Not now, not this year, but before 2010, sooner if certain things give evidence that escape might be harder, such as any requirement of permission to leave like the Soviet exit visa, freezing of assets or prohibition on international movement of funds, confiscation of gold and personal arms, and the like.

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I've thought about this a lot since the '04 elections. My family home in a little town in Germany is a tempting move. Paris also beckons, as does the Alsace, but I'm here for the duration. If it gets too bad we'll leave, but not when there's a chance we can win and restore...not restore because then we'd be going backwards...lead this nation forward into its bright potential future. While my faith in my fellow Americans to do what's right has been severely tested over the past half decade, I still see glimmers of hope, over the past few weeks especially. I'm praying it won't come to, as David puts it:

...It will take a peoples' insurrection to save this country. A second American Revolution...

But if it does, I'm there. Hell, I took an oath to defend the Constitution and I always figured I'd go out in a blaze of glory. Beats dying in your sleep. What did Patrick Henry say? America is worth saving. Liberty or Death, pick one.