From now on, instead of sending important information by email, I will be posting to the Big Brass Alliance Forum set up by Pam, to whom we owe a great deal of thanks.
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It's correct of course to criticize Bush for all this stuff. But the cold truth is that we - the American public - are now equally to blame. We saw what was wrong and chose not to care. Having seen what was wrong, we chose to ratify the administration's conduct.
Welsh singing star Charlotte Church branded US President George Bush "a right weirdo" and opera legend Pavarotti a "big fat diva", it was reported today.
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Church, 19, said gaffe-prone Bush had no idea where Wales was when she met him after performing for outgoing President Bill Clinton in Washington in 2000.
"Clinton was lovely, in tune with everyone else, but George Bush just hasn't got a clue what he's doing," she said, according to the Daily Record.
"He asked me what state Wales was in. I said: 'It's its own country next to England, actually Mr Bush.'
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WASHINGTON -- Online political activists want the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to stay cool when considering proposed rules that some fear will chill online political debate, particularly in the blogosphere.
The FEC agrees, but the courts do not.
Faced with a mandate from a federal court to extend some aspects of campaign finance laws to include the Internet, the FEC finds itself in the awkward position of proposing rules it didn't want to write in the first place.
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It is interesting that the ACLU got a ruling requiring that all the Abu Ghraib pictures be released to the public. What is really interesting is that the government argued that releasing them would be contrary to the Geneva Conventions. (Via Talk Left)
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. . . alleviate the personnel crunch by retaining soldiers who are earmarked for early discharge during their first term of enlistment because of alcohol or drug abuse, unsatisfactory performance, or being overweight, among other reasons." [my emphasis]
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. . . But fear is a powerful thing: deep, psychological, repressed fear - that if the truth is not held back, then the monsters of anarchy must be unleashed. It is better to take down a President for something a great deal more prosaic than war crimes and mass murder. Because what does it say about us if our leader is guilty of such things? [my emphasis]
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The [Republicans] talk about a culture of life. What about a culture of corruption in this country? We have the leader in the Republican Party [in the House of Congress], who the president just endorsed as doing a fine job, and who the chair of the Republican party endorsed as doing a fine job.
I happen to think that's true; the Republican definition of a fine job is to be reprimanded three times in a row [by the House ethics committee]. The Republican definition of a fine job appears to be if your leader is under investigation and three of his aides have been indicted for allegedly funneling $600,000 of corporate money into Texas campaigns. That's how Republicans do business. They think it's fine. Americans don't think it's fine. We need to get the culture of abuse and corruption in Washington out of here.
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-Dr. Howard Dean, DNC Chairman.
Yasith Chhun often boasted to newspapers and magazines about masterminding an attack on government buildings in Cambodia and his plans to overthrow the Southeast Asian country's communist regime.
The U.S. State Department declared the group he headed, the Cambodian Freedom Fighters, a terrorist organization in 2001.
But that label didn't stop Chhun, 48, from gaining friends among GOP stalwarts, such as Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of Huntington Beach and the National Republican Congressional Committee, which raises funds for electing Republicans to Congress.
Rohrabacher said he was aware of the State Department's concerns about the Cambodian Freedom Fighters but remained a supporter of Chhun and his allies because of their passionate efforts to topple the Cambodian government led by Prime Minister Hun Sen.
"The State Department quite often will worship at the altar of stability and not consider liberty and justice as part of the equation," the congressman said in a phone interview. When "you talk about a dictator like Hun Sen, you don't want stability, you want change. Let's hope our State Department is not condemning anybody who would act to eliminate Hun Sen."
Sakphan Keam, an English-Khmer translator in Long Beach, said many of the city's Cambodian Americans equate the Republican Party with reform overseas, a belief that was strengthened by President Bush's invasion of Iraq.
Allegations of ethics violations swirling around House Majority Leader Tom Delay have raised serious questions about a possible epidemic of "pay-to-play" politics in American government. On Friday, June 3, 2005 at 9 P.M. on PBS (check local listings), NOW investigates the charges against DeLay and shines a spotlight on the real-world consequences of special interests, lobbyists, and big campaign donors using money and gifts to exert influence over our elected officials. The program looks at the sweatshop working conditions in the Marianas Islands, an American territory, which is the focus of new allegations that an aide to DeLay offered federal money to local legislators to support a local leader who opposed reforming the garment industry there.
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Amnesty International first communicated its concerns about the treatment of prisoners to Rumsfeld in January 2002 and continued to raise these concerns at the highest levels as allegations of abuse mounted from Afghanistan, Guantanamo and Iraq.
[AI's William] Schulz said this administration responded by preventing human rights workers from investigating or visiting the detention facilities in question. Schulz contrasted the administration's actions in this regard to countries such as Libya and Syria that have allowed independent monitors to examine prison facilities. [my emphasis]
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A progressive blog, Democrats.com, is offering a $1,000 reward to anyone who can get United States president George W. Bush to answer a question about pre-Iraq war intelligence . . .
In July 2002, did you and your administration "fix" the intelligence and facts about non-existent Iraqi WMD's and ties to terrorism - which were disputed by U.S. intelligence officials - to sell your decision to invade Iraq to Congress, the American people, and the world - as quoted in the Downing Street Minutes?
. . . But claiming that the people who brought Nixon down are responsible for the Khmer Rouge and the Killing Fields? ARE YOU EFFIN' KIDDING ME? . . .
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Let me just quote the part of Noonan's article I'm interested in talking about:
Felt helped produce was a weakened president who was a serious president at a serious time. Nixon's ruin led to a cascade of catastrophic events--the crude and humiliating abandonment of Vietnam and the Vietnamese, the rise of a monster named Pol Pot, and millions--millions--killed in his genocide. America lost confidence; the Soviet Union gained brazenness. What a terrible time. Is it terrible when an American president lies and surrounds himself by dirty tricksters? Yes, it is. How about the butchering of children in the South China Sea. Is that worse? Yes. Infinitely, unforgettably and forever.
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If we're going to seriously accept an argument that Nixon was capable of stopping Pol Pot then it's not too crazy to contend that Clinton could've stopped al-Qaeda if he hadn't been critically weakened by "Lewinsky-blowjob-gate." Clinton would've been in a position to seriously go after al-Qaeda if he wasn't distracted by the impeachment saga of 1998 and 1999.
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I heard a really bad joke last year:
Q: What's the difference between Iraq and Vietnam?
A: Bush had a plan to get out of Vietnam.
The Brad Blog reports that the John Conyers Downing Street Letter to Bush petition has topped 86,000 signatures so far, with the ante upped to 250K, over the 100K originally requestion. Amazing. Conyers on the response:
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And, that's what's happening now. I smell the long-forgotten skunk, the long-forgotten rot of fascism. What is happening all around can no longer be denied. What I ran away from so desperately in 1938 is coming back full circle. Only the jack-boots have not yet arrived . . .