Speechless

This gets me so pissed off I don't have the words:

The Bush administration was unprepared to meet the needs of military veterans returning from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. One scheme they've come up with to make up the cost of health care and other services for this new cadre of U.S. veterans is to shortchange some of this country's most vulnerable older veterans.

[. . .]

Those standards would render 85 percent -- 85 percent! -- of the veterans in Washington's three veterans homes ineligible to stay there, according to Alfie Alvarado, assistant director of the Washington State Department of Veterans Affairs. At that rate, she says, the state's veterans homes would "not be able to operate." [my emphasis]

[. . .]

The way this government treats the people who've sacrificed their minds and bodies for this nation is unconscionable.

I owe somebody credit for the link, but I'll be damned if I can remember who. Update: Thanks to Jillian at Skippy's.

PlameGame

Here's a blog devoted to the Rove deal. I just saw this on one of the "inside the blogs" segments on one of the MSM TV shows. Go see PlameGame. On the right side, just under the picture of Bush holding a beer mug, are links to some blogs devoted to "other scams". Worth a look.

But . . . but . . . but . . .

Raisins? Raisins??? RAISINS????!!!!!

[. . .]

But Manji says recent research shows all that virgin stuff was based on an erroneous translation of the Koran: what awaits in heaven are 72 raisins. What? Could 54 people really have been blown up for a bag of raisins? "Well in 7th century Arabia raisins were so exalted as to be promoted to paradise."

[. . .]

Surprise!!!!! Heh.

Hat tip: Church of the Front Porch.

Boston writer takes time off from man-on-dog action to thank Senator

Michael Blanding replies to Santorum for outing Boston as the modern-day Gomorrah that it is. Via Alternet.

We, the depraved citizens of Boston, would like to thank Sen. Santorum for recognizing our city as the modern-day Gomorrah that it is, and pointing out all the ways that Boston has led to the moral decline of the nation.

With all due respect, however, I don't think you've really considered how far the wrong way Boston has taken them. Truth be told, our sick culture of sexual depravity goes back a lot further than gay marriage and Catholic priest abuse. Take the Puritans. I mean, talk about alternative lifestyles! The constrictive clothing, the stocks and irons, the public hangings, the dunking tanks, the flamboyant letters pinned to their breasts ... Massachusetts Bay Colony was like an S&M dungeon waiting to happen. And those were the same folks who founded Harvard University, spouting some crap about the need to train a literate clergy. Whereas we all know that literacy just gets in the way of the quick snap judgments and moral superiority that right-wing clergy (and for that matter, certain senators) really need to do their job.

Go read. I've been to Boston. Kinda like a little New York City on steroids. Remind me to tell you a story sometime about my experiences in the now-defunct "Combat Zone". I like Boston.

'Special rights'

Heaven forbid we give homosexuals those 'special rights' . . . like equality under the law. The esteemed Eponymous takes a look at the latest bug up the Winghuts' asses.

[. . .]

Uh huh. You know, I didn't think it was possible, but those mooks at the AFA are becoming stupider as time progresses. I've always found it interesting the way the AmTaliban frames this debate in terms of "special" rights. As if homosexuals, simply by "choosing" to be gay (you know, like a Christian chooses to be so) should be entitled to fewer rights since their choice involves simply not conforming to socially acceptable sexual norms. "Special treatment" for homosexuals is apparently "equal rights" for the rest of us.

[. . .]

Panic

The Guardian:

It was a question the White House press corps once believed unthinkable. Has President George W Bush lost confidence in his political guru, Karl Rove? If simply posing the question was a surprise last week, the answer - or, more accurately, the lack of one - was an even greater shock.

[. . .]

That has put Bush in an awkward position. He has previously promised to fire anyone revealed to be involved in the Plame leak, though the White House is now refusing to repeat that statement. McClellan is an even worse spot. He once told reporters that it was 'totally ridiculous' to suggest Rove had been involved.

[. . .]

If the legal case against Rove has holes in it, the political case is more damning. For the first time in years the Democrats can exploit a scandal that is easy to understand. While the details are confusing, the narrative is simple: the White House exposed a CIA agent working to protect America. 'People are angry. The press corps is angry. The Democrats just have to keep feeding the beast,' said Haas. [my emphases]

[. . .]

Yes indeed. Why does the Bush Administration hate America? Why have they committed treason? What did the Chimp know and when did he know it? Can you say 'impeachment', boys and girls? I thought you could.

Thanks to Maru for the link.

The Return of J. Edgar Hoover's Ghost

Via Pam's House Blend:

In an effort to fight the "War on Terror", the FBI has been monitoring the ACLU and other groups such as Greenpeace.

"I know for an absolute fact that we have not been involved in anything related to promoting terrorism and yet the government has collected almost 1,200 pages on our activities," Romero said. [Anthony Romero is the ACLU's executive director] "Why is the ACLU now the subject of scrutiny from the FBI?"

John Passacantando, Greenpeace's U.S. executive director, said his group is a forceful, but peaceful, critic of the Bush administration's war and environmental policies.

"This administration has a history of using its powers against its peaceful critics. If, in fact, the FBI has been deployed to help in that effort, that would be quite shocking," Passacantando said.

No, it's not shocking at all. I'm starting to feel that the FBI is this administration's Gestapo in the making.

Insight

Lambert comes up with some:

[. . .]

You know, this whole thing reminds of that great old Agatha Christie novel, Murder on the Orient Express. The whodunnit is totally confusing, clues pointing every which way and cancelling each other out, until Hercule Poirot figures out that the reason the clues could only make sense if they were all in on it, is that, indeed, they were all in on it.

[. . .]

I think this is exactly the way it went down.

Doing my part

To keep the Republicans on their toes. I wrote this over at TF&G the other day, about the assorted nuts who hang around the shop. One I thought my Brain readers might like:

[. . .]

Kommissar John: The New York State legislator for our district. Republican, spitting image of former Connecticut governor (now convict) John Rowland. An asshole extraordinaire and I tell him every chance I get. He usually checks to see if my car is in the lot before he shows up. Tries to avoid me like the plague but his local office is line-of-sight from our door. Try to guess how many times I've mooned him. Yes, the locals are used to driving by the shop and seeing me in the lot, mooning somebody up the block.

[. . .]

An Iraq Picture Show, 2004

Ginmar got to enjoy her time in the military over in Iraq last year. Now she's sharing some of her pictures. The captions really make this post great.

Former Vietnam Combat and commercial Pilot Says 'No Way' Could a Novice Fly the 'Big Birds' He Knew So Well

Via the 9/11 Blogger:

More holes being poked into the official version of the events surrounding 9/11. This article hits home to me as I have relatives in the aviation industry. One quote I find particularily chilling:

"Knowing the flight characteristics of the "big birds" like the back of his hand, Wittenberg convincingly argued there was absolutely no possibility that Flight 77could have "descended 7,000 feet in two minutes, all the while performing a steep 270 degree banked turn before crashing into the Pentagon's first floor wall without touching the lawn."



Wittenberg claimed the high speed maneuver would have surely stalled the jetliner sending it into a nose dive, adding it was "totally impossible for an amateur who couldn't even fly a Cessna to maneuver the jetliner in such a highly professional manner, something Wittenberg said he couldn't do with 35 years of commercial jetliner experience.



"For a guy to just jump into the cockpit and fly like an ace is impossible - there is not one chance in a thousand," said Wittenberg, recalling that when he made the jump from Boeing 727's to the highly sophisticated computerized characteristics of the 737's through 767's it took him considerable time to feel comfortable flying."

Disturbing food for thought.

Army Further Damages it's Credibility

Given that the Army has missed it's recruitment goals, it's not surprising that an Army recruiting officer who threatened a young man with jail time has been transfered from one recruitment office to another and promoted to supervisor.

"The Army says he's the perfect person to be in charge of other recruiters since he experienced first hand what happens when ethics rules are broken."

Oh yeah, I bet he is.

If Rove were a Democrat, he'd be shot

The truth via Skippy:

I'm certainly happy that George W. Bush and Karl Rove are not Democrats. If they were, just imagine the mess this country would be in right now, even worse than the mess it is in.

First, there would be cries of "treason" directed at Mr. Rove from the Republican ranks. Some of the more overheated members of Congress would demand that he be taken immediately out back of the Capitol and shot by a firing squad.

[. . .]

Story with a moral

From my brother-in-law who gets the best stuff:

The teacher gave her fifth grade class an assignment: Get their parents to tell them a story with a moral at the end of it. The next day the kids came back and one by one began to tell their stories. "Johnny, do you have a story to share?"

"Yes ma'am. My daddy told a story about my Aunt Karen. She was a pilot in Desert Storm and her plane got hit. She had to bail out over enemy territory and all she had was a small flask of whiskey, a pistol and a survival knife. She drank the whiskey on the way down so it wouldn't break and then her parachute landed right in the middle of twenty enemy troops. She shot fifteen of them with the gun until she ran out of bullets, killed four more with the knife, till the blade broke, and then she killed the last Iraqi with her bare hands."

"Good Heaven" said the horrified teacher. "What kind of moral did your daddy tell you from this horrible story?"

"Stay the fuck away from Aunt Karen when she's drinking."

"Fly! Be free!" - Mork, to an egg

Take the quiz: "What Kind of Soul Do You Retain?"

Free
You have an open heart and open mind and you chose not to let anyone get to you and the way you want to live.

There were no good answers to most of their questions. I'm surprised the result came out as close to the mark as it did. The picture looks just like me, too.

Thanks, Granny.

Keep your eye on the ball

This is the best op-ed of the weekend, in my not-so-humble opinion. Frank Rich in the NYTimes. He goes into the steam calliope (makes a lot of loud noise, exhausts a lot of wet hot air) of the Republican slime/noise/spin machine in the Rove deal and then refocuses the real thing:

This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit - the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes - is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for Vanity Fair.

Once we were locked into the war, and no W.M.D.'s could be found, the original plot line was dropped with an alacrity that recalled the "Never mind!" with which Gilda Radner's Emily Litella used to end her misinformed Weekend Update commentaries on "Saturday Night Live." The administration began its dog-ate-my-homework cover-up, asserting that the various warning signs about the uranium claims were lost "in the bowels" of the bureaucracy or that it was all the C.I.A.'s fault or that it didn't matter anyway, because there were new, retroactive rationales to justify the war. But the administration knows how guilty it is. That's why it has so quickly trashed any insider who contradicts its story line about how we got to Iraq, starting with the former Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill and the former counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke.

Seasoned audiences of presidential scandal know that there's only one certainty ahead: the timing of a Karl Rove resignation. As always in this genre, the knight takes the fall at exactly that moment when it's essential to protect the king.

I think that when Rove's head deflates enough to realize he's not getting out of this one, his desperation will crank up the noise machine to where it will be obvious to even the most casual observer that his house of cards is about to fall, and deservedly so. To make the Bush archway fall, remove the Rove keystone.

Yeesh

More 'creative naming' from our friends at 1600. You remember 'Clear Skies', 'Healthy Forests' and 'No Child Left Behind'. Farnsworth:

As if the greedy pig motherfuckers at Halliburton weren't already fattening themselves enough at the public slop trough, a little-noticed bill is worming its nasty way through the greased machinery of the Repugnican senate.

It's called the FAIR Act, for Fairness in Asbestos Injury Resolution -- yet another in a long line of Orwellian naming conventions -- that would establish a $140 billion trust fund to be drawn down by sufferers from one or more of the many asbestos-related diseases such as mesothelioma.

[. . .]

Sunday funnies

For those who see MTP later, John Podesta (Clinton's former Chief of Staff) gives Ken Mehlman (RNC Chair/Closet Queen) a weenie-whacking on the Plamegate deal. Even Russert inflated his raisins and asked some tough questions. All Mehlman could do was recite talking points.

Two of my favorite girls were on McLaugh-In. Eleanor Clift per usual and Raghida Dergham of Al-Hayat whom I just adore (I based a character on her in my book The Fourth Estate). She proved, at that fat bastid Tony Blankley's expense, that Blankley is a moron and an RNC shill.

And will Joe Biden (D-MBNA) just shut the fuck up and go away, please? He's shown himself for the whore he is. Time to give him a primary fight. Orrin Hatch (R-Mormon) is a bleeding asshole.

I am Jean-Luc Picard

And I look at that as a good thing. Via Church of the Front Porch.

Movie reviews

I don't like reviewers. I got a problem with people making money giving opinions on artists' work. Bottom-feeders, I put 'em in the same category as plaintiff attorneys. But Digby has the best movie review I ever saw. Well, it's a review of reviews that shows how the 101st Hiding Cowards are actually terrorists.