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

...

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.

...

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.

...

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!!

...

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:

...

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.

...

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.

...

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.

Who Dares to Question the Dubai Port Deal?

Joe Conason

How fortunate that the opinion pages of our mightiest newspapers are open to diverse viewpoints. We would otherwise miss the opportunity to learn from liberal, conservative and centrist pundits alike that opponents of the Dubai ports deal - which now include about 70 percent of the American public - must be crazed, racist and xenophobic.

Such is the conventional mainstream wisdom, which blesses all trade as "free trade" and venerates corporate globalization as the one truth faith. To question those assumptions, even in the name of national security, is considered a sign of benighted partisanship, economic ignorance or worse.

These pundits don't condescend to engage in serious debate. They gush over Dubai's luxury hotels and skyscrapers, without mentioning the utter absence of democracy, transparency and human rights. They praise the United Arab Emirates for behaving like an ally against Al Qaeda, while ignoring its recent connections with the Taliban and Osama bin Laden. They seem to think that if any foreign firm is allowed to operate an American port, then a company that is wholly owned by a foreign dictatorship must be treated the same way.

If none of that makes sense to you, then you're obviously a racist, bigoted, xenophobic protectionist. Remember that for most if not all critics of the Dubai Ports World takeover, the most troubling issue is the Bush administration's casual approach to vetting the deal. The more we learn about this process, the less confidence we have in it. To doubt the competence of this government is neither xenophobic nor racist.

I agree. It's only prudent to question an administration that has a penchant for extending 'free trade' to include get-rich-quick deals with the Devil. The Devil usually comes out on top. And we lose.

Ultimate SciFi Quiz

Got this one via Paul the Spud over at Shakes' Sis:

You scored as Deep Space Nine (Star Trek). You have entered the dark side of the Star Trek universe. The paradise of Earth is far from you and you must survive despite having enemies on all fronts. But you wouldn't have it any other way because you thrive in conflict and will know what needs to be done to take care of those around you. Now if only the Founders would quit trying to take over the galaxy.

Your Ultimate Sci-Fi Profile II: which sci-fi crew would you best fit in? (pics)
created with QuizFarm.com

Deep Space Nine (Star Trek) 100% Babylon 5 (Babylon 5) 100% Moya (Farscape) 100% Serenity (Firefly) 100% Enterprise D (Star Trek) 88% Nebuchadnezzar (The Matrix) 88% SG-1 (Stargate) 88% Bebop (Cowboy Bebop) 81% Andromeda Ascendant (Andromeda) 75% Millennium Falcon (Star Wars) 75% FBI's X-Files Division (The X-Files) 75% Galactica (Battlestar: Galactica) 75%

I posted this because I like the results. I especially like Cowboy Bebop. I'd probably be more like Jet than Spike, but it'd be fun hangin' it out with Faye.

Too bad they didn't have Ghost in the Shell on that quiz, but it's more CyFi than SciFi. Cyber-babe Motoko is always about three drops of ink from bein' nekkid! My character would be Batou.

I return you now to Reality, such as it is.

The Worst of Durst

'Tis the season. In the spirit of the Oscars, Will Durst gives out his own awards:

And here at Worst of Durst Comedy Ltd., having never spied a bandwagon we weren't willing to jump on, it is giddy with self congratulation that we settle in for the most serious and consequential of all the awards ceremonies: the Will Durst "Thank God For These Liquid Squeezebags Because I'm a Comic" Awards.

Set yourself down in a comfortable chair and relax folks. We got your back. And be assured, not a single Brokeback Mountain joke in the bunch.

# THE FOR CRUM'S SAKE, COME ON, GIVE HER THE MONEY, SHE SLEPT WITH A 90 YEAR OLD GUY FOR A YEAR AND A HALF AWARD: Anna Nicole Smith.

# THE IF THEY WERE A HORSE, WE'D HAVE TO SHOOT 'EM AWARD: The Democratic Party.

# BEST MAKEUP: Harry Whittington.

Plenty more. Go read and have fun.

Anybody who tells you it couldn't possibly get worse is a fool

Molly Ivins is in a ramblin' mood today in a piece about the cost of Bush's incompetence.

And now comes a curious new contract for KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary. The contract provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing Immigration and Custom enforcement. It's a contingency contract -- the contingency they have in mind apparently being "in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the United States." Canadians drowning from global warming? Mexicans feeling the return of PRI? Ah, but the contract also specifies the detention centers are to "support the rapid development of new programs." New programs? Far be it from me to speculate.

The alarmmeisters in the blogosphere, whose imaginations know no bounds, are already positing any number of horrors. (I cannot imagine where they get some of these far-out ideas. From reading the right-wing blogosphere?) What surprises me is that the administration has planned for ... whatever it is it's planning for. How forethoughtful of them to have something in place in case ... a lot of citizens need to be rounded up or something.

Me 'n Fixer have kinda had our hearts set on warm tropical breezes, scantily clad brown skinned beauties, and big rum drinks with little umbrellas. They'll probably close down Gitmo just before they round us up, and we'll get to spend winter in a camp in North Dakota. That's like a gulag in Siberia without the charm.

One of the problems we have here is that in order to fix a mistake, it is first necessary to recognize that you've made one. But we're dealing with George W. Bush. We should be getting ready for three Katrinas next year, but first the administration would have to recognize that global warming is taking place.

One of the most discouraging morsels of news in recent days is that President Bush was so enchanted by Michael Crichton's novel purportedly debunking global warming that he asked Crichton to the White House to chat with him. HELP! Why can't we ever get a break? Think what would happen if the president read the "The Da Vinci Code."

Now there's a comforting thought! Gee thanks, Molly. I guess it's a blessing sometimes that Chimpy's head hurts when he reads, unless there's pictures.

Hmmm. Winter in North Dakota might be warmer than I thought, and it's a long way from the rising oceans, but the 'brown skinned beauties' up there are cows! I hope they have milk crates. Or at least milking stools.

Wow, what a concept!

There's a new website called ReadtheBill.org that proposes Congress should put all new bills on the web at least 72 hours before it goes to the floor for debate to give citizens a chance to read it. Wouldn't hurt for the lawmakers to read 'em before they sign 'em, either.

You can help. Go read.

You are what you eat

And pretty soon you'll glow in the dark:

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THIS time they're being paid by the big food and chemical companies to gut the food safety regulations in place now in the individual states. On top of that, they're gutting California's Prop. 65, which requires businesses to warn people when they might be exposed to dangerous chemicals!

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Watch out for green clouds of shit coming your way, Gord.

Suck my ass

All you spineless Dems who wouldn't stand against Alito. Go see Pam:

Reading this love note from the freshly confirmed Supreme Court Justice to the head of Focus on the Anus gives me visions of Strip Search Sammy Alito knelt before his master Daddy Dobson, ready to do, oh...you get the picture...

Let me ask you. If the South Dakota abortion ban ever gets before SCOTUS, how do you think they're gonna rule? When anything faith-based gets before SCOTUS, how do you think they're gonna rule? Idiots.

Rethug realities

Rep. Peter King (R-Idiot) is thinning down his Kool-Aid with real water. Reelection time is fast approaching and there are certain realities in play when you run on the Rebub ticket in NY. My neighbor Blondie has more on the dipshit's changing stance:

Peter King, the only republican congressman on Long Island has grown a bit of a conscience and is an outspoken critic of the UAE port deal. I believe he is up for re-election in November and realizes that allying with the bushistas isn't going to play well with his constituents (who mostly voted for John Kerry).

...

The port deal hits close to home for King, on several levels. His district is a valid target for al-Q, as opposed to his Rethug colleagues from say...Kansas or Wyoming, who probably wouldn't be able to see the mushroom cloud from their office windows, just as they didn't have the Stench of Death blow over their houses from the WTC from September 11th until Thanksgiving.

R.I.P. Republican 'Personal Responsibility'

Glenn Greenwald expands on Fixer's post about fixing responsibility for the administration's failure in Iraq.

For the last couple of years, the tactic of war proponents was to simply deny reality and pretend that the disaster in Iraq was just fiction, nothing more than the invention of an American-hating media. That little tactic isn't working any longer. All but the hardest-core Bush loyalists have abandoned this war long ago. And anyone with eyes can see that our Iraqi project is a disaster - at best, it will achieve nothing in exchange for the incalculable costs our country has endured and will have to pay for a long time to come. At worst, it will ensure the opposite of our goals.

Finally forced to accept the reality of their failure, war proponents have only two choices left: (a) admit their error and accept personal responsibility for their horrendous lack of judgment and foresight, or (b) blame others for their failure while insisting, in the face of a tidal wave of evidence, that they were right all along. Guess which option these Shining Beacons of Personal Responsibility are embracing?

And then we have those self-defenders who will sink a level lower than even the level to which Kristol descended by seeking to blame war opponents for the war's failure. At least Kristol had the intellectual honesty and decency to try to shove the blame onto those who actually influenced the prosecution of the war (the Defense Department and the military). These "blame-the-war-opponent" types are actually trying to blame their own failures on people who control nothing and influenced nothing.

Virtually every prediction the President and his followers made about this war has proven to be false, while virtually every prediction made by war opponents has proven to be true. The President and his followers controlled every part of this war with an iron fist, ignoring anything which their political opponents said and insisting on the right to exert full-scale, undiluted control over it. And now it has failed. And it's everyone's fault except theirs.

There's plenty of blame to go around, that's for sure. It is not exactly Bush's strong point to admit his mistakes or take responsibility for his actions, so it comes as no surprise that the people who influenced his decisions are the same way.