Well, that's no ordinary rabbit!

Heh...

Declassification

Digby's been all over this thing and one question he asks sums it up nicely:

If it was a legitimate disclosure of sensitive information in the public interest, why didn't the president just call a press conference? Why all the cloak and dagger stuff?

Word.

Saturday Cartoons

More, as usual, at Bob Geiger's place.

Incredible

Radical Russ does it so much better than I could so here's just a little bit:

The patients at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, are in great peril. On April 17th, they will be visited by a presence so dark, so deadly, that it may be Evil Incarnate. Seriously ill patients will be exposed to a force so dedicated to death and destruction, a force that compels the feebleminded into blind obedience to fantastic notions so counter to reality and so offensive to decency and good that we must all band together and pray for the deliverance of these good people from the clutches of this malevolent force!

No, no, Dick Cheney's not going to Minnesota. I'm talking about the highest teacher in Buddhism, His Holiness, the Dalai Lama...

The full story. Wingnuttia at its best.

The post 9/11 mindset

The correct post 9/11 mindset. Jeff Huber has it:

...


Mister Bush has become fond of saying, "We can no longer hope that oceans protect us from harm." As with so much of what Bush says, that statement is largely bunk.

Yes, terrorists can sneak into this country, hijack airplanes, and drive them into skyscrapers. But that was as true in 1948 as it is now. Rogue nations like Iran or North Korea may someday be able to strike American cities with nuclear tipped intercontinental ballistic missiles, but the Soviets became capable of doing that during the Eisenhower administration.

But no one can muster sufficient ground forces to invade and occupy America, and even if they could, they couldn't muster enough maritime or air transportation to bring a force that size across the oceans. Even if they could muster that kind of transoceanic transportation, we could easily sink it or shoot it down before it got halfway here.

...

Americans should get it too. Time to start thinking rationally about our actual needs and requirements.

Friday Cattle Dog Blogging

Princess Shayna was heard to say, "it must suck to be Snot McClellan today."

A First Amendment moment...

Yesterday, at one of Bush's bullshitapaloozas in Charlotte, a guy named Harry Taylor laid into him. Video and a transcriot at Think Progress.

Q You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food. If I were a woman, you'd like to restrict my opportunity to make a choice and decision about whether I can abort a pregnancy on my own behalf. You are -

THE PRESIDENT: I'm not your favorite guy. Go ahead. (Laughter and applause.) Go on, what's your question?

Q Okay, I don't have a question. What I wanted to say to you is that I - in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency, by the Senate, and -

AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Booo!

THE PRESIDENT: No, wait a sec - let him speak.

Q And I would hope - I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself. And I also want to say I really appreciate the courtesy of allowing me to speak what I'm saying to you right now. That is part of what this country is about.

Thanks, Mr. Taylor, for showing some sack at one of these phony "unscripted" bullshit sessions amongst delusional Bush supporters. Bush has it coming, and much more besides.

I'd love to be able to do something like that, but since I probably couldn't keep it together that well in Bush's presence, I'm glad I'm not going to get to. His handlers wouldn't let me within a country mile of the Great Poobah. I'm a little too direct. My dream is to get him by the stackin' swivel, shake him hard and tell him what I think of him and what he's done in no uncertain (or printable) terms. I'd pour it on like it was the one-time deal it most certainly would be. Fuck civility in the presence of evil.

Daily pedophile

Another rat. Fucking amazing. From Skippy:

a high-ranking defense department it official has been arrested and indicted on child pornography charges.

charles lynch, director of the defense information systems agency's internet protocol version 6 transition program, was arrested march 8 and indicted in the u.s. district court for the eastern district of virginia the next day on one count of possessing child pornography.

...

GOP Afflicted With New Disease

I steal this post from The Ostroy Report without comment, as none is needed:

News from The Center for Disease Control and Prevention is circulating the 'Net Friday stating that the Republican Party has contracted a new virulent strain of a sexually transmitted disease called Gonorrhea Lectim (pronounced "gonna re-elect him)", which is contracted through dangerous and high risk partisan greed, cronyism and corruption. Several GOP leaders previously or currently running for re-election have been politically crippled by this debilitating condition, including Tom DeLay, Bob Ney, Rick Santorum, John Boehner and Duke Cunningham. Other high-ranking ReTHUGlicans including Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice seem to have contracted a version of the dreaded illness as well.

Cognitive characteristics of individuals infected include:

-Anti-social personality disorders
-Delusions of grandeur with messianic overtones
-Extreme cognitive dissonance
-Inability to incorporate new information
-Pronounced xenophobia and paranoia
-Inability to accept responsibility for own actions
-Cowardice masked by misplaced bravado
-Uncontrolled facial smirking
-Ignorance of geography and history
-Tendencies towards evangelical theocracy
-Categorical all-or-nothing behavior

Naturalists and epidemiologists are amazed at how this
destructive disease originated only a few years ago
from a bush found in Texas.

Real men

"I got pushed. I got hit. I got a sign wadded up in my face and my hat pulled down over my eyes," said Marsha Rovai, 69, a supporter of Nick Lampson. "They just did it to be nasty."

...

You indtimidated, menaced, and assaulted a 70 year old woman? And you call yourselves men? You call yourselves human? I'm sorry but at this point in time, if you tell me you're a Republican, I'll tell you you're a criminal; directly or indirectly, you are culpable.

Amateurs

Was over at Holden's and he has some quotes from the Chimp:

After the war -- and by the way, it ended with an old doctrine of warfare, which is, destroy as many innocent people as you can to get the guilty to surrender. That's changed, by the way, with the precision nature of our military, and the way we're structured, and the way our troops think, is we now target the guilty and spare the innocent. That's another subject if you got a question.

There is no 'old doctrine of warfare'. There is no 'new doctrine'. The whole idea behind war is to kill as many of the enemy's people and destroy enough of his infrastructure until he is forced to surrender. That's it. Any other method of warfighting aside from a total, all out effort, is not war. It's some bastardized plan that won't work. You see how well the Chimp's 'new doctrine' is working. And just an aside, I don't believe for one minute Bush cares a damn about the innocents, just the oil fields.

That's the reason you don't go to war until, or unless, it's absolutely necessary. Stupid shit like what we're doing in Iraq won't work because you don't go to war if you have a problem with killing innocents. If you do, you don't go to war.

Look at Iraq. Even as we went in there with the 'spare the innocents' mindset, look at how many innocent folks, hard-working Iraqis, have been killed by American troops. War is dirty, messy, and innocents die at an alarming rate (it's not an occasional thing and tens of thousands have died).It should not be entered into on a whim or for reasons other than national defense.

What we have done in Iraq amounts to war crimes and we are all responsible. This nation was sold a vision of war that only happens on TV and in cheesy novels (heh) and most of us put our money down too easily. I think we should mount webcams on all U.S. military vehicles in Iraq and stream the video, like the cops' dashboard cams. If the American people saw the real deal, they wouldn't be so quick to follow some rhinestone cowboy into such an ill-planned attempt at imperialism. This is what you get with amateurs at the helm.

Another big Fuck You

To all the creationists, intelligent designers, and others who take the Bible literally:

A newfound beast with swim fins and a head like a crocodile fills an evolutionary gap between fish and four-legged land animals.

The creature had gills, a fish-like jaw, and scales. But its mobile neck let it lift its head above water, and it could support its own weight on thick ribs and wrist-like bones. It may have even trudged across mudflats in the manner of four-legged animals, called tetrapods.

"I would say it's a key transitional form in the fish-to-land animal transition," said study co-author Neil Shubin of the University of Chicago. "It has features of both fish and tetrapods - we call it a 'fishapod.'"

Fish push-ups. [my em]

...

Just shut the fuck up.

Thanks: Shakes.

The daily DHS pedophile*

A third DHS employee now appears to have criminal sexual tendencies involving children.

For a Dateline NBC segment on sex predators, Southern California police set up a sting: A decoy pretended to be a 12- or 13-year old online at home, alone. Sex predators found the decoy on the Internet and arranged to meet. When they showed up, the police arrested them.

Caught in the net was Michael Burks, 30, a former La Verne, Calif. police officer who was a DHS "agent," according to a Jan. 14 Los Angeles Times article (not online).

...

What to say? Even the Catholics are shaking their heads.

*This might become a daily feature if they ever start investigating DHS.

FrankenPAC

Al Franken is a huge favorite of mine. He has the ability to cut through the crap with great civility and humor, yet slice right to the bone. Here's his new Midwest Values PAC.

Just in case he posts something above it, here's his opening speech at a Hebrew dinner where he faced off against Ann Coulter.

And I'd like to answer the question that I actually get asked the most when I do an event for a Jewish organization. Yes, I had enough to eat.

You'll read. Enjoy.

Speaking of the skank Coulter - if beauty is only skin deep, let's skin her. Maybe we'll find some beauty. Frankly, I doubt it, but it's worth a try.

Treason at the Top

Murray Waas is turning into a leading journalist in the War on Bush. Shit, it's easy - all he has to do is tell the truth.

Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff has testified that President Bush authorized him to disclose the contents of a highly classified intelligence assessment to the media to defend the Bush administration's decision to go to war with Iraq, according to papers filed in federal court on Wednesday by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the CIA leak case.

Libby "further testified that he at first advised the Vice President that he could not have this conversation with reporter Miller because of the classified nature of the NIE," the court papers said. Libby "testified that the Vice President had advised [Libby] that the President had authorized [Libby] to disclose relevant portions of the NIE."

One former senior government official said that both the president and Cheney, in directing Libby to disclose classified information to defend the administration's case to go to war with Iraq and in formally declassifying portions of the NIE later, were misusing the classification process for political reasons.

One former senior official said: "They [the leakers] might have tipped people to our eavesdropping capacities, and other serious sources and methods issues. But to what end? The information was never presented to the public because it was bunk in the first place."

They hang traitors, don't they? Hell, if they'll just please hang Bush, Cheney, et alia fer lyin' or stealing sheep or somthin', I'll forgive 'em the treason. Leave that for the history books. As long as they hang.

Update:

From Emboldened:

There you have it. Bush is now officially implicated in the chain of events that led to the outing of a CIA agent for political reasons. No one has proved that Bush ordered Plame's name released, but this story demonstrates how casual he was with classified information when it came to spreading his false justifications for war. If the uranium story was so important to Bush, imagine how angry he must have been at Wilson:

Of course I'm being overly optimistic when it comes to this Administration's accountability, but if Bush isn't going to fire himself maybe he'll extend himself the same lifeline that he did to Libby and allow himself to resign.

It'd save us all a lot of time and trouble if he'd hang himself as well.

Migraphobia

Fiore

Nowhere near humble enough

Robert Parry on some members of the media who first supported Bush's War, but are now backing off only because he bungled it, not because it was just plain wrong to begin with.

"Those of us who once advocated this war [in Iraq] are humbled," Cohen wrote in a column on April 4. "It's not just that we grossly underestimated the enemy. We vastly overestimated the Bush administration."

Yet, even the tactical retreats by "humbled" pro-war columnists like Cohen have focused on U.S. incompetence in waging the war, not any outrage over the illegality and immorality of invading a country that wasn't threatening the United States.

By failing to expand the criticism of Bush beyond success or failure, the mainstream U.S. news media implicitly embraces Bush's assertion of a special American right to attack wherever and whenever the President says.

It's still out of bounds to discuss how the Iraq invasion violated the Nuremberg principle against aggressive war and the United Nations Charter, which bars attacking another country except in cases of self-defense or with the approval of the U.N. Security Council.

Indeed, in the mainstream U.S. press, there's a smirking attitude whenever international law is mentioned, much like the contempt expressed by President Bush in his quip, "International law? I better call my lawyer."

Yet there is a strong argument that the United States should begin facing up to how Bush's actions violated the rules laid down by the Nuremberg Tribunals, which held that aggressive war was an offense so severe that it justified execution (my em).

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who represented the United States at Nuremberg, stated, too, that the principle did not only apply to Adolf Hitler's henchmen, but to all nations, including World War II's victorious powers.

"Let me make clear that while this law is first applied against German aggressors, the law includes, and if it is to serve a useful purpose, it must condemn aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here now in judgment," Jackson said.

This failure of the U.S. press corps to address legal and moral issues raised by Bush's Iraq War also reflects a refusal by the news media to hold leading American journalists accountable for their part in the tragedy.

Much of the media was complicit in the crime. They should answer for it in a tribunal along with Bush and his neo-con henchmen. They don't have to go to jail with him: I'd be happy as a clam if they all just take Goering's way out.

Question of the Day

Brought to us by our pal Jo Fish:

...I wonder if in 20 years anyone will admit having voted for these idiots, thieves, pedophiles and felons?...

Yeah, just like everybody who was at Woodstock in '69.

Late

I didn't write about the 'big John Kerry statement on Iraq' because...well...maybe he should have come up with it during the '04 campaign two years ago. That's one of the reasons I want him to stay out of the '08 Presidential race. Two years late and a couple bucks short is not what I want in a President. Note to John, see: Feingold, Russ; Gore, Albert; Clark, Wesley. If you won't stand up for your honor when it counts, see: Swift Boaters, how will you stand up for ours when push comes to shove?

Fundies

Driftglass:

...

If you don't voluntarily slot it [Brokeback Mountain] into a DVD player and voluntarily set aside a couple of hours to watch it, it has no more power to work it's Terrible, Nancification Mojo on you or your weak-willed whelplings -- or inflame the tender sensibilities of your morally stunted God -- than a lost episode of "The Prisoner" in an abandoned Chevy at the bottom of a mine shaft, or a pornographic mosaic under a heap of Atlantean rubble on the ocean floor.

How is it that the same human atavisms who whip themselves into rabid, ass-biting berserkers at the thought of someone, somewhere buying a copy of "Brokeback Mountain" in a Wal-Mart bargain bin...can also believe that they can make History, Cosmology, Chemistry, Archeology, Paleontology, Biology, Reason, Physics and Causality vanish in a burst of phuqutard willpower if they just close their potato-bug eyes and Wish Reeeeeal Hard?

...

They are a vicious, dangerous cult that has declared war on The Enlightenment, and sworn blood-oaths that Science, Tolerance and Reason are to be treated as enemy combatants in that war: traitors to Heaven to be tortured, but never trusted.

...

Driftglass goes on to cite the article in WaPo that I did the other day and then finishes up with the unassailable truth:

...

It doesn't matter what we say or what we do, or how reasonable we are or how much of the middle ground we cede to them in the cause of the commonweal[th] and keeping the peace in the family: Hate and fear is not what they feel, it's who they are. They're are on one, long, mean Blood-o-the-Lamb drunk, and no matter how often they are appeased, they will always find another excuse for rage.

For another pogrom.

Another purge.

Another bonfire.

I have no wish to try to reason with this filth any longer, Mr. Dennett. They have been steadily, unblinkingly goose-stepping towards the Constitution and the Bill of Rights with torches in hand for 30 year[s] and have been crystal-clear about their intentions.

...

Unfortunately, when you compare christian fundies with the Taliban or the Nazis, people's eyes glaze over. "Oh, that couldn't happen here," they say and I say horseshit, look at South Dakota. If these people had their way, our women would be wearing burkhas and walking 10 feet behind their men. Certain books and lines of thought would be banned.

I thought I wouldn't have to deal with these Jesus freak assholes when I left the Republican Party. Tell me again how these people gained credibility in the most advanced nation in the world? When I was young, we used to laugh at them. I beieve back then, their biggest goal was preparing for the Second Coming. For a long time, I thought devout christians were multi-orgasmic (now I know the concept of 'orgasm' doesn't even enter their thought processes). Go back to the little world you inhabited when I was a kid and stay out of governance. Idiots.