Hey, all fishermen are liars...

...but we have a truly world-class one in Bush. Americablog

Bush told the following to a German newspaper yesterday:

Bush told weekly Bild am Sonntag when asked about his high point since becoming president in January 2001.

"I would say the best moment of all was when I caught a 7.5 pound perch in my lake."

The only problem is that the world's record for the largest freshwater perch caught is 4 pounds 3 ounces.

So Bush either doubled the world record, and didn't report it, or he's a liar.

There's some question that Bush said 'bass' instead of 'perch'. Bass are generally bigger. Maybe it's in the translation. Yeah, right.

I'm glad Bush caught something, even if he's lying about what it was. After all, he can't catch Osama Bin laden or al-Zarqawi, and nobody's catchin' avian flu like he predicted.

Fish stories are like war stories ("Now this is no shit...") or fairy tales ("Once upon a time..."), except they start with arms outstretched sideways ("The damn thing was thiiiis big..."). It's a good idea to wear waders to listen to any of 'em.

I released the biggest fish I ever caught, but the photo of it weighed three pounds.

I have a question...

...about General Hayden, Cheney's Bush's pick for CIA director. Not about the nomination, that's clear as a bell: now that the CIA is a perfectly dysfunctional wholly-owned subsidiary of the Pentagon, a perfectly dysfunctional wholly-owned subsidiary of the perfectly dysfunctional corporate-owned war- and fear-mongering White House, the general who was the architect of the illegal NSA wiretapping makes perfect sense. It's like being a branch manager of any top-down organization, like maybe a really evil Taco Bell. Or Wal-Mart. Yeah, that's it.

Here's my question: Go to TPM Muckraker and look at Gen. Hayden's picture. Above the fruit salad on his left breast, where most USAF officers wear their wings, is a badge that most definitely ain't wings. What is it? Is this guy just a career staff weenie? Also, I don't have a picture to show you, but can anyone analyze his five or six rows of ribbons? I think that might be interesting.

While you're there, read about Hayden's involvement with the same defense contractor who bribed the Duke. Poker? Cigar? Underaged Thai hooker, anyone?

No surprises

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Translation: Besides being a money trough for Christianists, the abstinence programs are a crock.

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Like everything else, we told the Jesus freaks this wouldn't work. Lambert.

Why...

Does 31% of the population still not get it? Salient words from Froggy (DBK):

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It's amazing how many postings I have made with "Culture of Corruption News" in the title just this year alone. I don't even have the time to count them. And I don't even use a service to alert me to new corruption scandals.

Maybe it's my German coming out, but Jesus H. Christ, if you can't see it by now, you're either brain-dead or psychotic. It's so obvious, no sane person would say the Republicans aren't a criminal organization. How in Hell do you people function through everyday life?

Dicky

I jumped on Richard 'The Dick' Cohen the other day. So did a buncha other folks. Well, he's asking for it again and Left Blogtopia (y!sctp!) doesn't disappoint.

Here.
Here.
Here.

The unsinkable...

Molly Ivins:

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I don't care what anyone smoked 20 years ago, I approve of those who boogie till they puke, and I don't care who anyone in politics is screwing in private, as long as they're not screwing the public.

On other hand, if you expect me to pass up a scandal involving poker, hookers and the Watergate building with crooked defense contractors and the No. 3 guy at the CIA, named Dusty Foggo (Dusty Foggo?! Be still my heart), you expect too much. Any journalist who claims Hookergate is not a legitimate scandal is dead - has been for some time and needs to be unplugged. In addition to sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, Hookergate is rife with public-interest questions, misfeasance, malfeasance and non-feasance, and many splendid moral points for the children. Recommended for Sunday school use, grades seven and above.

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After living in Texas for a couple years, there's little I like about the place. I hated the cracker mentality and the intolerance to anyone who wasn't Texan, let alone American. That said, Texas has given us a national treasure in Molly Ivins.

Big tip o' the Brain to litbrit at Shakes'.

Always the men

I've asked the question many times. Why are men's voices always the loudest in the 'pro-life' movement? Blondie answers in an excellent post.

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Au contraire. The root of the so called "pro-life" movement isn't anti- abortion as much as it is anti-sex and anti-contraception. So we got the picture. The active abortion foes are against sex for pleasure, even among married couples. Would they please get a grip and stay out of consenting adult's bedrooms, for gawdsake? What are they Catholic? Well it seems that they took their position from the Catholic play book.

Imagine my surprise when I read in the NY Time Magazine this article Contra-Contraception which addresses my concern that men in power want women (including married women) to be punished for their wanton acts of lust by birthing unwanted children. It's not Roe they're against, according to the article, but "Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 case that had the effect of legalizing contraception" (in the bedrooms of married couples).

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Incredible...

It just snuck up on me but Gord's and my other blog, The Fixer & Gordon, is 2 years old this month. Happy Birthday to us!

Crashing...

31%. Ha-ha!

Who's Crazy now?

Paul Krugman via Tennessee Guerilla Women.

Some people say that bizarre conspiracy theories play a disturbingly large role in current American political discourse. And they're right.

he truth is that many of the people who throw around terms like "loopy conspiracy theories" are lazy bullies who, as Zachary Roth put it on CJR Daily, The Columbia Journalism Review's Web site, want to "confer instant illegitimacy on any argument with which they disagree." Instead of facing up to hard questions, they try to suggest that anyone who asks those questions is crazy.

But now those harsh critics have been vindicated. And it turns out that many of the administration supporters can't handle the truth. They won't admit that they built a personality cult around a man who has proved almost pathetically unequal to the job. Nor will they admit that opponents of the Iraq war, whom they called traitors for warning that invading Iraq was a mistake, have been proved right. So they have taken refuge in the belief that a vast conspiracy of America-haters in the media is hiding the good news from the public.

Unlike the crazy conspiracy theories of the left — which do exist, but are supported only by a tiny fringe — the crazy conspiracy theories of the right are supported by important people: powerful politicians, television personalities with large audiences. And we can safely predict that these people will never concede that they were wrong. When the Iraq venture comes to a bad end, they won't blame those who led us into the quagmire; they'll claim that it was all the fault of the liberal media, which stabbed our troops in the back.

These are the morons we're up against, folks. They're morally superior, so they can't possibly be wrong, and everything is someone else's fault.

Go read the rest.

Iraqi War For Tomatoes Is Going Well. Yeesh!

Thank God for links. If I told you about this without one, you'd think I still had my hat on from my previous post!

Career appointees at the Department of Agriculture were stunned last week to receive e-mailed instructions that include Bush administration "talking points" -- saying things such as "President Bush has a clear strategy for victory in Iraq" -- in every speech they give for the department.

Another attachment "contains specific examples of GWOT messages within agriculture speeches. Please use these message points as often as possible and send Harry Phillips, USDA's director of speechwriting, a weekly email summarizing the event, date and location of each speech incorporating the attached language. Your responses will be included in a weekly account sent to the White House."

This scoreboard, of course, will ensure you give it your best shot.

Now, you might still be scratching your heads, trying to figure out how this is going to work when people expect a talk about agriculture issues. Not to worry. The attachments -- which can be viewed at http://www.washingtonpost.com/fedpage -- show how easy it is to work a little Iraq happy talk into just about anything.

Talk turkey, or chicken, to your audience: "The major poultry producers in Iraq . . . are using [U.S.] loan guarantees to buy U.S. corn and soybeans. . . . This in turn provides a cycle of income that is being used to update 25-year-old chicken houses," the e-mail suggests. Chickens apparently produce better in nice homes.

But what if your speech is on civil rights? Easy. Begin this way: "I'm here to talk about civil rights, which is one of the fundamental tenets of democracy." Then you can say this country "has been evolving for 230 years . . . still working to become a more perfect union . . .

"So before I begin talking about the civil rights climate at USDA," the example says, "I'd like to address the situation in another nation that is just now forging the path to democracy."

Bingo! You're in. Now: "The president has a clear strategy for victory in Iraq structured along three tracks," etc.

"Iraq is part to the 'fertile crescent' of Mesopotamia," the sample script says. "It is there, in around 8,500 to 8,000 B.C., that mankind first domesticated wheat, there that agriculture was born. In recent years, however, the birthplace of farming has been in trouble."

Probably want to pause here and give the audience a chance to catch its breath. It's hard to travel 10,500 years that quickly. "But revitalization is underway. President Bush has a clear strategy . . ."

Don't forget to send that weekly e-mail to Harry.

Un-fuckin'-believable! The bastards are getting so desperate they're goin' nuckin' futs! Good.

Maybe they could work something in about how the insurgents are actually illegal immigrant agricultural workers complaining about stoop labor wages.

All Foiled Up

Where else would you find stuff like this but in the LATimes? Photos and video too.

In the search for the perfect tin hat, a few things are learned about community and mind control.

Foil hats got a pop culture bump in the 2002 thriller, "Signs," when, in perhaps the film's funniest scene, Joaquin Phoenix donned aluminum headgear to keep his thoughts protected from unseen aliens. But in my Web sleuthing I found that the coterie of the aluminated (my em -worth remembering. Heh.) is of two minds. Anecdotally speaking, some feel that tin foil provides a shield to thought invasion by both aliens and, dare I say, the CIA. Others contend that the thin metallic sheets are actually more of an "antenna" for other-worldly communication.

I couldn't make this shit up if I tried!

Conyers rebuts

DeLay and Timmy:

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Perhaps Mr. Russert has forgotten, but I have been a Chairman before. For five years, from 1989 to 1994, I was the Chairman of the House Government Operations Committee, now called the Government Reform Committee. I have a record of trying to expose government waste, fraud and abuse.

That was back when Congress did something called "oversight." You know, in our tri-partite system of government, when Congress actually acted like a co-equal branch. The Republican Congress decided to be a rubber stamp for President Bush instead.

Perhaps, if we had a little oversight, we wouldn't be mired in a war based on false pretenses in which we have lost thousands of our brave men and women in uniform and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis.

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Indeed. I am so tired of these crooks and cocktail party 'journalists'.

Link thanks to C&L.

Freedom and democracy

A warning from Dave Johnson:

Caution, do not read this if you are the least bit squeamish. It is truly horrible. Part of me died when I saw this cruel killing.

This from the article:

EVEN by the stupefying standards of Iraq's unspeakable violence, the murder of Atwar Bahjat, one of the country's top television journalists, was an act of exceptional cruelty.

Nobody but her killers knew just how much she had suffered until a film showing her death on February 22 at the hands of two musclebound men in military uniforms emerged last week. Her family's worst fears of what might have happened have been far exceeded by the reality.

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Now, there are no pictures at the link, but the article is a vivid description of the way this woman was killed. I don't give a shit if you're squeamish, go read the fucking thing. Then sit back and realize that our invasion three years ago begat this. Her blood, and that of many others who have died in this, and more horrible ways, is on our hands, like it or not.

Silly me [slaps forehead]

It's all us liberals in the Army and the CIA. That's why the Chimp's policies aren't working. That's why the grand plan for Iraq went awry. Because we're like rats, like cockroaches infesting everything. Digby's on it:

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There is a very interesting discussion taking place all over the left blogosphere about how the conservatives have discovered that the entire Republican establishment, particularly the George W. Bush administration, are liberals. Glenn Greenwald has been directly taking on Jonah Goldberg on this subject (which is something like my cat "taking on" his toy mouse), Hunter at DKos has written a lengthy and fascinating explication of the process, and Kevin Drum, in a different vein, discusses political Lysenkoism as the consequence of conservative loyalty over policy.

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Yeah, that's it. You see, the Chimp is really a liberal, and so is everybody else in government. An excellent post, replete with gobs of links.

Now, I have a question. Since, for the past 5 years up until the Chimp's popularity ratings went into the toilet, the Chimp and his minions were the 'Great White Saviors' of the 'consevative base'. What happened? Are they really conceding they've been snowed for the past half-decade? Are the conservatives admitting they are really that stupid and gullible?

Just askin'.

A to Z

Thanks to John Howard and his brother, I'm wasting time as the Mets get their asses handed to them.

Accent: Long Island...very

Booze: Newcastle Brown Ale (or other good beer) and Jack Daniels'.

Chore I Hate: Folding laundry (usually left for the Mrs.)

Dog or Cat: Dog, as you all know.

Essential Electronics: Computer, TV.

Favorite Cologne: Armani di Gio, Jaipur, and Tiffany.

Gold or Silver: I wear a gold wedding ring and a small gold hoop in my left ear.

Hometown: Long Island, New York.

Insomnia: Never. Nightmares when my PTSD acts up, but not so much anymore.

Job Title: Mechanic, author, layabout.

Kids: None, I don't care what you parents say I'm missing. I think you all tell me to have kids so I can suffer along with you.

Living Arrangements: 2 1/2 of us in the house I grew up in.

Most Admirable Traits: I can fix anything, I'm good in bed, and I can make sparks shoot out my ass.

Number of Sexual Partners: I don't have a clue. I figure between 30 and 50.

Overnight Hospital Stays: Tonsillectomy, Achilles Tendon, various puncture wounds, various broken bones, various blunt trauma to the head.

Phobias: Making Mrs. F mad.

Quote: "Pay up, get out."

Religion: Heathen and proud of it.

Siblings: Only child and made the most of it.

Time I Wake Up: 0400 weekdays, 0430 weekends.

Unusual Talent or Skill: Aside from looking at something and being able to tell you how it works?

Vegetable I Love: No love, but the Mrs. makes me eat green shit a couple times a week.

Worst Habit: Smoking cigarettes.

X-Rays: I've had everything X-rayed at one point or another (see 'Overnight Hospital Stays').

Yummy Foods I Make: I don't cook unless there's a gun to my head.

Zodiac Sign: Libra.

Navel gazing

The lovely Avedon Carol has probably the best post I've read about blogging.

I'm gonna do this

Via our pal Glen at A Brooklyn Bridge.

Wood! It grows on trees! It's the most common building material in the world, it can be harvested sustainably, it's beautiful, it's nice to touch and look at, and it's completely ignored in consumer electronics.

But in the past few weeks, we've seen quite a few new electronic devices housed in wood, and so we went on a search. A long search, it turned out, for all the best, coolest and most useful products in wooden computing.

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I can make these. Now, to find the time...

Are you kidding me?

Over at Running Scared, Ron finds this:

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Diagnosed with autism at age 3, Jared is polite but won't talk to people unless they address him first. It's hard for him to make friends. He lives in his own private world.

Jared didn't know there was a war raging in Iraq until his parents told him last fall -- shortly after a military recruiter stopped him outside a Southeast Portland strip mall and complimented him on his black Converse All Stars.

"When Jared first started talking about joining the Army, I thought, 'Well, that isn't going to happen,' " said Paul Guinther, Jared's father. "I told my wife not to worry about it. They're not going to take anybody in the service who's autistic."

But they did. Last month, Jared came home with papers showing that he not only had enlisted, but also had signed up for the Army's most dangerous job: cavalry scout. He is scheduled to leave for basic training Aug. 16.

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If our recruiters are this desperate (not taking anything away from Jared, who seems to be a good young man), there is something seriously wrong with the military. We have to get these idiots out before it becomes FUBAR.

Are ya gonna be pussies...

Again this year?

The reason I'm asking is because a lot of people who called me an idiot, an asshole, a queer, a pansy, a traitor, etc. when I railed against the Chimp in the run-up to the Iraq war are now telling me I was right all along. These are the same folks who, three years ago, called for 'killing all the ragheads' and solving the problem once and for all. The 'Wanted: Dead or Alive' crowd.

As we've been seeing over the past few months, the criminal organization known as the Republican Party is coming apart, you can only baffle people with bullshit for so long, and they're gonna be desperate by September if this trend keeps up. So I ask all of you who've come to see the light, are you gonna be pussies this Fall when the 'terrorist attack' occurs? You know it'll happen because the Repukes know how gullible and scared you are. They know it's the only way to keep people who've been shit on regularly in the fold.

Are you just gonna run back to the Chimp and the Repukes like you did in '04, cowards? "Don't change riders in mid-horse" or some other bullshit they scream when they're worried. Are you gonna fall for it or are you finally gonna do the right thing? I don't put much faith in cowards. I dare you to prove me wrong.