Saturday, Saturday, Saturday night blogwhore*

The next installment (Chapter 13) of my novel The Captains is up at The Practical Press.

*Apologies to Elton John.

How come?

Seems we needed to know every time Monica Lewinsky visited the White House. How come we're not allowed to know when Jack Abramoff and Jeff Gannon did?

Kicking when down

I don't know what to say:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Army said Friday it would apologize to the families of about 275 officers killed or wounded in action who were mistakenly sent letters urging them to return to active duty.

The letters were sent a few days after Christmas to more than 5,100 Army officers who had recently left the service. Included were letters to about 75 officers killed in action and about 200 wounded in action.

...

Great thanks to Watertiger for the link.

Climate change

Since most of us are in shorts and t-shirts (it's 60 degrees here on Long Island) and have yet to get a real freeze (except for poor Gord up in them thar big hills out west), can we all agree that, aside from me being able to give my home heating oil company the finger this year, we've got a real problem on this planet?

...

Ski resorts have been struggling to survive in Europe. There's no snow, though Vermont just got a welcome boost. Still, the trends now are impossible to ignore. It all just feels wrong now, and you don't need a scientist to tell you about it. Someone just told me the cherry blossoms on the DC tidal basin are starting to bud already, this week. I haven't seen it myself but my friend is pretty reliable. What's the weather like where you are?

Fortunately, the criminally insane Republican leadership in Congress is no longer in charge:

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"Girl, go get 'im!"

This musical greeting to Nancy Pelosi from Yikes McGee will warm the cockles of your heart.

Democrats Burn the Republicans' Bed

The Rude One, in toto:

[Goddamn, it was so easy to predict: the first reaction of Republicans losing their power in Congress is to whine like the oldest, mangiest bitches in the pound, hoping that if they cry loud enough, they'll avoid the long walk to the metal table in the other room. As Democrats take over today, they've said that the Republicans can go fuck themselves. Break out the needles.

The fact that Republicans even think the victim act will work is laughable, in a "Christ, that's sad, let's shoot Old Yeller way." They don't realize that people love it when the bully gets beaten up. When an abused wife shoots the shit-faced, pummeling husband in the back of the head. When the convicted serial rapist is turned into the gang-banger's punk in prison. Sure, sure, we can bemoan the system that creates the circumstances where such violence can occur. But even in our most bleeding hearts, it's hard to feel anything but satisfied. Because for every life directly damaged by the actions of thuggish wads of fuck, there's reverberations to many, many people. Ask the family of any woman who's been raped. The parents of any kid who gets slugged every day at school. So even if you've promised non-violence as a way of life, well, at the end of the day there's a difference between pacifism and passivism.

So, really, and, c'mon, the proper response, as many have said, to the NRCC's pussy wails of disenfranchisement is to stare at them like the pathetic peep show masturbators they are. They seriously think saying, "Democrats promised to share their toys" is going to have traction as a counter argument to the election results, even when the entire country knows that Republicans kept the playground locked to Democrats for all these years. This is a Karl Rove ploy, the weak wimper of a cancer-ridden corrupt old man, trying to turn the Democrats on themselves, hoist them on their promise of better bipartisanship.

You can smell his sausage-like finger grease all over George Bush's sad editorial in the Wall Street Journal. "What Congress Can Do For America," it was titled. And the simple answer, the one demanded by all Americans whose paychecks don't rely on desperately trying to make Bush into a "leader," is "Fucking stop you."]

Amen.

Quote of the Day

The cartoon at Sumo's. Read the post too, dammit.

I apologize

As you lovely folks are about to discover, I went nuckin' futs on this machine today. There's a lot goin' on. Whee!

Please forgive me, and read every word.

I'm gonna go shovel snow now.

"Malkin may get this guy killed"

A follow-up to Fixer's post, from Cursor:

After the Iraqi Interior ministry acknowledges the existence of a disputed AP source , the source is arrested for talking to the media, but there are few signs of regret from the conservative bloggers who denounced the AP's reporting, and Eason Jordan spreads the blame around.

Way too much content to excerpt. Thank goodness for links.

Street fightin' man...

More on the resignation of Harriet Miers in WaPo:

"They face the question of, to what extent you cooperate or protect presidential prerogatives and withhold documents," said H. Christopher Bartolomucci, a former Bush White House lawyer. "Potentially, it could be a period of conflict with the Hill. . . . It's not necessarily going to be a bloodbath, but it's certainly possible."

Republican advisers have been telling the White House to be ready for war, and many cited Miers as the wrong general. "The White House knew they needed to get a tough street fighter -- that's what this is about," said one such adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preserve access to the White House.

The advice, according to this person, could be summed up this way: "You guys better lawyer up, and lawyer up in the right way. You better understand the need and the peril and the urgency. . . . You need somebody as tough as [Clinton aides] Harold Ickes or Bruce Lindsey. Because they're coming for you."

"Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do when they come for you..."

I had a vision of Karl Rove, drunk and shirtless, glasses askew, bent over the trunk of a black and white Crown Vic...Heehee!

I know of a coupla ol' "street fighters" that'd just love to be in the White House, just fer an hour or two, please Jesus, and we they ain't lawyers.

"Kick rocks, Dick!"

Pandagon

Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY), now the Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee as the Dems take over the House, has booted the VP out of his suite.

Rangel, you might recall, has called the VP a "son of a bitch" and said "Sometimes I don't even think Cheney is awake enough to know what's going on," and "He's got heart disease, but the disease is not restricted just to that part of his body. He grunts a lot, so you never really know what he's thinking."

Mr. Rangel says he regrets calling The Dick a sonofabitch in public, but I don't think he really does. Why regret telling the truth?

Charlie's one of my faves.

"...the gavel changed hands with a hug and a kiss."

Good story about the changing of the guard in the House. Or maybe NAMBLA...

WaPo

When House Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) rose to present the gavel to the new speaker, he was magnanimous in acknowledging both the roots of Republican defeat last November and the historic import of the moment.

He concluded with a warning for Democrats, gleaned from his party's pursuit of power and the lessons learned from defeat: "If there is one lesson that stands out from our party's time in the majority, it is this: A congressional majority is simply a means to an end. The value of a majority lies not in the chance to wield great power but in the chance to do great things."

In what must be another first, the gavel changed hands with a hug and a kiss.

[...] Democratic Sen. Robert C. Byrd (W.Va.) shouted "Praise Jesus!" during the opening prayer.

The old fart gets wound up, don't he? I will say this about Sen. Byrd: he inspired me to get the "little red book" of the Constitution and refer to it often. He always carries one.

Today, Democrats hope to pass new rules to promote open deliberations in the House, rein in special-interest spending and lawmaker pet projects, and prohibit passage of spending or tax measures that increase the federal deficit.

Over the next two weeks, Democrats in the House plan to enact new homeland security measures, increase the minimum wage, allow federally funded stem cell research, permit the federal government to negotiate lower prescription-drug prices for Medicare beneficiaries, cut student-loan interest rates and fund alternative-energy research by rolling back tax breaks for oil companies.

But Pelosi herself acknowledged that her carefully constructed consensus agenda will not satisfy the angry electorate that swept the Democrats to power. Democrats will have to confront President Bush on the larger, more controversial issues of the day: the war in Iraq, military tribunals that suspend the legal rights of terrorism suspects, and warrantless wiretapping by the National Security Agency.

Her call yesterday for a new direction in Iraq "that allows us to responsibly redeploy American forces" elicited strong applause in her party while clearly splitting Republicans, many of whom joined the ovation.

The domestic shit's all well and good, but I remind our legislators:

IT'S IRAQ, STUPID!

Barf and liquid alert!

"Six years of George W. Bush: A celebration of courage!"

Let the games begin!

John Murtha

I will be recommending to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense that we begin extensive hearings starting on January 17, 2007 that will address accountability, military readiness, intelligence oversight and the activities of private contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We will be demanding substantive answers to questions that have gone unanswered for far too long.

Go get 'em, Colonel. I hope you act like the bulldog you look like.

This is just one of many investigations scheduled to take place. This is gonna be fun!

"...six years of backlog to clean up"

My Left Nutmeg on minority party rights, and a response to Bush's WSJ bullshit piece.

In 2004 Minority Leader Pelosi proposed to the GOP leadership a Minority Bill of Rights. The Speaker of the House didn't even bother to respond to her letter. Now that the House has changed sides, three members of the GOP Leadership have proposed that she now honor the request she made two years ago.

The correct response is for the New Speaker of the House to agree to the Minority Bill of Rights that will go into effect exactly TWO YEARS from the request, as that's how long they made her and the Democrat minority wait before they even bothered to respond.

So, on Jan 2, 2008 the Minority Bill of Rights for the House will become effective. If it was a good idea for the GOP to wait two years before they began to think it is a good idea, it's a good idea to wait two years before implementing it.

Pretty damn generous, to my way of thinking.

For six years the GOP has controlled all the Federal Government. The result, a culture of corruption where every vote was for sale to the special interests. Homeland security that said that checking on 10% of the cargo entering our country was okay. No investigations into fraud, waste and abuse. A blank cheque on spending like a drunken sailor with money that we don't have. No bid contracts to favored corporations. And most of all, a destruction of the middle class, which has been shrinking for the last six years, not growing. More people having less. That's what six years of the GOP running both branches have done to America. Well, get ready sir, for all that is about to change.

CHEQUE? Ain't there a "Nutmeg State" up around Canada somewhere?

The concept of "working together" is an odd one. Do you really want the Democrats to treat your fellow Republicans the way that we were treated for the last six years? I am sure that they don't. In the House they are demanding a Bill of Rights, just as we did two years ago. Two years ago the Speaker of the House didn't even respond to our request. We were ignored. We were not allowed on commitees. We were refused rooms for investigations, We had no supeona power. We were treated like we didn't exist. We were not able to even offer amendments to bills. Do you remember how a vote was left open for hours so that the GOP leadership could arm twist the votes that they needed to pass a bill you wanted? Rules be damned, and the same with a minority voice. Well Mr. President, do you think the GOP members of the house would like to be treated the same way that they treated us? The way the Executive treated us?

Now you want a two way street where before you were more than happy to run over us and leave us and the over half of America that we represent unrepresented. I'm sure it would be understandable if we were a bit upset, as the American people are, they showed that to you and us at the polls.

Have you been asleap for the last six years? Where do you get off saying that the minority party has a strong say in the form bills take? For the last six years the minority party has been locked out of having any say in the form that bills take. We haven't been able to even offer amendments to the bills presented in the House. As for bringing up bills of our own to the floor, hell had a better chance of freezing over.

The writer makes many good points. Go read.

Fuck bipartisanship, at least for a while. We want revenge on these Repug bastards, as bad and intolerant as that sounds. The pols can't say that out loud, but I can. Mrs. Pelosi can signal that the Repugs can have a say by wearing ice skates in the House.

Update:

A rough draft of Bush's WSJ op-ed has been found. Chortle!

White House Postponing Loss of Iraq, Biden Says

Say what you will about Joe Biden, sometimes even a blind pig finds a truffle. WaPo:

Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said yesterday that he believes top officials in the Bush administration have privately concluded they have lost Iraq and are simply trying to postpone disaster so the next president will "be the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof," in a chaotic withdrawal reminiscent of Vietnam.

"I have reached the tentative conclusion that a significant portion of this administration, maybe even including the vice president, believes Iraq is lost," Biden said. "They have no answer to deal with how badly they have screwed it up. I am not being facetious now. Therefore, the best thing to do is keep it from totally collapsing on your watch and hand it off to the next guy -- literally, not figuratively."

Biden said that Vice President Cheney and former defense secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld "are really smart guys who made a very, very, very, very bad bet, and it blew up in their faces. Now, what do they do with it? I think they have concluded they can't fix it, so how do you keep it stitched together without it completely unraveling?"

It is completely unraveled, but one thing they could do is make apologies in suicide notes and leave a place for someone who might be able to do something. Like admit a bad idea has failed as it should have and was destined to do in the first place, that we've lost, and get the fuck out of Iraq.

It's up to all of us

Go read Molly Ivins.

The president of the United States does not have the sense God gave a duck -- so it's up to us. You and me, Bubba.

I don't know why Bush is just standing there like a frozen rabbit, but it's time we found out. The fact is WE have to do something about it. This country is being torn apart by an evil and unnecessary war, and it has to be stopped NOW.

Here she cites several examples of what went wrong and promises to do more in each column.

We need to cut through all this smoke and mirrors and come up with an exit strategy, forthwith. The Democrats have yet to offer a cohesive plan to get us out of this mess. Of course, it's not their fault -- but the fact is we need leaders who are grown-ups and who are willing to try to fix it. Bush has ignored the actual grown-ups from the Iraq Study Group and the generals and all other experts who are nearly unanimous in the opinion that more troops will not help.

So, like I said, it's up to you and me, Bubba. We need to make sure that the new Congress curbs executive power, which has been so misused, and asserts its own power to make this situation change. Now.

Now.

It's not a game ...

Now, I generally don't follow, read, or quote Right wing blogs. They're idiots, period, and I don't give their rantings serious tought. It's as if they're playing a game with our nation's future. I guess the role-playing computer games weren't gratifying enough so they began to play with real life, all the while taking money and favors from the Right Wing Noise Machine.

That said, I do pay attention to them when they manage to really fuck something up. The 'Veronica' to Ann Coulter's 'Betty', Michelle Malkin and a bunch of her no-dick male cohorts have created a scandal (there was no scandal to begin with) to try to smear the Associated Press (something AP can do well enough on its own). In their zeal to remain relevant, they might just have put the life of a source in the Iraqi Police, and his family, in mortal danger.

Look, idiots. I don't give shit what you say on your blogs. They're yours and this is still America and you can say what you damn well please. My problem with you is when your words and actions get people killed. Especially innocent people. Especially for some non-existant 'scandal' you create to justify your own existence.

I hope you can sleep well at night.

Quote of the Day

"I have absolutely no problem with anyone believing differently than I believe, as long as they don't impose their religion on me or my government," says Ms. [Lori Lipman] Brown, a former Nevada state senator [and current Director of Secular Coalition of America].

An interesting article for me being I have a big problem with people (especially the government) telling me what to believe.

Great thanks to Blondie for the link.

Nyuk! Nyuk!

Cursor

Appearing on "Countdown," (Rep. Barney) Frank told Keith Olbermann that "when the Republican administration of George Bush tells me not to use legislation to make political statements, it's kind of like being accused of being silly by the Three Stooges."