Standing up

I stole this from Pauly.

Hon. Pete Hoekstra, Chair
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
Washington, DC

Dear Congressman Hoekstra:

As a matter of conscience, I am returning the Intelligence Commendation Award medallion given me for "especially commendable service" during my 27-year career in CIA. The issue is torture, which inhabits the same category as rape and slavery - intrinsically evil. I do not wish to be associated, however remotely, with an agency engaged in torture.

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The obeisance of CIA directors George Tenet and Porter Goss in heeding illegal White House directives has done irreparable harm to the CIA and the country - not to mention those tortured and killed. That you, as Chair of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, show more deference to the White House than dedication to your oversight responsibilities under the Constitution is another profound disappointment. How can you and your counterpart, Sen. Pat Roberts, turn a blind eye to torture - letting some people get away, literally, with murder - and square that with your conscience?

If German officials who were ordered to do such things in the 1930s had spoken out early and loudly enough, the German people might have been alerted to the atrocities being perpetrated in their name and tried harder to stop them. When my grandchildren ask, "What did you do, Grandpa, to stop the torture," I want to be able to tell them that I tried to honor my oath, taken both as an Army officer and an intelligence officer, to defend the Constitution of the United States - and that I not only spoke out strongly against the torture, but also sought a symbolic way to dissociate myself from it. [my ems]

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What did it take for the man to do this? He has to sleep at night.

Desperation?

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It appears that, to close the deal during his visit, Bush directed his negotiators to give in to India's demands that it be allowed to produce unlimited quantities of fissile material and amass as many nuclear weapons as it wants.

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That's good.

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But now the criticisms may focus on this question: By enabling India to build an unlimited stockpile of nuclear weapons, would this agreement set off a new Asian arms race?

And here's another question: Were Bush and his aides so eager for some good headlines -- for a change -- that they gave away the store?

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Ya think?

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"Last week, during a private meeting with a group of congressional leaders, [undersecretary of state for political affairs R. Nicholas] Burns suggested it was unlikely the sides would be able to quickly bridge significant gaps on the separation plan. But a last-minute decision by Bush to accept India's demands sealed the deal. . . . [my ems]

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Let's see. I remember all the puckered assholes around here when the U.S. and Soviets were building ICBMs at an astounding rate in the 60s. We're gonna have another arms race, this time in far more unstable places than the U.S. and Soviet Union circa 1968, just to further Republican political goals. Tell me how this will make us safer? Tell me why Chimpy shouldn't be dragged out of the White House in irons right now?

Great thanks to C&L for the link.

NOLA

I've been remiss in not directing you to First Draft and Scout Prime's reports from New Orleans. Go to the bottom of the page and scroll up.

Strong-arming

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This truly is an unprecedented move: the Senate Majority Leader is threatening to make the Intelligence Committee a political rubber stamp because the White House and the Republican leadership are so terrified that the President's actions won't withstand scrutiny and will be found illegal by the Committee.

Bill Frist is nothing but a cheater, who is trying to rig the Committee -- a majority of whose members WANT to provide oversight and actually DO their jobs. This is the single most craven, pathetic and weak move -- the fact that the interests of the nation would be served by an oversight hearing takes a back-seat to Karl Rove's marching orders that George Bush's authority not be questioned. Ever.

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FDL.

So when do we go out in the streets? I mean, Frist is saying he is willing to bring this nation one step, a big step, closer to a dictatorship/monarchy. How long will we sit back and do nothing? Will it take the '06 elections stolen? Will it take another terror attack in the U.S.? Or will we just roll over and play dead?

Make up yer minds

Wax on, wax off.

Friday Saturday Cattle Dog Blogging

Princess Shayna says, "those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it."

La Legion Etrangere Americaine?

MM

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I noticed a new proposal being floated to solve the manpower shortfall...offering expedited citizenship to the undocumented aliens in the country...another "pay for play" scheme.

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and Lurch

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I have to admit I gasped when I read this. It's an idea that does have some merit, in a quirky way. I'm sure there are thousands of young men around the world who would leap at the chance for a green card, and eventual citizenship.

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have been talking about the idea we should create a new military unit(s) made up of non-Americans, the reward being U.S. citizenship at the end of their honorable service a la the French Foreign Legion. Do you think the U.S. should travel down this road?

One down

SAN DIEGO - Former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham began his first day in prison after being sentenced to eight years and four months for taking $2.4 million in homes, yachts and other bribes in a corruption scheme unmatched in the annals of Congress.

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Let's hope we can say this about DeLay and the rest of the Crooked Congressional Republican Club soon.

Thanks to AMERICAblog for the link.

Cartoons

Bob Geiger and his great Saturday roundup.

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

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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.

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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.

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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!!

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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:

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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.

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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.

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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).

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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.

It's our fault

Does Gavin M. find a Repuke who admits failure in Iraq? Sadly, No!

Following William F. Buckley's concession that the Iraq War is a fucked deal, Jeff 'Protein Wisdom' Goldstein takes up the genius argument that it's critics of the war who are are to blame for any failures unrealized successes of the Bush Administration's Iraq policy. [my em]

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Those damn naysayers...

"...and you want to let the air out of him and mail him home flat."

Garrison Keillor on impeaching Bush:

Do we need to impeach him to bring some focus to this man's life? The man was lost and then he was found and now he's more lost than ever, plus being blind.

Meanwhile, many Democrats have conceded the very subject of security and positioned themselves as Guardians of Our Forests and Benefactors of Waifs and Owls, neglecting the most basic job of government, which is to defend this country. We might rather be comedians or daddies or tattoo artists or flamenco dancers, but we must attend to first things.

The peaceful lagoon that is the White House is designed for the comfort of a vulnerable man. Perfectly understandable, but not what is needed now. The U.S. Constitution provides a simple ultimate way to hold him to account for war crimes and the failure to attend to the country's defense. Impeach him and let the Senate hear the evidence.

Even though GK wasn't referring to him,if I mail Bush's ass home flat, his teeth will come under separate cover.

DU

Depleted Uranium

I meant to blog this myself, but Froggy (here and here) and Pauly (here) both have posts up at Skippy's.

When I think of all the times we had exercises where Warthogs were close air support, I'm surprised my prick hasn't fallen off yet.

Old, used, and wrong

No, not my story about the hooker on Okinawa...never mind. Kreetcha's pissed. And correct by the way.

Portents

I've said it (and quoted him) quite a few times, Frank Zappa was one smart dude. I've been a huge fan since early in the 70s, both of the music and the man. Today Crooks and Liars has a treat for Zappa fans like me. An appearance on Crossfire where:

...Frank argues against censorship and tells Washington Times wingnut John Lofton, to "kiss my ass" in 1986...

He sure needed a lotta commas...

Geov Parrish puts the Dubai port scam in perspective and manages to sum up Bush's record in one sentence while discussing this administration's poll numbers! Amazing.

So it has come to this. After two stolen elections, a secret energy task force, Enron and assorted other corporate scandals, massive tax cuts for the rich, the largest federal debts and trade deficits in world history, blowing up the ABM treaty, killing stem cell research, laughing off global warming, allowing 9-11 to happen, stonewalling its (and every other) investigation, failing to catch Osama bin Laden, the PATRIOT Act, still-unsolved anthrax attacks, launching a secret prison system, denying due process to both foreigners and Americans, engaging in torture, monitoring Americans' phone calls, e-mails, and faxes without a warrant, launching unprecedented foreign and domestic propaganda campaigns, blurring the line between church and state, trying to overthrow Hugo Chavez, using lies to launch an illegal invasion of Iraq, badly mishandling both the occupation of Iraq and the resulting insurgency, outing Valerie Wilson (and lying about it), grandstanding on Terri Schiavo, pushing through a miserable Medicare prescription drug law, privatizing public lands, trying to privatize Social Security, securing CAFTA, appointing two reactionaries to the U.S. Supreme Court, the Abramoff scandals, and botching Katrina's aftermath as well as its rebuilding, among many, many other things -- after all that -- the tipping points that bring Cheney and Bush to this abysmal public standing are shooting a lawyer and defending an ordinary transnational corporate deal.

I think the word 'ordinary' is code for 'just another Bush family and military-industrial corporate war-profiteering scheme'. I think I would have used 'usual' or 'normal'.

F*%k You South Dakota

Molly Saves the Day is posting some important information that many women may need to know about if the Wingnutters prevail in other states. And I'm all about freedom of information.

For the women of South Dakota: an abortion manual
I understand that you're probably really angry right now. Maybe you're reading a blog expressing that anger -- the anger that your state thinks it knows better than you what to do with your body. Maybe you're anxiously wondering where the nearest abortion clinic is, now that you will have to leave the state to get to one. If you have a serious medical condition, you might be doubling up on birth control methods, leading to a lot of worry and possibly negative side effects.

But what you need right now isn't the righteous anger the rest of the blogosphere will give you. You need more.

No textbooks or guides existed at that time to help them, and the equipment was hard to find. This is no longer true. For under $2000, any person with the inclination to learn could create a fully functioning abortion setup allowing for both vacuum aspiration and dilation/curettage abortions. If you are careful and diligent, and have a good grasp of a woman's anatomy you will not put anyone's health or life in danger, even if you have not seen one of these procedures performed.

DISCLAIMER: I am posting this as information only. Whether anyone chooses to act upon this information is their own concern. I believe in the free exchange of information and ideas. I believe this information has been kept from women for too long, and there is no reason they should not know about a procedure being performed on their own body, and no reason women should be kept in the dark about how to perform it -- especially if someone they know is having their health jeopardized by this law.

Read it all here,if you need this info before Blogger takes it down.

Stars and Stripes

The GIs have had it:

WASHINGTON - Seventy-two percent of troops on the ground in Iraq think U.S. military forces should get out of the country within a year, according to a Zogby poll released Tuesday.

The survey of 944 troops, conducted in Iraq between Jan. 18 and Feb. 14, said that only 23 percent of servicemembers thought U.S. forces should stay "as long as they are needed."

Of the 72 percent, 22 percent said troops should leave within the next six months, and 29 percent said they should withdraw "immediately." Twenty-one percent said the U.S. military presence should end within a year; 5 percent weren't sure.

...

And of course, they don't really mean it:

...

But Loren Thompson, a military analyst with the Lexington Institute, said troops who say the U.S. should withdraw could be concerned for their own safety, or they could be optimistic about progress so far, or they could simply be opposed to the idea of operations in Iraq.

"You have to pick apart each servicemember's thought process to understand what that means," he said. "I think this is about personal circumstances, and not proof there is a higher rate of troops who desire departure."

...

Um, dickface? When the GIs see the only purpose they're serving is as targets for any idiot with an AK or RPG, when they see their mates killed and maimed every day and the violence only getting worse, they see what their government thinks of them. That's what their thought processes are all about. Maybe this clown should grab a rifle and head over there. Wonder how long it will be before he wants to come home? Fucking idiot.

Simple-minded frat boys

A great rant by the even greater Neil Shakespeare:

...

But there's no worry in your camp, is there? No remorse over blood spilt in a War of Agression based on lies against a country that had done nothing to you. Your money will still be there in the bank when you're out of office and leave your inhuman mess behind for someone else to clean up, won't it?

...

'But they tried to kill mah daddy!'

34%

The latest CBS News poll finds that the Bush approval rating has fallen to a new all time low of 34 percent. That's down from 42 percent last month.

...

Wheels. Coming. Off.

Review of Port Deal Will Leave Decision to Bush

NYTimes

The Dubai company seeking to take over some terminal operations at six American ports formally asked the Bush administration on Sunday to conduct a deeper investigation into security concerns surrounding the deal. The request will leave President Bush in the politically delicate position of having to personally approve or disapprove the takeover.

Oh, fucking swell. That's like making the head of an arson ring the Fire Chief.

But Democrats balked, insisting on their original demand that Congress should have the final say over the deal. Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who joined a bipartisan group of senators on Friday in calling for a quick vote on legislation requiring a 45-day review, said Congress, not the White House, should make the final determination.

"We still believe that the report also has to go to Congress, that as much of it as possible ought to be public and that we would have the right of disapproval," Mr. Schumer said in an interview. "That is part of our legislation. That is constitutionally valid; you can have the right of disapproval."

Mr. Bush has vowed to veto any bill giving authority over the deal to Congress, rather than to the executive branch.

Congress, there had better be enough left in your sack to make you stand tall on this and override that twerp. I don't really care if you only do it because elections are coming up and you want to keep your plush jobs. The time has finally come for you to earn your money for a change.

I don't care how strategic and profitable our relations are with the UAE. Keep it overseas. I don't trust 'em as far as I can throw 'em, given their prior terrorist connections. I trust them almost as much as I trust Bush to do right by the American people. In other words, I trust them not at all.

UAE is a big arms buyer

From IPS News Agency:

The United Arab Emirates (UAE), the centre of a growing controversy over its proposed management of U.S. port terminals, is one of the world's most prolific arms buyers and a multi-billion-dollar military market both for the United States and Western Europe.

The delivery of 80 U.S.-built F-16 E/F fighter planes -- described as one of the biggest single arms packages to a Middle Eastern nation and finalised back in March 2000 -- is to be completed only in 2007.

U.S. President George W. Bush's threat to veto any attempts to block last week's deal permitting a state-owned UAE company to take over the management of six U.S. port terminals has underlined the significance of the political and military relationship between the two countries.

In other words, Bush's family and friends are getting richer and richer and the Hell with us.

"If I had to hazard a guess on the potential impact of the current imbroglio, there will be increased interest on the part of the UAE military to move to further arms source diversification" -- and away from relying too heavily on the United States.

I think I am beginning to see the light: The UAE pays cash. The same Military-Industrial corporations that are making a bundle off U.S. taxpayers via the criminality in Iraq have found a customer and are getting a ton of our oil payouts as well. This has Carlyle Group (aka Daddy Bush and his buddies) written all over it as does this:

Connecting Dubai Ports World, the Carlyle Group, CSX, John Snow, and David Sanborn

This is too convoluted for words. Just go read. We may have to change our name to the United American Emirate. It looks like we're not only being sold out and down the river, but we're being bought with our own money.

We're the gravy train, and Bush doesn't want to fuck it up. At first, he was gonna keep it quiet 'til it was too late to stop it, then claim he didn't know about it. Now that it's been made public, he has to do whatever it takes to make it happen. He's got his orders.

I bet they keep the negatives...

A BuzzFlash analysis of the port deal:

Which leads us to a further profoundly disturbing thought.

Maybe the Bush Administration, whose so called task force on the Dubai contract met only once, is really shoving this outsourced, kinky contract down our throats (and remember we are paying taxes to be betrayed by the Judas in the White House) for another reason.

Maybe the sheikhs of Dubai and the United Arab Emirates have some nasty goods on Bush, Cheney, the Carlyle Group, Halliburton (you name the corporate crony relationship) that the Bush dynasty can't afford to be revealed because it involves illegal financial transactions and questionable geopolitical agreements.

In short, maybe the national security of America is being blackmailed.

I wouldn't doubt it a bit, but, damn, Clinton was a lot more fun.

Good. God.

Found this via Atrios:

...

Bremer knew nothing about Iraq. He had never been there, did not speak Arabic, had no experience in dealing with a country emerging from war, and had never been involved in "nation-building." During the two weeks he was given to get ready, he recruited a senior staff including several retired ambassadors, a former assistant secretary of state for administration, and a high-powered Republican Washington lobbyist. Only one of his recruits had any background in the region.

...

The chaos on the ground in Iraq was matched by chaos within the Bush administration in Washington. President Bush decided on war with Iraq shortly after September 11, and from late 2001 planning for the war was underway. But the President never addressed the big issues of how postwar Iraq would be governed. Would the United States run a prolonged occupation as it had done with Germany and Japan? Would it hand over power to a provisional Iraqi government? If so, who would be in that government? What would be done about the Iraqi military and the Baath Party?

...

Bremer says that Bush "was as vigorous and decisive in person as he appeared on television." But in fact he gives an account of a superficial and weak leader. He had lunch with the President before leaving for Baghdad - a meeting joined by the Vice President and the national security team - but no decision seems to have been made on any of the major issues concerning Iraq's future. Instead, Bremer got a blanket grant of authority that he clearly enjoyed exercising. The President's directions seem to have been limited to such slogans as "we're not going to fail" and "pace yourself, Jerry." In Bremer's account, the President was seriously interested in one issue: whether the leaders of the government that followed the CPA would publicly thank the United States. But there is no evidence that he cared about the specific questions that counted: Would the new prime minister have a broad base of support? Would he be able to bridge Iraq's ethnic divisions? What political values should he have? Instead, Bush had only one demand: "It's important to have someone who's willing to stand up and thank the American people for their sacrifice in liberating Iraq." According to Bremer, he came back to this single point three times in the same meeting. Similarly, Ghazi al-Yawar, an obscure Sunni Arab businessman, became Bush's candidate for president of Iraq's interim government because, as Bremer reports, Bush had "been favorably impressed with his open thanks to the Coalition." [my ems]

...

So explain to me again why this bunch shouldn't be in jail?

And if you want to know how to foment a successful insurrection, read my story The Captains (yes, I'm whoring but it's relevant and it's free). Sure it takes place 200 years in the future, in another galaxy, but the principles are the same.

Class Act

Our esteemed colleague and all around good dude RJ Eskow. Observe a case study in ethics:

...I found a comment which linked to Factcheck.org. Following the link, I found enough evidence to convince me my statements about Cheney's personal benefit were wrong.

...

When you make a mistake, you acknowlege it and go on. You don't hide, scrub, or revise. You 'real' journalists get it yet?

It's about time...

We got another one.

Unpreparedness

The Guard is in trouble.

WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 - Governors of both parties said Sunday that Bush administration policies were stripping the National Guard of equipment and personnel needed to respond to hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, forest fires and other emergencies.

...

The governors said they would present their concerns to President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Monday. In a preview of their message, all 50 governors signed a letter to the president opposing any cuts in the size of the National Guard.

"Unfortunately," the letter said, "when our National Guard men and women return from being deployed in foreign theaters, much of their equipment remains behind." The governors said the White House must immediately re-equip Guard units "to carry out their homeland security and domestic disaster duties."

...

After Iraq, the response to future disasters will be about the same as it was to Katrina. Do you think most of these Guardsmen who come back from Iraq will re-up or get out after facing family or financial ruin doing something they didn't sign up to do? It's a good bet the Iraq War has already destroyed the National Guard and the active duty force is next.

Thanks to ReddHedd for the link.

99 to 1

Picking up on Fixer's post, Paul Krugman localizes it a little:

So who are the winners from rising inequality? It's not the top 20 percent, or even the top 10 percent. The big gains have gone to a much smaller, much richer group than that.

A new research paper by Ian Dew-Becker and Robert Gordon of Northwestern University, "Where Did the Productivity Growth Go?," gives the details. Between 1972 and 2001 the wage and salary income of Americans at the 90th percentile of the income distribution rose only 34 percent, or about 1 percent per year. So being in the top 10 percent of the income distribution, like being a college graduate, wasn't a ticket to big income gains.

But income at the 99th percentile rose 87 percent; income at the 99.9th percentile rose 181 percent; and income at the 99.99th percentile rose 497 percent. No, that's not a misprint.

The idea that we have a rising oligarchy is much more disturbing. It suggests that the growth of inequality may have as much to do with power relations as it does with market forces. Unfortunately, that's the real story.

Should we be worried about the increasingly oligarchic nature of American society? Yes, and not just because a rising economic tide has failed to lift most boats. Both history and modern experience tell us that highly unequal societies also tend to be highly corrupt. There's an arrow of causation that runs from diverging income trends to Jack Abramoff and the K Street project.

And I'm with Alan Greenspan, who - surprisingly, given his libertarian roots - has repeatedly warned that growing inequality poses a threat to "democratic society."

It may take some time before we muster the political will to counter that threat. But the first step toward doing something about inequality is to abandon the 80-20 fallacy. It's time to face up to the fact that rising inequality is driven by the giant income gains of a tiny elite, not the modest gains of college graduates.

That's pretty technical shit fer this ol' dumb-ass country fuck, but I think I can sum it up: The rich are getting a lot richer, the poor are growing as a class because of it, and the rest of us are getting lower in the water.

There's lots of economic opportunity in Uganda, though...

More on Impeachment

Lewis Lapham in Harper's on Impeachment:

The Conyers report doesn't lack for further instances of the administration's misconduct, all of them noted in the press over the last three years - misuse of government funds, violation of the Geneva Conventions, holding without trial and subjecting to torture individuals arbitrarily designated as "enemy combatants," etc. - but conspiracy to commit fraud would seem reason enough to warrant the President's impeachment. Before reading the report, I wouldn't have expected to find myself thinking that such a course of action was either likely or possible; after reading the report, I don't know why we would run the risk of not impeaching the man (my em). We have before us in the White House a thief who steals the country's good name and reputation for his private interest and personal use; a liar who seeks to instill in the American people a state of fear; a televangelist who engages the United States in a never-ending crusade against all the world's evil, a wastrel who squanders a vast sum of the nation's wealth on what turns out to be a recruiting drive certain to multiply the host of our enemies. In a word, a criminal - known to be armed and shown to be dangerous. Under the three-strike rule available to the courts in California, judges sentence people to life in jail for having stolen from Wal-Mart a set of golf clubs or a child's tricycle. Who then calls strikes on President Bush, and how many more does he get before being sent down on waivers to one of the Texas Prison Leagues?

Whatever prison the Chimp ends up in, I guarantee he'll play catcher, baseball diamond or shower room, mox nix.

Put down your coffee...

..and go read all three pages of Ironic Times.

Frequently Asked Questions About Vice President Cheney Shooting A Guy In The Face With A Gun

Will Durst with more on the Chweeney shooting.

Q. Don't you think its time for the liberals to lay off this and move on to more important affairs of state?
A. Point well taken. They should promise not to give Dick Cheney's lack of moral judgment a single second more attention than was given to Bill Clinton's.

Now that would be money well spent!

How're we doin'?

Not so good:

We keep hearing from our Wrong-Wing Wregulars about how well the economy is doing. There is only one real way to know if this boast of theirs contains any merit, and that is by comparing the US economy to that of other nations. I do this, beginning below the fold.

But I warn you. What you are about to see has to be a Bu$hCo Top Secret, for the facts aren't matching the rhetoric coming out of the White Lie House. Reading this information just might get you sent to Guantanamo, or at least one of the new KBR 'detention' facilities as an Enemy of the State!

Here's a good sampling of the health of the world's economies:

...

A long but good read over at Left Coaster.

Chutzpah

WASHINGTON - Wal-Mart's chief executive told America's governors Sunday that he needed their help to make healthcare more affordable and accessible for the retail giant's 1.3 million U.S. employees because the company couldn't do it alone.

Lee Scott said Wal-Mart's healthcare costs had risen 19% in each of the last three years and that it was a matter of time before it, and other businesses, would not be able to sustain rising costs.

...

When I saw this on TV this morning, I thought it was a piece on The Onion. All I can say is; are you fucking kidding me?

Ports...once more

Dave Johnson makes the entire point:

I want to make a comment on the "UAE port deal" controversy. We invaded Iraq based on less evidence of al Queda and other terrorist ties than there is of UAE ties. Yet, the Bush crowd insists that we have nothing to worry about from handing control of our ports over to the UAE.

...

That's what it's all about, ladies and germs. The Chimp can't have it both ways. What was it? "You're with us or against us." Even if the UAE were harmless, which they're not, this deal shouldn't go through because they certainly haven't proved they are 'with us'. Just because they let us dock our ships in Dubai, doesn't mean we have to throw them this bone. Like Gord says: If they "...wants to open a chain of Al Qonvenience stores, that's one thing. Fine. Let 'em..." But by golly, don't give 'em the keys to the front door.

Parallels

I'm reading a book titled The First Battle: Operation Starlite and the Beginning of the Blood Debt in Vietnam by Otto J. Lehrack.

I got this book as soon as I saw it because it happened while I was in the Corps, and I knew a lot of guys who were involved in Starlite. They rotated from Vietnam to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where the 2d Marine Division was guarding the Atlantic coast against the VC. Corporal Gordon was doing his usual magnificent, heroic job of bringing up the rear from his command post at the Area 6 EM Club..

Operation Starlite was the first major combat by American forces against Main Force VC and effectively took them out of action as large-unit combatants for the rest of our involvement there. The PAVN, aka NVA, took over the role afterwards.

Mr. Lehrack brings up issues that are analagous to Iraq. I'm not sure if he meant to, because the book was published in 2004, and he conducted lots of interviews with American and Vietnamese (both sides), and that must have taken time. My guess is that he was in the final turd-polishing editing when the Iraq war started. Here's a few quotes from Chapter 2, "America Touches The Tar Baby":

...Johnson could not appear to be weak. He was a Texan, dammit,with all the pop-mythology baggage that the label carried. He regarded himself as a macho-man. Some months after Johnson's election, at a small White House meeting, Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg asked the President why we were in Vietnam. Johnson unzipped his fly, pulled out his penis, and said, "This is why."

[...] The corner was turned when Lyndon Johnson asked for, and Congress naively gave him, a blank check to conduct an undeclared war in Southeast Asia.

Not everyone within the administration was sanguine about America's prospects in Vietnam. As early as 1963, John McCone, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), expressed doubts to President Kennedy about the efficacy of American efforts. His view of the adventure in Vietnam was that it was based on "complete lack of intelligence" and "exceedingly dangerous..." His views were dismissed as "out of step with policy."

There's a lot more, and I'm sure you recognize some key words that are being used today in relation to Iraq. The point is that both wars were started with lies for political gain, and that folks who tried to slow things down were pooh-poohed. Personally, I think this administration is far worse than Johnson's.

The chapter on parallels about the end of both wars is yet to be written, but I definitely see history repeating itself: a tremendous loss of life and treasure for no gain.

Calling bullshit...again

McCain is on with Little George and says that more and more Iraqi battalions are capable of fighting on their own. Ummm...no, asshole:

...

Then a few weeks ago we heard that after all these months of training it was again admitted that there was still but ONE IRAQI batallion capable of fighting on its own without the United States help.

Progress.

And the news gets even BETTER a few weeks later when you find out a few weeks later that there are NO IRAQI batallions capable of fighting on their own without the United States help.

...

He is such a lying sack of shit Bush whore. His prior service be damned, he should be thrown in jail with the Chimp and the rest of this corrupt crew.

And just a side note. The 'roudntable' discussion this week did not include Katrina Vanden Heuvel. This week, all the little guests sit in awe of George Will instead of telling him where to get off.

Update:

Hell of a balanced lineup on Press the Meat too:

Sen. John W. Warner (R-VA)
Rep. Peter T. King (R-NY)
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R-CA)

Love that 'liberal media'.

Calling bullshit

Scott Shields on healthcare:

...You know all of those stories Republicans tell us about why American healthcare is so expensive? You know, malpractice awards are too high, that we don't ration our healthcare, that our healthcare infrastructure is just better, etc, etc. Well, according to an extensive study published last year in the journal Health Affairs, those stories are (surprise, surprise) not true. [my em]

...

It's time for universal health care now, for all our citizens. A large percentage of people in this country are one catastrophic illness away from financial ruin. The only thing the current American health care system is good for is enriching folks who already have most of the money. I'm sorry, but health care should not be a for-profit endeavor. If you're going to med school to become a doctor, you should be doing it for noble motives, not as a way to get rich like lawyers do.

Nuff said...

It says a lot about our country that Clinton was impeached and Bush has not been. The idea that a sexual indiscretion is more significant that entering a war under false pretenses, flagrantly breaking the law on domestic surveillance, and presiding over an immense squandering of national treasure is, frankly, ludicrous. I had a rather unhealthy personal hatred of Clinton in the 1990s, primarily because he was a draft dodger who had become Commander in Chief. Every US military death in Haiti, in Somalia, in Bosnia was a moral outrage. Now, though, I'm faced with a C-in-C who also evaded meaningful service and has ordered thousands to die in a war based on a lie. Clinton balanced the budget; Bush broke it.

[Link]

And just a gripe

I got a problem with people wearing the uniform when they didn't serve. Now, I wear BDU pants to work every day, instead of the usual blue mechanic's uniform pants, because I like the abundance of pockets (I can jam tools and parts in 'em) and they're comfortable and durable. I still wear some I was issued 25 years ago. I love 'em.

I realize that the kids wear 'em as a fad nowadays too. I got no problem with that because they're kids and I remember what it was like to be cool when you're young. The problem I have is grown people giving the idea they actually contributed to the defense of this nation when they haven't. You don't know how many people come up to me and ask where I get my stuff. I tell 'em, 'the hard way, I enlisted'.

Now, I also realize it's a petty gripe and there are much bigger fish to fry, and it probably doesn't even warrant a post here. But when I saw this...



If the guy hadn't done his best not to serve, it probably wouldn't bother me as much.

Pic courtesy of Karena.

Update:

Christine looks at this idiot's speech to the American Legion on Friday:

...

But I know you guys aren't as gullible as his audience there in Washington today. We all know it's not freedom he's spreading, but imperialism. Imperialistic anal rape is what he's spreading. Painful, non-lubed, hold still and take it or I'll kill you ass fucking. Plain and simple.

...

Katy lies...

You could see it in her eyes...

At Pensito Review:

Over one year ago, PR reported on U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris (R-Stolen Elections) trying to divest herself of the same illegal contributions which former California Representative Duke Cunningham is going to jail for accepting.

...

After the employees complained about coercion, Harris offered - in the style of the DeLay-linked - to return the payola. Now the horse manootey is hitting the fan, and Harris' new name is in legal circles is "Rep. A."

...

It comes around. Hope you have a pleasant stay in Danbury, honey, though you should probably face a firing squad.