...
just yesterday skippy received a call from the "democratic finance committee." once the caller identified whom he was representing, skippy told him in no uncertain terms, "you guys really screwed up on the iraq funding withdrawl vote. i'm not giving you guys another cent until you get that right."
and he hung up.
...
This isn't good news.
THIS IS EXTREMELY OMINOUS
I've been writing for over a year now that the Joint Chiefs have been blocking the White House's efforts to expand the war to Iran. No matter what you might think of Gen. Pete Pace, this really is TERRIFYING news, unless you crave a wider war in the Persian Gulf and South Asia.
Pace has been the most visible symbol of the push-back within the military against the Long War.
MORE below . . .
Poor George W. Except for his cohort, "Buckshot" Cheney, no one really likes his Iraq policy – not the generals, not the troops dying for it, not the people of Iraq, not his fellow Republicans, and certainly not the American public.
But wait – there is one group that is ecstatic about what he's doing there: al Qaeda! Yes, Osama bin Laden's network of terrorists. Remember him? He's responsible for the 9/11 attack on the U.S., and Bush himself promised in 2001 to "smoke him out." But then George, Buckshot, and Rummy decided to forget him and divert our military to Iraq, so bin Laden is still on the loose.
To get congress and the public to accept their nonsensical detour, the Bushites claimed that al Qaeda had a presence in Iraq. That turns out to have been another of their little fibs, but guess what? Thanks to Bush's invasion and occupation of this Muslim nation, al Qaeda now has a great big pressence there. They've been able to recruit thousands of mostly-young men to go to Iraq and fight the Bushites' imperialist ambitions. In fact, Iraq has now become al Qaeda's top recruiting ground! Indeed, al Qaeda now exports war-tested veterans from Iraq to train anti-American forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
Thanks, George!
Battling Bush has turned Iraq into a cash cow for al Qaeda's whole terrorist network, energizing donors from all across the Middle East. Add in ransoms from their kidnappings of wealthy Iraqis, and al Qaeda is generating so much money in Iraq that it can not only keep fighting our troops there, but also export funds to other al Qaeda pockets. The CIA has learned that even Osama bin Laden's core command is being financed by payments coming from its Iraq franchise. As one American counter-terrorism official concedes, "Iraq has been a moneymaker for them."
Ironic, huh?
BWAHAHAHAHA... Shorter Judge Walton: get a fucking life and then go fuck yourself, you sniveling little jizz rags.
"He would probably get a warmer welcome in Cuba," said Roberto Calderoli, senator from the opposition Northern League.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced that he would be replacing Joint Chiefs Chairman Peter Pace in an unexpected news conference Friday afternoon.
Flexing their new-found political muscle, Native Americans - the only "true" Americans - have now weighed in on the McCain-Kennedy immigration bill, lobbying Congress to provide for the immediate deportation of all Mayflower descendants.
Speaking for the National Council of American Indians, Chief "Running Tab at Foxwoods" asserted that the Mayflower settlers "not only entered this country illegally, without visas or work permits, but behaved very badly – spreading disease, raping our women, despoiling the land, and worst of all, stealing our very identity for their sports teams."
Other tribes have proposed a "touchback provision," requiring the illegal squatters to return to the 17th Century, for four centuries, before applying to live here legally in the present.
In Tuesday's Republican presidential debate, Mitt Romney completely misrepresented how we ended up in Iraq. Later, Mike Huckabee mistakenly claimed that it was Ronald Reagan's birthday.
Guess which remark The Washington Post identified as the "gaffe of the night"?
Folks, this is serious. If early campaign reporting is any guide, the bad media habits that helped install the worst president ever in the White House haven't changed a bit.
Thus most analysts declared Mrs. Clinton the winner in her debate, because she did the best job of delivering sound bites - including her Bush-talking-point declaration that we're safer now than we were on 9/11, a claim her advisers later tried to explain away as not meaning what it seemed to mean.
Similarly, many analysts gave the G.O.P. debate to Rudy Giuliani not because he made sense - he didn't - but because he sounded tough saying things like, "It's unthinkable that you would leave Saddam Hussein in charge of Iraq and be able to fight the war on terror." (Why?)
Look, debates involving 10 people are, inevitably, short on extended discussion. But news organizations should fight the shallowness of the format by providing the facts - not embrace it by reporting on a presidential race as if it were a high-school popularity contest.
For if there's one thing I hope we've learned from the calamity of the last six and a half years, it's that it matters who becomes president - and that listening to what candidates say about substantive issues offers a much better way to judge potential presidents than superficial character judgments. Mr. Bush's tax lies, not his surface amiability, were the true guide to how he would govern.
And I don't know if this country can survive another four years of Bush-quality leadership.
Star at Creationist Museum Runs Sex Site
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The man who plays Adam in a video aired at a Bible-based creationist museum has led a different life outside the Garden of Eden, flaunting his sexual exploits online and modeling for a clothing line that promotes free love.
For months, senators have listened to a parade of well-coached Justice Department witnesses claiming to know nothing about how nine prosecutors were chosen for firing. This week, it was the turn of Bradley Schlozman, a former federal attorney in Missouri, to be uninformative and not credible. It is time for Senator Patrick Leahy, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, to deliver subpoenas that have been approved for Karl Rove, former White House counsel Harriet Miers and their top aides, and to make them testify in public and under oath.
This noncooperation has gone on long enough. Mr. Leahy should deliver the subpoenas for the five White House officials and make clear that if the administration resists, Congress will use all available means to get the information it needs.
There it was on the front page of Wednesday's edition of the Washington Post, big as life and twice as ugly: "In the West Wing, Pardon Is A Topic Too Sensitive to Mention."
The gist: I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby got clocked with a 30-month prison sentence after being convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice in the Valerie Plame matter, and now squadrons of GOP die-hards are insisting that Bush pardon him before he goes to jail. On the surface, debate over whether or not to pardon Libby centers around how much more scandal and public disgrace this administration can endure. The Post story reports that several White House aides are deeply concerned that a Libby pardon risks "renewing questions about the truthfulness of the Bush administration."
Perish the thought.
Beneath this simplistic surface, however, boils a cauldron of deeper and far more complicated troubles. Bush, Cheney, the administration as a whole, and the entire Republican Party face the simultaneous eruption of several potential catastrophes, which, if they were to coalesce into one gargantuan avalanche, could very well render all prior problems quaint by comparison.
Peel the onion:
The newest Pew Research Center poll shows Bush's overall popularity coming in just under that of scabies and bubonic plague. [...]
The movement faction hasn't quite realized the degree to which they are considered useful-idiot cannon fodder by GOP officeholders and the check-writing faction. Whenever the GOP needs to divide public sentiment or distract public attention, the movement people get deployed to scream about gay rights, the Ten Commandments, snowflake babies, or whatever happens to be available at the moment. By mouthing platitudes about these issues, the party fools the movement faction into thinking the party actually cares about them.
But now, there is this immigration debate, which threatens to rip the scales from the eyes of the movement faction. Battalions of GOP politicians have made careers out of spitting venom at illegal immigrants to gain support from the movement base. Simultaneously, however, those same politicians have been accepting gigantic campaign checks from the big-money faction, who absolutely depend on easy access to the dirt-cheap pool of slave labor availed to them by the existence of millions of undocumented immigrants within the US.
The problem for the GOP politicians, of course, is that their movement-faction constituents have bought into their demagoguery about illegal immigration to such a degree that, today, this issue is second only to abortion on their list of Hated Things. The issue has birthed a seething anger within the movement faction aimed at illegal immigrants in general, but now aimed also at any GOP politician who stands for anything besides mass deportations.
But there are all those checks to consider, right?
If Judge Walton decides June 14 is go-to-jail day for Libby, and no Bush pardon is forthcoming, special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald will find himself gripping the handle of an awesomely formidable battle axe. Fitzgerald has made clear his belief that Libby broke the law, but did so to protect his boss, Dick Cheney. Fitzgerald will be able, under these circumstances, to offer Libby a choice: do hard time, or roll on your boss and spill the beans.
If that happens, and Libby decides to escape prison time by telling Fitzgerald what he knows, the cat will finally leap all the way out of the bag. The outing of Plame, the manipulation of WMD intelligence, the Office of Special Plans, the manipulation of terror alerts, the true intentions behind the decision to invade, and the whole smelly pile of fish heads will come spilling out onto the dock for all to see. Such an outcome might even pierce the veil surrounding Cheney's secret energy meetings from way back when; many people suspect that an invasion of Iraq, and a capture of their oil infrastructure, played a large part in the formulation of those plans.
June 14, simply put, is going to be a really, really big day.
And yet tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps ever on in this petty pace. Any one of these troubles is trouble enough for the GOP, but to have all of them come together simultaneously portends the kind of total political calamity this country has not seen in generations.
Strap in.
Yes, Dennis Milligan, the head of the Arkansas GOP, said this just a few days ago, posted in a June 3 article in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.
Now, this is a monstrously barbaric and treasonous statement. It is hard to even begin to wrap one's mind around how it wishes Americans more terrorist attacks to prove Bush is "right" in sending Americans to die and paying hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to war profiteers. To repeat, Milligan is wishing more Americans to die from terrorism on our home soil in order to prove that Bush is doing the "right thing" to prevent such attacks from occurring.
Okay, lift up your jaw.
Now, here's our point. Beyond how Milligan represents the traitorous extremes that Republicans will go to in making excuses for failed policies, have you heard one word of denunciation or alarm from the right wing media echo chamber about the traitor in their midst?
We haven't. Not a peep.
These people are enemies within our midst, whose minds and loyalties to an authoritarian hierarchy of incompetents is more important to them than loyalty to our safety and to our Constitution.
Think of what would have transpired if a Democratic State Party Chairman had said this. It would have been a national media and Republican talking point uproar for days.
But, most importantly, remember this point. This is for real. This is how Republicans think.
They wish us harm in order to prove that they are "right" in pursuing errant policies.
They have lost all sense of real concern for our safety – and are a threat to our well-being.
If the DNC had enough good sense, they'd bankroll the Republican Presidential Debates as a weekly, roving, televised Chautauqua. I mean, what more could a Democratic campaign ever ask for than what was seen Tuesday night on CNN? Every major (and almost every minor) Republican contender elbowing each other aside to chide President Bush while simultaneously and unreservedly endorsing his most unpopular policies. An authentic twofer – for the other party, that is.
I'm not a Republican so I'm no position to judge which candidate came closest to appealing to the party base but none of them made any effort to speak to the some 70% of the American population that by now has had enough of the war.
This was great TV. My TiVo wants to know the next time this circus is scheduled to perform.
"WASHINGTON -- In the past year, lawyers for President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney directed the Secret Service to maintain the confidentiality of visitor logs, declaring them to be presidential records.
"The drive to keep secret the lists of visitors to the White House complex and Cheney's home, the administration says, is essential to ensuring the president and vice president receive candid advice to carry out their duties. The decision made the logs exempt from a law requiring their disclosure to whoever asks to see them."
Washington -- Lawyers for President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have moved to make the text of all laws initiated or supported by them unavailable to whoever asks for them. The laws will still be available to all people who do not ask for them. Members of Congress will be able to see the laws on a "need to know" basis once they have voted in favor of them.
Washington -- Lawyers for President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have moved to have their names stricken from all public documents. "If the terrorists knew who the president was, they could very easily find out where he lives," said Press Secretary Tony Snow. "They could learn to whom he is married and where his daughters go on vacation. Imagine what they could do with that information!"
Washington -- Lawyers for President X and Vice President Y have asked the lawyers to classify everything that might be described as "information." Said Press Secretary Beta 5: "More than anything, the terrorists want information. They spend their time and resources attempting to acquire it. It is our job to prevent that from happening. I did not make these remarks and I do not exist."
We must ask you not to read this column. Doing so would subject you to stiff fines and harsh penalties. If you are still reading this column, please waterboard yourself until a federal agent arrives to do it for you.
United States:: 29,000 dead, 106,000 wounded and missing;
United Kingdom: 11,000 dead, 54,000 wounded and missing;
Canada: 5,000 dead; 13,000 wounded and missing;
France: 12,200 civilian dead and missing
OK, on to the Republicans. I'm going to rank them in order of most possible pickup, including their number from the last roundup. I'm also adding the "Boxer number," an excellent system for measuring districts given to me by a reader whose name escapes me. Basically, seeing how Boxer fared in her 2004 re-election against Bill Jones in a particular district is a decent indicator of how partisan it is. If I put "57," that means Boxer received 57% of the vote. Anything over 50, obviously, is good.
1) CA-04 (Doolittle). Last month: 1. Boxer number: 40. John Doolittle's stayed out of the courthouse thus far, but he's clearly damaged goods and the GOP knows it. A number of prominent Republicans have made waves about challenging Doolittle in the primary, including Air Force reservist Eric Egland, a former Doolittle supporter. Schwarzenegger flack and former Bush-Cheney campaign guy Steve Schmidt apparently has his support. In the article, he calls Charlie Brown a "Cindy Sheehan Democrat," which is ludicrous on several levels, but undeniably more effective in that reliably Republican district than we may think. Doolittle believes that he still has majority support, but then again he thinks rogue Democrats in the Justice Department are conspiring against him. Charlie Brown still has a better chance against Doolittle than a fresh face.
"That's right, if we get him declared an 'enemy combatant', and tried under the Bush Military Commissions, he has no chance of ever being convicted."
...
The rhetoric coming out of these guys is really quite extreme, even by GOP standards, but I guess that's just because the front runners are all a bunch of flipflopping hypocrites who have to fake some kind of red-meat qualifications for the base. They've opted for bullying machismo, which is actually quite smart. It's the tie that binds. They certainly have given up on the "law 'n order" platform with their nearly unanimous support for a Scooter pardon -- especially the ex-federal prosecutor Giuliani who couldn't stop whining and twisting his little lace hankie about how unfair it all was.
...
Bush Declares Self 'Mega Decider'
New documents ensure Dubya will rule America, should calamity strike. Free balloons!
It goes something like this: Should any "decapitating event" occur in America that somehow incapacitates the D.C. power structure, should "any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions" take place, well then, all power and decision making would devolve to the White House, which would then attempt to orchestrate our very survival and oversee all essential governmental functions with none other than the president himself as, well, Super-Mega Lord Decider. With extra crayons.
You know, a dictator.
And then boom, the nation goes into lockdown and it's a strict military state and Lynn Cheney starts enjoying sweaty night visions of Dick lumbering purposefully through the White House halls deciding who to nuke next as Dubya quivers in the corner and the flying monkeys prepare the escape pod. Just like in that Will Smith movie! Neat!
After all, Shrub only has a year and a half left in office. Plus, his power has been severely truncated by the Dems. Why would he care to try for such a thuggish, cagey power grab now? What would be the point? Except, you know, to savagely tilt the next election and to further the new 'n' brutal neocon agenda of perpetual war and as a desperate, last-gasp move to prove he actually has the cojones to do something so appalling, so perfectly megalomaniacal, it's sure to rescue his rotten legacy from history's compost pile? I mean, besides that.
The group nears and enters an outdoor market, the vicinity of which has been thoroughly scanned for possible threats. Soldiers fan out throughout the area. Smiling, McCain approaches a rug seller.
McCain: Hiya partner, I'm John McCain from the United States of America. How's business?
Translator: (in Arabic) This guy is an American senator. Smile and shake his hand or you'll be killed.
Shopkeeper #1: (in Arabic) Wonderful. Can we make this quick? I'm trying to sell some rugs here, because your stupid war has made the money I had saved completely worthless, and I lost my job as an engineer. Generally. My life has gone to hell.
Translator: He says it's an honor to meet you, sir.
The great fraud being perpetrated in our political discourse is the concerted attempt by movement conservatives, now that the Bush presidency lay irreversibly in ruins, to repudiate George Bush by claiming that he is not, and never has been, a "real conservative." ...
... This con game is being perpetrated by the very same conservatives who -- when his presidency looked to be an epic success -- glorified George W. Bush, ensured both of his election victories, depicted him as the heroic Second Coming of Ronald Reagan, and celebrated him as the embodiment of True Conservatism.
...
democrats lose 24 percentage points - now dead even with awol in opinion polls. no one could have imagined that voting a blank check to the megalomaniac against the will of the people would backfire. [my em]
Federal prosecutors are seeking an indictment today against Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) in a longstanding FBI corruption probe centering on allegations that he took bribes to promote high-tech business ventures in Africa, sources familiar with the investigation said.
If filed, the indictment would cap a long and tumultuous investigation that was stalled for months because of a legal battle over the constitutionality of an FBI raid on Jefferson's office last May. The raid came after the FBI found $90,000 in the freezer of his Capitol Hill home.
Creation Museum Opens
Features documentary film about Earth's history by Hanna-Barbera.
Archeologists Find 2100-Year-Old Melon
In the back of your refrigerator.
Another Close Bush Adviser Leaves White House
Barney's departure "not related" to recent attorney firings.
Army Sending Amputees Back Into Combat
Tactic last used by Germany in April, 1945.
CORRECTION
We erred in ascribing the term "enhanced interrogation" to the Bush Administration. In fact the term was originally used to describe interrogation methods used against insurgents and other civilians by the Nazis in 1942, and later judged to be war crimes. The techniques, and the arguments to justify their use, however, were the same as those used by the Bush Administration. We apologize for any confusion caused by our mistake.
...
In fact, it seems to me that “morality” imposed by religion is often brittle. How often do we hear about religious leaders committing the very sins they rail against? What’s amazing about Ted Haggart’s story is not how unusual it is, but how typical it is. Show me a holy roller who rails against the sins of the flesh, and I’ll show you someone who’s been making unauthorized use of his own body parts. You can almost count on it. The same church that crusades against abortion tries to sweep the molestation of choirboys under the rug. The same ministers who warn against worldliness get mixed up in partisan politics. The Ten Commandments forbid graven images, and the faithful make a graven image of the Ten Commandments. It’s as if there’s a near-total disconnect between what the religious say and what the religious do.
And these examples are not exceptions. Albert Schweitzer was an exception. St Francis of Assisi was an exception. Jim and Tammy Faye are, alas, the rule.
...
...
So when the super-rich use offshore tax havens to avoid paying what they owe in taxes, they’re reneging on their duties as citizens. It seems only fair to me that the consequence of that kind of tax avoidance ought to be loss of citizenship. If it’s more important to someone to avoid paying what they owe in taxes than to continue being an American, then let them keep their money. They can become a citizen of the Cayman Islands or Bermuda or wherever else they store their wealth, and come here on a visitor’s visa – if they can get one. [em in original]
Frank Rich longs for the days of Richard Nixon and presidential competence????
spoke with someone who attended the graduation ceremony at West Point where Dick Cheney gave the commencement speech. Cheney then stood on stage and shook hands with each of the 1000 graduates: wait, make that 999. Because one courageous and principled cadet faced Cheney, looked him up and down, decided not to offer his hand and walked on. Cheney was visibly taken aback, and turned to glare after the parting cadet. (We can only imagine the repercussions that this cadet may now face.)
A West Point cadet is the epitome of honor, duty and respect. That this graduate was willing to show the assembled gathering that he would not deign to honor this dishonorable Vice President with a handshake should have sent tremors of excitement through the crowd. This is probably the first time in six years that anyone has had the temerity and honesty to face down the man whom we could arguably call the Big Evil. Cheney should be getting this treatment from every person he encounters, as should Bush, Gonzales, Rice and the rest of this renegade administration. Of course, these corrupted leaders have insulated themselves from almost any contact with the general public, to the extent of even blocking off the side streets as their armored motorcades (reminiscent of images of dictator governments the world over) take them from home to work. If they were regularly exposed to common Americans they would discover that there are many who would dare to tell them that this emperor has no clothes.
NEW YORK (CNN) -- Four men have been charged with conspiring to blow up jet fuel supply tanks and pipelines at John F. Kennedy International Airport.
Homeland Security sources said there is no current threat at the airport and the attack as planned was "not technically feasible." [my em]
...
