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A state court is upholding the city's Prohibition era law that bans social dancing in bars, restaurants and certain clubs.
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The total number of people directly affected by medical bankruptcies in the U.S. has risen to more than two million annually, according to an article published online today in the journal Health Affairs.
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I think we should start working on flipping a Republican Senator. Does Olympia Snowe want a committee chair? How about Chuck Hagel? Anything is better than putting up with this blackmail from Lieberman.
Resolved, that Richard B. Cheney, vice president of the United States, should be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors and that these articles of impeachment be submitted to the American people.
But none of these apply to Vice President Cheney, and not only because it was Cheney (and not God, or George W. Bush, or anybody else) who selected himself as vice president back in 2000. With Cheney, there are also no lingering questions about capacity, motive, or malice. Over the past six years, as the country has spiraled into military misadventure, fiscal madness, and environmental meltdown, the vice president has not merely been wrong about the issues; he has been duplicitous, deceitful, and deliberately destructive to the American democracy. These things can no longer be denied by rational minds:
That in the buildup to war in Iraq, the vice president, lacking confidence in the true casus belli, conspired to invent additional ones, misrepresenting the available intelligence, crafting new "intelligence," and then spreading these falsehoods to the public, perverting the democratic process that he is sworn to uphold.
That as the war devolved into occupation, the vice president again sabotaged the democratic system, developing back channels into the Coalition Provisional Authority, a body not under his purview, to remove some of the most effective staff and replace them with his own loyal supplicants - undercutting America's best effort at war in order to expand his own power.
That in his domestic capacity, the vice president has been equally reckless with the trust of his office, converting the vice presidency into a de facto prime ministership, conducting secret meetings with secret policy boards to determine national policy and then refusing to share the details of those meetings with the other branches of government.
Finally, that the vice president has repeatedly promoted the interests of a corporation, Halliburton, over the interests of the nation, causing untold harm to American economic, military, and public health.
For these and other offenses against the nation, Vice President Cheney, clearly, is guilty of crimes against the state.
Herewith, in the absence of action for the past six years by a timid Republican Congress and a refusal to act by the new Democratic leadership, we, the Fourth Estate, take the mantle of indictment unto ourselves and present these Articles of Impeachment, to be adopted by the United States House of Representatives and voted upon by the United States Senate, at their earliest possible leisure:
Wherefore, Vice President Richard B. Cheney, by such conduct, is guilty of an impeachable offense warranting removal from office.
We had a real shot at winning the Iraq war/civil war/internecine war/uprising/insurgency/general bloodbath -- nay, we had it won, by God -- till Denmark lost it for us. Well, it and liberal bloggers. And Keith Olbermann.
That, anyway, is the blame-game line I am recommending forthwith to the White House and Republican National Committee for their most traditional of all right-wing amusements: finger-pointing on chewed carpets when all things American go a bit ... sour.
You will recall, for instance, that decades ago the Chinese communists did not defeat Chiang Kai-shek's forces. The communists did not win anything at all. No, they lost China -- "they" being Trumanite pinkos in the State Department, United States Army and other well-known bastions of raw pinkoism.
Then "they" lost Korea -- they being the same Trumanite pinkos, who, it is true, were too busy fielding idiotic McCarthyite questions about their loyalty to pay much attention to the business of foreign policy. But such is the price of freedom we -- they -- pay.
And Vietnam. The North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong did not victoriously reunify that country by kicking French and American butts into the Tonkin Gulf. No, "they" lost it, too -- the flower children, the liberal media en masse and Walter Cronkite, personally. Oh, and medal-tossing John Kerry and artillery-straddling Jane Fonda, who, according to my talk radio sources, were also "directly responsible for the deaths of 3 million Southeast Asians," right after Walter lost Vietnam.
"We" don't lose wars, you see -- we being the real Americans. Other people -- "they"; the those-on-the-left they -- lose wars for us. And of course occasionally those infernal, weak-kneed foreigners contribute to snatching victory from the we-us.
The Brits never cared enough about their own bloody empire, let alone ours, so they're skedaddling from our garden sandbox; and Lithuania, too, is throwing in the Iraqi towel, which is just like a bunch of lily-livered Lithuanians, don't you know.
But I blame the Danes, damn their Scandinavian hides.
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The essential principle of American politics is that it insists upon the exercise of cold reason in governance; revelation can play no part, nor can any religion have any kind of privileged status. Period. The End.
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Japanese Cabinet Ministers have openly denounced US policy in Iraq as childish and accused the Bush Administration of being cocky. The latest blow was last week's agreement on North Korea’s nuclear programme which is privately regarded by many in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Government as an American betrayal. Yasuhisa Shiozaki, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary, could hardly have been more dismissive of Mr Cheney’s visit. "Since the other party is coming over,” he said yesterday, when asked what was the point of Mr Cheney’s visit, “it must have some point for the other party." [my em]
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Outrageous? Of course.
But are you shocked that a country that can spend some $300 billion to wage a war could treat the injured heroes in such a fashion?
Well, sadly, you shouldn't be, not by now.
On Monday night, they announced the winners of the George Polk Awards for Journalism, honoring the best news reports and articles that appeared over the course of 2006. For those of you unfamiliar with the Polk Awards, run by Long Island University, they are arguably the second-most prestigious journalism prizes, sort of like the Golden Globes to the Oscars of the Pulitizer Prizes awarded in April.
And three out of the 12 winners. amazingly, were for stories that chronicled mistreatment or abuse or unnecessary risk to Americans fighting in Iraq -- along the lines of the Walter Reed story, yet arguably worse in some cases, because in these instances young men and women actually died. Read through these award-winning stories, and you'll be as baffled as I am over how a great nation can neglect or mistreat its own soldiers in this fashion.
If these stories don't get your blood boiling, nothing will. And it's easy to whip yourself into a frenzy, to ask things like "Why do they hate our troops," etc. On one hand, it's not that simplistic. I don't think that anyone in the Pentagon or the White House is sitting around actively "hating our troops," seeking ways for our men and women in uniform to suffer, or in some cases die, like these stories have shown.
On the other hand, I don't see these as all randomly unconnected stories, either. What they do show is this, that the war in Iraq is a huge mistake, an incredible black hole, and our leaders in Washington have a habit of condoning increasingly foolish or risky behaviors -- rather than directly confront these inconvenient truths. It's a lot like the thousand little lies that an alcoholic or a compulsive gambler might tell others and himself to avoid confronting the real issue at hand.
And so rather than build modern new facilities at Walter Reed -- a tacit, public admission that many more people have been severely wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan than anyone ever projected beforehand -- they would rather let soldiers languish in squalor. Because there aren't enough troops to fight the stronger than expected insurgency, they send suicidal soldiers into battle, and they are so desperate to keep the casualty number down that they will roll the dice on a high-risk, experimental medical treatment. And they're also reluctant to drop their plan to make a contractor buddy like Raytheon rich in 2011, because they would have to admit how bad things are in 2007.
The choices are clear. We can continue to pretend that we have enough healthy troops to wage our precarious war in Iraq, and pretend that thousands of them are not getting maimed, or worse. Or we can do what Great Britain appears to be doing tonight, and look at the situation with a view geared toward the reality on the ground.
We look forward to reading some great journalism in 2007, but we can't bear to see one more story about the mistreatment of American troops.
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In a press roundtable at the National Press Club tonight, White House Press Secretary Tony Snow led a discussion with White House correspondents about the impact of the internet on their respective jobs. Their conclusion? They don’t like being challenged by blogs.
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These fuckers have no idea what anger is. The media is responsible for cheerleading us to into a war and they sit back and act like absolutely nothing is wrong. Do they not realize the stakes? They give the White House a pass, they fuck up, and people die. If I had hair, I'd be tearing it out of my head right now.
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Blair's reversal was likely motivated in large part by various domestic political pressures. Still, the fact that President Bush's most steadfast ally has reversed himself in such a public and humiliating way, and announced a clear-cut withdrawal from Iraq on a set timetable, should embolden frightened American Congressional war opponents to move beyond inconsequential and limited non-binding resolutions and begin thinking seriously about how to compel an end to this endlessly destructive occupation.
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To keep filling the ranks, the Army has had to keep lowering its expectations. Diluting educational, aptitude and medical standards has not been enough. Nor have larger enlistment bonuses plugged the gap. So the Army has found itself recklessly expanding the granting of "moral waivers," which let people convicted of serious misdemeanors and even some felonies enlist in its ranks.
Last year, such waivers were granted to 8,129 men and women - or more than one out of every 10 new Army recruits. That number is up 65 percent since 2003, the year President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq. In the last three years, more than 125,000 moral waivers have been granted by America’s four military services.
Most of last year's Army waivers were for serious misdemeanors, like aggravated assault, robbery, burglary and vehicular homicide. But around 900 - double the number in 2003 - were for felonies. Worse, the Army does no systematic tracking of recruits with waivers once it signs them up, and it does not always pay enough attention to any adjustment problems. Without adequate monitoring and counseling, handing out guns to people who have already committed crimes poses a danger to the other soldiers they serve with and to the innocent civilians they are supposed to protect. [my ems]
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But the Pentagon is discharging more than 700 people a year who are determined to be homosexuals -- who in nearly every case have performed their service honorably on behalf of their country and uniformed service.
But it goes beyond troops on the front line. The military apparently has little problem putting major weapons systems into the hands of criminals while at the same time discharging Arabic-speaking linguists.
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Although I find the MTA Subway design on the wrapper a bit un-sexy, NYC Condoms are free. That's right. Free! There will be 18 million of them distributed- 18million less chances of contracting HIV or paying child support for the next 21 years.
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WASHINGTON, Feb. 18 - Senior leaders of Al Qaeda operating from Pakistan have re-established significant control over their once-battered worldwide terror network and over the past year have set up a band of training camps in the tribal regions near the Afghan border, according to American intelligence and counterterrorism officials.
American officials said there was mounting evidence that Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, had been steadily building an operations hub in the mountainous Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. Until recently, the Bush administration had described Mr. bin Laden and Mr. Zawahri as detached from their followers and cut off from operational control of Al Qaeda.
The United States has also identified several new Qaeda compounds in North Waziristan, including one that officials said might be training operatives for strikes against targets beyond Afghanistan.
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Andrew Stephen in Washington warns that war could easily be triggered by the Bush administration's sheer incompetence
Flat-out lies, contradictions, the right hand not knowing what the left is doing: that, by far, is the most worrying aspect of the Iran crisis unfolding before us.[...]
But let us pause and take a deep breath. I have not spoken to anybody in Washington this week who actually thinks the Bush administration is planning imminent war against Iran, though I would be prepared to bet that Bush will launch some kind of military strike against Iran before he leaves office; I have, however, talked to insiders who think war with Iran could yet be the logical outcome of the muddle-headedness and incompetence of the Bush administration.
"If the Iranians decide to respond by showing that they can be tough guys, too, we could easily get an escalation of a tit-for-tat nature," he told me. "It would start in Iraq, where we start to do things and they respond. Then we [the US] believe they're responsible for that, and so we decide to ratchet it up by hitting them somewhere else, and then they respond by hitting us in the Gulf. And then we are at war."
More than 42 years ago, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner were allegedly attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin by North Vietnam, who claimed severe provocation. History is still vague as to what triggered a series of tit-for-tat incidents between the mighty US and little North Vietnam. But it is all too clear about the outcome. That, Mr President, is how wars start.
The new symbol is being launched today by the IAEA and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to help reduce needless deaths and serious injuries from accidental exposure to large radioactive sources. It will serve as a supplementary warning to the trefoil, which has no intuitive meaning and little recognition beyond those educated in its significance.
The Angry Arab unearths this insight into the true mindset of America's oh-so-Christian commander-in-chief, George W. Bush, from a Haaretz review of a new biography of Bush's soulmate and mentor, Ariel Sharon. Like a DNA sample from a spittlefleck, this little glimpse of Bush gives us the man in his entirety, in his essence: the empty bluster of an impotent drunk; the ineradicable vulgarity of the fratboy mentality; and the uncontrollable sexual panic of a harshly repressed psyche expressing its thwarted nature in fantasies of rape and violence. (And in Bush's case, of course, the violence is not just fantasized, but acted out - by proxy – in horrific reality across the world.)
From The pessimist was right, by Uri Dromi; review of "Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait" by Uri Dan (Haaretz):Speaking of George Bush, with whom Sharon developed a very close relationship, Uri Dan recalls that Sharon's delicacy made him reluctant to repeat what the president had told him when they discussed Osama bin Laden. Finally he relented. And here is what the leader of the Western world, valiant warrior in the battle of cultures, promised to do to bin Laden if he caught him: "I will screw him in the ass!"
REPORT: 41 WANTS JEB TO BE 44
So he can pardon 43.
Fox News Channel Launches Own Satirical News Program
It's called “Fox News.”
Mexican Biologist Discovers 40 Dinosaur Footprints in Desert
Headed north.
My mother was a fanatic about public restrooms. When I was a little girl, she'd take me into the stall, show me how to wad up toilet paper and wipe the seat. Then she would carefully lay strips of toilet paper to cover the seat. Finally, she would instruct, "Never, NEVER sit on a public toilet seat".
Then she'd demonstrate "The Stance," which consisted of balancing over the toilet in a sitting position without actually letting any of your flesh make contact with the toilet seat.
That was a long time ago. Now, in my "mature" years, "The Stance" is excruciatingly difficult to maintain.
When you have to visit a public bathroom, you usually find a line of women, so you smile politely and take your place. Once it's your turn, you check for feet under the stall doors. Every stall is occupied.
Finally, a door opens and you dash in, nearly knocking down the woman leaving the stall.
You get in to find the door won't latch. It doesn't matter. The dispenser for the modern "seat covers" (aka "ass gaskets" - G.) (invented by someone's Mom, no doubt) is handy, but empty. You would hang your purse on the door hook, if there were one, but there isn't - so you carefully but quickly drape it around your neck, (Mom would turn over in her grave if you put it on the FLOOR!), yank down your pants, and assume "The Stance."
In this position your aging, toneless thigh muscles begin to shake. You'd love to sit down, but you certainly hadn't taken time to wipe the seat or lay toilet paper on it, so you hold "The Stance." To take your mind off your trembling thighs, you reach for what you discover to be the empty toilet paper dispenser. In your mind, you can hear your mother's voice saying, "Honey, if you had tried to clean the seat, you would have KNOWN there was no toilet paper!" Your thighs shake more.
You remember the tiny tissue that you blew your nose on yesterday - the one that's still in your purse. That would have to do. You crumple it in the puffiest way possible. It is still smaller than your thumbnail.
Someone pushes open your stall door because the latch doesn't work. The door hits your purse, which is hanging around your neck in front of your chest, and you and your purse topple backward against the tank of the toilet.
"Occupied!" you scream, as you reach for the door, dropping your precious, tiny, crumpled tissue in a puddle on the floor, lose your footing altogether, and slide down directly onto the TOILET SEAT.
It is wet of course.
You bolt up, knowing all too well that it's too late. Your bare bottom has made contact with every imaginable germ and life form on the uncovered seat because YOU never laid down toilet paper - not that there was any, even if you had taken time to try. You know that your mother would be utterly appalled if she knew, because, you're certain, her bare bottom never touched a public toilet seat because, frankly, dear, "You just don't KNOW what kind of diseases you could get."
By this time, the automatic sensor on the back of the toilet is so confused that it flushes, propelling a stream of water like a fire hose that somehow sucks everything down with such force that you grab onto the toilet paper dispenser for fear of being dragged in too.
At that point, you give up. You're soaked by the spewing water and the wet toilet seat. You're exhausted. You try to wipe with a gum wrapper you found in your pocket and then slink out conspicuously to the sinks.
You can't figure out how to operate the faucets with the automatic sensors, so you wipe your hands with spit and a dry paper towel and walk past the line of women, still waiting. You are no longer able to smile politely at them.
A kind soul at the very end of the line points out a piece of toilet paper trailing from your shoe. (Where was that when you NEEDED it??) You yank the paper from your shoe, plunk it the woman's hand and tellher warmly, "Here, you just might need this."
As you exit, you spot your hubby, who has long since entered, used and left the men's restroom. Annoyed, he asks, "What took you so long, and why is your purse hanging around your neck?"
This is dedicated to women everywhere who deal with a public restroom (rest??? you've got to be kidding!!). It finally explains to the men what really does take us so long. It also answers their other commonly asked question about why women go to the restroom in pairs - It's so the other gal can hold the door, hang onto your purse and hand you Kleenex under the door.
Maybe the Bush White House can't conduct a war, but no one has ever impugned its ability to lie about its conduct of a war. Now even that well-earned reputation for flawless fictionalizing is coming undone. Watching the administration try to get its story straight about Iran's role in Iraq last week was like watching third graders try to sidestep blame for misbehaving while the substitute teacher was on a bathroom break. The team that once sold the country smoking guns in the shape of mushroom clouds has completely lost its mojo.
Surely these guys can do better than this. No sooner did unnamed military officials unveil their melodramatically secretive briefing in Baghdad last Sunday than Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, blew the whole charade. General Pace said he didn't know about the briefing and couldn't endorse its contention that the Iranian government's highest echelons were complicit in anti-American hostilities in Iraq. Public-relations pandemonium ensued as Tony Snow, the State Department and finally the president tried to revise the story line on the fly. Back when Karl Rove ruled, everyone read verbatim from the same script. Last week's frantic improvisations were vintage Scooter Libby, at best the ur-text for a future perjury trial.
Even if the White House still had its touch for spinning fiction, it's hard to imagine how it could create new lies brilliant enough to top the sorry truth. When you have a president making a big show of berating Iran while simultaneously empowering it, you've got another remake of "The Manchurian Candidate," this time played for keeps.
Bowing to the dominant religious elements in his Shia Party, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki announced today a complete ban on opposite-sects marriage.
The frenzy against opposite-sects unions was also whipped up by the radical cleric, Moktada al-Falwell, who claimed that the U.S. occupation of Iraq was Allah's way of punishing such blasphemies.
Sunni politicians also supported this move, saying that if you allow opposite sects to marry, it's just a slippery slope to a marriage between an Arab and his goat, or worse, a Jew.
However, one Iraqi politician, Sunni Vice President Dickwahd al-Cheney, was exposed as a hypocrite on this issue, since his daughter is married to a Shiite. Questioned about this contradiction on the Al Jazeera program, The Shiite-uation Room, al-Cheney replied by asking the host if he'd like to live to see another Ramadan, and bragged that he had once tossed an IED in an old man's face.
Although sectarian conflicts continue to bitterly divide the Iraqi government, all sects did manage to put their differences aside to unanimously pass a law legalizing gay marriage. As the speaker of the Iraqi Parliament said: "Whaddya' think, we're still living in the Seventh Century?"
Terrorism charges brought Friday against the administrator of a loan investment program claimed that he secretly tried to send $152,000 to the Middle East to buy equipment such as night vision goggles for a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.
He was also charged with money laundering for allegedly causing the transfer on Aug. 17 of about $25,000 from a bank account in New York to a bank account in Montreal, Canada. The money was to be used to provide material support to terrorist, prosecutors said.
The indictment also charged him with wire fraud conspiracy and wire fraud. It said he devised a scheme to administer and promote a fraudulent loan investment program known as "Flat Eletronic Data Interchange" through which Alishtari and others fraudulently obtained millions of dollars from investors by promising high guaranteed rates of return.
CBS News has confirmed that Alishtari is a donor to the Republican Party, as he claims on his curriculum vitae. Alishtari gave $15,500 to the National Republican Campaign Committee between 2002 and 2004, according to Federal Election Commission records. That amount includes $13,000 in 2003, a year when he claims to have been named NRCC New York State Businessman of the Year.
Alishtari also claims to be a lifetime member of the National Republican Senate Committee's Inner Circle, which the NRCC describes as "an impressive cross-section of American society - community leaders, business executives, entrepreneurs, retirees, and sports and entertainment celebrities – all of whom hold a deep interest in our nation's prosperity and security."
You can't talk about Iraq without talking about the composite dynamic in the Middle East.
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Me [Sumo]: how much more of this stuff do we think is out there just like this one, anguishing over their roles in Iraq or Afghanistan. There must be miles and miles of it...waiting like a coiled spring...ready to snap...most likely to do harm to themselves because they can no longer live with what they did, witnessed or simply couldn't help their dying buddies ...
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Lost paperwork for new uniforms has forced some soldiers to attend their own Purple Heart ceremonies and the official birthday party for the Army in gym clothes, only to be chewed out by superiors....
....One amputee, a senior enlisted man who asked not to be identified because he is back on active duty, said he received orders to report to a base in Germany as he sat drooling in his wheelchair in a haze of medication at Walter Reed. "I went to Medhold many times in my wheelchair to fix it, but no one there could help me," he said.
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As usual, perhaps the worst part about this is the sickening propaganda for which parts of Walter Reed are used, while Building 18 and its occupants are hidden away from view like the flag-draped caskets of their brothers and sisters. Who, exactly, is helped by celebrating wounded veterans as heroes in photo-ops if they're then treated like shit for the next two years of their lives? It ain't the veterans; that's for sure.
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I started keeping track of this list in September 2005 after noticing our frequent success at catching top lieutenants/associates/#2’s/etc. of al Qaeda in Iraq’s then leader, Abu Musab al Zarqawi ...
In his President’s Day commentary, USA Today founder Al Neuharth says that he once disputed the idea the George W. Bush was America’s Worst President Ever - but now he has seen the light ...
WASHINGTON — The U.S. general commanding the security crackdown in Baghdad said Friday that he has asked for reinforcements beyond the 17,000 U.S. combat troops already committed to the Iraqi capital as part of President Bush's emergency build-up.
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The final number of reinforcements will be determined by the Pentagon - and possibly by Bush - as part of plans to expand the number of U.S. soldiers in Baghdad.
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Although the devices were not IED’s like those found in Iraq, the explosions were in the area a group sponsored by the United States may be operating. The area in Iran is Sistan-Baluchestan near the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Sy Hersh and a number of other reporters have said this is the area in which the MEK (or the mouthful name Mujahedin-e Khalq) have been operating.
This morning a Chinese newswire is reporting that the Iranians have evidence linking the attacks to the United States.
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Even if the United States were behind the operation, it is unlikely the Iranians would find weapons and materials that would be identifiable as American. US organizations that are involved in covert operations are very good about not leaving signatures that can be traced.
That is even more of a concern. The Iranians are choosing to make an issue.
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"Politics is like football. If you see daylight, go through the hole." --John F. Kennedy
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That is why they are so eager to equate criticism of them with treason and to stifle debate. They have not only lost the debate over Iraq and general Middle East militarism, but their continuous extremism and deceit is being exposed, and they fear being held accountable. It is only natural that they want to render criticism of their war and their conduct impermissible.
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And that was the point of Gaffney's column as well -- that it should be considered not only un-American, but actually criminal, to criticize the war and the people such as Frank Gaffney and Doug Feith who concocted it and sold it to the country. But ultimately, that tactic will get them nowhere. Americans are not going to be persuaded by the idea that they are obligated to refrain from criticizing Doug Feith, Bill Kristol and the wars they have spawned, to say nothing of the new ones they are attempting to foist on the country.
It is insufficient simply to have persuaded Americans that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake. It was not merely a mistake. It was the by-product of extremely deceitful ideologues who exploited the 9/11 attacks to implement a very destructive agenda that long pre-dated 9/11 and that has nothing to do with combating terrorism other than the fact that terrorism is the pretense used to justify that agenda.
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Department of Veterans Affairs doctors are furious over a recent decision by the Pentagon to block their access to medical information needed to treat severely injured troops arriving at VA hospitals from Iraq and Afghanistan.
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"My JPTA account has been disabled within last few days," [Dr. Shane] McNamee wrote. "I called the hotline and was told that all VA accounts have been locked. Could not get a good answer why. Anyhow -- I have 4 [Iraq/Afghanistan] service members to arrive within the next 2 days. This information is terribly important," the doctor wrote.
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The greatest threat America faces is not Iran or the terrorists or weapons of mass destruction or Russia or China. It is the purposeful and focused internal campaign, being conducted by right wing ideologues, to destroy the citizenry's capacity for critical thinking.
To make us so confused and so afraid that at the end of the day, we have no choice but to believe what Big Brother tells us, even if we know he's contradicting himself and making no sense whatsoever.
PBS Soundstage is airing Real Live Roadrunning March 1, 2007 at 10:00 PM ET (check local listings). (Emmylou and Mark Knopfler live in concert, from LA's Gibson Amphitheater, performing favorites from their album All the Roadrunning, such as "This is Us," "Right Now" and "All The Roadrunning," as well as favorites from each of their respective solo catalogs, like "Red Dirt Girl" from Emmylou and "Romeo and Juliet" from Mark)
"The Catholic Church is ripping the city's condom giveaway.
New York Archdiocese Cardinal Edward Egan and Brooklyn Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio released a joint statement calling the condom distribution program “tragic” and “misguided,” saying it promotes an "anything goes attitude."
The city began handing out free subway themed condoms on Valentine's Day - and plans to hand out some 26 million."
Not only is the administration sending them to risk their lives in a war that shouldn't have been fought in the first place. It sends them without appropriate equipment for the job they are being asked to do. How many more deaths in this illegal war is it going to take before Congress finds the spine to pass binding resolutions? Binding resolutions of impeachment. Bush and Cheney (and a few more) in shackles. They are nothing more than murderers and should be treated that way."How do you explain to the thousands of American troops now being poured into Baghdad that they will have to wait until the summer for the protective armor that could easily mean the difference between life and death?
It's bad enough that these soldiers are being asked to risk their lives without President George W. Bush demanding that Iraq's leaders take any political risks that might give the military mission at least an outside chance of success. But according to an article in The Washington Post this week, at least some of the troops will be sent out in Humvees not yet equipped with FRAG Kit 5 armor. That's an advanced version designed to reduce deaths from roadside bombs, which now account for about 70 percent of United States casualties in Iraq." [more . . .]
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. House of Representatives on Friday denounced President George W. Bush's Iraq troop buildup in a symbolic but politically potent challenge to his unpopular war strategy.
The Democratic-controlled House voted in favor of a resolution opposing the Republican president's decision to send another 21,500 troops to Iraq. The measure does not force Bush to act, but supporters hope to pressure him to reverse course and start bringing troops home."
During House floor debate on the Iraq War resolution Thursday, Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska) fell into a trap that's caught plenty of other Iraq war supporters -- misquoting Abraham Lincoln as advocating the hanging of lawmakers who undermine military morale during wartime.
"Congressmen who willfully take action during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs, and should be arrested, exiled or hanged," Young quoted the 16th president as saying.
The only problem: Lincoln never said such a thing. It was actually J. Michael Waller in a piece he wrote for Insight magazine in December of 2003. Waller later told Annenberg's FactCheck.org that the "supposed quote in question is not a quote at all, and I never intended it to be construed as one."
Annenberg counted 18,000 subsequent references to the Lincoln "quote" by people who typically support Bush's war policy and, moreover, oppose critics of the president's war policy.
Shortly after he left the House floor Thursday, Young found out that -- woops -- he had mistakenly put words in Abe's mouth. Young's spokeswoman, Meredith Kenny, said the congressman took the quote directly from an article he read in The Washington Times on Tuesday, which as of Thursday had not been corrected.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY), speaking on the Senate floor this afternoon, vowed to "get to the bottom" of the administration's December purge of federal prosecutors, and said that if they found that the prosecutors had indeed received positive job evaluations from the Justice Department before being booted, "there will be real trouble."
Inside the Beltway, they call politics show business for ugly people, but absolutely no awards are given out to our hardworking representatives. Unless you call the honor of serving us, the unwashed hoi polloi scurrying about their districts, a just award. "Being elected to serve to good people of (insert place name here) is all the award I need." Gag. But some of these guys and gals have gone the extra mile and deserve to be recognized for their unstinting effort in making my job as a political humorist as easy as slam dunking from a step ladder.
And although attempts to secure a television deal for the awards ceremony this year were less than successful, our salivating expectations of extreme schadenfruede will not be absorbed by the bib of lamentation, as we hand out for the 14th time, the prestigious TGFTLSBIAC awards. The "Thank God For These Liquid Squeezebags Because I'm a Comic" Awards. Your gift bag is in the mail.
THE BEST IMPRESSION OF A SLEEPY LIZARD IN SEARCH OF A WARM ROCK AWARD: and the winner is... I'm sorry, we're all winners. The award goes to Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, edging out 6-time winner Vice President Dick Cheney.
THE MOST IMPORTANT MAN IN AMERICA AWARD: For the 7th year in a row, Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens' doctor.
THE COMEDIC TIMING OF AN END TABLE AWARD: It's a tie! Hugo Chavez and John Kerry.
THE UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT OF PAYBACK AWARD: is given to the entire Republican Party Congressional Caucus for whining about the Democratic Party cutting them out of the legislative process.
It would be perhaps more precise to call paid-GOP-propaganda-shill-on-FOX News-turned-paid-GOP-propaganda-shill as White House Press Secretary, Tony Snow, a smarmy prick.
But he's also a daily hypocrite in his arrogant and deceitful dealings with the lapdogs of the White House Press Corps. He's their male dominatrix. He cracks the whip of mistruths as he casts out snide asides and the well-paid stenographers of the status quo roll over and retreat to their submissive stenography.
For a week and a half in April 2005, one of the favorite warlords of fugitive Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was sitting in a room at the Embassy Suites Hotel in lower Manhattan, not far from where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center once stood. But Haji Bashar Noorzai, the burly, bearded leader of one of Afghanistan's largest and most troublesome tribes, was not on a mission to case New York City for a terrorist attack. On the contrary, Noorzai, a confidant of the fugitive Taliban overlord, who is a well-known ally of Osama bin Laden's, says he had been invited to Manhattan to prove that he could be of value in America's war on terrorism. "I did not want to be considered an enemy of the United States," Noorzai told TIME. "I wanted to help the Americans and to help the new government in Afghanistan."
For several days he hunkered down in that hotel room and was bombarded with questions by U.S. government agents. What was going on in the war in Afghanistan? Where was Mullah Omar? Where was bin Laden? What was the state of opium and heroin production in the tribal lands Noorzai commanded--the very region of Afghanistan where support for the Taliban remains strongest? Noorzai believed he had answered everything to the agents' satisfaction, that he had convinced them that he could help counter the Taliban's resurgent influence in his home province and that he could be an asset to the U.S.
He was wrong.
As he got up to leave, ready to be escorted to the airport to catch a flight back to Pakistan, one of the agents in the room told him he wasn't going anywhere. That agent, who worked for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), told him that a grand jury had issued a sealed indictment against Noorzai 3 1/2 months earlier and that he was now under arrest for conspiring to smuggle narcotics into the U.S. from Afghanistan. An awkward silence ensued as the words were translated into his native Pashtu. "I did not believe it," Noorzai later told TIME from his prison cell. "I thought they were joking." The previous August, an American agent he had met with said the trip to the U.S. would be "like a vacation."
Valuable intelligence assets are seldom paragons, and the best are valuable precisely because they have traveled down the darker alleys and know where opportunities and danger lie. However unsavory the résumé, says Alexis Debat, senior fellow at the Nixon Center and an expert in counterterrorism in South Asia, "it is always a smarter move to leave someone in place as long as you are getting reliable information." Noorzai's story is both a symbol and an example of this critical debate over means and ends. [...]
Noorzai has a flair for the dramatic gesture. In January 2002, to convince the Americans that he wanted to work with them and demonstrate not only his worth but his influence over his tribe, he delivered 15 trucks loaded with weaponry, including about 400 antiaircraft missiles, that the Taliban had concealed in his tribal villages. The gesture apparently had the desired effect. Over the next few months, Noorzai said he met with U.S. military and intelligence officers five times. The purpose, he says: "To make the situation in Afghanistan stable and also to help the Americans negotiate with the moderate members of the Taliban to reconcile with the [new] government."
The trial can be seen as a test case for the costs and benefits of arresting and prosecuting a man like Noorzai. Does the potential cost to the battle against terrorism in Afghanistan outweigh the benefit to the war on drugs? These are the kind of wrenching questions that the U.S. must weigh in its new twilight struggle for stability both at home and abroad.
For his part, Noorzai insists that his offer to help stabilize Afghanistan was sincere. He is also certain that he offered his help to the right people: "I still believe American and NATO forces are the only ones who can help Afghanistan rebuild." They will just have to do it without him.
"Much of the pre-war intelligence that led to President George W. Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003 came from the popular fortune-telling toy known as the Magic 8-Ball, according to documents released today.
As Congress debates the war in Iraq, scrutinizing the pre-war roles of such former administration figures as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, the news that a small plastic ball shaped the decision to go to war came as nothing less than a bombshell." [more . . .]
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They will pat our troops on the back, throw them a parade, and then send them half-the-world away to die - who cares as long as these fake heroes back at home don't have to do a damn thing except stick a fucking magnet on their car and attack us so-called "liberal hippie leftists".
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